The Lazarus Impact (8 page)

CHAPTER 15

Manhattan is in chaos. It’s like something out of a bad 1980s movie that depicts the future. Anarchy. Lawlessness. Rampant crime. Looting. Old barrel fires from the night before rage on unattended. There are bodies strewn all over the place, and the winds continue to fill the streets with soot. People are kicking in doors, trying to escape the poisonous air. Others, like Michael and Amy, have their eyes and mouths covered and are on the move. The streets are eerily void of traffic. Even parked cars seem to be missing from the scene.

Michael complains about the water running all over his bag, chilling his skin in the cold. Minxie seems to be relaxed as they make their way toward the Holland tunnel. Amy stays alert to some masked looters across the street who break into storefront windows, stealing anything they can carry.

“What are they going to do with TVs and stereos?” Michael asks.

“Maybe bribe the guys at the bridges and tunnels to let them cross,” she answers.

“Don’t stare. I feel like if they see us watching they might attack,” Michael warns. But as they avert their eyes they are met with the hollow end of a pistol.

“Don’t fucking move or I’ll blow your brains out,” the man says through his sinister looking, dual filtered biohazard mask. “Take off your packs and toss them to the ground, next to me.” They do as they’re told. Michael places Minxie on the ground and she clings to his leg. “Now keep moving. Hands up! Turn around and you’re dead.” They walk past him, headed in the direction of the tunnel. They don’t put their hands down until they round the corner at the next block. Michael quickly lifts Minxie back into his arms.

“The masks are all we need right now,” Amy says, trying to reassure a dispirited Michael. “Once we get out of the city things will be different.” He returns a depressed nod. He’s too angry, scared, and bewildered to respond. The packs weren’t much, but they meant something. They were a three day guarantee. They were light, food and warmth. They were life. They were hope.

As they get within five blocks of the tunnel, they see strings of automobiles jamming the streets in every direction. Everyone had the same idea; get out.

“The tunnel must be blocked,” Michael says.

“Let’s see for sure,” a determined Amy responds.

Minxie begins to cough and hack in Michael’s arms. He places her on the ground and kneels down beside her.

“What’s wrong girl?” He lovingly pets Minxie behind her head. “I thought people were saying this stuff doesn’t affect animals. I just saw some pigeons flying around doing fine a minute ago.”

“Minxie’s a fat, old, out of shape apartment cat. Maybe she can’t take it like other animals can.” Amy wanted a dog; a substantial dog, or nothing at all. People with pets in the city annoy her, but Michael had Minxie since his freshman year of college.

Minxie labors in her movement, and her legs weaken under her drooping belly. She pukes little puddles of yellow bile as she tries to get closer to Michael’s boot. She lays on her side, huffing panicked, strained breaths in and out. She dies. Amy stands by with her hands on her hips as Michael softly weeps in his mask.

“We should probably keep moving,” Amy says softly after a few moments.

“Don’t you have a heart?” Michael asks, angry. “Just give me a minute, alright?”

“We don’t have a minute. It’s fucking insane out here!” There are gunshots and distant screams, and an increasing number of homeless looking vagrants wandering the streets.

Michael scoops Minxie up into his arms and carries her through the maze of empty parked cars over to a tree by the sidewalk. He gently places her on the small square patch of dead grass surrounding it. He pets her one last time, and then turns to Amy. “Okay let’s go,” he says sluggishly.

They see a small crowd of people near the tunnel entrance, and as they get close they hear yelling and chanting. It’s a protest of some kind. Tanks and armed military humvees block the tunnel, and faceless soldiers wearing hooded gas masks and bulletproof suits stand ready to fire their weapons if anyone steps out of line. There are others with riot shields, and more still behind makeshift sand bag bunkers. Even up on the rooftops nearby there are MPs with assault rifles, looming over the scene.

“I guess we’re stuck here.” Michael says.

Just then one of the protesters hurls a flaming Molotov cocktail toward the barricade. It breaks against the ground near the men with riot shields. The fire is quickly extinguished, but the military volleys a can of tear gas into the crowd. Those who are already wearing gas masks are unaffected, but the ones without eye and mouth protection begin to flee or drop to the ground. The remaining protesters begin throwing rocks. They pry up the cobblestone bricks from the street and launch them at the MPs, but the MPs fire back at them with rubber bullets.

“We are authorized to use deadly force if necessary. I repeat: we are authorized to use deadly force,” one of them warns through a megaphone. The protestors yell even louder, and start to surge at the barricade. There even seems to be some scuffle rousing up among the protesters. Infighting. Suddenly machine gun fire echoes off the buildings nearby, filling the quiet morning air with dread. The protesters scatter but several are left dead in the street. Others are zip-tied and thrown in the back of a military truck.

“Oh my God! This is no joke. What are we gonna do?” Amy asks as she and Michael run back the way they came.

“I have half a mind to go down there and protest! This is bullshit!” Michael complains.

“Are you nuts?” Amy glares at him through her mask.

“Let’s just head back home. Maybe those looters left. If we can reclaim our apartment we can board it up and lock ourselves in, and be ready to defend ourselves better,” Michael suggests.

Amy doesn’t like the idea. She doesn’t like the thought of being contained, but it’s the only plan, and the streets are too dangerous to press on. “There has to be another way,” she says.

“I can’t think of anything,” Michael responds.

“Didn’t you help assess the tunnels for the city planner’s office when they were studying the homeless, trying to get an accurate figure of the people living underground?” Amy asks. The sight of scores more shambling wrecks on the street gave her the idea.
I wonder; where are they all coming from?

“Yeah. Yeah!” he says. “There was an old abandoned PATH tube just a few blocks from here. It was supposedly cleared out, and the way in was sealed up. If we can break through it, maybe we can get out.”

“Will they know about it? Will they be guarding it?” Amy asks.

“If they checked the records it would say that the area was properly sealed off, so maybe not,” Michael says. “It’s worth a try while we’re out, and it’s close by.” Michael points down the street when he sees Minxie in front of him. She walks in a zigzag without her characteristic feline poise. Her eyes are yellow, and she gnashes her teeth.

“What the fuck?” a startled Amy blurts out. Michael starts to walk toward the cat. “Don’t. Stay away,” Amy warns. Minxie hisses at them. All the hair on her back stands on end. It seems she is beginning to regain her wits, but her demeanor is angry. She stands still in the street, just a few strides away from them. Suddenly a rat crawls out from the sewer grate beside Minxie. She lunges at it without hesitation and begins to devour it alive. “Come on let’s go!” Amy yells. Michael follows.

CHAPTER 16

Marcus looks up into the poisonous air. He’s free, but trapped behind a mask. The prison walls fade into the horizon behind the group of inmates as they trek down a lonely highway on the west side of the Hudson. They keep cover in the woods along the roadside in case any authorities are on the hunt for them. The air is cold. Occasional blusters of dust pelt them as they walk, shivering. The debris from the meteor is settling, but it’s no less dangerous to breathe. All it takes is one particle to kill you.

Marcus and Harley’s band of escapees found that out the hard way when a few of the others took their masks off for a moment earlier. They coughed for a few hours afterward and then collapsed. And then they changed. There are twelve of them left now. Harley was eager to put the other three down.
I wonder if maybe they could’ve been cured
.
Maybe some doctor could find a fix for it in a lab or something
.
But it’s too dangerous to risk keeping the risen with us, and what doctor would help a crew of convicts?
Marcus didn’t like it, but he understood why Harley did what he did.
The dead have to stay dead
.

Everyone is getting hungry, so they cautiously veer off course to a rest stop. The signs leading up to it show all the icons of the big fast food chains. They get excited at the thought of burgers and fries, bragging about what they’re going to order, not thinking about how they can pay for it with nothing in their pockets. They hope against reason, but soon realize that with the power out they aren’t likely to get any food. They see several cars parked outside, but no one is in sight. The doors are open, and the lights are out. Inside it looks like a bomb went off. Chairs and tables are flipped and knocked over, cash registers are smashed on the floor and emptied, and there are bodies all over the place with bullet holes in their heads. Their dreams of a hot meal are dashed.

“Switch outta your clothes,” Harley commands them.

They begin to undress the dead and exchange their prison jumpers for bloodied civilian clothes.
I guess it’s a better look than convict orange
. Marcus finds a big guy whose clothes might fit him. He can smell the stench of death through his mask as he undresses him and eyes his marbled green skin underneath. The man lies in a pool of foul ooze that drips from every hole in his body as his insides turn into liquid.
I’ll stick to the coat and boots
.
Everything else is nasty
.

“Got a gas burner out here. Camping equipment in a car. Propane,” one of the other inmates calls out from near the door.

“Marcus, go grab us some burgers,” Harley calls out.

Excited by the allure of fresh burgers, Marcus hops to it and heads back to the kitchen through the double doors beside the register. There is rancid meat, lettuce, onions and tomatoes all over the counters, and there are more bodies. He hears a light scuffling sound coming from back behind the fryers, near the freezers where he needs to go. He looks around for a weapon, hoping it’s just a bunch of rats. There’s only one bullet left in Thompson’s gun, so he wants to save it, if even use it at all. He finds a thick metal grill scraper on the nearby counter and picks it up.

Marcus slowly creeps toward the back of the kitchen, careful to make each step in silence. The sounds grow louder; the sounds of someone eating. Ravenous.
It’s one of them
. Through the cracks between the stoves and overhead steam cooking compartments, he sees the undead feasting on the dead. Suddenly his appetite escapes him. The monster is eating a dead employee right in front of the freezer door.

Marcus thinks back to all the reading he did in the prison chapel. He read the Bible cover to cover, over and over. He remembers Lazarus rising from the dead, and then Jesus. But the frightening parts were when the prophets spoke of the dead coming back to eat the living. One line he remembered from Jeremiah was “I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will feast upon one another.” There were more references in Revelation about the dead coming back to life and striking horror and fear in the living; the end times.
If this ain’t the end of days, I don’t know what is
.

He’s a changed man, and he refuses to become one of these things. He says a prayer to himself, asking forgiveness for what he is about to do; he vows to kill every one of them he sees, to stop them from changing men into monsters. At the same time, he renews his vow to never again bring harm upon the living.

He swiftly approaches the zombie and jabs the metal grill scraper down with both hands, just below the back of its skull. After a few quick strikes the beast’s head detaches from its body and tumbles aside, but its mouth still chews at the flesh dangling from its teeth. Horrified and disgusted, Marcus stomps on its face with the heel of his dead man’s boots until it stops moving. A thick, goopy blood sludge covers the tiled floor in front of the freezer.
Thank you God, for keeping me safe
. He breathes a sigh of relief, and gets back to his mission; food.

With any luck some of the burgers are still cold and okay to eat. He grabs the biggest pack he can find; a 36 count box that’s still cold to the touch. He even remembers the buns and some ketchup. He steps outside to cheers from the others, who sit waiting for him around a small portable grill fire. The burgers begin to cook. Marcus wraps himself in a large black blanket he finds in a nearby car to stay warm as the sun sets. It forms a hood over his gas mask.

Harley hops up into the cab of a large delivery truck and starts it up with the keys left in the ignition. He drives it over to where the rest of the group sits and turns it so the driver’s side door is blocked from the wind by the rest of the truck. He crawls over the seat and into the back cab. “We can eat in here.” His voice echoes from inside.

“You gonna be the first to try?” one of the inmates asks.

“Already got my mask off, wiseass,” responds Harley.

When the burgers are done they all climb into the back of the truck and eat with jackets and shirts covering their heads to block the air even further. No one gets sick.