Northern Lights - The New Release Thriller by T.Rico : June 2013

Chapter 19

The Dead Have Risen

“By the time I got to the ward they had already taken Geena’s

body to the basement,” Johnny said. “She is being held down

there along with all seven of the fly fisherman. They’re all dead

now. They’re storing all the bodies down there: Officers Amble

and Madsen, who burned to death in my backyard the night of the

landing; Frank and Maureen, the young couple who burned by

River Glomma. With the exception of the couple that had the SUV

accident up on ‘reaper 172,’ they’re all dead. That couple is still

hanging on. I think they’re going to finish doing autopsies on all

the bodies, but I’m guessing the results will be the same: infected

by the same brain parasite they found in the fisherman who killed

himself.”

“Johnny, you’re in no shape drive all the way back home. I

insist that you stay at our place. You can keep Ella company while

Hannah, Freddy, and I go to the U.K.” I offered. “We’re going to

make plans to fly out tonight to hunt down this Professor Shryll we

heard about on the news. He’s an archeologist who was at a dig site

near Stonehenge when the second landing happened last night.”

“Well, thank you, guys. That’s very nice of you,” Johnny said,

still trying to compose his emotions. “Why don’t I meet up with

you in a bit? I want to go back inside and say goodbye to Geena.

I haven’t viewed her body yet. I’m going to have to start with the

funeral arrangements tomorrow and before I do, I want to bid her

farewell alone.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay” Hannah asked.

“Yes. Please, I have to see her, you guys go back and I’ll catch

up with you in about an hour.”

- 147 -

Hannah, Freddy, and I gave Johnny a loving hug, and then we

hopped into the car back to our home, with the intent of making

our travel plans while we awaited Johnny’s return. As we pulled

out I turned and saw Johnny approaching the doors of the ward,

yelling for Dr. McCrum.

“Dr. McCrum, it’s Johnny Briten, the CDC cleared me to view

Geena’s body one last time.”

As I knocked, the smell of my own regurgitations on the side of

the porch permeated my nostrils. I shook my head at the tragedy of

it all, and peeked through the door’s glass to find that Dr. McCrum

was approaching. The door opened.

“Have you come back to say ‘goodbye?’” Dr. McCrum asked.

“Yes, doc, is it okay? I know you’re under quarantine now.”

“Well, okay, but make it quick, Johnny. We need to secure the

facility and evacuate the premises. I’ll go with you and we’ll grab

a couple of gas masks the CDC left for us.”

McCrum and I walked towards the elevator and descended to

the basement. The smell of rotting flesh drifted up the elevator

shaft and became more pungent the closer we got. I barely got the

taste of puke out of my mouth and now had a lovely flavor combo

stirring inside, with the smell of dead flesh entering my nose,

greeting the lingering puke taste in my mouth. We both put the gas

masks on before we got to the bottom floor.

The doors opened and all the gurneys were laid out next to one

another. Twelve of them in a row, it struck me that I was going

to have to play Russian roulette lifting each blood-soaked sheet

looking for my dead sister. My tears had run dry by this point. I

was now just gripped with fear, the fear of looking at the dead,

most of whom had all gone mad just before dying, doing the same

thing Geena had done, tearing and ripping at their faces and hair,

trying to get at the parasite that was eating them from the inside

- 148 -

out. I lifted the first sheet up, and it was one of the detectives that

were in my backyard the night of the landing. I couldn’t tell if it

was Amble or Madsen. The body was severely charred, but there

were burnt remains of his officers’ uniform that gave his identity

away. There wasn’t much left but bone and ash. His eye sockets

had sunken inside his skull, I glanced down and could swear I saw

his temple move a bit, like one of those little buggers was still

inside, having a feast of burnt brains for dinner. I glanced back,

and it was gone. This was sure to be the easier of the bodies to

view. The others were fresh and the wounds were new. The gas

mask would help keep out the odor, but the sight would be burned

into my memory forever. I wasn’t sure I was prepared to see my

beautiful sister in the state the doctors had explained she was in. I

wanted to say goodbye and knew I wouldn’t believe she was dead

unless I saw her for myself.

I moved on to the second gurney. It was the fly fisherman who

had committed suicide. I could tell because his head was bashed in

from the impact with the pavement below. The inside of his head

was on the outside of his body now. Brain tissue had cascaded

down the front of his face and onto his chest. His meaty bloody

frontal lobe and temporal lobe were completely eaten away, with

the remains hanging across his left shoulder and his brain stem was

severed.

I could have looked away, but it was like a train wreck. I just

had to see what this creature was doing to the host bodies, in a way,

so I could understand the agony Geena endured and the misery that

caused her to take her own life.

With my luck, I would have to endure ten more viewings

before I’d finally reach Geena’s body. With apprehension, I walked

around the head of the fly fisherman to the third gurney, all the

while keeping my eyes on the previous body, half expecting the

parasite to jump from the corpse. But I continued, hoping I’d be

lucky enough to stop at the next gurney that followed. Slowly, I

pulled the sheet back. I was careful not to touch any of the blood

that saturated the linen, and glancing at McCrum, noticed that he

- 149 -

had decided to keep a safe distance. I noticed the hair color at first,

hair that resembled the locks that fell across Geena’s once beautiful

face.

Did I get lucky? Would this be the last body I would have to

endure viewing? Either way, this wasn’t luck. I pulled at the sheet

a bit more. It was her. My poor baby sister was gone. I wanted

to drop to my knees and weep, but this was no time to be weak.

Tears welled in my eyes, and I fought to hold them back. She must

have been clawing at her eyes. Thick meaty pieces of flesh were

clipped from her face and blood streamed from her eyes down the

nape of her neck. The claw and clipper marks had left deep gouges

in her skin. She couldn’t have done this damage prior to writing

her farewell to me. The self-inflected mutilation persisted long

after her letter was complete, before the combination of Xanax and

Percocet laid her to rest. Rest, I thought to myself.

Rest in pieces Sis, the irony of the term, and the state of her

body made me quiver in fearful disgust.

The gas mask was cumbersome, and my breathing was getting

heavy. A vapor was developing on the inside of the mask. I looked

at Geena’s face and could swear I saw movement in her eyes. I

leaned in, until my mask was three or four centimeters from her

face.

There was a momentary twitch in her eye socket then, to my

astonishment, her eyes

opened.

Her mouth dropped open, and she let out a howling growl, like

that of a wild animal. Her eyes were white and glazed, devoid of

any pupils. She couldn’t see me, but she moved her head from

side to side as a hunger-crazed wolf might. She seemingly was

picking up the scent of her prey as a blind starving animal might

do. I leaped backwards and knocked into the gurney behind me,

that gurney hitting the one behind that. Two of the gurney’s I had

previously inspected flew across the room and the bodies that lay

atop teetered on the edge for a moment, and then fell to the floor.

- 150 -

The fly fisherman’s body, already badly broken from the suicide

jump, snapped in half on impact. I could hear the sound of his

spinal cord snapping and the tearing of flesh as he hit and the body

broke in two. I turned my gaze to McCrum. He let out a scream

and scrambled for the elevator.

Geena’s growl stirred the others under their sheets; one by one

they all began to rise.

Amble or Madsen, whichever it was, began lifting his body

from the floor and sniffing the area for fresh flesh. All of them were

waking up with the exception of Earl. His body lay motionless on

the floor in two separate bloody sections. The blood from his body

being severed in two was streaming towards a drain in the corner

of the room. I backed away slowly from Geena as she was sitting

up and trying to pick up a scent.

The elevator was our only way out and it was sure to make a lot

of noise as it rattled down the shaft. The room was dim and murky

with only one light bulb shining down on the rising dead. My mask

was still fogged up, which made my endless creeping backwards

even more arduous. McCrum was feverishly pressing the button

over and over again, groaning at the slow speed of the approaching

elevator, and cursing whoever used the elevator, returning it to an

upper level.

I looked over my shoulder towards the elevator. It was the kind

that opened horizontally rather than vertically. It had a big heavy

gate behind it, sure to keep us safe from the undead if we could

just get behind it, and lock it safely. The zombie-like creatures

were moving slowly, but the fact that they

were moving seemed

surreal. The banging of the elevator hitting the basement floor got

their attention, and they gathered in a group walking towards us,

led by their sense of smell rather than their eyes. They couldn’t see

us for sure, or they would have focused on us, their target. Some

of them just stumbled towards us, as if their insides were not

connected by sturdy bones anymore. Others dragged various limbs

- 151 -

along the floor that caught the nearby table as they snarled and

moved closer and closer. Finally McCrum opened the horizontal

doors, and gate behind it, the bottom half of the horizontal door

didn’t fully sink into the pocket below, which left it protruding

from the floor. McCrum attempted to navigate climbing over the

door, but tripped as he went catching his right leg on the bottom

half not fully collapsed. I scurried quickly and hopped over it, and

passed McCrum, then threw my back against the far wall. One of

the affected dead grabbed at McCrum’s ankle.

He screamed in panic.

“Help me Johnny; they’ve got me, Johnny. Help me quick!”

I tried to pull him in, but feared I would pull the undead in

with him. The affected one that had a grip on him wore a badge.

It was one of the cops from my yard I saw the letters “Mads—”

on the badge, the rest of the name was covered in dried blood.

It was Madsen, the same man I had offered hot chocolate to the

other night in my home. He was a big guy, and apparently death

didn’t make him lose any of his strength. He grabbed at McCrum’s

ankle with his fingers. Then he snagged McCrum’s left and right

ankles all at once, and now with one leg in each hand, he dragged

McCrum over the partially closed door that stuck up from the floor.

His head snapped back as it hit the door protruding upwards. The

other zombies picked up the scent and grabbed at him as well,

pulling his screaming body backwards into the pack of savage

mutants. They knelt around his body. One of them ripped into his

neck with one deep starve-crazed bite. Blood squirted and hit some

of the other undead on their hands and faces. The splash of plasma

seemed to delight them as they licked the warm blood from their

hands and wiped the dripping blood from their mangled faces, and

then licked their hands once again.

He was gone.

- 152 -

There was nothing I could do but make my escape as they

enjoyed the banquet of his flesh. I lifted the bottom half of the door

that McCrum, the poor bastard, had tripped on. That could easily

have been me. Just one missed step and you’re dead. I was lucky. I

pulled the top half of the door down and latched them together. For

a split second, that gave me a sigh of relief. I closed the gate and

pressed the button for the lobby. I heard banging on the doors from

the floor above. The few CDC guys that were left in the building

must have heard the cries of terror from below and were attempting

to help, calling down to us.

My heart was throbbing in panic over what just happened. A

mere hour or two ago, I was alerted of my sister’s death and tossing

my guts up over the porch railing. Now, to see her rise from the

dead was more than this guy could handle. The ascent to the lobby

seemed to take an eternity. The banging from above and the sounds

of the risen dead at feeding time from below had me gripped with

- 153 -

fear, sweat beaded on my forehead. I tried to calm myself by

humming a nursery rhyme.

Row, row, row, your boat gently down the stream, merrilymerrily-

merrily-merrily life is but a dream

I checked my arms and legs to make sure I hadn’t gotten bitten.

I gagged at the thought that the gas mask had not done its intended

job—keeping me parasite-free. I thought that in just twenty-four

hours or so, my body and mind could be relegated to what lurked

in the basement below. I felt faint, nervously repeating the calming

affect of the nursery rhyme.

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrilymerrily-

merrily-merrily life is but a dream.

I heard the guys calling out my name from above, getting

louder as I drew close. “Mr. Briten, Mr. McCrum, what’s going on?

Are you okay? Answer us.”

“I’m all right, alive anyway” I yelled.

The elevator finally came to a halt and I opened the gate and

unlatched the doors dropping the bottom first and lifting the top.

Two CDC guys were outside. They questioned me about what

happened, and I found I couldn’t explain it without sounding like a

raving head-case. They were having a hard time believing the story,

but the chaotic moaning from below and the blood all over my shirt

and face was quickly making them believers.

We found the switch in the elevator that would stop it from

descending. We closed the gate and tied it off with some rope. With

McCrum dead and the rest of the building evacuated, my thoughts

turned quickly to the security of the basement. I’d never been here

before, neither had the CDC guys.

“I wonder if there is any way for them to get out besides the

elevator,” I said.

- 154 -

All three of us still had our masks on and it was making it

difficult to communicate. I thought the best thing to do would be

to get out of the building before the affected ones did and alert the

cops of the newly risen dead. The three of us busted through the

double doors, out to the parking lot, and split up into our cars. The

CDC guys jumped into their van and hit the gas so fast, that the

dirt, ice, and snow kicked back and splashed chunks against my

windshield. Pebbles flew at the front of my car as the van peeled

out of the lot. I followed close behind and, at high speed, ripped off

the gas mask and took a deep breath of unprocessed air. Fumbling

for my cell phone, I called Dante and Hannah’s house to tell them

the dead had risen. Freddy picked up.

“Thorgen Ranch, Freddy speaking. Can I help you?”

Frantically I explained to the doc what happened at the Psych.

ward. Oddly enough, he was not shaken by the news.

“I was afraid something like that was going to happen. I knew

when I heard about the mutated parasites that they had the ability

to make their host bodies reanimate in order to seek a new host. I

was just hoping that the human brain would be more evolved, and

not fall prey to the

Toxoplasmosa gondii it had swarming inside.

It’s starting to get dark, Johnny. You should get here as soon as

you can and alert the authorities so they can handle the situation.

Dante, Hannah, and I have a red eye flight booked to the U.K. this

evening. You should get here and stay with Ella as they suggested.

I think the two of you will be safe here. I’m sure they will be happy

to know that Ella has someone here with her.”

“Okay, doc, I’ll be there just as quick as this ole shit-box car

can get me there.”

“Drive safe, Johnny. We’ve seen enough death for one day.”

After I hung up with Freddy, the CDC van and my car came

to a fork in the road. They sped off one way, and I went the other,

heading towards Thorgen Farm, and

hopefully far enough away

from the freak show I left behind.

- 155

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T. Rico announces release of ‘Northern Lights’

New book takes a different look as to what the Northern Lights really are

PLAINVIEW, N.Y. – In “Northern Lights” (published by AuthorHouse), author T. Rico’s new novel, readers experience what he says is a fine blend between the sheer terror of “Independence Day,” the powerless feel of “Armageddon” and the abominations in “Night of the Living Dead.” “This is a new look behind the beauty of the northern lights and what they truly symbolize,” he says.

Readers join Dante and his wife, Hannah, as they are chosen by the forerunners to become “aware,” and help save humanity from the creatures ushered forth by the northern lights. These hideous mutations now walk the remains of a charred planet under an emerald colored sky bringing about the true battle between good and evil.

“My book challenges the different cultural perceptions of God. It places the concepts of science and religion on a scale, and gives the reader an opportunity to decide which one carries more weight,” says Tom Rico. “It also makes a strong statement about the corruption in today’s society, not only in politics but in the heart and soul of everyday people. And then asks the most challenging question. How pure is the love in your heart?”

An excerpt from the book:

“The heat climbed as it went overhead, and the hairs on my arm singed. It was maybe a kilometer high aloft, but its colors ignited the heavens above. I thought to myself, thank God it’s not lower and closer. I felt the heat radiating from above. Had it been lower we would have been cooked in our shoes for sure. People screamed as it soared by like a meteor. After it passed toward the river, we walked into the clearing. The fields were still illuminated. A pinkish red draped across the landscape of the hills from the afterglow. The winds died down and our hair was tousled in the aftermath. We looked east, over the river, stunned and waiting. It hovered over River Avon, spinning and glowing pink in the orange night sky.”

“Northern Lights”

By T. Rico

Hardcover | 6 x 9in | 318 pages | ISBN 9781481736312

Softcover | 6 x 9in | 318 pages | ISBN 9781481736329

E-Book | 318 pages | ISBN 9781481736336

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

T. Rico resides in New York. He lives with his wife, Kim, and has two children, Thomas Jason Rico and Nicholas John Rico. He is an avid science fiction fan and writer.

Northern Lights - The New Release Thriller by T.Rico

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What will you do when the dead begin to rise?

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Friday, June 21, 2013

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