Day 7: Hard Drive

Today’s Prompt: “Checking Hard Drive… File Corrupt.” With a deadline looming, my heart stopped.

— Courtesy: Writing.Com

Word Count: 1,723

‘CHECKING HARD DRIVE…’

Koko stared at the screen of her inbuilt computer, the sense of urgency charged the air. The street was alive with people but Koko knew better to be wary cause this was 2057 where people had ceased to be just people. Computers ruled the age and people had become Files. Night had covered the world with deceptive ease while she buried herself in work.

‘CHECKING HARD DRIVE…’

            “Shit, this is going to be a long night,” she said aloud to no one in particular. “Can’t you just figure out who is real and which ones are ghosts of their former selves?” she asked the artificial intelligence installed in her Jeep. Just when she decided to spin her wheels, she probably had nothing to fear, her computer shattered her hasty conclusion with a ‘BONG!’

In 2057, that sound had become the next thing to the Final Trumpet Sound. Sitting in her Jeep, alone in the dark of night, the computerized female voice inserted terror in Koko.

‘CHECKING HARD DRIVE’ traded places with ‘virus detected’ and got traded for ‘file corrupt.’

Blue dots filled the computer screen. That signified one thing: she was in danger. She was stuck for alternative routes. Plus, beating the deadline seemed somewhere in the realm of impossible. The blue dots converged cued by an invisible, diabolic director. Then they began to move in on her in slow measured tempo acting out their cemetery choreography.

            Koko’s heart stopped. Only for the breadth of a second. In this tainted oasis, she couldn’t afford the luxury of static. The beasts detected human presence in the atmosphere and streamed toward the scent, gnarling like prototype mad dogs. Mad dogs who traded barks for bites.

‘VIRUS DETECTED.’ The computerized female voice declared, ‘ENTIRE COMMUNITY INFECTED.’

            “Like hell, I don’t already know that.” She killed the engine and waited in the charged up silence.

Once, while discussing this kind of situation at the office, long before the plague blew itself out of proportion, someone had made a bogus announcement.

            “Zombies can’t detect humans if they can keep their heads and stand still,” Zach (she just happened to remember his name) said.

            “Does that interpret as a zombie can’t bite a sleeping person unless they snore or twitch in their sleep?” some guy probably, Afia said. Everyone laughed it off but Koko wanted to hear more, see if the talk amounted to anything.

            “My neighbor tried it.” Zach wasn’t going to get put off so easily. “He told me they just walked around him like he didn’t even exist. He said one of those things pulled up short for a couple of seconds to sniff the air around him but moved on and didn’t bother him at all.”

            “Where’s your neighbor now,” Luke asked.

            “He got bit.”

            “Aw, shucks a zombified mutha can’t teach shit on how to stay clean.” That was Ray.

            “But that was just last week, he told me the story a week before that.”

            “Quit it, buddy. You’re beginning to sound like a wicked stepmother caught in the act,” Afia said.

            “Once is luck, twice the exception and third time makes the rule. I say, those sorry ass zombified fellas were probably, overfed,” Ray said.

            “Nobody ever heard of sated zombies. Somebody help me out here.”

No help had come for Zach that day and for Koko, it became clear the gist would prove nowhere near expedient. But here she was stuck in the midst of several hundred ugly-looking zombies parked in the middle of nowhere with no hope of rescue. She sat there waiting in the darkness while several hundred zombies tried to sniff her out of the night air.

            “If zombies can’t detect static humans,” Tammy recalled someone saying. “Is that why they try to sniff us out, instead? Heard they survive by their sense of smell and that the scent of human blood is what draws them out.”

Zach, it appeared, had not given much thought to this theory before narrating his story. He left the question hanging, kicking and dying probably, like the Philippines and Koreans like their dogs. Tammy watched the scene playing outside through her windshield until she heard the thunder behind her. The zombies had bashed in the glass on her back window and on the heels of that the tinkle of glass sprayed all over the backseat of her Jeep. Now bare hands slammed into her windshield trying to duplicate the rear window damage. She twisted her head and caught a glimpse of several zombies trying to squeeze themselves all at once, into the hole they smashed into her back window. Her mental safety mechanism flushed adrenaline to her brain. Koko broke her paralysis.

            “Like hell zombies can’t detect static humans. Up yours, Zach.” She turned on the ignition, revved the engine. The zombies didn’t seem to notice. She leaned on the horn. It shattered the sinister silence of the sunset. Yet, the beasts kept up their attack.

            “Guess, I’m gon’ have to run you slow foots over,” she said. Koko released the horn and leaned her weight on the pedal, flooring it. The Jeep roared to life and leaped into the air shrugging off a bunch of undeads like a maid shaking dust off an old rug. Smell of burning rubber filled the air and then the Jeep was off painting zombies all over the asphalt.

‘IMMEDIATE VICINITY CONTAMINATED.’ The computerized female voice said in a shrill. ‘CODE: RED. CODE: RED. SECURED PERIMETER BREACHED.’

            “What now?” Koko said and then she saw through her rearview. All the zombies including the ones that clove to the Jeep’s roof fell off when the vehicle picked up speed. Except one. One of the several that clung to the back window had made it halfway through the shattered glass. It inched its way forward clawing at the leather on the backseat soon it would take a seat for a spin. “Oh, Lawd.”

‘VIRUS INFECTION IMMINENT,’ her vehicle’s artificial intelligence squealed. ‘VIRUS INFECTION IMMINENT. CONTAMINATION IMMINENT. ABANDON VEHICLE. WARNING. WARNING. DANGER. DANGER. ABANDON VEHICLE.’

“The heck I’m abandoning this vehicle.” Koko threw a glance over her shoulder and caught sight of the foul being reaching for her. She stole a whiff of its body odor. “Oh, what the… don’t you shitheads have enough courtesy to wash?” she stepped on the brake hard. The flesh-eater flumped into the backseat. No sooner had its back touched the leather than it sprang up grabbing for Koko again. Behind her, not far off in the distance, the rest of the zombie community gave chase. “Abandon vehicle, then what? Sprint from here to the Refuge City? The hell I want to do that for.” ‘Refuge Cities’ were selected ‘quarantined’ areas where non-contaminated folks lived. The gates closed by 1900hrs and for Koko, with a deadline looming, this was a fight to win all fights.

            “If I can’t get rid of one zombie how do I outrun a few hundred?” She stepped on the gas and the zombie was again thrust into the leather of the backseat. She turned and gave it the eye. “We can do this all night long, Mr. Zombie or you can hit the road. Either way, nobody’s taking one bite out of Mama’s girl. Not tonight, not ever. You hear me, you freaking animal?”

She was going to hit the brakes again and throw the zombie off balance when dead fingers brushed the skin of her neck, groping for purchase. She grabbed at it with her left hand and tried to jerk it off. Another set of fingers came round the left flank of the headrest and seized her throat. She yanked her head forward but the fingers were strong and won’t give. Her head was pulled back, slammed into and compressed against the headrest. Gently at first and then as the pain in her head grew she realized her assailant intended to pull her head through the headrest into the backseat. The complicated process hurt her windpipe. She sank into deep darkness and the Jeep rolled off the road until it got trapped on a low brick fence. She was losing the fight, giving in gradually to the tireless zombie power when she felt the monster’s fetid breath on her neck. It was coming in for the world in-famous zombie bite. Koko lashed out with her remaining strength and clawed out one of the vile creature’s eyes it didn’t seem to notice. She lashed out a second time and the thing caught her hand. It released the pressure on her neck a little. It was the only license she needed.

She successfully retrieved her fingers from the zombie and was catching her breath in gasps and gags when the monster lashed out at her and chewed a chunk of her headrest.

            “That may have been my ear you big dumb fool.” The other zombies were gaining on her she saw through the busted back window, to her utter dismay. Koko grabbed at the head restraint on the passenger seat, tugged the steel legs out of its sockets. She shoved as hard as her strength permitted her and the enemy fell back for a second.

            “I’m done playing with you. This ends now.”

‘Always go for the head, that’s their weakest point.’ She recalled someone saying about killing zombies.

When the zombie lurched at her more furious than ever, Koko was waiting and armed. She drove the steel points of the head restraint into the monster’s head. It sank in hard and fast, cracking skull and puncturing the remaining good eye. One steel leg, the one that went through the good eye came out on the other side of its head.

It fell back into the backseat for the final time. A dead undead.

            “Be a good boy now and have your beauty sleep,” she said.

Koko had just enough time to step out of the vehicle and drag out the excess weight. She got back inside the confines of her Jeep just in time to hear the first zombie slam its palms into her trunk lid.

‘VIRUS DELETED. FILE FIXED. NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED.’ The computerized female voice said.

            “As it should be,” she said and gunned the motor pulling away from the ruined brick wall. She stepped on the gas and made the zombies take her dust.

Eneh Akpan

June 7th, 2014