DISEASE: A Zombie Novel (13 page)

The guards hang on Lot’s every word, like babes suckling at her bosom, but Opie can’t hide his surprise. He’s seen Lot put on many faces in his day, but this is by far one of the most disturbing.

“Cure him from what?” asks Thick Marge.

“His appalling disease of the mind. He—he has a predilection for children.”

Arnold and Thick Marge gasp, overwrought with outrage.

Thick Marge looks as if she might spit on the floor.

“I always knew there was something wrong with him. I’m sorry, Lot, but I always felt he was a bit ’off’. It’s not your fault and we’re going to find the boy and bring him home safely. I can’t promise the same for Danny.”

Arnold agrees. “Don’t blame yourself, Lot, please. Whatever Danny’s done, and plans to do, it’s on his shoulders alone. You tried to help him, to stop him. I only wish we’d known about this before. Maybe we could’ve helped. You loved him like a son and you’re only guilty of doing what any mother would do.”

Lot wipes her eyes. “No, I’ve operated selfishly. I couldn’t bear to see harm befall my son and now a child is paying the consequences. I
have
to do what’s right from now on. When you find Danny he must be treated like any other citizen of this community. He must be brought back to pay for his crimes.”

“You don’t have to go through that,” says Thick Marge. “We can… take care of him, immediately after we find him.”

Arnold shakes his head in disagreement. “No Marge, she’s right. He must face the consequences of his actions, like anyone else. An example needs to be set.”

Lot sits back in her chair. “I can no longer protect him Marge. Justice must be served.”

Thick Marge peaks out the foyer peephole, peering across the field at the forest. Creatures aggravated by Danny’s little jaunt form deadly clusters, on the lookout for fresh meat. This is taking too long, Danny already has a head start and it’ll be hard enough to track him as it is. Every minute they wait further reduces their chances of finding him.

She closes the eyelet and joins a group of men near the entrance. They murmur about tactics as she sit and begins bouncing a leg, unable to hold still. If they hustle they should be able to outrun most of The Risen outside, and catch up with Danny, wherever his is. She always knew he was a creep, she could just tell, and the boy he’s stolen needs to be saved.

Marge doesn’t have children of her own, never did, but she once had a kid brother. There was a fifteen-year difference between the two of them, so he felt almost like a son, and they’d been close. When The Plague struck he’d been torn away from her.

It was the most miserable day of her life. Some lunatic charged her SUV as she drove her brother from school. She usually picked him up on Fridays when she wasn’t on base, trying get a little extra time with him. It was getting harder as he got older to see him, he wanted be with his friends, playing videogames and not with big sis.

She remembers how the crazy woman attacked their vehicle when they stopped at an intersection. If she’d known then what she knows now, she would have accelerated through the stop sign and never looked back. Or maybe she would have just shot the bitch, right there, with the military issue handgun stowed in the glove compartment. Instead, she tried to keep her cool.

Her little brother didn’t feel the same reservation. He rolled down the window and yelled at the lady to get out of the way and Marge’s memory gets blurry from there. The woman looked like she’d jumped from the pages of a textbook showing horribly advanced syphilis. Somehow that disgusting creature bit her brother’s arm. Marge floored the gas, driving right over the nutter, who then got up and attacked the SUV again like nothing had happened. It was unbelievable.

A call to 911 brought police. They Tasered and shot the lunatic with no success, she just kept attacking. More people were bitten before she was finally cuffed and detained. Marge’s brother was taken to the emergency room, and then… well the story wrote itself.

The hospital was bedlam, crazy people coming out of the woodwork and ending up in the ER. Her brother’s condition deteriorated as a speedy and hard-hitting infection spread through him. He flatlined and the doctors pronounced him dead—then he recovered. It was a miracle they said, but it was anything but.

The last time she saw her little brother he was strapped to a hospital bed, writhing as though possessed and trying desperately to attack and bite the doctors surrounding him. They were trying to get some sort of vitals reading from the boy.

Although that was three years ago, Thick Marge is still stuck there, remembering the events as though they happened yesterday. She often wonders if that sweet boy is still strapped to that bed in an eternal hell, never able to release himself, never able to escape.

Of course the situation is different now, much different, but she nevertheless feels compelled to rescue the towheaded Alex. She’s prepared to do what she has to to save the child, even if it means laying down her own life.

Thick Marge continues to bounce her leg anxiously. Arnold, whose real name is Javier, walks up to her. “Any change?”

“Not really.”

He nods grimly, shifting the supply sack on his shoulder into a more comfortable position. He knows what some call him behind his back, but he doesn’t care. What point are names in a world filled with death? Everyone dies, and everyone’s name is eventually forgotten. He doesn’t care what they call him, as long as they do their job and help him find their target.

Arnold’s fought next to Danny enough times to respect his capabilities and knows this won’t be an easy mission. Their route to find him isn’t established, the sun is setting, and not only are there cannibalistic cadavers to contend with, but also a smart and dangerous man. The deck is stacked heavily against them. He thinks they’ll be lucky if they get the boy Alex back alive.

At least he has a good idea of where Danny will be heading and it’s their only hope in hell to find him. Arnold has some tracking skills, being trained for it in the Marines, but he’s by no means a professional. If he’d known that every corner of the world would succumb to utter devastation he would’ve brushed up on his training before it all happened.

To Arnold it felt like the world had fallen apart before his very eyes, town after town, city after city, and country after country. He’d always worried about a nuclear winter, but this? Never this.

Hospitals were the first hotspots. People didn’t know what they were dealing with. Well-meaning family members rushed the sick and “infected” into ERs. Police stations and jails quickly filled up too. It wasn’t long before the majority of first responders were with either dead or infected, leaving the army as the nation’s only line of defense.

Their orders were simple: destroy areas that were overrun by the dead, there would be civilian casualties, but desperate times called for desperate measures. They tried to cleanse towns and cities of the spreading disease, but it was a losing battle. There were always more living corpses spewing from the mouth of hell.

Weeks passed without any sign of relief as Arnold’s squadron hunkered down and followed orders. They didn’t know it at the time but The Plague was only just beginning. Then came the call to hit a school full of families seeking refuge. The situation had become so critical that if there was even one suspected infection, annihilation was the only order

The commands were sent via satellite phone from politicians in bunkers, fat-cats far away from any action or possibility of infection, making decisions based on data collected from the ground. It was easy for them, sitting back in their leather chairs with their unscathed children at playing their feet. They just pointed their pudgy fingers at targets on maps, like it was a game board. Pass the crackers please.

It was difficult for Arnold leave the safety and security of the military he had known for a decade. It was even harder to disobey the direct orders given to him by a superior officer, but it helped that there were fifteen of them that deserted.

Soon after, he was separated from the group. It’s possible they’re all still alive and well, and he prays every night for them.

Years of tough training serve Arnold well now. Not only did it build character, but they also built stamina and grit, all of which he will need to barrel headlong into a dark forest after a deranged man holding a child hostage. It’s men like Danny that brought The Plague to humanity’s doorstep, but it’s men like him that will stop it.

He and Thick Marge look over their small group. There are five men, Rob, Brody, Habib, Dennis, and Jamal. Three of them had volunteered for the now defunct solar panel mission and they are all hard, experienced fighters.

Thick Marge unlocks the foyer cage. “Alright, boys. Let’s do this.”

***

Alex follows Danny as they push their way through the thick underbrush. In here, trudging through the woods, there is no way to know where danger hides. The sun is setting, nearly gone, but the road isn’t an option. It would be a safer, but they would be too vulnerable to discovery.

Somewhere around here is an old deer trail. If they keep going Danny knows they’ll find it. Get to that, and it will lead them through, to the other side of this nightmare. It will be a few days worth of walking, but if they can survive, Whitebridge is only another few hours from the edge of the forest, and a possible place of refuge.

Lot has been feuding with Whitebridge for a long time. She claims they are Godless heathens. A community bent on inbreeding and immoral behavior. It doesn’t help Whitebridge’s reputation that they routinely send raiding parties to stake out routes and kill Lot’s people.

Of course, many of Lot’s missions were once raiding parties too, not a few of them headed by Danny, but that was until she established trade with some of the surrounding communities. Since then raids were a thing of the past. Danny never really understood where the problem emerged with Witebridge, but there is bad blood there. Maybe they know something he doesn’t.

Lot’s influence grows by the day because of her trade routes. Most of the surrounding communities would happily turn anyone over to Lot if they hear she’s looking for them. Whitebridge has somehow resisted Lot’s charm and Danny’s gambling that they’ll accept a defector.

He tries to focus on the matter at hand, survival, but can’t. His mind spins at an unstoppable pace, unburdened by the rational thought of well-rested judgment. The meticulously built walls he spent years constructing now lay as rubble, scattered at his feet. His thoughts skip and bounce with little rhyme or reason as connections he shut himself off to long ago show themselves. Despite the fact that he’s sleep deprived and terrified, Danny feels like he’s finding pieces of a missing puzzle and for the first time in his life a full picture is forming. He finally understands how Lot is building her empire. He finally sees the rotten system built by a rotten leader.

A comment here, a lie there, Danny’s putting it all together and wonders how many other people know exactly what’s happening. He wonders if they care and he wonders why he never saw it before. It’s funny how tiny things tell a big story when you’re not afraid to look.

Danny’s stomach flips. Had anyone realized what was happening to him? What Lot was doing to him? Looking back, he knows the answer is yes, someone had to of known. Someone could have stopped it, someone could have saved him, but no one did, and he couldn’t save himself.

Lot was all Danny knew for years. After his father’s death she kept him on a short leash, always by her side and eventually she infiltrated his mind so thoroughly he no longer had any sense of self. There was no sense of being without her, she made his decisions, she controlled his actions, and she controlled his thoughts.

He was so completely under her spell that he tried everything he could to keep their connection as he aged. He even went as far as to stop eating. By severely limiting his diet he delayed puberty by at least a year. Now, with unclouded eyes, he realizes it was a thought she put into his head. That was what she did—what she does—best.

When Lot finally severed their relationship it was cruel. She was done with Danny, cut and dry. He wallowed, unable to come to terms with the fact that he’d been evicted from her bed and he blamed himself. She let him. All he had left was emptiness and anger, he didn’t know how to function. Lot had so completely eviscerated his identity that without her, he was nobody and nothing. Even now, running from her with Alex in tow, a small part of him hopes he can return to her one day. He hates himself for it.

Danny‘s stomach tightens, nauseous with guilt. He can’t stop thinking about her, about how he’s betraying the only person in the world that loves him. Her hooks drag through him as he pulls away, taking chunks of his very being with them. He knows he will never truly be free of her. She’s an entrenched obsession, cultured from years of abuse.

Danny staggers.

Abuse, he never thought of it that way before, but it’s impossible to hide from it now; no matter how much he wants to. The floodgates are open and he’s drowning.

“Lost?” a man’s voice startles Danny and he realizes he’s stopped walking. He can’t remember getting here. He’s been on autopilot, lost in a maze of violent emotion. Alex stands next to him, peering into the dark.

“Who are you?” Danny asks.

“My name is Sal.”

“What do you want? We have nothing.”

“Oh? On the contrary, I see you’re both wearing clothes, and you have a nice set of boots on your feet…”

“Don’t come any closer.”

Danny grabs Alex’s arm and shoves the boy behind him then raises Casey’s bat.

Sal steps forward, unafraid, his face still hidden by shadows.

“I don’t want your stuff, I was just proving a point.”

“Which was?”

“That you’re an appealing target to those that would harm you, and you seem woefully unprepared to protect that child of yours with just a bat to defend yourself.”

“What
do
you want then?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I
don’t
want. What I don’t want is to see some poor bastard and his kid get mauled out here because they’ve been walking around in circles. I have a safe place you can spend the night.”

“We haven’t been walking around in circles, I know exactly where I’m going.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You don’t have to, it’s your choice.”

Sal turns and walks away with a deep limp. Danny watches as the man’s form is quickly eaten by the shadows. He peers into the dark as a coyote yips far in the distance. The bat is heavy in his arms and his eyes burn with exhaustion. It’s been ages since he’s slept and he knows he can’t go much further.

***

Most of the low hanging clouds have dissipated with the light summer night’s breeze. Thin tendrils of moonlight strain in their battle against the dark forest. Everything is quiet and still, but Thick Marge and her cohorts know it’s a ruse because littered throughout the branches and fallen leaves are unspeakable evils.

They step quietly, trying not to attract attention. No torches, or flashlight, no GPS, or satellite radar to guide their way. They rely solely on Arnold, the Marine, to navigate them through this house of horrors.

Arnold thinks Danny will head to Whitebridge, where they are rumored to have taken in a traitor once. He’ll probably stay off the road, to avoid discovery. It’s a shot in the dark, but it’s their best bet.

Rob catches up with Dennis and they whisper, falling slightly behind the others.

“This is messed up, huh?” Rob asks. “I can’t believe Danny did something like this, and now we’re out here looking for him and that kid instead of securing solar panels. It’s crazy”