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  “It’s wreaking havoc on the locomotive and the brakes. It’s scared a child,” Donald said.

  “Child? It bloody scared me,” Ronald said.

  Harland took a deep breath and released, and let his chin drop. He stared at the floor. A tiny hand released from the bottom ledge of the table and disappeared beneath. Harland pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “All right,” Harland said. “Calm down.” He raised a finger to his lips, shushing the two Coopers, and kneeled on the floor. Water soaked his knee. Aha—that part clicked in his mind—the Scotsman’s knee had been wet. Now for this rat business. They had tiny hands, right? Well, not hands really. He peered beneath the table.

  A red light flashed. He took another breath and looked for the owner of the tiny hand. And there, pressed against the back wall was a small man. Harland sucked in a surprised breath. No. Not a man. An imp of all things: long pointy nose and ears, smallish eyes, and he wore little clothes, like a tiny handyman. Maker!

  The creature appeared worried and brought a finger to his little grey lips. Maker! The imp winced, and pointed to the device. The creature put his hands together and pulled them apart suddenly and mouthed what Harland swore was “poof.”

  “What is going on down there, Mister Stone?” One of the Coopers asked.

  “We have a problem. A bomb, I believe, and on a timer.” Harland eased the device from beneath the table.

  The galley door banged open.

  The Scot and the Englishman stood there, both holding rather crude looking guns. Of course, Harland rarely carried a weapon, relying more on subterfuge and talking his way out of problems.

  Donald (or was it Ronald?) fainted, his head rapping against the table’s metal edge.

  “Put down the device,” the Englishman said.

  The Scot advanced and brought the butt of his gun down on the remaining Cooper, sending him to the floor and joining his brother.

  “So, you sabotaged the train,” Harland said. “But why if you’re going to blow it up with this?” He shoved the device at them, the angry red light flashed.

  “What? We’re blowing up the train. We didn’t do anything else.” The Englishman reached forward and took the device.

  “So, you’re dissidents. The ones we’ve been worrying over all this time. Scots and English working together to take down the Empire? Excellent,” Harland said.

  He took a few quick steps backward, and bumped against the counter, feeling for anything at all he could wield as a weapon.

  Perhaps a pot or knife.

  Nothing came to his grasp—

  —but tiny fingers wrapped around Harland’s pointer finger and dragged his hand. He tempered the urge to jump at the imp’s clammy touch. Then Harland’s fingers wrapped around what the imp had guided his hand toward—a handle, hopefully one attached to a heavy pot.

  The tiny hand patted his hand. The imp was sentient, he couldn’t get over it, a fairy tale come to life. Fantastic!

  “Why blow up the train? And why way out here?” Harland asked. “Ah, the timer.” He answered his own question. “You mean to blow the train in London.

  “Very good,” the Scot said, “now let me see your hands.”

  The galley door whooshed, slamming against the Englishman holding the device. Lou Cooper filled the doorway, angry and menacing.

  The Scot turned and raised his gun. At that moment, Harland saw the little imp hit a switch, plunging them into darkness.

  A gun went off, the flash illuminating the room for an instant, but enough for Harland to guess where the Scot was. A high-pitched whir filled Harland’s ears. The round ricocheted off metal, and no one uttered a cry of pain.

  The thuds and oofs and shuffling of a scuffle filled the galley.

  The device’s red light blinked.

  Harland lifted what the imp had guided him to, and stepped forward—it was indeed a heavy pot. He swung for where the Scot should have been standing, and connected with a solid thunk. The lights flicked on and the Scot crumpled to the ground.

  Harland grabbed the Scot’s gun and put it to the Englishman’s head. The Englishman ceased struggling with Lou Cooper who then found the Englishman’s gun and pointed it at the defeated men. The two unconscious Coopers groaned.

  Harland glanced about for the device—it had disappeared. He dropped to his knees and found the device under the table—must have been kicked there during the struggle.

  The red light no longer flashed. Scurrying down a pipe in the corner was the imp. He was gone. Was it possible the imp deactivated the device? There could be no other explanation.

  Harland removed the device from under the table, and showed it to Lou.

  “The bomb has been deactivated,” Harland said. “I’m taking it as evidence.”

  “So,” Lou said, pointing the gun at the two men, “they’re the ones responsible for the sabotage.”

  Harland smiled and thought about his little grey-green friend. “Yep, they were responsible for everything. Lock them up in an isolated room, please. Once we’re in London we can sort them out.”

  The Coopers moaned and groaned, but came around and assisted with the dissidents.

  “I’m getting some rest,” Harland said, and made for his compartment.

  ***

  Harland eased back and sunk into the plush cushion. Sleep.

  He took a deep breath and drifted.

  A breeze touched him.

  “Good work, Stone,” a tiny voice said in a bad Scottish brogue. “You done a fine thing you have.”

  “Ugh,” Harland said. “I thought I was done with Scots.”

  “Not likely,” the tiny voice said. “And you’re not done with me either.”

  Harland’s eyes opened. He thought the little man was toying with him, but he had a feeling. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve seen me. No one is allowed to see me, and in fact, most people can’t. But since you have seen me and touched me—”

  “Wait, you touched me,” Harland said, still not believing he was having a conversation with an imp.

  “Well, you’re stuck with me,” the imp said. “Unless you die of course.”

  Harland sighed. “Fine, tell me your name. I need sleep.”

  “Yes, Mister Stone,” the imp said. “I’m Cephus Boothe of the Orkney Isles. Shouldn’t have said that. No.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.” Harland yawned. He had no energy to turn Cephus away right now. Perhaps when he woke up in London he’d realize this was a dream.

  No. This had been real. He should never have gone to Scotland.

  Introduction to “Containing Patient Zero”

  For some reason, our fantastic detectives have inspired their share of writer/actors. Like Joe Cron, Paul Eckheart writes stage plays as well as science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and mainstream fiction. Paul is a founding member of the Improvables theatre troupe, as well as a recent winner of the Writers of the Future contest. Currently, he makes his living as a software engineer for the audio industry.

  “Containing Patient Zero” marks Paul’s first appearance in Fiction River. I suspect it won’t be his last.

  Containing Patient Zero

  Paul Eckheart

  The protesters yelled obscenities and threw wadded up paper and rocks at the patrol car. If not for the uniformed officers standing watch along the sides of the road Joseph would not be at all surprised if they threw themselves in the path of the vehicle.

  A few of the rocks thwacked against the side of the car. One hit the window next to Joseph’s head with a great crack that made him jump in his seat. He wiped the sweat from his hands on his pleated black slacks and glanced nervously at his companion.

  The officer remained calm, stoic even, as the car drove through the crowd. “It’s one of the bigger protests we’ve seen, sure. But don’t worry yourself, Doc. Ain’t nothin’ we ain’t equipped to deal with. See that?” He pointed to one uniformed officer who stood stiffly facing the crowd, a whole head tall
er than anyone there. Uniform coloring—brown, not flesh-tones. No hair. No ears.

  “Is that a golem?”

  His companion nodded. “Berkowitz called in a favor. We even got the troll from the harbor bridge deputized and standin’ by for tonight. It’s what’s inside—that’s what’s got the brass worked up.”

  Joseph licked his lips to moisten them and gnawed hesitantly on one side of his bottom lip, still tasting the medicated balm he’d used what seemed an eternity ago.

  The protesters outside held signs with pictures of a bald headed little man smiling a fearsome grin through sharpened teeth. Some signs perversely read: “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Joseph heard their chanting through the tightly closed doors. He shoved his hands into the soft pockets of his leather bomber’s jacket and shuddered.

  Execution night at the state pen.

  It brought out all sorts.

  The one person it shouldn’t have brought was Dr. Joseph Nelson.

  He sank down in his seat, rolling his head back and forth against the rough material of the patrol car’s headrest. Joseph took a few deep breaths of the stale air inside the car, forcing himself to relax, and checked his watch. 1:30 A.M.

  Leroy “Little” Star. 4’ 6” tall. Reality TV star. Shot to the top of the public consciousness ten years ago on a hidden-camera-type stunt show by popping up out of trash cans or falling down out of trees to punch unsuspecting celebrities in the crotch or lick women with his surgically forked tongue.

  Once “Little” made it big he scored big on the charity circuit, becoming a huge donor to orphanages—especially St. Christopher’s downtown, where he himself had been raised.

  Six years back a shocked nation watched as Leroy Star broke down on the witness stand, confessing to the brutal strangulation murders of at least a dozen teenage girls.

  And his fans loved him for it, the sickos.

  The execution should have gone down at midnight. Joseph’d watched all the news stations hoping to get word the little puke’d gone on to his maker.

  Word that had never come.

  Yet there’d been nothing mentioned about a call from the Governor. There’d been no stay of execution.

  When Joseph’s phone rang, twenty minutes after the execution supposedly took place, he knew it immediately, felt it in his bones.

  Something went wrong.

  ***

  Joseph met Warden Sandusky at the door to the warden’s office. Sandusky was a big man, but not heavy-set. His broad shoulders nearly filled the doorway and he quickly closed the door behind him, giving Joseph only a glimpse at some frightened people waiting inside.

  He recognized some of their faces from the paper. Families of the victims. He immediately felt a deep empathy for them.

  Sandusky offered Joseph a wry smile and a hand. “It’s good to see you again Dr. Nelson.”

  “Joseph. Please. After all you did for us, we should be on better terms.” Sandusky still had a firm grip, but the callouses Joseph remembered from eight years back, when Sandusky’d been the chief of the precinct downtown, had softened more than a little.

  Sandusky led the way through the narrow prison hallways, past cells that had the clutter and reek of habitation but that were curiously empty. Their footsteps echoed off the barren cement walls.

  “Wish we’d been able to do more for you and your lovely wife,” Sandusky said.

  Joseph sighed. It was inevitable, he supposed, that Sandusky would bring it up. After so many years he should deal better.

  But he couldn’t. His throat tightened as he fought back the memories of their lost little boy. The nights of panic and prayer. The relief when Charlie was found, unconscious, in a warehouse down at the docks. And then, finally, the despair when Charlie never recovered—that last long night in the hospital trying to say goodbye to their little angel.

  Joseph balled up his fists and pushed them ever deeper into the warm pockets of his jacket.

  Sandusky turned to him with questioning eyes. Joseph met his gaze, but knew he’d missed something. “I’m sorry?”

  “I asked how your wife was.”

  Ex-wife. And how should he know? He hadn’t seen her in over a year. But that was beside the point. Nothing there Sandusky needed to know—it would only distract from whatever had brought Joseph out tonight. “She’s fine, you know... all things considered.”

  He was pretty sure it was a lie. Last he’d seen Maeve she’d been anything but fine.

  At the end of the hallway they reached a nondescript door, painted white in contrast to the cement gray that defined the rest of the surrounding building.

  Sandusky smoothed his tie and checked to make sure the buttons on his dark pin-stripe suit were done up. He was nervous.

  So was Joseph.

  Joseph gripped the warden’s arm just above the shoulder; what he hoped was a comforting gesture. “Anything I should know before we go in there?”

  “Best you just see it for yourself.”

  Sandusky opened the door.

  ***

  As the door swung inward a motion activated air freshener just inside the room hissed out a puff of lemon. Sandusky motioned Joseph through the door. Motes of dust danced lazily through the light of a buzzing fluorescent tube overhead.

  The floor here was carpeted in a cheap brown material that led down a couple of steps to a darkened glass wall. Three rows of stadium seating filled the bulk of the room.

  Joseph stepped into the back-most row of seats and rubbed his dry lips with a finger, wishing he had even a touch more of that medicated balm.

  Sandusky didn’t bother to close the door. He didn’t even fully enter the room. Just reached over to a switch and turned on the lights on the far side of the glass wall.

  An execution chamber.

  Everything set and staged for lethal injection. The table with leather straps for holding down the victim’s arms and legs stood empty.

  Three bodies lay on the floor. Pooled blood, darkened and thick with time, left trails on the parquet where something had walked through it.

  Joseph chewed on his lower lip.

  A sickening thant-thant-thant came from the far side of the room where a little creature bashed its head over and over again into the door leading from the execution chamber itself.

  As the lights came on the creature stopped and turned toward Joseph and the warden.

  In the fifty-some-odd years since the first large-scale zombie attack in October, 1968, the public generally learned all the important things. Zombism is a blood-borne virus transmitted through a cut or scratch, usually a bite, that fully manifests itself with the death of the infected person. It is stopped by trauma to the brain.

  This is true of all secondary infections.

  The rules are different if you have a patient-zero. From patient-zero the virus is airborne. It remains on surfaces indefinitely. As patient-zero decays more and more of the virus enters the air. Only upon entering a living host does the virus mutate into the blood-borne form everyone recognizes.

  Patient-zero will also continue to move, seeking the flesh of the living, no matter how much trauma it sustains.

  And Leroy “Little” Star was definitely patient-zero. A chunk of his skull, enough to put down any self-respecting zombie, was missing completely.

  Joseph checked his watch. 2:15 A.M. Autolysis wouldn’t break down the cell walls to dangerous levels for another 16, maybe 20 hours.

  Joseph licked a finger, held it up in the air. The saliva on his finger made it feel cooler, but not cold. “It’s too warm in here. Divert everything you’ve got to the air conditioning.”

  “Already working on it,” said Sandusky.

  “The others in the chamber—”

  “A technician, the doctor on call, the executioner.”

  “—assume the bodies are infected.”

  “They were. Taken out by a sharp-shooter through the slot in the chamber door.”

  “Double-tapped?”

  “Yes.”


  “Then pardon me for saying so, Warden, but why the hell did you call me on this? I’m an expert in mythical creatures. What you need is a virologist.”

  “We already talked to him,” Sandusky said. “He suggested we call you.”

  ***

  Joseph swallowed the bourbon in a single gulp. In hindsight it was quite possibly the most expensive drink he’d ever had in his life, but right now he didn’t have the time or inclination to savor anything. Joseph just wanted to feel the burn of the alcohol in his mouth and throat.

  His fingers gripped the glass bumps ringing the bottom of the glass as he stared through the large glass windows of Sandusky’s office overlooking the prison yard and the helipad with waiting chopper.

  In the distance he could see the protesters out by the razor-wire fence surrounding the pen. Ten, maybe twenty news vans with camera crews filmed the ongoing protests. He wanted to shout at them, Run. As far away from here as you can. Go. Now.

  A soft ruffling of papers brought Joseph back to the now and he turned from the window in time to see Sandusky flop a gray, 3-ringed binder down onto his great wooden desk.

  “You asked why we called you. This is why.”

  Joseph clunked his glass on the desk as he leaned over the binder. Sandusky’s desk was covered by several decades worth of gouges, partially filled in with years of polish. Joseph let his fingers trace the smoothed cuts as he read.

  Sandusky clamped his hands behind his back. “Star’s files from the orphanage. Took a court order to open them up, but that didn’t take long thanks to the virology department at StateMed. The key bit is about two-thirds of the way down that first page.”

  “Oh. God.” He said it more as a prayer for deliverance than as a profanity.

  Star was a stage name. No surprise there. His adopted name had been Smith. But after Leroy hit it big he went back to the orphanage with a genealogist. Kept everything they learned under lock and key, but here it was. All laid out.

  Four generations back the family name had been Mac Crarey.