Convulsing, Uncle Bob’s body writhed in the bloody dirt. His eyes had rolled so far back in his head that thick red veins were coming up from below his eyelids. Auggie cocked the rifle and ended his favorite Uncle’s pain with a single shot between the eyes.
The memory taught Auggie not to panic. He knew what he had to do for BB as the enemy soldiers battered his comrade’s head against the muddy earth. He set his weapon to pop-tip, semi-auto, and using a single slug in each, dealt a final end to the three attacking BB.
Starkey’s field med-kit carried a lot of amazing medicine and potions, but miracles weren’t one of them. He injected BB’s lifeless body with an anti-coagulating agent to slow the decomposition of the recently deceased, allowing for future transplantation of usable organs.
-BEEP- Sgt. Walker, “The Cavalry’s close, men. Keep those pajama-wearing, undead, bastards back a couple more minutes and we’re in the clear.” -BOOP-
The sound of the enemy’s paralyzing rounds whizzed past them as the squad set up a defensive line. Auggie set a frag-grenade to contact-detonation, so that it would explode as soon as it landed. As he released the can, a bullet slipped through the opening in his titanium-Kevlar vest under his armpit.
The shot tore through his skin, ripping through muscle and bone, coming to rest in the center of his chest. Instantly heated by his living tissue, the slug’s jacket melted, injecting its chemical payload directly into his heart, stopping it.
Starkey used another anti-coag injection on Auggie as he suffered the first of his deaths. UAA reinforcements arrived minutes later wiping out the rest of the attacking force.
Transported back to their fire-base, the MARSH unit—short for the, Mobile Army Reclamation Surgical Hospital team—pulled Auggie back to the side of the living by using organs harvested from his fallen brother-in-arms, BB.
Auggie died twice more during his tour overseas. Following each resurrection, Auggie’s personality changed. His empathy for the plight of living humanity waned. By the time he left the jungle, he wasn’t the same man he had been when he volunteered to fight for what he thought was right.
Auggie returned home from the war, no longer certain that the cause was just. Once a devout Christian, he never again set foot in a church, or simply prayed for help or forgiveness. He knew he could never be absolved from the sins he’d seen and those he’d committed. His life plan, to serve his country, return to raise a family with the woman he married the night before shipping out, and living a long and happy life, evaporated into the fog and death of war.
Unsure of his place in the world, he had lost himself somewhere in the black-grey shroud in between the living and the dead.
---End---..
To Grandmother’s House We Go.
By Wayne Hills.
The steady rumble of my Reclamation Enforcement Agency (REA) cruiser is always a pleasant sound to me. The dual-turbocharged, in-line five cylinder engine reminds me of the big V-8s the older boys in my neighborhood hot-rodded before my mother was salvaged. Although a much smaller displacement and running on hydrogen distilled from the onboard water tanks instead of refined decaying dinosaurs, the Swedish designed 2.5 liter engine develops twice the horsepower as those archaic gas guzzlers. Hitch those wild ponies to the tweaked four-wheel drive and my, ‘not-so-standard’ unmarked sedan will outrun pretty much anything on or off the road. My SV75 is a beast and one of the only perks I get as an REA agent.
Today I'm following the map projected onto the windshield by the Agency's communication system. Along with the active satellite image of my route, it displays where the people on-site are located so that I'm never pulling up blind. Well, almost never.
Although the eye-in-the-sky x-ray cameras aren’t perfect, the system is much better than the primitive, ‘Surprise it’s an ambush,’ radio dispatches of the pre-Nam2 technology calls.
Flames explode from the exhaust as I slow and downshift to turn off the main road and pull into an upscale neighborhood. There are none of the typical cardboard cutout houses, with their generic middle class architecture, found in the lower class sections of town.
The local residents do, however, share some things in common with the humans living in those less affluent locales. They all live sheltered lives, existing with the same mistaken belief that the insanity will end. Believing that someone will find a cure, praying in vain that nature will prevail, and humankind will be saved from the catastrophe that has befallen our civilization. They cling to the hope that this unnatural way of life we've become accustomed to will pass.
I pity them.
“Too bad for them, that normal's dead," I mutter to the mansions as I speed toward my destination. "It's really gone suckers. Not just temporarily suspended like a human death. That normal's gone, never to return. Long live the new normal."
Over the years since my father's reclamation, cynicism has tinted my view about the choice’s we’ve made to cope and I don’t try to hide it. I’ve seen too much. The twin plagues of Earth and Nature, the war, the unspeakable inhumanity from humans and Prior-humans alike. There is too much pain, too much death and far too many rebirths of the dead. Thinking about it makes my temples throb. An all too familiar pressure builds behind my eyes.
A metallic female voice pops into my earpiece, “You have arrived.”
I turn through a high, spiked gate, onto the wide black driveway of the largest house on the block. I upshift and pick up speed as I pass a manicured lawn dotted with radar-guided Gatling towers. I hear the screaming and the pounding coming from the pristine Victorian home before I even skid to a stop.
A small crowd has gathered outside and I spot a couple of uniformed Police officers on the front steps keeping the neighbors back at a safe distance. Each is holding a standard issue grab-stick that is used to seize and restrain an out-of-control Prior in order to hood and capture it. They are a six-foot long fiberglass pole with a claw at the end; similar to the kind given to people with bad backs to pick up their socks or empty beer cans. Besides the longer length of a grabber compared to the household convenience variety, the main difference is the adjustable spring-loaded claw.
At its grisliest, it can be adjusted to what I like to refer to as the "Dandelion Setting." As a child, before the outbreak and chaos of the dead returning to feast on the living, I would pick the little weeds, hold the stem in my fist and flick their pretty yellow flowers off with my thumb.
Regardless of the pressure used, the procedure usually ends badly for the occasional user, which is why the rank-and-file prefer to stand outside and wait for the professionals to show up.
That’s where I come in.
The two cops at the door drop their shoulders and become more at ease seeing that I’ve arrived equipped with my more effective means of Prior containment: customized grab-stick, specialized slug gun, diamond razor wire spoolers. All the toys at my disposal are very effective at keeping humans safe from runaway Priors.
From the dispatch call, I have a pretty good idea of what I’ll be dealing with. An older Prior housekeeper has trapped its host family in a pantry that doubles as a safe room and she's clawing at the door. Lucky for them they have a fortified room. I've seen Priors twice my age break through solid wooden doors. From experience, once they get the taste of a live human, they'll keep coming until you're a meal or their head's a bile soaked mess on the ground.
I arm myself for impending battle and slam closed the rear hatch of the SV85.
"Hey Auggie!” I hear my name shouted over the crowd's murmuring and the banging from inside the house. Turning toward the familiar voice, I see my old friend, Sgt. Nick Walker, right hand outstretched.
"Careful there Nicco," I say, patting his left shoulder. "Last time you almost broke my pinky. What fun do you have in store for us today?"
His cybernetic hand still grosses me out a bit. The slight warmth and dampness to the touch feels too real. If I didn't know the hand he had been born with had gone up in s
moke and gelatinized flesh years ago, I wouldn't be able to tell it was filled with hydraulic fluid and cables instead of blood and bone.
Nicco has been a buddy of mine since we met in the Marine Corps on my first tour in the jungles of Southeast Asia over a decade ago. But that’s a story for another day.
When he first laid eyes on me, I was six foot three inches of skin, bones, and a mistaken belief that we were doing the right thing for God and country. The Corps put 30 pounds of muscle on me, swapped my heart for one that still beats in my chest, and changed my world-view of humanity. Nicco survived the war better than most; he came back with only one rebuilt limb. It was half of a new right arm courtesy of a plasma napalm grenade melting it off just below the elbow. He told me once that even though his bionic hand had the look and feel of the real thing, he couldn’t get used to jacking-off with it.
“It feels strangely gay, like it's some other dude touching Little Nicco,” he'd said.
He always did have a strange sense of humor.
After being discharged, we both chose to continue to serve, he as a street cop, me as a Prior cop. We make a point of seeing each other from time to time, even when we’re not fortunate enough to run into each other on the job. It helps keep us sane since we came back from the jungle and the horrors we witnessed, or committed, there.
"I'm glad they sent you, Auggie," he said, releasing my grip. "We've got a lively one for you; or a deadly one depending on your point of view. As far as we can determine, the Mayor's mother was reclaimed. It was a completely off the grid reclamation.” He nodded towards the side of the house. “We can see her through a window into the kitchen."
"Have they tried subduing her yet?" I ask, already suspecting the answer. If they had, either I would have been called off, or an ambulance would have been called in.
"Not yet, the situation’s too dicey.” He shook his head. “I've got Patrolmen Mellon and Viktor keeping an eye on her. Viktor’s a rookie, skinny kid, still wet behind the ears. It was the first Prior-human off-the-leash call for him. Seems like an okay kid, I need him to get a taste for a wild one, and see how he handles it."
I reply as we walk toward the back of the house, "Well, let's try to keep him out of my way and let him start to build those emotional calluses he'll need to survive."
"Maybe we can show him one that goes smoothly so he'll know what a capture is supposed to look like," Nicco says with a smile, "As if any of these go as planned.” He stops. “I need to ask a favor. Can we try to keep a lid on this one? You know, for a change of pace, turn that big stick of yours down a couple notches. Try to not pop Grandma’s head off in front of the Mayor and his family." "We'll see," I say. "Let's take a look at sweet old Granny first.”
“Not good enough Auggie. This is the mayor’s family we’re dealing with. My CO told me this is a live catch situation. No shit, bro. Take her hooded.”
Nicco is referring to a blinder hood. It’s a pretty straightforward, low-tech device; a tan canvas bag with a pre-loaded closure. Slip it over the crazed Prior’s head and pull the tab. The actuator zips the opening tight and the Prior is blind. The only real piece of technology is olfactory. It ‘smells’ neutral. Not to a human, just to a Prior. Smells like shit to us but their tongues can’t pick up the scent of the living. Once they’re blind and can no longer pick up the scent of the living, they become docile. When they don’t sense a nearby meal, they shut down and wait for something tasty to come by. Like any number of animals in nature, they become ambush predators, lying in wait for some poor sucker to come strolling by. “La-di-dah,” out for stroll and,
Through a thin flowery curtain covering four square glass windows, Nicco and I crouch by the back door. “I'm not making any promises Nicco. It depends on how it plays out." I tell him as we survey the scene.
The home’s ground floor is split into two large open floorplans. On this side is the kitchen area with an archway leading into the main house. The door we’re peering through opens into the kitchen side of the room with a butcher block cooking island positioned off-center creating a barrier between the dining and cooking areas. In the kitchen, a restaurant style stainless steel stove is bookended by thick, white marble-topped counters.
Between the two entrances sits a mahogany extension table. The center leaf is installed, and it’s surrounded by eight matching chairs giving the furniture the appearance of being slightly too large for the room. On the table are elegant china plates, highly polished silverware, and an assortment of glasses.
There is also obvious evidence of a struggle. A lavish floral centerpiece is lying on its side and several of the high-backed chairs are knocked over.
I whisper, “It looks like they were preparing for a party when all hell broke loose.”
Nicco points towards the wall adjacent to the table. “There’s blood splatter on the table and wall above the credenza. She may have gotten a taste Auggie. That’s not good for a safe retrieval is it?”
I shrug off the rhetorical question.
The pantry containing our trapped family is to our right, just beyond the island. This will give us a barrier between our entrance and Grandma. I move closer to the window to get a better view of the situation. I'm a little shocked at my first look at our target, and from a grizzled veteran of the war, and dozens of domestic Prior encounters, that's saying something.
A bruiser of a woman, she may be of Nordic or Austrian descent. Looks like she was in her late 60's when she passed. How long ago, I wonder? Ten years at least, might be twenty. She’s five foot ten, 220, maybe 240 pounds with all the reclamation hardware in her. She turns her head, her fat black tongue samples the air; she looks like a huge anthropomorphic lizard.
I shake my head. “This is a bad sign, Nicco. She’s flicking her tongue, trying to smell living meat.”
The look on his face has changed into his war mask. “I haven’t seen a Prior do that, in years, Auggie.”
Natural Priors, those that turn without any human interference, use their tongues the same way snakes do to sample the air. A prior-human’s internal organs decompose and gel into a single massive slug contained within their ribcage. They have no lungs; therefore no way to breath, or reason to for that matter. They absorb what they need from the air through their skin. It was only after the reanimated dead were being reclaimed for human use that the lung bag was invented to allow them to use forced air for certain tasks. In the most advanced and expensive procedures; these tasks include speech, playing musical instruments, and singing lullabies to their precious and delicious grandchildren.
I have no doubt that the mayor paid for all the bells and whistles for sweet old mom. I notice that her 'Natural Look' perma-wig is still stapled in place, but the makeup tattooed into her undead skin is faded from the years. Her red lips appear to be a shade too dark, and smeared a bit onto her chin.
“She definitely clipped one of the family members,” I say. "What were they thinking, bringing her back as a domestic, and related domestic at that. This family must have some pull to get this approved.”
“We'll sort that out later; let's get them through this so I can find someone living to blame," replies Nicco.
I move away from the window. Nicco grabs my arm in his vise grip-like hand. “We’re under orders to take this Prior alive.” He shakes his head. “Not alive-alive, just not re-dead. You know what I mean. I specifically requested you for this call. Don’t make me regret it.”
I shake my arm out of his grip. “I can’t jeopardize a human for one of them.”
My jaw tightens involuntarily as my body reacts to a spike of pain in my temples.
“I don’t see how we can keep her in salvageable pieces, Nicco. You see her in there. She’s big and pissed, not to mention off the reclamation juice. She wants blood, warm human blood. Even if we can bag her, there’s no way to know if she can be brought back under control.”
“I promised the Chief I’d try Auggie.” His gaze stays wit
h mine. “I said you were the best; if anyone could grab her clean it would be you. Can you at least try for me, buddy?”
“I already said I’m not making any promises Nicco. Let’s get your men set up in the house and we’ll give it a shot. That’s the best I can do.” I’m lying. There’s no way I’m letting this one loose on society.
We decide to have the uniforms enter from the main house and draw her attention while I come through the kitchen door. Nicco tells me his men have already checked and the front door is unlocked.
"Send them in," I tell Nicco. "Make sure they're quiet. We need to have Granny's attention on the pantry until we're in position."
Prior-Nana stops beating the door, turns and looks at me, black tongue tasting the air for life. She cocks her head toward the archway. I think that she knows to watch both entrances into the room. Her face twitches, her lip snarls, and she returns to pounding and pulling the pantry’s handle to a new chorus of screams from within.
I check my belt: spoolers, slug gun, and with my modified grab-stick in hand, I’m as ready as I can be. My headache increases, the pain shoots through my upper jaw and bridges across my nose. I push it back to regain focus.
‘Never go into battle sick and never pass up an opportunity to take a leak.’ Life lessons learned through combat. Well at least I don't have to piss.
Reaching to my side, I touch a spooler and consider apologizing for beheading Granny later. Based on the Spanish hunting weapon, the boleadoras, a spooler consists of two billiard-sized balls connected with a diamond blade cutting wire. Depressing the button on the first ball dispenses the cable until it’s thrown. When it wraps around the target, the balls are magnetically drawn together and the cable retracts, tightening until whatever it’s wrapped around is sliced clean through. In this case, it would be our hungry Nordic behemoth. I decide to appease Nicco for now and follow the plan. I turn my attention back into the house.
All Things Zombie: Chronology of the Apocalypse Page 45