by GJ Zukow
I was even more surprised when the driver of a new Cadillac gunned the motor of his car and proceeded to run the teen down. The sound of the teens head busting open on the front grill was sickening. The Caddy just drove over him, dragging him about a hundred yards down the road and never stopped, he just drove away like nothing happened.
I wasn’t making any money at all anyways so I decided to keep a low profile until this shit worked itself out in one way or another.
I once again retreated to my apartment, watching what I could stand of the news channels, but mainly sticking to reruns that had nothing at all to do with what was happening outside.
I remember the night they declared martial law nationwide. It was the same night I heard my apartment manager beating on my neighbor’s door demanding the rent which was apparently only a week late.
“Open the God damned door and pay me my rent mother fucker!” were the first words out of his mouth.
I peeked out the small window in my door, pushing aside the privacy curtain to view the skinny, frail looking manager. His face was half covered in blood red blotches.
The manager was just pounding on the door with both fists screaming obscenities. I knew this was not going to end well.
“Get the fuck away from my door asshole.”, was my neighbor’s reply. It came out more like a growl than spoken words.
I knew my neighbor. He was over six feet tall and easily weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. Normally he was a nice, easy going guy that got along with practically everyone. If he wanted he could crush the manager’s skull with his bare hands and I feared that that was exactly what he was going to do.
“You’re a week late and now you owe me a late fee fuck head. Get out and fuckin’ pay me right now or get the fuck out right NOW!” he yelled. The manager’s blood-shot eyes had a crazed look to them as he beat so hard on the door that his knuckles were bloody.
“You want me out you little douche bag? Go ahead and evict me then you little piece of shit.”, was my neighbor’s reply.
From there things just got worse and I won’t bother to write what they said to each other. It wasn’t like I was the only one who heard them. People were poking their heads out of their apartments, (and all of them had red blotches clearly visible on whatever skin wasn’t covered) some adding to the chaos by yelling at the two to shut the hell up. Somebody must have called the cops because shortly sirens were heard in the distance, quickly getting nearer.
Police involvement was my neighbor’s breaking point I think. He was on parole for gettin’ drunk and assaulting someone pretty badly in a bar fight previously and I knew he thought he couldn’t win and that he was going to jail. It didn’t help my neighbors frame of mind one bit that the manager was crazily laughing at him now and taunting him, saying he was going to toss all of his shit out on the street as soon as the cops took his ass away.
The door to the apartment whipped open then and in the blink of an eye my neighbor had a shotgun pressing into the stomach of the apartment manager. My neighbor was wearing only boxers, sweating like a pig. His skin was so covered in those blood red blots that it appeared as if his skin was naturally scarlet colored, broken by white freckles.
With the shotgun pressing so hard into his stomach I thought it might actually spear him and come out his back, the manager was backed up into the hallway wall opposite the apartment door.
There were no more foul words spewing from the manager’s mouth, as he was completely silent then. My neighbor was also silent as I knew he was trying to figure out how to control himself and not pull the trigger. The cop car pulled up just outside the main entry way to the apartment block, the blue and white lights flashing inside the hallway. My neighbor looked to the door where the cops were sure to enter momentarily, then he looked back at the manager.
The roar of the shotgun was deafening in the enclosed hallway. I backed away from my little window real quick then as the cops came in guns drawn. The last thing I saw as I recoiled from the shotgun blast was the utter disbelief shown in the manager’s eyes as he tried to hold his guts in, which were spilling out from both the front and the back.
It turned into a shooting gallery then, like something from the old west. Multiple shotgun blasts and the sharp sound of police issue nine millimeter pistols rent the air. There shortly came the sound of automatics, with their distinctive, repeated quick-fire echoes as others joined in the murderous fray. I jumped in my shower, hoping that any errant bullets would be deflected by the metal bathtub.
After about half an hour the gun shots stopped. The sound of my TV, which I had left on one of the twenty-four hour news channels, was only marred by distant shots, screams and the occasional siren. I lay there wondering how long it would take for the Scarlet fever to run its course and if I could ration my food to outlast it. After an hour or so I heard the National Security Advisor issue martial law nationwide.
I knew they were hoping that the discipline instilled in the members of the armed forces would be enough to overcome the parasites insidious emotional control, but it was not to be.
At first it seemed to be working. Shoot to kill orders and strict curfews put a damper on the insanity that threatened to over-run the nation.
For a few days anyways. Even the members of the military were only human though. They just started mass murdering everybody they saw as their skin turned beet red. Then they turned on each other.
Someone once said that there were only three things that nature used to keep man’s numbers in check. Famine, Disease and War. War because as man had no natural predators, he had to be his own. Nature was harsh and brutal, but it had decided that seven billion plus people were too many.
The last news I heard (the television and cable stations blinked off one by one) was that this parasite was a man made, bio engineered creation. The CDC showed proof positive that DNA from three separate deadly organisms had been spliced into this parasite. Mother Nature had not evolved it. Two of the bio-engineered gene strands were identified, but the third strand was an unknown. The third strand was a very specific thing that targeted the nervous system for some reason, but they had no real idea how it was supposed to help the parasite or what it specifically was meant to do. Fingers were pointing at North Korea, and almost as a final fuck you, North Korea launched a full scale nuclear attack on South Korea, obliterating Soul, Pusan and a number of other cities, even launching a few nukes at Japan before they crossed the de-militarized zone and literally slaughtered everyone in their path.
Pakistan and India went to war, they also quickly used nuclear weapons. Israel and most of the Arab nations went directly to nuclear war. Russia and China exchanged a limited number of nuclear weapons. Genocide and war became the norm for nations as all sense of humanity left all of humanity. War raged in the last few days in the sky, on the seas and on land. In the end I don’t think it mattered who the men with the weapons attacked, as long as they could sate their blood lust. The only thing that stopped them was when the parasite finally ended up killing its host.
Then things went quiet. Like being in the eye of the hurricane. Quiet and still for good twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
That’s when the dead, in their billions, started to rise.
7
It's been a couple of days since I last wrote in this journal of mine. I can't begin to tell you how much better it feels not to be hiding in some random building with a multitude of ravenous undead trying to get inside to devour me alive. I personally haven’t felt this good since before this all began, over a year ago. Concealing myself and my every move, with nothing to do but wait for the seemingly inevitable, made time just crawl along at a snail’s pace. For the past three days I’ve been passing the time, which has been flying by, fixing up the place and cleaning it.
About this place though, it has some real good features about it. It’s sturdy, well built and isolated. The only real way to get here is down a now partially overgrown dirt road. Until you get to the drive way i
tself, you can’t even see the house. The lack of visibility isn’t due to the thick growth of the surrounding wooded area, although now in late summer that would normally be the case, it’s due to being in a natural depression. Its sits on a small plateau in the middle of a huge, almost bowl like hollow. The roof of house and attached garage sits far enough below the upper ridge that even in winter, when the leaves have fallen and the lush vegetation has died off, that it still can’t be seen from the surrounding area. About ten feet below the plateau, upon which the house sets, there’s a lake. I think there’s a natural spring that feeds it, as the lake actually feeds a little creek that runs off into the woodland. There’s a little dock here, and a row boat, and there’s actually fish in it. I think this building had been originally built before electricity and water were even invented. It has been expanded and obviously upgraded a number of times, but its origins are still observable, here and there. The pantry is also, surprisingly, well stocked.
There’s also some things that kinda worry me about this place though. I actually spent two full days cleaning the gore and blood from this place. The blood trails start in pretty much every room and they all converged in the kitchen. There’s an old style pump that can be used when the water main is out (which it is) next to a large double sink and a largish butcher block. I’m hoping that somebody came back here during the height of the madness and found some scared animals had taken refuge in the place, and that whomever it was (person or persons) took the opportunity to do some hunting. Meat is really a rare thing now. I’m not sure, but some of the dried blood looked like it was layered on top of each other, like the killing had been dispersed months apart. The butcher block, a thick hard wood slab, was covered in the dried gore and shows signs of repeated use. Smaller blood tracks went through the back door, across the dock to the lake itself. I guess if I really want to know what was butchered here, I could swim down to the bottom of the lake and look for the bones. I don’t really want to know that badly though.
I keep getting this feeling to just take what I can and get out. I’m sure it’s because I feel that this is too good to be true, what with the experiences of the last two years coloring my mind. I keep trying to tell myself that eventually luck would finally favor me, that eventually I would have to find a safe haven, but it still feels to me like this place is somehow haunted.
Enough of that for now. Tomorrow I’ll resume my telling of what happened. Today I’m going to go fishing. I’ve seen a couple of nice ones jump out of the water and I’ve got a craving for some fresh fish. It’s been so long since I had any real meat, let alone something fresh. Wish me luck.
8
It was my old friend hunger that made me leave my apartment. Until I found this place, hunger had been my constant companion. Always was I hungry, always I had to ration every scrap and morsel of food I found.
Even though I knew of the scene that lay just outside my doorstep, I wasn't prepared. The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was the scent of rot and death. Inside my apartment it hung in the background but it wasn't overpowering like it was when I opened the door. I don't know if it was the strength of the smell that assailed me and made me involuntarily retch or the sight of my door and the surrounding wall. My door was covered in the blood and pieces of my neighbor’s brains, dried and stuck firmly to it. Thankfully I hadn’t much at all in my stomach, or it all would have come out instead of the thin dribble that did. What did come out landed right smack dab on what was left of my neighbor’s head.
I had never really seen death this close up before, and the puke reflex had bowed me over, bringing my own face that much closer to his. What was left of his head was flattened, being just his face, lying there like a mask with a small hole in the forehead. Everything else that wasn’t his face was, I suppose, splattered all over the walls and my door. I remember I had to force myself to close my eyes and regain my composure before I could continue. Now though, neither the sight nor the smell bothers me.
There were footprints in the blood, both coming and going through the scene, as if people didn’t care at all. The apartment manager’s body was gone, along with the shotgun that killed him, but to where I had no idea. I didn’t care to linger but before I left the apartment I remember I made sure to lock my door. I never made it back to my old apartment, nor do I have my keychain anymore.
I carefully stepped my way outside and was grateful to be outdoors where the smell of death wasn’t so cloyingly thick. The gray, muted quality of the light drew my eyes skyward. Dark heavy clouds covered the sun and the whole part of the sky. Pieces of ash and soot fell down like rain. The world was burning and I could smell it.
There was a dead cop lying in the parking lot. Whether he was one of the police that responded to the altercation between my neighbor and the manager I don’t know. I do know that he had been shot in the neck and bled out soon after just by looking at him. He was clearly dead and I about jumped out of my skin when I saw his fingers flex and twitch. It didn’t help at all that the cop spasmed as I was checking for his weapon. I didn’t know at the time if it was rigor mortise or my imagination or what. Now I know that it was the parasites regaining control of the body. There was no weapon though, somebody had gotten it already.
I made my way over to the side parking lot thinking I would just get in my car and drive to Wal-Mart. Yeah, I nervously laughed aloud when I saw it. It was crushed under a big yellow school bus that had somehow ended up laying on its side across the top of the row of cars. So much for that.
My stomach growled, urging me to walk to Wal-Mart if that’s what it was going to take.
My apartment complex wasn’t really that far from Wal-Mart. It only took me about 20 minutes to walk there. As I was walking I don’t remember seeing anybody or anything moving, except for the occasional corpse twitch. I do remember thinking that even if I had my car it would be worthless anyway. Autos and trucks were strewn around the roads and every intersection was an accident scene. Traffic signals were still changing from red to green and I caught myself actually reflexively waiting at one of them until the pedestrian crossing light flashed that it was legal to cross.
The Wal-Mart parking lot looked as though a major riot had taken place there. Burned out cars and trucks, a military troop carrier (I think it was a deuce and a half, the kind with the canvass covering the rear bed), a fire truck and two police cruisers were interspersed with decaying bodies of every age, sex and color.
The inside of the store wasn’t any better. Every once in a while one of the dead would twitch and I hurried around the store getting what I could.
I had grabbed a camping backpack, one of the nicer ones that I would have never have been able to afford before. After gathering a bunch of other items from the camping section I made my way to the food isles. It was there, while I was stuffing Spam and chili and whatnot into my new backpack that I realized I was going to have to carry all this weight around with me as I had no car. I was lost in concentration, trying to decide what I wanted to carry with me on this trip, as I thought for sure I could make my was back here again, when I heard a mechanical click behind me.
“Stop right there...,” said a distinctly female voice.
There was a hard edge to her voice and I slowly turned to face her.
“Put your hands on top of your head, nice and slow, or I won’t hesitate to kill you.” She said it nice and calmly, like she had said it more than a few times already.
The barrel of an M16 was in my face so I decided to comply with its owner’s wishes. She was looking me over and I knew she was scrutinizing my face and skin for those tell-tale red marks to see if I was one of the infected. I was doing the same to her, noting that she could barely be out of High School, if she had even graduated yet.
“Lift up your shirt and turn around. Show me you’re not affected and you can live.” Her voice was steady and I had no doubt she wouldn’t hesitate to murder me if I didn’t do as she said.
“Ok, good...,”
she said as I finished turning around for her.
“Now drop your weapons to the ground nice and slow...One fast move...,” she said as I interrupted her.
“I don’t have any weapons.” I stated nervously.
“What? Bullshit. Who the fuck walks around anymore without a weapon?” Anger was starting to tinge her voice and the M16 was being leveled into a firing position.
“I don’t...I been in hiding ‘til the shit blew over, now I’m just hungry...,” there was a pleading tone in my voice as I tried to talk her out of shooting me.