The Fall of Man - Chapter One

The Fall of Man

by Timm Rees

CHAPTER ONE

    The clock radio changed from 9:59 to 10:00 and turned on.

    “..01.7 where we play no less than 46 minutes of hit music every hour.  Rocking Detroit 24 hours a day!  It's April 23rd and at the tone the time will be ten o' clock AM..... BEEP!  Now we'll send you over to Kathleen McMillen for the top of the hour news update.  Kathleen?

    “Thanks, Jim.  The Center for Disease Control has released their recommendations for the Human Re...”

    A hand reached out from the bed next to the radio and shut it off.  Rick Thompson slowly sat up, wiped the sleep from his eyes and stretched.  He looked to the empty spot next to him.  No surprise there.  Becky always got up early.  Some days she got up three or four hours before him.  She was so kind to just let him sleep.  He swung his legs over the side of the bed, grimaced a little as his naked feet hit the cold floor and headed off to find his wife.

    As he headed down the steps, the sound of the living room television came into range.  The news anchor was relaying a story about another new virus that was spreading across the country.  Ricked pushed this news from his mind.

    “Same old stories, everyday,” he said to himself.  “ First it was Mad Cow Disease.  Then it was Bird Flu.  Then it was Swine Flu.  Now it's another one.”  He smiled to himself.  “Nothing ever came of any of them.  Nothing will come of this one.”

    He found Rebecca when he reached the bottom of the stairs.  He saw her out the front door, in the yard, weeding the garden.  He opened the front door and called out to her.

    “Hey baby.”

    She looked up from her work.  She had dirt smeared on both her cheeks.  Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun, with loose strands of deep brown hair straggling in every direction.  She smiled the same smile she always gave him.  The smile that said, “I love you,” without having to say a word.  He didn't understand it.  He certainly didn't feel like he deserved her.  He was a good enough husband, but she was the absolute best wife he could have imagined.

    “Looking good,” he told her.

    She looked up and smiled again.  “Please,” she said.  “I'm a mess.  When I'm done, I'll clean up and look good for you later.” 

    “I was talking about the garden.”  He chuckled as he spoke.  “But you're looking good too.”

    Her smile grew even brighter.

    “I'm going to get a cup of coffee,” he said, “then I'll come out and give you a hand.”

    Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a teenage boy walking up the street towards them.  He looked up to examine the boy closer.  The boy was dressed in baggy jeans and a purple and black flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off.  He wore fingerless gloves on his hands.  He was the type of kid that drove Rick crazy.  He let out a judgmental scoff and went back in the house for his coffee.

    He thought about the boy while he was pouring his coffee.  Something was bothering him about that boy.  The way he was dressed, obviously, but something else...  He thought harder as he took his first sip, then it came to him.  The boy was walking with a severe limp.  Was he hurt?  Did he need some help?

    He set his coffee down and headed for the front door again.  That's when he heard it; the sound that would be forever singed into his memory.  He heard the ear curdling scream of his wife.  Now he ran towards the front door and threw it open.  He was met with the sight of the boy hunched over his wife's body.  The deafening sound of the door crashing against the side of the house caught the boy's attention and he looked up at Rick.

    Rick took in the sight, trying desperately to make his brain compute what his eyes were trying to tell it.  The boy had blood dripping from his mouth.  The blood was.... the blood belonged to his wife.  She was lying beneath the boy, gasping for air.  She was missing a chunk of her neck, her blood was spilling out into her freshly weeded garden.

    After what felt like 5 minutes of trying to comprehend this scene, he called out to the boy.

    “Hey!” He screamed.  “What are you doing?”

    The boy looked at him, but at the same time, seemed to look through him.  His eyes were glossy and lifeless.  His hair was matted and his shirt was soaked in blood.  He was bleeding from a wound in his own neck that practically matched the fresh wound he had just given Becky.  He issued a deep, guttural growl and rose from his perch on top of Becky.  Now, he began to stagger towards Rick.

    “What are you doing,” he asked again.  He reached over and grabbed a shovel that  Becky had left leaning against the side of the house.  He lifted it with both hands and pointed it at the boy, now no more than ten feet away from him.  He wanted nothing more than to go to his wife, right now, but he had to deal with her attacker first. 

    “Stay back,” he told the boy in the most severe tone he could muster.  “I don't want to hurt you, but I will.”  He wasn't good at this tough guy stuff, but all he cared about right now was that his wife was lying on the ground, dying and he could do nothing about it until he either subdued or scared away this deranged teenager.

    The boy continued to stagger closer.  At this close range, Rick could now see that the boy's eyes more clearly.  The boy was looking directly at him, but his eyes were wide and unblinking.  The boy's bared teeth were stained red.  His skin was the palest white Rick had ever seen.  Rick knew that some kids liked to look as if they were dead, but this kid took it to a new extreme.

    The boy was now just out of arms reach from Rick.  Feeling as if he had no choice and angry at the fact that he still was not at his wife's side, he reeled back and swung the shovel directly at the boys head.  It made contact with a sickening thud.  To Rick's amazement, the boy's head detached from his body and fell to the ground.  Blood and gore sprayed in every direction.  The boy's decapitated body stood for a split second and then tumbled to the ground in a lifeless heap.  The head hit the ground a moment later and rolled to a stop, a good ten feet from Rick and what was left of the boy.  Its lifeless eyes still wide open and looking directly at Rick.

    In shock, Rick let the shovel slip from his grip.  For a moment, he forgot about his wife.  The sound of her gasping for breath brought him back to reality.  He went to her.

    “Baby?” he said, as he cradled her head in his hands.  He looked into her eyes and he knew, without a doubt that she was dying.  “Baby, stay with me.”  He began to cry. 

    As he held her head in his hands, her breathing began to slow.  She looked him directly in the eyes, and tried to say something.  She couldn't speak.

    “Don't,” he sobbed.  “Don't try to talk.”

    She stared deeply into his eyes and she did the only thing she ever needed to do for him.  She gave him that smile.  The one that made him fall in love with her in the first place.

    He matched her gaze and tried to muster up a smile of his own.  “I love you too,” he said, and as he pulled her close to his heaving chest, she issued her last breath.

    “I love you too.”   

The Fall of Man - Prologue

    

The Fall of Man

by Timm Rees

PROLOGUE

    He sat in the same spot he had been sitting for the past three hours, deep in thought.  He spent a lot of time deep in thought lately.  Nothing better to do.

    He let his eyes wander around the room, taking in the same scene he had taken in countless times over the past.... How long had it been?  He examined the calender hanging on the wall to his left; July 6th.  He had come down here on April 23rd.  Two and a half months.

    He let his eyes continue along the wall.  On top of a bookshelf there was a picture.  He had turned it face down some time ago, but he didn't need it to be facing him to see it.  He could see it perfectly in his mind's eye.  His wife stood there, looking beautiful with her long flowing brown hair.  Her eyes were the deepest brown he had ever seen.  A perfect smile adorned her face.  She wore a light blue dress.  He stood next to her, wearing a dress shirt of the same light blue, looking sheepish.  He remembered the day they took that picture and he knew exactly why he had the silly look on his face.  He was preoccupied with the fact that he was so lucky to have married her.  He couldn't believe such a wonderful woman would even consider having him as a husband.

    Below the picture, the bookshelf was lined with books.  He scanned the titles, not expecting to find anything new.  War and Peace; read it.  Pride and prejudice; read it twice, as it was his wife's favorite book.  Five Little House on the Prairie books; he had read all of them.  Finally, on the bottom shelf, stood three Bibles, some kind of Bible Dictionary and two Bible Commentaries.  He had not brought himself to read those particular books yet.  He had convinced himself to crack open the Bible that his wife had given him as a wedding gift.  It lay before him, opened to the book of Hebrews.  He had read  it, been spurned by it....  He hated that book.

    He let his eyes wander upwards to the television.  The television stations had gone off the air about two months ago.  He remembered the last few weeks of their existence well.  24 hour news coverage of the outbreak.  At the time that the last station went black, there was still very little known about the virus.  No news of the outbreak's origin.  No thorough explanation of symptoms.  No known cure.

    The familiar pains of hunger hit him.  His stomach growled a feeble and pointless growl, knowing that food was not forthcoming.  The steady diet of water, canned corn, green beans, fruit cocktail and crushed pineapple was not sustaining him well.  He looked to the cupboard were he had been keeping the food.  He had a dozen or so bottles of water, a can of fruit cocktail and a can of green beans left.

    His mind wandered from the food to the outside world.  He knew nothing of it anymore.  All he knew now was this basement.  His only possessions were the turned down picture, the books, the television that doesn't work, the radio that gets no signal, the water, the fruit cocktail and the green beans.  He could only imagine what it looked like.  He imagined it was desolate.  By now, the streets must be filled with infected, incoherently stumbling around.

    “No,” he thought.  He had to think of something else.  The more he thought about what it might look like out there, the crazier he felt.  He redirected his thoughts towards his wife.  He thought about what a happy life they had been building together.  He thought about the pregnant glow that people always talked about and how she truly had that glow.

    Then he thought about how she looked the day she died.  She actually mustered a smile as she lay in his arms, a gaping wound in her neck.  She couldn't speak, but her smile said what her words could not.  It told him how much she loved him.  She always had.  She was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

    Now he thought about the next time he had held her in his arms.  The neck wound was still there, but now there was a new wound.  A bullet wound, directly through the center of her forehead.  

    With this thought, he shed a tear.  It rolled down his cheek, off his chin, and dropped with a deafening splash onto the open page of the Bible before him.  He looked down and read were the tear had landed.

    “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”

    “Lies,” he said aloud.  He wanted so badly to believe the words he read in this book.  His wife did, but in the last three months, he had watched his wife die not once, but twice.

    ..Or perhaps she had only died once.  Maybe the virus was God's judgment on mankind.  Maybe that wasn't truly her that he held the second time.  But she was a good person.  She went to church.  She 

tried every week to drag him along with her.  She believed in Jesus Christ.  God wouldn't have inflicted this judgment on her.  Why her?  Why not him?

    “No,” he said.  “There is no God.  If there was a God, He wouldn't have allowed this to happen to her.”  He shed another tear. And another.  “If there was a God, He wouldn't have taken her from me.”  Now he began to sob.  “If there were a God, He wouldn't allow zom....”  The word came to the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't speak it aloud.  He wiped his tears on his blood stained sleeve, swallowed hard and then spat it out.

    “...ZOMBIES!”