Chicago Fell First: A Zombie Novel
Page 22
He reached the ground floor, rushed out onto the street, came face to face with a horde of hungry Empty Ones, and the dance of death began.
Through a window across the street, a woman and a child watched the fight. Their eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness now and they could see in the night better than at any previous point in their lives. The mother had nearly lost hope since the Ether-virus had hit the city and claimed her husband and most everyone else she knew. The child, a boy about the age of Brandon, had kept the fire of possibility burning in his heart. He would not give up hoping for a future.
They watched as the man who had come from nowhere whirled and cut and attacked and parried and destroyed zombie after zombie after zombie. The mother did not try to cover the boy’s eyes; they had both seen too much in recent days for her to worry about that. As the heap of bodies grew and the man in the middle remained unscathed, the child finally spoke.
“Mommy, is that an angel?”
The mother was silent for a moment, her attention captured by the violent spectacle. But she had heard her son’s question and finally replied.
“It might be an angel … or it might be the devil, but it makes me think that maybe you will grow up. Maybe you will.”
Chapter 19
It took a few days for the effect of the explosion over Chicago to be seen, but the wind and the air did their jobs and the blood accomplished its mission. Eventually, the Empty Ones just stopped. Some fell from the initial explosion of mist and their decomposition seemed to spread the anti-Ether-virus even more effectively into the atmosphere.
Soon the streets were littered with corpses, dead for the second time, now truly at their ends. Gradually, the still-human survivors emerged from their hiding holes and retook the streets. Bonfires of bodies glowed and rank smoke rose. Word reached the authorities in the outside world and the army came back into the city and finished off the few small pockets of Empty One occupation. It was over, though the price had been a high one.
Doug killed dozens of zombies before they began to fall on their own. By the second day, he was exhausted and could slay no more. He slept in a locked office building and awoke to find his shadow-self vanished, presumably satisfied for the time being and gone off to hibernate. He knew it would return, but felt it was distant and would not be heard from soon.
When the military came back in and the borders were not quite so closely guarded, he managed to get out. He took a car—not considering it theft since he assumed its owner was likely a casualty of the Ether-virus—and drove back to the village. His adopted family was all there and they were glad to see him. He kissed Kacey like he’d never kissed anyone before and made love to her that night without his shadow-self hanging over him like an avalanche waiting to fall.
A week after the crisis was over Brandon Saunders finally realized how much he had lost. He wept for his family, deeply and sincerely, and then put his grief away and regained his hopeful, happy childhood. Danielle and Professor Harrison turned him over to the state of Illinois as the law required, although Danielle vowed to never forget him and always keep track of his whereabouts.
The rest of the little band of friends brought together by the strange tragedy of Chicago soon parted ways, but they all felt the unique bond that connects soldiers and families and those who have faced immense challenges together. Before they separated, they held a funeral for Terence Trumbull, burying his gun and phone in a plot in the woods beyond the village. Danielle and Kacey cried. Brandon saluted. Doug smiled as he thought of Trumbull’s courage in going willingly and proudly to his death.
Chicago slowly and achingly recovered. Scars that would always be on the city’s surface formed a now-permanent part of its history. Thousands had been lost and the population would take decades to reach its former height.
Eventually, it began to look and act like a city again. Power was restored. Many who had fled moved back. Old businesses reopened or new ones took over. Children went back to school and others were born. Recruits replaced the many police who had died defending the city. Over time, memorials were erected to honor those who had perished in the dark days of the reign of the Empty Ones. Chicago would never be quite the same, but it would be a great city again.
Epilogue
The public never knew exactly what had happened to end the plague in Chicago, although rumors were rampant for many years after the fact. One theory was that the sickness had simply run its course and ended naturally, though few truly believed that. Other rumors ranged from divine intervention to extraterrestrial salvation to something that was actually quite close to the truth. The conspiracy theorists ate the whole thing up like it was candy from God’s cupboard; their favorite seemed to be the idea that the government was storing some of the zombies in suspended animation somewhere, maybe Area 51, saving them for the day they might need a really nasty weapon.
Danielle Hayes left the village and went straight to the parents of her roommate Claire to tell them that their daughter had died bravely. After that, as Chicago began to breathe again, Danielle returned to school and eventually realized her dream of being a doctor. She would spend her life helping those who needed her the most. She took her job seriously and her career became her life. She never married, never had children of her own, but made sure to visit Brandon on his birthday, no matter how far apart they happened to be living at the time.
She did miss one of his birthdays though, but would never tell him why. She had heard a rumor that something strange had been seen on a small South Pacific island where the natives lived much as they had centuries ago. She went there, thinking it sounded far too ominously familiar. She did not stay long, but things were better when she left.
Years later, anthropologists would visit that island and find that a statue had been erected to honor a goddess that had not appeared in earlier versions of that particular mythological system. The statue had long, beautiful hair, wielded a big stick, and appeared to be dousing a snarling demon with some sort of potion. At first, it looked to the visiting scientists that the statue had been damaged, but on further inspection they realized it had been intentionally sculpted with only one foot.
Late in her life, Dr. Danielle Hayes thought back on the events surrounding those dark days in Chicago’s history. She tried to write of those experiences, but managed only a single page:
The end of the world as we knew it began with a mistake. The mistake was followed by a miracle. But it was a miracle marred by an obscenity, like a crucifix kissed by the lips of the devil.
It began with rice. Something so common, something we see everywhere. Rice is usually food, but it tends to show up in other places too. For years, they had those little kiosks in malls, silly little novelty stations where you could pay to have your name written on a grain of rice. Long grain rice, with its nice flat cylinder shape, was held in place in a lump of clay while miniscule letters were added with a fine-tipped technical pen. Those little souvenirs sold quite well. The letters identifying a person reduced to such tiny size, as if a human life could be compressed into such a small capsule of existence.
Rice shows up at weddings too, thrown at the bride and groom with wild shouts of joy and congratulations from the crowd. The wedding rice tradition has two different origins, for it sprang up in two different types of culture, separately but simultaneously, as strange customs often have in the wide, echoing halls of history. For some, the rice symbolized prosperity in the form of showers of grain, an avalanche of blessings to last a lifetime.
In other cultures, the rice had a more defensive significance. It was thrown in the path of the newly united couple to feed and distract the evil spirits that were believed to show up, uninvited of course, to trouble the happy young husband and wife.
Rice is so common that one hardly ever thinks about it, even when it’s on a dinner plate, usually just sitting off to the side of the main attraction of the meal, looking so benign
It began with rice. Everything changed after that.
About the Author:
Aaron Smith was born in New Jersey in 1977. After years of trying to figure out what to do with his creative energy and trying everything from acting to visual arts to music, he finally settled on writing and hasn't looked back. He was extremely fortunate to have an opportunity for his first published work to feature his all-time favorite fictional character, Sherlock Holmes. Since then, he's written three more Holmes mysteries and a novel(Season of Madness) starring Holmes' friend Dr. John Watson.
Aaron's other work includes many short stories for the Airship 27 line of pulp anthologies, including stories featuring characters like the Black Bat, Dan Fowler:G-Man, Ki-Gor, and others. His two original pulp characters, Hound-Dog Harker and the Red Veil also debuted in Airship 27 books.
Outside the world of new pulp, Aaron has written stories for comic books, science fiction anthologies, and detective magazines. He recently contributed stories to the young adult paranormal anthologies PROM DATES TO DIE FOR and SOMETHING WICKED by Buzz Books USA before writing CHICAGO FELL FIRST.
Smith's vampire novel 100,000 MIDNIGHTS, was released as an e-book by Musa Publishing in 2012. The sequel, ACROSS THE MIDNIGHT SEA, is due out in August of 2013.
In July of 2013, Smith's lifelong dream of writing a spy novel was realized with the release of NOBODY DIES FOR FREE.
Get to know Aaron on his website at http://godsandgalaxies.blogspot.com
More books by Buzz Books USA
Paranormal/fantasy:
Twin Falls: Messengers Book 1 by Lena Brown
Something Wicked Short Stories in the Kindle store.
Prom Dates to Die For: A Paranormal Prom Anthology
Mark of the Centipede: Timeshifters Journey 1 by Cara Brookins
Supernatural Hunters by Kelly Parra
Diana Rodriguez Wallach’s “Mirror, Mirror” Mythology High trilogy
PR Rock Star by Cyndy Hoenig (business)
Distortion by Lucie Smoker (fiction: crime, mystery)
Next Left by Dani Stone (an ebook novelette, romance)
Something New: A Novel by Malena Lott (women’s fiction)
Fixer Upper: A Novel by Malena Lott (women’s fiction)
Full list of books available by Buzz Books: click here.