Zombologist Book 1 Zombie Hunters (Zomboligist Series) (18 page)

“She’s ready, let’s get her in the SUV” Jana said and a
funny thing happened. The zombie stopped thrashing, her head turning in Jana’s
direction.

Dillon looked questionably at Jana and she just raised her
eyebrows at him and shrugged.

There was an audible creek of the floor board behind them
and Jana turned quickly, saber raised. She sees a little boy on the bottom
stairs holding a baseball bat.

Jana quickly lowers the saber.

“You’re the zombie hunters aren’t you?” Sammie asks.

“Yes, and you are?”

“I’m Sammie. I live here with my mommy. That’s the baby
sitter.” Sammie pointed to the dying girl on the floor.

“Where is your mommy Sammie?” Jana asked as softly as she
could.

“She’s at work, she’s a nurse. She works in the hospital.
Are there any more zombies?”

“Yes, Sammie there are a whole bunch outside. We need to
get this one loaded into the vehicle on the street. Can you wait here until we
come back?”

Sammie nodded his head. “Yes, I will wait right here. If
Dottie becomes a zombie should I smack her over the head with the baseball bat?”

“I don’t see that happening until we get back. You wait
right here, okay?”

Dillon yanks the zombie off the floor. She is suddenly
uncommonly quiet and subdued. It’s almost as if she is ‘cooperating’ with them.
He and Jana have no trouble getting her into the SUV and locking her in with
specially designed restraints.

“What are we going to do about Sammie?”

“We’ll take him with us until we find his mother.”

Dillon walks over to Sammie when they enter the house while
Jana turns her attention to the woman on the floor. She is unconscious and
barely alive. Blood is pouring from several wounds around her neck and shoulder
area.

Dillon hunches down in front of Sammie. “Hey buddy, you can
put the bat down now, the zombie is gone. That’s really cool that you know so
much about zombies. Me and the Lady there,” throwing a sideway glance at Jana,
“Well, we would like for you to come with us, to a safe house where there are no
zombies. In fact there are some horses, cows and fat pink pigs that you can help
take care of. How does that sound? You can stay there until we find your mom.”

Dillon waited patiently until the boy mulled this over. He
had just witnessed something that no boy his age should ever have too and Dillon
didn’t want to rush him.

Sammie looked at Dillon and nodded. “Okay, but will you
teach me to be a zombie hunter too?”

“You bet I will. Okay champ, let’s go to your room and pack
some clothes. If you have anything that’s special to you, we can grab that too.
What do you say?”

Sammie nodded again and headed up the stairs with Dillon
right behind him. He glanced back just as Jana was feeling for a pulse. He saw
her exhale, felt her defeat and turned his head just as she sliced into the back
of the girl’s neck, where the virus would be gathering.    

Jana was putting her saber away when a young blond woman
bursts through the door. Jana sees her taking everything in, Jana standing over
a decapitated body, all the blood, but she didn’t even bat an eye. All she said
was, “I’m looking for Sammie.”

“Are you his mother?” Jana asked, even though she knew this
wasn’t Sammie’s mother. For one, the woman wouldn’t walk in and announce that
she was looking for her son in her own home. For another Sammie’s mother would
be franticly worried about him after seeing the bloody scene before her.

“No, but I was with her before she died. One of those
infected things tore into her at the hospital. She sent me here to get Sammie,
to watch out for him. His father passed about a year ago, his mother is, er,
was, all he has. I promised her I would take care of him. What IS going on? And,
WHO are you?”

“It’s a long story. We were going to take Sammie with us
until we found his mother. God, the poor kid. So, you were just at the hospital,
what is the situation there?”

“Not good, not good at all. There are all those crazy
infected people running around attacking and biting doctors, nurses, other
patients and the police. The cops are stumped and most have gone home with
fevers. Just on my drive over here, I saw maybe a dozen or so, wondering the
streets, and an old woman walking around just outside.”  The blond woman turns
and looks outside before quickly shutting the door behind her suddenly realizing
that she is standing there with her back turned, exposing herself to a possible
attack.

“Do you have a vehicle outside?” Jana waited until the girl
nodded. “Good, here is my phone number and the address. You take the boy with
you and pick up a week’s worth of clothing and whatever you can grab from your
house. If there is anything sentimental, grab it too.” Then as an afterthought
Jana added, “just in case.’

“Just in case of what, exactly.”

“Listen, it’s no longer safe to stay within the city
limits, trust me. Grab what you can and go directly to this address. There is a
house in Bull’s Creek specially suited for any pandemonic situation.  We should
be there by the time you and the boy get there. If not, wait. Stay in your car
with the lights off and stay as quiet as you can. Got it?”

“Yeah, got it.”

They both looked up as Dillon and Sammie were coming down
the stairs. Sammie was dressed in jeans and sweatshirt and holding a fuzzy brown
bunny under his arm. Dillon was carrying a duffel bag.

Jana swore under her breath and quickly sent Dillon a text
explaining the situation.
 

Taking them to safe house. Sammie’s mother deceased
.

Jana waited until Dillon read the text and nodded.

“What is your name?” Jana asked the girl.

“Kelsey, Kelsey Rains.” Kelsey said, extending her hand.

“Well Kelsey Rains, this is Sammie and Sammie this is
Kelsey.” Jana made the rest of the introductions then turning her full attention
on Sam she said, “You are going with her to her house to pick up a few things,
then the both of you are going to stay with Dillon and I for a while. How does
that sound?”

“Okay, then are we going to look for mommy?”

“Yes, Sammie. We will.” Jana said, her heart deeply
saddened. She knew this was not the right time to tell him that he would never
see his mother again.

 “Kelsey, do you have a gun?

“Yes, at home. I have several as a matter of fact.”

Jana pulled her semi-automatic from her shoulder holster
and handed it to Kelsey. “Take this. Don’t hesitate to shoot any of the
infected. Do you understand?”

“After what I saw at the hospital today,” Kelsey whispered
“I won’t hesitate.”

****

Kelsey’s tape from the hospital had become viral and was
flooding the social networking sites at a rapid pace. News networks nationwide
began picking it up and broke into the regularly scheduled programs. Local
reporters were out in full force in the attempt to catch breaking news that
would send their careers skyrocketing. There were dozens of them, falling all
over themselves, trying to catch a random video of an attack. The only reporter
missing from the chaos was the one that broke the story in the first place. She
was nowhere to be found.

The president of the United States was finally found on the
golf course when a flood of reporters rushed him to get a statement. Cameras
rolled as reporters anxiously waited for his reaction to the current virus
outbreak happening a few hundred miles from Washington D.C.

Before they received an answer, his personal swat team
arrived to brief him and whisked him off the green. Before they left, the
president, obviously oblivious to the current state of affairs, was overheard
arguing that he hadn’t been watching the news so he had no idea of what was
going on.

The Altoona police department was out in full force. They
were sent a link via email of an online video taken by the reporter at the
hospital, the same reporter they had been instructed to find. They communicated
with dispatch and each other through walkie-talkies, police radios and text
messages. They were trying to figure out what they were dealing with.

At first they thought it was some form of drug such as bath
salts. Just recently they have been informed that a flesh eating drug called
Krokodil, being sold as Heroin was rotting the skin of addicts from the inside
out.  But, that didn’t explain the flesh eating boy on the video.

Many suspected it could be terrorism too. There had been
reports after the Boston Marathon bombing of several foreign students breaking
into the Quabbin Reservoir that supplies drinking water to Boston. These foreign
students studied chemical engineering. Could it be that someone had successfully
contaminated the water with some kind of mind altering psychotic drug? Is this
similar to the 1960’s when hippies tried to put LSD into the major water
supplies?

Perhaps it was a fast acting virus similar to rabies that
was attacking the brain and creating delusions by the affected. They all knew of
the several officers that had been bitten at the hospital and around the city.
Those officers were all reported as showing signs of fever, illness, so it
had
to be connected. Some had to be hospitalized from the seriousness
of their injuries; others choose to go home until they felt better.

They just couldn’t figure it out but they did conclude on
one single source. It was being spread through the bite. There was only one
thing that this was similar too and it was quickly dubbed ‘the zombie virus.’

The situation was rapidly growing out of control as looters
took to the streets. Families were car jacked and the police were slowly
beginning to see what they were up against. Not only were they dealing with a
contagion but public panic as well.

****

Jana put a call
in to
the head of the West Coast division of
the society
, Peter Dunn. He was
still in South America but he immediately picked up.

“Jana, what the hell is going on up there? I’ve been
getting calls from all over the country.

There have been several hundred people infected probably
from the rouge still on the loose in Maryland. It’s already spreading into
Cleveland, Pittsburgh and New York on a massive scale.

One report states that a truck driver had been attacked in
a truck stop, in” there was a rustle of paper before he continued, “ah,
Illinois. He had been pushing off the attacker when he was bit on the finger. He
jumped in his rig and made it to his next stop before going to the hospital for
a tetanus shot.”

Behind her, Jana could hear loud snarls as the zombie was
trying to loosen the restraints. She wished Dillon would hurry before the zombie
tore her own hands off trying to escape.  

She turned her concentration back to Peter as he continued.
“The doctor immediately admitted him for high fever and severe headaches. He
fell into a coma and much like the situation in Altoona; he died and turned in
the morgue. He attacked several people, patients and doctors before escaping and
running into the streets.

They finally gunned him down outside on the street but the
damage had already been done. The situation, I believe is out of control.
Members of
the society
are calling in attacks from all over.”

“Peter, we just picked up the zombie thought to be
responsible for what is going on here. I believe she was a survivor from the
Devlinsville attack of 1967. We are on our way back to the safe house now.”

There was dead silence on the other end.

“Peter? Are you still there?”

“Was it the preachers’ wife?” his voice was barely a
whisper as it registered the shock of the blow she had just handed him.

“No Peter. I will fill you in later. New developments.”

 “I will hold you to a full report then. At this point a
full report may sound rather foolish, but I am holding you too it. I am calling
for an evacuation. We don’t have enough resources to manage this. Do you
understand Jana? Evacuate. We must prepare for phase 2.”

“Evacuate? Peter, are you sure?”

“Absolutely!  And Jana?”

 “Yes.”

“You take care. Don’t do anything foolish.”

“I won’t Peter. You take care too.”

With that they disconnected.

Jana texted Paula and told her to hack the airwaves
nationwide and to let
the society
know that an evacuation was called.
Those on the ground were to take out as many as possible but containment at this
point was not possible.

As Jana listened to the news reports coming over the radio
she knew that national panic was beginning to set in. She listened to reports of
the ‘soulless individuals’ that were attacking people at random. News outlets
were beginning to announce that a contagion was loose on the public. They were
reporting that the bitten were registering high fevers and comas.