by Jack Wallen
The doctor jarred us from our conversation by slamming a little harder against the glass. It was as if the idea of Bethany in his lab had registered and did nothing but piss him off. Susan squealed, and my heart skipped a beat or two. The look on Godwin’s face was almost joyous, as if he gained something from our fear. Zombie-Godwin started smashing his fist against the glass. I hadn’t checked to see how strong the plexi was, but it seemed to be handling a full-on attack from a raging zombie.
Godwin unleashed his fury on the glass until the flesh on his knuckles and palms split and splattered the glass with even more blood. The blows continued as if nothing had happened.
Susan winced every time a blow landed, until she could no longer take the freak show. When she jumped up, her cheeks ran afresh with tears. My own anger jettisoned me off the table and to the glass. I landed my own blow on it, which stopped Godwin from throwing punches. We stared at one another long enough for me to think there was something of the man left.
“Come back to us, Lindsay,” I muttered, half under my breath but loud enough to traverse to the air on the other side of the glass. As soon as the words tickled the ear of the zombie, he screamed and started afresh with his rage.
Maybe I was wrong, and there was nothing left. Maybe it was time to move on and find another possible source for a cure. And maybe Susan was right about Bethany. It was worth a try. At least I had a newly-hatched purpose― convincing Bethany she could pick up where Godwin left off and find a cure.
Chapter 24: The discovery and the breech
“There’s no way. I’m not a geneticist.”
I could have predicted Bethany’s initial response.
“But you won’t have to start from scratch.” I was obviously desperate.
“You’re talking about some serious chemistry. Computers, I get. Genetics? No way. I can’t hack the human genome, Jacob.” Bethany seemed pretty sure of this inability.
“Bethany, all I am asking is that you try. Just take a look at Godwin’s notes and his work. Maybe he did enough preliminary research that all you would need to do is put the pieces of the final puzzle together.” I pled my case, making sure she knew that if she didn’t try, I didn’t stand a chance.
The melting of her resolve was slow and beautiful. When she smiled, I had all the confirmation I needed. A simple thank you kiss on the lips and I started to guide her out of Room 77. But before she could go, she had to grab a few items…and she had to make sure I understood that she couldn’t make a single promise, other than she would do her best. For me, that was good enough. I knew that, without fail, Bethany’s best brought success.
Or was that me setting this whole plan up for one epic failure?
As soon as she left the room, I felt it―heat boiling my brain and sound levels quickly rising up and down like someone twisting the volume knob on an old transistor radio. It was coming fast; I only hoped this one wasn’t the Sanford-ian “big one.”
Thanks to Bethany’s ingenuity, my recorder was once again working, so I would be able to catch everything that happened.
The pain was incredible, but the sound overshadowed all else. The sound seemed to be coming from the center of my brain, as if some collection of synapses were simultaneously misfiring. This only added to the collection of various sounds coming from monitors, radios, and servers in the room. It was all so overwhelming and painful.
“I have to…get out of this room.”
My head needed silence. As the pain continued to increase, my feet scrambled around to locate a place that could bring me silence. I finally found myself squatting in a closet with the door closed. The lack of ambient noise helped to soothe the pain.
I had found what I needed. The pain of the transformation was caused by sound. In silence, the pain was bearable. I still didn’t feel like myself, but at least I was in control. It took some concentration to keep my mind from wandering.
God, the silence was blissful. The silence was everything. It was the sound of innocence. I would burn in hell if I didn’t silence the noise in my head, in everyone’s head. It was the only way to cleanse the corruption. What would happen, though, if my mind was silenced forever, only I didn’t die? Was that Zombie Nirvana? Silence…trance-like silence? If it were only silence I needed, I could rupture my eardrums and never hear again. But that was not the silence we heard. Zombies heard beyond sound, beyond tones and vibrations. We heard the collective noise pollution of a corrupt and dirty planet. We heard the sum whole of the evil of mankind.
We heard…
everything
and yet
nothing.
…
…
The feeling was ebbing away. I was going to get to be me at least one more day. Oh, that was a good feeling. Kiss Bethany one more time. Smell her delightful female smell. Hear her charming voice. Taste her delicious sex.
Bethany. Shit. I had to get my ass to the lab so I could fill her in. I was sure Bethany would be glad to hear of my little discovery.
“Silence? That’s it? That’s all it took?” Bethany’s face registered some serious doubt.
“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the sounds that drive them into rage. When the sounds are gone, the zombies are left with only what is in their heads.” My explanation left something to be desired.
“So all we have to do is deafen a planet full of zombies, and we’re safe?” The question itself was fairly ridiculous, and we both knew it. Neither of us wanted to deny it, though.
“I’m not completely sure. It seems it’s not just external silence, but an internal silence as well.”
“So we just figure out a way to get millions of zombies to meditate, and we’re good? Zen and the art of the zombie?” Bethany’s voice carried a sarcastic doubt.
We both had a laugh. At least in the midst of our waking hell we haven’t lost our sense of humor. But more important, I thought my point was starting to sink into both of us. It was a subtle realization, but a realization nonetheless.
“Maybe we should just focus on you for now. You keep getting your Buddhist monk on every time you feel all zombie-a-go-go, and I’ll get something resembling a cure-all up in your business.”
I loved it when Bethany talked tough. She knew it and smiled.
Bam! Crash!
The sounds of our upstairs neighbors started ringing through the building again. Only this time it seemed the numbers had grown exponentially.
“Did you ever find the surveillance cameras for the hallways?” I asked. Bethany had already gone back to poring over Godwin’s notes. She didn’t even glance at me when she spoke.
“Channel 626 on monitor C will get you the upper floors.”
I gave her a thank you peck on the cheek that hopefully said more than the intended thank you and sped out the door. My target? Room 77, of course. This cat had a case of morbid curiosity that only knowing how many moaners were directly above us would cure.
Bethany’s instructions were spot-on. I wished they hadn’t been. What I saw made me want to puke and shit and weep and hang myself all at once. The upper halls were absolutely filled with zombies. But what made the situation even grimmer was that scattered among the multitude of moaners were enough screamers to pretty much ensure our deaths. The screamers were tearing through the lumbering crowds like football players ripping through a paper wall. Moaner flesh was, quite literally, flying through the air. Chunks and hunks of the gore filled the halls. Spoiled brown blood was gushing like it was being sprayed from a hell-born fire hose. The entire scene was a macabre circus that would shame any nightmare created by the most delusional, deranged, and twisted of minds.
But with all the gore and horror, what was the most unsettling was the sight of a pack of screamers crowding around the elevator doors, beating and tugging at them as if driven by a singular determination to have at the sounds emanating from below. Those sounds?
Us.
They knew we were here. They knew exactly where we were. And now it seemed they
knew how to get to us.
I was starting to think maybe they would make it through the security, make it down here, make it to us. I had to tell Bethany that we might have to flee our little dream home. Could this get any fucking worse?
I probably shouldn’t have written that. Damn it.
Chapter 25: Fleeing
“What do you mean forget the cure? We have to follow through with this. I’m really close to understanding where Godwin was going with this!”
“Bethany, listen to me. There are screamers attempting to break into the elevator. They will get to us, and they will kill us…or worse. We have to find a way out.”
She knew I was right. She closed her eyes and let out a long, deep sigh.
Crash
Screams
And now a symphony of screams echoed through the halls. It was all Bethany needed to hear to be pushed over the edge.
“Okay, but I’m taking Godwin’s notes. If I leave these behind, what slim hope we have vanishes.”
We grabbed every sliver of paper we could find and stuffed them in Bethany’s messenger bag. We were desperate. We were panicking. We had to keep reminding ourselves not to lose control. One small slip, one tiny oversight could lead to an untimely tragedy.
Bethany turned to me with sweat covering her upper lip and forehead. I had to push down the urge to kiss her mouth. “Okay, what’s the plan? How do we get by the screamers blocking our only exit?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. In the movies, there was always a backup plan, and the hero was always one step ahead of the bad guys.
I was one shitty hero.
“We need Room 77.”
Sometimes women could toss out the most random thoughts.
“We might be able to find schematics of the building. Maybe there’s an exit we don’t know about.”
And then there was Bethany.
On our way to Room 77, we searched for, and quickly found, Susan. She had been cowering under her bed. I didn’t blame her. Hell, if I had my way I’d have been under there with her. The sound had grown so loud it was threatening to turn yours truly into a screamer, and I didn’t have time for a meditation at the moment.
When we continued to Room 77, Susan didn’t even question where we were going or what we were doing. She asked me to pick her up and carry her. She buried her face in my neck and breathed in deeply. At least one of our group had found some safety. I remembered that feeling, my mother coming into my bedroom to rouse me from a nightmare, my body covered in sweat, shaking, terrified. As soon as my mother’s arms had locked around me, that feeling sank away. Everything, no matter how bad, was instantly made better. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t actually do a damn thing about the nightmares; it only mattered that she was there.
Well, at least I could give Susan that. I desperately wished I could give her more, like the rest of her life. I would do everything I could to see that happen. I would also do everything I could to avoid having to actually make that promise.
Room 77 wasn’t immune to the maddening screams raining down from above. I didn’t want to worry my girls, but the sound was starting to get to me. If we didn’t get out of the building soon, my scream was going to join the chorus, and I would be tearing into the flesh of my makeshift family.
“What are we doing here? Can’t you make the noises stop? Can we eat soon?” In her barrage of questions, Susan was starting to sound younger and younger. It must have been fear causing her to regress.
“We’re trying to find a way out of here, Susan.” Bethany didn’t even falter at the keyboard. She was typing like mad, trying to locate schematics of the building. I took it upon myself to scan through the monitors to see what our chances were of actually getting away from the building once we managed to get past the first wave. From the looks of it, our chances were just about nil. No, they were completely nil. Judging from the amount of bodies at our front door, the place was probably surrounded.
So, instead of continuing the downward spiral of defeat, I turned my attention to the screens displaying the news. The screens that were blank earlier were still blank. At least there was the tiny sliver of good news that there was no further global spread. Or so it seemed. The whole goddamned situation was so grim. Never in my life did I think I would experience the apocalypse. Even if I had thought I would, I never would have guessed I’d be at ground zero keeping a journal about it.
And just what about this damn journal? Was it really worth my time? I’d been taking every chance I had to scratch and scribble every thought and every instance of this nightmare-made-real, sometimes to the tune of putting myself in danger. And for what? Would this ever amount to anything? Not a Nobel, that was for damn sure. I didn’t think I’d pieced together a single phrase worthy of such an honor. Of course, it was pretty fucking challenging to put that kind of effort into a work you doubted you would even finish.
So what then? What if this chronicle didn’t win any awards? Hell, at this point, I didn’t even care if it was ever published. Right now this notebook and my recordings were the only things keeping me sane. Well, that was hardly fair, as Bethany had certainly done her part to ensure I kept it together. But even without publication, maybe this journal would serve as the schematic that would enable others to survive. Maybe in the end I would have become some prophet or man of myth who wrote the Bible for the new world order.
Was that my ego I was seeing on the horizon?
“Aha! Found ‘em. The schematics.” Bethany’s aha moment jerked me out of my head so quickly I feared whiplash.
“Is there an escape?” I felt like a kid in one of those movies where all the little boys and girls are being held hostage by the creepy old guy who plans on using the kids’ hopes and dreams to power his latest destruct-o ray. Old B-scifi was so underrated. Give me Invaders from Another Planet any day. Kind of apropos now, too.
“I think I found a way out. It might be a bit of a tight squeeze, but I believe it will drop us out on the ground floor at the rear of the building.” Bethany was practically glowing with pride.
Glow on, girl, glow on.
I looked at the schematics. She was right; it was going to be a tight squeeze. Good thing we had been subsisting on next to nothing lately. Our currently emaciated conditions were perfect for the tight-squeeze retreat. We could actually do this!
Bethany printed out a copy of our route. I grabbed the printout; it was small but readable.
“Wait. This is strange.” Bethany’s voice was sotto voce, as if her thoughts were just leaking out of her head into the air.
“What is it?”
Bethany didn’t speak right away; she was lost in computer commands. “It’s an encrypted file, and a fairly large one at that. I know an encrypted file in this room isn’t really all that special, but the location and the encryption scheme of this file are what make it odd. There’s more. The file is named Mengele_Virus.”
That last bit stopped me in my tracks. I was torn between wanting to know, right now, what was in that file, and knowing we had to leave at that very minute.
“I can save the file to a flash drive and crack it later. There’s a laptop here with a full charge. I’ll pack the lappy along with Godwin’s notes.” The pistons in Bethany’s mind were firing at an insane speed. It was a wonder her brain didn’t go up in flames.
We scrambled to grab everything we could before attempting to slither our way to safety. I took one last look at all of the monitors only to see the screamers beginning to pull the elevator doors open. The sight was beyond chilling. Go-time was now.
Assuming that the brains of the operation was probably best suited for the task, I pulled out the map and handed it to Bethany. She didn’t even need to look at the paper at first.
“The entrance to the route is near the mess hall.” Bethany took point like a pro. Susan was nestled in behind her as I brought up the rear of the troupe.
Without warning, Susan stopped, causing me to slam into her. I grabbed her befor
e she hit the floor.
“What about Dr. Godwin? We can’t just leave him here, can we?” Susan’s face was covered with concern.
We didn’t really have time for distractions, especially those of the futile nature. Godwin was a lost cause. And besides, why would Susan care about the man after all of his lies and manipulations?
“Honey, Godwin is one of them now.” I figured the truth was the best tactic, given the situation.
“Shouldn’t we check first?”
The sounds were growing louder, echoing loudly enough through the elevator shaft to make it seem the screamers were on our floor.
The screeching of metal heralded the imminent arrival of doom. Instead of arguing with Susan, I picked her up and nodded Bethany on toward the mess hall.
“Sorry, chipmunk, we don’t have time to check on the status of our dear zombie pal. Death is knocking on our front door, and we have a date with escape. One way or another, I am getting us out of here alive.”
Of course, our escape had been made infinitely more difficult now that the screamers were reaching the same floor we were trying leave. If we were going to make it out, it would have to be in absolute silence.
Could this get any worse?
Wait a sec…strike that last question. If there was one thing I had learned in this shit-storm of an Armageddon, it was that things could always get worse. Always. There was no need to tempt fate any more than I already had.
“Chipmunk, we have to be very quiet. Okay? Step as cautiously as you can. Don’t speak or knock anything over. If you see something scary, cover your eyes and your mouth.”
“I get it, Jacob…I’m not five. Now shut up before the things hear you.”
“Bethany, lead the way.”
“You said…”
“Shhhh.”
Words couldn’t possibly describe what was happening. The screamers had obviously breached the elevator. We were creeping around in what seemed to be a secret access tunnel. It was as if someone knew escape had always been part of the plan. But why? Why build an escape route in a building designed to be impenetrable? I was getting the feeling this whole plan had been put into motion long, long ago… well, at least before I fell victim to its wrath.
