Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse (2 page)

Just then a loud bang sounded from upstairs. Sean and Mike looked up at the ceiling, as if they could see through the plaster.

“What do you think: Jack or Brian?” Mike asked, smiling and still looking up. There was a soft scraping noise then a loud “Fuck!”

“Jack!” they said in unison, laughing.

They, of course, were talking about their two other housemates, Jack Di Meola and Brian Dunn. Jack, the man with the loud expletives, was another college friend. Mike and Sean had met him during their sophomore year of college, and the three of them soon became best buds. After graduation Sean and Mike stayed in New Jersey. Sean had gotten his art and business degree and Mike his teaching degree to become a history teacher at the same high school they’d graduated from. Jack stayed in school and eventually got a doctorate in psychology. Even though he was originally from Boca Raton in South Florida and came from money (his father owned a string of exotic-car dealerships there), he elected to stay in New Jersey with his two best friends. He now practiced two towns away.

Brian Dunn, the fourth and last member of the crew, was the latest addition to the foursome. Brian was originally from Pittsburgh and had started off on a football scholarship at one of the big universities. He had a good freshman season, but at a practice scrimmage right at the start of his sophomore year, he took a bad hit that completely screwed up his ACL, thereby ending his football career and scholarship.

Not able to afford the high tuition at his prestigious university, he transferred to the college Sean and company had attended. They met at a frat party senior year, and Brian’s weird and hilarious sense of humor ushered him perfectly into the group. Brian was still a muscular
man—six foot two and 245 pounds—although he was getting soft around the middle. The fact that he had been injured and had lost his chance at a football career still bothered him, which in turn led to his reluctance to do much in the way of exercise. A month ago he had come down with the Pandora virus, but although he had to be hospitalized, he recovered rather quickly and was back at work at La Ventura, an upscale restaurant in the nearby town of Montclair, where he was a bartender. As it was the biggest hot spot and place to be seen, he made
mucho
money in tips. It seemed that tipping there was a yuppie dick-measuring contest. His sense of humor served him well, and he was very popular there.

Their conversation momentarily curtailed by Jack’s outburst, Sean and Mike went about filling their coffee mugs, getting ready for the other two to join them.

“I’m taking my coffee to the living room to watch CNN for a while. I want to see if there’s any more news on what’s happening with Pandora. Care to join me?” asked Mike, looking at his friend. He walked to the living room with his coffee, sipping it as he left the kitchen.

Just then Jack stuck his head around the corner. “Morning, guys! How’s it going?” He went to the Keurig and chose a strong Colombian blend. “I heard Brian stumbling around his room, so I guess he’ll be down shortly too,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “Those pancakes up for grabs?”

“Go ahead, Jack,” said Sean, walking out to join Mike. “Just leave one for Brian.”

Jack laughed. “I leave him just one, and he’s liable to eat my arm too.” He wasn’t exaggerating much; they all knew of Brian’s enormous capacity for eating.

“Hey, Jack,” called Mike from the other room. “Don’t you have patients this morning?”

“I usually do—you’re right. Not today, though,” said Jack, walking into the room with Sean and Mike. “Both of them called my answering service this morning, claiming they’re sick. Lousy luck, as they both just got over the Pandora virus. I had a woman do that same thing yesterday. I guess I’m in front of the boob tube this morning with you guys. Shove over. Just don’t
put on any reality show. My IQ can’t take the hit.” He sat down on their extra-large couch next to Shawn.

The sixty-inch, flat-screen television burst to life as Mike pointed the remote at it. He quickly switched the channel to CNN, and the three friends settled in to watch the breaking news.

“The continuing reports that have been flooding in from Europe and Asia regarding people suddenly falling ill then attacking first responders and others who have tried to help them have taken a very strange turn. Some reports are saying the people who have suddenly taken ill have—and I hesitate to even say this—died before turning on the people trying to help them. There are even reports of these apparently deranged attackers biting and…um, eating their victims. I know it sounds like a bad horror movie, but this is what is being reported overseas, although we have yet to receive absolute confirmation.”

The three men sat with their mouths hanging open as they listened to the news anchor.

“No fucking way!” whispered Sean.

After being handed a sheet of paper, the anchor continued. “We’re just starting to receive new reports from various cities in this country about vicious attacks occurring randomly. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the World Health Organization have just confirmed that all the people who have fallen sick and then become violent are individuals who previously contracted the Pandora virus that recently spread as a worldwide pandemic.

“The federal government has called for all Pandora survivors to immediately report to any nearby hospital for testing and probable quarantine. Radio and television alerts are to be—”

Just then a kitchen chair fell over, banging noisily on the tile floor. As one, the three friends jumped in their seats. They were so absorbed in the newscast that the loud bang scared the shit out of them.

“Crap, spilled my coffee,” complained Jack.

“Yeah, me too,” added Mike.

Sean walked into the kitchen to check on the noise when he ran into Brian.

“Sorry, guys,” Brian mumbled sheepishly. “I’m feeling a little dizzy this morning.”

Sean looked at his friend in the bright morning light that shone into the kitchen. He was shocked at how sick his buddy looked. “Dude, are you all right? You look like shit. I mean, you really look bad,” he said, now very concerned.

Brian Dunn stood in the middle of the kitchen, practically swaying back and forth. He looked ashen, and his skin appeared clammy. When he looked at Sean, his eyes were very bloodshot and seemed almost dull.

“Hey…here, man,” Sean told Brian, grabbing another chair. “Sit down before you fall down.”

He guided Brian onto the chair and glanced up to see Mike and Jack standing in the doorway, looking worried. They came in as Sean got down on one knee in front of the now-seated big man.

“Do you want some water? I think it may help,” Sean said. Turning to Jack, he added, “Hey, give Brian a glass of water. Okay?”

Jack ran to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of Poland Spring water and, twisting off the cap, hurriedly brought it back and handed it to Brian. After taking the bottle with a shaky hand, Brian slowly brought it to his mouth and took a sip.

“I dunno53, guys,” groaned Brian. “I really feel like crap.”

“What do you think it is?” asked Sean. “What symptoms are you feeling?”

“I have this splitting headache.” Brian closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “It starts from the back of my neck and runs over the top of my head to behind my eyes. It feels like my head is about to explode. All my joints and muscles feel sore and kind of stiff. Even my hands feel achy.” Brian looked down and picked his hand up from his lap, then curled and uncurled his fingers like claws. He let his breath out in a long exhalation. “Man, this sucks!” He took another sip of water.

“What do you need us to do?” asked Jack.

Brian gave a disgusted shrug. He sat there for a minute or two, just staring into his lap. In the quiet of the moment, they heard the reporter on
television talking about a new attack at New York-Presbyterian University Hospital and something else up in Boston.

Sean stood and looked at Mike. Mike met his gaze and raised his eyebrows; both of them had the same unspoken thought. They looked at Jack, but he kept alternating his gaze back and forth between the television, which he could just see around the doorway to the living room, and Brian, who was sitting dejectedly in the chair, softly groaning.

Mike took a step closer to Brian, rested a hand on his shoulder, and bent down. “Brian? I think this might have something to do with what’s on the news. They said anyone who’s had the Pandora virus is getting sick again. I think we should take you back to the hospital. I know you don’t want to go there again, but this is real serious, bro.”

“Yeah, what do you say, Brian?” asked Sean.

Brian looked up at them then looked down again, rubbing his hand through his uncombed blond hair.

“All right,” he said simply.

“Great!” said Sean, brightening up slightly. “We’ll all come with you.”

“I’ll get my Jeep,” Jack offered. “You guys get him ready to roll.” He quickly walked to the hall table near the front door and grabbed his keys.

Sean and Mike helped Brian up to a standing position and gently guided him to the front door, which was now open, as Jack had run out to get his Cherokee started. Now that they had him moving, Brian looked even paler than he had before. Yet he gave them a feeble smile and said gamely, “I hope that cute nurse is still there.”

He was referring to a very nice, very petite blond nurse at Saint Mary’s Hospital who had been his night nurse when he initially had come down with the Pandora virus. Brian had been between girlfriends at the time and had asked Mike to have his girlfriend, Susan Tolliver, maybe fix them up on a date. Susan also was a nurse at Saint Mary’s but in a different department; she worked on the oncology floor. During the Pandora epidemic, the virus had run rampant throughout the ward, probably brought in by visiting relatives. Susan had lost a great many of her patients due to their depleted state from cancer. It devastated her,
and she talked about transferring to another floor, maybe the cardiac unit, because she was so distraught. She was still there, though, having decided to tough it out.

The two housemates managed to maneuver Brian down the front stairs and to the side of the driveway, where Jack was waiting, his car idling in the morning light. He stuck his head out the window and called out, “Are you guys okay?”

Just then Brian gave out a soft cough then another that sounded almost as if he were gargling. As they stopped at the edge of the lawn, Brian bent over, his face scrunched up, and let loose a prodigious amount of bloody vomit over the new spring grass.

“Oh, Jesus!” Sean exclaimed, backing up while still holding Brian’s arm. “That’s disgusting!”

Shooting him a baleful glare, Mike turned and said to Brian, “Do you want to stop?”

“N-no. I…I think I’m done.” He returned to gasping and spitting on the grass, which was now more red than green.

Mike looked back at Sean and said, “Let’s get him in the car now.”

They struggled over to the Jeep, opened the door, and sat Brian in the backseat. Jack turned around in the front, with one hand pushing his straight hair out of his eyes, and said sheepishly, “Hey, can you sit him near the window in case he pukes again?” The three others looked at him. He smiled, embarrassed. “The car’s still kinda new, you know.”

Sean and Mike looked at each other and laughed. Jack just sat there looking over the console, with a pained little smile and his eyebrows raised as if in question. Everyone always thought he looked just like John Stamos, haircut and all.

“Don’t worry, Jack,” Sean said, grinning. “We’ll keep the window open.”

Mike slid into the other rear passenger side and put his hand on Brian’s shoulder, patting it reassuringly.

Sean jumped into the front seat next to Jack and thumped the dash twice. “Let’s go!” he yelled.

The ride to the hospital was thankfully uneventful. Brian sat slumped in the backseat, his head back and his eyes closed, as he breathed shallowly through his mouth. When they arrived at the emergency room, they screeched into a fortunately available parking space and quickly manhandled Brian out of the Jeep. They helped him into a wheelchair that Jack had noticed outside the entrance doors and had commandeered. Wheeling Brian through the entrance, his head swaying drunkenly to and fro with the movements of the chair, Jack turned to Mike and said, “Stay with Brian. Sean and I will go get someone to help him.”

As Jack and Sean ran over to the nurse at the admissions window, Mike sat next to Brian, who was slumped in the wheelchair, and looked around the filled-to-capacity waiting room. Some seemed to be there with seemingly routine illnesses and injuries. He saw crying babies held in their mothers’ arms, a few people holding various limbs and wincing, and even an old Hispanic man holding a bloody towel to his head while his probable grandson, neck tattoos peeking out from his collar, glared at everyone. There were, disquietingly, a few people, sitting with concerned family members, looking discomfortingly similar to Brian. They all appeared very pale and listless. One teenage boy, sitting directly across from Mike, had in his lap a blue plastic pail, obviously brought from home and partially filled with a bloody froth that seemed to contain pieces of what almost appeared to be his insides. He stared intently at Mike with hooded, horribly bloodshot eyes and a chilling red-smeared smile on his ashen face.

Michael quickly looked away, his skin actually getting goose bumps from that creepy look. He looked down at Brian and put an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry, Brian. We’ll get a doctor here soon to look at you. Don’t worry.”

Brian nodded his head slowly then coughed. A wad of bloody phlegm arced out of his mouth and landed with a splat at his feet. He opened his eyes and looked back up at Michael with a long red strand of thick saliva hanging from his lower lip.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said with a voice that sounded as though his lungs were filled with oatmeal. “I…I think…I think I’m dying.” His voice choked up on the last word.

“No, no, no,” soothed Michael unconvincingly. “You’ll be okay. Hang in there. Just wait for the doctor to get here. He’ll get you fixed up in no time.” Mike was near tears now. Between seeing one of his best friends going down like this, listening to what was going on in the world and connecting that with Brian, and sitting in this hospital waiting room, seeing the reality of things and that creepy, gore-smeared, death’s-head version of a kid leering at him from across the aisle, he felt as though he might lose it.