JUST A GLIMPSE -

 Many of you know I am writing my first novel. 

About a group of survivors trapped in jail. About zombies. Some of you may even recognize the jail that I've used as my model.

Here is one of the chapters, most likely the opening chapter. I'm not sure yet.

How long I'll keep this on my blog, I'm not sure of that either. I kind of want to keep it a secret until I'm closer to being finished, but I also wanted to share it with those who are interested in reading it.

I've been working on this for the better part of the past year and a half. I was at about 50,000 words but wasn't liking how my main character - Jules - was developing or the direction of the story, so I started a rewrite. One of my characters, Keenan, who was to have only a minimum role, has kind of taken over. This is one of his chapters. My rewrite is now at a little over 38,000 words. 

Constructive comments are most welcome, but remember, opinions are like assholes. We all have one, and most of them smell. So, choose your words wisely. :)

Enjoy.

DEPUTY KEENEN RUSSELL (First Floor) | 

Deputy Keenan Russell is exhausted. He slumps against the hallway wall with his head drooping and hands splayed on knees that won’t stop shaking. His eyes are closed, but he isn’t asleep.

After waking up to find himself alone, this brief reprieve is the first mercy the night has allowed. Gladly accepting whatever quiet moment he can get, he sits down, gathers his thoughts, and grieves for those corralled in the holding cell across from him. Not all his coworkers are there, though, because some he couldn’t find, some he let go, and others he had to kill.

He tries to count them, to sort the missing from the alive but dead, but their names slip through his mind like water. He knows that he knows them, but he can’t remember. He tries to imagine them as they were before, but their faces remain blurry and blank.

His thoughts are disintegrating quicker than he expected.

He squeezes his eyes shut, willing the faces of his coworkers to surface, but everything inside him is vanishing. He’s changing so fast that even the guilt and grace that once drove him have begun to feel distant. Soon, there will be nothing left of him except for the echoes of the terrible choices he’s made and the bitter shame that will forever follow his family, but he won’t remember any of this.

His coworkers, what’s left of them, anyway, hurl themselves against the glass of the holding cell. The glass shudders with every impact. Their hands smear greasy pus from the popping blisters on their rotting skin across the window’s surface, and their exhales fog the pane in frenzied, savage bursts.

They snarl.

They moan.

They sound nothing like the men and women he once laughed with within the walls of this place, the place he’s worked for the past ten years. They’ve become something else. Something feral and empty, driven by instincts he can’t understand, but is slowly beginning to. Their eyes, wild and black, look at him as if he’s prey. Their friendship and camaraderie are long dead, and whatever does exist is buried too deep within their infected souls.

This all could have been avoided if Keenan had only told Captain Beringer, “No.”

The glass trembles again, but Keean is not too concerned with them breaking through. The glass is double-paned and reinforced, and the metal door is locked. But he is worried about his wife waiting at home.

Tears cling briefly to his long lashes before dripping to the floor.

Today is his and Michelle’s 30^th wedding anniversary.

His children, Brandon and Zahra – grown, thriving, and the pride of his life – were buzzing with plans for their anniversary party. His wife had all but begged him to call in sick so they could steal a quiet evening together before the big celebration, but he couldn’t.

The only times he ever called out were when he was really sick and had to remain housebound, and even then, he’d spend the afternoon insisting he was fine. And tonight, especially, his calling in sick would have drawn the attention of those he blames for what’s happening. The men in Army uniforms would have shown up at his house, interrogated him in front of his family, perhaps even interrogated his wife, and he didn’t want his family to know what he’d agreed to do and what he’d already done.

So, like always, he kissed his wife goodbye at the door, but since it was their anniversary, he promised to make her blueberry pancakes for breakfast, her favorite, when he got home. Something special just for the two of them.

The sun won’t rise for several more hours, but the time has slipped past midnight, so technically, it’s their anniversary. Not that it matters, though. He won’t be home to celebrate it. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

Michelle will wake and shuffle into the kitchen expecting coffee and her pancakes, or at least the banging of pans and plates as Keenan prepares them, but instead, she’ll find the kitchen quiet. Standing there in her pink robe and slippers, she’ll listen for the sound of his car in the drive or his keys in the door. She’ll peek out the window, and when she doesn’t see him, she’ll wonder what could have delayed him on a day he never once forgot.

Keenan imagines first her confusion and then, as time passes, her fear. Sadly, there’s nothing – absolutely nothing – he can do to stop any of it.

When he doesn’t come home, Michelle will sit at her regular place at the table, clutching her cellphone so tight her hand cramps. Staring at the screen, her face lit up by its blueish hue, she prays for – no, she demands! – a text or call from him, but there will be nothing of the kind.

She’ll convince herself that Keenan’s just late, that sometimes he doesn’t get off shift on time, but as time drags on, she won’t be able to deny that the knot in her stomach is anything other than fear. She’ll call him. Once. Twice. Thirty times. Each voicemail becoming more frantic, and her voice shaking despite her effort to sound calm.

But what Michelle doesn’t know is that both cell and landline service to the jail have been disconnected by the men monitoring him from inside the tents set up in the parking lot. Her messages and calls have disappeared into the unheard, unseen black hole of technology, and Keenan will never get them. He’ll never hear the way her breath catches with concern, or the happy anniversary she tries to squeeze in before her voice cracks. He’ll never hear her last message at all – “I love you, Kee. I need you to be okay.”

But Keenan knows his wife.

When her calls go unanswered, she’ll wait impatiently, but not for long. She’ll come to the jail searching for him, and Keenan has no idea what’s happening outside, but whatever it is, he knows it isn’t good. He’s afraid for his wife, afraid of what she’ll find when she finally does arrive, and afraid of what the Army men will do with her when they learn she’s come for him.

He wishes he had called in sick, not just for today, but for all the days – for his son’s football games, his daughter’s theater productions, Christmases, Thanksgivings, birthdays, and every single holiday and precious moment he’d waved aside with the same tired excuse: I have to work.

Back then, he told himself the sacrifice was a necessity for his family’s benefit. A father providing for his children. It’s what his father did, and what his grandfather did before that, but now Keenan realizes that what his family wanted and needed from him all these years wasn’t his money, but his time.

Instead of giving it to them, he gave it to his job.

And for what?

Nothing.

Time – such a clever and cruel thief of life. A person always squanders it when he has it, and wishes for more of it when it runs out, and sadly, Keenan is no different. It’s too late for him, however, because soon he will die.

Click. Click.

Keenan sighs, wipes the tears from his eyes, and pushes himself unsteadily to his feet.

Another one is coming.

When the things in the holding cell see him move, they roar as one and rush toward the window. They crash against the glass and each other, comically bouncing and spinning around the cell like pinballs in a machine, but there is nothing humorous about them or about what’s happening.

He doesn’t know how or why they became what they have, but they were once good people with families, kids, and grandkids, just like him. And who knows? Maybe somewhere deep in their unaffected psyche, his friends might still recognize him, but watching them now, he doesn’t think there is anything left of the old them, and that breaks his heart.

Underneath the bandages on Keenan’s hand, his knuckles are twice their normal size, and his gold wedding band cuts painfully into his finger. His entire hand tingles and burns, and the gauze wrapped around it is filthy and rank. He peels it off, and the medical tape rips away his dying skin. The teeth marks in the fleshy part between his thumb and forefinger are red and pustulous. The infection is ripe, and storms unheeded through his bloodstream.

Hours earlier, with the pretense of hanging out, but really observing the deputy working the control tower position in one of the housing modules, Keenan had drifted off to sleep. He rarely works night shift and isn’t used to being awake at such a late hour. For a moment – only five minutes, he told himself – he shut his eyes, but the nightmare came fast, and in it, everyone was dead.

Their corpses were piled ten bodies high and set ablaze. The acrid smell of gasoline burned his nostrils, and searing white-hot flames spiraled skyward. Heavy smoke blotted out the twinkling nighttime stars, and all he could see were the faces of his friends and coworkers melting away. But just as quickly as his dream came, it left him. He awoke screaming and thrashing in his chair to find the other deputy kneeling next to him, chewing on his hand.

That was the first man Keenan had ever killed. But there have been many more since.

A greasy, stank liquid oozes from the bite marks, and he wipes the wetness on his already-soiled pant leg. He pulls another bandage from his pocket, tears it open with his teeth, and presses it to the wound. He wonders how long it will take for him to turn, and if it will be as quick and painless as it is in the movies, but there is no time – time, there’s that word again – to worry about that now.

He has work to do.

He pulls his baton from the ring on his duty belt. His fingers are stiff, and he forces them to curl around the handle. The wooden baton is battered, stained, and clumps of hair stick in the cracks, but it has been a useful tool. He’s glad he’s kept it and never replaced it with the expandable aluminum batons that the younger deputies favor. He doubts those would have held up for as long as this one has or would have done as complete a job.

He swings the baton back and forth, jabs it in front of him, and slices it down through the empty air. He can’t hold it as firmly as he would like, but he will have to try. 

The clicking grows louder, and one of his coworkers lurches around the corner. It’s a woman, and he frowns because it makes what he must do that much harder.

As she staggers closer, Keenan searches her face for any sign of humanity left within her, but there is none. The clicking from her jaw opening and closing is relentless; each sharp crack is a reminder of what she has become because of him.

She sees him, and her eyes flash gold. Each time he finds one of his coworkers, he hopes it will be alive and normal, but few of them have. She has turned completely, and the abnormal sparkle of her eyes tells him she is different from the others and possesses exceptional strength.

Keenan puffs out air between his pursed lips and slides his baton back into its place on his belt. He reaches instead for his taser. Using his thumb, he toggles the switch to the ‘on’ position and waits until the little green light blinks. It’s charged and ready. He lets her take a few more staggering steps, then aims and pulls the trigger.

The cartridge ejects with a loud pop. The probes blast forward and penetrate her uniform. It’s a well-placed shot. The darts stick in her flesh, one in her paunchy stomach and the other just above her left breast. A sizzling 1,000-volt current courses through her body. She stiffens and tips over, temporarily incapacitated.

Her body straightens and convulses once more as he zaps her with another five-second round. He releases the spent cartridge, and it drops to the floor. He holsters the taser and pulls out his baton again. He runs his hand along its pitted shaft – How many more times must I use you? he wonders – and plucks away a strand of long blond hair belonging to one of the nurses who worked on the second floor.

He gazes down at his coworker. She has recovered from the jolt, and her eyes bore into him, but there is still no recognition. Her lips peel back, revealing eager, black teeth. The sound gurgling up her throat and out of her mouth is not human. It’s primordial.

Behind the woman, high on the wall, a small, black dome fits snugly in the corner where the ceiling and the walls meet. A red light from the camera inside winks at Keenan as it records his every move.

“I am a man laden with the guilt of human blood,” Keenan screams at the camera, “and I will be a fugitive until my death!” Then, softer, to the woman lying at his feet, he whispers, “Please forgive me, Deputy Madrigal.”

She sits up with a jerking stiffness. Her eyes lock onto his just as his baton crashes down with a sickening thud atop the crown of her brown, curly-haired head. She collapses back onto the floor, her limbs twitch, and she claws at the air in unnatural spasms.

A low hum vibrates from her throat, like the buzzing of a million insects, “Keenan…” 

His heart slams against his ribs as his friend’s honey-colored, tear-filled eyes gaze up at him. He hesitates with the baton frozen in mid-air. The old her is there. He leans closer, searching her face. “Maddy?”

Her glistening eyes flick from him to those in the holding cell, then back to him again. They widen in fright, then narrow into madness, and go a smoldering golden black. She is back to being the inhuman thing that she was. She lunges, snapping and snarling, with the intent to rip the skin from Keenan’s bones and feed upon his organs.

He stumbles backwards, raises his baton higher, and bashes her skull over and over until her diseased brain spills out onto the floor, and her convulsing body lies still.

Keenan looks up and points a swollen finger at the black dome and blinking light. “This is your fault,” he accuses the men observing him, and then shatters the camera with his bloody baton.

A camera monitor in one of the tents outside blinks and goes dark. The silence that follows tells the two men watching Keenan that this nightmare is far from over.