by Gnarly, Bart
I didn’t know how long it would take, or what a transformation looked like. All I knew was that the condition was, as far as anyone would guess, a virus that you could catch and die from, only to be reanimated as a zombie.
Not me.
I ran to the mill, burst in the back door, and grabbed the kerosene. If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to be one of them. I went to the office and grabbed a box of matches.
Could I do it?
Could I set myself on fire?
Could you?
I started to have doubts. What if I wasn’t infected? What if I wasn’t going to become a zombie? Did I feel any symptoms? How did I even know a bite would infect me? Wasn’t that just the movies talking again?
What if I wait too long? What if Peter was right? What if my body becomes zombified, and I remain conscious? “A prisoner in your own head,” he had described it. A walking death. What if I delay so long I go past the point that I could light the fire?
I knew that I had to move soon if I was going to do this. I just kept repeating to myself, “You’re already dead, Kyle Moore. You’re already dead. The virus just hasn’t taken hold. You are already dead.” Over and over I repeated this as I exited the rear of the mill. I stood near the area where I burned Peter the previous night, and emptied the can of fuel over my head. The liquid was cold on my skin and the fumes made me woozy. I blinked through the burn and located my box of matches.
I took a deep breath, and drew out a match.
“No!” shouted a voice.
A human voice.
A real, live, human voice.
I flicked my eyelids at the source and saw the blurred outline of a woman.
“No, Kyle,” she said. “Don’t. I can help you. I can help you live.”
Before I passed out from the fumes, my last though was, “She knows my name.”
CHAPTER 8
Alive
There was a buzzing in the room, but I couldn’t tell if it was machines or the pounding in my head causing my ears to ring. I tried to blink the pain away to look for my watch, but my vision was obscured in darkness. I couldn’t see a thing. I tried to reach my face but by hand felt trapped in a pipe. A panic crashed into me as I roared and struggled to move. My arms didn’t work. My legs wouldn’t move. I couldn’t.
What happened to me? How am I here? Why am I here?
And then it came back to me.
Peter.
The talking zombie.
He was bitten.
Burning the two of them.
Zombie hunting.
I was bitten.
Oh shit.
I was bitten by a zombie.
Oh shit.
Shit. Peter was right. I’m trapped in the head of a zombie.
No.
No, it can’t be.
What did I do?
I tried to burn myself.
Why didn’t I?
Or did I?
Shit. I’m stuck in a zombie.
I’m a shuffler.
“Nooooo!!!” I roared, praying that someone would hear me and end this. “Help!! Help!! HELP!!”
Between my screams I heard a woman call a single word: “Kyle!”
“Kill me!” I cried, hoping that whatever I said could be understood.
“Easy, Kyle. You’re still fighting the virus.”
What?
Light flooded my vision as the blindfold was pulled away. I found myself in a lab of some sort. The walls were bleached, clean, and everything was glass, chrome, or white plastic. Standing above me and just beyond my vision was the source of the voice. “You are alive, and very much human, Mr. Moore.”
I tried to move my head and found that it was strapped down, as were my wrists and ankles. I could feel a band across my chest as I breathed and I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“I just have a few more tests, but I would appear that you are not capable of carrying the Z Gene. It’s remarkable really, that in the whole world we should be so lucky as to find someone like yourself.”
“Wait,” I complained, still waiting for my head to clear and my eyes to adjust to the bright lights. “Z Gene? What the hell is that? And why would I carry it? Damn, lady, you are not making any sense at all.” I desperately wanted to rub my head but no matter how I struggled my hand would not budge.
“The Z Gene is what we call the virus which has apparently infected the world.”
“We?” My head was slowly clearing and I was starting to feel more normal.
“There is a group of us here at EWU that have been working to understand the outbreak ever since it hit our area. We have fortified ourselves in the lab and have taken samples when possible.”
“Samples?”
“Infected persons, pieces, product. Basically anything that may be carrying the Z Gene.”
“So I’m…”
“In a university lab. Yes.”
“Because I’m a carrier? I’m a sample?” The whole time we had been talking, the doctor had been beyond my view. It was starting to feel like I was having a conversation with a voice in my head. “Doc, can you come around to where I can see you?”
“Not yet.”
I struggled against the bonds again, and again my condition left me feeling completely helpless. My life was at the mercy of the mystery doctor.
“The longest recorded transformation was just under nine hours, with obvious symptoms by the three hour mark.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Twenty-two hours,” she said, as though she were reciting the temperature outside and not discussing the fact that I just lost an entire day of my life without my knowing it.
“Twenty-two hours?” I repeated in a tone that spoke of my disbelief. I studied the ceiling tiles, the light shining in my eyes, the glass walls to my left and the brick wall to my right. This room had been my home for the past day?
“Almost twenty-three,” she clarified. “You must understand, Mr. Moore, that we have never seen someone injured like you were, by direct contact with an infected person, and not become infected. Some thought that the possibilities existed for an unaffected host but we had no idea that any of us would actually find one. In Cheney! You really are a quite remarkable occurrence.”
“And this is how you treat remarkable occurrences? Tying them up and hiding yourself from them?” I strained to catch a glimpse of the doctor but no matter how I struggled I just couldn’t find her.
“You really do need to try and be still, Mr. Moore. You will corrupt the numbers.”
“Fuck your numbers!” I screamed.
That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. I began to just blurt out every feeling I was experiencing.
“Everyone in my life has died, and most of them did so right before my eyes. In the lowest point of my life, when I thought all hope was gone and I would never see another human again, you come along and prove that life is still on Earth. That I wasn’t alone after all. And you refuse to let me see you. You tie me up and monitor me, and fine, I get that. I was bit, and you want to stay safe. But for fuck’s sake why can’t I just see that you are a real live human being for one minute? Just give me that, one breathing human to another. Let me see your face. Please.”
I heard the soft press of her shoes on the tile before I saw her. She kept her distance, and I couldn’t blame her for that. “Can you see me now?”
“No,” I answered truthfully.
Then her head rose into my field of vision. “Hello, Mr. Moore,” she said looking into my eyes.
The doctor was a plain looking, dark-haired forty-something with a messy ponytail and a wrinkled lab coat. She wore no make-up, but that made sense. Molly didn’t wear make-up and Sissy had only occasionally done so.
I was the apocalypse after all.
“Hello, doctor.”
“I am expecting your test results back any minute. When they get here, and they say what I think they will say, then we can let you free. Until then…”
>
“No worries,” I interrupt. If I’m a dead-head, then you have every right to keep me tied up. Just don’t let me be a zombie for long. Do me fast, doc.”
“Do me fast?” asked a voice coming from the glass wall. “What the hell am I walking in on, Stephanie?”
“Michael,” the doctor said in an irritated tone, “you do realize the world is burning all around you, right?”
“All the more reason to do it fast, right? Holy shit! Look at you, you sexy man! You don’t look anything like a brain-eater.”
I craned my head trying to see the newcomer. “Oh sorry,” he said when he saw me struggling. His head popped into view and said, “Michael Adams. Nice to meet you.”
“Kyle Moore,” I replied.
“I’d shake your hand if I wasn’t completely freaked out by the fact you were bitten by an honest to goodness zombie.”
“Infected person,” Stephanie corrected.
“Bullshit. Why did we call it the ‘Z Gene’ then, hmm?”
“Because it has all the characteristics of Zyklon B. It killed millions before anyone even knew what had happened.”
“Zyklon B?” I asked.
“Nasty frickin’ poison the Nazis used to gas the Jews,” Michael explained. “And whatever, Stephanie. The “Z” stands for “Zombie”, and that’s the end of that. Now untie this son of a bitch. I want to meet the boy who lived!”
◊◊◊
The boy remembered the old life. The one with color, and shape, and sound, but it seemed so distant that it no longer meant what once did. There was only hunger; the ever-present pulse of the craving against the front of his skull. He felt that the only survival possible was to feed. There was nothing else. He remembered riding his bike and swimming in the pool and climbing trees. He remembered drawing and playing basketball. He remembered Julia Snodgrass kissing him behind the fence at his house. He remembered his friend Rogelio showing him how hop a curb on his bike. All these memories that seemed so important before the hunger were now faded grey and cast aside. The boy would eat Rogelio as soon as he eat would Julia, and he knew it was true but he didn’t care. The only way to silence the voice in his head; the only way to stop the rush of desire; the only way to quench the urge; the only way to soothe the pain; the only answer was to feed. And he would feed on anything. He had eaten the neighbor boy. When his parents tried to pull him off, he ate them too. He tried to eat Mr. Carson’s dog, but the animal’s meat didn’t stop the urge. He needed the meat of people. He used to feel sad at the thought, but the hunger took care of that for him. The hunger loved him and wanted him to be well. If he listened to the hunger, he would be fine. If he obeyed the hunger, he would live and the pain would go away. So he ate. And ate. And ate. He tore homes open and broke down doors. He smashed windows and pushed through fences. The boy was shot, stabbed, and whipped, but nothing compared to the hunger. He was beaten, stuck with arrows, and jabbed with homemade spears. But the only thing the boy felt was the urgent need to feed. He just knew, he could feel it, that if he didn’t eat soon he would burn from within until he was no more than a smoldering glob in the street. He gave no thoughts to cleanliness, or appearance, or society. There was only the gnawing hunger and the boy would answer the call. He would feed until there was nothing left.
◊◊◊
“You are amazing,” Michael said, and not for the first time. In truth it was getting kind of creepy, the level of interest the scientist was taking in me. To Stephanie, I was little more than an interesting lab rat. To Michael, I was a unicorn. My existence didn’t make sense but it verified the presence of something greater and magical in the world.
As if zombies weren’t enough.
“Thanks,” I reply, “but you’ve got to stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re in a strip club and you’re waiting for me to start taking off all my clothes,” I say.
Stephanie looks over and rolls her eyes at us.
“Looks like Dr. Carver thinks your comment was uncalled-for,” Michael replied.
“Looks like Dr. Adams still has no idea how to read my expressions,” she quipped back.
I laugh at the two of them spatting like a married couple. The normalcy of the situation seems perverse when compared to the havoc taking shape outside the building. People are dying horrible deaths just to reanimate and become the thing that killed them, and here we are joking about strippers and misread expressions.
“So what is it, guys?” I ask. “Why am I not dead?”
The two doctors share a look. Based on my short experience with the two, I feel safe saying that Dr. Carver meant something specific when she raised her eyebrows slightly and frowned, and that Dr. Adams had no idea what that was.
“Well?” I persist.
“No one knows,” Michael answers. “We have no idea. There are 11 scientists in this facility, all working to give people what you already have. Who knows how many doctors, scientists and researchers are working world-wide on this problem, but we all want you you’ve got. Problem is, we have no idea what part of you is rejecting the Z Gene. Frankly, I have can’t explain why you are alive.”
“I think I can,” Stephanie interrupts.
“What do you think, doc?” I ask her, and she gives me a look that I probably interpret incorrectly.
“I think the answer is in your blood,” she began. “You have a live Z Gene infection racing through your blood but it isn’t taking. Why? By all accounts you should be back in the lab, fighting against the bonds and trying to eat anything that comes near you. But here you are. I think it’s your blood.”
“What about it?” I ask.
“I think you are an original carrier,” she answers, and I don’t like the sounds of that.
“Original carrier?”
“There are diseases and viruses that remain dormant in a host body, not corrupting or killing that host, but using it to transport itself to other hosts who will become infected and sick. I think you are a dormant host. I think you were born with the Z Gene already, tucked away in your DNA, and it was just waiting for the right moment to become active. Don’t misunderstand me,” she adds, seeing the revulsion spreading across my face, “I’m not saying the outbreak was your fault. That would be silly, unless of course you were in Florida a week before the outbreak hit.”
“Which I wasn’t,” I reminded them.
“We know,” Michael said. “That’s why we asked earlier about where all you have been. Just trying to eliminate you from the pool. But that still could mean that Stephanie’s theory is correct.”
“That I have zombie blood?” I ask.
“Kind of,” Stephanie explains. “You see, you blood isn’t any different than mine or Michael’s, except that you have a strain of the Z Gene that just sits there. It doesn’t attack your cells and infect you. Instead, it acts like it’s going to sleep once it hits you.”
“Your body got majorly sick after the bite, like it was fighting the Z Gene. You slept like mad. But after twenty-four hours you were fine. And dude,” Michael said in a voice filled with awe, “that is amazing.”
“One of your organs could be filtering it out of course,” Stephanie began again, “but which one? It makes more sense to me that you have always had it. One or both of your parents would have been original carriers as well, and you would have inherited this from them.”
“If that’s the case,” I protested, “and there have been carriers in the world all along, then why did we not see this before it happened?”
“Why didn’t we see the Z Gene before?” Stephanie clarified.
“Why didn’t we know that people were unsuspecting hosts of a virus that would turn the world into zombies?” I asked.
“Well,” Stephanie said, “picture your bloodstream as a public pool. Parents will pass up hundreds of kids swimming in the pool just to find theirs, right? Well, imagine that the pool has hundreds of thousands of kids running around. The only way you ever find y
ours is because you know he likes to use the slide, so you go to where he is normally found. That means you have ignored eighty-percent of the pool, and almost all of the other kids. In truth, you have no concept of who else is at the pool, because once you find your kid, you’re done. Well, that is blood science in a nutshell. Researchers like us look for things they know. There is loads about blood that we don’t know, and this virus is proof of that.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I protested. “If there is a kid at the pool with grey skin and bad teeth, and he’s chewing on the other kids, somebody’s going to notice.”
“Maybe,” Michael offered. “How long was it until we realized that people were not just acting weird, but were indeed eating and infecting others? One week? Two weeks? And that was happening in front of the entire world. In your case, going back to the Stephanie’s analogy, the zombie kid at your pool isn’t attacking anyone. It looks like all the other kids. Scientists would look right over him as some stranger that we have yet to identify, if they acknowledged him at all.”
“This just doesn’t make sense,” I vent.
“I think that your blood caused this outbreak,” Stephanie said, and I shook at the words. “Not you, mind you, but blood like yours. There must have been a trigger that activated the virus, and then it spread like a fire in dry grass. Everyone who did not have the Z Gene already dormant in their system was susceptible to the virus and became infected at first contact. And that has been our experience in every case… Until you of course.”
It was too much to handle. I’m one of them? I’m essentially a healthy zombie? My blood infected the world? If that were true it would mean that I am the thing I hate.
This can’t be.
“Michael?” I ask.
“Yeah?”
“Got any booze?”
◊◊◊
The boy pushed on the doors and clawed at the brick. He knew deep down that he couldn’t claw through a wall, but the hunger told him that he must try all the same. He had to hurry, the hunger told him. The pain would be coming back. The anger and the desperation and the craving would rise up and make him crazy if he didn’t eat soon. So he pounded at the glass until it broke. Then he shoved himself through the window. He had to eat. The boy had to find food. The hunger told him that there was food in the building and if he ate he could be well again. Color and feeling would come back and he wouldn’t be sick anymore; just so long as he fed he would be fine. So he shuffled down the hall, following his nose and the hunger within. He would be fine. He would be okay. Just so long as he ate every living person in this building.
