Authors: Jenika Snow
Chapter Two
“This is fucked,” said Brandon, one of the
scientists who had been working on the immunization from the ground up.
Marius was shoving items in a large backpack, intent
on getting out of the bunker they’d been in for far longer than he could even
comprehend.
Brandon was walking back and forth, pacing the small
confines of the room. The underground bunker had been government issued, a
place that held several scientists as they worked on a cure. But there was no
cure, and despite telling the government officials that, informing the
President that there was nothing that could be done, they’d still kept working.
What else were they supposed to do this deep below the earth?
Besides, Marius didn’t want to give up, didn’t want
to be a part of why humanity had fallen.
“We’ve done all we can, Brandon.” Marius kept his
back to the other man as he shoved in bottles of water, canned and packaged
food, and grabbed medical supplies.
“So you’re just leaving?”
Marius turned and faced Brandon. “I can’t stay here
any longer. I need the fresh air, the sun. Besides, staying here with the
supplies diminishing like they are will only make this our coffin.”
Brandon didn’t speak for several long moments.
“You can come with me. We can find a place above
ground, try to find survivors, help them.”
Brandon shook his head. “I don’t want to run into
those fuckers, Marius.” Brandon ran a hand over his face. “We already had to
deal with that down here with Marie and Kyle.”
Just thinking about the two other scientists that
had been put down here when they’d gotten infected made Marius sick. Marie had
been infected with the virus when she’d accidently pricked herself with a
needle, a rookie mistake that had cost Marie her life. But she hadn’t told
anyone she was infected, and they hadn’t known until it was too late. She’d
kept herself away from them as the infection ate away at her body, and when she
finally did die and was resurrected as one of those walking corpses, she’d gone
after Kyle.
Marius ran a hand over his face. He’d been the one
to kill both of them before they got him or Brandon. It was something that had
to be done, and he knew something he’d have to do above ground if he wanted to
survive.
“Staying down here will be your ultimate death,
Brandon. If you want to survive you need to get out while you can. If lack of
food and water doesn’t kill you, the isolation will drive you insane.” Marius
shook his head at the reality of that. “We haven’t heard any news from up above
in weeks. That has to tell you something, tell you that we are now on our own.”
It took a moment for Brandon to move, or even speak,
but he finally breathed out and nodded. “You’re right, I know that, and should
be smart enough to understand it, but I can’t leave, Marius.”
Brandon was afraid, and rightly so, but staying down
here really would bring about their deaths.
“What if we just get supplies and come back here?”
Brandon sounded hopeful.
“Brandon, I need out of this fucking place. We’ve
been down here for a long damn time, and I can’t take it anymore.” Marius
grabbed the backpack and slipped it over his shoulders. He had his boots on, a
couple changes of clothes, and, he hoped, enough food and fresh water packed
that he could survive until he found something else.
“You’re welcome to come with me, to face the world
above, but I can’t and won’t stay here.” Marius walked toward the man who had
stood by him through all of this, since the very beginning. “I’ve left you
enough food and water that you shouldn’t have to find any for a while, but
Brandon,” he pleaded with the other man, “staying here will have you dying,
too.”
Brandon sat down on the chair in front of Marius,
and made this low, exhausted sound. “Good luck out there.”
And Marius knew Brandon wouldn’t come, not even with
the knowledge that he would die down here if he didn’t at least try. The world
anymore was hectic and deteriorating, but hiding in a bunker underground wasn’t
the way to live, no matter what anyone said.
Marius held out his hand, and Brandon took it. The
men shook, stayed silent, and then Marius nodded once, and turned to leave. He
had to try to survive out there, try to see if he could help anyone. He knew
about the virus, about every aspect of it—he’d been on the team that had helped
create the initial vaccine, and that’s why he had such a sense of guilt after
everything had fallen. He had to help, in any way he could, no matter what the
risks were.
****
Maya didn’t know what had woken her at first, but as
she opened her eyes her heart was already beating fast and hard. Sherman, who
they kept in the room with them at night, started whimpering and scratching at
the door. Maya turned her head to the side, saw the spot her mother usually lay
in was empty, and instantly sat up. Since everything had gone to shit she and
her mom had been sharing a room, wanting to stay close. They’d set up her
father in another bedroom, something he’d wanted, and the smart way to go given
the fact he was sick.
“Mom?” Maya called out. There was silence in
response, but after a moment the sound of something crashing came through,
startling Maya.
Sherman started scratching on the door with more
fervor, his growl low, threatening. She climbed out of bed, knowing something
wasn’t right, and bent down to grab the baseball bat she had tucked underneath
the bed. It hadn’t been planned to use on her father if he turned while they
were asleep, because they kept their door locked and were “relatively” safe.
They kept the door locked in case looters, rapists, or the humans that had gone
insane because of the anarchy decided to break in.
She crept toward the door, reached out with her hand
not holding the bat, and pulled it open slowly.
“Stay,” she whispered to Sherman. He whimpered
again, but lay down, his face upward toward her. “Good boy.”
She opened the door a bit wider, and the old wood
creaked slightly. Maya winced at the sound and held her breath, her pulse
skyrocketing. The house was dark, but the sound of a crash from the kitchen
told her all she needed to know. Maya’s heart raced, her muscles tightened, and
the flight or fight instinct ran high in her.
She looked at her dog again. “Stay, Sherman,” she
said once more, and stepped out into the hallway. Keeping her back to the wall,
she tried to slow her breathing. She needed to be calm, to keep a level head.
It wasn’t as though she was tough as nails, or one of those women that could
take a man down. But Maya had grown up working on her grandfather’s farm and
knew what it mean to stay strong in the face of a hectic, confused situation,
and had always prided herself on using her brain in these matters.
Rounding the corner, but still keeping her back to
the wall, she thought maybe an infected had gotten in, or maybe it was a
looter? But as she leaned around the wall and looked into the kitchen, her
mouth parted at the scene before her.
It wasn’t a stranger in her house, or an infected
that had somehow broken in. No, it was her father standing in the center of the
kitchen, right over her mother, and dark liquid dripping from the front of him.
It might be too dark to see exactly what that fluid was, but she wasn’t a fool.
It was blood, her father’s and her mother’s blood.
And when her father leaned down, kicking glass that
was on the ground across the room, and started to tear into her mother, eating
her flesh, an involuntary gasp left Maya. The moonlight gave her a small
glimpse of the carnage, and as much as she felt like losing it right now, just
breaking down, she had to stay strong if she wanted to survive.
Kill me
if I turn. I don’t want to hurt you or your mother, or anyone else. I don’t
want to live as a corpse.
Her father’s words played through her mind over and
over again, tearing her up, making her wish she were living a different life.
Her father turned around swiftly, still huddled over
Maya’s mother, and opened his mouth in a grisly display of gore. He screamed
out, a gurgling, distorted sound that had chunks and fluid spewing from his
mouth and down his chin. They held each other’s stares for several seconds, the
wheezing coming from her father a reminder of the pain he’d endured while
alive, and during his last moments on this planet.
She backed away slowly, survival instinct taking
over. She’d been prepared for this since her father came home with the bite,
and although she’d dreaded this moment, she couldn’t back down. Maya had to do
this for her father, to end his suffering.
Turning and running toward the bathroom when her dad
rose and started shuffling toward her, Maya slammed and locked the door for
good measure, went over to the closet, pulled open the door, and pushed the
hanging clothes away. She dropped to her knees and instantly saw what she was
going after. Lying on the floor along with a box of shells beside it, was her
father’s shotgun. The rifle was in the living room, the center of the house.
She had weapons stashed throughout the home, for this particular situation, or
if anyone tried fucking with her and her family.
Maya grabbed the gun, checked the chamber to make
sure it was full and ready to go, and closed her eyes, breathing out slowly.
The sound of her dad coming closer, his feet dragging on the hardwood, had the
tears coming fast and strong. Squeezing her eyes harder, telling herself she
could do this, that she had to do this, she rose and turned to face the door
just as the booming knocks came.
Thud.
Thud. Thud.
She could picture her now dead father pounding a
bloody fist on the door, smearing her mother’s blood over the wood, making it a
grisly reminder of what the world had come to.
Maya moved closer to it, her hands shaking, her
mouth dry, and her throat tight. The pounding continued, matching the beat of
her heart. She was a foot from the door now, and taking a deep breath, she
lifted the gun and held it steady with both hands. She had two shells in the shotgun,
and she wouldn’t waste them, wouldn’t make her father suffer more than he might
be already.
She didn’t know if the infected felt pain, if they
even remembered anything of their former lives, but she did know one thing for
sure—they didn’t get better. They decayed even more, their bodies rotting,
slowly become nothing more than rancid, putrid flesh on bones.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispered to herself, and
then aiming where she thought her father’s head might be, she fired a shot off.
The bullet tore through the wood, blasting away a chunk of it, and only a
millisecond later she heard her father’s body slam against the opposite wall.
She was shaking harder now, adrenaline pumping through her veins fast and hard,
like a train about to slam right into a brick wall.
She waited several moments, waiting to hear if he’d
get up, start banging on the door again, or if he was still alive. She was
crying heavily now, her vision blurring, the tears running down her cheeks.
Wiping the wetness away, she lowered the gun to her
side, took a deep, steadying breath, and looked out the door. But her vision
was so blurry, and so much smoke still seemed to be in her eyes from her firing
the gun that she couldn’t see clearly. She reached for the handle. The brass
was cold, a stark contrast to how hot her body felt. Without thinking, because
she didn’t want her dad to suffer any longer if he were still alive, she opened
the door.
Maya opened the door slowly, peering out through the
crack, and seeing her father’s still body on the floor across from the door.
Blood and chunks of his flesh was splattered along the wall, but as the seconds
ticked by she saw the small twitching of her father’s fingers. She started
choking up when she heard him gurgle out, and then he lifted his hand slowly.
Even with half his face blown off he was still alive, the infection making the
dead rise until their brains or spinal cords were severed and destroyed.
Without postponing this, she lifted the gun, aimed
it right between his eyes, and pulled the trigger. And just like that he was
done—his life, the infection, and everything that had happened up until this
moment snuffed out like a candle’s flame. She wanted to sink to the floor, to
let her emotions claim her, but she had to check on her mother even though she
knew what she’d find.
Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Maya moved
away from her dad and back into the bedroom. She grabbed a couple more bullets,
popped out the empty shells, and reloaded. She then moved back down the hallway
and into the kitchen. The electricity had gone out the first week the infection
had spread, so now she relied on candles and flashlights. There was a
flashlight on the counter, and she grabbed it and turned it on. But she didn’t
shine the light on her mother’s body right away, needing to steel herself for
what she’d see. After a long moment she lifted the light and shone it on her
mom.
The gag reflex was instant, and she turned and threw
up, unable to keep down what little contents she had in her stomach. After she
threw up, she wiped her mouth, her tears strong, her pain so monumental she
felt like she’d die from it. Reaching out for a towel on the counter, she wiped
her mouth again, trying to force herself not to cry. Straightening, she turned
and faced what remained of her mother. It was disgusting the amount of flesh
her infected father had eaten, and although her mother’s body was in ruins on
the ground, the head was intact, and therefore Maya knew the infection would
claim her eventually.