Surviving in the Time of Zombies Read online

  The Most Uncommon Cold II:

  Surviving in the Time of Zombies

  Jeffrey Littorno

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  The Most Uncommon Cold II:

  Surviving in the Time of Zombies

  Copyright © 2014 by Jeffrey Littorno

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording, or otherwise – without prior permission in writing from the author Jeffrey Littorno.

  ISBN: 1500943878

  ASIN: B00N02YOMK

  Chapter 1

  Lieutenant Detective Greg Lawrence kept the handset pressed to his ear. He said nothing as his eyes moved around the office, waiting for a response. “Detective Lawrence of the San Francisco Police Department,” he repeated after a few seconds.

  “Crank call?” I asked in a poor attempt to lighten the tension. The detective looked at me and started to reply but stopped. “Yes, I’m right here”, he said into the phone. After a few seconds, he said, “Okay, honey, I need you to slow down… Now where is your mommy?” He paused listening to the reply. “No, don’t go outside… No, stay inside. Can you see your mommy?” He listened again. “Honey? Okay, you need to stop crying. She is not angry at you… No, it’s not your fault… What’s your name?” Another pause. “Christina, that’s a really pretty name… You have to keep the phone up, honey, or I can’t hear you.

  So can you tell me your address, Christina?” He looked around the desktop and grabbed a pen.

  “Okay, Christina, tell me the numbers slowly.”

  He began writing numbers on the palm of his

  hand. “Four… One… Two… Seven. Good girl! Now what street do you live on?” Lawrence’s face turned pale as he waited for a response but spoke in a calm and comforting voice when he replied,

  “Honey, I know you’re scared. It’s okay… It’s gonna be okay. Christina!” The big man’s eyes got wide for a second then he said, “No, I am not mad at you, honey. Not mad at all, okay?” Lawrence smiled as he continued, “I want you to be brave. Now what street do you live on?” The smile vanished, replaced by an expression of horror. “You have to stay quiet. Please, Christina, be quiet. Don’t cry. You’re a big girl, right?”

  The detective had forgotten everything around him and focused entirely upon the little girl on the phone. “Yes! It’s okay to be scared. Can you tell me what street your house is on? I got four, one, two, seven. What is the street’s name?” His face got red and tight as if he was attempting to send his will through the phone line to the girl. “Yes, you can remember it, Christina. You can! Keep thinking. What is the first letter? Can you think of it? P? Like in pumpkin? Yes, okay… P like in panda.” Lawrence smiled again. “Now the second letter? Eight? Are you sure? Okay, eight like in hot. No, that’s very good, Christina. Four, one, two, seven, P, H--” All at once, he yelled into the phone, “Christina, you need to hide right now! Go hide! I am coming to get you! Go hide and--”

  With sudden fury, he yanked the phone away

  from his ear and slammed it onto the cradle. The desk and everything else in the office trembled

  from the force.

  “What?” I asked in a loud trembling voice.

  My words startled Lawrence as if he had forgotten about me.

  He stared blankly at me for a moment before responding. The line went dead,” he said flatly. “That little girl… We gotta send a patrol car to get her.” He looked around the empty room before adding, “We have to go get her.”

  I watched the way he stared straight ahead and got the distinct sense that saving this little girl meant something more than this little girl.

  For the first time, I took a moment to study Detective Lawrence. His big bull-dog face showed signs of a life that had not always been easy. The result of drinking too much of the hard stuff was clear. The need for a haircut and the wrinkled clothes led me to guess that he lived alone.

  “Before we go anywhere I want to know what the hell is going on!” The detective had found his second wind. “A coupla minutes ago, I put two bullets into a guy. One shoulda put him down. What the fuck is that?”

  “I told you everything I know. This cold that’s been going around is something else. I mean my wife got it, and she…” My voice trailed off as the wave of sorrow slammed down on me again.

  Lawrence recognized my emotion and became clearly uncomfortable. “Okay, let’s go find out what’s going on.” He started toward the door but stopped, “Shit, I might be crazy here, but I guess you oughta be armed.”

  He walked back to his desk, opened the big desk on the side, and started rummaging through it. I walked over next to the desk as he lifted a stack of manila file folders and slammed them down on the desk top. The sound made me jump. Fortunately, Lawrence did not catch it. Instead he stooped over to continue hunting through the drawer.

  Finally, he straightened up and looked at something in his hand. An old, dirty grey washcloth wrapped the something. Lawrence slipped it off. A dark black pistol waited beneath. The small gun looked old and not entirely safe.

  “Well, it’s nothing fancy, but it’ll work,” he said as he handed the gun to me. “Plus, the serial number’s been filed off. Not like that’s important right now.” He chuckled at his last statement.

  As far as I could remember, I had not held another gun other than the old Daisy BB rifle I had as a boy. The pistol was heavier than I expected. My discomfort with the gun must have been apparent.

  “Never shot a gun before?” Lawrence asked.

  I considered making up some macho lie but instead said, “That obvious, huh?”

  “Well, it probably won’t matter. You shouldn’t need to fire it,” Lawrence did not appear to believe

  his own words. “Let’s go.”

  I followed slowly behind him.

  We stepped into the hallway and the silence immediately swallowed us. Somehow the lack of sound made the air heavier until it seemed as if it

  pressed down on us. I am not certain about Lawrence’s experience, but for me, every movement took extra effort. As silly as it may sound, I moved as though underwater.

  The sharp ring of a telephone washed away the sensation of being underwater. The sound shot out of a room near the end of the hallway. Seemingly on instinct rather than conscious thought, we both headed toward the noise. As we crept closer to the open door about thirty feet away to the right of the hallway’s end, the ringing stopped and silence took over once more.

  I looked at Lawrence next to me. Maybe the tension of the moment or something else heightened things, but for some reason every detail suddenly appeared very clearly to me. I noticed the beads of perspiration glimmering on the detective’s forehead, the squeak of his shoes on the tile floor, and the absence of his breath.

  I had not realized until that moment that we were both holding our breaths. I must have made some sound, because Lawrence looked over at me. I am not sure if his expression came from concern or from confusion. In any case, it made me a little uncomfortable and I looked away.

  After a moment, I turned back and asked, “So do you really think we can find this little girl in

  time to-”

  “Christina! The little girl’s name is Chri
stina!” The detective interrupted. “And yes, I think we can find her before anything happens to her.” His eyes sank slowly to the floor before shooting back

  up to me. “We have to.”

  Lawrence’s matter-of-fact tone made it clear that trying to talk him out of the idea would be a waste of time, so I did not even try.

  “Okay, let’s get going,” I said in the most positive voice I could manage.

  Even though that we had made the decision to go find this girl, neither of us had any idea what to do next and simply remained still. After a moment, the detective said, “Well, shit, let’s goes!”

  The sound of his voice shook me out paralysis, and I followed him out of the office and into the hallway. I was still holding the gun awkwardly, not sure precisely how best to carry it. I started to tuck it into my belt as I had seen television cops do, but the heavy thing pulled my pants down.

  If Lawrence noticed my problem, he did not comment on it. Instead, he walked slowly down the hallway listening for any sound. The police station remained completely silent. Finally, I simply held the gun with both hands in front of me and hurried to catch up.

  The big detective stopped right before an open door with his head tilted to the right obviously listening to something. I started to ask what he was doing, but he put his palm out to silence me. Then I heard it. The noise was a sort of smacking sound. I grinned a little at the thought of it sounding like a teenage girl smacking her gum. The grin did not go unnoticed, and Lawrence gave me a look of curiosity mixed with irritation.

  He crept over against the wall and slid his

  shoulder slowly along until he was right at the doorway. I moved right behind him. Whether it was from the sound of my heavy breathing or the squeak of my shoes on the tile floor, Lawrence spun his head around to glare at me. I met his eyes with an expression of apology which immediately turned to one of horror as I saw something move into the doorway.

  “What?” Lawrence hissed.

  Before I could answer, the thing moved out of the doorway to grab him. The detective was suddenly spun around to face a short muscular form in a dark blue police uniform. Blood was still oozing out over the lower lip of the shell as it moved its mouth open and closed to make a smacking sound.

  Lawrence pushed away from the thing and screamed, “Hernandez, what the hell? Let go of me!”

  The shell showed no reaction to the words but continued moving forward.

  What took place next fit perfectly into the sense of everything being unreal that I had been experiencing since getting out of bed three days earlier. Lawrence took a step back as I moved off the wall to the middle of the hallway. As the shell

  moved forward, my arm flew up with the gun in the middle just as I had seen in countless police shows on television. In the next instant, any similarities to police procedure vanished. The gun went off, sending me stumbling backwards. My arms screamed with pain as though they had been

  ripped off. The roar of the blast echoed through the hallway and left me with a humming sound in my ears. The sound filled my head and blocked everything else from entering. I could see Lawrence’s lips moving but there was nothing but the humming sound. I turned in the direction I had shot to see a huddled bundle of dark blue on the floor in the doorway.

  Lawrence grabbed my arm causing me to jump with fright. His lips continued moving. The humming in my ears drowned out every other sound, and I pointed at my ears and shook my head to show him that I could not hear.

  He nodded and kept talking. After a few moments of watching his lips move, I began to hear some sound amid the constant hum. “…one of the toughest little bastards I ever met. I remember when he first joined the force, we gave him a bad time about--” Lawrence stopped in mid-sentence. We both watched as the previously still bundle of dark blue on the floor began to twitch. The movement began as nothing more than a tremor, but it was enough to hold both of us completely captivated. It grew to some muscle contractions in the legs. But it did not stop. The slight jerking movements travelled up the entire body like a wave. A second later, the stillness

  returned. Lawrence and I looked at each other with something like amusement. This shared expression changed immediately as we watched the shell in dark blue try to sit up.

  “But I shot it!” I screamed as if the shell’s

  movement presented some personal insult. “It should not be moving!”

  Lawrence stood next to me con-centrating on the blue thing. “Have you got any idea about what is happening to these people?” He was speaking louder than necessary as if his ears had also been affected by the roar of the gunshot.

  “I told you everything I know. People get this cold that’s going around, and it does something to them. I don’t know… I guess it kills them, but then… then they don’t stay dead.” The words brought the images streaming back, and they pulled me out of the police station.

  I instantly found myself back in the parking garage beneath the apartment I shared with my wife Bonnie. Immediately, my heart was racing and my breathing heavy with the anxiety of what I would find in the garage. I replayed the scene of slowly crossing the dark pavement on the way to see if Bonnie’s little red Toyota waited in her parking space. As I crept along, I realized I was holding my breath. In my mind, I recalled the sense of holding my breath as a way to keep hope alive. I believed by keeping my breath from escaping that I could keep hope from escaping, as well. At that instant, the hope I was hoping with everything inside of me was that Bonnie’s car would be gone from that parking space. If her car was gone, it meant she had gotten away from here and away from here meant hope of her being safe. Now that hope seemed pretty pathetic, childish. It amounted to nothing more than a lie told by the

  heart even as the head knew that harsh reality would soon come crashing down.

  The hum of the florescent lights above provided the only break in the silence of the place. I continued on my path fully aware of precisely where it led. It was the walk of a condemned man on his way to his execution, knowing that each step simply brought him closer to the inevitable destination.

  I rounded the corner of the last row to see Bonnie’s car stoically looking back at me from its parking space.

  A second later I was sitting behind the wheel of my Jeep. I was startled by the anger burning inside of me. I caught sight of the dead thing that resembled Bonnie, and the fury flared even hotter. I started the car. At the sound of the engine, the thing looked toward the Jeep. As I revved the engine, the Bonnie-thing stood up and began slowly moving toward the car. Its face was now entirely covered with blood and bits of something darker. Even as it moved, I saw the thing was not actually thinking about what it was doing. The movements amounted to nothing more than repeated motions, like someone walking in their sleep. It turned toward the sound of the engine and slowly began moving.

  The Bonnie-thing stepped unsteadily toward me, and I kept on revving the engine. The loud roar echoed bounced off of the walls of the empty garage. The Bonnie-thing quickened its pace as it focused more clearly on the car.

  Strangely, I watched the thing without emotion, as if all sensation had simply drained out of me until I was left observing as one watches fish inside an aquarium. It became nothing more than something happening outside of the car.

  My hand moved to the center console of the Jeep and to the gear shift. The Bonnie-thing slapped the hood of the car on the passenger side and began to move toward me. When it reached the middle of the hood, I pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor and slid the gear shift from P to D.

  The Jeep lunged forward, and the thing doubled over the hood. In the seconds it took to cover the few feet between rows of parked cars, I looked straight into the empty eyes of the thing and felt merely disgust.

  The next moment found me surrounded by the airbags of the Jeep. I struggled to push the door open and almost fell out of the Jeep. My knees went weak and were barely able to hold me as I stumbled toward the front of the car. I slid my hand along
the side of the car for support and for the sense of something tangible in a world that was fast becoming surreal.

  The Jeep had collided with a smaller dark green car and was leaking either gas or water or both.

  The Bonnie-thing stood still and squashed tightly between the two vehicles. It remained draped over the hood, but now its head was twisted at a strange angle on the hood.

  I wrestled with the airbags to free myself and tried to open the door. It refused to budge. After a few pulls on the door handle had no effect, I began frantically throwing my shoulder against the door trying to get free. The whole car shook, and that movement is what must have awoken the Bonnie-thing.

  “Kevin, I’m sorry that I hurt you,” a voice that sounded like Bonnie’s cried, and the sound froze me. “I still love you.”

  Although I tried with all my strength not to turn in the direction of the voice, my eyes could not keep from moving there. I saw the thing that looked like Bonnie slumped over the hood. As I looked at the thing, the rage boiled throughout my body. As I glared at the form, I wanted nothing more than to tear the thing apart. I pictured myself ripping the arms off. Blood sprayed everywhere. I became drenched in the warm fluid, and it dripped off of me. I am not sure whether it was from the satisfaction of having torn the Bonnie imposter apart or the comforting warmth of the blood which covered me, but I suddenly felt pretty good.

  In the next instant, I made eye contact with the shell. No longer were the eyes dull and cold. They were bright and full of life once again. My breath caught in my chest. The face tilted up and made

  eye contact with me. This was my wife’s face. I wanted to rush to her and hold her, kiss her, and leave this nightmare behind. I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be fine. I wanted to

  tell her that. But when I tried to speak, no sound came out. Instead I just stared at her beautiful face. It was again the face that I had loved. There were the dimples alongside her bright smile. The cheeks dotted with the freckles that had always made Bonnie self-conscious were there as well.