The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory

by Rich Restucci

  “Did he think I might need a fuckin’ sandwich too?”

  Remo handed him a Power Bar. Atlantis had zillions of those things. My favorite was the chocolate peanut butter. Zero tore the package open with his teeth then ripped into the food. “Got separated from the rest of the unit.” He grumbled between bites. “Most of them were already dead by the time we made it to the lab. We set up a defensive position at a choke point in the corridor outside the test center. Didn’t do shit. The firing inside a steel tube had our ears ringing so loud we couldn’t hear the fuckers coming up behind us. I locked the doors and led as many of the dead bastards as I could away. I found Jarek hiding by the engine room.” He turned around. “Jarek, come out.”

  A guy dressed in filthy coveralls stepped out of one of the doors. He wiped his hands on his sides and stuck one out to me. “Jarek Doorshe.” Zero smiled because he knew what I was going to say.

  “Jerk-douche? Really?”

  “Really,” he stated. “What is your name?”

  Guy had an accent, and I couldn’t place it. I stuck my mitt out to shake his hand and introduce us newcomers, but a muffled explosion from the general area of where we had just come from interrupted me.

  I looked in several directions. “What was that?”

  “That was your buddy, Ship.” Zero raised his eyebrows. “He’s pretty fuckin’ handy. He and a few others are in the galley, but I haven’t been able to get to them. These dead fuckers are all through the ship, and I’ve almost bought it a few times pushing my luck. Now that I have some ammo and some help, we might be able to push through.”

  Remo rubbed his jaw. “What’s the best way to the galley?” He passed another Power Bar to Jarek, then began loading a magazine with some loose rounds.

  “Back the way you came,” Zero began. “About twenty meters down the passageway, but we aren’t going through there and coming out alive. We go this way,” he thumbed over his left shoulder indicating the corridor behind him, “shutting the doors I missed on the way. There are a couple places where I know there are some clustered infected, but the five of us should be able to take them.”

  “Can you draw a map?” Remo produced the same Sharpie he had given me on the monkey island. See? I can remember shit.

  Zero took the marker and drew on the bulkhead, pointing with the tip of the pen at key areas as he drew. “This is where we are now. This turn will bring us around the galley to the far side, but it’s full of infected. I was able to shut the near hatch, and the far hatch is the galley, so they’re trapped in there. This is the ladder to the passageway to the engine room.” He crossed off a large area with a big X. “We stay the fuck out of here.”

  “Why?” I asked maybe a bit too quickly.

  “There are a hundred or more dead trapped down there. It’s an access passageway to one of the holds. This is where they did their experiments, and where they stored their subjects. Their main lab is down there. The entire hold is crawling with dead fucks. We can go around, but the way is blocked here, and here.”

  Kinga furrowed his brow. “Blocked by what?”

  “This one is where Ship set off one of his IEDs and it bent a hatch closed. We would need tools to get through. Here,” he indicated another junction, “there are about twenty infected trapped in a passageway just like this one. We might be able to go through there, but as soon as we flip the hatch handles, all of those pricks will push up against the hatch, and it opens away from us.”

  Remo put his pack on the floor. All eyes were on him as he pulled out a red-wrapped candy bar from one of the pockets. “This will open it.”

  I was wondering how a brick of chocolate was going to open a door when Zero disclosed, “Semtex, nice. Where’d you get that Czech shit?”

  I had thought he had said check-shit, and was totally lost until Remo clarified that Atlantis had two pallets of the stuff from the Czech Republic.

  “Works great, I’ve used it before,” Zero added and frowned. “I’m a little pissy that nobody thought to give me some when I signed up for this fuckin’ suicide mish.”

  Remo and Kinga looked at each other. “Army,” they both chided at the same time.

  Kinga raised an eyebrow and pulled out his own candy bar. “We asked. Looks like it’s you that needs saving.”

  Zero smiled, but I was getting antsy. “Pissing match later, let’s go get my… our friends.” Zero had given me the death eyes when I had said my. He was in for a penny just like I was, and had actually been here for a few days, whereas I had just arrived.

  All three of them stared at me, and without a word began switching out magazines. I did the same, and reloaded my Sig as well.

  Kinga handed Zero an extra radio, the army guy attaching it to himself and installing the earbud. His rifle hung on his single-point sling, the suppressor no longer viable and discarded. He was using a suppressed Sig P226 just like we were, the Desert Eagle in a separate holster on his hip. When we were ready, Zero turned to the new guy. “Jarek, you coming or staying?”

  “Coming,” he proclaimed, and hefted a fire axe.

  “Quiet from now on, just like we did before, okay?” Jarek nodded in understanding.

  There were six handles on the hatch. Zero moved five of them into the open position, pausing on the last to look at us. He nodded once, and we tensed. If there were fifty of the things on the other side of this door, we were probably dead. The door opened in, and we would never be able to shut it again. Remember that on the other side of the hatch behind us were a few dozen infected still bashing themselves to pulp trying to get to us.

  Zero slowly pulled the handle until the door was no longer sealed. He remained in a crouch as he pulled the door wide. An empty passageway greeted us. No zombies. No smell. No sounds. The fluorescent lights overhead were already on, and we were witness to stains and some of the shit the things leave behind them when they move about, but there were no dead here.

  Stepping over the knee-knocker (I still couldn’t figure out why some of the doors were doors, and some were hatches. Must have something to do with flooding), Zero scanned the area, then moved forward enough for all of us to step into the corridor. Kinga came last and he secured the door with one handle.

  We made it through two corridors, our tactical lights showing that all the doors were closed, before we came upon our first obstacle. It was the closed hatch that Zero had indicated before. There was an orange circle with a line through it and the words DO NOT OPEN with INFECTED underneath was scrawled in that same Day-Glo orange marker.

  “This is the hatch with twenty or so of those fuckers trapped in there,” whispered Zero into the radio. “We either go through here, or we go down there.” Zero took two steps toward a hatch in the floor (I know I write hatch a lot, but that’s what they are!) and he pointed down. We peered into the hole. A steel tube-ladder descended into semi-darkness, vague shadows indicating several things were moving about further down the passageway below us. The revealing sounds told us exactly what those sinister forms were. Zero shook his head. “I doubt we would step foot off the ladder before they tore into us.”

  Remo had taken all of it in quickly. “Agreed. We need to go through there.” He indicated the corridor in front of us. “Shut the lights off and use NVGs. Shape charge the hinges, blow them from halfway down this passageway. When they come out, we take them one at a time as they come through the hatch. Jarek holds the rear and opens up the hatches behind us if we need to fall back.”

  I wrinkled my nose, the stink from the open trapdoor getting to me. “But Remo, we’ll be trapped if we have to fall back that far.”

  “We will, but it will give us time to reload and come up with a plan. Besides, we’re already trapped.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. He was right. This damn boat was jam-packed with these rotting shitheads. They were in front, behind, above, and below. We were already stuck here, and I immediately found that even more disconcerting. Thanks, buddy.

  “Just one more thing?” King
a and Zero looked annoyed at me, but Remo seemed interested. “What if we just try opening the door?” I pointed at the white steel. “Why can’t we just have a guy forward, he undoes the handles one at a time and slowly, then kicks the door open and runs back to the shooters?”

  Remo looked at the other two, and all three of them eye-shrugged at the same time. Zero stuck out his lower lip. “That will take away a few shots as you run back to us, but they’ll probably jam the door all trying to get through at the same time. Not a bad plan. And it saves explosives and maybe a concussive blast. Okay, fall back.” He looked at me. “Good luck.”

  I may have mentioned in my journals somewhere, that however badass you, Dear Reader, take me to be, I am not, in fact, MARSOC, a SEAL, a ninja, or Spiderman. I’m a moron sometimes, that’s true, and this was one of those times. Of course in my head, one of the operators was going to operate on this particular portion of the mission while I sat back as far as possible with my biggest gun, a Bud Light, and some porn. As I had suggested it, however, I would be doing it.

  Shit. Didn’t they tell me I had to stay back when we were up in the wheelhouse? WTF changed their minds? Imminent evisceration?

  As I pondered my stupidity, the guys worked out the plan in detail. I open the door and run like hell, hugging the steel of the right side corridor wall. They would shoot past me if they could, and I would take a standing position and begin firing into the crowd. We would flip down our NVGs, and Jarek would kill the lights, keeping his hand on the light switch. If all went well, we would smoke all the undead and be with Ship and my friends in time for Jell-O shots. If bad shit happened, we flip up our NVGs, everybody yells to Jarek to turn on the lights, and we book it back to the first passage, shutting both doors on the way. Rinse and repeat until we run out of zombies.

  I thought Jarek might want to buy his fire axe some dinner and dress it in a skirt he was holding it so tight. “But what about the fast ones?”

  “We target them first,” Zero told him. “Knees or center mass, just get it on the ground and worry about headshots later.” Zero had been looking at Jarek when he said it, but as Jarek didn’t have a firearm, the rundown was undoubtedly for my benefit. I wish there was some way of keeping a tally of how many of these things I had killed. I bet it was just as many, or more than Zero.

  The crewman had his finger on the light switch, and that made me nervous. “Jarek, don’t turn the lights off until we tell you. I don’t want to be running back and trying to fumble with my NVGs while these three are shooting past me in the dark.” He was wide-eyed and breathing fast, but he pulled his digit off of the switch.

  This shit was happening. It had been my idea. Hell, it had been my idea to come save these dumbass friends of mine. Oh, and Ship, when you’re reading this later, you don’t get to call my intelligence into question unless you do the same for yourself. You’re in exactly the same situation I’m in, and we both put ourselves in it. The only difference is, I’m going to pull your fish out of the fire.

  My hand had been on the first handle the whole time I had been thinking that all this shit was my fault. I looked back at the other four guys, they had taken up their firing positions. MARSOC on one knee each, Zero standing behind Kinga, unsuppressed rifle raised, and Jarek at the end of the hall. Remo nodded and I flipped the first bar. I listened intently, but could only hear the things on the other side of the steel making the noises they make. I undid three more handles and listened again. Nothing pawing at the hatch that I could tell. I undid number five and put my hand on six. A bit of pee might have eeked its way out of me. I took a big breath, twisted the last handle, and took a step back.

  Nothing. They didn’t come flooding through as I thought they would have. If this was good or bad, I didn’t know. I stepped back up and pushed on the door, but it didn’t budge. Another big breath and I turned my gaze on the guys behind me. Kinga appeared bored, and Zero was giving me the hurry up look. Remo, as always, was impossible to read.

  I grabbed the sides of the hatch, put my boot against it, and pushed for all I was worth with one foot. It opened wide, smacked into one of the things and bounced back at me. The stench that wafted out of that corridor after less than two seconds of open door was almost unbearable. Didn’t stop this kid though and I kicked again, the door opening as far as it could and smacking against the bulkhead. The resounding echo of that thump resonated through the hallway and no doubt the entire ship. A shit-ton of red eyes stared at me for a split second, every one of them asking me if I was out of my fucking mind, then they all surged forward. I spun and high-tailed it back down the passageway. The boys started firing, and Zero’s rifle sounded like a… a… I don’t know something really loud. I got about halfway back when the lights went out. Two steps later, somebody punched me in the side, just above my left hip, and I jerked to the right, slamming into the bulkhead. The firing ceased, but all that meant was that there were dead things intent on a banquet a few feet behind me. Yeah, and I was by far the closest to them.

  “Jarek, turn the fucking lights on!” I heard Zero positively scream.

  The overheads flared to life, and I dared a quick peek behind me. The dead were about twenty feet away, but when they are that close, it’s too close. I got up, my side hurting, and hurried to my place on the line. The bullets whizzed down the tight hallway and the things in front began to hamper the progress of their dead cousins behind when they fell. Somebody yelled something and I saw Kinga reload. I couldn’t really hear shit because of Zero’s M4.

  I shot a kid in the face. I shot a skinny girl with rotting tattoos in the eye. I tried to shoot a freshly killed but severely mauled military guy, but the top of his head popped up before I could squeeze the trigger. I sighted on a guy in green coveralls, but my eyes went out of focus for a second, and before I could reacquire him, he was down. The dead were starting to plug the corridor, and we had killed them all the way back to the hatch. They were still coming, but slower, when I realized my mouth was incredibly dry. I swallowed and tried to sight on another guy in coveralls when the entire ship sort of lurched to the left. Nobody else seemed to be bothered by it, and they kept shooting. I, on the other hand, needed to put my hand on the bulkhead to steady myself. I was also feeling a bit wet. I had not pissed myself! I would never live it down. I touched my side, pain flared there, and I looked at my palm. It was covered in blood, as were my pants and lower tactical vest. The floor hadn’t been spared either, and I saw that a large puddle of my red stuff was staining the carpet. The gunshots stopped.

  It dawned on me what had happened. “Which one of you fuckers shot me?” I asked, ears ringing. I fell down a deep hole and slumped against the bulkhead.

  Shot. Again

  “Pressure! Here, Jarek.”

  “Syrette?”

  “No, we’ll need him frosty. It’s a through-and-through, but it’s bleeding badly. I hope nothing inside got nicked, but we can’t go in now anyway. Then there’s the fact that I’m not a fuk’n surgeon.”

  “That is a lot of blood.”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “But so much blood…”

  “Jarek, are you a medical professional? No? Then let me worry about it for now.”

  My eyes fluttered open and it was very bright. The overhead fluorescent lighting hurt my eyes. Then I felt some real pain in my side when somebody pushed on my wound. I was on my back on the deck, shirtless with my tactical shit in a pile next to me. Somebody snapped their fingers in front of my face and I focused on them.

  “Remo, you shot me.”

  “You had the poor notion of stepping between the business end of my rifle, and my sighted target.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Shit happens. We can’t stay here. The weapons fire is sure to bring more of them.”

  Zero, reloading his Sig, looked down at me. “I closed every door I could without getting bitten when me and Jarek ran through the ship. I couldn’t get them all though, so we should be on our toes.” He moved o
ff out of my field of vision. “In fact…” He let that statement dangle, and I heard one of the things rasp followed by a single suppressed shot.

  “Save ammo,” Remo suggested. “Use your knife if it’s only one.”

  “Can you stand?” Kinga asked me.

  “Yeah, let me…”

  Remo put his hand on my shoulder as I tried to sit up. “Not yet.”

  “How long was I out?”

  Remo wasn’t sure. “Two minutes?”

  Jarek still had his hands on my side and was pressing down. Remo fished in a small pack he had on his hip. He pulled out a green package and tore it open with his teeth. Pulling out a bandage, he told Jarek to move his hands. The new guy pulled back and a dripping, red piece of some type of cloth came with his mitts. Remo pressed the fresh bandage to my wound, and the Devil himself was unleashed inside me. I actually convulsed the pain was so intense. That little guy that lives in your brain and unleashes the hurt decided his vacation was over, hiatus done. He returned to work, getting on the horse quickly, throwing all the handles, and pressing all the red buttons labeled PAIN. That shit hurt. I bucked and gritted my teeth.

  “What… what the fuck was that?”

  “The entry wound. You ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  Remo pulled me forward by the left shoulder, “The quick clot infused bandage will really help the bleeding.” He wrapped the bandage around me and pressed it into the exit wound.

  I gotta tell you, I’m not a pussy. Really. I’ve been shot a bunch of times now. I’ve killed, I don’t know, a hundred infected? Maybe more. I’ve killed bad guys that deserved it, and I don’t feel guilty anymore. I went through months of needles in a secret government hospital. I mean, I was in a plane crash a couple days ago, and right now, I was on a huge container vessel, swarming with undead things that wanted to eat me, all because I’m looking to save my friends.

  All this having been said, I screamed and some pee came out of me when the jarhead put that shit on my wound. It happened. I didn’t want it to happen, it just did. It was an exceptionally manly scream, if such a thing exists, but a scream nonetheless. My upper abdomen and crotch down to my knees was soaked with blood, so nobody saw the piss, but I felt it leave me. I will be embarrassed when somebody reads this, but at the moment of said evacuation, I didn’t care, the pain was so extreme. It didn’t last long, but it still friggin’ hurt. Like, a lot.