A Little Undead

A
Little Undead

By Laira Evans

She was feeling optimistic.
Zombie incursions from the red zone were at an all time low, she
finally had her own apartment, and she was about to start her first
full-time job as a police officer. This was the true beginning of
the rest of her life. Now if only she could figure out where this
sudden craving for human blood came from...

Chapter 1:
A New Beginning

It is a testament to the gravity of what came
after that perhaps the most destructive natural disaster in the
history of the modern world is now barely a footnote in the history
books.

–
Massachusetts
Historical Society

The bus ride was relatively
uneventful. The bus's suspension fought against the long stretch of
bumpy highway, largely unsuccessfully. Some sat in tense silence
hour after hour and others chattered nervously, children exclaiming
proudly that this was their first time outside Haven. The adults –
I still had to remind myself I was one as well now – had a
rather rough time of it. The repurposed school bus had all the leg
room of a cupboard and about as much padding.
'At least there's
one thing my height is good for.'

My sister, Holly, sat next to
me, staring with wonder at a countryside more wild than it had been
in a hundred years. I could hear her sigh as the bus clunked over an
old stone bridge, gaze transfixed by the sparkling waters. I drifted
in and out of sleep, sunlight leaching at my strength as always as we
passed slow mile after mile. As enrapturing as the sights might be,
the allure of a cat-nap was too strong.

It wasn't until we passed into
a valley an hour from Boston that we had our first incident. A
zombie scattered into pieces on the windshield, prompting screams of
fear followed by cautious cheering. My eyes snapped open at the
impact as I quickly cataloged it's appearance before it burst apart.
It was obvious it was a rotter even at first glance. White eyes
stared out of a sunken face, its flesh so rotten and ragged it was
difficult to believe it was ever human. The most easily recognizable
of all the zombie types we had been taught about in school, it was
also the most common. Unlike ferals or red-eyes they were typically
active during the day, though perfectly willing to take a bite out of
the unwary that stumbled across them in the dark. Grotesque
creatures, they were half-blind, slow-moving, stupid, and so
infectious once fully ripened that a drop of blood or saliva in an
open wound or a scratch from one of their fingernails was enough to
kill you without antibiotics. Walking petri dishes of bacteria, they
were always rotting but never quite falling apart. Stuffy air or
not, I was glad the bus service mandated that the windows stay sealed
shut at all times.

It was the first zombie I had
seen since arriving in Haven, the first since the accident that had
taken my memories, yet my pulse was as steady as ever. As the
windshield wiper scraped the blood and particulate from the glass I
tried to conjure up some hint of fear or disgust but all I felt was
cold. It wasn't that I wanted to shriek or run in fear or anything,
especially considering I was just hired as a police officer, but as I
laid a comforting hand on Holly's shoulder after seeing her
blood-drained face I couldn't help but think that I should be feeling
some
degree of shock.
Putting the matter aside I plumped up Holly's discarded jacket and
made a little pillow on her shoulder before laying down my head to
rest.

My head felt funny. Where
was I?

“
Th-thirsty,” the
word was only a whisper but even so it slid through my throat like
sandpaper, ending as a hiss through too-dry lips. I tried again to
make a sound but stopped with a cough. Shallow, hitching breaths
followed, leaving me with no air to speak. Spotting a paper cup with
a tantalizing shadow of water showing through it's surface I reached
out for it but came up just shy. Fingers still clumsy from sleep the
cup jerked and spilled, leaving only a few drops to coat my raw
throat.

A sticky note was attached to
the side of my pillow. “Gone to call Mom, be back soon. Love,
Dad.”

'A
hospital'
, I realized, '
I'm
in a hospital'
. I sat up slowly, wincing as heavy bruises
across my chest and left shoulder made themselves known. Peeling
back the medical gown I noticed an angry diagonal red line running
across my body. '
From a seat
belt?'
I wondered, thinking it would explain the soft neck
brace keeping me from turning my head too far. The bruises looked
yellow, as if already half healed, and my neck felt as if it was
never injured at all. How long had I been here? There was no water
bag and nasty needles like TV dramas showed coma patients having, so
it couldn't have been that long, right?

I flexed my toes, wondering
what was taking Daddy so long. My throat was still dry and my
injuries didn't hurt
that
bad. The doctor's wouldn't mind if I got up for just a little while,
right? Besides, the bathroom wasn't very far away... unless that
door went to a closet or something. That would be annoying. Turning
in the bed I let my feet dangle off the side as I peered through the
window. It was night, I realized, heart jumping as I wondered if
Daddy had left me here alone. I took a long deep breath like Mom
told me and felt my heartbeat slow, blood ceasing to pound in my
ears.

Looking downwards I noticed
something out of place. A long stretch of yellow tape with black
lettering stretched around the hospital. Looking towards a section
under the street lamp I could just barely make it out.
“Quar-an-tine?” I didn't recognize the word but it
sounded like something not very nice.

The lights flickered and in
the flash I saw a shadow race past the window of the door. Slipping
under the sheets headfirst I felt a soft click as the neck brace came
undone. Yelling internally at my foolishness for letting a nurse or
something scare me I touched the brace, wondering if it was alright
to leave it off. '
My neck feels
fine,'
I decided. Besides, it was annoying and itchy.
Turning on my belly I lowered myself from the high bed, toes curling
as my bare feet touched the stone-cold floor. Gathering up my
clothes and the paper cup from the counter I headed towards the
bathroom.

“
Unhh.
”

'
What
was that?'
I was too startled to breathe as something
pounded from inside the bathroom door, scraping down the wood. '
A
dog?'
While not afraid of dogs, I still remembered Uncle
John showing me the old bite marks on his arm. I didn't know why a
dog would be in the hospital but it was probably better to wait for a
grown-up.

Instead of waiting I pulled
the sheet across the side of the bed to shield myself and changed as
quickly as I could. The socks, however, I spent a few minutes to
position. Such troublesome things, always bunching in my shoes.
Why did people wear socks anyways?

The hallway outside my room
was creepy-silent. Maybe Dad was outside smoking? Mom wouldn't like
that if she found out. I'd have to stop him. The exit sign was just a
few steps away. Planting my feet, I pushed at the heavy door, hurt
shoulder pinging at me as I drove it open. '
?'
It was too much to see at once, like a vision of Hell from
one of the movies my dad watched somehow come to life. If it had
been too quiet inside the hospital, now it was too loud. Car alarms
and shouts combined with the roaring of fires as bodies dropped from
windows onto the crowds below. Then I saw one of the bodies get up
again. A scream welled up in my throat–

“
Julie, wake up.”
Familiar hands gently shook me awake as I swallowed what would have
been an embarrassing outburst.

“
We're
there already?” I asked, trying to hide how much my hands were
shaking. '
Just a nightmare.'
It
hadn't felt like I was dreaming. Even though the memory of it was
blurring I could still feel the imprint of the door on my palms,
smoke scratching my lungs as I drew breath to scream.

Holly shook her head as I peered
around her neck to look outside. “No, just the checkpoint.”

Looking down the aisle I spotted
a man and a woman in military fatigues slowly making their way down
the bus. Hastily I dug out my ID, not wanting their attention on me
any longer than necessary. My classmates had informed me quite
enough times of how strange I was. I had no need of an enforced
seven day stint in quarantine to remind me. The woman reached my row
and snatched the card from my hand, apparently having no patience for
niceties. “Nineteen?” Her eyebrow arched in disbelief
but then she just snorted and tossed the card into my lap. Holly had
already stored hers safely away by the time the soldiers reached the
next aisle but my hand lingered over the laminated card.

Age nineteen, black hair, blue
eyes, 4'8” and 75 lb. It was more of a travel visa than a
drivers license as existed before the Infection, but I didn't blame
her too much for thinking I had faked my age a bit. Even with all my
efforts to appear older I was lucky to pass for sixteen, let alone
the nineteen my ID age indicated me to be. These days even people
who knew me were starting to forget that Holly wasn't the older
sister.

The dream was just a dream. It
had to be. Even if I hadn't lost my memories, I couldn't have been
older than three when the outbreak started. Reading a quarantine
sign or being tall enough to get off the hospital bed was out of the
question. I hadn't even hit puberty until I was sixteen for crying
out loud. It was more likely that everyone guessed I was older than
I actually was when I first arrived in Haven, not younger, right?
With the amnesia I'd suffered I certainly wouldn't have been in any
position to dispute the matter. I frowned and turned over the card,
not wanting to look at the unpleasantly young face in the picture any
longer.

Unlike I had imagined, there was
no clear sense of where Boston began amidst the wilderness and the
decaying husks of a fallen era. There was no stockade here, as was
common in most post-Fall settlements. Fences, where there were any
at all, were small affairs. A bare thirty feet of chain fence
enclosed what passed for a yard behind one of the houses, a dog and
child at play behind that fragile safety net. Another outlying
citizen appeared to have fenced in just his doorstep, an extra little
step of precaution against the ravenous undead. Traveling deeper
into the city the signs of fire-gutted buildings and ragged concrete
lessened. Windows whole and free of cracks grew more common, though
bars or wooden slats often blocked them for security. Military
convoys (eyeing our still blood-spattered bus with considerable
suspicion) tapered off, replaced by two-man patrols of police in riot
gear.

It was a walking city, I
realized. As the bus crept further in we slowed more and more,
pedestrians steadfast in their control of the road. I didn't
particularly mind. Inconvenient as it was, it was a sign that Boston
was alive and well. The living walked openly in the streets without
looking over their shoulders or even carrying visible weapons. It
was the largest city on Earth to survive the Infection; a place where
people could live free under the sky. And if having so many people
near me in addition to the smattering of people on the bus was making
me nervous enough to dig my fingernails into the seat padding, well,
it was something that I was looking forward to getting used to.

“
So this is Boston.”
Adjusting the straps of my hiking backpack I stepped off to the side
of the bus to wait for Holly. Puttering like a dying beast against
my back the engine slowly stuttered to a stop. The old yellow school
bus probably should have been retired a decade ago instead of serving
as long distance transport from the outlying provinces of the
Republic of New England. As it was they gave it a hasty paint job,
some steel reinforcements to impede zombie attacks in the event of
engine failure, and a snow plow. Somehow I doubted the plow's most
common use was for snow.