Lyle Perez-Tinics - Existing Dead

Kyle tried not to think about Mary murdering Eddie then committing suicide. Yes, it hurt him, but the evil, malevolent part of him was a little glad. Sure it was easy to pretend like the world would heal from this, but really there was no telling if things would ever get back to normal. Ending Eddie’s life swiftly was probably better than dragging out a long and painful death. The other part of him felt a cold and empty void, something that could only be filled by seeing someone that brought him happiness. Like seeing Jasmine’s face again. He knew where he was going. In California there was a small town near San Diego named Poway, and that was his destination.

Before moving to Nevada to start a new life with Mary and Eddie, Kyle had lived in California. He was born and raised in the town of Escondido, right next to Poway. Knowing the area well would definitely give him an advantage. It would make things easier when traveling through dead-infested territory. If he didn’t run into any trouble, he could make it there within a few hours. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was 9:30 a.m.

He began flipping through the radio stations, only to find white noise or an annoying emergency broadcast beep. He switched to AM and continued scrolling through the channels as the cool AC air blared into his face.

“… Yes, yes, it’s true the dead are coming back to life,” a voice managed to say through the static. He adjusted the tuning knob until the voice became clearer then turned up the volume to listen.

The acoustics of the room made it sound like the people were broadcasting from a small conference room. There was a lot of noise and people interrupting others, talking over each other.

“If you all could please shut up and listen to me!” an authoritative male voice yelled over the crowd. The noise subsided as the voice continued, “Like I have been trying to say, my name is Doctor Theodore Greenly, and I was a former member of the CDC.” When he said that, the room went into an uproar. People began asking questions.

“Was this something that was created by the United States?” someone said.

“You’re from the CDC, so you’re saying it’s some sort of virus?” said another.

Doctor Greenly quickly calmed the room again. “Please, please,” he said, “let me finish. I will answer as many questions as I can. Let me get this information out first.” Doctor Greenly sounded out of breath and congested, as if he were either fighting off a cold, or he was an overweight man.

Kyle began to hear more static as he drove passed the town’s zoning lines. He didn’t want to miss what Doctor Greenly had to say. He looked around the terrain; there was no one and nothing in sight. He was out of the suburban area and began entering the small patches of desert that have not been turned into suburban neighborhoods. He decided to pull off to the side and listen. He left the truck running in case he had to leave in a hurry.

“There is no evidence to support that this is a virus,” Doctor Greenly continued, “but, in all honesty, we don’t know what this is. If it is a virus, I have never seen anything like this in my forty-year career with the CDC. What this is has to be something different, maybe something out of this world.”

“Do you mean like extra-terrestrial? A virus from another world perhaps?” someone called out.

“That was one of the possibilities we had in mind. We have been in contact with what’s left of NASA to see if there have been any larger than normal meteorite collisions or returning satellites within the past week. Scientists have reported that there have been no major collisions. On a hunch, we decided to see if anyone at SETI, The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, was still alive to tell us if they have made any form of contact. As of now we have no confirmation.”

“So if it’s not alien, what do you personally think it is?” the same voice asked.

“Our best guess is some bizarre paranormal phenomenon that we have never experienced before. This explanation was a little much for our team to swallow. But we still have zero evidence of any of this. It might very well be something viral. The only thing we know for sure is that anyone who has been bitten by one of them will die and come back to life craving human flesh.”

“But why? Why human flesh?” another voice cried out.

“We do not know why they feel the need to consume human tissue. We do know that they get absolutely no nourishment from it. They will continue eating flesh even after their stomachs rupture and their entrails hang out of their bodies. A cadaver that we experimented on managed to eat three entire recently expired bodies. On its fourth, the subject’s body was so bloated it could hardly walk. When the stomach ruptured it kept eating. Before anyone asks, the recently deceased bodies the cadaver was consumed were donated in the name of science.”

“After being bitten, did the bodies wake up at any point?”

“That is a great question. No, the bodies that were bitten after expiring did not come back to life. We believe that the cause needs the bloodstream of a living person to transmit.”

“So what about pain?” the first voice asked.

“That one is simple, they do not feel any. We had one of our officers discharge an entire M4 thirty round magazine into the patient’s mid and lower section. The shots did immobilize the subject, but it continued advancing toward the man using any means possible. It wasn’t until the officer gave it a quick shot through the temple that it stopped completely. On this first experiment, we let the body lie for twenty-four hours. It did not rise again. So yes, they do not feel pain, but they can be stopped.”

“That’s how you kill them? With a shot through the head?”

“No, no, no,” Doctor Greenly said in a fast triplet speech. “I said that they could be stopped. The body we neutralized was just a host for something, it still showed signs of microscopic life after the brain was destroyed. The host was no longer active, but the cause was more or less still alive. Think of it as someone in a coma. They are no longer active, but still alive. Destroying the brain only stops them, we don’t know if the cause could truly be killed. This entire situation is just baffling. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“Do you have any evidence that these things can’t be one-hundred percent killed?”

“As a matter of fact we do. First we have to take a look at what I mean by dead. When a living person dies, so does every cell in their body. They begin to rot away until they are nothing more than a memory to the living. In one of these living dead corpses, after the brain is destroyed the cause that brought it back to life lives on. For example, after we neutralized the subject with a shot through the head, we …” The doctor paused for a moment then sighed into the microphone. “Before I mention this, the world needs to understand that our experiments are vital to the human race. That being said … forty-eight hours after we neutralized the original cadaver, we injected 5mL of the corpse’s blood into a living human subject.”

The room grew louder after that was said. People began to protest and obscenities blared through Kyle’s speakers. He was completely enthralled in the broadcast that he found himself yelling, “Shut up,” to the people who wouldn’t let Doctor Greenly speak.

Finally the crowd calmed and Kyle could hear Doctor Greenly’s voice again. “Like I was saying, we injected 5mL, which is about half of a standard syringe, of blood directly into the living subject’s bloodstream. After we injected the blood, the patient lapsed into a coma. A few hours later, he expired. A few moments after that, his eyes re-opened.