Dead World: Hero

by D. N. Harding

  Jack told her everything he had seen. He left nothing out. There was no doubt that she was a tough little squirt and he felt no need to sugarcoat the truth. When she asked questions, he answered as honestly as possible and she asked a lot of questions. She was looking for something in particular. Finally, it came out.

  “You saw my mother? Doctor Baker?”

  “Doctor Shirley Baker is your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack nodded and watched her visibly relax. She turned around and sat on the edge of the roof. When she started giggling, Jack raised his eyebrows. What started as a chuckle gradually grew into full-blown laughter. Her tears flowed freely despite it. Before long, Jack was laughing along with her regardless of the pain it caused his arm. He had no idea why he was laughing except that it was naturally contagious. When she began to settle down, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, but I’m going to find out where they took my mom and why.” She turned her mascara streaked face toward the sun and closed her eyes. The autumn day was warm. Cottony-white clouds drifted like islands through the blue expanse above her. She thought about the last time she had seen her mother. They had argued. Randi wanted to go out with the teams to scavenge for more supplies. No one could scavenge like she could and everyone knew it — everyone except her mother. “You’re too young to be out there,” her mother had said. In response, Randi had used words and called her names that she now regretted. Her mother deserved better. Randi left anyway, leaving her mother calling from behind her.

  “Be glad you weren’t there, Randi,” Jack said. “They weren’t gentle with the women.” The only reason he didn’t say what he suspected the men would do to the women once they got them home was that he didn’t want to worry her further. He could read the soldier’s intentions on their faces when they bound the women. “I’ve personally seen what these men are capable of — it isn’t nice. I want to find them as bad as you do, but we need to be smart about it. It won’t do to get ourselves killed because we didn’t think things through.” Jack watched her closely as he spoke gauging her response to his words. He really wanted to talk to her about all the killing he’d witnessed her do. It wasn’t right that a smart girl like her should travel such a dark road. Maybe he could do something to convince her to set aside the rifle.

  “So what do we do now?” Randi asked as she kicked at the pea gravel.

  “With my arm the way it is, I don’t see that I have any choice but to wait until it heals. It’s not broken or fractured — at least I don’t think so. I think I sprained it. It hurts more in my shoulder than in the elbow.”

  “Let me see it,” she said. The tone in her voice sounded much like what he might hear from a trained physician. She even maintained that “no nonsense” attitude that said that the doctor knows best. He had to smile, as she looked him over. “I think your right. It’s not broken or fractured.”

  “How long you think I got, doc, before I will have full use of it?” Jack said with as much seriousness as he could muster. She stopped and looked him in the eye, searching for sarcasm. Jack did well to hide it.

  “A couple of days and we should be on our way,” she concluded and then with a slight smirk added, “Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.” Her smirk gradually blossomed into a smile. Her whole face lit up with it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  J ack rolled over on the makeshift bed that doubled for a couch in a small conference room. Something had brought him out of his sleep. His watch read 3:23 A.M. Randi’s pallet on the floor was nothing more than a pile of blankets. No Randi. Then he heard it. Gunfire. The first thought to enter his mind was that The Band had discovered them and Randi was fighting them off with her automatic rifle.

  He quickly realized that his motor skills were still half-asleep as he unwittingly entered into a wrestling match with his blanket in the attempt to get out of bed. Exasperated, he stop thrashing — conceded that the blanket was winning — then slowly and deliberately pulled himself out of the ninja-like burrito wrapping. Once his feet hit the floor, he grabbed his pistol, stubbed his bare toe on a chair, opened the door leading to the hallway, and then unceremoniously fell through it. By the time he was up the stairs and out onto the rooftop, his shoulder was throbbing in perfect time with his big toe, all of which was further aggravated by the fact that he hadn’t taken the time to put his shoes on. His tender feet cursed him as he ran across the gravel.

  Randi knelt and sighted down her rifle, her cheek resting lightly on the wooden stock. Slowly she squeezed the trigger. Bang. The sound was deafening. When she heard the gravel crunch from behind her, she turned to see Jack partially running and partially dancing across the gravel toward her. He looked like an amateur firewalker who was in the process of losing a bet. The look on his face wiped the smile off hers.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, moving her gaze to the open door to the roof behind Jack as if she expected the “problem” to come from its open mouth.

  “That’s what I came to find out,” Jack replied, unable to hide the frustration in his voice. He stepped over to the edge of the roof and looked down at the carnage below. There were dozens of dead people sprawled in the street. All of them taken down by headshots.

  “How can you be so cruel? What did those people do to you that you can just murder them for the pleasure of it?” His voice was soft and filled with reproach.

  “What people?” she asked. The tone of his voice sounded very much like the tone her mother so easily mastered. Her chin rose ever so slightly in response. There was going to be a fight. “You mean those things?” She pointed and laughed. Her own voice now filled with scorn. “You’d better wake up, Jack. Those things are not people. They’re monsters!”

  Jack found himself on the defensive. He didn’t want to fight with her, but she had to know that killing because you simply label someone a monster doesn’t justify the means.

  “That’s what Hitler said of the Jews,” he said. “They weren’t real people so it didn’t matter what they did to them. Randi, just because you call them monsters doesn’t mean that it’s so. Look at them. They’re sick. They don’t know what they are doing and they can’t help themselves. Look!” Jack pointed down to the street.

  A clearing had opened up among the throngs of people leaving a single child standing by himself. His cloudy eyes carried no awareness. He merely stood in the street unmoving. His shirt was no longer white and the denim overalls still held a crease. His little hands were so dirty they looked nearly black. Gripped in one hand was a small blanket. “Don’t you see?”

  “Here is what I see,” she said as she lifted the rifle.

  What she was doing failed to register with Jack until it was too late. The shot echoed throughout the canyon walls below them. The whole scene seemed to move in slow motion. With one hand still extended toward Randi in his failed effort to stop her, he watched the end of the gun spit fire. The bullet, moving too fast to watch, made straight for its target. Jack watched a red dot appear on the child’s forehead, while what looked like red pudding with small pieces of fruit ejected from the back of the child’s head. The boy dropped to the pavement without a sound.

  “If that was a real child, do you think I would have killed it?” Her voice filled the vacuum left by the gunshot. She watched, as Jack had to tear his eyes from the body of the boy to look at her. His face was expressionless, but his eyes were filled with barely restrained fury. The look he gave her stripped her of her confidence. It laid her open in ways that no one had ever been able to do. She knew that she was right in her choices, but in this moment she would have gladly have taken the action back. When Jack stepped toward her, she felt the cold chill of terror run up her back. She raised her rifle to defend herself, but he had a hold of it before she could bring it fully to bear.

  Jack stripped the gun from her hands in the way a mother might take something dangerous from her child. The trigger guard bent her finger backward the wrong way and she yelped in re
sponse. She cradled her hurting hand under her armpit and watched with dismay as the weapon was launched into the air. It flew dozens of feet before clattering to the street below them.

  “You are better than this. I refuse to believe that you are the heartless murderer that I just witnessed,” Jack said. The tears in his eyes mirrored the tears in hers. Maybe you don’t know any better, but as long as we are travelling together, you will not kill without concern for the sanctity of human life. I know what it is to live under the shadow of such actions.” His voice softened as he realized that she was crying. “I would protect you from the guilt and horror that may one day torment you should your conscience come alive to these truths.”

  “You don’t understand,” she offered weakly.

  “Understand what? That you would rather kill than be killed? That because you choose not to see value in those who can’t protect themselves, it makes them worth killing? No, Randi, I think I understand perfectly.” Jack turned from her and started limping back to the exit, when he felt the weight of the gun in his own hand. Turning, he flung it into the night.

  Jack climbed back under the covers. His body ached from the bottom of his feet to the back of his neck. He felt as if he’d just been in a fight. He yawned. Randi crept into the room with her head down. He half expected her to pack her stuff and leave. She was a runner. She would only do what was in her nature to do. He sighed and rolled over.

  “Jack?” Her voice was soft, almost docile.

  “Yeah,” he responded.

  “I want to show you something — something that will help you understand.”

  “Understand what?” he asked, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice. He rolled back over. Randi was standing over him holding a pink smart phone. It was lined in black with red accessories.

  “May I?” she asked, pointing to the edge of the couch. She offered him a small smile as he slid back to give her room to sit on the couch in front of him. Her hands shook and she took a deep breath. “My father became infected and died. What’s on this video is the only thing of him I have left. He was a doctor just like my mom, except he was more of a scientist than a physician. He was also one of the first to study those who had become infected. He was trying to find a cure.”

  “Did he find one?” Jack asked.

  “No. But he did find something. Watch.” With that, she touched the screen of the phone and handed it to him. As the screen came alive with an image, she got up and left the room.

  The video jostled about as it depicted what was most likely a laboratory. The sterile white room filled with various utensils, beakers, glass tubing, computers, and the occasional box of rubber gloves made the perfect backdrop for a mad scientist’s lair, Jack thought. Unable to remain lying down to watch the video, Jack sat up and ran his hand through his hair. He was disappointed that the Asian doctor who stepped around the camera to film himself didn’t have wild and crazy hair like Gene Wilder in Frankenstein’s Monster.

  “My name is Doctor Thomas Baker. It is Saturday, June 26th, 2017 at 9:30 in the morning. My initial plan had been to study the subject in the hope of finding a cure, but what I have discovered removes from me any hope that a cure can be found.”

  With that, Doctor Baker turned the camera toward what appeared to be a CT scanner. Strapped to the bed of the device was a nude male. The restraints holding him down were drawn so tight that they had cut through his pasty gray skin. The man thrashed, shaking the machine violently in his effort to escape. Something appeared to be setting on his chest. Stuffed into his mouth was so much gauze that his jaw was locked open. Jack stifled a yawn as the doctor continued.

  “I know that the sight of this man may be shocking, but it will not compare to what I am about to show you.” Baker shivered and visibly broke out in a sweat on the screen. Wiping a shaky hand across his brow he continued, “I’m sorry, I don’t have much time. When I began to study this subject, he had just been bitten by another person who carried the infection. In less than an hour, this subject died from the viral infection. Let me say that again. This virus takes less than an hour to kill those who are infected. It has been rumored that some have turned within minutes of being bitten.”

  “Dead?” Jack said and looked toward the door. In his mind, he recalled the bus driver, the nurse and the man that had climbed on the bus after being bitten. None of them were dead as far as he knew.

  “Somehow — and I don’t know how — the virus reanimates the corpse.” Jack spun his head back to the screen. “However, I have discovered that the virus activates a sequence of chemical events, beginning under the surface of the skin and in the mucous membranes, which inhibit the bacteria that would normally cause decay in necrotic flesh.

  “This restriction of bacterial enzymatic activity somehow maintains the integrity of soft tissues, especially in the brain. Putrefaction is interrupted. The soft tissues, including the external epidermis, are turned into a soapy or waxy substance composed primarily of saturated fatty acids. The exact mechanism of this transformation is beyond my capacity to determine, but the final result is the preservation of the altered tissue. In layman’s terms, the flesh of the postmortem remains becomes mummified.”

  “Zombies?” Jack offered as he waited for the doctor to get to the point.

  “The point is,” the doctor continued as if in response to Jack’s question. “The virus reactivates brain activity after the subject is deceased. My research has uncovered what normally would have been the discovery of the century. However, under the present circumstances, it bodes ill for those of us who are not infected.

  “Various areas of the brain are hyper-stimulated by the virus. For instance, notice this part of the brain. It’s called the visual cortex. The amount of activity recorded here must affect the way the . . . creature . . . sees.” The doctor was holding what appeared to be a colorful x-ray of a human skull in his shaking hand. After succumbing to a violent coughing spasm, he leaned in closer to the screen. “Areas influenced by this hyper-activity include aggression, sensitivity to sounds, and [cough] an acute sense of smell — with the highest level of activity focusing in the hypothalamus. The creature is frenzied with a desire to consume.

  “Yet, one more thing should be noted.” With this, Doctor Baker moved the camera closer to the man strapped to the machine. The dead man was still jerking around despite the fact that his ribcage was pulled open. The camera moved to reveal a gruesomely empty chest cavity. The internal organs had been removed, yet the creature seemed alive. “These walking corpses are not dependent upon oxygen. If their lungs continue to function, they may still find some use for them, but as you can see, I’ve removed all the internal organs from its chest cavity. It continues to function without them.”

  Jack stared without blinking at the image of the dead man as it fought to get free from its restraints. Baker swayed unsteadily before setting the camera on the counter next to him. The image of the dead man’s face filled the screen. Somewhere near the camera, the doctor continued speaking though his voice was softer and gurgled at the end of his sentences. “Two things must be known if the human race is to survive this plague. One: the only way to kill them is trauma to the brain. Kill the brain you kill the creature. Secondly, and more important is that [cough] the virus that reanimates the corpse is highly unstable. It will most likely mutate or change the nature of how it functions. I’m not sure what that means. I’m not a virologist.”

  The bloody gauze finally came out of the creature’s mouth on the screen. Its chin dropped, leaving its jaws open wide as if it was trying to scream. Back and forth, its head thrashed against the table raising and dropping. Finally, its jaws chomped shut as it bit at the air. The sound of clicking teeth raised the hair on Jack’s neck. The screen jostled around again until it came to rest on Doctor Baker’s face. His eyes were beginning to cloud over.

  “Honey, I’m sorry it had to end this way. Please [cough] tell Randi that she has my . . . love.” The camera fell from his hands cl
attering on the white tiles of the laboratory floor. The doctor could be seen partially slumped over on the floor next to it.

  Jack reached over and touched the screen trying to turn it off. It took him a moment to figure it out. That was Randi’s father, he thought to himself as he looked through the open doorway. Dead. He didn’t want to believe it. How could it be true? Yet, he’d seen the dead man moving with his own eyes. There was no heart, no lungs and yet it lived. No. It was not alive. Randi was right. It was a monster.

  Jack climbed the stairs to the roof slowly, moving one foot in front of the other. He felt like a zombie himself — moving around yet without a spark of life. Zombies. How could it be? Stepping through the door into the cool morning air was a shock. It brought him partially out of his trance. Randi leaned over the edge of the roof looking at the crowds of people — no, they were not people — crowds of dead people. Dead people. Could he say the words aloud? He didn’t want to do it. If he could just not say it, it might not be true.

  “They’re dead,” Randi said for him.

  “Dead,” Jack repeated. He looked over the edge at the crowd below. Every one of them had been a living soul. Now they were. . .what? “What do I call them?”

  “Homomortis is the label my mother uses,” she said with a slight smile.

  “I don’t think so,” Jack responded shaking his head. “They’re zombies. They’re the undead — if I am to use words that I previously thought to be fiction.” There was no humor in his voice. His mind still had not absorbed the whole truth yet. Hundreds of moving corpses filled the street below. Their moaning and wailing filled the air with a cacophony of sounds that made him shiver. The child he thought Randi had murdered was dead before she shot him. The body was still in the street below. The people he had watched her kill on her way to meet him were dead before she met them. The six men and women he’d killed on the street below were already dead.