Rise of the Dead

by Emir Skalonja

  He was just one man, of course, but he would take a few dozen of them before they would even get to him. He was pretty confident of that. Besides, there were many more folks like him out there, those who had seen the truth, those who could see through this shitty government and their evil agenda.

  He fixed the curtain on the window, sat down in his recliner facing his wife, and then looked around. The house was unkempt. Not what it used to be when Phyllis was running around like crazy, cleaning up and cooking. Everything was tidy and clean then, smelling of whatever she was cooking that day.

  There was no more of that.

  The walls were now yellowing from the dirt and dust that had accumulated over the past several months. He had tried to keep up on the housework but all had taken a back seat when Phyllis was struck with her illness.

  There was no more of that sweet smell of bacon and potatoes, no chicken or steaks; the house now reeked of medicine and death. It no longer had that homely feeling, it was no longer a sanctuary to retreat to. It was a hospital away from a hospital that had turned into a hospice and that would eventually, in turn, become a graveyard.

  ‘Hell, we are already living in a graveyard,’ Bob thought as his eyes fixed on Phyllis. God only knew how many corpses were buried beneath them, and that’s just those that weren’t carried away to be buried somewhere else.

  For a moment, he wondered what he would do with the property after she was gone. Maybe sell it (if that was even possible) and move away somewhere far away from this shit hole. The thought came to him on a whim, but then he pushed it away immediately.

  He had fought the county for too long and too hard to just forget about it all.

  This was the place of memories. His and his wife’s.

  And he’d fight again if he had to.

  ***

  The metal gate with the NO TRESPASSING sign opened to let the truck in and closed behind it. The vehicle rolled slowly to the back of the building and pulled up to the dock. Dwight, the man that drove the truck put it into park and continued to smoke his cigarette.

  “Alright,” he said as the smoke started to fill the cabin, “I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to. You guys know the drill, so … don’t keep me waiting.”

  “I don’t wanna be here anymore than you,” one of the men sitting next to him said. “But, money is money, makes no difference to me and this is just another job.”

  “Well then get your ass outta the truck then, Patrick and let’s get this show on the road. I feel like my sperm count is getting lower just by breathing this fucking air here.”

  “Man, who got your panties in a ruffle today?” Patrick said as he checked his weapon. He carried an AK-47 with an extra clip taped to it. “Been bitchin’ since we left.”

  “Why don’t you both just shut up and shake your dicks. I’m getting a headache from you too. And this asshole has to smoke,” the third man, sitting closest to the passenger door, said as he got out of the truck. His name was Steve, the oldest of the three. “Besides, someone’s gotta do the job of driving this junker and apparently that’s the job for our little Dwight.”

  Patrick laughed, skidded his ass over the seat and jumped out of the truck.

  Dwight smirked, mocking the two armed men, took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke into the windshield. He heard the overhead gate to the dock open and saw a soldier walk up to the truck.

  “You have to put that out,” the soldier said.

  “I’m almost done with it,” Dwight said as he blew another thick cloud of smoke.

  “Now,” the soldier said sternly.

  “Alright man, relax,” Dwight said annoyed at the man spewing orders at him. Dwight took the cigarette from his lips and tapped the lit end quickly on the back of his hand until it was out. “It’s out, see?” He then placed it into the breast pocket of his green camo jacket. “Happy?”

  The man stood there for another moment, then walked away.

  “These guys are so uptight,” Dwight said to himself and looked at his reflection when he adjusted the side view mirror. He licked the tip of his finger and slid it over his bushy eyebrow.

  To most people it was rather uncanny how closely he resembled Bruce Campbell. Too often was his appearance used as an ice breaker in social situations and many of his friends (well, he called them associates since he didn’t really believe in traditional friendships unless there was something to be gained) he was known as Ash, after the main character from The Evil Dead films. He didn’t mind that; Bruce Campbell was a good-looking guy and if people wanted to compare him to one of the most prolific horror icons, well then, so be it.

  He rubbed his face, feeling the scruff he had been meaning to shave off, and readjusted the mirror.

  Of all the jobs he’d taken up as a mercenary he hated this one the most. Coming here and transporting these ‘failed experiments’ as they called them, was unsettling. In his line of work, there weren’t too many things that could surprise him or get to him, but just knowing the history of the place – and what he was doing – was enough to throw a wrench into his cog wheels. That’s why he had been off and rather irritated all day. And it wasn’t just today; every time he had to come here, and that was at least once a month, he would wake up in a shit of a mood.

  ‘It came with the territory,’ he guessed and looked out the window. There were two soldiers coming out of the building opposite the truck; they stared at him for a moment, then went back inside.

  The government wouldn’t waste their men on jobs like this. Oh, no, sir, they had to baby sit all the egg-heads down below as they poked and prodded the corpses. He wondered how big of a shit storm would hit the media if the government contracts were caught mixed up in this shady business. If American soldiers, paid for by the common taxpayers, were caught handling the bodies of the deceased and dumping them at an undisclosed sight, the public would surely have a shit fit; and rightfully so.

  For all anyone knew, this was just a garbage-processing dump and nothing more. Sure, an unmarked truck would come by every now and then, but who was there really to see?

  He put his head back and let out a long sigh.

  It would be about twenty to twenty-five minutes before Patrick and Steve would come back to tell him the cargo had been loaded and ready to be taken away. Until then, all he could do was to sit and wait.

  He was dying to finish off his cigarette, but didn’t want to risk that asshole soldier coming back to scold him like a little child. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be talked down to; the problem was that were he to come around again Dwight wouldn’t be able to keep himself from getting into a fight. He would leap out the car door and start beating his face with the butt of his M4 rifle. And to go ahead and do that, not only would this job be long gone and passed onto someone else, but he would be shot on the spot. He would just have to sit there and dream of finishing that cigarette sometime in the very near future.

  ‘The radio wouldn’t hurt, though,’ he thought, and turned it on just loud enough so he could hear it inside the cabin. Whatever garbage came on the radio he wasn’t all too familiar with it. It was just the noise that he needed to pass the time. He looked at the watch on his wrist and it was as if time stood still on this warm September day.

  The sun was going in and out of the clouds when the watch told him that he had about another fifteen or so minutes to wait.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Patrick walked through a long narrow hallway right in front of Steve; they were both led down this dimly lit corridor by two soldiers who hadn’t said a single word to each other since they let them in.

  They usually never spoke, actually, now that he thought of it. They didn’t care for mercenaries, he knew that and was entirely fine with it. He didn’t care. A mercenary’s job wasn’t about making friends. He hated Dwight with a passion, and he was almost sure Dwight hated him back, but that was alright as long as they came to the job together and did it the way it was supposed to be done. What Dw
ight, or anyone else on the team, did in their spare time was none of his business. The only person he somewhat didn’t have a problem making a conversation with was Steve.

  Steve had been around a long time and had seen some demented things in his life. The man looked like he lived through Hell too, with his scars and wrinkles on his face. Naturally, Steve shaved his head to make sure no one knew about his receding hairline, even though everyone knew from his old pictures of his ex-wife.

  ‘It is what it is,’ Patrick thought as the two men brought them to the end of this never-ending underground passage and slid their card through the reader on the door in front of them. It beeped, then the two guards went inside and ushered them in.

  The room before them was enormous, filled with body bags from one end to the other. It was considerably cooler in here as well, Patrick thought as he saw his breath in front of his face.

  “Damn,” he said, “those are all the unlucky bastards headed for an unmarked burial. Fuck me, man.”

  “And no one will know what happened to them. The plots marking their resting place are empty. But, that’s not our problem, Pat,” Steve said and nudged him onward.

  There were men there, dressed in all-white lab garments that were rolling huge piles of these body bags into a winding tunnel. They rolled them on metal carts, where about a dozen or so of the bodies fit onto a messy heap. Patrick quickly did the math and figured that about ten or so of these carts could fit into the truck that would be taken to their designated site, dumped, and buried. End of story, there was no need to get all emotional.

  One of these men dressed in white smocks came out and his drab was considerably bloodier; there were splotches of red all over him, even on the goggles he wore. Then a woman came out who was equally as bloody. She approached the first bloody man and said something to him. It was on the other end of this gigantic room and Patrick couldn’t hear what they were talking about over the loud hum of the cooling system.

  “What do you think they’re talking of?” Patrick asked

  “Who cares?” Steve responded and shrugged. “Makes no difference to us.”

  “It doesn’t intrigue you one bit just what goes on down here? I mean c’mon, this looks like a setting from a mad scientist horror type movie. You know, with someone back there pulling off all sorts of experiments, like Victor fuckin’ Frankenstein.”

  “I have no interest whatsoever,” Steve said as they walked into the tunnel alongside with the men and women in white who pushed the carts of dead bodies. “There is a reason why we are here and that reason is that we don’t ask questions. We come here, do the job and move on with our lives.”

  Patrick saw one of the soldiers give him a dirty look, as if he wanted him to stop the chatter.

  “Now stop your yapping before you get us both detained … permanently,” Steve whispered and nudged him again with his shotgun.

  They walked further up without saying another word. There was only the sound of the squeaky wheels on the carts. The hum of the air conditioning was fading into the distance as the convoy of mercenaries, soldiers, scientists and dead bodies moved up the corridor toward the dock where the truck was parked. It all looked like some sort of an escape plan, as if they were all trying to transfer the wounded under enemy lines. For a moment, Patrick thought that he was a part of something meaningful and not just another job.

  The hallway was dark and narrow, with wall fixtures only partially lighting the way every dozen or so feet. The end of it widened into a large loading dock with half a dozen gates; the men and women in lab coats lined up in a single line, ready to load the dead cargo onto the truck. One of the soldiers unlocked the gate and rolled the door overhead, exposing the trunk.

  Steve walked over to door and opened it.

  The first cart rolled to the dock plate and the two who wheeled it there started to toss the bodies into the darkness of the trailer. Steve, his shotgun slouched over his shoulder, helped them toss the dead inside. When they were done, the scientists wheeled the cart back where they came from and another one was brought up to be unloaded.

  The soldiers stood there and observed this process; it was always like this. They just watched it all happen without lifting a finger, Patrick thought as he glanced over the cargo. The soldiers were there to make sure no one got out of hand and that everything went smoothly. Everything else, including physical labor was on others.

  Then, something happened that drew Patrick’s attention and caused him to grip his weapon tight in his hands, and even raise it up a little.

  One of the bags had moved; he was certain of it.

  He stared at that exact one with utmost intensity, not even blinking.

  “Did you see that?” he asked nervously. Then he approached one of the men handling the cart and pointed at the body. “Tell me you saw that.”

  “Saw what?” the man said, his goggles fogging up from the change in temperature.

  “That one right there.” Patrick pointed again. “That one moved.”

  As he looked at it now, it jerked again. It was a quick, spasm this time.

  ‘No way,’ he thought. Rigor Mortis was impossible after such a long time, especially when a body had been tested on for equally as long in so many ways.

  “Take it easy there,” one of the soldiers said and took a couple of steps toward Patrick.

  “What’s going on?” Steve asked as he helped toss one of the dead. “Everything alright?”

  “No, one of them moved!” Patrick exclaimed and pointed at his discovery with his AK-47. He was sure this time, and now it was moving continuously. “Are you fucking seeing this?” he addressed the soldiers that now had their weapons pointed at the piles of the dead.

  The loaders now started to step away from their loads one by one as they looked at each other in confusion.

  Patrick readied his weapon as cold sweat washed over him.

  One of the corpses fell from the pile and four more followed suit, then they all started moving about.

  “What the Hell is this?” Steve yelled as he already took the shotgun from his shoulder and pumped it for use. “Aren’t they supposed to be dead?”

  All he received in return was confused stuttering from the egg-heads. Only one of them was sane enough to string two thoughts together. “T-this isn’t supposed to happen. I-I thought th-they were dead. We made sure they were all deceased before the tests!” He turned to his partner and grabbed him by the collar. “Did you use the strain? Did you?”

  “N-no!” the man managed to utter as he kept his eyes on the moving corpses that now started to emerge from their sacks. “It h-had to be th-the chemicals they died from. T-they perhaps somehow kick started the reaction in their brains.”

  “Are you telling me these people are alive now?” Patrick shouted at the two arguing men.

  “They shouldn’t be!” the first one responded in fear.

  One of the corpses crawled completely out and moved toward the closest worker. The woman approached the man crawling toward her in an effort to help him up. The skin on the man’s face was sagging and there appeared to be bloody lesions all over his body.

  “Don’t touch him!” someone yelled from the back.

  The man grabbed the woman and pulled her down to him and as she fell on her back, he then crawled over her and bit into one of her breasts, ripping it off with a single bite. Blood sprayed everywhere as the woman screamed in pain for only a moment until the shock set in and she slowly drifted into unconsciousness

  “Holy shit!” Patrick shouted and squeezed the trigger on his weapon. The bullets ripped through the man’s body, yet he merely continued to gnaw on the flesh of the unfortunate woman.

  “Everyone out of here now!” one of the soldiers yelled and readied his weapon for combat.

  Many corpses were now fully out of their constraints and reaching for the first slab of meat they could get their hands on. They all looked sick, as if their bodies were already in advanced stages of decomposition. Their
eyes were grey and white, their faces deformed, their bodies bleeding from the gashes and sores.

  A complete pandemonium ensued as they bit, tore, and ripped people to shreds. Two of them grabbed a man and brought him down in the blink of an eye, ripping his face off with hungry bites. Another had her hands deep into a man’s stomach and was pulling out his innards. She then shoved them into her mouth and bit, squirting blood into her eyes as she did so. It didn’t faze her.

  The soldiers opened fire, but at this time Patrick didn’t really think they could tell who was alive and who was dead-and-alive. A large pool of blood began to form; limbs flew everywhere; groans and screams filled the air, soon overpowered by echoing gunfire and ricocheting bullets.

  They fired at anyone that moved.

  “Steve!” Patrick called and looked over at his colleague just in time to see him being pulled down by two of the corpses that had come back to life. One bit into his leg and the other began to gnaw on his neck, ripping off a juicy and fat bloody mixture of meat and skin. Steve screamed, though his voice was quickly drowned in blood. He fired off a shot from the shotgun as his hand squeezed the handle of the weapon in pain. The recoil pushed one of the dead from him and he managed to elbow the other.

  But it was too late for him: he turned over onto his stomach just to spew his blood over the dock plate.

  “Fuck!” Patrick cried in exasperation and perhaps even fear. Yes, that’s what that feeling was. Confusion had passed and had slowly turned into terror.

  One of the scientists fell in front of his feet and reached a bloody arm toward him in a cry for help. One of his eyes was ripped out and dangling by his nose.

  “H-hh-help…” the man cried before his head hit the floor.

  “Mother of God,” Patrick exclaimed and slowly began to walk backward, his eyes fixed on the insanity unfolding before him. Two of the dead started shambling in his direction. He squeezed the trigger and watched the bullets shred the walking ghouls. The firepower knocked them down but even when on the ground, they kept moving and reaching for him.