Prologue
If there really is a God, he hates me. He hates all of us. Shit, we deserve it. We spent our whole existence destroying everything in our path, like a cancer, a fucking disease. I have no right to preach, I didn't recycle everything I could have, I didn't ride my bike to work. I aspired to have a nice house, with all the basic comforts, a family, and a career – just like everyone else. I didn't like human nature, how all we do is fight, kill, destroy, cause war, and famine. Nobody had to starve, but none of us were willing to really give up any of our comforts to solve any of the real problems – things like poverty, hunger, and disease. We were all just looking forward to the next night out with our friends, or we were spending our money on a concert so the singer can have a house with ten bathrooms.
No wonder God did this. If he's real, that is. I was never religious; my family never went to church. I had a catholic cousin, I had dated a catholic too; I'd been to church. I always loved hearing stories about Jesus and the bible. I never actually read it - the bible. I used to know triplet girls from Somalia. I remember they told us all about their religious beliefs and values at our elementary school Christmas play one year. I was captivated, fasting, praying… I wished I believed in something.
Its not that I don't believe in God, there are just so many Gods to choose from, hell; who's to say the ancient Greeks were wrong about Zeus, and Hades, and Dionysus? Personally, I like the idea of Gods who bicker and argue, who are weak, who give into temptation. Human Gods. I don't know which God is the true God, or maybe they all are, or maybe God is something or someone we never thought of.
I don't have a religion, but I follow my own set of morals. Things I learned from family, friends, teachers, and role models… I just do what I think is right at the time. Sometimes what I think is right is no good to anyone in the end, but I try. When the shit hit the fan, I tried to do what was right… but I fucked up.
It was all over the news, disappearances, strange attacks, cannibalism, the dead coming back to life. It started out small, a few instances in different parts of Canada, North America, South America… soon we were hearing reports from China, England, and Africa. It was a disease the doctors were claiming on news channels. They didn't know the cause, where it came from, just that being bit or scratched by an infected person would kill you, and you'd wake up an empty vessel. A crazed, killing monster, with no trace of your former self left to guide your actions. No morals. No soul.
Everyone joked about it, until it started becoming a pandemic. Airlines didn't start checking their passengers for the disease; it had spread to every country before long. Airplanes had outbreaks in flight, there were crashes, ships were overrun, people were running screaming in the streets. Chaos had struck. I was on vacation with my family in Atlanta, Georgia. My parents' idea, my brother and I had wanted to go somewhere tropical. We had only been there two days before we heard reports of chaos in the airports. We wanted to go home to Canada, to our small city in Ontario – but we weren't stupid enough to risk trying to fly there, and driving through all the mayhem in the streets was not an option.
My mom was in denial about the whole thing. We were in a shitty little motel room, and as the pandemonium got closer to where we were staying, I made a decision: we would fight the inevitable. My mom and dad were arguing in the corner of the room while my brother sat on the edge of one of the two lumpy beds in the stale smelling room we were holed up in. I had been sitting in a chair by the window and I suddenly sat upright.
"We need supplies, and we need to find somewhere safe, somewhere remote – away from people" I waited for a response, and none came. They were looking at me with concern etched on their faces. Finally my mom said softly "We're safest with other people, Alessandra".
I directed my gaze to my father and spoke with all the conviction I could muster "Any one of those people can turn in to one of them, and infect everyone around us – the farther we are away from everyone else, the safer we are." I was surprised when my brother was the first to agree "We need supplies, food, weapons, gea.." my mom cut in angrily "Weapons? Weapons? What do we need weapons for?".
It took a while to get through to my mother, the three of us had to explain that the weapons were only for protection, we weren't going to hunt any of those… things, down. My brother was pissed that he was left behind, but we needed him to protect my mom. My father and I went out for supplies, we hit a grocery store first and grabbed all the canned food we could. We stocked up on bottled water, and located a camping supply store. There were people everywhere, panicked, unsure – my father and I knew what we planned on getting and were lucky to find most of what we hoped to find.
We were just packing the gear into the rental car when I heard a rasping, I turned in time to see a dead-eyed person, smeared in blood, and dirt, grab my father and sink his teeth into his neck. "No!" I screamed, reaching into a bag to pull a weapon free, my hand clasped around the hilt of something, a machete. I brought it down hard on the creature, halfway severing its arm just above the elbow. It let go of my father, who sunk to his knees, clutching his neck. I panicked as the mindless vessel lunged toward me. I thrust out my arm and the machete slid between its ribs. The thing wouldn't die, it was now at arm's length, and I couldn't shake my weapon free. It should be dead. How do you kill what is already dead?
I lifted my leg and pushed the thing away with my foot, grasping, white knuckled to my weapon, sliding it free. I was aware of my hysterical screaming, but couldn't stop it. Tears stung my eyes as I took what was sure to be my last swing – a sickly thud sounded as my machete sheared through rotting flesh, muscle and ligament, and found its way through the vertebrae in its neck. I hadn't cut the whole way through, and its head was hanging off its neck by a half inch of dead flesh. The body collapsed, it seemed only the head could function. It lay, snapping at me pathetically. I brought the machete down with all my strength onto the head, cracking the skull and finding the soft, grey-pink of its brain. The teeth stopped biting and I concluded it was no longer a threat.
I turned to my father, dying in front of me. His eyes pleaded, and he looked at my grisly machete. "Take care of your mom, your brother too", he gurgled as his life's blood came out in streams between his fingers. "I will." I whispered, barely audible. I closed my eyes and brought the machete down.
I don't know how long I sat there, crying, laughing, hysterical. It felt like years. Suddenly I was aware of the shuffling of feet and turned to see three vessels shambling towards me. I kissed my father on his broken head, trying to avoid the gore "I'm sorry, you deserve better than this" I sobbed into his ear before scrambling to throw the rest of the supplies into the car.
"Shit!" I screeched, the keys! I forgot the keys! I scrambled on my knees towards my dad and reached into his jacket pocket and found what I was looking for. I was back in the car moments before the vessels got there. They pounded pathetically on my windows. I began to drive away, I felt compelled to look back at my father one last time – but resisted. I didn't want to see what those things would do to the man who raised me.
The five-minute drive to our room felt like it took hours. My mom, my brother; how do I tell them? Are they safe? My hands shook as I turned the engine off and pulled the keys free. As I was stepping from the car I froze, our room, the window was broken. I couldn't feel my legs, as I drifted towards the room. The door was a jar. I couldn't see any sign of my mom, or my brother. "Mom? Steve?" I could barely choke out the words as I peered into the bathroom. Empty. No blood. I couldn't see blood… but they had no weapons, no supplies, not even a car. This was my fault.
A week, its been a week. No sign of my mom, or dad. I can't stay any longer. Vessels are everywhere. They can hear me in her, or maybe they smell me. I can't stay. I leave cans of food on the bed and carve a message into the wall with a shard of glass: 'Dad is dead. I'm sorry, I couldn't save him. I stayed as long as I could. Too many freaks. I have to leave. I'm not sure where I'll go. Stay safe. I love you both. Take the supplies, don't worry about me.'
Before I leave, I set a couple hunting knives and a baseball bat I found during the week down next to the food. I start to leave, and decide to write one last thing. 'You have to destroy the brain, only way to kill them'. I had killed 3 more vessels during my week of waiting. It hadn't gotten any easier for me to do. God, if you're there, protect them, please.