Genesis Virus

by Pinto, Daniel

  Delilah leans back emotionally exhausted. “Everyone left in this world is trapped in a cliché, we will do whatever we can, to survive.”

  Queen says to her. “Oh, I forgot you were here.” Just then someone runs up and talks to Queen off to the side.

  David says when the person leaves. “What about your friend?”

  She says. “Not a clue, he’s probably dead or killing prisoners.”

  Queen places both of her hands on the windowsill. “Though, some days I wished I talked to Beast before I left.”

  David says. “Why don’t you go get your friend back, you look well situated here?”

  Queen says. “Because I don’t think about myself like he did at that camp.” She smiles and says. “Let me guess that’s what you’re doing, right, rescuing someone, I can hear it in your voice. I envy you, I wish I could be that naïve again, but to each their own. But know this, the person you lost is not going to be the same person, if you do find them.”

  David says. “I get it, you’re better than me.”

  Queen says. “Never better, just different.”

  Queen travels around the room, ruminating. “Who knows what’s right or real anymore...If you want to find out, I believe it’s a question of proving the real through the imaginary or opposites, for example, proving the law through transgression, proving the system through crisis, Anti-Christ, and now we can prove the human through the anti-human, which is no longer imaginary. These anti-humans are the hope we can one day find our way back to normalcy, because no matter how evil we get, we can always come back from it, because we are not them and they’ll never be good and human again.”

  David says. “These anti-humans are not evil, but neutral or amoral, because they are only doing what’s in their nature like a snake biting you when you step on it…”

  She says. “That’s your interpretation, and nothing has meaning until you give it some, everyone has this power and so in a way, everyone plays or creates their own God. These monsters are evil and exist to show us that we are good, this is my meaning and what I know to be true.”

  David says. “Superstition is like a speeding train, once you get on, you don’t know where it’ll take you and you can never get off.”

  Countering, Queen says. “And a ride to nowhere is a pointless life.”

  22

  Ava’s legs are shaking from fatigue and the floating dust fills her nostrils. The smell in the air is overpowering and sour like cheap cologne. She’s standing holding her mouth around a hundredfold of nude beautiful mannequins in a warehouse with a shattered skylight ceiling. The white mannequins with their abnormally perfect bodies and faces creates an unnerving sense that all could snap to life any second. They are the complete opposites of the deformed monsters that have been chasing her for years, yet she feels no closer kinship to them than to the zombies. Both are freaks of nature, eating at her soul. She has no MP5 bullets, she can hear bloody footsteps, the wind rushes in, and she perceives mannequins toppling over. She instantly gets quiet and rigid like when there’s a knock on the door at night and nobody’s home.

  Ava sneezes as loud as a cherry bomb, it has an echoing sound like in the shower.

  A nude crawler zombie with ribs piercing through flesh jumps on a mannequin wearing Ava’s jacket like a lioness, biting on its neck. Ava knocks over mannequins, stabs the zombie in the middle of the skull, and pulls down to the back of its head like opening a hairy cocoanut. Pinkish blood paints the white ladies’ faces. Ava can’t tell if the zombie was a man or a woman. On its back is a hundred whip lashes and its limbs are flailed to the bone.

  She’s rubbing her shiny and thin arm hair, looking at the zombie, the mannequins start falling all around her, limbs and heads bounce on the ground, and it brings her back to the inside of the warehouse. Get out your mind, this place, and this contaminated city.

  With a scorching red sun behind them and in the middle of the street near Ava’s dirt bike, three bandits are waiting with one human hound zombie on the right with its nose up in the air. They all begin to stare ahead as Ava comes into focus and none of them move a muscle or bats an eye. She’s a black silhouette, tightrope walking concentration in her eyes, muscles tight, and thoughts singular. The street sign says Daniel; she knew it started with a D.

  She stops over twenty feet away from them; the leader bandit in the middle has his thumbs hooked in his front pockets and spits out some tobacco dip, shouts. “Are you in charge of this hobo town?” Each man is wearing a bandolier, holding cartridges and grenades across their torsos. Ava’s black vest has scratches on the front and back, her short dark hair is down and blowing in the wind, she’s bleeding through her visible shirt.

  Ava looks at the rooftops. “And if I am?” She has that dreadful feeling one gets when they’re alone and feel someone is watching them.

  “We just want to trade. That’s it pretty lady.” The bandit speaks as if he has marbles in his mouth, the wrinkles on his face looks like dry splintered wood, cracking across his face as he joyfully smirks.

  Ava says. “How about this, I’ll give you a chance to leave in peace, because I’ve just killed over ten of your men and slaves and frankly it’s getting old.”

  The pugnacious bandit on the right says, “motherfucker,” then pulls out his handgun. But the man in the middle places his gloved hand on top of the barrel and lowers it, says to Ava. “Bullshit.” Then spits out thick brown goo.

  Ava pops her neck to the side and stretches her arms, so the leader bandit nods to his friend on the left and the guy walks over to the back of a truck. He drags two men from the truck with their hands tied behind their backs and black hoods over their heads, one is brought over to the leader in the center. The Chief, Lou, both bikes are still here.

  The leader of this team says. “I’ll let you leave with these two men if you tell me where everyone is hiding, save me the headache.” He yawns. “It’s been a long day.”

  Ava holds her tongue and the leader bandit says after a moment. “No...you have moxie kid, I give you that, okay, have it your way.” He puts one of his hands on the man’s shoulder from behind, then pulls his other arm back as far as it can go and strikes the hostage in the ear with his metal retractable baton. Police issued. The hooded man’s head caves in like a soft boiled egg, he collapses and Ava steps forward, but the other bandit shouts. “That’s far enough.” His mouth twists up in anger, embittered more than a kid who realizes he’s not the favorite anything in his family.

  The leader bandit looks up at Ava. “This is on you,” then with complete indifference he slams his boot spurs continually into the man’s face, the man chokes on the cloth in his throat with his arms tied behind him and his torso squirms frantically as splotches of blood absorb into the black hood. The Chief or Lou?

  The aplomb leader signals with his fingers to bring me the last hostage. Meanwhile, from behind and on top of the roof, where Ava saw the reflecting light signal when she entered the city, the Chief is aiming an arrow at the leader’s center of mass. But as he releases his arrow the leader moves and instead of hitting him the arrow slices the last hostage’s carotid artery causing blood to spray and gush from the man’s neck all over the face of the leader. The human hound goes from docile to violent in the blink of an eye, turns around, and springs onto the leader, thrashing his eyes out with its sinewy fingers. Lou then shoots an arrow into one of the bandit’s heart and Ava does the same with her pistol for the last standing bandit. She made damn sure her handgun didn’t jam this time.

  The leader with a bloody face swings at the human hound and his fingers get lodged in the zombie’s mouth and are quickly bitten off. And so with the other hand the bandit slams the zombie’s head into the ground repeatedly and lastly smashes its head in with his elbow to make sure it’s dead. “Fuckin’ mutt.”

  Afterwards, the nonplussed leader with his bloody hands and eyes stands up and says in Ava’s direction. “You can slow me down, but you can’t kill me. More in my image
will come. We are but the beginning. The father of us all, shall avenge us.”

  Lou and the Chief slide down the emergency ladder.

  The Chief gets to the man first. “Did you take our women, is your leader the Boss?”

  The man chokes out a laugh. “We take what we what. Boss who? We’re free, are you?”

  Convinced, this a different crazy, he signals to Lou to stay back, and both check on their vehicles, feeling despondent after a victory.

  The bloody man says. “He who is without sin. Yada yada. Cast the first stone.” He moves his head around waiting for a response, and then finally shouts with blood streaks down his eyes. “Hell, I can kill all of you with one hand and no eyes. Because I have faith in myself.” Ava walks over to him and stops three feet away, with her pistol raised at him. He smiles with no teeth. “You smell nice.”

  Ava says. “Do you have any last words?”

  The bloody man says. “You’re not better than me.”

  “I never said I was.” Ava hesitates to pull the trigger, his eye sockets are caulked with blood, he’s missing the top front four teeth like Abigail.

  He says. “I’ll make it easier for you babe, so you can believe it’s all done in self-defense and won’t cry at night.” He quickly pulls his knife from his belt and jumps towards her, she reacts on cue and shoots him in the throat, he plummets to her feet, choking on blood.

  He gurgles to her, “bandit,” and becomes stiff as he holds onto her ankle with his chewed up hand. Ava crosses over his body to check on the hooded prisoners. Dead.

  23

  Queen looks over at David as he eats from a can of Pinto beans. “Why are you always smiling?”

  David says. “It’s better than crying.”

  Queen says. “I hear that, I’m over the end and I can’t afford to sit around all day and cry over what ifs and what was. Everyone needs to get over their withdrawal for their old lives like you, so we can all start moving forward because a new beginning is not going to exist if we wallow in negativity. I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s necessary.”

  Queen goes to a window. “Look at all those satanic cocksuckers.”

  David holds a spoonful towards her, “unsavory characters,” trying to outdo her insult.

  She looks at him to get up. “The school of hard knocks is in session.”

  Zombies are blotting out the ground and David can no longer see the concrete in either direction out of his window. Continuous streams of zombies are partaking in the invasion as far as the eye can see, they are closing ranks and moving as one down the streets with a persistent pushing from behind like crazed fans trying to get on stage. It’s a funeral brigade for the dead old man in the other room. Do more, equal stronger senses for the group? David backs away from the window, the freak occurrence reminds him of a million bats leaving the comfort of their home, under bridges in Austin, all at once to hunt at night. Shock and awe stratagem.

  Queen says. “When a horde made up with hundreds of these walking cadavers come into your personal space, you can either fight, run, or hide. You may destroy a herd, but how many times can you do that, you can run, but what if they come to your home. You can hide underground, above ground, up your own ass, but what if they decide to become your neighbors…You can’t run forever.”

  David puts down the can and wipes his mouth. “I can help you fight these things if you want.”

  Queen laughs and presses her forehead to the glass. “You must not be from around here.”

  David says. “Obviously.”

  She says. “My drivers or drovers, which better describes them, are my answer to this riddle of survival. Think of these creatures as mindless cattle that want to be told where to go and my drivers, as ferocious dogs, keep them on track with their horns and movements. I really should be awarded with a Nobel Peace Prize for this idea, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. My people will lead these soulless fuckers away from our city mostly with sounds and by tomorrow most of those things will never see us again. If you want to stay in one place and you don’t want to be besieged, walled in and starved to death by those things. You will have to get your hands dirty every once in a while by doing this or whatever tickles your fancy. This country is huge when you travel on foot. The odds of a huge infestation happening like this again this month is unlikely.”

  David says. “But there has to be at least two hundred million of those things in America.”

  Queen says. “How do you figure that? The military used all of their MOAB bombs, which is the strongest weapon under a nuclear bomb, in the largest cities, which decimated millions of those things off the map. Then you have months of military skirmishes with these things, and countless boats leaving the coast leading many of those things into the oceans. There may be millions left, but their numbers are dwindling everyday due to Mother Nature with her grueling weather and landscapes. Humanity is on the tail end of this apocalypse, mark my words.”

  David says. “But they still out number us.”

  “So do fish, insects, and birds, but they have never taken over the world.” Queen stands in front of David and points one finger up. “Wait…listen for it.”

  David waits for it, the havoc through the walls is getting louder like he’s on the outside of a club and it’s peak party time.

  Loud boom sounds appear in all directions, as if aerial bombers have commenced The Blitz.

  Queen moves to run for the stairs. “Follow me.”

  Both track up multiple flights of stairs, the roof door chatters to a close and the pairs of eyes gaze up at all the firework explosions appearing outside of the city. David fondly remembers baseball and hotdogs. Cheers are down below, he’s in the nose-bleed section.

  The zombie processions are in full swing heading for the light show. David can hear a chatter of low grunts and footsteps all around him.

  Queen strolls over to the edge of the roof, peers over. “Look at those shitheads heading away.” She was right and it feels good to hear it out loud.

  David peers over the ledge next to her like a child about to wave to the passing gigantic floats. “It’s not enough, there’s still stranglers.”

  Queen says. “I know, we’re not idiots like them.”

  The prowling zombies are thinning out; leaving human trash behind. David sees multiple cars shoot from the underground and street level garages, motorcading the gnawing fool zombies down Elm Street. David points his gun at a waving zombie. Cars ram through the stragglers and left behind souls. Wobbly zombies are bleeding like stuck pigs.

  Cars navigate towards the exits of the city drawing more zombies further away from Queen’s homebase. The fireworks have restarted farther away. Electric showers rain over the horizon. It’s a man-made rainbow holding a prize at the end for the zombies.

  David says. “How many people have you lost doing this?”

  Queen turns and sits on the ledge, halfway standing. “A couple of injuries at the beginning until we got over the learning curve. Now all the vehicles are reinforced with steel and more horsepower. I was a mechanic, I used to owned and run the family business. And when I got here, my new friends and I used to sleep in these city’s sewers. Boredom and necessity is the mother of invention and I didn’t have to hard sell my idea of droving with cars to this group who were pretty fed up of eating rats and living in the dark like pasty pathetic vampires.”

  David studies the vehicles; armored plated, some modified for a person to shoot standing through the roof. No gunfire yet, strange. The vehicles also have steel grills and steel bars over the windows. Trucks and mustangs traverse through the streets running over zombies causing them to fly and go spiraling through the air, streaks of blood splash over doorways. The Angel of Death sparing all inside. David tries to follow the cars and hotrod engine growls. Bones and smashed faces keep each other company on the warped roads. Passengers are leaning from the car rooftops and removing bodies from windshields.

  A monster truck leads the brigade, it has a fiberg
lass body suspended four feet over tires, each taller than a man, the sound of its engine sounds like a lion’s roar in a microphone. Vehicle is as wide as the street and two stories high. The giant truck flies up in the air and crushes the zombies like toy soldiers as it bounces and hits the corners. David runs on the roof to get closer to the monster truck.

  Queen says. “That’s my baby.”

  “You should be proud.”

  Queen says. “Each driver has a predetermine route that they don’t stray from, so we don’t create a clusterfuck and commit unintentional suicide. And contingencies up the wazoo.”

  David says. “You also don’t want your guys to shoot into the buildings.” She winks at him.

  She says. “They do shoot, once they get a few blocks away.”

  “Can I hire you?”

  “I haven’t thought about that, I’ll get back to you.”

  Crowds of zombies huddle together near the outskirts of the city on a psychotic break. The car leaving that section of the city sharply turns away from the group and the speeding passenger throws a Molotov cocktail, lighting the stubborn zombies on fire. Fire runs through the mini-herd, engulfing all the zombies, turning them into melting wax figures that rapidly merges into a smoking human ball creating a cloud of black smog over the city.

  Zombies stumble after the honking cars like annoyed pedestrians after a hit-and-run. Ungodly response time. Separate, but equal groups of living dead entities begin to connect and march for the promise land.

  The truck that led David to this city is racing alongside the herd as the gunner in the bed, fires into the flanks of the dead, giving the escort cars room to breathe. They honk in appreciation. Fireworks have long ceased, grey streaks pour downwards from the sky. The monster truck is leading the second herd to mend with the first herd now halfway in the field. It does circles, crushing a block of zombies. Then speeds up in a straight line, hard turns left like a chariot for ten seconds and cuts through the belly of the first herd. And takes its rightful place up ahead, engine purring. Vindictive zombies sway to the left after the bouncing monster truck. Three cars on each side of the unified herd pull inward to contain and carry the dead forward like eager pallbearers.