Zombie-dem

by James J. Stubbs

  Chapter 22

  Jason Seven, Severed

  Jace was dying. But there was something about dying that just allowed him to let loose. To just surrender his inhabitations to the inevitable and get on with the job that they still had to do. The alcohol was helping, though it was starting to wear off. He could tell that Sid, the younger of the two brothers in Jack's rag tag team of intrepid Robot killers, was starting to get nervy. Jack, on the other hand, as always, just looked like he was on extended vacation.

  'Okay...' He addressed his team. They had closed the door that led to the lower levels of the building and assembled in front of the elevator. 'Are we ready for this?' They all nodded but said nothing. Jace's nose immediately began streaming blood. He couldn't stop it, so stopped trying to even hide it. It leaked out and stained his green borrowed camouflage jacket a disgusting hue of brown and black. He wasn't doing so good.

  'Every door we breech... there will be collateral damage. But all we can do is rely on the fire support. But at the same time, we have to give them a fighting chance.' He had been holding two hands behind his back. It looked like he was trying to mimic Napoleon or some other great military general. But in fact he was hiding a series of powerful flares. There were at least ten packs of them.

  'We need to breech every door, launch in a flare, cause some kind of shit, and burn it to the roof.' He unzipped all of the packs and started passing them around. He gave Jace less than the rest. Not to cause offence, but he was by no means going to be even half as fast as they were. 'That way we light up the building, and fire support should be able to differentiate between us and them.' In Jace's case, he doubted there was much left to be able to tell any difference at all. But he said nothing. 'Copy me!' Jack grew frustrated at their silence.

  'Copy!' Sid and Jake said in unison and stuffed flares into their pockets. Jace just nodded, took a deep breath, and stood as upright as the shivering pain in his back would let him. He had something to do. A mark to leave. If he was going out, and there was no doubt left in him that he was, then at least he was going out as one hell of hero. He took what was left of the flares, and checked he was locked and loaded.

  'Let's do this.' He sniffed through his river of blood, snorted hard so the blood clot slowly forming in his nose moved to his mouth. He spat it against a wall and flicked the safety catch off his pistol. There was a stairwell running up the north side of the building. That's where the men positioned themselves. The ground floor was just going to be a practice run, and they were going to have to do the same thing on every floor.

  'One way up, one way down.' Jack instantly hit the commander role. He was a natural leader, and a sportingly gifted one at that. 'Each floor we reach, we run to the opposite side, breech on our way back to the stairs. Don't stop for anything.' Jace's heart was beating a terrifying thunder inside of his aching and closing chest. It made him feel sick, but he just kept fighting to hold it together. Part out of pride, part out of self respect and self determination.

  'Boys?' Jack held out a hand. Each of his men shook it in turn. Never did they know which mission was to be their last after all. Jace joined in. It was very nice of them. He felt accepted. A small warm feeling inside of his shivering cold body that slowly failed him. 'Sid, Jake, you hit the apartments on the left. Me and the cop will do the right. If you turn I shoot you.' He was no bullshit straight talking. Jace liked that. Far better to just have it in a "how it is" vibe than pussy foot around him.

  'I'm counting on it.' Jace forced a smile as the team walked to the far end of the hall for the first run. 'Let's go.'

  They hit the mission at a furious pace. Jack led the way with a solid boot to the first door. It splintered away from its housing like it was made from polystyrene with the force he put into the kick. Two Robots greeted him. He blew them away with no issue. There was no point in wasting a flare if there was no chance anyone was alive so he moved on.

  Jace rammed the next door. He was sure the impact broke his collar bone. He heard a very distinct snap, and added that to his list of pains. He didn't care anymore. But at least the door broke. No monsters or people, so he threw a flare in anyway. That's when the fire support team let rip. The hail of bullets and shards of plastic and wood they sent up was intense. But sure enough, three terrified Asian Americans ran screaming from the doorway.

  'That way!' Jace tried to shout but was overcome with the feeling of blood gushing from his mouth and onto the floor. They were more scared of him than they were of the Robots. But at least they were out on the street and under the watchful eyes of the fire support team in no time.

  'Move!' Jack yelled as he slammed open three more doors in the time it took him to do one. It took only moments before the building was alight with red glaring blasts from the flares and filled with the hearty smoke they gave off too. Jace hit one more door before finally reaching the stairs.

  'One okay.' Jake yelled and hit them running.

  'Two okay!' Sid yelled after him and leapt the first few stairs in one.

  'Zero okay!' Jack yelled and forced Jace up the stairs. There was no point in Jace lying and saying he was okay. It was pretty clear that he wasn't. He didn't have the energy to even try to figure out their military terms anyway.

  They came up to the next floor, only to see it totally decimated by a fire that had long since burned out. The carpets were melted into the wood flooring and all of the apartments had been caved into one as the fire must have raged through doors and wooden walls indiscriminately.

  'Skip it!' Jack ordered and they hit the stairs hard again. He was right to. There was no point in wasting valuable ammo or wasting their time trying to search for survivors when there was less than no chance that anyone was going to be alive still.

  The next two floors were the same. The team waited for no orders and just kept running. The effort was making Jace all the more sick with every step. He threw up twice, but didn't stop to care to look sorry for himself. He was carried by his own stubborn half drunk desire to do one last good thing before he clocked out for good.

  They resumed their killer pace at the next floor. Jace fired at two Robots in the hall. They went down with surprisingly well placed shots. He then threw his body against a door. He fell right in, on top of a Robot who snarled at him but didn't bite. He shot it through the head and just moved on. Jace was half way down the hall by the time he picked himself up.

  Jake was in trouble though. He was wrestling his gun from the powerful grip of a particularly large and fresh looking Robot. Jace threw himself over it and slammed it to the floor before spitting blood in its eye. A slam of his elbow to the soft tissue in his eye put it down for good.

  Jake nodded to him, with a terrifying look in his eye. Did Jace really look that bad? But what a pointless question that would have been. He looked so sorry for him. So upset for him. But in the corner of his eye, he masked a glimmer of total pride and every ounce of respect that he had in him. Jace was doing a very brave thing.

  He hit another door hard. A terrified family huddled behind it, obviously scared by the hell they were causing. Jace threw the flare behind them to protect them from the ongoing bullet hail from the fire support crew.

  'Get out of here!' He spat at them, his guts failing him one more time, all over their rather nice carpet. His head was swimming with clouded thoughts and barely functioning senses that just tried to keep up with the thunderous pace.

  'Jace! Get a move on!' That was Jack, already at the bottom of the stairs with his crew. He was glad he wasn't going easy on him. He would have felt like hell if he had been. And it kept him going too. Having that order barked at him just kept him focused and stopped his mind from sinking into a sorry and pitiful state of self hate.

  'Sir.' He shouted back and jogged the last of the steps to him. 'What are you waiting for, a cuddle?' He bravely pushed past the soldiers and leapt up the stairs. His shoulder was almost seized from the repeated impact, but he kept pushing anyway. Only a few more floors to go.
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  The next floor was covered in Robots, just out in the hall. Like they were waiting for breakfast or something.

  'Save your ammo!' Jack ordered, stood as calm as still water, and threw three flares into the crowd of almost dormant Robots. The flares erupted in smoke and billowing green flashes. The spectacle of contrasting and clashing colors might even have been pretty under any other circumstance. The floor erupted with gunfire from the support crew. They must have been using some damn high powered guns. The bullets tore through the walls and shredded the Robots into pieces like water to salt. Jace took the time to catch his breath. But Jack... He just wanted to see the carnage unfold. Satisfied they were all down, he pushed on.

  They breached through every door in the next floor in record time, and saved a number of families in the process. Jace had barely noticed his vision slip away. But he could no longer see much more than dark shapes. He blew two Robots away but waited until they were in close range and he was sure he wasn't just killing an innocent family.

  'Move!' The next floor already? Jace stumbled down the hall, his shoulders hitting both sides as he couldn't walk a straight line. It was kind of his adopted team to wait for him every time. He would have forgiven them if they had just blown him away. Put both him and them out of misery. But they didn't.

  He slammed against one last door, fired off a few flares and watched as the carpets caught fire in the intense heat. There was no one there at least. The whole building was half ablaze and filled with smoke by now. He coughed and spluttered some more blood all over his hands. But they had done it. The building was clear of survivors. At least as far as they knew.

  'Come on!' Jack didn't let up for even a second. 'Get to the helicopter.' He forced his way through another door and leapt up to the roof beyond. The wind hit Jace like six tons of bricks. It damn nearly blew him away and finished the virus' job. But it eventually settled and he could focus on just inhaling his last precious breaths of fresh air. The team bundled into the helicopter as Jack prepared the detonator switch. He eventually climbed into the cockpit. The helicopter only just fit in between the air conditioning and other units on the top of the building.

  Jace got himself lashed in tight. The soldiers kept half an eye on him. Watching for him turning at a seconds notice. Jack fired the engine and the lift was immediate. No time for pre flight checks. He climbed as high as he could in the cold air of New York's choking winter.

  'Brace!' He yelled over the built in ear piece on the helmet Jace had stuffed over his head. He looked down, waiting for the building to crumple beneath them, thus finishing fortress New York. Nothing happened.

  'Damn it!' Jack slammed the detonator switch a few times before hitting it with frustration. It wasn't working. 'We have to go back.' He half sighed and started lowering the helicopter.

  Jace had lost the ability to talk. But his mind was made up. He started to unfasten his harness. When the helicopter was low enough so the fall wouldn't kill him, he slid out and fell the last few meters. He hadn't told the team what he was going to do, and they hadn't seen him unfasten his belt.

  'What are you doing?' Jack asked, with genuine concern in his voice. Jace stumbled to his feet. His bones brittle and snapping beneath his weight.

  'Saving... everyone.' Jace replied. Jack hadn't the heart to reply. How he could fly that thing as drunk as he was, was anyone's guess.

  'Thank you son.' Is all he could manage. He hadn't realized that Lizzie was listening in the whole time.

  'Get back on that chopper you ass hole!' She screamed at him down the radio. He just shook his head, not that she could probably see.

  'Stay alive.' Jace whimpered to Jack. 'Now get the hell out of my city.' He stumbled back down the stairs, falling at least half of the flight to the bottom. He was going to trip the explosives himself. He didn't care to be buried under the rubble of the building. In fact, he would prefer it to dying horribly and having to have someone put him down like a rabid dog on the street.

  'Don't do this.' Lizzie cried. She must have been supporting him still, because every Robot he walked past, not caring to try and kill it himself, was blown down by a well placed shot. 'You've done enough.' He still hadn't the heart to reply to her. He wanted to see her one last time. He wanted to look at her pretty face one last time. He wanted to steal a glance at her round hips just one more time before he died. But such was life.

  He stumbled further down the hall and half threw himself down each flight of stairs. He clocked the helicopter cruising away through an open window in one of the apartments he had helped breech. Jack swung it back around. There was a gun mounted to the mid section, retro fitted and bolted on to the news helicopter like some total bodge job. Jake was sat directly behind it, ready to pump lead all over anything that stopped Jace in his tracks.

  As Robots always do, they surprised him by how many of them there were, and just how resilient they could be. As he stumbled down the lengths of the stairs, he could hear the cannon on the helicopter tear the building apart. The building that would be his grave.

  It didn't take him long to reach the final floor. More of them had congregated there than he had ever seen in one place before. All dressed and ready for work. Like they were waiting for the buss to arrive and take them there. Some in suits, others in overalls.

  'Get that damn chopper in the air.' Jace whispered through his muffling headset as he started stumbling for the door that would take him back down into the depths of the building. He could still hear the swirling up draughts of the spinning blades nearby. There was nothing more that they could do anyway. So Jack did what he said he was going to do from the very beginning. He took off and flew into the distance. To be fair, he needed to get away from the blast anyway.

  He started walking through the crowds of Robots. Just like he was one of them. He shoved them out of the way. Not that they cared. They just rolled their shoulders and swayed on the spot. No point in them eating tainted meat anyway.

  'I'm coming to get you.' Lizzie kept on crying. She couldn't stand by. She had to do something. Jace pushed past a few more of them, before taking the last mag of his pistol and firing into them. He shot indiscriminately at them, into heir heads, their bellies, their limbs. But they just stood there, groaning.

  'No!' He tried to shout. He could barely stand, barely keep his eyes open. He just vomited what must have been the last pint of blood left in his veins onto the nearest Robot. 'It's too dangerous... let me do this. Just...' He was about to ask her. He flung himself at the door and stumbled down into the basement. He tried to fasten his goggles back onto his head, but could hardly do it very well. They hung there against one eye. That would have to do. He had forgotten how dark it was in that basement.

  'Anything?' She cried some more. It was heart breaking to hear it.

  'Just talk to me... say anything. Anything to take my mind off the pain.' He swayed delicately down the last of the steps, but fell at the last hurdle. He crawled to the generator that powered the lift, the only place he could remember having placed one of those bombs. She talked while he crawled, and he just tried to focus on the sweet sounds of her seductive voice.

  'I'm sorry... that we never. That I never told you how I felt after all the chances I had to say it. I'm sorry we both knew and were too stupid to say anything. I'm sorry I can't save you.' The rest of the time she spent sobbing. He finally threw himself against the cold metal of the generator.

  'Okay...' He started to cry. A sobering moment, to be shaking hands with the reaper like this. 'How about a pizza one night... maybe a film at my place?' He tried to be as nice as he could to her. No point letting all that emotion out after all.

  'What should we see?' She half laughed and half cried.

  'Something girly... So I can give you a tissue if you cry, run my hands through your hair.' He reached up for the bomb and pulled it away from the metal. The dull groaning of the Robots that were still down there was a somber soundtrack to die to.

  'We can maybe have
a drink too?' She asked, sobbing horribly into his ear. 'You can have an Alco-pop... damn lightweight...' She tried to joke with him, but just fell apart at the end.

  'And you can have a bottle of Vodka... coffee flavor or something. Or probably mixed with an energy drink knowing you.' He smiled. Smiled at the counter world he tried to imagine where it might have happened.

  'You were a great cop.' He got serious as he started twisting at the buttons on the bomb with a sharp focus of what he needed to do. She could hardly stop crying. He sighed and chose his last words as carefully as anyone could.

  In some ways he could be happy. In an odd way he could be grateful. Death was rarely so kind to let someone have their final words. Death was rarely so patient. It waited for no man. But waited patiently for Jace.

  'Might even tell you I love you at the end of the night.' He twisted the button. The building erupted in a ground shaking quake. Death was instant. Another kindness to him.

  Lizzie hated him for not giving her the time to say it back. But she whispered it to him anyway. And then cradled her weapon, from so far away, like a teddy bear and cried herself hoarse as she saw him buried in a shallow grave. All while she watched through the scope of her rifle.

  Chapter 23

  "This was us"

  The Lakes Country. Jack had stumbled across an abandoned air force base, and even managed to fuel up one of the planes. The crash had hit him hard, but after putting down the turning co-pilot, he managed to smash his way out of the cockpit and make a run for it. He hadn't been able to find Logan or Lizzie despite having looked for weeks.

  If they were still alive, and he was sure they would be, then Logan sooner or later would have gotten the itch to press on. He would head for Russia. He had definitely seen Logan's parachute open. He was certain of it. He kept telling himself anyway.

  Before departing, he checked the air traffic control room across the green field in what was a nice summer's day, for any communications equipment. He put down a few zombies on his way. But everything, in this picturesque and lonely part of the country, was left hardly overturned by the end of the world. He hit some switches and tried the microphone.

  'This is United States Army Pilot Jack. Anyone out there?' The transmitter he could see blinking away on a nearby hill must have been far more powerful than he thought. Because the rasping voice that came back immediately was that of General John Cygan. Logan's old friend.

  'Jack... you made it out. I knew you would.' He was far calmer than he usually was. Usually he was offensive at best, but not so this time.

  'General... good to hear your voice.' He would have rather heard Logan, but beggars couldn't be choosy at the end of all things. Human, in some stretch, would have to do. 'What's your situation?'

  'Not many of us left. Held up in the bunker beneath the White House. Is Logan with you?'

  'Separated.'

  'He's alive. No killing that damn cockroach. I know it.' He sighed heavily. Puffing on a cigarette knowing him. 'I need you to get a message to him, if you ever find him.'

  'Go ahead.' Jack was in no mood to stick around. He just wanted to get in the air and start patrolling the skies, looking for his real friends.

  'Tell him the Russians have been in touch... they've solved the dispersal problem for the Zolpidem cure. Didn't say how, but they say they're months away from launching a planet wide solution. A cure. They're, somewhat affectionately calling it "Zombie-dem". Cute name for a weapon of mass destruction...'

  'Is that all?' Jack was about to cut him off. He never did have a lot of time for Cygan. Even though he often saw him in Logan, the way he thought and the way he fought too.

  'No... tell him this too. This is no natural disaster. No act of God. No freak of nature... the zombies. Reggie... This was us.'