Crimson Awakening

Chapter 2

Gabi had vomited all over the dashboard. Her sweet voice was now a gurgle. She hissed at him with large eyes, half-wondering what was happening to her and the other half-questioning the sudden burning hunger for human flesh. Her head drained of all emotions, and her memories evaporated.

The human in front of her meant nothing but a strong desire to feed off his flesh and brains. She snapped her teeth, and vile puss dripped between shriveled lips. Her once stunning face was now disfigured by a hideous rictus.

Rey stared at the unthinkable. He understood nothing of it, and his survival instincts wrestled with the love for the woman he had married.

Love won.

With a quick snap, he clasped her hands together.

The zombie extended her neck, aiming for his jugular, but he grabbed her by the throat, still holding her hands with one hand, and pulled her out of the cabin. She wiggled violently with strength that Gabi had never had.

He dragged the zombie toward the back of the trailer. There, he forced her to the ground and pinned her down under his boot. Then he opened the trailer and picked her up.

Rey held her at an arm’s length and peered into her eyes, looking for humanity. Two dark holes and nothingness stared back.

He hurled her into the trailer and locked the doors behind him. Scratches and shrieks ensued.

Mentally exhausted, Rey collapsed. Sweat and tears flowed freely down his face. Despair and resentment, abandonment and rage, convulsed in his heart. He ceased to hear the strange noises coming from the trailer.

Then rage took over.

He jumped up, huffing. His lungs quickly pumped oxygen, and blood traveled at high speeds in and out of his beating heart. With desperation, he hammered on the doors of the trailer. Why, God, why? He smashed his fists again and again until his knuckles hurt.

The urge to turn the rig upside down entered his mind, but then the face of his daughter sleeping upfront came to him.

He collapsed on the ground again. His mind went blank, and his body numbed. Minutes went by.

After a while, he slowly stood up and walked with drooped shoulders back to the truck’s cabin. His kitten, Eve, was still sleeping, sprawled on the lower bunk bed. She smiled, dreaming of puppies and red balloons.

He sighed. A new life was ahead of them.

Or a new hell.

Absentmindedly, Rey finished filling up the dual tanks, paid at the pump with a credit card, and then jumped into the cabin. He pulled the truck up to the water hose then cleaned the passenger seat thoroughly.

The image of Gabi struggling and wiggling in his hands was seared into his brain, playing over and over again. He moved about like a robot, devoid of feelings, just numbness. His brain refused to fire up connections between things that made no sense.

He felt a bump in his pocket. The disinfectant … s**t! He poured the entire contents onto the dashboard and the seats. Disgusted, he then threw the bottle onto the passenger seat.

Climbing into the driver’s seat, Rey turned the key, threw the truck into first gear, and revved the engine hard. The rig snorted and thrust forward, out of the gas station, as Rey headed back onto I-40, toward California. The road was dark, but the headlights cut through the night like knives of light.

He switched on the radio. An avalanche of words burst out, and a frantic voice reported on zombie occurrences around Oklahoma City. Rey switched channels. All reported the same thing—destruction, attacks, mayhem, gore, and blood flooding the cities of America. It was like a cancer spreading rapidly throughout a healthy body.

Rey shook his head. So, it’s everywhere.

He pressed the gas pedal and looked to his right, used to seeing Gabi there. When he saw the empty disinfectant container on the passenger seat, Rey narrowed his eyes. He needed a doctor. A plan sprouted in his brain.

Driving with one hand, he scrolled with the other through the address book on his phone. He pressed the call button next to the name that read “Jenkins.” After a few rings, a grumpy voice answered.

“Who are you? And what the hell do you want at two o’clock in the morning?”

“Jenkins, it’s Rey. Sergeant Reynir Halldor.”

“Who?”

“We met several years ago during the NATO night exercises. I was a Delta Squad sergeant in the Icelandic Special Forces … Víkingasveitin.”

“Viking, what? What in the hell are you talking about, man?”

The slurred speech on the other end told Rey that he was dealing with a man awakened from a drunken stupor.

“For Christ’s sake, Jenkins, we got s**t-faced at The Drunk Rabbit. Remember?” Rey tried to trigger old memories.

I’m s**t-faced now. “Yeah … maybe …” Jenkins grunted.

“Are you still in Long Beach? I need your help.”

“Yeah … Long Beach. My help? How can I help … Sergeant?

“Aren’t you a doctor?”

Jenkins paused, not quite ready to share his life story with a guy he barely remembered. “Yeah, I used to be. Now I just work at a lab.”

“Great. Have you watched the news?”

“What? No. What news? Who the hell watches the news anymore? Those stupid mother—”

“Listen, take a cold shower, drink some coffee, and watch the news. Call me after,” Rey said.

“Yeah … okay.” Jenkins clicked the phone off and went back to sleep.

Rey cursed under his breath.

Strong as a horse and without even a seasonal flu under his belt, Rey had never been to a doctor, on purpose. Since he’d been a kid, his grandfather had treated him like a little Viking, and they had often swam together in the icy waters of the Silfra fissure in Iceland.

Rey hoped Jenkins still had connections in the medical world who might be able to help with Gabi’s “condition.” What he didn’t know, though, was that Fredrick Jenkins, MD had lost his medical license several years back, due to his alcoholism. After repeatedly neglecting his duties, the military had terminated him. As a final slap to the face, his wife had cheated on him with the very officer who had signed his discharge papers. Then, as the cherry on the cake, she had married the guy. His name was Rick Vance, but Jenkins preferred to call him a certain body part that rhymed with “Rick.” Buried under a mountain of alimony and child support bills, Jenkins had slowly faded away and jadedly settled for a janitorial job with Sylvania Labs in Long Beach, California. And that was a damn shame, because the man had a brilliant mind and had often published papers in microbiology and virology during and after graduating at the top of his class at West Point.

Rey had to figure out when he would arrive in California and instinctively turned to his right again. He stared at the bottle on the empty seat for a second, sighed, and then returned his eyes to the road ahead.

With both tanks full, he calculated in his head. Three hundred gallons of fuel, at eight miles per gallon, would give him a driving range of at least twenty-four hundred miles. And Long Beach is at … f**k this!

He flicked on the GPS dashboard then plugged in the coordinates for Long Beach. Thirteen hundred and forty miles flashed on the screen. Plenty of fuel. At sixty miles per hour, he would be in Long Beach under twenty-four hours. Would it be too late for Gabi? Or whatever it was in back in the trailer? Rey refused to call her a zombie. Still …

According to the Department of Transportation regulations, he was supposed to drive eleven hours a day and rest at least ten. Depending on the state, his speed couldn’t be more than sixty per hour, either. Right, like I’m going to drive sixty ’cause some dumbass government bureaucrat said so. I’d like to see him stuck with his wife in a trailer. See if he wants to drive only eleven hours a day. f**k him! He pushed down on the gas pedal.

In Long Beach, Jenkins woke up sweating. Chico, his cocker spaniel, was whining and l*****g his hand. Outside, a cacophony of sirens blared, and yells and screams made it into his living room.

“What the hell …?” he grumbled, standing up. He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms outward. Last week’s newspaper shuffled off the couch and landed on his TV dinner leftovers.

Barefoot, he walked to the window and peered outside. Flustered, pajama-clad neighbors gesticulated on porches across the street. On sidewalks, others clumped in small groups were engaged in agitated discussions.

Bums causing trouble again. Whatever …

Jenkins scratched his unshaven face and returned to the couch. An empty bottle of Jack Daniels laid on the floor. He squeezed one last drop out of it. Disappointed, he then collapsed back on the couch.

Chico jumped up next to him and watched with curious eyes as only a dog could.

“Chico, my man, let’s see what the tube is saying,” Jenkins said, turning on the TV. The screen illuminated the dark living room as he nudged the volume up. He sighed as if the effort exhausted him.

“… Our reports indicate that the new substance, Zicomer, was illegally tested in markets around the world,” a jovial newscaster announced.

“Sure, it was, you bunch of frauds,” Jenkins sulked.

Chico, used to Jenkins’ one-way conversations with the TV, ignored the comment and remained coiled next to him, waiting for something that really mattered to his limited dog world.

“… The chemical substance was designed to keep food fresh in perpetuity. It was distributed in poor neighborhoods and soup kitchens all over the world. For the past two months, over ninety-eight percent of those who have consumed foods treated with Zicomer have died. So far, the Paradime Corporation, where the substance was manufactured, has not returned our calls for comments …”

“Ha! Keep trying, you morons. They don’t give two shits about your comments.”

The TV screen split in two, and a new image showed another reporter waiting for his cue to speak.

“Our correspondents have reported strange events developing in cemeteries across the country. Apparently, the Zicomer-affected dead are being activated by this substance and—hold on to your seats, folks—they are coming out of their graves. The walking dead are amongst us. The phenomenon cannot be explained, and the medical community is scratching their heads. Thousands of buried individuals are somehow getting a new life.

“Let’s go now to such a site where Elijah Stein is reporting live from Brea. Elijah?”

“Yeah, Elijah, tell us what it is, brother,” Jenkins said as if he knew Elijah Stein personally.

The camera zoomed out, showing the reporter standing next to a sign that read “Memorial Park & Mortuary.” Excited to be transmitting live from a cemetery, Elijah nodded repeatedly. Next to him, an even more excited and a much larger man turned toward the camera, and then to the reporter. He did it several times, as if watching a tennis match.

“About two hours ago,” Elijah started the report, “the local police station received a disturbing call from the night guard at Memorial Park and Mortuary. The caller indicated that several tombs had been opened, and it seems … the dead bodies … um … walked out.” He stopped abruptly, seeming to struggle to make sense of what he had just said.

“You shittin’ me, Elijah?” Jenkins piped in from the couch.

“… The night guard reported that he called for help when his colleague, who was patrolling on the opposite side of the cemetery, suddenly disappeared. We are now talking to …” Elijah Stein shoved the microphone in the large man’s round face and waited.

“Jack Craig. Are we on?” the large man asked.

“Yes, go ahead, sir,” the reporter encouraged the guard to tell his story.

“Oh, okay. Benny, my brother, called me, screaming and hollering … Um … He said something like he saw zombies coming outta graves or something …”

“Wait,” interrupted Elijah Stein, “your brother works here, too, and his name is Benny Craig?”

“Yes. Just like Jenny Craig, only he is Benny. I’m Jack.”

“You are jack s**t, Craig,” grunted Jenkins, shaking his head. “What a bunch of jerkoffs …”

Elijah’s voice came back, and Jenkins listened in again.

“So, Mr. Craig, to clarify for our viewers, the ones coming out of these graves are believed to be the ones who ingested food treated with Zicomer, correct?”

Jack Craig looked dumbfounded as he scratched his head. “Not sure what you mean by ingested, but they sure ate some of the stuff from the soup kitchens. This section of the cemetery is for poor people, you know?”

“And there you have it, folks, you heard it from the source. Police are on the scene and are searching for the missing brother. I’m Elijah Stein, back to—”

A scream blared out of the TV, and Jenkins jolted back on the couch. It sounded like a wounded elephant—high in pitch and gurgled like someone was trying to speak through ripped out vocal chords. Chico perked up his ears and growled.

Another scream followed, and the camera panned around toward the source.

Out of the dark, two dozen skeletal figures appeared behind the police cars. With pale faces accentuated by flood lights, the figures looked like walking ghosts. Some had blood dripping out of their mouths, and all snapped and ground their teeth as if chewing sand.

A rookie cop opened the trunk of a cruiser and quickly distributed what looked like shotguns. Then the police took position behind their cars. Through a bull horn, another cop ordered the pale platoon to stop and put their hands in the air. Ignoring the warning, the walking cadavers advanced.

The camera then zoomed in on the group and, on his couch, Jenkins jolted back in horror.

The screen was filled with skin-stripped cheekbones with b****y, putrefied teeth protruding out. Depraved faces with angry expressions of murder and mayhem gave a new meaning to live reporting.

Is this s**t real, or are they f*****g with me?

The police started shooting, and the sound was deafening. The camera captured the barrage of fire unleashed and, for several seconds, smoke filled the screen. Then screams, shrills, thumps, and thuds thundered through the speakers.

When the smoke finally cleared, the bodies of what used to be four officers of the Brea Police Department were now a mangled mound of meat, broken bones, and shattered skulls. Above them, limbs and jaws grabbed and ripped apart the b****y remains. Hungry for more, several zombies searched for more humans.

The abandoned camera nosedived, pointing toward the ground.

On the couch, Jenkins wished poor Elijah Stein and his cameraman had the smarts to get away. He was wrong.

The transmission failed to show the young reporter and his cameraman having their skulls smashed on the curb and the ravenous mouths slurping their brains. Instead, the image returned to the studio, where the newscaster seemed to have lost all his joviality. He gasped several times, and then the screen went dark.

What the hell?

Jenkins changed channels, but all returned to the same dark screen. Then some returned with the Emergency Alert System.

Bullshit. They are f*****g with us, he decided, laying back down for a nap.

Just then, at the end of the street, the first zombies appeared in Long Beach.

Chico howled in the night.