by Marcus Caine
The Last Words
Marcus Caine
As the world goes mad around them a brain damaged soldier fights to protect a group of mental patients who may now be the sanest people on Earth. But how long can the asylum walls keep out The Affected? How long can the soldier take care of people who are unable to take care of themselves? And how long can he stay sane when he’s forced to forget and re-remember that everything he knows and loves is gone over and over again?
Here’s what other readers have to say about The Last Words:
“This is a story that ensnares the reader with ease.”
“Caine has an unusual take on how the zombies got to be so, and an even more unusual group of unzombies opposing them.”
“I simply couldn’t put this book down. It has a very unique take on the zombie apocalypse with several creative and well thought out characters.”
“I’m going to give fair warning: This story is violent and bloody.”
Note to readers: This book was previously known as Meme, and while this edition has had additional editing and proofreading done if you’ve read Meme then you’ve read The Last Words.
Marcus Caine
THE LAST WORDS
A Novella
CHAPTER ONE
Artifact 2495-ka
Remnants of 5 journals found in the wreckage of an ancient warship currently known as The Stout.
Translated by Shayra Ware Waro on 0.11.16.3.2.13
We were outside Kabul, taking heavy fire from all sides when I heard the Chinook coming in in the dark of night.
The thud thud thud pushing the smoke away, the smoke that was coming from all sides, covering us to some extent but also in my eyes and nose. Burning my eyes, the smoke and my sweat and some other gas in the air, something not good, making it hard to see much less shoot.
“Tell them to back off,” I hollered. “It’s too hot.”
“What?”
“Tell them to back the fuck off, it’s too fucking hot,” I yelled at Wallace, our comm guy.
This was a supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission, in and out, nothing to it. Just supposed to find out if a particular high ranking insurgent was here in the area. He was.
“OK, OK, red to yellow, back the copter off.”
Another burst from below interrupted him. AKs, always AKs, you could bury those things in sand, piss on them, drop them from the roof, they would still fire.
Another round from below. I returned fire. The roof wasn’t the best place for us but it was the only place the big Chinook could land. Someone had turned on us, let ’em know where we are. One of our local contacts.
“Repeat, back the copter off, we are under heavy fire.”
“Negative, sir,” they squawked back. “I’m under orders to reel you in.”
There were only three of us, half our SEAL platoon, but I knew the chopper had a whole other platoon aboard. Couldn’t risk it.
“I said back off, right fucking now pilot. You have a whole ’nother platoon in there.”
“OK, hold steady platoon blue 6 is coming in to give cover fire.”
Good, they could come up from the other side, distract them, maybe we could get to the chopper and get out safe.
When I figure out who betrayed us I’m going to fucking flay them.
The Chinook started lifting again and that’s when the RPG hit it square in the side. I saw it like it was in slow motion, the rocket puncturing the metal, the fireball coming out the other side. Then the whole thing went up in a fireball, not even a chance for the guys inside. The blades were still going, lifting without the rest of the Chinook, both big top rotors going straight up into the air. I actually saw the pilot just…incinerate, there, then gone, a shadow of a skeleton for a second.
I could feel the shock and knew the heat was coming but never felt it; instead I caught a glimpse of something dark heading my way out of the fireball and the next thing I know I woke up here.
In a hospital.
I jumped out of bed realizing immediately that my clothes felt wrong, civilian clothes? I heard an explosion in the distance and felt the adrenaline coming back up. I looked for my gun. Nope, no guns. I went to a barred window and looked out. A city, but it didn’t look like Kabul, smoke was rising in various areas so it had to be somewhere still in Iraq. Maybe I was in a military hospital.
I looked around my room, it looked mostly like a typical hospital room, except the door was thick, metal, with a small reinforced window and a slot that looks like it would be used to pass food through. A prison? Had I been captured? But, the door was wide open.
I looked around some more; there were some knives and tools in the room. They wouldn’t have left those with me. So maybe I wasn’t a prisoner. But to be safe I grabbed two knives before leaving the room. It still looked like a hospital, but there were more thick doors along a hallway to my left, and these were closed. To my right it looked like the hallway opened up. I chose this way. It turned out to be some kind of common room with couches, tables, chairs. And it still had more the feel of a hospital than a prison. This common room had larger windows, still reinforced, that looked out at…
This was not Kabul. This did not look like any city in Iraq I had seen. There was smoke coming out of various parts of the city, true, but there were way too many buildings, tall buildings, skyscrapers. And some were familiar. I have seen this city before. It was New York. “What the hell?” escaped my lips before I could stop it.
I heard someone move in one of the rooms and was immediately at the ready, blood pumping, ears alert, knives positioned.
It came from the hallway to the right. I was barely able to keep myself from yelling “who’s there”. I snuck down the hallway as quietly as I could, trying to figure out which room it came from. Then something slammed into the door next to me, and it screamed. My heart skipped and I retreated to the other side of the hall against another door, but something slammed into that one too and was I back out in the middle of the hall again, turning around, sweating, heart throbbing. More things slammed into the doors in some of the rooms down the hall and they all started screaming. I could see some of them; they looked human, banging their heads against the small windows on the doors until they were leaving blood on the glass. Then at the end of the hall I saw an iron gate and bars, and people who appeared to be sleeping in a big pile on the other side of the bars were getting up and screaming too while trying to reach through the gates. They were people. But they weren’t. They were bloody and their clothes were ripped and their faces appeared cut up and some were even salivating. But the least human thing of all was their eyes. Their eyes were wild, ferocious, animal eyes.
I started hearing words in the screams: worm, rye, moth, bear. Just random words here and there but then it evolved into a chant; worm milk chest mouth wound sea…they were chanting the words together, but it still didn’t make any sense.
“Jude, good you’re awake,” said a doctor I didn’t know who seemed to know me as he came from the other direction. He was tall, older, graying, glasses and wild eyes with big bags under them. Disheveled as hell. He looked like shit.
“Come on, come away from there,” he said. He didn’t seem terribly disturbed by the screaming people.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Dr. Gates. Come on Jude, come away from there.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Read your journal to catch up then I’ll tell you what I think I’ve figured out. I’ve been up all night, of course.”
Journal?
“Don’t worry about them, we’re safe. Just read your journal.”
“Journal? I don’t have a fucking journal.”
“Yes you do. Start three days ago, that should get you up to speed.
Then check your quick notes.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Jude, check the time.”
I looked at my watch, the date was way off. Then I saw them.
Tattoos. Tattoos I didn’t remember getting.
Jude, don’t panic, you’re safe. You had an injury and now you have a really really bad memory. Turn your arm over.
I did
It will be OK. Just exercise then read your journal
I don’t have a fucking journal. Someone was fucking with me.
But I did, it was rolled up and tucked into my pocket. Worn, like I kept it folded like this often, and had handled it often. I opened it to the first page and knew it was my writing. Small, concise, efficient if a little hurried, but unmistakably mine, and it said things I didn’t remember writing. I started to read while moving towards the doctor and away from the… whatever they were, then remembered what the doctor said and found the last entry, then counted back three days from there.
CHAPTER TWO
From the journal of Jude Guerrero
12/21/2012
So I woke up this morning like I guess I do every morning; adrenaline pumping through my veins, looking for my gun, realizing I’m not where I think I am and checking my watch, an old habit. And as soon as I look at my watch, I know something’s wrong. The date, it’s off by about three years, like I’m three years into the future.
And then I see the tattoos. The tattoos tell me what happened. And the journal, this journal. Good thing I’m organized, the journal even has notes so I don’t have to read the whole thing every day. Every few entries there is a flagged page, with cliff notes of my life on them. Short, bullet pointed. What happened, what it’s called — anterograde amnesia.
• You have anterograde amnesia. It means you can’t remember anything for very long. Yeah, like that guy in Memento.
• You’re in New York, at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, on Wards Island.
• Tim Tom — Big hairy guy, has aphasia, it means he can’t understand language, written or spoken. It’s because of a head injury. But he can talk, a lot, and sometimes he gets his words a little mixed up. Talk to him if you’re ever in a bad mood, and you will be.
• Dr. Gates — He’s the one what brought you. He’s a pretty big deal, apparently, has written a few books, had you transferred here because of your condition.
• Eric — Ex drug addict, kind of psycho, never really sleeps, kind of a dick.
• Cassie — Blond woman, a little older, cusses up a storm, schizophrenic, thinks “they” are trying to control our minds with TV, internet, radio, etc.
• Marcus — Autistic? Never really talks, but watches movies a lot.
• Adam — Manic depressive.
• Jermaine — The big orderly, even though that’s not what they call them anymore.
There were some others.
Will it be like this the rest of my life or will Dr. Gates find a way to fix me? Because this, this is broken. Since taking shrapnel in Kabul my memory has been damaged to the point that I can’t remember anything, even something traumatic or important, for more than a few hours.
Dr. Gates says it’s rare, and he’s studying me, saying I can help people, help them understand more about the nature of memory and so on and some shit. But it doesn’t change the fact that I am broken, fragmented.
I went out to “meet” everyone again, like I guess I do every day. They all know me, but I don’t know them. Tim Tom, who talks up a storm but has no idea what I’m saying. Cassie, who cusses harder than any of my boys back…my boys, my platoon, they’re all lost. I don’t know why I keep writing this. I should take it out, forget that it happened. I could tell them to lie to me, I would never know the difference. But maybe I deserve to know, to be punished, to mourn them every day, every single day, as if I had just lost them. I’m going back to my room.
OK, enough, I’m out again, I can’t just sit in there and mope. There are some here that do just that, all day, but I suppose that’s why they are here. Because they’re sick, depressed, something. Not me, I’m here because Dr. Gates wanted me here, to study me, along with a few others with rare disabilities like mine. Like Tim Tom. Apparently Dr. Gates is pretty well known, who else would have the pull to get me transferred from the VA clinic in Virginia where I apparently was before to here, The Manhattan Psychiatric Center. It looks nice here. It’s on an island next to Manhattan and I can see the skyline from my room. I’m guessing this room would cost quite a bit if it was a condo. I hope this Dr. is as good as everyone is saying he is, I hope he’s good enough to help me, and Tim. I have to admit I like Tim, even though he keeps calling me Joe, but I don’t know how to tell him my name since his disability keeps him from understanding me.
From the journal of Dr. Montgomery Gates
12/21/2012
Patient Jude Guerrero
Jude is in a slightly better mood today, though I know that it doesn’t really mean anything. His mornings change from day to day. I would love to know why, why some mornings he just lies in bed and others he gets up, exercises, socializes, mourning for his fallen comrades only briefly. He finds out the same news, every morning, like it had just happened, but his emotional responses are all over the place. Just one of the many mysteries of his fractured mind.
The only consistent progress I’ve seen so far is from his performance on the Tower of Hanoi test, every day, just a little better. Proving the findings we had with patient HM, that semantic memory may be intact, even when episodic memory is not. HM was also able to improve on this test on a daily basis, though not as fast as Jude.
The only other constant for him seems to be Timothy. While the others he likes some days and dislikes (quite clearly) other days, due to his “first impression” of them every day, him and Timothy seem to get along like gangbusters, no matter what the first thing Timothy says to him is, and it’s usually quite ridiculous or inappropriate. He never even seems to mind that Timothy continues to call him Joe because he doesn’t know his real name. The other patients have taken to calling him Joe too but his reaction to that varies from patient to patient and day to day.
His journaling is getting more extensive every day, and more personal, even though in his notes he makes it clear that he knows I will be reading the entries, something he seems completely OK with. Where his journal entries were short and to the point at first he now writes elaborate detailed histories of each day. Which makes sense, considering that his journal is now, basically, his only way to remember things. The journal has been such a success with him that I have encouraged it in the other patients, and some of them had even requested a journal before that, having seen Jude wandering about constantly writing in his. The other patients, they look up to him, even knowing that he will not remember them. I suppose it is because they know he was a soldier, or maybe just because of his still impressive physical presence.
Something new he wrote in his journal today surprised me. He wondered if he should remove every reference to what happened to his platoon during and after the helicopter crash. I admit I had considered this myself, to keep him from going through the same devastating sense of loss every day. It would also cut the mourning period down so we could do more tests and make more progress. But I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to do it, to lie to him. Surely he would ask me himself what happened to his men if it wasn’t in his journal. Could I really look him in his face and lie to him about that? Every single day?
From the journal of Jude Guerrero
12/21/2012
So this test, the tower of Hanoi, you may already know what it is and I may have already written about it but this is my memory and I’ll probably repeat lots of things so deal with it.
It’s three stacks of poles with rings of different sizes, largest at the bottom going to smallest at the top, on one pole. You have to figure out a way to get all the rings onto another pole in the same order. Dr. Gates say I’m getting better at it eve
ry day, even though, of course, I don’t remember ever doing it before. But, he says this is very exciting. He gets excited a lot.
I have to admit, it didn’t seem familiar at all but I was going through it like a breeze, nothing to it. It felt weird as hell, being good at something that I knew should be tough, doing it so easily. Not that I’m dumb, I speak Arabic, Spanish, French, it’s why I was talked into becoming a SEAL, but this should still be a tough puzzle for anyone and it seemed so simple, like it was solving itself and just using my hands.
I got to the last ring, the Doctor had that big ass grin on his face, when there was a commotion in the TV room.
CHAPTER THREE
From the journal of Dr. Montgomery Gates
12/21/2012
We don’t really encourage the patients to watch the news, but we don’t forbid it either. After all, the general feeling here is that we are helping them to adjust to living in the real world, not trying to protect them from it. As Jude was placing that last ring on the tower of Hanoi there was a commotion from the TV room and he felt the need to go and check it. I suppose it makes sense that he was not as excited as I about completing the tower so easily, after all, he doesn’t’ even remember working on it all these weeks.
The news was ominous, but not completely out of the ordinary. A professor at Oxford had gone on a shooting spree, killing several people with a double barreled shotgun before being taken out, and apparently, he didn’t go down easily. A shooting at Oxford, even in England itself, seemed so odd. I supposed the shotgun had been for pheasant hunting, having lived in England for a time in my youth I knew that there really weren’t many guns there.
