Zombie Apocalypse! Washington Deceased

Chapter Nine

IT WAS FULL night as Kevin approached the Van Arndt farm. He’d been within thirty miles as the sun had set. He’d tried contacting Bobby one last time to let him know he was an hour away and finally had continued on.

He’d left Interstate 40 ten miles back, and had driven cautiously along narrow two-lane country roads since. The land was hilly and densely wooded, and even at twenty miles an hour he’d had to swerve dangerously on three occasions to miss a shambling figure. He knew the Hummer was safe, but he still found himself nervously re-checking the door locks.

And of course the gas gauge. What had happened just outside Memphis had almost ended the trip. He’d smashed in the window of a car parked in a convenience store lot, setting off the car’s alarm. The zombies had converged from everywhere, and even though the Hummer was parked less than fifty feet away, they’d cut him off from reaching it. He’d considered fighting his way through with the crowbar, but there were too many. So he’d fled on foot, towards a large office block down the street, dodging more attackers as he went. He’d run into the parking garage first, giving cars as wide a berth as possible. Finally he’d spotted a door marked STAIRWAY.

Of course it’d been locked.

He’d managed to break the lock with the crowbar, and had yanked the door open just as the first of the zombies had staggered around the corner of the garage entrance. He knew they’d come soon.

He also knew he’d be trapped. If the floors above him were full of them . . .

But they weren’t. He’d run up the stairs until he came to the fifth floor. Out of breath, he’d paused in the dim stairwell, then ventured to the landing and peered through the window inset into the exit door.

He heard moans from the stairwell below him, so he decided to risk it. The door was thankfully unlocked, and he pulled it open, stepping into the corridor beyond.

Kevin jogged down the hallway, trying doors as he went. Finally he came to one that was unlocked. He quickly stepped inside.

The office beyond was small – just a reception area and an inner office. Both were empty. He opened the blinds on the outer window to give himself working light, pushed the heavy metal reception desk up against the outer doorway, and waited.

The sun had gone down two hours later. He helped himself to room-temperature water from a cooler and hunkered down to wait. He managed to grab some sleep on a battered leather couch, but when dawn came, he heard the moans again from outside.

So he waited still longer. Through another day and another night. Relieving himself in the office trash can. Eating some wrapped crackers he found in a desk drawer. And waiting.

At some point he glanced at his hand and remembered a hotel parking lot in Erick, Oklahoma, where a woman with no lower jaw had sunk her upper teeth into his flesh. The woman had been a zombie, carrying HRV. All bite wounds were infectious. Shouldn’t he be sick by now? Feverish? Aching? Vomiting?

Turning?

He wasn’t, though. In fact, except for feeling anxious and bored and hungry, he was fine.

So he waited. And when the second day dawned to silence, he ventured out.

Only to find a zombie in the hallway, between him and the stairwell.

He almost ran back into his office sanctuary, but anger and desperation prevailed, and – virtually without being aware of it – he charged the dead woman, crowbar raised. She moved forward, reaching for him, but at the last second he dodged to the left and smacked her midsection. She went down and Kevin pounced, driving the end of the crowbar into her forehead.

He hadn’t realized he was screaming until then.

After running back to the Hummer, Kevin had found the parking lot empty. The car he’d originally meant to check for gas turned out to have a full tank. The irony of the past two days was not lost on him.

He finally refilled the Hummer and got back on the road.

And now, thanks to GPS tracking and satellites that continued to orbit, beaming information down in disregard for the chaos below, his headlights picked out a mailbox with VAN ARNDT stencilled on the side in faded block letters.

He hadn’t seen a zombie in the past mile, so he dared to hope that Bobby’s farm had stayed untouched, pristine. Just past the mailbox was a gravel drive that led a short distance to a two-storey farmhouse and barn. A chain-link fence had recently been added around the structures, and Kevin had to stop the Hummer at a gate across the drive.

Kevin looked around, surveying the situation. He saw none of the dead, and there were lights on in the house. It would have all looked perfectly normal – cozy, even – had it not been for the fence.

Setting the Hummer’s parking brake, he shifted into neutral, leaving the engine running as he climbed from the car. He examined the fence, but saw no sort of buzzer or bell. As much as he hated to use the car’s horn (dinner bell!), he saw little choice.

He leaned into the car, gave the horn one tap and stood by the vehicle. He wanted to make sure he could be seen and identified.

A figure started forward from the house. Kevin wasn’t sure who it was or where they’d come from; the front door hadn’t opened, but they might have come from the rear of the house. They weren’t in the path of the headlights and he couldn’t make out a face.

“Bobby?” He’d shouted to be heard above the engine rumble, but there was no response.

His stomach clenched. The figure was walking evenly, but too slowly, mechanically. Finally it stepped into the light, just a few feet on the other side of the gate.

It was Bobby. And he was dead.

“Damn it. I should’ve gotten here sooner. I’m so sorry, Bobby, I tried, I really tried—”

A gun blast split the night air. Kevin jumped back, and saw now that a man had come out on to the porch of the house, a smoking .22 rifle still clutched in his hands.

“You got no business here and we got nothin’ you’d want, so just turn your vehicle around and get back on the road,” he shouted at Kevin.

He was an elderly man, sparse white hair crowning a wrinkled face, and Kevin knew that this must be Bobby’s grandfather. Bobby had spoken often about the old man, who’d raised him after his parents had been killed in a car accident; he practised what Bobby had jokingly referred to as “tough love”, but Bobby had loved “the old bastard” anyway.

“Mr Van Arndt, my name is Kevin Moon. I’m a friend of Bobby’s. I just drove here all the way from California to see him.”

“Well, you’re too late. He’s gone.”

Kevin glanced at Bobby again, who was now turning away from him and shuffling back towards the old man, who showed little concern.

“What happened? He was fine when I talked to him on email just a couple of days ago. He really wanted to see me—”

The old man cut him off, his voice strained. “You are what killed him! He heard somebody in the driveway three nights ago and thought it was you. Run out all excited like, came back with a scratch. Said it weren’t nothin’, but it killed him. He’d still be alive if it weren’t for you.”

Kevin shook his head. “No. I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t . . . he was . . .”

Bobby had almost reached the porch now, and his grandfather hit him in the chest with the butt of the rifle, knocking him on his ass. “You and your kind poisoned this boy. He should never have left. Now look what’s happened to him.”

His eyes streaming, Kevin clutched the fence. “Why don’t you just shoot him?”

Kevin wasn’t happy about having to drive further through these country roads at night, but anything was better than watching his dead friend try to claw his way up to where his grandfather stood, waving a rifle as if it was a lecture pointer.

“Goodbye, Bobby,” Kevin said under his breath. Before he returned to the Hummer, he called out to the old man, “Bobby was killed because his luck ran out, Mr Van Arndt – not because he was gay.”

He turned his back, ignoring the protestations and curses that were hurled in his direction. He was still thankful to climb into the Hummer and slam the door, sealing himself away with nothing but the engine’s reassuring roar. Throwing the car into sudden reverse, he backed down the drive, hit the road and sped away.

After a few miles, he stopped the car, pulling on to the shoulder from force of habit. He waited for his breathing to slow down and felt a sting on one cheek. He turned on the overhead light and looked into the rearview mirror.

Three long, fresh bloody furrows raked down the side of his face. He hadn’t even realized that when Bobby had reached out through the fence he’d been that close, and he hadn’t felt the physical pain until now.

It didn’t much matter, though; he’d already been infected. That’d been three days ago. He didn’t have much time left. Kevin had no idea where to go, but he didn’t want to die in a stolen Hummer, by the side of a forgotten road. He’d find some place quiet, maybe even nice; he’d wait out the end there.

He decided he didn’t want to go far, because after he turned, he hoped there’d be just enough left of him to go back for Bobby’s grandfather.

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

CLASSIFIED – EYES ONLY

DATE: 07/05/13

SUBJECT: ANALYSIS OF JULY 4 LETTER FROM “JAMES MOREBY”

Background: On July 4, remaining worldwide digital networks and broadcasting systems were flooded with a document (see attached) purporting to be a letter from “James Moreby, President of the United States of America”. This letter – which served as a sort of victory proclamation – claims that intelligent zombies have taken over all parts of the United States except for isolated rural areas. The letter’s author calls himself a former White House janitor who, by virtue of having consumed the brains of the Capitol’s strategists and analysts (whom he refers to as “the greatest minds of our generation”) has gained enough knowledge to declare himself President over a United States in which zombies have faced humans in “the great civil war” and emerged triumphant.

ANALYSIS: White House employment records do indeed confirm that a James Moreby was employed on the janitorial staff and was likely present in the building during the initial, most devastating waves of zombie attacks.

We do, of course, note the similarity of names between this self-proclaimed “President” James Moreby and “Zombie King” Thomas Moreby, aka “Patient Zero”, who was supposedly terminated when New World Pharmaceuticals shut down its research facility known as “The Bunker”. Tracing James Moreby’s lineage back suggests that he may indeed be distantly related to Thomas Moreby.

When Moreby “died” in 1803, obituaries noted that he passed on with “no issue”. However, we can follow James Moreby’s heritage back to 1654, and an ancestor named “Amos Motherby”. Motherby is a figure of much speculation within occult scholarship; he claimed, in 1672, to have discovered the secret of preserving a man’s “Essential Saltes” – physical immortality, in other words.

More than a few scholars have noted that “Amos Motherby” is an anagram of “Thomas Moreby”, and have suggested that they are one and the same. In the case of our subject James Moreby, the spelling of Motherby seems to have been altered to Moreby by Ellis Island officials when his distant kin emigrated from Britain to America in 1803. Perhaps coincidentally, this is the same year that Thomas Moreby reportedly “died” or, more accurately, disappeared.

Given that James Moreby may be a direct descendent of Thomas Moreby, and that James Moreby would have been one of the first of the intelligent zombies, we believe it is safe to assume that there is a direct tie between the two Morebys. James Moreby is probably a puppet ruler whose strings are being controlled by Thomas Moreby.

If this is the case, it suggests three things:

1) Landen Jones was lying when he claimed that New World Pharmaceuticals had terminated Moreby

2) Thomas Moreby is also currently in the White House and

3) Gaining the White House may indeed have been Moreby’s goal all along.

Although Moreby was brought to America (or, more specifically, to New World Pharmaceuticals) supposedly for research purposes, there were rumors at the time of Moreby’s transfer that indicated that Moreby had arranged the transfer himself. If Moreby’s plan has always been world domination (as we must assume), then it would follow that placing himself in power in Washington would have been of paramount importance.

New information has recently come to light that supports this theory in other ways. Before he disappeared, Thomas Moreby formed a secret cabal called “The Well of Seven”. This group was composed of high-ranking members of British society (including politicians, physicians, scholars and architects), and their purpose seems to have been the practice of occult rituals under Moreby’s direction.

According to records on file with the British Museum, these activities came to a head on October 7, 1803, when a mob broke into a cellar of a brothel and found Moreby and the Well of Seven sacrificing Moreby’s nineteen-year-old wife. The girl did not survive, and most of the members of The Well of Seven escaped. Moreby was carried by the mob to a vault beneath All Hallows Church, Blackheath, where he was reportedly interred alive. Later, the members of The Well of Seven were either interred – or interred themselves! – together nearby, beneath a large stone circle.

If we accept that supernatural forces are in effect and Moreby wields some control over these forces, then it’s not ridiculous to assume that Moreby plans to somehow resurrect this Well of Seven and install them as his government, operating under President James Moreby.

REPORT PREPARED BY:

Marissa Cheung, Deputy Director and C.I.A. Analyst