Season of the Dead

by Adams, Lucia

  “By mid-July, the virus was confirmed on six continents. I had heard rumors, but I lived in Nebraska; it had not made it to us. Our government was keeping it pretty tight; they were jamming the video sharing and social networking sites. I spent most of my time at work and didn’t pay much attention to it. That all changed in the beginning of August when I was paid a visit by the CDC and a group of military brass. They gave me the information that I am sharing with you.”

  “They were concerned about the mammals. They are carriers, and the government wanted a way to stop that. So it made sense they would contact me. At least that is what I thought then. I’m not sure what to think about it now.” I paused, weighing my words.

  Gerry had wandered over and sat in the other chair beside Lucia. They had spent the last few months running, and these were the first actual answers they had been given. I could see them absorbing the information like sponges.

  “How did the virus get out of Greenland?” Gerry asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I was given limited information. Enough to do some tests and make some theories, but the hows and whys—I wasn’t told.”

  “I do know that the Hauksson virus is fatal. There is no cure, and there is no immunity. If you get it, you die, and then you resurrect. But all the things that make youyou don’t. It’s a necro-virus and its victims become zombies.” My words hung in the air for a minute. They all knew this, but to have it voiced was a totally different matter.

  “I came across some smart zombies,” Lucia said. “What do you suppose that is all about?”

  “Yes, I had an experience with that as well,” I paused, recalling the thinker I had met. Jack had died that day. It wasn’t a pleasant memory. I swallowed and continued. “The closest that I can figure is that there is some resistance to the virus. The person infected lives longer. Whether it has something to do with an RH factor, or just some sort of natural immunity, I don’t know. I have samples from the thinker I met, but without some more lab equipment, there isn’t a lot I can do with it.” She nodded and leaned back in her chair. I could see her turning the information around in her head, processing it.

  “Does that happen to those that don’t get bit?” Paul asked. I turned to look at him.

  “The virus is spread by bodily fluids. The portion of the brain that triggers salivation is targeted as a means to spread the virus. The virus also targets the part of the brain that makes the body think it’s hungry, so the resurrected host is driven to eat, even though it doesn’t really need it. It is just how the virus works.

  “The virus is classified into two types. Type one is infection via a bite. The victim becomes hyper-aggressive and generally dies within four hours. Resurrection time seems to vary.”

  I flipped to the case files that showed the patients that had been studied. I then showed them the video of Mindy. They watched her come back to life. And even though they knew it was going to happen, they still gasped when she did. Gerry swore under his breath and stood. I watched him pace for a moment before I continued.

  “Type two is infection via means other than a bite. For instance, if you get something in your eyes or mouth or through a cut, it takes much longer for the virus to incubate, but you will succumb eventually.”

  “Like Ginny Dailey,” Kitty said quietly. I looked over at the kitchen door to see her standing there. Through the crack I could see Parker at the table coloring. I don’t know how long she had been listening, but it didn’t matter. She knew now, so I just nodded.

  “But with regards to the thinker, I believe that when some people become infected, the virus can’t take over as fast. I don’t know if the incubation period is longer or what happens, but when they resurrect the virus has the ability to access some higher brain functions, which would imply an ability to learn. And I suspect they may retain some things that have become muscle memory. For how long, I don’t know.”

  Gerry came and sat down across from me. “We were told it was just rabies.”

  I sighed. There it was—my worst fear voiced.

  “You’ve done nothing wrong,” Paul said, touching my shoulder gently. I smiled grimly, but didn’t look up.

  “It’s a nice thought. I’m having trouble convincing myself of it though,” I whispered.

  “You were told it was rabies because I told them to say that,” I said in a rush. “They had not alerted the public; something needed to be said. They wouldn’t… couldn’t… say what was really going on without a full scale panic. That would only have made it worse. But they did agree to the rabies story. So I wrote up the public service announcement, and they distributed it.” I pulled a folded-up copy of it from my pocket and handed it to Lucia.

  I looked up, expecting to see shock, horror, and recrimination on their faces. But that is not what I saw, and the lack of it affected me more than I thought it would.

  Kitty looked over her shoulder and then came and perched on the coffee table in front of me. “Did you know what was going to happen?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said, looking at her intently. “They weren’t going to alert the public at all. I thought at least this way there would be some sense of caution instilled. And then things went to hell so soon after that. I was being watched. There were guards stationed in the parking lot of my building. They drove me to work every day, and then drove me home. My personal computer was taken. I suspect my phone was monitored. There was no way I could tell anyone any of the things that were on those files.” I swallowed back hot tears that threatened.

  She nodded once abruptly. She hadn’t told anyone what happened to her family or how she came to be on the farm. I wouldn’t push her to do so now. We had all lost those we loved and done things that we never would have dreamed ourselves capable of. But we were adults, and no matter how grown up she acted, Kitty was still just a child. She should be chatting on the phone with her girlfriends about the boys at school. Yet here she was, stranded in the middle of a national park in the wilds of Canada with a group of strangers all just trying to survive.

  “Would they have killed you if you told?” she asked quietly.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled as I considered the idea. “I don’t know. The day I left, the guards were gone. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out why.” I thought about Jenny and for the first time wondered how she came to be infected. How had the guards not noticed? Silence settled over the lodge as each of them processed what I had said.

  “The plane I was on was headed to a research facility,” Paul said. “They were clearing out of Europe. I saw them loading equipment and guns on the plane. One of the men had a case cuffed to his wrist.”

  “They’ve likely done a lot of what I haven’t been able to. I’d like to review it and see if my theories are true. I don’t know what I can do with it, but it seems a shame to just leave it lying out in the elements.”

  “There was a military presence on the plane?” Gerry asked Paul.

  “Yeah.” He said their name in Irish. We all blinked, and he grinned. “The Army Rangers.”

  Gerry whistled through his teeth. “So they’d have some serious weapons.” Paul nodded.

  I leaned back against the cushions and ran my hands through my hair. “In just a few months, the world has changed drastically. Approximately 90% of the population has contracted the virus. That means that there are over six billion people dead or undead.” I paused there to let that number sink in.

  “I’d like to know what the life span of this virus is. I’ve seen zombies that have died when the virus ran its course, so I know it has one. And I’d like to see if there is way to prevent a future outbreak.”

  “You are not looking for a cure?” Lucia asked.

  “No,” I said. There was no point in sugar coating it. “The virus is so aggressive, once it’s contracted, there isn’t much I can do. If I can figure out what causes the thinkers, maybe I can help those people before they die.

  “Dead is dead,” Paul said quietly.


  “Yes,” I sighed. “I’d like to see if I could synthesize some sort of immunization. But there is no way I can do that with the equipment that I have. I want to search the plane and see what was on there.”

  “That’s some pretty sensitive equipment you’d be looking for. I doubt it survived the crash,” Lucia said.

  “I know,” I said with a sigh. “But it’s still worth a look. And then there is the research they’ve done.”

  “I’d rather have all the available weapons under our control,” Gerry said.

  “I agree completely,” Lucia said. “So, when do we go, and who goes?”

  “I’d like to go, but someone needs to stay with the kids,” Paul said. Kitty flashed him a look at being referred to as a kid. “And, I’m pretty banged up from my fall. I can’t go.”

  Gerry stood up. “Right, its only just now noon, let’s go look.”

  “Look for a zombie with a brief case,” Paul said.

  Gerry snorted. “Hopefully the bastard hasn’t eaten it.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Lucia

  Kitty had pushed the furniture to the sides in the great room. Parker sat on the steps, a dutiful student, as she showed him different moves with a machete in each hand.

  “I call this one ‘the McDeath’, because Paul taught me it.” Kitty began slashing both of her machetes forward, in a wheeling pattern. Her long, brown hair flicked from side to side.

  Sharon was descending the stairs, “I hope Paul didn't show you with such vigor; he's still recovering.”

  Kitty stopped, arched one eyebrow and sashayed her head from side to side, “Look who's talking about vigor stunting recovery.”

  My eyes widened, but Sharon laughed, “Keep on training your prodigy, Sensei. You about ready, Lucia?”

  I rose from the floor and picked my rifle up. “Yeah, Gerry is hooking up the trailer and bringing the quad around.”

  Kitty looked at Parker and continued, “Okay, I call this one ‘the Cheerleader’, because I killed a few with this move.” She flattened her machetes and cut outward, in an X pattern.

  Parker laughed, “Did you really kill cheerleader zombies?”

  “Hell, yes. Your big sister’s a lethal killing machine.” Kitty laughed and stopped to tousle Parker’s hair. “I had to mow down a pack of degenerate beauty queen wannabes to get out of my high school alive.”

  Sharon shook her head as we both laughed. Paul slowly descended the stairs. “What’s so funny?”

  Sharon and I looked at each other and she spoke, “Um… have fun babysitting.”

  “We’ll be fine. But you guys…be careful.”

  “We will.” Sharon nodded towards Kitty, “You wanna bar this door behind us?”

  “Yep!” Kitty bounced over to us as we exited.

  *

  Charred documents and two bags of peanuts were the first things we looted from the plane wreckage. Burnt body parts were scattered around the crash site. We stepped over them and were careful not to touch them. Gerry whooped loudly when he found large cases of military weapons, still intact. He tossed them onto the cart and briefly examined them before snapping them closed and then he scanned the tree line with the scope of his rifle.

  Sharon ran a few feet and stopped. “I thought I saw something shiny.” She started kicking the snow around with her feet, then bent over and picked up an ax. High above her head, she held the ax and said, “Cool! Look at this!”

  Gerry and I nodded in agreement, exclaiming how awesome it was. Sharon smiled and carried the weapon back to the cart. “I think this belonged to Paul.”

  “Is that it? Are we done?” Gerry asked. He seemed anxious to leave.

  Sharon bit the bottom of her lip. “The briefcase is missing.”

  I removed my squirrel head so my words weren’t muffled, “Maybe it burned.”

  Sharon shook her head, “No, I don’t think so. Paul said it was handcuffed to the wrist of one of the passengers. The wreck was bad, but it didn’t burn that hot. We’d have found a partially burned body with the handcuffs if that had happened.”

  Gerry pulled the zipper up further on his coat. “I’ve searched this field with the scope. I haven’t seen any bodies and we didn’t get any new snow, so I’d say it’s in the forest somewhere.”

  “Do we go there?” I shot a look between the two of them, and then focused on the looming darkness amidst the gathered fir trees. I was scared.

  Gerry shrugged. “I’ll go if you guys think we need to.”

  Sharon sighed. “We really should try to get the briefcase.”

  “Why though?” I asked. “We don’t have the equipment to formulate a cure. Without even the most basic of equipment, it’s useless to us.”

  Sharon put her hands on the sides of her head and shifted her hat down. “But what if they were close to a cure and someone finds us? What if that’s our only chance and it’s lost in the woods just behind our camp all of this time? We should at least try… just once… before the heavy snows make it impossible.”

  “Let’s walk in.” Gerry nodded towards the woods. “We can be taken by surprise if we can’t hear over the engine of the quad.”

  “Okay, I’m game.” I put my squirrel head back on and swung my rifle strap over my shoulder. I was willing, but not eager.

  Every fifty yards or so, Gerry paused to scan the tree line with his rifle’s scope, and Sharon looked with her binoculars. I removed my squirrel head and cocked my ear towards the forest, listening.

  “Guys, I see something.” Sharon faced the east and focused her binoculars. “Here, look.” She handed her binoculars to me as Gerry pointed his scope in the same direction.

  Gerry chuckled. “It looks like a zombie stuck in the mud.” He lowered his rifle, “Let’s go see.”

  In a cove clearing [Ed. note: a cove is a kind of bay] free of trees, the torso of a zombie stuck out of the ground. As we approached, he didn’t move. When we were close enough, I picked up a rock and threw it at his head. It bounced off dumbly, but his eyes didn’t open.

  Gerry threw his own rock, hitting him with more force. Still, the zombie didn’t move. “Hmm… how can he be dead? I've seen plenty of zombie torsos still crawling around. His head’s not injured.”

  “Maybe he was one of the smart ones and committed suicide.” Sharon and Gerry looked at me. “You know, like Flipper did.”

  “What do you mean?” Gerry asked.

  Sharon’s mouth flattened into a line and she spoke. “She means that each breath for a dolphin is a decision. The main dolphin, Kathy, who played Flipper on the TV show, experienced depression and purposely stopped breathing, thus committing suicide.”

  “That’s grim as fuck,” Gerry said.

  The zombie turned its head and we heard it crackle. “Oh,” Sharon said, “not dead, just frozen. Good to know.” She shot the moving torso through the head, and it flopped backwards. “Well, no handcuffs, so we have another zombie around here…somewhere.” A moan erupted to our left; we all raised our weapons and walked towards it.

  Navigating through the woods was difficult in my suit, and the fur was now slicked down from the wet snow. We moved in a triangular pattern, covering all sides. The jagged, rotting stump of a tree had impaled a zombie on his free-falling impact to the earth. He moaned and gnashed his teeth at us as we approached. His head kept darting forward as he futilely attempted to lurch his body towards us. Dangling from his wrist was the briefcase and it beat against the tree stump as he thrashed about.

  “Well, aren’t you quite the hors d’oeuvres, all toothpicked up in the forest?” I laughed at the zombie. “Hungry?”

  He responded by trying to jerk his body loose. “Fuck this,” Gerry said, and he killed him with one shot to the head.

  “Nice aim,” I said.

  “Thanks.” Gerry nodded once, in my direction. “I’m gonna try to shoot the handcuff so it breaks off of the zombie.”

  Sharon nodded and Gerry fired twice before the briefcase fell away from the dec
aying limb. He picked it up and handed it to Sharon. “Thanks. We can pop the locks open on this back at the lodge. For now, let’s get out of here.” She scanned the woods and we began trekking back.

  The light of the clearing was just ahead when we heard a collective of zombie gnarls, growls, and moans. Gerry whispered, “Let's make a run for the quad. We’ll have a clear shot in the field.” Sharon nodded, and we started running.

  Like objects slipping through the holes of a too-large sieve, the zombies pushed forward between the trees. We quickened our run and bolted for the field. The cold had slowed them down, but the zombies were closing on us. I could smell them as I was sure they could smell us.

  Sharon and Gerry dashed ahead of me. The suit was slowing me down. I’d never worn it while running through the snow before. My padded foot caught on a rock and my body was thrown face-down onto the ground. My gun slipped out of my hand and landed a few feet from me. With the squirrel head on, I couldn’t turn around and see the zombies, but I could hear their feet pounding towards me. I struggled to get up as one reached me. I screamed and fell as I kicked his knee backwards. All of the air in my lungs had been pressed out of my chest in shrieks and I prayed Gerry and Sharon could hear me. The zombie was on top of me and his teeth were fully exposed because so much flesh had rotted away from his face. I grabbed him by the wrists and held him off as my legs kicked at him. Over his shoulder, I could see other zombies staggering towards us.So you were the fast one?My squirrel head fell backwards, just as bullets whizzed overhead, one finding the zombie’s forehead with athunk. Gerry and Sharon stood over me, shooting at the horde moving through the forest. I rolled to my feet and picked up my gun to join them.

  Slowly, we walked backwards as we inched out of the woods, laying waste to the zombies amongst the firs. Sharon arched her head upwards to search the sky. We all heard it: a helicopter was nearby, though we couldn’t see it.

  When nothing else moved, we stopped firing. As the last shots echoed through the forest, distinct pops came from the direction of camp. Gerry looked at us. “That came from camp. Let’s hurry.”