Death After Life: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller Read online

  Which was not to discount the fact that, again, Winter Masakawa was in love with his partner.

  “No punchline. I told you, this a true story. Mr. Park Ranger’s eight-year-old son dusted him trying to crawl through the cat-door.”

  Nic laughed so hard it bounced her long, tight braids. “No punch line, my ass.”

  Winter looked at her with mock seriousness. “Would I make up something like that?”

  They’d gotten their coffee and were parked on the street when the dispatcher’s voice crackled over the digital receiver. A waving Abominable Snowman figurine was mounted on the dash beside it.

  It was garbled (department equipment was gradually going to seed, Winter had noticed) and Nic fooled around with the tuner. She picked up the mic. “10-1, receiving poorly.”

  Winter sipped his drink, waiting for the caffeine to lift him from his afternoon doldrums. “I’ll receive a lot better after my mocha.”

  The static-distorted voice patiently repeated its message. Winter thought he could hear “10-92.” He knew that code.

  Nic must have found a better frequency because Dispatch’s suddenly clear voice confirmed Winter’s suspicions.

  “All units, all units, 10-92 in progress in the U-District. 10-92 in progress, U-District.”

  Winter groaned. “Not another riot.” He lolled back on his head-rest, closing his eyes.

  Prompted by headquarters, the heads-up display offered turn-by-turn directions. They didn’t need it.

  The Interceptor reversed, light bar flaring green and yellow. The siren spit a few notes and a Jeep dawdling in their lane moved aside to let them U-turn. The sleek Mustang leapt forward as if jet-propelled, streaking northward.

  Winter checked the load on his department-issue Heckler & Koch submachine gun. Light and short-barreled, the semi-automatic made a fine weapon for virus control because most encounters were at short range. You needed stopping power to keep a relentlessly advancing feeder at bay until you could hit him in the head.

  Securing the magazine, Winter realized he had no idea how many feeders he’d taken down with this very H&K. More than a few. He’d been a Seattle beat cop for almost a year when the bug hit. After a few chaotic weeks he signed up with the Department of Virus Control, on the very day it was inaugurated. He was green, then. Now, in Year Three A.V. (“After Virus”) he was starting to forget what being a cop used to be like.

  Virus Control didn’t do domestic disturbance calls, bust corner crack peddlers or issue speeding tickets. Winter likened his gig to a military police posting in an occupied country — every neighborhood was unsecured, every civilian was a potential threat and every patrol could be your last. His cousin Hideo did two tours in Afghanistan and had confirmed that analogy.

  “Awful quiet over there,” Nic commented, looking over with that hint of playfulness she reserved for him. Or so he liked to think.

  “Just getting my game face on.”

  “Your face always looks like that.”

  “You calling me an inscrutable Asian?”

  “I’m calling you a better poker player than a cop.”

  Winter smiled. “That why you refuse to join our game, or are you afraid we’ll play strip?”

  “I got nothing to be afraid of,” Nic bantered back with a look he found so incalculably sexy he wondered how long this partnership could last. It was killing him and keeping him going at the same time.

  #

  Evan Pollard parked the truck beside the burnt-out façade of a Korean grocery, long-closed, and the news crew cautiously disembarked with their equipment. Jeanne, Evan and the two sound guys.

  “Still hot for hard news?” Evan quipped, making Jeanne scowl as she smoothed out the wrinkles in her “on-air” blazer. “It’s all hard news now,” Jeanne snapped. “We’re at war, dumbass.”

  She looked out over the ruins of the U-District and discordantly remembered a live remote she’d done here about a year before the virus changed everything. It was a puff piece about a sculptor who’d left a giant fiberglass Octopus on the sidewalk in the middle of the night. Guerilla art, someone’s commentary on multinational corporations.

  If there was one nice thing you could say about the virus, it was that it had pretty much sounded the death knell of the puff piece. Then again, nobody gave a shit about local Emmys anymore, either.

  Jeanne confidently led the crew into the rubble. She was wearing hiking boots — the “on-air” shoes (pumps) were in her purse.

  The column of protesters marched past, noisy as hell and waving their signs and banners like there was no tomorrow. Which, of course, was always possible, for anyone outside of a Ft. Knox style bunker in the mountains.

  “Come on, boys,” Jeanne said, gathering her “on-air” persona with a lungful of air. “An Emmy for everyone.”

  Just for old time’s sake.

  #

  When Amy Cooley saw the KOMO Channel 4 News van pull up outside the shuttered grocery, she felt a surge of vindication at flouting her parents’ warnings and joining the protest march. They’d said survival was the best way to make your voice heard, which didn’t make much sense any way you cut it, but she understood their trepidation. This neighborhood had been hit hard when the virus swept through the city.

  In those first frantic weeks, like everywhere else, Seattle’s inhabitants turned on each other in a wild, uncomprehending tumult. People weren’t as well armed then, of course, but in the initial panic (mostly unchecked by police) violence bloomed like a hothouse flower. The infected ran rampant in close quarters, finding victims behind every door. Residents already paranoid about each other showed little compassion or restraint when confronted with a haggard neighbor who may already be “one of them.”

  Ultimately the National Guard fought one of the biggest battles of the Seattle campaign among the student residences and junkie flophouses. The low-rent housing burned or was razed and many of the bodies were dumped in a mass grave behind the Episcopalian church on Falkirk Ave.

  Since then, the U-District had been largely abandoned, despite city government’s assurances that it had been fully pacified. This was a fitting place to protest the government’s anti-plague policies, for it represented the failure of that government to protect those who most needed it. Over four thousand casualties were suffered in the U-District area during the initial outbreak, and a full 1200 were children. Three days before the organizers had unspooled these facts with grim intonations at the Student Union, addressing the Social Action Club.

  One look over at the handsome Shea McDonald was enough to put Amy’s name on the sign-up list. He’d also been enough to lure her to the club in the first place, though the burden of being a freshman with a scholarship to maintain already weighed heavily on her. In point of fact, a look at Shea McDonald was probably enough to lead her straight up to the gates of hell.

  And so Amy found herself within the ranks of sign-waving students, activists and disenfranchised poor, despite the fact that the scary old tenements and collapsed houses were doing much to erode what courage Amy had brought with her. The knowledge that Shea McDonald was only a few steps away brought only scant comfort now.

  Watching the news crew approach, Amy hoped they would interview her. A few cogent words, perhaps a poignant entreaty to the television audience, might go a long way to getting the impossibly attractive junior to ask her out.

  She was blonde, which the guys seemed to like, and waif thin (though the word “cow” often came to mind when she looked in the mirror), but she wouldn’t describe herself as vivacious and self-possessed, qualities the other “political” girls seemed to have in spades.

  Of course, they weren’t as pretty as Amy. Funny how that worked out.

  The news crew fell in step with the procession about 50 people behind Amy, dashing (at least for the moment) her hopes of impressing Shea with quality camera time. While her eyes were on the reporter, she tripped over a half-buried newspaper box and nearly fell face first into a carpet of bro
ken glass.

  Shea was instantly there to help her up, demeanor concerned and nonjudgmental, but Amy turned bright red just the same.

  “Thanks,” she said, and he smiled easily before turning to keep going.

  #

  When the skinny white girl took the spill nearby, Jerome Green marveled again at what a dumb idea all this was. Somebody was bound to get hurt, and Jerome was determined that it wouldn’t be him. He kept close to Andre and Jimmy, hoping the older guys knew what they were doing. It was their lark, this impromptu social activism, and Jerome took their boasts of “we’ll bust up some pigs” for the empty bravado it was. Nobody was happy with the way shit went down these days, but the cops had dispensed with nightsticks and pepper spray in favor of “shoot first, file the report later.” You had to be a serious banger in a serious crew to fuck with them, and Jerome’s neighbors, tough as they might be, weren’t gonna win many “o.g.” challenges anytime soon.

  Jerome stuck his hands in the pockets of his baggy Seahawks jacket and trudged on, watching the cute ass of the girl in front of him. He figured there were several hundred people out here already. Apparently their plan was to hike through the ruins and conclude downtown, where they would address City Hall from the street until arrested or dispersed.

  The TV reporter — Jerome had seen her glib reportage before, but couldn’t remember her name — was hustling toward the marchers. Sure would be cool to get on the news. He tried to think of something smooth to say for the camera, but nothing sprang to mind.

  From a few blocks away, the wind carried an all-too familiar artificial wail to Jerome’s ears. Sirens.

  “Ah yeah, time to scrap,” Andre said, cocking a head toward the sound of trouble, growing louder all the time. Jerome caught Jimmy’s eye, and saw some of his own anxiety reflected there.

  The rubber bullets were gathering dust in a storeroom somewhere. Nowadays, all rounds were live.

  #

  Wendell Atkins awakened blearily to the sound of marching feet, chants, and approaching sirens. He somehow equated this with the possibility of a hot meal, as he now looked favorably on any break from the isolation and monotony of life in the ruins.

  Wendell had sought refuge in the restricted neighborhood when he was chased out of a Safeway by a machine-gun toting assistant manager, whose reaction to a swiped deli sandwich was to threaten murder. The trigger-happy asshole scared Wendell so much he’d just kept running until there was no one around to shoot him.

  Finding himself in a quiet, almost peaceful valley of uninhabited buildings, once chaotic perhaps but no longer torn by the strife had emptied them, Wendell quickly stopped expecting a feeder to grab his arm as he passed a hole in a wall.

  He spent the night in a thoroughly looted liquor store. When morning came and he’d heard not a single voice or car engine, let alone been menaced by murderous Safeway clerks, Wendell realized he may have found a peaceful refuge. The song of birds confirmed his sentiment, as if signaling nature’s return to a place surrendered by humanity. He felt much safer in this abandoned place than in the teeming city.

  Sleeping in the litter of empty bottles and torn-up packaging, Wendell was as content as he’d been since the hospital turned him out in September. The shelters he’d been to were mean, squalid places, packed with paranoid eyes and violent hands.

  It was two days in the liquor store before he really got hungry again, but it hit him with a vengeance. Even his emaciated 120-pound frame required some sustenance beyond the rainwater he collected in a bucket outside the store. Foraging in the ruins had brought him glimpses of other squatters (Wendell wondered if he looked as filthy and desperate as they did) but precious little food. Now it had been five days since he’d eaten more than two stale Twinkies and a dead rat (how long it had been dead, he steadfastly refused to wonder).

  Famished, every step a test of strength, Wendell tottered toward the line of demonstrators with only one thought in his energy-deprived brain. Hope. Surely one of these bleeding hearts would give him food, money, something that would make the ache in his empty belly go away.

  Staggering through the archway formed by a blasted-out window in the façade of what was once a 99 Cent Store, Wendell tried hoarsely to find his long-unused voice.

  #

  As she caught up with her choice for the first interview, Jeanne made sure her cameraman was following along — these days crews were used to shooting on the move. Viewers didn’t expect well-choreographed field reporting. Everyone had come to expect an element of chaos in their lives.

  She stuck a microphone in the face of an angry young man holding one end of a banner that shouted, “MEDICARE WAS NOT AN OPTIONAL PROGRAM!” The guy looked like an organizer type; he wore a Che Gueverra T-shirt and a jean jacket covered with political buttons and patches.

  “The right to assemble in protest has been suspended by executive order,” Jeanne said, throwing a look into Evan’s lens, “Why are you risking arrest?”

  “These neighborhoods are a symbol of neglect,” the protester replied. His breath smelled distinctly of onions. “They represent the low priority our government gives its constituents who aren’t moneyed influences. In a time of crisis, you see who’s really important. In this country, it’s only the rich.”

  The police sirens drew near. The protesters exchanged nervous glances, quickening their step. There was no telling, these days, what the response to civil disobedience might be.

  A bold dissident started a chant. “USA, USA. Fascist law is here to stay!”

  Reluctantly at first, the others took up the mantra. Soon they were bellowing it in unison.

  A wall of police in riot gear cautiously approached, faces masked by their black helmets. Each held a shield in one hand and a submachine gun in the other. No billy-clubs today.

  A captain shouted into his bullhorn, “This is the Seattle Municipal Defense Bureau! You are ordered to disperse immediately!”

  The protesters ignored his order, tenaciously marching toward downtown. But the intensity of their chant flagged, a few stumbling as their eyes spent more time on the riot cops than the treacherous footing.

  Jeanne approached the police captain. “These people are unarmed. What’s your response going to be if they disobey your command?”

  The grizzled career cop gave her the kind of look inspired by an encounter with the criminally insane. “This isn’t a University sit-in. Disorderly mob activity is a threat to public safety.”

  “Answer the question, Captain. What will be your response if these protesters fail to disperse?”

  The captain gave her a steely-eyed glare. His eyes flicked to the camera in his face.

  “We have the situation under control.”

  #

  Wendell half-ran, half crawled the last hundred yards of alley between him and the clean, well-fed young people. He knew somewhere in his gut that if it took more than 50 more steps, he wasn’t going to make it. He would collapse, and never get back up.

  Not alive, anyway.

  The first person he saw stood out like a beacon in the crowd. The young girl was angelic — a slender blonde with a sweet, infinitely gentle face….

  #

  Amy turned her head and he was just there. An emaciated figure, skeletal really, with big glassy eyes and a filthy hand that reached unsteadily for her. He must have tottered from the alley because suddenly here he was, mouth working like a gasping fish.

  She screamed, because this apparition was about to grab her arm. Shea whirled, saw the man, and pulled a small silver .38 revolver from his coat.

  In the next split-second Amy recognized that the man faltered, a uniquely human reaction to a firearm pointed at him. He was alive. She started to open her mouth, though she had no idea exactly how she would articulate what she needed to...

  There wasn’t enough time. Shea pulled the trigger. The man dropped, a black hole fissuring blood from his temple. Dead. For good, at least.

  Amy stepped forward, words starti
ng to form on her lips. A second bark of gunfire, more distant, and Shea himself was sliding along a toppled wall with a stricken expression.

  Mercifully, Amy never registered that the top of Shea’s head had been roughly sheared off by police bullets. Less than a second later, her own brain was quieted forever by a bullet’s deadly passage.

  #

  Jerome sensed the white girl’s shooting more than witnessed it — he was tracking the gunfire’s sudden reports while hustling over treacherous terrain that demanded his attention — but he caught her crumpling to the ground and quickly put two and two together. The police had opened fire on the crowd, and that meant they would keep shooting until there were no potential threats left. Jerome knew as well as the most hardened v-cop that anyone without a bullet-perforated brain was a potential threat.

  Jerome ran headlong through the panicked crowd, everyone stumbling over rubble in their haste. All around him ankles turned, knees buckled, bodies crashed heavily to the unforgiving ground. Signs and placards were trampled underfoot.

  Their bold words forgotten in the roar of discharged rounds, Andre and Jimmy darted fleetly onward without a glance back at Jerome. His step was more unsure and he fell behind. Their backs vanished behind a swirl of fleeing bodies and when the way cleared again, Jerome had lost track of them.

  This was unsettling enough but things got worse when he ran right into a v-cop in black body-armor — they rebounded off each other like billiards balls. This cop’s helmet screen was transparent and Jerome got a glimpse of a man’s youthful Asian features and startled eyes.

  There was a second cop beside him — a lithe female — who reflexively lifted her submachine gun to waist level.