Zombies! The Fall of London

by Kassandra Alvarado

I’m afraid I wasn’t very polite about it. Aside from a dutiful expensive gift from parents, uncle and his doting wife, I wasn’t experienced in receiving gifts. Etiquette, I mean.

  “For you.” Dr. P said, an object wrapped in shiny aluminum computer packaging was handed to me. Barcode ID, the works. Obviously, the wrapping came from the receptionist’s wastebasket.

  I peeled the slick plastic back to reveal a light brown bound quarto-size book. Just to make sure, I flipped past the leather cover - was it real leather? My fingertip sensors stroked the soft cover. The corners were imitation brass squares and the center had an intertwined gold squiggle. Meaningless ornamentation. “A blank book?” I puzzled aloud, impassively studying the empty sheets. “What am I supposed to do with this?” There was a certificate of authenticity tag sticking out of page 104.

  “Fill the paper with the breathings of your heart.” Voice chip altered speech patterns to loft.

  “Quoting Wordsworth doesn’t suit you.”

  Dr. P wasn’t ‘advanced’ enough to understand sarcasm. “Since you adore sharp things and their uses as crude weapons. Do try not to stab anyone’s ocular cavity.” From a drooping pocket, a set of Calligraphy pens with faux brass tips lay in a soldierly row. These were passed down the length of the Plexiglas workstation.

  “What am I...?” I don’t like repeating myself.

  “Take a trip. A journey to the remotest place physical boundary allows. That book is to record your experiences in the most primitive form known to man.” Dr. P was almost sympathetic. Firm. But, celluloid. “I’m afraid by attempting a semblance of normal life, you aren’t dealing with the problem.”

  “But, won’t the reminders still be here when I return?” I guessed he meant no cell phone.

  “There is a high ratio of failure, but the infinitesimal fraction makes the time outlay worthwhile.”

  And so, my weekly appointments were placed on indefinite hiatus, Dr. P means for me to fill this little book with my meanderings and even my languages Professor from Penn State, Ms. Kojima agreed it was a very worthwhile venture. And so, outmaneuvered, this begins the journal of Catherine ‘Kate’ Allen, much good it’ll do.

  November 26th 2096

  Boarded the Polestar this afternoon, the body lies like a large floating bumblebee beside the docks. This is the start of a 14-day cruise entitled Discovering The Northwest Passage offered by Polaris LLC. The ship itself is a refurbished yacht with a capacity of sixteen cabins, the largest - the Great Cabin, is mine, offering crystal chandeliers, fine white tablecloth dining in the two mess halls, a formal Lounge with a minibar and hollow-book lined walls of a Franklin Library room with digital editions of every popular Arctic exploration subject line. On the walls are reproduction portraits of Richard Beard's daguerreotype set.

  When lunch was served, we ate off porcelain plates styled after fragments of Sir John Franklin's plates, the flatware was bi-carbonate plastic in silver color bearing different officers crests. I think I had Fairholme's, a simple crest of a dove holding an olive branch in its beak bearing the legend Spero Meliora, I hope for better things.

  There was even laminated ersatz copies of The North Devon and King William Informer from Russell Potter's bestseller Dead Reckoning, interspersed on tables in the Lounge reminiscent of Titanic. For some reason the book’s title always reminded me of a walking dead novel rather than nautical parlance.

  The whole ship feels as though you’ve stepped back in time, that was probably my uncle’s intention.

  December 2nd 2096

  On one of the cabinets in my room, hangs two portraits, I’m writing beneath them now. One of Queen Victoria in her stoic youth and another of a woman England once hailed as their English Penelope, before all those rumors of cannibalism: Jane Griffin-Franklin. I rather think her features aren’t bad. She possessed a weak chin, a thin hard mouth and sharp, intelligent eyes. I wonder if she enjoyed the freedom widowhood gave her?

  December 5th 2096

   Peel Sound is very blue. Google Earth doesn't show you that. Outside my starboard porthole window, a sea of vivid blue lies glass-like. In cresting mysterious waves a dense, low-lying fog steals in on silent feet. The occasional glint of white heralds a berg, fractured as it were from a mass of a whole.

  Indeed, the season is nonexistent but we are encountering little resistance traversing the channel to Franklin Strait. They say Global warming's a penguin killer, destroying their natural habitats, forcing more and more land mammals to seek colder waters. Truth is, there's none more suited than the Arctic ocean or Antarctica - well let's say fifty or more years ago. The water is a balmy - ͦ 10 while the air is a pleasant  ͦ 30. It still gets colder in Philadelphia. Environmentalist groups are top dogs in the media now, trumpeting claims on how the ice will vanish forever by the year 2110. If that's so, the Arctic will become little more than a memory.

  December 10th

  This was and always will be Bill Harris's fault. A more oversexed pig-headed man couldn't be found this side of Victoria Strait. If he hadn't wrecked the Polestar, pride of my uncle's Polaris fleet, off the coast of King William Island, quite simply I wouldn't be sitting here beside a bowl of Mulligatawny soup listening to a man trying to serenade me in an awful Orkneys accent - oh, thank the stars! Someone just hauled him away.

  But, I digress, it began with a great thunderous groan, the small ship felt as though it were being tossed by a giant's hand, rocking to and fro, forward progress halted. We, the passengers stumbled out into the hallway in our bedclothes, wearing anxious expressions, all asking, "what's going on?"

  We were then told by intercom that the ship had run into engine difficulties and that a Coast Guard ice-breaker would be along in the morning to aid in repairs. Hot coffee, tea and chocolate were then served for a few Canadian dollars in the Lounge. I heard later from the engineers that Bill had tried to go sternboard to impress us with the view and despite the advanced control system, didn't see the mist lying low over the ice-choked sea.

  In other words, he rammed the Polestar straight into it. I think he was trying to pull a James Ross via Antarctica 1843. By 10 pm, we were informed that the ship was sinking. Onboard engineers had discovered the steel hull to have been breached by the ice, allowing a steady flow of water to inch up the bulkheads. The ship had lost power by nine, the main body itself sitting low in the water. No small amount of panic was caught like the plague by the passengers. We were herded topside, eight couples plus myself. On deck with - ͦ 10 below temperatures, the ship's Captain addressed us, simply saying, a party of Inuit had been radioed in, we would hike to land where they would meet up with us and escort us to Gjoa Haven by helicopter, where we'd find lodgings and in the meantime...enjoy the great outdoors, folks. In Canadian twang.

  The last statement was met with cold stares. Winter was upon us and the arctic darkness is known for disguising bears and other predators of the night. Not a single soul on deck believed the one cabin steward armed with a pistol could escort us - safely - I sympathized with the poor man shivering in a thin plastic windbreaker and galoshes, he was used to recessed air vents funneling hot air inside the spacious companionways and cabins of the Polestar. The rest of us were more or less prepared for light traveling in Primaloft parkas, poly-propylene thermawear tops and pants tucked into heavy hiking boots outfitted for the kind of weather out here. Mine were army issue combat boots, meant for the coldest places on earth.

  There were many grumblings about the fact that we had to carry out our entire luggage from the ship. Anyone, whom had purchased carved reindeer statues during the stopover in Finland, had to load up everything in two small lifeboats. The scant accompaniment of crew would stay onboard with Captain Harris, he in turn didn’t miss this opportunity to try and kiss me goodbye. Thankfully, I managed to avoid the unpleasantness of his pocked face and puckering lips. I did hope at the time, he planned on going down with the ship, keeping up tradition, you know?

  The strongest of the oct
ogenarian set, took turns paddling the lead boat while the second with myself and the middle-aged husband of an Environmentalist couple, had insisted everyone use paddles instead of ruining the natural-ecosystem by using gas propellers. Well, the fellow didn’t seem to know how to paddle a boat, thwarting my forward progress by continuously propelling us backward toward the damaged hull of the ship. With some difficulties, we eventually made landfall on a sea of interlocked floes. Any continued progress hindered by jutting chunks where the ice had collided, smashing together into weird and somehow beautiful shapes. These, I later learned, were pressure ridges.

  Further description of our time spent out there bears little consequence to this narrative. We had moved farther inland, the lights of the Polestar reflected the beacon of civilization even as she sunk lower in the water, her mass eventually vanished to our eyes when the mist came. Roiling across the surface of inky night, with it came screams, the sound of shouting and explosions of gunfire. I hardly remember whence it came, from land, from the north, south, east, or west. It was simply not there one moment, then there the next, all encompassing, it swallowed everything in its path. Our group stood huddled, hearing the feral growl of an animal, echoing, bouncing from all directions. I held my service revolver, the muzzle tilted skyward, calmly ordering everyone to stay together.

  But, it was so difficult to see-!

  The growl was closer, and then suddenly, I saw it. They all did. A monstrosity of black eyes, white fur and muscle. The black-tipped snout and powerfully built hooked claw paws thundering toward us. We broke apart like water against stone. Scattering in all directions. I was closest, swinging aside, taking aim even as the arctic beast vanished into the sworls of grey mist.

  “Come back!” I shouted to the rest. “Look! It’s gone!” My voice echoed from all sides, rebounding against solidified air. The steward ran up, panting. “They’re all gone! I can’t find anybody! Fucking hell, Bill’s going to kill me!” He half-sobbed, sniveling into his coat sleeve.

  “We’ll find them, okay? We’ll just stick together,” I reached out, gently lowering the barrel of the gun pointed in my general direction. He nodded, still choked up. Taking turns, we alternately called and wandered throughout the thickening maze.

  I was the one who heard it. Someone was calling for help. I grabbed the steward’s arm, jerking him to an abrupt stop. “Did you hear that?” I was fixated, staring ahead through a gap between the ridges, a shaft of moonlight washed the passage white, the sound filtered like an aural slice from there alone. “Someone’s in trouble!”

  “I don’t-” he began, voice trembling from the cold.

  But, I did. Louder. More desperate. I knew I had to go. “I’ll be right back!” The words flew from my lips as I dashed forward impulsively. “Just a few minutes -” it was a tight squeeze, but I was through. “- I’ll only be a moment!” It never registered in my mind that I couldn’t hear the steward’s voice as he called after me, still. I was running forward, drawing closer to the sound. A roar and splinter of gunfire. I dared half-turn, seeing nothing but a sliver of darkness made all the more terrifying by the sudden silence. When I looked ahead again, the figure of a tall heavyset man completely garbed head to toe, loomed out into the pathway.

  There was no way to avoid it, we were going to collide.

  He saw me at the last second, a glimmer of dark as our eyes met. I tried to veer off course, feeling nothing but thin air slamming full pelt through. Equilibrium thrown off, I flew forward and down, dazed into the snow. Did I pass through him? The same thought must've passed through this apparition as he touched his chest where I should've struck and stared at where I had fallen.

  Who are you? I wondered as he dropped his hand, taking a step toward me. There was something almost painfully familiar about him, something I couldn’t define. He extended his hand out, warding or aiding, I’m not sure which. Then, my eyes fell to the frozen ground beside my hip where the chill was just barely beginning to bite through my pants. The short stock of a sawn-off shotgun lay only inches away, the very same model smuggled onboard as one of the tourists was a big game hunter and had the money to bribe Harris to overlook the law.

  Snatching it up, I rolled up and onto my feet, sprinting into the darkness.

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