Genesis Virus

by Pinto, Daniel

  “Make it quick.” Phillip takes off his backpack. David forgot his pack inside the bunker.

  David says. “I’m a fast learner. Now I’m the master and you’re the whiny sidekick.” David laughs as he tosses more wood into the fire and eschews the floating embers.

  Phillip breathes out a sigh of relief and cracks a square of noodles. “Yeah, yeah, but you’re still an idiot.”

  David looks around the trees. “Please don’t start talking about what ifs again before bed time, it stresses me out and I have your little speech memorized. You don’t even need to ask, you know I will take care of your wife as long as she calls me Daddy.” David laughs and Phillip puts up a fist playing like he’s going to punch him. One day he might.

  “David, you’re the only one who laughs at your jokes.” Phillip pulls out some rope. “I’ve seen that you’ve been writing a lot lately. Am I in it, any action, cursing, and sex? Real art.”

  David says. “Nah. It was my mom’s notebook. Now it’s a journal of my memories, and reports of past events. I want it to be the first book in mankind’s new library.”

  Phillip says. “You got a title for it yet?”

  David says. “Some pretentious title like, The Origin of Species or Lethum, that’s Latin for death. I think that might be a fitting title because Latin is a dead language and because of our circumstances. Remember my mother was a professor, so I know a few things.”

  Phillip looks David in the eyes. “And your father?” Both are silent and relax for the first time of the day in the bed of leaves.

  Phillip lays back and shuts his eyes for what he thinks is a minute. Looks up. “The stars are constant and comforting on a night like this.” He glances around and realizes that David is gone. He suddenly hears the crackling of twigs and leafs around him. Through the darkness, two strangers appear with shotguns in their hands.

  The taller and younger stranger tells Phillip. “I know you, you’re that fucker that ran from us. Where’s your boyfriend? The Boss wants ya’ll alive.” The other man moves to stand over Phillip. “Jacob, your father the Boss will be so proud.” They have big grins on their faces as they poke through the darkness.

  The sound of quickening footsteps turns everyone’s head in the direction away from the campfire. David appears, followed by a flash. Shooting the teenage looking boy in the head, between the eyes. Jacob never knew what hit him. Phillip then drives his crowbar up the throat of the other man. A shotgun blast hits the flames, gravels flings into the air. The birds are scared as well, fluttering away in new directions.

  Phillip says. “Who’s the bitch now?” Phillip stands up as the man falls to his knees grabbing for Phillip’s arms then back onto the blood soaked grass, convulsing.

  David approaches Jacob and stares into the frightened eyes. Phillip is quiet with his anger then says. “Thanks for saving my ass, brother.” David responds. “I don’t think we’re out of the woods, yet.”

  After a collection of seconds and heavy breathing, they hear an escalating sound on the wind. Reminiscent to thunder brewing, the trees seem to move from the vibration and the rapid fleeing flashes of light.

  Vroom. Vroom. VROOOOM. The motorcycle light is a long spherical sword cutting through the darkness.

  David gathers up the fallen foe’s weapons and supplies. “Hurry let’s go.”

  6

  The night is a fizzy gray.

  Phillip and David sprint to higher ground, torches in hand, running through brambles, splitting shrubs down the center, and hopping over deadfalls. Their hearts beat like racehorses when they stop. Cold breath clouds exit their mouths like comic speech bubbles. They can see a dirt bike’s headlights running away. Both misjudged the third man’s distance and it shows on their exhausted faces. Earlier, Phillip and David stored their vehicles in a cave in the opposite direction.

  David says. “His buddy’s bikes should be close. We can make it to them and get back home in hours.” Someone has to be the positive one.

  Phillip says. “It’ll be easier to reach them with the walkie, as well.”

  They carefully track with dripping torches towards an opening; together they form a sphere of light rolling in the deep dark woods. The opening disappears and turns into a wall of bark. “I was following you.”

  Phillip coughs spittle into a tree after a mile. “Hold up. I think we’re going in circles.” David stops, swings the torch back and forth. “I think you’re right, let’s rest a minute. It won’t kill us. This third man has a head-start, but he can’t find the bunker at night, that gives us till sunrise. Ava and Maria can handle themselves; they’re safer than us.”

  “Don’t overthink yourself into more problems.” Phillip sits and lays his back against the tree. Then says. “The man on the bike if he survives the night. Him and his friends have to be at least two days away from our home unless they appeared from thin air.”

  David smiles when he notices Phillip lighting a cigarette. “Even with the end of the world, you can’t quit smoking. Toss me the lighter. I’m afraid your tired ass might lose my only lighter.” Phillip closes his eyes, leans his head back, puffs out smoke. David takes the lighter from his sweaty hand then goes through the backpack.

  Phillip says. “Remember don’t drink from that bottle, it’s not water.”

  “I got it, just relax cool guy and enjoy your cancer stick.”

  “David, you killed the Boss’s son back there, his name was Jacob.”

  “The Boss. Bruce Springsteen, his old ass survived the apocalypse too?”

  Both men relax like they deserve it.

  David says. “They brought it on themselves. I wish I could feel bad for them.”

  Phillip offers him the cigarette. “No, you don’t.”

  David waves the smoke from his face. “No, thanks.”

  Phillip says. “Why, you afraid you’ll like it. It’s not crack.”

  David plants his torch in the ground. “Druggie logic…We’re already killing each other for food and water out here. I don’t want to add cigarettes to the list.”

  Phillip nods towards him. “Touché. More for me…Relax we’ll be home by breakfast.”

  David grabs his torch and walks forward. Meanwhile, the little cigarette drops out of Phillip’s hand, so he bends over to get it. A zombie head swings from behind the tree, missing Phillip and getting its teeth jammed in the bark. Crunch. David runs up and kicks the tree, smashing the face on his boot. Crunch. He rubs his boot down the side of the tree to clean it as if it’s dog shit.

  Phillip gets up and coughs like an eighty-year-old man. “You’re right, I need to stop smoking, it’s going to kill me one day.” Phillip feels compelled to keep talking because David has a quiet intensity. “It was my fuck you to this world, the one constant of my old life, the one thing that never changed in me.”

  David looks up. “The past is always with us, most of those stars are dead up there, but the light is finally reaching us. We are literally looking into the past and powerless to change it.” David wraps his arm around Phillip’s forearm and pulls the big man up.

  Phillip says. “That should be the first line of your book.”

  “Wiseass.”

  “Seriously.”

  They walk straight as best they can silent as church mice, Phillip carves X’s into the trees, and David counts steps.

  Phillip rushes past David. “I’m heading back. He’s gone and this is pointless.”

  David says. “A few more minutes. We got this.”

  In the black abyss all around them, approaching screams and grunts reaches the men minutes before they see anything. “Oh shit.”

  David gives Phillip the machete and shield. “Here, take these, longer reach.”

  “Talk to me bro. Let’s just make a run for it.”

  David ignores him, takes a water bottle from the bag, and douses the trees in gasoline, which are in front and encircle them. David walks back looking at Phillip for him to do the same. He throws one torch; it cracks o
n the wood, the fire races up the trees at the same time. The screams are getting louder and the trees are starting to tremble as if tanks are plowing towards them. A full moon overseas it all.

  The ground is shaking as if an auditorium of people are stomping their feet waiting for the game of death to begin.

  David says. “We have to make a stand here or we won’t survive the night. Don’t worry, if we do this right, we’ll kill all these Jumpers and not get burned to death. Afterwards, we could put their scent on us and stroll our happy asses out of this death trap. Give me your weapons. Only use the guns if they start to come from behind.”

  “Sometimes I hate you.”

  “Use that hate now, you might not get a second chance.” David stabs the crowbar into the ground next to him and squeezes the axe with both hands like a Major Leaguer up to bat. “I’m going to stand on your right, so you won’t cut me in half.” Phillip is left-handed.

  Phillip says. “If I go down, run for it, don’t be a hero.” David remains silent and focused. “You hear me?”

  In their purviews, zombies are jumping from tree-to-tree with the fluidity of chimpanzees, their eyeballs rolled back revealing only the whites of their eyes. Black bile drips from their mouth like scared grasshoppers. A mishmash of mold lichen and moss cover the tree fogger’s bodies as if the earth recently gave to birth them. Dry elongated flaps of skin weaved together with long hair around their translucent faces resembles octopus tentacles like the mythical Cthulhu. Twigs pierce through their nude bodies, arrows shot by the trees, forming spiky backs mimicking black sea urchins.

  David is moving around and picking up his feet from the forest’s understory, to discover the best footing.

  Phillip repeatedly bangs the machete against the shield like a drummer. “Fuck these bogeys.”

  Coming out of the woodwork, the first zombie runs through the flames with its face on fire, blazing hair whipping like a sword. David swings, slicing its face in half; his axe collides and bounces off the shield afterwards.

  Phillip is in low guard stance. “Watch out. Call out kills.”

  A zombie soars like an hawk with its arms spread out over Phillip, he swings in a rapid arch into the zombie’s stomach, it splits into two, creating a rainbow of blood in the night sky.

  The Jumper zombies’ gums have receded making their teeth look longer, thicker, and sharper; their murky eyes have dropped inwards, emphasizing deep black sockets with a tiny white dot.

  David and Phillip look at each other’s orange glowing faces.

  It gets darker in an instant, a zombie corkscrews over the flames, lands and grabs onto the shield, Phillip moves his head left as he rams the shield multiple times into a flaming tree, exploding the zombie one piece at a time. Between breaths, leafs rain down and another zombie falls through the branches, high above Phillip’s head. He squats low, raising his shield over his head, causing the creature to roll off it. David runs to it, finishing it off with quick hammer thrusts to the ground. David first cuts its arm burning Phillip’s ankle, then goes for the head. Phillip remains poise and doesn’t move.

  David jumps off one-foot and hacks a zombie’s head off that’s hugging a tree absorbing the flames and killing the light. David dunks the rest of the gasoline on the trees. Phillip turns his elbow with the shield attached horizontally, so he can quickly punch with it. Both men are breathing in hard; the flames are sucking up the oxygen.

  Phillip says to David. “Stand back.”

  Two Jumpers come from opposite directions and wide around the protection of flames. Phillip aims and launches his shield; it spears a zombie close to a preoccupied David. The sharp shield lands in the zombie’s chest bringing it down. The zombie rolls the shield away and gets to its stomach, trying to push itself up. David runs and jumps on the zombie’s back, blasting its spinal cord through its heart, a mangy head bowls away into the dark.

  When Phillip threw his shield, the other zombie brought him down. On the ground, Phillip has to grab the machete with both of his hands to block the creature from biting his pulsating neck. “David.” The zombie has a pale underbelly and is slippery like a codfish. Phillip pulls dreadlocks from the zombie’s face revealing skeletal cheekbones.

  David turns around. “Push it up. I’m coming.” Phillip uses his knees and his blade to protect his face. The zombie is thin, but is pushing down with the weight of a bear.

  Phillip’s jacket sleeve catches on fire and he beats his arm in the zombie’s face as he crawls backwards.

  David pulls his arm back to throw his axe, but a Jumper lands on his back, making him lose it. So immediately with his left hand, he grabs the zombie by the hair, runs up to Phillip, who’s still on the ground, and kicks the lust-crazed zombie in the mouth. David’s boot connects under the chin and punches out its eyes. Phillip closes his eyes and spits out chunks of bone. The zombie whirls off Phillip, he quickly gets up at the same time and swings the machete, it goes through the zombie, starting at the armpit. The bloody machete goes halfway through the bark of the closest tree. Phillip throws the body through the flames into the screaming faces.

  David snatches his knife from his belt while Phillip was rolling on the ground. David then blindly stabs backwards for the monkey on his back, getting dead blood down his back and slowing the zombie down. The knife removes chunks of facial flesh. David feels bleeding gums sucking on his neck. The zombie’s arms and legs kick and beat on his back and head like a drum for the longest minute. David finally rips off the zombie’s head by stabbing it in the neck and jamming its back into a flaming tree. He walks a few steps, looking lost then falls to the ground alive and exhausted.

  Phillip yells. “David get up. They’re coming again.”

  David is on his knees, hands spread out with his back arch trying to stand. He’s almost up, but he falls face first. The grass tastes like gasoline.

  Phillip has the shield again and the crowbar. A screaming zombie runs into Phillip, he shoves the crowbar in its mouth; the zombie continues to run forward until Phillip pulls the crowbar out of its mouth sideways then elbows the zombie with the shield. Its teeth get an inch from his knuckles. At the same time, another zombie on fire runs past Phillip. “David, watch out.”

  David turns onto his back as the zombie lunges through the air to land on him. He shoots the zombie with the new shotgun, exploding a hole in its chest. The zombie is pushed through the air like a parasail. Up and away. Phillip stomps on its head when it lands. David fires a second shot, hitting a zombie coming from behind Phillip, shredding its legs off. Phillip turns around and brings the shield down over its sizzling mouth. Phillip’s beard is soaked with blood and sweat. He spits out what he can.

  David says between coughing up blood. “Phillip give me your guns and run.” David sees black spots and feels like he is floating in deep space.

  Phillip says. “We’re not dying tonight.” He quickly picks up zombie limbs and throws them on David.

  Only David’s eyes are visible to his friend. Phillip fires up into zombies rappelling down the gnarled branches like rampaging baboons. David blinks and zombies are performing balletic leaps through the fire and Phillip has his shield firm.

  Buried under charbroiled bodies, David blacks out from the hellscape.

  Chapter Two

  1

  This is not a work of fiction, all persons, places, and events are not fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or actual events is not purely coincidental. I say a lot of dumb shit and smart things, I tend to forget the dumb. Sadly, I am not the next great American writer; so bare with me…but if I am the last writer I will be the most influential. In another life, I was pre-med because I’m a good boy and I listen to my parents…and who can balk at the idea of saving lives for a living. I was to become a scion and give back to the community with medical expertise; all that knowledge I wanted is gone forever and it can never save another life. What a shame. I am not special, only the culmination of my experiences is unique to m
e.

  From prattling on to blarney conversations, who can tell the god honest truth about who people really are. Being intelligent at a young age is depressing, but it’s better than being an idiot when you’re an adult. Usually, I gauge people’s narrow-minded-ness or a-hole-ness for serious topics like sex, religion, and politics before I delve into serious adult conversations with them. I’ve been indoctrinated to think for myself. Since there is no society left worth trying to impress and no point in being nice with phony beauty queen pageant answers. You can answer truthfully about your homophobia, racism, sexism, and anti-poor complaints. You can let in all hang out, all your dirty laundry about your preferences. There are no more closed doors to whisper behind, your freedom of speech filled with hate. How can you tell the truth, if you’ve been lying to yourself the whole time? It’s quite liberating on one level to be who you are and say whatever you want unlike in the Old World, where a single action or comment could ruin your life. It’s the little things like this, that kept me going. A sliver lining in this black world. Sometimes, I wish I could be a happy fool like so many others.

  In the beginning, the infected were quarantined and others had to wear red arm-bands if they possessed a symptom from a plethora of potential warning signs listed by the CDC’s website. That list was so long it was obvious the CDC was guessing like the average citizen. What is the point of the organization’s existence if they can’t handle real problems, instead of merely telling people, “Hey we think you should really get a flu shot this year because it sucks to have a cold.” Where were they when it mattered?

  Minorities, which is anyone who is poor, was rejected medical care and placed in internment camps, so many ended up staying away from hospitals out of fear of becoming prisoners for the sake of the government trying to save a buck disguised as protocol. Euthanizing babies and mandates to kill family pets were enacted like in WW2. I wish I were making this up like some Russian propaganda against America.