Dead Pulse (13 page)

“No!” yelled Quaid
, his arms outstretched, but it was too late. Kevin had grabbed his gun placing it deep under his chin. Without hesitating he pulled the trigger.

“
Holy shit, holy shit, was he bitten?” Frank asked.

“Does it matter?” replied Quaid, sorrowfully, his hand on his brow. In the cold breeze, he noticed that his boots had let in water. Annoyed and angry he looked up that the surrounding trees and into the grey sky beyond.

“Don’t beat yourself up Q, at least he won’t come back, come on let’s move it.” Frank said setting him in motion with a shove.

As two men disappeared deep into the
foliage, the dead began to tear at Kevin’s exposed face, opening it wider showing his shattered skull. 

Jayne pointed out of the window. “This is dangerous. We have no need to do this any longer,” she said watching the men below at turn-style entrance metal doors. Jayne continued. “The entrance doors were used for the workers to enter the compound with a swipe of an electronic card. A now they are used to...”

“
I inherited this place, and not by choice. So what, now the doors are used to allow the dead in one at a time and dispose of them.” Interrupted Frank.

“Dispose? Those men
shoot them with a single round cattle gun. Pick the meat up from the sludgy snow and load it to be fried.” She clasped her hands tightly. “It’s a hazardous task and unnecessary.”

“Listen Jayne, ‘saviour of the human race’
,” Frank said sarcastically. “I understand where you’re coming from but it gives these boys something to do while we wait for
our
miracle bomb to wipe the dead out. Besides, it stops their minds straying onto other things.”

“Other things, r
ight, other things like me and Jackie you mean?”

“For once I agree with Frank
, its best they’re playing with dead bodies than chasing you with a...” Quaid looked at the ground, embarrassed to finish his sentence.

“Okay I’ve said my piece; I’ve highlighted it as a risk.” said Jayne. “It’s a real bullshit risk, inputting the number of the bodies in a computer for no one to read. We’re running out of food and
we will have starved before the winters end.”

Frank
put his face in Jayne’s space and whispered, “I know your over-educated head has been worth my protection, and that dead Crafton and the Presidents little project will come through for us. But from where I’m standing it’s clear it is way over due. I never wanted to be suck here with the workers,” He looked at his watch, “It’s months late,” he added sitting back in his seat.

Icicles hung from the perimeter compound fence. Quaid looked down to both north and south entrances. He watched one of three high security solid steel entrances. A man activated the turnstile with a swiped across a security card reader. A green arrow above the entrance illuminated, and one of the dead walked in. A single cattle bullet was fired through its head. The dead continued to push against the metal turnstiles as it fell to its knees, falling forward, landing facedown into the snow. The man gripped the body by its arms and rolled it onto the back of the trailer. Quaid watched the same procedure another three times always thinking of their lives before death, before their return. He then stood watching as the vehicle full bodies were driven a short distance before being loaded onto the conveyor belt that took them through to the incinerator.

“Don’t you get fed up of watching?” Jayne asked quietly.

“Nope, I’m always thinking about life and whether or not it’s worth living these days”

Jayne frowned, “Quaid, we have to get out of here.
We have limited firepower because of Frank’s early shooting sprees. We can’t wait any longer. It’s simple, our choices are few, starve here; freeze or be eaten out there.”

“I’ve been thinking hard about this too,” said Quaid.

“We’re not going to eat the dead, Quaid. It’s immoral and sick; we would be no different to them. Also they could be contagious.” exasperated she sat down.

“I have plan,
” said Quaid.

Frank slammed his hands down on the table causing his brandy glass to wobble precariously. “You’re not going anywhere, there’s only fuel in one vehicle! Our fuel supplies were cut off a long time ago in case you’ve forgotten.”

“What are YOU going to do with it?” spat Jayne.

“I may need it when this place falls down,” snapped Frank.

“Quaid and I are taking a chance to get some help. I know where all the other shelters are.”

“If the trip to the farm has taught me anything, it’s that we should wait. We blew up the sewerage system to ensure they couldn't get in. My army... Major fucking Hardy will come.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Jayne.

“Because, they’re not going to leave their greatest asset here, to freeze, or to become lunch for one of them,” he said jabbing his finger towards the fence.

“
No one cares about an old veteran. They replaced me Jayne with an ass-hole. So as long as you are here, I’ve got a chance.”

Jayne stomped out of the room, slamming the flimsy office door behind her.

Waiting in the office, Quaid leaned up against the grey wall, his arms folded. He moved forward as she came in, “How’d it go?” Her face said it all.

“
And I thought Hardy was an ass-hole. He’s an idiot, he’s always been an idiot, a vicious and solitary old soldier who has fallen from grace, and without orders he’s lost it, he’s nothing!” Jayne said, trying to control her rage.

Frank finished a large glass of brandy, and took a deep hard look at his aged face in the reflection of the office window thinking of his dead sons, not sure if he now wanted revenge or to be reunited.

The dead left their exhausted feeding ground of Ravenswood, implused with hunger. They gathered around the suburbs in their hunt for more food; they were the eradicators of human kind, unaware that the more they would consume and infect the closer they were causing a contradictive genocide of their own. They had destroyed cities, continents and countries; foodstuff emboldened them to continue like small armies.
 

To oversee the deployment of seventy-seven,
 what was left of Army command had dispatched three platoons, headed by Major Thomas Hardy. He was reluctant to return to Farmore with out of date air intelligence. Before setting out he snorted some cocaine, and looked at his aging face in the reflection of the vehicle’s window. He couldn’t help but think of Marshal and for the first time appreciated the pressure he must have been under.

The jeep stopped in the
mud-covered road, melting snow had caused a slide. Spotting the large group of dead about 5 miles away along the North Garrow River, Hardy also knew that there was nearby some totalling about forty dead, the things were coming from the valley. Ignoring orders to wait for the deployment of seventy-seven, dividing his forces further, Hardy sent troops to meet them in the valley and he decided to attack before the dead could group. He did not realize that the number of undead in Farmore outnumbered his men many times over. These were not just the town folk of Farmore but the dead from the west and north valleys that had come through Farmore bottle necked by the rough and hilly terrain looking for large cities in search of blood.

Another herd
of the reanimated corpses appeared from the mist and attacked from the lower southern end of the valley. The two platoons quickly found themselves in a desperate battle with no hope of relief. Some withdrew into the woodland and the cemetery.

Hearing the screams in the fog and mist the dead
sent fear through loyal Frank supporters, now Hardy’s remaining soldiers, the Zombies emerged colliding with the last third of Hardy’s advancing soldiers and forced the defence force back as they panicked fired in the fading light and depleted their ammo. As the enemies closed in, Hardy ordered his men use the carcasses to form a wall, but they provided little protection from the increasing numbers of the dead on the road. In less than an hour, Hardy and his men had been killed.

During and after the battle, the zombies
tore the clothes from the bodies and mutilated the soldiers in turn these mutilated dead began walk the earth feasting on the wounded and survivors.

Without
reason, they permitted one dead to detach Hardy’s neck from his head leaving his uniform untouched and his other body parts intact stopping to paw at any other part of him. Farmore’s serial killer simply walked off with it in his hand.

It was a pinnacle time for the
dead; they were at the height of their power. However, little did they know that their threat and tenuous unification onslaughts would be brought to a temporary standstill. A harsh retribution would be dealt starting with Farmore, the test ground for seventy-seven, where the dead would return to their symbolic graves, with a discharge that would attack their brain's central core destroying their limited limbic system once and for all.

Quaid drifted in and out of sleep that night, the
death watch had been particularly long and his eyes felt strained. He lay on his makeshift bed, the radio crackling in the background, when he heard a familiar voice over the airwaves. Quaid sat up.

“This is the last remaining member of
Hardy’s team, if you can here this…
static
… I’m coming for you.”

Quaid rubbed his eyes and picked up the radio, “ F1 over.” He sat at the end of his bed in the dark room “Hello, F1 over.” He repeated his only response was the sound of static. Now, sitting in the darkness he wasn’t sure if
he had dreamt the voice or not. He let the radio fall to the floor watching the wire untangle as the white dawn light peeped through the window.

What an eventful day,
Quaid thought;
Jackie caught screwing one of the body loading men,
nothing like making some money for when this is all over,
he mulled over smiling.
Smith and Frank exchanged both words and fists proving he’s still very dangerous
, he shook his head, glad Jayne and himself were on watch once again.

Quaid watched as the men piled the bodies. Suddenly, alerted by what was happening below he ran to the roof exit, breaking the glass on the alarm as he passed. Hearing the alert, Jayne sprinted across the roof slipping the ice as she ran to him. By the time she got there she could only look on in horror as one of the bodies meant to be on its way into the incinerator had grabbed one of the loader
s and had bitten into his face.

The other men panicked, one picked up a plank of wood and began to hit the dead man trying to beat him off his colleague. Turning
, the zombie lurched at his attacker and sank his teeth into his arm. “What are we going to do?” panicked Jayne.

“There’s nothing we can do, this death
watch has just clocked off early!” Quaid and Jayne turned, making their way towards the roof’s only exit.

Alerted by the siren Frank
crunched through the snow with the single shot cattle gun, greeted by the men that had become the infected dead. Frank skidded to a stop on an ice patch, firing his last bullet; he narrowly missed one of his former colleagues, hitting one of the main electrical power boxes behind splitting open its metal cover. As he quickly tried to put another round in his gun, the box sparked blowing open making the sound of a Catherine Wheel, the lights around the compound began to go out. Fumbling in the dark Frank lit his flair but wished he hadn’t as he was greeted with a decomposed face and the bloodied faces of the compounds men. A Florida retirement was far from his mind. He didn’t have time to contemplate ending his own life, only managing a brief glance at the bullet cartridge and gun. Vapour came from his mouth followed by a painful echoing scream. In the burning yellow, reddish flare lit light the dead gathered over Franks’s body. From inside the building Smith watched the horror unfold beneath him, his face and hands pressed up against the window.

In a dusty poorly lit storage-room, Jackie sat on three empty bottle crates as Louis bent kissing her roughly. Frantically they tugged at each other’s clothes as she rocked precariously on the crates. Just then another man pushed against Jackie. “Wait your turn.” She felt a shock of static electricity.

“Hey buddy,” Louis pushed the man away
and a jolt shot up his arm like an electric fence. As he clasped his elbow he caught a putrid smell, but it was too late. The dead man bit Louis’s fingers. Blood shot over Jackie’s chest, just as the lights went out, her scream the only sound in the dark. The three of them left in the darkness. She did not see the man lean forward to bite into her thigh but the intense pain was numbed as her body went into shock.

As the outside emergency floodlights came on, the dead lurched and shuffled forwards. The turnstiles mechanism had failed during the power cut and the dead now poured into to the compound. Smith stood frozen to the spot, staring in amazement as the cold, grey, dead moved forwards through the freely moving turnstiles. Smith counted the bodies as they entered; ten; twenty; more; Smith lost count. Turning away from the window Smith slid to the floor with his back to the wall and just gave up.