F-Zombie Read online



  F-Zombies

  Jason thornton

  Copyright 2013 by Jason Thornton

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  F-Zombies

  Copyright © 2013 JASON R. THORNTON

  “Grandpa, tell us about the f-zombies.” Little Nick was four years old. They taught about f-zombies in school, but usually not until the fifth grade, because as the school board likes to say, “It scares the hell out of the kids.” For Grandpa, Mike Evers, that's exactly what needed to happen, and at a lot younger age, like 2.

  It was still early in the evening, so there was plenty of time to tell Little Nick and his older brother Todd about f-zombies....

  “I'm never sure when it became 'official' to call them f-zombies. I'm not even sure when it was OK to call them zombies. At first they were called 'Victims of The Nile Corpse Virus'. Someone in the government or the media shortened that, thinking they were being intelligent and wise, to the Victims of NCV or VNCV. For about a week they tried referring to them as Vincent V's.

  I'm not sure who starting using the word 'f-zombie', though the term seemed to fit. There's not one officially recognized source for the 'f' in f-zombie, but each explanation for it is pretty much true.

  One thing that they are is fastidious. What that means is that tidy up after themselves, which means they look like everyone else. No blood drippings from their chins, skin hanging loose off their face, no white eyeballs or the stench of rotted flesh. If your best friend was a well fed f-zombie and was sitting in that chair on the other side of the room, yeah that chair with your stuffed teddy bear, you wouldn't have any idea at all. They tied their shoes, buttoned their shirts and combed their hair.

  Fooled us real good. That's another 'f', 'fooled' because they looked so much like everyone else. We liked to say they'd pull a 'fast one' on you. That's where they fool you and it's also how so many people got bitten.

  There was also the name 'festies', cause they'd show up at parties. 'Feisties' because they'd get real agitated if you found out they were an f-zombie and didn't treat them exactly like you had before they were infected. There was the name 'Falsies', cause they were just 'false'. Last one I can remember was 'feasties', cause they were coming to eat you.

  I worked in an office when the plague started. Some tedious government job entering information about some group of people in order to make reports about how to better manage that group of people. I don't think there was any purpose to it, but I can't complain since it was putting food on my table and kept a roof over my head.

  But that is what I was doing when the plague started. Nothing special or memorable.

  I remember the first person in the office that was infected, Charlene. She liked to go out to the bars every night for entertainment. That's probably where she was bitgen. She came back to the office the next day, all pretty, cheerful, waving and saying hello. Yes, she said “hello”, all bright and cheery, like she always said it. She had everyone fooled. She bit her boss and two more people before someone figured out what was going on. Bob, our boss, was walking around the office with his usual coffee cup, a huge blood stain on the back of his shirt collar and completely oblivious that he'd been bitten.

  That was another scary thing about f-zombies. You didn't know when you'd been bitten.

  We hog tied Charlene with that clear packing tape. She laughed and giggled when we started, but then she went crazy. She was screaming, thrashing and trying to bite us. Once we got here taped up and threw a trash can over her head, our Human Resource Equal Opportunity Representative, Laura Lee, decided to make a visit to the office. She was besides herself with anger when she saw what we'd done to Charlene. She took the trash can off Charlene and got bit right in the face. Oblivious to the blood gushing down her face, she continued to berate our inhumane treatment of Charlene for another 5 minutes while trying to free her from the packing tape. After 5 minutes, she grew frustrated with it and physically dragged Charlene to the elevators.

  15 minutes later we got an e-mail from the head of Humans Resources about the proper treatment of Victims of the Nile Corpse Virus (VNCV) for short. We were to notify our supervisor immediately (the one with the bloody shirt collar) and provide the VNCV with all the dignity we would afford to our uninfected colleges. Half of us thought it was the most hilarious joke ever, while the other half were completely incensed by the naivety of our leadership.

  Charlene was able to bite 5 more employees thanks to Laura Lee's rescue; 3 in the elevator and 2 in Laura Lee's work area.

  We never heard from Laura Lee again. When the police arrived to hear her complaints against us, they saw that she'd been bitten by Charlene. They took her, Charlene and 8 others to the quarantine camps. There were still quarantine camps in the beginning. We could've stopped the infection back then, but people were still treating the infected like normal victims of a plague.

  Life got weird after our first taste of the infection. We tried to keep working and going about our normal lives. It wasn't too hard to keep the infected at an arms length in the beginning. We used simple tricks in the beginning to help identify them. Simple things like greeting a person and having them spell a word, or performing a weird hand gesture that had no basis in logic, but would totally differentiate infected from non-infected.

  But then they learned. Yeah, they freaking learned. They weren't perfect and spelling usually caught them, but they'd catch on and totally fool you with their responses. I remember I did a spectacularly complex hand gesture when I greeted an old friend. He said to me with a grin, “Oh, that's a good one. Now watch this,” and proceeded to make an impressive set of hand gestures that look remarkably like a butterfly caught in the breeze. I asked if he'd like to stop for a drink at the bar and he said, “Awesome.” It wasn't until I was ordering a pitcher of beer and the bartender chucked a bottle over my head that I'd realized my mistake. My life long buddy was six inches away from taking a chunk of flesh out of the back of my neck.

  He was just staring at me with a grin on his face and blood dripping down his forehead. The bartender handed me a good sized roofing hammer, which I promptly buried in my old friend's skull.

  Yeah, that reminds me of something else. F-zombies are a little different than movie zombies. Shooting them in the head doesn't kill them. It'll drop them to the floor and make them stupid, but it won't kill them. The only thing that will kill an F-Zombie is starvation...and a starving f-zombie is a scary thing to see.

  That's when it got bad. We learned that they learned and we took even more precautions to stay safe. Pretty soon, every one was walking down the street with some sort of protection. Head to foot protection like fully equipped football and hockey players. There were shark suits, modern combat armor and home made contraptions made out of anything and everthing from cardboard and carpets, to stainless steel cookware. The f-zombies wore it too, of course they were too dumb to realize you can't bite a victim if you're wearing a football helmet.

  But like I said, that's when things got bad, cause the f-zombies started starving. They weren't eating in the quarantine camps cause they'd only eat people and no one was going to feed them people, and they weren't eating in the streets cause we were walking around like middle age knights in armor.

  They were starving an
d that's when f-zombies get scary. A starving f-zombie starts to degenerate. They have to have human flesh to regenerate injuries and look fresh. The flesh of a starving zombies starts to sag and look bruised. Sometimes it will rot, other times it will turn to leather. Their eyes will do the same, either rot or turn opaque black They smell ten times worse.

  A starving f-zombie is a lot more aggressive and savage. They won't try to fool you anymore, but will straight out charge and attack you. I'm not sure which I hated more, the charge or the sneak attack. At least when they'd reached the aggressive stage we were better prepared, but we weren't.

  They starting attacking in swarms, overpowering whole neighborhoods and some cities. The quarantine zones were only effective until the infected began swarming. Their zones fell within a day once the swarms started.

  When the swarms came through my neighborhood, I hid up in my attic. Somehow they figured out I was hiding in the house and busted in. They tore through the doors and windows like butter. Then they started thrashing on the walls and furniture until there was nothing left but the lumber of the house frames and the roof. They even busted down into the crawlspace.

  For an hour they stared upward, too stupid to figure out that the wood frame of the house was keeping me safe. Then one of my neighbors busted loose from his hiding spot and took off running. The f-zombies gave chase as best they could. After they left I didn't see another major swarm pass through, just an occasional roamer.

  I waited up in the attic a good week before coming down to scavenge for food and water. They were few enough that I could avoid them or take them out individually. If I separated the head from the bodies they couldn't feed themselves any more. A starving zombie starts to fall apart fast, faster than the uninfected dead. Even the leather ones that you'd think were well preserved would start cracking and turning to powder. The flesh separates from the bones and they become immobile. They're not dead yet, but they're not moving around anymore. Then they just fall apart and turn to dust within a month or two. Just gone. It's weird, so many piles of clothing from where the infected fell throughout the world. Us old timers, we'll still walk around a pile of clothes on the floor. It still creeps us out and makes us nervous.

  I met your grandmother in the weeks after the hordes tore through my house and neighborhood. She looked like a tan grizzly bear. She'd made a protective suit out of carpet that covered her from head to toe. Darn good armor too. Not too heavy, but it would stop any f-zombie bite. It wasn't any heavier or hotter than the collection of football, hockey and army equipment I was wearing. We watched each other for a week before making contact. You could never be too careful. I'd even seen a fresh f-zombie in armor kill a rotting f-zombie. I figured he'd seen me or someone else do it and was just mimicking us to get in close. Too bad he was missing the entire back side of his armor suit. His bare butt was swinging in the wind when he ambled up to me and said “hi.” I said hi to him and moved away. He followed. I hacked his head off.

  Your grandmother and I took our time getting to know each other. We'd have 20 minutes conversations together, but we still weren't sure if one or the other was infected. Paranoia dies hard.

  Eventually we started scavenging together and clearing the neighborhood of any wandering f-zombies, and then we starting sharing a large sturdy house. We slept in separate rooms, just in case the other was just a REALLY convincing f-zombie.

  Three months after we saw the last f-zombie, she kissed me. The rest will be in your school books. Now go to bed before anyone finds out I told you about the f-zombies.”

  Little Nick smiled and reached out to give his grandfather a hug good night. As he did so, he clacked his teeth together. Grandpa Mike back handed poor little Nick and sent him flying off of his bed and onto the floor. While little Nick lay dazed on the ground, his grandfather pulled out an old leather wallet and flipped his ID card at his grandson.

  “I hope you can read little Nick, your life depends upon it.”