Planet of the Dead

by Flowers, Thomas S.

  Another Representative near the epicenter of the room shouted to the Speaker, "Where is the President of the United States, sir? Why haven't we heard from the West Wing? The Commander in Chief ought to be--"

  More hammering of the gavel.

  More thunderous shouting from the gathered few.

  From the disembodied voice, "That was Rep. Wendy Evans of Washington, addressing a concern many of the Representatives have communicated. Rumors have only spread following this morning's bizarre Press Briefing as the signal was cut out while Deputy Press Secretary Walter Friendly--"

  Polk

  Part 2

  Shoreacres,

  Texas.

  ABC13 Eyewitness News had just cut to commercial following a very strange and grisly report from Houston's downtown medical district. Seeing a man being devoured and torn apart live on TV would no doubt send a lot of viewers into shock, but not Ashley Polk. At the moment, Polk was more concerned with why this late fiftyish looking woman with the signature Texas-well-to-do big hair dressed in a very well-tailored track suit was staggering around the front lawn of her best friend's house. More concerning especially with all the noise in the typically monastery-like silence of the Shoreacres neighborhood. Gunshots. Sirens of all kinds. Dogs barking. Shouting. Wreckage, glass shattering, metal slamming into unseen objects. And dare she imagine, the sound of screams carried in the wind?

  Polk watched the woman carefully from the little window beside the front door. "Who the hell...what is she, drunk? It's not even that late..."

  As the stumbled woman made her way closer to the front stoop, Polk frowned, focusing on her face. "Wait, is that--?" she pushed off the glass and ran to the hallway where Karen had hung all her photos. Searching each one, pausing on one that didn't have Jonny in the image, just Karen and who she assumed to be her sister, a younger looking brat of a girl (just a feeling she had), and their parents. The woman with the big-well-to-do Texas hair, it was the same woman on the lawn.

  "Shit, did something happen?" Polk rushed back to the front door and unlatched the deadbolt. She went out onto the stoop and called to Karen's mother.

  "Hey...are you okay?"

  Hey, right, like she even knows who you are.

  "You're Karen's mom, right? I'm Po--Ashley, Jonny's friend from service."

  Nothing from the woman stumbling across the lawn. There only sign she had heard Polk was a low guttural growl and a meager quickening in her sluggard pace.

  Polk cleared her throat. "Is everything okay, ma'am? Are you hurt?"

  In another moment of uncomfortable silence, the woman had made it across the lawn, reaching out for Polk with both her hands, eyes wide and grey, saliva glistening on her chapped looking lips, rolling down her short chin.

  Polk started to move aside, "Do you want to come--hey, stop. Get off me. Let go!" She shoved Karen's mom back, side stepping her fraying, clawing hands.

  Karen's mom stumbled backwards, reasserted her balance, and lunged forward again.

  "What the hell is wrong with you?" Polk protested, stepping back in through the front door. Keeping her eyes on the older woman, she slipped on the foyer rug and fell on her backside.

  Slightly dazed, she watched as Karen's mom came in after her through the front door, her expression knotted with a sort of hunger Polk had never seen before, like a madness belonging only to movies and nightmares. She could smell her now, a stench she had experience with, back in the war, the potent stink of rotting fruit and spoiled milk, coming off her in waves. Flies darted about her cracked and pasty face. And her eyes, they were worse than grey, they were dead milky orbs with only the faintest glow of awareness.

  Polk scuttled backwards on the floor, as quickly as she could. "Stay away--STOP!" she shouted, shielding herself instinctually with her one arm.

  Karen's mother glared, deadpan, a greenish yellow drool oozing down her petite chin, adding to the ruination of her expensive looking track suit. She glared and started for her, gurgling and growling simultaneously.

  Frozen on the floor, Polk stared transfixed at this unbelieved situation, staring up at this deadpan woman as she started for her, falling prostrate to her knees in an awkward sort of motion, jittery, as if her muscles were balled tight or coagulated. And she noticed for the first sometime the gnarled purplish wound on her neck, swollen and infected looking, raw with a wide berth of dark crimson stained around the tracksuit's collar, yet somehow no longer bleeding, now mere inches away.

  Polk kicked out. "Stop!"

  Karen's mom registered nothing of her pleas; she grew only hungrier, pawing at her pants to drag her meal closer to her.

  "Get off!" Polk kicked out, harder this time, no longer concerned if she hurt this woman, supposedly Karen's mom, her best friend's probably future mother- in- law.

  Karen's mom fell back, sliding on the tile foyer floor. Regaining her balance on her knees, she turned and growled and moaned stubbornly at Polk.

  "Fuck you!" Polk yelled.

  Behind Karen's mother, a shadow dashed in through the open door. Polk registered briefly what looked like a man with long wavy hair and wooden surfer sunglasses. Fluttered around him was the American flag.

  And then she flinched.

  Blood splattered her face.

  Her gaze sent to Karen's mom and the horror she found there.

  Protruding from her eye socket, a three-inch-thick pole impaled like a pike. Bits of red flesh slid slowly off and plopped on the tile. Holding the makeshift spear, the strange man yanked the flag back.

  Karen's mom sputtered a frothy red foam and then toppled over on her side in a sickening thud. Polk stared at her, unblinking, and then to the stranger.

  Pulling a rag from the cargo pocket of what looked like flower-patterned swimming trunks, the young twenty-something looking man cleaned off the end of the flag pole, being careful not to dip the Stars and Stripes into the muck on the floor. He wore a tight-fitting sky-blue tank top, revealing a sun- kissed tan underneath.

  Polk sat on the floor, motionless, staring at him, taking momentary glances at Karen's now dead mother.

  "Did it bite you?" he asked, breaking the odd silence.

  "Bite?" Polk blinked, trying to force a sort of rationality to all of this.

  He gestured to the dead woman on the floor. "Did she bite you?" His tone was serious, but only as if strained to be. He seemed to be very naturally non-serious, as she would imagine how skaters or surfers talk in movies or on TV.

  Polk shook her head.

  He exhaled. "Good. Trust me, you don't want to get a bite from one of these nasties. Very not cool, man, you dig?"

  She looked at what remained of Karen's mother. "Nasties?"

  "Yup," the skater turned to leave, "I'd bolt the doors next time, if I were you."

  Polk scuttled to her feet, rushing to the door after him. "Wait. Why? What's going on? Do you know what was wrong with her? Why did she--?"

  "--come after you as if you were a pepperoni pizza?" the surfer stopped and turned back, smiling with a sort of smug coolness.

  Polk nodded.

  The surfer stood, bracing himself with the American flag; out in the lawn another body lay crumpled, bloodied, and unmoving. He looked up at the descending mid-day sun. "Dunno, man. Probably has to do with that Super Flu or whatever the news is talking about. What they aren't saying is how it's turning regular folks into killing machines. Or maybe they just don't know. I have my doubts about that, man. Who knows what the government is really up to nowadays. Chemical agents. Some virus cooked up in a lab run amok. What I do know, it's the fever, I think. You get the fever first, buddy of mine got it. Got bit by his girl. That's why I asked if you were bitten. You get bit, you're not gonna have a good time."

  "Good time?" Polk mouthed.

  The surfer smiled, his teeth brilliantly white in contrast with his tanned skin. "You get a bite and the fever drags you under the tide, and when you come out the other side you got the munchies for people."

  "People?
"

  "Yup. My buddy came after me. Cracked his skull with my board. Broke it too, damn shame really. It was a good board. And down the road there, I saw a man out on his lawn chewing on some lady as if she were a cheese burger. He didn't even care I was there watching him from the street. He just sat there, eating."

  "Can't be..."

  The surfer nodded, looking somewhat amused by Polk's denial. "What do you think that old bird was after?" he gestured to the house. "She was after you like a bucket of fried chicken, dude. Kinda gnarly, right? I read somewhere that people can bite with a force of two hundred and seventy-five pounds of pressure, give or take. And I imagine these nasties probably bite a little harder, given how they don't seem to care what it is they're biting into or how hard." He stopped and shook his head, caught up in his own thoughts. "Can you imagine, a world of people eating people...but then again, in a fucked-up way, I suppose we've always been eating each other, somehow or another."

  Listening, Polk felt as if she were in a dream.

  Bites.

  Nasties.

  Fever.

  Cannibalism.

  Conspiracy.

  It was all too wild.

  Polk licked her lips, struggling. "So, you're telling me a virus of some kind, government made or otherwise, is turning people into cannibals?"

  The surfer shook his head.

  "You just said--"

  "Yeah, but it's not really cannibalism."

  "How so?"

  "You have to be human eating another human to be called a cannibal, right?"

  Polk stared at him, confused, more so than she already was.

  The surfer's smile faded. "I don't think these things are human."

  She nearly laughed. "Please don't tell me aliens."

  He gave a weak grin. "I wish, man."

  "Then what?"

  "I don't think they're alive."

  "What...?"

  He shook his head. "I know how it sounds, man, trust me I do. But, dude..." He stopped and gazed at Polk. "Have you been out there?" he gestured backwards with his head.

  Polk looked around, beyond them, listening to the sounds of mayhem somewhat distant to the quiet neighborhood she'd come to love in her short stay. Looking back at the surfer, she shook her head.

  He nodded. "You'll see soon enough." And with that he turned and started away again.

  Polk watched him as he headed towards a golf cart parked out in the street. Bags and suitcases filled the small backseat, as well as a dark stained hockey stick and a seemingly untouched baseball bat. He shoved the American flag he was holding into a plastic holder that kept the flag erect on the side of the cart. Then he jumped into the driver's side and turned the key.

  "You alone?" he called, looking back up at her from the road.

  Polk said nothing.

  He shrugged. "Fair enough. I'm heading to the local yacht club down the road. My dad used to take me and my brothers sailing every weekend before Ike came through and wreaked his boat. With everything going on, maybe the open water is the safest place on earth. These...nasties don't look like they've got good coordination. You can join me if you want. Some of these boats are pretty roomy."

  "Thanks, but no. I better stay." Polk started walking backwards, slowly, trying not to be too obvious. It wasn't just what the surfer said that bothered her, though it was pure madness; but not just that, it was also his nonchalant attitude about it all, the carefree whateverism in face of the end of the civilized world. It wasn't cold, exactly, but it disturbed her nonetheless.

  He smiled, nearly laughing. "I get it. It's not just these walking dead nasties we got to worry about, right." And with that, he drove off.

  Polk watched him go until he disappeared around a corner. She glanced down at the dead man laying crumpled at the end of the lawn. A dark wet circle bubbled at the back of his skull, of what she assumed to be from the surfer's makeshift spear. Shuddering, she started for inside Jonny's house and bolted the door.

  Vladimir Ryazanskiy

  International Space Station

  Earth Orbit, Day 25.

  From the Zvezda service module, strapped to a seat, Commander Vladimir Ryazanskiy gazed down at Earth. Moments before Mother Russia had passed, or to be precise, he had passed. Orbiting Earth, he could look down at his homeland once every ninety minutes. Typically, when it was dark, Moscow would burn brilliantly in a glowing pearl sort of color, spreading and diminishing in the eastern Asia areas of Siberia and south towards Ukraine. Tonight though, it seemed most of his nation's capital remained dark. And now, as the North American continent approached, he looked down at a similarly strange occurrence. Along the eastern seaboard, masses of bright lights extinguished. New York City, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, all the way south into Florida, they glimmered and blinked into darkness.

  There was supposed to a launch today from the Kennedy Space Center. The new S5 Truss and research module were to be delivered to their docking bay. Six hours now and the only word they had received from either the RKA or NASA was to stand by for further information.

  Commander Vladimir Ryazanskiy did not like to stand by.

  Unlatching himself, his body jostled and began floating away from his seat. Taking one last look through the portal from the Zvezda module, Vladimir kicked off and drifted through a connecting corridor into the command module.

  "Any word from mission control?" he asked, drifting inside.

  Pete Coppock glanced over his shoulder from the seat he was strapped in. "Hey, Vlad. No, nothing yet."

  Vlad grumbled. "Nothing? Not even from Korolyov?"

  "Not RKA or NASA." Pete returned his attention to the array of controls and readings of the space station that displayed a wide range of data, to include velocity and orbital path, as well as radio transmissions, both auditory and written readouts carried in the signal from Earth.

  Vlad leaned in to look at one of the displays, his thick dark brow lowering over his brown eyes.

  Pete cleared his throat. "They said to sit tight, right. I'm sure mission control will get back with us soon on what's going on down there."

  Pushing a button, Vlad sighed. "I don't like it."

  His turn to frown, Pete asked, "What's not to like? First to go, last to know, right." He smiled, spreading the wrinkles along his face, making him look older than what he really was.

  Vlad sighed grumpily. "I suppose."

  Gesturing back through the corridor, Pete asked, "What do you say, comrade, buy you an ISSpresso?"

  Nodding, Vlad turned to float back out through the module. "No use watching the pot boil, as you Americans say."

  Pete unlatched his seat traps and floated after the commander. "Exactly my thoughts. They'll let us know what's happening...eventually. Might as well relax, enjoy some of that newly brought Italian coffee. And who knows, whatever's going on is probably just a failed systems check, a glitch in the system."

  Vlad floated along to the galley unable to dismiss the small burning knot in his belly. Something was going on...something bad. He prided himself for having a sense for the worst. Ever since his Mikoyan MiG-29 days with the Russian Air Force during the South Ossetia War. He smelled then as he smelled now...trouble was brewing.

  After his coffee, Vlad would want a full systems check, especially how their food rations and water was looking. If things down on Earth were as bad as what his stomach was telling him, their stay onboard the International Space Station could last longer than anticipated.

  Taj

  Part 3

  1

  Webster,

  Texas.

  Taj pushed through the crowd of fleeing sick and wounded and terrified. At the check-in counter, the little girl in the red dress continued feeding on her dead bulbous father. Munching, devouring chunks of flesh, her mouth drooling with that yellowish-red pus now glistening with an abundance of crimson from bits of fat and tissue. Behind him he could hear Jonny and Karen calling after him. More people rushed past him. Side stepping,
he pushed an elderly black man out of his way. The old man, bald except for patches of thin white on the sides of his head, teetered and fell backwards on the floor, losing his cane in the process.

  Refusing to stop again, Taj pushed away the sounds of anguish from the old man, ignoring his frail pleas asking for help.

  His vision was a tunnel, nothing mattered around him.

  Not the old man he shoved.

  Not Jonny or his nice girlfriend Karen.

  Not even that little girl--eating her father.

  Why is she doing--no, it doesn't matter.

  Whatever it is that's going on, like with that junkie at the gas station...

  None of it matters.

  I need to find my father.

  "Taj, we need to stick together!" Karen yelled somewhere behind him.

  Using his shoulder, he pushed through a group of onlookers gawking at the bloodied girl, and started down the hallway following the signs for the restrooms. Turning slightly, Taj glanced over to where Jonny and Karen stood in the waiting room. Karen was kneeling by her sister now, still laid out in the seat he had offered them, his seat. And now look at him. Searching for the only person that ought to matter to him, not strangers. Jonny was making his way to the little girl, perhaps to stop her from doing--what she was doing.

  God, nothing made sense.

  This damn long night, one impossible moment after another.

  The junkie.

  His father attacked.

  Those cops unloading on that woman.

  But none of those bullets phased her. She kept on, until the head shot.

  And here...in this waste pool of coughing, moaning, pus reeking desperate people looking for help but finding none. Still they wait, some of them. Nowhere to go, maybe. Unsure of what to do when the system malfunctions. No voices of authority to tell them what to do. If this continued, Taj had little doubt the dead would flourish exponentially. The weak will die and the strong will survive. Like a William Golding nightmare come true.