by Jean Booth
Darkness.
She heard sobbing. A scream. Felt a crunch beneath her fingers. Her stomach growled. Hot liquid poured over her hands as she grasped something thick and slimy. She felt movement against her fingers. She looked down.
“Please. Dear god. No. Please.” A woman crouched down in front of Jessica, sobbing.
Jessica’s fingers clenched, reflexively grabbing what they’d been holding. She tore the liver out of the woman’s body, her fingers grazing the thin membrane of the diaphragm as she ripped the connective tissue. Her hands brushed against the woman’s lungs, feeling them expand with her final breath. Jessica tore into the liver like a rabid beast, starving, yet not sure anything would ever satisfy her hunger.
Her hands returned to the dead woman’s body—almost of their own volition—searching for something. Blood oozed between her fingers as she ripped away the flimsy barrier of the diaphragm. She shoved her arm up under the woman’s breastbone, grasping onto her still heart. She felt the arteries and veins tear as she wrenched it out.
Jessica held the heart to her mouth and sucked the blood out, seeking every last ounce of its power. She purred with contentment as she licked every last drop from her fingers. One last thing.
She reached up to the woman’s head, cracking the skull against the tile floor as she would an egg. She cradled the woman’s head in her hands and carefully peeled open the skull, revealing the dying brain inside. She smiled.
With each bite, things started coming into focus. She could feel parts of her own brain start to work in ways she never realized it could. A stab of remorse shot through her and was quickly extinguished by her brain’s demand for more.
She looked around when she was finished with the woman. The carnage was absolute. Blood coated every surface of the hall she was in. Body parts were strewn about like unwanted garbage. A hand slowly crawled over a man’s torso, searching for its owner. Crazed beings were greedily eating their chosen victims. Groans of the dying replaced the screams of the hunted.
She surveyed it all with a casual detachment she wouldn’t have felt before Caleb had infected her. A part of her was horrified at what she’d done and what she was looking at. That part was carefully separated from her thinking process. She knew she should feel horror, but she could only think about how grateful she was to not be the woman beneath her.
A young man ran by, carefully and quickly examining the bodies around him. She watched him gag, and took in the chunks of vomit already covering him. She smiled as he reached down to one of the dead bodies. He slathered himself with blood, absentmindedly running his hands through his hair and smearing it through his brown locks.
His eyes met hers and she could smell the sweet, pungent odor of fear.
He ran.
She listened to his footsteps as they pounded down the hall and into the stairwell where she lost him amongst the chaos that was still ensuing below this floor.
She stood up slowly, sated for the moment. She walked toward the door the man had run through, and followed his scent to an exit on the side of the hospital. It was there that her conscience came rushing to the fore.
What have I done? How could I eat someone? What did Caleb do to me?
Amongst fear, and confusion, she wondered where Caleb was. If he was okay. Did he feel any remorse at his own actions?
She wandered through town, watching as people ran screaming and chaos erupted around her. The stench of fear permeated her surroundings. Riots were breaking out. People attacked each other and destroyed the city they had once called home. The cold, unfeeling casinos no longer chimed with their alluring clinks and clangs of slots. Instead they cried tears of smoke and pain.
She heard snarls and groans all around her, interspersed with screams and gunshots. She felt as if she was apart from the madness, detached, a voyeur. Tears streamed down her face. She watched a group of the changed humans—the zombies—attack a family, tearing them apart without regard to age or gender, completely unremorseful. She lost it.
She ran at the creatures, tearing them apart limb from limb to try to rescue the little family. She ripped off their heads with thick sounds, blood spurting and coating the entire macabre scene a deep scarlet red. She was barely winded as she finished tearing the creatures apart. The breaths she did take caused her chest to heave in angry retribution. She glanced at the family around her. It was too late. The young girl was snarling, a bloody chunk bitten out of her cheek. She looked around for prey.
A scream tore through Jessica’s throat. She knew what she had to do but didn’t want to do it. She walked up to the child before it realized her intent. She held the curly blonde ringlets in her hands.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she kicked the toddler’s body with enough force to sever the head completely from the girl’s torso.
The child’s eyes went dark. Jessica dropped the head on the ground and ran.
JESSICA
Hours later, she found herself in the forest surrounding the town she both loved and hated. She was hiding among the bushes as though hiding from civilization would wipe this terrible day from her memory. She was exhausted from the infection, from the stress of the day, and from the horror that’d be forever imprinted in her mind.
The gentle sound of a bear’s snorts woke her as it searched, scavenging for the remaining berries on the bush above her head. She could smell the beast, hear its heart beat like a siren’s call. Her stomach churned but she couldn’t tell anymore if it was from revulsion or hunger.
The bear snorted, giving away its exact position, and a plan to kill the wretched creature flashed through her mind. The only problem was whether to eat its brains or its heart first. The thought of ripping open the creature’s chest, pulling out its still-beating heart, had her salivating with anticipation.
But its brain. Just the thought of that soft, squishy organ had her almost in a frenzy of need. It wouldn’t be as full of knowledge as a human’s, but she knew it would still be delicious.
She went through a few different kill scenarios. There were various ways she could use her small body to surprise and ultimately overpower the bear, gaining the prize she craved. She didn’t want to see these images, didn’t want to be planning the death of this creature, and desperately didn’t want to be craving the things she was. She knew though, that if she didn’t feed this craving, this addiction, that she’d wind up repeating the scene at the hospital. That thought sent shivers up her spine.
No.
She listened to the bear’s snorts and snuffles as it pawed through the bush, pausing every now and again to listen for prey or munch on a treat. She knew her best bet was to catch the beast by surprise. She wanted to leap onto its back while it was still on all fours; then she’d have the advantage and the leverage she’d need.
She tilted her head so she could see the bear. It was a beauty; its rump was turned toward her and wiggled as it looked for food. Little did it know, this would be its last meal. Without thinking about what she was doing, Jessica bent into a crouch.
She waited until she heard the gentle slurping and chewing of berries before she leapt. She landed on the bear’s haunches, scrambling quickly to plant her feet on its shoulders and grab the head.
Its growl of surprise was cut off when Jessica secured her hands in the bear’s mouth and used its momentum for the growl to rip off the head at the jawline. The scent of death had her stomach turning. The last remnants of her humanity cringed, horrified at what she’d done, even as she scooped the brains out of the bear’s skull, slurping them like a delicacy.
She scarfed the brain down, inhaling it, unable to savor the sweet knowledge she was receiving, as it was the wrong species and dreadfully smaller. Before the body even had a chance to start growing cold, she took a rock and smashed open the chest cavity, eating the heart like a greedy child.
The last bits of blood ran down her chin. It truly was a shame she didn’t gain any sustenance from this organ. She craved it almost as much as
she did brains.
After she’d eaten her fill, she lay against the decapitated creature and wept. She wept for what she’d become, for the loss of the bear’s life. Most of all, she wept because she knew she’d have to return to the humans in order to survive properly. Even after gorging herself on the bear, she was starving. She craved brains, but only a human’s brain would ease her hunger. In that moment, as the bear’s carcass cooled next to her, she hated Caleb for what he’d done to her and she vowed to find a way to make him pay.
JESSICA
Upon her return to town, she set up shop, a home of sorts, in an abandoned house in the southern part of town. She’d always admired these houses, envied the people rich enough to live in them. Now, here she was, living in their homes for free, as the top predator in the food chain. She couldn’t help but feel smug at this turn of events.
She made sure she was careful when she went out to feed. She had a gun and two knives on her person at all times. When she ventured out to hunt, she not only consumed the human’s brains, but destroyed some of her competition as well. She had to eat a live human brain daily to sustain herself. While she still hated Caleb for what he’d done to her, she was glad to not be one of the sniveling masses she consumed on a daily basis.
What she really needed was a way to have her prey close; having to hunt every day was taking its toll, especially as the number of humans left dwindled. They were starting to live and move in groups. Finding a lone survivor was proving to be more and more difficult.
She’d learned a lot since she’d been infected. The first was to not care for or trust anyone. Loving and caring for her brother was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. Her time in the woods had taught her that she needed human brains to survive. This was a fact that’d been confirmed daily as she learned to survive in the city. Killing humans was no small task.
She discovered that she had to keep herself clean, free of the mess the other infected were constantly coated in. When she was clean and her clothes weren’t torn, she blended in with the other survivors. If she was able to feed daily, even her eyes stayed normal and didn’t betray her sickness. With the fresh blood and healthy brains she’d consumed, she looked and could act almost human again.
She preyed mostly on men. Their inherent need to protect women was ultimately their demise. She’d lure them in with screams of fright, whimpering and wailing at the first sounds of their rapid heartbeats. It was almost pathetic how easy it was to trap them. The difficulty came in trying to kill them without them realizing what she was about to do. She couldn’t afford to get shot or injured. That would cause her skin to start decaying and give her away to her prey.
While she could hear, smell, and plan better than she’d ever been able to before, she was unable to heal from the most minor scratch. Months before, when she had killed the bear, she’d punctured her hand on its tooth. She had to constantly keep the wound cleaned and covered; otherwise it would begin to ooze and smell foul.
She was still amazed at her ability to overpower her prey. While she hadn’t increased her muscle tone or her ability to lift heavy objects, she innately knew how to maximize the muscle tone she’d always had. She was able to use her small frame to her advantage. It wasn’t as though she could increase her muscle tone anyway. Once she’d been infected, she’d lost the ability to heal or alter her body type. She had always been slightly athletic with a soft midsection. When she was younger her friends were always jealous that no matter how much she ate, she didn’t gain weight.
She typically staked out the grocery stores as well as any store that held hunting supplies, but humans were becoming even scarcer. She was hungry, and frustrated at not finding anyone in the past two days. She cursed the other infected for feeding so much in the early days.
She was so busy lamenting her lack of success as she hunted that she almost missed it. A heartbeat. Its rapid, erratic pulse could only mean one thing. A human was nearby, and it was alone. She smiled, the satisfied grin morphing into one of pure evil as she heard the slow pulse of a zombie stalking her prey. It was probably scaring the human, causing its pulse to race. The zombie didn’t stand a chance while she was near.
She followed the pulse to a small alleyway behind the strip mall where she had been hunting. The human was cowering in the corner, his back up against the wall with nowhere to run.
She frowned. She’d lost the zombie and this man appeared to be alone. She could tell he wasn’t one of the infected by his erratic pulse, but she couldn’t figure out why he was cowering in the corner or where the other slow pulse went. Zombies didn’t just give up on their meals.
“Don’t move,” a harsh male voice ordered behind her.
She could feel the barrel of the gun pressed against her head and swore softly. This had been a trap. She slowly raised her hands, struggling to force tears that refused to fall.
“Oh thank god! I thought one of them was out here. You don’t know how grateful I am to see a normal person,” she gushed, her voice trembling.
“Turn around, slowly, and let me see your eyes,” the man with the gun ordered.
She swore silently to herself, wishing she’d been able to eat before they’d caught her. She knew he’d see her for what she was, once he saw her eyes. She turned slowly, praying as she’d never prayed before, and opened her eyes.
The man was taller than she; her head came up to his shoulders. The gun was pointed directly at the middle of her skull and smelled used. He was detached, cold and unfeeling in his assessment of her. She hoped he’d miss the hazy, glazed, postmortem look in her eyes that every other zombie had.
He smiled.
She took a shaky breath, knowing this was the end.
“McCloud looks like we found a new recruit,” the man said, lowering his pistol. He grinned at her. “You got a name, girl?”
“Jessica Gibbs,” she said breathlessly. She couldn’t believe it. He thought she was still healthy. There’s no way her eyes were normal. Although, not having looked into any sort of reflective surface since her brother injected her, she didn’t even know what her eyes looked like. Hell, she didn’t know what any part of her truly looked like, other than the unchanged skin she could see by looking down.
“Well, Gibbs, this is your lucky day,” the man said. “I’m Private First Class James Gregory, and you’ve already met Private Ian McCloud. We’re stationed in a military hospital about an hour east of here. If you’re looking for a place to stay, you have to follow our rules, but we sure could use the help.”
Jessica stared at him, unable to understand her own luck.
“We have a lot of patients that need the caring only a woman could provide. What do you say?” James continued.
Jessica ignored his sexist remarks, too relieved to still be alive to care about his statement. “Yes,” she whispered, “how many survivors are there?”
“We have about two hundred, a third who are patients and in need of care.” He talked about training and things that they still needed for their safe haven, but she’d quit listening.
Private First Class James Gregory had just solved her problem on how she’d find a consistent food source.
JESSICA
Life on base wasn’t exactly what Jessica had hoped for. Sergeant Stevens wasn’t as easily swayed as the two men who’d found and brought Jessica to the hospital base. He watched her every move, making feeding difficult, almost impossible. She had to wait until the very late parts of night, when most everyone was sleeping, to consume her prey.
There were enough sick people that her first few kills weren’t noticed by anyone as zombie kills. She removed the brain and heart before the bodies were tossed to the infected.
That had been a tricky conversation with Sergeant Stevens. When she had first arrived and saw the bodies piling up in a closed room she’d suggested that they feed the infected the corpses to keep them at bay.
“We can pile them up, or send them down the garbage shoot to keep the i
nfected in one area. It would free us up during patrols and make things easier,” she explained to them.
At their horrified expressions she amended, praying they would listen to her previous suggestion. “Or we could burn the bodies. Either way, this room is like a beacon to them. Newly dead, fresh corpses just waiting to be eaten, it’s like leaving a pie on your windowsill and not expecting someone to eat it. They’ll come from miles, coaxed by the scent. You’re lucky you’ve only attracted the stupid ones so far. The others, they’d have figured out a way to consume you all already.” She forced a shudder of revulsion she didn’t really feel.
“You’ve seen them?” Stevens asked, skepticism thick in his voice.
“A few,” she replied, adding a tremor of fear into her voice for effect, “they feed on the brains of the deceased while allowing the others to eat everything else. It makes them smarter, faster somehow.”
She dropped her head, bringing the memory of that day in the hospital into her mind. She could still feel the betrayal and the grief from what Caleb had done to her as if it had just happened. Her voice cracked when she next spoke, the emotion of that memory palpable.
“My brother was one of them. Believe me, you don’t want to cross paths with a zombie on a brains-only diet. They’re cunning and cruel. Take what I’ve learned out there and use it to your benefit. Remove the brains; corral the zombies. Or burn the bodies. Just don’t bring one of the smart ones here.”
Stevens stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. So long, she thought about what she’d said and realized she had spoken the truth. She truly didn’t care what they did with the dead, as long as she didn’t run into another creature like herself. Especially Caleb. As much as she hated him and wanted to make him pay for what he had done to her, she wasn’t sure she could harm her only brother.
He made a slight gesture with his hand and the men in the room proceeded to take the bodies out from the storage they’d been placed in. The brains were removed and burned while the rest of the corpse was taken to the emergency entrance. That entrance was blocked from wind by two sides, and was a perfect area to contain the zombies. It was the best way to dispose of the dead and kill off the undead. The ease of entrapment was almost too perfect for some of the more seasoned shooters.