THE SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER Book 1: Bleeding Kansas: A Novel Of The Zombie Apocalypse (5 page)

Yet here I am now in this faraway city, taking apa
rt a police-issue Glock, reassembling the parts. Meanwhile, Tanner talks about himself, his five-star wonderful family living the Good Ol’ American Dream. To people like him the Great Recession is an attitude problem. Everything is onwards and upwards, the good getting better all the time.

Which is fine.
At least he’s not asking me any questions about my own family. Claire is dead. She couldn’t even kiss me goodbye because we couldn’t afford it. 
Couldn’t afford it.
 Seriously.

Well, honey, I didn’t get sick. Now what?

I smile, nod, practice sighting with the Glock as Tanner goes on about his wife and how she got the pink Mary Kay Cadillac for making x number of sales. His son plays varsity hockey and is thinking about wrestling next year but all of his friends are into lacrosse. Tanner’s daughter “dabbles” in modeling but her boyfriend is graduating from the Air Force Academy in another year so all that’s up in the air. He and his wife want to move but you just can’t sell a house in this market. There are all kinds of opportunities overseas, though, and his wife has always wanted to live in London so….

It comes off as quite the magnanimous gesture when Tanner pauses in his litany of First World problems to let Angie know he’s thinking about her: “Why don’t you find an empty room and go to sleep for a while?”

“I feel better out here with you guys,” she croaks at us.

“So long as you’re comfortable,” he says.

“Fine. Thanks.”

I get up and walk to the sofa we’ve dragged behind the front desk for her. Angie’s skin is covered in a greasy sheen. I touch the back of my hand to her head. “
Ow!” she cries out.

“I’m just seeing if you have a fever.”

“It hurts!”

“What’s going on over there?” says Tanner.

“She’s got an infection!” I look down at Angie. “Can I get you to drink some water?”

“I just want to sleep….”

I go into the back and fill a glass with crushed ice and water. “I’m setting this here,” I tell her when I get back. “Don’t be shy. Believe it or not, you need this.”

I’m aware of Tanner looking at me as I return to my seat at the bar. I pointedly ignore him.

“There are a lot of germs in the human mouth,” he says. “In fact, a bite from a human is one of the worst you can get.”

“I’ve heard.”

“You need to rest for a while?”

“No, I want to see the service. We still have some cheese sticks and chicken wings here.
Might as well make supper out of it.”

“I like the way you think!” says Tanner.

Thank God for small favors.

The coordination of the media is impressive. Each of the local stations has their assigned neighborhoods and their parks to cover. They have their separate theme music, even separate logos and titles but the narrative is the same: a straight-out-of-nowhere summer cold somehow became the Final Flu and now the world takes historic pause to bury their first wave of dead from this once-in-a-century epidemic. “Like in the days of the 1918 Spanish Flu we all look forward to getting back to more-or-less normal,” I hear people on two different channels say word for word. “Of course, the new normal will take some getting used to!”

The other satellite channels show documentaries on the Spanish Flu, with nods to plagues past. I suppose if you watched some of that for long enough you might come to accept that one out of three people dropping dead is perfectly natural.

This channel shows the
surviving members of Congress and the Senate praying on the Capitol steps. “We encourage everyone watching to tune into their own local channels for coverage of what’s happening in their own areas,” says the voiceover. “We know it seems out of the ordinary to ask viewers to turn away but it is imperative we stay in touch with our local communities and do what has to be done to normalize issues specific to our respective localities. Every community has its own issues with the Flu, and its own requirements for taking care of the remains of the deceased. Meanwhile, we’ll show scenes of faith from around the globe….”

The clips they’re showing from inside churches could just as well have come from coverage of Easter services in any given year. The voiceover repeats the script.
“Worldwide catastrophe” is a phrase that turns up now and again. 

So, good citizens that we are, we click on to the coverage on the parks closest to our area. The solemn bumper music plays as they come back from break—the break being a list of the stations to call to have your deceased removed for you, based on ZIP code, school district, etc.

The narration is hushed as the camera follows a Guardsman pulling a little bundle in a sheet from the back of a canvas-covered truck. “The flu was extremely random in its selection of victims,” says a male narrator. “Whereas the Spanish Flu of nearly a hundred years ago targeted young, healthy adults and spared the very old and very young, this flu took infants, the elderly, the young, middle-aged—everyone. Every family has been affected. My family, my co-host Andrea’s family, Jeff the cameraman’s family, our producer, Jean, in the van. 
Your
 family, too.”

I’m sliding off my stool to pour myself a beer when I hear the firecrackers again. I go to the
plate glass doors and try to make out where it’s coming from.

“Sound to me like its coming from one of the problem areas,” Tanner says.

“Problem areas? How is anything a problem with almost everyone dead and the National Guard on the streets?”

I’m aware of Tanner looking me over, wei
ghing my capacity for frankness. “There are certain cultures,” he says carefully, “that resist having their deceased taken away from them without a proper viewing period.”

“
So they’re shooting them?”

“W
e’re in the midst of an epidemiological emergency. Two days ago it was a bunch of people with colds. Now people are dead. A lot of people.” Tanner nods toward the TV. “This is about getting a biohazard good and buried before we lose what’s left of us.”

We see shots of the canvas-covered flatbeds pulling to the curb in various neighborhoods. The volunteers in their Day-Glo yellow vests walk up to the doors on either side of the street. They don’t use gurneys but stretchers. Once they have the body they jog to the back of the waiting truck.

The survivor fills out the paperwork on the clipboard held out by one of the government volunteers. Name, age, sex, approximate time of death. They get a numbered receipt for the body in lieu of an official death certificate.

The narrat
ion is unbearable to listen to. Platitudes, benedictions, tasteless frosting on an unspeakable cake. I think of Sibyl and Jack having to deal with their mother’s lifeless body. And I’m not there. I keep telling myself they’re capable and mature enough. Which they are. Still….

The scene cuts to a park. There’s a long trench and yellow police tape all around.

“This is just three blocks over,” Tanner says.

“Yeah, we heard the backhoe earlier.” I’m looking at all the people behind the yellow tape. Even from the screen you can feel the tension of the crowd. They want to see their loved ones covered, even if it is with a backhoe.

Tanner frowns. “This isn’t good.”

“Why not?”

He doesn’t take his eyes from the TV. “They’ve had some issues at some of these burials.”

“I thought this was the first wave.”

“The first wave here. Burials have been going on pretty much all day everywhere.”

“So, aside from the logistics of burying so many people at once, what issues have they been having?”

“There!” Tanner says.

Most of the bodies are wrapped in sheets; the ones that aren’t are wrapped there at the park before being lowered into the ditch.

One of the bodies is apparently resisting being wrapped up. A pale little girl kicks and flails at the sheet. The two wrapping her are knocked back on their rears as the girl sits up.

“The hell?”

“Watch!” says Tanner. He leans eagerly towards the image on the screen.

A woman r
uns screaming to the girl but is blocked by a Guardsman and his M4. He pushes the little girl’s mother so hard she falls backwards. Another Guardsman runs forward as the little girl falls atop one of the volunteers trying to wrap her up. It’s the volunteer’s turn to kick and flail now that the girl has her head nuzzled into her neck. Crimson spray erupts along either side of the girl’s head. The second Guardsman shoots twice, once into the girl’s head and again into the head of the injured volunteer.

“Holy shit!
Tanner, what do you know about this?”

“It’s been a busy 12 to 18 hours. No one knows what to make of it. I’ve been reading messages from my sources overseas but I picked up a lot of
intel just walking around with Officer Dalton. The cops and the Guard know all about this.”

“
This
?”

Two Guardsmen hold the screaming, kicking woman while two others pull the little girl from the body of the volunteer. Her face is blotted out with red. Bits of pale matter dot the clot of scarlet clenched between her tiny teeth. After some deliberation they toss the volunteer into the trench as well.

I can’t believe what they’re showing next. The bodies of the little girl and the volunteer are lying on top of what looks like giant writhing maggots—the corpses struggling against their shrouds in the trench.

“Yeah,” says Tanner. “They’re
gonna have to close that up fast. Weird how so many of them will come back at once like that. It’s like that first one woke them up.”

“What the blue screaming hell is going on here?”

Tanner nods at the screen. A reporter speaks to the camera: “What we’re seeing here is a post-mortem reaction to the Final Flu. These are not your loved ones all of a sudden getting better. These are—”

We hear the automatic gunfire echoing loudly among the buildings outside before hearing it on the TV. The camera swings away from the reporter to down the street from the park. A figure falls forward, a broad stripe of blood plastered from his mouth to his groin. As that one falls we see
the man behind him, comically barefoot in his Sunday best suit. He’s clasping a woman to him. You can see the woman’s screaming face over his shoulder as he chews into her. A bloom of red appears on the back of the man’s head and he falls, pulling the woman with him. The Guardsman runs over, points his rifle down and fires.

“As you can see over here,” we hear the reporter’s voice over the image, “victims of bites from these reanimated bodies need to be put down, too. No matter how slight or severe the wound, the person bitten will sicken, die, and rise to bite someone himself. Reports of this phenomenon in other cities have indicated that the lower brain stem must be destroyed to drop the reanimated ones.”

The air crackles with the
pop-pop-pop
of gunfire. “It’s not just here in this park!” the reporter yells over the blasts.

“This is happening with the burials at other parks! This is why eve
ryone was supposed
to stay home!
” The camera finds the reporter at last. He’s got his back to the trench, where one can see hands waving over the lip of it. There were other bodies wrapped in sheets waiting to be put into the trench. They writhe and twist like oversized grubs. Legs begin kicking free, arms thrust stiffly out. “Many of the dead are getting free,” says the reporter, “either from the sheets or from loved ones who think their deceased have miraculously recovered. The ones in the trench aren’t likely to get out, as it was dug a solid six feet. The dead are utterly mindless on top of very uncoordinated. They don’t—”

A scream close by cuts the reporter off this time. The camera pans right to show a Guardsman taken down from behind by a big woman in a pink
muu-muu and a pale, thin teenager dressed in what must have been his prom tuxedo. They each have an arm upon which they batten down. They gnaw and tear furiously at the tough cammie sleeves. The Guardsman is young and fairly robust yet he can’t break the grip these people have on him. The fat paws of the big woman close so tightly you can see the Guardsman’s flesh bulging white between her fingers.

The camera turns back to the reporter in t
ime to show two dirty figures ambling up behind him. There’s an animal 
hnnnnnnnh!
 and the camera’s eye is jerked backwards. It bounces once, rocks, then settles for a view of the clear blue sky. The screams are so loud and close the mic is distorting. Beyond the screams the background is filling with the sounds of weird moans, a low growling. And more screams. A dog yelps and cries over and over….

The slurping and smacking noises are the worst. And the hungry
 
mmmmmm!
 you hear as they tear into another bite.

God knows what took them so long to switch
back to the studio. One man at the news desk, no spiffed-up female counterpart. He eventually looks at the camera, his forehead creased as if weighing what he’s about to say next.

Finally: