Byron : A Zombie Tale (Part 1) (2 page)

The next morning I was woken by a strange rocking sensation. It took several moments for me to realize that the sensation was caused by somebody shaking my shoulder. As my senses began to recover from the inky void that was my slumber, I could hear a distant voice asking if I was alright. It took several moments for me to recognize the voice as that of Cole, my roommate.

Goddamn!
I thought to myself.
My head really hurt!

I groaned.

As my brain gradually rebooted, it became evident to me that I was not sleeping in my bed. Beneath my face, I could feel the coarse pile of the commercial dorm carpeting. But, there was something else also touching my face. It was something wet and sticky. The odor that suddenly struck my olfactory senses confirmed my worst fears; I had been sick during the night and was lying in a pool of it. Though, I could smell something else in the stench that didn’t seem right. It smelled metallic.

My eyes took a Herculean effort to open. I couldn’t remember a single time before that had required such an exertion of will to open them. At a snail’s pace, the world started coming into view. The cheap commercial carpet and pinkish pool of chunky sick were the first to come into full focus. I wanted to retch.

“Byron, you alright man?” It was Cole talking, but his voice sounded different. It wasn’t its usual sarcastic self. No, he sounded almost… afraid!

My neck and throat were sore. I groaned again, unable to formulate any words. After several failed attempts, I was able to croak out, “whassup?” It was only a touch above a whisper, but the words were out there.

“Oh, thank god!” He said, “you’re alive!” It was strange, but I could hear genuine relief in Cole’s voice. Why in the hell would he say something like that?

I tried to move, but my body was stiff. And, my head was killing me. God! What happened last night?

I tried to search my memories, but it was all a blank. Had I really had that much to drink? I thought I had been fairly conservative in my share of the celebratory drinks. In fact… Yes, it was coming to me now. I’d only had a couple of beers at the campus pub. So, I had to wonder why it was that I felt like someone had just dumped me out of a garbage can.

I moved my head around to assess the situation and try to figure out what Cole was talking about. As I took it all in, it became evident that I had fallen out of my bed and landed face-first onto the floor. My legs were still up in the air on the bed. There was a pool of vomit under my face, and the side of my mattress was covered in something dark and sticky. It looked like it may have been blood, but I couldn’t be sure; my brain was still fuzzy.

I attempted to swing my legs off the bed and rotate my trunk so that I could obtain a sitting position on the floor. However, it wasn’t too surprised to find that my legs were unresponsive. They’d probably been propped up all night and I was sure I would have the worst case of pins-and-needles once the blood started to flow back into them.

As I tried to move, I heard Cole yelp in surprise. “Dude,” he said, overplaying the worried roommate card, “don’t move. I’m gonna call 9-1-1. Just stay there.”

But, what if he wasn’t overplaying it? The more I thought about it, his response was really starting to worry me. I needed to see what the hell he was talking about.

I attempted to sit up again. My legs slid off the bed and onto the floor with an unceremonious thump and I rolled my trunk so that I could sit against the bed frame. Ha! Success! From my sitting posture, I took another look around the room. With my back against my bed I could see that where my face had been was a huge pool of pinkish-tan; its stench was starting to make my stomach hurt. To my left was where my legs had gotten caught against the bed. To my surprise something dark and sticky had saturated my sheets, trailed down the side of my bed, and pooled into a large stain on the carpet. It looked like blood. But, I couldn’t think of where it would have come from.

I examine my legs, on the off chance that I’d had some mysterious wound from which all this blood had come and found Cole’s blood-saturated towel adhered to my right leg. Up until this point, I hadn’t been aware of any pain in my leg, but now it suddenly burned like hell. My heart started hammering in my chest and I got this sick, sinking feeling in my gut. Again, I had to wonder what’d happened last night.

Cole walked out of the bathroom with the cordless phone and jumped when he saw me. His face was pale and his hands were shaking terribly. “Dude, it’s going to be okay.” I could hear in his voice that he was scared. And, he was nearly out of breath. “The campus police and paramedics are on their way.”

“Whaa hammed?” I said. Mind you, that’s not what I had tried to say. Not in the least.  I wanted to ask ‘What happened?’ But, for some reason, this was the best that my stiff jaw could do.

Cole finally turned back to me sitting against the bed. “Oh GOD!” he exclaimed. “Look at your neck.” He started hopping around, his face turning from pale white to a sickly shade of green.
What the hell was his problem?

I raised my hand to my neck. It wasn’t hurting, or anything. What was he talking about? I felt along the side of my neck, and noticed that it felt a little swollen on one side. Had I gotten some kind of weird virus, like the mumps or something? Or a goiter? Whatever it was, it wasn't anything that should have been cause for his foolishness. Besides, my neck wasn’t hurting in the least. No. The only thing that was hurting was my leg. In fact, my leg was on fire!

I had never felt anything hurt so bad. Not even when I had broken my arm two years ago playing football on the quad. It was like a two alarm fire burning in my right calf and thigh. My foot felt almost like it was about to become a small pile of ash.

Whatever it was that was happening with my leg was hidden by the towel which was stuck to it. I resolved that I needed to see what was happening - to understand why there was so much pain! So, I grabbed the towel and pulled it gently.

The sensation was instantaneous. The burning in my leg had grown in intensity from a two alarm to a five alarm fire. My lips went numb and I could see little sparkles of light bursting before my vision.

It was evident that this was going to hurt. But, hey, it's just like taking off a bandage, or picking a scab. You gotta do it fast, right?

With a firm grip and a quick, fluid motion I pulled the towel again, hell-bent on removing it from my leg and discovering the source of my pain. As I did, though, the flames of pain burning in my leg engulfed me and I quickly slipped back into a sea of inky blackness as Cole, my bed, and my whole dorm room suddenly disappeared.

When I woke next I was even more disoriented than the last time. I don’t know for sure how much time had actually passed since I’d blacked out, but considering that everything was pitch black it must have been considerable. I could hear nothing, and all around me was just darkness.

It became evident to me that I was no longer sitting up against my bed. I was now laying flat on my back without so much as a pillow beneath my head. At least this was a better posture and happenstance than last time when I had been greeted by a pool of my own sickness. My head still hurt. And, now the burning, which had spread from my calf to my thigh before I tried to rip the towel from my leg, consumed my entire lower body from the waist down.

Cautiously, I moved my leg up and down and was relieved to find that I still had good control over my motor skills. Thankfully, I was not greeted by that same feeling of absolute numbness either. In fact, I could feel that my knee and toes on my right leg brushed along something like cloth as I lifted them.

My eyes were open; there was no doubt about that. I could feel them straining against the darkness to find whatever shapes or sources of light may exist. But, the darkness within which I found myself, I realized, was so complete that it was unnatural. Even during the darkest night in my dorm there should have been some faint trickle of light invading the space – be it from the incessant hallway lights, the poorly shaded window, or even the little red light on the bottom of the cordless phone charger.

Something was amiss. Darkness in my room should not be so unnervingly absolute. Unless, of course, it just so happened that I was not in my room.

Testing the veil of my reality, I reached a hand outward in front of me and found it impeded by that same cloth-like substance I had felt with my lower extremities. I lifted my head slightly and let it drop. The sound I heard was neither the ‘flumpf’ of a mattress, nor was it the thud of a floor. No, instead what I heard was a metallic ringing sound.

Adrenaline coursed through my veins and my respiration became rapid. I could feel my hands begin to shake nervously – a condition I had only on several brief occasions had the fortune to experience. All of these, however, were moments of severe tragedy which would forever traumatize my mind; like the first – and, thankfully, only –  time that I had seen my parents naked together and I thought that they were going to beat me senseless. The other time I dare not even try to remember because it still gives me shivers.

Why am I on metal?
I thought to myself.

I felt forward with my hand again, following the curve of the cloth to the front center where I felt a zipper.

Oh God!

My mind raced. Could it be possible? Obviously something was wrong here. Was this some kind of a sick prank? It had to be. A sick prank perpetrated by my frat brothers. Of course, that’s what this was. What other explanation could there be for me to be lying on a metal table in what seemed like a body bag?

As my hands settled back onto my chest I became a little more concerned. My clothes were gone. My body was bare.

I reached my hand up over my head to where the zipper should be located and could feel a small, smooth piece of plastic. Yes! That was it. I wrapped my fingernails around the plastic and with a painful slowness began to open it up. Once the zipper passed in front of my face, I was able to reach my hands to the outside of my enclosure and finish opening it.

My eyes took a little time to adjust to the dim light in the small room. It reminded me of a meat locker. The walls were ceramic tiled and a bank of stainless steel counters lined the walls. There was a stainless sink, and I myself was sitting upon what looked like a stainless steel examination table. Looking down I could see that there were drains in the table.

I understood in an instant just where I was. I was in a morgue and it looked like I was next on the slate for an autopsy.

This damn joke was just getting to be too much! It had gone too far! I swore out loud, shouting names at the top of my lungs, calling out those I suspected to be the perpetrators of this farce. I would get back at them. And when I did, my vengeance would be served cold.

I sat up, my body stiff from being so still. The burning sensation in my lower extremities dimmed a little as I moved. Perhaps it was nothing more than some kind of relic of the alcoholic binge I had apparently undergone the other night; the night that I couldn’t remember.

It was hard to see my body with any real clarity. Perhaps, if I was lucky there would be a mirror somewhere in the room. I lifted my legs out of the body bag and swung them over the side of the table. Hopping down to the floor, I noticed with satisfaction that the tile floor was not at all cold. In fact, it was quite comfortable against my bare feet. I must have been asleep for some time because I was a little wobbly on my feet and had to clutch the table to steady myself.

I turned my head back with some difficulty to examine the leg upon which the offensive towel had once been stuck only to see that there was quite a wound there. What had I done to my leg?

I looked up and saw that there was a lab coat hanging across the room near the door. Well, if my friends hadn’t cared about my naked body to execute this epic prank, then they wouldn’t mind it for a few more minutes as I made my way over to grab the lab coat and cover myself up. My legs were really stiff at first, but I was soon able to gain a little more agility as I walked over to the doorway.

To my luck, the light switch to the room was also next to the door. I switched the fluorescent overhead lights on and my eyes ached terribly with the sudden burst of light. Yet, instead of things becoming clearer, many of the items in the room were ringed with halos.

I grabbed the lab coat and slipped it over my naked body thankful that my frat brothers had not planned to have all of their friends waiting in hiding to leap out and surprise me in such an awkward situation. They were known for some intricate pranks, but this…this…

For them to carry this out would have taken months of planning. Not to mention the fact that they would have needed a colleague in the Medical Examiner’s office. I had to admit that no matter how angry I was about this stupid gag – I was also quite impressed.

In the glow of the fluorescent lights I could see that there was a mirror on the far end of the room. That was my new target. My muscles were thankfully becoming much more nimble and I was able to walk fairly easily over.

What I saw in the mirror astonished me and made me doubt some of my earlier suppositions. Though, given the complexity and expense that my friends had undergone to accomplish this joke of jokes, there were details that I would have certainly figured beyond their reckoning.

My skin was pale. No; it was white as death itself. As if there was no blood flowing through my flesh from which a rosy shade could have blossomed. My lips were a shade of grayish blue that seemed eerily unnatural. My eyes were slightly milky. Though, this effect, I surmised, must have been through the use of contact lenses because my vision was completely unobstructed. I pressed on my fingernails and was impressed. They had even figured out a way to somehow mask the capillary response. Perhaps, through the use of nail polish?

I looked at my leg again, using the mirror to help take a gander at what I could not see so well before. There were teeth marks marring the flesh in my right calf. In fact, it even appeared as though a small piece of the flesh had been torn away. No wonder it burned.

My frat brothers would need to be commended on the excellent job they had done in completing the illusion that I had died. Looking down at the floor, I could even see that there was a toe tag tied to my right big toe. I knelt down and looked at the information on the tag. It looked official. It had my name, age, and weight. Most interesting, it listed my cause of death as unknown.

That figures. They couldn’t even come up with a good cause of death.
Well, guess what boys
, I thought,
Byron is alive and well
.
And, he’ll be paying a visit to you soon.

I chuckled. My throat was dry and hoarse. I really must have been asleep for a while for my throat to be this dry. Either that, or I must have been getting a cold. I really didn’t want to be sick.

I gave the mirror one last smile and turned away, ready to head out through the front door. But, as I turned my head I could see something that gave me a slight chill down my spine. My neck didn’t look right. In fact, ‘not right’ couldn’t even begin to describe how my neck looked. It looked damn wrong. Hell, it looked like several of my vertebrae had been diverted several inches to the right.

I felt the protrusion in my neck expecting it to be tender. But, it did not hurt at all. Ha! Of course not! It was probably just another piece of theatrical makeup that my numbskull frat brothers had added to further bolster the authenticity of their prank. And then I remembered Cole. Cole had gone nuts, jumping up and down, crying like a little baby about something wrong with my neck.

They even had Cole in on this prank.

Oh man! I just can’t wait,
I thought,
they’ll see who has the last laugh.

As I stepped out the morgue door and into a dimly lit corridor I began to run through scenarios of my vengeance. It would be mine!
Oh, yes,
I though,
the last laugh would be mine!