Dead Stop Read online

  But clearly such social complexities were lost on Gerald, and she wondered how he managed to get through life in one piece. Any idiot could have told him bringing up the subject again wasn’t going to accomplish anything but possibly anger Deke, or get him a date with Marisa’s bat. She could see he didn’t use his girlfriend as an advisor on such matters either, since the pale blonde’s only response was to try not to look so mortified it might embarrass him in front of others.

  “In case I didn’t make it plain the first time,” Rachel snapped while simultaneously laying a calming hand on Deke’s uninjured shoulder, “getting injured isn’t contagious. Why don’t you let me worry about the medical problems and you just focus on trying to get though to somebody and get us some help. There is only one cell phone tower servicing this entire area, and it’s famous for going out during storms. So how about you keep trying to get through to the police before that happens.”

  It turned out Gerald and Holly were the only two with available cell phones left alive in the Textro. Rachel’s still rested in the lab coat in her office, and Marisa had left her’s in the restroom when she rushed back to help Stacey. There was a landline in Big Earl’s office but it was dead, either as a result of Deke falling on it or the lines were out. Since the only other landline had been at store-side checkout, there was no way to check.

  Holly dutifully began punching buttons on her cell phone again, but Gerald must not have been ready to let his point go.

  “I hate to pull Hollywood on you, Your Sorta-Docterness,” the dumpy redhead sneered, “but it’s common knowledge that when a zombie injures somebody, they become a zombie too. I know it’s ‘just the movies’ but this is a pretty unreal situation and I think it’s only common sense to take precautions.”

  Rachel tightened her grip on the young redneck’s shoulder while starting a mental ten count of her own. She wondered if she would really put much effort into stopping Deke if he decided to go after the little jerk. In the end, medicine decided that question for her because it simply wasn’t worth the risk of him tearing his already damaged shoulder muscle. She didn’t like violence, but had come to realize over the years there were some people in this world who would really benefit from a thorough butt kicking…and Gerald struck her as a prime example of one of those people.

  To her surprise, Deke didn’t respond with anger at all.

  “Zombies?” he mused aloud, “These things don’t seem much like the zombies I’ve seen in the movies. Those just groaned and shambled around in slow motion. These things are fast, focused, and vicious as hell.”

  “Hah!” Gerald scoffed with a dismissive wave of his hand, “Those were the old zombies from the black and white days. Those were due to some silly signal from outer space and never really realistic in the first place. The new zombies are faster, and are the product of a virus.”

  “Yeah,” Deke agreed amiably, “but the zombies in those movies come from living people being infected. These guys are obviously dead from the beginning. How do you explain that?”

  “So it’s a virus that infects dead people,” the aloof urbanite shrugged.

  This was getting ridiculous.

  “It’s not a virus,” Rachel sighed. She couldn’t believe the twist this conversation had just taken. Zombies? Seriously? She consoled herself with the thought that at least it wasn’t turning into a brawl.

  “Oh really? Why not, Dr. Doolittle?”

  Was this guy for real?

  “Because,” Rachel answered sweetly while wondering if things were going to end up with Deke and Marisa holding her back from the abrasive twerp, “a virus requires a living cell with a functioning DNA process to splice into. A corpse doesn’t have those. The DNA process stops and the strands break up soon after death. That’s why dead people don’t catch the flu.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. So I think you can relax and stop worrying about Stacey over there tearing her face off and trying to eat your brains.” She felt it was a lame attempt at levity, and regretted it as soon as she said it.

  The veterinarian gave an apologetic wince at the wounded waitress.

  “I don’t think these things care about brains, Doc,” Stacey’s somber face was still tight in a haunted way that worried the veterinarian almost as much as the old truck driver’s condition. “They seem more like animals or something.”

  Rachel had pieced together that Stacey had been the first to encounter these things and survive, and whatever scene the girl had encountered out there had shaken her badly. Unfortunately, psychology wasn’t a big part of veterinary science and the doctor had no idea what to say to her. Instead, she resolved to hurry and finish up on Deke so he could get over to her and provide a shoulder to lean on.

  “Okay, Deke. I think I’ve done all the damage I can do here, so I’m going to put a pressure bandage on you just like I did the others. Then I’m going to put you in a sling to keep you from tearing your shoulder even worse. You need stitches…hell, all three of you need stitches…but that’s for the hospital guys to handle if they ever get here.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” the young man’s thanks didn’t sound very enthusiastic…not that she blamed him.

  “Just be glad my needles and sutures are out in my truck,” Rachel quipped and handed him a folded towel. “Now hold this down against your shoulder while I try to figure out how to tie it on.”

  “You mean you don’t know?” he looked at her in surprise.

  “Well, I would if you were a Rottweiler. You aren’t exactly built like most of my clients, you know.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Rachel settled for wrapping his ribs almost like she did Stacey’s, then running a strip of towel over his shoulder from there to hold the pressure bandage down. The system seemed to work, which was all she cared about. She then grabbed a nearby apron off a wall and fashioned it into a sling. Deke carefully pulled his bloody shirt back on, and then let her fit him with the impromptu sling.

  Rachel surveyed her handiwork then nodded in satisfaction.

  “Okay, young man. I officially pronounce you ‘treated.’ There are to be no more heroics out of you. You are to protect that shoulder. Got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good,” Rachel then leaned close, nodded towards Stacey, and whispered into his ear, “Now go over there and hold that girl. She really needs it right now. She’s a tough little thing but she’s hurt and she’s been pushed way too far.”

  “But I just asked her out tonight,” Deke wavered.

  “Trust me on this,” she hissed. “Now step up and be there for her.”

  The young man looked unsure, but nodded and headed over to where Stacey sat huddled next to the grill. The doctor watched him go while wiping her hands on a hot rag. He bent over and said something to the girl softly, and whatever it was must have been the right thing for she gave him a wan smile and offered the spot on the floor next to her. Rachel had a feeling he was going to have a girlfriend on his hands long before their scheduled first date took place.

  Assuming any of them lived that long.

  “Okay,” Rachel surveyed the grim faces around the kitchen, sighed, and tossed the rag into the sink. “Is that everybody? Are there any other injuries I need to know about?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Anybody?” she repeated. “Bueller?”

  “Well,” Marisa spoke up from her place beside Benny, “I remember that Harley’s hand was bleeding, but I think it was just a barked knuckle from punching the one out in the store.”

  “Okay,” Rachel pondered for a second, “That’s not critical enough for immediate attention, but I’ll remember it if I get a chance at him later. Anybody else?

  For a moment nobody answered, then Gerald’s girlfriend raised her hand.

  “You’re injured?” Rachel frowned

  “No,” the girl blushed and shook her head in obvious embarrassment, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that. I just have a question. It’s complet
ely unrelated to injuries.”

  “No problem,” the veterinarian shrugged…at least the girl was polite, no matter how bad her taste in boyfriends. “It looks like everybody is patched up for the moment, so what’s your question?”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “Huh?” Rachel gave the girl a puzzled look. “What are you talking about?”

  “The dead things…the zombies,” Holly swallowed. “They’ve got to come from somewhere, right? I’m not from around here, but we passed this place on the highway before turning around and coming back, and I don’t remember seeing a graveyard.”

  A graveyard?

  Rachel gaped at the girl as her mind violently twisted away from being preoccupied with treating people and focused on the question.

  A graveyard?

  She had been so busy trying to help people, it had never occurred to her to question the origin of these monsters. Up until now, she hadn’t had the time. She had simply considered them a hideous threat and not put much more thought into them than that. But now…

  …now they were something worse.

  “Oh…no…” she moaned as the only possible source for these “zombies” rose in her mind. She vaguely saw Marisa coming to her feet with a similar look of horror on her face, apparently realizing at the same time where these things must be coming from.

  Only they weren’t “things”.

  They used to be people…their people.

  People who had lived, loved, and had families. People who had died and were buried at the Mazon County Memorial Cemetery a mile up the side road beside the truck stop.

  And one of those people had been Matt.

  ###

  “Doc? Marisa? What’s going on?”

  Rachel saw Harley turn in his bar stool towards them as they crowded to a stop in the kitchen door. The door opened from behind the counter, and she had expected to have to slip past him to get into the room proper. So it came as a bit of a surprise to see him sitting out in the open on a stool in front of the counter, instead of the station he had assumed behind it when everybody first retreated to the kitchen.

  The young man had tilted the scruffy hat back on his head and was lounging on the stool next to the back wall, drinking coffee that he had been serving himself from the nearby pot. For a hopeful moment Rachel wondered if things had changed out here and the big lout simply hadn’t gotten around to telling them.

  A quick glance at the windows revealed that not to be the case. As a matter of fact, things were worse than before.

  They were surrounded.

  Water sheeted down the big panes of glass, distorting the figures in the unending row grinning back in at them. The motionless forms stood side by side in a line stretching from the window closest the kitchen wall, to the glass fire door, then the windows all the way to and around the front corner…stretching across the front windows as well. The light from inside the diner shimmered out through the streaming sheets of glass, almost glowing off the bone and bare teeth of the watcher’s mutilated faces. At the same time, it made their sockets look black and utterly empty of both eyes and humanity alike.

  They wore dark suits and pale dresses, all drenched and hanging off their frames like overdressed scarecrows at a dinner party for the damned.

  There was no sign the storm howling around the building discomfited them, or if they even noticed it.

  They simply stood out there.

  Waiting.

  Rachel hesitated at the sight of them, causing Marisa to bump into her from behind before allowing herself to be slowly edged into the room. She tore her eyes from the motionless wall of dead people and fixed them back on the man at the counter.

  “Harley,” she whispered urgently, “We need to see something. We’ve got to know if something is true about these…things. It’s important. Is it safe to come out here?”

  The young man gave a speculative glance over his shoulder at the windows, then looked back at the two women with a fatalistic shrug. He picked up a bottle of sugar and started pouring it into his coffee as he answered.

  “It’s alright,” he cautioned softly, “As long as you move real slow and don’t get too close to the window, they don’t seem to react. But stay out of sight of the ones at the door if you can. They seem to see better. I think it has something to do with the water on the glass.”

  “Oookaayyyy,” Rachel replied doubtfully.

  Part of her still insisted this had to be a trick or an illusion of some kind. Maybe some form of disease that wasted an individual and drove them to self mutilation and violence. The doctor knew what she had seen at the back door, but still felt tempted to write it off as a quick but unreliable impression in the heat of a violent confrontation. She clung to a small sliver of hope that a closer look would reveal an all too mundane nature of their attackers.

  All it took was one flash of lightning to shatter that hope, once and for all.

  As she reached the end of the counter, the sky flared with light and cast the line of besieging horrors into stark relief. The man looking in directly across the room from her must have had his suit torn a recent altercation, for it hung half off him and revealed the desiccated chest underneath…along with the autopsy scar. The incision must have also been torn loose in the same fight, for it hung open on one side and revealed the cracked ribcage underneath.

  The woman next to him might have died in a car crash or some other violent manner, for the face of her skull was half crushed in. Only one eye glared back from its lone intact socket, and the jaw didn’t hang exactly straight underneath either. She was missing an arm from the elbow down, and she stood at an odd angle that suggested hip or leg damage as well.

  These people were dead.

  Very dead.

  And the only question left was their point of origin.

  Rachel moved up to the end of the counter, and barely noticed as Marisa brushed past her and started moving down the room, peering at the ghoulish figures one at a time.

  It only took Rachel one look at the window to drive home the numb certainty her own intent to search for Matt…to settle once and for all if her lost husband walked out there in the storm this night…was doomed from the start. Almost all the male figures wore dark suits that appeared identical in the night time downpour, and without faces there was nothing else to go by…just a chorus line of stick figures with leering skulls and hanging suits, anonymous in their shared mutilation.

  He could have been any one of them…or none o them.

  It was almost a relief.

  Maybe he wasn’t out there. Maybe this nightmare had nothing to do with Matt at all. Just maybe these things came from some military or government vehicle that had crashed nearby, or was parked behind the truck stop right now with its back gate forced open. Seriously, who knew what cargo any eighteen wheeler out on the road might be carrying? Hell, this was already like some kind of bad movie…was there any certainty where these things really came from?

  “Oh, no.”

  Marisa’s soft gasp jarred Rachel out of her reverie and back into the room with the hellish view.

  The waitress had dropped the bat and covered her mouth with both hands. A single tear started down her cheek as she stared at the window.

  Rachel tracked her horrified gaze to a wraithlike figure in a white dress. It was hard to see much through the streaming window, but the older woman could tell even in the rain it had a full head of thick black hair very much like the girl staring at it, and its garment looked like some kind of formal gown…or perhaps a prom dress.

  “Vicky?” Marisa choked out. “Madre de dios! Vicki?”

  The girl took a halting step towards the window.

  “Doc!” Harley called while coming off his stool, “Grab her! Don’t let her do that!”

  Rachel recovered and moved towards the girl just as she stumbled toward the window.

  “Vicki!” the tears now flowed. “Soy yo, Marisa! No te recuardas de mi?”

  Rachel caught he
r just as the thing in the window came alive.

  The two women shrieked as the dead woman gaped her jaws in what was becoming a familiar prelude to attack and slammed herself against the window. The whole pane shook as the monster now focused in on them, withered hands splayed against the glass. For one heart stopping second Rachel thought the horror would come crashing through the weak barrier and land on them both. And if that window broke there would be more of those things piling through in a heartbeat.

  The sound of the pane creaking in its frame sounded like imminent death in her ears.

  But evidently it was made of sterner stuff than she realized. The window held…for the moment…and the veterinarian grabbed Marisa as the girl cried out at the specter.

  “Vicki! So yo! Marisa! Tu hermana, Marisa! Lo siento! No hagas esto!”

  Not knowing what else to do, Rachel put herself between the young woman and the window and embraced her tightly. She couldn’t understand what the girl was saying, but from the sound of her voice she was bordering on hysterics. She could also hear more hands thumping and squeaking on the glass behind her and feared all their luck would soon run out. A look to her left revealed Harley had halted on his way over, obviously not wanting to add any more motion to the scene.

  It was up to her.

  With gentle care, Rachel eased herself and the girl two small steps away from the glass. A glance back revealed the dead woman to be pressed up against the window…her teeth and cheekbone making an audible “scritch” as they slid across the pane’s surface…but at least she wasn’t slamming up against it anymore…much. The distraught waitress must have seen enough, because she felt Marisa bury her face into her shoulder and start to cry.

  “Lo siento, Vicki!” she sobbed into Rachel’s shoulder, “Lo siento! No sabia! Por favor, lo siento! No sabia!”