XXX As a Halloween Gift. A sneak peak at a current zombie story in the works for the 3rd Octopus Book. (Unedited!) XXX JOSIAH Weeks now… Every creak and sound was the subject of a minor heart attack. And in such a massive building, left unchecked, there were always sounds. And it was nightmarish here. An epicenter for contamination and exposure. And Josiah was the only living soul left. Not the only animated thing left, but the only one with any kind of humanity that he could tell. He crawled slowly and carefully through the hospital ventilation. Such a big building required such massive tunnels of steel and concrete in order to maintain both ventilations and decontamination, though the later was seldom talked about. At least not until the end when such things were not only discussed but obsessed over. And this was no Anthrax or Ebola. Nobody had been able to tell exactly what it was. And it spread too fast to study closely. It wasn’t just under an electron microscope or being spun around in a blood gyroscope. This was coming through the windows. This was pouring in waves through the halls. This was eating everyone alive. Josiah, a true believer in the god of science, stayed to the very end. He believed such things could be stopped. That the government he briefly wound up working for was determined to find a cure before it was too late. And he had been here when the hospital had been overrun. Josiah worked as a nurse in the massive hospital. And when it all started he had been drafted into government studies. Almost immediately catapulted into the status of doctor. He had been here as soldiers unloaded through the hallways, taking down living and rogues alike. The final evacuation of doctors, scientists and soldiers had been pure chaos. People screaming and running. Men grabbing boxes and instruments and vials of medications. Josiah himself had picked up a rifle and started shooting. He had tried to get on that last truck. And as it pulled out and away from him, he could not tell if the people clinging to the sides were alive or rogues. In the end most of the faces had been the same. In the end the screaming and hollering and gunshots had made his ears ring. The smoke of diesel and fires gone out of control, mingling with gas and gunpowder had made his eyes burn. And there was blood on his glasses. He had climbed. The kind of frantic climbing that comes from primitive animal instinct. Pure survival. They had left him behind and they were everywhere reaching for him. And the screams of the dying that could not escape… the ones that had been bed ridden or injured or simply too sick to move echoed through the giant building. And Josiah had climbed. He had felt them grabbing at his ankles. His heart pounding and he could barely see. He felt the heat of flame everywhere and everything with shrouded in smoke. Josiah had climbed the wall. Finding dumpster, then water pipe, windowsill, and bars. He had climbed and when he finally did turn and look down he almost fell. Somehow he had made four stories. And the parking lot turned military compound was a sea of faces looking at him and hands reaching for him. Waiting to catch him if he fell and tear him to pieces. He found the grating of the ventilation system and made his way inside. Remotely he thought that no sane person would ever enter Hell willingly but he felt that this was exactly what he had done. For weeks he had existed inside. He made his way to the very top floor. There were not as many of them up there. His only guess had been that they found it too much of a hassle to go that far up. And the very last floor had been a haven. Only accessible by one elevator. There had been only three of them up there and he had been able to handle them. This is where all of the labs had been. There had been some supplies; Government and Civil Defense stores of basic rations, water and toiletries. They had lasted him for the three weeks he remained up there. Twelve hours a day he spent doing research. And through the night on the little cot he had found, he tried to sleep as he listened to the sounds echoing up through the ventilation systems. The sounds of them. Wondering around down there. Tearing the building apart. One week in he heard the sound of a woman screaming. Perhaps another survivor. One that they finally caught. Or perhaps it had just been a nightmare. He eventually made his way up to the roof and looked out over the city. Many of the streets were flooded. The crumping explosions had shattered many windows as the military deliberately destroyed the bridges and the levees. There were great pillars of smoke reaching to the sky as fires continued to blaze out of control. And looking down he briefly imagined himself an angel, looking down on the damned. He recalled seeing a disturbed ant pile as a child. Not knowing what it had been. All those thousands of shiny things pouring out of it. All red and swarming. He had reached to touch them. And they had swarmed onto his hand and had bitten him over a hundred times. He had been taken to a hospital then. Only three and suffering anaphylactic shock. And here he was, in the hospital again. And looking down he was reminded again of that ant hill. He was reminded again of the seeming millions pouring out of it. All of them wanting to bite him. TAYLOR Taylor had run out of gas a month ago and abandoned the long loved Lincoln to a grove of trees where soon after it grew a beard of moss. The food she had taken ran out not long after and she had had very little luck using the rod. She found herself drifting slowly about. Each day she made her way further away from roads. First asphalt and then dirt roads. She passed a farm and slipped into a massive field of corn. She saw the far away farm house and considered making her way to it. She was within a quarter mile of it when something deep inside her made her pause. Looking at the farm house down the aisle of cornstalks she became certain that she would not return from it. The corn field was massive. And the harvest ripe. She picked corn ears and ate it raw. Dusk came. And as the deep red settled over the field she stumbled through into a small clearing and slapped her hands over her mouth. In the center there was a high pole and crucified to it was a scarecrow. Just a scarecrow she told herself. She stepped closer to it. Dead cornstalks snapped under her feet. And at this sound the head of the scarecrow snapped up. Eyes flew open and through the stitched up mouth and bits of burlap it wailed at her. Arms tied with rusted barbed wire came to life and tried to pull free. Taylor, unable to stop herself, screamed and ran from the clearing back into the corn. The corn field seemed endless as the sky darkened and Taylor finally stopped. Wind rustled the leaves around her and there was no way to see which direction she was going. She wondered endlessly in the darkness. Every rustle made her jump as the leaves blew in the soft southern night wind. She walked for hours in the darkness, jumping at shadows and sounds. Convinced they were all around her. The night went on and on impossibly long. Exhausted, Taylor finally lay down and covered herself with piles of dead stalks. The sleep that took her was that deep kind you literally fall into. It terrified her to sleep. Always did. Nowhere seemed safe. She had on several occasions climbed trees and found an uncomfortable slumber high above the ground. One night she had done so in the arms of a massive oak. She had awoken to see them. Hundreds of them. All moving together in a crowd. They streamed under the branches of the oak. Taylor held her breath as she watched them. None of them had seen her. None looked up. There had been hundreds. The parade of them had lasted for hours. And she kept thinking to herself that if she had slept on the ground they would have found her. She would have awoken to find her vision filled with hands and faces bearing down on her. Awoken just in time to be ripped apart in horrible burning agony. Screaming as they pulled her stomach open and emptied her. As her fingers disappeared into mouths that crunched down on them. Screaming until her tongue was pulled from her mouth. This dream snapped her awake to the warm dawn light. And she sat up to see them. Ten or twelve of them emerging from the corn. Arms outstretched. Reaching for her. Taylor jumped up and turned taking half a running step before she collided against something soft and giving but heavy. She went down on top of it. And it’s arms embraced her even before they hit the ground together. Face to face she screamed and its mouth came at her. Taylor pushed at it and her hands sunk into it. The smell gagged her and she could not breathe. It ripped at her clothes and she beat at it trying to break free. The others closed in from seemingly every direction. Taylor thrashed and twisted, finally breaking free and covered in filth. Thought escaped her. All thoughts but one. “Get away! Get Away!” Taylor bolted like an animal, darting between them wherever there was room to do so. To her own shock she ran at three of them blocking her way, screaming and jump kicking at the middle one knocking it to the ground. She rolled away and darted through the green hell of leaves and blinking sunlight. Suddenly she was out and on a dirt road. Barely more than an aisle within the corn. She turned and ran up it till it crested and looking down it she saw the house. And the Scarecrow. It was making its way up the road towards her. Even so far down she could see its eyes through the burlap holes. Glaring at her under the rotting old brim of the hat it wore. The hands it reached towards her with were tattered and shredded. She stood paralyzed for a moment. And from the corn they emerged on both sides, joining the Scarecrow in its march up the hill towards her. And when she heard rustling and those horrible wails from both sides of her the paralysis broke and she ran back the way she had come. Back down the hill through the single aisle that led like a narrowing ribbon through the corn maze and into the forest. Her lungs were burning by the time she got there. And when she plunged into the woods, mindless of the brambles and branches that tore at her face and arms, she did not turn to look back until the sun was once more giving way to the gloom of night.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 05:28:27 +0000
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