Days With The Undead (Book 1)

by Snow, Julianne

  We do have to take into account that we may no longer be travelling through the infected zones but still… Why does it seem like no one is doing anything?

  We were stopped late last night by a small town Sheriff’s Department Deputy. He looked young and his face showed how tired he was. I thought it likely that he had stopped us just for something to do. A reason to break up his night so that he didn’t end up falling asleep in his cruiser.

  He said his reason for pulling us over was that we were travelling too fast down the major two lane highway that cut through that particular part of the state. The fact that there wasn’t another soul on this road didn’t seem to matter. His flashlight illuminated briefly on each of our faces before he asked Max for his license and the registration for the truck.

  Moment of truth: Max’s license was from Ontario which was not a crime, but might be enough to prompt this deputy to make our lives a little more difficult. And then there was the truck… The one we had borrowed in Michigan from the long-term parking facility.

  We had no way of knowing if the owner had returned and found the truck missing, making the truck we were currently sitting in officially stolen. And of course there was the fact that the name on the registration would match one of ours, but only if this were a story full of impossible coincidences was that even a possibility.

  Max reluctantly handed over the paperwork and as the Deputy’s flashlight panned down to look at it, the light caught the glint of a barrel of a shotgun between the seats. He took a closer look in the truck and saw the arsenal at the ready. He pulled his service revolver and asked us where we were headed. Max was brutally honest and told him as far away from the Undead as possible.

  The look on the Deputy’s face was priceless and had the situation been different, it might actually have been comical. I don’t think he knew whether to believe us or arrest us. As the thoughts ran the gamut across his face, the moment that he settled on the actual truth as the truth, his entire countenance changed.

  In the place of confusion, fear and what I can only describe as loathing took root. You could see that the truth didn’t seem to sit well with the Deputy. He ordered all of us to slowly exit the car one at a time. It was like a standoff in one of those old black and white western movies – there was no way that we were getting out of that car unarmed and he was just as unlikely to lower his weapon.

  Even in the face of the truth, it appeared that he was going to try to arrest all of us.

  Now, I don’t know why he didn’t use the radio strapped to his shoulder to call for back-up. He just stood there staring at us as if in disbelief of whom he had encountered and what he had been told. Perhaps he still viewed the situation as something that could potentially be viewed as terrorism or worse. You could see the wheels turning in his head; trying to figure out how he was going to get us to surrender when he was clearly outnumbered.

  Seconds seemed like hours. He could open fire at any time and wound or kill any one of us. No words passed between us. The silence was deafening.

  Until…

  It came out of the darkness. There was no betraying scent to give it away. Just the soft whisper of its feet on the ground. And then the blood-curdling screams of the deputy and the panicked shot that barely missed the truck. We heard a thump against the bumper and knew it was time to leave.

  Slimy, putrefying hands snaked into the open window almost laying purchase to Max as he turned the truck back on. The surprise of the moment threw all of us off for a second but quickly the handguns and windows all came up. We could still hear the dying screams of the deputy in the still of the night through the closed windows.

  With the windows up, we felt a small bit safer. Soon the hands started to smack against the glass of the windows. The noise was unnerving and the slimy hand prints left behind a reminder of what we didn’t want touching us. Our headlights grew dark as they closed in on us in the idling truck.

  It was eerie, suddenly not being able to see around you but knowing what was out there in the darkness, surrounding you. I’ve never been someone that felt the effects of claustrophobia but in that moment, in the dark with all of the undead bodies pressing up against the truck; it took a firm grasp on me. As I fought the panic, the sounds of them moving against the metal became louder.

  If you’ve never heard those sounds, count yourself lucky.

  Max put the truck into gear, thinking that it was time for us to put some distance between us and them. As he pressed down on the accelerator, the truck met with a lot of resistance. How many of them were actually there? The sheer desperation of the situation nurtured the twisting knot of panic growing in my stomach.

  I could feel myself fighting it, knowing that if I started to submit to the control of my panic that I wouldn’t be able to regain composure. There was no telling when I would need to calmly react and I couldn’t allow myself to succumb to the panic coursing through my body. Not now, not ever.

  Max was gunning the engine but we weren’t going anywhere. Could the Undead really be holding us back this much? Trying a different tactic, Max shifted the gears of the truck into reverse and gunned the accelerator again. We gained a little ground but then met with resistance again. They must have us completely surrounded and there must be a whole heck of a lot of them.

  The situation seemed bleak; would we be able to break free of the horde that was boxing us in? Max continually shifted gears from drive to reverse and jimmied the truck back and forth along the road. It was the only way that we were able to move, to break free. And it was beginning to work; well at least it felt that way, but in the dark there really was no way that we could be sure.

  The horizon revealed a twin set of lights heading in our direction; another vehicle out on this desolate stretch of road. On this back road, would there be room for them to pass or would they just get caught up in the horde like we were? As the car got closer, we began to get an accurate picture of just how many of the Undead were surrounding us as their bodies were silhouetted from behind.

  There were so many of them. How had they gotten this far? How had they managed to catch up with us without being noticed by anyone? The Undead finally took notice of the car coming at us, its headlights beacons in the dark night.

  As the Undead the furthest from our truck began to turn their attention to the car coming toward us, the tension holding us back lessened. Max was able to continue moving forward instead of trying to jimmy us back and forth.

  As the car got closer, it must have noticed the horde on the road - how could it miss them? In a panic, it hastily tried to turn around on the road. Unfortunately, the sides of the road were soft and it ended up getting stuck in the loose dirt and gravel.

  Realizing that she would be trapped if she stayed put the lone occupant of the car, a woman, got out. She left her car door open so in the meager light we watched her take off. She didn’t make it very far, but the commotion afforded us the needed momentum to finally break free.

  Once we were through them, we didn’t stop. We just drove, trying to answer the questions that crept into the forefront of our minds. There was a part of us that wanted to know how many had managed to get this far. We knew that they couldn’t have been from neighboring towns, mainly because there was no news of the infection getting this far. It was just so odd that they had managed to catch up when we were now travelling by vehicle.

  Then realization hit me; these must be people who had tried to get away from it and then ended up trusting the wrong person. Someone in their group who must have been hiding a bite or scratch.

  It was sad, if only for the fact that people had to know what they were going to turn into if they got infected. As a group, we had already made a pact to be honest about possible bites or scratches. We knew that our honesty was going to help keep us alive and I will state now that I trust these men implicitly as I’m sure they trust me. We have come too far and have too much to lose to put it all on the line now.

  As we slowed our pace a little bit,
thinking that we had gotten far enough away, hands smacked against my window and a bloodied ashen face pressed up next to me, its mouth moving in a mockery of mastication. The headlights had now illuminated a few of the wanderers, those that look almost confused about what their new role in undeath was.

  Max accelerated again, not wasting any time putting the scene and the Undead as far in the rear view mirror as possible. We now know that we’re not safe yet and that we may never be so... Pray for life, please.

  Day 12:

  The Internet has certainly been alive today. The abundance of information is frightening for two reasons: you don’t know how much of it you can trust. And if you can trust it, it means that the situation is only going to get worse and quickly.

  The states that are now reporting massive outbreaks and incidences of the Undead are Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. Outbreaks are also being reported throughout Ontario, as well as in Manitoba, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

  By tomorrow the list will likely be longer.

  The Undead are multiplying at an exponential rate. Whomever they kill only joins them. It’s like the mythical Ouroboros, the iconic symbol of the serpent circling back upon itself to bite its own tail – a symbol of eternity, of immortality.

  At some point, the Undead will run out of a food source and potentially starve to their second death; but considering that their food source is us, it’s not the best plan for us to just wait them out. And that’s only if what we’ve seen in movies and read in literature can be trusted.

  We are relying on the assumption that they consume us for a specific and necessary reason. They might not need to consume us for nourishment at all. Their attacks on us may only be a means of transmitting and thereby propagating itself. The virus or bacterium or alien organism causing all of this needs a means of passing itself along. The only form of survival it has is replication.

  What if the Undead don’t “starve” once they stop finding people out in the open to infect?

  What if we are destined to be plagued by the Undead forever?

  There will come a certain point in time when the bodies of the Undead will give way. Their tissues will putrefy and rot away, but only if it still behaves like “normal” tissue. What if it doesn’t? What if everything I know about natural decomposition has changed when it comes to the Undead? Sure, we have seen putrefaction occurring on their bodies and certainly smelled the odor of decomposition on them, but I am seeing corpses walking around that just shouldn’t be.

  Forget the fact, for a moment, that they are dead and walking. Consider the fact that the way in which their bodies are decomposing should render them immobile. Where is the bloat? The formation of adipocere due to the wet conditions they are likely to encounter? If the bodies are in fact in active or advanced decay, how can they still be moving?

  Nothing is truly following the natural order of decomposition. It’s almost as if some of the laws of nature are being expunged, disregarded and have become obsolete in the face of this. If that’s the case, there may be no hope in stopping them except for total eradication.

  But even that poses problems. Once they are totally and completely eradicated, once the earth is no longer home to the Undead, we will forever need to be vigilant. There is no way to know how long the infection will remain virulent outside of the host, or how long it will be able to survive as part of the archaeological record. We could eradicate it now only to have someone come into contact years or decades later and trigger the whole thing over again. There is just too much that we don’t know to be sure of anything.

  While we have no way of knowing how long it can survive outside of its host, we do know that it has the ability to cross species. That’s a huge thing too. Not many organisms have done that and once they do, they become far nastier. When it jumps from species to species it’s a generally due to mutation, a coping mechanism it develops to survive.

  Thinking about it scares me to death.

  At some point someone has to come up with a plan. We as a species can’t just sit back and allow ourselves to be annihilated, can we? I have to trust that our flight has been worthwhile. That we’re fighting for something…

  As I mentioned earlier, the Internet has been very active today with news, most of it covering the attack on Washington. In case you hadn’t heard yet, in the early morning hours, throngs of the Undead marched right into the city. Washington was just waking up for the day and it was like no one seemed to expect that anything so horrific could ever happen in to them in the Capital. There had been no preparation against a potential imminent bombardment despite their proximity to New York, Delaware and both of the Virginias.

  One would have imagined that there would have been some level of precaution taken to protect the country’s seat of power. The shaky videos on the Internet showed us otherwise. I would include the links for the videos but for some reason I can no longer access them. A service provider may be down, or maybe someone, somewhere has decided that access to what occurred in the Capital should be kept to a minimum. If so, this is what I saw…

  The Undead strolled in just before dawn, coming right up one of the boulevards as if they were part of some sort of elaborate homecoming celebration. They just shambled along the streets, almost unconcerned with what was going on around them. A few of the Undead could be seen attacking anyone that happened to be out in the street at that early hour but for the most part, they appeared as if they were moving with a purpose. The procession marched right up to the steps of the Capital in some perverse parody of pomp and circumstance and then scattered as if they were blown away like fallen leaves on a windy autumn day.

  One could almost believe that the Undead had a shared sense of consciousness but it seems too foreign to credit them with any intelligence.

  Albeit, there was a time when we trusted the dead to stay dead…

  The online news outlets were clogged with reports about that short space of time; the scattered Undead caused a great deal of fear and panic. Many people uploaded videos of witnessed attacks onto YouTube in what must have been an attempt to let other people know what was going on. Otherwise, it was just some sick individual finding a gleeful pleasure in broadcasting in broadcasting the demise of others. Seeing that a number of videos were uploaded by the same individual, I really hope that is not the case.

  In fact, most of the video came from the cameras that had been placed around the Capitol to catch traffic violations and other crime. Someone must have hacked into the live feed and decided to stream it directly onto the Internet. Luckily (though that might be the wrong word given the circumstances), the video also went into an archival format every ten minutes. If it hadn’t, we might not know what we now know.

  Just under an hour later, a large number of the Undead reconvened at the White House. They stood outside at the gates, pushing and straining against them. There did not appear to be anyone there at the time since no Secret Service Agents or anybody really comes into frame or were noticed in any of the doorways or windows of the video although I’m sure they were there.

  It took the Undead some time but they eventually broke the gates inward and flooded onto the neatly manicured lawns moving up toward the house.

  You see them clearly overtake the White House. Within minutes you begin to see some people run out of the house screaming, being pursued by the Undead. Others are seen illuminated from behind in windows, their deaths and undeaths recorded on film in a matter of seconds.

  I’ve seen a lot of death in the past twelve days. Heck, I’ve seen the dead rise. The last frame of the video I could bear to watch on the Internet was shocking. It was so shocking mainly because of its recognisability. I can completely understand why it may be unavailable for future generations to see…

  The President of the United States of America is no longer leading the country: he�
��s now one of the Undead. Some of you might wonder if I really saw what I think I saw, but I can promise you that it was unmistakable. His face was clearly caught by one of the cameras as he left the now blood stained lawns of the White House.

  Before the feed went black, you clearly saw him as one of the Undead, his right arm hanging limply to the side, the massive bite of flesh missing from his bicep. The pajamas he wore were covered in blood along the right side. For a moment, the face turned directly to camera, the eyes not exhibiting the familiar milkiness of death yet. The visage was instantly recognizable. It was the face we have all seen many times previously. I promise you that what I’m telling you is not a joke.

  What will happen to any measured response if the person meant to deliver the order has been compromised?

  Day 13:

  The situation with the Undead is causing the world to start unraveling at the seams. The looting and the rioting in the urban areas both big and small are shameful and it’s the last thing that anyone needs to be doing.

  Society needs to hold it together at a time like this. To come together. To fight for the will to survive. No one is going to need a bigger television when the cable goes out, when there is no electricity being delivered to paying customers. This is not a vacation from your old life…

  Something more horrific than you can even imagine is coming down the pike toward you and if you’re not already running, they will catch you. We’ve been travelling through Oklahoma most recently and have come across more pockets of the Undead clogging the arteries feeding the cities.

  We try our best to dispatch them without getting bogged down, but too large a group puts our survival at risk. We could easily be overtaken and swallowed by a larger group; the potential for them to overturn our truck is high. Now we just drive through them, over them and around them as best and as fast as we can; hoping of course that we don’t run out of gas in the middle of a particularly large group.