Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series) (3 page)

As the two guards closed in on it, it noticed them and got jerkily to its feet to meet their attack. At this point it had no intention of feeding off the intruders
. It simply wanted to defend its food. If by chance it ripped off a piece of flesh in the process of doing this it certainly wouldn't spit it out, but the sooner the interruption was over, the sooner it could return to feeding on Doctor Wendover.

The security man on the right moved first, lunging for the assailant. At the same time the guard moved, the late Darryl Turp attacked, leaning forward to let its weight fall into the guard. The dead and the living grappled for only seconds before the guard jerked back with a bite on his forearm.

The second guard had moved in by this time and put it into a chokehold. The nude thing thrashed back and forth, trying to throw off its captor. In the long run, it would succeed for the simple reason that it would outlast the guard. It had no need of either air or blood flow and did not require rest.

The first guard recovered quickly from the shock of being bitten and had the presence of mind to see that they
weren’t dealing with something that could be subdued with ordinary methods. Drawing his taser, he yelled to his partner, "Let him go, I'm gonna zap his ass."

The second guard realized this was easier said than done. If he let loose the chokehold, the madman would whirl around and attack him. The old saying about riding the tiger flashed through his mind.

Frantic now, it clawed at the arm around its neck, digging furrows in the skin with its nails as its saliva flowed into the fresh wounds on the guard’s arm. Still shaking back and forth, it suddenly stopped moving as it lost interest in the struggle. The need for food had once again taken over to dominate its entire being. Since it could not reach the arm that had grabbed onto it, it looked around for something else to eat. Sensing that the one it had been feeding on earlier was still alive, it turned around to resume eating. Ignoring the security guard still hanging from it, it moved toward Doctor Wendover. Seeing his chance, the guard took this brief respite and pushed the nude man away with his free arm before jumping back. As the walking dead man bent over the barely breathing body of Doctor Wendover to continue its meal, there was a sharp popping noise as the guard with the taser pulled the trigger on his weapon. The prongs dug into its back as a half second later, 70,000 volts of electricity surged through its nervous system.

Although
a charge of that strength would normally render its victim immobile or unconscious, when it struck the dead man it did much more than that. With its primitive nervous system functioning in fits and starts as it propelled the corpse in its search of food, the charge from the taser instantly disrupted this erratic series of electrical pulses and caused the late Darryl Turp's nervous system to shut down completely. This time permanently.

Shaken, the two guards surveyed the room, unable to do anything but stare at the carnage.

Curious about the sudden silence in the room, after the screaming and crashing of the fight between the madman and the guards, a nurse tentatively looked into the room. Seeing the patient immobile on the ground, she called for help. The room quickly filled with medical staff that turned to the task of tending to the dead and wounded.

The two security guards were ushered into another room where their injuries were treated. The intern who cared for the men, who had
himself been bitten on the forearm a few years previously while trying to subdue an out of control crack head, warned them to keep the wounds clean. He used the scar on his own arm as an example and went on to explain that a bite from a human being was more likely to get infected than a bite from any other animal because the human mouth carried so many germs. Both men took this advice and sincerely promised to wash their injuries three times a day and to use the antibiotic ointment provided them.

The intern, though correct in his concern that germs could contaminate the bites, was too late
with his warning. An infection was already coursing through the two men he was treating and everyone else who had been bitten.

CHAPTER TWO

Clearwater, Florida:

Steve Wendell stood up, relinquishing his chair to Mary Oliver as he asked, "Where in the hell is Kemp? You're on in two minutes."

"You know he doesn't like it when you call him that
," Mary replied as she sat down and adjusted the microphone in front of her. "He's known as Meat. You know, as in the Meat and Wood in the morning show. He's Morning Meat and I'm Morning Wood."

Steve snorted in disgust. "Al
l right then, where's Meat?"  ·

"Last I saw him he was headed for the bathroom to throw up. You know he gets nervous before the show," Mary replied primly, trying to protect her coworker.

Steve shook his head as he looked at her with disbelief. He knew it wasn't nerves that caused Mike Kemp, AKA Meat, to throw up. It was the seven nights a week he spent partying at every dive bar in the Clearwater and St. Petersburg area that did it.

Kemp claimed his drunkenness and hangovers were work related
, in that he was doing location gigs for the radio station, but Steve knew different. The on-site, live shows that Meat broadcast never ran past midnight, which gave the man plenty of time to get his act together and arrive on time and ready to go for his morning show. The problem arose after Meat turned control back over to the midnight to five AM radio personality. Once free of his responsibility to the station, he would latch onto whatever available groupie presented herself and go on an all night tour of the bars and bottle clubs in the area.

Steve constantly reminded himself that if Meat wasn't so damn good at coordinating the live events the radio station put on or got such high ratings, he would fire the disc jockey in a heartbeat.

He checked the clock on the wall and compared it to the time remaining on the commercials he had cued to play during the switch over to the morning show. Noting that it was running short, he said, "I'm gonna go get him. If I'm not back in one minute, put on ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ by Iron Butterfly. The long version with the drum solo. That'll give me enough time to drag his sorry ass in here."

Steve turned to leave the studio but stopped short when he saw Kemp through the glass partition coming toward him down the hall. With his long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing a dirty tie dyed t-shirt with a peace symbol on
the front and bell bottom jeans, he looked like a reject from a 60's sit in protest.

Meat could tell that Steve was pissed
, so as he entered the studio, he said, "Don't worry baby, I got this covered. I'm a professional, man."

Plopping down in the chair next to Mary, Meat saw Steve open his mouth to tear into him
so he held up his left hand in a 'wait' gesture while using his right hand to activate the control board, putting the station live on the air.

The Meat and Wo
od in the morning theme song came up as Meat said into the microphone, "Good morning Clearwater, you’ve got Meat and Wood in the morning. Yesterday, Wood and I were discussing the recent shark attacks on the East coast over by New Smyrna Beach and some of our listeners called in to tell us what attracts sharks. One caller told us that urine does."

Mary cut in saying, "Hey Clearwater
, Florida, this is Morning Wood. We’ve got a special treat for you today. Our intern, Jonny G, has been sent out to Clearwater Beach where he will wade out into the surf and pee - can we say pee on the radio, Meat?"

"Say urine," Meat chimed in. "As in,
you’re in
for a possible live shark attack." Meat laughed inanely at his own wit.

Mary giggled before continuing, "So Jonny G is going to wade into the surf and urinate to see if it really attracts sharks.
Let's go live now to Clearwater Beach. Jonny, are you there?"

Jonny came over the live feed and started talking to Meat as Mary shot Steve a disdainful look and gave him the finger.

Steve replied by flipping her bird with both hands and giving her a smile and a nod to let her know that while they had won this round, it wasn't over. He knew he'd been defeated for now, and would have to wait to tear Meat a new one, but that it was only a matter of time. Kemp thought he had saved himself from an ass chewing by going live, but he'd only managed to postpone the inevitable. At eleven o’clock he’d be off the air and fair game.

Quietly exiting the studio, Steve went down the long central hall to his office at the other end of the radio station.
On a normal day he would just be showing up for work, but since the regular midnight to five AM Jock had taken off for a job in Phoenix, Steve had to fill in until a replacement could be found. Jonny G had been pestering him about taking over the slot, but Steve considered the intern as nothing more than a crash test dummy, so that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

Entering his office,
he glanced out the window to check the view. The sun hadn't risen yet and the lights of Clearwater spread out before him, sloping down the bluff and ending in the darkness that was the Gulf of Mexico. Further away near the horizon, he could make out the navigation lights of a freighter wending its way south toward the pass into Tampa Bay.

The best revenge is living well
.

As a station manager, Steve was used to working in offices that would make a janitor
’s closet seem spacious, so when he came here to KLAM music radio, he expected more of the same. He was pleasantly surprised to find the station situated in a suite on the twelfth floor of the Garnett Bank Building in downtown Clearwater. He was even more surprised when he was shown his office. Four hundred square feet of area furnished with a full size desk, two couches, a separate computer workstation and a view that most people would kill for. After years of drudgery, he had arrived.

Booting up his computer,
he logged onto the New York news service the station subscribed to and checked for any interesting stories that he could forward to the monitor in the studio. Meat and Wood might need something to fill in with after they got Jonny G killed. More of the usual greeted his inquiry. War, more war, flooding and famine.

As he was about to log off, a headline caught his attention.
Steve scanned the article quickly, then went back and read it all the way through twice before leaning back in his chair and thinking, not your usual way of going postal.

The news brief stated that a patient in a Little Rock Arkansas hospital had gone crazy, killing a doctor and critically injur
ing another before security guards killed him. In the course of his rampage, he had also injured four others.

What caught
Steve’s eye though wasn't that the man had attacked the medical staff, this happened much more than people knew, it was the manner in which he attacked them.

He bit them
.

Alt
hough disturbing, the story gave Steve an idea. Halloween was coming soon and the station needed some kind of gig for the event. They were already doing a remote from Universal Studios, but as usual, all the local radio stations would be at the amusement park doing the same thing. Even though KLAM was within spitting distance from Orlando with all its haunted houses and scary Halloween crap, it was almost getting passé covering the same thing every year. Though this was Steve's first Halloween in Florida, it seemed that no matter where he worked it was the same old thing. Go to a haunted house and broadcast live.

Boooring.

Maybe a broadcast from a morgue where the dead come back to life and attack the living, Steve thought. Try to do a War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells’ type broadcast and scare the shit out of everyone in Pinellas County.

With this in mind, he composed an e-mail with the news clip attached and sent it to Meat down in the studio. The man might be number one with a bullet on
his shit list but he was still the most creative DJ when it came to producing and broadcasting live shows.

The reply came back immediat
ely. ‘That sounds cool. Let me think about it and get back to you.’

You do that, Steve thought to himself. Think hard too, because your continued, gainful employment might just depend on what you come up with.

Steve pulled up an advertising spreadsheet but found it hard to concentrate as his mind kept drifting back to the story out of Little Rock.

How would that feel?
How would you kill someone by biting him? It would have to be on the neck like some kind of vampire or something,
he decided.
Just bite down and rip out the jugular vein or maybe just clamp onto their windpipe and crush it.

Steve clicked his teeth together a few times as he imagined what it would be like
. The taste, the texture of the skin, the feel of flesh ripping.

Shuddering at the
thought, he admonished himself to quit freaking himself out and turned his attention back to the spreadsheet on his monitor. The work was boring and he was tired from being up all night so his concentration waned. His mind kept returning to thoughts of people biting each other.

Just too weird
, he thought.