The Zombie Letters (11 page)

I remember the one night. I was yanked out of a deep sleep by the sound of a gun going off. I looked around . . . my heart fluttering in my chest. There was a man with one of those old bolt-action rifles running toward the car as a group of about twenty of those . . .
whatever you want to call them
. . . chased him. He spotted me almost immediately. “Hey! Hey! Over here!! I can help you!” I shouted, rolling down the window and holding up the plant. As if he knew what the fuck it was, anyway. If the guy weren’t running for his life, he probably would have thought I was some sort of crazy person. In his wide-eyed panic, the man in the blood-spotted business suit didn’t seem to notice me. I was frightened for him, but at the same time I was nearly giddy seeing another unaffected human being. Such a bizarre cocktail of emotions, given what was happening. He got about twenty feet from my borrowed vehicle when he tripped and fell. He went down face-first on the pavement and twisted the hell out of his ankle.

“Shit! Get up!” I opened the door and ran after him, screaming at the top of my lungs. When I got close to him, I saw what made him fall . . . the thing that grabbed his ankle. A young girl, no more that thirteen or fourteen. She had one leg torn off and another twisted backwards. The girl climbed on top of the man before I could get near him. I ran as fast as I could and kicked the girl right in the large laceration that lined her cheek . . . hoping it would hurt. She turned to look at me and hissed; an airy and dry sound like a caged python.

“Get off of me! Get off of meeeee . . .” he shouted, attempting to position the rifle in his arms.

I looked toward the car.

The plant.

Christ, why didn’t I bring it with me? It would have saved his life. The man raised the rifle and used his knees to knock the creature back. He pointed the gun to her head at point-blank range.

“The blood . . . No! Don’t!”

The shot went off, instantly making my ears ring. The young girl reeled back and its dark, oily blood splashed onto the man’s face. It landed in his eyes, his mouth . . . everywhere. The group that had been rushing after him caught up. They surrounded us, stared at the man for a moment, and walked away. He had already turned. That was the quickest I had ever seen someone do it. I walked back to the car. I could hear him get up . . . muttering painful gasps of incoherent mumbles. I got back into the car, swearing I heard more footsteps running in my direction. Thousands of them.

The passenger-side window shattered inward, making me scream. For a second, I thought I was dead. A dirty, sweating woman with torn clothes and bloody hands jumped into the window, nearly crushing the plant. I quickly grabbed it and placed it in a car seat that was buckled in the back. “Drive! DRIVE!!” she shouted, uttering a cry of pain as her shirt rode up and caused her to scrape her stomach on the broken beads of tempered glass she had shattered with a crowbar. I looked behind me. My heart skipped a beat when I saw them. They filled an entire block. Half-burned, torn and mutilated people were coming closer. Some were running, but mostly all of them walking. They didn’t need to run this time. The girl was a sitting duck. They were going to tear the car apart, pull her out and skin her alive. “Start the car! We’re gonna die!”

“No, we’re not! Listen! I have a second to explain, so shut the fuck up!” I reached inside my pocket and removed the small baggie of liquid I had extracted from Archie the previous day. It didn’t matter that it worked, though. When you see a fucking legion of those things coming for you, you pray to god that your spur-of-the-moment, flimsy theory really works. I was absolutely horrified as I took the oil out of the bag and lathered her hands with it. She tried to pull away from me, but I held her down by force, rubbing it into her hair.

“What the hell are you doing?
DRIVE!!
”

“Trust me!” I said, reaching around her to open the passenger door. I took hold of the woman’s slender shoulder and pushed her out of the car. She landed on her bottom, looking at me with an expression that would have driven me over the edge had she died. That look on her face . . . a woman in the midst of impending doom and certain fate, sitting and staring at me with such hurt eyes . . . tears already running down her cheeks. She sat with her eyes locked onto mine when the stinking, festering and rotting crowd of them closed in on us . . . and kept walking. The woman looked around, darting her head back and forth. She was nearly hysterical. “Sorry I had to do that. Get in the car.”

She complied, squirming away from the dead walkers that passed us like a sea. She sat in the car dumbfounded. Her once quite attractive gaze was now a tear-shrunken thousand-yard stare. “How . . . how did you do that . . .”

At first I thought she was much older, but when she pushed her back-length matted hair away, I was mistaken. She was young. Probably mid-thirties. Her face was caked with dirt. Her complexion was the same color as the stuff under her fingernails. I could tell she was considered beautiful. Probably married. She was the kind of girl I would ask out back in the real world. I felt bad seeing someone so distressed and broken down; and trying to see if she had a rock on her finger. “Listen. We’re going to Washington. A tiny amount of this stuff lasts roughly twenty-four hours before it dries out, so we will be fine as long as we keep my pal back there alive and well,” I said, pointing back to Archie nestled in the car seat. “We have him, we’re fine. Trust me. But, we are going to DC. Hope you haven’t made any other plans.”

“How did you know? Where did you get that plant?”

I smiled at her. “My friend, do I have a story to tell
you
.” She stared with wildly terrified eyes out the window as the mass of them shuffled past us. “Don’t attack them. They won’t hurt us. Provoke or agitate them and I don’t know what they’ll do. Probably shish-kabab you. I haven’t found out how predatorily-sound they are yet and weather or not they will kill us if threatened. More than likely not. I’ll explain on our way east. Have you seen anyone alive on the way here?” She continued to look out the window, not speaking. “Hey!” I startled her.

She shrank back, shaking her head. “No. They’re all dead. Everybody.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout like that. We’d better get going as soon as this crowd thins out.”

“Why are we going to Washington?”

“Just do what I tell you.”

II

              As hordes of the dead, millions strong, rose out of the sea, they outnumbered other countries quickly. The ‘zombies’, if you want to argue that name by sheer root-definition, weren’t invincible. They were extremely strong physically, though. Their mouths were capable of biting a person down to the bone. When my new passenger and I reached Des Moines, we passed a group of them that collectively ripped a car door off its hinges to get to a person inside. Anyone not underground or in a hardened area was doomed if their presence was known. If they made the slightest slip. I
did
have a cell phone. It was useless now. After the main tower in the city was torn down when an army tank crashed into it, there was no use having a phone. A Smartphone, though . . . those come in handy. I used the sound recording app as kind of personal journal where I would record my observations about the creatures. I drove around destroyed cars, fallen buildings and streets littered with the dead and the parts of the once living. I had this phone in my pocket the whole way . . . dictating.

             
They seem to have keen senses and eyesight. Impeccable hearing and incredibly strong. Without higher brain function, they are unable to speak or respond to speech. I had no idea at first how they were able to differentiate between themselves, living people and those with the plant extract on them. Heightened senses are all I can use to account for that right now. I don’t really care. All I know is that it works. If that plant didn’t, I would be dead. We’d all be dead. Rudimentary skills such as the usage of tools and cooperation with their own kind is nonexistent. They don’t attack each other unless in extremely dire circumstances. I have yet to figure out what happens when the protein in their blood that they need from humans depletes. I don’t believe they will starve to death. I think their hunger will only grow; giving them a more aggressive behavior. I’ve taken Brian and Samantha’s medical records and some other materials from the lab along with Archie. I’ve been looking over everything. There’s so much to read through. I don’t expect any solid answers any time soon.

              What I can gather so far is that a gunshot wound to the head or any trauma to the brain will stun them for a minute at most. The most effective method, however just as flimsy and unproven as anything else, would be to either decapitate them or incinerate them completely. In the event of decapitation, the head will function, but the body will be useless. The head will probably still be ‘alive’ if the brain isn’t removed completely. Even partial brain activity in these things seem to still keep the body working. I have seen Zeds with their skull caps removed and half the brain eaten and they are still running around. Ingestion of their blood or any bodily fluids results in almost immediate death and reanimation. The long dead . . . those buried away underground . . . I thought they would be the ones that were safe. That their rest would be uninterrupted. Every cemetery I drove past . . . graves had been crudely exhumed. Older graves were left alone for the most part, but fresh ones looked like they had been unearthed by animals. They weren’t. The infected dug them up with their bare fucking hands. Maybe because there was still something left on the buried bodies to pick off and eat. Didn’t matter that the bodies they scavenged were dead. Those turned too.

              The girl l
ooked over at me
.
I
was driving with my
phone in my breast pocket and dictating in it at the same time. She shot me a strange glance. “Really?” she said, an eyebrow cocked. “Those
things
dug up graves, too? I wonder how many they added to their numbers by doing that.”

              “Yeah,” I said. “You should have seen the graveyards. Every single one in Des Moines. It was horrifying to look at. Even graves as far back as twenty years were dug up.”

              She said noting. Just stared out the window for the longest time.

              When the car ran out of gas in Iowa City, about two hours east of Des Moines, we took another one. It was an old Honda SUV with good tires and half a tank of gas. We had to take state highways and back roads to get where we needed to go. The interstates were nearly impassable. Interstate 80 that runs right through the center of Iowa was so scattered with cars and crashed army vehicles that it was a no-go. Even if we could get through the strewn abandoned cars, bodies and broken glass, it would take hours to even get a few miles. One would have to get out every minute or so and move some kind of hazard out of the way. I was secretly amazed that even on the back roads, we never popped a tire. The young woman drifted off to sleep about thirty minutes after we passed the
WELCOME TO IOWA CITY
sign. Her ringless fingers were relaxed over her chest as if she were sleeping on guard duty. Even in her sleep she looked poised. Her eyes darted wildly behind her eyelids and she jerked occasionally. I hated to wonder what she was dreaming. Even as night fell, she still slept in that state.

              There were lights on in some houses we passed. I didn’t stop, as much as I wanted to. The dead seemed to congregate toward lit areas and noisy movement. It seemed as if some kind of human instinct or memory . . . the most basic of memory . . . still remained. The scientific community knew so little about the human brain. Perhaps it was instinct. That would prove my theory that memory was more of a cellular function than a mental one. One-thousand years ago, human beings swore that the earth was flat. Leeches were known as a miracle cure for every illness. When a man died in the dead of winter, the steam leaving his mouth was believed to be the soul exiting the body. Only eighty years ago, human beings believed that cocaine could cure flus and head colds.

              Maybe we’re still wrong about everything.

              That’s it, lady. That’s all I have. I did what you people wanted me to do. Consider Doctor Darin Miles off the goddamn clock. I gave you all my files, my records . . . everything. Now you know all that I know. I am curious, though. What are you going to do with the Lynn File
when this is all said and done? Wherever it is kept, make sure the thing is under lock and key, okay? If the wrong person reads this? We don’t even know if human beings as a species will even survive
this
outbreak. The world could not afford another one.

              I have nothing more to say. Don’t want to talk about this anymore.

              I need to get back to work. I need to reverse the thing I helped create. This man right here deserves to die for what he did . . . and I do partly blame myself. When this is over and if . . . I say
if
I can stop this, don’t honor me. No medals, no flags, no gun salute, no stories about me passed on after I die. This isn’t a heroic thing I’m doing. Heroism is dead. I killed it. Now it is just survival.