Zombie Threat: The World’s Next Plague
Spread of the Infection
Published by Colten Steele - [email protected]
Copyright 2014 Colten Steele
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Before you read…
This is the third short story in my Zombie series. While it is fine to read this book first, I would recommend reading Zombie Threat: The Undead Arise and Undead Genesis: Zombie before delving into this one. Both are available at most online bookstores.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Epilogue
Afterward
Author Notes
~ Introduction ~
Throughout my career as a journalist with the Archive Channel I have had the opportunity to travel to many remote and dangerous places. I remember almost all of these expeditions fondly, but what I saw in the deep rainforests of the Amazon will intrigue and disturb me for the rest of my life.
Those of you as old as I am will remember the mysterious disappearance almost two decades ago of survivalist Rock Santana, host of the highly rated show New Worlds, along with his entire crew. They disappeared in a stretch of rainforest approximately the size of the United States and all attempts to find or communicate with them at that time failed. Years of searching for the crew produced no results and the attempt to discover their fate ended over fifteen years ago.
Many people today have forgotten Rock’s disappearance, but those of us who worked with him at the Archive Channel never will. This is partly due to the large portrait in the Archive Channel’s foyer, but mostly due to his enigmatic personality. Rock could be a complete pain in the neck, but nobody was more entertaining. His charismatic storytelling was legendary and people could not get enough of him.
Rock and the members of his crew were supremely gifted to survive in any environment. They had been everywhere and seen everything. Had you locked them in an empty bank vault naked they would have been cooking a snared rabbit over a campfire within an hour. We never gave up hope of them one day just walking out of the forest and calling the network.
When I pitched the idea to the network of taking another camera crew to search for the missing men, they were understandably reluctant. It seemed suicidal to the higher-ups to send any more journalists into a place dangerous enough to take Rock. I had to assure them we would be travelling with the latest equipment, including two items they did not have way back then: a handheld GPS and a remote beacon so I could be easily located.
I went in with the best team and local guides available. We had enough weaponry to take out half the remaining native population if necessary. Now that we are back, I am thankful to tell you we never needed the weapons. We walked out unscathed about four months after we walked in.
You may have seen the resulting show the Archive Channel broadcast after we returned. If not, I can summarize it for you. The show details how we found no skeletons or physical proof of what actually happened to the crew, but unbelievably, after weeks of searching blindly, we stumbled upon their equipment… literally. A guide we called Poppo tripped on a pack frame buried in the brush. Many critics blamed the network for faking this stunt for ratings, but I was there and it happened. Anything made of cloth had rotted from the hot and humid environment, but some of the hardier equipment, including items such as guns and canteens, were still intact.
If you did see the show, you probably also know of the recovery of a camera and audio cassette tape belonging to Manon Morales, the cameraman on the crew. Some of the more mundane recovered footage from the video camera was used for the television special and made it a spectacular success. What you have never seen is the rest of the unbelievable video Rock’s team recorded.
After a few minutes of listening to the audio cassette, the ribbon broke. I was not able to ever hear much of what was recorded there, but I included what I did hear in the story that follows. However, the video camera, after being charged with our portable battery packs, remarkably still functioned. The tape inside had been protected from the elements and was still intact with all of its footage.
When we returned with the camera and showed the network executives the tape, they quickly confiscated it. As far as I know it is still there in Archive’s archives somewhere, but I doubt anyone will ever see it again. When I insisted they show the world what was on the tape, I was summarily dismissed and have had trouble finding a job with any of the other networks. My career as a journalist may be finished, but I now have the time to share the truth concerning my discoveries with the world.
What follows is the fantastic adventure Rock and the rest of his crew experienced put together from the footage I saw on those missing tapes. From the video I was not able to tell every detail, such as how the infection you will read about was transferred to the first guide. These missing pieces are filled in using educated guesses based on my experiences during the search for answers in Brazil. Even so, much of the unbelievable account you are about to read is true.
~ Prologue ~
The howler monkey watched the men walk into the clearing below. Like many young male howlers, he had instinctively left his mother’s troop to lead a solitary life when reaching sexual maturity. He had been searching for another troop, where he planned to test his youthful strength against the group’s dominant male in hopes of securing his own females.
Weeks ago, the clearing had drawn him in with its tempting fruits and leaves. These delicacies had been picked clean in many other areas of the jungle by the birds and other monkeys, but here there was no other competition. He warily watched the odd creatures lying on the ground in the clearing while he ate enthusiastically, but they seemed to pose no threat.
In his experience, the large hairy jungle spiders had never been a problem. The two species ignored and avoided each other when possible; instinctively knowing an encounter could be deadly for both. Unaware of the aggressive nature of the spiders in this one small section of the jungle, he went on about his business as usual. The monkey was startled when, just after lying down in the bed he had built high in a tree, he felt something large land on his back, and then experienced an intense sting of fangs sinking into his shoulder.
The primate reached up past his neck and grabbed the spider, flinging it away from him. He watched mesmerized as the spider spun away from him through the canopy with legs spread wide.
He felt the poison rapidly spread through his body, and lay shaking uncontrollably in the bed of leaves and branches before blackness overwhelmed him.
In the morning he woke, weak and exhausted. He would never be able to determine what had changed. He had lost all memories of his life to this point, though he still maintained his instincts. He was stronger and more aggressive. He had lost the desire for food and drink.
He had also acquired a single-minded hatred for the spiders. He could sense them, even if he could not see them. Their presence beckoned him. No longer concerned with the agony of their sting, the howler went out of his way
to attack and dismember the abhorrent little creatures. It did not bring any pleasure, he was past feeling emotions now, but instead filled an instinctive need.
The men below scared and enticed him. He ached to destroy, but far up in the trees, the need was weakened by distance. The more time they spent in his vicinity, though, the worse his needs became. His insatiable desire to consume the life within them wrestled continuously with generations of instinct, which pushed him to keep clear of the large upright creatures in the clearing below. Often the men would make loud startling noises, causing the howler monkey to flee temporarily… but he always came back a little more anxious then before.
Over the days that followed he gathered the courage to sneak closer; hiding in a low branch just out of sight. He could faintly hear the life-giving blood pulsing through their veins. There he waited… undecided.
~ Chapter I ~
Manon had never seen anything like it in his years as a cameraman… not in his most terrifying nightmares, fabricated from near fatal encounters with the most savage men and beasts the world had to offer, had he imagined anything this disturbing. Everywhere he pointed the camera another desiccated figure lay moaning and feebly reaching towards the nearest member of the crew.
Ricardo “Rock” Santana yelled from the other side of the clearing, “Hey… this way.”
Manon stopped recording, carefully avoiding any contact with the suffering beings scattered haphazardly across the clearing, and headed over towards Rock. He noticed the clearing was eerily quiet. Occasional echoing calls from a howler monkey could be heard in the nearby trees, but otherwise the area was silent. There were no birds singing or insects chirping.
The international television star combined the suave good looks of his Hispanic parents with the body of an Olympic athlete sculpted during his years with the Fuerzas Especiales, the Mexican Navy’s Special Forces. Rock had supreme confidence, an unerring instinct for survival and a smooth baritone voice. If he had a flaw, it was his overwhelming love for himself, which he personally considered his greatest asset.
He was kneeling near two figures barely recognizable as human. A large spider was perched on the lower leg of one of the bodies and arched upwards as Rock came close.
“Start recording,” Rock instructed Manon. “Zoom in on me until I motion towards the bodies.”
Manon had been part of Rock’s crew for the previous two full seasons of the show. He knew what to do, but he also knew Rock was the star and expected immediate deference, so he made no reply to Rock’s unnecessary filming instructions. Looking into the camera with his dramatic dark brown eyes and an expression of grave concern, Rock started speaking.
“I am deep in the rainforest of Brazil. I have been here for weeks exploring areas film crews have never before recorded. I have discovered new species of insects and plants the civilized world has never documented… but I was not expecting to find anything like this.”
Manon panned back to capture the disquieting scene as Rock gestured with a magician’s flourish.
The two nearest bodies were of an adult and preadolescent child. It was impossible to distinguish the sex of either without looking under the simple ragged loincloths, which still offered a small shred of modesty. The bodies lay on the ground, the child across the adult’s chest. Their once dark olive skin was now cracked and dark gray, and stretched over the bones of a body which appeared to have consumed itself from the inside. The arms of both figures weakly reached towards Rock with grasping hands. The heads extended towards him and the jaws opened and closed slowly in a seemingly desperate attempt to reach the man. Rock squatted just out of reach.
“I have had the unfortunate opportunity in my lifetime to witness people starving,” Rock continued, “but these bodies are well past the point of starvation. There does not appear to have been any way for these poor creatures to obtain water or food. As you can see, they can barely lift their arms, much less feed themselves.”
“There is no attempt to communicate with me. They seem only to want to grab with their desiccated arms and bite with teeth protruding beneath paper thin lips. I don’t think I have ever been this disturbed, and I am truly grateful these poor people are unable to get to their feet. They seem to lack human intellect or understanding.”
“Look closely at the arm,” Rock said to the camera as he placed a short stick in the grasping hand and lifted the attached arm into the air. Manon zoomed in.
“There is no muscular definition under the skin. You can clearly see the radius and ulna bones in the forearm, yet… there must be some small remnants of muscle still remaining to grip the stick. The skin looks as thin as parchment.”
“Up here near the shoulder and on the upper arm you can see down to the bone where a large section of flesh was cut or torn out, but nowhere else on the body are there signs of any physical wounds.”
Rock let the arm back down and pulled the stick from the creature’s grip. He pointed at the body with it.
“Look at the chest. This appears to have been a male, though I only assume that because there are no remnants of breast tissue or extra skin in the chest area. The skin has been pulled tight over the ribcage. Below the ribcage the abdomen falls as if off a cliff face. If I was brave enough, I could probably encircle the waist with both hands.”
“I just had a thought. Isn’t it also odd…” Though the camera was rolling, he was just speaking to Manon, not performing. “The jungle has a complete ecosystem dedicated to cleaning up dead and dying things. Hundreds of species of beetles, ants, worms, rodents and fungus feed on anything too weak to fight back… yet it appears not even the fungus wants anything to do with these defenseless beings. The only other life in the area seems to be a large species of common spiders. They are everywhere… under every crevice… roaming openly across the clearing.”
Rock gave the cut sign and asked, “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Manon had no words.
The regular crew also consisted of three muscular men who carried large backpacks full of basic supplies and weapons to provide security for the team. In addition, two English speaking native tribesmen had been employed as guides for the excursion, and to translate if necessary. These two had refused to enter the village and were nowhere to be seen.
One of regular crew, a large black man Rock had recruited from the Special Forces named Armando, was waving them over with highly exaggerated movements.
Rock and Manon walked over to see what he had found.
“It… I think it melted,” Armando whispered in reverent awe.
The remnants of the body at their feet looked to have been carved from white vegetable shortening in a warm room. The skin no longer existed. The bone structure, though it was possible to still see the framework, had collapsed. The ribcage sagged until it had rested on the spine. The pelvic bone folded outwards like an open book. The skull resembled a rotted jack-o-lantern fallen in on itself.
“This is far beyond a television show… this is Pulitzer material. Get your camera ready Manon, I am going to be famous.”
The two roamed the clearing, documenting the remnants of both the living and dead beings scattered randomly. In some cases the bodies were literally stacked on top of each other. In other places, the bodies lay isolated. All lay immobile on the ground in varying states of decay.
~ Chapter II ~
“Did you notice the huts?” Manon asked distractedly. He was sitting on a fallen branch absently picking at his untouched lunch with a foldable metal camp fork. Out of habit, the others sat around him perched on various rocks and branches to avoid the many ant species in the rainforest, though there were no ants in the clearing to avoid. The two native guides were still nowhere to be seen.
Rock looked around. “Yeah… so?”
“They are heavily decayed,” Manon pointed out. “You have been roaming jungles for a long time. How long does it take for a native hut to crumble like th
at? The grass making up the once thatched roof is nonexistent. The bamboo poles have rotted, cracked and broken. A few of the huts have fallen over completely.”
After a few seconds of silence he continued, “If these people lived in these huts before… this… happened, and they stopped maintaining them at the same time, that means these bodies have been disintegrating for…”
Rock continued for him. “years… wow.”
Rock got up. Nobody else seemed inclined. “Grab the camera Manon. Let’s go have a look.” They walked over to the nearest hut.
“The most likely place for the poles to fail is where they touch the ground, but look,” he gestured towards one of the thick supports. “They did not bury the poles in the ground. Instead they placed them on thick rocks with pockets for the poles. That makes a lot of sense in the wet jungle where insects will bore into the wood and contact with soil will lead to rot. They probably also smoked the poles before using them, which can help to keep the insects away.”
“I would just be guessing, but if the huts were well maintained beforehand, maybe four years… give or take a year or two.”
There was a minute of silence while they circled the hut.
When they reached the stairs leading to the hut’s elevated entrance Manon asked, “What do you make of this one?”
The figure at their feet had fallen in on itself like many of the others. It seemed to be one of the most ruined. It had been a tall individual for a native tribesman, probably making it a male, and had fallen to the ground face first. There was no skin left. Only the leftover bones were still visible and they had all sunk flat to the ground. When Rock poked a rib with his walking stick, it slid in like a knife into warm butter.
Still looped loosely where the neck had been was a rope connected to a long decaying bamboo pole. The pole was lying on its side, weathered and covered with small holes. It had been there so long the far end was half buried in the dirt. A spear with a stone tip lay half underneath the body and appeared to have been thrust completely through the chest. The back of the ribcage had now melted around the spear’s handle.
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