I Zombie I [Omnibus Edition]

by Jack Wallen

  Okay, one step at a time.

  ~

  “Jacob.” Just as I was struggling to bring myself to an upright position, my angel of mercy’s voice greeted my eardrums.

  “Bethany? I thought…. Fuck, who cares what I thought? I’m just glad to see you.”

  And I was. I really couldn’t express just how glad I was to see her perfect face.

  “Let’s go.”

  Mostly because she didn’t give me time.

  “Give me a little time here, I just…”

  “Sorry dear, time is not a luxury we can afford. The Zs are back in full force, and the new Obliterator is ready to rock. We have to get you to a safe location.”

  Bethany managed to help me to a different room on the same floor. My legs were a bit shaky, so I was glad for the assistance.

  The girls had managed to somehow gather enough material to effectively soundproof a small office in the electronics store. And from that room, Bethany could control the Obliterator 2.0, as she fondly dubbed it. Without Sally catching a glimpse, Bethany handed me a set of earplugs for extra protection.

  “This is going to be really loud. Are we ready?”

  She got the thumbs up from everyone, and then set off the device. Initially, it seemed like nothing was happening. After a moment, I could feel a certain change in the air…pressure was developing. The pressure wasn’t steady; it was more like a heavy, pulsing pressure to go along with the oscillations of the Obliterator 2.0. The feeling was a bit sickening, like stomach cramps and diarrhea. I wasn’t sure if that was isolated to me, or if everyone could feel the same thing. I wasn’t about to say anything as Sally might get creeped out. I wasn’t really sure why I was protecting the woman. Maybe it meant there was still plenty of humanity left in me.

  I wondered how we could know if and when the station was clear. Of course, Bethany, in her infinite wisdom, had planned ahead. She turned a small monitor toward us and switched it on. She had placed a camera at the top of the stairs so we could check on the mass exodus. She caught me staring at her and smiled. I returned her smile and added a nod, hoping she would understand that I planned on thanking her later. I think she understood precisely how I intended on thanking her as her smile changed from innocent to vixen-ish in the bat of an eyelash.

  On the screen, chaos was ours to behold. I was reminded of the sea of bodies clawing and digging to get into the laboratory; only this time, the door opened the other way. It was working. It was brilliant.

  Bethany mumbled something. I went to remove the plugs, but she stopped me by shaking her head with wide eyes that said don’t even think about it! I complied. The last thing we needed was to have me scrambling to join the masses in their escape.

  It was amazing how intent the creatures were on exiting the station. It was also becoming quite clear that not everyone was going to make it. No pity was forthcoming for the monsters. Let them tear one another apart. Let them choke and drown on their own soiled blood. Let them swim in pools of their own viscera and entrails.

  I was surprised to feel a bubble of rage rise up in my gut for what had happened. It should have subsided when Mistress Irony kissed Godwin on the cheek, and he found himself frothing at the mouth with little more than a moan on his lips. It didn’t. But that rage had to be locked down tight. I refused to be its slave.

  A thought pulled me out of my rage-induced moment of self-pity. How were we going to keep the zombies out of the station without keeping the Obliterator running twenty-four-seven? Since Bethany had the machine hardwired into the station-wide loudspeaker system, there would be no way to escape the wall of sound. Communication would be difficult, if not impossible, between us.

  “Bethany!” Everyone’s head jerked my way in surprise. I still had the earplugs in, so my voice was certain to be louder than necessary.

  I read the what? on her lips, and then relayed my thoughts. The concern on her face gave away the fact she hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  I was pretty sure her lips spoke We’ll think of something. Either that, or We reek of pudding. I was guessing the former.

  At some point, we were going to have to open the door to this soundproof room and let the wrath of the Obliterator inflict its special kind of hate upon us. The last of the moaners would squeak through the exit, and we’d have to make our move.

  If I believed in God, I would have prayed. Hell, I was thinking if I had belief in God, this whole ordeal would certainly have had me second-guessing that belief. Nevertheless, God or no God, I felt like praying…or something.

  As I pondered the existence of the Almighty, Bethany pulled out the laptop she had so smartly packed along. I assumed she was going to be checking her e-mail or attempting to crack the Mengele file. She saw me staring and gave me a wink to assure me she was up to some seriously good tricks. I trusted her implicitly.

  The laptop finished booting, and Bethany started doing her thing, which was beyond my personal comprehension. I glanced over at the screen and saw that she was ticking out commands that I had never seen. Eventually, a schematic popped up on the screen. The schematic looked as if it could be the train station. The girl was good, of that there was no doubt. I continued watching, my eyes not even bothering to blink.

  Bethany spoke, but her lips were facing downward, so I couldn’t catch her words. I tapped her on the shoulder and made that fact obvious. She repeated herself, only this time slowly and facing me.

  “I…am…going…to…direct…the…sound…to…the…outside…speakers…once…the…station…is…clear…I…don’t…know…why…I…didn’t…think…of…it…before.”

  My genius girlfriend. There, I said it. I had to be beaming with some strange sort of pride. Everyone looked at me as if I had a pelican resting on my head.

  We all stared at the tiny monitor. Fortunately, its size didn’t give away too much in the way of details, which saved us all from seeing yet more of the same horror we saw at the lab. These Zs were showing no mercy to each other. Blood and flesh were piling up at the entryways, yet we looked on, rubbernecking the worst accident we’d ever seen.

  As soon as the main floor was clear, Bethany tapped out a few more commands, and there was a noticeable shift in the air around us. The oscillating pressure eased up, which effectively relaxed my bowels. For a moment I was afraid I was going to do something I hadn’t done since I was a child.

  Bethany instructed us to cover our ears. I still couldn’t hear, but she made the universal sign for ‘Cover your ears’ by placing her cupped hands over her ears. We all complied right before she opened the office door to peek her head beyond the soundproof barrier. We all must have assumed some nauseating wave of sound was going to punch us in the collective gut. When that didn’t happen, we stood and followed Bethany out the door.

  I assumed the sound of the Obliterator could still be heard, but it was off in the distance. I left my earplugs in, just in case. We never did test to see what decibel level was necessary before a zombie went apeshit and followed Elvis out of the building. Just to be safe, we had assumed the level had to be high, even though it was now outside the building. We could still hear it, after all.

  Outside of that distant thrumming, the station was deadly quiet. I looked over at Bethany and pointed to my ears. She nodded, giving me the okay to remove my plugs. When I did, I was surprised that, even with the distance, the sound still made me a bit twitchy. It was tolerable, only a bit uncomfortable.

  “What now?” Sally spoke nervously.

  “We need to see about locating a train. We find a train, and we’ll know what to do.” Bethany went back into the office to collect her belongings.

  “Why did you need the ear plugs?” A very accusatory tone spilled out with Sally’s words.

  “Excuse me?” I was unsure of how Sally had noticed the plugs, and why she cared.

  “He’s prone to severe tinnitus. Had he not been wearing plugs his ears would be ringing so loud he wouldn’t hear us for days,” Susan chimed in so quickly
with the lie I nearly believed her myself.

  “Where do we look?” I changed the subject before Sally could question me further.

  We decided the best, first place to look was the tracks. Maybe there would be a stopped train and maybe that stopped train could be started and used to take us to freedom. Or maybe we’d wind up walking a few miles of track before we came across a train. Or worse yet, maybe we would walk a few hundred miles only to find every train had already abandoned Germany with the hopes of finding safe passage to the promised land.

  Honestly, I didn’t give a fuck. I just wanted out.

  The first floor was empty. Due to proximity, the sound was certainly louder, almost unbearable. I should have popped the plugs back into my ears, but I was afraid something would happen to one of my girls and I’d miss it completely. I would just have to suffer…ever the martyr.

  “You know what bothers me the most?” Bethany asked in a veiled whisper. “The silence. It makes this station seem even more surreal than it already is.”

  Surreal. That was a fairly accurate way to sum up the situation, although I would be prone to pepper the description with a few colorful metaphors and an F-bomb or two.

  “I’m going to check and see if there’s a train schedule posted.” Bethany picked up her pace. “Maybe we can figure out when the last train left.”

  The ticket booth was near the entrance. I wasn’t sure how or why we forgot about the mounds of carnage, but we did. Somewhere near the twenty-yard-line from our opponent’s goal, the stench stood us up only to knock us over. It wasn’t just the normal stench of blood and meat, there was an undertone that made the smell far more repulsive than it should be. I was shocked to find out a room full of tossed human innards could actually have a more repulsive smell hidden deep within its bowels. After seeing war and smelling its carnage, the tang of death had offended my olfactory sense enough to know flesh from fantasy. This was something different. There was a sourness to this stench that natural death didn’t own. This stank as if the bodies had been festering in the summer sun for days, or weeks. It was disturbing, to say the least.

  “Bethany, do you smell it?”

  “I smell a shit-storm of blood. Is that what you mean?”

  “There’s something else…something…I don’t know…foul.” Even as the words left my lips, I knew the very idea was ridiculous. Even so, my nose and my gut were insisting there was another layer underneath the standard stench.

  “Jacob, there are hundreds of mangled bodies piled up all over the entrance. Stomachs and intestines have been spilled. Of course, there’s something foul in the air. Now come on, we have to find a train.”

  “You don’t understand. There’s something beyond flesh and blood there. I can feel it.”

  “Jacob, you’re scaring me.”

  “You don’t need to be afraid.”

  “Well, I am. Now, we have to go, and you’re going with us.”

  “Bethany! I found something!” Sally yelled from across the expanse of the room.

  “Jacob, they need us. Come on.” Bethany grabbed my arm, pulling me out of whatever fugue had me in its grip.

  “Okay. Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Sally was proudly holding a walkie-talkie she had found attached to the empty uniform pants of a station employee. Also attached were a pistol, some keys, and a Taser. Finally, we had some protection and the very tool that might locate our means of escape.

  “Does it work?” Sally handed the walkie over to Bethany.

  “I’m sure it does. We only have to hope someone alive has one of these babies as well. Just have to turn it on and…”

  The walkie crackled to life. Judging from the looks of the thing, it should have some decent range.

  “Hello? Is anyone out there? My name is Bethany. I’m with three other survivors. Hello?”

  We all held our breath hoping someone, anyone, would respond. Well, not anyone. It would make a huge difference if the respondent just happened to be the driver of a train awaiting departure.

  All we heard was silence.

  “Hello? Is anyone there? Please…”

  Silence.

  The air was slowly leaking from our confidence. Something had to give eventually. It seemed we were always just inches from rejoining the living world, but every time we got close, something slapped us back down. It was degrading, demoralizing.

  “Hello? Where are you?”

  And there it was. We had no idea if whoever was speaking from the ether could help us or not, but just the sound of another voice was a music we desperately needed to hear.

  “We’re in the train station. Where are you? Who are you?” Bethany spoke nearly too fast to understand. She repeated herself just in case.

  “My name is Gunther. I am a conductor. Train Five-Oh-Seven. I am not at the station, but I can be there in about an hour. Can you wait for me there?”

  “Yes! Oh God, yes!”

  “Be at track two in one hour. I will see you there.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Just when I thought we had lost all hope of making it out of this hell, along came Gunther to save the day.

  “We’re saved!”

  The girls began a little jumping up and down celebratory dance. I wanted to join them, but something prevented me from it. Something. Some. Thing. I wasn’t sure if it was the rot inside of me or the rot surrounding me, but some other influence was pulling me down, causing me to give up, give in. There was a dirty seed that had been sown in me, and it was begging to bloom. But if the seed blossomed, I would be completely lost to the monster…the moaner. I had to keep fighting the urge.

  Urge. I wish I knew whether that was all it was. I was afraid that whatever was inside of me was more than just an urge.

  “What do you think, Jacob?” Bethany asked happily.

  “About what?” Oops. I was caught off guard.

  “Should we make our way to the track now, or should we collect a few supplies?”

  Since the track was only about fifteen minutes from our current location, according to Bethany’s spot-on map-reading skills, it made sense for us to gather some supplies first.

  “Search around and see if you can find anything we might need. A source of light, food, weapons, anything.” I had a gun and I knew there was only one thing to do with it.

  “Bethany.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “Just listen to me. I want you to have this, just in case.” I attempted to hand her my gun.

  “In case of what?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Seriously, I’m― Wait, no! No way. I can’t. I couldn’t.”

  “You might have to. Look at me. If this takes over, you have to be able to protect yourself and the others. We can’t keep pretending.”

  “I can just continue sedating you until…”

  “Until what?”

  “I have the encrypted file. At least let me keep sedating you until I find out for sure what’s in that file. It could be the cure.”

  “But why would Godwi―”

  “I don’t think he knew what was in that file.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The other files all had the same encryption. But this one is different. And the time stamp on the file is over ten years old. That file hasn’t been decrypted; it hasn’t been read. Trust me.”

  “I do. And you should trust me. Take it…as a failsafe. In case it happens, and I can’t revert. Please.”

  Bethany finally took the weapon. Her pleading touched me. I’ve never felt such a deep emotional need coming from another before. I only hoped she knew the need was completely reciprocated.

  “I found a flashlight!” Susan’s squeaky voice perked up as she pulled the working Maglite from another guard. I never thought I’d see the day when a teenage girl was so thrilled about pulling something from a dead, mangled body.

  “Jacob, there are vending machines in that room. We could break into them.” Sally po
inted toward a small alcove with a refreshment sign over the door.

  “Junk food is better than no food.” In the snack room, four glass-front machines stared back at me, begging me to partake of their delicious snack food items. I would, with the help of a fire extinguisher.

  I’d always wanted to do that―pick up a bright red fire extinguisher and smash it through a glass window. The move was so iconic to the American cinema. It screamed Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford and any other handsome modern-day hero. I had always wanted to be that hero. Strangely enough, now I probably was.

  The glass shattered exactly how I hoped it would. Even the sound was satisfying.

  As Susan helped me load a pack with the booty, her eyes glazed over, the old kid at the candy store made real.

  “Go ahead…” I urged.

  “Seriously?” She smiled.

  “Why not?”

  It was touching to see Susan actually care to gain the permission of an adult to indulge in a few candy bars.

  “Care if I join you?”

  “Be mah guest,” Susan muttered, her mouth already filled with chocolaty, nougaty goodness.

  It had been a long time since I indulged myself like this, too many doctors telling me my cholesterol or my heart couldn’t take it. Fuck them, I thought. Eat the candy. Live your life while you have it to live. Before you know it, you’re a fucking zombie dining on human brains, the thought of candy long usurped by destruction.

  Susan and I wiped our mouths and fingers free of the incriminating evidence before we finished packing the bag.

  “That was good.” Susan’s grin was ear to ear.

  “Yes, it was, my little friend. Yes, it was.”

  It was time. We had just enough ticks on the watch to make it to Track Number Two before Gunther arrived with our salvation, our ferry across this river Styx.

  And I was still unsure what to do. I was hoping some divine prophesy would fall into my lap, giving me a holy answer that I couldn’t refuse. I should know better. I would get no sign from God. Any decision made would be based on fact and instinct.