Steve raised the knife slightly and John swung, pandemonium breaking loose again in an instant. As Emma stepped in Steve ducked below the hit, swiping awkwardly with the knife and scoring a low graze across John’s stomach.
Emma threw out a rabbit punch, looking to score any hit as even a relatively small punch could prove out to be a fatally distracting hit if it created enough confusion for John to follow up with one of his massive hits with the baseball bat.
She was quite surprised when Steve raised his seemingly inoperable right arm to block, only grimacing slightly at the impact.
John was still way out of alignment from his hard swing, Emma cursing his impetuous need to connect with everything he had. Steve meanwhile was in perfect position to put his knife directly in John’s kidney. Throwing her left arm out, she just deflected it sufficiently to send it skidding past his side.
Steve kicked out to the side - a largely ineffective kick that still caught John off balance and sent him stumbling into some rubble where he lost the grip on his bat. The wood hit the obstruction and half bounced half rolled over the top and started to roll down the other side.
Her attention split, Emma almost too late saw Steve sweep the knife down across her face, just sidestepping and ducking enough at the last minute to get beside it rather than in the path.
To the side she saw John jump forward onto the rubble and gain the end of the handle, then in horror saw the man they had stepped on to jump the table rise up and grab both his arms. His face already looked like it was swelling, a big ugly welt on his cheek oozing blood and forcing his left eye closed but he was still big - if lanky - and John looked small and in a dangerous position.
Focusing again on her own battle, Emma stepped close and pushed while Steve was somewhat off balance, using her additional weight and low center of gravity to throw him backwards – though to his credit he stumbled for step after step on his heels but did not fall. Moving in she still watched John from the corner of her eye, saw him break the hold and bring the baseball bat up in a sharp motion that saw the thug’s head snap back hard before he fell backwards, straight as a tree.
Stepping too close, Emma instantly regretted the decision. Steve never stayed incapacitated for long and now was no different. As soon as he managed to get a foot properly placed to reverse his backwards momentum he instantly pushed off and hopped back towards her, knife leading the way. With a noise that sounded like “yipe!” Emma put up her left arm and watched in horror as the knife sliced deeply through her forearm, skidding off the bone and over to her right hand side.
Something must have been severed because she instantly lost the ability to flex her fingers. As she was now leaning heavily left forwards, she bought her arm back across in a boneless backhand across Steve’s face, stunning him. The follow-through turned her now wildly to her left where she was once again face to face with John – presently in the middle of another of his powerful swings, this one backhanded.
It might have connected to an unaware Steve if Emma hadn’t with perfectly terrible timing turned his attention back that way in time to see it. Steve stepped out at the last minute and watched smugly as John again blew the follow through, glancingly scoring a hit on Emma’s left shoulder (that arm was getting no love today) and sending her into a half turn spin. She stumbled forward a step, her hand flat against a table that miraculously was still on all four feet though covered with masonry. The extra step had been a calculated move, putting distance between herself and Steve in case he saw fit to make an opportune hit while she was distracted. Turning back, Emma saw she was right in the guess. Steve was once again within range and about to shank her kidney.
With a quick motion facilitated by her turn, Emma released a handful of grit and dust from her right hand that she had scraped from the top of the table directly into Steve’s eyes and was rewarded with a yell as she scored a direct hit.
A second later she almost got stabbed in the neck with a wild swing as Steve frantically stabbed and waved the knife with his left hand, aiming for where she had been as he whipped his right sleeve and then fingers over his eyes, trying to remove the blink inducing blockage.
John took the opportunity to step in from the side and level another of his crazy hard swings, right into Steve’s back. Steve made a noise, half squawk half expelled air from his lungs and went down - rolling on the ground as he lacked air or sight to get up.
The thumping in Emma’s ears was palpable, probably a side effect of the blood pumping out of her left arm - it was practically all she could hear. John stalked over the fallen foe - swinging to get a shot to the head but instead catching a variety of protective limbs.
Finally he kicked the rolling Steve in the side and the surprise opened him up. John bought the bat down in a sharp motion, quicker than a lot of the haymaker swings he had been making so far but nonetheless effective. Steve’s head made a sharp cracking noise and he was finally, mercifully, still.
The thumping noise in her blood was now penetrating her bones, Emma saw John say something but couldn’t make it out. Looking up from the still figure of Steve, Emma was treated to a perfect silhouette of a helicopter through the window over John’s shoulder, against the reddening dusk sky.
Still half deafened from her earlier head trauma everything had seemed muffled and booming, so her racing heart had been the natural candidate for the thumping in her ears – at this moment Emma would have sworn its blades matched her own heartbeat perfectly.
John looked up at her, the very first inclination of danger starting to pass across her face. He didn’t even have time to react though as a rattling blast sounded and John staggered forward, a bullet hole straight through his head.
Emma didn’t have time to contemplate – a hail of bullets tore through the walls sounding like hard rain against a tin roof. Emma took a round to the right of her chest and twisted through the air as she went down, immeasurable pain deep in her right boob and lung.
Merciful blackness eluded her. Somewhere the animal in her brain would not allow her to lapse into unconsciousness again despite everything in her screaming in agony. Crawling forward, each arm-hold of dirt, concrete and tile felt like it should be her last as her chest throbbed in pain. Shock must have settled quickly in though because despite having every reason to stop she kept in pulling forward pace by pace as bullets ripped above her. A creak to the right and an already strained load bearing pillar collapsed, taking a large section of the roof with it, the weight of the debris slammed into the floor and kept going, revealing a basement. For a second, Emma contemplated trying to fall into it but knew such a move would only serve as sealing her into her tomb.
This whole place was coming down and if she wanted to live her it would be better if it wasn’t onto her.
Reaching out again she looked up, searching for any hope in the situation and found it. One of the walls had fallen outwards perforated as it was by bullets, poor maintenance and time. The roof was already sagging down to fill the hole but for the moment there was a gap. Summoning everything she had left and more, Emma made for the gap among creaking shifting building. An explosion wracked the building and the floor shifted alarmingly beneath her – her feet were left feeling like they were lower than her head. Risking a glance over her shoulder, Emma saw the floor was indeed sinking towards a hole more or less in the middle of the room where the large chunk of roof had pierced it.
Half dragging herself half crawling in her haste, Emma made the last five feet to the gap in the wall and flung herself through it – only to be reminded that the building sat high, raised about two feet from the ground. The blessing and the curse was the wall that fell out had not disintegrated completely upon impact so at least instead of falling onto loose sharp rubble she hit with a crunch of her wrists onto a more or less solid surface.
Rolling away into the long grass, Emma knew she could not afford to stay in the vicinity. The soldiers had already lost
numbers to the previous infestation Steve had so cleverly started and they were taking no chances. Bullets continued to ricochet behind her into the old hospital, the occasional one making it all the way through and breaking into freedom again somewhere above her head.
Looking to the cliff in front of her, Emma low crawled as the building behind her tore apart. Another explosion rocked the structure not twenty seconds later and with an almighty crunch the whole thing split in two, sinking in the middle. A pattering noise could be heard as bricks and tile broke off deep inside and fell into the blackness of the basement.
At last the noise of gunfire stopped, Emma thought she could hear the chatter of radio but was not entirely sure with her current hearing. Odds were they had soldiers on the ground circling the building, inspecting. Making sure nothing and no-one survived.
Still about twenty feet out, Emma mustered strength for a burst of speed while crawling through the long brush. Reaching the edge, she looked behind and saw the piercing beams of flashlights waving as people surrounded the structure in the darkening light. Red had given way to inky blues but sooner or later if she was unlucky they would see the mural of blood she had painted on the wall she fell upon and follow it and bent grass out to her. Reaching the edge of the cliff, she looked down. Fortunately the drop wasn’t far but it was jagged, about 10 feet of rock at a shallow angle out into water and weeds.
Lowering herself over the edge, Emma prepared to climb down but lacking the ability to grip with her left hand she just hung over the edge for ten seconds trying to get a hold with her wrist and palm. Her right wrist crunched painfully as she held on, the impact with the wall had broken a couple of bones in her wrist and hand.
As she scrabbled with the left a helicopter passed overhead and in surprise she let go. As she fell/slid down the short slope a sharp rock was kind enough to open a gash from the outside of her right knee to her hip. Hitting a chunk of cliff that – in passing – bore an uncanny resemblance to Elvis Presley, Emma bounced one last time and finally smashed down into the water.
Passing out from the shock of cold Emma drifted hopelessly, sinking slowly into the ocean water - clouds of red surrounding her haphazardly as blood puffed serenely from her recent leg wound. Some last vestige of her subconscious noted it and idly started word games.
Blood Pool at night, Zombie Delight
Clouds of Blood while Mourning, Zombie’s Warning.
Needs work her brain decided reluctantly and moved on to other pastures.
John was gone. Granted he had been a somewhat unwilling ally at times but he was the only one she could trust to share any Zombie related problems with. A girl needs someone to ask about period advice she thought to herself Is it so crazy that I need a fellow Zombie to discuss best brain biting tips with?
As she drifted gently in the ocean the image of the bullet splattering John’s forehead haunted her. He had seemed invulnerable somehow - thinking of him dying by brain splatter like so many of her victims just seemed wrong somehow.
Did she really want to wake up to a world where she was completely alone again?
In the end, the decision was made for her. In the past month Emma had found an indomitable spirit that would make her mother proud, if such a thing were possible. It kept dragging her along no matter how much she would want to sleep. It had pushed her through all the late night studying and right now - when her sister would probably have given up and died - it, yet again, dragged her forward.
Consciousness came with a gush of water into her lungs. She surfaced the lapping waves coughing and thrashing, born again in a world where military helicopter chopped buildings apart with hails of bullets and everyone who knew her secret was dead. Looking the 10 feet over from where she had drifted she received the worst news yet.
The rock she had bounced off into the sea wasn’t even shaped like Elvis.
Epilogue
Channel 7 WHDH Urgent News Update
We have word from Amy Bishop of the National Guard that confirmed cases of EV are down over the last four hour period. According to the National Guard, reinforcements were successfully deployed to key barricades during the night, keeping most zones of Boston completely free of infection.
In the last hour WHDH has received unconfirmed reports of EV outside city limits. When asked for comment, Amy Bishop replied they will continue to stridently look into any reports of such cases. As of yet, she says they have yet to confirm a single case outside Boston.
Even so, the number of casualties ranks as one of the largest disasters to ever happen on U.S. soil, with early estimates of dead numbering somewhere between 10 to 30 thousand people. Given the damage to cell towers during the last couple of nights, it might be days before a true account of fatalities can be calculated.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of anyone missing during this time of crisis – WHDH pledges to assist in any way it can families searching for loved ones.
Viral experts have already gone on the record stating that given the pathology of this new virus it is unlikely we have heard the last of Emma’s Virus. If you suspect anyone you know of contracting the virus, contact authorities as soon as possible. For WHDH this is Mariana Blanco, signing out.
Dragging her wet, dirty and bloody self into a taxi not far from the docks, Emma was struck by a sense of wrongness. She had come full circle back to the night John bit her.
Well maybe not quite full circle she reflected, feeling a chill breeze against her cheek. When a driver tried to shoo her muddy mess past his taxi she had put a fist through his window.
The ride was colder but the shocks were much better so she considered the whole thing a net win.
Reaching her place – not the hotel but her actual apartment - Emma took a small amount of pity on the cabby and paid him an extra hundred dollars to replace the window.
Limping slightly from the still healing tear down her leg, Emma reached the door to the building and savored the moment. She had nothing left to fear from Steve, so she didn’t have to go back to the shitty motel she had been living out of since he found her id.
Nodding to a fellow resident exiting the building – and receiving a stare normally reserved for homeless people in return – Emma remembered how she looked right now and cut short the internal dialogue.
Heading up the elevator, Emma got to her room and tried her key in the forced door, luckily it still managed to open the stressed lock, albeit with a little wriggling. As she pushed the door wide, the scene in the room that was revealed was one of utter chaos.
The wall opposite was emblazoned with the catchy slogan “Die Bitch!” spray painted with sloppy writing in fuzzy red three feet high letters.
“Fuck you Steve,” Emma said quietly, feeling the hatred behind every word as she closed the door.
Entering the living room that now reeked of week old urine, Emma saw not an inch of the floor was free from wreckage, her clothing had been cut and ripped to tatters and now covered everything in festive multicolored confetti. The crowning piece was a Teddy Bear she had loved since she was five. It was sitting three feet into the room, a sliced cup from one of her bras now making a rough mop of black hair. Both eyes were torn out and red marker slapped over the little black mouth line - like he had a haphazard lipstick application.
“If I could kill your fucking ass a second time I would!” Emma yelled to no-one in particular.
Picking her way through glass, wood and cloth to the bedroom Emma wasn’t surprised to see her bed had slashes everywhere; foam was all over the living room.
Her closet had nothing left in it, anything that wasn’t torn to pieces was lying in a pile on the floor of the bedroom – and was the source of the piss smell Emma had detected upon entering her home.
Turning away from the awful smell, Emma spied her old gym bag more or less untouched. Opening it she found a pair of sweats and a t-shirt that had not been washed after her last workout ??
? for a moment she wondered if the sweat smell was worse than the piss on her other clothing but sighing she dug them out.
Heading to the shower, Emma didn’t even bother to get undressed before she got into the claw footed tub and pulled the curtain. Starting the flow of hot water - a balm for her cold, damp flesh, Emma started shedding clothes and dropped them outside the tub. The blood on them was incredibly damning should it ever be examined so tomorrow they would be destroyed and dumped. Tonight, however, a pile would do.
When she at last got to her jeans, Emma reached into the pockets. Drawing out fistfuls of damp slightly red tinged cash, Emma let the water wash over it as she vaguely counted it.
It’s blood money she thought to herself. The pragmatist she had been forced to become added but luckily it spends the same.
All told she dropped over twenty thousand wet dollars out of the shower, taken from the bag of money recovered on the streets of Boston. It was followed by her bloody, torn jeans.
Ten minutes or so later, Emma got out of the shower and dripped on the floor – there were no towels left in the apartment. A red flashing light caught her eye, it belonged to her phone, sitting jauntily on her nightstand – clearly visible through the open door of her bathroom. It injected an air of normalcy into her ruined apartment, sitting exactly as it would have a couple of weeks ago before any of this started.
Limping back into her bedroom - the last cut she received was still especially painful – Emma hit the button.
“Two messages, First message, Friday, 6th, November, 10:37, AM,” the nice little robot lady proclaimed. It took some very active thought for Emma to pin down today as Saturday. Thank god it’s the weekend thought Emma sardonically this week has seemed to go on for – like - ever.
“Hey Emma,” Dan’s voice greeted her “It’s Dan,” the disembodied voice confirmed.
Emma did some quick calculation, this would be … a little over two hours after the main outbreak yesterday.
“I feel pretty stupid, actually,” Dan continued after a brief pause “left the safety of the campus to go and get my dog. I know, pretty dumb but all I could think about was him alone and whining in the apartment.”