Dead Man Running Read online

  Mira stood. "Do what you have to do. They'll be no considerations. And I would appreciate it if you would leave."

  He got on his feet, reached down and plucked a globe off the floor. Using his right hand he crushed the steel ball.

  "I gave you a courtesy. Any considerations, and by considerations I mean the penetration of your vagina and other desired entrances, I will take by force if necessary. I don't have to ask for a damn thing from you, now. Now, I take from you what I want, when I want it and for how long I want it."

  He dropped the crushed bomb at her feet and, with a smile, left her apartment.

  When Tamesha woke it was twilight. She lay fully clothed under the covers of a substantial bed. She was in a girl's bedroom and for a moment she forgot about what had happened with Hank Bartholomew and thought perhaps she was back in her bedroom in the foster home.

  She looked around – the walls were pink and covered with posters of male stars who she knew had not been popular for several years.

  She slowly crawled out of the bed, careful not to make much noise. She didn't want Hank to be alerted to her waking. On her hands and knees she made it to the window.

  She was located in the front of the Bartholomew house as she could see the horse stables to the immediate left and her foster home past the wide carpet of grass and thick tuft of trees.

  She tried to open the window but it was nailed shut.

  She considered throwing a chair through the window – Hank's sister had a straight backed chair sitting in front of a desk. But, that would make noise, which would alert Hank and he would catch her before she could fling herself out the window.

  She subconsciously felt her neck. It was very painful to the touch and she let her hand fall away. She wondered if she was bruised from where he held her. Probably so, she thought.

  She looked around the room and her eyes fell on the girl's iPad lying on the desk. She had no experience with the devices but when she touched it, the device somehow 'woke up'.

  The low battery icon was on the screen, warning that the machine had five minutes of power left. Another alarm flashed to tell Tamesha that there was no connectivity. Tamesha had hoped that she could somehow send an email to her foster parents. She would have been too afraid to alert the police since she knew that policemen could be zombies, too.

  With time running down she finally concentrated on the screen. A website had been pulled up and she quickly scanned the information. Someone – maybe his parents since Tamesha understood that Hank's older sister was at Cal Tech in grad school – wanted to know how to kill zombies.

  Tamesha read as fast as she could. As she reached the bottom of the screen, the device emitted three very loud pings and shut down.

  In seconds the bedroom door flung open and Hank Bartholomew stood there wearing a ridiculous apron.

  "You're up! That's wonderful! I was just fixing you something to eat. Sorry, no peanut butter in our house but I did find some hot dogs."

  He stepped over to her, laid a comforting hand on her brow as if he were taking her temperature. "What's this?" he asked as his eyes fell on the iPad.

  "It's dead," Tamesha said.

  Hank tapped the screen a couple of times to no avail. "Wonderful," he said. He reached out his hand and she took it. He helped her to her feet.

  "I don't want anyone interrupting our marriage and honeymoon." He winked at her, first with his left eye then with his right one. If he wasn't a monster Tamesha would have found the gesture kind of cute.

  "Come along Tamesha, I have dinner ready for you."

  "You're not eating?" she asked as she let him lead her from the room, his hand enveloping hers.

  "I don't eat…..hot dogs," he replied.

  I know, you bastard. I know what you eat and I know what kills you. And as soon as I can I'll find me something to take off that head of yours.

  Mira Hidar ended up not enjoying her evening. The spaghetti – formerly her favorite food – was like rubber and she gave up eating it after a few bites. She retreated to her kitchen table with the wine, which she drank directly out of the bottle, and a handful of bombs. She had consumed half the bottle and converted the five bombs to reverse devices when the cell phone rang.

  It was a disposable and Manchester Lee was the only one with the number.

  There was no preamble from Lee. "We have someone in the White House press pool. The White House posts the president's and vice president's schedules out months, logging an event or trip as soon as it is known. That is the custom."

  "And?" she asked.

  "And the vice president has been scheduled to visit China following the election."

  "Won't that still be Biden?"

  "You think Wiley will wait until January to take the job?"

  "No, so Wiley is heading to China."

  "Wiley, I believe, is heading there to make his move on the Chinese. If he can convert the key players in China he can lower their air defenses, making two billion people vulnerable to your atomic zombie bomb."

  "It's not my bomb."

  "Whatever. The schedule next shows him travelling to Moscow. Ten gets you five that he plans to do the same thing to the Russians. All of Asia and Europe will be wide open for his attack."

  "We have to destroy him before he gets to China."

  "The flight over the Pacific would be opportune. Eight thousand miles of mostly empty ocean. He could be destroyed and no one would find a trace of him."

  "And you could coordinate the death of Wiley's wife. She'll be spooked once she finds out that Wiley has been killed, maybe go to ground and disappear."

  "We'll need to walk through this when you come back from Fiji."

  "If I come back."

  The two were silent for several moments.

  "Elias found you?" Lee asked. He almost whispered it.

  "He did and you were correct, he's become a monster."

  "Lots of that going around," Lee said and they laughed.

  "Did he threaten you?"

  "Yes. I don't believe I'll live long after the trial is a success."

  "Will it be?"

  "Yes."

  "Does your reverse bomb work? Can you stop him?"

  "I've never tried it on someone so aggressive, who hates me so."

  "Why would that make a difference? Isn't it all just science, chemistry?"

  Mira knew he wouldn't understand, similar to how the other zombie she spoke to that evening had not understood. Magic was a living force – it could not be calibrated to reach a one hundred percent success rate nor could it guarantee a vengeful zombie would be converted to human. They were too many variables to be certain of any outcome.

  "It does, just take my word on it."

  Lee considered this for a few moments. "Good luck," he said finally.

  "Thanks. If I'm successful we – you, me and Elias – will get together to plot out the last days of Benjamin Wiley."

  She hung up and took another slug of wine. She stood and took the bottle to the sink. She poured the rest down the drain, rinsed out the bottle with tap water and sat it in her recyclable bin.

  She sat down at the kitchen table. She gathered the zombie bombs in front of her. She said one last incantation over the devices and they were complete.

  She closed her eyes, projected her mind and found him. Her lips worked themselves into a fury as she chanted her spell. After several minutes she was done.

  She looked at the globes – truly humanity's last hope. It was appropriate that her last spell would leverage that most human emotion to help assure success. If the spell failed, she would rather be dead and she would look forward to any misery the zombie calling itself Elias Turnbull inflicted upon her.

  In his limo zooming down a Delaware highway Elias Turnbull was upset.

  I thought zombies had no emotions?

  He shook his head and cursed the lovelorn husk of Elias Turnbull's humanity still residing in this shell.

  He was angry because she had gotten to him. Th
at woman. That human low-life bitch.

  He seethed as the limo streaked down Route 1 into northern Delaware. He had to do something. He ordered his driver to pull off at the next exit.

  After several minutes they approached a roadway chock full of fast food restaurants. Elias was ravenous – just not for the fare they served.

  He directed the driver into the parking lot of something called Wawa. He exited the car and entered the establishment. Given the lateness of the hour the place was nearly deserted. There was one worker behind a checkout counter island in the center of the store and one more employee manning the sandwich and coffee stations. Elias made his selection and headed for the coffee. He grabbed a large cup, randomly selected a flavor – Colombian Deep Roast – and filled his cup. He made eye contact with the coffee/sandwich lady. She had an Eastern European look, was youngish, big boned with a friendly smile betrayed by her hungry, almost desperate eyes.

  "Hi there," Elias said. "I was wondering if you could help me."

  The woman smiled, obviously impressed by Elias' silk suit and gold Rolex hanging off his wrist.

  "I'm from NY and I think my battery just went out on me."

  "Do you have triple A or someone you can call?"

  Elias shook his head. "It's not my car, it's a limo and the bozo has jumper cables but has no one to call to give him a jump. I was wondering….do you have a car? Can you give me a jump?"

  The woman looked around at the nearly empty convenience store. "I shouldn't really be leaving my station," she said miserably.

  "Don't they give you a break?" He whipped several hundred dollar bills out of his wallet. "I'm in a big hurry and I'll certainly make it worth your while."

  The woman's eyes flashed on the cash. "One minute," she said. She walked to the sandwich station and hit something underneath the counter which allowed her to exit the area.

  Elias sat his prop coffee down and watched as the co-workers conversed. The woman at the register looked at Elias, smiled uncertainly, and looked again at the other woman. The matter finally decided, the sandwich lady glided back to Elias.

  "Becky says that I can take my break early. I told her you were my boyfriend." This made the woman smile, that someone would be stupid enough to believe that this fine, rich man could possibly be her boyfriend.

  "This won't take long," Elias said. He gifted her with his warmest smile.

  The woman pulled the nose of her car – a ten year old Mazda – in front of the limo. She popped her hood. Elias went around to the trunk, he said, to retrieve the jumper cables. He had confided in the woman – her name was Esmeralda – that the limo driver was too lazy to help.

  Esmeralda Mlatic waited at the front of her car for a couple of minutes but Elias had not returned with the cables. She looked at the time on her iPhone then glanced back toward the rear of the limo. The trunk was open but she could not see Elias. Her fifteen minute break would be over soon and Esmeralda never took more time than what was allowed.

  "Elias?" she called out but there was no response.

  She decided to wander back. She found Elias looking inside the trunk.

  "Is there a problem?" she asked.

  Elias lifted his head from the trunk. The first thing she noticed was the teeth – there were so many. Second, she noticed the eyes, so much colder than those warm brown eyes he flashed in the store.

  Before she could scream a strong arm swept her into the gaping trunk. The trunk door quickly slammed on top of her. After a moment of shock Esmeralda Mlatic screamed for all that she was worth but no one heard her.

  In a deserted park nearby, Esmeralda Mlatic suffered all the depravity and pain that Mira Hidar could not suffer this evening. The final act – an act of mercy really – was her dismemberment and consumption by Elias Turnbull and his driver.

  Meal complete, Elias continued his journey south to Dover. He was in a much improved mood and his outlook was again sunny and bright.

  THIRTY

  THE TODAY SHOW SET – NEW YORK – AUGUST 2012

  It was a set-up, of course. Wiley. Matt Lauer. The Today Show. The phalanx of physicians from the Mayo Clinic. It was all carefully orchestrated by the campaign.

  The old Harlem footage of zombie Wiley being struck by a car, crashing to the ground then straightening his damaged leg had resurfaced. The enemy campaign was using it in heavy TV rotation in the battleground states. Wiley had attempted the old excuse that his drug addiction – long since heroically conquered – had enabled him to perform this superhuman feat. Their opponents had then edited their commercial to include their medical experts, all claiming that drug addiction was no explanation. The ads didn't say it but the Republicans were whispering that Wiley was an alien, sent to Earth to take over the planet and that, in Obama, he had found a willing partner.

  Wiley bound onto the Today Show stage, wearing only a wife beater undershirt and boxers, to prove that he was not a brother from another planet.

  Lauer, along with the hosts and producers of most major news programs, had been converted long ago. This supposedly unbiased participant minutes earlier was in the green room kissing Wiley's staff.

  The man has gotten in the habit of carrying around what he called his staff – a six foot long pole adorned with the desiccated head of the fierce Latina woman he had met, hunted, captured and mostly devoured in upstate NY. His loyal followers were encouraged to kiss the staff.

  Lauer and two Republican observers watched as the Mayo Clinic physicians – handpicked by the opposition prior to being converted to non living – seemingly took Wiley's blood. The newly minted zombie doctors used a special Hollywood syringe, made to appear, even in close-ups, as if it was truly piercing the skin and drawling blood. Zombie blood was black and black blood would belie Wiley's image as a red blooded all-American regular guy. So the syringe was rigged by a movie special effects technician to reveal, with a sliding partition hidden inside the syringe, the healthy red blood the syringe contained when it was brought on stage.

  The health of the donor of this blood – still bound and gagged in the green room – could not be guaranteed beyond the length of this segment of the show.

  Imagine: Coming to deliver a breakfast pizza pie, being waylaid by a bunch of people with impossibly large teeth, siphoned for blood then bound and gagged by the HUD Secretary. It had not been a good Tuesday morning for Bud Soheski and the day did not promise to get better.

  After examining the blood live on an electron microscope the doctors measured Wiley's blood pressure – a healthy one ten over fifty five – and skin elasticity, which was excellent for a man in his fifties. Next, behind a screen Wiley dropped his shorts and the rectal exam commenced. A long tube with a camera mounted on the end was inserted into the candidate's body and soon the insides of a very human small intestine were being shown to the world. Unfortunately for Bud Soheski it was his intestine being shown and the tube had been inserted in his body with far less ceremony and lubrication than the normal rectal exam. It was decided not to show Wiley's insides due to the slowness with which zombies digest human beings. It would not do to project the remains of a Girl Scout troop leading grandmother – Wiley's meal the night before – to the American people.

  The exam finished with x-rays and a MRI, each of which cemented the candidate's qualification for office as a human being. Wiley, the consummate pleasant, patient and non threatening black man, smiled throughout.

  Afterward a fully dressed Wiley sat facing Lauer for a brief interview.

  "Secretary Wiley, what does it say about your opponent's campaign that they question your status as a human being?"

  "I think, Matt, that black people have always been seen as less than human. This is a historic fact. The people saying that I'm from outer space are saying the same thing people said during slavery or during Jim Crow – 'I can abuse you because you are black and blacks are not human'."

  "So it's racism?"

  "It's really desperation, Matt. The president has a message that
resonates with the American people. Our opponents want the status quo, more of the same failed policies of the past. They're out of ideas." He smiled broadly. "All they have left is to accuse me of being from outer space."

  "Which we clearly saw this morning, is not the case."

  "Exactly." He looked into the camera. "To all you purveyors of hate, know one thing: we love you. And when we win, we'll embrace all of you, wrap our arms around you and take you into our…..hearts."

  Lauer. "I, for one, look forward to that." He suggestively licked his thin lips. "Thank you candidate Wiley and I'll turn this back to Al Roker for today's forecast. Al?"

  Tamesha had had several days to examine her prissy prison, the former bedroom of Melinda Jean Bartholomew. She was looking for a way out and, in the closet, she found it. In the ceiling was a one foot square panel the led to the attic. In her wanderings around the second floor – Hank did not permit her to go downstairs – she had found the panel's twin in the master bath at the opposite end of the house. If she could climb up to the attic, walk down to the other panel and descend onto the bathroom floor that would get her past the bedroom door Hank locked every evening. She would then have to sneak past Hank's gauntlet of balls, bells and chimes on the stairs, and somehow escape out of a window or door on the first floor without alerting her captor.

  After a Hank prepared meal of waffles, bacon and fish sticks, Tamesha watched TV with Hank then went to bed. Hank locked his captive's door with the set of three padlocks he had transplanted from the barn doors.

  A wife was more valuable than a couple of horses, right?

  Tamesha pretended to shower and brush her teeth. She donned one of Melinda's night gowns and waited for the inevitable visit from Hank.

  She read Melissa's copy of "The Hunger Games" while she waited. She hoped that she could show the same courage as the novel's heroine Katniss Everdeen.

  Near midnight she heard the three locks being disengaged and the bedroom door opened.