by J. K. Norry
Allen listened to what might be the last episode of his favorite podcast while he watched the blank television. He checked the lighted screen on the device in his hand. Two more minutes. He looked twice more before the minute advanced. Three minutes later, the television still stood quiet. Allen paused the podcast, gazing anxiously at the dim light over the power button on the set.
It was on. The message wasn’t coming.
In the same moment that he pressed the play button on the handheld device, the larger device in the storefront window beeped and then crackled. The screen remained dark, but a voice issued forth. Allen tapped the pause symbol.
“Come to the piers in San Francisco if you can. We’re setting up stations right now, and several are all ready to distribute. Folks, we have a cure for the zombie virus. Stop killing each other. Come to the San Francisco piers if you can. Tune in this time tomorrow for where we will be. We will continue to distribute the cure until the howlers attack. Any peaceful approach will be allowed; any hostile threat will be answered with whatever force we feel is necessary for our escape.”
The broadcast repeated two more times. Allen had long since started running. He could beat the top speed of most vehicles on foot, and with the highways and freeways turned to parking lots he was the fastest thing on the ground. He ran until his new body began to tire for the first time, crossing what used to be farms and quaint coastal towns in a featureless blur. The whole run was an escape from his own thoughts, and as he slowed they issued unbidden from his mouth.
“…It’s not a virus,” he panted, jogging slightly faster than the posted speed limit. “How can there be a cure…?”
His hurried steps brought him to the final hill before the ocean, and he saw the tendrils of smoke reaching into the sky as he crested it. Nothing remained of a long string of concrete outcroppings but the shattered remains of booths and stands. Huge craters pitted the cement peninsulas, and the ocean showed through in more than one place. Only a couple of shops were still standing, and they would be gone soon. They were on fire, mostly burnt to nothing already; the smoke he had seen trailed from their pitted remains.
Allen had missed them. By quite a while, from the looks of it. He was hungry, and tired from his run. The device he had been carrying around with him had been lost somewhere along the way, and he hadn’t gone back for it when the sound cut out. He looked down at his hands, dreading the starving fumbled programming he would have to do with talons made for killing. Holding them up in the sunlight, Allen narrowed his rusted eyes. His hands were smaller.
Looking down at himself, Allen realized that the run had taken more out of him than some serious electrolytes. His torso was nearly what it had been before, at least in size. It was still an armored beast’s torso, but it was noticeably shrunken. His hands were smaller, the nails not as long. Allen had shriveled back into his original size in his hurried quest to become his old self. He was tempted to look for a reflective surface, but he knew the face in it would not be his own.
He walked the docks until the smoke had nearly choked itself out. He could smell living flesh, and he could feel that twisting hunger in his belly. Allen shook his head, wondering what brave fool would be out here just before the howlers hit the streets en masse. The broken rubble at his feet would have been enough to keep Allen home even in the mornings, had he borne the burden of flesh. Walking quickly, Allen tried to move away from the scent. If he caught a glimpse of a living person, it might overwhelm him. He hadn’t done much to control his hunger, except avoid humans, and that hadn’t been hard the last few days. Now he couldn’t get away from that lingering odor. Everywhere he walked it seemed in front of him, or behind him, climbing into his exposed nasal cavities to twist the hunger within him more painfully. After several minutes he stopped.
“Go away!” he called out. “I don’t want to eat you!”
“Then don’t eat me!”
She emerged from behind a van that had been left in the middle of the street. Peering at him closely, she spoke again.
“Allen? Allen, is that you?”
His eyes were round rusted orbs of disbelief.
“Elayna?” Allen wished his voice didn’t sound so hoarse, and hungry.
He shook his head. “You’re…you’re you.”
She smiled, and he marveled at the way the flesh on her cheeks bunched up to form the expression. Her eyes were beautiful and dark instead of fearsome and red.
Elayna nodded.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
She glanced back the way they had come. “Same as you.”
“But you’re changed.”
“It keeps trying to take hold,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s like I can’t change all the way back. I get to ninety-nine percent and then it starts to reverse.”
Elayna held up a small translucent container. She shook it, and he heard pills rattling around inside.
“Unless I take these,” she said. “Then I just hover at ninety-nine percent.”
“What’s ninety-nine percent?” Allen asked. She looked fine to him. Actually, she looked better than fine. For the first time, Allen realized how striking Elayna was. The same filters that had kept him from seeing his own ugliness had kept him from seeing her beauty as well. She lifted her shirt a little as he stared. At first he saw nothing but healthy young flesh. The fabric moved past her belly button then, and he saw it. The skin had not grown back where her umbilical cord had once been attached. Blood-stained flesh made a little mandala of purple and red and white where the slight smooth rise of her belly should have been.
Elayna glanced down at her torso and frowned. She dropped her shirt back into place. “Gross, huh?”
Allen felt his eyes go to his own monstrous form. He held one of his hands up between them, turning it so she could see what he was looking at as he answered.
“Not just gross,” he said. “Disgusting.”
“Oh, Allen, I’m sorry.” She stepped closer.
“Stay back!” he hissed. She may have been one percent zombie, but she smelled deliciously and completely human to his hungry nose.
She shook the bottle again. “Do you want one of these?”
“Do they help with the hunger?”
“Oh yeah.” Elayna nodded. “After a couple days you’ll be craving food instead of flesh.”
He eyed the container doubtfully. “How many do you have left?”
“Enough,” she answered. “Here, take one.”
Allen let his eyes drift to the patch of her shirt that hid her secret shame. He frowned. His eyes moved to the single white pill on the palm of her hand.
“It won’t work,” he said. “Not all the way.”
“It worked on the others,” she said, taking another step.
“What others?”
“The people who took it after being infected,” she responded. “The others I saw at the facility I was at.”
“It’s not a virus,” Allen said, shaking his head.
“I know that. You know that. They don’t know that.” Elayna shrugged. “Does it matter what they call it, if the cure works?”
“Except for us.” Allen couldn’t take his eyes off the patch of fabric that she had lifted, or erase the image of her belly from his mind.
A hungry howl split the air, and he watched the hairs on her extended forearm stand up. Elayna shuddered.
“Take it,” she insisted.
“Don’t touch me,” he drew back. “Drop it in my hand.”
She dropped it into his hand, and Allen swallowed it. He looked down at himself. “How long does it take?”
Another howl sounded out, closer, followed by a chorus of answers all around them. Allen resisted the urge to cry out his own hunger.
“Come on,” Elayna said. “I have somewhere we can go.”
Chapter 21
Joe had always loved gardening. He had drawn many comparisons between the life of plants and the way of the human spirit in his books and films, m
any of which he had thought of while tending to his own. The analogies would have been there even if the rows of food and flowers didn’t cover his backyard; but he might not have harvested either fruit if not for his love of growth. Joe had found, long ago, that happy is much more important than rich. Then he had gotten both. Until a few days ago, his life had been dedicated to helping others do the same. Now his garden was getting nearly all of his attention. Back at the pyramid…
A score of tanks came to a halt somewhere between twenty and thirty yards of the entrance. A dozen sand-colored Earth Roamers were already there, and figures in camouflage were setting up a device that they were assembling from parts hauled from the vehicles’ cargo holds. Mallory was watching them, his hands manacled together and chained to a ring of metal that encircled his waist. The general approached him.
“You’re sure she’s in there?” he asked Mallory.
The professor nodded. “I can feel her. She knows we’re here.”
He looked down at his hands, jangled the chains.
“I could be a lot more help if you took these off,” he said.
The general chuckled. “I’ll bet you could. Unfortunately, the troops are uncomfortable enough just having you here. It helps put them at ease.”
“They’re only holding me because I’m letting them.”
“I know.” The general nodded, unsurprised. “I appreciate it.”
Mallory shifted impatiently. “What are we waiting for?”
The general nodded again, this time in the direction of the device.
“That,” he said. “We’re waiting for that.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
“Exactly?” The general laughed quietly. “I can’t tell you that. Approximately, it’s a machine that harnesses sound or sound waves in a startlingly destructive way.”
“You’ve seen it work?”
“Oh, yes.” The general watched them fitting the last few components together. He seemed lost in some thought, or some memory. “I’ve seen that thing turn a ten thousand foot warehouse full of scrap metal to a pile of dust. It’s got serious limitations when it comes to range, but I’ve seen that thing erase virtually anything you can think of. To tell the truth, I’ve seen a lot of things.”
Mallory gave him a moment, to mourn or remember. After a spell, he spoke again.
“It looks like trumpets,” he noted, quietly. “It looks like seven trumpets. Does someone at your engineering department have a truly dark sense of humor, General?”
“What do you mean?”
“The last sign of the apocalypse is seven trumpets sounding.” Mallory couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be horrified. “It seems a pretty interesting coincidence that the device you folks brought to end the apocalypse looks just like the one the Bible says will begin it.”
Mallory’s hand moved to rub his chin thoughtfully, but the manacles stilled the motion. He glanced down, annoyed, then chuckled.
“What if it’s no coincidence at all?” Mallory mused. “What if some other version of us some long time ago discovered this same technology? Perhaps the biblical reference is a hint at the answer that we need now.”
“Are you saying that you believe that civilizations as great or greater than our own have risen and fallen in our planet’s ancient past?” The general was wearing a wry half-smile, and Mallory didn’t understand why. “Did you say you were a doctor, before?”
Mallory shook his head. “I had a collection of degrees, but I wasn’t a ‘doctor’ doctor. I was a professor.”
“Just the same, I think I’ll call you ‘doctor’, Doctor.” The general was wearing a real smile now, the first time Mallory had seen it. He still couldn’t explain why, but he got the sense that the general had taken a liking to him for some reason. They stood in comfortable silence together and watched the technician start bringing the device online. It took awhile, and the sequence had to be done in order. The young man flipping the knobs and turning the dials made mistakes twice while they watched, and had to start over.
“Not exactly a convenient design, is it?” Mallory smirked. “Maybe you shouldn’t watch, General. I think you’re making him nervous.”
“No offense, Doctor, but I think it’s you,” the general responded. “When you came to us, as the reasonable monster with a long shot at a possible solution, even I had trouble believing what you had to say. What you are is both incredible and disturbing. These troops are all afraid of you, Doctor. If my gut didn’t tell me to trust you, I would be too.”
They shared another laugh, and another quiet moment. The machine started to hum and buzz as the technician zeroed in on the sequence. The general raised his voice a little, over the hum.
“Doctor,” he said, “you wondered if maybe some other version of us had harnessed this technology, perhaps to fight the same threat.”
Mallory nodded, raised his voice too. “I did.”
“Then where are they?”
Mallory almost had to shout over the high-pitched whine now issuing from the device. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” the general shouted back, “what if it didn’t save them? Weren’t they wiped out? Where are the tales of their triumph? Where are their stories of survival? Where are their cities, their people? Why did everything end when the trumpets sounded? What if the Bible is warning us against using this technology?”
“General!” The technician was looking at him, his hand poised over the control panel. He was shouting even louder than they were, his face reddened with the effort. “We’re ready! The device is online!”
Chapter 22
Delia was not a whiner. She had built an empire on shifting sands once, and she was determined to do it again. Land had been dirt cheap in the middle of the desert, and over time she had fortified the warehouse and the perimeter to rival any military installation. The items that she was offered as payment in her business had ranged from simple cash to products that most civilians could never get ahold of, and her high-ranking government clientele had made some interesting payments over the years. No one had known, and no one had needed to, until now. As soon as the fences were electrified and the cannons put in place, she began to broadcast the location of the haven she had made. She invited the humans that remained, and the howlers that were ready to die, leaving the message everywhere she could think to post it. Then she settled back and waited for them to come. Delia was ready. In what used to be the second largest city on the coast…
Allen felt like he had been chewing for hours. Despite the fact that his teeth pointed inward, and pressed the glob of tastelessness insistently at his throat, he couldn’t swallow.
“This is disgusting.” He spoke around his teeth and the glob.
“They’re rations,” Elayna shrugged. “They’re good for you, and they keep a long time. Just try to eat some, Allen. It helps.”
He looked down at his hands. They were smaller, and the sharp nails were shorter, but they were still the hands of a monster.
“I don’t think the pills are working,” he said, his voice still garbled with the mouthful of tastelessness.
“It’s only been a day,” Elayna said. “Your skin is already starting to grow back a little.”
She was trying to comfort him. He looked at his hands again. Allen was as much a monster today as he had been yesterday.
“Your face,” she said. “Look in the mirror. The skin on your face is coming back in. You’re almost handsome again.”
Allen laughed bitterly, swallowed at last. “I haven’t looked at my own reflection since my skin first started to fall off.”
“Really? Why?”
“At first it was what I had become, or what I was becoming,” Allen shrugged. “I saw others change, and I realized they were still somewhat recognizable as their former selves. By that time I didn’t want to see the monster I realized I used to be any more than I wanted to see the monster that I had become.”
“What do you mean?” Elayna frowned.
<
br /> “I mean that I used to think I was a pretty good guy,” Allen sighed. “I didn’t realize what a scumbag I was until I stepped away from my own life.”
“Come on,” she protested. “You’re a great guy.”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t see it,” he scoffed.
“Are you talking about being in love with Maya?”
Allen waved his monstrous talons dismissively.
“Love?” He laughed another bitter laugh. “Whatever I felt, it wasn’t love. If I was in love with anything, it was the idea of Maya and me together. There was no intimacy there, or reciprocated feelings. It was all me being a bad friend to her, and an even worse friend to Todd.”
“She didn’t ever seem to mind.”
“Todd did,” Allen shot back. “I thought he was such an asshole. But he was the one she wanted to be with. I was the asshole for hanging around and waiting for her to change her mind.”
“Some girls like a safety net,” Elayna shrugged. “They keep other guys around to let their guy know that he better keep his shit in line. They don’t ever plan to sleep with the other guy, or guys, but they give them enough attention to make them think it may happen one day. If you had stepped away from the situation, how long do you think Maya would have taken to find a new male best friend?”
Allen shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I can only take responsibility for my own decisions. I was such a douche.”