by Matt Handle
Storm Orphans
By Matt Handle
Chapter 1
The first documented case occurred in early 2011. An attractive blonde television reporter opened her mouth to do a story in Los Angeles one night and spouted 10 seconds of pure gibberish instead. The humiliating episode made headlines for days as a host of doctors and experts hypothesized about what might have gone wrong with the poor young woman. Was it a seizure or a stroke? The seemingly final verdict was that it was merely a bad headache. This diagnosis didn’t really convince anyone of course, but the media knows that its audience has a short attention span and some sort of closure was necessary so that they could move on to the latest sordid tales and misdeeds that generated their ratings and advertising revenues.
But then it happened again, and again. Over the course of the next year, dozens of mishaps were documented across the country and then quietly filed away. Random people all over the United States seemed to go haywire without provocation. One day they were fine, the next all that came out of their mouths was a meaningless jumble of consonants and vowels. And then it got worse.
An increasing number of citizens began to suffer the same symptoms. First, they’d briefly lose the ability to communicate, but snap out of it minutes later. Then the seizures began to last longer, hours, and sometimes days. By the time 2014 rolled around, the victims had turned violent. Incoherent babbling led to physical tremors which in turn led to victims lashing out in uncontrollable, angry outbursts. In time, these outbursts became a constant; the victims filled night and day with a hatred and need for destruction that was unquenchable. Rioters destroyed storefronts and automobiles. Murder rates skyrocketed in almost every major metro area around the country. The police were outmanned and then more and more of them disappeared only to show up amongst the rioters days later, wild-eyed, slobbering and unable to speak.
The CDC opened an investigation in late 2014 into what was now being called an outbreak, the Babylonian Plague. Its victims were simply labeled “the Afflicted.” Soon after, the federal government declared a nationwide state of emergency and martial law. Industry came to a halt, the economy collapsed, and the few people that were still unaffected hid in their homes, barricading themselves from the roaming gangs of mindless killers that haunted the cities and terrorized every town. Tanks rolled through the streets and soldiers fired upon the gangs, leaving corpses to litter the pavement and rot in the gutters. And still, it got worse.
By 2016, the United States of America no longer existed. 99.9% of the 320 million citizens of the former world power were either dead or turned into gibbering zombies that traveled in packs, slavering for human flesh. Wrecked and rusting cars clogged the inner city highways, buildings fell into disrepair, and nature began to reassert itself. Weeds grew in the broken cement and vines climbed their way up the walls, hiding the crumbling brick and weathered steel of man’s former domain.
And the rest of the world kept their distance. There were no rescue planes, no relief packages, and no peacekeepers. Word had spread all around the globe. The real estate that was once home to the proudest nation of the modern era was now cursed, a no-man’s land that meant death to any who dared set foot on its shores. The few survivors of the catastrophe were alone, left to fend for themselves against the ravenous monsters who had once been their neighbors, their colleagues and their friends.
***
Sawyer Bell stood staring at the Afflicted as its struggles weakened. Caught in his perimeter fence, Sawyer knew electricity was coursing through the creature’s body, slowly killing the thing as it opened and closed its mouth in wordless agony. He could have put it out of its misery with a single shot of his pistol, but ammunition was at a premium around here. Sweat dripped down the side of Sawyer’s shaved head and he glanced up at the merciless Miami sun. It wasn’t even 10 AM yet and the south Florida weather was already stifling.
The dying creature reeked of dirt, rot, and shit. Its milky eyes stared dully at Sawyer as its hands clenched reflexively with each jolt of electricity. Sawyer had rigged up the fence six months ago after the last of his fellow residents in the trailer park had died. With no one left to share watch duties, he’d been forced to improvise. With some barbed wire stripped from the now lifeless cell tower at the far end of the park and one of his former neighbor’s power generators, he’d managed to jerry-rig the existing six-foot-high chain-link fence into a serviceable first line of defense. It didn’t carry enough juice to kill you quick, but if you hung there long enough, it would do the job. Wiping the sweat off his brow, Sawyer left the creature to die and headed back inside his trailer to get out of the heat.
Since the power station had died, Sawyer had been using portable generators to cool his home. He didn’t dare use the window air conditioning unit for fear of draining the power too quickly, but he had an oscillating fan set up at each end of the one bedroom trailer and a large banyan tree outside offered his home partial shade.
Closing the door behind him, Sawyer made his way to the bathroom and splashed some lukewarm water on his face from the sink. There was no such thing as hot or cold anymore, but so far, the well was holding out and that was something to be thankful for. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. Deep brown eyes stared back at him. His biracial heritage left him with naturally tanned skin, making the pale six inch scar that ran down the right side of his skull that much more noticeable. He ran a calloused hand over the light stubble that covered his jaw and then shut off the faucet before grabbing a towel to dry his self off.
“If you can survive al-Qaida in that shithole of a desert, you can survive this,” he said to himself. As the plague wore on and those around him either turned or dropped dead, he talked to himself more and more often. It was probably a bad habit, but he couldn’t seem to help it. Speaking felt like one of those skills you had to use unless you wanted to lose it. Given the nature of his countrymen’s demise, he wasn’t about to take the ability to speak for granted.
He stepped into the trailer’s narrow kitchen and checked the pantry. The pickings were getting slim. He’d have to risk another trip outside the park soon to get more supplies. He plucked a can of beef stew off the top shelf and peeled it open with a can opener from the utensil drawer before turning on the electric stove. He would have liked to cook over a fire outside in order to save power, but the smoke might be seen by some of the local ghouls. He wasn’t sure if they were smart enough to equate smoke with potential human targets, but he didn’t want to find out. There were two more gennies that he hadn’t commandeered yet. They were 2000 watt jobs and wouldn’t last long, but he figured he’d just have to worry about that when the time came. Just now, his first priority was lunch. If more of those monsters hurled themselves at his fence, he might need his strength. Electrified or not, the chain-link wasn’t going to hold if they came in force.
An hour later, his lunch eaten and the mess cleaned up, Sawyer had decided that today was as good as any to restock his foodstuffs. He stood looking at the assortment of weapons and ammunition he’d managed to collect before and after the plague had started. The collection was laid out atop his bed; two assault rifles, five pistols, half a dozen magazines of ammo, a five-inch serrated hunting knife, a pair of grenades, and a PMN-2 mine. He’d purloined two of the pistols and twice as many magazines from his deceased neighbors during his regular post-apocalypse raids of their trailers, but the rest of the weapons were from his personal collection. He was especially proud of the land mine, something he’d picked up at a bargain price from one of his former Marine buddies turned black marketeer. He slid one of the pistols into the waistband of his camouflage pants, two of the magazines into a side pocket, and put the rest inside a duffle bag which he slung over one muscular shoulder.
&nb
sp; After shutting off the fans, Sawyer exited the trailer and started across the yard toward the generator that powered the fence. He noted with some satisfaction that the Afflicted that had been sizzling on it earlier was now extra crispy and as dead as a mosquito in a bug zapper. The thing’s eyes had been cooked until they popped out of their sockets and they oozed down its mottled cheeks like runny eggs.
He didn’t see any other members of the Cannibal Club milling about so he turned off the gennie and headed for the gate. The gate had a single padlock on it and he produced a key from one of his pockets that opened it with a simple click. Without the electricity running through it, the fence probably wouldn’t keep out anyone or anything that truly wanted to get inside, but once outside, Sawyer locked the gate behind him anyway. Until he had a better plan, this place was home. He’d do what he could to keep it safe.
Walking along the deserted two-lane road that stretched east and west past the trailer park was eerie. Sawyer hadn’t stepped outside the confines of the park in over two weeks, but every time he did, it reminded him of how empty and lifeless Miami had become since the onset of the plague. Gone were the cars zipping along the road at 60 MPH or better, stereos blasting. Gone were the jets, streaking across the blue South Florida skies with their distant engines roaring. In fact, even the criss-cross patterns of the jet streams, cause of much hand-wringing as the plague first began to spread, had disappeared. All that was left was the vegetation that was creeping over the edges of the pavement, the steady hum of insects as they continued with their tiny little lives, oblivious to what had happened to their much larger neighbors, and of course the constant state of wariness, sure that one of those now mindless and bloodthirsty neighbors would pop out ready to eat you at any moment.
The nearest grocery store was approximately two miles west, but Sawyer had practically cleaned it out over the past year. He’d lived off their stock of beef stew, tuna fish, ramen noodles, soups, and bland canned veggies. He’d polished off every fluid ounce of bottled water, every box of crackers, and as much breakfast cereal as he could stomach. While starvation would likely drive him back there for the less tempting non-perishables in time, for now, he headed east. There was a Kroger just over three miles in that direction and he hoped it might be less picked over. He didn’t carry anything but his duffle bag of weapons, but he’d push one of their metal wire carts on the way back home, overflowing with as much food as he could stuff in it.
He had already lined up over three dozen of the carts in one corner of the trailer park, remnants of his past grocery runs. Once upon a time, Sawyer might have worried about leaving stolen property lying around for anyone to see. Now they weren’t any different than the rest of the city as it faded away into history, just a bunch of four-wheeled skeletons rusting into oblivion.
As he rounded a bend in the road, he came across a late model Honda that had skidded off the pavement and wedged itself into a tree-lined ditch. Abandoned wrecks could be found everywhere since the plague. There were over a dozen along the western route to Publix that he’d decided against today. This was the first he’d seen since choosing to go east. When he reached the spot where the car had swerved, he stood at the edge of the road and gazed down at the wreckage. He knew better than to risk going down into the ditch itself. Chances of finding anything of value were slim and you never knew when or where one of the Afflicted freaks might jump out and take a bite out of you. He’d learned over the years that plague victims weren’t your standard movie zombies, despite their similar appearance. Getting bitten by one wouldn’t pass the plague into his bloodstream. Nevertheless, he had a natural aversion to being eaten alive. Whenever his time did come, he was dead set on making sure it wasn’t down the gullet of some lobotomized attacker with a bad case of B.O.
A closer look told him this particular freak’s jumping days were over. A half-rotten and very dead body was squished between the gore-splattered grill and the thick oak tree that had stopped the runaway Civic in its tracks. The unfortunate creature’s now-dried intestines were splayed all over the hood like a pile of snakes sunning themselves in the Miami heat. The driver of the car was slumped over the steering wheel, the bloody remains of the airbag hiding most of the specifics. Sawyer didn’t need to see any more. There were victims everywhere you looked. All he cared about was survival.
Sawyer was accustomed to scenes of carnage. Two stints in Afghanistan had left him with more memories of bloodshed and ruin than he cared to recall. Over there it had been religious fanatics in robes and headscarves wielding automatics. Now it was raving lunatics wearing rags that might have once been from The Gap and trying to turn him into lunchmeat.
As he trudged along the road in the afternoon humidity, he thought to himself, funny how often shit goes from bad to worse.
By the time the grocery store came into view, Sawyer had counted 16 more wrecks along the way. Many of them were empty, left behind like giant cicada exoskeletons to mark the day their driver’s shed their human skins to join the ranks of the Afflicted. The rest contained the rotting corpses of those that were blessed with a quicker death.
When victims had first started appearing, the government had done its best to respond to accident reports and to tow the damaged vehicles off the roads. As the disease raged on and human resources thinned, those tasks eventually fell by the wayside. Now, with hardly anyone left, the streets were more like metal graveyards, completely impassable by normal cars and trucks. Sawyer figured a motorcycle could weave its way through the obstacle course, but the loudness of its engine would have carried for miles in the surrounding silence. Walking was safer.
Kroger looked as he’d expected it to. The parking lot was nearly empty, only a couple of abandoned cars left to oxidize as the years rolled on. Three or four carts sat forgotten in each of the corrals and an American flag hung loose and tattered on the pole in the listless September afternoon. Both the sign out front and the store itself were dark, not a hint of electricity or life. Sawyer could only hope the interior hadn’t been ransacked yet. As he approached the north end of the lot, movement to the south caught the corner of his eye.
A church stood on the opposite side of the intersection, its white bell tower rising up into the pale blue sky above its Spanish tile roof. The windows and doors had been boarded up and milling around those doors were at least a dozen of the Afflicted. Sawyer could hear their low moans and grunts as the creatures searched for a way inside, banging on the wooden barriers in frustration.
His first instinct was to get out of sight before the creatures noticed him, but then a booming voice originating from inside the church made him hesitate.
“Out demons, leave this house of God!” it bellowed. “You shall not feast upon my flesh for I am a servant of the Lord and he shall protect me!”
Without thinking, Sawyer drew his pistol and took two steps toward the church. He wasn’t alone. Someone else was alive and inside those boarded up walls in need of help. He raised the gun and gripped it with both hands as he took another five paces.
One of the creatures saw him and uttered an unearthly howl before racing toward him with its head held low and its hands stretched out in front of it like claws. Sawyer put a bullet in its skull when it was still twenty yards away, dropping it in a heap. More followed, all but two of the monsters leaving the church and rushing at their new target.
Sawyer kneeled down on one knee, dropping his duffle bag beside him. He deftly unzipped it and scooped out one of the assault rifles which he turned on the approaching monsters and opened fire. Less than 30 seconds later, it was over. Every one of the attackers lay dead on the lawn between the church and Sawyer’s position in the middle of the intersection. All that remained were the pair of Afflicted that hadn’t left their place in front of the boarded up doors to the church.
Sawyer returned the now warm rifle to the bag, hitched it over his shoulder, and once again drew his pistol from his waistband. The two vile creatures mewled pathetically as he approache
d. When he was no more than 10 feet away from them, one of the two monsters glared at him and hissed like a cornered alley cat. Before it could close its mouth again, Sawyer shot it right between the eyes and then did the same to its partner. He stared at them for a minute as their blood, so red against the white surface of the sidewalk, pooled around their corpses.
These things used to be like me, he thought to himself. Then he stepped up to the double-doors and banged one meaty fist on the boards that blocked his entrance.
“They’re dead,” he called out. “Open up before more of them come running.”
“Who are you?” the voice responded from inside the church.
“The guy that just saved your ass,” Sawyer growled. “If you don’t want my help, so be it. I’ll be on my way.”
The sound of a deadbolt being unlocked was followed by the doors opening just enough to reveal a sliver of an elderly face and a shock of white hair and beard as it peeked out at Sawyer from between two of the boards.
“There’s a back door that’s much heavier and not boarded up like this one,” the old man said. “Come around and I’ll let you in that way.”
The old man shut and locked the doors again and a minute later, he opened a metal door set in the back of the building where Sawyer waited for him.
“Hurry, get inside,” the old man insisted. “Those demons won’t stay gone for long.”
Once Sawyer was inside, the old man made sure the door was secured and then offered Sawyer a bony but firm handshake.
“Father Lynch,” the elderly priest said. “Thank you for coming to my aid. The Lord does indeed provide!”
“I was just in the neighborhood to pick up some supplies over at the Kroger,” Sawyer stated with a twinge of guilt over his earlier vulgarity. He let go of the priest’s hand. “You’re the first person I’ve come across in months.”
“Tell me your name, son,” Lynch replied. “I’d know the name of the man sent to deliver me from those fiends from Hell.”