The Old Man & the End of the World | Book 1 | Things Fall Apart

by Harrison, William Hale

  One of the neighbors, Manny, leaned out of his door with a phone pressed to his ear. “Did you get it?” he yelled.

  “Yeah, this one anyway. Call 911!”

  “I’m on the line with them now,” he shouted. “They’re on the way.”

  The old man ran up the stairs past the fallen man who, he saw, was indeed Jerry, the husband. He could see blood still pumping weakly out of his neck. He thought for a moment about trying first aid, but realized the man was now infected himself, and better a quick death now than an inevitable one in a few days.

  He stepped up to the screen door and hammered on it with his gun butt. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he yelled. He figured if there were any Infected inside, that should draw them to him. He waited a few moments, and when he heard nothing he stepped inside, pistol at the ready. His heart sank when he saw the trail of bloody footprints coming down the stairs.

  He followed the footprints to their source, a child’s bedroom at the end of the hall. On the frame of the doorway he could see a bright splash of blood. He took a deep breath and stepped in. A moment later he came back out, his face pale. The remains of the children, a baby of less than a year and a bouncy happy toddler, hadn’t looked remotely human.

  A police car pulled into the small subdivision, siren wailing, and screeched to a halt outside. Owen went back down the stairs and reversed his grip on the gun, holding it by the barrel. He put his hand on the handle of the screen door and yelled, “Coming out!” He opened the door a crack and stuck his gun hand out first, and slowly followed it with the rest of his body.

  The two cops, he could see, had their attention divided about equally between him, the thing on the ground and the two big dogs sitting in the street, tongues hanging out and short tails wagging. He went over to the cops and talked for a while, and when another car arrived with their lieutenant whom he talked with some more. Eventually they were done with him.

  Manny waited by his front door. “That had to happen sooner or later, I guess,” he said. The old man liked Manny and his wife, Luisa, and their three little kids. The kids always said hi to him, and there was always a friendly wave from Manny and Luisa. They’d sat in Manny’s garage a few times where he had a man cave set up, and watched a game and drank a few beers. Manny had been a hell raiser in his youth, with a juvie record. At eighteen he bought a car from a used car lot, and when he got home he decided he didn’t like the tires that came with the car. That night he got caught breaking into the dealership to steal better ones. He got lucky, and the judge cut him a break. At eighteen he could have been sentenced to real jail time, but the judge gave him a choice of a year behind bars or enlisting, so he joined the Navy. He ended up spending his enlistment working on ships’ hydraulics, and when he got out he went back to school where he got himself an associate’s degree as a hydraulic systems tech. Now he worked for the county public works department and earned good money.

  Manny had a brother-in-law, Ruiz, who had taken the other path. He’d ended up in and out of jail, prison tats and all, mostly drug related but also a couple of assaults. He was a little guy with a big chip on his shoulder. Some nights he and his biker buddies would hang out in Manny’s garage and get loud, but Manny had always been mindful of his neighbors and didn’t let the parties get too wild or go too late.

  “Yeah,” the old man said. “I’m sorry about Susie and Jerry. I liked them.”

  “The kids…?”

  “Dead. She tore them up pretty bad. Not something I wanted to see.” The old man looked at Manny’s kids peeking around him in the doorway. “You got a piece?”

  Manny nodded. “Yeah, a couple of them. A Taurus 9mm and a Remington 12 gauge. I keep them locked up because of the kids. Might have to rethink that, though.”

  The old man went into his house and got a spare dog bowl from under the sink and grabbed a beer from the fridge. He went back outside and sat down, popped open the beer, poured it in the dog dish and set it in front of Tank and Sonny. “Here you go, boys,” he said. “You earned it.”

  His cell phone chirped, and he saw it was Floyd. “Hey, Floyd,” he said. “You missed all the excitement.”

  “Oh gosh, we couldn’t hardly miss it,” the old man answered. “That gun of yours makes plenty of noise. And all the police? My goodness, Willow was having fits, weren’t you, girl?” The old man smiled. Floyd and Marilyn had outlived both their children, which no parent should ever do, and now they treated Willow like a baby. She clearly adored them both. “Say, Owen, do you have any plans for dinner? Marilyn’s making a big pan of lasagna, and there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “Tonight? Sure. I was just thinking about frying myself up a pan-full of Spam, but I have to admit, Marilyn’s lasagna sounds a lot better.”

  “Spam?” laughed Floyd. “Man, we had better stuff to eat in Korea, and we were in the middle of a war!” Floyd had been with the Marines 1st Division during their terrible retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in 1950, and had been awarded a Silver Star for his efforts. Once in a while, after Marilyn had gone to bed, he and Floyd had sat up late to drink and swap war stories, one old jarhead to another.

  “When do you want me there?”

  “Oh, come over any time. The boss says it’ll be ready in an hour.”

  He went upstairs to shower and change, and twenty minutes later he stood at Floyd’s front door, a bottle of good Italian wine in his hand. The old man opened the door but instead of the big toothy smile he expected, Floyd seemed nervous. He stepped in and saw Marilyn standing in the kitchen wearing an old flowery apron. She looked at him with a melancholic expression and gave him a sad smile, and said, “Hello, Owen.”

  The signs of her infection were obvious. Her face was pale, her lips were purplish and there were ugly blue patches around her eyes.

  “Oh, sweetheart…” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.” He gave her a long hug. She resisted at first and then settled into it, sighing. He could feel a tear roll down his cheek. He looked over at Floyd.

  Floyd ducked his head and said, “Let’s talk about this later, okay? Right now we’ll enjoy ourselves.”

  The lasagna was excellent. He had eaten dozens of variations, in good Italian restaurants and even in Italy itself, and never tasted better than Marilyn’s. After dinner they sat at the kitchen table and reminisced. He mostly stayed quiet and let them do the talking, asking an occasional question when they seemed to be winding down. They were both in their early 90s, he found out, and had been married for seventy-two years. Floyd talked about his first car, and meeting Marilyn, their courtship and his proposal. Marilyn told him about their wedding and their honeymoon at the Wisconsin Dells. They talked about their two boys, Simon and Ray, and about their loss. The stories were often funny, sometimes sad, but all told with warmth and humor. And throughout the entire evening, they held hands.

  Finally Marilyn began to tire, and Floyd reached out and held onto his forearm. “Owen,” he said sadly, “We’ve been together all these years, and I’m not going to take Marilyn someplace where they’ll put her in a cage, and I don’t want to live anymore if she’s not with me. We’ve decided we’re going to go to sleep tonight and not wake up.”

  “Oh Floyd…” His heart rose up in his throat. Marilyn and Floyd were almost family, like a favorite aunt and uncle. And now this…

  Marilyn looked at Floyd and took Owen’s hand in both of hers. “Owen,” she said, “We need a place for our baby. We know it’s a lot to ask, but would you take Willow?”

  His eyes watered. “Of course I will! You know I’ll be glad to have her! She’s such a good girl and the boys love her.” They sat back, obviously relieved. Floyd got up and came back with a half a sack of dog food and a shopping bag.

  “Floyd, do you have everything… you need?”

  “Oh yeah.” He smiled sadly. “I’ve got a whole bottle of pain pills. We’re goi
ng to get ourselves good and drunk, take a bunch of pills and just go to sleep. When we wake up, we’ll be with Simon and Ray again.”

  “And the Lord,” Marilyn added softly.

  At the door, he fought back tears, and hugged them both. They knelt and hugged Willow and told her to always be a good girl, and that they loved her very much. Then he and Willow walked back down to his place, his footsteps echoing in the dark.

  Yaizu, Japan

  June 15th

  The big trawler rocked gently alongside the concrete wharf, her deck buzzing with activity. Down in her hold were mountains of gleaming silver fish. Men shoved huge nets on long poles into the open holds, pushing them deep into the pile. Cables attached to the poles hauled up the bulging nets and swung them over the side of the ship, to the waiting mouths of bright blue wheeled crates the size of dumpsters, where men yanked at cords and the bottoms of the nets opened and disgorged the catch. As the crates filled, forklifts swooped in and hauled them off to the nearby processing sheds, while the men shoved the next cart into place. Two men stood nearby, watching the process. They had known each other since childhood. Both men wore swords.

  “Looks like a good haul, Hideo.” Kenji Murata, master of kendo and Itto-ryu, and now most famous for being the father of “Samurai Girl” Mitsuyo Murata, stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his sword Tiger’s Tooth at his side. A slender man, he wore, as he always did now, the traditional baggy pants and keikogi of Itto-ryu. Short, with a lean almost wolfish face, he bore more than a passing resemblance to Seiji Miyaguchi, one of the actors who starred in The Seven Samurai. Several of the men working around them carried swords as well, and there were others strapped with cleavers and long-bladed knives.

  Hideo Enchi, his boyhood friend and now manager of Lucky Flying Fish Seafood’s processing operation in Yaizu, nodded. “Fewer boats out now, but we’re seeing more fish per boat. Probably because of the reduced competition.” The spread of the parasite among fishing crews, who seemed especially hard hit, plus the increasingly spotty delivery of fuel, had made it harder for boats in the various fishing ports around the country to even leave their docks. They were lucky here in Yaizu; a big fuel depot at the edge of the dock area kept the fleet supplied, and the city was full of men who had sailed with the fishing fleet in their younger days and who now, with the closure of some of the local factories and businesses, were turning up dockside looking for work.

  In the past, there would have been an aura of humor intermixed with the hard work; an occasional taunt or tease, followed by general laughter. But no one joked much anymore. Almost everyone on the wharf had lost a family member or close friend. Loved one gone forever. The parasite seemed to strike at random. Some families were spared, while others were thoroughly decimated, leaving the city to pick up the pieces of the social fabric. They even had to open up orphanages for children who had lost both parents and all close relatives.

  The city had commandeered several large warehouses to use as “transition centers.” The individual holding cages were gone now, rejected for lack of space. Sections of the floor were covered with tatami mats for sleeping, and TV sets and game tables had been added to help pass the time. Armed guards roamed the areas at all times, constantly watching for telltale symptoms of impending change like agitation and itching. Internees who appeared to be on the verge of turning were ushered into separate rooms and dispatched efficiently, with a bullet to the head or a quick decapitation. People who carried the parasite, it seemed, were more likely to undergo the change themselves if they were in the presence of others who had turned, as though somehow their proximity acted as a trigger.

  There had already been several mass outbreaks in Yaizu, mostly in some of the seedier sections of town where compliance with regulations was not as wholehearted. The worst one was near Mitsuyo’s middle school by the old Pachinko hall. It had taken the army and the police an entire night to defeat the packs of Infected, and in the end there were over 5,000 deaths.

  Hunger had become a serious problem in parts of Japan, especially in Tokyo and the other large cities, as the government was increasingly hard-pressed to keep its people fed. Even in good times, Japan imported almost 60 percent of its food, much of it from the United States, mostly in the form of meat and feed for livestock. The US was quietly trying to ship what they could, but everyone knew that those shipments couldn’t last. The national diet was becoming severely deficient in protein, which put increasing pressure on the country’s devastated fishing fleet.

  “I hear the Navy offered to loan the fleets some sailors to help fill some of the fishing boat crews,” Kenji remarked.

  “My company has been contacted, but I heard we turned them down. So far we’re doing okay. We’re a bit shorthanded at times, but the board felt it would rather see the extra manpower going to the outfits that really need it.” This was a time of national emergency, and in true Japanese spirit, everyone was putting aside motives of profit and trying to keep the country going. “Here, let me show you something.” They walked through the processing center where scores of people expertly filleted the catch and slid the meat onto long conveyor belts.

  They stopped in front of a long row of large metal cabinets. Hideo grabbed a heavy mitt from on top of one, and opened the cabinet door. Inside stood a rack with dozens of huge metal trays. He slid one out. Fresh fish fillets packed each tray, all neatly arranged. The edges of most of them were beginning to curl. “Almost done,” Hideo said, and slid the tray back in and closed the cabinet.

  “Commercial dryers,” he said. “We’re having trouble getting fresh fish to markets and food plants with all the traffic tie-ups. And even if we do, the blackouts are causing a lot of it to spoil. The way things are going, some areas could be without electricity for a long time.” They both knew that “a long time” might even mean “not in our lifetimes.”

  “So we’ve decided to dry a lot of our catch. That way it can be stored almost indefinitely.” Hideo walked down the row, pointing. “We have pollock, saury, yellowtail snapper.” He paused and slid a big sheet out of another dryer. “Even squid.”

  “Where did you get the machines? China?” Kenji asked. A lot of the country’s machinery now came from China and Korea, and even Vietnam.

  “No, we tried, but it’s impossible to get delivery on items like this now. The government over there is keeping all that kind of thing in-country.” The whole world trade system was rapidly breaking down as resources became unavailable and plants closed. “Actually, we had an older model that we’d been using for special orders. The mayor’s office put us in touch with a fabricator in town and he made all these based on that one. We’ve got a dozen more on order. Of course, we’re completely violating the copyrights and patents involved, but I doubt that will be an issue again for some time.”

  They kept walking. At either end of the wharf there were several armored personnel carriers. Troops armed with machine guns stopped every person coming in or out and made a careful inspection of hands and faces. Hideo smiled. “So how is Mitsuyo taking her sudden fame?”

  “‘Samurai Girl?’” Her father chuckled. Mitsuyo had become instantly famous when the video surfaced of her single-highhandedly killing two dozen Infected. She had been on national TV talk shows and done video chats with shows in Europe and America. It all seemed silly, but officials from the government had begged him to allow it. In these times, they’d told him, the country desperately need its heroes. The culmination of the silliness, in her father’s opinion, came when a popular TV variety show had her come on and recreate her fight to loud rock music with a series of inflated “zombies” which, oddly, were painted as clowns. He consented, but would not allow her to sully a sword like Willow Leaf with such a frivolous display, and made her use a modern sword from his stocks instead.

  Things had begun returning to normal for the twelve-year-old. She seemed to have grown up several years in the ensuing weeks, becoming ca
lmer and more confident, more like a young woman than a little girl. As a fortunate side effect of the incident, the city’s school district officials had decided that all middle and high school students would now study sword use each day during physical education class. A local knife company turned out a decent quality blade; abominations to a master swordsman like Murata, but certainly better than nothing if facing an Infected.

  His family’s kendo school, of which he was the head, was packed. After the world saw Mitsuyo defeat a whole shipload of undead, a huge wave of applicants had appeared at their school. Many family members and senior students, all of whom had achieved prominent rank at the school, had been pressed into service as teachers. Classes now started at 5:00 a.m. and continued until midnight. His father, who because of health problems had passed the school on to Kenji, now taught full time again, though he could see the toll it was taking on the man. Even his frail ninety-year-old grandfather, the great grand master Matsuo Murata, taught advanced students a few times a week.

  In the past, typical students sought to learn Kendo and Itto-ryu as a way of acquiring discipline and focus, but most of the new ones freely admitted that their goal was to learn to kill Infected, or Zonbi, as they were known in Japan. This occasioned a family conference, at which a spirited debate took place among the extended family gathered in the dojo.

  Kenji and some of the younger generation favored streamlining the instruction schedule, moving the students quickly to combat training. He and some of the younger generation had been studying the Infected, designing moves and combinations that would be most effective. His father was mortified. Their careful step-by-step instruction had evolved over centuries of masters. Any change merely for immediate circumstance was little short of heresy in his eyes. The debate ranged back and forth across the room until finally Kenji’s grandfather cleared his throat. The room immediately fell silent.