I.
The city block had been reduced to rubble by the shelling, and Paul Glasser made his way carefully among the ruins. A year ago, he had been a computer salesman, manning the phones at a gleaming low-rise office building near the airport, and the airplanes were still flying. Now, they were bound firmly to the earth, for the virus had burned its way through the pilots and maintenance crews, and Paul’s own life was reduced to the bare essentials of survival. It’s the end of the world as we know it, he thought, and even if they managed to drive back the tide of the walking dead, life would not return to normal for decades. They were eating their seed corn to drive off starvation.
He chambered a round in his carbine and felt for the axe at his belt. The work was easier than Paul had expected at the beginning, for simple tactics and rudimentary marksmanship were sufficient for the enemies that he faced. Disable them with bullets, then hit them with the axe so they can’t come back. The army and police had been overrun in the first weeks, and what was left of the government relied upon citizen volunteers as the last line of defense.
In the rubble of an abandoned storefront, he saw movement, and Paul fired a short burst from the carbine as he wondered whether another team had slipped past him in the confusion. Christine, a nineteen-year-old coed, had taken a bullet last month, and though the official explanation had been friendly fire, Paul had seen the marks on her skull. It happens, he thought. Someone wanders away from their team and gets bitten, and half the company is infected before they know what hit them.
He fired another burst at the retreating form and stepped gingerly through the rubble. It was important to be cautious of scrapes and cuts, for he was required to undergo a thorough inspection at the end of each day. Paul hated the procedure, standing naked and perfectly still while a stranger examined his body for bites or scratches, and more than one poor soul had been hauled away, crying that a bite was merely the cut of rusty sheet metal, the scratch marks nothing more than a careless fall onto concrete. “They lie about being bitten,” the captain had explained. “Do you blame them? I don’t, but we can’t have someone dying inside the wire and rampaging through the barracks. We don’t have the luxury of doubt.” Besides, the empty streets and ruined buildings were filthy, smeared with blood and shit and God only knew what else, and infection weakened your immune system. If a trace of dead tissue from one of those things entered your body through a scrape, you might as well give yourself up to be eaten.
A woman rushed through the open door, and Paul fired, three shots into her chest and a fourth into her ear. “Save your ammo,” the captain had lectured countless times. “Use bullets to put them down and clubs or edged weapons to finish them.” A headshot was wasteful, but Paul used the carbine whenever no one was looking – the screams of the dead had an eerie human quality, their moans took on the structure and syntax of speech, and he often found himself unable to use the axe. Paul said nothing to the others, for when the dead spoke to you, it was a sure sign that you were cracking up – or that you had been bitten.
He raised his carbine as a man crawled through the window at the far end of the room, but it vanished quickly, and Paul rushed to the window, half-expecting to find a body smashed on the concrete or impaled on a wrought iron fence. Instead, the street below was empty.
He retraced his steps to the street, and a surge of fear wormed though his belly as Paul realized that he was cut off from his team. They had radios in the early days of the outbreak, and when the electricity failed, they charged the batteries with diesel generators until the fuel ran out. Things were easier then, he thought. A radio would have allowed him to contact his teammates, and they could have done a thorough search for the missing ghoul. At the very least, I could let them know that I’m safe. If the team returned to base without him, Paul would face an intensive interrogation for breaching protocol – assuming they didn’t shoot him on sight as he approached the fence. Still, the ghoul was a threat to Paul’s team, and he couldn’t leave it to wander the street.
The doorway at the far side of the building had been blown from its hinges (a relic from the days when they still had explosives), but the partial repair confounded him, for ghouls lacked even rudimentary mechanical knowledge. Paul’s heart hammered beneath his ribs as he burst through the doorway, his carbine snug against his shoulder, and confronted the dead thing that cowered against the wall. Its hair was long and stringy, a horrid odor oozed from the sickly pores of its skin, and Paul’s eyes widened at the sounds that emanated from its throat.
“Please,” it croaked. “Don’t shoot me.”
II.
For a fearful instant, Paul felt the urge to back away and spray the room with bullets, but the stranger’s eyes did not have the lifeless gaze of the dead or the sick, frightened stare of the infected. His skin tone was an unhealthy pale, and several of his teeth were missing, but those eyes were definitely alive.
“My name is Edmund – Edmund Halloran.” He extended a hand, which Paul did not accept.
“You’re not dead.”
“No.” Edmund Halloran licked his dried lips. “Not dead. Just hungry. Do you have anything to eat?”
He was not supposed to share food, but Paul fished through his cargo pants and grabbed a pack of stale crackers from one pocket and a half-finished bottle of water from the other. Their food supplies were dwindling, and he would regret the loss of the plastic bottle, but he would tell the captain that it had fallen from his pocket when he killed the woman.
“How long have you been living like this?” he asked.
“Since the beginning.” Edmund Halloran licked the crumbs from his fingers and gulped the water. “They burned my house in the first month, and I’ve been on the run ever since.”
Paul nodded in sympathy – whole neighborhoods had been torched to cut off the outbreak – but he was puzzled by the accountant’s story. Rather than fight, Edmund Halloran had been content to flee and to live among the dead.
“You should come with me to the base,” he said. “There’s food there, and you can get a bath, clean clothes, a medical check-up – anything you want.”
“No.”
Paul was shocked by Halloran’s reply, as if the sickly man at his feet had expressed his support for cannibalism or human sacrifice.
“Why?”
“Tell me something – what do you remember about the earliest days of the outbreak? When did you see your first zombie?”
“I don’t know.” Images filled Paul’s memory, of the dead rampaging through the streets, of narrow escapes and tragic losses, but he could not recall whether the memories were his own or the tales shared around a hundred campfires.
“Really? I remember quite well – the earliest cases were not the dead but the living – those who had been bitten and were on the fringe of turning. It was one of the first rules of the outbreak – someone bitten is as good as dead, and they can turn on you any minute. That’s why they burned my home – there was a rumor that my wife had been bitten. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” Paul said. Mistakes were surely made in those early days, but they had been fighting for the survival of humanity, and if the innocent died along with the guilty…
“So when was it, Paul? The first week of the outbreak? The first month? How many zombies have you seen with missing limbs, or with flesh rotted away to show only bone? How many have you caught in the act of biting or eating another person? You’ve been doing this for a while, so I expect you run into that a lot, right?”
“I’m not sure…” He had heard stories, but it was difficult to remember what he had seen for himself.
“Then let me help you.” Edward Halloran no longer appeared half dead – indeed, his eyes sparkled with terrible life. “I can answer all of your questions and more.”
“Stop.”
“The answer, Paul…”
“Please stop!”
“Never. You never saw any of those things because they never happened. There are no zombies, Paul! The whole thing started on social media, and people began to suspect their friends and neighbors. In a short time, it took on a life of its own, first a few murders, then a few more, then panic engulfed the whole country! I tried to tell them –”
The carbine in his hand barked three times, and when its movements ceased, Paul removed the axe from his belt. He used the last of the water to wash the blood from his face (anyone who returned to camp with blood around his nose or mouth was automatically suspect), then went to find the rest of his team.
III.
“I think that’s everything, unless you have more to tell me.” The captain regarded him carefully. “Is there anything else, Paul?”
“No sir.” He had endured an extra hour of examination this afternoon, and they had gone over every item of clothing for signs of bites or scratches. He would pay for the lost water bottle with a day’s rations, but Paul made no complaint about his punishment. The captain thought this odd – everyone endured the occasional reprimand, but most protested loudly as they paid for their sins.
“Something’s bothering you, son. I can see it on your face, so why don’t you let me help you?”
“It’s nothing sir. I think I’ve been working too hard, that’s all.”
The captain slid a pack of crackers across the battered desk, for he knew when to cut corners. They had lost too many good men and women lately, and the others were on edge.
“You know, I hear stories sometimes, where a man gets strung out from hunger or lack of sleep, and he starts to see things that aren’t there. Sometimes he hears voices – maybe the dead beckon him onward. Have you been eating enough? Sleeping okay?”
“Yes sir. I eat enough to get by, and I sleep well every night.” It was a lie, but the captain let it pass.
“And you saw nothing out there, heard nothing, that I should know about?” He had already decided to give the boy another round at medical, but it was easier to swallow if he knew the truth.
“Nothing sir,” Paul said. “There was nothing at all.”
Holy moly what a twist!
Definite “I am Legion” vibes! Great job!
Interestingly, “I am Legion” was based on a novel by Richard Mathieson of Twilight Zone fame, and was made into a movie called “Last Man on Earth” starring Vincent Price. It’s a sort of cheesy film and I remember a scene that still makes me laugh. He’s goes to one of his door posts and says, “gotta get more garlic” (to ward off the vampires) as if he’s about to head out to store to pick up a clove for marinara.