Dead Evolution

by Tim Moon

  The mass of infected slowly closed in behind the runners. She would be blocked inside until they left. She clenched her jaw and tried to fight back the tears welling in her eyes.

  Vanessa turned away from the dark scene a moment later and returned to her spot on the couch. Her heart continued to race. She was safe but there was no way she would get back to sleep. Sighing in frustration, she decided to go upstairs and continue searching for a useful clue. Anything that might help her find out who was responsible for ordering the spread of the virus, or whether they had a vaccine.

  Vanessa began the climb to the fifth floor, with a bag of chips from the vending machine in her hand. When she arrived on the landing, her thighs were burning, and she was breathing heavily. She wiped away the sheen of sweat from her forehead and went around to the windows, closing any blinds that remained open. Then she clicked on her flashlight and began to search.

  Much to her surprise, she found Steve’s desk. It would have been easy to overlook. Each cubicle looked almost identical to the next. What caught her eye was a photo of Steve and a young woman, a girlfriend or fiancé perhaps. They stood in front of the castle at Disney World in Orlando, looking happy and carefree.

  Had the woman survived the infection? Was she out there somewhere hoping to hear from Steve?

  A pang of sadness tugged at Vanessa’s heart. She felt so alone.

  Vanessa crumpled into the chair at Steve’s desk and wept. She mourned for her parents who lived overseas, for her students and friends at work, for making a stupid mistake that got Steve killed, and for not being able to help April. She even cried for people she didn’t know. Even if the infected were all killed or died off on their own, life would never go back to the way it was.

  Vanessa lifted her head from the desktop and dabbed her eyes with the cuff of her jacket. She had no idea how long she’d been crying. It took her a few minutes to regain control and refocus her attention. She picked up the picture frame and took out the photo of Steve and the mystery woman. It would be a reminder of her purpose. Steve had risked everything by reaching out to Eyes of Truth. She needed the same strength now. She folded the photo and slipped it into a pocket in her jacket.

  Getting back to work, Vanessa opened the first desk drawer. It revealed hanging file folders. She pulled a handful out and quickly leafed through them. For the most part they seemed like wasteful paperwork. Some printed pay stubs, old memos, and correspondence from other labs and researchers. It appeared to be useless. Information about the virus or any other sensitive documents would likely be on the computers.

  Or maybe…

  Vanessa’s head popped up and surveyed the room like a submarine periscope. When she spotted the manager’s office she stood with excitement building in her chest. She tried to temper it, but a smile spread across her lips. During her time working for Eyes of Truth, she had learned that even government agencies such as the CIA often kept hard copies of highly sensitive material.

  If it worked for the CIA, a government contractor like Black Tide would surely have printed something about Necrose-7A. Wouldn’t they have given their employees procedures for avoiding infection? Vanessa chewed the inside of her cheek as she opened the office door.

  The office had belonged to a Dr. Angelina Bautista. Vanessa sat at her desk and saw a family photo. Dr. Bautista was a short woman with good looks and beautiful jet-black hair. She looked normal; responsible even. How had she been lured into supporting a company like Black Tide?

  The air in the room still carried the faint scent of flowers. Colorful pictures hung on the walls. Dr. Bautista enjoyed a bright and cheerful work environment. Vanessa wondered where the good doctor was now.

  She sneered at her dark thoughts about what had likely transpired until she noticed a tiny fridge underneath a shelf behind the desk. Her eyes widened, and she opened it hoping for something glorious. Inside were several cans of Coke and bottled tea.

  Not bad, she thought.

  Vanessa soon found what she was looking for in one of the bottom cupboards. It was a metallic, gray safe. Her stomach sank. It looked impossible to break into. The safe had a silver knob on the front for entering a combination. Thankfully, it didn’t appear to have any electronic features but the number of combinations to open the safe would take a lifetime to figure out.

  Her one hope was that like most people, Dr. Bautista might have written the code down somewhere. These office types always had it written down; security protocols be damned. She wouldn’t be surprised to find the doctor’s employee login and email password nearby. Vanessa had often exploited this common failure to gather information for Eyes of Truth.

  She began to root through the woman’s desk looking for a piece of paper with the combination. The top drawer yielded nothing more interesting than a pack of gum. She unwrapped a minty stick, folded it and popped it into her mouth. It helped to clear away some of the bad breath she had from not brushing her teeth before falling asleep that night. It took a while, but she finally found the code on a worn and faded sticky note underneath the desk calendar.

  Approaching the safe with the combination in hand was like approaching a mound of presents on Christmas morning. The knob spun easily. Vanessa’s breath caught in her throat again when the lock clicked, and she could turn the handle. She licked her lips nervously and pulled it open.

  Inside the safe were three brown envelopes bulging with paperwork. They were marked as financial, research and top secret. Vanessa dove into the top-secret envelope first.

  Much to her surprise, she found financial reports, research proposals, progress reports, and test results for various programs. When she finally came to the Necrose files, Vanessa gasped in surprise and relief. It didn’t take long to realize that some of these documents had not been in the data Steve provided to Eyes of Truth. That in and of itself wasn’t a surprise. The content was.

  Vanessa sat in the worn leather chair and leaned back. She even propped her feet on the desk. The information itself was virtually useless now, since there was no functioning government that she knew about and no one to report it to. The original data dump had caught on with the media and garnered a lot of attention before the news stations stopped broadcasting, the local newspapers had lost their employees to the virus, and the electricity had cut out. With no electricity and thus no internet, she couldn’t post it online. At best she could hold on to it in the hope of someday passing on the knowledge for the sake of human history. If anyone survived.

  Falling back on the promise she’d made to herself before, Vanessa focused on what she could do to make sure Black Tide went down for the count. All she could think of was that she needed to visit their headquarters in Colorado. A daunting task given the circumstances. Her palms grew damp with sweat.

  The prospect of potentially facing the company leadership enticed Vanessa.

  29

  Ben woke up in an unfamiliar bed. He bolted upright and stared around the empty room, breathing heavily. Puffs of air were visible in the dull light of the break of dawn.

  Fuck, it’s cold, he thought.

  Swinging his feet out from under the covers, Ben sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his eyes. His head throbbed, and his throat was scratchy. He slipped on his shoes and began to lace them up. Tilting his head to the side, he wondered when he’d taken his shoes off to begin with.

  The last thing he remembered clearly was freeing Charlotte’s body from the car inside the burning garage. After that, it was all a blur. Nothing about the room he was in came to mind.

  At the thought of Charlotte, Ben’s eyes stung. It seemed he’d run out of tears though. Hollowness lingered in his gut, but not from hunger. He stood up slowly and stretched. Feeling chilled, he picked up his jacket from the floor and pulled a blanket off the bed to wrap around his shoulders.

  Ben stepped out of the room and emerged at the end of a hallway, eager to find the bathroom and take a leak. He slipped quietly down the hall to an open door on his left. The blanket w
as quickly balled up and set on the counter while his cold hands fumbled with his jeans.

  The toilet still had water, a luxury these days. Ben didn’t flush though in case someone had more serious business to attend to. He was able to wet his hands in the sink. After soaping up, he turned it back on to rinse the suds and even had enough pressure to splash a few handfuls icy water on his face.

  A rough day lay ahead of him. All of them. They had lost their home, their refuge, and their friend. It felt like a bad rerun of Kona’s airport when things had started to look promising before going to shit. Flames, death and destruction had brought it all crumbling down there too.

  In a way, Ben knew they had fared well against the attack. The traps gave them a small amount of warning and their car wall kept the infected out until the end. In fact, given that Mark was something of a spy they were lucky he hadn’t killed anyone in their sleep. What had he hoped to gain by taking Oliver?

  Nick’s words came back to him. It had been about revenge. Oliver was a way to lure them out and it had almost worked.

  They might have escaped nearly unscathed if only Ben had moved faster in the garage. Or if his friends had been able to move the vehicles out earlier. He had watched the garage door while they loaded up. Why hadn’t he just gotten into the car?

  The enemy had been smart though. Flanking the house, and keeping constant pressure on those inside to pin them down. Ben’s frown deepened the more he thought about it. Guilt tore at his heart.

  The house was quiet. He couldn’t tell what time it was, but it was early. He slowly opened the door and was grateful it didn’t creak. Spotting a staircase, he padded downstairs.

  In the living room, he saw Chadwick sitting on the couch, staring out at the street. He cradled an AR-15 in his arms and sat with a blanket across his legs. Chadwick heard Ben approaching and stood up, looking startled. When he realized who it was, he relaxed. Chadwick’s gaze met Ben’s with sad eyes.

  Ben just gave him a quick nod and turned away. His raw nerves couldn’t handle a conversation yet. He walked around to inspect the house and to try to get his bearings. Much to his dismay, the last part of the previous night eluded his memory.

  The house was neat and surprisingly clean as if the owners had gone over it before leaving for the apocalypse. His shoes squeaked softly on the tiled floor of the kitchen, which didn’t smell so nice. A moldy loaf of bread sat on top of the microwave on the corner of the counter. The window sill above the sink featured a lemon whose top half had succumbed to mold and had collapsed in on itself. The homeowners had a bird feeder outside the window where a sparrow looked up from its meal, cocked its head at Ben and flew away.

  With only a sliver of interest, Ben continued his search. His stomach growled so he checked the pantry. The family had stocked up on canned and packaged goods, all of which they could use. He found and opened a jar of peanut butter, scooping out a bite with his fingers. His mood didn’t improve when he realized it was crunchy peanut butter, but he didn’t care enough to stop eating it.

  At the far end of the kitchen, near the back door was a small laundry room. Again, he noticed just how clean and orderly this family had kept their house. The room had a door on the other side that probably led to the garage, so he opened it to see.

  The sight of the two vehicles made him freeze in place. Their getaway car sat next to the truck they’d been using to haul building material from the home improvement store. The last time he’d seen it, the truck had been parked in the neighbor’s garage.

  When he registered the reek of death that permeated the air in the garage, he gagged and covered his face with a handful of the blanket. Ben didn’t want to open the garage door in case any survivors of the attack were hunting for them, but he went to open the windows at the back of the garage. He turned around and saw the car’s front end, dented and marred by the dark zombie blood that was streaked all over. Blood splatter covered the windshield and side windows too.

  Ben took a tentative step towards the truck to inspect the bed. Inside, wrapped in a blanket, lay a body.

  Charlotte.

  Ben felt the air leave his lungs as though he’d been punched. Sinking to the cold concrete floor, he sat over his jar of peanut butter and let his emotions take over. It wasn’t pretty.

  Nothing would have felt better at that moment than to run outside and brain some zombies. Or hunt down the few remaining survivors of the attack. Those guys hadn’t even bothered to find out why Ben had killed their friends. It probably never occurred to them that their side was in the wrong. Ben had no real choice. Those men at the pharmacy had to die. Ben felt a smug satisfaction that their leader had died too. Nick had chosen to bring the fight and he’d lost big time. It did little to soothe Ben’s pain, but it was something.

  Killing infected or Nick’s crew wouldn’t get to the root of the problem though. No, it was bigger than the unthinking drones they called infected. Someone had created them. Someone had put his friends and family in the position of having to fight for survival.

  Black Tide.

  Ben’s eyes narrowed in anger. Black Tide was ultimately responsible for creating the shit-show that was their lives had become. Ben rocked back and forth on the floor thinking through a thousand options - hundreds of scenarios, which included punishing everyone even remotely responsible. It was not just Charlotte who had suffered, after all. Ty had died because of the Necrose virus too. Not by a bite, but the untethering of civil society.

  Of course, there were others too. The hundreds, if not thousands, that Ben had witnessed. The athletes and spectators at the triathlon. All the civilians and soldiers at the airport. People from the Quarantine Center. How many had been murdered? How much of a debt did Black Tide owe?

  Too much to fathom.

  His father had some role in all of it too. Isn’t that what he implied? How the hell did his father get tangled up in the greatest mass murder of all time?

  Ben ground his teeth. Despite all the other factors, he kept coming back to one immutable fact. He’d moved too slowly. It was his fault Charlotte died. Why had he taken so long to get into the car? Had they left just a few seconds earlier, the wood spike would have hit her headrest instead. Or missed all together.

  “FUCK!”

  Ben hurled the peanut butter against the wall. A glob of the brown paste splatted against the wall as the plastic container bounced away, hit the floor and rolled to a rest underneath the truck’s rear tire. He stood and gripped the tailgate with both hands, knuckles blanching under the pressure.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw a shovel hanging on a nail. He threw off the blanket he wore and went to pull the shovel down. He had work to do.

  Gripping the tool as if it were a lifeline, Ben exited the garage through a door to the backyard. Charlotte deserved a proper burial. Had his house not burned down, it would have been nice to bury her there. Since she was so far from her home, Ben wondered if it really mattered where she was buried. Her family would never know the difference.

  The backyard spread out much larger than he would have guessed. Along the fence line were neatly organized flower beds and shrubs. Just like the house, it was obvious that a lot of care had gone into tending the yard. In the back-right hand corner, was a single, tall maple with finger-like branches that spread out to cover half the yard. Not a single leaf clung to it, but in the fall, he imagined it would glow golden in the sunlight. A worthy place to rest in peace.

  Ben picked a spot near the tree, close enough that she would be covered by the branches overhead but far enough away to avoid the bigger roots. He scraped a rough outline of the grave into the grass and began to dig.

  The rhythm of the work distracted him from the pain. It wasn’t too long before he had the whole thing a foot deep. Rich soil piled high next to the grave. Just like the improvised sandbags they had made, the smell was oddly comforting.

  Someone cleared their throat behind him. Ben stopped digging and looked up.

  Anuhe
a looked down at him standing almost knee deep in the hole he’d dug. Tears rolled down her cheeks. The numbness inside Ben melted away. He climbed out and pulled Anuhea into a hug.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ben said. “I was too slow-”

  “Stop it!” Anuhea snapped, pulling back and slapping his chest. A dark scowl contorted her features and her skin flushed red. “It wasn’t your fault. They did this to her. This isn’t on you. It’s on them.”

  His shoulders drooped as he stared into the hole, considering her words. He didn’t hear Anuhea leave but a few moments later, she returned with a shovel.

  Together, they finished digging Charlotte’s grave.

  30

  Burying Charlotte was a calm, quiet affair. Each of them took turns to say a few words about her. Oliver said he’d miss playing with her. As Charlotte’s oldest friend, Anuhea shared the most. She started with a story of how they’d met at university along with a few details of the years after.

  Nancy brought dried flower petals that she found in the house, some sort of homemade potpourri. Everyone took turns sprinkling some over Charlotte’s body.

  After the others left, Anuhea helped Ben fill in the grave. They placed bricks from a raised flower bed around her grave. Chadwick came out when they were almost finished with wooden plant stakes that he’d found in the garage and fashioned into a cross. Using a permanent paint marker that was stored with the plant stakes, Anuhea wrote Charlotte’s name, date of birth, the year of her death and placed the cross at the head of the grave.

  “We should eat,” Chadwick said.

  “I’m starving,” Ben said softly.

  Anuhea didn’t respond.

  They followed Chadwick back into the house, where they congregated in the living room. Nancy handed out packets of backpacking food and they all settled in for a quiet meal. Each pouch of dehydrated food was “cooked” with water Chadwick boiled on a portable camp stove they had stashed with emergency supplies in the car. He also had a cup of tea. Conversation was sparse and short-lived.