I Zombie I [Omnibus Edition] Read online

  I Zombie I

  Jack Wallen

  Copyright 2010 by Jack Wallen

  PUBLISHED BY: AUTUMNAL PRESS

  Edited by: Lynn O’Dell

  Jim Chambers

  and Karen Brogan

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales, events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  *****

  This book is dedicated to anyone willing to hop onto the dark hayride with me. Thank you so much for diving into the dark fantastic with me.

  The following is a transcription of the written journal and audio recordings of Jacob Plummer

  Chapter 1: It begins

  The blast ripped through the air, stopping all time and thought. Even from within my hotel room, I felt the concussion deep within my cells. I felt it in my gut, my eyes, my brain. It rang in my skull and burned my skin. The sensation and sound were everywhere and everything. And then it was nothing…which was the strangest part of it all. I expected the sounds of chaos―alarms, cries, screams―but there was nothing. I was confronted with an all-encompassing nothing. For an instant, I felt as if someone had lowered me into a deprivation chamber, where all was lost save some scattered randomness in my brain. At first I thought maybe the concussion had blown out my hearing, but the sound of breathing and the rustling of sheets neatly tucked away the fear of going deaf.

  The blast and the shaking room were enough to make me worry that something serious had happened. Against my personal moral code, I decided to turn on the television in hope that it would have some explanation. Surely the local news would interrupt whatever reality-trash was broadcasting to instruct citizens on what to do in case of an emergency. The television brought me nothing―nothing but static and white noise. The snow-filled screen was hypnotic. I have no idea how long I sat and stared. It felt like forever, but with the fear that gripped my gut, the black and white of the static was soothing. I wanted to hear some fifties-era tones echo from the speaker informing me to get to my nearest bomb shelter, anything that would give me some indication the world hadn’t finally managed to destroy itself. Instead, the noise of the static did its best to lull me into some semblance of comfort. I wanted to stare into the void until everything just disappeared.

  After I managed to pull myself away from the hypnosis of the empty screen, I decided that maybe the front desk would have something to offer. I was wrong. I let the phone ring, and ring, and ring…nothing. No “Front desk, how may I help you?” Not even an answering machine.

  I tried the radio. Static.

  I checked the hallway. Empty.

  I opened the curtains only to be greeted by a thick, grayish fog preventing me from seeing anything a foot beyond the glass.

  Even without the fog, I was too high up to see the streets clearly, so I couldn’t even assume the city was awake and reacting to whatever had happened. Wonderful. I was in a strange city, I knew no one, and I couldn’t reach anyone. I was afraid the world had ended and left me behind. Me. Why me?

  ~

  I think I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. I should probably fill you in on who I am before I write another page. At least then you can decide if you care enough to draw your own conclusions to the question “Why me?” Of course, I’m being presumptuous in assuming there is still a ‘you’ left out there to be reading my words. After what shocked me out of bed…

  Anyway. My name is Jacob Plummer. I’m a writer. Actually, I’m a reporter, which was probably even more fitting for someone trying to chronicle what might be a cataclysmic disaster. Another presumption. I keep writing as if I know for a fact that something tragic has happened. Maybe that’s the reporter in me desperately hoping for a story. Okay, okay…focus.

  I work as a political, world news, and events correspondent for a newspaper owned by one of the largest media umbrella companies in the United States. It’s a good company, and I get to travel a lot. Unfortunately, most of my traveling places me right in the middle of war. This time around, however, I was assigned to Munich for an unveiling of an epic scale. Why me? Because I’m one of the few reporters on staff with absolutely zero family to keep me tied down. No wife, no girlfriend, parents dead, only child, and no real friends to speak of. All I have is my job. It defines me. It is me, in a sense. There really is no “Jacob;” there is only “Reporter.” Therefore, good old Jacob can roam the planet in search of the next great story for the paper. Speaking of which…

  A physicist, Dr. Lindsay Godwin, allegedly developed a device that would solve the world energy crisis. The device was supposedly of the nuclear fission sort which would promise a “greener than solar” and “safer than standard nuclear” renewable energy source. No more dependency on oil, no more need for gasoline. No more OPEC. No more price gouging. No more pollution. The global economy would be salvaged and the epic depression, suffered world-wide, would disappear. These were bold promises at a time when any promise, no matter how small, brought about both hope and doubt in the same breath.

  So on the day this salvation was to be handed to the planet, I planned to wake, lie in bed, gather my research, and write a few notes when, before I could even get started, something must have gone horribly wrong. Or so I presume.

  So here I am, in a hotel room unable to make contact with another human being and surrounded by an implausible silence…a silence so consuming it seems there is nothing left outside the walls that stand between me and whatever lies beyond. But I will go. I have to go. And like a typical journalist, I will document everything I see and do. But I do hope my fear and musings are all for naught. I hope to step out of this room into some bizarre practical joke where the unveiling goes off without a hitch, and I can head back to the States to my loft in Manhattan, where the sounds of the city completely consume me.

  But know this, if I don’t write another page, then one of two things has happened: whatever lies in wait outside of this hotel has silenced me, or there is nothing else to report. That’s not completely true. I do have a rather important event to cover, and with that event comes a crucial deadline. So if I’m not dead, I will continue writing; only the subject will have changed. Enough about me…back to chaos.

  ~

  Chapter 2: The world outside

  I lived to write another day. I made it out of my hotel room and into the lobby. The initial shock of what I saw will probably be burned into my retinas until my death. The lobby was filled with bodies―motionless, lifeless bodies. To my knowledge, I was the only living being in the building.

  I stood completely still and held my breath. It was as if time had come to an absolute stop. Other than my brain and lungs needing precious oxygen, I could have stood there, not breathing, forever. The moment was beyond anything I had ever experienced. Fortunately, my brain reminded my diaphragm that it had needs, and my body continued with the less-than-subtle art of living.

  Slowly, hoping to not wake anyone from what I wanted to be nothing more than a deep sleep, I made my way out of the lobby. Outside, I was met with the same view as in the lobby―dead bodies. Death and silence. And even though I could see the remains of what once were thriving, bustling humans strewn about the streets, the silence tickled the back of my neck with its cold, ghost-like fingers. The only thing more frightening than the silence was the cloud of gray dust hanging in the
air, blocking out the sun. What I thought was nothing more than a fog was far more tangible, far more dangerous. It was dirty, warm snow falling from the sky. What little light illuminated the morning―if it even was morning; my watch has stopped―was gray. It all smacked of a Hollywood fictional treatment of World War III or some eerie horror movie where some restless evil demon has risen to finally reign as supreme master of earth.

  I wanted to breathe deeply of life-giving, clean air, but I breathed in nothing but cold, lonely fear. The heavy air filled my lungs but never seemed to charge my veins…choking me from the inside out.

  I screamed, hoping to bring out some life from the surroundings. I received nothing in return. Even my voice was minus an echo. The air felt dead. Sounded dead. Smelled dead. From the sidewalks, to the buildings, to the sparse trees, I seemed to offer up to the celestial bodies the only beating heart.

  The ravings of a madman? Surely sanity couldn’t be stripped from me this quickly. I’d been awake for, what, thirty minutes, an hour? I’d lost track. In that short time, I was suffering from the over-dramatics of a teenage girl. Is that what madness is? A regression in absolute? Maybe I should write less and seek more. Keep my mind off of what seems to be the end.

  I remember from my childhood the first time I ever got lost. I was four, maybe five, and my mother was dragging me through a crowd of shoppers. Somehow, we got separated. I remember the feeling of panic flooding my system, the frantic searching and yelling, ducking under the swinging arms of adults, pushing over-stuffed shopping bags out of my way, hoping to spot the familiar arms and legs of Mom. I remember that all too well. That same feeling had its chilly fingers wrapped around my heart again.

  “Hello?” I thought I had seen someone.

  “Hello?” Without a thought for my safety, I took off, hoping I wasn’t actually alone.

  I was wrong. It was a mannequin in a store window. I was starting to feel some serious I Am Legend schtik here. Saw the movie. Read the book. Now I seemed to be living it out in perfect post-apocalyptic glory. All I needed was a soundtrack to go along with my own personal hell. Truth be told, right now I’d have settled for any sound. Instead, all my ears were greeted with was silence. That was the eeriest part of the whole fucked-up situation―the lack of ambient noise. What in the hell is going on?

  I let loose a primal “Hello.” My voice bounced off of nothing. Not even an echo to keep me company.

  “Hello?” I screamed louder, hoping someone, anyone, would return my call.

  “Fuck!” Not even profanity gave me anything in return. I was left standing still in the middle of the street, gray ash beginning to cover the top of my head. What had happened? What in the hell had happened?

  My eyes might have been playing tricks on me, but I thought I saw someone. “Hey! Over here!” My feet quickly carried me where my eyes led them.

  Dead. Damn it, what was going on? Wait a minute. They were everywhere―bodies on the ground, nearly covered by the ash.

  “Hello?”

  I wanted to believe I had fallen asleep and awakened thousands of years after the human race had ceased to exist―only remnants and remains told a tale that something had previously inhabited this place.

  But why had I survived? Was there some purpose for me continuing? Was there an Eve to my Adam out there somewhere in all of this gloom? And did I really care to know?

  All I really cared to know was what in the fuck had happened, and where in the hell were the rest of the survivors? It couldn’t have been just me. I refused to be the sole survivor on this planet. I couldn’t swallow the bitter irony of that pill. I’d already lived the majority of my adult life alone. I didn’t want to think that, if there was a God, his sense of humor was that twisted.

  But then again…

  I heard a sound. A glorious sound. A music-to-my-ears sound. The sound tickled my cochlea and brought my brain back to life. The sound seemed nothing more than a moan. Someone in pain or waking after being knocked out by the blast. Or maybe a couple in mid-coitus? How odd would that be? Post-apocalyptic sex. I fought the urge to make a really bad joke. There was no time for humor.

  Oh, who gave a damn who made it? I only cared that it was made and that it sang to me, happily informing me that I was not the only living being left. I had to find the source of this sound. But where should I look?

  After a long wait in silence, the sound had yet to repeat itself. I was afraid the blanket of ash was muting its music. Whoever made the sound might have been close enough for me to hear, but then it moved beyond range. Thank you to this never-ending accumulation of gray shit falling from the sky!

  I had to know if there is someone else out there.

  “Hello?” My cry once again brought me nothing.

  This time I let loose a throat-torturing scream, but that also only returned silence, not even so much as an echo. And the ash wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. This nuclear winter, or whatever, didn’t seem like it would ever let up. Its bone-gray ash was accumulating on the ground like a snowstorm that would cripple the northeastern United States. I’d been fighting the urge to drop to the ground and carve out a snow angel. At least that might lend me some solace or assure me that I have left some mark on this world outside of my words. The ash, of course, was definitely not snow; it wouldn’t pack together; no matter how hard I smashed it, when I opened my balled-up hands the ash just floated away as if my palms had caught fire and burned to cinders.

  The ash was bereft of even the faintest scent, like the ash from a camp fire or the dust from some long-forgotten attic, evoking memories of a misplaced childhood. The dead bodies on the ground had begun to disappear under the blanket of falling soot. I was just getting used to seeing death’s gray pallor littering the streets and sidewalks. I couldn’t even pretend the dead were just taking a much-needed siesta on the sidewalk.

  Maybe I should start digging the dead bodies out of their ashy graves, I thought. There could have been someone alive under the blanket of gray. Or maybe the aftermath of seeing so many bodies would eventually wreak havoc on my mind. I would probably wind up hearing voices or start dancing with cadavers. Not a good idea. I’d already felt the fingers of fear creeping up and down my skin. I didn’t need Death to give me a full-on massage.

  I couldn’t stop asking myself why I was still alive. Shouldn’t I be just as dead as everything around me? Why in the hell was I suffering this insanity? And here I was again, back at “Why me?”

  Out of the blue, a thought occurred to me. The answers to all of my questions could possibly be found at the site of the unveiling. What else but the unveiling of an untested technology, one that was based on nuclear fission, would have caused such a blast resulting in widespread death and falling ash? It was the only logical conclusion I could draw at the moment. If that generator was in fact the cause, then maybe there is someone, or something, there that could enlighten me as to what the hell has happened. All I had to do is get my bearings and figure out which way it is to the building where the unveiling was to happen.

  That was a problem. I had no idea where I was. The ash was filling the sky, making it difficult to navigate around the city. My frustration was growing palpable. I grabbed the nearest street sign and took out that frustration on the unsuspecting sign, shaking the ash from the lettering. Now I could see the lettering, but of course it was in German. I didn’t fucking read German!

  I supposed I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, seeing as how it was the end of the goddamn world as I know it―with a nod to REM. Yeah, I was showing my age by spouting off pop culture references. So now I felt alone and old. Great. Maybe I should just stop right here, put a gun to my head, and end my misery.

  I must have been either too cowardly or too curious. I voted for curious because I wanted to see how this story ends. Would the leading man get the girl or would it end on one doozy of a cliff hanger? Seeing as how there weren’t any girls around anywhere, or any cliffs…

  Okay, okay. It was just a
metaphor.

  As I was standing still, attempting to decide on a direction, a gunshot jump-started my heart.

  I immediately started toward the sound. My feet kicked up a rooster tail of ash behind me. Before I could travel more than a full city block, something glorious caught my eye.

  Footprints! I was looking directly at a pair of footprints. Right in front of me. And they weren’t mine because I was wearing shoes, and the prints were that of bare feet. That’s right―bare-fucking-feet! The prints were fresh. I could tell because the ash was still falling, and the tracks were only just getting covered up.

  “Shit, I better hurry and find the owner of these prints before they disappear.” I spoke out to the universe before I took off running after whoever had left the prints behind.

  The tracks meandered between the sidewalk and the street. After the tracks took a right turn, they quickly ended at―oh, fuck―a dead body covered in blood. This, I was not ready for. The ash was sticking to him, making him look like some bloody sausage rolled in gray, mashed-potato flakes.

  “What the hell?” The body was covered in bite marks! Human bite marks. It looked as if someone had gnawed on every inch of his skin. Cannibalism? Really? Fuck.

  The good news, if there could be such a thing at that moment, was that there were no sounds, so I bet whoever, or whatever, did this was nowhere to be found.

  Speaking of cannibalism, my stomach was insisting I was hungry. I know, I know―good timing. But the facts are the facts, and my stomach was quickly digesting itself. If I was to survive this nightmare, I had to keep myself fueled and ready for anything.

  I found a convenience store unlocked and ready for looting. I referred to it as looting because, obviously, there was no one to take my money. Fortunately, I had quite a conscience, so my looting went no further than essentials. Essentials at a convenience store meant one thing―junk food. If there was one good thing about junk food, it was that it doesn’t go bad. Ever. In fact, junk food might be the only thing to survive the apocalypse. So it looked like until I rediscovered society, I would be dining on crap.