The bag had a bit of a hard time zipping up, and it was quite heavy as it donned my shoulders, but it would have to do.
Flying back down the stairs I saw Peter was still standing at the front door, frozen and staring off in to the distance.
I caught up to his side and saw what he was gazing at: three human figures coming over the hill at the edge of our property line, stumbling and moaning as they headed towards us. Even more than three hundred meters away I could see their faces was deficient of normal animation, their expressions or lack there of portraying their lifelessness. Their ambulation was irregular and stiff, more similar to a marionette on strings than a human.
As we both stared at the figures I knew without a doubt that I had been right. These were zombies.
River growled, though this time more forcefully. While the figures’ eyes seemed lifeless from this distance, they also seemed locked on us in the doorway.
Even though River’s hackles were up, I never anticipated what happened next.
In a lightning flash River was off the front porch, bounding towards the shambling figures.
“River! NO!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. The zombies seemed instantly more focused on their destination after hearing me.
Bad idea, I thought. Still, that paled in comparison with what looked like my dog’s suicide mission, barreling head first towards a group of zombies.
I tossed my pack on the floor and went back for my handy baseball bat. I guess there was a reason that was my weapon of choice in zombie video games.
I was going to get my dog back, no matter what it took. But I figured with the way Peter was gaping I better slap him back in to action in the meantime.
“Peter, get the car in the back ready now! I’ll be there in one moment,” I told him while forcibly turning him until our eyes locked. I waited for some sense of acknowledgment from him, then turned and ran after my dog.
I heard the front door close behind me. I really hoped that meant my urging Peter to snap out of it had worked.
At the same time as I had heard the door close behind me, River was intercepting the three individuals. She started running circles around their legs and barking at the top of her lungs. The zombies wanted to maintain their focus on me, but River was doing her best to make it nearly impossible for them. Getting closer I saw there was a man, woman, and child. Maybe once a happy family, maybe complete strangers, who knew? The woman stumbled over River and fell to her side.
I found myself reducing speed as I got closer, taking in what was before me.
Getting a close up look confirmed my previous conclusion: there was no way these humans were still people. The woman River had knocked down was closest to me, trying to push herself up as her teeth chomped at the air. The snapping noise sent sharp pains up my teeth, a noise as nerve tingling as nails on a chalkboard. The woman’s lips were blue with cyanosis. A large gash had split open on its cheek though no blood flowed from the wound. Instead, the wound was jagged, but the flesh appearing from its edges were gooey, like a long necrotic injury.
But what startled me the most, what caused me to hold my breath transfixed, were the eyes. The eyes had been blue, but were glazed over, cloudy, emotionless, bloodshot, and intent. The monster started to get a hold on the ground and rise up towards me, those eyes never unlocked from mine. They were lifeless and enraged at the same time. For a moment I expected them to roll back in the woman’s head since in so many other ways she seemed dead. Those eyes continued to gaze at me, her prey, without blinking.
As we stared deeply in to each other’s eyes in a moment farther from a love story than Tom Cruise falling for Katie Holmes all over again, River once again came to my rescue and ended this tragic love story before it could happen. My eyes were finally torn away from the creature’s as River landed on her head and pushed her back in to the ground, glaring at me from the top of the scalp before jumping away.
I snapped back to the moment and expanded my peripheral vision, and realized that River must have knocked both the other zombies down. Right now all three were floundering in the grass trying to stand up. River started barking again, but this time from behind me. She was trotting back towards the house, giving me furtive and frequent glances to ensure I followed. I really needed to learn to trust my dog. After all, I could have saved a lot of expended energy if I had just entrusted her not to do something stupid in the first place.
A lingering guilt at not putting these three out of their misery washed over me, but then I knew I had to get moving. River had done her part, trying to temporarily slow them, and watching her head towards the opposite side of he house I knew she now was taking it the next step and diverting them away from the driveway where we would shortly be making our escape from.
I turned and confirmed this plan was working as I saw that the three zombies were now on their feet and lurching towards the side of the house. I also heard an engine spark to life and smiled, thinking we had timed this perfectly.
Slowing my pace a bit to ensure the zombies had the trajectory we wanted, I rounded to the back of the house with River, only to see a carless driveway before me. I heard the crunching of gravel growing softer and further away from me.
Peter must be driving to the front of the house to save River and I, but we had it under control! I rushed towards the back of the driveway and hoped I could silently get his attention before his car caused the zombies to lose their course.
But there was no Peter rushing to save us, no heroic effort to bulldoze those monsters in to the ground. And my flailing arms drew little attention. His BMW was already turning on to the road from the driveway.
Stifling a scream and a whimper all at once, I still pulled off the best floundering octopus impression I could manage, waving my arms and jumping up and down to get his attention. My instinct was to scream to him, but that might draw the attention of our pursuers.
At the last moment I could see his head in the car, and he turned to look at me as he continued down the road. He simply shook his head sadly as his eyes met mine, and then turned his head back towards the road as he drove away. My arms slowed and I just stopped moving, overwhelmed with a feeling of disbelief that he had just abandoned me.
I felt the blood rushing to my head and it was as if my head was in a bubble, deaf to its surroundings by a constant white noise that was the whooshing of blood through my ears. I might have heard something behind me, something that vaguely resembled a muted sneeze, as if someone had unsuccessfully tried to cover up being too noisy during a keynote speech only to have the sneeze explode more violently out in an embarrassing spurt. Still, I ignored it, not caring or recognizing what it was.
Then another noise happened, this time more forceful. It was almost as if someone was beating a monotonous drum, though more shrill and irritating, it slowly pounded its way into my cognizance.
River was barking at me. Loudly and repetitively. Let me tell you, River is one of the smartest dogs on the planet, and I think she knew as well as I did that more noise was not a good thing in our current predicament. But she needed to get my attention and draw me out of the cocoon my brain was starting to form.
Forcibly shaking my head, I slapped my cheek a couple times in the same manner I would to remind myself to wake up” if I was dosing on clinics. River seemed pleased with my effort and finally stopped barking, but in the same moment I acknowledged her presence she bounded to the top of the stairs on the back porch.
I turned back towards the road and briefly watched as Peter’s car disappeared, turning down a side street.
My body still felt numb, but at least I had temporarily hauled my head out of the fog. The adrenalin was still pumping through me, though I felt like I was fighting the urge to slump more than one might have to fight the post-prandial slump you get during the first hour of lecture after lunch. I was trembling all over and feeling more exhausted than after any post-prandial slump.
The zombie man from the front yard was rounding the cor
ner of the house I had purposefully led him down. I knew his friends wouldn’t be far behind. Despite the lack of feeling in my fingertips and the cold, lifeless feel to my lips, I knew what had to be done.
I could make it to the back door before him, and River must be standing there for a reason. That dog, whom had already saved my life on several occasions today, was standing at the door with a look of such human urgency and understanding it as uncanny. I’ve had better luck trusting my dog than anyone else my whole life, and I wasn’t going to stop now.
Part 3: Fugitive
“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.”
–Anne Frank
Chapter 14
Gregory stared at Judy. She had explained everything as best as she could during their flight, but now that they had landed in Hawaii he made her repeat the story. The first time he had interrupted her, scoffed at several of her descriptions, even argued with her. Since holing up in a hotel in Honolulu and seeing the breaking news, Greg was forced to believe his sister even if it pained him to do so.
Judy was being labeled a terrorist on the news. She was considered a dangerous fugitive at large, and only limited details were being revealed about the aftermath of what had occurred following her escape. They had turned the TV off to limit distractions, and Greg was listening to Judy in silence.
From the major news channels’ descriptions, the story being spread was that Judy was a member of the Anti-nanocist movement, a group of radical environmental terrorists that attacked scientific laboratories all over the world. The group believed that people, and specifically scientists, were meddling with powers they were not supposed to. Anti-nanocists wanted to sabotage as much scientific research over the globe as possible in the hopes that it would prevent an apocalyptic scenario started by science gone wrong.
Judy found it ironic in a sick, twisted way. After all, the actions of the company she had been working for could have been responsible for an apocalypse. In fact, they might still be. Yet their devised cover-up story involved cataloging Judy as a terrorist with goals opposite of what she was truly trying to achieve, or prevent.
The newscasters were also explaining that a contagious form of meningitis had been released during the fires and failed explosions Judy had rigged. That was what Judy was trying to explain to her brother. She didn’t understand why there had been explosions. He couldn’t make sense of it, unless someone above Mr. Dickinson had authorized it in an attempt to contain the monsters in the basement levels. Nothing she had done would have triggered the building to blow up. And if it had been an effort to halt the spread of the contagion those poor people had been infected with, it too seemed to have failed miserably. Judy couldn’t understand why the media had been spreading this story that she destroyed the building during an act of radical extremism, but the experiments they likely wanted to conceal from the public by doing so were still getting out through the cracks.
In an endeavor to contain the virus, all commercial flights out of the Philippines were grounded. Report of possible illnesses in Australia and California had also resulted in many U.S. airlines to start screening processes for those traveling to and from Southeast Asia.
Judy was struggling to absorb it all, and figure out what the motives of those involved might be. Her biggest suspicion was that forces outside the company were now pulling many of the strings, whether on purpose or not.
After what seemed like a lifetime of staring at her, and then pacing around the room, Gregory was again sitting in front of Judy intently. He was her brother but it still made her uncomfortable.
“OK.” Greg said.
“OK,” he repeated, forcing himself to stand up.
“OK, now what.” He said it like a statement rather than a question.
“I don’t know,” Judy replied.
“Well, let’s regroup and go over the facts again. You are now being labeled as a terrorist. You have information stolen from your company proving that they are the ones that have been committing human rights violations and other egregious crimes. Somehow after you escaped and set some sort of virus driven, manic cannibals on your boss and those responsible, the building was blown up. It’s possible that the reports of meningitis cases popping up back on the island and other places might be the same virus. You need to get to the mainland to bring this information to a trusted source, but we currently don’t know if we can trust anyone,” Greg summed up.
Judy nodded at him in agreement. He had summarized the facts well.
“So the only way we are getting off this island is if I can arrange for a trip myself to an isolated airspace in California. That’s the farthest my jet would make it. And my identity is probably being monitored as well, so I’ll have to find who I think is a trusted friend to get me through security,” Gregory seemed to be stating things matter-of-factly, and Judy was grateful that he was taking the lead. She might have been more of the brains in the family when it came to math and science, but she always appreciated her brother’s guidance and leadership skills. Their age difference also made it easier for Greg to be the one Judy turned to for advice, seeing as he was fifteen years her senior.
“It sounds like some branches of the military might be involved, but I bet if we could get your information to the CDC they’d help. They can’t be in on this. If not, maybe we take it to Congress and the President. Worst case scenario we find a way to reach out to the United Nations.” Greg continued. “If we get this to the right people that are above the level of Viratech, we can probably clear your name, and start working on fixing this mess.”
“What about mother?” Judy asked.
“Well, there is the San Ardo Airfield that is privately owned near Monterey. I bet we could fly in to there easily. We could check on mom during the trip, or I could as they might be watching the house for signs of you. The trickier part will be getting off this island first.”
Their mother still lived in San Jose, California. Judy figured all that talk by Mr. Dickinson had been a bluff, but she still had a nagging feeling urging her to get home and make sure her mother was safe.
“I know Michelle has connections in the government, and she said she’s not letting her phone leave her side until she hears that I’m safe,” Judy suggested slyly.
It had been the second strangest phone conversation of her life, after the one she had had with Gregory a couple hours prior. Her life felt like it was spiraling out of control during her conversation with her brother. Once she was in one piece and airborne she had received an unexpected call from Michelle Chapman.
Michelle and Judy had been close friends during their PhD years, though they only touched base by email less and less frequently since Judy took her new job. Michelle kept trying to convince Judy to apply for a position in her department at Boston University’s virology department, but Judy wanted to avoid all the politics that came with an academic position in the beginning of her profession.
Nevertheless, picturing Michelle’s long brown hair, angular cheeks, and warm smile made Judy’s stomach fill with butterflies. She always felt that she could trust her, and that was the most important aspect of their friendship. Judy didn’t feel a need to reveal any of her deeper affections for Michelle to her brother.
Judy had already informed Greg of what they had talked about: Michelle had heard preliminary news reports about some sort of lab fire at Viratech, and knowing her friend was there Michelle had called to see if she was alright. Judy hadn’t told her everything that had transpired, but she had told her the basics. And she couldn’t help but notice that Michelle seemed more concerned about her safety than anything else, including any intrigue she might be harboring about the research Judy had uncovered.
Greg was worried Michelle might go the authorities, and pointed out again that she conveniently called at such an opportune time. And so he took the precaution of having both their cellphones destroyed upon arriving in Ha
waii, limiting the possibility of being tracked down.
“Are you really sure she can be trusted?” Gregory asked Judy again.
“No, but she’s the only friend I have stayed in touch with from school, and she’s the one who reached out to me.”
“Exactly. What if that was because she had inside information?” he asked.
Judy paused and scrunched up her face in contemplation. It all seemed so unlikely, that Michelle might have somehow been connected to Viratech. She worked for a university, not the private sector. Even when Judy and her kept in touch, it involved discussing some of the latest studies coming out in peer-reviewed journals on topics they both found interesting. Judy’s job had forced her to keep silent about the precise nature of her experimentations, which was funny in hindsight considering all she studied was vaccine development.
“It just doesn’t seem possible. I could probably count the people I consider friends on one hand, and she is one of them,” Judy told her brother. As she said this she saw Mark’s face bubble up to the front of her mind and felt a pang of sadness, not knowing if he was alive, or what his current fate was. It seemed unlikely that he had survived the aftermath at Viratech. She had tried his number again as well when they arrived in Hawaii, but it again went straight to voicemail. Greg wouldn’t let her use the hotel phone to try again.
“Well of course your friend has to be on the exact opposite side of the country to us. I don’t know how the hell we could make it across the country without being caught.” Judy could see Greg’s eyes rolling as he strode around the room again. “I doubt we’d be able to send it to her securely electronically.”
“I wonder if it will spread,” Judy said quietly, changing the subject.
Eves of the Outbreak Page 8
