Marshall scanned the field in front of him for any signs of movement. The rising morning fog made it difficult to see but he knew the Scab was out there. He had heard it's cries for the last half hour. Marshall hated the high shrill it made as did many of the remaining River Bend townspeople, but it helped him in his job. The Scab materialized from the ground fog at about a hundred yards from the wall. Marshall raised the hunting rifle and lined up the Scab’s head within the scope’s crosshairs just like his father taught him when hunting deer on his first hunt. The target was in full Bloom. His face was unrecognizable and covered in the mix of the telltale scabs and open running sores. His clothes were dirty and ragged. He looked like he was an extra from the Night of the Living Dead movie, hence the Scab name stuck. The name also helped people to forget they were killing their former friends, neighbors and in some cases family members. To Marshall, killing Zombies felt more like shooting a rabid dog or injured animal. To him it was just putting them out of its misery. That’s why he didn’t mind pulling nightly guard duty on the wall. That usually meant a couple of Scabs would stumble in looking for food or who knows what. Near the end of their lives these poor bastards were totally out of it. Besides being covered head to toe with painful sores their guts would be disintegrating leaving their body from any available orifice. The scabs and sores coated the inside of their throats. If that wasn’t enough the tongues would swell allowing only wails, moans and grunts to escape their open months. Marshall believed most of these lost souls wanted to be killed and that’s why they just strolled right into plain view and his gun sight.
“Forgive me father...” Marshall softly whispered before holding his breath and slowly squeezing the rifle's trigger.
A sharp crack disrupted the early morning stillness causing a flock of birds to squawk and take flight from a nearby tree. This Scab wasn't so lucky. The bullet entered his forehead and exited just as fast taking off the back of his head and brains with it. The body continued to take an extra step before collapsing in a heap over seventy-five yards from the wall surrounding and protecting the Marymoor Estate, the new home for the townspeople of River Bend.
Marshall made the sign of the cross and kissed the silver cross which hung around his neck before pulling a tattered notebook out of the pocket of his army surplus jacket. He flipped to the back because it was a faster way to find an empty page. He found his last entry and scribbled in the date and time.
August 4th- 1 Scab (223)- Identity unknown.
Marshall had been keeping a journal since he was twelve. He had a box full of note books stashed in his closet. The pages were filled with homework assignments, ideas, random thoughts and feelings. He used to keep them hidden because he knew his friends would make fun of him. It didn’t matter now since nearly all of them were dead and he just didn’t give a shit anymore. Marshall flipped through the worn pages of the notebook. He hadn’t made many entries lately, besides his kill list. This latest one raised his kill total to 223, by far the largest total of any of the wall walkers. He continued to flip the pages before stopping at the first entry that mentioned the meteor shower.
July 7- Dad took us out to see the meteor shower. It was cool as the fireworks on the 4th of July. Jeff was a prick and kept whining about how boring it was. There were reports that some of the larger chunks made it through the atmosphere and were crashing into the earth. I wish one would smash right into Jeff.
That was just over two years ago. Marshall continued to skim through the notebook remembering to peak up now and then in case another Zombie was looking to get popped. He never was much of a writer, but keeping the journal helped him cope with what happened. Marshall continued to page through his notes reading passages and remembering.
Luckily the large meteors that did make it through missed large populated areas. They weren’t huge chucks, but at the speed they could do some damage. Scientists descended on the impact sites like flies on shit. Marshall thought they must have cream their panties when they found living spores attached to the meteorites. Little would they know the discovery they just found would be their last. The next day they nearly shit themselves when the surrounding fields blossomed with a new plant type. The press dubbed it the Space Bloom. The front page of newspapers around the world show similar pictures of purple fields blooming. When they finally figured out that it was releasing a pollen like substance into the air it was too late. The scientists were the first to go, dropping off one by one between the rows of purple plants. The army dropped in and tried to quarantine the fields and torch the infected area, but it was too little too late. The winds had already started to carry it away creating more and more fields. What the wind didn’t carry cars, trucks, and people did. The damage was done. Soon the plants were everywhere. Within two days the first reports of people getting sick started rolling in. The United States wasn’t prepared for a pandemic that moved this fast.
Marshall broke the spread of the Bloom epidemic down into four waves.
The first wave was the most devastating. It stuck without warning several days after the meteorites hit. People just started dropping over dead. It was a total mystery at first like Legionnaires Disease in the late 70’s. Similar to that event this one was dubbed by the media too. You saw tabloids headlines screaming the “Purple Plague while more respectable papers referred to it as Space Bloom Sickness or SBS for short. Most people just called in the Bloom.
The Bloom spread quickly leaving death in its wake. Within a week cities populations were reduced by 60%. Chaos reigned. Large cities had it the worse. With the complete breakdown of order looting, rioting, shootings, rapes became commonplace. People also held their collective breath hoping the powers that be which controlled the weapons of mass destruction died in the first wave and took the codes to their grave. There were also unconfirmed reports that Israel and Palestine. North and South Korean threw everything they had at each other, taking each other both out. The super power hover over the button, but the resited. The massive death tolls grew, but the news media and everything else for that matter ground to a halt and just waited to die too, but as quickly as it started the deaths stopped ending the first wave.
The second wave or the guilt wave started several weeks after the first wave. These were the people who couldn’t cope with what had happened or couldn’t understand why they had spared while so many others died. They ended up just putting a gun in the mouth, overdosing, or taking a bath with a razor blade. Some religious groups declared this was the rapture and the people that died were the first ones God took. The living was forced to live on what was left of the earth until they served out their penance. Some of these people thought there had to been some mistake. They couldn’t understand why they were left behind. These like-minded people gathered in groups around the country and made the Jones Town suicide look like a tea party. The second wasn’t as nearly as large as the first wave but it took its toll physically and mentally.
The third wave was as devastating and as sad as the first wave. People watched their loved ones die in the first wave, but fought off depression and the crazies of the second wave only to die because there was no longer a continuous supply of available medicine. Asthma, diabetes, the flu even bee stings became deadly. Marshall remembered searching house after house for medication of any kind. It was all collected at the clinic where it was cataloged and placed under guarded 24 hours a day. Sick as it may sound, the third had its good points. People who might have been addicted to drugs, alcohol or even food for that matter had to find a way to change their lifestyle. It’s incredible what can happen when all the drugs, booze and food is locked up and guarded. While some people called it a tragedy others called it a blessing.
The River Bend survivors were currently battling the fourth wave. It started roughly six months after the first wave or at least that’s when it reared its ugly head in River Bend. The Bloom returned, not a swift killer like the first wave, but a slow painful one that turned people into hideous monsters within weeks. At first they tried to treat the infected or at least try to keep them comfortable. The condition, unfortunately, caused them to become disorientated and violent. So violent they couldn’t be controlled safely anymore and the community couldn’t waste their precious limited medical supplies on a lost cause. The fear of anyone being a ticking Bloom time bomb created the mandatory town laws. Everyone was checked for early warning signs at least once a week. If signs of the Bloom where detected you had two choices. Townies referred to it as the run or gun. Take a bullet then and there, or be expelled outside the city limits never to return. People weren’t shot on the spot , but were given a mix that made them sleep forever. According to the Doctors it’s been a 50-50 split. Marshall hated the checks. It reminded him of tick checks after a camping trip but 10 times as embarrassing. It sucked, but now it was a necessary evil. The expelled ones started to group into packs or tribes. They took refuge in abandoned houses left vacant by the first wave. These were referred to as nests. Because the disease progressed much slower these packs started to grow larger and braver. Dissatisfied with their living conditions and place in the new post Bloom society they struck out against the townspeople of River Bend mounting raids on their supply depots and people. The townspeople of River Bend knowing they were fighting a losing battle decided to retreat into a safer stronghold, the Marymoor.
Stolen novel; please report.
Marshall closed the notebook, wrapped a rubber band around it to help hold in the loose pages and slid it into his coat pocket. He looked over the wall to check the perimeter. The patrolled area was broken into two zones: the power plant and the Marymoor Estate. They were separated by the river but connected by a bridge. Each Zone had a 15’ wall surrounding the grounds. Scabs stupid enough to try and cross the river drown in the swift current or were just pushed down streams. If any did make it, which a few did would stumble into the jingle wire. Jingle wire was a combination of fence, barbwire, rope, string, or anything the town’s people could get their hands on. The jingle wire crisscrossed the beach and was strung with old cowbells, aluminum cans or anything that would make a noise when moved. Some nights when the wind was right the wire would move and make kind of an eerie sound like an out of tune wind chime. Marshall hated it when the Scabs stumbled into the wire. They would trash around like a fish caught in a net, which only made it worse. It also made them hard to shoot when they flopped around like that. The best thing to do is get in close with a shotgun and put them out of their misery. After that you would just cut that section out of the wire, dump the body in the river and patch the hole. Let the town's down river worry about burying or burning them.
The wall did a really good job of keeping the Sabbies out, but the townspeople knew they couldn’t just sit inside and do nothing.To help keep the Scab numbers down they would conduct nest crawl every two weeks or so. Marshall hated nest crawls. He would rather pull twenty-four hours straight on the wall then go on nest crawls. That was how he met up with his brother Jeff. Jeff chose to be a runner when his weekly check came up positive. Most runners don’t run too far. They usually just run back down to the abandoned town of River Bend and hold up in a house and pretend like nothings wrong. You don’t have to worry too much about those guys. They still have their enough brains left to high tail it when they see or hear a nest detail heading their way. The ones you have to worry about were the full-blown Bloomers. They’ll take over a house and turn it into a pit in no time flat. They’ll trash the place looking for food, clothes, supplies anything they can use and set up shop. To keep warm they start burning furniture for heat, fireplace or not. Toss things anywhere they feel like and shit all over the house. On a hot summer day you can smell a nest a block away. When nest patrols first started they would send people straight in to clean out the buggers. They thought they would just scatter like roaches when the crews entered the house. That changed after a couple of times crews stumbled into a large packs who didn’t give a fuck anymore. We ended up losing a lot of good people that way. Now if there is even a slight chance of a nest they just torch the place. That will send the Scabs flooding out of the place in mass. All you had to do then was just stand there and pick them off one by one. Marshall didn’t mind that part. It was the screams he hated. A couple of them would always get stuck inside and would just start wailing. The noise they made just didn’t sound human anymore. Many nights he could still hear those cries. The day he met up with Jeff he was stationed out back ready to pop anyone trying to cut out the backdoor. They had just started to fire bomb the house with a couple of Molotov cocktails made from old coke bottles stuffed with gasoline and chlorine tablets. These usually caused quite an explosion and sent any Scabs hiding inside scurrying for the doors. It was no different on this occasion, but one of the puss balls that came running out was his brother Jeff. Marshall popped the first two in the back with a sawed-off shotgun as they ran past. He flipped the barrel open to reload and there was his brother Jeff. They both hesitated for a fraction of a sec. Jeff was in pretty bad shape. His face was covered in sores and scabs. His hair was long and matted. Marshall couldn’t tell if Jeff recognized him or not. He didn’t wait long to find out either. He dropped two shells in, raised the shotgun and pulled both triggers at once. This resulted in taking Jeff’s head clean off and painting a good section of the back of the house red. Marshall felt it was the right thing to do. He knew that Jeff would do the same for him.
Marshall put those thoughts aside and stood up to watch the sunrise over the mountains. This was his favorite part of the day. Most Scabs didn’t like the sun and would be trying to find a place to hole up for the day. This allowed him to relax for a moment and enjoy the sun's warmth on his face and watch it dance on the water as it glided past him before going over the falls. The river not only provided protection but life as well. When the world started going to shit, the people of River Bend were smart enough to seize control of the Power plant which was stationed across the river from the Marymoor. Many people who worked at the plant lived right here in River Bend, including his father. The surviving workers kept the plant up and running all during the different waves of the Bloom. It was more of an act for normalcy than anything else. Once things started to settle down they realized they had more than just electrical power, they had bargaining power. In the post Bloom world you had to have something trade or you were dead. Surrounding towns would provide food, alcohol, cigarettes, ammunition supplies, building material, fuel you name it to keep the lights on. Traded supplies were usually brought in by train or boats, sometimes even tractor-trailer trucks, but always heavily guarded. These vehicles or guards were of course controlled by other towns who took their cut too. It was a nice little system. If a town didn’t deliver they went dark, plain and simple. A couple of times some rogues tried to take control of the plant and Power plant. Unfortunately for the attackers the plant was made out of poured concrete and looked more like a little castle in the woods then a power plant. The plant’s internal equipment was updated in the late ’70s right around when Marshall’s father was hired, and one of the reasons for him to take the position in this tiny town in the Cascade mountain range. The solid cement exterior remained the same. The only direct entrance to the power plant was a twisting gravel road off the main highway. If someone was going to try to seize the plant their was only one way in and the townspeople created a few surprises. Trees were strategically placed across the road. Their branches were whittled into spikes. Small hidden bunkers concealed by tree branches and leaves were part of a tench system. This allowed the townspeople to easily move unseen and set up kill zones. If a group was skilled enough to get passed the logs and firing bunkers they would have to get into the plant itself. The plant had been surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire even before the Bloom. Another row of jingle wire was strung around the fence as an extra precaution. To provide even more defense a parapet was added on top to better protect the firing positions, allowing more opportunities to rain down a storm or fire if anyone got close.
The north side was protected by the dammed water itself. Someone would have to be pretty desperate to try and access the building from the water, but just in case they strung razor wire upstream at several places to snag anybody foolish enough to try. The west was a rocky cliff which was a monster to scale let alone stage an assault from. Just as precaution razor and jingle wire was hung over the very top to tangle any climber near the top where they could be easily tangled then shot from the parapet protected roof. This left only the Southside which was a thick forest running for nearly 2 miles back to the highway. This was the most dangerous area for the power plant and any would-be attacker. The woods would provide ample cover for a force trying to overtake the building and the townspeople of River Bend knew it. This is where veterans of Vietnam provided some help. Several veterans survived the war and the Bloom. In the past their tales and stories of what they faced were either locked deep inside themselves or told down at Judy’s Bar after a couple of drinks. These were put to good use in the woods around the power plant and the battlement surrounding River Bend itself. Tiger pits filled with sharpened wooden spikes were covered with branches and leaves. Homemade anti personnel mines were fashioned with 9volt batteries and explosives prickling with nearly a box full of nails. Tripwires holding back spring-loaded wooden spears and arrows were scattered throughout the woods. Trail cams were repurposed to be surveillance cameras as well. The map that detailed the locations of the traps and explosives was a well-guarded secret. Even with the map people drew straws to see who would have to check the traps from time to time or after explosive traps were set off. It was usually a deer or small animal rather than a raiding force. If it was some dumb enough to try they were chewed to bits before they even reached the building.
Marshall didn’t hear Tom Tom quietly climb up the ladder to the walls catwalk, but he could smell him as he tried to walk up behind him.
“Don’t even think about it Tom Tom,” Marshall snarled.
“Ah, you’re no fun Marshall,” Tom Tom laughed. “I snuck up on old Pete and he nearly fell over the wall. I had to grab his boots or he would have gone over for sure. You should have seen him dangling over the side. It was classic.
Marshall liked Tom Tom but didn’t like to chit chat much. He turned around and grabbed the clipboard out of Tom Tom’s hand. Marshall quickly filled out a quick duty report, indicating his one kill and handed the clipboard back. He unloaded the rifle, showed Tom Tom the chamber was clear and handed it over too. He dug deep into his big pockets and returned the remaining bullets. He bent down, opened his old school backpack and fished out a pair of headphones and pressed play on his iPod. He placed the headphone over his ears, pulled his hoodie over his head and started descending the ladder to the path to the Marymore.
“Have a good sleep Mars baby.” Tom Tom called after him.
Marshall just kept walking pretending not to hear him over his music.
Marshall adjusted the volume of his music to get it just right as he wandered down the path back to Marymoor Manor.