He didn’t need to be a genius to know that whatever Selena was planning on, wasn’t working out as she’d expected. Her backups were now zombies. The silo trashed. The roads and city were nothing but roaming corpses. Arthur thought about this new world and hoped there was something they could do about it. He saw a sign with some no name county in Indiana.
They needed to get to the CDC, give them the information he had along with the samples, so they could start working on a cure. With Selena in charge, that was unlikely to occur.
“Why did you leave the others alive? That was beyond cruel,” Arthur said to get her talking, and to get his focus off the death around them.
“What do you care, both of them had orders to kill you or bring you in. No matter what way you look at it, I’m the one who actually had your best interest at heart. The minute Sunset Inc. realized there was an outbreak, you became collateral damage,” Selena explained.
“I still don’t see why you couldn’t have been the least bit kind. After all, Frank did save your life,” Arthur argued.
Selena snickered, “Are you kidding me? I was doing fine on my own until he showed up. The guy was an idiot.”
“He cared about you.”
“That was his mistake. Now shut up and drive.”
Arthur let the wheels in his mind continue to work for the next few minutes. When they reached a turn off for an airport, Selena told he to take it. After another five minutes, they pulled up to an airstrip. The place appeared abandoned, zombies in flight suits roamed around.
“Go to the hangar over there, number seven,” Selena said.
Arthur obeyed, hiding his surprise when the doors opened and several armed men came out. They pulled him and Selena out of the car roughly.
“Are you infected? Have you been bitten or otherwise in contact with them?” A guard asked.
Arthur shook his head, as did Selena. A man in an impeccable grey suit came out and eyed them.
“As usual, Selena, your work is above all others. Dr. Covington, a pleasure to meet you. I think you’ll enjoy the new lab we have set up for you as we work together to determine what is in those rocks.”
“What? Who are you? We need to warn the rest of the world and work on a cure,” Arthur countered.
The man chuckled, “How noble of you, wanting to rid the world of the pandemic you created. Unfortunately, I am not concerned with a cure for anyone but myself.”
Arthur opened his mouth to say something when he felt a sharp pain in his back and he fell to the ground.
Selena’s face came into his line of sight. “Do as he says and you’ll live. This is a new world now, thanks to you.”
Arthur wanted to scream, but he felt consciousness slip away from him.
What had he done?
EXCERPTS
Read on for a free sample of Nightmare of the Dead by Vincenzo Bilof
Falling through the deep, frigid darkness and rushing onward to a terminal light, there is awareness, and the concept of shape, form, and breath.
The woman exploded into the universe of the real. Her soul collided with her consciousness, and she simply was. Her vision was flooded with light as she brought her forearm in front of her eyes to shield herself from the searing fire. She thought about pain, water and gasped for fresh, revitalizing air.
“It’s about time,” a man’s voice spoke.
“What?” her lungs failed her; she coughed spasmodically. She leaned forward in her seat and stifled the urge to vomit the flame that tickled her throat.
She was moving, but uncontrollable, unstoppable perpetual motion urged her entire body through the spaces of light. She could feel it, though she sat in a seat. She was alive. This much she knew.
“You were asleep for so long…” the man replied, though she couldn’t hear the rest of his words over her second coughing fit. Her entire body quivered; she arched her back against the seat, opened her eyes long enough to see that she sat beside a window, and the sun-soaked world outside scrolled along her perception impossibly fast. She was momentarily jostled, and her head nearly hit the window. She could hear steel and iron grinding beneath her feet.
She was on a train, but why?
She wiped her mouth with the bottom of her dirtied, frayed shirt. The collar was open against her perspiration-soaked chest, highlighted by the glaring sunlight that poured through the window. She reached up for the curtain above and pulled it downward to help ward off the light. The darkness, for now, was more comfortable. She needed to collect her idealized notion of perception.
What was happening to her? She glanced at the weather-beaten youth with tanned flesh and wild, unruly blond hair atop his head. He was shirtless beneath the gray jacket that lay open, and he lay slouched against the seat beside hers. He absently rolled a pendant that hung from his neck between his fingertips. His other hand rested on the butt of a revolver. The gun slept on his thigh, while the leather thong attached its lethal presence around his shoulder.
“Remington,” she named the gun. How did she know what it was? Did it belong to her? Would she know how to use it?
With sleepy, gray eyes, he looked her up and down. He seemed to wheeze, “Anyone ever tell you that you look like the outlaw? You know…Neasa Bannan? ’Scuse my language, ma’am, but she could make the Devil himself get down on his knees and pray. Don’t mind me, I’m just blabberin’. Figure it’s on account of this here train. Damn unstable. Never did like these rides. My pop used to always say…”
She stared at him while his mouth moved. Useless words tumbled lazily from his mouth as if he struggled against nausea. Dark shadows bordered the ridges of his slow, half-lidded eyes.
Her mouth opened. There were words she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how to say them. Questions. There were answers that should have already belonged to her with certainties that would identify her, isolate her soul and define it with purpose. She lacked them all. She opened her hands and looked at the multitude of uncountable lines that formed deep ridges within her palms.
No. She was…she was…
“…Damn nigger lovin’ Yanks sent that dog Pemberton running. I got to get home and tell Pa ’bout my brother. I’ll be damned if Pemberton’s goin’ to find me. He ain’t lookin.’ Call me a yella-belly if you want, but you might think different if you seen what I seen. Them Yanks got these guns that keep on firin’, and they got their general with them, that alcoholic sumbitch…forget his name. Pardon my language, ma’am. I ain’t much for manners. I s’pose, on account of it all, you know, the war. It ain’t no war, though. I thought a war might be like you get these good ol’ boys and the Yanks, you see, and we roll up our sleeves and decide what’s what…”
The boy continued to ramble. She looked down at her hands again. She could feel every bead of sweat against her spine. The back of her neck was cold and wet. She squeezed her eyelids shut and listened to the wheels roll across the tracks. She felt incredibly alone in the midst of a vivid dream. The dream belonged to her, yet she was deeply entrenched within its symbolic miasma of terror.
She didn’t know who she was.
“…I ain’t no thief, mind you. This here gun belongs to you. A nice piece. It’s the newest model, I reckon. My brother used to have a Colt, which reminds me of this one time where we was rustlin’ up these pigs…”
There were questions she could ask, but she would reveal her weaknesses. She sought within the recesses of her mind for some semblance of identity. What did she look like? Her brown hair was shoulder-length and wavy, her body was lithe; she was tall. Her legs stretched out beneath the seat in front of her. Was the seat empty? She sat up to survey her surroundings. The car was empty save for a single man who seemed to be sleeping a few seats ahead of them. She felt compelled to interrupt the youth’s long, tedious speech.