Chapter 3

A Chapter by Jackson Keller

Something wicked this way comes

July 14^th, 2008

Chris sat at a table outside a little coffee shop in downtown Miami, staring at the rows of cars trudging by. It was amazing how bad traffic could get at 5:20 in the morning. Chris looked around him, there weren’t any other customers seated outside. The only sounds that filled the air were the rumbling of cars in the street. There typically weren’t too many pedestrians walking around this early in the morning. Most of the patrons of the various bars and nightclubs had already gone home completely wasted.

A taxi cab stopped at the stop light without a passenger. Chris pondered signaling it, but he let it pass. The diner wasn’t too far away from the coffee shop, he had time to kill. No use going in early.

Chris was thankful to have found a little place where he could grab a cup of coffee early in the morning. Chris peeked into the coffee shop’s window, a young man stood behind the counter with dark circles under his eyes reading a newspaper. Chris wondered how long he had been here. There weren’t any other customers or employees in the place. Chris stood up and pushed the glass door open. He walked up to the counter, but the man didn’t notice him come in.

Chris didn’t know what to say, so he simply cleared his throat to get the man’s attention. The man jumped a little bit and put down his newspaper. He looked at Chris with a humorless expression, waiting for his order.

“Hello, I’ll have a coffee and a bagel, please,” Chris said. The barista gave no reply; he simply raised an eyebrow at Chris, like he had just told a really bad joke. Chris sighed, “Café y bagel por favor.”

The barista nodded and turned around to prepare Chris’s drink. Chris didn’t speak Spanish fluently, but because Miami’s population was overwhelmingly Hispanic Chris picked up a few important phrases. Living there for three years will do that.

The barista plopped the coffee down on the counter and turned around to get Chris’s bagel. Chris looked down at the newspaper the barista had left on the counter. He hadn’t been keeping up with the news recently. He wondered if the man would let him take a look at the paper for a few minutes.

“Que será de cinco dólares y setenta y cinco centavos,” the barista said as he put the bagel down next to Chris’s coffee. Chris gave the man a blank stare and said nothing. The barista rolled his eyes before grabbing a napkin from the dispenser next to him and pulling out a permanent marker. He wrote down “5.50” in numerical form and showed it to Chris.

“Ah,” Chris said as he nodded his head. Chris reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. Much to his chagrin, he only found ten dollars. Chris frowned and thought for a minute. He didn’t think that he’d have enough for cab fare if he took the order. Even just taking the coffee and forgoing the bagel might be cutting it pretty close.

He looked into his wallet again and pulled out his credit card. He sighed as he handed it to the barista, who was looking more impatient by the second. The barista swiped the card and handed it back to Chris. Chris nodded at the barista as he put the card back in his wallet and his wallet back in his pocket. He picked up his order and walked back outside.

Chris didn’t like to use his credit card. He always tried to save as much money as he could. Typically, Chris only used the card for emergencies. A credit card debt was the last thing that he needed.

Chris sat back down at one of the outdoor tables; he looked at his watch, 5:25. He thought about calling for a taxi, but decided to stick around for a few more minutes. As he gobbled up his bagel, a lone newspaper sitting on one of the other tables caught his eye. Chris put his food down, walked over to the table and picked up the paper. The newspaper had some pages missing and was a little damp, but Chris could still read it. He walked back over to his table and took a look at the front page while sipping on his coffee.

Hurricane Incoming

By Matt Brown

One of the worst storms in recent memory is expected to hit the southern United States next week, with Florida expected to be hit the hardest.

Governor Crist has advised Floridians to evacuate the state as soon as possible. Citing the hurricane and the recent outbreak of Swamp Flu as reasons people need to leave.

“In the interest of the people of Florida, I advise everyone to evacuate immediately,” Crist said in an interview yesterday. “We’re trying to evacuate our citizens in a quick and orderly fashion. We have also begun organizing shelters for those who wish to stay. We don’t want to repeat what happened with Hurricane Katrina.”

While Florida is expected to bear the worst of the storm, the effects are predicted to be felt in North Carolina and even southern Virginia, with heavy rain and high winds expected to get to get as far as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The article kept going on about specific weather conditions that Chris didn’t care about. Chris sat at his table and thought about what he was going to do.

“I guess I better find the nearest shelter, staying in that crackhouse of an apartment is a death wish. God, I wish I had a car. That way I could get out of here and… wait a minute, Swamp Flu?”

Chris fumbled through the newspaper, hoping that there would be some article on whatever this outbreak was.

“Jesus, I guess I REALLY haven’t been keeping up with the news. Hurricanes and diseases, what’s next locusts? Ah, here’s an article. Let’s see what this ‘Swamp Flu’ is all about.”

Victims of Swamp Fever Get Violent

By Alexa Santiago

Doctors all over Miami have reported that those infected by the “Swamp Flu” have started to get violent, attacking doctors and other patients.

Margret Donavon, a nurse at St. Mary’s children’s hospital, reports that one of her patients attacked her while she was delivering her lunch.

“I was walking upstairs with a lunch tray for a little girl named Maria,” Donavon said. “She was looking worse than usual, so I told her to stay in bed while I went and got her some lunch. When I came back from the cafeteria she was standing up, and I asked her why she wasn’t in bed. She didn’t say anything, she just stared at me. I said, ‘Maria, get back in bed sweetie, you need to rest,” and then she tackled me! She knocked me to the ground and bit me on the arm! It took three doctors just to get her off of me!”

Maria is just one of many people who have been infected with the Swamp Flu, which was discovered on a Miami citizen just a week ago. Common symptoms include pale skin, bloodshot eyes, headaches, fevers, and vomiting.

The flu is extremely contagious, and doctors haven’t been able to pin down a cause nor an effective treatment. All infected individuals should go see their physician immediately.

Chris couldn’t help but smile. It was a disturbing story, but he knew exactly what Kelly would say if she were here right now.

“I knew it! The zombie apocalypse has begun! Come on Chris, we need to prepare! First, we’ve got to stock up on food and ammo, then we’ll need barricade your apartment, only leaving for…”

Chris stopped and put down the newspaper, “No. I’m not doing this to myself anymore,” Chris thought, “I don’t need her. I never needed her. I don’t care what she would say.”

Another taxi cab pulled up to the light by the coffee shop. Chris raised his hand to tell the driver to wait. He ran over to the cab and jumped in the back. The driver turned around and looked at him; the driver looked like he was in his late thirties. He wore a Miami Heat baseball cap backwards and a baggy red t-shirt. The man had a very pronounced jaw, a shaved head, and a graying goatee.

“Hey buddy, where to?” the driver asked.

“The Tropic Tree Diner,” Chris said.

The driver nodded and waited for the light to turn green, “So guy, what are you doing up so early?” the driver asked. Chris gave no response; he didn’t even look at the guy. He stared out the window at the newspaper sitting at the table. The wind blew the paper away, Chris tried to keep his eye on it, but it flew out of Chris’s sight.

“Not much of a talker? I can dig it,” The driver said as he swiveled forward. At that moment, the traffic light switched from red to green. It was like the cab driver had been waiting for that all day, he stomped on the gas pedal and took off like a rocket. The driver sped forward for a few seconds before slamming on the breaks. The momentum caused Chris to fly forward and bash his head against the driver’s seat.

The driver roared with laughter, “Sorry about that buddy, you looked tired. Figured you might appreciate a wake up call.” The driver’s words went through one of Chris’s ears and right out the other. Again, Chris didn’t even look at him; he just looked out the cab window. The driver slowed down and started moving through the city at a normal pace.

The cab passed hundreds of cars; each driver should have looked different. So why did it seem like every person in Miami was a young woman with long blonde hair? Something reminded him of Kelly at seemingly every block. Billboards with basketball players on them, a guy wearing a Halo 3 t-shirt, a nightclub with a margarita glass for a sign, advertisements for the next Saw movie, a blonde woman with long hair waiting at a bus stop next to her boyfriend. Even things that should seem average and plain, like skyscrapers and stop signs, Chris managed to connect to Kelly somehow.

The harder Chris tried to stop, the more he thought of her. Nothing could take his mind off her. More memories of his time with her came flooding back to him, it was like his life was flashing before his eyes. All the moments with her that he remembered flooded his mind.

Kelly’s voice echoed in his mind, “So what’s in the notebook?”

Chris closed his eyes, “Go away, please, just go away,” he thought.

“It was good! Except… I didn’t like the main character. He was annoying,” Kelly’s voice echoed again.

Kelly’s voice continued to ring through Chris’s mind, all the memories overlapped each other into one indistinguishable sound.

“This place is perfect! This should be our secret spot… one that no one else knows about. Got it?”

“That hurt Chris; I don’t ask much from you.”

“Listen carefully Chris, for I am only going to say this once.”

“You have a best friend who loves you, nothing will ever change that.”

“That’ll be $4.75.”

Chris shook his head and snapped back into reality, the cab had arrived at the Tropic Tree Diner, and the driver looked back at Chris with his hand out. Chris reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. Chris stared at the ten inside and looked the cab driver in the eyes. Chris looked back down at his wallet, biting his lip.

“What’s the matter?” the driver said, “Look buddy, I have places to be. That’ll be $4.75.”

Chris didn’t even consider the man’s words; he may as well not have even been there. Chris looked out the window into the diner. None of the lights were on, and nobody seemed to be inside. Chris left a huge stack of dishes to wash yesterday night, and a flood of people eating breakfast would only make the load worse.

“Nothing will ever change that…” Chris whispered to himself.

“What was that?” The driver asked.

Chris flipped his wallet shut and stuck it back in his pocket; he turned his attention back out the window and looked at the diner, then back at the driver. Chris cleared his throat and raised his voice to a firm, audible level, “I changed my mind,” Chris said, “Take me to the airport.”

The driver grinned at Chris and laughed, “Good for you! Next stop, Miami International!” The driver floored it, causing Chris to fly backwards, bashing his head against his back seat. The driver looked at himself in the mirror and swiveled his hat forward, “You know you’ll still have to pay the fare for the drive to the diner.”

Chris nodded his head, still not listening to the cab driver. He could have said anything and Chris would have agreed to it. Every day it was the same: go to work, come home late, crash on the couch, try and get some sleep, have a nightmare, wake up at two, try to go back to sleep, fail, think about Kelly, repeat. The cycle never ended, there was no way to break it.

Until today. Chris had enough, there was no point in spending the rest of his life wallowing. He couldn’t possibly afford a plane ticket, there was no way he could possibly afford to pay the inevitable credit card debt, but at this point he had nothing to lose.

“What are they gonna do? Kick me out of my apartment? That’d be the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Chris thought.

He didn’t have any sort of plan. He didn’t even know if Kelly still lived in New York or not. Kelly could be living in the Sahara Desert for all Chris knew. Chris knew the risks; he was a gambler with only a dollar to his name betting everything he had on the cruel wheel of fate. The odds of him finding Kelly in the metropolis of New York City were slim to none. However, when the alternative is spending the rest of your life wasting away in a greasy burger joint, losing everything doesn’t sound so bad.

The driver’s deep, thunderous voice broke the silence, “Smart move.”

Chris looked away from the window and at the driver, “Excuse me?”

The driver threw his right arm over the backside of his seat and slumped down. His eyes stayed glued to the road, but he only had one loose hand guiding the cab, “Getting out of the city while you still can, smart move.”

Chris straightened out his back and looked at the back of the driver’s head, “Oh yeah, that hurricane’s gonna be pretty rough.”

The driver chuckled and spun his head around to look at Chris, “You seriously worried about a sissy little hurricane? Boy, that hurricane’s the least of your problems.”

“I… wait what?” Chris said, looking at the road past the man’s eyes.

“I’m talking about a flu that, after it has run its course, will have a higher body count than every other disease combined,” The driver said.

“Red light!” Chris yelled. The driver slammed on his brakes before he even turned around, Chris tightened up and braced himself, but momentum is a formidable foe, and Chris ended up slamming his face into the seat again.

Chris reoriented himself, rubbed his temples and groaned, “Please stop doing that.”

“Sorry about that,” the driver sat up, took his arm off the back of the seat, and put both hands on the wheel.

Chris blinked a few times and shook his head back and forth, “Anyways, Swamp Flu? Are they thinking it’ll be that bad?”

The driver lowered his voice to almost a whisper, “Do zombies sound bad to you?”

Chris said nothing; he stared at the back of the driver’s head and waited for the punchline. Thirty seconds of silence passed, the driver turned around and looked at Chris, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Eyes on the road,” Chris said. The driver turned back around and focused on the road, “I’m sorry, I think I misheard you. What did you say?” Chris asked.

“You heard me right, don’t play dumb. Zombies, the undead, hell’s army, common infected, whatever you wanna call them,” The driver said.

“Uh huh,” Chris said. He turned his head back to the window and watched the pedestrians walk along the sidewalk. The driver took a hard left turn that shook Chris’s head around.

“If you don’t mind me asking, where do you plan on going?” The driver asked.

Chris put his hand on the side of his head, “New York City,” Chris said.

“And what do you plan on doing once you get there?” The driver asked.

“I’m going to go visit a friend,” Chris said.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant at all! What do you plan to do about the zombies? Do you even have a plan?” The driver said. Chris sighed and rolled his eyes; he leaned his head back into the seat and shut his eyes. “I’m serious kid; you aren’t gonna last more than five minutes in New York. Way, way too many people. Not many effective weapons or hiding places, if the military decides to use the nuclear option than New York will the first place to go. What I suggest you and your friend do is get out of the city and into the countryside. Big open fields, loose gun laws, not too many people…”

“You sound like you have it all planned out,” Chris said.

“When your career consists entirely of carting around drunken people who don’t speak a word of English, you have time,” the driver said.

“Look, what makes you say that this Swamp Flu is going to cause some sort of zombie apocalypse?” Chris said.

The driver looked out his window at something on the sidewalk; he slammed on the brakes, stopping in the middle of the road. Chris slammed his face into the seat for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“Jesus Christ! Will you stop doing that?” Chris yelled.

“Now look here kid, I want you to see something,” the driver said, blatantly ignoring Chris. He pointed his finger at a portly man wearing an orange tank top that looked two sizes too small while carrying a McDonald’s carryout bag, “See fatty there walking out of Mickey D’s?”

Chris kept rubbing his forehead as he peaked out the window, “Yeah, what about him?”

“Don’t you notice anything weird about him?” The driver asked.

“I don’t know, When I drive I don’t typically stop in the middle of the road to analyze pedestrians.” Chris said.

“Look at the guy; he’s white as a ghost! He’s practically bleeding out of his eyes!” The driver said.

The obese man reached into the carryout bag and unwrapped an Egg McMuffin, he lifted the sandwich to his mouth, but dropped it with a sudden movement of his hand. The man bent over and clutched his chest with his right hand. He coughed and gagged nonstop for at least twenty seconds. Blood shot out of the obese man’s mouth and stained the concrete beneath him.

“OK, so he’s pretty sick. What does that prove?” Chris said.

The driver opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by honking of horns behind him. The driver grunted and began rolling down his window. He leaned out the window like a dog and looked back at the traffic behind him.

“Alright, I’m going! Don’t get your panties in a bundle! Jesus Christ!” The driver yelled. The driver put his head back inside the vehicle, slammed on the gas, and started grumbling to himself, “Everyone’s in such a goddamn hurry these days… no one ever stops and takes time to appreciate the little things, you know?” Before Chris could even considering answering his question, the driver continued to ramble on, “All I know is that you’re one lucky son of a b***h. I’d have left this city weeks ago if it weren’t for the missus. She says that I’m ‘insane’ and it’s all ‘crackpot conspiracy theories’. Humph. We’ll see who is ‘insane’ once she’s getting rushed by a lifeless monster. Maybe you should teach me some of that ancient Chinese ninja s**t so I can properly protect her.”

The driver took his hand off the steering wheel and kid a karate chop with his hand, making a stereotypical karate sound you might hear in a cheap martial arts movie. Chris winced, that was wrong on so many levels. From that point onward, Chris let the driver babble on for the rest of the ride. Every once in a while, Chris would nod his head or say “Yes” whenever the driver would ask a question, but Chris zoned out. He had more important things to think about than some crazy cab driver’s theories on how this “zombie virus” came to be.

Soon enough, Chris found himself in front of Miami International Airport. He breathed a sigh of relief to be away from the cab driver after what seemed like an eternity in that cab.

“So, including the fare to get to the diner, that’ll run you $23.25,” the driver said. Chris whipped out his wallet and handed the driver his credit card before the driver could say anything else. The driver took the card and swiped it before handing it back to Chris. Chris didn’t say anything as he stepped out of the cab and started walking towards the airport entrance.

“Hey kid!” the driver yelled from the window. Chris quickly turned around and gave him one last look, “Good luck out there! I have a feeling you’re going to need it!” The driver shouted. Before Chris could respond to the driver, he already rolled the window down and sped off into the distance. Chris stared at the speeding yellow car and shook his head as he turned to walk towards the airport.

A horde of people greeted Chris as the automatic doors of the terminal opened. Usually, airports were noisy, bustling places where you could barely here yourself think over the sounds of busy people preparing for their flights. But today the only sounds in the entire airport were the soft murmurs of confused people. No luggage was on the baggage claim belt. The various book stores and coffee shops had shut their doors and closed. It seemed like everyone in the airport was either gathered near the entrance, staring at something to Chris’s left, or over by the entrance to the gates arguing with the security guards, who refused to let anyone through.

Chris tried to see what everyone was gathered around the entrance for, but he couldn’t see over anyone’s head due to his short stature. Chris started to circle around the mob, not wanting to get caught up in the center of it. The mob was so large Chris ended up overlapping with other mob that was yelling at security. After a good minute of walking around, Chris was at the opposite end of the terminal entrance and could now see what everyone was looking at. Everyone was staring at the flight information board, but at the distance Chris was at, he couldn’t read what it said.

Chris sighed and started to force his way through the mob, using his skinny body to his advantage by slipping in between people. Worried questions like, “What’s going on?” and “What happened?” went through Chris’s ears as he worked his way to the mob’s center. Chris made sure to not shove or cause any trouble as he worked his way forward. Chris worked his way through the maze of people slowly, often having to move to backwards and to the side just to move a foot in front of him. The terminal suddenly seemed much larger than it was before.

After working through the mob for a good five minutes, Chris found a spot where he could read the board without any people blocking his way. He folded his arms and went down the list of flights, looking for one departing for New York.

American Airlines, Flight 1348, Aruba, 6:30A 7-14-08, Status: Canceled.

Delta Airlines, Flight 2870, Atlanta, 8:00A 7-14-08, Status: Canceled.

American Eagle, Flight 3613, Birmingham, 7:35A 7-14-08, Status: Canceled.

American Airlines, Flight 1930, Boston, 6:15A 7-14-08, Status: Canceled.

United Airlines, Flight 7555, Chicago, 9:25A 7-14-08, Status: Canceled.

American Airlines, Flight 682, New York, 6:45A 7-14-08, Status: Canceled.

Delta Airlines, Flight 001, New York, 9:00A 7-14-08, Status: Canceled.

American Airlines, Flight 860, New York, 10:15A 7-14-08, Status: Canceled.

The list went on and on, every single flight canceled. Chris read over the board over and over again to make sure that his eyes were working properly. Chris looked at the arrivals board; every flight was canceled there as well. Chris’s jaw dropped in awe; he stood there staring at the board in disbelief for fifteen minutes. It finally set in that Chris wasn’t going anywhere. Chris started to weave his way back out of the mob towards the terminal entrance.

“Hold on,” Chris thought, “What time is it?” Chris looked down at his watch and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw that it was 6:45. Chris immediately took off into a sprint, not caring who he plowed into on his way to the front door. The people Chris knocked into caused a ripple effect, those people knocked into other people, who looked at Chris as he sped towards the door parting the sea of people. Eventually the entire terminal was staring at Chris as he ran out the door.

Chris hoped that the airport’s ground transportation was still running.

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