Stay Inside

by Maria Herring

  Stay Inside

  Stories For Quarantine

  Maria Herring

  Maria Herring

  Copyright © 2020 by Maria Herring

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Z-VID 45

  Z-VID 45

  Screen fades in.

  A middle-aged man walks into the shot. His clothes are spotlessly clean, but worn and ragged. His shirt sleeves are rolled up past the elbow, and his forearms are as weathered and scarred as his face, but there are no bite marks. The scars were obviously made from blades or other such edged weapons. As he sits, the camera wobbles a little then settles.

  CW: Right here? Now what?

  OFFSCREEN: Just keep looking into the camera and I’ll ask you questions from here.

  CW: Okay.

  OFFSCREEN: For the record and the audience, please state your name and pre-Z-VID occupation.

  CW: My name’s Charles Webster, and before the outbreak I was an online High School History teacher.

  OFFSCREEN: You’re here today because you’ve been accused of murder. How do you plead?

  CW: This is fucking ridiculous! Is that what you brought me here for?

  OFFSCREEN: Please refrain from using explicit language. This is a live stream. How do you plead?

  CW: Not guilty, of course! How on what’s left of God’s green Earth can anyone think I’m guilty?

  OFFSCREEN: That’s for the viewers at home to decide. Please answer the questions I pose fully, honestly, and with clean language.

  Webster pinches the bridge of his nose while chuckling softly. Then he looks back up into the camera.

  CW: You really think after all we’ve seen, all we’ve done, people give a rat’s… people care about a few curse words? All right, whatever. Have it your way. Ask your damn questions.

  OFFSCREEN: Did you kill Maddie Winchester on Wednesday October 4th, 2052?

  CW: Nope.

  OFFSCREEN: There’s video footage attesting to the opposite, Mx Webster. Video footage that you live-streamed yourself. Did you kill Maddie Winchester?

  CW: No, I did not kill Maddie Winchester. I tell you what I did kill though. I killed a zombie. I killed a monster. I killed a soulless creature that had turned any number of God-fearing citizens into zees, who then went on to infect others, and they infected others. But you know how the infection works, right? You suits got all the answers, right? All safely holed-up in your little bunkers while regular people like me are going round doing the job your kind couldn’t stomach. Now you’re accusing me of being, what, a murderer? Go fuck yourself.

  OFFSCREEN: Please refrain from swearing, Mx Webster. This is a live stream. Is it true that during the quarantine restrictions you rebranded yourself as Zee Hunter, and purposely sought out hordes of infected in order to kill them?

  CW: You have all the stream footage. It’s all online for anyone to see. Why are you asking me that question?

  OFFSCREEN: Yes or no, Mx Webster?

  CW: Well, what was I supposed to do? We hadn’t seen any sign of the government once all the sh— crap hit the fan. The military were infected way quicker than the rest of us, so they couldn’t do anything. You expected me just to sit around and watch the people I love, the whole damn world, turn into monsters?

  OFFSCREEN: Yes or no, Mx Webster?

  CW: God damn it! Yes! All right? Yes, I did. During the quarantine, I tracked down zees and I killed them. About a year into it, I hit on the idea of filming and posting videos so that other people would know how to do it too. I was teaching people. That’s my job. I teach. And none of you guys were doing anything to get us out of the situation, so, yeah. I took it upon myself to teach the living how to kill the dead. And you know why my show was popular? Because people were finally getting the help they wanted, the help they needed. If you didn’t want people going out and cleaning up the mess that you weren’t, you should’ve got up off your asses and done something about it the first place.

  OFFSCREEN: Did you enjoy it?

  CW: Did I what?

  OFFSCREEN: Did you enjoy killing the infected, Mx Webster, and the fame it brought you?

  CW: Jesus Christ…

  Mx Webster leans back in chair, pulls his fingers through his hair. He shakes his head several times. He leans forward into the camera again.

  CW: Did I enjoy it? Did I enjoy coming home from the store one day in February 2045 to find my wife feasting on my new born baby? Did I enjoy watching my five-year-old son turn because my wife had bitten him too? Did I enjoy watching first my neighbourhood, then my town, then my country, then the world goddammit descend into this nightmare that we’re only just waking up from now, seven goddam years later? The answer’s no. No, I did not enjoy it. I did not not enjoy seeing the people I’d recently celebrated New Year’s with turn into mindless monsters. I did not enjoy the constant fear that’s fuelled me the past seven years. I did not enjoy the fact that I had to put down the creatures that had once been like me, were once just as scared as me, who once had families like me. I did not enjoy the fact that all that fell on my shoulders because suits like you had abandoned us.

  OFFSCREEN: What was your reaction when the government released information about the vaccine?

  Mx Webster laughs softly.

  CW: I questioned it. I questioned its efficacy, I questioned its availability, and I sure as hell questioned why it took you so long to come up with one. You know, during this whole pandemic, we all still had electricity. We all still had access to the internet. We still had running water. We were looting shops and abandoned farms for food and supplies, sure. But you still managed to organise the occasional supply drop. That suggested to me that there was a level of preparation for a pandemic of this scale. Maybe even an expectation. So why’d it take this long to come up with a vaccine? Nuh uh. I don’t buy it. There’s no vaccine for this. You can’t cure dead.

  OFFSCREEN: The infected humans aren’t dead, Mx Webster. They’re infected. It’s an illness, which means it can be treated. They only died when you, or others like you, killed them.

  CW: You abandoned us! You streamed your little infoshows from the safety of your impenetrable bunkers and just left us to get on with it! We had no defence against them! What did you expect us to do? Just sit back and wait?

  OFFSCREEN: Yes. We expected you to obey the rules of quarantine. We told you we were working on a vaccine, and now we have a vaccine. And from that vaccine we developed a cure for those patients already infected with Z-VID 45.

  CW: Patients!

  OFFSCREEN: A cure which, as we explicitly stated in our daily broadcasts from the beginning of September 2052, would begin rolling out on Thursday October 5th, 2052. Now, we have stream footage of you killing Maddie Winchester on October 4th, despite knowing that the cure would be administered a day later. Because of this, you have been accused of murder. How do you plead?

  Mx Webster shakes his head. Then he looks directly into the camera.

  CW: I am not guilty. You wanna blame someone for the death of that zee? Sorry—that patient? Blame the son of a bitch that bit her in the first place. Blame the infection. Blame the government that left us stranded for so long. Blame Maddie fucking Winchester for not taking precautions when she knew what the dangers were. Hell! We’ve been in quarantine for seven goddam years—you think she went all that time not realising what the hell was going on out there? Blame any goddam thing you like, but do not blame me. I never killed Maddie Winchester. I am not guilty.

  S
creen fades to black.

  Screen fades in.

  In front of the screen is a woman of indeterminate age, her face is lined with worry, her eyes are red and puffy. They dart from the camera to the other people in the room offscreen. Her arms are crossed and resting on the table in front of her, but every now and then she fidgets with the wedding band on her ring finger.

  AW: I don’t know what to say. Should I be saying something?

  OFFSCREEN: We’re going to ask you some questions. Just answer them honestly and fully into the camera. Remember, this is a live stream, so polite language only. First of all, state your name and pre-Z-VID occupation.

  AW: My name’s Amy Winchester, and I used to be an Influencer before…all this.

  OFFSCREEN: You’ve accused Mx Webster of murdering your wife, Maddie Winchester, is that correct?

  AW: Yes, it is.

  OFFSCREEN: Please tell the viewers at home why you’re pressing charges.

  AW: Because it was the day before the cure was due to be released that he killed her. There’s no way he didn’t know that! The alert had been streaming to everyone’s screens for, like, two months before that. And he’s the Zee Hunter, right? Of course he has screens! There’s no way he could’ve missed all those announcements. And also, he knew Maddie. He knew she got bitten and he tracked her down on purpose so he could kill her!

  OFFSCREEN: He knew Maddie? How did he know Maddie?

  AW: Not, like, IRL. He knew her because of his show. Maddie was such a huge fan of his, like, really huge. Before the outbreak, Maddie was a registered voice, you know? For, like, those audiobook publishers? She loved reading so much. When the quarantine started, she began streaming her own audio show, #QuarantineLibrary. You heard of it? Anyway, she basically tracked down all these old books and stuff on the net, stuff that wasn’t copyrighted anymore, you know? And read them out loud. Just so people could have something to listen to now they weren’t publishing any more. And anyway, that’s how she came across Zee Hunter.

  OFFSCREEN: He used to listen to her show?

  AW: No, no. I guess in one of her millions of searches to find new things to read, she just came across his stream. She started watching his videos. I remember her saying to me one day that while she was inside reading to people about all these different exciting adventures, he was out there living them. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. We LOL’d a little, then went back to whatever we were doing. And not long after that she started writing her own stuff, you know? She got really into that.

  OFFSCREEN: So, I’m a little confused, Mx Winchester. If Maddie came across Mx Webster’s stream, how did he know about her?

  AW: Well, the stuff she was writing wasn’t popular. She was losing a lot of followers. I mean, I hearted her stuff so hard, but then, I guess not everyone’s into lit-punk. But that was when she really started getting into Zee Hunter’s stream. I mean, like, really. It was kind of becoming, like, an obsession, or something. She watched him every day, and if he wasn’t streaming, or hadn’t posted anything new, she’d rebinge old episodes, you know? And that’s when she started writing fanfic. Zee Hunter fanfic, can you even?

  She puts her head in her hands for a moment. Then she looks back into the camera.

  AW: I mean, it’s like, how reckless can one guy be? We’ve all got the gov-stream, we all know what’s going on out there, we all know how dangerous the infected are… Who did this guy think he was? Walking around outside like he’s immune, streaming his kills like he’s some big-brand Influencer. Who even was this guy before Z-VID, you know? But, yeah, he was super popular, because, you know, like, the entire world was his captive audience, wasn’t it? And Maddie got hooked, and then she started writing fanfic. Short stories based off of different videos of his. You know, maybe it was the pre-Z life story of one of the zees he killed, or what a particular town used to be like before the hoard showed up, that kind of thing. One of her best was about a shattered pot plant in the middle of the street. You saw it for, like, a couple of seconds as Zee walked towards this infected person, but Maddie created a whole half-hour story about that potted plant. It was beautiful.

  She turns her head away from the camera and wipes at her eyes. Then she turns back.

  AW: I’m sorry. Sorry. Okay. Anyway, that particular story got a lot of hits. Went viral. You know how it is. And that’s what put Maddie on Zee Hunter’s radar.

  OFFSCREEN: Did Mx Webster ever contact Maddie?

  AW: Yeah. He commented on that particular story. OMFG guys, but she was, like, uncontrollable after that, you know what I mean? I’d never seen her so excited in my whole life. For, like, a week she wouldn’t shut up about him, you know? And she really doubled down on the writing after that. And obviously that Zee guy was checking out her back catalogue too, because even more comments started popping up from him. They were feeding off of each other, you know? He’d comment on something of hers, and she’d write a bunch more fanfics about him. Feeding off of each other.

  OFFSCREEN: But that doesn’t explain how Mx Webster knew that Maddie became infected.

  AW: Hashtag-WaitForIt. So Maddie starts featuring herself in these little fanfics she’s writing now. Yeah. I know, right? Now, we’ve got her and Zee running around the country and saving the world and all that shit, and IRL he’s loving it, and she’s loving. And then one day, she gets the stupid fucking idea of actually going outside herself and shooting a video of her hunting down an infected. I mean, can you even?

  OFFSCREEN: I’ll remind you to watch your language. Did you try to stop her?

  AW: Of course I did! We’d been indoors for years by this point, living off looting and supply drops and the few straggly vegetables that grew in our yard. You think I’m skinny? you should’ve seen the state of her! But she’d somehow written herself into believing in this ludicrous notion of hers.

  OFFSCREEN: Ludicrous notion?

  AW: That she was the musclebound hunter version of herself that appeared in her fanfic. And that she could take on the infected with no problem whatsoever. So she goes out with her phone, finds herself an infected, and livestreams herself taking it on. And then…

  She sobs for several moments.

  AW: Well, you’ve seen the stream. You know what happened to her.

  OFFSCREEN: And when did this take place?

  AW: Second week of September. We’d already had your info-streams about the vaccine and cure, so I guess Maddie thought that if she did get bitten, she’d be all right. And she would’ve been! I mean, I knew where she was—I’d seen the live stream and I was already out there trying to find her. I got her back home, but I hadn’t paused the live-streaming on her phone, you know? That’s how that Zee was able to track us down. She turned a couple of days after that, and I kept her locked upstairs in the guest bedroom. On October 4th, there was a supply drop about half a k from where we lived, so I went out to see what I could score. When I came back, she… She…

  OFFSCREEN: Take your time, Mx Winchester.

  AW: When I came back, she was on the porch. All chopped up. He’d cut off her head, and… I don’t know how he did it, but her head was just a bloody puddle. Even if there wasn’t a vaccine, even if there wasn’t a cure, why did he have to be so brutal about it? He knew she lived with someone, you know? He must’ve seen me leave that morning to go to the drop. So why leave her like that for me to find? And a day before the cure was to be released! That son of bitch rat bastard! The day before the cure!

  She crumples into tears. Screen fades to black.

  Screen fades in.

  A figure shuffles into view, supported on both sides by white-clad medical staff. They ease the figure into the chair, then step away. The figure is of indeterminate gender, indeterminate age. Their skin is waxy, covered in stitches. Their eyes are bloodshot but alert. They remain upright and stiff in the chair, their hands with bandaged fingers flat on the table in front of them.

  OFFSCREEN: Please state your name and pre-Z-VID occupation for the r
ecord and audience.

  ZB: My name is Zoe Baker. I was…a, a high school senior.

  OFFSCREEN: Is that your recollection, or something you were told post cure?

  ZB: Something I was told post cure.

  OFFSCREEN: Do you understand why you are here today, Mx Baker?

  ZB: I’m in trouble? I’m in trouble because I ate someone? People keep telling me I ate someone. I don’t remember eating someone.

  OFFSCREEN: No, Mx Baker, that’s not why you’re here today.

  ZB: I didn’t eat someone?

  OFFSCREEN: You did, I’m afraid. That’s a fact. But it was a symptom of your infection. But you’re cured now. You’ve had the cure.

  ZB: Oh. Then why am I here?

  OFFSCREEN: Because your DNA was found on the body of a Mx Maddie Winchester. She died the day before you got the cure. You bit her the day before you got the cure.

  ZB: She died because I bit her?

  OFFSCREEN: No, she didn’t die from the bite. She did become infected, like you were. She died because a man called Mx Webster killed her. He didn’t like infected people.

  ZB: That’s because we eat people.

  OFFSCREEN: Used to, Mx Baker. Used to. Not any more. Not since the cure.

  ZB: Okay. Why am I here?

  OFFSCREEN: We’re here to determine, to find out, who should be punished for Maddie’s death. Should we punish you for biting Maddie and causing her to become infected? Or should we punish Mx Webster for killing Maddie before she had a chance to get the cure? Or was it Maddie’s fault for not obeying quarantine rules?

  ZB: I don’t know.

  OFFSCREEN: No, nor do we. That’s why we’re here today. We’re here to talk and tell the people about what happened, so that they can decide.