Dead of Knight: A Zombie Apocalypse Survival Tale

Dead of Knight:

A Zombie Apocalypse Survival Tale

Stephen J. Beard

Copyright © 2014 Stephen J. Beard

All rights reserved.

For Lindsay

Prologue

     I always thought the end of the world would come with giant flashes of light, thundering sound and towering mushroom clouds.  Maybe a fiery asteroid crashing into Earth.  Some huge, loud massive end to us all.  Instead, the end of the world came on delivery trucks.  Normal, everyday delivery trucks.   The same kind that brought parts for your dishwasher, Christmas presents from Grandma and boxes of goodies from Amazon.  The delivery trucks carried flu vaccines tainted with some form of virus.  These tainted flu vaccines were delivered to doctors’ offices, pharmacies and clinics all around the country.  Some people couldn’t believe that a controlled laboratory environment that produced flu vaccines could have such a massive fuck up.  But, it wasn’t long ago that many people contracted spinal meningitis from steroids that had left the factory tainted.

     We’ll probably never know how the flu vaccines became tainted.  The facilities are long abandoned.  But, it doesn’t matter.  Knowing how or why the dead rose to eat our flesh doesn’t help me survive the night.  We figured out how to kill them long ago.  The rest doesn’t matter.

     I don’t know how many living human beings are left on the planet today.  I know it’s not many.  Some people we’ve come across have said that there may be only 1% of the population left from the time before zombies.  But they’re just guessing.  Personally and quietly, I think it may be less than that.  Far less.

     When the world ended and the age of the zombie began there were four of us:  My wife Samantha, my 7 year old son Malcolm, my 14 year old daughter Tabitha and myself, Ryan Knight.  This is our story.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

     It was a heavy news day.  And most of it was bad.  The country was reeling from a plane crash the day before.  Several hundred people had died in the crash, which was seen live on TV by many.  But, Christmas was just around the corner and many were out spending what they could to make the holidays seem a little brighter.  There were Bowl games on TV for those who weren’t glued to the news channels all the time.  My wife shopped.  My son played catch with a friend out in our fenced backyard.  My daughter talked on the phone up in her room.  Or texted.  Or chatted online, or something like that.  Who knows what a teenage daughter does in the confines of her room?  With so much going on, it only made sense that something mundane would be overlooked.  Several people had fallen ill then lapsed into comas in Boston.

     Two days later, on Monday the 15
th
someone at CNN noticed the coma story and put it up on their website.  By then, three other hospitals, one in Denver, one in Charlotte and one in Atlanta, were reporting the same thing.  Most people were at school or work when the story popped.  I am a tour guide in historic Charleston, SC so I get most of the winter off whether I want it or not.  I spend a lot of time online and I didn’t even see the story.  The horrific plane crash the previous Friday still dominated the news.

     On Tuesday, while the first funerals for the passengers in the crash the week before were covered in excruciating and unnecessary detail, CNN also broke the story of the comas.  The victims were connected.  All of them received flu vaccines and the vaccines had come from the same lab.  Some place in New England.  Tainted drugs.  Was it an accident?  Bio-terrorism?  Something worse?  What would happen to the victims still in their comas?  And, more importantly, what cities got the tainted vaccine?  Theories abounded.

     My wife brought it up over dinner.  “You already know how I feel about vaccines but this is even worse than I imagined.  Comas?  It’s crazy.”

     “Just another day in a world gone mad,” I said.  It was my motto.  If I had a motto.

     “You just can’t trust anyone anymore,” Sam said.

     “Who can’t we trust?” asked Tabitha.  I thought 14 year old girls were supposed to ignore everything their parents said.

     “Oh, some people got sick from a flu vaccine, that’s all.”  My wife obviously had more trust in our daughter’s ability to process adult things.

     “Well, I am never taking medicine again.”

     “Thanks, Sam.  That was great,” I said as I handed a bite of meat down to Thor, our yellow lab.  He stayed at my feet at the dinner table most of the time.

     My son, Malcolm chimed in.  “If Tabby doesn’t have to take any yucky medicine, then I’m not taking any either.”  Tabby smiled to herself.

     “Excellent, Sam.  That’s all on you.  I’ll start cleaning up.”  I’d rather do dishes than try to figure out how to undo what my wife just did.  Thor followed me into the kitchen hoping for another treat.  Thankfully, my family is fairly healthy.  A few migraine remedies for my wife.  But, overall we don’t take much yucky medicine.

Wednesday, December, 17
th

     On Wednesday, it happened.  CNN reported that several of the coma patients in Boston had died.  While the experts talked in the studio, a live crew set up at the hospital for the inevitable hospital spokesperson statement.  The building was a midsized hospital about 6 stories tall.  The front entrance was dominated by large glass doors.  The video feed shifted to the hospital as the spokesperson was about to speak.  Suddenly, sirens were heard getting louder as two squad cars pulled up to the hospital entrance, lights flashing.  Two officers jumped out of the cars and raced into the facility.  Reporters scrambled to report something while the hospital spokespeople retreated back inside the building to find out for themselves what was going on. 

     I was watching it live from home in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt.  Our TV room was a fairly large family room with a sofa, loveseat and recliner.  And the biggest flat screen TV I could afford without making my wife mad.  There was also surround sound, of course.  Thor slept next to me on the couch.

     It didn’t take long before people could be seen coming out of the hospital entrance.  A few at first, then quickly there were more.  Now, some were running.  Hospital visitors, doctors, nurses and patients all mixed together.  Running from something as yet unseen.  Running scared.  The reporters ran to the fleeing people with their questions.  No one could believe the answers.

     As more police cars arrived, followed closely by SWAT then fire rescue and ambulance, the reporters pieced together what had happened inside.  The fleeing people reported hearing screams coming from the area of the hospital where the coma victims were.  Of course, hospital workers ran toward the screams trying to help.  Then they saw blood, lots of blood.  There was blood on nurses, blood on doctors.  There was blood on security personnel and blood on the floor.  Blood like they had never seen.  One nurse who was obviously shaken up spoke a little more coherently than the others.  She was breathing heavily as she spoke.

     “I saw one of the doctors reach for a door, trying to get to where the screaming was coming from.  Then the door punched open and this man…  This man, he was covered in blood.  It ran from his mouth to his neck and chest.  And there was something in his mouth.  Something that looked like flesh.  He grabbed the doctor and bit her on the face.  He just latched on with his teeth like a lion at the zoo.  When the doctor tried to get away, she fell and half her face came off in his mouth.  Oh, God.  Her face came off.  The man went down on top of the doctor, biting and chewing, ripping and tearing.  All the while, the doctor was screaming.  That’s when I ran.”  The nurse said.

     The reporters listened, the tapes rolled, the witnesses talked and the whole thing was broadcast live on TV until somebody in the studio realized that fact.  At that point, the shot went back to the studio where the anchors sat in stunned silence, some with their mouths hanging open.  It’s hard to look at a journalist that’s stunned into silence.  I must’ve looked about the same sitting there on the sofa.  CNN went to a commercial and I went down the hall to take a piss after letting Thor outside to do the same.

     I came back through the kitchen and grabbed some pretzels from the pantry and a diet coke from the fridge.  Thor was already at the back door waiting patiently for me.  The anchors on CNN were saying that the crazed man was still inside and police had him surrounded.  No one suggested that the people in the coma and the crazed man were connected.   Why would they?  Just another day in a world gone mad.

     Back live, more people could be seen running from the hospital, some with the help of the police.  They told stories that backed up what the nurse had said a few minutes before.  Some hid after the doctor went down, some ran as far as they could.  Then a survivor reported hearing gunfire.  Several shots, all coming from the hallway near the coma patients.  Then, few shots could be heard outside.  It was a lot of gunfire for one man.  Even a crazed, flesh eating man.

     I sent a text to my wife.  She worked in an office but was often on the phone.  Email or text usually got her attention.  “You better check out CNN.  There’s something going on at the hospital in Boston.”

     As usual, we responded with “?”

     On the TV, the reporter was speaking to the camera.  “Marie, whatever was happening inside the hospital is now over.  The police officer that I spoke with was reluctant to talk to us but did say that the assailant is down.  He said it took a lot of lead to stop him.  His words.  The officer didn’t know how many people had been injured or killed.  The officer was shaking as he spoke, clearly upset by what he’d witnessed.  He looked, well, he looked scared.  Back to the studio.”

     As the anchor in the studio began to speak, the microphone at the scene, left open briefly, picked up the sounds of gunfire.  The picture went back to the live shot of the hospital.  Police officers and SWAT were running up to the entrance of the hospital.  The sound of gunfire seemed to be coming from just inside the door.  A few officers were helping wounded people through the doors.  The reporter was speaking.  “We don’t know what’s going on now, Marie and Jack.  There are many people that appear to be wounded.  Several that are just covered in blood…”  Her voice trailed off as several SWAT officers could be seen backing out of the doors firing at something not yet visible.  Then, their targets appeared.

     My wife texted back; “Holy Crap!”

     Coming through the doors were four people covered in blood.  They staggered through the doors, jerking every time they were hit by a bullet.  After what seemed like minutes, one of the people went down with a shot to the head.  It took the other officers a moment to realize what had happened then they started to target the head as well.  The remaining three people went down quickly.  When the last staggering assailant went down, all the officers stared at the bodies as if they were expecting the dead to rise up.  Then, finally one of the officers collapsed to the ground.  He was joined quickly by two others.  As more officers moved up to assist, the camera view was blocked and the picture went back to the studio.  One anchor stared at something off-screen.  The other turned to the camera and attempted to speak as tears rolled down his face.  After two heartbeats, the picture went black and the CNN logo appeared.

     I sent another text to my wife.  “I think you should stop on the way home and get some groceries.  Water, canned stuff.”

     “Why?”

     “People get crazy when crazy things happen.  If you want, I’ll go.”

     “No, I’ll stop.  You’ll be home for the kids?”

     “Yep.”

     When the news came back on there was a different anchor at the news desk.  With a moderate level of composure, she recapped the events as she knew them.  There were several people dead.  A bunch more injured.  The victims had been, for lack of a better term, eaten by an unknown number of other people inside the hospital.  They cut back to the reporter on location in Boston for an update.

     I couldn’t help thinking that this reporter had just stumbled into the biggest journalism coup ever.  At the hospital to report on a few dead coma patients and ends up reporting an unbelievably bloody massacre of some kind.  She’d win a prize because of this, I’m sure.  The reporter had also regained some measure of composure and was interviewing a doctor who had witnessed some of what happened.  The doctor was obviously in shock but the reporter kept at him.

     “I still don’t know what happened.  Don’t know.  The blood was everywhere.  Those people were my friends.  They died horribly.”

     “Sir, who did the attacking?  Could you see who they were?”

     “The coma patients.”

     “Sir, we understood that the coma patients were dead.  How could they have attacked anyone?”

     “The people who attacked my friends were the coma patients.  I’m sure.  I worked in that area.”

     “The coma patients were dead.  That’s why we were here.”

     “They were dead.  Then they woke up.  Then they ate my friends.”

     I couldn’t help but think how absolutely crazy that sounded.  There were dead people coming back to life and killing others.  There was definitely a tingling rising on the back of my neck.  Before I could address this tingling the desk anchor cut back into the interview.

     “We’re getting a report now from a hospital in Charlotte, NC.  Let’s go there now.”

     The scene was eerily similar to the one in Boston.  Hospital exterior.  Police outside.  People, nurses, patients doctors, all coming out of the hospital.

     “Sherri, we’re here outside Charlotte Memorial Hospital in Charlotte, NC.  We were here because one of the tainted flu vaccine coma patients had died.  Then as we were going to go live, the tragic events in Boston occurred.  Now, it seems like we have something similar going on here.  We can see people running from the building and hear screaming coming from inside.  It looks like the police are discussing their options.  And, it looks now like they’re going in.  A handful of officers without SWAT backup have moved up towards the entrance.  Gary, Gary.  Let’s follow them up as far as they’ll let us.  C’mon.”

     I found myself on the edge of the sofa, heart racing.  Even Thor perked up and was listening and watching.

     The camera operator, Gary, started running for the hospital entrance trying to keep the lens on the reporter and the overall scene for the folks at home.  They were inside the hospital now and the people are running by the lens on their way out to safety.  As the camera goes around a corner they catch up to the police who have stopped in front of a set of doors.  As I watched live on TV at home in my pajama bottoms and t-shirt, a patient bursts through the doors covered in blood.  He falls to the ground twitching.  Another person, this one a maintenance worker comes through the door.  Halfway through he is grabbed from behind by what appears to be a doctor.  The doctor tears into the man’s neck from behind and he goes down, twitching as well.  The police open fire at the doctor and the camera jumps a bit from the sound of the gunfire.  The shots don’t seem to have any effect.  The camera begins to back up as the doctor staggers toward the officers, jerking with every hit.  The camera operator panics and drops the camera.  The reporter trips and falls.  The doctor falls onto her, biting into her face and neck, tearing away flesh as the camera records every detail.

     More gunshots could be heard in the corridor but I didn’t see that happen.  I was already taking two steps at a time up the stairs to my bedroom.  Wallet, keys, phone, knife.  Must have a knife, its rule #9.  I reached up onto the shelf for a certain shoebox.  My one guilty pleasure.  A Glock 19.  Before the wife and kids, I would go out with friends to shoot at the range on weekends.  The holster was where it was supposed to be.  I get everything where it needs to be, put Thor out back in the yard and I’m out the door to get my family.  I don’t really know what’s going on.  Or, at least, I don’t want to admit it yet.  But, whatever is going on, we all need to be together, not spread out like we are now.

     Tabitha’s school was closest.  I called ahead and lied.  I told them that an aunt had died.   But don’t tell Tabitha.  I wanted to do that.  Tabby didn’t have an aunt but they didn’t know that.  What was I supposed to tell them?  “Oh, I’d like to get my daughter out of school because people are dying, then waking up and eating other people?”  I like the idea of lying to them a lot more in this case.  I had to wait some of the longest five minutes of my life waiting for them to bring my daughter was brought to me in the office.

     “Why are you doing this?  You are so embarrassing.”

     “We’re not doing this Tab.  Walk to the car.  Go quickly.  Do it now.

     “What’s wrong?” she asked.  “Why are you acting like this?”

     “Don’t ask questions.”  I grabbed her arm and hurried her along.  Partly to move her along and partly to give her a sense of the gravity of the situation.  Of course, I had no idea of the gravity of the situation myself.  Once in the car, she looked scared and I felt bad.

     “Where’s Mom?  Where’s Mal?”

     “Your Mom is at work.  She’s fine.  Malcolm is fine too.  He’s at school.  We’re going there now.”

     “Then, what’s going on?”  A reasonable question and I had no real answer to give her.

     “Tabby, you know how you’re complaining that I always treat you like a little girl?  Well, I do.  I love you and want to protect you from all the bad stuff in the world.”

     “Dad, I’m not a little girl anymore.  I know what the world is like.”

     “You don’t Tabby, you really don’t.  And, to make things worse, I think the world just changed, pumpkin.  Something happened in Boston today, something bad.  And I’m not 100% sure we’re safe from it even all the way down here.  If I tell you what I saw on the news, you’re gonna think I’m making it up or playing a joke but I’m not.  I watched it live on TV and I’m not even sure what I saw.”

     “What did you see Daddy?”  She actually was taking me seriously and looked fairly concerned.

     I asked her if she was squeamish and she rolled her eyes.  Typical.  My little girl.  The last time we watched a scary movie together, she watched most of it from behind her fingers.  Was this the right thing to do?  Probably not, but the world had changed and she was going to have to live in it too.  So, sitting with her in my Land Cruiser I made a decision.  I took her phone and pulled up the video for her to watch.  While Tab was watching the video, I called Mal’s school.  No lies this time.  “I want my child.  No, no one died.  Just coming to get him.  Thank you.”