The Freeze Instinct

Jack


The voice and the infection are tied together somehow. The voice is familiar but since I've become infected it has a presence. It feels like it has a face and arms that reach out inviting me to a dark place.


The more I read online about these people eating other people the more that stench crawls into my nostrils and into the back of my throat. The more that voice shackles and weakens me. Plagues and infects me. Debilitates and cripples me. I'm left with a sense of powerlessness I think I've felt my whole life but is now magnified by my profound inability to survive. The blackness crawls in me and torments my brain. I'm dying.


It comes with every thought to move or take action I have. It goads me into getting up off the bathroom floor. Yeah get up. Let's see what you can do you stupid brainless shit. I don't get up and the blackness spreads. I slice at my arm trying to get it out. I find my way up to my feet and look in the mirror. You've never done anything right. You are going to fuck this up like you fuck everything up. Pathetic. I look directly at my eyes swearing that my eyes look blacker. My pupils taking up more space. I look at the bullet wound in my arm. I'm infected. I know it. You're going to die. You've never been able to do what you say. You think you can get out of here? Kill somebody? You couldn't even save Dee. You were a failure and a deadbeat in the that relationship you impotent shit. Life was never anything you could handle.


Somewhere out there is a basement room with a toilet in the middle of it. Out of this toilet shit pours out with rats, infectious waste, and people's forsaken entrails. A place where the blackness that is inside me overflows from abundance. This is the home for my mind. Since that bullet coated with infected blood lodged itself into me it handed over the deed to this new one bathroom apartment in the basement. This is home for me now. Where blackness, doubt, and fear determine my existence. 


I find myself telling this to Grave.


My body is infected. Every time I think about leaving I think about how I'm going to freeze when one of those things comes after me. I think about hesitating while this voice reminds me I can't. I can't. I am unable.
Grave looks up from his notebook.
You're frightened.
Yes!
You are frightened because you believe at you're core is incapability. When that ultimate test comes you'll fail. We are creatures governed by our mind but our minds our governed by our perceptions, our subjective beliefs. Do you know you will fail or do you fear you will? 
I think I will...
He interrupts.


Our capabilities far extend past our perceived capacity. But if our mind does not believe it our body makes it so. People say that the animal instinct in each of us responds with flight or fight when our survival is threatened. But people so often forsake the most human of all instinctual responses. Freezing. 
I'm going to freeze, Grave. Threat is all around me. That stink is a constant reminder of this darkness creeping inside me and those monsters creeping outside.
Seemingly uninterested in my worry he continues.


Instinct is predicated upon the idea that thought does not interfere with action. Survival, do you understand. Survival is at stake. So, the body calculatedly forfeits the luxury of reason and rationality and responds immediately for the sake of surviving. For some, when survival is threatened their very first reaction is to freeze. 
I can sense the blackness moving up me now. He is exposing some piece of me I don't want to wrestle with. I begin hoping to disappear. 
My instinct is to freeze, Grave. There is no thought process. Just a response that will kill me outside that door.
Jack, pay attention. Arms, legs, and eyes of stone. Gripped. When that threat finds you Jack, you will freeze. 
I want to fight.
We aren't animals. Our instincts are muddled in our minds. Minds determine instinct for humans. Behind a fighting instinct may be someone who grew up thinking that to get by one must fight. So, one has a predisposition to fight when under threat of extinction or when one simply runs into confrontation. For those who run perhaps they learned that by avoiding confrontation, they too have survived. But those who freeze... it is their fearful doubting mind that educates their instinct. A sense of incapability like you describe. A belief in one's smallness. Doubt. Doubt. Doubt. Like the blackness you falsely believe infects you. It spreads to our heart and our mind so that when we look death in the face we believe we know we will lose. So we don't fight. We don't run. We handicap and paralyze ourself. Human instinct is tied to the mind and your instinct is tied in fear.
How do I become a fighter?
You don't. Fighters fight for better or worse as do runners. If you fight every time you die. If you run every time you forsake those you may need to protect.
I won't survive if I don't fight.
No. You won't survive if you don't kill. You don't have to be a fighter.
What then? What do I have to do? Run?
You will need two things Jack? Two things only. But it not enough to hear them. You have to live them, breathe them, and know that it is these two things coursing your veins. Not blackness.
What are they?
Understanding and faith.
Grave, I don't really believe in God...
No. Listen. 


I'm scared of what he'll say. These two things are what he thinks I'll need, but they are also an offering. A path he is showing me I'll need to walk. My whole has been spent being given opportunities I didn't take for fear that once I did, I would be expected to perform. I didn't do well with expectation so I didn't give people a reason believe in me. I never allowed people to see me, just a watered down version of me I found out people were much more likely to accept than to think anything much about or reject. It wasn't happiness I found in this, just other people's approval and a true self that was buried alive. A buried self that I could hear screaming to be exhumed.
Grave went on. 
Understanding and faith will determine your instinct. You come to a place where you will understand that you, Jack, will die. It may be walking into a hord of the dead. It may be by the living. It may be tomorrow or during old age. You're instincts and thoughts will be predicated not just on a thought, but a belief and an understanding that you are going to die. So, when 50 of them beat down that door they will they evoke an acceptance and understanding of your connection to them. This understanding leaves no room for fear. For the room that fear occupies is not filled with anything. Just dead space. When one fills that void with the understanding that they are undoubtedly going to die the acceptance allows room for potential and capability. There will be no fear of failing. Because hey... what's the worst that could happen?
And faith?
In the light not a darkness inside of you. You can't have delusions about what you can control and what you cannot, but you cannot fear your capabilities. You must have faith in them. To believe you can't walk through a door is to close every door that lies beyond that one door. There is true capability in each of us. That is our light. Fear blackens our light and clouds our thoughts with perceived incapability. That is not real. You have capacity. You have capability. Put you're faith in them.
You mean I have to just believe I can do it?
It can't be superficial. Blind faith is to put your life in the hands of something that will come to control and dictate you. There are the earthly capabilities of you have that thirst for you faith. You think you can't walk out that door and lodge a knife into the skull of another person you are wrong. You can and will. Then there is faith in your capacities that lie beyond earthly understanding and more in you connection with something spiritual. There will come a time when having faith in your capabilities will mean understanding their limits... and getting the hell out of dodge. The understanding and the belief must be real.
How do I.
I pause. I can't grasp it all. I swallow and the stink shoots up my nose as I inhale. You'll never, ever be able to...
How do I get there?
You are there already, but the fear creates a veil blocking your vision. It blocks your understanding and faith. We must dispense with your fear and your darkness. Pick up that hammer and that gasoline. We're going to burn this place down. 

the house across the street I

These days I wake up earlier than I ever have before.  I make instant coffee and sit staring through a crack in the boards that overlook the greenhouses in the front field.  Behind those, perhaps a few hundred yards, the road cuts across and bends lazily to its right and behind some trees.  From my seat by the window i can watch the morning light creep onto and through the little block of gardens and rows of lawn.  The scratching sounds from the basement aren't so audible in this front room; i imagine the thing down there has dragged itself towards the back kitchen-corner of the house.  It's quiet and calm, the cars that once passed by even very early in the morning are no more, and I can sit and pretend that I, and the thing in the basement, are the only things left in the world.
Lately, though, I've started imagining what i'd find in the house i can just make out across the street.  Shelves full of canned food or even dried pasta or fruit, or batteries.  Tarps or have-a-heart traps.  A bigger knife, or more razor blades.  more guns.
A carpet spongy with blood, flies buzzing.  A locked room, tidy, but with a closet full of unmarked video tapes.  White corpses with black hands.  Shit and rotted food and bugs.
It's so far away, and a needless risk, but i'm starting to think I need to go over there and see, so I can come back and sit in the mornings and not have a head filled with dares and imagination.
But first, the basement.

The Scene

Jack

I'm back in the bathroom. Back in this windowless tomb that is the only comfort I can find after I close the door, lock it, and lay on the cold tile floor.

I got out of the bathroom a few days ago. The infected part of me telling to stay put and Grave telling me to come out, eat, and prepare. Prepare to leave the apartment because we are running low on food. You'll never make it. You're pathetic. You are going to die.

Grave told me that he lives in one of the buildings nearby and that it got over run by the dead. That's what he calls them. That was when he found me. He said that he had a family that he watched die. He said he left them without hesitating the second he realized saving them would have meant all of them dying.

Quick, calculated, emotion-free decisions are what will save us, he says. Most of the time you will only have a moment to decide and it is better to calculate and pull the trigger then hesitate for even a moment. Even if that means pulling the trigger on the person you love the most. Do it. Survive. And deal with it later.

He is still sure I am not infected. But fear grips me. I can feel that black stink beneath the surface. I can hear a voice calling my name, tapping his foot and holding my coat for me.  I can smell the stink. It is overwhelming and all the time. It is me, but Grave thinks it’s all these dead.

I just stopped writing to search the web for updates. More and more places aren't updating their sites. One place says government test gone wrong. Another says the virus came from infected birds. One place said that a terrorist group has claimed responsibility. The associated video link shows a bearded man in a cave with a flag behind him. It sounds like it’s just the US and quarantine efforts have been expansive. All these sites say that the president is still alive and meeting with advisers on how to proceed. They recommend heading north to the cold but list protected safe zones. They say these things only seem to be driven by killing and can not survive the cold.

I asked Grave what he thought. He said I'm only worried about that front door and preparing you to handle what's on the other side of it.

I had left this bathroom 3 days ago. I did it because Grave said we are going to have to leave to gather food. He asked if I wanted to live. I told him I thought so. He said I'd have to do better.

He said that the only them that stopped them was destroying the brain. The internet confirmed that. So he showed me how he had killed them. He showed me how to walk around quietly and sneak up on them. He showed me how to stab them in the brain and kill them quietly. He said he couldn't tell if they heard well but knew they saw well enough. I kept telling him that I'm weak and infected. I'd never killed anything. He said it was my life or what was left of theirs. Right now, he said, survival is as good as it gets. You're parents are dead, you're family, you're friends... they're dead. Once we get to the cold it will be about more than surviving. Until then think fast, pull the trigger and never hesitate.

After he said that I went and looked out a crack in boards of one of the windows. I realized I hadn't looked outside. I was so content to let the infection overrun me I didn't even think about it.

What I saw is what made me crawl back into this bathroom.

I saw this old man walk out his front door. He looked sickly and hungry but not infected. He started throwing up and dry heaving. It is the smell. It wasn't the blackness that came up. So I assumed he wasn't infected. He was walking into the street. He was saying something. Crying for help. No. Food. He was hungry. I started panicking. Should I save him? Yell to him? I couldn't open my mouth. You fucking loser. My stomach tightened. Go save him! Do it! You can’t do it. You’re pathetic. You infected gutter of shit. I could feel the darkness crawling inside. Tensing me up. I heaved. I told Grave to come over.

Oh no, I said. Oh God, no. God please, no.

I saw one of the dead. It wondered out from the other side of the street. The man turned to her. It? And started pleading with it. Asking for food. She was naked. Completely naked and young. Maybe late teens early 20s and disturbingly tight and perky. The rain had left a clean shine on her and I remember thinking she may have just gotten out of the shower.  Then I saw her face and her chest. The only stain on her body was the blood being soaked off her mouth. Her neck. Her chest. The deep redness of it was thinning out. She looked so clean. I remember thinking about the juxtaposition of that blood running down her body and the clear clean perfect looking skin just beside it. And she kept marching towards him. Go save him! What is wrong with you? Look at how weak you are. Look at how pathetic you are. You can’t even muster the courage to save that man. Just go back into the bathroom and die. Just go…

We can’t save him. Too risky. We go out. The dead see us. They could swarm us. We don’t know how many are out there. He means nothing.

Grave sounded so sure. My weakness was appeased. I was relieved.

I couldn’t close my eyes. It was pouring rain. The dead sort of stumbled on to him and they both fell to the ground. The old man didn’t brace for the awkward tumble. He just folded. His head smacked the concrete and the dead fell onto its back. The dead rose up. Possessed. It crawled onto the unconscious old man and buried its teeth into his neck. It pulled away, jaw still engaged, and took part of the old man’s neck with it. A flap of skin aching to stay connected stretched off and blood flooded out of the wound. Not in spurts or squirts but a flood.

The dead readjusted herself. Calculated. I don’t even think I blinked. This dead thing then started slowly pushing its hands down on this old man’s soft stomach. It was a gradual pressure led by her nails.  Finally it punctured. I remember thinking how easy it seemed for this lifeless weak dead looking woman to get underneath the surface. Surprised at how corporeal and soft that stomach was. How permeable and vulnerable its, my skin really is. And then heaping fistfuls of innards were shoveled into its mouth. I threw up. It gorged and binged like it had not eaten in days. Parts of this old man’s insides fell off the heaping handfuls back onto him like the food that hits your mouth and falls down from oversized spoonfuls. Rain came down hard onto the scene and spread the thinned blood in every direction from the old man.

He killed him with the bite on the neck and now he’s feasting. That black gaze of emptiness doesn’t look satiated does it? Grave asked.  

It ate and then threw much of it back up. Ate and threw up. Blackness intermingled with flesh.

I fell to my knees. Wept and remember thinking this isn’t possible. This isn’t possible. And as the thought transformed into a whispered repeated mantra I found myself closing the bathroom door. As I did I saw Grave writing things down in a notebook. His eyes skated over to me and then back down. He started talking to himself. I thought maybe he was infected. Then I thought about me being infected. And then I felt the blackness crawl up from my heart. As I started passing out I heard Grave say that tomorrow we will have to kill somebody.

before II

I almost threw up.  I couldn't tune out the sounds and the room felt like it was spinning.  I knew there was someone in that car but i was simply frozen.  Looking back I wish I had done something, yelled or tried to kill that gaunt, white ex-human that was smashing its arm to pieces on the glass of that car.  I simply couldn't function in any other capacity but to run away, put as much distance between it and me as i could.  I have no idea how i managed to get back into the front room and grab my bag and the rest of my stuff, but I know it took me a while to muster up the courage.  I could still hear it banging away, but I ran into that room just the same as if it were right in the kitchen.  Then i went out the back window, crawling through the window and down between the yew and the house, then out, dragging my bag.  I stopped and stood listening, my stomach twisting, head turned.  Then, after an what felt like minutes but was probably seconds, I heard another wet thud and ran for the woods that separated the back yard from the marsh behind the house.  Beyond the marsh: route nine.  And then just a few more miles to the only place I could think of to go.

Grave

Jack Vital


Stay alive, he whispered.


I haven't posted in a while. He took my phone saying I need to rest and worry only about healing. I was too infected to argue. Too weak.


I've been awake for a few hours now but for the past several days I've been in and out of consciousness. Terrible dreams of dark tunnels, Dee, Trevor, my parents, rooms full of blood and shit, and the stink. Oh god the stink. I would wake up to it and will myself back to sleep despite it. Waking up to it was waking up to the blackness that had reined over my life for the past 2 weeks since Trevor died and came back. You should have saved him. You can't do anything right. Pathetic! You actually need someone else to help you live. He'll know you're infected. He'll know...


You're not infected. You would have turned already. You'd be one of the risen. Anyway, you can't spend a spare second thinking of it, he says. 
I'm not even sure of his name.
Grave. My name is Grave.
He leaves some food that he says will help me heal and then walks away.


During these past days when I'd wake up I could feel the blackness inside me. It haunts my sleep with the dreams, my waking life with the stink and with the doubts. I'd wake up to thoughts of how infinitely incapable I am. I'd wake with my senses confused. I'd waiver between feeling as though I was producing the stink, to wondering if I were dead, to being sure I was dead, and then the doubt would incapacitate me.
You loser. You pathetic piece of rotten shit. My stomach would cramp trying to stave off the thoughts. A battle clashing inside me. The blackness versus... something. Me?


I remember thoughts like: you won't get far, you have no idea how to stay alive, you couldn't save Dee or Trevor, you couldn't even open your mouth when that cowboy came in shooting the place. 


The thoughts were somehow unfamiliar but critical in a way that felt familiar. I'd never done anything special. Never been popular or good at my job. I float between inconsequential and completely apathetic. This voice knew that. It would wake me up.
It would tell me to look under my skin and pick at my bullet wound. It wanted the black out, but not to purge it, but display it. I could feel it and I was sick. My stomach would cramp and my mind would fight but I couldn't do it. I'd go pick at my wrists or at the bullet hole. I'd shiver and ask for my mom. I'd shiver and ask to just end it. I'd shiver and bargain with a God I'd never talked to.


But every time I did it seemed that Grave would come in.
You're causing your own suffering. Your body and mind must be healthy. Fight the thoughts and rest.


He'd say that Dee was out of my control. He'd say that in order to survive I must listen to him. He'd say it isn't safe where they are and that we need to head north to the cold. There is light there, he said. 


Grave just came in and asked how I was feeling. He asked me a bunch of questions about how I was feeling physically and mentally. I didn't say much. My stomach hurts from trying to fight off the thoughts and it doesn't leave much fight left for the pain, the tears, or the smell.


So, here I am. Healing. Is anyone out there? What is going on in the world? A lot of sites aren't updated. Grave keeps telling me I shouldn't worry about it right now. It seems like this isn't just happening in Boston. If you have information post it here, please. We need to know the truth.

before

Sometimes I look back on that morning to forget about the scraping sound in the basement here at the farmhouse.  At times I feel safe here despite the sound, but I know I'm not.   My days are numbered.  Back at the beach house I was in a place filled with warm memories: i had always felt safe and happy there before, but i could feel the danger creeping as the days ticked down in that house.  I would pace between the kitchen and tiny living room and all i could think of was getting out.  That morning I woke up early, ready to leave.  I got dressed, crammed a handful of granola in my mouth and was still chewing it when i heard the first thud, just as i slammed my heel into my loosely tied boot.  I looked out the little window of my front door and could just see the emaciated thing smashing its fist into the rear window of a Volvo station wagon parked in the driveway next door.

It's one of the starving, I thought, and I backed away form the window as the next wet whap left a splatter on the now spider webbed safety glass.  Up my spine shot that feeling of unease: it raced through my shoulders and up my neck to the back of my head, and drained down through my legs to weaken my thighs and my knees.  Not just fear, but a breath-catching, eye-watering, stomach churning sense of complete wrongness that was unlike anything I'd ever felt before, alive and squeezing into my thoughts for good.

I heard the third crunch as what i imaged was left of the thing's hand smashed a tiny hole through the glass, but at this point i had grabbed my bag and the pile next to it and retreated back where i had been sleeping, closing the door too loudly, sitting down on the edge of the bed, and squeezing my eyes  shut until they ached.

9.

Jack Vital


You're weak. You're pathetic. All you had to do was get out of the way. You can't even do that right.


A bullet through his brain that must have collected just enough black seepage from Trevor found its way into my arm. The sickness that claimed him has me now. I'm sure of it. What luck, huh?


When Trevor came into the apartment, sick and dying, I thought maybe he would get better. Then I saw his face when he died. Hopeless, frail, and a receptive accepting of his fate. That is what I have. I acceptance this infection. This curse. This blackness.


I keep coughing. That coughing and spitting you do right before you throw up. I'm waiting for that black sewage to come firing out of my insides. But it hasn't come, yet.
It laughs at me.


You're not a fighter. You're a loser. You can't even get infected right. 


I'm tucked, curled in the bathtub. Might as well be the toilet. I haven't eaten in two days and I'm not hungry. Maybe when the curse takes over you there is no hunger for like before. I drink water from the sink. Two days ago my roommate came in, died, woke up, tried to bite me, and was then killed by a man with a gun. That man put a bullet through Trevor that went into me. He's gone now but he left me with a death sentence.


I'm posting on my blog to try and put the truth out there about all of this because the papers can't make up their minds. But right now I just need help. Does anyone know a cure? I don't care if it is anti-biotics or Voodoo. Even something just to help with the smell. It is giving me headaches. I can't get used to it. Please help me.


Just give up.


I keep pinching my veins on the tender underside of my wrist. I want to see the darkness pour out of me. I have scratches from where I've bled but the blood is dark red. I keep thinking that I'm immune. Or maybe the darkness hasn't spread to my wrists yet.


So I start prodding at my bullet wound. Picking at it. Poking at it. Where is it? WHERE is IT!?


While I'm writing this a greenish yellow syrup is draining from the wound. The stitches are undone. It isn't black but its only a matter of time. I feel faint. You piece of shit. If you had one ounce of worth in you the mirror would be broken and you'd stop scratching your wrist and finally slice it.


I keep imaging the different scenarios of me cutting my wrists open. One scenario is Trevor, even though he's died twice now, walking in shortly after. I'd explain to him I didn't mean to. I'd tell him I just wanted to get the blackness out. I'd beg for help as the blood spread across the floor.


The other scenario is that I would watch the living red blood pour out and slowly thicken into black.(My God, the pain coming from my shoulder hurts so much). I'd just slowly watch the blackness come out but I wouldn't die. It would stop filtering out of me and I'd still be alive. And the voice would say...


You can't even kill yourself properly.


Or maybe I just wake up like Trevor. Either way, I'm not brave enough to kill myself. Whatever comes after scares me too much.


I need to get that shit out of me. I poke at the bullet wound. I prod at it. I get the butt end of my tooth brush and dig it in there. When I do it feels numb. Like I'm sponging around inside a stranger looking for something important. It hurt so much I passed out. When I woke up I wanted to be hungry. But hungry for what?


I pass out. I sleep. I wake up. I look for the blackness under my skin. Then I pass out again.


Life just takes you. It wields you and twists you. Then it takes you. The pain is radiating. 


If this moment defined your life Jack, you would forever be known as Jack the Coward. Jack the dickless wonder who poked himself to death. You can't even die well. 


I'm dizzy. My arm near the wound is numb. This bullet hole is bigger and getting bigger. I have this whole in my shoulder, now. A gap that feels and looks sick.


I just keep falling asleep. I'm going to die. I should eat something.


I keep having dreams. Swimming in black water. Trevor chasing me. He is on all floors running like a wile possessed beast. That dead man dressed in black waiting for me at the end of the hallway. Holding my coat for me. Tapping his foot on the ground. Waiting for me to take steps towards him.


Here I come. Here I come.


Then a voice.


Get up, it says. Wake up. It's time to wake up. You need to eat. You need to heal your arm.


And you need to live.

8.

Posted by Jack Vital.


That's it. I'm dead. I'm dying. I'm infected. Cursed. Bound for the unholy undead virus that claimed my roommate before he was re-killed.
The stench that was coming from Trevor and all that black ungodly vomit he spewed all over the apartment is crawling inside me. I can feel the blackness. I'm just waiting. Looking at my veins until I can feel the darkness grip me. I have it. Or I guess... it has me.


First Trevor came home, then he died, then he was awakened, then he came after me, and now he has been delivered from whatever horrible thing took him over. But now my fate is left in the same black wake and that ungodly stink is crawling up my lungs and with each breath further fowling up this tiny bathroom in which I've once again barricaded myself. The only difference now is the bullet holes in the door and my unholy sentencing.
I'm shaking so badly I can barely type the words on this little phone's touch screen.


Help me, please. I'm going to die. Where is help?
No one is coming, Jack. It's over. You're pathetic.
That man, he kicked the door in. I pressed my head against the bathroom door. Then I pressed harder because I heard nothing. He must have turned the corner and saw Trevor. He called out.
You! Speak or you get a fucking a bullet.


Silence. Footsteps.


Then three shots went out. I felt a sting in my arm and the noise was so piercingly loud all my senses went into to shock. The bite in my arm, the noise from the gun, the stink from Trevor, and I reeled backwards falling into the bathtub pulling the shower curtain down with me.
Stupid awkward loser.


The guy must have heard me. He came over the the bathroom door.
Anyone in there? I'm not in the mood to waste rounds but I will plug that bathroom full of hell if you don't answer me.
Pause.
Hello?
My mouth is open but I can't speak. I start to feel liquid sliding down my arm.
The door gets kicked in. I start crying. Out loud.
He looks down at me.
Get up. Get up. C'mon. 
I can't. I fucking can't. I think I'm injured. I'm scared.
He grabbed me and pulled me. He looked at my arm. I looked, too. I couldn't believe it. I'd been shot. Blood was slowly sticking my shirt to my skin.
Sorry kid, we'll fix you up later. We gotta go. No time.


I'm crying uncontrollably. 
Weak.
He laughs.
I can't believe it. I put three bullets you're friend's head, there. How did on of them end up in your arm.
What? What do you mean?
Listen, I'll explain later. We HAVE to go.


No. No. No. No. You think that black shit from the bullet that went through him is in me now? What if...


I couldn't bare the thought.


What if I have what he has. I mean he was bitten. Maybe it spread to him and now it will spread to me.
Kid, you have a bulltet inside you. Nothing else. You want to stay here and die or you want to get the hell out of here?


Oh God. OH GOD! I can feel it. I can feel that black sickness. I'm going to die. Help me. HELP ME!


That's the last thing I remember, was saying that. 


I woke up a few minutes ago. My bullet wound stitched up and a note.


Kill the brain and you kill them. Stay alive, kid.
Signed Mortey


I'm dead. 
Just get it over with. Do it. You want to be one of those?
I'm on the ground now. Curled up with my back to the door. My last ditch effort to survive is just using my body to prevent anything from coming in this tiny bathroom.
Give up. You could have prevented this.


A text comes in on my phone. Dee is dead. My girl friend is dead. I'm dead. Oh God. That black stink is crawling inside me. I can feel it like an army of tapeworms taking me over vein by vein. It will reach by brain.
I'm crying. Calling for help. Quivering. Dee. Dee? Mommy... Mommy?


********


I just woke up again. I must have passed out. I had a dream.


Before that man came and shot Trevor... and me. In the dream I walked out the bathroom door and there was Trevor. It was freezing cold and the stink was worse than ever. He was down a long hallway. He was dressed like the Grim Reaper. Dee was standing next to him and she was one of them. Like Trevor. It looked like she was obeying him.


He didn't have scythe, though. He had my long black winter coat and he was holding it for me. Waiting for me to go over there and stretch my arms into those warm inviting sleeves. 


Instinctively, I turned my back to walk away. When I went to look over my shoulder back at them Trevor had taken his hood off. Then he came after me. Fast as anything I'd ever seen. Coming on at me in a flash with out time for me react. I froze. And just as he came upon me. I woke up.


When I did I remembered watching Trevor die as he said They're coming. 


-Jack Vital

7

I packed a small light backpack full of canned food, my headlamp and my military tent/poncho that i still do not know how to make into a tent.  This was at about five in the evening, and my plan was to set out early in the morning, with the hope of making it to the little farm in one day.  I put the bag by the door and then stood in the middle of the living room for about ten minutes picking up objects, feeling their weight, looking at them sideways and pretending to swing them.  I thought of pulp fiction; i felt foolish.  In the end i settled on a cricket bat i had been given as a birthday present, despite the fact I do not play cricket, back when i was in college.  I had already been sleeping with a mean, sharp cooking knife slid between the mattress and the box-spring of my bed so that the handle was within easy reach.  It had its own little sheath i found in the back of the junk drawer, which i tossed next to the bag by the door.  My Leatherman was still attached to my belt, but i added it to the pile next to the door, creating a physical checklist for myself in the morning.
For dinner i ate the rest of the bread and cheese i'd been saving, washed down with flat Moxie.
I turned my phone on again, checked for service, cursed and turned it off.
I checked every entrance, I swear i did, I did every night; i know because i fall asleep by going through my checklist again and again in my head, locking doors and locking windows and closing shades.  Since everyone left, i guess i'd become a bit nuts.
I didn't get to sleep for hours.

6.

The black shit is seeping through the towel I shoved into the crack at the bottom of the bathroom door. The stench is palpable. I can't seem to get myself to leave this bathroom. It feels like the stink is stuck in my throat. I can't escape it. I try and put my arm to my nose, but it almost smells like my skin is absorbing that black smell.


Trevor won't respond to anything. I keep trying to talk to him, to coax him out of this state he is in. But he just keeps pounding the door.


WHAP.


I'm still stuck in bathroom. Posting here for help and to spread truth. Some of the on-line papers say 'get out of town.' Some say 'stay in you're apartment.' Some are saying there are others like Trevor. Some are saying it is nothing. No one is saying what it is. Every time I try to open the door to get away my gut turns while I slide down the door into the fetal position.


I got a text from my girlfriend's mom that said, "Get here fast Dee is sick bitten hurt bad going to metro hsptl." God. Oh God. I hope Dee is okay. Trevor said he was bitten, too. I should save her. I should go save her.
  
She's dead. I know it. 


Or worse. The hospital may be able to help. I love Dee. We've been together for... for...Oh, shit. I forgot.



I can't concentrate with Trevor banging on the door. It's been almost 12 hours now. My mind and body are shutting down but every time my eyelids close... WHAP and then this liquid squish. I have to assume his arms are cut open from repetition and that flesh is spreading around the door. WHAP, again. Then I wait. Sitting down with my back to the door. Eyes drift close, but I know what's coming. No sleep. WHAP.


When I was a kid I used to read about means of torture. Never performed it, just studied it. I thought about the kind of people that are strong enough to live through the suffering or possibly die without giving in and the people that cave. I thought about the torturer's pursuit of crippling the tortured's mind and body by dragging them through the depths of pain and hell until their face to face with their end. Kneading them into submission. And I thought about the tortured's pursuit to endure, live, or die. Secret safe. Those two forces driving into one another. Battling.


I always wondered how I'd respond and that's what fascinated me. In the face of unconscionable pain and inevitability our resolve is tested. My response, I always thought, would be the person I really am inside. Not someone I feel I have come to know very well.


One method of torture was called Chinese Water Torture. You can read more about it here. The basic idea is that someone is strapped down to a bed such that they are completely immobile. Slowly, and in random intervals water drips onto the subjet's forehead. Some would have you believe that after a long enough time the water creates a cavern in your head causing brain damage. But the truth is that this was a psychological form of suffering, not a physical one. 


See, the torture wasn't the actual drops, but the time in between them. At first you think it will stop, then you hope it will stop, and then you pray it will. Then another drop falls. There would be no escape from the inevitability of that next drop and you had no idea when it was coming. Eventually you come to learn there is no stopping that next drop from falling. In the face of that you loose your mind... or you endure.


WHAP... another rap at the door.


In between those drops there was a truth that you were forced to look straight in to as you lay there tied down. And in the face of that truth you acknoledge it or you crumble. A truth that, in life, we go to great lengths to avoid so much as the line of thinking. And spend most of our lives avoiding and denying the end of that line. Then there would be another drop. It was coming. All you could do is wait. There would be no break long enough to escape the reality of the situation. In between those drops, in between these smashes at the door, is my mortality. And the very second I get the luxury of my mind running away with a thought that's to do with anything but what comes next...


WHAP... another rap at the door. And another is coming. I don't think I can stop...


HOLY SHIT! Someone is knocking at the door. The other door. The front door. He says he has a gun. He wants to know if anyone is in here. 


Oh God.


I'm talking to Trevor now. I'm telling him to snap out of it. I'm telling him this guy says he has a gun. He says if anyone comes after him he'll shoot 'em. I can help you Trevor. I can make this go away. Trevor, this guy is going to kill you. You can't go after him. Trevor? Trevor?


Shit, he kicked in the door.

5

I’m calling it my basement because I’ve been here eight days now, and I haven’t seen any other people. I picked most of the vegetables outside in the main garden over the first few days, and they’re starting to be pickable again. This old farmhouse was a business once, but that was before. There weren’t too many people up here to begin with, so there aren’t too many dead people around. There is enough jarred and canned veggies to last a while, and I’ve boarded up the windows and installed makeshift slides of four by four posts from the lumber pile out back on all the doors, as they had no locks before. I think the generator outside must be hooked to the big fuel tank, so I think if I need power I can get it, I haven't tried it. The nights are hard, but I put extra boards across the bedroom I sleep in and try not to make too much noise. In fact I’m always quiet; I think they can hear better than they can see, but I can’t prove that and I don’t want to try to prove it. People who run experiments die.

4

When the news and everyone in the neighborhood started losing their minds I locked up and waited. I watched from my second floor bathroom window as they packed cars full to bursting with stuff they would never need and then tie more stuff they would never need to the roofs. It took days before the last of them lumbered down the one road that ran along the beach and out to route nine. It was nearing the end of summer, and some days there was a lot of traffic along that road; cars overheating and arguments between men in shirts they had sweated through, flower patterns darker from the moisture, sticking to their backs and their bellies. There was thievery and fighting, teenagers delegated by their parents to find anything useful roved from empty beach cottage to empty mc-mansion trashing what they didn’t take and being praised for the retrieval of a can of beans or a battery powered radio. Nonetheless, when they walked by my place, knowing I was in there, it was as if they reverted back to early summer, before the panic and chaos. They never even knocked.

I heard them talk about Montreal, or Boston, or places I’d never heard of. They talked with that bright sheen in their eyes, eyebrows raised, gesticulating towards the road, sweating, normally calm hair a wild, spiky mess; they looked insane, sounded lost and, in my opinion, all acted suicidal.

Soon it was as if there had never been a happy little beach community here at all. After a few days my food started to run low and I knew this place had been too populous to be a place to stay. I knew I had to move, and I had only one idea of where I needed to go.

3.

You're out there. I knew someone would find me here. Please keep posting. I need to know what is going on. I need help. I've barricaded myself in my bathroom and my roommate is still trying to get in.


I'm posting on the blog from my phone. It's been 8 hours and help still isn't here. Trevor hasn't stopped pounding on the door. I get the feeling his arms are starting bruise, or chafe, or ware down. Every time his arm hits the door there is a squishy sound like the open flesh of a wound being fingered around. It is slow and methodic. Maddening. Not enough force to knock it through. He throws up every few hours. How much of him is in there to throw up? Either way, their can't be much left of Trevor inside there.


The black liquid crawled under the door so I jammed a towel into the crevice at the bottom of the door. The towel is getting soaked through. My God, it smells awful.


Is this happening anywhere else? Do you have any information? I don't see anything on the news or online other than here.


Oh my God. OH MY GOD. I just got a text from my girlfriend's mom. It reads "Get here fast Dee is sick bitten hurt bad going to Metro hsptl"

2

There’s a dead woman in my basement. I can hear her down there when I stop working, scratching with her arm or her leg in the dirt of the dirt floor. Sometimes I have to stop working and walk over to the nailed shut door and press my ear against it and listen, and listen, until the soft sound gets louder. I press my ear harder against the door, or switch ears, or sometimes I get down on my hands and knees and listen at the crack at the bottom.

Listening makes my hands shake and my eyes tear, but I have to listen because I think the sound is getting closer. I hear it now in the dining room, where I never heard it before.

When the sun comes up in the morning I rip the board I nail across my door every night off with my hammer, then I go downstairs and listen and count the scratches, or try to hum at the same pitch as yesterday to see if I can hear them when yesterday I couldn’t. I think about ripping the board off the basement door too, and I scheme ways to get it bright down there so I can see her. But then I picture her gaunt face, lipless, grinning up and still moving and scraping, as I know she is down there. I never rip the board off, in fact I’ve nailed up three more.

Sometimes I think about packing my things and setting the place on fire, and walking out the front door onto the porch and never hearing the sound again. I’d be dead in days if I did that, I think, so I’m staying here and dealing.

1.

I'm alone. 


I'm alive, I'm alone, and my friend who is banging at the door died 20 minutes ago.


I have no idea what to do. I'm scared. All that blood. Black blood crawling under his skin and then purging out. It looked like a road map of veins inking its way up to his head before he threw up blood all over our apartment. It seemed like gallons of it swimming out of him. Black blood and guts. His black bile insides. It smelled putrid, instantly. 


This all happened after he had walked through our door desperately palming a neck wound. He said he was bitten. Then he died. I'm sure that he was dead. His heart stopped. That's when his veins turned black from the inside out. 


At least I'm sure that I thought he was dead. I'm sure I did not feel a pulse. Whether he died or no, I suppose I'm unsure. Seeing as he is outside our bathroom door right now and I'm stuck inside. Right before he went or changed I heard him say,


They're coming. 


I'd only seen one dead body before today. Some homeless guy early one morning didn't make it through the night. I only remember one thing about how he looked. His eyes were open and there was nothing to them. Nothing behind them and certainly they were not recognizing anything in front of them. They weren't recording anything. Just reels that once witnessed and now spin and spin and spin. 


When Trevor, my roommate woke up, he had black eyes. That black blood found its way. Those eyes had no more life than the those of that homeless dead man I saw. But he was awake. Awakened and seemed to be drawn to me, though you wouldn't know by his eyes. The empty reels were spinning behind them. But slowly he drew towards me. Clamping those teeth at me. He walked slow and I couldn't stop him from coming after me. 


He repelled me. I retreated. Then he threw up so more. Black insides liquefied and dying to get out of him. My eyes watered from the smell. He paced reaching out and I fell into the bathroom. Laying on my back, it was all I could do to kick the door shut and cry while I held off his attempts to get in with my outstretched legs. 


I called the cops. Busy. Busy? Parents aren't answering and neither is my girlfriend. The lines seem to be all tied up. I just get an unholy automated woman saying sorry she can't put my call through. But what she is really saying is "you're alone and there is no one coming to help you."


I tried sending some texts and they went through, but I thought the best thing I could do was post on my blog. Someone will see it and they will send help. I'm warding off Trevor's relentless attempts to get through the door with my legs. I'm scared to death and I'm writing for help. I'm too scared to move. Please come.


Are you out there?


Jack