Blood Soaked and Contagious

by James Crawford

  Like I said, a very short scripture. Their idea of a worship service probably wouldn’t be all that wonderful, if you consider that the only thing that really gets them going is eating people.

  Chapter 2

  I just wanted to stand there, drinking in the afternoon sun. This section of Route 29 in Arlington is quiet that time of day. At least, it has been since a good-sized chunk of the population started croaking, coming back to life, eating their neighbors, and somehow forgetting to show up for their fulfilling IT and government contracting jobs every day.

  They declared martial law during the start of the Emergency, but much of the enforcement slacked off around non-critical areas. The suburbs, for the most part, were classified as non-critical. Even so, in this neck of the woods, you’re more likely to see a stream of urban camo-painted vehicles, driven by various members of the Armed Forces, rather than morning commuters. When I was younger, we’d hang out on the way to school and beat the steaming poo out of one another while counting Volkswagens. These days, you shouldn’t play games like “Punch Buggy” with military Humvees, because there are more of them moving around than commuter cars. That game nowadays always devolves into a fistfight and a kid gets his nose broken. And I dislike screaming children.

  However, once in a while, the kid is screaming because Mom and Dad are about to force them into a corner and bite their ears off. Like today. I heard the noises before I decided to stroll up to the burnt-out McDonalds to confirm what I suspected.

  Yeah.

  Dad, I guess, had backed his son into a box of mostly melted Happy Meal toys and was doing his level best to eat the kid alive. Shit.

  “Pops! Back off the youngster!”

  The man, covered with gore, looked up and out across the wilted plastic seats in the remains of the dining room and smiled at me.

  “Don’t you see, this is just a little family squabble—nothing to worry about. Fuck off, Chester.”

  I had a hard time believing that, watching the little boy writhing underneath his hands.

  “My name isn’t Chester, and I’m not going to let you munch on that kid.”

  Dad wasn’t one to waste time. He stood up and hurled himself through the distance that separated us. I’ll admit that, in retrospect, he had one of the best Angry Zombie Growls I’ve heard. What he didn’t have was any clue about human body mechanics.

  Faster. Meaner. Claws. But just as stupid.

  Charging someone with your arms spread wide, foaming at the mouth, and at full speed is not smart and won’t prepare you for someone who charges back at you.

  I ran straight at him, popped the Man Scythe out of the Kydex rig across my back, and snapped the blade out as I moved. To his credit, Dad did not flinch, stop, or do anything else that would have made my day more unfortunate. He just kept coming like a pasty-white, scrawny, undead linebacker.

  I planted my leading foot, which checked my forward motion, and collapsed to one knee while pivoting. His arm went right over my head. I came back to my feet, following his motion so that we faced the same direction. He was still in range.

  Swing, batter!

  The Man Scythe is a compact, folding, melee weapon that is based on a single-handed scythe design. If you’re a martial arts fan, you’ve seen a kama before—it’s a folding kama on steroids.

  The frame is milled titanium, with a synthetic rubber grip for traction and shock absorption. The blade is three-quarters the length of the entire weapon, and it folds out into position with a flick of the wrist. A slot in the titanium forms a tongue that snaps into place under the blade, keeping it open for use and does a good bit to keep the blade from folding back in when you least want it.

  I had this one made for me. No bullshit off-the-shelf models, as if anyone could mass-produce a thing of beauty like this. The blade is hand-forged, laminated steel, selectively hardened, with a hamaguri (clam) edge profile, as sharp and strong as a samurai sword. Don’t ask me what it cost to have it made—I may never be able to erase that debt.

  Dad’s head popped off his shoulders, and the body kept going, spraying blood in a beautiful arc as it fell forward. I didn’t even feel it when the scythe sheared his vertebrae. The blade is a testament to modern workmanship, executed by a Master of his craft.

  The kid screamed—he was conscious enough to watch the show. Shit, again.

  I figured that I’d cope with him as soon as I’d finished the necessary process. You have to open the skull to the air. You can either squish the brains around with your boot or hope for hungry animals of one kind or another to find it and consume it. In the light of day, with people milling about, animals are less likely, which means the first method is the one to use.

  Boot.

  The back of the scythe blade ends in a beveled spike. It was a thoughtful design decision on the part of the whackjob who came up with the idea. (That would be me. My self-deprecating sense of humor will be the death of me.) All you have to do is reverse your grip, spike forward, and give the decapitated head two or three love taps. By the time you’re finished, either the brain will be exposed, or you will have sufficiently damaged the brain and won’t have to stick your boot in.

  The scythe came down with a positive sounding thunk, albeit a bit deeper than I had planned. I was about to put my foot on the cranium to pull the blade free when I heard the kid screaming “My daddy!” over and over again, right behind me.

  I spun around, gave the child a complete dose of the “Hairy Eyeball,” and was very disappointed when he didn’t stop the noise.

  “Kid! Shut the fuck up!” I bellowed at him, gesturing with both hands. “Your daddy was eating you!”

  The little boy’s eyes bugged straight out of his head, the remaining color drained from his face, and he passed out. I marveled at my success and was about ready to pat myself on the back for properly establishing my dominance and pointing out the reality of the situation, when I realized something.

  I had never put the scythe down. I’d been flailing around in front of the kid with it still in my hand, flinging his father’s head around in front of him like some kind of macabre magic wand. His short little life would be forever tainted by the image of a madman yelling while his own dad’s bloody noggin danced in front of his face.

  There have been times when I knew what I’d just done was a one-way ticket to Hell. In that instance, I was sure I’d just earned a table in the chef’s kitchen in the club car to Hell.

  “Aw.” I was very earnest. “I’m really sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to do that to you.”

  But he was out. Passed clean out—little psyche gone completely AWOL. That really did not help the situation because I really wanted to confess myself to this little fellow and have him forgive me for terrorizing him. That was no way to die.

  I took a good look at his visible wounds and sighed. He wouldn’t make it. Emergency medicine didn’t exist for people who carry the virus. Ninety percent of the time, if a carrier is wounded, they wouldn’t live long enough for an ambulance to arrive. The blood draws zombies from all around.

  “Fuck me!” I stormed away from the little prone form on the concrete and proceeded to dash the head against the curb. Destroy the brain and get the damnable thing off the spike of my tool. That was about all the satisfaction I would be getting out of this.

  Some moist minutes later, I cleaned off the blade with my shirttail and was just about ready to fold it down, stow it, and move on. Then I heard the little boy stir and start crying. It went way beyond pitiful and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to leave him there to fend for himself. Tears get me every time and I know it.

  It was Hard Lesson Time, and there was nothing I could do about it. I got down on my knees beside him and tried to keep a wary eye on our surroundings.

  “Uh. Hey. Your dad was eating you because you’re infected with the virus that makes zombies. You’re hurt really bad.” I realized that saying all of this was pointless, but I couldn’t just let him die alone without someone. I kept ta
lking to him.

  “Kid. Do you have any family or anyone?”

  He just shook his head at me.

  “Nobody? No family? No nothing?”

  Same shake of the head, tears flying left and right.

  There was a chance that I could flag down a Humvee in a little bit and hand him off to the military if he lived long enough. It was an option. They’d take him to the local processing station and put him in the next convoy of infected people that they send to the Pens in Tennessee. They might even patch him up some.

  The Pens had been set up to handle situations like these. An infected child who is orphaned with no family or means of support, the elderly, and anyone who cannot reasonably be expected to contribute to what remains of America’s economic infrastructure were sent to the Pens. It was not a great solution, but it was better than nothing.

  He’d live for a while in one of the heavily guarded tent cities that had been slapped together out there. Maybe, but not if the convoy was overrun or the Pens invaded. Then he would go back to being chow, only to join the ranks a little while later.

  My choices were not fabulous. Toss the kid at a Humvee, leading to his likely death. Or leave the kid to fend for himself—infected and about to die.

  The choices looked like: die; die; live for a little bit, terrified, hungry, no medical care, and probably die.

  I should have just let his father do the dirty work, but for the fact that it would mean the boy would’ve died the most horrible way imaginable. Maybe I didn’t do anything good for the kid after all.

  We just held our places, staring at each other. Weepy Kid and Zombie-cide Man.

  “Kid, how old are you?”

  “I’m seven years old,” he whispered, starting to wheeze a little bit. Not good.

  “Okay.” At that age, he really wouldn’t get the complexity of the choice that I wanted to lay down in front of him. There was no doubt in my mind that choosing whether to die now or die later would be too much for any child to really grasp. But I had to give it a try, because I couldn’t choose.

  “Kid. I need you to think about something. I know you’re really upset now, but you have to think about what I’m going to ask you. Can you do that?”

  “Huh?”

  Great. Just great.

  “Do you want bad things to happen to you today, or do you want bad things to happen to you tomorrow or the next day?”

  He looked at me with the glazed eyes of the utterly bereft. Tears had dried on his cheeks, and snot had trickled down his face. If it hadn’t been for the expensively tasteful clothes, he could have been any tragic victim from any Third World country you could name. He was the sort of child that gets plastered all over “Adopt Timmy from War-Torn Belize” advertisements.

  “Bad things have already happened today,” he whispered. “I don’t want tomorrow to be bad, too.”

  I nodded at him. This reduced the options I was considering by one. Don’t hand him to the military. Fuck. I was wasting time.

  “Do you want bad things that happen fast and are over, or do you want bad things that might take a while before they stop?”

  “Fast bad things.” He didn’t even pause before he answered. Bam. Clarity.

  I couldn’t leave him to fend for himself, be hunted, and then eaten. I also couldn’t take him with me, because he’d just be a juicy worm on the fishing pole. They’d find him and me. Worse, the kid could infect me somehow.

  I nodded at him again, and took a deep breath.

  The boy said, “You killed my dad. Are you going to kill me, too?”

  The breath rattled out of me, and I had trouble taking in another one. I don’t know how this little boy knew, but he’d figured it out. Sure, I could just do it and never answer his question, but I knew that it would eat at me, strain my resolve, and give me more reason to hate myself for the things I had to do to survive.

  “Yes.” I said it.

  “Why?”

  “Because if I don’t, things worse than your father will find you really soon. They’ll eat you, just like he wanted to, and then you’ll become just like them. You will go out and eat people.” The words tumbled out of me in one breath.

  “Oh,” he replied in that small voice children use when something makes sense. “I don’t want to eat people. It’s bad and it hurts them.”

  His eyes started to glass over.

  “You’re right,” I said, looking into his fading eyes. They were a really warm brown. “Eating people does hurt them. I’m proud of you that you don’t want to hurt people like that.”

  I still don’t believe it, but he actually smiled. It was a good smile. I bet there were little kids like him who went to the guillotine, being brave like that.

  “Hey,” I said, “do you see that cloud over there? The one that looks like a duck?”

  He turned away from me and looked up. It was the last conscious thing he ever did. Between the beats of my heart, this innocent little boy went rigid, relaxed, rattled deep in his tiny chest, and gave up the ghost. I’d waited too long.

  Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

  I’m sorry. I’d hoped to do better for you than talk you to death, kid.

  It is always the same story, a decent sort of person who didn’t deserve to have their life tragically cut short. There was only one thing left to do: destroy the brain and then move on.

  When it was done, I cleaned off the scythe, folded the blade back into the handle, and snapped it back into the rig. I wasn’t seeing very clearly or breathing very easily. My face was wet.

  All I could do was walk away from it. By the time I made it back to my place, my face was dry again.

  Chapter 3

  My home used to be a local hardware store. I like it because it is fairly easy to keep secure, as it had very few windows to begin with and only three sets of doors (two of them being steel). The best thing about it isn’t the security aspect, which isn’t as much of an issue as it would be if I were infected; it is the ready access to supplies. I need a nail, and all I have to do is walk down an aisle.

  It is also a fantastic source of trade goods.

  The virus and zombies appeared about two years ago, and roughly 40 percent of the North American population contracted the contagion or was in a position to return as a zombie. As I said, we don’t really know what came first, just that they rolled out concurrently.

  After six months of cannibalism, martial law, resurrection, and mayhem, modern society was starting to seriously break down. Goods and services were impacted, as well as delivery of the same. Zombies, you see, regardless of the fact that they retain their memories, do not really give a shit about the 9-to-5 workday. They are much more concerned with their nutritional intake.

  Barter became a reasonable way to get things done, and many people adjusted to it with little effort. Of course, adjusting to that sort of economy is easier when you are capable of making a product yourself. Cheese, for example.

  My neighbor, Yolanda, makes cheese. All she needed to live a comfortable life was a supply of raw material and time to scale up her operation. She found a dairy that could supply the milk and a willing neighbor (me) who could help her build cheese presses.

  I’ve got cheese. I’ve got enough cheese that I could trade it, the hardware supplies, and my own semi-skilled manual labor, and also live a comfortable life. As you might imagine, a comfortable life where I didn’t go out and kill zombies would probably be more satisfying. Sadly, you don’t get that kind of choice when you need to defend your community from undead squatters. Worse, because we’re all bartering and interdependent, we can’t just kill someone who produces what we need if they contract the virus. We’re in a position in which we actually have to try to keep them hidden, safe, and productive for as long as possible. The longest we were able to keep someone hidden was measurable in days, not months.

  Mister Yan was a tailor. He had become our source for clothing repair and anything we made that needed more than hand sewing. Somehow, he got in
fected. It took only five hours after he was infected for a hungry visitor to find him.

  Yolanda’s husband, Omér, took care of that critter. Two hours later, Mister Yan had been moved into Shawn Cooper’s basement. Two guards at all times, four-hour shifts. Neighborhood watch on similar shifts. Perimeter patrol duties assigned as well.

  It kept every able-bodied adult in our community working an extra four hours a day on top of whatever they normally did. We did a good job, but we were not prepared for a direct focused assault.

  There were 40 of them and were led by someone who had been a captain in one of the infantry battalions. We finished off most of them, but there were enough left to take Mister Yan from us. We also lost people in that fight.

  The blessing for us is that our former neighbors did not come back from the dead. They had been victims of a sniper or someone else with good aim. A single large-caliber bullet to the head ended each of their lives.

  Six months after that attack, we still feel the loss of those people every day. It makes you reevaluate the meaning of each human life, let me tell you.

  I am seriously glad Shawn wasn’t one of those we lost. He’s our machinist, armorer, gunsmith, and metalworker. Without him, we’d all be dead.

  The military wanted to be useful, and I’m absolutely sure the commanders, chiefs, and so on who were sequestered in the bowels of the Pentagon were attempting to help the common man. At least, I have to believe in that a little bit, or the rest of my sanity will give way to something less friendly. The sad reality of the matter is that the Armed Forces usually cause more damage and loss of life than they prevented.

  When it came to neighborhood-to-neighborhood conflicts, the military kept their noses out of it. The only occasions in which they were called out to do anything besides protect the national critical infrastructure were situations where there was a direct threat to the government’s status quo.

  Two weeks ago, the Army assaulted Chain Bridge. For those of you who are not as intimately familiar with the Washington, DC area, let me give you a little framework to help it make sense.