The Bomb and the Cage: Doree Anne (7 page)

“How are you …” The thing broke through the window and grabbed nurse Janis by the hair. It pulled her through the window. Her sides were cut by the shards of glass sticking out of the metal frame, which had held the window in place. She screamed loudly as it was biting, tearing at her face, ripping the flesh from the bone. I pulled the trigger of my gun, and nothing happened.
It was empty
. I unloaded the spent rounds, reloaded, and took my shot. I hit the monster in the head and it fell back violently.

Nurse Janis rolled around on the sidewalk holding her face. The blood seeped through her fingers and she screamed in agony. I looked down at her and knew she would die soon, that she would
change
soon. There was only one thing left to do now. I aimed the pistol at her. She never saw it coming, through her blood soaked fingers.

“I’m sorry.” I said. The bullet soothed her. She stopped moving, stopped screaming, and stopped breathing.

Chapter 14

09/18/2004 0920 Hours

E.M.T. Bruce Howard

The ambulance struck the bottom and that strange floating, falling feeling was gone.

“Linda, take off any gear that isn’t necessary and make sure to take off anything that could snag as we got out. I did the same. I picked up a small oxygen tank, which was in the back, and brought it to the front.

“Okay, this is the plan. I’m going to break the window; you need to wait for the cabin to fill up before we get out. Take a deep breath at the last second possible.”

“Okay.” Linda looked nervous, but I was sure she would be okay. She is a strong woman. “Good luck, Bruce.”

“Baby, we’re not going to need it!” I slammed the oxygen tank into the window shattering it on the first hit. The water started pouring into the cabin. I felt myself shiver immediately. Then just like we had planned, we took our deep breaths and swam out the window of the ambulance.

The lake wasn’t deep because of the drought we’ve been in for the past few months. Maybe twenty-feet deep, but even at that depth it felt like I was never going to get to the surface. I took a large long breath when I broke through to the surface. I looked to the shore; none of those things had gone into the water. Linda popped up next to me.

“Are they in the water?”

“No, they stopped at the edge.”

“Thank God!”

“We need to get to the shore on the opposite side.”

“Okay, I’ll follow you.”

The shore was heavily wooded. Once there we blended into the trees and hid from sight. Just passed the prison, the highway made a wide right wrapping around the woods and was a straight shot to town. We would use the woods to get to town undetected.

There was a hill several yards back and we went to it. From the hill, we could see the entrance to the prison and where
Highway 27
connected to the prison road.

“Should we head back towards the highway?”

“No, not yet, we need to stay here. We don’t know if there are more of those things, if this is the only case, or if it’s ground zero?”

Far away there were the sounds of police sirens. The sounds were growing and I could see there were five squad cars that stopped on
Highway 27
and blocked the entrance to the prison road. They turned off their sirens and got out of the cars.

One of the monsters that had wandered from the group started running towards the police. The person was running at a fast pace and when one of the police officers saw it, they started walking towards it. I wanted to scream as loud as I could, try to warn them, but wouldn’t do any good. A moment later, the person and the officer collided and fell to the ground. The rest of the officers ran over and piled on top of it. They handcuffed it and dragged it to one of the police cruisers.

The police officers surrounded the wounded officer who was lying motionless on the road. I didn’t need to be any closer to know that the officer was dead. The bite must be poisonous.

“How did he die so quickly?”

“Maybe their bite is poisonous.” Three of the officers ran to him while another was talking on a cell phone. When the officers got within a few feet, they stopped. Two of them ran back drawing their weapons, the other was grabbed by that thing, before he could get away. The officers started shooting. When they stopped, it looked like both men were dead.

“So what are we going to do now?”  Linda looked worried.
Was I was displaying the same emotion and just didn’t know it
?

“If the prison is ground zero, then we need to get as far away from it as humanly possible, stay off the main roads. How far do you live from here?”

“I stay at
Rain Tree Apartments
in
Leefield
, fifteen miles away.”

“Well, it’s closer than me; I stay twenty-five miles away. Do you have any weapons in your home?”

“Yes, I have a rifle, handgun, and a few hundred rounds of ammunition for each.”

“Okay,
Leefield
it is.” I said, and then smile.

“What about family, Don’t you have one?”

“I did, my wife left me three months ago. She’s with her mother in
Georgia
.” I waited for the
I’m so sorry to hear that
but for some reason it didn’t feel appropriate and apparently the feeling was mutual.

“My family is from
Tennessee
.”
It was impossible to tell how far this virus would spread
.
Could it be a nation epidemic
?
By the poor response so far
,
I was certain that it would be all over the state by next week
.
Could it be in
Tennessee
by the next month
?

“Good, they’ll be safe. I’m sure the Government will step in and stop this from spreading.”

Chapter 15

09/18/2004

Eric Kelly

Waking up on the floor of what was once the visitation room and not knowing what happened is bad. Looking over to see a group of visitors eating the correction officer that just moments ago, opened the door for you, is terrible. I didn’t move and looked around the room the best I could. Several people were walking around. Some were missing limbs, some were dripping in blood, and all of them looked dead.
What is going on in here
? I tried to think back to what happened and I didn’t need to search hard to figure out that my first attempt at a car bomb had succeeded, however my first attempt at a timer had failed. 

I planned for the car bomb to go off while I was in the far corner talking with Allen. Allen had not even arrived yet when the bomb detonated. I remember the concrete cinderblocks falling on a couple that were across from me. They were holding hands and they looked happy. The way the sunlight from a nearby window basked them. It was
perfect
, until those cinderblocks fell on their bodies, crushing them. Their smiling faces changed to surprise for just a moment, then it violently twisted, turning into
pain
. Excruciating pain as the weight broke bones as it fell on them. I wondered for a moment if they were still holding hands underneath all the debris.

Something I had not considered when planning this great escape was the children’s play area. The play area was also on the same wall that I had succeeded in destroying. There were bricks piled up there too but I couldn’t see any children in the wreckage. At least not from the floor where I was laying, motionless, watching the dead walk around me.

There were the sounds of screaming coming from outside the visitation area. I continued to lay still and counted the seconds that the screaming had lasted. Counting the seconds tic by was the only way I could maintain my composure. I had made it to three-hundred-twenty before it had finally stopped. Three-hundred-twenty seconds of hell for whoever or whatever was screaming in agony.
Why were the dead walking
?
This wasn’t possible
.
I must be dead, dead and in hell
.

I needed to get out of here. I couldn’t just lay here and hope for the best. Eventually one of those things was bound to figure out that I was still alive. I had already been lying here for what must have been five or so minutes, but then again when fear grasps you seconds can feel like minutes. I needed to break the grasp; I needed out. I had an exit strategy before the blast but I didn’t plan on the dead not staying dead. I didn’t plan to be alone either.
Where was Allen
?
Had Allen gotten in trouble again
? I needed to get out of here and find him.

There was the sound of talking coming from the front of the control room. The voices muffled as if coming from a different world, and then a moment later, gunshots. I flinched from the initial bang. I looked around and none of the things seemed to notice me. I took a long, deep, breath. I exhaled slowly and tried to think.

Were the bathrooms locked
? I had to move before I was discovered. The things were now all moving in the direction of the gunshot. I got up and was greeted by a sharp pain in my leg. I looked and saw my pants had been ripped and there was debris sticking out of my leg. It was a gory twisted mess, and I was surprised I had not felt it before.

More gunshots echoed through the large room. I ran across the room to the bathrooms.
Please don’t be locked. Please be empty inside
! I turned the cold metal doorknob, it opened. I got inside and pulled the door shut behind me. The floor was wet and I slipped falling and sliding into the only stall. More pain greeted me as I took in a sigh of relief, this time in my chest. I pulled myself up and locked the door. I pressed myself against the door, slid down it, and felt the vibrations through it, of some monster trying to get in.

Chapter 15

09/18/2004 0925 Hours

Officer Ted Bryant

Gus Smith was a tall, thin man that resembled a scarecrow. He was forty-eight with gray and black hair, that was more grey than black. He had the thin fine lines on his face that showed his years. All the years of his face pressed together, squinting as he stared into the Florida sun as he watched over the prison from his high tower. Gus had been working at
Clearwater Correctional Institution
for twenty-one years and had done fifteen of those years assigned to the back tower. He had never fired his weapon.

Gus couldn’t tell me much that I didn’t already figure out. There was an explosion. The prison’s radio tower sat on top of the control room; which so happened to be right next to where the explosion took place. There was a good chance that it was planned that way. Gus didn’t know of any
special
inmates that might have the money to pay for such an extravagant escape plan, but he didn’t know many inmates either.

The explosion wasn’t the most important thing right now, the dead coming back was. It wasn’t possible for this to happen, yet they were.

“Here, take a look.” Gus said and handed me his rifle an AR-15 with sniper scope. I held the rifle up and looked through the scope towards the prison. There were several groups of people running around inside. The sight was unimaginable. One group gathered over something; they were tearing at it, eating like vultures. Then I saw an officer running from a group of people.

“There are people in trouble. Have you fired any shots to help?”

“It won’t do any good, people are confused. They’re scared. All you’ll do is make things worse.”

Gus looked at the prison. He had stared from this tower for the past fifteen years at the
same
prison. It was the prison he had worked at day in and day out. Even though it was a prison, it was still a place he had spent a majority of his life, it had become a second home. It had to be hard to see it like this. “Go ahead and try.” He continued.

I took a deep breath, watched the crosshair lift above the officer who was running. When the crosshair came back down, I fired. The bullet went straight through one of the  attacker’s chest. The force caused it to fall and two others fell while trying to run over it. The three got back up. I shot him again this time just below the head in the center of his neck; again he fell, then again got back up. I remembered the one in my car; I shot that one in the head maybe that was the only way to kill them. I fired again this time connected with the head. It fell to the ground and didn’t get back up.

I put the sight back on the attackers and took three shots each one hitting one of those things in the head. There was now only one person running after the officer. The officer raised his right hand, he had a gun, and he fired it into the air. I took another deep breath and just as my crosshairs rested on the attacker, a building blocked my sight.

Gus patted me on the back firmly. “You’re a good shot.” 

“Did you see any of those people scatter when I fired?”

“No, I sure didn’t, that just doesn’t make sense.”

“I killed one of those things when I pulled in. They had been chasing an ambulance. The driver drove straight into the lake up front. They were blocking the road. I drove up to them and they swarmed me. One of them broke in. That thing looked deader than dead, I shot it in the face. The body is still in my car. This is like one of those zombie movies, maybe they are zombies?” Gus didn’t look surprised. “We need to get a hold of someone inside there. Is there any forms of communication up here?”

“Well my landline phone isn’t working either which means the power must have been knocked out by the blast too.”

“What about a cell phone?”

“We don’t carry them here, the only ones who do are the captains and above.”

“Well, what’s their number?” I said while fishing out my cell phone.

“I don’t know. Only ones with the numbers is the front and back gate sergeants Rob here at the back gate left this morning with the bloodhounds to train. I’m sure it’s in his office but there’s no way to get there without power.”