Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series) (31 page)

T
here was little sign of the police or the National Guard. With the exception of the two initial roadblocks, where the soldiers had told him that he had to detour further east, the only troops in sight were those riding in the occasional Humvee that roared past. These soldiers seemed to be heading in no particular direction but still honked at the traffic around them and occasionally brandished weapons to prove they had the authority to by-pass traffic. Other than the two abandoned Sheriff’s cars, Steve had only spotted one Largo City police car after he crossed Ulmerton Road. It was parked with its driver's side wheels up on the median, while the officer sat on its hood staring insolently at the traffic going by.

Even from a distance
, he could see that while Belcher was a mess, Gulf to Bay was a parking lot. Before reaching it, he cut off on a road that paralleled the thoroughfare three blocks to the south. Although running the entire distance to the business district, the shortcut was only a two-lane street that cut through a mostly residential area.  Because it wasn't a main street, it was usually sparsely traveled and he hoped to make better time by taking it.

Too many times to count
, after making the turn from Belcher, he passed groups of the walking dead. From what he could see, they seemed to be wandering around in search of food. As he drove by, they would reach out their hands to grasp at the Jeep while making the same high whining noise as the one he had shot on Gulf Boulevard.

Although
the creatures were revolting, the initial rage to destroy them that he felt after abandoning Miss Carlson had disappeared, leaving only a feeling of disgust when he saw the dead. He still wanted to exterminate each and every one of them but to do that; he knew that first he had to survive.

Nearing Clearwater High School,
he had to slow down because smoke from a house burning on the side of the road cut visibility down to only a few feet. As he crept along, squinting to see ahead of him, a figure suddenly appeared only feet away from his front bumper. Reaction took over and he hit the brakes, even as his mind told him to step on the gas.

Looking close
r, he saw that standing in the middle of the street was a woman of about fifty, wearing a bright neon pink sweat suit. She looked immaculate in her appearance, with her hair done up and makeup on her face, so he relaxed.

Then he noticed her eyes, feral, hungry
, predator eyes that looked at him with longing. The thing took a stumbling step forward and threw itself onto the hood of the Jeep as he floored the accelerator to run it over. It grabbed onto the hood latch with one hand and kneeled on the front bumper, clinging to his vehicle like a lamprey.

St
omping on the brake, Steve caused the Jeep to nose dive. He watched with triumph as the unwanted hitchhiker was propelled off the hood as if jerked by an invisible leash, to land on the road directly in front of him. Without hesitating, his foot jabbed down on the gas.

The Jeep roared
forward before the front bounced up like it had hit a speed bump too fast, and a second later the rear end did the same. Stepping on the brake again, Steve looked into his mirror and saw that he had broken the things back. It lay on the ground writhing like a pink snake. Mesmerized by the sight, he watched as the dead thing got its hands up underneath it and began to drag its useless legs behind as it came after him again.

With a roar of disgust,
he threw the Jeep into reverse and aimed his right rear wheel so it would roll down the entire length of the thing's body. The Jeep bounced again, throwing him against the door. Braking, he looked at the crushed thing that now lay in the road.

Smoke
from the burning house drifted over the twisted, pink, sack of rags, slightly obscuring the view, but Steve could see enough to know that he had done a job on the Mary Kay bitch from hell.

Glancing through the windshield
, Steve noticed dozens of figures coming toward him through the smoky haze. He wanted to make sure that the thing wouldn’t crawl after anyone again, so he quickly threw the Jeep in reverse and drove back over the body again, this time with substantially less bounce. Satisfied the job was done, Steve jammed the Jeep in gear and fled the oncoming horde.

Coming up on the footba
ll field located just past the high school, Steve noticed how deserted the area seemed. He could see the tents the National Guard had set up for the refugees, but they all looked abandoned. Suddenly, his sense of smell was assailed by a sweet, sticky stench that he first thought was burning pork. It caught in the back of his throat and for a second he started to gag but got it under control by swallowing hard a few times. Passing the bleachers for the stadium he could see low, smoking fires burning in an open playing field along the rear. The pork smell was stronger here.

Hell of a night for a cookout
.

Two cars passed him going in the opposite direction
and he tried to yell out a warning as to what awaited them that way, but they were moving too fast.

Steve looked
through the smoky haze hanging over the empty playing field and could see that the traffic on Gulf to Bay had eased up quite a bit. Deciding that it would be quicker to go that route, and that it would give him more visibility than the closed in residential streets, he cut over on the first intersection he came to.

As he looked ahead for a crossover,
he could see a few cars stopped at a National Guard roadblock. He started to pull in behind them when a thought came to him, if someone pulls up behind me while I'm sitting here, I'll be boxed in, and if those things come along I'll be trapped.

Making a quick
two-point turn, he headed back toward the school.

J
ust before he reached the grandstands, Steve stopped and switched to four-wheel drive. Bouncing over the curb onto the practice field, he steered between two of the fires still smoldering there. The stink of burning filled his nostrils, causing him to gag again. This time it turned into dry heaves, so he stopped to lean out the door of his Jeep and threw up.

With nothing in his stomach, it only took a minute before he got
it back under control. About to pull his upper body back in the Jeep, his eye caught sight of something glowing in one of the fires only a few yards away.

It was a human skull.

When Steve looked closer, he could see other bones resting in the embers, along with what looked like a metal prosthetic leg. Swallowing hard to keep his gag reflex down, he jerked himself back in the Jeep, slammed the door and drove as fast as he dared through the field.

He didn't know what had gone on back there
, and didn't
want
to know. All he wanted to do now was get to the radio station. After turning from the field onto Gulf to Bay, he found himself coming down a short, steep, curving hill that delineated the edge of the downtown area. He could see more figures moving around now, and at first alarmed they might be more of the dead, quickly recognized that they moved with a fluid grace in contrast to the corpses walking around. These were people, living people.

Steve was relieved to be
back among his own kind, but that turned to cautious fear when he reached the base of the hill. Here, a convenience store he had stopped at numerous times stood in the middle of a small parking lot. On this early morning, nothing would have gotten him to pull in.

The glass front of the store had been smashed in and
a gang of people was standing around in the parking lot next to the piles of goods they had looted. From what he could see, it was mostly wine and beer.

Challenges were yelled at him as he drove by
, and one man tracked the Jeep with a shotgun. Steve scrunched down in his seat to present as small a target as possible until he was out of range. He saw more figures, loaded down with goods, running out of a pawnshop on his left.

He drove
as fast as he dared and soon caught sight of the Garnett Bank Building rising up to form part of the skyline. An onshore breeze was blowing, keeping most of the smoke away, so he chanced rolling down his window to breathe the fresh air that flowed in and spit the taste from the funeral pyres out.

The downtown area was deserted as he drove through it
. This seemed more ominous than having looters and zombies running around. Normally, there was at least someone on the streets. Remembering what Heather had told him about the ESU team searching the storm drains right below this area, he expected to have to drive through a throng of the dead to reach the station. He could see where the grills and manhole covers over the sewers and drains had been removed, proving that the dead had been here, but where they were now was anyone’s guess.

Theorizing that they might have emerged here
, in the mostly deserted downtown area, and then moved off to better hunting grounds, Steve was just glad they were gone.

Two National Guardsmen stood at the intersection in front of the bank where he needed to
turn. As he approached, one guard help up his hand for him to stop.

Walking nonchalantly up to the driver's side door with his M4 assault rifle held loosely in his hands, the soldier
blew a bubble with the gum he was chewing before sucking it back in with a pop.

"Where
ya headin’?" He asked nonchalantly

"KLAM, I'm the station manager. I've got my ID and Captain Sobloski can vouch for me
," Steve said while trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice. Despite his best efforts, he thought he sounded like he had just sucked helium.

Brightening, the man overlooked Steve's nervousness
and said; "I listen to you guys all the time, man. You rock." In a lower voice he asked, "Is Wood really hot? I mean she sounds sexy as hell."

Steve considered
this; he had never put Mary in the same sentence as hot. She wasn't a dog but...

"She's all right looking
," he finally said.

"Thought so
. Most of those radio chicks are hogs when you meet 'em in person but she always sounded different. Ya know?"

Steve nodded, putting a sly, agreeing face on. He really wanted to get going but didn't want to piss off this trooper who could tell him to kick rocks and enforce the order with
his assault rifle.

"If you get a chance, ask her to come down later and say H
i. It's safe here now. It got kinda hairy for a bit when those things started popping up but we chased 'em off."

Surprised, Steve asked, "She's here?"

"Guys on the other end of the street said that she and Meat came in about an hour ago." Stepping back he waved Steve past saying, "If you get a chance, play ‘Freebird’ for me."

Steve
smiled as he drove around the corner, past the MRAP and into the parking ramp entrance. Getting out of the Jeep, he unlocked the heavy chain link gate that secured the structure, and after driving through, locked it back up behind him.

He
wasn't too worried about being attacked on the parking ramp as the whole first floor had chain link fencing over the openings. Once the gate was secured, no one could enter without a key. These security features had been added by the structure’s owners after a rash of car burglaries and robberies occurred. They had talked of putting in an automatic door, but since so few of the patrons used the ramp in the off hours, it was never installed. Because Steve usually arrived before dawn and left after the sun went down, it had been a minor annoyance. Now, he felt safer knowing it would take a key or a bulldozer to get in.

The ramp was almost deserted so he pulled into an open spot near the walkway to the bank building on the second level. Shutting off the engine he sat in the semi-silence
, amazed he had made it.

In the distance
, he could hear the rattle of small arms fire, punctuated by the occasional lower boom of a shotgun going off. The alert sirens were now nothing but a distant wail. Even as he listened, they wound down and went off completely. He decided this might be a good thing. The noise brought people out to see what was going on and exposed them to the dead that now seemed to freely wander the streets in certain areas. After wondering how many more people had been infected so far that night, his mind switched to Heather and Ginny.

Steve
pulled out his cell phone and was about to try Ginny again, instead, he found himself dialing Heather’s number. The phone rang ten times and he was about to hang up when she answered. Sounding confused, worried and out of breath she asked,  "Where are you?"

"I just got to the station. I'm in the parking garage
."

"I saw a Jeep go by a while ago that looked like yours and I thought it was you.
It was being chased by some of those things."

"Not me
. I'm safe," he reassured her. "Are you doing all right?"

''I'm near Tropicana
Field, it's surrounded by those things. Or it was anyway. We just got here and we can see them all over the place, going in and out. Somehow they got inside and overran the place. This was one of the biggest evacuation areas in the city and now it's gone," she said despondently.