Fire on the Mountain (Sequel to Sinking!)

[perfectlemonade]

Author's Note: Well people, a lot sure has changed since that day almost a year ago now when I was reading through some of the stories in this forum and decided to see if I could use my love of creative writing on the forum. I toiled with the idea for weeks, but finally came back to a short story I wrote for English a while back. The assignment? To write a fictionalization of something that you did over summer break. Naturally, I chose the last thing to happen to me that summer: a cruise to Bermuda in mid-August. The story featured a zombie outbreak on the ship and the entirety of the story was just that prologue. Well, I came back to it and added a first chapter. Then a second. And then it was 10 chapters long. Just like that. And it was, in my opinion, one of the best things I've ever written, even though it was too long to be considered a short story and too short to be a novel (not a good thing in book terms).

I knew there would be a sequel about halfway through writing it. I knew I couldn't leave Daniel and Emily at just 81 pages. I knew I had to make them endure even more zombie hell on land. And that is where this story comes in. So without further ado, I present...

Fire on the Mountain

One

112 Days After First Infection

It’s the same thing every time.

     We stare at each other, and I am overtaken by this paralyzing despair. But she doesn’t feel it. She wants me to die. I think she does, at least. The virus does. I am pretty sure of that.

     In this dream, my mother pounces and we collide and she claws at my skin; I feel the infection seep into me. And then her teeth are in my neck and like some animal she moans because my flesh is the greatest thing that she’s ever tasted. Her friends come to join her and I feel teeth and fingers all over me. Then there is nothing. There is no Emily. Davidson is still screaming but I’m not. I’m dead. That’s weird.

     Then why do I die every single night?

     After that, I slowly realize where I am. That one horror has been swapped for another. That my mother does not exist anymore. And I’m stuck on this base with my father while he goes around prepping for nuclear holocaust or whatever the hell he does. I have no friends here, and Emily is even worse off than me but at least we have each other. And Colin. That kid. He’s quieter now. He doesn’t have a PSP.

     Every night, I turn on the lamp and slowly get out of bed. It’s only 3:22. I don’t go back to sleep after I wake up from the dream. I would rather walk around in a haze for my entire life and have a heart attack at age 35 than endure that same dream twice in one night.

     And every night, I wonder if maybe being infected isn’t so bad after all.

     And usually that’s the end of it. A new day begins with my mind locked up by the Xanax, some kind of chemical shield protecting it from the memories of the cruise ship. I sit in bed, humming to myself. Or I watch TV. Or I take a shower so long the water becomes icy cold and goosebumps explode across my legs and arms.

     Instead, there’s a knock at the door. I stare at the slate of wood and I am pretty sure I wonder about the human need for privacy, and we would go so far as to cut down trees just so we could do embarrassing stuff in peace, but the Xanax blocks out the thought. Or the memory of the thought. I don’t know. It’s not a selective shield. It doesn’t just block out the terrible memories, but everything.

     We should start calling it that and then the door opens and it’s Emily.

     I remember the look of pure, sweet relief on her face when I told her she could stay with us and when I kissed her on the ship and every kiss we’ve shared since and our promises and the fear of having to start school once the new semester starts but at least knowing that I’ll have her with me and although we’ll both be basket cases, at least we can be basket cases together. As a couple.

     “Hey Daniel.”

     She laughs and gives me a little smile, but as she steps into the lamplight and takes a seat on the foot of my bed, I can see that her eyes are puffy and red and her face is scarred by tears. It’s one of those nights. Where she’s just so horrified and so broken about what happened with her family and with everything that she can’t sleep. And she just cries.

     But I can’t imagine anything right now. The Xanax gets in the way of that.

     “Yeah,” she answers, crawling under the covers with me. I smell her. The smell breaks the shield some and I think just how incredible it is and how incredible she is, but the shield quickly recovers and I’m a zombie again. She sniffles. “Bad dream?”

     “Sorry,” she says.

     Emily touches my face. “I do, Daniel. I always feel horrible—always—but you make me feel less horrible.” That’s our relationship. Making us feel less horrible about our lives.

She kisses me and we get into it and then she tugs away.

     “No, I get it,” I reply, trying to sound confident and not hurt by it or anything. “You have a lot on your mind.”

     “It’s really no big deal, Emily.” I take hold of her hand and with the other, turn on the TV with the remote. It’s late night CNN. Or early morning.

     The anger.

     The shield shatters into a million pieces.

     But it got out. Something survived.

     I check the clock. Chill, Daniel. Chill. 5:31. In twenty-nine minutes, my father will wake. He will know. He will know what’s going on, and he can give me the straight up truth. And I can know what’s to come. What I will see, what I will have to do, again.

     She doesn’t squeeze back.

“What the fuck is this?”

     “What did you just say, Daniel?”

     Dad sets his coffee down on the **** please report this topic, post **** counter. This entire house is horrible. The same piss-yellow walls. The smell: cheap disinfectant. There’s only health food in the fridge and just three bedrooms. Emily has to sleep on the couch because Dad wouldn’t let me give her my bed.

     There is no home for me now.

     So this is not home.

     My mind is still picking up the pieces of the chemical shield in the car ride over to the Fort Bragg Command Center, his ‘workplace’. Dad’s car, a ten-year-old Mercedes, smells like sweat and cigarette smoke. It makes me dizzy to be in it for too long.

     The bullethole in her forehead.

     “Correct. But the CDC lacks the manpower to properly control this disease. That’s where we come in. We’re the ones that actually combat the infected, these so-called ‘zombies’. We’re the ones that protect the country. Our people. The CDC just looks for a cure or vaccine and sets the protocols on how to handle the infected.”

     My father turns onto a secluded drive, leafless Japanese cherry trees lining the median. At the end of the road, a large office-like building reaches ten stories into the sky. I can make out the letters on the face of the building against the dull overcast: Fort Bragg Command Center. “Because Daniel,” he says. “You’re going to help make the protocol.”

     Sometimes I am jealous of Emily.

     But then I think of the bad nights, like the one she had last night. And then I feel like crap because I’m a selfish person for thinking that, but I can’t help it.

     That’s my first thought as I take a seat before the long conference table, right next to my dad. I’m surrounded by men dressed in top of the line suits and officer uniforms, all staring at me like I’m a lunatic or wedding crasher or something.

     “Gentlemen,” Dad greets as soon as everyone is settled in. Mumbles in reply. The conference room is horribly stereotypical. Boring, beige walls. The table stacked with papers and laptops and iPads. A screen on the far wall for conference calls and Powerpoints. And the smell—coffee. Old coffee.

     Take me home now.

     “Well, Mr. Secretary, this is my son. He was one of only thirty-three survivors of the Magnificence of the Seas incident. And since we have been called here together today to discuss the possible containment of this new virus, I thought Daniel should be here. He knows better than anyone what these things are capable of, and how to stop them.” He pats me on the shoulder. Like he’s proud that I survived a zombie outbreak or something. “Am I right?”

     Everyone looks at me like I’m crazy. “But, General, don’t you think it’s a little drastic to drag a… kid here? To this meeting?” I try to identify the speaker, but everyone here is mono-ethnic.

     “But he’s already told us everything—”

     No one says anything after that. My father smiles, proud of himself. “Okay, good,” he continues. “The folks from the CDC, what do you have for us?”

     The next slide shows a grotesque picture of a mutilated, deformed zombie being dissected by men in orange biohazard suits. I can make out ‘CDC’ on one of the helmets. “Infected seem to be incredibly resilient creatures. We discovered this one, Subject 1Z, alive and well, 14,000 feet down at the wreck of the Magnificence of the Seas. The fact that one of these things survived at phenomenal pressures is a testimony to the sheer resilience of the virus. The only way to dispatch of an infected, in our experience, is to inflict critical trauma upon the brain. All toxins—excluding extremely corrosive acids and very powerful neurotoxins—seem to be useless against the undead. Fire does little to its wet skin. Electricity, however, has been deduced to be extremely efficient against the infected, as their weakened nervous systems are particularly susceptible to even very low voltages. Trauma to the heart, lungs, liver, and stomach, on the other hand, seems to not affect the undead. However, since infected still require fuel—specifically human flesh—one could argue a devastating blow to the stomach could, over time, kill one of them, essentially ensuring that they would starve to death. We are assuming Subject 1Z only survived as long as it did due to the fact it had a full stomach when the ship was scuttled. Next slide.”

     “Mr. Carper, what do you have to say about this?”

     “I said,” the CDC guy says. “What do you think of all this?”

     No. That would be wrong. I’m going to be a part of something that could save this country, that could save humanity, even if for just a little while. I have to give it my all. I can’t be the apathetic shell of my former self that relies on Xanax to just get out of bed in the morning.

     Not anymore.

     “Some of us will survive. And we need to know how to live after that. For one, every killed zombie—zulu, infected, whatever you want to call it—must be destroyed. Burn it, blow it up, melt it… whatever. But anything that comes in contact with an infected individual, dead or alive, sentient or not, must cease to exist. No exceptions.

     “Then there’s the common sense stuff.”

     “Daniel,” Dad says. “Explain to us what the ‘common sense stuff’ is. We want to write the protocol on handling a full-blown pandemic. We have to cover everything. Can you help us with that?”

     I’m on the title page. My name. Forever imprinted into humanity. When this shit hits home—and it will—I will, hopefully, have made a difference. Hopefully, I will save at least one life. That would make this entire thing, going back to the ship, worthwhile.

     But the Carper Protocol will help. Every city with a population of over 50,000 will now have a relief center stacked with food and water that can last them two months. A presidential speech will be given to explain the public of the situation. Flyers will be posted on every street corner.

     I can kill them.

     My mother. So, so sick.

     The door opens behind us. Dad strolls through, closing his umbrella. Microscopic droplets of frozen water slide off the slick surface of the umbrella. I look at him. He understands what I’m asking. Can I tell her? He shrugs and sulks off to bed.

     Deep breath. The Xanax beckons.

     “What happened?” she repeats.

     Her eyes widen. “Public? But don’t you think that’s… not good? Everyone is going to flip.”

     She doesn’t say anything after that. And I can’t really blame her. It’s traumatic and it sucks and it’s unfair and we’re probably going to die, but we have to at least give ourselves a chance. Tomorrow, before Dad goes to ‘work’, he’s sitting us all down and telling us the plan. Where to go in case of an outbreak. Where the guns are kept. How to defend ourselves, though I don’t think we particularly need that.”

     The breathing. Panic attack.

     Emptiness.

113 Days After First Infection

I’m on my last pill by the end of the night. I’ve taken so much some would call it ‘abuse’ or a ‘suicide attempt’, but it’s not that. I have to have it. To function. Taking 8 pills in one night isn’t a suicide attempt—it’s the only thing keeping me alive. Because I’m sure if I didn’t have it to guard me from the echoing moans of undead bouncing around inside my mind, I’d certainly abuse them and I’d certainly want to end my life.

     “Hey bud.”

     He says, “What do you need? I’m in a meeting.”

     “Her name is Dr. Rumline.”

     He’s quiet for a while. “Daniel, you just got it refilled two weeks ago. I don’t think they’ll let you get some more this soon.”

     He says, “I don’t know if I can allow that, Daniel. How do I know that you’re not… abusing it? That you’re not giving it to Emily?”

     “Then what, Daniel?”

     His breathing is heavy on the other end of the line. I can tell that I hurt him. But he’s hurt me. We have no one and he doesn’t care. How can I be expected to respect him when he’s all but abandoned us?

     My hand twitches and I throw the receiver across the **** please report this topic, post ****. It shatters a glass cabinet and Emily yelps from the couch and I am having trouble even forming thoughts. But it’s not from the crumbling chemical shield encompassing my mind. It’s the rage, the blinding anger at everything. It’s the hopelessness. I just want to kill something. I want to kill something innocent.

     8:52.

Emily’s hand is in mine and Colin is kicking a rock in front of us. He’s got this smile on his face that tells me this is one of the few moments where he can escape this whole mess. Where he can be a kid, free of the chains he was bound to at the ship.

     I haven’t seen my friends in months.

     After… I knew I could never befriend those people I knew at school again. They sent me ‘get well soon’ cards and such. They left me encouraging posts on my Facebook wall. They tweeted me. They texted me. From what I could hear, I was a certified badass at school. I guess I still am. There were rumors that it wasn’t pirates that took down the ship, but actually zombies, and I’m some zombie hunter. They thought that was cool.

     Emily and I haven’t been back to the movies since then.

     “What do you mean?”

     There’s a voice in my gut that’s telling me something else, though. I can take it. I know I can.

     I’m Daniel Carper, Sr.

     “It’s okay, Dan Dan.” That’s what she calls me sometimes. Dan Dan. It makes me feel like a moonshiner or something, but I can’t to help some when she says it. “I know there’s a storm coming,” she says. “But we survived once, and we’ll do it again.”

     I turn around to face my father. His cold eyes are tinged with red. I’m not sure if it’s from the cold or crying. “I think we need to talk, Dad.”

     My father takes a seat in his chair. The Dad Chair. Every family has one. The chair—usually a Lay-Z-Boy—that the father of the family has reclined in so much that his scent is interwoven with the fabric on a molecular level. I shut off the TV. We both start talking at the same time, and then stop five words in.

     I take a deep breath and nod. Emily squeezes my hand. That gives me a little jolt of confidence. “Dad, we need you. These things… they change you. They make you into something you’re not. And that person terrifies me. Mom isn’t here to help me through it anymore. But you are. I need you. Colin needs you. All of my life, you’ve put us second. And now more than ever, we need you to lose that. We need you to put us first. So when everything changes, and trust me, it will, we’ll be together and maybe, just maybe, we can all get out of this alive.”

     “I think that transitions nicely into what I was going to say, Daniel.” He laughs, and we all feel obligated to laugh as well. “Because, well, our conversation on the phone today made me think. And I think that I have been a pretty crummy dad to you and Colin and a bad host to our guest, Emily. But the thing is, and I hate excuses, but the thing is I never had a dad growing up. He died when I was just five-years-old. I don’t remember much about him. So I don’t have much to go by. And I always tried to do things with you and Colin, but at the same time, I had to take care of myself. Your mother and I’s marriage was always kind of rocky and it caused me a lot of stress. And I coped with that by drowning myself in my work. But that came with a cost: missing out on almost all of my sons’ lives. And for that, Daniel and Colin, I am so, so sorry.

     Colin rushes him and they share a beautiful hug and then I’m hugging him too and Emily escapes upstairs. There are a lot of ‘I love you’s’ and whatnot and eventually Dad ushers Colin to his bedroom and tucks him in for the night and it’s just incredible. Dad strolls back down the stairs. We hug again and sit back down.

     “It’s okay, Dad. I forgive you.”

     My father stands up, wipes of his uniform. Goes to his bedroom. It’s so quiet I hear him shut off the light.

     I make coffee. Emily is watching a Christmas show on TV, even though Christmas is still over two weeks away. I never understood the logic behind these programs. There is no variety. Just the same thing every single year.

     “When what’s going to happen?”

     I gulp. “What?”

     “Shit.” It hurts, to know that something like this is coming, that it’s unavoidable, and you can’t do a thing about it. The best thing we can do is prepare ourselves for the worst.

     I feel faint and take a seat, sipping on coffee. Whatever these people think this will become, just another flu or Chicken Pox, they are so, so wrong. It will be the worst thing this world has ever seen.

     She doesn’t answer. It’s not like I expected her to.

     I squeeze Emily’s hand as the president clears his throat and begins his speech. The low murmur of reporters instantaneously ceases when Obama begins, creating this eerie silence in the room. The CNN logo spins around in circles at the lower right hand corner of the screen.

     Gasps, followed by ‘shushes’ from officials. Obama remains quiet as the noise dies down. “Now,” he begins. “We have kept you in the dark for a lot of this. But I believe—and none of this is on the script—that it’s time everyone knew just what’s going on here.

     “That’s why I’m telling you this, my fellow Americans. We cannot take this lightly, as some fantastical thing that will never affect you, because it will. It will, and we will not be prepared. This cannot happen. So I am issuing the Carper Protocol, named after one of only thirty-three survivors of the Magnificence of the Seas. In accordance with the Carper Protocol, martial law will be declared. Food and gasoline will be rationed. You will only have a certain amount of water per day. Community relief centers will be set up. You can get your own copy of the Carper Protocol at your community center, which will be named following this broadcast. Thank you, and have a safe night.”

     It feels weird, hearing it from him. On the TV. It feels weird to know that other people are acknowledging it, that something bad is happening, and everyone knows now. Think of the apocalypse cults. Riots.

     “What the hell?” I say under my breath. Emily and I share this horrible look. Everything is going to change.

     “What are we going to do?” she asks me, expecting a response. I have none but she deserves one. She deserves to be given reassurance.

     Emily doesn’t look convinced. I know that trying to tell her this hasn’t achieved much. It’s confusing. Everything. Is just confusing.

     It was supposed to have ended on the cruise ship. When De Luca’s gun was pointed at my face and I got out of it. Instead, it’s only gotten worse. And it will get worse.

     “I can’t do this, Emily.” I can’t. I can’t do this. “I’m going to bed.”

     It will be my father this time. Or Colin. Or Emily. It won’t be my mother. It will be someone else. I think it will be everyone else but me, because they are out to get me, they hate me for surviving and they’ll make me suffer for it. They’ll take everyone I’ve ever cared about until I’m the only one that’s left—hopelessly alone—and then, finally, they’ll take me. They’ll take me and…

     I’m visiting Dr. Sunshine today.

     The shield shatters when I enter her office. It’s the smell. It overpowers everything because I recognize it as a place of both stress and peace, evoking such powerful emotions and increases in brain chemicals that the Xanax has no choice but to retreat into the depths of my mind.

     NPR is on and they’re talking about the outbreak in Texas. I don’t get it. It’s NPR. They’re not supposed to talk about shit like that.

     20,000. I gulp. So many. So, so many.

     Dad turns down the radio. I look at him, this horrible look in my eyes and it’s hopeless. It’s just hopeless. I don’t even know why we’re here. We should be at home, preparing for the shit to hit the fan, for everything to come tumbling down. I should be enjoying my last couple days of freedom, of this life, but deep down I know I couldn’t care less about ‘this life’. I hate ‘this life’. I hate being safe. I hate not having the constant threat of death looming over my head. I need it like we all need air and water and food. I need to have something worth living for—maybe Emily, maybe excitement, a change in the schedule—and if I don’t, I’ll wither into the snow and melt.

     I told her that back in October, when I first started seeing her. She wanted to commit me to a ward.

     “You told me what, Daniel?” There are dark bags under her eyes. She is just as freaked out as the rest of us.

     Dr. Sunshine sips on her coffee. She flattens out her dress. Tic-Tacs rattle in her pockets. “I had good reason to think that, Daniel. Before the outbreak in Mexico, the idea of the dead coming back to life as soulless mutants was fantastical. All the signs pointed towards the sinking of the ship being so traumatic that your mind made up a new story to make it seem less than it really was.”

     “Maybe so.”

     And I can’t do it anymore. I can’t stay in this box that smells like cheap cinnamon candles and I can’t look at this woman’s smile and I can’t talk out my problems. I can’t. When the undead show up at my front door, there will not be any talking out my problems. There will be blood and death and fire and it will be Hell.

     I need to face this.

     I’m overtaken by this urge to go there. To feel it again. To feel the chaos consume me, drag me down and become one with it. I want it. I want chaos.

     I dodge cars and screaming pedestrians. There are sedans parked in bushes and Cadillacs boxing each other in. An elderly man is slumped at the wheel of his truck, the windshield bashed in. The snow below is stained red.

     I don’t know what I’m doing here. Will I loot this store like everyone else has? No. I don’t think I will. I just needed to see it. I needed to see the desolation with my own eyes. I needed to see what we have been rendered as: Sheep trapped in a pin. Cows being swept into the butcher’s knife.

     It wasn’t her. It was just a shell of her. It was just the absolute minimum of what she was expected of. She loved us, but she didn’t love us. It wasn’t true.

     And now she’s at the bottom of the ocean.

     There’s this guy that’s yelling at me. He’s a soldier and his eyes are angry and he’s spilled his bag of imperishable food because of me. Because he ran into me.

     I stand up and I punch him. He cries out, wraps his leg around my torso, and spins me around so that I’m immobile and he has me wrapped up like a spider encasing its prey in its web. He slams my head against the pavement and the snow doesn’t do much to cushion the impact. It leaves me dazed but I squeeze out of his grasp, somehow, and I lay another punch on him before a cop tackles me. I feel cold metal digging into my wrists and a click. I don’t know what’s going on. He lifts me up and all but drags me to his car. There’s a slow trickle of blood running down my forehead; I can tell because it stings my eyes. Then he slams the door without reading me my Miranda rights.

     Ha. I just got curbstomped.

     I wonder if they will infect the suburbs and then Emily and Colin and Dad will either die or join them.

     Jail.

     There’s a screeching of breaks against the ice and asphalt. Through the haze, I can make out a figure lying in the street. It’s still and I can see that its clothes are ripped. I’ve seen enough dead bodies to know what it is. A wave of nausea overpowers me, and maybe it’s that I’m concussed, but I vomit all over that cop’s interior. He yells at me but I can’t really make it out

     The end of the world has begun.

     “What’s your name?”

     “What happened?”

     “What hurts?”

     “Are you eighteen?”

     “Do you have a legal guardian—”

     That’s when the silence hits me. I look up, blinking out my eyes to adjust to the light. Through the old steel bars, I can see, clear as day, that my worst fears are confirmed. It’s deserted. The ‘waiting room’ for being put in your cell is devoid of life. There’s no one. Nothing. The news is on the TV and the anchor is talking in a hurried, frantic voice. Like she wants to go home.

     It’s happening.

     Maybe it got into the water. Maybe someone stowed away an infected and brought it down here, looking for some miracle cure that does not exist. I don’t know. But I know they’re here. I know they are.

     I can’t get the image out of my head. It excites me. It makes me crave blood again. And I’m a killer. I want gore. I want death.

     People. They’re not the arms of undead. They’re other inmates.

     I back myself into my cot. It bangs against the wall, rattling the entire room and making this horrible sound.

     Deep breath. My head is ringing but I can think. “Attract who?” It’s basically rhetorical though.

     I sit back down on my cot. This is all happening too fast. I’m in a jail—more specifically, a freaking tiny ass jail cell with no food or water and inmates all around me with only a dozen or so steel bars for protection—and there are zombies outside. I know there are. I can feel death hanging in the air like a storm. It’s horrible. It’s so, so horrible.

     Then the moans.

     They’re here.

[richlands24]

Dude, this is awesome. I can't wait for more of this, bro. :D

[MyLittleHellhound]

Oh. 'dis gun be good! :twisted:

[perfectlemonade]

Chapter Three is up ;)

[unlawfully inacurate]

What happened? Hard drive crash again?

[perfectlemonade]

What happened? Hard drive crash again?

No I just gave up lol. It was getting virtually no response.

I could start up again if I had some people willing to read it, but at the moment I have other, bigger projects going on.

[bad karma]

What happened? Hard drive crash again?

No I just gave up lol. It was getting virtually no response.

I could start up again if I had some people willing to read it, but at the moment I have other, bigger projects going on.

I. MUST. HAVE. THE REST.

Please? :)

[unlawfully inacurate]

Yes, Please! But when you're not so busy with other projects.

[perfectlemonade]

Yes, Please! But when you're not so busy with other projects.

I'm working on getting a real book published. Maybe when I have that out of the way...

But, for now, I need to focus on myself. Maybe sometime later! :D