Notes from a Necrophobe

by T. C. Armstrong

  “I wonder what they were thinking when all their subjects rose up and turned on them.”

  We all thought about that for a moment.

  I carry on, my words spilling out without care. “They found that when they were close to the bodies, the Blowflies would start laying their eggs in the ears, eyes, and mouth of the living.”

  “Ugh.” Nemesis covers her face like it’s happening already.

  “These flies and the bacteria cause a cellular breakdown within the body. That produces a gas that inflates everything: stomach, face, arms, legs…they swell up like balloons, as much as four to five times a body’s normal size! In fact, some of the new CSI recruits learned the hard way to wear protective suits and gloves and face shields because when they poked a corpse with a stick, the liquefied body tissue exploded all over them.”

  My captive audience shouts “Ugh!” in unison.

  “It gets worse!” I chirp with delight. I can’t help it; I’m in ‘the zone.’ “When the maggots start to overwhelm moist areas like the mouth, eyes, and groin the skin starts to slough off, sometimes in great big sheets around the hands and feet. Soon we’ll be able to tell where a zombie was just by the skin it leaves behind. It’ll be the dead’s version of a bread crumb trail!”

  Kaboom turns to Houston. “Is she kidding, Hou? I don’t know her well enough to tell.” Houston shakes his head no.

  “Wait! It gets even worse! Soon we’ll have to contend with the smell. If you lay all the adjectives in all the languages that could describe the stench end to end, they would stretch far away, but not far enough to reach a place where the stink couldn’t get to you. You won’t be able to shake it because it’ll become a part of you. The smell will stick to you and it’ll stick to the back of your tongue because that’s where the taste buds for anything putrid exist.”

  “Ah, so that’s why the smell of rotten things seem to coat the back of my throat.” Houston is reminiscing about what our garage smelled like after Mom dragged that sick dark treat back home under her car.

  “And when the dead move, they’ll smell ten times worse than they do when they’re at rest.”

  “But wait a minute,” Nemesis says, inching her way back to me. “If the bacteria and flies are liquefying a body and just poking a bloated body can cause it to explode, and if skin is falling off in sheets, doesn’t that mean these things will be falling apart and unable to chase us?”

  “I hope so. There’s got to be an upside to all the stink we’re going to have to endure.”

  “If Dorothy were here she might say, ‘I’m grateful for putrification,’” Houston says with a smile.

  “She wouldn’t say that if she smelled it,” adds Kaboom.

  “I don’t know if we can entirely count on them falling apart. There were bodies on the farm that were older and mummified. The bugs would only eat in so far so they could leave the skin as protection against the sun. When there’s no need for protection from the sun, like when a body is locked inside a trunk or is duct-taped all over, the bugs eat all the skin away and the body decomposes quickly. I still don’t understand how these things work, so I don’t know if the parasite can carry on manipulating a mummified body.”

  “Anything else, Morticia?” asks Kaboom.

  “Well, I am looking forward to seeing a Cheese Skipper Maggot.” I can’t resist dropping this piece of totally useless information on them. I’m just making conversation right now, hoping some senseless chitchat will distract us from the horrors below.

  Nemesis rolls her eyes and says, “I’m afraid to ask, but I’ve got to—what’s a ‘Cheese Skipper Maggot’?”

  “They’re something that can usually only be seen at the Body Farm because you need the dead to be in close proximity to each other.”

  Kaboom looks over the side of the roof. “I think we’ve got that covered.”

  “Cheese Skipper Maggots look like tiny white Mexican jumping beans. Well, actually they look more like rice than beans, but they will skip in droves from one corpse to another.”

  There’s another collective “Ugh” followed by Houston thoughtfully saying, “But ultimately we can look forward to these things falling apart as they liquefy from the inside out.” He lets out a long sigh and looks into the distance. “The crisis that was started by bacteria could be ended by it.”

  Nemesis gazes past the edge of the roof at the mingling departed and says, “It couldn’t come soon enough.”

  The shadows lengthen, heralding the end of the day. Another line of shadows advances out of the tree line in the distance and merges into one rolling threat. It’s a sight that reminds me of what I saw on the Rock when Ghost gave me the binoculars: “They wait in the trees.” The zombie horde is definitely growing. Doom rejoins us and reminds us it’s his turn to stand watch. I wonder if he chose the night shift so he has less of a chance of seeing his family in the dark.

  We stand up one by one stretching and yawning and reaching for the sky before we squash ourselves into the confines of the tent. The sun slips under the horizon taking the last of the light with it, but not before Doom notices how much the horde has grown.

  “Welcome to Bite Night,” he says glumly.

  HOUSTON

  My sister is so morbid. Count on KC to bring the book about dead bodies up to the roof. It was an unsettling experience to talk about the different states of decay while looking at examples of it down below, yet at the same time it’s encouraging to think that if we can put up with the stench and the flies, that threat will eventually fall apart and this will all be over. Unless…

  The most horrible thought pops into my head. A tactful person would keep the horrible thought to themselves, but this is not the time for restraint. I look around to make sure little ears aren’t listening. Doom is standing watch tonight—with extra blankets of course—and the rest of us are snuggled up in the tent. Normally having people this close would bother me, but these days I need the warmth more than I need the space.

  Fortunately Jesse and Sarah seem to be asleep while the others are still awake. We have one of the small battery lamps going, so I can tell that the remaining refugees have their eyes open. This is my chance to share the horrible thought. I’m not trying to shock or get attention, I’m just hoping someone can debunk it for me and put my mind at ease.

  “KC,” I begin cautiously, “you know how you told me about the blowflies, how they’ll lay their eggs in any moist nook or cranny they can find, dead or alive?”

  This has everyone but Sarah and Jesse up. Mom and Mr. Cromwell exchange worried looks and I remember KC telling me that they read the “Bodies We’ve Buried” book too. Nadia still doesn’t have a clue and she doesn’t want to either. Can’t say that I blame her.

  “Yeeesssss,” KC replies slowly.

  “What if the flies that hatch from the dead come and lay eggs in our eyes and ears and…”

  “That’s enough, Houston. We get the picture,” Mom interrupts. I think she’s worried about Nadia more than the sleeping girls—her eyes have grown as big as saucers and she’s breathing rapidly. In fact, she looks like she’s going to be sick, and there’s no room for her to be sick here.

  Kaboom’s obviously not picking up on Nadia’s distress because he says, “Yeah, like if I start driving around on my Vespa again and accidentally swallow one of those flies, what will happen?”

  “You’ll have more brains in your stomach than your head,” Nemesis retorts.

  Kaboom gives her a biting look while the rest of us burst out laughing. Unfortunately this makes Jesse and Sarah stir in their sleep and prompts Mom to say, “Unless you guys have a solution to that, I suggest we change the subject. In the meantime, let’s just concentrate on getting through our current trials.”

  We try to go to sleep, but I can tell by looking around that their thoughts are churning on this as much as mine. I can also tell that some of us aren’t finished talking, not yet. Eventually it’s KC that finally breaks the silence. “I think we need to talk
about the elephant in the room,” she says hesitantly. In the old days I would have made some fat joke about that, but in these lean times you won’t find an ounce of fat on any of us; we’re all on the Zombie Survival Diet.

  “Which elephant would that be?” asks Mom.

  “She’s looking at me,” replies Mr. Cromwell solemnly. “I think she’s asking how Dorothy, Sarah, and I survived when Linus and the others didn’t.”

  Mom sighs. “Mr. Cromwell and I have been discussing that too.”

  “And?” asks Nemesis.

  “And we’re still struggling to come up with something. We’ve shared the same diet and habits for the last few months, and all we can think of is it’s something genetic, like an in-built resistance to bacteria.”

  “If that was the case, wouldn’t they have discovered this in the first month of the Invasion? Wouldn’t it be obvious if there were people who were immune to the effects of infected water?” asks Mouse. She finishes up her thought with, “Maybe the ones who didn’t change with infection didn’t want to come forward because they’d be poked and prodded and turned into a lab rat till they found a cure.”

  “Maybe they’ve been building up some sort of resistance,” Kaboom wonders.

  “That’s stupid. How would they do that?” Nemesis gripes impatiently.

  My mind flashes back to the first full conversation I had with Dorothy and a wonderful idea forms in my head. A thought so bright it just might be the antidote to the horrible thought. In fact, it might be the antidote to the whole Invasion! “Mr. Cromwell, do you know what Sarah’s father did for a living?”

  Mr. Cromwell looks at me with suspicion, like I’m trying to change the subject or something. “I believe he worked for the State Department.”

  “This might be a bit of a reach, but hear me out.” I’m either going to come off as completely crazy or completely brilliant with my idea. “Dorothy traveled the world for her job as a courier and Sarah’s family probably traveled for her father’s job. Wouldn’t they need certain shots to live overseas?”

  “Yes, that would stand to reason, but I don’t know how that would link them up to me—I haven’t travelled anywhere but Europe and the only thing you need to be inoculated against there are the tourist traps.”

  Damn, I really thought I was on to something.

  “Are you sure?” Mouse asks. “I mean, what kind of shots do you think Dorothy and Sarah had to take?”

  “Probably things like MMR, DPT, poliovirus…” says Mr. Cromwell.

  “Almost everyone around here had those; they’re the basics, and it didn’t stop them from being infected,” says Nemesis dejectedly.

  Mom joins in the conversation with “What about Hep A, Hep B, Typhoid, Encephalitis?” Mr. Cromwell shakes his head to each one of these.

  And then KC asks, “What about rabies?”

  Mr. Cromwell freezes at this question. His mouth drops open in a surprised “O” and his eyes look off into a distant memory. “Mr. Cromwell?” KC asks again, a little more urgently. “Did you ever have the preventative Rabies vaccination?” Everyone holds their breath for his answer.

  “No.”

  We all exhale with disappointment. It would have been nice to have a solution as simple as a Rabies vaccine.

  “…But I was treated for rabies shortly after I arrived here.”

  What? Are you kidding me? We’re all surprised, none more so than KC. “Wait!” she cries out. “I remember now! You were the crazy guy who interrupted my session with the psycho-spy! Was it rabies that turned you into a nutter?”

  Mr. Cromwell hangs his head and quietly explains. “My family and I were forced from our little bungalow when the creek behind us overflowed and flooded the house. The last thing I remember was running with the kids from a pack of wild dogs. I was bitten by one of them and the next thing I knew, I was here.” His voice tapers off into tears. There’s nothing we can say that will make him feel better, so we give him the only space we can by looking at the floor and being quiet. I find myself grateful for the fact that it’s Doom on guard duty; he’s not good at silence when it’s most needed.

  Except that he’s not on guard duty anymore. He’s at the door of the tent ready to be relieved of his shift. He must have been there long enough to hear our “Eureka!” moment, such as it is, because he pokes his head inside the tent and says, “So there is a cure!”

  “Fat load of good it will do us if we’re not rescued soon,” moans Kaboom.

  RENEE

  We lost Kaboom and Nadia today.

  The day started out fair enough. We managed to sleep better knowing that there was something that could save us if we ever got off this roof. The first thing we’ll do when we get rescued is get that rabies vaccine. I’m even more proud of Houston than I was before for figuring it out, and I didn’t think that was possible. KC may be the book-smart one, but Houston has common sense and is good at visualizing how things relate to one other.

  I think he’s looking forward to the chance to present his find to the world just as KC would like to present her Lake Vostok theory, but I have a feeling that by now the world has made those connections. Still, it is an amazing find for a stranded group of refugees without a lab or the Internet at their disposal.

  We took advantage of the warmer weather by shedding some more layers of clothing and hanging out on the roof. Everyone seemed to be in better spirits once they could move about and soak up the sun. KC started teaching Jesse and Sarah how to play Suduku and the others were engaged in a conversation about what they were going to do with their life when they got out of here. I didn’t pick up on all of their ideas but I couldn’t help hearing the one that KC came up with in jest because it made everyone laugh: buy up a franchise of port-a-potties and call it “IPlop.” With any luck all the lawyers are dead, or else both Apple and IHOP would sue her for that.

  At some point KC and Nemesis noticed that Kaboom and Nadia were no longer with us. I knew they were off on their own, but I wanted to give them some space. Heaven knows Nadia needed it. The poor thing became everyone’s punching bag as they got more and more frustrated with her helplessness. I think she was just a product of her environment. She wasn’t raised to be flexible or to adapt and not all of us are built to be a rough-and-tough survivor. Nadia was more the Look-At-Me type of girl who dreamed of growing up and getting her own reality TV show. That didn’t make her a bad person. It just made her look like a bad person when everyone else was bent on survival instead of attention.

  So KC and Nemesis looked around and hopped up to the roof where we found the tent. I followed them at a distance, ready to diffuse whatever argument would arise between the four of them. Before I knew it, Houston had joined me, walking wordlessly by my side and wearing the same anxious look as I did.

  We found Kaboom and Nadia looking over the side where we had to drop Dorothy. At first I thought they were trying to pay their respects to our departed friend, but instead they were lying down on their bellies while dangling their heads and arms over the side like they were trying to pull something up. This set off alarm bells and the four of us quickened our pace. “There’s nothing down there they should be bringing up here.” I thought to myself. They were so engrossed in what they were doing they didn’t notice us until Nemesis called out, “Hey! What are you two up to?”

  Nadia jumped to her feet to face her accusers, but not before she pushed Kaboom back down. “You’ve almost got it, don’t stop now!” she hissed down at him. In a voice laced with guilt she said, “If you must know, I’ve found a way to get us more food and water.”

  As I walked over to the edge of the roof I asked “How? There was nothing there when we lowered Dorothy down into the bushes.” I looked over the edge at what Kaboom was fishing for. The first thing I noticed was that the dead were nowhere to be seen. That was odd because the Infected tend to gravitate to wherever we are, and Kaboom and Nadia aren’t exactly good at silence and stealth.

  The second thing I noticed wa
s the backpack. Kaboom had a length of rope, probably from one of the packs, and he had attached a rudimentary hook made out of one of the bulldog clips that once secured the tent to the roof. Before I had a chance to protest, he had hooked the damn thing and pulled it up onto the roof.

  Nadia pounced on the pack and tore it open. “Were you ever intending on sharing that with the others?” Nemesis asked suspiciously.

  “Why?” pouted Nadia as she removed a bottle of water. “Why should I? I’m the one who found it, not you!”

  “She’s speaking out of hunger,” Kaboom said apologetically as he looked sheepishly at us. “Of course we would have shared it.”

  I didn’t care whether she intended on sharing it or not, what I cared about was that no one drank it. I took a step towards them and bent down to grab the backpack. “Hey!” shouted Nadia in surprise. “That’s still mine!” She reached out to take it back, but I threw it as far off to the side as I could. I probably should have thrown it over the side of the roof, but even I was curious as to what was inside.

  Houston ran to where I threw the pack and scooped it up in one swift move. “What’s the matter with you?” he said in exasperation. “Can’t you see it’s another trap? If it wasn’t there yesterday then it was planted there for you to find today!”

  I stepped closer to Nadia, summoned the calmest voice possible, and said: “Nadia, that water isn’t safe. Please hand it over to me.”

  “No.”

  KC was tired of this standoff. With way too much sarcasm she asked, “Please will you hand it over to us? Pretty please with a little umbrella in it and a cherry on top?”

  “No.” Nadia braced herself on delicate legs like a spoiled child that had just been told off. She quickly unscrewed the cap and brandished the bottle like a weapon. It was the worst threat she could have made, and we all jumped back to get out of the splash zone. Nemesis started to needle Kaboom into helping us out. “Come on noodle-spine; you know we’re right! Talk some sense into your girlfriend before she gets us all killed!” Kaboom stayed by Nadia’s side, but there was a look of concern on his face as he turned to Nadia and asked, “Baby, are you sure that water’s safe to drink?”