by A. R. Wise
Laura was drenched in sweat and leaned against the glass, but it was so hot that it burned her skin and she moved away. She looked at the smear she left behind and saw that their zombie neighbors were now sitting on the floor, something she’d never seen an undead do before.
“Hey, look at this,” she said as she wiped away more of the condensation on the glass. The Greys looked up at her, and one even started to try and stand, but then settled back down. They didn’t look much different than normal, except that they were seated. The creatures weren’t sweating, and their eyes were as wide as ever, belying their seemingly sleepy state.
“I guess your theory’s right,” said Billy. “The bastards need oxygen after all.”
“Took them long enough to go back to sleep,” said Harrison. “Feels like we’ve been in here for half a day.”
“I doubt it’s been more than twenty minutes,” said Ben.
“Why am I holding your damn dog?” asked Harrison. “Here, you take him for a bit. He feels like a sweaty gym sock in my arms.”
Ben took Stubs and scratched the dog’s ear. Stubs whined and panted, his tongue flopping much further from his mouth than seemed possible from his short, stocky body.
Something outside of the cell thudded and the group looked at the door, uncertain where the noise had come from. Then they heard another, similar sound, and a man’s scream. The voice was dulled by their enclosure, but it wasn’t a zombie. Someone was alive out there.
“Do you hear that?” asked Billy.
“Yeah,” said Ben. “Someone’s calling your name,” he said to Laura.
“Are you sure?” she asked and started to wipe the moisture away from the glass door.
She cleaned the door just in time for them to see a red axe slam into a zombie’s head. They all screamed in shock as a masked man appeared in front of the cell. He slammed his fists into the door and continued to scream Laura’s name.
“Well, let him in!” Billy pointed at the handle.
Laura grabbed it, but the metal seared her and she retracted her hand. The man outside saw her attempt and grabbed the handle on his side. He pulled it, and the air inside whistled as it was pulled out. The heat outside of the cell was far more intense than Laura had expected and she grabbed the masked man and pulled him in fast.
“Close the door!”
He turned and tried to pull the door shut, but a zombie’s arm had flopped out when it had opened. Laura grabbed the corpse and pulled it back until the firefighter was able to get the door to close.
“Who in the hell are you?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s me,” said the stranger, his voice garbled by the mask. He pulled the plastic shield away to reveal his sweat drenched face.
Laura cried out with joy and wrapped her arms around him. Then she let go suddenly and cringed. “You’re blazing hot. Holy crap, it feels like I’m trying to hold a hot potato. Get that suit off.”
Zack tugged at the buckles in and attempt to get the jacket off. “This damn thing is a pain in the ass to get on and off.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” asked Billy.
“I came back for Laura.”
“Are you insane?” asked Laura, but her soft tone and teary eyes revealed how thankful she was to see him. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”
“You didn’t think I was going to leave you here, did you? Haven’t you learned anything about me in all these years?”
She stomped her foot in mock annoyance. “Hurry up and get that damn jacket off so I can kiss you.”
“I’m trying,” he said and tugged at the stubborn buckles.
“How the hell did you find us?” asked Harrison.
“I just followed the noise of the zombies,” said Zack. “When I got to the basement, I heard them down this way and figured they were after you. Never would’ve guessed you were sitting in a glass prison full of zombie bits.”
“This is how they were storing the Greys,” said Billy.
“Would you get that damn suit off?” asked Laura impatiently.
“Babe, give me a minute,” said Zack. “I’m getting there.”
“Fuck it,” she said and grabbed his cheeks. She pressed herself against him, ignoring the blazing hot suit, and kissed Zack hard. She didn’t even mind his sweat soaked beard. The she moved back and wiped away her tears. “I thought I lost you.”
“It’s going to take more than a burning church and a few hundred zombies to lose me, kid.”
“Aw, this is sweet,” said Harrison. “I mean, it’d be sweet if it weren’t so fucked up, what with the zombies and all. You guys make a nice couple. You should get married.”
Zack shook his head. “I’ve already asked her too many times and all she ever does is turn me down.”
“Try me again sometime,” said Laura, but then she pointed at the floor and laughed as she added, “But not here. Not now. This would be a fucked up place to propose to someone.”
“Tell me when you’re ready, kid, and I’ll get down on one knee.”
Chapter Twenty – From the Ashes
Two years after the apocalypse
Reagan is in the room with the tortured girl, facing the image of his son.
“This is some sort of trick,” said Reagan, but his hands trembled as he fiddled with the tubes that connected the prisoner to the hanging bags of fluid. The plastic strands hung from the clear bags and plugged into circular ports on her side that had valves that, when turned, detached the tubes. He got to work, unplugging the weeping child from the contraption and revealing the grotesque holes in her body that the tubes fed into.
“Reagan, you need to listen to me,” said the man on the computer. “We don’t want to kill you. We need you. Just come quietly and we won’t have any trouble. Go out of that room and turn left. If you don’t, I have ways of forcing you to do what I ask.”
Reagan dared to glance, but the vision of his lost son on that screen was too much for him to take. His mind spun with a mix of anger and dread, sorrow and fury. He looked back down at the tortured patient, which turned his stomach in a different way. “Stop fucking with me.”
“If you’d just listen to me for a minute, I could explain…”
Reagan pulled his pistol and pointed it at the screen. He had every intention of pulling the trigger to silence the false image. These bastards had used a computer to create a representation of Jim, and he knew it couldn’t really be his son. Jim had turned into a zombie on the first day of the apocalypse and killed Reagan’s wife, Arlene. Reagan had been the one to find them.
He remembered opening the door of their apartment and yelling his wife’s name. He could still hear the noise his boots made on the wood floor, and how the apartment had been ransacked, as if burglars had come to tear it apart and left it in shambles. Reagan held on to every miniscule detail of that moment, although he often prayed to forget.
Arlene was on the floor in a pool of blood at the end of the hall, their adopted son perched over her, his hands deep in her abdomen. His eyes were white, and his mouth was splattered with blood. He turned and growled at Reagan, then returned to his meal.
Reagan had cried out his son’s name, at first in shock and then in sorrow. Then he drew his pistol and murdered his boy, his reason for living.
Now he was standing over a helpless, writhing child, again pointing his pistol at his son’s face. He paused and his heart raced.
The man on the screen said, “No!” But Reagan pulled the trigger.
The screen shattered as the bullet passed through and lodged in the concrete wall behind. A fountain of sparks blew out of the back of the computer followed by a gush of black smoke.
“You need to see this, Reagan,” said Billy from the hall. “Hurry up in there.”
Reagan went back to the girl and pulled out the remaining tubes. She whimpered when he tried to pick her up and jerked away from his hands.
“I’m going to get you out of here.” He looked ba
ck at the hall and saw the plume of smoke from the diesel fire clouding above Billy.
“It hurts,” she said.
He saw thick, clear fluid leaking from the holes in her side. Her gown had been made to accommodate the ports, as if the military was doing this procedure so often that they had to have clothing manufactured specifically for it.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said and tried again to lift her.
“My body hurts. My bones hurt. I just want to die so I can be with my mommy again.”
The girl’s barbaric braces were lying on the floor. The soldiers had stripped her of them when they had put her in this chair. Reagan ignored the braces, unsure why she would need them, and tried to get Hero’s shirt over her mouth to protect her from the smoke.
“No, no, darling,” said Reagan. “Don’t say that. You don’t mean that. Let me help you.” He grabbed her, and she tried to push him away. She slapped his chest and clawed at his cheeks, but he lifted her anyway.
“Let’s go, Reagan!” said Billy, his rifle aimed down the hall.
The child cried in pain as Reagan carried her. There was something wrong with her body. It seemed like her joints were moving too liberally, as if he were carrying a doll with loosened hinges. He could hear the sound of her elbow as it popped out of socket, and then snapped back in when her arm moved toward her chest.
“The fire that was in front of the doors got sucked inside of the rooms for a second,” said Billy. “It was like someone had a vacuum in there and was trying to put out the fire by sucking it up.”
“What?” asked Reagan. It was hard to fathom what Billy was saying. He was too focused on the wailing child in his arms.
“Then the doors all opened, but nothing came out.”
Reagan looked at the opened doors and saw that the fires were still burning in front of them. If there were soldiers inside, they were hopefully blinded by the thick smoke.
“Let’s just get out of here,” said Reagan.
They ducked to avoid the black smoke, but it stung Reagan’s eyes as he went. He had his shirt wrapped over his nose and mouth, but the odor was strong enough to bleed through, causing the taste of fuel to fill his mouth. They neared the first door and Billy pointed his rifle inside, shining the attached flashlight through the rising black smoke.
It was nearly impossible to see anything beyond the fire, but Reagan thought he saw a human figure. Then the girl in his arms cried out and something inside of the room answered her. That’s when the people hiding in the rooms were revealed as they moaned and growled.
“Zombies!”
The fire at the doors had pushed the undead to the opposite side of their rooms, but the lure of a screaming child was too much for them to bear. They sprinted for the doorway, and flew through the flames. One of them slammed into Billy and knocked him to his knees. The creature was standing halfway in the flames, and his clothes ignited as he tried to devour Billy.
Reagan tried to set the girl down on her feet, but her legs gave out beneath her and she fell to the floor. He was sorry to have hurt her as she lay on the floor screaming, her knees bent in impossible directions, but he had to save Billy.
The mass of zombies that had been in the room were trying to pour into the hall, but the first of them had blocked the entrance as he clawed at Billy, the flames now surging up over his shoulders. Reagan shot the creature and then kicked it back into the others. He took aim and shot at what he hoped was head height through the shroud of smoke.
“Billy, get the girl,” said Reagan.
The young man crawled on all fours over to the screaming child, then stopped and set his elbow on the concrete floor. He reached around with his other arm and held his back.
“You okay?” asked Reagan.
“Yeah,” said Billy, though he clearly wasn’t.
“Can you get the girl?” Reagan holstered his pistol and loaded a fresh magazine into his M-16.
“Yes,” said Billy as he scooped the crying girl into his arms, stood, and then started limping toward the exit.
Reagan was going to offer to take the girl, but then the zombies started to appear from the other doorways that stood between them and Hero’s truck. The creatures were on fire, their old clothes like kindling to the hungry flames. Reagan took aim and quickly mowed the monsters down, splitting their skulls to pieces with the powerful rifle.
Billy was moving faster, seemingly past his momentary back pain, or at least dealing with it better. For a moment, it seemed like they were in the clear. The sunlight from the stairs pierced the smoke ahead, and Reagan knew they were less than ten yards from freedom. Then he heard the footsteps behind him.
There was a horde chasing them from the depths of the underground hall, burning and screeching as they flailed their limbs and ran to their meal. Reagan turned and started firing, but there were far more than he could hope to kill. He fired until the rifle was empty, and then drew his knife. He wouldn’t go out without a fight.
* * *
August 24th, 20 years after the apocalypse
Ben and the others are in the cell beneath the church.
The group was still trapped inside of the glass box as they waited out the fire that was consuming the church above them. They were drenched in sweat and far past exhausted as they stood wavering, desperate to sit but unwilling to collapse into the blood and bodies beneath them.
Ben was watching Harrison. The old man kept checking his pocket, by either reaching in or touching the outside. At first, Ben wondered if Harrison had been hurt, but now he suspected that the old man had stolen something. Everyone that knew Harrison seemed to agree that he was a thief, and that his relationships with the local settlements had been strained because of his sticky hands. Ben had been introduced to the old man’s dark side when they were in the medical truck.
Harrison had succumbed to a drug habit that he’d been fighting for decades, and had tried to distance himself from Ben by insulting him. That’s when Ben realized what Harrison had done, and why he kept checking his pocket; the old man had stolen drugs from Clyde’s kit when they were working on Annie. He was hiding them in his pocket.
“So have you thought any more about your twin back there?” asked Billy.
The question startled Ben, who had been considering accusing Harrison of stealing in front of the others. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.”
“Sorry he died. Did you find anything useful on him,” asked Laura, who had been in this room investigating the cells when Ben searched the dead pilot.
“He had a scar on his shoulder, in the same spot as one that I got when I was a kid.”
Laura had the same reaction to the news that Billy and Harrison had earlier. The information seemed to be of little interest to her at first, but then the implications sunk in. “So, wait a minute,” she said as she scowled. “How is that possible?”
Ben looked at his hands as he held the panting dog. He had a myriad of scars, but now he wasn’t sure if he owned them or not. “I’ve been trying to figure that out since I saw it.”
“Did you have the scar before you got caught by them?” asked Harrison.
“Yes,” said Ben.
“Then maybe they tried to make that pilot a perfect copy of you,” said Harrison.
“But why?” asked Ben. “I don’t understand what that would accomplish for them.”
“When were you captured?” asked Laura.
Harrison looked at Ben as if in apology. Laura saw the odd exchange and became concerned. “Is there something you’re not telling us?” she asked.
“It’s nothing bad,” said Harrison as if eager to keep the Rollers from turning on Ben. “In fact, it’s actually pretty amazing. You should tell her, Ben.”
“My father knew about the conspiracy to release the disease,” said Ben. “And he trained me in survival techniques so that I could take care of myself after the apocalypse, but he also gave me those files that you saw. Each file was on a person that he said play
ed a part in the conspiracy. He wanted me to seek each of them out and kill them.”
“Right,” said Laura. “I remember you telling me that part. When did they capture you?”
“It was in Georgia, right after the virus was released. My father knew that one of our targets was stationed at a prison there, and he let me get captured and taken in. He said that I was immune to the virus, and that he wanted the scientists to get a chance to study me, but he also wanted me to kill the target. I was told to allow them to run tests on me, and as soon as they were finished I was supposed to get loose, kill my target, and then get out.”
“Christ,” said Zack. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
Zack shook his head and whistled. “That’s nuts. What a thing to expect out of a kid.”
Laura stayed quiet, and Ben wondered if she was putting the pieces together. He continued while watching her reaction, “They were running tests on kids there, and injecting them with different versions of the cure. Most of the kids died, and turned into zombies, but others just screamed in pain as the experiments ate their bodies from the inside out. I saw some horrible stuff. The versions of the cure they were making ate protein structures, including bone cartilage.”
“I thought they already had a cure,” said Billy. “They were giving it to some of the soldiers. It was what they put in that antibiotic: Dori-something-or-other.”
“That was for the original virus,” said Ben. “But I had been given a cure for a new, stronger version. I’m immune to the Greys as well as the Poppers.”
“So is Annie,” said Laura. “And she was in a prison in Georgia at the same time as you.”
Ben nodded at her, and then waited a moment before saying, “I know.”
Harrison pointed at Ben and excitedly blurted, “He was there, Laura. He’s the one that saved Annie.”
“Holy shit,” said Billy.
Laura was expressionless as she said, “You’re her guardian angel.”
