“Okay, now what?” asked Ward, picking up his pack and casting a wary eye toward the other end of the bridge. “Got at least a dozen tangos down there, now...”
As he shouldered his heavy pack full of food and ammo, Seneca pointed over the railing at the cluster of buildings along Main Street. “Back the way we came. We’ll get on top of one of those buildings and wait out the night. Then we can regroup and find transport in the morning.”
Ward stepped up next to Seneca at the south railing. “We’re going back into that? Shit fire and save matches, I shoulda stayed in the damn army…”
“Hooah,” Seneca said with a lopsided grin.
12
Awakening
Viking Museum
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan
Gunfire woke Darren. He sat up after a loud shot echoed down the street outside the museum, then immediately regretted it as his head felt ready to explode. The pulse pounding in his temples caused him to close his eyes and double over. His stomach wanted to climb up through his throat, but he clamped his jaws shut and moaned through the worst of it.
Another shot in the distance woke Carl up on the other side of the room. “Whazzit?” he groaned.
“Gunshots,” Darren whispered around a tongue that felt like it was wrapped in an old gym sock. “God, my head hurts…”
“Gunshots?” Carl asked, scrambling to his feet and slamming into the wall in his hungover haste. “What?”
“Dunno,” Darren said, easing himself to his feet. He heard a scream outside and opened his eyes, letting what little light there was outside illuminate his world slowly. “How much did we drink last night?”
“Not enough water, that’s for damn sure,” Carl moaned. “It’s still night.”
Darren shuffled over to the window and peered out at the pre-dawn darkness, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I don’t see anything, I wonder what’s—”
Three people ran past—illuminated by street lights—all carrying bags and suitcases. One stumbled in the wet street, looked over his shoulder and screamed, then got up and abandoned his things, easily outpacing the other two. Darren watched them until they passed out of sight down the street. He scratched at his jaw.
“Well, that was weird.”
“Not…n-n-ot as weird as this…” Carl whispered from the window on the other side of the room.
Darren moved to Carl’s window and peered over his shoulder. In the middle of the street, a man slowly walked forward, one shuffling, awkward step at a time. He looked injured—the gimpy leg was sheathed in a torn, flapping pants leg, stained dark down the length of the tear. The pale flesh under it was likewise smeared with something dark. As he shuffled forward, Darren saw a flash of white.
“Shit, that guy’s got a bone sticking out of his leg!”
“Forget his leg, look at his face!” hissed Carl.
Darren did so, and took an involuntary step back from the window. “Fuck!” he gasped. The man’s face was a white mask of pale flesh. Black veins stood out in start contrast to the dark rings around his sunken eyes. The eyes were solid red, all the white part glistening like they’d been painted in blood. Red streaks trailed from the corners of his eyes, his nose, and his mouth. He twitched and turned his head, exposing an ear that had dried blood encrusted down his neck.
“What the fuck is going on…” whimpered Carl.
They watched the man in the street stagger forward one step at a time, swinging his arms to propel himself forward. He never wavered in his goal and kept moving, despite stumbling over the bags the guy in the street had dropped when he’d fallen.
“What’s wrong with him?” Carl asked, as they moved to the window Darren had first looked out to watch the wounded man in the street.
Stumbling over the bag seemed to have broken whatever spell he’d been under. He was standing there, wavering slightly as he stared at the ground perhaps ten yards in front of him. His greasy, limp hair hung in gnarled strands from his scalp. From this vantage point Darren noticed the bone fragment protruding from the man’s lower leg. The dark stains on the pants had to be blood.
Darren rubbed his face and watched with disbelief as two people came down a side alley and skidded to a stop across the street from the strange man. He turned and stared at them for a long moment.
The man and woman froze at the sight of the stranger. She screamed when he took a lurching step closer to them, and her companion moved back and tripped, pulling the woman down to the ground with him. She screamed again and the guy got up, shoving her off him in his haste to get away.
The man in the street shambled forward, picking up speed as the woman on the ground tried to crab walk backwards and get up at the same time. It didn’t work. The man was almost on her when Darren acted.
He threw open the front door to the museum and clambered out onto the sidewalk his mud-encrusted socks. “Hey!” he yelled.
The bloody man lurched to a stop and swiveled around, the movement almost making him fall over. His mouth hung open and dark drool leaked around his teeth. He looked even more frightful.
The woman didn’t waste her opportunity and finally got to her feet, then sprinted off down the way she’d come, chasing after the man who’d abandoned her.
“Awesome, you saved her…” Carl called from inside the museum. “Now what about us?”
“Uh…” Darren said, his eyes darting around, looking for a weapon or anything to use against the guy in the street. “Hadn’t gotten that far,” he replied.
The man groaned, a guttural, feral sound that send a trickle of lightning down the back of Darren’s leg. There was something animalistic about that groan, something primal.
“I, uh…I think you’re pretty sick there buddy…how about we find you a doctor, huh?” Darren asked, taking a step back.
A young woman—different from the other one—skidded around the corner behind the guy in the street and froze. Darren saw her and waved her off, indicating she needed to be quiet. Her eyes were as big as saucers. She remained frozen in place, watching as the guy in the street advanced on Darren and reached the sidewalk.
As he drew near, Darren noticed the guy was leaking blood from a dozen little injuries but the bone sticking out of his leg didn’t seem to be bothering him all that much. Dried, crusty blood caked his pants like river mud caked Darren’s. He reached out and gripped the handrail, his skin sounding like sandpaper on ice as he mounted the first concrete step to the museum entrance.
“What are you doing? Get inside!” hissed Carl.
Darren’s eyes were drawn across the street as movement behind the girl captured his attention. Another pale-faced, black-veined person, this time a woman—with long, stringy red hair—appeared. Before he could shout a warning, she’d grabbed the girl. She screamed, a long, high pitched, gurgling sound that only stopped when her attacker dragged her to the ground.
“Jesus!” Darren exclaimed, watching the two women writhe around on the ground in the street. Blood leaked out in a growing puddle and he heard the snapping of bones and what sounded like paper tearing. The victim slowed her fight and lay still, her feet quivering as the other woman remained hunched over her.
Then the man in the street filled his view, having mounted the steps. He rasped a growl, his mouth moving but no discernible words coming out. He lurched for Darren with outstretched, grasping arms.
“Fuck!” Darren said, stumbling back. He swung his right arm out and connected with the side of the man’s head. The guy staggered to the left under the blow and collapsed against the handrail, groaning.
“Get inside!” Carl demanded again.
“D-did you see…” Darren said as he allowed Carl to pull him inside and slam the front door. “The girl…that woman…”
“Yeah…this is insane.” Carl moved to the other window, running hands through his hair. “Oh, man…there’s more of them out there.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Darren asked the museum, staring out the front door. The b
loody man walked right into it as if it wasn’t there, rattling the glass and metal frame. He groaned louder and almost sounded angry. He pounded on the door, softly at first, then picking up speed and strength. The door rattled again with every impact.
“Shit, shit, shit…” Carl said, backing into the next room. “He’s gonna bust through that glass…”
Darren grabbed his muddy boots and put them on, then followed Carl. “Get your shoes, we need to get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m not going out there!” Carl blurted, pointing at the front door. “There’s two more besides that one…it’s like…it’s the fucking zombie apocalypse, man!”
Darren backed into the L’Anse aux Meadows model and cursed when it fell off it’s legs, sending little trees and sand all over the floor with a crash. “Shit…the curators aren’t gonna like that.”
“I don’t think they’re gonna like that either,” Carl said, pointing at the front door. Glass shattered, and the zombie forced a groping hand through the open hole, tearing a long cut in his arm and spraying blood on the floor.
“We can’t go out there…”
A second one—the woman—joined the guy at the front door. Bright red arterial blood smeared her face. A long chunk of stringy flesh hung from her gaping mouth. She pushed the guy out of the way and in one swift movement, smashed through the remains of the door.
“Look out!” Carl yelled. “They get stronger after they eat!”
Instead of shambling across the room, the woman walked forward at an even, measured pace. The ragged skirt that clung to her pale skin dripped blood and filth as she walked, one high heel on her feet making her tilt at an odd angle with every step. The guy behind her struggled through the wrecked door and growled in triumph, then followed her, albeit slower.
“We gotta do something,” Carl warned, moving into the next room. Then, “Hey! Darren, get in here!”
Darren turned and ran to the back room, the armor room. Carl stood in the middle, holding a replica viking sword. “I found this in a pile of shit over there,” he said, gesturing with the sword where a stack of shovels and other wooden implements from early Scandinavian life had been gathered together. He tossed a replica bearded axe to Darren. He tested the weight and balance. Solid and relatively light, it was the kind of weapon you could swing all day. But they were still replicas and probably not something they should trust their lives to.
“I don’t think—” he began to warn Carl that the weapons weren’t real.
“Fuck thinking, let’s kick some zombie ass!” Carl yelled. He charged forward, screaming “Tyr!”
Darren figured that shouting the Norse god of war’s name was as good as anything when facing down a zombie, so he did the same and raced at the woman, axe raised. He’d already seen her kill the girl in the street, so some part of his mind said he was justified in attacking a murderer.
Carl reached her first and swung his sword in a long looping arc that caught her on the right shoulder. She staggered back and gout of blood sprayed onto the far wall, but when he wrenched his sword free, it was bent almost in half.
“Oh, shit—” he said, looking at the cheap aluminum sword.
Darren was two steps behind, but too far away to stop the woman from jumping forward and knocking Carl’s sword out of the way. She was too close for Darren to swing his axe, so he body checked her, using his greater mass—he was easily twice her size and likely 50 or 60 pounds heavier—and flung her off Carl and into the far wall where she crashed with a grunt. Pictures of viking warriors fell off the wall and shattered on the floor.
“Get up!” Darren said, pulling Carl to his feet. The woman snarled and bared her teeth like a goddamn animal and rushed at him faster than Darren would have thought possible 24 hours earlier. He had time to bring his axe straight down and luckily caught her right on the top of the head. The blade, though quite dull, sunk an inch into her head, splitting the skull with the sound of someone breaking open a watermelon.
“Gah!” Darren said as the impact shuddered up his arms. It was like hitting a concrete post with a baseball bat. Her eyes rolled up, and she collapsed, but her forward motion made her now limp body crash into Darren and they went down in a tangled heap.
“Off—get off!” he yelled, flailing with his arms and legs to get the corpse off his chest. She smelled like a cat that been hit by a car and left in the sun all week. Where the fuck was Carl and why wasn’t he helping? Darren had just saved his life!
Carl’s scream gave him all the answer he’d ever need. Darren freed himself from the dead woman that had fallen on him and rolled to the side, coming up with the axe handle, the head still buried in the…he hesitated to call it a zombie, but if the shoe fit…
The bloody man was grabbing at Carl, who was back pedaling and swinging his bent sword at the zombie. Darren looked down to the axe and tried to work it free, the woman’s head shifting left and right with the sound of grinding bone and squelching flesh. He jerked as hard as he could and the axe came free with a sickening POP. Blood spurted on the floor—he was barely able to jump out of its path.
“Darren! Could use a little help over here!” Carl called, now fully backed into a corner, with the growling zombie swinging its limp arms and clawing at his face.
Darren squashed the rising bile in his throat and put aside the wave of guilt that washed over him. He’d just killed a woman by slamming an axe into her skull like a Goddamn barbarian—and he was about to attack the man in front of him.
But it was clear as day on the man’s face that he intended to do far worse than just kill Darren and Carl if he could manage it. He snarled, revealing red teeth, and a swollen tongue.
Darren had enough. “ODINNNN!” he roared the Norse god’s name and charged. He swung as hard as he could to try to bring the axe down on the man’s head, but the zombie tripped and lurched to the side. As a consequence, Darren’s axe buried itself in the man’s shoulder, severing the collar bone with a gut-churning snap and sticking fast to the gore.
The zombie howled in rage or pain, and swung sideways, flinging an arm out. It caught Darren in the chest and lifted him off his feet, and crashed into the wall.
“You…” he coughed as he slid to the floor, worried he’d cracked a rib. “You guys…are stronger than you look…”
The zombie turned and pinned Carl to the other wall with its one remaining good arm. Before Carl could scream for help, the zombie snapped his head forward and clamped his mouth on Carl’s throat.
“NO!” Darren called, trying to rise, stunned, from the floor. He heard a tearing sound, and the zombie turned, Carl’s body falling to the floor behind it, to face Darren. His blood and most of his Adam’s apple hung from the thing’s mouth as it chewed.
Carl stared at Darren from the floor, his eyes blinking, and his mouth opening and closing without making a sound. A soft whooshing noise escaped the massive, gushing hole in his throat, and pink froth bubbled up as Carl started to convulse, his eyes never leaving Darren’s.
“Carl!” Darren sprang to his feet, consumed with anger. The zombie gave no reaction and lurched forward, faster than before. Maybe Carl was right, maybe the damn things did get stronger and faster when they fed. Darren didn’t care at the moment. He darted to the left, then juked right and grabbed the bloody axe sticking out of the zombie’s shoulder. He put all his considerable strength into the pull and launched the monster across the room, ripping the axe free in the process. He ignored the gore and blood that sprayed the wall when the axe came loose and stepped past Carl’s twitching corpse.
Roaring a mindless shout of rage and fear, Darren charged the zombie. This time the creature seemed to know what was coming and tried to duck, but Darren didn’t bring the axe down like he had before. He spun let centripetal force add speed to his swing. The axe crunched into the zombie’s neck and nearly severed the thing’s head. Darren’s momentum carried him past the zombie and he managed to keep the axe in his hand, so he was ready for the backswing.
The monster staggered under the massive blow and its head fell at a sickening angle to the side, held on by a few bits of muscle and skin. Blood spouted up in a few short spurts from the ragged stump of its neck. It took two halting steps toward Darren, reaching with its one good arm, then sank to its knees, wheezing. The thing’s chest, covered now in bright red blood, heaved.
It was breathing.
Darren stepped back, tripping on Carl’s body, and braced himself against the wall. The monster flopped forward and twitched, then lay still on the floor, black blood leaking out of its neck and pooling next to the female version. Darren dropped the axe to the floor with a wet clatter and slid down the wall, staring at Carl.
He brought his shaking, bloody hands to his face. “What…w-what the fuuuuuuck is going on?” he whispered.
Outside, more gunshots shattered the silence, and a few horns honked in reply. Darren got a whiff of smoke drifting into the museum from the ruined front door. Something out there was burning.
Forcing himself to his feet, Darren stood and picked up his axe. He went to the front ruined front door and peered outside. A few more people ran by carrying belongings and looking over their shoulder. There must be more zombies that way, he figured, toward the river and downtown. Smoke drifted on the wind, bringing with it an acrid smell like burning plastic.
The van keys felt heavy in his pocket. He thought for a moment. The university van was parked in the public lot down the street from the museum, closer to the dig site. It was in the opposite direction the people were headed. Toward…more monsters, he assumed.
He looked back at Carl’s body on the floor in the corner of the back room, surrounded by blood. Blood saturated the walls and the floor, and the two zombies lay where he’d put them. At least the damn things weren’t getting up and walking around again like in the movies.
But zombies didn’t bleed…or breathe…in the movies either. Did that mean they were still alive? Still people? Darren spun back to face the museum and threw up—mostly dry heaving since he hadn’t had anything to drink since dinner. He sagged to his knees, bracing an arm against the cold stone wall that towered over him. What had he done? Had he killed two people that were just really, really sick?
Elixr Plague (Episode 3): Pandemic Page 8