I Zombie I [Omnibus Edition]

by Jack Wallen

  Joshua stepped into our circle of intelligence. “Okay, I hate to interrupt the celebration, but we need to wrap this up. If there’s a trap in that car, then most likely it was planted by the Zero Day Collective. If that’s the case—”

  Once again, Rizzo chimed in with the only intelligent bit of information necessary.

  “We really just need to get the H-E-double hockey sticks outta here. The longer we wait, the more likely—”

  Rizzo’s words were overtaken by an all-too familiar sound—the rattle and clacking of bone.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Boners? Now? Fuck.” Josh voiced everyone’s feelings, before he took off for the Hummer. “Morgan, man the gun. We’re going to need all the heavy firepower we can muster.”

  Morgan complied and scrambled to the top of the truck like an apocalyptic ballerina. Within seconds she had the handles of the weapon in her grasp and was ready to pulverize anything that crossed her sights.

  “Into the trucks, everyone. Now!” Joshua’s voice commanded an attention I hadn’t previously heard from him. Not one person shrugged off the demand. As we filed into the vehicles, the sounds of hell on earth played a wretched symphony in the background.

  My face was planted against the window. Morbid curiosity was locked in battle with my consciousness. Why I wanted to see a battalion of Boners was beyond me.

  “Oh my God,” Echo whispered. “I think I’m going to get sick.”

  I reached back and placed a hand on Echo’s cheek. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Before I could continue, the sound of gunfire interrupted the moment with a blistering, angry clatter. A cloud of dust appeared. Random body parts poked out from the roiling cloud: an arm, a leg, a shoulder—all of it covered in bone.

  “Oh my God, we’re going to die,” whispered Echo, under her breath.

  “B, do you think now would be a good time for the Obliterator? Or maybe another sonic cannon?”

  Our last encounter with a gang of Boners had involved us using a sonic cannon to shatter the bone armor so we could then shoot them down with conventional weapons.

  “I don’t have what we need for a sonic cannon. Jamal, I barely have what we need to keep us alive.”

  Jamal gently grabbed my face in the palms of his hands. “I know this for truth, B…I haven’t told you enough how amazing you are. You’ve managed to keep safe our little group where anyone else would have failed. You are truly astonishing.”

  “The last time someone was this nice to me, I had to put a bullet through his…”

  I couldn’t believe I went there. In the midst of a zombie attack, I besmirched the memory of the single most important man whose path I’d ever crossed. Tears began to well; I fought as hard as I could to keep them at bay. It was a battle lost before it even began.

  “I don’t blame you.” Jamal offered me a soft and gentle grin.

  “For what?”

  Jamal nodded at me. “The tears. This is some fucked up shit, B-dizz. You’ve managed to keep this crew together through some of the thickest, baddest of it all. I don’t know how you do it.”

  Before I could reply, the truck was hit by a charging rhino—or so it seemed.

  “Let’s give the Obliterator a go.”

  Against my better judgment, I pulled the laptop out, plugged it in, and brought some serious noise to the party. The high-pitched oscillations danced through the darkening sky and assailed the ears and dissolving brains of the Boners. One by one the monsters stopped. Unlike the Moaners and Screamers, the Boners didn’t automatically begin banging their heads against the concrete below their feet. That would have been far too easy. Instead, they seemed momentarily lost, their heads lolling back and forth. Morgan took the opportunity to unleash her special flavor of the month. Bullets crashed against bone; bone shattered against flesh. Slowly but surely she was getting into the creamy center of the armored zombies.

  “This is…” Jamal whispered.

  “Surreal?” I asked.

  “No…fucked up,” he returned.

  I couldn’t argue with Jamal’s rudimentary summation.

  It wasn’t enough. Though the Obliterator slowed them down, the small gang of Zombius Erectus 2.0 made their way to Rizzo and Josh’s Hummer and attacked. They all stood on one side of the truck and simultaneously laid their hands to metal.

  “What the…?” I started.

  “…fuck?” Jamal finished my thought.

  Echo leaned over my lap to get a better look at the action.

  “Holy mother of shit.” Echo’s voice was a mere whisper. “Are they…?”

  “…working together,” I answered. “It would seem so.”

  They were. We’d had our suspicions about this new iteration of undead back in Seattle, where they’d worked in conjunction to locate and trap us in the underground city. What we were now seeing confirmed that assumption dead to rights.

  “We have to help them, Bethany.”

  Before I could reply to Echo’s demand, the Boners managed to tip the other truck over on its side. As it rolled, Echo released a scream that shrieked inside my ear canals. The Boners continued pushing on one side of the Hummer.

  I wiggled my way to the driver’s seat. “I have an idea. Jamal, tell Morgan to hold on tight.”

  Jamal complied as I turned the engine over.

  “Bethany, what are we doing?” Echo was near hysteria.

  “Bone breaks under pressure. So we’re going to apply enough pressure to snap those sons of bitches in half.”

  I turned the wheel of the Hummer and drove in a slow half-circle until the front of the vehicle was pointed directly toward the Boners. Without too much gusto, I pressed on the gas and moved the truck forward. In a stroke of luck, the zombies were so intent on getting their hands on the brains of Josh and Rizzo, they were completely oblivious of us.

  The business end of the truck made contact with the bone-armored zombies and I punched the gas. A deep crack and snap of armor plating thumped and echoed through the truck. The sound was nauseating, like breaking every bone in your body at once.

  Trapped monsters pushed, with every ounce of strength they had, against the trucks. I matched every shove with a punch of the accelerator until the snapping of bone gave way to the rush of rotting bodily fluids. A brown-and-black sludge splattered the windshield of the Hummer. Instinctively I hit the wipers, which only served to smear the rotten, viscous fluid over the glass.

  “They have to be dead, right? I mean dead dead.” I tossed the question up into the air, hoping someone, anyone, would answer in the affirmative.

  Jamal was the first to answer. “I can’t calculate…”

  “To hell with it.” I didn’t like his answer, so I slammed the truck into park and opened my door.

  “Bethany, you can’t…”

  I could, and I did—regardless of how much Echo begged me to stay. I wasn’t about to let Rizzo and Josh die. There’d been enough blood on my hands to date. These stories have yet to be fully written and I was going to make sure they got the Hollywood ending they deserved—apocalypse or not.

  “Josh, Rizzo, you okay?” I called out.

  No reply.

  I banged on the roof of the truck. “Come on, I know you’re in there. Answer me, ya punks!”

  “Yeah, we’re here.” Josh’s voice was muffled.

  “Is it safe to come out now?” Rizzo’s voice bounced out from the cockpit.

  “Josh.” Morgan’s voice rang out from the upright roof. Her jackboots slammed against the metal of the hood before they carried her across the divide between the trucks. She landed on the side of the upturned Hummer with the grace of a puma. The leaping feat was almost as impressive as her manhandling of the driver’s side door until she ripped it open.

  The sound of bone clacking against the hood of the other truck shocked me into bringing my pistol to bear on the crushed zombies. I unleashed a round into each of their skulls. Now that the apocalypse had mankind bent over, there were so
few rules left. One of the remaining rules—the single most important to follow—was to always, always, always…double-tap.

  With the undead finally and completely dead, I turned my attention back to the rescue at hand. Morgan had her hands full with pulling Rizzo from the wreckage. The waif of a woman hopped out of the Hummer and jumped to the ground with an unexpected grace. Josh, on the other hand, hit the ground like a bull. Morgan followed suit and nodded at Josh to help her return the Hummer to its natural position. It took all four of us to finally get the vehicle upright. When we did, Josh hopped behind the wheel and turned the ignition key.

  Nothing.

  Again.

  Nothing.

  Before he wasted the Hummer’s precious battery, Morgan stopped him.

  “It’s probably flooded. We’ll need to give it some time to dry out. I don’t think the engines of these things are made to survive rolling.” Joshua peeked into the cockpit.

  “We don’t have time,” I said, as I jumped from the truck. “We’ll all have to squeeze into the other truck. I hope you don’t mind a tight fit.”

  After transferring the supplies from the downed truck, we rolled out, with two extra passengers. After getting Rizzo to promise to behave, we helped her and Echo into the back. They were the smallest in the group, so it only made sense.

  We finally drove off, having not saved a single civilian, toward New Salt Lake City.

  chapter 8 | the gateway drug of choice

  The battery on the camera light blinked to solid red before the device shut down. Before the lens, Dr. Richard Gerand sat at a table, his upper body splayed out, motionless. The slow movement of his chest and shoulders clearly indicated life was still to be found within the man. But what else?

  A low, barely audible grunt escaped Gerand’s drooling lips. His right index finger twitched before his torso jerked back into a seated position. Sweat poured from his temples and forehead. When his eyes opened they revealed a patchwork map of red veins, half of which had ruptured to spill precious blood into the purest of whites.

  Gerand’s jaw dropped open; his teeth clacked together once, twice. Finally a breath escaped his mouth, followed by a jet stream inhalation.

  “I’m still alive.” A monstrous sigh escaped Gerand’s lips.

  He attempted to stand, but unsure legs forced him back into his chair.

  Standing sentinel beside the table was a stainless steel operating tray, which held an unused blood-drawing kit. From the kit, Gerand pulled the requisite rubber tube and tied it tight around his arm to draw up the veins. He sterilized the skin in the crook of his arm, removed the syringe from the sanitary packaging, and plunged the needle into his arm to do the deed.

  “I have to know,” Gerand whispered, as blood filled the attached vial.

  A vice clamped down on his head. He dropped the syringe and wrapped his fingers around his skull. Instinct made him want desperately to force his head into the brick walls of the basement. Any moment, the sound would return and he would know his fate.

  Any…moment.

  The crushing head pain subsided. Again, he attempted to stand; again, his legs buckled underneath him.

  “Son of a bitch!” he shouted, and slammed his fist to the table. When he looked back up, he caught sight of the camera.

  “Come to me, oh teller of truth.” Gerand reached across the table to get a hand on the nearest tripod leg. The camera was out of reach. Again he stretched; again he failed. His eyes darted around to find something to help him out of the situation. He assumed the weakness in his legs would soon wear off.

  “Fuck, I don’t want to wait for this. I have to know.”

  He spotted a rubber tourniquet used for blood drawing. He grabbed it and whipped it outward, toward the tripod leg. The rubber whip spun around the leg and took hold. With a gentle tug, the outfit came tumbling forward until the camera was in Gerand’s hands.

  “Goddamn battery!”

  The camera in its current state was of no use. The SD card within, however, was. The video on the memory card would have all the proof he needed to convince her it was all very real and very true.

  Gerand pulled his laptop from the chair to his left and set it carefully on the table. He tapped in his ten-digit password and fired up his web browser.

  “Zombie Radio dot org.”

  When the website opened, it offered up the promise it was the “Personal soundtrack to the end of the world.”

  “Jesus, people will try to capitalize on anything these days,” Gerand spat.

  He knew, however, it was the only way to find her; and she was the only hope he had of making the public aware that a cure was in fact possible.

  “…that’s right, Zombie Radio Nation, I have heard it all now. Steve-o asked the one question on everyone’s mind; is it okay to fall in love with one of the undead? Well, Steve—it’s okay if I call ya Steve, right?—no, it’s not. Why do I say that? Because I have what the masses would call a rational mind. That’s right, I said it; you, my friend, have crossed a line, okay? Ya know why? I’ll tell ya why, so make sure, Steve-o, you have your ear pressed tightly up against the speaker on your little radio. Here’s the why—because zombies are nothing but a gateway drug. Yah, I said it…a gateway drug. Next thing ya know, you’re wanting to bang vampires or Frankenstein’s monster. Or worse, you’re getting werewolves to blow you while you’re doing lines of coke off Igor’s hump. What hump, you say? This hump, jackass! Can you believe that, listeners? But seriously, if you’re even considering that a life with a zombie just might be for you, grab a pistol and give it the best hummer you can muster. And while you’re busy shining the knob of that weapon, pull the trigger. What other flavors of crazy have you for me, my lovelies? Why don’t you send me a tweet and let me know what’s going on? It’s always good to hear from my fellow survivors. You know where to reach me. In the meantime, how about a little song dedicated to our dear friend Steve-o? The song is by the Groovy Ghoulies and it’s called ‘Zombie Crush.’ Let’s get creepy!”

  The grunge-inspired, punk-riff song drizzled from the speakers of the laptop as Gerand decided it was finally time to take his work public. He opened up his Twitter account and dropped his truth in the lap of the DJ in one hundred and forty characters.

  @_zombieradio I have the cure. need to connect to bethany nitshimi

  It was all he needed to say. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the reply.

  chapter 9 | the wall, the metaphor, the skeleton dream

  We drove through the night. The Hummer was packed tight, but at this point creature comfort had to take a backseat to survival. No one bitched; good thing, else they’d get backhanded by any given passenger packed in like forty pounds of ass in twenty-pound-ass-capacity jeans. I dozed on and off. Most of all I just needed to shut down my brain. Every waking moment of the apocalypse was spent with my mind spinning circles around how to get Jacob back and the pressure of having the weight of humanity on my shoulders.

  My personal cross was a bit on the heavy side.

  “Bethany,” Jamal whispered, and nodded for me to lean in. I complied. “I did a quick scan of the RF communication within the truck. The subdermal transponders used to locate Joshua and Morgan are not even remotely secure. It took me about forty-five seconds to hack into them and pinpoint their whereabouts. We need to either remove them or secure them.”

  I scanned the truck—no one was listening.

  “I’m all for securing them. Can you do it without their knowledge?”

  Jamal bit his lower lip. I was almost hurt by the illegal use of the sexy lip move, thinking it restricted to women and their flirtations. In the end, I opted to overlook it, given how adorable it was on him.

  “Yes,” he finally replied. “However…if we make any changes in the software on the chips, it would most likely mean whoever is watching them will lose their location.”

  “That’s good, though, right?”

  Jamal narrowed his eyes at me. “Well, yes, if tho
se watching him are the bad guys. If they are the good guys we could be seriously monkeying with their sauce. And that sauce just happened to save us back there.”

  He had a point. As much as I wanted that system shut down, the failsafe it offered brought a reassurance nothing else had.

  “That’s a tough one, Jamal. What if you sneaked into the ZRT system and modified the tracking software with the changes you make to the chip? Maybe set up encryption key authentication on both sides so that the Zombie Response Team hackers have no idea that changes have been made to their system. As far as both ends are concerned, everything works as it should. We, on the other hand, know the truth.”

  Jamal didn’t reply. Instead he pulled open his laptop and allowed his fingers to dance across the keys. The tips and taps of the keypad were hypnotic. I desperately wanted to join him on his mission, but I knew the best place for me at the moment was leading our little group to safety.

  “I’m in,” Jamal grinned.

  “Your boudoir banter is getting better, my dear. Can you locate the software and make the changes?”

  Jamal looked at me as if I’d just insulted his dead mother. I knew better. Of course he could make the changes. Before I could amend my statement, Jamal looked up with a Cheshire Cat grin on his lips.

  “Done. I’ve set up the encryption key on the server. All I have to do now is modify the chips themselves, add the key, and their system will officially meet our impossible security demands.”

  I leaned in and kissed him square on the lips. “I could love you long time. Sooo long time, right now.”

  Jamal pulled back, laughter spilling from his lips. He got the reference—graduate school, late nights, and too much anime.

  “God, we were nerds,” I whispered.

  “Were? Are you serious?”

  “Hey, take a look at this.” Morgan’s voice broke the spell Jamal and I had woven.