We stagger into the thick bush, pushing aside branches and debris. I can’t see clearly; the sun is too bright, and it’s right in my eyes. It blinds me. But dusk is only two hours from now, and we can’t afford any delay. Jack is a few meters ahead – she prefers scouting the territory, to make sure we don’t fall straight into a trap. Unintentional as it might be, given the nature of the danger. But deadly nonetheless.

I detect movement into the woods, but she’s too busy avoiding the twigs to pay attention. I slow down, waiting for the hidden shape to emerge. I’m not disappointed. A whoosh – a low, snapping sound, followed by a squelching noise of trashed leaves. She turns her head, alarmed, whilst my arrow hisses and darts just a few inches away from her left ear.

“Norman, what the-”

A body falls to the ground at her feet, and she jumps back in a hysteric jolt. “Christ!”

“You’d better be careful, my friend.” I come forward, collecting the tiny bolt from the corpse’s head, dipping it in an iodine-arsenic solution and putting it back into the quiver. “Birmingham is known to be one of the most infested areas in the whole country. I wonder why this one was all by himself. Poor chap. He just wanted a taste of your sweet blood.”

“Well, he can taste this.”

She shoots him twice in the mush of its exposed meninges that scatter further on the ground. As if we needed additional infectious stuff. But Jack always goes for the overkill. It eases her tension. And she prefers bullets, whilst I’m more confident with my silver, recurve crossbow and my wooden darts, which I personally make. They’re cheap, fast and mortal, and good wood is the only thing I need. I also carry mini-frag hand grenades though, for fast-paced action. My victim lies there, lifeless as the dead forest that surrounds us. We call them Raptors, and that’s somehow a misnomer. But they don’t get offended, I guess.

Jack looks back at me. She’ll never admit it, but she has been scared shitless by the ambush. “Americans were just right. Let’s leave this shithole.” She says eventually, putting her gun back in the holster.

“Where for? Space, maybe?”

“You’re so funny.”

“And you’re so smart. Me, I’m European. I’m not leaving my country to hordes of famished Raptors. They’ll have to kill us before.”

“They will.”

“They won’t. We’re not as soft as you whiny North-Americans – yes, Canadians included.” I say with a smile on my face. I like provoking her – hurt national pride always reacts on cue. As if this bullshit made sense any longer. Who cares about who you are, provided you’re not one of Them? And fuck nationality too. But Jack never disappoints me.  “You French faggot!”

Should I remind her the whole story? At the beginning, we gave this weird plague a fancy name –the Andromeda virus. Because it happened as in an old novel of the late XX century. One day a satellite came back carrying a nasty bug from outer space, escaping all decontamination procedures. After a while, we didn’t call it anything any longer. We were too busy dealing with the disaster. The world witnessed humans turning into monsters impossible to define, even less to contain. Their ghastly look and their predatory behaviour did resemble zombies of the best movie tradition. But they weren’t zombies. They didn’t eat flesh; they feasted on blood, without being vampires either. Not that luck – they didn’t turn victims into something like them, just into tiny lifeless shreds. And they were blind, with oddly bluish corneas. The plague that created them shattered the planet like a thousand cataclysms. The ones that escaped being infected started running and hiding, before deciding to fight back. For us, the Children of the Apocalypse, running has never been an option. We’re the second generation after Andromeda. Not only do we not remember a world without the Raptors; we’re not even able to imagine one. For us it’s as far away in time as the fucking Roman Empire. Our amazing progress of the last fifty years has given us clean fusion energy and blossoming space colony projects, but not a goddamn way to deal with this virus. Not yet – not anytime soon. Our only option is to chase and kill them, as many as we possibly can. “I’m Scottish French. And wait at least to try me before calling me names. Tonight?”

“In a parallel universe.”  She sneers in defiance. “You can have all your blood sucked first.”

I probably will.

“You’re too noisy, both of you.” Ethan comes forward, put his gloves on and quietly starts examining the corpse. He turns it on its back, concentrating on its vitreous eyes. Good for him: they’re still there.

And he’s right of course. You don’t go hunting this way, even less on a high-risk mission. Ethan has been with our group since year one or so, but we don’t know jackshit about him. He’s older than us, this much I can tell; he looks in his mid-twenties – long dark hair, tattoos and a handful of earrings and bracelets. But he’s built like a special forces operative, and the precision of his sniper rifle is likewise.

From the accent it’s impossible to tell where he come from, no matter if his English is flawless. His complexion is darker than ours, and yet his eyes are the clearest I’ve ever seen. Almond-shaped ice blue. The girls like him – all of them, Jack included  – but grudgingly: he doesn’t pay attention to them. Or to anybody. He shows affection just to the little ones – and once he admitted he had two baby brothers. And hell no, I didn’t dare to ask what happened to them. Ignorance is bliss, in our age.

Jack observes him with an impatient regard. “What are you checking the bastard for, exactly? A passport?”

Her sarcasm is obviously misplaced. Ethan ignores her.

“Happy with your findings? Maybe you haven’t realised it yet, Einstein, but they’re all the same, ugly and nasty and famished.”

“Quiet.” I interrupt her with a gesture. Another muffled noise. A far away screech, carried by the wind, and a not so far away sound of broken twigs.

Ethan stands up. “Let’s clear the area. We’re not in for a fight today.”

He’s right again. An annoying trait of his, this one – no wonder Jack always gets so pesky. But today we do hunt for something else, and as he has succinctly stated, it’s time to fucking leave.

*****

It’s almost night when we finally reach Solihull. Birmingham looms in the distance. I look at the city – at what remains of it. My mom worked here as a History lecturer in the University. But she, as many others, had been obliged to abandon it and go North during the second Escape. In retrospect, that came as a surprise. Yes, because after ten years or so of complete disarray since Andromeda, the world had reorganised. Asians – Indians and Chinese – had cleared up their premises and shown the rest of the world how to deal with a threat you can’t get away from. First, selecting an area conveniently remote and then luring over as many Raptors as possible. Then, blasting them with high-yield neutron nukes. Success. Replicated ever since whenever possible. The US government chose instead to quarantine entire states, leaving them to the ghouls. Hoping them to die sooner or later for lack of nourishment. Some of them did, according to estimates. And what about Europe? In Europe, now as before, we were structurally incapable to come out with a coherent strategy. While politicians discussed in their underground bunkers, people on the surface had taken interesting initiatives. Like survival, for example, and restless hunting expeditions. For twenty years furious fights ravaged the whole continent. And just when things seemed going into the right direction, a new wave of Raptors came out of nowhere. Giving origin to what has been called the Second Escape, six years ago.  In the UK, all cities have been abandoned, apart from London and Glasgow. Small communities represent, now and since the beginning, the best bet for survival. But whenever packs of Raptors are famished enough to attack en masse, things can still go horribly wrong. This is what happened in Tweedmouth, near Berwick, two years ago. Myself, Jacklyn, Kiera, Aidan and Marie are the only ones left from a community of more than 10,000. We took away all the children we could carry and we settled down in the outskirts of Newark. And Raptors apart, life isn’t smooth. Diseases exist nonetheless, and the long-forgotten smallpox now threatens our small community. Kiera is the only one with medical training. She has put all sick children in isolation, but that’s not enough. With no doctors and no facilities, we need medical supplies. We have to go to a big city, into one of the old hospitals, and pillage their storage.

It was a simple decision to head South hunting, this time for medicines – as dangerous as it might sound. Less simple was to decide who had the best chances to get the job done and make it back to camp alive. We’re roughly the same age, with the sole exception of Kiera, Jacklyn’s sister. But she’s barely nineteen nonetheless.  The two are the foreigners in our group: their parents moved to Scotland ten years ago. Both dead in the siege of Tweedmouth – together with the other adults. We drew straws. Chance kept us alive, chance had to select the hunters. Kiera was excluded from the ballot and Jack and I won the lucky draw. Ethan joined us.

“Do we know if anybody still lives here?” Jack sounds uneasy as we walk through the deserted streets.

“Apart from the Raptors, you mean.”

She doesn’t reply. She looks worried, but I’m not. It has been a while since the last time I’ve fought, and I’m right in the mood now. Truth is, I’m after a good hunt today – and they are my prey.  I’ll worry about medical supplies later.

I don’t have to wait a lot. A compact screeching group emerges from a gutted building, waving rather enthusiastically at us.

Jack swears and starts firing. Ethan and I take position at her side. The Raptors fall with impressive regularity, one shot, one down, and while the two of us advance to make it quicker, Jack remains behind. Too bad, because another group comes out from a lateral street, few meters from her. She screams and stumbles, falling down. What comes after is just too fast: Ethan drops rolling on the ground and hauls Jack away, while he keeps shooting at the nearest ones. I reach for my pouch and throw a hand grenade to finish up what Ethan has started.

Screeches stop. There’s a moment of eerie silence. We’re look around – nobody else is coming. We’re safe for now. Ethan collects Jack’s weapons, while I get her into my arms, still trembling.  

* * *

We decide to stop for the night – an abandoned house in the suburbs. It’s not safe for us to be there – no need to make things any worse by wandering after sunset. The Raptors are more aggressive at night, and diminished light makes us vulnerable. Ethan checks the place and decides it’s reasonably ok for us to stay. And stay we do.

Jack is shaken, and she’s right. What if Ethan had not been there? And talking about him… he looks concerned too. Somehow I feel it’s not the Raptors he’s worried about.

“Can’t you sleep, mate?”

He shrugs. “You know why so many people died in the beginning? Because they could not believe what they were seeing.”

“Well, how to blame them? At the beginning, people even believed the Raptors were rising from their graves. Like zombies, you know, or ghosts. Not exactly common sense, you’d give it to me.”

“Is it so? In your religion, that’s a given. The God you worship came back from the dead on the third day in an aura of immortality. He promised the resurrection of the flesh, and that’s why you stopped cremating the bodies.”

“Yes, but …He said nothing about a penchant for blood. Without mentioning an alien virus.”

“Alien? I rather think Andromeda was caused by an Earth-born bacterium, whose RNA was altered by cosmic rays. It won’t be impossible, you see. Not even unlikely.”

I nod. “I’m sure I’ve read something of the kind. But it was sci-fi.”

“Reality is stranger than fiction, and on top of that it has not to make sense. I’m sure you’ve read this too.”

Ethan remains in silence for a while. “We’re going to die, all of us.” He says eventually. “Our species, Norman.”

“You mean the Europeans? Our generation – the Children of the Apocalypse?”

He shakes his head. “The Homo Sapiens Sapiens has dominated this planet for how long -60.000, 70.000 years? Maybe we’re at the end of the road.”

Ah. It’s not just us he’s talking about. “C’mon, mate. They’re humans too, the Raptors – even if they don’t remember it. Name apart, they’re not fucking dinosaurs. Or aliens.” I wave at the stars. “OK, they’re as dangerous. We’re not sure even now how Andromeda spreads. But the Raptors still belong to our species. And we’ll find a way to fight them down.” I’m suddenly annoyed. I believe what I’m saying. “They’re not dinosaurs, and they’re not smart either. You mentioned the Homo Sapiens. Right, we’ve inherited this planet with our brain, the same this sort of monsters seems devoid of. And it will be the key to our survival, as it has always been.”

Ethan’s stare makes me shudder. There’s something in his cold eyes that scares me silly. “What if this is not the whole story, Norman?” He never blinks. Maybe that’s the reason why he makes people nervous, me included. “What if they are the new species and we’re like the old Neanderthal – stronger, maybe smarter and yet condemned to extinction?”

“No – species reproduce and have a sort of primitive organisation.” I say. “Not just mammals, even insects. Guess what? They’ve none.”

He doesn’t reply. He’s asleep in minutes, leaving me wondering about that strange discussion.

*****

The sun is high in the sky, but weather is so bad that we can’t see shit ten meters ahead. There’s fog, too, as if we needed any more excitement. We cross the city centre, quietly walking into that ramshackle area near the canal once known as Brindley Place – with its fancy bars and its glimmering lights. Nothing has survived. Gee – I expected desolate, but this is a notch up.

We advance in formation, covering all sides. We want to avoid yesterday’s incident.

I hear a click, like the safety of a rifle going off. I turn at once – I can’t see anything. But I know I’m right – somebody’s there. Ethan looks at me and put his hand on the gun. Before he’s able to take it out, an acute voice makes us stop.

“Freeze.”

Three people, armed like ninjas, appear. I attempt a step forward, but one of them aims straight at my head – her gun loaded and ready.

“Who are you?”

“Norman. Scottish. Hunter.”

“Hunter of what?”

“Generally Raptors, but not today. I’m more into medical supplies at the moment.”

“And you search for them in Birmingham?” Her sneer conveys her surprise.

“Why, London or Manchester are any better?” Being sassy is perhaps not the smartest thing I can do right now, but hey, it’s not as if I’m not in danger already. I’m in danger since I was in my mother’s womb.  “And you are…?”

“We own this place. Nobody goes in and out without checking out with me first. Not even those fucking Raptors.”  The girl’s eyes squint a little. She observes me for a couple of seconds, and then she lowers her gun. “Shelby, lead them to the old hospital in Edgbaston. Let our guests get all they can pack and escort them out.” She says with a wicked grin. “I’ll tell the others to hold fire until they clear off.” She’s dazzlingly pretty, now that I look better. Leggy and willowy, with gleaming amber eyes. She catches my stare, and smiles. “Want to come over to our place? You can rejoin your party on the way back.”

I consider the tempting offer. I’m used to the Raptors, not to street hoodlums with stunning bodies. Jack says nothing, but something wary in Ethan’s eyes makes me think again. “No, thanks. We prefer staying all together.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.”

I sure get a fair picture. I’d better leave before I change my mind.

The girl and the other boy walk away, while the one named Shelby remains with us. He’s our age or younger, and, from Jack’s admired stare, I can see she finds him sort of cute. I wonder the hell why. That waxen-faced dickhead with pale green eyes doesn’t look appealing to me. But girl I’m not. Thinking better, maybe that’s why she has not objected when the hot babe wanted to snatch me away. Great. I decide to pay them no attention.

We walk for a fair while, and finally reach the hospital, deserted and derelict as the rest of the town. We’re damn lucky it’s in working conditions. Facilities of the old days. Civilisation here may well be a memory of the past, but electricity still works.

We check the area and prepare for the night. Shelby boy is quiet, speaking exclusively to Jack, who seems appreciating his conversation. A tad too much for my own taste. But I’m tired, and when they go outside to smoke after dinner, I don’t object.

When I get up in the morning everybody seems busy with a purpose. Ethan is listing supplies, while the boy and Jack are fixing breakfast. I sit nearby, taking a cup of coffee. “Hello guys – you had good night?”

Shelby nods and drinks his tea, while Jack smiles. “Hi, Norman. Everything’s fine here.”

Her eyes however suggest otherwise. And the way he touches her arm makes me think something happened last night. But it’s only a fleeting moment. Maybe I’m just jealous.

Shelby stands up. “I’m done here.”

“Yes?” Ethan says, looking at him with an unreadable expression.

“Yes. Tomorrow I’ll come and walk you out.” His backpack on his shoulders and his rifle in his hand he leaves quickly, while Jack follows him with a disturbingly wistful stare.

*****

We spend the day packing what we can. I observe Jack. She’s weird, but maybe it’s just my impression. However, when at night she comes on to me, I decide it’s not just an impression. She undresses and remains stark naked – her pale skin shining in the moonlight. “What are you doing, Jack?”

She takes my hand and put it on her breast. “I’m ready, Norman – let’s do it.”

Uh-oh. “What’s up? Raptors haven’t drunk me dry yet.”

“I’m serious.” She hugs me and takes out my shirt. I should be excited, but I’m not. There’s something that makes my hackles spike up like a frightened cat.

A sudden noise disrupts this intimate moment, making her jump.

“Norman, you need to come with me.”

We turn toward the entrance. Ethan is there, rifle ready to shoot. We both look at him amazed. Jack reacts first, covering her body best as she can. “You wanker -go away.”

“Now, Norman.”

There’s urgency in his eyes and a concern I have never seen before. I step back.

“Where are you going?” Jack looks alarmed, her eyes wide-open. “I was right, you’re a damn faggot.”

I don’t reply. I follow Ethan outside.

“We’re going to sleep here in the lobby.” He says, handing me a sleeping bag. “Nobody can access the storage room from here without hitting us first.” He says slowly, reading my thoughts. Jack is going to be safe there, alone or not. I could ask for explanations, but I’m not sure I want to know. And something tells me the night won’t be boring.

I hate to be right. Only a couple of hours have passed, when we hear noises. Actually, footsteps. Ethan loads his rifle. After a few moments, we see Shelby heading toward us, while I hear Jack coming out from the storage room and slowly walking into our direction.

He looks at us, and then looks at her, smiling. “Games are over.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I don’t like his grin, that strange light in his eyes.

“She didn’t she tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“About us.”

“About…the two of you?”

“No. About all of us. Including you.” He says, and I notice his eyes are dangerously bluish in the low light of the lobby. “Have you ever wondered how the Raptors could possibly be in control of such extensive territories after all these years? How they could keep going on and on and on after generations? They’ve been almost hunted down in Europe after the first wave, and exterminated; yet, they have managed to provoke the Second Escape. What do you think they are, fucking immortals? I’ll tell you how.” He takes a step in my direction. “They’ve learnt, asshole. They might have forgotten how to speak, but they still communicate, and exchange information. And in this evolutionary process, they learnt how to reproduce. How? They use us for it. Infected people but still humans, able to breed and transmit the virus. Spreading Andromeda to as many other humans as they can. Until, one day, we fully convert too. The Raptors are creating a new species, stronger than any human, or animal, can ever be. Like viruses can’t survive without their hosts and learn how to keep them alive, they hunt and capture us to spread their DNA, produce new specimen and keep going. The new Master Race, the one that will eventually inherit this world. Here, in Europe.

“The centre of world renaissance.” Ethan says coldly. “Once again.”

“Yes – an entire new world.” Shelby laughs. “Humans don’t stand a chance, and you should be grateful for the membership ticket. You’re part of the elite now.”

Jack starts crying, but Ethan has his own way to thank him for the offer. He shoots him right in his head. We look at the body on the ground. Yes, he had blue shades in his eyes. But human he was. He spoke, too. “He doesn’t seem one of them. Maybe he was just high.”

“Maybe.” Ethan starts checking him out.

“Norman I’m so sorry, so sorry….” Jack is on her knees, crying. “You may think this is why I’ve approached you last night. But I had no idea.”

“I believe you.” I do, really. “And I don’t believe his story. Andromeda turns people into monsters in a matter of hours. And was never sexually transmitted anyway. This boy was not infected.”

“Wrong.” Ethan loses no time in volunteering details. He starts rummaging into his backpack. Out there, in the countryside, the only way to tell if you’re infected is by using leeches. They react with disgust to the virus, and this is why everybody grows them as pets. But here we’re in a hospital and more sophisticated methods are available.

He tosses Jack a testing kit. “Do it yourself.”

“And then what? You will kill me if I test positive?”

“Do it.”

“Answer me, you Chinese half-blood. You think I don’t know where you come from? You bastards have killed your own people in thousands.”

He smiles to her. A suave smile. Then he raises his gun and points it at her face. “Good. I haven’t to explain you how I deal with Andromeda. Now give me a reason to keep you alive.”

She turns to me, her eyes brimming with tears. “How can you let him threatening me like that?”

“He’s right, Jack. If you’re infected we can’t bring you back to the children. Test yourself.”

Resigned, she does it. She inserts the testing unit on her forearm while she winces in pain, and she closes her eyes. There are a few seconds of silence. She looks at it – an allergic reaction’s already there – and starts crying again. Then she turns toward Ethan in anger. I see his eyes squinting and I know he’s going to fire. No. If somebody has to kill Jack, it has to be me. I raise my crossbow and I shoot straight into her heart.

Silence. Doom. Fucking white moon shining outside, nowhere as white as my girl’s sleek skin.

I’m still observing her in a sort of reverie when we hear a familiar noise. They’re coming. Hunting time.

*****

The sun is rising. We walk into the desert road that takes us away from Birmingham. We have not spoken since the carnage at the hospital. Because carnage is what it has been.

They were there, blocking our way out of the building. Most of them not older than twenty, and humans. Only their corneas were too bluish and their movements too feverish. But they didn’t screech – they swore like Jack and I in our most inspired days. I keep telling myself they were Raptors like the others, in another form but even more dangerous, if possible. I can close my eyes and see again, as in a nightmare too vivid, my parents ripped apart by those who have announced themselves as the new master species: and I hate them. But the truth is, what I’ve just killed were not famished monsters. They were boys like me, children of the same Apocalypse, but not as lucky: no Ethan around to save their ass. And I’ve butchered them.

My throat feels dry – those images are dancing in front of my eyes like transparent butterflies.

The blood flowing away from their wounds, their screams and my rage. Ethan shoots them down with the precision of a sniper. His eyes are cold, and his hand never waves. I shiver, and need to adjust my target more than once – and yet, my crossbow is as deadly.  I slaughter the hot babe, when she attacks me; I jab a wooden arrow in one of her pretty eyes, that will never be pretty again. And even when I start having enough of all that blood, and tears run down my cheeks, I keep going, slashing their necks, looking at their bluish corneas and repeating myself – hunting is my life, this is what I have to do. Killing, killing, killing.

The howl of a dog gets me back to the present moment.

Ethan is looking at his compass, he doesn’t trust anything else, and certainly not GPS.  Things look not that good. We’re covered in blood. We can only hope we don’t have scratches. We make a stop into the first canal we encounter on the way out. We strip down naked and we wash ourselves in the water with bleach and iodine. Then we test ourselves, just to make sure not to carry any infection back to camp. I give Ethan a sidelong glance. He’s even quieter since we have left, looking tired and worn out. I suddenly remember our conversation the first night we arrived in Birmingham. “Ethan, did you know it? I mean … Shelby’s story.”

“Yes. I heard rumours. But I wasn’t sure. Not until tonight.” He stares at me with his almond-shaped eyes.  “Hong Kong, three years ago. We had an outbreak – one of the many. One of my baby brothers got left behind, and survived. We believed he had got away. But he had not. He kept a human shape for one year, without showing any symptom. I guess this is how they started mutating, the Raptors. It hasn’t happened in a day, and what we see yesterday are the results of that evolution.” He lowers his voice. “My brother…he infected our mother, his twin and my little sister too. I had to take them out.” He finishes suiting up. “We could not understand. It was nothing we had ever seen before. I was a biochemistry student at the time, volunteering in a crisis unit. After that, I decided to travel to Europe and search for evidence that ours was not an isolated case and we were indeed facing something new.”

“I don’t understand. The Raptors – they’re not even able to talk.“

“Do bees or termites talk? This doesn’t prevent them to build huge structures and develop complex societies. I guess we are witnessing an admirable example of swarm intelligence applied to a new human species. They adapt and evolve, learning what once made us a winning species.” He smiles, a dark hue in his eyes. “Maybe this is mother nature protecting herself. This new version is certainly less harmful for the rest of the species of this planet, considering that it only consumes the previous one. It doesn’t need to slaughter anything else on its path to supremacy.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Alert homebase. Send my report over. Prepare for counterattack. Go hunting them, before it is too late.” He loads his rifle, smiling at me. “And taking these supplies back to camp.”

 

END.

By Russell Hemmell

 

Things Fall Apart

Sammi Milva barely contained the shudder which threatened to roll up her spine.  Once had been bad, twice had been worse.  But this would have been the third shudder in the five minutes after she awoke, and she thought that that might drive her mad.  Assuming, that was, that she wasn’t mad already.

She sipped at her first cup of coffee; a wonderful brew that had come from a well-stocked kitchen that was almost as big as her house.  Her watch had actually started twenty minutes ago,  but Miguel had let her sleep a little longer.  That was nice of him, she thought, even though all it means is that I’ll do the same for Sarah, and she’ll do the same for Miguel, and we’ll all be right back where we started.

She looked out the window at the vast lawn, and the things walking around on it.  The infestation didn’t seem to be quite as bad today.  Of course, that was like visiting a death camp with only twenty or thirty dead Jews and saying, “hey, that ain’t so bad.”

As she thought this, an image popped into her mind.  A fellow with a cane and a red-banded straw hat, dancing around in his striped suit and crooning: “Heeey, that ain’t soooo baaaaad…”  She almost laughed at this, but bit her lip instead.  Laughing would be worse than shuddering.  Besides, there was no sugar-coating the situation.  If it was two million zombies she was looking at instead of three million, she was still being fed a shit sandwich.  The shuffling dead stretched from the steps of the front lawn all the way out to the Washington Monument (and probably beyond).

The third shudder came anyway, and when her sanity didn’t completely melt away in an instant, Sammi took another sip of coffee.

They were both gone, they weren’t coming back, and that was that.  POTUS, the Prez…whatever you wanted to call him, had boarded Air Force One two weeks ago, assuring them that, while he was leavin’ on a jet plane, he most definitely would be comin’ back again.  The Royal Jackass, Mister Second Fiddle himself, had left three days later aboard AF2, not bothering with platitudes.  Meanwhile, she and what remained of the White House staff were “holding down the fort”.

She had hummed several bars of the song before she realized that she was doing it.  When she did, she was a little amused to find that it was the chorus of an old Elton John song; “Bennie and the Jets”.  She christened it with new words, mumbling them out of a half-smile of exhaustion and fear and tottering sanity, as she watched the zombies:

“P-P-P-POTUS and the Veep!”

 

*    *    *

 

The press conferences had been almost as bad as the problem itself.  She couldn’t remember how many times she’d had to assure reporters that this hadn’t started at Area 51, for example, but it had to have been at least four.  As White House Press Secretary, she’d had to go round after bloody round, sometimes answering the same question two or three times a session.

And the Prez?  Fuck, they’d jumped all over him about it.  Was this some kind of terrorist attack?  If so, how come it seemed to be popping up all over the world all of a sudden?  Did the White House know why (or have anything to do with the fact that) international communications were beginning to black out left and right?  And on and on and on.  She had reflected to the President – a touch grimly – that the only reason the relentless press conferences had eventually stopped was that most of the reporters were finally eaten.

What had been the most maddening thing about it – to Sammi, at least – was that the tone of each conference seemed to be one of finding a place to lay the blame, rather than a solution to the problem.  She supposed that at least part of that could be chalked up to the CDC.  The President’s budget cuts the year before had slapped them right in the face, so it wasn’t too surprising that when they got caught with their pants down, they immediately tossed the hot potato through the Oval Office window.  As if Capitol Hill didn’t have enough on its hands already.  This snowballing clusterfuck was a political, economic, military and religious catastrophe all rolled up into one, and the last thing they needed to have been doing was trying to place blame.

So yes, that was part of the hell of it.  But…not all.  No, the other part was the fear in the eyes of the reporters.  These were, after all, the type of people who would’ve been pushing to get to the front of the line to cover a nuclear holocaust, or to take the first temperature readings on the day that hell froze over.  Barely human themselves, it sometimes seemed to Sammi.

And yet, as two weeks turned slowly into the first month, she had seen the color first fade on their cheeks, then drain away entirely.  Naked fear played across their features, and many began to seem distracted, as if they were only coming to work because there was nothing else for them to do.  And who knew?  For some of them, that was probably exactly the case.  Toward the end – of the press conferences, a week and a half ago – some of them had begun to ask if they could stay.  The White House might not be the absolute best place to be, but it was better than others in that it was at least fortified.  By then, the gas was running out for the press helicopters, and many of them were having to brave the streets to come on foot.  These had not really been press conferences, of course; by that point they were just gatherings for refugees, people somewhere in the valley between name tag and toe tag, a ragged band brandishing digital recorders which no longer had anything to dock with, and staring into the eternally-dark eyes of their i-Phones.

 

*    *    *

 

She set her coffee down on the table, and her fingers brushed the butt of the Walther.  One of the zombies was getting too close.  They were unable to climb stairs, but this guy had made his way over a pile of bodies, and was now stumbling around just a little north of Sammi’s comfort zone.  She brought the pistol most of the way out of its holster – the fingers of her left hand began curling to fit the shape of the door lock – and then she dropped it back.  No sense waking everybody.  Instead, she studied the zombie as it shuffled around, still a safe thirty or so steps below her.

It was the corpse of a very large black man.  Sammi had no doubt that it must have taken at least five or six zombies to have been able to do as much damage as had been done.  The left arm -which hung uselessly at its side – had been chewed down to the bone in most places, although here and there she could see little chunks of meat that had been missed, small hills of sun-browned musculature casting their own unimportant shadows on the blood-bathed expanses of radius and ulna.  The same could be said of the face, which on the same side as the arm was mostly gone.  One whisker from that side of the face curled in a kinky arc, and the tip of it came to rest against the protruding sharp edge of a fractured cheekbone – she realized that she could tell when it was moaning because a ragged chunk of his cheek would jiggle back and forth with the breath of it.

And what terrible breath it must have.  What terrible breath they all must have.  For some reason Sammi could not identify (unless it might be another step on that increasingly short road to insanity), she found this concept to be very funny.  Monsters with bad breath?  Try Colgate!  Try Altoids!  Try Lis-teh-fucking-rine!

She laughed a little, and her own breath reached forward and fogged up a little section of the window.  She realized that she had damn near been pressing her nose to it, watching this guy.  On a whim, she decided to name him.

“Fred?  Do you look like a Fred?” she whispered at the corpse.  It did not hear her, and may not have seen her at all.  Although, why else would it be trying to get up here?  “No, not Fred.  Fred’s a white guy’s name…unless you count Frederick Douglass.  Or that other guy, what was his name?  Frederick the Entertainer?  No, that’s not right…”  She paused ponderously.  Finally, she looked back up, grinning now.

“Fine, fine.  Fred it is.  How ya doin’, Freddie boy?”

The monster made no reply, not even a moan.  At that moment, its gaze wasn’t even fixed precisely in her direction.  It was looking off a little to its right, although she thought that “looking” wasn’t really the word for it.  She didn’t think they did much “looking”.  It was more like…well, just pointing their eyes, in one way or another.  She thought that “looking” implied a little more intelligence than these bastards deserved credit for.  “Looking” was something you did when you had a reason to “look”, right?

But maybe that was just more nonsense.  Maybe it was more madness.  Pretty soon, they’d be hauling her off to the funny farm.  Except, the funny farm didn’t exist any more, did it?

Why of course it does, dear.  Just take a look at the world all around you.  It’s nothing but one big happy funny farm out there, you crazy bitch!

 

*    *    *

 

The reporters hadn’t been the only ones, either.  Refugees from all over D.C. had come off and on, desperately seeking shelter from the onslaught of the undead.  It had been hard to turn them away, and Sammi was grateful that she hadn’t always been the one to have to do it.  The Prez had done it himself, the first few times, citing known shelter areas in the city in which people were more likely to be safe.  These shelter areas – “military zones” was the technical term – had likely been overrun within the first week or so of the outbreak.  That had been before all the data had come forth on preventative measures, and thousands of the infected had slipped past dozens of checkpoints throughout the city.  Could the Prez be blamed for that?  No, probably not.  The information he got on the situation was almost as sketchy as what the rest of them got.  He probably really did think he was sending them to a safer place, at least at first.  Later…well, who was she to hazard a guess?  Besides, all that did was go back to the blame game, and that wasn’t going to help anyone now.

After POTUS and the Veep had gone, it had been up to her.  She was the highest ranking officer in the remaining food chain by then.  And hadn’t she believed that she was doing the right thing by sending them away?  Hadn’t it been in these refugees’ best interests to keep moving, and to try to eventually get out of the city?  Surely that was the case.

And yet…

And yet part of her nagged at that.  Because part of her knew that if they let people in, two new elements would be introduced, one of potential and one of fact.  The potential element was the infected, and if the law of averages was worth a shit, that could almost be counted as an eventual fact, couldn’t it?  Sooner or later, they would let the wrong person or persons through the door, and then it would all be for nothing.  Oh, they might catch one or two in time to do something about it, but wasn’t it more likely that they wouldn’t?  That some poor schmuck would expire in the middle of the night, and then come back as one of those things within the walls of the White House?

The other thing was the food supply.  There was enough food to feed a few people for a very long time.  But a lot of people?  How long would it last then?  How long before they all began to starve?  How long before hunger would drive one or all of them to do something crazy, like try to run away from this place, or worse?  For that matter, what if their hunger drove them to sink to the level of their undead foes, dining on the flesh of one another?  It could never, ever come to that, of course, but…

She was ashamed of herself, mostly because she knew that the predominant reason in her mind during these refusals was not at all concern for the refugees’ safety, but concern for her own.  That was what it all boiled down to, and it was driving her mad.

 

*    *    *

 

Fred was definitely looking at her now.  The sliver of cheek on his face flapped back and forth a little, and she almost thought she could pick out his individual moan over the low drone of the rest of them, as if her ears were capable of picking out the sound of one poorly-tuned instrument in a cacophony of poorly-tuned instruments.  Silly, of course.

Fred’s lips seemed to pull back a little, almost as if he were affecting some kind of hungry sneer.  Sammi returned the gesture, but she found it was almost more of a smile than anything else.  And why not?  Fred was sort of cute, in an undead way.  One part of her mind was suddenly appalled to hear the other part give voice to such a disgusting (and crazy) utterance, but she ignored it.  She allowed herself to wonder what Fred had been like in his life.  He was wearing a business suit, but it was too dirty and too tattered for her to be able to tell if it was expensive or not – usually she could tell about these kinds of things with at least a fair amount of accuracy.

So, all right, she couldn’t tell whether he was wearing Armani or Bill Blass, but that was no big deal.  He was wearing a suit, at least, and that was something.  Also, as large a man as he had been, it almost certainly had to have been tailored.  Guys Fred’s size didn’t usually just walk in and out of The Men’s Wearhouse in thirty minutes, loaded for bear.

Fred resumed his attempt at upward mobility, bringing first one foot forward against the step in front of him, then the other, his useless chewed arm swinging like a horrific pendulum by his side, his other arm reaching toward her as if he would love to fondle her nose.  When the second shoe hit the step, Fred overbalanced and tipped forward.  Sammi wasn’t sure if she had actually heard him moaning above the others, but she was almost positive she could hear his face hit the pavement as he self-administered a curb check.

She started backward, giving off a little shriek as she did so.  Her hands rose to the side of her face, her now-jagged fingernails digging into the skin just beneath her temples.  Was Fred all right?  Had he hurt himself?

What in the blue fuck do you care? another voice in her head asked.  You’d better hope he – it – did.  You’d just fucking better!

But the truth was, she didn’t.  And when Fred began to pull himself back up into a standing position, slowly managing some sort of half balance on his one useful arm, she felt a sigh of relief whistle out from her clenched teeth.  She lowered her hands from her face, and placed the left one against the glass of the window, leaning on it for support as she continued to watch.  She half expected Fred to dust himself off, then give her a goofy grin as if to say “well, I did it again.”  But he didn’t do that.  Instead, he rose to his full height, his eyes staring – well, pointing – off into the nothingness again, as if he had completely forgotten that she existed…which he most likely had.  His face was worse now.  The torn cheek now hung much more loosely off the frame of his face.  His lower lip was torn open, and because no blood had come out of it, she was able to see the broken lower teeth behind it.  As she watched, two or three flecks of those teeth went tumbling out of the V shape that his new lip configuration had created, and bounced on the steps below him.  Again, she half-imagined that she could hear each individual clink as they came slowly to rest.

You poor thing! part of her mind said.  The rest shot back: What?!  What the hell did you just say?!

Her palm began to sweat, and her hand slid several inches down the glass, leaving behind it five damp fingerprint streaks.  She had been leaning heavily on this hand, and now it was her turn to regain balance.  This she did with much more ease than Fred would have or could have, and once she was back in place, she looked out to find that he had seen her again.  This time, the trembling of that torn jowl was more pronounced; it sent the curly beard-hair away for the briefest of seconds, then allowed it to reunite with the cheekbone again.

Fred started forward toward her once again, and once again he fell.  This time, he managed to land atop the corpse of one of his fellow zombies…

 

*    *    *

 

Zombies.  That’s what you have to keep telling yourself.  That’s not a man out there, it’s a living corpse.  And you, little Missy, would be crazy to think anything else of him…it.

Crazy.

But it didn’t seem crazy.  Was it possible to anthropomorphize what had already once been a human being?  Surely that was prohibited under some sort of homo sapiens double jeopardy law, right?

She laughed, this time more than a little titter, but covered her mouth with her free hand to stifle it.  No sense waking the others up, especially when waking them up might mean exposing them to her…well, her little fit.  If it had to have some kind of label, she supposed that should be it.  She wasn’t crazy, after all; she just occasionally had a crazy idea or two.  Like the idea that Fred out there – that zombie out there – was sort of cute, and that he might actually want just to talk to her.

Yes, that was even what it looked like, now that she thought about it.  He seemed to be extending that one working hand in a gesture of friendship, diplomacy.  Anyone, but particularly a White House Press Secretary, ought to be able to recognize diplomacy on sight.  Perhaps he wanted to meet with her, tell her all about the demands of the zombie population.  She could imagine how such an interview might go.

Sammi: Good afternoon, Fred Zombie.  Welcome to the White House.  Can I get you anything before we begin?

Fred: (distortedly) Well, normally I’d take a forearm, but I’m trying to watch my belly.  It sort of gets distended, you know…

Sammi: I understand.  How about some fingers, then?  Just to take the edge off.

Fred: That would be wonderful.

Sammi: Here you go.  Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks, Mr. Zombie…

Fred: (through a mouthful of finger-meat) Please, call me Fred.

Sammi: Thank you, Fred.  You really know how to lighten a tense situation.

Fred: Well, that’s why I’m here, and not some of the others.  I have a tendency to set people’s minds at ease.

Sammi: Well, you’ve set mine.  So let’s get started.  What would you say the core demands of the zombie population are?

Fred: First of all, we’re discussing among ourselves the distinct possibility that the term “zombie” might not be very politically correct…

Sammi: Oh, my apologies, Fred.  Did you have another title in mind?

Fred: (thinks for a moment) We talked about “the Undead”, also “the Living Dead”.  We don’t think the latter applies, really, since we’re not living, after all.  And, let’s face it, “Undead” conjures up a fairly negative association, wouldn’t you agree?

Sammi: Undoubtedly.

Fred: The jury’s still out, of course, but for now let’s work with one of the suggestions from the group: the Posi-Humans.  You know, kinda like antimatter, the positron?  Guy named Craig thought that one up.  He used to be a physicist or something.

Sammi: That sounds just fine, Fred.  All right, what would you say the core demands of the…the…

Fred: Posi-Humans.

Sammi: …the Posi-Humans are?

Fred: (bringing his working hand up to his chest and drumming the fingers there) Well, you’re really probably not going to like them.  First of all, we demand the right to eat humans.

Sammi: Yeah, that’s a pretty tall order.

Fred: (sighing dismissively) You asked.  Second of all…and this really isn’t so much of a demand as a request…we’d appreciate it if the majority of the stalled traffic throughout the city could be moved to allow passage on foot.  We…can’t drive, you see.

Sammi: Yeah, I know.  Now, how are we going to go about moving the traffic if your people – sorry, Posi-Humans – are eating us while we do it?

Fred: (with a nervous laugh) Point for your side, Miss Milva.  I can’t promise that none of your people will be harmed, but after all, you are the superior species in terms of intellect.  Surely you can figure something out.

Sammi: I’ll see what I can do.  Moving on to…

 

*    *    *

 

…the next step.  Sammi blinked, unsure of what she had just seen.  But when her eyes opened again, it was just as true as before she had closed them.  Fred had made it up to the next step.  It was impossible, of course, but it had happened nonetheless.  It wasn’t much progress, and Fred fell down again once he had attained the next step.  But it was shocking nonetheless.

Was it possible that they were beginning to learn?  Surely not.

And yet there he – no, it, dammit!  It’s not a he, you moron! – was, getting back up on the next step.  Sammi’s stomach lurched, and she felt like she might throw up.  The others needed to know about this.  She wanted to turn around and go wake them up.  She desperately wanted that.  But her feet wouldn’t move from their spot.  She was rooted to the floor, staring helplessly out at Fred.

His name’s not fucking Fred!  Quit calling him – it – that!

And an incredible thought occurred to her at that moment.  She could just unlock the door.  Yes, unlock the door and run out to him, run out to Fred.  After all, it was cruel to make him climb the rest of those steps alone!  The man had only one working arm.  How much of a bitch could she possibly be?

“Sammi?” a voice said from behind her.  Sammi had had no formal training in the use of firearms, yet she whirled and produced the Walther from its holster with a speed and ferocity that might have made Clint Eastwood shit his pants.

But it was only Miguel, standing there, pale as a sheet as he stared down the barrel of the Walther.  She lowered it slowly, then uttered a high, tittery laugh.

“They can climb stairs,” she said.  Miguel only stood there.  His eyebrows raised, but the eyes themselves did not leave the lowering gun.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean I saw Fred climb up a fucking stair, you dumb shit!” she yelled, but it only came out as a hoarse croak.

“Who’s…”

“Not Fred!” she said, shaking her head as if to clear it.  “What I mean is, I saw one of the zombies climb a step.”

“Sammi, I don’t think…”

“I fucking saw it, Miguel!  I was watching, and he just…that is, it just took a step up.”  Her eyes blazed, and the hand that held the gun began to move back and forth in a seemingly aimless arc.  Miguel regarded it, a little fearfully.

“All right,” he said, and the reasonable tone in his voice told her that he thought she was cracking up.  “So one of them managed to take a step.  I’m sure it was a coincidence.  These things can happen, you know.”

“Don’t you patronize me, Miguel!” she said, and to her own horror, she raised the gun at him.  His eyebrows shot back up again, and he raised his hands.

“Sammi, what are you…?”

But that was when she shot him.

 

*    *    *

 

Night lay across the D.C. sky like a blanket full of tiny holes; the moon and stars shone down vaguely through it, penetrating the underlying sheet of thin, wispy clouds and illuminating the dead – the Posi-Humans – beneath that.  The moans were louder now, but Sammi guessed that that was because the door was open.

The cold night breeze blew in through it, chilling her and driving her arms up to and around her knees.  She drew them up to her breast, hugging herself tightly as she began to rock back and forth a little.  The feel of the Walther against her thigh was a good one.  It beat the shit out of the feeling on her face, the one the breeze produced when it blew across the tacky surfaces of the blood flecks.  Those had come from Sarah, of course, who had been much closer than Miguel when…

Fred was still down there.  She couldn’t see him now from where she was sitting, but she knew that he was still down there.  And who knew, he might have made another step or two.  She doubted it; she now imagined that Miguel had probably been right about that.  But it was possible.  She rocked back and forth, alternately fighting and embracing the panic, and all the things it brought with it.

Had she been so wrong?  After all, Miguel and Sarah had shot just as many people as she had.  Not zombies, but people.  That last day, when the remaining reporters had stormed the White House, demanding refuge?  What had happened then?  Had she been the only one to open fire on them?  Had she even been the first?

“Fucking right I wasn’t!” she breathed into her knees.  She felt a new wetness on her face, and for a horrible moment she thought it was more of Sarah’s blood, perhaps some that she had missed before.  But of course it wasn’t.  The tears began to stream down, slowly at first, then building up to a torrential flood.  She began to sob wildly, rocking harder and harder until her back was slamming up against the wall she sat near.  Her heels left the floor, banged down on it, left it, banged down again.  The fingers at the ends of her hands began to shake violently, and the Walther clattered to the floor with a clank which was almost noisy enough to block out the loud noise of her sobs and the louder noise of the moans.

Those moans!  Those insufferable, God-forsaken moans!  A thronging chorus of the damned, come to see another soul wing its way downward through the cracks and fissures of the Earth, and into the eternal blissless existence saved only for those burning in the deep fires of hell.

This was Trenton Milva’s little girl Samantha, who had always wanted to grow up to be a singer – at least until her junior year of high school.  The girl who, at seven, had once plucked a bouquet of daisies, and had proceeded to place one on top of each of the gravestones in the Morton Hills Cemetery, which had sat in timbery shadows across the street from the small house where she had lived and where she would continue to live until her nineteenth year.  The girl who had lost her virginity in a broom closet, of all places, and to Gabe Hirsch, of all people.  The girl who had decided late in her high school career that singing was fine, but it wasn’t going to get her where she really wanted to go.  The girl who had, instead of applying at Julliard or the Royal Academy of Music, applied at Harvard and Yale, and who had gotten Yale.  This was the girl who was now a woman, and who had spent the last decade clawing and biting her way toward the top.  And hey, White House Press Secretary was pretty fucking close to the top, wasn’t it?

And now she was, be it ever so humble, at least at the top of the stairs.

But not for long, she thought.

She got up slowly.  The tears were still streaming down her face, and two or three of them fell from her cheek, plopping on the marble floor and shooting up a tiny cascade of saline in all directions.  She grabbed the Walther, not even noticing them.  She tried to walk over to the open door, and found herself hobbling a little instead.  She was thirty-seven, but even at such a tender age, her body didn’t take kindly to her sitting in one position for too long.

Fred was still there, but he hadn’t made it up another step.

“Fucking fluke,” she said idly.  Her voice shook from having sobbed, but her mouth turned up into a horrible, mean grin.  She raised the Walther and pointed it at Fred’s head.  Then, thinking better of it, she lowered it a little, and blew off most of Fred’s useful arm.  Fred did not cry out, but he did fall backward.  He went tumbling down, head over heels, unable to use either arm now to slow his fall (not that he would have).  When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he landed among some of his standing brethren, his legs splayed outward and both of his arms beneath him.  He began to move immediately, and Sammi knew that eventually he would get back up, eager to be back at the task of making it up the stairs to get at her.

“I won’t make you wait, Fred darling,” she said, and laughed into the bitter night air.  She raised the still-hot muzzle of the Walther to her temple, and fired the one shot allowed to a human in such instances.

Moments later, her body did indeed land very near to Fred’s.

 

END.

by J. M. Jennings