by Candis Vargo
If the filthy creatures he was forced to walk among for years knew anything at all they would have known the consequences of their actions and that the moment it began, there was no going back.
He laughed as he thought about it. “Stupid fools,” he said to himself. His heart pumped faster at the thought of his time being so close. He felt it deep down in his veins like a poison burning through him, agonizing and tempting.
Just a little bit longer. That’s all he needed. A little bit longer until he could find what he wanted…what he craved. He would be able to find the reason for his existence and be able to control the outcome in a whole new way.
He leaned back in his chair as he watched the television screen, snickering at the cowards that were rushing around the police stations and hospitals as they searched for people.
He smiled when he thought about how those filthy humans swarmed the buildings looking for the missing. They never even acknowledged the ones they were looking for before It had begun. They only desired to talk about it and maybe somehow make money off of the stories they could sell.
That is what most of the greedy bastards wanted.
But they would never get the chance.
He could feel them everywhere and his legs shook with anticipation. He knew exactly what was happening and how they were starting to form. Imagining the formation in his head as though it were happening right in front of him, he saw the tissue began to connect as it engulfed them. Watching it twist and turn as it bound together like the fusing of atoms, bringing them to life through a rebirth of need. Joints would snap as the formation would begin to take effect.
He knew it would be the eldest who were immune to feeling anything other than the hunger they were being programmed with, but the ones they would infect…he knew they would be flawed.
Chapter 4
The First Sighting in America
3 Days Later
“The police have the report.” Jase said. “There’s nothing more we can do right now. Hey, Ev, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ev said as she turned on the TV.
“Are you sure you want to be watching that?”
“I’m okay, Jase. Really. I have no problem with this now. I just want to know what’s going on out there. Last I knew it was a mess. And hey, maybe they’ve figured out what is happening so we’ll understand what to do. If it’s something we can prepare for we might be able to help other people.”
Jase sighed and sat down. “Alright, go ahead.”
Ev hasn’t watched the news since she found out her mom and dad were among the missing. She didn’t dare to. She was worried about finding out that it was a mass suicide or a sort of chemical attack on every country. In the back of her mind she thought about the possibility of every country in the world starting a chemical warfare and somehow that caused everything. But the news brought upon a different aspect.
A news reporter in red hair spoke to the camera as though she was cumbersome. “Three days ago millions of people vanished. We all thought that was impossible. Something out of this world and couldn’t have happened. But when the first dead body began to rise, it made everyone rethink the possibility of what is impossible.”
Evelyn’s face hardened to stone as her back straightened. The hair on her skin stood up all over her body. With those few words, she knew what this meant. She just never thought it would happen.
“The dead started coming back all across the world. One country at a time. We can only pray that it doesn’t happen here. We have been informed to tell you that if you see one of the dead, do not try to make contact. Call the number on the screen below and tell them your location. Our government officials are prepared to handle any outbreak that happens. They will respond quickly and take control of the situation before it gets out of hand, like the first countries affected by this terrible plaque.”
Evelyn sat there watching the reporter on the TV, but she didn’t hear a word she said. Ev has been prepared for nearly everything that could possibly and impossibly happen. She was ready. Her muscles tensed as she clenched her fists although her heart beat was steady.
“Ev, are you sure you’re okay? Listen, if it happens they said the government will help. We’ll be okay.” Jason walked over to the refrigerator and wrote down the number the reporter gave them to call if they saw one of the dead.
One of the dead.
Zombies.
“You have two choices, Jase,” Ev said as she still stared at the TV.
“Am I going to like them?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, alright. Shoot,” Jase said with a sigh as he leaned on the kitchen counter and looked into the living room at Ev.
“One. We can stay here and wait. See if anything happens. If it does, we can call the number and see if it actually works. Two. We can go. Right now. No looking back.”
“Well I’m not too sure what you’re exactly talking about…but I say we stay. If we can help anyone, let’s help. Momma and daddy didn’t raise us to be cowards Ev. You know that better than me. So, I say we stay.”
“Alright. But let’s get ready.”
“Get ready for what?”
“To survive.”
Evelyn began pulling bags out from underneath her bed. There were five bags all together. As she carried them into the living room she looked at Jason and said, “Go scope out the street. Drive down the road. Look for any abandoned SUV’s or trucks and make sure there’s a clear path to get out of town.”
Ev walked back into her bedroom and opened her closet door. “Take these and fill them up,” she said as she handed her brother four gasoline cans.
“What the hell is all this?” Jason knew his sister was prepared for nearly everything, but he sure didn’t understand what exactly her plans were. “Fill up the vehicle you find too. There’s guaranteed to be an abandoned one somewhere. A lot of people vanished in their vehicles. They most likely ran out of gas and the battery might be dead. There are jumper cables in my trunk and a half a can of gas in there too. Find the vehicle; get it to the gas station. It’s not stealing if the person is dead.”
“Well, how the hell do you know there’s still vehicles out there?”
“The cops and government have been too busy dealing with the dead Jase. Trust me. There will be one out there. Here,” she said as she threw her brother a roll of cash. “If someone is at the gas station you’ll need to pay for gas. Go. And Hurry. I want you back here in thirty minutes.”
A look of confusion crossed Jase’s face. He realized now, not only how prepared his sister really was, but also that she’s a little crazy. The government said they could come and take care of it if one of the dead was spotted, so why was she so paranoid? He had full faith in the government and that everything was going to turn out fine. Jase was optimistic. He always liked to believe everything was going to turn out fine and he was half tempted not to go on the errands for his sister but he knew it would make her feel better.
He would do anything for his sister. Family values were something they were brought up to cherish. No amount of money or anything that could be bought with money was worth more than your family.
Jason did exactly as his sister had said; he carried the gas cans down to her car and began the hunt for an SUV on his way to the gas station. The store was a few miles away on the same road as Evelyn’s house. He didn’t even make it a half mile before he realized how right she had been.
Jase looked around and he saw at least ten stranded vehicles up ahead and two that had collided in the middle of the road. He slowly pulled up toward the vehicles before he got out to check them out. When he stepped out of the car an eerie silence took over. It was the silence of a widow’s bedroom the first night her livelong mate passed away. The silence of a mother’s house when she loses a child. Pure. Silence.
Jase gathered up the courage to check the vehicles for survivors, anyone who may be stranded. After he checked all of the vehicles and there wasn’t a soul i
n sight, he began to place them in neutral and push them off of the road. The Jeep Commander had been the last vehicle he walked up to, and how right Ev was again. Whoever was in the vehicle must have been one of the ‘missing.’ It had run out of gas and needed a jump.
After putting all of his necessities in the Jeep, he slowly made his way down to the convenient store. It was deserted. Not a soul in sight. The same eerie calm hovered over the store. It seemed like it was everywhere. Where were the birds? he wondered. There wasn’t any chirping, any sound of wild life in the nearby forest, or even a hiss of a stray cat. Not even a damn cricket. He wondered if the animals were part of the ‘missing’ also, and he could only assume the owner of this small town gas station was too.
When he made it back to Evelyn’s with the Jeep she ran outside and threw in four out of the five bags.
“What’s in them?” he asked.
“Survival.”
“Okay…where’s the last one?”
A grin swept across half of her face. “We’ll need it on us so we can make it to the Jeep if it gets bad enough.” Evelyn pulled a 9mm pistol out of the back of her jeans and cocked it. “You’re going to need this too.”
“What the hell Ev?”
“The safety is on. Don’t forget to take it off when the time comes. Two shots. One in the chest…and one in the head.”
“You’re really thinking something horrible is about to happen, don’t you.”
Ev slammed her hands down. “No. Something horrible already happened. Now shit is going to hit the fan. I’ll give you your other weapon when you’re ready. For now let’s go back up and keep an eye out the windows.”
“Ev, if the first Reanimated show up, I doubt it will be here. We’re just a small backwoods town. It’ll probably be in the city. Hell they probably have dead people crawling out of the sewers and just don’t know it. But it won’t be here.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Ev said. “Never hurts to be prepared, that’s my motto.”
“Well, alright then. Let’s keep an eye out.”
As they headed back in the house Jase began to wonder if he was becoming as crazy as his sister. He reassured himself that he was just doing all of this to keep her as calm as he could. He really didn’t think there would be a mob of Reanimated corpses in the US. The government would find out about the first one and manage to control the outbreak. Somehow, he thought, a virus must have gotten out causing the corpses to come back. Maybe someone working in a lab vanished like everyone else, and happened to have a vile in their hands that held all of the answers to reviving the dead. That had to be it.
That would explain the Reanimated, but not the missing.
It was getting close to dusk and Evelyn kept Jase busy by switching windows every thirty minutes. There were only two of them, and four sides to try and watch. She kept the coffee hot, making sure they didn’t get too tired. They each took turns taking a nap that afternoon because she had a feeling they were going to need their energy.
She was right.
“Hey! Hey Ev! There’s someone walking out there!”
“Sh! Lower your damn voice.”
“Why?” Jase whispered.
“Because the person might not be a damn person. That’s why.” Evelyn walked over to the window Jason was looking out of and held up her binoculars. She saw a man walking slowly down the street. He was too far away for her to be able to see his face but she took note of the way he was walking with a limp.
It could be a sign that he was a passenger in a vehicle when someone vanished and had gotten hurt. His arms flopped around to his sides with every step he took, that could be a sign of exhaustion. His clothes were worn and dirty…and bloody. She kept sight on his face, waiting. All she needed was one brief moment to look at his face.
Then she got it.
Parts of his flesh on his face were gone. An entire cheek looked like it was rotted off and his skin, what was left of it, was caved in. Blood covered his chin and looked like it was smeared sideways, down his neck. Within the gray skin that was left on his face were holes that looked like they were burrowed by insects.
“I told you to shut up,” she whispered to Jase as she handed him the binoculars.
Evelyn walked over to the phone and dialed the number the government gave them as Jase looked in horror at the first Reanimated to be announced in the United States.
“You might want to take your safety off now…just in case,” Ev said with the same grin on her face that she had before.
“This is Lieutenant General Adams. Name and location.”
“Evelyn Banks, Smithton, Virginia.”
“How far away is it Ms. Banks?”
“Seems to be moving slowly, coming from the east about half a mile away.”
“You’re not far from us at all. We’ll be there within the hour. Please, sit tight and stay quiet. If you can manage to shine a light toward the sky when you hear the helicopters that would be greatly appreciated so we can make sure you’re safe.”
“Ready and waiting.”
With that, Lieutenant General Adams hung up the phone.
It was nearly the hundredth call in the past twenty minutes and this time it was their turn to go face the unknown.
Chapter 5
The First Encounter
Adams didn’t need to tell anyone to get a move on it. The moment his phone rang, everyone literally sprang into action. Sometimes having the government listen into your calls came in handy. Adams ran outside and jumped into the helicopter without having to say a word to anyone. They already knew where they were going. Three helicopters lifted in the air and headed toward Virginia to try to control the Reanimated outbreak before it actually became an outbreak. Five military issued Hummers were en-route to the location and were being followed by the CDC in RV’s just in case they needed to quarantine the county. They would do what they had to do to make sure this shit didn’t spread.
“ETA 20 minutes,” the pilot informed them.
“About time,” Adams said. He learned to deal with a lot of impossible things working for the Special Forces branch of the government…he thought he dealt with it all but the dead coming back in living flesh, was one thing he never thought he would deal with. He never considers anything impossible anymore, just unlikely…and this was unlikely.
Whatever lies ahead for them, Adams was prepared. Part of the reason he went into the military to begin with was because he didn’t have family. He was put into foster care as a child and never got out until he joined the Marines. He signed on active duty and volunteered for missions which didn’t leave much time for him to settle down with anyone. It’s not that he didn’t want to, he just didn’t have time. He began going on several secretive missions across seas after he proved himself worthy in Afghanistan and Iraq. He felt honored when they deemed him worthy to join the SEAL’s and deploy to capture or kill Bin Laden. After that he was offered a job in the special unit forces and agreed. He learned never to think so highly of yourself that you can’t see a good offer when given one. It took him a while to get used to everything that went with the Special Forces, but he adapted pretty well which was something he thanked his hard childhood for.
Since Adams was trained to kill with his hands he very seldom carried heavy weapons unless it was a war zone. Even then, sometimes it was easier to carry a small semi-automatic, which is what he chose to carry tonight. With an M16A2, Beretta M9 Pistol, and Combat Knife…he was ready.
The flashlight was surprisingly easy for them to spot from the helicopters and they found a field large enough to land in nearly a hundred yards behind the house.
Evelyn was watching and waiting after they landed. She knew her suspicions were right when the Reanimated corpse began to frantically look up at the sound of the helicopter. She didn’t dare yell to warn them, not yet. They were military. She knew they should be able to handle themselves with one walking corpse.
After they began to huddle out of the helicopter they heard
an animalistic snarl and the rustling of tall grass no more than one hundred yards away. Adams turned and pulled out his pistol while shining a light in the direction of the noise, all in one swift moment. “Stand down,” he ordered. This was the first and possibly only one, and it was his.
He waited a few more moments for the corpse to get closer to him before he fired three rounds into it. Two in the heart and one in the head. As Adams walked up to the corpse to get a better look he began to cough and was forced to cover his mouth and nose because the smell of death burned through the air. There was a huge difference between death in a funeral home and death of a decayed body. This was much stronger than that. He has smelt decaying bodies in the desert and on several of the missions he has been on. Al-Qaida never cared to dispose of the bodies after they murdered the innocent. They left them there for the military to find, as though they were proud. In their sick minds they probably were. He’s smelt days of decaying flesh, even weeks…after they were bloated and deteriorating. That smell wasn’t anything compared to what this thing smelt like. Adams held bile down as he turned away and began walking toward the house that Evelyn was in. “Bag it, but don’t touch it,” he said as he walked away. Corporal Johnson and Corporal Nielson followed Adams to the house.
When he arrived at the house his knock on the door was followed by a woman’s voice. “Did you touch it?” she asked.
“No,” who did this woman think she was? He was the military. He should be asking her the questions.
“Did it bite you?”
His mouth formed a firm line as he scowled. “No.”
He heard the locks on the door slide and made his way in. Holding out his hand as to stop them he asked, “Have you made contact with it?”
“What? Hell no. I may be a woman but I’m not fucking stupid.”
“I wasn’t trying to offend ma’am, just trying to make sure so I don’t need to take you for testing.”