This is one in a series of short stories I've been writing during my own coronavirus quarantine. You can find the complete collection of fiction written especially for this blog here. My books are available on the Amazon Kindle, for sale or for reading via Kindle Unlimited.
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Clean, bright Florida beaches aren’t where you go for horror.
For that, you need a place like the Maine woods. Deep, dark, filled with the noise of animals and the crackling of branches. The hoot of an owl, the rustle of an eagle’s wings as snatches its prey.
That’s where the scare is.
Madison “Mads” Fitzpatrick, a 20-year old University of Florida sophomore, loved a good Stephen King story. She had read them all. She had also read his imitators, and much of his fan fiction. She even wrote some of it. She wanted to be an English major. Her dream was to become the 21st century’s Stephen King, to meet him at a book launch, and to win his praise.
She was starting to write a horror story when the virus sent her home from the dorm, back to Homosassa, where she lived with her grandparents. Mom and dad had perished on 9-11. They were traders at Cantor Fitzgerald. She was a baby then, staying with Dot and Bill Lawson at their home on Long Island.
She was still staying with them. There was nothing wrong with grandma and grandpa, but they were 80 now. They quarantined long before it was cool. Grandpa lived for his weight room, grandma for her stories. The food was delivered.
Nothing was happening in Homosassa. Mads tried zooming with her classmates, but after a few weeks she realized just how shallow they were. She tried video games, but the online bros were worse than the girls. Instead, she read, then she wrote.
She wrote about zombies. Zombie stories were popular, both at Crystal River High and at Gainesville.
Most zombies were easy to spot. They walked funny. They looked like they were wearing goth makeup. They talked about eating “brains” and were an object of fun. They were the boogie man.
Mads saw on the news that the virus was making a different kind of zombie. You couldn’t tell this zombie from any other person. But if you stayed too close to one, you’d become a zombie too.
Madison started reading the science news and learned a lot about these zombies. Roughly 40% of the people getting the COVID-19 virus never displayed symptoms. But it was clear they could transmit it, through their breath, and especially if they coughed. You never knew, without getting the virus, what kind of zombie you might be. You might get sick. You might die. Or you might not notice.
Even if you didn’t notice, you were still a zombie. For at least two weeks you could throw off virus with every breath you took. You could go down to the beach, hang out with your friends for a few hours, grab sodas together, then come home and kill your parents.
Or your grandparents.
Mads stayed inside.
In June Florida eased some restrictions, even though the number of zombies was increasing. There were over 50,000 now, at least 50,000 that they knew about. Lord knew how many more there were, zombies who had never been diagnosed because they never got sick, even zombies who had stopped being zombies and now couldn’t become zombies again.
Mads had a science class on her spring schedule, a basic biology class where she had planned to get a gentlemanly C. But every day she was becoming more-and-more fascinated with these new zombies. At the end of May, after earning an A+ in the class, she wrote her professor, asking for more reading.
The professor sent a password, for her access to Findit, which would let Madison access journal articles free. She also sent links to instructions for using a bunch of scientific search engines, from Google Scholar to Microsoft Academic and Science.Gov. Finally, she offered an invitation to correspond regularly, and it was this that Madison treasured most of all.
Mads dove in like the “mermaids” at nearby Witchee Watchee Springs. Through exchanges of e-mails, and hours spent in front of her computer, she learned how to read the journals. She learned how they worked, their language, and she learned how to be skeptical of them.
The virus itself wasn’t just breaking lungs, and it wasn’t just hitting old people. It was killing young people, too, she learned. It was causing blood clots that made toes run crooked. People were losing limbs. Strong people were dying of strokes. Muscle men were turning into skinny nerds. The virus wasn’t just killing people, it was maiming them as well. Just because you left a hospital “cured” didn’t mean you were better. It might mean you had a lifetime of hard rehabilitation ahead. It might mean you were permanently disabled.
The scariest zombies weren’t the sick people on ventilators. Doctors and nurses weren’t the only heroes. The scariest zombies were people like Mads, who were spreading the virus without knowing it. People working in grocery stores, in the food supply chain, or who were just volunteering to trial vaccines, they were all heroes.
All that summer, as the virus ravaged the people around her, and as her grandparents became more-and-more frightened, Mads kept reading. When the doorbell rang, she would put on gloves for her grands, carefully pick up the package, then wipe down everything in it before placing it on shelves. Her hands were becoming cracked from the hand washing. Dot and Bill weren’t zombies yet, but in their own online world they were learning of friends who were. Their friends were dying, but they were determined not to go down that way. Mads admired their determination and resolved to keep them from becoming zombies. Just in case she ordered extra PPE from Amazon, some masks and gloves, a few gowns and face shields. If Dot or Bill went down Mads would be there for them.
All that summer, her education continued. The University was determined to hold classes on schedule, despite the danger, so they could make money from football. With her teacher’s help, Madison scheduled five science classes, three meeting on Tuesday and Thursday, two of them online. She told her grandparents she would be back home to help them the other days, but that she had a mission now.
They were shocked. Madison had been a party girl at Crystal Springs. She’d been a party girl in Gainesville.
Mads said she wasn’t a party girl anymore. She wasn’t going to write about zombies anymore.
Mads was going to become Dr. Madison Fitzpatrick. She was going to become a virologist. She was going to fight zombies.
