Summer Of 68: A Zombie Novel (4 page)

Sid smiled, pleased with himself.

“I know I am,” he said. “Now go an’ wake those boys of yours. Tell ‘im, I’ll drive them on out there in an hour, sharp.”

She snuffed the remaining nub of her cigarette on the ground, snatching the empty mug as she stood. “I will,” she smiled, though her sincerity looked forced. There was something about the trip that struck an awkward cord inside, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

In the kitchen, she shut the door and despite her best efforts, it squealed in protest. Its nauseating report rang through the room like an ill-fitting premonition, she flinched.

Something’s not right,
she thought. No matter its appearance, whatever it was remained unknown.

Chapter Three

Sheriff Baker arrived at the station no less than twenty minutes after receiving word of Mary’s absence. By the time he arrived, much of the morning’s darkness was gone, singed away and replaced by a soft array of spring colors—baby blues, pinks and purples splintered across the sky, blending into one another with a seamless beauty. They swirled around the center mass of the sun.

He took a deep breath, letting the car idle. A dull migraine formed across his brow and slowly spread. With the way his day had begun, could it get any better, or would it continually slide further and further downhill? He could already imagine the bottle of Aspirin in his desk and the bitter residue they’d leave, once he swallowed a couple of them down.

He cut the engine and shook it off. Glancing at the rearview, the Sheriff smiled with a sudden flash of youthful admiration, as Janet’s Cadillac rolled through the back lot, parking a little ways from him. Baker promptly exited the vehicle and quickly made his way to her with the sole intention of escorting her inside. Baker prided himself on being a gentleman, having grown up under the primary care of his mother, learning fast that courtesy opened many doors.

He waited, pretending not to notice as she gathered her things. He used this time to straighten his ruffled shirt, and slicked his hair back.

“Morning,” he said as she looked his way.

Janet had a pretty smile and was quick to show it, pretending to be caught off guard. Shouldering her purse, she chirped, “Good morning to you, too.”

Baker couldn’t help but be taken back. Janet was a pretty number, still in her twenties, possessing a keen eye for style, even in a small town. The outfit she wore was a green skirt and white ruffled blouse that complemented her olive skin to near perfection.  

“Well, I know it’s a beautiful day and all, but are you just going to stand there or are you going to walk me in?” Her voice was innocent and her tone, playful. It was her smile that got him the most and left him weak at the knees.

They started their walk across the parking lot, and after a couple of yards, Baker needed to know: “Any chance…did you see anything interesting on the news?”

Janet shook her head. “No, I was sleeping when Mark called, hopped in the shower and came right here…” her cheery disposition shifted. “Why? Is there something wrong?”

Baker shook his head. “No, I suppose not.” Baker took note and would ask Cohen the same. If anyone had heard anything, he was certain his deputy would’ve, or at least reassure his paranoid mind that it was a hoax.

Janet held her gaze, staring him down as if she could sense his unease. “Are you sure?” She asked. She paused as he held the door open.

“Positive,” Baker nodded. For a moment, he considered telling her and decided that would have been a preposterous thing. The thought of this young thing, head over heels for a man easily duped by a radio drama, would be humiliating for the both of them.

“Whatever you say,” she said and continued on.

They entered through the employee entrance, accessible only by key and followed the narrow corridor. Eventually, it turned off into a longer hall. This footpath served as the station’s main artery, leading towards the lobby, offices, and holding cells. Baker followed close behind, glancing at the closed doorways that sprang up on either side. The building was eerily silent, but in a couple of hours, the rest of the staff would report to work—filling the building with ringing phones, conversation, and the continuous click-clack of typewriter keys.

“Tell Mark that I’ll be there in a moment,” she winked, breaking off toward the restroom.

Baker nodded without breaking stride and continued his course to dispatch. He followed the
hall, closed doors mocking him at every step. Passing his office, his name elegantly engraved in italics on a gold placard, he reached the end of the hall and took a sharp right, cutting through reception.

Dispatch sat at the far end. The door was closed and through it, he heard Deputy Mark Cohen’s muffled dialogue. His words were indistinguishable. Baker stopped, his hand hovering above the brass knob. He waited, leaning forward with the intent to listen. His ears focused on the deputies’ words, but nothing came to mind. His brain was unable to decipher the muttered sounds.

With a deep breath, he entered. Inside the small room, he found Cohen huddled over one of the desks with a telephone pressed tightly to his ear. 

“Please,” Cohen begged as Baker stepped through the door, Janet followed a moment later. Looking up, he nodded, acknowledging their presence.
             

“Slow down and tell me again,” he said.

Cohen looked down at his hands, but his eyes were wide as he wore a frazzled expression. “Uh-huh,” he muttered, reaching for a pad of paper and a pen. It was painfully obvious how out of his element he truly was. He began to scribble what the caller had said.

“Can you please say that again?”

Whomever he was talking to wasn’t making it easy on the man, which was understandable. No one called for idle chitchat, only emergencies and mishaps.

Deputy Cohen listened for a moment longer as the person repeated what was said. With the pen in hand, he sprung forward, spelling it out as quickly as he could.

“Uh-huh,” he muttered with every flick of the pen. Cohen looked up and frowned, Baker and Janet watched from the doorway. He smiled meekly, offering a shrug. “Okay, one second ma’am,” he said, waving Baker to the desk. Baker obliged, swiftly filling the gap in a couple of steps. Cohen slid the notepad his way.

Ruth Miller. 1243 Apple Grove St.

Unknown/multiple intruders

Possibly armed, weapons not seen

Gathered in/around barn

Stealing (Slaughtering?) livestock…?

Three warning shots fired at a distance—no response.

Ten minutes ago.

Baker took the notepad, reading it over and over again. Any given day, he’d think of it as outlandish psychobabble, and yet, strangely on par with the mornings events. Glancing up, over the lip of the page, he met the deputy’s gaze as well as his corresponding frown.

“Alright, Miss Miller,” Cohen said still trying to calm her nerves. “What I’m going to do is hand the phone over to someone else, so—”

On the opposite end, Miss Miller became hysteric. Baker heard her worried voice as she screamed, shrieked, and shouted her disapproval, interrupting Cohen before he could finish.

“Miss Miller,” he spoke sternly, “what I’m going to do,” he repeated,
emphasing each word— “is hand you over to someone else. I want you to stay on the line until an officer arrives, okay?” He listened to her response. “Alright, I’m going to hand you over to one of the nice ladies here, her name is Janet.”

Janet came up behind the two and took the phone. Her words were calm and soothing, as this was second nature and no different than any hundred times that came before. She looked at the two men and nodded, phone in hand. Baker offered a parting nod, tearing off and pocketing the paper as they B-lined for the door. Janet’s voice followed them as they went on their way.

“Everything's going to be alright, Miss Miller. We’re sending a couple of our finest officers your way, they’ll be there shortly. Please, can you do me a favor and stay inside until they arrive. Keep your doors and windows locked. Can you do that for me?”

Chapter Four

The ride out to the Miller residence was long and arduous. It took them past rolling hills and miles of forgotten farmland, stretching further than the eye could see. While the drive itself was smooth, the road eventually gave, receding back into a porous and uneven gravel top. After a couple of bumpy miles, it gave way to fine clay dirt that churned beneath the tires like a gentle coastal mist. It was still early and most of the roads through and out of Red Bluff were relatively free from traffic, allowing the two lawmen to make the twenty mile trek in half the time.

At the station, Cohen took the wheel. A local boy himself, he was born and raised at the county line and knew the local geography like the back of his hand. He took shortcuts, steering Baker down roads he had never seen. 

They sat in silence for most of the ride. A typical reaction whenever responding to a call—the wait and thought of the unknown whispered softly in their ears, as they bounced back and forth across the bumpy roadway.

From the passenger seat, Baker watched the world blur past his window, miles of fence posts flew by in the blink of an eye. He turned away and looked to his deputy. Cohen sat behind the wheel, his eyes unblinking as his hands gripped the wheel with white knuckles. He watched for a moment and turned back to the road ahead.

Eyes forward, Baker asked, “What do you make of it?”

Cohen twitched, furrowing his brow. He released his tension with a shake of his head, shrugging in the process, while his eyes remained on the road. “I’ll tell you what I think,” he said. “It’s probably nothing more than a couple of drunks from the night before, hung over and looking for a shady spot to sleep it off. They saw the barn and thought nothing of it.”

“And the fact that they didn’t scram when Miller fired the shot?”

“Maybe they didn’t hear it?” Cohen questioned. “You know how it goes when you’re good and sloshed.” 

The Sheriff sniggered.

“What?” he asked with a sideways glance.

“You ever hear about a couple of good ol’ boys going out to the barn to slaughter some old woman’s livestock?” Baker laughed nervously. “I don’t know ‘bout you, but I really
don’t
know how that goes—sober
or
drunk.”

Mauling it over, Cohen chuckled. “Let’s try and look at this logically, and say that she
didn’t
see them kill any of her animals.”

“So you think she’s full of it?” Baker said.

“No, I wouldn’t go that far. The mind does a lot of crazy things to people when they’re scared. Reckon this, Miss Miller saw someone trespassing and it scared the daylights out of her, right? That much we already know. Hell, those folks she saw might not even be looking for any sorta trouble…Outta fear, the poor lady’s mind went to the worst of the worst. Think about it,” he said in a say-speak tone, “she’s probably just seeing the boogeyman because she
wants
to see the boogeyman.”

Baker nodded, the man had a good point. “More likely than not, I think you’re right,” he said.

His eyes settled back on the road. The rolling hills continued to blur, moving in unison on either side of the car, like a looped reel of film—with it, comes a voice. It spoke continuously in his ear as though driven forth by a metronome.

Dead bodies have been reported to be returning to life.

The voice only faltered once he spoke. “By any chance, you listen to the radio this morning, or catch the news?” Baker’s mind ran in overdrive, analyzing the facts and drawing his own conclusions. He realized something, perhaps this call wasn’t as farfetched as his deputy suggested. Maybe it was rooted in the impossible, after all.

“No…why do you ask?”

Baker pushed himself as far back into his seat as he could, trying to pass it off as nothing more than a soulful stretch. In reality, he used it as a means to mask his discomfort. The topic left him uncomfortable, making him regret it the moment he asked. After a moment of awkward silence, Baker found his response, “I don’t really know how to describe it—strange, sure.”

“Well, what?” Cohen was growing impatient.

“This morning, I stopped for a moment on the side of the road…you know, before hitting town and had myself a couple of cigarettes. I turned on the radio and found this station, it—”

“What station?”

Baker shrugged, “I can’t say I remember,” he sighed. When he spoke again, he muttered the words, articulating his thoughts in the process. “I took a breather before hitting town, stopped on the side of the road for a smoke and to gather myself. I turned on the radio and there was this guy…he started in on, well, he said that the dead were returning to life.”

Cohen smirked. “He said the dead were returning to life?”

“Yeah…”

“When—where—
how?
” The deputy seemed genuinely perplexed by the statement, if not bemused.

Baker shrugged. “I don’t really know why, and from the sound of it, neither did they. And from the looks of it, it’s hitting back east—Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.” His voice trailed to the background, swallowed whole by the subtle rattle and hum of the motor, as the car drifted seamlessly through the powdery dirt.

“For the record, let’s clarify this and make sure we’re on the same page…We’re talking about zombies here, aren’t we?”

Baker chewed it over. As strange as it was, he had never given time to consider what it all meant, especially that particular word. For him, zombies were fictional ghouls, fifty feet high on the silver screen. Another handful of seconds and the idea sunk in, he nodded as though accepting of the possibility.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Cohen tapped the brakes, slowing their speed and steering the car from the main road onto a long stretch of gravel, which lead straight to the Miller Farm.

“The thing is…I can’t stop thinking about it, it sounds like absolute bullshit, I know. But the deejay, he sounded so...so genuine. You could tell that
he
believed everything he was saying and at the same time, didn’t believe a word of it.”

At the end of the long driveway, the Miller Farm came into view. It was a
quaint, two story structure, almost picturesque. At one point, it had been painted a bright and cheery yellow. The years, however, had not been so kind, leaving it beaten and bruised, reduced to a mustard-colored husk of its former self. Across from it sat the barn—removed and isolated a few hundred feet from the rest, and protected by a rickety old fence, which bordered the outmost edge of the pasture. At this hour, the pasture should’ve been teaming with cattle, as all the signs were present and yet, it sat eerily abandoned.

“You think it’s possible that
maybe
he was lying. Like it was some sort of a sick joke?” Cohen asked, bringing the car to a stop, shy of an old pickup truck. “Think about it, we deal with people like that all the time and some of them can be pretty damn convincing, too.”

Baker nodded. “Yeah, maybe—don’t think that thought hadn’t passed my mind either. I’ve been doing this for a while though. I like to think that I’ve got a pretty good nose when it comes to the bullshit.” In his own ears, he sounded scared and uncertain and from the look on Cohen’s face, the deputy fed off of his own unease.

Cohen cut the engine and handed over the keys. Baker took them, but before the deputy released his grasp, he offered, “It must’ve been a joke.” Uncertainty was contagious and now even Cohen was showing the telltale signs.

“I hope you’re right,” Baker said.

They stepped out in unison, even slammed the doors in sync. Baker had to admit, it sounded pretty damn cool. By now, the sun had warmed away the morning, obliterating the chill he had previously.

Cohen looked over the top of the car. “What else did he say?”

Baker scanned the windows, checking the surrounding land for signs of the absent farmer, before turning his focus over to the barn. A nervous thought crossed his mind, faltering his steps. The radio broadcast and call, less than an hour apart, were too coincidental to view as nothing more than a couple of isolated innocents. The timing was all too perfect, and if Deputy Cohen and himself fell into it as easily as they had, what else was happening in town that he didn’t know?

“I didn’t hear much more. You ended up paging through the CB about that time. By the time we were done, it was over—off the air.”

“Off the air?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean?”

“Static—
silence…that sorta thing.”

“Do you think it’s possible you might’ve blown a fuse or something?” Cohen asked, shielding his eyes from the sun.

“The thought crossed my mind, sure. But…did you hear the radio?”

Cohen frowned. “No, it was—”

“It was on,” Baker corrected. “Volume cranked up to full blast, too. I’m telling you, everything isn’t adding up.”

Cohen shrugged, all but throwing his hands in the air. “I don’t know.”

“Neither do I,” Baker replied with a snort. He quickly changed pace, nodding to the farmhouse. On that note, the two men began their trek across the gravel.

“Did they happen to say anything about it happening in our neck of the woods?” Cohen spoke loudly, competing against the crunching gravel underfoot.

“Now that I think of it, they mentioned something about a corpse waking up in a LA county morgue. That’s about it.”

Cohen nodded but was otherwise silent.

They hit the steps and made their way to the porch. The old wood buckled and flexed, groaning in protest to the added weight. The closer they got to the front door, the quieter they spoke, as their asinine conversation wouldn’t be too obvious.

“Think about it,” he whispered, “first the broadcast, and then Mary abandoning her post, now we got a call over a handful of people supposedly slaughtering livestock?  I mean, really? Is it a coincidence or something else?”

Cohen shook his head as though to push the thought from his mind. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s something more going on, but first and foremost, we need to get to the bottom of all of this—
then
we can worry about the rest. Okay?”

Baker nodded, “Yeah.”

Cohen drew a deep breath and rapped his knuckles against the door. The sound echoed, carried across the land like a kite caught in the breeze. Nervous, the two men glanced back in the direction of the barn. There was something strange about it, something which unnerved them to no avail. Neither would admit it, but both of them could see it in the others face.

“Ruth Miller,” Cohen announced, “Sheriff’s department!”

They heard her before they saw her. “Coming,” she yelled, traversing the floor, closer and closer to the door. Each footstep caused old wood to bounce beneath their feet.

Baker and Cohen exchanged nervous glances.

With the click of the deadbolt, she opened the door a couple of inches, until the chain caught. Through the gap, Ruth appeared, her narrow, marble-like eyes staring up at them from the darkness beyond.

“Let me see some badges,” she asked. Her tone was both kind and demanding.

The men obliged.

“Thank you,” she said as she glanced back and forth between the two. She smiled and slammed the door shut. A moment later, they heard the rattle of the chain as she unlatched the lock. Opening the door, she looked past them, straight to the barn and beckoned them inside.

“Come on in, hurry now.” She slammed the door and quickly set about relocking both the deadbolt and chain.

The house was small and southern fried. It carried a musty aroma, which fit naturally as though it had been there since the day it was built. The residence was cluttered with a lifetime worth of knickknacks and memories. The curtains were drawn, permitting slivers of sunlight to peer through the cracks, bathing the sitting room in a soft golden hue. Somewhere nearby, the tick-tock of a grandfather clock sang in a relaxing rhythm.

Ruth was what you would imagine—short and stubby, heavyset like a lump of clay. She wore a blue dress, hanging off her belly like a tarp, and when she moved, her body jiggled, exaggerating every motion she made and every breath she drew.

“Miss Miller?” Baker stepped forward.

She nodded. There was a blatant look of trepidation shimmering within her deeply set eyes.

“My name is Sheriff Baker,” he introduced, “this is Deputy Cohen.”

“Hello,” the Deputy said.

She nodded, wading through the pleasantries. “How do you do?” her shaky voice hinted at a former Southern belle, though that could’ve been a lifetime ago. “I must apologize if I’m a bit shaken up,” she said in the hopes of being polite. “As you could imagine, it’s been a pretty stressful morning.” She tried to smile, but that alone was enough to make her look pitiful.

“You don’t need to apologize,” Cohen said.

Ruth looked between the two, “Please…would either of you like to sit?”

Baker shook his head. “No thank you, ma’am.”

“What about some coffee, tea, or lemonade?”

“We’re quite alright,” Baker said. Stepping forward, he waved to an old and overstuffed armchair, puffy clouds of cotton popping from the frayed upholstery. “Please, sit.”