Humanity's Death [Books 1-3]

by Black, D. S.

  3

  Okona was worried about Tasha, but he was also worried about Chris too. The loss of Andre was hard to swallow. Just like that, the man was gone. A man they all had trusted and loved since before the Fever. The trials and tribulations they’d been through since then only tightened the bond.

  But Andre was Okona's friend. Andre was Chris's brother. Okona was an only child, so he'd grown up with just his own mind to keep him company. Chris grew up with his brother. Okona could only begin to imagine what kind of emotional shock this could cause, especially under such extreme circumstances.

  He was sneaking glances at Chris as he drove. Chris's hands kept clenching and closing, clinching and closing. His teeth ground together and spoke silent words of agony. Okona was damn worried about him.

  Outside the weather was frighteningly hot, but inside the brand-new Wrangler, the AC blasted cool comfortable air—a blast from the Old World. He'd tried the radio. Found nothing of course, just static. The world was dead; the airwaves proved that. Not that he ever listened to the radio before. He agreed video killed the radio man; the internet then killed the TV man, who then became the YouTube man; the Fever killed the YouTube man.

  Up ahead, Duras's Wrangler came to a stop. More cars.

  Okona stopped and put the Jeep in park. Him and Chris stepped out, their doors banging shut behind them.

  “Fucking cars!” Duras shouted from about ten yards away.

  Okona walked over and joined in on looking out at the mess. This was going to take at least an hour or more of sweaty work. “I-20 shouldn't be much further.”

  “Nope! We could make it in less than two hours without all the roadblocks,” Duras said.

  “Well Let’s get to it,” Okona said.

  There were about twenty cars stalled on the road, pointing in many different directions, as though the occupants had been drunk while parking. A few had zombies inside, and Okona stabbed them in the head and searched through for any salvage items. He found very little. A few canned goods, a few bullets, and an old .38 snub nose.

  Sweat streamed over his body as he pushed the cars onto the side ramp. The ones they couldn't get into gear were pushed off by using the Wranglers. They went easy enough either way. He was thinking that if the Militia were going to take over the State, then the least they could do is be a bit more consistent with their road cleaning practices. No one said anything, just grunted and pushed the cars. The alliance between Okona and Duras had a shaky tense feel to it. Men that had spent the time before the Fever trying to put each other out of business, and then for the last year trying to kill each other were now forcing themselves to accept the new terms of the relationship. Sometimes their eyes met, and each time they did there was a moment where anything could happen. The only thing keeping the peace was the fear for Tasha and Mary Jane; fear that if this alliance broke, the only option would be death at the hands of the Militia, or worse yet; surrender and obedience to them. This was the alliance of the lesser of two evils.

  4

  Chris was thinking about all the video games he and his brother played. So many memories, so many editions. Max Payne, now that was a man who understood revenge. And not the shitty movie with Mark Walberg. The video games, all day every day. Chris belonged to the school of thought that considered most movies based off video games to be the worst of the worst. The same could be said of most movies based on comic books too. That's why Hollywood had to keep remaking them with new actors; that, and they tend to do well at the box office regardless of how shitty they are. How many Spidermans does America need? How many Supermans? How many Batmans?

  Batman! Now that was a fellow who understood revenge. Bad guys killed his parents, and he doesn't just want revenge on the killers; he wanted to take on the whole damn underworld. Batman and Robin, Chris and Andre. They were the ultimate dynamic duo. Now his partner was dead, and up to Chris to take revenge against the villainous Militia; a man with nothing to lose.

  And now, pushing a rust bucket Oldsmobile off the side of the road, Chris understood revenge was fuel for the ages. Fuel to keep living and keep breathing; his internal combustion engine driving him forward, coursing hot blood through veins that carry pain to his brain; pain meant he was alive; pain meant he could put up with anything.

  The Oldsmobile ran off into a ditch, end going down, back standing up. He clapped dirt and flaky car crust off his palms, then wiped a glob of sweat off his forehead with his arm. He looked around. Okona was in the Wrangler, using it to push a Cadillac Escalade off the road. Duras and Vice were pushing a Ford Explorer off the other side of the road. Rhino and Iceman were doing the same with a Toyota Tacoma. There was no wind today, which made the heat next to unbearable.

  Okona was backing the Wrangler up, then stopped and stared over at Chris, gave a wave and a wink. Chris waved back. No one spoke. No one had to. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts. Memories of whatever they missed most, Chris thought. He could almost taste the melancholy in the air, thick and hot. In the woods to the right, the sound of whippoorwills singing. Then Chris saw the first zombie stumble out of the tree line. Then another, and another. Then they came like ants on the march, dead and hungry, eyes glaring at the lunch standing on the road.

  Let em come, Chris thought; let the dead bastards come.

  5

  Okona wheeled the Wrangler back onto the road, getting ready to push a Chevy Malibu, when he saw them coming out of the woods. A small army of about twenty dead men, women, and children rambled out of the woods. He stepped out of the Wrangler and walked over to where Duras, Ice Man, Rhino and Chris now stood on the right side of the road facing the woods.

  “All this noise on the main road's a dinner bell to the dead fucks,” Duras said.

  Stepping beside him Okona said, “No guns. We'll need the ammo for Columbia.”

  “Agreed,” Duras said and removed his bat’leth from his back.

  Okona had a short sword. Ice Man held an ax. Rhino had a machete in one hand and a long knife in the other. Vice had a short hatchet, and Chris had a hammer in either hand. They stood on the edge of the road like warriors of old. Sweat gleamed on their hardened faces, their eyes staring down the slope leading to the woods. The zombies moved up the hill in their jerky way. Their burning white eyes looked up at the survivors.

  “Let em come to us boys,” Duras said.

  “Spread out a little. Make them break up and come at us one at a time,” Okona added.

  Okona looked at Duras. Duras was smiling at him. Was that respect or disdain? Okona couldn't tell for sure. Either way, they took the advice and spread out about three feet apart from each other. It was a steep slope the zombies had to ramble up. The hacking began in earnest. The zombies broke up, seemingly confused about which human to go after. Some slipped and fell back down the hill. Okona stabbed what once was an elderly man through the eye. The sword, sharpened and deadly, cut the skull like crunchy butter.

  Okona shouted over to Duras, who had just chopped the head off a little girl, “They've been dead a while! It’s so soft!”

  “At least three months I'd say! Maybe longer!” Duras replied.

  It was turning into an enjoyable game. They were all laughing and smiling. A comradeship was building between the men. Blood stained the top of the hill as the men chopped and killed. The midday sun burned in the clear blue sky. Birds sang somewhere off in the trees. The men grunted and laughed, stabbing and kicking the dead bodies back down the grassy knoll. Okona laughed and laughed and laughed.

  6

  With a hammer in either hand, Chris nailed zombie after zombie. He felt an unexpected joy at the work of his hands. Maybe it was the endorphins. Maybe it was just getting to channel the vengeful rage locked up inside. Whatever it was, he wanted it to last forever. Seeing the hammer crunch into their dead soft skulls was like a snort of some exotic drug. He laughed, just like the others were. They were like little boys.

  “Hey, Okona!” Chris said.

  “Yeah?”


  “I'm having flashbacks of playing Left 4 Dead!”

  Duras interrupted, “Hot damn! What a game!”

  “Fucking nerds! Jesus Christ!” Vice shouted.

  Chris nailed another dead head and kicked it down the hill. Then prepped for the next and said, “What's wrong Vice? Never played video games?”

  “HA! Vice was too busy chasing little girls in some fucking third world shit hole!”

  “Active duty Army don't give a lot of free time to play fucking games, dipshits!”

  Ice Man and Rhino just laughed, enjoying the conversation and killing.

  “God this feels good!” Chris said.

  And it did, so much. The hill was now littered with corpses. For the time being, he'd forgotten about Andre. The pain was gone, taken away by the joy of killing zombies. It would no doubt come back later, but at that moment, all that mattered were the men he was with and the killing field below. It was times like this that Chris loved the New World and the gloriously gruesome joys it offered. The Old World, with its bitchy wives and spoiled daughters, didn't hold a candle to this blood and ruin.

  The killing lasted for nearly thirty minutes. When it was over, they fell back to the Wranglers, took out water, and rested against the vehicles.

  “Lunch?” Okona asked.

  “Please,” Chris said; the others murmured their support.

  Cans of Beef Ravioli and spoons were passed around. Chris thought they could be doing much worse than this. Okona passed him the can opener. He opened the can and passed the tool to Duras. He spooned a piece of ravioli into his mouth, it was like beefy heaven.

  Then the memory of his brother invaded his joy. He stopped eating and stared out into the woods. He didn't notice Duras staring at him.

  “We'll get them Chris,” Duras said.

  “Uh? Oh yeah! Yes! Of course, we will.” He started eating again.

  “Andre was a good man,” Okona said.

  No one said anything else. The good mood was deflated. The mission ahead now loomed in their consciousness. That's how things work in the New World. Joys come in bits and pieces, laced here and there amidst a plethora of sadness and madness, rage and pain. No more coffee shops, no more movies, no more video games. Just blood-soaked days and nights. The concepts that once felt so meaningful—friendship, love, honor, loyalty, family—became harder to define and maintain, pushed almost to the level of pure abstract, unattainable ideals.

  Yet they held on, refusing to give up everything about the Old World they loved, clinging to the thin strands of sanity, hoping for a better day; that day may never come, and the good concepts may be all but dead, and some feelings were more easily understood and grasped and held onto in such dead days, such as revenge is best served hot and angry, and feasted upon with like-minded souls. It was with that thought that Chris finished his ravioli and joined the others in clearing the road.

  7

  Back on the road, Okona drove, both hands on the wheel. The Wrangler drove smooth over the blacktop. The road was clear, and they'd soon be turning onto I-20; headed for Columbia.

  “Do you think she's alive?”

  “No idea, Chris; but my gut tells me yes. Why would they take her just to kill her? I'm sure they have other plans.”

  “I'm surprised we haven't seen them yet.”

  “Let's hope our luck holds out. What do you think of our new friends so far?”

  “If you'd told me I'd enjoy the company of Tommy Morrow two weeks ago...”

  “I know what you mean. Right now, we have a common goal. A common enemy. After we get Tasha back; I think we may go our separate ways.”

  “Maybe. Then again, strength in numbers. It’s a lot to think about. Right now, I just want to get Tasha back and make those guys pay. I thought of First Contact earlier.”

  Okona smiled. “Captain Ahab? Yep! Good scene. Wish we had a few phasers.”

  “Or an android.”

  They both laughed, but it was a weak laugh.

  The closer they got to I-20, the thicker the tension became. Okona looked over at Chris and saw a single tear running down his cheek. It had become a familiar sight since losing his brother. Okona didn't think the man even noticed the tears anymore.

  Worry and fear were powerful motivators but could also make a person go insane. How much of the New World could a person handle before breaking? How much loss could be endured? How many dead friends or family was enough to topple the mind into the depths of madness?

  Okona thought, as stoically as possible to himself.

  8

  When Chris was ten years old, him and his brother Andre were playing Mortal Kombat on Super Nintendo. Chris always played as Scorpion, and Andre always played as Johnny Cage. Chris's parents were in the living room listening to music and preparing supper. Chris's dad loved pork chops, but tonight they were having baked chicken because Chris's dad had high blood pressure. His mom worked for Palmetto Bubbles Carpet Cleaning. She spent her days cleaning carpets and dusting. His dad was a public defender making about seven hundred dollars per case. Like all public defenders, the caseloads were heavy and compared to the number of hours put in; the pay never really justified the amount of work, but Chris's dad was a social warrior with a bachelor degree in sociology and a law degree from USC Columbia. He didn't do the job for the money; he did it to help fight against the inequality in the American justice system.

  Sometimes Chris would see his father sitting in his small study; his fingers rubbing hard against his temples; tears running down his face. Chris didn't understand back then why his father was so upset. He didn't learn black people were treated differently till much later as a young teen.

  Living in America was hard enough for black folks but living in the American South makes it much worse. Chris eventually experienced his share of racism, though he would tell you he got off pretty easy. “Nigger boy” and “Jungle Monkey” had been thrown his way on many different occasions. He'd been pulled over by angry looking cops for no apparent reason; they always referred to him as “boy.” They always searched his car, found nothing but seemed angry none the less.

  On the day he was playing Mortal Kombat something happened that changed his father forever. The phone rang and was answered. That's when Chris and Andre paused the game. Chris's father was screaming. He'd never heard his dad that angry, not before and not after. His mother was crying. Chris opened their bedroom door and listened.

  “How can you let this happen! How? He was only a boy! A little boy!”

  His parents wouldn't tell him what was happening. He didn't understand it till the next day. It was a Saturday and his father left his newspaper on the kitchen counter. Chris was looking for Fruit Roll-Ups when he saw the headline: TEN-YEAR-OLD KILLED IN POLICE RAID, NO DRUGS FOUND. It turned out the police in their endless Drug War, raided the wrong house. A young black ten-year-old boy was playing with his water gun when SWAT kicked in the door. The young boy was filled with over fifty rounds in a matter of seconds. On top of the dead kid, the cops then bagged the two-family dogs—a beautiful golden lab and a one-year-old Pit Bull.

  Despite protests (his father along with the NAACP pleaded for justice), no charges were filed; no disciplinary action taken; no apology given. These things happen, so said the county sheriff. The boy shouldn't have been pointing that gun at his men, even if it was a small green toy; in the heat of the moment, how can the public expect them to know otherwise?

  For weeks after, Chris would sit and listen as his father talked on the phone to a lot of different people; he heard his father cry on more than one occasion.

  Chris decided back then he would never go into legal practice. If he was going to help people; he wanted to do it in some other way. At some point while in college, after meeting his bitch of a wife was when he thought selling comics and offering a safe haven for nerds of all skin colors was a good way to lend a helping hand.

  But he never could trust the police from that point on. Not that he was alone; more and more
of the American public began to distrust the cops as the first two decades of the twenty-first century got going. With the advantage of video cameras on cell phones; citizens began filming cops, often catching them committing cold blooded murder. Chris had watched the evolution of the anti-cop movement with fascination.

  CopBlock started with a few angry but dedicated activists, and progressed into a highly trafficked website and over a million Facebook likes. Then, after Travon Martin came Black Lives Matter.

  Then came the lone wolfs. The men and women who saw the courts were corrupt, politicians didn’t care or openly sided with the police; for the lone wolves, the only answer was guerilla warfare.

  Cops started dying. When the Dallas man shot and killed six cops, Chris found that he wanted to feel sorrow for the dead cops and their families but couldn’t. To his dismay, his disdain for the police had entrenched and progressed to the point he felt the shooter was a martyr and the cops had it coming. He never spoke this out loud, but saw many others twitting similar sentiments, and not just from black folks.

  One day he sat thinking over the issue. The comic store was closed and dark; he was alone. He began thinking maybe if enough cops died the police departments might finally decide to stop targeting black communities. Maybe the police would stop acting like an occupation army and start acting like peace officers, or was this the beginning of something much worse? Could this lead to violent raids by the police? Would these shootings cause more innocent black people to lose their lives? Could this lead to some kind of civil war? He remembered the north Charleston cop who shot and killed a black man as he was running away. The cop planted a weapon on him to make the shooting look justified. The sheriff’s office accepted his report verbatim until cell phone footage surfaced that recorded the entire incident. The cop was fired and charged with murder.

  Chris had to wonder, how many times had this happened? How many times had this cop and others like him murdered black (or any other race) and simply planted evidence and gotten away with it? The brazenness of the cop was evidence enough this kind of corruption was a regular thing. Like, hey! no big deal, they taught us at the academy if you shoot a man in the back all you got to do is plant some evidence on him and look here; let us show you how to do it.