Byron : A Zombie Tale (Part 1) (14 page)

My face flushed. For once I was so glad that my back had been turned toward her and she couldn’t see my face as those three words escaped my lips. What had prompted me to say that? I didn’t want to dwell on it. I wanted to run away. I had said it, and there it was. I loved her, but yet I barely knew her. I had, after all, only found her a few short hours ago being attacked by blood-thirsty undead.

I continued walking out of the apartment. There were no more creatures in the living room, or in the hallway back to the front door. However, outside the door there were several creatures shuffling about in the apartment building. That these were starved of blood I could tell, their limbs were stiff and they had trouble moving. I finally looked at Elise trying to make sure that none of the blood she had earlier swallowed was fresh on her clothing. All we needed was for these damned beasts to get their little shot of invigoration. I stood in the doorway, ready to give it a mighty kick, while hefting the battle axe up to my shoulder. Elise had drawn one of the Japanese swords and was standing in preparation for the fray we knew would soon ensue.

I kicked the entry door on the frame with all my might. However, the thing didn’t budge one iota. I looked at Elise and could see that she was stifling a laugh. I couldn’t understand what in the hell could be so funny about our predicament. We were stuck inside the building!

“You’re funny,” she told me. “Now open the door, silly.” I had no idea what in the hell she was talking about and looked at her like a dog trying to do long division. She stepped past me, laid her hand on the door handle and pulled inward.

How could I be so stupid to screw up something as simple as that? Of course the door opened inward, that was how the other two creatures had managed to wind their way into the building. The probably just leaned against the doors and they opened right up. Instead of looking Elise in the eye, I leapt through the door, swinging the axe at the first beast within striking distance.

Once through the door, a handful of the creatures shuffled away from me. Two of them, however, set their eyes upon me and ran with incredible speed.
Why weren’t the microorganisms’ warnings working?
I thought to myself. The creatures seemed to be completely unaffected.

Seeing the pair rush forward I saw Elise run toward them with her sword raised high. In two quick strokes she managed to sidestep their attacks and expertly use the sword to cleave the creatures’ heads from their bodies. My jaw dropped open. How could this lovely creature be such an efficient killer?

Almost as if reading the question in my face Elise said, “I’ve been taking martial arts lessons since I was seven years old.” She smiled at me then flipped the blood off the sword and re-sheathed it in one swift move.

I smiled back at her and winked, “You’re bad-ass!”

She laughed and replied, “I know!”

Outside the building, we struck off in the direction of John’s apartment. As we walked I went over in my head all of the foolish embarrassments I’d made of myself since meeting Elise. How could I ever win the favor of someone like her? She was gorgeous, smart, and could fight like a pro. I guessed the only thing going for me was that as far as she knew I was the last man alive on earth. Or, at least, the only other one of her new hybrid species.

Absentmindedly, I stumbled along passing groups of creatures who shrank away from us and only stopping my mental self-flagellation when an occasional beast would charge us seeking blood. However, it was typically Elise who would dispatch the creature with both elegance and ease.

We stopped on two occasions to hunt. Elise, I was glad to note, had taken quickly to this new lifestyle. She was a born predator and rounded up a greater pile of feed-stock, as I’d begun to think of the masses of rodents and small animals we captured for food, than I had.

“So,” she said at one point, “tell me about these friends of yours.” She sounded genuinely interested. But, I figured that she was also just trying to find out what kinds of people we would soon have to deal with. Though, I am sure she was also trying to determine whether or not they would need to be dispatched if they gave us any trouble. So, I told her about them. I told her about John’s past playing baseball and his being much smarter than he liked to let on. I told her about how Evan was a nerd who was constantly picked on, and I told her about Tim and his predilection for easy, gullible women. “It sounds like an interesting bunch,” was her only reply.

After a few minutes of silence, she spoke again, “so, tell me about you. Tell me about Byron – undead zombie slayer.” She kind of laughed as she said it, but I tried unsuccessfully not to take any offense.

“I’m nothing much,” I told her. I told her some of the details of my past, most of which were so blasé that I was sure they’d be easily forgettable. On the whole I had to admit that I’d painted a portrait of myself as some pathetic loser who just happened to luck out and get into a frat. Believe it or not, this story was a very large part of who I was. After today, there was no chance that she would want to stay with me. Especially once she met Tim. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would be able to sweep her away from me without so much as a second glance in my direction.

She looked me up and down. “You don’t think very much of yourself, do you?” she asked me. I was floored! She’d hit the nail right on the head. “You think that I’m going to be interested in some other guy even though you feel something for me that nobody else could ever understand,” she continued. “You’re preparing yourself for whichever of your friends you think that I am going to fawn all over and leave you for without a second thought. What you don’t realize, however, is that for some reason because of your insecurities and how very much a human trait they represent I am even more attracted to you than before. It is so endearing to me that you’d beat yourself up over something that would never happen, but yet you still think is a possibility.”

It was at that point that I KNEW that I didn’t deserve her. What the hell was she, telepathic? Was she reading my mind or something?

“I’m not reading your mind, you know.” She said. “I’m just reading you, your body language and facial expressions. I was in the graduate psychology program at the college before this whole thing happened. I was trying to find my way over to the college library when I was attacked. Apparently, martial arts skills don’t work against a horde of the walking dead; unless you’re one of them. They swarmed me and had me overcome before I even knew what the hell was happening. If it weren’t for you I’d probably be gnawing on some poor unsuspecting fool’s head right now.”

I didn’t know what to say. I folded my hands and found sudden fascination with my shoe laces again. As my eyes passed downward, however, I could see that over her shoulder there were about five creatures making a beeline for us. Without a word I drew my Japanese sword and ran at them. I had struck off two of their heads and was engaged in battling two more when Elise finally made it over to assist in the battle. She quickly dispatched the one remaining creature and engaged with one of the two I was fighting. These two, however, were amazingly fast and strong. They also seemed to be anticipating our strikes – as if they were prepared for a battle.

“What the hell? Are these things getting tougher?” I asked Elise.

However, it was the chorus of microorganisms who answered back.
Their colonies are well established, but there is something wrong with them. They are ignoring our warnings and avoiding all of our rules. They seem to be rogue colonies. We have tried adapting our warnings to cause physical pain to the others, but it has only served to make them even more intent on attacking. It is almost is if these other failed colonies are intentionally trying to destroy successful ones.

Though, for some reason I thought that the microorganisms were holding something back. Why would a failed colony try to destroy a successful one? It made no sense to me.

I didn’t feel that we couldn’t trust the colonies, either rogue or ‘assimilated.’ We couldn’t trust the very organisms to which we owed our undead blood-thirsting existence. I had to tell Elise, somehow. But, how? The microorganisms were connected to all of our senses. There was no way to send information to her without it being intercepted by the colonies. Dammit!

Since there was no way to hide the information, and my doubts, from the colonies within either myself or Elise I decided to just lay all my cards on the table. “I don’t think we can trust the colonies, the symbiots,” I told her. “My colony just told me that they think the reason there are some colonies resisting the warning is that the warnings they’ve been sending out are beginning to cause physical harm to the ‘failed’ colonies. I don’t believe it. It makes no sense to me.”

Elise looked at me with a serious expression. I didn’t know how to read it. “I agree. It makes no sense. My colony has given me a similar explanation. But, I don’t see the logic in it. You would think that they would try to put distance between themselves and the cause of the pain. That’s what a true reaction would be. However, these other colonies are directing their hosts to attack at the risk of increased pain and anguish, and even possible death. No. It makes no sense. Though, I don’t think that our colonies are trying to deceive us.” I saw a strange gleam in her eye, was she trying to tell me something?

“Our colonies have worked hard to heal our bodies and lay dormant when we don’t wish to interact with them. The other colonies, however, seem to have adapted some kind of strange belligerent instinct. I think we need to learn more about these things before we can truly understand their actions. Our colonies can only guess about the behaviors of these ‘failed’ colonies because they know how they were supposed to act. But, we don’t know what is driving these other colonies to act the way they do. Maybe we should spend some time observing them before we go back to rejoin your friends?”

I had to admit that Elise made a strong argument. We didn’t know enough about these things. And, having better knowledge would be a good thing as it would help my friends’ chances at survival. I agreed that we should find somewhere to watch and observe the activities of the more-resistant colonies.

We found a small hiding place up high on the roof of a building. We’d climbed up along the fire-escape, which was weighted so that the first-story stairs retracted above the ground, and allowed the stairs to draw themselves up leaving us relatively safe above the creatures below. For the most part, as we watched, the beasts either ignored or were unaware of our presence. We were able to watch them for some time without worry of being discovered.

After about an hour or two we could see some strange behaviors among the teeming undead walking the streets. The first was that the streets were becoming busier. There seemed to be more of them coming out into the open. However, from where they came we had no idea. The group just seemed to grow continuously one or two creatures at a time.

The second behavior was that many of the creatures tended to mass together, yet seemed only nominally cognizant of the presence of others around them. Most of them seemed to be suffering from a dramatic lack of nourishment as their movements were stiff and awkward. But, a handful we had noticed that kept to the periphery of the group were much more nimble and seemed to be fully aware of their surroundings. In fact, on two different occasions I noticed that one of the creatures even realized that we were watching them below and I saw him look up directly at us and sneer before resuming his activities.

In an instant, that fellow who’d seen us darted away in pursuit of something. He ran oddly, almost as if on all-fours. But, as he bounded after his prey, which we noticed had been a fine-looking squirrel, we were shocked by what we’d seen happen next. The creature followed the squirrel as expertly as either Elise or I would have, but as the rodent leapt and bolted up a tree the fellow followed like a parkour runner in a competition. He quickly adapted to the changing environment and single-mindedly pursued his quarry with little concern for obstacles or changing terrain.

Elise and I turned to look at one another. We apparently had had the same realization: our perch was no longer safe from such as that fellow. And, we also knew something more – animal blood gave better sustenance to the colonies than did human blood. We’d suspected as much given our own situations, but now seeing how other animal-fed creatures reacted, it was obvious that my suspicions were correct.

The animal blood must have had some nutrient in it which allowed the colonies to survive and thrive. However, what I couldn’t understand is why the creature was still a mad feeding-machine instead of regaining its identity as the person it once was.

“It’s curious,” I said to Elise, “that the fellow is powerful, fast and smart but, hasn’t regained his human identity or sense of humanity through the consumption of animal blood.”

She nodded. “I was wondering the same thing myself. I mean, we can survive off animal blood, were both very much dead, and the colony of organisms repaired our bodies. But, we are still us! These creatures seem to be somewhat sentient and self-aware, but their bodies are still decaying. There’s something wrong with them – wrong with the colonies.” Her last words were more of a rhetorical question than a statement.

We continued to watch as several other self-aware beasts moved in on the crowd. Again, they were aware of our presence high above them, but didn’t do anything to interfere with our observations. The mass of beasts down below continued to shuffle about seemingly without purpose. And then, we could see that the self-aware beasts began to corral the others. They were guiding them and directing them. Toward what purpose, I knew not. But, the behavior they exhibited was with deliberate purpose of directing the horde of undead toward some unknown target.

A sudden chill ran down my spine as I realized the direction in which the mass of undead were moving. My face paled in shock. “Elise, they’re going toward John’s apartment. They’re headed straight to the sanctuary! We have to go.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the edge of the roof. But, as we turned toward the fire escape our eyes revealed to us about six of the self-aware beasts climbing over the edge of the roof and coming toward us. And these were wielding blunt weapons.

“What the hell are you?” I said out loud just above a whisper. And, to my surprise, one of the beasts sneered. It was the same one who’d been chasing the squirrel.

Had we become their next prey? Were we the next up on the feeding schedule? Suddenly, I could hear the chorus of voices in my head –
No, it cannot be. You must run! It is an infected colony!

Elise and I shot each other a quick glance. Apparently, our colonies had spoken to us at the same time. At least I felt safe in that we were on the same page with regard to information bestowed upon us by our colonies.

RUN!
I heard the chorus scream in my head. Elise, however, merely seemed to shake her head and unsheathed her two swords. It looked as though we had a fight ahead of us, and so I too unsheathed my sword.

As I watched, the beasts began to spread out around us. They were trying to flank us, but we kept our backs toward the roof edge so that we couldn’t be completely surrounded. The squirrel-chaser was the first to attack. He swung what appeared to be a galvanized steel pipe at my head. I block
ed it with my sword and deflected the blow, trying to send the beast off balance. I’d hoped that Elise would be able to follow up with an attack of her own, but could see that two more creatures had rushed in to engage with her.

I stepped in toward the creature and grasped it by the throat, remembering that with the colony surging through my veins my strength had increased dramatically. However, the beast answered by driving its head into mine. I saw stars as our skulls collided. Pieces of his putrescent flesh splattered all over my face. As his head pulled back away so that he could strike me again I could see that the force of the blow had cause
d much of the rotten meat covering his skull to slough to one side revealing the bare bone beneath.

Before he could land his second strike I shoved backward with all the force I could muster against the throat I held in my hand. The shove threw the beast off balance, and with my other arm in one fluid motion I raised the Japanese sword over my head, released my grasp on his throat and brought the sword down toward his partially bare skull with both hands. But, the beast was fast and my sword only cleaved off a small section of the flesh, bone and brain on the right side of his head.

The attack, however, had thrown me off balance and the beast capitalized on this. With lightning speed the steel pipe came swinging upward and caught me right underneath the jaw causing my head to snap upward. At the apex of its upswing the pipe stopped and began its descent, driven faster by the powerful arm of the beast. All I could do was throw my left arm up and into the weapon’s path. The stainless steel struck the metal gauntlet I wore and interrupted the strained sounds of battle with a loud clang.

The blow had been deflected just in time to see another creature rush in to the aide of the squirrel-chaser. This second foe, however, was not a very experienced fighter and was easily taken down by my sword as I swung in a wide arc. The blow was so powerful that it severed the head of my second foe and was buried deep into the squirrel-chaser’s putrid flesh and bone.

The attack had thrown my opponent off-balance and I cast a quick glance over to Elise to see how she was making out. She was holding her own. Her first two foes had been quickly dispatched, but now she was fighting like a whirling dervish with steel flying through the air parrying and striking with expert skill. Her attackers, it seemed were also very skilled.

I’d carelessly pulled my attention away from my foe for too long as the steel pipe crashed into my ribs from my right side. I doubled over instinctively from the pain. I distinctly felt several of the bones crack with the blow. God, that’d hurt!

Pulling the sword from my foe’s decaying flesh, I turned and ran. As I ran I grabbed Elise by her midriff. Her last act before being whisked away was to deliver the death-blow to her last foe. At the roof’s edge I leapt, dragging both of us into the air and ultimately into freefall. We landed among the throngs of walking corpses which helped to soften our fall. By some odd miracle we’d both retained our grasp upon our weapons and sheathed them quickly before bolting into the mass of walking dead.

We needed to get to the sanctuary – my friends were in danger. And, I knew that we’d meet our self-aware foes again. In fact, of that I was positive.