The other was posted by hikers claiming they’d spotted Infect militias deep in the woods of Montana and Idaho. That they’d crept close and seen them training, organizing, not acting like zombies at all. They were calling them the Evolved. Of course, none had pictures, just excuses. Camera battery dead, cell phone shorted out, video not available.
The next link went to a Chinese chat room, the text of the site in Mandarin.
“It says click here and beware?” Amanda translated.
“How do you know that?”
She just shrugged.
The link bounced them into an ongoing chat that was coded. Amanda clicked around, ran it through some encryption software, and then a translator.
“What are you, some sort of hacker genius?”
“No?” she said, voice even more whispery than usual. “Anyone can do that? It’s just to? Keep out the noobs?”
Soldier34532: But they’d changed. They didn’t attack, didn’t bite. The Evolved have an agenda, I’m telling you.
PreachPeach9: That’s what I heard too. Zombies with the ability to reason. To problem solve. It’s, like, Kafka or some shit. Or was that Kant?
TheNutcutter: Whatever. You guys are morons.
HeadSnapp: Hi! Who wants to talk about mixed martial arts?
Soldier34532: They’ve moved on from their basest needs. It was bound to happen. Even the stupidest animals adapt, gain skills, improve their chances for survival. Either that or they die out. But the Evolved haven’t died out. They’re flourishing. It’s natural selection.
BillyGrammerer: Or unnatural selection.
H.M.S.Beegle: Check the fossil record. They found zombie teeth from before Christ in some cave in the Negev.
TheNutcutter: Oh, yeah? How exactly can you tell zombie teeth from any other teeth? Did they find Judas’s fanny pack, too?
ColonCleanse: The government says this entire Z routine is all a bunch of crap. So does my friend Tim.
OrksDrink40s: Ah, yes. The government. The same people who brought you Lee Harvey Oswald and Iran-Contra. The same people who sold you tax cuts for the rich.
Prelapsarian1: What are you, socialist?
OrksDrink40s: No, I’m just not stupid.
Cronenberg: Do you even know what socialist means, Ork?
OrksDrink40s: Yeah, it means the government is better equipped to handle certain social services, like your lobotomy, or delivering the mail, than Goldman Sachs is.
Prelapsarian1: Eff U, Socialombie!
FunionInParadise66: Can we get back to, like, the Zomb-A-Pocalypse, please? While we still have time?
TheNutcutter: So tell me one thing, where did this “virus” come from?
Nick leaned over and typed.
Soul2Sole: It came from Fresh Bukket.
GBeckG: Ha! At least it tastes oh so good on the way down.
Soldier34532: I was there on the ridge when they broke through our lines. Attacked the Sno-Cats. Total animals. Berzerkers. Now they’re like . . . next-gen zombies. They’ve learned to control themselves. They’re living in tents. Rumor is that when you have the virus long enough, you begin to evolve.
GBeckG: Soldier’s a fag.
PreachPeach9: Training themselves for what, Soldier? And how do they control the virus?
Soldier34532: I dunno. Maybe the reason people act like zombies is because they haven’t learned to let the virus control them yet. Maybe the biting comes from the human part of them not letting go. Once it’s in there long enough, maybe the two parts, human and zombie, finally make peace.
PreachPeach9: Peace with what?
Soldier34532: The inevitable.
OrksDrink40s: If zombiedom is a reversion to the essential self, it’s entirely possible that Z is the next stop in human development.
TheNutcutter: Which means the fat, the rich, the cynical, the entitled, the liars, and the bored all have something coming.
OrksDrink40s: A date to meet their own monster.
TheNutcutter: Not coincide with it. Not buy it off. Become it.
OrksDrink40s: Turns out revolution isn’t all bombs and tear gas and braless hippies shouting slogans after all.
TheNutcutter: Holy shit, it’s a coup on the microscopic level! The revolution will not only not be televised; it will be unable to be seen by the naked human eye!
OrksDrink40s: All they need is a Z leader. Some guy with good hair and a cleft chin.
BaruchThePoet: Actually, there’s a woman, not a zombie. Who they say is in charge. She’s like Golda Meir. Total Badass. Lara Croft.
Soldier34532: J. Own Jhet.
TiffTame8: What’s that?
Soldier34532: Her name, I guess?
TiffTame8: Sounds Russian.
Soldier34532: Well, that’s what she calls herself. I’ve never seen her. They say she’s still human. Whatever that means anymore.
GBeckG: Oh, my God, do you people need to get a —
The screen went blank. Then blue text filled it from top to bottom: FORBIDDEN SITE — CLOSED INDEFINITELY.
“Darn it? That was good?”
They found a lot more sites, mostly the same thing but more digressive, even less convincing. A few others were closed down while they read. Some went quiet just out of boredom.
Amanda clicked over to a new game. It was called Discovery 1492. She was an explorer leading a motley crew of conquistadors into the heart of Mayan civilization. And wiping it out with Daisy Cutters and TEC-9s.
“I say we? Blow it all up and? Start over?”
“What do you mean?”
“America? Humanity? The world’s a? Thinly veiled apocalypse? Already?”
“I know, but —”
“Pixilated violence? Is just another sign of? Cultural collapse?”
“It is?”
“Yes?”
“But it’s all you ever do.”
Amanda lit up a row of teepees with a napalm cannon. Her voice got extremely low.
“Why fight it? It’s time that something major shifted? Before it’s too late? People are always terrified? When the change comes? You think they didn’t cower? At the edge of the Renaissance?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“A Caravaggio probably? Seemed to them? Just like a zombie does? To us?”
Nick laughed. “Wow. Not only is that amazingly perceptive, but you realize that’s the most consecutive words you’ve strung together since you were born?”
“It’s the first? Time I ever? Needed to?”
Nick watched Amanda’s explorer take off his helmet and armor, then turn and start firing on his fellow conquistadors. She double-clicked and a line of claymores exploded under the mercenaries. Little text bubbles started popping up, like Hey! and WTF? and Stop it! and Traitor! Amanda took out a team of artillery gunners and then laid down suppressing fire as the regrouped Indians whooped, stormed over the hill, and mopped up invaders with knives and rocks and wooden clubs.
She threw down the controller and turned to Nick. “I want to? Evolve? Just like them?”
“You don’t need to. You’re perfect.”
Amanda made a vomit face. “Don’t patronize? I know what? I am?”
“Which is?”
“Totally ready for everything? To be? Very different?”
“It’s not just you, though, is it?”
“All of us want to? Aren’t you paying attention? The world is? Terminally bored?”
Nick rubbed his temples, suddenly knowing exactly what he had to do. And how to do it.
“But even if the whole world is a hole of suck, maybe it’s still better than what’s coming.”
Amanda’s voice was barely audible.
“It’s not?”
“You’re sure?”
“I am?”
He nodded, kissing her forehead.
“Thanks, A-dog.”
“Of course?”
“And don’t tell the Du . . . don’t tell Dad, okay?”
Amanda rolled her eyes and loaded a new game. Within
seconds she was driving a tank made of human bone into South Central L.A.
“Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“Close the door?”
“Sure.”
“But next time you? Open it?”
“Yeah?”
“You better be coming for me?”
Amanda racked the .50-cal, loaded a sleeve of uranium-tipped shells, and started piling up serious bonus points.
AFTER SCHOOL, NERO DROVE THE CELICA TO the IT facility and parked in the gated lot, behind three circles of electrified fence. After he was escorted in, he said hello to Bruce Leroy and Exene, who were playing chess, and then sat in the TV lounge with Mr. Bator, who refused to speak but seemed to enjoy having company while watching TV. A rerun of Too Much Love for One Abode. was on. It was a sitcom about a middle-class couple, the Abodes, who’d adopted nine Albanian children. The children took turns comically butchering idioms and being amazed by the largesse of the American supermarket: “Campbell must be very powerful man, no? They name for him so many kinds of soup!”
Mr. Bator laughed, sort of, a wet slurp that came from the tear that used to be his face.
“You ready?”
A guard escorted Nero along the usual route. He sat down on the other side of the thick glass. Petal was lying in bed, looking gaunt and drawn in cutoff jumpsuit bottoms and a T-shirt that said GANG OF FOUR in black Magic Marker. There was an IV in the crook of her arm, a blood bag slowly filling up on the floor. Her white hair was whiter than ever, cut in a severe angle across her face.
Nero waved.
Petal put down her copy of The Prince, sat across from him, and pressed the button that let them talk through a speaker in the metal housing.
“Brains,” she said.
“Must. Have. Brains,” he said back.
It was a private joke that wasn’t very private. The guard yawned, but they knew he was listening.
“Fuld offered me a job.”
Petal raised an eyebrow. “You should take it. I bet there’s a great health plan.”
“I already did. It’s one of the reasons I’m here.”
“To talk me into being a good kitty? Meow on command?”
“Exactly. In exchange, when this is all over, he’s going to let you out. Everyone else too.”
“Did you get that promise on paper?”
“Signed on the dotted line.”
She leaned back, provocatively crossing her bare legs on the table.
Her slightly gray and bruised and punctured legs.
Legs that he could not allow to be abused.
For even a minute longer.
“Well, it’s settled then.”
“Fuld also told me you tried to burn down the Blue Room.”
She frowned. “Not really. I was just having a bad day.”
“Argument with your other boyfriend?”
“Total PMS.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Petal leaned into the speaker and spoke quietly. “Because it was a stupid gesture that didn’t change anything, and because deep down I know if I had the chance, I’d do it again.”
“You would?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
A buzzer went off.
Petal’s blood bag was full. She pulled out the IV roughly. A nurse who looked like the bass player from ZZ Top came into the vestibule in scrubs and blew a whistle.
“Clavicle tap.”
Petal handed the bag through the collection slot. The nurse whisked it away with two gloved fingers, holding her breath. Petal grabbed a fresh bag from the table, then racked the needle into her neck, like plugging in a pair of headphones, while giving the finger to the nurse’s back.
Nero could not believe how much she’d changed.
Shy and quiet? Sorry, that girl was long gone.
Trusting? No, sir.
Prepared to do as she was told? Not hardly.
A reformed arsonist? Yeah, except for the reformed part.
Over the months in the facility, the infection had remained static, but Petal had blossomed.
Fuld thought he had her locked down, in control. Tap the main line, turn on the faucet.
But Petal was the only immune.
The carrier of a pure strain of Z.
It was like being pregnant, but without all the belly.
“So let’s deliver it,” Nero finally said. “Cut the cord. We’re our only way in, and our only way out.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“Are you scared?”
“No. Yes. A little.”
“Good,” she said. “You should be.”
Nero looked over, made sure the guard wasn’t watching, and slid his hand through the collection slot. It didn’t really fit, but he shoved it beneath the metal lip, scraping off a layer of skin.
It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t need it in a few minutes.
Petal took his hand and stroked it, turning her head so she could rest his palm against her cheek.
She kissed his fingertips, kissed his thumb.
“Is this insane?” he asked.
“No more insane than what was done to us.”
“What will people do?”
“They’ll adapt.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Then they won’t.”
Nero thought about it. “You’re right.”
“Hey, no one asked penicillin’s permission to exist. No one asked the Internet to wait around on some hard drive until everyone was ready.”
“Then stop talking and do it,” he whispered.
Petal opened her mouth.
Lips drawn back from two rows of perfect white teeth.
And bit through Nick, deep into Nero.
Lovingly.
At least at first.
And then hungrily.
A fine mist of blood sprayed across the wall.
“Stop.”
She bit deeper, began to drink.
“Stop!”
Petal looked up, eyes glazed, breathing heavily.
He pulled his hand away and hid it under his shirt.
“What did it taste like?”
Her teeth were red. “Good. Gross. Both.”
“Everything is both. Have you ever noticed that?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at him with such love and appreciation he considered the possibility that he might actually deserve it.
“So what do we do now?”
“Wait.”
“For what?”
“For your skin to begin to twitch.”
“My skin is already twitching.”
“For a buzz to rise in your ears.”
“A buzz has totally risen.”
Petal smiled. Her eyes were a blue million miles. She leaned up against the glass and whispered.
“Then, honey, we’re here.”
As if on cue, the guard turned, yawned, said time was up. “Kissy hour’s over.”
Nero stood, feeling ridiculously strong. “I’ll be back.”
“How long?”
He looked at the watch he wasn’t wearing. Only one person had the key card to open her door. “Not long at all.”
“C’mon, Romeo,” the guard said.
Petal laughed, wiping her mouth. “How appropriate. Star-crossed lovers. Houses divided. Juliet gives him poison, and then the whole world changes.”
Nero followed the guard into the hall, hypnotized by the pulse in his neck, his unsullied flesh, his irresistible new-car smell.
He could have stood there, breathing it in, forever.
“Can we hurry it up, chief?”
“No,” Nero said. It was getting hard to talk. His mouth was swollen and sore. “You must. Be patient.”
“Right.”
The guard slid foil off a piece of Juicy Fruit and slipped it between his teeth. He was big, with a
neatly trimmed goatee and tattoos poking from a tight shirt, all pecs and delts and combat training.
All of it useless.
Or at least it would be soon.
He opened the security door and extended his hand sarcastically. “After you, Fruit Loop.”
Nero grabbed the guard and bit deeply into the flesh of his upper arm, then pushed him to the ground. The guard, in shock, started to flail for the antibiotics they all carried in a flap on their belt.
“Don’t bother. Doesn’t work. Just there to make you. Feel better.”
The guard gulped the pills anyway, at least the ones that didn’t scatter across the floor, and scrambled back against the wall. Nero cuffed him to a chair.
“Why?” he asked, eyes animal with fear. “Why on purpose?”
It was a fair question.
A toughie.
Hard to answer.
Maybe the virus was inevitable.
Maybe it was even God.
Someone bit into an apple, and then everything changed.
Someone bit into a security guard, and then everything changed again.
Nick was Nick was Nick was Nick.
Then he was Nero.
And, ultimately, Nero was not going to allow his girlfriend to rot in a cell one minute longer.
Was it worth sacrificing the whole world for?
Maybe.
But how did you explain all that to a security guard who was asking questions as a cheap distraction while trying to fish a Taser from of his back pocket?
Nero blinked, slapped his own face, forced himself to maintain.
Because his head buzzed.
It screamed and ached.
He was Adam, naked.
Petal was Eve, naked.
They were Zadam and Zeve.
The apple and the serpent and the hands and the teeth.
All he had to do was go forth and multiply.
Nero walked into the cafeteria. War Pig was sitting by himself, eating oatmeal. His red curls had been shaved off. There were purple rings under his eyes.
“Hey,” he said glumly. “You look like you could use a cup of coffee.”
Nero leaned over and bit him on the shoulder.
“What the fuck, man!”
Nero wanted to respond but couldn’t.
The Infects Page 21