Call Me Human: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel Page 2

  Naturally, there were exceptions. I witnessed a few cases of such heroic self-sacrifice that they alone could redeem humankind, but by the same token, they highlighted the shameful infamy of mass cowardice. These were times outside any moral and decency: pure biology celebrated the world of animals scared to the point of aggression.

  I don't really know what happened to those who had enough money and power to sit out the catastrophe. It's quite possible some of them did escape, hiding with their families in underground bunkers. But now that I've seen it all, I do believe that most of them are now here with us, in our streets and squares: there they stand, their dead eyes gazing into space, or clomp in circles, mumbling and stumbling upon each other.

  I don't mean to be vindictive as I say it: all I mean is that the catastrophe had made everyone truly equal as it denied the powers that be their chance of survival just as it did with common folk.

  A strange thing transpired once the deadly madness and anarchy of the first months gradually gave way to a shaky stability. The society structure — this gigantic pyramid of hierarchical tiers it had taken us centuries to create — seemed to have been head over heels. Those on top had disappeared, washed away by the blood river of changes; it was the dregs of society, its pariahs, traditionally despised and avoided, that received priority. Homeless tramps, escaped prisoners and marginal loners were quite used to surviving without civilization's crutches; now that those crutches were gone, having buried those who couldn't live without them, the new best men had to lead whatever was left of humanity. I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I'm just stating the fact. They were lucky in that many of them had been in prisons at the start of the epidemic, and a prison is little different from a fortified castle: so they stayed safe during the most difficult first periods of the attack. Ditto for military officers, or at least those of them who'd sat out the onset of the epidemic in their closed garrisons and bunkers.

  In most catastrophe movies, the military used to play a big part confronting, to the audience's relish, various hypothetical disasters. First some useless idiots would do everything they could to obstruct the rescue mission until finally the right guys took over, usually inspired by the President, and promptly salvaged the world. This scheme had penetrated our minds so badly that at first, I secretly hoped for their cavalry to save the day. But unfortunately, the army had collapsed together with the rest of the powers that be. Only in the first few days a few military airplanes and choppers zipped across the sky and disappeared, but who flew them and where they headed, I can't tell you.

  Once I saw the army in action, namely when I was leaving the city in the column of other fugitives. A few armored vehicles drove onto the road and stopped, blocking the way; some of us burst into tears as they hurried towards them hoping to be rescued. The turrets turned to face them. Several submachine guns showered the crowd with bullets. The panic that started grew into a stampede as the shouting crowd attempted to disperse, trampling to death those that fell or were injured.

  Like the rest, I ran for dear life; instincts are best suited to control one in this sort of emergency. Only later as I took cover in an abandoned cellar, I tried to fathom what could force the army to shoot at desperate people seeking their help. I've no idea what they were thinking as I don't know which particular structure the armored vehicles belonged to, but my educated guess would be that they had simply been possessed by fear. Possibly, they believed we were infected.

  Later as I roamed about, lost and frantic, in search of my family, I had occasionally come across evidence of some military activity. In the suburbs, you could sometimes hear quite heavy shooting. I don't know much about weapons nor can I tell you which direction it was coming from — because in cities, buildings reflect the sounds so you can't determine their exact locations — but I had a feeling there was some quite heavy artillery involved, explosions resonating loud and clear. I still don't know who was shooting at whom and where.

  Another proof of the army involvement was the fact that quite a few of us encountered zombies wearing battle fatigues. Apparently, the authorities attempted to send the army into the thick of it, having underestimated their ability to handle the crisis. On the positive side, the beauty of it was that — if you disregarded the apparent obstacle consisting of thousands of roaming zombies — the area was chock full of abandoned weaponry, some of it quite serious, which considerably improved the survivors' chances to pull through.

  Contrary to disaster movies, we couldn't help ourselves to bigger military machinery, also lying around in abundance. Tanks and armored vehicles proved useless, and not just because of the obvious absence of gas. Barricades of broken cars, fallen trees, lampposts, dead bodies and mountains of waste rendered the roads impassable. A tank could get through in certain places, but not everywhere. Later, when it calmed down a bit, a bicycle seemed like a natural choice to cover large distances, as long as you could find one in decent condition, but even that proved iffy. I once witnessed a group of zombies catch a man on a bike. He was well-armed: a rifle on his back and an axe showing from the carrier bag. They spotted him — there were half a dozen of them or so — and rushed to block his way. The guy had spotted them, too: he must have realized he had no time to stop, jump off the bike and reach for his weapon. He pushed like crazy but eventually, they caught up with him. It's common knowledge that zombies are capable of brief sprints of remarkable speed when they spot their prey. At any other time, I'd have been distressed by the scene, but by then, my heart had long gone hard; I'd seen horrors much worse than the death of the poor wretch. I simply made a mental note that riding a bike was dangerous and impractical. I couldn't help him without attracting the attention of a good hundred more zombies which would have lead to an equally quick, infamous and, most importantly, pointless death. After that day, I never used the bike. Like others, I preferred to walk, all eyes and ears, weapons at the ready.

  II

  The following summer found me out of town, but not where my cottage used to stand: I'd moved further on to the south west. I couldn't face staying where everything reminded me of my loss. But the direction I chose was almost at random. I left the burned-down cottage up in the north; for some funny reason I never liked the east; going back to Moscow was out of the question, but by the same token I didn't feel like heading for other areas: God only knew what went on there. That left me with the western suburbs. In the bygone world, this was the affluent part of the city, populated by millionaires, top brass and the like. I hadn't been there since I was a child. Our country was ruled by communists then — their leaders took a fancy to this part of town and had their summer cottages built here. At one of them, I'd spent some of the best days of my childhood. Would be nice to see them again, I thought — to see how the changes had affected them.

  On foot, the once-forty-minute drive took me almost a month and a half. All my earthly belongings fit into a small backpack. A basic survival kit: an army ration pack, a few tins, some water, fire starters, a first-aid kit I'd scavenged from a gutted car, a hand-crank flashlight, a handful of water disinfection tablets, some matches, maps, optic sights, a compass and other popular commodities. I chose to limit my weapon options to an SMG with a detachable bayonet — a good combination indeed, — a handgun; enough ammunition for both; a trenching shovel that doubled as an axe and saw, and a few frag grenades. To my distress, I had to leave plenty of other useful things behind: a storm pellet rifle, a carbine with a rifled barrel, a few hunting guns, a nice collection of grievous-looking axes and hunting knives, and on top of that, a few crates of grenades and yet another case of disposable grenade launchers. I'd amassed these treasures as I roamed about, and the thought of possessing an arsenal so serious provided me with some semblance of security.

  Reluctant as I was to leave it behind, I simply couldn't drag the whole bunch along. I had to prioritize and only take what could prove the most useful on the road. Also, I had to consider the load I would carry. The rest I wrapped in some tarpaulin and burie
d in the woods — in a good hiding spot only I knew about — in case I had to return if need be.

  After I dumped my warm clothes, or rather the filthy rags they'd turned into, I was left with whatever I had on my back. I reasoned that by next winter, I'd either be dead or somehow scavenge some new stuff.

  This kind of attitude was typical for most survivors. Instead of making something new, growing vegetables, repairing equipment, or building new machines, their every effort served their flight from death. They could quite easily find whatever they needed: clothes, food, gas, medications, weapons and ammunition — everything was readily available in deserted stores and warehouses, their windows broken, their stone bodies in various stages of disrepair. Sometimes you found stuff you could use next to dead bodies lying around; other times, you stripped bodies of the things you needed. Finally, you could always take away the things you needed from other survivors, provided they were weaker than you, and more often than not you could kill them, too. Sad as it sounds, the new era gave a new meaning to Christ's famous maxim, "be like birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap". Didn't he also say, "tomorrow will take care of itself"? In a way, survivors followed his advice, albeit not literally: they didn't look further than a couple of months, and no one ever thought what would happen to him in a week, let alone a month. Thinking about it scared people so much that they avoided planning at all.

  Survivors' consumer preferences had changed, too. Now we finally appreciated the importance of simple things, like food, clean water, some salt and matches, a knife — the absence of which renders you helpless once you're stranded. Money, this gentrified colored paper, had lost all purpose. In small groups, survivors practiced fair exchange; in other cases, people simply took away what they needed by force.

  So I was on the road for nearly a month and a half. I only travelled at daytime, every other day: the first day I'd walk non-stop dawn till dusk, resting the whole of the second day. As every potential reader of this diary knows, zombies are particularly active in the dark. I can't really tell you why: you'd think a cadaver can't care much about sunlight? — but the fact remains, they take cover in daytime by hiding in the shade somewhere, or even better, in some cellar or hole in the wall: there they stay in a semi-conscious stupor, although they can and do attack if they sense prey or detect a noise nearby. For some reason, sunlight makes them uncomfortable, strange as it is to discuss the discomfort of beings that don't feel the bullets that hit them. My educated guess, based on a year's worth of watching them, is that they simply can't see well in sunlight. I don't believe all that mystic crap that sunlight kills them the way it kills vampires. Zombies are the opposite of mystic: if the truth were known, they're the most real, physical and material thing on Earth.

  When the sun starts to set, they scramble out of their lairs. This is the most dangerous time. No, not so: the most dangerous time is when the sun goes down, replacing twilight with pitch-black darkness, especially on a cloudy or moonless night. Almost immediately after sunset the world is swarming with them. Daytime, you don't see many, but at night you'll be hard put to find a place free of them. In the darkness full of inhuman screams, groans and howling that make your hair stand on end, you start to think there're thousands of them around — which isn't that far from the truth, I suppose. Our nights are different from those bygone city nights flooded with electricity. You can't see past your nose now. A flashlight or a torch are no good as all they do is attract unwanted attention.

  My Casio watch proved a lifesaver. This artifact of progress past, told not just the exact time of sunrise and sunset, but also the phases of the Moon. It even had a built-in pedometer so I had some idea of the distances I covered.

  First thing in the morning I would take out my optic sights and examine the area from my cover to decide where to make the next stop and how to get there safely. Optic sights are better than the binoculars in that they leave one eye free to detect any threatening movement nearby. If I saw zombies I made a mental note of their number and planned my route respectively. As I had to avoid open areas, I couldn't just take the shortest route from A to B. On one hand, such open areas gave me some kind of advantage not allowing zombies to approach undetected, but on the other, they put me right into the sights of another human.

  I've already said that friendliness wasn't a typical trait of the time. Whether I'd fall prey to a looter or just some sharpshooting lunatic wouldn't make much difference to me after the fact. So I tried to stick to the edge of the woods, ready to take cover under the trees or, alternatively, run out into the open, if need be. I gave human dwellings a wide berth and tried to avoid using roads whenever I could. I didn't come anywhere near the abandoned houses zombies normally used to hide from sunlight.

  A couple of hours before sunset, I started seeking shelter for the night. Sometimes I couldn't find anything remotely suitable and had to climb a tree, but luckily, it didn't happen very often. A cellar with a good lock was ideal: it had to have strong concrete walls and a good steel door, preferably with some hooks or eyelets on the inside. I had a bike lock I could trust, thicker and stronger than regular ones, that I'd scavenged in a looted hardware store; with its help, I could secure any door or gate bars from the inside.

  As soon as I found shelter for the night, I would lock myself in it and have a meal of sorts; then I'd lay out the map, turn on the flashlight and plan the next leg of the journey: where exactly I was going to go, what distance I'd have to cover and how much time it might take. After that, I for most part fell asleep, but not always: the nearby zombies would sniff me out and try to break down the door to get to me. They howled as they shook the door, scratched and bashed, until sunrise forced them to abandon their labors and go back to where they'd come from. At first, these things scared me witless, but man can get used to anything: one day I helped myself to some earplugs I found in a looted drugstore and thus solved the problem.

  But the psychological barrier I faced at first was much harder to overcome: I found it difficult to convince myself, even after persistent checks, that the door and the lock were strong enough to restrain an attack that could last for many hours. This was the matter of self-trust: have I checked everything scrupulously enough? Could I have possibly missed a tiny detail that would cost me my life? I've forgotten to add that before I ventured inside and locked myself there, I littered the area in front of the door with shards of broken glass, tin sheets, dry twigs and any such garbage capable of making a sound when trampled upon. I tried to make those heaps look as natural as possible, as if they had been around for ages — so that it didn't let potential enemies work out my hiding place. By potential enemies I mean humans, as zombies are not capable of any reasoning, however simple. Although no one in their right mind moved about at night, an extra bit of caution didn't hurt.

  I slept in my clothes in case I had to jump up and fight. The trenching shovel, the gun with the safety off, and a couple of grenades lay within my reach; the SMG with the bayonet attached lay on my chest. I hugged it as a kid would hug a cuddly toy, but not because I loved it so much: I had to hold it so that my fingers didn't accidentally pull the trigger: a heart attack caused by its going off was the last thing I needed.

  Ever since the disaster had struck, I started practicing sleeping fully armed. At first I couldn't find a comfortable position, but after many nights of practice I finally worked out a pose that allowed me to sleep without compromising my safety.

  If the night happened to be quiet, I spent the next day resting, eating and sleeping without venturing out of my shelter. The next morning I woke up before sunset, had breakfast, slid outside and walked on trying to stick to the plan I'd worked out the day before.

  So days passed, followed by weeks. I'd had my fair share of close shaves in the course of my journey and witnessed my fair share of unsightly scenes. I'd described them all in the diary I'd lost and have no intention of reliving them again here. I don't even think that personal experiences of an insignificant person like myse
lf — whose resilience to death is his only claim to fame — could be worth anything at all, except perhaps as a DIY survival guide. I'll do my best to mention useful survival tips, in the hope someone might need them one day.

  Finally, the weeks-long hike was over. I'd reached my target: a wasteland no different from everywhere else. I could barely recognize the places of my childhood summers. Since I'd been there last, everything had changed. After the fall of the communists, the vast area was thickly built with holiday homes of the new rich and other upstarts, their villas and mansions competing for every spare inch of land. Now, though, they toned down a bit. Broken gates, posh furniture and stuff lying around, rusting limos and sports cars, smashed and ruined by time and weather; badly decomposed bodies and skeletons, their poses telling one of their deathly torments. Abandoned mansion houses, their doors and windows gaping with broken glass, often badly burned or completely gutted, they had nothing left of their past glory. On TV, they'd shown the devastation before, but I had no idea it could be that bad. Apart from the fact that there were no wooded areas left to hide here — all the woods had been uprooted when the building started — the abundance of shelter meant the equal abundance of zombie population. With time, though, I realized that it wasn't as bad as it seemed: you could meet an occasional zombie or other, but overall, their numbers were limited. I decided to stay for a while and study the area before deciding what to do next.