K. T. Swartz

Table of Contents

The Legacy of Dr. Z

As Recorded by KT Swartz

Copyright © 2012 by KT Swartz

http://graphicartofwriting.blogspot.com/

Cover Illustration by Mike Crawford

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, and events portrayed in this story are of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living and dead, business establishments, or incidents is entirely coincidental.

There’s an old lady who lives in the apartment above mine. She isn’t like most old ladies, with their dozen cats and pictures of their families decorating the walls. She keeps propane tanks in the bathroom, bottles of bleach and ammonia under the sink and in the pantry, and a bow and dozens of arrows in the living room closet. She also owns a storage unit full of sheet metal, matches, non-perishable foods, assorted combustible chemicals, nails, a hammer, and other bizarre things.

Most days she sits in front of the window in her living room and watches the world pass her by, but I know better. She’s waiting. Her windows are reinforced with bars, both inside and out, and over the front door is one of those retractable garage door set-ups with steel netting. The netting is so she can shoot zombies reaching for her through the gaps. That’s also what the arrows are for. And though she has guns all over the apartment, she still favors that willow bow her deceased husband made years ago.

I asked her once why she kept that primitive thing, and her eyes grew distant. I wondered what she saw that I couldn’t, but I changed my mind when she responded.

“
Bullets run out,” she said. “Trees don’t.” And then she taught me how to string it.

When my parents and I first moved into this complex, people already whispered about the crazy woman in Apartment A4. They called her Dr. Z, but they laughed when they said it. I used to sneak up the stairs and sit at the top. That’s all I did, just stared at the door and wondered about this Dr. Z. Every once in a while a shadow would pass by the crack underneath the door. Feet would pause right in the center, but then they would disappear again.

One day black vehicles started showing up across the street. Men and women in black suits and black sunglasses locked their cars and headed right for our apartment building’s front entrance. And with them came the doctors. To a child, their presence was scary. They were too clean-cut, too clinical, and too polite. They always knocked on Dr. Z’s door. Sometimes she answered; most times she didn’t.

And even though those men and women in black suits and those doctors kept coming back, I got the feeling they weren’t really listening to her. Curiosity got the better of me, and on my thirteenth birthday – after I’d convinced myself I was a grown-up – I knocked on her door. She didn’t answer, not that time nor the four times after that. I was almost fourteen before the door finally opened.

Chain locks swung back and forth when it did. I counted seven, all spaced evenly down the door. I’d also heard deadbolts and finally the door handle unlock. A brown eye glared at me from a face wrinkled and lined with age. Cotton-white hair was cut short and straight. The old woman looked me up and down. To this day, I still don’t know what she saw when she looked at me. A thirteen year old girl with a ponytail and glasses, I couldn’t have looked like much. But she let me into her private sanctuary.

That was our first meeting fifteen years ago. Now I know why those men and women in black suits – and the doctors – keep visiting. I understand why people avoid her and why she chooses never to leave her home. If I lived through what she did, I wouldn’t either. I’d probably keep propane tanks in the bathroom, chemicals in the pantry, and arrows in the closet. But I didn’t. And I’m thankful for that.

This is the true account of Dr. Z, one of the last survivors of the twenty year blight that killed billions of people across Earth. I have collected her memoirs through our interviews, through eye-witness accounts, and by visiting the towns she wrote about. I give these accounts to you, because should the Out-Break ever happen again, I want you to survive too.

~ KT

The first local news stations to broadcast warnings were one week behind the real threat. Like the Bird Flu and Swine Flu, a few cases first cropped up in cities with major airports.

A man was rushed from the Orlando airport to a nearby hospital. His condition was listed as critical. His symptoms included – but were not limited to – seizures, swollen joints, foaming at the mouth, organ failure, and severe tachycardia.

At the Los Angeles airport, a mother and her two kids suddenly collapsed. All three were rushed to a nearby hospital. Their symptoms included – but were not limited to – elevated body temperature, advanced Necrosis in their fingers and toes, extreme aggression, and
Anhidrosis
¹
.

The third outbreak that day occurred in the New Haven airport, in Connecticut, where a young African-American couple checked themselves into a nearby hospital after they began complaining of symptoms including some of the above-mentioned.

All three cases were considered unrelated due to their varying symptoms. No connections were drawn when each victim died within four days. In that time seventy-two people were bitten or scratched by the infected. Hospital emergency rooms flooded with the suddenly ill. Once-healthy individuals were dying from no apparent cause.

The CDC issued an emergency warning to all inbound and outbound international flights. The Red Cross began immediate steps to support those hospitals incapable of handling the increased number of cases. And the death toll began to climb.

During that first week, one thousand and four people were admitted to hospitals. There were no survivors.

At the close of day seven, the CDC issued a second emergency warning. The United States of America had been hit with an epidemic. All international airports were closed. Flights to Canada, Mexico, and South America were canceled. Weeks later, planes stopped flying between cities. The media labeled this spreading killer ‘the Black Death’, after the pandemic in Europe in the 14
^th
century.

They were partially correct. And simply too late.

The Erickson McKenzie Medical Center sat just off Main Street. A recent expansion doubled the hospital’s size; it now took up an entire block and had consumed a two-lane street and a parking lot, but when the dust cleared, the monolithic maze resembled nothing she remembered. May Morris-Reid stood at the one-time crossroads of 4
^th
Street and Martin Luther King Blvd, now paved over by the only hospital in Danville.

Under her thick-soled hiking boots, glass cracked. She looked down and stepped to the side of the broken bottle’s remnants. Her eyes closed, forcing her to focus on the sounds around her. A low moan from the hot August breeze rustled vinyl blinds against broken windowpanes, making them buzz like excitable bees. A glass door squeaked on its hinges. No birds. No human voices. No roar of a car engine.

Those metallic monsters were nothing more than lawn ornaments scattered down 4
^th
, Main, and every other street in the world. They rusted in the rain and faded in the sun. Only insects had any use for them now.

She opened her eyes. The hospital still stood in front of her. Like the obsessive Count from Sesame Street, she counted every window she could see. Under her breath, she whispered one number at a time, hesitating after each one, just long enough to add ‘Mississippi’ to it. Her eyes bounced from one pane to another, and her head nodded in synch, all the way to the ground floor.

Nothing but the sun’s rays moved across each window, and yet her feet refused to step forward. She held still for another second. Then flexed her shoulder muscles to relax away the tension. She flexed her arms, relaxed them. Tightened her core, let out a soft breath. One muscle group at a time, all the way to her calves. But she was still jumpy.
So much for stress-relieving methods.

From her left side, a single dragging footstep kicked a metal trashcan lid. Not moving her head, she looked at it from the corner of her eyes. At the point where a flicker of dull pain zipped through her eyeballs and across her forehead, she saw movement. A shift of light behind a sedan. She blinked; had to look straight ahead to prevent a headache from building.

She didn’t move. A few strands of black hair blew across her face. The wind came from the northwest and mixed her scent with that of the putrid, black gunk that stained her heavy leather jacket, her jeans, and boots. She should have had her gasmask on, but the August heat had her sweating under her many layers. The humidity lay thick over everything, where even the glass windows sweated and thin mirages danced across blacktop. If she had to guess, she’d say the temperature was close to – if not already past – one hundred. On one of the hottest days of the year, she wore leather, layers of shirts and pants, and a heavy, thick scarf.

And here she stood out in the middle of the heat, in the abandoned city of Danville, Kentucky, to let the shambling dead shamble closer. That shifting of light took on a shape, one with a head and shoulders, with a hunched back and drooping arms. She stood the same way. Fingers hanging loose, bent forward, no sound, no quick or sudden movements. Maybe if she hadn’t waited so long, she would be one step closer to Step One. But she’d waited, erred on the side of caution, while caution wouldn’t err on her side. The zombie dragged the soles of his feet across the blacktop; the garbage lid bumped and shrieked, and then got caught between his heavy foot and rough pavement.

She kept her curses behind her teeth. Held her position and tried to focus on something else besides the metal lid’s constant shrieking. But whatever footsteps she might have heard from other zombies were lost to her ears. Something could be standing right behind her, and she wouldn’t know. That’s why her clothes stank like a bloated corpse and why sweat rolled down her back.

Her fingers itched to draw her crowbar as the trashcan lid clanked and banged its way down 4
^th
street. The zombie on top of it stopped. He was distinct now, in his plaid shirt and jeans. Oily patches of green and black goo stained his outfit, except for a swatch of red on the hem. His once-red plaid shirt was now black and bulging awkwardly around the stomach. The extra weight gave the zombie a roly-poly appearance, as he shuffled and stopped, only to have his protruding belly tug him forward another step.

When the garbage lid stopped, the zombie moaned softly, more a loud expulsion of air than anything. He rubbed against a truck bumper, left a black streak across chrome. The garbage lid jumped over a reflective light in the blacktop; the zombie didn’t. His shoe snagged on the obstacle; his foot skidded across the lid. With absolutely no attempt to catch himself, he punched the ground hard; his distended belly burst like a water balloon, spraying gore and undigested meat across the pavement.

She drew her crowbar, turned immediately while the zombie was down. His knuckles scraped blacktop; clear brown eyes lifted, locked onto hers. A rotting tongue flopped from his jaw as that low, hungry moan filled the air. She stomped on the fingers reaching for her ankle and dropped down on one knee. The pointed end of her crowbar punctured his skull; bone cracked, followed by a wet squelch of smashed brain matter. Like a puppet with his strings cut, the zombie sagged onto the road.