The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory

by Rich Restucci

  Orca Three here.

  “Orca Seven is alive. Mostly,” I added.

  Orca Four is… what… AHHH! Four began yelling, then screaming. We could hear the terror over the radio, then a crunch and some gurgling. There was momentary static, then nothing.

  Orca Four, what is your status? Four, come in! Where are you, Four? Come in!

  Four didn’t come in. It was an absolute certainty in my damaged head that Orca Four had, in fact, gone out. I searched in the darkness for my light, but it was gone. My hand did come across the hose for my cutter, and I pulled it to me. I tried to move, but my right foot was pinned. It didn’t hurt, and I could feel it, so it wasn’t crushed either. I put my hands up, and impacted something hard and heavy above me at almost full arm’s length.

  We need to assemble. Orcas, sound off. This is Orca One.

  Three is okay.

  “Seven here, but I’m stuck.”

  Don’t panic, Seven, we’ll get to you. Three, do you have a light?

  Negative, Three is blind, lost chem-lights as well.

  Chem-lights! I had forgotten I had them! What a dick! I reached my paw up to my shoulder and pulled one of the lights out of the Velcro pouch there. I snapped it, shook it, and held it in front of my face. Not three feet away were the dead, red eyes of a zombie looking right at me. It lunged and got about six inches. I shuffled two or three inches back, my stuck foot not allowing me to get any further. The thing kept trying unsuccessfully to lunge. It was also stuck on something. The something was the collapsed stairway that must weigh three thousand pounds. I had been fortunate enough that the ton and a half of steel that we were on when it collapsed had missed me. I was pinned by a railing, and it had hit me at an angle. Had it been another inch down, I would be walking lopsided for the rest of my short life. I wasn’t freeing my boot anytime soon, but thankfully, I would keep my foot.

  The dead guy wouldn’t. Just when I was thinking that this dead bastard would stay three feet away forever, his right leg tore free from his trapped knee. I heard it rip away through the water and almost puked in my mask. The fucker still couldn’t reach my face, which is what all zombies want to bite first, but he could sure as shit now reach my trapped appendage. The thing was stretched out so all it could do was grab my boot, but you try being trapped and having a dead monster paw at your foot. Now try it while underwater and using a glowing, green chem-stick as your only source of light.

  The whole time I had been going through what you just read, Orca One was still trying to get in contact with his other men. “Seven has a problem,” I said into my helmet.

  What kind of problem? Is your rebreather damaged?

  “The dead kind, and no, but my sanity is a bit damaged.”

  Hang on. We’ll get to you as soon as we can. Three, you still with us?

  One, this is Three. Affirma… ing for a… ght source... My ceiling is only about five feet high here and I… ell whi… is up with this buoyancy.

  Three, One, you’re breaking up.

  I heard a crack, another tear, and whipped my head over to check on the status of my new dead buddy. Black shit was floating out of his legs, and I knew he had ripped free of both of his lower extremities. His left pant leg was still trapped under the crushing weight of the collapsed stairs. That and the fact that his belt was firmly attached to his waist were what was keeping him off of my important parts for now.

  My bang stick was nowhere to be seen, but I still had my knife and a pry bar. I moved the chem-light around some, and noticed the cutter hose. I grabbed it and pulled the cutter and tanks to me. I had heard about these cutters before. They were the high-speed plasma-type used by the military. The thing grabbed at the cylinders, but was woefully short. I turned on the oxygen and pressed the electronic start (yes, it has an underwater electronic starting mechanism, don’t get your panties in a bunch) on the cutter. It fired up immediately, and I honed the flow. I couldn’t sit all the way up, so I scrunched myself into a fetal position and started to cut at the railing.

  This is One, I see a glow!

  “One, Seven, the glow is my cutter! Can you make it to me?” I added hastily.

  I can’t tell yet, there’s a ton of debris in the way. Three, can you see the glow? Three, come in. Shit, his comms must be down.

  Everly was also bellowing for a report, and I could feel Ship in the background mutely demanding answers.

  I got most of the way through the first cut on the tube steel when hands grabbed me from behind. The hands pulled me back and the thing that leaned over me and bit my helmet was a black-garbed horror. It was horribly burned, like the thing that had been on the stairs. So were the three behind it that were slowly making their way toward me through the wreckage. My knife slid easily into the creature’s temple, but it took a few seconds for it to cease trying to bite my face through the glass. It had smashed its face into my mask, and the view plate was now covered in gooey smears. I wiped the goo away, but the thing twisted as it collapsed and my knife was torn from my grasp.

  Legless had gotten free and was now crawling through the railing to get at the rest of me. It grabbed my free leg and I kicked it off, then kicked it in the nose. The blood and goo that was now in the water was friggin’ nasty, but I had more pressing issues. The thing latched onto my kicker again, but this time had me firmly in its grasp. It used my leg to pull itself all the way through the railing, and was trying to bite every part of me it could. I used my leg to keep it from succeeding, but eventually, it would get a bite in. I got in one more swat with my boot, and it fell to the side. It was up again in a second, and now it was on me. It was all I could do to keep its teeth from ripping into my dry suit. It continued to drag itself up me until it was trying to bite through my helmet just like its brother had, except now I was knifeless. I grabbed the forgotten cutter with my right hand and put the nozzle against the dead man’s forehead while I held his neck. It took less than two seconds to burn through and then the single most disgusting thing that had happened to me since the start of this plague occurred. The overpressure from the heat inside the zombie’s head shot the rotting contents of its skull out the hole, past the cutter beam, and all over me.

  I pitched the thing to the side, and glanced over my shoulder at his pals. They were on top of me as well. The anger that I had just been experiencing turned to stark terror. I was going to go out like this? Underwater with three dead guys all dressed in black camo eating through my dry suit.

  Fuck.

  I lay back and began to fight over my head with the first of them. It latched onto my hand, trying to relieve me of a few fingers, but I was too fast and yanked my hand away. Light flooded the area from behind the dead, but all that did was blind me for a crucial couple of moments. In that time, the thing I had been battling with was able to grab my wrist and bite down. On my dive watch. It hurt like hell, but my suit hadn’t been breached. I had to pull the thing closer to deal with it, and the oxygen cylinders were snagged on something, so the cutter was not an option. I began to smash my hurting head up in a steel-covered head-butt into the thing’s face. The light was everywhere now, and I saw one of the black-clad things get jerked back into the brightness. My head was about to explode, but the thing on me was stunned, and I jabbed my fingers into its eyes. I felt both of them go, but this wasn’t my first rodeo with that. This fucker was blind now, but had fully functional teeth, so was still deadly. I smashed my head upward again, and destroyed a couple of those teeth. Green circles began to dance in front of my eyes as I fought to stay conscious with my head in such pain. Literally, the last thing you want to do when you get smacked in the dome is use your melon as a battering ram. Write that shit down, because it’s a life lesson.

  I heard grunting and gasping, and I realized it was coming through my headset. I heard and felt the explosive whoosh of air and water that accompanies one of the bang sticks going off. The blind thing was yanked off of me in a fear-filled moment. I blinked, thinking if I passed out I was lunch, and O
rca One was staring at me through two panes of glass. He smiled. So you’re not dead.

  “Day ain’t over.”

  He glanced at the three things he had killed, and the two done by me. Damn. You’re lucky.

  “Don’t feel lucky.”

  Can you say more than three words at a time?

  “Only need two,” I extended my middle finger, “Fuck you.”

  He smiled again, and helped move the dead guy off of me. C’mon, Seven. We have to find the others, get the package, and get out of here. He panned his light around, and we found one of the Orcas. It wasn’t possible to tell which one as all we could see was his glove sticking out from under the collapsed stairs. I hope it had been painless.

  That was at least two dead. Orca Four had been eaten, and this one crushed, so we were down to five with only two accounted for. One pulled my knife from the black-clad creature’s temple, passing it back to me. He also passed me the cutter, which was still on. In less than a minute and a half, I was free, and it felt great.

  Orca One, this is Rampart. Report.

  Rampart, Orca One. At least one dead and four missing. I am with Seven, and we will make our way to the target searching for survivors along the way. Had contact with Three, but his comms are down.

  Along the way? Was he nuts? I took stock of my surroundings and realized everybody was dead. They had all been squished by a ton and a half of broken boat. We might find that other guy, I couldn’t remember which number, but that was it. I stepped on something turning my ankle, but not badly. It was my light, broken and useless.

  When we could stand, we stepped over the bodies, and I had to wonder what was up with the black camo and why they were burned. Moving down the corridor, we saw more bullet brass, and another dead black camo guy with a head wound. It almost looked like there was a two directional firefight here.

  Orca One looked at his map and then at our surroundings. We moved at a fairly brisk pace and to the door of the captain’s quarters quickly. It was then I realized I was done calling my only friend down here Orca One. “What’s your name?” He looked through the glass at me like I had three heads. Call me Orca—

  “Fuck that, what’s your name?” I put emphasis on the word name so he would get it.

  Uhh… Frank.

  “Well, Frank, look at that.” I pointed to the door. Scrawled on the steel in Day-Glo orange marker was a note. Probably left for us.

  DEAD INSIDE.

  Where did everybody get all this orange marker? I’d seen it in three different places since the apocalypse came to dinner. Was it a common item in everybody’s survival bag? I ask because I don’t have an orange marker. Do you, Dear Reader, have an orange marker? Don’t get one. Every time I’ve seen it used, a bunch of people were dead.

  I was looking at the door when I noticed Frank look past me down the corridor behind us. He shined his light down that way and we were pleased to find that Orca Three was making his way toward us. We breathed a sigh of relief until we noticed that he was coming a bit faster than the casual swim-walk we were used to. When he got closer, we could see there was an air of panic to his movements. Frank’s light showed movement behind Orca Three, and the panic was not unwarranted. Ten or twelve of the dead crewmembers followed Three at a speed and distance that told me they would be on us in a couple of minutes. At least one of them was wearing a shredded dry suit. Three made it to us with something wrapped around his right leg, and pointed to his head, mouthing shit inside his helmet. He also pointed back behind him. “Can you hear me?” I asked into the comms.

  He shook his head in the negative, so I pointed to the door. Any idiot could see what he said through the glass of his helmet when he read the words. One syllable. Rhymes with Fuck.

  Three had his bang-stick, as did Frank, but my only weapons were my knife, the cutter, and my incredibly sharp wit. I was one-quarter out of oxygen for the cutter, but my wit was at full capacity. “The Devil you know?” I asked thumbing to the growing crowd of underwater pus bags on the way toward us, “Or the one you don’t?” I nodded toward the door.

  We need what’s in there.

  I tightened my balls, “Okay then,” and tried the knob. Shockingly, it was locked. This was a cabin door, and as such was like any other wooden door, so I used my pry bar to Jimmy the lock. As soon as the lock broke, the door was pulled from my grasp from the inside and I looked into the face of a dead guy in a suit. He looked great other than he was dead and had a bullet hole where his heart was. He reached for us, but Frank was faster and shoved his stick into the thing’s face. His head did what anything would do when confronted with a twelve-gauge persuader: it ceased to exist. The remnants of his noggin exploded backwards into the face of another suited dead man, who got Three’s bang stick and the cranial-popping occurred again. The third guy in a suit was a bit further back, and a fourth dead man was experiencing the extreme bloating that the floaters from before had and was floating up near the ceiling. This time, we were well within reach though.

  Frank passed me the light, and I flashed it around as we stepped into the room, both of them reloading as we did so. I moved forward with my knife, careful to stay out of reach of the floater. I stabbed the mobile one in the eye, the comedy of him sinking to the deck in slow motion not lost on me. Three’s stick made short work of the guy on the ceiling. A better search of the room with the light told us that was the end of the dead in here.

  There was fuck-all in the room to brace the now broken door with, so we would have to improvise. An old whaling harpoon was attached to the wall over a desk, and I broke it off passing it to Three. He wedged it diagonally into a groove next to the door. It would slow down the infected, but they would get through it. I know what you’re thinking too: Use the harpoon as a weapon, dumbass! But it was one of the old types with that big ass barb on the end. It might be possible to get it into the skull of a dead man, but you were never getting it out again.

  A fifth body was behind the desk, but it was mostly a skeleton. The things in here must have gnawed on it. It was nasty and unmoving, as the faceless skull had a big hole above the right eye socket.

  A dozen or so pictures and photographs adorned the wall, and I began to rip them down. The safe was under the third painting; a portrait of Abraham Lincoln sitting in a chair with his chin in his hand. I fired up the cutter and got to work.

  The safe wasn’t a Chubb Sovereign, but it wasn’t cheap either. It was a newer model Sentry Hideaway, with a standard three number combination. Two rods on the top, two on the bottom, and three on the left. No tar layer to create smoke, and more importantly, no copper plate for heat dissipation. The weak part was the combination wheel, and that’s where I started. The cutter was through the wheel in four minutes. I popped the wheel with my pry bar and inspected the tumblers. One had to be cut before the others would disengage, so I turned the cutter on that. Another two minutes and I was through. I used the bar to pry the second and third tumblers into position, turned the handle, and looked at my prize.

  It was a briefcase. I had been hoping for gold or jewels or a map to a porn palace, but I had gotten a fat, leather briefcase, the size of a backpack. I reached for it, but Frank stopped me. Let me, came through the headset.

  I shrugged and stepped away. Frank grabbed the case and the door that three was guarding received its first thud. It was followed by several more, and the door opened as far as the harpoon would let it, maybe four inches. Dead hands reached through, pushing, pulling, and hoping for flesh to grab.

  Rampart, we have the package, but there are hostiles on us. Report again when we’ve dispatched or evaded.

  The only access to this room was the door we had come through. Of course, that meant that it was also the only egress. I looked around, searching for magic, but there was no joy. I tried to imagine what was above and below us. Above was most certainly another stateroom, but I had no idea what was below. It would take me about fifteen minutes to cut a hole in the ceiling of this steel box we were in. I
had, maybe twenty minutes of oxygen in my cutting tanks. I went to work on the bolts for the leather couch first.

  So you’re on a ship. You can’t have furniture sliding around willy-nilly in six-foot swells, so you bolt all your shit to the deck right? Those were the bolts I was after. I was through the fourth bolt in two minutes. Eighteen left to cut into the deck above us. Frank knew what I was about, and pushed the couch over to Three, who was doing a shitty job bracing the door against a concentrated undead attack. The couch moved against the door just as the harpoon was giving way.

  I stood on the wooden desk and began to cut into the ceiling. The initial cut took moments, and I began to move the cutter flame in a wide circle. We would have to fit ourselves and our rebreathers through the hole.

  I heard a small muffled explosion, and dared a glance at the door. Three had used another shotgun shell, and Frank was poking his stick through the partly open door. The couch moved just a bit back into the room. Three moved back to push the couch, but it wouldn’t budge and actually moved a tiny bit more toward him. Frank chose another target and shoved his bang-stick through the gap again. Something on the other side got wise and grabbed it. Frank yanked it back, but the dead bastard held firm. We had been talked out of spear guns, and I couldn’t help but think that at this juncture they would have helped.

  Let GO! he yelled, and the thing complied, the living man stumbling back into the room. He reloaded and did it again, the whoosh of the explosion louder this time.

  Quarter through my cut, but it was hard to see as the cutter was the only light source, our one light being focused solely on the door between us and a couple dozen voracious monsters. I snapped another chem-stick, but it didn’t add tons of visibility.

  Halfway through my circle, the first thing got its head and shoulders through the door. Orca Three was pushing for his life (and ours), but it was a losing battle. Frank popped the nearest creature, re-killing it, but it was halfway through the portal. That door would never close again with the body in the way. Not only that, but with the door as open as it was, it was much easier for the dead things to push. Another thing got partly in, Frank destroying it with a jab. A third gained access as Frank was reloading. I could see Three sliding back on the end of the couch.