These words shocked Val. “Connor,” she said, “the Brady you know is gone. He’s a king now! As deep as you can go. He’s killed a ton of people. You’re scaring me because you’re acting like you’ve forgotten that. Brady isn’t going to magically recognize us and come back to the light.”
“No, you misunderstood me. I know Brady’s mind is completely gone and I’m not expecting miracles from him. What I’m trying to say is: it’s like Brady wouldn’t have chosen this way, in the first place, if it resulted in us dying here. Does that make any sense?”
“Not really. Brady’s not a fortune teller. I don’t think any of this was what he wanted. He didn’t want to kill and look where we are.” Val looked out the window and continued. “This whole thing is so messed up. He wants to save his wife. And in the process he’s murdered… we don’t even know how many. Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? How is that worth it? At first this seemed noble. Now it seems kind of sick.”
Val looked back at Connor and continued, “Maybe the most merciful thing to do here would be to kill him. Connor, he’s not coming back.”
“You might be right. But I can’t give up especially when I have this cure. At least we have to try it.”
She looked deep in his eyes. “Ok,” she replied simply.
To his confusion, she leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. With that done, she slid open the rear windows and threw her gun out into the truck bed. Why she didn’t just open the door and walk around Connor didn’t know. But he appreciated the view in the rear view mirror as she squeezed through the tiny opening.
With Val ready, Connor drove the truck closer to the zombie city. Soon they began to encounter sporadic level one zombies. Val made quick work of these even from the bumpy truck bed. Connor hit several with the truck.
One zombie collided into the grill and was thrown up onto the hood. The zombie’s broken legs dangled off one side but her working arms clawed at the windshield wipers to get closer to Connor. When it pulled itself up, it began pounding the glass with one fist and hanging on with the other hand. The zombie managed to grab onto one of the windshield wipers and Connor engaged them hoping it would either distract the zombie or make it fall. She responded only by breaking the wiper and pounding her fist so hard into the glass it shattered. Spider web cracks suddenly shot across Connor’s view of the road ahead.
Connor and Val hadn’t noticed when a zombie managed to grab onto the passenger door as it flew past. It had spent the last several seconds climbing in through the passenger window. Sliding inside, it scooted up to Connor and tore into his shoulder. The zombie on the hood combined with the bite was enough to distract him from driving. Connor fumbled for the rifle by his leg and didn’t realize the truck veered towards a pole.
Val saw the impact coming and managed to duck before they hit. The force threw her against the back of the cab. As if in a dream she saw little pieces of clear light falling all around her. When the truck had stopped, she looked up to see her head had hit the rear window so hard the glass shattered and broke into pieces around her. Upon seeing this, she felt the pain in her head.
Val looked inside and saw Connor struggling with a zombie. She quickly found her rifle and fired several rounds into the thing’s head. Connor tried to cover his ears after the first couple shots. With the zombie dead, Connor looked up to her with a shocked, surreal look.
“Well, that went to shit town fast,” Val said.
Connor had a hard time hearing her but guessed the message. He tried to start the truck again. Turning the key only produced a click. “It won’t start,” he yelled far louder than necessary.
Connor exited the vehicle and looked at another slow wave stumbling in. He grabbed his rifle from the truck and mowed down the first few. Val helped him and soon there were only a couple stragglers a block away.
“I think we should get out of here,” Val yelled to him.
Before Connor could reply, a group of second level zombies ran onto the street ahead of them and with them their new king. Connor pointed that direction and readied his rifle.
Val grabbed Connor by the arm and started pulling him back. Connor fired off a few round and then turned to retreat. He unclipped his pistol from its holster to be ready. The two made it almost a full block before the faster zombies overcame them. Connor turned and stood his ground. With reckless abandon he brought his rifle up to his shoulder and killed the closest ones.
Val, seeing they couldn’t outrun these new enemies, turned to help Connor. Together they killed fifteen or twenty of the newcomers. This victory lasted until Brady arrived. Val desperately wanted to run but stayed to give Connor his chance. Val watched as Connor fired off the remainder of the clip in his rifle and let the weapon fall to the ground. Keeping his eyes on the new king, Connor reached down and withdrew his sidearm. His left hand cupped his right to help steady the weapon. Brady seemed more fixated on Val than Connor. This gave Connor the chance to take a few steps forward.
In his peripheral vision, Connor could see two more charging in from behind a nearby building. Connor marked their location and speed in his mind and then pressed it to the back of his brain. Nothing was more important than this shot. Brady closed in dangerously close to Val and she retreated into a building. Brady turned his back on Connor as he decided the easiest way into the building to follow Val. Connor bolted several steps closer and raised the pistol again. He felt the trigger on his index finger and squeezed it lightly while checking the sights again.
Connor shot. At first, his mind refused to acknowledge the new crater of concrete just above Brady’s left shoulder. But the more he looked the more he could not deny the fact that his bullet had harmlessly impacted nothing but the building. At the last moment, Brady had ducked down to break down the door.
Connor’s heart sank. But his mind would not let him forget the two others quickly approaching. The back of his mind had been running the numbers and informed him that they should be close by now. Connor turned and found his mind correct. He jumped back so the first actually ran past him and then fired three bullets into the second. The two chest wounds didn’t slow the second down, but the third bullet went through his brain and sent his body to the ground.
The first lunged onto Connor and the two fell back onto the ground. Instinctively Connor used the momentum to kick the attacker completely off him. By the time the first realized what had happened, Connor’s bullets found him.
Connor popped out his clip and inserted a new one. Though he wanted to run into the building after Val and Brady, a large wave of first level zombies now pressed in. They lacked speed but would soon fill the whole area. Connor ignored the cautious side of his brain and ran towards the building to rescue Val. But the appearance of Brady saved him the trouble of having to go inside. To Connor’s horror, Val had been captured by him and now hung under Brady’s arm.
“Hey!” Connor screamed. Brady did not so much as look Connor’s direction. Something snapped in Connor and he wanted nothing more than to have Val back. He unloaded his whole clip at Brady and hit him several times. Connor yelled to Val but she seemed unconscious. She didn’t reply or struggle against her captor.
Soon Brady walked into the ranks of first level zombies like a man stepping into the sea. All Connor’s hope drained out of him as Val and Brady passed beyond reach. He suddenly felt very alone. He would have stood and watched but the wave of zombies came pressing in on him.
Connor fled.
Now a desperate need of a vehicle plagued him. The zombies had taken all the nearby ones for their wall. But Connor thought he remembered passing a bike or moped on the way in. The world turned to a blur as he bolted down the streets away from the zombie city. In his mind, he saw only Val. Lifeless and limp. And like a taunting ghost his missed shot haunted him.
Several blocks away Connor found a moped. He found the keys and a few of the owner’s fingers still in it. Somehow the fingers had maintained their grasp on the right handle even though the hand had long since di
sappeared. Connor didn’t notice them at first. Not until he was half way up the hillside did he see the worm-like fingers still desperately grasping the handle. Normally he would have knocked them off, but having even this small part of a human next to him gave Connor a little comfort.
Close to the house, Connor came across a more suitable vehicle. He stopped the moped and let it apathetically fall to one side without even turning it off. The new two-door sedan took him the rest of the way to the house.
Now that he made it to the house, he realized he didn’t know what to do there. It seemed only logical to him to go back there. He stopped the car and opened the door. He looked out at the house but when he thought of it being empty he almost cried.
He stumbled out of the vehicle and collapsed to the ground. Hopelessness weighed down on him. His only friends gone. And him without a cure. He thought it would be poetic if Brady came all the way up here to eat him.
His mind taunted him saying he could have done more to save Val. The image of his missed shot played over and over in his head. Every time it did, he tried to aim a little lower but the memory would not oblige him and he was forced to watch his bullet harmlessly impact the concrete again.
His head spun somewhere between that memory and Val’s lifeless arm dangling from Brady’s grasp. The storm inside his head escalated. It spun around him like a tornado until he closed his eyes and placed his hands on his head. With a frustrated yell, he managed to stop the vortex. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw gave him hope.
His pistol sat on the passenger seat with the barrel pointed straight towards him.
It all seemed so clear now. A solution to everything.
∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙
Val looked up at her captor as he took her into the zombie city. He fascinated her. He was the only person she’d ever known well before becoming a zombie. The changes in his body and face astounded her.
She knew her flesh must smell good to him. Only the greeting she gave and the call of her king saved her from his fury. He tolerated her but the look on his face showed he did it only out of obedience.
Once inside the city, Brady threw her down before the king’s building. Val stood and found Brady’s hateful eyes watching as she stood up on her own two feet.
“You like what you see, you piece of shit?” Val taunted him. “You so much as think of eating me and my father will end you. I am his in a way you’ll never be."
Val drew close to him, “Look at you! Your dreams fall like sewage on your head. You eat them not even knowing what they are. Do you have any idea of what you’re doing here, Shit-Eater? Do you even remember her name?”
Suddenly the Zombie King appeared and came down the steps to them. Both Brady and Val knelt before him.
“My father,” Val greeted him in her mind. “Have I pleased you?”
The shockwave of his disapproval blew her backwards off her knees. She cringed and rose to her knees steadying herself with one hand. From the ground she looked up into his angry, disappointed face.
“Father,” she pleaded raising her other hand to him. “What have I done to displease you? I have brought you the one who interested you. I have infiltrated groups as you have asked.”
To Val’s horror, the king let out a shriek informing all those within range that they could devour her. This news delighted Brady. He turned to devour her but the king engaged him with his mind. The two had far more important things to do than the death of this disappointment.
Several nearby minions descended on Val and bit into her. Her eyes filled with tears but never left her father’s gaze. Val struggled against the grasp of her destroyers and crawled towards her king. She whispered, “Daddy?”
“You disgust me,” the king replied to her telepathically. “Far too human. You’ve barely kept my interests in mind. I tried to make you strong. But your fortresses are built of sand constantly destroyed by waves of emotion. I hate you. I hate the sight of you.” The king stepped towards her and slashed her across the face with his nails. The gesture knocked her onto her side.
“Have I not brought you this one that you favor?” Val said gesturing to Brady.
“One thing you’ve done out of the dozens I’ve asked of you. I will tolerate you no longer. I regret you.”
Those eating her found her altogether too zombie for their liking. With her flesh still in their mouths, they vomited her skin back up onto her. Val stood covered in wounds and vomit slime. She shook like a terrified child before him.
“Very well,” the king announced, “be gone. If I ever see you again, I will end you.”
In tears, Val pushed her destroyers aside and fled.
∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙
Connor had taken the gun from the passenger seat. He held it for a while. Caressing it. It seemed to him the only glimmer of hope. He wondered if he’d feel it – the bullet cutting through his brain. His breathing became quick and shallow. Silently he brought the gun to his temple.
A noise on the road stopped him. Someone approached. When he looked, he saw a miserable, disgusting thing. Its body was battered and bloodied. It looked to him like a second level zombie in terrible shape. But it seemed unlike other zombies. For one thing, all its black hair was still intact.
Connor pulled out his side arm to quickly end its misery.
“Connor!” it greeted him.
“Who are you?” Connor replied.
“It’s me – Val!” she blurted out in a weak voice.
Connor immediately suspected trickery. He’d witnessed dozens of humans carried off into the zombie city and never once had one returned.
Connor maintained his distance and his aim. “How did you escape?”
“Connor,” she pleaded. “Just hold me.”
This whole situation confused Connor. He’d never seen a zombie impersonate a human before but he was not about to trust it. “Tell me how you escaped,” Connor said glancing behind him as if expecting an ambush.
“I-I,” she struggled to say the words. “They wouldn’t eat me. I don’t know,” she said crumpling over into a heap of tears. “Please,” she screamed as she rolled over on her back like a dog.
There under the hazy afternoon sky Connor witnessed her duality. Unable to keep the two personalities separated any longer, she jerked back and forth between the two of them.
At first, she growled at him very much like an animal. Her face twisted and contorted in zombie-like motions. Connor kept his gun aimed at her head ready to fire. She threw her head onto the dirt and scraped it across the ground speaking the most absurd things.
But just when he became convinced she was completely zombie, she switched back to the Val he knew. She sat up and spoke to him in perfect intelligible English.
“Shoot me,” Val screamed at him. “Shoot me! Would you want to live like this? Connor, if you’ve ever loved me, pull the trigger!”
Connor said nothing in reply.
“Can’t you see? I’m a zombie! I’m one of them! Shoot me.”
“Then why do you look human?”
“Hybrid!” she screamed and then began savagely digging into her left wrist with her right hand’s fingernails. Val threw herself into the vehicle as if to stop herself.
Val cried as she wailed, “She’s such a bitch!”
Connor watched Val’s personalities unravel like a ball of yarn.
“I’ve got to get her out!” Val wailed. “Get out of me!”
Something of the old Val returned and she again fell into a blubbering mess. “I’m dead! I’m dead in ways you can’t even imagine. My mind is literally a shit swamp.” She wailed a while longer with her head in her hands. “I’m so scared of being damned.”
Connor sat down on one of the boxes and lowered his gun to his knee.
“If you’re a zombie, why haven’t you eaten me?” he asked.
Val stopped sobbing and actually looked up to meet his gaze. “Because I’m more of a product than anything. I’ve been manufactured to infi
ltrate. I wouldn’t be a good spy if I ate all my informants. Don’t you see? I’m some combination between the two. I’m not fully human and not fully zombie.”
“And you’ve been like this the whole time?”
“As long as you’ve ever known me.”
Connor breathed in heavily and looked at her pathetic state.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
Connor only looked at her and made no reply.
They sat together in silence for a long time. Val seemed much calmer now and curled up in a ball and Connor thought she slept. Connor gathered a few of his belongings out of the house and placed them at his feet. When Val seemed to wake and addressed him again, he had collected his thoughts and made a decision.
“You’re going to walk,” he said coldly.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Get up.” She stood and he gestured for her to move. “That way,” he said pointing to a road leading south. Once they started their march, Connor said, “Next, you’re going to tell me everything about yourself. If you try to attack me or even turn around, I’m going to shoot you Val.”
She looked at him knowing him to be a man of his word. “What do you want to know?”
“How did you come to look human?”
“I do not remember much. I just remember experiments. Terrible nightmares where the Zombie King tortured and twisted me. He wanted a creature able to mingle with humans and give him information. He’d always been fascinated with information about your race. After unspeakable things, he birthed me. He is my father and I am his child. He’d crafted me with human emotions. I slept in his womb and he whispered to me. And I came to love him first before any others. With his daughter complete, he sent me out into the world to gather information and report back to him.
“I have a unique tether to him unlike any other under his command. He does not ‘control’ me. He gave me a mind able to think and reason on its own. I travelled around with different groups just telling him whatever he thought may be interesting. But I think he expected humanity to bond together into a large city I could infiltrate. He seemed disinterested in the random quests of the groups I joined and nothing I could offer pleased him. I didn’t realize how unsatisfied he had become with me until he tried to have me killed right along with the other humans when Brady and I were inside the mountain.
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