Survival Kit

by Haga, A. H.

  Shadia squeezed my hand and tried to draw me against her, as if she could protect me with her body. André had almost finished his sausage, not seeming able to stop once he started, but he stopped now and stared openly at me. It was the longest his eyes had rested on me so far.

  “Anyway,” I said, trying to break the heavy silence that hung between us. “Shadia said you were doing some kind of experiments?”

  This seemed to shake him out of his stupor and he hurriedly finished eating the bierwurst before he began speaking. “’Experimenting’ may be a bit too heavy a term. Observations would be more like it, you know.”

  “OK. Observing what?”

  “The walking dead, of course.”

  Excerpt from Medical Notebook

  No one knows who patient zero was, or even where they came from. What we do know is that the sickness sprang up in major cities across the world within one weekend.

  At first, no one knew it was any different than the flu, but it spread fast. Within weeks, most of the countries in Europa had shut down, trying to contain it. America was in upheaval, every State running according to their own rules but none able to contain it. China cut off from the rest of the world first, shortly followed by Japan.

  Everyone tried to figure out where it started, but everyone had different suggestions. The best minds in the world raced to find a cure. They were too slow.

  11

  His words seemed to hang between us like a bad smell. Looking at Shadia, I could tell she already knew what André was about to tell me, but I couldn’t tell if she approved or not.

  “OK,” I said again.

  André seemed to take this as confirmation and swung the rucksack he was wearing around his shoulder. As he talked, he looked through it. “The reason I was at the street where I found you is because it’s one of my observation points. While some of the walkers come and go as they please, those stuck between the cars don’t go anywhere, and that makes it a lot easier to observe how they function. Before you two came along, I used the ones at the school as well, but they’re all gone now.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  He pulled a notebook from the rucksack. “No matter.” He pushed the book toward me. “They would have found something to chase sooner or later, I guess. Or they might have stayed and rotted. Who knows?”

  I don’t know what I’d expected the notebook to be about, but I was totally unprepared for the pictures and notes that met me. The first few pages weren’t so bad. André had filled them with everything we knew about the undead from the news. It wasn’t much, but André must have been a fan of zombie shows, for he had written possible similarities to some of them, and tried to use that as a way to learn as much about the zombies as he could. Some of his conclusions had to be wrong, but others seemed plausible, like the parasite eggs spreading through water.

  “But why didn’t anyone see the eggs? They can’t be that small.” Shadia pointed out.

  André shrugged. “How do parasite eggs get through anywhere? They’ve been getting into us humans for thousands of years, you know.”

  “OK,” Shadia pulled out the word. “Then how did it get in the water in the firstplace? And all around the world almost at the same time?”

  “My theory is that the eggs wouldn’t hatch before ideal conditions, which might be based on temperature or weather or who knows what! So the eggs might have been spreading for years, and then something in the atmosphere triggered them to wake up.”

  “Or they may have been spread by humans,” Shadia said.

  André nodded. “We just don’t have enough info.”

  “If this is right,” I said, tapping the page with my finger, “how come you’re not sick?”

  Shadia snickered, and André blushed before he stuck a hand into his rucksack and pulled out a Monster can. “I only drink energy drinks,” he said, not meeting my eyes, before pushing the can back into his pack. “She told me you two only drink water from a cooler?”

  I glanced at Shadia before I nodded. “Or, mostly? I only drink from a cooler, but Sha sometimes drinks coffee and tea at work, don’t you?”

  She nodded, but before she could answer, André scooted forward, his eyes big and intense. “She told me, and I think that answers a few other questions.”

  “Which ones?”

  “That the eggs die when boiled.” He snatched the book from my hands and leafed through it. “I haven’t really met anyone else who survived, but I know there are people in the city.”

  “If you haven’t met them, how do you know they’re there?” I asked.

  He snorted. “They aren’t hard to find. They’ve set up in Vigeland Parken.”

  Shadia’s hand found its way to my shoulder, and I felt the small tremor in it. “How many?”

  “Around fifty or so? Ah, here! This is what I was looking for.” He turned the book back to face me. On the page was a polaroid picture of a group of skinny but clearly alive people walking around between the statues of Vigeland Park. “They are all alive. I couldn’t believe they all avoided drinking tap water for some reason or another. It’s too big a coincidence that they also know each other, don’t you think?” Before we could answer, he continued. “So I kept an eye on them, you know, and this has led to another conclusion. The parasite needs fresh meat to survive. Without meat, it just shrivels away.”

  “And how did this group of people lead you to that conclusion?” Shadia asked. She had scooted to sit behind me now, letting me rest against her. “If you haven’t talked to them, I mean.”

  He fidgeted again. “Well, I kind of listened in, you know? The thing is, they’re like a cult. According to what I could hear, they used to be the members of this super-healthy yoga studio uptown. If you didn’t follow the studio’s rules, you were kicked out.”

  “And how do you know that?” I asked.

  Still not meeting our eyes, he started tugging at his long hair. “Well, you see … when it all started out, I met one of them, you know?”

  “One of who?”

  “One of those people from the cult. I was out to look at the Zs, you know, when I saw him. He was in trouble like you two were, and I helped him. After, he told me to stay away from the park and the people there.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, according to him, you know, they didn’t accept new members unless they reformed to their rules. Or the rules of the leader of the studio. He wasn’t really a part of the studio but followed part of their rules to support his wife. The leader collected everyone when the city evacuation started. He claimed they had been chosen by some God or other, and that’s why they didn’t get sick. Anyway, he wanted every marriage to be dissolved and the group to repopulate the earth. This guy I met, Harold, and his wife didn’t want to go along with it, so they were kicked out.”

  “But how did that lead you to conclude that the parasite needs fresh meat to survive?” Shadia asked. Something in what André had said tickled at the back of my brain, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

  “One of their rules is to be vegetarian. They don’t eat meat, and so they don’t provide food for the parasite. Think about it. What other animals were affected?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t really remember anything from the news about that.”

  “Cats and dogs. Rats and foxes. Animals that eat meat, you know? They had this whole thing at the beginning where they thought the sickness spread from meat, right? But they didn’t find any parasites or anything in the stomachs of cows or chickens, but they did find it in the stomachs of pigs on a few farms. On farms where they fed them with some kind of meat. The eggs are everywhere, but without fresh meat, they don’t mature, and so the worm is never born.”

  Shadia had wrapped her arms around me and was squeezing a little too tight. She was afraid, and no wonder. What André was talking about was scary. “Do they all come back? Those animals? Like we do?”

  André shook his head. “I don’t think so. I haven’t seen any zombie dogs or c
ats, at least, although I think I might have seen a rat.”

  “Why not?”

  “Maybe they’re not big enough to support the parasite? Or they’re somehow harder to control? I don’t know yet, although I would love to catch a few animals and test them.”

  “What? You want to make animals that may have escaped the parasite sick?”

  He shrugged. “That’s how science is made.”

  Finally, what had been itching at my brain clicked. “Wait,” I said, stopping Shadia in the middle of an argument for why André should find some other way. I couldn’t say I disagreed with her, but I needed to know. “What happened to his wife?”

  “Whose wife?” André asked, but he didn’t meet my eyes.

  Shadia stiffened even more behind me.

  “That guy, Harold. The former members of the cult. You said his wife got kicked out with him? Where was she when you saved him?”

  André busied himself looking through his pack. When he came up again, he’d brought another sausage with him. I wanted to hit it out of his hand, but he didn’t do anything with it. Just looked at it as he answered. “She was taken by the Zs two days before, he told me. He was out there, wanting them to eat him as well, but for some reason, he couldn’t find any when he needed them. Then I came along, and he doubted himself.”

  “What happened to him?” Shadia asked, voice barely higher than a whisper.

  André shrugged. “I don’t know. I brought him back here to rest as I did with you, but when I got back after my trip out the following day, he was gone. I haven’t seen him since.”

  The silence between us was no longer as hard as it had been before the conversation started, but it was still heavy. Finally, André sighed and started removing the plastic around the sausage. This one smelled of chili rather than garlic.

  “So you think we escaped the parasite because we didn’t drink water from the tap unless it was boiled, and you didn’t drink water at all, and the people at Vigeland because they didn’t eat meat?” I asked. André nodded, his eyes flicking up and meeting mine for a few seconds. “What else did you figure out?”

  He took a bite of the Bierwurst and chewed it to pieces before he found another notebook. “I keep an eye on the Zs to see how they evolve.”

  “Evolve?” I asked.

  Taking the book before I could open it, Shadia leaned forward and put a hand on the cover. “I’ve looked inside this one, and it can be rough, OK Kit?” she whispered.

  “What kind of rough?” I asked.

  “Close-ups of … things.”

  “Those are in the back,” André said, but he wasn’t looking at us again. This would get old fast. “I’m using the front to observe the actual walking dead, or the stuck but still alive dead, you know? If you want to see some of the stuff they leave behind, you can look in the back, but I wouldn’t do it unless you have to.”

  I really wanted to look in the back, but considering the things I’d already seen, I wouldn’t. I lifted Shadia’s hand and kissed it before I opened the front cover.

  The notebook contained information on a variety of zombies. There were pictures marked with dates, sickness, day-number, then with notes on how the zombie had changed from one picture to the next.

  The first was of a woman in her fifties. André had managed to take a picture of her just after she turned if I was to judge from the lack of rot on her face or blood between her teeth. She was dressed in a clean dress, and her red hair was braided. Someone had clearly cared for her after she died. In every picture, she had the same background, like she was stuck in a room, and André took pictures of her through a window. I watched as she rotted day by day until her yellow dress was stained by the liquids flowing from her body, and her earlier full face turned shaggy and empty. On day three, she had blood around her mouth, but it looked old. After that, she never seemed to have any fresh blood on her. By day fifteen, which was the last picture, she was on the floor, glaring up at the camera with black eyes.

  I flipped through the rest of the book: it was filled with a multitude of other zombies. There were the ones stuck between the cars where André had found us, and some walking around the city with orange crosses painted on their faces. I remembered seeing those crosses, and when I looked up, André gave a small nod and lifted his hands, showing the orange paint stains I’d noticed before.

  “So you watch the zombies, and then what?” I asked, closing the book when I came to a blank page.

  He shrugged. “Try to solve the mystery. You saw that woman in the beginning, right? I’ve watched her every day since she turned, and if they aren’t fed regularly, they decompose pretty much as a normal dead person would. You saw today’s picture, right? She couldn’t stand up anymore.”

  He’d finished his bierwurst while I looked through the book and was back to fiddling with his hair. He still wouldn’t look at us.

  “Thanks for letting me look,” I said, handing the book back to him. My head felt heavy and tired, and all I wanted was to go back to sleep. I wanted to forget those pictures and the words written around them. I wanted not to know the things I now knew about the parasite. Just sleep and not remember.

  “Do you have any idea how they find us?” Shadia asked, drawing me out of my thoughts.

  “What do you mean?” André answered.

  “They must be able to find us somehow, right? Do they smell us? Hear us? See us? Do you have any idea how their senses work?”

  “No.”

  “Any chance they can smell blood?”

  “Like sharks?” I asked.

  Shadia nodded, not taking her eyes off of André. He was chewing on his bottom lip, his eyes unfocused.

  “No,” he finally answered. “Why?”

  Shadia shrugged. “My period started yesterday. It would be a big inconvenience if they could track me because of it.”

  I snorted a laugh, both at her comment and at the blush exploding across André’s cheeks.

  “Well, no … I don’t … that is … don’t think … that’s a problem, you know?” he stammered, not looking at either of us.

  “Good,” Shadia answered, smiling a half-smile at his discomfort.

  For a few seconds, we sat there, André not looking at us and fidgeting as if he wanted to run from the room as fast as possible. Men and their fear of menstruation never ceased to amaze me.

  Finally, André cleared his throat and forced himself to look at us. “There’s one more thing.”

  “OK?” Shadia and I said in unison.

  Still not looking at us, André pulled a smaller notebook from his bag and handed it to us. On the first page, he’d written ‘Patient X’, and below followed a short description. ‘Male, mid-twenties, 178cm tall and 54kg heavy’, I glanced up at André, estimating his weight and height, but Shadia was turning the page. Her sharp gasp made me look down again.

  On the page was a bloody… something. The blood was fresh and red, and in-between, I could see small wounds in a half-moon shape. Under the picture, he had written: ‘Day 0. The patient bit at 11:27 by subject 1, Old Woman’.

  On the next page was another picture of the wound, but no blood. This time it was clear it was a bite mark from a human mouth, and from what little I could see in the picture, I guessed it was located where the shoulder met the neck.

  ‘Day 1. No change’.

  Each page after that had another picture of the wound, which had stopped bleeding but didn’t seem to heal, and a small comment below with what day it was and changes in the patient. There didn’t seem to be many, other than the pain subsiding.

  All in all, there were nine pictures logged.

  “This is you, isn’t it?” Shadia asked. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the picture on the last page as she spoke. “You were bitten by one of them and have been logging your progress.” It wasn’t a question.

  Finally, I looked up at André.

  He didn’t answer but unwound the scarf from around his neck. He dropped it to the ground, and I co
uld see what looked like a red tattoo peeking out of his t-shirt before he pulled the neckline aside and showed us the wound. It was as fresh and clear as in the pictures.

  12

  “How could you?” Shadia yelled for the hundredth time. “How could you let us take this risk? What if you turned on us, huh? What would we have done then? You knew the risk when you brought us in here, and you didn’t tell us.”

  “I’ve told you now,” André answered, also for the hundredth time.

  Shadia’s feet stomped back and forth across the concrete floor as she yelled at André like he was a child.

  “Why did you tell us now, then? Why didn’t you just let Kit heal, and we’d be out of your hair?”

  “Well, you know, I was wondering if I might come with you,” André mumbled.

  “What?” Shadia’s shrill shriek made my ears burn. “Why would we take you with us? You’re a ticking time bomb. Why should we take that risk?”

  I opened my eyes for the first time since Shadia started yelling. “Sha,” I said, and she appeared in the doorway. “Let him come.”

  Her mouth fell open. “What? Why?”

  “Because we could use the extra help. We left home almost a week ago and aren’t even out of the city. How’re we gonna get to the cabin at this rate?” I locked my eyes with hers. “We won’t. Not on our own. I’m slowing us down. I’m not saying you leave me behind,” I hurried on when she clenched her jaw, “but I’m saying we bring him. Now we know he’s been bitten. He hasn’t turned in days. Maybe he won’t turn at all. In which case, we have an extra pair of eyes and hands keeping us alive. If not, we deal with it when we need to.” My voice grew in strength as I spoke, and I pushed up until I was leaning on my elbows.

  Shadia stared at me for a long time before she sighed and turned, probably to look at André who was somewhere in the other room. “Fine. You can come. But I want the patient book. I want to take your daily picture and checks; you got me? You say nothing has changed, but there may be things you won’t notice that I will.”