“You’re lying. What happened to the others?” I had to know, and without getting taken myself, I figured this was the best chance I had.
Joseph took a moment before raising his face. Behind the bruises, I saw tears flooding in the corners of his eyes.
“I don’t know the details, but the ones who are taken are beaten like me. The women are raped and used as vessels for the infertile elected or play toys for the guards. Some of them don’t make it and are dispatched as soon as they hit the floor. I don’t know what went wrong.”
“They came to check my ticket but decided they didn’t want to see it as soon as I pulled out my wallet. What was that about? Why did I get out? And how did you escape?”
“I gave you my wallet and my ticket. They must have seen the wallet and known it was an authentic ticket. That’s my guess.” Joseph touched his swollen face. “I don’t know why they let me go. I didn’t escape.”
“Oh, great. They let you go, and you led them to me.” I stood and reached for Joseph. I was going to toss him out the door.
“Wait,” he said, throwing his hands up to block his face. “I have a plan. We can end this.”
I didn’t want to hear his plan. I’d lost everyone I’d ever cared for before the infection started. After the infection, I’d had my job. Now, starving to death and jobless was my future. Other than escaping into the wastelands and becoming one of the infected, I had no plan for myself. Joseph took my silence as a sign to continue.
Once he started to talk, I sat down and listened.
“What about the public danger?” I asked when he’d finished his outline.
“The gates are sturdy. They think it’s only to keep things out, but the gates will be as effective to keep things inside. And the place you’ll be taken will keep you away from the innocents. ”
“And how will the people get the food?”
“The pantries are locked tighter than the front gates. However, the entrance to them is outside the gates. They carry food in through a tunnel. Once that gate and the tunnel are secured, the people can eat again.”
“So you have all this mapped out. You’ll keep the innocents safe, I’ll have a ticket, and we can end this?”
“Yes, that’s the plan.”
* * *
I stood outside the gate of the assembly hall. My entire arm throbbed with the infection. I smiled at the guard as he took my ticket, handed it back to me, and waved me through the gate. Changing into the suit I’d used before, I shuffled out of the marble room and into a dark alleyway just in time to vomit green bile that smelled like I was rotting from the inside out. My shoulders were starting to burn with an ache I couldn’t have imagined. It was worse than losing my finger.
I made my way into the banquet room. The food smelled rancid, but I figured that the infection was making everything smell foul. A man asked for my ticket. I pulled out the second wallet I’d brought and showed him the obvious fake. It was creased and water stained and written with a dull crayon.
“Come with me, sir,” the man whispered with a smile.
His rough grip felt like a massage on my aching muscles. He dragged me through the door in the back. I was afraid to open my mouth to protest in case I hadn’t tossed all my cookies earlier.
The door slammed shut behind me, and I found myself in a darkened room lined with doors. Four of them opened. Six people in stocking caps stepped into the room. I was grabbed again and led through a fifth door. According to Joseph, I was being led deeper into the building to keep the revelers from being disturbed.
With each step, I could feel myself losing consciousness. My joints were cracking, and my fever was high. The light cake make-up I’d applied kept my flushed cheeks from being noticed. I knew the charade would be over when I started to shake. I just hoped I’d be able to finish the job.
After traveling through the third door, I was surrounded by people in gowns and jewels, tuxes and top hats. This was where Joseph had said the target would be. He’d said I’d know where to start when the time came because of all the glamour. And he’d said I’d know whom to start with by his jeweled cane.
Something wasn’t right. The infection was progressing as I’d expected, but I hadn’t been hit or accosted other that being manhandled through the doors. Everyone was smiling. No anger or concern lingered on anyone’s face.
“Welcome. We hear you have a custom ticket,” a woman in a jeweled gown said. “You were selected to hear the truth.”
“What do you mean the truth?” I growled. I could feel the first tremors in my toes.
“You’re here to meet someone, I suspect?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice to sound human. My arms had started to shake.
“I can see you’re excited, would you like to sit?”
The woman snapped her fingers and a folding chair was set behind me as I collapsed.
Another woman flung her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek.
“Stephen, you’re finally here,” Angela said. “They said they’d come get you. I’m glad they did. It’s not what you think.”
I tried to push Angela away from me, but the transformation was almost complete. I knew that once I rattled my last real breath, I’d be hungry.
“Here he is.” The jeweled woman returned and smiled down at me. “I’d like you to meet my husband, Doctor Harvey Lewis. He’s found a cure for the infection.”
I saw him hang his jeweled cane over his left arm as he reached for my hand to shake. I exhaled a final time and lunged for his throat to begin my rampage.
* * *
Obituary
Doctor Harvey Lewis, 42, was killed in the assembly hall on Wednesday, October 14th. No viewing has been planned, as the body is missing. Dr. Lewis was said to have found a cure for the rotting infection that now plagues him. However, his notes were not well written and each attempt to repeat his trials has failed. He often attended lavish dinners given by the elected to celebrate and welcome back the infected citizens he had cured. His wife and children perished with him in the same disaster. He is survived by his brother Joseph. In lieu of flowers, donations to the food bank are requested.
As I Watch Her Walk Away
By Dave Minyard
As I watch her walk away, I can’t help wonder how this would have turned out, had I never met her. It started about four hours ago. Well, we started three years ago, but this “problem” started at about 8 a.m.
It began like a normal day; we both woke up and started our regular routine, going separate routes through the apartment. I stumbled towards the bathroom to begin my process of waking up. She floats toward the kitchen to begin helping my process of waking up. She has always been a morning person. I, being on the exact opposite end of the spectrum, am a night owl.
I will always remember our first morning together, after a long evening of drinking and an even longer night of making love, she bounced out of bed without a stitch of clothes on, threw open the blinds, and sung the theme to Mister Rogers. Really, she did. As I crawled further under the blankets like a scared turtle, she looked over at me from the corner of her eye, and with the most devilish grin said, “Awwww, Do you need some coffee, neighbor?” We both knew it was something special, so when I asked her to marry me less than two months later, it was no surprise that she said yes.
On this particular morning, neither one of us turned on the TV. Nothing was odd about it at the time, but now, after all that’s happened, it seems like a cosmic joke.
We had coffee and chatted about nothing important. I told her about something funny I saw on TV the previous night, she told me about something that so- and-so said on Facebook. We sat and had our breakfast and my two cups of coffee. Then we kissed and went about our separate daily routes through the day. I manage a Starbucks, she volunteers down at the senior center. Like I said, opposite ends of the spectrum.
Our apartment is about a five minute drive from my job, and about fifteen from hers. On a few occasions, I have walked the twe
nty minutes to work, but it was rare. For some reason, today was one of those occasions. Again with the cosmic joke.
When I arrived at the store, one of my employees, Brian Buckley, or Buck as I called him, was waiting outside, smoking a cigarette.
“Decided to walk today, huh?” he asked sarcastically as he flicked his butt in the parking lot. I didn’t mind. I knew his first duty is to clean the lot.
“Yeah, I could use the exercise I guess,” I replied.
As I unlocked the doors, Brain asked, “What do you think about that shit in L.A., buncha crazy ass horror movie fans, ya think?”
I wasn’t really listening, but felt obliged to ask what he meant.
“Dude, did you not watch TV at all this morning?”
As I went about opening the shop, I started getting a little curious about what he was talking about, but before I could tell him to turn on the big screen TV, he already had the remote in his hand.
“What’s going on in L.A.?” I asked as the TV flipped on showing the local news station with ‘Breaking News’ plastered across the bottom of the screen.
“DUDE, are you kidding me? Just watch.”
The news was showing a view of what could have been Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. People were running all over the street and fighting. There were columns of tear gas smoke rising up into the sky. My first two thoughts were: how big was the earthquake, and which team lost the game? As the entire nation knows, we Californians hate it when one of our teams lose…or win for that matter. The Lakers winning the last championship is a perfect example of that. The celebrating fans did almost two million dollars worth of damage. And we wonder why people don’t like Californians.
“Turn it up, Brian.” One of the only times I ever used his first name.
The solemn looking news anchor was a woman I recognized, but not by name.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what you are seeing is graphic and disturbing, please; if you have small children, take them out of the room.
“Adam Thomas is live in the news copter. Adam, what do you see out there?”
“Well,” said the metallic sounding voice. “Pandemonium, Mia. It is pure pandemonium down there. It appears the SWAT team that was called in has been decimated by the rioters.” He sounded shocked. “I mean literally ripped apart. I have never seen anything like it. I need a minute here, Mia, back to you at the studio.”
The screen cuts back to an alarmed Mia Jaye as she was looking through her notes. As visually shaken as she was, she took a deep breath and was back in news anchor mode again.
“Well, for those of you just tuning in, these are the events as we know it. It appears that around three this morning, there was a disturbance in several spots in the Los Angeles and Hollywood area. The disturbances ranged from fights and riots in parking lots to an entire hospital being overrun by assailants. The consensus is that it is some kind of biological terrorist attack, but that has yet to be confirmed. Wait one moment…”
“Holy shit, Buck. Are you kidding me?” I asked, hoping that at any moment some guy was gonna pop out and say Are you scared? You shouldn’t be, you’re on Scare Tactics.
“I know, man. I’m tellin’ you, it’s like a zombie apocalypse or something. This morning they showed people actually biting other people, but they said it was just a group of crazy movie fans, I told Sarah it was probably those flash mob weirdo’s doing some undead kinda theme.”
Back up on the screen, the anchor was adjusting her ear piece and started speaking again. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a survivor on the line with us…Erin, are you still with us?”
A very hushed and whispering voice came over the air waves. “Yes, I’m here.”
“Erin, can you tell us your full name and where you are?”
“My name is Erin Tollefsen, and I am at Cedars-Sinai hospital in L.A. I’m hiding under a bed in a storage closet on the third floor; you need to send some help”
“We alerted the authorities, Erin, and they are doing everything they can to get to you. Can you tell us what happened there?”
During all this, the split screen on the TV has been showing different camera views of the riots. There was fighting and police cars and what I thought looked like regular, stock riot footage. Then, for a second, I saw an image on the screen. If you were not looking directly at it, you would have missed it. It couldn’t have been real. It was in the background of a police fire-fight; there was a man in a business suit holding what looked like a human arm.
After taking a deep breath, Erin starts telling a story that had millions of people glued to their televisions.
“I was walking by the entrance to the hospital when I heard a loud crash. I looked around and saw there had been a car accident on the corner. It didn’t look very bad, but the driver of one of the cars seemed to be having some kind of seizure, so I ran into the hospital and started yelling for a doctor. Then I noticed that nobody was listening, and everyone was running around. I tried to grab a nurse and when she turned around….her…oh, my God…what’s going on out there?” Erin started sobbing, and Mia, ever the professional, started the media ritual of coaxing the story out.
“Erin, listen to me. People need to know what’s going on; right now you are the only way that’s going to happen. Please tell us what’s happening.”
Erin slowly steadied her voice and said with a sigh, “I’m sorry, but there are people screaming and moaning out there. I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m really scared”
She took another deep breath, and with a still shaky voice, started the story again:
“The nurse was covered in blood. But, it was HER blood…A big piece of skin was missing from her cheek. She just looked at me all wild-eyed…then she ran off, and I froze. I started really looking around and realized that people weren’t just running around…they were running from people. There was a guy who was just standing there staring at the wall. People were running and stumbling all around him…and he just stood there! So I turned around to run away—oh God, why did I wait?
“People began flooding into the hospital. They were falling over each other and then climbing over the ones who fell. So I just ran. I ran towards the stairwell and up the stairs. When I got to the second floor, I could see through the little window on the door. There was blood everywhere. Then I saw a nurse…and at first I thought she was giving this guy CPR…but she was eating him…she was taking bites of his face.”
Through all of this, Erin had been very quiet and borderline whispering. So when her voice came back and she spoke in a regular voice, I actually jumped. “Oh shit…they’re coming in!” At this point, Erin fell apart.
All at once, there was banging and moaning and the most godawful screeching. Erin started screaming as the door that, just seconds ago was keeping her safe, collapse with a crash. As soon as her screams of fear turned into screams of pain, the audio techs turned down her voice.
During Erin’s story, Mia had been trying to reassure her. But during the final moments, she had pulled her earpiece out and was holding her hands over her ears. “No, no, no, no…” was all she was managing to get out.
I realized that I had forgotten I was standing there with Brian and looked over at him.
“Buck, please tell me, is this real life? I mean, Orson Wells did this once. He had the entire nation going crazy. Please, tell me it’s a gimmick for the new Romero movie or something.”
I knew the answer before he said it.
“Sorry, compadre, this is the real deal. I’ve seen enough movies and done enough special effects to know the difference between latex and corn syrup and what we just saw on there.”
Then it all came to me, and I had an idea. “Hey, you’re the horror movie expert here, right? What do we need to do now? I mean, we’re about seventy miles from L.A. Will it even make it this far?”
The look he gave me said it all.
“Listen, man, and listen good. It will get here. And it will get here fast. There is not going to be a s
afe place to go to. You can’t rely on the cops, and you sure as shit can’t depend on the government to help. I guarantee you they are almost to their “safe zone” hidden in that goddamn mountain. You need to get with a group of people and get yourself armed. Then find a place to hold your ground. I promise you, bro, the world as you know it is over, and there is not a damn thing you or anybody else can do about it. Here’s my cell, call me in about thirty minutes and we’ll touch base. I need to get Sarah and start getting ready to kick some goddamn undead ass.”
All at once I felt like a complete douche. “Oh shit, Buck…I gotta get Carly.”
“Yeah, and get as many canned goods and any weapons you can round up. Call me in a half hour, man. I’m serious.”
“I will. Thirty minutes, got it.” Even as I said those words, I was following him out the door.
As I turned around to lock the door, I guess Mia was done with her part in all of this. I heard the man’s voice on the TV say something that I thought might be important. I would only realize how important later on.
When Carly answered the phone, I could tell right away that she knew something was up. Only, she didn’t know any of what was happening.
“Hey, baby, everything okay?” she asked.
“No, it’s really not, sweetie.” I tried to figure out a way to do this and have the desired effect. “Look, you need to get home now. I don’t have time to explain, so you need to trust me on this, okay?”
“Darren, what’s going on?” she asked in a way that made it really hard to answer.
“I don’t have time to tell you now, but this is not a joke, baby. You need to get your stuff and drive home as fast as you can. Don’t stop for anybody…don’t talk to anybody, just go home. I will be there in about twenty minutes. Do not, under any circumstances, open the door for anyone but me.”
“Okay, now you are freaking me out. What happened?” God, she was stubborn
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