By Jack Wu
25th August 2038
It’s a cold morning, when a breath can be condensed by the chill and dark grey clouds cover the ground from sunlight. Heavy rain from the night before has thickened the creek mud. The workers would rather wait for the ground to dry, but the overseer is having none of it, there is a schedule to keep, and he’s a hard ass about punctuality and deadlines. Their job is simple—clear the rubble of the bridge and make room to build a new one; all part of some new plan for rebuilt infrastructure. But none of the workers give a shit, it’s a job that pays enough.
Marian wishes she had brought her jacket and regrets lending it to her brother. She will perhaps trade for a new one later. Masks on, they begin pulling chunks of cement out, the dust gets kicked up and backs are sore. Until one guy tugs on a hefty piece at the bottom of the pile, shifting the weight of the mound and loosening the wreckage. A body tumbles out, and an unbearable, unmistakable stench follows. It’s a woman, as far as anyone can tell, with long raven hair, a tattered and ragged teal shirt and jeans. Rotted and thin, her chest is crushed and caved in.
‘We’ve got a body here! Call an exterminator!’ calls out a worker.
The ten or so workers walk away, taking this as an excuse to rest. The overseer stomps away, swearing under his breath at the unplanned break in the schedule and fumbles around his pockets trying to find his phone to call management. Marian steps closer, wondering if she’ll recognise the poor lady. A gust of wind blows down the creek, sending the acrid smell right into her face, finding its way through her mask. She turns away trying to block the smell with her back, gagging. Disoriented, she’s slow to move through the mud. She coughs so loudly that she doesn’t hear the raspy breathing or tumbling rubble coming from behind her. She doesn’t see the body rise. She doesn’t notice as it lunges, jaw agape.
3rd September 2038
It’s a cool spring day, even though the sun radiates high in the sky and fluffy clouds dance about. A van screeches to a stop in front of a home on the outskirts of the city, the building somehow still standing despite the wear-and-tear and rotted wood that constitutes the wall, roof and front deck. Jermaine tests the brakes for a minute listening to metal scraping against metal somewhere in the van. He’s no mechanic but knows something’s wrong. He sighs, there’s nothing he can do for now but get to work. It is, frankly, not a good day for Jermaine, he’d much rather be at home with his husband. Cassie would understand, she’d see this was a job they could put off for a day or two. But she has long since retired and this new dispatcher is young and far too eager to please the higher-ups. He doesn’t get that Jermaine wants to be with Christoph for what’s supposed to be their anniversary, or at least be there to comfort his husband while his sister-in-law sits in isolation before she possibly turns and is executed.
Jermaine turns off the van, puts on his jacket, steps out and heads around to the back. He opens the rear doors, unlocking the case he kept his pistol in and gives the gun a once over before holstering it. He finds his knife on the dashboard, having left it there two months ago and pulls out a bite sleeve where spots across the forearm have frayed and loose fibres. He’s been requesting a new sleeve for weeks.
It used to be that being on extermination crew meant respect. Everyone understood that even one stray zombie could mean another outbreak, more lives lost. And while the military could easily handle these zombies, their intervention was too much of a hassle to wrangle up for a single body or a small pack of zombies. But a ghoul was still somewhat terrifying for the unprepared. Having someone dedicated to cleaning up just seemed convenient, and the price of convenience could get expensive. High enough for Jermaine to buy his husband a new camera or a fancy custom chocolate cake. Everything he has, he owes to his work. It’s how he met Christoph.
But that was then, and this is now.
He quits ruminating, he has a job to do. All it takes is a single zombie for things to go to shit.
Jermaine reads the report again. Apparently, a neighbour has seen the occupant regularly lug black garbage bags out, and at night they can hear a generator running. It’s not much to go on, but still worth checking out. He walks to the front door and gives it a knock.
‘Exterminator!’ he calls out.
He waits
Jermaine has since learnt it’s best to deal with people first.
16th January 2035
It’s a humid summer evening, a cacophony of crickets and cicadas are chirping in the trees and bushes. Jermaine stands before a huge fire, turning his body away from the heat. Ideally, he’d be toasting marshmallows and sharing drinks with his crewmates and husband, but tonight, he must hold back a frantic, sobbing, grief-filled young man. The man lets out a shuddered sob as he is forced to watch his shed lit into an inferno of bright orange and yellow flames, the site deemed contaminated. The young man had kept the zombified remains of his parents in the shed, unable to let them go. The extermination crew were tipped off when neighbours noted the noxious smell of decomposition permeating in the summer heat, and when a local child dared to investigate and nearly lost an arm.
The young man obstructed the exterminators at every step. The best Jermaine could do was stop him from joining his parents in the flames.
3rd September 2038
Stepping into the home, he walks over pieces of shattered glass from having smashed through the window of the back door to make his own entry. Jermaine pulls out his pistol with bite sleeve raised. Scanning the room, he finds a cable stuck to the corner of the wall and floor, taped in place and hastily painted to match the walls. Intuition tells him to investigate. He follows the line through the home; it makes no deviating paths. Clearing every room he passes, Jermaine can’t help but note the state of the place; the rooms are dust-covered, cold and sparingly lived in.
The line leads Jermaine to an inconspicuous door around the corner from the main entrance. Opening the door, he finds an unassuming closet with some hanging coats, a loose broom and a nondescript cardboard box. Yet he notices the cable continuing further into the closet and entering a crack between the wall and the bare, mismatched floor. It’s a well-constructed facsimile of a closet. He notices a small bit of white plastic tucked away in the corner, finding a white plastic switch hidden behind a hanging coat. Jermaine gives it a flick and a soft yellow light peeks through cracks in the floor.
He pulls out his knife, wedging it in the crack and using it as a makeshift lever. Lifting the hatch, Jermaine stares down a set of wooden stairs and swears he can feel his heart stop. The last time he’d seen something like this, the perpetrator was a sick freak.
He takes a second to take a deep breath, allowing his heart to slow down. But he can’t help but wonder if the apocalypse produced these creeps or if they found a way to thrive in it.
What led the occupant to construct this hidden basement?
22nd July 2031
It’s a cold night, where the slightest contact of open air on bare skin feels like it saps all body heat, and only the sounds of trees swaying in the gusty wind can be heard. Hiding in a stranger’s freezing basement, having run to escape the hordes of zombies in the city, Amber, a ten-year-old girl, cuddles close to her father. She’s been struggling to sleep while battling constant nightmares.
Steven, the girl’s father, strokes her eyes in a slow repeated manner until she can’t resist the urge to sleep. It’s an old bedtime routine they used to do when she was four years old. He’d do it all night if he must. He won’t be sleeping anytime soon and needs something to occupy his mind and keep him busy. He doesn’t want to feel the empty, cold concrete beside him. He wants to remain in denial that his wife was infected, turned and gone. He doesn’t want to think about his empty promises of helping her when she was bitten. Or the blood-curdling cries she made as she slashed out at their daughter. Or the wet, crunching of bone as he bashed her head in. Amber feels her father’s embrace tighten and listens to his soft whisper.
‘I promise. I’m not going anywhere darling.’
3rd September 2038
Jermaine stands before a large stainless-steel wall, there’s a door in its centre with a large, heavy metallic handle and hinges. He recognises this from when he worked as a kitchenhand in his teens—a walk-in freezer.
The room around him is sterile and well-lit; plastic sheets cover the walls. By the furthest wall, a table holds spit hoods, cuffs, rope, and other restraints. In a metal bin, there is an open black garbage bag with bloody rags, hypodermic needles, and glass vials.
Along another wall, workbenches span its length and are littered with scientific or medical instruments he barely recognises. Jermaine knows it would have been no easy feat to secure the equipment and wonders what he has stepped into. Maybe this is another black-market organ dealer, selling “second-hand” products.
It looks like he’ll have more work soon.
But his attention is caught by a small desk lit by a desk lamp. Sprawled around the desk are medical textbooks and diagrams. A photo of a scruffy-haired young girl and man sits on top of a stack of files and books. The girl is holding a second-place ribbon. Jermaine knows he shouldn’t empathise with the photo. It’ll make his job harder. But his heart still sinks for the family.
A thick folder lies dead centre, in shoddy handwriting it’s titled “Cure?” His curiosity gets the better of him, he peeks inside. Mad scribblings and notes, indecipherable nonsense, all in crappy ineligible handwriting, fill the pages. Jermaine should’ve known better; the military deemed a cure unviable.
He turns to the freezer and swings open the door, bite sleeve up and pistol drawn, ready for what gore lies ahead. A blast of freezing air hits him, and the foul and sour smell of decay follows. No light is on inside, but Jermaine sees the silhouette of a body on a gurney with a white, crisp and clean blanket covering it.
The torso slowly rises, the blanket falls from its face and exposes its hollow eyes. Jermaine expects to see the bony, rigid face of the dead but finds something more. For a second, he stares into its lifeless eyes, he could have sworn they were staring back at him. But Jermaine can’t hesitate. He aims the pistol; his only act of mercy will be to give this poor bastard a quick death. But he notices peculiarities. How the zombie isn’t thin and malnourished. How the skin is pale yet holding onto colour. How the thin strands of hair were holding onto the scalp, but a noticeable stubble grew across the face as well. How the smell of decay isn’t as pungent as expected, and the scent was only present here.
‘A..Am..ber,’ the body croaks out.
Jermaine pauses, his finger ready on the trigger. He’s never seen a zombie talk before.
10th September 2033
It’s a warm spring night. A light breeze blankets the air in warmth, perfect weather for a night on the town. But Marian wishes she could be anywhere else but the city. She clutches her snub-nosed revolver, the only sense of security she can find while trapped in a utility closet.
Chased by a horde of zombies while scavenging, she and her brother, Christoph, now wait for help. He is curled in the corner, counting what ammunition they have left. Marian had fired as many bullets as she could into the horde before she and Christoph watched them tear their friend to bits.
He holds his hand aloft, with only two bullets in his palm. Marian quietly loads the bullets. She raises the pistol to his temple, hands shaking and hesitant to find a grip, but muffled sounds of gunfire and rumblings of explosives interrupt them. They sit in silence, waiting for whatever is beyond the door. A minute passes, and then another. They are left holding their breath before a loud banging on the door gives them a shock.
‘Exterminator! Are you alright?’ the voice calls out.
Marian and Christoph cautiously open the door, blinded by the flashlight of their saviour. The light is turned off, it’s a large, burly man in uniform covered in dust and dirt cradling a rifle. His name tag reads “Exterminator Jermaine.”