Apocalypse: The Savior with System

1 To the South

“Paul Justin's? Is that you, Paul?”

Six feet tall towering over most of the passengers even seated and hunched with possibly fifty other people towards the back of the steel railcar, Paul Justinos looked to his left and saw an eager face by the dim light of the sparse LED fixtures above them. That face belonged to a man not much older than he was; a face that already bore the signs of Phase 3 infection.

“Richard Taft? Ricky?” Paul asked just to be sure. The man nodded keenly. He held out a hand to shake Paul’s, thought about it again, and returned his bandaged hand back to his side. Ricky Taft was a captain in the Marine Corps. They graduated West Point together though they had never been friends. Just a few years after graduation, possibly owing to the fact that Ricky was the son of a three-star general, Ricky was given command of his own company earlier than usual and sent to Virginia. Paul was promoted a year after to captaincy, too, but was deployed urgently to Pakistan to aid the Pakistani allies against the hordes of Phase 5 infected—zombies, in common talk.

There he picked up the infection he has been carrying now for three years.

How strange that while Ricky stayed within the borders of the United States of America all their commissioned lives, he looked in far worse condition than Paul did at the moment. Especially since the new strain, a faster-acting one had only been discovered inside the country a few weeks back.

Ricky stood and pushed his way nearer to Paul, sidestepping a young lady who was doubled over her knees and coughing violently. “Good to see you, man! I mean, I didn’t expect to see a friendly face here of all places,” Ricky said with a grin, all facial fat from their West Point years replaced by hollows and angry, red, blistered skin.

“Same here,” Paul replied with as much cheer as he could under the circumstances. He shifted a little to make space for Ricky between himself and the coughing lady, who was now joined by several other voices, a coughing and hacking choir.

Grim music, if there ever was one, Paul thought grimly.

“Caught mine in Seattle last year during an R&R,” Ricky shared, which meant Paul would have to share what he could of his infection history.

“Pakistan, three years ago,” Paul said vaguely, not wanting to be reminded how and why he got infected in the first place. His commanding officers had reprimanded him heavily and called him anything from “stupid” to having a “Messianic complex”.

Ricky’s eyebrows shot up. “The horde from the north? You were there? Jesus! A miracle you made it out.”

“Yeah, best to think of it that way,” Paul said with his own uncertain grin. In a surer tone, he asked, “Not to be an ass but you look Phase 3, Ricky. How come?”

Ricky sighed and shook his head. “Beats me, Paul. And beats others, too. I don’t know where else you’ve been after Pakistan but if you didn’t know yet, the new strain hasn’t been here too long.”  Looking about him furtively, Ricky bent closer to Paul. “Rumour is that the new strain came from our shores. Not Central Asia, not China, not Russia. Here. And they’re developing a vaccine for this new strain but there are some shady things going on. You know how it is with the suits.” Suits being their go-to term for politicians and bureaucrats.

Like the Interim Government will ever admit to that being true, Paul thought. He was not ready to believe Ricky at face value either. Something niggled at the back of his mind, like a memory of something but he could not remember what it was. It certainly had something to do with the infection but whatever that something was escaped him.

“Well, wherever that s**t virus came from doesn’t really matter much now, does it?” Ricky said glumly, raising his soiled bandaged hands. Ricky did not yet smell like animal carcass but based on what Paul knew of the new strain, it was not going to be too long before Ricky reached Phase 5.

Paul laid an arm across Ricky’s emaciated shoulders and gently gripped him in a manly side hug. “Cheer up, Captain Taft! You do know we’re heading to the South, right? Where the UCL Hospitals are all located and where the best doctors in America are.”

“Houston?”

“Right!” Paul chirped. “Well, as far as I know, advanced cases or those Phase 3 and above are sent to either Dallas or Houston. I’m headed for Dallas. You?”

Ricky looked confused, which made Paul confused.

“It’s on your Patient Identification Card,” Paul supplied. Ricky still looked confused.

“I don’t have a card but I did get a tattoo a week ago before they told me I was to head south,” Ricky said, showing him a row of small numbers in blackish green ink on his left forearm. “Some guy in a hazmat suit scanned my arm like I was a canned good from Walmart at the terminal. You didn’t get one, did you?”

Paul summoned enough strength to smile and shake his head. “It probably depends on the quarantine facility that housed you. They’re pretty much ancient there in Los Angeles.” But Paul knew, just like in Pakistan, why it made a difference whether you had the card or the tattoo instead.

Because cards enabled you to pass through scanners and security gates into the treatment facilities. A tattoo is a mere identification…for those about to be sent to the ocean where saltwater abounds, the only earthly matter the virus and those who’ve gone past Phase 5 and turned into a full zombie cannot tolerate.

And then wet, they are hauled into the large furnaces the interim government built along the shores of the nation, where the salted zombies burn until not even ash remained.

Ricky was not getting treatment but extermination.

A final solution.

Without thinking, Paul grabbed Ricky once again and gave him another side hug but kept his arm around his shoulders.

“Hey, man, what’s with all the hugging?” Ricky wheezed in panic. “You’re probably not even Phase 2, you should not be touching me! Hell, I shouldn’t even have come over here!”

“’ S’okay, man! I just missed an old friend,” Paul said to the back of the head of the man in front of him. “You don’t mind a little bromance, do you?”

Ricky laughed and ended up having a coughing fit. Still, Paul held the other man close.

“No, I don’t mind at all, Captain Justin's,” Ricky coughed out, hiding from Paul the streaks of blood on his bandages. “Don’t take this the wrong way but I’m a little relieved I saw a familiar face. It’s been a hard year, you know?”

Paul nodded, shifting seats with Ricky so he could help the young lady with his other arm as her pillow. He noticed her head lolling every which way, obviously too asleep or too exhausted to care from her nearly fifteen-minutes of dry, hacking cough a while ago. She started when he placed his other arm around her and tugged her to his side. She didn’t fight him, however, and let her body lean on Paul’s.

At Ricky’s teasing look, Paul asked, “What? She didn’t look comfortable looking like a soggy Raggedy Anne doll. Besides—“

Images of a young woman not unlike this one and a little boy rose in his mind. The smell of cumin and coriander mixed with the metallic tang of iron in blood…the sound of chanting in an ancient language mixed in with the crying and screaming fits of those in the throes of Phase 5 transformation…him running to the ocean and scrambling to reach the giant furnace…to reach his wife and son who had the tattoos…

If only he had not taken them with him to Pakistan…if only he had refused Amita’s help as translator…if only he had not gotten her pregnant…

His commanding officers were right. He was stupid. And he was no real Messiah.

“You’ve always been a right kind of gentle bastard, Paul,” remarked Ricky, leaning on Paul’s other side and not picking up on Paul’s sudden tension. “I’d have let you marry my sister but she’s gone now. Mom, Dad, George. Everyone’s gone now.” Ricky yawned and promptly fell asleep. Paul understood. He knew how energy-consuming a few seconds of coughing could be. He’d seen it first-hand. He’d suffered watching it in the people he loved.

The common nickname of “sufferer” did apply to him, he realized not without a little humor, though mostly with regret.

“Go to sleep, brother,” Paul whispered. “You’re safe with me.” The railcar was now completely silent save for the rumble of the iron wheels on the iron tracks. It was like a lullaby that not even Paul was immune to. Whether it was night or day outside, Paul had no idea, as the railcar windows were painted black and boarded shut. All he knew was they were moving south and he could still be treated.

That was what he was told anyway.

He yawned and leaned against the wall. Closing his eyes he muttered, “Not everyone’s gone, man. I’m still here.” Yawn.

I’m still here.

~~~~~

Paul was in the middle of a hazy dream when he was suddenly jerked awake.

Well, him and the rest of the passengers, as the train suddenly jerked to a full stop. Sounds of muttering and cursing carried to him to the back of the railcar. He longed to stretch his muscles after several hours of sitting in one position, afraid that shifting would wake up Ricky and the lady whose name he never knew.

The train stops woke them both up anyway.

“How long have I been asleep?” Ricky said, yawning. “Sorry for the inconvenience, Paul, and thanks.”

“No problem, Ricky,” Paul said. He turned to the young lady but found her coughing violently again. Since she didn’t seem to be ready to talk, he turned to Ricky. “How are you feeling?”

“Not as bad as before you offered your arm as a pillow,” Ricky said sheepishly. “But, really, you didn’t have t—Woah!”

The railcar suddenly began shaking and seizing as people became more fully awake and alert now. Several women shrieked in surprise, a few children began to cry. Someone cursed vilely in Spanish. The shaking stopped but only for a few seconds and it started again, becoming more and more violent.

“Is it storming outside?” someone asked in the dark.

Nobody could tell, really. Save for the sound of the wheels on the iron tracks when they were moving, no sound came in from the outside, and no light either. The LED lights inside the railcar were all about to go out.

“Engine trouble, maybe,” Paul said. He blinked the sleep from his eyes and tried to check on his system, which malfunctioned every once in a while. He did not know whether it was because of the infection or not. Since a week ago, the navigation was a bit off—okay, very off. He tapped on it several times until it lit up properly. But when it did, it only showed a static-ridden display of a map that he couldn’t see clearly anyway. He must have banged himself somewhere or whatever.

“Maybe we’ve arrived at a terminal,” Ricky hedged. “Anytime those hazmat guys and the guards will be opening the door.”

The door did open, Paul saw. But it was more than just seeing a sliver of daylight coming into the rapidly sliding door.

It was the smell. Congealed blood. Putrid, fetid, and rotten.

And then the screaming coming from the front of the car.

Paul was not given a chance to stand because the rush of too many bodies overwhelmed him as they all scrambled, screaming and crying, as far away from what entered the train as possible. Based on the smell and the terror, he knew already.

Zombies.

He was trapped beneath the crowd, with someone using his head as a pedestal to come to safer ground. In a closed space stalked by zombies, there was no safe ground.

“We’re going to die here!” someone screamed. Or, everyone screamed.

“Paul! Paul!”

“Ricky! I’m here!”

“Paul!”

In an instant, he thought he might have seen Ricky pushing against people using Paul as a stepladder until something really heavy and painful rammed against the back of his head.

The last thing Paul saw before the world turned dark was Ricky rushing towards him, a frantic expression on his face, his mouth open in a scream rendered silent by the chaos around them.

And then, nothingness.