Decaying Humanity (19 page)

    “Those scientists can probably get just as much out of her dead. Take her, we are done here,” Neves said.

    “What about him?” one of the soldiers asked.

    “Drop the girl and we won’t hurt you,” Neves ordered.

    A boiling rage began to fill me as I looked into her glossy eyes. We had been robbed. Not just of our life together, or our happy ending, but I never even got to say goodbye. I wanted to tell her so much and now I couldn’t. They stole her from me. I stared up at the captain defiantly.

    “Fine, just shoot him,” Neves said coldly.

    I kissed her on the forehead and held her close. Then the roar of gunshots filled the air. As the bullets drilled into my body and I just kept thinking,
keep her safe
. Pain, at this point, had lost its novelty. At first, the evolution or mutation had made it almost exciting to encounter pain without harm. Now as bullet after bullet tore through me, the fun had quickly vanished. The pain of seeing her limp in my arms hurt worse than any weapon. I was devastated and couldn’t take it any longer. All I needed to do was pull my head out of the shelving and they would have a clean shot. Then, we could be together.

    I looked at her one last time, hoping that I could take her image with me to the grave. A sense of rage came over me that was so abrupt and powerful that it felt inhuman. Foreign thoughts took over my mind.
“Live. Kill.”

    There was a sudden wave of pressure and a loud cracking sound in my head that blurred my vision. The addition of this sudden pain on top of the searing burn of hot lead tearing into me caused me to dig my fingernails into Shay’s skin. I tried to pull back, but something prevented me. I could feel her blood running down my hands. I gasped for air and then stood up screaming at the ceiling in rage, still holding her limply in my arms.

    I felt the bullet slam into my forehead and my vision went dark. I became weightless as I floated through a sea of darkness. There was a whisper and I moved towards it. The voice sung to me clearly.

    
“Live. Live together,”
it sang.

    All the feeling in my body return and suddenly the pain in my back subsided in one final explosion.

    “What is he!?” screamed one of the soldiers.

    I opened my eyes and the light was blinding. On the ground, by my foot, was the flattened carcass of the bullet. I raised one finger to touch my forehead and there was no hole, no damage whatsoever. A shadow began to creep in front of me; it was something waving about like snakes reaching up for the sky.

    “He’s an alpha too!” the captain shouted and snatched the rifle from one of his troops. He took a shot and it struck me hard in the forehead. It sent my head back only slightly and then a smile stretched across my face as I heard the round plink onto the floor.

    I unleashed an inhuman screech and thin wiry tentacles extended from my back. They flew across the aisle and stabbed through the soldiers nearly fifteen feet away. These monstrous appendages functioned without my input, as even I was surprised at their deadly precision. They drove through the men and exited from their backs. The bloody tips then wrapped around the soldiers and dug into their hands forcing them to drop their weapons. The men behind me screamed in pain and as I turned to them, they too, were being assaulted by the beast inside me.

    The captain surprisingly was the only one untouched by them and he took a few defensive steps backwards. A few additional tentacles wrapped around his feet and tripped him. He lay on his back and struggled to keep his weapon from being snatched away. The soldier beside him was even lifted off his feet a few inches as the beastly threads punctured him. Then there was a dark chorus of groaning as every soldier transformed into the undead in unison.

    “I put a .50 caliber round through the last pack leader I encountered. I underestimated you,” he said smugly.

    He attempted to crawl away from me, but the tentacles held fast. The new zombie soldiers reached and clawed for him, but they were restrained. Whether controlled by my unconscious or something else, this power knew I wanted to deal with him, personally.

    “What is a pack…,” I began before being interrupted.     

    “You…” a whisper from my arms said.

    I looked down to see Shay looking up at me. Her wound had completely healed over and her eyes had returned to their previous shine.

    “You’re alive!” I cried out in a shaky voice. “How did you, I mean I thought you…”

    “You finally got your claws,” she said faintly and passed out.

    I laughed tears of joy as I pulled her close and kissed her hair. I looked over to see Harvey standing in the aisle by the exit.

    “Captain, it’s time for us to go home,” I said as I walked up to him. I stood over him as he flailed and struggled to keep the tentacles from constricting his hands and feet.

    “It’s not too late; you could still turn yourself in. Your blood could be the key to human survival,” he pleaded.

    I looked at Shay and smiled as she began to regain consciousness. She opened her eyes, wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me. I put her on her feet and we stood side by side, looking down at the defeated man.

    I didn’t even want to see him anymore. His presence made me sick. He was the terrible example of what humanity stood for. He abused everyone to get what he wanted, what he thought was right. If only he had thought to just ask for a blood sample, we would have gratefully obliged. No, instead they shot up my friends and paid raiders to rape and pillage everyone in the town. He made me wonder, were people even worth saving anymore?

    Harvey approached with a hungry look in his eyes.

    I drew both of my machetes and looked at the captain with disgust.

    “Look at what you have become,” he said and spit in my direction.

    I looked at my two friends standing there in the new silence. We had become something different, but looking around at the uniformed men around us, I wondered exactly who was the monster. I thought of the thousands, or more likely,
millions
of people out there who were gone now … because of people like this man. Men who were willing to murder anyone for what they considered the higher purpose. The same men who had forgotten that humanity had gotten as far as it had, not by putting the species ahead of the individual, but by understanding that
every
life was worth trying to save. It is the
trying
to save another, even against unbeatable odds, that makes us human.

    The tentacles began to silently retract into my back. I realized that even with my new senses and strengths, despite my monstrous new abilities … I was still
human
.

    I turned my gaze back down to his cruel face and said, “Captain, it could have been worse. I could have turned out like you.”

    I dropped both of my machetes to the ground and fell on him in a hungry frenzy. Harvey and Shay joined in and there was a darkness that washed over me like a drug.

    Later, when there was no recognizable remainder of the captain, we silently packed our supplies and proceeded to leave.

    “I thought you died,” I said to Shay as we walked through the desecrated aisles.

    She was quiet for a moment. Then she looked up at me and said, “I think I did. Everything went cold and everything went black. I never felt alone. A force pulled me back, so I could come back to you. Then, all of a sudden, I woke up in your arms. You were killing everyone with those things.”

    “I’m sorry,” I said.

    “For having a power that saved our lives?”

    “Well, I guess I’m not sorry, then. I was afraid you would think I’m even more of a monster than before,” I said.

    “You aren’t a monster. Monsters hurt innocent people. Remember, that’s what you told me and I think you are right. Plus I mean, tentacles, c’mon, that’s badass.”

    “He called me a pack leader. Did you hear mention of that in the hospital files?”

    “No. Must be a military term, I guess we aren’t the only special ones. That would probably explain why the zombies are drawn to you.”

    “I guess so.”

    “What now?” I asked.

    As we made it to the front entrance an eerie silence fell across the area. Harvey shook my shoulder and pointed at the doors. There was a mountain of bodies all across the floor. Zombies shambled about and feasted on the corpses. It seemed the Army had broken through the zombies and raiders, but more zombies had flooded the area.

    Things were quiet, but the Army surrounding the building couldn’t have been overrun, could they? We crept to the doors and peeked out. The soldiers had been completely destroyed. The parking lot was filled with immobile vehicles and uniform wearing undead. In the center of the devastation stood a zombie wearing a hunting jacket, staring at me intently. It was the thinker from the motel. I glared at him, was this my new family?

    “Jim, I think your fans are coming from even further away now,” she said. She pointed out past the wall of cars and a sea of zombies had come to our aid. There were thousands, almost as if we had stirred every zombie in the city.

    “They came for us,” I said. “Where do we go now?”

    “We just found each other. Even our love has beaten death,” she said.

    “If we turned ourselves in, our sacrifice could save everyone else.”

    “True,” she responded reluctantly.

    I pondered this difficult choice. Should we bring Pablo his supplies and lead the zombies away from the town? We could be together, possibly forever. We would witness the world struggle to recover from this disease. Life would never be the same and those that survived would have to fight to stay alive. In the end I imagined the dead would consume the world. I loved her so much that just knowing she was with me, made me whole. Who cares about everyone else? My whole life had been following rules and doing for others. This could be our only chance to be happy.

    Or, we could turn ourselves in. The scientists would pull us apart and study us. They might develop a cure from us and many of the world’s survivors could be saved. With this cure the world could rebuild itself. Life could eventually return to some kind of normal, but that world would hold no place for us. If they didn’t keep us locked up in some underground lab, they would simply exterminate us. Our sacrifice could possibly save millions.

    I held my car keys in my hand and stared at them intently. Harvey stood motionless, watching me with questioning eyes. He waited for me lead. Shay wrapped her hands around mine, with the keys cupped tightly.

    “Come on, let’s go,” she said with a smile.

    “Where?” I asked.

    “I think you already know,” she responded and kissed me on the cheek.

    She was right … I had always known.