About the Author
John Russo wants everyone to know hes a really nice guy even though he loves to scare people. He started it by co-scripting the 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead, one of the greatest fright flicks of all time, ranked #18 on the Internet Movie Databases top 100 Scariest Movies. (In a fine example of showmanship and multitasking, he also played a zombie in the film.) He also wrote the screenplays and/or stories for Midnight, Santa Claws, The Majorettes, Return of the Living Dead, Bloodsisters, and Inhuman.
Mr. Russo has authored fifteen terror-suspense novels, including Living Things, The Awakening, Voodoo Dawn, and Inhuman . His nonfiction books Scare Tactics and Making Movies are considered bibles of independent filmmaking by film students and horror fans.
Those who are not faint of heart will enjoy digging into this presentation of Epidemic of the Living Dead.
Mr. Russo resides in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. To his knowledge, none of his neighbors are zombies, though there is that one guy around the corner who is rumored to have devoured the mailman a few years ago.
CHAPTER 1
Eighteen Years Earlier
For Bill and Lauren Curtis, as for many others in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the joy of budding parenthood was tempered by their dread of the plague. Again and again, it had struck in dozens of communities all across the United States, turning decent people into mindless cravers of live human flesh. There were no vaccines, no cures. No one knew where it would strike next. It would flare up and be put down with guns, bombs and torches, then lie dormant till it struck somewhere else, with random, maddening frequency. Bill was a dedicated police officer, sworn to protect his friends and neighbors. But he knew that they might suddenly turn on him. Or he on them.
Lauren had tried to talk him into moving to Pittsburgh, forty miles away. But they both knew that the big cities were no safer than the small towns. So they stayed in Chapel Grove, Pennsylvania, where they had both grown up. The birth rate had shot up in recent years, as will happen when people are so scared that they will grasp at any affirmation of life.
Bill glanced lovingly at Lauren. She was washing breakfast dishes, and her swollen womb made her stand a foot back from the sink. She was into her seventh month now, and wanted badly to have a baby, even though she was scared to bring it into a plague-ridden world. Her first two pregnancies had ended in miscarriages. This time, she almost didnt dare to be hopeful. Her ultrasound test had revealed that she was going to have a baby girl. She wanted desperately to make it through a full nine months. She was afraid to jinx herself by decorating the spare room before the infant was born healthy and coming home.
Bill was proud of her for sticking to a healthful diet throughout her pregnancy. A petite ash blonde, she not only ate the right foods but also performed daily exercises recommended by her obstetrician. A passion for fitness was one of the things she and Bill had in common. She did her routine in the spare room, which, if all went well, would soon be transformed into a nursery, and he did his at the police gym where he could use state-of-the-art machines. At six-one and one-eighty, he was lanky but athletic looking, with light brown hair, a craggy face, alert brown eyes, and a dimpled chin. When he and Lauren were dressed for a night out, people often beamed at them and said they were a handsome couple.
Bill knew life hadnt been easy on his wife while he was in the army. He had survived two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, and she had lived in fear of getting a dreaded MIA or KIA letter from the Defense Department. He still carried a small piece of shrapnel in his right thigh from an IED explosion, too close to the femoral artery to be removed by a scalpel. After he was wounded, he was offered an opportunity to become a training officer, but instead he came back home and enrolled in the police academy. In five years on the job, he had done well to rise from patrolman to lieutenant, yet Lauren kept wishing hed quit and do something else.
As he was wolfing down his eggs and toast, in a hurry to get to the police station in time, his cell phone rang and it was his boss, Captain Pete Danko. Dont sign in. Meet me at the Chapel Grove Medical Research Institute.
Whats up?
Some hypodermic needles have been stolen.
Is that a big deal? Bill asked.
Dont ask questions, just get there.
Annoyed at not being filled in more, Bill grimaced as he plunked his cell phone on the kitchen table, and Lauren shot him a worried look. Not a murder or a bad accident, he told her consolingly. Only a petty theft. Ive got to meet up with Pete.
That man pushes you around too much, she said. I wish you could find another job.
Well, I dont like working with him, but if something bad happens, I want to be where Im needed.
Thats what scares me, Bill. Youd risk your life for other people, and I dont want to be a widow or a single mother.
This town is safer than most towns, he said, and swallowed the dregs of his coffee, which had gone cold.
She sighed and said, Text me later so Ill know youre okay.
Sure, he said. Dont worry.
He kissed her good-bye, then headed for the institute on a two-lane blacktop shimmering in the morning sun. The woods and green fields all around looked so peaceful and pleasant in the orange light of dawn, it was hard to believe that the plague was a constant threat. In the face of it, people still had to go on with their daily lives. In about an hour, Lauren would head for the Quik-Mart on the other side of town, where she worked for her father, along with Pete Dankos wife, Wanda. The extra money helped Bill and Lauren pay bills and set aside money for a bigger and nicer house for the baby to grow up in, and Wandas extra money helped the Dankos pay for their sons college tuition. It was a terrible thing in Bills eyes that the normal goals and aspirations of ordinary families were now tinged with dread.
He arrived at the Medical Research Institute just as Pete did, and they slid into side-by-side parking slots. He got out of his three-year-old Malibu and Pete got out of his shiny new Mercedes. Pete was fifteen years Bills senior, and in the army had been a major while Bill had been a sergeant; now he was the police captain, and Bill was his lieutenant. Pete had never shed his military bearing. His buzz cut was shaved to the bone around his ears, and his black suit, black shoes, and solid black tie might as well have been a uniform. He shot Bill a disparaging look for coming here in denim jeans, tan blazer, and open-necked yellow shirt, none of it against regulations, but not the way Pete thought his inferior officer should dress. As they walked toward the glass double doors of the gray concrete institutional building, he said sternly, Ill do the talking. I know the director.
