Dead Drop - Stolen Secrets

Prologue ~ Cooper Reid

I haven't said anything to anyone yet about the hallucinations. It's getting harder to separate fantasy from reality.

Kevin and I made a supply run to the east side of Tucson. I was inside Target and pulled a piece of note paper out of the pocket of my of cargo shorts. Shannon's handwriting. This should have clued me in. Shampoo. Soap. Lotion. Deodorant. Foot powder. Toothpaste. At the bottom of the list were the dreaded feminine hygiene products for Hayley. Thirteen—how could she be old enough for those things?

A pretty blonde walked by me pushing a small, curly-haired boy in a shopping cart. The young woman's breasts bounced slightly as she walked. She flashed a beauty queen smile in my direction. The preschooler wiggled in his seat and laughed as he waved his chubby hand. "Bye-bye," he said.

I smiled and waved back.

A young couple wearing matching University of Arizona t-shirts, walked past me before disappearing into the next aisle.

Softly humming a made up tune, I strolled through the oral hygiene aisle. I tossed two tubes of toothpaste in my hand-basket along with some toothbrushes.

A bottle of cologne on a shelf along the back wall caught my eye. I couldn't remember the last time I wore any and put the bottle in the basket, too.

Moving to the next aisle, I bent over to grab a stick of deodorant. Glass shattered on the floor across the walkway. I jerked my head toward the sound and saw an elderly woman stooping down to examine the broken pieces. She hadn't seen me but cocked her head sideways and pulled her lips back. Her absurdly toothy smile made her look like a nightmare clown.

I took a step back and caught a glimpse of myself in the convex security mirror. Boots and tactical body armor. Was that real or my eyes playing tricks on me? Present circumstances and memories of the past had merged together for several seconds. The room swirled around me. The walls, shelves, and merchandise oozed to the floor in a kaleidoscope of colors. It reminded me of those old Chianti bottles that Shannon and I had used as candle holders when we first got married with their mishmash of brightly colored, melted candle wax dripping down the sides.

My rose tinged fantasy lay in a black puddle on the floor. I blinked and my reality was illuminated in shades of gray and green through my night vision goggles. The inside of the store was dark and gritty. A heavy layer of dust and dirt from the latest windstorm that had blown through Tucson a few weeks before covered every surface and made a perfect canvas for hundreds of foot prints that crisscrossed the dirty floor. I spotted toiletries and home goods on some of the looted shelves.

It was afternoon, but outside, a fast moving storm threatened and turned the world gray and lit the store's entrance with subdued ambient light. Shadows cloaked the rest. One small exception was the light that shone through a spot in the wall where the cinder block had crumbled and left an opening large enough for me to crawl through when I entered the store a few minutes earlier. The pickup truck that created the hole was still outside, it's front end smashed against the building.

I took a step. Plastic crunched underneath my boot. The infected woman raised her head and sniffed. What was left of her hair was limp and greasy and hung in her face. She hadn't been smiling as I previously thought. She spotted me and screeched like a large bird of prey. The sound made the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end.

I scrambled backwards as she sprang up, legs and arms hurtling towards me. I launched myself backwards. With my finger inadvertently left on the trigger, I sprayed silenced rounds in an arc across the ceiling. Light fixtures and ceiling tiles disintegrated. The debris rained down on me as I fell onto my back and slid across the floor. My rifle skittered across the linoleum, well out of reach. The infected woman flew over my head and crashed into the shelves behind me.

Within seconds, she flipped from her back onto her feet with the ease of a gymnast and came at me again as I scrambled to my feet. With no rifle, I pulled out my boot knife and let her get close enough to deliver an elbow strike to her face. Her head recoiled from the sharp impact, and I grabbed her by the neck. She struggled, but I plunged the knife into her throat.

Using all my strength and body weight, I pushed her backwards and pinned her writhing body against a column a few feet away. She clawed at my body armor and threw her head forward again and again as her jagged teeth snapped in staccato rhythm. Blood and spittle sprayed from her mouth. I stepped out of reach and turned to retrieve my rifle. Then I froze.

Others were making their way to me from the back of the store. Their screeches echoed off the walls. I ran in the direction of the small beam of light coming from the pharmacy. The light almost blinded me. I flipped my night vision googles out of the way and had to keep blinking to see where I was going.

When I got close enough to the hole, I stretched my arms out in front of me and dove into the open space. But before I could get all the way through, I felt hands wrapping around my boots. They pulled me backwards as I tried to kick them off.

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