Eat'em (22 page)

Chapter
52

And that’s how I almost saved humanity… desperately clinging to an ink pen, contorting madly on the floor, soiling my pants in front of all those who tuned in. I writhed and twisted and screamed. I put up as convincing of an argument as could be expected from a man with an invisible talking demon. And as I curled into the fetal position and frantically guarded my face from a flurry of unnecessary batons, I reminisced of the first moment I met Isaac. Eat’em told me if I cared anything for the human race I would dispatch Isaac.

I don’t know if killing him then would have saved me all the trouble. Maybe I would have never run into Parsons. Maybe I wouldn’t have ever killed anyone else. Maybe I wouldn’t have pooped myself after being tased on national television. Unfortunately, I’ll never know. Because later that afternoon, after a forced recess, which included a hosing that Eat’em found hilarious, I had the distinct pleasure of listening to a jury of my peers declare me guilty for multiple counts of first-degree murder. The deliberation was short and sweet and the courtroom almost lit up in a hooray. Had it not been for the overemotional demon, one might not have thought anyone cared about me at all.

My heart broke as I was led out of the courtroom in cuffs by the same guards that beat me senseless hours earlier and I finally brought myself to acknowledge Dixie and Valentine. Their eyes were red as mine and sadness brought them together in an embrace that I so much wanted to share.

Alas, hugs are reserved for those found innocent.

I sat in the confines of my cell. The last place on Earth. Not even Eat’em could cheer me up. Though, I will say he provided an excellent candy smuggling service, as his confinement was more-or-less on a volunteer basis. He snuck out to find treats and trinkets, but he always snuck back in. And yes, I did consider my key trick, but getting out of a cell is not the same as getting out of a prison. The cell was for my protection; the prison was for my confinement. At least, that’s how I figured it, anyway. I didn’t know what I’d do if I somehow managed to break out. Maybe I’d kill Isaac. Soon enough all the world would be Isaac anyway. So, it didn’t matter.

I flipped through the pages of a book Isaac got for me. It was a leather-bound print of the original Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Complacency led the people of London into self-destruction in the wake of several murders by a blood-sucking vampire. How subtle, Isaac. How subtle.

But at the end of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Dracula dies. At the hands of a Texan, no less.

If you want to live forever, prison is the place to be. The countdown to death was agonizingly long. The year I spent waiting to be judged and sentenced lasted longer than the combined twenty-two years preceding it. The only hours that go by quickly while imprisoned are visiting hours.

“Jacob,” a familiar voice resounded as the mustachioed chief of police, whose name was Benjamin Milan, approached my cell. “You have some visitors.”

“Visitors!” Eat’em yelled, “YES!”

Two other officers were with the chief. Bellecroix and Cameron. Behind them was Isaac.

“No…” Eat’em said. “Lame.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, putting down my book.

“I don’t get why we’re here,” the lieutenant said. “The judge ordered us to come see you. Said it was imperative. That
chief Milan bring myself and Cameron specifically, and to bring this guy. Don’t know what strings were pulled, but here we are.”

“How are you holding up, Jacob?” Isaac asked.

“I’m great,” I said, “you know. Just waiting to die. Here to gloat?”

“If I’m to be honest,” Isaac smiled.
Chief Milan and Cameron smiled too. Bellecroix had the same stupid look on his face I imagine I had. Isaac, Milan, and Cameron all said in unison, “kind of.”

Cameron
and the chief grabbed Lieutenant Bellecroix from under each arm.

“What in the Hell is going on?” the lieutenant said as they hoisted him against the bars and Isaac unlocked my cell. They tossed the senior officer onto the floor beside me and locked us in together. Bellecroix’s voice cracked. “Are you serious? Are you fucking serious? You better open this thing right the Hell now, Cameron. I kid you not!
Chief! What’s going on here?”

He reached for his holster to find it empty. Isaac held up his sidearm.

“I don’t know who you think you are, but you just made the dumbest decision of your life,” Bellecroix said, “Damn it, Chief! Cameron, you better open…”

“SHUT UP!” the three said as one. Then Isaac stepped toward the bars and spoke alone. “I’m not subject to your threats, Hershel. You are more inconsequential than nothing. Jacob,” he smiled, “how stupid you must feel.

“I’ve been around for a long time, kid. Long enough to see my wife and children grow old. I tried to make them young again, Jacob. Who wouldn’t? But there was none of them left…”

“What are you
talking about?” Bellecroix asked.

Isaac pointed the gun at him from the other side of the bars. “It is not your turn to speak, Hershel. It will not be your turn to speak until I am gone. And if you speak again, I will shoot you.

“There was none of my wife and children left, Jacob,” he continued, “because all that was left was me. So, you see, I didn’t kill them. I gave them life. And in effect, I only killed the part of myself I couldn’t live with anymore.”

“Jacob, what’s he…?” Bellecroix said before a gunshot dropped him to the floor. Blood oozed from his thigh as he screamed, drowned out by the aftershock of the blast.

“Again and I kill you, Lieutenant,” Isaac said. “Nod if you understand.”

Bellecroix nodded.

“Good,” Isaac looked over his shoulder as if waiting for response to the gunfire, and turned back as soon as nobody rushed into the bay. “I fought in World Wars One and Two. I died in every battle. I’ve experienced death many, many times, Jacob. Undoubtedly, I will experience it many more times. It’s maddening. But I know how to create a life without death. It’s my destiny.

“You thought you were working your way toward the top of some chain,” Isaac scoffed. “Jacob, you weren’t even on my radar. You were some kid to talk to, that’s it. I’ve been doing this long before you were born. You don’t even have a clue as to how long the chain goes nor do you know how many chains I’ve started. But I’ll give you a hint. Here’s one…”

Isaac lifted the gun to Chief Milan’s head and pulled the trigger. Another shot rang out. Blood and teeth, fragments of skull and chunks of brain exploded into the air. The behemoth fell. The lieutenant held in a scream.

As if in reaction to the chief’s sudden departure, Cameron began to twitch uncontrollably.

Black liquid poured from Cameron’s mouth. Blood dripped from his eyes and nose and ears. He collapsed and seized violently, an intense growl broiled up from his heaving lungs.

“I wanted to cure humanity from death,” Isaac said, “but through the perverse nature of some evolutionary trait that created you, it’s now clear to me that humanity wants death. Humanity craves death. Humanity somehow needs death. Well here it is. My gift to you. And I’ve given you front row seats out of the kindness of my merciful heart. You wanted to start a war. Nobody has more experience with it than I do.”

He turned and walked away.

“Wait!” I yelled. “What happens next?”

He paused. Without turning back he said, “Enjoy the show.”

After he disappeared out of sight, Bellecroix finally coughed. “What was that, Jacob? What was that? Christ on a Cross! You were telling the truth? Tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t know…” I said.

“Were you two not paying any attention?” Eat’em chimed in. “Must I explain everything?”

“It’s not good, sir,” I said. “And it’s about to be worse.”

Outside the cell, Cameron climbed onto his hands and knees. He lifted himself up on the bars and pulled himself to his feet. A hollow howl escaped his ragged windpipes. It echoed through the bay. Other howls followed. From inmates. From guards. From outside the prison walls.

The world faced an epidemic, as I remained locked behind bars with the man who put me there, listening to the events leading to this predicament as narrated by a small red imp.

Epilogue

Dear survivor,

Firstly, good on you for spitting in the face of the apocalypse. Civilization has come to a big bloody finale and it’s time to sit back and relax with a book. Why not, right? The world’s gone to Hell, hope is all but lost, Internet is down, cable’s out, how about a good read? I wouldn’t blame anyone.

I lost hope when the newest
Star Wars
got canceled just months before release. I lost hope again when all the movie theaters started locking their doors. I lost hope when all the power went out and never came back on. Sure I kept what faith I could that maybe someone out there would have an old BluRay player and an HD TV and a power generator or something so we could watch movies, but I guess not everyone has the same priorities when the news anchor tells them it’s too dangerous to go outside before signing off for the final time. People started biting and killing each other the world over. I lost hope.

The post-apocalypse isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Perhaps, I’m guilty of having seen too many post-apocalyptic movies, and that’s why I expected some
Mad Max
kind of nonsense. I figured there’d be gang wars and violence, people struggling to survive, that kind of stuff. That hasn’t been the case. In fact, food is readily available and the people whom were able to wait it out are all pretty friendly.

I guess we all just kind of have stronger stomachs now. When everyday’s a funeral, it’s kind of hard to be rude to each other. So we shuffle down roads lined with abandoned vehicles, and we always say hi to one another. On occasion people group together and help each other out, but not always. That said – I haven’t seen anyone fight since the end. I’ve seen people walk into an old CVS and take just what they need. One guy even stayed in the store for a while, helping people find medicine and food and such, almost like he worked there. But nobody paid him and nobody took more than they needed.

Granted, it’s really easy to share when almost everyone is dead. I never thought about it when things were normal, but as one of only a few hundred people left, nobody wants the reputation as the guy that horded all the children’s Tylenol and is shooting people for formula and diapers.

Back when people swarmed cities there were plenty of shootings for cases of
Enfamil
. Gang bangers were having baby gang bangers they couldn’t feed with welfare checks spent on booze and cigarettes. Now, there’s no reason to be forced to choose. All the gang bangers are reformed… or dead. It’s nice.

To be honest, I kind of prefer the way things are. People aren’t as judgmental and now that the world has ended I’m not so afraid to die. I mean, that day… the day people were screaming and death cascaded upon the Earth to punch the collective society’s meal ticket… for me that was almost a relief. It was a relief. A huge burden was lifted off my shoulders, really. I’d put a lot of effort into postponing the post apocalypse and all it did was end me up in a short line to be strapped to a table and injected with God knows what. Dead. Me. And I would have made that exchange to save the people we had to bury. Gladly I would have taken the needle to keep everyone else from the grave, but I couldn’t. It’s a huge weight on your shoulders to know Death is sitting there on his black stallion and you’re the only one doing anything about it.

My favorite part of surviving any tragedy is finding out where people were when it happened. Everybody does it. “Where were you the day…?”

As the rest of the world collapsed, I was in a prison cell with the one man who hated me more than anyone else on earth. Lieutenant Hershel Thibodeaux Bellecroix. Some sergeant named Aaron Cameron chomped on the bars to the cell like it was some sort of snack. He chewed the thing until his teeth broke out his mouth and he gummed it until someone outside the cell disrupted his thinking with a magnum round.

I’d like to say it was my Uncle Valentine or Dixie or even Big Mike… someone cool and pertinent to my life somehow. But our rescuer was just some cop that happened to be fighting his way through the prison one bullet at a time. Unfortunately, it was his last bullet, and an orange-clad maniac tackled him seconds after getting the key into the lock, and commenced eating our shining hero as I helped Bellecroix step over the smorgasbord.

See, because Bellecroix had been shot earlier by the guy that started this whole mess. Yeah… him.

Anyway, I helped the lieutenant out of there. It was the right thing to do. And then I headed off to search for my friends… Valentine and Dixie. Not Big Mike. He died. Because he ate. Not because he was eaten.

Diabetes.

I’m on a tangent. The point is. You’re alive… Yay!

Yes, yes, I know it’s a crapstorm. But I’m trying to keep optimism alive. Because without optimism, without hope, without
Star Wars
, what is there really?

When I started writing this, I meant it as a rally. Like, “Hey, we’re alive. Meet us here. Let’s do brunch.” That kind of thing. But, we’ve decided not to stay here.

The one who caused this is still out there. He’s still alive. This isn’t over. And I want to leave this as a promise to you. Whoever you are. You will feel safe again.

Wherever he hides. In whomever he hides. I will find him. And I’m gonna Get’em.

Jacob C. Brook