Chapter Fourteen
Elizabeth Jones
Lizzie pushed the door closed and locked it from the inside of the house leaving her companions alone in the garage behind. The key was thick and strong, forged completely in iron, and hung from a solid ring like a jailors’ set.
She waited for the lock to click into place before turning away from the safety of the garage behind. She sighed and closed her eyes just for a second. She wished that she could understand Logan better.
He was old. Not ancient but he was still old. But he had the energy and the passion of a young man coupled with the wisdom of experience. She could only aspire to be like him. Calm but passionate. Violent but protective. She shook her head and forced her eyes open. She would be lucky to be able to aspire to be anything in this world.
She had slumped back onto the door to rest, still feeling a headache coming on; she rubbed her cold clammy palm over her oddly warm forehead. Maybe there would be a few painkillers in the kitchen or something.
The house was cold and dated. The former castle of a Catholic family. She jumped a little when she saw the bust of the Virgin Mary hanging on the papered wall to her left. She missed a breath and clasped her hand to her chest.
She should have gone for her gun. The eyes of the bust seemed to lock with hers. That was unsettling and incredibly off-putting. The pale white painted face poking out of the blanket of darkness. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The fire from the garage behind had left a flickering imprint on the iris of her eye and it took some time to fade.
Through the door she could hear a faint chuckle and she immediately shook her head in condecension. She wished she hadn’t though because the sway made her throbbing head worse
‘Glad you’re having a good time.’ She whispered to herself. To think though, it was a little odd that none of them had volunteered to escort her or go with her. But that was the treatment she felt she deserved.
She didn’t want to be carried. Not a burden to be worried about or cared for. She was a tough as nails city cop and had spent her career, short lived as it was, alone in some of the roughest parts of New York City. This should have been a walk in the park for her.
She hadn’t moved from the door yet. That white pale face and blue garment on the bust was oddly captivating. Hypnotic even. Eventually the darkness gave way to what little light there was and the innards of the house came slowly into view.
The walls were smooth and papered with light blue paper with pictures of flowers on it. The bottom half of the walls were paneled with wood and painted the same light shade of blue. The stairs followed the wall up to the left into another level of darkness.
The kitchen came slowly into focus at the opposite end of the hallway. The main entrance to the property was to her immediate right but it had, oddly, not been barred or barricaded with any furniture.
She couldn’t help but remember that silly fantasy of hers. She hoped beyond hope that it might have had a shred of truth in it. Maybe the family was far to the north nestled in a tent deep in the woods. Maybe they were safe.
She slowly pushed herself away from the comfort and false security of the door that led to the garage and made for the kitchen located directly down the hall. She found herself doing the same thing Logan did. Stroking the handle of her pistol nervously as she walked, pace by pace and step by step, forward into the unknown.
That headache was getting worse. A sickening though crossed her mind that was difficult to dismiss. What if she was getting the flu? She had to try very hard not to follow that thought and get drowned by it in a sudden glaring wave of fear and anxiety. A cold and intense shiver swam down through her body and deep into her spine. She shook her head to realize that her vision was starting to blur.
‘Oh shit…’ She sighed to herself and dropped the top half of her body, bent at the waist, so that her hands touched the carpet below. She hadn’t noticed through her boots. It was soaked with blood.
She started panting for breath and her heart beat raced erratically. She tried to reach for her radio but stumbled and fell to her knees. The blood in the carpet started soaking up through her tattered trousers. She wiped her hands frantically over the thick jacket and accidentally got old coagulated blood all over her gun and radio.
She could feel it right in the back of her throat. Fluid and saliva started gushing at the back of her tongue and she could feel pressure build up right at the bottom of her stomach. She couldn’t keep it down.
The thin, water like, malnourished sick spilled up through her throat and seeped into the carpet. One mouthful, then another, then once more until her eyes started watering uncontrollably. She clutched her stomach tight and couldn’t help but groan and pant out loud.
‘Come on!’ She shouted at herself and pulled up with everything she had onto one foot then dragged the other up to stand upright. She swayed under her own weight and her vision swam from left to right beneath a thick layer of salty sweet tears.
A figure slowly came into view and her heart sank deep. Though she could see in only black and white there was no mistaking the groan and shriek of a zombie. She could feel the scream build up inside of her, from the back of her throat and out through her mouth.
She had never screamed like that ever before. She started backing away, stumbling and fumbling under her own weight and sudden weakened state. Her boots slipped on the soaking wet carpet and she hit the floor hard. She could feel the shock vibrate up through her back and into her chest cavity.
The fall took her breath away and winded her into submission. Her blinks slowly became more and more drawn out. She was passing out! Shit! Am I turning? She had seen what happened to the victims of the flu. She had seen her work friends succumb to it in only minutes as it swept the horrifically unprepared city. She had seen people die in days. Some even faster.
Then when they started turning, they turned fast, some only minutes or hours after death. She was again overcome with the same overwhelming fear and burning panic as she scrambled backwards, tired and breathless, fighting against the slippery and messy blood-soaked carpet behind her.
Her gun. She had to reach it. She could feel the metal digging into her back though the sharp corners had been lubricated by black blood and her own stomach contents.
‘Lizzie!’ She was sure she could hear her own name, shouted again and again in Logan’s powerful and deep southern voice. ‘Lizzie! ‘But she couldn’t focus on it. She finally got a tenuous hold of her gun and pulled it from her trousers.
The figure ahead slowly lurched forwards with arms outstretched. It was still cast in darkness and she couldn’t make out any of its features. She tried so hard to raise that gun. But her arms were locked solid and no amount of effort could raise them.
She fired one shot. It went far wide and ricocheted off one of the wooden panels. It sparked up dust and splinters. The sound resounded around her aching head. With everything she had she pulled the gun just a few inches higher. She still had only limited sight but took a gamble and fired another shot. It hit the monster in the head.
Not by skill but luck. It slumped like a sack of dead wood and fell flat against her legs. She panted again and again for breath and felt her nose pop and blood start to gush down her face. In the distance, in the back of the kitchen, another figure slowly appeared. So much for that indulgent fantasy of hers. Another zombie.
A few thuds echoed from behind her and the door to the garage slowly but surely gave way. Logan had used a fireman’s tool, usually used to pry open crashed cars, to pull the door clean off its frame. The smoke from the machine pumped out into the hallway.
He saw the zombie at the far side of the house, instantly drew his Desert Eagle, and fired a lone shot. It hit the monster right between the eyes and splattered fresh blood and bone fragments against the once clean blue walls. His heart sank when he saw Lizzie slumped on the floor barely clinging to consciousness.
‘Lizzie.’
He whimpered desperately.
He holstered the gun quickly and reached down to pull her by the shoulders away from the slumped zombie on the carpet. ‘Are you bit?’ He shouted at her and ran his bare hands over her cold face. He looked her up and down then looked longingly into her fading eyes.
She looked terrible all of a sudden. Not the same girl who had walked out of that garage only a few moments ago. But no sign of a bite.
‘Shoot me.’ She coughed and spluttered on the last remnants of sick in her throat. His heart sank again.
‘I said “are you bit“?’ He shouted at her even though he was only a few inches away. She slowly shook her head and nestled into his shoulders.
‘I think I’m gonna turn.’ She started to cry. Tears rolled down her cheeks and matted into the blood from her nose. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t get any firewood.’ She was slipping away slowly and was becoming delirious.
Logan wrapped his arms around her and picked her clean off the floor with no effort. She gagged a few times but held it together. She told him again:
‘Shoot me. I don’t wanna come back.’ She sobbed harder and harder as Logan carried her through the doorway.
The two gunners, Jake and Sid, had rifles drawn and trained on the windows at the far side of the garage. The pilot, “Jack” as he was affectionately known due to his hidden but controlled borderline drinking problem, had the fire engine’s back door open and was ready to help Logan pull her inside.
‘You die, I die. Remember kid?’ Logan had her tossed gently over his shoulder. He lowered her carefully to her feet but she had no strength in them and slumped back over his shoulder.
‘Yeah.’ She whimpered pathetically and passed out instantly. He passed her to Jack who pushed her gently onto the back seats of the fire truck. For an old General, the panic in his eyes, and stress inside of him was transparent.
He started biting his lip and rolling his jaw around on its joint as he stared longingly through the window of the now closed and locked door. If she turned he would never forgive himself.
How could he have let her go through that door on her own? That was a terrible mistake. Like the victim in England. Like the first survivors in that library. Jack pointed right in his face with a long finger and a stern, unforgiving glare.
‘Keep it together Logan!’ He shouted at him like he was in charge. The seasoned General inside of him wanted to bark him down and lose it but the pilot was right. He hit the nail right on the head.
Logan could feel the anger and the rage boil and bubble inside of him and he had to step back to remind himself of the more obvious danger. The one zombie at the window had grown to ten and they were all pressing hard on the glass. All screaming and shrieking at the chance of food.
They banged against the glass until it shattered and splintered all over the cold concrete floor. The wind and snow swept instantly through the cracks and flooded the garage with a shrill cold. Jake and Sid started firing with time served precision through the gaps in the wooden boards.
A few of the zombies went down but for every one that fell three or four more replaced it. They convoluted at the windows snarling and reaching through the gaps. The wood started bending and bowing. After a few more shots from the high powered rifles they splintered and cracked in half.
The zombies started spilling through by the dozen, all standing and stepping over one another to reach their prey. Logan drew both guns and started firing. Every shot hit. Some of the zombies were soldiers and some of them were civilians. They were dressed, some in gowns from the field hospital over the ice, and some in winter garments from the march away from New York.
Something must have happened. One of the convoy of refugees must have been infected and turned while being processed over at the temporary lab. He cast a brief but intense thought to his friend, Doctor Abraham Priest, and he could only hope he was still alive.
‘Fall back!’ Logan screamed as his last two shots hit another two zombies. That was it though. He was out of ammo and the next two consecutive pulls on the triggers resulted in dull clicks. He holstered them, even though he might never find more ammon for them, and turned back to the fire engine.
Jack and the two brothers were already inside. Logan jogged to the back seat and checked that Lizzie was still ok. She was out like a light but she hadn’t turned or anything. He yanked the door handle, jumped inside beside her, and slammed the door shut before the first blood soaked monster threw itself against the once polished side of the truck.
He shuffled over the black leather seat to check Lizzie still had a pulse. He held two fingers to her neck gently. There was a weak thud at the side of her neck but it was slow and not pronounced. She was still alive. For now that would have to do. He reached frantically for his radio.
“Abe! Do you hear me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, Logan, I hear you.”
The intensity, depression and helplessness in his voice was clear from the first word he spoke. Even over the radio Logan could sense his distress. Logan was short and snappy with every one of his replies.
“What the Hell happened?”
“I don’t know. Something must have gone wrong. I wasn’t looking after the refugees, I was still studying…”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the containment room. With the zombie we were studying before. I can’t get out Logan. They’re everywhere. I’d been trying you on the radio but mine must be broken. I can only receive. I thought you were already dead.”
“Damn it!”
His heart sank yet again and that rage he was trying to suppress oozed out in his raspy voice. One of his only friends was dying out there on the ice and the other one was dying in his arms in the back of the fire truck they had taken refuge in. He couldn’t save anyone! Abe stayed calm though. Logan sensed why. Abe knew he had no way out and he had begun to accept death.
“I think I’ve figured it out Logan. I think I know what it is.”
“What? You have a cure?”
“No. More of a self-destruct I would call it.”
“How?”
“I asked myself the questions that everyone else is afraid to ask. Just like you told me to. I asked myself: how do you kill that which is already dead? Then I started looking at it like a cold mathematical equation. We got it wrong. We have been fighting the zombies using attrition warfare this whole time. We’ve been trying to kill them all. But you can’t add death to death and balance an equation. To kill something alive you must minus life. To cancel out death from the other side of the equation you must plus life. Death plus death, I guess, equals more death and imbalance. The equation reversed is “death plus life” and that returns the world to balance. To zero.”
“What are you saying?”
“To kill that which is dead you must give it life. I’d come in here to test it when the first zombie burst through the door. After the rest of them spilled in I was just about to set the timer on the explosives, sink this place, and blow my brains out before you just called.”
Logan sighed a long heavy sigh. He kept one finger trained on Lizzie’s pulse and stroked her matted hair with the tip of his thumb. The metallic, iron like, sickening smell of the blood caked onto her jacket was sickening. It clung mercilessly to the back of his throat. He ignored what the Doctor said about figuring it out. He didn’t care if he finally had the answer to save the world. He cared about saving Lizzie.
“I think Lizzie’s getting the flu… I don’t know how to save her.” He waited impatiently and with baited breath for the Doctor to respond. She was passed out in deadly silence beside him. The zombies beat hard against the doors of the fire truck but nobody knew what to do. The doors and windows on the truck were thick and toughened. They couldn’t get through. At least not so far. The three man strong helicopter crew were sat up front counting ammo and reloading their weapons in silence. Abe responded, finally, after a long reflective pause.
“I can save her.”
“How?”
“The flu isn’t deadly per se. Just violent, quick and relentless. A broad spectrum anti-biotic might bring her out of it in a few days. Maybe less. If she stays strong that is. The problem is getting it to you.”
“You might as well be on Mars Abe… We’re pinned down and running low on ammo.”
Logan sounded uncharacteristically deflated. He would have marched across that ice unarmed it he had to. If he thought it might save her.
“I’ll synthesize a broad spectrum anti biotic using the material that I have with me. Then I’ll tie it, prepped and ready in a syringe, around my neck and let them in. When…” He sighed and sobbed a little “when I get bitten, I’ll turn and hopefully my… re-animated corpse will shuffle towards you. You can shoot me and retrieve the medicine that will save the girl.”
“Don’t even think about it!”
He lied to himself and tried to say that there would be another way. But he just wanted Lizzie safe. If Abraham wanted to do this, there was nothing Logan could say or do. He felt sickened by his own twisted excitement. Any way of saving Lizzie filled him with elation. That emotion clashed head on with the bitterness and powerlessness he felt in that he had to listen to another friend die in order to do it.
Abraham was a grown man, a fantastic Doctor, and a hero in his own and every right. He deserved the chance to do one last brave thing with his life. In that, some good and one more life saved could come from this horrid mess. But Abe had the answer to the zombie epidemic too. He had solved the mystery and the equation too. That would be his last contribution.
“They aren’t fully brain dead. We saw from those scans before that the virus leaves some parts of the brain active and leaves most of it dead and completely starved of oxygen. It isn’t the same thing… But it hit me how similar it was to victims of trauma and survivors of comas. Some victims end up in something called PVS. Permanent Vegetative State. They have the ability to breathe on their own but lack focus in their eyes and respond less, if at all, to external stimuli. They are trapped in what must be a horrible state between consciousness and death. A kind of living-dead limbo. This virus elicits a similar state but only after observable death. It also keeps a primal part of the mind alive. The need, or the instinct, to feed.”
“Doctor…”
“The short story is that there were a few trials in the 1990’s and a little later that managed to awaken patients suffering from PVS. If only for a brief few moments with each administration. Zolpidem. A drug usually used to help people fall asleep managed to revive the patients back into a form of consciousness. Patients could hear, focus their eyes, and recognize people and retain memories. I think we should try Zolpidem, in a weaponised state, as a method to combat the creatures. It might even awaken a last glimmer of humanity inside of them. There’s no way to know what that will do, I admit, but I think it might stop them. I can’t test it anymore. That falls to you now.”
“Abe…”
“Save the girl.”