Living Legacy: Among the Dead (Zombie Apocalypse)

by RWK Clark

  Living Legacy

  Among the Dead

  by

  R.W.K. Clark

  Copyright © 2015, 2016 R.W.K. Clark

  All rights reserved, www.rwkc.us

  This is work of fiction, all names, characters, locales, and incidents are product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual people places or events is coincidental or fictionalized.

  Published in the United States by Clarkinc.

  Printed and distributed by Amazon Digital Services LLC

  Edition 1.1 Last Updated 6-20-2016

  United States Copyright Office

  #: 1-3416897780

  International Standard Book Numbers

  ISBN-10: 0692517243

  ISBN-13: 978-0692517246

  ASIN: B014HW9XZO

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I dedicate this novel to my wonderful readers and for all the amazing people I’ve met and those I haven’t. To my family and loved ones, all your support will not be forgotten.

  Thank you

  PROLOGUE

  Jim Richardson thrust his hand into his pocket and withdrew a grimy handkerchief. It had once been white, but after years and years of soaking up the sweat from his brow it had turned a faded brownish-yellow that even the strongest bleach could not remedy. He looked it over, smiled to himself, and mopped his forehead with a single swipe. As he buried the piece of cloth back into his pocket he looked over his “office”: A large space filled with chemical vats and meters, alarms and tubes, all of which either brought in the materials needed to make plastic, or brought in what was needed to break it down. It didn’t matter which; the vats contained the volatile substances because no other holder could. Not without harming everything nearby, people included.

  Jim had worked for All-Purpose Plastics for thirty years, and he was beginning to count the years and days until his retirement, he dram about that moment in time when fishing and beer were the priority. He had no college degree; he was only aware of the dangers of his job because they told him. They had needed someone they could trust to follow strict protocol at all times, and he had proven himself trustworthy. They liked him, and they always made sure his bread was abundantly buttered. He made great money, and even though he didn’t get a regular vacation period (or even a day off, for that matter) they gave him a brand new car to drive every year, paid his mortgage off in-full, and they generously allowed his wife to remodel their home, footing the bill to stop her bitching about his hours. He loved the hours, truth be told. It protected him from her bitching as well.

  Today had been a bit off from the beginning: Jim had risen at four, showered, and made it to the plant about a quarter hour to five. Things had gone smoothly until exactly 7:23, nearly two-and-a-half hours later. While walking his rounds in his tank he had noticed a leak. The substance leaking was toxic; he knew this because they told him, and he believed every word they said. It had formed a substantial puddle on the floor, where a film had begun to form over the top as the hot goop cooled. According to procedure he had to gear up in a yellow rubber jumpsuit which completely covered him, and clean it up immediately. There was a special tank in one area of his worksite which he would dispose of the substance in. It was filled with water, and would not only supposedly neutralize the substance, it would subsequently dispose of it, carrying it out of the building to its new home, wherever that was. To a facility on the outskirts of town, he believed. He believed this because they had told him so, and they never lied.

  There was the equivalent of three large scoop shovels of goop to eradicate, and at one point he paid close attention to the stuff in his shovel. It had a weird color and appearance. When the light reflected off it one could swear the stuff was…moving.

  He shoved the thought from his mind and continued to do his job. He put a special container under the leak, and with awkwardly gloved hands shut off connecting valves and repaired the damaged piping. In no time the equipment, and entire area itself, was secure. He was up and safely running again. He filled out a three-page report, which was the worst part of his job, in his opinion, and personally walked it, in duplicate, to the office of the scientist in charge of this particular project, and the Big Cheese himself, respectively.

  Turning the paperwork in was generally uneventful, aside from a few questions to make sure he had followed procedures. He had, to a tee. He took great pride in being thorough and trustworthy; they were his best characteristics, according to the powers that be. He put in the rest of the days hours with nothing changing, except that he walked the floor for inspection rounds a few more times than usual. Accidents had a way of making you gun shy for a bit.

  ∞

  The next day was the same as the last, the same as always. Get up, go to work, do your work, go home. But today Jim had a severe bout of heartburn, so severe that nothing seemed to remedy it. He noticed a rash on his right wrist and forearm which was bothersome as well. He applied calamine lotion from the tank’s first aid kit, but it did little to help the itching at all, and he was thirsty, man was he thirsty! He chugged down more water that day alone than he had over the last five days combined, he was quite sure. Maybe he was coming down with a bug.

  By the following Monday Jim Richardson was in a bad way. Not only had his skin taking on a grayish pallor, it was sort of numb. His thirst increased steadily, and while his heartburn had ceased, he had not eaten a bite of food in nearly five full days. He just didn’t feel like anything sounded good. He was tired, but not worn out, and strangely enough, he felt strong and energetic, staying at work for the last two nights because he just couldn’t sleep. He noticed a lack of interest in everything, even his work. His wife expressed concern which he blew off clearly to her face. She nagged until he put a hole through the front door and went to work, where he had stayed. Okay, so he never had a temper problem, but why did she have to be such a rag?

  Now he felt a slight tug of concern. Not for his own personal well-being; he was sure he was fine. He was concerned that maybe the spill had caused a problem for him, therefore causing a problem for All-Purpose Plastics. That was the last thing he wanted. His life sort of revolved around this place, after all.

  He filled his thermos with water from the tap, and slamming it down in record time, he headed to the lab to talk to Sandberg, the head scientist in charge of the project. When he reached the main lab he cracked the glass door about four inches.

  “Sandberg, are you in here? It’s Jim.” There was no immediate response, but Jim went in anyway. If Mike Sandberg wasn’t in here he would just have a seat. He would be back soon enough.

  There were three chrome and plastic chairs next to the glass door. There was a cheap plastic coffee table with two copies of ‘Newsweek’ thrown carelessly on top. It was all covered in a layer of gray dust. He sat, the air escaping him loudly, and looked around the main lab entry area.

  To his right was a large green metal desk with a rubber top. A blotter calendar with the year 1998 was on top, and next to that an old-style cradle phone with five white buttons and one red one sat lifeless. A Lakers coffee cup with upside down pencils sat opposite the phone; not one of them had its lead intact.

  To his left were two heavy wood institutional-type doors. One led to the actual lab; its window was covered with a magazine cover from the other side. The other door led to Sandberg’s office. Its window was not covered, and the light was on.

  Jim stood and walked the fifteen feet to Sandberg’s door. He stumbled twice, but managed to keep his footing. What was that about? Ah, hell, keep your balance, Jim. He tried to smile to himself, but his face did not cooperate. He wasn’t surprised and didn’t c
are.

  After three short raps on Mike’s door the knob turned and there stood Sandberg. Jim hadn’t seen him since turning in his report on last week’s incident, and the look on Mike’s face told Jim that the scientist didn’t like what he saw.

  “Jim, what the hell happened to you?” Sandberg was so shocked by Jim’s appearance he couldn’t even close his mouth. His eyes got wider as Jim got closer. “Sit down, man, you look like death warmed over!”

  “I was hoping you could tell me, Mike. Since we work with such delicate and secretive garbage I thought I’d better come to you before seeing my HMO.” His voice was no more than a croak. It took Mike a minute to piece his sounds into a sentence he could comprehend. Jim sat in a chair to the right of Mike’s desk and looked up at him expectantly.

  “I’m glad you did that, Jim. Tell me all that is going on with you. When did it start? I’m sorry if I look a bit overwhelmed, but have you looked in the mirror lately?” Jim thought about that, or, at least, he tried. He couldn’t recall the last time he had looked in a mirror at all. Jim typically showered in the morning before leaving the house, but he had been here forever, it seemed. The house…what house? He found himself confused about where home was or what it even looked like.

  “I don’t know, Mike.” He must have even looked confused, which seemed to startle the scientist. Mike walked around his desk and fished a small round shaving mirror from the bottom right-hand drawer. He brought it to Jim and held it up to his face.

  His eyes were dead, just dead. There was no color to the irises; they seemed as black as the pupils themselves. His skin was not just dark gray, there were patches which appeared papery; they were even beginning to peel at the edges. The left nostril of his nose looked like it was deteriorating or something, and his tongue was black on the surface as well.

  “What the…?” Jim felt a bit of emotional discomfort at the sight, but at the same time he felt a smug satisfaction that he didn’t comprehend at all. He decided to go with it.

  Mike asked again for Jim to tell him everything. Richardson did the best he could. His voice was all but existent, and he felt like he was almost in a trance. The funny thing was, the more he heard Mike’s voice, the more annoyed and angry he became. It was akin to sandpaper on his skin.

  Mike went around his desk and picked up his phone. “I’m calling Mikelson.” Mikelson was the president of All-Purpose and the only other person Jim came into close contact with. “What was the first sign that you recognized that told you things were…off?”

  “It seemed like I looked pale, and I had a rash. Can I have a drink of water?” Mike went to a small sink in the corner and, fetching a Styrofoam cup from the cupboard over the sink, he brought it to Jim.

  It was gone in seconds. Jim lurched blindly to the sink and managed to down five more before leaning contentedly against the basin and looking back at Sandberg. Something was sparking in Sandberg’s mind. Something bad.

  He recalled the preliminary testing which had been done on the substance Jim was in charge of overseeing. Testing such as this is extensive; so extensive that this particular battery of tests had lasted more than two years. You find a problem, you rectify it, and you move on. They had had plenty of rounds of this cycle. The plastic was called ‘Soligel’, and it promised to be the plastic of the future, if they could just iron out the bugs.

  The first handful of problems were simple, easily rectifiable. Small things like chemical imbalances in the ‘recipe’. The real problem had reared its ugly head when it came to testing for safety around humans and animals. None of the team had any problems, but the experimental animals had an issue. The seemed to almost ‘die’, yet they were living. Dissection experiments had shown no organs were functioning in the rats except for their brains. There were dusty death from the inside out. They had been unable to pinpoint the cause, and lack of further evidence of destruction had led them to virtually cover up the entire shortcoming.

  Now it seemed they had acted too soon.

  Harvey Mikelson answered his emergency extension, and Sandberg used code to fill him in without giving away his words to Jim, who now had his head down and was drinking directly from the faucet. This was bad indeed. Mikelson told Mike he would be to his office shortly to help assess the situation and make a decision regarding the proper course of action. They were making millions off Soligel. If they pulled the product now, well, let’s just say crap rolls downhill.

  Sandberg recalled how the rats who had not undergone dissection seemed to change behaviorally before their very eyes. If they were eating and one rat began to nibble on the kibble in another’s dish, things became violent. One such confrontation between the rodents ended when each limb was pulled off another; he lay squirming in his own dust. Mike had to remove the animal’s head before it would stop moving. This led to another round of…well, playing, really. They would pick the rats with the shaggiest fur and the deadest eyes, the most violent, and they would put them through various means of torture, just to see how long it would take for them to die. In the end they concluded brain death was the only way, by any means possible.

  Because they had abandoned their studies to move on with the actual production of Soligel, they really didn’t know what had spawned the adverse reaction the rats had to the substance. Frankly, none of them had cared. The money began rolling in before they had even put a pen to any contracts. They had gone blind, figuratively speaking.

  There was a sharp knock at Sandberg’s office door, and Mikelson made his way in just as Mike had convinced the staggering Richardson to take a seat again. Jim didn’t even notice that the chair had been moved; it was much closer to the sink.

  “Jim. I hear you aren’t feeling well.” Harvey Mikelson’s voice was deep and a bit gravelly, matching his imposing six-foot-four build to a tee. “Tell me what has been going on.”

  Now Jim found he was really feeling pissed. Repetition. Why all the repetition? He opened his mouth and made the words, but the sound of his voice was monstrous. It gurgled and smacked of his own rotten saliva.

  Harvey listened as best he could, pretending to put with a golf club he had brought in with him. “Mm-hmm,” he would mutter in an appeasing fashion whenever Jim seemed to pause.

  “I’m tired, so tired,” he croaked to Mikelson.

  “What you need is rest, a long rest,” said Harvey. Mikelson was right. Jim believed him, because Harvey would never lie to him.

  Jim Richardson didn’t even hear the swooshing of the wind as Mikelson’s golf club swung hard through the air, and thanks to the poisonous toxins in his body he didn’t feel a thing when the sturdy club connected with his rotting skull, ripping the skin of his neck and disconnecting his head completely from his body.

  It landed in the sink, drops of water landing in his gaping mouth.

  Harvey Mikelson looked at Sandberg with a grim smile and said, “Fore…!”

  CHAPTER 1

  It’s Thursday night.

  As I lie in my bed in my UCLA dorm room the fog begins to clear from my mind. I was sleeping. I was suddenly aware that I was sleeping no longer. What woke me? I listened closely to the sounds around me; the room was too dark to see. I was soon able to identify the sound of my roommate, Lilith, moving around. As I strained to hear what she was doing I realized she had returned to the sink; she was having a drink of water…again. I groaned and tossed off my light blankets, swinging my feet to the floor. The floor felt ice cold, even though the night was comfortable, warm enough for the windows to be open.

  “Lil, are you awake? Are you thirsty again? Maybe you’re sick. You should see campus medical.” All I could hear in response was her gulping down the chilled tap liquid. I looked at the clock: 11:30 pm. I had turned in around 8:30, early for me, due to an important biology exam. I was prepared, but I wanted to be well rested. This was the second time Lilith had managed to wake me attempting to quench her nagging thirst.

  As I listened to the sounds she made while drinking I felt a pang of
jealousy; I found the water to be repulsive. It began with a slight bitter taste which put me off, and it had grown exceedingly worse over the last few months. I simply couldn’t stomach it, couldn’t get it past the nose on my face, but it seemed to bother no one else. I was dying to taste good water, to feel it run its course from my mouth to my stomach, but I couldn’t. The fact is, everyone else continued to drink it heartily, even in its putrid state. Now it was flashing all over television that we are actually short of water all over. They say nothing regarding the smell and rank flavor. None of this made any sense to me, but not another soul seemed to bat an eye at the situation.

  The water wasn’t the only issue, and neither was the blasé attitude everyone had toward it. These were just the tip of the iceberg. The truth of the matter is that these things were accompanied by a problem which brought a cold chill of fear and apprehension to me: No one was the same. At that point I could not quite put a finger on the differences I saw, so subtle they were. But they were there nonetheless. Everyone was just…off. At that point it felt much like it must feel to awaken in a parallel universe where everything is the same, but it is darkly different. This is the only way I can describe the changes in personality I was witnessing at that time. Now I know it to be about so much more.

  My entire life had begun to be characterized by apprehension and suspicion when it came to literally everyone I came into contact with, on campus and off. In those initial days, before I knew what was happening to the world around me, I simply thought I was losing my mind slowly but surely. How could everyone be different but me? I had started to conclude that I was not only paranoid, but sported fanciful illusions as well. As I became aware that the opposite was true I felt an odd mixture of terror and relief that was quite disconcerting.

  People were changing, and not just in Los Angeles. They were changing all over the world. Initially it was just a behavioral; shorter fuses, longer periods with less sleep, etc. Soon I began to notice the paling of their skin, everyone’s skin. There was an emptiness in their eyes which actually seemed to progress, and I can honestly say that was the worst part then. The look, or lack thereof, in their eyes. No one was ‘home’ upstairs but me.