Undead Genesis: Zombie
Epidemic Origin
Published by Colten Steele -
[email protected] Copyright 2014 Colten Steele
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Before you read…
This is the second short story in my Zombie series. While it is fine to read this book first, I would recommend reading Zombie Threat: The Undead Arise before delving into this one. It is available at most online bookstores.
Table of Contents
Chapter I – Arise
Chapter II – Above All
Chapter III – Who Am I
Chapter IV – No Turning Back
Chapter V – White Flag
Chapter VI – Can Only Imagine
Chapter VII – Lay Me Down
Chapter VIII – 10,000 Reasons
Chapter IX – Revelation
Chapter X – White Flag
Chapter XI – How Great
Chapter XII – Redeemed
Chapter XIII – Awake my Soul
Chapter XIV – Never Let Go
Chapter XV – Save Me
Chapter XVI – East to West
Chapter XVII – Open the Eyes
Chapter XVIII – Waiting Here For You
Epilogue
Author Notes
~ Chapter I ~
Marik slowly woke before the darkness started to surrender to the coming day. He had been taught from his earliest days to wake up just before sunrise for the express purpose of experiencing the marvelous arrival of this day. He carefully stretched each sore limb, one at a time, after an uncomfortable night curled into a tight ball like an unborn fetus. His handmade vine hammock was attached precariously to the tree trunk above him. Both ends of the hammock were wrapped around a wooden peg placed in a single diagonal shallow groove cut into the tree. The boy’s cocoon of vines gently twisted and creaked loudly with each subtle movement.
The night sky slowly lightened. With his small fingers Marik widened a gap in the vine mesh and admired the horizon as it gradually turned from light rose, into an alluring pink, and finally into the dazzling orange of daybreak. From his vantage over one hundred fifty feet in the air there was no ground to be seen, only the rolling green of the rain forest canopy below. A few feet above him the lowest limbs of a sacred cotton tree spread over him like a monstrous hand reaching across the brightening sky.
Marik was just over thirteen years old. This was the third time he had seen the sunrise from above the canopy, and he knew there was a chance he may never see it again. He had been born and raised below, in a world covered by the jungle where direct light only penetrated when the sun was overhead. His close knit nomadic tribe never ventured out of the jungle’s safety, and only this sacred ritual from the tops of cotton trees gave a member of the tribe an excuse to see the sunrise. If he was able to complete this portion of his rite of passage into manhood today, he may never get an opportunity to see the sunrise again.
The boy had been carefully scaling this particular tree for the last five days. Each step required a shallow notch to be cautiously cut into the trunk of the tree with a sharpened stone wedge and heavy rock tipped hammer. A long narrow step was then inserted into the notch giving Marik enough room to fit both feet and move up the tree. Previous attempts at scaling this cotton tree by his ancestors had left frequent puckered scars in the outer bark over the decades.
Looking down, Marik could see hundreds of these flat steps in a meandering line, each one meticulously created by his own hands over the last couple of years. He was only strong enough to carry six of these platforms at a time upon his back, so he repeatedly and carefully descended the steps again to retrieve more.
He had reached the top of the previous two trees and found the first of the sacred ingredients, the ransi flower. A pouch full of these beautiful, but poisonous, red flowers had been carefully collected and was presently hidden below with his meager gear deep in the crevice of a nearby tree. However, there was no trace of the final hallowed component he was required to retrieve in either of the first two trees; the larvae of the bondai fly.
In previous generations the larvae were found abundantly at the top of every cotton tree, but before he was born the larvae started to disappear and boys sometimes had to climb more than one tree now to find it. Marik knew he would throw himself from his precarious perch in frustration rather than to sulk back to the tribe without finding the last ingredient.
He spent another few moments admiring the rising sun and thanked his ancestors for keeping him safe. He praised their bravery and asked for them to direct his life on this day. Singing ancient songs of tribute to the spirits of the many men who made this same climb before him, he unwrapped himself from his hammock and started to ascend the final few feet to reach his goal.
~ Chapter II ~
Marik was in the branches one hundred eighty feet above the ground and was exhausted. The eagerness to reach the top he felt hours ago had fled as he struggled to remain steadily focused. His last meal had been consumed the previous day and had consisted of a few mouthfuls of a hard dried porridge and the second half of a slightly over-ripened pineapple. He sipped the last of his water and knew he needed to start the long precarious journey back down the tree soon to avoid dehydration.
The top of a cotton tree in the northern rain forest of Brazil towered over the rest of the canopy and was unlike any other environment in the jungle. Many species of plants and insects lived here which were not found anywhere else in the world. The large bondai fly was one of these species and had yet to be discovered by the civilized world. Once the bondai fly emerged from its cocoon, it flew off to the next cotton tree it could find where it mated, laid eggs in the upper branches a few weeks later, and then died. The larvae spent their lives at the tops of the trees. They first consumed the carcass of their mother, and then fed on the tree until pupating.
The adult fly was remarkable for its size and aggressiveness. It could grow up to an inch and a half long and was extremely territorial. The bite of the fly left a painful welt which did not disappear for days. Marik had spread a thick mixture over his entire body derived mainly from a single large pointy aloe leaf crushed days ago. He had been told this would protect him from the painful bite, but had also heard stories from men who said it did not always work. He was cautious, but had not seen any of the flies or larvae in the two previous trees, so he was less worried than he had been previously.
Marik was shuffling along with his feet on a low branch and his hands searching the leaves on the branch just above him. The muscles in his neck and shoulders were sore from looking up for hours in search of the elusive larvae in a tree whose canopy covered more than half an acre.
When the heavy fly unexpectedly smacked into the side of his neck and took a painful chuck of skin in its sharp jaws, both hands came off of the branch he had been clinging to. Thankfully the hammock from the night before was tied around the branch above him and looped under one arm. One of his feet slipped and for a moment he hung in the balance waving both arms wildly.
He was vaguely aware he had wet himself as one hand groped to regain a hold on the tree branch above and the other beat frantically at the insect which still stubbornly clung to his neck. He connected solidly with a slap that left its own mark on his skin and the bondai fly fell weightily on his shoulder. It teetered there a moment, before falling forward, rolling down his chest. Marik quickly lost
sight of the insect as it plummeted towards the dark earth below.
The boy stood there breathing heavily while his heart beat out of control. The lethargy he had been experiencing minutes before was replaced with an adrenalin rush which had set his senses on high alert. He could feel blood dripping slowly from the fiery wound in his neck, and the steadier drip of sweat as it poured from his brow. His skin tingled as if thousands of insects crawled over every inch of him and he franticly wiped at every prickle.
His feet itched the worst and he could not bend over to reach them. He picked his left foot up and reached behind him to scratch it. What he felt there was not his foot, but something soft and gummy between his fingers. He kicked instinctively and hysterically to get whatever was on his foot off, once again nearly losing his balance, but it clung stubbornly. He looked at his leg as it thrashed back and forth before realizing a clinging soft body there was scuttling slowly up his calf. An inch long white larva of the bondai fly crawled to his knee before he was able to regain control. Lifting his leg, Marik plucked it off and plopped it into a waiting pouch.
When he looked down he saw another larva was climbing on his right foot, and many others could be seen further along the branch.
~ Chapter III ~
A week later Marik stared up at his father Jarik as the older man applied black war paint to his son’s face. They sat on a bench in the communal gathering hut located in the center of the village. It was by far the largest building in the tribe’s clearing. On a typical day, the women would be preparing meals and scolding rambunctious young children here, but today there were only men present.
Surrounding them were others performing similar tasks in preparation for the coming war. All were decorated with vibrant colored feathers and war paint. A group of seven young men stayed together at one end of the hut. They were loud, often jumping to their feet and yelling boastful guarantees of their upcoming success. Marik would not be accepted into this group until his rites of adulthood were fulfilled by participating in and surviving the coming conflict.
The older men sat solemnly in a circle discussing the possibility of losing their lives, or more tragically, the lives of their arrogant, and ignorant, sons.
The previous evening Marik’s coming of age ceremony had been performed. He was the only boy this year old enough to earn this honor. The tribe had once had hundreds of members dominating a vast area of the jungle. In those days dozens of boys would have been a part of the ceremony each year. Things had changed greatly between then and now. Many years ago, before Marik’s father was born, outsiders had come. These strange light skinned men, now only remembered in tribal lore, claimed to want to provide help, but instead brought curses which wiped out entire villages with sickness. The forty eight surviving members of the once grand society now hid fearfully in the deepest jungle and struggled to preserve the ways of their ancestors.
The upcoming yearly raid was an orchestrated event with another tribe. They had also suffered the same decimation from diseases. Both tribes required war and sacrifices for their ancient traditions, yet two obstacles stood in the way of achieving their goals. First, the distance between tribes was too vast and the tribes moved too often for raids to happen by chance. An agreed upon location had been set. Second, neither could afford to lose many young men. Each tribe was only allowed to capture one opposing warrior and kill another. The first tribe to accomplish this was considered the victor and both tribes would withdraw afterwards.
As a rule, no long range weapons were allowed in the engagement. Excluded were arrows, thrown spears, and, most importantly, witchcraft.
Any divergence from this arrangement would result in a terrible curse being placed on the offending tribe. Each tribe had a powerful shaman wielding remarkable, yet terrible powers. Everyone respected and feared these men.
Looking at the small group of eighteen others around him, Marik could not fully conceive the vast armies which had gone to war in the distant past. He had been enamored with the stories of these unimaginable wars since he was a small child. The tribal warriors, who now easily fit in a single communal hut, had once covered a massive area with cooking fires as far as the eye could see.
The elders stood and walked towards the door. Everyone else stood up to follow. Wordlessly, the tribe’s ancient wrinkled chief pulled the leather door cover open and the warriors filed out at a brisk jog. The old man watched them go with a melancholy gleam in his eye as he remembered when he was physically able enough to join the war party.
The women and children formed two groups on either side of the door the men ran through. The women wailed and moaned with overly exaggerated gestures. Some flailed on the ground covering their mostly naked bodies with fine dust, while others clutched halfheartedly at the men as they ran by, symbolically trying to hold them back. Young boys stared in awe from behind their mothers and imagined the day when they would be included.
As the man with the least stature in the tribe, Marik was the final one out the door. As he exited he glanced at his mother. She was flailing most of all, bawling a mournful appeal to her son not to leave. Her cries rose above the rest and tore at Marik’s heart. She had been the center of his world for thirteen years, and he left her now to potentially give his life in an effort to become a man. As custom dictated, Marik ignored her clutching hands as he passed and concentrated on keeping up with the fast moving column.
The men ran all afternoon without stopping. The brash boasting was gone as even the young men were forced to use each breath to fuel the overwhelming needs of their bodies. As evening slowly overcame the light, a single dim flame in the distance became visible and guided them unerringly towards their destination. It became brighter as they approached until Marik could make out the dark figure of a man holding a single staff-like torch taller than he was.
When all of the men arrived, the man with the torch lifted it up and brought it back down. When the staff hit the ground, the flame immediately went out. At the same moment a single scream in anticipation of triumph was offered by all of the men as blackest night crashed around them.
~ Chapter IV ~
The jungle was quiet and still wet with morning dew. This deep under the canopy the sun’s light had barely put a dent in the blackness of night. Marik walked slowly behind his father following in his footsteps. They moved silently from tree to tree, using every bit of cover and deep shadow to remain virtually undetectable from ahead. To his left and right Marik could see others from his tribe similarly stalking forward.
Tanis, the tribe’s shaman, boldly walked ahead of the hidden tribe members striding openly through the jungle. The various bones, decorations, and pouches dangling from numerous places on his body loudly clattered as he walked without fear into a clearing ahead. The old man was slightly stooped and extremely wrinkled. His head was completely bald and his face was dominated by a large flat nose.
Marik could make out the dark shape of a similarly dressed shaman from the opposing tribe already waiting for Tanis in the clearing. He could not make out any of the opposing tribe’s warriors, though he knew they were there waiting on the opposite side.
The two shaman sat down together. Their heads leaned towards each other and they talked quietly. Not a murmur made it back to where Marik was hidden. Their discussion seemed to last forever as Marik’s muscles soon burned from standing motionless. He wished he could lean over and stretch his aching back muscles, but he remained stoic as did the rest of his kinsman. Nobody ever mentioned this uncomfortable aspect of war when recounting the past.
The light was growing now as the sun’s strengthening rays managed to break through the foliage in random places.
Suddenly both shamans exploded from their sitting positions and jumped many feet into the air. When their feet again touched the ground they faced each other dancing, shrieking and shaking their staffs. The accoutrements clattered so loudly they often drowned out their voices. T
he two were moving farther apart as they danced and soon Tanis neared the edge of the clearing.
The shaman both turned towards their hidden warriors, raised their staffs, and brought them down in unison to the ground. This time Tanis’ staff had a flame leap up seemingly from nowhere and the warriors on both sides of the clearing burst into action.
The large clearing was alive with painted men brandishing short crude clubs, long handmade spears, wooden staves and small round shields. All were yelling challenges at each other as loudly as they could. Marik was unprepared for the sudden charge and followed his father a few seconds later. He was in flight when the two groups met in the middle. He could hear the collision as weapons landed on shields, bodies slammed into bodies, and the challenges changed to screams.
The boy caught sight of his father in combat with another large warrior. He hurried to catch up to the struggling men. As he neared he raised his long fighting staff and swung it horizontally as hard as he could towards the back of the opposing warrior’s legs. The long stick whistled as it flew swiftly towards the unsuspecting warrior.
When it connected the large man collapsed with arms pin-wheeling as his knees suddenly buckled. Marik’s father took advantage of the sudden opening and brought his club down towards the warriors exposed temple. Had the club connected solidly the man’s skull may have been crushed, but it was a glancing blow and the man dropped backwards. Their opponent lay stunned with eyes open as Marik’s father disarmed him and quickly knotted a rope to secure the prisoner’s arms. He then shouted a triumphant cry and started pulling the man back towards their side of the clearing.
“Help me drag him,” Marik’s father ordered and the young man grabbed an arm to help pull. The rest of the battle raged around them, but for Marik it may as well have been miles away as he struggled to pull the heavy man. He entered a deep hole in his mind where he neither saw nor heard anything happening around him. All he saw was the nearly unconscious man on the ground. The thin trail of blood snaking from the man’s forehead fascinated him.