ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE ALMOST

Today is April 31st. It is the year 2028 in the United States of America. Our country was hit by a second viral infection that quickly turned into a pandemic. It has been named AMSPEED28 and it has swiftly killed 200,000 people. Americans immediately thought COVID19 was rearing its ugly head back up but it is a completely new unidentified strain.

The CDC quickly stepped in and investigated the possible cause of the disease and its origin. It was first believed to be transmitted by air but was soon determined to be from a blood infection. Oddly, no other North American Countries seemed to be affected. Could this be from a possible terroristic threat, a virus brought in by someone that was exposed to the virus during recent travels abroad, or even a recent blood transfusion? Again possibly.

Epidemiologists around the world are working 24/7 to find a cure. People are being asked to stay home whenever possible.

Three weeks into the pandemic, China was the first country to develop a cure. Supposedly, massive buildings were still set up from COVID19 research and were full of a variety of medicines and chemicals with testing equipment readily available to be used. Immense quantities of the cure were transported to America immediately.

A very grateful America did not ask questions. People are just happy a cure was found quickly.

The cure is delivered with only one injection. Once inoculated, the previously compromised person will no longer be able to infect someone else. Brochures have been circulated and can be picked up in churches and schools or delivered to you. For any one that has received a transfusion or that has been bitten by a person or an animal you are asked to call the Green Bus number listed on the brochure for immediate transportation to a treatment center. You must comply whether you are having symptoms or not. It’s imperative to get the inoculation within a six hour window before the viral blood infection becomes life threatening.

Luckily, the numbers of infected started dropping swiftly. Families were allowed to claim bodies to bury or cremate at no costs. The threat seemed to be over.

Life returned to whatever was normal.

POST AMSPEED28

The current year is 2030.

Twelve years ago, a family had purchased a modest size, old, Southern Plantation home and farm between Edgard, Louisiana and the Mississippi River. A more precise location would be about 50 miles from New Orleans in St. John the Baptist Parish.

The Batiste family were cotton farmers. Monroe and Janae’ were the proud parents of three children. Twins, Marcus and Maggie, age 14 and Jack age 12. They were a close, hard working family. The kids were allowed plenty of time to just be kids and not just go to school and work on the farm. Monroe and Janae’ wanted them to be regular kids and just have some fun. Although, none of the kids ever objected to helping their dad with the crops or other regular farm duties. Maggie worked more inside the big house with her mother in their garden and was the official egg collector everyday. With help from Marcus and Jack their father only hired extra help at harvest time.

One hot, humid day during the summer Jack, the youngest, decided to take a walk down to the river which was about a quarter mile away from the farm house. He had walked this path often, usually to go fishing. Along the way he bent to pick up a stick that appeared to be a piece of driftwood probably washed up after a hurricane that hit landfall about a year ago. The hurricane caused the river to overflow leaving tons of debris along the banks and up almost to their home. It still stinks sometime usually on very hot days. Today is definitely a stinky day.

At the river bank, Jack saw the river was churning wildly. He thought, no fishing today. A little disappointed, he chunked the stick in the swirling water and started to turn around to head back home. Before he got all the way around, he heard a mumbling, almost gargling sound behind him. He spun around wishing he still had that stick. Jack came face to face with a tall skinny boy that looked to be around 12 like him.

This kid was filthy covered in thick, stinking mud. Dang boy, are you alright? No answer. Jack tried again, you lost? What’s your name? he asked. I’m Jack. Still no answer but the boy tilted his head to the side that caused a sharp cracking sound like snapping a piece of wood might sound like. This scared Jack enough that he stumbled back a couple of steps, almost falling. He took a closer look at the boy. He didn’t seem to be aggressive. Jack began to wonder if he had been washed up on the riverbank from a raft or a boat that might have overturned. He wore a ragged red and white checked shirt. It was dirty and very faded. His jeans had so many holes in them that Jack wondered how they even stayed together. He was also barefoot. His brownish hair was heavily matted with twigs, and river debris that had worms and bugs in it. Jack took a couple of deep breaths to keep from throwing up. By now, he decided he was in over his head with this skinny guy. He waved and gave a quiet goodbye.

Jack turned to head home. He had only walked a few yards when he noticed the kid was slowly following him. He panicked. His mother would have a heart attack if this strange kid followed him home. He turned and faced the kid and told he couldn’t come with him. He said go back over there by that big mound of dirt and I’ll come back in the morning.The boy tilted his head again, same cracking noise but he seemed unphased. He gave Jack a sort of wave with a boney hand as began stumbling in the direction Jack had pointed.

What? I think he understood me. Jack took off in a dead run as soon as the boy had turned his back to him.

As soon as Jack got home he rushed into the house in search of Marcus and Maggie. He found them upstairs and quickly joined them. Maggie was watering the upstairs plants and Marcus was reading a book. Marcus spotted Jack and asked, “what’s up Jack?” Maggie had put down her watering can and joined them. Jack didn’t say anything. He just motioned for them to follow him into his room in case his mom was nearby.

Jack excitedly revealed literally every dirty detail about the boy he had found and said he was going back in the morning. Marcus said he wasn’t going to let Jack go back to meet this kid alone. Jack was relieved not wanting to admit that he was terrified. Before Jack could ask, Maggie laughed and said that she had no desire to meet a filthy kid that could be some kind of serial killer. She turned and returned to where she had been watering.

Morning came quickly. Marcus had placed a couple bottles of water and some leftover biscuits from breakfast in a backpack.They grabbed their fishing gear and told their mother they were going fishing for a couple of hours. Their mom gave them a nod of approval.

At the river, they heard lots of grunting and mumbling sounds that sounded almost like a conversation. Marcus and Jack froze in their tracks as three, not just one grimey person approached them. Jack could hear his own heart beating or was it Marcus’? They were frozen in place as the weird, motley crew approached them. The boy from yesterday seemed glad to see them and pointed at Marcus spit out some sort word that sounded like, goo. Jack pointed at Marcus and said, “my brother, Marcus.” Then he pointed to his own chest as he faced the other two and said, “I’m Jack.”

A round of goo’s, la la’s and herkle sounds were happily exchanged in a chat from each of the three people. I laughed and pointed at each of them. The boy from yesterday pointed at his chest and said something scratchy like “Ga-Roo.” The next one, an older man said, “Knuck-Knuck.” The third one, a woman we guessed to be in her 30’s. She spoke in a light, squeaky but still scratchy voice, “Oh-Mum-Mum-Mum.” This one caused Marcus and I to exchange a confused look. These names were what we heard knowing they were probably not accurate.

I was so curious now. I asked “where did you come from?” They did their guttural chatter thing again and Ga-Roo motioned for us to follow him. Marcus and I thought about it for a second then decided to follow.

They lead us over toward the big dirt mound and then around to the other side of it. Knuck-Knuck pointed toward the old cemetery that was on our property. My dad found it not too long after we moved in. There were only twelve above ground tombs. Louisiana is below sea level and floods frequently. Even old cemeteries like this one placed the dead in these higher level tombs instead of burying them. Now Marcus and I were so scared that we just stood there with our mouths wide open as we realized that these strange people were actually Zombies! Marcus was visibly shaken and I felt a cold chill move rapidly over my body.

O-Mum-Mum-Mum was the first to lead us to her tomb. The flood had almost demolished the first three tombs. The names were partially still legible. Her first name was Mantama. The first three letters of her last name were Bon…that’s all we could make out. Knuck-Knuck was at the next tomb. His name was Nick with only one letter of his last name still there, It was an N. Next Ga-Roo was waiting for us. His name was Gerald but nothing was left for us to determine his last name. The dates were destroyed as well as any other information about them was laying in a scattered piles near the tombs .

Marcus told me this was kind of sad and wondered what we should do next. We didn’t feel our parents would believe us. “Jack, what do you think they want us to do?

I have no idea. Let me see if they can understand us and we’ll see. Jack said, “Ga-Roo, how can we help you?” Ga-Roo looked a little surprised or at least as surprised as a Zombie could look. All three pointed simultaneously at their tombs . They mumbled something that sounded like “ba in,” To clarify, Jack said, “so, you want to be put back in your tomb?”

They all emitted uh, uh, uh sounds pointing at each tomb. I told them to wait here and tomorrow Marcus and I would see what we could do. As we were walking out of the cemetery I tripped over an old white styrofoam container that looked like a drink cooler. It was split in half. Marcus said this must have washed up with the hurricane debris. He said don’t touch it. The top had a Red Cross symbol on it like a medical symbol. It appeared to have been sealed with bright yellow tape that said HAZARDIOUS MATERIAL in black bold letters and below the yellow tape the words DO NOT OPEN spelled out in red letters. Across the sides it was labeled, property of CDC, Louisiana Administrative Office. Below the CDC marking it was cataloged as AMSPEED28 #7452311028S.

We knew we had to tell dad but we decided to help our three friendly, homeless Zombies first. The three Zombies were wandering around aimlessly and hadn’t noticed that we were examining the white box, we were just looking at it, not touching it. The hazardous sign was enough to make us cautious. Marcus and I rushed home. We hastily dropped our fishing gear in our storage shed and dug around for a pick axe and a shovel. We knew we couldn’t repair the tombs with the same material they were made from so we planned to dig out the broken sides enough for our Zombies to crawl back in. Then we would repack the dirt and tomb material up around the damaged sides. It would make it look like they were just flood damaged like most of the others and we could get dad to repair them properly.

The next morning we got up early and grabbed our digging tools on the way to the old cemetery. Ga-Roo met us at the entrance into the cemetery. We greeted him and told him our plan. He seemed to understand us and turned to explain what was planned to Knuck-Knuck and O-Mum-Mum-Mum in their guttural, weird language. Marcus and I kept nodding at certain parts of their conversation as if we could understand what they were saying. When we realized what we were doing we both laughed and playfully bumped each other on each other's shoulder. As brothers, we had our fights but in spite of the occasional disagreements, we were very close.

We said our goodbyes to our Zombie friends after we dug out the sides of their tombs just enough for them to crawl back in. It was an emotional ending for all of us. Marcus and I wiped our dirty hands on our shirts after we finished rebuilding the damaged sides as best we could. We remained quiet for several minutes. As we were walking home, we pledged to each other that we would never tell anyone about what we had encountered over the past three days. We’d get Maggie to keep our secret too.

When they were back at home, Marcus explained to me about the AMSPEED28 pandemic that had been eradicated by a cure that successfully stopped the virus before it could spread worldwide like COVID-19 had way back in 2020. I remembered some of it but. I was pretty young. He said that the AMSPEED28 was different because it was transmitted by blood instead of being airborne. He explained that’s what he thinks caused the Zombies. He said, “since the flood from the rising river water washed up the styrofoam box, it must have split open when it slammed against one or more of the damaged tombs. The content or whatever specimens were in it, leaked the virus into their bodies. There was probably some dried blood from the bodies in each of the tombs that was rehydrated with flood water. That’s what I think turned the bodies into the Zombies. Then they were able to get out because of the tomb damage.

I told Marcus how impressed I was with his knowledge and theory and I asked him how knew all of this stuff.

He chuckled a little and said “he watches the news, reads and pays attention.” Then he teasingly said “I should try it so he wouldn’t always be the one that had to figure things out.” I agreed, which made him laugh harder.

That night at dinner, we told dad about the white Hazardous Material box. He was alarmed and immediately concerned about our safety. He feared that we could have contracted the disease somehow. We assured him we only looked at the box without touching it or getting too close. He was relieved. He told us he would contact the CDC Office in New Orleans first thing in the morning.

It only took the CDC four hours to arrive at our farm. They exited their white van wearing full hazmat gear. They followed dad, me and Marcus to the old cemetery where we found the styrofoam box still there, as if it was patiently waiting for us. Marcus and I glanced often at the Zombies tombs.

The CDC people carefully bagged up the white container in a biohazard red bag. They also bagged soil, sand and flood debris into large rubber air tight storage tubs. They dug at least a 2 foot deep trench in a wide circle around where the white box had been. When the circle trench met it was right at the edge of Ga-Roo’s tomb and followed a slight, downhill slope passing in front of the other two tombs as well. The CDC people took at least 20 pictures of the entire area they had just encircled. They had all evaluated the damage that had been done to the tombs, especially areas where contaminated water could have seeped in.

Finally, their leader, a Dr. Proctor approached my father. He told him not to let anyone including the boys come near the old cemetery again until they could measure structural damage to the tombs and the level of contamination in the exposed area. He went on and explained all of the tombs would be repaired instead of destroyed. He had recognized that this was a very old cemetery and likely had historical value to the history of the state of Louisiana. Marcus and I were relieved to hear this news. My dad was relieved that he wouldn’t be responsible for paying any of the bill.

Marcus told me later that night that I had stumbled right into the most exciting summer we’d ever had. We talked about finding a new fishing spot so we could keep our distance from the cemetery. I told him once the CDC cleared the area and we could go back, that I wanted to visit our Zombies tombs we agreed that we would never forget, Ga-Roo, Knuck-Knuck and O-Mum-Mum-Mum. Her name, or at least the way she said it made us laugh every time we tried to sound like her high pitched, squeaky voice. We hoped they were no longer Zombies but just three humans now resting in peace.