by Rick Chesler
Remaining stock still in the cluster of pipe work, she held her breath as Marcus The Zombie shuffled toward her. When he drew near enough, she looked closely at his face.
Oh God.
It was now sunken and gray, cadaverous, all shrunken and shriveled. He was missing front teeth, too, although, she supposed, they could have been knocked out due to trauma as opposed to falling out, but somehow she suspected the latter. She recalled her confrontation with him in the infirmary when he had accused her of not being an M.D. In my non-expert, non-medical opinion, Marcus, your goddamned gums rotted out from under your teeth, and that appears to be the least of your problems. New rows of sharp-edged incisors were coming in, pushing out the old teeth unsuited to their new function.
She waited for the zombie to walk far enough away. Then she bolted for the entrance to the facility. Even hanging out with Xander in there was preferable to this. At least she’d confirmed one thing, she thought, improvising a holster for the knife in the waistband of her jeans.
It took a headshot to kill those things.
28.
Adranos Facility
Marcus Ramirez wandered up to the dead zombie slain by the soldier. He crouched eagerly, animal-like, pulling the corpse so that it remained upright in a sitting position. He felt waves of revulsion as he sniffed the corpse.
Revulsion that was quickly overcome with another feeling. A need.
Hunger…
So intense. His jaws opened and snapped. His tongue came out and licked the edges of the new teeth. He wanted to lap the blood pooled in this corpse’s open neck, like a drunk guy at a wedding sipping directly from a champagne fountain. Wanted to sink his face into the dead one’s right bicep, but instead, his belly aching and rumbling, he stood and sniffed the air in the direction of the facility.
He sniffed the air again. Something else, something… better… was around.
He set off in that direction, the vacant mind filling with vague purpose like a pinball bouncing from one target and seeking the next. Marcus’s remaining hand scratched reflexively at the now open stump while he stumbled along, the bandages long since having fallen away. A cloud of flies buzzed about the raw amputation, the zombie’s personal air force.
The light of the tunnel stood out from the rest of the storm-battered island and the Marcus-zombie gravitated toward it. In the distance, he heard a large animal vocalizing, causing him to turn his head but not to stop walking. A high-pitched squealing sound, and it was almost—but not quite—alluring enough to call him toward it, but for some reason, he fought that call. For some reason, he turned right instead of going inside, walking around the outside of the complex. On this side of the building, the ground sloped away sharply, causing him to adjust his shambling gait with one leg higher up than the other.
When he came upon an open doorway set into an alcove in the side of the enormous structure, he paused, the sounds of a human struggle piquing his dulled senses. He turned and walked inside the open concrete bay, some kind of receiving station meant for vehicles to back into. Two still-functioning Jeeps were parked inside.
He shuffled past them into a narrow entrance vestibule, a sign overhead he could no longer comprehend reading, MEDICAL UNIT. This area emerged from that into a small hospital-like room, which led in turn out into the same large hallway he had walked through earlier, although he had no recollection of that. Wheeled cots, defibrillators, various medical machines, supplies, and equipment filled the space.
He paused, drooling, and stared ahead.
Feeling the hunger surge, his stomach rumbled and he licked his lips in anticipation.
#
In this room, two of DeKirk’s doctors—genuine research physicians—both wearing white lab coats, struggled to keep two of the zombified ship’s crew at bay, keeping a wheeled table between themselves and the reaching attackers.
“I thought you said they were dead!” One of the men said to the other, his mind struggling to accept the impossible.
“They were! They were dead on arrival. I’m sure of it! I took their pulses myself. They were flat lined, I swear it! That guy is the one who had his leg crushed by the crane on the ship. The other one drowned, his body washed up on the beach.”
“Steve…”
“We need to get some help.” This doc, a pudgy, bald man in his fifties, let go of the table and rushed to a handheld radio docking station on a counter, but froze when he sighted The Zombie Formerly Known As Marcus standing there at the back of the room. Marcus was dripping a cornucopia of bodily fluids and rainwater onto the tile floor, sounding like a mini-percussion ensemble as the steady drips intermingled with the occasional plop of an abscess releasing its cargo of smelly pus.
“Good Lord,” the other doctor said, ducking away from the reach of one zombie. “Get back here and help—” Then he saw the Marcus-zombie.
The one who’d been going for the radio considered their situation. Three zombies, although he didn’t yet think of them as that, occupied what until now had been their comfortable little work area where they’d treated the occasional workman’s injury during the construction of the facility. He turned to the newcomer. Maybe it was the unreality of the situation, or it was just his mind’s way of breaking away from the terror of imminent violent death, but he spoke, as professionally as possible.
“Hey…uh, you require some urgent attention?”
No response came from the zombie. From any of them.
Meanwhile, the doctor in the corner faced off against two slow-moving but relentless zombies. The nameplate pinned to that doc’s coat read, Felix Alvarez, M.D. Alvarez was clearly not a fighter, awkwardly attempting to fend the zombies off with timid arm gestures. One more shove of the table against his hip caused him to notice behind him the enclosure on the wall containing a fire extinguisher next to a red-handled axe. He stood there looking at it for a moment too long, before the nearest of the zombies suddenly launched itself over the table.
“Get off me! Get! Off!”
The attacker only sunk its teeth into Alvarez’s upper back, eliciting a blood-curdling scream from the man.
“Get it, Steve—” Felix, lying on the floor, pointed with a spasming hand. “—the axe!”
Steve, meanwhile, continued to stare at the motionless, newly arrived zombie. He noted the missing hand and the hopelessly gangrenous, abscessed wound there. That entire arm will have to be amputated, he couldn’t help but think, before mentally chastising himself. Stay focused! He’d heard the whispered rumors of some of DeKirk’s “experimental” endeavors and wondered if this could somehow be one of them. There were those blind tissue assays Melvin asked us to do last week...
Felix managed to get to his feet, one zombie still feasting on his back, the other shoving the barricade away and lurching toward him. He reached the fire implements on the wall, the zombie riding him, now trying to take additional bites from the smorgasbord of his back. The semi-tough lab coat material was the only thing making it difficult, but it wouldn’t be long before the monster took a real bite.
Marcus suddenly jumped, and came toward Steve fast.
Steve tried to summon the Judo skills from the classes he’d taken decades ago as a teenager and never followed through on. He kicked out awkwardly with his right leg and connected with Marcus’s gut, knocking him back a few steps but also winding up on his back on the floor in the process. He shot to his feet. No more of that crap, he told himself. The zombie he’d kicked was just recovering. He’d bought a few seconds. He moved toward Felix, now cornered by two zombies, one still clinging to his back, repeatedly jabbing his mouth onto him, while the other still sought access to the potential meal.
He had to help Felix out. Steve ran up to the lagging zombie and gripped it by the shoulders. He jerked it backwards, sending it flying to the floor. Looking back, he saw the zombie with the missing hand start to walk toward them, his left foot dragging across the floor. Steve turned around to face this threat.
At the s
ame time, Felix got a hand on the axe and ripped it from the wall, knocking himself in the lip with the butt of the blade in the process. He caught a glimpse of his face in the reflection of the fire extinguisher case and saw the blood running from his split lip. The zombie on his back became even more excited, crawling higher in order to feverishly lick and sniff his at his face like some kind of hyperactive, rabid dog.
Hunched over with his attacker sprawled over him as he was, Steve had no way to brandish the axe. The only direction in which he could strike with it was directly in front of him. He had to keep shaking his head from side to side to avoid a facial bite from the zombie, but he was able to thrust the axe into the fire extinguisher case. Shattered glass dropped from the housing. He let the axe fall to the floor and reached out for the extinguisher as the zombie took little nips from his skin, now frustrated at not being able to sink its teeth more deeply, like a toddler unable to bite into a whole apple.
Steve circled around the Marcus zombie. As a doctor, he’d dedicated his life to relieving human suffering, and even though he was a threat, the details of this person’s condition had a sobering impact on him. His skin had congealed to form a scale-like dermis. The edges of the scales were rimmed with blood. He was covered in festering abscesses, terrible infections that would require lengthy intensive treatment, if it wasn’t too late for this poor soul already.
He found that the zombie wasn’t able to track him so well when he circled in this way. Its head turned much too slowly, although when it decided to adjust its position it moved very quickly. As Steve circled he got a look over against the wall at how Felix was doing. It wasn’t a pretty picture. The zombie that Steve had thrown to the floor was now back on its feet and lumbering over to Felix’s left side. The other zombie still straddled the physician high on his back, assaulting his face with a barrage of quick, vicious little bites.
“Get him off you, Felix!” Steve yelled his encouragement, but there was little more he could do. He wasn’t about to turn his back on this one-armed monster, which now became more aggressive, lashing out alternately with its stump and its whole arm when he thought Steve might be in range.
That’s when the Cryolophosaurus hopped into the room.
A small dinosaur by ancient reptile standards, it was no T. rex, but still, when a reptile twenty feet long and a dozen high hops into a room, people—and zombies—pay attention.
A reddish, feathered crest sat atop its slim head, which it lowered order to fit into the space. Its two clawed feet clacked on the floor as it pushed further inside, aware that the ceiling was far too low for its usual loping gait. Its beady black eyes gave away nothing as its nostrils flared while it jerked its head up and down.
Steve couldn’t tell what the creature was looking at. To say his mind was blown simply did not do justice to the utter detachment from reality he felt at that moment. Dinosaurs? Zombies? Did DeKirk leak psychoactive drugs into our water supply?
As Mr. One Arm took advantage of his lack of attention and threw itself at him, Steve knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the situation he now found himself in was all too real. So real, in fact, that it wasn’t just another part of his life, it represented an entirely new existence for him.
Zombie...zombie...zombie...He flashed on a vacation to Haiti he’d taken many years ago, during a pocket of political stability there to indulge his adventurous first ex-wife’s penchant for exotic travel. They’d stayed in some fluffy beachside resort but took a day trip into a genuine village to see a real life witch doctor. She was an old, superstitious woman who, in a Creole accent told him about spirits and voodoo and zombies while he drank something of the Earth...He was a man of science, a physician, but the essence of her message had never left him. There is more to this world than you can see...He pictured her leathery, lined face now, heard her rhythmic chanting...
In the distraction served by the dinosaur, the Marcus zombie leaped across the space between them and closed its jaws around Steve’s throat, clenched in a spray of blood. My blood, Steve thought indistinctly. Struggling to breathe, struggling against an onslaught of such pain he could never imagine. He felt drained, the strength sapped out of him along with the image of the witch doctor.
Next he knew, he was on the floor and staring up. He felt his larynx pull free into the monster’s mouth with a sickening snapping sound and a burst of blood. With a bizarre form of objectivity, he mentally pictured the anatomical parts of his throat that had been removed, exactly where the tendons, nerves and blood vessels had been severed, picturing the full color plates from Gray’s Anatomy that he’d pored over for countless hours all those decades ago.
Then he watched the Cryo rush at him. Sadly, he welcomed it. He wanted the monster to step on him, to bite his entire head off, to end his life quickly… far better than to asphyxiate on the floor while this subhuman brute ate the rest of his throat and face.
As the dinosaur pushed further into the room, the high point of its back wedged into the ceiling, halting its forward motion. Stretching its neck out, its head reached a couple of feet shy of the zombie dining on Steve’s throat. It squealed in frustration, but the zombie bent over Steve only gave it a passing glance before returning for another feeding session.
Steve’s vision faded to black.
The last thing he heard was the strident hiss of a fire extinguisher.
29.
Adranos Facility
Alex Ramirez shifted the Jeep into four wheel drive and flipped on the fog lights. The weather intensified, the wind and now the rain increasing in force. Finally, he could see lights a hundred yards or so through the jungle. After standing in place in the driver’s seat, looking around for signs of dinosaurs or zombies, he rolled the Jeep down a steep, muddy incline toward the facility.
Xander would be here, along with Veronica. He had to admit that he wouldn’t mind seeing her right now, and his Dad. Alex had no idea about his health or his condition, and he feared the worst.
The Jeep’s right front tire bounced off a volcanic rock and he corrected for it, coaxing the vehicle back on course. The land flattened out at the bottom of the incline and he followed the muddy track out of the jungle into a clearing, at the opposite end of which lay the lighted facility.
He looked around again, half expecting the T. rex to come barreling out of the forest, racing to devour him, but there was only open space between him and the building. He pressed his foot down on the pedal and ate up the distance, rolling by the corpse of the soldier Veronica had taken the knife from without noticing it. He parked the Jeep in front of the tunnel entrance and got out.
He could hear shouting now, and sporadic gunfire. Definitely not coming from inside the tunnel, but somewhere close. In the tunnel, however, he could hear an alarm of some type, not unlike the fire alarms he’d heard during school drills. He took off at a jog inside the structure, glad to be out of the rain. He tried the first couple of doors he passed but they were locked. He was about to call out when he heard it.
A prehistoric roar.
Not the T. rex. More shrill, and chilling in its simplicity. One of the Cryos?
He continued down the hallway, the braying alarm growing louder until he reached an open door on his right. A current of cool air passed from it into the hall. His eyes narrowed as his gaze caught on a blood splatter pattern extending into the hallway floor. He darted to the wall on the same side as the open door and flattened himself against it, listening.
A shuffling and clopping sound, like a large four-legged animal walking, emanated from far into the open room. As he listened that sound grew fainter, as if moving away. Alex slid along the wall until he couldn’t be any closer to the doorway without being in it. The shuffling continued away from him, so he poked his head around the doorway.
He’d never seen a floor with so much blood on it. That was the first thought to strike him. The second was that the room had a strong metallic odor to it, like copper. His gaze was riveted to that shimmering, red floor
. It was like a lake of blood, there was so much, although it did thin out toward the opposite end of the room, where the shadows were thicker.
Against his better judgment, he stepped into the room—obviously a medical facility of some kind. He crossed the lake of blood over to the right side of the space, where it was even deeper. His shoes splashed in the stuff with each step. He saw a busted BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY fire alarm on the wall. On the floor, he saw a raised outline of an axe. He almost missed it because the axe was red—a fire axe—while the floor was red with blood. A burst of adrenaline bloomed in his abdomen and spread to his fingertips and toes in half a second. Something god-awful horrible had transpired in here, and not very long ago.
A fire extinguisher also lay on the floor, its black funnel spray nozzle hung up on the handle of a cabinet door. Looking up, he followed a trail of white chemical spray that went from the wall near the fire case on up to the ceiling—random zig-zaggy swathes of discharge that suggested whomever had used it had been under great duress and not aiming steadily. Which one might expect in a fire situation.
Looking around, Alex didn’t see any signs of a fire. No charred areas, no smoke damage, no lingering smell, and of course, most fires didn’t leave behind a lot of liquid blood.
He splashed further into the room, glad for the fact that he wore “old school” leather sneakers, not the new ones with that fabric mesh crap. Full-on shit-kicking boots would have been even better, but he had what he had. Alex reached the vestibule area near the back and ventured through it.
Two Jeeps in good shape were parked here, a bloody handprint on the hood of one of them. Lesser amounts of blood compared to the medical room streaked the concrete floor. He passed through this area to the outside, where an unpaved access road led away from the building and curved off to the right. He traced its path with his eyes but saw no activity there. Then he looked off to the left, out toward the tree line that marked the edge of the jungle, and he spotted it.