Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse (7 page)

Sean fell to his knees and cradled John Sullivan’s head. His father’s eyes were wide open and staring blankly. “Dad, Dad,” he moaned. “Oh, my God, no.” As tears ran down his face, a thought dawned on him. “Mom?” he asked, looking up frantically. He got up and ran into the kitchen. The damage in that room was more complete. Chairs were strewn all about, and dishes and food littered the floor. The blaring voice on the television was starting to drive him mad. He followed the debris and blood spatters to the mud room at the back door. It looked as though his mother had been trying to get outside to escape, but she hadn’t made it. With her legs stretched out in front of her, Cecelia Sullivan was sitting on the floor, her back against the door. She was clearly dead. Her nightgown was torn open, and she was almost eviscerated, her intestines tumbling out of the ragged hole in her abdomen and into her blood-drenched lap.

Sean stumbled back, putting his hands over his mouth in shock. He was crying so hard now he could hardly see. Making a sudden choking sound, he turned and ran for the sink. Leaning over the drain, Sean vomited out the entire contents of his spasming stomach. Gasping and choking, he straightened up, looked back at his mother’s body, then bent over again and was wracked by dry heaves. Finally getting control he stood erect and walked into the living room. Mind blank, he automatically shut off the television. Sean walked through the open front door and, standing at the entrance, dialed 911. All he got was a busy signal. He then noticed bloody footprints leading away from the house. Following them to the neighbor’s backyard, he found the person who had savaged
his parents. It was their neighbor. Covered with blood and just standing there, chewing on something in his hand, the undead man didn’t notice Sean standing there. Suddenly overcome by a white-hot, raging hatred, Sean grabbed a shovel that was leaning against the house and ran at the gore-soaked figure.

The zombie saw Sean running toward him, groaned loudly, and raised a hand. Sean, enraged, knocked the zombie’s arm down and swung the shovel like a baseball bat with all his might. The flat of the shovel hit the ghoul square in the center of his face, making a sound like that of a melon bursting. As the zombie staggered back, Sean swung again, screaming in anger. This time, his face now pushed in, the zombie fell backward like a tree falling. Sean stepped up and stood over him. Using the blade of the tool, he chopped at the creature’s head. The blade kept rising and falling, gore flying in all directions, until Sean was physically unable to lift the shovel again. Panting furiously, he stood there, leaning on the shovel, eyes closed, trying to catch his breath. It took at least ten minutes for him to calm himself down, get his breath, and take stock of his actions.

The zombie, lying flat on his back, arms outstretched, had basically no head left. There was only a mass of wet, bloody tissue and shattered bone. As Sean gazed down, noticing one intact milky eye staring up at him from the jumble of flesh, it was hard to believe that what he saw once had been a human face.

Still breathing heavily, Sean dropped the gore-covered shovel and trudged back to his parents’ house. After climbing the front stairs, he leaned wearily against the doorframe, not knowing what to do next. Even though 911 wasn’t answering, he knew he couldn’t possibly leave his parents lying there like that. His eyes filled again with tears, but he was much too exhausted to cry. Sean slowly stepped back into the abattoir then grabbed the afghan his mother had knitted years ago from the back of the living-room couch. He opened the green, pink, and cream-colored blanket and walked over to cover his father’s body. As he walked, he spread his arms up and out, holding each end of the thick blanket
out. Bending to drape it over his father, he looked down and froze. The only thing on the carpet was a large pool of congealed blood. His father’s body was gone.

8

M
ichael Quinn got a call on his cell phone at noon. Seeing it was Susan, his girlfriend, he quickly answered. “Sue, how and where are you?” he said without preamble. “We’re still at the hospital,” she announced. “They closed the emergency room, Mike. I heard some of the ER nurses talking, and all the patients who came in turned into zombies and attacked everyone near them. The entire first floor is in shambles. Whatever staff made it out either came upstairs or ran away. We’ve disabled the elevators and blocked the stairways with hospital beds and furniture. Fortunately we’ve had very few turn in our wing. And those who did we knew were going to, so we restrained them in their beds.”

“Jesus, Sue,” gasped Michael incredulously, “that’s horrible.”

“I’m telling you, Mike, it’s now a desperate situation here.”

Mike thought for a moment then asked her, “Do you want me to come get you?”

“Not yet,” she answered, exhaling sharply. “We’re safe for now, and the patients here still need our help. If things deteriorate any further, I’ll call you back.”

“Stay safe, hon,” he said.

“You too, Michael. Bye.”

Michael disconnected and sat back down on the sofa. The television was on, and unbelievable images were flooding in from all corners of the
globe. Riots were erupting in every major city. People still were continuing to die of the Pandora 2 Mutation and coming back to life. The quarantine centers were now just holding pens for zombies, as victims died, turned, and attacked the personnel and the not-yet dead, and they in turn died and attacked others. In some countries, such as Germany and Israel, law enforcement just secured the gates, evacuated military personnel, and bombed the infected who were enclosed within. In most cases, many, many zombies were annihilated this way, but others were now free to travel the countryside, as their prison had been destroyed.

In many areas of the world, zombies roamed freely. Certain zones were losing all communication with the rest of civilization. Television, telephones, and the Internet still functioned as usual, except in a number of poor third-world countries.

Jack was sitting despondently in one of the leather easy chairs. Unable to reach Nicole in New York City and very worried about her, he was curled up and halfheartedly munching on an apple. Suddenly his cell phone rang. Scrambling to his feet, he raised it rapidly to his ear. “Nicky?” he asked anxiously.

“No, it’s me…Tommy,” a male voice roughly responded.

“Holy shit! Tommy?” Jack shouted happily. “Oh, man, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

“Likewise, bro.”

“Are you still in the ’Stan?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, Jack,” his younger brother answered. “Listen to me. The president is recalling all troops from overseas deployment and bringing us all back to the States. I think they intend to reverse the Posse Comitatus Act and use the forces to augment and then replace the National Guard…at least temporarily.” Tommy paused for a few moments then continued. “We’ve been starting to have firefights with not only insurgents but now with bunches of zombies as well. With the world governments having trouble keeping control, the president is worried that our troops may become trapped at their stations.”

“Wow,” Jack exclaimed, “but that’s good news. You’ll be back in the States finally.”

“Right you are,” responded Tommy warmly. “I hear they’re transferring my company to Eglin Air Force Base on the Gulf Coast of Florida to help act as protection for the fighters and bombers there. It’ll be nice to be back in our home state again, bro.”

“Awesome,” declared his brother. “You’re close to home.”

“Roger that. Hey, the transports are here. I’ve got to run. I’ll call you again when we get stateside, Doc. Love you, big brother.”

“You too, little brother.”

As their brief call ended, Jack sat back, smiling.
Well
, he thought,
finally some good news
.

9

S
ean stood staring agape at the dark stain. His brain couldn’t grasp the fact that his dead father’s body wasn’t where it was supposed to be. He looked around numbly but didn’t see the corpse anywhere.

“Dad?” he meekly asked.

Sean wandered into his parents’ dining room. His father was standing on the other side of the big cherry table, facing the window.

“Dad?” he squeaked.

His father turned around to face him. Blood from his torn-open throat drenched his polo shirt. With milky-white eyes glaring at his son, he snarled and stepped forward, smacking into the table. The former John Sullivan put his hands on the tabletop and leaned in closer with a vicious, wet, gurgling growl. Blood mixed with saliva hung in long strands from his unshaven chin. He moved sideways and then, toppling a chair, started after his son.

This woke Sean up from his stupor. He turned and ran back into the living room. There his mother was waiting for him. Lips curled up in what he wasn’t sure was a sneer or a smile, she made a guttural sound deep within her throat. With her intestines hanging down in bloody, purple ropes to her feet, she also came after him. Sean screamed and, dodging around her, ran across the living room and into the kitchen area. He came to an abrupt halt, turned, and spun the kitchen table around, pushing it into the doorway he had just come through. It slammed into
the doorjamb just as both of his parents appeared. Snarling fiercely, his father tried ferociously to push the table away. Sean used this time to turn and run to the dining room. Still hearing his father’s frustrated growls, he ran into the living room, heading for the front door. His mother already was coming into the room and was too close for him to make it to safety. As he reached the front door and grasped the knob, his mother, reaching her clawed hands to him, stepped on a strand of her own intestines. Her feet became entangled as they pulled her guts out of her abdominal cavity, and she fell on her face before she could reach him.

Whimpering, Sean swung open the door and raced out onto the lawn. He paused for a fraction of a second then ran straight for his car. He jumped in and quickly started it. Looking back at the house, he saw his parents appear in the doorway, loud guttural sounds issuing from them. Sean pressed the gas pedal to the floor and sped quickly away from this nightmare, the back end of the car swaying.

When he arrived home, he sat behind the wheel of his SUV and shook. The adrenaline rush had passed, and he was left with a headache and trembling hands. On his way here, zombies had twice attacked his car on the road. The second time was at a stoplight. One of those monsters had grabbed the door handle with two hands, yanking on it to try to get in. Sean floored it. The zombie fell but wouldn’t let go of the handle. Sean opened the window and was beating on the zombie’s hands, screaming for him to let go, as he sped down the street. He made a tire-squealing right turn, and the ghoul finally lost his grip and slammed into a parked car. As Sean sped on, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw the creature trying to get up.

At last the shaking stopped, and he went inside. Mike and Jack ran to greet him. The three friends sat together, and Sean asked for a beer, which Mike ran to get. After downing the brew in a long, continual series of gulps, he proceeded to tell them of his hellish experience. He had just finished when his phone rang. It was Linda, his girlfriend.

“Hi,” he said tiredly.

“Sean,” she said, the hurt evident in her voice, “I can’t believe that with all that’s been going on, you haven’t even called me once today.”

“Linda—” he started.

“For all you knew, I could have been dead. You know…” she continued on.

“Linda,” he said softly.

“…my mother was just—”

“Linda!” Sean shouted. When she was silent, he went on softly. “I’m sorry. My parents are dead. I went to their house, and they were dead. Then they both turned and attacked me,” he said even softer. “I ran out.”

“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Sean. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know. I’m just so scared. Sean, I’ll throw my things in a bag and be right over.” She hung up.

As an awkward silence ensued, Mike glanced at Sean and said, “Linda called earlier. She was looking for you, and I told her you went to see your folks.”

“Yeah, well—” Sean began.

Mike kept on speaking as though Sean never had started. “She was crying. The quarantine police took her mother. She’s afraid for her, and well, she’s just scared, man.”

“Oh, shit,” Sean said disgustedly, shaking his head at the ceiling. He put his hand over his eyes. “Jesus, I’m such a jerk! She tried to tell me…”

Linda Berger’s father had died four years ago, and her mother had moved to Arizona, outside of Scottsdale. Although they constantly argued, Linda loved her.

An hour later Linda walked through the door. The guys were watching television, so Sean excused himself, and he and Linda went up to his bedroom to talk.

Jack and Michael were watching a scientist discuss the attempt to find a cure for the Pandora 2 Mutation. The problem they were trying to overcome was the fact that since the original microbe was of alien origin, none of the researchers had any point of reference at which to start. They were still trying to analyze how it originally had infected humans. It had turned into an enigma of epic proportions.

Jack glanced out the window and noticed the sun was just starting to set. Right then his cell phone rang. He got up, stepped away from the television screen, and answered it.

“Hello?”

“Jack, it’s Nicky,” Nicky whispered.

“Nicky, are you home? Why are you whispering?” Jack asked, puzzled.

“No. I’m still here in New York.”

“Still in the city?” he retorted. “What happened? And why are you whispering?”

“We’re downtown somewhere. I think maybe Little Italy. We’re hiding in a basement stairwell until dark.”

“Hiding?” he said. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Do you remember the six other people I was trying to get to the ferry with?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Well, there are only three of us now. One was attacked as soon as we left the restaurant. Two others were killed by zombies on the way here. Another person, a poor girl named Marianne, was bitten on the leg when we got to the Village. When we found out, we were afraid of her dying and turning into one of them, so we ran.” Nicky sniffed now, still whispering. “She…she was sobbing and trying to keep up with us, but we were so scared that we lost her in the maze of streets. There are more and more of these dead things on the streets now. They’re attacking everyone they can find. We’re hoping we’ll have a better chance of slipping past them at night. Jack, I have my ringer turned off, so you can’t call me. I don’t want the ring to attract their attention. I’ll call you when I can. I love you.”