by C. M. Wright
Jordan's mouth drops and her face takes on a color that closely matches her hair. "You're what? To who?" I watch as her head swings toward me and then her eyes widen in disbelief. "To that? Have you lost your mind? Why would you bring someone else here? Why would you do something so stupid?"
As pissed off as I am by the insults, I still open my mouth to try to warn her not to piss him off, but he's faster than I am. His hand striking her face leaves both of us in shock. Her eyes flash with intense anger at him, and then at me.
She looks back at Jake, obviously expecting an apology. But when none comes, she huffs out a burst of angry air, runs off the porch and around the house to the back. Jake just starts picking up the boxes and items he had placed on the porch and brings them inside, as if nothing happened.
"Who was that, Jake?" I ask him, knowing the risk of being hit is high for me too, but curiosity wins out.
"Jordan. My ex-fiancée."
His what!
"Um, Jake? When did she find out she was your ex-fiancée?"
"Just now, I guess," he answers without any emotion to show he even cares how that must have made her feel.
I can understand her attitude toward me and don't blame her a bit. You took asshole to a whole new level, Jake.
Suddenly very tired, I hop over to the sofa and sink onto the thick cushion; but before I can get comfortable, I hear a door further back in the house open and close, followed by quick footsteps coming toward us.
Expecting Jordan, I'm surprised to see a younger girl appear. She looks to be about sixteen and has long blond hair with just a touch of red. She looks enough like Jordan that I'm positive they're related. But where Jordan is restrained and a bitch - although warranted, yes - this girl is openly warm and sweet.
She comes right up and sits beside me on the sofa, grabbing my hand with both of her own. And then...she opens her mouth. My head spins from all the questions, statements, explanations, compliments, and descriptions of every single thing that could possibly be discussed by someone who doesn't actually know you.
I don't say a word - I don't have to - so when I realize my participation isn't required, I settle back against the sofa and just listen to her. I find out her name is Vicki, she is sixteen, she's Jordan's baby sister, she is madly in love with a nineteen year old guy named Nick who doesn't even know she's alive. She lives on this property in a smaller cabin back in the woods a bit, which she shares with Nick, another older man named Paul, and now she believes Jordan will be back there as well.
Actually, Jordan can stay here and I will gladly stay in the cabin with the others.
After all that, I lose the conversation as she goes from one subject to the next too fast for me to keep up. I sit up when my mind realizes she mentioned zombies in a building a few subjects back.
"Wait, Vicki. Back up. What did you say about zombies?"
Before she can respond, Jake grabs her arm - gently - and pulls her up and hugs her. She squeals when he swings her around and the affection they both have for each other is clear. She looks up at him with the adoration a younger sister has for her hero big brother.
"I see you're filling in my wife very thoroughly, Vick, but I think I will give her the tour and finish filling her in on the details. Why don't you make us something to eat while we get settled in."
Vicki giggles and nods as she rushes off to - I assume - do just that. Jake leans down and gets right in my face.
"Don't be questioning anyone but me about the things that go on around here. Whatever you need to know, I will tell you. Understand?"
I nod, although I highly doubt that's true.
"And one more thing, don't even think about hurting Vicki. I mean that."
What the hell? Why would I even do that?
I nod again and Jake grins, obviously satisfied. Then he helps me off the sofa and up the stairs. We pass four doors - two on each side of the hall - before he opens the door at the end of the hallway which faces the stairs. Inside is the master bedroom with an attached master bath. The room also has a jacuzzi right in the bedroom. No need to ask who this room is for.
Damn it.
"Why don't you get a nice long bath and get changed? I'll help you in the tub then bring your clothes up."
I just nod and hop along beside him to the bathroom. He wraps my cast, I get in the tub, he leaves. All I can think about is the "zombies in a building". What does that mean? I'm sure I'm not going to be finding out via Jake. He didn't seem too open about discussing it with me.
Turns out, I was wrong.
After I finish bathing, dressing, and eating; Jake takes me out the back door and leads me to the building a few yards away. He starts explaining as we leave the house.
"I kept a few things from you." You don't say? I'd call it straight-out lying, but maybe that's just me. "I've been doing some experiments on a couple zombies. Trying to figure this out."
Even though I already knew it from the pictures, to hear him confirm he knew about this long before the outbreak in Stephen, gives me a jolt of new fear and confusion.
As we reach the door to the building, he says, "I'll explain more when we get inside." He opens the door and waits for me to go ahead of him. I just stare at him.
"Go on. It's ok."
"If there are zombie's in there, it's not ok. I'll follow you if you don't mind." Beat me all you want, but I am not frikken going inside a place I don't know, especially where zombies are being kept. Restrained or not.
He doesn't beat me, but laughs, shakes his head, and goes inside. Then, and only then, I follow him. We walk down a long corridor and finally enter a room with a large glass window in it. I move closer to the window at Jake's encouragement and look down into an open arena-type setting.
Four zombies, two women and two men, are shuffling about on the dirt and snow packed ground. There's no roof to protect them from the cold mountain air and snow, but they don't seem to mind. As I focus more on the zombies, I let out a gasp of shock when I realize two of those zombies are his parents, the ones in the photos and the newspaper article.
I do my best to hide my surprise, shock, and horror before I look at Jake or try to speak. Once I think I have it under control, I turn to see Jake looking down at the zombies and smiling like a proud parent.
I clear my throat. "Jake, who are these people?"
"Well, those two" - he points at his parents - "are good ole Mom and Dad. The other woman is Nick's ex-girlfriend, Kris, and the man is my former associate, Walter."
"Former associate? What exactly do you mean by that? Are you really military, Jake?"
He grins at me. "Kind of. I was hired by the military. I'm actually a psychiatrist."
A what! Really wasn't expecting that. Scientist maybe, but not a psychiatrist. He's more screwed up than any mental case ever diagnosed, me included.
"I started becoming interested in reanimating corpses when...well it doesn't matter when. So I left my practice and moved up here where no one would bother me. Somehow the damn military heard about my research and paid me a visit. I tried refusing their offer, but the fact is, you can't refuse their offers because ultimately, they're not really offers. You do it or die.
"Turns out, one of the higher ups had a son who died and he was pretty tore up about it." He says that as if he can't quite figure out why a parent would be so upset over losing their child. "I was adamant that the process hadn't been perfected, that they don't come back the same. So instead of just giving me time to continue the experiments on my parents - to get it right - they forced me to infect other dead - ones who were newly killed and scheduled to be cremated. Those families are holding onto or spreading the ashes of animals and other non-human things like paper and trash. Imagine the surprise of family members who may have come face to face with their loved ones who they believed were floating on the wind!" Jake laughs. I feel sick, sick and angry.
"The military also ordered me to experiment on the living. Giving the injections to some, and to others, expos
ing them to the already infected. The results weren't good." No shit? "I experimented on people in Nebraska, Springfield, Stephen, Dallas, and Washington. Mostly on the elderly in the nursing homes. Oh, assisted living is the correct term nowadays isn't it?" He barks out a few ha ha's. "People can get offended over the stupidest little things. Bunch of damn morons. Not all the subjects were elderly, some people I injected on my own without the military's knowledge - people who pissed me off or were rude to me, you know? I have to say, it didn't bother me a damn bit to inject some of those people. Didn't bother me at all."
My mind is reeling from the horror of what he's telling me. I very badly want to be able to humor his imagination and believe that this is only his make-believe little world. But it's not. It's all true, and I know it.
"The old residents were supposed to be monitored, but who can keep track of everyone? So the old patients would bite the nursing staff, some bit their own family. They were only to be given to the ones whose minds were barely there, if at all. The ones who were already restrained to their beds for their own safety. But once they infected someone else, someone who could move freely, without restrictions - it got out of control."
"Who monitored the people you injected for the hell of it?" Until his eyes flash, I had forgotten that he likes to get physical with me. But who can blame me for not thinking straight?
He doesn't hit me, instead his face changes to a big grin as he decides he's proud of what's he's done.
"Who cares? I started this for my own personal reasons. It was for me and just a few people I picked out. But when the military stole the virus and started injecting it into random people that I didn't even know about, it got out of hand fast. So who cares if I made a few more zombies? What was the point in being discreet? Being careful? Especially when the military was making more than they could handle. I knew where this was leading."
"But...but what if you get bit? Did you think about that? And what about your parents? Why did you tell me that awful story about them? Your dad never beat you or Greg did he? And speaking of Greg, what is going on with him? What did you mean he's already dead?"
Jake stares out the window for a few very long minutes before he walks across the room and pushes a couple chairs near the window. He motions for me to sit and I do. He sits in the chair next to me, leans forward putting his arms on the wide ledge of the window, and presses his forehead against the glass. Finally he speaks.
"My parents were great parents. They gave me and Greg everything we wanted and needed. Of course Dad never beat us." He stops and just watches the remains of his parents as they stumble around.
"They didn't know what I was up to. They thought I had started working with the military on my own, by my own choice. But they had no idea of the experiments, the zombies, I had made. Then I went to visit them about a year ago. I needed their help. I wanted new subjects to work on right here, mine not the military's. So I went and picked them up late one night after all their nosy old neighbors had gone to sleep. No one knew about this place. Just me and my employees.
"Greg had gotten cancer and we were told he wouldn't make it. I had already experimented on other terminally ill cancer patients by injecting them with the zombie formula. The cancer would disappear. But if they didn't get the antidote regularly, they would become zombies too and―"
"Antidote! There's an antidote? As in, you stop being a zombie?"
"If you would let me finish I'll tell you, damn it!" I lean back and do my best to wait patiently, but he skips around so much I want to scream and beat the information out of him. As if that could happen.
"The military - before they got stupid and stole my formula and then blocked me from my own experiments - had sent me to several of the armories so that I could deliver the antidote to protect the men who work there. That's how I knew where the armories were. I left vials with green liquid at the armories, but it wasn't the antidote. I'm not going to waste my precious antidote on anyone else. I also collected keys for each armory and made note of where all the weapons were stored, and as much as the layout of the building I could get access to, I memorized.
"Now...the antidote doesn't help you if you're already a zombie, it only helps to prevent you from becoming one if you're injected or bit. I'm still working on that. But you have to have the injection weekly. Greg's week is up. His week was up yesterday. He'll soon be a full zombie if he isn't already, which means your family is, or soon will be, just like him."
Jake stares at me with his stupid grin. The panic becomes overwhelming; the terror and fear I feel is painful.
I gasp out, "Call them." Knowing he won't, but that doesn't stop me from begging. I only want my family safe. Alive.
Jake shakes his head slowly while he looks at me with a serious expression, his eyes intently on my own.
"I don't think I will. They'll kill my brother, if they're still alive anyway. No point in all that shit is there?"
Then Jake reaches over to a nearby desk, opens one of the side drawers and pulls out a vial and a syringe. The vial matches the ones he had hidden in his backpack. He slides the syringe into the top of the vial and pulls up on the plunger and dark green liquid fills the glass tube. I'm terrified that he might inject me with the stuff, but he inserts the needle into his own arm and presses down on the plunger.
I watch in sick fascination as the vial empties and Jake's appearance almost immediately becomes healthier looking. Gone are the dark circles around his eyes and the pure white tone to his skin where it wasn't flushed with red transforms into the healthy glow from before he started getting sick. Even his hair looks healthier.
"Jake?"
"Yeah, I was bit. My lovely mama bit me." Then he turns his body and raises his shirt. Right on the meaty side of his back, just above his hip, is a scarred bite mark that I have never noticed before.
He turns back around and my eyes flash up to his. Oh my god! He's a zombie! I've been raped by a freaking zombie!
Chapter Thirty
"Jake, you're...you're a zombie?" My voice is shrill with fear, disgust, and shock.
"I'm not a zombie, you idiot. Do I look or act like one? No! If I don't take this stuff, then I'll become one. But I'm not a damn zombie."
To me, he's a zombie. I always thought an antidote completely cured a person. Maybe I'm wrong, god knows I'm not an expert on this shit, but it doesn't really matter because as far as I'm concerned, he's a damn zombie.
"Now, watch this. Jake presses a button on the wall beside the window. A loud buzzer sounds and a portion of the metal opens in the arena wall downstairs. A woman comes racing out. But she's not alive - she's a runner.
"That's Brianna, a friend of Jordan's. Isn't she beautiful?"
Um, maybe if it weren't for the whole rotting corpse thing!
"She was my first zombie. The very first. I believe the longer they're zombies the faster they become. My parents just won't speed up, so I'm thinking the age when they die may have something to do with it too."
"So when you saw all the Runners before, your terrified reaction was all an act? You already knew?"
"Well, sort of. I thought Brie was the only fast one. I thought there was just something about her that enabled her to do it. I had no idea there were more, but like I explained before, the military had been doing their own experiments - and from the amount coming from Nebraska, I think I can safely say that that is where they started the turnings."
I watch as Brianna runs, stops, runs, stops. Do they know how to walk anymore? Can they walk anymore?
"I think that's enough information for now. Let's go back in the house." He grabs my arms and pulls me up. It's dark outside and I hear moaning from undead mouths which I assume belong to the captured zombies in the open arena. But when Jake steps in front of me and watches the wooded area to our right, I realize this mountain may not be as safe and zombie-free as I had thought. Sure enough, an undead man walks out and Jake shoots him. More moans get closer and Jake rushes us up the porch stairs and in
side the enclosed porch.
We sit in patio chairs and watch as several zombies emerge from the woods. Suddenly I hear Jake gasp and his chair crashes against the wooden floor as he stands and rushes out of the porch and back toward the building, dodging undead as he goes. He goes past the building instead of inside. I stand and move where I can see better and I'm shocked when I see Vicki just strolling along from the back woods toward Jake's house. She's listening to music and has her ears covered by the headphones. A huge male zombie is coming right up behind her, gaining on her because she's spending more time dancing than walking.
I can hear Jake scream her name but she can't. Finally, she looks up and sees Jake running toward her, waving his arms. Her face breaks out in a big grin and she walks a little faster. Then she either turns off her music or realizes Jake isn't playing, because she turns around just as the zombie reaches for her.
He grabs her by the throat and picks her tiny body up, her feet high off the ground. He brings her toward his wide-open mouth and her face is mere inches when Jake arrives at the side of him, and shoots him in his head. Vicki slams to the ground, screaming even though her throat has got to be killing her. Jake gathers her up in his arms and runs as hard and fast as he can back to the porch. He makes it halfway up the stairs before the bottom is full of zombies.
I open the porch door for them and wait for him to set her in a chair. Then I pull a chair close to her and check her throat. She cries hysterically the entire time, and I wince at how much it has got to hurt her already raw throat. Jake goes inside and gets her a glass of cold water. I hold her and try to calm her down.
After a good fifteen minutes or so, her cries turn into hiccups and she relaxes more into my arms. I ask Jake to help me get her inside, away from the sounds of the zombies. He carries her to the living room sofa and I follow. She doesn't say a single word the entire time.
But Jake sits in one of the chairs across from us, and in a gentle but firm tone, asks her why she was out in the dark by herself? Why wasn't she paying attention, knowing full-well of the danger?