Pathosis (A Dark Evolution Book 1) Page 19

  A shiver ran through Brisbane as she pulled on a pair of socks. She could imagine what would happen if the mosquito population of Florida became infected with some deadly virus. It would be a goddam Armageddon, she thought, mosquitoes and flies are everywhere down here. Hell, the Everglades probably breed more mosquitos than any other place on earth. She was still in her sweats from earlier in the day and she paused to frown at herself in the mirror.

  “Crap,” she said, and pulled her sweatshirt off. She slapped deodorant on, pulled a sports bra down over her head and chest, and then once again donned the sweatshirt which read U.S. Coast Guard. That’s better.

  Emily intended to drive down to the base, but when she saw her cell phone on the kitchen counter, she picked it up and tried to dial them first. While it was ringing, Brisbane walked through the living room and slipped her feet into a pair of worn gray tennis shoes that were sitting by the door. They had been broken down by years of running, but fit her feet comfortably.

  She was growing impatient when the phone was finally answered.

  “Operator,” a slightly annoyed male voice answered.

  “This is Lieutenant Brisbane.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I need to speak to the FBI agent in charge, right now!”

  “Ma’am, I don’t have a line to him.”

  “Dammit man, patch me into the cafeteria office; they’re still in there, aren’t they?”

  A pause, then, “Yes, ma’am.”

  The line went blank then started ringing again.

  Brisbane grabbed her keys off the hook and, while holding the ringing phone in one hand and her keys in the other, opened the door, revealing the unnatural yellowy glow of the sodium halide lights overhead.

  The line still rang.

  Brisbane flipped the lock over with her thumb and forefinger and kicked the door closed. Why isn’t anyone answering? She had to get this information to the Feds; they needed to know they were dealing with something a lot bigger than a handful of rogue spiders. These creatures were carrying some type of pathogen that could spread rapidly, drive people mad, and kill quickly.

  The line kept ringing.

  Brisbane turned from her door and prepared to head down the stairs when a loud noise stopped her. What the- It came from behind her, a loud thunk. She turned, the ringing phone still held up to her ear. She was on a small landing, about five by five, that led to the second floor apartments on this half of the building. Immediately to her right was the door to her apartment, and directly in front of her was the other apartment, apartment B.

  The line kept ringing.

  Another loud thud. Something was hitting the door from the inside - hard. A few seconds went by. Thud. Someone was banging on the door, trying to get out. My God, someone’s hurt in there, they can’t get out. Brisbane debated calling the police, but she didn’t want to hang up.

  See took a step forward and placed her hand on the door. A moment later, a deep thud, then a shock against her hand.

  “Hello!” she called out. “Kimmy? Are you hurt?”

  She thought that was her neighbor’s name, though in truth, she had not spoken to her more than a handful of times and it was mostly “hello” or “goodbye.”

  Making a decision, she dropped her free hand to the door handle.

  “Kimmy, I’m going to open the door! It’s your neighbor, Emily!”

  Emily twisted the doorknob and pushed in on it. Immediately the foul stench of cat piss filled her nostrils and she balked, then shoved the door harder until the inside of the apartment was exposed.

  “Kimmy!” she yelled inside.

  A light brown hand grasped the door from the inside and pulled it the rest of the way open, jerking Emily off balance. Kimmy Soon stood before her. She was nude except for a pair of tan panties. Her hands were bloody. Her cheeks had deep fingernail gashes in them that dripped blood.

  “Kimmy?” she gasped.

  Kimmy lunged at her, swinging her arms in wind-milling arcs, her bloody nails splashing scarlet on everything. Emily stumbled backward, reaching out to steady herself against the wall as Kimmy threw herself at her.

  “Kimmy stop!” she screamed. Then, stupidly, she remembered she was still holding her phone to her ear and dropped it, where it clunked with a thick plastic sound.

  My training, my training, Emily chanted to herself as her neighbor charged from only a few feet away.

  Emily squared her shoulders and raised her hands into fists up near her face. Kimmy made contact, slashing at one of her arms with a bloody hand. The force of the blow was more than Emily expected, but she did not fall. Instead, as her body shifted from the blow, she let her hips rotate in that direction and punched out hard with her right fist. The jab came out fast and connected with brutal force against Kimmy’s snarling bloody face.

  The impact felt like it broke bone, both in her hand and the woman’s face. Kimmy staggered back, slamming her head into the doorframe of her own apartment behind her. Then she howled, a loud deafening sound, and flung herself forward again. Her mouth was wide open, ready to bite Emily’s face or neck if she could.

  Emily let the jab fly again, and again it connected with a healthy crack, shuddering into Kimmy’s face. Her jaw has to be broken, Emily thought. Instead of falling back, though, Kimmy fell into her, and got her spindly arms wrapped around Emily’s body, where she began to squeeze and wrench Emily from side to side. She couldn’t break Emily, she was sure of that, the woman just didn’t have enough muscle for it, but she could launch them down the stairs and – oh, the pain!!!!

  Kimmy clamped her teeth down into Emily’s arm, harder than Emily thought humanly possible. As Kimmy’s teeth sank in, Emily screamed in pain. She thought she could feel teeth hit her bones.

  Emily got her hands up to Kimmy’s chest and pushed her away with all her strength. Kimmy’s hold did not release, and with an audible rip she tore away part of Emily’s right bicep. The muscle seemed to quiver in Kimmy’s mouth.

  Emily’s mind went blank. Basic training left her and close combat training disappeared. Emily grabbed Kimmy’s hair with her left hand and with a savagery she did not know she possessed, she brought her knee and hand together, smashing Kimmy’s broken face into the hard bone of her knee. She did it again, feeling Kimmy’s skull crack against her. The sound made her sick. The Asian woman’s face was mush.

  Emily let go of her head and Kimmy fell to the floor. Her mouth, like a rabid animal, still continued to try to open and close. Emily’s muscle hung from it like a chewed up tenderloin. She drew her foot back and kicked Kimmy in her broken face as hard as she could. The tennis shoe broke through the hollow in her skull that was made for the nose and drove into Kimmy’s brain, smashing into the grayish matter and killing her instantly.

  Emily was hyperventilating. There were noises down below, people rushing up to see what was happening. Emily forced herself to look down at her arm. She wished she hadn’t. Oh no, oh dammit. She could never remember on tests whether it was the axillary artery or the brachial artery than ran deep beneath the bicep. But there it was, torn open and exposed.

  Someone reached the landing, but Emily couldn’t see who, her vision was failing now.

  “Dios mio!” she heard a voice say, somewhere far in the distance. She collapsed onto the landing. Her head landed near her dropped phone. It wasn’t ringing any more. A male voice was on the line.

  “Hello?” the voice said. “This is Agent Grey, to whom am I speaking? Hello?”

  Brisbane tried to speak, she tried to tell him, but everything was going dark now, like the shimmering pool of scarlet that grew around her with each fading heartbeat. Then it did not matter anymore. The mosquitos were forgotten, as was the neat yellow notebook with the captain’s horrific story, and very soon, one or two heartbeats later, Bris
bane ceased all thought.

  Chapter 25

  It was a bloody, violent dawn. Kala stumbled out of her front door, drunk on adrenaline, close to falling over from shock. She was nauseous and wobbly as she took three or four steps down the stone walkway that led to the sidewalk, then dropped down to her knees. Her chest heaved, and her eyes leaked the last tears they held. By this time her face was bright red from crying and the many tears she had shed left acidy little streaks down her face.

  Kala struggled to take breaths, trying to breathe deeper with each one, praying that one of these exhales would provide relief from the pressure on her heart. They did not.

  This time of the morning was usually quiet, but not today. She heard crying and screams. Some sounded fearful, some sounded like wails of pain, and some were very far off. The air was filled with the sounds. To Kala, it sounded like a choir performing a piece using ‘echo.’ She focused around her and continued to pull in deep breaths, then stood and strode a few steps to the sidewalk. Down the street, she saw several other people wandering from their homes and onto the road. They looked blank, traumatized. Kala understood.

  There was blood in the street and on the sidewalk. Patches of gore on the asphalt, splashed on the yucca plant in the yard, and a thick trail leading east over in the corner of the driveway. She heard gunshots and her head snapped toward the direction they came from. The gunshots were coming rapidly, in three-round bursts. The sound of tires screeching rang out from her left and she observed a wood-sided station wagon careening around the end of her street. The car was shaking back and forth, bouncing from one side of the road to the next as it began to barrel down her street. A moment later Kala saw why. What she initially thought was a car-top carrier on the roof had arms and a head.

  There was a person on the roof of the car. She could see the driver’s face, a young man who looked terrified. The person on the roof was trying to smash through the windshield with blood-streaked hands. It was one of them. Then it changed tactics and smashed its hand through the driver’s side window. Pay dirt. Kala saw the creature grab hold of the driver’s shoulder just before the young man swung the car off the road. It flew by Kala, only twenty feet away, and smacked into the corner of her garage. The front of the big wagon crumpled, as did their stucco. The zombie on the roof was thrown off the car, but was already getting up.

  Kala suddenly felt strong. She strode toward the car with purpose, ignoring the thrashing hand-signals and yells from the driver. Now he looked familiar.

  “Argh!” a loud cry came out from beyond the front of the car and the zombie creature rose. It had a broken arm, Kala could see bone jutting out of its forearm, and several large pieces of her garage’s stucco siding protruding from its forehead. The creature locked eyes with her and lunged. It was only a few yards away and most sane people would have screamed and run in fear. Kala did not scream or run. In fact, she stepped closer to the creature, who was once a human male.

  “Look out, get out of there!” the driver was screaming at her as she passed his door. His voice was male but high-pitched.

  She took one more step before reaching her right arm behind her. Her long fingers dipped down into the waistband of her skin-tight yoga pants and came up in front of her holding a giant silver revolver.

  The creature was almost upon her.

  “Shit,” she heard the driver say.

  Then she fired. She hit it directly in the chest, throwing the thing backward where it landed on the ground and squirmed. Kala stepped up over him, and with a face of stone and eyes that looked dead, she fired three more rounds into its chest. Finally, it stopped moving. Dead. She observed its face a little longer. It had been her high school advanced algebra teacher from last year, Mr. Simons. Not anymore. It was just a dead animal now.

  There was a sound from the car and Kala spun on her bare heel, pivoting and bringing the big pistol to bear on the driver. He had just pulled up on the door handle, but now he froze.

  “Who the hell are you?” she asked the driver, whose face was obscured by the doorframe.

  The driver slowly pushed the door open and emerged from the aged and now smashed station wagon.

  “Hey,” he said warily.

  It was the pizza delivery guy from last night, the one her father accused of having a crush on her. Kala lowered the gun.

  “Are you armed?”

  “Wh-what?”

  The gun came back up.

  “Are you armed?” she said the words very stiffly.

  The young man raised his hands in front of him in the universal sign for surrender.

  “I’m not armed. I promise.”

  Kala lowered the gun again, then left him there, walking around the back of the car and toward her house. She didn’t say anything else to him, but he followed behind her. He seemed like a nice enough boy, and she recognized him, of course. He bumbled a bit when he saw her, so she presumed her father’s instincts were probably correct about him.

  Thinking of her father brought up a pang of hurt, and with that hurt came nausea. She paused and leaned over, her stomach rolling for a moment. She was on the stoop in front of her door and thought she might vomit. While she waited, the driver came up behind her and gently touched her back. It wasn’t an aggressive touch, not a presumptuous one, only meant to offer some comfort.

  She let him touch her.

  “Did I frighten you?” she asked quietly. There was silence for a moment before he answered.

  “A little,” he said with the hint of a Cuban accent. He removed his hand from her back. “I’m Adrian. I’ve delivered-”

  “Pizzas, yes, I know,” Kala said, straightening herself out. She turned to him and tried to offer a smile, but it was more like a grimace. “I remember you. Have you seen any of the killing yet, Adrian? Besides just now?”

  Adrian nodded. “I have.”

  “Family?”

  He shook his head. “My family is back home in Cuba, what is left of them anyway. It was my roommate. He and his boyfriend went out shining gators yesterday. There were a lot of spiders and crawling things. One of them must have bitten him. This morning-” Adrian broke off in mid-sentence and shivered. “It was unspeakable. I ran and jumped off our balcony to get away from him.” He gestured to his bloody pant leg.

  Kala nodded. “Come inside with me if you like. My friend is hurt and my house, my house…” Kala closed her eyes, unsure of what to say. Her house was a mess? It stank with the iron and copper of blood? Her family’s bodies littered her once happy family home? Instead, she said nothing and led the way through the front door, the very door he had stepped through last night to give them their last family supper.

  They walked in through the foyer and into the sitting room. There was a square TV in the far corner, a La-Z-Boy recliner, and an old brown sofa. On the sofa was a half-naked girl. She startled when they walked into the room.

  “Jesus, Kal, who is that?” she asked in a frustrated tone, glancing down at her bare legs, using a pillow to cover up her panties. “And what happened out there? It sounded like somebody crashed into the house.”

  Kala motioned for Adrian to follow her into the living room.

  “This is Adrian,” she said as she walked up to Abbie. “He’s our pizza delivery guy.”

  “Oh,” she said, eyebrows raised.

  Kala knelt down next to Abbie and examined the large bandage she had affixed to her calf. The bandage covered a grisly wound, where Kala’s own father had taken a bite out of her leg. It had been bleeding pretty badly, but after a few minutes with an ice pack, Kala had been able to get a bandage on it. She could see the deep red blood soaking into the bandage.

  “I’m the one who crashed into the house,” Adrian said.

  Abbie nodded slowly, her eyebrows still raised. She was clearly not sure about or impressed with
him.

  “I had one of those things on my car. It was trying to get me.”

  “One of those things,” Abigail echoed. “Are there a lot of them out there?”

  Kala looked up at the question her friend had asked.

  He looked from one girl to the next before answering, “There are.”

  Abigail’s shoulders sagged.

  “But I think there are a lot more dead people than there are of those things. It’s like each one of them kills a half a dozen people before someone brings it down. That’s just what it seems like anyway. There were carcasses of people, all ripped up, all over the road.”

  “Did you drive by the hospital?”

  First, he nodded slowly, then sadly shook his head. “It’s no good there. Police have the parking lot barricaded and they’ve set up a firing line behind concrete k-rails. There are so many of those things in the street down there that they’re almost constantly firing.”

  Abigail looked over at Kala.

  “You said this is the … pizza boy?” She did not even attempt to disguise the incredulity in her voice.

  “I’m serious. It’s as if there’s a war going on in the city. It’s horrible.”

  “Five blocks away?”

  “Yes. Look, I’m not lying. It’s scary out there. On top of several downtown buildings, the police have a recording blaring saying that 911 isn’t currently available, and that every person should stay indoors.”

  Kala let a shiver run down her spine. “I’ll get you a blanket, Abs. Adrian, can you turn on the TV, find us the news?”

  “Of course, you have Charter?”

  “That’s all we can get here.”

  “Okay, I think everything is going to be news right now.”

  Kala started to leave the room but then turned back to the two.