by Ben Stevens
Parker: The Story of an Apocalypse Survivor (COMPLETE)
A Novel by Ben Stevens
Book 1
Walking along the deserted, weed-pocketed sidewalk, Parker stopped outside a large clothing store. Its windows were shattered, glass glistening on the sidewalk and inside the shop. Stepping inside Parker walked slowly past racks of trousers, shirts, sweaters and jackets.
Nothing took his liking.
So he walked over to the shelves full of shoes, pausing to look at an open, empty till. He doubted that whoever had taken the money had had much of a chance to spend it. Most likely it had already been totally valueless.
Having selected a pair of sneakers, Parker sat down on a plastic chair and took off his own shoes still shiny and new.
Putting on the sneakers he stood opposite a dusty wall-to-ceiling mirror, moving his toes to check there was sufficient room.
In the dimness of the shop, he strained his eyes to see his reflection.
‘Thanks – I’ll take them,’ he said aloud. An attempt at a joke.
And then he froze.
A low moan came from somewhere close to the back of the shop. There where it was darkest.
Shit – and Parker hadn’t even smelt them this time...
Quickly, Parker placed his hand inside his jacket pocket and produced his gun. Although they could hardly be called ‘fast’, these things had killed hundreds of thousands – millions – at the start, when people had refused to believe that if the plague didn’t kill within hours then it instead turned its victims into something from a horror film: hopelessly retarded, horrifically disfigured...
And extremely vicious.
Dragging footsteps came ever closer towards him. It had been said that their sense of smell was heightened ten-fold – they literally could smell the blood. It seemed almost to materialise out of the gloom, its dull dead eyes observing him with a horribly longing expression.
Clump, clump: it was as though the thing walked on clubfeet. Then suddenly it was almost upon him. For all their slow, shambling gait, the things could move fast enough when they wanted to...
Taking aim, Parker saw the ragged red shop skirt. And he now noticed the thing’s sex and youth; beneath the boils and the lumps he saw a pretty young woman.
Then the thing suddenly snarled and hissed at him. Spittle flew from the brown, bared teeth; its foetid breath was the stench of the tomb; the rotten mouth moved ever closer and ‘she’ again became ‘it’ in his mind.
This mental metamorphosis had to be so, for how else could he kill?
It was kinder to kill – like putting a severely-injured animal out of its misery.
Are they in misery?
He didn’t know.
He fired once, at the head. A sudden spurt of blood and the thing fell down dead.
Parker replaced the gun in his jacket pocket and turned around – which was precisely when another thing snarled and emerged out of the gloom towards him. The woman’s manager, perhaps. He still had on his tie, and a torn white shirt half-covered with dried blood.
He sprayed spittle in Parker’s face.
‘SHhhelllp you, shhhiirr....? hissed the manager – some line he’d often said during his workday now somehow remembered, emerging from the mangled, froth-covered lips.
‘Shit,’ muttered Parker, taking a frantic step backwards. But his heels collided with the woman he’d shot and who was now lying on the floor, and his entire body pitched backwards. The manager followed him down, hands with long, filthy fingernails clawing at Parker’s face.
Parker still had his gun in his hand. There was not the time for the measured, almost abstract thinking he’d allowed himself before shooting the she-thing. He brought up his gun and placed the barrel against the manager’s head –
And then emitted a hoarse scream as the manager’s teeth sank into his left bicep.
Stupid, stupid son of a bitch... After all this time, to meet your end this way...
With another wretched yell Parker pulled the trigger. The putrid remains of the manager’s brains exited out of the other side of his head, and he immediately flopped onto the floor beside Parker.
Who was crying freely. It wasn’t a particularly deep bite, and the throbbing pain he could bear – but the filth that had been transmitted into his body...
Already he could feel himself starting to sicken, his legs shaky as he got back up to his feet. A cold, clammy sweat on his back and a squirming feeling in his guts, like he’d shit himself with diarrhoea if he didn’t get to a john real quick...
Clutching his injured arm with the opposite hand, his gun shoved unthinkingly into his jacket pocket, Parker stumbled back towards the shop’s shattered windows, past the rails of clothes, again stepping onto the sidewalk. The bright sunlight stabbed his eyes and instantly caused him to develop a blinding headache.
He was going into fever. Maybe he was turning into a thing. He’d been somehow immune to this virus that had killed most of the entire fucking world but he’d never previously been such a goddamn sloppy careless bastard that he’d actually allowed himself to get bitten by a thing...
‘Ah, fuck,’ he muttered, slumping like a drunk onto a bench that was beside a shuttered and rusting hotdog stand.
Putting his head in his hands he shivered violently, knowing that for the sake of his life he had to get back up but lacking entirely the energy even to stand. The virus and whatever other filthy bacteria the manager had transmitted via one bite from his rotten teeth was currently coursing its way through Parker’s body, to his organs, limbs and brain.
‘Gotta get up,’ he mumbled, his voice already sounding a little like the manager’s had. ‘Jushht do it...’
Just do it? wondered some distant part of his brain. Hadn’t that been an advertising slogan or something back at one time, when there’d been some six billion humans inhabiting the planet Earth, and not just him and...
Well – from his experiences so far, not too many others...
Taking his pain-racked head from out of his hands Parker stared up at the vast, magnificent structures on the opposite side of the road. The metal and glass gleamed in the sunshine as they rose proud towards the blue sky.
Suddenly the skyscrapers cluttering the skyline seemed to bend towards the impossibly lonely, fever-wracked figure sat on a bench, enclosing him, restricting him, choking him. A pigeon came from nowhere and attacked his face; Parker hit the vermin with his fists, shouting and swearing. The bird fell to the sidewalk and he stomped on it with both feet, the creature’s innards splattering his shoes and trousers.
He sat back, breathing heavily. In spite of previous incidents he was still shocked at how emboldened, how vicious, even the most previously timid of creatures had become.
‘Get up,’ he said curtly, the next moment doing just this. He stood, swaying, the mess he’d made of the pigeon lying by his feet. More birds might be around; there was always that danger. He was in no state to fight them, either, as he’d done before.
(A length of wood or something of the sort made an ideal club – and birds such as pigeons were primarily cowards. Once they realized that their intended target was more than capable of looking after himself, they tended to fly off rather quickly.)
...Get up – and go the fuck where?
Hospital?
Parker almost laughed. There were no doctors. No nurses. He still had things like an appendix and if that ever burst then he’d die. No way of getting it removed, of course.
Same went for his teeth; so he took real good care of them, usually brushing and flossing twice daily. If he started
getting pain from one of them he’d just have to yank it out himself – and he wasn’t remotely keen on practicing such rudimentary dentistry.
Hospital – the word occurred again. And now he realized why, understanding dawning somewhere in his fever-racked brain. There still might be medicines he could find – antibiotics he could consume to try and battle the poison currently coursing around his body...
He began to walk. Or more accurately, stagger. Dead meat now if another thing should show itself.
But then – what with the way he was walking, and the blood soaking part of his upper body from the bite received from the store-manager, maybe he’d just be mistaken for a thing himself, and thus left alone...
He didn’t know this city. There were signs and names but these meant little to Parker now. Just weeds breaking through the roads and sidewalks, overgrown trees and long-since looted shops. The change of the seasons dictating what clothes Parker got for himself from such stores or the abandoned apartments he broke into...
The gun kept handy in his pocket, always keeping a look-out for things, or aggressive animals from rats to things like gorillas which had since made their escape from various zoos.
He’d shot dead a puma, once. Thing had been half-starved, its ribs showing – a pitiful sight, really. But still it had snarled and leapt towards Parker from behind a load of upended metal bins, and so he’d been obliged to put a bullet between its eyes.
And other people...?
There’d been a few of them...
Like that woman that time...
Parker shook his throbbing head, sweat coursing down into his eyes. He had to remain completely focused; try to find some sort of indication as to whether there was a hospital nearby. He was getting sicker by the minute. Using every inch of willpower he possessed just to keep staggering along like a thing.
Maybe they got willpower, too thought Parker bizarrely to himself, and emitted a hoarse croak of laughter.
The sky and buildings in front of it were swirling like crazy. Like a bad trip, maaaannn...
But there like some sort of dream was suddenly a sign of the type Parker had gotten so used to ignoring.
An arrow... the word Hospital... an arrow pointing straight ahead...
‘Jesus loves me... this I know... for the bible... tells me... so...’ gabbled Parker to himself. He’d no idea why. He’d never been particularly religious. Carrie had, though. Not majorly, but enough so that she went to church every so often. Helped out in their small community, that sort of thing...
‘Ah fuck...’ said Parker then, almost pitching forwards onto his face. It was hopeless; he couldn’t go on.
He suddenly vomited onto the ground, and then just to help matters started to feel his guts go. Like the worst case of food poisoning he’d ever had. Somehow he managed to yank down his trousers and get into a squat. It came out, hot and loose and fast. No way to wipe. Just pull his trousers back up and crawl if he had to.
Keep going... Just – keep going...
Like evolution he again got off his hands and knees and back to his feet. There ahead was a huge car-park behind a high chain-link fence. Mass of vehicles parked haphazardly within it. A load of cars – obviously – but also several green military lorries; even a tank. They’d been called out here while the army was still operating, obviously, though whatever had happened then meant that they’d never got back out.
So they might be inside this hospital... Still wanna go in...?
No choice. None at all. Parker vomited once again. His guts felt as though they were on fire. Just managed to pull down his trousers before experiencing another attack of diarrhoea.
Had to find antibiotics, or something, inside this hospital. Something to fight the disease the store-manager thing had given him.
Parker had always vowed that he’d shoot himself before becoming a thing – although until now he’d proved remarkably resistant to the actual virus that had wiped out damn-near all mankind – but vaguely he realized now that he might not even be aware by the time this transition actually began to occur.
He lurched inside the car-park. Passed a raised barrier and an empty little building where a bored security guard had once sat. Although, he wouldn’t have been so bored towards the end...
The hospital ahead was huge. Parker had to be able to find something in here, surely. The sliding doors into the main reception area were of glass and they were open. Bodies inside looking strangely mummified, sprawled out on the blood-stained, faux marble floor and on the numerous green plastic chairs in front of the reception office.
What had once been a woman clutched what had once been her baby closely to her chest. A huge chunk missing out of the back of her neck. What looked to be her spine slightly exposed. Parker wondered if she’d suffocated the infant, rather than allow it to be eaten alive by a thing...
Several elevators on one side. Also a wide flight of stairs and an escalator that naturally wasn’t moving. The sunlight slowly beginning to fade outside. Eight or nine o’clock in the evening. Large white clocks on the wall all stopped –
A moan. Coming from behind him. Parker turned round and there was the bored security guard. Still wearing his peaked hat. He had a bushy moustache caked in dried blood. He was missing his trousers and underwear, but still had on his black shoes. Parker didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sight. Just when he’d thought he’d seen every type of thing in every conceivable kind of state...
He pulled out his gun but was by now so sick and weak that he could barely even lift it. The sun gradually setting behind the guard seemed to clothe him in some sort of burning, blinding light which made taking aim impossible.
As the guard slowly shuffled forward, penis and testicles swaying from side to side, Parker realized that he’d be best off trying to get upstairs.
So he made for the stairs. The guard lurching along behind him. Goddamn but he was so sick that the thing was actually catching up with him.
He turned round again and it was almost upon him. The mouth with the bushy moustache above it opening up and revealing large, yellow teeth coated with saliva. Some froth around the lips, like a dog with rabies. That ugly, red, feral light glowing in the guard’s eyes. Prick and balls still swaying, seemingly larger as he...
‘Fuck,’ gasped Parker, blinking his eyes and realizing that the guard was now barely two feet away from him. Two hands with graying skin and razor-like nails took hold of Parker’s shoulders, and the yellowed teeth moved forwards to take a bite out of Parker’s face.
The gun was in his hand; but he was so weak...
He just managed to get his right forearm horizontal and he blew the thing’s family jewels to pieces. Not intentionally – he just couldn’t raise his gun-hand any higher.
The security guard didn’t even register the loss of a man’s most important assets. Just hissed stinking spit straight into Parker’s face, those fucking teeth looking to get a hold on his nose...
With a wild yell of effort, Parker hoisted up the gun and jabbed its barrel right under the thing’s jaw. Pulled the trigger and had the satisfaction of seeing the thing’s brains cascade from out the top of its head. Immediately it flopped onto the shiny marble floor, like a marionette whose strings had just been cut.
Parker turned back around and began his ascent of the stairs. Holding onto the rail with both hands, pulling himself up. Every stair felt like Everest. There had to be at least thirty or so such stairs as well – and that was just to the first floor.
Would he find what he was looking for there? And if not, did he even have the strength to try the second floor – and then the third, fourth, and so on?
No; no chance. If what he needed wasn’t on the first floor then he was finished. Even now he was so sick that he was actually starting to hear things...
Really, things. A mass of moaning, like twenty or thirty things were assembling near the foot of the stairs.
Vaguely, from some far-off, semi-coherent part of his mind, Parker
assumed that the roar coming from the thing whose balls and then brain he’d blown off and then out was merely repeating in his mind, echoing and increasing in volume like the ripples of a stone thrown in some auditory pond...
Then Parker happened to look behind him.
The bodies sprawled out on the marble floor and upon the hard-backed plastic chairs were still there. Presumably, semi-mummified/semi-skeletal corpses that were approximately two years old weren’t too appealing, culinary-speaking, even to a thing.
Because there were twenty or thirty things massed near the foot of the stairs. All gazing almost lovingly up at Parker. One thing (man or woman, Parker couldn’t tell) was missing both its legs just above the knee – and so was pulling itself along the floor using its hands.
That was the thing about things, thought Parker abstractly. They never seemed to consider dining upon a weaker member; one who couldn’t fight back because of the injuries received when it had first been fed upon.
Once Parker had seen a thing with only its right leg intact, and goddamn if two other things hadn’t been helping to pull it along. Maybe Parker had misread the situation, but that sure as hell was how it had seemed...
Parker emitted a sob, turned back around and resumed slowly pulling himself up the stairs by holding onto the handrail. One of the things – Parker assumed it was the woman he’d seen wearing the bloodied nurse’s uniform, one breast exposed (something of a fantasy of Parker’s at one time – certainly not now) – was slurring, ‘Crassssh team notified... activating defibrillator now...’
How the things possibly remembered such ‘lines’, as it were, from their previous lives was a mystery for Parker to ponder at a later date. Right now, gun or no gun, he had to find somewhere that would offer him sanctuary from the bloodied, chewed, slurring memories of humans that were looking to tear him to pieces and consume him while he was still screaming.
He reached the top of the stairs. The things by now at the middle of the staircase themselves. Time had slowed for Parker right down to some thick treacle nightmare. Where even the things were quicker than him.