by Jack Wallen
One by one he climbed the stairs until he reached the top. The door creaked open and the light from the basement spilled out onto the kitchen floor. When the squeal of the hinges faded to silence, an eerie blanket of fear settled over the area. Gerand had but one agenda at the moment—to secure the house. Deep within the recesses of his mind, he knew it was senseless to lock doors and draw blinds in the apocalypse. The rule of law was forfeit, so nothing would prevent muggers, rapists, and looters from entering your home and having their way with you or your belongings. It was cold comfort to seal up the house, but it was still a comfort he needed.
As he stepped to the front door, he chanced a glance out through the peephole. On the street in front of the house, a group of Moaners shambled about. There was no sign of life. No black vans, no red dots of laser-powered gun sights. All there was…was death.
Slowly and silently he shuffled about the room, locking doors and windows, shuttering blinds. Nothing could be left to chance. He was too close to making amends for unleashing hell.
With the house locked down, he carefully made his way back down into the basement to stand sentinel over his computer until Bethany finally reached out.
chapter 20 | the hell mouth and doll parts
Jamal and I arrived back within the safe confines of the great wall and raced to our new headquarters. There was so much to do, so much to plan. Before we could entertain thoughts of evil-genius doings, we had to get the gang up to speed on what we’d learned from Rip Vanity.
“You’re kidding,” Morgan exclaimed, “a concert? With the world crashing down around us? That is insane.”
Jamal jumped in. “That’s exactly what I thought, until they demonstrated the firepower they are working with.”
I explained The Answer to Joshua and Morgan. My words couldn’t, in any way, do it justice. Thankfully, Jamal had had the wherewithal to record Mauser’s solo on his smartphone. He pulled out the device, plugged it into a set of external speakers, and tapped Play.
“Holy shit,” exclaimed Josh, “the dude can shred.”
“His ability to ‘shred’ is moot, Joshua. What is significant and, quite frankly, brilliant about this is the underlying sound. Listen more carefully.”
Jamal turned the speakers up until they crackled with distortion. When he lowered the sound below the threshold of pain, Echo’s eyes lit up. “That’s the Obliterator!” she shouted.
It took a moment, but it finally clicked with the rest of the group.
Morgan stood up straight and glanced between Jamal and me. “So this Mauser guy is going to unleash an undead-destroying solo in the middle of this concert hoping the Moaners and Screamers for miles around will start committing mass suicide?”
Jamal nodded. “Yep, that about sums it up.”
Josh and Morgan shared a knowing look. When Morgan’s gaze returned to me, it was filled with doubt.
“You realize how crazy this is? It goes against everything we stand for.”
Jamal sucked in a quick breath to take the stage. Morgan backed him down with an upraised hand and then continued.
“Sure, this could work to stop the first wave of zombies. But what about the next, and the next? Are we really willing to risk the lives of that many people on some whim dreamed up by some burned-out rock star?”
Joshua shifted his eyes to Morgan and spoke out of the corner of this mouth.
“It is Doubletap Suicide. They’re kinda huge.”
Morgan snapped her head in his direction. The look in her eyes alone made the big man wilt. She finally turned back to me.
“What about the Zero Day Collective? How does an Obliterator-laced guitar solo take care of them in any way?”
“That’s where we come in.” It was my turn to stand a bit taller. “We need to form a plan to take them out. In fact, we probably need to form a few plans—in case the first plan fails. We might only get a couple of shots at this and I refuse to fail.”
Jamal chimed in. “Vanity announced the festival on Zombie Radio. It would be easy to assume the Zero Day Collective monitors that station, so we can be damn sure they’ll make an appearance at the show. We just don’t know how.”
“Yes, we do.” Morgan pulled a chair out and sat down. “They’ll do what they do best—fly in a few battalions of zombies and unleash them on the crowd. While the Moaners and Screamers busy themselves with de-braining and infecting the living, the ZDC will sit back and wait until the crowd is more manageable and then swoop down for us.”
“Or better yet, they’ll manage the thing from a distance and never even be seen.” It was Echo’s turn to bring us all to silence. When we turned her way, she innocently waved at us.
“She’s right.” I said. “Echo, you’re brilliant. It’ll be a risk, but if we split up, we can have one group working the show and the other attacking the ZDC HQ.”
Morgan pulled out her phone. “Actually, there’s no reason to split us up, not when I can call in the cavalry. We have at least two Zombie Response Teams close enough to make it by Friday.”
A plan. It felt good to finally have some semblance of organization on our side. I had been so out of my element without an office, a network, and a file to hack. The day-to-day management of living in the apocalypse had proved to be more of a challenge than cracking the CDC security. But here we were…surviving as a group, relying on one another, and doing a damn good job of it.
Morgan passed our best-guess coordinates on to her teams and instructed them to arrive Friday and wait for the signal to attack. When she hung up, she turned to us and smiled.
“It’s all set. The Zero Day Collective won’t know what hit them.”
“Unless they had a tap on your phone.” Jamal spoke up. “In which case, they know exactly what’s about to hit them and how best to respond.”
“Seriously, Jamal?” I slapped his chest hard. “You have to ruin the moment?”
“What?” Jamal’s face twisted in confusion. “I was just hypothesizing—”
I placed my hand over his mouth. “Don’t. Not now. We need this win.”
“Besides,” Josh interrupted, “if they’d had a tap on our phones, they’d already have stormed the castle.”
Jamal shrugged. “He’s right. I’m sorry. But before you make any more calls, please let me have a look at your phone.”
Morgan handed the phone over immediately.
“No need to wait; it’s all yours. Just make sure I get it back. That baby has every contact number for every Zombie Response Team. If I lose those numbers, we’re in trouble.”
Jamal nodded. “Before I do anything, I’ll back the numbers up to a memory card and transfer them to my phone. That way, should your phone die we’ll have a backup.”
Before Jamal dropped into his own personal “techvana,” I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to me.
“It’s late. We better all try to get some rest.”
Everyone departed for the pews in the sanctum. Rizzo was already curled up with a bedroll ready for Echo. I watched her as she wiggled her way into the pew and under the covers. She caught me staring and smiled. In that moment, something washed over and through me—something I hadn’t felt in such a long time.
Family.
Jamal motioned for me to join him. The shallow wooden benches were too narrow to spoon, so we arranged ourselves head to head. Our sotto voce could carry easily to one another.
“Bethany,” Jamal whispered.
“Yes?”
Silence.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
I twisted around so I lay on my belly, my head perched on my hands so I could look into Jamal’s warm eyes. Someone’s candlelight flickered in his right iris. I melted a bit. “Not fair. The never mind game is off-limits in the apocalypse.”
Jamal smiled. A soft beam of moonlight caressed his cheeks and his eyes. The sight was pure art and it swelled my heart to bursting.
“I love you, Bethany.”
&nbs
p; Once again, the dams of my eyes unleashed a deluge.
Concern filled Jamal’s face. “Oh no. No, no, no. I’m so sorry, B. I take it back. Forget I—”
“I love you, too.”
My words silenced the man. It wasn’t until the smile returned to his face that I realized everything was as it should be.
As much as it could be with the world coming to an end.
We didn’t speak another word for fear of ruining the perfect moment. Instead, we turned back over and awaited the soft rain of sleep.
*
“Mother.”
The voice echoed from a distant past and rang out until it reverberated inside my skull. The sharp buzzing of the sound brought a lightning storm of pain along for the ride.
“Mother.”
Again the voice called for me—the age inappropriate for the spoken word.
The landscape shook; the dry, cracked Earth fissured until a blood-red, blinding light beamed from what could only be hell. As the quake subsided the voice returned.
“Mother.”
“I’m here!”
An arm shot out from the hellish hole and slapped down on the dirt. Slowly the arm tugged and pulled until the body of my baby boy stood naked before me, a single gunshot wound in the center of his forehead.
“Mother.” The voice of the man issued from the infant’s mouth. Another hand reached up from the crack and, within a heartbreak beat, a second baby Jacob stood behind the first.
“Mother.” Their voices spoke in unison.
A crash of lightning flashed and struck the first baby. A flood of flesh and blood washed over me.
“Jacob, where are you?” I cried out.
Another arm, another call for “mother,” another flash, another flood.
“Please answer me. I’m doing everything I can to find you.”
“Mother.”
“Stop!” I shouted. My tears did their best to wash Jacob’s blood from my cheeks. The sick, slick fluids ran into my mouth, down my neck, between my breasts.
I finally managed to clear my blood-blurred vision to reveal a dozen or more clones of my baby standing mere feet in front of me. Like tiny Nazi soldiers, they began to march forward, a minuscule goose-step parade. When the infantile army was upon me, the tiniest of fingers scraped and clawed at my flesh and clothing. Somehow the small figures managed to drag me to the ground. Another rain of blood washed over me, flowing deep into my mouth and throat. I tried to call out, but the words came out in garbled bubbles.
“Mother.”
The voices spoke in unison, the sound deafening, as hands collectively groped for my arm. A shot of pain danced down my flesh from my shoulder to my fingers. I felt a sharp tug as another flash of pain raced down my limb. Before I had a chance to scream, my arm ripped from its socket and the babies heaved it into the chasm.
A spider-crawl of fingers clambered onto my other arm to repeat the action. My cries of agony were muted by a spectacular display of lightning and a symphony of thunder. My babies continued to dismantle me: right leg, left leg. I lay on the hot ground, nothing more than a torso and head.
Three tiny fingers and a thumb reached into the socket of my right eye and dug out the orb. I could hear the stretch and snap of blood vessels and tendons. Before the optic nerve gave way, the hand turned the eye back upon me so I was looking at myself looking at my eye. My brain couldn’t comprehend the vision and threatened to shut down all together, until another set of fingers saved me from the confused state and removed the other eyeball.
Next went my ears, followed by my lower jaw. I couldn’t hear, see, or speak. All I could do was sense the movement around my remaining meat. What I felt next was a collection of hands playing tug of war with my head and torso. Eventually one team won and my head was freed from its perch on my shoulders.
Everything went black. I was surrounded by nothing. For the first time since the Mengele Virus had made its deadly appearance, I felt an absolute peace.
Completely undone, completely at ease.
Until the heat seared the remaining flesh off my body. How I knew what hell was ravishing my body, there was no way to tell—all I knew was fire, fear, and falling.
The many Jacobs tossed the remaining bits of me into the mouth of hell. The surge of heat raced up my back and poured into the gaping hole of my neck. Phantom limbs flailed about in a vain attempt to pull me up…or down (I couldn’t tell which). The gravity from the pit of hate held me fast. I couldn’t sit up, as I had no legs to counterbalance the act. I couldn’t cry out, as I had no mouth to speak. I couldn’t see the end, as I had no eyes. All I could do was feel the fire roasting what was once…me. Pain clearly registered and sent the hunk of meat that was once Bethany Nitshimi roasting as I fell.
“Bethany,” a familiar voice called out.
“Bethany, wake up.”
The voice tugged at my subconscious.
When my eyes finally opened, beads of sweat fell into their cracks and crevices to sting me into blinking. My arms danced about to gain purchase on something solid. Another fall into the pits of hell and I’d be done.
“It’s okay, Bethany, I’m here; Jamal is here for you.”
The voice finally registered and I flung my arms around his neck.
“Oh my God, Jamal. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.” I cried again.
“It’s okay, Bethany. It was just another bad dream.”
I pulled away from him. “No, it’s more than that. I don’t know how, but the dreams are trying to tell me something.”
The look on Jamal’s face registered some flavor of sympathy tainted with a maddening doubt.
“I know it’s crazy, Jamal, but I can’t ignore them any longer. There’s a universal truth within the dreamscape that’s trying to guide me.”
Jamal cupped my head in his warm hands.
“That truth is the pain you feel for the loss of Jacob. Bethany, he’s still out there and we will get him back. I promise you that.”
A flood of tears washed down my cheeks.
“Please, Jamal, don’t promise something you can’t deliver.”
Jamal closed his eyes. When they reopened they were steely daggers cutting deep into my core.
“I promise you, Bethany, one way or another, we’ll get Jacob back to you.”
I flung myself back into his embrace.
“I love you, Jamal.”
“And I love you, Bethany.”
In an instant, the moment before we again fell into slumber’s cradle, peace washed back over me. For that second, nothing could hurt me. If only that moment could last.
*
Coffee. The smell caressed my nostrils like a long-lost lover. The very thought of caffeine sprung my eyes open and begged me to rise and shine. I wasn’t sure “rise” and “shine” could be accomplished, considering the circumstances. Jamal and I walked down the circular staircase into the massive kitchen area. Standing sentinel over the coffeepot was Rizzo. When she saw us, her eyes lit up like she was the world’s most adorable Christmas tree. Ebullience flowed from her like spirit from a squad of cheerleaders.
“Morning,” she greeted happily. “I made—”
“Coffee.” Jamal and I replied together.
Rizzo had two cups at the ready by the time Jamal and I reached the pot.
I kissed Rizzo on the cheek. “At this very moment, you are my best friend.”
“If this coffee is as good as it smells,” Jamal took a sniff of his cup before he continued, “I’ll have your babies.”
Rizzo blushed. “Thanks J-mal. You know I play for the other team, right?”
“Lucky team, that.” Jamal winked and took a sip. “Holy mother of Colombia, this is liquid love.”
Before I could add my own praise for the beverage, Morgan and Josh stormed into the kitchen, the former holding a laptop.
“Bethany,” Morgan spoke first, “you have to hear this. I tuned into Zombie Radio this morning and the DJ played back an interv
iew he had with Richard Gerand. I think you’ll be interested in hearing what he said.”
Morgan tapped the space bar and the playback began.
“The goal was to make sure the virus had a specific shelf life so John Burgess could control how much of the population would be taken out. It was the start of the Great Cleansing. It sounds horrible, I know, but Burgess had me chained down with a threat that I couldn’t escape. I had to do what he asked. While I worked on the virus, I also developed both a cure and a weapon.”
We listened in rapt silence. When Gerand was done, no one spoke a word. All eyes turned to me…for something. For our next move.
“We have to find him. We have to find Richard Gerand before the Zero Day Collective does.”
chapter 21 | the endgame
“We knew, at some point a child would be born immune to the virus. We had no idea it would happen so soon. Jacob is to be the rebirth of our race. That is why his survival is so crucial. Without that baby, we have nothing.” Faddig’s voice boomed.
Doctor Otte slammed his fists on the desktop. “I don’t understand; what’s the purpose of this plan? You want to destroy the entire population of the planet and then repopulate it with clones of Jacob Plummer? What endgame would that serve?”
Faddig drew in a quick breath through tight lips. When he spoke, it was clear he was doing everything he could to control his boiling temper.
“The Zero Day Collective wants a population it can control, manipulate, and command. The soul of the human race has rotted and the only way in which we can possibly survive is by starting over. Individualism and freedom have ruined us. We intend to strip the race of every desire, every hope, every unique thought that would threaten our grand design. In the end, humanity will be at our mercy and under our rule. Subject 002 is our beta. We used the baby’s DNA because of its immunity to the virus and the same techniques used to create Subject 001 to gain control over the subject. With that model we will amplify the newly envisioned virus with Godwin’s Quantum Fusion Generator. The results will become the template by which Man 3.0 will be created.”