What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Zombier (6 page)

“Don’t be afraid, Ladies and Gentlemen. We will be there soon.
The show must go on.
”

The people from the continent always berth here, at the south dock.

No one goes too far inland. Usually they make business with the fishermen; no one cares to know how we live, lonely and withdrawn. They call us “island folk” and they look at us as if we were aliens.

During the wintertime, the strait freezes, and we remain isolated from the world for three months. No one could come to rescue us if we are in danger; no one could hear the screams of those who get lost in a storm.

The tourists haven’t any interest in this strip of land thrown in the sea.

Once in a while, someone comes into the city, for a bowl of soup at Sue’s Diner. Rumors about her seafood soup, only them, have reached the other side of the strait.

But we, the islanders, know how to mind our own business, and the people who come from outside don’t go beyond the northern woods. No one visits the other side of the island.

Not anymore, since the time of the first conquerors, when it was still home of natives and ancient believing.

Our ancestors, whom first moved to this inhospitable land born from the sea, haven’t forgotten what once was. They ventured to the other side; they saw the cave of the big stone idol.

We’ve forgotten his name, that has gone lost with the memory of the last elder who died on the island, but we never stopped fearing and worshiping him.

He protects us from storms and tragedies; he assures us abundant fishing to feed our families.

The price he asks in return is not as high as it seems.

Just a piece of flesh for a whole winter.

I served for many years the Great Spirit; he gave me a long and prosperous life.

Now I’m old and tired. My skin is burned by the sun and spoiled by the harshness of winter. I’ve done my part already, and I sit here, on the quay, with a peaceful smile on my face.

People that come here, the strangers, don’t understand the reasons for my smile. They look at me in horror, frightened, some of them with pity and compassionate eyes.

I greet them showing my toothless mouth, my watery eyes, yet fierce for what I, along with the island elders, have done for our children.

Once in a while, my beautiful granddaughter, Anna Lou, comes to the dock to pick me up. She’s brave my Anna Lou, so young and still she already sacrificed her little finger. She wanted to do that for her eighteenth birthday.

Full of pride she grabs my wheelchair. She smiles and winks to the fishermen and to the strangers, then she pushes away her old grandpa, the man with no limbs.

Many think that my life is sad and miserable, but they don’t know that all the sacrifices I’ve made were for the good of my people, for my spot of Heaven lost in the sea.

“The public vote is closed. Leopold, you’re evicted.”

The attendant pushed the button for the lethal injection.

One and zero.

On and off.

Luke bit his fingernails with voracity, like he was craving his own flesh.

On the dark screen in front of him, the white cursor kept flashing on and off.

Black and white.

He looked down at the two buttons on the lower side of the screen: on the first a vertical line, on the second a circle.

One and zero.

His knees started to ache; he had to stand up and stretch his legs.

He turned around the cell, a perfectly cylindrical cell, like the bottom of a pit. A few feet above him, there were bars cutting out the night. An emergency light on the wall was the only source of light. Except for the blinking dash on the screen.

He followed the cracks in the stone with his fingers. They turned all around, carved at regular intervals of about eight inches. They run parallel like bended tracks, placed up to the height of six feet.

Tracks. Double tracks. Binaries. Luke chuckled hysterical.

He didn’t even remember how he came up there. The night before he got seriously drunk. Maybe he ended up talking with the wrong guy.

From some point, all became cloudy, confused, and dark.

When he woke up, it was late morning; he found himself grounded there, with that screen staring at him like a window facing nothing and just two buttons at his disposal.

At first he had pushed them, just for curiosity, only once for each.

One and zero.

Nothing happened.

Still it seemed him to hear some noise, like a clack, behind the walls. Maybe it was just his impression.

But he hadn’t dared to push them anymore. First, he must think, understand.

A whole day passed crying, calling for help, invoking for someone that wouldn’t have come.

He dribbled a puddle of his own thicken vomit and turned back to fix the flashing cursor.

On and off.

Maybe he had found the solution.

It should have been like that.

He had already counted the cracks in the walls; they were ten.

Ten.
One and zero.

He wouldn’t be fooled.

Again he made the calculations; ten in binary code was...

He went back to the screen and pushed the buttons firmly, in close succession: 1010.

A metallic noise.

The half-moon blades emerged from the cracks, taking him by surprise.

And they were the last thing he saw.

A warm blanket and a cup of tea in the quiet room. The glow of the screen gave her a blue complexion. Claire was moving the little mouse plugged to her laptop, challenging the bumps of the couch and vexing the wheel scrolling through the web pages.

Another boring night, surfing the net, searching for a topic that would catch her attention. Instead, she found just a bunch of jerks spreading around conspiracy theories or talking about the weather and other trivial things.

For once, she wanted something more, a real thrill.

She gave a quick look to the living room window, the pouring rain remembered her that no, it wasn’t a good idea to go out with that kind of weather.

She turned back to stare at the white Google homepage. She typed “survival horror”. She wasn’t much of a gamer, but once in a while she liked to try some new Flash games, those with the comic-like design and very easy to play, or some interactive adventures inspired by zombie movies.

She clicked on one of the search result and ended up in a page crowded with ads, flashing images and bleeding graphic. The average trash site with the only goal to make the users click by mistake on the ads so that the owner would earn some money. She was about to close the tab when something caught her eye. It was an anonymous box on the bottom right corner, with a strange series of numbers. They looked like a date, 2008.11.08. She moved her eyes to the Windows taskbar to check the day; it was November 8
^th
, 2011.

The text in the box was written with a simple font, and had a black border that looked like the one from an obituary.

Patience is an eight letters word.

If you want to know what they mean, click here.

What a strange ad, and it even seemed to have nothing to do with the scary things that covered the entire page.

The last word was red and pointed to an external link. Claire hovered it with her mouse and saw that the address was
ladypxxx.net
. She giggled; it was some porn website for sure.

She moved away the pointer to reach the red X on top and close the page, but her mouse tripped on the couch fabric and returned on the bottom box. While she was trying to adjust its position, her index finger slipped and made her left-click on the link.

A new page opened. Claire stopped to observe it with curiosity, expecting to see half-naked ladies or more explicit content. Instead, she saw just a black screen. The speakers of her laptop turned on to transmit a faint hiss. On the screen appeared white letters.

2008.11.08

Patience is an eight letters word.

Do you want to know what they mean?

Yes - No

Claire wavered. She looked at the time, midnight and a half. She drank a sip of her tea that was already cooling, placed the cup on the little table near the couch, and then decided to go on.

Let’s see what you got, my fanatic friend
. By now she was convinced that instead of a porn site it was the web page of some cult.

She clicked on Yes.

The screen turned black, and then new letters appeared, this time in red.

P is for Pouring

From the speakers came the sound of an amplified dripping.

Under the writing an image slowly appeared, it took a long time to load, while Claire was spinning up and down the mouse wheel as if it would speed up the process.

Bit by bit, before her eyes showed up a picture that at first looked just like a red and gray blur.

When it was perfectly in focus, Claire turned away her head and squinted with a grimace. But a morbid curiosity prompted her to look back.

In the photo there was the corpse of a woman. She was lying on the ground haphazardly, in a pool of blood, her throat slashed. Many cuts disfigured her face, arms, legs, abdomen. Her whole body was soiled with red, her nightgown was torn and her brown hair were blood-soaked. A very realistic effect.

The most disturbing thing was her face, with blood dripping from her mouth like cherry syrup, incisions on her cheeks and forehead, her red tears now dried up and her eyes wide open and glassy, that despite everything seemed to be staring at Claire.

Okay, it’s disturbing, I get scared, you did a good job, happy now? Or is there more?

Claire scrolled the page and saw that there was a text below the picture; it looked like an excerpt from a newspaper article.

The student Patience Wilson was found dead in her room at the college dormitory.

She was stabbed 38 times, said the coroner. The horrible murder took place the night of November 8
^th
. C.B., the girl roommate, has been arrested as the first suspect and is now in the prison of...

The rest was missing and a new link appeared:

Do you want to continue?

This time there wasn’t any yes or no, just the question.

The usual murder story that intrigued the housewives during the afternoon shows.

No, thanks, I’ll pass. Actually I don’t feel like staying on the Internet anymore.

Claire closed the page and turned off her computer immediately. She took the headphones of her multimedia player and listened to her favorite album while she moved to the bedroom. She wrapped herself up in the bed sheets and relaxed, forgetting everything and slowly falling asleep. It wasn’t a quiet sleep.

She woke up at the ring of her alarm clock. She was soaked in cold sweat and shivering. She had a nightmare, but she couldn’t remember; only a vague restlessness remained.
No more horror websites before bed
, she said to herself.

She prepared for class. Took her laptop and got out in the gray morning of November.

The time passed as usual, quiet and boring, she chatted a little with her college mates; after lunch she stopped by the library to edit her notes. She turned on her computer.

As soon as the start-up screen disappeared to show the desktop, the browser opened by itself, back to the page of ladypxxx.net.

A new message appeared.

A is for Atonement

Followed by a new image.

What the hell, I caught a virus.

In the background, an alternating sound set off, like the screech of something swinging. Claire looked quickly around to see if anyone had heard it, but the other students seemed too focused on their books to pay attention. She turned back to stare at the screen.

The picture this time looked less disturbing, perhaps because there was no blood and it was in black and white, with a low resolution, as if it was taken by a surveillance camera. It depicted a hanged man in a cell.

Just below there was a new excerpt:

C.B., suspect in the murder of student Patience Wilson, took his own life this morning in his cell. It is assumed that his extreme gesture was due to feelings of guilt, even if he has left no farewell message. One of the guards refers hearing him often murmur the phrase:

“I have no more
patience
.”

Claire shook her head.
I don’t have time to waste on this nonsense
. She closed the page again and everything seemed being back to normal.