Alameda Native History Project

Tag: horror

  • Zombie: The Incident at Bloody Rock – Four

    Four

    I’d never been able to sleep on those big jumbo jets.  I don’t know what it was about them.  Maybe it was because they flew so high up.  I remember one time I flew redeye to Dulles from San Francisco in a 747 and didn’t sleep a wink.  Then we flew from Dulles to a small airport in Pennsylvania, in a little mudskipper.  We’re talking a fifty passenger, two prop plane.  I slept like a baby the whole flight.  Maybe it was the adrenaline come-down, or the safety of my father.  My dreams were vivid:

    I saw it happening in front of me, the whole terrifying experience of dying.  The pain, the gore, I imagined myself on the hospital bed, bleeding out, burning out and choking on my own breath until it all went black.

    …Then waking up again like it was some bad dream.  I saw the astonishment I felt reflected in the nurses’ faces.  I wondered if I were ghost.  I felt as if I were replaying something that already happened when I looked over and saw the others tearing the room up.  I already knew to hide.  I watched as people ran past me screaming, only to be brought down and eaten.  I scrunched myself down in a storage bin and closed my eyes.  All around me I could hear people screaming, pleading for their lives, suffering….  I covered my ears so I couldn’t hear and prayed.

    From somewhere else, I could hear Clive telling dad that’s when I found him.  In my haze, I struggled to come to; I was almost too tired to move.  The car had stopped; I felt like we were still waiting for George.  Then I remembered, the images of his burning truck coming back.  I wondered which killed him: the truck rolling over, or the subsequent fire.

    As I climbed back into the cabin, I noticed my ankle was feeling a lot better.

    Clive turned around and asked, “Did you sleep okay?”

    “Yeah,” I said, “But I don’t think I really slept.  I think I dreamt what you were telling dad about what happened.”

    “How long have we been stopped?”  I asked.

    “Maybe about fifteen minutes,” Dad said.

    We all looked at each other for a moment.  I felt like I had interrupted the flow of things.

    “So. . .” I began awkwardly, “Why are we stopped here?”

    Dad let out his breath and shrugged.  “I don’t know . . . .  I just wanted to rest, I guess.  Try to get a grip on what just happened.”

    “Oh,” I said, “Watch out, Clive, I need to stretch my legs.”

    I pushed Clive out of the way, pulled the latch and flopped out of the door, onto my back, in the dirt.  The cool earth greeted me and I savored the feeling of calm and serenity, the pine scent, the dirt.  I took a big whiff of dirt-smell and looked at the sky.  I cocked my head to the left and looked out over the lake.  In the distance, I could see a thin trail of black smoke rising from where we left George…

    We were in front of the coffee shop, three doors up the street from the gas station.  The sky was bright blue, except for the horizon, where I could see the last thin strips color before the sun would to peek over the hills.  My watch showed sixty forty-three.

    The road we were on was a two-way; one lane larger than the unmarked dirt roads we had escaped on.  The shoulder of the north side being nothing but wood.  There was the rise of another valley hill maybe five hundred yards off.  The place was a ghost town, just like I thought.  It didn’t look like anything had been open in a while.  The window of the coffee shop had a thick layer of dust.  As I pressed my face against the glass I could see everything inside was coated as well.

    “Dad,” I said.

    He came over and stood by me.  We were both looking at the smoke now.  I wanted to tell him not to feel bad.  But I kinda wanted him to tell me that.  The incidents at Bloody Rock were so fresh I couldn’t think about them without breathing heavier.  And then there was Clive.  I found myself spacing out for a minute, thinking about what would happen, eventually.  Then I wasn’t really thinking about that, I was just staring out.

    “It’s unbelievable,” Dad said quietly.

    When I turned, he was looking at me solemnly.  But somewhere in his eyes I saw a glint.

    “What is?”  I asked him.

    “How are you so calm?”  Dad asked me, “Are you just pretending?  What Clive told me. . .”

    He left off there, probably realizing he didn’t need to tell me.  I took a few seconds to think about what I would say.  I wasn’t really calm inside.  But we were away from it.  We had that much.  How long would it take for them to wander?  Or chase the others into the woods?  Do they even need to eat?

    “I don’t know,” I said to myself, as much as him.  “I just took it at face value, took it like I had to.”

    He looked at me.

    “It was really just self-preservation,” I told him.

    Dad asked, “How’s your ankle?”

    I shifted my weight back and forth on it.  It felt really stiff, but I could still use it, for the most part.

    “It’s okay, I guess.”  I told him, “Could use some ice, though.”

    When Clive came over to tell us we were forty-five minutes away from the highway, I noticed his eyes were a little paler.  They looked like a gray instead of blue.  And he used to have brown eyes.  Dad and I both shared a look before examining the route.  It was different from the way we came, but it would shave off fifteen minutes.  And the road looked fairly flat, once we hit the ridge.

    The winds shifted direction, a dry heat wafting over us.  I could have sworn I heard something humming in the distance.  Clive was looking at me.

    “Who do you think called Dr. Robertson?” He asked.

    “I don’t know,” I said, “All the phones I tried weren’t working.  And we didn’t get cell phone reception.”

    “Maybe he was just crazy,” Dad offered.

    I couldn’t argue with that.  The little asshole was probably bunkered up in his office, talking to an imaginary person on the phone.  I let out a low chuckle at the thought.

    “Let’s get out of here.”  Clive said.

    “You don’t have to twist my arm,” Dad replied.

    So we mounted up and drove away. The road was deserted.  Only a couple SUV’s passed us.  Then we turned on the freeway.  By the time my stomach started to gurgle uncontrollably, we’d been driving for two hours and were in Santa Rosa.  Dad spotted a McDonald’s and told us it was time for breakfast.

    The first thing that Clive and I did when we walked into the McDonald’s was wash our hands.  Mine were stained the color of the earth outside the hospital; they looked like I had been digging in red clay, if one didn’t know better.  I tried not to notice as I scrubbed errant bits of hair off my fingernails.  After my hands, I scrubbed my face.  I was tan, normally.  But my face was covered in a thin layer of grime.  More from camping than anything else; I smelled, too.  The smell of the hospital had eased since I changed clothes, but the smell was still stuck in my hair; and it felt like it clung to my skin.

    After I dried off, I took Clive’s pulse, hoping. . . .  But his skin was cold.  And he still didn’t have a pulse.  His eyes were still the lightest, dullest blue I’d ever seen.  Enzyme packages my ass, I thought.  This is some voodoo bullshit.

    When we walked out, Dad had gotten us a pile of McMuffins.  

    “I hop you brought your appetite,” He said.

    Oh man, I thought.

    I tore into the food with a reckless abandon.

    Running for my life had me hungry.  Dad was more conservative, and I noticed Clive just sniffing at the food.  In between a gulp of orange juice and giant bite of egg, sausage and muffin, I took the patty out of Clive’s sandwich and squirted a bunch of ketchup on it, so it looked bloodier.

    “That’s not funny,” He told me.

    “Get used to it,” I told him, “You can’t eat the dog.”

    “’m not hungry,” Was all Clive said.

    I laughed anyway.  A kind of desperate, denial-laugh.

    “Seriously, though,” I told him, “Eat the fucking burger.”

    “Don’t talk to your brother like that!”  Dad snapped.  My dad was scary when he got angry sometimes.

    “Sorry, Clive,” I said.

    “S’okay,” He mumbled.

    Clive picked up the patty, then, and nibbled at it.  I watched him think about the taste, the texture.  I was kind of alarmed when I realized his nostrils were flared and he was looking at the other people eating.  I could tell he really wanted them.  Or us, for that fact.  I tried not to think about it, so I just concentrated on eating.  Dad tried to make small talk, but he could kind of tell Clive and I were both in our own little worlds.

    When I finished, I got up, balled up my wrappers and shit, threw it in the trash, washed my hands, wiped my face and walked outside.  I did all of that while I tried not to focus on the very real fear of my brother rising in me.  Clive wasn’t my brother.  Rodney wasn’t my friend.  Those things in the hall way weren’t my friends.  Even that woman, the one I crushed the head of….  She wasn’t really a woman.

    I shook my head and lit a cigarette; the conflict between what I saw and what I knew was the truth simmering just below the surface.  I hoped that my brother and my dad finished soon.

    Sooner or later, I thought.

    I could already see the battle to the death.  I don’t know why Rodney didn’t lift me up by the eye sockets, too.  Or even tore out my throat or hit me with an EKG monitor.  Why didn’t he?  But Clive was definitely capable of something like it.  Dad should have asked him how he could be so calm.  How did it feel to be a zombie?  How was any of this possible?

    And if we killed him, what would we do with the body?

    “Jesus christ!” I said aloud, “I can’t believe I’m actually thinking about this.”

    A mom with two kids walked out.  The kids were tyke, pretty much unaware of their surroundings.  The mom looked kinda tired as she herded them to the wagon.  It seemed so wrong.  If I’d left him, would he have turned on me?  If I had killed him, I was sure it would’ve felt much worse right now.  But I had to take him with me.

    God damn it.

    When Dad and Clive came back out, I asked to drive.  Dad gave me the keys and I hopped in.  Man, I loved driving the Toyota; and I drove it fast, too.  I rolled the windows down and turned on some oldies to get my mind off everything.  I knew Clive would have to be dealt with.  It was something that I had made my peace with.  In the moments after I snuffed my cigarettes out, I resolved myself to taking the matter into my own hands.  I would make him kill himself.

    Or maybe not; I still didn’t know what to do with the body.  I mean—“alive”—Clive is a zombie.  Dead, Clive is just a dead kid.  And cops are going to want to know why there’s a dead kid in your house.  There’s gonna be an investigation.  Someone has to be blamed, and it wasn’t gonna be me.

    If we didn’t kill him: then what?  Would we let him decompose until he couldn’t move?  Would he be completely conscious during the rest of his decay?  Frankly, would he like for us to bury him alive?  As I rolled over the Richmond Bridge, I considered dumping him in the bay.  A cement coffin might do well.  The body would decompose inside of it; and no one would find it because it’s at the bottom of the bay.

    But then I remembered that this wasn’t just a body.  The whole situation seemed a reversal of all of those hide-the-body dreams I’ve ever had.  This wasn’t just a fit of passion.  But he’s a zombie!  I thought, but I can’t prove it when he’s completely dead!

    It frustrated me, not having an answer.  I needed to have an answer.  I felt like I was on the verge of popping.  But I regained my control, and decide to confer with my father later.  I didn’t know what he thought of the situation.  From what I’d seen, my Dad was pretty much in denial.  He was being kinda vacant, not really bringing attention to anything.  I wondered if he was afraid of Clive, too.  If, maybe, he thought that bringing the matter up would spur an attack.

    At the toll plaza, at the Bay Bridge, I jockeyed my way through cars.  Dad gave me the toll money and I made the hop, skip and jump to our exit.  Sometimes it was convenient living in the middle of the bay.

    When we got home, everything was how we left it.  Everything seemed so normal.  I let out a huge sigh of relief when I opened the front door and the cool air hit me.  We didn’t worry about the stuff in the truck yet.  As Dad and Clive started opening the windows, I dropped my backpack on my bed, turn my computer on, and stood out on the front porch and looked at San Francisco.  I could hear Dad messing with the television.

    The day was clear.  It was about eleven now, and it was unseasonably warm for November.  And, with only a couple hours of sleep, it was incredibly early.  When I turned around and went back inside, Dad was watching channel two.  I remember this part clearly:

    “…And the breaking news: Bombs Destroy the Francis E. Seymour Children’s Research Hospital  in an Apparent Terrorist Attack.  There are no survivors,” Was what the lady said.

    I said, “What the fuck?!”

    Dad said, “Clive!”

    Clive came running and we all looked at the screen.  It was a hill, with a smoldering pile of brick and metal rubble.

    “That’s the hospital!” Clive exclaimed.

    The image cut to a pan over some dead bodies in the wreckage, burning R.V.’s.

    “Officials believe several bombs that were planted inside the hospital exploded earlier than planned.  The explosions completely destroyed the hospital.  What you see behind me is the rubble.  Some of it is still on fire, but fire crews say they have it… [I could hear the sounds of a jet soaring overhead] ninety-percent contained.”

    We looked on in disbelief as they played interviews with someone in camoflauge.

    “This is bullshit,” Dad said.

    Clive and I just looked at each other in disbelief.  The television told us there would be more information at noon.  Fuck, I thought.  Dad jumped up and started screaming cover-up.

    “You can’t show anyone those CD’s now,” Dad told me.  “If they find out we were there. . .”

    He looked at Clive.  I could see the light turn on.  Clive looked at both of us like we were going to kill him.  And who knows?  Maybe we were.

    “Go to your room, Clive,” Dad said.  “We need to talk about you.”

    “Are you going to kill me?”  He asked, obviously afraid.

    But Dad didn’t answer.  Clive went to his room, and slammed his door.  Dad turned the television up in the living room, and we walked into the kitchen, where we wouldn’t be overheard.  He poured a glass of water.

    “Have you been thinking about what to do, too?”  I asked him.

    “Yeah,” Dad says, “But this completely changes everything.”

    I took out the first aid kit and started to wrap my ankle.  It was very stiff, and very swollen, but not broken.  I brought Dad up to speed on what I had already considered.  Dad nodded and sipped his water.

    In the background, I could hear the reporters talking about “assassination.”  One of the African diplomats who were supposed to in attendance was running for re-election.  He was very unpopular, the report said, and lots of people wanted him out.  It was amazing how deep the lie was.

    They already had people in jail for orchestrating the attack.  I wondered what the omnipotent “they” would do if they ever found out we were alive.  My only regret was that I couldn’t be there to witness the spectacle.  Those things were exterminated.  At least, I hoped they were.

    “Whatever happened there,” Dad said, “People aren’t supposed to know there were zombies.  And we definitely were not supposed to get away.”

    I wondered how they did it.  How the government decided to destroy everything.  Even though the footage was heavily edited, I was sure the jet in the background was a fighter.  They probably called in the air force, I thought.

    “How many of them do you think escaped?”  I asked.

    “I don’t know…”  Dad replied, “They had a few hours to roam.  Those other two got pretty far…”

    “Do you think they’ll get to civilization?”

    Dad shrugged.

    Then I asked him the real question, “What do we do with the body?”

    Dad’s face went through a series of emotions, the first being shocked anger.  I thought he was going to hit me, honestly.  Then he took on the look he has whenever we play chess and I’ve just backed him into a corner.  He looked at the backyard, probably sizing it up for a burial.

    “We could just bury him under the house,” I cracked.

    “Don’t be morbid,” Dad told me, “This is already bad enough without you being so insensitive.”

    That hurt.  I didn’t say anything after that.  We looked at each other, trying to come up with an alternative.

    “There can’t be an autopsy,” Dad said, “That’s just going to expose us.  And so are those discs.  You should destroy them immediately.  We need to burn those clothes.  How long do you think we have with Clive?”

    “I don’t know,” I told him.  “Compared to Rodney and everyone else . . . he’s lasted for quite a while.  When Rodney attacked me, his eyes were yellow.  I don’t know if that’s the benchmark, but Clive’s eyes have only been getting paler.”

    “When do you think it’ll happen?”  Dad asked.

    “Probably tonight,” I told him.

    Dad asked, “Do you think we should ask for his opinion?”

    “You can,” I told him.  “I’ve had my share of murder.”

    Dad gave me a concerned look, “You don’t think it’s murder, do you?”

    He said, “The doctors checked him.  He’s dead.  They’re all dead, Kenny.  If we kill him…  Well, we won’t be killing him.”

    “But how do we explain his disappearance?  How do we just live knowing he’s out there?”  I motioned to the backyard.

    “The disappearance is easy,” Dad told me, “He died in the hospital, okay?”

    “Okay,” I agreed.

    But that still didn’t help the fact that my little brother’s body would be buried on our small property, “just waiting to be dug up by some future homeowner.”  How long would it take a CSI team to track his body to us?

    Even if we could explain what happened . . . it just wouldn’t work.  It would be easier if we let him scratch us . . . or bite us; at least it was self-defense.  But then, weren’t we as good as dead, too?  I should have just left him in the hospital.  It was so fucking ironic how one zombie was suddenly more of a problem than a hospital full of zombies. 

    I followed Dad to the gun case and watched as he opened it and prepped his Sig Sauer for my brother’s execution.  My heart rate went cyclical as he took the silencer out of a shoebox in his closet.  We only needed one bullet, but he popped three in the magazine, and chambered the first round.  I tried not thinking of him doing all of us.  (You know: murder-murder-suicide.)

    He turned around and looked at me, his face was desperate.  I could tell he wanted there to be another way.  But we’d worked ourselves into a corner.  No, I put us here.  This whole thing was my fault.  Dad could look as pathetic as he wanted to, but I knew in my heart of hearts, this was my fault.

    Clive must have heard the sound of Dad chambering his Sig, because he popped his head out of the door.  His eyes had taken on the color of old mayonnaise, opaque, and yellowed around the edges.  We looked back at him like the family dog who had reached his time.  I tried not to be afraid as he came toward us.  When he noticed the gun in Dad’s hand, he looked at us with a determined gaze.  

    “Just do it,” Clive said, as he stepped forward bowed his head

    Dad gasped and gripped the pistol tighter.  I watched it quiver in his hand.  My stomach was twisted in knots.  I couldn’t believe this was actually happening.  Clive was closing his eyes tight, but he looked calm.

    Clive muttered, “We all know you have to, dad.”

    When we didn’t move, he looked at us accusingly.

    “Do it!”  He screamed, “I don’t want to be like Rodney!  I don’t want to wait until I fall to pieces to finally rest.  I can’t feel anything.  I’m not hungry.  But I want to…”

    He grimaced and clenched his knuckles white, growling lowly.  Dad and I both took a step back.  Clive was changing before our eyes.  His eyes were rapidly turning yellow now.  I could see a hint of foam at his mouth.  When he locked eyes with me, I felt a quake go through my whole body.

    This is it, I thought, as Clive lunged towards me.

    Dad peppered Clive across the back with all three bullets, but he didn’t even flinch.  I could hear the sounds of ripping.  Ribbons of red hit the floor between us as he grabbed my outstretched arms.  I tried to break free, but he was much stronger than I expected.  He threw me down to the ground.

    I brought my knees up and kicked him away from me.  There was blood pouring from the holes in his side.  But I knew it didn’t matter to him.  Dad tried to catch Clive, but Clive almost caught him.  It was frantic.

    “Don’t get bit!”  I yelled at Dad.

    As Dad wrestled with Clive, I marveled at how strong my little brother had become.  Even Dad was having a hard time fighting him.  It looked like they were evenly matched.  I looked over at the gun rack and felt a calm rush over me.  Dad had left the keys in the case.  I watched them as I fumbled with the locks to the Mossburg.

    “The head!”  I told dad, “The brain or the brain stem.”

    Dad lightly slammed Clive’s head against the table.  I could tell Dad didn’t really want to hurt Clive.  His look said it all, shock and horror.  When Clive turned around, I could see the corner took a piece of his eyebrow.  As they fought, Clive would lean in every once in a while and try to bit Dad.  Dad was trying to get him to calm down.  But Clive was behind reason.

    “He’s beyond the grave,” I muttered to myself.

    I’ll never forget the sound his teeth made against each other.  I pulled the shotgun out and loaded the steel shot.  Clive whipped around immediately when he heard me chamber the first of four shells.  I flipped the safety on and got ready for Clive’s attack.

    It made me feel good to have the shotgun in my hands; even though I wasn’t going to shoot Clive.  I planned to beat his brain in the backyard.

    When Clive charged me, I stepped back and raised the butt to his chin.  Then I shoved the muzzle in his stomach, pushing him back.  He was fighting and scratching, but I was calm.  I kicked him into the kitchen.

    “Open the door, Dad!” I yelled.  “Get outside.”

    He did as he was told, slipping behind Clive, who growled and tried to scratch him.  I took the opportunity to butt him in the back of the head.  Any normal person would have been unconscious.  But Clive just turned and screamed.  I gave him the final kick and he flew out the back door and hit the dirt a few feet away.  He tried to get up, but I ground my boot in his face until he just laid there.  I thought it was over then.

    But he looked up at me like that girl in the Exorcist and said, “Do it!”

    Dad was standing to the side, shocked, as I stood over Clive and gave him the final blow.  It was one more shotgun butt, to the center of his forehead, straight down.  My knees followed through and the whole butt went through to the back of his skull with no more than a crunch and a wet slapping sound.

    When I removed the shotgun from his face, I tried not to look.  But he was my brother.  His head was caved in, a mess of purple skin, shattered bone, blood and hair.  His eyes were laying in the center, completely yellow now.  The smell was unbearable.  It was so bad I could almost see the fetid, curling trails of stench rising from his lifeless body.

    I dropped the shotgun and heaved until McMuffin was spurting out my nose.  Then I started to cry for my dead brother.  I puked so hard, my throat grew raw.  And the ragged breaths that I was taking in between sobs were filled with the horrible taste of my own bile.  I gave one last heave and laid out on the grass, rolling into a ball in the vomit and blood.

    Dad dropped beside me looked at Clive.  The look of shock and horror was displaced by the disgust . . . and the sorrow.

    It was over.  My brother was dead.  And what was it worth?  I looked at the blood on my clothes, on my hands, and wondered if there was anyone to blame for it.  Besides me.

    “Get the shovels and a trash bag to cover him.” I choked out.

    “What are we going to do now?”  Dad asked.

    We did what any good murderers would do.  We bought some lye, dug a hole and planted roses.

  • Zombie: The Incident at Bloody Rock – Two

    Two

    When I walked in, the lobby was empty, the lights were on low.  It was a lot warmer than outside, almost uncomfortable.  Some of the lights were on in the banquet hall.  It didn’t look like they had finished cleaning.  In the center of a room, there was a lone chair, overturned.  I walked past, to the elevators and got in.

    The second floor cafeteria was dark, as the elevator went past.  But I could see a few people rummaging around in the fruit bin.  The laboratory looked like a mess.  As I ascended, I became aware of the racket coming from my brother’s floor.

    At first it was a faint whisper.  But as I got closer I could make out the electronic tones.  The chimes and bells I’d heard coming from my brothers monitors were loud.  What’s more, I could here the lonely tone of EKG’s stuck on flat-line.

    No on was around when the elevator jolted to a stop on Clive’s floor.  Something about the situation made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  Despite the noise, I couldn’t hear anything else.

    I walked a few steps down the hall, and turned in to the AIDS wing.  It was the smell that made me stop dead in my tracks.  It was like rotting pumpkin.  But there was something else, something acrid.

    I was stood at the end of the hall, maybe three feet from the corner of the nurses’ station and took it in.  The place was a mess.  I mean, it looked like someone robbed them.  A few of the curtains were pulled back.  I could see bedpans scattered around the floor; and blood on the sheets.  There was a pile of orange-red puke on the floor next to one of the beds.

    I felt the overwhelming sensation of déjà vu, as I called out, “Hello?”

    I stepped in farther, and almost slipped on a popped bag of saline solution.   This is too much, I thought to myself.

    “Hello?!”  I called again.

    No answer.

    It occurred to me that I couldn’t hear any talking, no shuffling of feet.  Just the blaring alarms and chimes.  They were so loud I couldn’t think.  The buzzing was permeating my skull.  I wanted to go in and shut them off, but I was afraid I was alone.  And I could tell, without even going farther in, that something very bad happened.

    But it doesn’t make sense, I thought.  I saw people in here, from our tent.  Where is everyone?  What happened?

    I hadn’t seen anyone in the building; no patients, no bodies, no nurses!  Being immersed in the horrible smell, I couldn’t think about the word “vomit” without suppressing a retch that, very soon, I wouldn’t be able to suppress anymore.

    So I snuck into the room, crouching and being quieter than the alarms.  Maybe I was being paranoid.  Maybe the whole wing decided to eat in the cafeteria or something…  No one was in the storage hallway that connected both entrances.  But it looked like everything inside the storage bins had been emptied.

    Probably in the heat of the moment, I thought, it must have gotten even more chaotic once they kicked us all out.

    I eased up the wall next to the nurses’ station and peeked around the corner, super fast.  I wanted to see the nurses huddled around a clipboard.  But no one was there when I looked.  I took another quick look just to make sure. I searched the beds, disgusted with what I found; the vomit, blood and gore.

    There was blood all over the place, now that I noticed it.  I mean, I never really thought blood in a hospital would be out of place.  But the way this blood was spattered against places it normally wouldn’t be able to reach…  Like the nurses’ station.  It all gave me cause for alarm.

    Charts were strewn all over.  The phones were off the hooks.  There was blood on those, too…

    Maybe someone had come and killed them all, I thought.

    But I quickly dismissed the idea as paranoid bullshit.  There had to be a reasonable explanation.  The whole wing was deserted.

    I could see down the hall and into the west wing.  The automated doors—which were usually only opened for visitors—were propped open by an overturned wheelchair.  Beyond that, I could see it was the same as this one.  Now that I knew no one was around, I shut off all the monitors.

    It took me a second to adjust to the reduction in noise.  There were still alarms going off in the wing next door.  I looked on the floor for Clive’s file, being careful not to touch any of the crap by using some gloves that were sitting on top of a table.  But I couldn’t find it.

    I was about to walk back to the elevators and tell Dad what I found when I heard something move inside the storage area.  I became terrified when I realized I walked right past it without seeing anything.  I stopped breathing as all the things it could be ran through my head.

    Even though every self-protective fiber in my body was screaming at me not to call out, I knew that I should; in the end, this could turn out to be something completely different.  But if this really was something like terrorism or a mob hit, or some kind of international spy thing, then maybe it was a survivor… or something—hopefully someone who can explain all this.  And, if it were something else, like a rat, or just shifting crap, then I could chuckle to myself before I left to safety; and told Dad to call the fucking cops.

    When I looked in the storage area, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.  I mean, yeah, it was trashed; yeah, there was blood.  Yeah, this is fucking creepy and I want to leave.

    I sighed, “But I have to at least look.”

    There were tons of trays from the shelving units strewn across the floor, but all of the gates around the shelves were closed.  The gates were solid metal, all the way up to my stomach; from there it was covered with metal mesh.  Then I saw it.

    Even though the place was a mess, I could clearly see there was a space cleared in front of the unit in the center of the room where someone had thrown everything out, and closed the doors.  The swing of the doors left a trail in the rubble.  What’s more, I could see the top of a head.  Someone was hiding there.

    “Hello?”  I whispered.

    Whoever was in there jumped.

     “Kenny?” a strangled voice came from the middle locker.  It sounded like Clive.

    “Clive?”  I watched my voice.

    “Kenny!”  It was him, “Hurry! Let me out!”

    I pulled at the handle, but it was locked.  There was an LCD screen with a 9-key pad and some additional buttons around it that said stuff like “OK” and “Clear”.

    “I can’t,” I said, “It’s locked.  Do you know the combination?”

    “No,” He said, his voice was panicked.  “Get me out!”

    I shoved my fingers in-between the door and the frame and pulled as hard as I could.  I pulled so hard that the corner of the door bent outwards; but it wasn’t any closer to opening.

    “Hold on,” I said.

    I crouched down and used all my strength to pull the door up and off the hinges from the bottom.  It made a lot of noise, but there he was.  Clive was curled in the shelf, shivering.  I pulled him out of the bin and he gave me a big hug.

    “I thought you were never going to come!”  He said.

    Clive was covered with blood.  I couldn’t tell if it were his own, or someone else’s.

    “Clive, what happened to you?!”  I hissed.

    Clive shoved his hand over my mouth.  I was repulsed by its smell; his hand was clammy. His eyes were full of fear, and the bags under them were almost as big as Dad’s.

    “Be quiet, Kenny!”  He hissed, “We need to get Avery!”

    “Where is he?” I asked.

    “He’s upstairs, in the cancer ward!”  He pulled my hand and we trotted back to the elevator.

    As we waited for it to arrive, Clive was looking around wildly, as if something were going to pop out any second.  I kept asking him what was wrong, what happened; but he was too focused on finding Avery.

    .

    When we stepped out onto the sixth floor, I noticed there were bloody foot prints and smears everywhere.  Clive signaled to be quiet and walked silently over to the big double doors of the cancer ward.  Clive pushed on them, but they bumped against something and didn’t open.  I gave it the shoulder and the doors slid open enough for me to squeeze through….

    It was dim inside.  Most of the standing lights had been broken, as well as some of the overheads, most of which flickered.  The smell hit me immediately.  Like rotten pumpkin, but curled, like . . . I don’t know.  Whatever it was, it made my stomach wrench.

    “Jesus,” I said, covering my nose and mouth with my t-shirt.

    The doors on the other side of the wing were barricaded, I noticed immediately.  I took a step in and almost tripped on someone’s arm.  I was disgusted.  I was past vomit, past surreal.

    Bodies littered the ground.  Some of them had scalpels in them.  Some of them had bundles of syringes.  There was a boy who caught my eye.  He looked kind of like Avery.

    I half-stepped further into the room to get a closer look.  There was a massive wound in his neck.  I realized I was in his pool of blood.  I took an involuntary step back, glass crunching below my feet, and turned towards the door.  I almost screamed when I saw her.

    There was a nurse, dead.  Mouth gaping wide, her body slumped against the door.  Her head was broken, one eye cleanly removed; her skull crushed like a shell around a boiled egg.  I could see the red, scrambled mess underneath the ragged remainder of her scalp, which hung lazily over the crag.

    There was a monitor stuck in the wall behind and at angle from her head.  It was one of those metal ones the doctors use for EKG machines.  The wall was splattered with blood and I could make out something that I told myself wasn’t her other eye.

    There was a huge wound in her arm, about the size of my fist, like a gouge.  I couldn’t see it very well; but I could tell it wasn’t what killed her.  There was something else about her.  About the way she was laying . . . .

    It occurred to me that whoever had killed her could still be in the room, as the double doors were the only way out, and the woman’s body was effectively blocking the exit.

    “Can you see him?” Clive whispered.

    I freaked and jumped back through the door.  Thank god I had a way out!

    “I don’t think he’s in there.”  I told him.

    His eyes fell on the puddle of blood that seeped out from under the slightly opened door.

    “He has to be in there.”  Clive said, “I know he is.”

    “Clive,” I told him, “Everyone’s dead in there.”

    He made for the door.  But I grabbed him and pulled him away.  “No!”

    Clive broke free of my grip and went inside.  I followed him quickly, hoping to change his mind before we were caught.

    .

    Most of the dead were kids, mostly with shaved heads, and they all seemed to be piled around the nurse’s station.  They all seemed to have head trauma.  We walked around the room, looking them in the face, trying to find Avery.

    We were standing in the middle of the room, I just got finished checking a kid with hair and blood on his face when suddenly, out of the shadows, we heard a cough.  I spun around, ready to. . . well, just ready for whatever it was.

    It was someone in the shadows.  I couldn’t tell from where.

    “Hey guys,” A familiar voice said.

    “Rodney?” Clive asked.

    I could barely make him out.  But there he was, the dark shape in the corner holding something.  We stepped towards him, being careful not to walk on anyone.  Once we got closer, I was able to see he was holding Avery.  And Avery was dead.

    There was a scalpel sticking out of his forehead.  It was so macabre.  The blood running from it had already clotted, the place the scalpel protruded from had become a pussy, yellow mess, god it looked like cottage cheese.  I was thoroughly disturbed now.

    “What happened, Rodney?”  I asked.

    He pulled Avery’s arms into a folded position, across his chest.  “They went mad.”

    “Who did?” I asked.

    Rodney set Avery down on the ground, beside him, and stood up.  “All of us.”

    Clive stepped back then, and pulled my hand.  “Kenny . . . .”

     “They wanted to kill him.  The nurses…. They said he was going to kill us.  But they were killing each other.  I could hear them screaming from the fifth floor.  They were killing all the kids.”  Rodney stopped and held his stomach.  I noticed the blood that had seeped through his shirt; it looked black in the dim light.

    “But then he turned on me.”

    “What do you mean?”  I asked him.

    “Kenny!” Clive hissed.

    “What?”  I turned to look at him.

    Clive was staring over my shoulder.  His face was filled with terror.  I looked to my side when I heard a bedpan clatter on the floor.  An orderly, about six foot three, stood up.  In the dim light, I could see a bundle of syringes sticking out of his cheek, and more in his body.  As he reached towards us, I could see the orderly’s hand was split wide open.  It looked crushed almost.  So bad I could see his bones and tendons.  His neck was leaking blood, from what I could tell was a bite wound.  There were very clear teeth imprints all around the actual gouge.

    “Oh my god,” I gasped.

    And his eyes were yellow.  I wanted to close my eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening when the orderly came toward us.

    But Rodney was there.  He lunged forward and kicked the orderly down.  With a grunt, Rodney picked up a monitor and smashed the orderly’s skull in one blow.  It was done so fast, I wasn’t sure if it really happened.

    The sound of crushing bone and tissue sickened me.  I watched as Rodney stood over the body, panting.  He looked back at me, with dull eyes.

    “They come back,” Rodney said.

    I looked around me, at all the bodies, and wondered if they, too, would come back.

    “We should get out of here,” I said, and turned towards the door.

    But neither one of them turned to follow me.

     “C’mon!” I said.

    But they didn’t move.

    “I can’t,” Rodney said.  “When they find out what I am, they’ll kill me, too.”

    “What do you mean?”  I asked him.

    Rodney walked into the light from the hallway and showed himself to us.

    Clive shrieked a little; but I was so shell-shocked I don’t think I even blinked.

    Rodney’s eyes were glassy, and his pupils were crimson.  His face and body were covered with deep scratches.  Then there were the fist-size gouges in his sides big enough to be a bite…  At the bottom of every wound were purple, empty looking pits that pus seeped out from.  He smelled bad.

    “Are you going to kill me?”  It was the only thing I could ask.  I felt nauseous.  The smell emanating from him was even worse than the corpses around me.

    “I don’t think so.”  Rodney replied.  He was eyeing the open door.  “You know, I was doing okay when the door was closed.”

    Clive ran over and pushed the door closed.

    We just stood there, staring at each other.  I knew I shouldn’t trust him.  But he saved my life.  So this is some kind of . . . zombie thing? I thought.  I could already see there was  a big difference to between the nurses and Rodney.  Rodney was still smart.  Clive. . . .  Wait, I thought, what the fuck is going on?!

    Clive walked over to a window and looked down, seeming not to care if he turned his back on Rodney.  I, only the other hand, could not look away from this . . . macabre predicament.  I was sure that, for all intents and purposes, Rodney should be dead by now—or at least screaming in pain.  But he was neither.

    As if answering my unspoken questions, Rodney began to speak: “All the other people died before they became…  They bled to death, and they came back.  Or they died like Avery; and just woke up.  I don’t know . . . It seems like everyone who got the cure . . . .  They came back . . . .  And they started to bite people.  And the ones who got bitten and came back; they’re like zombies.”

    He kicked the orderly in the head, for emphasis.

    “And I didn’t do either.”  Rodney’s voice carried a bitter undertone. 

    I noticed Clive looking at me out of the corner of his eye.  Did he remember dying?  I had the eerie feeling that I had just walked into a trap.

    Rodney continued, “But I don’t understand. If I’m a zombie, I would know, right?  I mean, all these people got bit.  And they… they fucking killed each other!  And look at me!  Do you know how long I’ve been in here?  Four hours… Four fucking hours! “

    He was giving me a look I couldn’t discern.  He said, “I should be dead.”

    “Yeah,” I said.

    “Do you feel like eating anyone?”  Clive asked.

    “Not particularly.”  Rodney said lightly.

    I watched Rodney in the reflection of the window as I looked out.  The moon was setting, but we still had more than two hours of night left.  Six stories down was the tent I slept in.  I could see the coffee pot steaming on the camp stove from up here.

    I studied Clive.  He looked calm.  Through the dried blood caked to his skin, I could see he was unharmed.  I wondered if Rodney would try to eat me.  I wondered if Clive was one of them, too.  I wondered why he could talk, and how they came back, where the bodies from downstairs went.  I wondered why they hadn’t come outside yet. 

    I walked over to the phone and picked it up; playing on the off-chance they’d work.  No dial tone.  I lit a cigarette and told myself to chill out.  I was safe, for the moment.

    “So what the fuck is going on?”  I looked at Rodney, “What happened?”

    “Do you want the long story?” He asked, “Or just the short one?”

    “Just tell me what happened.” I told him.

    “I went in at about midnight,” He said, “I couldn’t sleep.  I’d already found out that people were dying.  So I had to go see if Avery was okay.  But when I got there, he was in a bed with the curtains drawn.  They told me he was sick, like, almost dead sick.

    “The doctors said he wouldn’t last the night.  So I sat by him, you know.  They told me everything was going wrong with him, his blood was poisoned.  His organs were shutting down.  That fucking cure wasn’t a fucking cure.  It killed him.  I mean, he looked worse than anything I could ever imagine.

    “His skin was white, he was oozing blood from his eyes and his ears and I could just see it creeping out from under the sheet.  It was horrible.  All the other kids were flipping out, even though the curtains were pulled, they could tell something was going on.  They were giving him morphine.  Avery was talking all kinds of crazy shit.  I could tell he was hallucinating.  I sat there with him until they said he was going.  I watched him close his eyes and take his last breath.”

    I watched Rodney’s face contort into grief.  He sniffed and held back a choking sob.  But tears still ran down his cheeks.  I wondered how any of this was possible.  I damned myself for ever setting foot in this hospital.  I wondered: What kind of idiot would build a hospital on a place called Bloody Rock?  There has to be a reason this place is called ‘Bloody Rock’.  And I’m positive it’s not a good one.

    “I watched as they checked his pulse and responses.  It was twelve-thirty-three, I remember that.  Then the doctor left.  Outside the doors, there was lots of yelling and screaming.  I figured it was just a bunch of people screaming and crying over their kids.  I know I was angry, sitting next to my dead brother.  But if I’d known then what was going on, I would have run for my life.

    “I would have left then, too.  But when I turned to say goodbye to Avery, he opened his eyes.  At first, I thought it was some kind of dead thing.  You know how you hear about people getting rigor mortis, losing control of their functions and twitching and stuff?  Well, I thought it was that.  But it wasn’t.  It was scary.  Avery looked at us, at all of us.  The doctors were really freaking out, then.  All of the monitors and stuff were still attached him, you know?  They were all saying he was dead.

    “You could tell he was confused.  Like he didn’t know how he got there.  Then he asked, ‘Am I dead?’  It was trippy, to say the least.  All the other kids were screaming, ‘Zombie!  Zombie!’  I mean, they were practically tripping over each other to get to the door.

    “When one of the kids opened the doors, we could hear people screaming from all over.  Another kid, from one of the other wings ran over to ours.  As I stood over Avery, I could hear him asking for help.  He said there were zombies.  Then there was screaming.  Lots of ‘What the hell is that?’ kind of stuff.  I turned and looked.  The doors were wide open and these two little gremlin looking kids, covered in blood, were screaming and hauling ass towards us.  The kid we’d just let in shoved the doors closed and we all jumped in to help.

    “They were strong.”  He motioned over to the orderly he killed in front of us, “Chad let the first one in without knowing because the little fucker said he wanted us to protect him.  He looked normal enough.  But when Chad picked him up, the kid bit him, ripped his throat clean out.  We all forgot about the door, when the little kid came at a nurse.

    “I tried to grab him, but he was biting.  So I held him by the face, like a dog, to keep his mouth away.  I threw him around a couple of times but he wouldn’t listen.  He was snarling.  That’s when I noticed his eyes didn’t look right.  I was pretty sure he was gonna try and kill me, too.  So I picked him up, put him in a neck lock, and snapped it.

    “When I let the kid fall out of my arms…  It changed me.  When I noticed it was one of the kids from dinner, I kind of put it together.  Well, not exactly.  But I knew Avery was one of them, somehow.  When I looked back, he was watching me with this weird look.  I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.  The bloodshot in his eyes were so thick they looked red.  And his eye color was black.”

    Rodney fell silent then, lost in thought.

    “The others closed the doors again.  I saw Chad stand and charge the nurses and patients gathered around the doors.  He was frenzied.  It was hard to tell what was happening, because Chad would just grab someone and bite them, taking big pieces out of them, and they would fall, but, like, a minute or two later, they would get back up and start biting, too.

    “Everyone scattered out and started hitting him with everything they could; it was a melee.  That’s when Avery got into it.  I tried to stay out of the way.  He had been watching the whole time.  But once he started, he was like a rabid animal.  He killed them all.  Then he turned to the only nurse that hadn’t been bitten yet… and he ate her.

    “I wouldn’t let him near me.  But he was talking to me like normal….  So I let my guard down.  He said he was sorry, he got kinda out of control.  Everything would be okay.  He hugged me and told me he loved me.  But then, he bit me.”  Rodney was quiet for minute, then. “And he wouldn’t stop.  I didn’t want to kill him.  But I had to.  So I killed him, and then I killed the nurse before she could turn, too.  Then I hid.

    “I slid down into the corner and waited to die.  But I never closed my eyes, never stopped breathing.  I’ve been sitting here for hours, now, wondering what to do with myself.  When I heard you downstairs, I didn’t believe it at first.  I thought it was another trick.  But then I heard Clive.  When you walked in, I was ready for another fight.  But I saw you weren’t bit.  I thought about saying something then.  But I knew you guys couldn’t help me.  I just hope . . . .”  But he didn’t continue.

    I stood there, looking at him, wondering how it was to wait to die.  I looked at Avery’s body, limp and still laying exactly where Rodney had laid him.

    “Where are the others?” I asked.

    “I’ve only been in here.”  Rodney told me.

    I turned to Clive, “Where did everyone in your wing go?  How come there was no one in there when I came?”

    “They left,” Clive said.

    All of a sudden, we could hear running outside, along the hall.

    “Hide!” Rodney hissed.

    We ducked into the nurses’ station.  Clive crawled under an over-turned computer chair.  Rodney and I hid behind two filing cabinets.  I could only see a little of the room between the cabinet and the wall.

    Standing next to Rodney, I became very aware of the way he smelled.  I could feel his blood seeping through my pants.  It was cool to the touch, and matted my pants to my thigh in a way I thought was more than a little gross.  I tried to push him away a little, but he said to be quiet and pressed against me more.

    The door slammed open.

    I held my breath as I watched three or four people slowly into the room.  I was scared, I realized, more scared than I had ever been in my life.  They stood in the center of the room for what seemed like hours, unmoving.

    I tried to stay still, not make any noise, pressed against the filing cabinet until my leg began to cramp.  And the smell from Rodney was becoming unbearable.  I felt claustrophobic.

    When they turned to leave, I caught a glimpse of a badge on one of them.  I whispered to Rodney it looked like a security guard.  But they heard me, too.  All of a sudden, they were screaming; and running towards us.  I pushed the filing cabinets on top of two of them and ran, punching the security officer to the ground as I passed.

    “Clive!” I yelled.

    He threw the chair away and followed us as we ran out into the hall, to the elevator.  I jammed the button so hard I almost broke, the button popping out of the countrol panel.  I shoved the button back into place and held it while the security guard came running out of the ward.

    “Kenny!” Clive screamed.

    I didn’t have anything to defend myself with.  But I could see the guard still had everything on his utility belt.  If I could somehow incapacitate the guard and take his weapons, then I’d have something use when we were leaving.  Rodney was on it.  He body slammed into the security guard and gouged at his eyes.

    I could see the guard was scratching Rodney, but he didn’t seem to care.  I watched as he popped the guard’s eyeballs and shoved his thumbs home.  Rodney picked him up by the skull and shook him out like a sheet.  The sound of the man’s spine cracking told me he wasn’t going to get up.

    I was in awe.  Even though I was horrified, I couldn’t help but empathize a little with the guard.

    I heard the elevator open behind me.  Clive jumped in.

    “C’mon,” He said.

    “Hold it!” I told him.

    “What are you doing?” Rodney asked me, as I dashed over to the dead guard and took his flashlight, nightstick, mace and handcuffs.

    “We’ll need these.”  I told Rodney.  I let out a shriek when I realized his eyes had gone yellow.  “Your eyes,” I gasped.

    “I know,” He said, “But don’t worry.”

    He smiled, and I could see the blood on his teeth.

    “Kenny!” Clive yelled.

    I turned to him and saw that a nurse was staring him down—the hot one.  I turned back to Rodney, to tell him we should help, but he already took that small opportunity to jump me.  He pinned me down and started punching me.

    “Rodney!”  I yelled at him, “Stop!  It’s me!”

    But he didn’t.  I could hear Clive squealing in the elevator.  Could hear the elevator thumping against the sides as Clive struggled with the nurse.  I hit Rodney in the head with the flashlight so hard he flew into the railing and almost went over.

    He came back screeching, mouth open, trying to grab me.  I stabbed him in the head with the short end of the nightstick; Rodney slumped back and grabbed his head.  But he wasn’t done yet; and neither was I.  Before he regained his composure, I hopped behind him and choked him with the nightstick.  He kicked and snarled as I picked him up and held him over the balcony.  When I tossed him, I made sure he’d hit something on the way down.

    I had to take care of the nurse next.  She had Clive on the ground; she was snapping at him.  I pulled her off and she pushed me against the wall.  I was surprised to see the sharp gaze in her yellow eyes.  When she lunged, I side-stepped and hit her as hard as I could in the back of the head.  She didn’t get up.

    I turned to Clive.  “Are you okay?” I asked.

    “Yeah,” Clive said.

    There was a loud bang, and snarling from the other side of the promenade.  More of them had come running out of the west wing.  They were mostly kids, and they were fast.  I pulled my little brother to his feet and shoved him into the elevator.  One of them almost reached us before it closed.  I could hear them pounding on the doors as we descended.

    “Do you think I killed Rodney?” I asked Clive.

    “Yeah.” He answered.

    I gave Clive the flashlight.  We stood there, in uneasy silence, as the elevator crept its way downward.  The commotion must have been heard throughout the building, because there was a crowd gathered around the elevator on the fifth floor.  They screamed and pounded on the doors as we passed, but the elevator didn’t stop.  I took out the nightstick and tried my grip on it.

    The elevator stopped on the fourth floor.  It was dark again.  And, from what I could see, so was everything below.  The elevator lights cast an eerie glow on a body lying not three feet from the door.  I was kind of freaking out at the thought of having to go through the darkness.  I could hear people screaming all around.  But this floor was quiet.  I jammed the door close button.

    Before the doors closed, Dr. Robertson appeared from the shadows and stuck his arm through the door.  I jumped back, but recovered quickly enough to kick the doctor away when the door opened again.  Clive shone the flashlight all around us, to make sure he was the only one there.  Dr. Robertson stood up and approached us again.  This time, he kept back from the doors.  They started closing again.

    “Wait!” He said.

    He still had his lab coat on.  There was blood on the bottom of his coat, and on his hands, but otherwise, he didn’t appear to be bitten.  I stuck my foot in the door.  “Why?”

    “Because you need me,” He said.  “I’m the only one who can reverse the cure.”

    “No you’re not,” I told him, “After they pick up your research, if this place still exists, there’ll be hundreds of people working to reverse the little freak show you’ve got here.”

    “He’s one of them!”  Dr. Robertson cried, pointing at my little brother.

    “I know.”  The elevator doors began to close again.

    “Please take me with you!” He begged.

    I sighed and felt like giving in; mainly because I really just wanted to get out.  I knew the longer I stayed in one place, the likelier it would be for me to get trapped; and the harder for me to watch both my brother and my backs.  I didn’t want to add the doctor to the equation.

    As I stood there contemplating this, the doctor stared at Clive and me.  He could show us the quick way, even drive us out of here.  I quickly disregarded the thought of leaving my father behind.  How much was this doctor worth?  My life?  Clive’s?  And who says he can reverse this?  Who says he isn’t one of them?  What if Clive can’t be saved?  But what if he could?

    I told the doctor, “If you do anything funny.  And I mean anything.  If you get us close to dead one too many times, if you make too much noise, if you don’t pull your own weight: I’m gonna handcuff you to a pipe; and you won’t be going anywhere.”

    The doctor nodded and said, “But, I need to get my research.”

    “Why don’t you have your research with you?”  I asked, “Your research is the most important thing you have and it’s not on you?  Where the fuck is your head at?”

    “You know,” Doctor Robertson pointed out, “Berating me isn’t going to help the situation.”

    “Well, then let me say in retort that we need to get the fuck out of here as quick as possible.  It’s not safe to get your research.  You can come back for it later.”

    “I need to get my research.”  The doctor stressed.

    “Only if we can wait here,” I told him.  “Besides, if it were us who truly needs you, why does it seem that you need us more?”

    “Can we not argue semantics?”  Clive grumbled.

    Dr. Robertson said, “You must come with me.  It’s on the other side of the lab.”

    “Are there any on this floor?”  I asked him.  I considered the fact that we had been pretty loud.  But, so were those screaming lunatics upstairs.

    “I locked three in the break room.”  He said, “There are two more.  The rest are dead”

    “Are you sure?”  I asked him.

    “I think so,” Dr. Robertson answered.  “But we have to go back to my office.  I need my research.  I wasn’t able to make a copy of my data before one of the ones from downstairs broke in.  But, this floor is secure… I think.”

    Clive shrieked, “Can anymore get in?!”

    “No,” The doctor said, “The doors in the stairwells are all handles except for the first floor, which was the push-bar.”

    Great, I thought, Let’s just give them an easy way to get out.

    I pulled the emergency stop and stepped out of the elevator.  Clive followed close behind.  I directed Clive to examine his arms and legs for bite marks as I stood there and looked around.  It was still dark, but I had gotten used to it without the flashlight.  At least, out there, in the light well; I knew once we walked away, it would get much, much darker.  Everything in front of the elevator seemed to be a series of laboratories, all smashed.

    “Do you have anything for a weapon?”  I asked the doctor.

    Dr. Robertson looked genuinely at a loss, “Weapon?”

    “Well, how did you kill all of these people?” I asked, “You didn’t use kung fu, did you?”

    “I don’t know Kung Fu,” The doctor said.

    “So…?”  I let the question hang.

    The other elevator went past us, then, going up.

    “They’re gonna get us!” Clive almost screamed.

    “Don’t be ridiculous,” The doctor said, “I’m sure they don’t know how to use the elevators.”

    We heard the elevator ding above us.  We listened, maybe for the press of the button, the doors sliding shut.  I kind of expected it to happen, actually.  I was almost certain that they would have opened the doors to the elevator shaft when we made our get away; that they would tear of the maintenance hatch and kill us both.  But after a couple minutes, standing there, listening to them scream and snarl, nothing came.  Maybe they didn’t know how to use an elevator after all.

    “Even so,” I said, “We should probably make sure there’s a door to run through… just in case.”

    “My office is right there,” He said, pointing to a hall behind the elevators.  “There are fire escapes on both ends of the hallway.”

    As we walked into the hallway, Clive pulled my arm and pointed at the elevators.  They were all piled into the elevator, clogging it completely.  The things screamed in ignorant rage at each other.  Of course, they weren’t really saying anything.  They were just a group of screaming, slobbering beasts.  Some of them were jumping over the railings to get to us.  I wondered if we would meet them later.  They looked so different from Clive or Rodney.  As the darkness closed in on us, I wondered if Clive was resisting The Urge on purpose or if it hadn’t actually set in yet.

    I looked over my shoulder what seemed like every second.  Most of the doors were closed and locked; all the lights were off, of course.  And it looked just like every other floor, ransacked.  Some of the office windows were broken.  There was blood inside one, handprints and smears all over.  In the center of the room, twisted in a mess of blinds and office equipment, lay someone in a lab coat.

    Her head was twisted towards us in a way I knew was unnatural.  Her face was covered with scratches, and her neck was eaten through in one place.  The woman’s head almost looked torn off, the way she was laying.  I covered Clive’s eyes before he could look, and, lord, when I touched his skin, it was cold.  That was when I started to freak out; more than when I found Rodney and he tried to eat me.  I looked at the Doctor, and he looked back at me with the same terror.

    We passed a closed door with an axe guarding the handle.  Inside I could hear faint thumping.  But I didn’t want to get too close.

    “That’s the break room,” Dr. Robertson said quietly.

    His office was against the wall, on the south side of the building, the front side.  It had a window; and I was relieved to see a hint of dawn on the horizon.  As soon as we stepped in, I pulled the curtains on the window to the hall, locked the door, and silently moved a filing cabinet in front of the window.  Dr. Robertson hopped in front of the computer and entered his password in the screen saver.  As the Doctor did whatever it was that he had to, I looked Clive over.  His feet were bleeding.  But, he still looked alright.

    “So . . .” I addressed the Doctor in a whisper, “Why is my little brother still alive?”

    “You know?” Clive asked.

    “You’re a walking corpse, little brother.”  I told him, “And, as much as I love you, I’m scared that you’ll turn on me.”

    “I’m not like Rodney.”

    “Who’s Rodney?”  The doctor asked.

    “He’s . . .” I forgot the name, “He’s . . .”

    “Avery’s brother,” Clive helped.

    “Oh,” the Doctor said, “But, he’s not a patient.”

    “What did you do, Dr. Robertson?”  I asked him, “How come Clive and Rodney were smart?  How did they come back?”

    “Every test I had performed, every analysis told me this was going to work in humans.  So, I don’t know.  This sort of thing has never happened before.  Even with the new enzyme package, this wouldn’t, ever be possible.”  As the doctor was speaking, he rummaged around in his briefcase, extracting a blank disc that he shoved into the computer.

    “Am I a zombie?”  Clive asked.

    “Zombies can’t be self-aware.”  Dr. Robertson replied immediately, as if he’d already considered it.

    “So what is this?”  I asked, “Are they in some kind of coma?”

    Dr Robertson replied, “That’s ignorant.  Even the worst somnambulists don’t run around eating people–”

    Clive was becoming offended.

    He continued, “And, even if they were sleep walking, how do you sleep walk after you die?!”

    “There has to be a reasonable explanation for this.”  I said.

    “You’re right, there has to be.”  Dr. Robertson told me, “But when the first one got up, we ran him through the gauntlet.  There have been many cases of mistaken death.  Many.  We reasoned: this all could have been due to some other, underlying disease we had no knowledge of.  Each one of took us turns inspecting his heart and lungs with a stethoscope.  There are animals that go from eighty beats a minute to eight, but a human can only drop down to fifteen beats a minute.  And when they do that, they’re asleep.  This kid didn’t have a pulse; we listened for whole minutes at a time.

    “If I’d have known what they were, I would have immobilized and quarantined him.  I could have locked everyone in the wings.  Anything could have turned them.  Could have been any combination of drugs we were already giving them.  Maybe one of the DNA treatments Drug Corp. had been so insistent I give them.  Maybe it was the something in the cake.  How could I have known?  I’ve been going crazy over it ever since.”

    “So, what did you do instead?”  I asked him.

    “We tested his verbal capacity and reasoning skills and… he did okay, although he seemed a little slow.  We thought maybe we’d got it wrong.”  The doctor chuckled slowly.  “But his temperature was ninety-point-two degrees Fahrenheit.  Yet he was exhibiting zero lividity.  We even checked his toes.  In fact, he didn’t seem to be the slightest bit uncomfortable.  I was going to run him through a full physical, but I was called upstairs, to the lab.  I had my assistant perform it.”

    Doctor Robertson shivered then, tears streaked his face.  I could tell he was trying to hold it back.  “She was only 22!”  He gagged.  “What did she do to deserve this?!  I should have transferred the call.  But, I only went upstairs for a few minutes.”

    Dr. Robertson looked back at the screen, hit a key and switched out the discs.

    “The hematologist was standing there, waiting for me.  The kid’s glomerular filtration ratio was insane.  First off, well . . . . His kidneys should have been decomposing by then.  His whole body was filled with toxins at levels only secreted when the body shuts down.  He should have been a frosty-lipped corpse in the basement.  Do you understand that?  There wasn’t a single explanation for any of this.  I should have called Lonna and told her to strap him down then.  I should have issued a code red and had the whole place locked down!  But I was too fascinated.  No, I was shocked.  I didn’t know what to do.”

    “We were just about to look at the blood in a microscope when I got the phone calls.  One was from Rachel, in the fifth floor ward, across from where your brother was.  She was calling to tell me that all of but two of them had died in the west wing, and only one in Clive’s.  She told me that the other wards we overflowed to were reporting similar numbers.  And Clive’s friend, Avery, in the cancer ward was sick.  I hadn’t heard the code blues because I was too intent on unraveling this enigma.  But, even if I had…. there was nothing I could do anyway.”

    He sighed, “I was… appalled.  I was scared.  What I first thought was a rash of food poisoning turned out to be something even worse. Even though there was no way to tell this was going to happen, no matter how many tests I did, I knew I would be held accountable for it all.”

    “Those fucking bastards!” He screamed.

    Clive and I both jumped, startled by his sudden outburst.

    “The second call was from the MRI tech who told me it looked like his lungs were forming hypostatic congestions.  Since he was on the same floor as Lonna, I told him to go help my assistant get the patient relaxed and into his bed.  That was a nice way of saying, ‘medicate him and strap him down’.

    “That’s when it started.  I heard Lonna scream my name.  It echoed up the light well.  The hematologist and I immediately ran down the stairs and came to her.  And, when we got there, it was astounding.

    “The boy was looming over her, biting her neck.  From what I could see, he was trying to eat her!  I noticed the tech. out of the corner of my eye, hiding in the opposite corridor, holding a fire ax.  He nodded to me, then rushed forward and started to choke the kid with the thing.  The boy went wild, scratching and clawing.  The hematologist tried to help get the boy under control while I rushed to see if Lonna could be helped.  But she was gone.  We locked the kid in an examination room and got on the phones.  The hematologist went to bandage his scratches…  I didn’t see him until later.”

    “You know . . .  A part of me wonders if–”

    The computer spit out the CD and the doctor was about to put it in his briefcase.

    “Let me keep it,” I said.

    Doctor Robertson looked at me warily, “No, I think I’ll keep it in my briefcase, thank you.”

    I didn’t want to fight.  But I didn’t want to risk having the doctor drop his suitcase; it was cumbersome, and I thought—if those files are as important as he said they were—he should have put it in his pockets.  There was a middle ground here.

    “How about making me a copy, then?”  I asked, “While you finish your story?”

    The doctor scoffed.  “What are you going to do with it?”

    “I’m just gonna hold it.”  I pointed to my cargo pockets, “It’s a perfect fit, and you know it’s going to stay with me the whole time.”

    “What would you do with it if I die?”  The doctor asked.

    “Give it to the CDC, and make sure they credit you for all of this.”  I told him, “Not just the good stuff.  But, yes, I solemnly swear on my life that your research will get to people who want to help.”

    “What if he turns on us?”  The doctor said, meaning Clive, “You should be careful who you trust.”

    “If he turns, I’m prepared for what I have to do.”  I said it cold, like how I would need to be if the time ever came.  “But if he doesn’t turn on us, then we don’t turn on him, okay?  He’s still my brother.”

    Clive stared at both of us the whole time.

    “Okay.”  The doctor said.  He even smiled.  We watched as he put another disc in the computer.  “Where were we?”

    “The kid in the examination room,” Clive helped.

    “So we locked the kid in the examination room, and put Lonna’s body on a stretcher.  I tried to call the receptionist, so she could use the intercom system.  But she didn’t pick up.  So Bart, the MRI technician, and I picked up the phones in neighboring rooms and made the calls ourselves.  They had no idea why we asked them to strap down dead people.  And when I tried to explain I got a mixed reaction.  Mostly, they thought I was playing a joke on them.  I was completely frustrated by the second call.  Bart told me he wasn’t having any success, either.  So we stopped.

    “Bart convinced me that we should stick together for safety, but it seemed kind of ridiculous.  Lonna, killed by some deranged, dead kid… This whole thing seemed ridiculous.  We checked on the kid, who was screaming and trying to break through the reinforced glass we have in the exam rooms.  The windows were the kind with the wire in them; so I knew the kid would be there a while.

    “Bart accompanied me back to the lab, where I transferred all of my data, via the network, to the computer, here.  I was finished and about to go back to my office when we got the first phone call.  The kids were starting to wake up again.  We told them, again, ‘strap the kids down.’  But it was already too late.

    “What we didn’t know, was that Lonna had come back sometime during the transfer.  She had let the boy out of the exam room, and they began to take people on the floor below us.  The sounds were drowned out in the lab, by all of the equipment.  It wasn’t until we lost the lights that we heard it.  I’m still not sure what caused it.  I haven’t gone down to look, but I’d wager it was some equipment malfunctioning.  There were only six people working downstairs, plus Lonna and the kid.

    “The phone rang again, it was the fifth floor, wanting to know what was happening.  I was going to reply when, all of a sudden, we saw the hematologist running at full speed towards the break room.  Behind him were the X-Ray tech and Lonna.  Bart and I jogged up, to see if we could help, but we realized it was a blood bath.  Bart was the one who locked the door with the axe.”

    The first CD that I was to hold popped out, the doctor put it in a slim case and handed it to me.

    “Thanks,” I said.

    By way of reply, the doctor grunted and put another disc in the tray.  He continued, “I wanted to stay and hide.  But Bart wanted to go outside, and find help.  He was bit, I noticed.  We ended up arguing about what to do.  I told him that, if he left, he could spread it; but he didn’t seem to care.  Then he left.  Just opened the door and walked out.  So I closed it and locked it.

    “It was horrible, really.  No more than twenty minutes passed when I started hearing the screaming and banging from upstairs.  It was enough to scare me under the desk.  After a while, it wasn’t as loud.  The sounds from the break room took over.  But, underneath it, I could hear someone in the hall.  I thought, maybe, it was Bart coming back to get me.  But when I opened the door, another one of them was standing there, looking at the office right across from me.  Somehow, she found me.

    “It was Connie, the nurse from radiology.  I closed the door, but she came through the window.  She was a disgusting mess, leaking coagulated blood from a gaping wound in her neck.  I crushed her skull with a paperweight while she was climbing through the window, and she fell at my feet.  I didn’t move for what seemed like hours, too scared of abandoning my hiding place just to run into a group of zombies.  To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know what to think when I heard Shane, upstairs.”

    The doctor was referring to when I was upstairs, calling out to anyone; looking for Clive.

    “I thought you were going to die, quite honestly.”  The doctor said to me.
    “Thanks,” I said.  Luckily for me, I thought, I didn’t die.  But am I going to get out?

  • Zombie: The Incident at Bloody Rock – One

    One

    As I was setting the tents up and dad was wrestling with equipment, I looked around.  The place was quiet.  Peaceful.  People were milling around, talking with each other.  All of them were smiling.  As I panned the place, a few people nodded at me and I felt obliged to nod back, ever so slightly.

    A warm gentle breeze wafted through the clearing, and on it, I could smell food.  We’d set up camp behind the building, next to a big cypress, a few hundred feet away from the loading docks in the rear center of the hospital.  Most of the other people chose to set up on this side, too.  There were R.V.’s and those convertible truck things.

    That’s when I met Rodney.  As I was tying down the rainfly on the tent, he walked up to me.  Rodney looked about my age, a few inches shorter than my 5’10”.  He was wearing some jeans and a Dredg shirt.  He didn’t say anything at first, just caught the side I was struggling with and helped me secure it.

    “Thanks,” I mumbled.

    The guy offered his hand and said, “I’m Rodney.”

    His grip was firm.  “Kenny,” I introduced myself.  I pointed to my dad, “That’s my dad, Corey.”

    “Are you here for family, too?”  Rodney asked, but we both knew the answer.  He kind of detracted that question and asked me how long we were staying for. 

    “Just tonight,” Dad replied, he was busy hooking up the stove and lanterns.

    “Oh,” Rodney said.  He asked me, “You’re not staying for the festivities?”

    Rodney moved with me to the truck and we formed a line, tossing pillows, sleeping bags and backpacks into the tent.

    “Nope,” I told him, “Just here to take my little brother home.  Thanks.”

    “No problemo,” Rodney replied.

    “We need to go check in now,” Dad told me.

    I looked at Rodney, who grinned back at me.  “It was nice meeting you,” I told him.  We shook hands and I followed my dad over to the hospital.

    The woman sitting behind the front desk was nice enough, issuing us a parking pass along with our visitor’s badges.  I looked around.  The door on the right of the reception desk led into a large hall, which was being decorated for the night ahead.

    On the other side of the lobby was a large curving staircase that led to the second floor, an arrow and the word “CAFETERIA” painted on the wall.  A few steps past that and we were standing in a large promenade with a skylight.  This place looked massive.  There were three sets of doors in the wall of the promenade, one of which was a set of double-doors I assumed led into a service-way.

    The elevators were in the middle of the promenade.  It was encased in a glass shaft.  The doors were glass, but the top and bottom of the elevators were made of shiny steel.  There were nine buttons in the elevator: B-2 through 7; there was a slot for a keycard next to floor seven with a label that said “INFECTIOUS DISEASES, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.”

    This is cool, I thought.  My dad mentioned it, too.  I watched the floors drop away from us, enjoying standing.  We got off on the fourth floor, where Clive would be waiting in the East Wing.  Before I went in, though, I looked up at the seventh floor.  It was sealed off with glass.

    “Whoa…” I said to myself.

    “C’mon,” Dad said; and I followed.

    When we walked into the doors, I could smell the sterility.  The room was filled with the mellow echo of the EKG machines.  The nurse said my brother was still hooked up because they wanted to gather more data.  This was a research hospital after all.  Clive was watching some reruns of Family Guy as we walked in.

    “Dad!” Clive exclaimed.  He almost jumped out of his bed.

    Dad gave Clive a big ‘ole hug and then it was my turn.

    “Kenny!”

    “Hey little man,” I greeted him.

    He looked better.  There was more color to his skin.  His eyes were shining.  He even looked like he gained more weight.  I was impressed.  He gave me a monster hug.

    “Wow!” I said, “What are they feeding you here?!”

    Clive giggled and told me they had a kitchen that cooked real food for his floor.  Lucky sod, I thought ruefully, we’re dining on Hungry Man meals and he’s dining out osso bucco.

    We pulled up chairs and chatted about life in the hospital.  We hadn’t seen him for three-months.  It’s not like we didn’t want to go see him.  It was just the damn journey we’d have to take, there were no motels close by and . . . .  Well, we’re here now, I thought.

    My brother told us about how the reporters had crammed into the room, trying to get the best shot for the evening news.  He said the injection felt funny, like a million butterflies were swimming in his veins.  The tingling sensation spread through his body and became barely tolerable.

    At first he thought something was wrong, but one of the nurses (he pointed at her)—the hot one—calmed him down.  The “Governator” even shook his hand before leaving.  That’s when he went on about meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was a god in his eyes ever since watching Terminator.  Frankly, I was jealous.  So was dad.

    When the nurse came around to hand out water, Dad asked her when they would let Clive go.

    “We still have to watch him for another month or so,” The woman said.  “But tonight, everyone healthy enough will be able to leave and visit with their families.  We planned the whole weekend for it.”

    The nurse adjusted the leads and automatic pressure cuffs attached to Clive.  “You guys are really lucky, you know.”  She said.

    Clive just beamed; the lucky one.

    .

    On our way back down, in the elevator of the seven-story complex, I reflected on what it would mean to have him home again, healthy.  Ever since Clive was born, the house seemed like a funeral parlor.  We both assumed that he was going to die soon, at any moment.  And any time he didn’t wake up quick enough, or seemed too tired to do anything, I thought…  It was just a matter of time.

    Out of the elevators, everyone was bustling.  There were workers decking the halls for the banquet.  And suits running around, telling them what to do.  The receptionists (three of them crammed in where I figured one usually worked) were busy taking and making calls; the lobby was full of their voices.  We walked out the double doors and made our way down the wheelchair ramp.  My dad gave my shoulder a firm grip.

    “It’s about time he got out of the hospital,” Dad said, referring to my brother, “To be honest; I didn’t think he was ever going to leave.”

    I was very excited that Clive would be able to come home soon, and I’d be able to show him all the tricks I’d learned on my board since he went away, almost three months ago.

    “Me too,” I told him.

    “Do you think he’ll like his room?”  Dad asked.

    We’d stocked it with all the video game systems, a PS3, all the Xbox 360 games we knew he’d love.  I’d been keeping the controllers warm for him.  “Zombie” just came out with their thirteenth and (maybe) final game for one of the story lines they made.  The new game was awesome.

    Clive was as much into Zombie as I was, although he’d wake me up in the middle of the night because he had scary dreams about turning into one.  But I wasn’t as easily scared.  Sometimes he wouldn’t be able to wake me up, and he’d run into Dad’s room, screaming.  Dad yelled at me after those times.  He told me to hide the games where Clive wouldn’t find them.  But who was I to deprive my little brother of his favorite past-time?  He asked me about the newest one when Dad went to go hit on the nurse.

    Watching Dad sit there with Clive and me; seeing him smiling, the hopeful shimmer in his eyes.  Man, it felt like we got the magic back.

    .

    At six, we were all summoned to the banquet.  There were hors devours all over the place, held by waiters with white towels on their arms.  An eight-piece ensemble was playing classic jazz and waltzes in a knave, next to the main stage.  The stage was a slightly raised platform at the end of the room.  A few old ladies were dancing in the middle of the large hall.

    In front of the stage, there was a table of honor set up.  Our governor was already seated close to the head, the rest of his table was murmuring to itself, and watching the press with wary eyes.  Directly in front of them were the Drug Corp. International and donors tables.  Both groups sat and glared at each other through the small space between them.

    The ceilings were vaulted, large circular depressions that held skylights.  From the outside, it had looked like a normal room.  But inside, it looked like we were in Rome.  Large panels were devoted to events like the construction and opening of the hospital.  The entrance wall was filled with donor plaques.

    Dad and Clive went to find our seats while I walked around the room, staring at the moldings along the vaulted ceilings.  There was a story, about some god of medicine, I think.  I couldn’t tell for sure, but it didn’t look dedicated to a saint because the man was holding a snake, and that would not have gone over well in a Catholic establishment. Over the stage, etched into the arches, was something in Greek or Latin that I couldn’t read. 

    “Would you like a drink?”  I heard from behind me.

    I turned around and was faced with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.  She was holding a tray with some martinis, glasses of champagne and some other drink with a cherry I’ve never seen before.  She had long brown hair that rested on the neck of her blouse, totally showing off the fact that she had big, nice boobs.  Her face was pretty, I mean, gorgeous, and I had to cough to clear my throat as I looked into her soft brown eyes.  She returned my gaze with a Mona Lisa smile, the edges of her lips curling at the ends.  …I couldn’t speak.

    I was going to tell her I was only 18, but she was already holding a flute.  So I took it.  Sweet, I thought.

    “Thanks,” I said, trying to keep my cool.

    She gave me a smile that just rocked my world.  She didn’t say anything.  She just smiled and turned and walked away and I watched her.  Of course I watched her!  I didn’t even know her name.  But then she turned and gave me a grin.  I caught you, it seemed to say.  I gave her my best grin and pranced off to find dad.

    “Dad,” I called trying my best to hide the flute on my side, “I’m going out for a fag!”

    Dad looked up from the menu and nodded.  Clive jumped from his seat and followed me.

    As soon as I got out, I lit up and took a deep hit.  I’d been waiting for that cigarette ever since I arrived.

    I barely noticed as Clive zipped past me and took a lap around the parking area.  In fact, I didn’t notice until he came trotting back my way.  Considering that, the last time I saw him, he could barely hold his head up, this was a really good improvement.

    “Aren’t you supposed to be resting?”  I asked him.

    “Whatever,” Clive said, stretching, “It feels good to get out of that hospital bed.”

    When I gave him the look, he added, “No, really!  It’s strange, I feel a hundred and ten percent!”

    “So when’d you get the shot?” I asked.

    “I dunno,” He said, “After lunch, a while before you guys got here.”

    I hit my cigarette and looked for a building, a plane.  But I saw nothing.  The air was filled with the smell of earth, and the sound of crickets.

    “What’s that?”  Clive meant my flute.

    I took sip.  It tasted kind of tart.

    “I think it’s champagne,” I told him.

    “Oh,” He said, looking a little interested.

    But I didn’t offer him any.  He jumped up and down a little, then; maybe just to get his land legs back.  Then he stopped and looked me dead in the eyes for a few seconds.  It was peculiar; I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.  He held the gaze so long that I was beginning to get creeped out.  But then he broke into a grin and gave me a bear hug.

    “I’m glad I’m coming home,” He said.

    I hugged him back, “Me too, little man.”

    After we finished having our guy moment and walked back into the entrance, the hot waitress lady offered me more champagne.

    “I haven’t finished my first one.”  I told her.

    She gave me the same smile from earlier and said, “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

    “You’re dangerous, lady.”  I grinned at her.

    I finished my first one and took the second, then got her number discreetly while Clive went to get hors devours.  All around me were the family and friends of other children affected with AIDS mingling with Dr. Robertson and, I guessed, the pharmaceutical executives, or other interested parties.  As we sat at the table, I couldn’t get over how healthy Clive looked.  It had been so long since I’d seen him healthy.

    I won’t go into all the details about lesions and the subtle downward spin he’d gone into shortly before being hospitalized.  But, this was the best I had ever seen him.  It brought a tear to my eye to know that he would be my normal little brother now.  There would be no more blood tests, no more worrying about his t-cells dropping. And we wouldn’t have to fight with him to take those disgusting pills.

    I know I keep saying that.  But it was over.  All of it was over and he would be normal now.  It was like the end of a nightmare, where you wake up to your reassuring blankets.; satisfied that everything was okay, after all.

    After everyone had been wheeled in, all the family seated, Dr. Robertson came out to full applause.  He was holding a large flute of champagne and his cheeks were rosy.

    “Dr. Robertson looks drunk!”  Clive exclaimed.

    I shushed him.

    Dad cleared his throat, he was working on his third or fourth flute, “There’s nothing wrong with celebrating, Clive.  You can have some champagne, too, if you want.”

    Clive declined; and we listened to Dr. Robertson begin his speech.  He told us we were a part of history.  He told us that, finally, the horrible disease that had taken so many would die on that night.

    After a life of searching for the cure, he found it, one night, when he was tinkering with his stem cells.  It was serendipity.  He couldn’t believe it worked.  He tried it on sample after sample, on rats, guinea pigs; he even tried it on monkeys—but that’s just between us.

    He even took healthy feline stem cells and used them to create a cure for the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus.  Tonight, the pain was over.  Thanks to his creation, and the government subsidies and pharmaceutical companies’ vows to keep it cheap.  Applause.

    Then there were the photo ops.  The pharmaceutical executives gave him the giant check.  All the patients gathered outside for a group photo, and then went back inside, where there was cake and dancing.

    When Clive and I decided to leave, I met up with Rodney.  We shot the shit as Clive and, his brother, Avery ran around in the field.

    “So where are you from, anyway,” I asked.

    “Santa Cruz,” He told me, “A couple blocks away from the boardwalk.  You?”

    Rodney seemed surprised to learn that there was an island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay; even more that I lived on it.

    “That must be pretty cool, though,” He said.  “You could row your ass to San Francisco.  …Is there any surfing out there?”

    “Not inside the bay,” I told him, “But, yeah, at Stinson Beach and Ocean Beach.  The riptides are kinda gnarly, though.  Santa Cruz is way more desirable.”

    It was getting dark when some dude in a black shirt and khaki cargos came running up to us.  His hair was shaggy, kinda surfer style.  I wondered if he was another brother or something, though they didn’t look related.

    I tried not to watch as they talked lowly between each other.  The guy in the black shirt gave me a sideways look.  I was started to feel left out when Rodney let out a laugh and pulled the dude around by his shoulder.

    “This guy’s cool,” He told Black Shirt, holding him.  “His name is Kenny.”

    Black Shirt turned to me.

    “Sup, Dude?”  We pounded fists, “I’m Trent.”

    He pulled a blunt out of his ear.  It was fat, and I could smell the weed from where I was standing.

    “Whoa!”  I asked, “Is that medicinal?”

    “Yeah, man!”  Trent replied, “My mom gets it for her back.  Do you smoke?”

    “Yeah!”  I replied enthusiastically.

    “Do you want to come to our tent and smoke?”  Trent asked.

    “Your mom’s tent?”  I asked, dumbly.

    “No,” Trent said, gesturing to him and Trent, “Ours.”

    It was about at that time that Clive, Avery and Trent’s brother, Sam came over to us, sweaty and breathing heavily.  Sam looked like a smaller copy of Trent.  It was kinda cute.

    Clive wanted to come with us, but I didn’t think he should.  Someone had already come out and made the announcement that it would soon be time for all the patients to come back.  Even so, I wanted him to; so I asked Dad (leaving the last bit out.)  Dad told me to keep him close.  Clive knew about smoking pot, but he didn’t partake, and I usually didn’t pressure him to do it.  This was not an exception.  Clive liked to watch, though.  We ended up smoking five bowls of weed before I eventually tapped out.  And I swear Clive even got a contact high.  

    Rodney, Avery and Trent followed us back to our big three-room dome tent.  I flopped down on my sleeping bag, in the left room, I couldn’t help it.  Clive came and flopped down against me.  The other guys hit the dirt, too.

    It seemed like everyone there had pot, and everyone was sharing.  It seemed like we’d met half the camp around Trent and Rodney’s tent.

    “I’m stoned,” I said.

    “Me too,” Trent said.

    When I looked over, Avery was closest to us, watching me and Clive.  Trent and Rodney were behind him, legs intertwined, resting against each other.  I put my arm around Avery and he snuggled closer.  

    We listened to the sounds of music and the celebration around us and looked up through the clear rainfly, into the stars.  It felt good.  And I felt happy that my little brother was next to me, almost ready to come home.

    My brother suddenly rolled over.

    “What are you going to do once you’re better?” Clive asked Avery.

    “I’m going to go back home and eat all the food I want to eat.  I’m gonna hang out with my dog and watch all the shows I missed, and hang out with my friends again.  Yeah,” Avery said.

    I saw Rodney’s head pop up from under Trent’s shoulder.

    “What are you going to do?”  Rodney asked Clive.

    “I don’t know…” Clive said.  “Get a tan.  Learn how to kick-flip.  Go camping.”

    Rodney lit up another blunt and we passed the time talking about sports and video games.  The “Governator” came up again.

    “You lucky bastards,” Rodney teased.

    I said, “If I’d have known, I would have sent you some movies and posters for him to sign.”

    Clive made a face at me.  I made one back.

    We were halfway through the second of Rodney’s blunts when I noticed Clive grimacing and holding his stomach.  In my arms, he felt tense.  It couldn’t have been after eight.

    “What’s wrong, Clive?” I asked him


    ”My stomach hurts.”  He said.

    I thought maybe we worked him too hard, with the running around and stuff.  So I told him, “Maybe we should get you back to your bed.”

    “No!” He shrieked, “I don’t want to go!”

    Rodney started putting his shoes on.

    “C’mon, Avery,” He said to his brother, “We might as well go, too.”

    “I don’t want to go.”  Avery told him.

    “You have to.  Do you want to get sick again?”  Rodney asked.

    “No,” Avery replied.

    “Then it’s settled,” I turned to Clive, “Let’s go before you get sick, too, Clive.”

    A flash lit up the sky, followed soon by an earth-rattling boom.

    “Yep,” Rodney said, “Let’s go.  It’s raining.”

    When we walked into the front doors, the lobby was bustling with activity.  Not just the regular clean-up after a banquet, something was going on.  A nurse—the hot one—ran up to us.

    “Is Avery sick?” She asked Rodney.

    “No,” He told her, “But Kenny’s brother has a stomach ache.”

    She grabbed Clive by the arm and said, “C’mon, we’d better go.  We’ve been seeing a few people sick already.”

    As we went into the elevator, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

    The laboratories on the floor just below Clive’s were busy.  I mean, busy!  As we passed, we could see people in clean suits huddling over a microscope.  It looked like they were arguing with each other.  But I could only go off their body language.

    “It’s probably something in the food, a minor case of food poisoning.  Most of the patients have been getting sick and, with such delicate immune systems, we want to be sure that they’re up to fighting off a tummy ache.”  She said the last words to the boys.

    The AIDS wing was crowded with people holding files and rifling through storage bins.  I heard someone yelling about not having the right size catheter.  Many of the curtains were pulled around the beds, but we could hear sobbing, and alarms.  Dr. Robertson was there.

    “You need to go and let us do our work!”  I heard one of the nurses yell.

    “Dr. Robertson!” I called.

    He turned around quickly.  Dr. Robertson looked frazzled.

    “Kenny!” He said.  “Is Clive sick, too?”

    “Yeah,” I told him.

    Dr. Robertson called the hot nurse over and told her something quietly.

    Rodney and Avery were trying to catch glimpses of what was going on behind the curtains.  But I was overwhelmed.  They took Clive to a hospital bed and had him strip down and get into a new hospital gown.

    I watched the doctor running the wing like a triage.  As we passed him, I heard Dr. Robertson telling the RN Clive was the last one, to put people up in recovery, which was in the basement.  It hardly seemed comprehendible while I watch Clive get hooked up to a Pulse Ox and EKG leads.

    I moved to a whole new level of numb as they drew his blood.  This isn’t happening, I thought.  We just got him back.  This is a mistake.  But it was.  Two beds over, I could hear a woman howling.  I could barely hear her over the alarms and yelling of the doctors.

    “What’s going on?” Rodney asked.

    When I looked over at them I could see they were as panicked as I was.  Though my panic was inside, it was a knot winding itself up in the middle of my chest.   I wanted to do something to help.  But I couldn’t.  I watched helpless as the woman adjusted a pressure cup on Clive’s arm.

    “It’s very delicate,” The male nurse who tested Clive’s eyes said.  He was writing in Clive’s clipboard, “The cure doesn’t work on everyone.  And we didn’t exactly plan on people getting food poisoning the same day they took a cure for an immune disorder.”

    “I think I need to puke!” Clive exclaimed.

    The nurse pulled out a bedpan just in time.  We watched as he filled the first, entire bedpan, retching loudly.  It was disgusting.  His vomit was bright orange and green; and nothing in it reminded me of the chicken and vegetables we’d had for dinner.  I reached behind Clive and rubbed his back as he gasped and heaved and readied himself for the second one.  He was sweating.  His skin felt cold and clammy under his damp shirt.

    “What’s wrong with him?” Avery asked.

    “I don’t know.”  I gasped.

    “Don’t worry,” The hot nurse said soothingly, “We’re going to find out soon.”

    Clive started hacking up big black/red chunks of . . . it looked like jello.  He started crying.  I could see the blood beginning to run out of his mouth.  The doctor told us that we would have to leave, immediately; and that Avery would have to stay.

    Avery didn’t want to, but—once the nurse had steered us away from Clive’s bed—she told him he could stay in the cancer ward, just to see if he got sick.  I was on the verge of flipping out.

    But we couldn’t say much because we were shocked.  Rodney cried a little as they took his brother away.  I did, too; but because I just lost mine.  And probably for good.

    I replayed the scene in my mind as Rodney and I rode the elevator down.

    “Do you think the same thing is happening to everybody else?” Rodney asked.

    “I don’t know,” I could still hear the alarms in my head, see the chunks.

    “Do you think it’s food poisoning?”  Rodney asked.

    “I don’t know.”  I felt sick to my stomach, too.  But it wasn’t because of the food.

    We said goodbye at my Dad’s tent.  Dad was all smiles and rosy cheeks.  I felt cold and desperate.  When I told him what happened, his smile sank.  Dad lamented the unfairness.  How hard he worked to make the money to put Clive in the hospital. 

    When he found out other kids had gotten sick, too, he wanted to sue.  But neither one of us knew how bad the problem really was.  We wouldn’t know until the morning. 

    .

    That night, I could barely sleep.  The sound of crying kept me awake.  I could hear the women from the hospital, still bawling.  I couldn’t forget the sound of the woman’s voice if I tried.  Except it wasn’t just her, it seemed like everyone was mourning.

    During the night, it only got louder.  More and more voices would join the others.  More people were getting sick.  Soon, the entire camp sounded like a war zone.  When I finally fell asleep, I didn’t sleep for long.

    .

    It was still dark when I woke up.  The tent was open and the cold wind was blowing in.  It was quiet.  Dad wasn’t in his sleeping bag.  I wiped the sleep out of my eyes, pulled on my boots, and stepped outside.  I looked at the hospital and my eyes stung at the sight.  The flood lights all around the hospital were on, shedding piercing white, halogen light across the grounds.  The cold was stinging my face.

    I could smell coffee.

    “Do you want a cup?”  Dad was standing over the camp stove.  He had heavy bags under his eyes.  When I turned around, he gave me a weak smile.  I knew he was worrying about Clive.

    “I’m gonna go check on him, Dad.” I told him.

    Then Dad said something that hit me so hard I saw stars.

    He said, “I think Clive’s dead, Kenny.”

    “No he’s not!” I shouted.  “The doctors took care of him.  I saw!”

    But I was really scared that he was right.  It was a creeping feeling that gripped me deep inside.

    “Son,” Dad said, “I know you don’t want to think about it.  But we have to.”

    I didn’t answer him; and he didn’t push me.  He gave me a cup of coffee and we sat in the chairs in silence.  Looking up at the hospital, I could see people running around on the fourth floor—probably still working like crazy.

    “Do you think they’ll let me visit him now?”  I asked.

    “Maybe,” Dad said.

    I wanted to see my brother.  “Can I call them?”

    Dad handed the cell phone to me, but it didn’t get any service.  I felt a hot wind rise up in my chest and a let out a long sigh.  I lit up a cigarette, handed the phone back to him and settled into my seat.

    “What happened?”  He asked.

    “No signal.” I told him.

    “Oh,” Dad took another slurp of his coffee and nodded at the hospital, “They’re probably still in there.”

    I sat there and fought myself over going in to see Clive.  The lights were on.  The most they would do would is tell me to leave.  But I wouldn’t want to go all the way up there for nothing.  No, I wouldn’t ask, I would just barge in and demand to know what was happening to my brother.
    I’m going, I told myself.  I’m going right now.

  • Zombie: The Incident at Bloody Rock – Prologue

    Prologue

    It was November.

    My dad and I were in some place about forty minutes north-east of Enterprise, California; inside the Mendocino Forest.  We’d driven nearly three and half hours up the 101 from Treasure Island, where we lived.  Then we turned onto some poorly paved road and went further on.  The road led us over some hills and past Lake Pillsbury.  There were some shops when the road opened up, and followed the lake north.  One had a giant, steaming mug of coffee.  Against the woods there was a gas station.  None of them looked open as we passed.  Then there was the gravel airport, which didn’t look well kept.  Then more dirt.

    One time we went too fast and almost lost control; our truck veering to the right while it felt like the weight was fishtailing off to the left.  My dad let out a nervous chuckle and grinned at me.  Point taken, it seemed to say.  Although I hadn’t said anything; I’d watched quietly from the passenger seat, staring out at the mountains in the distance, and the never-ending horizon.

    Being from the Bay Area, I’d gotten used to artificial horizons.  But this, this was awesome.  I rolled the window down to feel the air.  A hot, dry gust of wind shot in.   It must be close to a hundred degrees, I thought.  I could smell the pine trees and something else, something sweeter I couldn’t place.  I stuck my hand out the window.

    “What’s that smell,” I asked him.

    “You mean the trees?” He said.

    “No, the other one,” I told him, “The sweet one.”

    My dad pointed his nose in the air and took a whiff. “I don’t know,” He said.  “Do you know how far the hospital is from here?”

    I pulled the nav. device out of the backpack between my legs and turned it on.  I’d put it away for a while because it said we were supposed to go in a straight line until we got there.  I didn’t remember how far it said we should go, but what appeared as a little line on the map felt like hours.  The machine in my hands lit up and I watched as it loaded our trip.

    .

    The Francis E. Seymour Children’s Research Hospital was one of California’s leading research facilities.  That’s where my brother was being treated; and he was the whole reason we were there.

    We were supposed to be celebrating the end of AIDS.  The cure, as far as we knew, was a copy of the HIV virus, rebuilt to destroy the real virus and replicate healthy T-Cells that were specifically designed to repair the damaged DNA in cells already affected by HIV using pure code from stem cells.  A man, a doctor named Henry Robertson made this breakthrough; and the FDA rushed to allow him to administer his cure to all of his patients.

    This wasn’t entirely experimental now these days.  Scientists were beginning to make designer hearts and lungs for patients a little more frequently.  But it was still rare.  The cost of such an endeavor was extraordinary, and most of these cases were research-related success stories.  Doctor Robertson’s research was the single most important advance against the HIV pandemic.  And my brother was being treated by him.

    We were invited to participate in their special ceremonies the next day, tomorrow.  The governor had become intimately involved in all of the happenings around the first injections and probably took this as a great photo-op.  The guy even dug into his personal coffers to fund the party.  Since the official announcement of the cure, the hospital had been swamped with reporters.  We’d even gotten a few calls.

    My dad didn’t want to talk to the reporters; and he forbade me to as well.  He said our business was our business.  He wouldn’t even let Clive be filmed getting the injection.  I tried to talk him into at least interviewing.  But he would have none of it.  So I resigned myself to waiting for the day I’d see my brother again.

    .

    Mom thought she got away from the danger when she finally quit shooting, when I was four, and she found out she was pregnant with Clive.  But it just didn’t work that way.  

    Clive’s thirteenth birthday is in a month.  Mom died giving birth to him and he has HIV like she did.  This was back in the day when doctors thought most babies born with it were doomed to live life in the hours.  But Clive was a fighter.  In any normal circumstance, I could have blamed Clive for killing my mom on the way out.  But this was something she did to herself, to all of us.  I still missed her; even though I had more pictures than memories.

    I loved my little brother.  He was always nice, he always shared.  Sure, whatever, he’s my little brother, he gets into my stuff and tries to be me.  But I liked that.  There was a time I remembered that Clive stayed healthy for a few years.  Those days were the best.  We did lots of family stuff.  But he got sick again.

    The rest of the time, Clive was sick, fighting some flu or a cough.  Every sniffle or fever seemed cause for concern.  The last year and half was the worst, though.  We didn’t think he was going to make it.  He pretty much lived in the hospital.

    The doctors in Oakland didn’t have the expertise to handle him, though.  And that’s how he got here.  They kept calling Dr. Robertson for advice.  So dad eventually decided to put him in The Francis E. Seymour, where he could receive Robertson’s specialized care and expensive advice personally.  

    They had to airlift him in because the campus was so remote.  When I asked why it so far out here, my Dad told me it was therapeutic.  But I could tell Dad didn’t really know why, as he searched the endless horizon for the building.  Clive had only been there for a few months and he was already making history.

    I ran my fingers in the wind, tracing the outlines of all the hills I could see.  All the while I was thinking of how life would be with the new Clive.  

    “What do you think about the vaccines?” I asked.

    The governor had agreed to give half a million vaccines and a million cures to Africa.

    “With our tax dollars,” Dad noted.

    Delegates from the African Union would be there to accept them.  And they’d scheduled the ceremony for the day after the cures were administered.  That meant tomorrow.  We were invited to stay and participate in the ceremony, but dad and I weren’t trying to get on any evening news reports.  We just wanted to get Clive back.

    Dad said the whole thing was covered in subterfuge.  …My dad believed in aliens and ghosts and pretty much applied to any of those whacked out theories he could put some evidence behind.  Even Bigfoot.  When I asked him about Africa’s vaccines, he snorted.

    “Diplomatic positioning,” My dad called it.

    This whole event was staged, he told me.  Doctor Robertson signed with a major pharmaceutical producer shortly before they announced the cure publicly.  Of course, we had known long before then.  It was a coincidence that Drug Corp. International already had other DNA treatments ready to be released in combination with a drug like this.  Dad stressed the word coincidence.  They offered Dr. Robertson an untold sum for the patent.  Rumor was the amount was in the billions.  But the doctor didn’t seem any different than when we first met him.  He did look happier.

    When we pulled up to the hospital, the first thing I noticed was the red ground.  Even below the grass, in the huge clearing surrounding the hospital, it was blood red.  When I looked back at the navigation system, there was a tag that read “Bloody Rock”, right next to the location marker I was surprised the system could even find local information. Our phones had lost signal as soon as we drove over the first ridge.  Great, I thought.  The hospital was on top of a hill, smack-dab in the middle of no where.  But that might be underestimating it.

    The Francis E. Seymour was a large, imposing building made of smooth, red brick.  On all four sides was a perforated metal façade that curved outwards at the tops and bottoms, with larger square-shaped holes cut for windows, and a larger, rectangular incision made for the cafeteria and its second-to-ground floor ramp.  The entrance-way was encased by a large quarter-arch that split at the bottom like a snake’s tongue, with a staircase that led out to the main parking lot.  It looked like some modern art monstrosity.

    Even though the façade covered most of the roof, I could see the blades of a helicopter peeking out over the edge, and what looked a little like the rotor-top, and folded blades of another.  These guys are definitely making use of their funding, I thought.

  • Zombie: The Incident At Bloody Rock – Forewords

    Cover art.

    Publishing Notes

    Originally posted to a Google blog called “Gabriel Duncan’s Zombie”, in 2011; which was re-syndicated from my original websites LonelyOcean.co.uk; and LonelyOcean.net [check the WayBack Machine]. I know that this story was written in 2006, finished and published shortly before the release of the film adaption of Richard Matheson’s book, I Am Legend.

    I know it’s important to distinguish my work, Zombie: The Incident at Bloody Rock, from other works. But, the book I Am Legend, and the movie, “I Am Legend”, are important to distinguish from each other because:

    1. The book, I Am Legend was a racist white man’s response to Integration; the basis for the idea of “White Flight”; and he called all the zombies “vampire n-word’s”.
    2. “I Am Legend“, the movie, uses the premise of HIV being re-engineered to cure cancer by replacing malfunctioning cells with healthy cells, in some sort of CRISPR-esque way; oh yeah, and the main character is an African-American (Black) U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, and a Virologist–which is a far cry from the racist white guy hiding in his house, and performing mideval experiments to discover the best way to kill these …. vampire n-words. [What the hell. Seriously, the racism was barbaric. But, *spoilers* the main charecter in Matheson’s book was ultimately tried and executed for crimes against new humanity. …Which is sort of how the movie ends…. Sort of. That’s why the ending is a little weak, with the outro monologue. Sorry, my opinion.]

    Zombie: The Incident at Bloody Rock

    This is a story about the cure for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus; coupled with a mysterious enzymatic (bioenhancer) package, which became the catalyst for a zombie apocalypse. It’s got all the trappings of legit psuedo-science; plus some dark-corporate-money influence!

    This story is written from the view point of someone who watches his brother become one of the first people to receive the Miracle Cure. This story takes place at a remote Children’s Research Hospital, in Northern California; on the eve of the roll-out of the Miracle Cure. It’s all so promising. So hopeful. Until the kids start getting sick.

    This is the first of a series of at least three parts.

    The second part is being written now. Third part is already outlined.

    Some things I want to note:

    1. These zombies are re-animated through an anaerobic, chemical-electrical process that somehow leverages the components of the body for fuel, in an ultimately degenerative process.
    2. The idea of using a re-programmed RNA virus made the most sense. The other possible candidate was a prion-type genetic mutation.
    3. This idea has a twist:
      • People who were previously infected with HIV seem to regain most of their higher brain function.
      • Those who are not infected with HIV-1 or HIV-2 become the most basic, hyper-violent version of zombies.
    4. The primary influence behind this variant of Zombie Disease is the idea of augmentation. Something I’ve seen in the Resident Evil universe, specifically the series of books by S.D. Perry. And even Borg maturation chambers, to a certain extent.
    5. The book Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic medicine and Toxicology. Vol. 1, by Becker et al. was my main source material for the matters of death and dying; and, of course, Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers, by Mary Roach.

    Anyway. That was the brief introduction to the universe of what’s officially known as Gabriel Duncan’s “Zombie”.

    Stay tuned for Chapter 1.

  • Zombie: The Incident at Bloody Rock

    Welcome. This is the first part of a series written by Gabriel Duncan.