Undead L.A. (Book 2)

by Devan Sagliani

  “Actually our real appearance is too terrifying for all but a handful of enlightened and deranged humans to process,” Larry remarked. “That's part of the reason we remained cloaked to your kind until the final moments of your civilization. It's also why, when we interact, we take on forms you find more palatable. We've come to learn humans have a limited capacity for accepting different species other than their own.”

  Jeremy laughed so hard he thought he would pass out. Larry waited patiently for it to pass.

  “Okay then,” Jeremy spit out at last. “It's official. I've gone off the deep end. I'm nuts. Either that or Jess put some acid in my coffee. I tried it once in Des Moines when I was snowed in, but it wasn't this strong. This stuff is, pardon my pun, out of this world.”

  The sky above them began to swirl with dark clouds. Deep angry slashes of electric purple bisected the billowing giants like thrashing tentacles. Larry reached out and put his hand on Jeremy's shoulder, his grip impossibly firm.

  “Let's move this to a more comfortable setting,” Larry smiled pleasantly. An instant later they were sitting at a sports bar on Sunset Boulevard, frosty bottles of beer in front of them. Larry was picking through a bowl of mixed nuts, pulling out all the cashews. The place was empty except for the two laconic men in black from his personal detail, and an equally silent male bartender. The television screens ran news, NFL games, and what looked like the History channel. Jeremy craned his head around to see that outside it looked like a normal, sunny day. A stream of unsuspecting tourists flowed past them without looking in.

  “How's that?”

  “A beer with the president? Seems a little cliché,” Jeremy teased, taking a pull off his Hoegaarden bottle. “Hope you're not planning on running for a third term. I don't think I can handle trying to explain this to Independents. It was bad enough when the voters thought you might be from Kenya, much less the Crab Nebula galaxy! I mean unless you plan on adding Sigourney Weaver to your ticket as VP, I don't think you have much of a shot. Americans hate illegal aliens. Haven't you guys ever seen FOX News?”

  Larry let out a deep, hollow laugh that made chills run up and down Jeremy's arms. He tried not to show his discomfort.

  “You see,” Larry crowed. “This is exactly why we kept you.”

  “So break it down for me,” Jeremy prodded. “What happened? How did I get here?” He leaned back in his chair and downed half his beer in several thirsty gulps. Fuck it, he thought. If I've lost my mind there's no reason to fight it anymore. Might as well do my best to enjoy it while it lasts. He remembered an old line from one of his favorite writers, Hunter S. Thompson, “Buy the ticket, take the ride...”

  “Our civilization left our planet of origin before your sun was even born,” Larry stated, still picking through the mixed nuts. “We travel through the universe scavenging resources as we move along from other planets. In this way we have been able to survive for billions of years. Earth was very far away from the more populated and active parts of the universe, which explains why it remained isolated for so long. We only found it on accident, after one of your satellites wandered through a worm hole.”

  “Is it just one big mother ship?”

  “You would describe it in terms of an armada,” Larry clarified, tossing a handful of cashews into his mouth and chomping away. “If you were to line up all of our ships they would extend a distance greater than your solar system.”

  We never had a chance.

  “You'd think one of our scientists might have noticed you coming,” Jeremy snapped, taking another big pull on his ice-cold beer. No matter how much he drank he couldn't seem to make a dent in it. It just kept refilling itself. Well then, he thought, it ain't all bad losing your mind.

  “We've been cloaked, hiding just outside the outer ranges of the ice ball you call Pluto, for the last hundred years or so,” Larry offered. “We've been walking among you in disguise since the fifties. Several of us have been inside your government, which I guess makes my appearance all the more ironic.”

  “You said it, pal,” Jeremy fired back with a wink. He was starting to feel a buzz.

  “In that time we've determined the best way to encapsulate what your species had to offer,” Larry shrugged. “We've taken just over a million of the best and brightest of your kind with us, recreating a suitable environment for them on a ship of their own. It's a custom we've adhered to over the centuries to honor those who sacrifice their world for our survival.”

  “You mean like a floating space zoo?”

  “In a way,” Larry admitted. “But with far more liberties than humans afforded the other species they kept in isolation. Many surviving humans living in these controlled environments have no idea they are actually in an artificial world. The illusion is so thorough they simply can't tell the difference. We've done our best to preserve the fallacy of choice and free will to appease them.”

  “Why one million? I mean, the last time I checked there were over eight billion people on the planet. Why spare less than one percent of them, and how do you choose who gets to live?”

  “It comes down to expendable resources in a lot of ways,” Larry casually explained. “While there are determining biological factors that play a role, such as preventing genetic bottle necking that might allow a single infection to wipe out the remaining humans, ultimately we can't afford to spare more raw materials to sustain more than that.”

  “Cold hard science, huh? Ain’t that a bitch.”

  “Most of the individuals we selected offered something worthwhile,” Larry continued, ignoring Jeremy's childish taunt. “They had made contributions in science, the arts, medicine, and so on. Some simply allowed us a broader sampling of human beings in terms of races and cultures. And a very small number traded their cooperation for the chance to survive.”

  “You mean they helped sell out the human race to save their own asses? Let me guess, most of them were politicians?”

  “Yes,” Larry said, fixing Jeremy with a dark look. “It's true. Many of them were former world leaders. There were also business men and women, engineers, media, scientists, and members of the armed forces from each of your countries.”

  “So basically everyone we relied on and trusted was in on it,” Jeremy slurred, sloshing his beer onto the table as he pointed his finger at the president's doppelganger to drive his point home. “The very people we trusted to take care of us were the ones that cut a deal to save their skin.”

  “What you have to understand is that this was inevitable,” Larry urged. “We have been doing this for a long time and have become extremely proficient at it. A small number of humans who knew it was coming attempted to stop it by fighting against us. They were wiped out in under a month.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jeremy swore, feeling nauseous at what he'd just heard.

  “And before you decide to climb up on your moral high horse and start handing out judgment on your fellow human beings, know that you made a choice to survive as well,” Larry scolded, “even if you can't remember it at the moment.”

  “I did?” The impact of the words left him speechless. It didn't seem like something he would have done, but there was a small part of him that knew it was true, that it had to be true. He set his beer down and stared at the floor.

  “How did it happen? For the others? The non-chosen ones?”

  “We introduced a virus in two stages,” Larry admitted. “Despite sharing the same genome as each other, humans are surprisingly adept at ignoring their commonality and exaggerating their differences. We've come to believe this is an evolutionary trait designed to identify and classify objects and people. For us it's utterly fascinating, this idea of the individual. We don't have that in our society. All beings are equal and one would gladly sacrifice oneself for the good of the whole.”

  “That's what I've been seeing hit Los Angeles over and over again,” Jeremy interrupted, disgusted by Larry's childlike fascination with the eradication and enslavement of the human race. “A vi
rus?”

  “Not just an ordinary cold,” Larry explained, frustration finally visible on his face for the first time. “We perfected and introduced the zombie virus. You see, the first phase of the virus lies dormant in the infected individual’s system and then a second element is introduced that sets it off.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  The screens all around them began to show aerial shots over American cities with homeless people being transformed into vicious zombies and tearing anyone near them to shreds.

  “Those we'd preselected were given immunity boosters, just in case, although it was a silly precaution since the vast majority of them were already long quarantined from the threat of violence before it began. You see, we weren't worried that they'd be transformed by a bite. We knew once this thing took off they would be torn to shreds and eaten if caught. Plus they’d run the risk of dying by any number of elements of chaos this virus would unleash. What good is surviving the zombie apocalypse if you just get run over by a car or electrocuted by a downed power line?”

  “You used the homeless?”

  “That's correct,” Larry said, puffing up in pride. “Humans all over the world have an underclass of people they simply ignore or reject. They live right among you, but they might as well be invisible for all the good it does them. While we can't quite comprehend how this works we knew these abandoned humans would make the perfect delivery system to spread the virus as quickly as possible. In Los Angeles there were over fifty-four thousand homeless people by the time the end came, most of them living in tent cities downtown.”

  Jeremy looked up to see that all the television screens now showed scenes from downtown Los Angeles. The virus hit the shelters and food kitchens first, and began spreading out in waves. There were shots ringing out at the Emmy's with celebrities fleeing flesh-hungry monsters that overran them and tore them to bloody shreds while they shrieked in terror.

  “Why? I don't understand,” Jeremy spat in horror. “Why go to all the trouble? If you wanted to kill us off and take our planet why bother torturing us in the process? What purpose does that serve? Was it just for your sick entertainment?”

  The wide, bemused smile returned to Larry's face, clearing away all traces of his previous confusion, like a ray of sunshine blasting off coastal fog.

  “We studied you for decades,” Larry disclosed. “Humans are unique in so many ways, not the least of which are their fears and anxieties. We came to learn that fear is one of the primary components for what makes you human. Just like violence, it is hardwired into your DNA. Fear isn't just a survival mechanism for you. It's a coded system for how you perceive your world. Humans don't just use fear to prevent themselves from being harmed, they also use it to motivate themselves, to entertain themselves, to excite themselves.”

  “So we're lab rats in your apocalyptic game? Why zombies? Why not vampires or werewolves or the plague?”

  “Now that is the first good question you've asked so far,” Larry praised, motioning to the people outside. Jeremy spun in his chair to see that the steady flow of foot traffic had transformed into a snarling horde of undead monsters, biting and tearing at each other. A woman's ear-piercing shriek rent the air as a pack of kids in Justin Bieber and One Direction shirts bit her arms and chest, ripping free chunks of bloody meat. Jeremy cringed in revulsion.

  “Zombies represent your cultural fears and anxieties. Humans have used them to vent about everything from race relations to economic systems like consumerism, to fear of global pandemics like AIDS and Ebola, to terrorism. We wanted to understand you as best we could. What better way to know someone is there than to tap into their darkest, deepest fears?”

  “So you just sit back in your space ships in the sky and watch the chaos, safe and out of harms way?”

  “That's the Cliff's Notes version,” Larry jested, giving him the wink the president had become famous for when he first started stumping for the job. “Our technology is quite a bit more advanced than your understanding. It's difficult to explain how it works. Human minds don't have the capacity to grasp all of it, and not just because of the scientific concepts involved either. In part this is an evolutionary matter, since you are missing sense organs we were born with. Still you have the amazing capacity for abstract reasoning that allows you to know something without needing to get why it works. Most humans didn't know the mechanics behind electricity in full, but they understood that if they turned on the switch they got light.”

  “Go ahead and give it a shot anyway,” Jeremy moaned, shaking his head. “You make us sound like some kind of mongrel species.”

  “We are able to capture your thoughts and collect them,” Larry said, looking nervous for the first time since he'd arrived, if that was the right word to use for him being here. “We started with cities like Los Angeles all over the world, observing and collecting the inner thoughts and ideas of the people affected by the crisis. We've preserved them in a digital form as a sort of holographic record of how your species functions. Some of the people involved were fully translated. Most were simply observed.”

  “What's the difference? What do you mean by translated?”

  “We took the entire essence of who they were and created a digital copy capable of interacting,” Larry professed. “This allows us to introduce them to a synthetic reality and see them interact with others. These were individuals not preselected to be part of the million organic survivors, people who still offered interesting perspectives on your race as a whole, whose stories were unique in some way.”

  “Is that what I am?” Larry stood up, knocking his beer over in the process. A rope of sparkling gold flowed onto the floor as the bottle emptied, splashing against his shoes. “A hologram for you to mess with?”

  Larry smiled in wonder at Jeremy's anger, his eyes locked on him like he was at the theater taking in a breathtaking performance.

  “You are so much more,” Larry declared. “You are without a doubt one of our most valuable and priceless acquisitions.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jeremy scoffed. “I'm sure you're the low level tech they sent in to placate me while they reboot the program.”

  “On the contrary,” Larry refuted. “We don't have a caste system as such, so the idea of lower and higher is irrelevant in our reality, but just so you know, I volunteered for this. It is a great honor to be in your presence, Jeremy. There were many who were what you might call jealous that I got to be the one here with you.”

  “Why is that again?”

  “The fame and adoration you experienced during your time on Earth was extraordinary and well deserved,” Larry almost gushed. “But it is nothing compared to how popular you are now.”

  “Come again?” Jeremy sat back down, feeling his buzz return as the anger subsided and his curiosity rose like a talking snake. He reached his hand out and once again his ice-cold beer was in it, more than half full. He no longer questioned why as he brought it to his lips and chugged down a hearty swig.

  “It's true,” Larry said, his eyes filled with adoration. “You are the single most popular performer we've ever known in the entire history of our kind. You are beloved, and not just because you are talented. We love you because you chose this. You were one of the million, Jeremy. You were brought to us whole and safe and in one piece and placed in a perfect environment, a crime-free replica of Los Angeles. You could have spent the rest of your life in peace and quiet, never having to see us or interact with our kind again, and you rejected it.”

  “I did?” A memory was floating to the surface again. This time Jeremy didn't try to repress it. He saw himself sitting on a plush sofa looking out through a bay window into a pristine neighborhood in Brentwood. He felt the boredom painfully sinking in, felt his desire to go beyond simply surviving and being something more again, yearning for new stimulation.

  “Indeed,” Larry assured him. “While the vast majority of your kind were simply relieved to still be alive no matter what the conditions, you were not content wi
th a meager existence. Peace and quiet didn't suit you. You approached us and asked about the possibility of being translated.”

  “You’ve used that phrase before,” Jeremy recalled. “What does it mean?”

  “It's a process that allows us to capture you,” Larry explained. “Not your body, but your mind—your memories, the real essence of who you are. You were right earlier when you said you were still you. There is no question about it. But instead of being limited to what the decaying organic matter of your natural body is capable of you are now virtually indestructible, a bundle of tightly wrapped data capable of interacting, feeling, and perceiving new experiences without the threat of disease or even death. This allows us to introduce you to new virtual environments where you encounter predetermined situations and react to them.”

  “So it's like living out one movie after another?”

  “Precisely,” Larry agreed. “That's a great way of looking at it, only instead of pretending to be someone you are not you actually become that person.”

  “So why don't I remember any of this?”

  “You do,” Larry beamed, “once your performance is complete and has been captured. But while you are in your virtual environment all previous knowledge of your experiences is reduced back to what is essential for you to know. That way your reactions remain authentic, your responses visceral and genuine. That's what makes you the best. There is no one who can hold a candle to one of your performances, Jeremy. Quite simply put, we've never seen anything like it. That's why it's an honor to be sitting here with you, sir.”

  “You make it sound so amazing, but from what I can remember all I've done is sit in my house reliving the same day over and over again.” Jeremy felt the anger leaving him now as excitement replaced it, the questions multiplying in his head like leaves shaking on a tree.