The Unselfish Gene by R. Douglas Burns

Author:R. Douglas Burns [Burns, R. Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MagicHat Books
Published: 2012-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

The Humvee, a war machine, seemed completely at home here as its tires trundled over the zombie remains. Some of the very, very nearly-dead lay inside the burnt-out shells of mid-sized and small cars. The Humvee rolled over these too, crushing them like hibernating cicadas. As the cars collapsed, corpses inside exploded into clouds of puff and ash, streaming out the shattered windows.

“Okay, which way now?”

Hannah paused. The woman called Gayle was cheerful, almost unnervingly so, and so…what was the word?....charismatic, and it was easy to be swept away by her enthusiasm, like a twig in a river. And Hannah desperately wanted to be swept away, to live someone else’s life and forget what she had seen in her commune’s burrows under Fair Park.

As she grew older, she had often wondered why the commune had chosen to continue living in the access tunnels under the park. It was little better than living in the sewers. Yes, the tunnels were vermin-free—but only because High-Path plague didn’t discriminate between rat and man.

But with the non-zombie population of the Dallas metroplex only in the hundreds—or perhaps much less—there were plenty of upscale places to where the commune could have relocated.

She suspected it was a matter of inertia and perhaps a sense that the Burrows, as everyone called them, had become home. Sure, ventilation wasn’t good, and natural light was non-existent, but many of the alcoves had been made into cozy little nests, and the whole complex was secure since zombies weren’t good at climbing down the ladders that led into the Burrows or dealing with complex latches. Besides, the nearly-dead avoided hot open spaces such as the acres of fair grounds parking lot.

As the plague peaked and the zombies became sicker and weaker, it was only inertia that kept the commune there, she suspected. But the inertia had spelled everyone’s death, everyone but hers. She had been spared through an act of youthful rebellion.

Still, when she had climbed down into the Burrows and found the lights still working, she had hoped for survivors, but all she found was the dead. They hadn’t died from the heat. She guessed smoke inhalation had been the cause; everything and everyone was coated in a thick layer of black dust. The ventilation shafts had saturated the Burrows with vaporized asphalt from the Anita’s landing.

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