"Yeah. I haven't heard from him since then."
"Yeah," Jim nodded grimly. "But we're both still alive, so that means he might be too."
"Yeah, I don't want to rule that out. Dad's a tough guy."
"So what about Vicki?"
"I talked to her earlier that same day. She had just gotten home from a shift in the ER where all she dealt with were folks who had Owasa Disease. She said it was the most horrifying illness she had ever seen. She told me people were coming in with it who had never received the Noble Treatment. She said that she and Todd were going to probably hole up in their house if it got bad."
"Noble? What’s that" Jim asked quizzically.
"Yeah! The Noble Virus. It was a virus some researcher in Baltimore created as a cure for cancer. Man, did you just not pay attention to the news last week or the week before?"
Jim shook his head.
"Late night gaming, I understand," Phil said, laughing. "Anyway, people who received this treatment had their cancer cured. The guy who created it won a Nobel Prize or something like that. Well, after a few months being cancer free they'd come down with this horrible disease where they had symptoms like rabies and then started bleeding from their eyes and mouth and stuff. Then they would die. They'd always die."
"That's awful."
"Yeah, and often there would be reports of strange noises coming from caskets at these folks' funerals. So the hospitals all adopted policies of immediate cremation. As it turns out, guess where all the zombies came from?"
"Wait, all the zombies we've encountered are people who recovered from cancer?"
"Well, not all of them. Check!"
Jim looked down at the chessboard. Phil had his king in check. He moved a pawn to block. "So how did other people get this disease?"
"Well, it looks like it spreads in a way similar to rabies. It spreads via contact with bodily fluids. So people who received the treatment got sick and died and then came back as zombies and bit the people they were living with, or bit neighbors, etcetera etcetera."
"So what happens if you get bitten?"
Phil shuddered. "You get Owasa Disease. Except, it usually moves a lot faster. Owasa Disease normally takes a few days to kill. If you contract it via a bite or contact with bodily fluids, it kills in anywhere from a couple of days down to a few minutes. Then the person comes back as a bloodthirsty zombie."
"How did you find that out?"
"This floor had about a dozen tenants last week. They all turned into zombies. We watched a few of them die after being bitten. Jim, it was terrible."
"So what you're saying is that I shouldn't get bitten?"
"Yes. If you get bitten, even though you're my brother, I will kill you. And I hope you would do the same for me. Even without the zombie part, it just looks like an awful way to die."
Jim nodded. "On our way here, we helped some people. They had wandered out of their homes and were attacked by zombies. We killed all the zombies, but some of the people were bitten by them. They've all turned into zombies by now, haven't they?"
Phil nodded. "If they haven't yet, they will."
Jim looked down. He had made a horrible mistake that would likely result in more people dying.
"You told the survivors to take care of the wounded, didn't you?"
He nodded.
"Don't beat yourself up Jim. I mean, you didn't know. There's no way you could have known."
"Phil, this is playing out a lot like the zombie movies do. I mean you guys are watching through zombie movies to develop strategies, aren't you?"
"Jim, if I had come to you last week and said that zombies were going to be here now, would you have believed me?"
He shook his head.
"Exactly. We've been put in a situation no one has any experience with. You were leading your friends, right?"
"I guess."
"The leader has to make decisions with the information he has available. He doesn't have the luxury of seeing all things at once. So he has two choices when it comes to situations he's never encountered: do nothing or make a decision and stick to it. You did the best thing you knew to do. Would you act differently now? Of course you would. But, you have to realize those people will probably get eaten by zombies either way. The chances, in the long run anyway, aren't much better for us."
"Checkmate," Jim said.
"What? How did you...? Argh!" He laughed.
"Thanks Phil, that helped."
"What did? The advice? Me letting you beat me?"
Jim laughed. "Both I suppose."
"Well, I'm glad I could be of service!" he said sarcastically.
Jim stood up and walked over to the window in the kitchen. It faced northwest, and to the left Jim could see downtown Buffalo in the distance. It was ablaze. Office towers burned in the night.
"The city's on fire, isn't it?" Phil asked, walking up behind him.
"Just downtown."
"For now. Just wait. People are rioting all over the city. At least that's how it appeared this morning, judging by all the columns of smoke."
"Man, how do you think mom and Steve are?"
"I hope mom's okay. She and I haven't seen eye to eye on much lately, but she's still our mother. Steve, honestly I couldn’t care less about him."
"Yeah. He was a jerk. Have you talked to Andy lately?”
Phil shook his head. “No, I haven’t talked to him since shortly after Isaiah’s first birthday. He sounded like he was doing well then, but now? Who knows?”
Jim shrugged. “He’s probably out on an oil platform anyway.”
“Yeah. Hey, I meant to ask you if you’d heard about the DA in Boston getting assassinated?”
“I heard a bit, what happened again?”
“Someone, they think it was the mob, planted a bomb in her refrigerator. When she came home from a meeting, she opened the fridge to get something and boom!”
“That’s crazy.”
“I know. And, here’s the crazier part; you know Steve’s firm was getting investigated by her office, right?”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know little brother. Her office thought they were committing securities fraud or something probably.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Steve was a scumbag.”
“Even so, he might be the only family we have left.”
Jim punched his brother. “That’s not funny.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
"Anyway, little brother, I am going to bed. Sleep wherever you want, all of the apartments on this floor are unlocked."
"Thanks. Hey, I meant to ask. What's up with you and Sherry?"
Phil laughed. "Well, we aren't exactly dating and we aren't not dating. I guess you could say it's complicated."
Jim laughed. "Okay then. Goodnight."
"Goodnight Jim."
They spent the whole month of November training vigorously. Six days a week the schedule looked like this: in the morning, everyone watched zombie movies and practiced on zombies who were occupying the fifteenth floor. After lunch, they spent a couple of hours working out and then after dinner they read. One of the apartments on the twelfth floor had an incredible library within it.
The twelfth floor apartments were all two-bedroom apartments with an open floor plan. A bathroom and two bedrooms ringed the living room/kitchen. The first night there, Jim slept on Phil's couch but moved into an apartment down the hall that looked over the terminal concourse. He saw the shiny solar panels reflecting sunlight most days.
The apartment he moved into appeared to have belonged to an old man who had worked for an airline, apparently as a pilot. The walls were decorated with metal signs bearing old airline logos, and aviation memorabilia lay on shelves throughout the apartment.
There was a watch with a steel band on the nightstand next to the bed Jim slept in. It was an analog wristwatch with a TWA logo in the center of the face. The face had three dials set in it; a dial that rotated to display a moo
nlit starry sky and a sunlit sky alternately, and two smaller dials that displayed date and day of the week. The logo on the reverse side of the watch identified it as a Breitling. The right side of the watch had a dial to adjust time, a dial to adjust date and a fat dial whose function Jim couldn't figure out. The watch appeared to be custom made. He took the watch for himself as the owner was now deceased.
Phil also made everyone pack "bug out" bags; in the event they had to leave the building quickly, they would have all of the gear they needed to survive outside. Jim’s bag had all of the items he had packed before leaving the dorm as well as a winter coat attached to it with gloves, a scarf and a hat. It also had a four-pound bag of trail mix and several pocket notebooks. He secured all of the additional items from closets in abandoned apartments throughout the building.
The wristwatch was probably the most prized possession he found. He found a manual for it in the nightstand and learned the fat knob whose purpose had been inscrutable was actually an emergency beacon that could be activated by twisting and pulling.
The group slowly cleansed the tower of zombies and explored the rest of the complex. Phil and Antoine searched endlessly for the room containing the batteries attached to the photovoltaic panels on the roof but were unable to find it. Nevertheless, they figured everyone would be fine as the batteries should have an inverter attached to prevent overcharging.
For all the bad blood Phil and Sherry once had, they got along very well, to Jim’s surprise, almost like they were attempting to get back to a point where they could date again. That said, the redheaded Sherry turned out to be a pleasant woman to be around. Jeff, Vik and Jim occupied their free time by playing video games and reminiscing about childhood.
On the afternoon of Thursday, December 3rd, it was cold and snowy outside. From Jim’s vantage point fourteen stories above the street, he saw zombies shuffling about stiffly in the cold. Antoine had gone downstairs with Connor and Giselle a few hours earlier to search for the battery room. The sun broke through the cloud cover at dusk and painted the sky an angry shade of red.
Antoine and the others were still downstairs when Jim, Phil, Sherry, Vik and Jeff had dinner. Sherry cooked some chicken breasts stuffed with provolone with rice and vegetables, all pilfered from the freezers in the twelfth floor apartments. The food smelled delicious. As they ate, they mused about recent events.
"You know what really caused the zombie outbreak?" Phil asked facetiously.
"What?" Vik asked.
"The possibility of the Seattle Mariners winning the World Series!"
Everyone laughed at that thought. They had all been baseball fans before. Phil and Jim were Yankees fans, Jeff was a Mets fan and Vik was a Rangers fan.
"Do you guys smell that?" Vik asked some time later.
"Smell what? A delicious dinner?" Jim asked.
"No, I smell something, like something is burning."
Jim sniffed the air. He smelled it too, the faint odor of smoke.
"Sherry, you turned the stove and oven off, right?" Phil asked.
She nodded.
Jeff got up and walked out of the apartment, in search of the source of smoke.
"Guys! You might want to come see this!" he yelled from his apartment.
They all ran to his apartment and looked out the window. Bright orange flames leapt skyward from the roof of the concourse, illuminating the night sky in a garish color. Suddenly the power went out, plunging the floor into darkness.
"Guys, grab your bug out bags and let's head downstairs!" Phil yelled.
"What about the others' bags?" Jim asked.
"Grab them! Hopefully they’ll make it out too!"
They hurriedly grabbed their bags and made their way to the fire door. Jim had his backpack on with his coat tied around it and held his pry bar in one hand and a flashlight in the other hand.
Phil opened the door and they started down the stairs. As they descended, the air became thick with smoke.
"Pull your shirts over your faces guys! And duck down, we don't want to suffocate!" Vikram yelled.
They continued their descent but paused around the fifth floor. Jim heard pained screams coming from below accompanied by hurried footsteps. He and the others ran down to investigate and almost ran into Connor as he carried Giselle upstairs.
She was moaning in agony and in the dim light appeared to be badly burned. Connor was covered with soot.
"Guys! There's a fire!" Connor said breathlessly.
"Where's Antoine?" Phil asked.
"He's dead!"
"Come on! We've got to get out of here! We have your bags!" Jim said urgently.
They continued down the stairs as Giselle moaned in pain. When they reached the mezzanine level, Phil and Jim ran over to the windowed door that looked out upon the interior of the terminal.
The massive hall was ablaze. Flaming timbers fell from the ceiling and Jim saw one of the ceiling vaults collapse.
"Come on, let's go this way!" Phil said, running down the stairs. Everyone followed him out the side door of the tower. Jim gasped when they made it outside; there were hundreds of zombies in the courtyard.
The others immediately surrounded Connor and Giselle in a circle and began fighting off the insatiable undead. The cold night air was filled with the smell of smoke and decay and the sounds of war cries and the zombies' roars. The group hacked their way through the horde until a ring of corpses lay all around. Then Jim and Vik helped Connor and Giselle over the dead zombies and everyone made their way across the plaza as flames burst out of windows in the tower behind them. They stopped in a small grove of trees a few hundred feet from the tower and Connor laid Giselle down in the snow. Her moans had become quiet by now.
"Come on Giselle, hang in there," he said quietly, holding her hand.
Jeff shone his flashlight on her and Jim gasped as he beheld the severity of her injuries. Her shirt had melted into her skin and the flesh on her arms was charred.
"What happened Connor?" Jeff asked.
"We found the battery room. It had zombies in it. When we got in, Antoine swung his knife at one and pushed the zombie into an electrical cable. His knife's blade nicked the wire and he electrocuted himself. At the same time, the zombie burst into flames and we had just enough time to escape the room before the whole attic area ignited. A burning timber fell on Giselle. I went back to rescue her and I lifted the beam off her," he paused, showing his hands. The skin was red and blistered. "She's going to die, isn't she?"
"I don't know man," Jeff said.
"She is. None of us are doctors. None of us have the degree of medical knowledge necessary to treat her. It's snowing, it's cold and we don't have a sterile environment for her. I'm no pre-med student but even I know this looks bad," he said glumly.
Giselle moved her legs a little.
"Even if she lives through the night, we have no way to fix her wounds. Her shirt melted into her skin. I mean, that will get infected. So even if she survives through the night, she's going to die of infection," he said.
The tower was ablaze now, flames shooting forth from every window.
"Guys, we need to get somewhere that's easily defendable," Phil said urgently. "We just killed several dozen zombies, but more will come. We also need to get Giselle out of the cold."
"Let's try over there!" Vik said, pointing to the neighborhood that sat across a field from the terminal complex.
"I guess that's as good as we can do for now," Phil said quietly. "Let's go!"
Connor scooped Giselle up into his arms. She whimpered.
"I know babe, I know. We'll get you to shelter soon," he said.
"Why Connor? Why? My arms are on fire!" she cried out.
Jim and the others ran across the field in a circle around Connor and Giselle. Phil led the way, Vik and Sherry had each side and Jeff and Jim ran behind everyone. Jim looked around, trying to see if zombies were near. They were, of course.
The snowy field was slippery beneath Jim’s feet, bu
t somehow he avoided slipping. He and the others finally reached a small one and a half story house.
Phil tried the door and found that it was unlocked. The smell of death emanated from the darkened portal.
"Alright, me and Vik are going to go inside to make sure there are no zombies. Jim, you, Jeff and Sherry will stay out here with Connor and Giselle. Okay?" Phil said.
"Yeah," Jim said.
They ran in. Jim saw several zombies moving across the field toward the house in the light cast by the blazing tower.
"I'm sorry Connor, I'm sorry," Giselle moaned.
"It's okay Giselle," he said. He whispered something in her ear.
"All clear guys," Vik said from the doorway.
They went inside and closed the door. Jim leaned against the closed door as Jeff started a fire in the fireplace. Connor carried Giselle upstairs behind Phil. Vik walked up to Jim.
"She's going to die, I think."
Jim nodded solemnly.
Jeff muttered something under his breath.
Phil came downstairs a couple of minutes later.
"Hey Jeff, see if there's any bottled water please," he said.
"Okay Phil," Jeff replied, walking into the darkened kitchen. A few seconds later, he ran upstairs carrying a few bottles of water.
"Jim, come look at the tower," Vik said.
Jim walked over to watch the fire. The whole complex was burning. Suddenly a huge cloud of embers shot upward from behind the tower.
"I guess the concourse collapsed," Vik said quietly.
"Yeah."
A few minutes later the tower began to lean to the right a little.
"The tower look like it's leaning?" Jim asked.
Vik tilted his head. "Yes. It won't be long before it collapses. Look! The zombies are swarming around the tower!”
“Like moths drawn to a flame,” Jim muttered. He looked down at his watch. It was just before midnight. "Hey, help me move the entertainment center in front of the door."
"Okay," Vik said as he followed Jim over to the entertainment center.
They took the TV off and carried the wooden entertainment center over to the door. That finished, they went back over to the window to watch the fire.
Jim heard footsteps behind him. He turned and saw Phil and Jeff walking down the stairs. “How's she doing?"
Darkness and The Grave: A Zombie Novel Page 18
