by Jack Wallen
That, of course, had far too many religious overtones for my liking. Seriously, think about this; man creates a virus that nearly wipes out the human race. Religious zealots would call this God’s next test – a faith check, if you will. From my perspective, no God could be that cruel.
The word cruel brought my mind right back to our captive stranger; his kneecap blown to bits, tied to a chair, and quite obviously out of his comfort zone.
“Hungry?” I nodded the stranger’s way. He nodded. “I’ll untie a hand so you can eat. I should warn you, there are enough guns on enough people in this room that one rash move from you would certainly cause at least one bullet from us to take you down. Are we clear?” The man nodded. I untied one of his hands, placed a bowl of beans in his lap, and handed him a spoon. He immediately began slurping down the rich, brown food.
“You have a name, other than fuck you? I know it’s a stupid question; of course you have a name, but do you mind sharing?”
“Zander, with a Z,” he said through large spoonfuls of beans.
“Well, Zander with a Z, I’ll ask another question for you to answer – what are you doing here?”
Zander nearly dropped his spoon into the bowl on his lap. I had either caught him unaware, or he had just shit himself.
“Same as you, surviving,” Zander said nervously. I didn’t buy it. I could read a lie like a book. It doesn’t take much skill, just a bit of practice watching for the telltale signs: a bead of sweat here, a nervous twitch there. Mr. With a Z had all the tells, subtle as they were.
“Care to try that one again?” I smiled, trying to get him to warm up to me a bit. “Why are you here?”
“I already told you, just trying to stay alive.”
I don’t know, maybe the man was telling the truth, but something about the whole situation struck me as odd.
“Echo, Bravo,” I said, nearly under my breath. A flash of memory snaked its way into my conscience. The words had to mean something. I knew the military code and Echo Bravo was “E.B.” What could that mean?
When the words tripped out of my lips they had an almost imperceptible effect on Zander. I gave the man a seriously hard stare that only a woman could give. The stare said I’m on to you, but did so in a sort of flirtatious way. It was the old push and pull routine. It worked every time.
Only this time the recipient didn’t break. Zander bent, but didn’t break. I was impressed. I had taken down many a man (and a few women, to be fair) with that technique. This man was steel.
Of course, if you add enough heat to steel…
“So what happened to the Obliterator?” Gunther was at my side, appearing silently. Maybe my concentration was focused too much on Zander.
I turned to Gunther and gave him a quizzical look. He was obviously still shaken, and a bit weak. The doctor had him well patched up, and probably on some light pain medication. “At first I thought maybe the two strains of zombies reacted differently to varied oscillations and frequencies, but then I remembered, back in Munich, both screamers and moaners were repelled by the same device, with no modifications. Then I thought maybe the reaction we saw from our captive zombie was not what we should have been looking for.” I stopped my train of thought as another possibility hit me.
“Bethany?” Gunther waved his free arm in front of my face. “Are you okay?”
“There could be another answer. What if the zombies aren’t limited to moaners and screamers?”
“I don’t follow?”
“We assumed the mutation stopped at only two stages of evolution. What if there are more?” Although fascinating, the idea made me want to retch.
“Are you saying your device won’t work?” Gunther wasn’t seeing beyond the immediate danger. With such a small frame of reference he was incapable of understanding the exact scope of what we might possibly be dealing with.
I looked into his eyes, deep inside those bright blue, ringed with white, and lightly tinged with the yellow of age and stress, eyes, and realized I couldn’t I couldn’t possibly level him with the truth that was developing within my brain. What could possibly strip the man of the remaining sanity he held onto. So instead I just smiled and gave him a pat on his good shoulder. I would let this little time bomb tick off in my brain only. I will have to rework the Obliterator into something that can actually defend us from the evils of the world, and we will attempt to rework the new reality back into something livable. That goal, of course, still hinged on us curing Susan. With the mere thought of the little girl in the coma, my shoulders slumped hard and the air was kicked out of my lungs.
I need a break in the worst way.
“I hope you enjoyed that one. I brought that out of a very personal collection; an old favorite, from the era of flannels, ripped jeans, and Seattle, Washington. Alice In Chains’ ‘Nutshell’. Kind of an apropos little tune, don’t ya think? Aren’t we all just facing the path of time now? Isn’t it just a matter of a few ticks of the clock before old Josef Mengele reaches each of us from the grave and rapes what little privacy we have remaining? That is the general consensus right? That we’re all fucked? We had our hopes built up by the Angel of Life in Paris, France, only to have the Angel of Death rattle his bones from the grave over our collective souls. What do you think callers? Should we all roll over and take it like good lovers, or should we fight back? Let me hear your beautiful words my lovelies. Caller…speak!”
“Hey, Zombie Jesus, thanks for taking my call.”
“It’s all about you, my friend. What you got?”
“I live in a small town in Texas. Population’s about two, maybe three hundred. We tried like hell to hide from the zombies, but eventually they got through what little defenses we had. The first attack was on young Davie McRay. He was walking home from the local grocery store, after collecting some food for himself, his mom, and his sister when one of them grabbed him and made a snack out of his head. After Davie, the attacks happened more frequently. I guess the noise started drawing them to us. All the screaming and crying. Well, the town has lost all but five of its citizens. We fought as long and as hard as we could, but the zombies got the best of us. So…so, the rest of us all decided we’d rather take our own lives than have one of those things either make us like them or make us their dinner.”
“Caller, what’s going on?”
“We all drank poison about ten minutes ago. I imagine it won’t be too much longer before we’re all gone. We thought it’d be fitting to have our last words played across the airwaves so everyone would know what happened. We also wanted everyone to know there’s no shame in taking your life in these situations. Better to go this way than to wind up a buffet for the undead.”
Silence.
“We do have a request though.”
“Ummm…yeah, you got it. What can I do?”
“It’s gonna seem horribly cliché, but could you play Ring of Fire by Mr. Johnny Cash? We just wanted our last thoughts on this good Earth to be filled with the sounds of the greatest country singer to ever live, singing a song that could carry us to our maker.”
“For you, Happy Texas, I’d play damn near anything. If Mr. Cash is what you want, Mr. Cash is what you get.
As the strains of Ring of Fire played out, we could hear the sounds of the group from Texas suffering in the throes of whatever poison they’d ingested. I wasn’t sure why the DJ decided to include their dying sounds over the song, but for some deep, ineffable reason it seemed fitting.
I wanted to think their death was a brave ending, instead I found it clichėand cowardly. If instead of fighting for your lives, you wind up caving in and letting the forces of corporate evil take you down, you are doing your lives, and every life around you, a disservice.
But truthfully? What I really wanted to hear was discussion and debate about the Mengele virus, about our situation. The deaths of humans and humanity will continue in the foreground and the background and there is nothing we can do about it but continue on with the work that we are d
oing.
For just a split second I realized how utterly narcissistic that thought was, but I gave in and allowed the thought. It felt good to be a little selfish in this particular moment. Of course there was another, more altruistic reason for this need – I wanted to get everyone’s take on the decrypted file. If there is some hidden meaning buried underneath the structure of those words, it has eluded me so far. I was hoping some other intelligent human had managed to crack the next layer of code.
I went back to the words of Josef Mengele over and over and have yet to find any deeper meaning. I can’t understand why anyone would feel it necessary to encrypt that pedestrian text.
As if by reflex, my hand grabbed the headset and then connected Skype to Zombie Radio.
“Why if it isn’t our savior from Paris. How goes it, lovely lady?” I wasn’t sure if I heard a wit of sarcasm in the DJ’s voice or not. I wouldn’t blame the man for mocking me in front of his audience.
“I can’t find the meaning.” I realized my words were cryptic as soon as they tumbled out of my mouth. “The Mengele file. I have no idea what it means. I need your listeners to read it and help me figure out what Mengele was trying to say.”
“Oooh, I like a good riddle. It reminds me of my old Dungeons and Dragons days. That’s right everyone, I just confessed a deep, dark secret; a hint of what lies deep beneath the surface of your favorite disembodied spirit. I challenge you listeners to take up the gauntlet and help our poor maiden in her quest to solve the greatest mystery of all time. Go, I say! Go! Pore over the words and call back in when you have the answer.”
I realized I couldn’t possibly be listening to Zombie Radio 24/7 so I made sure to ask the listeners to email me their thoughts on the Mengele file.
“And with that, I send you off on your quests with an old tune by Les Claypool, Riddles Are Abound Tonight.”
The odd tune awkwardly twisted out of the speakers, speaking volumes of an odd musical genius few understood. I left the radio playing as soft, white-noise in the background. That lilting, twisting white noise was randomly interrupted by the screeches of our captive zombie. I so want to put that monster out of our misery, but we still need it. I have to figure out why the Obliterator didn’t work and, once a cure is developed our zombie prisoner will be its first guinea pig.
The screaming continued for a moment, but when the noise was punctuated with a gunshot, the proverbial fan blew shit all over the walls.
After the echo of the gunshot faded, a newer, deeper silence filled the void. Something was up. I took off toward Susan’s room just as Gunther was walking out of the zombie’s room, gun in hand.
“Gunther! What did you do?” My voice was cracking with an anger I couldn’t contain.
Gunther ignored my question, opened the door to Susan’s room, and stepped in. I peeked into the zombie’s room and, as I expected, the creature had a hole in its right temple.
In Susan’s room I stood and stared.
“None of us could stand the noise any longer,” Gunther said, matter-of-factly.
“It was the only way,” Sally agreed.
“And I was concerned we’d run out of sedative,” Jean completed.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed and slammed against the door, needing an exit before I opened up and splattered the gang with my angry words.
I heard the door to Susan’s room open and footsteps coming up behind me.
“Bethany, it really was the only way.” Jean’s voice reached for a comfort that might not exist.
When I turned to Jean, I felt the tears pouring down my cheeks. “Jean, how am I going to test the Obliterator now? What are you going to use as a test subject for the cure?”
“We don’t have a cure yet, we don’t know how long it is going to take to develop one, and we need to ration our sedative. Besides, the noise was wearing us all down. You know this is true. None of us have slept well since I had to start rationing our drugs. If we are going to survive we have to use as much rational thought and discretion as possible.”
Jean was right, on every level. I didn’t want to kill the screamer because…I don’t know, I guess it represented, in some demented fashion, the hope for survival. So long as we could keep that monster detained and at our disposal, there was hope for all of us making it through this nightmare alive.
Jean also let me in on his plan to use the zombie’s remains to gain as much knowledge about the beasts as he could. Thankfully, one of us is using their brain.
I thanked Jean by giving him a hug that was more for myself than him. I needed the comfort that only another warm body could provide. He held me tight and I felt a rush of tension washing from my body.
After I pulled away from the embrace I walked back into Susan’s room, over to her bed, and sat down. My hand instinctively reached out and gently grasped hers. Susan’s skin was dry and slightly cool. I fought back the urge to find a moisturizer for her skin. Instead I closed my eyes and concentrated on the connection, feeling almost motherly.
My breathing dug deep into my lungs, like I was about to drift off to sleep. Before I could fall gracefully into slumber, the image of Jacob on the floor of the train station seeped into my conscious thought. He had just suffered another attack and his head was resting on my lap. Fighting back spasms and tears, I had to promise him I wouldn’t let him finally transform, I would end his suffering before it was too late. Along with that promise was the promise to care for Susan. Jacob had become the girl’s family by proxy, a pseudo-father figure in a landscape that had stripped everyone of their loved ones.
When I finally managed to pull myself out of the painful abyss of memories, I realized I was crying uncontrollably. Sally had her arms around me and both Gunther and Jean stood by either side. I felt weak. I wanted to curl up into a little ball and disappear, to travel back to a time when I was a little girl and had the hands of someone who cared protecting me from the evils of the world.
But funny thing…the reality is that I have never really known such a time. When I looked up at the faces around me, I realized I was wrong. That time is now. Even though I have only known these people for mere days or weeks, they are my family now.
We all stood amid a silence we hadn’t enjoyed for what seemed like an eternity. The only sound was Zander’s soft snoring and the beeps from Susan’s monitors. This peace is a thing of wonder, of beauty, and is everything I need at the moment. This silence is the only thing that can clear my brain of the static that has taken up residence, threatening to permanently evict rational thought and intelligence. And in that silence I realized how exhausted I was. I need sleep and I need it now.
Sally must have read my mind because she helped me into the bed beside Susan and then, surprisingly, curled up tightly against me. She must have known; some intuition we women share must have informed her that leaving me without human connection might undo the fine thread of sanity left inside of me.
With the heaviest of eyelids I drift off, hoping that tomorrow will bring clear thought and a well laid plan.
Blog Entry 12/9/2015 10:37 A.M.
Another dream has my subconscious desperately trying to convey a message to a conscious mind incapable of getting the idea.
I was with Jacob at a formal dance. He was in the most handsome tuxedo, with a brilliant red silk bow tie and cummerbund. His hair was a modern tousle and his smile filled me with a desire and comfort I hadn’t known in a long time. I was wearing what could have easily been the most beautiful wedding gown I’ve ever seen. It had a high waist and low bust line and a train trailed behind me like a cloud of the wispiest silk.
Twinkling lights shined down from above, and it seemed like thousands of pairs of eyes were surrounding us as we twirled around the dance floor as graceful as Fred and Ginger ever were.
The dream seemed perfect until, as we continued dancing and twirling, Jacob turned from human to zombie and back again. The music we danced to shifted from the sweetest concerto to a chorus of dogs angrily barking, growling, an
d whining. As we continued on with our undead waltz, Jacob switched back and forth faster and faster until his face was nothing but a continuous blur. The dog music grew ever-more violent as our once-elegant waltz evolved into a near mosh-pit with a horde of moaners and screamers.
When I woke I was gasping for breath and covered in sweat. I immediately grabbed paper and pen, in case the dream couldn’t keep a foothold on my memory. There was something inside of that dream that had some bearing on reality, I was sure of it.
It took a while to regain some semblance of composure. My heart didn’t want to drop back down to a normal speed and the sweat covering my skin was still seeping from my pores.
I was surprised to see that Sally managed to last the entire night in the same bed with me. Usually most can’t seem to make it, especially when my dreams took such a turn. Either my incessant kicking or chattering in my sleep keeps everyone running for the guest room. It’s always been my Achilles heel with relationships. Not that I was concerned about that at the moment.
I wasn’t the only one awake. Jean was hovering over Susan, his back to me.
“Good morning, Jean.” The first words out of my mouth had that old familiar dry-mouth crackle.
“Good morning. It seems you had an eventful night,” Jean half-jokingly (and half-hoping) gestured toward Sally.
Men. I’ll never understand the lesbian fetishism. But there it was, a man losing his wits after seeing two women snuggled up to one another in a bed. Even though only comfort and humanity was shared in the act, the male mind knows no limits when fantasy melds with such moments.
Sally let out a soft moan and turned over to see Jean and I chatting. She instantly caught onto what was being implied and, as a joke, wrapped her arms around me and kissed my neck.
