Not Dead Yet (AM13 Outbreak Series Book 4)

by Samie Sands

  “Who are you?”

  She moves closer, flashing her bright blue, angry eyes at the camera. My heart pounds with fear as she moves, you can’t see it but my fingers are curling around the gun I have tucked away in my pocket. I’m so freaked out, really scared that something terrible is about to happen.

  Her: “What are you doing here? How did you find out about this place?”

  Me: “I...I overheard someone talking about it on the radio.”

  Her: “So, what does that mean? Why have you come here? Get that thing out of my face.”

  The camera falls towards the ground, but I don’t turn it off. I don’t want to miss any of this, especially as I’m afraid that I might be about to die. Even though I know the footage probably won’t make it out of the facility if that’s the case, I need to film it all the same.

  Me: “I think the question should be what are you doing here? I already know that you’re working on something, a serum, and that you pretty much have it. What makes you think that you can keep it to yourself, charging people to get hold of it? Don’t you think the world has been through enough?”

  Her: “Well, as I can tell from that statement, you clearly know nothing about what we’re doing here, so what I’m going to ask you to do is get out of here.”

  Me: “I’m not going anywhere. I want to know what your plan is. I’m a human being with rights. If you have a cure, we all need to know about it.”

  The other person moves in front of me at that point, but the camera lens is fixed on the ground. It’s a guy with long, lank dark hair and a beard covering a lot of his face. He looks gruff and intimidating, but I try not to lose my cool. I’ve come this far, I don’t want to fall apart now.

  Him: “Just get the hell out of here, kid. You have no idea what you’re getting involved with. Maybe it makes you feel good to think that there’s someone out there trying to fix this mess. Maybe it’s the only thing that gives you hope, but we aren’t all like you. Some of us see the positive to these changes in the world, some of us don’t want to go back. It’s better for you to just leave now before you find yourself in over your head.”

  Me: “You...you aren’t looking for a cure? Then what are you doing?”

  Him: “We want to utilize it.”

  The camera fades to black.

  Scene Seven

  The camera is fixed on my face, although you can see small parts of an unfamiliar room around me. I’m still in the hospital, but this time I have brand new knowledge of what’s going on.

  “I’m sorry I flicked the camera off, right as things were starting to get interesting, I just wasn’t sure what I was going to do. The words ‘we want to utilize it’ stunned me. I wasn’t expecting that. Nor was I expecting him to share any of my emotions about the apocalypse. However, hearing it from him made the idea of keeping the world like this sound much more callous.”

  I pause for a second, staring thoughtfully into the lens. My face looks a little crazed, which reflects how I’m feeling inside.

  “So, anyway, they went on to explain that what they’re doing has nothing to do with a cure. That hasn’t even come into their consideration. How can people with some form of scientific knowledge not want to help the rest of the world? I know the world going back to how it once was isn’t my dream, but it isn’t fair to continually let people die.”

  I press my palms into my eyes, just trying to block the memories from flooding into my mind all at once, leaving me confused. That’s how I stay while I state the next part. I try to keep my tone stony and neutral, but I can’t stop that crack of emotion coming through anyway.

  “Anyway, it took a while of pressing, but I finally discovered that they’re creating the serum from extracts from the dooies. Or something like that. What they want is some form of biological weapon. They’re so convinced that this virus will be over soon, that the infected will either die out or someone will find some form of resolve. Then, when it does, they’ll have leverage.”

  I lift my head up and stare deeply into the camera.

  “Do you know what the craziest thing is? They want me to join them. They didn’t even tell me their names, yet they want me to join them on their insane mission to rule the world, or whatever. I guess it’s because I know too much. Maybe it’s join them or die.”

  I scrape the chair back along the broken floor and I walk away, leaving the camera fixed on the walls behind where I was sitting. The viewer can see dusty books, broken glass, and empty tubs of God knows what. I have a hefty decision on my hands that I just know will have horrifying consequences either way.

  Time passes, but eventually, I come back and I take my seat once more. Only this time I have a vial clutched between my fingers.

  “So, this is the serum. Or a small bit of it anyway, there’s a huge vat in the other room. This is the liquid that holds all the power…or at least will do one day. Maybe. They’ve given me this to look at, possibly to change my mind.”

  I stare at the vial, starting to feel a little insane myself. There’s no denying that there’s a sense of power there, one that my expression portrays without me even thinking of it.

  “I mean, it isn’t like I want to join these crazy people, the thought of power sickens me more than anything else. I just…I don’t want to die either. I’ve fought so hard, I’ve come this far. I don’t want to lose my life, and my film, just because I couldn’t keep my nose to myself.”

  My face turns green as the reality of that statement hits. If only I ignored the radio transmission, I could be at home as normal I shake my head rapidly and continue talking.

  A voice from outside the room calls to me: “Are you ready to learn more, George?”

  I whisper to the screen: “I told them my name is George, it just seemed safer if they aren’t telling me who they are.”

  I yell louder: “Sure.”

  I whisper to the screen: “I suppose I better learn what I can while I’m here since I don’t think they’ll just let me out of here now.”

  I stand up and switch the camera off. The next time it comes on, I’m in the same room, but it’s a long while later, possibly even days. The stress has gotten to me by this point, and that shows in my appearance. My hair is sticking up everywhere, my eyes have deep shadows underneath them, I feel like I’m getting wrinkles and grey hairs, but I can’t really tell because it’s quite dark now.

  “I don’t know what happened then, it was all very weird. One moment they were showing me around a room filled with samples. By samples, I mean mangled, blackened organs from the infected, and the man was explaining to me how they extract the virus from them…at least, I think he was. I’m not the most scientific person in the world, so a lot of the words he used didn’t make any sense.”

  There’s a long break, with me simply sitting and staring into the camera, my thoughts racing through my mind like crazy. Eventually, I bang my hand down on the table and I start speaking again.

  “The next minute, everything was different. I felt dizzy and sick. They won’t tell me why. I begged and pleaded with them trying to work out if they’d done something to me but they denied everything. I’m not myself, I can tell that I don’t feel like me. Why is that?”

  I stand up and move towards the locked door, finally showing the viewer that I am actually being kept here, hostage. They haven’t outwardly stated that I can’t leave, but it’s obvious that’s the case.

  I yell loudly through the door: “Why? Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

  I don’t even bother to wait by the door because I know I won’t get an answer. I take my seat in front of the camera once more.

  “Because I’m not sure which way this will turn now, I’m going to store my tapes somewhere safe for someone to find. I might even write out the transcription to ensure that none of the video evidence gets lost.”

  I pause for a second, my lips curling up into a twisted smile as I think about the challenge that lies ahead, then I lean forward and click the but
ton on top of the camera.

  Camera fades to black.

  Scene Eight

  Camera comes on. I look different. My eyes are gone, my face is gross. Something terrible has happened. It’s been days. I’ve been writing my script the whole time. Writing…and changing.

  “They did bad things to me. I still don’t know what, no one tells me anything. It hurts, all over. My brain…it isn’t the same. Nothing is the same.”

  My heavy body moves, but not like it used to. It takes everything I have to stand.

  “I’m not me anymore. Everything weighs a…a ton. I can’t move most of the time. My mouth hurts. My words might not make sense. I will write them.”

  The viewer watches me write. It’s hard, my hand aches, but I do my best.

  “What did they do?”

  I want to cry, but there are no tears. All the water in my body is gone.

  “Why?”

  A voice yells through the door: “It’ll be time soon, don’t you worry, George.”

  I don’t think I’m George, but they’re talking to me. There isn’t anyone else here.

  “I don’t know what that means, I’m scared.”

  The voice: “Soon all your pain will be gone.”

  “Why?”

  The voice: “You should have joined us, we could tell that you didn’t want to, so now you have to join them.”

  “Who is them?”

  The voice: “Haven’t you learned by now? Asking questions leads only to bad things. Maybe this time it’s better to keep your mouth shut, George. It’ll all be over soon.”

  I whisper: “Over means dead. I know that. I will hide this, all of it.”

  I lean over and switch the camera off to hide it away with my notes. Still, even now after all of this, my movie is the most important thing. If I must die, I want this to live on. That’s all I know.

  tokyo

  Urgh, when I start looking so serious? Didn’t I used to be loads of fun?

  I pull down my eyes, distorting my features while leaning forwards to get a better look at my reflection in the mirror. I barely recognise the person looking back at me these days, there’s so much different about me. Sure, that’s the same face I’ve always had, but everything about it is odd now. I don’t really feel like me anymore. My eyes might still be grey with blue flecks, but they didn’t used to have that hollow, dead look behind them. My expression was always happy and carefree, whereas now it’s steely, and possibly a little stressed. Even my body isn’t the same, but then again I used to be able to eat and exercise whenever I chose to. Now, finding food is an everyday challenge, and working out is just an average part of life.

  I think that’s what I hate most about this virus and everything that’s come with it, the fact that it’s gotten rid of me. I liked me, I was pretty awesome. Sure, some people might think the person that I’ve become is cool, but I don’t agree. I think I was better before.

  “Leigh?” I hear my friend, Callie’s, timid voice calling around the door for me. “There’s something you should know.”

  I spin around on my heels to face her, trying not to let the irritation arise within me. When we both arrived here in Japan, for the work-trip of a lifetime as English-speaking support staff, we were so similar. Both fun-loving, spontaneous, always following what we thought would be an adventure. But now we’ve both changed, we couldn’t be more opposite if we tried. She’s weak, scared, quiet, and I’m strong.

  Strong enough to be a leader.

  I don’t know how it went down in the rest of the world, but I’m pretty sure everywhere else would’ve been far more prepared for the nightmare that hit. Japan didn’t seem to know that the zombie apocalypse was coming at all until it’d already happened, until the dead were walking the streets, infecting everyone else. Maybe if I’d been back at home when things went bad, I’d be a completely different person now, but I’m doing my best not to get bogged down in ‘what ifs’. What I need to do is keep moving forwards.

  Me and Callie were in a shopping center in Shinjuku when we first saw the bloody, gory mess a zombie could make. One moment we were casually glancing through our purchases, wondering where we should go next, the following minute we were swept up in the panic and tearing back to our temporary apartment screaming like nutters. Of course, it was something of a hysterical scream really, because as we learned very quickly when we arrived in Japan, anything can happen here. We didn’t really believe that it was real, we’d seen all kinds of weird and wonderful things going on, and in a way we thought that it was just another part of that. Another parade, or some sort of street theater thing. Anything other than the truth.

  But then we watched what was happening out on the streets, under the garish bright lights of the city, just to be certain, neither of us fully admitting that maybe things were more realistic than we first believed. We didn’t say anything, we sat there with baited breath just steeling ourselves in preparation.

  I was just about to say that maybe it was time to get back out there when the bloodbath descended upon us. It was brutal, we saw more death than I ever wanted to witness in my lifetime, I felt frozen to the spot, all sick and twisted inside. I could barely breathe, it was almost as if someone was squeezing all the air out of my lungs, and I’m sure Callie felt the same.

  “What do we do?” My voice was raspy, my eyes darting everywhere. “Should we move, or wait for someone to save us?”

  “Someone will come along,” Callie nodded sharply, as if she was trying to convince herself as well as me. “And...you still never know, it could all just be some weird festival type thing that we don’t know about.”

  But of course it wasn’t, and no one did come, so after a few days hunger forced us out onto the streets. We always had a scarce food supply, mostly down to laziness, and this time it came back around to bite us on the ass. It made us face the horrendous big wide world way before we felt ready for it.

  In all honesty, we barely made it, I thought I was going to die more than once, but somehow we survived. I’m not even totally sure how, it’s nothing more than a blur in my mind these days, but eventually we found our way to a group of survivors. I don’t know if we found them or they found us, but somehow we ended up no longer by ourselves.

  At first, that was really hard, mainly because of the language barrier. Me and Callie could speak a fair bit of Japanese, but it wasn’t enough to cope in the high-pressure situation where people spoke at a million miles an hour, and with no one offering to translate we were isolated, outsiders from the start.

  It’s taken months to overcome that, to get to where I am now, but it’s been a learning curve I’ll always cherish.

  I think.

  The group I live with now only contains a couple of members from that original group, but that’s just the way life is now. People die, you adjust. It’s hard, you have to be desensitized to a lot of things, but it’s that or get swallowed whole by your emotions. I get that, Callie doesn’t. Everything that happens hits her really hard, she simply falls apart, whereas I just deal with it...and that steely determination has led me to become the very unlikely leader.

  If anyone told me before the outbreak I would’ve ended up leading anyone, I would’ve laughed in their face. The girl who loves dressing up and partying, the one who took this job to come to this wonderful country rather than to help people, the twenty-three-year-old who hasn’t got anything figured out yet doesn’t become a leader. I’m not even the sort of person who wants to lead...yet here I am, somehow a brand new person. I don’t know how it’s happened, I’m just accepting that it has. Now I’m a badass with all the skills needed to survive, all while looking after everyone else in the process.

  Somehow, much to the surprise of everyone—most of all me—this horrible situation has been the making of me.

  “What’s going on, Callie?” I sigh, feeling a little exasperated with her. I don’t understand her weakness, it just doesn’t feel right to me. She should have grown and blossomed in t
he way that I have. Why wouldn’t she? We were similar, we went through the same things. Why didn’t she adapt? Things would be so much easier if she had, I hate having to carry her, it feels like an unnecessary burden on my shoulders.

  “It...it’s Suni,” she stammers, her pale face heating up with emotion. “She...her body has been dropped off at the gate.”

  Oh, God.

  Okay, that’s the one bit of news that could actually make me freak out. Suni’s my lifeline these days, the one who started off as my translator and quickly became my confidant. I like her a lot, she’s strong, powerful, she knows how to get things done. And now...

  She can’t be gone, she just can’t be. I don’t think I’ve realized it until now but I couldn’t have made it to where I am without her. She’s been the driving force behind absolutely everything that’s happened. My heart sinks and my stomach churns uncomfortably at the thought of making all of this work now. It’s as if I’ve been skating on ice and now my blades have been stolen from me.

  I can’t do this alone...everything’s ruined.