Transformation (8 page)

“Sure thing.” Ron smiled and left.

Damn it Francis, you silly fuck, you do like these folks. Well not the pig of course.

Weed sat on his bed and took a big gulp of his “medicine.” He’d just chummed up the waters but good. Hopefully when that Dale bastard started pointing fingers at him Ron would remember the reasonable doubt that existed.

§

Dale was boiling mad. He was sure the old bastard had something to do with the explosion. Ron was too big a pussy to see . . . no, he wasn’t a pussy but these people had no idea who they were dealing with and they wouldn’t listen to him. For Christ sakes he’d studied these types of people and spent years undercover with them. Ron and the gang had no concept of just how evil people could be. It was inconceivable to them that someone could build a bomb and kill innocent people and not blink an eye.

He’d just spent well over an hour trying to convince Ron that the old man had to go. Had he just dealt with the old man himself instead of wasting time trying to reason with Ron this would have never happened. Now he just had to handle the old bastard himself knowing that his actions may well get him banished from the community. Well, the knife wound on his leg was mostly healed up. Maybe it was time for him to move on, to go to that cabin in the mountains he was originally headed for.

Dale was already planning his actions; pack, take care of the slippery old criminal, and leave in the dead of the night. He’d write a letter of course and leave it where Ron could find it. Unfortunately, even Dale underestimated how dangerous Old Francis could be.

7.

Trevor knew he had a connection to the dead but he couldn’t quite figure it out. They weren’t afraid of him, they wanted to eat him but also sensed his nature, for lack of a better word, and were confused by it. Apparently they wouldn’t eat one of their own or someone with the infection in their body.

He stood staring, feeling the tickling sensation over his body that had been persistent since he started eating and drinking. It was gradually increasing to an itch, his fingertips were beginning to ache. He was looking at the city, seeing all the dead, the glow of a few people still alive and in their homes. He was unaware of his immediate surroundings being distracted and focused on his thoughts. He felt a tap on his shoulder, it was Cooper.

“Trevor. Are you OK?”

They were still on the roof of the grocery store, but it was almost pitch black out. There was no moon and the fog was heavy and low to the ground.

“Yeah, just thinking.” Trevor said nonchalantly.

“You’ve been standing in the same position for hours.”

“Hours? Hmm.”

“Yes, hours. You sure you’re OK?” Cooper backed up a little. He furrowed his brow. He wanted to reach for one of his guns but decided against it. He was worried about Trevor, but mostly he was worried about his and Ellen’s safety.

“Cooper, I’m scared.” Trevor held his arms out straight, his hands flat and bent at the wrist so his palms were vertical. “I can feel them, the dead. They’re not dead you know. They’re not alive either. I can feel them and they can feel me. We are all one, but each of us is a billion separate things.”

Da Fuq?
Cooper thought. Trevor sounded insane. “Um, aren’t you tired? Hungry?”

“No. I’ve never felt better.”

Cooper tugged on Trevor’s sleeve. “Look at me.”

Trevor turned. He looked normal in the face other than the color of his eyes.

“Are we safe to sleep? You are acting weird.” Cooper watched his face. He looked like the same old Trevor.

“Yes, you are safer than ever.”

“OK then, good night.” But Cooper didn’t feel safer than ever. He took a walk around the roof one last time, stopping to watch Trevor a few times. He tried to get settled in but found himself looking over at Trevor every so often. But he never moved and remained as still as a statue.

Trevor turned back to look over the ocean of dead below him. He felt the invisible vibe flowing from his body, across the parking lot, to the bodies bobbing in the bay, those packed in the various gorges on the peninsula, and on and on. He was flowing across the globe. He was starting to know. He knew there were still living humans around the world, there were many, many of the animated dead, some strong and feasting, most wandering, and starved for energy. Wildlife was abundant and thriving, but were staying away from him—them? He was at once an all-encompassing being surrounding the planet in a vast web and a miniscule and mindless speck of the whole. He was far more himself and far less than ever before. But Trevor knew in his gut that what was happening to him wasn’t going to end well. There was something yet to be seen in all of this, something behind the curtain. The connection he had wasn’t a perfect see-all, know-all mechanism, not at first anyway. At first it was a slow and blurry experience. It was a haphazard and purely visual experience. It seemed to be taking place only in his head, but rapidly the connection evolved. All along Trevor was wondering what the nature of the connection was. Was it an organic entity, alien lifeform, or something manmade? He started to get the feeling that what he was experiencing wasn’t a natural occurrence.

It all began to congeal as time wore on, the experience became more and more real. It was less like a daydream in his head and more as if he were actually at the location he was examining. The longer he observed a place the more present he felt. His ability to see and hear and even taste and feel (he hadn’t smelled anything yet) grew sharper and more in focus.

He rode the connection around the world, taking any one of its many streams to all the places he could imagine. He flew over and sometimes through cites and buildings. He began to notice many things about the behavior of the connection itself. The way in which it interacted with the things it encountered was the most noticeable. He was witness to the evolution of the slow and wandering nature of the mechanism from very early on. He could feel as it quickened and refined the decisions it made. Whatever drove the connection exhibited the behavior of someone who was exploring and learning.

It wasn’t until Trevor came across a remote island, riding the connection quickly, the world a blur, that he knew what he was dealing with. He’d passed the remote island before, the mechanism seemed drawn to it. Before he had veered off, exploring the world, looking for something “significant” but now he seemed to understand that this island was the most significant thing in the world right now in regards to the death of mankind.

He went in, letting the flow carry him over the green island with its high jagged peaks and mist shrouded canopy. Suddenly he was passing over a small town with a large population. There were neat rows of army tents and many people filled a grid of small straight streets. At first glance it looked so idyllic, the neat tent city on the lush tropical island, but he was moving fast and just past the tent city he saw a high fence. It was a massive net of rusted metal cables held up by large concrete pylons. The pylons were very badly weathered and streaked with the blacks and greens of jungle rot and growth as if they’d been in place for decades. Several of the large cables hung loose among the vines that grew along the length of the entire fence. Trevor saw a section of the fence that was being repaired. Vines were burning, cables being repaired, and the ground around it cleared.

In a flash he was past the tents and the fence, but it didn’t escape him that the people in the neat little city were probably prisoners. The flow avoided the fence. Trevor thought that odd as nothing seemed to stop it. But time and time again, he’d seen it avoid, or go around, certain objects and had yet to figure out what the common denominator was. The flow seemed to skim over this island, across a small bit of ocean, and then to another island. This was a larger island with higher peaks, thicker jungles, and a blanket of mist over it that stretched and tore as it swirled in thick clumps. Even the thinnest parts of the mist were almost completely opaque.

He approached several large concrete buildings, streaked and stained with greens and blacks, same as the giant concrete pylons surrounding the tent city. He got glimpses of neat little roads and smaller buildings amongst the thick jungle.

The stream split into many tendrils and searched the island quickly. As Trevor rapidly toured the island with the stream, he saw a few interesting things other than the island itself with its rushing rivers, high waterfalls, and complex system of volcanic caves. He saw a large rotting Victorian mansion on one remote corner of the island, a mountain top held a few satellite dishes long neglected, and there were even what appeared to be the ruins of an ancient temple. Just a few stones here and there, but they were arranged as stairs might be, stacked neatly on top of another. This was all hidden by thick jungle and the stream didn’t seem to register any of it as significant. Trevor realized he may have just seen things no man has ever seen in centuries.

The stream ended up swirling around the largest of the concrete buildings. It swarmed the large building and probed it. Trevor could see that the windows were new and clean in contrast to the walls. As he whirred past the windows, he could see inside the building. Virtually every room contained white-coated people of all description working on some piece of equipment or another.

Someone opened a door and the stream snapped faster than ever and focused all of its ability towards getting into the building. It seemed to physically blow open the door, crashing it against the wall. Trevor could hear the whirring sound it made as it passed through the confines of the building. The crashing of objects as it passed over them. The screams of the people it flooded around. And it still managed to avoid many things in this building. Trevor seemed to think it was related to electricity.

Trevor saw briefly the looks of shock and fear as the stream thickened and coalesced and flooded the building. There was no stopping it. Some individuals seemed to be trying to swat it away or simply going prone to avoid it.

The stream filled the building in a blind rush and probed every possible corner, every nook and cranny, and examined all the individuals. The amount of information it was taking in completely overwhelmed Trevor. He didn’t have the ability to turn it off. He couldn’t tune it out and felt that after a few minutes he was going to lose his mind to it.

A few minutes later and Trevor couldn’t remember his own name, was forgetting everything about himself. But the one thing he held onto was raw emotion. His remaining conscious experience was one of utter terror.

As the sun rose Cooper woke Ellen. He motioned to Trevor.

“He hasn’t moved a muscle all night.”

Ellen looked at him with concern then to Cooper who shrugged.

“What do we do?” She asked.

Cooper walked over to look at Trevor’s face. What he saw shocked him. His eyes were rolled back in his head, he looked drawn and gaunt, and he was white as a sheet. He wasn’t just pale, he was as white as if he’d been painted.

Ellen saw Cooper’s reaction and ran over.

“What do we do?” She asked, but Cooper was already pulling Trevor down and laying him on his back.

Ellen started slapping his face.

Like a rubber band snapping back across the globe, Trevor was suddenly being pulled backwards at an incredible speed. The world was a complete and indecipherable blur. He was back on the rooftop with Ellen and Cooper.

“I’m OK.” Trevor spoke clearly and startled them. He opened his eyes and the color started to return to his face. He looked less and less gaunt as the seconds passed. He sat up almost immediately and started speaking.

“I am just . . . learning.” He was still fully aware of his individuality as Trevor and his greater and lesser self that he’d just experienced.

Trevor rose, steady on his feet, and walked back to the ledge. He resumed the same stance as before on the ledge. He planned to stay away from the island, for now. He knew he would have to go back. There was something there that needed to be investigated further.

“I am going to be here for a while. You guys might want to . . . go off somewhere. Do something . . . else.” He chose not to tell them about what he had just experience or how they likely just saved his life.

“Well I’m not leaving him.” Ellen said.

Cooper looked at Trevor as he spoke to his sister. “Will you be OK if I take off and get some more supplies? I don’t want to stay on this roof forever. I want to go north to the place I was telling you about.”

As brother and sister spoke Trevor was completely there, but also everywhere else. He tried to understand it. He was alive but all the others were dead. They did nothing but roam and eat. He was conscious, but they were not. He felt a tug on his arm.

“Trevor! You are freaking us out.” Ellen tried to leave him alone but her concern grew until she could no longer sit still. She pulled gently on his arm. “It’s been too long. You have to stop this for a little while.”

Hours? Minutes? Days? Nothing sounded right. But he didn’t doubt it either.
He opened his eyes and relaxed, letting his arms drop to his sides.

“Are you OK?” Cooper asked. From the looks of things, he’d been standing there for days.

“Yeah. That virus . . . It did something to me.”

“No shit! Really!” The sarcasm came easy from Cooper. That was the understatement of the year.

“I’m still me. I’m one hundred percent in control of myself, but I’m connected to them.” He swept his arm out. “I can sense the world through them.”

“OK, I don’t know what all that means, but I do know that I want to get off this roof and to the place I told you about.” Cooper was starting to gather his things.

“It means,” Trevor looked at Cooper, eyes unblinking, “that I can feel them changing. I’m changing.” He held his hands up and looked at them as he rolled them around.

“OK.” Cooper spoke low to Ellen. “He’s nuckin futz. What are we going to do with him?”

Ellen and Cooper stood silently in thought as Trevor turned back around to look out over the ocean of the dead. He spoke after a moment.

“Look, I cleared the way for you.”

Cooper and Ellen both walked to the edge and looked. There was a perfect gap, a road, cutting straight between the dead across the parking lot and to the street.

“How’d you do that?” Cooper was stunned.

“How long can you hold them that way?” Ellen asked.

“I don’t hold them. I told them . . . instructed them. They will stay that way forever until I decide to move them again.”

In a dark, twisted scene reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy, the cowardly lion, and the scarecrow are following the yellow brick road, Trevor, Cooper, and Ellen walked arm in arm down the open space between two walls of moaning grasping zombies. Not one zombie stepped closer to them.