by L. ROY AIKEN
The clips they’re showing from inside churches could just as well have come from coverage of Easter services in any given year. The voiceover repeats the script. “Worldwide catastrophe” is a phrase that turns up now and again.
So, good citizens that we are, we click on to the coverage on the parks closest to our area. The solemn bumper music plays as they come back from break—the break being a list of the stations to call to have your deceased removed for you, based on ZIP code, school district, etc.
The narration is hushed as the camera follows a Guardsman pulling a little bundle in a sheet from the back of a canvas-covered truck. “The flu was extremely random in its selection of victims,” says a male narrator. “Whereas the Spanish Flu of nearly a hundred years ago targeted young, healthy adults and spared the very old and very young, this flu took infants, the elderly, the young, middle-aged—everyone. Every family has been affected. My family, my co-host Andrea’s family, Jeff the cameraman’s family, our producer, Jean, in the van. Your family, too.”
I’m sliding off my stool to pour myself a beer when I hear the firecrackers again. I go to the plate glass doors and try to make out where it’s coming from.
“Sound to me like its coming from one of the problem areas,” Tanner says.
“Problem areas? How is anything a problem with almost everyone dead and the National Guard on the streets?”
I’m aware of Tanner looking me over, weighing my capacity for frankness. “There are certain cultures,” he says carefully, “that resist having their deceased taken away from them without a proper viewing period.”
“So they’re shooting them?”
“We’re in the midst of an epidemiological emergency. Two days ago it was a bunch of people with colds. Now people are dead. A lot of people.” Tanner nods toward the TV. “This is about getting a biohazard good and buried before we lose what’s left of us.”
We see shots of the canvas-covered flatbeds pulling to the curb in various neighborhoods. The volunteers in their Day-Glo yellow vests walk up to the doors on either side of the street. They don’t use gurneys but stretchers. Once they have the body they jog to the back of the waiting truck.
The survivor fills out the paperwork on the clipboard held out by one of the government volunteers. Name, age, sex, approximate time of death. They get a numbered receipt for the body in lieu of an official death certificate.
The narration is unbearable to listen to. Platitudes, benedictions, tasteless frosting on an unspeakable cake. I think of Sibyl and Jack having to deal with their mother’s lifeless body. And I’m not there. I keep telling myself they’re capable and mature enough. Which they are. Still….
The scene cuts to a park. There’s a long trench and yellow police tape all around.
“This is just three blocks over,” Tanner says.
“Yeah, we heard the backhoe earlier.” I’m looking at all the people behind the yellow tape. Even from the screen you can feel the tension of the crowd. They want to see their loved ones covered, even if it is with a backhoe.
Tanner frowns. “This isn’t good.”
“Why not?”
He doesn’t take his eyes from the TV. “They’ve had some issues at some of these burials.”
“I thought this was the first wave.”
“The first wave here. Burials have been going on pretty much all day everywhere.”
“So, aside from the logistics of burying so many people at once, what issues have they been having?”
“There!” Tanner says.
Most of the bodies are wrapped in sheets; the ones that aren’t are wrapped there at the park before being lowered into the ditch.
One of the bodies is apparently resisting being wrapped up. A pale little girl kicks and flails at the sheet. The two wrapping her are knocked back on their rears as the girl sits up.
“The hell?”
“Watch!” says Tanner. He leans eagerly towards the image on the screen.
A woman runs screaming to the girl but is blocked by a Guardsman and his M4. He pushes the little girl’s mother so hard she falls backwards. Another Guardsman runs forward as the little girl falls atop one of the volunteers trying to wrap her up. It’s the volunteer’s turn to kick and flail now that the girl has her head nuzzled into her neck. Crimson spray erupts along either side of the girl’s head. The second Guardsman shoots twice, once into the girl’s head and again into the head of the injured volunteer.
“Holy shit! Tanner, what do you know about this?”
“It’s been a busy 12 to 18 hours. No one knows what to make of it. I’ve been reading messages from my sources overseas but I picked up a lot of intel just walking around with Officer Dalton. The cops and the Guard know all about this.”
“This?”
Two Guardsmen hold the screaming, kicking woman while two others pull the little girl from the body of the volunteer. Her face is blotted out with red. Bits of pale matter dot the clot of scarlet clenched between her tiny teeth. After some deliberation they toss the volunteer into the trench as well.
I can’t believe what they’re showing next. The bodies of the little girl and the volunteer are lying on top of what looks like giant writhing maggots—the corpses struggling against their shrouds in the trench.
“Yeah,” says Tanner. “They’re gonna have to close that up fast. Weird how so many of them will come back at once like that. It’s like that first one woke them up.”
“What the blue screaming hell is going on here?”
Tanner nods at the screen. A reporter speaks to the camera: “What we’re seeing here is a post-mortem reaction to the Final Flu. These are not your loved ones all of a sudden getting better. These are—”
We hear the automatic gunfire echoing loudly among the buildings outside before hearing it on the TV. The camera swings away from the reporter to down the street from the park. A figure falls forward, a broad stripe of blood plastered from his mouth to his groin. As that one falls we see the man behind him, comically barefoot in his Sunday best suit. He’s clasping a woman to him. You can see the woman’s screaming face over his shoulder as he chews into her. A bloom of red appears on the back of the man’s head and he falls, pulling the woman with him. The Guardsman runs over, points his rifle down and fires.
“As you can see over here,” we hear the reporter’s voice over the image, “victims of bites from these reanimated bodies need to be put down, too. No matter how slight or severe the wound, the person bitten will sicken, die, and rise to bite someone himself. Reports of this phenomenon in other cities have indicated that the lower brain stem must be destroyed to drop the reanimated ones.”
The air crackles with the pop-pop-pop of gunfire. “It’s not just here in this park!” the reporter yells over the blasts.
“This is happening with the burials at other parks! This is why everyone was supposed to stay home!” The camera finds the reporter at last. He’s got his back to the trench, where one can see hands waving over the lip of it. There were other bodies wrapped in sheets waiting to be put into the trench. They writhe and twist like oversized grubs. Legs begin kicking free, arms thrust stiffly out. “Many of the dead are getting free,” says the reporter, “either from the sheets or from loved ones who think their deceased have miraculously recovered. The ones in the trench aren’t likely to get out, as it was dug a solid six feet. The dead are utterly mindless on top of very uncoordinated. They don’t—”
A scream close by cuts the reporter off this time. The camera pans right to show a Guardsman taken down from behind by a big woman in a pink muu-muu and a pale, thin teenager dressed in what must have been his prom tuxedo. They each have an arm upon which they batten down. They gnaw and tear furiously at the tough cammie sleeves. The Guardsman is young and fairly robust yet he can’t break the grip these people have on him. The fat paws of the big woman close so tightly you can see the Guardsman’s flesh bulging white between her fingers.
The camera turns back to the reporter in time
to show two dirty figures ambling up behind him. There’s an animal hnnnnnnnh! and the camera’s eye is jerked backwards. It bounces once, rocks, then settles for a view of the clear blue sky. The screams are so loud and close the mic is distorting. Beyond the screams the background is filling with the sounds of weird moans, a low growling. And more screams. A dog yelps and cries over and over….
The slurping and smacking noises are the worst. And the hungry mmmmmm! you hear as they tear into another bite.
God knows what took them so long to switch back to the studio. One man at the news desk, no spiffed-up female counterpart. He eventually looks at the camera, his forehead creased as if weighing what he’s about to say next.
Finally:
“Homeland Security told us to make sure no one was frightened or otherwise led to believe that this situation was out of control. Well, you all saw what we saw. If you have Flu sufferers in your house, you have a decision to make. How do you want to remember them? You can either finish it now and put them out of their misery—or you can try and finish it while fighting for your life. Fighting against what has to be the devil’s cruelest trick on humanity since—”
The anchor swallows hard. “For our viewers, however many are left out there, please stay indoors like they’re telling everyone now—but don’t trust the authorities to get this under control anytime soon, if ever. Not only are people still dying from the Final Flu, a lot have died already—and not all of those bodies made it to those burial sites. As you could see from the live feed we had earlier, most of these wandered in from—”
The screen goes to a generic blue “Loss of Satellite Feed” page.
“I can’t believe it took them that long to cut him off,” Tanner says. “This is looking to be much worse than anyone thought.”
“The people you talked to knew about all of this and thought they could contain it?”
“How hard could it be? One in every three caught the Final Flu. Not everyone died at once. Even if they did, it’s still two-to-one. You’ll notice the afflicted ones don’t move very fast, either…oh, and speaking of which, could you get off your chair and move behind me as fast as possible?”
I look over in time to see Angie. Her eyes are dry and unfocused but I’m sitting closest to her and she’s stumbling straight towards me. I jump away from my chair and Tanner fires a round between her eyes. She falls, her arms still reaching out to take me.
Tanner slides off from his chair to stand over her. “Look at the color of her skin,” he says. “She wasn’t dead all that long. Her lividity would have changed over time but looking at her you’d think she was just fine, if a little pale. Feel her skin, though!”
“Er, no thanks. Her eyes were all I needed.”
“Hmm…well, yes. They can’t produce tears or blink anymore. Good catch! Hadn’t considered that one!”
“Goddamn it, it’s obvious this has been going on everywhere else. Why aren’t people being warned about this?”
“Actually, the reanimation phenomenon started just last night Stateside. People have been dying of the Flu in Europe and Asia all last week but this business with walking, flesh-eating cadavers is a new development. I must admit, though, I’m curious. How would you explain this?”
“How about we start with the truth?”
“Who would believe it? That’s why they were encouraging people to see it for themselves on their local channels. People can deal with it that way. Or so they thought. The National Guard here certainly wasn’t ready for it. They didn’t fill in that trench like they were supposed to once those things started stirring.” Tanner glances towards the plate glass entrance. “We might want to get out of sight of the doors.”
The first shadows are stumbling forth into the street from between the buildings across the avenue. They’re far enough away; we’re buffered by a wide, brick plaza anchored by a center fountain. Still….
“We should kill the lights,” I say, but Tanner has them off before I’m halfway through saying it.
Just as I’m turned to walk back to the desk the elevator door dings and opens. The light in the elevator is blocked by one, two, now five figures stumbling hesitantly into the lobby.
“Tanner!” I spring for the front desk.
“Nnnnh-waaaaah!” They key in on my voice and movement and shuffle in my general direction.
“Can anyone here say his or her name?” Tanner asks.
“Unnnnh!”
“Mmmmmgh!”
“All right, then. Good night!”
This gray, big-bellied old man wearing nothing but boxer shorts with his wedding tackle hanging out goes down, a red-black hole misting open between his eyes and exploding out the back of his skull. The man in the soiled and stinking flannel pajamas springs backward, as does the one in the gray track suit. God help us, the next one sweated out his last fever nude, his final death-shit moist about the backs of his thighs. Tanner drops him.
“Okay,” says Tanner, still grinning. “The last one’s yours.”
“What? You’re kidding, right?”
“No. You’re taking her down.”
She’s a slight, bird-boned thing with expensive hair poofed into a cloud behind her head from lying feverish in bed. She dressed in pink silk pajamas but like all God’s children, male and female, rich and poor, she voided her bowels at point of death.
“Look about you!” says Tanner. “Find something you can use!”
The shit-stench is eye-watering. I don’t see anything around me but various pieces of furniture.
“Come on! She’s just a woman! Not even a big one!”
I pick up the single big upholstered chair—lighter than you’d think, really—and throw it. It knocks the woman onto her back. I pick up the seat cushion, which had flown loose, and put it over the woman’s grunting, snapping face. She bites the cushion. The force of her contracting jaw deforms the cushion from the other side. Like it’s being pulled into a black hole.
Putting all of my weight into my heel I stomp down upon the woman’s head. I feel teeth break, then her jaw. But I can’t quite kill her. I start jumping up and down on her head. I lose my balance and fall backwards.
The pillow tumbles from her face as she rises. Rage flares in her undead eyes, standing one on top of the other as her broken-necked head rests with one ear flat upon her shoulder. Her face is black and blue, her teeth bloodied, but there’s enough of them left to inflict damage.
“Goddamn it, Tanner, shoot this thing!”
“You sure?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” I roll to my feet, the woman between me and Tanner. I put my heel into her solar plexus and kick her towards him. He’s startled so the first shot misses her head. His second shot drops her.
“Are you all right?” Tanner says over the ringing in our ears.
“You mind telling me the point of this?”
“I was curious to see how you would react in extreme crisis. You handled it in a manner…quite unorthodox.”
“I finally got you to shoot it, didn’t I?”
“The question is, should we trust you with a weapon?”
“Is that really up to you?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“In your dreams.”
I look at him, he at me. He holds the Glock up just so. I turn and walk back to the bar. Shoot me in the back while I’m going for a beer. I can think of worse ways to go.
“Okay, let’s stop this!” Tanner says. “We’ll find you a weapon, if only to double our firepower! There’s this one thing, though.”
“What?”
“Guns seem to attract them.”
I look out the front. The shadows of a dozen or so once-living people lean against the glass by their foreheads. Most of the men are dressed in suits, but barefoot. The women are in nightgowns or simple dresses. Some have dirt down their fronts where they clambered over the other bodies to get out of their trench. Maybe half have that wide streak of red-brown blood around the mouths and down their midd
les.
“We need to get out of this lobby,” says Tanner.
“Ya think?”
It’s not like they can really see us, with those drying and unfocused eyes. But their slackjawed heads follow us as we back slowly into the darkened lobby. “I’d suggest the stairs,” I say as I reach Tanner’s position behind the desk.
“Aren’t you on the 15th floor?”
“What if five of these things are waiting at the door on the 14th? Even if I had a gun I’m not sure I could get enough shots off at once before I got bitten.”
“No, what I’m saying is I have a card for the express elevator to the presidential suite. You could walk down five flights instead of climbing 15.”
“Oh. That’s what we’ll do, then.”
We walk to the express elevator and get in. “I expect the presidential suite is fairly large. Why don’t we just move our stuff up there?”
“Until when?” says Tanner. “Until all those police and National Guard we’re not seeing get all those carnivorous walking corpses under control?”
“Point. So what do we do, Mr. Security Consultant?”
“I don’t know about you but I’m going home to Colorado.”
“Tonight?”
“Oh no. First thing tomorrow I need to scout the area. Make sure the National Guard is really down. Then we make a run for it.”
“We?”
“Sure. I thought you might wanna come with.”
Come with? Right. “What about those bandits you were talking about?”
“Nothing the two of us can’t handle. If we leave early enough we should be able to blow through the worst areas without incident.”
“Of course.”
“See you at breakfast, then.”
The doors open. I can tell he’s already made camp here. Sly bastard.
“The emergency exit stairs are here,” Tanner says.
I raise my hand in acknowledgment as I push through the door.
“Make sure you’re wearing sensible clothes in case we have to abandon the vehicle,” he calls after me. “We have to be ready for anything.”