Devour, if you will.
Also, keep in mind that I rushed through all this in the space o two days, so it won't be my usual standard.
And yeah, I know that The Panic Broadcast chapter was just an alteration from a previous Prologue I've written.
---
1.
AWAKENING
I couldn’t feel anything.
That was the first thing that came into my
head when I ‘awoke’. I tried to lift my head, to obverse the remainder of my
body, but found it unresponsive to my commands. My thoughts were foggy and
slow. Nothing made sense.
From what I had been told, I should have died.
The chance of my survival, or revival if they managed to get the virus to work
correctly, was miniscule. The odds were really so small that it was something
that wasn’t even considered by me. Which was mainly why I had been so worried.
But it would seem I had survived.
And yet I still could not move. I still could
not feel anything. I still could not think straight.
I still did not understand.
The virus seemed to have worked then. Or was
it a fluke? Something else they had tired instead, because the virus actually
had failed? Or was I actually dead, and simply dreaming in an afterlife? If so,
the afterlife I was in must have been pretty crappy, for the ceiling was the
same dark and dank ceiling I would have left in life.
My thoughts continued to form in my head,
slowly filling it up, each of them bouncing off each other and tangling until I
could no longer tell one apart from the other. Once I no longer was able to
hold anymore, my mind too went blank, joining my body in a complete state of
numb.
I’m not sure how long I lay there after that. I
didn’t pay attention much, but nor did I care. Admittedly, I was still very
curious about what the hell had happened, but seeing as I couldn’t even move,
or even think at that point in time,
I couldn’t do much else other than loose myself to time.
Eventually, someone walked into my view, shot
a look my way, and saw that I was awake.
Or at least, must have seen my eyes moving,
because I still couldn’t move. At once, he walked over and examined me.
“My god,” said the vaguely familiar man in the
lab coat. “The virus works…” Well, that
certainly confirmed my suspicions. The man looked at my face again, then
checked for a pulse on my neck. “Are you conscious of yourself?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes in reply.
“Right…” he muttered, then bustled out of my
sight. Next, I heard a series of short beeps
from my left, then an odd sound of pumping something through tubes. Thirty
seconds later, I could move my fingers. Another thirty seconds allowed my arms
to regain control, then my legs, upper body, neck and head. I tried to sit up,
but the second I did my vision became blurred and I felt a sudden urge to throw
up.
I slowly lowered myself back down, breathing
heavily. After a few moments, however, I found that breathing was no longer necessary
to be sustained. So I stopped. I checked my pulse, at my neck, then at my
wrists. Nothing at all.
I really was well and truly dead.
The man was talking, saying something, but I
really wasn’t listening at that point. I was too fascinated at what I had
become, at what had happened. I was dead, yet awake. Not alive, but most
definitely awake, definitely conscious of what I was doing. Not dreaming, not imagining.
I sat up again, slower this time, and examined
my body. Tubes still were protruding out of my arms and stomach, and I saw
opaque fluid was slowly making its way into my body through them. This was probably
what had made my body moveable again just minutes before.
I examined my stomach more thoroughly. There
were scars everywhere, large, huge scars, lazily covered over with stitches
that had not been removed. The same went for my arms and the pants I was
wearing had large gashes in them, beneath which lay more stitched scars. I
tried to feel my neck, to confirm that there were marks there too, but on
touch, I found that I still could not feel anything, and instinct told me that
I never would again.
If I had indeed died, and then been
resurrected, how long had I lay dormant for? I had pondered this question thoroughly
before I realised that the man wearing the lab coat was still talking, and I
turned to face him.
“-and then we’ll have to run a few more tests,
of course, to confirm you’re entirely stable against the after-effects of the
increndiate woreate, but afterwards…”
I shook my head slowly, but stopped soon
after, for it made me feel sick again. I suppose that even though I couldn’t
feel physically anymore, that did not make an effect on my insides.
“Stop,” I said, and was slightly surprised at
how much it had changed from when I last remembered it. In life, my voice had
always been fairly cheerful. Average, I suppose, as far as voices go. But now
it was deep, very deep, and flat, and it also contained traits of a growl.
Either way though, the man stopped at once. His
brow furrowed and frowned slightly, as if confused, but then cleared his face
of emotion and looked at me expectantly.
“Start again,” I said in the new, horridly
unfamiliar voice of mine. “I wasn’t listening.”
“Of course,” the man said, and launched himself
into a lengthy half-speech with terms too technical for me to understand about
things I didn’t care about.
“Stop,” I said again after about five minutes
of this, and the man stopped. “What happened to me?”
Again, the man frowned, confused, then looked
up at me again.
“In simple terms,” he begun, “we killed you.”
“I know,” I said tonelessly.
“And then we resurrected you, from the dead,”
the man continued. “We released a virus into your system while you were in your
state between the two dimensions of life and death, and evidently it has
worked. For you are now the living dead.”
“I’m a zombie?” I asked.
“Well,” the man begun again. “We prefer to use
the term ‘Homo-Coprophagus-Somnambulus’.”
“I’m a zombie,” I said.
“Whichever you prefer,” the man shrugged.
“How long was I dead?” I asked.
“You’re still
dead, really,” he replied. “But you were, you might say, ‘asleep’, for three
months. Mr River, you are eternally dead. You now no longer require food, nor
water, nor rest, nor oxygen. You cannot feel anything.”
“Will I ever die again?” I asked. “From what I
am now?”
“At this point in time, we cannot tell if your
body and mind will ever deteriorate in your current state,” he said, shrugging
again.
I let all of this sink in slowly. My thoughts
were starting to clear up now, and it wasn’t as hard as before to accept this
new prospect.
I was dead.
I was a zombie.
I needed nothing to keep me going.
And from what I was feeling at that time, I
felt no need for human flesh, no need for human blood, no need for human
brains.
I let it all sink in.
And then, all at once, I accepted it.
“Okay,” I said. “What now?”
“What now?” the man asked. “Mr River, do you
realise what this means for humanity?”
I did not even bother to shake my head, but it
seemed not to matter, for the man continued on anyway.
“This discovery is a promise of no further
pain to our citizens. People will no longer have to suffer, for the way to end
it is simple, and has just been demonstrated by you!”
I thought about what he said for a long time
after that. Even after I finally understood, it was a while before I spoke
again.
“So you plan to kill people?” I asked. “Kill
them and make them zombies?”
“Essentially,” the man in the coat said. “Yes.
As cruel as it sounds, as yourself a question here. Think over what you were
three months ago. Now think of what you are now.” He paused for a few moments
to allow me time to do what he has said. I do so after a while, but not too
thoroughly. “Do you feel as if you have been treated unfairly? At all?”
I thought about this hard. I looked at my
hands, which were then stark white. I looked at the rest of my body, which was
also completely white. I looked at the large scars on the body, unnaturally red
against the white. Then I looked back up at the man.
“No,” I said finally.
2.
INTENTIONS
An hour later, the man in the lab coat, whose
name happened to be Grey Frimmet, had informed me of what he and the company
intended to do next.
Apparently, the virus had already been
approved by government officials and they were already preparing to begin major
scale operations on hundreds of patients.
When I had asked about how the virus worked,
Doctor Frimmet had launched himself into another long explanation. From what I
had gathered, the virus was released into my blood stream while I was almost
dead, carried around my body, and left to work while I was dead. The virus ate
through whatever I had on the inside and released fluids into my body, mostly
in my brain that constantly regenerated vital things I needed to keep me going,
and keep me alive. And once it was finished with the rest of me, the virus
reactivated my consciousness. Frimmet had explained all this in more detail,
but none of it really made sense to me, so I didn’t bother trying to
understand. To me, it didn’t matter much anyway. I was dead. I was a zombie.
That’s all I really needed to know. How the virus operated was more out of
vague interest, really.
Soon after, I requested to leave the facility,
but half a dozen doctors all told me at once that I must remain here, for tests
and all that nonsense before I was allowed to vacate the place.
So, I had to wait it out.
Later that day, three different doctors cut
open my left arm with a large razor-blade thing and sampled what little blood
was left in it that had not yet dried up. I was forced to sit on the metal
platform for an hour while the doctors examined the blood through a multitude
of different machines. First a microscope, from which results were evidently
not sufficient enough. After that, however, they moved onto different machines
that I had never seen before in my existence. They each seemed to gain
different information from each machine they used though, and as long as it
kept them satisfied, I didn’t mind. Just one step closer from getting out of
there.
Over the next few days, they did multiple
different tests. They cut out small chunks of my chalk white flesh and examined
it. They gave me simple spelling and mathematical questions to answer, to test
what brain power I have compared to what I had when I was alive. They started
conversations with me at random to test I didn’t even know what.
It took an entire three weeks for them to
complete all of their tests, but finally I was told I was stable, and
fully-functional, and was permitted to leave on the condition that I return to
the facility every week for a check-up.
I agreed only because I so badly wanted to
leave the place that reeked of human perspiration and misery and waste.
I finally escaped the place, and immediately
retreated to the place I once considered my home.
But after three weeks of neglect, the place
seemed to have half decayed itself. I let myself in to see cobwebs draped
across the ceilings and walls and was greeted with the smell of dirt and grime.
After sitting around in the lounge room for
three hours straight, I felt the need to do something. But what did someone who
is an undead do exactly? I no longer
required food or drink. I didn’t require exercise. I didn’t really need to do anything. It soon became apparent that
my life as a zombie was going to become painstakingly dull.
I may have contributed largely to solving a
huge world problem, but it had in no way at all improved my life. It had
probably extended it, sure, but what would I do in my extended years to come?
Finally, I simply stood up and went to find
some proper clothes to wear. Going through my wardrobe for appropriate clothing
was actually harder than I thought it would have been. Now that my flesh was
utterly white, there were only particular colours I could wear without looking
ridiculous. The unnervingly red scars that ran everywhere across my body from
my shoulders down did not exactly help either.
In the end, I chose a simple white shirt,
black pants and a leather jacket to top it off. I examined myself in the mirror
and was slightly disappointed. I had not wanted to die, no. I had not wanted to
end up becoming a bloodthirsty killer that could transmit a bloody infection
with a mere bite. But I had not wanted this either.
Working was now unnecessary, for there was
nothing I needed money for. After I had dressed myself properly, I decided to
sit back down on the couch again and just wait for the sun to set and for
fatigue to set in.
But I knew, even as I waited, that no sense of
exhaustion would pass me. Nothing even close to a hint of tiredness flickered
in me in my three weeks contained in the facility. No need for sleep or rest
overcame me. Being dead, it seemed, also blocked this from my system.
So I sat there, on the couch, for hours,
through the sunset, and through the night. And continued to sit there as the
sun rose for morning again.
By then, I was contemplating suicide, a quick
escape from this horridly dull life I now had. There would be no pain, I knew
that much. Technically, I was already dead, so there was nothing to fear from
the concept again.
But instinct told me that even if I put
several well-aimed bullets straight through my brain, nothing would happen in
the slightest. I had an array of guns and knives locked away in my basement,
but my instinct was usually correct, so I decided not to bother.
Instead, I continued to sit there, my mind
already fixed on the time I would be required to re-enter the facility for the
‘check-up’.
And so I sat there.
And sat there.
And sat there.
For weeks on end.
Until the next week came.
Two weeks passed as a zombie, and I entered
the facility again for check-ups. Both times, I was sent away will a report
saying I was well and healthy and still fully-functional.
I managed to pass my time by watching
television. I found no entertainment in it, but at least it provided a
distraction. As I had suspected, there had been no change in my body shape or
weight over the course of the two months, no matter what I had done.
On the third week, Doctor Frimmet informed me
that they had found a way to increase the speed in which the virus operated on
the body, so they would be able to treat patients faster.
Perhaps life as a zombie would not have been
too bad for patients who actually had a proper life, a family who cared for
them. But my family had all died long ago, and I lived alone. I often found
myself wondering what I had done while I was still alive, but the only thing I
had been able to come up with in the many, many hours I spent doing nothing was
work. And it was true, really. The
only thing I ever did was work. What a boring life.
But now I have an even more boring death. And
it’s not ending any time soon.
And so my death that was now my life, that was
really death, a living death, and yet still a life, passed in boredom.
Until one afternoon, with the television
flashing in front of me.
As the Prime Minister addressed the country.
3.
THE PANIC BROADCAST
That day, the 5th of August in the
year 2014 found the entire country of Australia hanging onto loved ones tightly
as the television broadcast flashed horrendously in front of them. At least,
that’s what I had assumed; having no loved ones left myself.
The 20th Prime Minister stood in front of a
ridiculously enormous crowd, and a television crew for each station that
amassed almost as large, reading off a long document propped on a polished
black lectern and speaking in a tone that clearly indicated that he was
panicking, though desperately trying to fake a calm for the country. Terrified
screams split the air, desperate moans of hopelessness filled the surroundings
and gaping stretches of shocked silence solidified in-between. Everyone heard what
the Prime Minister said loud and clear. No one questioned what had triggered it
to come to pass. No one questioned how it had occurred. But everyone managed to
grasp the fact that a deadly army of the dead, shortened to “zombies” as a
common phrase, had appeared out of nowhere and were now slowly spreading across
the country. Originated in Sydney, the plague was now slowly spreading out to
nearest major places of Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide.
I knew how this had happened, of course. I
knew, and the doctors at the facility knew, and the Prime Minister probably
knew as well.
But no one else questioned it.
No one else cared.
“Citizens are warned not to approach these
zombies,” The Prime Minister warned. “A single bite from these creatures will
trigger an infection to spread and cause the victim to become a zombie
themselves in a mere matter of minutes. As comical as this may seem, this is
now the reality our lives, Australia. The army is on its way.” Grotesque
footage of chalk white faces splattered with blood and vicious slices flickered
onto the screen, varying in quality from professional film captured by camera
crews to cheap videos taken by mobile phones and uploaded to Youtube. Footage
of already turned zombies slowly stumbling towards screaming victims, too
stunned or frightened to move before being bitten, mostly on the neck, and
collapsing on the ground while a clear sickness slowly spread across their
skin, killing then reviving them into what was now known to be a zombie, thus a
national wide threat and therefor a horrendous creature marked for death. A
creature that also held a mind with nothing, it seemed, but the need to extend
its own kind’s existence. Deformed, bloody, mindless, determined, relentless;
evil, these zombies seemed to be exactly what mankind had pictured them as, the
green skin feature aside.
I knew what had triggered this, why it was
happening to the other people who had been operated on and not me. It must have
been however they managed to increase the speed in which the virus operated.
Which either meant that they had added
something that changed how the virus operated as well…
Or that this was also going to happen to me in
approximately three months…
“Citizens that have weapon licences are
advised to arm themselves with long range weapons and those without are
suggested to find themselves a secure underground shelter to protect yourselves
and loved ones. This is now an official nation-wide crisis and is not a drill.”
The second the Prime Minister stepped down
from the podium and was swarmed by strong looking men wearing black suits, the
entire country was thrown into absolute chaos.
And I was left staring at the screen,
wondering if this death of a life was going to have some meaning before I was
turned into a mindless creature myself.
4.
THE BASEMENT, THE STREETS
After I managed to regain control over my
body, I stood up, my mind a land of chaos.
What do I do?
I asked myself this over and over. I should
defend myself, obviously, at least until the three months are up and I will
become one of them.
But I couldn’t stay there, at my house,
covered in grime and cobwebs. I had to move, for I would surely be ripped to
shreds if I stayed.
My life/death had suddenly taken a huge swing,
and was now something to be defended under these new circumstances. I didn’t
particularly give a damn about the other
people who might need help, but was concerned about myself.
Until the three month period ended.
Where to go? I asked myself
frantically, still standing. The answer followed it almost at once. The basement. To me, my basement meant weapons. The two words were literally
associated with each other in my brain.
I launched myself from the room and rounded
each corner of my house on to the way to the basement with much crashing
around. Once I was inside the place, I took a look around at my glorious field
of weapons. Striding right over to the guns, I grabbed two twin pistols and
slid them into my belt which had been specially designed to hold them years ago
anyway. Afterwards, I pulled a strap over my body and fixed a katana and
machete through the back of it. Then I grabbed two sub machine guns, the type
of gun I far prefer over any other.
Ammunition was quickly filled in pouches on my
belt, and I turned to exit the basement again, feeling more alive than I had in
years. Ironic, seeing as I was now dead.
I ran back up the stairs and left the
basement, heading back for the main levels of the house. Once I was back in the
living room, I quickly went over what I had already remembered to do and what I
still needed to do.
What had I remembered to do? Got weapons, check.
I halted for a moment, remembering that that
was all I had done so far. What an incredibly long list…
Things I still needed to do. Barricade the
entrances to the house until I work out where to go. Keep lookouts and
advantage points from inside to take down incoming zombies, if need be. Obtain
and ration supplies would have been on there as well if I had still needed
them, but since I was now dead myself, it would not be necessary.
Having kept these things in mind, I took off
through the house, searching for anything that would be useful to barricade the
entrances to the place. After ten minutes, I’d found wooden planks and nails to
hold them in place. I wasn’t sure how much good they’d do against a large horde
of zombies intent on getting through, but they wouldn’t need to hold for long
anyway. Just until I had worked out where I needed to go.
Another ten minutes later I had barricaded the
doors and most of the windows of the house. I set to work on the last window,
hammering the nails in with a hammer, through the wood and into the wall. After
I turned away from the final window, finished, I retreated back into the living
room and resumed my position on the couch, this time deep in thought.
I could not stay there. That much I knew, that
much had been established. Which, evidently, meant that I had to move from my
house. I begun to make a mental list of the places I could retreat to, but my
thoughts soon started to get tangled with one another. So I dug out a piece of
paper from an abandoned drawer I had and a pencil along with it. After a while,
the list started to take shape, and I managed to get this down in a messy
scrawl.
Hospital
Cain Wasteland
Train System
The Hospital was plain and simple. I figured
that other people would be gathered there, and while I did not like the idea of
having to rely on other people to keep me safe, nor the idea of having other
people to protect, but I liked the idea of being ripped to shreds consciously
even less.
Cain Wasteland was the option I liked most. My
father had often talked of the place when I was younger. It was a farmland,
really, but without all the animals. A few small houses scattered far and wide
over huge patches of land. Dry grass, minimum protection, hard living. Also
very desolate. If I could get there, I figured that I had little to no chance
of getting attacked by an undead infected at all in the few months I had left
to live.
However, the train system that operated in
Sydney was also an option I could take. It meant that I never really stayed in
one place for more than a few hours at a time. Which is probably a good thing.
I would also be able to gain information on the current situation of the zombie
threat. Such as the places where the infected are most common and where the citizens
are all in complete lockdown.
All were valid choices, but I decided to think
it through quickly. To make a decision here and now, despite the twenty minutes
I had taken to set up the barricades that fortified the house.
It took me another ten minutes, but I final
settled on taking the trains up and down the countryside for a while, and then
make a decision afterwards on whether or not I would continue on to Cain
Wasteland. The hospital seemed like such a stupid idea after that.
So I got up again and grabbed a large backpack
to carry with me. Back in the basement again, I filled an entire two sections
of this bag with various weapons, melee and long-range, plenty of ammunition,
and other things such as straps and belts that may come in handy along the way.
I dedicated the rest of the bag to things I found
back upstairs; hammers; nails; pliers and a medical kit just in case something
weird happens. I also filled a water bottle and a small plastic bag of canned
food. Who knows? I thought to myself.
I might start to miss having to eat.
With my bag packed and ready to go, I slipped
on my shoes and peered out the window to check the streets. There were two
zombies in sight, already a larger number than I was expecting. Deciding not to
waste any bullets on these things just yet, I simply tore down the wooden
planks and smashed the window open with my fist. Glass shattered and my ghostly
white flesh tore open at my knuckles, but I was still immune to feeling, and
thus; immune to pain.
The two zombies, of course, turned my way at
once and both made similar snarling noises. They weren’t the kind of zombies I
had seen in the movies as a teenager. They weren’t the decayed, green,
blood-covered, slow and stumbling, clueless creatures of death. These zombies
looked just like they had in life, their flesh aside. And they moved just as
quickly as well. Their sanity seemed to have decayed away, leaving only primal
instinct left, but otherwise they were the same.
The two zombies ran towards me, snarling and
glowering, arms flailing around wildly as they did so. And I pulled my machete
from my back strap and tore it across the neck of the first one. Blood
splattered and stained the neck, stained the face, stained the machete. Not
wasting time for the second zombie, I spun, let my leg fly loose and it caught
the creature in the shoulder. As it staggered sideways, I lunged after it,
bringing my machete up again, and forced it through the head of the zombie.
Blood splattered again, and the second one fell to the ground. Dead. Again.
I allowed myself a moment to view my quick
work. The two zombies on the ground looked a lot more like the zombies I had
seen in the movies now. For blood splattered their face and clothes. Their skin
was not old and decayed, but the blood splatter certainly added a more chaotic
air to it all.
I turned away from the two, and set off across
the streets, holding the machete ready to attack and kill at any movement made
towards me.
Yes, I had decided to go to the trains and
proceed from there, but I had also decided not to head there right away.
Because there was somewhere else I had to go first.
I had to return to the facility.
And find out what really was going on.
5.
WHAT REALLY IS GOING ON
It took me an entire hour to reach the
facility again. Normally, it would have taken me half this time, but I was
moving slowly, and there were still a few zombies to avoid. It seemed that
many, many people had already taken this thing offered to them by Frimmet.
I entered the facility without consulting
anyone and made my way directly to the laboratory where the doctors had checked
up on me in the past few weeks. I found him sitting on a chair, leaning over
his desk, head in his hands.
“You come to kill me now?” he asked dully as I
entered, not turning around to face me.
“No,” I replied in my voice as dead as my
body. “But I have to ask you some questions.”
Doctor Frimmet let out a noise half way
between a sigh and a grunt, and he slowly turned to face me. His face was
lined, covered in shadows of the dank and damp room. He looked a lot older than
I had seen him last, and his clothes looked as if they had not been washed for
weeks. I saw his eyes study me for the longest time. Then, he said, “Ask away,”
in a weary voice that sounded so very unlike himself.
“What’s going on?” I asked off right away.
He sighed properly this time and propped his
head on his fist. “You know what’s going on. The entire country saw the
broadcast.”
“And it was your fault?” I asked.
“Probably…”
“What did you do to them?” I asked.
“Exactly what we did with you,” Frimmet
muttered, turning back to his desk. He started searching for something amongst
the enormous cluster of papers on his table as he continued talking. “You and
three others were the only people who had a dose of the original virus, the
slower one.”
“So how did you speed it up for the faster
virus?” I asked. A mistake, evidently, because Frimmet launched himself into
yet another long, complicated explanation that I did not understand. From what
I gathered, though, they had indeed changed the formula slightly.
“So…” I muttered, trying to make sense of it. “So…whatever
is happening to the others isn’t going to happen to me?”
“Oh, well I can’t be exactly sure on that
notion,” he said, standing up with the paper he had been searching for and
striding over to me. Frimmet showed me the sheet and stared down at it,
incomprehensively as the multitude of numbers and graphs on the sheet meant absolutely
nothing. “We added an extra substance to the second variation of the virus,
correct,” Frimment said. “But there is no statistics, nor evidence, to suggest
that this chemical is the cause of the symptoms devolving over the country.”
“Symptoms…” I said blankly, the term falling
oddly into my head.
“Loss of mental control, and ferocity towards
uninfected or undead individuals, primarily,” he continued. “The term
‘uninfected’ obviously being a play on the virus.”
“Right…” I muttered, still not understanding,
or caring much, where the term he was using for the zombies came from. “So
there’s a chance I won’t become like them after a few months?”
“Oh, you most likely won’t,” Frimmet said,
waving a hand and returning to his chair. “There is, as I said, no evidence to
support my statement, but I’m fairly positive that you, along with the other three
that were tested with the original virus, will not make the same development as
the others.”
“But we could still become infected with the
second virus if we get bitten?” I asked, surprising myself that I came up with
this question.
Frimmet actually stopped and pondered this.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he answered
after a long pause. “Looks as if you’re on your own for that question.”
I nodded my deathly pale head and looked down
at the floor, frowning, trying to think.
“So,” I said finally, talking again. “You
seemed to have had a lot of people come in and get the virus.”
“Oh, yes, we had plenty,” Frimmet replied,
nodding. “But I’ve seen outside. Most of the ones that are walking around out
there are people that have been bitten by other people.”
I nodded and continued staring at the ground,
frowning, confused.
“I have something for you…” Frimmet grumbled
after another long silence. I looked up to see him walking over with a second
sheet of paper. “The results are consistent now: we’re fairly sure the virus in
your system will eventually begin to run out of steam. In two years’ time, the
virus will slowly die, and your body will begin to deteriorate.”
Two years? I asked myself.
Seeing as I was counting on having my conscious and what I knew as my life
taken from me in less than three months, that was an incredible increase of
time to do things in.
“That’s…. Uh…” I muttered, trying to talk
properly.
“We could always inject a second dose of the
original virus back into your system, of course,” said Frimmet. “But, in light
of recent events, I don’t think I want to have anything to do with resurrecting
people anymore.”
It’s completely understandable, of course. And
I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to remain on the Earth for two years now anyway,
so I didn’t argue against him.
“Right,” was all I said. “I’m going to go
now.”
“What will you do, River?” asked Frimmet
suddenly as I turned to leave. “Where will you go?”
I didn’t bother to turn around as I answered.
“I’m going hunting, Doctor Frimmet,” I said.
“No, stop!” he was hurrying over to me now,
blocking the exit. “They’ll kill you, River, you know it! Are you really so
eager to waste my years of research, of investment? Get to cover! Stay safe and
return to me for research when this
is all over!”
“Move aside, Doctor Frimmet,” I said dully.
“They’ll kill you!” he yelled at me as I
pushed him aside.
“You forget,” I replied, leaving the room. “I’m
already dead.”
6.
ALL ABOARD THE DREADED ZOMBIE EXPRESS
The journey to the train station that was in
my local area was not an easy one, nor a fast one. Firstly, I had only ever
been to the train station once, and that was years ago. Secondly, there were
still a lot of zombies around, so I had to be careful.
Something I had noticed on my way there,
however, was that while the zombies still ended up trying to kill me, they were
always confused whenever they set eyes on me. They saw I was dead. I was most
obviously dead. Yet I was not like them either. And that confused them. I saw
their heads tilt slightly every one of them saw me, but then they would attack
and I would put an end to their existence.
I decided to keep this in mind. It could turn
out to be a valuable piece of information in the future. I also decided to keep
with my previous inclination to keep my bullets for now. I had a feeling that
I’d need them a lot later on.
By the time I had left the facility, night had
started to fall. This would not have been much of a problem, because if I
couldn’t see properly, then neither could the infected, but I was still trying
to locate the station, and as such darkness was not going to help.
Thankfully, though, I managed to locate it
after another hour and only encountered seven zombies on the way there. I took
them out pretty easily with my machete.
Finally, I reached the station, lit only by
small streetlight, and had learnt another thing about the infected. They seemed
attracted to sound. Obviously, sound would alert
them to something moving, but they actually seemed to be attracted to any sound
at all. Which was probably more bad news for me, considering I was going to be
catching a train.
I ran up the steps to the platform and took a
quick look around. I was the only one there. At least, the only one I could
see. It didn’t really matter anyway; I was really on the lookout for zombies,
not people.
Confirming that I really was alone, I crouched
in a dark corner, machete at the ready, and waited for the train to come. The small
television thing with the incoming trains was still working, so I assumed that
the trains were still working as well. After all, the entire country couldn’t
have gone into a complete lockdown,
could it?
I checked the television thing again and found
that the next train was due in in three minutes. That was good, because I was
starting to get bored again.
Three minutes passed, and finally, I heard the
odd sound of a train beginning to pull up at the station. Thank god… The train
grounded to a halt, and the doors slowly slid open. I took my chance and ran
from my spot on the station and leapt into the train.
Behind me, I heard the doors slide shut again,
and I turned around, still holding the machete, to see the company I had on the
train carriage.
Zombies.
Zombies.
Zombies.
More zombies.
The entire carriage, and I took a guess and
the entire train as well, was full of nothing but zombies.
And they were all looking at me, snarling
their snarls, preparing to attack.
I had just leapt onto a Zombie Train.
There was a split second of utter tension,
where the zombies looked at me, and I looked at them. Nothing else in the world
mattered in that moment except for the contents of that carriage.
And then the train gave a lurch as it begun to
move again, and the first zombie threw itself at me. I reacted at once,
bringing my machete up to meet it, and I planted the weapon firmly through the
forehead. But even as its body sagged against the machete, the other zombies
were already attacking. I pulled my machete out of the zombie’s head and tasked
my free hand with punching as many zombies as I could while I worked. I got the
machete free and quickly got rid of as many zombies as I could with it. But
while one fell, another two took its place and there was soon a pool of pale
bodies splashed in each other’s blood built around me.
I gave up with one weapon, and pulled out the
katana in my back strap and quickly set that one to work as well. The entire
carriage’s supply of the undead was all setting themselves on me attacking with
everything they had. And it was all I could do to defend myself. My blades
flashed and blood splashed, and bodies fell.
Finally, as I tore my katana across the throat
of yet another zombie, I saw an end in their numbers, the open space at the end
of the stairs that marked they had almost reached their limit. Encouraged by
this thought slightly, I redoubled by efforts and battered one of them away
which, in turn, took three other zombies to the ground with its flailing.
The hilts of my blades collided with heads, my
fists obliterated the jaws of my enemies, and the two melee weapons penetrated the
vital areas of the zombies. And soon, each time a zombie fell, no other came to
replace it. Their numbers depleted and slowly dropping ever lower, my victory
over this horde was almost secured. And then, a final flash of my machete, the
final cry of an attacking member of the undead, a final body dropped, and there
was no one left to face. After the deafening roaring and screeching of the
zombies and the further terrible sounds they had made as they left the Earth,
the carriage sounded oddly silent, even as the train continued to rattle
onwards. As such, I was able to hear everything that happened, any movement
which, at that point, was none. I did not have to breathe, which felt weird,
especially since I had just been doing nothing but fighting for the good part
of five minutes.
And then I heard the soft breathing behind me,
and I spun, machete and katana already raised, ready to strike - but there was
no one there. As I spun, the was a sharp intake of breath, and then it stopped
entirely.
Confused, I backed away a step, almost
tripping over a pale corpse of an unmoving zombie as I did so. I frowned at
what I saw, then double checked, to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. But no, I
was seeing correctly.
There was a young girl hiding under the seats.
7.
THE GIRL
She was ten years old. She was scared,
frightened and starving. She was half dead, too, I might as well mention that. I
was wary at first, to see if she was planning anything, but it soon became
apparent that the girl was utterly unable to do anything, even if she had
wanted to.
We took a seat on the upper level of the train
and I opened the section of my bag that didn’t hold the weapons. It’s a good thing I decided to pack these
things, I thought to myself. The medical kit was opened and I treated her
wounds. They weren’t anything very major; a few cuts and bruises in place, but
that was about it. After a while, I cracked open a tin of salmon and she ate it
through ravenously. She drained half the water bottle too, and after she had
finished, simply lay across the seat and drifted into an uneasy sleep.
This had me by surprise. I wasn’t exactly sure
what I had expected after she had finished, but I had not expected that. A
sudden drop into a sleep. I figured it didn’t really matter though, and after a
while, worked out that it was probably to be expected. This girl was beaten and
scared, and had probably not even for over a day. Plus, it was probably around
midnight by now. She needed sleep, and was only a ten year old, which was the
only thing she had said since I got on the train.
“What are you doing?” I had asked, but she had
only whimpered. “Come on, get out, I’m not going to hurt you.”
Slowly, the girl detached herself from the
ground under the train seats and joined me, standing. I took her upstairs and
sat her down. “Do you need food? Water?” she had nodded blankly in response and
I had pulled out the medical kit and the two aforementioned things.
“I’m ten,” she had said. I had nodded, and
conversation died, leaving the place for me to heal her up and let her eat as
she pleased.
I was surprised at her, to begin with; that
she had survived for the full day on the train full of zombies and nothing to
eat. I figured I’d just have to ask her about it when she woke up. Which
wouldn’t be for hours.
Sighing, I propped myself back up in the chair
and put away my katana and pulled out a pistol instead. Just in case any
zombies stumbled onto the carriage as the train stopped again, or if any of
them managed to come in through a different carriage in the night. I didn’t
feel fatigue anymore, nor did I require sleep, so I remained up all night, both
weapons at the ready.
But no disturbance presented itself in the
hours that elapsed between my arrival and sunrise the next morning. The girl
woke fairly early. Probably around seven or so.
It’s then that she finally starts talking.
Her name is Rachel and all her family got
bitten by zombies who were already infected. She barely managed to escape with
her life and made it onto a train. She hid under a seat and as the train made
more and more stops, more and more zombies filled into the carriage and the
rest of the train. It was empty when she had first gotten on. She had pretty
much stayed quiet all through the day and waited for one of the zombies to
notice her, to die. But then I had shown up, and killed all of them. Killed
them again…
Her voice was always slightly afraid; as if
she was concerned I would attack her at any second. I wouldn’t, of course, but
I couldn’t exactly blame her. She was only ten, and had been through a lot in
the past day. Kind of. It was understandable, is what I think I’m trying to say
here.
Rachel had long, black hair and wore white
pants and a white shirt that were now covered in dirt and grime. Her brown
jacket alone seemed to be clean-ish.
After she had told me her story, however, it
seemed that she had a few questions of her own.
“So why aren’t you like them?” she asked
quietly.
“What do you mean?” I replied, confused.
“You’re dead,” she replied. “You look just
like they do, but you aren’t like them. You’re still you.”
“Oh, that,” I said. “It’s kind of a long
story.”
“So was mine,” Rachel shrugged. I decided it
would be kind of hypocritical not to tell her this simple story after what I
had just made her relive for me. So I did.
I started from when I volunteered to be killed
in the name of science. I explained how Doctor Frimmet and his team of
assistants had carted me into their facility and put me to sleep. I told her
how I could still feel everything as I was slowly killed, though not in great
detail. I explained my confusion that was explained as I woke up, resurrected. Then
I skipped to being let home and seeing the broadcast, as she had, before
packing my things and returning to the facility to question Doctor Frimmet
about the virus.
I told her everything up until where we were
then, just as Rachel had, and afterwards she seemed satisfied.
“But really,” she said after a long pause.
“You could turn into one of them in a
few months, right? Doctor Frimmet may not have been right.”
“You aren’t very cheerful, are you?” I asked.
“I’ve been told that before…” sighed Rachel.
I let her have whatever she didn’t finish of
the salmon the previous night for breakfast, and explained what I was planning
to do when she asked.
“I’m planning on taking trains up to Cain
Wasteland,” I said. “Heard of it?”
Rachel shook her head.
“Well, you can tag along anyway, if you like.”
“Thanks, I think I will,” she replied.
Wonderful I thought to
myself dully.
“Where is it, anyway?”
“Doesn’t matter, really. All it means is that
we’ll be really, really, really unlucky if we even see a zombie there.”
“And how’s your luck been lately?” Rachel
asked with an awkward smile.
“Pretty bad,” I replied, returning the smile.
No comments:
Post a Comment