Post by Remy Christian on Jun 7, 2011 1:28:33 GMT -5
There was nothing left to New York City but the stench of death.
That, Remy supposed, and the last dregs of its population, the living. And its buildings, more and more of which were being gutted by survivors in hopes of finding rations to eat, and by the undead in hopes of finding survivors to eat. And the undead, those wasted, writhing creatures, former lives sacrificed to the will of Diamond Corp. Another royal screwup, nowhere near the first in its history, and not the first one to affect the corporation's own consumers. But this time, Diamond Corp. had done more than screwed up. The idiots had ended the world as they'd known it; greed again, greed and stupidity, had brought them what could be considered their greatest achievement, if only achievement was measured by grades of failure.
He could see them all from the top level of his modest home, wandering around the streets, seemingly with no purpose. Occasionally he spied a survivor slipping by, past the clumps of undead, probably intending to loot supplies from somewhere. More often than not, the zombies spied them too, and Remy turned his attention to a formula he had been writing or a shirt he had been mending until the screaming stopped. Then he would look through the window again, and there would be new bodies lying motionless; after he forgot about the incident and his eyes happened to pass over that spot again, he would note with less and less surprise each time that the bodies were no longer there.
It was becoming more and more typical; he was gradually growing accustomed to, desensitized toward death. For a man who had never dealt with hardship before in his life, Remy thought he was doing pretty well. This opinion discounted the fact that almost every time he left his house, his life was saved by some neighbor or stranger. It also discounted the fact that he had the fortune of owning a secure underground lab, something his neighbors did not have; and the fact that he'd already had a good bit of food stocked up and the rest he had procured recently had been gained with the help of others. He wasn't developing any skills, he was coasting by on sheer luck. Remy, of course, didn't see it that way. He thought he was doing pretty well.
The basis of this theory was the fact that, so far, Remy had not had to kill a single zombie. He hadn't needed to, and while some of his neighbors had taken to shooting zombies for sport, Remy, despite being a far better marksman than all of them, refused to take part. Why would he? The undead were not the enemy here, by his logic; they were just the victims of corporate greed and incompetence. Diamond Corp had done this, and the zombies were just trying to get by, as any animal would. It was rather like battling an outbreak of hungry tigers, though a far less pleasant spectacle to watch. Or smell.
Remy, of course, had not lost anyone. If his parents out in Los Angeles, or the rest of his family in Australia, had been infected, he didn't know it. He'd had friends, coworkers, students, but none of them lived near him, and he didn't feel the need to venture outside of his neighborhood and risk his neck to check on any of them in person. He needed to be as close to his house as possible, where he could work on figuring out Diamond Corp's mistake and creating some sort of cure in his lab. Some of his neighbors had died, but he only counted them as acquaintances, faces he would miss seeing but would not mourn over.
And on the rare occasion that he wondered how much of his survival was luck and how much was skill, Remy simply reminded himself that he needed to live. For, in his mind, the outbreak was almost as much his fault as it was Diamond Corp's. He had worked at Diamond Corp, on the Immunex project, and he had seen where that vaccine had been headed, in the hands of those scientists and those bureaucrats. He had even quit the company over it. Still, foolishly, after the announcement had first been made, he had believed Diamond had gotten past its difficulties and given the public the "miracle product" they had been working on for so long. How wrong he'd been proven on that count.
In any case, Remy was still alive when many others weren't, and he was trying to help where most others couldn't. And he hadn't killed anyone at all. That had to count for something.
The sun was not far from dipping behind the horizon when Remy finally decided the streets were safe enough to travel. He slinked quickly and soundlessly among the shadows, carrying nothing but an empty backpack. There was a mom-and-pop convenience store not too far from his house, and that was where he had been gathering supplies. That was what he thought of it as, "gathering supplies"; it had taken him a long time to get used to the idea of looting, and he still wasn't used to it, but it had become necessary, which at least began to justify it.
In the store, he quickly grabbed some cans of food and stuffed them into his backpack, and almost jumped out of his skin when a sound clicked at the front door. But it was just a scared-looking blonde woman with a baby on her back, scurrying for food just as Remy was. He went back to his work.
She had attracted company. Remy had moved up to the cash register, where he was going to leave some money in or near the register, when two zombies lurched in, heading straight for the young woman. Remy's head shot up, and he almost yelled out to warn her, but the baby managed it first, and she turned around and saw them herself.
She was creeping backward, as was Remy although the zombies were nowhere near him, and he bumped into the register. Startled, his head spun around, and he saw a Kimber pistol hanging low on the wall, the shop's only security system. It was well within reach, if Remy stretched a little. But it wasn't silenced, it would just attract more of them, and would shooting them even help the woman...?
By the time Remy realized he was making up excuses to argue down the necessity of shooting the zombies, they had descended upon the pair. Woman and child screamed out as they disappeared from Remy's sight, behind a shelf, their cries ringing out in the small store and into the night. It was the first attack Remy had seen this close up. His breath caught in his throat, horrified, at the zombies, at the baby, the woman, himself, everything. He was sitting on the counter next to the register now, his chest heaving.
The zombies turned and set their empty gazes on him.
As they lurched down the aisle, Remy fumbled backward, first thinking to duck behind the counter. The items on the counter, save the register, scattered forward and backward on to the floor, raining down each side. By the time they rounded the corner, he had gotten down under the counter, sure they wouldn't see him.
Some moments of silence passed. Then a withering hand reached over the counter, almost right into Remy's face. Finding nothing, the hand grew into a forearm, then a full arm, and Remy ducked lower and lower until he realized he couldn't sink through the floor. In one last bid for safety, he scooted back out into their sight, against the back wall, meaning to run to the side and get out the door.
It wasn't going to happen. One zombie was in front of him, across the counter; the other was creeping in from the side, sealing his exit. His back met the wall, and his hand brushed against the pistol. It was there; he had to use it. Self defense. Even if they had been humans, killing would be justified in this case, right...?
As the first one lunged again, ineffectually, Remy snatched the gun up, raising it and dropping the safety as he had a million times before, and then the creature was stumbling back, a hole in its chest, and Remy fired again, this time driving a bullet between its eyes. A swing to the right, and another blast felled the second zombie, lodging a round in its head. It crumbled as the first had, a deteriorating mass beside the counter.
Remy was not sure what faded first, the reverberations of the last shot or the trembling in his hands. Whichever it was, he knew he did not become aware of either until a new noise caught his attention. He turned his head toward the source of the strange banging sound. A blonde head was barely visible at intervals; the woman had managed to get up, somewhat. Warily, Remy sidestepped the zombies and headed toward her aisle.
The baby had fallen out of its papoose, and was lying on the floor, a huge, bloody bite on one side of his face. The woman was covered in scratches and blood, and her body was shaking, but her movements were sure. She was smashing the bottom of a tin can against her baby's skull.
When Remy appeared, she looked up, a mixture of sadness, anger, and resignation in her eyes. The words tumbled softly past her lips. "He won't suffer." Then, her tone clearer, she spoke directly to Remy. "Kill me."
Caught somewhere between empathy and horror, Remy took a step forward. "No!" the woman screamed, thrusting a palm forward. "Stay back there. Just... shoot me from there."
The gun was still in his hands, and from its weight, Remy could guess there was more than one round left. His eyes went from the gun to the child to the woman to the floor. "I can't."
Her head swiveled back for a moment. "They're coming. Hurry up, you can still run after."
But he was still standing there, dumbfounded, confused. "I can't."
"Please." When he still hesitated, her voice grew shrill. "Please! Now! NOW!"
She was right; the sound of approaching shuffles outside had reached his ears. He raised the gun, still unsure. Her voice a whisper again, her eyes turned almost sad. "Thank you."
One more shot rang out in the tiny store. Barely pausing to watch her body fall next to her baby son's, he bolted out the door in the next second, as much to outrun the approaching zombies as to get away from the terrifying scene. He ran full speed, barely keeping out of sight, until he reached his backyard. There he stopped only to unlock the hidden door, then rushed inside, the door instantly sliding shut behind him.
The lab was brightly lit, familiar. There was nothing but the gentle whirring of a few machines and the glaze of the fluorescent lights then, and the weight of the backpack, and the feel of the gun in his hands. When he closed his eyes, he was not relieved by darkness, but saw the same scene again in flashes, the zombies closing in on him, the woman falling to the floor, but most clearly of all, the look in her eyes as she whispered her last words. How long he sat in that corner, slumped against the wall, he would never quite be able to say. Hours, perhaps all night, perhaps days. His thoughts- if they could be called thoughts, as they took no shape, but drifted through his head as shadows- pulled him deeper and deeper, softly, gradually, unnoticeably, dark and darker until even the lights above him gave no effect.
How could he have been so stupid and naive? Had he just grabbed the gun, or had he brought his own- he owned three, goddammit! -he could have saved the woman and her child. Even behind the counter, he'd had a clear shot at the creatures; a difficult shot for an average shooter, but an "average shooter" he was not. How many lives could he have saved in the past, had he just shot the damn things? They weren't human anymore, not even animal; they had no concern for him, not even for a woman or a baby, so why should he care about them? This was survival, and so far, he had only marginally passed at it. The time for mercy was past. If he owed anything to anyone, it was an antidote to those who lived to see it, and safety to those he could help.
The glare of the lights came back into focus, like sunlight to one who is underwater. He remained sitting there, looking at his lab from the floor, for a few minutes. Then, finally shrugging off the backpack, he stood up, ignoring the pain in his legs, and placed the Kimber on a desk. He would need more ammo for it. Quietly, he crossed the floor to stand in front of a computer. The weight of his body felt unnaturally heavy as he trudged those few steps, but the strange, ghostlike feeling eased as he walked, numbing as his mind had to his thoughts, as his eyes had to the lights.
That, Remy supposed, and the last dregs of its population, the living. And its buildings, more and more of which were being gutted by survivors in hopes of finding rations to eat, and by the undead in hopes of finding survivors to eat. And the undead, those wasted, writhing creatures, former lives sacrificed to the will of Diamond Corp. Another royal screwup, nowhere near the first in its history, and not the first one to affect the corporation's own consumers. But this time, Diamond Corp. had done more than screwed up. The idiots had ended the world as they'd known it; greed again, greed and stupidity, had brought them what could be considered their greatest achievement, if only achievement was measured by grades of failure.
He could see them all from the top level of his modest home, wandering around the streets, seemingly with no purpose. Occasionally he spied a survivor slipping by, past the clumps of undead, probably intending to loot supplies from somewhere. More often than not, the zombies spied them too, and Remy turned his attention to a formula he had been writing or a shirt he had been mending until the screaming stopped. Then he would look through the window again, and there would be new bodies lying motionless; after he forgot about the incident and his eyes happened to pass over that spot again, he would note with less and less surprise each time that the bodies were no longer there.
It was becoming more and more typical; he was gradually growing accustomed to, desensitized toward death. For a man who had never dealt with hardship before in his life, Remy thought he was doing pretty well. This opinion discounted the fact that almost every time he left his house, his life was saved by some neighbor or stranger. It also discounted the fact that he had the fortune of owning a secure underground lab, something his neighbors did not have; and the fact that he'd already had a good bit of food stocked up and the rest he had procured recently had been gained with the help of others. He wasn't developing any skills, he was coasting by on sheer luck. Remy, of course, didn't see it that way. He thought he was doing pretty well.
The basis of this theory was the fact that, so far, Remy had not had to kill a single zombie. He hadn't needed to, and while some of his neighbors had taken to shooting zombies for sport, Remy, despite being a far better marksman than all of them, refused to take part. Why would he? The undead were not the enemy here, by his logic; they were just the victims of corporate greed and incompetence. Diamond Corp had done this, and the zombies were just trying to get by, as any animal would. It was rather like battling an outbreak of hungry tigers, though a far less pleasant spectacle to watch. Or smell.
Remy, of course, had not lost anyone. If his parents out in Los Angeles, or the rest of his family in Australia, had been infected, he didn't know it. He'd had friends, coworkers, students, but none of them lived near him, and he didn't feel the need to venture outside of his neighborhood and risk his neck to check on any of them in person. He needed to be as close to his house as possible, where he could work on figuring out Diamond Corp's mistake and creating some sort of cure in his lab. Some of his neighbors had died, but he only counted them as acquaintances, faces he would miss seeing but would not mourn over.
And on the rare occasion that he wondered how much of his survival was luck and how much was skill, Remy simply reminded himself that he needed to live. For, in his mind, the outbreak was almost as much his fault as it was Diamond Corp's. He had worked at Diamond Corp, on the Immunex project, and he had seen where that vaccine had been headed, in the hands of those scientists and those bureaucrats. He had even quit the company over it. Still, foolishly, after the announcement had first been made, he had believed Diamond had gotten past its difficulties and given the public the "miracle product" they had been working on for so long. How wrong he'd been proven on that count.
In any case, Remy was still alive when many others weren't, and he was trying to help where most others couldn't. And he hadn't killed anyone at all. That had to count for something.
The sun was not far from dipping behind the horizon when Remy finally decided the streets were safe enough to travel. He slinked quickly and soundlessly among the shadows, carrying nothing but an empty backpack. There was a mom-and-pop convenience store not too far from his house, and that was where he had been gathering supplies. That was what he thought of it as, "gathering supplies"; it had taken him a long time to get used to the idea of looting, and he still wasn't used to it, but it had become necessary, which at least began to justify it.
In the store, he quickly grabbed some cans of food and stuffed them into his backpack, and almost jumped out of his skin when a sound clicked at the front door. But it was just a scared-looking blonde woman with a baby on her back, scurrying for food just as Remy was. He went back to his work.
She had attracted company. Remy had moved up to the cash register, where he was going to leave some money in or near the register, when two zombies lurched in, heading straight for the young woman. Remy's head shot up, and he almost yelled out to warn her, but the baby managed it first, and she turned around and saw them herself.
She was creeping backward, as was Remy although the zombies were nowhere near him, and he bumped into the register. Startled, his head spun around, and he saw a Kimber pistol hanging low on the wall, the shop's only security system. It was well within reach, if Remy stretched a little. But it wasn't silenced, it would just attract more of them, and would shooting them even help the woman...?
By the time Remy realized he was making up excuses to argue down the necessity of shooting the zombies, they had descended upon the pair. Woman and child screamed out as they disappeared from Remy's sight, behind a shelf, their cries ringing out in the small store and into the night. It was the first attack Remy had seen this close up. His breath caught in his throat, horrified, at the zombies, at the baby, the woman, himself, everything. He was sitting on the counter next to the register now, his chest heaving.
The zombies turned and set their empty gazes on him.
As they lurched down the aisle, Remy fumbled backward, first thinking to duck behind the counter. The items on the counter, save the register, scattered forward and backward on to the floor, raining down each side. By the time they rounded the corner, he had gotten down under the counter, sure they wouldn't see him.
Some moments of silence passed. Then a withering hand reached over the counter, almost right into Remy's face. Finding nothing, the hand grew into a forearm, then a full arm, and Remy ducked lower and lower until he realized he couldn't sink through the floor. In one last bid for safety, he scooted back out into their sight, against the back wall, meaning to run to the side and get out the door.
It wasn't going to happen. One zombie was in front of him, across the counter; the other was creeping in from the side, sealing his exit. His back met the wall, and his hand brushed against the pistol. It was there; he had to use it. Self defense. Even if they had been humans, killing would be justified in this case, right...?
As the first one lunged again, ineffectually, Remy snatched the gun up, raising it and dropping the safety as he had a million times before, and then the creature was stumbling back, a hole in its chest, and Remy fired again, this time driving a bullet between its eyes. A swing to the right, and another blast felled the second zombie, lodging a round in its head. It crumbled as the first had, a deteriorating mass beside the counter.
Remy was not sure what faded first, the reverberations of the last shot or the trembling in his hands. Whichever it was, he knew he did not become aware of either until a new noise caught his attention. He turned his head toward the source of the strange banging sound. A blonde head was barely visible at intervals; the woman had managed to get up, somewhat. Warily, Remy sidestepped the zombies and headed toward her aisle.
The baby had fallen out of its papoose, and was lying on the floor, a huge, bloody bite on one side of his face. The woman was covered in scratches and blood, and her body was shaking, but her movements were sure. She was smashing the bottom of a tin can against her baby's skull.
When Remy appeared, she looked up, a mixture of sadness, anger, and resignation in her eyes. The words tumbled softly past her lips. "He won't suffer." Then, her tone clearer, she spoke directly to Remy. "Kill me."
Caught somewhere between empathy and horror, Remy took a step forward. "No!" the woman screamed, thrusting a palm forward. "Stay back there. Just... shoot me from there."
The gun was still in his hands, and from its weight, Remy could guess there was more than one round left. His eyes went from the gun to the child to the woman to the floor. "I can't."
Her head swiveled back for a moment. "They're coming. Hurry up, you can still run after."
But he was still standing there, dumbfounded, confused. "I can't."
"Please." When he still hesitated, her voice grew shrill. "Please! Now! NOW!"
She was right; the sound of approaching shuffles outside had reached his ears. He raised the gun, still unsure. Her voice a whisper again, her eyes turned almost sad. "Thank you."
One more shot rang out in the tiny store. Barely pausing to watch her body fall next to her baby son's, he bolted out the door in the next second, as much to outrun the approaching zombies as to get away from the terrifying scene. He ran full speed, barely keeping out of sight, until he reached his backyard. There he stopped only to unlock the hidden door, then rushed inside, the door instantly sliding shut behind him.
The lab was brightly lit, familiar. There was nothing but the gentle whirring of a few machines and the glaze of the fluorescent lights then, and the weight of the backpack, and the feel of the gun in his hands. When he closed his eyes, he was not relieved by darkness, but saw the same scene again in flashes, the zombies closing in on him, the woman falling to the floor, but most clearly of all, the look in her eyes as she whispered her last words. How long he sat in that corner, slumped against the wall, he would never quite be able to say. Hours, perhaps all night, perhaps days. His thoughts- if they could be called thoughts, as they took no shape, but drifted through his head as shadows- pulled him deeper and deeper, softly, gradually, unnoticeably, dark and darker until even the lights above him gave no effect.
How could he have been so stupid and naive? Had he just grabbed the gun, or had he brought his own- he owned three, goddammit! -he could have saved the woman and her child. Even behind the counter, he'd had a clear shot at the creatures; a difficult shot for an average shooter, but an "average shooter" he was not. How many lives could he have saved in the past, had he just shot the damn things? They weren't human anymore, not even animal; they had no concern for him, not even for a woman or a baby, so why should he care about them? This was survival, and so far, he had only marginally passed at it. The time for mercy was past. If he owed anything to anyone, it was an antidote to those who lived to see it, and safety to those he could help.
The glare of the lights came back into focus, like sunlight to one who is underwater. He remained sitting there, looking at his lab from the floor, for a few minutes. Then, finally shrugging off the backpack, he stood up, ignoring the pain in his legs, and placed the Kimber on a desk. He would need more ammo for it. Quietly, he crossed the floor to stand in front of a computer. The weight of his body felt unnaturally heavy as he trudged those few steps, but the strange, ghostlike feeling eased as he walked, numbing as his mind had to his thoughts, as his eyes had to the lights.
