TAGGED: THE APOCALYPSE (2 page)

T
hey arrived back home from the Bahamas at 8:30 p.m., too late to go to the doctors. Marvin had switched their flight, shortening their trip by two days. He had made an emergency appointment with their internist, first thing in the morning. He was an excellent physician and Marvin was certain he would know what to do. Marvin jumped out of the small twin bed in the guest room, where he had been sleeping. Samantha was in the master bedroom.

He first noticed it on the plane ride. There was an odor about her and it was becoming more pronounced with each passing hour. It was like the smell of rotting meat. He shook his head vigorously to remove the
olfactory memory, but it was still there and stronger than ever.

The sound of the bed sheet tearing again jarred him
and he knew it wasn’t a dream. He heard footsteps and then, “Oh my God! Daddy!” It was his seventeen year old daughter Quincy in the hall. Thank heaven his younger child Dan had stayed an extra night with his friend. He didn’t want him to see his mother like this. No sense in scaring the boy unnecessarily. Marvin took a deep breath and flung open the door.

There on the floor in the hall was a nude skeleton
with the hair and skin still attached. For a moment, he didn’t even recognize his wife Samantha. How could this disease progress so fast? They should have gone straight to the emergency room. He was going to sue the bastards who had done this! “What’s happening, Dad? What’s wrong with Mom?” Quincy looked at him with terror in her eyes. Marvin realized this was the first she had seen of her mom since they had arrived home.

“Call 911
, Baby. Go. Now!” Most of all Marvin just wanted to get her out of the hallway and doing something else.

B
lack vomit came gushing out Samantha’s mouth, adding to the puddle already on the floor. Samantha was covered in a sheen of sweat, crouched on all fours on the wooden hallway floor, like an animal. Her thick yellow fingernails made deep scratches in the wood as her body convulsed with each new expulsion of the black vomit. Her hair was long and thick and full; thicker and fuller than he had ever seen it. It reminded him of a lion’s mane. Her skin was a sickly pale grey with disturbing red boils the size of grapefruit and weeping puss-filled black blotches where others had burst. Spider webs of blue veins were visible under the skin all over her body.

“
Quincy called the ambulance. They’re coming.” Samantha’s back was like an oven where he touched it to comfort her. She stared straight ahead with unfocused eyes. She didn’t react to him when he touched her or acknowledge his presence in any way. The smell of death and sweat and vomit was overpowering. Marvin ran and yanked the sheet off the bed in the spare room, covering his mouth to prevent himself from vomiting. He threw the sheet over her naked body crouched on the floor. She turned her head to look at him then, and he couldn’t tell if she was trying to smile or if she was snarling at him. Her teeth looked huge, like they were too big for her face and shrunken, emaciated body.

“Daddy
, what’s wrong with Mom? Why does she look like that?” Quincy stood in her bedroom doorway with her iphone.

“Did you call 911?”

“Yes.”

“Go out front and wait for them. Make sure they can get in.”
Quincy blinked back tears as she stared at her Dad. She couldn’t look at the naked beast under the sheet in the hall. She stood there crying, arms crossed over her chest in her oversized night shirt, overwhelmed. “Go wait out front, honey.”

“Samantha. Samantha. Samantha.’ Samantha lifted her head the third time
he called her name and looked in his direction, but she seemed to look right through him with unfocused eyes. “The ambulance is coming. I need you to hang in there.” Marvin forced himself to smile through the smell of death, the vomit, and most of all her hideous appearance. She seemed to see him then and her eyes locked onto his. She coiled and sprang on top of him like a lion. Marvin clenched his eyes shut, screamed and thrashed in terror. Her weight crushed him like a two ton pickup. He couldn’t breath. His heart skipped several beats, then hammered like a thing possessed. There was a pain in his left arm like it was being ripped off.

Blackness.

“He’s waking up. Mr. Jones can you hear me? Mr. Jones you’ve had a heart attack.” Marvin was inside an ambulance. An EMT in a bright orange shirt was speaking loudly to him and shining a light into his eyes to check pupil dilation. His shirt was off and he was hooked to a heart monitor.

“My wife…” Marvin tried to speak, but his voice came out as only a harsh whisper.
He noted that all his limbs were still attached.

The
EMT just looked at him. Outside the ambulance beyond his feet, he could hear Quincy crying. He lifted his head. She was crouched over someone beneath a sheet. “Don’t move Mr. Jones. You’ve just suffered a heart attack.” The EMT pushed Marvin back down onto the cot with his hand.

“But she’s
not
dead! DO SOMETHING!” He could hear Quincy screaming hysterically at the EMT standing between her and the covered body on the rolling cot.

“There’s nothing we can do. I’m sorry.” The
EMT said quietly but firmly.

A uniformed police officer appeared at his feet. “I’m going to need to ask you some questions about what happened here, sir.”

“Is Samantha okay?” Marvin whispered.

“
No,” he shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye Marvin saw the EMT beside him widen his eyes and shake his head, mouthing silently, “don’t upset him.”

“What happened?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” the officer said.

“Mom? Mom
! I told you she’s alive!” Quincy’s voice rang out beyond his feet. Then he heard a long agonizing high pitched scream.

“Mrs. Jones
lay down. Mrs. Jones…” Then a garbled cry from the EMT.

Marvin
lifted his head up in the cot. This time the EMT beside him didn’t push him down but instead jumped out of the back of the ambulance to give aid to his downed colleague. Beyond the doors was the young police officer with his gun drawn. “Stop now! I’m ordering you to stop!” Two steps in front of him was his wife, crouched on all fours like a lion, staring intently at the officer. Beyond was a bloody corpse lying face down with a tangle of long blond hair that couldn’t possibly be Quincy. Closer was the second EMT on his knees with blood gushing over his hands from a gaping slash wound to his throat. The beast that was Samantha sprang and tackled the officer. He heard the pistol fire and the officer screaming.

“
Quincy, run! Run, baby!” Marvin whisper-yelled as best he could from his cot. He was strapped across the chest and waist. His arms were pinned at his sides. He was only able to lift his head. The pain in his chest and arm was excruciating. He struggled weakly to free himself like a drowning fish in a net. The second EMT turned his back to sprint away, but he was brought down before he took two steps. Marvin frantically peered over the edge of the cot searching for the clasp to release the straps. There it was just below shoulder height attached to the metal cot. He struggled and squirmed to move his left hand to release it but he was barely able to touch it.

Then she was there in the door
way of the ambulance at his feet. She jumped up like a lion, then stood up on two feet like a human. Her hair was thick and full. She had a mouthful of giant teeth. He could see four pronounced canines in the front and strong claws where her fingernails had been. Her strong body was shriveled and emaciated with her ribs and hip bones sticking out prominently like a concentration camp victim. Her stench was overpowering, like a deer carcass left to rot on the side of the road.

“Samantha. Samantha
, my darling,” Marvin whispered. She looked at him with no recognition in her weird red eyes. Marvin realized that the irises of her eyes had flipped and were now vertical like a cat’s eyes, not horizontal anymore. She parted her lips and showed him strong teeth with four pronounced canines in the front.
This is a dream. I am hallucinating
, Marvin thought.
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” He found himself repeating the childhood nursery rhyme as she slowly leaned over to smell him then savagely tore a fist sized chunk of flesh from his neck with her strong teeth. Marvin screamed.

SAN
JOSE, CALIFORNIA 

“I am here to offer you eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ.” Warren Dubrowski loudly proclaimed hoping to avoid startling the man as he approached from his blind side.

The
tall man with the loose fitting psychedelic shirt and the dreadlocks down to his waist was clearly startled as he stood in the side doorway of his rambler in the anonymous suburbs of San Jose, California and his left hand immediately went to reach for something just inside the door.
Probably a gun
, Warren thought. He’s putting his life on the line every day for these people. Warren smiled and held up his empty hands to show he wasn’t a threat. He knew he was a sight to behold by now. He had a week old growth of beard and a burlap sack across his shoulders with a hole ripped for his head. His appearance was intentionally disheveled. Warren could see something very large moving just inside the screened door, watching him intently, and beyond that the profile of a double barreled shotgun. Warren breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the door click shut. “That’s a big dog you have there.” Except for breathing, the dog didn’t make a sound.

“Boxer-Pitt mix.”
The man looked him up and down and then at those in the street behind him.He relaxed a bit eventually removing his hand from the door handle. Then realizing that Warren was not a threat, the man reached into his pockets and pulled out a stubby cigar. As soon as the hippy lit it, the smell hit Warren and he knew that this was a blunt – a cigar mixed with San Jose’s finest weed. With a straight face, the hippy offered it to Warren, “smoke?” Through the open side door, Warren could see what looked like a forest of plants. This was Warren’s first sighting of a cannabis grow house.

Warren
took a half step back and laughed. He knew the hippy with the long dreads was mocking him. He smiled and was momentarily at a loss for words.

The hippy
nodded to the crowd behind Warren in the street, the noise of which had surely brought him out of the safety of his home. Warren knew that they must look like freaks even to this hippy. There were three ‘drummers’ making a lot of disjointed noise banging on trash cans and an empty food bucket and two tambourine girls dancing – Tiffany was actually kinda hot - and trying to play in some sort of rhythm. In the front was a man he knew only as “Samson,” a big man that from all appearances was a former juice head gym rat with exquisitely defined muscles, stripped to the waist and carrying a huge nine foot cross hewn from raw timber and held together with nails and twine. Behind him in a rough line were the flagellates: five men also stripped to the waist, holding various chains, heavy corded ropes, and one with what looked like a leather whip from the S&M sex shop. They beat their backs as they slowly walked down the center of the street. Warren could see the hippy looking them over with interest. On either side, as well as the front and the back, were men holding large bibles, wearing burlap like himself and screaming various canned slogans such as “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” The hippy put his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh. Warren turned to see what he was looking at, and his eyes rested on the S&M whip being used by one of the flagellates in front. Warren thought his name was Jeff, but he wasn’t sure. He imagined the unholy acts in which that particular whip had participated prior to being co-opted by them.

“Isn’t that a little dangerous?
I mean won’t the blood draw them to you?” The hippy pulled his long, waist-length blond dreadlocks back out of his face with both hands and tied them off with a scrunchy over the back of his psychedelic shirt.

“
We have to save as many as we can.” Warren stood there uncertainly. He glanced at his wrist at a watch that was no longer there. He had traded it for a can of tuna the day prior to joining the flagellates. It was getting late in the day. They would need to find a place to set up camp soon. Those things came out at night. They were always exposed. Warren was exhausted and beginning to wonder if he had really been “called” to go with the flagellates or if he had just been at the end of his rope. Rock bottom as they say. No doubt talking to this hippy would be just a waste of time for both of them. Warren looked back at the slowly moving crowd of flagellates to make certain he didn’t fall too far behind. He would keep this one brief. “The infected don’t attack us. God protects us.”

“God protects you?”
The hippy bent down to cup the blunt in his mouth and re-lit it. He had to turn his face to the left to avoid lighting his giant tangle of hair. “Mind if I smoke?” He said, after lighting.

“Yes.
I mean, smoking is fine.” Warren unconsciously put his head down and squinted his eyes as he opened his giant bible and began flipping through. He knew the hippy was being intentionally rude to him. Why even bother? Warren began to read, “The fifth angel sounded his trumpet and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth…da daa de dum” Warren looked over his shoulder, gauging the distance the flagellates had moved. “…Here it is - out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.” Power came into Warren’s voice when he read the scripture. It just felt so right. It didn’t really matter if this man responded to the Word as long as he was faithful. Warren looked up from reading, surprised to see the hippy listening intently, then continued, “The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle…their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth.”