by Brown, TW
***
CONUSHUB: NODE 3 OFFLINE; NODE 2 OFFLINE, NODE 1 NOT RESPONDING.
NODE 5, LINK SEVERED-SHUTDOWN INITIATED.
NODE 4 STILL ACTIVE>PING.
***
“Subject three showing no change,” Lena Borlavich said as she jotted notes on her clipboard. She stared in at the creature encased in the ten foot square room. The inch-thick glass was smeared with brownish fluid. Dried blood wasn’t nearly as red in real life as it was in the movies.
“Did she eat it?” Darlene Mensa asked through a mouthful of peanut butter sandwich.
“Nope.” Lena pushed the button that activated the sprinkler inside the observation chamber. “Apparently zombies don’t like chicken.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call them that,” Darlene groaned.
“What would you have me call them, Doctor Mensa?”
“Subjects…test cases…”
“There is no denying that these subjects were living, we infected them with a fluid sample from a contaminated test case, which lead to their eventual death. In less than fifteen minutes, the dead subject opened its eyes,” Lena said, taking pains to emphasize Darlene Mensa’s preferred names for the dead who were now standing inside observation chambers waiting for the chance to bite into a living person and eat them much like Darlene was currently doing to the sandwich in her hand.
“But calling them zombies is so…”
“B-movie?” Lena offered.
“Are we having the zombie discussion again?” Samantha Black, the third scientist in their group asked as she stepped out of the decontamination chamber.
“Nice of you to join us,” Darlene quipped.
“Dock my pay,” Samantha said with a dismissive wave. She walked over to the chamber Lena still stood at with her clipboard in hand. “No luck with the chicken?”
“It seemed to follow it with its eyes for a few minutes,” Lena replied. “But it didn’t make any attempt to catch the chicken.”
“So we can cross that off the list.” Samantha plucked one of the peanut butter sandwiches off of Darlene’s plate. “I see you left the chicken in there during the wash down.”
“Darlene was in the garden and I won’t open those chambers without one of you present.”
All three women shuddered at the memory of how close they’d come to losing Darlene. You could be as careful as you wanted, but accidents happen…people trip, slip, and stumble.
“And what about Fido?” Samantha asked.
All three women moved to the next chamber and peeked in. The dark figure huddled in the corner did not seem to notice. Lena tapped the glass and the large head of the Rottweiler lifted. The white filmed eyes stood out in stark contrast. Only a few feet away, a chicken lay…untouched.
“Wanna toss in another kitten?” Samantha asked with far too much enthusiasm.
“You are one sick individual?” Darlene scowled, tossing the uneaten remains of her sandwich in a nearby garbage can.
“You say individual…but what you really mean is bitch,” Samantha said with a smirk. “Anyways, I actually came with some news; the computer just kicked out a message. It seems that we are the only node still active.”
“When did number five go down?” Darlene asked.
“Sometime in the past few hours, I guess.”
The three women were silent for a moment. Eventually it was Lena who spoke up. “Do you wonder how they went down? I mean they couldn’t be breached if their set up is like ours.” She indicated to the monitor that still gave them a live picture of outside. The perimeter fence had long since fallen, and the massive crowd of zombies was now packed in tight around the concrete cylinder that the camera was mounted on top of.
“Doesn’t matter how they went down,” Samantha spoke up. “What matters is that, as far as we know, we are the last ones looking for a cure.”
“And what do we do if we find one?” Darlene pointed to the monitor. “It’s not like we can just load up in a car and take off. There must be thousands of them out there.”
“We can worry about that when we have a reason,” Lena said with a shrug.
“Or when we go down like all the others,” Darlene added.
***
Bald Knob, AR—Corporal Jody Rafe stepped out into the cold morning air and scanned the area. He was relieved to see everything exactly how he’d left it before going to sleep. That meant it was just a bad dream. Or, more accurately, another bad dream.
As part of 3rd Battalion, 153rd Infantry, Charlie Company…the last of the “Gunslingers” of Arkansas, Jody’s unit had been in Little Rock at the start of what Command Central referred to as “The Event” or as the soldiers more commonly called, “The opening of Hell.” The city had fallen in under two weeks. That still boggled the mind; at least it still boggled Jody’s mind.
The battalion was gone. The 153rd was gone. As far as anybody could tell, Charlie Company was it…the last group standing. Of the two hundred and sixty-three members of Charlie, forty-seven remained. They continued to hold to the command structure. Some of the men complained, saying that there was no more United States, therefore, no more United States Army. Yet, they stayed; they took their watch and patrol assignments, and still addressed their ranking officer as Commander (despite the fact that he was a field-promoted captain who had been out of the academy for less than six months when this whole thing started).
“Hey, Jody,” a voice heavy with a Boston accent called, “you got forage team in two hours.”
“Thanks, Danny,” Jody groaned with a stretch and a wave. “Who’s leading?”
“You ain’t heard?” Danny O’ Leary unslung his weapon and stopped with an over-exaggerated “present arms” move while coming to a half-assed semblance of attention.
“Heard what?” Jody asked suspiciously.
“You got the detail Sergeant Rafe.”
“What?”
“Pitts went AWOL.”
And then there were forty-six, Jody thought.
“He take that local?”
Sergeant Bill Pitts had gotten involved with one of the local girls shortly after Charlie Company had secured the little town of Bald Knob—back when there were still over two hundred living members serving under the banner. There were a few problems with the relationship. The first being the young lady’s husband; that had been solved when the man suffered a bite from one of the stiffs. Only, when the young lady got herself nipped, Pitts tried to hide her instead of submitting her to quarantine.
What happened next was actually pretty sad. It turned out that the girl demonstrated immunity to the bite! It was the first time they’d known anybody to survive the bite and not become one of the stiffs. That was almost worse for the poor gal. Back then, they still had radio contact with other commands. The order came to have the woman secured and sent via helicopter to Georgia. The CDC in Atlanta hadn’t gone offline yet and was very interested in the woman’s apparent immunity.
Pitts had slipped in and taken the girl from the holding cell. It couldn’t be proved since neither of the men on watch that night saw anything. The inquiry was cancelled when Atlanta fell a week later. No use worrying about anything when the location causing all the fuss was no longer active. To nobody’s surprise, the young lady reappeared the next day.
Jody was a little astounded to hear that the sergeant had bailed out on Charlie Company. The man was a damn good soldier and an exceptional leader.
“Took the girl, the dog, and a few crates from the armory,” Danny said with a snort.
“So who decided that I was the next in line?”
“Cap posted it outside his quarters along with the results of the induction testing. About a hundred of the locals are being drafted.”
“How is that news going over?”
“Town’s as quite as I can ever remember…we have extra men patrolling the street in case that piece-of-shit mayor tries to pull anything,” Danny reported.
That was another problem entirely. When Charlie
Company had rolled in, they’d been treated like heroes. But it was just like any other occupation after a while. The folks didn’t like being told what to do by the military. It had started with a few of the locals doing a number on one of the men who had gone in to one of the local bars after spending three days out in the unprotected countryside looking for possible survivors.
Lately, the defiance had escalated. The citizens were declining to do the duties assigned to them as the preparations were made to ensure that the town was safe. Walls were being constructed, supplies gathered for distribution. The mayor was behind it all, insisting that it was the duty of the military to protect the “Good folks of Bald Knob, glory be and amen!”
“Captain says we will be issuing booklets to everybody.”
“What?” Jody asked as he checked his patrol pack to ensure he had all his gear.
“Yep,” Danny nodded, “every citizen will be issued a booklet every month that will be used to record their hours and determine what they will be allocated at the stores depot.”
“That’s not gonna go over well,” Jody sighed.
“That ain’t the half of it,” Danny whispered. “Starting tomorrow at just before sunrise we will be going house to house to confiscate all supplies such as food and even half-used toothpaste tubes. Cap says that he wants everything under lock and key by nightfall.”
“How does he figure we can get that big of a job done in so short of a time?”
“Because everybody is going to be placed in the detention facility until we are finished.”
Jody stopped the inventory of his pack and turned to face his fellow soldier. “Sounds a little Red Dawn-esque if you ask me.”
“Maybe so,” Danny agreed, “but most of the company seems to think it is a good idea. The fellas are tired of busting their asses for a bunch of ungrateful folks who are starting to treat us worse than the rag heads did over in Iraq.”
Jody closed up his pack and slung it over his shoulder. He grabbed his weapon and headed to the patrol’s muster area. A cold rain was just beginning to fall. To Jody, this seemed too much like an omen to ignore.
3
The Best Laid Plans of a Geek…
Kevin poked his head around the corner. Up the street he saw four more zombies. Each was busy pawing at a door or window of an equal number of houses that lined the litter-strewn, tree-lined road. He didn’t like it; the road itself that is. It was cast in shadows even though the venerable oaks that stretched their limbs across it to form a natural archway had lost all their leaves weeks ago.
“I can’t hold it much longer,” Aleah whispered in his ear.
“You wanna go right here?” Kevin hissed. “I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable taking a leak here…and it is much less of an ordeal for me than it is for you.”
“More proof that God was a man and wanted to stack the deck against women early on,” Aleah groused. Kevin had to bite back a chuckle.
“If we stay behind that fallen truck, we should remain out of their line of sight.”
“And which house are we making a run for?” Aleah peeked past Kevin.
“The brick one with the tall columns along the front porch.”
“Why not the dark brown one with the motorcycle crashed in the fountain?”
“The one with the columns has a car parked in the driveway. The door in back is open and I can see a car seat,” Kevin explained patiently what was, to him at least, so obvious. “A car seat means that we have a better chance at scoring baby stuff.”
Aleah had to tell herself to shut her mouth. How in the hell did he pull this stuff out of the air? she wondered. Time after time he came up with things that absolutely amazed her. And not just her…the others commented on it frequently; even Peter who had been making it a point to get in a pissing contest with Kevin seemingly every day.
Kevin shifted his body enough to free his machete from its sheath. He didn’t need to say a word, Aleah knew the drill. She drew her own iron spike-tipped axe handle (Kevin had shown her the disadvantages of an axe…namely the head of the axe tended to get lodged in a skull) and watched his head bob. One…two…three…
And he was up and scurrying to the rear of the large truck that would be their cover for the first half of their run to the house they intended to scavenge for supplies. Aleah followed, hating how the adrenaline rush of the situation aggravated her need to pee in the worst way. Coming up behind Kevin, she could hear the closest zombie now. His hands were clawing at the wooden door. She was willing to bet that the creature had lost most of the flesh from its fingertips. She could hear that deeper sounding scratches that came when bone clawed at wood. Funny the new skills a girl picked up in the apocalypse, she mused.
Kevin bobbed his head three times and took off again. This time he was crouched low and trying to stay close to the trees that lined the road. She followed as fast as she dared while still managing to hold her bladder. It was that terrible need to relieve herself that probably made her miss seeing the rusted tin can. Of course, in her defense, it was half-buried in a pile of rotting leaves. Still, her foot caught it solid and sent it clattering along the cracked surface of the road.
In eerie unison, four heads turned, ceasing instantly in their attempts to claw their way in to one of the formerly grand houses. They began to lurch in the direction of the sound.
“Crap!” Kevin sighed.
“Sorry,” Aleah apologized.
“Later!” Kevin stood and moved wide of the truck. “Make for the house, but go to the one next door and use the back yard. Hopefully that will keep them from clustering around the one we want.”
Aleah took off. As she ran, she couldn’t help but appreciate the fact that, even in the heat of events, Kevin’s mind still worried about the details. She paused long enough to spike a portly teenaged boy, ironically dressed in a Walking Dead tee shirt.
***
Kevin brought his heavy blade smashing through the skull of the nearest zombie. He’d watched Aleah until she ducked around the corner of the house he’d indicated for her to use as a diversion. That few precious moments had allowed over a dozen of the undead to come out from whatever dank places they’d been hiding in and start their slow march towards him.
“C’mon,” Kevin taunted, trying to ensure that none of them went off after Aleah.
Stepping into the first pair that came within range, Kevin brought his blade across, taking the top half of the first zombie’s head almost off. He kicked out and knocked the body free, then thrust up, catching the other under the chin. He stepped back and took a second to admire the work. Most times he had to kill quickly. He could take his time with the first few as he drew the rest closer.
When Kevin had set out with three friends, they’d all been self-professed zombie movie geeks. They’d had delusions of grandeur as to how things would play out. They’d discovered from the start that it wasn’t like the movies or the video games. Things had gone badly early on and never quite seemed to right themselves. Now, he was the last one standing. He was living in a walled country club with a third year med student who was as close to a doctor as he could ever hope for, a former female pop star, her little sister—who had just given birth to a baby girl—a high school cheerleader that turned out to be immune from the bite, a young man who was still trying to regain his ability to walk after nearly starving and having a piece of metal lodged in his thigh for so long it had almost grafted to the meat, and then there was Aleah.
Aleah was probably the most beautiful woman Kevin had ever seen…living or on a poster. The fact that she had a thing for him was still taking some getting used to. He was not accustomed to the attentions of a “hot babe.”
Taking a step to the side, Kevin dodged the awkward grasp of a naked man who had probably tipped the scales at three hundred pounds as a living being. The man was not fat, but rather, exceptionally tall—close to seven feet tall if not more—and extremely muscle bound. His arms were bigger than Kevin’s legs. Black veins were l
ike rotting ivy tendrils all over the man’s skin. The cause of death wasn’t visible anywhere.
As Kevin cleaved the man’s head, he remembered how Mike had died. The best they could guess, he’d gotten some contaminated blood in his eyes or mouth one day when they were fighting off a few while rigging traps in the road near a farm house they had stayed in for a while.
That was why he and Aleah were wearing goggles. That was why they all wore them any time they ventured out. Kevin had hit a sporting goods store and scooped up dozens of pairs of swimming and racquetball goggles. That was also why he had crafted mesh-lined gloves for everybody. Kevin was all about planning.
He made short work of five more zombies before moving in the direction of the house he’d sent Aleah. Scanning the street, he was thankful that there didn’t appear to be any more heading their way. Sometimes you get lucky, he thought. Then the scream split the air.
Aleah!
Kevin took off at a sprint. He shouldered past the two un-dead that were in his way. Both had started to turn in the direction of the scream and had their backs to him as he shot by sending them tumbling to the ground in a heap.
He reached the gate and didn’t bother with the latch. Tossing his weapon over where it landed point first and sunk a few inches into the soggy ground, Kevin planted his hands and vaulted. He slipped just a bit as his feet hit, but managed to keep his footing and grab his sword by the pommel on his way past.
When he rounded the corner, he discovered a back yard that reminded him of all the footage he’d seen of the Playboy Mansion. There were tennis courts and pools and a big rock structure that had obviously been a waterfall. There were also several zombies gathered around a small stage-like platform. Aleah was on the platform jabbing furiously at the mob. Kevin felt his heart sink. Her shirt was ripped and he could see blood dripping down her front.