You're Never Ready for a Zombie Apocalypse

by Jeff Thomson

  20

  “Vaccine...?” Gilbert said, his voice taking on an oily quality Jim didn’t like one bit. He rolled his fingers on the glass counter top, as if he were tinkling the keys of an imaginary piano. “Do tell...”

  Jim had argued against the idea of offering vaccine in trade to anyone - least of all to Gilbert Farcquar. Mere possession of it was a crime, since its source material came from the spinal chords of formerly living human beings. Granted, those human beings had turned into slobbering, drunk-looking, naked, homicidal lunatics, but they were still - at least in the eyes of the legal system - humans, and, therefore, subject to all the protections of the law. Possession of the vaccine was, therefore, accessory to capital murder, and so the fewer people who knew they had any of it, the better Jim liked it.

  He considered Gilbert to be about as trustworthy as a crystal junkie. If Gilbert saw an advantage in screwing them, he’d be on it like a meth whore on her drug dealer. And Gilbert owned a lot of guns.

  The man’s attention focused on Gus, Jim took the opportunity to reach behind his back and release the hammer strap on his holster and tuck the back of his flannel shirt into his belt. Better to be safe, than sorry.

  “Two doses,” Gus said. “Each, of primer and booster, for all the ammo we want.”

  Gilbert sucked air through his teeth, as if the thought of this deal pained him. “Ten,” he said. “Of each type.”

  Gus’ eyes flicked toward Jim. They were only carrying eight vials: four of primer and four of booster - the last of their supply, although John was picking up the scientist who made them, so presumably they were going to get more. Still, to leave themselves with none...

  “Three doses,“ Gus countered.

  “Twenty,” Gilbert sneered, and Jim was quickly getting sick of the prick. He was tempted to clock him over the head and see if it made the bastard negotiate a little better, but Gus carried on in good faith.

  “Four doses,” Gus said, then added: “Final offer.”

  Gilbert tilted his head sideways and gave a small negative shake - almost a “no,” but not quite.

  “You know anywhere else you can get it?” Jim asked.

  The man’s eyes shifted and narrowed. “I’ve...got a source.”

  They’d been shipmates for three years, back in the day, and the thing people tended to have when underway was time - lots and lots of time - on their hands, while spending twenty-four hours a day trapped inside a steel shell in the middle of a vast ocean, in which to do lots and lots of nothing.

  Some people read. Jim had once read the entire multi-volume set of Winston Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples, cover to cover. Some watched movies. A few played weeks-long games of Dungeons and Dragons. Gilbert Farcquar had played poker.

  Jim had played against him, more than once, and Gilbert Farcquar was a terrible poker player. He almost always lost, for the simple reason that he couldn’t bluff for shit. He had a tell: his eyes would narrow and shift, exactly as they had just done. The bastard was lying.

  “Bullshit,” Jim said.

  Vaccine had started out at fifty bucks a pop, street value, but as each day progressed, and as people became more and more panicked about the so-called “zombie virus” that was not stopping - was, in fact, accelerating, as more and more and more became infected - the price kept rising. The last Jim had heard, the going rate was five hundred per dose of primer, and seven-fifty per dose of booster.

  Capitalism in action, Jim thought. He was a Capitalist, through and through, but even he considered it highway robbery, especially since almost nobody was accepting cash at this point. The dollar had descended in value as social values spiraled deeper and deeper into the chaos of a world speeding toward the tipping point.

  “We’ve got the most valuable currency in this economy, Gilbert, and you know it,” he said. “We’re offering you a fair deal. Take it or leave it.”

  Gilbert’s eyes shot daggers at him for the briefest of moments, then returned their gaze to Gus. “Let me see this vaccine,” he sneered. “I want to test it.”

  When vaccine first began to circulate (Christ, it was only a couple weeks ago, Jim thought), everybody got into the action - even drug dealers, who produced everything from colored water to actual high-grade vaccine that proved indistinguishable from the stuff coming out of the corporate labs. A way needed to be found to test it, and so some entrepreneurial person quickly developed, and then mass-produced vaccine test kits. One of the bigger Pharmaceutical companies dropped a shit-ton of money on the inventor, and in less than a week, had them spread all across the United States, where they were sold at every drug store, convenience store, and liquor store. Jim had even seen them on display at a Starbucks.

  Gilbert slid down the counter and pulled open a drawer at the far end. Jim tensed, thinking the asshole might be going for a gun, but he only pulled out one of the brightly covered packages, emblazoned with the label: True Test. He placed it on the glass in front of him. He also, Jim saw, left the drawer open.

  Gus pulled a small cloth pouch out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the glass counter. It clinked, as the glass vials of vaccine came together. He undid the drawstring and removed one clear bottle, about an inch-and-a-half high and three-quarters in diameter, then placed it in front of Gilbert. It sat there, gleaming in the florescent light of the gun shop, looking like nothing more than an ordinary bottle of medicine, like insulin, except for its lack of a label. He pulled a hypodermic, its needle capped in plastic, out of the opposite pocket, and set it next to the vaccine.

  Gilbert stared at it for a moment, not moving. He sniffed in a lung full of air, then blew it out like smoke from a cigarette, as if steeling himself. Jim didn’t like this one bit - especially when he saw the man’s eyes flicker toward the open drawer.

  Finally, he picked up the hypodermic, uncapped it with his teeth, then picked up the bottle and eased the needle through the wax seal at the top. He pulled back the plunger just a bit, enough to withdraw a few tiny drops of the clear liquid into the hypo reservoir, then set the bottle back on the counter and brought the needle to the open test kit. This stuff was worth more per ounce than gold, and he wasn’t going to waste a single drop.

  Depressing the plunger, he shot the vaccine into the small plastic bowl at the indicated spot on the kit. All three of them watched the clear liquid flow through the channels as the medicine passed over the test strips, or whatever the testing medium might be.

  None of them knew exactly how the thing worked - like most things in life - but they still retained the certainty that it would. That’s the way life in an ordered society had always been: things did what they were supposed to do. It didn’t matter if the people using them hadn’t the slightest idea how they did what they did, like computers or TV sets or microwave ovens or the internal combustion engine. These things worked. They always had, and they always would, and each and every one of them woke each and every day in the certainty this simple fact would never change. They didn’t question it. They just accepted the fact and moved on with their day. Pomona was about to teach them just how naive they all were, but not yet, not yet.

  The thing - whatever it was - in the appropriate place turned a bright blue. All three men leaned forward to stare. Gilbert slid the package the kit had come in around, so he could read the instructions. Blue meant positive for Pomona booster. He smiled. Gus smiled.

  Jim would have smiled, but out of the corner of his eye, he caught the movement of Gilbert’s hand toward the drawer. He eased his own hand behind his own back and gripped the butt of the .38.

  In a flash so fast it even took Jim by surprise, Gilbert pulled a big damned handgun out of the drawer, cocked it, and pointed it an inch from Gus’ eye. Gus froze. Jim didn’t.

  “Give me everything you’ve got,” Gilbert said in a rush. “Now god damn it!”

  Jim pulled his own gun, cocked it, and stuck it right into Gilbert’s temple.

  “You’re gonna want to rethink th
at.”

  21

  “What the fuck is he thinking?” Jonesy raged.

  Molly stood beside him on the Flying Bridge, watching as the sun went down on what had turned into a very long and terrible day. That it was also her first day on her first ship as an Ensign in the United States Coast Guard had not escaped her. And what a day!

  She looked at Jonesy, at the man she had...what? Loved? No... Not that. Not loved. Liked, then. Liked enough to have given him her body - willingly - more than once. But that was something she could not - would not - dwell upon.

  They had known each other for quite a long time; since Alaska, five years ago, when she had been sixteen, and he had been maybe twenty, or twenty-one. He had seemed such an unattainable goal back then. He was absolutely unattainable now - by law, if not by actual fact or...desire? She couldn’t think about that, either.

  In any case, Jonesy was now as pissed off as she had ever seen him, and she couldn’t blame him for it one bit. The XO - sorry, CO, now - was an asshole, and a dangerous one, to boot.

  “How am I supposed do my job?” Jonesy asked. Molly couldn’t answer.

  “I may have to kill some of these guys,” he said. “Do you realize that?” He turned and stared at her. “Does he?”

  “I don’t think he much gives a damn, Jonesy,” she said, and mentally kicked herself for saying it. She was an officer, damn it! She was never, under any circumstances supposed to bad-mouth a superior. She had a momentary, and crazy-absurd vision of herself as a Harry Potter house elf, banging her own head against the steel railing as punishment for disobeying one of the cardinal rules of officer-ship. But she was damned if she would disagree with Jonesy. Not on this.

  Medavoy was clearly, indefensibly wrong in refusing Jonesy the ability to arm himself, when it was abundantly, dreadfully clear he was right. He, in all probability, would have to kill one or more of his - and now her - shipmates, and you only needed open eyes and access to a TV set to know it.

  Scenes of chaos, mayhem, and brutal violence that would have given any Hollywood movie an R-rating, had been playing out on the nightly news of every city of any size all over the entire world. Thousands were dying every day. And those were just the images shown on TV. The ones out on the street, seen with actual eyes, and not camera lenses, were far, far worse.

  And of course, the Powers That Be in the governments of all the nations of the world had been playing it down, so as not to create a panic, but everybody with active brain cells knew: it was coming apart. And so, therefore, Medavoy knew. And yet, he was acting in a way contrary to good sense and the safety of the crew to which LCDR Sparks had given him command.

  Maybe that was it. Maybe he was so afraid of his tenuous hold on this new command, thrust upon him in extremis, he feared the possibility of losing it to armed insurrection.

  And there it was: the pop psychology she had loathed in her classmates. As each year of psychological study had progressed, along with the command responsibilities thrust on them as part of the curriculum at the Coast Guard Academy, and the you are superior attitudes the Academy fostered in its future officers, her classmates had seemed to grow more and more pompous in their certainty. They understood the workings of the human psyche, better than anyone, ever. And they proved this, day after day, by psychoanalyzing any and everybody with whom they came in contact, snapping off psycho-babble diagnoses like homilies from Hallmark.

  It had been bullshit then, and it was bullshit now. Which did not mean she was wrong.

  Jonesy sighed. “What am I gonna do, Mol?” he asked, then seemed to realize what he’d just said and where he currently was. “Sorry...I meant Miss Gordon.”

  She didn’t answer right away, and didn’t chastize him for the clear lack of military decorum. She didn’t even look at him, at first. Instead, she stared at the dark grey non-skid deck at her feet. “You know how Uncle John is always coming up with pithy sayings, like he was a walking motivational poster?”

  Jonesy didn’t answer right away, then suddenly, a snort burst out of him like hilarious gas. She supposed the correct term would be chortle, but his had seemed darker, somehow, as if tinged with despair. Or was that just more psycho-babble?

  “Yeah,” he laughed. “He was always making lemonade out of tangerines, or some stupid thing like that.”

  “Exactly,” she chuckled, and favored him with a smile. “Anyway, he used to say you can only deal with what’s in front of you, and only with the tools you have at hand.”

  Jonesy nodded. “That sounds like John.”

  She shrugged. “It’s probably what he’d say to you now.”

  He thought about it for a moment, his shoulders still tense with anger, but then they seemed to ease - if only a little. “He probably would.”

  “In other words,” she said. “Go find yourself some tangerines.”

  He laughed and nudged her shoulder with his elbow, then seemed to think better of it and stepped away toward the ladder off the Flying Bridge.

  “And maybe a baseball bat, while I’m at it,” he said, and headed below.

  22

  The giant zombie charged, and John didn’t even think. If he had, then he’d have hesitated, and if he hesitated, the six-foot-seven, four hundred pound monster would have been on Spute in seconds.

  The second problem (the first being the mammoth zombie, itself) was John had no gun. Of course, a gun would have just pissed the behemoth off, so more to the point, he had no rocket launcher. What he did have was a crowbar. He took two running strides, brought the crowbar from around his back, as if he were bringing it up from last week, and with an overhand swing that would have made Venus Williams weep, he slammed the claw end of the bar smack into the side of the zombie’s head.

  Gigantor-zombie lurched and recoiled from the blow, yanking the crowbar out of John’s hand. It hung there, swinging slightly, embedded in the thing’s skull. And the zombie kept moving. Blood flowed from the terrible wound, adding to the blood spread all over the thing’s face, as it staggered. But it kept moving.

  Spute had frozen; Floyd had not, and so the dolly upon which the dental x-ray machine perched, was now spinning in a circle, as one of them moved and the other didn’t. And the zombie kept coming - slower now that it had an iron bar stuck in its head, but still moving.

  “Move, you idiot!” Floyd shouted, as he bitch-slapped Spute on his left cheek. It did the trick.

  As Zom-zilla reached out its dinner plate-sized hands to wrench Spute’s head off his neck, they - and the dolly - spun aside, the x-ray machine nearly crashing into a million pieces onto the concrete, but was saved when John darted forward and shoved it upright.

  The zombie kept coming, though there seemed to be something wrong with its vision, because it kept right on going in the direction it had been, through where Floyd and Spute had been moments before. It bounced off the entrance alcove wall, hitting it with its right shoulder, and did a slow turn, as I’ve got an iron bar in my brain finally registered, then it fell over backwards into a hydrangea bush. It lay there, twitching, for a moment, and then was still.

  Silence fell over the bizarre scene. John heard nothing - not even the thudding of his own heart, so he thought it might have stopped - but then with a rush in his ears as the blood flowed back up into his stunned head, he heard it pounding, right where it was supposed to be.

  “Fuck me!” Spute said.

  John looked at Spute, who looked back at him. His friend’s face seemed to be made out of bleached and worn paper. But when John looked over at Floyd, he saw something disturbing and different.

  Professor Christopher Floyd was staring at the now dead and blood-covered former human being with an expression of keen interest. This guy really is a mad scientist, John thought. He was interested - fascinated - by it, rather than being scared witless and in serious need of a new pair of underwear.

  John, himself, felt a combination of fear, nausea, guilt, and adrenaline-fueled exhilaration. All those feelings swirled around i
n his head and his heart as he tried not to think. He had just killed a human being. Granted, it had been a human being the size of a ‘52 Buick, gone stark, raving mad and trying to kill his friend, and the freak show Christopher Floyd was turning out to be, but still human. What he didn’t feel, couldn’t feel, would never feel, was fascinated. And yet there was Christopher Floyd, contemplating the remains, as if it were an interesting science experiment.

  “Fuck me!” Spute said again.

  John snapped out of his reverie. “Fuck this,” he said, grabbing Floyd and pulling him away from the dead zombie. “Let’s get out of here.”

  23

  Gilbert Farcquar lay on the somewhat dusty concrete floor of his gun store’s back room, trussed like the proverbial Christmas turkey, with zip ties, instead of string. Christmas turkeys weren’t ordinarily gagged, either, but Jim had insisted, and Gus had not argued.

  Gus Perniola stared at the pistol in his hand that had so recently been pointed at his eye. It was a big fucker - a Ruger .44 Magnum, to be precise - and the round barrel had seemed like staring into a planet-sized black hole. And yes, it was loaded. He had never been closer to death, and he never wanted to even be in the same zip code, ever again.

  “There’s a keypad on the gun vault,” Jim said, coming back into the room. “We need the code.” He stood over the prone, and furious form of their former shipmate. “I’m going to remove the gag.”

  “You can’t do this!” Gilbert spat, as his mouth became free of the gun oil-covered rag they’d used.