“Who is it?” she asked.
Each time the response was an unintelligible guttural sound. After the fourth attempt at communication, she gave up. When the week came to an end, Samantha started to run low on food and other supplies. She watched the news every day but nobody seemed to be reporting anything similar to what she had experienced at the bus stop. They would only say that the flu was severely affecting the productivity of the nation for now but things would likely improve soon. Since people still seemed to going on with their daily lives, Samantha decided to venture out of her complex and visit a nearby supermarket. She cautiously opened her door and looked outside, prepared to bolt into the safety of her apartment if necessary.
The complex was quiet and the same cars that Samantha had noticed the Monday before were still there gathering dust. Once out in the open, Samantha looked up at the windows of the other apartments for any signs of life. Only one was without drawn curtains. A small boy peered at Samantha from behind the clear panes. She recognized Andre Vance and waved slowly.
He raised his hand and Samantha realized in horror that his palm had no skin left. It was a pulpy mess of red and black flesh. As she covered her mouth to stifle a gasp, Andre slapped his hands against the windows, leaving smeared prints on the glass. A grin split his face exposing sharp teeth behind chapped lips. Samantha turned and ran towards the gate.
Contrary to the news reports, things were not going as they normally would on the street. What few people Samantha saw on the road regarded her with suspicion and kept their distance before hurrying away. When Samantha got to her usual supermarket, she found that it was firmly shuttered behind steel doors so she was forced to venture outside of her comfort zone. She finally came upon a little makeshift shop where someone was selling goods from behind the safety of steel bars and concrete. She could already hear persons grumbling about the exorbitant prices but given the circumstances, they had no choice but to pay. Samantha sighed and joined the line, turning sideways like everyone else so her back wasn’t to the road. The woman beside her touched her shoulder.
“Hey, you hear about the biters?” she asked.
“The what?”
“The biters! Girl, where you been hiding?”
“Uhm…”
The woman waved away Samantha’s non-answer with a flutter of her hands.
“Nevermind. You know the flu so much people got the other day? Well, some of them got better but the other ones…they got something else. They walking around trying to bite people!”
Samantha shook her head in disbelief. “Bite them? But the news…”
The woman hissed her teeth.
“Look here…the news is foolishness you hear me? Watch the public access channel with Trevor. Him know what’s really going on.”
The woman dug into her handbag and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. She scribbled on it hastily and handed the paper back to Samantha.
“Here…is my address. If you need somewhere safe, come. We have space.”
Samantha folded the paper in her hand and nodded numbly.
“Next!” the shop owner yelled.
The woman turned to order her groceries without another word to Samantha. When she had finally gotten her groceries, Samantha walked away from the shop as quickly as she could, all the while keeping an eye out for anyone who behaved suspiciously.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she placed her card against the card reader system at the massive iron gates of the apartment complex. She hurried through and was half way to the stairs when she heard a wet squelch in the direction of the gate. Samantha turned around in trepidation. A man was standing in the gateway with one hand pressing against the gate and other against the wall. He was being slowly crushed by the sliding movement of the gate. As she looked on, a second one joined him and then a third. They would lose against the mass of the gate but they were still creating a long enough lag for one of their friends to get in. As soon as she had that thought a small child squeezed through the mass of compressed bodies, their draining fluids lubricating her way.
The little girl seemed to smile in triumph and Samantha caught a glimpse of sharp yellow teeth nestled in blackened gums. Her mouth was already stained and dripping red. Samantha broke into a sprint hugging her groceries to her chest. She didn’t want to drop anything but she wasn’t going to become the next smear on the little girl’s lips either.
Samantha concluded that the apartment complex was no longer as safe as she thought it would be and she needed to leave. She decided to wait a bit because she was fairly certain that little girl and her friends wouldn’t give up on finding her that easily. She would have to try her luck at the address the woman had given her. While she packed her bags, Samantha reflected on the events that had led up to this.
Truthfully, when the most recent bout of the flu broke out, persons hadn’t been that concerned at first. They had survived the chikungunya virus in 2014, the zika virus in 2015 and an unprecedented dengue fever outbreak in 2016. Conspiracy theories were so rampant that even the usually skeptical Samantha had to admit that it seemed someone was trying to wipe out the inhabitants of her beloved small island.
Around August of 2017, persons started to fall ill with a mysteriously debilitating flu. There was almost a collective groan throughout the populace. Here we go again, they thought. More sick days exhausted, more loss of productivity in the workplace and more strain on the already burdened healthcare system. At Samantha’s company alone, she was sure that at least 90% of the employees had gotten the weird flu. Some of them eventually returned to work but the others…well she supposed it was safe to assume that she wouldn’t want to see them again.
She took one last look out the window in search of the little girl but didn’t see her. The other…what did the woman call them…biters…had been crushed by the gate and Samantha hoped they hadn’t compromised the locking system of the gate. She grabbed the spare car key she had received from one of her neighbours, Shane, in case of an emergency. She had driven him to the hospital the Sunday before her encounter at the bus stop. The doctors hadn’t allowed her to see him after he was admitted and he never came back home. She had tried not to think the worst but she had no choice now.
Samantha gathered her bags and stepped outside the door. When she looked both ways down the hall, she spotted the little girl at the end of it, fiddling with the door to the Vance’s apartment. She moved her hand swiftly along the doorknob but nothing happened. The little girl wrinkled her face as if in concentration and turned the knob more slowly. This time Samantha could hear the click of the lock being opened. A fleshy palm grasped the door from the inside and Samantha decided she had seen enough. It was time to leave. Fortunately, the splattered zombies hadn’t damaged the system and she was able to use the clicker in the car to open it.
Samantha consulted the folded paper for the umpteenth time before turning away from the gated complex. The woman’s address was fairly close to the complex though not in an area that she was comfortable with. Samantha couldn’t exactly afford to be picky right now so she drove cautiously into the rundown neighborhood. Only a road separated the garrison community from the higher income one Samantha used to call home but it was enough. It was common knowledge that only the residents of that community were allowed safe passage across that road and only when the ruling gang leader said so. Yet, there Samantha was driving across the imaginary threshold in search of a woman whose name she didn’t even know.
The narrow street leading into the community was deserted but Samantha knew better than to think that meant nobody was looking. Pieces of zinc lined both sides of the street, interspersed haphazardly with graffiti smeared walls. It was impossible to tell where one house began and another ended but she supposed that was the point. She threw the paper with the woman’s address to the ground as the approached the end of the street. What purpose was an address when none of the houses had any numbers?
Samantha made a U-turn at the end of the road wit
h the intention of leaving the community. As she faced forward again, she realized that there were now two heavily armed men wearing nothing but army type camouflage pants and boots standing in front of the car. The taller of the two had a long scar from his left lower eyelid to the corner of his mouth. The shorter, stockier one had a smooth, nondescript face in comparison to his counterpart but tattoos lined both his arms. The scarred man wound his finger around slowly indicating that Samantha should wind down her window and she complied.
“What you want?” he asked while leaning his rifle on the window sill.
“Uhm…I’m looking for 131 Sharp Cresent. A woman gave me her address and said I could stay with her.”
“What the woman name?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t…”
The man leaned away from Samantha and put the muzzle of his rifle against her temple.
“Why you coming to look for somebody you don’t know?”
Samantha started to tremble. What the hell had she been thinking? “Please,” she begged, “I met her at the shop. I just need somewhere safe from the…the biters.”
The tattooed man at the front of the car started to laugh loudly.
“What you call them? Biters? Bring her come Marcus. We can keep her safe man and I promise we won’t bite.”
Marcus snickered causing the gun’s muzzle to ruffle Samantha’s hair. Her heart thudded against her chest and she hoped his finger wouldn’t pull the trigger in error. As the sound of her own panicked breathing filled her ears, she thought she saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. She was too terrified to move her head to confirm it. Marcus turned towards her and gestured with the gun.
“Come out the car.”
With her head freed she was able to see the biter ambling towards the tattooed man. Both men were focused on her so she concentrated on keeping her face impassive so they wouldn’t see the biter before she wanted them to.
“Ok, ok,” she said, “Just let me open the lock.”
The biter reached the tattooed man as soon as Samantha’s fingers reached the lock. The biter clamped his teeth into the back of the tattooed man’s neck and locked his jaw in one quick motion. The tattooed man screeched and jumped away leaving a clump of his flesh in the biter’s mouth. As blood ran down his back, he opened fire hitting the biter several times. The biter kept moving forward even as bits of flesh and sprays of blood dotted the road.
Samantha took the opportunity to put the car in gear and ram the gas pedal to the floor. Marcus had to do a little jig just to get away from the accelerating car. By the time he started shooting at Samantha, she was already halfway to the road she never should have crossed. Silently, she berated herself for her foolish actions. With all the chaos going on, she had completely forgotten that there were still people out there who were far more dangerous than the biters.
Samantha drove around her neighborhood for a little while trying to decide where she should go. She had never really made any close friends. Sure she had gone to a few work functions and a party or two but she had no idea where any of her coworkers lived. Even if she had known, what was she supposed to say? Oh hey, I know I never accepted any of your invitations to lunch or dinner or birthday parties but I’d love to come hang out now that the country is falling apart. Somehow that seemed unlikely.
That only left one set of people. Family. Boy was that quite the smoldering bridge. Samantha was an orphan and had been raised by revolving households of aunts and uncles. When her parents had died in a bus accident, all the family members had decided to raise her but each home could only bear the financial burden of another child for a set period of time. So every few months or so Samantha had to pack up whatever she had and move. It kept her from getting particularly attached to any one family and by the time she was 16 years old, she packed for the last time and walked away from all of them.
It was difficult for Samantha initially because she hadn’t known anyone in Kingston and the parish can be an unfriendly place for outsiders. Eventually, she found favour at a homeless shelter run by a church. With their guidance, she had been able to find a part-time job, resume school and finally establish an independent life. She hadn’t spoken to her family since she left 10 years ago and though the island’s phone lines were still functional, she had no phone numbers to contact them. She couldn’t stay in Kingston though, the disease was running through the parish like unchecked sewage. With a sigh, Samantha turned the car in the direction of Manchester. She was going home.
A mere hour later, Samantha pulled up to the house where her Aunt Martha and Uncle Thomas had lived. She hoped that was still the case. A curtain fluttered as she got out of the car. A frisson of fear crept up her spine as she remembered the little girl opening the apartment door. Were her aunt and uncle one of those creatures now? The door opened and her feet remained rooted to the ground. Aunt Martha ran towards Samantha with tears running down her face. Arms were wrapped around Samantha before her brain had registered that her aunt was unharmed.
“Samantha girl! Lord it good to see you! Come inside quick. Strange things been happening down here.”
Strange things have been happening everywhere, Samantha thought. After packing away the few things she had carried, she spent the evening getting caught up on what had been going on. The flu and the biters were happening in Manchester as well. Fortunately, there were less people in the rural areas and everyone wasn’t so densely packed. Still there were enough tales to disturb Samantha.
“Lord child, you should have been here last week. I send poor John to school not knowing what was going on. Him come home not too long after with a helluva story. The teacher walk into the classroom quiet as ever. When one of the students go up to her to ask if she alright, the woman turn round and bite her! Can you imagine? Well some other students never see exactly what happen so they thought the teacher and the girl were fighting. They went to part them and that is when they see the blood pouring out of the girl face where her nose and lips used to be. So of course everybody now start to run out of the classroom. Nobody else never know what was going on because the students wouldn’t stop to say anything. Anyway, soon enough the teacher and the little girl come out of the class and start bite people too. That was it. I don’t really leave the house since then.”
Samantha shuddered at the story and its implications. The biters weren’t only smart, they weren’t eating anyone just biting them. Plus the virus appeared to be very fast acting.
“So where’s John now?” she asked.
“He just went to get some things from Miss Suzie up the road. Things getting a little rough so we have to share what we have with each other. Hopefully all of us make it through this.”
“And Uncle Thomas?”
Martha’s eyes flickered downwards and she ran her palms slowly down the sides of her floral skirt.
“Boy…Thomas never make it. The virus…is not everybody it turn into those things. If you weren’t so wholesome to begin with, it just kill you and you know your uncle heart wasn’t so good these last days. After the stroke…”
Martha’s voice trailed off and Samantha reached across to stroke her aunt’s hand. She realized that would explain why they weren’t more biters around and why Andre Vance had been alone in the apartment. Mr. Vance had had a bad heart too and a few months ago Samantha had noticed a dramatic weight loss in Mrs. Vance. She had assumed it was cancer. She must have been right.
While Samantha settled in with her aunt and cousin, Jamaica changed. Every day, entertainers left for world tours, athletes left for training, businessmen and women left for meetings and politicians just plain left. By the time regular citizens realized that it was a mass evacuation, it was too late. There were no more flights in or out of the island. Perhaps if Samantha had had a different last name or had some claim to fame other than being a hard-working, law-abiding citizen, she would have been able to leave too. Unfortunately, she and her family had to wait it out with the rest of the island’s pl
ebeian assemblage.
When the hospitals got around to reporting strange happenings within their walls, the undead were already walking the streets. Persons who thought they had been getting better were actually getting worse and were turning or dying in their cars, in taxis and in one noteworthy instance…while giving an update on the current ‘flu situation’ on the local news. The sniffling news anchor had halted her report mid-sentence and stared wide-eyed into the camera. While viewers watched, she bent towards her co-anchor and ripped his cheek off with her sharp teeth. People watched in horror as the man screamed, his teeth making a clicking sound each time he closed his mouth. The woman spat the piece of cheek on the news desk and started to walk towards the camera. Viewers got a brief glance at the snarling, red-eyed woman before the camera crashed to the ground and the screen went blank. After that the news was no longer delivered in pairs.
On October 5, 2017, a few weeks after Samantha’s trip to Manchester, the Prime Minister issued a statement while safely ensconced overseas. It was just a terrible flu and there was nothing to worry about. He would be back soon.
On October 7, 2017, the island’s two major airports and a minor landing strip were bombed. The following day, a representative from the United Nations admitted that trials had been conducted on Jamaica’s 2.9 million inhabitants. As suspected, the mosquitoes which had been blamed for a myriad of illnesses had indeed been genetically modified and released unto the island starting in 2014.
He told those who could still listen that while the consequences of the trials were unfortunate, the information gleaned was invaluable. It would lead to great strides in the field of medicine and would help millions of people. Just not the almost 2.5 million Jamaicans left to fend for themselves. He went on to further state that the member states of the U.N. would have to take measures to contain the infection. Persons found out via public access T.V. that he meant posting security boats just off the island’s shores and shooting down anyone that tried to leave by boat.
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