WARNING: This story contains liberal amounts of blood and gore.
This city was once called Vancouver: a bustling hub of commerce and culture during the heyday of human civilization. Then, as the Necrobonic Plague swept through the continent, the city fell into gradual ruin. As I write this, most of the great monuments and skyscrapers collapsed into the streets as jagged hulks of metal, glass, and concrete. Trash and debris littered the sidewalks and thousands of abandoned cars occupied the streets. The only sound in the city was the soft howl of a gentle breeze.
Despite the silence and loneliness of the dead metropolis, it was not unoccupied. Following the outbreak of the Plague, the city was now home to millions of corpses. As the Plague infested their cells and reanimated them, the corpses found enough life and energy to stand, walk, and prey on every other living thing around them. The undead citizens roamed the streets restlessly and endlessly; they never spoke, never worked, never slept, never dreamed, and never felt anything beyond hunger. They’d occasionally gorge on any animals that lingered in the city: the occasional pigeon, crow, or an escaped zoo animal. But with living flesh becoming rarer and rarer in the city, the living dead often resorted to attacking and eating each other.
If they ever caught my scent, they likely would have devoured my flesh long ago. But ever since the outbreak started, I learned to adapt. Using Kevlar body armor from a police station, and a rain poncho, I covered myself in the flesh and blood of the dead. The sheer stench it gave off masked my own scent, while the gore on my suit made me look like one of them. For the past ten weeks, this allowed me to walk among the zombie hoards without being attacked.
I went out this way every day to scavenge food, clothes, tools, medicine, and other supplies. The city had everything one would ever need. In the beginning weeks of the outbreak, looters and rioters ravaged entire districts, fighting violently to take everything they could carry. It wasn’t long before the undead hoards overwhelmed them. Only the shrewdest of looters survived; most either escaped, or like me, adapted and survived in the city. With only a handful of living people left in the city, entire districts of shopping centers and department stores were left open for me.
Thirteen weeks since the Plague came to Vancouver, I left my secured hiding place and went into the city one more time. I hoarded enough food and supplies to last for years, but on this excursion, I needed one more important thing. With my bloodied suit donned, and its deathly stench emanating all around me, I strode beside the walking corpses.
They shambled around the streets and through every building without any apparent forethought to their destination or purpose. I moved through them, careful not to bump into them too roughly, and careful not to appear too fast or too slow. If I moved uncharacteristically, they would take notice and turn on me. I’ve had one occasion where I tried to speed-walk down the length of the road in my suit; the zombies weren’t fooled, and a pack of them chased me for several blocks. I narrowly escaped them by running into a metro station and jumping over the one-way exit turnstiles.
As time wore on, the undead grew more and more lethargic. Whatever energy it was that made them frenzied beasts had waned. After consuming most of the living in the city, they could no longer find sustenance, and were starving. There were several spots in the streets where, in an almost ritualistic fashion, the zombies selected one of their own to sacrifice. I averted my gaze from the gruesome sights as packs of the undead knelt over their dead brethren, scooped up handfuls of semi-rotten organs, and gorged themselves. Blood dribbled from their mouths as they tore and ground the raw meat with their teeth. No matter how many times I saw such gruesome spectacles, I could never stomach it; sickness and dread settled in the pit of my stomach when I considered that, someday, they might disembowel me with the same savagery.
Walking slowly, I passed the monsters without drawing their attention. Beyond was the hospital; it was once a clean building that promoted life, but now it was a ruin that housed more of the dead. Its windows and doors had been smashed open long ago, either pillaged by looters or ravaged by the zombies.
Moving toward the building, I walked past the broken doors and proceeded down the corridor. Every room and hall in this hospital was dilapidated, with debris, old papers, and dried bloodstains ordaining the walls and floors. Red skeletons littered the reception area, where hoards of zombies attacked the living and picked their bones clean. After thirteen weeks of decomposition, these bones and the leftover gore around them gave off a putrid stench.
Past the reception and waiting areas, the hallway looked clear. I kept alert, listening for any giveaway noises that resident zombies would make. They were quiet for the most part; the only sound that gave their presence away was their labored breathing, their shuffling feet, or the grotesque sounds of their feasting.
The hospital was quiet, and I felt free to move in a natural fashion. I strode down the hall, passing by dozens of empty wards before coming to the doctor’s offices and surgery rooms. These areas were just as wrecked as the rest of the hospital. I felt slightly dismayed when I considered that the medicine I was looking for would be long gone.
What doubt I harbored fuelled my urge to seek out the medicine. I was rushing down the halls toward the medical storage rooms; my heart was racing in anticipation of finding what I needed.
When I reached the rooms, I found them locked, but thankfully they weren’t plundered. Beneath my poncho, I had a hammer strapped to my leg. Brandishing it, I dug the claw end of it into the door, and pried on it hard. It took some effort and a lot of patience, but I managed to crack the wooden door around the lock. Severely weakened, the door swung wide open.
Inside was a wealth of controlled medicines and substances. What I needed was one of those simple, important substances that were always available when one needed it, but became a dire necessity when it became unavailable. I was elated when I saw the antibiotics on the glass shelves. I grabbed as many of them as I could, and shoved them into a bag.
Hastily exiting the hospital, I made my way back to my home. Once I approached the zombie hoard in the middle of the street, I slowed my pace and walked calmly among them. Having spent the past few hours in my disguise, its effect was wearing thinner and thinner, with all the blood and its stench gradually wearing off. For a while, the zombies were still oblivious to my presence. Then, I saw them starting to look at me. There was no mistaking the sensation of being watched by so many walking corpses; their glazed, unseeing eyes sent chills down my spine.
One of them lunged at me, his teeth hungrily closing in on my flesh. I wasted no time; in an instant, I had the hammer in my hands, and I whacked the creature in the face. The hammerhead crushed his jaw with a loud crack, forming a bloody circle on his flesh. The impact sent the zombie flailing to the ground, at the feet of other zombies.
More of them came at me with arms outstretched and mouths agape. Their throats gave off an eerie chorus of dry groans and gurgles. Running laterally from them, I cut through a line of zombies and stepped on the sidewalk. As six zombies stumbled after me, I darted into a narrow alley.
The small space provided the perfect bottleneck; the multitude of zombies huddled around the alley’s entrance, all struggling against each other to fit through the tight opening. One pushed past the crowd and closed in on me; I slammed the claw end of the hammer into his face and gouged out his eyeball. The claw not only left a bloody hole in his head, but also dug into his brain. With an uncontrollably spasm, the zombie collapsed to the ground.
What few other zombies came down the alley soon huddled around the fallen corpse and started feasting on it. They greedily snapped off limbs and dug for the soft tissues beneath the flesh, before taking greedy bites into the skin and muscles. I left behind the grisly scene, and continued toward my apartment.
The alley brought me one block closer to my home, but there was still a large pack of the undead between me and the tall building. As soon as I came out to the street, one ghastly zombie staggered toward me; as one of the older zombies, his flesh was rotting and discolored, with pieces of it peeling away. When I struck him in the head, his neck was ripped clean off, and the head fell to the concrete. Blood oozed out of the open neck wound, before the body collapsed in front of me.
I immediately moved away from the body, before the other zombies grouped around it and devoured it. One of the creatures was lapping up the blood that came out of the open neck, as if it was a water spout. While the undead were occupied, I crossed the street and continued down the block.
Resistance closer to the apartment was substantially abated, thanks to the landmines I had planted all around the block. I saw that a few of them had gone off since I last laid them; limbs and pieces of bloodied flesh littered the streets, from the last few hapless zombies who stepped on the mines. I crossed the pavement carefully, being careful not to step on the mines, before approaching the apartment.
I erected a crude barricade by the apartment door, comprised mostly of a wrecked car and planks of wood; I expertly climbed over the barricade and entered the building. It was dark and quiet inside, but I felt the safest here. As I went up the stairs to the penthouse suite, I discarded my rank poncho.
At the top floor, I used my key and entered the penthouse. Having spent the past eleven weeks in this place, it was as familiar and comfortable of a home as I ever had. The rooms were large, spacious, and clean, with polished white and pastel-colored walls and white carpets. I had weapons and equipment strewn on the kitchen table, but my wife was very meticulous in keeping the floors, the kitchen, and bathrooms clean and tidy. What few other possessions we had –clothes, food, supplies, books and games to pass the time – were neatly stacked in closets and on shelves.
Taking off my Kevlar vest, I moved to the bedroom with my bag of supplies. The bedroom was usually a bright place, with its white and blue walls and its conservative décor. Now, with the curtains drawn, it was dark and it felt musty.
On the bed, I beheld my wife. Her blonde hair was messily sprawled on the sweat-soaked pillow; her face was red and wet, and her cheeks were puffy; her body looked thinner and frailer than when I last saw her. Whatever sickness she had contracted, she was growing worse by the minute; it was all the more reason why I needed to administer the antibiotics as soon as possible.
As I read the drugs’ directions and took out the pills, there were flashes of doubt in my mind. The biggest worry was that antibiotics may not be effective, if this disease was not bacterial in nature. All the symptoms indicated that it was, but what if I was wrong? Above all, I feared that this may be a variant of the Necrobonic Plague. What if it mutated, and was no longer a passive disease, but something that actively killed its hosts before bringing it back to life?
I chose not to waste any more time with doubt or worry. I counted out the pills, poured some bottled water into a glass, and brought it to my wife. She weakly lifted her head up, and I slipped the medicine through her dry lips. Slowly, I brought the water to her mouth and tipped it. When she swallowed and had enough to drink, I placed the glass on the night table.
Looking up at me with her blue eyes, my wife spoke with a raspy voice, “It’s almost time.”
“Oh no it isn’t,” I argued.
“Yes, I can feel it in me. I have seen angels in my dreams. They tell me that my time is coming. I will die by tonight.”
I wanted to dismiss all of it was mere delusions and fear, but I could tell from her expression that she believed everything she was saying. I told her, “Don’t say that. The antibiotics will help, and you’ll be all better!”
She lifted up her arm; it shivered weakly in the air. I held it, while she said, “I wish it could have been different.”
We both knew that, under different circumstances, our love would have endured. We would have had children, but since the Plague, we knew that bringing children into this world would have been pure folly. We wanted to have a family and a happy domestic life, but how could we when the entire world was populated by the undead?
At this point, we both knew that the Plague was something beyond our control, and we had to adapt. We also both knew the consequences of death. If one of us died, the body would be re-animated and turn into one of them. Through an unspoken pact, we knew that the surviving person would have to permanently lay that person to rest. Thus, if she died in front of me, I would have to decapitate her; not only would it protect me, but I also knew that she wouldn’t want to become one of them. Even if the roles were reversed, the predicament would have been the same; if I became a zombie, I would expect her to take my head off.
I suddenly felt frozen, and my muscles seemed to seize up. Thinking about mutilating my wife’s corpse was an act too unbearable to consider. I never gave it any credence, because I wanted to believe that we would remain as living survivors for the rest of our lives. I planned for so many contingencies, but I never prepared myself for this one.
I desperately didn’t want to go through with this. My hand tightened around hers, as I told her, “Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me.”
My wife’s final words escaped her lips, “I’m sorry. I love you.”
In the next few moments, she slipped away. There wasn’t even enough time for the antibiotics to work, assuming they were effective in the first place. Her last breath escaped her lips, and her body remained rigid and still. Her eyes stared up unseeing and lifeless. There was no mistake that she was no longer living.
The grief came on suddenly and relentlessly. It made my body quiver and convulse, as a deep sickness welled up in me. Tears erupted in a series of uncontrollable sobbing spasms. The sound coming from my mouth was something between a cry and a scream.
I remained in this state for at least ten minutes, with tears coating my face and sorrow coating my soul. A myriad of memories washed over my mind, seeming to snuff out the present and bathe me in the past. There were a few bitter memories, but it was the sweet ones that surfaced and made the pain that much more intense. I remembered when we first met; an unassuming encounter at a bookstore, followed by a lively chat at a coffee shop. I remember the many times we talked and laughed, growing closer to the inevitable kisses. I remember the wedding, and how overcome I was with such a deep adoration and joy. Even in the days of the Plague, when we planned for our survival and fretted about how we would cope with the living dead, my love for her never abated.
It was only in my memories of the Plague that I brought myself back to the present. I was so lost in my happy memories that I didn’t even realize that I was still clenching her hand. When I let go, it fell limply to the bed with a soft thump.
What sorrow lingered in my heart was soon pushed out and replaced by a gut-wrenching dread. It wouldn’t be long before the Plague causes her body to rise up and attack me. Looking at her soft and pristine face and eyes, I didn’t want to believe that such a beauty could turn unto a ravenous creature. But my mind prevailed against my heart, and I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to remind myself that she would never want this fate for either of us; I had to desecrate her remains, so that she would find peace and I could continue living.
Rising from the bed, I went back into the living room. We had a set of samurai swords sitting on the floor in the living room; it was a replica that we had plundered from a store just a few weeks ago. The blades were not intended for real combat, but I had sharpened and reshaped them with my various tools, and they proved to be fairly effective. Grabbing the top-most katana, I unsheathed it and brandished it in my hand.
Moving back to the bedroom, I saw that the Plague had already started to make my wife stir. Her body was upright, breathing softly, with a sickening gasping sound coming from her mouth. Her head slowly turned; her blue eyes regarded me, but still appeared unseeing and lifeless.
As she slowly swung her feet off the bed and stood up, I held out my sword and tried to picture myself committing the final deed. All it would take is one quick and clean swing across her neck, and her head would fly off of the body. There would be a fountain of blood, before the headless body collapsed.
Despite that mental image, I still couldn’t picture myself being the one to deliver the final cut. My hands were quivering, and I couldn’t will them into do anything else.
My undead wife stepped closer, her mouth agape and drooling. Another sick sound of gasping air and unintelligible vocal moaning escaped from her mouth. Her sweaty blonde hair clung to her cheeks, masking half her face. With each passing second, her eyes seemed to become more glazed and lifeless than they were before.
She came closer, and I could smell her sweat and her breath, still heavy with medicine. In just a few more paces, she would be upon me, to gnash at my neck with her teeth and rip out my intestines. I still couldn’t believe that she would attack me like one of them, but the more I watched her, the more I was certain that it was inevitable.
With another step, she raised her arms and seemed to lunge at me, her mouth open and ready to bite into my flesh. In a panic, I fled the bedroom. As I side-stepped her, she shambled forward and ran herself into the wall. With her sprawled on the floor, I slammed the door shut. Taking a key out of my pocket, I frantically locked the door, and locked her in the room alone.
Moments passed before she stood up again and followed my scent toward the door. Running into the door, she started banging hard on it with her fists. Each wooden thud pounded into my heart, as a constant reminder of the task that I had failed to finish, and still needed to fulfill. All I was doing now was stalling for time. I needed to open the door back up and finish her off!
My mind was still filled with doubt. It would have been far easier for me to leave the penthouse and leave her in that room once and for all, to eventually starve, collapse, and rot. I was stopped only by how cruel it sounded, and knowing that she wouldn’t want that kind of fate. She needed to rest in peace, and I couldn’t abandon her.
And yet, I couldn’t ever bring myself to open the door back up. As the seconds, minutes, and hours passed, the banging on the door became slower and slower. She likely would continue pounding at the door until she spent all her energy.
Eventually, the pounding became too much for me, and I left the penthouse. In the halls of the apartment complex, it was quiet, and my mind felt freer. At first, I resolved to accomplish my task and kill her. I still couldn’t picture myself delivering the blow.
I wandered to the apartment building’s courtyard, just behind the barricade. As soon as I felt the cool air on my skin, my scent drifted to the nearby city blocks, and the zombies in the street started to gather around the barricade. I could hear their anguished moans and gargles amidst the pounding and slapping of their hands against the barrier.
Those noises, and the sight of so many ghastly corpses flinging their bodies against the barricade, should have reminded me of what my wife really was then. I should have known that she would become no different than one of them, and needed to be slain.
Instead, I had a new idea in mind. It was a horrible idea that manifested as a bittersweet ray of hope in my mind. I think I knew then that I was merely stalling for more time, but I was desperate for an alternate solution. I wanted anything except to kill my own wife.
So, I reached over the barricade and stabbed one of the zombies in the chest. With his heart punctured, the creature shuddered and eventually became limp. With the dead body in their midst, the surrounding zombies started to claw and grasp it with their hands. I grabbed the dead zombie’s hands and pulled his body over the barrier. With all the other zombies holding onto the legs, I had to struggle against them. As they bit into the flesh and tore away the creature’s muscles, the entire top torso became free, and I staggered backwards with it. A mess of entrails and blood splattered at my feet, as I still held on to the zombie’s upper body.
Carrying the rank torso up to the penthouse, I brought it back to the bedroom for my wife. When I opened the door, she came out at me with ravenous teeth and vicious hands reaching for me. I flung the torso between us, nearly knocking her over with it. As the zombie’s blood splashed on her nightgown, she caught the scent of the rotting corpse, and accepted my offering. Kneeling down at the body, she dug her face into its open stomach, smearing it with blood. She had the corpse’s raw kidneys in her mouth, and she bit into them as if they were nothing more than cakes.
It was a disgusting sight to watch my wife devour the torso, but at the same time, I had a morbid fascination with it. It was incredible to see the transformation: just days ago, she was beautiful, full of life and energy, and loving. It was an odd and disconcerting experience to see that same gorgeous woman gorging herself in flesh and blood, reduced to a mere cannibalistic monstrosity.
It took her all night to finish off the zombie’s torso; she ate the creature down to the bone. I locked myself in the bedroom while she peeled off the corpse’s head and finished off the last of the brains. When she was done, she started pounding at the door, directing her hunger at me. The pounding continued through the night; it was difficult, but I managed to fall asleep on the bed.
The next morning, the pounding still continued, albeit slowly and irregularly. Opening the door, I beheld my wife, now twelve hours dead. Her hands were bloodied and raw from bashing them against the door for so long. Her face and skin was all pale, with splotches of gray dark spots and sores all over. Blood from her last meal still covered her face and gown. It wouldn’t be long before she looked like every other zombie in the street.
She lunged at me with a raspy roar escaping her lips. Side-stepping her, I let her stumble into the opposite wall, before slipping out the door and locking her in. While she pounded at the door, I left and sought out another body for her to consume. It was easy enough for me to grab one, or at least half, of a body from the hoard of zombies that congregated in the street. Dragging the corpse to the penthouse was a chore, but once there, I would leave it out for her. When I opened the bedroom door, she would come out and immediately burrow her face into the corpse’s flesh and organs.
While she devoured the corpse, I would take the time to tend to other matters. I donned my vest, gear, and poncho, to venture into the city and scavenge for more supplies and food. She would still be picking at the corpse when I returned, leaving me free to cook for myself and plan my next course of action.
Things continued like this for seven days. Each day, I staved off the inevitable by feeding her. Each day, I awoke to hear her pounding at the door, as if demanding to be fed. Each pounding was a dire reminder of the task I had failed to do, and the never-ending torment I wound up subjecting myself to.
My wife’s appearance became worse and worse, with even more sores and discolorations spotting her body. Her nightgown was once white, but was now painted all in red, from all the blood from all the corpses she had consumed. Her lips were chapped and covered in sores. Her hair was dirty, bloodied, and tangled. The only thing that remained the same was her eyes; they still maintained their brilliant blue color, but remained unseeing.
With each passing day, I knew that my wife’s true spirit was floating around, likely looking down on me with contempt. I knew that I had failed her, and I needed to end this living death quickly, if her soul is to ever find rest.
I eventually grew to question myself. What the Hell was I doing? By staving off the inevitable, I had turned myself into the slave of a zombie wife. She wasn’t even my real wife. All I was doing was clinging to a skin-deep shell of a wife, not wanting to let go of her memories. I didn’t realize until it was too late that she was long gone, and the shell needed to be gone too. I needed to make the killing blow and move on, rather than linger with the mere shadow of my beloved.
After spending a day on the apartment rooftops, thinking things over, I went back to the penthouse to confront my wife once and for all. I found her with a photo of me in her hands. Not realizing that it was just a picture, she had stuffed it into her mouth. Pieces of the picture’s wood frame and glass had cracked in her mouth, impaling her cheeks and tongue. Blood dribbled from her lips, but she seemed oblivious to the fragments in her jaws.
Turning to face me, she walked slowly. Holding up the samurai sword, I waited until she was closer. I took in deep breaths, preparing my nerves to take the swing. My hands were calmer and steadier than they were before. My heart was empty of any grief or sorrow, not like the day when she turned. I felt I was ready to finally do this.
When she staggered toward me, I swung hard and fast, with the speed and ferocity of a bee’s sting. As I always pictured it, the blade cut through her neck cleanly, and her head parted from the body. As it bounced on the floor, blood gushed out of the neck and coated her body. The headless corpse collapsed, splashing a streak of red against the light-colored wallpaper.
Later, I carried my wife’s body and head to the courtyard, and tossed them to the street beyond. Turning away, I could hear the dry, raspy voices of the zombies as they converged and devoured the corpse. Perhaps it was not the most respectable funeral I could give, but the zombies never wasted anything. They picked her bones clean, leaving nothing behind. She was gone forever.
After thorough cleaning and sterilizing, I made the penthouse livable again. Without my wife, it was never the same, and I always found myself stung by the happy memories and the bitterness of how poorly I handed her death. Even though I’ll always love her, I finally accepted that she was gone, and she had found peace. It was time for me to move on without her.
Packing all my gear and food, I set out to find a new place to hole up and continue living.
Copyright 2012, all rights reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment