They Rise Again

[Warclaw]

Chapter 1

Kyle Snow thought he could not have picked a worse week to visit England on vacation. When he'd left Pittsburgh International Airport the first cases of the new flu bug from India were beginning to show up on American media in some major cities. Throughout his visit to old castles, battlefields and historical sites in the United Kingdom, he'd caught news about the illness spreading in the United States. Kyle had been able to mostly ignore it, as he traveled the countryside and enjoyed the awe of visiting castles that were older than the USA itself, and got a taste of the homeland his own ancestors had came from. By the end of the week though, there could be no more ignoring the effects of the flu in America as the BBC showed footage of riots, fires and chaos in major cities.

They called it the Indian Flu at first and according to some professors and doctors who made the rounds on the network news programs, it actually originated somewhere in Bangladesh months ago and went almost unnoticed by the worldwide community as it was just a local outbreak. Soon though, more reports of the illness began to spread down the Ganges River. From watching the news, Kyle soon learned the Ganges River is a sacred place for many Indians, where often the ashes of cremated dead are dumped as well as corpses that cannot be creamated due to poverty. Additionally, as one doctor explained on BBC, many take drinking water from the Ganges or bathe in the same waters where corpses decompose. Thus, the sudden spread of disease along the Ganges wouldn't be surprising.

He stood in lines at Heathrow for nearly six hours as the airport was in something of a minor meltdown. Some pilots were being quarantined in foreign countries and some of the airport's staff hadn't shown up for work. Even London was showing that it was not immune to the chaos of a panic and as Kyle went through security, he overheard a conversation between a small group of security guards that Heathrow might shut down in another day or two. It was with great relief that Kyle settled into his seat onboard the nearly empty British Airways flight from Heathrow to Pittsburgh. After the takeoff proceedure he leaned back in his seat and turned on the small television built into the back of the seat infront of him. Barely able to focus his exhausted brain on more BBC coverage of riots and world-wide problems, he simply closed his eyes and was soon asleep.

The bell followed by the pilot's announcement that the plane was about to land woke Kyle up from his rest. He rubbed his eyes and looked around at the other few passengers on the plane with him. Most of them were buckling their seatbelts or still tapping away at laptops or smart phones. Most appeared to be businessmen and women, with a few couples or families in the mix. If he had to guess, Kyle figured the plane was only about thirty percent full of passengers and there were only two flight attendants. He cranked his seat upright and fastened his seatbelt, shutting off the little TV monitor infront of him and putting the headphones away. He yawned, turned his head to look out the window and felt a jolt of shock sieze in his stomach. Pittsburgh was visable on his side of the aircraft, but was shrouded in a haze of grey and black smoke. Some of the tallest buildings stood above the pall, but most of the city seemed to be gone, lost an ebon fog that drifted wraith-like, curling between structures as it was pushed by the wind eastwards and along the rivers. Here and there in the haze he could make out the pinprick flashes of emergency lights, red for firetrucks and ambulances, blue for police. Then it was out of his view as the plane banked for final approach.

The 747 made a gentle landing and taxi'd as the passengers began to unbuckle and gather up their things. Kyle looked out his window again and saw very little activity at the airport. It was about noon and Pittsburgh International would normally be quite active by this time, but the tarmac seemed deserted except for a couple of small luggage trucks that were approaching as the 747 'docked' with the airport gate. With just a handful of people onboard, the exit proceedure was quick and orderly and Kyle found himself walking to the luggage pickup in a nearly empy terminal. The first few pieces of luggage began to appear on the turntable when a door suddenly opened along the wall and one of the British Airlines flight attendants came quickly walking out with a look of worry on her face. She broke into a jog and made for the gate, turning a corner out of Kyle's sight. He mulled it over for a few more seconds until he saw his suitcase appear and grabbed it. He wheeled his baggage through the terminal, checked out and walked past a security office where two security guards looked at him intently from behind the glass.

[DTyra]

I'm in!

[Nancy1340]

Oh boy! Hang on it's gonna be a good 'un.

Thanks

[maldon007]

Details!... I love details

Moar please.

[Warclaw]

Chapter 1 (cont.)

Kyle made his way to one of the parking garages that service the airport and listened to the hollow sound of his footsteps as they echoed through the deserted building. He thought his 2005 Jeep Wrangler looked a bit lonely where it was parked since there was only one other vehicle on this level of the garage. Starting up the Jeep, Kyle drove down the ramps of the garage to ground level and fed his parking slip into the machine by the exit, which lifted the gate for him and let him out onto the street. Turning on his radio, Kyle discovered that his usual sports talk channel was static, so he pressed the seek buttons looking for a signal, glancing down from his driving now and then to see the radio scanning over channels that normally would have had a clear signal. After a few seconds the radio stopped on a music station playing 70's hits and he left it there as he navigated the Jeep towards Pittsburgh.

Other than the streets being nearly empty, one of the things Kyle noticed first was the price of fuel as he passed a gas station. Regular unleaded was marked at $6.99 and premium $8.19. Not that the price mattered since the gas station itself was closed. A dozen cars sat dark and empty in lines leading up to the pumps and the windows of the service station were smashed in. He remembered when Katrina hit and one of the first thing some citizens did was begin looting. While he could sympathize with those needing food and water, he felt anger towards those who had decided that flatscreen televisions and jewelry were life-saving supplies. The abandoned cars were not limited to the gas stations. Every hundred yards or so along the side of the road were cars and trucks that had appearently run out of fuel or broken down and been left. A few had rags hanging from the windows while others had their windows rolled down and even some doors and trunks stood open to the weather.

As he passed a sign that indicated detours ahead, Kyle was thankful that he lived near the airport. A few turns and soon he was on 79 heading south into Carnegie. He passed more abandoned vehicles and had to move into the left lane to avoid some dumbass who stumbled drunkenly down the highway in the slow lane, seeming unconcerned about getting hit by a car. He gave the guy an annoyed honk of his horn as he passed. Off of 79 and ten minutes later he was driving through his neighborhood, a quiet suburb south-west of Pittsburgh with trees and well-kept lawns on a normal day. Today though, some lawns looked to be overgrowing, several days past the point that they needed mowed. Garbage day was yesterday but trashcans stood out on the curb filled with bags, and many with bags overflowing or piled ontop of the cans.

Most interesting of all, Kyle noted as he pulled into his driveway, was that there was no one around. The school year let out a week before he left for England and the sounds of children playing in the yards, riding bicycles, playing ball in the street or swimming in pools had filled the air. Now it was dead silence as he got out of his car and the slamming of the car door felt unnaturally loud in the peace. He unlocked his front door and stepped inside the house, setting his suitcase and travel bag down on the sofa before shutting the door and checking the mail, finding just a few bills and other junk mail. The paper box only had two newspapers in it, and the last one was dated for three days ago. Either the paperboy had the flu, or one of his neighbors had stolen the newspapers. He doubted that it was a neighbor, considering on one side lived an elderly couple and on the other side was a vacant house for sale. There was also a neighborhood watch, and generally everyone in the area was friendly and kept an eye out for each other.

Kyle turned the thermostat down to 73 to cool the house and turned on his computer before going to shower. By the time he finished his shower and unpacked his bags, the house was cooling down to comfortable levels and he stepped over to the computer to check his email and some news sites. He didn't know a lot about computers, so it baffled him at first when he clicked on a news website and it took a full thirty seconds to load. Typically a website would pop up almost instantly, but this time it was taking a while to load each page. All of the front page type stuff was coverage of the Indian Flu, and they were repeats of the same things he'd seen on BBC. He checked his email next and discovered that the last email he'd recieved was four days ago. This was strange, since he usually recieved email every day from various mailing lists, coupon groups and spam. Interested, he looked back to the news page and examined it. Every story was dated for three or four days ago. Even the headline stories on the website linked to old articles.

He began to search the web for more recent stories, but could find nothing that was new. Many of the links he clicked were dead or gave errors and the rest were old news. He searched google for Indian Flu and got some hits, including a government website advising people to avoid contact with those infected, to immedietly call 911, to report all cases and so-on. Nothing particularly helpful. On a forum he found a discussion about how the Indian Flu is actually a type of rabies, since those infected show similar symptoms. Other users disagreed and insisted on some type of bacteria, others suggested it was a biowarfare attack. One user claimed he works for a hospital and an infected victim had come into the ER, died in the waiting room and then violently attacked staff while being resuscitated. The infected had to be handcuffed to a bed and in the process had bitten and clawed several of the forum poster's co-workers. The post was five days old, and there were several pages of replies before the websites had stopped updating.

[Warclaw]

Chapter 1 (cont.)

He made himself lunch and checked the 'fridge, making a list on a dry erase board of what he'd need to go shopping for. Before his trip, he'd finished off the milk and bread, and he'd also avoided leaving meat and eggs in the 'fridge. Those sorts of things were first on his list, followed by other items that he was running low on. He checked the calendar and saw that the 4th of July would be here in another week, so he wrote out a second list of things like hotdogs, hamburger, soda and snacks to contribute to the neighborhood's annual July 4th Block Cookout.

The cable was out when Kyle turned on the television and the phone was dead when he checked it, wanting to call in to work and check on how things were going. With nothing better to do, he walked outside to the shed and climbed onto his lawn mower. He popped in the earbuds for his iPod and began mowing the lawn while he listened to music. As he drove back and forth across the lawn, he kept an eye on the street and noticed that there was no traffic at all. It probably had something to do with the fires downtown. When he looked north towards Pittsburgh, he could just see a vague greyish haze in the air. Despite being miles from the city, he could still catch a very faint scent of smoke now and then, an acrid smoke like from burning plastic or rubber. There was also a rotting garbage scent that Kyle figured was from the garbage cans along the street. Someone had thrown out meat and it was now stinking up the neighborhood. The smell of freshly cut grass helped to mask the stink, but he was still catching frequent whiffs of it that made him almost gag.

Noticing some movement out of the corner of his eye, Kyle saw two figures walking in the shade beneath his neighbor's trees across the street. They seemed to be facing him, so he lifted his arm and waved at them as he turned the lawnmower to make another swipe at his grass. A sudden strong stink of rotting meat assaulted him, and he felt something tug at his shirt sleeve. He turned slightly to look at his sleeve and saw a smear of brown, then looked over his shoulder to see a man following his lawnmower.

The man wore a set of coveralls with the nametag Jim on the left breast. The coveralls were smeared with grease and filth, and the right sleeve was tattered and ripped to shreds to expose the man's arm. The arm itself was a horror show of stripped and blackened flesh, torn away to reveal both of the bones in the forearm and the hand itself severed. Blackened, rotting blood oozed from the man's mouth as he opened it hungrily, the intact left arm reaching for Kyle on the mower.

Kyle hollared in surprise and fright and lept from the lawnmower, which immedietly shut down when he took his weight off the seat. He ripped the earbuds out as he backed away franticly. Without the music and engine of the mower filling his ears, he could hear the hoarse, gasping moan of the man as he chased Kyle across the yard. Kyle ran towards the corner of the house, only to see the two figures who'd been across the street had approached and now blocked his path. A man and woman, both of them dressed in jogging outfits and bearing old wounds. Their pale and flaking skin told him that they too, were not normal. They outstretched their arms towards him and moaned, walking unsteadily in his direction as he backtracked, squeezing between the house and the creature in the coveralls. "What the hell is this?!" Voice raised in panic, Kyle shouted as he ran through his back yard towards the shed, "Help! Someone help!"

The only answer to his cries for help were the moans of the dead, which persued him as a steady walking pace. He grabbed a shovel from his shed and dashed back into the yard just as the creatures came around the corner, bumping and crowding each other mindlessly in their persuit of living flesh. "Back off!" Yelling at them, Kyle circled to his right and branshed the shovel threateningly, "Back off or I'll beat the shit out of you!" The female jogger lifted her head, her blonde hair matted to her skull with dirt and dried blood, revealing that her entire throat was gone, just a few loose bits hanging from beneath her jaw towards the stained collar of her sweatshirt. "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit." The male jogger reached for him and Kyle swung the shovel at the creature's hands, cracking one wrist with a solid -thunk- of metal on bone. The jogger continued on as if he didn't feel it, and Kyle followed up with a swing at the creature's face. -Clang!- The shovel's handle shivered in Kyle's hands as the bottom part of it crushed the creature's face. Nose broken and pushed to the side, teeth falling out, the male jogger stumbled and fell down.

Kyle tried the same move with the female jogger, but his aim was knocked off by the woman's upraised arms as she grabbed at him. His shovel bounced off her shoulder with no effect, so he pulled back and jabbed it at her head, the point of the shovel hitting her face, gashing open one side of her face and letting oozing black blood dribble from the wound. Panicing, he kept jabbing at her face, ripping more flesh, knocking out teeth and shearing off a chunk of her nose as she and 'Jim' chased him back to his front yard. Kyle saw the male jogger stagger to his feet behind the female and Jim, and he felt horror overtaking him. These things seemed unkillable. He swung the shovel wildly left and right, swiping the space between himself and the undead. 'Jim' reached out his good arm, and Kyle swiped at it, the edge of the shovel biting into the flesh just beneath the elbow. The limb suddenly dropped towards the ground, half-severed and hanging onto the rest of his arm by some muscle. A second swing chopped through that, and 'Jim' was suddenly armless.

Swinging the shovel at the female jogger, he made solid contact with her upper leg, slicing deep into it and sending her collapsing to the grass. The handle of the shovel snapped with the blow, and the shovel's head with a portion of the shaft attached rebounded off the side of the house and landed in the shrubs below his bedroom window. Suddenly armed with just half of a shovel's handle, Kyle spun around and ran to his front door. He grabbed the handle and realized he'd locked it. He patted his pockets, and then looked at the lawnmower. His keys dangled from the ignition. Sprinting over to the mower, he reached for the keys as 'Jim' thrust his stumps at Kyle, trying to grab him. Kyle vaulted to the other side of the mower and whacked ineffectively at 'Jim' with his broken shovel handle for a moment. The female jogger was crawling towards him and the male jogger wasn't far behind. Things were getting critical.

'Jim' started to circle around the mower, and Kyle grabbed the mower's steering wheel, leaned back and kicked 'Jim' in the stomach. The sudden impact caused the creature's mouth to jolt open and a spew of rotting black .. something sprayed out as 'Jim' fell to the ground. Kyle lept onto the mower and reached for his keys just as the male jogger arrived. Kyle was forced to lean backwards in the seat as the jogger reached for him from the front of the machine, smelly fingers just inches from Kyle's face, grabbing at air. Kyle put the broken end of the handle to the jogger's face and shoved him backwards. About to be overwhelmed, Kyle did the only thing he could in the situation. He started the mower.

"Oh god.." Throwing it into gear, he rumbled forward, pushing the jogger back until the jogger's feet caught on 'Jim', who was struggling to rise. Both creatures fell into a heap as Kyle rolled over them. Kyle clung to the steering wheel of the lawnmower as it went up, down, side to side over the creatures. The blade produced a horrific grinding sound and the engine squealed. He rolled forward several more feet and over the crawling female jogger, the bent and broken blades doing their grisly work. The lawnmower was vibrating crazily as the unbalanced blades spun, and he shut it down, slowly turning to look behind him at the scene. 'Jim' and the male jogger lay together in a heap, just a mass of chopped apart flesh. The female jogger's entire back was shredded, as was the top of her head. A chunky spray of black and rusty red blood had flung itself against the side of his house as if someone had taken a gallon of spaghetti with meatballs, added a couple of quarts of motor oil to it, then thrown it onto the wall.

He slumped to the side in his seat and hurled, puking up his lunch into the grass.

[Nancy1340]

You are an evil, evil person to stop here.............so when can we expect a new chapter?

[DTyra]

Had to laugh as I read about Kyle going about his business...sounds like me. I bet he gets his head out of his butt pretty soon now though.

[Sheriff McClelland]

Well done . Looking forward to the next installment . Thanks

[Warclaw]

You are an evil, evil person to stop here.............so when can we expect a new chapter?

I'm going to try to add to the story each weekday. Hopefully 1-2 parts per day.

[Warclaw]

Chapter 1 (cont.)

Recovering his senses, Kyle snatched the keys from the mower and dashed to his house, unlocking the door with Olympic record speed and slamming it shut behind him. He fumbled with the deadbolt and chain lock before getting them into place and running to the phone. Still dead! "No! No! No!" He tapped the switchhook a few times and got only dead silence on the line. He then flipped open his cellular phone and saw that it had no 'bars', no signal. Sweat poured down his face and dripped in his eyes as he went to the bathroom and stuck his head under the faucet, letting cold water pour over his hair and neck. He lifted his head and looked into the mirror, vaguely surprised in his shocked state to see that the front of his shirt was speckled with bits of fluid and material, probably from when he'd kicked 'Jim' in the stomach.

Kyle ripped his shirt off and tossed it into the bathroom garbage can, then after a second of thought did the same with his shorts, underwear and socks. He quickly stepped into the shower and washed off, scrubbing his skin with soap as if he could wash away the day's events. By the time he'd cleaned up and gotten dressed, the sun was dipping down towards the horizon. He went around the house, cautiously peering out his windows to check the street and lawns for more signs of trouble. His bedroom window was splattered with gore, so he skipped over that one, already knowing what was out there. With no signs of movement outside, Kyle went to one of his closets and opened it up, searching around until he found his softball equipment. He grabbed an aluminum softball bat and took a couple of test swings with it in his living room, trying to gauge how much damage he could do to a person with it. The bat was balanced for whacking a softball, but he wasn't sure how useful it would be against the walking dead.

Walking dead. That had to be it, right? Those things he'd encountered outside had clearly died before, there was just no way for a person with no throat to keep going like that. Kyle could be pretty oblivious and day-dreamy at times, but he wasn't an idiot. The logic fit, no matter how illogical the conclusion might seem. Maybe there was more information posted on the internet before it had stopped updating? He leaned his bat against the wall and sat down at his computer, trying various searches for things like 'zombies' and 'walking dead'. These mostly brought him to fiction websites. He'd never really been a fan of the zombie genre, preferring science-fiction and fantasy, so he needed to learn all that he could. He finally got some hits on 'Indian Flu Undead' on an obscure conspiricy theory forum.

The forum user from Seattle had posted that an outbreak of Indian Flu had sent hundreds to local hospitals, his wife worked as a nurse in one of the smaller hospitals and they had been overwhelmed with cases. The patients became violent and very aggressive, showing signs of madness as they attacked hospital staff and security. Then according to the user, his wife had come home early one afternoon and told him that they needed to leave Seattle. According to his wife the outbreak was beyond control, and that the National Guard had been deployed in Seattle but had arrived too late to quarantine the hospitals. Seattle was descending into anarchy and violence. The last post on the forum was three days ago.

Kyle laid low for the rest of the evening, occasionally looking out the windows but seeing nothing moving around outside. A few lights were on in neighboring houses, but after watching them for some time he saw no signs of anyone inside. To give himself a sense of stealth, he shut off all of the lights in his house and closed the blinds on the windows. Some time around midnight, he managed to fall asleep on the couch with his bat laying on the floor beside him.

[Sheriff McClelland]

Apparently no firearms in the home ... a unique twist from the norm . Nice touch .

I assume that will change

[Griffworks]

Really liking this.

If I might add some conscrutive criticism, tho...? Run your story thru Word -or a similar program - and use Spell Check. While it might not bother some, mis-spelling of fairly common words is jarring to me. It's pursuit and conspiracy, for two words that weren't spelled correctly.

Can't wait to read more, regardless!

MOARPLZ!