Eves of the Outbreak

by Lilith Assisi

  Chapter 24

  I awoke slowly to a dark room and realized that Marge had returned. And she wasn’t alone this time.

  She was on the floor next to two other figures, while a fourth was in the cot. She was awake and her eyes met mine.

  I lifted an eyebrow when I realized she was looking at me, smiling.

  She sat up and whispered a response.

  “Ian’s in the cot, and then Sam and Nathan are on the floor here,” she told me.

  I was glad that the kids had found a friend in Marge. I took in the other surroundings of the small office and saw that River and Percy were still there. I reached over to pat Percy’s head and heard the swish of his tail over carpet.

  Nathan, Marge, River, and I had shared this office from the first day. And as our group grew we still stayed close, unintentionally bonding since that first incident with Scott in the lobby.

  I lied back down and pulled the covers close. I could get up to grab some food or water, and I kind of had to pee, but I wanted to enjoy the warmth and comfort of the cot a little longer.

  I think I dozed back off, but I found myself waking to the strange sounds of growling. I knew it was one of the dogs, or both. But it was strange to hear this noise in the middle of the night in our pitch-dark office.

  Finally coming to my senses, I jolted upright in bed. River and Percy were no longer at my side. Instead they were standing in front of the other cot. Sam, Nathan, and Marge all rested on the floor, not moving. But Ian was stirring in his bed. He was tossing and turning, and for a brief moment I thought the poor kid must be having a nightmare.

  “Ian? You ok?” I asked across the room.

  Sam stirred a little. Ian continued to writhe under the covers.

  I stood up and looked over towards Ian’s cot. I could only see the back of his head. My eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, and I thought I could see sweat stains over his sheets. I felt that strange prickling at the back of my neck as my teeth clenched and my hair stood up on end: something was not right.

  I was about to walk over to wake him up and then everything happened so fast.

  Ian’s face jerked around to face me, but his eyes didn’t have their usual definition or alertness despite being open. They weren’t glazed over with sleep either. They were cold, heartless, other. His jaw was slacked. He did not seem completely aware of what was going on around him.

  And it hadn’t dawned on the three sleeping closest to him what was going on either…

  “GET UP!!!!” I screamed.

  But I was too late. Before I could get anyone out of harm’s way the newly reanimated Ian had pounced off his bed in to the group on the floor.

  They all startled awake and started grunting and yelling, but it was Marge that woke with a blood-curdling scream. It was a scream that could only come from someone in incredible pain, made all the more heart-wrenching for me coming from someone I cared about. Ian was attached to her shoulder, teeth gnashing as he tore away and chewed on her flesh there.

  The others were yelling while I ran to the door to turn on the light. I flicked the light on and was blinded for a brief moment while my eyes adjusted.

  Percy and River had likely already adjusted to the change in light, and River had moved herself to tugging on Ian’s back pant leg.

  The others were getting up, yelling and scrambling towards the door.

  I ran in to the hall to grab the crowbar, which I usually left alongside my bat and get-away pack outside the office.

  I grabbed the bat, which was closer to the door this time, and turned back around and went back in to the office as Sam and Nathan were fleeing out. Sam was crying and mumbling her brother’s name as Nathan forcibly dragged her out of the office.

  I was about to run back in and try to take care of Ian when Percy did something unexpected.

  He had been growling at Ian from the side of my cot the whole time, and his pent up rage finally seemed too much to control. He suddenly lunged for Ian and bit him in the throat, tearing him away from Marge. Marge had stopped screaming, but appeared to have passed out.

  I shouted for him to stop, but Percy was suddenly a beast, attacking Ian like a lioness bringing down a gazelle, like his survival depended on it. He left huge bite wounds along Ian’s throat and face, but I was able to tear him away. He had sufficiently disabled Ian so that his corpse was only barely twitching.

  I used my superpower and detached myself from what I was doing, then brought the bat swinging down in to Ian’s skull. His movement stopped.

  By the time I turned around there was a crowd larger than the one that had been in the office standing there. The noises must have woken most of the people in this side of the building. I could hear more commotion in the surrounding halls, but I could see at least eight faces peering through the door. One face I couldn’t see was Sam’s. She had buried her face in Nathan’s chest as he held her there. She was sobbing and shuddering as he held his hand against her back.

  “What the hell is going on?” I heard David’s distinct voice from the back of the crowd and people seemed to be parting the way for him to come in.

  He burst through the crowd and took in the scene.

  Since David had arrived it had been like the two of us were competing for the role of leader. With his military background he always fell in to the role of barking orders and trying to control others. It was a stark contrast to my approach and priorities: I wanted to help everyone survive and be happy, so people came to me as a leader as well. My attempts to have group discussions and figure out ways to help us all work together in harmony made me the natural opposite to David, and I’m pretty sure he hated me for that.

  To put it bluntly, David was a good old-fashioned douche. He didn’t care about others’ feelings. He could be cruel and heartless. He had a love obsession with guns. He as a mysoginist in many ways, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that blended with a bit of sadist, culminating to me as a face that always deserved to be punched. I didn’t want to call him evil, that seemed harsh, but he was the closest thing to it here in our encampment. Even Bari seemed appalled by his attitude at times, and that was saying something. Right now we had someone how to a stare down, which involved me fantasizing about how punchable David’s face was while he looked at me with a smug “I told you so face”.

  Marge’s low moan brought all our attentions back to the blood stained scene on the floor. Punching David would have to wait for another time.

  It wasn’t a lifeless moan. Instead it was one full of pain and agony, one that made me feel incredibly guilty for not having attended to her needs sooner, and instead wasted my time in a pissing contest with dick wad of the year.

  David looked from Ian to Marge, then back to me.

  “I’ll go get my gun,” he said matter of factly before turning back and pushing his way back through the crowd.

  I turned and looked at Marge. Her wounds were pretty bad, mostly on the left shoulder and left cheek. She would die from them, or the infection, but either way it would end in her becoming a zombie. I knew she would not want that. We had all agreed to take each other out if that happened.

  “No, wait!” Nathan shouted. David turned and gave him the most incredulous look someone could muster.

  “I’ll do it. If that’s OK. She was my friend. If I could borrow your gun please,” he asked permission of David. David looked shocked. I think he had been expecting Nathan to protest or try and come up with some cockamammy reason for why we shouldn’t kill Marge. That’s what I had been expecting.

  “Sure. It’s in my bunk,” David said to Nathan with a curt nod. But then he glanced down to see Sam still pressed in to his chest there.

  Nathan gently turned her around and pushed her in my direction, and I unfolded my arms to let her continue her mourning there.

  As Nathan walked by I grabbed his arm and looked at him with my best “concerned and worried” look I could muster. He turned to me and said “We had agreed if either of us needed this
we would do it for each other. It’s ok Di, really, it is. I promised her this,” he said. I nodded in understanding and gave him a hug.

  “You,” was all I heard David say behind me. I turned to see him looking at Sam pressed against my chest just in time to prevent him from ripping her from my arms.

  “She’s coming with me,” David stated as he glared at me.

  He grabbed her clothes more forcibly and tore her from me, pulling her back through the crowd. And that’s when I snapped back in to action.

  “What the hell are you doing David?!” I yelled out after him. I pushed through the crowd that was already starting to disperse. There were looks of fear and horror, sadness and shock. There were also a couple faces that looked angry.

  David was picking up his pace and Sam was too traumatized to stop him. She just shuffled along behind him.

  He turned down a hallway and I followed, finally catching up. He looked at me defiantly as he pulled her in to the ICU break room and shoved her down in to a chair. I followed and was comforted by the fact that my dogs were still with me, though a little horror struck by Percy’s mouth being covered in blood. I made a mental note that we would have to figure out, and quickly, whether or not dogs could become infected.

  I was also a little surprised, and equally comforted, as I squeezed my hand around the baseball bat that I had forgotten I had been holding this whole time.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted at him.

  “Her brother was infected. He must have been bitten before we let them in! Don’t you see?!?! I demanded that we start inspecting the bodies of all those we let in, but you and Tracy refused. Now we’ve got more dead, and a freaking clean up situation on our hands,” he told me. He was angry, but he also looked self-assured, and I wanted to smack him for that.

  I rolled my eyes at him but deep down had to admit he had a point.

  “Yes, you have a point. We should have a forum to decide, but why did you bring Sam here?” I asked.

  “Forum?! Are you freaking kidding me? I am getting to the bottom of this right now. I don’t care that this girl said she wasn’t bitten, I am going to find out on my own!”

  “How? Stripping her down and running your hands over her? You’re fucked up Dave, but I didn’t think that fucked up. She saw what happened to her brother. She knows the consequences of being bitten. We can trust her. And if it’s that important that she be strip searched, I will do it,” I said.

  “Bull shit. I can’t trust anyone but myself. And I can trust my own eyes when I’ve seen her body and that there are no scratches or bites hidden under her clothes,” he said.

  Before I could shout another retort Sam had taken things in to her own hands, stunning us both. We had been ignoring her during our debate, and then she suddenly jumped out of her chair and tore away through the ICU quicker than either of us realized what was happening.

  We both darted after her, but I was behind David. He would catch her first and I just hoped he wouldn’t hurt her.

  She dashed through the row of cages and ended up in the hallway, but before I could shout to her to go left, back towards our group of people, she took off to the right. There were large laundry bags and extra banks of cages that way. We had left it that way on purpose on the first day when we tried to barricade entrances we weren’t going to use. And Sam was headed straight for that back entrance along the side of the building with the delivery bays.

  “Sam, no! Stop!” I screamed.

  But the girl was fast. Way quicker and more agile than David too. David was a couple feet from her when she burst in to the door and flung it open.

  If a zombie could show shock that was probably the one moment I saw it. In the yard beyond were at least a half dozen of them, one just a foot away from Sam and David. It was almost comical, like if I had seen their faces it would have been one of shocked horror only mirrored by what I would describe as shocked delight. And it was like all that running had left everyone paralyzed.

  That is until another scream broke the silence. The scream of Sam as she realized what was happening and the first zombie latched on to her arm.

  David went to turn tails but the zombie toppled over Sam and knocked him over as well. He was scrambling to get up but even in those few seconds the remaining zombies had breached the doorway and were tumbling in. Most of them were stopping to devour the two in the hallway, their shrieks piercing the air behind them and likely bringing more zombies to the feast.

  The only other noise I could hear was the low rumble of growling on either side of me, River and Percy both taking up my flank.

  I think we all knew we had little chance of rescuing them, so the three of us turned and ran.

  Meanwhile I heard a gunshot across the hospital, likely Nathan taking care of Marge. Hopefully the others had been as proactive as I had been in packing an escape bag. We were going to have to high tail it out of the hospital and hope that there weren’t any more zombies by our other exits. I was going to miss this hospital, but with the memories from tonight I was ready to get the hell out of dodge.

  Part 5: Chaos

  “At first sign of crisis, the ignorant don’t panic because they don’t know what’s going on,

  and then later they panic precisely because

  they don’t know what’s going on.”

  –Jarod Kintz

  Chapter 25

  A cool sensation washed through Judy’s head. She could hear something rhythmically barking in the distance….barking….a dog? A siren? It jarred her consciousness and she headed back towards the black, comforting home of her subconscious. Heading there, she heard something louder this time, more difficult to ignore, and more familiar. It was even more jarring than the other noises, this one lacking any consistency or beat that something musical might have. She once more tried to block it out, clinging to the possibility of continued sleep, but whatever the noise was, it was persistent.

  “Mei mei, GET UP! We need to go, now! Judy!”

  Grudgingly Judy opened her eyes, and found herself staring back at her brother’s anguished face. The backyard of their mother’s house started to fill in the blurry gaps behind Gregory’s face, and her brain, no longer able to shelter her from the ugly in the world, flooded her with unpleasant memories of the events in the last hour.

  Darting upward Judy rolled over and retched, exorcizing any of the last bile from her stomach. Behind her, Judy knew that her mother’s defiled, necrotizing corpse slumped on the fence. Judy knew from the lack of noise it was making there was a single bullet hole somewhere in it’s head.

  She wiped her mouth on the bottom of her shirt and felt Greg’s hand wrapping around her waist. Gregory was kind, angling her away from her mother’s body as he helped lift her to her feet.

  “Judy, we need to go. There are sirens approaching. I think someone heard and reported the gunshots. We need to get out of here,” he said.

  She nodded, and Gregory continued to assist her then, through the hole in the fence with his body shielding her from their mother once again. Judy thought she heard sirens right on top of her as they reached the other side of the next yard, picking up the pace as they hopped over a fence and headed toward someone’s shed three yards over to hide.

  A trip that should have taken less then ten minutes took them almost two hours, weaving and ducking amongst yards with no activity or dogs, and trying to take the most roundabout and safe path they could back to the Jeep. When they arrived there, they faced their biggest obstacle yet.

  The moon shone down on three police cruisers and two ambulances cluttered along the street adjacent to their getaway vehicle. There was no sign of the homeless zombie, but Judy could see that one EMT worker was helping bandage a police officer’s arm. A large amount of black liquid, probably blood, stained the pavement in between two of the cruisers.

  “I am going to go get the Jeep. You stay here and I will drive around to get you,” Greg instructed.

  Judy hated the prospect of h
im heading off alone, but knew her brother was right in being the one to retrieve the vehicle. Otherwise she, a wanted terrorist, would be walking directly in to a gang of law enforcement.

  Greg tried to look unconcerned about the group of law enforcement and first responders as he approached the Jeep. Judy watched with horror, thinking it actually made sense to feign some interest like most laypeople would. Still, relief started to build in her chest as he was just a couple feet from the car.

  He reached for the door handle, and that’s when the female officer closest to him seemed to notice his existence for the first time.

  Look away Judy urged the woman.

  She let out a short “Hey!” and jogged across the street to confront Greg.

  Judy felt her chest fill with panic, made even worse by not being able to overhear the conversation between Greg and the police officer. Her panic tripled as the woman turned and Greg began following her towards the police vehicles. He disappeared behind an ambulance with the cop.

  Judy found herself taking some deep breaths trying to calm herself. After two minutes, which felt like twenty, she seriously considered running to the Jeep and trying to make a getaway. But there was no way she would be able to retrieve Greg from the middle of a half dozen first responders without getting caught, or killed. She resigned herself to wait.

  After what felt like an hour but was probably closer to five minutes, Greg emerged. She could see beads of sweat appearing on his brow, though he tried to keep his façade composed as he walked back to the Jeep.

  Before she knew it, Greg had driver to the hiding spot she had at the end of the street and she hopped in with him. He told her quickly that the cop just wanted to ask if he had seen anything, which he had told her he hadn’t.

  As they sped away she looked in the rear view mirror and could see the yard where the pool party had been earlier. The pool and the yard were both still illuminated though by the moon this time, adding to the eeriness. All of the tables and chairs were chaotically strewn about the yard, and large stains of a dark liquid seemed to be all around the edge of the pool. She could have sworn she saw bloody handprints along the walls of the pool, but maybe they were just party decorations whose details she couldn’t make out in the dim light? Turning the corner she saw a body floating on the surface at the end of the pool just as the yard disappeared from view, and Judy knew her fears were not unfounded.