Call Me Human: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel

by Sergei Marysh

  ***

  Oh my God. My handwriting looks truly foul. It's a miracle I can still write, though. I could barely decrypt the previous entry. I don't read these days, but rather, guess what's written, using my new comprehension skills.

  One thing to mention about my mind expansion, as I think I have a theory about it. I believe that as my senses fail, my mind engages its usually dormant skills of first-hand reality perception. Reality — yes, sort of. Whatever. As I look back, I can see that those skills have developed gradually, while my bodily sensations were dying off.

  My hearing was failing — I was right in assuming so; but it was overlapped by visions delivered by other sensory organs we don't normally know or use in our world. What I took for colored spots and stripes were, in fact, fragments of another world overlapping ours: one that penetrated ours on its way from its own higher dimension. I couldn't understand it as I only saw pieces of it, which I took for erratic signals sent by my dying eyesight. Now that a majestic view of the world opens before me, I know it's too alien to the human mind to describe and enumerate it, let alone tag it. In two words, I can see (wrong word, absolutely useless) an awesome world I can't describe or bring under my control.

  ***

  I've managed to see (I'll keep using this word, for lack of a better one) our world being born. This very world where we used to go to work and where we now fight zombies. I also remembered I'd seen it many times before, as a baby, when I couldn't speak yet. At first (another inadequate word) there's a void, and a rapid vortex in it, something swirling fast in the heart of it. There's no name to it: it is everything that's ever existed, everything there is — life's raw material of sorts. It has no qualities, properties, not even shape, but you can perceive it — although there's nobody to perceive it yet because you need a world first where to put the observer. It can be seen, but there's no one to see it yet. No, our language is no good. Then, at a particular moment an unknown force causes the vortex to change direction, and the fragments of that unknown something stick together, bringing our world into existence. It happens instantaneously; no effort or movement is involved in the process, although the vortex seems to be still swirling. The world disintegrates very much the same way. Although it doesn't look to be destruction: rather, what kids do when they dismantle their building kits and place all the pieces back into their box, so that they could start their work anew in the morning.

  This process of creation and decay repeats every time a person falls asleep and then wakes up. During my long years of living in my body, I lost my ability to see it, but now with its physical death, I've claimed it back.

  ***

  A funny thing has happened. If you alter the perception focus by consciously concentrating, all these wondrous and beautiful things that I can see but can't comprehend, fall together and start making sense. I like to think that I've learned to divine the nature of things. Sense is nothing but a yet another dimension, a frame of reference we use to trap reality (another meaningless word!) with in order to discipline and explain it. The way I look at it now, understanding serves no purpose but it makes us feel better.

  A little effort — and the wonderful kaleidoscope crowds with objects and events which follow an orderly set of laws and are interconnected in strict synergy. They have their own properties, characteristics, causes and effects, and the more evolved of them — like human beings or some others, — also their own wills and intentions. It's all so interesting. Naturally, the object world is rather boring and devoid of magic; but by the same token, you can study and classify, even describe, it, which makes it fun, too.

  But it could also happen that — and I have to admit that this notion scares me — that their sense derived in this manner can be, well, senseless. Possessing this knowledge may prove highly practical but, even as we possess it, we'll be just as far from grasping the nature of the things and forces we're using. I'm even more wary of the fact that this so-called grasp on reality may prove to be just another buzz word. There's nothing in the real world to peg it on! What if it exists solely for our comfort, and reality itself couldn't care less for our "grasping" it? Then logically, nothing can be understood through comprehending. Ouch, my poor imaginary head is sore with trying to explain it!

  XVIII

  While I pursued my experiments, I think I've managed to "see" the cause of my current state. I can't tell whether it's indeed a virus... but I'll keep calling it a virus for lack of a better word. I'm not sure how the human eye is going to perceive it through the microscope lens, but this is how I view it: something only half-alive, a hybrid of a protozoan and a non-organic entity. It looks like a blot of black substance, its inside sparkling with crimson. Not black as we understand it — when light doesn't reflect from a surface — but, on the contrary, exuding active radiation, black as coals. To visualize it, you'll have to imagine a sunrise filmed in negative: its rays will be the black I mean.

  When I first saw the virus I only felt fear and disgust, as if swimming into a foul black spot in the middle of a beautiful lake. But watching it time after time, I got used to it. I don't find it so obnoxious any more. When you have a closer look, it looks different: a bit like some black fluffy mold radiating an oily shine. I can liken it to a charmed black forest, treetops swaying in the wind, occasional red lights sparkling here and there in the thick. It's truly mesmerizing; you can forget yourself and stare at it for an eternity, as if you've found yourself in a weird new world, miles apart from what we're used to.

  The virus survives in blood and other liquids in the shape of microscopic dots, very much like mould spores I once saw on TV. What I perceive as the "black forest" is their concentration in some intestinal organs, especially the stomach, solar plexus, brain and spinal cord.

  Thanks to this information revealed to me, I know now that the so-called "zombie cravings" don't exist. Survivors have come up with this stereotype out of fear and inability to understand how the virus worked. They believe — just like I did myself not so long ago — that zombies persistently suffer from insatiable, infernal cravings which cause them to devour everything that moves. They are wrong. The cravings part of the story is true, but it's the mould, not its human host, that has them!

  What the virus does, it evicts, so to speak, the host's conscious mind, and squats in his or her body, using it to satisfy its own two needs, namely to feed and to propagate by killing everything else around. While the body, possessed by the virus, commits unthinkable deeds, the human inside it basks in blissful dreams, connected to the body with something that looks like the finest cord of silver light. At least that's how I see it. This cord won't break because the virus won't let it happen, otherwise his host would promptly turn into a regular corpse which will collapse on the ground and decompose in due time, and the virus will be forced to share his fate.

  I've also finally solved the puzzle of zombies' dislike of sunlight. A corpse couldn't care less, but the virus dies in the sun's rays. You'd think, once it's inside the body it has nothing to fear. But the bodies of most victims are so messed up there's little difference between inside and out.

  The mould consumes organic life directly, without the need for chemical reactions of any kind. I do understand it's not possible, but that's the way I perceive it. The mould sucks out the victims' life force, leaving the host just enough to keep him or her functioning. Zombies are not completely dead: there are grains of life in them, so tiny no instruments can register it, overpowered by the virus's activity.

  ***

  It gets curiouser and curiouser. Looks like I can see myself in different places, and even time periods, at the same time! Like now, part of me is lying on the bed in this room; another part is in a totally different town, and in the past, mind you: at the exact period when I used to live there. It's as if I'm spread like a blob of butter over space and time. A weird and very special feeling. I tried to transfer myself to various periods of my life — and I did it hands down! This isn't human memory at work: I relive th
ese moments so vividly as if in real time, and indeed I do, even though they are the things of the far gone past. Just another thing I can't explain.

  Driven by curiosity, I've decided to visit the future as well as the past. The sun is shining; I plod along, the bronze angel in my hands, when the world turns round and goes black. In place of sunlight, the star-packed blackness of outer space. The stars whirl around me, and I disappear in their vortex. The last thing I experience before disappearing completely is peace, eternal and all-absorbing. No happiness available to a human being can even start to describe it. If I had to explain it in one word, I'd call it... fulfillment.

  Inspired by the vision, I've decided to go one step further and find out a thing or two about my friends I've left in the shelter. In two words: I've done it, more details tomorrow. Tomorrow! What a ridiculous word indeed.

  ***

  Now the details. At first, I wanted to see what they were doing at the moment. I nearly drowned in the flood of visions, rather senseless mainly, but the basic idea I got was that nothing much has changed since I left. Masha was still ill, with Valentine fussing around her, and Alex prowling about the neighborhood, impatient to move on.

  I apparently had to concentrate on one or the other, and I chose Valentine to start with. Strange visions started flashing — most likely, the scenes of his past. They slowed down almost to a halt when I tried to focus, and I "saw" him meeting his wife at the station. Here's a train coming carrying lots of bitten, wounded and bleeding people; the poor buggers have no idea yet what they're going to face in a few minutes. When the doors open letting them out, the bitten ones start mutating and attacking the still-alive ones. His wife is attacked; Valentine tries to protect her and gets his forearm bitten, just as he told me.

  Then I "see" the virus in his bloodstream. Once inside, it immediately takes over the whole body, but for some reason remains latent instead of reactivating. Even the gleam it produces is not black, but a barely-there dark grey glitter that makes it look even more like mould spores.

  According to Valentine, a zombie penetrated his wife's room and bit her, causing her to mutate and Valentine, to kill her. Now I know it's not true. It was Valentine who infected her. He didn't mean it, of course, because at the time, no one knew anything about the infection routes. They spent the night together. His wife being frail and all, she didn't show much resistance to the virus: a few hours were enough. In the morning when Valentine woke up, he discovered a living dead in his marital bed. The rest of his story was true: he managed to kill her and escape the sanatorium.

  I also see that now he sleeps with Masha — I was right presuming they were lovers — and she already has the virus, albeit dormant still. She is doomed, and Valentine knows it: he realizes he is guilty of killing her, but can't help it: he's too much in love to think about the consequences.

  Strangely, I'm not at all concerned by what I've seen. Remaining human, at least somewhere deep inside, you'd think I'd sympathize with my friends: be upset about Valentine's lies to me, panic at the dangers awaiting Alex or grieve about Masha's horrid transformation. But nothing stirs inside. I've always been over-emotional, but now it feels as if I'm in suspended animation. Apparently, the emotional sphere has followed suit of my other bodily functions. I haven't even noticed it happen. Funny how it all goes: my body went down first, followed by my psyche. Like a robot, I'm being switched off part by part.

  ***

  Today, I couldn't resist the temptation of taking a peek at their nearest future. Valentine first. I see him in the dining room, an SMG in his hands. He ducks to avoid the bullets coming from outside. Masha is next to him and he's trying to save her. Too late — enemies have taken the building. They've come up the stairs and filled the corridor, the very same one where I killed the two jailbirds. Valentine attempts to defend Masha: he shoots at them and they fire back; he collapses with bullet wounds in his chest.

  Then I see Masha. She's in a dark cellar, a dim light bulb shining at her face. I can see that it's the face of a zombie: the virus has devoured her, she is definitively a corpse with her ashen skin, ugly distorted features, and senseless eyes full of hatred and fury. Muffled growling and howling escape her chapped lips. She's strapped in an armchair, surrounded by people: I can't see their faces because they stand in the dark.

  Now Alex. At first I decided against watching him die, but then curiosity took the better of me. I wanted to know what life had in store for him. I saw him rush through the forest, trying to outrun the bullets that whizzed after him breaking tree branches in their chase. I could hear dogs bark, more shots and yelling coming from his chasers. He shook them off and tried to throw them off his trail by hiding in ravines, moving deeper and deeper into the woods. The shouts and barking ceased after a while, only an occasional bullet thumped into a tree trunk overhead. Finally, he crossed the river and broke loose; exhausted, he lay on the grass, staring at the fluffy clouds in the limitlessly blue sky. As I understood it, he managed to survive this predicament.

  What lies in store for him, then? What I'm seeing now must be many years in the future. Cliffs overhang the sea shore, pebble beaches seem to stretch for miles. Above the crevice, a tiny, toy-like castle of grey stone towers above the precipice. Could it be Yalta? Russia's tricolor flag flaps over its roof. The wind carries fragments of a song that comes from large loudspeakers in the castle windows. I barely manage to recognize a few words: it's a very old song, performed by the Russian people's all-time favorite, Alla Pugacheva.

  The road which leads to the castle is blocked. Looks like they have a signal box there: a squat cabin with concrete walls and a machine gun poking from the window; next to it, a tank's cannon points at the road. The approaches to the castle are enmeshed with barbed wire leaving a narrow passage between the tank and the cabin, blocked with a gate of steel rods wielded together. A few young lads, up to their teeth in weapons, sit on top of the tank, laughing and poking fun at each other. I can't make out what they're talking about, but occasional bursts of laughter I can hear very well.

  Then I see the castle's inner rooms. The place is crowded: men and women appear to be busy with something, while others seem to have a break. Lots of children — you can hear their voices everywhere.

  As I keep peering I realize that many of them have a fleeting resemblance to each other. I'm looking at a large clan: all these people are related, they're each other's sisters, brothers, children, aunties, uncles and various in-laws, united by their mutual love and blood bonds.

  I now see the other side of the castle, the one you can't notice from the road. Under an awning, a soft settee faces the sea for a perfect view. On it reposes a white-haired old boy with a gut and a moustache; a curled cat sleeps in his lap. The old guy strokes the cat with one hand while holding a pipe in the other; from time to time, he softly places the pipe into his mouth trying not to wake up the cat, keeps it there for a while and removes it; then he produces thick clouds of smoke which the wind carries promptly away. Two little urchins play chase around the settee, and the old guy watches them with affection. I start to understand that he is the patriarch, the head of the clan and the owner of everything I see. I peer deeper into his face: it's Alex. Through hell and high water he has come to arrive at this place, old but, finally, content.

  XIX

  My new abilities inspire me so much that there's no stopping me. This time I wanted to know how it had all started: what had caused the pandemic that destroyed us. As soon as I sent a "mental signal" to my brain, I found my bed-resting, notebook-scribbling self in a totally different place I'd never seen before. This wasn't a vision any more: I actively participated in the events that unfolded.

  I'm in the subway, sitting on the platform with my back to the wall. Next to me, a tramp, quite aggressive but too weak to assault anyone. People give him a wide berth while he mouths insults, hisses and growls at their backs. He seems to be particularly annoyed with one of the passengers and crawls after him. When he crawls past me, I ca
n see that his lower body is missing: I can see the remaining backbone, flesh and whatever else there is. This has to be the first zombie, the one that started it all. I think that epidemiologists have a special term for the first epidemic victim, "zero patient". This tramp has to be it. I can't tell you where exactly the scene takes place but I have an impression it's some American city, a rather big one, seeing as they have a subway there.

  Given the impression the scene left, it wasn't really what I hoped to see. I wasn't interested in the details, but rather, in the causes of what happened. What had humanity done to deserve this lot? Why?

  After my numerous perception-expanding experiments I've lost the illusion of believing in "true reasons" for anything, let alone in hoping to discover them. I'm no longer tempted by words like "truth", "meaning", "cause" or, on the other hand, "correctness", "decency", or "common good". In reality, there's nothing in nature that can bear any of these names: they're nothing but a harmful abstraction, just like language on the whole, that lead us away from the direct perception of reality. I understand very well that my questions belong to the latter category. Don't I know that my conscious mind is capable of conjuring up endless and most detailed worlds, on the slightest cue from my whimsical fancy? As real as ours, those worlds can be so much like it; at other times, they aren't. I know that whenever I want a question asked that has no answer to begin with, my conscious mind will solve it anyway, by simply creating a world that holds the answer to my question. But is there any value in such an answer? Just shows you how false our language is: to explain the fictitiousness of the word "truth", I have to turn to the idea equally fictitious, that of "value".