The blood was so thick on the ground that as she came to a slow stop the tires seemed to sink into the grass field beside the hospital. Looking out over the parking lot she couldn't help but think the place looked like a nuclear bomb had went off and killed everyone in sight.
"Vehicle Four coming back. Nothing yet Dax just more slime and stink." Brynn had combed over nearly 13 acres in the span of a few hours, praying there were survivors hiding out somewhere. According to the radio, in Detroit roughly two thirds of the city population was considered diseased. They didn't know what else to call the happenings.
All they knew for certain is that by traditional sense these were zombies but there was something akin to intelligence and from the ones she had shot herself, emotions. Brynn removed her holstered fire arm and loaded the barrel. These creatures could jump at extreme heights, run so fast that you can barely see the streaks. When they attacked the only way you could tell was to hear the growling. If you didn’t notice the smell first.
The odor was somewhere between putrid and instantaneous death. Not the smell of a corpse. God knows Brynn had buried more than her share, but it was more the coppery smell of human blood mixed with rotten river water. The combination had a tendency to make some of the field newbies toss up their ration from the night before. Those like Brynn were sent to hunt and gather specimens while her company fought to find a cure or reversal of the effect of the disease.
She came up on a mangled wreckage of what she thought was a Honda at one time. Now it just seemed to be a haphazard mash up of steel and radiator fluid. Her foot came down on something soft that had movement. Cursing Brynn jumped back and fired off a round into the puddle of remains at her feet.
Only a few seconds after she heard the weak whimper did it register that it belonged to a survivor. Barely alive Charlie tried to reach forward towards the foot that has so unceremoniously crushed what little bone was left in her hand.
Brynn took another step back and crouched down to peer inside the wreckage.
What she saw was something that she believed to have been a woman at one time. Now it was just a swollen, bloody mass of whimpering flesh. The sound of the woman’s crying would be enough to draw the creatures back in droves. Brynn had to act quickly if she was going to be able to get them both out without being infected.
Using a hushed tone she asked the woman if she could move. Then the question she was dreading had to be asked. Was she bitten or had she been exposed to the creature’s saliva. Charlie replied no but was soon wracked with sobs as the memories of her newborn son being devoured in front of her very eyes consumed her. Having no options to quiet the bereaved woman Brynn delivered a swift kick to the side of her head rendering her unconscious. At that point Brynn began to work feverishly to free the woman without harming her further.
Then the growls began to come closer, a few to the left and a few to the right. Brynn was out of time to get Charlie to safety. Dragging the knocked out woman up and over the back of her four by four, Brynn gunned it and sent entrails flying behind her as the first of what seemed to be dozens of zombies began leaping at them. Cursing she fired her weapon into the eye socket of a zombie who had latched itself onto the side of their vehicle. Its skull exploded into what could only be considered red jello. Remnants of it streaked her arms and Charlie’s face. Zipping through the wood line and onto the trail, gunfire began to erupt like wildfire all around them.
They had arrived at the compound just outside the city limits as the horde of zombies were beginning to overtake their small four by four. One had almost successfully drug Charlie off the vehicle but a swift kick into its soft skull ended that attack without injury. The night sky lit up like a thousand fire flies as bullets flew around them.
The heavy iron gates closed with a teeth rattling clang. The sound of the monsters running straight into the walls served as a terrifying reminder of what awaited them should those gates fail. The medical team rushed to the two women and quickly began yelling orders and running over their bodies with what seemed like metal detectors.
While it could not confirm the presence of the virus the machine could detect the alteration of the cells within a bite or contaminated tissue. The virus seemed to remain almost undetectable until the victim began to exhibit severe mental changes and violent outbursts. They had been studying the virus at length and in the beginning they believed it to kill off the parts of the brain that enabled a human to essentially act as a higher functioning being.
What they had discovered recently was that the virus simply laid those parts of the brain that made humans advanced to rest in a dormant state. Some specimens even showed periodic recognition of familiar items such as shows, music, or clothing. This gave the survivors hope that their family members and humanity as a whole would be capable of overcoming this epidemic.
By this time Charlie had begun to regain consciousness and was openly sobbing as the paramedics began working diligently on her broken body. Brynn had to choke back her own emotion as memories of her children being ripped asunder assaulted her already exhausted mind. Dismissing the private who instructed her to remove her contaminated boots and clothing, Brynn stepped fully dressed into the decontamination shower and turned it on full blast.
The best way to beat a memory was to outrun it. That’s what she was taught from knee high and that is what she used currently to keep herself sane. The rate at which humans were becoming endangered was rising by the hour and at times like these Brynn was done fighting.
Removing her soaked and disgusting clothing she placed it into a biohazard bag and slipped on the provided scrubs her partner had left outside of the chamber. Everyone within the compound was required to wear white scrubs so that the purple leakage that was typical of early infection could be spotted right away.
It protected everyone involved. Most of all the few children they had at the compound. Those were their golden ones and the only thread of hope for the future of the human race. Each child regardless was treated almost as royalty in the encampment. Their every need and sometimes every whim being met without hesitation.
Brynn made it a point to remove herself from the presence of the children as the disturbing memories would become too much for her to handle. Especially today. She realized Charlie had witnessed the death of her child the same way Brynn had. This made an unwelcome swell of sympathy rise up within Brynn having already felt the same pain.
Charlie was immediately taken to a decontamination chamber that served for those survivors who could not complete the process on their own. It used gas as opposed to liquid to remove the virus and destroy it. It also was a better way for the computers to do in depth scanning of the survivor’s body to pinpoint any infection that may have begun.
They had tracked the infection rate in each human and it stayed exactly the same. 12 hours was all any one person was given before the virus took them completely. Typically it would begin with the eyes bleeding as the body no longer had need for viable blood circulation. It seemed as though their bodies would empty of all fluids, and was replaced by a gelatinous and highly contagious fluid.
Charlie was now into the spinal and deep tissue testing that would allow her into the decontaminated sick bay. Once there they would treat her as any member of the compound and piece her broken body back together.
Only a select few, Brynn included, knew what would occur should she fail any portion of the deep tissue testing. The compound was keeping semi infected individuals beneath the walls. This was for testing purposes as they fought for a cure.
Brynn made her way through the checkpoints and down underground. Heading straight for her office she noticed the lab was unusually quiet. Typically one could hear the whirring and buzzing of the machines along with the constant chatter of the technicians and sometimes the test subjects.
Standing behind the glass Brynn stood there in awe as she watched the zombie go through several types of testing. For a moment Brynn locked eyes with the zombie and that is when she
noticed that it seemed to smile. Then all hell broke loose.
The creature began tearing through technician after technician, tearing bowels from abdominal cavities and peeling back skin. Brynn screamed as the security doors locked and slammed, caging her in a room with no exit and no way for her to fire her gun.
As the zombie made quick work of her colleagues Brynn slid down the glass door, crying as she watched them struggle for their last breaths.
All of those great minds that had been trying so hard to reverse mankind’s created genocide were now laying in small pieces on the linoleum floor. The zombie ambled over to Brynn’s limp form just on the other side of the glass. It crouched down, hissing and spitting the magenta colored ooze from its mouth onto the glass. It kept dragging its hand through it as though it was wiping it away to get a better glimpse of Brynn. It was then that Brynn recognized those emotionless blue eyes. Charlie hissed at her as she placed her forehead against the glass.
Brynne slowly backed away on her hands and feet, keeping her eyes trained only on the zombie behind the glass. Her eyes teared up as she realized Charlie's recognized her. Charlie stood, one quickly rotting foot losing several inches as the decomposed bone collapsed in on itself in a sickening crunch. Brynne grimaced and remained crouched as shock overtook every inch of her body. Charlie had begun writing discernable words on the glass in her own gore.
Brynne realized seconds too late as the crouched zombie behind her tore her shoulder from its socket and sunk its teeth into the soft flesh at the base of her neck and ear. Her eyes rolled back in her head as the pain rocked through her body. Charlie watched with dulled amusement as Brynne's upper body was being consumed and ravaged by the zombie. Brynne's last vision before death took her was the words scrawled in decomposed flesh on the glass.
"Behind You."
“The Feast”
Story #8
By
Christina Estrada
Marko van Dien was a tall and slender man with sleek dark hair and piercing green eyes. His pale skin tone, naturally rosy red lips, and mixture of green eyes with black hair had made him popular with women since he was a young boy. He was well liked among most of the adults in town, although for some reason animals never seemed to like him. Neither did children, even when he was one himself. They always seemed to sense that there was something strange about him.
Growing up, Marko had had an incident involving police officers and his neighbors. There was a grave site unearthed in the empty lot next to his home, and inside it were all of the missing neighborhood pets that had vanished over the period of a year. It seemed that every pet in the neighborhood had abandoned their owners, and every time they got a new one, they would strangely disappear after only a couple of days. While many told the police they were sure that Marko was guilty of killing all their beloved pets, there was no absolute proof linking him to these killings. Marko's mother defended him against all of the accusations, and she said that they chose to blame him due to his oddity and because he was “different” than the other children.
This was true, Marko was an odd child. He had always been intelligent at a level far beyond his young age, and he was studying biology and other sciences before he reached the fifth grade. While other children chose to play together outside, four square or kick the can or riding bikes, Marko always preferred indoor activities. His interests were always in science, and he told his parents he wanted to be a veterinarian. They allowed him to gather small dead animals that he would find and dissect them “for science” at home.
The boy did not grow up to be a veterinarian, however. Although fiercely intelligent, the boy chose not to apply himself in school, but rather focused on the things he enjoyed doing at home. Because of this, he earned poor grades. Mixed with his family's lower middle-class background, Marko did not receive the financial aid he would have greatly needed in order to attend veterinary school. When this did not disappoint Marko, but he kept collecting animals in order to kill and dissect them. Though his mother didn’t know he was dissecting and mutilating the animals alive, his mother finally did began to believe the suspicion she had had since her son was very young. There was something wrong with this boy.
Now Marko stood at the counter of the grocery store with a little girl staring at him from the corner of her eye and only looking directly over to him when he moved his head as though looking away from her. Every time he would turn back in her direction, she would become wide-eyed and quickly look away. Inside he was full of laughter; why was it always children that suspected him of wrongdoings? He smiled at the little girl.
She tugged on her mother's dress and said to her, “Mommy, that's the man that took Suzy. I just know it!”
Her mother gasped, and swung around to look at who her young child was pointing at.
“I am so sorry, Mr. Van Dien. You know these children and their crazy ideas... well they just have no sense of what is right to say in polite society,” the woman apologized for her daughter, before smacking her on the head and telling her to “hush up”.
Suzy was the little girl's older sister who had been missing from home for over a week now. She had been on her usual walk to school, but she never arrived and no one could say they saw her on her way there. There were unusual circumstances about the situation. The girl seemed to vanish into thin air, and there were no suspects in the case. Suzy was a popular girl. She was head of the junior cheer squad at the local high school and was a regular in the school plays. The girl could sing, definitely, but best of all were her beautiful crystal blue eyes that sparkled in the sunlight like sapphires.
Little did the woman with the little girl know that Marko did have her daughter. He was unsure what had attracted him to her that day when he picked her up from her walk to school. It wasn't the usual blue eyes and blond hair that drew the high school boys and the pedophiles in the town to the young woman, but something in the structure of her legs. They were so enticing he just couldn't help himself, so he offered the girl a ride to school. After she had entered his car, he knocked her out with a chemical he had concocted himself through his knowledge of chemistry, and she slept the whole ride back to his house.
The strange man still lived with his mother. She was a fragile and sickly woman, now in her eighties, and she was confined to her bed in the den. Constantly connected to an oxygen machine, the woman was immobile and relied heavily on Marko to take care of her until she finally passed away. His father had died only two years ago in a mysterious accident that caused him to fall off of the roof, and so Marko and his mother lived alone in their large Victorian style house. While she obviously disapproved of Marko bringing this poor girl home, there was not much she could do but give him disapproving looks and cry silent tears. Her ability to speak had long been silenced after Marko performed surgery on her vocal chords to silence her screams when he'd brought his “victims” home before.
Marko walked down the stairs to his basement laboratory. He had been renovating the basement since he was a teenager, and it took years to get it just right. He needed sound-proofed walls to muffle the screaming of his many victims. He also needed refrigerators and freezers in which to keep the bodies of the young people he had been so drawn to and chosen for his dark endeavors. Marko always chose younger, more supple bodies to cut up and dissect and use. The older bodies he had previously tried to work with just weren't as satisfying.
Unlocking the basement door and swinging it open, he could hear the shuffling of the young woman that was chained to the operating table across the room.
“Good afternoon, Suzy,” he chuckled as the girl's eyes widened in terror, and her screams were barely audible through the gag of fabric he had tied around her head and mouth.
“Don't be frightened, my dear! You are going to be of great use to me and mother,” Marko said softly as he stroked the girl's hair. She writhed and wriggled, trying to break free of the restraints that held her in place.
Marko chuckled again, this time a more siniste
r giggle. This was his favorite part and he was filled with glee. He walked away from the operating table along the wall where his instruments hung, ready to be used to fulfill Marko's deepest desires. He adored cutting open these young victims, hearing their screams, and seeing their blood squirt and gush as he sawed or stabbed into them. He ran his hands along the instruments; he had blades of many different sizes, hand saws, ice hooks, scythes, and many other various weaponry to be used in his “operations”. Marko slipped on his butcher's gloves and grabbed a bone saw off of the wall.
Suzy's screams grew in urgency, as though she knew exactly what was coming. Her naked and bruised body tried to force itself out of the chains that restrained her, but it was in vain. He had perfected the art of restraining the animals after a couple of mishaps where they'd almost escaped and he had to kill them instantly. He never enjoyed that. He preferred to slowly carve at his victims, hear their shrieks of pain and horror, and finally see them go into shock. Marko slowly walked back to the operating table as the girl attempted to flail her limbs.
“No chance of escape, my dear,” he whispered into her ear before removing the gag in her mouth. Her pleas and begging to let her go only spurred on his fiery desire to chop her up.
Tales of the Zombie Apocalypse (Issue #1 | August 2015) Page 6