The Inhuman Chronicles (Book 1): Inhuman

by Feren, Todd C.

  He continued, his voice dropping into a more ominous tone: “‘But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead. Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by.’” He looked up at me with that crazed look of a believer. “It’s the rapture…” He concluded.

  “Ah,” I said. “It all makes sense.” There was an awkward moment of silence. “So…If this is the ‘rapture,’ God is returning for a thousand years. The dead have risen…now what?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked with a genuine look of confusion on his face.

  “Well, if this is in fact ‘God’s wrath’ that we are dealing with, what are we supposed to do?”

  “It says right in the scripture, ‘Shut doors behind you. Hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by.’”

  “So, hide inside?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, when ‘his wrath’ has passed by…Does the world go back to normal?”

  He shook his head. “Hell on Earth.”

  “Ah. Got it.” I acted like I was taking everything in with total seriousness. “So, doesn’t the rapture start with all of the saved souls being taken to heaven?”

  “Yes. I Believe the first of these walking corpses…”

  “Zombies,” I corrected.

  “The first of these ‘zombies’ were demons possessing the empty shell of those that ascended to the heavenly father. They took the bodies of those who were saved out of anger and spite.”

  “Then, if they bite us, another demon takes over our body?”

  “That’s right,” He replied very matter-of-factly.

  “And our eternal soul would then be free to go to heaven?”

  “No,” he said with his tone returning to that of a ghost story. “After the rapture comes the judgement. If you get bit, your very soul is feasted on by the demon that inhabits your body. There is nothing left to judge. You just no longer exist.”

  There was another long awkward silence.

  “Jack,” I started. “I have tried to live the good Christian life.” I lied. “But, to be honest, there was a time or two that I strayed off the path to God… So I get why I didn’t ascend to heaven with the rest of the first group. But, what about you? You seem to be chock full of unshakable faith… Why are you still here?”

  Jack stood up and walked to the window. “I was in the Gulf War. I did things…Bad things. I killed men and women…and children.”

  “I see. So is there hope for people like us?”

  A glimmer appeared in Jack’s eyes, and a smile widened across his face. “With God, there is always hope.”

  I seriously wanted to run outside screaming into the open arms and mouths of a zombie horde. This is why I always hated my human disguise. Having to listen to people ramble on about complete and utter bullshit was absolute torture. But…This guy definitely knows how to handle a gun. I could tough it out through his stories of biblical bullshit in exchange for some firepower at my side.

  “So, you were in the war?” I started. “That explains why you were so handy with those guns.”

  “I was always good with a gun.” He beamed.

  “Do you think you could teach me how to, oh I don’t know, hold one without killing myself?”

  He let out a loud and hearty laugh. “I’ll make us some lunch, and when we’re done, I will teach you everything I know!” Then he stood up, wiped his hands on his pants and walked into the kitchen. I watched as he left the room, and that’s when I saw Sara leaning up against the doorway with her arms crossed. She glanced into the kitchen to make sure Jack was out of earshot, and then walked over to me.

  “You know,” she said approaching me. “He may not be aware that you are making fun of him, but I am.”

  I mustered a genuine look of shock on my face. “Making fun?”

  “Look,” she sat in front of me. “I think it’s all bullshit too, but it’s his belief that has been keeping him going. I know it seems stupid, but if he loses his faith, he has nothing left to fight for. If he has nothing to fight for, he won’t fight. If HE doesn’t fight, what chance do you and I have?”

  “Good point.” I said. “Are you two…”

  She cut me off. “No.”

  “I just assumed…”

  She cut me off again. “Assume all you want. I was trapped on a roof top when he showed up. I was the only person alive. My boyfriend…All the employees….Everyone was dead…or had turned.”

  I really didn’t care about her sob story, so I gave her an out to telling her story that made it seem like I gave a flying shit. “If it’s too difficult for you to talk about this…” I said, hoping that she would stop talking.

  “No. It’s okay. I need to.”

  “Great,” I said flatly, trying my best to not look totally uninterested.

  Chapter 11

  Sara looked out the window reflectively. She really was quite pretty, so maybe listening to her wouldn’t be a total waste of time. Maybe I could just ‘mute’ her like an exceptionally loud commercial. Women appreciate a man who is willing to listen. Try it sometime. They don’t know that the entire time they are rambling on about something, all you are thinking is ‘shut up and show me your boobs.’ So I listened. I decided to do my best at recreating her story exactly the way she told it. So here it is.

  SARA’S STORY

  “When the outbreak started, I realized that this was going to be much bigger than a hurricane that just shuts down a city for a few days. I knew this was big. Really big. Everyone did. My boyfriend was diabetic, and we knew they weren’t going to be making insulin anymore. At least not for a long while. So we decided to run to the pharmacy at CVS to grab whatever we could. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones with this idea. We were one of the first there, and there were already people fighting over bandaids. The real problem with this CVS was its location. It was half a block from Mercy Hospital. We didn’t think of it at the time, but that’s where all of those sick people were sent. Before we really knew what was going on. That hospital was a ticking time bomb. We didn’t know that inside, the zombies were feeding away on every other sick person and increasing their numbers until the building just couldn’t contain them anymore. They poured from that hospital like water. I remember seeing the panic on the streets, and thankfully somebody inside the CVS had the idea of shutting the big metal roll down gate. We stood there inside and watched thousands of zombies flooding the streets and feeding on anyone that they found. A woman who got locked out of the CVS jumped in her car with her two kids, but she dropped the keys just outside the car when she jumped in.

  I could see the terror in her eyes as she looked at those keys on the ground, knowing that they represented the death of her children. The zombies pressed themselves against every window of that car and tried to chew their way through the glass. They had the car completely surrounded. Eventually, there were too many pressing against the passenger side window, and it shattered, giving an opening that the hungry zombies just couldn’t resist. I remember hearing those screams over every other scream that filled the streets. Once one got in the car, the panicked screams incited the zombies even more. We couldn’t see the car anymore through the crowd, but we could hear more glass breaking, and then the screams…Thankfully, those screams didn’t last long…

  There were about twenty of us in the store. Once the zombies started pressing against the roll down gate, we knew that if more showed up, they could take it down. So we ran from the front of the store and hid in the back. Hoping that if they didn’t see us, they would move on…But they don’t work like that. The ones who were there and saw us stayed. They have a one track mind. They saw food, and they wanted it. What hiding did was keep any more zombies from joining their ranks at the gate.

  We were all huddled in the
back…for days. We survived off of candy and Ensure meal supplements. One of the women who was trapped with us had the flu, and she kept creeping to the bathroom to throw up. We could hear her wrenching and crying in the bathroom. An old man crawled on his belly into the pharmacy and got her some anti nausea medicine. She couldn’t even keep that down. Eventually, she just stayed in the bathroom. I think she was worried that the other people were getting angry. My boyfriend was sleeping most of the day. His blood sugar was really affecting him. He was weak. I went into the back when we first got to the store to see if there was any insulin, but it had all been looted before we got a chance to take any for ourselves. I started to worry about how we would ever get out. There had to be another way other than through that front door.

  I convinced some of the men from the group that we should check the stock room. We hadn’t heard anything coming from that room, and we had been there for enough time that if something was back there, it would have bumped into something or made some sort of noise. I crawled to the flashlights and grabbed a handful and some batteries. When I got back, the small group was waiting for me by the stockroom doors. I handed out the flashlights, and we crept in. It was dark. The cheap CVS brand flashlights didn’t really do too much to light the room. There was so much dust in the air that all we could see was our beams cutting through the darkness. We found our way to the back door, and I pressed my ear against it to see if I could hear anything. All I could hear was my own heart beating in my throat. One of the bigger guys in the group moved me out of the way and slowly cracked the door open. It was clear. We couldn’t see any of those things out back. He closed the door as quietly as he could and turned around giving us all a thumbs up. We all agreed to gather everyone and make a run for it together. All I could think of was a video I saw on Discovery Channel with a herd of about thirty gazelles running through a crocodile infested river. They knew that the crocodiles would take some of them out, but the individuals had a better chance of survival in a group.

  Only about half of the gazelles made it across.

  Then we heard a noise above us. We all quickly looked up, and what our lights landed on was terrifying. A CVS employee had hung himself…Who knows how long ago. He had been bitten, and I think he tried to kill himself to keep from becoming one of those…zombies.

  We didn’t know at the time the way the infection works. If you get bit, the infection will kill you anywhere between one and three days. It just depends on how long your body tries to put up a fight. If you get bit, and die from any other reason before that, the infection doesn’t have any resistance going against it. It can take over much faster. This poor bastard had been hanging there for who knows how long just swinging and looking into absolute blackness. When we came in with our lights, we gave him some visual stimulation, and he started to react. But that extension cord around his throat made it impossible for him to moan. We left him there to swing forever. We went back to the group, and told them that running out the back was our best shot. About half of the group didn’t want to go, and the other half was more than ready to get out of there. An elderly woman went to the bathroom to tell the girl with the flu what the plan was. She was only in there for a second before we heard her scream. Everyone ran to the bathroom to see the girl with ‘the flu’ chomping away on the old lady’s face. When the zombie saw us, she hissed like an animal protective of its food. One of the men tried to slam the door shut, but one of the old woman’s legs was blocking the door. The zombie lunged forward and grabbed my leg. Two men jumped in to help, and in the struggle, they both got bit. A woman who was almost catatonic since we closed the roll down gate shuffled over, and when she was what was happening, she let out a scream so loud that I thought every window of the building was going to shatter. She ran away from the carnage, but in her blind fear, she ran to the front of the store where every zombie that saw her doubled down their efforts and started to shake the gate. Half of the group ran to pull her back, but it was too late. More zombies approached the front of the store to see what the commotion was. The woman dropped to her knees and just gave up. We tried pulling her away, but she was just dead weight. She wouldn’t come. I could hear the gate starting to groan as the stress on it was becoming too much. But, this woman just wouldn’t move…So…we all left her there and ran to the back door. One of the guys in the group tried to make some sort of fire bomb out of a glass bottle with lighter fluid and motor oil. He thought that if he threw it far enough, the zombies would be attracted to the fire, and it would give us a better chance to get away. It wasn’t a bad idea. So I opened the back door and started to run out. I turned around to see the man that made the fire bomb light the wick and get ready to throw it. As he wound back his arm, the zombie woman who had the “flu” grabbed him and bit him right in the forearm.

  She came out of nowhere.

  He dropped the bottle, and when it hit the ground, fire engulfed the entire doorway. I could see my boyfriend in the back of the group. I thought he was right behind me. I ran back to the door, but the fire was spreading everywhere. I looked into my boyfriend’s eyes, and then I saw him spin around. The gate at the front of the store had finally given out. They were coming. He turned back to me and mouthed the words, ‘I love you.’ And then I ran…

  That man was right about the fire. It does attract them. I could hear them coming.

  That moaning.

  So…I ran. Most of them were drawn to the fire, but a few peeled off and came after me. Across the street there was a Circle K store. The door was locked, and I could see people hiding in the back. I begged them to open the doors, but they wouldn’t even acknowledge me.

  One of the zombies got close enough to me to take a swing. I jumped back, and he just missed me. The streets were filling up again, and I had no place else to go… Then I saw the ice machine. I climbed on top of it, then pulled myself up onto the roof. They couldn’t get me up here. I was there for about twelve hours before Jack showed up in his truck. I never thought anyone could kill so many zombies so fast…

  Once he cleared out the ones in the front of the store, he helped me down. Some of the zombies, who were watching the remainder of the CVS burn down, saw us and started to make their way across the street. Jack helped me into his truck, and then we took off. I tried to get the people inside the Circle K to come with us, but they wouldn’t move. When we pulled away I saw a lot those zombies approaching the Circle K… There were too many… Those people were still inside…

  I would have died up there if it wasn’t for Jack… I don’t even want to think about it. I owe him my life.

  Chapter 12

  As Sara finished her story, Rex came prancing into the room with the T-Rex dragging behind him. He jumped onto my lap, and one of his paws caught just enough of one of my testicles to make me see spots. My initial reaction was to throw him across the room, but that’s not something a human would do. And since I was once again donning my human persona, I turned my anguishing yell into a hardy laugh as I gripped him firmly by the scruff and shook his head slightly harder than he would have liked. He seemed unfazed by my disguised attack, and he even managed to jump up further and get his filthy tongue on my cheek dangerously close to my mouth. I pulled his head back and held it firmly in both hands and looked directly into his eyes. For the benefit of Sara, I smiled and laughed a bit. But I hoped beyond hope that this dog could see into my soul and know that I was wanting so badly to throw him outside and let the zombies take care of him.

  “You can tell he loves you,” Sara said, wiping the tears that her story induced from her cheeks.

  “Yeah…” I said. “He knows how I feel too.” I let him go, and he leapt off of me, back down to the floor, honking out another fart to further his distance. Sara laughed at the dog’s smelly squeaker. I laughed too, but only to cover my growing rage. Rex dropped his T-rex at my feet and took off into the kitchen. At just that moment, Jack emerged with three plates. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I thought I could act
ually see steam coming off of them. When he got closer, I realized what I thought I had seen was true. There was steaming spaghetti with meat sauce, a slice of bread with what looked like Cheese Whizz spread on top of it, a very small handful of Cheese-It crackers, and what looked like blueberry vomit. In short…It was a feast.

  “How did you make this?” I asked in all honesty.

  Jack laughed. “I used your MREs.”

  “What’s this, now?” I asked looking even more confused.

  “Meals Ready to Eat,” he said. “There were a couple of dozen in your gun bag. How did you not know you had them?”

  “Well…It wasn’t always my gun bag.”

  Jack looked at me with a raised eyebrow. As we ate our meal, which I would rate about a three out of ten, I told the story about walking across the street and finding the guns. Only in this version, I was showing general concern for my close friend and neighbor. I was also shocked and mortified by the site of his dead body. Little details like that garner sympathy from normal people. It gets them to ask fewer questions when they see it’s “difficult” to talk about. The fact that “normal” people have sympathy at all puts them at a huge disadvantage.