There was no way we could have known how quickly, how stealthily it would hit. We tried to prepare. Don’t think we didn’t try.
There was talk from the scientists. Chatter about them. About what was happening behind closed and locked doors. In white rooms monitored by large silver machines. Peopled with white lab coats and them.
They must have been people. Once. They had to have been human before the tests. Before the prodding and poking. Before the vials. Before the disease was divined and set loose. Before it infected them. There was a before. It’s all we can think about now that we are living in the after.
The movies got wind of it. The chatter. It was good fodder for scripts. Then books came. And websites and plans and news stories. Mostly fake. Like it was a joke. It wasn’t real. Not then. Not to us. Not yet.
I’ll tell you how it all began. And then I’ll show you how it began for me.
_
The scientists. I suppose it was them that started it. One had to say it was possible. Then one had to try it. Then it was institutionalized. Our government wrote the check. We financed our own end.
But the first white coat, who perhaps was told about it or maybe came up with the sick idea himself, figured out how to re-animate. That is, re-engineer a corpse into ‘living’ again. But nerve endings and circuitry aren’t what makes a person alive. It’s his soul. Right? Well, it’s what separates us from them.
The mutated cells, really viruses, I suppose, are what makes them come back, the corpses. Dead bodies with active brains. Or maybe it’s not organic after all. It could be some kind of cyborg. Just cogs and wheels that got smart. Too smart. Smart enough to coalesce into the space that was once the human brain. And animate the body. But not just animate, take it over.
Oh, and then take over the next person it can lay its eyes on. Living or not. And infect them too.
The virus, or cyborg, injects itself into the new host that it captures and starts chewing on. They like the back of the neck, especially. Quicker rewiring, I guess.
The research facility was located outside of the city. But not far enough. The workers and doctors returned to their homes inside the city in the evening anyway.
We don’t know the details of that first time for sure. Some people I’ve known have told their own versions of it. Some swore theirs was the true tale. Some just wanted to scare the kids shitless. I don’t believe we’ll ever know. Why? Because the only people who do know exactly what happened died from it. It was so unexpected. How could they enact a plan they did not take seriously? A plan they never really paid attention to in the first place. A plan they didn’t know.
The first night the infection escaped its confines, it rode in the veins of an orderly, who cleaned up this last mess in a series of re-animation experiments. The corpse started spewing blood. That’s the problem with bullet holes when you re-animate the functions of the body. It’s eyes had flickered open for a moment, but faded. The scientists, the doctors called it a breakthrough. But it still needed tweaks. And an intact subject. That work was saved for tomorrow though. And the cleaning crew was called in.
The orderly stooped in front of the no longer moving or spurting corpse. To clean its blood. No, it’s not AIDs. It didn’t jump through the blood to an inconvenient scrape on his hand. The body did. Well, it fell on him. Mouth open. The teeth struck his upper back and punctured it. And that’s when the real experiment began.
Through the saliva, the corpse infected. The virus found a new host.
He might have made it all the way home. And eaten his family. Or maybe he was walking down the street, and caught a passerby in his jaws. Perhaps he went to happy hour with some coworkers. And before they could order the second round of drinks, he changed. The virus flipped the switch and his soul vacated. He turned to the woman on the barstool next to him and he closed his mouth on her neck. Another man hears her screams and wrenches him away from the woman. The infected orderly is not picky. He promptly bites into his flesh too. The woman falls from the stool. A concerned crowd is gathering. More men pull off the crazed biter. They are bitten in turn on their arms and hands. An ambulance is called. And the police.
The first woman and man are transported to the hospital. As you can imagine, after the incubation period wears off, two similar attacks ensue and new infections blossom. It’s a domino effect. An inevitable chain reaction.
The orderly is probably tranquilized by the cops. But it’s no matter. The virus has already achieved its goal. It’s already spread. Now it’s a matter of exponents.
And lack of a better plan.
_
I was late for work that morning. I was mad. Hannah had dismantled my alarm clock when it buzzed the first time, so instead of waking up at the prescribed hour, I rolled over. And so did Hannah. Pregnant women apparently need lots of sleep.
So I yelled when I woke up an hour later. I yelled at her. I still said goodbye, after I got ready and left. I still kissed her and said the three little ritual words. But I was still angry. I was going through the motions.
Too bad I didn’t know that would be the last time I would.
I drove towards the gleaming buildings of downtown. Well, they would have been gleaming, if it wasn’t so cloudy. There was a huge cloud barreling down on the city.
I drove. I sped. There was hardly any traffic at this time of morning. I was gleeful in spite of my tardiness. The commute was the worst part of my day.
Then I came to a wall of stopped cars. Expletives spewing out of my mouth, I jammed on the breaks. The car stopped just inches short. It was only then that I looked up to the skyline.
It was burning. Each building smoldering.
The obscuring cloud hovering over the city was smoke and it poured out of every high-rise office building, both court buildings, the hotels, the Arch. Everything.
What happened? Were we attacked by terrorists and I just didn’t know? My iPod was in. I wasn’t listening to the radio like I usually did. I flipped on the FM. Static. I changed to another station. More static. Then garbled words. Was that panic? Was that a warning?
Honks from the cars in front of me swelled to a crescendo. Screams pierced them. More cars filed in behind me. This wasn’t good.
Bodies. Leaping. Was that a person? Or some trick of the light? Windows of the Sheraton Hotel were smashing. The hotel less than 15 feet from the highway I was on. The glass, shimmering softly, rained down next to the elevated highways. And figures leapt from these windows onto the highway. They landed onto the westbound lane of traffic, which was stacked on top of the eastbound lane. It was 500 yards in front of me where my lane subverted under the westbound. It was empty, no cars, just the figures which seemed to pick themselves up after their jump from the Sheraton. Were these things robots? There was no way a human could survive that jump.
I had no idea how right I was.
My mind tumbled over the possibilities. What are they? What could possibly…? More screams. The things, now disturbingly resembling people as they came closer, leapt into the crowded eastbound lane. People abandoned their cars. Some stopped next to the open doors to stare. What is coming? Others turned and ran. They streamed past my car.
A body is thrown. Another landed on a windshield – crack. Grabbing the zippered pouch tucked into the driver’s side door, my umbrella and my phone, I vacated my car. A bloodied body sailed past me. I turn for a moment. Glimpses of a woman crawling. A bite taken out of her leg. I move to run away. But the woman yells for help. Her voice is shaky. She cannot believe what is happening any more than I can. I bent down to hoist her up. “What happened?” came my obvious question.
“It bit me.”
“What did?” still thinking robots were a distinct possibility.
“The… the… it was a man.”
That did not compute. I stopped walking.
“…But it wasn’t a man, he was… I don’t know. His clothes were all bloody and his eyes were all unfocused, like he was sleepwalking.”
“I don’t think this is normal sleepwalking behavior.”
“I don’t know, I – oh – ” The woman with blonde hair like Hannah’s but straight, clutched her stomach. Then she fell to the pavement. Hard.
I held her head in my hands, trying to shake her awake. Afraid that she might not. She made a low, rumbling noise. Like a growl. Her eyes eased open. And she screamed. Not a scream of terror. Or pain. It was more like longing. Her limp arms now grabbed me and pulled me towards her. Her mouth opened. This woman was trying to bite me.
She was a zombie.
My mind did not want to accept the fact but it was being pushed toward her hungry jaws, so I did the only thing all those, often dopey, zombie movies taught me: I broke her grip, unzipped the pouch I had tucked in my waistband and unloaded half a clip of the 9mm into her brain.
I killed my first zombie.
And I had no idea what to do next. More of the walking dead were coalescing around me. I had to get off the raised highway. The MetroLink Station lay below it. I steeled myself. This was going to hurt.
A zombie, originally an elderly man, moved towards me. Arms out, grabbing in the traditional zombie stance. I shot him in the head once. Looked over the ledge of the overpass. Gave him the double tap and as he dropped so did I off the highway.
I landed in the dumpster, thanking my SEAL training. There were no zombies here. Now. But I couldn’t be sure if one saw me jump and would follow. Clambering out of the dumpster, I made my way to the MetroLink.
Looking at the timetable, assuming it was still running, I tried to calculate how long I would have until some zombies found their way in here. The sound of glass breaking came from the other side of the station. I cocked my pistol.
A head popped out from the divider. The protruding afro quickly retreated. “Man, you pointin’ a gun at me? You better not or I point my gun at you!”
“You aren’t a zombie?” I already knew the answer.
“Nah, man, do it look like I a goddamn zombie?”
“How should I know? You’re hiding behind a wall.”
“Put yo’ gun away and I come out.”
“Okay.”
The head poked out again. I pivoted to show him the gun tucked into my jeans.
“What the hell you doin’ in here?”
I returned the question.
“Raiding the vending machine. It don’t matter that they got a camera here, now that we got a zombie problem.”
I laughed, “Yeah, guess not.”
“You?”
“They overran 4o. I was heading to work… I jumped down here to get away.”
“You goin’ to work? Where the hell you work?” He appraised my casual attire.
“Ad agency.”
“An’ they got no dress code?” He was smiling.
“No.”
He laughed. “What’s yo’ name?”
“Garret.”
“I be Jay.”
Screaming broke up the introductions.
