by M. D. Massey
“Switching to FLIR,” he said with absolute calm. Despite the sick researchers shambling around—all with sickly gray skin and glowing red eyes—he didn’t lose his cool. He was proud he’d been able to push the fear away and stay glued to his objective. He imagined it was how proper military men might handle the same situation.
“Got it,” JT replied.
The infrared headset worked miracles for him. “Wow. That’s the ticket. I can see ‘em all!”
They fired at will. He and JT stuck together until the middle of the room. The tables of vats and beakers on the far side required them to split up so they could clear the room properly. He marveled at the amazing fidelity of the scene as he watched a shotgun shell forced from the breech of the weapon along with a puff of gas. The infrared mode didn’t strip out any of the detail.
“This is awesome,” he screamed into his headset.
He brought down several more zombies in quick order before reaching the back wall. JT came running up from his side of the room, bragging as usual.
“How many did you get? I killed ten.”
Liam doubted his friend’s count, but he hadn’t been keeping score just then.
“What do we do now?”
JT smiled from under his IR headgear and pointed to an alcove on the back wall. “We’ve made it to the end, my friend. We just have to push that button, and this place will self-destruct.”
“And all this will be over? This whole adventure? That doesn't seem right … ”
“Yep. We win.” JT clapped him on the shoulder.
“This is all too easy,” Liam responded. Easier than the bridge where they’d lost their two friends, no question there.
“Who cares. Just push it, and we can get out of here.”
It probably ran on batteries because it had a little blinking red light under it. Just as you might expect of something designed to blow up the place.
He finally relented and pushed the three-inch button into the wall with a quiet click. A moment later the building began to shake. A massive door along the back wall slowly slid open and revealed hundreds—maybe thousands—more zombies in the next chamber. All of them moved toward them with the same slow zombie shuffle, shouting the word “brains” while holding their arms in front of them. They greatly desired the fresh meat in their midst. Liam had seen it before, though never with this many.
He began to reload his shotguns when a female voice broke his concentration.
“Help me, please!”
JT shared his concerned look.
“Under here,” he yelled while pointing both shotguns at the cabinet door beneath the lab table.
“After you,” JT said dramatically while training his Pythons on the same spot.
Liam lowered the shotguns, ignoring the groans of the horde drawing close. He unlatched the door to see a young blonde-haired woman coiled up inside. She held out her hand, and the boys helped her to her feet.
Moans and groans momentarily forgotten, Liam couldn’t help looking her over.
Blonde. Tight-fitting jeans. Nothing above but a stars-and-stripes bikini top.
“We’re here to rescue you,” Liam declared with his best attempt at bravado.
“No, we’re all going to die,” she replied. “There’s too many.”
Liam was dumbfounded. “Then why did you get out of your hiding spot?”
He watched her blue eyes tear up, and he instantly regretted the words. Her eye sockets were messy puddles of smeared eye liner from previous tears.
“I—I didn’t want to die alone.”
“Oh, hell,” JT droned from behind him.
“We’ll do our best,” he said to cheer her up.
Her smile was weak, but it was there. She had faith.
We can do this.
Zombies came in from the entryway, fell from ceiling tiles, and swarmed from the back until they converged on the trio. Each doomed warrior expended a good chunk of ammo before the zombies trapped them for good.
He had to shout over the noise. “JT, you lied. You said all we had to do was push the button. That’s how we win!”
The horde pressed up against them. The two boys stood with their weapons forward and their backs against the helpless damsel in distress. Thinking it over, it was pretty near to one of the screenshots he remembered from the game’s download page.
His friend sounded beaten. “I’ve never made it this far before. I was just making things up.”
“Well, that figures.”
Liam could do no more than watch as his avatar was brought down in a zombie chomp-fest. The pain was amplified because JT's character died a full second later. That would be one more point against him in their brother-like rivalry in video games.
The girl they were protecting died last.
A female computer voice filled his headphones. “Match ended. Hunter team efficiency 37%. Hunter team losses equal 100%. Player ‘Meat Me in Yonkers’ has maintained the rank of Rookie.”
“Dang it!”
He yanked off his headphones and tossed them onto a pile of books on his desk next to the PC tower. The computer game after action screen glared at him as if to mock his purported expertise. He’d let two of his friends die early on in the simulation and failed to lead the rest of the team to victory. They’d been in a position to rescue one of the valuable non-player characters, but she died in that room same as them. JT even got more kills than him, in addition to capturing that all-important braggy extra second of life.
The distant voices of his friends came out of his discarded headphones. His volume remained turned up well beyond what Mom and Dad would find appropriate. Even great-grandma Marty would probably think it was too loud.
He snickered as he put them back on. The headphone and microphone combination was necessary so he could talk to his three friends. The wintry conditions on the county roads made it impossible for them to meet in person as they all preferred but playing online while chatting was the next best thing.
“Guys, World of Zombies is kinda lame. It’s not nearly as cool as World of Undead Soldiers, which you all know also has zombies.”
Left unsaid was that he’d played the other game for years. He was, in fact, a master at killing all manner of undead. Vampires. Yetis. Even zombies. But a game with only zombies was a different beast entirely, and not one he found very challenging. It took brains to fight those other beasts, as each required a particular kind of weapon or magical talisman to defeat. Zombies just stood there and died with simple bullets. The game designers made no effort to make them interesting or different.
Jacob laughed. “At least you didn’t die in the middle of the game. I slipped off that bridge like a newb lord.”
Liam pushed back in his chair and crossed his arms. If his friends wanted to play again he might indulge them once more, but there was no reason to stop playing his preferred game. Sure the video quality was better, and it was the “latest and greatest” from Saratov Systems—his favorite game company—but new wasn’t always better.
A loud bang rattled the floor beneath his chair. The sound defeated his amplified headphones still blaring the end game credits.
He rolled his eyes.
Dad had been shopping again. He’d watched him unload the car earlier that evening after pulling it into the garage and closing the garage door. Dad proudly called himself a gun nut, and he often proved it. Not even icy streets could stop him from buying guns at auction.
It sounded as if he’d dropped some while taking them to the basement.
Internally he debated helping. He knew he should. His game was a total loss, and nothing required his butt be in his chair, but he was kind of Dadded-out at that particular moment. It rubbed him the wrong way his father would go to any length to get those stupid guns, but he wouldn’t budge when Liam asked him to drive through those same road conditions to get him to JT’s house for the night.
While he debated that point, his friends started up the next game. A screen asked if he
wanted to join.
Sorry, Dad. I'm reeeeal busy.
He clicked the screen. “All right, guys. I’ll give this one more shot. Let’s go find some zombies.”
In six months, the zombies would be looking for him.
1
CIV
Martinette Peters leaned against her oven and thought about hunger. She guessed she'd cooked tens of thousands of meals during more than a century of living, but this morning was different. She was off the script.
These days her breakfast was prepared by Angie, the nurse who lived in the upstairs flat of Marty’s two-family red brick home. Bacon. Eggs. Toast. The same things she'd made for her the past two years. Every day. Without fail. But today Angie hadn't come down at her regular time and hadn't answered the intercom or her telephone. Marty waited as long as possible for her chef but soon thought about how to cook those things for herself. What was once second nature now required proper planning.
She studied the cabinets, the pantry, and her cooking dishes. Everything she needed was far above. Either she was getting shorter, or Angie had intentionally placed everything on shelves out of reach.
She walked from the kitchen, leaning on her cane. A bag of bread hung from her free hand. That, mercifully, had been within her grasp on the counter. The phone rang as she guided herself into her comfy chair. Her cane remained nearby.
“This is the Metropolitan Police Department, City of St. Louis, with an emergency alert. Violent disturbances have been reported in multiple locations within St. Louis city limits. There is a risk of injury or death to any participants or bystanders. If you hear this message, we urge immediate evacuation to safer areas. Follow instructions from city or police officials in your neighborhood. Be alert for additional emergency messages. … This is the Metropolitan … ”
Shifting in her seat, she listened as the robocall repeated through the answering machine. She screened everything these days, responding at her leisure, if at all. Despite having many friends and relatives, she seldom had energy for chit-chatting. At 104 years of age, she assured herself it was okay to be picky.
The announcement finally ended with a beep, leaving her to her thoughts.
Well, I'm not going to run for the hills!
She glanced at the two-wheeled walker in the corner, tennis ball-swathed feet fresh and yellow—she hated using that big device. If she were going to chance an escape, which she certainly was not, she'd use the smaller, quad-footed cane sitting by her side. She despised that thing too, but grudgingly admitted it helped her get around more effectively than grasping at walls and furniture while patrolling the cozy single-level flat.
Ignoring the robocall’s instructions, she resumed cross-stitching under the timeless rhythm of the wall clock. Angie would call sooner or later, and then the day would start properly.
It wasn't long after the phone alert when she heard a great banging sound from the front of the apartment. To her hearing-amplified ears, it sounded like someone had fallen down the stairs leading to the upstairs flat. Over the years, she'd heard many things dropped down those stairs, including many by her grandchildren who just loved playing on them despite her stern warnings. She had also come to know the sound of someone tripping up the stairs or falling down the steep flight. This was a case of the latter.
“Angie, is that you?” she asked, though she knew her raised voice was still too weak to be heard in the front of the house, through a wooden door.
Getting up, she patiently grasped her cane, pushing up on the armchair with her free hand. Normally it was Angie who would come down to help her when she had trouble getting out of her chair after being comfortable for too long. A quick buzz on the intercom was all it took. This time, she was able to make the transition from sit to stand unaided.
She lamented that if someone up front was counting on her to help them quickly, they were in trouble. With her hunched back and sub-five-foot stature her gait was a slow shuffle at best—foot, foot, cane. It was, however, very steady most of the time. That, at least, would give the desperately injured some modicum of hope of eventual rescue.
She hurried—in her own way—to the potential fall victim. At a snail's pace, she passed her curio cabinet and shelves of fine china in her dining room and emerged in her front living room. She steadied herself on a big armchair, then pushed off to the last stop, the interior door in the front foyer of her home.
Lord help me move.
Soft moans and scratching indicated this was indeed an emergency. She steeled herself to see the fallen victim as she opened the door inward.
“Oh my, Angie. Are you all right?”
Angie had bounced down the stairs sure enough, but a mere fall was the least of her problems. Her skin was ashen, and her eyes were bloodshot—or bloody, it was hard to tell—and her usual perfectly manicured hair was sitting in greasy knots. Her light-colored nightgown was soaked with sweat and stained with many red streaks and blotches from top to bottom. The fifty-something nurse looked almost skeletal, and her emotional state wasn't the expected embarrassment or agony from the crash, but instead...anger? Her right foot was unquestionably broken—it was pointing in the wrong direction.
Why isn't she screaming?
While Marty had scoffed at the warning on the phone, she was aware of the panic sweeping the nation and was certainly aware of the mystery Ebola-like sickness which so troubled many of her family members. They were at her flat just last night urging her to stay with them until it all blew over. She demurred, declaring she felt perfectly safe for the time being. She assured them if things got really bad she'd oblige them on their offer. Secretly she felt it couldn't possibly get rotten enough for her to leave. For someone who had lived through the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, and the War on Terror, she did not panic or scare easily.
She wasn't panicking now, but she was hasty about shutting the door.
“I'm sorry, Angie. You aren't looking right. I'll call 911 and get you some help.”
Before she could get the door fully closed, Angie stuck her arm and shoulder into the void to reach for her, preventing a good seal.
“My lands!” It was as close as she came to cussing.
* * *
2
A woman of 104 wasn’t going to kick or shove a person lying on the floor hard enough to get them back through an open door. It would be difficult for someone half her age, so she released the door and did the only sensible thing she could at that moment—she walked away.
Perhaps it was habit, or maybe just a little bit of panic creeping in, but she went back into her flat rather than step out the front door to the relative safety of her front porch. After several seconds, she realized her mistake and partially turned around to see if she could still slip out—and saw Angie slithering into her flat, blocking escape in that direction. Angie had an evil look she had never seen on her friend's face before, and she was struggling to get off the floor.
“Angie, you're hurt badly and aren't yourself. Please wait where you are, and I'll call a doctor.”
She considered her options as she pushed herself through her home, understanding that she was likely in mortal danger. Angie was probably infected with heaven-knows-what, though it was beyond her reckoning how anyone sick or healthy could lay there with a broken ankle and not make a peep. Working her cane with her left hand, her free hand was in her pocket holding her rosary. At her age, death was never far away, and the rosary was an important reminder of the faith she always kept close, but this was not how she wanted her story to end. She needed a plan.
She could easily lock herself in any room of the house—a bathroom would be the best choice for now—but she didn't know how strong Angie might be. If she could survive a broken ankle and not complain, what if she could put her head through the thin wooden doors? The growling sounds of the sick woman behind her spurred her to continue without stopping to consider potential side routes.
“I'll just be a moment, Angie.”
She walke
d into the kitchen at the back of the house, looking around frantically for something to help her. Her heart was beating hard at the effort to simply walk at such a brisk pace. She scanned the kitchen table, the oven area, and the open door to the basement—her great-grandson Liam lived down there, but he was gone for the day to the library. She would never be able to get down all those steps. Her eyes finally fell on her impressive collection of kitchen cutlery, and she chuckled to herself at a funny thought.
Maybe I could fight her with a knife? Ha!
Her painfully slow progress brought her near the back door, the only real alternative left. Going into the backyard was a definite option, but that would put her outside her house for who-knows-how-long. What about food, water, her pain medications, the telephone? Could she survive until Liam returned? The shuffling noises entering the kitchen made up her mind.
She slid out the stout back door, pulling it shut behind her. The exterior screen door slowly followed suit. The concrete porch was a flat, open space with a small awning overhead, providing limited shade for a few chairs and one large freestanding porch swing she kept around mainly for the grandchildren. She liked this flat for a lot of reasons, but the biggest was how few stairs she had to use. The bright-eyed Marty who moved in all those years ago never imagined she'd still be here at 104 with a disdain for steps.
She hobbled, her back starting to flare up in pain, to the closed window near the back door so she could get a look inside at her friend. She had to put her face up against the glass to see through the glare of the morning sunshine. Her cane, with its four small feet, waited patiently at her side.
Angie was right up in the window looking back at her.
Oh, my. Poor Angie.
She could see Angie had to be standing on her broken foot, banging herself against the window quite forcefully. The interior screen frame was already ripped and bent, but her greatest concern was how much pain the woman must be suffering from that injury.