ANTIVENOM

by M. Lorrox

  She passes another container, and again, she marks its location on her mental-map. Whatever, zombies are stupid. If that’s the best they’ve got, this’ll be easier than I thought!

  Soon, she passes the shallow valley that leads west—to where she’ll meet back up with the team—but she still has a task to complete. She smiles to herself while she blasts through the undergrowth and fallen twigs of the old forest. I wouldn’t try to touch the tower anyway, it’s not like I can cut it in half… But I bet I could reach it if I needed to.

  Winded and slowing after her long hike, she ascends the backside of the mountain the facility is on. As the forest thins, she’s even more careful of staying hidden. At each tree, she pauses behind its trunk, then she darts to the next one like a dark flash in dim shadows.

  She soon starts to hear a growing buzzing sound.

  When the canopy opens enough to see the tower once again, she drops to the ground behind a tree trunk and fishes out her mirror. What is that sound?

  She looks and rolls her eyes. Fucking drones patrolling the tower. Goddamn it, they’ll have eyes on them... And they cleared the trees to open their view of the ground. Some pricks are drinking lattes and monitoring the feeds... Jerks.

  She backtracks along her same path, pausing again at each tree like she did on the way up. After a few minutes, the canopy grow denser, and she relaxes in the forest’s protection. Time to get back to the group—without any good news. Maybe Miss Hecate is having better luck... I hope she spots any containers before they spot her... Ugh, she’s the opposite of stealthy.

  When Hecate rounds some trees and is able to look up the mountain to the facility high on its slopes, she’s momentarily stunned by the imposing structure in the distance. She stands in the open for a moment, and she doesn’t notice the partially hidden storage container placed behind the trees on her side. As she studies the mountain below the facility and looks for a climbable path, she hears a slight humming noise stop, then restart. She looks and sees a camera pointed ahead of her and to her right, and it’s spinning toward her. Fuck!

  She jumps and dives behind a tree to her left, hoping she wasn’t seen. She slams through a bush, but its shaking slows as it enters the camera’s view.

  With her belly flat on the ground, she waits until the sound stops, then restarts again. Now it’s going back. She waits until she hears the noise stop and start once again, and she pokes her head out for a look. The camera is pointed away and is sweeping back to her, but she’s well hidden by the tree trunk and bush. Below the camera, she recognizes the container as the same kind she found in a metro tunnel in DC, except this one is camouflaged. Hmm. Zombies are no big deal, those cameras though…

  She slinks away from the container and finds a covered position where she can look upon the facility. She assesses the mountain for climbing, and the longer she looks, the deeper her frown grows. That will not be easy, or quick, and they’ll probably have cameras watching. She sighs as she remembers words of wisdom from the knight who trained her.

  She imagines Calypso’s stern face and her maimed but deadly hand. Half of Calypso’s right hand’s muscles were torn off when she was young—before she was turned to a vampire—and the old, stubborn knight never attempted to reinjure and heal her hand. With her scarred black skin pulled taught over a nearly fleshless, bony digit, she pointed right in Hecate’s face, saying, “Never get caught below your enemy. Never engage against a defender on higher ground. That’s when you bleed.”

  Hecate swallows. Well, we may just have to.

  Although it’s late spring in the United States, New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere and is deep into fall.

  On the bank of Bligh Sound, the late afternoon air chills the wet and grumbling team after their swim ashore. Stephanie is the last to arrive, and she changes back into her dry uniform. The others, who were at first annoyed by her delay and confused by the slim soldier shivering while emerging from the water nearly naked, now shiver themselves and wish they’d had the same forethought.

  The only exception on the team is Naga, who doesn’t seem affected by the cold at all. He wrings out the top to his Army Combat Uniform, revealing that the tattoos on his head travel down his back and chest, across both sides of his abs, and disappear inside his pants.

  Fifty feet in from the bank is a small clearing, and the team arranges the equipment crates they brought from the boat. Trees stand tall everywhere around their basecamp, and mountains to the east glow in the fading sunlight. The wind across the mountains shakes the trees’ leaves, and the whole mountain shimmers green and gold.

  Charlie gathers everyone together in the basecamp. “We might be pushing on to the target tonight, or we may be staying here until tomorrow. We’ll make a plan when the scouts return. Until they report in, I want a defensive perimeter around our position. Naga, you guard north against the water’s edge, and Gabriel, you guard the south side. Landside of Naga, I want Ricochet at northeast, Balena east, and I’ll take southeast.” They nod, and Charlie turns to face Stephanie, Owen, Johannes, Eddy, and July.

  “Major and Second Lieutenant, I want you to hold in the base here, and pull up to the line and support as needed. Keep in mind that we’re more durable than you are, so watch yourselves... Johannes, I’d like you stay with my son, Leo, and with July. I want you three to start organizing our supplies and setting up camp.”

  As Johannes nods, Eddy scowls. “Dad, I’m a good shot, put me on the line. I don’t need a babysitter.”

  He shakes his head. “Be grateful I didn’t leave you in town, or in Hawaii. You and July will hold up in the base and help Johannes. You can be a good shot from here.” Charlie looks from eye to eye of each of his team members. “I want everyone with both a blade and a gun. I don’t want to take any chances. Try not to fire though—the sound might travel too far.”

  Johannes snickers. “Are you going to carry a firearm too?”

  Charlie sighs. “Carry one, sure. Shoot one? Only if I have to.” He shrugs. “Hecate should be returning soon, then Ghost a while later on. Stay sharp. Go.”

  “Sir?” Stephanie takes a step toward Charlie.

  “Yes?”

  “Permission to continue working on the directional jammer while we’re holding here?”

  “Yeah, please do.” He motions to Owen. “We’re counting on you two to give us a chance against their techie-toys.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Charlie nods. “Dismissed.”

  Johannes grabs the dry bag he brought his leather shoulder-bag through the water in, and he carries it over to an equipment case. Ricochet, already set with his gun, opens a different crate. “Here we go.”

  Owen steps next to him and smiles. “I’ve always wanted to get my hands on a Zinner, but they were only sent to The Line, so I thought I was out of luck.”

  In the crate are two dozen slightly curved swords with thick, black blades. Each is about three feet long and has a full, steel handguard.

  Ricochet picks one up and slips the blade from its leather-and-brass sheath. “These are like Navy swords from the nineteenth century, except longer.”

  Owen grabs one himself and points to the handguard. “But the zombie edition has the full handguard instead of just a bar.”

  -Shlink!- Ricochet sheaths the sword then hangs it on his belt. “I personally hoped I never would have to use one.”

  Stephanie finishes wiring one of the blunt, short antennas of the jamming device to terminals on its base. “One down, one to go.”

  July looks at her and the device for a moment, then she looks away. The sun on the mountainside, the birds in the trees, and the breeze tickling the evergreen beech leaves all call out to her, and the life surrounding her holds her attention.

  Eddy furrows his brow at the device in Stephanie’s hands. “It needs two antennas? Is that to pick up different signals?”

&
nbsp; Stephanie shakes her head. “No, they’re for transmitting different frequency ranges. The device Hecate found in DC had a pair of radio bands it used, and I want to be able to jam both bands.” She turns to Owen. “I want to automate a scan and set function, so we can point it, and whatever specific frequency it picks up, it tunes the transmitter to that and swamps it.”

  Owen walks over with a M4 assault rifle and a Zinner sword. “That’s easy enough, I mean, adding that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Good.”

  “Let’s see… I’ll need to write a new function, so I gotta head back to the boat. My laptop and gear is there. Should I disassemble my setup and bring it here—” He points over to his backpack. “—or should I bring the board and FPGA to the boat and do everything there?”

  “You should bring your gear here, so you’ll be here in case we need to push forward.”

  He sets down his M4 and Zinner. And I just got dry. Oh! He starts to unbutton his ACU top. “Gimme a dry bag. I’ll be back ASAP.”

  She looks up at him. “Hold on a sec. I want to test this antenna before I move on to the next one. Grab a scanner.”

  Qilin purchased three “buyout” tickets to Florence for five thousand dollars apiece, and when the first three passengers on that list were given the great news, they all decided to splurge in the airport lounge while planning what to do next. They toast their third rounds as Qilin, Madeline, and Steve exit the Blood-Scent Checkpoint and approach the gate.

  The extremely expensive seats include a pair on a side aisle and a single in the middle aisle of the Airbus 330 wide-body jet. Qilin decides to take the single seat, and she asks Jambavan and Madeline to sit together. She grows a devilish grin. “If you’re about to be spotted, just pretend you’re a couple and start making out.”

  Both Jambavan and Madeline groan.

  Qilin’s seat is most forward, so she’s allowed to board first. After another minute, Jambavan and Madeline are welcomed aboard. Jambavan is tall, and he leads Madeline down the aisle toward their seats. He looks for any of their marks—Lorenzo, John, Li Chen, or Steve—who Jambavan believes might have already boarded, and he hopes he’ll block their view of Madeline.

  Jambavan doesn’t see any of them. The plane is large, so when he gets to his and Madeline’s seats, he feels lucky that they’re apparently not seated near their marks. Just to be safe though, Madeline takes the window seat, and Jambavan takes the aisle.

  People continue to board while some passengers try to force obviously too-large luggage into the overhead compartments. Flight attendants use their firm but polite voice and continually remind passengers that it’s a full flight and that baggage may be brought up to be gate-checked. Jambavan glances back and forth between the aisles, tries to ignore the commotion, and hopes to spot the marks as they board.

  Madeline jabs him. “Jeez, Mr. Boyfriend, you seem really tense. Chill out.”

  Jambavan frowns and motions with his head toward the stream of people in the aisles. He whispers, “You don’t want to get spotted, do you?”

  “That’s your problem?” She rolls her eyes and leans into the corner of the seat and the window, then she pulls her hood up over her head. “I’m asleep. Let me know when we’re all-clear.”

  “I guess that’ll work. Buckle in or else an attendant will—”

  In a minor kerfuffle, she sits back up, angles her hood, and buckles in. “Better?”

  He sighs. “Mmm-hmm.”

  Madeline pulls out a set of earbuds and then plugs them into her phone. She puts them into her ears, then plugs them into her phone and turns on the screen. She reads the text from Steve and groans. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. “Dude, we’re boned.”

  “Why?”

  She sits up and pulls her hood off.

  “What are you doing?”

  She holds out the phone, displaying the text. “They’re not going to Florence, they’re going to Rome.”

  “But, the guy said... This is bad.” Jambavan freezes as the notion of possibly failing the mission grips him. No, I can’t fail, Korina is watching. She—

  “Come on, maybe there’s still time to jump onto the right plane.”

  They both get out of their seats and find Qilin. She’s confused when she sees them. “What are you doing?”

  Jambavan leans over and whispers in her ear, “Text from Steve says they’re not going to Florence, but to Rome.”

  Qilin’s eyes grow wide, then she relaxes. “Our connection is in Munich, and we’ll just reroute from there. If they have Wi-Fi on this beast, I can arrange everything while we’re in the air.”

  Madeline exhales. Oh thank goodness. Shit, I’m nervous as fuck. She hears a pained sigh that she’s all too familiar with, and she glances in that direction. Li Chen!

  Li Chen is waiting behind someone trying to smash their luggage into the overhead bin. He looks down at his phone and clicks to download another playlist for the long flight. He, Steve, and John are all on that flight to Munich, too, where they grab a connecting flight to Rome.

  Madeline spins away from Li Chen and looks for a way to hide. There’s an empty seat in the opposite aisle, next to a college-aged kid. She dives for it and leans over to the guy. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  He looks up. Oh my god those eyes! “Uh, sure?”

  She whispers into his ear, and he grows a large smile. He looks across the aisle to Li Chen, and when Li Chen has passed, he nods.

  Madeline leans off him. “A deal’s a deal. What’ll it be?”

  He grins, takes her hand, and kisses it. “Your email.”

  She smiles.

  Jambavan shakes his head, then looks down the aisle—Li Chen is seated five rows behind his own, empty seat.

  In SeCComm’s Command Center, Hector squeezes his hands into tight fists and watches a digital clock on the wall. Air handlers hum in the background, and no one makes a sound. The overhead lights are dim, but light spills from lamps on the many desks below Hector in the bullpen and from the wall the desks all face. There, dozens of screens show different video feeds, each with a different set of letters and numbers displayed in their corner and a large letter labeling the screen. A few of the video feeds pan side to side, showing empty clearings.

  The top left monitor is labeled “MtnPl-NW,” and it shows a high angled view of the attack boat and a dark spec on the nearby land—the base. Hector looks at the clock again. Where the hell is—

  “Sorry I’m late, sir!” Paul Baudin scoots into a wheeled chair behind his desk—one of dozens in the bullpen that each have a bank of monitors, a keyboard, a mouse, and between one and four joysticks. Paul attacks his keyboard. He glances at one of his screens, then up at Hector. “Directional Control Team One ready, sir.”

  Hector takes a breath and sits forward. He hits a button and his mic turns on. “It’s time, people, look sharp. Open containers in arc sections six, twelve, and thirteen. D-Con One, Two, and Three, take them. Switch views from the lead zombies up to monitors B, C, and D.”

  Below him, fingers fly across keyboards, then, the fingers move to the joysticks. The images shown on three monitors in front of the room change to show a first-person view of moving through clearings. The image on each dips and bobs with each step of the zombie that the camera is attached to. Another monitor on the side, labeled Unit-Overlay, shows a map of the area, a red-dot where the knights’ base is located, and a swarm of green dots streaming from three blue squares.

  Hector sniffs. “Spread ’em out, then push a jolt to pick up speed.”

  Paul—and most all the others working below in the bullpen—operate joysticks simultaneously by using a single finger on the top of each stick. On their monitors, similar video feeds are displayed in small windows, one feed per joystick. Paul moves a hand to his keyboard and types in a command:

  gang: push

  H
e hits ENTER and moves his hand back to the joystick. The video feeds on his screen all quiver for a moment, then they start to shake more rapidly as those zombies run.

  Hector watches the Unit Overlay monitor and sees the three green swarms spread out. One is north of the target base, one is farther away and east, and one is southeast. They’re all moving toward the red dot. “Okay, engage razors and arm them.”

  There’s a moment when the room holds its breath, as each operator below types in another command:

  gang: razor, arm

  They hit ENTER, and each is prompted with a confirmation.

  CONFIRM ACTION? (Y/N)

  Hector is watching the command screen of someone stationed below him. “Confirm.”

  They confirm, and on the Unit Overlay, the green dots change to triangles, and around each, a circle grows outward. At first, it looks like a picture of a bubble bath with overlapped circles, but slowly, thanks to the operators in the bullpen, the zombies spread out, and the circles no longer overlap.

  July practices a parry and thrust combo with the Patton saber that Ghost taught her. Unlike the dagger, she uses this weapon in her dominant hand, and with each thrust, she pops forward on her right leg, extending the tip of the thin, three-foot-long blade far in front of her. She grows more confident with the movement, and she executes the combination faster with each repetition. She does it one more time, then she pauses in her ending position.

  She checks her form; first inspecting the sword and arm, then her back and shoulders, and finally her legs. She stares at the dagger strapped to her left thigh—the dagger Li Chen stabbed her with. It’s almost a foot long in the black nylon sheath Ricochet found for her, and the black checkered grip on the handle almost looks like a porcupine’s back in the light. That’s mine now… I never thought I’d be strapping on blades and—

  Her eyes dart up and into the forest she faces. She squints, then she closes her eyes and only listens. “Does anybody hear that?”