Chapter 9: Lessons Learned
LeBron sat quietly in the loft listening to the sound of the rain coming down. With the windows boarded up and the overcast sky it might was well be midnight. It was actually early afternoon on the day they’d estimated the first of the infected may start showing up. LeBron was sitting on the loveseat upstairs thinking about the ludicrousness of it all. Their lives had been turned into a bad zombie movie in the span of the last few months.
LeBron had watched every video of the infected he could find back before the internet had been shut off. He’d watched the ones where people in the streets were bitten and minutes later were running around like maniacs trying to find more victims. He’d found a whole channel on YouTube dedicated to the crawler metamorphosis. Three to five days after getting infected people seemed to start calming down. They stopped running around like blood thirsty lunatics and began avoiding bright lights. Once that happened the next time those people were seen they were loping around on all fours like hairless gorillas who’d had one too many banana daiquiris.
Unlike the infected in the surge phase the crawlers had a method to their madness. They’d move along slowly looking for signs of uninfected humans before springing into action. Once they attacked though they did so with the same manic strength as the recently infected. It’s like their brains opened up in a way that allowed them to tap the adrenal gland on demand. For whatever reason this new ability impacted their tolerance for light. There were a lot of theories out there, but LeBron was pretty sure Drew had nailed t.
Drew was the only one of them to have ever experimented with hallucinogenic drugs. He’d been in some unsavory situations before winding up with them at the Russel’s home. There was a common theory based on the dilation of the infected peoples pupils that once an exchange of fluids had occurred the infected started tripping like crazy. Drew pointed out that with all that hallucination going on the infected may just reach a stage where they became deathly afraid of the light. When LeBron had looked at him like he was crazy he’d been treated to a story of how Drew had avoided reflective surfaces for a week. That had happened after he’d watched his body melt apart in a mirror after dropping acid. That was from stuff you could buy in the parking lot of a high school. Obviously, the stuff causing the crawlers was at a whole other level.
“Dude why are you sitting in the dark like that. It’s creepy. Come downstairs. The President’s going to lie to us some more.” Drew said. He was using the flashlight on his smart phone to look around the loft. They were very careful about where they shined their lights at night since it could be seen through the holes in the boards. During the day it wasn’t as big of a deal. Although during a thunderstorm like the one currently raging outside it probably should be.
LeBron took the stairs slowly. He was still mulling over the data he’d accumulated so far around the people who’d been infected. A lot of the data seemed to contradict itself. It was beyond frustrating that all his sources of information had been abruptly cutoff. The internet had become just as useful and expected a utility as water, sewage and cable TV. It was completely unjustifiable to him how they could still have power but no data. Nothing but the utterly useless horribly slow homeland defense server anyway. At the foot of the stairs he grabbed his bowl of rice and two adult Gummy multivitamins. Nancy hoped the multivitamins would make up for the lack of variation in their diets.
“He’s coming on.” Yue announced to get everyone to shut up and sit down. For a bunch of people who were supposed to be hiding out they sure talked a lot. Thinking about hiding out she got up and tugged the curtains tight to make sure they were completely closed since they had the TV turned on.
Bart walked over with a bowl of rice and tapped Drew on the back. Drew being the first one to finish his food pretty much every time they ate.
“Hey. Go stand over by the window and keep a look out while we’re watching this.” He asked Drew. Drew grumbled at having to get up off the couch but dutifully began walking the rounds for the bottom windows. The group Yue had spotted the day before had cemented in their minds how important it was to maintain a constant vigilance. If she hadn’t seen what was going on outside that interaction with the shelter survivors could’ve ended a whole lot less peacefully. The screen of the TV was showing the seal of the President as Drew walked over to look out the first window.
“My fellow Americans. I’m heartbroken that I have to start this address out with an apology. The government has failed you. I have failed you. We weren’t able to contain the infected at the border. It’s anticipated they’ll have spread across the majority of North America within the next few weeks.” The President paused to let that point sink in. This time there was no need for him to have to try to appear serious. The weight of what he’d just admitted was heavy enough to need no clearer explanation. After an acceptable pause for everyone to reflect the President continued speaking.
“Our experts predicted we wouldn’t be able to stop the spread of this contagion. I prayed that they were wrong. We launched strike after strike along the border to try to stop it. We were unable to do so. Parallel to those efforts we also
