Death Plague [Four Zombie Novels]

by Ian Woodhead

  It only took Patrick a couple of minutes to pass through the normally busy pedestrian walkways that linked the several habitation blocks in this sector. He thought that, for once, luck was in his favor, until Patrick reminded himself that the lack of fast-moving human traffic was probably linked to the boy’s absence and to what was happening to his family. It was quite simple really; their bodies must have become immune to whatever chemical they had put in the pills.

  He stopped and leaned over the railing, watching two huge black armored trucks thunder past, heading towards Government House. Each one would be full of exhausted soldiers, fighting the good fight to help clear those walking corpses from around the capitol’s high walls.

  The bright blue sky and hot sun currently burning Patrick’s shoulders could not stop a shiver from travelling down his spine. There was just too much evidence around him for Patrick to remain blindly optimistic.

  Pretty soon, those trucks would be travelling from Government House, full of soldiers, all fresh and ready for action. This time though, the truck wouldn’t be heading out of the city. They’d be fighting the good fight with freshly-turned city dwellers.

  He spun away, trying to hold back the tears. There was no way that he’d let anyone hurt his family, no matter what happened to them. Patrick bolted along the walkway, just hoping that he’d be able to get home before they did turn.

  It had been the irritating dog who lived with the Osmond family that had given Patrick the first clue. Just like every other morning, Jack Osmond had let out the ball of greasy black fur before the man left for work. As their block didn’t have access to any recreation area, the bastard thought that it was perfectly acceptable to let the mutt do its business anywhere it liked, which usually meant in the communal hallway.

  All the residents knew, especially the Osmonds, that pets were strictly forbidden. Then again, the fact that they had a dog at all was unusual. Everyone knew that anything with four legs didn’t last long in the city.

  Patrick lived in a block that, before The Turning, was due to be demolished. Most of the residents had already moved out. Patrick’s family had been promised a new apartment on the other side of the city. Now, they had no choice but to stay in their decrepit apartment; it was falling down around them, and they were surrounded by scummy neighbors with no sign that any of this was going to get any better. Unlike the elite block where he worked, or any of the perimeter blocks that separated the three zones, the people in his block were generally left to fend for themselves.

  Just like the many hundreds of grey concrete buildings surrounding their block, they had one family who were supposed to liaise with a central habitat maintenance official to help keep the place running smoothly. It sounded great in theory, but most of the time the families ended up running the blocks like it was their own private fiefdom. The Osmonds were no exception. If their dog crapped outside your door, you picked it up and kept quiet. It was the only way to avoid any trouble.

  The only person in the entire block who didn’t despise that vile little animal was Patrick’s little girl. What surprised Patrick was that the feeling was mutual. The dog doted on Lucy. Although his wife hated the family, she had explained to Patrick a few times that this would be the closest their daughter would get to having a childhood similar to the ones they’d had.

  That friendship had been severed just three days ago. Patrick had been noticing just how slow and lethargic his daughter had been recently, and suggested that she ought to go get some fresh air. Of course, her response to this suggestion had been noncommittal so Patrick had lost his temper, dragged the girl out of the chair and pushed her outside.

  The first thing he saw was the Osmond dog, chewing on the rubber tree that their next door neighbour kept outside. The dog had suddenly stopped and backed away from Lucy, growling.

  A hard lump had appeared in the pit of Patrick’s stomach and he’d dragged the unresponsive girl back inside. He’d dug out his portable scanner to check her out, cursing himself for not seeing the signs earlier after the device confirmed what he’d suspected.

  Patrick slipped through the open gate that separated the walkway from the rest of the habitation zone. The fact that the gate was even open gave him more of a scare than not witnessing anybody around him. That gate had never been left open. The elite don’t enjoy sharing their breathing space with normal people.

  His own block was only a couple of minutes away. He increased his pace when the hard edge of his building came into view. Patrick raced towards the main doors, noticing, for the first time, a couple of young boys playing on top of an abandoned school bus. They both suddenly stood up and started to jeer at him. They were too far away for Patrick to pick out individual words. It didn’t matter to him though. The fact that some part of normality was still going on wiped away some of the heaviness that had settled on his heart.

  The familiar and cloying odor of unwashed flesh slammed into his nostrils as soon as he entered the building. He held his nose and ran over to the stairwell, totally bypassing the lift. That hadn’t worked for over a decade. The smell lessened the further he climbed. He knew the reason for the stink. It meant that the building’s air con had packed up yet again. As he passed the Osmonds’ door, he wondered if anybody had bothered to report it.

  ”Keep calm,” he murmured, when his own door came into view. “Keep thinking of triviality.” He reached his door and took out his key, noticing just how much he was shaking. As he turned the key, Patrick reminded himself that until this morning, the worry of the air con breaking down would have overshadowed everything else. It certainly wouldn’t have been a trivial matter.

  Patrick pushed open the door and rushed through the hallway and into the living room, his heart thudding hard against his chest. He saw his beautiful Veronica slumped in the armchair and dropped to his knees. Patrick didn’t need to get any closer to know that his darling wife had passed away. “Oh God,” he said. “I’m too late.” Through the flowing tears, he could see the shell of his now dead wife turn its head.

  The thing leaned forward and tried to raise its body out of the chair. Patrick scrambled backwards, his numb mind refusing to take in that he’d lost the only woman he’d ever loved. Despite the endless training and preparation that every citizen was required to do, he couldn’t even find the strength to raise his arms. Patrick watched her stand up and take one tentative step forward. Somewhere, deep beneath his conscious mind, a tiny voice calmly informed him that he was watching it take its first steps. Although the sounds of Patrick’s voice had given the thing the motivation to move, it still didn’t know Patrick was in the room. There was still time for him to get out of there.

  He rested the back of his head against the wall, noticing that his dead wife had yet to open her eyes. He decided there and then that this was his time. If Veronica had turned, then his daughter must have gone the same way as well; his wife had only started to show the same symptoms yesterday. There was nothing else for him to live for. The dead woman’s foot was now inches away from his body.

  The pain would only last for a few seconds and then it would be all over for him. Sure, his body would still be moving, but his soul would have left this miserable fucking existence to be with the rest of his family.

  The corpse had seen him. It groaned in excitement and stumbled forward, its arms reaching out.

  “Come on then, Veronica!” he yelled. “Get it over and done with.”

  “Daddy?”

  He jerked his head towards to the front room door. “Lucy?!” Oh God, he didn’t believe it, his daughter was still alive. Patrick rolled away from the zombie and jumped to his feet. There was a long sword and a small fire axe hanging on the wall but there was no way that he’d be able to use either weapon on his dead wife. He ran over to her, avoiding the woman’s flailing arms. He grabbed her waist and spun her around, then pushed her hard before running out of the room and slamming the door shut.

  “Hold on, honey. I’m coming!” he shouted, runni
ng up the stairs, taking them two at a time. When he reached the landing, Patrick saw that her door was wide open. There were clothes strewn about everywhere. As he neared her room, Patrick caught sight of something moving near the girl’s feet.

  The dog jumped off the bed. It padded over to Patrick and yelped just once before returning to the bed. His daughter was sitting on the floor, surrounded by every piece of clothing that she owned. He then saw that Lucy had raided his wardrobe as well as Veronica’s drawers.

  “What the hell?”

  Lucy jumped up and ran over to him, wrapping her arms around his legs. “Mummy is one of those now,” she whispered. “I’m so scared, what are we going to do?”

  He held her tight, trying not to think about the fact that her body was freezing cold. He lifted her up and placed the girl on the bed. “I need you to take these,” he said, digging out the foil strip. “You have to take them all at once.” Patrick passed her the glass of water which was sitting on her bedside table, then picked up another foil packet, lying next to where he’d picked up the glass. This strip had belonged to Veronica. Every pill had been pushed out of the strip.

  “I took them all, Daddy,” she said, stuffing the ones that Patrick had given her into her mouth. “Make it stop!” Lucy stood up on the bed and threw herself at him, wrapping both her arms around his neck. “Daddy, I don’t want to end up like my mom.”

  He returned her hug, gently squeezing Lucy’s slender waist. “Hush, don’t worry, everything is going to be okay. I promise.” He carried her into his bedroom, trying not to look at his wife’s side of the bed. Patrick glanced at Veronica’s bedside table, noticing her nearly completed romance book. A single tear ran down the side of his cheek. “Honey, Daddy has some spare tablets. We’ll get those and get you to a medi-center.”

  She struggled in his arms. “No, please, not one of those kinds of people, Daddy. I don’t want to be a needle junkie.”

  Patrick bent down and managed to open his cabinet door while still holding Lucy. He could hear his wife under them, moving about in the living room. She’d spend the next hour or so wandering around the room before finally stopping, becoming as motionless as the furniture around her.

  “Am I going to be okay, Daddy?”

  “Of course you are, Lucy.” He placed her on the bed. “Look, it really is nothing to worry about.” He did his best to give her a reassuring smile, wishing that he had someone to give him some hope. His smile faltered when he put her tiny hand in his. Her body temperature was starting to drop. Patrick turned and snatched his emergency packet. He popped out four tablets and pushed them into her mouth. “Swallow them, honey.”

  Patrick picked her up and ran out of the bedroom.

  “No Daddy, I don’t want to go to one of those horrid places.”

  “Hush baby, they’re not like what the other kids say at school, I promise. They’ll make you better.” Patrick wished he could believe his own words. Right now, his daughter was the only thing that was keeping him alive. If he lost her, then he might as well have let Veronica end him.

  He passed the living room door, trying not to think about his daughter’s flesh cooling. Patrick had no more tablets left. He pushed open the door, squinting at the bright sunlight. He looked over at the two kids and saw the older one now lying on the ground while his friend straddled him. The kid’s head was buried deep in the other boy’s stomach cavity.

  Lucy’s grip suddenly relaxed. He turned his head and gazed in horror at a pair of lifeless eyes staring back at him. “Oh no,” he gasped. Patrick tried to pull the girl off his body but her grip had returned, stronger than ever.

  She growled once then lunged forward, her small jaws fastening on Patrick’s windpipe. His scream died in his throat. Patrick’s last thought was of watching his mother leap on Patrick’s father during the first outbreak. He closed his eyes, feeling his strength leaving him. He hoped that he’d meet up with all of his family in a few moments.

  Chapter Six

  He pressed his forehead against the cold white tiles. Tony placed his hands beside his face. He had to find some way of calming down before his heart bounced through his ribcage. There was little chance of him finding any sort of tranquil state when his own body was cooling faster than a glass of water in a fucking icebox.

  The sickness had awoken with vengeance. It coursed through his system, into each cell in his body. He was turning, Tony was going to join the ranks of the living dead and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.

  Tony rolled around and leaned back. “Stop it, for crying out loud, you baby. Get a grip on yourself.” He staggered over to the sink and gripped the edge while looking into the mirror. “Positive mental attitude, Tony. Come on, it’s what your wife keeps saying to you.” His eyes were a little bloodshot, but apart from the droplets of sweat on his forehead, he showed none of the classic symptoms. He leaned closer to the glass. “It’s all in your mind, Tony,” he whispered. “No, it fucking isn’t. The others standing in line showed no signs either. It didn’t stop the security forces from pulling them out.”

  If he hadn’t been delayed, Tony knew that he would have been forced out of that queue at gunpoint, joining Kelly and Arnold in that truck. “And you even started to run because you thought you were going to be late for work,” he said to the terrified looking man in the mirror. Tony spat into the bowl. “No blood in your saliva. That has to be a good sign.”

  He cast his mind back to when the entrance to Government House had just come into view. Noticing the long queue, Tony had slowed down to his normal walking pace. There was little point in overtiring his already worn down body. He’d done enough of that in the simulation, earlier.

  A moment before Tony reached the end of the queue, the line began to move again. He’d never seen a queue outside his place of work before. From listening to his fellow colleagues standing at the end of the line, Tony wasn’t the only one who thought this was a bit odd.

  His curiosity soon turned to fear when he saw five armed men pulling two employees out of the queue at the front of the line. Tony retained enough sense to notice that one of the soldiers carried a scanner. His gun was still slung other his shoulder.

  A strange sense of calmness settled over him. It was as if he was watching the events unfold from the comfort of his armchair. Tony reached into his back pocket, pulled out the remaining tablets, and dry swallowed them. He had no intention of getting caught by another scanner today. Those soldiers wouldn’t wait for him to babble out an excuse. He’d be inside that truck along with the others before he could blink.

  They dragged out two more workers that failed the scanner before driving away. As he watched the truck leave, he realized that the others in front of him cared more about saving their skins and the indignation of the soldiers treating them like commoners than the fate of their unfortunate workers.

  Not one of them even gave a single comment about what would happen to the other employees. Tony kept his mouth shut. He knew where that truck was going, judging from its direction. At least he had a strong hunch.

  Those poor bastards were about to be processed, killed, their corpses chemically changed back into human before final disposal. He hoped that he was wrong about that. None of them deserved ending up sharing the same fate as a needle-pushing scumbag. They were the ones who had helped to bring human society back from the brink of anarchy. Treating them like commoners or even worse, walking dead, was just despicable.

  Tony’s feeling of detached reality left him as soon as he ran into the restroom. It had taken considerable effort to stop his stomach from ejecting its contents; what was inside him needed to stay there. After all, he’d just swallowed the last of his precious tablets.

  His haggard reflection frowned. “So, what am I going to do now?” He hurried over to the door, opened it just enough to let the light in, and peered through the crack.

  There was nobody about. All he could hear was the usual piped music coming through the tiny speakers atta
ched to the walls. It was an oasis of calm out there, in stark contrast to the turmoil he was going through. Tony paused and decided not to leave his sanctuary just yet when he spotted movement. Six men, all dressed in the somber uniforms of building security, were escorting a young man in his mid-twenties along the hallway.

  Tony stared at the figure inside that throng of dark blue-suited muscle, wondering if his eyes were actually working correctly. The man was dressed in what could only be described as outlandish. He looked like a cross between a clown and harlequin. Tony had never seen anything like it in his life.

  The sudden sound of rapid gunfire blasted through the corridor. Tony jumped and let go of the door. Jesus, that was inside the building; judging from the noise, it wasn’t that far away either. So much for the oasis of calm. He pulled open the door again and saw that the man in strange clothing had tried to take advantage of the confusion by swinging his fist into the nose of the black-haired man holding his other arm. The man clamped both hands over his nose, screaming muffled obscenities at the grinning clown, who then proceeded to try and shake himself free from the other two men still holding him.

  Tony watched with interest as the man desperately fought with his captors in a futile attempt to escape. He wanted to join in; the man obviously needed help, but there wasn’t a chance that Tony would leave the safety of the restroom. Although he felt for the man, it was obvious that he must be going through the same changes as Tony. Why else would building security be treating him like that? Tony also knew that if he joined in, it wouldn’t take longer than a minute to end up lying on the rough blue carpet with at least one of those bastards sitting on his chest.

  He sent a silent apology to the other man, watching security rectify the situation, restraining him securely before pushing him through a door on the other side of the corridor.