by Matt Hart
“Okay, see you in a bit.” I took Jen’s hand and squeezed it, then turned up the street, holding my new rifle at the ready. It was an AR model, single fire. I wondered idly if it could be modified to auto fire. We walked quickly but carefully to the red house then ducked behind it, looking for zombies and other dangers.
So close to home and we have to deal with this now.
We spent maybe fifteen minutes there looking around the corner, but we didn’t see anyone or anything.
“It’s me—Art,” came a low voice behind us. I whirled around and pointed the gun before realizing what I’d heard. There was no one there.
“Art?” asked Jen. A head poked around the corner.
“Yeah, it’s me. I ducked back in case you startled and shot me,” said Art, laughter in his eyes.
“We probably would have,” I admitted. “I didn’t think to keep a watch on the lake-side of the house.”
“You’d better be thinking that, because I could have just as easily been a zombie out for a swim.”
I lowered my head. “You’re right. All this way and it could have ended here.”
“Well,” said Art, “I can train you both to be more tactical and aware.” A distant scream sounded, probably from across the lake. We all looked in that direction. “Assuming we are given the time.”
I nodded my head and gestured at Jen and Art, and began walking toward my house. We glanced back every once in a while, and Art stopped twice to see if we were followed. I wondered about this “Jeffrey” since we saw that someone else was with Richard back near the convenience store. The rest of the way was surprisingly uneventful. We walked up the long driveway through the woods to my house, and I pulled a key out of my pocket. I unlocked the door and we walked in, then I closed and locked it back.
“Home again, home again, jiggigy jig,” I whispered, emulating my dad. He didn’t always say that, but after a long trip like we’d had, it was inevitable. My eyes watered.
“I feel almost safe,” said Jen, looking around in wonder.
“Make yourselves at home,” I said, gesturing around.
Art nodded. “Looks good. We’ll need to secure it against zombies and intruders,” he said, tapping one of the many big windows with his rifle, “But the isolation is very good. You kids rest and I’ll take the first watch.”
I muttered agreement as my pack dropped and I flopped into a chair in the living room next to the front door. My eyes closed of their own accord and I drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 31
Interlude : Boreling Empire : Plannel 6
“Grodge! Wake up you idiot!” Grodge opened his drug-addled eyes and looked around for the source of the interruption. His gaze fell upon his workstation, cluttered with empty Calmative Stim Sticks. He must have used too many of them and fallen asleep. “Are you sick or something? Wake up, Grodge!” It finally occurred to Grodge that it was his monitor that was speaking. He looked up to see the angry face of Pactain the Virulent. He shot up in his seat and looked around for a Perkumup Stim Stick, but didn’t see any. He settled for a Spicy Chew drink and slurped some down.
“Oh, sorry, your Virulency,” said Grodge. “I’ve been, uh, supervising the, uh, teams that are culling the bio-creatures, sir!”
“Well that’s what I’m calling about!” yelled Pactain. “How soon will they be finished?”
Grodge quickly called up the list to see how far the team had gotten. He’d been dreaming of females pinging him after he gained the name Grodge the Destructor, and not monitoring the cull at all. “The team is finishing up the next to last group and will start on the last one in about half an hour.”
“And what’s the viewership Grodge? What’s the ratings?!?”
“Oh, uh,” Grodge stammered. He had no idea since he hadn’t been watching it. “Make something up,” he thought. “We’re getting millions of new viewers watching the troops clear out the feeds.”
“Safe enough guess,” he thought.
“Millions?!?” sputtered Pactain. “That’s not even enough to pay for your miserable-looking clothing, Grodge! You’d better come up with something better soon or we’ll be seeing you in a re-run of One Last Chance!” The connection cut suddenly and Grodge was fully awake. One Last Chance was a perennial favorite, where fired workers competed in a dangerous obstacle course until only one of them was left alive. That one was then given the lowliest job they could find – usually grinding gridlenrocks.
Grodge tapped the keys and checked the actual numbers. Six hundred billion had tuned in at some point to the Entertainment Assurance feeds. He smiled and leaned back in his chair, then tapped a quick note to Pactain.
“I meant billions sir, billions. I’ll do my best to make a trillion, sir.”
He clicked the Send button and breathed a sigh of relief, then sat up as a thought occurred. Grodge realized that billions would see that human’s bunker. He wondered if he should do something about that, call off the team or maybe have them drop a rock on the building. “Too risky to change things now,” he muttered.
Grodge spent the next hour searching for other ways to destroy the bio-creatures without killing the humans, or ways of fostering more human-on-human violence. His search focused on the bio-creatures themselves, and how they were created. He discovered a reference to a “human vaccine”. It took a bit of hacking, but he discovered that there were stocks of some sort of chemical that would keep the bio-infestor from harming any non-affected humans. Basically, if it was distributed, those zombie-things wouldn’t be able to bite a normal human and turn it into another zombie-thing. The chemical was already near the planet in dispersion drones.
He sat back and clicked his thumbs for a minute, shrugged and leaned forward. Tapping rapidly, he sent eight drones to the same places on his list to help prevent future bio-creature outbreaks. He didn’t officially have authorization to do such a thing, but Grodge prided himself on covering his tracks when he hacked into various systems.
“Besides,” he muttered. “It’s not like it’s dangerous to prevent humans from turning into bio-creatures.”
Grodge tapped a few keys and brought up the bunker feeds. The human had been clever, causing the creatures to tumble down the stairwell. They ended up too broken to really threaten the man. He nodded to himself and then switched the main channel to check the most popular feeds at the moment.
Scary Mayhem Planet Reality Apocalypse Show Highlights
Bunker Busters
Human Leader Antics
Funniest Armed Forces Moments
When Animals Attack
Assurance Teams In Action
Trooper’s Scariest Moments
Talk Show: Aliens are People Too with Dradge Borgwah
Grodge flipped over to 6 to see what they were showing. He sat back and popped a stim stick and breathed it in, then stuck it in his mouth and sucked.
—————
In Earth orbit, eight small drones about the size of a refrigerator detached from a platform and burned into the atmosphere. They broke away from each other and took up their positions over San Diego, Mexico City, Moscow, Beijing, London, New York City, Mumbai and Cambridge, Massachusetts. An invisible mist settled over those cities.
Chapter 32
Erin : San Diego, California
I was tired of this. Tired of being on edge. Tired of the focus. I wanted to sit in a movie theater and eat popcorn and watch Adam Sandler battle museum displays. I wanted to sit quietly in the dojang as fellow students went through their forms. I liked helping other students—about the only interactions with other people I really enjoyed.
Out the window and way down the street on the right, there was a mob of maybe thirty or forty zombies, at least that’s how many were visible. Maybe three times that many in reality—they were flooding into every home, systematically searching every one. It was weird, like they’d gained more intelligence overnight. I heard Stompy Joe rattle up behind me, so I moved away from the window and pointed down the s
treet.
“That’s not too big a mob,” he began. “I bet we could…” His voice trailed off and I knew what he was seeing—the creatures were pouring out of the homes. “They’re falling out of every window, at least three, no four houses,” he whispered. “Those houses must be wall to wall packed.”
I knew what he was seeing next, too—the mob was going into every house on the street. “And they’ll be here soon,” I said as Joe turned to look at me. Jeans came up the stairs wearing a jacket and carrying a small duffle bag. I nodded at the window. “The zombies are flooding into every house, systematically searching through each one.” There was a dresser in the room with a picture of a young man standing next to an old car of some kind. I picked it up, asking as I turned to Jeans, “Do you still have this old car?”
“No,” she said, “but we have a Ford Fairlane in the garage. It’s pretty old and should still run, although I haven’t fired it up.”
“No time like the present,” said Joe. “Any car is going to be better than walking right now.”
I nodded and put the picture back on the dresser, then walked to the bed and grabbed my pack. “Let’s go,” I said, leading the way out of the room and back down the stairs. I checked my shotgun to see that it was fully loaded, then walked through the kitchen and into the garage. The boxy car almost filled the entire garage, and the light from the garage windows gave it an eerie blue metallic tint. I walked to the garage door and looked out the windows at the creatures on the other side of the safe door.
I am not getting trapped in a garage ever again.
I heard a car door creak open and turned around to see Joe tossing his pack in the back seat. He closed the back door and opened the driver’s door. I pictured the sequence in my mind… First, the door opens. I looked up but didn’t see an automatic opener, which meant someone would need to lift it. Next, whatever is out there comes in here. I looked out the windows again, half a dozen zombies within a dozen yards. Then, we get trapped because we can’t accelerate out or the car gets stuck.
“Joe, get out of the car. You’re riding in the back, but only after you open the garage door.” He looked up at me, resignation on his face, then stood up and walked over to me.
“Okay Ninja Girl, what’s the plan?” he asked.
I ignored him as Ima Jean came into the garage.
“Jeans, put your bag in the middle of the front seat. You’re driving. Don’t stop for anything. Not for a family, not for an injured old lady, nothing. Got that?”
“I got it, little miss,” she said with a hint of laughter.
I nodded to her and turned back to Joe. “The plan is you opening the door, me taking out the trash while you cover me. Then you ride in the back and I ride in the front.” I turned and walked back to the car and tossed my pack into the back. “And you carrying my pack if we need to run from the car.”
“Got it,” said Joe.
“Good. Jeans, start the car and put it in gear. Don’t back out until we either jump in or I tell you to back out. You have enough gas to go twenty miles?”
“Yes little lady, it has plenty,” she answered.
I walked back to the window and looked out, holding my shotgun.
Ten, nine, eight…
“Are we ready?” asked Ima Jean. I tuned her out.
…seven, six, five…
“She’s preparing herself,” said Joe, “Or something like that. Whatever she’s thinking, whatever she’s about to do, it’s guaranteed to be exactly the right thing.”
…four, three, two, one, zero.
No, this won’t work.
I walked back to the car and put the shotgun in the front seat, then pulled out my machete and baton. I needed to be quiet and not draw attention. I looked out the window one last time, then stepped back from the door. “Open it up Joe, not too fast. You need to take five or ten seconds to get it halfway up, then quickly open it the rest of the way.” Joe nodded then pulled the door handle and began lifting the garage door. It was a solid door and came open with the top moving in and the bottom moving out.
When it was two feet up, I dove at it sort of sideways and shoulder-rolled underneath it, hopping right back up and using my momentum to swing the back of the machete into a zombie’s head. I turned left and walked into the grass as another creature stumbled at me from my right. I pushed it in the back with my baton and struck its head on top with the dull side of the machete. It fell down but continued to crawl my direction. The rest of the gang lumbered after me as I walked quickly away. There was a big maple tree in the yard. I kicked a small zombie girl down and struck it with the baton, then let both the machete and baton dangle from their straps as I climbed the tree. I walked out on a huge branch that kept going away from the house.
“Back it out now!” I called over the low moans of the creatures, holstering the machete and baton and pulling my handgun.
Chapter 33
Joe : San Diego, California
I swear she’s going to give me a heart attack. Erin led the rest of the zombies to the next house over. I figured she’d just run around them or something but noooo, she goes and climbs a tree! She’s trapped up there now. I was about to head over there and start killing them. Or, killing them again. I think they were already dead, although that word didn’t mean quite what it used to.
“Back it out now!” she yelled. I stopped and relayed the message to Ima Jean. Then I shook my head. Funny how I did that without question or hesitation. I stepped backwards and bumped into something, just as a shot rang out. I looked up in the direction of the gunshot and saw Erin pointing her handgun at me. I stepped backwards again and stumbled, almost tripped over the leg of a zombie, it’s head blown.
It was still twitching.
Okay. Now I’m really going to have a heart attack.
I looked back at Erin just in time to see her dive out of the tree, just like she did out of the window of the house where those nuts tried to set us on fire. My wits were scrambled at this point, but I was shaken back into reality by a loud moan behind me. I turned and saw five creatures closing in, so I raised my rifle and sent three shots into each one of them, knocking them backwards. Three of them fell down, but the other two stumbled a bit then stood back up.
“Well, hell,” I said, aiming this time and sending triple shots into each of their heads, then I shot the ones still on the ground. I dropped the magazine and loaded another one, then picked up the empty.
“Get in Joe!” yelled Ima Jean. I turned and the door was right there. I opened it and practically fell in. I had a bit of a hard time sitting up, but finally made it and closed the door.
“Nice dive into the car, Ace,” said Erin, sitting calmly in the front seat with her shotgun held across her chest. A dozen creatures could be seen out of her window, less than ten feet away. “Jeans, let’s go,” she added, pointing down the street to her right and away from the bigger mob. “That-a-way.” Ima Jean backed out, striking one creature, then hit the accelerator.
“Slower,” I told her. “No more than fifteen miles per hour. No point in risking a high speed smash into an unseen horde of zombies.”
“Well when you put it like that,” said Ima Jean, “It makes perfect sense to go slower.” I laughed and looked over at Erin, but she was looking intently out the window. I turned to follow her gaze and sucked in a breath. “What?” said Ima Jean, looking over. “Oh my word!” she exclaimed, taking her foot off the gas.
“Keep going,” said Erin, her voice emotionless, toneless. “We cannot help them.” Ima Jean still didn’t accelerate. Erin turned and looked at her. “Ima Jean, you must keep going. Trust me.” Ima Jean gulped and nodded, then accelerated away.
Ima Jean didn’t have our vantage. We could see the blood streaming down the woman’s lower leg. We could see the two creatures on the ground in front of her as we moved away. We could see that they would keep her and her child from us.
I shared a glance with Erin. Tears were streaming down her face.
“Which way?” I asked Erin. She didn’t answer for maybe half a minute or less.
“Turn right at Hemlock, but slow way down to make sure there’s no mob in front of us,” she said. Ima Jean nodded. I looked at the houses as we passed and saw a few curtains move.
What good is being Army if you can’t help American citizens be safe from attack in their own homes?
“Where the hell is the Army, the National Guard?” I asked, my anger beginning to show. “They should be out here in Humvees mowing through these things with a fifty cal!” I slammed my fist against the back seat in frustration. Erin turned to look at me. I expected an “Easy there Slammy Joe” or “Watch the upholstery Camo Joe” or something. She didn’t say anything, though.
I had no idea what she was thinking. Maybe that only the here and now matters. “Only the here and now matters,” I whispered. Erin nodded and turned back around. Crazy Ninja Girl.
Ima Jean slowed at the intersection and we all looked carefully down the street. No big mobs, just a few creatures and even some regular folks running away from them. The car turned and Erin pointed to the ocean. “Go all the way now to Oceanside then turn right, but slow at each intersection so we can get an idea of the danger,” she said.
I looked left and right as we drove, thinking how strange it was to move so quickly. In just a few minutes we’d gone nearly as far as we did the previous day. We slowed and passed one intersection. There was a fairly big mob on the right, but it was several blocks down. The left didn’t have as many. We passed the next streets the same way—mobs on the right, just a few creatures on the left.
“Turn right if you can,” said Erin. She sat up in her seat, clearly eager to get to the ocean. We approached Oceanside and began to turn when Ima Jean stopped the car. The road ahead, maybe two blocks away, was covered with zombies.