Zombie Defence

by Rick Wood

  They all looked at Sadie. She looked clueless. Unable to understand.

  “Her body did what it was supposed to do with the virus,” Eugene continued. “When you delivered her to us, she – she was what we needed to know we’d succeeded.”

  “But you’re better, aren’t you?” Hayes said to Donny, gradually stepping toward him, his hand still outstretched. “Because we took her blood and we synthesised it and we made it better and we made… you, Donny.”

  “Don’t listen to them, Donny,” Gus tried. “Whatever they are saying, you are one of us.”

  Donny looked to Hayes’ outstretched hand.

  “You don’t belong with them,” Hayes continued, ignoring Gus’s feeble attempts. “You’re better than that.”

  “Donny, please, come on,” Gus urged. “We need you.”

  “Yes, Donny. They need you. But do you need them?”

  Donny reached his hand out and placed it into Hayes’s.

  “I remember,” Donny said. “I remember everything.”

  “Then you know?” Hayes said. “You know you are ours?”

  Donny nodded.

  The Journal of Doctor Janine Stanton

  Day 5

  Transcript from webcam journal by Janine Stanton, fifth entry

  Donny spoke to me today. I mean, more than one word. We actually had a conversation.

  He asked me what he was doing there.

  I told him he was becoming something.

  He asked where his friends were.

  I told him I didn’t know.

  He asked if he was going to be important.

  I told him…

  Nothing. I told him nothing.

  I gave the final dose.

  * * *

  80% blood of mutation

  20% blood of infected

  0% blood of subject

  0% ketorolac

  0% cortisone

  0% water

  * * *

  Something happened. Once I did it, something happened, to him, physically. His body started… throbbing. Like something was crawling underneath his skin. His fists clenched, and he – he changed. He became whatever it was they wanted me to make.

  It worked. The damn thing finally worked.

  And I created that.

  I created that.

  And I couldn’t believe I did it. So I marched into Doctor Emma Saul’s office, I marched in, and I said to her, I said, “What the hell have you done to that boy? What the hell is going on with him?”

  She looked back with this smug look like she owned the place and I am not a violent person but I could have gone for her oh I really could have gone for her in that moment I could have – I could have – I could have–

  (gathers herself)

  She told me to take a seat.

  I didn’t want to. But I did.

  And she explained what she’d been brought in to do.

  All of his friends were now his enemies. They had conditioned this into him – through torture. Through months of abuse, through pain deterrents, repetition, psychological pushing, whatever barbaric technique there is to mind-fuck someone and change their entire life perception, they did it to him.

  They told him where he was to lead his friends to. They told him what he was to do once he got there. They told him that once he’d fulfilled his duty, and he’d taken Boris Hayes’ hand, that’s when he could remember – that was hypnosis, that one, that technique.

  And then, to finish it all off, then they, they – then they made him forget. It all. He has no idea who he is, beyond Donny Jevon. And he gives none of it away. His mouth stays shut, all the time, his mouth stays shut.

  Then I came in.

  With these stupid injections I convinced myself into doing because I had no idea it would be this bad. I thought I was surviving. But in truth, I’m creating something. I’m creating a… a…

  Monster.

  Something that can take the infection and turn it into some kind of super soldier.

  How did I not realise!

  (distant screams)

  I knew it was unethical, I knew it was bizarre, extreme, but I had no idea it would be to this extent. Then again, what did I think it would be?

  I guess – I guess I thought this was an experiment. I didn’t realise I was creating a weapon.

  And Emma Saul told me a few more things. She told me that Eugene got some foreign countries to bomb London as a favour, and made it look like an attack.

  (more distant screams)

  And now he’s going to use this guy to create an army to retaliate. That’s what they were planning all along.

  I ask Emma why she told me this.

  (distant screams grow louder)

  She just smiled.

  She said there’s no harm in me knowing, as there is no way I can contact the outside. There is no way I can influence Donny after what she’s done to him. And – this one’s the biggie, the one that really bites – there is no chance of me ever getting out of here. Not knowing what I know. Nobody can.

  (screams outside of room)

  Almost as if in perfect coincidence, that’s when I heard it. The rumble. I looked out of the window.

  There are so many of them.

  So, so many.

  And they are all running toward us.

  The fence – it – it looks like someone has blown it down.

  And they are coming.

  All of them. They are coming.

  (screams outside of room)

  (Janine stands, looks off screen)

  (loud bang)

  (silence as Janine stares off screen)

  Are you… are you her?

  (silence)

  My name is Doctor Janine Stanton.

  (silence)

  Listen, I don’t want to hurt you.

  (person appears close to Janine)

  (Janine lifts her hand out and strokes hair out of person’s face)

  Look, I know who–

  (person bites through Janine’s arm)

  (Janine goes off screen)

  (Screams)

  0 HOURS TO TRAP

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Donny went to his knee. Bowed his head before his general. Obedient as a lap dog. Pathetic as a wretch.

  Gus watched with no conceivable understanding of what just happened. His perception, that Donny was against them, could not be right. This could not be right. None of this could be right.

  Yet, as he despaired, watched with distraught eyes, he saw what everyone else saw.

  “Good boy, Donny,” Hayes said, patronising, cocky, conceited. “You can stand.”

  Donny stood. His head bowed in a contortion of compliance and reluctance. Submission owned him.

  “But, Donny…” Gus tried.

  Donny turned away. Kept his face concealed.

  “Donny, what the hell are you doing?”

  Hayes laughed. “You can try all you want, he’s not going to respond to you.”

  “Donny, whatever they’ve done to you, you remember who you are, you remember you’re a friend, you remember–”

  “Enough!” Donny’s head lifted in a definite twist. His face had changed, showing a look of wrath he had never worn before.

  Whoever this was, it wasn’t the man Gus knew.

  Desert drew her weapon. Prospero already had his out. Whizzo backed further away.

  Sadie looked to Gus.

  She didn’t understand a lot of things, but she understood enough. There was a time to kill the infected, and a time to kill the attacker. The situation was blindingly clear for any onlooker or participant to understand.

  “I’m not going to kill him,” Gus told Hayes.

  “That’s fine,” Hayes answered. As if to say, then he’ll just be able to kill you.

  Gus drew his blade.

  Donny stepped forward, putting himself in front of Hayes.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Gus saw Eugene back away. Taking the coward’s way. Feeling the fight was imm
inent, so peeling off to find a good vantage point to watch. Maybe he’ll get some popcorn too. Watch the highlights afterwards.

  Arsehole.

  But Eugene was not Gus’s immediate concern.

  “Donny, listen, you just–”

  “Enough of this,” Prospero decided and, before anyone could object or act, leapt toward Donny with his knife showing.

  Donny simply sidestepped Prospero’s advance and took the man’s wrist in his hand. Using strength the muscular former-sergeant couldn’t fight, Donny twisted Prospero’s knife hand toward Prospero, pressed it forward, and slid the knife’s edge neatly into Prospero’s gut.

  Their eyes met as he did it. Prospero, a face of perplexity, of betrayal, of final thoughts – Donny, a scrunched-up mess of all kinds of anger. His nose curled into a painful grimace, his eyes so full of rage they almost burst from his face.

  In a swift motion, Donny withdrew the knife from the gut, stuck it into Prospero’s throat, then kicked the gagging body to the ground as Prospero choked the final few chokes of his life.

  “No!” Desert screamed, charging forward. Gus intercepted, placing a hand across her, using all his strength to hold her back.

  “Let go of me!”

  “You’ve got to leave emotions out of this. You’ve got to. Can you do that?”

  “Can you?” she asked.

  Hayes laughed and clapped his hands.

  “Go to hell!” Gus screamed, wrenching his face toward the maniacal sycophant hellbent on wrecking Gus’s life.

  Hayes just laughed more.

  “Why?” Gus demanded. “Just – why?”

  Hayes shrugged. “A test that it had worked. Now we can manufacture more of him. An army of them.”

  “Then what?”

  Hayes lifted his arms. “Then… the world.”

  Donny lifted his blade. Looked into Gus’s eyes.

  “I won’t fight you,” Gus told Donny. “I won’t. And I won’t kill you either.”

  Donny was not deterred.

  Donny marched forward. Gus backed away. Kept his weapons at his side, readily dormant. Donny’s strides got him closer to Gus than Gus had precedented, but he just kept backing up, kept getting out of reach.

  Gus ran. Ran to a door that led to the old school’s corridors.

  He looked at Donny, standing there, glaring at him.

  If hate had a stench, Donny would reek of it.

  Donny looked to Hayes, like a pet to its master, awaiting further instructions.

  “Kill him,” Hayes instructed.

  Gus looked to Sadie, wide-eyed, and pointed at Desert and Whizzo. “Help them,” he told her. “They are friends. Just – help them.”

  Gus turned. Burst out of the hall, through the corridor, sprinting with as much gusto as his new leg would give him.

  He didn’t need to turn his head to know that he was being followed.

  The heavy footsteps, stomping closer, getting louder, they took over Gus’s mind, penetrated it with a strafe of sound.

  Gus turned a corner.

  The sound of barging against the wall and further running continued behind him.

  He turned into a room. An old classroom. What looked like it was a science room; the stools, abandoned Bunsen burners, gas taps all around the room.

  Only, this room was it. It was a poor move. There was nowhere else to go.

  He shut the door. Backed up against it, pushing it closed with all his might. But, just as the skin of his palm traced the door’s wood, the door burst off its hinges, forcing Gus to the floor.

  Donny’s silhouette filled the door frame.

  Gus held tightly onto his blade. Looked like he was going to need it.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “Help them. They are friends. Help them.”

  Sadie fell to her knees. Reached out for him.

  His final words before he left. Before they both left. Sadie’s two friends. All she had in the world, gone to fight.

  “Gus…”

  She couldn’t understand why. There was no logic to their fighting, no reason she could understand, but they were gone, to hurt each other.

  “Gus…”

  His final words were not to follow. To help their new friends.

  Desert and Whizzo. Their new friends.

  Friends.

  “Gus…” she sobbed for the last time.

  Over her shoulder, Desert backed away.

  Whizzo was in the corner. He was rummaging through his bag. Like he was trying to find something.

  Before them, rows of soldiers. An army, ready to take them down. Overkill in its most blatant form.

  Sadie took to her feet.

  She reached her hand out to Desert.

  Desert looked back.

  “Friend…” Sadie said.

  Desert nodded.

  “Friend,” Desert confirmed.

  Sadie turned. Game face on. If she could kill this many of the undead, she could kill this many of the alive.

  She knew she wasn’t normally supposed to kill people. Gus had said. But this was different.

  Gus had said to help them.

  And they were in danger.

  She scowled.

  Hayes laughed. “Look at her, she’s like a rat! Or a fucking cat or something. It’s pathetic.”

  Sadie growled.

  Desert backed away.

  “Right, enough of this. Kill ‘em.”

  The army raised their guns.

  Sadie lifted her arms out and screamed. She ran toward the gathering troops. The first spray of bullets hit the ground behind her, unable to trace her speed as she flounced to the left, to the right, and up, jumping over them.

  She landed on one of their shoulders. Tried to rip their head off.

  But…

  Their heads were tougher. They weren’t like the infected. They wouldn’t rip off so easily. How was she supposed to do this?

  She looked to Desert.

  Desert was backing away, finding cover behind a large pile of wood, entrails of the school following a likely ransacking for supplies in the initial stages of the infection.

  But, just before she found cover, she threw her knife into the air, at perfect height for Sadie to catch and use to slide into the soldier’s throat.

  That was better. That went through the soldier much easier.

  Desert and Whizzo stayed hidden behind the small barricade. Sadie could see them. More of the soldiers were edging toward them, firing, destroying their shelter, taking away any hope of refuge.

  Sadie was not having it.

  In a speedy attack, she leapt to the group of soldiers closest to Desert and Whizzo’s barrier, taking them to the ground. Their falling caused a few more stumbles of other soldiers, and Sadie used the shelter of the pit of stumbling bodies and momentary lapses in focus to kill a quick sequence of them. Before any other living creature could conceive of the movements, Sadie had swiped her knife through three chests, a leg, two necks, the underside of a chin, and an eyeball; which stuck to the knife, causing her to have to wipe it off on her trousers.

  Icky.

  She ran toward the next load of oncoming assailants, diving into them, moving her knife hand quicker than they could react.

  So quick, she didn’t even hear the gun fire before it got to her.

  Her shoulder. Immense pain. Then a sudden feeling like she was drowning.

  She fell onto her back.

  She heard someone scream her name, probably Desert, possibly not.

  She howled. It was agony.

  The soldiers parted. Allowed the shooter to walk through.

  General Boris Hayes, his jacket off, his gun out. Doing what he did best. Striding like Moses, arrogantly marching through the parted sea of soldiers.

  Sadie dragged herself back to her feet, went for him, but stumbled, her balance gone, the pain taking over any movement she attempted.

  Hayes aimed the gun at her face.

  She swiped for it, but missed, falling,
collapsing in an earthquake upon solid tiles.

  That was when Whizzo stood and withdrew something from his bag.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Gus crawled backwards along the floor, staying beneath the concealment of tables. He knew it wouldn’t protect him for long, but every action was an immediate thought; once he’d been afforded the next few seconds of protection, he’d produce the next.

  Donny threw the tables out of the way like they were nothing. Sent them surging into smashed windows to his right, faded displays to his left.

  He kicked the chairs, sending them spinning across the room, punching the far walls with a heavy dent.

  “Donny…” Gus began, then decided to stop.

  He hadn’t been able to rationalise with Donny so far.

  Could his friend be so far gone?

  Gus knew he had to find some way to stop Donny without killing him.

  Or, failing that, he wouldn’t have a choice. He would have to…

  No. He couldn’t kill Donny.

  Only, Donny’s blood had what Eugene Squire needed. It had the blood of what they were trying to create.

  For the greater good, there was no way Gus could let Donny go.

  For his own breaking heart, there was no way Gus could let Donny die.

  Gus ran out from beneath the final table. He fumbled to his feet, using a nearby sink to steady himself. His head was smacked into that sink before he had any idea it was about to happen.

  He ignored the delirium and pushed himself hazily back up, running, just running.

  He saw a back door. There was a back door. A means of escape. A means of not dying.

  But it was so far away. Metres, yes, but in terms of–

  His lamentation was cut short. Donny gripped Gus around the throat with his firm hand and lifted him into the air. Gus grabbed Donny’s wrist, squeezing, pulling, trying to tear it away, but Donny was not interested. He even tried kicking Donny. Fighting back seemed like the only way – for now. But his kicks may as well have been done by a toddler, such were their effect.

  He choked. His breath. Escaping.