Escape From the Planet of the Dead

by Thomas S. Flowers

  Zac didn’t say anything at first. He looked at her, and then the others. He sighed and said, “Yeah, I can do that. I’m just—”

  “—feeling a little stir crazy,” Denise finished for him.

  Zac smiled, weakly. “Yeah.”

  Denise nodded. “We all are.” She looked over at the others and then looked back at Zac. “Once the storm passes, we’ll go outside for some fresh air.”

  “Sure.” Zac nodded and then slowly started back to the group.

  Denise watched him as he sat back on his sleeping bag, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders and whispered to the others. Hopefully, she thought, giving them some reassurance.

  Removing the barricade, she slipped out into the hallway. The walls on either side were lined with wall lockers. Seeing them, she could still hear the clanking as hundreds of students swept through towards whatever class they had next period. The chattering, excited voices. Talk of boyfriends and gossip. Laughter over some moronic joke. Plans for the weekend. Sleepovers and hanging out after the big game.

  The big game.

  Football.

  She wondered if Coach Todd was still alive.

  He’d been one of the survivors who took refuge at the school. He helped them get setup in the music room. But then he left. His wife had been in D.C. at a conference with her job. On the radio they had talked about some kind of military coup. He had to get to her.

  And so, he left them behind.

  As did Ms. Gomez, the Spanish teacher. She wanted to get to her sister’s. Some place south of here—Florida she thought.

  And Mr. Hanson. He’d taught history and had heard about a quarantine zone not far from the school. Thought it would be safer to go. Several students followed him. Denise had been too scared at the time. That was before the temperature started plummeting. Maybe he had been right. It would be fitting, she thought. Wasn’t there a saying about how most historians are right, yet usually ignored?

  Shaking her head, Denise cleared her thoughts. Focusing on the here and now. There would be time to ponder the mystery of what ifs later when they had food and a fire. She followed the hallway past the lockers, turned dusty tombs. The cafeteria was conveniently located not far from the music room; her music room, the place where she was once a teacher. Approaching the swinging doors, she peered through the circular porthole. There was no one, dead or otherwise inside. Just empty tables.

  Denise crept inside and quickly made her way to the kitchen.

  A cold, metallic pang echoed from somewhere from inside the school.

  She froze.

  It sounded like a door slamming.

  She listened. Unable to move.

  Did one of the children follow her perhaps?

  For what felt like years, she stood, struggling to decipher every noise.

  But there was nothing but silence.

  Must have been the wind

  Turning, Denise resumed her hunt. All the cabinets lay bare. Without power, whatever remained in the fridge was to be avoided. Boxes already previously raided lay strewn about. She kicked one, frustrated at herself for staying. They should have left. Now it was too cold—they would freeze before making it anywhere safe.

  Wait...

  There’s that sound again.

  A door slamming open.

  And screaming—the children!

  Denise ran from the kitchen and back into the hall. She rushed down, despite the numbing pain in her side and her legs. She simply hadn’t been eating enough to exert herself this much. But still she ran.

  Turning a corner, she froze.

  “No!” she cried, muffling her sobs into her hand.

  Down the hall, the dead had burst through the door leading to the breezeway. Dozens poured into the school. Surrounding the music room. Several had wormed their way through the barricade.

  And the children.

  They were screaming.

  “Miss Aspell!”

  “Help!”

  Cut off in a gurgling plea.

  More glass shattered from somewhere else, down the hall to her right where the main entrance to the school was.

  And more.

  And more glass broke.

  They were coming in from everywhere.

  She felt dizzy.

  Her legs wobbled beneath her. As if she were surfing the floor.

  The dead were coming for her now.

  Her heart hammered against her chest.

  “Damn you!” she moaned.

  As if to match her pitch, the droves of dead moaned and moaned, filling the cold empty halls with the song of the undead. A shivering, loathsome desire; an insatiable hunger.

  Where could she go?

  Denise ran.

  And their song followed her.

  Eyes straining with tears, Denise hit the stairwell door with her shoulder. The door clanked opened loudly. A pang echoed up the chamber. Ignoring the pain in her legs. The cramps twisting knots on her side, she took the steps two at a time. Rushing past the second floor and continuing upward, past the third level. At the top, she threw herself at the ladder and climbed up. The steel was cold and stuck to her warm flesh.

  She bit down on her lip. Ripping her hands from the metal and continuing to the roof, over and over, leaving behind shreds of bloodied skin.

  Before, when the epidemic was still new, they had come out on the roof. For fresh air and to see what was happening. They spent most of their days stuck inside where it was safe. And so, in time the roof had become a sort of respite from the suffocating feeling of hiding. Perhaps that was why she had thought to come here. In her moment of need, the roof was familiar.

  But from here—what?

  She was safe for the moment. Denise doubted those things could climb ladders. She’d seen enough of them to know the returned dead lacked the necessary dexterity. Walking in circles, she knew she wouldn’t survive up there forever.

  Exhaling a fog of breath in the bitter snowy wind, Denise hugged her arms to her body and trotted over to the edge.

  She peered over.

  “My God!” she whispered.

  Her knees trembled.

  She grabbed hold of the chest level side wall to keep from falling.

  Looking over the side again she watched in horror as an army of the dead marched past the school, stretching as far as her eyes could see. They were innumerable. Collectively moving in the same direction—south, like a massive herd of animals fleeing the northern winters for warmer shores.

  She watched.

  Helpless.

  And wept.

  Doctor Ying

  Part I

  Undisclosed Military Underground Compound

  Chongming, China

  “Honey—you have to go,” came Li’s kind voice.

  Wang Xiu Ying shook her head as if she were a child refusing to go to bed. “No,” she pleaded. “I’m not leaving you.”

  Li smiled. His dark, brown eyes so full of love, kindness and patience. “...for the greater good,” he said—his voice coming to her as an echo down a long hallway.

  “Li, where are you?” she called. Ying ran towards his outstretched hand. She ran and ran, but no matter how fast, he seemed that much further away.

  “Don’t forget,” he called, his voice fading.

  “Forget what? Li, come back!”

  “I love you—”

  And he was gone.

  Ying slammed against a cement wall. Dazed, she fell to the ground. Shaking away the buzzing in her ears, she stared up at a white wall with nothing on it but a calendar. Curious, she stood, gazing into this familiar object. Was this their calendar from back home? Dates were x’d out on red ink.

  What day is it?

  What month?”

  Ying peered closer.

  She could hear something, now.

  Something itching behind the wall.

  What was that sound?

  She pressed her ear against the cold cement.

  Suddenly, dead hands and arms pe
netrated through, reaching, grabbing for her. And the constant droning moans of the eternal hungry.

  Ying bolted upright.

  The room was dark.

  She was alone.

  Sweat soaked into her shirt, matting her black hair. She felt clammy. And despite the generous size of her barracks, the room still felt incredibly small. As if the miles of earth above her could come crashing down, crushing her, burying her forever.

  Shaking away the dream, Ying felt around on her nightstand and drank from a bottle of water. Taking gulps that were never quite satisfying.

  There wasn’t a night that she didn’t dream of Li.

  But it always ended the same.

  He was gone.

  And all she had was the dead.

  Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Ying pulled on a pair of military-style pants. Laced up her boots. Tied her hair into a tight ponytail and started off for her lab. Unsure what time it was, the empty corridor was a telling sign. Activity, troop movement, ended around midnight and didn’t resume until 0500. Early on, there had been a twenty-four-hour cadence of guards coming and going. But there had been incidents along the way. Part of their research—all of them, from Bai to Lien, her own, and even Doctor Zhang; especially Doctor Zhang—her experiments were brutal. Working through and disposing of infected at an alarming rate. Much faster than the troops could keep up with safely. There was great risk gathering the undead for their experiments. A risk their military counterparts took on completely. And Major Wei did not let them forget that fact.

  Ying entered through a foggy glass door to her lab. The light blinked, sensing her presence. Donning her white lab coat, she went over her notes on what she had been working on before. Restarting the centrifuge, she inspected the petri dish from yesterday’s batch. Carefully, she used a pipette, introducing normal human cells with the virus. Peering through her microscope, she gazed upon a group of yellow colored hexagon cells attacking and converting white blood cells. Satisfied, she used, then added her batch that had been cooking overnight. She again peered through the microscope.

  “Dead cells—total resistance,” she whispered. Sitting back, Ying sighed and jotted the failed attempt at treating the virus with another virus—this time a non-lethal dose of orthohantavirus. As per protocol, she collected her sample and deposited it into the incinerator. Closing the lid, she hit the large red switch. Listening to the roar of the flames inside, she wondered if perhaps her purpose here was foolhardy. Perhaps what Doctor Zhang was working on would yield better results.

  At the thought of Doctor Zhang, a rumbling growl echoed from next door—from the mad scientist’s laboratory, or so the other doctors joked. Zhang was an eccentric. Brilliant. The People’s Republic couldn’t have selected a more qualified biochemist. Yet while the world collapsed top side, the rules changed underground. And each step toward understanding this virus—whatever it was that was reanimating dead tissue—was made with questionable ethics. Ying didn’t consider herself naïve. She knew the stakes. Her husband was still out there somewhere, but she had to wonder if any of their attempts at finding a cure or creating a weapon would produce anything of worth. Or worse, would there be anyone left to care?

  Curious of the noise, Ying washed her hands in her sink and started for next door. The labs were connected in a large X with each other. Doctor Zhang’s was directly across from hers. Quietly she entered in the dimly lit laboratory. Zhang was scribbling notes on her dry erase board. Around her, the undead lay strapped to metallic examining beds in a cornucopia of horrific conditions. One corpse lay armless and legless wiggling like a worm. Another had his jaw removed—his tongue lashing about lazily, oozing a blackish muck on the exam bed. And there was another who’s head was nothing more than a brain stem, connected to wires and probes.

  Ying gasped, holding her hand to her mouth.

  Doctor Zhang turned; her white lab coat stained in blood. She smiled. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in weeks.

  “The brain is the engine, Ying—the motor that drives us,” Zhang started to say without question or approach. It was as if Ying’s presence in her lab activated some desire to lecture.

  “...what?” Ying whispered, unsure what to say.

  “They don’t need any of their blood flow nor internal organs,” Zhang continued. She quickly went to one of the operating tables to showcase one of her experiments, a squirming corpse whose stomach lay exposed, utterly cored of anything that made it human. “Observe this one,” she went on, “there’s nothing left but brain and limbs and look—it still functions.” She held her hand inches above its mouth. With a weak growl, the corpse snapped its jaw, lunging pitifully for Zhang’s dangling hand. “See?” she said, glancing up at Ying with a proudful expression her tired face. “It wants me, it wants food. But it has no stomach. It can take no nourishment from what it ingests. Its working on instinct, Doctor Ying. Don’t you see?”

  “Doctor Zhang...” Ying started to say, squeezing the bridge of her nose between her fingers. A slow, throbbing pain had begun pressing into her skull. The lab felt hot and crowded, reeking of decay.

  Ignoring her, Zhang rushed over to the dry erase board like a teacher on the first day of school. “Decomposition, you see, starts first in the frontal lobe, the neocortex. And next the limbic system—the middle brain. But the core—the core Doctor Ying, is the last thing to be attacked by the decay. The core is the r-complex, that prehistoric leftover from the reptiles. Don’t you see?”

  “DOCTOR ZHANG!” Ying shouted.

  Zhang flinched, cradling her dry erase marker.

  Ying closed her eyes, swallowing deep breaths. Opening them again, she stared at the shaken, sleep-deprived scientist. “What exactly are you trying to prove?” she asked, keeping her voice even and controlled.

  Zhang cleared her throat. She looked this way and that, as if searching for the right words, or any words at all.

  “Doctor Zhang?” Ying prodded.

  “Domestication,” Zhang blurted, snapping from her trance.

  “Excuse me?”

  “They can be domesticated, don’t you see?” Zhang continued. “If we can find a way, some sort of implant into the core of the brain—we could control them.”

  Ying gazed from experiment to experiment, her gaze resting on Zhang and her blood-stained lab coat, the dark bags under her eyes, her uncombed hair—once jet-black now streaked in gray.

  “Don’t you see?” Zhang prodded, her voice trembling, begging for understanding.

  Doctor Ying took another breath. She understood the pressures they were all under, the often-malicious attitude from the Major, the loss and abandonment of loved ones on the mainland, isolated underground from civilization—it was all taking a toll.

  “And how do you propose we do this?” Ying asked. “Your hypothesis is based on information we already know. And you’re talking about a surgery that only a handful of us are qualified to perform. You haven’t been topside in a while, none of us have, but we know the infection has burned through the city. There are too many of them to accomplish what you are proposing.” She stopped, looking around at the open, gutted and dehumanized subjects. “And this,” she gestured around, “do you know how dangerous it is for the soldiers to collect our samples? We’re taking a lot of risk, bringing them into the facility. I wouldn’t be surprised if Major Wei doesn’t shut us down—shut down the entire operation.”

  Ying shuddered. She crossed her arms, hugging herself almost. In that moment, she thought of her husband and his last words to her.

  “I’ll give them proof,” Doctor Zhang whispered.

  “What?” Ying croaked, her voice quivering in her throat.

  “Proof—I’ll show them results. And then they’ll see. You’ll all see.” Doctor Zhang smiled, but it was not a joyous expression; it was maniacal, like a raw nerve spasming uncontrollably.

  Doctor Ying said nothing—she stared at the smiling biochemist and her heart ached with the thought of failure.

&
nbsp; Elias

  Helsinki,

  Finland

  Elias lowered his binoculars, smiled and handed them to his friend. He glanced back in the direction he was looking and asked, “What do you think?”

  Without missing a beat, Hadden said, “I think you’re crazy.” He smirked, knowing Elias was looking at him.

  Exhaling, Elias watched his breath fog in the bitter cold air. He rubbed his hands together, waiting patiently for Hadden to scope the ship. His friend was just as hungry as he was, he had no doubt about that. It was the risk that was causing second thought. The not knowing what waited for them onboard. Then again, it was Hadden’s hesitancy, his natural born caution in not taking unnecessary risks that had kept them both alive—even when said risks meant easy survival—a hot meal and a warm bed.

  “I don’t know,” Hadden finally spoke. “I don’t see anyone onboard but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people inside. Or worse, the boat could be overrun with those bastard things.”

  Scratching his beard, Elias sat up from his prone position on the roof of Salutorget—an overpriced restaurant near Kauppatori Bay he had never eaten at. He could hear the dead down below inside. Somehow, those horrid dead things knew they were on the roof. They sounded frustrated not knowing how to get to them.

  “That’s a Viking Cruise ship, Hadden—a floating hotel. Can you imagine what we’ll find inside? Beds. Running water. Food. Maybe even electricity. I heard those things run on their own generators. I doubt the ship has moved in months, not since...” Elias trailed off, recalling the early days when the crisis, the plague, whatever had caused the dead to rise, when the world collapsed in on itself—swallowed alive by something it could not understand. Thank God none of the bombs dropped here, though. He’d heard most of eastern Europe was a wasteland. The causality of desperate leaders hoping for a quick victory. No, whatever sickness was causing corpses to eat the living was not something he nor Hadden believed would end swiftly.

  No.