The Ugly Beginning - 01 (6 page)

She saw Jaime for what he really was, or what he had become. Two thick intestinal strands hung to his thighs from a rip across his abdomen. Bite-sized pieces were missing from both arms, and his shirt was torn, not only at his stomach but the left side of his chest as well where another chunk had been taken.

Melissa wanted to scream, but only choked. Using her hands, she tried to scoot back away from the horror that stood above her. Jaime’s body lunged at her awkwardly and landed with his face burying itself in one still-large breast. She felt his mouth open wide, teeth brushing her skin, then…more pain. His mouth closed and tore, bringing away a wad of cotton sports-bra as well as flesh. The pain was brutal, but Melissa was drown-ing. Drowning on the blood she kept sucking into her lungs with every attempt to scream. Another bite into her flesh, and blood erupted from her open mouth in a red, hot, sticky geyser. She felt hands tearing at the loose, soft skin of her stomach.

Her scream finally came in the form of a weak, mewling gurgle. The remnants of her tongue and lower lip flapped and blood splattered her face. The light seemed to dim, and Melissa knew that she was dying. The pain slowly changed to a dull warmth.

Darkness came.

***

“You sure this isn’t some sort of joke?” Ritchie stared at the television over Phil’s shoulder.

“Ain’t seeming to be.” Phil watched the grainy footage that kept running on a loop while the commentator announced the grim news.

“…as of yet the White House has made no comment other than to deny that this crisis is terrorist related. Word of savage outbreaks like those reported earlier are now coming in from all around the globe. There has been no word from the CDC that confirms internet rumors of the dead reanimating. They were however, quick to discount what they deemed an “overactive cluster of horror-movie fanatics creating a story to satisfy an adolescent fantasy.”  Doctor Linda Sing had this to say at the latest CDC press briefing.”

A middle-aged woman with short, dark hair appeared on screen with her name and title just above the news ticker. Her pale skin looked even more washed out under the lights. This was exaggerated further by the fact that she wore absolutely no make-up.

“Those rumors of the dead coming back and attacking the living are beyond ludicrous. Ignoring the pure physiological impossibility, there is simply no way this can be considered with any seriousness.”

“You believe this?” said Gerry, another of the regulars, and the one who the others had blamed for their free piece of ass cutting them off. He’d been the first to suggest that Melissa
accommodate
two of them at one time.

“This is like some
War of the Worlds
shit,” Phil laughed unconvincingly.

The electronic pulse tone sounded, announcing some-body entering or exiting the gym. Gerry, Phil, and Ritchie looked at one another with hopeful smiles. Simultaneously they all called out in a lusty sing-song.

“Me-lis-sa.”

Shoving Phil into Ritchie, Gerry got the jump. He had been in a real dry spell with the exception of those walks out to the car with Melissa. Since the night she’d announced it was over, he had been forced ‘to go solo’, and he always struggled with that Catholic-induced shame afterwards. Running around the corner into the big entry foyer, Gerry noticed a stench unlike anything in his life. It made his protein farts smell like fresh mountain air.

“Holy—” He was unable to finish the next word as his latest power drink exploded from his mouth and nose in a bile-mixed spray of watery vomit.

The smell was bad, but it was the apparition standing just about ten feet away that turned his guts to searing jelly. As the vomit sprayed from seemingly every orifice in his head, both his bladder and bowels let go. All this took place in a matter of seconds.

What remained of Melissa stood in the middle of the lobby. Another figure was just behind her. And he—Gerry was pretty sure it was a he—seemed to be stuck in the door. Or at least what had to be his intestines were. The guy was trying to pull free, but only managed to have more of the gray-pink coils spooling out from the hole in his guts.

Melissa looked little better. She was covered in blood. Her entire abdomen was hollowed out into a crimson cavern of raw, dangling viscera. Enough of her rib cage showed to reveal that a couple of bones had been snapped off. Remnants of her over-large breasts hung in tatters. But her face was what broke Gerry’s mind. The lower jaw remained awkwardly attached. All of the left cheek and most of the right had vanished. The mouth hung open to reveal a blackish stump that had to have been her tongue at one point. The eyes were coated in some sickly film and bloodshot in black.

“Fuck!”  Phil and Ritchie breathed almost in unison.

They arrived to see two equally terrifying events happen at practically the same time. Melissa lunged forward, catching Gerry’s hand in her mouth, biting off three fingers, and the man in the door jerked forward suddenly, ripping away from his own insides that now hung from the door and lay in a pile on the rubber mat that people had wiped their feet on when entering. The smell in the air was so bad that neither man who stood right behind Gerry ever knew the other had soiled his pants.

Nobody heard the screams. The begging. The crying. Phil had the worst of the three. When he and Ritchie had turned to run, he stumbled over a flat bench and hit his head hard enough to lose consciousness. He awoke to four zombies feasting on him. He died screaming as he watched his own insides being pulled from his body.

***

 
Somewhere in the Central Interior of Australia
—The Old Man sat cross-legged, facing the slowly setting sun. The cataracts over both eyes had stolen his vision more than forty years ago. Not that The Old Man knew how long an actual calendar year was.

Many that came to see The Old Man guessed him to be comfortably over a hundred. They came with questions. As had their parents. As had their grandparents. The Old Man would listen to the question. Then, he would draw in the dirt with a stick. He always continued to ‘look’ straight ahead. And as he drew, he would smile. His smile was little more than a dark crease in his weathered, wrinkled, treebark-textured skin. People would look at the picture, and somehow it would answer their question or give a solution to a dilemma.

The Old Man never asked for money. People simply gave food. Sometimes, tribal groups would come and repair The Old Man’s hut and stock him with supplies. Once, long ago, a commune showed up in a bunch of beat-up vans and set up around The Old Man. They planted gardens and installed a water pump. They never asked any questions, they only wanted to be near his
aura
. One day, they just left.

The Old Man never spoke. He drew. Sometimes he hummed songs that nobody knew. His face never changed expression except to smile when he drew.

That was until two days ago.

The images that came so easily and often suddenly stopped. Now, there was only one overwhelming image. The sun, with a jagged, black tumor visible in its center, facing a bloody moon with a bite out of it. The feeling he got from this vision was cold.

Death
.

The Old Man realized that in his vision he was in the heavens between the sun and moon. When he looked down, he knew he would see Earth, but he could not look down. The Old Man was afraid. He knew what he would see.

Death.

Slowly, The Old Man rose to his feet. He gathered a stick for walking, a leather bag for water, and a pouch of dried berries. He had to leave. He must go deeper into the nothingness of the desolate country where man did not tread.

Mankind was dying. He had to get as far away from Mankind as possible. His time was running out, and none of the machines or big buildings could help now. Earth, Gaia, Nature, whatever you call it, it was resetting itself.

The Old Man suddenly saw visions in his mind coming so fast that they all bled together. The planet had been scarred and ravaged by Mankind, who was brushing everything away. Wars raged and Mankind sought to dominate itself. Mankind could not realize that it could no more dominate itself than one toe on one foot can control the other toes.

The Old Man smiled at his realization. The planet would use the only thing Mankind understood to bring it down.

Death.

***

 
Eastern Ridge Prison, Idaho
—Dillon Clay lay on his bunk. The light from the three-inch-wide by two-foot-long horizontal window bathed his ten-by-eight cell with cool, soft, bluish light. The intercom had called “Lockdown!” about an hour ago. Still, no CO had come by to count him. Dillon didn’t like things he did not understand. There was always a count at lockdown.

Something must really be popping off in one of the blocks. The rest of Tier A seemed just as anxious. There was a lot of yelling going on up and down the block. That was also out of the ordinary. Usually the CO on the tier would come down on people for making a racket during lockdown.

Yep, something was not right.

“Clay!” a voice hissed.

It was the kid across the hall, Ian Lotherman. He had moved in about five months ago. Real sad story. Nothing any
real
man couldn’t understand. The kid had come home early one night to find his new wife of just three months with her mouth full of another man’s pole. Now they were both dead, and Ian was doing Life Without.

That seemed to satisfy the kid, because he was quiet again. Dillon, however, was not convinced by his own words. He’d seen some real crazy shit in his twenty-three years down. The COs were just as particular about routine as he was. Anytime there was a lockdown, there was a headcount. That was just the way things were.

Lights.

The sudden illumination caused an uproar. Men up and down the tier cursed. Sounds of boots rushing down the concrete floored tier came even as the main door was still opening with its mechanical whine. Another sound carried on the wind.

Gunfire.

Several of the prison’s correctional officers rushed by wearing full riot gear. None of them even glanced in Dillon’s cell as they passed. The two bringing up the rear had pistol-grip shotguns and were pointing back the way they had come.

Now guys were really yelling. At the head of the tier, where the door leading out to the common room had locked open with a loud metallic clang, there was a sudden change in the timbre of the voices. It was no longer the gruff harassing sound of boisterous convicts.

“What the hell is going on, Clay?” There was definite fear in Ian’s voice. The kid had his tall lean frame pressed against his cell door. His eyes were wide, and his hands held on in a white-knuckled grip on the round bars.

Dillon Clay knew the smell of death. On the streets he had stumbled across the occasional wino that had spent a few days rotting unnoticed in an alley or under a bridge. He’d killed a few rival dealers. Once or twice, one of his girls would turn up dead in a motel room where some John had gotten rough, or decided not to pay. Yes, Dillon Clay was familiar with the smell of death.

Death was on the tier. Something was wrong though. This smell had something more. Whatever it was had grown, street-hardened convicts screaming. Begging. One scream was coming through above all the others. It was a scream of unbridled pain.

Boom!

The explosion of a shotgun echoed up and down the tier.  The acrid smoke filled Dillon’s nostrils, but it did not hide that stench of death.

Twice more shotguns blasted, drowning the screams. Drowning the sound of the door at the rear of Tier A opening, but not the vibration. The rear door only opened in case of emergency. Or, since there had never actually been one, more correctly, during a fire drill.

“Get away from the door, Ian.”

Dillon’s voiced had not changed. It had not raised or lowered. Yet, Ian heard the message clearly. He let go of the bars as if they had suddenly been charged with electricity. He stepped back, stumbling slightly as his legs contacted the stainless steel toilet and sink unit that jutted out of one wall.

The smell grew stronger. Men were gagging, retching, and spewing the contents from their stomachs. A silence far more deafening than the screams or shotgun blasts was washing down the tier like a tsunami.

A body came into view in front of Dillon’s cell. It was a CO, but he wasn’t in riot gear. He was wearing what was left of the standard uniform: gray button-up shirt, black khaki pants, and dull unpolished boots. Blood was everywhere, turning the gray to black in places. The head was tilted at an awkward angle, exposing a long, jagged rip down the left side of the neck.

“What the …?” Ian gasped.

With a jerk of its head, the creature on the tier turned towards the sound. Thick blood oozed from the rip and trickled along the collar of its shirt. A pregnant drop hung for a second before falling with a splat on the buffer-polished concrete. It lunged forward, colliding hard with the bars. Two more figures stepped into view and followed the first. Dillon couldn’t see their faces to attempt and identify just exactly
who
these things once were, but he had a sick feeling he knew
what
they were.

“Stay in the back of your cell!” Dillon yelled.

“What the hell is going on?”

Dillon could hear the edge of hysteria in the young man’s voice. Like a contagion, that hysteria seemed to suddenly spread through the tier. Screams for somebody to open the doors or to simply ‘Help!’ began in earnest.