Dead Flesh: Stories of the Living Dead (2 page)

              When the rain began to fall Billy wasn’t too worried even though his mom and dad were both in the city leaving him alone in the house. They’d told him he was big enough to stay home alone while they made the twelve mile trip from the old farm house to the grocery store in town. He’d felt very proud of himself. Then the television began to show him some really scary things.

              That was yesterday morning.

              When mom and dad left he’d done what every kid does when they are left alone for the first time. He’d turned on the television louder than his mother ever would have allowed and he’d dug into the junk food in the kitchen. He was talking to his best friend Brandon via Instant Messenger when the TV began to make that stupid Emergency Broadcast noise.

              “Damnit!” Billy said and giggled because he could swear out loud without having to worry that his mom would hear him. It never occurred to him that his parents might have wired a camera to keep an eye on him.

              He reached over and grabbed the remote to hit the mute button. He spun the chair around, aimed the remote at the television, and then stopped cold. The scene was one of chaos and for a second Billy actually thought it was a city scene from the latest “Left 4 Dead” game.

              The scene was shot from a stationary traffic camera. There was a man running down a street and below the image a caption said “Downtown Boston”. Behind the man was a pack of what looked like sick people stumbling and falling as they pursued him like a swarm of ants. To Billy it looked like something they would see in the fields when they were rounding up the cows at night. The man was limping like he’d hurt his leg and Billy could see that he was soundlessly screaming for help.

              “This can’t be real,” Billy whispered to the empty room as he watched the man being overrun and taken down by the pack. The last image was of the man’s single arm reaching for help. Then the picture switched back to the daytime weather girl sitting behind the anchor desk.

              Billy turned the volume back on and listened as the somewhat hysterical anchor tried to explain what they were seeing. She attempted to convince the audience and presumably herself that this was some kind of terrorist attack and that the people doing the killing were infected with some sort of toxin or virus.

              Billy shook his head in disgust. Even at twelve he knew what was going on. He knew that it could only be one thing.

              Zombies!

              The first thing he’d done was to retrieve his bat from his room and then make sure all of the windows and doors were locked. Then he turned all of the exterior lights and every light in the house off except for the flashlight he carried with him. He knew from the plethora of zombie movies and books he’d consumed that the dead would be drawn to the light. He then camped out in his parent’s room and turned on their television to watch the chaos unfold.

              The rain that had been falling steadily all day began to increase in intensity not long after he established his command center in his folk’s room. The winds picked up and whenever he peaked through the heavy blinds the water was falling faster and faster.

              He considered going out to the barn and checking on the animals while there was still light. But he had no desire to encounter one of the dead whose numbers seemed to be increasing exponentially according to the TV. Even though they were relatively isolated out here on the farm the valley still had a population of nearly twenty five thousand.

              After an hour he made the first attempt to call his parents on their cell phones. After more than fifteen attempts it became clear to him that the circuits were so overloaded it could be days before he would be able to make a connection. Besides he was sure it would only be a matter of time before they came home. Then they could all ride out this crisis here on the farm safe and sound.

              The rain kept falling.

              He fell asleep sometime around midnight. His parents had yet to return home and he’d begun redialing their numbers every five minutes. The images on the television were becoming more frightening as scenes of death and insanity filled the screen. Sometime around eleven the female anchor had a meltdown and began sobbing and screaming for somebody to please go to her house and check on her children because the police would not allow her to leave the studio.

              Billy switched over to Netflix at that point and started watching old episodes of Adventure Time to calm himself.

              The power went off sometime before five in the morning as best as Billy could figure. When he woke the air conditioner was off and the room was chokingly hot already. He was covered in a thick sheen of sweat and was forced to take a very cold shower in order to relieve the greasy unpleasantness. He changed and then went downstairs to check the doors and windows.

              The house was dark and hot.

              Billy went to each door and every widow and assessed the situation outside. He saw none of the dead but he was disquieted by the amount of standing water he could see in the fields and on the lawn. His father had complained that it had been an unusually wet and hot spring and that too much of the snowpack had melted. He’d been concerned they would be unable to get a good crop this year because of oversaturation. The rain was still falling as hard as ever.

              Then he saw the shape by the barn.

              It looked like the outline of a person but Billy was not able to determine who it was. His first instinct was to go out there and greet them. The idea that it was an adult who would help him was just too appealing. He sprinted from the window to the door and was just about to throw the door open and race into the torrential downpour when his calmer nature took over. He considered the possibilities.

              What if it was one of the dead people?

              What if it was a living person who was looking to steal from the farm?

              What if it were somebody who was hurt?

              What if they were lost?

              What if he knew them?

              That last thought was the one that spurred him into action. The valley was a close knit community and there were very few people who he didn’t have a passing acquaintance with. He grabbed his rain slicker from the mud room and threw it on as he scooped up his bat. Then he hit the door and hurried toward the massive rust colored edifice that was the farms central barn.

              “Hello!” he yelled. “Are you hurt?” He closed the distance, his feet sucking into the muddy ground, as quickly as he could. In his mind it was one of the neighbors, they had hiked over because the water had washed out the roads and they were here to take care of him. He came to a squelching stop in front of the open door to the barn and his jaw hit his chest.

              Apparently the winds of the night before had ripped one of the doors off of its hinges exposing the interior to the elements. Inside the gloom he saw the shape of the person bent over the struggling body of a chicken. There was blood and feathers all over the muddy ground and the animal, which had to already be dead, was twitching uncontrollably.  In the darkness of the interior he could hear the agitate cries of the other animals as they attempted to put as much distance as possible between themselves and their unwanted visitor.

              Billy began to back up but in his fear he forgot about the mud. He was unable to cleanly pull his boots free of the molasses like ground and fell backwards into the morass.  The creature raised its head and appeared to be sniffing the air before turning its head to look directly at Billy.

              It loosed an evil moan and rose to its feet.

              Billy was shocked to see that he did indeed know the person the zombie had been. Erin Kelly lived five miles away with her husband. They raised and boarded horses. It had been Miss Erin who taught Billy how to ride and care for a horse. Now she was walking slowly and methodically toward him, her jaw working up and down.

              “Miss Erin, what happened to you?” Billy asked as he attempted to free himself from the quagmire. He could see what appeared to be a massive wound on her right shoulder and a large splash of red brown blood covering her blouse.

              Instead of answering the thing that had been his friend and teacher exited the barn and advanced through the mud toward him. She was already moving so slowly and methodically that the mud seemed to affect her much less than it had affected him.

              He was now scrambling backwards through the mud. Tears ran down his young face and mixed with the rain water as he attempted to simultaneously rise and flee. He accomplished neither of these actions and the relatively slow zombie cleared the space between them.

              “Please Miss Erin, NO!” he cried as she reached for his feet.

              She grabbed hold of his ankle and began to pull him toward her. If Billy had stopped to think he probably would have been dead. Instead he switched over to a type of panicked autopilot and began to kick and scream wildly. He was like a penned and wounded animal and every time he made contact with her dead sodden form he felt a primal jolt of pleasure. After the fourth or fifth kick made contact with her face the zombie Miss Erin fell backwards and her grip on his ankle was broken.

              Adrenaline buzzing through his system Billy sprang to his feet and raced to the bat he’d dropped at the barn entrance. He could hear the Erin thing struggling to its feet behind him but he paid it little mind. He needed to get to the weapon. Heart pounding and the smell of rot, mud, and warm rain filling his nose Billy retrieved the aluminum club and whirled around.

              She was advancing again.

              He set his feet firmly in the mud and raised the implement over his shoulder. He knew all he needed was one good swing. All he needed to do was make contact with the small woman’s head and he could drop her. All he had to do was kill someone who’d been like an older sister to him his entire life.

              “Erin, please stop,” he whispered and the tears that had never stopped flowing picked up in intensity.

              She advanced.

              “Please don’t make me do this,” he begged

              She growled.

              “Please just go away,” he begged.

              She reached for him

              “I’M SORRY!” he screamed, and then he swung the bat as hard as he could.

              She dropped to the ground.

              It was hard for Billy to say how long he stood in front of the barn and cried over the body of his friend. It may have been minutes and it may have been days. In that moment time meant nothing. But the Billy who eventually returned to the house was not the one who’d left it.

              That Billy was as dead as Miss Erin.

              He decided he would make some dinner and eat it on the massive covered porch. His father had a shotgun in the basement and Billy would take it with him. The rain showed no signs of letting up and the water was getting higher and higher in the fields and on the lone road. Soon it would reach the porch.

              He would wait for the water to stop rising. And then he would go find his parents.

Jack was not feeling so good. Ever since he ate that donut and coffee this morning he’d been feeling dizzy and having sharp pains under his rib cage. At first he thought that it was just a really bad case of gas. He’d been using that new sweetener, unisweet, for the last week and one of the possible side effects that was listed on the box was gas. Jack had already been seeing massive results from the usage of unisweet. He’d not changed his eating and drinking patterns in the slightest but dropped almost fifteen pounds.

              Unisweet, a substitute sweetener made from genetically engineered corn, had been released onto the market almost thirty days ago and was touted as the answer to the world’s weight problems. Not only did unisweet have zero calories it also encouraged the body to not absorb the calories from other foods and beverages. 

              A massive cramp jumped from the pit of Jack’s stomach to the center of his chest. He dropped to his knees in the middle of the hallway and the papers that he’d been taking to the accounting department scattered across the floor in a white fanning arc.

              “Jack, are you ok?” Marie asked. She was the attractive administrator from the research department. Jack always perked up when she spoke to him. Now she seemed very worried as she knelt beside him and took his hand in hers.

              Jack always liked Marie, her caramel colored skin and dark eyes usually had the power to send his heart fluttering and to tie his tongue in knots. But at the moment all he could do was hope that his bladder didn’t release from the pain. Instead of answering her he groaned loudly and rolled onto his side drawing his knees up to his chest.

              “Somebody call 911” Marie yelled, “I think he’s having a heart attack!”

              If he’d been feeling a little better Jack might have smiled at the real concern he heard in her voice. But his vision was fading and he was beginning to hear things as if he were at the bottom of a pool. There was a rushing in his ears and his breath was coming in short painful gasps. He vaguely realized that his pants had become warm and wet but it really didn’t matter because his pulse was racing and the room was spinning.

              “OH MY GOD!” Marie screamed as Jack began to spasm and convulse. For thirty seconds Jack Meyer, Junior Partner at the Law Firm of Goldman & Stern, whipped across the floor and released his bowels. Then he went still and quiet.

              The crowd of people that had gathered around Jack stood shocked and silent. Blood poured from his nose, mouth, ears, and eyes. Nobody approached closer than ten feet and the air was still and quiet.

              “Is he dead?” someone in the crowd asked but Marie couldn’t answer.

              She shook her head slightly, visibly steeled herself, and knelt down next to Jack and said, “Jack … Jack are you ok?”

              There was no response and the crowd began to murmur.

              Marie reached out to touch Jack’s shoulder. Before she made contact Jack’s body shook. She drew her hand back and the group gasped. He began to roll over and Marie smiled.

              “Oh thank god” she said and reached out to help him up.

              As soon as her hand touched him she knew something was wrong but she never had a chance to do anything about it. Jacks head whipped around and she saw the cloudy red pall over his eyes and the bloody grimace on his open mouth.

              “Jack …” she began.

              His hand flashed out and grabbed her arm. It was painful but she never had time to cry out as Jack’s entire body sprung forward like a coiled spring and his teeth clamped down on her shoulder. Blood streamed from the bite and then Jack ripped a huge chunk from her body. She screamed and attempted to fight her way free of him but his hands were like steel vices.

              All around them the people in the office began to run and scream. Nobody looked back at Marie as Jack’s teeth ripped another chunk of her flesh out and her blood flowed onto the expensive carpeted floor.

              On other floors in the building the same scene was playing out.

              All across the city, the state, the country … all across the world the same scene was playing itself out.

              A very tiny fraction of the population was allergic to the active genetically modified ingredients in unisweet. Once those people reached a certain level of saturation a cascade effect took place. Those with the allergy died and then the brain was restarted by the genetically changed sweetener. The people that got up were then ravenously hungry and the prey they craved was the flesh of their fellow humans. To make matters worse the genetic coding was transferred in the fluids of the infected to their victims.

              All efforts at containment failed within hours as the infection spread.

***

              The group had been moving hard throughout the night and had been on the march for almost a week. Six days before, the pack of dead besieging their hiding place had finally gotten through the defenses they’d been reinforcing for more than a month. If it’d happened a few weeks earlier it would have been tragic but they had been at the end of their food stocks and the debate about whether or not to make a move to someplace better had been becoming heated.

              The numbers of the dead on the streets were light and they’d been making good time. Even the children hadn’t had any real problem keeping up with the rest of the group. There were three main goals. First they had to acquire some transportation, then they needed to secure a new and hopefully an easier defended place to live, and finally they needed food. These things were easier said than done, in the weeks since the rising of the dead. Most of the trappings of civilization had deteriorated faster than anyone could have guessed.

              Most of the vehicles readily available were either damaged or they lacked something necessary such as tires, batteries, and gas making them useless. A lot of the more suitable buildings were either taken by the living or more often the dead. Or they’d been damaged in some way that made them uninhabitable without a serious amount of work. All of this was bothersome but it could be worked around, the real problem was the lack of readily available food.

              In the days of chaos when the crisis began people scoured the stores and restaurants for all food they could lay their hands on. The survivors had stopped at more than a dozen locations since escaping their former home and the most they’d found was a few bags of crackers and stale bread. They’d been on the move without any food for more than a day.

              It was the little Asian kid who saw the truck.

              Overturned in the middle of the road was a delivery truck with the graphics of cakes, cookies, and pies plastered to the sides. It had apparently taken a turn way to quickly during the rising and had overturned and rolled into the ditch on the side of the road. The doors were still closed, the widows were cracked but intact, and the truck had not caught fire.

              “Hold up,” the leader of the group said and then motioned for three of the members to check it out.

              They were all experienced in the ways of the new world. When they pried the glass out of the front wind shield nobody was surprised when the broken form of the driver pulled itself out of the truck, groaning and reaching. The creature was quickly dispatched. Then the trio moved to the back of the truck where they pried the rusted rolling door open.

              “It’s good,” one of them called out. The glee heard in his voice was infectious.

              “Alright folks,” the leader said. “Let’s get down there and have a bite to eat.” He grinned and then led his group of survivors to the sugary bounty that awaited them.

              The group, all twenty three of them, fell upon the goodies in the back of the truck. The last cargo it had carried were snack cakes and pies for convenience stores and gas stations. The survivors gorged themselves on fatty sugary goodness until they were stuffed and satiated. It was decided the area behind the truck was a good place to set up camp and rest for a few hours.

              None of the survivors paid any attention to the stickers on all of the cakes and pies which read “Made with Unisweet”.

              In less than six hours all of the survivors were dead and walking. The weeks of heat had caused the modified genes in the sweetener to grow in potency. Seven of the survivors quickly succumbed to the allergic reaction while the others slept or paid attention to the area outside the camp.

              And the world kept dying.