The Reawakening (The Living Dead Trilogy, Book 1) (30 page)

“Take my truck and leave here with the others. I’ll give you plenty of food and water and enough gas to transport you down to Boston. Don’t worry about me, Thom, I’ll be fine here all alone.”

“Your arrogance and rigid beliefs have not only screwed up our lives, but it’s set off a dangerous chain of events. It’s affected my family in the worst way possible, and now my future grandchild will be raised in this dangerous new world. What’s left for the child? For me?”

“Are you that naïve, Thom? Do you really believe that a screw-up of this magnitude would not have happened eventually? As for your creator, I’d love to hear God’s rationale for sending an army of cannibals down to earth to consume our flesh, flesh that he created in his own image. Everyone must choose their own neurosis. So what if science happens to be mine? At least I don’t adhere to some lame-brained fantasy called religion, sold to a bunch of lonely souls seeking meaning in their lives.”

“The reawakened are telling us a different story. They’re telling us that they’ve entered into the afterlife before being sucked back into this abyss.”

“You stupid bastard. Once you die—or in this case, twice you die—the lights go out and the curtain falls.”

“I don’t believe that,” I replied, tears falling from my eyes, “because one day I know I will see my wife and son again.”

“Maybe in this life, Thom, but not in any other. So what the fuck are you going to do?” He shrugged.

“We’re going to do some research, and you’re going to report back to me.” I waved the gun at him. “Now drop the knife and lay down on the cot.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“Lie on your stomach and shut up.”

Rick lay face down on the cot, too weak to resist. I pulled loose one of the straps and secured his hands behind his back, then pulled the remaining straps around his legs, torso and neck so that he couldn’t move. I turned his head towards me and cinched the belt tighter around his head so that the veins in his temples bulged. Rick complained about the pain and tried futilely to free himself.

“Are you going to just leave me here?” he asked.

“You altered nature and set off a global disaster. For that you should pay the ultimate price.”

“Please! You swore you would not leave me in limbo.”

“I had my fingers crossed behind my back, like when we were kids. Remember those days, Rick?”

“You swore on God’s name.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in God?” I laughed.

“You lied to me.”

“So what? Which of us has committed the greater sin in God’s eyes?”

“My intentions were pure. I only hoped to facilitate human progress, not set it back. I’m very sorry for what I’ve done.”

“Sorry?!” I placed the gun against his back. “It’s way too late for apologies now.”

“Please don’t let me turn into one of them, Thom.” He started to sob. “I’m your brother for crissakes, your own flesh and blood.”

“A brother like Cain was to Abel. Good old-fashioned biblical justice.”

“I’ll do anything. I’m begging you.”

“You don’t even understand the enormity of your crime, Rick. My daughter was
raped
in those woods a few months ago because of what you’ve done. You have no children, so you can’t even begin to comprehend the incredible harm that was done to her. It’s forever torn us apart and ruined our lives.”

Tears fell from his eyes upon realizing the devastation he’d caused us, and he made no attempt to defend himself.

“You’re going to describe to me everything you see after you reawaken, and tell me if there is an afterlife or not. If you fail to do this, Rick, I will lock you inside this room and throw away the key. I’ll leave you suspended in that miserable state for eternity.”

He begged for mercy as I pressed the barrel of the gun into his back. I said a quick prayer for God’s forgiveness and then pulled the trigger. The bullet went cleanly through, piercing his heart. I didn’t have much time. I released all the straps and flipped him over. A growing stain of blood formed over his shirt. I strapped him down again, making sure there was no chance he could escape. I took the clipper and shaved portions of his scalp, and then affixed the electrodes to his skin. I felt as if I was losing my mind as I hooked them up to my own scalp and then to the laptop computer. When everything was in place, I flipped on the switches and sat back in the chair—and waited for something to happen. Although I didn’t know how to operate this software, I’d seen him do it a couple of times and believed in my deluded state that I could somehow figure it out. Then I reclined in the chair, closed my eyes, and waited for the reawakening to occur.

Chapter 21

M
INUTES PASSED.
T
HE KNOT IN MY
empty stomach tightened as I waited for him to open his eyes. The ethical implications of killing my own brother had not yet struck me. Justice had been served. Delusions of grandeur filled me as I contemplated what I’d done to save the world. I couldn’t allow him to live and continue in this vein, destroying everything that God had created.

What would I tell the others? Did they even need to know that I’d killed my own brother?

After fifteen minutes passed, his body began to move. His fingers wriggled against his thighs, and his feet began to rock back and forth. I leaned forward and observed him closely in this reawakened state. His eyelids fluttered and then opened, and he stared peacefully up at the ceiling, all the stress and hardship gone from his face.

The overhead bulb flickered off and on. His concentration appeared focused as an ethereal smile spread over his face. His skin radiated and glowed, and gave off a warm, kind heat. He looked at peace with himself, content with his state of being. He laughed lightly, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. I asked him what was so funny, and he glanced over at me and smiled beatifically. The laptop on the bench showed an unwavering flat line.

“I forgive you for what you’ve done.”

“What have I done?”

“Your crime against nature. Taking another life.”

“What about all the bad things
you’ve
done?”

“I love you, Thom. I’ve always loved you. You were always the one with the most love in his heart.”

I wanted to cry. What had I done to my own brother?

“What comes after this life is something timeless and without ego.”

“Tell me more,” I said, weeping.

“Not until the chosen ones are found. Only then will a new society rise up from the ashes of this corrupt world.”

“What new society?”

But he had already fallen back and closed his eyes, and started transitioning into the next ugly phase.

All I could think about was the biblical tale of Cain killing Abel. Then Cain went off to repopulate the new world that would eventually rise up from his primordial crime. I felt ready to pass out from starvation, shock, and guilt. Suddenly a voice began to filter in from the shortwave radio situated on his workbench. Startled, I stood and regarded it oddly. Why was the shortwave radio on?

Rick’s expression began to change. His skin turned sallow and translucent. The voice on the radio sputtered as Rick’s hands and legs began to tremble, shaking as if he were having an epileptic fit. His mouth opened and a foul odor emanated from deep inside his gullet. His eyes snapped open, and he let out a low-pitched growl that frightened me. I jumped back in fear. He turned and scowled at me with bloodlust in his eyes, struggling to break free of the restraints, jerking and arching his back, wailing loudly in protest. I glanced over at the laptop and noticed the steep, violent alpha waves pulsing over the screen.

The voice on the radio became louder, clearer.

And then I remembered that Rick could hear me inside that dead skull of his.

My head and ears began to fill with the noise coming over the static. At first it started out as a whisper, and then it began to pound my ears disharmoniously. I covered my ears and tried to block out the sound, but it was omnipresent, insistent. I thought I heard something beneath the din, what I thought was a small voice hidden in the resonance. I stopped and listened, trying to make out what the voice on the radio was trying to tell me. The same words over and over. The words pulsed softer and then louder—like a wave. The creature next to me gnawed at the air, ravenous. Finally the words came to me and echoed in my head, filling me with shock. I ripped off the electrodes and backed away from the creature, realizing that by leaving him in this condition he’d be imprisoned indefinitely. It was as if my brother had been speaking directly to me, begging me to set him free.

“Get out of there right now!” the voice reverberated from the shortwave radio. “Donnybrook, if you can hear this message, get out of there now.”

I picked up the microphone. “This is Donnybrook. What’s going on?”

“I’ve just come from a meeting at the Pentagon. What I’ve been telling you all along is true. They’re going to drop a small nuclear warhead in the area affected by the contagion you’ve created.”

“When is it going to happen?”

“Any day now. Save yourself, and get out of there now! This is your final warning. You won’t hear from me again.”

The voice on the high-frequency range pitched back into static and faded away.

I was shocked. Rick had not only been communicating with the outside world, but he’d known about this threat all along and never even mentioned it to us!

I took the hunting knife off the workbench and held it up. Light reflected off the blade’s edge. I pinched my thumb and forefinger against it and felt its razor sharpness. A small slice of skin peeled off my thumb. The creature that was my brother snarled and hissed below me. I leaned down and put the blade to its neck, and then sliced through the dead and rotting tissue connecting it to the body. The flesh parted, having the consistency of warm brie. I kept cutting through the neck until its head was fully severed from the trunk. The creature kept making high-pitched squeals, and I made sure to keep my hands away from its mouth so as not to risk infection. When the head was fully removed, I released the strap around its skull and stepped back. Its eyes rolled around in its sockets, and its mouth snapped open and shut, the tongue protruding and licking its scaly lips.

I wrapped a towel around its mouth and secured it with the extra strap, effectively muffling its voice. The head went silent, though the muscles continued to pulse and spasm. I slipped it inside an empty box and then grabbed Rick’s journal. A backpack hung on the hook attached to the door. I stuffed the box and the journal inside the backpack and limped up the stairs, trying to block out those words echoing in my head.
A small nuclear device?

And who were the chosen ones, and what new society would they attempt to build?

Dar and Thorn stood gazing out the window, staring at the growing legion of dead agitating out on the driveway. They stomped around in a state of despair, screaming and waving their hands about like a colony of drunken lepers. There appeared to be twenty or thirty of them in the driveway, stumbling and bumping into each other chaotically. Out in the pasture, I could see many more of them heading this way

“We need to leave now,” I said, not mentioning the nuclear threat. “Before it’s too late and they completely swarm the place.”

Dar stared outside, processing this information.

“We’ll pack everything up and prepare to move out tonight.”

“Right on,” Thorn said.

“Guns, ammo, all the food we can carry out of this shithole. The rug rats will sit in the front with me and the bitch. And we’re going to need to load that last barrel of fuel into the bed of the truck,” Dar said.

“How are we going to load that shit up with all them fuckers walking around?”

“They power down at night, remember? We’ll have a small window of opportunity to escape,” I said.

“Any of those fuckers come near us, I’ll blow them to kingdom come.” Dar turned to me. “Go grab your shit, and take only what you need. Where’s Rick?”

“Forget about him. He’s gone now.”

“Dead?” Thorn asked.

“Let’s just say he won’t give us any more problems.”

Dar shrugged matter-of-factly before turning and walking away.

The kids cried in the other room, but I didn’t see Kate anywhere. I could barely focus now on account of the voice speaking in my head, resonating so loudly that it felt like water torture. Had that current actually been transmitted inside my brain? I went to my room and filled a small bag. I didn’t need to take much. The only things I wouldn’t part with were my spiral notebooks and the backpack stuffed with Rick’s journals…and his head.

I hobbled downstairs and dropped my two bags near the door. Thorn stacked four rifles and some pistols on the table along with the remaining boxes of ammo. I ran back down to the lab and slipped Rick’s keys out of his pocket. I tried all the keys in the basement doors until one of them finally opened inward. The first thing I saw was a pile of blankets, pillows and winter clothing. But what I discovered in the next room shocked me: edible goods stacked three shelves high: canned vegetables, tuna, chicken, sardines, corned beef hash, juices, pastas in tomato sauce, beans of all types, tubs upon tubs of peanut butter. That asshole had been starving us to death! I grabbed a plastic jar of peanut butter, opened it greedily, scooped out a heaping mound into my palm, and shoved it into my mouth. In less than two minutes, I’d consumed half the jar, and my shrunken stomach throbbed in pain. It felt wonderful to binge, but I feared that I’d be discovered by the others and accused of holding out. I grabbed a bottle of juice, quickly slugged it down, and then ran upstairs to tell them of my discovery. I prayed Dar would look favorably on me and return me back in her good graces. Her stamp of approval meant everything to me in my deteriorating mental condition.