Plague of the Dead
By
Alli Rayfield
Chapter 1
I could feel my cellphone vibrating in my pocket. I knew it was Adam calling which made it less appealing to answer. He was just mad because our daughter, Jackie, was feeling ill when I left and he couldn’t dump her off on the neighbors, ruining his normal Wednesday plans. I was aware of what he had been up to when I was at choir practice, even though he thought he’d been so sly about it.
I could’ve answered the phone though because we hadn’t even begun practice, even 15 mins into our allotted time. The pianist and choir director were having a dispute over one of the arrangements. They didn’t fight often but when they did it was epic and very little got done during their battles.
“You’re completely out of your mind or just tone deaf,” I heard Polly, our pianist, say.
“Are you really that arrogant to think you know better than me about this,” Lisa shot back.
“I’m not but you are.” Polly stated.
“Why can’t they just get along? We’re in a Church for sobbing out loud.” Lauren said to me, sitting back down after visiting the bathroom. Her bright blue eyes rolling as she shook her blonde head.
I shrugged, “it’s just some stupid power struggle. They have no power in their day to day lives so they’ve got to be in charge here.”
Lauren giggled. “Thank God I wear the pants at home; I’d hate to act like that every other week.”
I laughed along with Lauren.
“So Shelly, how are Adam and Jackie doing?” Lauren asked as it became obvious that we weren’t going to be getting any singing done.
Almost as if on cue, I felt my phone vibrate again indicating that I had a message from Adam.
“Well, Jackie wasn’t feeling very good when I left so Adam’s taking care of her,” I said, then added the lie, “other than that, they’re good.”
She nodded, “is Jackie alright?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She just said she felt funny. She didn’t have a fever or anything. Honestly, I think she just wanted me to stay home. She’s going through a phase were she wants me to stay home with her all the time. Daddy’s not good enough.”
“Sara went through a phase like that. It drove me crazy. I mean no matter how much we love them, sometimes we need a break, just a little time to ourselves.”
I nodded in agreement, “exactly. Excuse me a moment.”
I decided to go ahead and listen to the message just in case I was wrong about Jackie faking it. I really didn’t think I was though considering she had no symptoms to speak of. She just kept saying she felt funny. She said that last Wednesday too. Well last week she said she felt weird and I decided to miss practice. In ten minutes she felt better, like nothing had bothered her at all.
That’s how I figured something was going on with Adam though. He went to take a quick shower because he was going to play poker with some of the guys. While he was in the shower, his phone buzzed with a text message that said “I’m so hot for you. When are you coming? And more importantly when am I?”
I was in complete shock and didn’t say anything to him. I decided to wait to confront him until I knew what I was going to do about it. Finally I had come up with a plan. I was going to take Jackie with me to my sister’s in Arizona but I had to wait until her roommate moved out and coming up with the money wasn’t easy. A flight to Arizona from Guam wasn’t exactly pocket change. My sister offered to buy the tickets so Adam wouldn’t notice the charge on the credit card, which I originally declined but it became more tempting the more I stewed in my anger.
Though, the charge wouldn’t cause any suspicion from Adam considering that we’d been stationed on Guam for about a year and I’d never gone that long without seeing my sister. He wouldn’t think anything of me not asking him to go either since him and Cate didn’t get along.
I went outside to listen to my message. After going through a bunch of messages that had to be deleted since they had been on my phone too long, I finally got to my “one new message.”
“Hey, Shell, I’m taking Jackie to the ER. She’s running a fever of 105.2. I don’t know what happened but all of a sudden she just started burning up. You don’t need to leave early; I’ve got it under control. Just meet me here when you’re done.”
Panic shot through me. Panic and shame. I’d thought Jackie had been faking it. How could I be so blind to my own child’s needs? I took a few deep breaths and looked at the clock on my phone. There was more than twenty minutes to go but we hadn’t practiced at all. I figured if they weren’t going to be respectful of my time, I didn’t need to be respectful of theirs.
When I went in Polly and Lisa hadn’t let up on their stupid argument. I told Lauren that I needed to go because Adam had taken Jackie to the ER.
“Oh, dear. I hope she’s all right,” Lauren said sweetly.
“I’m sure she will be,” I said as I got my purse and headed towards the door.
Little did I know my daughter would never be the same.
Chapter 2
My journey to the hospital was a complete blur. I couldn’t remember the drive to save my life but I knew it was a miracle I didn’t get stopped or in an accident. A ticket wouldn’t have been the worst thing but the precious time it would’ve taken from me getting to my beloved Jackie would have been agony.
When I got to the hospital I ran through the front door to the main desk. I got more than a few looks of concern from the other patients waiting there.
“I’m looking for Jackie McCormick,” I said before the receptionist had a chance to acknowledge me.
She was a petite girl with her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She didn’t look a day over sixteen and if I hadn’t been on the verge of a heart attack from panic I probably would’ve been more curious about how she managed to get a job there.
She looked through some files and said, “They moved her to room 323 on the third floor just about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Okay, thank you,” I said before rushing to the elevator.
“Wait…” I heard the receptionist call behind me but I ignored her.
I pressed the button repeatedly. The doors were not opening and increasing the aggressiveness in which I hit the button wasn’t making a difference. I couldn’t let any more time pass than necessary so I decided to take the stairs.
I ran up the three flights taking two stairs at a time. Finally I reached the third landing completely winded. I worked out a fair amount but it seems to make no difference when it comes to climbing several flights of stairs.
Out of breath and half insane, I made my way down the hall to room 323. There was no one around. It was eerily quiet in the corridor. All of the rooms doors were closed. It looked like the corridor had been deserted.
I twisted the knob and though it was unlocked I was met with a lot of resistance from the other side. I pushed on the door but it didn’t budge. I put my whole body weight against the door and pushed with every bit of strength that I had.
I managed to get the door open enough to get my body through. One of the hospital beds had been pushed up against the door. I found that very strange but it wasn’t the strangest thing inside that room.
Nothing could’ve prepared me for what lay in front of me. There was blood everywhere. It looked like a murder scene in one of those gruesome horror movies Adam always made me watch with him that I couldn’t stand.
It wasn’t just blood but what were very obviously human insides. There were limbs strewn around the floor. Just beyond the hospital bed blocking the door was a man’s forearm and hand. I recognized the gold wedding band on the third finger that matched my own set that I wasn’t weari
ng and felt incredibly nauseous.
There was another person’s leg in front of a chair that judging by the bloodstained white pants, must’ve belonged to a doctor.
That’s when I finally noticed a low munching sound coming from the corner of the room and there I saw what was the cause of the destruction.
A little girl was kneeling on the floor, eating the remains of someone. I made my way around the bed and as I stepped forward, my foot landed on broken glass. It crunched loudly beneath my weight.
The little girl turned her head slowly to look at me. I knew without a doubt that this little girl had once been Jackie but she no longer looked like herself. Her skin was grey and her eyes were dead. Her teeth were a dark yellow color. She looked as if she’d been in the grave for days, maybe years, yet she was sitting there looking at me. She had muscle tissue from the person she was eating hanging from her mouth that was dripping blood on to the floor. I’d never felt so sick in my life.
“Jackie?” I whispered.
She seemed to recognize the name and the fear I probably should’ve felt as she began to stand and limp her decomposing body towards me never came.
As she quickened her pace, I felt frozen in place. I was too confused to make a move. She began to growl at me as she got closer but I still didn’t move. I couldn’t. I could only look into the dead face that once belonged to my little girl.
“Jackie?” I said again barely audible.
She reached out to grab me but when she was within inches a loud bang cried out into the room. The bullet went into the front of her head and black blood flew up into the air as she fell backwards to the floor.
“NOOOOOO!” I screamed.
Though that creature was no longer my little girl, she had once been. Maybe something could’ve been done to save her.
I ran to her side and knelt by her lifeless body. She smelled like decaying flesh and had blood all over the blue dress I had dressed her in that morning. I could feel my heart shatter into pieces. My head was blank from the confusion.
I put her head into my lap and stroked her hair. I was crying violently and felt my body shaking uncontrollably.
I don’t know how long the doctor tried to get my attention. I didn’t see him walk over to me. I didn’t notice him kneel down on the other side of her body. I was lost. Too far gone in my grief.
I saw his lips moving for a minute before I finally heard his baritone voice as he said, “Mrs. McCormick.”
He noticed the change in my expression as his words finally broke through whatever invisible bubble my mind had put around me.
“I’m sorry I had to do that. I’m very sorry this happened.”
“You didn’t have to shoot her,” I whispered.
His face looked pained, “There was no other way. She was not savable.”
“You don’t know that,” I said holding her closer to me.
He sighed, “Mrs. McCormick there was really nothing that could’ve been done. What happened to your daughter was something we’re not able to fight.”
“Well, what the hell happened to her?” I asked aggressively.
He flopped down and sighed. “That would be the question of the year.”
Chapter 3
Dr. Dirk Benson introduced himself before trying to explain what had happened to my Jackie. It was some kind of plague that had been reported first in Southeast Asia, then in Africa, before outbreaks in Europe and the America’s began to be reported.
“How come I haven’t heard about any damn plague?” I asked confused and angry.
“It was considered something on a need to know level until just a few hours ago. No one wanted to cause a mass panic until they knew what they were dealing with and how to handle it. Well, they didn’t find out anything and now more than sixty percent of the world’s population is believed to be infected. That number is rapidly growing though.”
“How do you get it? Is it airborne?”
“No, you have to be bitten or scratched by the infected. That’s really the only thing that has been determined about it.”
“And that the person who is ill is basically a walking corpse.”
He nodded, “that too.”
I sat there with Jackie in my arms looking at her grey face. It broke my heart to look at her eyes closed and her skin so decayed looking. She looked like she had been dead for a while and not only about ten minutes.
Dr. Benson put his hand on mine. The feel of another humans touch broke me out of my daze.
“So they’re zombies basically? All that fiction about zombies come to life sort of thing?” I asked.
He pulled his hand away and rubbed the sides of his temples with both hands.
“Not exactly fiction,” he stated.
“What?” I asked.
“The Zombie lore is based on a real virus. A mutated form of the black plague they believe. At least that is about the time it started happening. It seemed to disappear before it spread as rapidly as the black plague though and it wasn’t considered a concern. Very few people knew about it and those that tried to tell what happened were made out to be mad or liars. It took on a life of its own of course in movies and books but it was always considered to be complete fiction by the general public. No one ever thought the disease would return, it ended so mysteriously.”
“How do you know about it?” I asked.
“I’ve only just been privileged to the information when people started turning.”
I took a deep breath not quite believing the words this doctor spoke and snapped, “So I take it vampires and aliens are real too?”
“Vampires no, the information about aliens is classified.”
The look on his face suggested he was attempting a joke but I didn’t find it funny.
He sighed, “Sorry. I know this is a lot to absorb. I’m struggling with it myself.”
“Yeah but your daughter didn’t just eat your husband and then got shot in the head by her doctor.” I stated.
His brown eyes glistened in the light for a moment, “that is true.”
We went back to not talking. He sat across from me but I just stared at Jackie. I felt so overwhelmed yet completely empty at the same time.
The door crashed open. I looked up and saw a nurse standing in the doorway. She was out of breath and sweaty.
“Another one turned Dr. Benson.” She stated.
He let out a sigh. “I’ll be there in a minute Jenny.”
The nurse nodded. Her eyes were big and she looked even more scared. She left the room then.
Dr. Benson looked at me, “you need to go to the airfield.”
I looked at him, “what?”
“They’re evacuating people to the mainland on the airbuses. They believe it will be safer. You should go.”
He got up then and walked to the door. He stopped before exiting the room entirely.
“Shelly, please. It’s your best option to survive this thing.” He said then added, “I’m very sorry about your loss.”
He waited for me to say something but I said nothing. He left after a moment.
I heard the gunshot from down the hall. Putting down someone else’s family member. Putting down another monster.
I sat there with Jackie in my arms for a while. I half expected Dr. Benson to come back but he never did.
The only family I had left was my sister, Cate, in Arizona. It made sense to get on the plane to try and get back to her. Though that would only take me to California. Something told me getting to Arizona would be extremely difficult. Yet I had nothing else but this challenge in front of me. I felt a fire begin in my belly. A fire of purpose and drive. I needed to get to Arizona from Guam to the only family I had left even though I knew then it was going to be next to, if not completely, impossible.
I kissed Jackie’s forehead on the only spot not covered in thick black blood, “I’m so sorry this happened sweetie. I love you.” I said.
I felt the tears in the back of my throat but I wouldn’t l
et them fall. I couldn’t grieve now. I had a mission. There would be time enough to grieve, if time for nothing else, there would be time to grieve.
I got up and walked out the door. I didn’t look back at the scene of destruction in that room. There was no need. I would never forget the blood on those walls. The only thing left of my husband was his arm. Though on some level I felt he deserved it with the cheating but I still loved him. Most of all I would never forget my daughter as a zombie, the bullet going through her head and quieting her forever. If Dr. Benson had not come at that moment I would be dead because I would’ve never been able to take down my little girl, no matter what she had become.
I ran down the hall to the stairs. I didn’t even bother with the elevator. I made my way down the stairs going way too fast. I slid down the last three, hurting my back but I got up and continued on my way.
I was running on adrenaline. I didn’t stop to think. I didn’t let myself think. If I let my thoughts go I knew I’d never get to the airfield.
I heard the receptionist call to me as I ran past her. I paid no mind to her. She was probably just yelling about me running through the lobby.
I made it to my car and got in. The engine gave me a bit of trouble when I tried to start it. It sounded tired and angry but finally kicked into life. I’d been meaning to take it into the shop for over a month but hadn’t gotten around to it. I guess it didn’t matter now.
I thought about going to the house but figured there was no time. It sounded like there was urgency in getting to that airfield.
I made my way there, though not with nearly as much urgency as I had when I was going to the hospital. I even obeyed the speed limit this time around.
I pulled into a parking lot near the hanger. I was surprised at the number of families hanging around with bags packed. Mothers were holding crying children, while fathers looked more than a bit annoyed. It was definitely no longer need to know.
I saw one of our friends, Richard, standing outside with a clipboard. It looked as though he was making some kind of announcement to the crowd.
Plague of the Dead (Book 1) Page 1
