by Jack Wallen
“The world is filled with naysayers. I myself have found a few inconsistencies I could point out. For instance –”
“I’m putting the recordings up on the site. All of them. You and your listeners can download and listen to every second of Jacob’s life from the blast to the end. And for those who doubt why this happened, pay close attention to the confessions of Dr. Godwin. It’s really him and it’s all very true. The man wiped out the planet for a few hundred million dollars. He thought he was only wiping out the Germans, which of course is ironic, considering much of his work was the continuation of the work of one Josef Mengele.”
Dead air. The moment all radio stations dread. I managed to silence Zombie Radio for a good twenty seconds. Those twenty seconds were all the victory I needed.
“Wow, are you serious? Mengele? So it’s all true? The fucking journal isn’t just a hoax?” The DJ’s voice was filled with shock and awe.
“It’s not a hoax. It’s all very real and I may well have found a way into the file that could contain the cure.” My words bounced out of my lips and sailed across the airwaves – hopefully into the ears of millions of listeners. The truth could be just as viral as lies.
“Nitshimi…you are one balls to the wall woman. I’m impressed and, again I say, I am in love. You must marry me.”
The DJ laughed and then played Billy Idol’s White Wedding. The guy certainly has a thing for the ‘80’s.
As the song danced out of the speakers I noticed the lights on the network switch going crazy. I logged into the server to check the stats, which turned out to be staggering. The audio files were flying off the drive. The world wanted to hear the truth; they wanted to believe. But didn’t we all? This new world has made naysayers out of everyone, and rightfully so. Monsters are real, and are swiftly becoming the norm. The stuff of nightmares and horror films has seeped from our imaginations and is flooding the streets of the cities across the world.
And we all want to believe – believe it isn’t real. None of it; the monsters, the death, the ash that fell from the sky, the cause…everything undead and forever damaged. But ultimately, the thing that really baffles us all is the cause.
A man, tempted by greed, creates a virus to end a race of people and, due to a slight oversight, amplifies the virus with a fusion generator of his own creation. And now? Now the films of Hollywood past are made real. The human condition is no longer a single linear path, but a multitude of parallel lines. Human, moaner, screamer, and who knows what else will evolve once they start re-infecting their own kind.
Inbred undead.
Fuck, why did I go down that path?
I was starting to worry the server couldn’t handle the load it was under. I made a note to set up some load balancing and fail over. I want the survivors of the world to have immediate, twenty-four hour access to the truth and nothing but.
I went back to making some notes when a crashing sound sent my heart into overdrive.
“Hello? Is someone there? Jean? Gunther? Sally?”
No answer was not a good sign. I called out again, this time a little louder, when the hiss of an opening door caught my attention.
Footsteps.
“Goddamn it! Hello?” I raised my voice to make sure whoever it was could hear me loud and clear. The reply was nothing more than a scrambling sound. Someone, not one of us, was there and I’m guessing it’s my phantom stranger.
“Hey, don’t go!” I stood up and ran full steam toward the sound.
A door ahead of me swung open. The hallway was dark, and all I could see was the shadow of another person holding the doors open and staring my way.
“Get out of here, all of you. If you stay you will die.” As soon as the last word spilled from the stranger’s mouth the doors were released and the stranger took off running.
“No! Wait!”
I realize danger has become a very relative word and is the normal state of nearly every moment of life now. It was easy to infer that the danger the stranger was referring to was the infernal horde that would eventually surround the building and tear down the walls to get to the one thing that can slake their hunger – our brains. But something was tickling the back of my mind telling me there was a subtext to his warning that should be given immediate attention.
Before I could take off after the stranger, a powerful arm wrapped itself around me, and a muffled voice spoke.
“Don’t move and don’t make a noise. This gun is loaded and I will not hesitate to use it.”
“How did you –”
“I said, don’t speak. I know this building better than you can imagine. I know its secrets…and its lies.”
I struggled uselessly against the human python around my chest.
“I said, don’t move. Now, I want that file. I want every copy you have.”
“Go to hell!”
“Sorry, honey, we’re already in hell. You’ll have to do better than that.”
“How about this?” I was lucky enough to get just enough of an angle to bring my foot up and connect with his most tender of bits. He dropped to the floor and I ran like I’ve never run before.
“Bitch! I’ll kill you!” The stranger’s voice became a distant echo as my tempo picked up with every step.
“Gunther! Jean! Sally!” I screamed, hoping to get everyone’s attention at once. Unfortunately my plan backfired as both Jean and Gunther came out and at me, closer to the threatening stranger. I had to act fast. I ran to the nurses’ station and grabbed the laptop.
“Run!” I waved everyone back toward the direction they came. “Run now!”
Without question, everyone made a one hundred-eighty degree turn and fled the scene. We made it back to Susan’s room and slammed the door shut. Before I could catch my breath, I noticed Sally was missing.
“Where’s Sally?” I asked, my voice ragged, raw.
“Bethany, what’s wrong?” Jean grabbed me by the wrist, which I summarily jerked away.
“Where’s Sally?” I spat, hoping the man would realize there was no time for banter.
“I think she went to the other floors to find food,” Gunther finally answered nervously.
“Fuck. We have to get her back here with us, now!”
“Bethany, what is wrong? What happened?” Jean insisted.
I gave everyone the rundown on what happened. There was no point hiding anything now that the shadow man had made his move. Obviously we were in very real – and very immediate – danger. Someone knows we have the file and that someone wants it. But why? I have no fucking clue.
Naturally everyone was near panic. But the one constant among the group was we could not give up that file, no matter the cost or danger.
“We have to find a way to neutralize that enemy.” Gunther seemed to drop into some military mode with which the rest of us were unfamiliar. “If we are able to take him out, we remove the immediate threat.”
“Before we bother with the stranger, we have to find Sally. If she’s out there and unaware, that man could find her and do who knows what to her.” The thought of Sally becoming collateral damage made me want to scream.
“Doesn’t she have a phone?” Jean brilliantly interjected.
I yanked my smart phone from my pocket and, as soon as the messaging client was open, tapped in:
‘get back to Susan’s room now!’
I hope the urgency translated. I would call her, but the last thing Sally needed was something drawing attention to her location. Sally needed stealth on her side.
‘And quietly,’ I added for good measure, trying to keep the woman from getting ambushed and, well, I don’t want to go there at this moment.
“I have an idea.” I opened up the laptop and checked the status of the last crack…nothing. I opened up the file I saved earlier that held the enigma code.
Ewdltygflepq
I carefully typed the code and pressed Enter. The cracker went to work. I have no idea how much time I have before the crack either works, or fai
ls.
“What is your plan?” Jean asked nervously.
“If I can get into the contents of that file and publish it for the world to read, whoever is hunting us will have no reason to kill us.” My mouth was on auto pilot as my eyes watched the crack work its magic.
“Unless whoever it is wants to prevent that very thing,” Jean replied dully.
“What do you mean?”
Jean stared at me with a surprised look in his eyes – as if saying ‘You really don’t get it?’ Fortunately, his words were much kinder than his look. “If someone wants this suppressed and you release it, they could kill you, and the rest of us, out of spite or anger.”
“Yes, and if we don’t open this up to the world, and whoever that is gets to us first, whatever is in this file will never see the light of day!” My voice was growing desperate for the crack to work and for Jean to understand my point. The crack seemingly came to a slow, grinding halt, as if seconds began to tick backwards, forwards, and then backwards again. In reality the application was burning away CPU cycles like a fat man burning through a tub of buttery popcorn at a film festival.
“Bethany, think about what you are doing. What that file contains might very well be the absolute salvation for the human race,” Jean was attempting to sway me with a gentle, fatherly voice. But before his voice could woo the idea from my head, Sally slammed against the door to the room.
“Help! Let me in! Please!” Her pounding was as desperate as her cries.
As the door opened, Sally spilled in and fell to the floor in a crying mass.
“Sally, what happened?” Jean, Gunther, and I converged on the sobbing woman to protect and comfort her.
“This man…I didn’t see his face…he held me down…had a syringe at my throat. He said he was going to rape me…and infect me,” Sally gasped out between sobs.
“Syringe? What was in it?” The answer to my question was probably obvious, but it had to be asked.
“He didn’t say what. Oh my God, Bethany! He said he was coming after us – all of us. He said he was going to infect us all.”
Gunther and I put a barricade against the door that Darth Vader himself couldn’t break down. There is no way some fuck-wad psycho is going to crash our party and spike our drinks with zombie-a-go-go. We haven’t survived this long to roll over and play undead. We will fight, and we will not lose.
“Jean, how is Susan?” I asked over my shoulder before I focused all of my attention on the laptop.
“She’s stable. If that man gets inside this room, it wouldn’t take much to tilt the scales in death’s favor. If you’re going to crack that file, you better do it now. The sooner we have that cure, the better her chances for survival.”
I got the point, loud and fucking clear. I gestured to Gunther to comfort Sally so I could return to the file.
Shortly after I turned my attention back to the laptop, it started showing signs of a possible break. I didn’t want to prematurely celebrate, but I nearly wet myself in anticipation. The cracker beeped once, signaling the software had managed to get through the encryption. A second two-beep sound would indicate the contents of the file had been successfully read and could be extracted.
I sat, staring at the screen, holding my breath. My eyes refused to blink as I watched the random strings of characters fly by.
Beep beep.
“It worked! The Mengele file has been cracked!” I nearly screamed.
“What does it say?” Jean said quietly, still standing by Susan’s side.
“No time. I have to get it posted first.” I fired up the wireless on the laptop and…hesitated.
I wasn’t sure. Should I do this? Upload the Mengele files for the world to see? I thought I knew exactly what was best for me, for us, for Susan. But now? Now I’m not so sure.
“Bethany, what are you waiting for?” Jean leaned into my personal space, sensing my hesitation, my doubt.
“I don’t know!” I yelped. My eyes scanned the room and landed on Susan. With the exception of her slow, shallow breathing, she lay motionless. She could easily have been mistaken for dead. As my eyes lingered on her small frame, my mind drifted back to Jacob – his unbreakable will and drive to get his journal to the masses. It always seemed that truth was his one and only guide. As he slowly transformed into a monster, his only concern had been saving the world.
In that moment I realized that Jacob must have known that there was some broader picture being painted. His focus was brought about by a fear that the bits of information we had were only a tiny fraction of a much grander plot. His paranoia was founded not in fear, but in truth. That was when I realized exactly what I had to do and, without further hesitation, I uploaded the file to the server and typed up a paragraph and a link pointing to the contents of the Mengele file.
And then I allowed everything to stop. Time momentarily stood still. Even if only for a fraction of a second, there was a hint of peace to breathe in. But as soon as that peace settled over me, it was summarily yanked away when our captive monster woke and roared his disapproval.
“Oh my God!” Gunther nearly screamed in frustration.
“We have to shut that thing up,” Sally followed up.
Sally was right, we had to shut the damned beast up before it drew too much attention from our psychotic stalker.
“I’ll take care of this.” Jean had the hypos in hand and was carefully pulling back our barricade from the door. Gunther began heading toward the door, gun in hand.
“No, you must watch this room. If that madman gets anywhere near these women you kill him. Can you do that?” Jean insisted.
Gunther nodded his head and stood at the door. The zombie in the other room was bellowing a scream of disapproval to wake the dead and undead alike. The screaming went on for another minute or so before it was finally silenced. That brief moment of hell-sound was all the reminder we needed that the danger outside far outweighed what we were facing within the walls of this hospital. Inside it was one maniac with a very big knife and gun. Outside was a legion of zombies that had one simple need – our brains.
Jean returned unharmed. We were all holding our breath, waiting for the fallout from the hell mouth beckoning its mad brethren. For some fucked-up reason, my brain tried to wrap itself around a situation that could be worse than the one we were presently experiencing. No matter how furiously it searched, my brain couldn’t come up with any possible scenario worse than this very moment.
Jean re-barricaded the door, turned to me, and spoke with an almost child-like excitement. “So, what was in the file?” Do we have a cure?
I had almost forgotten the Mengele file was cracked and I probably wasn’t the first to read its contents. I faced the laptop, nervously opened the file, and discovered its contents were in German. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this. The file read:
Als ich mit meinen Untersuchungen zur Herrenrasse begann war ich sicher, dass der Schlüssel zu ihren Geheimnissen in den Genkombinationen der genetischen Permutationen von Zwillingen verborgen lag. Ich war besessen von dieser Theorie. Aber nach Jahren fehlgeschlagener Experimente verwarf ich sie schließlich. Die Vorstellung der Perfektion zerronn zwischen meinen Fingern. Hätte der Führer gewusst, dass meine Studien fruchtlos waren, er hätte mich sicherlich in die Duschen geschickt. Ich musste etwas finden, das den Herrn Hitler zufrieden stellt. Unsere Kriegsanstrengungen beginnen fehlzuschlagen. Es ist Zeit, einen neuen Ansatz zu wagen. Ich hatte an einer anderen Idee geforscht, die uns helfen würde, die Welt von gottlosen Abscheulichkeiten zu befreien. Anstelle von Gaskammern, Kugeln und Arbeitslagern würde ein Mittel treten, den menschlichen Geist über nie gekannte Grenzen hinaus zu in Wut zu versetzen. Ich hatte ein Serum entdeckt, das den Geist und das Schmerzempfinden eines normalen Menschen betäubte. Rasende Wut füllte jede seiner Zellen, und sein einziger Daseinzweck war es zu zerstören. Die Effekte waren kurzlebig, aber wenn man das Serum in eine Art Virus umfunktionierte der von Mensch zu Mensch übertragbar war, zum Beispiel durch Spei
chel; ich glaube das wäre die Antwort, die das Dritte Reich sucht.
Mir kam die Idee, als ein tollwütiger Hund ins Lager eindrang und die Gefangenen angriff. Der Hund schien aus purer Wut gemacht zu sein… nur eine Kugel durch den Kopf stoppte sein Toben. Der tollwütige Hund war der Auslöser für die erste Version meines Virus. Und wie der Hund würden alle, die sich dem Führer widersetzten – Juden, Schwarze, Schwule – einen furchtbaren Tod sterben. Das Mengele-Virus würde ohne Gnade, ohne Furcht und ohne Heilung sein.
My German was non-existent. Fortunately, our little group was privileged to have one certified native-speaking German. Gunther translated the file for me. I waited nervously as he worked on the laptop to slowly peck out the translation. When he completed the task, he turned the laptop to me. The translation read:
When I first began my experiments on the Master Race, I was certain the key lay in the secrets locked away in the genetic combinations in the gene permutation of twins. I became obsessed with this theory, but after years of failed experimentation, I finally gave up the theory. The idea of perfection was slipping between my fingers. The Fuhrer would certainly have me sent to the showers if he knew my studies had borne no fruit. I had to find something to please Herr Hitler.
Our efforts in the war are starting to fail us. It is time for a new approach. I had been researching another idea that would help use rid the world of Godless atrocities. Instead of gas chambers, bullets, and work camps, I discovered a medical means to enrage the human mind beyond a threshold never before possible. I had discovered a serum that would numb normal man to pain and thought. Rage filled every sense and the singular purpose was to destroy. The effects are short lived, but if the serum could be made to act like a virus, spread from human to human through the saliva, I believe I would have the answer the Third Reich sought.
The idea came to me when a rabid dog broke into the camp and began attacking the prisoners. The dog seemed to be made of pure rage. Only a bullet through the head stopped the beast from continuing its rampage.
That rabid dog led me to develop the first strain of my virus. And just like that dog, the Jews, Blacks, and gays…and anyone not of the Fuhrer’s liking, would die a maddening death. The Mengele Virus would be without mercy, without fear, and without cure.