The Lazarus Impact

by Todarello, Vincent

  He wishes he never left his career in immunology. As fearful as he is, this is also an exciting opportunity to discover more about the nature of life in our world, and the nature of life in worlds beyond. If I were still in the labs down at the CDC I might be able to study this further, to contribute, to make a difference. But fate works in mysterious ways. His career change took him away from there, but it also put samples into his hand that might be important for the study of this microbial life form. Perhaps I’m the first to discover that the particles from the meteor might actually be alive. I wonder if any other scientists know that.

  CHAPTER 32

  After some time there's room to drive along the side of the road, so Marcus takes the pickup down from the monster truck rally on top of the highway traffic. Michael’s skin seems to rattle with the lingering sensation of motion, but he can finally breathe again without feeling like he’s about to throw up. Marcus keeps his speed moderate, since he doesn’t want to burn through gas any more than he already has. A jacked up ‘86 pickup with a blown 350 doesn’t do well in the whole miles per gallon arena. No doubt they’ll have to stop and try to score gas at some point.

  Amy turns her head to look in the truck bed; everything is still in its place, strapped down securely with bungee cords. Amazed, she congratulates Marcus on a job well done. She slides open the rear cab window and begins to climb back into the truck bed.

  “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” Michael asks.

  “I haven’t ridden in the back of a pickup since high school,” she cheers. “Do you mind?” she asks Marcus.

  “Go right ahead. Just hang on,” he says.

  Michael glares disapprovingly. “Be careful.” He watches her all the while.

  They hit a small bump in the grass, giving Amy a little toss as she gets into the truck bed. She laughs it off and stands up, grabbing hold of the pipes that secure Marcus’ array of high beam lights on top of the passenger cab. With her other hand she holds her mask, securing it in place and keeping it from blowing off her head in the cold winter wind. She doesn’t mind the sting of frost in the air. She feels free.

  “I had no idea she ever rode in the back of a pickup,” Michael says to Marcus.

  “Everybody got their secrets,” he says.

  “Yeah? And what’s your secret?” Michael asks.

  Marcus leans closer to Michael and whispers, “It’s a secret.”

  The amount of stopped cars on the highway lightens as they make their way further from the city, and soon Marcus is back on the pavement. Every so often he dodges and weaves around abandoned cars or bodies.

  “The concept of road kill has completely changed in meaning, eh?” Michael says.

  “Indeed it has,” Marcus responds. “Indeed it has.”

  They’ve entered Pennsylvania, and as long as the roads stay somewhat clear, they’ll be at Amy’s parents’ house in a few short hours. But gas is getting low, so Marcus begins to check each car they pass. Amy helps him get the plastic tubing out from the truck bed and hops out to watch him siphon bits of fuel off from each car. On occasion he slides himself underneath the back ends of cars and punctures the gas tanks, filling a plastic gas can from whatever flows out of the abandoned or wrecked cars. They quickly notice they’re getting more from wrecks than abandonments. It makes sense: the people that ran out of gas must’ve left their cars in search of fuel; but when people were in a crash that totaled their car, they often still had plenty of gas so long as the tank wasn’t ruptured.

  Amy moves back into the cab as they get closer to her town. Strange plumes of smoke rise up from alongside the highway, ruining her free-spirited ride on top of Marcus’ truck. Craters dot the cornfields and farms of rural Pennsylvania. Ahead in the distance they can see the ghostly, faded shape of a massive and dispersing mushroom cloud.

  Amy guides Marcus off the highway at her exit, and they slowly roll through the ravaged town that was her Main Street when growing up. Homes and storefronts look devastated, like a tornado hit the area. Some are in shambles, and others, usually the ones with sturdier structures, remain unscathed. There are more bodies and more abandoned cars. Amy begins to worry about her parents. After a few quick turns they arrive on her street. The home is okay, but three bodies are flopped on her parents’ lawn. She knows right away. One of them is her father, up by the glassed-in porch. His face is covered with a mask but she knows it’s him. She climbs over Michael and jumps out of the truck before it even comes to a stop. Her mask fills with fog and tears as she kneels down beside her father’s body. She sees the gunshot wound on his chest, and picks up his gun beside him.

  “Something went wrong here,” Michael says as he and Marcus approach.

  “Yeah no shit! My father is dead!” Amy cries out.

  Michael consoles her. “No I mean... look. He was defending the house from these two,” He points at the male and female corpses in the front of the house. “They look like they changed and he shot them. But your dad still has his mask on. He was shot, not bitten or sick.”

  “There was someone else shooting,” Marcus adds. “These bullet holes on the bodies here... they ain’t from his piece. These are like rifle shots.”

  “How can you tell?” Michael asks.

  Marcus pauses, still reluctant to bring up his past. He knew the difference between a pistol wound and something else like a rifle or a shotty.

  “My mom might still be inside,” Amy blurts, running inside.

  “Whoa, whoa hold up!” Michael chases after her, noticing the broken windows and wide open doorway in the front of the house. Marcus follows with his scythe across his back.

  “Mom! Mom!” Amy yells as she peeks her head into different rooms on the first floor.

  “Okay try to calm down,” Marcus says as he catches her in mid-stride between the living room and dining room. She buckles in his muscled arms and cries on his shoulder. Marcus passes her off to Michael. “Stay here,” he says to Michael. Michael nods, and Marcus begins to cautiously sweep the house.

  He creeps from room to room, stalking every single nook in the home, closets included. He takes notice of all the religious images displayed throughout the house; paintings of Mary, framed images of Jesus, a cross somewhere in each room. God is watching. He hears something fidgeting around upstairs. The ceiling squeaks with movement from above. He slowly goes up, one step at a time, silently placing each foot with care, holding his breath so as not to make a sound. The noise is coming from the right. He can hear what sounds like a woman struggling, breathing heavily. Marcus gets up to the top of the stairs and turns the corner to see an Asian woman tied to a chair on the far side of a bedroom, beside a vanity next to a window. Her face is exposed to the poisonous air that pours in from the broken windows below. Her sunken eyes glow with the dirtied amber color of piss. She drools at the mouth upon seeing Marcus, violently shaking in her chair, trying to get at him. Marcus sweeps the rest of the upstairs quickly before going back down.

  “Is she okay?” Marcus asks Michael in private.

  Michael shakes his head no.

  Amy catches her breath and collects her emotions on a chair in the living room. Marcus pulls Michael into the kitchen and whispers to him what he saw upstairs, but Amy overhears them arguing about whether they should tell her, and she hears the noises from above. She goes up on her own as they bicker. When they hear her scream in terror at the discovery, they both run up to her.

  “No! No, mom, no!” she cries. Amy’s mother stretches her head so far out toward them, trying to bite them, that she nearly pulls the vertebrae in her neck out of articulation. That hunger, that rabid desire for flesh, completely consumes her.

  “Hey what’s this?” Michael says, picking up a letter on the vanity beside Amy’s mother. It has Chinese characters scrawled onto it.

  “It’s addressed to me,” Amy says. “A note from my mother.” She opens it and reads it to herself, whimpering all the while.

  “What does it say?” Michael asks.r />
  Amy looks longingly into her mother’s pissy eyes and ravenous face, trying with every ounce of her will to find a shred of humanity left in there. But there’s none. She knows it.

  “Baby?” Michael puts his arm around Amy.

  Amy begins to read with anger in her voice. “Dearest Amy. If you should find this note, please know that your father and I love you very much. We have always wanted happiness and success for you in life. We were hiding away here. The air was safe for us inside, but no longer. We know what happens next. If you should return and find us here like those demons, please put us down. We do not wish to become the living dead.”

  The groans and seething hunger of Amy’s mother break the tension that lingers in the air among them. She lunges at them fruitlessly from her chair. Her skin rips and tears beneath the bindings that tie her down, exposing meat and bone beneath.

  “What could have happened?” Marcus asked.

  “Maybe the windows broke and she started to get sick, so she wrote the note to Amy,” Michael offers.

  “But we still don’t know where those rifle rounds came from,” Marcus adds.

  Ignoring the discussion, Amy holds her father’s gun to her mother’s head. Her mother tries feverishly to bite her hand. Tears stream down Amy’s face.

  “Do you want me to bear this burden?” Marcus offers.

  “No. It’s my burden,” she says between sobs.

  She fires a bullet into her mother’s temple. A red spray coats everything nearby, soaking a framed image of Christ with Amy’s mother’s blood. A long silence follows, interrupted only by the pitter patter of brain bits and skull fragments that fall from the nearby wall and curtains like raindrops as they hit the carpet.

  All momentum was drained from their cause in that moment. Their destination, their solace; it was just another nightmare. Amy’s dreams of breaking her diet with a taste of the salted pork she grew up with would now remain fleeting memories of a time taken for granted.

  Marcus fixes his eyes on the blood-soiled image of Jesus. He says a prayer in his head, asking for his, Michael’s, Amy’s and her parents’ sins to be washed away in the Lord’s blood. He asks that they be welcomed into God’s grace. “We should give your folks a proper burial,” he suggests after a moment. He beckons Michael over to him. He whispers into his ear that they should go find shovels and start to dig two graves in the yard. Michael agrees, and they dig. Afterward, Marcus fashions two crosses from some wood he finds in the shed. Amy joins them outside after some time passes, after gathering her emotions.

  “Thank you,” she says. Michael hugs her, but the reception isn’t what he hoped it would be. She’s distant.

  “Help Marcus with their bodies,” she says to him without making eye contact.

  Marcus and Michael carry Amy’s parents into the backyard one at a time, and the two men bury them. As the sun sets Marcus offers a prayer, and Amy kneels with her hands folded together to join him. Michael tries not to roll his eyes or show his distaste for religion. He stands by quietly with his hands on his hips.

  “Let’s stay here for the night. We can pack up some things and then keep moving west in the morning. It’s obviously not safe here,” Amy suggests. “I don’t think I can stay here any longer than that anyway.”

  Marcus and Michael agree with the plan, and they all head back inside to clean up and get ready for the journey ahead. They spend the evening gathering things and packing them into Marcus’ truck.

  CHAPTER 33

  The early drive is quiet, almost peaceful. Willy pulls over and stands guard when Sheryl and Brandon have to go to the bathroom. Rocky goes as well, but he isn’t concerned about taking cover in the woods.

  In the distance a fast-paced thumping begins to fade in from silence. Willy cups his hand over his brow to shield the morning sun as he looks for the noise. A chopper. It gets louder and louder as it comes closer. Willy knows it’s military just by the sound of it, and moments later it’s coming right at him. It takes a sharp turn and hovers over the woods, just past where Sheryl and Brandon went in to squat. Willy feels the swirling winds as it passes overhead. A sharp pain fills his ears and a crushing migraine comes over him almost instantly. The thunder of helicopter blades gives way to the raining sound of gunfire. In an instant, he’s back at war, wading thigh high in a stagnant river. His platoon is just on the other bank, making their way to his rally point but still in the jungle. An air strike was called in, so they need to hustle out, otherwise face a napalm death. He calls out to his men, shouting the last names and nicknames of brethren he’s barely even thought about or remembered for 40 years. There’s no answer.

  The air rips overhead as fighter jets tear through the skies. A moment later the entire jungle is aflame, and the tortured screams of forgotten men fill the air behind fading war planes and the muted drumbeat of chopper blades. Charred and melting bodies emerge from the thick jungle and flop into the stale river, sizzling upon impact and leaving behind only the curled and blackened shells of men.

  Two survivors, with fire still clinging to them, step out onto the water without sinking in. They run across the surface of the river toward him. A moment later they are on him, their flames consuming him. Willy screams in panic. But the river soon becomes a road, and the jungle becomes a winter forest. Sheryl shakes him back to reality, and Brandon holds a bottle of water just beneath his lips, telling him to take a sip and relax. His eyes fix on the woods at the side of the road. Smoke rises up from a short distance beyond, and there’s an orange and red flicker within.

  “Are you okay?” Willy asks them.

  “Are you?” Sheryl responds.

  “I’m fine. Just had a flashback. A relapse.” His surroundings come back into focus, and in his mind he’s no longer at war.

  “Some helicopters just flame-throwered part of the woods,” Brandon announces with excitement in his voice. “You shoulda seen it. It was awesome!”

  “Shoulda seen it? Hell, I lived it, boy,” Willy says with anger.

  “I thought they were after us, but it looks like there’s a small crater back there. I noticed a clearing when I was going to the bathroom,” Sheryl says.

  “They must be burnin’ all the places where there was impact, trying to kill whatever’s in the meteor dust,” Willy explains.

  A moment later the sound of helicopters fills the air again, and several special choppers with large containers attached to their bottoms hover over the same part of the woods. A thick goopy mud is dropped onto the fire.

  “And that’s to try to contain it,” Willy says. “Could be cement, tar, or just mud. It’s a wet burn.”

  Brandon flails his scrawny arms and jumps up and down to try to get the pilot’s attention. He knows they see him, a pasty, gangly little boy, right smack in the middle of an empty highway. But they ignore him and fly off when they’re done. A sense of hopelessness washes over the group. They’re truly on their own.

  Sheryl takes her coat off. Her bad arm is feeling cramped, so she changes from a sleeved shirt to a white tank top. They continue on, this time with Sheryl driving. But a short while later there’s a string of vehicles blocking the road ahead. Sheryl eases off the gas and slows to a coast, but Willy knows in his gut that something is amiss.

  “Don’t slow down,” he says. Ahead he sees a man scrambling into a delivery truck and starting it up. “Go ‘round them. Go ‘round to the right and don’t stop!”

  Willy reaches over Sheryl and flips on the police siren and lights. Rocky howls with the rising and falling siren blares. Sheryl accelerates in a panic. She veers off the road and onto the rumble strips along the shoulder. Then she takes the police cruiser onto the grass. But it’s too late. The delivery truck rams them just as Sheryl is about to pass and drive on. The car skids on the grass, spins and tumbles. Willy, Sheryl, Brandon and Rocky are thrown around the car as they slide upside down to an almost gentle stop against a nearby tree.

  “Lemme see all of yo’ hands!” a gruff sounding m
an shouts at them.

  Willy reaches back for his shotgun, but he hears a gun fire.

  “Don’t reach for nothin’ or I’ll kill every last one a y’all!” The man approaches the car, pointing a gun at Willy. “Get out. Slowly,” he says. Several other men approach the car as well. A gang of marauders. Looters. Criminals.

  Rocky gnashes his teeth and barks angrily out the window. Brandon shields his face and body from what he thinks is another crash soon to come. Out the busted back windshield he sees a massive black truck approaching far too fast from behind. He can hear the engine roaring like a beast. He curls into the fetal position and waits for the jolt to come.

  CHAPTER 34

  Marcus, knowing the mannerisms and stance of his old jail mate, sees what he thinks is a familiar person from a distance. The man points a gun at some people in an overturned police car on the side of the road. It's Harley. What are the odds? Of all the roads I could be on right now, why did God bring me to the one he’s on? Why, when there were so many other directions we coulda gone, and so many miles between here and where I left him? And why Harley and not some other criminal? This is my test. This must be. This is when I’ll have to face the flaws in my vows. Kill no man. But protect the weak. Fight the wicked. He tucks Thompson’s gun in his waistband and makes a hood over his head with the black blanket.

  “Hold on. This might get ugly,” he says to Michael and Amy.

  “Just go around. We don’t need any trouble,” Michael begs.

  “Well, whether you want it or not, you got trouble. I know this asshole,” he responds. “Get down low, so no one sees you.”

  Michael and Amy do as they’re instructed. Marcus puts the pedal to the floor and pulls up hard and fast, screaming the engine and then ripping to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. Harley turns and points the gun toward the truck. Marcus shuts the engine and jumps out, grabbing his scythe from the truck bed.