by M. D. Cooper
“Zombie,” BAMF said simply.
“OK,” Ramsey agreed, feeling a bit nauseous at the sight of the disembodied head. “For now, I’m comfortable calling them that. Lashes, what do you have?”
“What do I have? I have a strong desire to leave and tell Petra that we’re sorry, but her brother is a member of the walking dead,” Lashes replied.
“Funny,” Ramsey replied.
“Fiiiine. But if I turn into a zombie, I’m biting you first,” Lashes whined.
“And the layout down here?”
Lashes turned her gaze back to the terminal. “The level has a lot of holding cells, actually…and there’s a lab area, too.”
“What’s closer?” Ramsey asked.
“The lab—it’s about a hundred meters away, down a few halls,” Lashes replied, and passed the schematics to the team over the Link as she stepped out of the security office and carefully walked around the head and the body to which it had once been attached.
Ramsey looked to Sam, who seemed frozen withe fear, staring at the head.
“What’s wrong?” Ramsey asked.
“I…I…think I knew him. That’s Henry. He transferred offworld a month ago.”
“Looks like he transferred to hell,” BAMF said. “We’ll be there, too, if we stay here too long.”
“Get moving,” Ramsey said to Sam. “Or you can stay here. Your choice.”
Sam took a faltering step after BAMF and nearly fell, but managed to steady himself.
“Try not to wake the dead,” BAMF said with a grin.
The team crept down the hall, following Lashes as she led them around one turn, then another, and another. Before long they were at the labs, all of which were fronted by large windows. What lay within was horrible beyond imagining.
The first lab they walked past seemed to contain nothing out of the ordinary, but then a figure in a dark corner stirred. Initially, its body appeared cool, almost room temperature, but just like their previous attacker, it flared brightly on their IR vision as it leapt up and lunged at the glass.
It was a man in a lab coat. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and foam dribbled from his mouth as he pounded on the glass. He didn’t appear to have any injuries, but his hands began to leave bloody streaks as he smashed his knuckles against the window.
“It’s not a side-show,” Ramsey said. “Keep moving.”
The horrors became progressively worse. In some rooms, there were multiple zombies sitting quietly in corners—until they spotted the team and they charged the glass. In others, there were corpses that appeared to be utterly desiccated, as though their insides, and every bit of moisture, had been removed.
In the fifth lab, they saw two zombies sucking at a corpse’s neck, slowly drawing blood from the body.
“Vampire zombies?” Lashes asked with a tremble in her voice. “I thought zombies ate brains.”
“There’s no such thing as zombies—at least there wasn’t until now. Who knows what they really eat,” Ramsey said stoically.
“Big galaxy,” BAMF said. “If they’re here, I bet they’ve struck elsewhere, too.”
In the next room there was a naked woman strapped to a table with medical equipment arrayed around her. Her body was warm and her skin appeared unmarked, and Ramsey noticed a slow rise and fall to her chest.
“Live one in here,” he said.
“Live as in alive, or a lively zombie?” Lashes asked with a look of concern.
“Does she look lively, fool?” BAMF asked.
“Guess not.”
“Missy!” Sam cried out when he peered out from behind Ramsey’s back.
He rushed to the door and palmed it open. The portal slid aside, and Missy screamed and closed her eyes.
“Wow,” Lashes commented as she looked at the door’s control. “Nice security. “No wonder all their zombies got out.”
BAMF rushed in after Sam and grabbed him by the shirt. “Wait!” she hissed.
“Let go! It’s Missy!” Sam hollered and struggled.
“Shut up, kid! And stand back, she could be infected,” Ramsey said, and Sam’s struggles instantly ceased.
Missy, for her part, had opened her eyes and was staring incredulously at the group.
“Sam? Is that you?” she asked in wavering tones.
“It is, baby, I came here to rescue you.”
“Oh sweet stars… enough with the sap,” Lashes sighed.
“Are you OK?” Ramsey asked. “Did they do anything to you?”
“I…I don’t think so,” Missy replied. “They brought a lot of us out of holding cells last night. I heard something about prepping for a new round of experiments. After they strapped me to this table, they left and no one else has been in here. But then…then the screaming started.”
“It’s OK,” Sam said. “We’re going to get you out of here. I brought these people to help.”
“Did you hear them mention a guy named Ben at all?” Ramsey asked.
Missy shook her head, then her eyes widened. “They did mention a guy named Benjartamew. Is that who you mean? They mentioned something about him working in one of the labs.”
Ramsey nodded. “That’s our guy.”
“Can…can you unstrap me? I’ve been here for hours. I’m really stiff,” Missy said. “I really have to pee, too!”
Sam reached for one of the fasteners and BAMF slapped his hand away. “Wait!”
BAMF picked up a pair of medial tongs and walked out into the corridor where a few leftover body parts from some gorey feast lay about. She picked up a half-hand with the tongs and brought it into the room, where she held it near Missy’s face.
“Hungry? Want a bite?” she asked seriously.
“Fuck! No! Gross! Get that away from me!”
“She’s safe,” BAMF said with a grin and tossed the tongs and bloody hand aside.
Sam and Lashes freed Missy from the bed and lifted her up.
“Oh, Sam,” Missy said as she collapsed in his arms. “I thought I was gonna die here…gonna be one of those things.”
“Never gonna happen,” Sam replied.
“It will if we don’t get a move on,” Ramsey said. “Missy, grab those slippers over there. You can’t walk around out there barefoot.”
“What about clothes?” Sam asked. “She can’t just go around naked.”
Lashes sighed and rummaged through a drawer, producing a hospital gown, which she handed to Missy.
“Here, put this on,” Lashes said.
“Gah, I hate these things,” Missy complained. “My ass is going to hang out. A zombie might bite it.”
“Fine,” Lashes said and handed her second one. “Put one on backwards. Now you can escape the zombie apocalypse with your dignity intact.”
Ramsey was out in the hall and poked his head in. “You guys coming or what?”
“I’m ready, but can we find a bathroom on the way?” Missy asked.
“I’ll keep an eye peeled,” Ramsey grunted and stepped back into the corridor.
In the lab directly across the hall, a man stood at the glass waving urgently. His hair was bedraggled, hanging over his face, and he wore a lab coat over a red-stained shirt. It was not an auspicious sign.
Ramsey looked up and down the corridor and then crossed it and pressed the intercom button for the room.
“Are you a zombie?” he asked.
“A what?” came the reply.
“A zombie, you know, all the things that are running around down here killing everyone?”
“Ohhh…you mean the Safahs?
“Safaas?” Ramsey asked,
“No, not Safaas, Safahs. Semi-Autonomous Fominous Ambulatory Hominids.”
“Are those the things running around killing everyone and sucking their blood out?” Lashes asked as she approached.
“Uh, yeah.”
“So, zombies, then,” Ramsey said.
“Well, I can see why you’d think that, but they’re a bit more like vampires,” the man said.
“Yeah, but vampires are smart—I know some. These guys are not smart,” BAMF said.
“Zombpires?” Sam asked.
“I think they’re more like Vambies,” Lashes said. “They’re primary motivation is blood…or whatever. Not brains.”
“Maybe Vampbies,” BAMF said. “The B adds something to it.”
“Yeah, but they lumber around like zombies. I could go as far as Zompires.”
Ramsey smacked his palm against his head. “Can you shut up about naming them for a moment? You, guy, are you infected?”
“No,” the man shook his head. “I’ve been in here the whole time—locked in, unfortunately.”
Ramsey palmed the door open and the man took a step back brushing his hair from his face.
“Oh hey, it’s you!” Lashes exclaimed.
“It’s me?” the man asked.
“I do really have to pee,” Missy muttered as she clutched Sam’s arm and bounced on the balls of her feet.
Ramsey ignored her. “Yeah, you’re Ben, right? Your sister sent us to find you.”
The man looked confused. “What? Petra sent you? Is she here?”
Ramsey shook his head. “No, she’s on the ship up in orbit.”
“So, how are we going to get out of here?” Ben asked, glancing around as though he expected a Zompire to jump out from anywhere—something that wasn’t an entirely irrational fear.
“Uh…guys?” Lashes said.
“We have a shuttle,” Ramsey said. “Now that we have you, we shouldn’t have any trouble getting out. How many of them can there be, anyway?”
“Colonel,” Lashes entreated. “We have companeeeee.”
Ramsey looked at Lashes, and then at where she was pointing. Down the hall, barely discernable in the darkness, was a mass of shapes moving slowly toward them.
“Shit!” Ben exclaimed. “They’re gonna surge in a moment.”
“Let’s get a move on,” Ramsey said, and gestured for Lashes to lead the way out, while he and BAMF took up the rearguard.
The moment they began to move, a few of the Zompires lit up on the infrared band and charged.
Ramsey and BAMF fired plasma shots at the ceiling above the first few creatures, aiming for maximum splash damage. Then, as starstuff dripped onto the mob, they unloaded their clips. They took down four, then ten, then fifteen.
“How many people did they have down here, anyway?” Ramsey hollered over his shoulder as they retreated.
“Not sure,” Ben called back. “Maybe hundreds. I think they were abducting people from the island here for some time.”
“Shit,” BAMF grunted. “We don’t have the plasma ammo for hundreds.”
“I’m already half through mine,” Ramsey said.
“Aw, crap!” Lashes called out as weapons fire erupted at the front of the group. “There’s more of them!”
Ramsey and BAMF had whittled the horde down, but there were still another twenty figures behind them.
“Are they falling back?” he asked BAMF.
“Beats me. They didn’t teach Zombpire tactics at the academy.”
“Zom-PIRE,” Sam yelled as he swung a metal tray he had picked up at a creature that had broken past Lashes.
“Down here!” Ramsey said and motioned for the group to turn down a side passage, which read clear on IR, and paused to scan the schematics for a route out of the sublevel.
Lashes had switched her rifle to a concussive pulse setting, and BAMF was firing projectile rounds.
“Next time we go somewhere like this, I’m bringing grenades,” Lashes yelled as her weapon’s blast forced a group of zompires back.
“I think I have a route,” Ramsey said. “Follow me.”
The next twenty minutes were filled with the screaming wails of Zompires, shouts of fear and rage, and weapons fire from the team. As their weapons were running dry, the group reached the stairwell, where BAMF smashed in the faces of two more zompires lurking there.
They closed the door and pushed the bodies in front of it before racing up the stairs. When they reached the top, gasping for air, a zompire rushed out of the open door, screaming as it charged at Lashes. She fired a shot from her slug thrower and hit the creature in the face.
“Shit, that was my last round. Cells are dry, too.”
“I have one clip left,” Ramsey said.
“Same here,” BAMF added.
They peered down the hall, which led toward the room where they had first entered the complex.
“Are there bathrooms up here?” Missy asked. “I really can’t hold it much longer, I’m gonna piss down my leg in a minute.”
“Don’t do that!” BAMF whispered angrily. “The zombpires might smell it.”
Missy bit her lip and trembled slightly while Sam frowned. “How many times do we have to tell you, its zompires!”
“Shut up!” Ramsey said as he peered down the corridor. “Looks clear.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Lashes said and stood back as BAMF pushed past her.
Sam followed with his steel tray, having found his courage in the halls below—probably in part due to the presence of his girlfriend. Ben followed behind them, still peering nervously down the hall.
“I never thought I was going to get out of there,” he whispered.
“What happened down there, anyway?” Ramsey asked. “This has to have something to do with that bacteria you were researching.”
Ben nodded as they crept down the hall. “Yeah, turns out they had sent my lab the samples to see if we could get them to enhance metabolisms without mechanical mods.”
“Seems unnecessary,” Ramsey said. “There are a thousand ways to do that. Do we need another?”
“This bacteria is not terrestrial in origin,” Ben replied. “Yet it can interact with our bodies. That’s pretty damn rare. Getts wanted to work out a way to commercialize it and make a new market.”
“Alien bacterial enhancements?” Lashes said in disgust. “No freaking way!”
“Some people would go for it,” Ben said. “There’s a market for just about everything.”
“That there is,” a voice said, and a man stepped out of a doorway ahead of them. “And you have my chief researcher and an important test subject. I’ll need them back.”
“Letch?” Sam asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t think that’s Letch,” Ramsey said. “Letch had longer hair.”
“Seriously?’ Lashes exclaimed. “First zompires, now clones?”
“I hate clones,” BAMF muttered.
“Clones?” Missy exclaimed in dismay, and the unmistakable sound of urine hitting the floor sounded in the corridor.
“Oh, god, that smells! What did you eat?” BAMF said with a gaging sound.
Ahead, more clones appeared, these ones carrying rifles and unpleasant expressions—not because they were poorly cloned, but because they were quite irate.
“If you’ll come with us, we need to get out of this facility and to our beta site,” not-Letch said with no urgency in his voice.
“Oh yeah? And what are you going to do with this place?” Ramsey asked.
“It’s set to blow in fifteen minutes. We’ve pulled what we need from the backups. Now that we have Benjartamew, we can really make some progress on our research. There is much to do,” not-Letch replied.
“Drop your weapons,” one of the other not-Letches said.
“Do we have to, Colonel?” BAMF asked.
Ramsey didn’t see any other option at present. “Yeah, do it.”
Instead of dropping her weapon, BAMF pulled out the rifle’s clip and power cell and walked toward one of the not-Letches. “Hold this, I’ll want it back later.”
The not-Letch laughed. “It is a nice piece of hardware. Maybe I’ll hold onto it.”
“For a bit,” BAMF corrected.
“Move,” the first not-Letch said.
They marched down the hall and took a left down another corridor, which ended in
a large steel door that was open, showing the soft glow of the moon’s morning. The opening was guarded by another pair of clones, who closed and sealed it once the group was through. From there, a winding path led up the hillside toward the landing pad that still held the Gettsbird.
As they reached the ship, the head not-Letch turned to address the prisoners. “OK, you three tough guys, on your knees.”
Ramsey, Ben, and Sam all got down on their knees.
“What? No! Not you two,” the lead not-Letch gestured at Ben and Sam. “Get up. I meant the mercs.”
“Well, you weren’t very clear,” Ben said as he stood. “You said ‘three guys’. There are three guys here.”
“You know what he meant!” one of the other not-Letches yelled.
“Clearly not,” Lashes said calmly. “Missy, BAMF, and I were sure you meant the guys, too, not the girls. Right BAMF?”
“I pity these fools,” BAMF grunted in response.
“I didn’t really know what to do, either,” Missy acknowledged.
“This is ridiculous!” the head not-Letch threw his hands in the air. “People use ‘guys’ for men and women all the time.”
“Yeah, girls can do it, but it’s confusing when guys do,” Ramsey said. “It’s really not that hard to pick up on.”
“It’s ’cause they’re clones,” BAMF said. “If they were real people, they’d get it.”
“I know some other people who don’t get it,” Sam mused. “Think they’re clones, too?”
“Probably,” BAMF shook her head. “Fucking clones are everywhere.”
“OK, you, you, and you, on your knees,” the head not-Letch pointed at the three members of Delta-Team.
“I guess that works,” Lashes said. “Still a bit ambiguous, though.”
“I know,” Ramsey said brightly and removed his carrot as he gestured at his team. “We never got the chance to get properly introduced. I’m Ramsey, this is Lashes, and that’s BAMF. Now you can just call us by name.”
“Really?” one of the not-Letches asked. “Your name is BAMF? Did your mother name you that?”
“What do you think?” BAMF growled.
“I have to say,” Lashes commented as she tried to get comfortable on the hard surface of the landing pad, “I wish you guys would have just done this down the hill. The grass would have been softer, and then we wouldn’t have had to hike up the hill before you killed us.”