Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse

by McCrohan, Richard

  “Oh, my Lord!” the elderly woman bleated. “Emily, are you all right? Dear, you look awful.” She stepped forward and reached out her hands to her. “Come here, child. Let me get you back up to bed.”

  Emily reached her hands up also. As she did, her blank countenance changed. She bared her teeth at her loving aunt. Edith stopped short and said meekly, “Emily?”

  Her now-undead niece took two more steps toward her then lunged at her. The two of them, locked in an unnatural embrace, crashed backward into the heavy oak table. The force of their bodies made them spin around the table’s edge. Emily snapped her jaws at her aunt until she hit a chair and fell over. Edith miraculously kept on her feet and backed away, screaming madly. As Emily scrambled to stand up, Edith’s hand found the bread knife. This nightmare from hell came at Edith again. As she came close, arms grasping, the old woman plunged the knife into her niece’s chest. The zombie staggered slightly and looked down at the hilt sticking out of her left breast. Realizing what she had just done, Edith painfully called out, “No, Emily. I’m sorry…I’m sorry. Oh, Lord, what have I done?”

  As Edith was blubbering out her useless apology, Emily looked up at her again, hissed, and jumped on her. Both women fell to the floor, with undead Emily on top of the poor woman. Edith Schoenbart’s last thought, as her throat was torn out, was, I don’t understand what’s happening to me.

  5

  Sitting in a corner booth at Paddy Flannigan’s, Sean, Mike, and Jack stared at the beers in front of them. Sean had ordered cheese fries for the table, but they sat there almost untouched. Hardly anyone was in the place. Two couples were sitting across from them. One of the girls was crying softly, her boyfriend holding her close. There were three men at the bar. Two of them, sitting together and watching one of the many televisions, were having an animated yet quiet conversation.

  Jack broke the silence that had fallen between the friends by blurting, “I called Nicole while you guys were talking to your folks. She didn’t answer her cell. I was going to call her back later tonight.” They looked at him while he fiddled with his beer mug.

  Nicole Acosta was Jack’s girlfriend. She was a buyer for Bloomingdale’s, and they all knew she had a meeting in New York City today.

  “I’m sure she’s very busy and tied up in her meeting,” Sean said. He put up his hand to make a point. “You know she’s been all flustered about this. She’ll call back when she’s on her way back from the city.”

  “You’re right,” said Jack, nodding. “I’m sure traffic is a bitch now anyway, especially with what’s been going on.”

  “Speaking of what’s going on,” Mike said, leaning in, “we should be doing something. We should be getting ready or prepared or something. No?”

  Sean looked at him. “Prepared for what?”

  “You know,” Mike went on, “the zombie apocalypse or whatever.”

  Sean and Jack stared at him for a couple of seconds. Jack said, “Don’t you think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here? I don’t think they’re even right about those people being zombies.”

  “Oh, come on,” retorted Mike, miffed. “You’ve seen enough zombie movies to see what’s happening here. We have to start stocking up on food and water…maybe find a safe place to wait this out.”

  “Whoa! Wait a minute.” Jack leaned back and put his palms up defensively. “I’ve been watching the news all day, and they’re starting a nationwide quarantine tomorrow for everyone who’s had the Pandora virus. Once they have these people contained, they’ll be able to control the new mutation that’s causing all the craziness.”

  As the two young couples got up and walked to the door, one of the two men talking at the bar suddenly got loud.

  “Fuck that, Jimmy!” he exclaimed. “No way’s that happenin’.” He was plainly drunk, and the other man was trying to placate him. He got off the stool and took a step back. “No, I don’t care. Fuck the quarantine. My wife’s fine. She’s not even sick. I don’t care what they’re sayin’—I’m not lettin’ any goddamn soldier put his fuckin’ hands on my wife. Not now, not ever. Do you think any decent guy is gonna let them just take away his loved ones? No fuckin’ way!”

  “Wait a minute, Carl,” pleaded his friend.

  The bartender came up to the men just as the two couples ran out the door. The girl was crying in earnest now.

  Carl looked at the bartender then at Jimmy. “And fuck you too! I’m takin’ care of business. You can all go to hell!” He stormed out the door, knocking over a chair on his way out.

  The threesome watched this exchange, and when Carl barged his way out, Sean turned to Mike and said, “You really think now that this quarantine is going to work?”

  Arguing the matter they finished their beers. The bartender called out, “Okay, guys, I’m closing early and calling it a night. CNN says it’s starting to get a little crazy around the globe, so maybe we should all just try to get home safely.”

  In the parking lot, after paying the bill and heading for the door, Sean and Michael called their girlfriends. Sean’s steady, Linda, answered immediately, telling him she was at her apartment and all right. She had picked up some takeout and was in for the night. Mike’s girlfriend, Susan Tolliver, a nurse at Saint Mary’s Hospital, where they were this morning, answered but said the place was a zoo and she couldn’t talk, then hung up.

  As they were getting into Mike’s SUV, Jack’s phone rang. He, as did they all, had an iPhone, and he saw he had a FaceTime call from Nicole. He deftly made the connection and saw Nicole’s teary face in front of him.

  “Jack? Jack?” she said, her voice hitching with barely controlled tears.

  “I’m right here, Nicky,” Jack replied anxiously. “Where are you? Are you all right?”

  “Y-yes. I’m okay,” she responded, visibly calming down now that she had Jack on the phone. “I’m still in the city. Oh, Jack, it was horrible.”

  “What happened?” Jack all but whispered.

  “The meeting was over at three, so Todd and I—you know Todd; he’s another buyer with me. Anyway we thought we’d hail a cab back to the PATH train. We walked past this man sleeping in a doorway, and as we passed this middle-aged couple coming from the opposite direction, he seemed to wake up and then he”—she paused, her voice quaking again—“he got up and jumped on the man who just passed us. Oh, Jack, he was like an animal. He was…he was…ripping and clawing at the man, and the woman was beating him over the head with her purse. It was awful! Then Todd and another passerby ran to help.” She was sniffling and choking now. “Todd grabbed this…this maniac by the shoulder and pulled him off the man. Then…then…he turned around and bit Todd on the cheek. Jack, he ripped a big piece off. There was blood all over. Todd was screaming; the couple was screaming; everyone was screaming; and I was so scared that I just ran.” She was actively sobbing now.

  “Nicky, where are you now?” Jack asked hurriedly.

  “I’m in this second-floor restaurant in Midtown,” she said, looking around her as if surprised to be there. “Jack, it’s crazy here.” She moved over to the window near her. It looked down on Broadway and Fifty-Sixth Street. She turned the iPhone toward the window, saying, “Look, Jack.”

  Jack’s phone screen blurred for a second then suddenly came into focus. He was looking at a side-street view of Midtown. Traffic was bumper to bumper, even worse than usual. It seemed as if everyone were honking their horns at the same time. He heard sirens blaring from squad cars and ambulances. As he looked at this cacophony, he saw, coming from the corner of the screen, three people—two men and a woman—running down the middle of the street, trying to get into idling cars waiting at the light. They were making horrible grunting, groaning noises, and one of the men’s shirts was smeared with blood. Jack heard screams coming from the cars. Nearing the corner, one of the men jumped onto the running board of a delivery truck and slammed his fist on the driver’s-side window. As the glass cracked, the driver unexpectedly swung open his door,
which knocked the frenzied man off the truck and onto his back on the street. When he started to get back up, the delivery driver stuck his hand out of the cab. He was holding a semiautomatic pistol. Firing once, he put a bullet through the man’s left eye. He abruptly slammed the door and, grinding gears, pulled out into oncoming traffic. The delivery truck was immediately hit by a taxi, which slammed into the truck’s body. The cabbie opened his door and ran to the truck, yelling and gesturing in anger. As the trucker opened his door to step down, now yelling too, the other woman and the bloody man ran up and tackled the arm-waving cab driver. Gawking as they ripped at the cabbie with teeth and nails, the deliveryman jumped back into his truck and swiftly pulled away. He sideswiped a BMW and another taxi before disappearing from view.

  Nicole turned the screen back to herself. “See, Jack? It’s crazy here,” she sobbed.

  “Call the police,” demanded Jack.

  “The cops are running all over, Jack. Don’t you get it? What you just saw is happening all over.”

  Jack went silent, his mind reeling. “What are you going to do?” he finally asked.

  “There are seven of us here, all trying to get back to Jersey. They’ve decided to try to get downtown to the ferry to Jersey City. I’m going with them. When I get across the river, I’ll call you. It should only take a couple of hours. I…I love you, Jack.”

  He smiled. “I love you too, babe.”

  Nicole hung up, and he put his phone away. His two best friends, who had watched the whole exchange, put their hands on his shoulders.

  “She’ll get out, Jack,” Sean said reassuringly. They sat in silence, taking comfort in one another’s company.

  Mike started the car, and they headed for home. Even though it was now evening, the main roads that connected to the highways were becoming snarled with traffic. Mike mentioned that everyone was probably headed for their mountain or shore houses, where, at this time of year, it probably would be less populated. But as they passed cars and saw people on the side roads packing up, they noticed that a number of people who looked quite sick were leaving too.

  Jack turned to Sean and said, “Well, I guess that guy in Flannigan’s wasn’t alone in his thinking. It looks like they’re getting out of Dodge before the sheriff comes a-calling.” The irony in his statement wasn’t lost on anyone.

  “The only way they can know who’s probably infected,” Sean commented, “is from the addresses in the hospital records. They’ll correlate the inpatient files with the additional address forms and go house to house to collect people. I imagine everyone out there came to the same conclusion and is secreting their sick spouses or kids away.”

  “Once every one of them starts changing, they’ll spread the virus somewhere else. Or worse, they’ll die in their cars then come back to life and attack their families, who’ll be trapped,” added Mike.

  As they drove the back roads to get home, Sean turned to Mike and said, “I’m sorry, Mike. I think you had the right idea before.” He looked at Jack then continued, “Why don’t we stop at the 7-Eleven on Elm Street and pick up as much water and food as we can?”

  Everyone nodded in agreement. Mike altered his destination to accommodate their decision, and they arrived at the convenience store a few minutes later. The three men piled out and, taking a basket each, went about collecting their booty.

  When they were finished shopping, they stuffed the SUV full of supplies. As Mike closed the hatch, Sean said, “I figured this would be faster than trying to tackle a supermarket right now. It would probably be jam-packed.”

  They arrived home and unloaded everything from the car, then put their food and water away. In the middle of this, Jack glanced into one of the bags and smiled wryly, snickering. “Really, Mike? Five bags of Fritos?”

  “What?” replied Michael, wide-eyed. “I like Fritos.”

  After finishing the task, they watched the deteriorating situation on television then agreed to call it a night and get an early start in the morning. Their goal was to hit the hardware store and the supermarket for what they had missed at the 7-Eleven.

  6

  While they slept, things had already started to spiral out of control. Asia and the East Indies, including India, had been hit by the comet Pandora’s debris trail first and in turn had suffered the Pandora virus first. And now they were experiencing the beginning of the Pandora 2 Mutation first. Because of their huge populations and the cramped quarters of their crowded cities, China, India, and Japan quickly descended into chaos. For some reason the average 30 percent infection rate was higher in these regions—as much as 50 percent in some places. The infected unfortunately included European and North and South American tourists as well. When people had started to initially sicken with the first virus, the tourists quickly had flown home, hoping they weren’t contaminated. This, however, did not prove to be so. Unfortunately they had arrived home before the airlines shut down and became ticking time bombs to add to their countries’ problems.

  Only two days had passed since Anichka Hordiyenko had become Patient Zero of the Pandora 2 Mutation, but with so much of the planet’s population dying and reanimating into bloodthirsty zombies, the world’s underlying infrastructure was absolutely unprepared and immediately overwhelmed.

  The aforementioned countries of China and India had quickly closed down all internal media outlets, saying they didn’t want to overly panic their citizens and give them false propaganda. The real reason was to impose draconian measures, especially in China, to quell the sudden surge of zombies. Any zombie, anyone sick, anyone suspected of being sick, or even anyone who so much as complained was swiftly treated with a quick bullet to the head. This plan of action, rather perversely, probably would have worked if it weren’t for the sheer number of infected. Governments, being brave but misguided protectors, had to deal with the initially infected and in turn the increasing number of victims who were infected because of bites. This latter number was rapidly growing due to police and military personnel who were being infected while enforcing the new and sometimes genocidal orders from their superiors.

  In Europe they were faring a little better but not much. The level of initial infection remained at about 30 percent, and the governments and ruling structures were more stable and less corrupt. But the efficiency of response varied from country to country, with Germany, France, the UK, Switzerland, and Belgium putting together a rapid response team, cobbled together from police, special forces, and elements of their militaries.

  The majority of the rest of the countries, however, spent more time arguing over what to do than actually doing anything. With Europe’s borders as porous as they were, the ultimate result was inevitable. Fleeing refugees, both healthy and infected, crisscrossed national borders, and the resultant human bottlenecks hampered already-tenuous emergency operations. Because of policies in Catholic-dominated countries such as Spain, Italy, and Ireland—all of which refused to accept the idea of zombies—confusion ensued over what to do with the infected. They were, in fact, victims of a terrible illness, so one could not just shoot them, yet there was great difficulty in containing them in one place, however compliant they may have been. The concept of concentration camps had a very bad history in Europe, but no one could find another solution. Obviously, unlike their contemporaries on other continents, these countries felt a “Final Solution” was completely out of the question.

  Russia and its former satellite countries were in dire straits. Between the rampant governmental corruption and the state of the military, things quickly went to hell in a hand basket. To make matters worse, the Kremlin’s iron-fist handling of its peoples led to various nationalistic, fundamentalist, and jihadist uprisings throughout the former Soviet Empire. Competing paramilitary and terrorist armies used the pandemic not only to kill any zombies they found, but also to settle old scores with both real and imagined enemies. The region slipped into complete bedlam.

  Africa was becoming a continent of armed camps. Various despots and
warlords rounded up their personal armies and basically circled the wagons. Armed compounds formed around presidential palaces. Only soldiers, the politically connected, and dictators and their families remained safely inside. But even among themselves, anyone even remotely showing signs of infection was expediently eliminated and the body thrown over the walls. The people remaining outside were on their own. Between zombies, vengeance killings, and poor local sanitation and water sources, they didn’t fare well in this dangerous environment.

  Those within the walled camps eventually came to realize that although they had thought to make sure the leader’s hidden wealth was saved and the army had ammunition, stocking enough food and water was more of an afterthought than part of the hastily conceived original plan. Arguments ensued, and dictators were usurped, and when they finally ventured out to find something to eat or drink, the vast army of flesh-eating ghouls found something to eat instead.

  In the Americas, we had the fortune of being the last landmass to succumb to the virus. This gave us a brief but crucial heads up when it came to dealing with the mutated virus. The president, his cabinet, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff hurriedly met and hammered out a rushed agenda to try to contain this unimaginable, civilization-ending event. They decided to cull all the previous Pandora virus victims and gather them together. The activated National Guard was pressed into service, erecting camps of Quonset huts in designated areas to house the infected. The thinking was that if those infected did not die, they eventually would be returned home. If, instead, they died and reanimated as zombies, they would be executed and buried in mass graves already dug outside the gates of the quarantine camps. Perhaps because of the vast acceptance in popular culture of the word and idea of zombies, high officials knew (or hoped they knew) that most civilians were more ready to accept this as a valid concept. The civilian roundup was to start the following morning, and although considered humane (at least compared to what was happening in some other countries), the idea didn’t appeal to everyone. The president was hoping the plan wouldn’t be announced until the last minute, but as with all political secrets, this one was quickly leaked to the press. And with the press being the press, this enterprise was released to the unbelieving public in the morning in widely various manners, from the underground press screaming of Nazis in the government to Fox News declaring this was the only logical way to protect our great nation.