Decay | Book 1 | Civilization

by Spitznogle, D. L.

  The car rolled backwards as he let his foot off of the brake. He brought the car to a stop just outside of the garage. A smile formed on his face, he looked around knowing that nobody was there to see him anyway, and he stomped on the gas. The tachometer shot to six-thousand RPMs as he released the brake.

  All five-hundred and thirty-six horsepower from the twin-turbocharged six-liter V-12 engine ignited over the asphalt driveway through all four tires of the wickedly powerful sedan. Smoke was accompanied by the smell of burning rubber. As the front tires finally found their grip, the car launched back, and Jonathan lost control.

  Grass and dirt rooster tailed into the air as he flew through the yard. When he finally pressed the brake down the car slid another ten feet, stopping just a few feet from a large palm tree. He had gone across the entire front lawn in a matter of seconds. A few awkward laughs escaped him as he fully realized what all had happened in such a short amount of time.

  “I probably shouldn’t do that again,” he said to himself. His heart pounded like a string of firecrackers exploding in his chest.

  With his nerves finally settled, he shifted the car into drive and released the brake. Allowing the car to idle, it moved forward quickly through the yard and across the driveway. He backed the BMW up to the wall and stepped out. Two ropes tied to the undercarriage of the car would provide both the snare and a way back over the wall after he set the trap. The ladder against the wall was brought out earlier in the day.

  Jonathan threw both ropes over the wall, climbed the ladder to make sure it was clear, and he walked back to the car to grab some steaks he had grabbed out of the freezer the night before. Not sure exactly what would attract them; he chose to go with New York strip steak, as he knew it would surely attract him. Drops of rain began falling gently from the sky. How this would affect his plan was unknown, so he moved ahead.

  Peaking over the wall, he confirmed that the street was clear enough to make his move. Giving one last tug on each of the ropes to make sure it was fastened securely, he prepared himself one last time to venture outside the safety of the wall. He tossed the wrapped steaks over, slid himself to the other side of the wall and dropped to the ground. The fall was further than he anticipated. Pain shot through his left leg, and he fell onto his stomach on the cool wet grass.

  Assessing his leg, Jonathan felt that nothing was broken. Wobbling slightly as he stood, he looked around once more and proceeded with setting the trap. The snare was set wide, about five feet from one side to the other. Jonathan felt this would provide enough room to trap one of the dead. Resting the rope on sticks he had tied together to provide a base that would allow the rope to sit roughly two inches off the ground. Jonathan’s number crunching showed that this would snare the dead just below the knees.

  After placing the steaks in the center of the ring he began climbing the rope back over the wall. The pain in his leg was dull, but it made it hard for him to climb the wet rope. Pulling himself over the wall was difficult, yet he made it just as he heard the moans coming from the yard across the street. Turning around on the ladder, he peeked over the wall to watch as his prey walked into his trap.

  The shambling dead man gurgled as he wandered out into the street. He was dressed in a police uniform. His right arm hung loosely as it was broken above the elbow. Jonathan felt bad for the man, but he was so excited to have lured one in with such ease and on the first try, too. The dead police officer didn’t come across. Instead he wandered down toward the end of the block. Jonathan was furious and stuck his head up over the wall to see if there was a reason he’d passed by.

  “Nothing!” Jonathan said under his breath in anger. “What is it going to take to get your attention?”

  He stepped down to the next rung on the ladder. As he put weight on his left leg to bring the other down a slight hint of pain caused him to turn his foot slightly. The wet rung seemed to have run out from under him. He let out a loud yell as he fell the remaining four feet.

  Jonathan slammed into the ground, feeling as though he had been hit by the BMW. Pain coursed through his body. With the wind knocked out of him, he tried to let out another yell, but no sound came out. Then he lay in the soft rain struggling to catch his breath. The choking moans became louder, causing him to sit up.

  His right elbow felt as if someone had smacked it with a hammer. Along with his left leg and right ribs, the pain seemed to move between the three areas. The moans became louder still. He forced himself up the ladder, taking caution not to slip again. By the time he made it to the top of the wall he could tell that the moans had more than one source.

  Peeking over the wall yet again, he saw three dead people making their way toward his wall. They still didn’t seem to have much concern for the steaks he had set out for them, but he could tell they knew someone was close by. He kept a close eye on them as they felt along the wall. They slowly moved closer. Unaware of exactly where the noise came from, they seemed to just head in that direction.

  Jonathan recognized the young woman in the yellow tank top as she moved along the wall completely passing by the trap. He had seen her on his first time out after the attacks. The next man was also familiar. He was the heavy-set man standing with her at his gate that day. This man stepped right into the snare and Jonathan reacted. He grabbed the rope and pulled with all his might.

  He took it easy, however, but as soon as his feet touched the ground, he ran away from the wall still holding the rope. The sound of the man hitting the pavement brought a smile to Jonathan’s face. Jonathan made his way back up the ladder as quickly as he could despite the pain. He saw the man lying in the grass trying to make his way to his feet.

  He made it back down the ladder much faster this time as he pushed the pain from his mind. He jumped back into the driver’s seat of the BMW, pressed the ignition button as well as the brake. As soon as the engine roared, he dropped the shifter into drive, released the brake, and let the car move forward under its own power. Keeping his eyes on the mirror he saw the feet come over the wall followed by the legs. The legs, however, were followed by a string of intestines. He had pulled the man in half.

  Stopping the car and stepping out, Jonathan made his way back to the pair of legs. They were not kicking or moving which gave him the impression that he must have killed the man. If he could call killing a dead man “killing him.” He climbed back up the ladder slowly peeking over the top of the wall. The dead man was crawling away unfazed by what had just happened to him.

  Jonathan glanced back down at the legs with a look of surprise on his face. He hypothesized that the body was indeed controlled by the upper half, most likely the brain. He would try again tomorrow, but for now he was going to drag the legs to the back and throw them over the wall into one of the other yards.

  He decided to take the next day off as his body was sore. During his resting time, he had to fix the problem of ripping another dead man in half. One of his first re-designs called for a pulley system that would allow him to lift a body over the wall before bringing it back down on the other side. Something a little simpler came to mind, however. He would use two ropes and call them to him. One rope would be his snare trap on the ground while he used the second rope as a lasso, dropping it down over the chest.

  He figured this would solve two problems in one shot. The problem of possibly pulling another one in half, and the problem of tying it up once he had one over the wall. He wouldn’t need the lasso skills of a cowboy, yet he still practiced perfecting his technique.

  Jonathan awoke, feeling no more pain in his body, and he felt the day was here to make his move once again. The sun was bright, and the grass was dry. The fact that the dead were out all over today was an added incentive to go for it now. They had been out more after all the noise he’d made the last time. Stepping out of the garage, Jonathan felt consumed by the beautiful sun. The car was already in place with the ropes waiting to play their part.

  He tried to stay as close to the wall as he could to a
void being seen through the gate. He crept up the ladder and looked over the wall. The dead were everywhere, and there was nothing around to explain why they were out like this. Although most days were as beautiful as this one, he theorized that maybe it had something to do with humidity, but lacking a hygrometer, he couldn’t confirm this.

  Jonathan dropped the first rope down onto the soft green grass in a five-foot radius. Even after shaking the rope a bit it still turned into more of an awkward oval than a circle, but it would work as the last one had. The next rope he kept in his hands ready to drop it around the chest of the first dead body to walk into his trap.

  “Hello!” he hollered over the wall kind of timidly.

  The sounds of feet and bodies being dragged stopped along with the horrible moans. The silence felt heavy to Jonathan, like he would soon be crushed by it if some noise didn’t stop its brutal assault.

  Theory had become a way of life for him, and he theorized once again. This time he had confused them, and he had made a mental note of it. Once the shuffling and moans started up again, he looked over the wall. They had gone back to their aimless wandering.

  “Hello!” Jonathan shouted once more adding, “Over here!” He was certain they didn’t know what over here was, but he said it anyway.

  This time he waited for them to turn and look. His eyes met those of the girl in the yellow tank top. She wasn’t as decomposed as many of the others, which Jonathan found to be very fascinating. This made him wonder if the effects of his father’s experiments are permanent. Which would mean these people would be capable of roaming the earth for an unforeseeable number of years.

  Most of the street had responded to his call, but the girl in the yellow tank top had stepped into his trap first. Jonathan jerked as hard as he could on the snare rope while trying to use only enough force to tighten the rope around her legs without knocking her down. As soon as the rope was tightened, he prepared to drop the lasso waiting only long enough for her to hold still for just a moment.

  He didn’t want her to have the chance to move and possibly trip as he wasn’t sure if she would be able to stand back up with both legs tied. His moment came and he dropped the lasso perfectly around her chest just in time for her to fall over. Her fall managed to tighten the rope working perfectly in Jonathan’s favor.

  Throwing himself off the ladder, he ran at a dead sprint to the car which was not all that far away. Overshooting the door by a few feet, he had to turn around and take a few steps back. Once again, the car engine fired up, the brake was pressed, the shifter was aligned with the drive gear, and Jonathan released the break allowing the car to move forward under its own power.

  Erupting from Jonathan was a combination of cheer and laughter as he saw the body fall over the wall in the rear-view mirror. Placing the car in reverse, he drove back a few feet to give him slack in the ropes, and he jumped from the car. Reaching the struggling body, he quickly placed a burlap sack over her head; he’d gotten this from the pantry after emptying the potatoes from it. Then he tightened the ropes around her the best he could.

  After zip tying her boney hands behind her back, he dragged her through the yard. She was much lighter than he had expected she’d be. Moans drifted eerily from the burlap sack and she twisted her head back and forth. She didn’t seem to be strong, yet Jonathan was nervous of what she could do if she were to wiggle free.

  The excited moans and commotion of the dead out on the street could still be heard, yet it was gradually quieting down. Once he made it back to the shed, he tied the girl up by her neck, legs, arms, and even around her waist.

  Up close, Jonathan could see that most of her skin was wrinkled and thin. It hung loose from her body in some spots. Her fingers reminded him of his great-grandmother. Chills shot through him as he thought of this woman reaching out to pinch his cheeks when he was just a small child.

  “Come over here, boy, so I can get a look at you.” Her raspy voice would give him goosebumps every time he heard it. Those thin fingers were cold on his face as she squeezed. Never tight enough to hurt, but Jonathan believed that was her intention. Luckily, she didn’t have the strength.

  Pushing the memory aside, he returned his focus to the dead girl in front of him. “Time to learn something about you,” he said as he pulled the sack off of her head.

  The girl became more violent as she saw him. She let out a low groan and tried to break free of her bindings. Jonathan watched her for over an hour, and never once did she seem to tire. Her groans turned to moans, and the moans to a gurgling choking sound, and then they turned back to groans. Now that he had captured one, he really wasn’t sure where to start his research. He walked through the garage and into the house to watch her from a window. She continued to fight with her body turned in the direction of the door he had disappeared through.

  “Fifty-nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds,” he said into a voice recorder as he wrote this down in his leather-bound journal. “It took the subject about an hour to give up her pursuit for me. She now seems to be perfectly content with her situation.”

  He continued to watch her through the day. Never once did she seem to show any signs of acknowledging her bindings. She just stood there. Occasionally she would try to move, but after being stopped by the ropes she became docile once more. Throughout the night, when Jonathan woke up to check on her she was never asleep, and she never seemed to care that she couldn’t roam about. She just stood there. Emotion was absent, and she seemed to have no essence or individuality.

  The sun rose up over the eastern wall that next morning. Jonathan exited the back of the garage, and as he did so his captive began her attempts to reach him. With him he had some freshly cooked sausage links, yet she didn’t regard them in the slightest. He held one up to her face with a fork even going as far as placing it in her mouth. The girl didn’t even attempt to chew it, and the link fell to the ground. It seemed her only goal was to make it to Jonathan.

  “Hunger does not drive you?” he questioned her aloud, not expecting a response. “So then why do you attack people?”

  He’d seen them on numerous occasions with what appeared to be human body parts that have been chewed on and eaten. This couldn’t be explained as mere hunger if she wouldn’t eat any other food. Fortunately, though, he had never seen one attack a living person, but he couldn’t help to wonder what such an attack would tell him; on a scientific level, that is.

  His father never had the chance to understand why Sam had awoken from death. Jonathan hypothesized that perhaps it was caused by the contact with Greg’s fresh blood cells that were certainly spilled while Brian beat him. He continued to write in his own journal regarding the research he was doing.

  Perhaps the chemical needs to attach itself to living cells, he wrote in his journal. That wouldn’t explain how these dead have managed for so long without fresh tissue, though.

  Dozens of theories were produced by Jonathan in his attempts to understand what was causing this not only to happen, but to continue to happen. He wasn’t sure how long a chemical reaction could last with nothing to feed it. Nothing of it made sense, so he went back to researching his new friend by the shed.

  After doing some research in a medical book, he used a small hammer to test the girl’s reflexes in her knees and elbows. She only continued to struggle to reach him. He tested her ability to hear by sneaking around and making noises in different areas of the yard. All of which she reacted to as anyone would.

  By sneaking up close to her he gathered enough data to claim that her sense of smell was heightened. This struck him as peculiar since her own body stunk horribly of decay. Her breath had the awful smell of rotten eggs and vomit. Jonathan wasn’t sure how she could smell anything over that.

  With a little more research, he ran a series of simple tests. The simplest of these was checking her pulse, which none was found. He checked for a heartbeat using a stethoscope his father had in a medical bag in the basement. No heartbeat could be found either. Us
ing a blood pressure cuff that he also found in the medical bag, he found she had no blood pressure.

  Strangely, she was breathing; however, it was almost too slow to notice. Air was pulled in through her nose and exhaled from her mouth. This made sense of her ability to smell him, as well as their ability to make noises, but he doubted that she was actually consuming oxygen from this. He made a note to examine her lungs.

  “I am no doctor,” he read aloud as he wrote in his notes, “but in a clinical sense, this woman is dead. As expected.”

  One morning he made the decision to test the pain tolerance that they have. She didn’t seem to be bothered by being dragged over a wall and dropped to the concrete. She also didn’t seem to care about being bound to a shed. Jonathan’s curiosity grew as he wondered if there was any way to discourage them.

  Jonathan walked out of the garage door and toward the girl by the shed. She made attempts to reach him when she saw him coming. He concluded that they had no memory of anything. The girl always reacted in the same way upon seeing him. Day after day she made attempts to reach him. An hour after he disappeared through the door, she would go docile again, as if she forgot he was even there. She also didn’t seem to understand that she was bound.

  In his right hand was a pair of scissors. He looked down at her feet. She still wore only one battered and dirty shoe. He couldn’t tell if her sock was pink or just stained with blood. Jonathan also wondered what had happened to the other sock and shoe, quickly dismissed the thought, and knelt beside her.

  The scissors were sharp, but it still took plenty of effort to cut through the bone. She gave no indication of feeling any pain. She also didn’t seem to be concerned by the loss of her toe. She continued to wiggle and jerk in her vain attempt to move.

  Holding the toe close to his face, Jonathan examined it. The little amount of blood that oozed out of the wound was thick and black, resembling a dark maple syrup. He brought the toe even closer to his face. The smell from the inside was putrid. He took the toe inside to examine it further with a microscope.