by Josh Hilden
She watched the monster as it violated the eerily silent version of her. When it had finished with her other self it fell into the pool lost to the oblivion. She then understood the existence of the third, smaller version of herself. It was a creation of her own mind to protect her soul from the horrors that she was to be subjected to.
She was being pulled back to her real body, the one that had continued chanting on the edge of the well the entire time. She was far too weak to resist the pull. She felt diminished by the death of a part of herself. She was relieved to discover as her consciousness reentered her body that she was still intact. She was still chanting, and now that she was returned to her body she understood what she was chanting.
The spell, she still didn’t believe in magic but that was all her mind could think of to call it, was almost complete. She understood that the spiritual rape and murder had been the monster claiming half of her remaining life force. That had been the price for starting the ritual. She now knew that her physical death here in the well was the price for completing the ritual.
She was panicking inside. There was nothing she could do. Her body was still chanting and she knew that when the chanting was done Elliot would lead her willingly to the pool and cast her inside. She screamed inside of her own head, ‘NO, NO, IT WASN’T FAIR GODDAMNIT!!!’ she wept inside.
“My dear, are you still in there?” Elliot whispered into her ear. “It really doesn’t matter. I doubt you were strong enough to survive meeting my master. Ast-Murath has driven much stronger than the likes of you to madness.” He chuckled.
She heard shuffling and moaning behind them and she concentrated with all her might to dart her eyes to the side. She saw a small crowd of dead and rotted corpses. Among them were Larry, Curly, and Moe. The others seemed to be a mixed bag of tourists, fishermen, and sailors. If she had thought about it, she might have realized they were the built up collection of random people over the years that had stepped foot on the island and never left.
“My dear, are you still in there?” Elliot whispered into her ear. “It really doesn’t matter, but I doubt you were strong enough to survive meeting my master. Ast-Murath has driven much stronger than the likes of you to madness.” He chuckled, then slid one hand around the front of her shorts and undid them. The other was thrust up the bottom of her shirt and began roughly twisting her nipples. “I think it would just be criminal to waste this last opportunity, don’t you?” Now he laughed maliciously.
A part of her thought that maybe she even deserved this, she had used sex as a tool and a weapon her entire life, maybe it was darkly appropriate that she was going to die like this. ‘NO!’ she screamed inside her own head. That was bullshit, nobody deserved this, and the world did not deserve what she was helping to unleash upon it. Even if she did hate the world so much that she didn’t care if everyone lived or died. When she was gone there was still Lisa. This could not be allowed to happen to Lisa.
Her mind again tapped that font of knowledge, the existence of which she could not explain. She knew that if the monster, Ast-Murath Elliot had called it, came through that pool and inhabited the earth then every man and beast that had recently died would rise up and kill. The human race wouldn’t stand a chance. But if he could be stopped from coming through, the damage could be minimized. It was too late to stop every human that died from here on out from rising up and walking, but maybe it could be limited to just that. Then they might still have a fighting chance.
She had to regain control.
He talked as he thrust in and out of her.
“I am going to be a god on Earth!” Thrust.
“People will bow down before me!” Thrust.
“In the end humanity will break or it will be meat for my master!” Thrust … Thrust … Thrust!
He never shut up as he worked his way in and out of her and this is what made her laugh. It started as an internal giggle, which grew into a silent chuckle, which then snowballed into a mute roar of laughter.
And then she moved her hand.
It was a small thing and her mouth still continued to incant in that vile inhuman language but she moved her damn hand. She concentrated and moved her arm and the laughter grew in silent intensity. As he was nearing his climax, she knew the signs all too well, the laughter broke through her lips and the incantation stopped.
Elliot didn’t notice her laughter as he shuddered in a violent climax, and when he did notice it was too late. Sandra whipped around in one quick motion scooped up the revolver from Elliot’s feet. He looked at her with that dopey slack jawed expression that had always irritated her. Then she brought the gun up to his forehead and pulled the trigger.
The report was dull in the cavernous space, much quieter than she had expected. Elliot slumped to the ground and his blood began to pool around her feet.
“You son of a bitch!” she yelled and kicked his corpse square in the ribs. “You were the lousiest lay I ever had you limp dick mother fucker!” She kicked his corpse over and over breaking bones and mangling flesh. It felt good to let it all out. Hot wet tears mixed with the screams and the laughter.
“NO!” The wail was distorted and echoed from the depths of the pool, but she recognized it as the voice of Ast-Murath.
She turned toward the pool, kicking her shorts to the side with a grimace. “Better to be nekkid from the waist down than to trip on my own fucking feet.” She said to herself as she braced and waited. She knew this would be over in a moment. A semi solid version of the demon broke the surface of the pool. Sandra knew that with the spell incomplete he would not be able to manifest in this world for long.
“Finish it … finish the ritual … finish it or my minions will devour you and your soul will forever be trapped in flesh that rots and yet still walks.” The creature hissed in her mind. Behind her, Sandra heard the choir of the Dead begin to moan in hunger.
She couldn’t hesitate, if she did it would have her under its thrall--and that would be the end of the human race. Behind her the mob of the Dead began to shuffle toward her. She placed the gun against her head.
“NO … stop!” The creature gargled at her in that hideous language.
A smile was plastered on her face and she could feel the peace of this final decision. She knew she had not been a good person. She had used people, betrayed them, and cheapened herself in the process. This would pay for all of that a thousand times over.
“I love you Lisa.” She said, and pulled the trigger. The last sound that she ever heard was her own laughter. She hoped it would follow her into the next world.
Chapter Two
1
White River Federal Storage Depot and Bio-Research Center:
Near White Harbor, Upper Michigan
October 17, 2012 AD (Day Zero)
11:35pm EST
William “Liam” Harrison was terrified. He wouldn’t have thought it possible but his heart was beating faster than that last night in Saigon. He’d been a newly promoted First Lieutenant and been tasked with leading a team of Rangers through the Northern Quarter of the city. They were looking for people listed to be extricated from the city no matter what. Most of the people listed were friends and relations of the remaining United States Embassy staff.
He had lost seven of the twenty one men under his command in that cluster fuck of a mission. Only one of the eleven people on his list had been located, a thirteen year old prostitute that was the mother of the bastard son of one of the embassy’s high ‘Muckity Mucks’, a Deputy Ambassador to be exact. They’d gotten her and the baby back to the embassy two hours before the last choppers took off. When they’d arrived at the embassy the father of the child had scooped it screaming from its mother’s arms and fled toward the roof of the building.
When the mother had tried to accompany them she’d been stopped by the non-military security forces that’d been all over the embassy destroying files and communications equipment. Liam and his men tried to force the guards to let her through but they were
ordered by the Colonel to stand down. His last sight of the young girl had been when the security men had dragged her kicking and screaming from the room begging for them to give her back her baby.
The sight numbed Liam. Her face and voice still haunted his dreams. He and his men spent those last two hours waiting for room in the escape choppers, convinced that they were going to be left behind to enjoy the tender mercies of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. He’d never been as relieved as when he belted himself into the Huey and the craft took to the air.
He was feeling that way once more.
The elevator seemed to rise slower and slower the closer he got to the surface level. Yet with even more than a dozen floors above the main research labs he thought he could still hear the screaming.
It was all Richards fault, that was what he kept telling himself as his hand gripped the steel head of his cane harder and harder.
Richard Isaacs was supposed to be the Lead Agent on station here at White River this week. His damned appendix had burst and Liam had been forced to cover the gap himself at the last minute. The only reason he’d let them promote him in the first place was so he didn’t have to pull anymore of these piss-ant oversight jobs.
He was 59 years old and had no desire to spend all his time cooped up inside a sealed High Security Bio-Research Center for seven days straight just so the Director of the National Security Agency didn’t feel like he was being politically “Cock Blocked” by the CIA and the Joint Chiefs. God forbid one of these geniuses discovered a genuine piece of valuable scientific information and Liam was not able to relay it to Hadley faster than the representatives of the other ‘Alphabet Soup’ Agencies.
Well, screw the Director and everybody else safely tucked in down in DC, Fort Meade, and Langley. If things went the way Dr. Santos had said they would, the whole world was in a lot of trouble.
2
White River, Sub Level 13
October 17, 2012 AD (Day Zero)
10:45pm EST
“It’s worse than I thought.” Dr. Santos said through the intercom system and from behind a full four inches of bullet proof glass.
“What do you mean Doctor?” Liam Harrison asked the little Hispanic man in the bio-hazard suit. Under normal circumstances he would not have been so formal. He would have simply called the man Javier. They’d become pretty friendly in the three years that Liam had been the Senior Oversight Agent at the Facility. Liam was tired and all he really wanted to do was go back to bed.
He’d been safely asleep in his quarters when one of Santos’s lackeys had knocked on his door and told him that that Doctor needed to see him ASAP. He was less than happy at having his sleep interrupted for what was sure to be another of Javier’s phantom emergencies. The man was infamous for them. He had, after all, just finished a 45 minute briefing with the Director of the NSA, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the President of the United States himself about what was going on here. He’d hoped for a little more time to rest. It would not be the last time that it was denied him in the coming days.
“I mean, Agent Harrison,” Liam noted the use of his formal title--something that Javier would not have normally done either, “That every single person on the face of the earth seems to already be effected by whatever this is. I can’t even tell you for sure that we are actually carrying a virus or anything. Neither myself, nor my colleagues in Atlanta or San Francisco have been able to isolate even a hint of an honest to God infectious agent. For all we know it could be the actual environment of the Earth itself that is doing this. Regardless of the cause, I would guess within the next 24 hours, the geometric progression of this … disease, or virus, or whatever the hell this is … will begin to overwhelm every corner of the globe. Agent Harrison, everyone that dies from here on out will end up like Jeffery over there.”
He gestured toward an individual that was strapped down to a metal autopsy table in the center of the room. He struggled against the straps holding him down. A gag was shoved and taped into his mouth, a gag that had been put in after the damage was done.
“I have also talked to my international colleagues in London, Paris, and Melbourne and they’ve all reached the same conclusions. The recently dead are reanimating and attempting to devour every living creature, human and nonhuman, that they can get into their jaws.” Dr. Santos shuddered. “The men and women in Atlanta are better equipped to handle this line of inquiry than we are. It’s just bad luck that we were the first to figure it out. We are supposed to be researching bio-warfare compounds--not the newly risen Dead damnit.”
Liam felt cold rush through his system as he stared at the thing strapped to the table that’d once been a man. Earlier that morning Jeffery Camden had been one of Dr. Santos’s top Lab Techs. Liam had liked the young man and they’d played cards a few times after hours. Almost four hours ago Jeffery had fallen victim to a cerebral hemorrhage and died before they could get him from the cafeteria to the infirmary. Ten minutes after he’d died Jeffery sat up and proceeded to kill and begin to devour the orderly who’d been taking his body down to cold storage.
The security team on duty saw the attack on the monitors and rushed down to subdue Jeffery. When they arrived in the corridor Jeffery had risen up from the fresh corpse of the orderly and began walking toward the security officers. They would later say, before they succumbed to their injuries and joined Jeffery and the orderly as one of the reanimated dead, that he acted as if he was very drunk as he stumbled toward them.
They drew their sidearms and put six rounds into him with no effect. Then the clearly dead body of the orderly got up and began stumbling toward them as well. They attempted to physically restrain the two and received several nasty bites each before they successfully cuffed and bound their assailants.
Despite their injuries the guards managed to keep their wits about them. They retreated to the end of the corridor closing and sealing the fire door locking the two restrained but thrashing and moaning men inside. Luckily no one else was on duty in that section.
The two guard’s bite wounds began to fester almost immediately and they both died less than an hour later. They both reanimated and tried to attack the scientists studying them ten minutes later. An orderly in the room attacked the two obviously dead guards with a length of stainless steel pipe. At first his strikes did nothing more than knock them down. When he brought the pipe down onto their heads, and caved in their respective skulls, they stayed down for good. The orderly accidently found a way to stop them. This was put to the test when a security guard put a 9mm round into the skull of the first orderly that Camden had killed.
The orderly stayed dead after that.
“What exactly are you trying to tell me doc?” Liam asked, although he knew the answer to the question already. He needed to hear it from another person’s lips before he could believe it.
“Agent Harrison, Liam, I need you to listen clearly and try to understand me because I don’t have much time. From now on every person who dies will get up and attempt to eat any other person they come into contact with. Their bites contain a toxin that will kill anyone they only manage to wound. Those people along with all of the other dead people will then get up and do the same thing over, and over, and over again until they are stopped!” Dr. Santos was holding back a scream as he said the last part.
That was when Liam noticed that the doctor holding his left arm in his right hand. “Javier what happened to your arm?” He asked his friend.
Dr. Santos almost laughed as he held his arm up high for Liam to see the small tear in his bio-hazard suit and the red liquid smeared around it. “I got a little too close to Mr. Camden over there and he was a little bitey.” He actually smiled as he said the last part. Before Liam could respond Dr. Santos drew his .38 Caliber revolver from the holster on the exterior of the bio-hazard suit and put a single round into the skull of the thing that’d been Jeffery Camden.
Dr. Santos looked at him and said, “You need to let them know Li
am, the only way to stop them is to destroy the brain.” He looked down at his arm and then back up at Liam. They both knew the bite was a death sentence. “It has been good knowing you Liam, but right now you need to get out ahead of this because I don’t think that anyone can actually stop it.” He hesitated, looked at the blinking security camera and then continued, “Tell your family to get here Liam. This is a level five facility. If they aren’t safe here, they won’t be safe anywhere.” He then put the revolver against the side of his head and pulled the trigger. His brain mass and a large section of his skull flew across the room and splattered against the far wall. His body dropped to the floor with a muffled thump.
