Spark of the Dead (Part 10)

Fish knew right away who was out there.

He grabbed the radio from Officer Perry and yelled into it, “Frick’n drive! Don’t give him a chance to attack!”

The trio of Laura, Ken, and Hillary walked at a quick pace avoiding the windows as they slinked from house to house.

Ken and the two girls traveled for two blocks before stopping against the back porch of an abandoned house.

Back over where they came from Magnis came bursting through the front door of the house he fell down into. For a short time he looked for them each way down the road before taking off the wrong direction. From watching him they noticed that he was now limping.

“I’m glad he has something to slow him down,” Hillary whispered. After she said it she covered her mouth feeling terrible about what she just said. “I’m sorry Laura. I didn’t mean it like I’m honestly glad he is hurt… I uh…”

“It’s ok Hillary. That thing isn’t my husband, it just looks like him.” She closed her eyes tightly. “If by chance we come across him again, the three of us should destroy him. It’s not right that those things are in control of him. I know he wouldn’t want to run around being controlled like that.”

“Should we keep calling the things… uh, things? Or should we give them a name?” Ken asked. “It just annoys The Ken continuing to call them,” he made quotations with his fingers, “those things.”
Hillary giggled and grinned; she smacked Ken in the arm playfully. “This isn’t a time to be funny Ken. Stop it.”

“The Ken is serious. It really bugs The Ken.”

Laura exhaled loudly. “Just call them Thingheads so we can keep moving, geez.”

He looked at Laura with a dull stare. “The Ken doesn’t approve nor is he impressed with your creativity Laura.”

“Why are we even having this conversation? Aren’t we running for our lives?”

That was enough encouragement for everyone to get serious again.

They looked over the porch railings down each part of the intersection in front of them.

“Looks clear,” Hillary stated.

“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling all of a sudden,” Laura said.

“Ok, let’s wait a moment. Unless you want to teleport to the other side and make sure it’s clear.”

Hillary put her hands through her blonde hair. “Ugh, I guess. Be right back,” with that she was gone.

Ken and Laura looked down the street and Hillary was crouched down scoping out the directions that they couldn’t see as well from their sides. With a nod she told them it was clear to cross.

Not having any cover out in the open they both figured it was fine to run and sprinted across the street to Hillary.

Halfway across Ken swore.

Laura looked to their left and a group of at least ten zombie people were walking down the opposite street. They each saw each other right away.

They scampered in the direction of Laura and Ken.

“Ken you’re a fast runner. Get them to chase you and circle back around. We’ll have the SUV running and you can jump in for a quick getaway.”

“Good plan,” with that he ran at the group of zombies shouting and waving his arms to draw attention to himself.

Once they were focused on him he turned around and ran off down the street all of the zombie people focused on chasing him while Laura ran over to Hillary.

“Give me back the radio!” Perry yelled at Fish, “Never ever take anything from an officer! Do anything like that again and I’ll dump you into the backseat handcuffed! Do you hear me?”

“You’re not understanding,” he tried to explain. “The guy at the cabin who got sick, attacked us all, and had worms come out of his head. The guy out there with glowing blue hands; I know it sounds crazy but I know I’m right.”

Perry swore and yelled into the radio. “Daniels! Don’t get out of the car. That man is a dangerous.”

Fish tried to see better out the windshield to confirm if it was indeed Yang or not. He saw the blue that he knew was his cold-fire but something was weird about him.

Either Daniels didn’t hear the warnings or was ignoring them.

Daniels got out of his squad car. Seeing this put Perry in a panic and she upholstered her pistol hastily getting out of the vehicle. Fish didn’t want to seem like a coward so he too got out of the cop car.

Perry yelled out to Daniels with her gun pointed in his direction. He was standing still with a glowing blue light illuminated around him from the figure in front of him.

Fish mentally prepared himself to fight.

Perry yelled again and Daniels stepped to the side confused, “What?” Him moving clearly revealed the guy in front of him. He wasn’t Yang, it was a young man with glasses who was carrying a pair of bug zappers.

Fish exhaled loudly feeling bad that he had gotten Officer Perry worked up for nothing.

Perry holstered her gun and looked over at Fish appearing angry. He figured he better stay out of things and be quiet.

“What are you doing out here?” Perry demanded.

“Well geez officers, I didn’t mean to create a scene. Here, let me introduce myself. The name is Dr. Derik Donaldson. Friends call me Triple D. I’m out here studying the insects in this region.”

“So why do you have zappers if you want to study them?” Daniels asked. “Isn’t that going to kill them?”

Dr. Donaldson held the source of the lights higher into the air. “They really aren’t bug zappers officer. They attract the insects and they fall into a special chamber completely alive.”

Perry walked forward to get a better look at his lights. “Why the hell were you in the middle of the road? That’s a dangerous thing to do,” she scolded.

He lowered his head embarrassed. “I apologize for that. I heard a swarm of bugs across the road and was trying to sneak up on them.”

“Kind of unusual behavior.” Perry said.

“Well… yes, the life of a scientist can be.”

Daniels looked back at Officer Perry and back at the doctor. “Well there are some rather interesting things going on tonight.” He hoisted his belt up, “Can’t say I’ve ever liked driving with anyone else in the car and I’m not about to start. Perry will escort you back home.”

“I don’t live around here but I’ve been staying at an inn at Shorewood.”

“We’re on our way there right now to investigate a series of strange events. If there is any truth to it I don’t suggest going back to—”

“What sort of strange events?” Donaldson asked suddenly. From the way he asked the question he was clearly nervous about something.

“It’s only speculation until we know for certain.” Perry pointed to Fish, “He claims that other strange events are going on in other places around here too. Says that people are being taken over by purplish worms by crawling inside their heads. We have a guy back at the station that came from Shorewood saying the same thing. Just before we left we had gotten confirmation from another officer that something isn’t right in the town. We aren’t a hundred percent on if things match up yet.”

“My God…” Donaldson said than muttered something quietly.

“Speak up, what did you just say?” Daniels interest had been peeked by something he said the others weren’t able to hear.

Derik looked down at the ground and sighed. “I lied about the insects.”

“You what?” Perry said getting up in his face. “What are you talking about?”

“Listen, I’m just an assistant and I don’t know everything about these… things but I’ll tell you what I do know.”

“Go on,” Daniels said putting his hands on his belt.

“Some other scientists and I were running some experiments on mosquitoes as weapons.”

“How could a mosquito be a weapon?” Fish asked finally feeling like he was ok to add to the conversation.

“We were trying to genetically alter them to be able to hold and inject deadly poisons. To be stealthy killers for situations that would be near impossible for humans.” While he talked he swayed the lights back and forth like he was resisting the urge to gesture wildly as he talked. “We didn’t have an exact buyer for our research yet but we were dealing with an underground type organization that was funding our work.”

“So what does that research have to do with the stuff going on around here?” Perry asked. “Besides it being the wrong sort of research in my opinion.”

“We needed a specific type of mosquito in order to successfully hold the poisons without it dying before it got to its target. That particular species of mosquito thrives naturally in these parts.”

Parry sat on the hood of her vehicle. “Ok, I think we are all following you so far, keep going.”

“Once we got that part down, we ran into the problem that they would only be able to bite skin. In order to make our work seem more attractive to a buyer we changed their DNA to create a type of steel needle that could penetrate any type of clothing or simple type armor. When we did this they weren’t able to hold the poisons anymore.”

“Pity,” Fish added.

“Shhh,” Perry scolded.

“Anyways, long story short we took the DNA from an assortment of things in an attempt to stabilize the qualities we wanted the insect to have. The results we got were… unexpected to say the least.”

“Let me guess, they got loose and you’re out here looking for them?” Perry leaned off the car and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. She shook him causing him to drop his lights. “Well we found them and they are killing people.”

“And taking over their bodies,” Fish added.

“Whatever!” She shook the doctor again, “What we need to do is get to Shorewood and see if we can contain this situation before it gets completely out of hand.”

“The good news is that the insects don’t have that long of a lifeline. The bad news is that somehow they managed the feat of being able to mass multiply similar to how a living cell does.”

“Only faster?” Fish asked.

Perry turned her head to yell at Fish again. “Will you stop interrupting!”

Fish was starting to feel bad that he was getting Officer Perry so upset with him.

“We have no idea how it mutated so much to become what it is. The fact that it can control a no longer living body is beyond the laws of nature that I’ve come to know.”

“That all still doesn’t explain why you are out here with these lights,” Daniels said. “And let go of him Perry, Jesus Christ.”

She let go of him and turned around to her car. In a fit of frustration she kicked the tire of her squad car.

“I… I thought I could find some of the escaped insects and sell them as whatever the heck they are.” He got quiet and looked at the astonished officers and Fish. “I know… I’m a terrible person.” He sent Daniels a very serious gaze. “I don’t know if you want to jail me or what, but if your town is in trouble you better be quick. There is no telling how much the insect has spread by now.”

“It’s a worm,” Fish said.

“Defiantly not a worm,” Derik said laughing. “That is just its larva stage. It started as a type of mosquito but that isn’t what its eggs turn into anymore. It injects its eggs into its victim through a secondary needle where they grow and feed off of the victims own flesh until they become larva.”

Perry walked back over to the group. “So how do you know all that if they just got loose?”

“More like loose again,” Derik rubbed his foot into the ground appearing uncomfortable.

Everyone was quiet until Fish spoke up again. “So what do they turn into as adults if they can do this much damage as teenager bugs?” 

“I don’t know… but God help us.”

Want to continue? Part 11