Summer Of 68: A Zombie Novel (2 page)

There was nothing glamorous about working in radio. Everything he was promised: sex, drugs, and endless parties with rock stars, well…fact is, it was nothing more a boldfaced lie and had only taken him two years to learn the truth. Now he was stuck. Too late, well aware by now that he should’ve seen college through like his folks suggested, and maybe—just maybe, he wouldn’t be stuck yapping for KUBH 127.3—a small radio station just outside of Sacramento, California.

If he did, he might’ve had a life to be proud of.

He glanced at the clock and sighed. It was early and with an hour left to go in his shift, he needed something to pass the time.

Louis took another sip of cold coffee and wondered, why even bother? How many people were even awake at this time, but whatever the number, it couldn’t be much.

The station broadcasted too much of Northern California, from Modesto to Redding. At any given time, a few hundred people were tuned into Louis’s show from ten pm, to seven am, every Tuesday through Saturday.

He leaned forward and stretched, listening to the remaining seconds of a dog food commercial and kept focused on the console in front of him. He shook his head and cleared his thoughts, before looking back at the clock. Thirty seconds remained, and then it was back on the air and he would begin wrapping up the night. For most of the show, the prime topic was the recent East Bay protests against the unethical treatment of the Viet Cong POW’s at the hands of US GI’s. Much of it was spent in autopilot, skimming through the call against a prefabricated list of questions and answers concocted long before.

Twenty seconds remained.

With another sip of coffee, he readied the microphone. Time slowed into absolute boredom. Ten, nine, eight—a loud smack shook the small booth. Louis jolted forward, spilling the last gulp of coffee across his lap and groaned, luckily it was hours old.

He looked up, grimacing.
Figures,
he thought.

Standing opposite of the glass partition, stood John, the station’s night manager. He held a clipboard against the glass and looked ready to swing it, again. Louis sat confused, unsure of his next move. The bewildered look upon John’s beat red face was troubling and something was up, causing John to look as disgruntled as ever.

Louis shrugged, acting cool and calm, his heart still racing.

“What?” he said with an emphasis on the enunciation and shape of the word as it left his mouth. The booth was soundproof and any facet of dialogue would’ve been inaudible.

John pointed to the clipboard. Louis leaned forward, squinting to decipher the man’s scribbles.

Problems on the east coast

Dead people walking

Cut to another commercial!

Louis sat there, looking from John to the microphone and back to John. He’d never been interrupted like this before and wasn’t sure what to do, a few awkward seconds passed as the station lapsed in to dead air. John smacked the clipboard again.

“Cut to a fucking break,” John yelled, his voice muffled. “Got something we need to talk about.”

Defeated, Louis nodded. Five seconds of silence had passed before he returned on the air. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Louis said, calmingly, “it appears we’re suffering from some technical difficulty on our end. We hope to have it all taken care of in a matter of minutes so we can get back to what matters most—your opinions. So until then, please hold tight and enjoy a few more words from our sponsors.”

He switched over to another commercial and slumped back into his chair. A small light over the console hummed with a red glow, signaling they were off the air, as he flicked a nearby switch, silencing the radio spot through the speakers.

John wasted no time and burst into the room.

“What got into you?” Louis asked. “You have any idea how many listeners we’re about to lose?”

John shook his head, “Like that’s ever been any concern to you,” and ripped the top sheet from the clipboard. Handing it to Louis, he added, “Anyways, it’s this…”

Louis took it, reading through the scribbles.

“What do you make of it?”

Louis shrugged as he crumbled it into a ball and tossed it to a neighboring wastebasket. “Some bullshit horror story,” he replied, bluntly. “Nothing there worth a grain of salt, either.”

“I thought the same thing, but it looks like it is. I just got off the phone with one of our contacts in DC…it’s all over the place. Whatever it is, it’s
big.
”

Louis frowned. “Seriously, they’re talking about this crap on the air?” He paused as a new realization dawned. “No, you don’t seriously want me going live with this, do you?”

“Do you think I’d have asked you to cut like this, if I didn’t think it was important?”

“Important?” Louis sprung forward, slapping his fist against the desk. “The only importance is its bullshit, and the fact that people are treating it like news is beyond me.”

“It is.”

Louis smirked. “No, it’s not.”

“Say what you will, but it is happening. New York’s falling apart and they’re on the verge of a riot. First reports were treated as if it was racial tension. Race war and all that bullshit, it got out of hand quick and spread. Pretty soon, it won’t be restricted to the East Coast, not if things keep on going the way they are. If that happens, we got a whole lotta problems.”

Louis shook his head because this was too much to deal with, especially this late into his shift. Exhaustion had set in hours prior and this was the icing on the cake.

“Paranoia,” he replied, rubbing his temples. “Think of it, it isn’t anything more than classic, War of the Worlds hype. Someone wants to scream fire and of course people are going to run.”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt,” John said.

“Look,” Louis said, looking to reason. It took him a moment even to find the words. “Dead people don’t just get up and walk around, and there are no such things as zombies, or ghouls, or whatever you want to call them. Hell, you of all people should know that!”

John looked away. His eyes lingered on the floor as he found the words and prepared an argument. Offering a curt nod of self-encouragement, he turned back to Louis. Louis spoke first, discouraging his superior.

“The way I look at it, this was probably nothing but a misdiagnosed DOA that woke up on the county slab—like a coma or something. One thing leads to another and the next thing you know, we have people seeing zombies around every fucking street corner.”

“What if it isn’t?”

Louis shook his head. “I don’t know—government hype, maybe. Scare tactics? Rally the populous into believing,
and
fearing things that aren’t even there. I’ll bet my paycheck that in a couple hours, the White House will issue a statement telling us it had something to do with the Soviets or a couple of VC spies. Your guess is as good as mine, but it ain’t what you think it is. That I know.”

John nodded with a sad smile. “Something tells me it isn’t that easy.” He took a deep breath and sighed, Louis realized that John was shaking. “I’ll prove you right and am willing to put my reputation on the line.”

“What about mine? What do you think this’ll do to me if you’re wrong?”

John didn’t answer. Instead, he stood there, looking at Louis. He opened his mouth, but stopped and lapsed into silence. Failing to produce a response, he sighed and shook his head. On the radio, the commercial had ceased, bowing once more to dead silence.

“Alright,” Louis said, unable to fathom what he was about to ask, “how sure of this are you?”

“Pretty sure,” John replied.

“Pretty? I’m gonna need a lot more encouragement than pretty here, John.”

John nodded. “I’m positive.”

Louis leaned back and shook his head. In the silent booth, the creaking chair was near deafening. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this,” he said and sprung upright. He pounded what little remained of his coffee, and readied the microphone. With another breath, he went live.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Louis Kincaid and you are listening to KUBH one-twenty-seven, point-three. We have some breaking news coming to us from New York City, it appears…”

Chapter One

A pale green light flickered across the predawn sky, cutting its way across the vast and starry expanse of space. After a moment, it disappeared from sight. In its wake, the meteor left a vaporous trail, which glimmered softly before that also faded. 

Sheriff Baker watched from the corner of his eye, and by the time he looked, it was gone. He spent the following moments searching, hopeful to glimpse that hypnotic glow. Sadly, he couldn’t. What he saw was enough to crack a smile. With the war machine raging in Viet Nam and violent protests taking place across the states, the idea of an endless, extraterrestrial abyss free of hardship and pain, was a simple reminder of how any problem could look petty in comparison to the universal scheme of things.

Baker took a sip from his coffee mug, pulled his gaze from the heavens, and turned his focus back to the road. A couple of minutes prior, he steered the car off the highway, pulling onto the gravel shoulder a couple of miles from the town of Red Bluff. For him, this was as
routine as a cup of coffee and the morning’s first cigarette. Furthermore, it was meditation—a brief respite before the daily grind cut him down.

In relative peace, he listened to the subtle hum of static originating from the police radio sitting in the center console. Opting for something else, he turned on the radio and heard Johnny Cash singing,
Folsom Prison Blues.
He listened for a moment, before switching to another station and found comfort in the dull, monotone voice of a talk show host. As it were, he possessed little interest in politics, but found comfort in the voice of someone else. It was the first voice he had heard since the previous day—save for that of his own thoughts, as he suffered another long and introspective night alone. His restlessness and insomnia had returned. He laid awake at night, longing for the companionship of his dead wife, Maria.

He spent his nights alone, watching television and waiting for her to walk through the door, as if the last five years was nothing more than a bad dream. Baker thought about becoming a drunk, relying on alcohol to fill the void. Thoughts of his youth and that of his father soiled the possibility. Instead, he did what he could to grasp his sanity: he swallowed his emotions and hid them out of sight. Every now and again, they come above ground for a breather.

Baker took another swig of coffee and opened the car door. He increased the volume and stepped into the morning. The gravel crunched underfoot, competing against the calming breeze of crisp country air. He walked toward the road, mindful of the deejay as he discussed the return of a satellite en route from Venus to the Earth. It was interesting, but not Baker’s cup of tea.

From his pocket, he produced a crumbled pack of cigarettes, glancing towards the sky. Perhaps that light marked space probe’s return. He considered this, puffing gingerly from the cigarette. The early morning rush of nicotine coursed through his veins, but his mind remained cloudy and half-asleep. It would be a long day, indeed.

Through a copse of oak trees, shy of the roadway, a mournful breeze whistled around their gnarled trunks. In a couple of hours, temperatures would peak in the triple digits, making his day sweaty and uncomfortable.

“Should’ve called in,” he said, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

“—dead bodies,” said the man on the radio. Those two words pulled Baker from his thoughts. He flicked aside the cigarette and walked back to the car. The deejay continued. “—have been reported to be coming back to life.”

An underlying bout of static crept through the airwaves as the deejay chuckled, as though unwilling to accept the absurdity of the notion. “We have received similar reports from over a dozen hospitals and clinics throughout New York, New Jersey, and the Pennsylvania region.”

Baker frowned. He didn’t know what to think and justified it by lighting another cigarette. His frown morphed to a callous smile and chuckle. It took a moment to realize that this was nothing but a novelty gag on par with Orson Welles’ old broadcast, first with the NASA report, and then the segue into drama.

“The US Government has yet to comment on the validity of these reports. Most, if not all, have been sketchy at best. They appear to be coming in from multiple locations within the tri-state area—all of them within minutes from the last. The most horrific of which, plants reanimated corpses in the middle of Times Square.”

The deejay paused, breathing into the microphone. Was it from nerves or merely for effect? Either would suffice, because if this was a hoax, and Baker was more than certain it was, he was caught, hook, line, and sinker.

Still, that worm of doubt wiggled through his mind. What if there was truth to it?

“Jesus,” he said, as the deejay ran through a recap of events. He flicked the spent cigarette aside and considered another. The deejay’s voice extinguished the thought.

“Wait a minute people,” he said, speaking over the interrupting voice of someone near the microphone. “We have just received word that a corpse in the Los Angeles County morgue has opened its eyes and then attacked the doctor in charge.”

Baker shook his head.
This has to be staged,
he thought.
The timing is too good to be true.

The deejay took a drink and gulped. He stammered, “I can’t believe what I’m telling you, but whatever it is, this is not—I repeat, this is
not
an East Coast phenomenon as we had previously reported. Whatever it is—” the deejay sighed, “—it appears to be spreading.”

Baker slipped into the driver’s seat. His eyes on the radio dial. He shut the door and took a breath. His lungs longed for another bout of nicotine, but his churning nerves said otherwise.

I must look like a damned fool,
he reckoned, leaning back into the seat and closing his eyes, focusing solely on the man’s voice.

A hiss of static rippled through the cabin, followed shortly by a man’s voice. “Baker,” it said in between bouts of static. “Baker…Sheriff Baker, can you hear me?”

Baker sprang forward, confused. It took a moment to realize that this wasn’t part of the broadcast, but originated from the CB radio. Baker shook his head, his heart rate slowing back to a logical pace.

“Go for Baker,” he said, snatching the receiver. The voice belonged to his deputy, Mark Cohen, which begged the question: “Where’s Mary?”

He listened to the rolling static, awaiting reply. “I don’t know. We’ve been steady on calls…” a phone rang in the background, followed by another. “Damn it, here we go again and look—there’s no one here to answer them!”

Baker frowned, how long had dispatch been unattended?

After a prolonged silence, Cohen asked, “What do you want me to do here? I’ve already searched the station—can’t find her anywhere…I’m running thin on places to look.”

Baker grumbled, and felt a headache slowly form. “Was she there when you started your shift?”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. She was here less than twenty minutes ago and now I don’t know where or when she left.”

Baker thought it through. “Alright,” he said, “if you need, try reaching her at home. Maybe she had an emergency.” It was a possible explanation, at home, she had a newborn and drunkard boyfriend to mother. Baker answered more calls to her residence for petty squabbles than he’d like to admit

“If, for any reason you can’t reach her there—go ahead and call Janet. I’m sure she’d be willing to work a double.”

Baker fell silent, realizing the radio program he was listening to had done the same. He twisted the dial, dancing between stations. It was operational only a couple of minutes ago and now there was nothing, save for the rolling waves of static that endlessly overlapped one another.

“Baker, you still with me out there…Baker, you copy?”

“Yeah,” Baker said, clearing his throat, “I’m here,” though his thoughts remained elsewhere,
shifting between Janet and the radio.

“You hear what I said?”

Baker frowned. “No,” he lied, “it’s fuzzy on this end, I must’ve missed it. Repeat it, please.”

“I went ahead and gave Janet a call. She’ll be in as soon as she can.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes, myself. Do what you can and let’s see if we can’t get this squared away before anything gets too out of hand.”

Over the radio, Cohen grunted in agreement. “Roger that—what do you
want me to do until then?”

“Just what’cha been doing and man those phones. Get Thompson or Hawthorne onboard if you need a hand.”

“Okay,” Cohen grumbled, “I’ll see you when you get here.”

Baker signed off and started the engine. Back on the highway, he directed himself towards town. With his eyes on the road, he continued to flip through the radio stations, desperate to find a voice. All he found was static. At first, he wondered if it was the station’s fault. Perhaps a relay tower was down, something along those lines. Maybe it wasn’t as complex as that. For all he knew, the car had blown a fuse. 

Hitting Main Street, the sky above lessened, the darkness softened to a lush baby blue, intertwined with splotches of pink. The streets remained quiet and at a glance, nothing was out of the ordinary.

Coming to a stop sign, a rusted old pickup truck rumbled past, spitting a plume of exhaust. Its driver, an old timer named Ted, offered the Sheriff a curt wave, in passing. Baker did the same and for a moment, considered flagging him down and inquiring about his radio. He decided against it and drove the rest of the way in silence.

Why was it bugging him so much, he wondered. He couldn’t explain it, even though he was
convinced
that it was a hoax, there was something in the sincerity of the man’s voice, the hopelessness and the fear that said otherwise.

“Let it be a hoax,” he whispered as the police station appeared at the end of the street.