World of Ashes

by J. K. Robinson

  “I guess there’s still no word from Texas, lots of people are here just waiting, I think.” Paula was trying to make small talk while the computer techies complained about the power interruptions from the generators. There was enough power that many people had brought their computers to the gym as well, they were doing everything from sharing files and playing games to printing out legal and personal documents that would need to be hardcopy if the power every truly failed.

  “I don’t know that we’ll ever hear from Texas. They know who and where we are though, so I can’t imagine it will take forever.” As the movie played Keith found that he hadn’t even noticed Paula’s head resting on his shoulder until she’d been there a while. He didn’t think it was very comfortable, he was mostly skin and brawn after all, but she was asleep before Anakin discovered who the Sith Lord really was. Keith stayed for the final dual of Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi, but had little interest in the ending. Playing with toy lightsabers was Keith’s guilty nerd pleasure, but he’d never admit it.

  Paula stayed in an abandoned residence with six other women, none of which were refugees like her, but more like some of the single women in town banding together to be more irritating in packs. Keith took the liberty of carrying her to the truck he’d claimed as his own and drove her home. The other girls thought it was “cute”, and vowed to tell Paula all about it when she woke up.

  On his way back out to Ethan’s house Keith started feeling the last few weeks catching up with him with a vengeance. He’d had just one energy drink too many, and now he was finally at the end of his body’s limit. His eyes felt almost too heavy to keep open and the vehicle started to drift from one side of the narrow country road to the other. Snapping his head up again when he realized he was falling asleep, Keith slammed headlong into a zombie wearing an Air Force uniform with old Army ACU body armor on. The ‘99 Dodge Ram Keith was driving might have been mighty, but almost three hundred pounds of immobile flesh and Kevlar with ceramic plates was still a force to be reckoned with, much like a waterlogged tree.

  A loud bang and a sudden stop later, Keith stumbled from the truck in a daze. Cars torn to shreds by moose or horses didn’t look, or smell, this bad. One of the zombie’s hands were torn off at the wrist, still gripping the slats in the truck’s grill. “Aw… That’s fuckin’ nasty.” Keith groaned to himself, realizing just how exposed he was now.

  The zombie’s torso, squished between the sapping-plates, was thrown down the road a good twenty feet. The truck stopped almost dead in its tracks, steam and fluids leaking out all over. Grabbing his M4 Keith climbed into the bed of the truck, suddenly wishing it were a hard shell camper like the truck he’d passed up for this one. Flipping on a search light, Keith held his breath and lit up a field completely devoid of more infected, or even wildlife. A lone zombie in the middle of nowhere and he had to hit it with a truck. Go figure.

  The zombie’s head, neck and most of the right arm started stirring some. Sighing, Keith raised his M4 to shoot it, but a figure moving almost as fast as an infected person in their rage phase ran across the road and split the snapping skull in half with what looked like an angled machete.

  “Halt! Identify yourself or I will open fire!” Keith shouted, putting the light on the figure. Instead there was just the Air Force zombie, no other people to be seen. The truck’s springs started bouncing and Keith found himself face to face with an even more haggard looking version of Ethan, only with blond hair instead of brown.

  “Lee?” Keith guessed.

  A blood soaked Ka-Bar was suddenly at his throat, “How do you know my name?” The grizzly man demanded, his breath smelled worse than a corpse, tattered clothing and grime all over didn’t help his appearance. He wore what was left of an Army uniform, the camouflage pattern beyond recognition with so much mud and blood all over it. He also hadn’t shaved in so long twigs and clumps of dirt pocked his scraggly, patchy red beard.

  “Your brother’s been looking for you.” Keith tried to remain calm. “We’re not far, man, everything’s cool.”

  Lee look Keith’s M4 and backed away some. “There’s only seven houses on this road. Where were you going?”

  “Back to Ethan’s, man!” Keith was suddenly just glad to be alive. “Jesus H Christ, dude! You about gave me a heart attack. Ethan’s gonna freak when he sees you!”

  “He’s still alive…” Lee allowed himself a brief smile, his right front tooth was chipped and his teeth were completely yellowed.

  “Yeah, man.” Keith breathed a sigh of relief, “C’mon, let me get you home.”

  Ethan was extremely drunk when they arrived, trying to calm his fear that his only remaining friend might have been eaten without him there for backup. When Keith came back he was elated. When Lee followed, despite his odor and mud caked clothes, Ethan jumped up, fell over a foot stool and into his brother’s arms for the strongest bear hug in the history of brotherhood. The family reunion was only broken up by Ethan strongly suggesting Lee take a shower and put on clean clothes. Reluctantly he did so, a grooming process that clogged the shower and the sink. An hour later, when Lee didn’t emerge, they found him passed out on the toilet with clean boxers and one sock halfway on. At least he’d taken a shower first, so they left him in there with a felt blanket and a pair of their mother’s house shoes. The well worn pink bunny slippers Lee had always hated, to be exact.

  “So now what?” Keith asked, the only other sound in the house a ticking clock.

  Ethan popped the lid off a beer. “I don’t know. That’ll depend on what Lee has to say when he wakes up. He looks like shit. I can’t imagine what he’s been through out there. Things were bad for us, but we weren’t alone for long.”

  Keith had something witty to say, but a scratching at the door stopped him. Before either could reach for their weapons a gunshot rang out from the bathroom. Lee, still in his underwear, jumped out of the bathroom and fired two more shots from the hallway with a compact pocket pistol they didn’t even know he had. The back door had been breached and Lee was the first to hear it.

  “There’s a whole shit-ton of ‘em!” He shouted, firing twice more. “They’re coming from the garage!”

  Ethan flipped the safety off the M4 and shot the zombie pawing at the patio window. Three more took its place. It was the same story all over the house. Keith, thinking quickly, was already calling the police station to get a truck of Minutemen to come and save them.

  “Landline’s down!” Keith tossed the phone. “I guess the dead flyboy I hit had some friends in the woods.” A motion light near the shed came on as Lee pulled a pair of pants on as fast as he could. Keith pointed, slackjawed as they saw just how many Zims there truly were. It was possibly even worse than the battle for Meramec State Park. If only they were at the fortress now.

  “I’m trying the radio.” Ethan set both radios on the table and started calling for help. “Mayday mayday mayday. HQ, this is Ghostrider.” A call sign he’d personally picked out. “Cally residence is being overrun. Break.” He took a breath, “Need gun trucks and retrieval. Break. Area crawls!”

  A response came quickly, “That’s a negative there, Ghostrider. Attacks all along the border are tying up all available resources. Suggest going to rooftop and waiting for morning. Break. Will send rescue when… And if, possible. HQ out.”

  The words were like a death sentence. There was an entire army of the undead attacking the town right now and they were stuck at home. The only good news was they were prepared. “Lee,” Ethan hugged his brother again. “Welcome home. Now, let’s get as much shit into the attic as we can before they break down the doors.”

  Lee sighed, “Yeah.” He was exhausted, but at least there wasn’t much to take upstairs that Ethan hadn’t already done. Making sure the faucet in the upstairs workroom was still working they pulled the drop ladder up and dug in. By “dug in” that meant Lee passed the hell out almost as soon as the trapdoor was shut. For good measure he flopped a mattress down on it before l
etting himself slip into a near coma. He didn’t snore. People who snored were eaten in their sleep. If you snored, you learned not to.

  “Well this is just fucking great.” Keith rolled his eyes and started pacing. “I gotta get out of here man, I gotta make sure Paula is okay.”

  Ethan felt his stomach drop. Had he really been so busy that he’d never noticed Keith had a girlfriend? “I hate to ask, but-”

  “How long have we been together? Kinda just tonight, really, so you’re off the hook. She’s staying over by the library in one of the abandoned houses with a few others. I’m really fuckin’ worried about her.”

  Ethan reached over and flipped on his father’s old radio. A layer of dust came off on his fingers. His dad hadn’t used the upstairs studio in a long time, a hip injury making climbing difficult. Flipping through the channels he didn’t pick up anything on FM. Out of boredom, or maybe curiosity, he switched to AM and caught a weak signal. It was, unfortunately, another religious zealot. Ethan was about to turn it off when Lee reached up and grabbed his hand.

  “No, man. I haven’t heard a radio in a long time.” He shut his eyes and laid his head back down on the clean side of the pillow that had been left on the studio couch.

  Ethan looked at his clock. “Two hour watches?”

  Keith shook his head. “What for? It’s not like they can reach us. Lee’s passed out on the door.”

  The brothers and their friend began drifting farther into sleep. They all listened to the zealot speak his mind, as twisted as it was, and were grateful when a man taking the roll of a newscaster interrupted him. “Good morning America, and all the ships at sea…” He began. “And there are a lot of you out at sea, or on barges on the rivers and lakes… In attics and behind government barriers… Well, not so many behind those now… We’ve lost all contact with the FEMA Safe Zones… I’m sorry for those of you expecting rescue. The only thing I can do is try to educate you, pray with you, and say good luck.”

  Ethan wanted nothing more than to shut the radio off now, but wouldn’t for Lee’s sake. The broadcast continued. “We received news today over satellite internet, as our landlines have failed, that a cause has finally been narrowed down to a few likely suspects. And I guess we can only blame ourselves, America. Because it’s our fault? Wait, what? What the hell is this crap?… No. I’m not reading this you pinko commie trash talking fucki-” The transmission went to silence for a moment while the man obviously argued with someone else in the station before he came back on, scuffling sounds and cussing in tones no one bothered to censor could be heard, and in the background a door slammed. “Sorry about that interruption folks. I just had to fire some fat college Hashtag-Occupy protester. Serves me right for trying to let someone write for me for a change. I’m not going to sit here and blame Average Joe for our ‘leaders’ lack of foresight. Here’s the nitty-gritty of it: The world is extremely fucking nigh. There’s estimated to only be about one, to two billion people left worldwide. Europe is silent, Asia, Africa and the Middle East are unknown to us as well. Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Okinawa and the Philippines still broadcast… But not mainland Japan. The last holdouts from Japan were evacuated to the Island of Sapporo six months ago. Here in America, Alaska and Texas have declared their independence from the Union… Not that it matters, I suppose. There hasn’t been a Union for three months now.

  “Remember, GZLE 550 Radio takes no sides, but I’m sure if the other assholes hiding here with me have their way that could change. Whoever has the biggest handout will surely get the loudest voice and their undying devotion, but hey, enough about my problems. Let’s talk ‘Infected Citizens!’” The radio jockey said in as pontifical voice as he could muster. “Or, as those of us who are still capable of abstract thought like to call them, Zombies. Not your everyday, run of the mill ‘Cajun Nightmare’ grindhouse Voodoo Zombie, but more like the cubical workers at my last job kind of Zombies. We know they go through what has been labeled the Rage Phase within thirty seconds of initial infection, and we know they die only minutes after that from a massive fever, and then sometime within the next twelve hours they get back up and start lurching around, trying to kill, infect, and/or devour those yet uninfected. We know its viral, we know it’s not airborne, and just like an AIDS patient you can’t get it from a swimming pool just because you’re both in there at the same time, but we also know the water isn’t safe for swimming as these reanimated corpses tend to sink after they’ve farted their last fart.

  “We don’t have any doctors in the studio with us, the closest we have is an EMT named Joshua Robinson. He’s just stepped into the studio with me and will tell us what he can. Josh, how are you this evening?”

  The microphone picked up the sound of a chair moving and someone clearing their throat. “Paranoid.” The show’s guest had a baritone that was hard to hear over the static. “But then if you’re not paranoid these days, you’re on some powerful drugs.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. You, your girlfriend and your kid have been spending the last month here with us. And before this you were…”

  “Waiting things out at home, until a swarm made that not an option. Look, if you don’t have to run, don’t. But lucky for us we ended up in your town, and you guys opened the doors for us when we were in real trouble. Thank you, Joe. I owe you more than just my own life. But, before all the crisis, I was attending college. I needed a better job. The usual, ya know?”

  “Been there. So, Josh, what can you tell us about these Zombies?”

  “Well, Zombies as we traditionally know them from film are actually living people, Joe. The closest we’ve got in popular fiction to what we’re seeing in the streets is Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, but only in that the Frankenstein Monster was technically a reanimated corpse. These people… These infected corpses, Joe, are dead. D E A D Dead. The person, the human being, is gone. We don’t have an MRI here, but the topic of the Infection was a hot issue before school was cancelled. The Center for Disease Control put together briefings on an infected individual who was subjected to an MRI in the early stages of the outbreaks. We learned from this scan, albeit only after the Administration was unable to keep it out of WikiLeaks’ hands, that all brain function in the infected person begins a rapid shutdown upon the virus reaching the brain stem. Kinda like the biological version of wiping a hard drive, the virus erases all cognitive thought patterns. First documented by a pair of Romanian medical students studying at the Maricopa Medical Center, they labeled it the “Inviere” or Resurrection Virus. The effects of the viral compound on the human nervous system are nearly instantaneous. Our white blood cells are actually pirated, turned against us and forced to carry the plague to the brain. There it seems to absorb into brain tissue, taking its shape right down the cellular level, but like a bone becoming a fossil the remains of the brain tissue, now transformed but fundamentally dead by any known medical standard, seem to function like a puppet driven only by the most basic level of function. Maybe a really bad copy of the brain tissue would be more accurate, like a child’s Play-Dough rendering of a model of a brain cell.

  “Now, it’s also fair to say the battle between the protective white blood cells and Inviere Virus is what causes the fever. The elevation in temperature boils the brain at an astonishing 115 degrees Fahrenheit. After the victim is deceased and begins cooling to between 100 degrees and 85 degrees Inviere takes complete control of the autonomic nervous system. All bodily fluids exposed to the Inviere Virus are lethal to all forms of life if ingested. However, the virus only targets humans. We don’t have a theory for this yet, but it could be, and I emphasize this is wild conjecture folks, that the virus feeds on whatever it is that separates sentient Man from Beast. There is also evidence to suggest it is a weaponized version of rabies spread by Islamic Terrorists and failed North Korean attempts to destabilize South Korea. In the last year we’ve dropped nuclear weapons for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an act of war, and Iran and North Korea no longer exist. Yet we are
no closer to finding the culprit, Joe.”

  “For those of you just tuning in this is Joseph Khur on 550AM GZLE, The Daily Gazelle, broadcasting to you live from our Branson, Missouri studio. I’m on with a man I’m literally trapped with, a Paramedic Student and EMT, Joshua Robinson. Josh, what can you tell us about Zombie Safety?”

  There was a laugh. It sounded like a hyena. “Well, Joe, during the Rage Phase, when the person’s cognitive reasoning fails they will resort to baser instincts. They’re already scared, and the viral effects on our fight or flight instinct is probably what drives them to attack. Once a person is bitten, say on a lower extremity, immediate amputation has been known to save individuals. However, I don’t recommend you start hacking at each other’s fingers. Unless a skilled surgeon is present I wouldn’t attempt it at all. Within two minutes the infected will be unable to reason. They will become aggressive and panicked, thus imitating some initial symptoms of rabies. It’s really not rabies, though. We don’t have any idea what it actually is, just to be fair. We only think it’s viral, though that is probably an oversimplification. It’s oxygen independent, feeding perhaps only on glucose or other compounds already in the host. This makes Zombies who aren’t floating a hazard under water, so if you’re a pearl diver, I’d find a new line of work.” Josh joked. It was a shitty joke. “The virus, it seems, is what might be consuming the corpses. I read of control group studies that showed though the decay process is slowed due to the vast majority of microbes and insects having no interest in the infected whatsoever, the infected still decay. I can’t give an accurate timeline yet, but they won’t last forever.

  “People need to stay safe. Stay hidden. Remember, the people in the rage phase aren’t always the greatest threat. They scream a lot and already cannot reason. If you’re far enough away, Ragers can be easy to put down if you keep a level head. It’s the resurrected zombies I’m most concerned with, Joe. They seem to react only to outside stimuli. If you leave one in a locked room with no noise or movement they will simply hold still regardless of the position of lights or furniture. They are as equally effective at hunting at night as in day, so night isn’t always your friend. They have no pain response. Some may not even feel it when touched, but any disturbance to their visual spectrum, or if they hear you, they will begin expelling air from their lungs, if they have any lungs left, and begin following the movement or sound.”