by D. S. Black
But Peter Dike changed my mind.
Peter Dike has been dead for twenty years. He was this station’s manager back before Fox took over and I am staring at him right now. He stands at the control station, just staring. He doesn't talk to anyone, but he does walk around, smoking a phantom cigarette, as though a major event is on the horizon. Wherever he goes the temperature drops dramatically. Most of my collegues just stay away from the control station now. But I cannot help but watch him. Its certainly better than standing on the hot roof watching the dead move in the streets, waiting to feast on the meat from my bones.
I cannot even begin to try and understand why or how such paranormal activity is happening. Is it a mass hypnosis? God... I just don't know. I am a fucking new anchor not a theologian or philosopher. I have to rest. I'll write more later.
Its been two weeks since I last wrote. That puts the initial outbreak at about five weeks ago. Things have gotten much worse here in the station. Last night there was a rash of suicides. There is only a few of us left. And of course Peter Dike still owns the control center. I wish the bastard would at least talk to me! I've tried to talk to him! He either does not see me or does not care that I am talking to him. I don't know how much longer anyone in the station can put up with the mental strain. I feel my own sanity slipping. More later. Hopefully.
Its been a week since I last wrote. At least I think so. I'm all that's left. The rest took their lives last night on the roof. Some of them were not so good at blowing their heads off and turned. As the earlier reports suggested, the Fever seems to be inside all of us, waiting to assert itself. I locked the door leading up to the roof, but they are slamming themselves against it, almost nonstop. Sleep is now a forgotten dream. And my only companion is Peter Dike.
I'm going to end it tonight. I doubt anyone will ever find this letter. God knows I hope you do. But from the looks of it, civilization is over.
Peter Dike can have the damn station!
This is Dale Thomas, Channel 12 news, FOX Carolina, signing off! Have a good day South Carolina!
2
My name is Tommy Lister. I’m from Conway, South Carolina, and this journal is for those that survive.
Entry One:
Me and bobby fought off a whole lot of them jerkin bastards. Barely got out. A real shit eater. don’t know where army is. I don’t know what’s going on. Chaos round every corner. I saw three women torn apart by a gang of men in dark cloaks. they carried her off, half awake and screaming bloody hell. God help us.
Entry Two:
Momma’s dead. Daddy’s dead. Saw it happen.
Entry Three:
Got bit today. I’ve seen people go fast. I’ve seen em turn slow. It all depends on the person. aint got it in me to kill myself. Ill join the Ranks of the Dead. god have mercy.
Entree Four:
Still alive. Don know how much time. If Mr. Keely (my english teacher finds this): sorry for shit grammar. I done it Redneck. Till the end.
3
Dear World,
Today I killed my mother. I smashed her head in with her cast iron frying pan.
My name is Mary Beth Parker. I'm from Spartanburg, SC. I'm sixteen years old. I go (or went) to Spartanburg High School, where I am (or was) a junior honor student. This is the last letter I will ever write. As I stated above, my mother is gone. I had no choice in the matter. She chewed into my shoulder and then went for my throat. I've wrapped my shoulder up tightly, and the bleeding stopped. But the fever is getting bad. The news station is calling it the Fever, with a capital F. I can't leave the house. Its just too dangerous.
Why am I writing this letter? I guess I want to leave something behind. I want my daddy to know what happened. He doesn't answer his cell phone, and I worry the cell towers will go out soon. My boyfriend, Darrel Harris, doesn't answer his either. I fear the worst. It is an absolute hell out there. I think the world is ending. So much for Jesus I guess.
I'm sweating bullets. I'm so hot. And dizzy. I laid down in the dark for a while and felt a little better. That's when I decided I better write this letter before I'm unable to. It all happened very fast with my mother. She came in from shopping, and said she'd been bit by a crazy man. She was bleeding badly, so I helped her bandage it up. I told her we need to go to the hospital. She said something was happening and it would be impossible. I turned on the kitchen TV and the news showed me what she was talking about. People attacking and eating each other. It was like watching a horror movie. I stared at those images flashing on the TV for I don't know how long, and then noticed my mother wasn't talking. I turned around to her and she looked dead. I panicked and ran to her, shook her, and screamed so loud. Then she looked with a fast jerk, and I saw her eyes. Those dreadful eyes, like white fire balls. Then she grabbed me, leaned in, and took a chunk out of my shoulder. I pushed her away, tried to grab onto something, but only knocked myself over along with a number of pots and pans. She came at me, I grabbed the cast iron pan, and swung, swung, swung, SWUNG!
I swear I didn't have a choice! I swear! I swear!
I'm so dizzy. I wish daddy would come home. I think I am seeing things now. It must be the Fever, because I'm looking at grandma. She's standing right here, smiling at me. Grandma's been dead for five years.
God, I'm so dizzy.
4
To my family, to my Friends, to my Country,
When I first joined the Army, I did it because I loved America. I loved everything about her and still do. My daddy was career Army, along with my granddaddy. My granddaddy fought in world war two, my daddy Vietnam. I did two tours in Iraq, then another two in Afghanistan before coming back state side. I never married, because I was already married to America. I never, in a million years, thought I'd witness her destruction. Not from terrorism, not from an invasion, and certainly not from some damned Fever. But, here I am. The last of my unit, holed up in this damn stadium. It was supposed to be a refugee camp. A safe place for citizens to come and wait this thing out. Who the hell were we kidding? The dead walked through our lines like unstoppable plague. We just didn't have enough fucking bullets. Those bastards multiplied so damn fast...
And I did what I had to do. Or am I am lying to myself? Some of those people... Jesus forgive me... they weren’t all infected. The chaos. We just unloaded. Killing indiscriminately. I still hear their screams. I’ll hear those screams for whatever is left of my life.
And now we're down to the ammo in our magazines, that's it. The arena is surrounded by the dead. There is no escape. No way we could shoot our way out. There's just too goddamn many of them. The other units either fled or were over ran. We held fast, cause we all joined for love of country, duty, and honor. Do those words mean anything now? We're down to the MREs in our packs. I tell you, its not a lot. I don't know why I'm writing this letter. No one will ever read it. Captain says we might just make a run for it. That's a suicide run of course. There has to be at least ten thousand roamers out there. May be if we'd made a run earlier, like the other units did. They took off when things got bad. When it was clear that we didn't stand a chance. When HQ stopped responding.
I think the stench is the worst of it. I've been around a lot of death. I've disposed of a lot of bodies over my career. But that smell dies off, forgive the pun. The smell of those things out there just lingers, and gets worse by the day. They don't sleep. At least I don't think they do. They just wonder around and wait...wait for someone to eat. A lot of them have army fatigues on. Soldiers that got ran through. God its hard to look at. Captain says if we can get out, we'll head towards North Carolina and see if anything is left of Fort Bragg.
Something tells me it’s a lost cause. Something tells me the human species is finished. Its only been a few weeks since the Fever started.
What will be left of humanity in six months?
A year?
Chapter Six: Tommy “Duras” Morrow
1
He pulled the trigger of his Springfield and watched another dead bu
m drop to the ground. Look at them, eating my sheeple, like that is their right, like that is something they are allowed to do.
How will he ever secure this damn town now? And where the hell is Barney with the 50 caliber?
“Do you see Barney yet?” Duras asked.
“Nope. The son of a bitch is taking his sweet time.” Vice said.
How am I going to win this damn city back? Must be over two thousand walkers. That bald fuck's gonna pay for this.
The sound of Barney’s fifty caliber let loose into the crowd below.
“Barney is finally showing his worth, don’t you think Vice?” Vice stood on the edge of the roof, peering out and down at the stench ridden crowd as Barney laid the demonic scum to rest. Duras thought it looked like a video game. Or like that scene from Predator, when they mow down an entire section of forest, but this time it was flesh that went flying, and heads, and arms, and guts, followed by a stream of blood running through his clean, well-manicured cobble streets.
The air was humid and hot. The sky was a dark gray. The stench of death floated up from the streets. He aimed his rifle out, and saw what once was pretty young thing, all bloody with death, skin peeling, and a big USC on her cheerleader outfit, and her damn, god forsaken dead tittles jiggled like loose coconuts hanging from a tree. He took the shot, and she fell for the final time, with a split skull, but he doubts she ever had much brain anyway. And how did she ever make it here? USC? Columbia? These dead bums can walk, walk, and then walk some more. Screams of death echoed all around. Dying kids. Dying adults. Just a shit load of dying. The wonderful sounds of the New World. The hymn they lived to now.
He continued firing into the crowd. Vice slapped him on the shoulder. “Say Duras! We can trick em by shooting some fire arrows into those trash cans with gas?” Vice was such a good man, with such great ideas. Now, that is why he always kept him close by, especially when death mulled around every corner. “Send Rhino and the Ice Man down with some gas. Tell them not to get too close to those dead things moving around down there. Or else I’ll take their heads off from my wonderfully comfortable position here on this god awfully beautiful roof top, underneath this magically, hypnotically, burning fire of a sun.” He kept firing, killing one dead bum after another, till he finally saw Rhino, with his blackened skin, mouthing something off in his barely legible geisha slang to his good buddy and compatriot, The Ice Man. Barry. He thinks that’s what Ice Man’s real name is, but the moment Duras saw him, looking so much like Vail Kilmer, he told him from that minute forward, his new name is The Ice Man. He remembered he smiled, with bright white teeth and his dirty blonde hair flickered in the hot breeze.
Now, He watched him, through his Springfield’s site, pushing, and filling trash cans with gasoline. Duras made sure to kill any dead thing that wondered to close. And the hot gun Barney fired off was still dropping them in crumbled fleshy rows, all piled on top of each other, while the heavens poured their rays down, cooking the filth, which Barney and company would have to later burn.
Over to my right, Vice had strapped on his quiver, all full of arrows tipped with sparkler shavings wrapped in cheese cloth, and all held together with trusty Elmors glue and thin gauge wire. He had taken the liberty of taping a few full lendge sparklers around the tip. “Over kill Vice. And a damn waste of some damn good sparklers.”
“We have plenty.” Vice said.
Vice sat a glass of kerosene on the roof’s ledge and dipped the tip of the arrow, and left it there marinating for a few minutes. Duras focused his attention back down to Ice Man and Rhino, and they’d successfully placed the cans exactly where they needed them, and did it all without getting bit.
Duras peered around with his scope, taking off a few more dead heads, and then noticed a particular zombie milling about all by himself, continually crashing into the fence line, stumbling back, then crashing again. He wore a sweater vest, ripped and torn, but none the less; it certainly was a fucking sweater vest, with a red bow tie, a bloodstained bright blue stripped dress shirt; and on his face was large, gaudy glasses like something a librarian, or better yet, a professor would wear. Indeed. Duras figured he must have been a professor at some school somewhere, may be from USC up in Columbia; where he enjoyed porking the young cheerleader whom he decided to follow down here in a death induced delirium; and now that Duras had taken his love’s head clean from her shoulders; the poor dead professor lost his mind, and his bearings and now can could only crash against the cold steel of the perimeter’s fence line.
“Ready to go!” Vice shouted. He moved the arrow from the kerosene, struck a match, and lit it. Duras stood back as Vice placed it in his bow, and pull back, and let it launch. It flew through the air like a burning, sparkling bird, and landed with a fiery explosion in the one of the cans.
“Damn good shot! Damn good sir!” Duras said and removed a hand wrapped joint from his pocket, along with a Bic lighter (compliments of numerous raids on gas stations). He lit it and breathed in the sweet bud’s smoke, a purple haze blend he'd grown in the garden area, and blew out of the smoke and coughed, coughed, coughed.
“Let me have a hit.” He handed it to Vice, who took a few tokes, before passing it back to Duras. The fires were burning brightly down below, and Ice Man and Rhino had made their way behind Barney; and Barney was still busy mowing down zombies, who had become easy targets. Some of the dead mulled around the newly lit fires; and Duras and Vice, stoned now, feeling quite nice, took easy aim, Duras with his Springfield, Vice with his scoped AR. Duras always enjoyed the spring and jiggle of his Springfield after each and every shot. It felt like a reward for being such a great killer of the already deceased.
The sun was coming up, and the smell of death drafted high into the air. The streets were filled with the dead, and now what was left of his men, led by Rhino and Ice Man, began gathering them up, tossing them in the red pickup trucks and hauling them off to the fire pits. They'd made those fire pits some time ago, just for the occasional need for burning of bodies.
Then from behind Duras came the voice of Mary Jane, “We made it into the shelters. About 100 of us made it. We lost nearly 200 people.” Duras turned and saw her face. It was covered in black smoot, and dried blood; but her bright blue eyes still glimmered through the darkness. Her thin, firm frame, covered in a tight fitting black shirt, her blue jeans, torn in all the right spots, clung firmly against her legs. “What’s that?” He asked.
“I thought you might be hungry. Give me a hit of that.” Duras took a bowl of hot soup from her, and handed her a finely wrapped joint. She lit it; and he sat down against the hard ledge, his Springfield resting beside him, and fed his hungry belly with the spicy soup she made so well; she sat silently beside him, worn out from both fear and anxiety, and blew the sweet smelling scent of marijuana high into the air. “I needed that.” She said.
“I can tell.” He said.
Vice had disappeared, and Duras assumed he went to oversee the disposal of the bodies; or more than likely to check on his version of Mary Jane, her little sister Sarah Ann.
“How's Sarah?” He asked.
“Yes. She made it. Too ornery to die, that one. Think I saw Vice running her way on my way up.” She said.
“Oh yes. He'll do that. And, of course she made. Of course you both made it. That’s what I love about you to. Ornery, godless, and horny. Just the type of women I need to run a post-apocalyptic religion.”
She said nothing, and blew pot smoke out in different sized smoke rings. He finished off the soup; and stared at her. “What are the people saying?” he asked.
“They're scared.”
“I'll talk with them soon. Give them the hope they need.”
“What will we do now?”
“Rebuild the walls. Go after the people that did this.”
“The tree folk?”
“Yes. The tree folk. Okona.”
“I wish I could come. Help you kill them. You've never really told me about what all the beef is about.�
��
He motioned for her to come to him. She came, sat beside him, and handed him the joint. He breathed in the hot smoke, and she laid her head on his chest. Her hair smelled like a fire pit; and he wrapped his arm around her, and brought the joint to her lips. She smoked it, and he smoked it; and then they just stared at the sun rising.
“I think I told you.”
“Nope. Just that you knew him and hated him.”
“He was a cocky asshole. He bought the comic store across from mine right after I'd beaten the store into the ground. He's a bit younger even with that bald head and he enjoyed using his endless amount of cash to take me on.”
“He owned other comic stores?”
“Nope.” He took another drag of weed, blew it out, and continued. “He did stupid stunts and filmed them for YouTube. A real sensation and must of made a lot of cash via the ad revenue.”
“He ran you out of buness didn't he?” She said as she took the joint from his fingers.
“Nope. But he would have, if the shit hadn't of hit the fans. In the end, the dead put us and everyone else out of business.”
Tommy “Duras” Morrow remembered the Old Days, sitting in his Comic Haven, just off highway 17. Before the bald bastard came and shook up everything and before the world went to shit. The smell of new comics drafting, his wife's ass as she stocked shelves, and the sound of the kids coming in after school. He especially remembers his little girl, a sweet face blonde with locks and blue ribbons. The nick name “Duras” came from his love of Star Trek. He flew his wife and daughter to the Comic Cons and Trek conventions, always dressed as Klingons, most specifically the leader of the Klingon Empire (you guessed it, the klingon's name was Duras. He even had a bat’leth custom made, and after the shit hit the fans, he sharpened the edges and put it to damn good use. Duras was always a no nonsense kind of guy, never taking shit from anybody. His body big and strong, just over two thirty and right at six foot five; Tommy “Duras” Morrow was a nerd nobody chose to pick on. Comic Haven had been his dream and a dream he refused to lose, even in the face of the competition across the street. The competition, or Comic Land, was formerly owned by a donut eating black man by the name of Andre and is brother Chris. That was, of course, before the arrival of Okona. Tyler Okona. What a cocky little shit. If there had ever been a neck that needed breaking, Tommy thought, Okona was the guy that needed it the most. When Duras opened Comic Haven he knew Comic Land was already on its last leg. It didn't take him long to lure what few customers they had over to his new and much larger and flashier store. This all made possible by the added extra of having a coffee shop inside the store, which also, much to the dislike of big black Andre, sold donuts. Duras believed he'd won and certainly there was plenty of evidence to back this up. After all, he'd turned a profit within the first year and was now looking to not only put Comic Land out of commission, but also to lease the store front and start his comic empire. Then came Okona. That filthy, bald fuck. With his boat loads of cash and ever so arrogant attitude, not too mention a blistering hot wife that made Debbie Morrow look like a two dollar bimbo. Well, may be not that bad, but she certainly had an hour glass figure and a booty to go with it, and a pair of perfect tits every man dreams about. And ever since society took a nose dive, the dead walked, and ghosts started showing up (or so he's told, he's yet to meet one), Duras has still had nothing but trouble from Okona. A reckless bandit that one. An apocalyptic robin hood if there ever was such a thing. Hit and runs.