Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 5): May

by Rowlands, Dave

  noon

  Unpleasant side effects was an understatement. Apocalypse Girl and Sister writhed in agony, stretching against their restraints in vain. Valkyrie's scream still echoed in my mind, if not the room any longer. She had passed out from the pain a while ago, and was twitching unconsciously in her slumber from time to time. Viking had tensed every muscle in his body and was sweating litres of fluid. Archer simply lay in his bed, though his skin had paled dramatically. I myself felt as though my blood were lava, flowing through my body, charring my insides.

  I remember only flashes of my own experience, even bare hours after the event itself. When I came back to myself, I saw that the others were also regaining some measure of themselves. Viking had a sheen of sweat covering him, soaking his clothing, Valkyrie's eyes werered, not simply bloodshot, almost bleeding. Apocalypse Girl just looked exhausted, with a heavy undercurrent of terror still present. Without words I knew that terror was for our unborn child.

  Sister was moving, cutting into her restraints with the bloodied scalpel, trying to free herself. She had seen what I, and the rest, were only just noticing. Archer was dead. And beginning to move. Archer was Dead. Shit. She had managed to free the arm whose hand held the blade, swiftly moving onto the other. Dead Archer, meanwhile, had toppled his bed over in the direction of her own and was beginning to gnash his teeth in her direction.

  Sister wailed as Dead Archer's bed crashed into hers, knocking them both over. She cried out in pain as his teeth found her flesh, tearing out a small chunk of her right arm. Her left hand flew, scalpel first, deep into his head, killing the poor guy dead. Deader. Shit. She disentangled herself from her bonds and the carcass of our friend and came to me, cutting the straps that held me. I took the scalpel from her and freed Apocalypse Girl, Valkyrie and Viking.

  “Kill me.” Sister begged me. I held the scalpel up to my face, seeing the remains of Archers brain still attached. I told her no. “If you don't, I'll...” She started sobbing. Apocalypse Girl slapped her, hard.

  “ He died for the same reason we're all here. We've been injected with a potential vaccine, remember. Besides, we need you to get out of here.” Apocalypse Girl told her, flatly. The sounds of gunfire emanated from without. “Let me patch you up.” Sister relented, allowing Apocalypse Girl to clean and bandage her bite wound, wiping tears of terror from her cheeks.

  The Smart Couple entered the lab, followed by the guards that Archer had befriended. They took one look at his corpse, sighed, and offered us their aid anyway. One held out a bundle in our direction, the hilt of my katana sticking out, beckoning my hand. I reached out, drew it and felt complete once more.

  “ Anything else from The Colonel?” Asked Apocalypse Girl of Smart Girl, who replied in the negative. “Shit.” She turned to me and clarified. “Apparently they've gone and run into a bunch of Dead, more than The Colonel thinks they can break through easily, so they're going to hang about and take them out first. Basically, we're on our own here.” Shit.

  evening

  The pair of guards took us through the hallways at breakneck pace, saying that a bunch of Dead had seemed to rise up from the lower levels, The Major was currently hard at work trying to fend them off and barricade their path, but seemed to not be having a great deal of luck at present. We would need to fight our way through the Dead, but we would at the very least not get shot at by his men.

  Turning a corner, we came face to ugly, fucked up face with several Dead. They seemed to just be standing there, ignoring everything, at least until they scented the blood from Sister's arm. My blade sliced through one head, Viking's hammer crushed another, our escort gunned down the remainder.

  The guards blasted our way through a couple more groups of Dead before we reached a stairwell leading downwards. I led the way, slicing apart the odd Dead one on the way down, Apocalypse Girl on my heels. My only concern was getting her to safety, now.

  When we hit bottom, Apocalypse Girl pulled on my arm, saying that she needed to rest a while. I asked the guards if there was anywhere nearby that we might be able to hole up in overnight. She wasn't the only one exhausted by our ordeal. “There are a few rooms down here, yeah, we can arrange something easily enough.” Sure enough, we found some empty, darkened rooms, a series of them, leading into another part of The Facility. The best part was, the doors were not only solid fucking steel, they were easily sealed.

  “ Is it just me, or is it getting hot down here?” Sister asked of nobody in particular. Smart Guy reminded her that The Facility was built into the caldera of a volcano. “Yeah, well, so it isn't me then. Good.” She sounded worried. That was good, far better than terrified. “So, who's keeping an eye on me? Making sure I don't turn into one of ...”

  “ For fuck's sake, woman, if it comes to that I'll do it myself, but I don't think it will now,” Apocalypse Girl told her. “I've seen plenty of people bit before, by now you should have a really fucking nasty fever and the infection should be visibly crawling up your arm. You don't and it isn't. Get over it, you're going to live!”

  “ What if all that running was helping to stave it off?” Sister argued. Apocalypse Girl sighed in exasperation. “No, seriously, wouldn't that affect it, too? My heart beating faster?”

  “Based on everything we've seen, and we've seen more than I care to admit, physical exertion will only serve to help spread the infection. Amputation would work, at least theoretically, provided you manage to remove the affected area swiftly enough.” Smart Guy told her. “Anyway, we'll know more in the morning. It would be a good idea to keep a watch, however. There are several thousand Dead down here, after all.”

  “ I'm just glad we were able to find this way down,” Said Smart Girl, “The other way, the one The Major is blocking off, that's where they just throw the Dead down the stairwell into a pit. Often before they are even Dead. Your friend went down that way, I hear.” The Kid. Fuck. I felt responsible for bringing him here, though he came willingly enough.

  Apocalypse Girl chose that moment to ask if anyone had thought to bring along any food. They had not.

  May 10thYear 1 A.Z.

  morning

  I think it's morning at least. We've decided that we've had enough rest, at least, and have begun exploring these sealed rooms, hoping to find something to eat, of course, but realistically the only edible items in anybody's definition of the word would probably be the nine of us trapped in here. Sister had Apocalypse Girl look at her arm earlier, it looked nasty but clean. Uninfected!It looked like The Kid's sacrifice at the very least had been worthwhile.

  Archer's Death had been planned, it seemed. According to The Smart Couple, one of us had to Die and at the very least bite one of us in order to test the effectiveness of the vaccine that they were testing on us. They swore that they had nothing to do with the decision and had tried everything in their limited power to prevent it. As it was, they had stolen all of the research notes, so that someone, somewhere would be able to make use of their ethically challenged science.

  I was well inside the sealed-off section we had inhabited overnight, sitting and talking about nothing in particular with Sister and Apocalypse Girl when a massive CLANG!!!!!came from the outer door. I was on my feet, sword in hand and halfway to the massive steel door before I realised that I had even moved. A second, less loudClang!sounded from without, followed by a series of taps. Three short, three long, three short. SOS? Telling everybody to get behind us, Viking and I unsealed and opened the door to reveal our old companion, standing tall in a hallway that was soaked with the blackened blood and entrails of possibly a couple of hundred Dead that had managed to pick up and follow our scent trail, yet had no way of getting inside our rooms. “May I come inside?” Asked The Kid, ever so politely. “There's more Dead coming. Might be a good idea to get inside and seal it all up again.”

  noon

  He had woken up, apparently, mid-fall. “That's got to have been the most fucked-up moment of my life, falling into a pit full of Dead...well, okay, m
aybe the second most...” He grinned his fang-ridden smile. It seemed oddly comforting. Valkyrie asked him if he had any food on him. His smile dropped from his face as he turned to the Swedish blonde. “I don't need food anymore. If I'd known you guys had nothing I might have run upstairs and raided a cupboard or two, though. Now...” His face turned sombre. “There's several hundred Dead just outside that door that know you're in here. I can't really do much about that right now. They might calm down enough for me to move them in a few hours, but I wouldn't hold my breath.” She swore.

  Viking asked The Kid how he knew where we were. The Kid fixed him with a look that said 'seriously? You're really too thick to work that one out yourself?' before explaining in simple terms that he could tell that there were a whole heap of hungry Dead just outside a door that they couldn't open that they knewfoodwas behind. “Besides, you're vaccine was made from part of my brain. I always have you guys in mind!”

  Those of us that knew him chuckled weakly at the joke. The guards seemed incredibly shaken by his presence, as they had presumed him very dead by now, but accepted him readily enough on seeing the easy manner in which he joked and laughed with the rest of us. The Kid had always had a fine sense of humour, maybe not making exactly funny jokes about things, but always at the very least in high spirits. Always ready to laugh and smile. That alone made me glad to see him.

  evening

  We had retreated as far back as we were able so The Kid could try to convince the Dead on the other side of the door to move, but he was thus far having little real success. Theyknewwe were in here,knewthat they only needed to wait, we would try to make a run for it eventually, food always did. The way The Kid relayed what was going on in the limited, seemingly communal mind of the Dead unnerved me slightly.

  Viking and Valkyrie were busily ransacking the contents of the few desks and cupboards, finding only a few scraps of paper, one coffee mug, a couple of paper clips, a stapler and one incredibly rusty pair of scissors. There was a fridge there, too, though it was bare and nonfunctional. Nothing that we could eat, in any event.

  My stomach was growling like some kind of wild beast stalking its prey. The main difference was that the beast was likely to eat sometime soon. Apocalypse Girl was experiencing a kind of indigestion common among those who had not eaten for a couple of days. I had just gone through it myself. I hated seeing her like that, but I knew it would pass soon enough. Sister complained loudly about being eaten, couldn't Archer have been kind enough to spit out the piece of her arm so that she could have a bite to eat too?

  The worst of it was that we had food, though upstairs, securely tucked away in our backpacks in our quarters on the second floor. However, if we could get to that, we would be able to reach the food storage section, where everything simply hung, suspended in time. I had often wondered exactly what technology was used in this food stasis locker idea, because the temperature was admittedly a little cooler than normal room temperature, so definitely not any kind of refrigeration. It had been that way at The Think Tank, I only assumed this place had a similar food storage system.

  Apocalypse Girl began muttering to herself. “He said I could learn, said this was easy as well...” She began rummaging through her pockets, not finding anything of any real use yet. A couple of lighters, a pocket knife. Then she went to the cupboards. She found a stack of unused post-it notes that the Nordic couple had ignored. Except that they both swore that they had been through every container of any kind in the whole place and had taken out everything they found.

  She stalked towards the fridge, her own stomach sounding not unlike a big cat, a lioness perhaps, stalking prey to feed her pride. She reached one hand out to the handle, grasping it. She had but to pull it open, but she hesitated, took a deep breath, closed her eyes and gave the door a yank. I swear, for an instant the fridge light came on. She reached inside, felt around for a minute or two and pulled out a huge platter covered up with aluminium foil. Removing the foil revealed a double layer of individually portioned sushi. I took the platter from her. It was cold, as if it had just come from a working fridge, plugged in and turned on, rather than this ancient thing that had last seen an electron perhaps a decade ago. Elder was right, she could indeed learn.

  May 11thYear 1 A.Z.

  morning

  The guards had been thoroughly shocked by Apocalypse Girl's mystical food finding ability, but were every bit as grateful for the sushi as the rest of us. They asked her if she could find some cigarettes in similar fashion, though she told them she was able to only find things that were in that location in a parallel dimension, at least that had been how Elder had described it. They poor dudes looked so dejected, that was until one told her that he had always carried smokes in his top pocket, asked her to check there for him. She did so, finding a pack with only two remaining the guards were amazed once again and instantly lit them up.

  Sister's arm was looking to be healing nicely, though there was still a chunk of flesh missing from her forearm and always would be. She had spent the night in quiet conversation with The Kid, drawing out his own experience of having been bitten. His was nowhere near as nasty a wound as hers had been, just a tiny scratch barely a centimetre long made by Dead teeth grazing his flesh when he was ogling some pretty girls at work where he should have been on guard, but the certain knowledge of impending Death had still been present, not to mention the fact that he, like Sister, had managed through a stroke of incredible fortune to survive. The Smart Couple had been in contact with Soldier during the night, as well. The Colonel had crushed the Dead barring her way and would likely be at The Facility tomorrow sometime. She had been warned about The Major and his predilection for unethically using both military and civilian personnel as test subjects, needless to say The Colonel was pissed off. Having seen that tiny woman in a foul mood executing three men in cold blood who had been eating the flesh of the Dead, not to mention the way she had taken control of the military forces that had conscripted us outside of Canberra. The Major was in some pretty fucking deep trouble once she arrives.

  noon

  “They've moved.” The Kid told us all, suddenly. He uncoiled himself to almost his full height, the ceiling being too low down here for eight feet, and lumbered on over to the door, unsealing it and ducking out, saying; “Won't be long, gotta take care of a few things. Better shut this up properly behind me, though.” We did as he suggested.

  Viking and Valkyrie were beginning to get fidgety by now. I knew that the blonde giant of a man disliked small spaces, not that he actually admitted to

  claustrophobia, he just preferred being outside. I hadn't known it before this morning, however, but now we all did, because Valkyrie had just finished telling him that it was okay to be afraid. Viking wasn't afraid of small confined spaces, he just didn't like being in them. Honestly, though the walls were seeming to close in on me as well by now, there was clearly only a finite amount of time that we would be able to continue down here before being driven insane by our predicament. Were it not for Apocalypse Girl's calming presence I think I might have been already.

  After a while, the familiar CLANG!!!!!of The Kid's knock sounded on the steel barrier separating us from the hallways of The Facility's Depths and Viking, swearing loudly, moved to the door to unseal and open it. Needless to say, since we knew it was sure to be The Kid, nobody bothered going with him as backup. A moment later the gigantic blonde man flew backwards, knocking into a cupboard and being thoroughly stunned in the process. I drew my blade, running out into the main room to see a trio of Giant Dead ducking under the door. I swore loudly enough for the others to get the picture, if they hadn't already, and ran into the fray, swinging my blade low, trying to cut the legs out from under one Giant Dead while dodging the swinging, grasping hands that flailed about just above my head. Gunfire erupted from behind me, driving one of the monstrous Dead back a little, at least momentarily. Long enough for Valkyrie's assault, armed with Viking's hammer, to occupy one of the enormous mutated crea
tures. That gave me an opportunity to at least close the door, if not seal it, before the fifty or so normal Dead that were on their way down the corridor arrived.

  Backing off a little, I motioned for Apocalypse Girl to sneak around them while Valkyrie and I drew them away from the door so that she could seal it properly. One swung it's flailing limbs a little too near her for my liking but she was able to dodge out of the way, sealing the door before diving between a pair of Dead legs. I grabbed hold of one of her hands, pulling her out of harms way, sliding her along the floor behind the guards who kept on firing at the Giant Dead, concentrating on one in particular. Looking up at it I saw several bullet holes appear in its head, and eventually it fell down, properly dead once again. This left two more.

  One of those two had Valkyrie backed into a corner by this point, the other was bearing down on me. My Dead swung its fists down from overhead, one connecting with my shoulder, knocking me to the ground. Fuck, but these things were strong! Dead, usually at least, were relatively weak, though in large enough numbers they could literally tear buildings to pieces. I had seen it often enough. These Giant Dead, however, had the strength to match their size. This time it was Apocalypse Girl's turn to drag me from danger. My hand couldn't grip the hilt of my blade and it fell from my grip.

  The two guards, having run out of bullets finally, charged in, using their guns as clubs, belabouring the Giant Dead that had downed me about its head and neck.

  Meanwhile Apocalypse Girl scrabbled for my sword. I heard a cry of pain from the other side of the room and looked up in time to see the other Giant Dead picking up Valkyrie with one hand, lifting her to its mouth and tearing a huge chunk from her shoulder. She lifted Viking's hammer up with her other hand, bringing it down upon the huge Dead one's head. The hammer's head was bloodied from the contact that had driven it deep into the Dead's misshapen skull, dropping it to its knees. Apocalypse Girl hacked the head from its shoulders, following that up with a kick to the torso which toppled the monster.