N87 Virus | Book 1 | After the Outbreak

by Kadin, Karri

  “Sir. We have something up ahead.” He opened his eyes and looked out the front windshield. Staggering down the middle of the roadway was a naked woman, bloody, dirty. She saw the van and stopped, watching it approach. Infected.

  “You know what to do,” he said.

  They parked in the middle of the road about one hundred feet from her. When the Collectors exited the van, guns drawn, she charged. The men fired. She went down a few feet from the van. Dr. Neff jumped from the van and walked toward her. She lay on the ground, writhing, floating between consciousness and the dark bliss of sleep. She swiped at him, but her arms were slow. Confusion spread across her face as the sedative took effect. Fluffy white foam flooded from her blood-stained lips. Her tight curls were knotted and scattered with debris.

  “Do you want us to load her up?”

  “No.” Dr. Neff walked to the van, lifted the back floor panel, and removed a crowbar. He picked up a hazmat face guard from the emergency kit and secured it in place.

  He approached the woman again. She was asleep, almost. Bitch. He raised the crowbar above his head and brought it down on her head. A sickening crack echoed along the roadway as her skull gave under the metal.

  She screamed. Blood pooled on the pavement, her curls floated in the stream of red.

  Left me. He hit her again. Blood splattered across his shoes and pants. Took my son. The woman’s body spasmed on the ground. He brought the crowbar up above his head and brought it down again, this time across her back. You took everything from me. He slammed the iron against her skull. Her blood now spotted his face mask. Everything. He hit her again and again and again until he couldn’t see through the blood.

  Chapter Eight

  Allison

  Every day, Allison’s flashbacks decreased in frequency while they increased in clarity. Ordinary things triggered them, which made them impossible to avoid, but she was getting better at recognizing the signs of an upcoming attack. On a Tuesday morning as Allison strolled the yard she came upon Dave leaning over the old blue truck in his tan overalls. Allison’s body stiffened as the heat surged through her, sending her eyes rolling to the back of her head as her body fell onto the dirt driveway. The farm blurred from her vision as a wood-paneled hallway came into view. Her stomach burned from hunger, her skin wet as perspiration dripped from her body, her temples pulsating with every beat of her heart. The pain and heat radiated through her body in a deep rumble. Any minute she was sure it would split her in two. Allison crept down the hall, coming up behind a man in tan overalls standing at the kitchen sink. She quietly watched as he ran a sponge across a dish before she sank her teeth into his neck. As she clenched his skin between her teeth, tearing the flesh from his body, the pain and heat slightly subsided only to rev back up with each blow he landed to her head as he tried to free himself. The scene of the man screaming as blood splattered from his neck faded away along with the feeling of intense warmth and agony. Most of the words the man screamed were a jumbled mess in her memory. But one word was clear: “cabin.” Allison awoke in Dave and Sandra’s yard surrounded by chickens with Dave holding her head in his lap.

  “Are you okay? That one scared me,” Dave said. “You hit the ground so hard. You haven’t fallen like that in some time.”

  “Yeah. That one just hit me fast. I wasn’t ready,” Allison said. Dave helped her up from the ground. Allison brushed the grime from her clothes.

  “How about something to distract you? You feel up for an auto maintenance lesson?” Dave smiled.

  “Thanks, Dave,” Allison said. “I think that would be nice.” Allison tried to force the memory of the man at the sink from her mind and spent the rest of the afternoon focused on the inner workings of the farm truck.

  There were times when Allison could avoid the memories of a flashback, but some were too haunting and disturbing to find relief from. The Sunday Allison went into the barn looking for bedding for the new baby chicks, one such flashback plagued her mind. She noticed an old wood baseball bat leaning in the corner. Suddenly the familiar heat built in her core as her vision blurred. She stumbled to the ground before it overtook her. A group of Infected, Allison with them, surrounded a family on top of their van. The children were crying and clinging to a stuffed penguin. The dad was swinging at the Infected with a bat. The mother’s eyes glazed over, clutching her children tightly. Infected began climbing on the car, blocking the family from Allison’s view as she tried to push her way past the crowd to get closer. A loud crack interrupted, followed by screams and growls as the dad’s bat made contact with an Infected’s head. The screams of children laced the air as the father was pulled from the car. Infected swarmed him.

  “Run! Run now!” the mother screamed as she urged her children off the car, while all the Infected moved toward her dying husband who was still swinging his bat. Allison spotted the children sliding from the roof of the car and veered in their direction.

  Allison awoke alone in the barn, her face muddy from her tears mixing in the barn dirt. She picked herself up and walked to the corner where she had spotted the bedding material. Pressure built in her chest, squeezing her lungs as she struggled to breathe. The family’s screams rang in her head. Tears slipped from her eyes, and in a wave of frustration she kicked a large wheelbarrow full of cement patio stones. The wheelbarrow and all of its contents slammed into the barn wall six feet away. Allison froze. She examined the deep track gouged into the barn dirt by the skidding wheelbarrow. What the fuck? In haste she cleaned up and with shaky hands placed the wheelbarrow back where it had previously been. Her foot didn’t even hurt. What’s wrong with me? She ran from the barn, completely forgetting about the bedding.

  The hot and humid first official day of summer when Sandra decided to thin the flock of chickens brought Allison yet another awful memory.

  “Too many roosters!” Sandra exclaimed as she rounded up the unlucky few.

  The first rooster on the chopping block was a young one with glossy black feathers. Sandra brought the hatchet down swiftly on its neck, cutting clear from side to side on the first go. The rooster didn’t even see it coming. The crimson liquid pooled on the log as it drained from the gaping hole where the head had been. It dripped from the log, landing with little splatters on the rocks at the base of the stump.

  The world slowed and spun around Allison like a carousel. The heat engulfed her body in a burning ache before the images slammed into her like a tsunami. Allison on top of a man in all-black clothing, bashing his head in with a rock as cool rain pounded into her skin. Her damp hair clung to her face, somewhat obscuring her vision. The rock was slippery and tried to jump from her hand with each blow, so she held it with two hands to prevent it from flying from her grasp. As she slammed the rock into his skull, warm blood spatter covered her face and nude body. The contrast of the cold rain and warm blood made her body quiver in anticipation and shivers raced down her spine when his head cracked open beneath the rock, spewing red gooeyness from the opening. A wave of satisfaction washed over her as the painful heat left her body, and she indulged her hunger with the bits of flesh clinging to the rock in her hands.

  The images were awful, but what was worse were the feelings that went along with them. Allison relived every emotion she had in those moments. She enjoyed the fear, the hurt, the chaos she caused.

  Sometimes a flashback drained her emotionally and physically, leaving her unable to support her body weight. When she was too weak to stand Dave would scoop her into his arms and carry her to bed, tucking her in gently. Sometimes Sandra would place a pillow under Allison’s head and cover her with a throw from the couch and leave her where she was. Allison would awake hours later, slightly dazed, feeling empty and numb. Every moment she was forced to relive pushed her to the same conclusion each time: Only a monster could do the things Allison had done.

  During her downtime, she flipped through the old magazines Sandra had given her, engulfing herself in the sleek pages filled with designer clothes and arti
cles with titles like “How to Please Your Man in 5 Easy Steps.” On good days this temporarily distracted her from reality. On the bad days this pastime caused depression and tears, Allison realizing her life was so different from the ones depicted in the shiny pages. Remembering what was, what could have been, what may never be again.

  Then came the dreams. At first, she would wake up in a sweat, shaking, crying, unable to be calmed. Sandra would rush into her room like a mother hen, clutch Allison to her chest, and rock her. Sandra would tell her that the dreams weren’t real. But they were real. They happened. All of those things happened, and, worst of all, Allison was responsible. In the same way that people can never seem to say the right thing to comfort those who have suffered the death of a loved one, there was nothing Sandra could say to make this better, to make it bearable. Allison was a monster who had destroyed people’s lives. Sandra could not fix that.

  On a particularly dreary day when the sky was full of gray clouds and it was raining so hard Allison was sure God himself was crying, she found a box in the top of the closet in her bedroom. It was flimsy, dusty, and had obviously not been opened in years. She opened the box and found it full of school supplies. Pencils, pens, some glue, packages of looseleaf paper, and a beautiful leather journal. The journal had a beautiful tree with an intricate border around it embossed into the soft brown leather. The inside had a tab that held a maroon pen with gold details, and the pages were blank. Allison removed the journal and put the box back in its place. She wandered into the kitchen, journal in hand.

  “Well, what do you have there?” Sandra asked in the motherly way she spoke to Allison. She was standing by the counter rolling out dough destined to become a peach pie.

  “I found a box in the closet. It had this really cool empty journal in it.” Allison held up the journal as she spoke.

  “Oh, you found my box of extra supplies. I always kept it stocked to help supply my students with the things they needed for our lessons. Even before the outbreak this area was struggling. Many families had no extra money for school supplies. So, I did what I could.” As she spoke Sandra spread the pie crust into a pan and filled it with a jar of home-canned peaches. “I really don’t know why I even bought that journal. It wasn’t something I would typically keep in my stockpile. But it was just so pretty, I just felt I had to have it.” She sprinkled the top of the peaches with sugar and different spices, then began working on the lattice for the top of the pie. “You are welcome to it. I have never been much of a writer but my best friend in high school, Margret, was. She always said it helped clear out her head. Maybe writing could do that for you.” She finished the latticework for the top pie crust, then brushed it with an egg wash, sprinkled it with sugar, and popped it in the oven.

  “I’ve never written anything before, but anything is worth a try, I guess. I didn’t know you were a teacher.” Allison sat at the table, placing the journal in front of her, tracing the embossing with her fingers.

  “Yes, third grade. I loved it. I don’t know if I will ever get to do it again.” A darkness dulled her eyes as she frowned. The look quickly passed and was replaced with a forced smile. “I am going to go see if those lazy chickens have laid any eggs. They haven’t given us any in days.” She grabbed the basket from the counter and went out the back door, leaving Allison at the table with nothing but her thoughts and an empty journal.

  Before she knew it, her pen was moving and words were flowing out of her mind onto the paper. Tears clouded her eyes, and she used the back of her hand to wipe them away. Feelings that she had been ignoring for weeks clawed their way to the surface and ended up on the pages of that journal. All her mental notes from her dreams and flashbacks. She wrote down every detail she could remember, from the color of her victims’ eyes, to the smell of decay that filled empty towns, to mini maps of areas she recalled frequenting. She wrote down all the horror, heartache, and death from her dreams. She wrote about her last normal night that she could remember, the night of the party, the night everything changed. The music blaring, the fear, and the dead woman on the ground below her. She wrote about the cabin where she killed the man at the sink. But another memory was there, buried deep within her subconscious. The cabin filled with the screams of . . . a girl. The one memory so fuzzy it was as if her own body was begging her not to remember it. By the time she was done hours had passed and her hand ached from overuse. She had filled dozens of pages but still had so many empty ones. She felt a weight lift from her soul, and for the first time since she awoke in the woods, she was herself again, not the monster, but just Allison.

  She looked to the counter where she saw the peach pie on a cooling rack. She didn’t remember Sandra coming back into the kitchen to pull it from the oven. It was dusk outside; the setting sun filled the sky with orange and red hues. It was beautiful. She could see Sandra and Dave on an old wood swinging bench on the back porch right outside the window. They were laughing and smiling, something Allison had never seen before. Dave kissed Sandra, and they looked at each other the way only two people truly in love can look at each other. Despite N87, despite the death, despite Allison, the world still had some wonderful things in it. There were things worth living for, fighting for. Love being at the top of the list.

  That night Allison rested in bed, stomach full of peach pie, and she thought about her future. Each day she stayed at the farm was another day without knowing what happened to her family, to Gabby. A lump formed in her throat as she imagined the people she loved being victims of hungry Infected or of N87 itself. The thought of finding her family and Gabby alive spread a smile across Allison’s face. But if they were still alive, she would have to tell them what she had done, the monster she had become. Allison’s heart skipped in her chest as she imagined her mother’s eyes filling with disgust and sadness as Allison told her she had once been infected, that she was a murderer. I have to make it better. I have to make myself better. Tears soaked Allison’s lace pillow as she drew up her redemption plan.

  After running through different scenarios in her head, Allison knew there was only one thing to do to rid herself of her guilt. There was only one thing she could do to be able to face her family, to make the daily chanting of monster, monster, monster in her head stop. She had to face the demon from her dreams. She had to face herself. That meant facing those she hurt, those she killed. She had to accept what she was. Or end it. She couldn’t live like this.

  She snuck down the hall, making sure Sandra and Dave’s door was shut. She listened to the deep snoring coming from within before she headed to the kitchen. With her journal in hand, she pulled a set of maps from a drawer. She spread the first map on the table with her journal open on top and continued to formulate her plan.

  That next morning over plates of biscuits and salt pork, Allison told Dave and Sandra she would be leaving.

  “Where will you go?” Dave asked.

  “I’m not sure. I was hoping you could help me with that. I’ve been looking over maps all night, but I’m not sure where I need to go exactly. I want to find my family and friends. But I have something I need to do first,” Allison said in-between bites of biscuit. “I want to own up to what I’ve done. I need to find the people I’ve hurt, or the families of the people I hurt. I need to apologize. I need to show them I’m not a monster,” Allison paused. “I need to show myself I’m not a monster.” She dropped her biscuit to her plate and leaned back in her chair, twisting a section of her hair tightly around her finger.

  “Oh, honey,” Sandra said, placing her hand on Allison’s arm and patting it gently. “You are not a monster. You didn’t have control over yourself. You are not responsible for the things you did while you were Infected.”

  “I am responsible. I can’t live with it if I don’t try to make amends.” Allison pushed her empty plate away from her and sighed.

  “How do you suppose you would do that? It’s not like you know the names of these people,” Sandra said.

  “I remember thing
s. Like street signs and names on stores. I’m hoping if I can find those spots, the places I remember the most, I can backtrack to find the rest.” Allison pushed her empty plate away. Dave sat silently staring at his plate of food, rhythmically tapping his thumb on the table.

  Sandra grabbed Allison’s plate and took it to the sink. “It seems unrealistic to me,” she said, keeping her back to Allison.

  “Has it occurred to you that most people will not be receptive to your apology? That you are being selfish by even trying?” Dave questioned, finally looking up from the table with a stern look on his face.

  “Dave! I don’t think—” Sandra began to say but her husband interrupted her.