Chapter Ten: Professor Mary Jane
1
One hour before the attack
Mary Jane sat drinking a hot bottle of chardonnay. Not top shelf either!
Fuck!
She hates this fucking goddamn world! She thinks as she chugged the bottle hard, turning it up high letting the wine course down her throat.
She sat alone in her room. A room that once belonged to a young hipster now roaming the world as a zombie. She knew this because of the pictures she found when she moved in. He’d been a lanky fellow with a ridiculous looking artsy goatee and slick black hair that looked like something out of Grease. No doubt, he thought it a real hip thing to do, dressing up his hair like he lived in the 50s. Hipsters never made any sense to Mary Jane. Rich kids. She always graded them down. Always. No matter how good their paper may have been.
But, tonight, drunk and high, she sang to herself. Soon enough her world would turn upside down; but right then she drank for the Old World. She sang. She sang some more. Not a jolly tune. Not a tune at all. Just a sound that wreaked of wine and depression. What’s left in this shit hole anyway? More depression than wine. That’s for sure. Jesus. This wine is disgusting. But so is everything. She hates it all. She hates Duras to. She hates them all. She wants out. She wants out of this dreadful excuse for a city-state. The ancient Sumerians would laugh at their pathetic attempts to save Western culture. Oh and the Greeks! What would Aristotle say to a fenced in hell hole that is forever surrounded by roaming dead men?
No. She doesn’t hate Duras. What a lovely evening they just had. Plus…
Where can could she go?
But She did want out. She wanted to go back in time. She wanted her students back. Their cheerful faces, even the hipsters. She wanted research grants back. She wanted the summers off. She wanted to be called professor again.
Her husband, with his little round belly. Her son. Her little boy.
A tears rolled down her face.
Now she just sat. Drunk and stoned. Her whole life is now nothing but drunk and stoned. Weed and drink. That’s it.
Sex with Duras.
The hated task of caring for the needs of people too dumb to care for themselves. She wished they would all die.
She turned the bottle high. Down it went.
Oh god. When will it all end?
To hell with it! Tonight she drinks alone. Tonight she is free. Tonight the dead win. Tonight she cries a tone of solidarity with those dead fucks. Fuck them all.
She walked to a mirror and spoke to her reflection. “I warned them. I told them about Holocene Extinction. Did they listen?”
She threw the empty glass bottle against the wall, causing it to shatter. The little shards of glass fell to the floor like in a slow motion movie scene, and she watched them bounce for a moment, then…
…She fainted to the floor and drifted.
2
She was back in the classroom. It was only days before the virus killed humanity. “The Holocene extinction is the predicted 6th period of historical mass extinction marked by rapid loss of biodiversity largely caused by humans.”
Around twenty young eyes stared back at her. Some of them were clearly high, others clearly hung over; others alert and taking notes.
“Humans are killing off species thousands of times faster than nature creates them. The current rate of extinction across species is one thousand times that of the background rate before humans began altering the globe and thousands of times faster than the creation of new species.”
She spoke to her class with real concern. She knew that something was coming. She felt it in her gut and between global warming, the large number of species dying off, the threat of super bugs that are resilient to antibiotics, and the inability for humans to come to terms with the amount of destruction they ensue—she knew something major was in the air.
It was a simple matter. Humans had to go. Nature wanted people gone, so that’s what it made happen. She never imagined the horror that was to pass. How can a person imagine people would die and reanimate like some shitty horror flick?
She had a family. A husband. A son. The whole American dream. A house, a two car garage, and two cars to park.
“PS4 mom! Fuck! Don’t you know?”
“Make due.”
“With a PS3? Really? Dad! Mom is trying to force me to live like a stone age peasant! Do something!”
She was back at her house. Soft crème carpet under her feet. Mahogany trim on the walls. A large brick fire place with a large picture of her family, her included, hanging above the hearth. She wore her silk dress to the photo shoot. Mark said she over did it. But he would. He never took off his Oxford sweater or any one of his thirty or more Polos.
In walked Mark, his Oxford sweater clinging to his pudgy belly.
“Your son has lost his senses, Mark.”
He chuckled at her and then spoke, “You just don’t know what these kids need hun.”
“Oh?” Her hands were on her hips, trying to act serious.
“The boy is simply trying to keep up with the social trends.”
Her husband was the head of the Sociology department. How she ever fell in love with a sociologist she was not quite sure. She met him her senior year. He had worn an Oxford sweater, even though the temperature was around 75.
She was standing by the vending machine, staring at the candy hooked in the metal coils. He’d walked up and started babbling about how food choices are influenced by socialization.
She'd always hated sociology, such a mind numbingly waste of brain energy. But, that day, Mark’s idiotic naive intellectual fat face, clean shaven and smelling of expensive aftershave, and those cobalt blue eye…
“Yeah mom! I need to keep up with the social trends. Don’t you want me to grow up and be a fine member of society? I can’t do that without a PS4!”
“Oh Jesus Mary of Lucifer! Take him to the store, Mark!”
She wasn’t much of a mother though. By default, scholars are almost always shitty parents who raise snot nosed brats. Her son, a thirteen-year-old with an addiction to video games and Red Bull was a fine example.
She just didn’t have the time to put into proper discipline, so the boy did what he wanted and she always caved and Mark seemed to get a great deal of joy in giving his son anything he ever wanted. Nurture and love, that’s what a boy needs, said Mark. A proper socialization.
The contradiction never seemed to bother Mark. The fact that his son had zero real friends never made him worry at all. Postmodernist sociology is what he called his specialty. He believed that in the new age of consumerism, digital communication, and global connection, the traditional definition of friendship was inadequate.
His soft voice explained, “You have to understand the concept of hyperreality, which creates the simulation of reality for modern day kids and many adults. Playing video games, watching movies, and so forth creates simulations that are more real to them than what you may consider to be true biological reality. For example, while kids are fighting the perceived enemies in their video games, it creates in them a feeling of power and control, of being the hero. Not that I would expect a biologist to care too much about sociology.”
He was right; she didn’t care; but being around Mark made her feel safe. Strange as he was, he made her feel so comfortable. He never got angry. Never screamed.
She always wanted to see him blow up, just once, but not a fat chance in hell. He yodeled though. Very loudly. It made her love him even more. That fat belly and those chubby cheeks, red and burning with yodeling passion.
And his cheeks were red that day, the day she watched him smile for the last time.
3
A week before she'd watched a documentary, well, if you want to call it that—on the History Channel. Some crap about the Rapture. People disappearing, cars crashing, planes falling from the sky, and all the nonbelievers stuck on earth while the Christians sat happy go lucky with Jesus.
She had a long day that day. Finals. A stack of papers still ungraded sitting beside her half glass of raspberry wine. She flipped through the channels. She finally landed on the satellite radio channel for alternative music. A rare pleasure. She allowed herself to lose all touch with reality while the music glared.
She listened to the tunes of The Offspring’s “The Kids Aren’t Alright.”
Then she remembered growing up off highway 9 in Upstate SC by a shallow and muddy creek, filled with its dangerous water Moccasins. She remembered her daddy’s whiskey breath. He’d tied a long rope to a tall tree that hung over the creek. To that he’d tied an old tire. And it was on that tire that the Creek Kids (that’s how she saw them at least) would swing back and forth, and many times, let go and crash into the water, causing red clay mud to rise up. It was by that creek that she'd gotten her first kiss.
Barry Chance was his name. A blue eyed boy rebel that she followed everywhere. His long blonde rat tail ran down his tan smooth skin.
“Mary Jane! Catch!” The baseball cracked against her skull. She didn’t get mad at him though, even though he knew she didn’t play ball and didn’t know how to catch. His daddy beat him black and blue for putting that lump on her head. She didn’t see him much after that; but she never forgot his screams while his daddy whipped him with a switch from a briar patch.
Soon after her daddy got a new job and she left the Upstate and moved down to Horry County. That’s where she went to middle school, high school, and eventually college.
Damn good days.
She remembers watching the news with her father after getting home during her senior year, the class of 2001. The country was up in arms, ready to kill everyone and everything that looked different. “Nothing but bad news. Nothing but bad people daddy. Least that’s how it seems.”
“Focus in on the seems part, kid.” She always liked when he called her kid. It wasn’t disrespectful, but meant with enduring love. The love between a father and a daughter. “For every bad man, there are at least three good men. But, the news aint never gonna talk about good stuff.”
“If it leads, it bleeds. We learned that in communications class.” She said.
On the T.V. a man in a blue suit and white hair screamed and pointed at the camera. He warned the “demonic terrorists” that their days were numbered. He said the war would be fast and precise. He spoke of smart bombs and special forces.
Her dad cut off the T.V. and looked at her. “Don’t let this old world get you down. Trust me. Life is gonna go well for you. You’re one of the good guys. And believe it or not, us good guys out number the bad guys.”
As she lay half-conscious on the floor (right about then Rusty Ray was learning about anal adventures of the worst kind), the tears came as she remembered her dad.
Where was he now? A dead man roaming the highways looking for living flesh to eat? And where were all the good guys now? Dead. Gone and dead. Walking around dead. All the good people are dead. And she was never one of the good people, because all the good people died early on. They died trying to help other people. She stayed hidden in those early days. She didn’t help anyone. She looked out for herself.
She didn't look for her husband. She didn’t look for her son. She knew they were dead. She knew she couldn’t save them.
So She saved herself. And that made her a bad guy. A rat that hides and comes out when everyone is dead or gone. What did she get for it? This bottle of booze? This half rotten city-state? The filthy inhabitants? The sex between her and Duras?
But what about Duras? Did she really hate him? She loves him. He was all there was now. She'd loved her husband to. She'd loved her son to. But she couldn’t save them.
“I could not! I swear it! I couldn’t save you!” She screamed and fell to the carpeted floor, cradled in a fetal position, and sobbed.
4
She didn't know how long she laid there. But the tears slowly dried up. Better memories came through. She was back with her father, out deep in the woods. A long weekend of hunting was almost over. Now they did what they always did, and wasted what was left of their ammo on his beer cans. He’d throw them in the air, and she'd show him her skill with well-placed shots. The sound of the blast, followed by the echo through the woods always excited her and made her feel powerful. Her father brought her up watching Lethal Weapon, Predator, and she even liked the Crow. But she especially loved Aliens. The heroics of the “not so beautiful” (as her father put it), Sigourney Weaver emboldened the feministic side of her brain and made her want to always be just as fast, smart, and good at killing as any man.
“ROTC? Really? Sounds great kid!”
It was freshmen year in at Socastee High School. “Junior ROTC, but yeah dad, like a modern day Spartan Hoplite.” The year before, she'd become engrossed in ancient Greece, especially the Spartans. A proud warrior culture and dominators of Greece for centuries. And, although her dad still struggled with memories and regrets about his days wearing the uniform and marching deep in dangerous jungles where he watched friends die and saw the bodies of dead kids he knew his bullets had killed—he never bad mouthed the military or the government and always supported her positive warrior nature; a girl growing up in South Carolina had to have a little kick to her step, not to mention be able to handle the kick from a Colt revolver, double gauge shot gun, and any other weapon these local rednecks wanted to throw her way.
And it was a redneck that she fell in love with in early fall of her freshmen year in high school. Barley Thomas, a thick neck dumbass that had the disgusting habit of chewing tobacco. Why in god’s name she loved him never really made much sense.
It didn’t last though.
He was driving her home. She slurped on a chocolate shake from Dairy Queen that he just purchased her with the money he made cutting lawns on Saturdays and Sundays.
“Listen Barley. It’s over.”
His neck pulsed and his eyes enraged. He slammed on the accelerator. His mildly retarded eyes jiggled in the moon light. Rain fell outside and slapped hard against the windshield of his rusted red Chevy blazer. An ancient piece of shit vehicle if there ever was one, and in a moment she was going to find how shitty the brakes were.
He rounded a curb at blazing speeds, all while cursing up a storm. Nothing but dark trees dashed by on either side. She'd never seen him angry before, but he’d told her about his father, who he claimed had the temper of a wild alley cat mixed with a caged dog that hadn’t been fed for a week.
He rounded the curb, and headed down a long patch of road that didn’t have any light on it. Trees arched over the road creating a dark green canopy.
White lighting crackled in the sky and dashed Barley’s face with hot light. His knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel and a large vein pulsed on the side of his neck, “You ain’t gonna leave me! No way! No how! Not today! Not tomorrow! Nooooooo!”
She said nothing. She watched his shadowy face barking like a devil hound; she continued slurping on her chocolate shake. Then she felt the cup’s contents splash cold onto her face. She closed her eyes and tried to calm myself. She breathed deeply.
Only a moment in time, only a moment in time.
“Yeeehawww! Bitch you are mine!”
She stared daringly up at him. His eyes burned with madness and tears. Snot and tobacco juice spurted from his mouth and nose.
Another streak of lighting lit up the road and a herd of deer darted across the dark asphalt; there pretty white tails high in the air. What happened next is what she thought death would be like— at least what she thought it was like back then—a darky misty void where the slight echo of the living is faint but hearable. Cause after waking up and seeing the paramedics, she knew she was alive, but she also knew a few moments earlier she existed only in a dark world full of strange and soft voices; her world had been turned black. The lights had gone out and she didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.
When she gained her senses, she stared around and sa
w Barley being lifted on a stretcher, well, she didn’t see him exactly, because his was DOA and covered up with a white sheet. She'd broken his heart and he died for it. The tragedy was that she didn’t really care. The guy was sounding more like a crazed animal that needed to be put down. So, while laying around the hospital with a broken arm, three bruised ribs, and a hell of a concussion, all while drugged on pain killers—she concluded Barley’s untimely death wasn’t so untimely after all; indeed, may have been a blessing, both for her and the pathetic redneck woman he would have eventually married, beaten, and impregnated. This would continue the violent Thomas lineage started by his granddad, Ted Thomas. Barley had spoken with great pride while telling her about how his granddaddy “strung up enough niggers to keep this town safe and pretty.”
Years later, as spit fire freshmen in college, she fell in, at least for a short time, with a crowd of hippy types; the people who are not really hippies, have no idea what it even means to be a sixty’s soul child, but none the less wear tie-dyed shirts, flowers in their hair, and smoke a shit ton of weed. It was with this group that she traveled to a little festival called Sun Shine in the Pines, which isn’t anything but a swelling of more soul child wanna bes crowded in the trees of the hick county of Marlboro, SC.
This trip wouldn’t have been much of anything but a sad distraction of drugged up yahoos dancing around like colorful arrhythmic zombies, had it not been for the loss of her, once whether important, virginity. It all happened in a fast bang; Tyler Bledsoe was in and out faster than sweat could drop off her face.
His breath smelled like burnt weed pipe resin and he stank from a least two days without a shower. He climbed off of her, and fell over onto his side of the tent, reached and grabbed a glass jar, popped the top, removed a pre-rolled joint, took a red Bic lighter from his left pocket, struck it, and lit the joint.
5
Her baby sister. She was just a kid. Hell, they were both just kids back then. Her sister wore a black cap and gown. Mary was then a senior at College of Charleston, go Cougars. Her sis just graduated Socastee High and was a spitting image of a Greek goddess. Her dark brunette locks curled up and flowed out from under her cap. She’d just stepped off the stage and Mary embraced her tightly, “Momma would be so proud.” Mary said.
Her momma had died when Mary was in eighth grade. Her lungs had turned black with cancer from decades of relentless chain smoking. Those last few months of her life were unbearable to watch. Vomiting, hair loss, and her father’s grim and pain covered face, with lines that said I’d take the Vietcong jungles over this any day.
Her momma’s face had sunk in so far in those last days. Just a pale and patsy whisper of a woman. “Death ain’t nothing but a thing. Just something we all I have to face.” Momma said while lying flat on her back on the hospital bed. The room smelled of cleaning liquids and her daddy sat in a corner chair staring out the large window, down at the roof of another hospital wing. Momma held Mary's hand with her left and Sarah’s with her right. They stood on either side of the bed. “Your daddy’s seen plenty of death. Aint that right baby?”
Her daddy just kept staring. He didn’t say a word. That was his way when he was in a lot of pain. Just plain silent. Mary always wondered what went through his mind in those moments. He never spoke about the war, at least not in detail. Nothing about the loss of friends or holding the entrails of his good buddies. But she knew he saw his fair share of hell. Mary could see it in his eyes, and while momma laid there dying, his eyes stared out like he was watching the war happen right there in front of him. “Your daddy has his ways. Don’t mind him. He will mourn how he wants.”
“Momma.” Sarah said with tears dripping. Mary watched her sister’s tears drip like rain droplets; then her own started to fall.
“Heaven aint so far away baby. Don’t cry for me. Things can only get better from here. Always remember, good people don’t die, they resurrect.” Momma said. She was a religious woman, raised by a stout, tall, and red headed fire breathing backwoods southern Baptist. He’d died of cancer to, the same kind. The Lord seemed proud to take his most faithful while leaving the skeptics behind to use their death’s as evidence of His nonexistence. But, looking down at Momma’s dying face, all Mary could think of was a poem she once read by some unknown, wanna be poet:
Old man sleeps, bones ancient, mind tired, skin splotched
Old man weeps, lost years, dead wife, broken heart, forgotten dreams blotched
Old man falls, unsteady, unready, broken bones, ripped skin blood falls
Old man dies, weak heart, people gather, people cry, six feet down old man decays
Momma wasn’t an old man, but that poem floated in Mary's mind while Momma breathed her final breathes. Momma's dreams died that day, blotched out of existence, now just a dead wife and mother. Her years lost and wasted, only religious nonsense and two daughters to show for it. A few days later people gathered, people cried, and Momma drifted down six feet under and joined the ancient bones that had since melted away, back into the earth as ashy decay.
Death is that way though, always ready to take you away, at any moment, on any day. Creeping around the corner, just waiting with an incurable cancer, a drunk driver, a busy day with a hot cup of coffee while crossing the street and a bus driver that didn’t get enough sleep, oh yes, death is always waiting; it’s a plague that kills people over and allows them to rise back up, hungrier than ever for the thoughts of others, the ideas, the philosophies stored inside the mind, encapsulated in the brain. That’s what they want, they want a chance to think again. That’s why they crave the brain. They want the chance to dream again, an insatiable hunger for knowledge, that’s all the undead bastards want, a chance to live again. The world grew addicted to pop culture, TVs, smart phones that made people dumb and complacent and caused humanity to take for granted all the wonders of the modern age, so nature decided to put everyone all on their ass and took it all away; figuring since no one wanted to use their reasoning powers anymore, then no one wanted to think, dream, and create, so nature took it all away, humanity’s death; Mother Nature’s final gift to the bipedal hominids.
6
Sarah was still in grade school back when Momma died, but years later, staring at her sister in her cap and gown, and those locks of dark brunette chocolate; Mary could see momma, or at least what Momma should have been had she not smoked herself to death. Mary and her sis were close as any sister could be. And on that fateful day, when humanity’s death came and took the old world down to hades, Mary and Sarah had spent the prior week together. They didn’t go out that day. They'd stayed home where Netflix helped try and heal wounds of a recent breakup.
“Who needs a man?” Sarah said as she sipped her red wine from a coffee mug. “All I need is my sister and this TV, and may be that cute nephew of mine.”
“You can have him, but I warn you, he’s spoiled to the bones.” Mary said.
“Not too worry, as long as QVC keeps their stretch pay option, I can buy him all the video game consoles his heart desires. And really, sis, a PS3? Come now…” She sipped her wine, and then BAM!...
…The front door shook hard. Mary jumped up in a start. “Somebody wants in, must be that bastard Cole, looking for me.” Sarah said.
“God… you didn’t drag a stalker to my home did you?” The banging turned to soft moaning and then scrapping on the wood. Mary put a hand on her sister’s shoulder, “No, you stay right here. I’ll get rid of him.” Mary didn’t like overbearing men, and she especially didn’t appreciate some crazy asshole fucking up her door. A few feet in front of the door is a closet where all the jackets are hung, along with a baseball bat she always kept, just in case; this time the just in case turned out to be a lot uglier than she'd ever thought possible.
The eye she saw when she looked out of the peep hole was like staring into white hot fire. The man, the thing, jerked back a few feet from the door, then slammed himself into the hard wood with a clumsy thud. The face was pale
with a hint of green and those eyes… they burned like a white sun. His tongue hung out of his mouth, black and red. She didn’t recognize him. She never understood what caused him to stumble on her doorstep. And, at that time, she didn’t know that the Fever was spreading rapidly all over the world.
“Tell him I don’t want to see him and we’ll call the cops if he doesn’t leave!” Sarah shouted from the living room.
Mary didn’t say a word. She just stared at those eyes. Her heart rate was starting to climb. Then a loud BANG! from a gunshot caused her to jump. It came from somewhere down the block.
She lived in a small neighborhood close to campus, but far away enough so that she didn’t have to worry about frat houses or house parties. Most of her neighbors were old and retired. It’s what she loved about that area, the peace and quiet. The well-manicured lawns. The jingle of wind chimes. The little old ladies wearing neon pink wind pants walking little dogs.
Nature decided to end all that and the gun shot caught the dead man’s attention and he jerked his way off her steps, onto the lawn, and out of sight.
The rest of the day, her and Sarah watched the news; and kept an eye on the doors and windows. She couldn’t get her husband or her son’s cell phones. Just ringing.
But her dad called. He said he was on his way to her. He said the dead walked. He said to lock and load and kill anything that didn’t look normal.
She never saw her father, husband, or son again.
7
Now, laying passed out from alcohol and rage, right dab in the middle of the City of God, Mary heard a mighty explosion; her town house shook. Gun fire erupted from somewhere outside. Shrieks of fear cried out. She looked out of the window. A loud blast broke the window and sent her flying backwards. She crashed hard against the wall. Her face and hands bled. A large shard of glass cut into her leg. She looked down. It was in deep. She stumbled to her feet, holding the wall for support. She worked her way out into the hallway and then fell down the stairs. People were rushing by the exit doors of the apartment building. She crawled to the door way and peered out broken panes of glass. Soldiers. She saw soldiers. Camouflaged men marching through the streets killing anyone they saw.
(lock and load)
She ignored the pain in her leg and ran over to the closet. She opened the door and removed an AK-47. She moved back to the only unbroken window, squatted, moved the dark blue curtain over just a bit and peered out. The screams were getting wilder and the gun shots continued to ring out. People were being murdered in the streets. Kids, women, men, it didn’t matter.
The only thing worse than the dead are the living, especially when they wear uniforms. Uniforms give men a sense of authority and the conviction that all their deeds are justified, regardless of how deplorable and gruesome. That’s something her daddy told her years ago. He was drunk that night and gave her a rare story about the war. Tears ran down his eyes, “We shot up an entire village. Kids, old people, you name it. We thought it was all justified. We had on uniforms, didn’t we? That’s all a man needs to forget all decency, a fucking uniform.”
Back when she'd joined ROTC, she didn’t believe any of that. But, now, looking out and seeing the murder in the streets, she knew her daddy was right. All a man needed was a uniform.
(my sister!)
The image of her Sarah’s dying body crossed her mind like a waking nightmare.
Mary Jane’s leg hurt like hell, but she had to get to her sister. She had to get past the uniforms and find Sarah.
She rushed out of the house and onto the streets. Gun shots were everywhere. Screams of dying children. The laughs of soldiers. More gun fire. She ran through the streets. Her heart raced faster than her feet could move.
A back alley ran along the entire length of the town houses; she disappeared into the dark alley. She stayed in the black shadows as soldiers rushed by. She could smell their hate. She could hear their joy of killing; she could see the spittle dripping from their mouths like rabid dogs; their eyes bulged and seemed to pulse with mad pleasure.
She moved through the darkness, her gun held in front of her; but now her hands shook. Tears ran down her face. Death was everywhere. Humans dying all around. Death owns this world. Humanity’s death so close to its final completion; the extinction of the human species was well in its final stage.
Another scream. A little girl stumbled into the darkness; Mary Jane froze, watching.
A dash of moon light highlighted the girl; she held her stomach as blood gushed out of her. She was screaming. “Mommy! Mommy! They shot my mommy!”
A solider, tall and lanky, moved into the alley behind her. His pistol raised, his teeth shining yellow and rotten in the moon light. A hot flash exited the barrel and tore the little girl’s skull open. Mary Jane put a hand over her mouth and puked into her palm as he took out his member and drenched the little girl in yellow. He zipped up and left the girl lying dead, and took his killing elsewhere.
Mary ran past the little dead girl and nearly slipped in a slathering of her gray brain matter. She didn’t look down. She kept moving forward.
My sister. Please god. Don’t let this happen to my sister.
8
Guns crackled and blasted. Screams kept screaming. Mary kept moving in the shadows. In the distance, she saw her sister’s town home. She saw her window. She saw shadows inside. She heard more screams, like someone was being ripped and torn apart from the inside out. The echoes of death raged in every direction. No end in sight. No hope for life. No savior coming. No late night infomercials. No fun days at the mall.
“The kids all dead, mom. Didn’t you hear? The kids are all dead.” She spoke out loud. She tasted the vomit. The bile was dried on her hands. She heard a raucous of laughter then a woman pleading. “Don’t kill my baby! Don’t kill my sweet baby!” Then a gun shot, then the sobbing mother’s cry of pain.
“Yeah mom! The kids are all dead! Didn’t you hear?” Mary spoke to herself. She stopped for a moment and realized her pants were wet. She hadn’t peed herself since she was four. But now she was drenched. This is all that’s left, a pee stained world, full a pea brains with guns and a healthy appetite for torture. That’s all that can survive now. Just darkness. Just pure evil. No good people left. The goods one left will die out or turn bad soon enough.
She suddenly felt bitterly cold, like she was tossed into an ice cold January. All around she heard them at once. Dead voices. All speaking in union. It was not the screams of the living, but cold whispers that seemed to scream in her ear. Too many. Too fucking many. She shook with fright and chill.
She knew the voices. She knew them well. It was the people dying out there on the street. All the people she'd helped in the past year screaming.
“I can’t help you! I can’t help anyone!” She screamed.
The voices disappeared until she heard only one, and like a frozen vice grip, something grabbed her arm and held her still and screamed at her; she felt the cold rush of its voice: soon, soon you will help!
And then all around her the world changed, and she saw the lives of people that used to walk and talk in this town. Little kids, mothers holding babies, and boys on skate boards. Men in business suits marched by, hustling to whatever meeting they needed to get to. Mary saw them, but it wasn’t really them. It was just an echo of what used to be—just a faint echo of their former lives. Their faces weren’t right, their bodies whisper thin, hollow, and transparent; they roamed in a freezing memory, a flash back of lost lives—and they swirled around her faster and faster, rushing past like shooting stars, and then…
…it was over.
The hot and smothering July night returned. Above her she saw the stars twinkling. She didn’t know how long she'd been standing there, but the gun shots had slowed. The death was nearing completion. She was once again staring down a dark and shadowy back alley and now she needed to get to her sister.
She ran as fast as I could.
9
She charged into her sister’s townhouse. The wood floor creaked under the weight of her boots; the air smelled of blood; a clock ticked, ticked, ticked time away on the wall. Her sister’s body was laying in the middle of the floor. Her clothes were torn off, her bare skin visible via a bar of moon light shining in through a double pane window. Sarah laid face down in a pool of her own blood. Her panties were still on, but half torn and pulled to the side.
Mary dropped to her knees as tears pooled in her eyes. She dropped her gun and crawled on all fours till she reached her sister's dead body. The body felt warm. After a tearful grunt she forced her over and saw that her throat was cut open, from ear to hear, like a sick and disturbing smiley face. Her skull had been stabbed with a large knife.
She held her as best she could. She was dead. She was the final kind of dead.
Always remember, good people don’t die, they resurrect.
Just then, a loud crack came from behind her—
She tried to turn around—
Blackness.