Last Man Standing Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Taylor, Keith

  “The problem with Sala Daeng is that you’ve got a few thousand people packed into a tight space. There’s music, laughter, yelling. No way anyone could hear the screaming over the noise. People started to push and shove desperately into the crowd, but what else is new? The crowd just pushed right back and threw their water. It wasn’t until someone knocked over the big speakers at the side of the street that the music cut out, and suddenly everyone could hear the screams.”

  For a moment Paul seems to drift away. His eyes lose their focus, and when he continues it’s with an odd tone, as if he’s reading from a script.

  “A scream is... it’s a strange noise. You’ve been hearing them all your life in the movies, but real screams don’t sound like that. Actors can’t do ‘em justice. It’s like the difference between a fake laugh and a real one, you know? You can’t mistake it. What I heard that day I pray never to hear again. People were screaming so much their voices gave out, but it still wasn’t loud enough to drown out the pleading. People were begging for mercy even as their bones broke.” He shivers despite the close heat.

  “One girl, some skinny blonde tourist with a long ponytail, panicked and tried to run through the pack to get back to Soi Convent. One of them grabbed her hair, easy as you like, and just tugged it right off her head. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Fucker just pulled and pulled until her whole scalp just slipped off. Someone must have bit her in the crowd, because she was back on her feet a minute later and joining in the fight for the other side, that ponytail still hanging by a strip of skin halfway down her neck.”

  I cringe with disgust at the image. I’ve seen a few walkers with horrific injuries, thankfully on TV rather than up close, and it’s all I can do not to wonder how they’d come by them. I thank God I’d never had to watch as someone was turned, or killed.

  “Everyone else, of course, pushed right into the crowd. Once the music was gone and people started to hear the screams they all started to shove, but when you’ve got a few thousand people crowding down half a mile of narrow street it’s impossible to get everyone moving as one. Hundreds were trampled. The unlucky ones at the back... well, they were torn to shreds pretty quickly. The really lucky ones, those at the other end of the street, some of them must have managed to get away, but it was the people in the middle who lasted the longest. They were squeezed in by the crowds. Some of them managed to stay on their feet. Maybe some even managed to slip away into the shops along the street. That’s what I hoped Ogi had done.”

  “You said you saw her again? In the crowd?”

  Paul falls silent for a moment. He stubs out his beedi on the surface of the wooden table, ignoring the ashtray by his bottle.

  “Yeah, I... I think so. Seems stupid to say this, but I can’t be sure. You know how people say all Asians look alike? Well, it’s bullshit. Ogi was Mongolian, looked more Korean than anything else. She definitely didn’t look Thai. In that crowd, though, I couldn’t have picked her out if she’d been wearing a big sign. Almost everyone had black hair, and I was looking down from above. Everyone was moving too much, squeezing, pushing, pulling. The whole crowd moved like the ocean, waves of movement pulling people this way and that. Some people tried to scramble over the top of the scrum, only to fall down and get trampled beneath thousands of feet.

  “I think I saw her dress. She was wearing this long, flowing blue floral thing I’d bought for her a couple of weeks earlier in Cambodia. She loved that dress. Said it made her feel like a Parisian, whatever that means. I think I saw it. I saw a figure clambering up on a big ceramic planter at the side of the street, and I saw that flash of floral blue for just a second or two. Whether she fell, jumped or was pulled I have no idea. I just know she vanished backwards behind the plants, and that was the last I saw.”

  “Did you try to call her phone?” I ask.

  Paul shoots me a withering look. “Of course I tried to fucking call,” he snaps. “I called, I sent texts. I called her sister. I called all of our friends. The network was busy every time. Of course that was later, after I got out of Silom. When it all started I had my own problems to deal with. There’s another thing I’d like to speak to Romero about. These things are quick as hell. As long as they haven’t injured their legs they’re just as fast as you and me. It’s only later that they slow down, when their joints dry out. When it all kicked off, though... shit, they could move.”

  “You were chased?”

  Paul nods. “I was chased. I made the same stupid ‘movie zombie’ mistake as everyone else. I assumed I was safe up on the walkway above the street. It never occurred to me that these things could climb stairs. I didn’t think they could think. I wasn't all that worried about my own safety until I heard a scream to my right, and I turned just in time to see a young Thai woman tip over the railings as she ran to escape a small group that had managed to climb the stairs. She landed down on the street with her legs straight, feet first, just behind the pack. I probably imagined it, but I'd swear I heard her bones snap. I don't know. All I know is that she was still alive and awake as they began to close in on her. I didn’t have time to watch what happened next, even if I'd wanted to.” Paul plays with his bundle of beedis for a moment, but doesn't light one.

  “One of the group that made it up the stairs locked eyes with me. Just stared me down from fifty feet away. For a moment – and I know this is stupid – I wondered if I could just slowly back away, no sudden movements, as if I was dealing with one of those crazy soi dogs that run around the city. No chance. The second I twitched he started sprinting at me. You know, people who’ve seen the movies will tell you there’s nothing more terrifying than a zombie shambling towards you, groaning all the way like Frankenstein’s monster. Film critics say there’s something about the slow, unrelenting pace that taps into our primal fear, but if you’re ever unlucky enough to meet a freshly turned fucker you’ll know it’s bullshit. I’ll see your groaning zombie and raise you a pair of my damp trousers that there’s nothing more terrifying than one of them silently sprinting at you full pelt. Fortunately mine hadn’t been too quick on his feet when he was alive. He was a little heavy, and he seemed to have trouble running in his sandals. I kicked mine off my feet and shot off down the walkway, towards the MRT station at the end of Silom Road.”

  I glance down at the hastily sketched map in my pad. “Isn’t that where the rest of the infected were heading, too?”

  “Yeah, but I had the advantage that I wasn’t stopping along the way to tear thousands of people to pieces. The walkway was almost empty, and I soon passed over the crowd. Before long the one chasing me peeled off, too. I risked a look behind me and saw him throw himself over the railing back down to the street, where he landed right in the middle of a group of kids trying to escape. That’s one thing that came in handy. They’ll always go for the easiest target. If you can run them in the direction of a limping granny you’ll probably get away safe.”

  Paul notices my expression.

  “What, you think you wouldn’t? Fuck you, Tom. Trust me, if you ever saw how they kill up close you’d soon change your mind. It’s easy to be a hero in theory. In real life... well, you find out pretty quick just how brave you really are.”

  He pauses for a moment, lifts his drink for a swig then reconsiders. “I got back down to street level on the corner of Silom Road and Rama IV. The underground station was right there, but there was no way I’d head down beneath the streets. Unless there was a train waiting for me on the platform... well, I don’t want to think would have happened if I’d been trapped down there between the platform barriers. Thousands tried to escape that way, and they’re still clearing out the bodies today.”

  “I ran across the street towards Lumphini Park, the only real green space in the city. Behind me I could hear the traffic go crazy as people were pulled from their cars. As I reached the park gate I turned to see what was happening, and I really I wish I hadn’t. It’s strange how irrational people become when they’re afraid
. I saw people jump into cabs that were snarled up in traffic, yelling at the drivers even as the dead came in through the windows. If only they’d kept running they might have gotten away.”

  “Why do you think they did that? Got in the cabs, I mean,” I ask, realizing the pointlessness of the question. Paul looks at me like I’m simple.

  “How the fuck should I know? Maybe they thought these things couldn’t open doors. They’d be right, for the most part, but a few dozen of them pounding on a window is just as good. A tuk tuk almost managed to get away, jumping onto the sidewalk and cutting through the crowds, living and dead. If only it hadn’t hit a hydrant it may have made it, too, but it clipped the steel and bounced off into a shop window. The whole thing went up in flames – those things are death traps at the best of times – and I started running again as the shop began to burn. I can’t be sure, but I think that was the start of the fire that tore through all of Silom. I’m damned certain nobody came back to fight it.”

  “How did you make it to safety? Wasn’t your apartment in Thonglor?”

  “Yep. It was at least five kilometers as the crow flies, and longer through the streets. I ran all the way once I was in the park. Didn’t stop to take a breath. Made a few wrong turns, too. Luckily for me, between Lumphini and Thonglor there weren’t any train lines. It wasn’t until I reached my apartment block that I realized they’d used the trains to overtake me. Some of the wounded from Silom must have made it up to the platform at Sala Daeng. Some may have even made it all the way to Ratchadamri. I know they didn’t turn until they reached the interchange at Siam, ‘cause some of them had switched to the Sukhumvit line before it hit them.”

  “God knows what the other passengers must have thought. Most of the wounded, I’m guessing, would have just had broken bones. It was only the ones who were bitten that would have turned. Imagine making it through that hell, escaping onto the train only for your friend to turn in the seat beside you. I don’t like to think about it. All I know for sure is that the trains were running on auto. They kept making their stops even after all the passengers were dead. All along Sukhumvit those fuckers poured out at each station. That’s why Bangkok got out of control so quickly. The bloody trains. Over the streets and underground those bastards outflanked us all, right out into the suburbs. We never had a chance.”

  “So why didn’t they stop the trains once word got out?”

  “Well that’s the problem. I don’t think word ever really got out. The first most people knew about the outbreak was when it came down their street, through their front door, and the trains just kept running, ferrying the bloodthirsty buggers efficiently around the city. That’s how they were waiting for me when I got back to Thonglor. An hour of sprinting through back streets, two more hours of creeping around, and when I got back to safety I found they’d beat me to it.”

  Paul excuses himself once again, waving for a fresh drink as he walks to the toilet. I light up a Marlboro, take a deep drag and frown at my notes. So far his story bears little resemblance to what had been heard on the news. Paul’s official story – the one he’d been spouting on the talk shows every day – was that he’d watched from the flyover as vans sprayed some kind of toxin onto the people on the street below. He’d run down to the street and bravely tried to save as many as he could, killing a terrorist in the process. The body had been recovered by the army, and an investigation of his apartment had found that it had been converted into a lab. The junta had announced that many more such labs had been found across the city, all linked to renters from the Middle East. They’d cited these facts whenever they made a fresh arrest; whenever they confiscated property, deported a foreigner or executed an ‘accomplice’.

  When Paul returns I ask him why his story had changed.

  “Fuck, what does it matter?” he sighs, lighting another foul smelling cigarette. “I liked the idea of being a hero. When I finally made it out of the city and collapsed at the blockade out at Bang Pakong I was too tired to argue. They told me, you see. They told me I had a choice. Either tell the story they wanted me to tell and live like a king, or try to tell the truth and... and they’d send me back in to the city.”

  “So why are you telling me this now? Why did you reach out to me?”

  When Paul looks at me it’s with eyes much older than his thirty eight years. His voice sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a deep pit far underground, and it cracks a little as he speaks. More than anything, he just sounds tired.

  “It doesn’t make a difference. They could drop me right back into Silom, and I wouldn’t care. Someone should know the truth, before... Anyway, you want to know the worst part? I didn’t kill a single zombie. Didn’t have it in me. You like to think you’d go all Rambo in that situation. You’d pick up a gun and make a few head shots, at least take a few of them with you before they get you. I just couldn’t do it. The moment I got through the security door in my block I cut the power to the keycard reader and pushed a desk in front of the door to wedge it closed. I could hear people banging on it, trying to get in behind me. They were still alive, I know that from the screaming. I just went up to my apartment on the fourth floor, locked the door and waited until the streets were quiet. Three weeks. All I heard were screams. I didn’t try to find my wife. I called until my battery died, but the calls would never connect. Maybe she survived. Maybe she was one of the folks screaming at the ground floor, trying to get through the door to safety.”

  Paul drains his beer in a long gulp, slips another cigarette from his pack and lights it up.

  “You always think you’ll be a hero, you know?”

  He suddenly rises from his chair, throws a handful of cash on the table and walks out of the bar without another word. I wait for half an hour, but he doesn’t return.

  Paul McQueen was found hanged in his apartment several days after this interview was recorded. He left no suicide note.

  ΅

  YOU HAVE BEEN tried by God, and found wanting. He gave you free will, and He weeps to see how His children have chosen to abuse the precious gift He bestowed upon us. We have strayed from the path the Lord laid out. Men lay beside men. Wives no longer serve their husbands. Children no longer respect their parents. Men no longer respect even themselves. They choose to degrade themselves with pornography, and indulge in sinful pleasures that do nothing but destroy the purity the Lord gave them. God is sickened and disgusted by the path we have chosen.

  Bangkok was a warning. An ultimatum. A promise. That sinful fleshpot was nothing but a modern day Sodom. The world is purer now its unrighteous denizens have been sent to face the judgment of the Lord, but it was far from unique. Every inch of this planet drowns in sin, and we must now prostrate ourselves before the Lord or be cleansed from this earth.

  We offer this message as our final warning. This is your last chance. The human race has one year from today to embrace the Lord God as its sole savior. If you fail to repent you will face the final judgment.

  We are his divine messengers.

  The Sons of the Father

  ΅

  :::1:::

  THAT WAS HOW it started. A simple message mailed to media outlets and governments around the world. Everyone from the White House to Fox News to the BBC to Buzzfeed got a copy in their mailbox, and the response from most of them was “Huh, this crackpot has nice handwriting. How come we don’t teach kids cursive anymore?”

  Of course nobody took it seriously. Why would they? They must get hundreds of letters every day from bored pranksters and unmedicated psychopaths, each of them claiming that the world will end next Tuesday, or that 9/11 was a false flag operation orchestrated by Walmart, or that the dog next door had started to speak, and it was craving baby blood and fish tacos. Most of the time those letters go straight in the trash, and most of the time that’s exactly where they belong.

  It was the same story when the President was fired on in Savannah last summer. When the Secret Service admitted they’d received a threat from the s
hooter days earlier the media went insane, accusing them of failing at their most important task. The mania only died down when the President herself came out and released records of the sheer volume of threats she received every day. Thousands of unbalanced assholes scrawl warnings on the back of a napkin. Hundreds of them still have a tight enough grip on reality to figure out how to buy a postage stamp and use a mailbox, and it’s up to the Secret Service to trawl through them all and determine whether any present a credible threat. It’s not an easy job, and sometimes they call it wrong.

  In the case of this particular letter... well, absolutely nobody thought it was worth a second look. Smart people with years of experience in threat assessment concluded that no terrorist with the capacity to develop sophisticated weapons of chemical warfare would make a threat that looked liked it was written with a quill. They also wouldn’t make such a vague, ill defined demand. How could the entire world agree to accept God as its savior? What would happen if everyone got on board but the Swiss? How would you get the OK from every last Masai tribesman? Every herder working high in the Tajik Pamirs? And even if you could somehow get everyone to agree, which God are we talking about? The Christian God with the long white beard? Allah? Vishnu? Bill Murray?

  No, none of this fit the profile of a legitimate threat. It was just a bad, weird joke from some addled crackpot who didn’t understand the meaning of ‘too soon’, and it was filed away with the rest of them.

  The letter was reported, of course, simply because it went everywhere. Thousands of them were mailed out, each one exquisitely handwritten, and that was enough to make a few reporters sit up and take notice. They didn’t believe the warning but they thought it was interesting that someone had clearly gone to a lot of effort to scare the shit out of people. Interesting enough to report it in the And finally... segment of the nightly news, anyway.