This Plague of Days, Season Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (30 page)

“I am not in charge of anything. That’s what God is for!” the young man replied.

“I didn’t get pulled over by God. We’re here against our will! You — ”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but perhaps after you find out whatever this is, you won’t be here against your will. I will be glad to explain. No one has to stay. But please allow me to make my invitation before you refuse it.”

The old man stood stiffly, unimpressed.

“Thank you for standing as I entered, my new friend, but that’s so old world and I don’t stand on formality. So please, rest your tired feet and all your questions will be answered. All your dreams will finally be fulfilled.”

A gaggle of people behind the old man gently pulled him down so he was once more seated in the grass.

The speaker’s last line seemed to be a practiced cue because two teenage boys appeared through the tent flap behind the stage. Between them they carried a desk. A young woman stepped in behind them carrying a chair. They placed the props swiftly and then rushed out of the way to the sides of the stage.

The man in white didn’t bother with the chair behind the desk and instead sat on the desktop, his legs crossed comfortably in full lotus position.

Anna leaned so she could speak into her mother’s ear. “Let’s decide right now,” she said. “If they force us to dress in unflattering saffron robes and sell flowers, we kill ourselves.”

“I wish I had that sense of humor. You got it from your father.”
 

“Get started with getting it. It’s the only thing that’s keeping me from shooting bananas out my ears,” Anna said.
 

The hot white spotlight beam swung on them. The man on stage watched them, his black pupilless eyes glittering. “It’s time to bring the news,” he said. “I am Xavier!”

“
X! X! X!
” the crowd chanted.

He smiled and waved. “That’s right, friends. Always with the
X
, never pronounce the
X
like a
Z!
X
is the unknown we solve for.”

“
X! X! X!
” they replied.

“For our guests and newfound friends, it’s time to tell the story again.” The crowd showed their approval with three slow claps and fell silent. The spotlight that had rested on Jack and Anna and the others near the front of the stage winked out, leaving Xavier alone in a white circle of light.

“Ladies and gentlemen, fools and slugs, boys and girls of all ages! I was in New York before the Fall of Man. What do you want to hear first? The good news or the bad news?”

“The bad news! The bad news! The bad news!”

“That’s the proper way because we always gotta end on hope!” Xavier nodded his approval. “First, in case you didn’t know, America’s enemies manufactured the Sutr-X virus to make us weak! Their goal was to weaken us. They put us down farther than they ever could when we were strong! I saw it happen in New York!”

“What happened?” someone said out of the darkness.

Xavier made a whistling sound and threw his arms wide and mimicked the sound of an explosion. “Zombie bomb!”

Low moans escaped from the adults as a young child from the center of the group laughed musically. Xavier closed his eyes, raised his head and smiled. He cleared his throat.
 

Behind Jack, a woman screamed, startling her. “Teach it! Tell it!” The baby in the woman’s arms gave a long, warbling cry.

“I lived in New York,” he said. “I’ve been a fiddler and a poet, a disappointment, a rebel against all things and I have become a faithful servant of the Lord. Our enemies used microbes against us and then — I saw the fruits of their labors myself — they filled a ship with a new version of Sutr that makes people into monsters. I saw them up close! I saw them do terrible things. The Lord saved me from the Fall of Man! And do you know why?”

“Why?” a man yelled out of the darkness.

“For you. God made the terrorists his instruments…God allowed the horrible to happen…for you! He saved me for you! How else could I have escaped the zombie conflagration, the ghoulish storm of destruction? God gave me the power to walk through fire, but not for me! For you!”
 

The group replied with three fast claps.

“I know it sounds crazy. But in this new world, what isn’t crazy? We’ve all seen crazy. Crazy is the new normal! Crazy isn’t crazy anymore! What’s a baby dying?”

“Crazy!” the crowd answered.

“What about many children dying in their dead mothers’ arms?”

“Crazy!”

“And what about the prospect of you dying and the universe going on without you?”

“Crazy!” the crowd replied again.

Jack and Anna exchanged a look. Jack guessed what her daughter was thinking. Jack eyed the distance from her seat in the grass to the tent flap. If they ran and left Mrs. Bendham behind, they might make it outside before the guards stopped them. They’d certainly never make it as far as the van.

A
BOUT
W
HO
K
NOWS
W
HAT

A
t 7 a.m., Chris Evans sat on an orange, coffee-stained couch in an alcove in a second floor corridor at Marion County General. It wasn’t that the taste of sweet, hot coffee was so good, but he missed the calming morning ritual. His breakfast was an old, misshapen apple and a bottle of Evian water. He’d been up since dawn, watching the sky change. Since the death of television, he noticed lots of survivors turned to the clouds. People were paying attention again or maybe just relieved the dead night’s terrors had receded.

Chris slept better knowing others were nearby. Life was different, but life continued. At dawn, he’d heard the telltale sounds of lovemaking. Somewhere down the corridor, a pair coupled. There was hope in that. It cheered Chris to think someone still had the gumption. Maybe those biological imperatives could actually be spurred on by so much death.

Chris shifted on the couch uncomfortably. His hip wasn’t limbered up yet. He could pop a pill, but he’d begun to worry that he’d had too many too close together lately.
 

And what about next week or next month when the worry was not too many pills, but too few? The pharmacies were stripped clean, so that meant searching the houses of the dead. He didn’t relish that idea. And how nasty would the hip get once all the medication expired and lost its punch?

He’d put new notches in his belt, but sometime today, between runs, he’d slip into the Wal-Mart on South Western Avenue and pick out new pants. Without the belt, the pants he wore would puddle around his ankles. Maybe he’d find some meds someone had skipped, too. Or maybe the looters had missed the veterinary clinic. The vet’s office might have painkillers he could store away for a rainy night.

Some night soon
, he thought,
when the pain gets so bad the dawn won’t be worth the wait, I’ll knock back all the pills I have left and join the ghost parade.

Chris glanced around the waiting area. Magazines lay about, filled with details of dead concerns. The remaining nurses called this the bereavement area or, among themselves “the nook”.

When the news from surgery was bad, Chris imagined families had gathered here to meet with the surgeon. The doctor would appear through wide double doors, blood still on his surgical booties. He’d describe how the procedure had gone right until the patient’s body had gone wrong. The doctor would make sure to use the word “dead” to be certain the family got the finality of the message. Then he or she would slink back through those big doors. The family would turn and a social worker and a chaplain would be waiting.

There was talk of downloading our consciousness into robots,
Chris thought.
Now there’s not a surgeon left to sew my finger back on if I slip with an ax chopping wood.

When Chris glanced out the window again, he saw the Alphas coming. They did something he hadn’t seen anyone do for a long time. They
ran
.

People told outlandish rumors of what happened in Europe and the Indianapolis Speedway. Rumors of sieges, atrocities, cures and possible rescue spread through the survivors faster than the plague. Chis hadn’t believed the stories about monsters could be true. Not until he saw them coming fast in a swarm.
 

* * *
 

There was no checkpoint outside the hospital. No machine gun nest guarded the entrance and so the vampires were undeterred. They’d been driving on buses and trucks through the night. Their hunger and thirst was so strong, their stomachs felt like clenched fists.

The hospital’s generator still worked. The automatic doors would have slid aside if the Alphas had waited. Instead, they burst through the glass on either side of the entrance.
 

Two homeless men who’d been talking quietly together shrieked in unison. They’d never seen people like this. The attackers were pale and naked or nearly naked. They moved with a smooth grace uncommon except among the greatest dancers, athletes and jungle cats. The attackers pulled the two men down, going for their throats before they could shriek again.

Other humans down the corridor took up with their own screams. A nurse was caught by her hair and thrown backward into the Alpha pack.
 

Three women and two men spotted the danger and ran for the doors to the X-ray department. The door had an electronic lock and one of the women thought to seal the door behind her. When the lead Alpha hit the door, it almost burst off its hinges.
 

“Run!” one of the others said.

Then two more Alphas joined the first and the big doors exploded inward. The trio brought one man and one woman to the floor, killing quickly and feeding gleefully.

Two nurses ran upstairs toward the nursery and daycare. Their intent to save children’s lives was pure, but instead they led the vampires to easy prey.

Panic spread through the hospital as more humans ran from the invaders. They were too focussed on running and evading the cannibals to risk screaming. The fastest runners escaped the first wave of the attack. Their sneakers squeaked and squealed on the hospital’s green tile as they turned down the east wing, sprinting for the exit.

That’s where they ran into the teeth of the second wave of the attack on Marion County General.
 

A long, lanky fellow hit the exit door cursing. Misericordia’s laughter boomed down the hospital corridor as he clotheslined the escapee.

Misericordia slammed the human into the ground, knocking the breath from him. The man’s body blocked the door so the Alpha leader ran forward, leaving the prey for lesser Alphas.

Running down the corridor reminded Misericordia of his rugby days. He slammed two burly men into walls as he raced down the corridor. This feeling was like winning a match, if he were on PCP as a teenager.

By the time he got to the stairs, he already smelled the blood. The tantalizing, metallic smell made him hungrier.
 

His hunger turned to fury as he hit the top of the stairs. Two of Misericordia’s vampires had broken a commandment. The Alphas had targeted children, after all.

The Alpha leader launched himself at the traitors. For the first time, but not the last, Misericordia fed on his own kind.

W
HILE
CRAZY
PROPHETS
GAIN
OUTRAGEOUS
PROFITS

“O
f course the universe can’t do without
you
. Or…” Xavier smiled slyly, “
so you think
. But God let this plague come down on us for one reason. He’s teaching — and He is a male, ladies, for a female God would be more forgiving and give us more chances —”
 

A few women clapped their approval but Xavier waved for them to be quiet. “He’s teaching us about his perspective on the human race,” Xavier continued. “There are billions of galaxies and we’ve been awfully self-centered about our tiny dot of a blue planet. We thought we controlled everything. We thought that once we developed vaccines, we’d won that war and we could go on to new wars. We’re good at starting wars but we sure suck at ending ’em!”

Three fast claps of approval came again. It reminded Jack of a refrain in Salsa music.

“You know those nasty little bugs, those microbes, those germs? You know what they did? They kept on mutating and fighting long after we gave up and relaxed our vigilance. Now our enemies have used the nasty little buggers and we were so silly, they took us by surprise.

“A few months ago, I was on a street corner down by the Guggenheim — I used to spend a lot of time hanging out at the museum until the cops chased me away. If I were standing on my corner doing a bit of busking and telling you about the end of the world, you’d have called me crazy. Would you call me crazy now?”

The crowd answered no in a ragged chorus.

Lights flashed outside, throwing bright red, blue and white on one tent wall. The crowd looked left, curious. Jack dared to hope there might be some kind of regular authority asserting itself. In the old world, this cult would be ordered to disperse because they hadn’t filed a municipal permit. Jack never thought she’d miss such mundane bureaucracy.

 
Xavier, sensing the crowd’s distraction, spoke louder and threw his arms out again dramatically. “But you know what? I was a fiddler with a marionette. Society put me in a box. Heck, I put myself in a box. You ever see those mimes, struggling to get out of their invisible boxes? You’ve been in an invisible box, too. Don’t feel bad. We were all trapped in boxes! We were all deceived, but now we have to break the box! Strangle our inner mimes!

“You bought the lies the TV and movies and the Internet sold you. You accepted what the government taught you. You believed they cared about you, that your taxes went to good causes, that they listened to what you had to say! They didn’t do those things!

“They went their own way. They killed innocents. They deformed babies with depleted uranium. They robbed you and, until the plague, you didn’t care enough to change. They made themselves rich! They gave themselves power! They told us to be grateful for crumbs! We were all living out our lives as if we had tomorrows to spare! Does anybody want to live the old way anymore? Do you want to just accept what you’re given?”