Apocalypse of the Dead - 02

by Joe McKinney

  “How come they don’t kill each other?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When they attack somebody who’s not infected. I’ve seen how sometimes they kill people—eat them, you know—but most of the time they don’t. I mean, they’re still in good enough shape to get up and chase other people around after they turn. Why is that?”

  Kellogg was still winded. “Nobody really knows why they stop attacking a victim when they do. I don’t think it’s a conscious decision. It can’t be, actually. They don’t have any capacity for conscious thought, so it can’t be that.”

  A dead body was propping the door open, and more and more zombies were coming into the waiting room, attracted by the moaning.

  Kellogg said, “I think the important thing to remember is that these people are basically human-sized viruses after they turn, and a virus is like any living thing, up to a point. Its goal is to reproduce itself, to survive. That’s what the infected are doing. They’re spreading the virus. Propagating the species.”

  “You mean the viruses are the ones telling people how much they can hurt somebody?”

  Kellogg frowned. “Well, no. Not in so many words.”

  “How can viruses do that?” Nate asked.

  Kellogg looked at him. “They can’t, Nate. Not really. It’s more of an expression. A handy way to look at the problem, you know?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Nate said doubtfully. He turned his arm over in his lap and inspected the bite he’d just received.

  To Kellogg, the wound didn’t look too bad. It had already stopped bleeding. In his mind, he reviewed rates of infection, all the various factors that went into motion as soon as a person became infected. By all rights, Nate should have been showing at least a few of the early signs of infection, like labored breathing, sweating, irritability. It was too early still for confusion and unfocused aggression, or for the rank odor of necrotic flesh, but regardless, any normal person would have been showing some signs of the change.

  “You did a brave thing back there,” Kellogg said. “Thanks.”

  Nate grunted. “They can’t hurt me. I’m immune.”

  True, Kellogg thought. “No courage without consequences, I guess.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Nate said.

  “It means you’re only brave if there’s a chance you can actually get killed.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, Nate, I’m not.”

  “Whatever.”

  Kellogg picked at a loose part of the carpet near the edge of the column. He said, “Nate, you mind if I ask you something?”

  Silence.

  “Why did you try to hurt yourself?”

  “I didn’t try to hurt myself. I was trying to fucking kill myself. There’s a difference.”

  Kellogg shrugged. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

  He flicked a bit of the carpet down into the face of one of the zombies. It landed on the man’s bottom lip and hung there amid a spray of white spit.

  “I told you the world needed you, Nate. Didn’t you believe me?”

  “Fuck the world,” Nate said. “The worthless scum-sucking bastards never did shit for me.”

  “So you won’t do shit for them. Is that about the size of it?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “You think that’s fair?”

  For the first time, Nate looked him in the eye. “Who gives a fuck if it’s fair or not? You ask me, they all deserve to die.”

  Kellogg raised an eyebrow at that. “Nate,” he said. “You’re a nihilist, aren’t you?”

  “You’re making fun of me again.”

  Kellogg laughed. “No, Nate, I’m not.”

  “Then stop calling me things that I don’t know what they are.”

  Kellogg paused.

  “You’re right, Nate. That’s not fair.” He straightened himself up and turned as much as he could to face Nate. He said, “A nihilist is a person who believes in nothing. I mean nothing. He believes in nothing the way other men believe in liberty or God. They don’t see any reason to be loyal to anyone or anything because none of it matters. There’s no point to anything we do. In fact, a true nihilist has one guiding notion, and that is to destroy, to make all things nothing.”

  Nate rubbed his arm. “I don’t want to destroy anything.”

  “Yes, Nate, you do. You want to destroy the one thing in this world that has any value. You want to destroy yourself.”

  Nate seemed to consider that. Then he said, “I told you. I don’t owe anybody shit.”

  “Okay, I’ll grant you that. But have you stopped to think why that’s true?”

  “Why what’s true? Stop trying to confuse me.”

  “Nate, I’m not—Look, I’m not trying to make fun of you, Nate. I see you struggling with this, and I want to help.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I get it, Nate. I understand where the hatred of the world comes from. I used to work in a hospital. I’ve seen the disgusting things people do to each other. I get it, Nate. I know the world is a mean and nasty place filled with people who don’t deserve to go on living another minute. I understand where the impulse to nihilism comes from. But the thing is, Nate, I just don’t buy it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, some people have God to fall back on. They say that nihilism is indefensible because ultimately there is God behind it all to give life meaning.”

  “I don’t believe in God.”

  “No, me neither.”

  From somewhere below them, the sound of gunfire was increasing. They could hear shouting, somebody giving orders.

  “Sounds like they’ve almost got to us,” Kellogg said. “Hopefully, we won’t be up here much longer.”

  Nate was silent for a long moment. Kellogg sensed that he was turning thoughts over in his head, questions that suddenly demanded answers.

  “So why don’t you buy it then?” Nate said. “If you don’t believe in God, why bother? Why don’t you just kill yourself?”

  “You’re not the first person to ask that, Nate. About seventy years ago, a man named Albert Camus asked the same question. He said that there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. He said that life itself was—”

  “I don’t care what he said. I want to know what you think. Why don’t you kill yourself?”

  Kellogg sighed. “I don’t think there has to be a reason, Nate. Not a good one, anyway. We are put into this hostile, alien world as isolated individuals. We can learn to like other people, even love them, but we can’t ever truly know them, and so we remain isolated. We’re not allowed to know why life has meaning, not for sure anyway, and yet we feel compelled to create some sort of answer. It’s an absurd downward spiral of impossible things, and yet it’s our lives.”

  “So what does that mean?” Nate asked. “Are you saying that a world based on bad reasons is enough?”

  Kellogg thought about that. “Yeah, I guess I am. To me, there doesn’t have to be a right answer. The questioning, the searching for an answer is enough in and of itself. I find that liberating.”

  “Like…running into daylight?”

  “You lost me, Nate. I’m not sure what that means.”

  “You know, like, running into daylight. When the whole world goes white. It’s like it goes on forever. It doesn’t matter how fast or how hard you run. The world goes on forever.”

  “Okay,” Kellogg said. He wasn’t following Nate’s reasoning, but he saw that Nate was onto something, in his own head at least, and that had been the point he was trying to get across in the first place, that we find meaning in our personal struggles to understand.

  Kellogg picked at the scrubs stuck to his thighs. He was sweating fiercely, and feeling a little dehydrated.

  He said, “God, it’s hot. Are you hot?”

  Nate shrugged. “I’m okay.”

  “Serious
ly? You’re not hot?”

  “I’m okay.”

  That stopped Kellogg. He looked at Nate and realized that was true. In all the tests they’d run on him, the only thing that stood out at all was his temperature. Always low. They’d injected him with both live and dead necrosis filovirus doses, and Nate’s body had never raised its core temperature to infection-fighting levels. That got Kellogg thinking. Fever was the body’s way of fighting infection. But what if that reaction was what the necrosis filovirus thrived on? What would happen to a body that didn’t give the virus what it wanted, like Nate’s?

  There was gunfire out in the hallway. Somebody was barking orders, calling out if anybody was alive down here.

  “In here,” Kellogg shouted.

  Soldiers burst through the door. The zombies clustered around the column turned and stumbled for the soldiers advancing across the floor.

  It was over in seconds.

  Then a security forces lieutenant was standing at the base of the column, surrounded by dead bodies.

  He said, “Major, you guys okay up there?”

  “Yep, we’re good.” Kellogg and Nate traded smiles.

  CHAPTER 52

  Dinner was barbecued chicken and creamed corn and green beans, all dishes Kyra had loved growing up. But now the food tasted like ash in her mouth. Nothing had been right for the last two days, not since Colin had gotten so angry with her. Even eating was a chore.

  She put her fork down. She felt so confused, so irritable. Nothing made sense. She’d put so much trust in Colin and look what it had got her. She was feeling sorry for herself and lying to everyone else around her. No, I’m okay. No, no one hit me. I fell down the stairs. It happens to blind people all the time. Jesus, had it really come to this?

  She remembered a girl she’d known in her real-world-skills class, blind like her, who was something of a wonder to the other girls because she dated a sighted boy, went out on real dates. The girl told Kyra one day how she’d made out with the boy on her parent’s couch, letting him take off her shirt, bra, and jeans, but stopping him at her panties. The boy hadn’t stopped, though. He got her panties off and stuck two fingers inside her. But the girl refused to call it rape. She said it was her fault, that she’d been wrong to lead the guy on like that. Kyra had gotten so disgusted at the girl’s self-deception that she refused to talk to her ever again. And at that moment, she’d promised herself she would live without her sight, but never without her self-respect, not like that girl. That really was blind.

  And yet, here she was, dodging a boyfriend who had beaten her up. She was running scared instead of taking back her self-respect and doing something about it. Was she any different? She hadn’t told anybody. Well, nobody except Billy, of course, and look what that had gotten her. She hadn’t done anything about it. Instead, she ate when the pavilion was empty. She told them she was too sick to work. She’d started wearing sunglasses when she had to appear in public. Anything to avoid the truth.

  But she had no idea what else to do. After what she’d heard the other day behind the office, she couldn’t even go to Jasper.

  Why didn’t anything make sense?

  She heard Colin’s voice behind her and stiffened.

  “Where?” he asked. His voice sounded strained, urgent.

  A voice she didn’t recognize said, “I don’t know. I saw her go that way.”

  Kyra got up from the table and felt her way to the main aisle that divided the rows of picnic tables. From there, she walked as fast as she could toward the back of the pavilion. She stumbled on the first step, but didn’t fall. The lawn sloped downward toward the playground. She had a vague mental map of it, but she didn’t know this part of the camp very well, and the uncertainty of every step terrified her.

  “Please,” she said, whimpering with every step.

  “Kyra!”

  “No. Oh, God, no!” For the first time in her adult life, she broke into a run.

  The voice behind her turned from a shout to an angry hiss. “Kyra, Goddamn it. Stop!”

  Her right foot collided painfully with a wooden log and she pitched forward into playground gravel. She threw her hands out reflexively and clutched fistfuls of small, rounded pebbles. Her foot was pulsing with pain, but she didn’t stop moving.

  “Kyra, get back here.”

  She rolled over onto her back and couldn’t stop gasping.

  “Colin, no. Please.” She heard his footsteps coming closer. “Please, Colin. Leave me alone.”

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  She braced for the worst. In her mind, she had an image of him grabbing her hair and dragging her across the lawn. She thought, He’s gonna hurt me. Oh, Jesus, he’s gonna kill me.

  Her body tensed in anticipation of the worst.

  The blood was roaring in Colin’s head. His peripheral vision disappeared. The air around Kyra was sizzling, diffuse, like it was shot through with heat shimmers. There was only Kyra on her back, hands up in the air like she had a chance in hell of stopping this, her chest heaving.

  The little bitch deserved a beating for putting him through this. Didn’t she know how good he could make things for her? Damn it, all he asked in return was a little respect.

  “Colin, please,” she said.

  But her whining only served to send him deeper into his rage. “Get up,” he said.

  “Colin, no.”

  “I said get up. Now. Get your ass up.”

  His whole body was trembling with rage. He reached for her, but just as he was about to put his hands on her, he felt a hammer blow to the back of his knees that dropped him onto his ass.

  He looked up and saw Billy Kline staring down at him.

  “What in the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Colin said.

  Billy ignored him. “Kyra, you okay?”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Colin said. “This isn’t any of your business, asshole.”

  “Dude, you cuss a lot, man. You should watch your mouth.”

  Colin jumped to his feet. His heart was beating like a wild bird in a cage. The skin of his face was tingling. There was no fear. There was only a red veil that had dropped over his vision and a terrible urge to tear Billy Kline’s eyes from the sockets. He ran at Billy and pushed him.

  Billy grabbed his hands and twisted, and the next thing Colin knew, he was on his ass again.

  “Motherfucker,” he said.

  “Better stay down.”

  Colin rushed him again. He swung wildly and the punch missed. Billy just disappeared, only to pop up far enough to Colin’s right that he couldn’t get turned around in time. Billy pumped his left twice to Colin’s face, knocking him backward and off balance. His legs felt like sand beneath him and the world went purple as he fell to the ground.

  When he looked up, Billy was standing over Kyra, helping her to her feet.

  Colin tried to stand and couldn’t.

  “Goddamn it,” he yelled. “Motherfucker.”

  Billy glanced back at him, but didn’t say anything. He put his arm around Kyra and the two of them walked away.

  “No,” Colin shouted. “No!”

  But there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t make his legs work, and the girl was gone. Fucking little bitch, he thought, sagging to the ground. You can’t do this to me.

  CHAPTER 53

  Colin went back to his bunk in dormitory number two and put his head down gently on the pillow. There was a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away. His jaw and his knees and tailbone were all sore, but it was his pride that hurt the most. He let his gaze wander around the large, open barracks. Sunlight slanted in through the windows on the north wall, touching the white sheets on the empty beds around him, lending the room a sepulchral aspect. How could this have happened to him? He looked back over the events of the last few months and it was a complete mystery to him. He’d been on the verge of inheriting one of the largest fortunes in America. Now, he’d lost one of his oldest friends and had been reduced to
fighting a two-bit Florida peckerwood over a damn blind girl. It just didn’t seem possible that he could have fallen so far.

  He rolled over and slept fitfully for the remainder of the day. When he awoke, the sky was plum-colored and there was a faint odor of wood smoke in the air from the barbecue pits down in the common area around the pavilion.

  His anger had subsided a little, but it still grated on his nerves the way he’d been outplayed and abused by Billy Kline. The barrack’s wooden floors were cold, and so he slipped on his shoes before he went to the bathroom at the end of the hall to wash his face. There were bruises at the corner of his mouth and on the point of his cheek and around his right eye. He tried to think of a way to hide the injuries but knew it was pointless. Even an idiot would be able to tell that he’d had his ass handed to him in a fistfight.

  He stared at his reflection in the mirror and a thought that had been going around in his head since he lay down came back to him.

  Michael Barnes. He was the solution to this.

  In very little time at all, the man had become one of Jasper Sewell’s favorites, and though nothing was ever said officially in front of the whole Grasslands community, it was generally acknowledged that Michael Barnes was the head of internal security at the compound. Ever since the morning that the infected had broken through the main gate, he’d had Jasper’s ear. If there was some way, through Barnes, to heap Jasper’s asperity onto Billy Kline, then he could remove his rival without lifting a finger. It would be the best kind of revenge.

  Yes, indeed, the best kind.

  Later that night, after most of the compound had retired indoors to get out of the cold, Colin knocked softly on Michael Barnes’s office door and poked his head inside.

  Barnes sat behind his desk, reading some kind of report and making notes.

  Colin said, “Uh, excuse me—” He was uncertain how to address Barnes, and so he added, “Sir?”

  Barnes didn’t look up.