The End Is Nigh Means Nothing (part two)

(The story continues)

Hundreds of miles away, Frank Jensen was well aware of the threat. Two days before, he had gathered hundreds of the Buddhist practitioners who were members of his meditation center. They had all met up at the center's retreat grounds for a marathon chanting session. He wasn't a naive person in the least, his years of practice with Buddhism had prevented any naivety but one. The fatal one he had, up until then, thought with all of his life could stem the rising tide of destruction.

The meditators had gathered in rows, this time facing away from him, while he sat on a dais and conducted the chanting. OM MANI PADME HUM over and over and over. The entire group of hundreds, just shy of a thousand, sitting there on cushions, in row after row, facing the coming swarm. They were all caught up in the idea that the power of their combined chanting and positive energy would break the violence of the coming hordes. But the undead could not be reasoned with, nor would compassion or positive vibrations do anything to them. Jensen realized this truth too late. He only wished some of the others had managed to escape in the ensuing chaos.

As the approaching horde came closer, he could sense the fear among many of those gathered. OM MANI PADME HUM OM MANI PADME HUM over and over as the swarm shambled closer. There were runners among the horde, Jensen knew this well, but there was no need for the runners to run with such an easy collection of snacks just sitting there almost as if in offering.

When the first disheveled and half unclothed wretches came upon the first row of chanters, there was no pause, just lunging, flesh tearing and blood spurting, screaming and moaning. The ever present moan of the undead.

The swarm kept coming. Within seconds, the chanting had broken off and most of the chanters were either on their feet running for their lives or struggling as the undead crowded over them, attacking, tearing and biting. Those that ran fared no better than those few brave or stupid souls who remained resolute on their cushions until their end.

Jensen bolted upright and ran off the dais and kept running. The swarm, distracted by the hundreds of fresh bodies, took little notice of him as he retreated into the nearby woods and ran for his life.

Jensen didn't remember how he ended up in his parents' home, nor how long he had been running, nor whether he had in fact stolen that car or just dreamed of it. But here he was. Two days after the massacre, still in his monk's robes, with a pair of jeans on underneath, his dad's old assault rifle slung over his shoulder, and a pack of canned food pulling on his shoulders. Jensen waited. Peering through the curtains of the living room window. The smell of smoke in the air while the occasional gunshot rang out from somewhere close by.

His parents had obviously fled in a hurry. Or they had been forcefully evacuated by the national guard, which he knew had rolled into various suburbs and herded everyone living that could be found onto the streets and ordered them to evacuate by any means necessary. There was supposed to be a rescue station, Fort Varick, a hundred miles away. Jensen imagined a bunch of scared weekend warriors defending a base crowded with thousands of refugees. He didn't want to think how many of those undead would be there, rushing at the soldiers. He didn't want to imagine any longer because he knew how that scene would end. There were just too many of the damned things now.

He could see a few more of the things wandering around outside. Not in any swarm. Just the occasional shambler. The runners had by now gone after more mobile prey. Unless some were around waiting for any sudden movements. There were surely more victims to be found, in basements or upstairs bedrooms and attics. He could hear banging and glass shattering, and the occasional muffled scream. And the ever present moaning of the undead, when prey was sensed.

He would also be prey. But so far as he knew, he was undetected and meant to stay that way. His only goal now was to find a way to escape into the country side, to somehow get past the streaming refugees and the certain undead swarms that would be on their heels. Yesterday, before the TV stations stopped broadcasting live, he saw such things from the birdseye perspective of a news chopper flying above a highway crowded with refugees on foot and in cars, as the undead swarms moved in closer, capturing and gnawing on the rear of the mass of people trying to flee to anywhere else. Up the highway, one way. From the chopper's perspective you could see that the mass of refugees stretched along for miles, and behind them, the mass of undead was also stretching for miles. From east and west of the highway, across fields, a few undead groups were running and shambling towards the highway, almost as if they were flanking off the living.

He shook his head. He would avoid the highways. And any where else he thought would have been packed with refugees. No. Survivors. Or survivors up until recently.

One of the last live broadcasts was the president declaring martial law by executive order. The quarantine zones had been breached and the only safe areas now would be the so called rescue stations set up by the military, for any survivors to try to reach. Teams of special forces would be deployed via helicopter back into the cities, to search for survivors and destroy any of the undead found. However, he wondered how much good such missions would bring. Any survivors still trapped in cities would surely either be undead themselves now, or torn to shreds so that even the infection or whatever in the hell it was wouldn't matter.

Jensen wondered to himself how the rescue stations would screen out infected refugees/survivors. Would they separate the bitten from the merely wounded? And how would they know who among the wounded had come into contact with fluids from either the infected or the actual undead? Would they even know before it was too late? And how many would figure it out in time? What would happen? Would those with weapons simply kill off the infected or those who could be infected? Were they going to strip thousands of terrified refugees for inspection?

Clusterfuck. That was the word that came to Jensen's mind. The absolute breakdown of every known part of the social contract. He shook away such cynicism since he had no luxury to think such thoughts when his own near future was in doubt.

Jensen felt ashamed for what had happened not only to his group of chanters but also the masses on the highways. He promised himself that he would allow himself to cry should he ever make it far enough away. But first he had to get away. Now was not the time for guilt or any emotion but that which would lead him far away.

The End is Nigh Means Nothing

(the first part of something I am working on at the moment. i posted it originally on Lost Zombies (http://www.lostzombies.com) a month ago. i think this makes a perfect first post here.)

"Don't ever humanize them."
-grafitti found spraypainted in red across a rotting billboard 60 miles out of Chicago

The glee of the fundamentalists on morning talkshows was what pissed him off to no end. Here was a worldwide epidemic shotgunning through certain major cities across the globe, infecting millions, and the self-appointed voices of god were blabbering about judgment upon a wicked world.

For about two weeks after the infection hit the news and was screamed around the world in thousands of programs, blogs, and websites, he kept up his daily routine. Life in his city was normal enough. Sure there was a run on bottled water and canned goods in all the stores, things which even he himself decided to stock up on just in case, but he wondered if it was just the paranoia of a post-9/11 world again.

Unlike most others, he did take reports of reanimated corpses seriously, but just like most others, it didn't affect him personally, no matter how bizarre and titillating the idea was. Right out of a horror film. He figured the authorities and the medical community would get a handle on it and isolate the outbreaks and contain the infected or deranged or whatever in the hell they really were. Undead or no. This surely couldn't be anything the government couldn't handle.

But those were the first several days. When outbreaks were just that. And there was no talk of swarms or of quarantined areas being breached. Just sick people and sick "camps." That was before Las Vegas was devoured into silence. Before Tokyo went up in a sea of fire. Before the massive riots in Paris turned into the fatal game of runners and shamblers verses those who could still scream. Zombies. He almost couldn't believe the word had jumped right out of a horror film and into the world media. Taking a huge bite out of the world in the process.

On the day his world started to end, he woke up at his normal time, brushed his teeth, and remembered a line from an old horror movie as the news on the tv blared about the national guard being over-run down in Houston. "The death of death."

He walked the short block to the train station and went up to the platform to wait for the next line of metal cars taking people to wherever it is they went each morning. He knew they were all going to jobs, like him, but he liked to imagine that everyone was just riding the train for the hell of it and would do whatever else they wanted to do that day but work.

From the platform, he noticed on the street corner about a half mile away, the burning wreck of a police car. This was about the same time he noticed nobody was on the platform and not a sign of any train. "Fuck" he muttered to himself in growing anxiety as he looked around in every direction while running down the stairs on onto the street back towards his home.

Strangest of things, as he reached his building, he reached for his phone and left his boss a message that he wasn't coming in today. Sick, as he said.

*****

After two days of being holed up in his apartment and hearing the occasional siren or smashing glass outside, he decided he would need to get his gun from the closet, clean it up and load it. He never cared much for the gun, but had kept it in the way some people keep family bibles. It was once his older brother's gun. A hand-me-down.

He mused about how quiet everything seemed, even though the news channels kept shrieking and showing images of mass destruction in other cities. But then again, he was high up on the 12th floor. There were more riots in central Europe. Civilians being gunned down by soldiers in India. Nothing in the images seemed too out of the ordinary for the modern world, except for the occasional footage of someone being cornered by those things and torn apart. Those things looked just like people. They were people, or had been recently. What in the hell were those things?

Regardless of the quiet, this morning he had moved a heavy dresser against his apartment door. And then in front of the dresser, an old oak trunk he picked up months ago at an antique shop. Just for good measure. If he rationed out his food, both recently bought and looted, he could last for a couple weeks. If his neighbors had all fled as he suspected, perhaps he could pick up more supplies once he was certain things would stay quiet. He knew too many things already about the walking undead, such as how they searched for the living or uninfected living anyway.

As for useful information, even the internet proved more useless than ever. He thought if he could find information about how not to become truly sick, he would just follow the instructions and ride it out. If his neighbors had largely gotten the hell away, perhaps he could stay for a long time without any of the zed heads ever being the wiser. He had wandered into the small grocery store downstairs yesterday and grabbed what he could carry. He felt a twinge of guilt about it, but the windows had already been blown out and the store looked as if a tsunami had crashed into it. On his adventure, he didn't see anyone else, living or dead. Though there was a lot of congealed and dried blood on sidewalk at the corner, by the bus stop.

The reports he read from frightened bloggers and watched from snatches of media footage tended to claim either that infected people would freak out in homicidal rage, attacking and eating the uninfected or that the infected were reanimated dead who were feasting on the living. The infection was spread through bodily fluid contact. Almost all attack victims would either die from infection only later to reanimate and shamble-hunt for the living or they would ratchet up into crazed predators in 28 Days fashion. If a victim had only been bitten, they could live for hours before symptoms presented, sometimes traveling among everyone else into safe zones and rescue stations, before themselves flipping out murderously or dying and reanimating, attacking those who assumed they had made it to safety.

He learned a whole slew of new slang words to refer to the things. Besides the ever popular "zombies" and the traditional "ghouls," there was Z heads, Zs, gut-buckets, stenches, eaters, Gs, moaners, biters, pus bags and so on. Most of these were from the military, many of whose soldiers were still running various missions and returning to base or some rescue station and getting online possibly to stave off the growing sense of sheer lunacy.

Here he was, stuck in his apartment. Waiting for the city around him to show its unraveling. Half wishing and wondering whether the hordes of zeds would move on away after fleeing refugees.

He wondered which of the times he awoke to sounds of smashing and sirens had been when that store got hit.

He didn't hear much of any screaming, or many random noises. No knocking or bashing sounds. None of the moaning he had expected. So he just waited. For as long as the broadcasts and the internet were running, people were at least proving that something would be done about this, and afterwards everyone would all get drunk and celebrate it, like v-day or one of the older commemorations.

He had been following the blog posts of a soldier stationed about 300 miles away. Finally, he decided to post a reply to one particularly harrowing entry titled "Get the Fuck Out of Dodge if You are Still Alive." It had just been posted 20 minutes ago, and perhaps he could find this soldier was still online, and maybe learn just what chances he had should he stick to his original plans and hole up for a while.