Safety (One Eighteen: Migration Book 1)

by Christopher Wiig

  7) Animals hate them, especially animals from their own species.

  When we see a group of Dead Things, we run. Animals charge. I've seen supposedly tame dogs tear chunks out of them. A few weeks ago all of the cats in town disappeared, and were gone so long we suspected someone had been eating them. A week later they came back dragging an emaciated, destroyed raccoon.

  It wasn't completely dead, but the racoon's limbs were so mangled that all it could do was lay there and writhe. Once the undead corpse was placed it in the middle of town like a warning. the cats returned to their respective owners. These things offend life on a very visceral level.

  8) ...and most importantly, if you take the head, the things stay down.

  Most agree that it’s catastrophic damage to the brain that does it, but if you've got time, take the head all the way off. I've seen these things keep going after a being shot in the forehead.

  My wild ass guess? The majority of the brain isn't important to these things; just the senses and ability to move. They don't need memories, logic, emotions or creativity. They just need to move, smell, hear, and kill.

  What complicates matters is that radio signals are completely out of whack too, and that is an entirely different issue with a lot more questions than answers. There is no doubt that transmitted signals are doing things to people– radio, cellular, (and I've heard microwave, but I'm not sure I put much stock in that rumor.)

  Listening to or watching anything that receives a signal causes all sorts of mental conditions and even some physical symptoms– headaches, nosebleeds, even seizures.

  And it's everywhere.

  Any sort of receiver turned on comes back with odd static mixed with a deep, warbling moan played across a thumping rhythm that's so faint you can't really hear it unless you're listening for it. But you feel it. We call it "the Murmur," for lack of a better term.

  It almost calls to you once it's got your ear. It makes it hard to turn off whatever device you're using because you recognize that there's some intelligence behind it. The longer you listen to it, the more it pulls you in and the more you hear in the static. It reminds me of one of those old hidden picture books that you stare at until you can see the underlying sailboat.

  You just feel like if you keep watching, keep listening, that maybe you'll understand it. And that by understanding it you'll suddenly grasp some larger truth to this whole mess. I wouldn't recommend following that impulse.

  Listening to it has taken more than a dozen people (that we know of) past the brink of sanity, many violently and this separate but intertwined problem causes a lot of confusion.

  Jackson Tate, (our town's resident firearm and Marlboro aficionado,) says he saw a television set turn someone into one of the Dead Things. I'm not sure he's right, but how could you tell?

  If you put a fresh corpse with no noticeable injuries next to a man driven mad by the signals you couldn't really tell them apart. They can both act violently and irrationally. The latter just happens to be still alive. If a dead thing's tissue is healthy and undamaged, it's going to be pretty functionally similar to a lunatic.

  While it’s almost certainly bullshit that a radio can turn you into a Dead Thing, avoiding being driven insane is a good enough reason to never turn on any kind of receiver. The problem is we've gone so far trying to deal with that fear we've uncivilized ourselves.

  When the word got out about the Murmur and it's effects, Greeley went off electricity all together. Not just receivers, but anything using current. If you get caught using or hiding anything electrical, you're banished, period.

  It's a defacto death sentence to go out over The Barricade, so the rule is taken very seriously. Even the flashlight I'm using now qualifies, although to the best of my knowledge no one ever got a good FM signal on a Maglight.

  So that covers some of the 'what.' As for the how, we're not exactly sure. Not everyone was in a position to hear the radio and television reports before the signals went dangerous, and there's disagreement among those that were about what happened. Everyone agrees that whatever happened, it began sometime between one and two AM on June 13th 2007.

  Shortly after it started, the signals went bad. So the reports tended to pop up and then disappear as that area's transmissions became dangerous. It happened at the same time across the globe, everyone knows that. But the ones who were in a position to hear those reports (and in the interest of full disclosure, I wasn’t one of them) say that’s misleading.

  They say it was within the same hour across the globe; between one and two AM in Beijing, in Moscow, in London, in New York. It was in Europe before America, probably in Asia before Europe. We know all of that and yet are sure of none of if. We're isolated.

  Media blackouts followed as each new region's transmissions turned bad. It circled the globe, time zone by time zone, hour by hour. One by one we lost news from those areas affected, and they never came back online. What did, you didn't want to be watching.

  To the scientific minded among us, that says that it came from space, some kind of cosmic taint that bathed our spinning planet while heading to an unknown destination.

  (First contact?)

  To others, it has the fingerprints of the divine will. A vengeful, punctual God with a clock and a chart of the Earth’s timezones; punishing twenty-four populations with twenty-four applications of righteousness.

  A few amateur numerologists pour over every book and magazine in town trying to figure out the significance of the date, of the hour. As though if they can just figure out one piece of the puzzle, they might be able to understand all this.

  Some of us like Mr. Hurley, (the ex-butcher handed the unfortunate job of surgeon's assistant and professional gangrenous-limb amputator) have a more practical take on things:

  "It don't matter one great goddamn why it is or where it come from," he told me one day as we were splitting frozen wood, freezing our asses off to fill the Deputies prized wood stove. He was drunk, which I'd consider dangerous except, Mr. Hurley is always a little drunk.

  "Cause it goddamned well happened, and knowin' or carin' about why it did or how it did ain't gonna make it unhappen.” He turned and pointed. He likes that I listen, and always takes full advantage when he has an ear. I refer to these speeches as his “Matlock moments.”

  “That's the problem with your generation right there, Jonas. You spend more goddamned time figuring out why somethin' happened or who's fault it is that it happened than you do dealing with the damn problem."

  I like Mr. Hurley quite a bit. He's one of the few people in town who've moved beyond the unfocused, disbelieving numbness and made peace with the new world around him. The old man focuses on the now. He's worth listening to, too. He may be a drunk, but he's a wise one.

  He often grumbles about the theorizing and complaining:

  "At my age you can't be running around getting your panties in a twist about how bad your life gets. God throws a punch and I take it right on the chin, shake it off and get back to livin' my goddamned life."

  Another good reason to like Mr. Hurley is he owns (and I'd assume built) a working still. We've got a good deal going; I trade hardware for canned potatoes, and he turns those potatoes into a liquor that tastes like paint thinner seasoned with vomit.

  Regardless of flavor, it does the job; of that I can assure you. What I don't use personally to help me sleep is great for trading. Horace controls almost all of the booze in town other than the shine, but he can't actually say no to our arrangement since only Mr. Hurley knows how to work the still.

  Since almost everything else worth drinking is gone, or being held (hoarded) by Horace for "The Greater Good," we've got a nice little monopoly on the stuff.

  ("The Greater Good" has become a nickname for the Deputies stash. No one knows where it is, or how big it is, only that a lot has been taken and most of it we rarely see again. So when the Deputies borrow something, you shrug, make a crack to yourself about it going to "the greater good" and move on wi
th your life.)

  Most of us aren't as comfortable with this new world as Mr. Hurley is. A large portion of Greenly is wandering around with what I can best describe as post-traumatic stress disorder.

  We're sleepwalking, but practically. We do our assigned jobs, wander out to the Civic Building for dinner and a square dance and talk about the same old football games. We're playacting at living. Still secretly hoping we'll wake up and this will all be fixed.

  Bob Neiman, who used to be a machinist over in Paradise Falls, has become something of the town bard, and High School football has become our Beowulf. He can describe every single game the Paradise Falls Wildcats played in the last five years in loving detail. Play by play.

  The Deputies love the stories because most of them played in those games and they puff up like peacocks with every sack and field goal described. Then we go home and pray for a dreamless sleep.

  A good nights rest is a thing of the past. Everyone looks tired. No one sleeps well. You have to keep one eye open, always ready to move. Nightmares are epidemic. Some have them more frequently then others. I have them every night.

  People take anything they can find (and afford) if it will give them a night of dreamless sleep. A sleeping pill is worth a can of food, (two if it's prescription and strong.) Alcohol is popular if you can handle the hangovers, and have enough to barter for it. For a few weeks there were rumors of some pot floating around, but I never saw it with my own eyes.

  Anything stronger than a baby aspirin was removed from the pharmacy and veterinary clinic (to discourage looting) and now are firmly under Horace's control, so prescription pills are a dead end.

  (However, someone is obviously supplying Sarah Goodman with party favors. Our little corn princess looks stoned out of her mind twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  "All work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl," she's fond of misquoting, though I can't for the life of me remember her ever doing any work.

  Even when we were constructing The Barricade she was up on the roof in a bikini getting a tan. Dating Willy Fetch clearly has it's privileges. (I may be using the wrong verb when I say “dating.”)

  Ah yes, the nightmares. My nightmares follow one of two major themes, violence during a lack of control, and flight from an unseen evil. I don't sleep a lot because I know I'll dream.

  I've ruined three air mattresses while thrashing in my sleep, which has driven me to sleeping on a cot air mattresses are expensive to trade for.

  The flight dreams are the ones that really haunt me in the morning, but I'll start with the control dreams since I remember them the most vividly. They always seem the most real.

  In the last “lack of control” dream, I dreamt I was wandering through a field. I'm not going anywhere, just wandering aimlessly. It's spring and the field is wet and rotten.

  I'm feel like I've been wandering for a long time without purpose and then I hear the whispers of two children, a boy and a girl. I don't have any children, but in the dream I know they're mine and I've been looking for them.

  I'm so happy to finally have found them, but when I try to call out to them my throat seizes and all that comes out is a raspy, hollow sound that's somewhere between a moan and a whisper.

  They are afraid of me, and I try to reassure them that there's nothing to be afraid of; I'm their father. That I've come to rescue them and take them someplace safe. But I can't talk, can't move on my own, and I feel wrong.

  Like I'm filled with some fantastic darkness that radiates out of me, and they can sense it the way animals sense the evil inside the Dead Things. But I keep looking for them. I need to know where they're hiding.

  In a flash of colors the little girl and boy dart from the bushes, and without thinking I grab the fringe of the girl's calico dress and yank her back. I start hugging her tight to my chest because I'm so pleased that I've found her. I love her so very much.

  She lets out a long, piercing shriek and I start to feel her ribs pop under my arms. All I can think is "I've got to let this little girl go; I'm hurting her." My arms will not stop tightening... and the boy is yelling for me to stop, but all I can do is stand there with a big stupid grin on my face and keep squeezing.

  Squeezing till she goes limp in my arms.

  I feel a pure, narcotic joy from her suffering and I realize it's not me feeling that, but someone else. I get angry when the feeling goes away. It goes away because she's dead in my arms.

  She's done struggling now and I stop to look at her for a moment. She's not peaceful in death. Her face is a mask of horror and submission and I shake her like a rag-doll, watching her eyes for any sign of movement.

  I'm so fixated on this that I barely feel the boys pocket knife as it slices into my stomach over and over again, not until I'm sure that the girl is completely dead. Then I cast her body aside and turn for the boy but I'm slower now, bleeding out and it's harder to walk.

  I'm hurt, and the muscles in my body aching and blood starved, but I'm still on my feet. Still moving. No pain, or if there is any pain I ignore it. The joy comes back. I know if I can just catch the boy, everything will be all right again.

  He runs from me but I know I'll catch him, eventually. One foot in front of the other, a few feet at a time but I'm going to catch him.

  Mr. Hare has to stop for a nap. Mr. Tortoise never stops.

  And Mr. Tortoise... is hungry.

  I do try to stop. I don't want to dream about these things. But whenever I try to stop myself from doing something dark in these dreams, I feel the presence of another, darker person.

  Not a force, or a general evil, but a living, breathing human. Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, but always inside with me. They can feel what I'm feeling and my fear only seems to give them additional pleasure.

  They like that I'm there. A tool and an audience.

  If I try to take control, or let them know I'm there, the acts I'm forced to perform become more ghastly, more obscene. Things I would never write down in even a personal journal. Things I try not to remember.

  They punish me for fighting, and I'm not as strong as they are.

  I've stopped fighting these dreams. When I have one I shut my eyes and ears to the events around me as best I can. I think about books and movies I enjoy, places I've been. I try not to hear the screaming. There's always screaming.

  I don't think they enjoy it without the screaming.

  The flight dreams are much less realistic, but no less horrifying. I'm running, and though the scenery is never the same, nor the obstacles in my path, it's always from something bad.

  No, not just bad. Not even very bad. The worst thing. Something so bad that to touch it, to even look at it would defile me, and defile it as well. It doesn't want to be seen.

  It is no yin-yang beast because in it's darkness there is absolutely no light. It feels old, older than antiquity, maybe older than man itself.

  The sort of things ancient tribes used to sacrifice captives to... to keep it away. I know fighting it, even trying to, would be an exercise in futility. So I run.

  I always run.

  It follows right along.

  I know that if it catches me, or if I turn to meet it, it will devour me whole. I don't know what to call it, so in my mind it's always the Dark Thing.

  The Dark Thing never gets tired. It never sleeps. It doesn't even really chase me because it knows that I will never EVER be a match for it. And I'll never get away.

  It's following just to torment, because it knows exactly where I'm going. It knows that it can reach out and pull me into it's maw at any time. It doesn't chase me for a meal. It chases because I run.

  And it likes to watch where I go when I do.

  I have to admit on many occasions I've considered turning and facing this beast. The Dark Thing can be hurt, somehow, I really feel that it can.

  I don't know how but I know there's a level of mortality in it. It can even be spoken to, or reasoned with. There's an intelligence inside it that feels a
ncient but I'm afraid. It knows me and I know that if I ever let it catch me, it would talk to me.

  And it's voice would destroy me.

  I don't want to write about the dreams anymore.

  I'm turning off the flashlight now and going to sleep. I can't write anymore tonight. I feel like I'm losing it, and that scares me.

  We all are.

  There's got to be a way to get through to the townspeople. We need electronics if we're going to survive. I've got to convince these people that with the exception of things that receive a transmission, there's nothing for them to be afraid of.

  I've asked nearly every person in town and NOBODY can tell me anyone who's gone crazy using anything that doesn't receive a signal. We've got ten perfectly good generators and plenty of gasoline. We don't have to live like this.

  We don't even have to live HERE.

  We have cars. If we ripped the radios out of them, they'd be safe. We could caravan... somewhere. If a hundred and twenty-eight small town folks survived, think of how many people could still be alive in New York. Los Angeles.

  Fuck, anywhere.

  Every week we don't use the tools available to us we're literally killing people. We're dying a few at a time and there's no need for it.

  Right now, we have enough people to work together and pull ourselves up. Keep waiting and eventually there won't be enough of us left to do anything but hide and wait to die.

  I've got to make them listen.

  Jonas Waight

  Preaching to the choir of one

  [File Note:]

  Jonas seems to switch tenses when describing his dreams. he's also very specific, more specific than when he describes events that actually happened to him. I've also noticed a tendency for him to switch to cursive, but only when he is writing about dreams.