by Pete Bevan
In the airlock Janice kicked off her remaining shoe and sprinted off through the staging area with bio suits and safety equipment hanging from the pristine walls. She heard the airlock door start to close behind her as she heard the first two infected drop to the floor. She hit the door to the Admin offices and flung it open with a crash. Sprinting down the central aisle she paused to swing chairs and monitors behind her to impede the progress of the creatures behind her who were now a way behind at the beginning of the offices. Seth counted eight altogether who had made it through the airlock before it shut with a clunk. They entered the offices scanning around wildly for their prey as Janice hit the double doors to the loading bay like a footballer going for a tackle.
The loading bay had a raised platform with a series of forklift trucks and racking for stores parts and equipment, the platform had a series on ‘U’ shapes cut into it where trucks could park at a level where a forklift could enter the rear of the truck and access the load. Two of the bays had empty trailers waiting to leave the unit.
Seth breathed a sigh of relief, all she had to do now was run across the warehoused size bay to the loading door where he could open it a fraction to let her roll underneath. His finger hovered over the ‘open’ button in anticipation. He had to time it right or the infected would get out as well.
She didn’t run towards the doors, she followed the interior wall round the loading bay. “What are you doing?” He screamed to himself. Then he realised. She was making her way round to the Security offices, she was trying to get to him, not out.
“No, no, no, no,” he thought repeatedly as she reached the locked door that lead to a series of corridors. She rounded the corner into the short corridor that ended in the security door just as the infected burst through the double doors and started scanning the loading bay for her location, like wolves hunting a rabbit.
Seth estimated he had maybe thirty seconds before they found her again. He scanned the CCTV outside the loading bay doors to see a number of security guards milling around outside. He couldn’t assess their actions but they were wondering why the alarms were going off without the lockdown alarm kicking in. In his mind he timed leaving his office, sprinting through the corridors to get to her, but it meant getting through two keypad doors and a card security door. There wasn’t enough time, it would take a minute or two to get to her. Not enough time. NOT ENOUGH TIME!
Seth sat back slightly. With dread realisation he had only two options as he watched the infected scan inside the trailers and underneath to find their hidden prey.
He could open the loading bay doors which would attract the infected and let them out to the security guards outside. There they would spread like wildfire through the compound, and the City beyond, killing everything in their path, Shelley, Alice and Anna, his mother and everything he knew would fall victim to the deadly virus which would rip through the World like an apocalypse. This would give him the precious seconds he needed to get to her and let her into the Security section, and back into his loving arms.
Or, he could initiate the lockdown, sealing everyone in the building but let her die at the hands of the creatures, watching her torn apart and turned into a snarling bestial thing like Gary.
His eyes flicked over the screens in panic. Twenty seconds.
He looked at the button beneath his hand. So innocuous with its edges rounded off from innocent use, faded green plastic, so inviting, so deadly. Its brass bezel stained dark with age. He looked at the screens again, the infected were two thirds of the way round the bay, flicking barcode scanners and boxes over in frustration, but still close enough to the loading bay door. Ten Seconds.
He looked at the screen with Janice staring up at the camera, her eyes bearing into his soul as she crouched in the corner to minimise the chance of them seeing her.
Destroy the World or save the woman he loved.
Five seconds.
Four.
Three.
Two.
It was the wrong decision.
He made it anyway.
zom⋅bie [zom-bee]
It started in Asia. The clock struck six a.m. and the reports of the madness started coming in. In Japan, whole apartment blocks erupted in warfare as the residents screamed and tore at each other, the images showing confusion and riots: started for no reason, no purpose, and with no goal. Then, as the hours rolled on, the madness moved with the dawn across Taiwan and China, through the Middle East and Eastern Russia. Back then, seven days ago….. Jesus! Was it only seven days? The only sane ones left were those who hadn’t slept. The news reporters, Doctors, ravers, and drug addicts all posted on their blogs and networking sites, as the madness screamed at them through barred windows and barricaded doors. By the time it reached Europe, the world was in panic as a working theory was drawn up. The sunrise swept around the globe and as it did the barrier between the conscious and unconscious mind was swept away. The Ego and Id merged and the madness came. The only defence was to stay awake. So, the World turned as it engulfed the United States and, in 24 short hours, civilisation came to a shuddering halt.
Sleep never came easy for me, and insomnia is a lonely mistress. In the depths of night, fear is amplified as I lie there trying to will sleep into me.
My relationships never lasted long. After a few months of disturbed sleep my girlfriends would look worn and ragged by my constant tossing and turning or the sound of the toilet being flushed or the TV in the other room, until the inevitable came and they left me with an, “It’s not you, it’s me”. Eventually, no matter how much I loved them, I resigned myself to this final conversation and soon enough I didn’t even care that they left. So I spend my hours writing beautiful, and elaborate, code for wealthy clients while I can’t sleep, and correcting it when I feel fresh from sleeping well. I feel my consciousness breaking down, taking my intellect with it with each passing hour as lactic acid and exhaustion possess me. I spend my life numb from tiredness. However, this last week even I was pushing my limits and my normal sleeping pills are stopped dead, replaced with amphetamines and caffeine pills, or anti-sleeping pills if you wish. Onwards I drive with no destination, my only hope is that the world will turn again and, as the sunrise comes, things will return to normal and I can finally sleep. The town ahead, with palls of smoke rising from untended fires, reminds me how futile this sounds.
I’ve been travelling for what, five days now? Six? I can’t concentrate properly, so as I near the town I need to be sharp. I take a handful of pills, slugged down with a glug of water. There are only a few left in the bottle now, so I need to find a drug store as well as food on my way through. This isn’t easy. All the towns I have passed though have their own distinct freak show. I still my nerves as the rush from the drugs kick in, and drive slowly past the sign.
‘Crescent Falls, Population 206’ The ‘206’ has been crossed out ‘205, 204, 203, 202’ until they run out of space.
I’ve been driving through the empty plains of America, and for hours you would think that everything was fine, until you passed a little vignette of horror. A rambling man shouting incoherently at nothing. A crashed car unattended by Police or Paramedics, victim exposed. A discarded red chopper bicycle, next to a pool of blood. Other than that, I’ve passed fields of corn and wheat attended by turning windmills and stored in aluminium silos. If I wasn’t so tired I could believe I was on a simple road trip.
I slow the huge, midnight blue SUV and crawl into town in second gear. Untended parkways turn to lawn and I roll through the empty streets of this worn town. There are doors ajar and curtains flapping through broken windows, furniture and TV’s smashed and strewn about the street. On an immaculate lawn to the left a full dinner service is laid out with napkin rings and a centrepiece. I drift on silently, but close the windows as I hear the screaming intensify as I near the centre of town.
A girl kneels on the sidewalk, my mind struggles through the haze to make sense of what I see. It seems to shift and mutate until I see the gi
rl’s hands are full of hair which she has ripped from her now bloody scalp. She sobs gently to herself but doesn’t look up as I slide by, my mind now struggling to determine the difference between reality and hallucination, as extraordinary sights, like the girl, filter through to my tired mind.
I reach the centre of town and now have to drive around the litter and corpses. As I pass, I see a body still breathing, but ringed by crimson blood. I drive on. The Drug Store is a bust, that’s where the smoke’s coming from. Its cloying irritation seeps through the SUV’s vents.
A young blonde woman wearing only jeans sprints between the houses, she’s dirty and her feet are bloody and bruised. She is pursued by two battered assailants who howl and hunt her as a team. In the distance two old men stare each other straight in the eye before fighting like rabid dogs driven by instinct and irrational fear. I find a ‘Stop & Go’, the only other likely candidate for drugs. I stop the car and grab the mask and shotgun. The Zombie Halloween mask, deployed quickly, normally freaks out any crazies who are feeling brave. The shotgun is for when the mask doesn’t work.
I crunch past the chips and glass littering the sidewalk from the broken windows and displays pulled from the shop. Behind a trashcan a wild-eyed teenager chews the chips and glass together, blood running down her chin.
Inside the shop it looks like a hurricane came for munchies. The ransacked pharmacy was empty so I grabbed a bag of chips, dips and whatever I could find and moved on. I found some big bottles of energy drink. That’ll have to do until after the amphetamines wear off. As I pass the counter something catches my eye. It’s a dictionary, open with a word red ringed, so I bend down and gaze at the definition:
zom⋅bie [zom-bee]
–noun
1. (in voodoo) a. the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.
2. Informal. a. a person whose behaviour or responses are wooden, listless, or seemingly rote; automaton.
I smile. That’s the definition of me, not them.
I have driven on and on through the wasteland on automatic, like my whole life has been. My constant quest for sleep as I forego everything I’ve ever known just to feel rested. The irony of it is beautiful. I leave and stand by the car as I watch the victorious old man smash a baseball bat into his victim’s face with such force it sprays him with gore as it pulverises a little more with each blow.
Then I feel it. Something small tugging at my pants. I turn with a sickened stomach and look down into the pure blue eyes of the toddler in front of me. Babies and toddlers haven’t been affected. I think the barrier in the brain is forming in them and so resists the pull, but I’m no doctor, and that makes what I have to do all the harder.
“Man, man!” She tugs again. “Help. My Momma’s tired. She’s sleeping.” She tugs again and I stare at her stained face, her filthy clothes. She implores me to follow. I stand resolute before her charms. There are too many of these lost kids. Too many. I raise the mask quickly to my face and stand there. She backs away, lip quivering, and walks away, looking at me, the whole time, over her shoulder. I feel like crap, I should help her but I nearly got killed the last time. Once bitten, twice shy.
I get back in the car in a daze and drive out of the town. I need something to keep me awake but it’s not here. I need to keep driving and, as I go, I can see the two hunters have caught their prey and are frantically trying to remove her trousers as she giggles like it’s the best game of tickles anyone’s ever had. The sound of laughter makes me smile as tears form in my eyes, yet I feel nothing inside. I haven’t the energy. As the sun sets on day seven - or is it eight? - I drive on as the mask leers at me from the passenger seat. Its latex cuts and rubber worms show more emotion than I. I am already dead inside. I’ve seen too much without the relief of sleep to sort out my alpha waves. Even if I could sleep, a lifetime of nightmares awaits. Fuck, I’m tired.
The miles roll past without incident and I’m wondering how I can have two big bottles of energy drink and a bunch of Twinkies and not need to pee. Yup, that’s about my intellectual level now. The lines on the road blur into hallucination, becoming Pong of the mind. On and on I rumble as the darkness falls.
Godammit, I’m coming down hard and I can’t think straight.
I was thinking about the mask, wasn’t I? The mask that keeps me from interacting with ‘Those that have Slept’. Maybe this is my true face, an insomniac Zombie out of touch with what the Human race has become. What use is being an insomniac anyway when you are as tired as this? Oh great! The mask looks like the girl on the sidewalk with no scalp.
There’s gotta be a town soon, or a nice empty mall that hadn’t opened for the day. It’s got a huge drugstore with a rusty set of shutters and no alarms. He he.
On into the night I go. The Last Zombie.
I open all the windows, but that doesn’t help. I finish all the drinks and that doesn’t help either.
Then a calm feeling washes over me. It’s time for a nap. No, not a nap, a nice long sleep. A good eight hours uninterrupted sleep would do just fine. I could just sleep forever I think.
It would be better in a bed, but this will have to do. I ease the accelerator down and the car accelerates with a barely audible whine. This is a very good SUV. It has electric seats so I recline them back, forcing my foot down onto the accelerator pedal. I turn up the heat in the cabin. I adjust the wheel so that it traps my legs as the SUV speeds up past one hundred. I relax my shoulders and adjust my trajectory along the straight highway and close my eyes.
Just for a second.
The Madman, the Tower, and the Devil
A brace of white clouds bathed the ruined park in patches of grey as they sped over the overgrown city. The breeze whipped up seed from the unkempt grass into a small cloud that carouselled past the faded, broken, drugstore sign that tapped gently against side of the building it had once advertised. The park had been well kept and attended to but now a smattering of unfortunate corpses lay in the long grass and a single Zombie stood stock still in the wide area, head up, as if appreciating the fine day. It had smelt something new on the breeze, something that stirred a hunger in its cankerous belly, but the wind changed and slowly it shuffled off in search of the rapidly depleting meat that was its food.
The park was a wide flat, tree lined area with a small stream that arose from pipes under the city for a brief sojourn in the sun before re-entering the dark on the other side of the park. To the north the statue of a forgotten luminary gazed impassively towards the city skyline.
Again the wind shifted and the suited Zombie turned, questioning in its stance, once-white shirt and tie reacting to the stiff wind. In the distance the low rumble of a petrol engine carried on the breeze stirred instinct in the corpse and its eyes widened in anticipation of the meal. Slowly it shuffled towards the sound as it saw the Humvee emerge from the street and enter the far side of the park. It was travelling slowly, quietly, buffeted by the pot-holed road and forgotten debris. The Zombie and the Humvee approached each other until, at about thirty feet, the Humvee stopped and cut its engine. Instinctual hunger rose in the Zombie and it shuffled faster towards the tin can containing the sweet meat it craved. A soft moan rose in its throat as the hatch in the roof of the Humvee opened with a cloud of smoke. The Zombie paused in anticipation. Food emerged.
From the hatch, a wide, battered Stetson rose, adorned with a string of yellow human teeth. The figure that wore the hat was tanned, craggy and muscular, red beard long down his neck, eyes hidden behind polarised Oakley sunglasses. The final vestiges of a cigar moved up and down as it was masticated by yellow teeth. The figure stood tall on the roof of the cab eyeing the creature below before hopping down onto the bonnet. The Zombie moved closer, raising its arms in anticipation. The figure stood with his hands on his hips studying the pathetic creature below as it slowly closed the gap between them. He wore a stained vest with tooth necklace and green camo trousers,
his tattoos and demeanour showing him to be military. He hopped to the floor as the Zombie approached, and as it came within grasping distance, broken fingers snatching for the so-close food, the General raised one massive fist and hit the Zombie square in the jaw, which spun from the Zombie’s head as it fell back on the long grass, jaw landing with a tiss of crushed grass. A gurgling moan rose in its throat as it tried to rise but the General dropped on one knee on the Zombie’s chest, trapping it before languidly removing the long knife from his belt and driving it down through the stricken creature’s eye. It bucked for a moment as whatever force drove it left the body. The General cleaned the blade on the suited figure and rose, looking into the sky. He offered a silent prayer for the stricken form below, raised one hand and pressed it to his ear.