Journals of the Damned (Book 2)

by GJ Zukow

  The day after we moved the Red was the day the attackers returned. The first sign we had that we were under attack was when the electricity went out. The facility normally gets its power from a dedicated underground set of cables that are fed directly from a nearby electrical substation. When the power went dead it was heralded by one of the loudest explosions that I had ever heard. It literally shook the building with its force. Somebody out there was getting good at improvising explosives from all the abandoned military equipment, that much was clear. The explosion was terrible in its fury. I had thought that the blast from the ambush was large but this one easily exceeded that. To say that the amount of explosives used to destroy the substation was overkill is an understatement. The whole neighborhood for a block around it in every direction simply disintegrated. Flaming pieces of houses and buildings flew everywhere, starting a massive conflagration that set everything to the east of us ablaze. I hope the bastard who set it off died in that blast, not knowing just how large it would be and getting caught in either it or the inferno that came after. If it weren't for the loss of electricity I wouldn't be trapped here to slowly starve to death.

  The lights went dark throughout the whole complex and automated alarms blared. Emergency battery back-up lights switched on, providing a dim glow that barely cut through the gloom. After a few seconds the lights flickered back on as the auxiliary generators kicked in and electricity flowed once again. Alarms were still going off and although there was power again, the automatic security system went into lockdown. All doors, cells, cell blocks, everything, fails to the closed and locked position and remains like that even after normal power is restored, having to be manually reset at one of the stations. This is a prison after all. The designers purposefully designed everything to fail shut to keep the prisoners safely behind bars. Normally this is not that big a deal as the monitoring stations are set up to control the doors and access ways whether on normal power or auxiliary power generated here on the grounds. Normally there are always at least two armed guards in full control of each buildings computerized monitoring stations. Normally the dead don't walk the earth. Nobody has been stationed there since the apocalypse. The only way I can get out now is to wait for someone from the main building to unlock doors from the central station that can override the local stations. There is no way for me to even get near the local station now.

  It was barely dawn and the only living people in the medical ward, indeed, in the whole of the building that housed the ward were myself and the prisoner/patient that was the "Red". The system magnetically locked the ward down from the rest of the building, effectively sealing us in together. The medical ward is a little different from the rest of the facilities here as my keys can open the doors within it to allow for emergency medical services to be provided no matter what the situation. I just can't leave.

  At first I remained calm as I knew that main building and at least the general services building had people in it, as soon as they could they would open up the doors for me. As long as there was electricity the phone system still worked. I had barely picked up the phone and dialed the extension for the main control station when another series of blasts rent the early morning. Before I could even say hello to the person on the other end of the line the phone went dead. The new detonations were smaller but much closer. There came the unmistakable sounds of fifty caliber machine guns going off in between the blasts, making a continuous deadly sound that sent a wave of fear through me. I could hear the impacts of bullets and shrapnel smacking into the side of my building. The sounds were almost deafening even through the thick walls and I had to stand up on a desk to peer through the narrow double paned security window to get a look at what was happening outside.

  I seriously almost shit my pants as an Abrams tank spit a gout of fire from its lethal barrel and shat death, point blank, at the main building. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the sight as people came out the main building only to be cut down before fleeing ten feet. The tank fired round after round into the building, blowing it into a flaming ruin. Some of the people ran out, desperately trying to shoot their way past the tank. Some survivors hid inside until the building was engulfed in flames before running outside into the tanks fire. I watched as Mary, the woman who used to assist me, ran out with her hair afire only to be cut in half by the machine guns hail of bullets.

  The tank wasn't alone in the assault. There was armored vehicle with it, I don't know what the name of it was, but it seemed to be going around and killing anyone that poked their heads out of the general services building.

  Once the main building was a heap of burning remains, the tank did the same to the other building that held people in them. The general services building was reduced to a slag of burning rubble in bare minutes. Nobody survived.

  Thankfully? they had no idea that I was inside here or they surely would have done to this building as they had done to the previous two. Thankfully? I wrote because they left me for a slow death instead of a quick one.

  That wasn't the end of it. They drove around firing randomly into buildings making sure nobody was left to fight back.

  Somehow they spotted the electricity was on after wiping the sub-station off the face of the earth or they heard the sound of the powerful Detroit Diesels that provided the auxiliary power. As soon as they figured out where the power was coming from they blew that building into a fiery wreckage also.

  When they were sure they had eliminated the majority of us and it was safe for them they came out of their vehicles and started grabbing up corpses. At first I wondered if they were going to bury the dead or burn them but they did something horrible. They stripped and gutted the dead like they were deer and piled them into the back of a stake truck.

  It was hard to see them but I'm sure I saw the signs of the Scarlet upon their faces. I thought hard about that for some time. There should be no survivors from the Scarlet by now, they should be either dead or existing as a carrier, like the Red in the cell down the hall. The only thing that I had heard of that slowed the spread of infection was from the ex-soldier, who I had seen processed like a pig and tossed into the truck before my unbelieving eyes. What he had told me didn't quite explain it all though, from what he said the drugs the military servicemen received only served to slow the rate of infection down by about half. These people who had attacked us so violently, only to cart their victims off as food, were still in the early stages of the parasitic invasion. I coupled this with the fact that whomever had driven that tank was a member of the armed forces at one time. Nobody just gets into a tank and drives it around like it's a car, let alone operates the turret and fires the shells. Somehow they must have stumbled onto something that must slow Omni down to a crawl or maybe even stops it in its tracks.

  There were some few things I tried on the captive Red of mine but I didn't have much to work with. I learned more from him by talking to him than by anything I did to him. In all truthfulness I forgot all about him until the next day when he started screaming his head off.

  For at least twenty four hours after the attack I was in a panic. I spent a lot of time after the attackers left waiting patiently for someone, anyone, to come out of one of the remaining intact buildings and spot me locked inside. Nobody did. Either everybody had been murdered or they were trapped inside as I am, unable to do anything but wait for death. A rising tide of fear of what was going to happen to me welled up inside me and I searched the entire ward manically for something to beat or break open a door so I could escape. In the end I realized if there were anything here to bust out with, the prisoners would have used it long ago to make a jail break.

  It was shortly before sunset that I gave up and went back to the window. My depression turned into a nightmarish horror as I watched a huge horde of the undead being somehow herded onto the prison grounds. Our Scarlet infected foes had diabolically used the entrails and loose internal organs from those of their victims they gutted, using those gory bits and pieces as a trail for the ra
venous walking dead to follow. They followed the foul trail in a huge mass, attracted like a flock of birds to pieces of bread strewn about one's lawn. There must be thousands of them outside now as they communicate to each other the presence of delectable human flesh to eat. They came in such numbers that at first I didn't know how so many could get here so quickly. That's when I noticed, in the background, my enemies had returned and they were actually herding the undead like they were cattle. How they were doing this I don't know but I have my suspicions. It appeared as if the infected assailants were spraying something at the monsters that the ghouls did not like at all. I had never before seen any member of the undead react with anything even close to what we would call fear but they avoided whatever it was that was being sprayed at them with vigor.

  I suspect now that it was some form of ammonia, as I have only recently, accidentally, discovered the parasite controlled cadavers absolutely detest it.

  It was a vicious touch that they drove the undead here like they did. Even if I could escape this tomb there is no way now I can survive trying to get away from here. Even if I could open the doors to leave I would be ripped apart limb from limb by fetid teeth and nails from the foul horde outside.

  I find my mind wandering now, I am so weak from lack of food that I am having a hard time concentrating or staying on any train of thought. I have only my discussions with the carrier left to tell about and my final experimentations on the undead whence I found something about ammonia that may help anyone who finds these last words. My body is gaunt and skeletal and if it weren't for my distended stomach I could be easily mistaken for one of the walking dead myself. Oddly my hunger seems to have slackened a bit. If I'm not rescued soon I will die. Of course with such an advanced state of malnutrition and starvation it may already be too late to save my life with the world as it is now.

  The attack happened on the morning of February 3, 2013. Only a month has passed since that fateful Sunday but it feels like years ago.

  I am almost positive there are other small groups of survivors trapped in the other three cell blocks, there has to be. The buildings were cleared of the dead and undead alike and people spread out amongst them. Call it human nature but people liked the idea of safety in numbers, except when they had to all pile into a single building like sardines, then they liked to spread out. Some wanted more privacy and some just flat out didn't want to bother having to go up and down stairs to get to the second or third floor to reach their rooms. I doubt they had any more food supplies with them when everything went into lock-down than I had. I hate to think what they must be doing to survive.

  I have a refrigerator and a freezer here in the ward which was mainly used to store insulin and other perishable medicines. Before the apocalypse the storage of food in them was strictly prohibited. After the apocalypse I was in charge here and I kept a small stock of food here for myself, any patient, and the lone Red. Normally, the food I kept here would only last a couple days. I really only kept enough food stocked for those days when I was so wrapped up in my examinations into the undead that I completely forgot to eat anything until it was well past night. I had two days worth of food for both myself and my prisoner. I gave the captive carrier two meals after the attack, one meal to get him to talk after starving him for a few days and then one last meal I poisoned him to death with. There is no cure for the Omni, he was just going to suffer in his madness and mental anguish until he starved to death (like me) anyways. By killing him I doubled the amount of food I had left. I made four days worth of food last two weeks. I ate my last crumbs barely more than two weeks ago.

  I have dreams of food now. I sometimes dream of sitting down with my family and eating a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. There is no Omni in those dreams, everyone is happy in those dreams. I wake from them still being able to taste my mother's cooking and it drives me mad with hunger. Other times I dream that I am in a huge grocery store, stocked with everything my heart and stomach desires. Those dreams are worse, when I get to the checkout I find I have lost my wallet and have no way to pay for what I so desperately desire. I awake from those dreams ravenous and so much more depressed. At least in the Thanksgiving dreams I still have the smells and the tastes in my mind, the supermarket dreams, on the other hand, leave me with less than nothing.

  I need to change the subject. I must get my mind off food.

  I had been trying the phone line and dialing up every extension to every building in my directory and then some to no avail. I still don't know if it's only my phone line that got cut or if all of them are damaged. That's when I heard the Red bellowing to be rescued. I had forgotten all about him to tell the truth. At first I was certain he was yelling to somebody else and the first thing that went through my head was that the marauders had returned to finish the rest of us off. The only weapon I could think of was loading up a syringe with as much insulin it could hold and using it to inject someone with a lethal enough dose to cause a heart attack. I nervously, hesitantly, opened the door to the isolation cells and saw him raving at the wall of his cell. The closer I got to the insane man, the more I could hear muted pounding coming from the other side of that wall. His cell held a simple concrete slab raised two inches off the ground, a stainless steel toilet/sink combo and a thin, ratty, grey blanket. Through the bars I could see him trying to make himself heard through the thick masonry of the wall and climbing on top of the toilet to try and peer out the thin, thick paned window. When I opened up the cell next to him to look through the cells single window for myself he noticed me and doubled his efforts to contact those on the other side, taking a few moments to hurl a few choice insults at me. When I looked out the window I was shocked. Dozens of the undead were beating and clawing futilely at the wall, trying to tear it down. As I watched the odd spectacle more were attracted by my presence and another couple of dozen started to claw and smash their necrotic flesh under my window. I am convinced the undead were drawn to me with hunger but with the madman they were somehow being drawn to him.

  I never managed to ascertain the carrier's name, every time I asked him what his name was he either gave me an obvious fake name or said it was "legion". Even after I withheld food from him for two days he wouldn't (possibly he didn't remember) tell me what it was. He occasionally would stop in my interrogation of him to turn and talk to the undead, urging them to continue to try and tear down the wall separating them. For the most part I got absolutely nowhere with trying to reason with him, most of the words out of his mouth were gibberish and what sentences did come out of his blackened mouth were hard to believe.

  He did respond to open hostility and insults though. When I told him he was a liar, that he could not communicate with the parasite colonized corpses of the undead, that it was only his madness that made him delusionally think so, he silently stared me down and after a few seconds the faint hammering and beating from the other side of the wall slackened and then stopped completely.

  "Coincidence." I flatly stated to him, keeping eye contact and adding a harsh tone to my voice.

  "Go look out the window now Doctor who-will-soon-be-meat. I can calm them or drive the maggots into a frenzy whenever I choose."

  The black orbs that were the eyes of the crazy Red seemed to burn upon my skin as I went and looked upon the incredible scene outside. There, in an almost semi-circle they swayed and stared at me through the glass. Even though the undead clearly saw me they didn't move from where they were, they were seemingly rooted to where they stood about ten feet away from me. Dozens of dead hungry eyes locked onto mine and as I turned away from their gaze and back to the madman's he smiled at me.

  White teeth surrounded by black gums and an even blacker tongue seemed to threaten me past lips stretched thin in an exaggerated smile.

  "Come, my pretties." He spoke calmly, his eyes still locked onto me.

  The infected patient/prisoner all but cackled at me after speaking those words and seeing the look on my face. I'm not sure if it was some odd reference to the
Wicked Witch from "The Wizard of Oz" or just some insane rambling.

  After the span of a few heartbeats the undead resumed their attempts to break down the walls. To say I was shaken was an understatement.

  "Bring me some coffee, strong, hot coffee and I'll tell you a couple of secrets my little walking dinner." The words came out of the Red more like an order than a request.

  I decided the information was worth the risk and I brewed up the last of the coffee I had in the worn old coffee pot that had seen more than its fair share of use.

  Though the liquid was hot, having been barely brewed minutes ago, he drank it straight down. I brought the whole pot with me and stood back from his cage, trying to maintain some distance between us if he decided to throw it at me. He gulped it down like it was manna from the gods and he immediately demanded another cup.

  "Before that you tell me one of those secrets you promised me." I sternly told him, fully prepared to walk off and leave him again.

  "I can sense every colonized cadaver within fifty feet of me and I can see through their eyes as they can mine."

  He held the cup out through the bars and shook it around, demanding that more coffee be poured into it. I started to pour some into it and then just prior to more than a single splash falling into the Styrofoam cup I stopped.

  "How can you do that?" I asked, holding the object of his desire back.

  "I don't know...It's the legion within me that lets me know of the legions without. More. Now." The cup was being shaken back and forth, demanding to be filled.

  Again he noisily drank the whole cup in bare seconds. As fast as the coffee could be dragged by gravity into his mouth it disappeared down his dark gullet.

  By the time I gave him the last drop of the caffeine laced liquid he had told me that while he can't really talk to them, as they had no language, they did respond to mental images. Basic mental images of simple things.