by RM Hamrick
Tasked with keeping her prize upright, Belinda did not approach Audra, but she shouted a “Merry Christmas!”
Audra ran to Belinda and gave her a big squeeze around the waist. She whispered in her ear, “Merry Christmas” in return.
The two girls lived a fairy tale for a couple of weeks. The cabin made a great home base where Audra could hunt and Belinda could gather. Audra was always on the look-out for how it would end. She would search the woods for signs of other humans, for signs of zombies. They got zombies, but Audra would bait them into going the other direction. She would run away from them and then lose them. The zombies would continue until something else caught their eye.
But then one night Audra awoke to a crackling laughter in the pitch dark. She looked toward the entrance and saw that the whole front room was ablaze. The long flames shot this way and that, with the most heavily invested flames on the front door itself. The top half of the room’s air was already filling with dark heavy smoke. Audra pushed on Belinda until she fell off the bed. Belinda groaned as her body hit the floor with a large thunk.
“Wake up, Belinda! Wake up!” Audra shouted.
Audra jumped over her sister and grabbed the rickety chair that neither of the girls was brave enough to use. She rammed the chair into the small glass window in the bedroom. Both the chair and the window broke. Audra used a leg of the chair to finish breaking out the glass. Belinda sat up but had pulled her legs close to her and wrapped her arms around them to create a small ball of a person.
“Belinda, you have to get up. Climb out this window. We have to go.”
She could hear yelling outside. Audra pulled on Belinda, but she did not move. This was not the time to freeze. Audra slapped her hard in the face.
“GET UP NOW!”
Belinda, still in a daze, was at least now in a moving daze. She uncurled herself and Audra helped her crouched figure toward the window. She gave her a push and with some squeezing, Belinda was out the other side. Audra felt the heat invading the room. The mattress had gathered sparks and was about to catch. Audra grabbed her full pack, which she packed every night, and shoved it out the window. She followed behind it, landing on it before slinging it on. She grabbed whimpering Belinda by the arm and they ran.
“Is that them?” shouted a voice from the front of the cabin.
Audra grabbed Belinda’s arm tighter and forced her at a speed that was not owned by Belinda. They kept tripping and falling all over the woods, smashing into trees, the scent of smoke still on their clothes. Belinda was sobbing, but Audra would not let her stop. Audra would never let her stop.
After the adrenaline had faded, fear still clung to their brains.
They ran all night.
* * *
Dwyn arrived almost midday to the township, finding Audra passed out up against the border fence. He suspected there was a moonshiner not far from her current location. He threw a blanket on her, making his way to Vesna. An hour later, he returned to her body, which had not moved from its awkward position.
“Let me rest,” she muttered, “I ran forty miles and beat your ass here.”
Even hung-over, she still had a quick wit. Dwyn rolled his eyes before leaving her and returning to their last camping spot. Setting his things down, he pulled off his boots and climbed into the river. Dwyn took off one article at a time, scrubbing and wringing them out, leaving them on the bank to dry in the sun. Audra appeared unexpectedly. She sat on the bank and watched carefully, much to Dwyn’s embarrassment and pleasure.
“Did you get in before the fire, last night?” asked Dwyn, standing deep in the water.
A pained look swept her face. Without a word, she stood up, grabbed his clothes and walked off. She dropped them several meters into the woods.
After a few days of errand running and zombie tagging, Audra and Dwyn were happy to bring the scientists their requested supplies. The gate was closed when the duo arrived. Audra was pleased to see that the place still looked abandoned. There were even a couple zombies surreptitiously tied up front to give the impression that the place was still overrun. Audra called out and Ryder emerged from the laboratory. She let out an excited squeal and gave them both a hug after she opened the gate. She barely allowed them to walk into the lab before she tore into the new supplies like a child on Christmas day. Audra was amazed to look around and see the lights on.
“Ryder got the solar panels working again,” said a proud Satomi.
Ryder blushed.
“Well, Satomi has been managing this lab better than Lysent!” she said in a joke only the two of them seemed to understand.
The girls exchanged playful pushes until Ryder spotted a new device.
“Oh my! We’ve been dying without a centrifuge,” Ryder said.
She forgot her modesty and jokes to rush a machine box over to the counter. Ziv tinkered with its settings, frowning at its features. Audra nodded and pretended she knew what a centrifuge was. She looked over the counters, covered in notebooks, beakers, and other science stuff. It looked like they had been busy.
“So, tell me more about what you’re doing out here,” said Audra.
Satomi smiled.
“So, as you know, the virus is only transferred by bodily fluids - typically from a bite. The virus shuts down the complex parts of the brain that make us who we are. The only things that run OK are the primal portions lower down, close to the spinal cord. That’s the brain stem and the cerebellum.”
“How does the virus know the difference?”
“It doesn’t, actually. The virus only attacks a specific type of neurotransmitter whose primary role is communication in the more complex parts of the brain. The primal parts also use them, but not as extensively. Somehow the brain adapts to keep the primal parts functioning, but the rest of the brain cannot communicate. So the lungs keep breathing. The heart keeps beating. Gross motor function remains. The hunger response is there, too. The virus evolved to stimulate hunger in the presence of potential hosts so it could continue to replicate.”
Satomi’s answers made sense to Audra, so she dared to ask another question.
“Then, how do you cure it?”
“We introduce antiviral molecules with special tags into the bloodstream. Instead of attaching to the neurotransmitters, the virus attaches to them. This neutralizes them and then the body removes them through natural processes. The neurotransmitters slowly replenish and wake up the rest of the brain.”
“Wow. How fast can you develop the antiviral?”
“Well, it will be slow if we have to develop it ourselves. We can do it. We’re working on it. Replication would be much easier.”
“So, if you had a sample of the cure, you’d have a head start?”
“A big head start.”
Audra pondered over that for a moment. She couldn’t help with all the science, but maybe she could help in other ways. The sooner they developed the cure, the better.
“Ryder, did you ever see where they keep the antidote?”
Ryder paused before answering.
“You want to steal us some?”
“Can it be done?”
Ryder thought about it.
“No, you always get escorted around, right? You’ll never be able to get back to the secured area.”
“Any time they are not in the secured area?” Audra prodded.
“No… well, I guess for transport to another township. The other townships hold their own infected and they like to keep it available for outbreaks.”
There was only one way Lysent transported items from town to town. They were so damn proud of it.
“Do they use the train?”
“Yeah, they do,” said Ryder seeing where Audra was going with this.
The antidotes would be most vulnerable en route on the train through the forest. If they could get a few samples, then they would be that much closer to replicating the cure. And Audra thought, even if it did not work out, she could steal one for Belinda. Perhaps this group was
worth something after all.
“Train heist!” yelled out Dwyn.
Ziv contributed nothing to the conversation. He shook his head in disapproval. Everyone avoided asking for his opinion.
CHAPTER NINE
“I’m just so tired of it all,” reported Belinda. “I’m tired of surviving, tired of death, tired of life.”
“We have to keep going, Belinda. We have to take care of each other.”
“Why?”
The question stung. Audra tried not to take it personally, but Belinda questioning both of their lives hurt. Belinda sat on the forest floor next to her first zombie kill. Her anger which had brought on the violence had turned to sadness. She had swung one way and was now the other. Audra imagined the statement pained her because of the truth within it. Belinda did look tired… of everything. Audra pulled a rag from her pocket and knelt down next to Belinda. She cleaned the splatter from her face. Belinda did not respond. She stared down at the blood-soaked animal corpse and the remains of the pups.
“They were my friends,” said Belinda.
“I’m so sorry.”
Audra was sorry, but there was no way they could have fed themselves, a mama dog, and her litter of pups. Audra wondered how much Belinda had eaten in the past few days. A lot of the meat had gone to the dogs.
“I don’t know why we keep doing this.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
Silence. Her eyes unwavering from the masses on the ground.
“If we weren’t worried about surviving each day, what would you like to do?”
Belinda thought for a few moments. Audra herself had a difficult time conjuring a dream without an invading zombie.
“What would you like to see?” She prodded again.
Belinda’s streams of tears faded as she spoke.
“Well, remember when we went on vacation and saw that waterfall?”
“Yes, I do. Mom and Dad made us walk up all those steps, but it was beautiful.”
Belinda paused at the mention of their parents. Audra thought of the purple scarf their mom had worn that day. The wind kept sweeping it off her head. She remembered their dad walking up the steps behind her, pulling on the scarf to add to the trouble.
“I’d like to go there again,” Belinda offered.
“Deal,” said Audra without hesitation.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, let’s go. We’re wandering anyway. Might as well go some place pretty, right? Let’s go.”
Belinda wiped her face with her sleeves. She gave the bloody dog one last look.
* * *
Ziv stood with the dissenters outside the plaza. His sign displayed disapproval of the corporate policy of waking the dead. The chants were easy to learn.
“Less dead means less food!”
“Keep them dead!”
In reality, he was watching Lysent move goods to the train depot to see if any antidotes were being transported today. Last week, it was nothing but food stores. Today, a small cart with a cooler on top, made its way from the laboratory to the convoy heading to the train station. Ziv cheered one more protest with the group then dismissed himself to signal Satomi. Audra noticed that he’d chosen the role farthest from the train. He didn’t want to be associated with the theft. His survival instincts were strong.
For as fancy as the train technology was, the station was not - a loading dock and a passenger area. Several people mingled around, including cool and collected Satomi. As she walked by, she marked one of the round corners of a silver car with charcoal, the car which had a cooler from Lysent Laboratories in it. She hoped the scribble would stay for the swift train ride. Lysent cleared the railway of non-passengers and the rail buzzed to life. The train took off fast, too fast to jump on or off.
The train sped along until its computers alerted for an emergency stop. A fallen tree had smashed through both fences and lay on the rail. The buzzing noise of the lines faded as power was cut until the debris could be cleared. A young girl hiding in the brush watched the front car for a crew member to step out and investigate. It was not unusual for the trains to be unmanned. Seeing no one, she ran down the rail along the train, looking for the small charcoal mark. She had to hurry. Workers would be out soon. They weren’t far from a station; the location of dying pines dictated their unfortunate proximity.
Audra then saw the mark. She rubbed it off the sleek metal with her sleeve before she slipped into the car. The shiny metal of the cooler was easy to spot among the wooden crates. She separated it from the others and examined it. It did not have a lock, but the black case surrounded by ice within it did. Audra did not dare take the whole container. GPS units were plentiful in the Lysent company. Plus, she hoped by only taking one vial that the theft might not be pinpointed to the train and the pine tree. Perhaps Lysent would think the antidote was stolen when packed or received. Audra listened outside for the crew to arrive or for the passengers to grow restless. She heard nothing. They still would have to remove the tree - she had time.
Audra set the black box on top of the closed cooler and pulled out a small metal tool set to pick the lock. It only took a moment to realize it was a hybrid, part mechanical and part electronic. She fished the electronic lighter provided by Vesna from her pocket. Did she have time? She pulled out its battery and some of the wires, stripped them with her knife and stuck them into the lock. The lock blew out when it made contact. She picked the mechanical part and opened the lid. There in insulation were thirty small vials labeled “Zombie Anti-Viral”. She grabbed two, sticking one in each pocket. She closed the lid. The mechanical portion of the lock clicked, but Audra was sure the electronics were fried. She put it back into the cooler and pushed it back where she’d found it.
Audra glanced out of the car. She heard voices, but no one was in view. A crew worked on the tree in the front, talking to each other about how unlucky it was that it had fallen on the tracks instead of any other way. She slipped down and underneath the train. It was a stupid place to be. At any point, they could clear the debris and turn the rail back on, electrocuting her. She crawled six cars down. Emerging from underneath, she walked down the track for a bit, hidden by the train. She could hear them chopping at the tree. When she had gotten some distance, she got off the track and found where the fence had been snipped in a few places for her to peel up and slide through. Dwyn had suggested she climb over, but the concertina wire at the top was not something Audra wanted to fight.
“Hey!” yelled a worker who happened to be by the fence, supervising the tree work.
Audra’s face swung toward the voice out of reflex before she slipped through. The fence edges scratched her escaping body. Would they recognize the tree as sabotage? Maybe she was just an opportunistic thief scouting the train.
“It has come to my attention that someone has stolen antidote vials off the transport train. This is NOT how we do things. We cannot just wake up people without due process. As punishment, there will be no awakenings for the next six months. If you think things work better in your hands, we will keep ours off,” Greenly announced to the crowd.
Audra hung back and listened. She heard the cries and frustration. Another half a year without their loved ones. Her job would be impacted, too. Negotiations would be different. If she found someone tomorrow, the family may decline to make a deposit. Why pay six months’ rent? They might need that cash during the unpredictable winter. Tag them and come back later when it was more convenient to all parties involved, minus the tagger.
Audra herself would struggle to pay rent for another six months with low wages. Her only out was the second antidote.
Audra had considered keeping the second antidote secret. She questioned Satomi, who explained the antidote was unstable and sensitive to temperature changes. Audra did not want to risk ruining the dose. She needed the scientists’ help. She disclosed her theft of two vials.
“No, our foremost concern is getting the antidotes out of Lysent’s village
and to the laboratory,” Vesna stated, matching the determination in Audra’s eyes.
Audra had ventured to ask Vesna for help to retrieve her sister. She feared the six-month probation. Lysent had quickly tied the antidote thefts to those interested in waking up loved ones. They had effective hostages under their roof and it would be easy for them to retaliate further. She needed to get Belinda out and they would not hand her over willingly.
Vesna packed the solar-powered cooler with the vials. The scientists were ecstatic to have real samples. Once they could replicate it, they could begin experiments on delivery systems. Audra had been told about Vesna’s plan and knew the risks. They did not want to just wake up a bunch of people and hope those people would be on their side.
They would wake up everyone.
A large population increase would overwhelm the corporate systems and cause them to fail. It would destroy the economy as it stood. Then, the people would be forced to rely on themselves, on their own systems. And the corporation would lose their power. If Lysent wanted to limit the resources and population artificially, Vesna’s group would do the opposite. They would aerosolize the cure, treating zombies at a distance en masse.
Audra had her doubts. A lot of the people enjoyed the corporation’s care. Would they be able to rely on their own resources? Yes, the plan destroyed the corporation, but what was best for the current and future population? Audra stayed silent on the matter. She now had access to cure vials. Anything more than that, she did not care.
“Then Dwyn can escort the scientists back to the lab with the antidotes and I’ll stay here and get my sister by myself. I think I have done more than my part, already.”
Dwyn shot her a look that declared he did not like that idea at all. Audra knew he was determined to accompany her into Lysent.