Dead Earth: The Green Dawn Page 5

  “Yes?” Jubal said, pitying the poor wreck, no longer aware of the worsening smell of decay and sickness.

  “The rest is...hazy. My car broke down, so I hitchhiked anywhere to get away. Got sick. So sick. So...”

  Renee’s eyes closed. Her breath hitched in her throat.

  “The dead army,” Jubal said. “Tell us about the dead army.”

  Her eyes opened to yellow-red slits.

  “Your dreams...are real.”

  Jubal turned to Fiona. “What does that mean? My dreams are real?”

  “Just what she said, Jubal. She thinks there’s an army tromping around somewhere. An army of...the dead.”

  “What?”

  Fiona nodded, her arms crossed, looking very serious.

  A burst of laughter erupted from Jubal. The laughter continued for some time until he noticed the tears on Fiona’s face.

  “Shit. I’m sorry,” he said, wrapping his arms around his fiancée and patting her back. “I just find it hard to believe; I mean, c’mon. Zombies? Maybe ‘dead army’ just means the US Army is out rounding up the dead from this epidemic.”

  Fiona’s head shook on Jubal’s shoulder. “You heard her. She had the same dream that I had. And that you had; I know you had it—I saw it in your eyes when she mentioned it. Something weird is definitely going on, and I’m so scared, Jubal.”

  Jubal held her tighter and let her cry into his shirt. He happened to glance over her shoulder at Renee.

  “Oh, shit.”

  Fiona pulled away. “What?”

  Jubal went to the woman on the couch and stared into her face.

  “Renee’s dead.”

  “How do you know for sure? Feel her pulse.”

  “Hell, no. I ain’t touching her. But I know dead when I see it, and she’s dead.”

  “What’ll we do, Jubal? What is going on?”

  “Let’s go to the kitchen. You can get some coffee brewing, and we’ll think this thing through.”

  They both shambled into the kitchen like lost souls. Jubal was beginning to feel numb from too little sleep and too much drama. He felt as if the world around him had become surreal, as if he were walking through some strange nightmare version of Serenity.

  I hope I’m not having a nervous breakdown. Not now, when everyone needs me.

  Then he thought of his dad, and Damon. They would never panic in a situation like this. At least he liked to think they wouldn’t. But he doubted if they’d ever had to deal with an emergency of this magnitude.

  Jubal pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and slumped into it. He watched Fiona go to the counter upon which sat the coffee maker. As she swung a cabinet door open for the can of coffee, her hair swung aside for a moment and Jubal glimpsed a lump on her neck.

  “So, what are we going to do with Renee, Jubal?”

  The sight of the blister or boil on Fiona’s neck had stricken Jubal silent. He couldn’t tell her about his plan to burn Renee’s body somewhere in the surrounding desert.

  “Did you hear something in the other room just now?” Fiona said.

  He had heard something...

  There was a moaning sound, then Renee Spencer lurched into the room, arms outstretched, heading straight for Fiona. She made a whining sound as if she were in pain...or hungry.

  Fiona screamed and sidestepped out of Renee’s path.

  But she was dead. I could have sworn...

  Renee swung around toward Fiona. She made an angry sound from the back of her throat. Jubal could see her eyes now. There was no light there; there was nothing. Yet this dead woman was in Fiona’s kitchen, attacking her.

  Jubal leapt out of his chair and punched Renee in the stomach. The undead woman let out a surprised grunt and tumbled backwards onto the tile floor.

  Oh my god. She looks dead. She smells dead. She looks dead. She smells—-

  Renee was on her feet again and Fiona was still screaming in the corner of the kitchen. Jubal grabbed Fiona’s sleeve and yanked her toward the doorway.

  As Fiona was pulled across the room, Renee clawed at her but missed.

  Renee emitted a hunger-fueled wailing that chilled Jubal to the bone.

  He yanked his Glock and shot the undead woman in the stomach.

  Then Jubal and Fiona fled across the living room and out the front door, slamming it closed behind them.

  Jubal opened the passenger door of the cruiser and pushed Fiona into the car. Then he ran around to his side as Fiona swung her door closed. Jubal got in and switched on the radio.

  Fiona was whimpering like a baby.

  “Sh, baby, shh,” Jubal said as he tried to raise the state police. But all he got was static and hum.

  “Shit!”

  Jubal started the cruiser.

  Fiona screamed. Jubal turned his head and, through Fiona’s window, saw Renee lurching down the front walk, her shirt spattered with blood. She reached out toward the cruiser with outstretched arms and groping fingers, her jaw working up and down.

  “Quiet, baby. We’re getting out of here.”

  The cruiser tore off down the street, leaving the hungry zombie behind.

  Fiona would not stop screaming. He’d seen hysterical people slapped in movies, but couldn’t bring himself to hurt Fiona—ever. Even if it was for her own good.

  Halfway to the sheriff’s house, Fiona’s screams died down to sobs.

  “Don’t worry, baby. Don’t worry...”

  “What...what happened back there?” Fiona said, sliding across the seat until she was right up against him. “You said she was dead. You said you were sure she was dead just by looking at her.”

  Those dead yellow and red eyes. That blank stare. And the smell...

  “She was dead, baby. I’m not going to lie to you. She was dead, and she was walking.”

  “Nooooooooooo.” Fiona moaned the word.

  “I shot her right in the stomach at point blank range, and she was up and at ’em—at you—in no time at all. And I saw her eyes, Fiona. I saw her dead, staring eyes right above her hungry, gaping mouth.” Jubal knew he shouldn’t be talking like this but couldn’t stop himself; he was babbling like a lunatic.

  Fiona grew silent. And then Jubal knew; she had seen the woman’s dead eyes, too.

  As they neared Damon’s house, Fiona said, “What about my neighbors? What about poor old Mrs. Sanchez and the Alberts?”

  “We can’t worry about them right now. This is too much for me to handle alone. I need to talk to Damon. I need to know what he thinks of the situation. He’ll know what to do.”

  “But isn’t he sick, too?”

  “Yeah...” Jubal wasn’t thinking straight and he knew it. Which only angered him.

  He realized he was chewing on the inside of his lower lip, something he hadn’t done since he was a child. It had always been a reaction to stress and he had torn up his lip pretty badly on occasion, causing his mother to coat the wounds with a foul tasting antibiotic paste. Back then the tribulations he dealt with included math class and getting the crap beat out of him by Tommy Brainard. Today was a mite tougher. He spat out the window, tasting the coppery tang of the blood.

  Blood.

  In the past few minutes he had seen more of it than he had in his entire life. The thought of it made him a little lightheaded and forced him to consider for the first time if he was cut out for this line of work.

  On the other hand, was anyone cut out for a job that included facing down walking dead women? Jubal seriously doubted it. This wasn’t some horror disc from his collection at home. In those films, the heroes easily absorbed anything that was thrown at them, while spouting off funny lines and kicking ass. He was discovering that real life was different. In real life, your brain could only handle so much before it threatened to shut down. He was worried that Fiona wasn’t going to recover from what had happened. Also, he wasn’t very confident about his own stability.

  The woman had died. He had no doubt about that. Yet the truth of what he had witnes
sed conflicted with his instinct. Could he have been that terribly wrong?

  No.

  She had been dead. She then got up and chased them. That was the truth, no matter how much he wanted to deny it or find a way to make it fit into some sort of nice package that would make sense.

  Nothing made sense now, except that Renee Spencer had become a soldier in the dead army. And she was still marching back there, dead but hungry.

  Holy Christ, what had happened down in that secret lab?

  He turned into Damon Ortega’s driveway. Except for the rooftop solar cells that glinted in the moonlight, the house was dark. Jubal yearned for dawn. Even a strangely colored morning sky would be preferable to this stifling gloom and the horrors that might be hiding in the shadows, because it had occurred to him—and what im-fucking-peccable timing you have, Jubal, to be spooking yourself now—that maybe there were others like Renee Spencer in Serenity, shambling into town during the night, mindless, soulless, with only their need to feed propelling them. Or maybe the sickest residents in town, the ones he hadn’t seen for days, maybe they were also dying, shedding their humanity and getting ready to sign up for a hitch in this new unholy army.

  He shivered in the cool of the pre-dawn morning.

  “What’s wrong?” Fiona said. She almost sounded normal, which in itself seemed a bit cruel. Jubal suspected they had last seen normal in the rear view mirror.

  “Nothing. Just got a chill.” He opened his door. “You coming in?”

  “I’m sure as hell not staying here.”

  In the dome light Fiona looked drawn and pale. He glanced at her neck, looking for the lump he had thought he’d seen back at her house. Her hair covered the spot, though, and he was grateful that he didn’t have to deal with it, at least for now.

  Just a few minutes, Lord. Just a few minutes without another night-mare.

  They held hands as they climbed up the front porch steps. Jubal rang the bell, but he didn’t really expect an answer. He turned the knob and swung the door open.

  Damon may not have been the cop Jubal’s dad had been; still, he was pretty good and he always locked his door partly because he had a large gun collection that was his pride and joy. As they entered the house—Jubal in front, Fiona close behind, hanging on to his hand—Jubal drew his own weapon.

  “Damon? You here?”

  There was no answer. They moved down the short hallway to the living room, which was softly illuminated by the blue light from the screen of the silent TV. A large shape was stretched out on the couch. A large, motionless shape.

  “Damon? It’s Jube. You okay, podna?”

  Damon snored, causing Jubal to jump back and Fiona to emit a frightened squeal.

  “Dead,” Damon said. “All dead-dead-dead.”

  Jubal stepped closer to the couch and the smell hit him. It was the same fetid odor of rot that filled Fiona’s house. It was the scent of Renee Spencer as she died and rose again.

  Jubal turned on the lamp next to the couch.

  Damon Ortega was covered with oozing pustules. The smell was coming from the yellowish fluid that leaked from the blisters.

  “Aw, God.”

  “Wha—Suze? That you?” Damon’s eyes fluttered open. Susan had been his wife. When Damon was still in high school she ran off with an economics professor from the community college in Carlsbad. Damon had never remarried. “I was too dumb for her,” Damon once told him. “You need to roust a drunk, I’m your man. But I wouldn’t know a floating exchange rate if it jumped up and bit me on the pecker.”

  “It’s me, boss.” Jubal couldn’t halt the tremor in his voice.

  “J—Jubal?”

  “Yeah. Fiona’s here, too.”

  “Hot in here. Is the goddamn furnace on?”

  Fiona moved next to Jubal, getting her first good look at the sheriff. She began to sob.

  Damon squinted against the light.

  ”What’s wrong with her?”

  “Oh. Well, it’s, uh, her time of the month, you know?” He tried to put a cheerful note in his voice, but he was afraid his attempt fell flat.

  “Oh, I know,” Damon said. “Lock ’em outside and toss ’em some chocolate, that’s what my old man always said.” Damon started coughing. Jubal closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the color and thickness of the liquid that ran from the lips of the older man.

  “What’s wrong, kid? Am I uglier than usual?”

  Jubal opened his eyes. Damon was no longer squinting. The older man’s eyes were shot through with streaks of red and the whites were now yellow. He owed this man, this second father, nothing less than the truth. But as he stared into that diseased face he saw that the knowledge was already there, streaked with crimson.

  “Naw,” Jubal said. “Just the usual level of ugly. Sometimes it still shocks me, that’s all.”

  Damon chuckled—without expelling any fluids this time, thankfully. “How’s that woman you found at the car wash?”

  Jubal could only stare at him.

  “Don’t look so shocked, squirt. I’m still the sheriff and I still got contacts. My feelers are everywhere.”

  The sickness momentarily forgotten, Jubal crossed his arms over his chest. “Who was it? Taylor or Red?”

  “Pops Perez,” Damon said.

  Jubal hadn’t even seen Pops out in the street. He wasn’t surprised, though. As much as the old-timer liked to gossip, he could also be as sly and quiet as a cat sneaking up on a bird.

  “How much he tell you?”

  “All of it, I reckon. She had blisters all over her face.” Damon ran his fingers over his own face, feeling the pustules like a blind man reading Braille. “He said she was babbling some crazy talk, too.”

  “Yeah,” Jubal said. “What about you, boss? You were doing a little talking when we came in. Do you remember?”

  Damon looked away from his deputy, and Jubal was grateful that he didn’t have to see those yellow and red eyes.

  “Just a dream I was having.”

  “About what?”

  Damon sighed. “Something was chasing me. It was a bunch of fellas, only they weren’t quite men.”

  “What do you mean?” Jubal could feel his pulse throb in his temples.

  “Well, they were shaped awful funny. Their heads were too narrow and long. Their arms were long, too. And...”

  “What?”

  “They were all tore up, like they had been killed by an animal or something. And some of them had parts of their faces torn off or big holes in their stomachs.” Damon met Jubal’s eyes again. “Some crazy shit, huh?”

  “Yeah. Crazy shit.” Fiona walked back toward the front door. He couldn’t tell if she were still crying.

  “So how is she?”

  “Fiona?” Jubal said.

  “The sick woman. Where’d you take her anyway?”

  “Oh. To Fiona’s.”

  Damon’s yellow eyes didn’t blink. “And?”

  Looking his boss in the eyes as he spoke his next words was possibly the most difficult thing Jubal had ever done.

  “Fine, Damon. She’s really coming along.”

  Damon closed his eyes and rested his head against a pillow. If he recognized the lie, he didn’t show it. Perhaps he was even grateful for it. It wasn’t long before he began snoring again.

  Jubal decided to let the sheriff rest. Maybe the old dog was strong enough to whip this thing. If anyone could do it, Damon could. After all, Jubal felt fine. He would figure this mess out on his own. He had no choice, really.

  “Let’s go check on my ma,” he whispered to Fiona.

  Growths covered his mother’s face like bumps on a blackberry. She floated in and out of consciousness and was barely coherent. Each wheezing breath was like another painful needle in Jubal’s heart. This woman, his best friend really—whom he had loved all his life—was dying.

  Jubal turned away, unable to look any longer, hiding his flowing tears from his fiancée.

  Fiona stepped up behind him
and laid her hand gently on his shuddering back.

  “We have to get help for her, Jubal.”

  Jubal sniffed hard and nodded his head. “Let’s get her into the car. We’re going to save her, Fee.”

  “Sure we are, babe,” Fiona said.

  They soon had Jubal’s mother in the back seat of the police cruiser...

  Just like Renee.

  ...and were on their way out of town, heading north towards Carlsbad. The sky to the east showed a lighter darkness. Soon it would be dawn.

  “She’s such a good woman, Fee. She’s always been a best friend to me.”

  “I know, Jubal. We’ll do whatever we can.”

  Jubal pressed down on the accelerator. He glanced at the gauge and saw he was going nearly 100 miles per hour. He’d have activated his siren if he thought it would do any good, but state highway 285 heading north was barren.

  “This is damn spooky,” Jubal said.

  “What?”

  “The highway. It’s still early, but there should be at least some semis on the road.”

  “There’s plenty of oncoming traffic.”

  “Yeah, weird.”

  Some of the people in the oncoming cars waved their arms out their windows, but Jubal was moving too fast to understand what they wanted. He was in too much of a damned hurry to care.

  “Why complain? The less traffic heading north, the faster we get help for your mother.”

  Jubal glanced into the back seat. His mother didn’t appear to be moving, but it was hard to tell anything driving this fast.

  “Keep your eyes on the road, please, Mr. Deputy Sheriff,” Fiona said. “I’ll check on her for you.”

  Jubal drove while Fiona leaned over the back seat. Soon she was sitting back down and fastening her seat belt.

  “Her breathing’s erratic and she’s sleeping.”

  Or unconscious. Or about to die.

  Jubal slapped his palm against the steering wheel. Fiona shot him a worried glance, but he ignored it. His only concern right now was for his mother, and if Carlsbad told him there was no room at the hospital, by God, he’d make some fucking room. He wished there was a medical facility closer to Serenity, but all they had was Doc Mitchell, and apparently he was next to useless in this situation.