Chris Wakes Up (3 page)

It wasn’t alone. At least a dozen more were stumbling through his back yard, slowly making their way towards the breached kitchen door, all of their mouths open, broadcasting that horrible buzzing sound.

Chris grabbed another knife, the last of the big ones in the butcher block, and realized there was no way he could kill them all. They would swarm him before he could bring down two. 

Shit. 

As the creatures drew closer, he noticed that while most were slow and ambling, others were fast, almost animal-like in their movement. The buzzing increased, in his head and from their mouths. It was only then that he realized the sound was also coming from his mouth. He closed his mouth, though it didn’t silence the buzzing in his head. Chris turned to the living room, forcing himself to move faster. He dropped the blade on the carpet, grabbed the girl into his arms, and raced through splintering pain upstairs. As he reached the top step, he could hear creatures banging into the furniture downstairs. 

Won’t be long now.

They entered the bedroom and the girl screamed, seeing Chris’s wife in bed, blood painting the wall.

He fumbled with the doorknob, freezing for a moment, struggling to remember how to lock it. The buzzing was now so loud in his head, it made thinking through the simplest act nearly impossible, like trying to figure out a Trigonometry problem in a burning house. Finally, he was able to think his way through the buzzing enough to slide the lock closed just as one of the creatures slammed into the door.

The girl, whose name he could no longer remember, screamed.

He turned, saw the gun on the bed, then picked it up, grabbed the girl, and pulled her into the closet, closing the door behind them. There was no lock on the closet door and he wasn’t sure how he’d hold them off. All he could do was hope that they wouldn’t look in the closet. The girl was crying incoherently. He pulled her to his lap, wrapped an arm around her and placed a palm over her mouth, trying to keep her quiet. The banging in the hallway grew louder as the swarming sound in his head grew louder, still. More banging against the door. He didn’t know how long the door would hold, but didn’t think it would be much longer. 

Once the girl’s cries turned to whimpers, he removed his hand. Her back against his chest, her scent stirred his hunger. Though the closet was dark, it wasn’t pitch black, and he could see the outline of her neck where it met her shoulder before vanishing beneath her shirt collar. He leaned forward, sniffing the sweetness of her scent, closed his eyes, and opened his mouth, inching ever closer to her neck. The hunger twisted inside him, thoughts of ripping flesh fueling his thoughts. Flesh would make the buzzing go away. Would sate him. 

Would fill him.

The buzzing in his brain swelled, rising to a tea kettle-like pitch, as he moved his mouth closer, ready to bite.

“Are we going to die?” the girl cried out, her voice so broken with terror, it snapped him from his daze.

The buzzing receded to a lower hum, and he shook his head, as she turned to see his response. He held the gun out, in front of both of them, checking the chamber. Three bullets. One for a monster, one for the girl, one for him. This time, he would not miss.

The door burst open. He heard them flood into the room, groaning and buzzing as they bumped into things. A glass shattered and the girl jumped. Chris quickly palmed her mouth before she could cry out. He prayed that the zombies’ thoughts were as consumed by the buzzing as his own. Maybe they’d not even look in the closet. Maybe they’d keep moving. The sounds outside the closet seemed to be dying down a bit, and Chris hoped that some of them had moved on and the rest would follow. Maybe he and the girl would be safe.

Then a bang against the closet.

The girl screamed, and the closet door began to shake as one, two, or more of the fuckers clawed at it, desperate to get to them. He held the door in place with his feet, but  as it began to slip, he realized he couldn’t hold it forever. They would get in. It was only a matter of time or numbers.

Chris brought the gun to the girl’s head, closed his eyes, and held his finger on the trigger, waiting for the closet door to open.

Suddenly, automatic gunfire erupted in the bedroom like thunder. Chris, startled, dropped the pistol and it fired a deafening shot in the closet. Seconds later, the door burst open and light bleached their world. Two soldiers with masks stood, automatic rifles aimed at he and the girl. Dead zombies lay in pools of blood behind them.

“We’ve got survivors,” one of the soldiers said into a radio. “Adult male, female child.”

The soldiers reached down to help the girl up. The hunger surged with the introduction of two new bodies. The buzzing began to rise and whistle again. He could eat them both, and spare the girl. If she saw him eat them, she’d run away, be saved by whatever other soldiers were waiting outside. Chris began to stand.

“Oh my God!” one of the soldiers said, staring down at Chris. “We’ve got an infected!”

“No!” the girl screamed, “He’s one of the good ones!”

Too late. 

The soldiers opened fire, and Chris fell back into the closet, collapsing as bullets tore into his flesh. As his life faded, he could see and hear the girl wailing as a soldier pulled her from the room. He hoped she’d be okay. That he hadn’t infected her, whatever her name was.

The remaining soldier lifted Chris’s body, dragged him to the bed where his wife’s corpse lay and dropped him on top of her.

Chris stared at what was left of her face. Her soft lips. Her beautiful, now blood-soaked, hair. 

Goodbye, my  . . . 

His soul twisted in agony that he couldn’t remember the name of his life’s true love.

The soldier stepped from the room. Another came in with a heavy-looking flamethrower. As the sound of fire erupted, the swarm’s buzzing mercifully ceased. Silence, at last.

Then his world exploded in a fiery blast.

And he remembered . . . 

Allison.

- THE END -

Author’s Note — Chris Wakes Up

Monster movies don’t scare me.

Well, unless that monster is a zombie. Even a mediocre zombie movie will give me a few chills. Done well, like
The Walking Dead
,
28 Days Later
, or
28 Weeks Later
, then I’m at the edge of my seat.

Zombies have plagued (no pun intended) my dreams before I even knew what they were. I’ve had recurring nightmares of fighting them since I was a child. The dreams almost always involve a mob of them, countless hordes, which I have to fight with little more than blunt objects like bats, machetes, pipe wrenches, and whatever else is lying around. If it’s big, awkward, and bulky, it’s likely to find its way into my hand in a dream where I need weapons. You’d think I’d at least get some cool guns or something, but nope. 

Writers have used zombies as metaphors for things like rampant consumerism or the spread of enemy ideologies, often pitting “us” against “them.” Fighting off hordes of zombies taps into a universal fear of being helpless against a mob, a very real fear, which is likely a holdover from a time before we had societal rules (or fears of gods) to keep people from savagely attacking one another. The real fear of zombies isn’t a fear of monsters, but rather the monsters within us — the monsters that linger just beneath the surface, waiting for the first sign of societal breakdown. Hell, we can see monstrosities in our world
today.
It’s not hard to imagine the shit hitting the fan and chaos erupting. We don’t even need a virus to undo years of evolution, reverting man to savage. 

Zombies scare me because man scares me. We, as a species, scares the fuck out of me, to be blunt.

I’ve always been fascinated by the evil that men do — from slavery, to war crimes, to bizarre medical experiments (by governments, no less), to murder. I don’t think the fascination is morbid curiosity, as I don’t like to read of or see people or animals in pain, so much as a desire to understand what causes such monstrous acts. There’s a disconnect in some people that allows them to do the most horrifying things. And while we often attribute these acts to monsters that were made through abuse, mental illness, or some other causality, I don’t think it really takes all that much to turn men into monsters. Just turn on the nightly news (or any of the 24-hour news channels) and you’ll see evidence of man’s horrible acts upon his fellow man. I think that zombie fiction’s appeal, is that it’s about holding onto humanity even as the rest of mankind turns to monsters. 

In
Chris Wakes Up
, I wanted to write something from the perspective of a man who has just been infected, battling against this monstrous change in him. Trying to hold onto humanity even as animal instincts and a hive mentality work to overcome him. As the story progresses, he is losing his memory and what makes him human. Sort of a de-evolution, if you will. In an early draft of the story, I referred to Chris in the last half of the story as “he” or “him,” to further illustrate how removed he was becoming from his prior life. However, in writing the story, it became difficult to refer to him over and over without it seeming forced or confusing.

Chris Wakes Up
is our first foray into zombie fiction, unless you count our post-apocalyptic serial,
Yesterday’s Gone
, which has zombie-like creatures; but those aren’t true zombies in the sense that you know them. Given how much zombies scare me, I doubt this will be our last time visiting Chris’s world, even if he’s no longer part of it. 

Thank you for reading,

David Wright

Dedication

To Lisa — Thank you for believing and reading.

— David

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* * * *

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& David Wright

* * * *

DARK CROSSINGS: Short stories. Killer Endings.

From the creators of the groundbreaking post-apocalyptic series
Yesterday’s Gone
, and the vampire thriller
Available Darkness
, comes six unforgettable short stories, daring you to experience the darkness of their worlds. 

Available as single stories or in the full collection,
Dark Crossings
is best enjoyed with the lights on.

PULL THE TRIGGER
— Ellie’s husband owes money to some powerful people. The only way she can save his life is to do one “simple” job — retrieve a mysterious box and kill the courier. But
can
Ellie pull the trigger? Nothing is at it seems in this pulse-pounding mysterious thriller.

CHRIS WAKES UP
— You know those zombie stories where survivors must make their way through a world plagued by walking dead? This is a tale from a zombie’s perspective, as Chris wakes up infected, alone, and hungry. As he struggles to hold onto his humanity, he finds himself the unlikely protector of a young girl seeking safety. Can he protect her from others? Can he protect her from himself?

RESPERO DINNER
— In the not-too-distant future, Xavier is the guest of honor at an exclusive dinner. It’s a night filled with friends, family, and regrets. Respero Dinner is a thought provoking tale of love, loss, and the choices we make in life.

THE VISITOR
— Blind and dying, writer Mary Fletcher is waiting out her final days in a nursing home. Unlike most of the other residents, Mary refuses to dwell on the past —until a mysterious visitor shows up. A visitor who sounds exactly like the love of her life who she believed to be dead. Who is he? What does he want? 

DINER FADED
— Zach hops into his car and hits the open road, angry and eager to put a couple of states between he and his girlfriend. Zach pulls into a diner, hungry and with a gas tank on fumes. He gets more than he ordered and something he may never escape. 

THE WATCHER
— Since the death of his young daughter, Frank Grimm’s life has completely unravelled. Barely connected with his wife, he now sits in his home office, watching his neighbors live their lives. And when nobody’s looking, he sometimes breaks into their homes. There’s only one house on his street he hasn’t broken into. And then one day he sees someone in the window of that house . . . watching him.

Visit
http://collectiveinkwell.com/dark-crossings
for more information 

or buy at Amazon at:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006K5SO1G/

* * * *

YESTERDAY’S GONE: THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS OF THE SMASH POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER