2136: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

by Matthew Thrush

  One of them latched on to my arm and pulled. I fell backward as they crawled on top of me. I pushed its snapping teeth from my face with both palms, emitting more foul blood and decay, dripping onto my neck as I peeled the flesh away from its face with my fingers. Its roar of bloodlust matched my own roar as I jabbed my fingers into its yellow eyes until it stopped fighting and fell to the side.

  I didn't have time to react before the next was on me, clasping my throat with a skeleton hand fully devoid of fresh. Its entire left side was missing, and only a third of its face was attached. The rest was removed. Fortunately, so were its teeth and that saved me from the first bite. Its gnawing gums were across my forearm before I realized it had attached itself to my body like a leech. More black grit spread along my skin as its gums burst from the pressure and old blood oozed from its lips.

  The last remnants of its face met the side of the glass to my right in a puff of black blood as its body was yanked from mine and slammed into the inside of the aquarium tube. The boy was standing over me, clawing at the undead trying to squeeze through. Somehow, despite his small stature, he was abnormally strong. He lifted one of the ghouls off the ground and smashed its face into the floor. Its jaw rammed straight through its brain and out the back. Its body plopped motionless on the other bodies beginning to congregate by our feet. The smell of spoiled fish and waste filled the small glass chamber as their bodies joined the others on the ground.

  The boy's thumb ripped a hole in one of their throats and tore free its jugular with one quick yank before its yellow eyes rolled back. But as one fell, three more took its place. Removing my own bleeding knuckles from the eye socket of another, I saw the boy swarmed by five at once. He tried to bat away the first two and managed to remove part of their rotting faces, but his blows were weakening. Being cramped up in a small space doesn't allow for much movement. He was already deathly skinny, and his muscles—if we call them that—were stringy tendons bound to the bone. It was shocking he had lasted this long. They rushed in on him like a flood. There were just too many of them.

  His withered body disappeared through the shattered glass and behind the curtain of grey humanoids as he was dragged out. I tried to reach for him, but my fingers found empty air. The fear in those blue eyes was the last thing I saw. I fell to my back and wept, sending my knee into the groin of another, and my boot into the hand crawling on the ground. I screamed for the boy that never had a chance. I sobbed for the little girl who had turned into one of them and that I had killed. And I moaned for my own sake and for the fact that I would die here and now.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ I wept as the boy's screams died out. ‘I couldn't save you.’

  I fought on as long as I could as the rage rushed over me.

  The faces of all those who were lost over the years flashed before my eyes as the undead bodies clawed towards me. I felt a tug on my legs as the first ones got in. A sharp burning sensation permeated from my right calf, and then from my left bicep as their teeth bite through skin.

  My mind whirled with the newfound pain emitting from my lower body, and the burning sting coursing through my tiring arms. As I punched another in the collarbone, I saw the face of my childhood friend smiling at me when we first found our secret hideout place. The second blow brought the stern stare of reprimand from Roxx when I had stolen one of his tools from his shop and he had blamed one of the other citizens of Precinct 11 and the stunned look of betrayal when he found out it had been me. The third rotting face met by my nails flashed the greying face and wise eyes of my uncle who I had never properly known, but wished I had. As they swarmed in, and as I struggled to stay alive, their bodies piling up at my feet, their faces shifted to the faces of every person we placed on large burning stacks after the attack. I could see their eyes begging me to save them, to help them, to free them but I couldn't. Instead, I set fire to their corpses and watched their black smoke billow into the grey sky. And then I saw the faces of my parents.

  The misery of failing them flooded my soul and the tears did little to block out my remorse for letting them down.

  ‘I tried,’ I whispered into the dark as another one bit into my neck. ‘I thought I could make a difference, but I was wrong. You were wrong...’

  My parents' faces smiled back at me with approving eyes. There was no judgment in the way they looked at me; no sign of disappointment or criticism, they were happy to see me, proud of me.

  ‘Come home,’ I heard them say when another chomped down on my chest. I reached out my arms to them.

  The darkness washed over me as my hands met theirs.

  ‘I've missed you,’ I whimpered as I fell into their arms. ‘I'm ready.’

  Then I felt a violent tug on my legs and the gnawing claws and teeth slid from my thighs and arms. My body tore through their legs as they fumbled over each other to reposition themselves for the next attack. As my body was yanked free of the clasp of biting fangs and the glass tomb, their moans escalated.

  ‘No,’ I heard myself mumble as the faces of my parents faded away the moment I was removed from the chamber.

  ‘Take me back!’

  Gunfire erupted into the crowd of grey flesh-eating bodies as I was dragged farther away. I heard the howls of the undead creatures wail as the burning metal bit into their fleshy bodies. They fell by the dozen as I was dragged away on my back.

  The blue lighting of the pathway flickered in my eyes before being replaced by white—a blinding white light—and the hiss of the hatch door closing behind me. As the door slid closed, sealing off the death that was so close to claiming me with a loud click, I could hear the thud of thunder popping through the thick metal walls.

  The last thing I remember was smiling at how final it all sounded; like fireworks and bombs going off in the distance, or a storm rushing over the tin rooftops of Precinct 11 before it was washed away, and the electrifying numbness sizzling from every orifice of my body.

  Then nothing.

  ≈ Epilogue ≈

  I heard the 15mg drip of morphine before I felt the cold liquid enter my arm.

  My body felt on fire. Every inch of me cried out in pain. I willed the numbing agent down the plastic tube, but the drip maintained its torturous detour as it remained slow and constant. I tried to open my eyes but something was holding my eyelids in place. I raised my hand and retracted a wet finger. It felt like cold gel or slime as I rubbed my fingers together.

  ‘You're awake,’ I heard a familiar voice say the moment my hand touched my skin.

  I could feel my lips quiver and my tongue shift, but no words came out, just garbled up gibberish as I moaned my complaint. My neck immediately shocked my nerve cells with crippling pain. My body seized beneath the entourage of suffering just the mere attempt to speak created. My right thigh blazed as if it had been struck by lightning or had a raging fire licking my skin and bone with its hot breath. I couldn't feel my left leg or arm. Heck, I couldn't feel anything on my left side! I didn't know whether that was a good thing, or if it was due to the overriding heat permeating from my right side dwarfing all other feeling.

  ‘Don't try to speak,’ he said, this time right beside me. ‘Are you in pain?’

  I heard a machine to my left flare to life as the readings skyrocketed with the sudden wave of pain imploding just under my kneecap. If the machine didn't tell him, my face certainly would. Yes—I'm in PAIN! Do something...

  He moved next to me and within a few seconds the alarms stopped and the slow beep of my heart echoed in the room. The burning in my right side dulled slightly, but the ache in my neck remained.

  ‘That better?’ he asked.

  I felt my cheek twitch.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I don't know how much you remember, but it's very important that you try to remember everything you can. You've been in an accident and you're in critical condition. What you say may help us save your life and the lives of others like you. Okay?’

  Save me? I thought. Just kill me already. Why wait?
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br />   ‘Tap your finger if you understand what I said.’

  I tapped my finger.

  ‘Perfect,’ he exclaimed. ‘You're much more cooperative than my other patients.’

  So I'm a patient. What does that mean? I don't remember going to a hospital.

  ‘I'm going to ask you a series of questions. Some will be very obvious, while others seemingly random. But I assure you, every question matters, as do your responses. It is very important that you answer every question truthfully, otherwise I won't be able to help you.’

  You mean save me. Isn't that what you meant to say, Doc? Save me and the others like me? I was already assuming he was a doctor. For all I knew, I was his experiment and this questioning was just his way of getting off before he killed me.

  ‘Answer yes with a tap, and do nothing for no. Do you understand?’ he asked, completely oblivious to the internal dialogue going on inside my head.

  I tapped my finger on the steel table.

  ‘All right, let's get right to it,’ he said. ‘We'll start easy and work up to the hard questions.’

  I heard him take a deep breath and sigh it out.

  ‘Is your name Willow Evelyn Washington?’ he asked.

  Hearing my name spoken to me sounded alien. Like I was an outcast or stowaway within someone else's body. I tapped my finger to signal that he was correct.

  ‘Is your father's name Warren Washington?’

  Tap.

  ‘Is your uncle Parker Samuels Rivers?’

  I had no idea what Parker's full name was. He had only ever gone by Parker; just plain old Parker.

  I tapped my finger anyway.

  I already knew where this was going. But him knowing all of my family members’ names was disturbing. Almost as disturbing as the fact my eyes were sealed shut with some kind of mucus membrane, half my body was paralyzed or worse, while the other was undergoing a deprivation of peace that I was most likely fortunate enough not to see with my own eyes.

  At the sound of Roxx's name I felt my hand shake.

  I went to tap my finger thinking he was going to say my mother's name next, but he never did. Instead, he continued with, ‘Any siblings?’

  My finger remained motionless against my side.

  ‘Is your home of residence Precinct 11?’

  Well, Doc. You see, that depends. If you were to ask me a few days ago, I might have tapped my finger yes. But now—my thoughts hung in the air—home doesn't exist. So you tell me. Is Precinct 11 still standing or did you and your buddies see to it that the other quarter was demolished too?

  The only way to block out the pain emitting from my face was to play on my sarcastic twine. It barely helped.

  ‘I'll mark that as a yes,’ he said. ‘Do you know where you are? Do you know why you're here? Do you know who I am?’

  Nope—nope—and nope.

  I wished there was a way I could have shouted TELL ME, but I couldn't. I just had to lie there paralyzed. That's what I had decided. Whatever happened to me must have paralyzed my left side and severely damaged my right. As for my eyes, I hadn't come up with a plausible hypothesis that made my predicament any better or kept me from curtailing straight into the oblivion of fear.

  ‘Do you remember what happened to you?’

  His tone suddenly changed. Had I been watching him, I might not have noticed the slight change in pitch. But seeing as the only senses I could still use were fifty per cent sensory and a hundred per cent aural, I noticed.

  He waited for me to respond.

  A tingling sensation crept its way into the back of my skull as the limbic system tried to relay past moments of immense emotion. It was then that the flashes came. First they were light blue flickers as if someone was pouring water onto my face from a pitcher. Each flash was a splash of memory coursing through my circuitry, trying to free itself from captivity before it was erased completely. My thigh burned hotter the more the flashes intensified.

  ‘Do you remember?’ I heard him asking again, but I was lost to his voice.

  The temperature in the room changed. The throbbing in my shoulders subsided, and the pain in my thigh and neck disappeared. As my mind raced through the spinning shadows of my memory, my body reacted by secreting cool sweat. My heart rate quickened before nearly stopping, and then I was there.

  Where it all took place.

  My imprisonment took on the shape of a blue cylinder dome; the glass nearly impossible to see through. I noticed a white mist filtering in through an opening in the top of the chamber. The tube wound from the glass chamber and vanished beneath the floor. My body shivered, and my arms wrapped around me for warmth. I felt the icy touch of the glass against my back as I slid to the ground. And it was then I saw him.

  Then the glass shattered and they rushed in.

  My body started thrashing violently against the restraints of the table. My eyelids flickered but remained sealed. I opened my lips to scream, but only a gurgling sound slurped its way from my vocal cords. I was choking. Their hands were all over me. I could feel their teeth biting into my flesh. My thigh erupted into flames as one of them sank their teeth into the fleshy muscle. I could feel the tendon stretch and tear from my quad, rippling the pain up my stomach. My neck cried out as another tore a large chunk away. Warm blood squirted from my ruptured carotid artery. I knew I was going to die even before more of their grey, decaying bodies poured into the shattered glass chamber now flopped on its side.

  The memory of the little boy being torn to pieces beneath their claws and my helplessness to stop them from doing so flooded my vision. My finger rattled against the steel table as I pounded the edge until my fingernail split and blood oozed out.

  I felt hands against my shoulders pressing down firmly. More soon grabbed my arms and legs. My chest caved in as the harness tightened. I felt the life fading from me a second time, and I prayed I wouldn't wake up. But I didn't fade into the ether. There were no bright lights to welcome me, or singing angels with harps and wings flapping in the clouds. No friends or families smiling for my arrival. There was just the black behind my eyelids as they held me down and waited for the memory to slip away. After a while my heart rate slowed, and the burning dimmed.

  Then I heard him speak again.

  ‘The event you just saw is real,’ he said.

  My lips quivered. Something sticky seeped from the crevice of my left eye and slid down my cheek. I never wanted to remember that moment again. I would have given anything for that memory to be torn from my mind and burned to ash. But I knew I was destined to remember it. Isn't that what my father had told me just before he died in my hands? 'You are destined for something great,' he had said. Is anyone born for the purpose to suffer? I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't. My life had meaning. I just needed someone to tell me what that was.

  I felt the warmth of his breath next to my ear.

  ‘You've been infected,’ he said.

  Infected? I thought you could save me. What kind of infection? But I already knew—the bad kind. The kind that paralyzes half your body in a catatonic numbness the other in blistering pain. The kind that people pray they'll never witness personally. The kind that a bullet would solve before it came to that. The kind that had killed Zoey, Skylar, and all of those souls who attacked me. The kind that would change everything. The kind that was killing me.

  He continued to speak, ‘The infection has spread throughout your body. You've suffered severe external trauma to both thighs, a large laceration below your fifth rib, and half your neck was removed. We tried to stitch you up as best we could, but the damage was—’

  He broke off and looped around to my left side.

  Irreparable, I finished for him.

  ‘By now you've likely noticed the changes in your body. The infected normally begin to show signs of mutation after day three, but in your case, your body began its change within minutes. We have not determined why that is.’ He continued, ‘The first stage of infection starts with tingles in your lower extremitie
s, which then leads to numbness before all feeling goes away. We call this the Tranquil State of the infection. Stage Two, the body continues to morph as cells die off and repopulate at ten times the rate in their genetically altered state. In this stage the body has lost all sense of touch. The only thing holding you to this world is your mind, and that only lasts a short time before it too disappears. As you might have guessed, Stage Three is full catatonia. The body has completely shut down, all senses are gone, and the mind has shut off.’

  The burning in my right ankle stopped. I couldn't feel it any more. Guess that means I’m moving into Stage Two and heading for the end.

  ‘This leads to the last and final stage. Stage Four, or as it's known, Genesis. You're no longer living, but something else. We haven't been able to determine what causes the body to reboot itself after death, but the neurological pathways ignite. Each subject is different and sometimes the brain never reactivates. For some, it's within a few hours. With others, a few seconds.’

  So where's the good news? Or was that it?

  ‘Which stage am I?’ I croaked.

  The doctor didn't respond right away so I tried to speak again, but the words refused to come a second time.

  ‘You're in Stage Three,’ he finally said. I noticed his voice cracked and raised in pitch.

  I heard him whispering to someone else.

  ‘How is it she's able to speak?’ he said to someone else.

  Another voice answered, ‘Perhaps she's mutating quicker than we anticipated.’

  ‘But her throat...it's...’

  ‘I know,’ the second voice said. ‘I cannot explain it. We need to get Doctor A in here right away. The virus may be evolving.’