Alpha-8

     As the make shift family of survivors sat down to eat, Norma gave the blessing.  Their dinner consisted of generic canned meat, some canned green beans and sticks of beef-jerky.  Though it wasn’t the most ideal food for a dinner, it was something that the survivors had become used to.  As always, Robert sat at the head of the table, considered a father figure by the group with Norma to his right.  Andrew sat at the opposite end of the table from Robert with James to his right.  Sarah sat next to James and Mark sat across the table next to Norma.  This was their family, whether they liked it or not.  It wasn’t initially easy to get along, they had their problems like any other family, but this is what was now familiar to them.

         As they sat and ate Andrew stared at his food, clearly something was bothering him.  “Son, are you alright, you don’t seem your usual self tonight?” asked Robert.  Andrew wasn’t sure what was going through his mind at that moment.  All this talk of Jason made him truly question the reality of this man and his existence.  Andrew knew that the group could not stay in the safe house forever.  He understood that at some point they would be depleting their resources and have to move on to another area.  “Guys, I don’t know what’s going on lately, but I think we should plan on taking a trip to somewhere else.  We may find some other survivors and a better living arrangement.”  The group looked at him quietly digesting their food and the thought of leaving their place of comfort.  For awhile now this place had become a home to them, the safest home they could hope for in a long time.  They knew that leaving the safe house was a terrible risk, but they also understood what Andrew was saying.  “I think that maybe we should draw up some sort of a plan”, said James to the group.  Robert nodded his head.  “We have to consider what we should take with us and what we can afford to leave behind.  If we go of course,” added Robert.  “This isn’t something that I would bring up if I didn’t think it was for the better of the group.  I don’t want to be the one forcing anyone to do anything though”.  Andrew knew deep down that he was a leader, the group looked to him for answers and guidance.  He didn’t want to take advantage of his friends though, and always thought it best to get a consensus from everyone even if he didn’t always follow their suggestions.

         While deliberating their options one of the trip alarms from outside was set off proceeded by a loud animalistic scream.  The group knew it was a walker.  Andrew had set up fishing line attached to a set of Christmas sleigh bells.  The bells were positioned inside the safe house, while the fishing line was set about the outside perimeter of the house.  If the bells rang it meant that something was disturbing the line, often times a stray animal could set off the alarm but it was never to be assumed that it was only an animal.

         Andrew scooted back from his chair at the table and methodically walked to the gun locker.  He examined his options for weapons and decided a .22 rifle may be the best weapon.  A .22 wasn’t too loud so it wouldn’t attract attention and it could impact the brain of a walker deep enough to shut it down.  As Andrew loaded the gun Robert and James took up their assigned posts as well.  Robert was to watch the back entrance through the peek holes built into the door while James would climb the service ladder in the store room and make way to the roof of the building to scout any walkers from up high.

         Andrew walked to the front of the safe house and listened outside for movement.  He could hear shuffling around on the street, like the sound of feet scraping on the ground.  Most walkers didn’t move very fast, though he had seen some that could get up to semi-running speed.  Andrew lifted the board that was hinged over the front window.  He moved it slightly left to give him only enough room to see without being seen.  The night was still young but the moon shone enough to be able to see well in front of him.  He would be able to make out any movement amongst the dark backdrop of the city in front of the safe house.  Just as Andrew thought, it was a walker about 50 feet from the front door of the building.  It was shambling around in a twisted semi-circle looking for sustenance.  It was dressed in what appeared to be a suit and tie, something not too fancy, like what a traveling salesman would wear.  It’s left arm was missing completely and it’s face had decomposed to expose the majority of it’s skull.  The only thing that remained in-tact on it’s face were the eyes.  The eyes of the walkers were always a light blue color.  The early reports of the Event called the virus Syrafax Indigo, named aptly after the first reported case years before.  Now, standing before Andrew and his family was the cause of the effect of a strain of various illness.  As Andrew closed his peep hole and made his way to the front door, Robert banged on the roof of the safe house indicating that there were more walkers than just the one.  The men of the house had decided on a code system to warn each other of possible threats without yelling or being too loud.  Banging on the roof of the house could not be heard too far from outside.  Andrew knew that the next set of stomps on the roof would indicate just how many walkers Robert was seeing.  Stomp, stomp, stomp…three walkers.  What Andrew didn’t know was if Robert was counting the one that he had seen as well.  Just as Andrew began to assess the new situation he heard two stomps from the back where James was watching out.  Shortly after the two stomps, three additional ones proceeded.  Six walkers, give or take one.  This was more than the family had seen in a very long time.  After a few months, the undead seemed to just make their way out of the suburban area and into a more populated city zone.  It was unusual for them to be back out here, maybe they had picked up a scent, or maybe the group had just gone out on too many scavenging missions recently.

         Andrew ran to the dining area and asked Sarah to stand his post at the front door so that he could climb the ladder and meet with Robert on top of the roof.  When topside, Andrew crouched his way to Robert and looked down the horizon.  Robert pointed out the first walker, which was the one that Andrew had seen from the front door then he pointed to the other two he had seen.  None of the walkers were keen on their position, but it seemed that something had definitely drawn them to that place.  Andrew made his way to the back of the roof close to the back door where James was stationed.  He could see the three walkers that James had stomped but a movement to his left caught the corner of his eye.  He turned to see what appeared to be three additional figures about 200 feet away from their house, walking aimlessly down the sidewalk chasing something that had caught their attention.  Quite perplexed by this sudden attack on the safe house Andrew mustered the entire family inside the and around the table they were previously enjoying their meal at.  “Alright, nobody panic.  It’s been a long time since we have been visited by any of these slack-bodied freaks around here, but I don’t believe in coincidence.  This feeling that I have been having for awhile finally makes sense.”  “I am not sure I understand Andrew,” said Sarah beginning to shake.  “We have everything we need here, all the safety all the food”.  “It’s been a good place, for a good long time”, Andrew looked Sarah in the eyes.  “I know how much this place has meant to all of us”, Andrew retorted as he scanned the room looking at the wide eyes of his makeshift family.  “I don’t say this with an easy conscience but we have to go.”  James gripped Sarah’s hand as she held Mark against herself.  Norma looked to Robert for approval and Andrew looked at each of them with the most sincere and caring eyes one could possess.  “When do you want to move?” asked James.  Without hesitation or the blinking of an eye the words that came out of Andrew’s mouth surprised even him, the fore-thinking man of planning and action.  “We go now”.

Alpha-7

    It was cold outside and Sam had a terrible infection.  On his way home from work at Compro he had stopped by the local coffee shop to grab a quick warm drink and be on his way.  He had some spare change in his pocket and walked his way over to one of Cleveland's many homeless.  Bending at the waist to drop a few cents into the man's cup was the last thing he remembered.  Days later Sam awoke at the hospital to find his wife and son waiting for him.

   As his eyes opened the light of the treatment room blinded him temporarily.  Seeing his family next to him he was comforted.  The doctors told them that Sam could be released, he was tested for rabies or any type of contagious disease and was medically cleared.  The swelling from the bite mark on Sam's right hand was still dominant and caught the eye even if you weren't looking for it but the nurse told Sam that it should go down soon, and that he was allowed to go home.

   Three months later Sam lay on the floor of his kitchen, part of a broken broom handle lodged into his skull.  Sarah tried to calm Mark down.  He sat next to his father's body deliriously shaking from shock, blood pooling it's way into Mark's socks.  At seven years old Mark was not in any way prepared to watch his mother insert a wooden stick into his father's head.  Tears rolled down his face from his eyes but he didn't make a single whimper, he just sat there clutching his knees to his chest staring at what was once his dad.

   "Mark, I need you to listen to me".  Sarah was pulling together all the strength she could to not react in the same manner as her son.  "That was not Daddy okay?  He became one of them sweetie, he wasn't going after you for who you are.  He wanted what you are."  Mark nodded his head in some semblance of understanding.  "Your father loved you very much baby.  That infection made him like all those others you see on TV, but we are okay you and I.  Mommy's not going to let anything happen to you alright?"  "Okay" was all that Mark could muster, but Sarah knew he understood.  "Listen Mark, we have to move your father's body out of here.  In a few days it's going to get bad and we don't need it any worse".  Mark wiped his eyes and stood up, he looked to his mother for the next set of instructions.  "Why don't you go watch some TV honey, Mommy's going to take care of this, just go relax."  Mark agreed and walked to the couch, curling up under a blanket.  He didn't turn on the TV, he didn't want to.  All he wanted to do was to go someplace else in his mind.


   Sarah took a sheet from the linen closet of their apartment and covered her husbands body.  She then grabbed a set of dish washing gloves from the kitchen and walked back over to Sam's covered body.  Carefully she tucked the sheet underneath him and rolled him over to his back.  She then tied the sheet over his front and began to drag the body to the front door.  The apartment they lived in was not a very large one, Sam's job paid well enough to cover the cost and Sarah would work random jobs as a Temp but they made things work.  Struggling with all of her strength Sarah pulled Sam across the kitchen and into the living room towards the front door leaving a trail of blood behind following her path.  "Mark, I'm going to bring this outside, I want you to lock the door as soon as I leave and don't open it for anyone but me do you understand?"  Mark nodded and crawled off of the couch.  As soon as Sarah was outside into the apartment hallway he locked the door, deadbolt and all, and ran back to the couch and under the blanket.


   Mark was a bright boy.  He did well in school along with normal childhood issues he was overall a good kid.  Both Sam and Sarah were very proud of him and all he had accomplished.  He had longed for a brother but knew that it wasn't up to him and even though he voiced his opinion on the need for a playmate his parents still won the argument.  As he sat on his familiar couch, absorbing all that had taken place he remembered back to just three days prior when his father was extremely ill and complaining of all the pain he was in.  He had been on bed rest for the past two and a half months after trying to go back to work and displaying that he was too weak to do his job.  Dad would come home defeated, sit with Mark for a few minutes on the couch watching TV and then tell him he needed to go to bed.  A few days later Sam was too sick to even visit the doctor and would spend all of his time sleeping or resting, waking only to eat and then go back to bed.  Sam's skin had turned a pale white and his veins were beginning to show through his skin.


   Mark would stay home from school because of his father's condition and would watch the news even after Mom would tell him to turn it off.  He watched as the news began to report about a disease that was spreading faster than anything the world had seen before.  The people on TV would say things like "this makes the swine flu look like a hang-nail" or whatever that meant.  All Mark knew was that a lot of people were getting what his dad had and the world seemed to be going crazy.  Sometimes he would quietly walk into his dad's room and just watch his father struggling to breathe.  He wasn't the strong man that Mark remembered him to be, he was much smaller now, much more fragile like a broken action figure.


   As Mark sat on the couch, trying to clear his young mind of everything that had happened he heard his mother scream.  It was loud enough to startle him right off of the couch.  Mark ran to the door and pressed his ear up against it.  The door was metal and cold and made him feel like he was laying on the kitchen floor.  The walls of the apartment were not very thick and many times you could hear voices walking down the hall or people laughing above and below you.  Ever since people started going crazy Mark knew that it wasn't safe outside.  He listened anxiously as he heard foot steps running towards the door to their home on the 7th floor of the Spring Valley apartment complex.  "Mark, open the door!" it was his mother.  A child will always knows his mothers voice.  "Mark, now hurry!" Sarah rapidly pounded the door with open fists trying to rush her son into action.  "I'm trying Mom I promise!"  Mark unlatched the bolt as Sarah swung the door open almost knocking her son down.  Immediately she took position up behind the door and with all of her body weight she pressed against it to close it.  The young boy fumbled with the lock for a few seconds trying to bolt the door shut.  That's when something hit the door.  It was hard like a football player rushing a tackling dummy.  It pushed a crack into the door and frame just wide enough to reach it's hand inside.  Mark watched in complete horror as the hand groped and grabbed for anything it could reach but this hand was not like a normal person's hand.  There was skin missing from it and it's color was of a light purple like bodies that Mark had scene on TV.  As the thing pushed and struggled for whatever it's objective was it growled and and hissed like some sort of injured animal.  Mark had never seen a monster before, but he was pretty sure that this was what his nightmares were made of.

Alpha-6

“THREE SECURITY TEAMS!  YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT THREE TEAMS OF MY MEN HAVE GONE IN THERE AND NOW THEY ARE DEAD?”  The police Captain was clearly agitated at the hospital staff.

            “Sir, I don’t know what to tell you.  I didn’t send in those men and they were quite obviously not prepared to deal with what is happening inside that room” Dr. Richfield told the Captain.  Both men stood outside Philip’s room trying to figure out the best method to restrain him and keep him at bay.  The hospital room was torn to shreds, a crimson carpet of blood covered the entire floor spilling out to the hallway under the door.  Bodies were strewn about in every direction from the original nursing staff to the six bodies of police officers who had responded to the room.  Philip had killed them all and eaten a good portion of each of them.  The first team of two officers responded to the room without any type of planned response.  They had tried to grab hold of Philip upon entry but he just leapt from the ground directly on top of the first cop and bit right into his ear.  The second officer tried to pull Philip off of his partner but was unsuccessful and wound up with a scratched face and a bite to his thigh directly on his femoral artery causing him to bleed out with no help.  The hospital staff on the outside of the room was too scared to enter with just cause to what was happening on the inside.  The next four officers met the same fate as the first two.  Unprepared for Philips ability and rage, they all were now laying face down in their own blood on the hospital room floor.  After devouring his assailants Philip resumed his sitting posture and contently stared out the window at the doctors.

            “This boy has killed six of my men and some of your staff doctor, this is beyond a reason to engage with force” barked the Captain.

            “I’m afraid your right sir, I understand and we are willing to comply with whatever it is you are requesting of us” conceded Dr. Richfield.  “It’s your show”.

            The police Captain turned away from the doctor and called something in on his handheld radio.  Within minutes a team of armed officers wearing riot gear showed up outside of the hospital room.  Mr. and Mrs. Syrafax had been moved to a waiting area so they wouldn’t have to witness what was going to happen next.  The Captain briefed his team and gave them the go ahead to enter the room.  In formation the team opened the door and entered Philip’s room, the first man in took a shot from his 9mm pistol directly into Philip’s torso.  The sound was so loud that the nurses standing at the desks had to cover their ears.  Unflinching Philip jumped up from the ground and onto his bed crouched for attack, blood dripping from his mouth and the new wound in his chest.  As Philip crouched there poised to leap a second officer shot Philip with a Remington shotgun maiming his right arm.  Philip fell backwards from the impact and readjusted himself back to his feet.  Not ever seeing someone withstand the brunt force of a bullet and shotgun rounds the officers opened fire on Philip out of pure desperation.  Bullets riddled Philip’s small frame to no effect.  He began to scream like a trapped animal.  He jumped on top of the first officer and began clawing at his torso making no progress as the policeman was wearing a flak vest.  The additional officers who had entered the room, five all together, made contact with Philip and grabbed hold of his arms and legs avoiding his head as not to be bitten.  The first officer climbed back onto his feet and was able to strap Philip down to his bed with the help of the other four.  They used the existing soft restraints attached to the hospital bed and were successful in securing him.

            During all the commotion in the hospital room, with eyes affixed on the cluster of officers chasing after and shooting a small boy who had just hours before been a sick and weak patient, no one noticed the muscles of the dead nurse begin to twitch.

Alpha 5

“Hey honey!” Sarah greeted James.  “Whatcha get me?”

            “Well I got a surprise today for you, a little roast lamb and some chardonnay”

            “Really?” asked Sarah with unbelief.

            “Nah just some spam, canned water chesnuts and chunky soup”. 

            “Ah my favorite!” assured Sarah.

            “Yeah, I’m sure.  Either way we got some good eats, so why don’t you let us in and we can have a fancy dinner”.

            Sarah opened the door wide enough for both of the men to carry in their full bags.  The safe house was such a comfort to Andrew and the survivors. It was crudely decorated with things that had been found on scavenging trips and yet it was still a place he could call home for now.  There was a couch in the corner that was once possibly some sort of leather, it faced a television set and an old DVD player.  Without people there hadn’t been any cable or news broadcasts in years but they did have an unending supply of DVDs that had been released before the “Event”.  Throughout the safe house were old make shift beds, mostly old mattresses and blankets.  Without the means of running water it was near impossible to wash the sheets and clothing.  They did what they could in puddles or ponds with detergent they had picked up from different stores they looted.

            Every so often Andrew would make an attempt to travel to an area in Cleveland that he had never been to before.  He would go during the day time for maximum lighting and less surprise, sometimes he would travel on foot and be gone for hours other times he would hotwire an abandoned car that still had fuel in the gas tank.  It was difficult to drive now since most cars had been left at a stand still littering the roads and sidewalks of the suburbs and city.  When the Event first happened many people took to the roads trying to make their way out of the cities and into the rural areas.  The problem was that everyone seemed to have the same idea and many of the highways and streets bottlenecked with vehicles.  The drivers just up and decided to begin walking.  Some would be with families while others were attempting to regroup with family members.  What the survivors didn’t know at the time was that without their vehicles they were susceptible to attacks from then-random walkers.

            The rest of the safe house was used to store the equipment and food they had acquired while out on their missions.  They had an area for non-perishable food as well as cleaning supplies and toiletries.  Andrew had found a sporting goods store that sold guns and he and James used a truck to haul a gun locker into the safe house.  They cleaned the store of all of it’s shotguns, hunting rifles and handguns, about twenty five to be exact. They also had plenty of ammunition, enough to fill seven 3 foot by 3 foot boxes.  Before the Event Andrew did not have much experience with guns but he had now grown accustomed to them in the past 3 years.  For Andrew it was more fun to successfully kill a walker by using some sort of common variety household item.  Anything could be made into a weapon and Andrew had learned how to modify them.  He once killed a walker with a frying pan, using it to bludgeon the undead.  He took some satisfaction with his inventive ways to kill walkers and had plenty of experience in the art form.

            “Well it’s about time you’re back”, said Robert concerned.  “Each of your outings take longer than the last and we never know if we are going to see you again”.  “We would have been back sooner had James not wanted to talk about Jason the whole time”, retorted Andrew with a disconcerting shrug.  “You know Andrew, the night that Norma and I met you we heard Jason on the radio for just a short second”.  “You don’t know if that was Jason or not Robert, it could have very likely been a military broadcast left over from after the Event.  There were tons of those on all frequencies for a long time”.   Andrew walked over to the cabinets where the canned goods were stored and started to unload his findings.  “This one was different, the voice didn’t sound military.  It said something about being beautiful or something along those lines.  You know the military wouldn’t be saying things like “beautiful””. 

Robert was convinced that he was right about hearing Jason on the radio.  For months the group of six had seen placards and graffiti on random buildings alluding to the existence of a man named Jason.  Sarah began to tell Mark bedtime stories of a man named Jason who was going to bring everything back to normal.  Before she and Mark had met up with the group she too had heard radio broadcasts from a group of survivors led by Jason who were out west.  James was convinced that Jason was in fact Dr. Jason Cross who was one of the leading scientists working on finding a cure for the Syrafax Indigo virus shortly after the Event.  No one had ever been able to confirm who Jason was or why there were signs everywhere about him but they all had hope that Jason was where they needed to be, all except for Andrew.

“Regardless of who this Jason fellow is, or if he even exists it doesn’t matter because he isn’t here right now, and to be totally honest I am getting a little tired of all the fairy tales being told.  Our focus needs to be on us and our survival if we are ever going to get anywhere.  Now if anyone else has anything to say about Jason, say it now or let’s just drop it”.  Everyone in the safe house was silent, they knew that Andrew didn’t get mad easily and he was clearly irritated by this point.  Norma stood up from her chair and faced Andrew.  “Thank you so much for bringing us food Andrew, and you too James.  Now if you don’t mind I would like to go ahead and prepare something for us to eat.  Can we all agree on that?”  Everyone nodded in concession.