They seem to have keen senses and eyesight. Impeccable hearing and incredibly strong. Without higher brain function, they are unable to speak or respond to speech. I had no idea at first how they were able to differentiate between themselves, living people and those with the plant extract on them. Heightened senses are all I can use to account for that right now. I don’t really care. All I know is that it works. If that plant didn’t, I would be dead. We’d all be dead. Rudimentary skills such as the usage of tools and cooperation with their own kind is nonexistent. They don’t attack each other unless in extremely dire circumstances. I have yet to figure out what happens when the protein in their blood that they need from humans depletes. I don’t believe they will starve to death. I think their hunger will only grow; giving them a more aggressive behavior. I’ve taken Brian and Samantha’s medical records and some other materials from the lab along with Archie. I’ve been looking over everything. There’s so much to read through. I don’t expect any solid answers any time soon.
What I can gather so far is that a gunshot wound to the head or any trauma to the brain will stun them for a minute at most. The most effective method, however just as flimsy and unproven as anything else, would be to either decapitate them or incinerate them completely. In the event of decapitation, the head will function, but the body will be useless. The head will probably still be ‘alive’ if the brain isn’t removed completely. Even partial brain activity in these things seem to still keep the body working. I have seen Zeds with their skull caps removed and half the brain eaten and they are still running around. Ingestion of their blood or any bodily fluids results in almost immediate death and reanimation. The long dead . . . those buried away underground . . . I thought they would be the ones that were safe. That their rest would be uninterrupted. Every cemetery I drove past . . . graves had been crudely exhumed. Older graves were left alone for the most part, but fresh ones looked like they had been unearthed by animals. They weren’t. The infected dug them up with their bare fucking hands. Maybe because there was still something left on the buried bodies to pick off and eat. Didn’t matter that the bodies they scavenged were dead. Those turned too.
The girl looked over at me. I was driving with my phone in my breast pocket and dictating in it at the same time. She shot me a strange glance. “Really?” she said, an eyebrow cocked. “Those things dug up graves, too? I wonder how many they added to their numbers by doing that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You should have seen the graveyards. Every single one in Des Moines. It was horrifying to look at. Even graves as far back as twenty years were dug up.”
She said noting. Just stared out the window for the longest time.
When the car ran out of gas in Iowa City, about two hours east of Des Moines, we took another one. It was an old Honda SUV with good tires and half a tank of gas. We had to take state highways and back roads to get where we needed to go. The interstates were nearly impassable. Interstate 80 that runs right through the center of Iowa was so scattered with cars and crashed army vehicles that it was a no-go. Even if we could get through the strewn abandoned cars, bodies and broken glass, it would take hours to even get a few miles. One would have to get out every minute or so and move some kind of hazard out of the way. I was secretly amazed that even on the back roads, we never popped a tire. The young woman drifted off to sleep about thirty minutes after we passed the WELCOME TO IOWA CITY sign. Her ringless fingers were relaxed over her chest as if she were sleeping on guard duty. Even in her sleep she looked poised. Her eyes darted wildly behind her eyelids and she jerked occasionally. I hated to wonder what she was dreaming. Even as night fell, she still slept in that state.
There were lights on in some houses we passed. I didn’t stop, as much as I wanted to. The dead seemed to congregate toward lit areas and noisy movement. It seemed as if some kind of human instinct or memory . . . the most basic of memory . . . still remained. The scientific community knew so little about the human brain. Perhaps it was instinct. That would prove my theory that memory was more of a cellular function than a mental one. One-thousand years ago, human beings swore that the earth was flat. Leeches were known as a miracle cure for every illness. When a man died in the dead of winter, the steam leaving his mouth was believed to be the soul exiting the body. Only eighty years ago, human beings believed that cocaine could cure flus and head colds.
Maybe we’re still wrong about everything.
That’s it, lady. That’s all I have. I did what you people wanted me to do. Consider Doctor Darin Miles off the goddamn clock. I gave you all my files, my records . . . everything. Now you know all that I know. I am curious, though. What are you going to do with the Lynn File when this is all said and done? Wherever it is kept, make sure the thing is under lock and key, okay? If the wrong person reads this? We don’t even know if human beings as a species will even survive this outbreak. The world could not afford another one.
I have nothing more to say. Don’t want to talk about this anymore.
I need to get back to work. I need to reverse the thing I helped create. This man right here deserves to die for what he did . . . and I do partly blame myself. When this is over and if . . . I say if I can stop this, don’t honor me. No medals, no flags, no gun salute, no stories about me passed on after I die. This isn’t a heroic thing I’m doing. Heroism is dead. I killed it. Now it is just survival.
If I succeed in doing this, I will retire peacefully. You will never hear from me again. If I fail, take the Lynn File and shred it. Take my body
and burn it.
LYNN FILE
END OF DOCUMENT
PLEASE STORE IN LEVEL A SECTION
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
PART II
THE LIVING DEAD
CHAPTER 5
I
It all started when a man named Winters drove a stolen eighteen-wheeler into the spillway at Quibin Reservoir in the small farming community of Matoka, Iowa. It was just a ten-minute drive from Des Moines – the state capitol. The crash flooded Cambria Cemetery and set fire to the truck that had already been leaking its payload. The police and fire departments responded quickly. Miranda Orr, a young CNA who worked at the local hospital called it in. She saw the crash occur at four o’clock in the morning as she was getting ready to do her usual weekly drive to Des Moines to visit her boyfriend.
Miranda stood at the steep hill at the mouth of the water with a rough, wool blanket wrapped around her. She had reached down to pick up her cell phone that fell off the passenger seat. She had told police all she could remember in her shocked state of mind. She grabbed the phone off of the floor of the car and looked up to see a semi drive up and make a jackknife, lodging itself into the gigantic concrete spillway . . . its fifty-two foot trailer blocking the road. The flooded street did little to stop Miranda’s car as it slid into the semi. She didn’t remember doing it, but she jumped out of the car a second before it hit. Miranda Orr’s car sank into the spillway as the old International rig’s engine compartment caught fire. The next twenty minutes were spent sitting in the road with one hell of a headache until police got there.
“I told you. There is a driver here somewhere,” Chief Ridley of the Lower Des Moines Fire Department said. He sneered at the shaking and cold young woman. “We search the grounds and I guarantee we’ll find him. No one just walks away from that.”
Miranda looked at the older man, trying her best to match his look of contempt. “Sir, I saw him leap out of the driver’s side door after it hit. He landed in the street. Banged his head on the . . . the fuckin’ . . . sorry, I am all flustered. Oh, the . . . dashboard. Hit his head on the dashboard and opened the door, hit his head on the road again. The guy hooked up some kind of hose to the trailer and threw it into the reservoir. Then he ran like hell towards this black car at the top of the hill that goes to the campgrounds. I’m telling you that he hit hard enough to knock him out. The man got up and got in the other car like nothing happened. He dumped something into t
he water!”
Chief Ridley looked at the twenty-year-old girl. She was half soaked with a cell phone in her shaking hand. The old man wore a scowl on his face. He had those perma-frown lines that the old-timers had around their noses. They come from holding it up too long. The old chief looked like he frowned a lot. “Young lady, that is a heavy truck, but to crack the spillway wall like he did, he had to have been going faster than forty-five. A person could survive this crash, no problem . . . but if you are saying that he walked away in one piece, you . . .”
A set of hands caked in black dirt and mud slammed out of the darkness and covered the chief’s eyes like someone playing a game of ‘guess who’ with him. Miranda couldn’t see the person standing behind the fire chief, but she could smell him. In the split second she thought it was just a silly prank being played by one of the other firefighters there, the dirty fingers dug into the chief’s eyes and pushing them back into the sockets. He screamed . . . a shrill, high-pitched shriek that made Miranda’s spine shake. She had never heard anyone scream like that before. Time seemed to slip by in slow-motion as the old man was dragged back into the dark, away from the lamp posts that lined the spillway. He was taken into the thick curtain of black just behind where he had been standing. She wanted to run. She wanted to scream, but she could not move. All Miranda could do was stand and listen to the man’s wails hoarsen and abruptly stop . . . following a wet crunch that sounded like someone crushing a watermelon. Tight packing sounds of what sounded like someone eating snapped her back for just a moment. Long enough to turn and run.
Nowhere.
Anywhere.
Just away from here.
She passed two officers full-sprint. They’d seen it. Please god, say they’ve seen it happen. They must have, because they didn’t pay even a passing glance to the terror-crazed young woman that lost her footing on the flooded grasses and tumbled down the steep hill that leads to Cambria Cemetery. They simply drew their guns and ran into the dark where the chief had been dragged.
Miranda slid down the hill in the two-inch deep moat that now surrounded the cemetery. She attempted to stand when a white-hot pain shot up her right ankle all the way up her leg. She uttered a weak squeal of pain and fell through the open iron gate of the cemetery face-first, splashing in the ice-colt water. It was still wildly running down the hill, soaking the grounds . . . turning the place into a thick, soupy muck. She knew her ankle was broken. Miranda screamed at the startling sound of a gunshot coming from the top of the hill. For a moment, the bright throbbing in her ankle nearly caused her to pass out. The smell of the burning truck kept her conscious. She wanted to pass out. Anything to get rid of the pain . . . but the stench of spent fuel, burning rubber and metal; as well as the soft glow of the roaring flames forced a sense of real into her mind like some sort of sick prank.
No passing out on me, hun. No la-la land for you. You’re not going anywhere.
“H . . . hello? He . . . help meeeeee . . .” She wanted to yell, but the words only came out in weak, panting whispers. She tried to stand up slowly, mindful to keep her ankle lifted as she leaned against the iron gate. Stars danced in front of her eyes. Grandma called them fairies when she was little. Prone to blood-sugar issues even as a small child, Miranda was used to the faint-fairies. Grandma Rizza always had a way of comforting her fear of them. That fear of blacking out and hitting her head bad enough to get stitches, falling into something sharp, down stairs or as she stood on a ladder. They all happened at least once.
“Granny’s got you, honey. Those be fairies in front of your eyes protecting you, sweetie. Don’t be scared. Granny has your shot and you’ll be all better. Okay?”
I’m scared.
“No need to be, darlin’. Hold still . . .”
Do the fairies tell you when they’re here? Can you see them?
“Can’t see ‘em, punkin. I can hear them, though.”
What do they say?
“To listen to your granny and all will be alright.”
Miranda stood for a moment, blinking away the fairies that were beginning to subside a bit. She looked to the top of the hill. Too steep to see anything.
“Hello?” Miranda jumped at the sound of another gunshot, followed by a splash.
Then, silence.
Miranda reached into her pocket for her cell phone. “Oh, no . . .” she caught a quick glimpse of it. There it was, a bright pink sugar skull phone case with the bow on it, floating in the running water at her feet. It was out of reach. No use grabbing for it now. It floated into an open drainage ditch. “Son of a bitch,” she whispered to the sounds of nothing but running water and the leaves in the trees rustling in the gentle morning breeze. She stood at the open cemetery gate, her ankle now a dull throb. Putting the slightest weight on it brought the pain back in full-force. It brought the fairies back too, but she managed three steps inside. The light from the truck intensified at the top of the hill, lighting only another couple of feet in front of her. The moon, obscured by thick approaching clouds faded back into the sky. The clouds covered the faint outlines of the headstones inside the palpable black. She took another excruciating step. The thick mud underneath her feet caused her foot to slip forward. Miranda tumbled forward, expecting the ground to rush toward her . . . but she kept falling. The girl landed with her legs underneath her, splashing into the hole with a sickening gasp of air. From within the searing screen of pain, she looked up to see the faint rectangular outline above her. Attempting to turn on her side, her arm brushed something cold. Something solid. She blinked away her fairy-obscured vision and noticed a shattered pine box cast into the corner of the hole that had widened by the flooded ground. It was a pine coffin with brass hinges. The sound of small splashes . . . shuffling footsteps neared the area at the top of the hole and stopped at the edge right above her.
Miranda opened her mouth to scream upon realizing what she had fallen into. She stopped herself when she stared up and made out four shapes standing around the hole above her. She couldn’t see the silent people watching. Only silhouettes. The pain in her legs careened up her back and she gave herself away to the darkness quickly surrounding her. Before the world went black, she thought she could hear something in the hole with her . . . something in the corner of the muddy hole clicking its teeth.
II
“Bullshit, motherfucker. We should have stayed,” Daryl Sloan said in deep slurs. “That girl wanted to fuck me, man.”
“I know, brother,” the driver said. He reached to the center of the dashboard and turned off the headlights just as the light of the rising sun started to illuminate the world.
“Don’t call me brother,” Daryl said. “I am a nigger, but I’m not your nigger.” He belched and swallowed back something that was trying to force its way up.
“We gonna do that shit again? What, a white guy and a black guy can’t go out drinking in this hick-ass town? When you get sloshed, I swear you turn into Malcolm X or some shit.”
“Kiss my ass, Benny.”
“Grab my chap-stick. Lemme pucker up, Soul Train.” He lowered his voice into a cheesy old western twang. “C’mon. Sing me one of them ol’ nigger work songs.”
They laughed together as only close friends would. Benny Kelis was a little hammered too, but not as much as his trusty co-pilot. Daryl Sloan, chief mechanic at Benchtree Tractor Supply (who had to be at work at eleven) slapped his pal on the shoulder, making him swerve. “Goddamnit! You retard! Wanna kill us? Last thing we need is some damn cop pullin’ us over. The whole car smells like beer and I can’t exactly ace a field test right now.”
“Pull over, pal. I gotta barf.”
“Fuck me, Daryl . . . you serious?”
Daryl forced something else back and held his hand in front of his face as if someone had bare-ass farted an inch away from his nose. “You want lung butter all over your nice, new GT? Be my guest, man. Breakfast burrito is fixin’ to say adios.”
“Oh, damnit!” Benny shouted. He quickly p
ulled the car over to the side of the empty road. They were only five miles outside of the city turnoff and another twenty minutes from downtown.
The car was still rolling when Daryl opened the door and leaned out, letting loose onto the ground. The pilot nearly gagged looking at him. “Jesus that smells . . . what the fuck you drink, man? Gasoline?”
“Nah . . .” he said, arching his back and violently spewing onto the grassy ditch. “They were fresh outta gasoline.”
“Here . . . get the hell out of the car and get some air right quick,” Benny said. He slammed the car into park and grabbed the back of Daryl’s shirt to keep him from falling on his face. Daryl slowly scooted to the edge of the seat and stood up, arching his back. The sun was nearly up now. His pilot exited the car and joined him. “I guess it won’t hurt me to get some fresh air either,” Benny said, joining his friend at the edge of the state highway dropoff ditch. Benny looked into the breast pocket of his t-shirt and fumbled for his cigarettes. “Want a smoke?”
Daryl didn’t respond.
“Hey, I’m talking to you. You want . . .” he looked up from the soggy pack of reds he spilt beer on earlier and at his friend, who was staring off into a soybean field off the road . . . his brow shrunken in an utterly confused expression.
“Daryl, what you staring at?”
Across the field, about one hundred yards from them, they could see a large group of people slowly walking toward the road. The light was still low and it was difficult to see them. “What the hell those people doin’?” Daryl said with a sickly hiccup.
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