“I’m sure we can convince you,” Jamie said and stepped in closer to Dr. Dorsett. He ran is finger down her cheek. I shouldn’t have, but I yawned. I wanted to get on with it all and move onto the next phase. The second generation of the virus, the Undead, were pests who continued to get in the way. They were the only real threat to us because they were more wild animal than anything. The body of the one on the floor reminded us of that.
The piercing scream from Dr. Dorsett made me cringe. Not because it disturbed me, but because of how shrill it was. There was no humanity left in us – we would live on
-- the third generation of the Undead.
I had to admit, Jamie was quite creative. He nailed Dr. Dorsett’s hands to the wall and then sliced her fingertips off cleanly. Mallory watched, her head tilted to the side. I didn’t know if she was more fascinated by the macabre display or if she was wondering if Dr. Dorsett would need her fingers to distribute the formula. It was a thought that crossed my mind. Jamie knew what he was doing – that much I had learned in the last few hours.
“Whatever happened to your grandmother?” I asked, the thought suddenly crossing my mind. I guessed Jamie was around forty years old.
“I killed her.”
“How come?” Alex asked.
“Because she didn’t give a shit about us,” he growled.
Another scream from Dr. Dorsett cut them off just before she passed out. Mallory let out a deep sigh. “We can’t kill her,” she said, sounding bored.
A loud boom echoed down the long corridor to us, vibrating the walls of the clinic.
“We need to kill them before they kill us,” Alex said. “You guys go take care of that while we get what we
need here,” Mallory said.
I stayed behind with Jamie and Mallory while Marcus, Alex, and Matthew left. Another boom echoed through the corridor again, causing plaster to crumble in the clinic.
“It should hold,” Mallory said – not seeming to care whether it did or not. I just nodded as Jamie used smelling salts to wake Dr. Dorsett.
Thirty-One
Danny Ruiz
Los Angeles, California
December 25th, 2021
It was easy enough to get Sadie what she wanted. We had found out from her brother that they were releasing the antidote and injecting many of the Undead with it. They easily sent him the formula and he was heading out to see Sadie. Meanwhile, we had quite the set up. Or, we had found quite the set up.
There were clearly two classes of Undead. The ones that acted more like animals and then us – the ones that acted like conniving animals.
Thirty-Two
Sadie
Los Angeles, California
December 25th, 2021
As the drugs pumped into the Undead, they were completely oblivious to what was happening to them. I was one of the few people that knew exactly what was flowing through their veins – thanks to my contact in Nevada -- Danny’s dead sister, Katarina.
As the drugs pumped into the Undead I saw my son, Mitchell. I closed my eyes and pictured myself as the poison, coursing through their veins. The satisfaction was little. I wanted more, I want more revenge because the fate of my son had been in their hands and they had turned him into a monster.
Each night I fell asleep, unafraid. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, yet I wanted nothing. It was a precarious position to be in. I walked the line at every moment and enjoyed every single, deliberate step. When Danny watched me like he did, curious about me – it did nothing. He would and could never understand.
They had robbed me of more than my life. They had robbed me of the breath that was my essence. They took my son – and they did the worst possible thing. “At least he’s still alive,” Danny said.
I wanted to snap his neck then and there. Except, I didn’t know how.
“You made a promise to me.”
“Holding up my end of the bargain won’t be a problem.
Are you sure you want me to?”
I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “What? Did you suddenly find your conscience again?”
His laugh echoed through the concrete, stark cold room. “Nothing that silly.”
“So, when is he coming?”
I looked up at the setting sun behind the fogged up window. “Don’t you find it strange?”
“What?” he asked?
“The sun still sets and rises. It doesn’t give a crap what we’re doing or not doing.”
“I don’t care about the sun. It’s irrelevant because we are a select few that remain, chosen to take this earth as we choose, without the mundane minds of the general population bogging us down.”
My finger coiled around the pendant around my neck mindlessly and I remembered all that I had gone through. I knew there was no escape from this darkness. All that mattered to me had been stolen.
Thirty-Three
Donnelly Vollario
Los Angeles, California
January 1st, 2022
Really? A deserted, dark, creepy as hell, stairwell in a twenty-story building? This is what I chose as a hide out? Not only did I pick that absolute worst place in the world to hide from the Undead, but I also suddenly had a case of stage fright.
Yup, stage fright.
According to the giant, linoleum, four-by-four sign on the cinderblock wall, I am somewhere between floors eighteen and nineteen. Apparently, no matter how hard I press myself against the wall I can’t disappear. Now that I see that I am getting near the top of the building, I realize my dire mistake.
No way out.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear the steady dripping of water into a puddle. Drip - drip - drip - drip. I’m going crazy; that sound is making me lose my mind. Why the hell is it so damn quiet in this building? I almost wish one of those creeps were chasing me so I’m not here wondering when the hell I’ll finally run into one.
Drip-drip-drip
I need to stop the damn dripping so I can think; if only I could figure out where it’s coming from. Think dammit, think.
That’s the thing with empty deserted stairwells like this, they echo. I think the dripping is coming from one floor above me, or maybe that’s just my way to keep ascending away from whatever lurks the streets of Los Angeles.
I know it’s all in my mind, but I can’t stop imagining that the drips are not only getting louder, but also that there are now more of them. I know they are all a part of my imagination, until I suddenly see where the sound is coming from. You would think that after the last two weeks of running and hiding from the Undead, from seeing my family become infected and having to kill them, that I would not be surprised at what I am looking at.
Yet, I am. Maybe it’s the finality of everything, maybe it’s me realizing that I pretty much just walked into my own death trap. I should have known that the sound of dripping making me go mad was really just my instincts telling me to run fast, in the opposite direction. Yet, here I am, looking death in the face and seeing that my options for running away are now gone. It’s too late.
Seven of the Undead sit in various folding seats throughout the unfinished and barren nineteenth floor as if they’re still human. I watch in abject horror as I realize the nightmare unfolding around me. The living are unconscious, lying on the floor, connected to tubes and being drained of their blood while others are slowly feasted upon. The dripping I heard was the blood dropping into a communal pot of blood - not water from a leaky pipe.
None of them hear me or realize I’m standing here. I know I should turn around and get out of here as fast as I can. But, I can’t. Something holds me here, frozen. Fear? Horror? Shock? I shut my eyes tight, but the images are burned into my mind forever. Even though forever will only be minutes...
I can’t decide what’s worse, the smell or the sounds. I remember the news reports calling it a zombie disease, but it’s so much more than what we realized. It is a parasite that takes over the body and uses it as a host. The heart would cease to beat
thus causing the flesh to rot. Because of the complexities of the human brain, there was still some human left in the Undead.
Unfortunately, all that was left were the raw, primal urges. When that first news report flashed across the screens, we all watched and laughed. There was no way that could be true, let alone happening. Then, it did happen.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t like in the movies. It happened so slowly that by the time we realized whom was infected it was usually too late. Some were a lot slower than others, and some others, like me, seemed to be completely immune to it. The low growl behind me vibrates my spine and I can feel the weight of a cold body lean into my back. I was so lost in my memory that I didn’t notice until now that all Unliving eyes in the room have turned their gazes toward me, watching me- us with curiosity.
A cold dry hand creeps up my arm, chilling me to my bones. Fingers grip my biceps tightly just before pain screams through my body. I hear my flesh being ripped from my shoulder and the shock that goes through me darkens my vision as pain debilitates my senses.
The room begins to spin and I beg myself to mercifully die right here, to end this pain as piece after piece of me is slowly chewed away from my shoulder. Each time the shockwave of pain is worse. I didn’t think it was possible, but it is. I try to vomit but I helplessly choke on pain instead, an internal battle as my body fights to deal with this slow death. I desperately try to think of ways to end my life more quickly, but nothing comes to me. My mind refuses to focus on anything except what is happening to me.
I don’t know how long I’ve lasted for. Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Whatever it is, it feels like a lifetime.–
Thirty-Four
Sadie
Los Angeles, California
January 1st, 2022
I felt the corners of my mouth turn up in a satisfied smile. Donnelly was here, I could sense him, sense his blood, my blood. His arrival felt like the thralls of a finely tuned orchestra breaking into its majestic peak. All I could hear was the perfect drip, drip, drip of blood in a bucket. The cement floors were cool beneath my bare feet. The only regret I had was not knowing what my brother was thinking. If only I could read his thoughts, it would make his death much more pleasurable.
He hesitated in the stairwell and I felt his fear, his doubts.
Don’t go back brother, I thought.
I have what you need.
His phone call echoed in my mind as I remembered those words. He had found the cure, he said. The cure? Ha. He didn’t know what he was missing and it was sad, really, that he couldn’t experience this. Well, sort of. I was going to enjoy his death very much. Poor Danny, didn’t understand that this sort of relationship with your sibling was much more satisfying.
The years of abuse were finally going to end. Did Donnelly really think I was going to forget all that just because of what we were dealing with?
He stepped around the corner then and I saw the slip of paper in his hands - the cure. Our phone call still echoed in my mind. What he had gone through to get here I wondered- a petty waste. I saw the color drain from his face as he took in the room around him. He was so distracted by the macabre display that he didn’t even notice my approach.
Danny stood next to me then and I felt his hot breath leave his mouth as he bit down on Donnelly’s shoulder. Donnelly’s screams did nothing for me. It was only when his body gave out and Danny dropped him to the floor that I made him stop. “What’s this?” Danny smiled at me as he picked up the piece of paper that Donnelly clutched.
I smiled as he retreated a step.
“You amaze me,” Danny said as he looked at the paper. “You really don’t care anymore, do you?”
“What’s there to care about? We are no better than you.” I saw Donnelly stir slightly.
“Sadie.”
My brother looked at me as realization dawned on him.
He seemed to shrink in size before me. “Your eyes. You’re not infected?”
The sadness in his own eyes was profound. But I felt none of it. I’d learned to detach myself long ago and this – this was nothing in comparison. One of the Undead brought a red canister to Danny and I watched as he poured the contents of my frightened looking brother.
“Sorry brother - you can’t cure something I don’t have,” I said as I threw the match onto his body. I watched with morbid curiosity as the flames licked at his body. His mouth opened in a silent scream as his skin melted from his bones like an Edvard Munch painting.
The show was not unexpected. “You have a flare for the drama.” I ignored him.
“It’s a shame, really,” Danny said. “We could do great things together. We once did.”
I cringed at his term of endearment. I turned to face Danny Ruiz for the last time.
“It’s a shame, Sadie, that you’re completely immune.”
“Was I?”
He tilted his head and looked at me deeply, his dark eyebrows casting a shadow over his crimson, liquid eyes. “Like I said, Sadie. We’re no different, are we?” The corners of his mouth turned up. “And you are living proof of that,” Danny said as he held his hand out, palm up, twirling my pendant in his hand.
I took it and looked at it wondrously. “It’s time,” he said coldly.
I nodded. I felt nothing then. No resolution, no relief. Vengeance left a feeling of incomplete satisfaction. A hole that would never be filled.
I placed the pill on my tongue and let the bitter taste of Cyanide coat my mouth. I reveled in the taste of death and in that moment knew that there was nothing waiting for me on the other side. My head began to throb and my muscles felt weak. There was a strange inner turmoil as my instincts fought to survive. Panic began to set in but I just pressed my eyes shut, willing the foreign feeling away. I fought for as long as I could, until my legs felt like cement. I took my last step into the burning fire, not even feeling the heat of it anymore.
The nausea and pounding headache were much more painful. I’m not sure if I were screaming. If I were, then I probably wouldn’t have recognized the familiar aching sound that I yearned to hear for so long.
It was only in those last moments of my life that I heard the distinct sound of my son’s Undead voice.
Thirty-Five
Christoph
Los Angeles, California
January 1st, 2022
The leaves tumbled across the vacant street, carrying on as if nothing had happened. Dust billowed in window sills and somewhere, in the distance, the wind blew a chain-link gate against the wall repeatedly.
“Happy New Year.”
I looked at Danny and smiled. “Is that what day it is?” He had just delivered the final dose to the last of the second generation of the Undead and the final human had died at her own hand. It was what we had come to Los Angeles to witness.
We stood in the middle of the street looking on at the vast emptiness. I felt her approach before I heard her. I guess it was some sort of new sense we were developing. Mallory looked up at the sky and then closed her eyes against the wind.
Danny turned to look at her then too and watched her, like he watched everyone – as if they were a specimen under a microscope.
“Well boys,” she said as she took a deep breath. “It’s been a pleasure.” She slapped her palms against our backs. I nodded. It sort of had been – a pleasure. As I watched
Mallory walk down the street and felt Danny leave my side shortly after, I continued to stand there, thinking. We estimated that about 100,000 of us remained on the planet – the new species. We were no different than any other animal that walked the earth, sharing this plane of existence with them.
We only needed to inject the new virus into about a dozen of the second generation of Undead and then it would spread, airborne. The third inoculation, our generation, had received immunity from it decades before. Some of us were born into the immunity, others received it in a course of immunizations designed for whom the elite deemed worthy of their new race. I don’t know who started it a
nd I don’t think we’ll ever find out. I imagine whomever it was, was now long dead.
As the wind and leaves continued to whip around my legs I thought about the last five months. I had survived strictly because of an engineered instinct. I was alive and part of an elite group of people. Yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss.
Epilogue
University of California at Berkeley: Robotics and Human
Engineering Laboratory
April 28th, 1978
Dr. Eugenia Ray Uchida sat at her desk, fixated on the thirsty peperomia. The tears filled up her eyeglasses, blurring her vision as she replayed the phone conversation in her mind. Eugenia Ray, daughter of a migrant Japanese worker and an estranged mother, felt lost for the first time in her life. Even when her father told her the story of how her mother had left them both when she was only four months old – her, hungry for the breast, and tormented by the loss of maternal bonding. Even when her best friend had pushed her favorite purple bike down a jagged cliff just to get a laugh from the popular girls in school. Even then, Eugenia Ray hadn’t felt lost.
Her entire life, she had known that she was going to become a scientist. “My little mad scientist,” her father used to say, even on his death bed. His headstone would read, “survived by a mad scientist who loved her father dearly”. Even then she didn’t feel lost. It was his death during her freshman year that made her feel more convicted than ever before.
“I want you to start these journals,” she had said to Paul Blazer, her college boyfriend. He adjusted the rims of his glasses – a nervous habit when he was about to do something he wasn’t sure of. He was always adjusting the rims of his glasses.
Now, she thumbed through the worn journal. Without thinking, she threw it against one of the glass cabinets, shattering the empty flasks that lined the shelves. Twenty-seven years she had worked in this lab to develop a robotic heart and now the funds were being yanked from under her.
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