Darlings of Decay

by Chrissy Peebles

  Realizing that something serious was going down, I called Ben. I knew he worked at St. Mike’s and any information I could obtain from him to pass along to Steve, the better in my books. When I didn’t get a hold of him, I hoped for the best, thinking he was probably just busy treating anyone hurt in the riot. I didn’t want to think that anything terribly serious had happened to Ben; no one wants to lose a friend, especially under violent circumstances.

  At around midday - they started bringing the bodies to us.

  But - they weren’t really even bodies. I mean they were clinically dead - certainly, but not acting like it. It was readily apparent from the faces and demeanor of the officers bringing in the highly restrained individuals that they just needed to get as many of them off the streets as possible.

  The official consensus was that it was an absolute mess out there and even though they had been authorized to use lethal force, it was a battle that they weren’t winning. No one in the lab wanted to touch them but my clinical curiosity got the better of me. What I was looking at seemed so utterly impossible; corpses of all races, ages, and gender were in front of me acting as if they were having a psychotic break of some kind.

  The blood on them was horrific - and I’m used to blood. Some were missing limbs or parts of limbs where they had been ripped or chewed off. One woman, and the only way I could tell that was from the tattered and bloody clothing she still had hanging from her body, was missing her face. I literally mean the skin and underlying tissue was gone; gnawed off.

  You could still see the teeth marks along her hairline. All that was left was the crimson stained surface of bone.

  It was at that point that I realized I had to leave. It was hard to believe then and is still just as hard to believe now; the Undead were fighting to assimilate the living in a battle that I wasn’t sure we could win.

  Not after seeing the after-effects firsthand.

  One might ask when the first person realized that the “rioters” were really and truly the “Undead”. I’m not sure myself but it must have been fairly quickly that morning or else why would they have brought them to me? I know all of it seems so strange, so unbelievable that the police were even able to restrain any of them. Yet the state of the bodies that I saw that day could make even the most skeptical believe in life after death. Okay, maybe that’s not an entirely accurate statement since they aren’t technically alive, but it’s the closest explanation I’ve got.

  In my heart I would love to believe that the situation in Toronto and the surrounding areas will be brought under control. However, I’m not going to stick around in the thick of it waiting complacently to see if that’s the case. I’m a realist and right now I’m choosing to fight for survival.

  I don’t know how long any of the technological infrastructures will remain intact or if anybody out there is even able to read this. All I know is that I will keep posting as long as I am able to. I think people in the world need to know what is going on.

  We’re afraid that even if the situation is brought under control that the amount of information (read: truth) that will accurately surface and be reported may be slim to none. For the sake of everyone left alive in the world, we need to collectively band together in order to keep our humanity alive.

  After our night in the cabin in the woods we’re starting to encounter more people travelling out of the urban sprawl and the smaller towns in Southwestern Ontario. There are some that want to join up with us but we’ve already decided as a group that we would try to stay small. Stay mobile. Besides we figured it would be easier to survive knowing the particular strengths of each of the persons in our group.

  So far we’ve been moving mainly on foot because the roads have been partially gridlocked with cars making them the ideal feeding grounds for the Undead.

  It’s sickening really; you can sometimes hear the honking from trapped vehicles. Their horns like the Siren’s call just leading more of the Undead to them…

  The day has been pretty uneventful by comparison to recent events. We managed to make good time and put a little more distance between us and them. We did encounter the odd walking corpse but thankfully the Undead have been less prevalent today than yesterday.

  While on the move, you learn a few things; certain things become a sixth sense that you never realized that you had. There were certain areas that we instinctively avoided; areas that none of us felt we should enter. It was the subtle clues that we took to heart the most.

  While your conscious mind is working on making sure that you are indeed placing one foot in front of the other in a safe and routine manner, your subconscious mind is working at keeping you alive. It’s making millions of life and death decisions for you and you just let it.

  Trust it.

  It’s the thing that is telling you right now to get up and get moving. Not to wait for someone to rescue you. The more of us that get out of their way, the less of us that will potentially meet horrible deaths. None of us want to become one of them. That’s a fate worse than death.

  We felt a little safer sleeping outside tonight as there’s a full moon out to help illuminate the woods around us. Obviously it’s not the best of circumstances but we need the sleep when we can get it.

  It helps of course that we’ve strung an alarm system of sorts around the perimeter of the camp. Just some rope and a few bells can work wonders if you set them up properly. If anything it will at least give us some time to get our weapons ready if the perimeter is breached.

  While we’re in the thick of this, I’m not sure how often I will have the chance to update you. Last night, I found the act of recording our journey extremely cathartic and a means of processing the day we had endured. It’s also given me a purpose.

  I know that I’ll be able to continue posting as long as I have access through my mobile internet or some unsecured Wi-Fi signal to leech off of. I’m just a little worried that at some point there will be no one to read these posts. Regardless, they will be immortalized on the World Wide Web for future generations to read.

  If there are any future generations…

  God, I have to stop thinking like this! I just hope that my words sound an alarm deep in your soul that you’ll hear and subsequently heed.

  It is a little early to start being pessimistic but after everything I’ve seen in the past few days and the fact that I’m running for my life, I have to wonder if we, as a global whole, can bounce back. I don’t pretend to know what happened to Brooks VanReit before any of this. Did he pick up a bacterial contagion, a virus, or touch some piece of fallen space junk? No one knows. All I know is that he appears to be at the center of all of this and that whatever he had, viral, bacterial or alien; at least it’s not airborne. Yet.

  Think about it; our bodies are marvels at mutating things. Think of all we know about cancer; think of all we have to learn about it still. Why do the cells in one person decide to mutate but others do not? Why does one person have to experience the devastation of cancer but not others?

  It’s like the lottery, some win but most don’t. That may sound a little callous comparing getting cancer to winning the lottery but it’s the best analogy I can come up with at the moment.

  Even though I’m digressing from the matter at hand, I guess what I’m trying to say is that we really don’t have any idea what we’re dealing with. It could have been one thing to start but now it could be something different; something mutated.

  The questions that I have are endless but the answers are insufficient and scarce. What it boils down to is the desire, the need to find someone or something to blame.

  A faceless, nameless entity is chasing us, using the Undead as its host. It’s eating us alive and we are helpless it would seem to stop it. It’s multiplying faster than we can kill it and to be honest, we don’t even have the means to eradicate it.

  A terrifying aspect to all of this is that during our escape we have not witnessed any concentrated effort to contain the epidemic thus far. The Tor
onto Police made a gallant effort but in the end they failed and most of the officers joined the ranks of the growing Undead army.

  Even though we’ve been trying to travel off the radar, it’s apparent from our encounters with the Undead and the lack of military or police presence anywhere that nothing has been organized.

  I keep scouring the web looking for any signs but it seems like there has been a blackout on the whole thing. Viral videos from Toronto on YouTube have disappeared, and there are no recent news reports. It’s almost like the net has been sanitized but I don’t understand to what end that serves. My sincere hope is that our government is not trying to cover this up. People out there need to know what’s going on, if only for the sole purpose to protect themselves.

  Holy shit! The perimeter alarm just went off. Hopefully we live to see another day. Pray, NOW!

  Day 5…

  The perimeter alarm was triggered by a singular Undead last night. Max thinks it might have been tracking slowly behind us all day as the Undead sometimes do waiting for the living to stop for a reprieve before inconveniently catching up. Its unexpected arrival was met with a swift and final second death but the fear of more of the Undead, especially in the semi-darkness, put every last nerve on edge.

  No one got any rest last night which probably contributed to the accident that occurred today. Not that you can call it an accident. Accidents in this new world are anomalies. All we have now are certainties – if we do not take heed, we will not survive. It’s just that simple.

  We had decided as a group to scope out a somewhat larger urban area closer to the border separating Canada from the United States that had not reported any incidences of the Undead as of yet. We were short of certain necessary supplies that we would need to purchase and knew that at some point we had to restock. Our hope was that we could resupply and then get into the United States without too much incident. Under the current circumstances, the sooner, the better.

  After observing the city for about an hour, we were amazed to see that things looked calm and orderly; like nothing apocalyptic was happening only kilometers away. There were no Undead in sight which was promising, and no one appeared to be in any kind of panicked state.

  The infection did not look like it had spread this far southwest yet and we could probably get in and get through the city without much of a problem. I have to say that it was a little weird. We had not really managed to travel all that far and the reports on the news must have gotten the people into some kind of an agitated state.

  I cannot simply believe that all of the news reports and the like hadn’t affected these people. There was no way that I was prepared to believe the Canadian adage of “don’t ask, don’t tell” was so deeply entrenched in this town.

  They had to know what was going on.

  Regardless, the absence of the Undead meant that we were going to go into town and exploit their resources before they even realized they needed them. Get in, get out. Easy as pie right? We will never make such an assumption again.

  As we walked into town we saw that our first and only stop was right on the relative outskirts. One of those big box-stores where you can buy everything from toilet paper to electronics to ammunition. We stocked up with what we needed and I’m sure that we must have looked somewhat crazy to the people working in the store.

  We had decided to split up and leave most of our gear outside with the dirtiest of us. Anyone that had blood on their clothing was out of the question. We were going into this store to purchase ammunition, so making it look like we were stocking up for our next homicidal rampage wasn’t going to help us get any service. The fewer questions we had to answer, the better.

  We knew that we had to keep everything light and portable; each of us were already carrying a small pack of supplies and adding ammunition, though needed, would only weigh each of us down more.

  There was a point where putting more on our back became counterproductive. The heavier our packs were, the slower we could walk. It would also affect our ability to fight off the Undead if we happened to come across more of them in our travels.

  Most of the time, we didn’t have that moment to shed our packs so it was all about being able to engage in combat if needed with the pack on your back. It was a fine line to dance but each of us had practiced a little. Not a huge lot, mind you; it would have looked awfully weird for us to have taken so much stuff on a hiking trip, not to mention carrying our firearms with us.

  You have to remember that while we were subtly preparing before all of this, the last thing we wanted to do was draw attention to ourselves. Too many curious eyes can lead to many more curious questions.

  My husband Steve was a member of law enforcement and in a way I was as well, but to have to answer unwanted questions wasn’t something that any of us wanted. Not for fear of being ridiculed or laughed at. Those thoughts were actually far from our minds. It was the fact that the political and law enforcement climates had changed so much since 9/11. We didn’t want to be labeled as home-grown terrorists when what we were doing had absolutely no connection. Besides, it wouldn’t have served a purpose for us to have been detained, trying to explain it all away. Even I can see how crazy and potentially dangerous we could have appeared to be.

  In the store, we still got strange looks. Three very dirty and disheveled people wanting to purchase ammunition wasn’t something that they were used to seeing on a daily basis. But no one asked us any questions, so we didn’t have to lie.

  Once we left the store with our meager but important purchases, we were still surprised by how calm the town was. It was so different from the panic that we had been experiencing for the past few days. Maybe the advance of the Undead had been stopped. Anything was, after all, completely possible.

  We should have just backtracked out of town the way that we had come. Instead we decided to take local transit and cut straight through town. The idea was supposed to save us time, supposed to give us a break.

  We got on the bus, and everything looked fine. People seemed happy if not a bit wary of the five of us with our guns, gear and gore-pocked clothes.

  Then I heard the scream of pure fear.

  It was a sound that I had heard before. I had even screamed a scream like that myself only a few days ago. It was the kind of scream that imprints on your soul and chills the marrow flowing through your bones. You hear a scream like that and there is no coming back. You know something is terrifyingly wrong and a part of your mind wants to ignore it; what you can’t see can’t hurt you. But then your subconscious comes to your rescue and you’re able to think about your next steps.

  It happened in a heartbeat. One minute he was alive, although he had looked a little under the weather at first glance; the next, he was Undead.

  He had been sitting by himself toward the back of the bus, sort of slumped over himself in the seat. There was a bandage on his forearm but to be honest, I didn’t think too much of that; not everyone sporting a bandage is infected.

  Barbara was the first of us to react, mainly because she was the closest to the disturbance occurring toward the rear of the bus. Knowing that firing a gun in such close quarters and with the number of people now trying to get as far away from the newly but ravenous Undead was dangerous and careless, she drew a short spear she had fashioned from a fallen maple branch.

  She lunged at the thing that was once a middle-aged man as the bus took an inopportune moment to hit a pothole nestled in the road. The bus floor lurched and threw Barbara off-balance, allowing newly dead hands to clasp tightly onto her shoulders.

  Before any of us had a chance to react those Undead arms were pulling Barbara ever closer.

  Closer to the open mouth of certain death.

  Its lips settled into the crook of her neck like those of a lover initiating an intimate interlude. Its teeth could be heard biting into her flesh in the comparative silence of that moment. The head jerked back and a surge of crimson burst forth.

  Barbara screamed; in panic
, in terror, in realization of what she would likely become. Her face turned to us, disbelief fairly evident but the control was still there. She was prepared to do whatever she could to save many more

  The hole in Barbara’s neck looked massive, a chasm of crimson on an alabaster background. While you could see the panic in her eyes and hear the panic from the other riders, she kept its attention focused solely on her. In an attempt to what I can only assume was to save her own life, she tried to get her hands up to help staunch the blood but it had too great of a hold on her. Giving up, she clung to the Undead man as it turned its attention to the rest of the riders.

  The bus driver pulled over to the curb, opening the doors as he did. Everyone with the ability to exit did so, leaving their belongings behind in their haste. A few people were trapped in the back of the bus, unable for various reasons to pass by the carnage unfolding before them. Everything but their eyes was frozen in horror.

  In the space of a moment, the Undead dropped Barbara. She had lost a lot of blood, that fact was apparent from the map of it on her clothing, conquering new ground each second in its quest for freedom.

  The shock in her countenance was plain to see. Shock from the attack as well as shock from blood loss. She wasn’t dead yet but soon she would be. There was no way Ben would have been able to repair the damage done to her neck. No way that we could have undone the damage that bite had done to her blood as well.

  There was no saving Barbara; we knew and so did she.

  The Undead turned and came at us, its speed still slightly quicker than most of its kind mainly from the fact that it still had some oxygen in its blood to help feed the dying muscles.

  Bob’s rage in that moment was palpable. Barbara lay dying and now it was coming for more of us. He pulled out his hunting knife and with a swift and powerful arc he sliced through its neck almost completely. His aim was kissed by pure chance, or maybe it was a little skill.

  Its head hung on for the briefest of moments only by the strength of a few tendons but as the body went limp the last remaining vestiges tore free. The severed head, still clasping the morsel of Barbara’s flesh in its teeth, tumbled toward the rear of the bus, startling a response from the frozen passengers. It was as if that was the signal for them to leave and quickly, they fled from the carnage in their wake.