Read (Book 2)What Remains Online
Authors: Nathan Barnes
Tags: #undead, #end of the world, #zombie plague, #reanimated corpse, #viral, #survival thriller, #Post Apocalyptic, #zombie, #apocalypse, #pandemic
(Book 2)What Remains
The Reaper Virus Book Two
Nathan Barnes
A PERMUTED PRESS book
Published at Smashwords
ISBN (eBook):
978-1-61868-575-9
What Remains
The Reaper Virus Book Two
© 2015 by Nathan Barnes.
All Rights Reserved
Cover art by David Walker
This book is a work of fiction.
People, places, events, and situations are the product of the
author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any
means without the written permission of the author and
publisher.
Permuted Press
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300
Franklin, TN 37067
Chapter 3 – Improvised Existence
I was pretty sure I had died.
Flashes of realization came into the darkness
around me. I remembered the long fight home. Awareness of how bad
everything hurt didn’t mean a thing because the full body pain had
joined my normal sense of being.
Why wouldn’t there be pain in Hell?
I
thought.
I could only be sure at the time that I wasn’t
in Heaven.
In the enveloping darkness I heard their voices.
It was always just a light whisper. “I love you Nathan,” Sarah’s
sorrowful voice said. Darkness returned between their soft pleas. I
remembered the silence being louder than any voice every time I
fell back into it. “Daddy, you’re going to be okay,” Maddox’s voice
would break in. Again it went to more painful silence. Then it was
Calise, my little princess, that broke through.
“Daddy, you’re not one of the monsters. You can
wake up now.”
How is it that I can still hear them? Am I
infected?
The thoughts were rampant and my wavering
unconscious state gave them ample time to do so.
I searched my memory for clues. What I found was
troubling. I recalled shooting my way past the wall of zombies. I
could almost feel the air flow over my face as I hurtled through
the air. The pain from impacting the street is still with me
today.
What is today?
I prodded my brain for
some perspective of time and space.
Will I ever wake up? Wasn’t
I bitten?
The burning I felt in my leg answered that
question. I remembered a hobbling creature coming for me. Then I
felt his firm, icy grip through the filthy pants I wore. There was
a searing pain from his teeth upon my leg with a pressure that was
so strong I could find no reason to doubt an ensuing infection.
My head was lifted up. Cool, heavenly water
traveled down my throat. Then I was gently placed back on the soft
cradle below. Every moment that the memories were disrupted by that
outside force brought me closer to reality. Each time was as if a
lifeline had been tossed into the blackness that clung to my
consciousness.
Regardless of the strength that gradually
returned to my being, I was still consumed in the void. My internal
pessimistic doubt forced me to dwell on the worst-case scenario.
The defeatist thoughts asked,
Am I feeling better because the
virus is taking over? Is this what happens when I’m about to
turn?
I was injured, that much was certain. However,
the time I spent around the undead proved that the R33PR Virus gave
the afflicted an evil endurance. Of course it also them, but in
turn it enabled them to sustain horrible injuries and unending
effort without faltering.
If
I’m infected and only feeling better
because I’m about to turn
, I mentally reasoned
, then I have
to get out of here. I can’t infect them. I’ve heard their voices, I
know they are here.
Yet no matter how much I screamed at myself to
move – I could not. All I could do was stay in this darkness and
dwell on what I’d done to arrive there.
This is punishment for what I have done.
It became obvious that when you have nothing but
thoughts and pain to contend with in an unresponsive physical form,
your brain turns vindictive.
I saw faces: faces of the people I abandoned,
faces of the zombies I slaughtered, the face of the man I’d killed.
All were faces that inundated me with guilt. I harbored a deep
guilt for the fate I’d left them to or the end I had created.
Get out of the house before you hurt
them!
screamed my mind.
GET THE FUCK OUT!
Instead, I did nothing. I remained in the
unknown void. In that void it was just me, the interjection of
familiar voices and the unrelenting torment of thought. All I could
do was wait to go back into the loving light, or make peace with
the inevitability of joining the ravenous darkness that consumed
our world.
Day One: November 23
1100 hours:
Time had become so skewed that the unconscious
realm was all I knew. I had honestly grown to accept that oddly…
peaceful
state of being. The looming concerns of gradually
transforming into an undead monster were manageable after the hell
I’d gone through to get home.
Maybe I am dead.
My voice echoed throughout the consciously empty
void.
Isn’t acceptance one of the final stages of
grief?
Being stuck with my thoughts and the occasional
outside voice for so long had me questioning reality.
The midnight of my vision was suddenly broken.
Blinding streams of light worked through and my stubborn eyelids
finally agreed to open. It took intense effort just to will myself
to blink. After a few minutes of straining every facial muscle, my
surroundings became clearer.
When your eyes first open after the body is
nearly in a coma, dilatation of your pupils can make any light
source seem like a million candles. I quickly realized that there
was only one little flame flickering in the corner. My eyes blinked
rapidly to eliminate the blurry sight left over from that
persistent vegetative state.
It was only a matter of time before other
familiar sensations returned. I wished to God that the next one to
return was something
other
than pain. My body hurt
everywhere. Pain echoed from my chest and radiated from my leg.
Surprisingly, the most notable sensation didn’t come from the
duct-taped gash on my brow. A throbbing ache came from my left leg.
It felt like someone had hit me there with a hammer or
something.
I laid on a heavenly surface. It took bit of
contemplation before I recognized it to be our memory foam
mattress. The last few places I could clearly remember sleeping
were makeshift cots and those fucking railroad tracks. Those
memories made me all the more appreciative of the bed underneath
me.
Then another sensation joined the mix. It was
the tiny twitching presence upon my abdomen. Every atrophied muscle
fought the movement that was required to turn my neck to look at
what I felt. As I willed myself to move, my brain ran wild with
questions about my current state. Much like it did when I was
unconscious, fear of possible infection dominated all thoughts.
That is, until I saw what rested upon my stomach…
It was a little hand. A sweet, heavenly hand
with fingers that twitched like a cat’s paw during a mouse filled
dream. My eyes followed the fingers to their source. Clinging to my
battered side was my darling baby girl, Calise. Her pink
pajama-clad arm emerged from beneath the heavy blankets on the bed.
Twirling waves of light brown hair topped the face of this angel
that was burrowed into my person.
She must have felt the consciousness return to
me. The tiny hand moved across my chest towards her face. Every
inch of skin that Calise’s hand touched throbbed with pain. My
entire existence had been dominated by pain for what felt like so
long. Each searing nerve served as a reminder of the evil forces
that wanted to consume my life. However, for the first time, this
bout of discomfort caused by the contact with my daughter’s hand
also reminded me why I’m still alive. I was still alive for
them.
Two little fingers brushed the hair away from
her eyes. Her hair was just as pretty as Sarah’s, only with my
coloring. Then two big, brown unobstructed eyes gazed up to check
me. In the flickering candlelight I saw them immediately widen.
Calise must have realized that finally, her father was looking back
at her.
A sweet whisper escaped her disbelief,
“Daddy?”
My throat was dry and both lips were practically
fused together. I forced them apart and croaked out a response.
“Hi, Princess...”
She jumped up then pressed upon my chest for
leverage. I winced but didn’t let it affect the smile I showed her
back. “Daddy! I knew you were going to wake up!” Then she descended
over me in a hug only a daughter could give. Her wavy hair fell
across my face and tickled my nose. Every sensation acted as a
revival to feelings that had gone so numb.
“You were right, sweetie. I’m so glad that you
were right. Watch out though… Daddy has a lot of booboos.” She
reluctantly released her baby bear hug and sat upright beside
me.
“Mommy said you would come home.” She started
crying. “She said the monsters wouldn’t stop you from finding us.
The monsters are really scary but I knew they wouldn’t get you,
Daddy.”
Tears also streamed down my face. Every inch of
me was so numb. I only became aware of the wet, salty streaks when
one of them ran over a cut on my skin with a sharp sting. “You were
right, Princess. I wasn’t going to let the monsters keep me from
getting home. Why are you the only one here?”
Calise wiped her left arm across her nose and
sniffled. “Mommy and Maddox are in the backyard. I told Mommy I
wasn’t going to leave you because I had to stop the monsters from
trying to get you again.”
“Thank you, baby. You did a great job keeping me
safe.” My tone shifted to become stern. “Why are they in the back
yard? It’s not safe outside.”
Her brown hair flung from side to side as she
shook her head defiantly. “No, no. It’s okay, Daddy. The monsters
can’t see us in the backyard. We just have to stay quiet and they
won’t bother us. But ever since you came home some of them have
been banging on the fence.”
“Alright, honey.” I tried to sit up. “I’m not
mad. Can you go get them and tell them I’m awake?” Calise leaned
over and gave me a sweet kiss on the cheek. She then jumped off the
bed and moved towards the trap door we’d installed in the bedroom
window.
