by Amy Spahn
Areva feared where this conversation would lead. Maybe a month ago she would have been happy to go there. But not now. She stood up, broke eye contact, and pulled her hands out of his grasp. “Viktor …”
He stood and spoke quickly. “Areva, I …”
“Viktor, I’m resigning from the UELE.”
She stepped out of the room and turned down the corridor, not wanting to see his reaction, nor wanting him to see the tears threatening her eyes.
* * *
Book Four
Preferred Dead
The police didn’t have a code for zombie infestations, so Lieutenant Ivanokoff made one up. “Captain, we have a large number of one-four-sevens who are one-twenty-three.”
His EVA suit’s intercom was silent for a moment, and then his commanding officer’s voice filled his helmet. “Repeat that, Ivanokoff? It sounded like you reported a bunch of dead bodies being drunk and disorderly.”
“That is correct.”
More silence. Then, “Lieutenant, this is not a good time for jokes.”
“I do not do jokes.”
“Then explain why you just said there are dead people walking around out there.”
“Because there are.” Ivanokoff watched a corpse shamble past his hiding place in a fire-gutted building. Its milky pink eyes were sunken into its head, its skin stretched taut over dry bones, and the few remaining strings of its hair clung limply to its skull. The being had once looked something like a human, although it had a much larger nose, pale orange skin, and the vestiges of extra fingers on each hand, from which protruded thick, overgrown nails. It was an alien. A very dead alien.
Ivanokoff shifted his position to lean against the charred rock wall and keep his head out of sight from the street on the other side, a difficult task given his height and muscular build. “As far as I have seen, there are no living beings left on this planet. I believe their entire population was killed by whatever turned them into these—”
“Don’t say zombies.”
“Corpses. I was going to say corpses, Captain.”
“And you’re sure they’re dead?”
“Yes. They do not produce any heat readings on scanners, and I saw one walking with a projectile wound in its torso. They are definitely dead.”
He heard a sigh and knew Captain Withers was adjusting to this curveball. “Just once I’d like to encounter a normal planet,” the captain muttered. “All right. So the entire species is dead. Any guesses about what killed them? Or why they’re still, er, mobile?”
“No information yet. I will try to find a government building, which may have records on …” Ivanokoff heard movement on the other side of the wall and silenced himself. While he doubted his words would carry through the transparent faceplate of his helmet and he had the external speaker on his EVA suit turned off, he didn’t want to attract the zombies’ attention. He hadn’t seen anything to suggest they were hostile, but caution had kept him alive in the past.
He peered over the damaged wall. On the other side, he spotted a female zombie who seemed to have crashed into the wall by accident. Blue scraps of fabric hung from her emaciated frame. She shook herself, looked quizzically at the remains of the building, and then turned ninety degrees to meander down the road.
Ivanokoff continued his conversation with the captain. “As I was saying, I will locate an official building to learn who these people are and why this happened to them. I saw a probable location a few blocks away, past what used to be a factory.”
“All right. I’ll have team two converge on your position to provide backup. Don’t stay out too long, Lieutenant. Your suit only has a few hours of air left, and I don’t want you breathing the atmosphere here in case it has something to do with what happened to the zombies.”
“I thought you did not want to call them zombies.”
“Shut up, Lieutenant.”
* * *
On the United Earth Law Enforcement Starship Endurance, Captain Thomas Withers silenced the communication channel with the surface teams and turned to face the pair of suits standing behind his command chair. “We’ll have a full briefing once they all get back. In the meantime …”
“Your first officer seems to think he’s a comedian, Captain,” said the suit on the left in a snooty accent. Bradshaw, Thomas remembered his name. The man had a buzz cut and a mild twitch in his left eye that constantly drew Thomas’s attention.
He tried not to look at it. “Believe me, he’s no comedian. He’s serious.”
“He reported zombies. And you played along.” Bradshaw took out his pocket computer, unfolded it, and made a note in a file. “This is not going to look well on your review.”
Thomas folded his arms and flexed his own not-unimpressive muscles. He was no Ivanokoff, but he still knew how to look intimidating. “I know you Oversight and Investigations people don’t get out of the home office very often, but this isn’t a joke. My people don’t give false reports. If he says there are dead people down there, then it’s the truth.”
“You’ll forgive us if we’re skeptical.”
“No, I won’t. We’re dealing with things humanity never imagined existed. We’re finding invaluable resources and technologies to bring home. That is the goal, isn’t it?”
Bradshaw gave a noncommittal grunt.
“It’s not easy being the first ship to leave the solar system. While Dispatch may not like everything we’ve done out here in the past few months, we’re doing our best.”
Bradshaw looked at the other suit and then back at Thomas. His good eye narrowed, while the twitchy one continued spasming. “Depending on how we grade you, you might not need to do your best any longer. I know your engineer invented the engine that allows four-dimension travel, but R&D has installed the devices on several other ships, with dozens more on the way.” His lips formed a thin smile. “Soon, plenty of real officers will be out here exploring, and your unique status will no longer apply. So I suggest you impress me on this review, Captain. Otherwise you’ll shortly be returning to a nice, quiet patrol route around Neptune.”
“Heh,” said Bradshaw’s partner.
Thomas’s gut clenched. “They’re a good crew, no matter what Dispatch says.”
“Of course they are. That’s why they’re assigned to the Dead End-urance.” Bradshaw didn’t bother to lower his voice. A rookie officer at the scanners station looked up, offense coloring her face.
Thomas growled “follow me” at the two suits and ushered them into his coat-closet office to one side of the bridge. He banged the hatch shut behind them. “This ship may be the Dead End of the corps, but it’s still mine, and they’re still my crew. Screw ups or not, you’re going to stop talking about them like they’re not people.”
Bradshaw looked supremely unimpressed. “Perhaps when they stop making up stories about zombies—”
“They’re not making it up.” Thomas’s heart fluttered a moment as he hoped that was true. While he could name a few members of his crew he wouldn’t believe if they reported the undead rising, Ivanokoff tended to be reliable and factual. The problem with him was that he might try to re-kill all the zombies single-handedly if one of them pissed him off.
Thomas pushed all of that anxiety away and raised his chin at the suits. “You’ll see. With any luck, we’ll figure out what did this to them and use it to discover some new branch of medical science. Bet Dispatch will love that.” He forced a grin onto his face. “Might even have to give us a commendation.”
Bradshaw glanced at his partner while the twitchy eye threatened to tear itself off his face and hop across the deck. “We’ll see,” he finally conceded. He then wrote something else down on his pocket comp and let himself and his partner back out onto the bridge without asking permission to leave.
Thomas glanced down at his desk, immaculately organized with his computer panel open in the middle, a photo of himself and his girlfriend in one corner, and a copy of War and Peace his first officer kept trying to get hi
m to read in the other. “Don’t screw this up, Ivanokoff,” he muttered to the book.
* * *
“I think Areva’s going to die first.”
“No talking.” Ivanokoff glared over his shoulder at the space-suited man following him past rows of rusting machinery. The factory had once produced some sort of carbon fiber reinforced polymer, formed into what appeared to be lightweight chassis for personal hover vehicles, and they passed multiple bins half-filled with the sculpted parts. The production lines stretched into shadow on either side, and dim light filtered in through dirty skylights. Overhead pipes and claws of automated machinery played tricks with the illumination and cast twisting patches of darkness on everything.
The speaker, Sergeant Chris Fish, had a pointy nose that nearly touched his helmet’s faceplate and blond hair that looked unkempt even in the suit’s controlled environment. “I’m just saying,” he said in a lower tone, glancing through a mesh of twisting pipes to his left. “She’s two days from retirement.”
Behind the pipes, a humanoid shadow hunched as it followed them. “Eleven days,” Areva said, her voice carrying through her spacesuit’s speaker. “And it’s not retirement. I quit.”
“Same idea, though,” said Chris.
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m just saying. You’re supposed to be our security guard, and you’re the most vulnerable.”
“Horror movie logic isn’t real.”
“Tell that to the zombie that eats your bone marrow.”
Areva hunched a bit more as she darted to the next bit of cover, though Ivanokoff knew it wasn’t because of the gruesome mental image. She didn’t like being in public.
He tried to avoid looking at her in those moments of visibility, despite the beauty of her dark hair curling around her ears and falling to shade her soft features. She was lovely, even if he’d never found the words to tell her so. Or the words to properly convey his respect for her marksmanship and espionage skills. Or the words for half a dozen other important thoughts he couldn’t seem to express. No quote he’d read had ever seemed quite good enough.
“He has a point, Areva,” Viktor said. “If you were not retiring, you would have less to fear.”
“Not you too. We’ve been over this, Viktor. Just leave it alone.”
Viktor had fought with Areva about her imminent departure from the corps at least half a dozen times, but she was convinced she didn’t belong anymore. Something about her refusal to shoot any enemy who could see her coming. As if that mattered.
They rounded a freestanding wall of maintenance and diagnostic tools for the machinery. Everything hung neatly in place in spots delineated by taped outlines.
“Look,” said Viktor, pointing to the tools. “They are organized. There was no panic when this happened.”
“Or it happened at night and nobody was at work,” said Chris.
Boom! In the darkness to the left, something heavy and metal crashed onto the concrete floor. All three jumped, and Viktor whipped his wristlight around, his other hand clasping the butt of his gun. The light glinted off the unrusted bits of the machines, showing him a row of huge, rounded structures that looked like ovens. The doors gaped open, daring him to investigate the darkness inside.
One second passed, then two. The echo of the crash died, and nothing else stirred in the silence.
Viktor finally relaxed. “Keep moving.”
Chris Fish exhaled through his teeth. “What if it was a zombie?”
“We avoid going closer to it.”
“What if it’s following us?”
“We move faster.”
Chris picked up his pace, heavy footfalls thumping on the factory floor. “Looks like this place was completely automated. These people were just as advanced as us. Maybe more. Too bad they’re all dead. It’d have been great to collaborate with them.”
“‘Would have been is the enemy of is,’” said Viktor.
“Who said that?”
“Sekrin Nandor. Lunar philosopher, early twenty-second century.”
“Yeah, well, ‘would have been’ is the friend of ‘don’t repeat what these people did to get their whole population killed.’ I bet you anything the government is behind it. Some sort of conspiracy to implement mind control or make everyone live forever. They screwed up, and everybody died. If we want to survive, we have to be cautious. My wife and I, especially. No sex until we’re away from this planet.”
Despite his lifelong stoicism, Ivanokoff choked. “What?”
“Do neither of you watch old films? Having sex in a horror story is like a guaranteed death sentence. Especially if the couple is happy.”
“Then you and your wife have nothing to fear.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? We’re happy!”
“With each other, perhaps, but you berate the rest of us so often, I would not call you happy.”
That silenced the scientist for a while, though he muttered, “Yeah, well, if I’m wrong and we find an ancient evil talisman that wakes the dead, I’m putting it in your backpack.”
They made it halfway across the factory floor before another bang froze them. This time it came from the right, and it didn’t stop. Another bang followed, then another, and a moment later hums and whirrs rose from all directions as the production lines came to life. Automated arms placed stripes of polymer tape crisscross on a thick metal mold. More arms lifted the completed structures and flew them overhead to slide smoothly into the black maws of the ovens. Foot-thick doors closed, and waves of heat rolled from the autoclaves as they baked the structures. Somewhere, Viktor imagined completed chassis being assembled into working hovercars that would never seat living passengers.
“This all still works!” said Chris. “You know what this means? Either this species was way better than us at building things, or they haven’t been zombies for that long.” He paused. “Or another species has been maintaining the machinery. Maybe all of this happened because some unknown people wanted to produce comfortable vehicles with virtually no overhead cost.” He leaned over a series of display screens, still hypothesizing to himself.
From one moment to the next, Areva appeared at Viktor’s side. “Do you think they did that on purpose? Turned everything on to scare us?”
Viktor watched the machines work, hand still on his gun. “No. The best time to ambush us would have been just after activating it. This was an accident.”
“I hope so. I may not believe this ‘two days from retirement’ nonsense, but I don’t want to die here.”
“Neither do I. ‘I have never died in all my life.’”
Areva thought for a moment. “Cervantes?”
“Da.” He grinned at her. “I see you are making your way through my recommended reading.”
“It helps me understand you. I’m just sorry I won’t finish the books before I leave.”
Something twisted in Ivanokoff’s gut. “You can borrow them, if you wish. Return them when we see each other next.”
“Really?”
“Or you could stay aboard longer. Postpone your resignation.”
Areva went quiet, and he worried he’d upset her. She finally said, “‘Before the government threw me over, I preferred to throw the government over.’”
He recognized the quote from the same book he’d just referenced. “They are not going to fire you, Areva.”
“They should. I told you what happened on that Haxozin ship. They were looking at us, and I froze. If it weren’t for Chris, they would have killed us.”
“What?” called Chris from the back of the group. “If it weren’t for Chris, what?”
“We would have much less inane conversation,” Ivanokoff said.
“Oh, that reminds me, try not to sound too intelligent while we’re here, because it will make your brain seem tastier. Can we get out of the haunted factory?”
Ivanokoff looked at Areva, hoping his words might have made her reconsider, but she’d disappeared behind a tool rack.
Viktor collected Fish, who had dismissed his economic takeover theory as “too probable” and had returned to postulations about government conspiracies. The trio picked their way toward the crumbling back wall of the factory without talking. Viktor kept his senses attuned to any irregular movement that might betray the presence of a zombie, but only the whirring and turning of the technology broke the stillness.
They reached a patch of wall that had rotted away, exposing metal support pylons and providing access to the outside. Viktor peered upward into the sunshine to where a towering skyscraper with an ornate rotunda sat prominently on its own concrete island encircled by roads.
Chris opened his mouth again. “See? Even on an alien world, the government is easy to find. I bet you anything they were responsible.”
* * *
Thomas was in his office when somebody knocked on the door in the rhythm of a popular ad jingle. “Come in, Habassa,” he called.
The ship’s chief engineer came in, his immutable smile warming his copper-skinned face. “Hiya, Cap. Got a second?”
“Not really, I need to—” Thomas cut himself off as Matthias spun the chair opposite his desk and straddled it. “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”
Matthias snatched a stylus from the desk and twirled it between his fingers. “I heard about these zombies.”
Thomas closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “They’re not zombies, and how did you hear about them already?”
“Rupin told Natalie Chao when they switched shifts, and Natalie told Lee during her coffee break, and Lee told Grace, and she told me. Is it true? Are there zombies?”
If Thomas stayed tight-lipped, by the end of the day the whole ship would believe they’d found super-powered mutants with tentacles for hands, or worse. “There are ... unusual beings on the planet who appear to be dead,” he said.