Kyle grabbed the .357 with some extra rounds and walked over to Mary, who had taken a seat next to Eddie. He handed the gun to her and said, “Here, take this, just in case something tries to get in.” Mary took the gun and the box of ammunition. “It’s loaded, be careful with this one. It’s very powerful. Keep Eddie safe.”
Kyle poked Eddie on the top of the head. The boy took off his headphones and looked at his dad. “I’m going to go out for a few days okay, Sport?”
Okay, Dad,” he said as he put his earbuds back on.
“That’s all I’m going to get? Can I have a hug?” Kyle asked not really expecting an answer.
“Just leave him alone, Kyle. He’s angry that you’re leaving him.” Mary began to rub Eddie’s back. “Just fucking leave already,” she said softly, her voice trailing into her sorrows.
“I’ll be back, Sport, okay? I’ll make sure to bring back a lot of games for your handheld,” Kyle said. Eddie nodded in return. “I love you, buddy,” he continued then turned toward the little window near the vent.
He grabbed the shotgun off the table as he walked to the vent. The world around him began to move in slow motion as he leaned the shotgun on the wall and lifted the vent door. He put the backpack and shotgun through the slot, and then climbed in. There was only enough room for him to crawl toward the opening in the front yard. He moved forward, pushing the pack and shotgun in front of him. The vent began to widen. There was more room for him to move. He saw a little patch of sunlight hitting the inside of the vent, but wasn’t entirely sure what to expect with the light at the end of the tunnel.
Kyle made it to the light and there was enough room for him to stand. He hunched over so the top of his head wouldn’t hit the metal entrance. He lifted the door slowly and poked his head out. He searched the area for movement. There was none. Grabbing the backpack and the shotgun, he placed them on the grass and climbed out, closing the hatch door behind him. Movement was everything now. Making less noise would ensure the he wouldn’t bring on unnecessary attention. He picked up the pack and the shotgun from the dew-filled grass and stood.
He searched the area again as he lifted the shotgun in a shooting stance. His blue 1995 Toyota pickup truck was still sitting on the driveway untouched. Kyle walked toward the vehicle, but suddenly stopped. He knew that he was about to do something stupid and dangerous. All he wanted was to get one last look at Eddie before he left.
Kyle casually walked toward the very small basement window. It was only one foot across and six inches high, Kyle never understood the reason for such a small window. Laying the weapon and backpack on the ground, he lay on the grass and peered through. The window was covered with a thick layer of moisture. He wiped his hand across the window a few times to clear it. He peered in again to get a glimpse of his boy. Mary stood behind Eddie’s chair with the .357 drawn and pointed at the back of his head. Eddie continued playing his video game as if nothing was wrong. She pulled the hammer back on the gun.
“No!” Kyle yelled as loud as he could. His heart sank and his body felt completely numb.
The scream was loud enough for Eddie to hear through the headphones. The little boy looked up at his dad and gave a quick smile. Kyle noticed that Eddie had the four-leaf clover keychain dangling around his finger.
At that second, Mary pulled the trigger. Kyle watched, in slow motion, as the bullet ejected from the gun and went through the back of the boy’s head. It exploded outward, leaving a large hole where Eddie’s face had been. Blood, cartilage, brain tissue, and other unknown substances spewed everywhere onto the ground. His bottom jaw was still intact, but the top of his mouth was mixed with the gore on the floor. Eddie dropped the handheld as he went limp. His arms fell down the sides of the couch. The keychain fell out of his finger and hit the ground.
“No!” Kyle screeched again even louder than before. He began to weep uncontrollably at the sight.
Mary stared at the glass window. She shouted something, but he couldn’t hear it over his mourning. Through tears, Kyle watched as Mary put the gun barrel under her chin and pulled the trigger. A look of disbelief crossed Mary’s face as the bullet went through her head, leaving a baseball-sized hole as blood and brain ejected across the room. She instantly fell to the ground and dropped the firearm a foot away from her hand.
Kyle was sick to his stomach and he began to vomit, showering the little window with his digested breakfast. He quickly backed away from the acrid mess. His eyes watered and tears began to fall freely down his face. Everything around him seemed to slow to a crawl, his senses heightened as adrenalin pumped through his veins. His hearing increased for a split second. He could hear each individual bird chirp and then he heard a moan from somewhere in the area. He wiped away his tears and quickly heaved to his feet, picking up the weapon and his supplies. Kyle still felt hollow inside, but his survival instincts kicked in, even though mentally, he wasn’t there.
Five bodies walked toward him. Their skins were grayish green and their clothes were shredded over their forms. The walking corpses were thin; their exposed skin looked to be stretched over bones. They walked slowly, carefully taking one step at a time. He needed to get past them in order to make it to his truck. Kyle raised the Winchester and fired. The shell caught the front monster in the chest, nearly splitting it in half. The creature fell back as Kyle pumped the shotgun. He aimed at another and fired again. The casing hit it in the head; the force of the slug causing its head to explode, expelling brain matter and bone fragments in a burst pattern.
Kyle kept repeating the words, “I’m sorry, Eddie,” as he shot off the remaining shells. He began moving toward the truck gripping the gun like a baseball bat, ready to swing at anything that might creep up behind him. He tossed the shotgun into the vehicle, and then threw the bag in. Another moan erupted. Kyle quickly drew his pistol like an old west gunfighter and turned. Standing before him was Gary, Eddie’s friend, wearing a gray hooded sweater and a vacant look on his face. His black Beatles-type hair was wild and unkempt. Kyle pointed the gun at the boy’s head, but couldn’t pull the trigger. The creature’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open as he lunged for Kyle. Kyle quickly put the handgun down and kicked the boy across the chest. Gary moaned as the force of Kyle’s kick caused the reanimated kid to fall to the ground, but as he hit the grass, he was already trying to get back to his feet. Kyle jumped into the truck and started it. He closed the door and simultaneously, Gary’s face pressed up against the window. Kyle motioned away from the glass in shock. The boy continued hitting the door with his palm.
The momentary safety of the truck caused Kyle to fall into a trance. He sat in the driver seat repeating, “I’m sorry, Eddie.” He grabbed the shotgun sitting next to him and put the barrel under his chin. “I’m sorry, Eddie,” he mumbled, and pulled the trigger.
The shotgun clicked empty, and when it did something clicked in Kyle’s head. The hollowness was still inside of him, but he began to think clearly. He turned to look at Gary again. “I’m sorry, Gary,” he said and put the shotgun on the passenger seat.
Kyle put the truck into reverse and backed out of the driveway. He shifted into drive and headed west up Colonial Road. He glanced through his rearview mirror and saw the figure of Gary walking onto the street, lumbering in his direction.
Chapter Two
Kyle drove through the deserted suburban city streets, passing by abandoned cars that were parked or crashed off to the side. He looked through the car windows. Most of them were empty, but others still had moving bodies fastened to their seat belts. He only saw them for a split second, but that was long enough to know they were struggling to become free.
Kyle tried not to think about Mary murdering Eddie then committing suicide. Yes, it hurt him, but the evil, malevolent part of him was a little glad. Sure it was easy to pretend like the world would heal from this, but really there was no telling if things would ever get back to normal. Ending Eddie’s life swiftly was probably better than dragging out a
long and painful death. The other part of him felt a cold and empty void, something that could only be filled by seeing someone that brought him happiness. Like seeing Jasmine’s face again. He knew where he was going. In California there was a small town near San Diego named Poway, and that was his destination.
Before moving to Nevada to start a new life with Mary and Eddie, Kyle had lived in California. He was born and raised in the town of Escondido, right next to Poway. Knowing the area well would definitely give him an advantage. It would make things easier when traveling through dead-infested territory. If he didn’t run into any trouble, he could make it there within a few hours. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was 9:30 a.m.
He began flipping through the radio stations, only to find white noise or an annoying emergency broadcast beep. He switched to AM and continued scrolling through the channels as the cool AC air blared into his face.
“… Yes, yes, it’s true the dead are coming back to life,” a voice managed to say through the static. He adjusted the tuning knob until the voice became clearer then turned up the volume to listen.
The acoustics of the room made it sound like the people were broadcasting from a small conference room. There was a lot of noise and people interrupting others, talking over each other.
“If you all could please shut up and listen to me!” an authoritative male voice yelled over the crowd. The noise subsided as the voice continued, “Like I have been trying to say, my name is Doctor Theodore Greenly, and I was a former member of the CDC.” When he said that, the room went into an uproar. People began asking questions.
“Was this something that was created by the United States?” someone said.
“You’re from the CDC, so you’re saying it’s some sort of virus?” said another.
Doctor Greenly quickly calmed the room again. “Please, please,” he said, “let me finish. I will answer as many questions as I can. Let me get this information out first.” Doctor Greenly sounded out of breath and congested, as if he were either fighting off a cold, or he was an overweight man.
Kyle began to hear more static as he drove passed the town’s zoning lines. He didn’t want to miss what Doctor Greenly had to say. He looked around the terrain; there was no one and nothing in sight. He was out of the suburban area and began entering the small patches of desert that have not been turned into suburban neighborhoods. He decided to pull off to the side and listen. He left the truck running in case he had to leave in a hurry.
“There is no evidence to support that this is a virus,” Doctor Greenly continued, “but, in all honesty, we don’t know what this is. If it is a virus, I have never seen anything like this in my forty-year career with the CDC. What this is has to be something different, maybe something out of this world.”
“Do you mean like extra-terrestrial? A virus from another world perhaps?” someone called out.
“That was one of the possibilities we had in mind. We have been in contact with what’s left of NASA to see if there have been any larger than normal meteorite collisions or returning satellites within the past week. Scientists have reported that there have been no major collisions. On a hunch, we decided to see if anyone at SETI, The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, was still alive to tell us if they have made any form of contact. As of now we have no confirmation.”
“So if it’s not alien, what do you personally think it is?” the same voice asked.
“Our best guess is some bizarre paranormal phenomenon that we have never experienced before. This explanation was a little much for our team to swallow. But we still have zero evidence of any of this. It might very well be something viral. The only thing we know for sure is that anyone who has been bitten by one of them will die and come back to life craving human flesh.”
“But why? Why human flesh?” another voice cried out.
“We do not know why they feel the need to consume human tissue. We do know that they get absolutely no nourishment from it. They will continue eating flesh even after their stomachs rupture and their entrails hang out of their bodies. A cadaver that we experimented on managed to eat three entire recently expired bodies. On its fourth, the subject’s body was so bloated it could hardly walk. When the stomach ruptured it kept eating. Before anyone asks, the recently deceased bodies the cadaver was consumed were donated in the name of science.”
“After being bitten, did the bodies wake up at any point?”
“That is a great question. No, the bodies that were bitten after expiring did not come back to life. We believe that the cause needs the bloodstream of a living person to transmit.”
“So what about pain?” the first voice asked.
“That one is simple, they do not feel any. We had one of our officers discharge an entire M4 thirty round magazine into the patient’s mid and lower section. The shots did immobilize the subject, but it continued advancing toward the man using any means possible. It wasn’t until the officer gave it a quick shot through the temple that it stopped completely. On this first experiment, we let the body lie for twenty-four hours. It did not rise again. So yes, they do not feel pain, but they can be stopped.”
“That’s how you kill them? With a shot through the head?”
“No, no, no,” Doctor Greenly said in a fast triplet speech. “I said that they could be stopped. The body we neutralized was just a host for something, it still showed signs of microscopic life after the brain was destroyed. The host was no longer active, but the cause was more or less still alive. Think of it as someone in a coma. They are no longer active, but still alive. Destroying the brain only stops them, we don’t know if the cause could truly be killed. This entire situation is just baffling. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“Do you have any evidence that these things can’t be one-hundred percent killed?”
“As a matter of fact we do. First we have to take a look at what I mean by dead. When a living person dies, so does every cell in their body. They begin to rot away until they are nothing more than a memory to the living. In one of these living dead corpses, after the brain is destroyed the cause that brought it back to life lives on. For example, after we neutralized the subject with a shot through the head, we …” The doctor paused for a moment then sighed into the microphone. “Before I mention this, the world needs to understand that our experiments are vital to the human race. That being said … forty-eight hours after we neutralized the original cadaver, we injected 5mL of the corpse’s blood into a living human subject.”
The room grew louder after that was said. People began to protest and obscenities blared through Kyle’s speakers. He was completely enthralled in the broadcast that he found himself yelling, “Shut up,” to the people who wouldn’t let Doctor Greenly speak.
Finally the crowd calmed and Kyle could hear Doctor Greenly’s voice again. “Like I was saying, we injected 5mL, which is about half of a standard syringe, of blood directly into the living subject’s bloodstream. After we injected the blood, the patient lapsed into a coma. A few hours later, he expired. A few moments after that, his eyes reopened.
“The most interesting things happened with the second and third test subjects. We injected 5mL of the original cadaver’s saliva into one of their bloodstreams and the man expired within the hour. Seconds later, his eyes reopened. Blood and saliva both carry the cause, but it’s the saliva that’s most toxic. As for the third test subject, we carefully extracted the brain from the second test subject. His body fell limp, just like the original cadaver that we shot through the head. We extracted the brain from the third living subject and attached it to the body of the second subject. For those of you who thought brain transplants were impossible, guess again. We were startled to see that once the human brain was attached to the brain stem of the living corpse, its eyes shot open and began to thrash. The cause lives inside of the human body, but the human body cannot move without the brain.”
“Are there any other ways to incapacitat
e an infected individual?”
“I don’t like the term infected. There is no evidence that we could see to support that this phenomena is caused by an infection. Yes, it may act like an infection, but we cannot see anything erroneous when we test the blood or saliva. A better term would be, Existing Dead. Let’s just call the victims that from now on until we could definitely identify them.
“But to answer your question, there aren’t many ways to stop one of the Existing Dead. We know that destroying the brain will stop them. We have also experimented with fire and other element-based attacks. Fire did work, but it became hard to keep the subject stationary while it was engulfed in flames. We nearly burned down our lab with this experiment. The average person will collapse within thirty seconds of combustion. It took the subject thirty minutes to an hour before it succumbed to the blaze. This is where the pain factor kicked in. It also brought up more evidence that it cannot be killed. When the Existing Dead was nothing more than a pile of ash, we mixed the dust with water and injected it into another living test subject. Two days past and we had another Existing Dead on our hands. We also tried the effects of freezing temperatures. It took the subject ten minutes to freeze solid in subzero temperatures, and half an hour to thaw to the point of being mobile again.”
“Where did all of these test subjects come from? The people have a right to know.”
“All of our living test subjects were donated by the Nevada State Penitentiary. The subjects were Death Row inmates, all of whom would have been executed within a few years. They were brought to our lab by a military escort.”
“Where is the military through all this? Has the entire country been overrun?”
“The military is currently in the northeastern seaboard trying to repel the Existing Dead toward California. Half of the country has deserted to the northern region, Canada or further. There are many patches of hot zones throughout the country, with California having the highest percentage of Existing Dead, specifically, San Diego.”
Existing Dead Page 2