Chapter Eight
The Epic of Gilgamesh
They had cooked their robust meal with a fire they built in her sink out of some old pillows and books. They had just begun to eat and had gone to sit down on the couch when Logan found her radio by the window.
He immediately tuned it to the emergency frequency. He should have been hearing Abraham’s voice, supplying a message on a continuous loop, instructing all who heard it to make for the screening net that had been set up in the small town of Valhalla to the north. Instead he was met with the rants and raves of a crazed New Yorker.
‘When Ishtar heard this , in a fury she went up to the heavens, going to Anu, her father, and crying, going to Anrum, her mother, and weeping: “Father, Gilgamesh has recounted despicable deeds about me, despicable deeds and curses!” Anu addressed Princess Ishtar, saying: “What is the meaning of this? Was it not you who provoked king Gilgamesh? So Gilgamesh recounted despicable deeds about you, despicable deeds and curses?” Ishtar then spoke to her father, Anu, saying: “Father give me the bull of heaven so he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling. If you do not give me the bull of heaven I will smash open the Gates of the Netherworld, I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down, and will let the dead go up and eat the living.”’
Logan and Elizabeth sat in silence and listened to the pirate broadcast from the scratchy sounding tiny radio she owned. They ate from bowls that she had washed with some of her stored up water. She had figured out by now, even though Logan had not really said anything, that they were going to be leaving the city first light.
There was no need for her supplies. They would only take as much as they could carry anyway. The bread, though stale, was flavored with nuts, seeds and a few currents. It was a lot nicer than it looked. The soup was ok too. She was a little on the thin side herself but even Logan needed a damn good meal.
He had picked and scraped at rations over the last few weeks as he sat angrily trying to figure out the virus in the Alaskan lab. The provisions at WDC had dwindled too. He couldn’t remember the last time that he had sat down to a cooked meal. For that he was hugely grateful. They continued listening.
‘The epic of Gilgamesh is a much longer story about heroes and friendships. It isn’t just about the ability the Princess claimed to have to tear down the posts of the underworld and let the dead rise. It is about love and friendship too. It focuses on our central character, Gilgamesh, who was a God-King in ancient Sumer and Mesopotamia. The story starts with a man who would become his friend. He was called Enkidu. He was a wild man living in the forest with beasts at the beginning of our story. He is sent a prostitute to sleep with him and thus bring him into the modern world of man. He sleeps with her and comes into the kingdom of Uruk where we meet the main protagonist, Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is a tyrant at first, killing as he pleases, raping as he wishes and works his subjects to the bone and into the grave, building his majestic temples and ziggurats. Enkidu saves Gilgamesh from this kind of life by fighting him. They eventually become friends and go on adventures together. When they returned from one of those great quests the Sumerian Goddess of love, Ishtar, falls head over heels in love with Gilgamesh. Basically, the short version of the story is that she is rejected and enraged. A woman scorned asked Daddy for great power, the bull of heaven, so that she could kill Gilgamesh.’
The presenter of the jacked radio station hadn’t said his name yet or mentioned anything about where he was. He just started his pod cast, as it were, with a few oddly disturbing glimpses into his psyche. He believed the dead were starting to walk to teach humanity for the wrong things that had happened. Human’s had lost their way and he was so sure of it he wanted the whole damn world to know his opinionated rants. He was quoting some ancient myth as some sort of proof for whatever half baked theory he had come up with.
‘The two heroes of the story eventually kill the Bull despite the power the thing seems to have had. Obviously it isn’t a literal bull. Maybe something coded into the myth that was in reality an otherworldly weapon. Or maybe a narrative tool to demonstrate a plague like the one we faced not too long ago. The flu that came before the swarms of living dead. What do you, the listener, think that this all means? I’ll tell you what I think. We could read the text as a literal truth but that would be silly I think. There might have been a Gilgamesh and there might have been a kingdom called Uruk once, in the ancient world of Sumer that is now buried under Iraq and the bombs our own country dropped, and there might have been a Goddess of love called Ishtar. But I think we need to look deeper than that. This more than likely isn’t a literal tale but a warning about greed, jealousy and lust. The fateful Goddess of love was driven by her desire for Gilgamesh to destroy half a kingdom because of the supposed lies he had told about her. Maybe she failed then all those thousands of years ago but we see the same monsters in our Western World. The tabloids obsessed with scanty clad celebrities dancing provocatively. Gilgamesh is a story of greed and power and because we haven’t learned anything from our ancients we fall victim to the fate they avoided. The princess may have been stopped from unleashing her power all those thousands of years ago but now she has smashed down the gates of Hell, now she has smashed the posts that hold the dead in their graves and now she has let the world die in the wake of her revenge!”
Logan smiled while staring at the last of the soup and a few floating sausages that he couldn’t handle. The smells of the spices in the soup warmed and cleared his nostrils. His rant was unfocused. Not well researched and hollow to the first poke. The pod cast on the pirate radio frequency silenced for just a moment. She saw him smile out of the corner of her eye. For a seasoned General, especially one in his position, it was easy to laugh and scoff at the pirate pod cast. She, even though a very small part of her was being drawn in by the rant, acted like she was as in the wise as Logan.
‘You should have heard his last one.’ She put on a fake smile and tried to start a conversation. She was secretly hoping, however, that Logan would share his thoughts with her and that they would make her feel better. Being cooped up inside with nothing to do, four walls to stare at, and only the radio to listen to played tricks with her mind. It was easy to begin believing the sorts of things the pod cast said and difficult to break the thought pattern once she was caught in it.
Elizabeth had given up eating a while ago and was guzzling pint after pint of water. No more need to save it. She was wrapped in her coat, a woolen blanket, and then a washed duvet as her final layer. The cold was becoming more and more bitter as the night went on. No heating and no power meant staying warm was difficult. Logan hadn’t resorted to more layers yet. All those years in Alaska as commander of WDC had hardened his skin to the cold and he felt it a lot less than most.
‘Why?’ Logan entertained her. She was curled up as tight as she could get on the couch beside him. Her eyes looked heavy.
‘He was talking about the Haitian Witch Doctors who were supposed to have had the power to raise the dead as servants. Voodoo powers, you know? I think he might have been leading up to this episode of his rant though because he eventually concluded that it couldn’t be Voodoo at work. He said the dead weren’t serving anyone. Just eating them.’ She looked spooked. Logan could sense that maybe she had bought into some of it. Her sadness looked deeper than her inner child needing a little reassurance though.
‘What is it?’ Logan asked her kindly as she stared into the radio speaker, waiting for the next chapter in the rant. ‘Look if you need to talk about what happened before its ok? We can just turn this off if you want?’ He reached for the power button but she stopped him with a quick tug at his sleeve. Logan was uneasy to bring it up and she was just as bad listening to him. She shrugged it off.
‘No!’ She exclaimed but immediately calmed down. ‘Thanks though…’ She paused. ‘He was my neighbor though. That guy from before. He was a nice guy before all of this. People do all kinds of things when they get scared like this. It isn’t just
terror it’s primal. I think it brings all sorts out of people.’ She looked him square in the eyes, held his gaze, and smiled a long smile.
How remarkable? She really did have love in her even for her enemies. But someone’s friend before the onslaught of the dead could easily be an enemy after. They were not fellow survivors but competitors to survive. And that was why everything primal oozed out.
‘I’m sorry if you thought I was a little rough with him.’ She shook her head instantly, still smiling, and propped her neck up with her free hand.
‘It’s really ok. Every night he would be banging on my door begging me to let him in. He would howl through his window to attract as many of them as possible and promised that if I had sex with him he would stop…’ She stopped as her eyes started to glisten with the first sign of a tear. Logan was speechless but really shouldn’t have been so surprised.
‘I always said no and just locked myself in my bedroom until he passed out drunk or something. It was like being in an abusive relationship with a man you only used to say “hi” to on the stairs.’ She looked sad and reflective for a moment but quickly snapped out of it. ‘Besides!’ She exclaimed ‘This guy is freaking me out tonight!’ She rapidly changed the topic.
She had said her peace about her brush with a rapist and Logan knew instinctively not to push her for any more details. That part of her life was over now anyway but he couldn’t help to feel sorry for her. He decided that it would be best to further indulge the childish plea for help. He sensed she was struggling with the concept of what the walking infection was, and the radio was starting to fuel a dark, childish and paranoid mind set. It was easy for him to know what it was. He had studied it for weeks and he was the first man to see the dead walk. He tapped his radio with a pointed finger.
‘That guy I was talking to on the radio before?’ Logan asked. She nodded remembering the conversation he had with Doctor Priest.
‘He loves the ancient world and stuff like that. I bet he’s listening to this fabricated crap and tearing his hair out.’ Logan’s comment couldn’t have been better timed.
‘That isn’t what the story of Gilgamesh is about at all.’ The voice wasn’t the original presenter. The unnamed and self-righteous sack hurling out unfounded theories from before. Logan smiled and waited for it. It was Abraham’s voice. He had obviously cracked the pirate radio and somehow regained control of the frequency. This was supposed to be a dedicated radio channel for evacuation procedure after all. He waited eagerly for his friend to tear the guy apart.
“You are right not to take it literally but the story of Gilgamesh is about self-discovery and ultimately about life and death. Enkidu becomes ill and dies as a punishment from the God’s for killing the Bull of Heaven. Gilgamesh mourns his much loved friend and eventually goes on another quest to find Utnapishtim, who is the equivalent to Noah in the Hebrew scriptures, the sole survivor of a great flood.’
‘He wants to know about mortality and how to live forever. In the Sumer version of the great deluge, the great flood, Utnapishtim is given eternal life and Gilgamesh wants that for himself after suffering the loss of his friend and thus being confronted with his own mortality. Utnapishtim tells him that the God’s had decided to never again flood the Earth and Gilgamesh returns to his homeland in the knowledge that, even though he will not live on, human kind will. And he is satisfied and empowered by this.’
‘The Bull of Heaven is more than likely a reference to the star constellation of Taurus. In some myths of the ancient world they would encode the date of the story into the fabric of the myth itself. The constellations pass across the sky so very slowly that it acts as a sort of universe clock. If you know anything about the progression of the equinoxes then you can ping the date of the myth fairly easily. I strongly suspect that the power of Ishtar to break down the door of Hell and let the dead out is used as purely a narrative device.’
‘What we are facing, in reality, is a virus. A sickness. It isn’t the wrath of God or ancient magic. We need to save as many people as possible until we can figure this out. There are more survivors out there and there are instillations like ours, the Weaponised Disease Control in Alaska, that are working tirelessly to contain and counter the virus.’
The Doctor went silent. Whether the presenter of the pirate station could reply or not didn’t matter. He either couldn’t or didn’t. In a few seconds the automated voice was back on the air. It made Elizabeth feel a lot better though she didn’t share that with Logan. She was trying so hard to impress him and not look stupid.
“This is Doctor Abraham Priest of the Weaponised Disease Control. New York has been placed under quarantine and a screening net has been placed to the North of the City. All survivors must break away from their dwellings, travel only in the light of day, and make their way North. The cold will be bitter and the journey not easy. Food, medicine, and what safety we can offer lies ahead.”
The message just kept playing in a loop so Elizabeth got up and turned it off. Her blanket slumped to the floor and she started to shiver. Even Logan was getting cold as the hours drew on. He made it eleven in the evening by his wrist watch. He was planning on making for the containment net at 0600 the next morning and would try to gather what survivors he could along the way.
Elizabeth started jumping around on the spot and flapping her arms to stay warm. Logan grabbed her immediately by the shoulders. She smiled and blushed quickly thinking that he was getting up to cuddle her and comfort her. His stern face killed that thought, and even though he looked right into her eyes, he wasn‘t focusing on them.
He had heard something in the hall. Elizabeth stood glued to the spot as Logan pressed his finger to his lips. That let her know that she had to be as silent as possible. She only had the chain across the door and a few extra bolts. It was a big heavy door to begin with and she had not seen any need to try and ram anything in front of it.
She relied on staying silent and thinking fast to stay alive. Logan silently un-holstered his guns, both of them for the first time, and made his way to the door. He was walking in a crouched position and pressed his heel down first, followed by the rest of his foot. That was how he had been trained to sneak up on someone. It made the least noise. He peered through the peep hole to see one of the dead staring back at him.
It was a woman. Dressed only in her loose nightgown. That same vacant stare in her glazed, milky grey eyes. It couldn’t see him through the glass of the peep hole but it was like she could sense there was someone alive in the room. She wasn’t howling like the ones back in England. She was just staring loosely into nothing.
Logan was starting to think of ways to draw the thing away. He could climb out of the window without anyone seeing him now that it was dark. He could shuffle across to the next window as long as his feet didn’t slip on the frozen window mantle.
Then he could climb into the apartment next door and run down the hall making as much noise as possible… In the end he didn’t need to. That man from before, her neighbor who had tried for so long to rape her, he stirred just at the wrong time. The door down the hall creaked open and he shuffled out still whimpering in pain. He had cracked his jaw back into place and had done the same with his wrist. He had wrapped some old clothes around it to help the brake heal.
He had pulled some jeans on too, ones that didn’t fit him too well, and had wrapped a big towel round his middle for the pain of his broken ribs. He was bent down to one side and hadn’t seen the creature yet. It had seen him though. It wailed a high pitch shriek and turned on the spot. It looked possessed as it started shuffling towards the already handicapped man. He started to panic and Logan could just about see him fall at the extent of his vision through the distorted glass. He gritted his teeth.
‘What is it?’ Elizabeth had gotten as close as she could and pulled on his shoulder so that she could whisper in his ear. Logan didn’t answer. He just reached for the bolt at the side of the door. He started unfastening it and t
hen turned the lock. It clicked but the animal outside was still too focused on her meal to have heard it. The man was still whimpering and panicking in the distance. The zombie still groaning and shuffling forward.
‘No! Please?’ The rapist started crying and pleading. He could have let him die. He probably should do too. But that image of the victim through the window back in the North of England was still burned to the back of Logan’s eyes. So was the heavy guilt he felt because he let those other survivors go instead of keeping them with him so that they could be safe. Even though this man had tried to rape his new friend didn’t mean Logan had the power to decide he should die.
Because he could do something, that meant he needed to. Elizabeth froze to the spot. She thought about pulling back on his arm but decided not to. She was half his size and couldn’t physically stop him. But it was more than that. She trusted him. She trusted him to keep her safe and knew that he would not let anything happen to her. She also hadn’t the heart to listen to her neighbor get eaten alive.
Logan slipped the door open and stepped out. He closed it immediately. The rapist cast Logan a pleading look. But it was one without hope. Never would he think the man who had just kicked the life out of him would come back to help him. Logan retained his low stance and stealthy footwork so he could sneak up on the shuffling zombie. After a few paces he had caught up. He holstered the guns. They would be too messy and make far too much noise.
He stood bolt upright right behind the woman turned walker and reached around her neck. He carefully but very quickly tightened his grip and twisted with every bit of strength he had. An intense snap echoed through the hall. The groaning stopped and her already lifeless body went immediately limp. It slumped to the carpet with a soft thud but her mouth still motioned up and down. She was still trying to bite even though her neck was snapped clean through. Maybe it had to be the brain…
‘Here!’ The man, still on the floor where he had fallen, unclipped his hunting knife from around his belt and tossed it to Logan.
‘Drive it through her skull.’ He coughed again and again with trickles of blood splattering around his mouth and over the cream colored carpet. Logan took the knife and didn’t hesitate. He pushed the tip of the blade through her left eye and instantaneously her body stopped twitching and her mouth clamped closed.
Logan still had his teeth gritted and his muscles tensed across his chest and back. He strode over the zombie on the floor and towards the rapist.
‘Thanks…’ He began. He picked himself up from the floor with more gasps for breath. ‘I didn’t think…’ Logan didn’t let him finish.
‘Don’t let me ever see you again. Because I just used up every drop of forgiveness I have!’ The man just nodded and started to cry. Maybe he had just had that moment of clarity. Maybe he just remembered who he was before all of this. He turned and walked towards the stairway. Logan had no idea where he was going to go but didn’t care. He had meant what he said.
‘Tell Lizzie I’m sorry.’ He whispered and slumped through the door.
Logan turned to make his way back to the flat but was stopped by another four of the things that had somehow managed to hear the commotion. He couldn’t lead them back to Elizabeth. That idea he had about climbing through the windows might need testing after all!
He watched as they each shuffled an inch closer, arms spread wide ahead of them, and groaning too. He saw Elizabeth open the door. She had a gun in her hand. A small 9 millimeter berretta, a police standard issue, against that his Desert Eagles looked like cannons. He shook his head frantically at her through the small crowd of zombies. She looked at him pleadingly. She wanted to help and she certainly didn’t want him to die saving that brute!
He raised his hand and pointed to his eyes with his fingers then waved in the direction of the open flat door. The one where he had stuffed the rapist before. He mimed the words “close the door” so she reluctantly did.
He let the things get just a few inches closer, as long as his nerve let him, then bolted for the door to his right. The zombies acted differently when there was a chance of food. They were slow and cumbersome at first but it seemed they got more and more riled up and just a touch quicker as they got closer to the smell of sweating human flesh. They got more agitated as Logan slammed the door. He did that on purpose so that he was the loudest thing on the floor.
He didn’t lock it. He wanted them to follow him. The window was already open at the far end of the living space. The apartment layout was the same as Elizabeth’s but it was much messier and the former occupants had left in more of a hurry. The window was open and the snow had drifted inside.
He slid out and reached down to grab the freezing cold ledge just as the monsters came crashing through the door. One lunged forward and fell flat over the table in the middle of the floor. The next made it to the window but fell, uncoordinated, down to the alloy below. Even though that fall had shattered the creature’s legs, Logan could still hear it howling and smashing its teeth together. The next two started crawling towards his still exposed hands on the side of the window ledge and frantically started scraping at his fingers. He trusted all his weight to his right arm and pulled the two creatures through the window, at the same time, with his left hand and sent them plummeting to the ground below. That was the end of them.
Logan had to tighten his grip and tense his fingers to stay on the small ledge. He tensed his abs and got his wildly swinging legs under control. He was panting for breath but trying to make as little noise as possible.
There were no balconies or window boxes on this apartment block. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the people who lived there weren’t that wealthy. The windows were close together though and the ledges were on the same level. It was a matter of carefully shimmying from one to the other with as much care and strength as he could manage.
Once he got up a routine it was ok to do though. He swung his legs over first so his centre of gravity was further away, then slammed down his hand on the next ledge, transferred his weight over and brought his other hand over too. His leather jacket kept getting snagged on the exposed brickwork. The jagged brick scraped at the tough leather but it wasn’t enough to make him fall.
He repeated that motion and kept going until he reached Elizabeth’s apartment. He made sure to count the windows so he got the right one. She had caught on to his plan. Her head was hanging out of the window of her bedroom ready to pull him in. He pulled hard on the ledge, ran his feet up the outside wall, and threw his momentum forward to slide in. He fell onto her bed in a heap but quickly rolled off and stood. He flapped his arms around and opened and closed his fingers to make a fist in order to get the blood flowing again.
It was horribly cold still outside and it had taken a huge effort to make that climb. Elizabeth closed the window slowly but firmly and draped over the sheet and nailed it back down with drawing pins. Then she closed the curtains completely.
She rushed over to him and pulled him tight and close for an unsolicited hug. She was as out of breath as he was.
‘You must be freezing! I thought you were going to die!’ Her voice shook. It was odd that she cared for him so much so quickly. The General had come into her life with a bang and made her feel safe and comfortable for the first time in a long time. She didn’t want to lose him.
‘Why did you save him?’ She almost shouted at him right in his face.
‘I didn’t want his death on my shoulders. I have enough on there to start with.’ He admitted the truth but omitted the reasons why and the severity of the weight he carried.
‘Do you like Elizabeth or Lizzie?’ He darted the conversation away. She was starting to sense that about him. He didn’t like intense emotion-filled conversations. He would rather swing the conversation around to anything a bit more light hearted at the first chance he got.
‘I don’t know. Liz or Lizzie I get all the time.’ She let him go finally. He hadn’t even held her back but she
didn’t care. ‘Either is fine.’ Logan laughed a little, solely for his own benefit.
‘Good.’ He said. ‘Saying “Elizabeth” was becoming an effort.’ He joked and strode back into the living space.
‘That was an impressive climb.’ She called back. ‘Not bad at all for an old guy.’ She jested him with a wink. He just sighed and sat back down on the couch. He felt like an old man that was sure enough.
Lizzie went over to check the door. She had a chair nearby that she wedged up onto the handle to act as a last line of defense. It was securely locked and there were no more of them in the hall. The snow storm looked as though it had picked up again though. She could see the hole where the door had been on that flat Logan had just escaped from. The snow was billowing into the hall and lying on the cold ground. Tonight was going to be a real test.
‘We should get to sleep.’ She suggested and slumped back down on the couch. She was starting to feel cold again now that the adrenaline had settled.
‘We need to start pulling out first light. You sleep. I’ll watch.’ He pointed to the door and pulled both Desert Eagles from his belt holsters. He pulled the slide back on each of them to; once again, check that there was a round in each chamber and the safety was on.
‘You want me to take a watch?’ She offered and stretched her arms into the air.
‘No. I got it.’