Dawn of the Dead Read online

  At the console, she stopped and said to the technician at the controls: “I’m gonna knock off the old rescue stations. I’ll have the new ones ready as soon as I can.”

  “Givens wants ’em on,” said the gruff technician with a big beer-belly and graying hair.

  Fran always had trouble with this one. He resented a pretty young thing’s giving him orders. She had spoken with Mr. Givens before about this man’s chauvinistic attitude. Apparently, he had ignored any warning—if there had been one. But now was not the time to raise his consciousness.

  “We’re sending people to places that have closed down,” she said firmly. “I’m gonna kill the old list.”

  As she moved toward the other control room, an armed officer stopped her. For a moment, she tried to get by, thinking he had brushed her by mistake.

  “Hey, she’s all right,” Tony said as he rushed by with copy.

  “Where’s your badge?” the young officer asked insistently.

  Fran reached for the lapel of her blouse instinctively. To her surprise, she found the badge was missing, and she was sure she had pinned it on securely this morning—or was it yesterday morning? The days, hours and minutes were all jumbled in one terrifying moment of confusion. If she stopped to think about it, she knew she would panic. The only thing to do was to keep busy, trying not to rationalize the horror going on outside the studio.

  “Jesus,” she shouted.

  “She’s all right,” one of the reporters said as he passed by.

  “I had it,” Fran tried to convince the officer. “I was asleep over there . . .”

  She pointed toward the mound of sleeping bodies across the room.

  “Somebody stole it,” the reporter told them both. “There’s a lot of ’em missing.”

  He turned to the officer. “She’s all right. Let her through.”

  Reluctantly, the officer stepped aside, giving both Fran and the reporter a deadly look.

  The two of them moved down the crowded hallway and into a small camera room. It was as though they were in the subway at rush hour. The hallway was wall-to-wall people.

  “I don’t believe it,” Fran told him as they tried to make their way down the hall.

  “One of those little badges can open a lot of doors. You avoid a lot of hassles if you got a badge . . . any kind of badge.”

  “It’s really going crazy,” she said, more to herself than to the young man, as they reached a small camera installation. The camera was aimed at a machine that was rolling out a list of rescue stations. The list was superimposed over the live broadcast as it went out.

  A red-haired cameraman turned to Fran as she entered.

  “You got new ones?”

  “I gotta type ’em up. Kill the old ones.”

  “Givens wants ’em—”

  “Kill ’em, Dick. Tell Givens to see me!” she said with finality. Now was not the time to let these guys get away with murder. When it came to making decisions, she was the boss.

  The man clicked off the camera and picked up his cigarettes, clearing away from the controls. Fran moved toward the studio. As the list of rescue stations blinked off the monitor, she noticed the debate was still going on between Berman and Foster.

  Fran walked down the center aisle and found an empty seat at the end of the fifth row from the stage. She practically collapsed into the seat, feeling for the first time how physically weak she really was. The doctor had told her she would start to feel tired, but she hadn’t given it much thought in the past few days. The only reminder she had was her constant nausea.

  Berman was holding court: “Well, I don’t believe in ghosts, Doctor.”

  “These are not ghosts. Nor are these humans! These are dead corpses. Any unburied human corpse with its brain intact will in fact reactivate. And it’s precisely because of incitement by irresponsible public figures like yourself that this situation is being dealt with irresponsibly by the public at large!”

  As if on command, another outraged cry went up from the stagehands and observers.

  “You have not listened,” Dr. Foster tried to outscream the cries. “You have not listened . . . for the last three weeks . . . What does it take . . . what does it take to make people see?”

  Fran took a deep breath and pushed herself out of the comfortable seat and moved into the large studio area, surrounded by the wires and mikes and cables of the live presentation. The uproar was deafening. She stared at the two speakers as if they were puppets.

  “This situation is controllable,” Dr. Foster said in a pleading tone, holding his glasses before him as if he were making a peace offering. “People must come to grips with this concept. It’s extremely difficult . . . with friends . . . with family . . . but a dead body must be deactivated by either destroying the brain or severing the brain from the rest of the body.”

  Another outburst shattered the studio. Over the outcry Dr. Foster tried to be heard.

  “The situation must be controlled . . . before it’s too late . . . They are multiplying too rapidly . . .”

  Fran could take no more of the aggravation, watching the poor helpless man try to convince a bunch of yelling and pushing lunatics, urged on by the frenetic Berman, that what he was saying was for their own good, for the country’s good.

  She moved off through the crowded room to another emergency radio installation. Skip and Dusty were there, trying to listen to their receivers. They jotted down notes hurriedly.

  Fran came up to the two young men quietly, not wanting to disturb their intense concentration.

  “Operative rescue stations?”

  “They’re dropping like flies,” said Dusty, who looked more like a cowboy off the range than a TV reporter. “Here’s a few. You know, I think Foster’s right. I think we’re losing the war.”

  “Yeah, but not to the enemy,” Fran said philosophically. “We’re blowin’ it ourselves.”

  In a gesture of friendship, she offered what was left of her lukewarm coffee to the two dedicated men.

  “Not much left, but have a ball.”

  Both Dusty and Skip were grateful for a sip of coffee. Fran rushed off toward a large TelePrompTer typing machine.

  Over the din of the station, the broadcaster’s argument could still be heard. “People aren’t willing to accept your solutions, Doctor,” Berman argued emotionally. “And I, for one, don’t blame them.”

  “Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them! It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!”

  The doctor’s hair was disheveled. His eyes were wild as he tried to get his point across. But, it was a hopeless battle. The audience and Berman just didn’t want to understand. They wanted to be pampered, to believe that by magic their government would chase “the bad people” away and the next morning on the news everything would be happiness and light and football scores and sunny weather. But, it just wouldn’t be like that again, at least not for a very long time.

  Fran handed the list of active rescue stations to the TelePrompTer typist, and then she rushed back toward the control room.

  There was havoc around the monitor consoles, and the commotion was made even more lunatic by the angered Dan Givens, the station manager.

  “Nobody has the authority to do that. I want . . .” he was bellowing angrily. As Fran came around the corner, he spotted her, but continued his tirade:

  “Garrett, who told you to kill the rescue station supers?”

  “Nobody,” Fran intervened. “I killed ’em. They’re out of date,” she said simply, trying to steady her nerves.

  “I want those supers on the air all the time,” Givens roared, his already red face turning a deeper shade of crimson.

  “Are you willing to murder people by sending them out to stations that have closed down?” Fran demanded.

  “Without those rescue stations on screen every minute, people won’t watch us. They’ll tune out!”

  Fran stared at the tall, dark-haired, red-faced man in dis
belief. At a time like this he was thinking about a stupid thing like ratings. She just wanted to get out of this alive—not win any awards.

  “I want that list up on the screen every minute that we’re on the air,” Givens repeated. But before Fran was able to retort angrily, one of the technicians, having overheard Givens, got up from the control panel and started to walk away. The station manager was livid.

  “Lucas . . . Lucas, what the hell are you doing? Get on that console. Lucas . . . we’re on the air!”

  The squat, middle-aged man merely looked over his shoulder and shouted into the commotion, “Anybody need a ride?”

  Two men from the other side of the control panel picked up their briefcases and followed the technician toward the door.

  The door was guarded by the same officer who had stopped Fran before. But the pressure had gotten to him, and he eyed the three departing men nervously.

  “Officer, Officer,” Givens called out, “you stop them. Stop those men, Lucas, get back on this console . . .”

  A frenzied rumble began over the lack of console control. People started to rush in and out, and over the hubbub, the floor director’s voice could be heard barking out orders over a talkback system:

  “What the hell’s goin’ on in there. Switch . . . switch . . . there’s no switcher . . . We’re losing the picture.”

  Over the turmoil, Givens cried to no avail: “Officer . . . stop those men . . .”

  The young officer faced the men as they reached his post. Then, as if he had made a decision, he took a grip on his rifle, opened the door and let the group through. Without a backward glance to the now screaming Givens, he ran out the door himself, deserting the losing cause and the crazed pandemonium.

  “Get somebody in here that knows how to run this thing,” Givens shouted as he jumped toward the console. He frantically tried to work the complex dials. “Come on, I’ll triple the money for the man that can run this thing . . . triple the money. We’re staying on the air!” He said the last part as if it were a threat. Fran just shook her head in disbelief and moved off slowly toward the studio.

  In the big room the tension was thicker than ever. Newspeople went about their business earnestly, trying to perform their various functions, but they wore faces of stone. It was as though any mention of crisis would crack their seemingly calm exteriors. But, the burden of staying calm was even greater with the sound of the agitated discussion that was being played over the airways in counterpoint to the newspeople’s desperate actions.

  “They kill for one reason,” Dr. Foster said, as if in a trance. He had his suit jacket off and was mopping his brow with a handkerchief. “They kill for food. They eat their victims, do you understand that, Mr. Berman?” he asked carefully, as though speaking to a child. “That’s what keeps them going.”

  A wave of nausea overcame Fran, and she had to lean against the hallway wall, in the shadows. People frantically rushed past her as though running to catch a train. She tried to calm herself and listened to the argument. TV station employees were filing past her, some leaving the studio in disgust.

  “If we’d listened. If we’d dealt with the phenomenon properly . . . without emotion . . . without . . . emotion. It wouldn’t have come to this!” Dr. Foster pleaded with the thinning crowd.

  Foster wiped his sweat-drenched brow with the now soaking dirty handkerchief. He pulled his tie away from his tight collar and popped the shirt button open. The once calm, collected doctor was now a bundle of nerves, desperate, shivering with anger and frustration. Fran had never seen so radical a change come over a person. She herself was shivering now, and clutched at her shoulders in the thin blouse. She felt so tired, so worn out, she just wanted to lie down and forget the whole mess.

  But the rasping, hoarse voice of Dr. Foster droned on, begging the people to heed his cry.

  “There is a state of martial law in effect in Philadelphia, as in all other major cities in the country. Citizens must understand the dire . . . dire consequences of this phenomenon. Should we be unable to check the spread . . . because of the emotional attitudes of the citizenry . . . toward . . . these issues of . . . morality.” The man’s frail shoulders seemed to crumble inward. He stood now, clutching the back of his chair with one hand and raising the other in a gesture of defiance:

  “By command of the federal government, the president of the United States . . . citizens may no longer occupy private residences. No matter how safely protected or well stocked . . .”

  The murmur in the studio began to build to an emotional crescendo. One woman gave a bloodcurdling scream and fell to the floor in a heap, another man cried out over and over again, “Air, air, I can’t breathe . . .” Foster tried to talk over the furor, but his voice cracked, and he could barely be heard.

  “Citizens will be moved into central areas of the city . . .” Foster cried to the technicians abandoning their posts, the cameramen dropping their headsets on the floor and breaking for the door. One cameraman’s instrument spun on its liquid head, and on the monitors a whirling blur was seen as Foster continued to speak. Fran moved quickly toward the unmanned spinning camera. She tried to remember what Givens had told her to do in case of an emergency, but her mind was a blank. She aimed the camera at Foster and managed to stare through the viewfinder, not believing what she was seeing.

  Foster was on the table, his shirt hanging out of his pants, his eyes like those of a wild man. His voice screeched out. He seemed like a prophet of old, foretelling of doom to an unbelieving population of barbarians:

  “The bodies of the dead will be delivered over to specially equipped squads of the National Guard for organized disposition . . .”

  Suddenly, a man darted out of the charging crowd and came running quickly up to Fran. She jumped as the figure flashed into her view.

  “Frannie,” the man, whom she recognized as Steve, cried, “at nine o’clock meet me on the roof. We’re getting out.” The force of his words caused Fran to let the camera slip slightly. “Stephen . . . I don’t believe this . . . What—”

  “We’re getting out. In the chopper.”

  Another technician stepped over to take the camera from Fran. Steve pulled her over, away from the man’s hearing, and spoke more quietly.

  “Nine p.m. All right?”

  “Steve, we can’t . . . we’ve got to—” she protested.

  But Steve was forceful. “We’ve got to nothing, Fran. We’ve got to survive.”

  She looked into the soft brown eyes of the man she now loved. His dark hair was a mess, his clothes in disarray. His slight body, barely taller than hers, shook with a combination of nerves, fatigue and astonishment at what he was about to do.

  “Somebody’s got to survive,” he tried to convince her. “Now you be up there at nine. Don’t make me come lookin’ for ya.”

  Just as swiftly as he had surprised her, he was gone. Fran looked nervously back at the cameraman, feeling guilty that he might have heard their plotting. As the room emptied, the sound of Foster and Berman’s senseless argument grew louder and louder.

  “Go ahead,” the cameraman said to Fran, without taking his eye from the viewfinder, speaking quietly and slowly. “We’ll be off the air by midnight anyway. Emergency networks are taking over. Our responsibility . . . is finished, I’m afraid.”

  Trancelike once again, Fran walked to the corner of the room where she had left her pocketbook and coat. All she had to do now was wait the forty minutes until nine o’clock. And what then? What next? The thought made her shudder.

  2

  Compared to the frenzied excitement of the newsroom, the rest of the dusk-laden city of Philadelphia was calm. The buildings of the sprawling low-income housing project, interconnected by walkways and playground areas, stood like tombstones as the first stars tried valiantly to appear in the murky, pollution-filled, dark blue sky.

  Suddenly, the glint of a grappling hook was noticeable against the lip surrounding the roof. Silent figures, as graceful as ball
et dancers, climbed to the top of the building. Men in the armored vests of the S.W.A.T. police, clutching the latest in special weapons to their breasts, took position on the roofs and in the dark corners of the development.

  In the shadows, squatting alongside the entrance to one of the building’s fire stairs, Roger DeMarco felt a sharp shooting pain in his thigh. Still in a squatting position, he tried to stretch out the aching leg to relieve the charley horse. Three other team members were poised silently beside him.

  The stillness was deceptive: it didn’t seem that this was the national disaster that the politicians had been crying about for months. The population really felt that the government was putting one over on them. No one, particularly the uneducated, the superstitious and the very religious, really believed the government’s explanations of why the dead were returning to life. No one wanted to believe that the husband, the wife, the child or the parent that they had just lost would return to terrorize and devour human flesh. Even Roger, who wasn’t particularly politically astute, realized that the administration in power didn’t have the faith and confidence of the people. The stock market had plummeted way below the lowest point of the Carter administration; unemployment had soared, and inflation was rampant. With a presidential election coming up, most citizens felt this was just another ploy to get the country behind the administration’s candidate.

  Roger looked at his watch. The figures next to him checked their weapons. The sweep hand on his watch reached twelve.

  “Lights,” Roger mumbled to himself.

  As if on cue, large searchlights bathed the side of the building in a soft amber glow.

  “Martinez,” came the sound of a disembodied voice from behind a large truck. It was the troop commander, shouting through an electronic bullhorn. “You’ve been watching,” he continued to the Puerto Rican leader of the tenants’ uprising. They had refused to evacuate the building and were creating their own cemetery in the basement of their building. “You know we have the building surrounded . . .”

  At the sound of the electronically amplified voice, any lights inside the project that had remained on blinked out one at a time.