White Flag of the Dead

by Joseph Talluto

  I told her, yes, and I went into detail about my preparations, about where I had guns and ammo, and the boarding of the windows.

  “They’re that far south, are they?” Ellie asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  Ellie sighed again. “We had a Chicago cop in here and he said the city was complete anarchy. Thousands of those things were in the streets, attacking anyone they saw, and transferring the virus. If they aren’t killed, eventually they become one of them. Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s slow, and it all depends on the individual. The cop said they can only be killed by destroying the brain.”

  “I know.” I said inadvertently.

  Ellie paused. “How do you know?”

  I told her about my little excursion, not leaving out any detail. I figured I would catch nine kinds of hell, but she just was quiet and then said, “Thank you for saving my baby.”

  I tried to be reassuring with a little false bravado. “Any zombie coming after him has to go through me first, and hell hasn’t made a zombie yet to match me.”

  Ellie began to cry, and I immediately regretted my words. “I’m sorry babe, I know this is serious.”

  Ellie managed to bring herself together, and asked me where Jakey was. “He’s over on the floor, trying to figure out why he can’t put a ball that’s bigger than his head in his mouth.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “Sure.” I brought the phone over to Jake and held it to his ear. I could hear his mother speaking to him, and he smiled as he recognized his mother’s voice. He squealed and laughed, and I could hear Ellie say how much she loved him and she would watch over him. That was odd.

  I brought the phone back to me and said, “Hey, I’m back, he rolled away.”

  Ellie was crying again. “John?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Take good care of my baby, please.?”

  “Sure thing. What’s going on? When are you coming home?”

  Ellie paused. “I’m not.”

  “What? What are you saying? Why aren’t you coming home? If things are that bad, you need to get out of there and come home.” I was getting very concerned.

  “John, please listen to me.” Ellie begged.

  “Okay.” I said suddenly worried.

  “I’ve been infected with the virus.”

  My world suddenly crashed. The sinking feeling I had in my gut became a hole in my chest. My heart sank and I could not focus. I started breathing heavily and I nearly dropped the phone.

  “John? Please talk to me.” Ellie said. “I need you to talk to me.”

  “Jesus, no, Ellie. Not you. Please not you.” I started to choke up, cursing a God that would do this to my family. “How?”

  “An accident. An infected patient was brought in, and he hemorrhaged in the OR. Two of us got blood in our eyes.”

  All I could do was shake my head. “No, no, no, God, please, no.”

  “John!” Ellie cried. “I need you to strong for me. I need you to take care of Jake for me. Please!”

  “I’ll come get you.” I said, knowing deep down it would be suicide. “Just wait and I’ll come get you.” I could barely talk.

  “No, John. Please don’t. This is hard enough as it is. If I know you and Jake are safe, it will make things easier. Please don’t come for me. I don’t want you infected. Promise me, John, please.”

  Watching Jake with tears in my eyes, I promised my wife I would not come to her rescue. “I won’t. You’re right.”

  “Thank you, John.” Elli sounded relieved. “John?”

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “Could we just talk? The phones have been going in and out and I don’t know how much time I have.” Ellie sounded like she did when we first started dating. My eyes watered up again, and I almost couldn’t talk.

  “Sure, babe. Sure.”

  So Ellie and I talked for the next hour about everything we had done, all of our happy memories, our regrets at not being able to do the things we wanted to do. I must have told her I loved her a thousand times, and she did the same. I brought the phone over to Jake again, and with the phone on the floor, I tickled Jake so his mother would have a memory of her baby laughing as she went into the long night. I asked her about what was going to happen and she told me that the doctors have been giving massive doses of morphine to anyone who was infected so they would die peacefully. I found this to be of some comfort, morbid as it seemed.

  Suddenly the phone started to have static and Ellie and I realized we did not have much time left.

  “John, please remember me as I was.” Ellie asked

  “Of course,” I said. “Nothing else.”

  “Take care of my baby.”

  “He’ll grow into a fine man.” I said, my voice catching.

  “Just like his daddy.” Ellie said, starting to cry again.

  The phone buzzed again and for a second I thought I lost her. “Ellie? Ellie?”

  “I’m here, John. We may as well stop, as I’m not feeling well, and I need to go see the doctor.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this without you, babe.” I cried, trying to hold back my sobs.

  “John, be strong. You’re much tougher than you give yourself credit for.” Ellie tried to console me, but it was hard. “Jake needs you.”

  That brought me back into focus. “I miss you already.” I said.

  “Me, too.” She said.

  I didn’t know what else to say, except, “I promise you, Jake will survive this. On my life, he will survive this.”

  Ellie cried again. “Thank you, John. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, babe.”

  “Give Jakey a hug for me.”

  “Will do. Ellie?”

  “Yes, John?”

  “Thanks for all the joy you’ve given me.”

  “My pleasure, sweetheart. Good bye, John. Love you.”

  “Love you.” I started crying again. “I’ll see you again.”

  “Promise?” She asked, crying herself.

  “Promise.” I said, and I meant it with all my heart.

  The line crackled once, and went dead.

  With that, I never saw my wife alive again. I went over to where Jake was, sat down, and just started crying.

  4

  For the next week I was on auto-pilot. I woke up, I fed Jake, I changed his diapers, I ate, and I went back to sleep. I couldn’t think of anything past what I was immediately doing and Jake’s needs. I didn’t try to go anywhere, and I didn’t even turn on the news. I was in a fog, lost in a pit of depression and self-pity. All I could ask was why? Why did this have to happen? Why did I have to lose my wife? Why did Jake have to lose his mother? That depressed me a lot, that eventually Jakey will not remember his mother in a little while. I was all he had.

  I was all he had. That thought began to stick into my head and I began to realize that I was all Jake had. I was all that kept him alive, all that prevented him from maybe turning into one of those things. I remembered a line from a very good movie once, and it stuck in my thoughts, so much so that I wrote it on a piece of paper and placed in on my fridge so I would never forget its truth. Very simple and more poignant than ever these days. “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” I thought about Jake and remembered my promise to his mother. Time to get busy living.

  I turned on the computer and fired up the internet. I was stunned at what I had missed over the past week. Headlines of “The Dead are Walking” and “Dead Consume Living” were all over the place. Talking heads were discussing the end of mankind and things like that. One of the sites had a list of cities to avoid, as the number of walking dead far outnumbered the living. People were in a state of panic, and martial law had to be declared. Videos were all over the net of people being attacked by mobs of zombies. One had a video of an attack, then the cameraman was attacked and the last shot of the video was of a mess of blood on the ground as two bloody feet slowly walked away.

  Realizing I could be overwhelmed with
information and none of it useful, I decided that if I was to survive this, I needed to know what I was up against. I spent the next three hours learning about the virus, how it was spread, how long it took to incubate, what the symptoms were. I read survivor stories and got bits of information from there. I learned that the infected victims hearing and smell seemed to be heightened, while their sight remained normal. I learned that they weren’t particularly fast, and were extremely limited in problem solving. I watched a video of a zombie trapped in a small room because it couldn’t figure out where the door was, let alone work the knob. I began to wonder how in the world everything had gotten to be such a mess, with an enemy that was pretty much stupid.

  I got my answer a lot closer to home than I intended. While I was on the computer, I happened to see a man out on the bike trail behind my house. He was walking on the trail when another man came out from between the garages by the condominiums. The second man walked slowly and directly at the first man. The walker held a baseball bat and waited for the first man to arrive. The second man was an older gentleman who clearly was infected. His skin had a grayish pallor, and he groaned into the wind. The walker waited until the zombie was close enough, then struck him on the shoulder, clearly breaking his arm. The zombie didn’t even slow down and barreled into the walker, knocking him down and biting whatever her could reach. The first man screamed and kicked shoved the zombie off, losing his hold on his bat. The zombie took repeated kicks to the face with no effect, and continued to bite and tear at the walker’s legs. The man screamed again and kicked with his feet, dislodging the zombie and scrambling backwards. The zombie rolled up and grabbed the man’s leg again, dragging him back within biting range. The walker’s legs and hands were bloody from bites, and he was obviously weakening. But he gave one more effort and threw the zombie off of him. The walker got to his feet and stumbled away, pursued by his attacker. The encounter had attracted the attention of another zombie, a woman with a torn shirt, who came out of a doorway, saw the walker, and started after him. I thought two things at this point. One was the man who was bitten was going to die anyway and become a zombie, and two, the zombies never stopped coming. They didn’t feel pain, they didn’t do anything but attack, attack, attack. My own experience was testimony to that.

  Part of me wondered why I didn’t try to help the man with the bat, but as I was learning from the internet, the less attention you attracted to yourself the better. I was grateful I had covered the front windows with boards. They kept things out and let me move about my house without fear of being seen from the street. They likely muffled sounds as well. I was probably going to have to board up the back windows at some point, but for now the light was nice to have.

  I checked on Jake and he was happily playing with some blocks, smacking them together and startling himself with the sounds he could make. I went back to the internet and surfed a few boards, taking in some survivor stories and tips on living on your own. I was interested in the groups that talked about “bug-out-bags” and what they needed for those leaving in a hurry. That seemed like a good idea, so I learned about that for a bit. I watched a few more videos, and I was struck by how many people made so many mistakes. If you kept your head, didn’t take chances you didn’t need to, didn’t do anything stupid, and kept your guard up, you could stand a reasonable chance of survival, if you weren’t trapped somewhere with no way out.

  I wondered about my brother and his family in the city, and with a small pang I realized that I probably wouldn’t see him again. He was a pretty smart guy, and had guns of his own, but he also had kids to look out for, so his choices were limited. I had tried to call him earlier, but the lines were all down or limited to official use only. I had left an e-mail with him, but had not received an answer for two days. Likewise with my parents. That was probably the worst part, not knowing. At least with Ellie I knew, and had a chance to say goodbye.

  I decided to turn on the news for a bit, and after making sure the volume was down low I sat on the floor with Jakey and took in the news.

  “…government agencies urge people to not use the phones as they are to be for official use only. All citizens are urged to stay away from hospitals and clinics, and people are urged to stay away from heavily populated centers. Infected people are everywhere, and no city is safe. Road congestion has stalled traffic in all major areas, and citizens are being attacked in their cars by roving infected. People are urged to stay inside, do not make undue noise, and try to stay out of sight. The president will be speaking later today regarding the situation. In world news, Australia has been overrun with infected, and small pockets of humanity have fled to the deserts and the outback. Europe is on the edge of collapse, and Russia has sealed its borders to prevent the further spread of infection from refugees. China has fallen to the infected, and India is said to have fallen as well. North Korea attempted a nuclear solution, however their missile misfired and destroyed the compound which housed it. The crisis has reached pandemic proportions, and experts now seriously doubt whether the surviving humanity will be in sufficient numbers to take over should the virus be contained. In local news, people are urged to stock up on water and supplies as there is no indication how long water or power might last. Congress is holding emergency sessions as all National Guard Units are called to active duty. At the bottom of the screen are the cities in the United States which have been deemed unsafe for people to travel to. Anyone with loved ones in these cites are urged not to try and reach them. If you are to travel, safe centers have been set up in each state to provide shelter and safety to those who arrive.”

  It took me a minute for my mouth to close. Holy crap. If this was what they were willing to tell us on the news, what were they hiding? I had grown up with a healthy distrust of news media, but I guess when the world ends, bias goes out the window in the interest of self-preservation. I was curious as to what the president had to say, but I was hypnotized by the stream of cities and towns that were scrolling across the screen. I wondered if there was a place on the internet where I could get a list of towns in my state that were overrun. As I watched the list go on and on, I realized that the safest course of action was to assume all population centers were dangerous, and you should not go out if you could avoid it. I felt sorry for anyone who was trapped in towns and cities. Where could you go? How could you get out? If the roads were clogged, you had to walk, and then you were a sitting duck.

  I turned off the news and played with Jake for a while. There wasn’t much else to do, and it allowed me to forget what was happening for a while. After the tenth game of Where’s Jakey?, I saw that it was time for his lunch bottle, so I made the meal and quietly fed Jake on the couch. He was a good boy about his bottle, not pushing at it like he had done in the past. His little brown eyes closed, and he was fully asleep when he finished. I carried him upstairs and placed him in his crib, closing the shades and door. I needed to make sure that I heard him as soon as he woke up, as I did not want his cries to attract attention.

  I went downstairs and took stock of my supplies. Water was still running, so that was not a problem. When it finally turned off, I had a natural supply, but it was a long walk across open ground to fill up. Not an option if I could avoid it.

  Food was in plentiful supply, I did not have too many worries there. I figured I was good for two months if I was careful, and Jakey was good for at least that long. Thank God we had stocked up before this mess came to a head.

  I had plenty of ammo, and since the attack I saw outside, I was keeping my guns within easy reach. My .22 was now on the kitchen table, and my SIG never left my side. I wandered into the garage and looked for what I could use as backup weapons. I had a pickaxe, but dismissed it as too unwieldy. I had an axe and a hatchet, but figured those would have to be last-ditch weapons. I brought them near the door, since you never knew, especially now. I took down my bicycle and thought about it. I had seen the videos of the clogged roadways, and wondered if biking was a better option. We had a b
ike cart that Jake could be strapped into, and there would be room for other things. Food for thought. I attached the bike cart and inflated the tires of both it and the bike. Just to be ready.

  I went back inside and brought my backpack out of the basement. I spent the next hour putting things in, taking things out, testing the weight, seeing what I could carry. I learned that water weighs a lot, and I needed to figure out what I was going to do with Jacob if I had to ditch the car or bike.

  I have to admit, at first the thought of being completely on my own was daunting, but as I began to pack and prepare and pray, I realized that I was comfortable with the tasks. It didn’t seem as strange to me as it might have seemed to others. It began to feel like this was something that I was meant to do, like I was meant to survive. I felt no panic, just a calm determination. Maybe it was because I had someone to live for, someone who needed me, but I think it may have been more than that. For a long time I had felt like something wasn’t getting done in my life, that I was supposed to be doing more. Maybe this crisis was a wake-up to see what I could do. Heck of thing, but I didn’t roll the dice, I just laid my chips on the craps table and hoped seven didn’t show up.

  I went back online after I checked on Jake and went on with a purpose. I wanted to find out everything I could about the zombies. I already knew that they couldn’t feel pain, and they were driven by hunger. I knew if they bit you, they spread the virus which turned you into a zombie. What I needed to know was details. How fast were they, how were their senses affected? I remembered the one zombie acting like he was smelling me, and I wondered about their sense of smell.

  After another hour of furious research and video watching, I came away with a much better picture than I had before. A decayed, rotting, smelly picture, but a picture nonetheless. I had watched several videos of people engaging zombies in combat, and the successful encounters involved people who kept on moving, who did not stand and try to take on a horde. Keep the fight to one on one, and you stood a pretty good chance. I saw one video where a person ran from zombies, only to be taken down after he ran out of breath. Lesson learned, they never tire. I read a report of a guy who said he tried to cross a street with ten zombies fifty yards away. He had stepped on gravel and they came after him. Lesson learned, their hearing seems to be heightened. Another story related how three people hid in a building, and two of them made it to the second floor and hid in a janitor’s closet. The third had hidden herself in an office. The zombies had gotten in, and zeroed right in on where she was. The only explanation was their sense of smell seemed heightened as well. I wasn’t so sure about that one yet, but it seemed possible.