Genesis Virus

by Pinto, Daniel

  Ava says. “And don’t you forget it.”

  David says. “Say you got my back.”

  Ava says. “We’re a team.” David then lays his head on her shoulder like a puppy. “That’s my GIRL.” Ava has a little smile on her face. David then removes his arm and stands up. “I want you to kiss and make up with Delilah. Then again you don’t have to make up with her, a kiss will do.”

  Ava stands up, dusting her pants. “Screw you. Your new girlfriend is lucky I wanted to hurt you, not her.”

  David says. “I don’t know why. People like me.”

  Ava says. “Keep telling yourself that.”

  Delilah has been observing them two the whole time and when Cooper puts his hand on her shoulder, she jumps a bit. He tells her. “You can ride with me today, if you want.” Delilah has been riding with David. She twists around. “Thanks, I will, you’re a real cowboy aren’t you?” Cooper slaps the brim of his hat. “You know it, madam.” Lou rides up next to them on his horse and says to Cooper. “First his hat, now his girl. You’re on a roll today pal.”

  Delilah sees David riding his bike and she smiles when he does a wheelie, horizontally in front of her at the other end of the town, the sun’s beaming behind him. He then drives passed them shouting. “This place is death and it’s pissing everyone off.”

  David waits for the group by a human scarecrow pierced through a telephone pole, thinking about what ever happened to the person dragging the wagon with the zombies. The rest of the group shortly rides up in a line and passes him. He looks at the town a little longer.

  5

  People say the word dead to describe the monsters, but how can something be dead and move about, that word makes us feel better rather than to think that each of us are murdering humans, our fellow man. Dehumanizing the enemy is the best way not to fall into depression; still killing human strangers who are dead is no less meaningful than killing the living. Doling out mercy kills and having to take on the burden of becoming a society murderer. How do I know, people can’t change back and regain consciousness? Violence was the first disease; its deadly pull is tempting and will kill itself into extinction. Easier to hate than to love, but life’s not about doing what’s easy; anyone can do that and deserve what’s left of their life. Evil is like energy, it can never be destroyed, it only changes forms, the same can be said about hope. Hate the behavior, not the person. No? It’s the same thing as hating the sin not the sinner, and all that jazz. Happiness and grief both take work, I know which one I’m spending my time and effort on. My faith is a suit of armor that has to be polish, not because it’s weak, but to keep it strong.

  We will outlast the monsters even if it’s the last thing we do. They’ve driven us underground to torment us in the fact that we’re worst than them. Some of us are cannibals by choice unlike them. Some of us hate and kill each other because we’re selfish unlike them. Normal humans are dying unlike them. Us and them want more. What happens next when the last person is eaten or the last creature disintegrates?

  Family’s not a supplement for happiness, it is happiness, and fighting for that can never be evil. Life’s a quilt of one long experience, with patches representing the most memorable moments; the quilt is comforting towards the end. I think about my wife of thirty years, every night when I wrap myself in the quilt, she made for me. I imagine her with me, it’s the only way I can fall asleep. My wife’s a sick woman with dementia that needs her medication, I know she loves me and I pray she forgets about our time apart. I’m coming for you my love, have faith.

  If any of this seems too optimistic or unrealistic then I have already become the walking dead waiting to be killed by my fellow man.

  Cooper

  6

  Under the indigo sky and somber clouds, Lou and the Chief are at the back of the group. The Chief says on his stallion after arduous traveling. “It’s going to rain I can feel it, my leg is getting tight.”

  Lou grabs the walkie. “Let’s rest.” He says to the Chief. “It’s going to get worst before it gets better. Maybe you should stay at the next town, our group needs you, it doesn’t need a hero.”

  The Chief’s horse bumps into Lou’s horse. “It’s interesting to talk about the unknown, but don’t live by it. If I ever feel like quitting, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Lou says. “Fair enough.”

  Near a clump of trees at the foot of a rocky ridge, the group makes for a stop. It starts to sprinkle a bit as everyone gets situated.

  Cooper pulls on his reins and turns his horse to face the group with Delilah on the backside, the rain comes down harsher, and so he talks louder over it. “From dawn-to-dusk, emotions have been on edge. I need a break too.” Lou looks over at the Chief, who ignores him.

  Lightening veins the overcast sky and the horses get spooked, fanning farther out away from each other.

  Rolling thunder frightens Coop’s horse into the high bushes; a zombie scrapes his upper incisors on Coop’s horse’s back in an attempt to consume the entire horse in one bite. The horse immediately kicks backwards, triggering Delilah to fall off into the bushes. The group doesn’t notice because they’re spread out and the thunder muffles every sound.

  Delilah crawls on her hands and knees as the zombie’s face zooms closer to her. Fast breathing trumps feeling sorry for herself. Cooper turns his horse and shoots the zombie in the back of the head with his handgun, its facial flesh opens up like a flower tasting the rainwater. Delilah screams and falls back with the zombie, finally at peace, sleeping on her stomach. Her face and arms are plastered in green blood that stings.

  Zombies are formulating behind Cooper in the distance. Top heavy, bony legs, with what looks like black robes flowing around their bodies. David listens to the sounds of the deep humming all around him as he gets off his bike, it’s reminiscent to monks solemnly chanting.

  David wipes the water from his eyes. “Get the horses out of here.” Looking at the dead blood and scalps flushing off the horses’ hindquarters. Their engines no longer have a sturdy hood to protect them from the elements of decay.

  Lou says. “Don’t tell us what to do.”

  Ava says. “Let’s just leave.”

  David ignores them and chases after Delilah through the dense branches and trees. When he catches up to her, he says. “Get to higher ground, here take my gun.” Her weapon’s on the horse and Coop rode away after he shot the zombie.

  Delilah says. “What about you?”

  David says. “I’m ok, just go, more are coming.”

  Delilah’s eyes widen, at the sight of the demonic scapegoats lusting after some arm-candy, as she clambers over the rocks to get to the top. With that, a multitude of supercilious zombies flock from the surrounding lowlands. They seem to be snapping into existence from the black clouds, God’s bastards banished to Earth. Water is now pouring harder, quickly darkening the world as if the living are trapped in a bird cage and someone has just thrown a blanket over it, to shut them up.

  David steadies his stance and secures his machete with both hands as if that would ward off evil spirits. The trees open up, a wet blur runs at David, he decapitates the zombie’s head in a full spin motion, but then unexpectedly another running zombie spears him in the back, driving David forward and to the ground. The machete skids on the ground. David motions around to face the zombie, and with his left hand, he squeezes its throat, his sticky fingers burrow through the soft flesh and finds bone. The zombie screams in David’s face, while he pulls out his knife and screws it into the zombie’s temple, causing blood to flow downwards, filling up the fissures in the zombie’s crater face. The dead weight pins David to the ground, the zombie smells like a wet dog that recently ate spoiled milk. Meanwhile, two zombies hover nearby, David watches them as he attempts to grab the machete’s handle from the ground; he can hear zombie growls close. Adding up.

  Hateful rain picks up.

  His fingers walk closer to the machete’s handle; the inescapable weight on his ch
est is taking his breath away. The tentative zombies in sight have lost David for a second, the rain keeps switching between a blessing and a curse. He snatches his machete; the scraping sound on the ground reveals to them where he is like some sort of zombie sonar.

  David swings his machete from his hips in one motion slicing through four ankles of the charging zombies lunging for his torso; they plunge back and to the right. David squirms ands rocks side-to-side in an attempt to get the heavy putrescence sponge off of him. As soon as he does, David rolls backwards to avoid all the crawling zombies on the ground with no feet.

  David gets up, runs with the machete in two hands, slashing the zombie coming through the grass in hot pursuit. The celerity of the machete separates the zombie’s face into two and the hammering rain washes the blood from David’s face afterwards. Immediately after swinging downwards, David hears foreboding splashing, so he swings with one hand turning on his heels to halt the zombie coming from behind him. The machete gets jammed on the zombie’s ribs and it reactively grabs the blade with one hand and seizes David shirt with the other, jerking him forward like a bucking cowboy. David dodges his face up and down as he battles to remove the blade; the zombie’s bite is getting closer and closer to David’s throbbing throat. He kicks in the zombie’s kneecaps. Don’t work, it’s still upright. David desperately tries to keep the blade from slipping out of his wet hands. The incessant rain is making it harder to see, he can’t see ten feet past him, but he can smell the zombie’s fetid breath. The zombie happily slides forward on the machete with the falling weight of twice its size. It opens its mouth wider as it gets nearer, tearing off decaying flesh around the rim of its mouth. David looks around, abandons his best weapon, grabs the unholy perversion of life by the hair letting the rain wash over it, then drives his palm up towards the chin of the infidel, splintering its teeth to bits. Granting it a unholy baptism. Next, David kicks the zombie off his blade; the falling weight backwards causes David to stumble forward a bit.

  David pulls out his gun, reloads it, but from the sheets of darkness a zombie seizes his wrist like a concerned parent and pulls him down to one knee, Hand feels trapped in a car door. David’s shoulder is on the cusp of popping out of socket. A nonlethal injury about to prove otherwise. After some clicks from his water pistol, David finally manages to fire two shoots into the zombie’s stomach. The heathen lets go and David turns his head to avoid blowback of bones to his eyes when he shoots it in the head. He fires at more zombies, emptying his clip. Threadbare clothing drops off the zombies’ bodies like black pulp as if they’re wrap in old newspapers.

  David jumps and swings his machete at a couple of undead strays stewing in afterbirth waste, putting them out of their misery. He gets surrounded by a concentration of wights with curved arms like jai alai sticks, catching the wind and making swish sounds as they cut through sheets of rain trying to knock David’s block off. The downpour becomes a tempest in his face, he swings, and his arms are slowed as if he’s in a room compacted with foam. He retreats without hesitation by jumping for a tree branch taller than him. Hacking down into heads like coconuts. Mists of red rain sprays out the back of the three stooges’ heads.

  The sky’s a dark blue and the raging storm is drowning out all the sound and life. David’s lost, alone on an island about to get swallowed up by a hurricane. He hastily runs to try and find his way out of seclusion instead crashes into a zombie like a twisted serendipity reunion, both instantly fall to the mud. On his back again, David grips the zombie’s face as it voraciously goes for his pulsating neck, and he snap’s the zombie’s neck like a twig leftward. David’s breathing quickens and the irradiated survivor’s head shakes faster, it vomits stale greenish blood on David’s face and down his arms. He chokes on the rain and blood, swimming in an open sewer.

  David puts his machete horizontally in the zombie’s mouth after it vomits and with both of his hands on the blade. He shuts his eyes and mouth tightly as he propels the machete through the zombie’s mouth to the back of its skull, cutting it in half. Chunks of viscid gunk from its head spill into David’s torso.

  Two zombies run at David, he throws his machete into the chest of one, slowing it down, and sweeps the other one off its feet, he then seizes it by its head and twists its face backwards to see its buddy, then elbows the top of its skull.

  The accumulating zombies that are circling David start heading towards the louder gunshots. His novelty wears off for the hellions.

  7

  The Chief and Cooper have vanished with all the horses.

  Youngblood’s lying on the ground with a zombie stepping on his palm. Mud covers both of their faces. He kicks his legs up. “Help.” Ava swings down at the torturing zombie’s head, her forearm slices down to its nose.

  Copious drench zombies slowly move in a pack like acolytes of Satan for gentile Lou; he clutches his mace. “Hurry the fuck up.” He uppercuts his mace knocking the shot-caller zombie back into more zombies, he then hurdles in the air forward landing on an already crushed face, its legs swing up from the mud.

  Lou impulsively bludgeons zombie faces with his mace. He then takes the mace with two hands, raises it over his head, and yanks it into a zombie’s chest a few yards away from him, near Ava. That zombie’s knees buckle and the joints bend inward shredding leg bone and skin apart. Ava runs over to it and cracks its head open with her bat, mud flies into her face. The bat residually vibrates in her bloody hands after that blow and the ones after, connecting to the limbs of the palimpsest of the humanlike crowd. Slowing them down in the dark. She shoves the fat end of the bat into a kobold’s mouth, tugs the bat up and down as she pushes it back, giving it a vertical smile, then she swings down. “And one to grow on.”

  Meanwhile, Youngblood is zigzagging through two zombies to get to Ava’s back and he passes through a line of decrepit zombie fingertips trying to seize him, they’re out of reach of his back and barely strum his upper shoulder blades. Youngblood proceeds to jab a few downward arching blows with his climbing axe until one swing finally punctures a zombie’s nose and exits through its lower jaw. Next, he catches a zombie over its shoulder and tenaciously pulls, taking the zombie down to the ground and kicks its head off into the coldness. He runs and leaps into a zombie’s chest with his knees bringing it down, both slide in the mud like a sled. He finishes it with an axe jolt to its right eye. Zombies scram to get to Youngblood on the dirt; he quickly rolls to his left as they stumble over the dead soul-eaters on the ground. The living have no time to plant their feet, they’re constantly moving like sharks in the water.

  Ava tugs a zombie by its shoulder, with her hand, that’s leering at Youngblood and uses it as a shield from an impending bite from a different zombie. The zombie bites the shield-zombie in the eyes, producing a crunching sound, as the two nimrods become entwined, she shoves them to the ground; Lou comes by and brings his mace down on the stack of zombie heads, pulverizing both heads with a single strike. “Go with God.” Showing off for Ava.

  She then maims a zombie with her kukri blade at the elbow then vehemently hacks at its face within seconds like a weed whacker. With her long legs she kicks zombies in the back to the ground for her teammates. Sweltering sweat brings out her rounded cheekbones and causes her ponytail to come loose in the rain, her wet hair swings and lays flat against her stoic eyes. Youngblood calls to her. “Behind you.” Blindly, the kukri blade swirls around and it slices the top of the zombie’s head off, revealing its diminutive brain, she pulls the black brain out and throws it far into the leaves like a grenade, the creature submissively falls to both knees lacking any purpose. She kicks it in the mouth with her shin, then whips her hair back.

  Lou’s mace comes toppling down on a zombie’s head, crashing it down through the zombie’s neck and shoulders like an out of control elevator to hell. He tamps a zombie’s face into a tree trunk with a blow from behind. Exploding it like a tube of lard between the two solid objects. Grey matter oozes outward from where its ears wer
e. Lou ducks under rows of teeth, angling his mace as he rises up into a berserker fit, hewing into the faces with the spiked tips jutting from the top of his weapon, clawing clunks of meat into the air with taps and jabs.

  Lou’s motionless and winded from the heavy weapon’s toll. It’s hanging down by his side like an anchor. His friends are taking care of the rest of the numb skulls up ahead.

  A surreptitious zombie bites Lou in his shoulder, he screams in shock making the zombie bite down harder. Lou elbows the zombie off him in one blow. Both stagger to one knee. The zombie stands back up and dashes towards Lou with a few more zombies following behind it. Lou fires his shotgun into the zombie’s face, exploding half off, BBs and skull debris blasts into the other zombies’ faces. Lou drops his loaded shotgun, strikes the next zombie with a backwards slap, knocking its head off to the side, the second punch caves its face it. He picks up the mace and grips it with both hands at opposite ends, shoving it into the last zombie’s throat. The irascible zombie tries to bite Lou’s callous knuckles as it’s thrust backwards into a tree thunk. It scratches Lou’s naked scalp. He glares into the zombie’s eyes; the darkened skin underneath its eyes is like a struck match. Lou grunts and drives his mace up and forward, raising the zombie up a foot in the air, slicing its head off. Lou checks his shoulder bite then in a hammering down motion stomps on the infected head a few times. “Motherfucker.”

  8

  From the cold miserable rain, David arrives running with his machete and with a swing he cuts a zombie in half under its scrawny arms going for Youngblood, eviscerating it. David skids on zombie bowels as he tosses a rock at a different zombie’s back, across from him, discombobulating it. During the zombie’s moment of hesitation, Ava turns to face it, ramming her blade in its sternum while holding the handle tight; she then brings the blade up and through the zombie’s forehead. It collapses hard at her boots. David whistles louder and louder, moving backwards, looking at Youngblood, who he flings his machete to. The piercing noise gives Youngblood windows of opportunities. Youngblood runs into one zombie and slams its body into four zombies transfixed on David. Youngblood’s locked arm and machete, shish-kebobs the group of zombies. All the zombies fall into the bushes, Youngblood withdraws his long blade from their stone hearts and beats the bush to death.