This Plague of Days, Season Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial)

by Robert Chazz Chute

  “I’m sorry, Theo,” Jack said. “We have to push on to Maine as fast as we can. I hope your brother is there waiting for us. I thought maybe we could go look for him in Chicago, but it’s too crazy out here. We can’t risk even trying to go into a city. The road wouldn’t let us if we tried.”

  Theo shrugged and nodded, but it was Jaimie who spoke. It was the longest sentence they had ever heard him speak.

  “We are not unsaved,” he said.

  His parents smiled.

  Later, as Jaimie slept, he heard the doctor with the strange name tell the nice Irish policeman about Wiggins.

  As soon as the word Wiggins came to him, the dream shifted and Jaimie saw him. Wiggins fed on the neck of a man in uniform who wasn’t quite dead enough yet. Wiggins shook his head and was covered in pumping carotid arterial spray.

  Jaimie told the dying man to let go of his pain. Then he whispered to the man who had been Wiggins. “They don’t understand what you are. They speak of Sutr-A. They call you an Alpha.”

  But Wiggins didn’t fully understand, either. Jaimie did not speak for himself. He was a messenger for The Way of Things. The trees told him something very old had reawakened and only he could interpret the culling song that was the virus.

  Later, at the edge of sleep in the van, Jaimie murmured to his father what he knew for certain about the white-eyed man from the Brickyard. “Ascendant.”

  SHARPENED TEETH AND THIN CLOWNS SEETHING

  In the battle for the Brickyard, Wiggins’ Sutr-A zombies first fought, not to kill, but to add to their ranks. The infection had raged through the camp and through the army’s ranks as one Alpha became two, then four, then eight. But it was the zombie children who saved the night for the Alphas.

  The military would have won if they’d used the tanks, but Wiggins commanded the youngest of the infected to rush the military’s lines. Some had fired on the advancing wave of white-eyed children, but even the most hard-hearted had hesitated. The span of one pang of empathy and a heartbeat’s regret was enough hesitation to turn the battle.

  Amid the chaos, the army first tried to save the children by containing the infected instead of exterminating them. When the children turned on their would-be saviors, the force with superior firepower lost heart. The Alphas had merciless numbers on their side.

  Wiggins led the final charge, bringing down General Alphonse Emery himself. Knocking the general’s empty pistol aside, he screamed, “Teeth don’t need to reload!” He grabbed the general by the ears and ate his face.

  Then the true feeding frenzy began.

  In minutes, the wave built to its bloody crescendo. In hours, the new, Sutr-A army had risen from the defeated humans. Only those who ran away survived.

  As dawn light crept into the Brickyard’s refugee camp, the first Alpha stood naked and victorious amid a field of corpses.

  Wiggins was not Lieutenant Wiggins anymore, of course. He remembered what he had been and his past disgusted him. Some new power coursed through his veins. He felt stronger and sharper than he’d ever felt. Whatever he had contracted on the container ship was not a disease. Diseases didn’t make improvements. He understood now that he had a strain of the virus, but like all viruses, it had evolved. So had he. It was like a warm blanket wrapped his body. The blood lust and strength pulsed through him like a powerful drug with each heartbeat.

  As he surveyed the field of battle, his eyes fell on the hanging corpses. His tribe hadn’t done that. People were so full of talk of peace, but their hypocrisy showed in their actions. The Army had guns and a better than even chance to win the battle. The Alphas had triumphed in a fair fight.

  Each hanging corpse, swinging slightly in the breeze, was a testament to everything that was wrong with what had been. The humans’ leaders spoke of peace while making war. A new war had begun and the first battle was won.

  His senses were fresh and buzzing, as if he’d been awoken from a long sleep and into a new, younger body in a better world. The thing that had been Wiggins climbed atop a mound of fresh corpses by the north gate. He stood and gazed upon all the Alphas, young and old, feeding on soldiers. He smiled, revealing bloody teeth.

  The doctors would have called him Patient Zero, but with their narrow ways and dim visions, they still thought of him as the new incarnation of the Sutr virus. He had been sick, but now he was better than well. Sutr had chosen him to become something else. He laughed. His laugh was the only thing about him that still seemed human.

  He called his new tribe with a scream that echoed up and down the concrete walls of the Brickyard. His tribe heard the call and stood from their carnivorous orgy. They answered with screams, joyful and triumphant.

  “Do you understand how you have changed? Do you see what I see? Do you see the beautiful auras around every one of us?”

  “Yes!” some answered. More answered with howls of delight.

  He spread his arms and pointed at the dead humans. “Do you see them for what they are now?”

  “Yes! Yes!” the mob chorused.

  “Do you want to be human again?”

  “No! No!”

  “Of course not. They had their chance!” He pointed at the corpses hanging from posts. “When those in authority had power they abused it. Humans weren’t so great. The ones in charge saw themselves in their big words and empty promises and the fearful and weak did as they were told.”

  The crowd howled their approval.

  “They preyed on the weak! Are you weak?”

  The Alphas rose with one voice in a deafening, “No!”

  “Do you feel pain?”

  “No!”

  “Do you suffer doubt?”

  “No!”

  That was the key to this new evolution, he was sure. Alphas were without doubt. Sutr erased doubt from their cells.

  “They’ll try to kill us! Everything that is new must overcome the old! Will you allow what you were to deny what you can become?”

  “No!” the crowd thundered.

  “The War of Ascendance has begun!”

  “Yes!” they cried. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  “You are predators! You are strong! The weak will join us or feed us! Do you have doubt?”

  The tribe’s savage answer was something that hadn’t been heard on earth for millions of years. It was a primal howl. The sound of it contained blood, murder, death, and the future. Their leader raised both arms in the air and joined them in their joy. “The blindfold is off!”

  One day soon, I will thank my emancipator. I will bring him down. I will raise him up. With my venom, the boy who set me free will join my tribe. Jaimie Spencer will be an Alpha.

  The blessed boy had brought joyous news to him from across miles. He had heard the boy’s whisper. “They don’t understand you yet,” he said.

  The Alphas’ leader threw back his head and laughed. “The humans call us zombies! But the messenger has told me the truth! We are Alphas, but we are not zombies!”

  The Brickyard vibrated with the tribe’s roars. Their chorus rose ever higher as their leader revealed the truth of the tribe’s new identity.

  WITH SIMPLE RHYMES FROM SIMPLE MINDS

  Jaimie sat up. He awoke in the forest again. Though he’d come to this place many times, this was his first arrival at night. A cold, full moon cast shadows among white birch trunks. In stark beauty, the trees stood out in the darkness, glowing like columns of white marble.

  He looked up. In sunlight, a boil of hawks always soared above the forest in slow funnels, circling, watching, waiting. Past the reaching trees, he saw nothing but indifferent stars and the infinite depths of the black chasms amongst their pale fires.

  “What has changed?” he called out to the trees.

  “Chiroptera.”

  By the rules of the Nexus, that which is named is readily seen, and so a cloud of shrieking bats crossed the lamp of the moon. Leathery wings beat the air as the colony shattered the moonlight into white strobes. The bats were so large, the
y cast chaotic shadows on the boy’s upturned face. Jaimie’s mirror eyes reflected scalpel claws and gleaming, tearing teeth.

  The boy looked away and reached for the cool moss.

  A chilled breeze shook the treetops. “The banished race is reborn. They will call themselves vampires again.”

  The boy nodded sadly. “That’s not far wrong. They are perfect serial killers. Why must this happen?”

  “This is the cycle. This is the Way of Things.”

  The boy began to cry. “Do I have to go back? Can’t I stay here?”

  “You must return. We only have facts and lies. We can tell entertaining stories, but we don’t have meaning. You have to go back to the edges of waking. Go back to your family and bring meaning back to us.”

  With that, Jaimie knew who lived in the trees. The knowledge was a key to a lock he did not want to open. Once opened, that door could never be closed.

  If he named the one who lived in the trees, his story would end. Endings are too terrible. Jaimie shut his mind to that possibility before the forest made flesh of the truth.

  The boy could already feel himself being lifted up and away from the Nexus, losing the sweet comfort of the cool moss and the sentient trees.

  “Feed us meaning!” the trees implored.

  The echo of their plea followed the boy all the way up to waking and back to his world of zombies and vampires.

  COMPLEX WEAPONS IN DISPLACED SPACE AND TIME

  In another dream, Shiva had held her newborn child. Craig, chased by millions of cannibals, stood before her, a pathetic supplicant. He’d asked about the baby. When she looked down, the blood-soaked infant reached for her throat.

  The boy had spoken with Craig, but she couldn’t hear or understand what he said.

  Something else disturbed Shiva. The starving hordes fell as one at the boy’s command. That had worried her. Agents of chaos could have only one general. The Sutr-Z infected were hers to command. She had created them.

  Now, the boy with mirrors for eyes came to Shiva again. She lay on a table of smooth obsidian in the center of a lake of jagged lava glass and whirling fire.

  Sweat made her skin slick and the oxygen was so thin she gasped. Searing fires burned her skin red. Rivers of lava poured and pooled around her body by inches. The baby pushed and kicked as if it could escape by tearing its way out of her abdomen.

  She sat up. “I’m dreaming.” She bared her teeth at the boy. “You have no power here.”

  As he drew closer, the fire and lava seemed not to bother him a whit. She saw her reflection in those dark, mirror eyes. She was no longer the Zombie Queen dressed in red. Her dress had become a tattered, black funeral gown.

  She squinted. Shiva wasn’t herself anymore. She looked older, wiry and her face looked longer. Her naked arms were muscled in the cadaverous way of marathon runners. Her lips were red, not with her customary lipstick. Her mouth was blood-stained.

  She felt a new stirring in her stomach. It wasn’t the baby’s incessant rolling and kicking this time. She needed protein. She wanted raw steak. She could feel the raw, red hunger fill the tips of her eye teeth.

  “Who are you?” Shiva asked.

  “In rerum natura.”

  “What?”

  “My name is Jaimie Spencer. I’m in the nature of things.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m here because of what you want.”

  “I work for peace! I make history so we have a future!”

  He gave her slogans a dismissive wave. “Ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.”

  “Why do you speak in Latin? It’s annoying.”

  The boy was unfazed. “Latin proverbs contain the carrier wave of my magic. Words cast spells. They calm me so I can deal with things like you.”

  “Magic Latin? You mean like Harry Potter?” she sneered.

  “My body’s in your world. My mind is mostly elsewhere. The words are my key to your world’s lock. Your existence is always so harsh, even before the plagues. I don’t know how any of you stand it.”

  “Uh-huh. And Ubi solitudinem something something?”

  “It means, ‘where they create a desert, they call it peace.’ You say you want to fix the world. You bring death and desolation instead. Words mean things, but not the way you use them.”

  The boy stepped closer, so close she could smell cherries on his breath. “I know what you are.”

  “But what are you?” She’d forgotten she was in a dream.

  “I am the messenger.” He leaned closer still. “I come from the west. For the future and to make history,” he added wryly. He touched her belly gently.

  “You’re turning, Ava.”

  “Don’t call me that name. Keres is dead.”

  “Sutr-A is running through you. You’re infected. Your fiancé will call you an Alpha. You’ll declare yourself Queen of the Vampires. You better hope the current ruler of the tribe approves.”

  She thought he might kiss her. Shiva closed her eyes to avoid seeing herself in the dark, heartless mirrors of his eyes. She saw what she had become. She turned her head. Still, she saw her reflection no matter how tight she squeezed her eyes shut. He allowed her mind no escape.

  The boy whispered in her ear like a lover. “Ultima ratio regum.”

  And somehow, she knew what that meant.

  “War!” Shiva shrieked.

  In a flash, she raked at the boy’s eyes with one hand — more a claw than a hand now — and punched him in the center of his chest as hard as she could. His sternum shattered with a satisfying crack. She reached for the boy’s neck, lifted him off the burning ground and flung him backward into a pool of lava.

  * * *

  A blink.

  Shiva was back aboard the Mars, naked and sitting up in bed. Her sweat soaked the bedsheets. A pair of broken spectacles, round with gold frames, lay in the her bleeding palm. She dropped the eyeglasses on the floor and, on impulse, licked the blood away, savoring the metallic taste.

  Wrinkling her nose, her gaze fell on the man across the room. She smelled feces. Dr. Pyotr Veselov, the ship’s doctor, lay on the floor against the wall.

  She knew immediately that he was dead. The loss of bowel control was one clue, but the way the rainbow of energy lifted away from his warm body told her Veselov was gone. A grin crept over Shiva’s ruby lips.

  New power surged through her body. She saw the world more sharply. The paint on the walls and the fabrics? Everything had more texture. Excited, she heard her heart race as she stepped from the bed, testing her legs. It was like moving on springs. Despite the baby, her body felt light and strong.

  She put the back of one hand to her forehead. The fever was broken. The doctor’s body was broken. She’d never felt so good in her life. Or so hungry.

  Shiva eyed the corpse of Pyotr Veselov and licked her lips. “Sorry, doctor. You were a loyal soldier to the cause. However, despite the unfortunate smell from your soiled pants, this is going to be delicious.”

  She squatted beside the corpse, watching what was left of the man’s aura slowly fade. His right eye was a ruined, oozing orb. His breastbone and several ribs were shattered, made his chest soft, and gave easily to her exploratory prodding.

  Only the cherry-flavored gum in Veselov’s mouth gave Shiva pause. However, no matter what she’d seen in the boy’s eyes, she told herself she was not some unthinking, rabid animal. She was not one of the growling zombies below decks ready to be unleashed on New York.

  The boy was right. The term ‘Alpha’ felt right. ‘Vampire’? Why not? Queen of the Vampires? She liked the sound of that title best of all.

  She took hold of the dead man’s white lab coat and ripped one sleeve from wrist to armpit effortlessly. “Reuse, repurpose, recycle!”

  Shiva set about devouring his right arm. With each swallow of pale flesh, red muscle and chewy, white ligaments, she felt stronger. The Sutr virus had chosen her, she was sure. This new evolution of the virus made her a more powerfu
l warrior for the cause.

  Shiva vowed she would find the mirror-eyed dreamer. A boy who could control those infected with Sutr-Z was dangerous. How much of this was real? She would take no chances. The distinction between reality and fiction meant less now. She’d just murdered a man, effortlessly, in her sleep.

  She’d find the boy wherever he slept. He would never again gain a beachhead in her mind. She’d tear out his eyes and heart. She’d murder Jaimie Spencer in his sleep. Effortlessly.

  SEASON 2, EPISODE 4

  This Plague of Days

  Robert Chazz Chute

  Season 2

  Episode 4

  Don’t box with God! Your arms are too short!

  (Straight to me

  from Johnny T.

  RIP, Rev.)

  *

  He who would fight a god does battle with the air.

  Slice all you want. The wind won’t bleed.

  *

  Death, he discovered, invites powerful poetry.

  ~ Notes from The Last Cafe

  *

  They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless.

  ~ William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

  *

  “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

  WHEN WHAT DREAMS MAY COME DO NOT ARRIVE

  Lance Corporal Pendle and Royal Marine Cameron walked backwards as they fired on their attackers. This time, the infected were undeterred. When Cameron ran out of ammunition, Desi pulled him into the shop and screamed for Pendle to get inside.

  When Pendle’s rifle ran dry, he didn’t have time to reload. The Lance Corporal switched to his sidearm, still back peddling up the wooden steps. The two Royal Marines who had already fallen, Dysart and Edwards, disappeared from view in the closing noose of hungry zombies.