The Zombies of Lancaster Read online

The Zombies of Lancaster

  by Jason Scimitar

  The Psycho Novel Series

  Dogtown Publications

  6937 Bruno Avenue

  Saint Louis, Missouri 63139

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sheriff Wilson's Family

  Sheriff Robert Wilson got up early as usual and jogged through town. Old Lancaster had a charm that tourists loved. Robert loved it also. He returned after his three mile run, showered, and donned his official uniform. He loved being sheriff of Lancaster County. He also loved his family.

  His wife, Beth, was an elementary school teacher. She loved her job also. She was perfectly matched as a teacher, because Beth loved children, and the school as well as her family were her entire reason for existing. She was mother to Wilson's son, Aiden, who at eighteen years was the star quarterback of the high school team and to Lisa, his sister, who at nineteen years was a freshman at the local junior college and who, like her mother, Beth, was interested in becoming an elementary teacher. They were good kids, and Sheriff Wilson spent as much time with them as he could, despite an extremely heavy schedule of duties which being a sheriff was required of him.

  "How is football practice going, son?" Sheriff Wilson asked Aiden.

  "Quite good," Aiden said.

  "No problems?"

  "None that I know of. One of the guys is pissed at the coach, because I'm the quarterback, and he isn't. You know how it is. I have to expect that."

  "Of course. I have the same problems. Every man in town thinks he can be a better sheriff."

  Aiden laughed. "It's all about you, dad," he chortled.

  The sheriff laughed.

  "I just can't put one over on this kid, mom. What did I do wrong?"

  "Same old, same old," Beth said. "But your father is truly the best man for the sheriff job. So are you, Aiden, for the school's quarterback. You are all winners in my book, guys."

  "Thanks, mom."

  The sheriff smiled. "How much did we have to pay her for that comment, Aiden?"

  "Ten bucks, as I recall, dad. Maybe less. She still works cheap."

  They chuckled a bit at that.

  "I wish," Beth said.

  "You'd be a millionaire if we paid you for being positive," the sheriff said. "And Aiden's right. Moms always work cheap. They also work hard." He leaned over and gave Beth a light kiss. "I love you, Beth. Besides, you do work cheap. That's why I married you."

  "How's college going, Lisa?" Beth asked her daughter.

  "Fine. I'm okay with it. I'm acing everything. There's not much academic prowess in my classes. Most of the kids are just going there, because their parents forced them."

  "I have to go to the office," Sheriff Wilson said. "Duty calls."

  He patted his kids on the head and kissed Beth and skittered out the door and was gone.

  "I don't like being patted on the head like that," Aiden told his mom. "I'm becoming an adult."

  "Well, Aiden," his mom said, "That's just the way it goes. In the back of our minds, dear, you are always going to be three months old even if you are a great jock. Get over it."

  "Okay. But remember. You have to treat me like the child you say I am whenever I screw up. How does that sound?"

  "Not good," Sheriff Wilson said. "But there is some hint of brilliance to your argument, son."

  "He's getting uppity, sheriff," Lisa said, "Maybe he needs a visit out behind the shed."

  #

  The sheriff started his Crown Victoria and slowly meandered down the street. The Vic was his only perk of note, and he loved it. Several neighbors waved to him as he passed. It was great to be sheriff, unless he had to evict a family, which was the last thing he ever wanted to do to anyone.

  Robert Wilson had been the sheriff of Lancaster for twelve years. He was cognizant of all of the seasonal needs of his small city. Lancaster was unusual, because tourists came to Lancaster to gawk at the Amish who populated its environs.

  The Amish had lived here peacefully for one hundred and fifty years. Some claimed the Amish had been here even longer, but the exact date of settlement was uncertain and changed depending on each person's conjecture. The old Amish fathers would sit in chairs around the parlor stove in Jensen's Hardware and discuss Amish history, town lore, and how "the English," as the Amish called typical Americans had been pushing them toward their cultural annihilation. The sheriff stepped into Jensen's and found very few Amish there today. He wondered why.

  "Where'd the Amish go?" Sheriff Wilson asked Jonathan Whitley.

  "Hell if I know. I ain't their keeper, you know."

  "This can't be good for the tourists," Sheriff Wilson said.

  "Right," Jonathan Whitley agreed. Jonathan was both owner and hardware clerk. "But I expect they'll be showing up soon. Either today or tomorrow. This just isn't like them not to be here."

  The sheriff turned to leave.

  "I best be getting out there now, Jonathan," the sheriff said. "If I'm not strutting for the tourists' cameras with my sheriff's hat, golden badge, and full uniform, then I'm not doing my job, you know."

  Whitley nodded. He knew full well. In many ways the people of Lancaster who weren't Amish themselves, were asked to be local docents. Many of them would explain the Amish ways to the many tourists who came into the stores to shop and to receive information conducive to their cultural immersion into this new social order of mostly unwashed Amish whose bodies smelled a bit sweet from their habit of living more naturally than most Pennsylvanians. In short, many Amish had practiced a penchant for infrequent bathing. The whiff of their natural body odor was one of the gifts given to the tourists which kept them coming for more and more of this good stuff.

  Sheriff Wilson had to laugh at the general sleaziness of life in Lancaster. It was lucky for the few residents of this small tourist town that the local color was still a good draw for vacationing families. The city council had made up tourist brochures asking the vacationing families to give the Amish the respect of not bothering them with questions. Rather, their brochures told them to try not to stare nor to discuss these Amish citizens right in front of them, but to give them a bit of privacy and to discuss their observations of this strange group of people only from a respectful distance where their conversations couldn't be heard. It was only right to give them enough distance to allow them to live their own lives without having to be dissected by so many common vacationers who came merely to gawk and whose petty talk right in front of the Germans, as the towns people referred to the Amish, tended to upset the Amish greatly even though most of them tried to be good sports among the English. The tourists kept a kind distance and tried to take pictures without using flash bulbs as their tourist brochures instructed them. All in all, the stand off was fairly good for all concerned, for it gave the tourists a chance to watch and to give the Amish just enough distance to keep them coming to the town without which the tourist trade would cease.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I Don't Feel Good

  Ruth Schwartz had been living in New York City with her Lancaster County friends. She was "running wild" as the Amish say, feeling her youthful Amish oats. Like other Amish young people, Ruth had been intimately discovering how the non-Amish world lived.

  A few days before, she had slept with a nice boy she had met at a party. His name was Ricky Schmalz. Ricky asked her to his crash pad, and she had gone with him. After awhile, they had sex. It was her first sexual encounter and the best wilding experience she'd ever had. Now, she wanted more. The only trouble was that somewhere between her partying and her innocent little sin with Ricky Schmalz, she had caught a cold. It was an unfair bummer for Ruth who wanted to discover more young men in the very near future, because she liked what she and Ricky had done in Rick's bachelor pad and wanted a lot more. Her cold had put her dreams in that regard on delay. For several days, her mind was foggy. She found getting out of her bed painful. Her joints ached. She had a fever. Her sweat that night had caused her to soak her sheets. Droplets of feverish sweat still beaded across her forehead. They created little streams of salt water that traveled with the wantonness of general nonchalance into her eyes. Ruth didn't like her persistent squinting caused by the salt's discomfort. In addition, Rick had bitten her twice and drawn blood, causing her to scream. He said he didn't understand why he had done that and had apologized.

  Her eyes seemed strange as well, and she had a sudden desire to eat her meals half-baked which was not like her. The taste of munching on uncooked meat suddenly seemed to have a sudden appeal to her. She even found herself thawing hamburger in the microwave and eating it while it was totally red. In fact, she had suddenly discovered that raw meat was actually one of the most delicious foods she had ever eaten. She wondered to herself just why hadn't she known this desire for redness in meats all along? Why had this sudden new culinary discovery appeared? She figured it was because she was sick.

  Ruth wanted to meet her new boyfriend, but he wasn't answering her phone calls. She figured correctly that he was as sick as she was. Maybe, she thought, he might need someone to talk to or to bring him some meals. She was bored in her apartment. So, as tired as she was, she craved stimulation. Her friends always said sex was good for a fever. Maybe she needed to check that out. She called a taxi.

  #

  As Ruth Schwarz approached Rick Schmalz’s apartment door, she noticed that her body seemed to be operating a bit erratically. She was stumbling. She had to struggle just to walk across the street, because the fever had caused Ruth to lose
control of herself. It was not like her to be this way. Ruth was not really with it at all today. The Amish girl figured it was another symptom of her fever. She wondered if Rick was having the same problem. Her arms reached out in front of her in a rather strange way, almost like a Hollywood zombie, and her thoughts were foggy at best. She knocked, but no one answered. So, she tried the door knob. It was unlocked.

  "Ricky?" she called. Still there was no answer. She opened the door and stepped in. Ricky was not there, so she went inside to see if her youthful and very handsome paramour was in another room. She tried his bedroom. Sure enough. There he was, sleeping. She got on his bed and leaned down against his side and kissed him. His face seemed odd at best. His flesh was cold. He stirred. But it was only slightly.

  "Rick?" she asked. Again, Rick did not answer her. "Are you all right, Rick?"

  Ruth thought that Rick moved a bit, but she couldn't be sure. She looked at his arms, and noticed what looked like bed sores here and there. That was new. She hadn't noticed that the night they made love. Curious, she checked herself for sores. Yes, there were similar sores on her arms and neck.

  "What the heck is happening to us?" she wondered.

  "Rick?"

  Rick sat up. His hands lunged for Ruth's throat. He was growling, and, as his eyes opened, she noticed how his whites were golden and his irises were suddenly bright red, almost like those of a mountain wild cat. Was she imagining things or was he changed in some way? She knew that an illness could be a sensitive thing that could easily affect the eyes and minds of its victims. Ruth had seen that happen with Amish patients whom she had cared for as a hospital aide when their temperatures passed one hundred and two degrees.

  Rick grabbed at her. She felt his hands closing around her throat, choking off her airway. He bit her shoulder and tore out a chunk of her flesh. He was growling.

  "Rick? You're hurting me, Ricky. Stop it!"

  She pushed Rick's hands away. Were they claws?

  Things had suddenly gone wrong.

  Her boy friend leaned forward, grabbed Ruth's arm and bit hard, breaking her skin. Rick's teeth ripped out some of Ruth's muscle, drawing even more blood than he had done before.

  What the heck was going on? Was he so ill that he didn't realize exactly what he was doing? She pushed him away and noticed how his facial features looked almost deadly, as though he had passed away and was starting to decay. Parts of his skin were missing. Little chunks of him had fallen away. In addition, his skin was no longer white. It had changed. Now, it had turned as blue as Roka cheese at a sleazy dairy counter. Rick's teeth had also protruded slightly. They had been straight before. Now, they bucked forward enough that he could probably eat hamburgers through a wire fence. These were the same teeth he had bit her with.

  As he fell back in the bed, she noticed that he had a ghastly look. She turned her head and saw herself in the mirror by the bed. She, too, had taken on a similar and deadly specter.

  It was time to go. But some crazed notion suddenly gnawed at her. She wanted to get back at him, so she lunged like Rick had done and bit him, tearing out some of his muscle. He screamed, then cut her with his claws.

  She attempted to block him, got up, and ran to the door. She slammed it closed on the way out and ran down the hall.

  She wondered why she had bitten him. It had felt wonderful to do that. “What has gotten into me that I would bite him like that?” she asked herself, but she had no answer suitable to the question.

  Once outside, she went straight to the train station to purchase a one-way ticket back home to Lancaster County. She needed her mommy. Ruth wanted no more of running wild in New York City for awhile. She was sick. She felt miserable. She needed her family's gentle arms holding her. Why were people staring at her so strangely all of a sudden? She went to the bathroom and noticed that she had that same look that Rick had. In addition, blood ran down her chin from where she had bitten him. There was also a large blood stain where he had ripped into her muscles and tore some of it away with his teeth. She had a hole there where he'd bitten out a mouth-sized chunk from her. Suddenly, Ruth felt even more feverish. Had she contracted a deadly disease from love making with Rick? As unlikely as it might otherwise seem, Ruth was truly terrified of what was happening to Rick as well as to herself. It was just plain odd. She wanted to be in her home bed where mom could look after her and make her well again like she had done many times before. Amish moms had that special medicinal manner with their children, and, if anyone could help her, it was mom.

  #

  Ruth Schwarz had always marveled at the interior of the train station. It was lavish in its carvings. The walls were nestled with Rococo style moldings, giving it a resemblance to the Vatican in Rome. She guessed it was an adaptation and that the architect had a hand in the decisions concerning just how to decorate it.

  One thing for sure, Ruth thought. This hall does not beg for accessories the way most Amish Farms might. Every detail was arranged for maximum impact, lending the entire scene a surreal combination of recent and medieval grace.

  She almost fell over waiting in the long line for her ticket.

  "How can I help you, mam?" the ticket taker asked Ruth.

  "I need a single ticket to Lancaster, Pennsylvania," Ruth told the dark skinned attendant whom she assumed might be from Jamaica from her clothing and hairdo which contained a myriad of corn rolls all laced at the ends with intricate gold caps. "By the way," Ruth said, "I hope it's all right for me to say that I love your hair. It is very lovely."

  The attendant smiled.

  "Why, thank you," she said. "That's very nice of you."

  "You are most welcome," Ruth said. "And I really mean it. I just love how it looks on you."

  They both smiled.

  "Well, I guess I'd best be on my way. I hope to see you here again some day soon," Ruth said.

  The lady smiled. She wasn't used to New Yorkers telling her nice things about herself. Usually, all she got were complaints about late trains, badly timed connections, and stories concerning a shocking death in the family as the reason for the customer's trip. Ruth had been a real delight. People like her made the ticket taker's day gallop along far more smoothly.

  #

  As the train rolled incessantly toward Pennsylvania and her home town of Lancaster, Ruth Schwarz had been feeling steadily worse. Her fever had increased, and her control over her body became even more erratic. Now, she could barely grip anything in her hands. Even hand rails were difficult to hold, because her fingers moved like balloons and were practically useless.

  The train slowly pulled out of the station into the brazen carcass of New York City. It's buildings were filthy as a pig stye, as usual. The windowed boxes of apartments and office structures loomed like stationary Godzillas along the track bed.

  "How are you doing, Miss?" a man asked.

  "Oh, you are referring to me?"

  "Yes, mam. Is everything going well?"

  "Yes. Well, not really."

  "I need to punch your ticket, please."

  She reached into her purse and found it. The man, whom she figured was either a ticket taker or conductor, attacked the ticket fiercely with his punch. She noticed how his hand tightened like an angry snake against the ticket's corner edge, and a well defined hole appeared where the conductor's small metallic chomping tooth had been resting which was just the right spot.

  "Many thanks. You have a nice trip, mam."

  "I appreciate that."

  The sweat poured from her temples and forehead, and her stomach was weak and full of acid.

  Soon, the city had disappeared, and fields sped by as the train made its solitary snake-like way toward her home town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

  Surely, mom would get her well...

  #

  After Ruth arrived home, her mom, Hannah Schwarz, immediately tucked her into bed. Her father, Jacob Schwarz, had to help his wife get their daughter up the stairs, because Ruth's body stumbled this way and that. The stairs were difficult for her to maneuver. It was as though Ruth simply couldn't control herself.

  Ruth's mom was convinced the devil had gotten a hold of her in New York City.

  "The sin of wilding has come down upon her," her mother said to Jacob. "I told you this tradition of letting them run wild in the city would produce nothing worthwhile. They are becoming hoodlums. All of them."