Journals of the Damned (Book 2)

by GJ Zukow

  Parts of the city were burning out of control under a grey, maligned sky that cried tears of soot and ash like dirty snow. Gunshots, screams and all manner of chaos could still be heard from both near and far. The heavy smell of smoke mixed with the cloying miasma of the numberless unburied corpses and filled my nostrils. With the world in its final death throes we set about the grim task of burning the dead.

  For the most part the majority of survivors set about cleaning the cafeteria, monitoring stations and the medical ward first, while I gave a brief examination of the corpses to ascertain they were dead. My day was filled with gathering the information I needed to fill out the thousands of death certificates that the bureaucracy demanded of me. The remains of the mangled cadavers in the cells would have to wait, and we basically left them to rot until we could get to them in the next few days.

  The burn pile was set as far away as possible from the buildings we were going to stay in but even still, the distinctive smell of burning human flesh permeated every floor of every building for a mile around. The bodies could only be stacked so high before it became too difficult to toss the corpses up onto the heap. The dead that were in rigor mortise were relatively easy to handle, those that were limp had the tendency to slide back down the necrotic pyramids of putrid dead, requiring multiple attempts to keep them in their place in the pile. Once the pile got to a certain height and depth, gasoline was poured on the deceased and then lit. The bodies burned slowly at first, the atrocious conflagration gaining strength once it got hot enough to use the corpse’s fat as fuel. As one heap of cadavers burned another mound was being created.

  I had heard of postmortem spasms before but until that day I had never seen evidence of it. There are always stories bantered around in every medical school of the dead moving and even sitting up on the morticians table but it was a rare occurrence. The Omni seemed to cause an unusual amount of muscular movement in its victims. After rigor mortis comes a secondary laxity (flaccidity) and this is the stage where the postmortem spasms occur. The first corpse I witnessed exhibiting this phenomena caused me to rush over and ensure I had not mistakenly declared him dead. The parasite causes whole muscle groups to spasm, and every muscle in the body is affected. The more cadavers they brought, to be stacked like cordwood waiting to be incinerated, the more movement I observed. I had no idea that the movement was the precursor to the reanimation of the dead flesh.

  It was disturbing, to say the least, to watch the bodies twitch and move around, en masse, as they burned. It was like watching a scene from hell.

  I was trying not to watch the writhing mound of blazing cadavers, it was too unsettling. Instead I focused on doing my duty while others managed the piles.

  I heard a blood-curdling scream behind me and I just about jumped out of my skin. I turned around and could not believe what I was seeing. One of the dead, having its clothes, hair and the majority of its skin burned away by the flames, had risen from the nauseating cremation fire to latch onto one of my fellow survivors from behind. The unliving, yet now mobile flesh was still burning and the flames jumped from the walking corpse to the living victim it had found. Small licks of flame quickly lit the terrified man's hair on fire as the animated unliving thing bit deeply into the poor man's neck. Such a thing could not be, I thought I was caught in a dream and would soon awaken. I could do nothing but stare in shock at what was happening. Arterial blood sprayed in huge spurts as the man screamed and struggled to get away from his hideous attacker. The thing kept biting at the jugular vein and digging its cold, dead fingers into its victims flesh. It wasn't until blood splattered onto my face that my lethargy was broken. Both the reanimated corpse and its victim were ablaze then. The unfortunate man collapsed to the ground with the unholy beast atop of him, still biting, chewing and eating him alive. I had no weapon and was at a complete loss of what to do. So I added my yells for help to the inarticulate screams of agony issuing from the poor man’s ragged throat.

  One of the Sheriff's deputies was first on the scene and even he stopped in mid stride once he saw the sight. I had to yell at the deputy to spur him to action. It took multiple shots to stop the thing, the rounds seemed to have no effect at all. The officer fired round after round, until a slug entered the beast’s skull and finally ceased its movements, sending it back into the eternal rest it should have never wakened from.

  There was nothing I could do for the victim. He had bleed out and died before we killed the parasite controlled corpse.

  The deputy and I were joined by others, also attracted by the horrified screams and we all watched, terrified, as more corpses started to rise to their feet.

  Round upon round and clip upon clip was spent into the masses of the dead, ensuring that no other abomination would arise from those unholy piles. Others went inside the jail and ensured that all the cells were shut and locked. Those dead that we didn't get a chance to cremate wouldn't have the opportunity to know freedom. They would stay incarcerated in death, as they had in life, until we could figure out a way to deal with them.

  All over the city, and the world for that matter, the dead started to rise from their all too brief slumber. Within two days, the vast majority of those who had succumbed to the Scarlet had been reanimated in a detestable mockery of life.

  There are four cell blocks on the jail grounds and work began on clearing the walking dead from the first of the buildings. While groups cleared and cleaned the block, turning the former cells into makeshift apartments for the survivors, other groups went out and tried to rescue more of the town’s survivors. The medical ward resides in a different cell block and while the immediate area had been cleared, the building still held hundreds of the parasite controlled victims. I spent most of my time providing medical care to the refugees, many of whom had atrocious, life threatening wounds from the cannibalistic attacks of the undead.

  As time went by, the numbers of the abominations in the streets grew, making it tougher every day for the rescue and supply squads to operate. We were safe though, for awhile at least.

  Two meals a day were served out of the kitchen and we turned the general services building into a makeshift cafeteria. It was there that I started hearing of some of the odd behaviors exhibited by the dead automatons.

  The undead seemed to gather together in groups, forming packs both large and small, depending on how many of them there are in the area. I also noticed this behavior in the jail cells. The dead, once raised, don't stay where they were when they awoke from what was supposed to be their eternal rest. Instead they all moved together, within arm's reach of one another and then they stand like sentinels, barely moving. They stand like that, swaying slightly, until they sense prey, then they go into a frenzy. Once they see living human flesh they beat, claw and bite at their confines trying desperately to tear down any obstacle between them and their quarry. In their single mindedness they continue this assault on their confines for hours, even days, before they cease. Even when they only catch a bare glimpse of a living person they continue this behavior. The undead obviously have no sense of pain as they will heedlessly cause themselves injury, breaking their bones and losing fingers and teeth in their assault upon the steel doors and shatterproof windows of the cells.

  As those first few terrible weeks went by, the rescue squads came back with fewer survivors and more of them came back from their patrols wounded. The teams weren't just coming under assault by the hungering dead, they were also starting to come back after being attacked by other hostile groups. Some of the people had no desire to submit to the same authorities that had, in their mind, been a part of the establishment that led the world to its current sad state. Soon, with all the activity and movement in and around the grounds, so many of the undead were drawn here that it made getting past the main gate extremely difficult.

  We hunkered down then and started waiting for the parasite to die off. I had never imagined that it would take so long. At first I believed that within two weeks the dead would return to
their rest. Then I was sure it would happen in a month. People kept hounding me about how long the dead would walk and many got mad at me when my guesses turned out to be wrong. I became just as frustrated as they were about this, reminding them that nobody knew a damned thing about the horrors that had claimed dominion over the corpses of our friends and families. Now, six months later, I am wondering if they'll ever die.

  I turned my time towards trying to learn as much as I could about the parasite, focusing my mind on them to the point of obsession.

  A small power struggle ensued here as the sixty three others worked out a new ad hoc governance. Thankfully it didn't get any more violent than a few isolated fist fights. I tried my best to stay out of the politics, I had no desire to make enemies. The end result wasn't a heavy handed authoritarianism, as I feared it might degrade into. Instead sensibility won the day and everyone agreed to vote democratically on whatever issue was at hand. The three main players in our new regime really didn't have much to do anyways then, as we were now pretty much stuck here inside the razor wire fences. The biggest headaches were brought on by minor squabbles caused by fearful people who were strangers to each other, forced into close confines in the midst of the apocalypse.

  At first I studied the undead from the guard's old monitoring stations, watching the results of some of my behavioral experiments on the monitors. The first thing that I had noticed was the undead's ability to detect the nearby presence of any uninfected human being. I happened to be idly watching the camera feeds during one of the daily security checks. Every day a small patrol goes through each of the buildings and cell blocks to ensure that all doors that should be closed are closed. The patrols weren't just for security, building maintenance must still be done. As the small group went through the three floors of the cell block, starting with the medical ward (which compromises the first floor of this building), odd behavior became apparent. As soon as one of the living corpses caught sight of the patrol, all the Omni infected corpses in the vicinity would turn and face the direction of the group (even those that were in cells that had no view of the small patrol). Whenever any member of the group was sighted by any one of the undead, every other undead being within twenty-five feet or so seemed to become aware of their presence.

  Initially I had put it down to the patrol making noise, talking or even the echoes of their footfalls on the hard floor. When I noticed that the parasite controlled horrors on different floors also responded I became intrigued. I found I could track the patrols progress through the building by watching the reactions of the undead on the floors above them. Though the building is silent, for the most part, and noise can travel easily, I knew that one cannot simply hear someone merely walking around on the floor below or above them. Maybe the parasite caused an increase in hearing I wondered. I started by placing a few simple sound monitoring devices (decibel meters) in different spots to record just how much noise the patrol made. There was no change in decibel levels recorded on floors that were separate from the floor the patrol was on. I even had one of my assistants, a woman by the name of Mary, go through the cell block as silently as she could without wearing shoes, clad in her stocking feet. Still the monstrosities responded through steel and concrete. They would have either had to have supernatural hearing or they were somehow communicating.

  To investigate this phenomenon further I had to get the help and approval of the rest of the group. It wasn't a hard sell, everyone wanted to know as much about the walking dead as they could. There was hardly any accusations of me turning into a mad man doing unholy experiments on the dead (at the time, those came later). I needed help to gather a handful of the undead and secure them in the few cells normally reserved for prisoners with contagious diseases. I also had one of the two rooms that held beds and traction tables turned into a makeshift operating room and lab where I could operate on and dissect the things, once they were securely strapped down. It took some time, and although there were a few people who received wounds (mainly deep scratches and bites) doing this, there were no severe injuries.

  The cells on the second floor of my building ended up being completely cleared and disinfected with the former unliving occupants either eliminated or moved to my ward. This left the third floor as a reserve of undead. All of the other buildings on the grounds were also searched and cleansed of the undead at this time. The second floor of my building, the group had decided, would be where any carriers would be housed. The carriers, completely scarlet skinned and completely insane, were difficult to handle. The hope was that I could do research on the "Reds" (as the carriers came to be called) and one day, hopefully, find a cure or vaccine. We only had one Red at the time and he was more dangerous than a hundred parasite controlled corpses. I digress though, I will cover this aspect of my research in later writing.

  There was some dissent over the fact that the cannibalistic dead would be housed so close to where any wounded or sick survivors would be treated and cared for, unable to defend themselves. Everyone was reminded that this was a jail, this was a secure building and that all of the undead were isolated, strapped and or chained down. Prisoners held here before the apocalypse were much more dangerous than the slow moving undead were. The undead were really only dangerous in groups and even if containment failed a single one (or even a small group) could be neutralized easily. Now I could observe and monitor their behaviors first hand or through the medical wards monitors.

  Mary was leery and hesitant of helping me at first. She had been a forty year old housewife in her previous life but once she got over her fear she proved to be a reliable and helpful assistant. She is no longer with me, having been murdered with the others when we came under attack. I can only hope that if there are other survivors from the attack that they have stockpiled enough food to last them until they are rescued or can find a means of escape. Otherwise their fate will be the same as mine, starvation and death. Unless of course they can find the willpower to resort to eating the flesh of their fellow starving survivors as they die off one by one. Such irony, to be turned into a living copy of the hungry cannibalistic dead. To become like that which we fear the most. For myself, I have tried to consume the flesh of the undead in my desperate bid for survival. Not only does it taste disgusting, which I could get past as I must eat, but it is toxic. Even cooked way past well done, to the point it becomes a charred hunk of near charcoal it still causes one to become violently ill, even after having eaten only a few bites.

  Twenty five feet seems to be the maximum range that the undead can communicate to each other of any human presence. My experimentation has shown that the twenty five foot range applies to every undead host, each seems to be able to transmit information to others of its kind out to that range. I placed an undead host in successive separate cells and as long as one knew of human presence, they all did. Colonized victims hundreds of feet away almost instantly react as if they are all connected in a ‘chain’, even though they themselves could not view the prey. Once the chain is broken, all of those after the missing link never become aware of a living being (as the unknown means of communication is disrupted). At ten feet, once somehow alerted to any human presence, they try to get as close to their prey as possible, crowding together and pressing heedlessly against any wall or obstacle between them and their prey even though they have never even set their dead eyes upon them. When they actually see a person they go berserk and even those in separate cells, if they are close enough, that hadn't seen any living being yet enter into this behavior. The undead are incapable of speech and are silent, so how they communicate to each other the nearness of prey is as yet unknown to me.

  When I first began my autopsies I surgically removed their eyes, including the optic nerves that connect to their completely dead brains. How they had any vision at all through those organs is beyond my ken to begin with. The sclera in every case had turned black as night from congealed and clotted blood, having a firm, almost rock hard density. On top of this the entire eye is covered in a t
hick cataract and film. There is no evidence of blinking or tear production. No moisture is produced by the lubricating ducts as in a living person to keep the eye moist and clean. On top of this there is no response to light stimuli, that is, no pupillary light response. For all intents the parasite should be receiving no visual input from these organs as they are clinically composed of dead cells and cannot transmit any information (I have come to the belief that they in fact, can barely see at all and are almost physically blind, as unbelievable as that is). Even with the Omni controlled cadavers having their eyes removed there is only a slight change in behavior. They still respond to human presence at the same aforementioned distances and with the same hostility. The only noticeable difference is that without eyes or optic nerves they no longer react to an unobstructed view of a living person as we would with our living, working sight (unless another colonized host can view that person). Specifically, if a lone colonized host (that has had at least the eyeballs removed) is alone in a cell (with no other nearby hosts) one may stand directly in front of it as long as the host cannot hear or otherwise sense that person. If that enucleated host has another walking cadaver within range with a clear line of sight the blinded, previously isolated, host will immediately react as if it had sight. It is as if there is some other mechanism being used by the single celled parasites that I am completely unaware of. The only other creature I know of that is virtually blind like this are bats but they use a form of sonar/radar to find their prey. I cannot do any further research into this as I do not have the equipment to look into this further. The only other insight I have to this behavior is what was relayed to me by the carrier. He flatly stated that the undead share a common sight, that every weak orb adds to an overall picture of their surroundings much like the many facets of an insects compound eyes (as difficult as that is to believe, I have no other working explanation for this phenomenon).