The missing children, Lee despaired to think,so many of them.
This was the primary objective of the scouting missions. Most citizens were accounted for, but there was an alarming number of missing children in the county, many of whom had mysteriously wandered away from the shelters and had never returned. There was enough curious dread afflicting the suffering survivors already, with the flooding and the sudden, drastic increase in pregnancies. The walls of the shelter were lined with women whose stomachs were swollen. It was almost too horrible to bear, this terribly real threat of losing more innocent children to the flood, especially some who remained unborn.
Lee sighed, tears brewing as his face pinched. The word came out of him in a murmur, the soft tone one uses to talk only to oneself as one cries alone.
“Beth,” he whispered. “Oh, Beth.”
* * * *
The radio was worthless now. She wasn’t sure if she was being heard, but she’d requested immediate assistance, and had given specifics as to where she was traveling. Terror pulsed through her, the sickening thrum of fear permeating her consciousness with the severity of a wound.
The ghoulish creature that had wallowed in the library had looked just as Lee had described Beth. The realization of this was chilling, but not as chilling as the suggestions her mind began to offer up to her.
Dear God, could it all be true?
She was worried for Lee now, even more than she had been in the past few weeks, which was a great deal.
Sarah remembered how good-natured he had been during those first few days on the force. Lee was one of those rare individuals who joined the police department with the earnest intention of making the world a better place for everyone. He also expressed a sense of camaraderie with the entire station, throwing smiles and back pats to every cop he came across. This friendliness, like all kindness, was immediately mistaken for weakness, and Lee was subsequently bullied and emotionally hazed by his jaded colleagues.
While working the beat, she’d watched the outside world and the job it created for them transform Lee. Instead of finding himself a beloved local pillar, he instead found himself to be little more than a referee in the vicious game of human interaction.
Sarah had been forced to watch him morph into another sad, quiet hulk of a man who armored himself with a slack expression and hid behind lifeless eyes. There was still an enormous amount of compassion buried within Lee, but he refused to share it with the world any longer. But he was always friendly with her, more so than any other cop she’d worked with, and he was a dedicated partner. He was this way with her because, unlike most people, she’d never given him reason not to be. But it was not merely their own interaction as partners that assured her that the warmhearted Lee still existed somewhere deep inside the hollowed hull of his social self: She had seen the way he was with his wife.
Sarah had been over to Lee and Helen’s home several times for barbecues and holiday gatherings. Lee’s behavior around his wife was tenfold what his early behavior as a rookie cop had been. Watching the two of them together was like watching two teenagers in the midst of a summer fling, wandering on the fading edge of a starry night. They had been married for two years and together for five, and they were still giddy lovers and not ashamed to show it.
When news arrived that Lee and Helen would soon be starting a family, something cracked open within Lee’s coarse external shell, and Lee relapsed and reverted to his former, good-natured self.
Helen was eight and a half months pregnant when the rains came.
Like so many other expectant mothers, she had ended up making her delivery in the makeshift maternity ward at the shelter, with Lee at her side behind the strung white sheets. The humid night had been hideously black, the stars blotted out. The delivery itself had been brutal: an extended labor that tortured poor Helen and brought her to the brink of madness before releasing her into a dangerous coma. The medical staff had struggled to save the unborn infant, who had been trying to come out backward, by performing an emergency cesarean section. Lee had refused to leave his wife’s side, even as they’d sliced open her swollen belly.
But his baby daughter had been stillborn. Her body still looked fetal, coiled around itself in a sad huddle. Her oddly open eyes were fully black, and her wide mouth had not yet formed lips, but had somehow begun growing imperfect, jagged teeth. When he’d looked closer at her tiny corpse, he was mortified by what he’d found. A thin wire of flesh was encircled around her throat, causing her to be strangled during her birth. Lee had thought at first, just as the medial staff had, that his daughter had been choked by the umbilical cord, but this was not so. Upon closer inspection, they could make out the umbilical cord beneath a thick veil of plasma, winding from the infant’s belly up into Helen’s insides. The thin wire of flesh that was wrapped around the baby was connected to her but not to the mother. It was an auxiliary limb that grew out of the small of the infant’s back. It was the strange, fleshy growth of a mutant, a birth defect that resembled something closer to the anatomy of a small squid than that of a human being.
The medical staff had tried valiantly to save Helen’s life, and failed, just as they had failed to bring Beth into the world. Sarah had watched Lee disintegrate since the tragedy, which was really only one of many such tragedies. But Sarah knew now that something more troublesome was unfurling itself across this suffering little New England town: a bizarre horror that was metamorphosing within the buried city and deep within the wombs of its mothers. Sarah sped on, like a lost child, her consciousness stunned by the terror that had been cast over her like the shadow of the rain itself.
* * * * *
Lee first noticed her as she squatted upon the half-submerged pile of concrete. She was merely a toddler, nude, wet, and a soft shade of gray. She was hunched over, her green hair obscuring the thing in her hands. He was fascinated by the rubbery jiggling of her limbs, her arms working like snakes, looking boneless as they twisted with her feeding. As the boat drifted closer, she looked up, noticing him, her eyes freezing upon him even as her puppet-like mouth flapped, still gnawing the strip of meat.
He looked closer.
She was feasting on the innards of a dead cat.
While the sight would revolt most, Lee was instead overcome by a quick brainstorm, linking the pieces of a macabre puzzle. He marveled now at the sudden notion:reverse evolution. The thought hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.It’s Darwinism gone berserk, he thought. Still, it began to not only make sense, but he could almost fathom a biblical providence to it all.
Perhaps, Lee thought, God or nature or whatever it may be had grown weary of the brutality of humankind. Some immaculate force had gazed too long upon the cruel anarchy that humans had made for themselves. Perhaps this divine entity shared Lee’s disappointment in humankind, and had now initiated not just an extinction, but atransformation in which human beings reverted back to sea creatures, and rapidly relapsed into an aquatic state of cold-blooded solipsism, as if God was starting again from scratch.
In this girl with a face like a piranha, Lee saw not a monster, but the first baby of a new world, like a mutated Christ child who had passed through some fathomless membrane to become the new link in biology. And while Lee had previously been considering himself to be like Job, now he could see himself as Noah, sailing through God’s merciless downpour as a rescuer of his creatures.
He brought the boat closer to the girl, who continued to stare him down as she gnashed her feline tripe. With the motor dead, the only sound was of the rain colliding with the endless pool.
“Hello, sweet pea,” he said with a warm smile.
She stared blankly. He made attempts at friendliness, as he tended to do with all children. He winked and waved, crouching a little to see her better behind her cloak of rot-colored hair.
“You remind me a lot of my little girl,” he said, smiling, hoping to spark her interest. She only belched, her giant mouth spitting gray bits.
Lee smiled w
ider as he cried, his heart swelling while his mind fragmented. He turned around, reaching for the surplus cooler. He took a large strip of jerky and held it out to her. He watched as the gills twinkled, expanding at the promise of flesh. She let the cat plop and began crawling toward the boat, watching him nervously.
“It’s OK,” he told her.
He placed the jerky a foot away from himself, hoping she would be brave enough to come aboard. The maneuver worked, and he was pleased to see her writhe onto the craft. She chomped down on the jerky ravenously. During this feeding frenzy, she occasionally bellowed with delight, obviously enjoying the snack. The sound she omitted was far from human: a curious bleating, like that of a dolphin struggling against a net.
Both of them flinched at the rising sound of a motor whirring closer to them. Its steady approach made the newfound girl nervous, and Lee calmed her with more jerky and a continuation of his comforting words, assuring her with soft nothings.
* * * * *
The sight of the two of them together made Sarah shudder. She pushed her coat away from her holster as she pulled up to them, wary of the child.
“Lee?” she called out to him over the sounds of the storm.
He was silent for a moment, as if hypnotized by the foul thing that crouched beside him now, feasting.
“Lee? What is going on?”
“Isn’t it incredible, Sarah?”
“Get away from it, Lee. It’s dangerous.”
He was deaf to her words.
“It’s like some kind of miracle,” he said. “After all this suffering, all this sacrifice, finally there’s a light.”
“Lee, listen to me ...”
“From all this darkness,” he began, “came all of this confusion and misery. But there was a purpose all along, a painful but necessary change, you see? The changes took my little daughter, and gave us these storms ... and from the storms, a daughter.”
With these words, he gestured to the creature beside him with his open palms, as if presenting this ghastly thing as a blessing.
“Lee,” she cried, “this isn’t your daughter! She isn’t human! Something’s gone wrong in this town Lee, something’s taking over.”
Sarah lunged from her own boat into Lee’s, grabbing his arm. But her sudden movements startled the girl, and she sprang upward in a fit of violence, clawing at Sarah’s legs. Her talons spun as they sawed into her. As her blood spattered into the face of the screeching girl, Sarah drew her pistol. She screamed just before the crack of the gunshot echoed throughout the doomed little town.
* * * * *
Lee placed his still-smoking pistol down on the cooler, waiting for the boat to steady itself from the impact of Sarah’s fallen body. His shot had been straight to her skull, ending her life as mercifully as he could, under the conditions. She’d fallen, landing half in his boat and half in her own, rocking both of them but tipping neither.
The girl was still rattled, but it was nothing a little jerky and lullabies couldn’t fix. She bleated quietly now as he cooed at her, coaxing her back to him. She perched on the end of the boat like a gargoyle, her webbed feet gripping the base so hard that it began to crack.
“Don’t worry, baby,” he said. “Daddy took care of things. She can’t hurt you now. I won’t let anybody hurt you, I promise.”
She was beginning to calm down, he could see that, but still she seemed more interested in Sarah’s remains than in him or even the jerky strip. She stared at Sarah with those oversized eyes of pure black, like two eight balls hammered into the face of a doll.
After a moment, Lee nodded at her, understanding. He reached across the gap between the boats and lifted Sarah, dragging her carcass entirely into his boat. He placed her shattered head at the front, directly below the girl, who still hovered like a vulture. This helping was fresh, not like the cat had been. Lee sat back and let her enjoy the full serving he had provided for her. He’d lost everything he held dear, but now he had something to hold on to, someone to protect once again. He watched as she dug into Sarah’s brains, feasting in a more gluttonous display than before.
“Enjoy, sweet pea,” he told her. “Everything’s going to be just fine. I’ll always protect you, and I’ll make sure there’salways plenty of food.”
Tears burned in the corners of his eyes as she looked up from the carnage of her meal. She bleated happily in a mist of blood.
“I love you too, Beth,” he replied.
Eaters
We’d only been out there for 10 days when I began to start thinking about eating Bill. All of Osceola County had gone mean and dry, but the ruins of Yeehaw Junction was the most destitute. It’d grown to mirror some of the nearby ghost towns since the disease had spread. There was an eerie, desolate quality to the streets, and the mangled houses seemed to melt there under the vicious Florida sun. It was summer, there hadn’t been any rain, and the air stank from the brushfires caused by the drought and chaos.
There were four of us patrolling 18 blocks, one of many units put together at City Hall in the wake of the outbreak. Ed was the lawman, a middle-aged deputy with an inflamed nose to match his stocky build. Then there was David, the college boy down from FSU, with his spongy, long hair and his clever T-shirts. He’d been going for a medical degree before the disaster hit, so he served as our makeshift medic, the pros being far too busy with the overcrowded hospitals. I was just a Good Samaritan, and I’ll have you know that I volunteered for survivor patrol before they instituted that new draft. Before trying to become a preacher, I’d worked as a ranch hand. I’m good with my mitts, having spent most of my life cropping hay and such. More importantly, I’m good with animals. Calving, branding, tagging, roping, slaughtering — you name it, I’ve done it. I reckon this is what got that Army recruiter so excited about me in the first place, ’cause what we were dealing with out there was moreanimal than anything else.
But I guess I should get back to Bill.
He was a cafeteria worker at the high school in St. Cloud, the nearest one to Yeehaw, which had had a small population even before the disease ravaged the place. Bill was older than me, in his late 40s, tall and thin if you ignored his beer belly. He smoked a lot, and his teeth were crooked and as yellow as custard. He also liked to lope. Hell, more than that, the man was just plain lazy. His dragging ankles held up our searches most of the time, and Ed gave him grief about it a lot, being our troop leader and all. Bill was one of the drafted who really resented being drafted in the first place, and so he chose to make his bad situation worse by moping all the time like a whore for pity. The kid, David, had been drafted too, but he was fast, smart, and useful. He didn’t piss and moan like Bill, and he also had an admirable sense of patriotic duty, which I’d always thought was lacking in his generation. David had been pulled in, but he was proud and happy to help. But not ol’ Bill. Oh no. He was limp weight. That’s why we mostly just made him carry our extra stuff.
People might think I targeted Bill for devouring first because he was the weakest team member. That would make sense, but that wasn’t it. He also wasn’t appealing physically — as meat chops, I mean. David was the youngest and had the least amount of hair and fat on him. He would have been the cleanest and leanest selection. Ed was the most muscular — a lot of steaks to be had there. Bill, however, looked like he’d just stumbled out of rehab, like he was carrying unusual STDs and simply wasn’t big on soap.
But when that special kind of hunger hits, there ain’t no rational thinking like that involved. It’s a chemical thing, a need. An alcoholic doesn’t slam back a bottle of Jack because he’s thirsty. He doesn’t even do it because he wants to get sauced. He does it out of sheer physical need. That is what the hunger is like. I didn’t choose Bill, the hunger did. I was just a tool of the plague, even if I had been in denial of it ever since I’d found the little girl.
* * * * *
The patrol unit’s main job was survivor recovery. With that job came the other jobs of test administration, tagging and r
eporting for transfer, and flat-out zombie killing. The real danger zones were infiltrated by the military — you know, all those places that were beyond hope and just swarming with the flesh-eating bastards. These zones were designated as such and were eliminated by bullets and flame. Most of your major metropolitan areas had met this fate. Overpopulated cities like Orlando had been too good a breeding ground for the plague, and it had spread like butter over a hot Christmas goose. There was nothing to do but eliminate the problem before it could spread beyond its borders. Survivors were, unfortunately, just considered casualties of war when those flame-throwers came out.
But these here small towns, tucked in between east of nowhere and west of jack-squat, these were considered unmarked zones. Patrol units like ours would sort of survey the area. We’d call in for rescue buses when we’d gathered survivors, shoot any full-fledged zombies we came across, and give the serum tests to any questionable cases. By doing this, we could evaluate what the zone needed next. If more firepower was needed to destroy a warehouse full of raving ghouls, we could request that assistance. If the area was mostly clean, we could start a safer evacuation. We were kind of like the census of a post-zombie-apocalyptic world. But the most vital part of our mission, beyond killing zombies and even rescuing survivors, was tracking the disease itself.
A lot of people still don’t realize that this zombie plague ain’t always fatal. Z1V1, as the scientists call it, is like any other virus. Some people with weak immune systems, like old folks or the sickly, they succumb to it almost instantly. David told me that their cells just aren’t strong enough to fight it off. But some people have strong enough immune systems to kick the virus after a few days. They’d get a bad flu, their skin would get that grayish-green zombie hue, and they’d start acting funny, sniffing other people like they were a bag of ground coffee and such. But after a few days or sometimes a week, they could fully recover. They would not become a member of the walking dead; they would just teeter there on the threshold for a spell in a sort of zombie limbo. But then they would come out of it restored to normal and even immune to the virus for good. The only problem was that sometimes in that interval, the virus would be going real strong like, and it would rattle their thinking too much. The inner itch of the zombie would take charge, and, well, they’d up and eat somebody.
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