The Dark Trilogy

by Patrick D'orazio

  Carol died a day later. She was strong, but like every other human being who had been infected, she couldn’t resist the virus’s deadly pull.

  Less than thirty minutes after her demise, she sat up in the bed on which Fred and Bobby had laid her on in the farmhouse. The first thing she did after opening her rheumy eyes was to hiss at her husband. Fred, who had wrapped the rifle in a towel to muffle the sound, waited until the very last second before putting a bullet through Carol’s head.

  They buried her an hour later, putting up a makeshift cross to mark her grave.

  Fred and Bobby spent the next week or so at the farmhouse, living in silence, rarely speaking to one another. They saw more and more of the dead creeping around off in the distance, but none ventured too close. Even so, it was getting worse every day. There would be long stretches of time where they would see nothing, but then they’d spot a pack of twenty or thirty of the diseased vermin roaming near the property. At the same time, they wanted to preserve their dwindling ammunition for hunting, so they had to continue keeping their heads down. Bobby found a bike out in the shed, but didn’t bother riding it anywhere. It was too dangerous a risk.

  It was on one of those drab, muggy summer days that seemed endless when they heard a noise that had become almost alien to them: the sound of a car engine rolling down the road that ran next to the property. Even off in the distance, the engine was clear as a bell. There were no other sounds to interfere with it—no other cars, no people, no machines … nothing. There hadn’t been anything but the moans of the dead and chirping of birds for as long as they could remember.

  The two of them watched as the blue Honda stopped in front of the huge property. At that point, it was just some faraway dot. It wasn’t until it turned up the road, moving closer, that Fred came up with a hasty plan that would help him and Bobby escape the farmhouse and make one last attempt to get to Hillsboro and Teddy, if he was still alive.

  Bobby had been hesitant about trying to hijack the van and wanted to see if they could just talk to the people to see if they might be able to hitch a ride with them. Fred steamrolled that idea without a moment’s hesitation. He was a changed man, no longer afraid to assert himself. The death of his older boy and his wife of twenty-three years had done that to him.

  He reminded Bobby that the few people they’d seen since they escaped from their house in Lawrence Park had been none too friendly to them. If his family hadn’t been armed, Fred knew, there was no way they would have made it this far. They would be dead on the side of some road, left as bait for the rotters as their fellow survivors picked over their meager belongings. People were desperate, crazed, and none seemed to be in the mood for small talk or hospitality these days.

  After a few seconds of heated discussion, Bobby gave in and reluctantly nodded his acquiescence. Fred moved into position behind the shed and told Bobby to wait at the door. They would be ready for the people in the van, no matter how dangerous they were and how well armed they might be.

  Despite the argument, and despite the lack of communication between the father and son, the two had grown much closer after Carol’s death. Before, their relationship had been okay—as good as could be expected between a rebellious teenager and his dad, but their level of trust and appreciation for one another had grown dramatically in the past few days. Despite the cloud of despair hanging over them, they knew that they could count on one another for anything.

  Charlie had been a great older brother. He liked to heap abuse on his kid brother when they were younger, with wedgies and Indian burns being his favorite form of torture. But as they got older, they had learned to watch out for one another, to watch each other’s backs. Somehow, after Charlie died, Bobby managed to stay strong, despite losing his best friend. He had clung to his mother, knowing deep down that he was her favorite, whereas Dad had favored Charlie. So when she died, it felt like his guts had been ripped out.

  It had been the same for Fred. Somehow, out of their combined pain and anguish, they were able to form a new bond. Part of it had come from the last conversation Bobby had with his mother before she passed. When they arrived at the farmhouse, Carol sat her son down next to her. She looked him straight in the eye and told him that it was his job to watch out for his father now. They were each other’s responsibility, and no one else was going to take care of them if they didn’t take care of each other. The entire world was out to get them, and they had to stick together if they were going to make it out of this alive. She made the boy swear to her that he would take watch Fred’s back. Bobby had, and when he did, he meant every word of it.

  Bobby didn’t realize it, but moments after he said his last goodbye to his mother and rushed from the room to weep silently in the shed, Carol had the same conversation with her husband. And Fred made the same promise to her that his son had.

  They would stick together until the bitter end.

  Michael, Frank, and Cindy

  He knew being with her was all wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Everything up to this point in his life had been regimented and controlled, structured to allow for the greatest amount of success. Even when civilization crumbled, he had adapted and maintained control over the situation. Now he was the leader of a small but growing tribe of people. The bloody lines on the map at which he looked every day spoke of his triumphs: where he had come from (where they all had come from) and where they were heading. They would continue eastward, away from large population centers, and find even more people to join them. His power would grow as more people relied on him and trusted his leadership. It was all working out as planned.

  But all those visions, all those dreams, had been disrupted. He still wanted the power, but there were other, darker things crossing his mind these days. They hadn’t been there before. They had been planted there recently.

  Perhaps that was an excuse. Maybe they had always been there, and it took the right person—or more accurately, the wrong person—to dredge them up. So maybe if that person were out of the picture, all those dark, hideous desires inside his head would disappear along with her.

  Either way, he was sure that Cindy had to go.

  ***

  Michael had been groomed for greatness by his parents from early on in life. Private boarding schools, Princeton, and then Michigan for his MBA. Business first, then politics. There had been a stint in a corporate training program for Proctor and Gamble. That was after they had wooed him and offered him the best compensation package amongst a slew of elite employers. There were several rapid promotions leading to the executive level. He was the youngest vice president in the company and was expected to go much further with them … if he chose to stay. The plan was to build relationships with various lobbyists, business leaders, and politicians, working those connections to his advantage. His father was highly respected, and not only in Connecticut, where Michael had grown up. He had politicians from all across the country in his back pocket. Between his own burgeoning relationships and those of his father, Michael would be ready to run for office either in Connecticut or Ohio shortly after turning thirty. From there, the sky was the limit.

  He was to marry first, of course. He’d dated a few respectable girls in Cincinnati, but they were of the disposable variety. Most were young and attractive, but interspersed with them were a few women of more … experience, who had helped him along his career path at P & G and with his political ambitions. But he was from old money, and the expectations were that he would marry old money. There just was not enough of it in Cincinnati for his or his father’s liking. So he had been shuttling back and forth between Cincinnati and New York on weekends for the past few months so he could court Ms. Penelope Warden. Her father was a business associate of Michael’s father. More importantly, Penelope’s family had political connections that ran up and down the east coast, and it certainly didn’t hurt that, as an only child, she was due to inherit substantial holdings in several Fortune 500 companies when dear old dad kicked the bucket.
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  That was about the time when things went haywire and the blasted virus came into play. At first Michael reacted like everyone else: in a complete panic. His world came crashing down around him. His downtown Cincinnati condo was in jeopardy almost immediately, and he found himself barricaded inside it as the city tore itself apart thirty stories below. He tried to contact his parents and younger brother, but they were out of the country, somewhere in the Mediterranean on the family yacht. When he couldn’t get a hold of anyone else back home or even any of the other P & G executives to see if he could snag a ride out of town on one of the corporate jets, he realized he was on his own. He didn’t bother trying to contact Penelope. Despite claims of undying love for him, she wasn’t going to be much help from over six hundred miles away. In a way, it was a relief. She was an insufferable bore and a hypochondriac who complained incessantly. Michael could tolerate a lot to achieve his objectives in life, but the thought of having her at his side during the apocalypse terrified him.

  As the world crumbled around him and he was certain his demise was eminent, Michael recalled something his father had said to him repeatedly when he was a young boy. “Life is what you make of it. When things go bad and you get knocked down, dust yourself off and get back up. You were born with my blood running through your veins, and I’ve never been a quitter. So don’t bother with the excuses, because I’m not interested in them.”

  The words seemed trite and unimaginative to Michael as an adult. But to a child of ten, they sounded impressive, even scary. And it wasn’t just the words; it was how his father backed them up. He pushed Michael into every activity, every sport the private schools he’d attended had to offer. He was never allowed to quit or perform at a subpar or average level. He was expected to have stellar grades, leadership roles, and top-notch girlfriends from well-to-do families. Of course, nothing was ever good enough for dear old Dad, and Michael spent much of his early life sniffing at his father’s feet for any sort of praise he could get.

  There was no sob story attached to his upbringing. Michael did not freak out, rebel, or ever climb onto a therapist’s couch. Sure, Dad had his mistresses, and because of that, Mom was a functional alcoholic and pill popper, but none of that ever played out in public or caused any uproar. It was simply par for the course for a wealthy family.

  Instead, he grew up knowing he was better and stronger than everyone else, if for no other reason than the sweat he had to pour into all he did. His childhood had been hard, but he knew that anything worth having in life was hard. His father’s philosophy had carried him this far, and he knew it would carry him further still.

  The sense of helplessness he felt while watching the city burn evaporated as he concocted a plan. Once the fear left him, things became clear. He grabbed the camouflage outfit he’d bought for some retreat on which he’d gone with other executives at P & G. For three days, Michael had played paintball, got drunk out in the woods, and howled at the moon. It had been an absolutely worthless experience, but at least he got some useful duds out of it. He also grabbed the rather large knife he’d bought out of a catalog after training with edged weapons in his martial arts classes. He’d studied tae kwon do more for keeping in shape than for self-defense, but now it appeared that he would have the chance to put that training and the knife to good use.

  He scanned his place one last time, eyeing all the decorating touches for which he had spent top dollar. He glanced over at his wine collection and the few pieces of artwork he’d bought at auction. The accoutrements of wealth and success. Now it was all kindling for the bonfire into which humanity was being tossed, nothing more.

  Being able to accept that was what made Michael stronger than his peers, and he knew it. So many of them would be desperate to save the trappings of their prior lives, believing it would somehow make a difference. They would all die clutching at scraps of that old world. He could relinquish it all—the wealth, the prestige, the influence—and recognize that in this new world, there would be other types of power that would allow only a few to stand out from the crowd. And that power would not come from possessions or connections, but from the strength of one’s determination and ability to adapt. Michael vowed to embrace this new world order and show his father and every other ghost living inside his head that he was up to the challenge.

  The next couple of days were a blur of furious movement and hiding in any hole he could find. He managed to escape the tower in which he lived with a couple of other tenants, though neither of them made it too far. They were convinced the police or military would save them, or that they would find a safe haven within the city. Michael didn’t spare much regret when they were torn to pieces within blocks of their former home.

  The running seemed endless, as did the uncomfortable and cramped spaces into which he squeezed to avoid detection. He slept in a broom closet in the bowels of an office building at one point, with the mop bucket and several large containers of cleaning solution pushed up against the door. He swiped bottles of water and smashed vending machines to get food. He avoided confrontations with both the living and the undead while moving steadily in the direction that appeared to be the safest: east.

  The city was a war zone. The trick, Michael learned, was to be counterintuitive. Other refugees migrated toward the shelters, toward the National Guard. They headed to the hospitals and police and fire stations. They were idiots. Because not only were the living moving in that direction, so were the dead.

  Michael listened to a portable radio he had taken with him from his condo, and every report about a shelter that had been set up in the city told him exactly where not to go. And when the reports stopped, he continued listening for gunfire, and steered clear of that as well. He slipped into areas that had already been overrun by the dead, because the stiffs had a pack mentality and followed their prey wherever they could sense them. That meant that only the stragglers and those too feeble to walk were usually left behind once all the living had fled or been devoured. Those few ghouls were far easier to manage than the large hordes attacking the National Guard troops and the frightened sheep the general population had become.

  By the time Michael met Frank, the endless hiding and running had taken its toll on him. He was wearing down and feeling dispirited, questioning whether his brilliant plans for the future were all just a bunch of crap he’d made up to keep him motivated to stay alive when there wasn’t much sense in doing so.

  Michael almost killed the other man by accident, thinking Frank was a rotter. He was beating in the brains of a woman with his bare hands out on the street, and it was hard to tell which of the two was alive.

  Michael tried to avoid situations in which things might get out of control on him. He had no interest in playing the hero or drawing a crowd, but this was a quiet residential neighborhood; there was no one in sight but the two people a dozen yards in front of him. It was, in fact, one of the first streets he’d walked that didn’t have at least a half-dozen stiffs wandering aimlessly on it.

  He’d come down this road because he’d spotted several cars and even a work van that appeared to be in working condition out in plain sight. The search for a vehicle he could drive out of the area had preoccupied Michael’s mind during much of his journey. Walking was getting old, and being out in the open and vulnerable was making him a nervous wreck.

  As he came up on the two struggling figures, Michael wondered if the man, or maybe the woman he was beating, might have a set of keys to one of the vehicles nearby. Looking around, he spotted a heavy tree branch that had snapped and fallen to the ground. There was, in fact, plenty of debris all over the street from which to choose. Shattered doorframes, discarded housewares, and even a few broken road signs. The area, an old, rundown neighborhood filled with dilapidated row houses, looked like a tornado had hit it. The two people doing battle appeared to be the last remnants of whatever madness had passed through the area.

  Michael crept up behind the man and raised his weapon, ready to strike. Frank ch
ose that moment to turn his head, perhaps having spied Michael’s shadow from the corner of his eye. That probably saved his life. He turned white as a sheet and raised an arm to ward off the blow as he scrambled backwards. He stumbled over the woman he’d been pummeling and fell on his ass beside her.

  The woman, no longer pinned to the ground, turned over in an effort to reach Frank, who scrabbled away from her. Her face was an open wound. A flap of skin that contained most of her facial features slapped at her skull with every jarring movement she made. She was a heavyset, matronly woman with thick arms and legs. She was trying to hiss out something through her detached lips, though nothing intelligible. A shower of spittle and blood came from the depths of her throat.

  Frank was babbling as well as he pressed up against one of the cars parked at the curb. Reaching behind his back, he made an effort to hook his hand onto the bumper to help elevate his corpulent frame to a standing position.

  Michael slammed his booted foot down on the small of the woman’s back and drove her chest toward the pavement. One of the hands she had used to elevate her body skidded out from underneath her, leaving most of the skin from her palm on the asphalt. Her other arm snapped, braking below the elbow, which caused her to collapse. Swinging the tree branch, Michael landed several blows as the ghoul struggled to get back up. A scattering of teeth sprayed from her mouth as the abuse rained down on the back of her skull. After a minute or so, the matronly woman’s movements stilled.

  Michael studied the corpse for a moment before looking back at Frank. The expression on the filthy man’s face would have been amusing if it weren’t so pathetic. Frank looked about as terrified of Michael as of the monster with which he’d been brawling.