Revelations - 02

by T. W. Brown

  Kirsten could no longer help it. This one pitiful thing had managed to do something with no real effort that The Big Man had to work hard to accomplish.

  Kirsten cried.

  

  “Doctor?” the weak, raspy sound of Jane’s voice woke him with a start. The woman’s eyes were bright and clear; she’d been awake for awhile.

  “Please, call me Reginald.” He sat up rubbing the sleep from his own still-tired eyes.

  “Reginald,” Jane said after clearing her throat a few times, “can I have more juice?”

  “Absolutely.” He practically launched himself out of the chair he’d been sleeping in for who knows how long. “Apple again?” Jane nodded.

  He hurried over to the cabinet and fetched a pair of the green boxes. When he turned around, he was surprised to see Jane sitting up with her legs dangling over the edge of the bed. The blue-green scrubs top she was wearing was several sizes too big for her nearly emaciated frame and hung down from one shoulder, exposing all of one small, partially shriveled breast. Still, it was one of the first real breasts not belonging to a corpse or cadaver in nearly three years that Reginald had seen. Before he could tear his eyes away, a noticeable stirring had already begun below his waist. In an instant, an awkward situation was jutting from the front of his loose fitting bottoms.

  He brought his eyes up as his free hand went down to hurriedly shift things to a less conspicuous position. His eyes met Jane’s and it was as if his face had suddenly been thrust into a blast furnace. His hand froze, and an overwhelming feeling of shame swept over him.

  “Umm…Jane…uh…” he stammered.

  “A little flash of a tit git you that worked up, Reggie?” Jane smirked.

  “No…I mean…you see…”

  “S’okay,” Jane leered. “Ain’t had no man all hot n’ bothered over me in quites a whiles.”

  “I mean no disrespect, it’s—”

  Jane’s braying laughter cut him off. She howled long and loud, flecks of spittle arcing through the air, catching the fluorescent light and sparkling like prismatic diamonds. She pulled one leg up and rested her chin on it, locking eyes on Reginald until he shyly looked away.

  “So, we the last man and woman alive or somethin’?”

  “That is a possibility,” Reginald sighed in relief, finally on to a subject he could converse comfortably about. “There has been no outside contact since my colleagues—my late colleagues—and I were brought to this facility.”

  “So how did I end up here?” Jane slid off the bed, testing the steadiness of her legs before finally committing her full weight.

  “You and the others were already in place when I arrived.” Reginald dropped his gaze to the floor once again.

  “So-o,” Jane drew the word out, and took her first tentative step, still uncertain about her legs ability to support her, “I was supposed to be like a lab rat?”

  “Umm…well…” Reginald felt like his mouth was shrinking as his tongue swelled to ten times its normal size.

  “Don’t sweat it, Reggie,” Jane snorted. “I’ve seen worse things happen on the streets.”

  She had managed to cross the room and now stood in front of the trembling doctor. She draped one hand on each shoulder and leaned in close. “Did you save me from the lab, Reggie?”

  “Umm…well, I saw no reason to continue with the protocols and didn’t feel it appropriate to leave you strapped to the table.”

  “Are there other doctors?”

  “There were, but I’m the only one left.”

  “So we have one thing in common,” Jane smirked, looking around at her surroundings. “Are we in some secret cave or underground hideout or somethin’?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Reginald nodded. “Remember those pictures on the monitors?” Jane nodded. “Well, that’s from a camera at the top of the bunker that sits above the entrance to this facility.” Jane’s face paled a bit. “Oh, no! There’s no need to worry. We’re quite safe in here.”

  “But what about getting out?”

  “I’m afraid that is unlikely at best.”

  “So,” Jane walked back over to the bed and flopped down on it, her face a clear picture of her disappointment. “It’s just the two of us…forever.”

  “I’m sorry, Jane,” Reginald nodded.

  “Yeah,” the woman’s head snapped up and glared, “about the whole ‘Jane’ thing…my name is Lucy Grimes.”

  

  The hot, humid summer afternoon would have made the hardest Southerner seek the comfort of shade or air-conditioning. However, the crowd of Southerners gathered at the entrance of the old church that had stood for years as one of Charleston’s noted landmarks felt none of the discomfort. In the rear of the crowd Jenifer-zombie stood, tottering back and forth, swaying with the surge of the mob’s ebb and flow.

  Those in the front of the pack pounded relentlessly, but with minimal effect, on the huge wooden doors. The sounds of yells and screams had no meaning beyond serving as a beacon advertising that food was near. The never-ending desire to feed was now the only impulse driving Jenifer-zombie. None of the few impressions that had flickered briefly in those first couple of days remained. There was no concept of hot, cold, light or dark…all that existed was one constant signal.

  Feed.

  As the day dimmed and the hot summer afternoon shifted to sultry summer night, more creatures like Jenifer-zombie gathered, drawn by the sound. Sound meant food. None of these creatures would remember how often they’d been drawn to a sound and not discovered food. Even as they gathered in numbers, some in the rear would hear a new sound: a window breaking, a metal can being blown over and rolling a few feet. That would be all they needed to turn in a new direction and wander off…past the window or empty can now laying up against the curb.

  As the sun rose unnoticed by the mob, shots rang out from the steeple of the old church. Sometimes, one of the mob would slump over and melt to the ground between the bodies clustered around it. There was no notice other than a slight surge where the gap was immediately filled.

  After an hour, the shooting ceased. Dead eyes drifted up at the sound of voices. There was no recognition of the two people arguing. But there was a renewed surge of desire in the mob. Mouths opened and a hellish choir sang in moans, mewls, gurgles and cries.

  As the sun set, the mob remained, now spilling onto other streets. Seven thousand strong they remained. Quiet now, the sounds of arguing long gone from their single-minded brains. Sandwiched between others, Jenifer-zombie stood…waited.

  

  The old man grasped the armrests of his wheelchair and braced for the impact of the body walking right for him. What had once been one of his nurses was now something from a nightmare. The white smock had turned black from the long-since-dried blood where the nurse’s throat had been torn out.

  The smell made the man gag, but he’d been out of food for two days and all that came up was watery bile. A ribbon of dense, sticky drool hung like an opaque cord from his chin for a moment, similar to the dark one hanging from the nurse’s.

  A scowl deepened the wrinkles on the face of the man in the wheelchair as he struggled to remember. It was futile, he couldn’t remember his own name, much less that of the doctors, nurses, and others who wandered the halls. On good days, he couldn’t remember the screaming, or things like seeing the pretty, dark-haired nurse who gave the best sponge-baths falling under several bodies; bodies that bit and ripped and tore. On good days, he couldn’t remember all the blood.

  Today was not a good day.

  He remembered being in his wheelchair after having a nice push down to the huge window that looked out over the city of Chicago and Lake Michigan. Then, the screams came. It was unlike anything he’d ever heard, and that included his time in Korea where men had died around him what seemed like every single day of the two years he spent in that godforsaken place.

  No, this scream was different. And everybody seemed to realize it. He didn
’t remember seeing stories on the news earlier that night. Or any of the other stories that had been broadcast the four days previous. He only vaguely remembered that, for some reason, his precious Cubs had not been on the television at all.

  Soon, the screams were coming from everywhere. Then, he’d seen the doctor. Only, he looked…wrong. One arm was all bloody, and he was sickly looking. And the eyes…they were gooey and bloodshot, but something about that was wrong, too. The blood looked black, which really stood out against the pus-like whiteness that coated the eyes.

  The doctor had stepped into the room and stopped for a moment. The head moved in little jerks…like a bird’s. Then the doctor had come for him, mouth open, drooling. He remembered the smell that seemed to pour off the doctor much like the drool dripping from his mouth. Then, another person came in behind the doctor and that’s when the man really knew there was something terribly wrong.

  This second person had been a woman. Not a doctor or nurse, she was wearing what was left of her hospital gown. Only she’d been ripped open at the belly. Strands and bits of her insides were still tumbling out of the horrid gash. Both of them came towards him, arms outstretched, mouths working.

  They reached his chair, leaning in, oblivious to the man’s weak attempts to bat them away. He remembered hands, cold and sticky with blood, grasping his arms. Both leaned in and he felt mouths brush his skin, then…nothing. They stood and turned, walking out of the room and into the cacophony of screams echoing in the halls.

  That scene would replay several more times over the coming days…weeks. The man had seen others fall to these… people? Were they still people? He didn’t know. His memory being what it was, he lost track. And sometimes it seemed like it was happening for the first time all over again.

  Eventually, the screams stopped. The man, unable to get out of his wheelchair rolled around looking for anybody, familiar or otherwise. He was alone. Scared. Confused. He knew something was terribly wrong. Only, he just couldn’t get what was left of his mind to clue him in on what it was.

  And that is how he remained as the days turned to weeks. Sometimes he forgot everything and spent hours or even days re-experiencing the initial horror of the sights that filled the floor he remained trapped on. He was incapable of using stairs, and there would be no elevator coming. A fire on one of the lower floors which—fortunately or otherwise—burned itself out quickly, left the building without power on that first terrible night.

  The man didn’t eat much, and, for the past several days he’d survived on cans of Ensure. The last of those cans was now empty and cast aside in a corner. Four of the dead who’d shared the floor with him all these days had wandered into the room, probably drawn by the sound of the can clattering on the dirty linoleum floor.

  Every time he left the room, or made a noise, they came. They’re more forgetful than I am, the man mused. The worst part was when they touched him with their cold, dead hands. It used to be the smell, but he’d been stuck in this chair so long that he could no longer smell them over himself. Sometimes, when he shifted positions even a tiny bit, the sores and filth now keeping him welded to the chair would tear and send a wave of stench up to his nostrils that would make him gag or be physically ill.

  This small group came, carelessly colliding with him and his wheelchair. But, as always, it was as if they were repulsed by the cancer that was eating at him from within. They leaned in close, and as he’d done hundreds of times before, the man shut his eyes and prepared for death to come in the form of teeth. As always, he was disappointed.

  He watched them turn and leave. Angry and frustrated, he followed them, cursing and yelling, although even yelling, his voice was barely above what most people would consider conversational volume. More came, but in turn, each one eventually wandered away, paying little more attention to him than they did each other.

  The man rolled to the window at the end of the long hallway. He passed the nurse’s station where one of those things was actually sitting at the desk with the receiver from the telephone in its dead hand, its mouth working slowly as if in conversation. As he rolled past, the creature rose, following him, pulling the phone’s handset free and falling in his wake as he rolled through the garbage-strewn hall. When he stopped, the thing came in close, its cold mouth brushing the side of his face like a perverse kiss. Then, it wandered away leaving the man alone at the window.

  As the setting sun cast beautiful purple and orange streaks across Lake Michigan, the man winced. A pain bloomed in his chest, shooting down his left arm and turning his hand into a claw. The man’s heart usurped cancer’s hold and claimed his life. Just before his eyes glazed over in death, the man had one, final clear thought.

  My name is Charles.

  

  Mackenzie wiped the sweat from her eyes and took a moment to look at her hands. The blisters would eventually turn to hardened calluses. Eww, she thought. While never too much on being ‘girlie’, Mackenzie had managed to retain an outward appearance of femininity. That hadn’t been easy growing up on a farm.

  She had no aversion to hard work, but there were plenty of jobs that didn’t leave one looking harsh and masculine. To that extent, Mackenzie had joined her school swim team. When she was awarded a scholarship and a place on the Oregon State swim team, her mother had been so proud. Until her dad got sick, neither parent missed a meet. So, Mackenzie had stayed trim and learned about running a business while minoring in agricultural studies.

  Upon graduation, she returned home and within a year, had restructured the family business. Things had gone so well that when two neighboring farms fell on hard times, she scooped them up and converted them to small plots that people could rent and farm themselves. It had been a huge success, and she found all sorts of creative ways to part the wealthy city folk from their abundance of cash by offering classes on how to farm their plots as well as supplying them with all their gardening needs at a modestly marked-up price.

  Things were really starting to go well when the world up and died…then got back up. So many horrible, unspeakable things had happened in such a short period that Mackenzie hadn’t really had time to process it all. Now, here she was building a fence around an island with her mom and a man she’d known for all of about three weeks.

  “Hey!” Juan’s voice snapped her out of her reverie. “You gonna dig that hole, or stand there staring into space?”

  “Bite me,” Mackenzie snorted and plunged the post-hole digger into the clay.

  “No, but I know where you can go if that’s what turns you on.”

  “Juan!” Margaret snapped.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” Juan dropped his head and focused on holding the four-by-four in place as the older woman shoveled in some of the Kwik-Dry Koncrete mix from the nearby wheelbarrow.

  “I swear,” Margaret Simms sighed over-dramatically, “you two should just kiss and get it over with.”

  “Mother!”

  “Margaret!”

  The two gasped in unison, both making inadvertent eye-contact which only exacerbated their blushing. Just as fast, they returned to their current tasks with renewed vigor; Mackenzie driving her tool into the ground and depositing the contents in a pile beside the deepening hole, Juan stamping down on the concrete while making small adjustments on the pole to make it as straight as possible. Neither said another word or brought their eyes up from the ground for several minutes. Margaret smiled broadly as she glanced back and forth between the two who were making exaggerated attempts not to notice one another now.

  Margaret wasn’t blind or an idiot. It was especially obvious with Juan how he watched Mackenzie when she wasn’t looking. The big oaf looked at her with the most obvious set of puppy-dog eyes. It was so cute. And Mackenzie, her brand of flirting was the same as it had always been, act tough, but lure her intended target in with occasional feigned helplessness. This fence was the perfect example. Mackenzie knew full-well how to set fencing. Yet, she’d had Juan show her each step. And today, s
he’d asked him to demonstrate how to dig the holes. Of course, that was after watching the poor boy struggle to hold his fork at dinner. His hands were an absolute mess.

  The sound of Jade’s barking froze all three. Each looked up to see the big dog down at the water’s edge staring out into the river.

  “Run!” Juan barked.

  Together they ran for the cover of the trees and thick brush a little ways up the hill. They’d been planting the posts well back from the highest level that the tide could reach. Currently they were on a stretch that was like a small, level ledge between the trees that divided a marshy wetland from the beach.

  “Jade! Come!” Margaret ordered.

  The big dog gave one more bark, then turned and bounded up the beach and into the thick foliage where the three people were huddled together as they each unholstered one of the handguns they wore on their hips. The dog seemed to sense their nervousness and quickly quieted and crouched down as if it too were ready to spring into action.