by Alex Apostol
Zack looked down at Anita’s streaked face, her body lying in a circle of blood as her hand rested on her still chest. He heard distant moans and feet dragging on the ground. His face scrunched and he turned towards the sky to exhale a loaded sigh. The man and woman took off together. Zack bent down, picked up his sword, and jogged after them. He didn’t allow himself to look back at Anita one last time, though every ounce of his body begged him to.
XI.
The group ran for over a mile with Zack in the lead. He had burst past to the front in hopes of passing them completely, not wanting them to know where he was headed. Pushed to the breaking point, the group trailed after relentlessly. Zack would have preferred the dead.
How were these people able to keep up when they had an older, overweight woman and the man who killed Anita still crying hysterically? Even Zack had shed all the tears he could for the moment. A herd of ravenous zombies at your back will wipe your eyes bone dry real fast. When his lungs couldn’t take the strain anymore he slowed down, but didn’t stop to rest with the others, who were hunched over here and there trying to catch their breaths. He walked on.
“Where are you going?” Gretchen called out to him.
He didn’t turn around or answer her. He didn’t know what he’d do if he did. The tears might’ve subsided, but the rage hadn’t.
“Do you have a place to stay?” she called louder. “Maybe we can come back with you?”
He stopped, facing the way towards home with his shoulders square. They rose and fell with heaving breaths, the cold air blowing from his mouth like smoke. The seething burn was rising in him again. He rounded back and came within inches of her face before anyone could stop him. He could have killed her, easily, if he had wanted to. “I don’t even know you. One of your people murdered my…” he didn’t know how to finish. “Why would I want you to come with me?”
Everyone stood staggered around as they waited for Gretchen to answer him. Her eyes never left his. She opened her mouth and then closed it again and bit her bottom lip. All she could do was toss her arms up in the air and let out a sigh. “Because you’re a good man.”
Zack laughed with his head thrown back.
“You just lost someone and you’re hurt and pissed off, but you’re still a good guy. I can tell. You could have killed me and Dan back there before the rest came, but you didn’t. You didn’t even raise a fist to him.”
“My mistake,” Zack growled.
Her head lolled to the side. “I don’t buy it.”
Zack stared down at the trampled, muddy snow. “You don’t know me or what I’ve done to survive.”
She took a step closer and he finally looked into her eyes. They were a swirling light blue and they pierced through him like two sharp icicles. It took his breath away, not because they were stunning, which they were, but because they brought about an overwhelming sense of déja vu, like he’d already looked into those eyes, but he’d never met the woman before in his life.
He stood with his hands on his hips, kicking at the snow as he looked down at the ground again. His brown eyes turned up to scan the group of people standing in front of him. He tapped his foot. It was just him, Liam, Christine, and Jerry back at the apartments. Christine couldn’t fight and Jerry’s back made him useless as hell. Eventually they’d need more people to survive. The question was, were these the right people? How was he supposed to live with that kid after he killed Anita?
But apparently he was a “good man”. He shook his head and scoffed when his eyes met Gretchen’s again. “This way.”
XII.
Apartment 624 was dark and still. Zack had been out all day looking for Anita. Liam didn’t know how he went out alone like he did, with no one to have his back. He himself had been holding off on going for supplies just one more day until his friend returned to go with him, even though he only had one can of peaches to split between himself and Christine.
His body thanked him for the day off as he sat lazily on the couch. It ached from hunger, shooting arrows, and swinging Ralph’s axe endlessly when the two men were out together with the dead. The things had grown in numbers the last few weeks, multiplying like bunny rabbits in springtime.
“Do you think they’re coming from the city?” Christine asked as they sat and shared the peached. Liam had found two cans of cola on his run the day before and she sipped at hers, wanting to make it last as long as she could. Who knew when they’d get another sweet treat like that. “Do you think they could be trying to get away from something that’s happening in Chicago?”
“Like what?” Liam asked muffled while fruit hung from his mouth.
“I don’t know. Something.” Her voice was distant as she wondered to herself. “Maybe there’s a lot of survivors in the city and they’re fighting back.”
Liam didn’t say anything in response.
Christine took that as a sign. He wasn’t convinced “Or maybe they’ve found some sort of bioweapon to destroy them…or a cure.” Her voice was hopeful now.
Liam let his fork fall against the ceramic bowl with a clank. “There is no cure,” he said. “We’ve been over this.”
Every time he said those words she tried to brush off like what he said wasn’t a big deal, but it gnawed at her insides and made her feel sick to her stomach. She ate the last peach and grabbed the bowl from Liam’s hands to put it in the sink, smiling at him all the while.
When she returned she sat on the floor between his feet and leaned her head against his knee. “Why don’t you read some of Dr. Hyde’s journal out loud this time?” He looked down at her and she leaned her head back all the way against the seat of the couch to look up at him. “Just to pass the time.”
With little else to do and Liam reading his journal privately, the curiosity had built up in her and hit its peak. She had to know what Liam had been doing in his last days of civilization. She couldn’t explain it. It was a craving she had, to know what they were studying, what plants Liam worked with and why, what they mixed them with.
His scientific and technical work used to bore her to death. She laughed under her breath as she thought about how much had changed since then. She moved up to the couch and sat close to him, her knees bent so her feet were tucked under her. Her fingers ran through his shaggy ginger hair as he opened the journal to where he last left off.
“You really need to clean this up,” she said, tugging at the ends so his newly grown out beard stood up at odd angels.
“You know what I don’t miss?” he said with a crooked grin.
She smiled back as she leaned her head so far to the side it almost rested on her shoulder. “What?”
“Shaving.”
They both laughed, Christine burying her face into her arm that stretched out on the back of the couch. “But you have razors! You could at least clean it up so you don’t look so wild and grizzly…”
“No thank you,” he declared. “The beard is here to stay. I’ve grown quite fond of it. Now it’s your turn.”
“OK, um…” she said, her eyes turned up toward the ceiling. “I don’t miss…trying on suit after suit to find the perfect one for work and then no one even notices.”
“And I don’t miss having to watch you try them on,” Liam said, pulling the trigger to the finger gun he held to his temple. They laughed again.
“Well apparently you’ll never have to go through that awfulness again.”
The laughter died out.
Liam sniffed and adjusted his glasses. “Right.” He turned back to the journal. “Shall we? We’re up to the day before he died.”
XIII.
Dr. Victor Faustus Hyde
Saturday June 20, 2020
07:13pm
I don’t know what went wrong. The vaccine worked. It got rid of the flu. I felt amazing for a few days after it was administered. My fever broke, the aches in my body disappeared, the nausea…gone. I had several days of health like I’d never had before. There was not one thing wrong with me. Even my
back felt better, which I haven’t felt the absence of the pinching in my sciatic nerve in almost five years.
Then came the descent. My breathing became labored at first. Activities, like climbing the stairs at the University, a task which at my age wasn’t the easiest to begin with, now feels impossible. I wheeze, I clutch my chest. There’s no making it in one go. Several stops are needed. As of yesterday, there is a constant rattling with every intake of breath.
All I want to do is sleep. It’s a battle every day to get work and stay awake to accomplish anything. I used to welcome the night, thinking of it as my irresistible and mysterious muse who brought out the best in my geniusness. Now she is a haggard woman beckoning me to bed.
The blood is circulating slower throughout my body. My temperature, no longer feverish, has gone in the opposite direction, plummeting, making me cold to the touch…cold all the time. Even though it’s summer I am wearing a large sweater under my lab coat. No one has said anything, but then again, who’s going to question their boss about his wardrobe choices?
A few members of my team have inquired about my health, no doubt concerned about my pale pallor and sunken face, another effect of slower blood circulation. My skin is mottled, discolored with blotches of different reds and blues.
I look like death walking. Thank God there’s no one in the labs today. They would be frightened of my appearance. I don’t know how much longer I have. I would hate to have one of my doctors find me, slumped over my desk.
I can’t stop, though. Not now. We’ve tested on a small group of people who contracted the flu naturally. They’re going to experience the same symptoms as me in a few short days. When they get better from the drug, everyone will be relieved. They’ll think the world will be saved. I need to make the necessary changes to the vaccine before it’s released to the public. I can’t tell them what I’ve done. I just need to fix it. These people will just have to pass in silence for the greater good of the rest of humanity.
XIV.
Liam closed the journal slowly as his mouth hung open, horrified.
Christine sat up straight and looked at him with wide, nervous eyes.
“It’s all my fault,” he whispered, clutching the leather-bound journal tightly in his hands. “It’s all my fault. This is my fault. I did this,” his voice started to escalate as what he read hit him like a bag of bricks. “I started this! I’ve killed everyone!” He whipped the journal at the wall. It hit above the desk and landed on the computer monitor, knocking it over on its screen.
Christine’s heart raced. Instinct made her run over to make sure it wasn’t broken, but then she remembered that it didn’t matter. She turned her attention back to Liam, whose face was growing redder by the second. Random thoughts on how to fix what was happening raced through her mind, each one more ineffective than the last. There was nothing she could say to make it better for him. He was right. He had started the end of the world.
Then, it hit her, all at once like a bright ray of sunshine. “If you created it, then maybe you can figure out a way to stop it.”
Liam quit pacing the floor and turned to her, his hazel eyes wild looking. “Even if I had a safe place to study what we did, what I did, I wouldn’t have the resources to stop it.”
“We have to try,” she said, standing up. “Liam, you can stop this.” She grabbed his arms so he’d stand still and look at her, really hear what she was saying.
He took a deep, steadying breath. His eyes blinked slowly as he debated inwardly, but then he shook his head and stepped out of her grip. “No, it’s too dangerous. We’d have to go too far out to find another lab. The university’s was trashed. We can’t leave. This is our home. We’re safe here. You’re safe here.”
“Who cares?” she said, throwing her hands up. “I would die if it meant saving everyone left, Liam. You’d be saving the world.”
“If I even know how!” he rounded on her, talking just inches from her face. “There’s no guarantee. We could get there and I could have no clue how to stop it or we could both die trying. I won’t lose you like that.”
“You’re just scared.”
“You’re damn right I’m bloody scared,” he yelled. “You’ve been out there, what? Once? I’ve been out there every day, fighting and killing to save our lives.” His arms waved wildly through the air as he spoke. “Me. And if you die then it would have been all for nothing and I would die too.” His voice was starting to tremble. “I would die without you, Chris.”
She threw herself into his arms and squeezed him tightly around the waist. His body shook against hers as he hunched over and cried onto her shoulder.
It was best to let it go for now, but when the time was right she’d bring it up again. She had to. The chance to revive civilization wasn’t something she could let go of, not yet.
XV.
There was a loud beep and Jerry’s voice rang out from the walkie-talkie on the kitchen counter.
“You better get down here, now!” His voice was fast, unlike his normal lazy way of grumbling.
Liam grabbed his bow and quiver and handed Christine Ralph’s axe. “Let’s go.”
They ran out the door and down the stairs. Jerry was standing on his patio, leaning over the waist-high railing to stare out into the darkness. Cold rain drizzled down from the black sky. It washed the snow away to reveal thick, brown mud beneath. The dampness made Christine shiver in her knitted sweater. She pulled the hood up.
“What is it, Jer?” Liam said as they approached him.
Jerry pointed out toward the fence that ran along the side of the building next to them. The lightening was still too far away to provide enough flashes for them to see clearly, but they had no trouble hearing it—the sound of hundreds of hands and bodies beating against the fence, trying to get in.
“It’s already leaning,” Jerry said with his pistol grip shotgun in his hands. “It won’t hold much longer.”
“Do we know if there’s anyone else left in the other buildings?” Liam asked quickly.
“I haven’t been in to check. Zack said you two were supposed to go.”
“Shit!” Liam yelled as a louder crack of thunder boomed. He wiped at his glasses furiously as the rain and sleet picked up. “We have to do something!”
“What can we do?” Christine asked. “We can’t take them all on, just the three of us!”
“Where the fuck is Zack?” Liam asked, but no one answered. They all knew where Zack was and they all knew him being there wouldn’t have made a lick of difference. “If the fence comes down and he comes back, he’ll die trying to find us.”
Christine’s hands started to shake. She wasn’t sure if it was from the freezing rain or from being terrified. Her mind raced through ideas. “What about the storage apartments we have?” she yelled as another loud crack echoed through the sky.
The lightening lit everything up like a strobe light for a few seconds and they saw the countless fingers grasping at the top of the fence as it leaned further in.
“Zack told me he used one for wood he found while you two were out, two by fours and stuff like that.”
“Brilliant!” Liam said with a snap of his finger. He pointed the way. “Down here.”
Jerry went back into his apartment and met them in the hallway at his front door. The wind blew harder and sharp beads of rain stung at the backs of their necks. “It’s in the Goldsteins’ old apartment,” Liam said as he raced down the hall. He pounded on the door with his fist when he got there. “Zack has the key!”
“Get back!” Christine raised the axe over her head. She brought it down on the door, but it only left a long, deep scratch in the wood.
Liam stepped closer to her to take it, but she brought it down again before he could near the doorknob. She chopped away, over and over. The loud banging of the axe mixed with the continual thunder and the door broke open.
“Good job, kid,” Jerry said as he passed her to go in. He slapped her on the back a few times and smiled at
her warmly. She’d never seen him look at someone that way before—with pride.
They searched blindly in the dark, grabbing at whatever they could that felt long enough to be a support beam for the fence. Liam whistled to Jerry when he’d found one big enough.
“You keep looking,” he said to Christine. “We’ll take this one out there and come back once we’ve got it up.”
Liam held one end while Jerry lifted the other, his face strained from the weight as his back knotted and pulled. They grunted as they took small, quick steps out to the fence. The rain beat down against them and soaked through their clothes.
Liam couldn’t see a thing as the water ran over his lenses. “OK, set it down here,” he hollered once they reached the fence.
Back at the apartment, Christine had found all the long wooden beams, but they were too heavy to lift by herself. She stepped out of the apartment and into the hallway to stand at the edge. Her neck craned to try to watch them put up the first beam, but the rain fell in thick sheets.
She straightened up and folded her arms. She had to bounce on her feet to keep warm. What was taking them so long? She bit her thumbnail and stretched her neck again to see if she could spot them through the heavy rain.
“We have to wedge this side in the ground and this side up under the fence. Then, we should be able to push it back up,” Liam said. He didn’t know if it would work, but they had to try. Liam grunted blindly as he maneuvered the heavy beam on his own.
“Watch out!” Jerry called out.
Wood creaked as the weight of the dead piled onto the fence. The further it leaned, the more the two men could make out of what was waiting for them on the other side—long, boney fingers, bloodied, savaged arms, and torn faces with gnashed teeth.