21st Century Dead

by Christopher Golden

  Zombies already ruled the virtual world. From HBO, The Walking Dead, to movies, comics, DVDs, zombies were more popular than vampires. Could only be a matter of time until American Zombie. The judges’ panel there already seemed half dead. George A. Romero was enjoying a huge revival and so was his catch phrase,

  When hell is full, the dead will walk the earth.

  As if even hell were running a strict immigration bureau. Real life came late to the show. The devastating earthquake in Japan had unleashed a cloud, not unlike the Icelandic ash, but smaller and faster. It moved from place to place for no apparent reason, hovered over certain regions, then disappeared. The affected region was soon overrun by the reanimated dead.

  It was beginning to be believed that all the data on Hollywood zombies must have been based on facts the human race learned eons ago, as much of it proved to be true. The principle being, you could put the infects down permanently only by destroying their brains, what was left of them. The movie Zombieland made the double tap derigeur.

  The World Health Organization got militant. No crap about finding a cure, seeking to help the afflicted, it was a straightforward directive.

  “Turkey shoot.”

  The anticipated protest from liberals and prolife were quashed and it was rumored that Amnesty International was under a cloud. The small, deadly one. Helped there by a combination of

  The CIA

  Mossad

  And the Chinese.

  The military moved in jig time as soon as the cloud hovered. Immediate cutoff, fences erected to keep the inhabitants in

  then nuke time.

  No debate, exceptions, help, or quarter.

  The cloud appeared, the area was gone. And now it had shown up in Ireland, over the tiny tourist village of Dromore. Not even a claim to be the ancestral home of the secretary of defense was going to save it. The cloud appeared on a Tuesday, by Thursday the fences were up, and on Saturday the bombers would fly. Where I came in.

  I’d been trained as a marine, my family having emigrated to the United States when I was a child. Was spotted at being adept in black ops, saw service in all the hot spots, then invalidated out when my state of mind raised alarm bells. I liked my duties too much and wasn’t too pushed about covering up. Civilian life was never going to work for me. I had a taste for killing. Went freelance. And oh Lordy, the pay was awesome. I formed my own crew, four apprentice psychos, and we rocked.

  Slade, my second in command, a black guy from Jersey.

  Turner, from, he said, “everywhere and nowhere, baby.”

  Kelly, from San Francisco. The sole woman.

  Reilly, from Belfast, veteran of the street in The Troubles. Word was, he was The Troubles. We were the call of last resort and we delivered.

  Fast

  Furious

  Fatally.

  Our crew gradually evolved from random acts of retaliation, revenge, and retribution to a specialized snatch team. Business was brisk. Samuel T. Rubin was one of the richest men on the planet. His daughter, Debbie, the only love in his life, power of course not included. Debbie was on a sabbatical and had traveled to Ireland.

  To Dromore

  Dumb broad.

  Didn’t kids rock in Ibiza anymore?

  Rubin flew me and my team to Ireland, the biggest check of our career in my pocket. With the admonishment

  “You can’t get her out? Don’t come out.”

  I’d been threatened by the best, relayed his sentiment to the crew. Kelly, God love her, said

  “Him and what fucking army.”

  Why I loved her.

  Fitzroy was aware of my rep, and despite his objections to my plan, he was powerless against a man of Rubin’s stature. Now he said

  “You haven’t a freaking prayer.”

  I was cleaning my weapons, racked an Uzi, said

  “Ain’t about prayer.”

  Nothing wrong with arrogance if you can back it up.

  * * *

  We had always had the most phenomenal luck, as if the devil paved our way. Reilly, with his Irish fatalism, believed we were due a fall and that it would be the “bollix of ’em all.”

  I had a map of the village spread on the hood of the Bruiser. Our custom-adapted armored car. Bulletproof, reinforced with the lightest metal and alloy available. It was awash in hardware and never yet failed us. I drew my finger along a line from a breach in the fence right to the church, said

  “We’re playing it real simple.”

  Behind the church was a small hill. An Irish one, meaning it had aspirations to be a mountain.

  The one road led to the church, that was all she wrote.

  Slade removed his earphones, from which heavy metal dribbled, said

  “Kill ’em all.”

  Well, yes.

  I looked to Turner, who said

  “We’ll lay down withering fire from the moment we hit the village, right up to the church. Anyone not in the church goes down.”

  The crew agreed.

  Kelly and I would enter the church, grab Debbie if she was still there, move out.

  Reilly was smoking, the only one of the crew with the addiction, took a deep drag, asked

  “What if there are other survivors in there and they want, you know, to get the fuck out of Dodge?”

  I let that simmer, hover for a bit, then he answered his own question:

  “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

  We prepared to lock and load. I reminded them

  “Head shots.”

  Kelly, in almost-designer fatigues, shifted her shades to rest on her blond locks, said

  “I give good head.”

  As we battened down the hatches, Fitzroy watched with bemusement. I was adjusting my battered leather jacket, pockets full of death, and I asked Fitzroy

  “Any last words of wisdom?”

  “Oh yeah, don’t go.”

  When we reached the fence, we paused. Turner moved topside, manning the machine gun, tailored to pump nearly five hundred rounds without jamming.

  I asked

  “See anything?”

  “Nope.”

  We moved, gathering speed as we approached the village.

  Turner shouted

  “Bogeys at twelve o’ clock.”

  I didn’t get much of a chance to observe as Turner opened up. The main and only street in the village was literally a sea of walkers.

  Reilly went

  “Holy fuck.”

  Turner had the gun trained on them, asked

  “Yeah?”

  As I watched the seething, teeming mess of infects, something stirred in my heart, something I couldn’t name. I was momentarily lost, and Kelly, catching on, snapped

  “Skip, what’s the haps?”

  “Clear a path through the bastards.”

  Kelly and Reilly were out of the truck, the mortar primed

  … to watch them tag-team that baby was beauty in motion.

  One

  Two

  Boom.

  Again, again.

  I shouted

  “Let’s rock now.”

  Back onboard, we moved through the path of destroyed, still-moving bodies, or rather parts, a loud growling, moaning growing in intensity.

  Kelly said

  “Jesus, it’s freaky.”

  Slade, who’d been ominously quiet, shouted

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  We’d got halfway up the street when we stalled.

  Slade was up beside Reilly, and the Bruiser lurched downward, a jolt threw us roughly around inside.

  Slade shouted

  “Ah fuck, the mortar tore a crater in the road.”

  And our front end was stuck in it.

  Not good. I untangled myself from the twist of limbs, pulled my body up.

  Slade said

  “Look.”

  Both sides of the street, the infects were still.

  WTF.

  Not moving. Just staring blankly at us.
/>
  Kelly, moving to the rear, asked

  “I thought they never stopped moving.”

  Moments like this, your whole team could fall apart, you had to act, even if rashly. I said

  “Get your shit together, Slade; you stay with the truck; and, Turner, see what you can do to get the truck moving.”

  We were on the street, knee deep in limbs and gore, the silent infects not five feet away.

  I said

  “Anything moves, nail it.”

  Reilly, Kelly, and I began to move, laden with hardware, our fingers on triggers, the silence spooking us.

  Turner said

  “This truck ain’t going nowhere, skip.”

  I didn’t look back, said

  “Stay on the radios. If the infects remain like this, maybe we can walk out.”

  Like it would go down that easy.

  I took the lead, Reilly at my shoulder and Kelly on point. We got to the door of the church, and I was about to hammer on it when Kelly screamed.

  The remains of what had been a cop, half his head gone, sunk his teeth into her shoulder. Reilly turned as a group of infects moved behind the cop. Slade opened up, mowing them down. Turned the barrel on Kelly, literally blew the cop’s head off her shoulder. I was banging on the door,

  “Let us the fuck in, we’re here to help.”

  Turned to grab the fallen Kelly, got my arm under her shoulder, and Reilly gasped.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  Crowds of infects were moving toward us. I heard rapid fire from the Bruiser and a babble from the radio.

  The door opened and we piled in. Fell on the stone floor as the door was slammed, heavy boards rebarricading it. A priest offered his hand and helped me to my feet. He was in his thirties, dressed in a brown cassock, Franciscan? The cassock was covered in dust and grime and he looked exhausted. He said

  “I’m Seamus and these are…”

  Swept his arm to the interior of the church,

  “My flock.”

  Bitterness spilling over the words. A bunch of about ten, armed with clubs, Hurleys, legs of chairs, even a pitchfork. Kelly groaned, got to her feet.

  Seamus asked

  “Is she bit?”

  Then I saw the rusty machete in his right hand, down alongside the cassock. No hesitation, I said

  “Not her blood, from one of them.”

  Reilly moved in front of her, blocking the priest’s view of her wound. I could see the shock on her face, her eyes going out of focus.

  I asked

  “Is this all of you?”

  A burly man came forward, said

  “Meet the population of Dromore.”

  Behind him, a young man, maybe twenty, carrying a shotgun leveled at us, said

  “And not due for a growth spike anytime soon.”

  Reilly, his AK resting on his folded arms, said quietly

  “Son, you want to point that somewhere else.”

  We were off to a dandy start.

  The shotgun was lowered.

  I asked

  “Is there a Debbie Rubin here?”

  A girl came forward, the all-American teen, her face wearing a look of trepidation and disbelief.

  The shotgun guy moved in front of her, demanded

  “What do you want with her?”

  A blur, as Reilly moved, kicked the guy’s feet from under him, wrenching the shotgun from him as he fell.

  He said

  “I’m really sick of your attitude, fella.”

  The priest looked like he might intervene and Reilly laughed, sneered

  “Don’t even think about it, Padre.”

  I said to the girl

  “Your dad sent us.”

  She seemed as if she might burst into tears but held it.

  The guy on the ground asked

  “You’re saving her? And what, leaving us?”

  I kept my attention on the priest and his machete, said

  “Her father didn’t mention you.”

  A man with gray hair, in his fifties, broke in

  “Might we all take a moment, we’re in this together.”

  Reilly never even glanced at him, muttered

  “Dream on, sucker.”

  The man said

  “I’m a doctor, Dr. Driscoll. The creatures out there—at first they seemed to go still every hour but then the intervals became longer, and it appears the episodes of this are gradually fading.”

  I asked

  “Your point?”

  He was furtively polishing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, as if they’d provide comfort, said

  “This is only my theory but it seems the human side—the very life, as it were—was fighting to stay, but the infection is gradually completely taking over. From the time of infection, a person becomes one of them in about four hours.”

  Neither Reilly nor I looked at Kelly, who had moved to a far wall and sat slumped, her head down.

  The doctor continued

  “I’d hazard there may be one more episode of stillness, then transformation is complete.”

  I pushed

  “Meaning?”

  “The next stillness could be our last opportunity. We have to try to break out then.”

  I took Debbie’s arm, moved her behind me. This caused a ripple in the crowd. What they might have done was averted by a rapid static of gunfire, then silence. The church windows were high on the walls so we were effectively blind to the outside.

  The guy on the floor spat

  “If you had men out there, they’re chum.”

  I kicked him in the head, brought my Bren up, leveled it, said

  “Any more smart asses?”

  No.

  Reilly was on the radio, calling Slade, tried over and over, then shook his head.

  I said to Seamus

  “Get someone up to the window, let’s see if the doc’s theory holds.”

  * * *

  I couldn’t even think of Slade and Turner, an image of them overrun by those . . creatures … freaked me. And worse, that they’d become the infected. I swallowed hard, moved over to Kelly, bringing Debbie with me. The priest watched me with those dark eyes. He had some moves yet and I’d better be ready.

  Reilly whispered to me

  “Skip, you want me to waste the padre?”

  Tempting as it was, it would only up the already knife edge we were on.

  I said

  “Not yet.”

  Debbie asked me

  “Are we going to survive?”

  I said

  “Absolutely. Never failed a mission yet.”

  Never lost a crew member, either.

  I bent down. Kelly seemed to be in a fever, her eyes closed but a steady murmur/groan coming from her chest.

  Reilly hunkered down beside me, said

  “Not good, skip.”

  I knew what I should do. Reilly would even do it for me. But I waited. For what, a miracle? Dromore was the end of life, the living, hope. Kelly had been on my squad for five years, we’d even had a brief fling. I couldn’t imagine the crew without her.

  The voice in my head

  “Wake the fuck up, what crew? There’s you and Reilly.”

  I stood up, took her beloved Walther PPK, handed it to Debbie, asked

  “You ever use a gun?”

  She’d grown up with hunting in her family.

  Reilly said,

  “Alana, we are the hunted.”

  The priest came over, asked

  “How is your friend?”

  “Good.”

  I thought, Fuck with me and I’ll gut you.

  He said

  “Her life is flowing fast, and soon she’ll have the thing that passed for new life, an abomination.”

  Reilly stood right up to the priest, asked

  “Isn’t all life sacred to you crowd?”

  The doctor said

  “Would you like to see the view from the roof?”

  Reilly nodded, indic
ating he’d manage.

  I said to Debbie

  “Hang in there, we’ll get you home.”

  She didn’t seem convinced.

  The view from the roof was bleak, the hill behind the church, the only area free of the infects. I noticed a flatbed truck a few yards from the church rear, and the doc, reading my mind, said

  “Might work.”

  I asked

  “Is there a path along the hill?”

  And the doc suddenly pointed, went

  “It’s happening.”

  The stillness.

  We came down those stairs like banshees. Shouting

  “Everybody to the back, there’s a truck, we’re running.”

  I said

  “Reilly drives the truck, injured in the back, the rest of us on foot, and hope to fuck we get to the hill before they come back to … whatever.”

  The priest blocked my path, the machete half raised, the belligerent young guy beside him, ordered

  “The infected stay here.”

  Reilly shot him.

  Stunned us all.

  He said

  “No time for bullshit, we’ve got to boogie.”

  We laid Kelly in the back, the doc with her, the young man still with the priest.

  I said to Reilly

  “Take off, I’ll catch up.”

  Watched the pathetic convoy of souls start toward the hill, went back to the church. The young guy was kneeling by the priest. I hit him hard with the butt of my gun.

  As I caught up with the convoy, the doc shouted

  “Where’s Flaherty?”

  There was no answer that contained sanity so I gave none. We were moving well when I sensed the change, looked back to see the swarm of infects begin to move. I could see the protective fence and shouted

  “Book it.”

  Debbie, who had been in the front, got out and said

  “I’m staying with you.”

  The truck stalled.

  I said

  “Lighten the load, get more people on the ground.”

  Got as many as possible off the truck and it began to move. We could see it approach the fence as we hurried to catch up. I also saw Kelly rise, fall on the doc. The truck began to veer, lurch, and then it slewed into the fence.

  I muttered

  “Jesus.”

  People were spacing out, trying to get away from the infects, from … Kelly. Reilly was out of the truck, seemed dazed from where we were.

  I screamed

  “Shoot her, for Christ’s sake!”

  My own words nigh to death in my throat.

  I froze. First time in my career, I lost the plot.