by Jack Wallen
When I arrived in Room 77, Bethany was sitting at the com desk staring at a single monitor. She was so engrossed in whatever she was watching she didn’t even notice me enter the room.
“What is it we’re watching?” The monitor revealed hundreds of moaners making an approach. Every cloudy, disfigured eye was fixed upon a single location. The moaners ambled and swayed with an obvious purpose, a collective purpose that stole my breath from my lungs.
“Please tell me that’s no―”
“It is.”
“Didn’t I just tell you not to tell me?” I asked, trying to bring the level of oncoming insanity down a notch before it could reach critical mass before our very eyes.
Bethany looked up, confused and a bit pissed at the same time.
“Joking. Really,” I said in quick surrender.
“Yes, Jacob, that is our front door, and they’re marching right for it. But our little tragedy only gets worse.” There was no hiding the severity behind Bethany’s voice.
“How could hundreds of moaners storming our front door possibly get worse?”
Bethany, of course, read my mind. She tapped a command into the primary keyboard, and the exterior camera began to pan from side to side. As the camera-eye view expanded, it became all too clear that things did, in fact, get much, much worse. An entire army of moaners was revealed.
“You’re kidding me, right? Are those seriously zombie soldiers?” I hoped my exasperation was obvious in my tone. What I really wanted to do was pull my hair out completely, slip into a comfy straitjacket, find a cozy, secure padded room, and ride this out with only my dwindling sanity for company.
“Jacob, please tell me that door is locked.” Bethany’s eyes practically demanded a yes. I desperately wanted to comply, but I had no yes to give her. I was fresh out.
“There is only one person who would know the answer to that particular question.” I started to stand, but the monitor pulled me right back into my seat with a gravity that would shame the very planet.
The first wave of moaners had reached the door.
My thought processes paused and took a U-turn to consider the topic of zombies. I knew the zombies made famous, and subsequently romanticized, by Romero were rather mindless, meandering meat sacks looking for a bite to eat. The real-world zombie wasn’t quite as mindless. And, unlike their fictional counterparts, they weren’t slow and dumb. Oh, no. Had that been the case, we’d have had no problem remaining safely tucked away in our little army-issue love shack. Real-world zombies can open doors, climb stairs, push a button, pick up a club… the truth was far more dangerous than fiction.
“It looks like the door is locked and holding, at least for the moment.” Bethany’s voice yanked me out of my strange interlude, while betraying a pessimism that made me think she had a good idea just how long that door would hold. And from the sounds of the pummeling the horde was laying on the metal, it couldn’t last long.
The chaotic rhythm being beaten on the door echoed through the halls of our little barracks like a murderous thunder. The zombies somehow knew we were inside, and they wanted to get to know us―in the strictest cannibal sense. The echoing rumbles were starting to rattle my brain. I was afraid a shift to the dark side was about to happen.
Out of the cacophony, a thread of an idea began to form. I was beginning to notice a physical pattern occurring in my transitions. Moments before I would change from mild-mannered reporter to the undead Superman, a pre-vomiting sensation would begin to build in the pit of my stomach. At first it was a low bubbling that would slowly work its way up to the roof of my mouth. A clammy film would cover my face. And right as I felt like lunch was about to spray across the room, out would come my darker self.
That very sensation was starting to boil up from my bowels.
“I have to go.”
“Where? Why? Stay here with me.” Bethany was confused by my announcement.
“I can’t. I think I’m about to turn again. I don’t want to be around you when it happens.”
“Stay. I want to help you through this. I want to know what the experience is like.”
“It’s too dangerous. Oh, God!” The echoing sounds from the metal door started reverberating in my skull, creating tremors deep within my organs. The pain was excruciating.
“I really have to go!” Without waiting for acknowledgment from Bethany, I opened the door and took off.
“Oh, Christ! Fuck!” The pain was worse than it had ever been. My skull was going to vibrate apart.
“Okay…okay…easy. Calm down. Fuck!!! I’m going to try…to describe what this feels like.”
I had to pause to force in a few deep breaths.
“I…feel like I was injected with…with…shit…shit…Oh, God!!!…Injected with… fuck! What was I going to say?”
“Jacob! What was that noise?”
“Susan, get away! Run. Now!”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
Without warning, a primal scream issued from my mouth. “The sound…my head! Fuck, my head. Fuck! Susan…you…your head…does it hurt like mine?”
“Jacob, what’s wrong?”
“Get away from me! I need…to get to your…it’s the only way…”
A crippling pain dropped me to my knees. This was it. I was being unmade, from the inside out, by the virus.
“Jacob? Jacob? I’m going to get Bethany. I’ll be right back.”
I tried to reach out for Susan, but she was too far gone. I felt myself slipping away into a sweet void.
Chapter 21: The world outside
Boom! Boom-boom. Bang. Boom.
Clang. Crash. Boom. Bang-boom.
The sound woke me up. Industrial popcorn driven by the collective power of Hell and heavy metal. The distant noise echoed through the halls, threatening to crack the paint and peel the paper from the walls.
I was in a room, the room I shared with Bethany that first night. I felt like a haze filled my skull, making thought, or at least memory, hard to come by. I went to scratch my head, but it was covered. What had I done?
In the bathroom, I flicked on the light, which nearly blinded me. Gazing at the compact fluorescent bulb was like staring at the sun. I scrambled to shut it off before it seared my retinas. But before I could reach the switch, I caught a glimpse of myself in the vanity. My head was wrapped in bandages. In spots, blood soaked through the gauze.
I slapped the light off.
Bang! Bang! Boom!
In the darkness, memory started to seep through the haze. The noise. Moaners―hundreds of moaners, all wanting to get inside. No…not wanting inside…wanting us. How did they know we were here? Zombies couldn’t possibly smell us belowground. Certainly they couldn’t hear us over the riot between their ears.
Boom! Boom!
I had to find Bethany.
Bethany was sitting like a queen on her throne at the master control station in Room 77.
“Ensign, I want a full tactical report sent to my com station right away,” I said in my best James T. Kirk. I couldn’t help but speak a little nerd to her. I figured it would, maybe, turn her on.
“Aye, aye, Cap’n.” Bethany turned with a Cheshire-grin gracing her mouth. “Jacob! How are you feeling?”
“Like I did something seriously embarrassing.” My eyes playfully glanced upward, indicating the gift-wrap headdress I was sporting.
“If you check your com, you’ll find a full report indicating you did no such thing.” Bethany’s flirtation was less than subtle, but more than adorable.
“What the hell happened?”
Boom! Boom!
“And why are they still trying to smash through that door? And while I’m on a roll, is there any update on their chances of bringing the walls down?”
There was a pause too long to indicate anything good. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear her answer.
“First of all, for some reason you were tearing at your skull. I had to bandage you to keep the blood from getting everywhere. It’s n
othing serious, mostly scratches and gouges. You should be able to remove the dressing soon. Second, the only way we’ll know if they can tear down the walls is if we go up and see for ourselves. And I don’t think you’re going to want to do that.” Bethany looked toward the main monitor which was displaying a real-time video of the main door. The zombies were still in full force, but something frightening was happening. No, not frightening. Frightening was a word best reserved for horror movies and murder. What the monitor was showing was far beyond that.
“They’re tearing each other apart.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. It looked like a cannibal cookout was going down. Zombies were pulling each other apart―literally―cracking skulls open on rocks, tearing into torsos with bare hands, twisting off heads. The ground was covered in blood and entrails. They were slipping in puddles of their own viscera.
Two zombies in particular caught my attention. They had effectively ripped each other’s mid-sections away such that their bodies were broken in half. They lay on the ground, nothing but torsos, and continued their dissection of one another. They couldn’t get away so they just continued. No fiction could ever come close to the horror being played out in front of us.
“It’s Dante’s Inferno out there.” Bethany’s voice was trancelike. “I want this to be over now.”
We sat there watching the nightmare unfold. Our worst fears were being made real, right before our eyes. Just as it seemed the beasts had whittled down their own numbers, more of them were drawn into the fray. I had a growing fear that we would have to wait out the destruction of the entire population of Munich. And, for the first time since we had arrived at the installation, I thought it might actually be safer inside than out. The world outside had continued to spiral into a dark chasm of chaos.
As we continued watching the monitor, I realized nothing would probably ever return to normal, at least not in my lifetime. Within the span of a few moments, the world had forever changed. No human would come out of this with their sanity intact. No life would go untouched. No sleep would go without nightmares.
On the monitor, I saw another group of zombies approach the ever-growing heap to sniff out any live brain matter. Even through the camera eye it was visible―that look of lust, of hunger for something just out of reach. Those monsters knew we were down here, and the more numbers they amassed, the better their chances of reaching us. There was no way around it; we were fucked.
As a young boy I was fascinated with horror flicks. It was sweet torture. But upon the conclusion of every film, I would wind up spooning with my mother as she stroked my hair and calmly proclaimed “It was only a movie.”
Where was she now, the mother that protected me from so much fear? And what would she have said about the nightmare-made-real in front of us?
“What are we going to do?” Bethany’s voice again pulled me out of my solemn reverie of days past.
“Well, I don’t think Godwin is going to pull through with an antidote, at least not while we have him locked up in the lab. He can work in there, but how well is he going to function if he thinks he’s a prisoner?” The realization didn’t come to me until the entire thought tumbled out of my gaping maw.
“Shit,” we both proclaimed in unison.
“We have to let him out. Let him roam free.” Bethany brought some sense to the table.
“At least we can keep watch on him while he’s being useful.” I looked at Bethany with steely eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me my plan was so inhumane?”
I choked on those last words. There was hardly anything inhumane about what we had done to Godwin, relatively speaking. But the truth was, if we wanted Godwin to find a cure, he had to be at his best. If that meant letting him roam about, so be it.
Chapter 22: Lockdown
It didn’t take much to get the doctor to feel a bit more like himself. As soon as he knew we weren’t going to keep him locked up, his mood shifted, albeit only slightly. I wasn’t sure if he’d seen his own mortality in his reflection, or if he knew the only way we’d ever survive this hell was if he managed to pull an antidote out of his ass. Whatever the reason, it was good to know there might be a slim chance, some hope.
Godwin drew blood from both of our arms. As he was pulling the life-juice from my personal stash, we let him know about WWIII taking place outside our front door. He assured us no zombies would make it through. I felt like that was quite an assumption on his part. I wasn’t so convinced, not after what I had seen. The carnage going on outside these walls stripped away what remaining assumptions I had left.
“This is going to take some effort to develop. I would be best left alone, so that I may concentrate. If you really want this to work, do not interrupt me.” The doctor made demands as if he were actually in a place that afforded him such behavior. “Do not even let Susan bother me.”
Oh, shit. Susan. I had forgotten she had bolted earlier. Who knew what kind of special havoc a young teen girl could wreak when locked up with no other teens, no texting, no shopping, and a horde of zombies waiting to take her to prom. Although the familial ties had been officially undone, I thought it best not to bring up the topic of Susan’s disappearance. Besides, she would show up. Where was she going to go?
“And just how are you, Jacob? How are your symptoms?” The doctor easily slipped back into the role of caregiver. How ironic.
“Getting worse,” was all I needed to say to bring the room to a complete and utter stop.
“Is it the pain that is worsening?” In some strange way, the doctor’s morbid curiosity was comforting. Even though he was undergoing the same fucked-up change as I was, he still seemed to care about my wellbeing. Either that or he knew he was looking his own future square in the eye.
I thought my reply through thoroughly. I was afraid it would sound completely absurd, but it was the only way to describe what was happening. “No. The desire is getting worse.” Another room silencer.
“I do not understand, Jacob. The desire for what?” There was a real concern in the doc’s voice.
“Desire to stop the noise in everyone’s head. I know, it sounds like the ravings of a lunatic, but what little thought I’m capable of at that moment is directed towards the noise. It’s what’s driving those things outside to do what they are doing. And if you don’t find a cure soon, you and I will be cracking open the skulls of anyone around us. We both know who that means.” Silence fell over the room again. That mistress silence can be a bitch at times.
“I see,” was all Godwin could muster.
I sat and watched him for a moment before I took my leave of his lab. Part of me did want to stay and watch him work some form of magic. But I knew I would only be in the way. Besides, there were far more interesting humans in this building―more interesting and sexier.
Bethany was waiting for me outside the door. How convenient. The look on her face spoke surreal volumes. A romance with the sexiest hacker on the planet would certainly make my last days a bit less filled with suck.
“Is he going to find a cure?” That same look on her face made an appearance in her voice. A knot developed in my stomach. That knot didn’t want me to confess to Bethany that, even with our mad genius at work, the chances were still slim. I wasn’t sure if I could take the look of disappointment crossing her beautiful eyes.
“Let’s hope so.” It wasn’t a lie, and it wasn’t all doom and gloom.
And with that, Bethany threw her arms around me and started crying. I allowed my arms to wind their way around her neck. My right hand snaked upward and cradled her head. This felt good. But holding her head in my hand served no other purpose than to remind me of what I might wind up doing. I didn’t want to rip this beautiful woman apart. I wanted, instead, to kiss her, make love to her, and finish my life with her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t know if that would happen.
We wound up silently making our way back to Room 77. Even though we knew we would see nothing short of terror, we had to go back. Along with the horror, the room inexplicably
brought some solace. Maybe it was knowing we could at least communicate with the outside world. Or maybe it was seeing how the facility could hold up against thousands of zombies brutally attacking its front doors. I was officially calling them ‘zombies.’ It had been happening for a while now; I had just been ignoring the issue. I just finally realized, after experiencing it firsthand, that moaner just didn’t really do the condition justice. The word moaner could so easily have a sexual connotation. The word zombie, however, brought nothing sexual to mind. Zombie was exactly what we were seeing in the monitors―mostly dead beings with a single, unwavering purpose.
I hoped Godwin found his cure. I tried not to, but I could imagine what it would be like spiraling down the zombie slide for the last time and not being able to escape this building. First, the girls would go down. Then ― and this was my favorite part of the nightmare ― it would be a fight to the, well, final death between Godwin and me.
“Ist jemand heraus dort?” A static-filled transmission echoed from one of the speakers. Shocked, Bethany and I stared at each other.
“Where is that coming from?” Actually, I knew where the sound was literally coming from, even before Bethany decided to smile and point a snarky finger at the speaker. “You know what I mean, ya nerd.”
“Actually, I’m not really sure. It sounds like HAM, but I can’t imagine a government installation with a HAM radio. Although, considering they were preparing for the end of the world, maybe they would include such antiquated technology.” Bethany spoke to herself as much as she did to me, all the while trying to locate said HAM device.
While Bethany continued with a litany about the pros and cons of HAM radio, I found the walkie-talkie, a fairly massive one, conveniently in its charger on a table.
“You speak German?” I held the radio out to Bethany with the biggest shit-eating grin I could muster plastered across my face.
“Of course!” Bethany snatched the radio out of my hands. “They would have a multi-band handheld on site.” She scanned the radio for a second or two and began using it as if it were second nature…the beauty of intelligence.