Once Finley was one of them. Like his former friends within the Enclave, he ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed Blessed, saved humans. Then one day on a mission, he saw his wife. Lost to him during the confusion of an evacuation, he’d waited in vain to see her name turn up on either an Enclave or ‘known dead’ list. She was one of the Blessed. He was fortunate in being able to contact a cell without being caught and devoured by the Blessed. Once this was done, he betrayed his team, proving his loyalty. His trials, including his being branded with the diamond, were many, but using his skills, he quickly rose to command his own cell. Now he was one of the most wanted humans in post-Zombie America. Anyone who killed him and brought back proof could name his or her price. Anything short of a governorship of an Enclave would be theirs for the asking. Finley looked down at the ruin of his left arm. The napalm dropped by the aircraft had peppered his left side, ruining his formerly good looks, nearly wrecking the limb. It was only recently he could use it at all. The pain of his wounds was a constant reminder that he was still among the living, that he hadn’t yet joined the Blessed. He didn’t care about living. All he wanted was to join his wife as one of the Blessed.
But first, he would need to complete one final task.
Finley stood. His wife. Even now, she was out there, one of the vast numbers of the Blessed. Before the rise, Finley and his wife were devout Catholics. He wondered if the Vatican still existed or had the Pope himself become one of the Blessed? Much of Europe with its heavy population and small, cramped cities had gone over quickly. A few places still held out. There was communication and cooperation with England and its various islands. Some places, military bases in Germany and Russia, still resisted. But the numbers of the Blessed now reached a point where they were no longer growing. The Enclavers, vermin, and the elements took their toll. Without fresh recruits into the ranks of the Blessed – this was difficult because the Blessed needed to feed – the numbers would eventually stagnate and decline. Finley slammed his right hand into his thigh. Something was up in the Enclaves; there had been a lot of coded radio traffic lately. Unfortunately, for the Lazarites, they didn’t have the proper hardware to intercept or decipher the messages. Between Finley’s defection and the fall of Enclave 9, the level of paranoia in the Enclaves had increased. Radio frequencies and codes were changed frequently. Still, Finley knew something happening. The question was what?
Chapter 19 - Flanders Story
Enclave 13
Never’s Office
16 May 2037
In most Enclaves, the usual method of governing was a civilian Governor and a military Lieutenant Governor. These were ably assisted by a council of military and civilian (an archaic term since everyone served) personnel. Enclave 13 was different; they had what could best be described as a military junta, led by Major Nevers. Nevers took over the De Facto ruling of the Enclave when its previous lieutenant governor, Colonel Bradley Frederickson, lost his mind. This took place after the stress of the war drove Frederickson out of his mind. One day the former Colonel came out to the gate nude, armed only with a pistol, drooling and cursing that it was time to open the gate and let the zombies in. He shot and wounded one guard before he was subdued. It was later discovered that he had already murdered Governor, Lomas Heffron, decapitating him with several well-placed shots. Little was left of the head to revive. This was when the newly promoted to Major Nevers, a respected and well liked (by those who followed orders and held the safety of the Enclave paramount) officer took the reigns of leadership. His first act was to put a bullet in Colonel Fredrickson’s brain. Nevers did this personally to spare any of the Colonels admirers the ugly duty. He did this in full view of the entire Enclave; only those on duty and children below the age of thirteen were exceptions, and it was recorded for future reference. Never’s wanted everyone to know that there was no room for such behavior. No molly coddling of the insane or those who pretended to be infirm.
Now Never’s had a difficult decision to make. Should he believe this information from Flanders? Lazarites had tried just about every subterfuge to destroy Enclaves and the people within them. According to Flanders information, Keystone wasn’t that far away, but it would use up valuable resources to get there and back. Still, if there was a ‘cure’ to the Zombie menace, they had to take the chance didn’t they? Without the zombies, the Lazarites would be a fairly easy menace to deal with. Nevers knew how he would deal with them. Extermination. Plain and simple. The zombies were a menace simply because they had numbers and, driven by their endless hunger, never rested. The zombies had no choice in what they did, they were creatures of instinct. The Lazarites were traitors to the human race. They had to die for their actions.
Nevers touched a button on his intercom. “Bring him in.” A moment later a guard opened the door and Flanders, with his ever-present briefcase, battered and stained, entered. “Have a seat, Professor.” The guard stood there in the open door, waiting until Nevers waved him off. “Take a break. I’ll call you when I need you.”
Flanders sat down. Never’s held up the sheaf of papers he spent most of the night reading. While not a scientist, he got the gist of it. This entire, horrible situation was man-made. Deep in Never’s cynical heart, he wasn’t surprised by it. “That stuff is on the level, perhaps a way to really end the zombies? Be safe for someone to die again?”
Flanders leaned forward. “It’s entirely on the level, Captain. I think its time I told you how I discovered this.”
Nevers reached into his desk and removed a bottle of pre-fall peppermint schnapps. Two glasses followed. Nevers nodded at the bottle. “Like a drink while you talk?”
“I would indeed.”
Flanders watched the irritated reporter on the news. He was arguing with a slender, bearded man about the dead returning to life. The bearded man had an insane light in his eyes, as if he were a prophet from biblical times. Since the rising, many went either way; some clasped religion to them as never before, others science. Some thought this was the long promised Armageddon or the resurrection promised in various religious mythologies. Flanders knew better. His good friend, Doctor Stine, a one-time eminent microbiologist had fallen into the same trap Flanders barely escaped from, employment with Benton. Flanders had not heard from Stine in person for many years, but, after Flanders fled the night of the Norton Fire, he found a way to contact his friend, let him know he survived. Stine reciprocated by letting him know what was going on. While Flanders didn’t know where the messages were coming from, the information received through a dead-drop internet account, Flanders knew that the rise of the dead wasn’t a natural thing. Benton continued the experiments that started with CR-I. Now what was happening was either an accidental release, or, too horrible to contemplate by any sane individual, a deliberate release of, if not the original virus, a new version. Not long after the message was received, Flanders never heard from his friend again. He was glad he used a temporary account, so that he couldn’t be traced. But how had it happened and why? Flanders was fairly sure he would never find out. He thought about digging, but knowing how Benton dealt with traitors, his fear kept him from digging too deep.
Rising from his desk, Flanders knew it was time to go. He had no wife, no living relatives to cry over. A man who valued privacy, he had a small home in the mountains; there he would wait out what he was sure would be the fall of civilization. Originally, a dead end cave, unconnected to any caverns, it was off the beaten path that would serve to protect him. His original plan was simply to retire there, now it might serve as a refuge for whatever remained of his life. Since it seemed that only the recently deceased were reanimating, many returning to where their last memories took them, few to none should be there. Flanders had outfitted his survival domicile with the monies from various books. But he took strict precautions with the workers so that they would not know where it was. He paid them handsomely to come and go in a van, windows blacked out, driven by himself. At first, there were protests, but on being told what thei
r bonus would be, they accepted their strange orders. It took him quite a few summer sabbaticals to complete his project, but Flanders felt it was money well spent.
Taking his one prized possession, an old leather briefcase, Flanders rose. Checking that his pistol was loaded and safe, he locked his office door behind him for the last time. As he left the sciences building, he was amazed at the silence on campus. A few leaves and scraps of paper blew across the quad, but there were no students, most of them long fled for home. Flanders walked slowly through the quad toward his jeep. As he neared the car, he saw a shambling figure. Flanders knew from the way it walked that it was one of the undead. Carefully he held his pistol out to his side. The creature had once been a police officer; its blue uniform was tattered, ribs showing where other zombies feasted before it revived. Flanders was more interested in the pistol belt it wore. The gun was there, still secure in its holster. It was a large automatic, possibly the same caliber as his. Flanders walked closer, took a quick look around, and then aimed his pistol. He didn’t want to damage his car, so he sidestepped; the action was mimicked by the zombie, and fired. The top of the zombie’s head came off in a splatter of brain and bone. The corpse barely had time to hit the ground when Flanders unbuckled the belt from its waist, opened the driver’s side door, tossed in belt and briefcase, and was gone. From here, until he was safe at home, he would stop for nothing. Darwin’s theory, survival of the fittest, would have to be the rallying cry for those humans who wished to survive.
Flanders escaped the campus and fled toward his sanctuary in the Alleghenies. On the way he saw sights the chilled his heart. Near one hastily (they’d used tipped over semi-trailers) fortified town, three miles of road held mutilated, crucified bodies, most of them now reanimated. Crows and other carrion birds as well as clouds of insects hovered around the bodies, pecking and gnawing at them. Some of the corpses bore signs - TEACHER, LAWYER, and BANKER. In another town, abandoned, Flanders saw horrible signs that the Lazarites had been there. Their diamond sigil was crudely painted everywhere and signs that the zombies were led to feast were plenty. Bones were scattered through the streets, burned churches, synagogues and mosques (symbols of a false god, the Lazarites proclaimed), heads of their enemies, impaled on stakes, the eyes still moving. Flanders began to avoid such areas. After a week of travel, listening to horrific tales and cries for help on his CB; he had to force back tears several times as the society he loved, collapsed under the weight of its own fears, Flanders reached his home.
Getting out of the car, he looked up at the sky. Clouds that threatened either rain or snow were building. Staring up and down the deserted section of road, he removed a knife and cut the stems from the tires. He wouldn’t need this car again and he certainly didn’t want someone thinking it was used recently. Reaching in, he slashed up the seats and then broke all the windows before piercing the gas tank. He had a good 4X4 up in his sanctuary, but he doubted he would use it that often. Slinging his briefcase across his back, he found a stout branch for a walking stick and, careful to walk where he wouldn’t leave tracks, began heading uphill.
His journey stopped when snow began. Flakes, large wet and heavy, accumulated on his path. Not wanting to leave footprints, he spent a restless few hours crouched under the branches of a pine before the snow turned to rain.
Flanders trudged up the path only he would recognize as such. He was glad he’d kept himself in shape, but even so, his legs were cramping. He needed a decent meal. As he turned the final bend, a shambling apparition appeared on the trail before him. Ducking behind a tree, Flanders waited. He didn’t want to use either gun if possible, since the noise would carry a good distance. The zombie was dressed in shorts and a tank top. As it staggered closer, Flanders could see it was a woman. One side of her once pretty face was destroyed, splinters of rock sticking from it. The right arm was gone from the shoulder down, the right leg devoid of a lot of meat. The creature was a shambling mess. One eye gone, maggots were writhing in its flesh. Flanders stared. Then it came to him. She must have been rock climbing and fallen. There was a popular spot a valley or so over. Not reawakening to anything familiar, the creature was just plodding about. Flanders grimaced - there was no way to know how long ago she was killed. He had to kill it quick and get to safety. He was tired, hungry, and thirsty. Lifting his walking stick, he aimed the pointed end and charged. The female zombie growled as he appeared, but its reaction was too late. Flanders jammed the stick through the zombie’s chest and drove it back. As the creature toppled backward, Flanders drove the stick through it into the dirt. Stepping back, he watched as it clawed pathetically at the wood, trying to free itself so it could get at him. Grasping a large, flat rock, Flanders raised brought it down on the creature’s forehead. The first shot stunned it, the remaining eye swiveling about in some parody of pain; a second blow shattered the skull like porcelain, destroying the brain in a splatter of gray and pink.
Breathing hard, Flanders got to his feet, pulled the stick out of the re-dead creature, and threw it into the underbrush. Thinking a moment, he realized he didn’t want to leave the body here. It was too obvious that it was killed rather than destroyed by accident. Taking out his knife, he began slicing around the neck. Then, grasping what was left of the head, he twisted and pulled, breaking the neck bone and ripping the head away from the torso. With a deep sigh of disgust, he threw the head off into the underbrush. There was no time to be pleased with what he had done; he still had to deal with the rest of the body. Wishing he had an axe, he blunted his knife dismembering the body for easier disposal. Finally, the torso was tossed off the path, any evidence of it gone over with a branch, eradicating signs of the small battle.
Done with the grisly task, Flanders hiked the remaining mile to his new home, which was as pristine as he left it after his last visit eight months ago and began to wonder just what he was going to do now.
In the beginning, Flanders lived peacefully in his mine/home. He made small forays out for supplies, early in the day, always to small towns that showed little sign of looting or of zombie presence. One small town, barely twenty houses, looked pristine. As if the inhabitants just got up and left, the town waiting for their return. Taking a look around, Flanders was horrified by what he found; everyone in the town had committed suicide. All of the bodies were in the small church, glasses of long dried liquid by them. At the pulpit, dried out and moving feebly was the pastor, hanging from a crossbeam. Flanders shot this one, hanging from a nylon rope, face purple, eyes bulging, reaching out, and moaning for the flesh it would never dine on.
At night, Flanders would listen to his scanner, the antenna of which was disguised in a tree nearly a half a mile away, the wire buried two feet deep and entering through drilled rock. The construction man who did the work thought he was a harmless nut, but did the job for twice what he would charge saying that no plans of it would ever exist. It was a one-day job and well worth the money. This was one of the few men who’d refused to ride in the darkened van. Claustrophobia, he claimed. Flanders could only hope that he kept his word. So far, there hadn’t even been a stray zombie on the mountain so the man either told the truth or felt the strange job not worth recalling. From time to time, Flanders wondered about that particular worker. Had he survived to reach an Enclave, or was he out there even now, wandering around looking for flesh? Or, even worse, alive, bearing the red diamond of the Lazarites.
One morning, nearly six years after the fall of humanity, Flanders was outside, wishing he felt secure enough to plant a small garden. He’d thought about trying to reach an Enclave, one, 13 wasn’t far off. The problem would be getting there without running into any Lazarites. Lately he discovered signs that their foraging teams were getting closer. So far, they’d stayed out of this area, but the constant attacks by Enclave 13’s forces were driving them toward his home. Heads nailed to telephone poles by their ears, bones left in patterns, their sigil of the hated red diamond. So far, Flanders avoided any confrontation with them,
but he wondered how much longer would his peace last?
A slight noise drew Flanders attention. Spinning he brought up his short shotgun and crouched behind a small outcropping. There it was again, the scrape of something against rock. Heart beating wildly, Flanders peered around. As he did, he heard a sobbing noise, followed by a thud. Flanders came around the rock quickly, startled at what lay before him. A man, dressed in tatters of a uniform, his skin where it showed, scarred and torn, was lying in the dust, two Lazarites standing over him. Both were so absorbed with the collapsed man, they paid no attention to their surroundings. Made sense to Flanders, other than Enclavers (from what he could garner from the radio) they had little to fear.
One of them, a tall, extremely ugly black man, face scarred with the red diamond, sneered down at the man. “Looks like he doesn’t want to be given to the Blessed, does it?”
The second, a white man with a weasel-like face topped by greasy hair, was fingering a club. “No, it surely don’t. He sure led us on a chase, though. Rest of the cell must be miles from here.” The man spoke with a southern accent, but he said what Flanders wanted to hear. They were here alone. Time to show them not all human decency was gone.
Flanders rose and without speaking, fired quickly. The first round tore the top of the weasel-faced man’s head off, splattering his comrade with his brains and bone. As the man toppled, Flanders fired again, the boom of his weapon echoing through the hills. This shot tore the black mans right arm off just above the shoulder. The man spun screaming, amazed that anyone would save cattle. As the blood, rich and red gushed out of his shattered limb; Flanders fired a third time, directly into his face. The Lazarites face was blown into a puddle of mush.
Enclave: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 48
