Humanity's Death: A Zombie Epic

by D. S. Black

  Rusty stopped and took in a deep breath. The dead man howled; Billy wept; the black woman on the floor began to wake up.

  Billy’s pants were stained dark yellow. Rusty pressed the blade a little deeper against Billy’s throat; the light above glowed bright in Rusty’s dark, pulsating eyes; Rusty's voice dialed down to a low and smooth whisper. “You see, Billy. We live in a City of Flesh ruled by hypocrites that use the name of God to control the inhabitants. These rulers are arrogant and put all their faith in human reason and wisdom. Duras and Mary Jane are sinful deviants and their time is coming; but, Billy, you still have a chance; if you are willing to turn your mind towards the gates of the City of God. Duras marches to war with the barbarians in the wilderness, and this, this, my dear Billy boy, is the moment Duras's foolishness catches up to him. His fleshly desire for revenge and conquest has driven him out of the city, leaving it for us to retake in the name of the one true God, and make it the true City of God. There is one thing that Duras is right about. The rapture was never a real thing. There is another six years of torture for those still living and breathing and we must endure and follow God’s way. Duras and Mary Jane have fallen in love with all the desires of Earth and taken many with them, but us, the Seekers, we seek out the City of God, Billy.”

  The groan of the half conscience woman caught Rusty’s attention. He let Billy go and ordered him to go fetch little Todd Zacker and have him come back and take the the zombies to the holding area.

  “Sur…sure thing… I’m real sorry. I will seek only the City of God. I promise.” Billy said.

  “I believe you. Now run along. I am ready to get this next sacrifice underway.”

  3

  An hour later Rusty Ray was peeling off his blood covered apron and changing into his brown, monk robe. The woman proved an easy sacrifice. She screamed a bit but didn’t fight nearly as hard as he expected. He was ready for a bath and a meal; it’s what he always did after a sacrifice.

  He'd met with a representative with the Militia a few days prior and was just biding his time till Duras ran off on his little mission in the woods. Ever since the attack on the gates, Rusty knew this was the time to act.

  And for the next week he bided his time. He stayed mostly to himself and avoided contact with Duras. Finally, the time came; Duras began preparing for the attack on Okona; and Rusty went to his final meeting with the Militia; creeping silently and unseen out of the city.

  “I can hand you a city. A defendable city. One that will bring power to your Militia.”

  “What makes you think I want torture you?”

  “Look into my eyes Lieutenant. Without me, you will not defeat Duras. He is many things, but a complete fool he certainly is not. Take caution if you move without my proper knowledge. Perhaps you should radio ahead and ask your Captain what you should do with a man that is offering you the keys to the City of God!”

  The Lieutenant sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “OK. We’ll do it your way.” He grabbed Rusty ray by the brown cloak and raised a short dagger against Rusty’s throat, “if I find out you are lying to me, I will shove this dagger into your brain. Do you understand Holy Man?”

  “You’re a most agreeable man. Indeed. Just listen to what I have to offer.”

  The Lieutenant listened.

  “Duras has a weakness. He is obsessed with a man that lives in the woods. They’ve feuded on and off for nearly a year. I have no idea why; but I do know it’s how we kill him.”

  The Lieutenant pushed back into his chair, relaxing. “I’m listening.”

  “Duras is getting ready to attack. He’s going to burn them out. We must be ready when he does. The city will be open for the taking.” Rusty crossed his arms smugly.

  “Do you think I am going to keep you alive for helping us?”

  “I think that is for your Captain to decide, Lieutenant!” This caused an uncomfortable expression on the Lieutenant's face.

  Rusty looked at him sternly, “Think about something for a moment… consider how religion benefits the Militia. Think about how it benefits your captain. You need men like me to facilitate the introduction of stable society. It is how we maintain power over the remaining population and fulfill the purpose God has honored us with.”

  “I hear you. I just want to make sure I understand you correctly. You are sayin, this Duras guy is going to march out of his gates with all his men and go play in the woods?”

  “Exactly! And that’s when we must strike!”

  “I agree Rusty. Take a team out there and bombard the poor bastards with artillery.”

  “We will bring back the Glory of God. Mark my words Lieutenant together we will conquer the world all over again.”

  “What’s all this we stuff?” The Lieutenant showed Rusty the dagger “What makes you think that I need you? Or your pathetic fucking religious bull shit? I never liked your kind before all this and I sure the hell don’t like you now. You misunderstand the purpose of the Militia.”

  “You do not know the city. I know routes that can lead you straight into the heart of the city. Trust me!”

  The Lieutenant let out a light chuckle, then with a thick southern drawl, “You keep on talking like you really believe you have a chance of surviving this encounter.” The Lieutenant reached out and struck the dagger’s hilt against Rusty’s forehead. Rusty fell back, stunned.

  The Lieutenant marched around Rusty, picked him up, and held in a bear hug, “you have given me all I need! Swear loyalty to me right now or I will rape your happy little ass.”

  With blood running down Rusty's face, “I swear only to God! Do what you must!”

  The Lieutenant ripped Rusty’s clothing and forced him into positions that Rusty never imagined. Tears dripped from Rusty’s face. He screamed, his religion dying with every hefty thrust the hardened Lieutenant gave—salty tears streamed out, hot salty semen streamed in. Soldiers stood around watching; their eyes bulging with drugged delight. Soon they’d all have a go with dear Rusty. And in Rusty’s mind, an even darker reality dawned: maybe there isn’t a God. God please hear me. Please God stop them. Please. It hurts like you cannot know.

  “Cry little Rusty! CRY! CRY! CRY!” a solider said as he mounted Rusty, thrusting hard into the rear.

  OUCH! OH GOD! PLEASE MAKE IT END! WHAT HAVE I DONE! PLEASE! Then out loud: “God HELP! HELP ME!” This brought a thunderous round of laughter, clapping, and jeering. A large bag of white powder opened and lines spread out on a small table nearby. While lines were snorted by one soldier after another, poor Rusty dripped blood from regions that would never be the same. A look of desolation and madness covered his face. His eyes stared blankly and blinked after each cruel thrust. Then his mind slipped back into a sweet and warm memory. Sitting at his mother’s kitchen table, her big tubby behind pushed up towards the heavens while she removed biscuits from the oven. She placed them on the counter and began lathering them with butter; she’d melted the butter in a blue acrylic bowl with gold crosses painted on the sides. She’d made it at her pottery class; that was nothing compared to July 1996. While most kids his age (12 at the time) hyped about Independence Day, starring Will Smith; Rusty Ray prepared for his for trip to Christian Day Camp. His mom didn’t let little Rusty watch TV, or go to movies. She’d been top of her class at Bob Jones University and she sure was not going to ever let her baby boy see vile, sinful filth (even though her and Mr. Ray enjoyed a private collection of BDSM porn).

  “Rusty! Who tha fuck’s your god now sissy boy!” The Lieutenant screamed, causing Rusty to snap back to his current and most painful conundrum (oh how he wished to taste his momma’s biscuits). No biscuits today Rusty! No biscuits for you! OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!!!!!

  4

  The Lieutenant was William Thompson. Before the Fever, he was a bored banker; he dreamed of moving up the corporate ladder. His ambitiousness carried over to the New World and helped him move fast in the ranks of the Militia. He learned brutality was the name of the game.


  His orders were to scout the area, find weaknesses in the city's defense, and then report back to his Captain. The Militia wanted the city as in tact as possible. The leadership wanted it as their coastal base.

  Thompson is part of Force Recon 3. His Captain, along with the rest of Militia Recon 3, were further inland. He coveted his Captain's position, and thought that if he took the city with his small platoon, the powers to be would promote him. And this may very well have happened.

  But sometimes superior force is not enough the win the day, because not all variables are predictable. Sometimes what appears as an advantage can turn against you in the blink of an eye. And in a world where supernatural forces are emerging as an influential force in human history; all bets are off, and unlikely alliances can occur.

  The ambitious Lieutenant Thompson would soon learn that first hand.

  But for the moment he leaned back in a large leather chair with his feet planted on a large dark wood desk. He was quite proud of himself. Even before the Fever, he was almost always proud of himself. On top of being an ambitious banker, Thompson was a card carrying Republican, and a starch defender of male superiority. His father taught him that women were exactly what the Bible said they were: property; the atheist liberals were the ones confused, trying their best to bring America to the level of Sodom and Gomorrah. Thompson didn't believe that the Bible was much of a book (as far as reality is concerned), but he did agree with its position on women and men. He considered it the natural hierarchy; anything else was not necessarily an abomination to God; more like, it was an abomination against Father Nature. Fuck Mother Nature in the ass.

  Thompson was also a closet homosexual. The only reason he kept it in the closet was because he worried about losing respect within the macho man banking environment. Unlike the rainbow flag carrying sissies, Thompson considered himself a Tiger. “I'm a wild and dangerous sexual Tiger, taking what I want, when I want, from who I want.” And as Rusty Ray found out, Thompson was a sadist to the extreme.

  Before the Fever, Thompson made (after taxes) a cool five hundred thousand dollars a year. As a single man, living in a humble apartment, this gave him a great deal of disposable income. A large chunk of which went to trips to Vietnam. He'd met a man there who specialized in finding sadistic white men sexual play things.

  Thompson preferred white American boys, but finding a supplier of underage sex in America simply wasn't a good idea. Was it possible? Oh yes, you best believe it. But the local law in conjunction with the FBI were a bit more adept at cracking down on sex rings than the authorities in Vietnam; where the American dollar went quite a long way in greasing the Communist authorities. So he spent his month long vacation every year in Vietnam, and the rest of the year in Charleston, SC where White Privilege was a way of life.

  Of course White Privilege was a myth, just ask any of the many Republicans (or even the idealistic libertarians). Blacks were simply more prone to violence by their very nature; to hell with what the liberal sociologists say about race being social instead of biological. Just more hippy dippy, liberal socialist Marxist nonsense trying to invade American Republicanism; just socialists trying to undermine the capitalist economy so they can give welfare to lazy blacks (and, Thompson would admit, lazy white trailer trash as well), so they can feed their ten kids while their baby daddies drink cheap malt liquor from the local Kangaroo.

  Meanwhile the White Man, in his clean cut business attire, held the world economy on his back like on the cover of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. So what if the white man might have a few extra perks; he by golly deserved it. To make matters worse, Thompson saw that it wasn't just blacks and lazy spicks eating up all his hard earned money; it was the other half of the human race: women. Women wanted the White Man's money to pay for baby killing operations like Planned Parenthood. They wanted free contraception, equal pay, equal say; my dear god who do they think they are? And, boy oh boy, friends and neighbors, those crazy commie cunts were succeeding at dragging white America into the gutters of liberalism.

  Then came the Fever. If there was a God, Thompson was quite positive the Fever was His way of putting an end to liberal bullshit. The Fever opened new doors of opportunity to the White Man. Now a proper society could be built. A society where women were property, and blacks knew their proper place in the racial, social hierarchy. The New World belonged to the White Man.

  “We are the ambassadors of the New Age. The Age of Whitey. The return to proper order.” He said to himself. He was alone in the cathedral and his voice echoed off the large walls and high ceilings. He'd came in here not long after finishing his business with Rusty Ray. “I think good ole Rusty may be a bit sore.” He cackled loudly.

  Unlike the soldiers under his command, Thompson didn't do the White Mist. No one Lieutenant level and up did the White Mist. Maintaining control was important, and one could not do that high as a kite; the Mountain King made that very clear from the beginning.

  Not that he'd met the Mountain King. Few actually had. Only the Colonels and a few of the Captains. And only the Mountain King chose the Captains and Colonels. Thompson wasn't sure what it was about the men that became Captains and Colonels in the Militia; it was something about them that was the same; he thought maybe they were all former law enforcement, but didn’t know that for sure. It was a though they'd all belonged to the same club before the Fever. What club that might have been, well, Thomson didn't know for sure. But, by god, if sacking this fucking city didn't earn him the right to a promotion, then nothing would.

  5

  Rusty wanted to die. All hope in God disappeared somewhere in the middle of the gang rape. Five of the soldiers still surrounded him; their perverse shadows darkening his face. The pale moon shone against their backs. Ripped camouflage and blood stained skin caste in the dead of night, a mixture of hatful madness. All five of the soldiers removed their clothes, and before the first thrust, Rusty blanked out and woke in a dark misty place deep in his mind. He could smell the black cancer coming from his mother’s breath and he knew he was in the hospital room at Coastal Memorial, July 2005. The month that brought us The Wedding Crashers and The Devil’s Rejects; not that Rusty got to see them at the theater.

  The hospital snuggled close to the east coast and hot summer air tinged with salty sea blew into an open window. The white curtains flapped with the breeze and little Rusty Ray sat holding his momma’s hand. His mother lay on the hospital bed drugged and dying, her eyes dark, hollow caverns of misery. The final solution, or as the nurses called it, END OF LIFE MEDS. Rusty always smelled her black and dying breath, that smell that meant cancer’s victorious dominance over life was near at hand. The cancer ate her alive, from the inside out, and there, with little Rusty watching, as she rested her final minutes, a hospice care worker came in to check every 20 minutes. She was in her forties but looked eighty; her was body frail and pale; her smile faded to a painful grimace. He’d watched her take her final breath; he said a prayer as she died; he asked God to take her soul and put her by His side.

  But the pain of losing his mother was nothing compared to what he felt now. Rusty Ray laid on a cold floor shivering with blood dripping from his anus. Dried semen covered his face like glaze from a Krispy Crème doughnut. The invasion for the city was over; Duras and company were currently under artillery bombardment.

  Rusty now understood something he never understood before: there is no God. There is no holy direction. Only death, bloody, black death. All the sermons, the bed time stories, ALL OF IT—lies. He saw his past now as a collection of pointless dabbles, encounters that led him to this very predicament. Rusty lay for a long time before a few soldiers picked him up, took him out into the night, and threw his worn and torn body into a nearby ditch. He splashed into the gully and lay staring at the sky. His eyes black and without hope or clarity of sight. The sun was rising in the East, a new day. A day without God, without hope, without any meaning, rhyme, or reason. Lies, all of it. Monstrous LIES!

  Rusty Ray
felt a powerful surge of anger pump into his veins. There was a God. He was only angry. He couldn’t blame God for this. He pushed himself up on one side and screamed. “To God be the glory!”

  An empty can of beans came hurling and cracked Rusty Ray in his temple, cutting into his flesh. For a moment he saw a flash of hot white, felt the hot blood dripping, tasted the red power of life sipping into the corners of his mouth.

  Then it was 1990, and a hot and cool wind whipped in through the open windows of his father’s recently purchased Corvette. The red Corvette that meant more to Daddy than living, breathing people. Even his father’s love for the dead could not compete with that fucking red Corvette. Black and tan leather seats, convertible top. His father drove with his chin held high, his salt and pepper hair blowing in the wind, his dark shades resting comfortably, his palm on the gear—Daddy never believed.

  This realization hit Rusty like a ten-pound hammer and he jumped back into consciousness. The soldiers were gone. The sun now burned high above. His skin was burned and red, with blisters forming. The puss pushed up from his skin like ready to pop domes. In the distance, about thirty feet off the right, stumbling and jerking down the road, was a horde of zombies; their eyes bursting with death’s white glow. They stopped, and in unison, sniffed the air; they smelled Rusty Ray.