Genesis Virus

by Pinto, Daniel

  In a small room. David opens his backpack and tosses in the medicine as if he’s in a bank vault stealing all they have. He found some antibiotics; everything else is so he doesn’t have to come back to this hell hole. Some of it’s expired. What’s the worst that can happen? He peeks out of the door, left-right like on a street corner. Clear.

  Eerily down the way, it sounds like La Llorona lamenting for her drown children.

  At the elevator door, he holds the walls on both sides and swings his hips gaining speed to jump back from whence he came.

  One. Two. Three.

  Something pulls him into a gurney, knocking down a fire extinguisher and waiting room chairs. Buried in furniture, David fires a single shot to catch his bearings, then a second shot in-between the zombie’s eyes, its head lands in his lap.

  Zombies have been looping their zones for infinity. Secluded and marooned on this tiny island of a floor, within the confines of a larger prison. David’s fall from grace has animated the veiled dead from apathetic cadavers to angry lionesses, the trash was their camouflage, it slides off their heads revealing eyes that can see in the dark.

  David crawls, striking more trash everywhere. He shines a light around.

  Manifold pregnant zombie woman, hedonistic to the core, occupy and command this dark space, each an indefatigable ghost in a shell; indistinguishable of each other like twin siblings. Hair is in the pregnant zombies’ faces down past their chest, patches of filth below their waist, in front and behind.

  Wide-stance David moves one leg at a time like a sumo wrestler walking in a sound minefield, exactitude in each of his movements. Faceless boogie women catching the hint of a flavor on the wind, they chew on their hair, dying to taste what’s next.

  Mid-pursuit, gowns unfurl behind the women like capes, exposing buttery subcutaneous fat. David lifts a wooden chair, keeping his head low, leads with the four stiff legs, and rushes the running women. Greenish bare feet like patina on forgotten metal in the backyard, screech on the floor. The bag ladies of the haunted floor are possessed with squalor visages, clear hoses in their noses, withered flesh from buckets of emergency water, and clothes smelling of sewerage. David moves down the hall, gaining traction, conveying multiple heads in the chair legs. The chair splinters, so he shoots to his left then right. Rings of pregnant zombies as far as the eye can see, are dragging umbilical cords choking unborn babies. Congeries of motherly zombies blitzes each other for the last man, as David leaps midair into the elevator shaft.

  He climbs up a few rungs; bemoaning voices are getting louder in the elevator shaft.

  “That was easy enough…Shit.” He does not feel his backpack. He could cry.

  David clasps the thick wire cable with the inside of his arm and shoots straight down with the other hand. The bullet echoes in the elevator shaft turning it into a bell tower. The ringing in his ears is worst than with the Jumpers.

  Once he shines his light, he witnesses woman after woman topple over the edge, participating in freakish postpartum depression suicides. Low moans precede resounding thump noises, which draws in the next woman. The blind are leading the blind in this merry-go-round of death. David’s suspended in complete darkness as well, spelunking in the unending cave. His arms are trembling and legs are slipping off the sides. He kicks off the wall, facing away from the elevator door and flies into a woman before she jumps. David tosses the first object he grabs within seconds. The gurney spins into their heads. The remaining zombies are not running, merely the last witnesses.

  Zombies are boxing him in with cold confidence; David is easily detectable like a black fly on a white wedding cake. The entire zombie harem looks to be holding each other’s shoulders, moving in closer, adopting mimesis, suffocating David’s personal space, his me-time. He mistakenly grabs from his belt, the new handgun he found earlier on a body by the fence. Waits till they get kissing distance and fires. No loud sound or flash. He rapidly squeezes the trigger again, fearing it’s empty.

  Lambent blue electricity yields and transmits through the zombies away from him. Creating a daisy-chain of pregnant zombies. The hospital is visible in flashes as if a laughing child is flickering the light switch on and off. Upright, David reloads and fires the second taser gunshot into thunderstruck zombies, pressurized stomachs explode as loud as fireworks and skin fries creating a burnt rubber smell. Blue lightening streaks melt eyes and crack bones shifting the zombies around every which way except towards David.

  The electrified chain aborts.

  David moves around in a squatting position firing his handgun upward as he bites down on his flashlight. Tenebrous auras flash background halos around the women similar to numinous Virgin Mary posters. Strobe lighting his path to freedom.

  He transfers one zombie by the hair and drags her backwards, its face stretches up like silly-putty, however it does not rip. Fellow suffragist zombies eat the woman’s toes, David fires at the zombies going ballistic for the man of the hour. Between shots, he sleuths his black backpack, takes his needle in the haystack and runs out on the women. Nagging blood-sucking females like the Aphrodite mosquitos that never let up. They’re cramming into one another as if they’re handcuffed by the wrists and ankles.

  David power-walks down the hall then segues into a red axe against a leaning filing cabinet. More importantly behind both items is a door leading to more stairs.

  8

  Ava has a scathing glance and flaring nostrils. “Can you like someone if you disagree with their views?”

  The Prophet’s face is in semidarkness, “of course, it’s unchristian to hate your fellow man,” he’s walking around looking for Job’s wife. Youngblood’s sitting and asleep in the cradle of his hands.

  Ava balks and says. “Quit with the phony beauty queen answers and be honest with yourself, it’s the first step to enlightenment and self-respect.”

  The Prophet pensively looks through her. “I am honest with myself, but if you want me to answer for the majority of believers in the old world. I would have to agree with your point coming up, that believers can’t separate a person from their views and so they’re hypocrites when it comes to loving their fellow man. They care only about the people who share their beliefs and everyone else can go to hell.” He looks into the dark, worrying growing.

  Ava arches a brow and is an inch off her seat. “But that’s okay according to them because no one can be perfect and so because perfection is unobtainable their negative attitudes and actions towards nonbelievers and believers is justifiable as long as they repent every Sunday to the man behind the curtain, and to take away their responsibility for their past actions…Just be a good person, stop blaming original sin, freewill, the Devil, nonbelievers and different religions.”

  The Prophet tries to cajole her by speaking slower. “There are about a hundred things wrong with your statement. Faith is not only a religious thing, but also a human trait like intelligence. Faith in governments, in businesses, and in personal relationships. Three little things that consumed everyone’s lives and gave them fulfillment.”

  Ava mockingly claps her hands. “Did I strike a nerve?”

  He stands still with stiff eyes like a dancer counting steps, then takes a breath. “I know you may find me and my ideas cliché, but I find your feelings and ideas cliché as well. Though my side is hope and yours is anger.”

  Ava says. “No, more like reality versus delusional.” She puts her hands together and makes a sphere. “You’ve built walls and won’t let any logic against your logic in, safeguarding your ideas by not addressing weak points in your arguments.”

  The Prophet says. “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. The message is important no matter who delivers it.”

  Job murmurs to himself. “I’m not going to get any sleep tonight, at this rate.” He punches the inside of his hat and slides it across his face, shielding it from the light and his missing wife.

  Ava says. “And other thing. There is no middle ground when it com
es to the Bible. Picking and choosing, saying this is a metaphor and this is to be taken literal, is the equivalent to non-believing, because you’re creating your own religion that fits with the times and blocks legitimate criticism. Take that same diluting process that everyone does with the Bible that have actually read the whole thing, which was not many people, and apply it to a law book or a dictionary. And this is what believers will say, ‘I believe in the alphabet, but not in vowels or I believe laws about murder are a metaphor, not to be taken seriously, trust me I know what it means.’ The middle ground is a safe place for doubters and is a pointless place to choose to live your life in. The Bible is a myth wrapped with historical inaccuracies, it’s the first National Inquirer of mankind.”

  Lou laughs, then says. “Who wants to be average in anything? I can see what she means, if you’re in the middle you’re an average believer at best who lives by the trends of the time.” Lou stands up mostly to stay awake. “The Bible seems like a big misunderstanding that started with the inventor and now because of time and stubbornness we have perceived facts instead of metaphors, which is what every religion is based on, symbols and myths to express life.”

  The Prophet shifts from foot-to-foot. “Everyone does have their exegesis or interpretation of the Bible, but that doesn’t make the book wrong, only the people.”

  Youngblood falls over into a tree, waking him up; he repeats the last thing before he closed his eyes. “Two logical people will never agree because of emotions.” His eyes are squinting as if caused by a phantom migraine.

  Lou has his chin on his chest, dosing off again. “It all sounds like a cult to me, next thing you know he will want to sleep with all of us like Jim Jones, no Kool-Aid for me.”

  The Prophet turns to Lou and says. “You can’t defend morality with logic, can’t explain it scientifically, take this example. Nudity, you used to see it everywhere in entertainment, and nonreligious folk who say to the religious people, ‘stop being uptight it’s only meat and flesh, no harm in what’s natural and scientific.’ If that was true, l would tell all of them, let me see your wife naked, it’s only meat. No? Why not? Love and morals are not science.”

  Lou cocks his head, pleading eyes to stay wide open. “No person has a complete scientific mindset or religious mindset. The Prophet has a point.”

  Ava has her hands folded in her lap. “Religion has an inverse relationship with proving extraordinary claims, the more religion claims the less proof we get. When science proves something, religious officials say, ‘Of course, that’s what the Bible was trying to say all along’, when it comes to explaining the beginning of the universe and how the universe works.”

  The Prophet takes a step back, rolls up his shirtsleeves. “That’s a bit of an oversimplification. Repeating someone’s ideas you heard does not mean you know what you’re talking about. It only proves you have a good memory.”

  Ava smirks and raises her dark brown eyebrows. “That goes both ways.”

  The Prophet says. “Think of a box with puzzle pieces, you can put the picture together in different ways or create a different picture all together. But you’re still limited by the pieces so you are not original because your choices are limited. The same can be said of the universe, we are all designers under the umbrella of the first designer. God. Same with consciousness, there is a God behind its design. If not, then tell me the mathematical formula for conscience or consciousness, then I’ll believe there is no God.”

  Ava says. “The only thing I know for certain is that you’re just as uncertain as I am. I know little about what I don’t know, and that goes for everyone. Both of us are uncertain, but why is your uncertainty give your theory precedent over mine or over anyone else’s?”

  The Prophet says. “The best explanation doesn’t need an explanation, like God being the creator of everything. The question of who design the designer would only lead to an infinity of more questions and explanations, and we could never explain anything. And if I try to wait on science to tell me what I believe to be true, I would have to live forever in anticipation. I rather succumb to my common sense, not ignorance.”

  Ava says. “I don’t want to settle for a possible explanation of the universe, I want the correct one. Logical sense is not truth. I have two legs, a marathon is won by two legs, therefore I can win a marathon because I have two legs.”

  The Prophet exclaims over Job’s yawning. “You could.”

  Ava says. “Your so-called claimed proof is circumstantial. I’ll say it another way. Lets say, the cops find a bloody knife in your car and no other evidence, what’s the best explanation? You killed someone. It comes down to probability when we have pieces of a puzzle, we can only guess the whole picture, but in my example, only one man’s life is at stake if I guess wrong. But you and others, who want everyone to believe in their God, risk billions of lives through generations. At the end of the day, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not just appealing to feelings and wishful thinking.”

  The Prophet says. “Maybe every spiritual person with a belief system had a personality flaw or disposition to believing in something greater than themselves. Which was the majority before all this, or maybe the minority with their superior factual mindset had all the answers and died with them, not ever telling anyone any concrete answers, only stating their denial.”

  Job laughs under his baseball cap. “I think he just called you a dumbass.”

  The Prophet moves to face Ava. “It’s laughable to think either way, but I don’t want to live in a world with no trust or faith in anything, so I say I don’t have a personality flaw or process life like a robot. I’m only a man, nothing more, but it’s enough. We can start this world over right, we owe it to the fallen to be better.” He walks around looking at the trees. “If everything comes down to faith or opinion, who can say my faith or opinions are wrong without looking like a self-righteous person. Who is the judge of mankind’s opinion?”

  Ava slaps her chest with both palms. “I am. That’s what you want me to say, right, to make me the bad guy and all my ideas bad…Right?”

  The Prophet says. “Assuming the worst in people until they prove you wrong, is not the way to live. I’m speaking to no one in particular.” Ava leans back on spread out arms.

  The Prophet smiles and waves Ava over to him. “Come over here and give me a hug. We are two schools of thought like the Ancient Greek philosophers, who everyone copies and remixes. No hard feelings.”

  Ava stands up slowly with her legs asleep. “It’s just words…”

  Job says. “I could use a cigarette.”

  Lou says. “Where’s your wife?”

  9

  David’s astray, crouching within the nurse’s control center and distal door, holding his breath and a firefighter’s axe with a double embrace. The tiny flashlight is back in his mouth. A memento mori from one of the lackeys of the Engineer, reminding him of the inevitability of death.

  A few moments ago, David was in the staircase, trying to get to the roof, when zombies pushed a door into him, bumping him down the stairs, a floor above the pregnant women.

  The door David came through is slamming into the wall over and over as the floor fills up with, what God knows what. I could use Ava’s help right about now.

  David’s an assassin with second thoughts on a shadowy level, discreetly pacing about until a tall burly zombie knocks him into a circle of IV towers. Bags of yellow water explode. David stands and slips into the wall. He can feel a towering presence.

  On one knee, he tries to carom the axe, but hits the zombie deep in the chest; it stands high, lifting David’s feet off the floor like a father picking up his son. Durability of rock solid flesh absorbs David’s kicks. David’s floating in the dark like in a nightmare.

  David’s feet pushes off the zombie’s hips and into the roof of the makeshift fort built of hardwood. He barrels over the desks, his neck breaks his landing.

  His jaw goes numb from biting onto the
flashlight; drool soaks his shirt collar. The same muscular zombie breaks through the filing cabinets, David eludes him for a second still the zombie succeeds in grabbing David’s arm holding the axe, David turns, but the zombie remains immovable. David’s arm is yanked out of socket and he swallows the flashlight. A muddled David chokes as he swings the axe with one hand, and it slips into darkness mid-swing. The zombie’s hand covers David’s entire face. A giant hand about to explode a bowling ball into powder. Where’s its head? In compressed darkness, David can feel a sloshing of blood as he repeatedly stabs the hulk of a man between the ribs with his knife into exhaustion. Chip away at the sturdy tree. His gun arm is useless. He’s a guppy versus a shark.

  David’s yanked into a desk in a violent car jerking motion; the zombie strikes him in the chest so hard it feels like a steering wheel after a collision, almost ripping the pericardial sac around his heart. David flips backwards over the desk, dislodging the flashlight from his throat. His knife is somewhere in the zombie’s body.

  He’s slogging through a flashing darkness. Zombies are getting closer with each new shine on them. David collapses on the wall, feeling on something long forgotten. Zinging his good shoulder muscle against a vending machine, it slams into a few indolent zombies. Cans shoot and roll in all directions, David hopscotches into a doorway, crushing cans, almost in; an unsuspecting zombie rips a patch of sweaty hair from David’s head. He turns kicking the door, hearing crashing and groans.

  There’s excruciating pounding on the plywood door, the flashlight spins on the floor and stops on David’s face, then pairs of arms break in and reach through the door around his head. He lurches from hungry grasps and gyrates away on the floor into a mop bucket and cleaning supplies, he instinctively pulls on the string to turn on the light to no avail. David sits on his tailbone with his knees to his chest, thumbs pointing up and fingers laced together gripping one kneecap. He leans his torso halfway back and pulls his knee forward creating tension. Becoming a rocking chair.