Backtracking, I walk the bicycle I’ve
liberated towards my dorm room, avoiding any other unfortunate encounters of
the ghoulish kind by ducking beneath windows. I can hear the Catholic Preacher
(seems like a fair enough title to give to a free-willed undead that preaches)
still amassing his army outside, preaching to them from the gospels as they
move further away from my dorm room.
I slip in through the window, over the
headless body of Laura (maybe Loren?) and head over to the computer, where I
boot up the internet to see what in the world is going on. Logging on through
my e-mail, I have like ten e-mails from my family asking if I’m okay. I type
off a quick response that I’m surviving and that I hope they’re safe too.
It’s only when I reach the news page of
my internet scrolling do I realize how pointless me e-mail was; they aren’t in
any danger back in Colorado. This is confined to one city in the United States.
San Antonio.
A biological weapon that went off at a
military base that quickly spread out of control, the Center for Disease
Control already has all the roads leading out of town blocked off, along with a
military presence ever hundred feet surrounding the city ready to shoot any
undead that try and leave. At the moment the pathogen is still airborne, and
anybody in the area can be considered infected.
That brings a smile to my face just
thinking about it, knowing I may get shot on the general principle that I live
in a city with five military bases! Scrolling through the stories as they
continue to pop up, I see that film from within the restricted zone (aka, where
I’m sitting) shows Preachers of varying shapes and sizes, surrounded by armed
zombies, going to war with each other upon encountering one another.
One video I upload shows seven zombies,
all armed with heavy piping, clubbing at a grey skinned child who is screaming
at them to stop, while another grey skinned older man watches on impassively,
clutching a bible to his side with rotting fingers. The footage is shaky and
the audio crackles, but you can just hear the grey skinned older man speak out.
“Spare the rod and spoil the child! If
this impudent rat thinks he knows the true path to salvation, let us beat it
out of him so we can see for ourselves.”
The other zombies all grunt and groan
in agreement as the methodically club the screaming child, breaking his limbs
and tearing away great chunks of mottled skin. The child is not so much as
crying as it is screeching, screeching biblical verses as it is clubbed to its
final death. The video clip ends there, but there are hundreds more I could
look at, some being uploaded to youtube. Scanning the titles, I see one labeled
“Satanic Zombie –University of Texas at San Antonio”.
Seeing as I’m in the dorm rooms of that
university, I want to see what might be lurking out there. Clicking play I hear
a whispered girls voice, obviously scared.
“Alright, so I came out of the library
and saw it standing by the fountain with like, ten other people. All of them
have slit throats and upside down crosses carved on their foreheads, though the
one that seems to be the leader, there, you can see him moving around like a
dog!”
The camera moves in and indeed, there
is a zombie that is walking on its knuckles as it moves, taking corners extra
sharp just to slide around. They have three people trapped between them all,
who are clutching at each other in absolute horror. The most mobile zombie of
all is one with hulking shoulders and dreadlocks, which turns its head about
back and forth as it howls forth blasphemous things.
“String them up! String them up by
their own tendons so they can dance for us like the puppets of God that they
purport to be.” It shrieks, waving a pistol at the group as several zombies
bearing knives walk up to the group. One person steps away, arms raised in a
peaceful gesture, saying something to the Preacher zombie. It laughs and spits
at him.
“Arrangement? I need more followers if
I am to get out of here, and how am I to attract them without live bait?
Consider yourself lucky Christian pig that I don’t just split you open and
feast on your beating heart right now!”
The clip ends with me staring in
silence at the screen, wondering where in the Hell I went wrong in choosing to
come to San Antonio for a degree. Turning on another news report, I sit back
and rub my eyes as I listen.
“The military has yet to comment on the
situation, and the Center for Disease Control has only released that the virus
is airborne and is currently only lethal after untreated exposure for over
seventy two hours. Survivors are encouraged to go to one of the safe zones within
the city to get air lifted out into a CDC control camp, where they can be
treated and kept from dying of this noxious disease.”
Looking at the map, I smile as my luck
may have just changed; atop the main parking garage is a safe zone, where
survivors are holing up and waiting for helicopters. If I can make it there, I
can get out of this nightmare and get treated, maybe even cured! But who knows
how long I’ve been infected? Clicking through several pages of story material,
I find what I’m looking for: signs of infection.
“Stage one: overwhelming hunger and
thirst as well as a rise in fever.” I read aloud. “This stage can last up to
forty hours, making it hard to detect.”
“Stage two: pustules under the skin
that burst if pressure is applied. This stage is when the subject is most
likely to turn into a normal zombie and can last anywhere from eight to ten
hours. During this time the subject is highly contagious and can become
irrational.”
“Stage Three: the terminal stage.
During this stage the persons organs begin to shut down, leaving them in
crippling agony. This stage can take as long as four hours. During this time no
other zombies will approach the subject, even if he is the only supply of fresh
meat within sight. Upon death the subject will reanimate and retain a certain
spark of the life he once had, as well as the ability to gather other zombies
and spark cognition within them.”
“Preachers…” I mutter, rubbing my chin
as I lean back in my chair. “So, I have less than three days to get to the top
of the parking garage. I can do that!”
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