The television screen blurred with his vision, but even as he faded in and out of consciousness, words and snippets of information clung to his mind, fighting to stir his awareness.
Suddenly, he was on his feet, struggling to get to his children, to protect them . . . somehow . . . lock them away in their room . . . the program on the television . . . couldn’t be real . . . make sure the kids stayed safe . . . this had to be a hoax. Or a nightmare.
He staggered toward the stairs, his rubbery legs threatening to collapse with each step. His body felt as if it had been doused with gasoline and set ablaze. He glanced at his hands, half expecting to see actual flames. He was almost disappointed there were none. The family room began to spin, and he reached out for something on which to steady himself. Richard took another wobbling step, and everything went black in the instant before the floor rushed up to greet him.
Kaleidoscope images and sensory glimmers flashed off in his mind, flickering for a split second before being swallowed up into the darkest pit of unconsciousness.
Shattering glass. A blooming crystal rose of destruction. A flash of incomplete sound.
Silence.
A cornered tabby cat hissing a warning.
Slate black.
A terrified shriek. A human siren of fear and pain.
Then sheer nothingness.
Dead world.
Richard was slumped on the floor, the world blurring and swirling in dizzying shades of red and black. He couldn’t feel the thick shag carpet beneath him. He couldn’t think straight. It was as if at the snap of someone’s fingers Richard had awakened from a deep hypnotic trance. He was staring at his hands, the very first image of the just-turned-on television program playing oddly before his eyes. His brain would not allow him to blink. The simple sight of his hands demanded his full attention. His thawing mind wouldn’t allow for any other action or thought.
Noise . . . pounding . . . coming from somewhere. . . .
His fingers were gnarled like the roots of an ancient tree. Fingernails were missing, the ends of his fingers ragged and raw. Knuckles were swollen, the flesh split open like tiny melons. His fingers seemed frozen, some pointed in absurd angles, but there was no agony. Both hands were covered in dark drying syrup. Looking at the mutilation of his flesh was like watching a movie through someone else’s eyes. It was just images.
The pinkie finger on his right hand was gone. A ragged hole remained in its place. The wound wept, but there was no pain. There was no anxiety. There was nothing. He felt hollow. He couldn’t think enough to feel or wonder or decide or cry out. He was just there, hardly feeling the floor, merely floating beneath the disorienting red and black waves of a mysterious sensory flood.
Dead world.
When he awoke the second time, his vision pulsed from ebbing blur to sudden vividness. The scarlet and black tinting was gone, but the rhythmic indecision of his sight, combined with the throbbing in his head, made his stomach twist and revolt. His hands still floated before his eyes as twin blood-soaked ghosts determined to haunt his every waking moment. Even the singular sight of his hands jumping in and out of focus rocketed the searing contents of his stomach up the back of his throat. Vomit gushed down the front of him. The eruption sent another lancing pain through his skull, causing his head to sag enough to see the bloody puke in which he’d covered himself. Startled by the violent ejection but still feeling oddly distant from himself, Richard forced his head up and leaned it against the wall. Slowly, his sight eased back to normal. Coughing, he closed his eyes, trying to quiet his headache. When the feverish tremble passed through his body, his first clear thought assembled itself.
The super flu.
His stomach convulsed again, twisting like a wrung-out dishtowel. Only clear drool slipped free from his mouth. Another strong shiver and he could feel the fever and the chills warring inside his system.
Fragments of thoughts and memories started to drift through his mind like the glowing wind-tossed embers of an autumn bonfire. He’d gotten sick. . . . He squinted for a second, but closed his eyes again, still disoriented. He tried to concentrate through the pain and nausea.
A killer flu had decimated China, then the Far East, then it had jumped the Pacific Ocean. . . . God . . . that’s why . . . he was on the floor . . . getting sick all over himself.
The super flu . . . strange words circled and swirled and repeated themselves in his mind. He fought to decipher them. There were gaps, missing bits. He recognized words but couldn’t explain them, couldn’t quite give the phrase the full definition it warranted. But there was no doubt he was sick. So he sat, seeking as much comfort as he could in the calming darkness behind his closed eyes. Feverish flashes passed through him like small electrical jolts. Time was of no consequence.
His eyes jumped open. Sunshine was still knifing through the gloom. The upstairs hallway stretched out before him in silence. A thought leaped to the forefront.
His family—the kids. Oh God, where were they? Where was everyone?
The debilitating flu symptoms had eased. He tried to pick himself up off the floor but sensed that his body was paying little attention to his mental commands. His hands were tingling, working to re-establish feeling. Soon, that feeling was all over his body, the sharp, glistening needle-prick pain of nerves re-awakening, almost a relief from his migraine. He grimaced, glancing down at himself. He was dressed in his get well clothes, a pair of matching worn flannel pajamas he wore whenever he was under the weather. They reminded him of a pair of favorite pajamas he’d had when he was a small boy. Well worn, they were as comfortable as hell. Right now, they looked long past ruined. He could feel the cool seep of his vomit soaking through the fabric, and looking closer, he could see the pajama top was already splattered in dried droplets of . . . of . . .
He jerked his attention away from the sight of himself before his mind settled into answers he wasn’t yet ready for. Instead, he took in his comfortable surroundings.
He was seated awkwardly on the floor of the upstairs hallway, down at the end by the stairs. A bright sliver of light sliced through the drapes at the end of the hall, providing the only light in an otherwise gloomy corridor. He called out, his voice dry and cracked as if he hadn’t spoken for days. His words were slurred.
“Honey? Christopher? Nina?” Silence drew itself into an agonizing length. He tried to move again but only managed to tip himself over, grunting as his shoulder met the floor. His legs, splayed out stiff and straight, trembled and shook, though thankfully didn’t cause him any more pain. His eyes darted to and fro, a feeling of helplessness settling on him like frost. As he lay, his eyes flittered over the floor and walls, suddenly locking on something. He squinted, wishing there was more light. In moments, his eyes adjusted, the sight causing his mouth to drop open.
There was a long smear down the wall, almost as if done by an old paintbrush. The closest end stopped not far from where he lay. Even without the benefit of better lighting, he instantly knew it was blood. He was almost frightened by his own desperate cries.
“Claire! Claire! Oh God baby—” His body rocked on the carpet but it didn’t respond enough to propel him to his feet or scoot him toward the bedrooms and bath. Frustrated and growing panicked, he threw himself over and over against the prison bars of his own body. Agonizing in the apathetic response of his urgings, his head sagged to the floor, weary and gasping from the effort.
His memories continued to thaw, a slow seep of the mind. Then suddenly, coming to him drop by drop was a tidal wave, slamming into his brain from every side and every sense. Images of the recent past battered their way into his consciousness. He laid still, his mind working to absorb all the input while also dealing with the horrific things now in his head. He stared down the floor of the hallway toward the bedrooms of his family, the sight blurring . . .
The television had shown the world slowly starting to crumble. In the United States and Europe, the bug had quickly grown to epidemic proportions, the mutating strain defyi
ng the world’s scientific and health communities. Death tolls soared to record numbers. Religious organizations began to preach plague and Revelations. Then all hell really broke loose.
He felt the first tear slide down his face, the truth echoing in his head, refusing to be ignored.
While the super flu was stealing the lives of infants and young children with a malignant efficiency, the virus was having a different, more prolonged effect on healthy teenagers and adults. Newspapers and programs reported that instead of adult lungs drowning during the pneumonia phase, the extreme fevers drove infected brains into comas, resulting in a ghastly state where the victim awoke but functioned only on the most primitive level, driven by violent impulses and a hunger, an unnatural hunger. . . .
Larger cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles were forced to declare martial law in response to the virus’ new monstrous effect. The general public was instructed to stock food and water, stay indoors and avoid contact with others until the emergency had passed and an antidote had been isolated. Extreme caution had been advised. The flu was capable of changing anyone into a lethal enemy, even a loved and trusted pet.
The name popped into his mind. He blinked.
The Romero Flu. The Romero Flu.
His chest hitched, and he started sobbing. His eyes focused on the bloody gash where his pinkie finger used to be. Pain began to creep into his consciousness, and his slowly reassembling memory didn’t slow its advance.
The Romero Flu, nicknamed after the creator of those cult zombie movies about the dead rising up and . . . and . . .
Oh, Jesus.
He stared beyond the bloody absence of his finger, down the hall, following the dark smear. The other end of it started outside the threshold of his bedroom.
His scream burst from his throat like a severed artery, and he squirmed his way to his hands and knees, using the wall as he crawled slowly into the gloom.
“Claire! Claire! It’s me!”
From downstairs, there was desperate pounding at the front door.
“Oh God . . . Claire . . . Nina . . . Christopher—Jesus, oh God, please no. . . .” The more that came back to his mind, the more he was driven to see the truth of what had happened when he’d finally succumbed to his fever, sometime after he’d crawled under the blankets piled on the bed he and his wife shared, drawing his wife’s burning and sweat-soaked body against his. He remembered whispering into her glistening, unconscious face, telling her it was going to be all right, that she and the kids would be all right. He recalled that he hadn’t been able to reassure her without coughing wildly himself. He had lain under the hot, damp sheets with her for a while until, unable to sleep, he’d barely made it downstairs to watch the television. Normal feeling was creeping back into his legs and he was able to unfold himself into a staggering crouch, fighting the urge to fall with every step as he followed the telltale smear.
With only a few more steps to go, he fell. As his body crumpled to the floor, the memories of what he’d done to his wife exploded into his mind. An instant later, he heard the front door slam open, announcing the arrival of unwanted guests. There were guttural moans and growls, shuffling movement.
Tears streaking down his face, Richard dug into the plush carpet with his ruined hand, clawing forward, driven to acknowledge the fate of a family he knew had not survived the false safety of their own home. He sobbed as the atrocities he committed upon his wife flashed through his mind, each image more sickening than the one before. Body shaking, he retched again and again. He vaguely heard movement from the stairs as he curled his body into a tight ball, fighting not to remember, wanting it all to stop. Lord knows he hadn’t meant to do all those inhuman things. He loved his wife and children.
The flu had made him into a monster.
Laying just a stride’s length from the closed door of his children’s room, he stared pleading, eyes welling with tears. From the floor, he couldn’t quite reach the door. The doorknob itself seemed a million miles away.
Suddenly, there was a flutter of shadows from under the crease of the threshold. He heard vague movement.
“Daddy?”
Richard closed his eyes, a flare of emotion overwhelming him. He forced himself to speak, his voice half a croak.
“Yes, yes, its daddy . . .”
Quiet sobbing followed. There was more movement from the other side of the door.
“Don’t—don’t open it,” Nina said. Fear carried her voice as much as the air. “Remember, he said he was sick—and that he might hurt us.”
His son whispered back. “I’m hungry. The pizza is all gone.”
“It’s . . . it’s alright now honey,” Richard whispered. “I’m alright, baby. Daddy’s feeling better, and I promise I’m not going to hurt you.” There was a long pause.
“Where’s Mom?”
The last of Richard’s strength drained into the floor. He closed his eyes and rested his head. The lie came out as easily as the vomit.
“Your Mom is sleeping. She’s still not feeling too well.”
Richard had become the enemy the television programs and the newspapers and the radio shows had warned his family about. But somehow he had returned. Somehow he had survived Romero, somehow he had beaten the virus, though not before the devastation of his own family. He didn’t notice the shadows of those that had climbed the stairs, searching.
“I’m unlocking the door,” Christopher spoke from the other side.
“Wait!” his sister cried out. An odd thought struck Richard as he heard the lock release with a snap. Perhaps he was the key to an antidote. . . .
There wasn’t even time for a warning.
A cloud of putrid odors assaulted his nostrils as the first zombies fell upon him, tearing at his soiled clothing to get to his fever cooked flesh. He wondered if he would actually die, or if he’d become re-infected and rise again from the plague of 2005. His last glance saw the kid’s door crack open, then forced wide as a shambling tangle of legs moved around him.
The sheer number of attackers overwhelmed his feeble struggle. Inhuman snarls filled the air but couldn’t drown out the terrible screams of his children. Yellowed teeth snapped and ravaged his flesh. Fingernails ripped at his eyes and violated his abdomen. A flash of pain as pure as God erupted, erasing his remaining thoughts.
His screams fell on dead ears.
The Dead Life
Mike Watt
“Henry! There are zombies in the basement!”
It was a common complaint. The dead had been returning for over four years. At first, it was a frightening phenomenon, one almost too terrible to comprehend. As recently deceased loved ones resumed walking, people began to openly panic, looking to the church for answers, demanding government intervention and investigation as the dead continued to multiply. The zombies shambled, their motor skills virtually non-existent. But they bit people, and these bites became infected; the infection raced to your brain and heart, causing fever, extreme paralyzing sickness, and ultimately death. But then, soon, you were back on your feet again. The media dubbed it “The Infestation,” which was as good a name as any.
Gradually, as the sight of staring, bloated, rotting corpses began to be commonplace, the fear subsided. Zombies were slow, off-balance, stupid. If you ran, they tended to abandon chase once they lost sight of you. The only time they became worrisome was when they traveled in packs—which was rare and unlikely.
On the other hand, there was the smell, and the fear of disease, especially a few weeks after the initial rising; the corpse became too rotten to move, and it just laid there, in a messy, undulating heap in the yard, and even the dog wouldn’t go near it. And the zombies smelled worse after rain.
What was worse, people were dealing with them on their own. Gun-happy homeowners turned to extermination, and were causing more accidental deaths by shooting away at anything that came near their houses. Postal workers grew more disgruntled by the day.
It took months of public outcry bef
ore the Federal Government finally stepped in. There was no progress towards a cure, and it was still a mystery as to why Mr. Jones returned but Mrs. Jones didn’t. It was a random infection with no known catalyst. But thanks to Presidential decree, there came NOE: The National Organization of Exterminators, the federal office of zombie control and removal.
This made most people happy, knowing their tax dollars were finally put to work for something. Private individuals who had been offering their services in the same area, however, were not so happy; they considered NOE yet another example of the government creating a monopoly to edge out the small businessman. After protest upon protest, these private exterminators were placated less than a year later by the Exterminators’ Privatization Act.
Even less pleased and never placated were the Society for the Preservation of the Undead Individual, but they were a small, radical group, constantly and publicly shouted down by the larger Living Rights Movement, a much higher-profile citizens’ group.
Now, the zombie infestation, which had seemed so terrible in the past, quickly evolved into nothing more than a nuisance. Zombies were still about, of course, and they got into everything, but they were manageable. In most cases, single zombies were deterred from your doorstep with a broom to the nose, and if there were more groaning about, you had your choice of NOE, or the slightly higher-priced private exterminators, who arrived quicker and who worked faster. And, as always, the cliché had been proving true and appropriate for the past four years: life went on.
* * *
“Henry!” In the front room, Bernice Dobbs shouted for her husband once again.
The Undead: Zombie Anthology Page 16
