Outbreak Read online

  Reign of the Dead

  Outbreak

  Len Barnhart

  ACHNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank my life-long friend Rick for his input. Rick gave me some great ideas when I was writing this book. He spent many hours reading through what I had written and improving upon it. In a world where it is so rare to have even one friend who you trust completely, I count my blessings. I have a few, including my wife, Carol. It is friends like that who make life complete.

  Len Barnhart

  Website: http://www.reignofthedead.com

  Email: [email protected]

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/len.barnhart

  Twitter: http://twitter.com/LenBarnhart

  PART 1

  Zero Hour

  They're loiterers, cannibalistic vagabonds for the familiar.

  —Jim Workman

  1

  New York City

  The blue and white ambulance came to a stop in front of the emergency room entrance and two men hurried from the front of the vehicle. The gurney holding Rebecca Longley slid back and they gripped the handles at each side of her lifeless body, heedless of the haggard man who stumbled out behind her.

  Michael Longley’s hands shook as he held a white cloth to his head. The cloth was warm and wet, his vision blurred by the mix of sweat and blood building over his brow and he fought for clarity as he neared the doors.

  Where was he and why was he there? He couldn’t remember, and where was his wife, Becca? His head was pounding and it was all he could do to stay focused and on his feet.

  The doors in front of him began to swing shut and for a moment it seemed as if his mind were clearing. Rebecca was behind those doors and all he had to do was walk through them to find her, click his heels three times and all would be as it had been this morning. He was still processing that nonsensical thought when out of nowhere a pretty nurse with dark hair stopped and tried to steady him.

  She was speaking, but her words were faint. The confusion was clouding his thoughts again. “I need you to come with me, sir. You’re injured…Please, come with me.” Michael struggled to understand. Was she speaking English? Yes, she was, but she was jumbling the words. “Omecay auth see.”

  “What?”

  Then, as if suddenly recovering from a mind-altering drug, her words were clear. “Come with me please.”

  She was trying to help. Dorothy Gale to the rescue, pretty as a picture and decked out in a blue pinafore. All he needed was a one-way ticket to Kansas, via those Ruby slippers. And where was his wife? I need to find my wife and go home is what he wanted to say, but his lips only moved silently.

  What was it Becca had said about Clarissa? He remembered her lilting tone as she leaned in to tell him as though she were sharing a vital confidence. She’d said, today would be a new beginning. Today the world would be made new. They were halfway across Pennsylvania, just passing Harrisburg, and her urgency had startled him. Becca’s references to Clarissa always startled him a little, even after all this time, but he knew enough to keep his mouth shut whenever Rebecca started in about her. Just let her speak. Get it out of her system. At least that’s the way he had come to rationalize it.

  In the past, Clarissa’s psychic intrusions had never been ill-omened, but she certainly had an uncanny way of always being exactly right whenever she had anything to share with Becca. Was the accident what she meant? It didn’t feel like a beginning to Michael. He felt that foreboding dread deepen now as he stood in front of a closed door, a door that was potentially closing on any future he hoped to have with his wife, and his hand trembled as he reached out to push the cold, metal bar latch. He could see his thoughts whirling like thought bubbles in a comic book. “On this side of the door is what I am now. This side is what I was. Don’t go through that door, Michael,” the bubble whirred past. “You don’t want to know what is on the other side of that door.” Another bubble blinked by.

  Michael shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated, trying to clear the images as he pushed through the door.

  Suddenly the voice in his head wasn’t his. It was Rebecca’s. He heard her, saw her, nervous and worried. Her voice was soft as she quoted her friend, “A different world, Michael.”

  Michael was going down for the count and he knew it. His head was spinning and it was hard to draw breath.

  As his knees bent, and he began to slump toward the floor, a tall, middle-aged black man loomed up in his field of vision and grabbed his elbow to help steady his wobbling stance.

  The man wore a blue uniform. There was a patch on his right shoulder. Through blurred vision Michael could see the bright yellow proclamation: Security.

  With sudden clarity, Michael came full circle, and like getting a jolt of good Java on a bad Saturday morning, he was suddenly awake.

  “I have to go in there.” He snarled at both of them as he pushed past the nurse. The guard however was not obliging as he placed a firm hand on Michael’s chest and stopped him cold in his tracks.

  “I’m sorry sir, but I can’t let you do that,”

  “Please, it’s my wife in there,” Michael implored, his demeanor changed from brusque to pleading. “I have to know.”

  Dorothy Gale eased the bloodied cloth away from his head and inspected the gash. She was several inches shorter than Michael, but still tall for a woman, probably five-eight, or nine. “I’m nurse Beatty. That’s going to need a few stitches. They will do all they can for her,” she assured him as she brushed his blond hair away from the wound. “But first things first. We need to look after that wound.”

  Michael calmed himself, and nodded in submission. They were after all doing what they perceived to be best. Best for Becca. He would only be in the way. “Will you check on her for me?” He asked the guard. “Please?”

  The guard nodded solemnly before his expression suddenly hardened. Looking over Michael’s left shoulder; he shoved him to the side and stepped around, pushing the double doors open wide.

  Michael’s lean frame hugged the wall tightly as four gurneys were rushed through. “There are more on the way,” one of the medics called out as he rushed through behind the others.

  The nurse pulled Michael over to the admissions desk and made him sit. “I have to go now. They are going to need my help in there,” she said, pointing to the double doors. “You sit here and keep holding this cloth to your head. Put pressure on it like this.” She held it firmly over the gash as she leaned toward the girl behind the desk. “Get their information,” She whispered, and nodded toward Michael. “We won’t be able to see him immediately. We’re going to have to take care of the more critical patients first.”

  “Yes ma’am,” the girl responded.

  Michael nervously bounced his left leg, waiting for her inquisition to begin. He tried to replay the accident in his head.

  Rebecca’s side of the car had been hit by a swerving eighteen-wheeler. There was a sudden jolt. A whoosh of air popped his ears. It seemed as though the vehicle were coming apart as shards of metal and glass filled the inner compartment. The world spun and he flashed in and out of consciousness. Then the dashboard zoomed up to meet his face.

  Suddenly, everything was still, and dark.

  Rebecca had not regained consciousness and he feared for her life. She had been so still, quiet and lifeless. Her breathing had been so shallow that at first he couldn’t tell if she were breathing at all. Certainly, only a thimble of life remained in her.

  He had been more fortunate. Only the bleeding gash over his left eye needed attention. He would gladly give his strength to Rebecca in exchange for her injuries. He would die for her.

  “Were you in that pileup out on Route 78?”

  The girl’s question brought him out of his temporary
fog and he stared at her.

  “Were you in that pileup out on Route 78?” A man’s voice echoed her question so exactly in cadence and timber, he thought for a moment he was hearing things. He turned to his right to see a New York State trooper looking down at him, waiting expectantly for his reply. Before he could process the question and reply, the radio hanging from the trooper’s belt blared to life. “Look Mister, this night has turned into a three ring circus, complete with freak shows. Just don’t leave until someone can get your statement.”

  With that, he turned on his heel, and barking orders into his radio, disappeared through the glass lobby doors so quickly that Michael wondered if he had been an apparition.

  The receptionist stared absently, first at the lobby doors and then back at Michael; her brows were raised in a quizzical expression, the unanswered question still hanging in the air between them. Michael tried to answer, but he couldn’t tell if he was actually speaking, or only mouthing the words.

  The girl behind the desk had a sweet, girl-next-door look about her, except for the mole on the tip of her nose. Dark in color, and raised, it seemed to dominate her face, this silly little black spot on an otherwise pretty face. Michael noticed the imperfection and it drew his attention in such a way that he was unable to focus on her words.

  “Yes, we were,” he finally said, trying not to look at her nose.

  “It’s a bad one isn’t it?” she asked, snapping her gum.

  Michael nodded, “Yes.” Jesus God she cracks her gum too, he groaned inwardly.

  The mole seemed to grow bigger as he struggled to remember the accident. Michael closed his eyes and focused on that memory.

  They were passing a big truck when a deer crossed the road in front of it and the driver lost control. The animal exploded like red rain across the trucker’s windshield. The rig swerved to the left and into them. The impact sent the car spinning. Then a great roar filled the night as other vehicles piled into the spinning wreckage and the jackknifed truck, which lay crossways in the road. The deer’s severed head whizzed past as it bounced across the car hood. Then his door was torn loose as if pulled away into the darkness by an unseen force.

  The whooshing sound and then the dashboard.

  Fade to black.

  Then in the silence, the cries for help. First only whispers, but then they increased in frequency and strength until the night clearly resonated the pain around them.

  All that seemed distant and surreal to him as he pulled Rebecca from the wreckage, their cries, mere echoes in the night, detached from his immediate situation. His full attention was focused on her, his love, the only thing that mattered. The rest was just background noise.

  He laid her in his lap with her head cradled in his arms and brushed her matted hair away from her face.

  There was a shard of metal lodged deeply in her chest. He wanted to pull it out and toss it away, but he was a cop and he had seen enough mortal wounds to know what this meant. He dared not touch it.

  “Clarissa,” Rebecca sighed.

  Michael cried quietly as he held her. The night was dark and the air smelled of gasoline and dampness. He wanted to lay the blame for the night’s tragedy squarely at Clarissa’s feet. She was supposed to have all the answers. She held the control over Rebecca, control he could never command himself, and for that he hated Clarissa. Fortune-tellers, astrologers, mystics…They carried weight with Rebecca, and through her, him too. And Clarissa was the best. The best at her game, and even if Rebecca was fooled, he was not. He was fully aware that it was only an illusion, a practiced parlor trick. No, she had no real answers, only deception. Then with what seemed like the last wheezing breath of her lungs, Rebecca softly said, “A new beginning, Michael.”

  A bleak and stifling darkness surrounded him. It threatened suffocation as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He felt alone as he stared down at his one true love. All of the good things that had ever happened in their life came rushing into his thoughts like the first brutal wave of a flash flood. He remembered Becca telling him about the horrors she had endured as a child, and how he had changed her life. These were going to be their good times. These were going to be their happy years.

  “Name?”

  “What?” Michael said.

  “Sir, I need your name.”

  “Michael Longley,” he told the receptionist.

  “Address?”

  “1135 Oakridge Drive, Chicago, Illinois—Listen, my wife and I were on vacation…” His words faded to silence, not knowing if he were speaking or only mouthing the words again, Michael put his head in his hands. Rubbing his eyes, he brought his head back up, and looking at the girl with the mole on her nose, said. “Some vacation, huh?”

  “I’m sorry. No it isn’t. What is your wife’s name?”

  “Rebecca May Longley. We’ve been married for six years. Is it six? Maybe it’s seven.”

  His mind was drifting. He had to remain focused. All of his police training was failing to bear fruit. He had to keep his wits, keep his head straight. Rebecca needed him.

  ***

  Doctor Adam Riker gently massaged the woman’s heart. It had stopped more than two minutes before and he knew precious little time remained. “Come on now. Beat for me. Beat for me,” he coaxed as his gloved hands moved inside her open chest cavity.

  Nurse Beatty watched as the doctor massaged the smashed organ. The damage to the heart was extensive. She knew Adam Riker was a good doctor. She also knew his attempts were futile.

  “She’s gone Doctor,” she said in a soft, yet sternly professional manner. “We have others who need tending.”

  Riker stopped, stripped off his bloody gloves, and glanced up at the clock on the wall.

  He heard the urgency in nurse Beatty’s voice. “Please Doctor Riker; we need you to call it.”

  Adam Riker did not like losing patients. This one was a heartbreaker for him. “Time of death, 1:05 a.m.” he said finally and motioned for Ron Whiteman, the anesthesiologist, to remove the tube from her arm.

  “So what do we have next?” Riker turned away from the dead woman on the table.

  Denial was his way of dealing with the death of a patient. Once he was out of the room, the woman would be forgotten completely, out of sight, out of mind. This was his mantra on death days. And any day that he lost a patient was a death day. Any day that he lost a patient, with his hands in her chest, that was a triple death day. And to Doctor Riker this was starting to feel like it was going to be a quadruple death day.

  “Cover her,” he snapped to Nurse Beatty as he moved to the next patient.

  ***

  Michael rose unsteadily and moved from the chair to pace the crowded waiting room. His head ached from a pulsating swell of pressure over the wound above his eye. What he needed was fresh air to clear his thoughts. An exit sign hung above a door on the far side of the waiting room. Just the beacon of light he was looking for. Just under the light and through the door was fresh air. Just under the light and through the door was clarity, and clarity was what he needed to help Becca.

  Michael sought the quickest path to the door through the crowd. A motley cast of characters had filled the room since his arrival. One man, balding and pudgy and dressed in a cheap, brown polyester suit, held his wrapped hand and rocked in his seat, moaning in pain. The makeshift wrapping was red with blood. A middle-aged man in a rumpled gray suit held onto a pale and crazed teenaged boy, no older than sixteen. The boy’s mouth was covered with duct tape, and his hands were tied. Michael thought that very strange. Why would that kid’s mouth be taped shut like that? And before he could catch himself, he was pointing at the makeshift gag and blurting out, “The kid can’t breathe like that.”

  He recoiled instinctively as the boy lurched up and thrust his face onto his captor as if trying to bite him through the tape.

  The sight of the spastic kid, duct taped and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey was too much for Michael. He had to change the subject. His auto-
defense mechanism was kicking in. Change the subject. My wife is hurt, this kid is fucked up. Good thoughts, good thoughts. Change the subject…

  And there it was. Michael retreated into thoughts of Rebecca.

  Their marriage had been rocky the first three years, but that had changed. Things were good now. Those bad years were a fading memory. But this night had up-ended their lives and threatened to take Rebecca away from him forever. To make things worse, they were a long way from home, and alone, separated from other family members who might give comfort.

  “What’s going on in there?” He turned and shouted at the receptionist. “It’s been over a half hour. I want to know how my wife is doing?” Again he moved toward the double doors and again the guard stopped him.

  “Sit,” he barked at Michael. The stress of the night showed in the guard’s demeanor. “Someone will let you know what’s going on when there’s time, now sit.” He shoved Michael unceremoniously back down into a chair and then moved to break up another scuffle in the rapidly filling waiting area.

  ***

  “Close for me.” Doctor Riker told Nurse Beatty as he tossed another pair of rubber gloves into the trashcan.

  “This one is going to make it, I think,” she said.

  “That’s two out of five,” Riker said. “While I have a minute I should go break the news to the people waiting outside.”

  Nurse Janice Beatty wiped her forehead. “Do you want me to do that tonight?”

  The doctor furrowed his brow, “What?”

  “I’ll break the bad news to the families tonight if you want. It will give you a break. You look like you could really use one.”

  Doctor Riker hesitated, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “No, I’ll do it. It is my job. I should be the one to do it.” Shaking his head, he sighed, “They expect the doctor to be the one. I don’t mean anything by that. It’s just that…” His words trailed off as he stared across the room.