Dead Faith (Book 1): Dead Faith Read online

  Dead Faith

  Chadwick Vee

  Copyright © 2020 Chadwick Vee

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living, dead or living dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by: Chadwick Vee

  This book is dedicated to my wife, son, & daughter. You will always be my number one zombie apocalypse survival team.

  Prelude

  Time: Tomorrow night, 11:59 P.M.

  Location: Covington, Kentucky

  The darkness of the underground labyrinth is barely broken by the light thrown off by the five torches sitting in their sconces on the wall. The room itself was cut out of the living rock long ago and is damp and cold due to being only yards away from the mighty Ohio River and just inches above water level. Many of the houses in this old and upper-class neighborhood are known for their hidden passages and tunnels that were part of the Underground Railroad. But some of the passages have been in existence long before the abolition of slavery and had a much more nefarious purpose that had nothing to do with freedom or helping one's fellow man.

  While thousands had gathered across the river in Cincinnati to watch the home team take-on their big rival from Cleveland, 13 men had gathered in the darkness of the cavern for their own nefarious reasons. Despite the fact that they were one person short, they had begun an ancient ritual to bring their dead leader back to life. As always with this group, there had been arguments at the beginning, their leader had been dead for months, and his decaying body lying on the floor between them didn't seem like it could ever be whole again. Many were nervous that one of their members had not shown up, but it had finally been decided that, for the task at hand, 13 was a good number. The appropriate sacrifices were made, the right amount of self-flagellation performed. And now, at one minute until midnight, the 13 men were chanting in unison in a language that hadn't been heard in over two thousand years. Their words demanded the veil between life and death be torn asunder so their leader could come back to them.

  Chapter 1.

  Emergency Room

  Saint Booth Hospital, Florence Kentucky

  "I'm telling you, Pastor, if they don't come back soon I'm just going to go home. I'm pretty sure my ankle is just sprained." Jon said halfheartedly.

  Being as Jon was a retired NFL linebacker, his Pastor figured that Jon probably knew if his ankle was broke or not. But over an hour ago they had been called back into the ER and put in one of those triage rooms made by pulling the curtains closed on three sides. The nurse had taken his blood pressure and temperature and said someone would be with them in a minute, but no one had shown up yet.

  "Still, broke or not, that's what you get for tackling the pastor."

  Both of them laughed for the umpteenth time that night at the pastor's joke. The Church's annual football game was a long-standing tradition, and it was also a tradition the music pastor and the senior pastor would quarterback opposing teams. It was a bragging right for anyone that managed to sack either pastor.

  Wiping the tear of laughter from his eye, Pastor Gabriel, or Gabe as he was known to friends and family, became suddenly serious. "Well, actually, I'm glad we have a moment Jon, we've been friends for a long time."

  Jon glanced up, a little surprised at the change in tone from his long-time friend and pastor.

  "Shelly left me last week. That's the real reason she hasn't been at Church the past couple weekends."

  Jon was stunned. "Oh, man, I'm so sorry to hear that."

  "I don't know what I'm gonna do Jon." Pastor Gabe paused as he considered whether he should say anything else. "I feel like I am just going through the motions at work… Like I've lost my faith.". Gabe stopped and looked at Jon, who wore a look of surprise on his face. Gabe knew it wasn’t a look of judgment, but more of a deer in the headlights look. "I'm sorry to just spring this on you, but I just don't see how I can spend my life dedicated to God, and my wife would leave me…" Gabe looked away from Jon before finishing his thought, "… for another man."

  "Gabe, man, I don't know what to say." Jon finally responded with sympathy and kindness in his voice.

  "I'm thinking about asking the Church board for a sabbatical. I don't know. Maybe I'll just quit and get a real job."

  "Gabe, you have a real job, a lot of us look up to you, and a lot of people count on you."

  Pastor Gabe finally looked back over at Jon with a tight-lipped smile, nodded his head, and abruptly changed the topic.

  "Geez, it’s almost midnight. I think those ambulances that came in a little while ago were probably from a pretty serious accident." Gabe got up from his seat. "It looked like a lot of doctors and nurses met the ambulances when they came in. Let me go see if I can find out how much longer it’s going to be."

  Pushing the curtain aside, Gabe headed down the hall. As he approached the nurse's station he hoped to see a familiar face. He had visited church members at Saint Booth Hospital numerous times, and for a while, when one of the members, who just happened to be a big tither, had developed lung cancer, he had become a pretty regular visitor and had gotten to know many of the nurses and staff. But Pastor Gabe was surprised to see no one behind the counter. Looking around, he saw several people down the hall going in and out of a couple of the rooms at almost a jog. They looked gravely serious coming and going, carrying different instruments with them that Gabe didn't recognize.

  Being only human, Gabe wondered in that direction.

  As he got near the end of the hall, he heard a male voice declare, "That's it, stop all attempts, call it, 11:59 pm". Pastor Gabe knew what that meant, and suddenly he had mixed emotions, he was a man of God, and even though he doubted his vocation, he wished there was something he could do to help, but being protestant he didn't even follow the tradition of offering last rights. But still, he felt the need to move closer and see what was happening as a silent prayer sprung to mind.

  Approaching, he saw the curtains between two of the rooms were open, making one large room. The front curtain was only partially pulled to allow free access to the hallway. Standing where he could see in, it was apparent to Gabe that the person on the table to the left was the one that had ‘coded,' as they said on the TV hospital dramas. There was blood all over the patient, which Gabe assumed was from whatever accident had sent him to the hospital, and he was bare-chested with miscellaneous wires still attached to him.

  The focus now seemed to be on the person on the table to the right who was obviously in bad shape as well. The room was full of nurses and doctors all busily doing things to the patient or the machines attached to him.

  And that's when it happened; Gabe saw something that at first he couldn't believe. The accident victim on the left gave a complete body shudder. Gabe immediately thought it must have been some kind of normal dead person thing, random electric pulses going through the brain or some such. But then he saw the guys hand start to reach up and over towards one of the medical people working on the other guy.

  "Hey, he's, he's moving, he's still alive!" Gabe finally blurted out.

  Everyone in the room immediately turned to look at Gabe, and then their eyes followed his gaze to the other table. The closest person, who Gabe assumed was a doctor, immediately grabbed the hand that was reaching towards him and started feeling for a pulse.

  "What the crap," The Doctor blurted out, "These fricking machines aren't working." He punct
uated his statement by giving the closest machine a small punch.

  The guy on the bed was starting to lean-up while pulling the doctor closer to him.

  "No, save your strength buddy, don't try to speak." But the doctor began to lean downward, turning his ear towards his patient so he could hear any whisper that he might get out.

  With sudden ferocity, the patient pulled the doctor the final few inches towards him, and Gabe was shocked to hear the doctor let out a terrible scream of shock and pain. The doctor yanked himself upright and Gabe could see a deep bite mark on the doctor’s neck as blood began gushing down his chest and spurting into the air.

  The doctor never made another sound, but several of the other people in the room, including Gabe, cried out in initial shock and disbelief. The medical staff immediately recovered from their surprise and reacted as a strong and professional team of ER veterans. Several turned to restrain the patient, while a nurse grabbed the doctor and began to apply pressure to the wound.

  Gabe saw that the doctor was about to go down, so he took a few steps forward and grabbed him from behind and helped the nurse lower him to the ground. The nurse stood up and grabbed a handful of fresh gauze and kneeled back down over Gabe and the doctor and tried to stop the bleeding.

  “Hey, we need some more help down here," Gabe called out frustrated that no one else was helping him and the nurse with what was clearly a critically wounded doctor. "HEY! Your friends need some help here."

  When no one responded to him, he looked up. Several people were trying to restrain the patient, but he was fighting back. Gabe’s eyes jumped from one nurse to another as they struggled to pin the man down. Most of them were now dripping blood where they too had been bitten. Another nurse grabbed the phone from the wall and, Gabe could hear her as she called for "Dr. Armstrong" to get to the E.R. Stat. Gabe knew from his previous visits to the hospital that Dr. Armstrong was code for the hospital’s security.

  Suddenly he saw the patient on the other table, who no one was helping, reach out and grab the nurse on the phone. He yanked her on the bed with him. Gabe couldn't see the top side of the bed from his position on the floor, but the nurse immediately started screaming.

  The nurse helping him with the doctor on the floor, grabbed Gabe's hand and pressed it against the wad of gauze on the doctor's throat, "Hold the pressure on the wound!" She got up and tried to yank the phone nurse away from the second patient.

  Gabe couldn't believe what was going on. Just a minute ago, he was worried about the direction of his life and faith, and now he was kneeling on the floor trying to save the life of a doctor.

  But before Gabe could give that much thought, he realized the doctor was beginning to go limp in his hands. The doctor had been pushing against Gabe's hand over the wound and gasping for breath, but now his hand was losing its grip, and his breath was growing shallow.

  "It’s going to be alright Doc. You’re in a hospital. What better place to get hurt. Right?” The Doctor’s eyes fluttered and then shut. “Hey, he is going unconscious, someone me!" Gabe panicked "I think I'm losing him here."

  The doctor's hand dropped away from his neck and Gabe couldn't hear him breathing. He couldn't believe that someone was dying in his hands. He heard another one of the doctors or nurses hit the ground beside him but he didn't look away from the doctor in his arms.

  Gabe had no idea what to do. Somehow, surrounded by so many, he was all alone.

  Suddenly the doctor's eyes snapped back open.

  "Oh, thank God." Gabe said in relief. "You scared the sin out of me."

  The doctor's hand came back up to his throat, but instead of helping apply pressure, he pulled on Gabe's hand. Gabe thought the doctor was in shock as he pulled and pulled on Gabe’s hand until he got it a few inches off of the wound. The man’s teeth snapped just as Gabe got his hand back under the man’s chin and on the wound. While the doctor continued to struggle with Gabe’s hand, he began struggling to get up. A Jolt of horrifying suspicion shot up Gabe’s spine. For a second Gabe's mind didn't want to admit it, but it was clear that the doctor, just as the other patients had turned crazy and attacked, was now trying to bite him.

  "I need some help, these guys are crazy!!"

  But it was too late. Suddenly the doctor managed to push himself into a sitting position and get leverage on Gabe. As the doctor began to lean over him, Gabe tried to get up and get away. With all the blood on his hands and the floor, he couldn't get any traction. The doctor leaned into him and opened his mouth to bite.

  At first Gabe didn't see what happened, the doctor's face was over him, ready to bite, and then suddenly it went away in a blur. Looking up he saw Jon standing there in the doorway with a crutch in his hand. He glanced to his side and saw the doctor sprawled beside him but already trying to get back up.

  Back peddling towards the hallway Gabe managed to spit out a question.

  "Did... did you just hit that doctor with your crutch?"

  "Hard," Jon answered matter of factly. "What the heck is going on…" before Jon could finish saying anything else, he reared back with his crutch to take another swing.

  Already on the move, Pastor Gabe instinctively rolled away from all the people and action next to him. When he came up onto all fours he saw Jon trying to beat the doctor off of one of the nurse’s legs, the doctor was sinking his teeth into her calf. He -had a grip that would make a pit bull proud. It was a losing battle as the other person who had fallen to the ground just moments earlier, suddenly set up and took a bite out of the nurse’s other leg.

  As Gabe was regaining his feet, he was relieved to see two guards running up with their billy clubs drawn. They ripped the curtains back as they entered the area, ready to handle any unruly or drunk patients and were stopped by what they saw, a man beating a doctor with a crutch. Under normal circumstances that would be the person they would try to stop, but the doctor was chewing on one of the nurses’ leg. It appeared she was trying to pull someone off the patient because the patient was biting that person. The med-tech was on the floor, joining the doctor who was snacking on the nurse, and that was just on one bed. The guards had never seen anything like it in their lives and weren't sure what to do.

  Finally, without speaking a word, both of them started swinging their clubs at anyone that was biting.

  Pastor Gabe began to back away down the hall. He didn’t think of himself as a coward, but he just didn't know what he could do. Anyways, Gabe reasoned, Jon was as big as you would expect a linebacker to be and the two security guards were both big guys, it didn't leave much room for Gabe in the room. One of the guards was a tall white guy with tattoos peeking out from both his sleeves and his shirt collar. He looked like he would be just as comfortable as a bouncer at a club as a security guard. The other guard was black, of average height, and looked like, even now into his late fifties, he was a regular at the free weight section of the gym.

  As Gabe moved away, one of the guards jerked a nurse off one of the others that she was attacking. He tossed her into the hallway where she hit the floor hard. Gabe heard something crack. She stood up, showing no sign of pain and started back into the room, but stopped when she caught sight of Gabe in the hallway.

  Gabe was stunned by the look of intensity and desperation on her face. He realized she had been infected by whatever was wrong with the patients and he was now the center of her attention.

  She started towards him at a fast walk, swaying slightly like a drunk trying to walk a straight line. Gabe looked around for something to hit her with, but before he could find anything, she was distracted by someone in one of the curtain rooms she was passing. She abruptly turned and went into the room. Gabe immediately heard screaming.

  A thunderous noise to Gabe's left made him jump and then drop to the floor in a duck and cover position. It sounded like a bomb had gone off, but when he raised his head and looked towards where the noise had come from, he could see an ambulance had slammed into the ER waiting room. It had come in at an
angle with the front and passenger side of the ambulance now completely in the ER waiting room. Gabe could see blood covering the windows from the inside. The van had plowed right over the waiting patients and chairs. Many people now laid around injured while others had been crushed to death instantly. As Gabe looked on he saw people that had no business being conscious, much less actively moving around, reaching out toward those near them. Once again the biting began.

  Gabe thought the two victims that came in earlier had some virus or disease, like some mutated rabies, but now everyone who died, seemed to get back up and attack others.

  "Gabe!"

  Hearing his name snapped him out of his stupor of confusion and disbelief.

  "Wha…" Gabe started as he turned towards Jon's voice.

  Jon and one of the security guards were backing towards Gabe while keeping several doctors, nurses, and patients at bay with their crutch and Billy club. Jon was limping very badly now, but the adrenaline was keeping him going. And despite the hits that were hard enough to break their bones, the crowd kept coming, arms outstretched, trying to grab hold of either of them. Gabe did not recognize some of the people who were attacking from the first room and saw no sign of the white security guard.

  "We need to get out of here!" The security guard said as he began to angle across the hall towards the waiting room

  "We can't get out through there; it’s just as bad…" Gabe yelled.

  "Okay, go to the end of the hall and around the corner, there are elevators." The guard yelled over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off the advancing mob of people who should be dead.

  Gabe ran down the hall and carefully peered around the corner, there was no one there and he could see the elevators just ten feet away. He ran down the hall and hit both the up and the down button.

  He ran back to the corner and yelled, "Come on, it's clear!"