Lights flashed across the walls and for a moment, she could almost forget that the world had died. It was such an ordinary event, light on a wall. Was a car passing by? Were customers coming to pick up the pictures? Then the soldier picked her up by her elbow, twisting her arm awkwardly, which made her yelp, and tossed her effortlessly over his shoulder.
Randi’s dark hair cascaded down past her head inhibiting much of the view around her. Outside, the night air was cold and pricked her skin with goosebumps. Her chest continued to throb from where he had pinched her.
“Were almost home, love,” he said and chuckled at some inner thought. “You’ll be warm in no time. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can warm up when you can’t stop screaming.”
Randi felt warmth spread across her backside and down her thighs. The sharp smell of urine filled the air around her and she struggled with the shame of knowing that she had lost control of her bladder. He would use this against her. She wanted to cry, scream, thrash, and . . . die. She had no idea what to expect from her near future and that lack of knowledge was like a buzz saw in her head grinding away at her will and showering everything in her brain with hot sparks.
Then an image filled her mind. She saw her mother in her crisp doctor’s smock standing arm and arm with her new friend Jack. They were smiling at her. Their eyes filled with love and affection. From behind the two, crept a soldier. He moved with the grace of a killer. His smile was cruel and mocking as he closed in on his two unsuspecting victims.
The image vanished and was replaced by radiant embers of fury. As long as this man lived, the safety and health of everyone she loved was in jeopardy. She would live. She would bear up under his touch. She would wait. When the opportunity arose, she would kill him, even if it meant giving her own life. The thought lent her courage.
Lifting her head, she looked across the parking lot to the shopping center. The dead had laid claim to the property like squatters; some were close. She could smell them. She drew deep droughts of the tainted air and then imagined that taint filling her heart.
As the soldier stepped up, carrying her into the shadowed rear of the army truck, she sent her thoughts out into the night. Wish me luck, Jack.
EPILOGUE
Wednesday, October 27th, 2017
I t was one heck of a storm. The world having returned to a pre-technological era made it impossible for George to know if the boiling clouds above him were part of a tropical storm or a hurricane. The sky dumped sheets of heavy, fat drops that pelted him like liquid hail that stung his face. His thick brown hair that usually stood every-which-way was now plastered to his glasses across his forehead. A scraggly beard made him look more like a hobo than a scientist. The wind lashed his white overcoat so that it snapped like a flag around his body as he walked, jerked and sometimes hopped toward the iron stairs that would take him to the helideck.
He slipped on the first step and skinned his knee. Struggling against the wind, he was too tired to swear. He looked down at the water below him some one-hundred feet. The thirty-foot whitecaps danced and leapt into the air around the thick black pylons under the Malex oilrig as if calling to Mother Sky to send more rain. Smearing the droplets on his thick glasses with a chubby finger, George squinted toward the shore. On a clear sunny day, he would have been able to see the distant white line on the horizon that was the sandy beaches of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. Now he couldn’t distinguish between the gray soup that was the ocean and the gray soup that was the sky.
A wail from behind startled him into action again. He clutched the silver titanium case to his chest despite the fact that it was cuffed to his left wrist. Lightning etched the dark sky with its blue-white lines and in that celestial radiance, George could see his co-workers lumbering toward him in their slow, sloppy gait — their dead eyes boring into his soul. The thunder felt as if it was coming from within him.
“I — I’m sorry,” he whispered. His tears mingled with the rain pouring down his face.
Using his one free hand, he slid down the steps to the first landing. Broad rusty cylinders stacked side by side curved around the lip of the landing, effectively blocking the wind. In the confined space, he watched Doctor Jared Spinner, a neurobiologist and close friend who died two days prior, as he was swept off the top deck by a particularly strong gust of wind. He disappeared into the frothing swells below. When George turned back, he saw his Karen standing at the top step. The lightning made her blonde hair glow with each flash. Her milky eyes looked nothing like the beautiful green orbs he’d fallen in love with when they were in college. George clutched the case tighter to his chest and sobbed. Thunder pealed.
“George, it’s okay,” Karen said. “The serum works.” The pasty skin on her face creased, baring her white teeth in a grotesque rendition of what once was her most charming attribute.
“No! You’re dead!” George screamed at the specter and then ran down the steps.
Karen was the reason he had been assigned to the Malex Research Group. The oilrig was a cover, permitting them to operate with a certain level of anonymity. The M.R.G. had collected some of the greatest scientific minds to come up with a cure for the zombie plague they had labeled, Mortis One. What better place to research and study the virus than on a rig in the middle of the Gulf? No zombies, no threat. Right? Wrong. To study the plague, they had to have samples of the plague. There was a risk of contamination.
“George!” It was as if he could hear Karen’s voice in his mind. “Please! Stop running!”
His feet moved of their own volition and he finally found himself standing on the hard asphalt of the helideck. The storm was increasing in strength. The rain fell horizontally. A small bubble helicopter was strapped to the asphalt and it shuddered under the increasing velocity of the torrent whipping across the deck. George failed to notice the complete lack of odds and ends that normally cluttered the helideck. There were no coils of ropes, barrels of fuel, trashcans, or large wooden crates. The only thing of note between the yellow deck rails was the small helicopter.
As soon as he stepped out from the shelter of the stairwell, the wind clouted him, bowled him over and nearly rolled him off the deck. Flipping over the edge, he managed to lock his left arm around the rail. An updraft caused his white overcoat to roll up his back and flap about his head. The silver case landed hard against his right shoulder. His feet dangled in the open air and the wind pushed his trouser legs up, exposing his mismatched socks and pale white legs. George looked wide-eyed over his shoulder at the pipe deck thirty feet below him.
Across the helideck, George watched in horror as Doctor Jamie Sanderson’s elderly corpse toppled when it stepped out into the gale. It hit the asphalt face first and then rolled several yards before coming to a stop less than two yards from George. She was wearing her red sweater, a pleated grey skirt and yellow galoshes. Her face was caved in at the nose and one eye hung from its socket like a spoiled meatball. The other eye turned on him. Her eyeglasses were partially buried in her exposed sinus cavity. In that one moment, George felt such a sense of revulsion and horror that he wanted let go of the rail. It would be better to fall to his death than to face the biting yellow teeth of a woman he loved as a mother.
Doctor Sanderson was the managing representative of the Malex Research Group. She had originally doubted his ability to maintain a productive presence on the team. Karen had convinced her that he would be a valuable asset since he was the foremost virologist in the U.S. She had not been wrong. His expertise allowed them to develop the serum that he now carried cuffed to his wrist. Though untested, he was sure it was the answer to the plague sweeping the world leaving the human race on the verge of extinction. He alone carried the cure!
George was the last living scientist aboard the rig and he knew that it was his responsibility to get the cure to the mainland. For days, he’d had nightmares about the world succumbing to the plague because no one in the Malex Group survived to get the cure to those who needed it.
The creature that was Doctor Sanderson reached an arm in his direction. Her long curly hair was blown straight by the wind. She began to inch herself in his direction through the puddles of water between them. The scratching of her nails on the asphalt ran shivers down his spine.
He wanted to let go. He was sure that he could survive a thirty-foot drop to the pipe deck below. The difficulty was that his left arm was around the deck rail, which left the chain and the case carrying the serum on the wrong side of the railing. If he let go, he would be left hanging from his wrist. He wiped hastily at his glasses again. His time was running out.
George allowed himself to hang from his elbow as it bent around the pipe. With his right hand, he grasped the case and tossed it onto the deck. Now, he thought to himself. If I can just maneuver it so that it won’t get trapped on the rail, I can let myself fall. He reached back up and tried to push the case further to his left. His feet thrashed in the air with the effort.
The silver case suddenly spun and then flew off the deck, striking him in his right shoulder again. The creature’s mangled visage rose up in front of his face over his arm. Mucus mingled with rainwater burped from the wound in its face and he could hear the sucking sinus cavity over the static of the falling rain around him.
He was stuck. He couldn’t let go if he wanted to.
The creature’s first attempt to bite his arm missed because its head hit the railing. The second attempt missed because he reached up and grabbed it by the hair, pulling its face toward the edge. Howling, it thrashed in frustration. Its hands floundered at him and he tried to turn his face away from the assault, but was too late. His glasses were knocked from his face and his vision was swept into a blur. It was as if the world was a precious painting and had been smeared by the rain.
George let go of his hold on the zombie in an attempt to catch his spectacles before they fell into oblivion. He missed. Over the sound of the falling rain, he vaguely heard them hit a large pipe below. Despair wreaked havoc in his chest. Then he felt the painful bite as it sunk deeply into his forearm.
Immediately, his left hand spasmed. The muscles allowing it to function properly were damaged.
“No!” George screamed. He swung his legs to the left and when they came back to the right, he used the momentum to elevate his right arm so that he could grab a handful of the fiend’s hair. Then using the opposite momentum when his body swung back, he pulled with all his strength.
Doctor Sanderson was a rather petite woman. George pulled the corpse from the asphalt by the hair. Head first, it dropped onto the pipe deck. It took a couple of seconds before the hollow sound of the body striking the pipes echoed from below. It made George think of a gong.
Swinging left to right again, he was able to throw a leg up onto the deck and eventually roll over the edge to lie on his back facing the sky. His lips were buzzing and he realized that he was hyperventilating. He closed his eyes and lay still as he calmed his breathing. Water pooled over his eyelids. Lightning flickered in the distance and was followed swiftly by its rumbling counterpart. What to do now, he thought.
He had been bitten.
The way he had it figured, he had about twenty or thirty minutes before the virus would end him. In his mind, he could already see the virus working its voodoo in his body — the curse for having spent so much time looking at it through a microscope.
His arm felt as if it was on fire. He rolled over and held it to his chest. The clink of the chain on the asphalt made him look at the silver blur lying beside him. Within the safety of that little container were two syringes containing a yellowish green serum — the last of the cure. Slowly, a truth dawned on him. The best way to carry the serum would be to give it to himself. His body would then create the antibodies needed and he wouldn’t have to die from the bite. He would be the cure!
George sat up quickly and pulled the case between his legs. He had placed the key into his breast pocket. His fingers felt numb from the cold rain and he fumbled in the pocket until he realized that it was empty. Squelching a curse, he laid back and dug his hand into his pants pockets, searching frantically. He yelped in pain when he tried using his left hand.
The key was gone.
He’d lost it somewhere between the moment he stepped onto the helideck and where he now found himself lying on the asphalt. With a desperation that bordered on a temper tantrum, George picked up the titanium case and began to beat it into the asphalt with his good hand. He pounded and pounded it until he screamed in frustration.
“Damn! Damn! Damn!” he yelled and threw the case away so that it flew to the end of the chain and then yanked his wounded arm causing him to cry out in pain again. “Damn,” he repeated.
“George.” Karen’s voice sounded tender and he felt mocked by it.
“You are dead!” George screamed. “I watched you die!”
“George the serum works. Look at me.”
George turned his head toward the apparition who once was a woman he secretly loved. She was nothing more than a colorless smear back dropped by a world he could no longer see. He turned away, clasping the case to his chest as if it was his only anchor to sanity.
“Give me the case, George. I’ll open it for you.”
“No!” he screamed and stood up awkwardly. His legs quivered and he suddenly felt hot. “You’re dead! Dead people don’t talk. I— I’m hallucinating!” He threw his head back and shook it like a wet dog.
A cold dead hand touched his cheek and he screamed. He knew what it felt like to be bitten and refused to suffer such pain again. He slapped the hand away from him and then swung the case with all his strength. It came into solid contact with the zombie. The crunch of breaking bones followed a brief yet indecipherable cry. He fell forward against the creature under the thrust of his attack. Blind fear compelled him to wrap his arms around the thing and drive it backward. His goal was to crush it against something.
When he felt the firm asphalt disappear from under his feet, he knew that he’d made a mistake. He could feel the creature in front of him as they fell and so he pulled it to him hoping that its body would cushion his impact with the water. It did.
Coughing up what seemed like a gallon of salt water, he turned to see the sky darken as a wave rose above him. It crashed down upon him causing him to tumble in the airy water as it fizzed about him. Somewhere in the mix, he felt Karen’s corpse bump into him. He tried to push it away, but it wouldn’t go. It wasn’t until he managed to reach the surface between swells that he came to understand why he couldn’t push her away. The silver case was buoyant. Her arm, draped over the chain, effectively trapped her between him and the case.
He reached over to dislodge her, when her voice came to him again.
“George . . . [gurgle] . . . please. The serum works . . . [gurgle] Help me, George. My neck is broke and [cough] I won’t be able to swim. Please [gurgle] help me! Please!”
Unable to take anymore, George pulled the corpse off the short chain and then pushed it away from him violently. It drifted away, slowly descending as water filled its cavities. George quickly pulled the floating case to him and threw his arms around it. For several minutes, he stared out at the fuzzy world with eyes that he knew would soon glaze over. The only detail that he could distinguish was the fact that the sky was dimming as if a cover was being pulled over the sun. The wash of rain on the surface of the water made him feel sleepy. It won’t be long now, he thought to himself and closed his eyes. His last thoughts were of Karen.
In no time at all, he fell into a deep sleep. His dying body slipped beneath the water and it hung suspended by the wrist under the bobbing silver case. The case was labeled, Malex Research Group.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
D. N. Harding spent the majority of his adult life in prison where he received his Bachelor’s Degree in Christian Theology and Biblical Studies. After spending a few years teaching Bible College to inmates, he was transferred to an institution where he joined Shakespeare Behind bars.
/> While in prison he developed a desire to write and worked briefly for an inmate magazine distributed within the prison. The majority of this book was written during this time.
After his release in 2015, he began working with GA Sanctuaries in an attempt to ease the transition of men and women leaving prison. He is the Creative Director of a quarterly magazine that is sent into all the prisons and jails in the state of Kentucky.
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