Chicago Fell First: A Zombie Novel

by Smith, Aaron

  “You all want to see the swimmin’ pond?” Constable Fess asked. “It ain’t good to jump too far into it when it’s dark, but it’s a nice place to sit and take a rest any time of the day.”

  “Ah… the lagoon,” Kacey quipped.

  “Huh?” the constable murmured his confusion. Gilligan’s Island was a universe away from his life experiences.

  “Never mind her,” Doug said. “Sure, the swimming pond sounds nice.”

  They walked past the edge of the small settlement, Fess carrying a torch to light their way through a short narrow path between the trees. When they reached the end of the path and the next clearing opened, they stopped in their tracks at the sight of something far nicer than they had expected.

  “Wow!” Brandon was impressed.

  “It’s gorgeous!” Kacey shouted, squeezing Doug’s hand.

  The pond itself was the size of a large in-ground pool that you might see on some celebrity homes reality show. It was encircled by a ring of smooth ground where the trees and shrubs had been removed to make a sort of sidewalk around the pond’s perimeter. Torches hung on poles there as they had in the village. The glow of the firelight reflected off the water’s surface was breathtaking. Insects could be heard buzzing in the background, a perfect soundtrack to the picture.

  Danielle sipped her second beer slowly as she sat back in one of the chairs in Harrison’s cabin. The professor leisurely puffed on his pipe.

  “Do you think it’s safe by now?” Danielle asked, her voice quivering a bit as if simply asking the question made her nervous.

  “Can you elaborate?” Harrison asked.

  “It’s been hours. I haven’t changed into one of those zombie things. I’m still me and I’m really beginning to think I’ll stay this way. I’m starting to feel relieved and I wonder if it’s justified.”

  “Be happy, Danielle. You’re alive and you’re okay and your injury was slight.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, smiling. “Then I have to shift gears and ask the next logical question: why haven’t I been affected?”

  “Everyone else has?”

  “I know there was at least one other, from what we heard on the news. It was a man, an older man, in his sixties they said. As far as more, who knows? Thousands changed, they say, and we know of two who didn’t. Who are we to figure out why, out here so far from the real doctors who I’m sure are working on this thing twenty-four seven?”

  “Maybe that’s the key, Danielle,” Harrison said, his voice shifting into teacher mode. “You’re away from that hell, outside the chaos, clear of the confusion. Think of your own circumstances and think of what you heard about the other one who didn’t change. You also have what you were told by that soldier you told me about, the man who helped you get out of Chicago. You might not have all the pieces, but you have part of the puzzle and you’re not an idiot. See what fits!”

  “Cancer fits,” Danielle said. It was all she had.

  “Cancer?” the anthropologist asked.

  “The man on the news, he talked about how lucky he felt to have survived the zombie attack and liver cancer. That’s the one thing I know for certain that I have in common with him. We both beat cancer.”

  “It’s as good a place as any to start,” Harrison suggested. “What will you do with that information?”

  Kacey’s empty sneakers and socks sat on the path that surrounded the pond. She sat there with her feet in the swimming hole, having put them in after being assured by Fess that nothing of toe-eating size lived in the dark water. Doug sat cross-legged beside her as she rested her head on his shoulder.

  Across the pond, Fess had produced a small bag of round stones from his belt and used a stick to draw circles of various sizes in the dirt. He was teaching Brandon a village game that consisted of tossing the pebbles into the circles with different numbers of points being awarded according to which ring the stone came to rest in. It was a sort of horizontal darts.

  “They’re having fun,” Kacey said softly in Doug’s ear.

  “Good,” Doug responded. “That poor little kid’s whole world just fell apart. He should have some fun if he can.”

  “So what about us, Doug? Our worlds are a little different now too, right?”

  “Yeah, it seems that way.”

  “Did you really kill all those zombies? Danielle says you saved her life and Brandon’s too. What was it like, killing those things? It can’t have been easy, even if they were sort of dead already.”

  “It was easy. It was too easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kacey, that’s why I walked out of the diner when you pushed too hard for answers about me. I’m … I’m not a good person. I have darkness to me that … that scares me, and it should scare you too. It would scare you if you could really see it, really feel it. What I did with those creatures was natural, as if all my instincts came to the surface and destruction, mayhem, violence was me, the true me, the monster that hides behind the mask of my face most of the time. You shouldn’t get too close to me, Kacey. It might not be safe.”

  “Might not be safe? Doug, you’re the one who came to Bellamy and talked me into coming out here to Northwest Bumblefuck so we’d be safe from those zombie things … and now you’re telling me I’m not safe here either because of you? Make up your mind!”

  “I can’t,” Doug admitted. “I’m not sure which mind is the real one.”

  “Well,” Kacey said, lifting her head from his shoulder and twisting around so she could look him in the eyes, “I hope the one who slept with me was the real one. You felt real to me, in every way. I think ‘Doug the big, bad zombie-killer’ was you having an adventure, and I’m sure it was interesting, but don’t let it go to your head.”

  Doug said nothing. He already regretted having said so much. He tried to stay calm. He wrapped an arm around Kacey and pulled her close to him, hoping the gesture would lull her into taking her line of questioning no further.

  She never got the chance to continue. A teenage boy came bounding into the area carrying a torch and calling for Constable Fess.

  “Fess, Mr. Donald wants you to bring them back to his house now. He says he’s got to do some talkin’ about the important things!”

  “Did you all hear that?” Fess called out from across the swimming pond.

  Doug nodded and stood up, turned and began to walk quickly back to the village. He had already learned the way. Kacey got up, grabbed her shoes and socks from the ground, thought about putting them on, shook her head and hurried after Doug, barefoot and almost tripping once, unaccustomed to walking unshod over dirt and stones and grass. Fess followed with Brandon in tow.

  Chicago was dark, darker than it should have been. The power outages were spreading as fewer city workers were alive or normal or available to keep the metropolis lit. The sounds of the night were still terrible ones, but the hum of motors and the rush of vehicles had lessened now, replaced by the sounds of breaking glass, looting, panic and yet more violence.

  To Terence Trumbull, it was beginning to sound like the police and military were giving up, leaving Hell to its demons and thinking more now of their own safety.

  Trumbull suspected that he would die in Chicago. The odds were too high against the city being saved now. But, he had already long since vowed, he would go down fighting and certainly not, under any circumstances, allow himself to become an Empty One. He inspected his weapons again and left the apartment where he had hidden during the sunlight hours.

  Doug and Kacey were back in Professor Harrison’s cabin. Harrison was in his chair and still had the pipe going while Danielle had moved to the bed, reclining with her back against a stack of pillows, her legs stretched out in front of her. She looked relaxed, a bit tired but in good spirits.

  Kacey sat down and used her socks as rags to brush most of the dirt from her feet before slipping her sneakers back on. Doug looked expectantly at Danielle and the professor, wondering why they had been summoned back. He did not
sit.

  “I have an idea,” Danielle began. “Obviously I haven’t turned into one of those creatures, and we need to find out why. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of information except for the fact that at least one other person has managed to avoid changing after being bitten: that man we heard about on the radio on the way here. Of course, we don’t know why neither he nor I turned, but there is one similarity. It seems that both of us have had, and survived, different forms of cancer. Is that the common link to our apparent immunity? I don’t know, but we need to find out.”

  “Cancer,” Kacey said with worry and shock. “You had that? Are you okay now?”

  “For the most part,” Danielle answered.

  “What do you mean?”

  Wanting to get the questions out of the way and get back to business, Danielle sat up, bent her left knee, yanked the prosthetic foot off and plopped the naked end of her leg back down on the bed for Kacey to see.

  “Shit!” the startled young waitress blurted.

  “It’s no big deal anymore,” Danielle assured her. “You didn’t notice before, did you? But anyway, we have an idea about how we can test my theory.”

  Professor Harrison spoke now, relating his part of the plan.

  “I’ve called my friend, Dr. Raymond Bosc. He occasionally comes out to the village here to tend to my friends’ medical needs. He’s agreed to come out here tomorrow and bring some equipment that he and Danielle will need to carry out their little experiments. Getting Raymond’s help and the tools we need is the easy part.”

  “And what’s the hard part?” Kacey asked.

  “We need,” Danielle said, taking over the conversation again, “a zombie.”

  Doug spoke for the first time since he had entered the cabin. He sounded enthusiastic.

  “I’ll take care of that!”

  “Are you crazy?” Kacey shot back. “What do you plan to do, just drive up to one of those monsters, grab him, tie him up and drive back here with him in the trunk?”

  “I was thinking something like that,” Doug answered, casually, calmly.

  “And what if it scratches you or bites you?”

  “It won’t … and if it does, it’ll wish it hadn’t.”

  “Then I’m going with you!” Kacey insisted.

  “No.”

  Professor Harrison stood up.

  “Both of you be quiet! Young lady, I understand your concern, but someone must get us a test subject and Doug has already proven that he can handle himself in a dangerous situation. If you insist on going with him, we can’t stop you, but I suggest you do as he says if you go.

  “Now, according to the information Danielle acquired from her phone while you two were out, there have been several small outbreaks of the zombie phenomenon in towns closer to us than Chicago. They are, of course, not of the scope of the plague in the big city, but a zombie is a zombie and I suppose any will do for our purposes. Doug, it would be best if you took my van for the capture of our guinea pig. I believe I have everything you’ll need: strong rope and wire, a machete should you need to fight, and even a rifle, assuming you know how to shoot.”

  “I’ve never fired a gun,” Doug said, feeling a little stupid for a second.

  “Hell,” Kacey interjected, “I have. Now you have to bring me along. I’m a good shot.”

  Danielle slid forward on the bed, sat on the edge, and spoke up to be heard above the rest, “I suggest we all get some sleep before morning. We’ll need to be rested before we start this.”

  “Very right, Danielle,” the professor agreed. “You two young ladies can have my cabin tonight. It’s the most comfortable. Douglas, you and I shall have to rough it. I myself am no prude, but considering the somewhat old-fashioned ways of the villagers, I suggest we separate genders for the night.”

  “What about Brandon?” Danielle asked.

  “I’ve already made arrangements for him,” Harrison said. “One of our families who have several children will have him sleep in their rather spacious cabin tonight. He’ll be perfectly safe and secure. I thought it would give the adults among you a chance to discuss adult matters without the presence of a child whom none of you—no offense intended—are fully prepared to be responsible for hour after hour, day after day.”

  “Thanks, Professor,” Danielle said, relieved.

  Doug followed Harrison out of the cabin, leaving Danielle and Kacey behind.

  Harrison led Doug to a small cabin on the other side of the settlement. It was a much more primitive dwelling than the one they had eaten their supper in, but there were two old beds, wooden frames with heaps of blankets. It would do.

  “The family that lives here was kind enough to lend us their accommodations for the night,” the professor explained. “What do you think of my little town, Doug?”

  “It’s interesting,” Doug said, “and I’m amazed that all these people live out here and the rest of the world has no idea! And they’re smarter than I would have expected.”

  “Why would you expect stupidity?”

  “Well if there’s only a handful of them, aren’t they incestuous?”

  “There are more, Doug. This is only one of a network of settlements in these woods, stretching up into Canada even, spaced out among the wild places of this region. Several thousand people. Not a huge population, but enough to avoid all but the occasional occurrence of inbreeding.”

  “I see,” Doug nodded, plopping down onto one of the beds as Harrison took to the other. The torches were soon extinguished and the two men spoke no more that night.

  The professor, accustomed to his surroundings, fell quickly asleep and began to snore. Slumber did not come as easily for Doug. He closed his eyes, shutting out what little light there was. He pulled a blanket up around his head, covering his ears to shut out any noises that might come in the night. It was futile. His shadow-self was dancing through his head.

  It was excitement, anticipation and discovery that had flipped Doug’s mind over again. Tomorrow promised action, mayhem perhaps, and certainly violence. He would have to act without hesitation, fear or remorse, and he was confident in his ability to do that.

  But there was something else creeping through his mind. The sight of Danielle’s leg had burned itself into his thoughts and his shadow-self kept bringing the image up to the surface. A beautiful machine with a difference, an adjustment, was what he had seen tonight—and it fascinated him. He had thought he understood the mechanics of Danielle’s body; she had moved well and that particular machine seemed to operate in very much the same manner as Kacey or most others. But there was a change that had been done to it and compensation had taken place. Doug’s mind wondered at the absence of a component and the adjustment of the rest of the machine: bones reshaped, flesh grown in a new pattern, and what about the nerves? How did the flow of signals to the brain readjust when the machine was altered in such a way? He wanted to see it again. Both aspects of Doug wanted to see it again, wanted to understand.

  He could feel a fascination with a new sort of machine growing and he feared that it was coming into conflict with his feelings for Kacey. One Doug willed his thoughts to turn in other directions, but the other Doug laughed at the first. Yet they were in agreement on one thing. Both longed for tomorrow and the chance to act, to fight, to cut and to break as they had done once and felt cleansed. On that matter, the two halves of Douglas Clancy were a unified whole.

  “You don’t mind sharing a bed, do you?” Danielle asked Kacey after the men had left. “The professor’s a big man so there’s plenty of room for both of us with space in between.”

  “I could sleep in one of the chairs,” Kacey said.

  “Why? What’s the matter? Did I offend you somehow? You sounded very cold when you said that?”

  “No, Danielle, it’s not that.”

  “Kacey, look, I know we’ve only known each other for less than a day, but we’re in a really bizarre, dangerous situation together—like the rest of Illinois is it seems—so
I think we’d be better off being honest with each other. What’s the matter?”

  Kacey hesitated for a second then said, “You intimidate me.”

  Danielle hadn’t expected to hear that. “Why?” she asked.

  “Because,” Kacey began to explain, relieved by the invitation to speak her mind, but feeling slightly silly doing so, “we’re so different. You’re the genius medical student that’s immune to zombie bites and has a plan to save the world! That was bad enough but now it turns out you’re a cancer survivor with a fake foot who doesn’t seem to be bothered in the least by that! You’re just too … confident! It’s irritating! And I’m just a waitress who’s basically here because I was bored with my life and hooked up with the video game repairman and decided to run off with him for an adventure and maybe to get laid again before the zombies get us. I just feel dumb in comparison.”

  Danielle sighed, spoke, “I’m not as strong as you think I am. You think cancer was easy? Try sitting there and being told you need part of your leg cut off as soon as possible and even then you might die and you still have to sit through all that sickening chemo and puke and feel like shit while the end of your leg is a wrapped up stump that throbs like hell for weeks before it starts to feel like part of your body and not some alien zone. And all that comes before the stumbling embarrassment of learning to walk again. It wasn’t easy, Kacey. I just had to learn to live with it and I see no use in hiding it now or complaining about it. As for the experiment I need to do tomorrow, I have no idea if my theories are correct at all. I’m not a doctor, not yet, and if this zombie thing keeps spreading, maybe I never will be, but I have to try. And trust me, Kacey, I’m as scared as you are and I feel pretty stupid too sometimes. I think everybody feels stupid right now, because the whole world seems to be spinning out of control and suddenly things are happening that only ever seemed to happen before in cheesy movies that are on so late at night that you’re probably too tired to realize just how bad they are. So can we please not compete over who’s stupider or more scared? Can we just be friends and try to survive this mess?”