by Alex Apostol
This made Anita open up again and laugh with her entire body. Zack loved the sound of her laughter. It was loud and echoed off the walls, but still seemed petite and girlish, just like her.
“How about Sunday afternoon? I close up early usually.”
Her smile faded and her face fell as she cocked her head to the side. “Oh, I’m sorry. I always go to my dad’s on Sundays. It’s kind of our little tradition ever since my mom died. I cook us dinner and help him clean up around the house.”
“Oh, OK. No problem,” Zack said. His mind worked in double-time to figure out if she was telling the truth or trying to get out of hanging out with him. “Some other time, then.”
She walked toward the door and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. “Definitely.” She disappeared.
Zack picked up a pen and pounded it on the counter a few times, hitting it so the tip disappeared and reappeared with every click. Was Anita telling the truth about going to her dad’s, or not? It was a toss-up. On the one hand, she’d seemed sincere and she did agree to have coffee with him before he named a date, but on the other hand she probably would have left after saying yes and never set a date. In fact, that was exactly what she did. Yeah. Zack was sure that was what just happened.
He picked up the keys from the counter and swung them around his finger. He walked to the door with his skateboard tucked under his arm. After locking up, he hopped on the board and rolled down the sidewalk toward his apartment.
XVI.
Christine walked the aisles of the comic book store, focused on her job of gathering supplies, but there was nothing they could use. Her stomach sank as she wondered if the others already saw her as a burden dragging them off course. Her eyes stopped on the long, shining sword on the counter, but she laughed to herself when she realized it was the one Zack had been carrying around for months.
A loud bang made everyone spin. The door to the backroom had been thrown open. A gnarled, decaying man stumbled out at full speed, tripping over his own feet, pushing him forward even faster. Zack was knocked down as the zombie’s arms thrust forward.
Ralph was the next closest. He swung his axe, but it hit the doorframe and stuck there when the ravenous corpse fell forward on all fours from the momentum of his lunge, avoiding the blade unsuspectingly.
Christine was frozen no more than fifteen feet away from it. She smelled the rot of decomposing flesh. Its skin was mottled and thin, a strange mixture of green and gray that hung loosely from its bones. Pieces flapped away from the torn muscles of its cheek.
It pushed itself upright again and grabbed ahold of the quiver that was slung over Liam’s shoulder. He fell to the ground from the weight of the corpse that tugged at his back. It stood over Liam with a mouth full of jagged, broken teeth, its jaw wide open to clamp down.
“Shoot it!” Christine heard from all ends of the store. “Shoot it!”
She had Liam’s longbow clutched in her sweaty hands, but she didn’t raise it. All she could do was stare out at the monster before her with wide eyes, horrified to her core. Her lungs felt constricted. It hurt too much to breathe, so much that she considered stopping all together. Soon, her entire body was convulsing in fear as she watched the dead thing’s teeth move closer to Liam’s throat.
The sound of an arrow piercing soft skull caused the store to fall into a deadly silence. The rotting corpse fell to the ground next to Liam and didn’t get back up. Ralph huffed as he stood over it. There was blood on one of his hands, the one that drove the arrow tip into the zombie’s porous skull.
He turned to Christine with his fists clenched. “I told you we shouldn’t of let her come,” he growled to her even though he meant to address Zack and Liam. He took a few strong steps toward her, closing the gap between them so he towered over her. “I’m not killing myself so you can feel like you actually contribute to something around here. I have a wife and baby. Did you ever think about what would happen to them if I wasn’t around to take care of them?”
Christine tried to force her lips move, but all that came out was a soft uncontrollable trembling. “I…I…” she stammered and then fell silent.
“Of course you didn’t! You run around here in your fake-ass combat boots like you know what you’re doing, like you know what’s going on outside the walls of your safe, little apartment, but you don’t!” his voice rose until he was shouting.
“Hey, come on,” Zack said, taking a few steps with his hands out. “Let’s just—”
“No!” Ralph shouted over him. “I’m not dying because she’s some bored housewife who wants to play warrior princess. It’s bullshit!” His arms waved wildly as he yelled.
Zack placed his hands slowly and carefully on Ralph’s shoulder and guided him to the door. “Why don’t we step outside for a minute, cool off?”
Ralph heaved heavy, angered breaths, but he didn’t object. They disappeared outside to leave Christine alone with Liam, who stood next to the body of the zombie that almost ended his life.
Christine’s eyes darted between the two of them. Tears spilled out and down her cheeks as her shoulders convulsed. “I’m sorry,” she said between sobs. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she kept saying whenever she caught her breath.
Liam didn’t go to her right away. He stood there as she broke down. The side of his foot rested against the zombie’s pliable head as blood oozed around his boot. He could barely hear Christine’s apologies. His mind was lost on what had happened. He questioned whether he was really standing or if he had died. There was the overwhelming urge to look down, but the fear of seeing himself lying half eaten on the floor kept him from doing so. His stomach lurched, but he swallowed, forcing the bile back down.
Christine’s sobbing grew louder in his head until he was forced to look at her. The realization that he’d survived rushed over him like a tidal wave. He ran to her and pulled her head to his chest. She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist and cried into his shirt, still mumbling a slew of apologies. He shushed her as he held onto her head. “It’s all right,” he said in a soft voice. “Everything’s OK. I’m all right.” Her body shook with heaving sobs.
He wondered if he’d just lied to her or if he told the truth. Was he really unharmed? He hadn’t had time to check himself over. Maybe he was bit and didn’t even know it because of an adrenaline rush, or maybe the bites don’t hurt because of some weird toxicity in their saliva. He had no idea what it felt like to be bitten by one of those things and it scared him. Instantly, he wanted to push himself from her and check his entire body. Instead, he clung tighter until her sobbing started to secede.
“Let’s go home,” he said as he peeled her from him and looked into her drenched face.
She sniffed and wiped the wetness from her cheeks and eyes. With a nod, she released a small, quick laugh. “Yeah. OK. Let’s go.”
As Liam guided her out of the store, his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders, he allowed his eyes to wander down to his own body, where he saw that the front of his shirt was stained with fresh, wet blood.
XVII.
Back at the apartment, Liam warmed water in a large pot over the gas stove. Christine sat on the couch with her knees pulled up to her chest as she bit the nail on her thumb. Occasionally, Liam turned to look at her. He wondered if there was anything he could say to ease her guilt. He was still at a loss for words by the time steam rose from the water. He carried the metal pot into the bathroom with both hands and filled the tub with about an inch of water. He closed the door behind him.
Liam Scott stared at himself in the mirror as he peeled off the blood stained clothes that clung to his body. As the shirt came off over his head, he closed his eyes, not ready to see if the blood was his or not. He opened one first and let out a sigh at the sight of his pale skin. There wasn’t a single scratch on him. He lowered himself into the warm water and started to wash vigorously with his loofa. He scrubbed so hard his skin turned a bright red.
Outside the bathroom door, Christi
ne got up and paced the living room floor. How could she have been so stupid, so cowardly? Liam could have been killed because she froze when she saw that thing. How could she have thought of them as sick people? They weren’t people. They were monsters.
It was the first time she’d seen one of them up close. The stench alone was enough to convince her it was no longer a living being, but a walking, rotting, dead corpse that was only capable of one thought—must eat everything and everyone in sight.
She pulled her hair tie out and let her long, blonde hair fall down to her waist. It swung back and forth at her back as she continued her repetitive path from the window to the kitchen counter, blood-stained rotted teeth burned into her brain.
It could have reached out and grabbed her if someone hadn’t been there to swoop in and save the day, as Ralph did. He was right. Going out with her was dangerous. Maybe the only thing she was good for was sitting on the porch like Jerry did to watch over things from a safe distance through binoculars.
The thought caused her mood to sink and crash. She didn’t want to be that. She didn’t want to be useless in the new world. Jerry was watch guard now. She had nothing that was her own to contribute to their survival. After Luke’s disappearance, she wasn’t sure how long they could rely on Zack, Ralph, or Jerry for support. One day they would be gone too, and she would be all Liam had left to count on.
She marched over to the patio door and wrenched it open, snatching up the crossbow from the floor on her way out.
Liam heard the door shut hard, but he didn’t move from the tub. The warmth of the water calmed his nerves. He leaned his head back and sank down to try to submerge as much of his body as he could in the low water. What he wouldn’t give for a full tub, just one more time.
Even though he tried to clear his head of any lingering thoughts, all he could see was Christine standing there in the store with a terrified look possessing her normally composed face. When he pushed her from his mind, the zombie that had almost latched onto him replaced her. There was no relaxing.
He stood up and wrapped a towel around his waist and another over his shoulders. When he looked in the mirror again, he thought he saw a bit of who he used to be before everything happened, but the image faded away as quickly as it had appeared. He left to check on Christine.
The cool breeze hit his wet hair immediately and chilled him to the bone. He shivered and pulled the towel on his shoulders down to wrap around his arms and torso. Christine was hunched over the crossbow as she balanced it on the ground and tried to pull back to lock the arrow in place. She grunted, each time getting it a little further before she had to let go and it snapped back.
“God, dammit!” she said, halfway between a yell and a whimper. She pulled back on it again. She gritted her teeth and growled as she used all her strength.
Liam walked over to her and put a hand on her shoulder as the other one reached for the crossbow. She let him take it from her. He leaned it against the wall and sat down in the chair, looking at the other one for her to sit next to him.
She stood up straight. Her face was scrunched in anger, concealing the tears that gathered in her eyes. “Why couldn’t I do it?” she blurted out. “Why couldn’t I shoot it?”
She looked to Liam, but didn’t wait for him to answer.
He didn’t know how to answer her, anyhow.
“When I left this morning I was all ready to play the part, be one of you guys, kill one of those things if I had to. I really thought I could do it, but I don’t know…” Her voice was rapid and loud as she turned to look over the railing.
Liam let her talk as long as she wanted. She needed to figure out what happened earlier, what caused her to freeze up after all the hours of training she put in. Only then could she work on fixing the problem.
“Maybe I’m not cut out for this world,” she said with a shaky voice as she looked down at the darkened parking lot. “Maybe I don’t deserve to be here.” Tears spilled from her eyes and ran down her rosy cheeks. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. Why couldn’t she stop crying over everything? Why was she so weak?
Liam stood up and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s all right, love. You did your best. Nobody was hurt. Everything is all right.”
“It was a person once,” she said with her head resting against his chest, wiping at the tears on her face. “It was a person like you or me and somehow it turned into this…this ugly, disgusting monster!”
He stroked her hair and rested his chin gently on the top of her head. “I know,” he said. “I know. But you can’t think like that when one of them in trying to kill you. You can’t.”
“What if it was me?” she asked as she looked up into his hazel eyes. There were dark circles under them that hadn’t been there before. “What if I was one of them? Could you kill me?”
He looked back at her. Her soft, pink lips were slightly parted as she awaited his answer. There was a deep bow in her upper lip that he caught himself staring at on many occasions. He took a shallow breath. “I don’t know,” he said honestly.
“Do you think they can feel anything anymore?”
His eyes widened as he stared out at the trees swaying in the cool breeze. Leaves scattered through the air before they fell to the ground. He’d hadn’t thought about it before. He hadn’t allowed himself to. Now the question beat against his brain for a definitive answer.
“Do you think they still have thoughts?”
Liam released his hold on her. He scratched his head, not knowing what else to do. He couldn’t answer any of her questions. He considered promising to think about it, but closed his mouth again before he let the words escape. If he wanted to survive he couldn’t think about it at all. He couldn’t see them for who they used to be. He could only see them for what they were in that moment—already dead.
“Why don’t we go inside?” he said, placing his hand on the small of her back.
The rest of the day was spent in silence and solitude. Liam curled up on the floor with his back against the couch as he read through his old boss’s journal. Deep down he had hopes that something in Dr. Hyde’s writing would inspire him to creating a cure. It was a fool’s dream, he knew that. But he couldn’t help hoping for it.
The man had been a genius at creating vaccines. The flu that was supposed to wipe out more than half of mankind was stopped because of him. Of course, it was replaced with an even worse condition that the doctor was not around to cure, but Liam still was.
Some nights he lie awake thinking about Dr. Hyde and wondered if he had been the one to get sick, if the doctor would have been able to stop it from spreading and cure the ones infected. Every time he came to the same conclusion—you can’t cure death.
Not that it mattered in the end. Liam was alive and the one man he believed could cure anything was dead and all he had was a journal. There had to be something in that journal. There just had to be.
XVIII.
Dr. Victor Faustus Hyde
Friday June 12, 2020
I think I’ve done it! I think we’ve done it! Earlier this week we developed a vaccine with some of the mutated plants from Dr. Scott’s lab. (I knew that Brit would be invaluable!) He hasn’t been here long at all and he’s already provided us with the answer to preventing this wretched flu from taking over the world.
I tested the vaccine on various lab rats, all with the flu virus given to them. Some were in the advanced stages while others were not showing any symptoms yet. I’ll be damned if every single lab rat didn’t pull through and rid itself of this God forsaken flu!
I have to get this out to the people. I have to release it before anyone else figures out what we’ve done here and tries to duplicate it, pass it off as their own. This is my vaccine. Our vaccine. No one will be the face of ending the end of humanity, but me and my team.
Clinical trials are required, but we don’t have the time. I’d have to seek out people, gather volunteers, (not that it would be hard to do. Everyone is scared to dea
th of this flu. They’ll take anything we say might stop it.), give them the vaccine, watch them, study them, record their every symptom, lack of symptom, and move. I’d have to organize all this information into a lovely cockamamie presentation that proves the vaccine works. This. Vaccine. Works.
So here is the start of my recordings of the clinical trial.
Patient One
June 12, 2020
11:49pm
Age 58
Native of New England, currently residing in the Midwest.
Has not contracted the flu virus yet, but will be injected with it in mere minutes.
Marital Status, Single. Never married. No children. No surviving parents. No family to speak of at all.
11:53pm The flu virus was injected. There was no sensation to speak of aside from the sting of the needle.
June 13, 2020
03:36am I’ve given sufficient amount of time for the virus to inhabit my body. We’re told it acts at an alarmingly fast rate once it enters. Already I am feeling a touch of nausea and warmth in my head. Fascinating when compared to the common influenza which takes 24 to 96 hours to show symptoms. This flu is extremely advanced. Mother Nature must be pissed off.
03:41am The vaccine has been injected. Upon injection there was the sting of the needle and then a dull burn as the liquid entered the body. This faded as the vaccine dispersed.
04:57am Already my rising temperature has begun its decent back to normality. The nausea is also subsiding. I am done for the day as it is Saturday now.
I can’t wait for the coming week to see what happens.
XIX.
After practicing her kill techniques all day, Christine Moore gave up, just as Liam had. He didn’t instruct her any longer on how she should stand or hold her weapon of choice for the day. Instead, he shut himself inside and read from the frayed leather journal when he wasn’t out with the guys. So, Christine sat herself down on the window seat and read the book she could never finish, Anna Karenina. She’d started the massive classic five years ago and was still only halfway through it. What else did she have to do now that the world had fallen apart and she wasn’t fit to go out in it?