The Reaper Virus (Novella): Sarcophagus

by Barnes, Nathan

  “Why does Todd have a gun!?” the woman in the back of the bus shrieked. An ache pounded within Jessica’s cranium. She wondered if the decision to join this retreat was in actuality a massive mistake. It felt to her this good-intentioned mission had spiraled towards a critical mass of tragedy. All of her good intentions had led her to empty her checking account, leave their apartment and trust in a group of people she honestly didn’t care for. Those good intentions put her sweet daughter in a front row seat to witness a sick man shot to death by a youth pastor with a crush on her. Ava’s eyes were locked on the scene. The troubled mother then began trying to find the courage to pick up her daughter and run away from this madness all together.

  The volume outside then increased to the point where imagination could fill in the muffled gaps left by the soundproof bus and discern what was being shouted from the parking lot. Her head was throbbing. “We can’t be here. We can’t BE HERE. WE CAN’T BE HERE!” screamed Jessica’s thoughts. Right when she started to pull Ava from the seat, the ruckus outside ceased. In that moment the universe came to a screeching halt; no one made a sound and all movement stopped. The infected man’s arms dropped to his side. His fist released the shard of glass allowing it to somersault down with a splat on the concrete. For a moment he did nothing but stare at the missionaries turned executioners. The eyes filled with rage a second before were now hollowed with sorrowful acceptance.

  Doug’s lips moved to the words of a final sentence, Jessica imagined it to be a prayer or an apology, before joining Sue and Todd in the last steps towards their bus. The infected man stood as a shattered surrogate of the fighter he was minutes ago. Vibration surged from the bowels of the bus.

  “Show’s over folks!” announced the driver, “Time for us to hit the road before anymore trouble tries to up and stop us.” When the rumbling turned into movement the man turned around and walked aimlessly in the opposite direction. A trail of darkened blood dotted behind him like waypoints on a twisted map.

  Relief overcame Jessica. “Alright, baby,” she said to Ava, “we’re finally on our way!” Her intent was to sound excited enough that the child’s trance on the man outside would be broken. Finally she gently placed her palm on Ava’s tiny chin. “Ava, don’t look at the sick man anymore. He’s a grown man… I’m sure he can take care of himself. Read your book or talk to me. We’ll be there before you know it.” The dazed beauty smiled and kissed her mommy on the cheek. Soon she was lost in her book about ponies with neon hair.

  Chapter Four

  Their bus eased out its way towards the parking lot entrance. From there they would take a right-hand turn onto Woodlawn Avenue then another right onto Patterson Avenue. After that the two vehicular mammoths will need to cut northbound on one of the neighborhood streets to reach Monument Avenue. Once they make it this far it will only be a few blocks before they can get on the Downtown Expressway, head south across the James River then continue away from this awful city. Most of the retreat members breathed a sigh of relief now that they had begun moving. Movement was, in their minds, a sign that salvation was near. They would be safe from the raging R33PR pandemic and the monsters it created. At the retreat they would be able to enjoy a reprieve from news broadcasts talking about the dead walking. Pastor Doug reassured them all that the spread of such stories was more dangerous than the virus itself.

  Jessica glanced at the little one to ensure that she was properly distracted. Her daughter was blissfully lost in fluffy tales. The exhausted mother’s face transformed then from masqueraded hope into its truthful verge of tears. She peered over Ava’s head to see out the window as the bus made its turn onto Woodlawn. The infected man wasn’t far from where she last saw him. He shuffled along like a soldier marching towards surrender. In the last seconds before view of him was blocked by the turn, Jess saw him stop. She imagined the sound of his face-first plunge was loud enough to echo. A nearby bird was startled from its perch by the quick slap of bloodied clothing punctuated by the sickening crack of his sorrowed eyes meeting the pavement.

  “Hey Mommy…” said Ava from behind the wall created by her storybook.

  A scowl inevitably formed from hearing the girl’s tone of voice. “Baby please don’t tell me you need to use the potty already. I asked you to go before we left the apartment.” Immediately she felt bad for being so cross with the little one but those words said in such a way almost always means ‘I have to pee!’.

  The unprovoked impatience shown by the young mother was countered with a fat lip that would melt the heart of Satan himself. “Mom-mee! I went at home when you asked me to and I WASN’T going to say that. Can you…” She became sheepish then. Her eyes found their way out the window and saw a woman sitting on a porch as the charter buses passed. The lonely-looking lady wore a funny looking white dress with red polka dots and no jacket in the cool morning air. Her silly dress made Ava smile but the woman on the porch looked so sad. Her head followed the pair of giant vehicles as they went by. “Can you please ask the driver if I can stand up by him to look out the front? The bus is really high up and I was thinking it would be a good idea to see from there.”

  Jess followed the girl’s eyes as her attention drifted outside their bubble of safety. She too noticed the woman sitting on the porch. Even a momentary glance from a moving vehicle painted enough of a picture of this woman to see that she’d been through hell. Dim morning light reflected off of a tearful sheen that dripped down her face. She sat three steps down from the top of a brick staircase leading to an old house with its door opened. Her posture indicted a person who suffered under the weight of defeat. A once snow-white dress was stained with crimson spatter. These tainted polka dots irregularly painted a grisly origin; their directionality showed flight from the area of the woman’s right side. The buses had almost entirely passed by the time Jessica put the pieces together and recognized the gore coated claw hammer held in the grieving woman’s right hand.

  Ava continued to plead her case as she turned back to face her mother. “Pleeease Mommy! The bus driver man looks lonely.”

  She didn’t realize how transfixed she’d become until Ava interjected the second request. Her mind was reeling over the events of this morning. They just passed by a woman who had likely been forced to commit some abominable unknown horror. Minutes before they witnessed a man get denied salvation from a church group then hit a pinnacle of desperation before losing his will to continue. The signs of the end have been all around them for a week but it wasn’t until now that Jessica allowed herself to see them. One way or another, she knew that they would not be returning from this retreat.

  “No. I’m sorry baby girl but no.” All she wanted to do was curl into a ball and accept whatever was coming towards them but because of what sat beside her strength could be the only option. “There aren’t any seat belts up there. I don’t want to take the chance of getting the bus driver in trouble.”

  Her little shoulders rose with a quick and dramatic sigh. “Ok, Mommy. I understand. Can we read my story together?”

  “Of course we can. Let’s just wait until we reach the highway. We don’t want to finish all of your books before we even cross the river!” She faked a smile.

  It didn’t take long for Ava to become lost once again in her picture book. Jessica attempted to get a read on the other passengers without coming across as overly nosey. Some of them were just as lost in reading material as her daughter. Many had headphones over their ears attempting to fill the soundproofed void with distraction. Others were doing exactly what Jessica was – appeasing curiosity while trying not to express their worry. They glanced out the windows or at each other. From the rear of the bus she could hear a woman gasp loudly at something she witnessed outside. Her gasp immediately turned into a panic until the man sitting next to her shot his arm high above her shoulders and pulled her away from the window. Sobs became the only sound in the bus for a moment. Then they were replaced by the man talking as he soothed her with his sheltering embrac
e. “It’s ok. It is going to be okay. He has them now. God has them now.”

  The roads were as eerie as they were hazardous. This was a lull in the storm. Jessica remembered seeing local roadways like this once before when Richmond took a decent hit from a hurricane. She was stuck at work but decided to risk the drive home during a brief dissipation in the previously relentless rain bands. During the drive she couldn’t help but feel like the world was in a transitional calamity. Roads were littered with debris and the occasional abandoned car. Any traffic came from random passing vehicles with people frantic to get to safety.

  Pedestrian traffic moved with a similar purpose. The atmosphere was one of panic and fear. Even if people didn’t know where they were going they knew that the open streets were the last place they should be. Jessica replayed her memories of reaching home during that storm and shuddered thinking about how bad the things got that day. The only light in the memory was that of safely holding Ava. She knew the strength that came from being in the presence of her most precious accomplishment propelled them through it; so it must do the same during this new storm.

  Random disabled cars transformed the road into an unpredictable maze. The bus hummed along undisturbed just long enough for the retreat members to forget this was not a typical church trip. That peace abruptly ended as the bus would jerk and swerve out of the way of some unseen threat. The unnerving turbulence started occurring so often that the passengers stopped looking to see what was causing the trouble. They became forcefully apathetic so long as the trouble wasn’t in the confines of their safety bubble.

  At the helm of it all was a bus driver that did everything he could to not react aloud to the nightmarish obstacles he continuously maneuvered around. Soon their caravan had to detour off of Patterson Avenue onto a few neighborhood streets instead of their original plan to travel the most direct way to Monument Avenue. Patterson had quickly become too risky and they were close enough to their plotted turn that the detour shouldn’t be an issue.

  Jessica felt everything list to the right as their large shuttle made its turn onto a narrow side street. Due to the size of their transport it was difficult to gauge how fast they were traveling, however, Jess had a feeling that the speed limit wasn’t really being considered. They should be on the Downtown Expressway within a few minutes. Once they reached that point then the possibility of escaping city lines becomes much more likely. She knew, of course, that it would be foolish to think that the danger presented by the infection was limited to Richmond. Things would feel dangerously tense for the retreat group until they reach the other side of the James River. After they pass that point the prevalent dangers of an infected city won’t be as much of an issue.

  With the new direction she decided to risk looking out the window once again. Fronts and backs of houses zipped by outside as they continued down the narrow two-lane street. Occasionally alleyways broke the blur of passing households. The first perpendicular outlet was a long expanse of nothingness. Jessica jumped in her seat when the stillness of the alley was broken by the shape of a person running full tilt out of a yard and into the empty lane. His speed suggested that he might be fleeing from something, but obviously she will never know what that something was.

  Then they passed an alley that was visibly marred by a bloody mess. Indistinguishable globs of flesh painted a scene that couldn’t conceivably have originated from the life of one human being alone. Jess instantly gagged at witnessing the brief horror. She never did well with scary movies; the reality of this murder scene was inconsequential thanks to the passing view from a moving bus. They were going far away from this nightmare and that was all that mattered to her.

  Chapter Five

  “Coming up on the Expressway, folks!” The driver happily announced from his station, “the lead bus is about to hit the on-ramp right now.”

  Sighs of relief sounded from throughout the cabin. Even with the announcement, the tension that was felt in the group remained palpable. Jessica gripped her armrest as everything began to shift to the left with the sharp right hand turn for the onramp. Ava looked up from her book with a hint of panic.

  “It’s alright hon. We’re just getting onto the highway,” she reassured the little one. Ava’s eyes lit up leading Jessica to preemptively answer her unspoken question, “yes we can read now. I can’t wait to hear what the ponies have in store for us!” Inside she was thankful that sarcasm hadn’t been added to one of her daughter’s many talents.

  Traffic was dense yet still moving. The two-bus caravan weaved towards the lane second from the left on the four-lane expressway. A black Volkswagen cut between the church vehicles and remained in the lane. From her seat, Jessica could see the pile of luggage towering above the car as it tailgated the lead bus. It was far from the only car loaded up for the long haul. Evidence of the unmistakable fear that infected the city could be seen all over the traffic, from full truck beds to loaded back seats, and cars over-occupied with passengers. The consensus appeared to be that Richmond was a powder keg waiting to ignite. She thought of the desperate infected man at the church then wondered if the ignition has already occurred.

  Ava picked up on her mom’s distraction and let out an audible grumble in response. Jessica snapped out of it then teased, “don’t you grumble at me little Miss Thing. We have all the time in the world to read.” The little girl giggled then they both focused on the book. Its pages regaled them both with fairy tale adventures; it was the perfect thing to distract from the harshness of outside.

  They travelled at a third of what the speed limit would have allowed. The bus tapped the brakes forcefully enough to jostle everyone inside. Mild panic could be heard once again from the retreat members. The old man behind the wheel tried to keep everyone calm, “just some traffic. Nothing to be worried about, folks.” Another jerking motion came, negating his reassurance. He added, “It’s getting a little thicker the farther south we go. I’m sure it’ll slow down some more before it gets better. Ya’ll should keep your seatbelts buckled just to be safe and try to avoid any trips to the facilities in the back until we’re over the James River.”

  He got on his radio then with the lead bus. It was muffled enough that Jessica couldn’t make out what the voice on the other end was saying. She wondered if the roller coaster of panic was also being felt in the other retreat members. The others on the first bus had a better vantage point of the traffic ahead. All the second bus could see in front of them was the black Volkswagen riding the tail of the first bus. Once the radio stopped she tried to focus on the words the driver responded with, “Yes Pastor. I understand. No matter what.”

  “No matter what?!” Her mind raced with possible explanations, “the hell does that mean? What are they seeing that we’re not?” She so badly wanted to go speak to the driver but saw no way of doing it without alarming Ava and the other passengers. Ava had finally reached some level of contentment as she sat happily scrutinizing every detail of an illustration on their current page.

  Jessica used the moment of freedom from her reading duties to observe the surroundings beyond the immediate traffic. She’d been through here hundreds of times, but always as the driver. Focusing on the road makes it easy to miss how much of a marvelous conduit the Downtown Expressway actually is. It’s a trench cut through the city lines that traverses as a sunken pathway surrounded by concrete walls and fences. Above the walls the city of Richmond carries on with little regard for the massive line dug to the river crossing.

  Dual rail lines separate north and southbound traffic. They run parallel to the expressway isolated from the chaotic travel lanes by a tall fence atop a Jersey wall. Racing a train going the same direction or seeing one zip by going the opposite direction had never failed to create a moment of excitement in their prior travels along this stretch. Of course, with the President shutting down rail travel a few days before, Jessica knew there wouldn’t be train races on this trip.

  “Do you see any trains, Mommy?” Ava sweetly inquired
after noticing her mother staring out the window. A frown was all she could muster in response to the innocent question. Jessica wondered if the trains would ever run through the River City again. Ava cheerfully added, “do you remember the time when we raced the silver train from here all the way to the river?”

  The railroad tracks break their joined path with a bridge passing above northbound traffic that then leads to a separate parallel bridge that’s just for trains. It’s an ornate-looking construction of arching pillars that carry trains high above the rapids. Commuters using the ordinary highway bridge, the same bridge the buses were headed towards, are treated to an unexpected highlight of scenic delight. Ever since they moved to this city the railway bridge over the James River stuck out as one of her favorite sites. Jess always imagined the bridge belonging in Gotham City rather than Richmond, Virginia.

  “It was exciting! I remember it well. Today, though, I don’t know if we’ll see anything on the train bridge. Sorry sweetie…” she said watching the little one conceal her disappointment like a professional.

  “Do you think one day we can ride a train across that pretty bridge?” Ava asked in a testament to innocence.

  The phrase ‘one day’ perforated Jessica like a knife twisted into her gut. She envied her daughter’s ability to dream of future adventures. It was a question that lacked any fear or trepidation towards the death that seethed around them. The Reaper Virus didn’t simply raise the dead; it infected every aspect of being. No matter where the troubled mother looked she saw reasons to lose hope. From random rust-colored blots painting recent violence on a sidewalk to homes abandoned like a panicked snapshot in time, the wretched cues that ‘one day’ would never come were abundant.