Brooke couldn’t remove her gaze from the large dark area that covered her sister’s neck and extended downward across most of her shirt. A loose and ineffective length of bandaging hung down from the blackened wound. Brooke slowly raised her pistol, and her hand shook more and more violently as the gun’s barrel pointed to her sister’s face. Her sister’s head tilted to one side, and, before Brooke could react, the creature was rushing toward her with surprising speed. Brooke froze until her attacker clumsily fell to its face and began crawling at her.
Brooke’s gun slid out of her reach, and she began a panicked crab walk backwards into her sister’s bedroom, fighting to maintain the slight distance between them. She tried to kick the bedroom door closed, but her pistol had wedged itself between the door and its frame. Just as the creature had begun to push the door back open, Brooke glimpsed the old accordion style, folding closet door that stood partially opened. Resorting to her childhood days of living without a lock on the very same door, Brooke slid the closet door the rest of the way open, causing its handle to wedge behind the knob of the bedroom door, jamming it from opening any further.
Brooke heard the rattling on the bedroom door stop, and a violent struggle ensued out in the hallway. Brooke’s eyes clinched shut as she stayed lying on the floor, awaiting the inevitable gunshot. Instead, she heard John call out a short time later.
“It’s safe; I locked her in the next room,” he called out. “You can go outside if you don’t want to be here for this.”
Without fear of the suspicious men who had been wandering down the garage only moments before, Brooke collected her pistol and returned to the van. She sat stoically for what felt like several minutes, anticipating the crack of gunfire. When the blast finally did come, Brooke felt nothing except guilt for not crying over the loss of her sister. She sat numbly, waiting in silence for John to return.
Inside, John was tempted to collect anything of use from the place but decided against it after considering the condition Brooke was surely in. He left empty-handed and climbed into the van with Brooke. He made a few gentle but vain attempts at consoling her and getting her to talk. It took several minutes of enduring a one-sided conversation before Brooke eventually told John that she was just ready to leave and get back to the house. John tried to offer that she didn’t have to drive the van back to the Jensen home if she wasn’t up for it, at which point she reached across and opened John’s passenger door before cranking the engine to life.
The two drove back separately along the same route they’d come in on to find that more people were now venturing back out into the streets. It was becoming commonplace for the two to hear the report of a single gunshot as they drove. John spotted a few different groups of undead that were barely visible behind the tree line alongside the major highways and a few that had even wandered up onto the asphalt. Less frequently, they would see survivors who had risked coming out from their shelters. Many of the people would try to flag their cars down, but John and Brooke continued on without hesitation. By the time they neared the house, though, the sun had begun its descent and the character of those who remained outside declined along with it. No one dared risk traveling the streets any longer but for the most desperate of looters. One wild-eyed hitchhiker even fired an errant shot at John’s truck after he’d refused to slow down and instead swerved off onto the shoulder to avoid hitting the man.
Virgil was rounding the corner of the house when John and Brooke finally pulled into the driveway. He hobbled over to open the garage door and motioned for the two to safely stow the cars inside and out of public view.
“Things are getting bad,” Virgil said as the garage door closed. “Seen some desperate looking folks come out this way. I was starting to worry about you two.”
“It was a rough day, but we’re ok,” John answered with a handshake. “Why are you all sweaty? Is everything okay here?”
“Oh, sure. I was just cutting some more firewood just in case,” Virgil said.
Brooke walked by without uttering a word. Her countenance had improved significantly from before, but even Virgil picked up on the fact that it hadn’t been a good trip for her. He looked to John for an explanation, and John offered only a frown and a slight shake of his head in response. Virgil’s reaction showed his understanding, and he patted John on the back before following him inside. The rest of the group, except for Steve, welcomed them back, and John was thankful that they all had sense enough to not ask about the trip or Brooke’s sister. Moto explained that the radio had resorted to playing looping generic messages about staying home and what warning signs to watch for in those who might soon turn violent. After that, Virgil had pulled down his old police scanner. The dispatchers had already given up on sending units out to reports of robbery and looting and were focused only on the violent attacks.
“Everyone’s gone completely insane,” Marie said. “I never would have thought our neighbors would react like this in a panic situation. I always liked to think we would stick together and be all the stronger for it, but they’re out there killing each other over gasoline and a couple days’ worth of food.”
“It ain’t just that,” Virgil said. “You wouldn’t believe the calls about rape and murder. Stuff they don’t even try to blame on the zombies. Just evil, evil people out there.”
“Wait, where’s Hillary?” Brooke asked.
“She’s napping on the couch,” Moto said. “She wanted to lay with Steve, but his fever went up. I really didn’t want to leave her up there alone with him… just in case.”
“Do you think…?” John didn’t know how to finish.
“I’m not saying we give up on him,” Moto answered. “But it’d be pretty stupid to pretend there’s nothing going on. I hope it’s just an infection, but, until we know for sure, I don’t know how we could treat him like normal. I can’t imagine a scrape from breaking down a door causing something like this. I confronted him about it and tried to guilt him into being honest, but he swears that he’s telling the truth.”
“What about the outside world?” John asked. “Has it spread everywhere already?”
“No way to know,” Moto answered. “All sorts of rumors are floating around and most of ‘em conflict with each other. If I had to guess, even the places that haven’t been infected have still been affected by the outbreak. At this point, I’m as worried about other people as I am about the zombies--if not more-so. Mix in soldiers all armed to the teeth, and I can’t imagine all is well.”
“We’ve learned a little I think, though,” Virgil said, pulling out a chair for himself while Moto went back to work covering the windows to conceal their light from the zombies. “From what we put together from the reports and from what Moto has seen, the ones who get hit in the head don’t get back up. We also think that it matters where you got bit. Take a bite on the hand, and you’re probably gonna be fine for a while. Take one on the neck or something, you won’t last very long.”
John observed Brooke out of the corner of his eye to see if she’d contribute after what they’d witnessed just hours before, but he she gave no reaction.
“Some people are saying that it’s airborne, like the flu or what have you,” Virgil continued. “We think they have to get you fair, though. Seems like we’d all be zombies already if that’s how this thing was going. And besides, if that’s really how it works, there ain’t much we can do about it anyhow. This one old boy who really seemed to have it all figured out even caught himself a couple of ‘em to test his theories on. He said that their bodies were focusing on keeping the important stuff alive by ignoring the less important stuff like their skin, heart, lungs, and the smart part of the brain.”
“Wait, you lost me. The heart and brain aren’t important?” Brooke asked.
“The guy said that they aren’t important to the zombies, and that actually matches up pretty well with what John and I have seen.” Moto said. “They somehow don’t have to breathe. I wouldn’t believe it from the way they moan
and everything, but we saw them firsthand walking around underwater in Puerto Rico. The brain apparently only uses the most primal parts that control things like hunger, sight, smell, stuff like that. He thinks that’s why you don’t see them planning ahead, or using tools, or communicating with each other. They just walk toward what they think might lead to food and eat what they find.”
“Okay, but what about the heart?” Marie asked. “How can you move without flowing blood?”
“You’re right. They don’t have circulation anymore. It’s another crazy way they don’t waste energy. Now, obviously this isn’t 100%, and the guy is just a step past guessing at this point, but it does match up with a lot of what we’ve observed too. He thinks that they’re so uncoordinated and everything because their movements are caused by electric pulses from the brain that go through that black gel stuff that’s in their veins instead of blood. He says that, instead of the muscles flexing with blood to help them move, it’s the central nervous system bypassing that part of the brain and bypassing the heart and the need for circulation altogether.”
“So, it’s like when you pull your hand away after burning yourself,” John thought aloud. “Your brain doesn’t even register what happened until your hand is already moving. I guess that makes sense. And that’s why you can shoot them in the heart, and they just keep coming and barely even bleed.”
“Right. The scientist gave examples of a lot of the different instances where he says zombies have already occurred in nature at different levels, like that ant fungus in Thailand and the zombie snail parasite. People are starting to understand how they work, but it’s not really adding to what we already know about how to take ‘em out.”
“None of what y’all learned is necessarily bad news, but it doesn’t change the fact that these things are probably going to outnumber us sooner than later.”
“What do you mean?” Marie asked. “All you have to do is shoot them in the head, right?”
“Right, but fighting them is like fighting a hydra. You might cut a head off once in a while, only for another two to grow back. For every person that we lose to a bite, the zombies also gain one. It’s gonna be like every other contagious disease and spread exponentially, but this one is gonna go until they start running out of victims. Unlike the others, this disease actively hunts us down. We can’t just sit around and ride it out in hiding.”
“He’s right,” Moto said. “We saw firsthand how quick it’ll all overwhelm you. With the police, doctors, and soldiers here all going AWOL to be with their families, I don’t see how the U.S. will fare any better than the island did.”
Everyone froze at the sound of gunshots just outside the house. John went to the next room and peeked out from behind the trash bag that Moto had taped over the windows to see a group of young men wandering down the street laughing and vandalizing anything and everything that caught their eye. One of the boys was pushing a shopping cart filled with guns, alcohol, junk food, and an assortment of other goods. A zombie approached them after the loud disturbance, and the boys viciously battered it with their makeshift weapons before continuing their stroll through the darkened neighborhood.
“Just some stupid kids,” John turned to say. “They’re not coming this way.”
Before he could peek back out, a barrage of bullets cut across the front of the house in a random spray of automatic gunfire. After it had stopped, John ran into the next room to check on Hillary and peek out a different window.
“Come here, sweetheart,” Brooke said as she picked up the terrified, crying girl and carried her into another room.
Outside, John saw a severely drunk boy laughing so hard that he was now hunched over. One of the other teenagers walked up to him and pulled the Uzi out of his hands before kicking the laughing boy onto his back and shooting him. One of the larger guys snatched away the gun and hung behind while the others dug through their cart, pulling out different bottles and goodies for themselves as they waited. After a moment, the dead boy began to rise up, only to be shot again by the larger man with the Uzi, this time in the head. John couldn’t hear the boys’ conversations, but he was pretty sure they were keeping count of how many zombies each of them had killed. Soon, the boys were out of sight, and John turned around to see that Moto was standing behind him.
“They’re gone,” John said loud enough for the people in the kitchen to hear, and then spoke only to Moto. “I don’t think you have to be bit to come back as a zombie.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Virgil’s preparations proved worthwhile when the electricity went out. They first worried that the teenagers had caused it, but the entire neighborhood had gone dark. Marie appeared with a basket full of candles and used a lit one to observe all the bullet holes littering her walls. John offered to help, as it appeared that the weight of the basket might be enough to pull the fragile, old woman over sideways.
“Thank you, son; we need a couple in every room and to leave a few of these lit in the bathroom overnight,” Marie said. “I’m afraid little Hillary wet the bed last night. I think she was scared to leave her room in the dark. Leave a few of those with me, and I’ll start lighting things up down here.”
While placing candles all around the upstairs, John found that Steve was in a serious state. The sheets were drenched in his sweat, and Steve had begun to bleed badly from his nostrils. John informed everyone but Hillary of what he had discovered. Fortunately, after some medical attention from Brooke, Steve’s condition improved noticeably. Once his sweating had stopped, and his fever had improved, the group decided to yield to Moto’s persistent requests for a rematch at poker. Seeing that Virgil had already lit a fire, the group sat down around the table and played in the flickering light.
Not far into the game, more gunshots rang out in the street. John decided not to fold back the plastic that covered the window for fear of their indoor candlelight attracting the attention of whoever was in the streets. He pardoned himself and explained that he wanted to go observe what was happening from a good vantage point. He’d found a perfect spot on the roof outside his bedroom window. After some prodding, Brooke took his place in the poker game with Hillary sitting excitedly on her lap.
“How come that clock is still working if the ‘lectricity is off?” Hillary asked, pointing to an ornate, wooden cuckoo clock whose pendulum still swung hypnotically.
“Well, it probably runs off of batteries,” Brooke politely informed the little girl.
“Actually, it doesn’t,” Virgil said proudly as he laid down the flop. “I made that clock by hand a long, long time ago. It’s completely mechanical. No electricity.”
“Very impressive!” Brooke said, admiring the craftsmanship of the intricate designs. “Does it have the bird and everything?”
“Of course it does, didn’t you hear me say I built it?” Virgil laid out the turn card, and tucked away his hole cards face down as he approached the clock. “You just have to raise this little lever on the side to make all the bells and whistles go.”
Knowing what the next question would be, Virgil rotated the minute hand around the clock until it reached the next hour and a colorful bird sprung out from its door and chirped its song along with the cadence of bells. The room was very pleased with the showing, except for Moto who grimaced at his now worthless hand of cards. The table checked their hands, and Virgil revealed an Ace as the final community card. Moto raised, and after the rest of the table had folded, Virgil re-raised Moto’s bet. Moto responded by making a big show of confidently standing up and pushing all of his chips to the center of the table. Virgil called without hesitation and flipped over his winning hand that had paired on the river. Moto plopped back into his seat, dejected.
“Use attack to exploit victory, never use attack to rescue defeat.” Virgil suggested.
“Why is it that every time you decide to talk, you say something that sounds like it belongs in a book?” Moto asked.
“Are you serious?” John asked as he returned f
rom upstairs. “You never read The Art of War? There’s a lot of timeless knowledge in that one.”
“I find that the more I learn, the more I discover that some dead guy has already put what I know into words in a way that I can’t improve on,” Virgil said. “And, to be honest, I don’t feel quite so smart after that.”
“And that’s a good thing?” Moto asked.
“It’s the only thing,” Virgil answered. “Knowing might not bring you to a place of being giddy or rich. But that’s not why you learn. You learn to avoid the mistakes of others and to gain an understanding of yourself and the world.”
“Laying on the knowledge kind of thick tonight!” Moto laughed.
“Shut up, I want to hear him talk,” John said. “Please, enlighten us.”
“If there’s one thing I’ll leave you with, it’s this. Happiness is a choice.”
He paused to think for a moment, and no one interrupted.
“It’s hard, ‘cause the more shit you’ve lived through, and the more you learn about the world as it really is, the more you’re pressed to get bitter and callous. If that’s how it’s gonna be for ya, you’d be better off being a giddy bigot that just doesn’t know any better. But. And there’s always a but. But, if you use that big world knowledge and put your stupid little stress and ego back into perspective, that’s gonna be a powerful thing.”
“Oh, Lord,” Marie said as she re-entered the room. “You’ve got him going.”
“But, that…remember what I said about there always being a but. But, that alone isn’t gonna bring you happiness. And if you learn more than anyone ever has and it makes you the least happy person ever, well maybe you’re not so smart for learning all that shit, now are ya?”
And the Blood Ran Black Page 14