Fleshing out the Undead

Jumping back to present day in my Undead saga, the main hero meets his match and starts a war with vampires.

“Evolution…” the teacher started the class, “is the scientific breakthrough that helps us explain many things in our natural world.  It explains a whole list of phenomena that occurs in our world from why the world spins on an axis from what killed off the dinosaurs millions of years ago and also explains why many of us will die from various diseases.”

The class was mostly bored at this point, some students were yawning others were clicking their pencils on their desk ready for what kind of lunch they were serving in the cafeteria.  Some of the youngsters were daydreaming losing focus staring out the windows of the second floor of the multi floored elementary school, thinking about riding bikes and skateboarding.  Some of the unruly ones were gathering spit arming long plastic straws with saliva induced wads of paper.  The other smart ones paid more close attention, jotting down what the teacher said in their spiraled notebooks.  Nerds and geeks are what the cool kids called them, four-eyes, dweebs, teacher’s pet…the whole nine yards.

Philip paid close attention to what the teacher had to say, I mean why else attend school if not to learn?  Even at a young age he was eager, willing to learn all about our so called ‘natural’ world.  He would look around the class room at the other students who barely cared, somewhat cared, or could give a s**t of what was going on.  He just shook his head and crammed his head inside his notebook as the teacher went on.  It was one of his favorite school anyway, Science.  And for the next couple of weeks they were studying the periodic table, learning all 119 elements that formed molecular compounds, chemicals that can be combined to form acids and pollutants, how different combinations can either be lethal or helpful to mankind.

Mankind he wondered?  Looking around the room he wondered if mankind did care at all, peeking at all the students that were mostly irritated to be inside of a classroom.  Most of them ‘too cool for school’ or whatever trend was in fashion.  He wondered if it all was worth something, anything for that matter.  He could see them now when  they were younger, the star basketball player, the drama queens, the delinquents that got high around the corner of the gymnasium, the geeks that would hang out in computer lab after school…most of them would grow up to be contractors, electricians, policemen or firemen, working for unions doing the daily grind of what most of society called “the common working man.”

Philip paid close attention because he wanted to be better, to do something worthwhile, to make a name for himself so he did have to fall under any of those tropes.  He wanted to make a difference in world.  But the more he looked around at a couple of his friends he asked himself “I don’t think any of them would actually care.”  There in lied the problem, most people young or old did not care; they did what they had to do in order to live out their lives and never bothered asking themselves, why?  Is there something more out there?

The teacher continued on with her lesson, “Alright now, students.  I want you to gather round the lab table and I am going to explain to you some interesting facts about chemistry, and the different types of elements that make up our bodies.”  The students all stood up and gathered around the teacher’s lab table she set up the night before in order to entice the children’s minds with basic chemistry and biology experiments.  

“Now today, boys and girls, we are going to learn about the three basic elements that make up our own bodies.  We have three of them that run through our blood at all times at very fast speeds.  And those three are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.  All these three have different atomic weights.”  She pointed at the chart behind her plastered high on backboard so all the students could see, “And these different atomic weights describe the amount of atoms within these elements.  And now here is an example of the common atom.”

The teacher brought out a 3-dimensional diagram of the common atom and put it on lab table for all the students to see.  Most of the students awed and stared at it, some of them did not care as much, “This is your basic atom.  And we can see in the center of the atom we have what is called a nucleus.  And the two balls that orbit our common atom is what we call protons and neutrons.  If we add all these different atomic parts together it gives us the atomic weight of any element.  So some elements have more protons than neutrons, and others have more neutrons than protons.

“If the amount of protons that circle, or rotate, around any element are more than neutrons we see it has a positive charge to it, as in the case of hydrogen and oxygen and carbon.  If the amount of neutrons is more than protons, we have what is called a negative charge as in the case of many metals on the periodic table,” the teacher than pointed to a couple of metals most of the kids new about like iron and nickel and silver.

“Now some elements we have come in the form of a gas, or what is called a vapor.  These elements can be found in our environment, such as carbon dioxide.” The teacher went on to explain how the chemical compound was made by showing them an example of how to add protons and neutrons to form the common formula of carbon dioxide, and she went on how we breathe in oxygen, mixed with the carbon inside most of our blood cells, and how we breathe out carbon dioxide, “And that is how we give so many plants vitamins and nutrients they need to grow, mixed with water which is a combination of hydrogen and oxygen found in our atmosphere,” she then explained how water was formed by showing them the diagram on the table, “and then add in sunlight.  And sunlight is a form of radiation.  I know, I know, radiation is a scary word.

“But radiation at very small, minute levels can be healthy.  We call this ultraviolet light and this form of light falls on a spectrum.   Many light colors such as blues and greens will absorb less ultraviolet light.  When others such as white absorbs all of the ultraviolet light.  And what is the one color that deflects all the ultraviolet light is what?”

Philip raised his hand amongst the group of children and answered, “Black.”

The other children to look at Philip, some of them laughed, others shook their heads, most of them didn’t even care.  “That’s right, Phil.  Black is the only color that deflects the entire spectrum of ultraviolet light.  That is why when it gets dark out at night or when we turn out all the lights to make the room go completely black, all ultraviolet light cannot be detected.  Which makes us not see because we need light that we a view through a spectrum to see all things.  Like objects made of matter, to scan and look at our environment, to pick out certain things inside that dark room or outside during the night such as trees and plants and roads.  Natural light, ultraviolet light always bounces off of our eyes because our eye is really a lens.  A lens that reflects and retracts light, it is what makes us see everything around us.  So without light our eyes would not be able to see anything…”

He felt two hands violently shove him from behind and into utter blackness.  The stench reeked through his lungs as if rigor mortis was taking its toll irking its way up his spine.  The foulness hung loosely in the air.  The hands kept shoving him backwards and a couple more hands joined the game.  Laughing and hooting lingered behind him as whatever they were tempted and scowled at him.  Sometimes he felt one of their claws tear into his shirt leaving blood stains on his back.  Smelling their bad breath from time to time as if they hovered right next to his ear.

It was some type of corridor or maybe a tunnel, he didn’t know.  There were no lights, no candles, no source of visible sight.  Just then he wondered what it would be like to be one of them to have this type of night vision.  To peer into the dark, see things no normal human would want to see.  Pulses pounding, veins protruding, eyes darting with blood soaked precision.  But the more he thought about it the more it repulsed him, so he violently spit in the direction of one their voices.  The other laughed as the one who was shoving the most cowered back a little.  A dry smirk came to his lips and that was when he felt a sharp fist against his jaw.

“Pick him up!”  another voice came out of nowhere, equally haunting and disturbing.  Another punch came to his abdomen and he felt all the air go out of his lungs.  Philip doubled down to the floor and felt how wet it was.  This had to be some type of sewer or maybe a basement of some kind.  Thoughts darted through his mind as he tried to feel for a wall only to be grabbed by talon-like hands feeling the nails dig into his skin.

“Ah…nice and fresh…” one of the voices exclaimed as he felt fangs dig into his arm.  Philip screamed out loud and he backed up against a concrete wall.  Concrete?  Stone? Maybe it’s some type of cage or basement room.  Either way the damn vampire didn’t break his gruesome hold on his arm.  He felt his elbow then shoulder go weak until he heard another scream, “Not all of it!  Stop playing with our treat!”

Philip counted at least three voices in this dark forsaken hell coming from three different directions.  One in front of him, one to the right, one to the left.  Patterns is what these creatures went by, these sadistic drones all kept to some type of system, perfectly surrounding him as a pack surrounds its prey.  Only this time it was some type of hive being surrounding by a loud hornet, a deranged wasp, and a silent buzzing bee.  He tried to keep his cool as he felt the more deranged one pull his mouth off his arm.  He slumped down the concrete wall, his arms feeling all around him to find at least some sort of hope.

“Oh look…the hunter can’t see…trying to find something, a*****e,”  A powerful grip engorged around Philip’s  throat.  He felt the putrid breath of whoever had him pinned against the wall.  He could feel the sweat bead down his cheeks as he took in the smell of death before him.  Those dead lifeless red eyes glared back at him inside the darkness.  Just a glint of pearly white fangs jolted from his mouth, “Look at you now, human.  Completely defenseless…unarmed.  Where are your weapons now?  Do you know how many friends of mine you have slaughtered?  Killed due to some self-righteous slanted crusade?”

“How many?”  Philip gritted sarcastically through bloody teeth.  The man before him wasn’t having any of it and he lifted him by his throat.  Choking started as he looked down into those red obsidians, all that devilish strength poring out.  He could feel jagged nails retract from human tissue clamp around his neck as he began to gargle.  The other two vile creatures began to laugh as they egged on and supported the alpha of the group.  He wish he had at least something on him, anything that could paralyze this testosterone filled hulk.  Then came another voice somewhere deep in the confines of the blackness.

“Let him go!”  a woman’s voice echoed and he let Philip collapse on the stone floor.  Good concrete, something hard and visible.  Just an inclination of where he might be.  More he smelled taking in the scent of mildew and fungus, definitely somewhere underneath the earth.  These creatures, some may call parasites, love murky damp places, it revitalizes some type of chemical balance that starts a catalysts working through white blood cells.  Some type of monoxide gas, perhaps pheromones laced with toxins that trigger heightened states of awareness and strength.  The stench made his stomach curdle but also incentive to where they might have taken him.  If humans produce dioxins that excrete from our bodies, then it had to be some type of vapor like methane or pesticide that triggered the parasitic growth inside of nosferatu.  Philip was closer to something, something more prevalent and powerful as he heard that woman’s voice come closer in the darkness.

It was his sister he was sure of it.  All of these years what started off as some type of type of darkness infecting him and his family was something vile and inhuman.  Some type of subhuman species, a parasite hell bent on destroying everything around them.  As she drew closer to her brother, he heard the footsteps of the three men echo down some type of chamber.  Right then and there fluorescent lights all turned on simultaneously and she stood above him.

She was dressed in something provocative, a black gown flowing gently down to her knees.  Her hair was no longer the blonde he remembered but a distinct reddish hue.  Her eyes sparked bright blue instead of her usual green.  She stood above him as he rested against the wall.  He could make out something, this was not some sewer system or tunnel, it just so happened to be a crypt.  The walls were lined with ivory and delicate flowers, circling patterns set up a more Lovecraftian take on the scenery.  Like tendrils of an octopus all coming together to form a bulbous center at the top of the ceiling.  Philip’s clothes were torn, his jeans ripped and his shirt soaked in blood.  His black hair was a mess and his brown eyes just stared up at Sarah as she smiled wickedly.

“It has been quite a long time hasn’t it?”

Philip smirked at her sister’s statement, “Still haven’t lost your sense of humor haven’t you?

“You have done quite some damage haven’t you.  Searching for who and what we are.  What we are capable of doing.  I can tell you right now that there is no plausible way to stop us.  I have brought you here because of every devoted disciple you have killed.  Both those who are turned and those who are dedicated and loyal to our true vision.  We are the future of this messed up chaotic world.  We will hold it in our lifeless hands and drain it of all its sweet nectar that these mortals provide us.”

Philip finally stood up tall and proud.  Wiping off some of the blood on his lips after being pounded from one of these drones, “You would only want to see the world in despair. To sap it of all its spirit and soul.  To keep people in chains, locked up, and treated like cattle.  Sheep kept in the slaughterhouses to be drained of everything.  Either be turned, serve and obey or be dragged off to be harvested.  To drain all humans of their decency and morality just so that you and your kind could have your so called ‘perfect world.’  ”

“And how is that any different from the world we live in now?  We are here to bring back balance to the world that was taken away from us.  Now we will have the power, the supremacy over humans.  The once slaves shall inherit the true earth ravished by your people, your kind.”

“The same people that you and your kind manipulated and turned over hundreds of years to do your bidding to make this a world a… ‘better place’?  You don‘t think I know what these undead creatures have done, putting your own kind in positions of power and authority.  I guess the prey have become the predators, but it will go back to the way it used to be…one day.”

“How naïve you are Philip to the whole scheme of things.  We are here to correct what your kind has done for centuries.  Out of all the countless attempts at what you hunters and slayers do, trying so hard to upkeep the old ways and traditions.  Completely spoiled our lands, ravished our original homes and covens, hunted down and exterminated our tribes?”

“That happened a long time ago to a previous species and race…it did not happen to you.  You were once human.  You once had a family.  A mother and a father and your brother is standing right here in front of you.  Now you are blinded by some type of viral spell-work and promised eternal life with some altruistic world to build.  What happened to you?”

“I woke up to the fact that there was more.  More to our family.  Our lineage goes far back.  Our blood is unique and strong, and I have embraced my true heritage.  The right heritage that one of our ancestors embraced.  I invited this curse inside of me, taking in all of its wonders and glories.  The temptation at first was overbearing but now I have embraced all of it.  All of that darkness that has plagued our family…I have become the embodiment of this dark gift.”

Philip looked at her cold heartedly coming towards her.  His muscles were tired and bruised, his chest heaved up and down from whatever toxin had permeated through these walls, “You think you are the embodiment of some toxic plague?  What about the one that turned you…that parasite of a monster?  The monster that I single handedly destroyed?  What type of gift do you think he gave you, some sort of sensual atonement?  Or maybe it is some type of virus or bacterial growth that attaches to its prey like leeches sucking on much larger hive?  You think you are all powerful…with your dark gift?  What about the one you serve…or better yet the one that controls your intravenously like some type of hypnotic puppet?”

Sarah growled at her brother fangs unsheathing from slumber.  She pushed him back against the thorny wall covered with moss and vines.  Her strength was unparalleled, she knew this too, that he was only human, no matched for a highly evolved entity.  In a quick burst of speed she pounded him against concrete and latched herself onto him.  Her neck began to fizzle and retract as a fish exercises its gills.  Her mouth capsized and cracked opened, her lower jaw line widening.  More teeth sharpened instantaneously and her tongue leaked out starting to grow in length.  Her tongue began to shed tissue as scales appeared and the tip began to form into the head of a viper, a treacherous snake from beyond the grave.  It slithered across Philip’s skin, its mandibles also formed into python like teeth.  He stared in horror as he never saw anything so terrible, so evolved beyond this world.  Her hands wrapped around his wrist as she pinned him against the wall.

“Nothing but a deranged sadistic snake controlled by a more powerful host…”  Philip uttered as he knew what was about to happen.  He knew this was his last call at being a homo sapien, the more evolved was going to become just a cocoon of his former self.

Just then an explosion went off in the distance and Sarah craned her head to the direction of the sound.  Philip lodged his knee between the two and pressed off against the wall causing his sister to stumble back and dislodge her grip from his arms.  His hand searched his back pocket to feel if it was still there, hoping they did not search him completely.  He felt the small capsule still floating around at the bottom of the pocket sleeve.  Taking it out he ran up to his sister and clapped both of his hands in front of her face.  As he did a violent powder exploded between two palms letting out noxious aerosol that floated both around his and her face.  Sarah let out a howl as a rabid wolf crying out for the rest of the pack.  She clutched her throat and her face began to break out in hives starting to blister around her cheeks and throat and even her fingers. 

 

“What the…” Sarah began to choke and gurgle as bile excreted from her mouth, “What the hell is this?”

“Should pay more attention sis…” Philip started to run down the corridor of this god forsaken crypt as he screamed back at her, “…that was vervain and wolfs bane mixed with iodine and sulfur, you b***h.”  Just to give her a heads up of what he was capable of doing, of what he knew and researched all these years.  Quickly he made his way down the slimy wretched corridor with various tunnels off shooting from the main one.  He could hear the screams and wails of the undead down one of them and he made his down that one.  The sounds got louder and closer, his legs pumping up and down faster and faster.  Screams of both vampires and humans were close by as he narrowed on the source.  

“Kill these undead b******s…” one of the voices from above him rung a similar tone, “…the hive has to be close by.”  Finally Philip thought, backup.

He ran towards a manhole cover that had a ratcheted ladder extending from it.  He pulled himself up on one bar, his arms still sore from the a*****e that bit him but that didn’t matter now, what mattered was getting the hell out of here.  He hoisted himself up one bar at a time until he came to the manhole cover.  Looking around for a latch he tried to push upwards with no avail.  There was only one way out of this.

“Robert!…Hector!…Steve!…I’m down here!” Philip screamed at the top of his lungs.  Violent noises were coming over head.  He could hear the guttural screams of the undead.  The loading and unloading of harpoons.  The swings of machetes and hatchets.  The swift releases of crossbows and compounds.  And then all of sudden a huge blast from a shotgun which made his ears ring.  A few seconds later someone unloaded another round right above him and he heard a body fall to the floor above.  It took a minute or two and the manhole cover came off, a hand came down to grab a hold of Philip and his good friend Hector pulled him out. 

 

His friend was drenched in sweat and looked like he just ran a mile.  Holding a 12 gauge in his hand he stood above the body that he just took out with a buck shot.  Philip got his composure back and stood up wiping off the access grime and muck crawling on him.  Hector looked at him turned around and finally spoke, “You alright?”

Philip only had one thing to say, “Took you long enough.”  Hector gave him a smug look, his eyes rolling at the statement.  Handing his friend an iron stake with barbed wire wrapped around except the handle and a machete that he took from his backpack he replied, “You should be more grateful for me saving your a*s for a second time.”

“You should have come quicker, you knew where I was going…where I was headed.”

“You said you had everything under control, and me, like an idiot, believed you.”  They both gathered their constitution and went over to the body that his best friend Hector had put down.

Philip bent down and realized it was not a creature that he was used to hunting and slaying but a regular human.  One of the many watchdogs that the undead use as bait and guards.  Hector stood over the body just as Philip rose to his feet.  They both peered down at the corpse as it lied there motionless and deceased, “Just as dangerous as one of them.  Even more ruthless.  To me their all the same,” Hector spoke.

“You did what you had to do,” Philip slapped his friends back in encouragement.  They both began to walk in what seemed to be a factory, some type of mill or perhaps a shipping dock.  Hector knew what had to be done, he had helped Philip on so many occasions.  He remained by his side through thick and thin, ever since his friend told him about his dilemma.  At first he didn’t believe him until he saw the true horror with his own two eyes.  That was when he first started to see things for what they truly were.  No longer was the simple life, he got welcomed into his friend’s darkest hell, a living tomb of unfathomable evil.  But he wouldn’t have it any other way, he always knew his friend had his back, in return he always had Philip’s.

They made their way towards the back of this factory, and Philip said something that gave Hector the chills, “Sarah is still alive.  I never completely killed her.”

Philip’s eyes turned to look at his friend, and Hector just stood there shotgun in hand looking like he was ready for the fight of his life, “You mean she is still alive, after all these years?”

He nodded his head, “Somehow she survived.  I did not remove her head.  At the time I didn’t have the courage, the strength to do it.  Now I think she wants revenge.  Things are far worse than I realized.”

As they both walked towards the exit of the factory, they made their way out into the day.  The sun beat down on them both and Philip took a nice long breath clearing out his lungs, coughing a bit.  Hector took out a pack of cigarettes taking out two and handing his friend one.  They both looked out at a vast horizon of garbage trucks, waste disposal cans, and mounds of trash.  Somewhere their other two friends were dragging out corpses that had wooden and iron stakes lodged into their chests under the sun’s rays that bore down into the earth.

The two best friends began making a path through the waste dump, and Hector said, “We have scouted every nook and cranny, tracked one of their hounds and beat the crap out of him to give up this location.  We’ve been doing this for a while, so what should we do now?”

Philip did not have all the answers and he prodded his memory to see if he could find one but the only he could tell his friend was, “I think we need to take the fight to them.  Expose the nests and draw out the masters.”

Hector nodded as he heard his friend’s plan giving an accepting smile and puffed on his cigarette one last time before throwing the butt onto the pavement.  Philip noticed a trail of gasoline heading into one of the storm drains in which his friend dragged him out from.  Flames danced and began to spread once it hit the drain and he could see fire coming from underneath hearing the screams and wails of these hellish creatures, “I’m with you…let’s exterminate these a******s.”

7/22/23

Author's Note

What did you think of the story? Should I start adding more characters or just focus on our main hero and villain? Where do you think I should go next with my connecting stories?