by Norman Dixon
“I speak now to all those that still retain knowledge, to those that refused to slip into the stone age, to those that survived and survive still, and to all of those that were lucky enough to be born into knowledge after the fall of mankind, to those that can understand my words.”
There was a low shuffle of papers and what sounded like the flick of a lighter.
“We have a vaccine, we have a vaccine for B2retrogress7, we have a vaccine . . . there are those among us that are immune to not only the bite, but every other form of transmission. Through much hardship we have broken the back of our enemy but we cannot spread the vaccine alone. We need your help. I beg those of you that are out there, be you isolated villages, strongholds, remnants of our government, I beg you to help us defeat our enemy once and for all. It will be a long road and the vaccine is not easily administered, and the road to us is a dangerous one. But I BEG YOU COME! Come to the coordinates that are to follow. We can provide shelter and protection from the undead and ultimately, with your help, we can conquer the darkness that has taken our world. I look forward to meeting you all . . . champions of humanity.”
The male voice was replaced by that of a young female. Before she even got the full coordinates out I had my map out, not that I needed it, I knew where we were headed. The voice just added an exact location.
I turned the recorder off and handed it back to Thorton. I didn’t know what to say, hell I didn’t even know what to feel. Part of me wanted to shout with joy, but the rational part of me warned against a trap, warned that for all I knew they were all dead already. But hope won out on this old bastard and I actually smiled . . . first time in years.
“Uh-huh,” Thorton added. He shifted his rifle and picked at his teeth nervously. Shit, I think the whole danger factor of it all sparked the kid in him again. Shirley, too, she was ready. Both of ’em had already racked up a higher body count than me and Tilda.
“God has spoken to us. He still cares. This is our duty,” Shirley said. Not even the dirt on her face could mar the twinkle of hope in her eyes.
Bunch of crazy-ass hillbillies we are to even attempt this. But it could damn well mean the end of so much suffering. And Shirley’s right . . . it is our duty to preserve humanity. Good, bad, and fuckin smacked-ass ugly.
I still can’t believe we are about to venture into L.A. Fuck me, I can’t sleep.
0600HRS: THE CITY OF ANGELS
Thorton keeps asking me about what I’m writing. He says I shouldn’t leave out any details. Just before dawn he said, “Randy, the written and spoken words cannot be forgotten. When all of our power sources were hindered we had the knowledge of those that came before us to rely on. They keep us going, give us faith, give our sons and daughters the means to survive, and they are more important than any of us. We are obligated to leave a story behind . . . no matter how small it may seem. Remember that, always.”
I always had a knack for putting words to paper. Even if my grammar is shit on a stick. I have to empty my head sometimes. Helped me get through a lot of bad shit. But I’m afraid I’ll have to catch up with myself later. We are holed up on the roof of an apartment building. We were able to sneak in. But they’re everywhere. I know I’ll be puttin’ my old girl to the test today. Can’t run the risk of makin’ an ass of noise.
We are a couple of blocks from the coordinates. From what I can gather the spot is somewhere in the concrete culvert to our west. Only a couple thousand Creepers between it and the three of us . . . four countin’ Tilda. Time to smack some skulls. Beckenridge out.
1200HRS . . . I THINK: SANCTUARY
Lost track of time. This is crazy. I can’t believe it. For starters—wasn’t a trap—damn near killed us, though, I should add it was all Shirley's fault. The old girl is younger than she looks and crazier than a shit-house rat on Judgment Day.
When we were close, down in the culvert itself she couldn’t hold back. She must’a takin’ out ten ‘er fifteen of em’ with a two by four. But all her growlin’ had the damn dregs ridin’ our coattails. If it wasn’t for these folks . . . we’d be dead.
If you can believe I’m writin this’n here passage under an electric light, on a comfortable bed, beneath millions of Creepers, then I’d say yer bout as crazy as the old broad. But I’d be wrong. These folks are real, a good bit of ’em are hippies, tofu crunchin’ sons of bitches, but they’re just as tough as any of my men . . . hell couple of these bastards are tougher’n me. Not by much though.
They got a whole system down here in the sewers and that’s not all. They’ve made a network, a safe haven out of this part of the city. They even go up into some the sky scrapers. I wish I had a camera, or even a little bit of talent with the pen, but these hands were made for killin’ and toilin’ in the earth and not much else. Up above there are gardens growing on top of the buildings. I reckon it’s looks like ancient Babylon did.
It’s . . . a little bit of heaven in hell.
Pa is snorin’ next to me with Shirley sleepin’ soundly in his arms. Kinda makes me wish I had a woman like that, but I was never the marryin’ kind.
They tell me tomorrow mornin’ they’ll show us around, show us the future.
I can’t sleep worth a shit and I still have no damn idea what fuckin’ time it is.
00-I FUCKIN’ GIVE UP-HRS: TOFU CENTRAL
Man’s name is Gary Danielson. Native of L.A. tall lanky son of a bitch. Too much vegetables, not enough red meat, but smart as a whip, and the closest thing I ever seen to Jesus Christ on this earth and he has the hair to match. This man, in his patchwork robe, like Joseph’s dream coat has saved us all.
I’m shakin’ as I write. I can’t believe it, can’t believe what I saw today.
Danielson said, “You’re one group of only a few that have made it. I very much regret others have tried . . . and failed. Welcome to salvation. Allow me to show you the future.”
He led us down a damp, narrow tunnel that smelled’a Satan’s asshole. We started goin’ up a staircase and well before I could see them I could smell ’em and I could hear ’em. The moans came down, echoing off the concrete.
Danielson put a hand on my shoulder and said to us, “Calm yourselves. You’ll see soon enough. You are not in danger here . . . unless we want you to be.”
We followed up and up min’ful of the folks with guns that moved in the shadows. They did a shit job of coverin’ their tracks. Too much time below ground. We was made to feel welcome in this strange place, but they wasn’t stupid either, they’d survived just as long as we have and under worse conditions. Every precaution was taken.
Soon Danielson led us into a building. I dunno what it was before, what purpose it served but it was something outta’ a movie now. What looked like regular offices was turned into cells and hospital rooms . . . even had a nursery. Every floor was the same and every floor I heard the moans but I ain’t seen me one Creeper and for that matter I ain’t seen anyone in any of the rooms. But they was here, maybe they smell is comin’ from the windows.
“We’ve lost many, and many more have sacrificed themselves. We are but a few now,” Danielson said. He rubbed his eyes. The son of bitch had the eyes of a weary man, a tired man, a man who’d seen too much death. I sympathized wit’im.
Shirley spoke up then. “Where are your women? There was a woman’s voice on that loop ya’ll broadcast.”
I got a little spooked. I hadn’t even noticed til she said it. There was no women around . . . at all.
“Yes, indeed there was . . . was. Silvia was one of the last to give her life, to give her brave young life for us all." True grief damn near bent that man’s head in half.
“For what,” Thorton asked.
“For them,” Danielson responded.
We was so caught up in his words we didn’t even notice the room at the end of the hall. At that moment I felt like I’d faint . . . Shirley did and Thorton nearly had his’self a heart attack. Just inside that room, through a blood smeared window I saw our future.
>
Five infant boys.
And a rotten, stankin’ ass Creeper standing over them.
“This some kind of damned joke,” I screamed at him. I had my hands round his scrawny throat. I heard guns cocked and ready all around me but I didn’t give two hot shits about it. Let ’em fuckin’ shoot me. I been dragged across three states, through the shit of shit, on some fool’s errand, Lord Have Mercy let ’em shoot me.
Danielson laughed. Son of a bitch laughed at me. He says, “You’re not the first to react in such a way. I reacted much the same way when I first saw it.”
“You tell your boys to keep calm or I swear I’ll break your neck before they can put me down." I shook his bony ass.
Danielson told ’em to ease up.
“By God what have you done. They’re children,” Thorton cried.
“They cannot be harmed. The virus cannot touch them, cannot alter them, their mothers passed on a special gift. They are quite alright. The same can’t be said for you or your wife. But know I did do this to shock you . . . it was necessary. I wanted you to feel strongly so you can understand just what’s at stake here and the high cost of our future.”
“You’re crazy!” I said, but I let the bastard go. There was somethin’ in his eyes.
“Far from it, Mr. Beckenridge, but I will explain. First let us get some fresh air.”
We followed him up to the roof.
I was livid, confused, and I wanted nothin’ more than to free them babies and head back home. I was never much for the city life, but when we got up there all that stopped
A dead city, reclaimed by Mother Nature, spread out before me. The smog was gone now and flocks of birds dipped through the buildings in rolling black-gray waves. Some of the buildings looked like they were cracked in half, as if Jimi himself took his hand to ’em . . .
“A big one hit us about six years ago. I still don’t know why we were spared,” Danielson said. His tired face scared the shit out of me like he was agin’ right before me.
“Was God that spared you all,” Thorton chimed in.
“That’s right,” Shirley added, hookin’ an arm round her man’s waist. The color started to return to her face, but the shock remained.
Everyone had had a chance to settle. In that clean air, so high up, we was waitin’ for the man to say his piece.
“It wasn’t any god, or collective of gods that spared us, Mr. Crannen, wasn’t any kind of intervention from some interstellar, time traveling alien either. Just a collection of possibilities that happened. A load-bearing wall held here, concrete poured just right decades ago . . . there, wasn’t anything mystical about it. Just like this—this—damn virus, our black death, Nature’s way of leveling the playing field." Danielson shook his head as if he tried to knock the thought of it all clear outta’ his mind.
“You’re wrong about that, sir, God has a plan for us all." I thought Thorton was about to pull his Gideon’s on the man.
“Like he had a plan for the mothers of those boys downstairs?” Danielson said to him with a shrug. “No, Mr. Crannen, it was not God’s plan that brought us to the cusp of the future. It was the brave, selfless sacrifice of the women that once called this place home.”
I seen many a man cry in my day. On the battlefield, after a long night of drink, after the loss of a loved one . . . I seen the toughest cry but none of ’em made me as sorry as Danielson. Was a mix of hope, death, and memory in those eyes, in his words. And none of us said nothin’ at all. We waited, let the man air it out.
“Tina went first. She just wanted to tend to our garden. I cautioned her against straining herself so far along in her pregnancy, but she insisted, she needed to be outside. She didn’t like the city much, though, her place was in the hills, but we got stuck . . . like so many others when they abandoned L.A. She wanted to see the sky that day . . . and what a day it was, clearest day I think I ever saw. A day that never would have been possible in old L.A—blue and not a cloud in sight, not even a wisp, just blue forever.
“She was tending to our tomato plants. She opened the old air duct to make sure the roots were taking to such a strange environment. She never expected the bite, not up here, not after so many years of being so careful. And that’s how long that thing had been in the air ducts. Looked like some business man, or what was left of him, had been bitten all those years ago and climbed into the system to hide . . . to die . . . to come back. She had no chance.
“Weeks away from giving birth to our son she was dead on her feet. Such a small thing, the bite, a rough circle of blood and broken flesh just above her wrist, but the viral infection was already spreading through her blood, through our son’s blood. Our life, or rather, what little piece of diabolical Norman Rockwell life we had, was gone.
“That night after we held each other for hours, after we said our goodbyes, she demanded only one thing of me. She told me, ‘No matter what, Gary, even if you have to cut the baby from my stomach while I’m trying to devour you . . . you deliver our child. And if the universe is truly cruel I hope you have the courage to end both of our lives. But before you have to tread that path you deliver this child.
“She was so pale in the end. I’ll never forget how her lips trembled, how her breath sputtered, her body racked by terrible chills, the sweat . . . and then nothing. I listened to her heart stop and I thought for a moment I’d be cutting our dead child from her womb but I found a heartbeat. She woke just before I made the incision, gnashing her teeth at me like an animal, and that’s what she was, an animal, my wife was gone to whatever fate the universe had in store for her, but I delivered our child, our son, while the shell of my wife fought blindly against the restraints. That damned thing didn’t even feel the blade, it felt nothing. With our son wailing in my arm I sent that terrible thing to its end.
“Tina was the first, not truly a sacrifice, but a victim of circumstance, of progress in a way. It didn’t make sense. Howard, our son, shouldn’t have been alive, but he was. Something happened in that span of hours. Everything in my experience, everything I’ve read, taught, and studied for years said I was crazy, that it couldn’t be, but the body is an amazing organic machine, and the birth of another life is even far more grand. Yes, something happened, perhaps it was mother’s instinct to make sure life went on, the will to live, who knows, but there was a shift. Our son, born covered in his mother’s blood, should have been infected, even if he was born alive, he should have turned, but he didn’t. When I looked at his blood beneath the microscope it was there, the infection, but it was contained. He was immune.
“Shaunna was next. Once I told the rest of our camp about what I . . . what Tina discovered, she was ready to die. She looked me straight on and said, ‘I have three months to psych myself up for this.’
“I don’t really sleep anymore, can’t really, it’s a lot of laying there, waiting, waiting for what, I don’t know, but there’s hoping, too, hoping for sleep, for a moment of soothing blackness, for a moment without the horrors my eyes have seen.
“I didn’t have the courage to put Shaunna out of her misery, nor did her husband, and it was a good thing because we discovered something else. In the presence of their children our dead mothers became docile . . . as if held in thrall by the sight of their children. It is something more than that, but I have not the technology, man power, or time to quantify it, let us call it something special. You people might call it divinity, and those of us that don’t believe will call it the unknown, the absence of knowledge.
“Doris, Maggie, and Sharon were next. There was no hesitation. They were not pregnant, they had no ties to any of the men in our group other than the fact that we had all survived together, but it didn’t matter to them. They knew the stakes, we all did. We were breeding, a fucking back room, back alley breeding program.
“But not everyone could handle the drastic nature of our experiment. During the first year there were three suicides, two more the year after . . . I lost count after that. I even considered
punching my own ticket, but the guilt of leaving my son and the other children behind, not to mention the men that have weathered the storm with me, dissuaded me from that path. So we pressed on. That’s when the kids started to tell us about their waking dreams.
“It’s not so strange really, at first it would’ve been impossible to notice the little lulls, the momentary lapses, but with so few of us remaining you didn’t have many distractions. My son being the oldest of our children spoke of it first. Late one night he said to me, ‘Daddy, I hear them whispering to me. They don’t know what to do.’ When I asked who he was talking about he told me, ‘The dead.’
“As he got older these episodes started to happen more and more. Howard and Silvia helped me with the next round of births. When he was with me, the mothers did not rise like they had previously, there was no unrestrained quest to fulfill their hunger . . . there was peace, a calm. Howard told me, ‘I tell them not to worry. That it is okay and they listen to me, dad, they listen.’
“After that Silivia suggested we reach out. The whole thing was her idea. She claimed that we’d stumbled upon something beyond us, beyond survival. She called it, ‘A way towards the future.’ She went on and on about what the world could be with these children. For fuck’s sake she was only twenty-two, and yet she could see beyond anything I could imagine. She used to draw these tables, sort of, family trees. Her idea was simple genetics, much like the archaic practices of selective breeding in royal courts, but in reverse. Her theory was that if we could get these kids out into the world, into the hands and care of those few sane groups of people left, there was a chance for mankind in this insane new world.
“I told her she was crazy. The sheer enormity of such an idea was off any rational chart . . . but what else did we have to lose besides hope? And dear Silivia’s plan was set in motion.”
