Elements of the Undead: Fire (Book One) (2 page)

Her Subaru was in the far corner of the parking lot, out of sight of the surveillance cameras. She beeped the car as she approached, and the headlights flashed once.

Once safely ensconced in the car, she popped open the center console, took out her iPod, turned it on, and cranked up the volume. As an afterthought, she pushed the central door lock, sealing herself in. Digging around in her backpack, she pulled out a small Ziploc bag. With dismay, she realized her pot supply was almost exhausted. The ounce she had purchased only a week before was no more than seeds and a few lonely buds.
Shit
.

She broke the seal on the bag with the tip of her finger and inhaled, reveling in the pungent aroma of the remains of her Super Skunk. She reached into her backpack again and pulled out her bowl, a compact swirled-glass favorite she had had since junior high school.

Someone rapped on her window, and she jumped in surprise. Cupping her pipe in one hand, she put on her most innocent face and peeked out, prepared for the worst.

Fuck me.
She relaxed. Brittany stood outside the car grinning like a maniac. Alicia exhaled a sigh of relief and pressed the unlock button.

Brittany slid in beside her. “Thanks. Can you believe the crowds today?”

With a noncommittal shrug, Alicia locked the doors and retrieved her pot. She chose the plumpest bud from her bag and crammed it into her bowl. “Sucks in there.” She lit up.

Brittany eyed her. “It does. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Alicia snorted, smoke jetting from her nose in twin streams and passed the pipe. They spent the next ten minutes smoking and refilling until only shake remained in the baggie, and they had run out of things to talk about. Alicia laughed to herself.

“What?” Brittany asked, tapping the ashes of the bowl into an empty Diet Coke can.

Alicia shook her head. “It’s nothing.” She checked the clock through heavy-lidded eyes. Three minutes until her break was over. Her life was supposed to have started by now. Instead, here she was, stuck in this shitty Costco in Tempe.

“Are you ready?” Brittany asked, shattering Alicia’s reverie.

“Sure. I guess.” She wasn’t. She could spend all day out here.

She stuffed her pipe and the empty Ziploc into the bottom of her backpack, tucking them under a spare pair of panties. “Okay. Let’s go.”

The girls got out of the car, surrounded by a billowing cloud of smoke, and began the long walk across the hot parking lot. As they neared the front door, Alicia stopped and took Brittany by the elbow. “Do you ever think about leaving here? I mean…”

Brittany gave her a puzzled look. “Not really... Why? What’s wrong?”

Alicia shuffled her feet. “I’m just…tired of this place.” She looked at the ground.

Brittany laughed. “You’re moody because you’re stoned. You always get like this.” She had a point. Brittany arched a perfect eyebrow. “Are you going out tonight?”

Alicia shrugged. “I don’t know. It depends—”

Brittany cut her off. “Call me if you do. I want to get out for a little while.”

“I will.”

They entered the store and went their separate ways.
Three more hours,
Alicia thought with a pained expression.

Three

Jack leaned on his shovel and ran the back of his hand across his brow, wiping off the accumulated sweat. He stole a glance at his wife Becka and waited in silence as she dumped a shovelful of dirt. “Something to drink?”

She dropped her shovel with a
thud
. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Jack groaned. His arms tingled, and his shoulders burned. He needed a glass of tea and a few minutes to relax if he had any hope of finishing the job today.
Or maybe even a beer.

“Okay. I’ll be back in a minute.” He sank his shovel into a mound of dirt and took off across the yard toward the front porch.

The hole, seven feet long by six wide and a little over a foot deep at the moment, was intended for a koi pond, a surprise birthday present for their twin daughters, Maddie and Ellie. As usual, they didn’t have enough money to hire an excavator, so this had become yet one more in an endless procession of do-it-yourself projects.

The idea had been born two weeks before on a routine trip to Home Depot. He was browsing the tool aisle when she called out to him. “Jack?”

“Huh?” He held a shovel in each hand, trying to decide if the shiny stainless steel model warranted an extra twenty dollars.

“I’ve got an idea,” she said, her voice full of mischief.
Uh oh
. He knew that tone.
Trouble
. He gave her his attention. “You know how the girls are into fish…”

Jack nodded. The girls were in the midst of their first small pet phase. From bettas to goldfish to species he couldn’t even pronounce, the house looked like an aquarium, with tanks covering every horizontal surface. Becka’s idea consisted of a second shovel—stainless, he insisted—along with a large, black plastic pond insert and a cheap solar pump.

He suppressed a groan. “Are you sure? What about winter? Won’t it freeze?”

Becka rolled her eyes, took the shovel, and threw it in their cart.

Half an hour later, they were on their way home with the tools in the bed of his pickup along with an eight-by-ten pond.

He strolled into the kitchen, got two glasses from the cabinet over the sink, and then went to the refrigerator. A refreshing wave of chilled air washed over him when he opened the French doors.
Damn....
He held them open and wedged his entire six-foot-two frame in as close as possible, savoring the coolness. He stayed in that position for a full minute, eyes half-closed, fantasizing about a mythical afternoon of leisure, a distant memory from the time before the girls. Finally satisfied, he took a half-f pitcher of iced tea from the top shelf and filled their glasses.

On the way out, he grabbed two oatmeal cookies from a plate on the counter, stuffing one into his mouth and pinching the other between the fingers of his free hand. Pushing through the front door, he smiled. Becka was lying in the grass, her eyes closed, her legs dangling into the hole. Covered in dirt and grime, with her dirty-blonde hair plastered against her head, she looked at peace with herself, completely in her element. Her white cotton halter top, the torn one she always wore when working outside in the summer, clung to the curves of her body, leaving little to his imagination. He descended the stairs and crossed the yard with a lascivious grin, fantasizing about what he was going to do with her later in the evening after they put the girls down. That was, if he could stay awake after all this digging. Becka heard him approach and opened her eyes. He handed her a tea and the uneaten cookie.

“Thanks.” She touched the cold drink to her cheek and smiled, glowing.

He drained his own glass and let out a growling belch.

“Excuse me,” he said, embarrassed.

Becka giggled.

Jack touched the still-cool glass to his cheek. “I should have brought the pitcher out. I’m still thirsty. “

Becka sipped again and waved at the house with her free hand. Jack took off.

~~~

Becka put her empty glass on a level spot and climbed back into the pit. They had to go down at least one more foot before declaring victory. It would be easy if it weren’t for the damned roots, some the size of her forearm, several even larger. She still couldn’t believe they came from the old cottonwood stump. Jack had laughed off her concerns at first, easily slicing through a bundle with the point of his shovel. But they kept appearing, as if the ground was determined to see them fail.

After three miserable hours and six inches of progress, she had asked “Do you want to try digging somewhere else?”

Jack was adamant. “No. This is the best spot in the yard. Plus, we’re outside the main fence—which is what we wanted.”

As they dug deeper, the roots multiplied. Becka estimated they had spent at least half of their time so far cutting the damned things. A testament to their efforts, a giant pile of shredded bark and root bits teetered beside the hole. They were committed.

She checked her watch.
Four thirty
. The twins were due to return at six. She shook her head in dismay.
This won’t be done in an hour. Maybe not in ten
.
..

She considered calling Jack’s mom and asking if she could keep the kids for a couple more hours, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. It almost never was with her mother-in-law.

Becka resumed digging. She wedged her shovel under a particularly stubborn rootball, and leaned on the handle. Throwing her entire body into the effort, she hopped up and down, grunting like a wounded animal. The root popped out, but the shovel kept going, plunging deep before stopping abruptly with a leg-numbing
clang.

“What the…?” She knelt and began sifting through the crumbly soil with her gloved hands, sweeping the dirt into a pile behind her.

“What’s that?”

She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Jack! You surprised me!” She pointed at the thing she had uncovered. “I found something!”

“No shit?” Placing the pitcher on the ground, he climbed in beside her and started to help. Jack scratched his head and stood. Listening intently, he stomped hard on the flat metal surface.  “Sounds hollow,” he said, perplexed. “I bet we’ve got an old oil tank here.”

Becka didn’t have words to express her frustration. She glared at the new obstacle, fuming inside.
This was supposed to be easy.

Four

Megan scrunched her eyes shut, willing herself to sleep. It didn’t work. She was too damned hot. With a frustrated groan, she kicked out from under the sheet and padded across the trailer to the ancient air conditioner. She jabbed the power button, and the machine rattled to life.

On the way back to bed, she snatched the television remote from the coffee table. Her roommate Heather had gone out of town, which meant Megan had the entire trailer to herself. Usually this would be cause for celebration, but for some reason this morning, Megan craved company, wanted to talk to someone real.

The next five days were wide open, her first vacation in over six months, and she planned to use the time to her full advantage. She had a ticket in her purse to Tucson, where her sister lived. All that stood between her and her much-deserved break was the hour-long drive into Vegas. Her thoughts drifted to Chloe. Married with three children and a house in the suburbs, Chloe’s lifestyle was the polar opposite of Megan’s. Despite their differences, the sisters remained close. Megan played the role of favorite aunt to her nieces and nephew, showering them with gifts and treating them like the children she hoped to have some day.

She turned her attention to the television.
Infomercial.
Flipping through the channels, she settled on a documentary about supervolcanoes in Wyoming. That kind of thing fascinated her. She crawled back on the bed and cranked up the volume. Sleep should be close—she hoped. The Xanax she had popped half an hour ago was already nibbling at the fringe of her consciousness, sanding the rough edges off the night and turning the world into a soft and fuzzy place.

Another difference from Chloe.
Or maybe not.
Kids seemed the perfect justification for a discreet Xanax habit. She chuckled to herself, amused at their unlikely similarities. She didn’t enjoy using the little blue pills, quite the contrary. But they sure took the edge off after a long night on her back. Anyone who said you could fuck for a living without some sort of self-medication was full of shit in Megan’s book.

Someone knocked on the door. “Yeah? Come in!”

The door swung open and Samantha Cantor, her boss, slipped inside. She nudged the door closed with her heel. Megan sat up. “Sam! Hey! What are you doing here?”

 “Have you seen the news yet, Megan?” Sam asked.

Megan cringed. “No. Why? Is something going on?” The last time someone had asked her that was the day the International Space Station had been destroyed by an errant satellite, killing everyone on board.

Sam walked over and made a spot for herself on the edge of the bed. She took the remote and flipped to CNN. Red banners and scrolling text screaming “Breaking News”blanketed the screen. A live shot from a helicopter hovered in the center. The camera jiggled and zoomed several times before finally stabilizing on a crowded street corner.

Megan stared in disbelief as people dashed in and out of the camera’s view, colliding with each other as they raced in every direction. In some cases, they appeared to be wrestling, locked in a gruesome struggle for an unseen prize.  The aerial camera focused on a young mother and her infant as a man tackled them from behind, pushing them into the street. As Megan and Sam watched, a speeding police cruiser, lights flashing, drove over all three, swerved out of control, and crashed into the rear of a UPS truck. The camera zoomed back out.

“Oh, my God!” Sam exclaimed.

Megan was confused. The coverage had the vibe of a street shot from some third-world hellhole. Desperate to find the ubiquitous robed men with chicken-scratched signs, she scanned the crowd, but only saw people that looked like herself—like her neighbors back home.

The scene shifted and the profile of the Transamerica Pyramid filled the background. A pall of thick, oily smoke clung to the horizon, blanketing the city with a viscous fog. “That’s San Francisco.” She gulped.

The video feed shrank to a small box in the lower left of the screen and was replaced by a shot of a man with a close-trimmed beard.

“This is Richard Mosby reporting from Washington. The president has declared a national state of emergency given the current events in San Francisco, Washington, and Miami. A press conference is scheduled for the top of the hour. CNN will have live coverage. Please stay tuned for the latest updates.”

Megan nudged the volume down. “What’s he talking about? I don’t understand.”

Sam coughed. “No one knows. It came out of nowhere…the first symptoms start like the flu. Within a couple of hours, people begin to change; they become violent, attacking everyone around them…”