Tracey screamed, and the three looked at her, but none made a move. Alan gave a cry as hungry mouths closed in on him. Their rancid breath had a meaty stink to it, and it made him gag.
Tracey cried, but her fear held her immobile. She could hear the groups coming up behind them, and could do nothing to help Alan. The three zombies engulfed Alan, until one by one, their heads exploded in a mist of blood and brain globules. The blood splatter painted the side of the van, adding a splash of color to its finish.
More shots rang out, and the sound of an engine - a heavy, powerful engine - made the street shake. Tracey’s legs buckled. She fell to the ground hard, landing on her side. She grabbed her belly and hoped that her death would be swift.
The last thing she remembered before everything went black were voices – several voices; frantic shouts…orders, follow by the sensation of being lifted from the ground.
Chapter 18 – Smarter than the Average Corpse
“It turned out that there was an army group following the large herd. They were trying to lead them into an area they had picked out, to try to kill them all in one fell swoop. They saw the commotion by the house, and followed up,” Tracey told the group, her tale almost told.
“If they hadn’t taken those shots when they did, I wouldn’t have made it. Those things had me good,” Alan confirmed. His eyes took on a distant, hazy look as he recalled the events in his mind.
“Well, thank God they managed to save you. That baby is going to need a Daddy,” Monique spoke, drawing a look from everybody.
“I wish I knew how we are going to handle all of this.” Alan answered, his answer encompassing everything, from life and the baby to the unknown that lay ahead for all of them.
“It sounds like you handled everything just fine,” Paul commented. He had been silent until that moment as he hurriedly finished his notes, and read the questions he had scribbled in the margin, as was his way.
“Thanks, but I didn’t do anything more than the rest of you. Besides, Tracey saved us a few times along the way.” Alan gave her a look. They were both young, and still had the look of a school child with a crush whenever they looked at one another. It was something that could not fail to moisten the soul of anybody lucky enough to witness them together.
“Yes, that is something new to the puzzle,” Paul mused. He spoke to himself, or so they all thought, for he appeared engrossed in his own scribblings. “It certainly lends credence to the theory that it was an agent of some kind rather than a natural occurrence.” He raised his eyes and looked at the group, who sat gathered around him as if he was their minister, and they his flock in search of salvation.
“There is something else going on here, though,” Alan offered. “I haven’t heard all of your stories, but I’ve read a lot of zombie books, and watched a lot of movies, but until two weeks ago I didn’t believe zombies existed, either. They shouldn’t care about a pregnant woman.” Alan stopped talking, hoping that someone could shed some light on the matter.
“The professor I was with told me he believed it to be a biological agent or something like that. He thinks the flu was an attack of some sort. The zombies are a side-effect. It explains a lot: the short half-life of the infection. If you think about it, it makes sense then that people retain parts of their humanity. What if the bite doesn’t actually kill them, but mutates them?” Leon mused aloud.
“I could buy that if those things were bitten once and carried on walking. But we saw them get ripped in half, shot, stabbed, you name it. People did it to ‘em, all but shove a firecracker up their backside and light it up.” Robert took his turn to speak. How could they keep coming if they weren’t dead?” he asked Leon directly.
“I don’t know. Maybe they are dead, but the infection does something…it keeps them alive, somehow. In their brains,” Leon threw it out there, but nobody dared to argue with it, because it was the closest thing they had to an answer, and worst of all, made a modicum of sense.
“So what we are saying is that these things are still alive…on some level.” Paul scribbled again, without looking down at the paper. He knew instinctively where he was and when to turn to a fresh page.
“Then that means we could cure them,” Jessica spoke up with a hopeful tone. “Maybe this could be cured.” She pushed, eager to hear more, but unsure as to what she could contribute.
“Well, if we theorize along that line, I would say maybe. Those too badly injured would die, those that have not sustained enough nutrition would also probably die. Then there is disease. I mean, these people are, let’s be honest here, eating raw flesh.” Leon paused, a final hypothesis floating in his mind. “If they were still alive, and if they could be cured, then I think the cure would kill them.” He sat back and ran his hands over his face, grating his thumb and forefinger against the thick stubble that adorned his face.
“But it would stop it from spreading. We could beat it,” Jessica pushed, “if they are alive.”
“Oh, they are alive, kid. I’m sure of it,” a new and aged voice spoke up, “and I’ll tell you one thing. They are evolving… learning.” The voice spoke again, but nobody saw where it came from.
“I don’t understand,” Tracey spoke, and jumped when the man appeared above the seat in front of her.
He had a flock of unruly white hair and a mass of white stubble that covered the lower half of his face like a moss.
“If you put a rat in a maze and electrocute the walls, after a while, he will learn. So do those creatures. If you watch them long enough, you will see if for yourself, like I did,” he continued. “Brian Crawshank.” He extended his hand to Tracey, who shook it without hesitation.
“How do you know?” Paul asked, finding himself excited by the prospect of another tale. He no longer thought about the book he had planned to write, the tales of the survivors. Writing about the cause of the zombies themselves was far more interesting.
“I know because I saw it with my own eyes. Holed up in my own home the whole time, I saw them change…grow.” He nodded his head as he spoke, as if his words needed an additional emphasis.
Paul felt his heart rate increase, and anybody who looked at him would have surely noticed the way his eyes lit up. He squeezed his pen and tried hard to keep the smile out of his voice. “Do tell.”
Chapter 19 – Rats in a Maze
Brian Crawshank addressed them all as he spoke, and they all listened to him. Their bond had grown, and with it, their desire for answers.
They had slowly started to piece things together. The virus was a biological weapon. They had been attacked by terrorists – or so they assumed. The initial flu virus had been the weapon, but it had mutated somehow, or at least, it reacted differently to what had been planned, because anybody who died from the flu rose up as a zombie, and set everything in motion. One by one they had all told their story, and each time learned something new, either about the zombies, or the world around them. When Brian rose and offered his assurances that the zombies were smarter than people took them for, they all snapped to attention. Their desire for knowledge burned inside them with the same lustfulness that the zombies had for flesh.
“You see, everybody thinks those things are brainless. Nothing more than dead husks hell-bent on consuming every living thing they come into contact with.” Brian spoke with the flair of a man used to addressing a crowd. “Sure, those things are dead. There is no bringing them back, that’s for damned sure. But dumb? Hell no! If you would have seen what I have seen, you would understand that these things aren’t dumb. They’re smart. It may take them a while… like rats in a freaking maze or something, but they get it.” He spoke to the group, and ensured that each one received eye contact from him. It was a small detail, but something that struck all of them. Until then, most of the people had looked at the floor or their own hands while talking. Only Leon and Tracey had looked directly at Paul the whole time.
“Would you care to tell us about it?” Paul asked hopefully.
J
essica fidgeted nervously beside him, crossing her legs one way and then the other in search of a comfortable sitting position.
“Are you alright?” Paul asked her. Jessica looked pale, and the bandages around her wrist had started to stain a little. “You’re wrists are bleeding,” he noted.
“No, they are just leaking a little.” Leon answered for her. “It’s the altitude. “You really should keep your arms elevated a little more Jessica. Try this: put them on the top of the seat in front of you. That should help. If you feel as though you’re going to pass out, give me a sign, okay?” Leon had placed his hands in the same position he advised Jessica to adopt. He only lowered his once she had copied his instruction to the letter.
“I’ll be fine,” she whispered, her voice a little distant…weaker. Paul had almost forgotten in the buzz of things that she had slit her wrists but a few hours before.
Once Paul was certain that Jessica wasn’t going to pass out on them, he redirected his attention to Brian, who was staring at Jessica with a strange look in his eyes. There was something behind the gaze, something that troubled Paul, but he wasn’t sure what it was. It was as though there was something trapped within him, some second part of the man that wanted to break free. It had forced its way to the surface, and when Brian noticed Paul staring at him, he closed his eyes and shook his head, hiding his face within his hands. When he pulled them away, the look was gone, forced back below the surface.
“As I was saying,” Paul continued, unable to shift his gaze from Brian’s face. He did his best to adjust the expression he wore as a counter measure. “You say these…things, can learn. I’d very much like to hear about that.” He flipped once more to a fresh page in his note book and began to write in his own form of shorthand.
Brian paused for a second, and for most people, Paul understood that they were searching for the right place to start their tale. With this man however, Paul got the distinct impression that he was not thinking about where to start, but rather about what bits he should tell, and which should be omitted. Paul didn’t like it. Something about the man made Paul feel uneasy, but Brian had gotten through the quarantine just like the rest of them. Plenty hadn’t, so he was probably just over reacting.
Chapter 20 – Brian Crawshank
The creatures that wandered the streets were a strange sight for Brian Crawshank when he woke late one afternoon. After a particularly problematic midnight shift he had marked the start of his week vacation by treating himself to a six-pack of beer and a pizza. He had passed out midway through the sixth beer, just as the sun was starting to rise. He was surprised to see that his mobile had no missed calls. The workforce was operating on a skeleton staff after a bad flu outbreak had stripped them down to below regulation numbers. He had pulled three double shifts in a row that week.
A strange growl rang up from the streets. With a dull ache in his head, Brian opened the curtain and winced at the bright grey light that assaulted his eyes increasing the ache from dull to moderate in a fraction of a second.
The streets were filled with people ambling in all directions. They were covered with blood. Several were limping down the road with broken legs, and in one case, a partially severed leg dragging behind them.
“What the hell?” Brian called out, but his house was empty. His wife was out of town, helping her mother move into a nursing home. It was a choice that had been hard on her, but her mother’s rapidly failing health and her reluctance to move closer to her only daughter made it a choice of practicality.
A more focused look out of the window showed a car wreck further up the road, but it didn’t look like anything major. Certainly not large enough to result in the number of injured out there. An image flashed in Brian’s mind. He saw a plane crash; a broken wreck lying in a burned out field. Debris was scattered everywhere and the survivors and those injured on the ground were walking the streets in the state of shock. It would explain their pale faces he thought to himself.
A pregnant woman came into view, stumbling down the road. Her face was covered with blood, and she clutched at her swollen belly as she walked. As she walked through Brian’s line of vision, he saw the large knife that jutted from between her shoulder blades. He was on the move and charging down the stairs before he knew what was going on.
He lived in a small semi-suburban area on the outskirts of town. He was on the wrong side of the ring road for it to be considered country, but the properties were large and the streets quiet enough for someone not to guess the actual location on a map. It was a quiet neighborhood. Most of the people had lived there a long time. The woman was foreign to the street, for none of Brian’s immediate neighbors were still of child bearing age… at least not naturally.
“Miss…. Hey, Miss wait, let me help you,” Brian called as he sprinted into the street. The woman turned around, as everybody seemed to do upon hearing his voice.
The moment Brian saw the woman from close range he knew something was wrong. Her skin was not pale or sickly, but deathly white. Her features were not contorted in pain as he had first thought, but into something else. She reached out for him, growling.
A voice called out to him, but he heard it too late. “Get away from them…”
The woman was upon him; her teeth snapping closed a split second after Brian instinctively pushed her away. The stench that she gave off was another pungent indicator as to her condition. It was the stench of illness…an odor of death.
“Get away…” the same distant voice called.
Brian turned and saw a young man, probably in his mid-twenties, running down the street toward him. He was covered in blood, but there was something fluid about his movements which, in the presence of the disjointed, lumbering bodies that surrounded them, seemed somewhat surreal.
Brian opened his mouth to call out, but the man was grabbed by another figure, that appeared from behind a white work van. The younger man fell to the ground. When the new arrival hauled him back onto his feet, Brian's blood ran cold as he saw the blood erupt from the young man’s throat. The body dropped to the road in a powerful rainbow of arterial spray. His conqueror stood above the body, chewing on the chunk of meat it had ripped away. On the pavement, the body jerked and twisted as life flooded from the wound. It fell still just before a group of three others arrived, drawn by the scent of the blood. They all fell to their knees, and in a scene that strongly reminded Brian of an Animal Planet documentary of lions lunching on a felled zebra, they began to tear away chunks of clothing and flesh. The man’s torso ripped open and a burst of steam erupted as the warm organs spilled into the cool wintery air and were shoveled into the hungry mouths of the undead.
Brian felt his world begin to spin. He had forgotten about the woman he had pushed away. She wrapped her arms around him, breaking the trance he had fallen into. The only thing that saved his neck from meeting a similar fate as the younger man was the protruding belly of the woman, which kept her from getting a good grip on Brian and meant her salivating mouth could not get close enough to clamp down on anything.
Brian spun around, and pushed out, once again acting on instinct. The woman gave a howl and fell to the floor. It was then that Brian saw she was still wearing what appeared to be either a night dress or a hospital gown.
In any case, as she fell, the loosely fitting clothing rode up and exposed her crotch to the world, and what Brian saw would haunt his dreams until the day he died. The woman had fallen with her legs spread, and between the nest of scabby hair, a tiny misshapen head peered through the blood-encrusted lips. Its mouth was a toothless snarl, while its body was forever encapsulated within its mother’s cunt.
Brian stumbled backward, his world alternating from light to dark, as if the sun had become a celestial strobe light. Growls echoed around him as every zombie in the street bore down on him. Brian spun around. Only the zombies seemed to have any color of definition. The rest of the world was matte black. A woman drew close to him. Her shoulder was dislocated and her neck twisted s
harply to the left. She had five deep gouges running down the side of her face and neck. The slits opened and closed like gills as she limped toward her prey…toward him. Brian understood that she meant to eat him. He turned to flee, but the gap was closing fast. He sprinted between the zombies, who grabbed at him, and ripped his clothes. Brian pushed his way through their ranks, and upon breaking through found himself on the wrong side of the group to his house. There was no time for him to regroup however, for they were closing in on him. Their lumbering gait had lulled Brian into a false belief that they were slow. In reality their walking speed, when blood was in the air, reached a speed that bordered on swift.
The pounding in his head thumped in near perfect synchronicity with the slapping of his feet against the damp tarmac as Brian sprinted down Costello Drive. He ran with no purpose, no direction. His mind was a sea of black; his conscious brain working hard to hide the events he had witnessed from his mind.
He had to keep going, to stay away from the group that pursued him. Their numbers had swollen. The undead appeared in doorways and from behind cars. From behind each new obstacle he passed, a new snarling face emerged; each hungry for blood and closing the gap between him and his demise.
Brian lived two miles from the city’s main hospital. He knew that his physical condition – even with the heavy head –was more than able to complete the run. So it was there that he aimed himself. The simple logic being used was that something was wrong. People were sick and dying. A hospital seemed like the sensible choice.
By the time Brian reach the junction of Costello Drive and Main Street West – the road that led to, and past the hospital - he had a group of around fifty zombies lumbering after him; including one in what looked to be military attire, with a rifle slung over its shoulders. The weapon bounced against the dead man’s torso like an oversized necklace.
Diaries of the Damned Page 21
