The Reawakening (The Living Dead Trilogy, Book 1) (12 page)

We dodged three more of them, one of which possessed bovine features just like Susan. It brayed and hawed. I had no idea what we would do if we faced one of the swifter moving canine or bird creatures. I didn’t have much strength left in my reserves, but I staggered on, determined to fight through the wall of pain.

“The farm is about one hundred yards away. All we have to do is dodge a few more of them and we’re there.”

“I’m not sure I can make it, Dar.”

“Suck it up, old man. We’re going to make it back together.”

“Please, just give me a second to rest.”

“Hell no! I’m not going to have your death hanging over me for the rest of my life.”

We reached the long driveway leading to the farmstead. As soon as we took the corner, we saw the gravel-filled path. The sky opened up, and the silhouetted hills appeared off in the background. Birds and pestilence permeated the sky and blocked whatever sunlight tried to filter down. I began to shout out Rick’s name as we stumbled towards the door. Behind us, a few dead stragglers staggered after us in pursuit. Dar pounded on the door. One of the creatures got too close, so Dar ran over and dropkicked it to the ground. Just then, Rick swung the door open and shouted for us to get inside. Rather than follow his directions, Dar ran to the center of the driveway and egged the creatures on. They turned and started to encircle her.

“Come on you freaks. Come and get me!”

“Get in here, Dar. Don’t be stupid.”

Rick ran out and dragged her back inside as I stumbled into the dining room and collapsed into one of the chairs. Sweat and blood poured down my face. I looked over and saw Rick carrying Dar in by the waist. She couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she kicked and punched at the air like a crazed lunatic. I’d never seen her so worked up. This ungodly situation we were in, ironically enough, seemed to have brought my troubled daughter back to life.

“That was so awesome!” Dar said once she’d settled down.

“Sit down and shut up!” Rick shouted. “Don’t you ever put us in jeopardy like that again.”

“You have no idea what we just went through,” Dar snapped once he placed her down. “And don’t you ever to tell me to shut up again.”

“Okay, kiddo, take it easy now. We’re all worked up here.”

Rick stared at her for a second, surprised, before sitting down next to me. “What did you see out there?” he asked.

“It’s bad, Rick. Real bad. On TV the reporter said that a global economic collapse was imminent. The world’s coming apart at the seams.”

“I knew it would, and it was only a matter of time. This economic collapse is just the beginning. It will lead to political instability and mass suffering. It’s why I’ve stored two years’ worth of food and supplies.”

“Good for you, Rick. You want a goddamn medal?” I said.

“Then again, I never expected
this
to happen, people coming back from the dead.” He stared at me with a harrowed expression. “Has this phenomenon been reported elsewhere?”

“Apparently not,” Dar said. “Seems not to be an issue outside this suck-ass little town.”

“Hmmm.” He gnawed on the nail of his thumb. “But why here in northern Maine?”

“Who knows why?” I said. “How is Gunner’s wife and kid?”

Rick shook his head ominously.

“Are they dead?”

“It’s only a matter of time. The two of them are exhibiting the same symptoms as Susan before she passed away. High fever and shallow breathing. We need to have a talk with Gunner about what needs to be done if and when.”

“He’s going to flip out when you tell him.”

“I know he will. Might as well hold off on that for the time being. I don’t want to see that guy lose his marbles. He’s a little unhinged to begin with.”

“Look, if you’d just seen what we’ve been through, Uncle Rick, you’d understand why someone could become unhinged,” Dar said. “This goddamn town is filled with these dead motherfuckers.”

“What a mouth on you. Those creatures out there teach you some new cuss words?”

“No one tells me how to speak or what to do anymore. So go screw yourself, Rick.”

Rick whistled and looked over at me as if to ask what had come over his niece.

“It’s crazy out there,” I said. “We barely made it back to your house alive.”

“What happened?”

I explained to him what we’d been through, keeping out the part about Dar’s assault.

“I give you two major credit. You city slickers are a lot tougher than I thought.”

“Whatever,” Dar said, rolling her eyes.

“Fighting for survival is not for the meek,” Rick said, standing to face us. He put his hand on Dar’s shoulder. “Most of these things, I’ll wager, are slow and pretty dim-witted, but as their numbers grow, they’ll continue to be a major threat to us.”

“Ya think?” Dar said.

“As we kill them, we’re going to need to torch their corpses. Who knows what diseases they carry. The harder ones to kill will be these animal hybrids. Some, like the bird and canine hybrids, will have quicker reflexes than others.”

“The human ones are slow and easy to waste.”

“Unfortunately, I had to kill one of my neighbors while you two were gone. He obviously succumbed to this contagion. I used to warn everybody around here that one day the shit would hit the fan, and that they better be ready when it happened. Advised them to store some food, water and ammo so that they wouldn’t have to leave their houses, but they obviously didn’t listen.”

“Who in their right mind would have expected this house of horrors?” I said.

“Why don’t you give your brother some credit for once,” Dar said, turning to me. “If it wasn’t for him, we’d have ended up as lunch meat.”

I stared at my brother, refusing to admit that he’d been right, even though I knew he was.

“Just like you, Dad.” She turned and looked at Rick. “It’s the same shit at home. He can never admit when he’s wrong.”

“Okay, so I was wrong about the dead coming back to life. Go ahead and sue me, then.”

“It’s not about being right or wrong,” Rick said. “This situation has nothing to do with bragging rights. It’s about survival now.”

“How could this have happened, Rick? You’re the scientist here. Got any answers? Why are the dead coming back to life?”

“I wish I could tell you.”

“So what are we going to tell Gunner?” Dar asked.

“Sooner or later we’re going to have to talk with him, and explain the need to put down his wife and child.”

“God have mercy on whoever has to deliver that message. I’m sure that discussion will go well.”

“These are the facts whether we like it or not,” Dar said. “We have to be realistic about the situation we’re facing.”

“Should we tell Dar about Susan’s experience, Thom?” Rick said, staring at me. “She’s in this as deep as you and I, and she’ll find out eventually.”

“Tell me what? You guys holding out on me?”

I glanced over at Rick, who looked away.

“Okay, Dar, after your aunt died, she began exhibiting this strange behavior before she turned into one of those creatures.

“Tell me something I don’t already know. I’m well aware that these fuckers like to eat human flesh. I also know that they take the shape of the animal that’s bitten them.”

“Partial shape based on the transfer of genetic material. But that’s beside the point,” Rick said. “After Susan died and then rose from the dead, she said some odd things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Spiritual stuff, I guess is how you’d put it. She didn’t turn into one of these things right away. In fact, she appeared almost like an angel. She specifically said how much she loved us all, and you in particular. She also claimed that she had an afterlife experience and said she nearly entered into the pearly gates until she was pulled back into this world.”

“Heaven?”

“Heaven. Bliss. Nirvana. Whatever state of being you want to call it. Personally, I think she was delusional, her dying brain playing tricks on her as the cells began to regenerate. It’s a common experience among those on their deathbed. But she was absolutely radiant in this new state of consciousness. It happened just before she turned into one of them. My guess is that it was an aberration caused by the virus.”

“Do you believe what Susan said?” I asked Rick. “The stuff about the afterlife?”

“I’m a scientist, and I don’t believe in God. God and heaven are merely myths propagated to keep the masses under control.”

“That’s exactly what Dar said.”

“What do you think she meant?” Dar asked me.

“I think what Susan claimed to have happened was real,” I said. “I believe Susan witnessed something tangible and real after she died.”

“You’re sadly mistaken in that belief, Thom.”

“What if I told you it happened not just with Susan, but with someone else?”

“And who would that be?”

I explained how the man I’d shot in the parking lot had come back to life, and how he had forgiven his older brother for sleeping with his girlfriend. I told him how he had taken a bite out of his brother’s throat and face after he changed.

“Once is an aberration. Twice and it can’t be a coincidence,” I said.

“I hate to put a damper on your theory, but I beg to differ with your interpretation.”

“Something evil is pulling these people back to earth,” Dar said. “They’re led to the gates of something awesome, and then it’s snatched away from them at the last second.”

“I’m afraid you’ll not like the truth when I tell you.”

“And you know what the truth is?”

“I understand the scientific truth about the workings of the human brain. The behaviors of these creatures have been adapted to insure their survival, similar to the predator in the wild who is able to blend into the environment in order to capture prey.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Dar said.

“These creatures are lethargic. They’re not yet equipped with the proper tools to catch prey on their own. They’re slow and plodding, and not very intelligent. That’s why they’re able to incorporate the DNA of other species. This post-death behavior is a way to hypnotize the living long enough to ensnare them.”

“That theory is so crazy that it actually makes sense,” Dar said. “But why are they so desperate to eat us?”

“It could have something to do with the evolutionary process.”

“How do you figure?” I asked.

“If these things have been created to consume the brains of living human beings, it means that they’ve been programmed to rid the world of humankind. It’s a Malthusian circuit breaker.”

“Malwhosian what? Speak English, Rick, before my head explodes,” Dar said.

“Okay, take the Ebola outbreaks in Africa. The virus kills its host, which means it has to quickly find another host in order to survive and then reproduce. But implicit in its grand design is the fact that it will eventually burn out, either by running out of hosts, or allowing the surviving hosts to build up a natural immunity to the virus, thus rendering it harmless. It’s the same with the dead. Built into their code is a directive; they must consume live brains in order to thrive. The function of this code must be to prevent the newly deceased from ever becoming a flesh-eater in the first place.”

“They don’t seem to be interested in each other, so without us humans to feast on, they’re destined to wander the earth endlessly.”

“Theoretically, but it’s only a hunch.”

“Look,” Dar said, “I don’t give a shit anymore about how and why these things came about. They’re out there, and we’re in here, so let’s deal with them with extreme bias. All I want to do is kill as many of these nasty motherfuckers as possible.”

“Dar Swiftley, the first warrior in the fight for human survival,” Rick said, laughing. “You’ll go down in the annals of human history, kiddo.”

“And you’ll go down in the anal of history as one of the biggest assholes on earth,” she shot back.

“Look, all I want to do is get home to my wife and son,” I said.

“This is the safest place to be right now, Thom. You go back down to Boston and it will be a nuthouse, I guarantee. Because if what you reported is true, I bet most major cities are in dire straits right now. There’ll be food riots, race wars, and money will cease to exist as we know it. And if there is an outbreak of the dead, you and everyone else will be overwhelmed. Think traveling in Roxbury is bad now? You wait. Those homeboys will eat you alive.”

“The TV reporter didn’t say anything about the dead rising up anywhere else.”

“Uncle Rick’s right,” Dar said. “Boston will be a madhouse.”

“It’s only a matter of time before this situation spreads. Look, Thom, I don’t know why it started here, but I know for a fact that there’s no safer place to ride this thing out than right here. The house is battened down safer than Fort Knox, and I have enough food, water and ammo to last us for some time.”

“What about my wife and son? They could be in real danger down there. Probably worried sick about us too.”