Blood Soaked and Contagious

by James Crawford

  No one moved. I didn’t hear a chair scrape the floor nor a single ass wriggle where it sat. Shawn, my mountain man, brother in arms, bowed his head. I’m not sure anyone beyond the front row heard him say, “Thank you, God,” under his breath. When his head came back up, he was a different person, more determined than I’d ever seen, and I was proud to have the chance to be with him.

  “Looks to me like we’re in this together. Thank you. Before we really get down into it, I’d like us to have a moment of silence for the loved ones we lost today. I would say a blessing for them, but I was raised Christian and don’t know what’s appropriate. If anyone has the right words, I’d appreciate your help.”

  Someone in the back of the room started speaking in Arabic, and I turned to see who it was.

  The Asian man who had come in with Buttons finished reciting, and then he shared it with us in English. “Allah, forgive our living and our dead, those who are here with us and those who are not, our young and our old, our men and our women. Allah, forgive him and have mercy on him, honor the place where he settles and make his entrance wide; wash him with water and snow and hail, and cleanse him of sin as a white garment is cleansed of dirt. Allah, most merciful, admit him to Paradise and protect him from the torment of the grave and the torment of Hellfire.” He looked up at the rest of us, nodded, and said, “That’s all I remember.”

  There were mutters of gratitude, and then the room fell silent. In my head, I knew there were no words spoken for two minutes and eighteen seconds, but it felt like an eternity to my heart. Shawn spoke up and invited Jaya to speak to everyone.

  She stood, turned to face all of us, and began, “The messenger who brought us the information this morning also brought a gift from my husband, as well as his love that I should share with all of you. As you know, he was to be working on nanotechnology for our enemy; however, things did not go as planned. What he was able to do before the project ground to a halt was create a series of nanomachines that would optimize the normal human body for the rigors of combat. That was the gift sent to me.” She pointed at Charlie and me. “They were also recipients of the information I was given, as well as the same gift of technology. You are all aware of how close Frank came to dying, and he is here, without a single scar to show for what he endured as a result of saving the children.”

  No one said a thing. I couldn’t tell if it was some general state of shock or disbelief, but I would have expected more reaction than none at all.

  “My husband designed these machines to propagate within a community of emotionally involved individuals. Human beings who share bonds of affection secrete hormones and chemicals in response to those bonds. The nanotechnology spreads when those chemicals are present in the host, directly to other people within a four-meter range who are also secreting the same chemicals.”

  That got a bit of a reaction—everyone in the room gasped and rocked back in their chairs. Jayashri pulled me up and asked me to speak about it.

  “All right, everyone, hear me out. There is a better than average chance that everyone in our community has become hosts to these little guys. If you have a bad set of cramps that cause you to crave and consume really odd things, like your silverware, it isn’t a pregnancy. It’s the nano-buddies. You may pass out after you eat whatever they want you to eat. Don’t worry! You’ll wake up!”

  My neighbors and friends gave me some very funny looks.

  I just kept going, explaining what I’d experienced, and how I’d already coped with being shot five times. That drew quite a few appreciative nods and a few questions I deliberately answered without discussing how the critters would scavenge available tissue in order to make battlefield repairs. Sometimes it is worth glossing over disturbing facts when you’re presenting a group of people with something that was already challenging to absorb.

  I told them about the dried milk ball instead. That got a laugh or two and some screwed-up expressions of disgust. Make ‘em laugh and it will be easier to swallow than a wad of dried dairy products.

  Shawn patted me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear. “Does that mean I got these damned things running around inside me?”

  “I don’t know. What happened after you came downstairs?”

  “Well,” he got an odd expression on his face, “I had this really fucked up urge to lick a shovel.”

  I had to smile at him. “Did you lick it like a good Knocker should?” Watch me tempt fate.

  “Aw, man. Don’t you start! Yeah, I licked the shovel and flopped over for about 10 minutes.”

  “In that case, you’re the first giant country nanotechnology-enhanced male descendant of Southern freedom fighters! Congrats!”

  There are places in the world where the sort of look he gave me would have been accompanied by everyone in the immediate vicinity holding up mystical gestures meant to ward off the evil eye. I just smiled back at him, because I still owed him for punching me when we argued and then giving my back a poke before all the technological fun began. A little snarky behavior would prime the pump for serious teasing at some later date.

  “Although,” I thought to myself, “if I manage to get really involved with Charlie, that might be revenge enough.” My hindbrain chose that moment to mule-kick my frontal lobes. “Okay, yes, I will be getting as deeply involved in her as humanly possible. That will be splendid revenge as well as carnally satisfying. Fine! Just don’t kick me like that again.” The hindbrain snickered and retreated to the warm, dark place that it favored for moist contemplations.

  Shawn grunted, turned to everyone, and called the meeting back to order.

  “All right, since we’re gonna fight, we need to break things down and start putting together our contingency plans. I need Nate, Barbara, Jim, Darcy, and Omér on the issue of keeping the kids safe. Mark, Gina, Barry, Katherine, and I will get into local defense strategy. I’d also like input from,” he gestured at Nate’s friends, “y’all on this. Flower, you pick whomever you want for offensive planning. Jaya, would you grab Yolanda and whomever else you need to arrange for triage and first aid?”

  Everyone broke down into their respective teams, and my whiteboard was commandeered by Gina for planning nasty surprises. Buttons and his people meandered over to Flower and began some rather animated discussion about things exploding. Charlie and I looked over the groups and wondered where we belonged.

  “What do we do?” I asked Charlie, as if she knew any better than I did. She shrugged and wandered over to her brother, leaving me standing in the middle of the floor, looking like an idiot.

  “Stewart!” Buttons waved me over. Joy.

  “Yes, Mister I’ll Nuke Them From Space, Just To Be Sure?”

  “You need to be on the offensive team if there’s going to be one,” he told me. Flower nodded emphatically. “Your skills are more than up to par for it, and you’ve got a good relationship with Bajali Sharma.”

  “That’s certainly true, but why are we discussing attacking them instead of defending ourselves?”

  Flower spoke up, “It’s a little counterintuitive, yes, but it makes a lot of sense. If Hightower commits the bulk of his people here, there will be fewer zombies available there to resist a small team of well-equipped people. At most, we send over five to rescue Baj and destroy as much as possible on the way out.”

  I nodded. Whether or not I liked the idea of not being here to defend my home and my extended family, the thought of bringing Baj back and busting infrastructure at the same time certainly caught my interest. Not being a tactician, I couldn’t say if having five fewer people on defense would make a huge difference. We needed every person, surely, but we also needed substantially more firepower.

  “All right, let’s say for the moment that I’m in. How are we going to compensate for five people not being here to watch the home fires?”

  The Asian fellow who had prayed spoke up. “I’m Shoei Omura. No fancy nicknames. We have significant firepower available to us onsite, not to mention using the orbit
al resources that you’ve been told about. Assuming we have a few days to act in, that will give us six shots from orbit to destroy, distract, or delay the opposing force.”

  No nonsense. I could like this guy. “Okay, what sort of firepower are we talking about? I’m assuming you had to have brought it with you, because I don’t know about it.”

  Flower chuckled quietly. “Frank, you don’t know everything that goes on in the neighborhood. You do spend a lot of time whacking zombies, and sometimes you miss... ahem... the occasional delivery from interested parties.”

  “Ah. Would you be so kind as to speak clearly about this issue?” I wasn’t annoyed, per se, but I was intensely curious about whatever it was that I wasn’t, and had not been made, aware of.

  “Haven’t you ever wondered where Gina gets her chemicals? Or the frangible material she packs the anti-personnel IEDs with?” If he hadn’t been twiddling his thumbs, I think he’d have patted me on my blind little skull. “We also have several crates of automatic weapons, ammunition, grenades, and other goodies in my basement. Buttons, Omura, and Channing have a few other interesting toys besides the orbital ones. Want to fill him in?”

  The third mouse, I assume he was Channing, smiled and told me about the fun they had in boxes, waiting to be assembled. “It’s a compact, multi-node, automated Active Area Denial System. We set it up, and nobody wants to be within 200 feet of the emitters.”

  “Dilithium crystal drain cleaner, what?” I had no clue what he was telling me, other than he looked really pleased with it.

  “Did you never watch the news or read Wired?” He was a younger fellow than either Omura or Buttons, and had he not been wearing black fatigues, I’d have been willing to bet there would have been a pocket protector in his daily wardrobe.

  “Not if I could help it in either case. Why?”

  “The Active Area Denial System,” his tone showed he was clearly offended I knew nothing about his Precious, “is the closest thing we have to an anti-personnel force field. They call it the Pain Ray. Anyone within range of the device is bombarded with non-lethal, but incredibly painful microwaves. No one, and I mean NO ONE, can bear to be anywhere near it.”

  “Gosh. Thank you, Mister Worf.” Oh, the dirty look I got! If it had been like the thing he was describing, I would have been boiled alive. “So, if we set it up, it will keep zombies from physically entering an area?”

  “Yes. This is a scaled-down version of the original. If we were to, say, put a node at every clear entry into this neighborhood, nothing with functioning nerve endings would be able to come through that point. They’d have to shoot into the area, disable the units, or spend time coming through booby-trapped buildings.”

  “Shiny, Mister Worf! Shiny! Doesn’t do much for rockets or a Bradley armored vehicle, but it helps with being overrun by the Mostly Dead.” This little prick really wanted to tear my head off, and if I’d been him, I would feel much the same. There was something about him that made me want to take pot shots at his ego. If I managed to live through all this, I would devote a whole half an hour to discovering why, or so I promised myself.

  I’m such a liar.

  Channing looked around as though he was expecting some sort of sympathy from the group. He didn’t get any. Sad, in a way.

  I looked around at everyone and they appeared to be looking back at me as though they were waiting for something, or I’d developed a goiter and was completely oblivious to the swelling.

  “And the Peanut Gallery says?” I waved my hands for emphasis.

  “All right Frank, the main issue is whether or not you’ll be in on our rescue mission or not.” Flower was not afraid of being blunt about anything, at least not in my experience. “Buttons tells me that your mere presence on a mission of this kind is vital, so it hinges on you. You in?”

  “In. Charlie comes with me.” I pointed behind me to where she was engaged in vigorous conversation.

  Omura looked her over and asked, “Why her in particular?”

  “Good question, Sir, and politely phrased as well. The answer, Watson, is simple.” I refrained from patting him on the head. “Jayashri is needed here for medical issues, and that is not open to debate. Charlie and Jayashri are the only other people with as much experience with their nano-upgrades as I am with mine. That, Watson, is why Charlotte Cooper is coming with me.”

  “Fair. Combat experience?” Omura was asking questions like he expected to be on the team, and they were reasonable things to ask one way or another.

  “Yes. Based on today’s adventures, she took down two in less than twenty seconds, after taking two bullets to the chest.” I didn’t mention the vest, not that it would have mattered a whole lot, but I wanted her with me. I suspect it was my way of attempting to control as much of the situation as I could.

  “Okay. We’ve got Frank, Charlie, looks like you’re volunteering, Omura,” Flower nodded at him and got an answering nod in return, “and me. We should have at least one more who could bring up the rear without getting it shot off.” He turned around and gestured at the knot of soldiers hanging around Nate, and said, “Nate’s friend Jackson is a reasonable person to ask. Nate gave me the skinny on him not long after they showed up. Good record, stable, and can take an order. Anyone object before I sign him up?”

  We didn’t. My friendly neighborhood sniper got up and made his way over to that group of people. I turned back to Buttons and his little cadre of bookends, and brought up the issue.

  “Well,” I said, addressing Buttons, “have you handed anyone my life story since we spoke last?”

  “Frank, whether you like me or not is immaterial, but you do need to trust me. Omura and Channing know nothing more than they need to know and are completely capable of not asking questions. You’re on the rescue mission for reasons you and I know very well, and that is all that needs to be said, unless you feel the need to be forthcoming on the topics we have discussed.” For someone that I’d assaulted and my future girlfriend had nutted, he was being immensely civilized. In the interest of furthering detente, I gave him half a Brownie point.

  I grunted and might have said more if Flower hadn’t returned with our Number Five and Charlie in tow. From that point, we got into substantial planning for our little stroll into town on the day of the big offensive. In a lot of ways it was quite a typical plan for an atypical situation.

  During the heat of the fighting, our team would exit the neighborhood, commandeer a vehicle from the enemy, and drive it right back to the building where Warren Hightower set up shop. Depending on resistance, we would either make our entrance via the parking garage or one of the service doors on the ground floor.

  Stealth was preferred, unless it was impractical to the situation. If we were discovered, or encountered large armed resistance, the general thought was to create as much bloody mayhem as possible, so that at least one or two of the team could proceed toward the goal.

  Omura and Flower agreed the secondary goal should be to destroy WH’s ability to continue his little zombie union and associated technological pursuits. I interjected that a goal of opportunity would be to assassinate WH, himself. No one disagreed. We had a general plan of action, and, for the moment, that was enough.

  “Charlie, could you give us a rundown on what you learned regarding local defenses?” Flower asked her with an uncharacteristic smile. He wasn’t one to smile, so the appearance of his teeth came as a bit of a surprise.

  “Sure, Matt.” Charlie filled us in on the revamped IED plans, proposed sniper positions, and defensive fallbacks. They had proposed two separate escape routes through the backside of the neighborhood, through other residential areas, with Yolanda’s dairy supplier’s farm in Winchester, Virginia, as the rendezvous point.

  Buttons and Channing nodded and headed over to talk with the Defense Team about burning microwaves and useful things that orbital railguns could do for making our opponents’ lives difficult. We hashed out a few other details and separated back into the other
groups to share information and learn more about what other decisions were being made.

  A certain pressure was building in my head, centered around the reality that I would most likely need to come clean on an issue or two before we headed out to rescue our friend. I’m sure they’d want to understand why the goal of opportunity was as important to me as getting Bajali back safe... perhaps more vital than I wanted to admit.

  The meeting dissolved about three hours later. Shawn felt there was a halfway decent chance some of us might live through it, and I accused him of being insufficiently positive about our chances.

  “The problem,” he told me, “is that we’ve got no idea at all about the sort of tactics he’s likely to use when they go all out on us.”

  “Honestly, they’ve only got so many guns to go around. This guy is likely to just overwhelm us with numbers if he can manage it.”

  “You think?” He didn’t seem convinced.

  “Look at it this way, unless things have changed a lot since I squeezed Jerry the Zombie, there are far fewer trained military people than there are Joe and Jane Average Zombie. Those trained soldiers have to operate weapons systems and order around the untrained flunkies.” I stuck my hands out in mid-air and mimed the classic shambling walk of Frankenstein’s monster. “Left. Right. Yell, ‘BRAINS!’ Beat nice people with sticks.”

  Shawn smiled and conceded I might have a reasonable point, since there was only so much recruiting that can be done in less than a week.

  “If Hightower managed to get reinforcements from some other organized group, we might be screwed.”

  “You have a point there. We’re lacking fundamental intelligence on what is going on over there. Did you see which way Buttons and his gang went? I’m going to ask him about any useful data he might be able to get for us.”

  “Flower said they’re going back to his place to uncrate some weapons and check over the Pain Ray units.”