Evolution of the Dead (5 page)

Her broken foot was killing her.  If only she had some medication for the pain.

She managed to hop back down the street after abandoning the hotel bus.  A burning traffic accident blocked access to the highway.  She didn’t think she’d be able to drive the bus backward down the street.  She had swerved around a lot of wrecks just to get to that point.  She didn’t think she could do it again in reverse.

Carmen brushed her hair out of her face.  Pulling her short shirt down she stepped out of the bus.  She was self-conscious of being only in her underwear.  She hoped no one would see her – but then again, she
did
.  She wanted to be found, to be rescued.

Getting to her car was going to be hopeless.  There were splotches of standing worms everywhere…in the grass, on the sidewalk, on the street, on the sides of buildings, on the sides of parked cars.  She had to be careful of every single hop she took.

She leaned against a dry spot on the back fender of a police car to give her foot a rest.  The car’s siren lights were spinning, throwing out spears of red light.

There were no policemen.  There were no firemen.  There was no rescue attempt.  No helicopters were flying over advising people what to do.  The city was deserted other than the wandering dead, hands reaching, mouths gurgling.

The inside of the police car next to her was plastered with puke and worms.  Who knew where the policemen could be?

“I need to get somewhere safe,” she said to herself.  “Need to barricade myself in…block myself so they can’t touch me or even get
close
to me.”

The rental trucks! That’s it! I can block myself in! They won’t be able to reach me!

Someone touched her back.

Carmen closed her eyes.

For an odd second, she thought it was John.  She waited for the sickness to take her life.  She expected warmth to grip her back as the infestation took hold.  She expected to be coughing to death soon.

But it didn’t happen.

She opened her eyes.

A woman with long blonde hair, a pair of blue sweats and a long blue t-shirt which was too big for her was standing next to her.  She looked pregnant.

“I’ve been watching you,” Maria said.  “I saw you sitting on the ledge of your hotel room window.”

Stunned, blinking, Carmen asked, “Oh,
really
?”

“Yes.  My husband saw you fall.”

“Oh, I…jumped.  I didn’t fall.”

“He’s dead now.”

Carmen swallowed back thoughts of her own near death seconds ago.  “Your husband?”

Dead people were slowly coming up the street behind Maria.

Maria thought that Carmen looked like she wasn’t in any better shape than she felt herself.  This girl’s face looked haggard even though she was probably in her mid-twenties.

Awkwardly, Carmen said “I broke my foot.”

Maria looked down at it.  “You’re just wearing socks out here? Where’s the rest of your clothes?”

“They got covered in puke.”  She started talking faster as the dead people approached.  “I was trying to get to my car before any more of the dead people got too close.  I’ve been avoiding them as much as I can but it seems like there’s more of them now.”  She started shifting against the police car.  The dead people were getting too close for comfort.

Maria looked up.  “Oh.  We…or I mean
I
have a car.  Matt drove.  He parked it right there,” she said, pointing at the car sitting behind the police cruiser.  “He didn’t want to use the hotel valet.  He never liked it.  He didn’t want to have to tip.”  She smiled.  “We thought we were lucky to have gotten this spot…it’s always so hard to find a spot here…”

Carmen nodded; it was true.  Finding a parking spot in downtown Orlando was always a pain in the ass – especially at lunch time…
but that doesn’t matter right now! The dead people are right
there
!

“I’m leaving,” Maria said quietly as she pulled some keys out of her pocket.  “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Carmen asked quickly, “Can I come with you?”

Maria nodded.  She thumbed a keychain.  The car doors unlocked.

Carmen hopped in a sprint over to the passenger side and slid in.  The car seats were leather.  They were cold against her bare legs.

Maria drove away from the reaching people who were only steps away.  She drove through the congested streets avoiding more dead, looking for any escape from this madness.

Norman Hinshaw didn’t care if his employees thought he was a lazy prick, even if he
was
one.  He had the right to be whatever the hell he
wanted
to be because he was the owner/operator of this fucking Rent-A-Center! He laid down the law! He laid down the
rules
; and if Kay or any of the other worthless bitches who worked there didn’t like the fact that they had to watch the front counter while he went into the back office for a nap, then
fuck
them! That was
their
problem.

This was his show! This was his baby! It took him eight years to get into this place.  He worked his ass off to get it, too; spending umpteen hours a day kissing ass, seven days a week bending over for customers, and
years
working overtime, going over books, making sure everything was as pretty as a peach.

Other than finally getting the owner/operator title, he also was proud that his store had the perfect location.  It took blood sweat and tears to get this building on the corner of the frontage road and the highway beyond – and once he got it, he pushed for more storage.  He wanted a warehouse.  He wanted delivery trucks.  He wanted to be the best place in Orlando to rent from.  And now anytime anyone came up the off-ramp or drove along the frontage road, they’d be able to see his store, his fleet of trucks, and his giant welcoming Rent-A-Center sign.

“It’s naptime, Kay.  You watch the fucking counter while I’m sleeping.  If it gets busy, call Rita.  If Rita’s busy, then call me.  If nobody shows, fuck off til I wake up.”

Kay chewed her gum.  “
Whatever
, Norman!”

She was the only one who really put up with his bullshit.  The other seventeen employees did what he told them to do with a groan.  Most of the time Kay ignored him, his cue ball cover-up and his small “cutesy” mustache.  She’d either play solitaire on the computer at the front desk or go back in the warehouse.  She’d talk to her friend Rita; or Carmen - but Carmen had gone downtown to have lunch with her
boyfriend
.

Business had been so slow lately.  All six of their trucks were parked at the dock in the warehouse.  They hadn’t had a delivery in weeks.

Kay stopped playing solitaire.  She was losing anyway.  She picked up a remote on the desk and turned on a wall of TVs on the north side of the store.  If she was lucky she might be able to catch the end of “
Steve Wilco
.”

All of the TVs came on at once with the volume muted.  A woman on CNN was talking about some breaking news in downtown Orlando.  Kay pressed the mute button on the remote.  Sound came blaring out of the TVs.  She held the volume down.  “Shit! Normie won’t like that.”

“
Repeating:  We have unconfirmed reports coming in from Orlando, Florida that an unknown disease has broken out.  Reports are sketchy at this time.  Stay with CNN.  We will keep you updated.”

“Damn, what the hell’s going on
downtown
?”

As she walked to the front of the store to go outside, a car went speeding past dangerously close to the front full glass window.  It barely missed the corner of the building.  Kay heard tires squeal and then a loud crash.

“What the
hell
?”

Another car went speeding past the glass front of the store.  Then another.  Beyond the frontage road, across a bridge spanning the highway, a fire truck was speeding with its lights flashing, the siren blaring.  It crossed the bridge coming toward the Rent-A-Center.

Kay asked herself, “What’s going
on
out there?”

A bell dinged as she opened the front door.  As soon as she stepped outside, a car came screeching toward her.  The front of the car slammed into the door, sending Kay and glass flying.  Her body was sliced in two by a window support.  Another car slammed into the back of the first. They both rolled over her body.  Then the fire truck smashed through the front of the building.

In his office, Norman had just about convinced Rita that it was ok to give him a blow job.  “No one will come in here,” he said as he looked up at her holding her by her hips.  “Kay’s watching the front.”

Rita pursed her red lips.  Shaking her hips, she pressed her large breasts into his face.  “Why do we gotta do this in here, Normie? Why can’t we do it like last time?”

“That’s our secret, baby.  Now come on. Why not give Normie some lovin?”

She went to her knees in front of him.

She undid his belt.

“You need to stand on the step stool like last time,” she said.

The whole store shook when the fire truck slammed into the building.

“What the hell was
that
?” he said as he tucked his shirt into his pants.  “Did someone hit the
store
?”

Rita looked up at him with questions and concern in her eyes.

“You stay here.  I’m going to check this out.”

“But I…”

“Rita, stay there god dammit.”

Leaving his office, shutting the door behind him, he quickly walked to the front of the store.  He stopped in his tracks as he came into the showroom.  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  The whole front of the store was gone.  Ceiling tile swung loosely here and there.  Wires dangled.  Sparks were shooting out of the wall where the large TVs once hung.  Window beams were bent.  Glass was littered all over the floor.

A fire truck had crashed right through the front of the building! A fireman in the passenger seat was now hanging out through the shattered windshield.  All of the rental furniture had been thrown toward the back of the store from the impact.

“No!” Norman screamed, “Not my fucking store!”

Someone was trying to stand up next to the fire truck.  It was a fireman! Norman ran over to him.  “Are you alright?”

The fireman slowly stood up.

“Do you need any help?”

As he turned to face him, Norman was shocked to see that the fireman didn’t have any eyes.  His skin was pale.  His veins had popped out, almost to the point of bursting.

“What the hell?”

The fire man threw up toward him.  Norman stepped back.  It splashed near him but didn’t touch him

“Holy shit!”

Running back to his office, Norman went inside and slammed the door shut.  This was some serious shit! What the hell was going on here? Was it the end of the world?

Rita was sitting in his chair, filing her nails, leaning back.  “What’s going on out there, Normie?”

“I uh, need to check on something, in the warehouse.  I’ll be right back.”

With his hands shaking, he grabbed a color coded key off his desk and ran out of his office toward the warehouse.  He nearly knocked over one of the other girls as he ran past.

He yelled “Get the hell out of the way!”

Fuck all these people
, he thought. 
I need to get somewhere safe!

In a lab in the lower levels of the Clinical Pathology Laboratories in Orlando, Scientist Edmond Jesseph said to himself,
this is unbelievable.

Making sure that his large belly wouldn’t bump the microscope, he took in a deep breath and held it as he leaned forward to view the slide one more time.  He had seen this specimen hundreds of times in the last few days, and with each subsequent viewing, it intrigued him even further.

He said to himself,
“How can this
be
? How did this avoid being
seen
?”

The specimen, routinely marked and cataloged, had been brought into the lab for standard testing several days before.  There had been no additional remarks about the capsule enclosed slide, nothing was noted as being out of the norm.  No special studies were needed.

As Jesseph routinely studied the slide, as he had done to thousands of other slides during his career, he noticed, as usual, one of the cell walls appeared to have a slight blemish on it.  He knew all cells had a slight discoloration on at least one edge of the outer cell wall.  As a matter of fact, all living cells had the discoloration; from animals to plants to humans.

He didn’t know why at the time, but Jesseph took it upon himself to look at the blemish a little harder.  Could it have been fate? A whim?

As he studied it, he became captivated by a strange abnormality lying
between
the outer layers of the cell.  He asked his colleague Doctor Julie Snow to verify his findings.  She collaborated.  The oddity was something neither of them could recall ever deeply studying in all of their years of carcinogenesis.  They had both simply thought it was part of the normal transformation of the cell.

“We have discovered something here quite unique, doctor,” Julie said as she stood behind him, a clipboard in her arms with pages and pages of scribbled notes clipped to it.

“Indeed we have.”

He took in another deep breath.  He had been contemplating a hypothesis, something unheard of in this community.  He turned to face Ms. Snow.  She was shorter than he; an attractive woman, 39 years old, single, black hair, black wire frame glasses, a slight quirk on the side of her mouth when she smiled.

“What we have here is an unknown.” Jesseph said, his eyes serious. “This discovery could change everything.”

“Yes it could,” she said straight-faced.

He exhaled, an overweight man of 57.  His lab coat was tight around his stomach.  He had gray hair and a long gray goatee. “Who should we tell?”

“Maybe we should delay, perform a few more tests.  Perhaps wait a few days – maybe wait until after the holiday weekend.  Clear our minds a little.  Let’s not tell anyone of this yet, doctor.”

“It definitely does need more study,” he agreed, crossing his arms.  “I know we’ve spent a great deal on this already and the rest of our work has fallen behind; but Julie, we need to be 100% sure of this.”

He shook his head in disbelief as he leaned down to the microscope once more.  He couldn’t believe he was the first to discover this underlying anomaly, this
tissue
within the cell wall.  How it could have been overlooked for years had him simply flabbergasted.

Why would science overlook it? Why would they simply let it pass by without study? It made no sense to him.

If his hypothesis was correct, the small bit of tissue was actually a different form of life that had been trapped
in
the cell wall.

“But what
kind
of life
?” His wife asked him over dinner on more than one occasion since the discovery.

He could never find an answer.  Hours and hours of study came and went without any answers.

How it got trapped there was something that he and his colleague needed to study further.

It was hard to fathom a guess, but Jesseph hypothesized that this had been confined on purpose.

By man, by nature, by something unnatural, he didn’t know; but if his theory was correct, then the
actual evolution of mankind
had been a mistake.  Mankind had been
allowed
to evolve because this other irregularity had been stunted, shunned,
locked
inside the cell wall.  It had not been allowed to evolve.

“If I’m right, and I believe you feel the same way,” he whispered.  “Logically, we all shouldn’t be here as humans.  We should have grown from the tissue
inside
the cell wall – not from the cell itself.  The anomaly is the more dominant tissue.”

“Yes, I am in agreement with you, doctor.  I believe, in retrospect, that humanity was given the chance at life,” Julie said matter-of-factly. “It was trapped by nature.  This cannot be defined by science.  This is nature. 
Nature
did this.  Nature
trapped
it.”

“Yes.  But the question remaining is
why
.”

Jesseph sighed heavily. His palms were sweaty.  “We should be something different,” he said with a wipe of his brow.  “Whatever this was intended to be is what we, humans, should be.”

“Humanity evolved wrong,” Julie added solemnly.

“Yes.”

“Doctor, we
should
test it! I know we discussed waiting until after the holiday, but perhaps we
should
remove it from the cell wall.  Give it the opportunity it was never given.  Let it grow.  Let it flourish.  It could become a new species, a new life never seen before on earth.  Doctor, we need to
release
it.  This is an amazing discovery.  We will definitely be nominated for the
Lasker Award,
perhaps even the
Nobel Prize
if all goes well.”

Jesseph nodded.  “Yes. 
If all goes well.
  Ms. Snow, we need more studies on this.  We need to get more people involved.  There are safeguards we must follow, you know this.  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  At least we know we’re the ones who discovered it.”

“Yes.  You’re right, doctor,” she said with a sigh, giving into him.  “There
are
rules to follow.  Safety is paramount.”

He nodded with a tight lipped smile.  His brow was covered in sweat.  His face was getting red.

Snow asked, “Doctor, are you feeling alright?”

“Yes.  I’m - just a bit tired.”

She agreed.  “Oh, me too.”

“Fine then, shall we take a break? Perhaps go get something to eat? It is nearly lunchtime.”

She smiled kindly.  “No, I had plans to meet with Pratt downtown.”

“Ah, ok, well, tell him h…hello for me, won’t you?” He put his hand to his chest.

“Are you sure you’re ok?”

He nodded, his lips tighter.  His heart was starting to beat heavily in his chest.  He felt his blood pressure going up.

He nodded, “Yes, just going to sit…here for a min…a minute longer…”

He fell backward off the stool.  His heavy body crashed to the floor.

“Doctor! Doctor are you alright?”

He didn’t answer.

Julie went into a panic.  She needed to call someone! She needed to help him! Quickly running into a small office outside the testing lab, she dialed security.

“
Security
.”

“Doctor Jesseph just passed out in Lab 44! Please hurry! I think he had a heart attack!”

“
We’ll get a call into 911 right away
.”

“Thank you.”  She hung up and hurried back into the lab.

Untouched, the slide still sat on the microscope.”

“This can be all
mine
,” she thought, her eyes darting around the room, looking down at Jesseph, back up at the slide.

She took the slide off the microscope, encased it in a slide container, and slipped it down inside her lab jacket pocket.  Forging Jesseph’s signature on a requisition form while he lay dead on the floor next to her, she solicited permission for a micro dissection on the cell sample that she was bringing down to the Bright Field microscopy lab.

On the way, she passed running EMTs.

In the microscopy lab, the technician inside happily dissected the cell on the slide once he saw Jesseph’s signature on the request form.

Securely, the abnormality was cut free from the embedded wall.  The technician was able to successfully contain it.  He handed it to her in a different enclosed slide capsule.

“Tell Doctor Jesseph we still need to finish our chess game,” the technician said as Julie quickly left the lab and headed to the elevators.  She was already running late for her lunch date with Pratt.

Outside, she was able to timely hail a cab as she left the Clinical Pathology Laboratories.  She told the cabbie, a short Mexican man, to step on it as she sat in the back seat on the passenger side.  They made their way downtown.

Julie took the capsule out of her pocket.  She looked through the clear glass.  She hoped to see the irregularity but knew it would be impossible since it was microscopic.  The naked eye would never be able to see it.

I’m not going to share this discovery with the fat man,
she thought to herself. 
And screw the
Lasker Award
. 
I
want recognition for this discovery
!
I want
fame!

As she held it up, the sun sparkling madly in the glass, the cabbie suddenly slammed on the brakes as someone pulled out in front of him.

The cabbie screamed, “
Stupid
ass!”

The sudden stop caused Julie to drop the slide capsule.  It flew forward out of her hand end over end.

It hit a credit card reader on the back of the seat in front of her.  An infinitesimal crack opened in the capsule.

It fell down between Julie’s feet.  She reached for it.

“
Got it
!” she said softly.

Four minutes later, the cabbie stopped near Lake Eola downtown to let his lady passenger out.  She had been quiet back there ever since the close call with the other idiot driver.

He hoped she wasn’t mad at him or would leave a bad review on the cab website.

He got out of his side and ran around her side to let her out.  Julie fell out of the car, gagging, holding her throat.  She wasn’t able to breathe.  Her skin was turning yellow.  She was coughing and gagging, leaning against the cab for support.  Her back was arched as she deeply coughed and then threw up all over the sidewalk.

Some man wearing a construction hat came running over to see what was wrong.

The evolution of the dead had begun.

Thock! Thunk! Thuck!

Running toward his orange Charger, Scott and Kim had to jump over tiny worms popping up out of the cement of the parking garage.

On the street, a fire hydrant blew, throwing infected water into the air.  It came down like blood orange rain.

Kim yelled, “What the fuck is going on?”

Scott didn’t answer.  He was frantically going through keys on his key ring looking for the one for his car.

“Hurry, god dammit, hurry!” Kim squealed jumping up and down on the passenger side of the car.  Her arms had broken out in goose bumps.

With shaking hands, Scott was finally able to unlock his car, jump in and reach over to unlock Kim’s door so she could get in.

He yelled, “We gotta get out of here now!”

Gunning the engine, he reversed, smashing into a parked car.  Shaking his head, he shoved the car into drive.  The tires squealed.  He sped through the garage, down and out onto the street.  He sideswiped a parked car on the side of the road.  Kim held onto the dashboard, her fingers digging in, her mouth held open in fear.

They sped along the lakeside, passing burning cars, a police car with its lights still flashing, an overturned cement truck, and hundreds of the dead.  As the car’s tires passed, worms popped up through the cement.

“What are we gonna do?” Kim asked, her eyes wide.

“Get the fuck away from here! Go to the airport!”

“I gotta find my husband!”

Scott glanced over at her.  “What? You just told me you hoped he was dead! Why did you change your mind? Why you worried about him now?”

“I’ve been more worried about saving my
own
ass.”

“And now you’re worried about
his
?” Scott yelled as he dodged a burning car on the side of the road.  A man stepped around the front of the car with his hand outstretched.

“No, not at all; but if I don’t at least try to find him then he’ll hit me.”

“
Hit
you? He
hits
you?”

“Yes.”