The Last Words

From the journal of Jude Guerrero 12/25/2012

“Nice,” spoke up Eric. “Way to bring them to us.”

“Fuck you, Eric. I’ll fucking burn a penis shape in your face.”

I’m not real sure why I said that, but I would do it. He shut up.

I gave the rig to Tim Tom. “Here you go. Enjoy.”

He looked at it. “Oh no, it’s missing a tank. It’s not going to work like this.”

“What?”

“Just kidding,” he laughed. “You should see your face.”

I was stunned for a sec but couldn’t help but grin. “Fuck you, Tim Tom, fuck you.”

We opened the windows on the side over the vans to see what we had and we did have a van with the back and side windows already barred. Better than that, we had two vans like that and a delivery truck, looks like it was a laundry truck.

I would say we were lucky but we were trapped in a city full of raving mad murderous cannibals, so lucky isn’t the word I would use.

We started on the windows, Tim Tom really doing most of the work, me just helping as I could. He just wouldn’t shut about some girl, then another girl, and pizza, and this beer he really liked that he could only find in Boston, and everything else except what was going on around us.

I also had him cut a bit of pipe for me. It housed electrical wires but the juice was off for good now, so it didn’t matter. I got him to make the end pointy, after a few minutes of trying to explain it, and he asked me what it was for but I knew it was useless to try and tell him, so I just waited to show him.

I took the long pipe back down the hall to the gate, where my biggest fans were still waiting to tear me apart. They sure don’t give up easy, but I guess what else do they have to do?

When they saw me coming the chanting got louder and some of it turned into roaring. Then I showed Tim Tom what the pipe was for. You see, my knife couldn’t fit through the grating on the gate, but this little pipe could and they were pushed up to the gate so close, the front ones being pushed from the back, that it was easy to just shove it right into them. As I expected, the first one didn’t seem to give a fuck that I had just shoved a pipe into him. He just kept screaming at me, banging at the gate. So I kept stabbing, and some of them started to bleed out, enough that they stopped chanting.

And, wouldn’t you know it, as soon as they stopped chanting the others attacked, ripping them apart with their teeth and hands, scratching and clawing and actually eating their fallen comrades.

“Oh my fuck,” he said from behind me.

I turned around and tried to shoo Tim Tom away, “Get away, you don’t want to see this. You either.”

The others were watching, and didn’t need convincing. They started leaving and left me to my grim chore.

I knew it was going to make a mess, and I knew it would start to stink, but I didn’t plan on being here much longer and we were going to have to get out and down those stairs to work on the van, then get everyone out. I figured since I had such a large crowd gathered I could go ahead and remove some of the obstacles that were going to be in our way.

It took a while, a long while. They were lined up down the stairway, waiting their turn for slaughter. And, I had to take my time, stab a few then let them bleed out enough that they stopped chanting and the others would tear them up and eat them. And they never seemed to get full. They also never seemed to realize that if they got close, I was going to kill them. I had to let them tear each other up and eat each other, or else the bodies would just pile up and be in the way and we wouldn’t be able to get past them. As it was, it was still going to be a mess.

It went on a long time. Way too long. When they finally stopped coming there was the biggest, most horrific mess I had ever seen, and I had seen some carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was glad I wouldn’t be able to remember it. I’m not sure why I’m even writing about it.

When I was done I walked into the main area with the others, covered in blood, and asked, “Does anyone know why I’m killing people?”

They were stunned. I wish I had been kidding.

“You mean you forgot why you were killing them?” the Doctor asked.

“Yes, I knew I had to keep doing it, but I didn’t know why.”

“My God,” the Doctor said. “Get cleaned up and read your journal.”

The others were still stunned, looking at me like, like I was one of the monsters out there.

From the journal of Timothy Lorne 12/25/2012

Joe and I tossed the bars out the window so that they would land near the van, but we couldn’t do that to the welding rig so we used sheets to strap that to me, I guess so I would have my hands free to fight if I needed to. He didn’t even need to explain to me what was going on, he just nodded his head like “You ready?” gave me a kitchen knife in a cardboard sheath that he’d fashioned so we could tuck it into our pants, and I grabbed Susie while he got his spear and we were off.

I knew what he had been doing over at the gate but I still wasn’t prepared for the mess. Holy snike it was a vernal smorgasbord of carnal decorum. It was like, like, nothing I had ever seen, like maybe what the corner of a butcher’s office or a meat processing plant might look like. The area where they throw the leftover shit that’ll be hot dogs that you feed your children on picnics someday. You couldn’t even tell they had been people except the last couple of bodies that I guess he’d killed and there had been no one left to tear them up and eat them.

He went first and kicked bones and guts and some other stuff to the sides then turned to tell me to follow and made a funny side to side motion with his hands. I didn’t know what he was trying to say until I stepped past the gate and started sliding on the blood of other human beings. Christ, what a holocaust. This was worse than the medical ward in the other building had been, and the fact that they were crazies really didn’t seem to make it any better.

We got past it and went slow and quiet down the stairs. He was shooting for stealth this time. We made our way down two floors with no worries, being extra careful near the doors on each floor. The affected in there were trapped, so that wasn’t a problem, but I knew they’d start making noise if they saw or heard us, and that could bring some that weren’t trapped up the stairs. If there were any more left down on the first floor.

But after two floors our luck ran out and one of them near the gate saw us and started chanting. Others on that floor ran at the gates, but couldn’t get through, so we started running down the stairs. The other floors had all come to their gates too, screaming and chanting in unison at the top of their lungs. If there were any loose, they would be coming now. And, of course, there were.

Just one at first, running up the stairs, and Joe speared him like a fish, right through the head. But two more were hot on his heels and it took him the spear and his knife to down them. We ran some more when we heard more on the way. It sounded like a whole herd but these things just made a lot of noise, I guess, like they say coyotes do, and it was only five. I stepped in with sweet Susie this time and helped Joe out, then we made it all the way down to the first floor before coming across a couple more that seemed surprised to see us and we were home free.

From the journal of Jude Guerrero 12/25/2012

Once we got down to the docks I motioned Tim Tom to wait while I checked outside, then went back in and gave him the thumbs up. The yard was clear, and there weren’t even any affected past the fence, though I’m sure some would wander by eventually, that’s why I had tossed down the sheets.

There were loads of them, plenty of extras, up on our floor, so I figured I could shield what Tim Tom was doing a bit. Keep any curious crazies from trying to climb the fence, ’cause you never knew when one might succeed, or enough of them might try in the same place and bring the fence, down, which would be a disaster. The thick doors and gates and barred windows would keep them out pretty damn well, but having two rows of tall fences topped with razor wire is the only thing that would allow us to move around outside and work on these vans. It was a shame we couldn’t hole up here longer, it was damn near perfect, but we would eventually run out of food, and probably water too, and these fences and doors weren’t going to keep out any smoke or fires, which would probably be coming soon. I could see the smoke from the plant, something was smoldering over there and it was only a matter of time before it spread and more tanks blew or the wind shifted and we were all breathing toxic shit smoke. The boat would at least give us a chance. Shit, I remember there’s a boat, but I can’t remember what kind. Better go back and read the journal again soon, and do some updates.

I hung the sheets on the fence as best I could to try to block the view in while Tim Tom started welding the grates from the windows to the vans. Then I just kept a lookout and worked I my journal until he yelled, “Hey Joe, look at me. I’m B.A. Baracus.”

He’d finished the first van. The bars didn’t fit perfectly but he’d done a damn good job of bending them on the top and shaping them to fit over the windows.

“I pity the fool that try to get in my van.”

Fucking Tim Tom.

“Shut the fuck up,” I said, knowing he couldn’t understand me, so I also held my finger to my mouth.

“OK, OK.” He grinned and went back to work after adding, “Hannibal.”

It didn’t take him long at all to get the next one done, and then the delivery van. But it was all I could do to keep him from yapping the whole time, alerting every chanter in the area to our presence.

Only a couple of curious ones heard him and both came close enough to the fence that I was able to spear them in the head before they got too loud.

I was surprised at how fast he worked, and excited. I was wondering if we were going to have to wait another day before the second phase of our plan. I looked in my journal on my notes on him as he worked and it said he’d been in construction, and he’d been injured on the job. Something went straight through his head, that’s why he was the way he is now, why he couldn’t understand what I was saying, and why the Doctor had brought him here. The Doctor had told me he was another rare case, like me and Eric.

OK, now we had to make it back up, and I wasn’t sure if there were any more left. While the rest of the building was nice and secure, the lobby had glass doors which had been shattered, and didn’t have a fence outside it. It looks like it had depended on guards to protect it, and of course, they were all off duty now.

We were as quiet as we could be, and with a lighter load since I had left the welding rig in one of the vans. Since it was quiet for now I decided to make the going easier for us when we brought the rest of the group down. I had Tim Tom help me move some furniture, and some heavy fucking file cabinets, into the hall that led to the lobby, the only place that didn’t have a door. It took us a while, longer than I would have liked, but now the whole way down would be secure, unless there were any more loose ones on the stairs or somewhere above us. I knew there were still plenty more in the building, but they were trapped behind locked doors and gates that they didn’t know how to get through.

By the time we got back to our floor I had to check my journal… again.

From the journal of Dr. Montgomery Gates 12/25/2012

I was a bit surprised, after only a few days, at how much I was having to fight sleep. I still had enough stimulants to keep me awake for quite some time, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to handle it. As it was I was already finding myself drifting a bit, even while standing, and once I had seen a shadow suddenly turn into a black dog before coming to my senses. I found I had to stand and walk around as much as possible, and keep my mind busy, which wasn’t difficult considering the large amount of material I had printed off the internet to go through. More and more I was confirming what I already believed; that the phrase was somehow responsible, and also that the lack of sleep was the only thing keeping Eric and myself from succumbing. It was hard to argue against that point with the affected chanting it over and over.

Marcus had finally succumbed, leaving only Eric, Jude, Tim Tom, Cassie and myself to take care of those who were affected and the other patients who probably never would be due to their nearer catatonic state. I know, as a Doctor, I had to try and take them with me, I also know, as a human being, that I would be putting my life at risk, as well as the lives of the other survivors. But I could put mine at risk, I suppose, after all, it was only a matter of time before I slept. I knew that the forgetting drugs were a shot in the dark, after all, they only made memories duller, they didn’t erase them.

As I watched the affected that we had locked in the rooms on our floor I hoped that I would see some sort of change. I was hoping that eventually the effects would wear off. After all, if this phrase was something that the Norse used to go into a berserker rage, or that Greek women used to go into a Dionysian ecstatic state before tearing animals apart with their bare hands, then it must wear off at some point. There was nothing in classical literature or Norse history indicated these manic states were permanent. But, I saw no changes in our resident affected.

Perhaps the phrase was different now; translating had made it more dangerous. Maybe the effects would be different in different languages, although it was clear that it had affected other countries. Maybe there were some that were less affected. But the words are so simple, so universal, and there’s no grammar to complicate translation, just a string of nouns. It should translate so easily into any language. Surely every language, at least today, has words for moth or rye or fig or any of the other words. But did the Norse know what tigers were during the viking era? Would they have substituted some other big cat they were familiar with? They knew about lions surely. Lions were in the coat of arms of many European countries. But what if there is a language, some small primitive tribe, that didn’t have a translation for all the words of the phrase? One could only hope that somewhere humanity would still have a chance.

Maybe in ancient times they had only used a part of the phrase for their effects. Or maybe there were was a counter phrase. God, I could hope, going through everything I could find about Norse mythology and ancient Greek mystery religions and the work of the linguist in Oxford. I wished and wished I could find something else, some other, shall I use the word, incantation, that might bring people out of their rage. Even if one existed, what are the chances the Oxford linguist had translated it, much less put it out on the internet somewhere? There was also the possibility that the ancients would get drunk before hearing the phrase, and that this somehow spared them the long term effects. In both ancient Norway and Greece it was apparent that alcohol was a big part of the rituals involved in going into a berserker or ecstatic state. Maybe getting black out drunk kept you from remembering the phrase in the long term. Though that wouldn’t explain why we had to sleep before it affected us, the phrase would have to work faster than it seemed too to put them in a rage state after they were drunk but before they sobered up. Unless, the phrase was actually more potent back then, or in their native languages, and worked faster, allowing them to get drunk, hear the phrase, go into a rage, then sleep it off after the battle was done or the orgies had ceased, not remembering anything, including the phrase, the next day. It was a valid theory, but how to test it? The only person here who we can be sure hasn’t heard the phrase is Cassie. And I don’t have any alcohol, although I do have tranquilizers. Dear God, I can’t believe I’m even thinking such a thing, much less writing it.

They would get quiet when left alone, the chanting barely audibly while staring at the wall or out the window, in a near catatonic state, some of them even rocking back and forth. Occasionally one of them would get worked up for no discernible reason and start mutilating their own face or body; pulling out hair, biting their fingers or hands or clawing at their faces. One had already torn his cheeks off, and another had managed to tear her ear off. When they did this we tried to direct their attention towards us, or put some food through the slots, something to redirect their rage. Of course, then they would often start banging against the door with the hands and head until those were bloody, and we would leave so they could eventually calm down.

I hoped beyond hope to see some change, some indication that it would wear off eventually. After all, that meant that once we were in the boat, I could be bound and fed for a few days until the rage wore off. But as yet, I had seen no indication that this was not a permanent state of being.

I was as quiet and cautious as I could be when peeking in to watch them, trying to study them, but sometimes they still caught me and went mad, clawing at the door. I had lost two more who wouldn’t stop banging their heads against the door, even when I slipped food in. After that I kept food spiked with tranquilizers handy to try to avoid losing any more…test subjects. I guess that is what they were now. My God, they aren’t the only ones losing their humanity.