Dead Sea

Chapter One

    I didn't shoot the bitch until she started eating Alan's face. Before this whole thing began, I'd never shot anyone in my life. Not once. I never held a gun until a few weeks before Hamelin's Revenge started. Hell, I never even referred to women as bitches. But that's what she was. And I had the pistol in my hand.

    And I shot her.

    Cue "Hey Joe" by Jimi Hendrix.

    This thing… this plague; it changed people. Not just the dead ones, either. It changed everyone. Changed me. I'm a different person now. Listen… you never know what you'll do until you find yourself in an impossible situation, so don't ever say never. Survival instinct is a real motherfucker, and when your back is. against the wall, everything changes. Everything. I know. It did for me. It all changed for me.

    My name is Lamar Reed and this is the way the world ended.

    It started with the rats. They swarmed out of the sewers about a month ago. Well, maybe swarmed isn't the right word. Swarm indicates speed, and the rats were anything but fast. The first attack took place in New York City during the evening rush hour. Imagine it. Sidewalks bustling with activity, crowds of people rushing to catch subways and trains and buses, streets choked with gridlock, taxi-cabs weaving in and out of traffic, horns blaring, manhole covers clanging as trucks drive over them. And then, in the middle of all this chaos, the rats slowly crawled out of a sewer grate on Thirty-first Street and attacked people-climbed up legs, raked at stomachs with their sharp little claws, sank their yellowed incisors into cheeks and thighs and necks; anywhere they could find a soft morsel. The rats fed.

    And the rats were dead. I should mention that. Wasn't weird enough that rats attacked commuters en masse. They were dead rats-guts hanging out, limbs and tails falling off, and big, ulcerated wounds on their sides, infested with maggots. Rotting meat on the run.

    Oh, we didn't know it at first. I remember watching it on the news that evening. Sitting on my couch in East Baltimore, eating bologna straight from the package and ignoring the stack of overdue bills. Watching the news, wondering when the cable would get shut off for non-payment. Wondering where the hell my unemployment check was. The mail lady hadn't brought it yet, and things were tight. I'd come up with some cash a few weeks before, but it all went to my mortgage. Like sticking one finger in the dam while three dozen more leaks sprang up.

    The news caught my attention because of the fucked-up factor. Rats attacking pedestrians? Crazy shit. But when the first reports started trickling in that they were dead rats-not dead as in some frantic stockbroker flung one to the ground and stomped it-but dead as in the living dead? That shit was off the hook. People scoffed, the media pundits argued, and the authorities refused comment. The cable news channels carried live footage. MSNBC called it a riot. CNN speculated about a possible terrorist attack. 1 don't know what Fox News called it because nobody I know watched Fox News. One thing that appeared clear was that nobody knew what the fuck was going on. New York's hospitals filled up with wounded pedestrians. Most of them suffered from bites, and others had been injured in the chaos that followed-trampled on as people fled. A few suffered heart attacks brought on by the stress. The people who'd been bitten got real sick. Then died. Then came back. Just like the rats.

    They were dead, but they still came back.

    The media called it Hamelin's Revenge. They came up with the name almost immediately. Hamelin's Revenge: the return of the rats the Pied Piper was hired to get rid of. But in that old story, when the mayor refused to pay, Hamelin-the Pied Piper-came up with another plan. That's how they spun it, anyway. Seems nobody bothered to tell the media that Hamelin was the name of the town, not the Piper himself. But that didn't matter. In their version, Hamelin's Revenge was when the Piper decided to get even. He took all the kids away and returned the rats to the village. Now the fairy tale had come true. The rats returned all right. And hell followed with them. Just like the Bible verse or the song. Hell.