Evolution of the Dead

by R. M. Smith

  Frightened, Reesa screamed. She grabbed her mother’s hip shying away from these men. Something felt itchy on her shoulder. She tried to scratch it away but it kept getting itchier.

  Diane thought these weird looking men must be going to a parade or some kind of Fourth of July event. Their costumes and make-up looked really good! Very professional.

  Another one of the men coming up the road reached for her. She ducked back playfully. “Oh! You almost got me!”

  He heavily vomited at her feet. It splashed up onto her bare shins.

  “Oh my God!”

  Quickly, Diane grabbed Reesa’s hand, pulled the door open going back into the hair salon, and said, “Now we need to get cleaned up again. Thanks a lot, asshole.”

  Diane knelt down in front of Reesa as the door closed behind them. “You ok, honey?”

  Reesa’s skin was changing color, spreading quickly down her arm. She bent over, hit by a strong stomach cramp. She vomited all over the tiled floor.

  The same receptionist who had just checked them out was texting her boyfriend when they came back in. Without looking up she asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Momma!” Reesa screamed holding her bottom. “I gotta go poopy!”

  “Ok honey!” Diane said, concerned. She hugged her. “We’ll find a toilet, ok?”

  Reesa’s bowels blew wide open, flooding out, soiling the back of her pants all the way down to her ankles.

  Reesa’s arms started to bleed. She was crying, screaming for her mother. Diane didn’t know what to do! She felt helpless as stomach cramps started to twist through her own bowels.

  Reesa’s eyes blew out of her sockets. Her dead body fell backward onto the floor. Her head hit the tile hard! Blood was coming out of every pore.

  “Call 911!” Diane cried at the receptionist, bending over due to her own pain.

  The receptionist was on her feet, her hands on her frightened face. Throwing her long black hair back with the whip of her head she dialed 911.

  With a shocked look on her face she asked, “The line’s busy? How can 911 be busy?”

  Reesa’s dead body suddenly rolled onto its right side. Her right arm bent at the elbow, pushed on the floor causing her dead torso to rise. Her head slipped back. There was no muscle control in her neck.

  Her body started to fall forward but her left arm reached out and caught her weight. Both of her hands pushed the rest of her body upward. One knee bent forward putting her foot flat on the floor.

  Her ruined dead body shakily stood on two legs.

  Her brain had no function. There was no sight. There was no sense of smell. All of Reesa’s body functions had ended. The blood and liquids had been crushed out of her body by a massive infestation.

  Under the layers of bloody torn skin, countless orange microscopic worms crawled through her veins, burrowing, moving here and there; causing her veins to pop up. Each worm had its own task in the ongoing evolution of the infestation.

  The worms flooded through Reesa’s empty veins, filling them. They were working toward a purpose to cause one of her arms to reach outward.

  More worms surged into her legs, making her body step forward, teetering a bit, trying to walk, trying to become mobile so that she could touch and absorb into the body of this other taller undead host screaming into the phone, hiding behind the desk.

  Diane’s own pain was excruciating, maddening, as it tore through her, flushing all liquids out of her body.

  In death, Diane’s body dehydrated itself naturally as it fought to kill off this unknown infestation which had now settled deep into her drying bowels, reproducing itself over and over, billions of times in a matter of seconds until it became an entity of its own set on one goal.

  Mobility.

  Diane’s dead body started to push itself to a standing position, too.

  In the midst of a large panicked crowd running away from Lake Eola, five strangers broke away from the group. They ran up a ramp of a parking garage.

  In his frenzy of trying to escape, 30 year old Scott Olson, an architect, thought heading to higher ground might be a way to get away from the madness that had unfolded around him as he stepped out of an office building during a break for lunch.

  He had been on the run for twenty minutes, dodging people as they choked, as they spewed vomit and discolored blood out of their changing bodies.

  “Hurry, they’re getting closer,” Scott nervously yelled to the people running with him. “We gotta move! We gotta get higher!”

  With screams of people echoing up from below, they were suddenly blocked by a broken water line. Water was spraying across the concrete floor at the top of the ramp. The water was pooling, growing larger, much like the expanding infestation below.

  A short Latino woman in the group, Jackie Mendoza, wearing sandals and a long flowing summer dress hollered, “Is it safe to cross?”

  “I don’t know!” Scott yelled.

  The water pooling was too wide to jump over. It was now starting to rush down the ramp they just came up.

  An older man with a short white goatee shouted over the rushing water, “You think we can get across by jumping across the top of the cars? They might be close enough to climb over.” His eyes were wild with fear.

  “I’m gonna take my chances,” Jackie hollered as she started tiptoeing through the rushing water. When her foot touched the water, her skin started to yellow at the heel.

  “No!” she screamed. “No God please!”

  Three other people in the group turned and quickly ran back down the way they came.

  Scott hopped onto the hood of a car closer to the ramp. Two other people followed him; a woman wearing a green top with tan shorts and the older man with the white goatee.

  Scott was able to step down onto the floor between the car he was on and get up onto the car in the next stall before water came gushing under.

  Jackie was now lying face down in the water. Blood and feces sprayed up out through her dress and splashed back down into the rushing water.

  The contaminated water quickly spread across the flat concrete. It was covering the whole down ramp now. Scott looked around for the next up ramp. It was on the other end of the parking garage. There weren’t enough cars to climb across to get to the other ramp.

  If they didn’t do something quick, they would be trapped here with nowhere to go.

  “We’re gonna get stuck here,” Kim Schlaegel, the woman with the green top shouted over the crashing water. “What’re we gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna go back before it’s too late,” the man with the white goatee said as he jumped down off the car. He sidestepped along the edge of the water. He lost his balance and fell sideways onto his elbow, breaking it. He grabbed his elbow in pain. Water washed over him. Scott and Kim watched helplessly as his skin started yellowing in seconds. His muffled screams were quickly overcome by choking.

  Jackie was up walking through the water. She was a mobile infection that needed to be avoided at all costs.

  Kim shouted, “We need to get out of here!”

  With options of escape running low, Scott looked at the ceiling. He expected to see mucus hanging from the supports or yellow hands reaching down through a hole. Instead he saw black cable wiring running the length of the ceiling over to the other side of the garage. If he and the lady in the green top could hang on them and swing across they might be able to get to the other side if the cables were strong enough to hold their weight.

  He looked at her. “You a good climber?”

  She looked at him with her head cocked. She had long sandy hair with straight cut bangs, a deep tan, light blue eyes, and white straight teeth. She didn’t have any make-up on.

  Kim asked, “Why?”

  He pointed up at the cable lines. “We’re gonna climb on those to get to the other side.”

  She shouted, “Go! I’ll follow.”

  Stepping up onto the roof of the car, Scott reached and grabbed one of the cables. It was coated in
a fine wet mist. He jerked his hands back quickly.

  Kim asked, “What’s wrong? Are they hot?”

  “No there’s moisture on them.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Jesus man, grow some balls would ya?”

  She hopped up onto the roof next to him elbowing him out of the way. Absent-mindedly, she thought he looked like the guy from the Trivago commercials; except maybe a little brawnier and definitely taller.

  Jumping up, she grabbed a cable line in each hand and slowly shimmied along closely followed by Scott.

  The cabling was strong. It held their weight.

  Jackie was moving around below them. Her skin had dried. It was cracking and peeling off. Underneath, her veins had popped. They were a deep orange color teeming with trillions of worms. Her body stood in the raging water, one eye socket empty, the other eyeball bloodshot, following the hosts as they slung along the cable overhead.

  As Kim got closer to Jackie, she kicked out with her foot and connected with her arm. This caused Jackie to stumble in the water. Her dead body was forced back a few feet. It gave Kim enough space to shimmy along the cable faster and pass Jackie as she regained her footing. Jackie reached out for Kim as she passed, but she was already out of range. Turning around, Jackie stood in Scott’s way. He dangled on the cable a few feet away from her, swaying, waiting for the infected woman to move out of the way.

  Kim made it to the other side. She started urging Scott to hurry. More of the dead were coming up the ramp. Some were already crossing the flooded pavement.

  Scott imagined them right behind him. He started to panic.

  The cable was slippery and cold. He felt his hands going numb. He wasn’t used to this kind of thing. He was an architect, not a rope climber. He felt sweat trickling down the back of his neck.

  Jackie was close enough to touch him. As a last ditch effort, Scott kicked out with his foot, knocking her out of the way. With every ounce of strength, he swung quickly forward, his heart thumping in his chest, clawing along the cable until he finally made it to the other side. Kim stood on the up ramp, her chest going in and out as she caught her breath. Scott jumped down next to her.

  With a slight lean to the right, Jackie walked over to them. She reached for Scott and Kim from the floor below.

  She was too far away to touch them. Her arm remained motionless. Her fingers didn’t move. She looked like she had reached to grab something off a shelf and then froze in place.

  Now that he was safely on the up ramp and should be able to get to his car, Scott set his sights on Executive Airport. His dad and little sister would be there now.

  Their plan was to meet there if ever an emergency or disaster took place in Orlando. Scott would fly them to safety.

  Scott said to Kim, “C’mon, let’s go! We gotta go!”

  They ran side by side up to the higher floors of the parking garage.

  At the patient receiving center of Orlando, Florida Hospital’s emergency room, Nurse Melissa Styles looked up from her computer just in time to see a very sick man come stumbling up to the nurse’s station.

  “Oh God,” he said hoarsely, snot running freely out of his nose, blood pouring out of his eyes. His skin was yellow. “Help me.”

  Melissa, a heavy woman, hurried around the nurse’s station only to find him lying on his face on the floor by the time she got there. Kneeling down next to him she asked, “Sir, can you hear me?”

  He didn’t answer.

  He was wearing jogging shorts. The back of his pants were covered in clumps of wet diarrhea. His skin was a strange cracked peeling yellow color. On his back, blood had soaked through his shirt. Suddenly, the back of his shorts and underwear were lifted as more diarrhea burst out of him.

  He vomited sideways across the tiled floor of the waiting room. The vomit, mixed with blood and stringy mucus sloshed into a nearby wall.

  Instinctively, Melissa reached for his pulse. When her hand touched him, she felt a tingle on her fingertips. The color of her skin changed to the same yellow color as the dead mans on the floor. She felt nauseous and flushed. Her nose started running freely. She felt her body temperature rise quickly. Barely able to stand, feeling faint and heavily overwhelmed, a major stomach cramp bent her over. The pain was intense. Her vision doubled. She began to urinate and defecate at the same time. Her body temperature climbed to 114 degrees.

  “I’ve got Ebola,” she whispered to herself as she slowly prodded along the front of the nurse’s station, hoping to make it to the other side to call for help. Another massive stomach cramp caused her to projectile vomit across the room. A long drip of heavy mucus ran out of her nose and dangled there. Her tongue felt so dry…so dry. “Help me,” she managed to say as another heavy hitting stomach cramp walloped her from inside. She felt like she was being crushed from the inside out. Her blood pressure skyrocketed. She fell against her desk, dying as she slid down the side.

  Rick Connelly, a patient with a severely sprained ankle who had been resting out in the waiting room witnessed the whole event. Getting up, he limped over to the nurse’s station.

  Leaning against the nurse’s station, Rick put his hand right in the middle of a large drip of snot. Disgusted, he wiped it off on his shirt. He felt a tingle on his palm. Seconds later he was limping down the hall gagging, trying to breathe.

  An elderly man who was having troubles with his hearing aid, Joe Nathan, came out of a restroom. Rick bumped into him, leaned on him for support, and begged him for help. Joe couldn’t hear what this kid was saying. He leaned down to hear the kid better. Rick vomited right into Joe’s ear.

  Rick looked at Joe apologetically. He ran away, limping down the hall, screaming for help.

  Joe pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket to wipe his face, turning his head as he did so.

  He didn’t see the overweight nurse attempting to stand up next to another man wearing jogging shorts who was already standing.

  “Damn kids,” Joe whispered. “Son of a bitch is going to get me sick.”

  Passing a young couple, he left through the emergency room entrance. He brushed the young man’s elbow as he passed. The young man didn’t think anything of it.

  Walking out to his car, Joe started to feel a bit nauseated. He got into his car.

  His wife asked him, “George, are you ok?”

  “What?”

  She asked louder, “Are you ok?”

  He shook his head no.

  “How is Brittany? Did you get up to see her?”

  “What?”

  She nearly screamed, “How is Brittany?”

  She’s doing much better,” he said, grabbing his belly as a cramp pinched through him. “They’re going to release her tomorrow.”

  “Oh good.” His wife put her hand on his arm. “You sure you’re feeling ok?”

  “No, not really. I’ll be fine. Some kid threw up on me. I want to go home and take a shower.”

  They barely made it out of the parking lot before Joe had to stop the car. He leaned out to vomit.

  Florida Hospital went from being a clean well-cared 450 bed hospital to a completely dead overrun hospital in less than forty-five minutes.

  “Oh come on!” Nick Carson said under his breath as he brought his car slowly to a stop. “It’s too damn early for a fucking traffic jam.”

  He was on Florida Highway 4 on his way north downtown after having an early lunch with his girlfriend, Kaylee.

  All four lanes of traffic heading downtown were at a standstill. On his car radio he dialed over to a metro traffic station. An emergency broadcast signal was playing.

  “What the fuck’s going on?”

  Jerking his head to flip some of his long curly blonde hair out of his eyes, he thumbed on his cell phone. A news banner scrolled across the screen:

  “DANGER! INFECTION RUNNING RAMPANT IN DOWNTOWN ORLANDO, FLORIDA.”

  “The hell?”

  He honked at a black guy in a car next to him. He rolled his window down.

&nb
sp; Nick yelled, “What’s going on up there? My phone says something about an infection.”

  “Don’t know,” the black guy said. “Let me see if I can find anything on my radio.”

  “Already did,” Nick said. “They’re not saying anything, just an emergency signal.”

  The black guy nodded. “Hold on a sec.” He reached under his dash for a CB radio. Turning it on, it was full of all kinds of chatter. People were talking over one another about some kind of infection downtown. “Some kind of infection, yeah,” he said. “Might be a long wait out here.”

  “Shit, alright, thanks,” Nick said as he flipped on his turn signal.

  He drove onto the shoulder while rolling up his window. He hated to drive on the shoulder; not only because it really wasn’t safe, but because his car was new. He only had it for two months; and he really didn’t want to spend the afternoon in traffic.

  In an hour he was expected to be at an important job interview. He had been told that they weren’t going to do any more interviews until after the holiday and he didn’t want to miss this job opportunity.

  He took the first exit down into the suburbs. Other people followed his lead.

  At a stop light at the bottom of the off ramp, he fiddled with the radio a little more to see if he could find some news about what was going on.

  Something bumped his car.

  “The fuck?” He looked up into the rearview mirror expecting to see that a car had rear-ended him, but the vehicle behind him wasn’t even close.

  Out of his peripheral vision, a wall of screaming people came running toward him from downtown.

  “The hell’s going on?”

  People ran by screaming. Someone hopped onto the hood of his car and leaped over the roof. Other people bumped into his car. Everyone had terrified looks in their eyes. They all were looking over their shoulders as they ran. It reminded him of scenes he had seen from 9/11 as the twin towers were imploded. Nick followed their gazes further down the street expecting to see a major fire, but he couldn’t see anything other than hundreds of people sprinting for their lives. His passenger door was opened. A black girl in cutoff jeans and a loose white blouse with a gray undershirt underneath jumped in.