Chicago Fell First: A Zombie Novel
Chicago Fell First
A Zombie Horror Novel
Aaron Smith
SWARM
Mystery | Suspense | Horror
An imprint of
Buzz Books USA
Copyright 2013 Aaron Smith
Published by Buzz Books USA, an imprint of Athena Institute, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use except for “fair use” as attributed quotations in reviews of the stories or the book.
All characters in this book are fictional. Any likeness to persons or situations in the stories is entirely coincidental.
For interviews or guest posts, contact publicity at buzzbooksusa@me.com.
For Chris Brennan.
She fought bravely.
Cancer defeated her body.
But it never broke her spirit.
Chapter 1
The end of the world as we knew it began with a mistake. The mistake was followed by a miracle. But it was a miracle marred by an obscenity, like a crucifix kissed by the lips of the devil.
It began with rice. Something so common, something we see everywhere. Rice is usually food, but it tends to show up in other places, too. For years, they had those little kiosks in malls, silly little novelty stations where you could pay to have your name written on a grain of rice. Long grain rice, with its nice flat cylinder shape, was held in place in a lump of clay while miniscule letters were added with a fine-tipped technical pen. Those little souvenirs sold quite well. The letters identifying a person reduced to such tiny size, as if a human life could be compressed into such a small capsule of existence.
Rice shows up at weddings too, thrown at the bride and groom with wild shouts of joy and congratulations from the crowd. The wedding rice tradition has two different origins, for it sprang up in two different types of culture, separately but simultaneously, as strange customs often have in the wide, echoing halls of history. For some, the rice symbolized prosperity in the form of showers of grain, an avalanche of blessings to last a lifetime.
In other cultures, the rice had a more defensive significance. It was thrown in the path of the newly united couple to feed and distract the evil spirits that were believed to show up, uninvited of course, to trouble the happy young husband and wife.
Rice is so common that one hardly ever thinks about it, even when it’s on a dinner plate, usually just sitting off to the side of the main attraction of the meal, looking so benign
It began with rice. Everything changed after that. -DH
***
There was a plop and a splash, followed by a loud, “Goddammit!”
Katherine came bursting out of the bathroom with her robe barely tied shut and slipper-clad feet stomping into the kitchen. She held a towel in her hands with something wrapped in its folds like a mother would carry a sick infant. Her stream of curses continued as she laid the bundle down on the counter and flung open the cabinets above the sink.
“What happened, Mom?” Brandon asked as he looked up from his Pop-Tarts. His mother didn’t answer right away, and Brandon watched as she rummaged through the cabinet’s contents and finally, victoriously, pulled out a bag of rice. She dropped the bag on the counter, took a knife from the countertop holder and slit the bag open, tipping it over just enough to let some of the rice spill out onto the counter. The tiny white grains sounded like the sand in an hourglass as they trickled onto the marble surrounding the sink. Katherine took the hidden object from the towel and held it up.
“That’s what happened,” she said, turning to her son for just a second. “The damn thing fell in the toilet.”
“Eww,” the seven-year old scrunched his face in disgust. “I hope you flushed first.”
“It’s not funny!” Katherine snapped. “This phone is expensive and I need it!”
Brandon watched as she took the phone and shoved it into the bag of rice, burying it among the grains. She turned back to her son and explained, her voice still high with exasperation, “I heard about this from a friend who works for Verizon. The rice draws the moisture out of the phone and might keep it from being ruined. If I carry it to the store in the rice to have it looked at, the water might not do too much damage.”
“Really?” Brandon asked, “It really works?”
“Supposedly,” his mother muttered back. “I hope it does. I’ll find out after I drop you off at school. Finish eating. Hurry up.”
Nine hours later, the final bell of the day rang and Brandon trotted out the door of the school and hopped into his mother’s SUV with his backpack. She was chatting away on the phone as he got in, talking to Aunt Phyllis he guessed by the sound of it. Brandon glanced at the phone she was babbling into. It looked like the same one. He took a closer look as Katherine hung up and dropped the phone into her purse to focus on driving. It was the same phone, for it still had the scratch on the side from when Brandon had accidentally dropped it on the sidewalk when his mother had let him use it to play Angry Birds while she was browsing at a yard sale. The rice had worked!
His mother began to pelt him with questions about how his day had been and he sighed and tried to evade what felt like an interrogation. The SUV drove down the streets surrounding the school as they went to pick up Brandon’s little brother Joseph from daycare. Moments later, three-year old Joseph sat in the back seat, babbling on and on about every little detail of his day and the stupid games they had played at what he kept referring to as school even though Brandon knew it was not real school. What was even more irritating to Brandon than his little brother’s nonstop chatter was his mother’s cooing responses. He wished he had an iPod to drown it out, but Katherine kept telling him he would have to wait until he was a few years older, a time that seemed eons away.
Halfway through the drive home, which took about ten minutes but felt a million times longer when Joseph wouldn’t shut up, Brandon heard his mother’s phone ringing from inside her purse.
“Mom,” he said, trying to alert her, but she was oblivious, caught up in the brat’s story of his snack time adventures. “Mom, the phone!” he tried again, to no avail. He finally tugged on her sleeve. She shot him a look of annoyance and started to mutter something about distracting the driver but stopped herself when she finally heard the buzzing bell.
“Hello,” Katherine said, answering the call. “Yeah, Phyllis, what’s up? That son of a bitch did what?”
Brandon knew what that meant. His mother only used those words when Aunt Phyllis was fighting with Uncle Martin. It happened a lot and Brandon wasn’t surprised. He thought Uncle Martin was a jerk and he wished Aunt Phyllis would divorce him. Maybe Aunt Phyllis could marry his father, Brandon had thought a couple times, since Mom didn’t want Dad anymore, though he couldn’t understand why. Brandon liked his Dad, even if he only saw him every other weekend and some holidays. Dad never got mad or yelled at him the way Mom did, and he also never talked to Joseph in that squeaky baby voice their mother used because she thought it sounded cute. Brandon thought it would be cool if his father got together with Aunt Phyllis, even if it made his mother mad. He laughed at the thought and turned his attention back to listening to Mom’s end of the phone call.
“Phyllis, calm down. Stop crying so I can hear you! It’s not that bad. No, I can’t. I have the kids here and I have to … oh fine, okay, give me half an hour, okay? And not for long either. I have to make dinner and all that. Why can’t you come to us? No, no, you’re right; you shouldn’t drive if you’re upset. Give me half an hour.”
&
nbsp; Katherine clicked the phone shut, shoved it back in her purse. At a red light, she turned to Brandon. “Listen, kiddo,” she said, “Aunt Phyllis needs me real bad and she’s really upset and I don’t think you guys should come with me. We’re going home first and then I have to go see her. Do you think you’ll be okay if I leave you with Joseph for a little while, Brandon? It won’t be for long and you’re a big boy now. You can just watch TV or something, okay?”
“Yeah, sure Mom,” Brandon said. He smiled. He liked the idea of being responsible, even if it was only for a little while. Anyway, he thought, Aunt Phyllis needed his mother more than he did at that moment. If he were not so sure his mother would smack him for saying the word, he would have agreed out loud that Uncle Martin was a real asshole. He would have bet his mother had no idea he even knew that word.
“Sit down and stay there,” Brandon told his little brother in his best imitation of his father’s authoritative voice, five minutes after Katherine had left the house. Joseph was sitting cross-legged in front of the TV Brandon had just switched on. He watched for a moment to make sure Joseph would stay put, and walked into the kitchen to get some cookies.
The Oreos were a top-shelf commodity, and a rare treat for Brandon since his mother was the house’s true Oreo addict. It was worth the effort, he thought. If he was old enough to watch the brat, he was old enough to get the cookies down. He dragged a chair across the floor from the table to the counter, feeling like a king. He climbed up onto the chair, used it as a step to ascend to the countertop and tugged open the cabinet doors, grinning, the blue Nabisco package as beautiful as anything Brandon had ever seen. He reached up and took his prize down, hugging it like a teddy bear.
He took out five of the black and white treasures, gently put them down on the counter, and returned the package to its rightful place, precisely as it had been before, confident that his mom would never know. He hopped down and put the chair away, marching into the living room with his cookies to check on his brother. And no—Brandon swore a silent oath as he crossed from one room to the next—Joseph could not have any of his Oreos. The TV sounded louder than it had been when Brandon had gone into the kitchen. Good, he thought as he turned the corner into the living room, he would have a reason to yell at the brat. But he turned that corner and didn’t see Joseph. The TV was on, the same channel as when he had left, but the spot in front of the couch was empty.
“Joseph?”
No answer. Brandon stuffed the first Oreo into his mouth, whole, and began to chew. He tossed the other four onto the couch cushion and began to march around the house looking for his brother, ready to bring up the volume on his imitation-of-Dad voice and really let the little kid have it when he found him.
The bedroom the two boys shared was empty. Brandon looked under the bed, in the closet, even in the beat up wooden toy chest Mom had gotten for the boys at a yard sale. No Joseph. There was no sign of him in their mother’s room either. He had to be in the bathroom then. Brandon headed in that direction, hoping he would not find that the brat had wet his pants or anything else gross. He was willing to watch him for a little while, but there was no way he was cleaning up anything like that. He found the bathroom door open a crack and wrinkled his nose in anticipation of a smell that might or might not be there as he pushed it open the rest of the way and went in. The light was on inside the bathroom and Brandon stopped, frozen in his tracks, as shocked as he had ever been in his seven years of life.
“Joseph!” Brandon’s voice squeaked and cracked with panic. Joseph’s clothes were in a small heap in the middle of the bathroom floor. The faucet in the tub was gushing water and the three-year old was naked and face down in the half-full bath.
“Shit!” Brandon used another word his mother had no idea he knew and stepped into the tub, his sneakers squishing as they sucked up water like two sponges. He grabbed Joseph under the arms and lifted him, tugged him up onto the edge of the tub, and shoved as hard as he could, sending the tot flopping over onto the floor.
Brandon got out, knelt down, and began to shake Joseph. No reaction, nothing but stillness and the clammy, cold skin, that horrible shade of blue. Brandon shook and shook the small wet body but nothing happened. He finally gave up, stared down at Joseph, and began to cry.
Joseph’s dead, Mom’s gonna kill me, Joseph’s dead, Mom’s gonna kill me, Joseph’s dead, Mom’s gonna kill me, Joseph’s dead, Dad’s gonna kill me … Dad! What would Dad do?
The thought of his father snapped Brandon back to awareness. He sniffled and wiped his sleeve across his face to slur the tears away. Dad would know what to do, Brandon was sure. But Dad was not there. Brandon was alone and he would have to find a solution. 911! No, he decided. Police would come and they might put him in jail for killing Joseph! There had to be another way. But what could he do, and what would happen when Mom got home? Brandon’s head spun around faster and faster. It was getting hard to breathe. He was scared, so scared.
Then it hit him: Brandon knew what he had to do. But money! He needed money! Luckily, he knew where Mom kept a stash that he wasn’t supposed to know about. In a fit of daring a few weeks earlier, he had been snooping in her dresser drawers, not looking for anything in particular, just being a kid. There it had sat: more money than he had ever seen before in one place. He had even counted it. Sixty-seven dollars! He ran into his mother’s room, tore open the second drawer from the bottom, pushed aside the gray jogging socks, and grabbed the clump of green paper with little pictures of old men. He stuffed the riches in his pocket and charged into the living room. He unlocked the front door, tore it open, and began to run down the block, his sneakers pumping bathwater out onto the sidewalk with each frantic motion of his short legs.
He reached the corner store in minutes, tugged the door open, almost bowled over a departing nun holding a carton of cigarettes, and frantically began to scan the aisles. He bypassed the Twinkies and newspapers and bottles of soda and found what he needed to complete his mission. He grabbed two five pound bags of rice, lugging them to the counter like a miniature Hercules, and threw them up in front of the cashier, a teenage girl chewing gum as she craned her neck to look down at the top of the head of her tiny customer. She giggled and scanned the bags of dried white grains.
“Ten forty-five,” she said.
Brandon pulled the wad of bills from his pocket, selected a ten and a single, almost threw them at the girl, grabbed his purchases without bothering to wait for his change, and flew out the door and back up the block as fast as he could go with the added ten pounds of potential salvation.
Huffing and puffing as he reentered the house, Brandon went straight to the bathroom. He looked into the tub and saw that all the water had now swirled away down the drain. He propped the first bag of rice up on the tub’s edge, dug in his nails and tore open the plastic, and let the rice fall into the porcelain chamber. He repeated the struggle with the second bag, poured until the bags were empty and the bottom of the tub was covered with a layer of rice. He tossed the empty bags aside and went through the desperate act of getting Joseph, limp and blue and looking so empty, back into the tub.
When the smaller boy lay unmoving like an oversized, pale potato on the bed of rice, Brandon felt the tears begin to well up in his eyes again. He kneeled down beside the tub that held Joseph and began to pray.
Katherine arrived home a few minutes later. She was surprised to see the front door partially open. She worried for a second but shoved her concern aside and started to mentally compose her speech to Brandon about taking his responsibilities seriously. She stepped into the living room and noticed that the carpet was wet. She frowned and upped the intensity of her unspoken lecture. She saw that the light was on in the bathroom, the glow shining out into the hall.
“Hey, guys,” she said aloud, “what’s going on in there?” she tossed her purse onto the couch where it landed beside the unnoticed Oreos.
As Katherine barged into the bathroom, the sight was so unexpected, so su
rreal, that she stopped and just stared, the room spinning. Brandon was kneeling on the floor, precisely in the center of the oval rug. His head bobbed up and down, causing his bushy brown hair to bounce and drop, bounce and drop as he chanted, “Please, Jesus … please, God … please, Jesus … please, God …” over and over again, stuck in a cycle of words and wishes. And there was Joseph, perfectly still and a sickly shade of blue, in the tub, with rice stuck to his body. Katherine froze. She tried to move, to speak, but nothing came out and nothing changed. She felt eternities going by, the strange chanting of Brandon echoing in her ears like thunder and a whisper at the same time. She struggled until she broke free and screamed.
The shriek snapped Brandon out of his trance, pulling him back to reality. He turned his head and looked up, saw his mother standing over him, her face twisted in shock, still wailing in the scream that might never end. He tugged on the leg of her pants, trying to get her to stop.
Katherine’s voice trailed off and her ability to move came back. She felt the pulling on her jeans and glanced down. Brandon.
“Brandon, what happened? My God! Joseph? What happened? What were you doing?”
Brandon’s mouth opened and the whole chain of events flashed across his mind as he tried to get the words out to make her understand.
“I went in the kitchen to get a snack and he must have wanted to take a bath and I came in here and he was in the water and I pulled him out and he was blue and I thought you would kill me if he was dead so I ran to the store and got rice to try to fix him like you fixed your phone and to get the water out of him because he was wet inside and that’s why he was blue like the ocean! I’m sorry! Mom, is Joseph dead?”
“Fuck!” Katherine shouted, not caring who heard. She bent down and scooped up Joseph, lifting his small body and hugging it to her chest. She looked desperately at his pale blue face and felt that no breath came from his lips or nose. She carried him into the living room as grains of rice that had clung to his wet skin fell off and left a trail across the floor. She put him on the couch, pulled her phone from her purse, and called for help.