Omega Virus (Book 1): Beta Hour

by Jake A. Strife

  It sounded crazy, but I found some relief. Someone had to be crazy to keep us alive in ‘End Game’ times.

  Wesley walked up to a panel on the wall. “This is the hand scanner. No one can get in without being an employee.”

  The glass doors looked thick. The windows above looked empty. A zombie moan came from somewhere nearby, and Wesley smacked his hand onto the scanner. The doors slid open, revealing the dark building.

  “I wonder how long the power will hold out?” Jessie asked.

  “Till the electricity grid give,” Dave said. “Won’t be too long, I’m sure.”

  The doors shut, bathing us in shadow.

  All but Wesley lifted our weapons. Zombies stood against the walls! Had he led us into a trap?

  “Pause!” Wesley held up his hands. “They’re statues.”

  I lowered my dagger and breathed a sigh of relief. Even still, they looked super realistic.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  Wesley looked around. His grin faded.

  “What’s wrong?” Tiffany asked.

  The silhouette of a zombie began pounding on the doors behind us. I could only hope the glass would hold.

  “I don’t hear them,” Wesley whispered.

  “Well, what do you expect?” Jeff asked. “They probably have good reason to be quiet.”

  “Here, no one ever is,” Wesley replied.

  I squeezed past the group and looked at a security monitor, revealing several different areas of the building.

  A kitchen caught my eye. The fridge hung open, and all its shelves were empty. From the look of it, all the cabinets were bare. The other cameras showed various rooms with TVs and game console development kits. Not a soul anywhere.

  “I think your friends bailed on you.”

  He stormed to the desk and peered at all of the screens.

  “They just went out to score some achievements, right?” I smirked.

  In the lower corner, a camera flickered. In a doorway labeled parking garage, a lone figure stood, holding a gore-covered arm in its hands. Wesley didn’t speak. His friends hadn’t gone for achievements, instead they had become one.

  Achievement unlocked; “Zombie Chow.”

  LEVEL 04 – QUALITY ASSURANCE

  “Wes, what’s wrong?” Tiffany asked.

  The Zombie Killer ignored her. He chewed on his bottom lip, eyes fixated on the security monitor. He needed to face reality, but the cogs in his head were ticking. His friends were dead.

  The living Corpse on the screen lifted the human drumstick. It sank in its broken fangs and ripped out a chunk. As it chewed, gore dribbled down its chin.

  Guilt edged into my mind.

  “Wesley, I'm sorry.”

  He didn't seem to hear my apology. Instead, he just leaned on the desk, still deep in some far off world.

  I looked at the Gamer's Guild. They weren’t really my friends, but I couldn’t imagine losing one of them to a Corpse. Like it or not, we were now a party.

  Jessie and I exchanged glances, and she shook her head. Wesley needed time.

  I joined the Guild, by the entrance. No one could find words. The banging on the front door continued, never-ending. The tall, zombified figure, smeared bloody handprints with each slam.

  After several more thuds, I couldn’t take anymore. “I'm going to look around.”

  Everyone, save Wesley, shot me a look.

  “You’re insane!” Dave said. “Those things are in here.”

  “Don't go, please,” Jessie said.

  I examined the dagger Wesley had given me. “Someone’s gotta do it.”

  “I'll go with him,” Jeff spoke up. “I don’t fancy standing around.”

  Instead of a glare, he had a blank look, almost peaceful. Had he finally accepted the ZPoc?

  I wouldn’t refuse his company. He carried a gun, which exponentially could increase one’s chances of survival.

  “Let's go, then,” I said.

  Jeff nodded, and we walked toward the hallway labeled ‘Development’.

  Wesley held up his hand. “Wait! Stay away from the Development Wing. That's where the garage is.”

  “R-right,” I said.

  We took the other hall labeled, ‘Offices’. No more than a few steps had passed before he muttered, “Noobs.”

  I opened my mouth to snap back but instead sighed deeply.

  “Jerk,” I whispered and hurried to keep up with Jeff.

  Taking the corner, I slammed right into him.

  “Don’t do that!” I breathed. “I almost stabbed you.”

  Jeff turned back. “Meh. We need a game plan, ya know?”

  I peeked down the hall. “You're right. What do you suggest?”

  “You're shorter, so you should go first.”

  “W-why me?”

  “You can't see past me. So what good would it do for you to provide backup?”

  The truth of being the short one burned my pride, but I couldn't argue. “Right, you shoot over me if anything.”

  “Exactly,” Jeff said.

  I scurried in front, noting that Jeff towered over me by at least half a foot. Even with my dagger, my pulse pounded in my ears. The dark floor tiles made the shoes of the statues blend, making it harder to tell if one were real.

  Stupid statues!

  I checked each one, making sure none moved so much as an inch. Several tense seconds passed.

  “Go already,” Jeff whispered.

  As I went, I stared intently at each statue. They were too realistic, from the deep cuts on their faces, to the ragged clothing. Before we had gone past three, I stabbed each one in a panic. Jeff could only chuckle.

  After the first hall, we found the offices. The first read. “Ben McRoy.” I approached the door and pushed. It creaked open and revealed nothing more than a messy desk, covered in papers and junk food. It looked secure.

  “It looks empty,” I said.

  “Someone was recently here, though,” Jeff pointed.

  A bottle of beer sat on a small end table. It still had the sweat on the dark glass

  I picked up the still-cold bottle. “Maybe some of Wesley's friends are alive? There's no blood.”

  Jeff shrugged. “Makes you wonder exactly how prepared they really were.”

  “If they were drinking? Who knows? Isn't that a sure-fire way to get yourself killed in a movie?”

  “Well, let's see if we can find the poor bastard,” Jeff said.

  I closed the door behind us and walked up to the next office that belonged to a ‘Serenade Kennedy'.

  The door opened without a squeal. This room appeared a stark contrast to the prior. Everything looked pristine. Papers were in perfect piles without even a stray corner sticking out, and a shelf behind the desk stood lined with anime action figures and little plush dolls of cats and other cutesy animals. Even those were set up from largest to smallest, and aligned to perfection.

  “Okay. This office belonged to a chick.” I said.

  “And she was hot,” Jeff said.

  “Huh? How's that?”

  Jeff picked up a picture frame from a bookshelf and held it up.

  “She was boiling!” he grinned.

  “Let me see!” I reached, and he pulled away, grinning.

  “Why do you care?” he asked, “You have the hots for Jessie.”

  A twisting knot of butterflies swarmed in my stomach.

  “N-no!” My cheeks burned.

  An electrical hum filled the air, spreading around the room, and outside the hall.

  “What's that?” I asked.

  “C'mon, admit it. You like her.”

  “I'm serious! What was that?” I hissed.

  “I need to know, man. Tell me.”

  He still held the picture frame. The woman had long black hair, perfect green shining eyes, and tan skin. A real beauty. But she didn't compare to Jessie, who had fair, freckled skin and beautiful red hair.

  The humming escalated, and the emergency lights
cut out. My first instinct kicked in, and I tried to hide, but Jeff grabbed my arm. “Don't move.”

  His tone sent chills ricocheting through me.

  A scraping sound came from somewhere nearby. It sounded just like nails on a chalkboard.

  I tensed, trying to fight the panic. “Where is it?”

  “Shuddup!” He said.

  I listened. The scraping seemed too close.

  Despite blinded, my sense of hearing didn’t get any better. Images of a zombie chewing on my leg flashed through my head.

  “Run!” Jeff shouted.

  His heavy footfalls echoed down the hall, leaving me alone.

  “Wait up!” I wanted to follow but fear paralyzed my legs. A silhouette of a zombie statue down the hall looked like it moved. Or did it? Maybe it did! Maybe they all were real and waited to tear into us!

  Tears welled up in my eyes. Terror filled me like never before. How could I get past them, and back to the others?

  Then came a single gunshot followed by a girl's scream. Jessie? Tiffany? Maybe one of the employees! Serenade maybe? But the cold realization chilled me to the bone. It couldn't be Serenade because she scraped the floor right behind me.

  My legs got yanked from under me, and I screamed. My head hit a cabinet, and plushies rained down. The living corpse dug her nails into my shoe. She groaned and grabbed my jeans, pulling herself. I reached for my dagger, but my fingertips sent it skidding into the hall.

  Serenade the Corpse, screeched in a hissing rage and pulled me under the desk.

  “No! No! No!” I screamed.

  I pulled back my leg as hard as I could and kicked with the other. My foot landed in her mouth, and the hissing moan skipped like a record. I crawled back enough to get my hand within dagger's reach. But she had me again! She lunged, and I jerked to the side. Her head hit the floor.

  “Help!” I pleaded.

  Again, I reached for my dagger, but I couldn't get my fingers around the handle. She reeled me back in like a fish. I reached for leverage to pull myself away and grabbed a drawer of the cabinet. The whole thing came crashing down, and I dodged just in time. But now my dagger had ended up on the other side.

  As things bounced from the opened drawers, a beam of light shot out from under the desk.

  A heavy silver flashlight! I grabbed it and aimed the beam at Serenade. Once the beautiful woman from the picture, she now had eyes that were no longer pretty. They were dull green and filled with the hunger of a feral beast. Her green veins bulged as she bared her fangs sending spittle and blood all over.

  I kicked her not-pretty face, but she came back hissing and snapping. My only weapons were small items lying around, so I started throwing them. A plushy cat, a hard plastic cartoon unicorn, a little basketball with a large Z on it! Nothing proved to be a useful weapon!

  She lunged higher up, past my leg and neared my inner thigh. Now I couldn't kick. The moment of death had come.

  But I held a large, and heavy flashlight.

  I brought it up, and as she lunged, slammed the makeshift weapon down and smashed the handle into her skull. Brain matter splattered my face, but she continued to twitch, so I went insane. I brought up the flashlight, smashed it down, brought it up, smashed it down, over and over, until it hit the floor beneath the bloody mess of her once beautiful, little head. The Corpse stopped thrashing.

  Leaning back against the fallen cabinet, I could hear only my heartbeat. I stayed there for many long moments, catching my breath. Finally, I shoved the dead body away and examined my legs to make sure there were no bites. Adrenaline could have covered the pain, maybe. I thanked the gaming gods when I didn’t find a scratch. The only injury had come from hitting my head.

  “That was too close.”

  I held up the flashlight and shined it around the room to make sure no more Corpses hid in the shadows.

  Safe. But what about the gunshot and the scream?

  I tried to stand, but slipped in the gore. Once again, I smacked my head into something hard.

  Everything went fuzzy and seemed to slow down. Somewhere nearby I heard more noise. Footsteps? Scraping? I cursed and grabbed the bottom of the office door, slamming it shut. I pushed all my weight against the cabinet, reinforcing the jam. Holding the flashlight to my chest, I clicked off the light. Something pounded on the door, just like the monotonous pounding of the Corpse outside the front entrance.

  “You're not going to get me,” I whispered, fading in and out of consciousness.

  I had just survived a near death experience, and another flesh crazed monster stood outside the door! Who ever said things were meant to be fair? My family didn't tend to me; no girls ever liked me or gave me a nickname. No friends to speak of unless you counted NPCs in video games. They were my friends. Characters were my friends, but they couldn't come to my rescue. Not even Jeff, whom for a brief moment, at least, I thought had my back. Of course, he too had run away.

  I leaned back and whimpered as the stinking Corpse pushed hard against the door, trying its damnedest to get in. Not budging. I would starve first before getting torn apart. I would never let them get me. Never. Ever.

  LEVEL 05 – PLAYER ONE PRESS START

  Somewhere in the darkness, I heard a young girl say, “Press Start.”

  It took a moment to respond. What did they mean?

  “What?” I asked.

  “I said, ‘Press Start’!” the same voice demanded. “Unpause the game or else!”

  I tried to spot her, but I couldn't see anything.

  “This isn’t the time for video games!” I argued.

  She shot back, “If you don’t press the stupid button right now, I'll go home!”

  I might have pushed the button to get her to quiet down so the Corpse outside would go away, but I didn’t have a controller, and we weren't playing a game. We were in real life and that an undead monster stood just outside the door. Couldn’t she hear it?

  “Okay, Zachary! That’s it! You’re no fun at all!”

  She sounded like Tiffany, but I'd never played a video game with her. I only played them alone, right? Everything felt fuzzy.

  “I’ll give you one last chance! If you want to be my boyfriend, press start and play the game! Stop being such a coward!”

  Boyfriend? Tiffany didn’t like me; in fact, she hated me. She didn’t even want me saying her name. But something seemed wrong about that. I'd said her name before; it felt right coming off my lips. Tiffany liked it. She even liked the nickname I'd given her, ‘Tiffa’.

  How did I know all of this? I could almost swear we'd grown up together. All of the answers existed in the vortex inside of my mind.

  The door shuddered and snapped me to the present. The Corpse pounded harder, trying to get to its next meal.

  “Zachary Mastiff!” Tiffany shouted. “Open the door! I won't say it again!”

  “Tiffa?” My eyes popped open, and I lay in the same dark office. Serenade's body rested on my legs. I still had the flashlight clutched in my hands, and the light shone on the pile of mush that'd been her head.

  “Zach, are you alive in there?” Tiffany shouted. “If you got yourself killed I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Dave interjected. “You sound like you’re worried about the Noob.”

  Tiffany snapped. “Hell no! We need all the numbers we can. If you forgot, Wesley wandered off!”

  “Find him on your own.” Jeff said, “It’s like you want every guy to be your boyfriend.

  “No way! I don’t want a boyfriend! I—I don’t even like boys!”

  “So you like girls?” Dave snorted. “Hear that, Jessie?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Jessie grumbled. “I’m not into girls.”

  “And neither am I!” Tiffany said.

  “This is annoying. Try pushing the door again.” Jeff said, “If we don’t hear him in their groaning, then he isn’t a zombie, at least not yet.”

  “You do it!” Tiffany said, “I’m tired of trying. If I hea
r anyone else put me in a romantic ‘hypothetical’ again, I’m punching them in the nuts!”

  All went silent until the door exploded off of its hinges and the filing cabinet shot forward sending me tumbling and landing upside down. My head ached, and the light burned my eyes.

  “Hey, the power is back on!” Dave cheered.

  “Zach!” Jessie and Tiffany both cried at the same time.

  Someone started lifting me, but then flung and slammed me into the wall, sending a sharp pain cracking up my back.

  “What’d you do that for, Moron?” Tiffany snapped.

  “He’s got blood on him,” Jeff replied. “Coulda been one of them.”

  “He’s still breathing,” Jessie said. “Oh thank the gods.”

  “Which gods?” I murmured.

  “The gaming ones, idiot.” Tiffany groaned.

  I looked up and found Jessie kneeling before me. Her eyes were red from crying, and her lips quivered as if she were about to burst into another flood of tears. Tiffany stood behind her, arms across her chest. Her lips and eyebrows were twitching; probably from annoyance.

  Jessie threw herself, wrapping both arms around my neck.

  “I was worried!” Jessie said. “I heard the commotion from the front. By the time Jeff got back, and he was alone, I thought, well, you know.”

  “We figured you were dead,” Tiffany said.

  “I almost did die. There was a Corpse in the office. The power went out; Jeff took off, and then it attacked me.”

  “So Jeff ran before the attack?” Dave snorted.

  Jeff punched Dave’s arm. “Don’t make me sound like a coward!”

  Dave burst into laughter and slapped his knee. “But you are!”

  The dynamic duo continued to argue. But what about the gunshot from earlier?

  I sat up straight. “The gunfire! What happened?”

  Tiffany shrugged. “Wesley went to check the other wing, and I guess he shot a zombie. It made Jessie scream.”

  “Aren’t you worried about him?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m not worried about anyone but myself. But we should see if we can find Mr. Zombie Killing Hat.”