Sorrow: A Novel Written by Brian Wortley

by Brian Wortley

  Val sat on her knees and offered him one of her hands. Brady took it and held it tight.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He said no words but only looked at her in a tearful, loving smile.

  After a while, he regained his composure and Val thought it time to ask her question. “Why didn’t you let me die in the mountain? It doesn’t make any sense for you to save me.”

  “Because I love you,” he answered without hesitation. She found his answer very odd. “I looked at you and I saw a small, scared Romanian girl. How could I not intervene? If someone you loved had a nightmare and you could go in and hold them, wouldn’t you?” His words struck her heart and she turned from his gaze. “You have suffered so much and yet you are so beautiful. Your beauty will inspire and give others hope. You’ll see.”

  “Thank you for everything. I know you could have easily kept me from your plans. And it would have been better for you if you did. There would have been no one to inform the Zombie King of your intentions.”

  “Things have a way of working out for the best.”

  “Thank you for your kind words in the trailer. You have saved me from my madness along with your wife. So thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. You have such a great role to play in the days ahead.”

  “How do you the things you know?”

  “Because, after all, Connor is right about me. I am, above all things, the bastard of hope.”

  “Brady, I love you and all, but you are too damn poetic.” She leaned down to sit with him and lovingly put her arm around his shoulder. "Please start talking like a real person." Brady only smiled in reply.

  Together they watched the sunset in silence.

  Part 6

  Epilogue

  For the next few days, they talked of finding a new place to live because their cabin had been compromised. But in the end, they decided against it. As they had hoped, the Zombie King’s hatred of them seemed to die with him and the rest of the Colorado Springs zombies saw no reason to march into the mountains to attack the four of them. Finally they settled into their new lives.

  Val confessed she lied to them before about living in Seattle. She told them she remembered almost nothing from before being experimented on by the Zombie King.

  Before she knew it, the day of her wedding arrived. Val and Sara prepared together in a tent by the lake while the men awaited them by the shore.

  “Are you nervous?” Sara asked.

  Val wailed. “Marriage is a good thing, right?”

  Sara couldn’t help laughing a little. “Connor is a good man. I think you two will be happy.”

  “I don’t get geek talk. I know he goes all geeky sometimes with physics terms and stuff. I’m not going to have to learn that stuff am I?”

  “You’ll be fine, Val.” She comforted her by placing her hands on her shoulders.

  “I mean how bad can it be? He still loved me when I was a cannibal and wanted to eat him. So we’ve already taken a ride on the shit-go-round. It can’t get much worse than cannibalism, right?” Sara laughed but made no reply. “How do you know if you’re in love? I mean, I don’t know if I love him enough. I mean, should it be like a dog? Like, I want to be around him all the time?”

  “Val!” Sara almost yelled. “Stop! You’ll be fine! Just take a deep breath.”

  Val did and felt no better.

  Sara stepped back and looked at her. “You’re ready,” she said with a smile. “Take your time and come out whenever.”

  Val took Sara’s hand. “Thank you.”

  Val looked at the tent door blowing gently in the breeze. A side of her wanted to find the nearest vehicle and keep driving until it ran out of gas. The deep recesses of her soul still scared her. And sometimes in the night she still heard voices. It seemed so much easier to suffer alone.

  I have to stop running sometime. And after all, Connor is a good man. She stood and reached out to the door to part it. This will be a new adventure.

  Connor nervously glanced Sara’s way as she led a heifer down the makeshift aisle. He smiled when he saw it decorated with a ring of flowers around its head. Sara smiled at Connor as she arrived at the post between the two men and tied the cow there to act as the priest. With everything ready, Connor looked out to the door of the tent for a long time before his bride exited.

  The woman exiting the tent took his breath away. Her beautiful black hair caught in the wind and danced about her shoulders. She looked up to meet Connor’s gaze and even at a distance, her eyes sparkled with the light off the water.

  Connor stared at his bride. Intrinsically she brought along with her beauty a sense of new beginning. Connor’s heart flooded with the sensation. It thrived even with the thought of something other than desperation. They had been in survival mode for so long. It would be good to live again. He had forgotten how much he missed having someone. And Val was a good woman. She had a spunkiness about her that made her irresistible to him. Something about watching her kill zombies thrilled him in a way nothing seemed to before the apocalypse.

  Val wobbled her way towards three of them. Shattering Sara’s entire concept of Val, Val insisted on wearing high heels despite the outdoor terrain. But after taking a few steps towards them, she kicked them off and walked barefoot. This action somehow only added to her beauty as the blades of grass bowed gently under her feet. She radiated a peaceful glow from her smooth skin that Connor could not help but notice. She walked down the aisle watching her footing until she stood before Connor. For the first time she looked up at him and the sparkling dark eyes behind her long lashes sent Connor’s heart beating faster. He had forgotten such beauty could exist in this zombie hell.

  They voted Brady to be the most like a minister and so he stood beside the cow and spoke a few words. Val looked up at Brady watching his scarred lips move. She thought he looked very un-priestly bearing the wounds of his encounter with the zombies on top the hospital. She thought the cure must have left him by the time he reached the hospital rooftop for he never seemed to heal from the gashes he received there.

  A nervous Connor pulled his vows out of his pocket and read them aloud. He found his voice much shakier than he expected considering this was his second wedding and only friends surrounded him. Val watched his eyes dart back and forth as he read. He bore his deep passions around his head like a crown.

  As he finished reading, she burst with love for him and leaned over prematurely and kissed him on the lips.

  “Well, ok,” Connor said once his lips were free again.

  “I just love you,” she said in an innocent and almost childish voice. She reached her hand into her chest. Connor tried not to stare but found it impossible. Val removed her hand bringing out a piece of paper. “What?” she said in response to everyone’s surprise, “this thing doesn’t have pockets! Where else was I going to keep it?”

  “Oh Val,” Connor said with a smile.

  Val read her vows aloud in a much smoother tone than Connor. When she concluded, Brady declared them man and wife and the four moved into a communal hug.

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ •

  The days after came happily. But always overshadowed. Unpredicted by Connor, Brady and Val experienced a type of withdraw from the Zombie King’s influence. In cycles they experienced together, the two became predictably depressed during certain weeks. But to Connor’s surprise Sara did not experience these withdraws. He theorized that since the two remained more conscious than Sara during their infection, it affected them differently.

  Both became terrible insomniacs during those weeks and could be seen walking around the grounds even in snow. After several months, Val seemed to recover but Brady grew only worse. His deep moods took on a new bent and an unspoken agony clung to him. Connor woke several nights to Brady weeping in the halls. His attempts to comfort him were only refused and Brady claimed he bore a sadness beyond Connor’s comprehension.

  At last during one of these dark times, Connor sat beside a shaki
ng Brady and heard his confession.

  “I bear the weight of the world,” he said in a trance-like state. “The blood weighs against me. I drown as if in a sea of sadness but I do not die.” Connor looked on him intently wishing he would speak in less riddles. “Our bloody business has just begun.”

  Knowing Brady never cast his words idly, Connor shuttered at their meaning.

  Book II

  The Bastard’s War

  Birth

  Deep into the sewers they brought them. Kicking in protest but fully alive. A deep seated fear churned in their eyes. Why they had not yet been killed – they did not know. The poor victims came whole into the bowels of Colorado Springs. In their fear, they guess it to be some sinister plot.

  The room reeked of half eaten corpses and festering flesh. The blood splattered across the walls dripped down onto the lifeless eyes of beheaded victims. The horrific scene of a disemboweled soldier dragging his intestines along behind him haunted the newcomers. The image would burn in their memories for the last moments of their miserable lives.

  They came at last to a larger room among the waterways. There in the center square of water floated the corpses of decaying humans. The looks on their faces made the newcomers wish they were already dead.

  The second level zombies threw their victims down upon the floor of the room. As the pitiful worms looked up from their humiliation they saw an altogether different creature before them. It moved, what the prisoners assumed to be, its muscular arms from the upper region of its body to unveil a face. Its eyes had been removed recently for the blood dripping down the empty sockets had not yet dried.

  It stood far taller than its soldiers towering above the miserable humans. With one of its appendages, it picked up a human and with another arm proceeded to rend him in two. The veins and sinews revealed by such an action desperately clung to their counterparts on the departing half. With its mouth, the creature collected these sinews between its teeth and bit down to forever separate the two halves. It consumed one of the halves in a manner of several bites and then turned to the others. They shook now in trepidation at the beast before them.

  It sent as it were a shockwave from its mind seizing the loyalty of those around it. Although the detestable humans had been freed of such curses months ago, a part of their minds resonated with his call.

  The being’s second victim looked on the creature as it bore him into the air. Between its bloodied teeth it crushed the eyes of the previous victim.

  A new power had been birthed under the shadow of the majestic mountain. There it awaited its perfect moment when all would fall prey to this second king.

  Part 1

  The History of Death

  The once distant hum grew until the deafening whoop whoop noise forced the zombies to scatter in all directions like sparks from a campfire. Normally they would have no hesitation standing and fighting but these foes came airborne. The little success they had over these flying vehicles came in the downtown district where the infection still lingered the strongest. When the enemy ventured in there, they had been able to get enough of themselves into taller buildings and jump out onto the flying terrors. Even though the rotating blades diced many, on occasion they had been able to overwhelm it by sheer numbers or by chance lodge some bone into the blades bringing it down.

  But here, away from downtown, they scattered like gazelles taking their chances on the run.

  As if the overpowering hum of the beasts were not enough, unbearable screeching noises accompanied them. The airborne foes lingered above a clump of zombies and cast down a strange object upon the ground. Out of curiosity one of the zombies investigated it but found only broken glass.

  As if some unseen foe attacked them, the greater zombies watched as their weaker counterparts fell to the ground around them. In bewilderment, they watched as their weaker friends wreathed helplessly on the ground and began to transform into their hated enemy. Despite the danger of doubling back to face the airborne foes, the brave turned to prey on their old friends.

  But their efforts were cut short as ground vehicles arrived with guns blazing. The remaining zombies, faced with retreat or death, chose to run. A distinct lack of bravery overshadowed them since losing their overseer.

  In raids like this, Colorado Springs had become more human than zombie.

  • ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  Helicopter raids became a frequent part of life in Colorado Springs over the past six months. The growing human resistance stumbled across a large group of working Bell 204’s in a Vietnam museum and ever since it became one of their main vehicles of transportation. Val wanted to use the helicopters at Peterson Air Force Base, but when she and a team went to retrieve them, they found them stolen. Val suspected some renegade group took them. Val spent the better part of the last few months training the new recruits the ins and outs of flight.

  Val found loud music could sometimes disorient the zombies and she quickly mounted speakers on either side of her helicopter. It usually blared some Beatles album if Val had anything to say about it. From the air, the gunners threw phials of the cure into the zombie hordes. The helicopters provided air cover while vehicles rushed in to snatch the new humans. If the incurable second level zombies were willing to risk doubling back, the humans could have quite a battle on their hands. In these types of situations, many new recruits fell prey to their old friends. But if the helicopters came in low enough and provided air support, often times the second level zombies would scatter off.

  It had taken several months for Connor and a few new friends to recreate the cure and then find ways to mass produce it. In the last couple months, they perfected it. With the help of his friends, Connor improved the cure's range and drastically increased its reaction time. To Connor’s frustration, it still could not turn many second level zombies. Connor’s team remained convinced those second level zombie’s minds were too deeply corrupted. Connor himself could not decide. Despite the discouraging test results they now encountered, he never forgot Brady had been a king when he was cured.

  • ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  Val looked out the windshield of her helicopter at the scattering zombies. The raid she was on had been successful. Already she could see the newly emancipated humans being dragged into Humvees. With the bulk of the danger over, Val wanted a turn at the guns. She leaned over to her copilot asking, “You got her for a bit? I need to shoot me some zombies!”

  “Go ahead.”

  Val moved to the back and took up one of the gunner positions. “All you need is love!” Val sang along to the music in between bursts. The others were struck by the irony of her mocking.

  “That’ll do for this one,” came a voice over Val’s radio. “Thanks for your help, Chopper One.”

  “Chopper One out,” she responded. “Ha,” Val said perhaps more to herself than anyone else, “I love my job.”

  Val had come a long way since marrying Connor. In many ways, she proved more social and well-adjusted than he did. Over the last several months, she became a bit of a daredevil as Sara called her. Being the captain of a chopper empowered her and offered her a sense of purpose. Her crew, known as the "Fire Hawks" throughout the resistance, thrived on her energy.

  • ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  Under the leadership of the original four, the resistance flourished. They spent the bulk of the last several months reclaiming zombies into their own ranks. Already their numbers were in the hundreds. Val was in charge of the air force, while Connor and Jones, a new member of their force, tested any chemicals and medicines that might further their cause. Jones had been part of a rogue group that joined and helped Connor solve his issues with reproducing the cure.

  When Val wasn't flying helicopters, she and Brady trained the new humans. Val focused on combat training while Brady retrained them on social and agricultural skills. All members agreed Brady and Val should be the ones to retrain new humans since both had been infected themselves. With his spare time, Brady st
rategized and often spent prolonged periods of time alone. Sara helped wherever she could. This usually meant she tagged along with Brady and Val.

  The resistance moved into the southern part of Colorado Springs. They had looked into moving into the mountain complex, but the old Zombie King had positioned a particularly fierce group of zombies there before he died. This group showed no signs of moving. Most were convinced zombies lived out their last standing orders from the old Zombie King.

  The camp prospered under the various skills of the recruits. The new humans easily picked up their old proficiencies. With only a little training, they possessed skilled doctors, pilots, weapons experts, and many other useful trades.

  The original four had not realized how much they missed society. At first, they dove into new relationships, craving friendships. But as time progressed, both Brady and Connor began to remove themselves from the community. Brady spent much time alone in his house while Connor became fond of driving around the countryside alone.

  A brooding cloud seemed to cover Connor’s path. After he helped develop a working cure that could be used in a wider area, he became unmotivated and uninterested in much else. As Val grew happier, Connor seemed more depressed.

  Brady’s absence, however, was of a very different nature. He became obsessed with the mission of the resistance. As the movement grew, Brady began to embody the mission itself. Despite his frequent disappearances, he found himself pushed into the spotlight of the movement. Connor could not help but notice.

  • ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  For the first time since Sara had been rescued, a giant storm blew across the US. One of the weathermen predicted it would hold for close to a week hiding their movements. Brady announced he would be making a trip to visit the old Zalac Enterprises building in Chicago. Immediately Sara, Connor, and Moses, a curiously strong man who wandered into camp alone about a month ago, decided to join him along with several others. Val and Jones opted to stay behind and hold the fort. She and Connor were having one of their spats and she looked forward to time away from him.