Dead Tide Surge Read online

  A PERMUTED PRESS book

  Published at Smashwords

  ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-2-840

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-2-857

  Dead Tide Surge copyright © 2014

  by Stephen A. North

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Roy Migabon

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Table of Contents

  In Memory Of…

  Prologue

  1. Mathers

  2. Clive

  3. Johnny

  4. Trish

  5. Jacobs

  6. Julie

  7. Daric

  8. Talaski

  9. Ray

  10. Foster

  11. Natalie

  12. Janicea

  13. Booth

  14. Trish

  15. Jacobs

  16. Julie

  17. Daric

  18. Talaski

  19. Bronte

  20. Johnny

  21. Clive

  22. Natalie

  23. Booth

  24. Janicea

  25. Jacobs

  26. Julie

  27. Daric

  28. Keller

  29. Bronte

  30. Kincaid

  31. Johnny

  32. Clive

  33. Natalie

  34. Tracks

  35. Booth

  36. Mills

  37. Trish

  38. Jacobs

  39. Julie

  40. Janicea

  41. Keller

  42. Johnny

  43. Clive

  44. Booth

  45. Talaski

  46. Jacobs

  47. Foster

  48. Julie

  49. Janicea

  50. Natalie

  51. Johnny

  52. Clive

  53. Booth

  54. Talaski

  55. Trish

  56. Jacobs

  57. Kincaid

  58. Foster

  59. Julie

  60. Bronte

  61. Johnny

  62. Clive

  63. Lassiter

  64. Talaski

  65. Jacobs

  66. Kincaid

  67. Julie / Booth

  68. Bronte Daric Janicea

  69. Johnny

  70. Clive

  71. Hicks

  72. Julie

  73. Sid

  74. Keller

  75. Trish

  76. Kincaid

  77. Lassiter

  78. Bronte

  79. Natalie

  80. Johnny

  81. Clive

  82. Hicks

  83. Keller / Amy

  84. Jacobs

  85. Bronte / Kincaid

  86. Natalie

  87. Clive

  88. Julie / Lassiter / Booth

  89. Jacobs / Natalie / Troy

  90. Trish / Mills Keller Amy / Ben

  91. Bronte / Janicea Daric Beth

  92. Johnny Marcel Anna / Ike

  93. Clive

  94. Hicks

  In Memory Of…

  Keith Laumer, who spent two hours of his life on the phone talking to a much younger version of me when I cold called him one afternoon almost thirty years ago; and my uncle, Malcolm Wells, who bled all over two of my short stories with red ink.

  Prologue

  He waited with the patience of someone who has no hope or expectations.

  Something stirred in the night, beyond his vision. He felt it evolving, growing. He sensed the coming storm; the hairs on his forearms stood on end. Dread circled at the edge of his awareness like a carrion bird.

  While he waited, he stood on the balcony and stared out over the white-capped waves of Tampa Bay. In the background a radio played, and a singer asked, “Where have you been all my life?”

  Somewhere out there—in the inky darkness across the black expanse of open water—was Tampa. Off to the left, he had a good view of the inverted pyramid shape of one of the city of St. Petersburg’s most iconic landmarks: The Pier, a five-story building and its lighted causeway approach.

  Finally, he heard the bathroom door open and turned around.

  In the dim light of a flickering candle, he watched her undo the buttons of her beige knee-length dress, one by one. The dress slid to the terrazzo floor and pooled at her feet. She stepped carefully toward him, naked except for a pair of black stiletto heels.

  Gilbert Kincaid was a tall, heavily built, brown-haired man with a jowl and an expanding waist. His pressed gray suit was cut well, and emphasized his broad shoulders while minimizing his gut.

  She was a tiny thing, but strong. Beautiful. Foreign. A woman like her from the States would never notice him. She had a pixie’s face: a small pert nose and a rosebud mouth. Her eyes were almond-shaped, and her hair a rich mahogany brown that fell past her naked shoulders in a lustrous wave. She was tan all over, with small, firm breasts, wide hips, and a nice ass. She wouldn’t look at him, and he thought it gave her a demure, sexy demeanor. Hadn’t said a word since entering the room either. She seemed to understand English though, when he said, “Come here.”

  He waited impatiently as she knelt at his feet and removed his shoes then pulled his socks off. Felt her fingers behind his knees, tugging him forward. He ran his fingers through her hair, and even rubbed her head with some affection as she reached for his zipper and pushed him back on the bed.

  Lightning flickered, visible through the open window, and just like that it was raining again and almost pitch-black outside. Her fingers gave him a brief teasing squeeze, and then her mouth covered his. Thunder rumbled, distant and ominous. She kissed his chest, reached for and grasped his right wrist. He grinned when he felt her slide a loop of rope around his wrist and pull it tight.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, voice full of laughter.

  She didn’t answer, but grabbed his left wrist and tied it down also.

  “Hey…can I trust you?” he asked, and wondered whether he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. She wasn’t the first woman he’d picked up in a bar on the way home, but she did represent his first venture, or first overture, toward his former life in which he had indulged.

  Her eyes met his at last. She smiled. In perfect, unaccented English she said, “No, you can’t trust me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s like this,” she said, and paused as someone opened the bedroom door. Two men entered. One wore a lab coat, gloves, a mask, and held a syringe. The second was an immense bald man wearing sunglasses, boots, old olive drab fatigues, and a holstered pistol.

  The syringe was all he could focus on. This had to be a nightmare.

  “Do you remember a little incident a few months back, Senor Kincaid?” The naked woman asked.

  Kincaid didn’t answer. She probably knew everything. He felt somewhat surprised that it had taken this long for word to get out.

  He knew exactly what she was referring to.

  He remembered leaning against a door, trying to catch his breath and fighting a panic attack. Reliving the nightmare was too easy, and he slipped right back into it. He recalled the klaxons and the red strobe lights were making him more than a little crazy. He remembered thinking: If only someone would turn them off, as he finished putting on the protective mask. He’d gripped the hypodermic syringe while staring at the three-tiered bank of twenty four-foot monitor screens before
him. Each monitor screen was currently showing shifting scenes of the breached facility. And the bodies. Dead people—hundreds of bodies littered the grounds—both inside and out.

  So far, none were moving.

  He hesitated with the injection. All he had to do was jam it in his thigh, but he had always been afraid of needles. Worse yet, he had thick skin. No sign of veins anywhere on him except on his feet and at his wrists.

  On camera seven he saw soldiers in bio-hazard suits at the perimeter fence, standing outside the locked down gate, but for the moment, the only things moving were tree branches swaying in the wind and, visible on the second tier, Camera Four.

  The plume, nearly invisible to the human eye, was carried on the breeze. No escaping it: an airborne, motive virus.

  God only knew whether the disaster was recoverable.

  The end of the world— all it had taken was one prick. Well, and the wind.

  The prick was the bureaucrat, Randy Francis, the guy three monitors over from the left. He had a face like a puffer fish—pale, puckered lips, flushed cheeks, with the skin tightened and tensed. The flush was the only color in his face. His crew-cut hair was gray and he radiated cold, too, like a tiled floor on a wintry day. No warmth in that thin-lipped smile or in his faded blue eyes.

  Even now, when nothing mattered anymore, Francis droned on.

  “I want to know why you didn’t hold people accountable, Kincaid. The facts were all there, and you failed to react. The president has authorized the No Live order for a fifty-mile radius. You included.”

  He wondered how the inhabitants of this South American country would feel about that.

  That isn’t close to far enough. Maybe nothing was.

  Kincaid lowered his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. He wanted to protest his innocence, but there was no point. The guy’s mind was made up.

  My life is over. I’m going to be blamed for this, even though I warned them. Why bother with an injection?

  The troubling thing was that he hadn’t had a life for a long time anyway. This project had been everything. His marriage was all but over. His wife, Jeanette, was cheating on him, and that wasn’t okay. He still didn’t know what to do about that. All he had was the kids, Ray and Cora, and they were adults now.

  “Anything to say for yourself?” Francis asked.

  Kincaid gave an elaborate shrug.

  You may think our little conversation is over, but it isn’t.

  He looked up at the monitor, and at the businessman sitting somewhere in a skyscraper in Tampa. The guy finished off a powdered donut, then took a casual sip of coffee.

  “You won’t outlive me for long, Mr. Francis. Not long at all.”

  Francis smiled faintly. “Don’t count on that, Kincaid.”

  Kincaid rolled up his shirtsleeve and readied the shot. The long needle reminded him of a lance.

  “What is that you have there?” Francis asked.

  Kincaid didn’t answer, but he continued to stare at the syringe.

  Should have drunk more water. Brings the veins right to the surface. The nurse who took his blood sample every four months always told him to drink a lot of water.

  “Is that an antidote, Kincaid?”

  Kincaid found a vein, feeling the faint pulse of blood in the crook of his left arm. Nausea nearly overwhelmed him as he slid the needle in and injected himself.

  “So what if it is, Francis? I’m dead, right?”

  In the uppermost monitor on the right, soldiers in black uniforms were rappelling out of a helicopter.

  “Is it the antidote? Tell me now, and I’ll let you live.”

  Kincaid couldn’t hold back, and found himself shouting, “Too bad about all those workers and, ultimately, all the people of South America, eh, Francis? They aren’t going to live! This place is about to become the Land of the Dead. Your fault, not mine! Your fault!”

  Francis showed him his teeth in what he probably thought was a smile.

  Kincaid smiled right back and whispered, “We’re all in this big fishbowl together. The wind’s blowing, motherfucker, and Tampa isn’t far enough away. No place is.”

  Francis was absolutely still, his smile long gone.

  “I will spare you and your family, Kincaid, but I want that antidote,” he said.

  Kincaid closed his eyes, and thought it over. “Put me on the next flight out, and you have a deal.”

  “Smart man,” Francis said.

  When Kincaid opened his eyes again, he was looking into the barrel of an assault rifle held by one of the soldiers in bio-gear.

  Privately, he agreed. He was pretty sure he’d never make it out of the country alive. There was really only one choice.

  Now here he was, tied down, and about to be injected with God-knew what. He thought about wheels within wheels and how he’d ended up in this woman’s room and the long chain of events that had to occur to get him here.

  The woman smiled at him and pressed the needle against and into his skin, then depressed the plunger. For a moment, the pain was little more than a stinging sensation, but it quickly blossomed into something so large and encompassing that he couldn’t get his mind around it.

  One thing he was sure of was that they weren’t giving him another antidote.

  “You scared?” the big bald guy with the gun on his hip asked.

  “No, should I be?” Kincaid asked, trying to bluff it out.

  The man took his sunglasses off, revealing the eyes of a remorseless killer. “I’d be scared if I were you,” he answered. “You have no idea what’s running through your veins now.”

  “And so,” Kincaid replied, “I have lost control of the situation. That ends any lingering worry. Why should I worry about things that are beyond my control? Also wrecks any leverage you have over me.”

  The masked guy in the lab coat spoke up. “You’ll start to exhibit symptoms that’ll be disturbing within days. Use this phone if you change your mind before it’s too late. There’s only one number in the memory. I recommend you call it soon.” He held the phone out to Kincaid.

  Kincaid shrugged. “My hands are still tied.”

  The bald man smiled at him. “We—that is, Mr. Francis and I— know where your children are, Kincaid. We’ve given you two solid reasons to do as we say. You can still save yourself and your children. You have roughly two days. Think hard. People are dying here. The plague is spreading quickly. It seems that many people, perhaps as many as one in three, simply succumb within moments of being infected.”

  Kincaid could only stare at the man. The worst-case scenario was playing out.

  The woman untied his hands and stepped back. Kincaid rubbed his wrists and examined his arm where the needle went in. He climbed back to his feet, straightened his clothing.

  The guy in the coat still held the phone. Kincaid took it and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  “You do realize that threatening my children was a mistake, right? Tell Francis that,” Kincaid said, while looking at the bald man.

  The man didn’t answer. Just glared at him.

  “I’ll be on my way, then,” Kincaid said. He crossed the room to the door and went out into the corridor beyond. Other doors stretched away to either side, and about fifteen feet away to the right was an overturned garbage can. A sour, rotten smell wafted to him, and he gagged and coughed. The elevator was ten feet down the corridor. He pushed the down button. While waiting, he could feel cold sweat forming at his temples and wondered whether he was feeling whatever they’d injected him with.

  A bell dinged; the door slid to the side. Kincaid stepped in and pressed the button for the first floor. There was only a vague sensation of movement. Moments later, the car arrived at the first floor, and he exited into a lobby with a gleaming white marble floor. On the way out, he passed a gray-faced man sprawled on the floor.

  He had the passing thought that the guy might be dead, but Kincaid didn’t care at the moment. Odds were, on a normal day it wouldn’t faze him eithe
r.

  One of his shoes hit the man’s outstretched leg on the way past. The man didn’t react, and Kincaid reached the glass lobby doors and pushed out into the humid night. Not far away, the lights of the Baywalk Movie and Restaurant Complex glittered, and he could hear Barry White music coming from a nearby taxi where a guy sat behind the wheel tapping his fingers to the beat.

  Kincaid felt for his wallet. It was gone. Probably still up in that penthouse.

  He needed that car, but didn’t have the money to pay for the ride. The driver looked big, but Kincaid figured with surprise on his side, he could take him. All he had to do was get the guy out of the taxi. What method would work best? he wondered.

  A moment later, Kincaid staggered around to the other side of the car and rapped on the back seat passenger window with the ring on his finger, trying to appear drunk. He really wasn’t feeling well, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch.

  Almost before he knew it, the taxi driver was out and coming around the car to assist him. Kincaid waited until he was within range, and pounced. The driver was so startled that he didn’t have a chance. When they hit the ground, Kincaid had his hands wrapped around the guy’s throat and the driver’s head hit the pavement.

  Kincaid grabbed the car keys and dragged the cab driver around the corner and into a nearby alley. He thought the driver was still alive.

  Not that it mattered.

  1. Mathers

  My last broadcast.

  It certainly wasn’t going to be the sign off he’d imagined. He didn’t even know if there was anyone out there to watch it.

  Lance Mathers took a last, long drag on his cigarette and tossed it away. He looked at himself in a small hand mirror and rubbed at the dirt smudged on his cheek. Not much could be done about his hair, but it wasn’t too bad. His suit looked clean, and the viewers wouldn’t have a clue that his deodorant had failed. He turned to his cameraman and asked, “You get a good shot of the choppers coming back, Ritchie?”

  The small, disheveled young man nodded. “Yeah, I got the setting sun as a backdrop and everything. Even got some footage of them shooting down a couple of guys who got bit. That what you wanted, Lance?”

  Mathers gave him a rueful smile. “That sounds great. Try to get the smoke and fire from that burning town in the next shot. This is probably our last broadcast. Might not even be anyone watching anymore.”

  “Whenever you’re ready, Lance.”