No. 11

Ben grabbed the water greedily, and I tried not to look so anxious but I wanted to grab it eagerly as well.
I’ve learned through my years to not appear too eager. It only creates mistakes and I was starting to realize that all of this was real. I was reminded of Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby” screaming “This is real!”
He handed me the bottle and I took it. No dramatics but God knows I wanted to drink the whole thing down in one gulp.
I took a hearty drink. No more and no less and stared at the man in front of me.
He eyed me warily, “I guess you have questions?”
I said nothing and looked at the chapel doors. They led outside. This much I knew.
“I figure you will tell me what you want me to know,” I said quietly. “If you can taze me, you have the power. Isn’t this all about power and control? It seems you have the advantage.?
Ben looked at me with a confused look on his face, but stayed quiet. I would learn over time this was a rarity.
Gray-haired man sat down in front of us, strategically in front of the doors.
“Dammit,” I thought but I didn’t say it out loud.
“We have a situation, Ms. Caldwell,” he said. “Apparently there has been a coup, if you will.”
I chortled, “A coup. You’re military, aren’t you?”
He laughed raising his eyebrows, staring at professionally manicured nails. He never looked into my eyes. “Is it that obvious?”
I snorted and took another drink of the cold water.
“Ok, let me get this straight. How long are we going to have electricity? Why are there dead people in the street and where is my damned bag?” I was irritated and I was scared. I hated the casualness of the exchange. I wanted to go home and check on my dog.
He leaned back, propping his feet on the velvet red cushion of the church pew.
“Daniel has your pepper spray,” he said. “We let them go. They only have a matter of hours before the virus hits them. The lucky ones died early. They, I’m ashamed to say, won’t really die. They will change.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ben said and I was actually glad he did.
“My name is Grayson, Ben. Regardless of what you think, we are in this together,” the man who formally wore a HAZMAT suit said matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean they only have a matter of time?” I said. I tried to control the shake in my voice and Ben placed his hand gently on my sleeve, still covered in blood and brains.
“We’ve been following both of you for a long time,” Grayson said, placing both feet on the hard wooden floor.
“There are three kinds of events happening here,” He added, standing up. “Those who die, those who change and those have already evolved.”
“Who did this?” Ben asked.
“Washington,” he added. “Why do you think hammers cost a $100 dollars for the military? They made something that we knew was coming. The thing is, we couldn’t stop it.”
Ben stared at him.
“These things don’t happen,” he said sadly.
“Great, can I get a beer before the apocalypse?” I grunted. I was with Ben. This wasn’t happening. This only happened in George Orwell novels.
“I think we all need one,” Grayson’s face smiled. “Stay here and then we are going to have a chat. We have about three days.”

I didn’t like how that sounded.

No. 10

They had moved me out of the preschool class into the chapel, which is where I woke up. I could tell there had been a time elapse because the stained glass windows of Jesus and Mary were darkening.
I wanted to pray, but I had forgotten how.
I figure, in retrospect, I’d been out for a couple of hours. My body felt like it had been struck by lightening, and I guess it had. My skin tingled as if I’d been sunburned and I couldn’t move.
I tried to move my head, but it felt like it had the weight of water buffalo holding it down.
“You ok?” I head a man’s voice from the other side of the pew.
I coughed and tried to remember what words were, as my mind was filled with fog and fire.
“I’m not sure,” I gargled.
“You’ll be all right,” he said. “You were just tazed. It will take a few minutes but you are going to be ok. Sore though.”
I didn’t think anything would ever make me move again.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
A very ordinary looking man with thick brown hair peeked over the oak chair looking at me with a dead serious glare. I thought I recognized him, but I wasn’t sure.
“I heard one of the new KKK say something was let loose,” he said. “Some kind of virus. It killed a lot of people but then some lived. They want to know why. Or at least that’s how it happens in the horror movies.”
“Do they have George Romero on the case?” I said making a lame joke. This was a joke, wasn’t it?
He smiled, “No, but they do have Homeland Security here but I haven’t seen that many people. It’s almost like they knew it was coming or something.”
I tried to sit up and was struggling.
“You are in trouble, you know,” he said nonchalantly. “You took that guy’s eye out.”
I nodded. What was I supposed to say. I’d never hurt anyone in my entire life, but that changed this morning.

“What’s your name?” I asked, finally moving upright.I felt like shit.
“Ben,” he responded. “The TV was still working before they brought me here. FOX was reporting it was a terrorist chemical attack. My idea though is different.”
“And that would be.”
“I think Washington just got tired of all of us, that’s all,” he shrugged. “I think that they thought the American people were getting too big for their britches, so they unleashed a bunch of shit at us to see what would happen.”
“That’s ridiculous, Ben.”
I would find out later that he was closer to the truth than anyone else in those first days.
“Where’s my bag,” I growled. “Where are the rest of them?”

“Luce, you can’t have your bag back,” a voice rang out from the back of the chapel. “You almost got yourself killed back there.”
I’d heard it before; it was the voice from the HAZMAT suit. My main question was why the other man who attacked me knew me. I wanted that question answered but I was going to wait for the right time.
“I figured that,” I said. “Can Ben and I at least have some water?”
A gray-haired man came down the aisle, his white duds abandoned.
“You can have your water,” he said tossing us a couple liter bottles of Dasanti from a small, gray bag. I wondered if there was a gun in there. From the look on Ben’s face, he was thinking the same thing. “Then both of you need to tell us why you are still alive.”

No. 9

“Be quiet,” Daniel said in a hushed voice to the others whimpering in the room. “Just don’t say a word.”
The lady in the pumpkin vest whimpered but everyone else was quiet. He stared at her until she crumpled into a fetal position on the floor next to a display about proper hygiene.
I scrambled through my bag. I dropped the pepper spray twice but finally got a grasp on it, my breath was short and I thought at any moment I might hyperventilate.
“It sounds like they are goose-stepping,” Virginia said with a quiet gurgle in her throat.
“Shut up,” Daniel stared at her. I was deciding I liked him.
It didn’t sound like that to me though. It sounded like the firing squad was coming to get the first ones.
As a newspaper editor, I assumed I would be first.
I stumbled for the desk but no one was paying attention. The teacher had kindly left a pair of scissors and I pocketed them in the back of my jeans. From the footsteps down the hallway, I assumed there were four or five HAZMAT assholes coming toward us.
The door exploded I a million pieces.
“Lucy Caldwell,” the voice that had put an Uzi in my skull said. “We need to talk to you.”
Apparently my first thought wasn’t wrong.
I hesitated. Daniel looked at me. He wanted me to go, needed it actually. If I went first, then that meant that breathing was still an option for those left.
I had already shoved the spray in my jeans’ pocket and the scissors were stuck, hidden in the back of a pair of Levis.
“That’s me,” I said. I was shaking but my voice was good.
The room chilled with hesitancy and relief.
“You need to come with us,” the voice said.
I swallowed. I was scared. To pretend I wasn’t would be disingenuous.
But I played it the way I have always played it because it had always bought me time in interviews.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Just come on.”
“Is this still America?” I said snarkily. I knew about Guantanamo Bay. I knew about private military courts. I knew that things had changed.
They had when an election was stolen. I had spoken up, but on deaf ears.
A nation stuttered and we all knew it.
“Don’t make this so hard, Lucy,” the voice said, disembodied and deep. I often dream of that voice. Eventually, I would know who it belonged to, but this was not that day.
“Come on, dammit,” another voice said, hidden by a tinted mask. “You are the first.”
When he moved toward me, I noticed the first man, the man who had told me to lie on the ground stopped. But his buddy moved toward me aggressively.
Both of my hands were on my weapons because it was all that I had.
“Come on, Randy,” the first HAZMAT guy said. “We want to talk to them, not kill them.”
“She put my mug on the front page of the paper,” second man said. “She ruined me.”
I knew his voice. He had lost his job when he was convicted of embezzling thousands of dollars from the local bank. He went to jail for less than a year. I covered the story.
I remembered. So did he, apparently.
He moved near me and no one in the room moved. I knew the pepper spray was useless. As he moved closer, knocking over a book display, I reached in my back pocket.
“Bitch,” he rumbled as the HAZMAT men moved forward, his gun pointing at me..
I knew I was in danger, so I stabbed him with the scissors in his eye, slicing neatly through the plastic mask that was supposed to protect him from what was bumping around in the dark.
I’ve seen a lot of blood.
His was a faucet and I was startled that I had created it. For a moment, there was a quiet and horrifying rightness about it all.
That’s when Daniel started screaming.
And that is when I felt an electric volt that knocked me into the chalkboard.
I was in the dark and remembered nothing.

That’s when I met Ben.

No. 8

“STOP IT,” Ben yelled at me. “You are telling it all wrong.”

We had moved that day. Out of the tent and into the town. We had found an angle.
“What do you mean?” I sighed. This is one reason that I hate that he keeps up with this journal. He calls me his life coach. I let him although I know he’s just power tripping.
“Seriously, you need to tell them why we are alive,” He said. He had found a case of Coors Light and was drinking them hot. “You need to tell them why we still have TV when we can find it.”

He offered me one but I hate Coors Light. He also found a six-pack of Miller Lite but decided to withhold it from me until I filled at least one of the notebooks up.
“I’m getting to that,” I said.
“No,” he said petulantly. “They need to know.”

He had cleaned up since his court days. He was almost cute when he said it, his lip curled up on the verge of a pout.
I didn’t listen to him but I usually don’t. We were staying in the loft of a dead businessman whose place had suited our needs quite well but this was the first night since we had been living in the tent. I hated the tent. It made me itchy and I really don’t like spiders.

I don’t think Ben is happy that we now have our own rooms.

We still have electricity but we didn’t know that staying out in the woods, but Ben refused to chill down the beer. He was afraid of comforts. When I turned on the news which surprised us both, he traditionally would have a fit. There were still some people alive.

Wolf Blitzer was gone though. Rick Sanchez was still kicking but nearly hysterical every time he was on the air.

Ben didn’t realize that old habits die hard.
I didn’t blame him though.
“You need to tell them about the blood,” he added. “Come on, Luce, You know they need to know.”

I laughed at him. He hates that but I couldn’t help it, yet he withheld the Miller Lite. I wanted him to put it in the damned fridge.

Bastard.
The blood will come later.

Now, where were we?
Oh, the pre-school where I killed a man.

No. 7

We huddled together next to crayons and stuffed animals that had names marked in permanent magic markers. On the wall was a pre-school teacher’s homage to the Constitution.
I could tell she was just doing her class work by the numbers but it didn’t matter. We were all in hell, and there most likely wasn’t a constitution in effect anymore. I don’t know why I knew that, but in retrospect, I was correct.
“What’s going on?” the little old lady asked. “Didn’t you know? Don’t you work at the paper?”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Virginia,” she answered. “Virginia Jackson. My husband used to own State Farm …”
She continued on with her life history but I was listening to the hallway. I hadn’t heard anything for a few minutes but I knew they were out there.
“What are we going to do?” A large black man asked. He was standing up right looking out of the window. “I was working on the gas main and my crew just … ?”
I knew he was going to say they just exploded. But what does one say? Of course, my mouth doesn’t always follow my brain.
“Did they just explode?” I asked.
He looked at me with disdain. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to say it out loud and he let me know it. Virginia looked at him with some fear. I’m not sure if it was because he was looking at me with a veiled hatred, or if it was because he was scared and tired. Newspapers aren’t always kind. I know that.
These things happen and although I detest them, they still occur.
“Yes,” he grumbled angrily. “I’m Daniel.”
Then he looked out the window. I said nothing.
“It’s a nice day,” he said to no one in particular. “Why is this happening on such a nice day?
I didn’t know.
There were five people in the room. One woman in an expensive skirt and jacket was crying near the hanging racks where the children had hung their coats in the past. Daniel walked toward her.
“Forget it,” I said to him. “She is either with us or against us.”
He stopped and looked over his shoulder at me.
“Girl, there isn’t any reason to be a bitch,” he growled.
I looked in my bag, seeking the pepper spray that had been given to me to ward off stalkers.
It seemed a lifetime ago when it was given to me as we laughed about it at City Hall.
“You going to help her?” I asked. “Or are you going to help yourself? She needs to stop it because we are in trouble. We have to work together.”
He ignored me. He went to the lady, who I recognized as a loan officer at one of the four banks in town. I didn’t remember her name but Lynn came to mind. I think I took her picture once when the bank donated some money to a local charity.

Daniel whispered to her and she got up and walked back to the crowd. She looked horrible. Her always immaculate make-up was smeared and lipstick she had carefully applied earlier in the day was dripping off her nose and was bunched on her teeth.

Sad, really. There were bigger things to do than worry about Lynn’s make-up. I could have cared less.
I’ve never been much about commitment. All I knew is that the HAZMAT men would be back.
And as I fingered the small aluminum tube in my bag, I felt we might have at least half of a chance of getting out of there.
“Guys, we need to talk,” I started.
And, after a time, they began to listen.
Either way, short-term or long-term, regardless of what we did, I knew we were screwed.
But at least we were doing something.
And then we heard the footsteps.

It wasn’t me that told everyone to stay quiet.

It was Daniel.

No. 6

I fell to the ground. The big dude in the white suit’s gun was pressed so hard against my head my glasses dropped to the ground. I still cannot see without them, but they appeared undamaged.
“Why aren’t you dead!” He howled into the sky. My peripheral vision noted there was about four other of these people wandering around the small downtown area and I shut my eyes.
This wasn’t real.
“I don’t know,” I said with a voice I had trouble finding. I decided, as some people do in moments of chaos not to cry but I could feel myself getting full. “They are all dead inside.”
The sign for the paper at the doorway that had seen thousands of people walk through to renew a paper or yell at me or countless other editors creaked with an ominous sound. It had hung in the same place for more than a quarter of a century, rusted and broken yet was swinging woefully. The rusted chains made it sound like it would fall on my head at any moment.
“Get up,” he said. His voice sounded annoyed and had a twinge of sadness located in the midst of it. I don’t know how I knew this, but I did. “Just get up for Christ’s sake.”
I fell twice trying to find my balance. I hung on to the briefcase, a knock off Kenneth Coleman I had bought at T.J. Maxx about five years ago. My Mac was in there with water and a bit of food.
“Move it, already,” he barked.
I finally got up. It took a minute, but I did it and begged my face not to look afraid.
But I was.
“Follow me,” he said and walked off. I only saw two other people out of HAZMAT suits on the street. There were several cars wrecked, one sitting in the grain bin down the block with corn, or something, piled out on top of it, nearly burying it.
There was the sting of burning bodies in the air. I had smelled it before in the giant metal carcasses of the dead on the roads when I had covered all those stories in the paper.
“Are you listening? We don’t have a lot of time,” HAZMAT guy ordered.
I followed along dutifully. I was just glad there wasn’t a gun to my temple.
I walked about three blocks, following the other two people and the HAZMAT people. We walked into the basement of the First Baptist Church on University Street. There were four or five other folks waiting there, terrified and speechless.
“Luce, can you help?” A little old lady I had seen around said. “Tell them we aren’t the enemy. Tell them.”
Her sweater was covered in pumpkins and ghosts. I had forgotten it was Halloween in a couple of days. She looked so scared.
So was I.
The edge in her voice was frightening and I thought for a minute her heart might not make it but I played the diplomat. I nodded, but I said nothing but I smiled gently at her.
It was a naked, false smile, but it seemed to comfort her. I would have left her if it was between her and me. I’m ashamed of that, but it’s true.
They cornered us into a small area in what appeared to be a room for a preschool class. We looked at the undersized desks but said nothing as they were directing us to the small space with their guns. We moved. There wasn’t anything else we could do.
And we waited.
I had some pepper spray to deal with some of the wackos that sometimes sent me death threats at the newspaper. I’d had it awhile and the police department had ordered it for me.
It was potent.
These guys weren’t that good.
They stupidly didn’t check my bag.

No. 5

I never studied hard. I was ambitious and I proved time and time again that I was a worthy apprentice to take on despite that I only had trade school experience.
I wove my way through news. The last of the fedora-wearing reporters that wanted to dig up a story because it was orgasmic to me and it pleased me more than sex, chocolate or life itself. I loved that feeling.
I can still remember those emotions well.
I started out in a small town but moved on. But as everything is circular, I ended back in the town that I had fought so hard to escape. An ill parent, too much partying in the city and no idea how to do the things that other people can do so effortlessly. So I returned and continued covering news.
I never flinched at a car wreck despite the obscure senses of humor that some cops had. I could handle the burned, the decapitated and the dead.
Not once did they see me cringe although they never knew that the relationship with the porcelain God at my house became well acquainted with me trying to reject the dark that resided in me seeing the dead torn and battered with no fan fair or joy. The tears of family members who saw their loved ones death masks tortured me but I learned to adjust with gallows humor.
“What do you thing about this one, Luce?” one of many faceless cops would say to me seeing if he could gross me out.
“Looks dead,” I’d say back. “Where is his face?”
It became a rumor that not much would get to me so they stopped.
I still threw up, but they would never know.
I became editor six years ago. I hated it. I wanted to be in the field, digging stories up from the ashes of people’s own arrogance but was instead mired down with budgets, aggressive sales people and ongoing personal drama.
I learned to update as the salary demanded that I do it, but I hated it nonetheless.
Sometimes, my friends, you get what you wish for and it’s one step from hell.
The town is small. If you walk into a bar, there is no need to ask what your poison is. The politicians all know my name as I do theirs. When celebrities showed up, my staff and I were the only game in town.
Plants blasted toxic smoke into the sky and Wal Mart was always open. Nascar and football were deities and Budweiser ruled the working class, while the upper class developed affection for Bartons and Dickel.
I sat on the sidelines. Many times, I would come out of my cocoon and then head back in when I couldn’t take it anymore. I would bury myself in beer and work hoping for the best but expecting nothing.
I watched a parent die, I saw young people move forward to the jobs that I secretly wanted and I remained balanced and calm.
I became what people wanted me to be, and then I would head home, empty and tired.
Always bone-crushingly exhausted because Mary Sunshine can only work for so long.
I found some friends that I could hang my hair down with. As I’ve never been prone to commitment, when things became too personal and too close, I would slowly fall out of sight.
Yet no one knew. I was that good.
I became insulated in my own world, controlling things the best I could. I didn’t need attention or intimacy. I was already dead, according to Ben.
Sometimes I wonder why he sticks around. I like to think he’s a masochist but that’s not fair.
Ben says these observations are important. I think they are useless to know. I think that everything changed when I saw real death in my office and I was told to lie on the ground.
Mainly because, I found out that fall afternoon that I was neither dead or alive.
Ben believes that this is what saved me, and him by proxy.
I’m not so sure.
The world is dead.
It began with the man in the HAZMAT suit.
That was the day that I became a monster.

No. 4

There are some things you should know, Ben tells me. He demands I write it down but I’m at a loss for words. He wants you to know about who I used to be.

I’ve told him it’s unnecessary. I’m no longer that person with ambition and hope waiting for my big break. I’m no longer the woman who was passionate and desired every piece of knowledge I could find.He doesn’t understand.
“You have to tell,” he said last night. “They need to know about you or none of this makes any sense. Dammit, you have to write it down!”
“Fuck you,” I said, turning over on the small cot we were sharing. I say that a lot to him, although I don’t mean it. It’s just a word but I usually can control him by yelling profanities at him.
“Jesus, just stop it,” Ben yelled. “Quit acting like this is something else. We are going to make it through this and people need a history of it all. Sometimes you piss me off.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I know he means the best but it doesn’t matter. Ben says it does but I’m not so sure.
“Tell them,” he said quietly. “Write it down. There is no one else.”

There is, of course, but we don’t speak of them.
And then he gave me a gift. A pen like I used to cover stories with at the newspaper. It was a Pilot Precise, which was green and reminded me of the days that I sat behind my desk in a fancy chair propping my feet up as the world moved on and I didn’t.

I hated him for a moment. Hated him to the depth of my lost soul, but then he ran his hand gently across my chin. I’ve always been a sucker for that and I felt myself burn for the loss of things when a touch mattered.
I sighed, trying to act perturbed but delighted by his find.

I loved him for a minute, but then I chewed down the thought of love and joy. It’s too much of a luxury.
“Tomorrow,” I finally said. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
That was last night and we awoke to a rainy cold day because the sun didn’t stop and the clouds still visit after Washington sold this country to the devil. We were cold, tired and wet, yet the tent kept us as dry as it could.

Ben’s watching now to the North. We heard they were coming although we have no idea what the time schedule is. It could be hours, days, months. I can fight them but he can’t.
He wants you to know who we are.
I want to tell him we are the damned, but I don’t want to break him.
It’s hard enough not to succumb to the hunger.
This far, I have.
What’s going to happen when I can’t?

No. 3

After things ended, I found a box of notebooks that had been undamaged at a Family Dollar store. I decided to write things down, items I remember before the tent cities became a new world suburbia for the survivors. It was harder to find pens and pencils until I met Ben.
He was on the court page at least once a month when I was the editor. So many public intoxication arrests that would make your head spin. Ben liked his drink and he liked to fight which got him in deep with the local police. Back when my mother was alive, she told me he was a step up from his father, Carl, who liked to drink and beat his wife.
Ben thought of me often as I printed his name in the paper selling his alcoholism out for a mere $.75. I didn’t think about him at all. He was one of the statistics I had learned to ignore. I think about that a lot now.
These days, we cling to each other. I used to exploit antics of his public arrests but at this period of time, he keeps me stocked with ways to write it all out. It’s amazing how things change and the irony that accompanies it.
The day that the graphic artist who would never be published named Jack’s head exploded, the entire offices did at the same time. It sounded like watermelons falling out of the back of a farming truck. Women and men who I worked with each day, a dysfunctional family where we fought each other and would fight against the world if need be as a team.
I screamed. I remember my throat feeling the pain of a thousand razor blades gutting my lungs but I don’t remember the sound at all. There was no noise that I could hear and I remember getting under my desk covered in blood and brains.
There was no sound other than a dog barking in the distance.
It took me about 30 minutes to quit shaking and move. I grabbed my cell phone and packed up my briefcase as if nothing was happening although that would be a lie. I crammed in water from the refrigerator and a box of crackers someone had left out. I did it quickly, also grabbing my Mac and my cell phone.
I did pick up the landline. There was no tone although in my shock, I wasn’t expecting there to be. I checked the water in the bathroom and it was functional.
I don’t know why I did these things, but I did. Avoiding the gaze of dead eyes gazing from partially blown up heads, brains lining the floor making it slippery to walk.
The office was the same, however, except for the dead. I didn’t throw up but I had seen dead people before.
Just not my dead people.
I walked slowly toward the door and out into the street.
That’s when the guy in the gas mask and HAZMAT suit put a gun at my head and told me to lie down slowly.

No. 2

In retrospect, the military did try to stop it. Strange things were happening but we didn’t see it coming.
One general was executed at his Georgetown home and it was on all the newsers. Then there was a missing blonde child who’s parents were wealthy dominated the news the next day.
They found her dead, but that’s another story for another day. Doesn’t matter anyway because we are all dead now in one way or another.
It was called a robbery and we believed them. We believed what they wanted us to believe. Wolf Blitzer, who I never thought was capable of comforting anyone, told a nation that robberies happen everyday.
We believed because we wanted to.
There was news about an outbreak of a virus in Montana. We didn’t think much about it until the dead were found in a mall. Bodies were found in dressing rooms, half-naked women lay dead in Victoria’s Secret, their sexy lingerie lying twisted around bloated bodies. A child’s body was found decapitated in a J.C. Penney store.
I watched the television with a morbid obsession. I thought of Timothy McVeigh and wondered if it was a terrorist attack, although none of it made sense to me. Pundits rattled on about how 1,600 people could die in one place with a motive. They blamed chemical warfare.
The politicians resorted to fear of the others. I would ask people who these “others” were but no one had an answer. I called the local politicians and went as far to leave messages in Washington, but no one returned my calls.
There were no answers. It was written off as we sent more troops abroad to the point that our National Guard was depleted. An underlying tension came to the small town in Tennessee I live in. Bars profits went up although grocery stores showed record losses after the Wall Street bailout trickled down closing the last of the manufacturing plants.
So, I drank with them, feeling the stress of knowing that I would have to downsize as well and would most likely be out of a job with the rest of my staff.
We turned the news to football because death was so fresh and a beer costs a lot less than going to a doctor would have.
For three months we waited for a sign.
Until the day the earth died and the dead started coming back, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’ll just say, at first we lost hope and that’s when the monsters showed up. The human ones were first.
Then the other ones showed up at night.