by J. K. Norry
Elayna laughed. “Well, I guess you weren’t the only one.”
He looked at her, wondering what she meant. Allen was struck anew by how beautiful she was. He was astounded all over again that he had never noticed before. While he stared at her, his hunger somehow forgotten, a thought surfaced in his mind.
“Hey,” he said, still holding her gaze. “Did you say I was handsome?”
“I said you were almost handsome again.” Elayna nodded. “Come on, let’s have a look in the mirror together.”
Allen shook his head violently. “No.”
“Allen, you need to learn to look at yourself,” she said firmly. “You need to learn to like what you see.”
“Elayna, I killed people, lots of people.” He snorted in disgust. “I ate people. How do I live with that? How do I look at that?”
She reached out a hand, to touch his face. Allen drew back.
“Don’t,” he said. “You can’t touch me.”
Elayna peeled of her shirt and cast it aside. She stood before him in her bra and jeans, looking down at the grotesque swirl that used to be her belly.
“We’re the same, Allen,” she said. “If you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t touch you. But I want to. I want you to want me to.”
His eyes went wide. “Elayna, what…?”
“Oh, come here.” She grabbed his hand before he could pull away, led him across the room. They stood together in front of a wide mirror, her looking at him while he kept his eyes on the floor.
“Look.” She nudged him.
He shook his head, kept his eyes averted.
Elayna sighed. “Alright, I’ll go first.”
She faced herself in the mirror. “I’m a monster. Look at that nasty patch of flesh. I’m so disgusting.”
“No.” Allen still wouldn’t look. “You’re not. You’re beautiful.”
“Really?” Her voice had never sounded so sweet, so vulnerable. “Are you just saying that? To make me feel better?”
“No.” Allen felt like a child, staring away. “I’m serious. I guess I never said so before but…you’re beautiful, Elayna.”
“What about this?” She pointed. “This is disgusting.”
Finally he turned. Allen looked at her reflection, tried to ignore his own. “It’s not, though. You’re the only one of us that tried to save everyone. You’re the only one of us who didn’t eat anyone. That stubborn patch is nothing to be ashamed of, you didn’t ask for it. What you did do is fight it. You fought a hunger that I couldn’t imagine saying no to, a hunger that I helped spread across the world. That should be a badge of honor, a reminder of how good you were when you could have become something so horrible.”
Elayna rested her fingers lightly on his chest. Allen’s heart quickened.
“I like what you see when you look at me,” she breathed. She looked at him in the mirror, her eyes moving up and down his sinewy torso. She went on, her voice still soft and her fingers still touching him.
“When I look at you,” she murmured, “I see the man you used to be, smart and cynical and funny. I see the pain you went through when you faced what you used to be, and the torture of facing what you had become. I also see how walking through those trials has changed you. Give yourself a chance, Allen. See yourself through my eyes if you have to, if you can. You wanted to undo this, it’s why we found each other again. No one told you to try to get some kind of human life back. You went looking for those pills on your own, and you found me.”
“The pills,” he said, turning away. “The broadcast…”
“It’s over,” she said. “You slept through it. I’m sorry, Allen. They’re moving south. They docked in Monterey Bay. I knew we couldn’t make it in time.”
“I might have,” he protested.
“Really?” She looked at him again, and Allen let his gaze follow hers. She was right; his skin was growing back. He flexed his bare muscles. They were smaller, and his arms and legs had gotten shorter as well. He didn’t feel like a fountain of power or a whirlwind of hunger any longer; Allen felt weak and drained.
“Probably not,” he admitted.
“Turning back really takes it out of you,” she sighed. “It did me.”
“I need to stop taking the pills.” Allen turned away again. “It’s the only way I can get to the next port in time. If I leave now-”
“You would have to feed,” Elayna cut him off.
Allen frowned. “I could save you. I could save us both.”
“You would have to feed,” she said again.
“Dammit, Elayna!” He met her eyes in the mirror. “What would you have me do?”
“Stay here with me,” she said, her eyes round and vulnerable. “Take the rest of the pills with me. Eat real food, or the closest thing we have to it. Change with me. Stay with me.”
They turned to each other at the same time. Allen opened his mouth, to protest or reason with her. Elayna stepped up to him, raised herself on her tiptoes, and kissed him.
When the kiss broke, Allen shook his head. “Really? Me? Elayna-”
She kissed him again.
This time Allen kissed her back. It was the first time in a long time that he felt a little like a human being again.
Chapter 23
Michelle watched the vessel’s radar closely, steering away from ships and land masses alike. The rest of her days she stared out the wet windshield, reaching down to absently pet the giant mound of panting fur at her feet every few minutes. There was nothing but hope in her eyes, even as her actions remained cautious. She used the sails when she could, and always found a place to anchor or drift quietly for the night. It was like a vacation on the sea, with no world to go back to when it was over. Across many miles of waves and water…
The device was trembling. The technician hovered his hand over the control panel, awaiting the general’s order. The general glanced at Mallory. The professor shrugged. Turning to the machine, the general shouted.
“Fire!”
For the next few moments, the noise became too much; everyone who wasn’t wearing ear protection clapped their hands over their heads to block out the sonic uprising. It was as if every level of the sound spectrum had come alive around them, and climbed inside them. Several troops cried out; their cries were lost in the soup of sound. As it became impossibly louder, all but the general and Mallory began to move away from the device.
Suddenly, all sound ceased to be. People were still crying out, from the looks of them; but a blanket of silence had settled over the desert. Troops moved, but there was no sound of boots scuffling in the sand. Mallory turned and said something to the general; his voice was shouted silence. The general stared at the ancient stone structure through it all, and soon every other eye followed. The air rippled, the pyramid went fuzzy, and then it was gone. A few piles of dust lay on the sand for a moment, only to drift to nothing across the desert. Slowly, the sound came back into the world.
Maya stood there, nude, shaking her head.
“Professor,” she called out. “You’ve returned to me.”
“This has to stop, Maya!”
“You would kill the spirit of the earth to save mankind?” She took a few steps forward, and the small army moved away together. The general waved his hand; a half dozen tanks fired as one. The explosions filled the air with sand and smoke, and for a moment they all watched it settle and drift. Maya stepped forth, still naked and unharmed, to stand her ground before them.
“You fools,” she spat. “You cannot see what is right in front of you. Or behind you.”
On the horizon, clouds of dust and swirling sand rose from the distant desert to block out the sun. The army fell silent, watching and listening together. The general glanced at Maya, then Mallory.
“What is it?” he asked.
Mallory frowned. “It’s an army of howlers, General. You better tell those tanks to turn around. Can that device be pointed in their direction?”
The general shook his head.
“It would have to be disassembled and reassembled. There’s no time.”
“It’s not on a swivel?”
“No,” the general answered wryly. “But I’ll make a note for next time we face a zombie zero.”
“A what?”
“A ‘Zombie Zero’. It’s what we call her.” The general pointed.
“Her name is Maya,” the professor said quietly.
“It was, maybe,” the general scoffed. “Not any more, doctor. Now her name is death.”
A chorus of hungered howls filled the air. As they watched the cloud turn to grotesque figures, they saw one lone monster streaking across the landscape before the other howlers.
“General,” Mallory jangled his manacles. “Any way you could take these off now?”
“Are you going to help us fight them?” The general scanned the horizon. “All of them?”
“No,” Mallory frowned. “They’ll never get to me. See the one in the lead?”
The general nodded. He was hard to miss, bigger than all of the others by half and faster than even their incredible speed. The horde filled the sky with sand in their collective wake. He left a lone narrow rise of dust behind him; it stood in the still desert air, like a jet stream, a hundred yards in front of the next fastest monster.
“That’s Todd,” Mallory said calmly. “He used to be a student at the college I taught at. Now he’s…that. And pissed off at me. The rest of them will never reach me. Again, any way I could get these cuffs off?”
“Who has the keys to this man’s restraints?” The general shouted loud enough for all of them to hear; no one stepped forward.
Mallory shrugged. Slowly, and with very little visible effort, he pulled his wrists away from his waist. The chains went taut; then they screeched, popped, and burst apart one by one. The general reached over his shoulder and unsheathed a sword. Reversing the long handle, he held the end of it out to Mallory. The professor nodded his thanks, and hefted the gleaming blade. It was like the weapons he had had before, dull in color and tempered to a strong razor sharpness.
He stepped toward the rising cloud of dust.
“Stand down, doctor,” the general put a hand on his arm. “Me first.”
The general didn’t say a word, but suddenly every man and woman under his command stood at attention. He moved his hands, and his head, and they moved as one to face the new threat. Tanks pivoted, lined up and made ready to fire. Troops filled the spaces between them, armed with automatic rifles and rocket launchers. Teams assembled cannons at either end of the tanks, and within a minute they were all still once more. They awaited the general’s orders, a hundred men and women poised to act as his body.
Another hand motion from the general, and the tanks released a volley of explosive charges. Four burst in the sand as one, tossing howlers and their body parts in every direction. One hit the open empty sand between the horde and the lead monster, and the last looked to be a direct hit. Todd disappeared in a cloud of smoke and sand. Another volley from the tanks, and the entire horde was obscured in floating dust and rising smoke. The cannoneers waited, watching the general. He motioned once more, the tanks fired off one more round, then he peered into the haze.
A howl split the air, loud and strong and hungry. A hundred more answered, and Todd burst through the drifting smoke. A few moments later the horde came into view. Mallory glanced at the general. He looked utterly unsurprised.
“Looks like we got a few,” he murmured under his breath. One nod from him, and white puffs of smoke rose from both ends of the formation while automatic rifle fire filled the air. The tanks rocked back repeatedly with their own respective launches, and the sounds of violence assaulted Mallory’s ears. He began to stride toward Maya, and the general listened as best he could while conducting the symphony of desert destruction.
“This has to stop!” he shouted.
“It will stop,” she called back.
“When?”
“You know when,” she answered. “When their knowledge of their own terribleness is lost forever. When there are but a few thousand.”
“What of their greatness?” Mallory cried. “That will be lost as well!”
Maya nodded. “The two are inextricably woven together.”
“Maya!” He stepped closer. “That’s so few! What if they don’t make it? What if another tragedy befalls mankind before it has the chance to rise again?”
“It won’t,” she answered. Mallory heard her voice in his head as much as he heard it in his ears. He noticed in the same moment that the gunfire had ceased, and explosive reports no longer rocked the ground.
“I will destroy them,” Maya said. “And then I will protect them. As I always have. When a meteor strikes this planet, it is because I called it forth. When volcanoes erupt, or the sun flares, or when fires or floods cover the earth, that is the Universe communicating with a part of itself. That is me communicating with you. These are not accidents, or chance occurrences. Just as the individual evolves, so does the species. And just as a planet evolves, so does the universe. It’s not always pretty, professor; but it only ever happens when it is absolutely necessary.”
Mallory turned, to recapture his own thoughts and to investigate the silence. The entire army had changed, before the enemy was within a hundred yards. They were all hungry, and their eyes filled with shifting sand as they fell upon each other. Mallory heard the general howl in the same moment that Todd tackled the professor. They tumbled to the ground together, biting and slashing at each other as they rolled and bumped along the sand.
They stopped in a tangled heap, with the professor on top of Todd. Biting at his thick sinewed neck, Mallory ignored the talons that raked across his back and chest. Todd got his arm between them and shoved, and Mallory pushed off as he did. He made for the sword he had lost as soon as he hit the ground, and Todd tackled him again as his fingers wound around the handle. He felt sharp teeth on his neck, and realized his esophagus was gone. While Todd worried at the taut tendons still keeping his head on, the professor positioned his sword behind the monster’s giant neck. With one hand on the blade and the other clutching the handle, he tugged.
The blade bit in deep, as did Todd’s gnawing teeth. There was no breathing, or lifting his head; there was only that superhuman tug, biting deeper into his hand and Todd’s spine. Mallory began to rock the blade back and forth, sawing at the wound as it tried to heal around the steel. He felt Todd bite into his spine, and the feeling started to fade from his limbs. Sawing with unfeeling hands, his body trying to gasp for air, the professor put every last bit of everything he had into one final gargantuan tug. The blade moved, a little bit, and then a lot.
Todd’s body rolled off of him; his head kept biting. Moments after one monster’s head left his body, the other’s lolled lifelessly in the sand beside it. Mallory’s rusted red eyes stared off into the smoke-filled sky, and Todd’s jaws slowly stopped gnawing at nothing. Both heads lay still, their bodies sprawled motionless side by side. Blood soaked into the sand around their corpses as the army mobilized once more.
Chapter 24
Tom had never expected to live on the farm. He had bought it for his parents, to make his father’s lifelong dream come true, but he had never planned on living there. Now it seemed that his father’s dream may have saved them, at least for the time being. They worked together to fortify the perimeter. They tended to the crops and the livestock. They harvested milk and meat, fruits and vegetables, and helped those they could find who still craved such sustenance. Somewhere in it all Tom got closer than ever to his father, and to the soil they worked together. It didn’t seem strange to him to stay positive and productive as the world fell apart around him; Tom had grown up in America. In the closest area that was once a metropolitan sprawl…
The flesh that had returned to his hands was gone. The pills that had been causing it to grow back were gone. The woman that he should have loved was gone. The last vestiges of his humanity had surely been lost some
where, along with everything else. Allen wandered the streets, adrift and alone, looking for flesh. He reminded himself that he was a mindless monster, no matter the complicated nature of his thoughts; he tried to dismiss his mind, and embrace the monster.
They had kissed, they had touched, they had talked and made love. With nothing but time on their hands, they had grown close in what little of it they’d had. She had tended to him like he was a junkie going cold turkey, rather than a zombie in the throes of flesh withdrawal. She talked when he needed to be distracted, listened when he needed to let something out, and kissed him when he felt strong. She fed him tasteless rations and pills between delicious kisses, and together they nurtured a new hope and a new love.
When they had run out of pills, she had been determined to stay together and fight their hunger. Allen had protested, and tried to leave; but she had held him and kissed him and begged him not to go. He couldn’t explain, not when he wanted her so much, not when she was kissing him and touching him. He had given in to his desire, and somewhere within their coming together he had lost himself completely. The overwhelming wash of sensations that was being with her had swept him away, and his hunger had returned like never before.
He hadn’t even realized he had bitten her until he felt his body begin to change. One moment he was kissing her shoulder, moving inside of her, and the next her blood filled his mouth. When he realized it, he tried to pull away; but her hand pressed insistently into the back of his head, her hips moved hard against his, and he kept eating. By the time he had lifted his gaze to look in her eyes, they were lifeless and staring. It hadn’t taken long to eat the rest of her; and by the time he was done, Allen was a mighty howler once again.
There was very little living flesh remaining in the city when he returned, and most of the howlers had moved on to scour the countryside. Allen stayed, walking the familiar streets alone or hunting with the pack he had fallen in with. Together they broke into prisons, tunneled into basements and bunkers, and breached compounds. They scanned the streets for heat signatures; they lifted their fleshless nostrils to catch the scent of fresh flesh, chasing down every last human to eat or turn them. They were slim pickings, and most of them got eaten.