The Zombie Letters (12 page)

              If I succeed in doing this, I will retire peacefully. You will never hear from me again. If I fail, take the Lynn File and shred it. Take my body

              and burn it.

LYNN FILE

END OF DOCUMENT

PLEASE STORE IN LEVEL A SECTION

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

PART II

THE LIVING DEAD

CHAPTER 5

I

             
I
t all started when a man named Winters drove a stolen eighteen-wheeler into the spillway at Quibin Reservoir in the small farming community of Matoka, Iowa. It was just a ten-minute drive from Des Moines – the state capitol. The crash flooded Cambria Cemetery and set fire to the truck that had already been leaking its payload. The police and fire departments responded quickly. Miranda Orr, a young CNA who worked at the local hospital called it in. She saw the crash occur at four o’clock in the morning as she was getting ready to do her usual weekly drive to Des Moines to visit her boyfriend.

              Miranda stood at the steep hill at the mouth of the water with a rough, wool blanket wrapped around her. She had reached down to pick up her cell phone that fell off the passenger seat. She had told police all she could remember in her shocked state of mind. She grabbed the phone off of the floor of the car and looked up to see a semi drive up and make a jackknife, lodging itself into the gigantic concrete spillway . . . its fifty-two foot trailer blocking the road. The flooded street did little to stop Miranda’s car as it slid into the semi. She didn’t remember doing it, but she jumped out of the car a second before it hit. Miranda Orr’s car sank into the spillway as the old International rig’s engine compartment caught fire. The next twenty minutes were spent sitting in the road with one hell of a headache until police got there.

              “I told you. There
is
a driver here somewhere
,” Chief Ridley of the Lower Des Moines Fire Department said. He sneered at the shaking and cold young woman. “We search the grounds and I guarantee we’ll find him. No one just walks away from that.”

              Miranda looked at the older man, trying her best to match his look of contempt. “Sir, I saw him leap out of the driver’s side door
after
it hit. He landed in the street. Banged his head on the  . . . the fuckin’ . . . sorry, I am all flustered. Oh, the . . . dashboard. Hit his head on the dashboard and opened the door, hit his head on the road again. The guy hooked up some kind of hose to the trailer and threw it into the reservoir. Then he ran like hell towards this black car at the top of the hill that goes to the campgrounds. I’m telling you that he hit hard enough to knock him out. The man got up and got in the other car like nothing happened. He dumped something into the water!”

              Chief Ridley looked at the twenty-year-old girl. She was half soaked with a cell phone in her shaking hand. The old man wore a scowl on his face. He had those perma-frown lines that the old-timers had around their noses. They come from holding it up too long. The old chief looked like he frowned a lot. “Young lady, that is a heavy truck, but to crack the spillway wall like he did, he had to have been going faster than forty-five. A person could survive this crash, no problem . . . but if you are saying that he walked away in one piece, you . . .”

              A set of hands caked in black dirt and mud slammed out of the darkness and covered the chief’s eyes like someone playing a game of ‘guess who’ with him. Miranda couldn’t see the person standing behind the fire chief, but she could smell him. In the split second she thought it was just a silly prank being played by one of the other firefighters there, the dirty fingers dug into the chief’s eyes and pushing them back into the sockets. He screamed . . . a shrill, high-pitched shriek that made Miranda’s spine shake. She had never heard anyone scream like that before. Time seemed to slip by in slow-motion as the old man was dragged back into the dark, away from the lamp posts that lined the spillway. He was taken into the thick curtain of black just behind where he had been standing. She wanted to run. She wanted to scream, but she could not move. All Miranda could do was stand and listen to the man’s wails hoarsen and abruptly stop . . . following a wet crunch that sounded like someone crushing a watermelon. Tight packing sounds of what sounded like someone eating snapped her back for just a moment. Long enough to turn and run.

              Nowhere.

              Anywhere.

Just away from here.

She passed two officers full-sprint. They’d seen it.
Please god, say they’ve seen it happen.
They must have, because they didn’t pay even a passing glance to the terror-crazed young woman that lost her footing on the flooded grasses and tumbled down the steep hill that leads to Cambria Cemetery. They simply drew their guns and ran into the dark where the chief had been dragged.

Miranda slid down the hill in the two-inch deep moat that now surrounded the cemetery. She attempted to stand when a white-hot pain shot up her right ankle all the way up her leg. She uttered a weak squeal of pain and fell through the open iron gate of the cemetery face-first, splashing in the ice-colt water. It was still wildly running down the hill, soaking the grounds . . . turning the place into a thick, soupy muck. She knew her ankle was broken. Miranda screamed at the startling sound of a gunshot coming from the top of the hill. For a moment, the bright throbbing in her ankle nearly caused her to pass out. The smell of the burning truck kept her conscious. She wanted to pass out. Anything to get rid of the pain . . . but the stench of spent fuel, burning rubber and metal; as well as the soft glow of the roaring flames forced a sense of
real
into her mind like some sort of sick prank.

No passing out on me, hun. No la-la land for you. You’re not going anywhere.

“H . . . hello? He . . . help meeeeee . . .” She wanted to yell, but the words only came out in weak, panting whispers. She tried to stand up slowly, mindful to keep her ankle lifted as she leaned against the iron gate. Stars danced in front of her eyes. Grandma called them fairies when she was little. Prone to blood-sugar issues even as a small child, Miranda was used to the faint-fairies. Grandma Rizza always had a way of comforting her fear of them. That fear of blacking out and hitting her head bad enough to get stitches, falling into something sharp, down stairs or as she stood on a ladder. They all happened at least once.

“Granny’s got you, honey. Those be fairies in front of your eyes protecting you, sweetie. Don’t be scared. Granny has your shot and you’ll be all better. Okay?”

I’m scared.

“No need to be, darlin’. Hold still . . .”

Do the fairies tell you when they’re here? Can you see them?

“Can’t see ‘em, punkin. I can hear them, though.”

What do they say?

“To listen to your granny and all will be alright.”

Miranda stood for a moment, blinking away the fairies that were beginning to subside a bit. She looked to the top of the hill. Too steep to see anything.

“Hello?” Miranda jumped at the sound of another gunshot, followed by a splash.

Then, silence.

Miranda reached into her pocket for her cell phone. “Oh, no . . .” she caught a quick glimpse of it. There it was, a bright pink sugar skull phone case with the bow on it, floating in the running water at her feet. It was out of reach. No use grabbing for it now. It floated into an open drainage ditch. “Son of a bitch,” she whispered to the sounds of nothing but running water and the leaves in the trees rustling in the gentle morning breeze. She stood at the open cemetery gate, her ankle now a dull throb. Putting the slightest weight on it brought the pain back in full-force. It brought the fairies back too, but she managed three steps inside. The light from the truck intensified at the top of the hill, lighting only another couple of feet in front of her. The moon, obscured by thick approaching clouds faded back into the sky. The clouds covered the faint outlines of the headstones inside the palpable black. She took another excruciating step. The thick mud underneath her feet caused her foot to slip forward. Miranda tumbled forward, expecting the ground to rush toward her . . . but she kept falling. The girl landed with her legs underneath her, splashing into the hole with a sickening gasp of air. From within the searing screen of pain, she looked up to see the faint rectangular outline above her. Attempting to turn on her side, her arm brushed something cold. Something solid. She blinked away her fairy-obscured vision and noticed a shattered pine box cast into the corner of the hole that had widened by the flooded ground. It was a pine coffin with brass hinges. The sound of small splashes . . . shuffling footsteps neared the area at the top of the hole and stopped at the edge right above her.

Miranda opened her mouth to scr
eam upon realizing what she had fallen into
. She stopped herself when she stared up and made out four shapes standing around the hole above her. She couldn’t see the
silent people watching
. Only silhouettes. The pain in her legs careened up her back and she gave herself away to the darkness quickly surrounding her. Before the world went black, she thought she could hear something in the hole with her . . . something in the corner of the muddy hole clicking its teeth.

II

              “Bullshit, motherfucker. We should have stayed,” Daryl Sloan said in deep slurs. “That girl wanted to fuck me, man.”

              “I know, brother,” the driver said. He reached to the center of the dashboard and turned off the headlights just as the light of the rising sun started to illuminate the world.

              “Don’t call me brother,” Daryl said. “I am a nigger, but I’m not
your
nigger.” He belched and swallowed back something that was trying to force its way up.

              “We gonna do that shit again? What, a white guy and a black guy can’t go out drinking in this hick-ass town? When you get sloshed, I swear you turn into Malcolm X or some shit.”

              “Kiss my ass, Benny.”

              “Grab my chap-stick. Lemme pucker up, Soul Train.” He lowered his voice into a cheesy old western twang. “C’mon. Sing me one of them ol’ nigger work songs.”

              They laughed together as only close friends would. Benny Kelis was a little hammered too, but not as much as his trusty co-pilot. Daryl Sloan, chief mechanic at Benchtree Tractor Supply (who had to be at work at eleven) slapped his pal on the shoulder, making him swerve. “Goddamnit! You retard! Wanna kill us? Last thing we need is some damn cop pullin’ us over. The whole car smells like beer and I can’t exactly ace a field test right now.”