The Virophage Chronicles (Book 1): Dead Hemisphere

by Landeck, R. B.

  The first shot rang out from the truck. Looking through the small side window, Tom could see one of the dead fall back into the mass of corpses, its head nothing but a cloud of red and black mist. Unless something happened soon and quickly, he would find himself the only one left, entombed in this stalled bucket of steel. Frenetically looking around, Tom searched for anything he could use to help. More shots. Soon the weapon’s 6-round magazine would have nothing left to give. Rummaging around the mess of equipment and uniforms, tools, and tarps, Tom’s eyes fell on a large crate stacked against the wall near the rear hatch. A broad smile flashed across his grime-covered face. He recognized it immediately.

  Amadou bayed with fury and frustration as he pumped another round into the skull of the corpse next in line, kicking its remains off the hood and into the waiting arms of its peers; the reprieve short-lived before the masses crashed back into the side of the vehicle, like waves in a storm battering a captain-less ship. The old man, despite his advanced age, had held onto both his grandson and the injured woman, dispatching whatever creature came too close by bringing down his foot as many times as it took on their skulls. Now his strength was fading, and his kicks quickly lost effectiveness, his foot instead sliding off and hitting nothing but the metal below, more than once threatening to throw the entire group off balance and into the gnashing jaws jostling for living tissue.

  Amadou took aim at yet another corpse, a young woman wearing a traditional African dress and with long hair covering much of her features. A gaping hole was where her nose and lips used to be, and she opened her mouth wide. Her dull, scratched corneas came to life with greed and hunger through a veil of braids hanging from her bloodied head, and she screeched in anticipation as she peered at Amadou across the ironsight of his gun.

  The barrel shook, the gun unsteady from the rush of adrenaline and the tension of his grip throwing off his aim. The bullet grazed the woman’s skull but then continued harmlessly on its path to nowhere. He was desperate now as her teeth drew near. With dark familiarity, impending death unleashed memories of events past in vivid imagery.

  ‘Steady yourself!’ He nervously squeezed the trigger and squinted in anticipation of the woman’s head disintegrating into fragments of tissue and bone.

  He missed, the round tearing into the woman, taking part of her face and left ear with it, before lodging itself somewhere deep in the corpse behind her. He cursed under his breath, again taking aim as the woman pulled herself across the roof and onto the hood with renewed energy. Lowering her head each time her arms pulled her body forward, Amadou heard teeth scrape across the metal. He brought up the weapon, and his eyes widened in horror. The slide had locked forward. The gun was empty, now nothing but a blunt instrument. Amadou dropped to his knees and smashed the woman’s skull with the butt of the pistol. It took three, four hard strikes, before she stopped moving, her brains spilling over the metal surface. The injured survivor let out a high-pitched scream, and he spun around.

  One of the corpses had managed to come up the side and get a hold, tightening its grasp around her injured leg. She clutched at her wound as the creature brought in its jaws for a bite. Another pair of dead hands had managed to reach the boy’s ankles behind her, and the old man was fighting hard to keep his balance as he tried to free them both. Creatures were rising up all around them, stepping up onto the hood, the corpses below them piled like a human step ladder.

  Amadou tried to intervene, ready to dispatch the ones closest to the woman, but felt himself being pulled from behind. He raised his elbow and pivoted, his arm impacting hard with the side of a creature’s head. Hanging onto the Molle webbing of his vest with its one remaining arm, its head snapped sideways. His momentum sent him spinning, and he and the corpse twirled in deadly embrace for a brief moment, before both crumpled onto the hood in a heap. The skeletal features of what had been a skinny man with high cheekbones and large sunken eyes were close enough to Amadou’s face that he could smell the putrid air escaping its mouth, and his body convulsed as he fought not to vomit. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the old man was likewise losing the battle. Several more hands had pulled him down onto the hood alongside Amadou, and he was kicking and screaming, trying to keep them away from his grandson as the first set of jaws clamped down on his lower leg.

  Amadou could feel the dead closing in, their outstretched arms, grappling fingers, and grotesque faces merging into a menacing mural of hunger and torment. They tore at his legs, arms and boots and he closed his eyes in quiet resignation. Soon he would be with his loved ones again.

  It would be but a brief moment of pain, and then there would be nothing; nothing but the warm embrace of his mother, father, and sister, whom he had longed for so much all these years. All would be forgotten and forgiven and the agony would be washed away in their arms. He had often wondered about how he would meet his demise; he who himself had brought so much suffering onto others and surely deserving of whatever the Almighty had in store for him. This, thus, was as good as any way to go and he could feel his muscles relax as his mind gave in to the inevitable.

  CHAPTER 16

  At first, he barely heard the thunderous thwacks that erupted from just ahead. His mind had turned inward and gone to a place where the world outside no longer mattered. But now, like hammers against the outside of a vault, the noise became louder and louder with each round that exploded near him. Through half-open eyes, he could see a fountainous display of dead flesh and limbs, of coagulated blood, brains, and guts, erupting into the air as bodies disintegrated into black mist.

  The grappling hands he had felt on his body went limp or disappeared altogether along with their dead owners. A jolt of energy shot through him, and like waking from a falling dream, he sat up with eyes wide. He gasped. In front of him, the injured woman, the old man, and his grandson were all covering their faces, rolling on the hood to escape the carnage that had suddenly engulfed their drowning island of safety.

  Through the mist of body fluids, Amadou could only just make out Tom’s silhouette atop the APC, a mere few yards across from their refuge of metal and grime. He was barely controlling the .50cal pointed squarely in their direction and pumping out round after heavy round in mechanical thunder, each projectile smashing into and through whatever it hit, blasting anything and everything into the past, to hell, or wherever.

  Tom grinned and roared as his eyes met Amadou’s with all the assurance of a madman caught in a last stand. After an eternity of gun-powered violence, Tom suddenly dropped the handles, and the weapon slumped forward, a long white plume of smoke emanating from its barrel. He briefly inspected his handiwork and watched as the survivors carefully lifted their heads and looked incredulously at what had become of the immediate vicinity.

  A cordon of at least ten yards had been cleared around the front of the truck, which now sagged forward, neither its tires nor its suspension having escaped the .50cal’s onslaught. As if a giant bucket of human remains had been dropped from great height, the truck’s front and every inch of surface around them was covered, splattered with bits and pieces of dozens of bodies. Some cut in half, other limbless, a few remaining carcasses still snapped at thing air, pulling themselves through the slime and over the chunks of what moments ago had still been their shambling comrades.

  Wiping their eyes clean from the dark blood, the survivors looked ghostlike as they stared back at Tom. He jumped down and, nearly slipping in the human slush below, staggered back to the truck and reached up to them. Time was of the essence.

  “You better get moving. This may have bought us a few seconds, but they’re already on the move again.”

  Amadou could see he was right. No sooner had the weapon fallen silent and the air cleared, did the mass of dead, now additionally motivated by the commotion, robotically resume their unrelenting assault and this time in even greater numbers. Helping the young boy and the old man slide down from the truck first, Amadou and the young woman followed, and he ushered th
em all across. Leaning against the thick armour, he interlocked his fingers and gave each a leg-up, and they climbed atop the hulking form of the armoured personnel carrier. Just as he himself lifted his leg from the tire and heaved himself past the overhang created by the vehicle’s hexagonal shape, a new tide of corpses reached the vehicle. Now, higher up than they had been before, the survivors could see more clearly across the area around them.

  Fighting, or at least gunfire, for the better part, had stopped. Soldiers and rebels, remaining UN peacekeepers, and the few armed civilians, all having spent the last of their ammunition, had been overrun by endless waves of walking corpses. Corpses who cared little about the damage they took and kept going and going until they either reached their goal or their brains were destroyed. Here and there, recently risen soldiers already staggered among the other cadavers. Forced to join the enemy without a choice in the matter, they now searched for human prey with the same zeal. Further afield, near the waters’ edge, lifeless forms floated, the lake no longer resembling a body of water, but rather a festering pool of body parts and intestines and all the fluids that seeped from them. Suitcases and clothes and all manner of items people had held dear enough to lug with them, now bobbed in the swell next to the mangled carcasses of their owners. There were still enclaves, small pockets of resistance, where groups of the living were making a futile last stand. Using whatever they could find to protect themselves, they fought impossible odds. One by one, eventually, each was overcome and torn apart, screams stifled by the incessant wail of the dead and the blood they drew with each bite. Some had even tried to escape in one of the many abandoned vehicles, but driving away from the oncoming storm had meant heading straight for the water.

  There, several cars now sat like badly designed pontoons, with their occupants still inside and slowly coming back to life. Wide-eyed and greedy, they pressed their hands against the windows and smeared across the glass as their bodies came to terms with their new existence.

  The battle, if ever it had been one, was lost. Around them nothing but a sea of dead, old and newly-joined, that swayed and raged and seethed in turmoil as they tore apart their kills and fought over the remains. In less than an hour, thousands had succumbed.

  Tom’s hope floundered. There was nothing that could stop this thing from spilling over and consuming the rest of the continent. He wondered how far into Kenya it would get before he managed to reach Julie and Anna.

  ‘Julie and Anna.’ He clenched his fists as he thought of the two amongst the hundreds of thousands that would end up trapped if the government followed its usual protocols.

  He could not allow that to happen. He. Would. Not.

  A nudge by Amadou’s elbow brought him back into reality and reminded him of their more immediate predicament. They could no longer see the ground around the truck or their own vehicle.

  The dead had closed the distance and were once again tightly packed, their rancid forms covering every square inch. They threw themselves against the APC, their arms reaching up and their hands stretching skyward, their hunger as ever unabated. The sight of food atop the vehicle excited them and sent a ripple of lustful moans through their ranks. Even the ones further out and unable to see joined the chorus in anticipation.

  “We better head below.” Tom opened one of the hatches and indicated for the others to get in. “Being up here just excites them more, and we really don’t need that right now.”

  They climbed in and collapsed on the floor, the seats and onto piles of tarp, taking a much-needed breather wherever they dropped.

  “I know it’s going to get a bit toasty in here soon, but just until we pull ourselves together, I don’t want any surprises raining in from above,” Tom explained as he closed the hatch and secured it.

  Meanwhile, Amadou had begun inspecting the instrument panel and cockpit. Thanks to the APC’s beaky nose, reminding Tom of the kind of amphibious buses used to cart tourists around canals, they were high off the ground and largely out of the dead’s sight.

  All they could hear now was the dull thuds of a hundred hands bashing against the thick steel exterior. Their presence and the relative safety offered by the armour of the vehicle rolling terror and comfort into one.

  “This thing won’t be going far,” Amadou whispered, having finished his initial check-up. “The tank is almost empty, and it looks like a couple of fuses have blown.”

  “And that’s not the worst of it,” Tom added. “It won’t start either. Either flooded or out of fuel altogether. Not that it matters now.”

  The men looked at each other, knowing full well what this meant. They were stranded near the lake, in an ocean of arms and teeth and death, their chances of escape somewhere between naught and zero.

  “Checkmate,” Tom sighed as he looked through the window in search of options he knew didn’t exist.

  The sun was low, now draining the light from the lower-lying areas as its last rays withdrew over the hills to the west and finally cast a blanket over the slaughter. The thousands of corpses blended into an expansive homogenous carpet of menace as greys replaced vivid colour.

  Soon, all that was left was their moaning and the relentless thumping outside the carrier. The dead neither needed light nor sight to feel their prey but a few living heartbeats away.

  The survivors stretched out where they could and sat in darkness, looking up through the narrow windows at the last bit of daylight, fading at a quickened rate along with hope. Not daring to say a word, they watched the two men in front as they continued their conversation.

  “I hate to be the one to ask again, but what now?” It was Amadou who asked what everyone on board was thinking.

  “I am working on it,” Tom offered unconvincingly, resting his head against the cooling metal.

  “I’d say we see if there is something to eat or drink in this giant tin, take it and then get some shut-eye. We’ll look it over in the morning.” He shrugged and pivoted, speaking to the others over the rear of the front seat.

  “Look, I know we all want to get out of here. But there’s nothing we can do at night and with these things packed as densely as they are. We hunker down, sleep, and get going in the morning.”

  He tried to make his words sound as confident as he could and was thankful that the others probably couldn’t see his face in the dark. He was tired. He was angry. And not being able to get to Julie and Anna ate away at his soul more than the creatures did at the living.

  The young woman introduced herself as Faith, and Amadou began looking after her leg wound. Red and infected, it pulsed, inflamed from the grip of decaying hands or from the myriad of germs carried by the crowd, it was hard to tell. The old man kept the little boy busy by having him help search the vehicle, patting him on the head and hugging him frequently as each thump from the outside wall sent the frightened boy back into his arms.

  The APC’s batteries still provided power to the interior lights, but they refrained from using them until they had managed to cover the windows with some of the tarp. They had enough excitement for one day, and there was neither need nor want for any more. Now they were sitting in the incandescent glow of the rectangular-shaped light set into the Kevlar lining of the ceiling.

  Before them was a virtual bric-a-brac of items they had discovered, most of the more useful items recovered from two backpacks stuffed underneath the front seats, probably at one point having belonged to the driver and his co-pilot. There were a few MRE’s, meals-ready-to-eat, a number of full and half-empty bottles of drinking water, and even a Leatherman tool, along with some spare clothes and a first aid kit. They had also found a few extra rounds of 9mm ammunition, something that caused Amadou to frown as he had dropped the empty Helwar during the corpses’ assault on the truck.

  “You never know.” He placed the ammunition into his pocket regardless.

  With the living, even the armed ones, increasingly losing the battle, anywhere they went would soon be awash with a veritable cornucopia of discarded, em
pty guns for him and Tom to choose from.

  They ate their meals in silence, closing their eyes as the warm food returned some semblance of comfort and energy to their battered bodies. The small packets of cookies, one in each MRE, were quickly gathered up and given to the little boy, whose face remained stoic, frozen from the horrors no child should have to witness. Amadou watched him. He was all too familiar with the trauma the boy had experienced, and he had to turn away as tears welled up in his eyes.

  With nothing left to say and exhaustion taking over the group, they all found a spot to lie or sit down and sleep as best as they could. The young woman, her leg bandaged as good as Amadou had been able to muster, laid down on the seats running along the interior, while the old man and his grandson had built a bed from tarps on the cabin floor, where the sound of dead hands banging against the chassis was a little further away. Amadou preferred the co-pilot seat next to Tom instead of the other bench. Joining these civilians he hardly knew seemed strangely inappropriate. They seemed weak. Weakness, he feared, perhaps as contagious as the virus itself if he gave it an opening.

  Tom leaned back in the driver’s seat, his gaze and thoughts travelling through the webbing and into the night.

  ‘This guy needs me to have his back now more than ever,’ Amadou thought.

  He and Tom had worked well as a team so far and as different as the worlds they had come from were, they shared more than they sometimes gave each other credit for. Besides, the way things stood, their objective was the same.

  There was ample legroom in the bulkhead and, so Amadou stretched out, while Tom, arms crossed over the steering wheel, leaned forward and watched the flats in front of them. The carpet of death seemed to suck the very light from the rising moon. Tom turned his head without lifting it and looked at the lanky Congolese’s features silhouetted against the pale light.

  “You were pretty nimble up there today,” he said, watching Amadou as he shifted, trying to get into a comfortable position. “I think I actually will call you Lee from now on.”