Evolution of the Dead

by R. M. Smith

  As she walked to the front of the store to go outside, a car went speeding past dangerously close to the front full glass window. It barely missed the corner of the building. Kay heard tires squeal and then a loud crash.

  “What the hell?”

  Another car went speeding past the glass front of the store. Then another. Beyond the frontage road, across a bridge spanning the highway, a fire truck was speeding with its lights flashing, the siren blaring. It crossed the bridge coming toward the Rent-A-Center.

  Kay asked herself, “What’s going on out there?”

  A bell dinged as she opened the front door. As soon as she stepped outside, a car came screeching toward her. The front of the car slammed into the door, sending Kay and glass flying. Her body was sliced in two by a window support. Another car slammed into the back of the first. They both rolled over her body. Then the fire truck smashed through the front of the building.

  In his office, Norman had just about convinced Rita that it was ok to give him a blow job. “No one will come in here,” he said as he looked up at her holding her by her hips. “Kay’s watching the front.”

  Rita pursed her red lips. Shaking her hips, she pressed her large breasts into his face. “Why do we gotta do this in here, Normie? Why can’t we do it like last time?”

  “That’s our secret, baby. Now come on. Why not give Normie some lovin?”

  She went to her knees in front of him.

  She undid his belt.

  “You need to stand on the step stool like last time,” she said.

  The whole store shook when the fire truck slammed into the building.

  “What the hell was that?” he said as he tucked his shirt into his pants. “Did someone hit the store?”

  Rita looked up at him with questions and concern in her eyes.

  “You stay here. I’m going to check this out.”

  “But I…”

  “Rita, stay there god dammit.”

  Leaving his office, shutting the door behind him, he quickly walked to the front of the store. He stopped in his tracks as he came into the showroom. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The whole front of the store was gone. Ceiling tile swung loosely here and there. Wires dangled. Sparks were shooting out of the wall where the large TVs once hung. Window beams were bent. Glass was littered all over the floor.

  A fire truck had crashed right through the front of the building! A fireman in the passenger seat was now hanging out through the shattered windshield. All of the rental furniture had been thrown toward the back of the store from the impact.

  “No!” Norman screamed, “Not my fucking store!”

  Someone was trying to stand up next to the fire truck. It was a fireman! Norman ran over to him. “Are you alright?”

  The fireman slowly stood up.

  “Do you need any help?”

  As he turned to face him, Norman was shocked to see that the fireman didn’t have any eyes. His skin was pale. His veins had popped out, almost to the point of bursting.

  “What the hell?”

  The fire man threw up toward him. Norman stepped back. It splashed near him but didn’t touch him

  “Holy shit!”

  Running back to his office, Norman went inside and slammed the door shut. This was some serious shit! What the hell was going on here? Was it the end of the world?

  Rita was sitting in his chair, filing her nails, leaning back. “What’s going on out there, Normie?”

  “I uh, need to check on something, in the warehouse. I’ll be right back.”

  With his hands shaking, he grabbed a color coded key off his desk and ran out of his office toward the warehouse. He nearly knocked over one of the other girls as he ran past.

  He yelled “Get the hell out of the way!”

  Fuck all these people, he thought. I need to get somewhere safe!

  If All Goes Well

  In a lab in the lower levels of the Clinical Pathology Laboratories in Orlando, Scientist Edmond Jesseph said to himself, this is unbelievable.

  Making sure that his large belly wouldn’t bump the microscope, he took in a deep breath and held it as he leaned forward to view the slide one more time. He had seen this specimen hundreds of times in the last few days, and with each subsequent viewing, it intrigued him even further.

  He said to himself, “How can this be? How did this avoid being seen?”

  The specimen, routinely marked and cataloged, had been brought into the lab for standard testing several days before. There had been no additional remarks about the capsule enclosed slide, nothing was noted as being out of the norm. No special studies were needed.

  As Jesseph routinely studied the slide, as he had done to thousands of other slides during his career, he noticed, as usual, one of the cell walls appeared to have a slight blemish on it. He knew all cells had a slight discoloration on at least one edge of the outer cell wall. As a matter of fact, all living cells had the discoloration; from animals to plants to humans.

  He didn’t know why at the time, but Jesseph took it upon himself to look at the blemish a little harder. Could it have been fate? A whim?

  As he studied it, he became captivated by a strange abnormality lying between the outer layers of the cell. He asked his colleague Doctor Julie Snow to verify his findings. She collaborated. The oddity was something neither of them could recall ever deeply studying in all of their years of carcinogenesis. They had both simply thought it was part of the normal transformation of the cell.

  “We have discovered something here quite unique, doctor,” Julie said as she stood behind him, a clipboard in her arms with pages and pages of scribbled notes clipped to it.

  “Indeed we have.”

  He took in another deep breath. He had been contemplating a hypothesis, something unheard of in this community. He turned to face Ms. Snow. She was shorter than he; an attractive woman, 39 years old, single, black hair, black wire frame glasses, a slight quirk on the side of her mouth when she smiled.

  “What we have here is an unknown.” Jesseph said, his eyes serious. “This discovery could change everything.”

  “Yes it could,” she said straight-faced.

  He exhaled, an overweight man of 57. His lab coat was tight around his stomach. He had gray hair and a long gray goatee. “Who should we tell?”

  “Maybe we should delay, perform a few more tests. Perhaps wait a few days – maybe wait until after the holiday weekend. Clear our minds a little. Let’s not tell anyone of this yet, doctor.”

  “It definitely does need more study,” he agreed, crossing his arms. “I know we’ve spent a great deal on this already and the rest of our work has fallen behind; but Julie, we need to be 100% sure of this.”

  He shook his head in disbelief as he leaned down to the microscope once more. He couldn’t believe he was the first to discover this underlying anomaly, this tissue within the cell wall. How it could have been overlooked for years had him simply flabbergasted.

  Why would science overlook it? Why would they simply let it pass by without study? It made no sense to him.

  If his hypothesis was correct, the small bit of tissue was actually a different form of life that had been trapped in the cell wall.

  “But what kind of life?” His wife asked him over dinner on more than one occasion since the discovery.

  He could never find an answer. Hours and hours of study came and went without any answers.

  How it got trapped there was something that he and his colleague needed to study further.

  It was hard to fathom a guess, but Jesseph hypothesized that this had been confined on purpose.

  By man, by nature, by something unnatural, he didn’t know; but if his theory was correct, then the actual evolution of mankind had been a mistake. Mankind had been allowed to evolve because this other irregularity had been stunted, shunned, locked inside the cell wall. It had not been allowed to evolve.

  “If I’m right, and I believe you feel the same way,” he whispered. “Logi
cally, we all shouldn’t be here as humans. We should have grown from the tissue inside the cell wall – not from the cell itself. The anomaly is the more dominant tissue.”

  “Yes, I am in agreement with you, doctor. I believe, in retrospect, that humanity was given the chance at life,” Julie said matter-of-factly. “It was trapped by nature. This cannot be defined by science. This is nature. Nature did this. Nature trapped it.”

  “Yes. But the question remaining is why.”

  Jesseph sighed heavily. His palms were sweaty. “We should be something different,” he said with a wipe of his brow. “Whatever this was intended to be is what we, humans, should be.”

  “Humanity evolved wrong,” Julie added solemnly.

  “Yes.”

  “Doctor, we should test it! I know we discussed waiting until after the holiday, but perhaps we should remove it from the cell wall. Give it the opportunity it was never given. Let it grow. Let it flourish. It could become a new species, a new life never seen before on earth. Doctor, we need to release it. This is an amazing discovery. We will definitely be nominated for the Lasker Award, perhaps even the Nobel Prize if all goes well.”

  Jesseph nodded. “Yes. If all goes well. Ms. Snow, we need more studies on this. We need to get more people involved. There are safeguards we must follow, you know this. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. At least we know we’re the ones who discovered it.”

  “Yes. You’re right, doctor,” she said with a sigh, giving into him. “There are rules to follow. Safety is paramount.”

  He nodded with a tight lipped smile. His brow was covered in sweat. His face was getting red.

  Snow asked, “Doctor, are you feeling alright?”

  “Yes. I’m - just a bit tired.”

  She agreed. “Oh, me too.”

  “Fine then, shall we take a break? Perhaps go get something to eat? It is nearly lunchtime.”

  She smiled kindly. “No, I had plans to meet with Pratt downtown.”

  “Ah, ok, well, tell him h…hello for me, won’t you?” He put his hand to his chest.

  “Are you sure you’re ok?”

  He nodded, his lips tighter. His heart was starting to beat heavily in his chest. He felt his blood pressure going up.

  He nodded, “Yes, just going to sit…here for a min…a minute longer…”

  He fell backward off the stool. His heavy body crashed to the floor.

  “Doctor! Doctor are you alright?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Julie went into a panic. She needed to call someone! She needed to help him! Quickly running into a small office outside the testing lab, she dialed security.

  “Security.”

  “Doctor Jesseph just passed out in Lab 44! Please hurry! I think he had a heart attack!”

  “We’ll get a call into 911 right away.”

  “Thank you.” She hung up and hurried back into the lab.

  Untouched, the slide still sat on the microscope.”

  “This can be all mine,” she thought, her eyes darting around the room, looking down at Jesseph, back up at the slide.

  She took the slide off the microscope, encased it in a slide container, and slipped it down inside her lab jacket pocket. Forging Jesseph’s signature on a requisition form while he lay dead on the floor next to her, she solicited permission for a micro dissection on the cell sample that she was bringing down to the Bright Field microscopy lab.

  On the way, she passed running EMTs.

  In the microscopy lab, the technician inside happily dissected the cell on the slide once he saw Jesseph’s signature on the request form.

  Securely, the abnormality was cut free from the embedded wall. The technician was able to successfully contain it. He handed it to her in a different enclosed slide capsule.

  “Tell Doctor Jesseph we still need to finish our chess game,” the technician said as Julie quickly left the lab and headed to the elevators. She was already running late for her lunch date with Pratt.

  Outside, she was able to timely hail a cab as she left the Clinical Pathology Laboratories. She told the cabbie, a short Mexican man, to step on it as she sat in the back seat on the passenger side. They made their way downtown.

  Julie took the capsule out of her pocket. She looked through the clear glass. She hoped to see the irregularity but knew it would be impossible since it was microscopic. The naked eye would never be able to see it.

  I’m not going to share this discovery with the fat man, she thought to herself. And screw the Lasker Award. I want recognition for this discovery! I want fame!

  As she held it up, the sun sparkling madly in the glass, the cabbie suddenly slammed on the brakes as someone pulled out in front of him.

  The cabbie screamed, “Stupid ass!”

  The sudden stop caused Julie to drop the slide capsule. It flew forward out of her hand end over end.

  It hit a credit card reader on the back of the seat in front of her. An infinitesimal crack opened in the capsule.

  It fell down between Julie’s feet. She reached for it.

  “Got it!” she said softly.

  Four minutes later, the cabbie stopped near Lake Eola downtown to let his lady passenger out. She had been quiet back there ever since the close call with the other idiot driver.

  He hoped she wasn’t mad at him or would leave a bad review on the cab website.

  He got out of his side and ran around her side to let her out. Julie fell out of the car, gagging, holding her throat. She wasn’t able to breathe. Her skin was turning yellow. She was coughing and gagging, leaning against the cab for support. Her back was arched as she deeply coughed and then threw up all over the sidewalk.

  Some man wearing a construction hat came running over to see what was wrong.

  The evolution of the dead had begun.

  Thock! Thunk! Thuck!

  Running toward his orange Charger, Scott and Kim had to jump over tiny worms popping up out of the cement of the parking garage.

  On the street, a fire hydrant blew, throwing infected water into the air. It came down like blood orange rain.

  Kim yelled, “What the fuck is going on?”

  Scott didn’t answer. He was frantically going through keys on his key ring looking for the one for his car.

  “Hurry, god dammit, hurry!” Kim squealed jumping up and down on the passenger side of the car. Her arms had broken out in goose bumps.

  With shaking hands, Scott was finally able to unlock his car, jump in and reach over to unlock Kim’s door so she could get in.

  He yelled, “We gotta get out of here now!”

  Gunning the engine, he reversed, smashing into a parked car. Shaking his head, he shoved the car into drive. The tires squealed. He sped through the garage, down and out onto the street. He sideswiped a parked car on the side of the road. Kim held onto the dashboard, her fingers digging in, her mouth held open in fear.

  They sped along the lakeside, passing burning cars, a police car with its lights still flashing, an overturned cement truck, and hundreds of the dead. As the car’s tires passed, worms popped up through the cement.

  “What are we gonna do?” Kim asked, her eyes wide.

  “Get the fuck away from here! Go to the airport!”

  “I gotta find my husband!”

  Scott glanced over at her. “What? You just told me you hoped he was dead! Why did you change your mind? Why you worried about him now?”

  “I’ve been more worried about saving my own ass.”

  “And now you’re worried about his?” Scott yelled as he dodged a burning car on the side of the road. A man stepped around the front of the car with his hand outstretched.

  “No, not at all; but if I don’t at least try to find him then he’ll hit me.”

  “Hit you? He hits you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck him. He deserves to die.”

  “I got to at least try.”

  Scott slammed on the brakes. The car went skidding sideways in the overgrown
street. “Ok. See ya.” He reached in front of her and shoved her door open.

  Shocked, she looked at him, her mouth open. “You’re not gonna help me? You’re gonna push me out into that shit?”

  He said, “Your hubby is not my problem. If you wanna go hunting for his ass then you’re on your own! I have my own family to worry about.”

  “Well I wasn’t your problem either but you sure helped me get out of here.”

  He let out a short laugh. “We’re not quite out yet and I’m not gonna go backtracking into that shit to look for your abusive fucking husband!”

  Kim turned in her seat to look out the back window. Cars were overturned. Water was spraying out of broken fire hydrants. Puke and shit covered everything. Dead people stood here and there reaching for them. A woman on the side of the street spewed a continuous stream of vomit at them. It splashed on the ground behind their car.

  “Yeah,” she said, turning back around. “Fuck him. He’s dead already anyway.”

  They sped out of downtown.

  With synched sighs of relief, Carmen and Maria finally found a clear path leaving downtown.

  Maria was crying over the loss of her husband as she drove, wiping tears from her eyes with her palm.

  Carmen sat on the passenger side, her hand on her bare knee. The pain in her broken foot was screaming up at her in a biting ache. She wished she had at least some aspirin to take the edge off. Looking out the window, her eyes darted back and forth along the side of the highway expecting a corpse to jump out of the bushes or from behind a car.

  Please, I don’t want any more bad feelings, she thought. It’s already bad enough. No more.

  Maria asked with a sniffle, “Where should we go?”

  “Just head south. Stay on the highway."

  They came up to a traffic jam. Flustered, Maria asked, “God, now what?”

  “They didn’t make it very far,” Carmen said quietly under her breath. “These are the people that sped away when the infection hit.”

  Several of the dead came walking out from behind some of the cars, their arms outstretched.

  Alarmed, Maria asked, “Do we back up?”