by Jimmy Bird
She asked, “Dad. What are you was doing?”
I blinked in my confusion. What did she mean by ‘What I was doing?’ Didn’t she see all those people around us?
I turned my head slightly to look behind her, but NO ONE was there. What the hell was going on? Where did they go? I turned to look behind me, but no one was there either. What happened to my wife and boys? What about my family and friends? Seriously, what was going on?
I must have made a confused facial expression because my daughter asked, “Dad? Were you hallucinating about our family and friends again?”
Hallucinating about our family and friends again? Is that what you would call it? Is that what I was doing? It seemed so real.
Still confused, I told her, “Im not sure. I think that maybe I was.”
She responded, “That doesn’t surprise me. You blamed yourself for their deaths. You have been carrying a heavy burden of guilt around with you for years.”
Hysterical, I asked, “Deaths? Whose deaths? How many years? I thought that it had all been a dream?”
She explained, “The doctors said that you are suffering from some type of short-term amnesia. It’s a side effect of a deadly chemical that a group of domestic terrorists had released on our country.”
I was really confused, “What deadly chemical?”
JoJo stated “It was a chemical that the terrorist group had released into the water systems. It had caused people to think that they were zombies and started hallucinating which were causing them to attack each other. Those that were being attacked were hallucinating that their attackers were zombies. It was a scary and confusing time.”
My daughter was patient with me as she took my arm. Her hand slid from my arm to my hand and gripped it tight. She gently pulled me towards the stairs and carefully led me down them.
She told me, “You’re suffering from an effect that’s like Alzheimer’s. The doctors said you would remember some things, but they would most likely be meshed up with some of your other memories. The doctors call it the Memory Bleed Effect or MBE for short.”
I allowed her to guide me down the stairs as I tried to remember what she was talking about. When we got to the bottom, she led me towards my dark colored, comfy recliner.
As she helped me into my chair, I asked, “What about the deaths? What about your mother and brothers?”
She sat next to me on the matching perpendicular couch and grabbed my hand. She placed one hand on top of my hand while her other held onto my palm from underneath. She them took a deep breath and exhaled.
With moistened eyes, she explained, “When the chemical took control of most everyone, everyone became delusional. It seemed that some of the people effected with the chemical began running around attacking people like they were zombies, several groups of people banded together to fight the zombies. You were a member of one such group. Apparently, the plan was for everyone to meet at Papa John’s (my father-in-law) machine shop. It seemed that when we tried to leave the house, a delusional guy had snuck up and attacked Jimmy Jr, causing him to think that he had become a zombie. Jimmy then attacked mom. By the time we made it to the shop, both mom and Jimmy had bled out. When we made it to the shop, we found vandals acting like zombies trying to break in. You and your friends killed the vandals, but not until a few got inside and killed Jesse (my younger, adopted brother). We cleaned up the shop and ended up staying there until another group came to claim it as their own. There was a battle and the outdoor propane tank was hit by stray bullets. It blew half the building up, killing almost everyone inside, including Cole and Corbin (my young twin sons). Those of us who survived retreated to Papa John’s land, only to find it abandoned. We stayed there for a short time until another group of people forced off the land. We stayed on the move until a cure was found.”
My daughter stopped talking and stood up. She looked down at me with sympathy in her eyes as I shook my head in denial. Somehow, I knew that wasn’t exactly how things had happened.
I looked up and said “That’s a lie. I don’t remember what happened, but that’s not how it happened at all.”
Without meaning to, I had just accused my daughter of lying. Her demeanor quickly changed from being patient with me to one of anger.
She said, “Fine. It was all your fault that everyone died!”
She turned to walk away but stopped after a few steps, “You killed them!”
I lowered my head and closed my eyes. I began moving my head from side to side to indicate she was wrong.
Without looking up, I whispered, “You’re wrong.”
I took a deep breath and spoke in my father voice, “You’re wrong!”
She responded, “What was that Dad?”
I looked up and yelled “You’re wrong!”
The only problem was that she was no longer there, but everyone else was. Standing directly in front of me was my wife, my boys, my sister, my mom, my brother, my cousin, and my friends. Everyone I had cared about and lost. Upon seeing them, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Hoping that I was hallucinating again, I immediately began screaming my daughter’s name. Unfortunately, I got no response. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that it was all in my imagination.
When I opened my eyes, they were still standing there wide-eyed staring at me. Just like before, there was no animosity in their faces. It gave me a creepy feeling all over.
Suddenly, they began parting like the Red Sea had done for Moses, right towards me. Coming up from behind them was a familiar looking Caucasian woman with a sort of woman’s short spikey 80’s style haircut. She was someone I hadn’t seen in a very, very long time. Now that I think about it, the last time I might have seen her was in high school. Hell, the last time I had even heard what had become of her was when she had joined the military. I heard that she had been living somewhere in Virginia. Her name was Serina Steph.
She walked right up to me as if she owned the house. She smiled coldly as she told me, “Jimmy. It’s nice to see you again. I hate to tell you this, but everything that you own is now ours and that includes your last child, your daughter!”
I responded with, “I don’t think so.”
I started to stand up in defiance but was quickly yanked back down onto the chair. I was pulled down onto a hard surface and noticed that I was no longer sitting on my comfy recliner, but on a hard wood kitchen chair. I couldn’t move. Confused by what was happening, I looked down and noticed that many different hands were holding on to my arms and chest. They were a mixture of white, black, tan, burnt, blood stained, and some even looked chewed up.
I fought back as best I could, but they had a strong grip on me. I quickly figured that I could wiggle myself loose if I used my legs, but it appeared that someone or something also had a hold of my legs. My mind raced for answers as I tried to figure out who was holding me down. That was until a random thought popped into my head causing, me to look behind Serina. No one was there. They were gone! Everyone that had been behind her was gone. What the hell was going on? Serina must have sensed my confusion because she talked to me as if I was a helpless little child.
She pointed her finger at me and smiled innocently as she reminded me, “Everything that you owned is now ours, including your family and friends.”
She moved her hand slightly, so she could point behind me. I was able to turn my head just enough to see out the corner of my eyes. Sure enough, everyone was there, only this time they had menacing smiles. You can imagine what they looked like with their eyes wide open with a smile. It was really creepy.
I turned back towards Serina, but she was looking up at the ceiling. I followed her gaze upward to see what she was looking at but saw nothing. Instead, I heard a voice. It was faint at first, but it seemed to be slowly getting louder and louder. It was a voice that I recognized but hadn’t heard in years, one that used to belong to an old friend of mine named Billy.
Billy was calling out my daughter’s name, her real name, not her nickname.
How did he know her name? I looked back at Serina who was watching me with a serious expression on her face.
Her face softened up as she said, “See, I told you that your daughter was going to be ours.”
She smiled innocently and turned to walk away.
I could hear Billy roaming in and out of the upstairs rooms saying, “Josephene, come out, come out, wherever you are.”
I then heard my daughter yell in a little girl’s voice, “Daddy, help me!”
I struggled against the hands that was holding me down as I yelled out, “JoJo! Run!”
Serina stopped dead in her tracks and turned her head towards me, “You don’t need to worry about your precious ‘JoJo’ anymore because you’re not going to around much longer.”
She turned around once again and laughed as she walked away. I felt multiple sharp stabbing pains all over the top portion of my body. It felt like dozens of teeth were tearing into my skin all at once. I fought back even harder as I tried to escape. I tried to scream out loud, but someone had covered my mouth with their hand. The pain was unbearable, causing the room to start spinning which was quickly followed by darkness.
As the room began to get dark, I heard my daughter scream out for me once again, “Daddy, help meeeeee!”
I fought as hard as I could to break free. The next thing I knew, I was sitting up in my sleeping bag with my gun pointed towards the only door in the room. My hands were shaking and moist. My daughter’s screams for help were still echoing throughout my head.
Chapter 2: Survival of the Fittest
I woke up in a cold sweat, my hands trembling as I held my gun out in front of me. My eyes searched around the security room that we had been staying in, looking for any signs of danger. My daughter’s scream for help was fading away. I blinked repeatedly to clear the sleep out of my eyes.
My eyes glanced toward my left and found my young sleeping teenage daughter, JoJo. Teenager? Maybe. God, I forgot, she could be nine or ten years old by now. It was hard to tell, but she looked so much like her momma, only a little taller. My, where had the time gone?
She was sleeping on her back, her right hand on her custom-made three-foot spear that Ruff had made for her all those years ago. The spear was always by her side. She was under covers, but I assumed her left hand was on the handle of her eight-inch knife. Under her pillow was her gun. I could barely see the grip, but it was easily accessible for her right hand.
Before all this craziness started, I used to worry about a boy hurting my daughter. Now, I worry about whether my daughter would kill a boy if he tried to put moves on her. I smiled. I guess, it was kind of a win/win scenario for me. My smile quickly faded as I realized that I could only hope that she would eventually meet a nice young man that wasn’t trying to hurt her.
My eyes darted to my right where I saw Makalyn Herring, my older cousin’s next to youngest daughter. She looked so much like a mixture of her mother and father. My daughter and I came across her awhile back, completely by accident.
We were making our way to the Lake Eufaula area. My nephew had just got injured and we had just lost his mother and her fiancé, Bobby to a horde of zombies. There was a massive car pile-up blocking the highway and when we stopped to check it out to see if we could find a way through the mess is when we lost them.
I’m not sure how long after the incident that I began secretly thinking about going to the military base in Lawton. I figured that if we couldn’t find a new home at Eufaula then we could go to Lawton, hoping to find a safe place to stay.
Makalyn on the other hand was heading south. She had just come from her hometown of Chandler, where she had unsuccessfully searched for her family. According to her, she had been held captive for a few years (putting it mildly). She had been in Yukon for some softball tournament when the world had turned upside down. She had been trapped there all these years ago until she had managed to escape. She had made her way home looking for her family. Unfortunately, she didn’t find them.
Instead of giving up, she had hoped that they had made their way down to their family cabin (a cabin that her grandparents owned on her dad’s side of the family) located somewhere on the north side of Lake Eufaula. She couldn’t find her way and became lost on what to do. She began to wonder aimlessly, looking for signs on how to get to Eufaula (she couldn’t exactly remember how to get there). She did that until we came across her. Well, that was entirely how it happened.
JoJo, Seth, and I had been sitting at an intersection, debating on which way to go when she came out of the woods, running from a horde of zombies. Coming across each other was luck, plain and simple.
She was covered in so much gunk that I hardly recognized her at. In fact, she was the one that recognized me. It looked like she was covered from head to toe in a mixture of blood and dirt. Her normally bright blondish colored hair was grainier, and dirt colored. It was severely matted and grimy.
Makalyn was lying under her blankets, silently watching me. The light coming from the candle in the middle of the room was reflecting off her multicolored eyes. It’s kind of gave me the creeps. On the plus side, she had cleaned up nicely from a small creek we had found.
I took a deep breath to calm myself. When I relaxed a little, I lowered my gun and laid back down. I looked at the ceiling and watched the shadows from the candlelight do its hypnotic dance. I closed my eyes hoping to fall back to sleep, but it was no use. I was wide awake.
After a few minutes of lying there restless, I decided to sit back up and looked around the room. My mind was still racing from my dream. I knew that I needed something, anything that would help take my mind off the nightmare. No, that wasn’t exactly right. I wasn’t looking for anything to do. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, I wanted to write.
It was the only thing that always seemed to calm me down, but it had been such a long time since I had been able to do it. I’m not even sure when the last time I had been able to write. Now that I think about it. My last time writing anything down was right before we had left the Warehouse to come towards Eufaula all them years ago.
One of the big issues I had about not writing was that I didn’t have anything to write with or anything to write on. I mean, who has time to carry around paper and pens? Another reason was that I really didn’t have any time. With all the moving around we had done these past few years, who could really blame me.
Being in this old security office, I figured that I could find some paper and at least an old pen or maybe even a pencil. Hell, I would settle for a crayon at this point, but I would have preferred a pen. When we first entered the room, I noticed some old boxes in the far-left corner. It didn’t even cross my mind to search them.
My eyes wondered around the room until I met Makalyn’s glance. She was still watching me. She was no longer the normal teenager I had known before the dead came back to life. It seemed that whatever Serina and Billy had done to her, really had a serious impact on her mental state. Oops, I forgot to mention that it was Serina and Billy who had held her prisoner in Yukon before her escape. But I’ll tell that story in due time. I guess Makalyn had felt comfortable enough around me that she started talking openly.
With a worried look in her eyes, she asked, “Did you have a nightmare?”
I just looked at her shocked. I couldn’t remember the last time she had really talked to me. It seemed like all she ever did was shrug since we left Medicine Park.
I looked at her and said, “Yes, I did. What are doing awake?”
She replied, “I have nightmares too.”
Absentmindedly, I shook my head up and down. After what she had endured from my childhood friends Serina and Billy, I could only imagine. The horrors she described would have given anyone nightmares. Now that I think back on it, it was only after we came across others that she had stopped talking. Well, that was until now.
I was lost in my own thoughts of horrors when she sat up. Noticing her movements brought me back to the present, causing me to focus in on he
r. I watched her kind of stretch out a little but stopped short of standing up. I couldn’t put my finger on it but watching her kind of reminded me of someone else I used to know. I got it, a younger version of her momma.
When she stopped moving, she sat still and silently watched me again. I guess my initial assumption of her now talking, was over. Feeling a little uncomfortable from her stare, I turned to my right and ‘looked’ for something to occupy my time.
I reached over and grabbed the edge of the closest box that was sitting in the corner. I slowly pulled it over to me and immediately started going through it. I was looking for something, anything useful. I didn’t find much, but I did find my pen and paper. I smiled. It was enough for me.
Makalyn asked, “What are you going to do with that crap?”
I looked at her, “Crap? I used to write all the time. It used to help calm me down. It used to give me a sense of purpose. I could write down my dreams, what had happened to us at the time, or maybe even both.”
She looked at me in confusion, “I didn’t know that you liked to write.”
I smiled wide, “It’s true. I was even kind enough to write my story and a warning to anyone who decided to go into the Warehouse looking for supplies.”
She was even more confused, “Warehouse?”
Thoughtful, I replied, “Yeah, the place where your grandparents, uncle, and I used to work.”
Makalyn, “I thought that it was called something else?”
I ignored the question, not to be rude, but my mind had already started working on a new idea. I could write a new journal and record our new lives in it, including all our hardships. Only this time, I think that I’ll keep it with me.
I looked over at my sleeping daughter and then back towards Makalyn. With all the hardships that we each had endured and most likely more was to still come, I figured that now was as good as any to start recording our history. Besides you never know which day was going to be your last.
If what Makalyn had told us was true about Serina and Billy, then they were most likely out there looking for her. It also meant that we couldn’t afford to stay in one place for too long.
