“Step away, Moore.” Larson was ten feet from the table, now pointing his weapon at Wendy. “I’m doing my duty, blowing her brains out and placing you under… arrest...”
Startled when Moore removed those glasses at the sight of his glowing irises, the officer was also surprised by Wendy Duffy’s brief convulsions from the drug’s initial effect.
“I knew it. See, the ZIP-12 vaccine worked, sir,” Terry removed the robe and let it fall. “I’m living proof, in a manner of speaking. This ZX-90 might save plague victims too.”
“Don’t move,” Larson commanded Moore, reaching for a portable radio on his belt, “you’ve been bitten, I see. We’ll at least fly you out for observation and tests, doctor.”
At that moment, Wendy Duffy seemed calmer sitting up, Moore feeling a slight pulse similar to his own while holding her right wrist. Watching the camouflage-clad man holding the pistol on them while activating his field jacket’s pinned radio, she started toward him from seeming curiosity. Larson fired one round into her skull between green eyes that looked less glazed-over now.
“NO,” Terry tried to intervene only catching Wendy as she collapsed onto the exam table, “she was responding to the treatment, you bastard!”
“CP, this is Larson. I have that suspect observed entering the lab in custody and terminated an infected individual he brought here. Dispatch backup and call for an evac bird.”
You’ll pay for that, jar-headed jackass.
Moore charged his enemy with a primal roar and Larson fired the gun three times before the intern fell upon him, each bullet flattening against the doctor’s enhanced bones, including a head shot to the skull that never stopped him. Wrestling for the pistol briefly while they crashed into one metal gurney behind the soldier, Moore pinned Larson and turned the weapon to fire twice into his chest, making certain the second shot entered the older man’s heart. The colonel soon groaned and stopped resisting as Terry stood with the weapon in his hands, firing a final head shot just above the left eye for preventing Larson’s reanimation, granting that enemy more mercy than he had to Wendy or the officer deserved.
Sorry, Wendy baby – I tried.
“You don’t deserve inclusion in the ZX-90 drug trials, colonel.”
Realizing he had limited time before more CDC-attached National Guardsmen arrived, Moore wrapped Wendy’s body in the quilt and placed ZAP-12 and ZX-90 vials inside one small red-and-white ice cooler chest. As four of the hospital’s camouflaged guardians entered carrying M-16s, he fought them in the open, taking about twenty bullet hits having no effect on him, before killing each guard with head shots, followed by taking out the room’s ceiling camera.
I’ll move you somewhere else to rest in peace, Wendy.
Replacing the Halloween costume’s robe, the intern took every printout and disk record for the project stuffed inside a small black medical satchel, carrying it, her body and the ice-filled cooler with him from the lab. He exited the hospital creeping through different corridors and finally out using an emergency exit. Dr. Terry Moore, M.D. then departed Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center for the final time in his Toyota, burying Wendy just outside their cabin before seeking vaccinated subjects starting with the hospital’s staff. He was curious if other people would be altered by the ZAP-12 or ZX-90 compounds after suffering zombie bites.
Maybe I and they will start a new intelligent human species in the land of the living dead – Homo-sapiens Zombie, I guess.
Mad Money
Cindy Rosmus
In the next room, Paulie heard her, rifling through his drawers.
Oh, Trish, he thought, wearily.
Same shit, every day. Looking for money, in all the wrong places. It was in the kitchen, in the Folgers coffee can under the sink.
The kitchen, he thought at her. The kitchen.
“I leave her money to steal,” Paulie had told Red, the barmaid. “I’ve got to. Or my whole pay check goes in the stem.”
“She stole my purse!” Red said.
“Nah. S’not her style. She just takes wallets.” Lovesick Paulie was so in denial. “Crack is poison,” he said, teary-eyed.
A real killer.
As Trish tore through the closet, boots and shoes went flying. Almost super-human strength, she had, these days.
The coffee can, Paulie thought, fists clenched. Under the . . .
In the doorway, he smelled her. He shut his eyes, pretended he was invisible. Still, he felt her eyes on him. Sweat poured down his back, into his shorts.
Finally, she went away.
***
He’d just got to work when the call came.
“Your wife . . .” His boss had that knowing look.
“Is she sick?”
“Oh, it’s a disease, all right.” Smiling, the boss handed Paulie the phone. “But she doesn’t have a fever, or cancerous tumor.”
You fuck, Paulie thought. Of all days to be out of cell phone minutes.
“Yer wife,” a strange guy told him. “She won’t leave. Did all my shit, drank my booze . . .”
Stole your wallet.
“Come get her, dude.”
“Be right over,” Paulie told him.
“And stay there.” His boss had stopped smiling.
***
Paulie himself was a three-beers guy. Had never done drugs.
“So what,” his friends asked, “do you see in her?”
Helplessness.
This lanky thing, with big, scared eyes. A wounded bird, she was like, huddled under his blanket. Almost shy, after sex, but just with him.
“Trish?” one guy yelled. “Shy?”
“Yeee-ooww!” Another grabbed his own cock.
“Paulie,” she would say, in this distant voice, “I need . . . help, don’t I?”
He held her close, her bones nearly cracking. “I’ll help you,” he said.
But he didn’t.
He was that scared of losing her.
***
By 2 A.M., he was past three beers. A pint of Jack, he’d found, in that closet. Skynyrd on his iPod: “Needle and the Spoon.” Words from the wise . . .
But no needle killed her. And no stem did, neither.
A speeding truck took her from him.
Chunks of Trish struck parked cars, a mailbox. Intestines smeared the streets and sidewalks…
Paulie’s underwear drawer…
Over Skynyrd, he heard her come back. A shuffling, and scratching, like rats. Smelled that smell, like a zillion dead ones.
He turned up the music till his ears screamed.
If she hadn’t been high, she would’ve seen that truck.
If he’d have helped her, she wouldn’t have been high.
“The kitchen!” he yelled. “Look in—”
But what she was here for, money couldn’t buy.
Itch
T. Fox Dunham
The reanimated junkie slammed its fists against the brick wall of the apartment building until most of the bone smashed away on the left, leaving a bloody stumpy. It moaned in a pain too familiar to Sam—in ways only another junkie would understand, crying like a cat from its throat. A few undead junkies still lingered in the back alleys in the French Quarter along Royal Street—where he used to come to buy dime bags, maybe shoot up with some other junkies. Sam observed it from the sewer, watching it rub its limbs to blood, and he understood, knew that itch pierced his own muscles and bone. Sam ventured into the city to satisfy it.
“I’ve come to end your agony,” Sam said, climbing out of the hole when he saw none of the other bodies approaching and readied his staff. “Please end mine.” The undead junkie turned and chomped at the air between them, biting for skin, cartilage, flesh, bone or blood. Its face registered relief, having something to distract it from the itch.
Sam raised the quarterstaff and crushed the junkie’s head. Without a functioning immune system, rot had softened the tissue, and its head pulped under the pole’s force. Clotted blood spurt from its nose and smea
red down its shirt.
Sam leaned the staff on the wall. “Come on, Man,” he whispered and searched its coat and pockets. He’d seen this dude here before. Many of them overdosed in those last days, running from the inevitable chaos running for them. He dumped out the pockets of his flannel. The lining had rotted through, and he grabbed moribund flesh. Sam had gotten lucky a few times, harvesting bodies. Something grunted from around the corner. They could smell him, and he knew where there was one bored body, several followed. They’d surge the alley and close off his escape in moments—not fast but silent, aggregating, choking off his exit. He kicked the still body of the dead junkie into the brick wall. Its sleeve caught on a screw, ripped off and exposed a syringe hanging out of its arm. Sam grabbed its limb and pulled it into the light. Clear fluid filled most of the needle. He noticed a bite mark on the junkie’s neck. He must have died before shooting up. Poor bastard. Sam grabbed the syringe, tugged it out of the spongy tissue and careful dropped it into his vest pocket. It might have some blood, but he could heat the juice again without losing too much and sterilize it.
Sam turned to grab his quarterstaff and run for the sewer grate. A hand grabbed his shoulder and dug its fingers in, but he wore padding under his vest and long sleeves. It would take some work to puncture his skin, but pain still shoot through his neck. Sam swung in panic, aiming for any part of the body and hit its bloated stomach. It popped a gas bubble building in its gut. A wave of filthy miasma rushed Sam, and he puked some out his nose—that rabbit meat he’d snared outside his hut.
Damn it!
He couldn’t waste the protein. He yanked his shoulder out from the zombie’s fingers. Think smart. Fight smart. You panic: you die—then worse. He aimed the staff up, struck its head, stunning it and spun the staff backwards, knocking another boated corpse at the back of the neck. Both wobbled then fell over. It didn’t take much. He rushed the next three lurching into the alley. He couldn’t let them see his exit. They’d work at the grate until they bent it open behind him and eventually spill into the sewers. Dead guys were bored dudes and could really focus—the kind of drive that in life would have made them successful. God damn. Even the zombies were better at life than he ever was. He aimed for the head and tripped up the other. The pole caught its bare foot, snapped its ankle and sent it into the wall. Then he aimed for the eyes—better to blind the walkers then try to take each out. Their eyes popped with little force.
“Go on home now,” he said. “You’re just souls who got lost on the way to heaven ‘cause the lights of the city blinded you.” He ran for the grate, lifted then jumped, landing in the muddy water flow. Sam climbed the metal rungs and scanned the alley then locked it down with some wire. One of them stumbled about, but Sam felt sure he hadn’t been seen. He checked his vest pocket for his cargo then dropped onto the walk and stepped carefully on the slime. He found his oil lantern where he left it and lit it with his liter. Batteries had to be saved, so he burned his light, though it flickered and didn’t cast enough of a clear view.
Not many of the undead made it down into the sewers, so he could access the city through this route. The NOPD sealed up most of the grate and tunnel access a year before the Doctor Helsinki cured cancer and unleashed the End of Days, and he only had to work on the river drainage at one of the water treatment plants along the Mississippi. Bodies floundered in the mud around there after the Ol’Man jumped its banks with no one to work the locks. It washed out the western side of the city. He stepped carefully, in case some stray bodies had accidently intruded, but his mind obsessed on the needle. A few times he nearly stopped and pushed it here, but he had to get to a safe place.
Father forgive me. It’s has been six days since my last high. This is my confession.
Rats scurried around his feet. He nearly slipped on the muck, dropped the staff and caught a rusty railing along the wall. The old metal, probably part of the original sewer system, sliced his hands down the palm. The cut stung. Blood leaked down his hand. Shit. When’s the last time he had a tetanus shot? His immune system was shit at this point. A little infection would progress into blood poisoning in days. He bound the wound with a bandana, then he looked for his staff in the dark and kicked the wood with his boot into the dirty water flow. He got clumsy, really hurting for the H. The current pushed the staff into the wall and caught it on the concrete, so he reached in and searched the filthy spill for it. Something grabbed his hand and jerked him into the water. He felt teeth brush his skin, but he yanked back his limb fast enough. His feet found the slimy bottom, and he felt for the staff. The body, probably washed down here after the last flood, raked for him again. It emerged from the dirty water, cast in the light from the dropped lantern. Most of its face had melted off in the water, and mildew grew through its hairline, staining its skin black. Sam kicked off the wall and punched it in the head. His fist burst through its eye sockets, and the head exploded in ooze. He tasted some of the rotten flesh and puked again, then he climbed up the side, gathered up his staff, lantern and jogged faster down the aisle.
Finally, he collapsed into a service tunnel, leaning on the old stone work of the original city—still preserved here. His limbs, soaked in the filthy waters, itched now, deep into the bone. No non-user could understand the depth of the itch, the way it dug into the body, drilled into the heart. He dug out the needle and drilled it into his arm. It was a fifty-fifty chance that the junkie had never pulled on the plunger, drawing infected blood into the cylinder. It seemed like a reasonable risk. At least, the hunger would leave him for a while—or forever. The euphoria rushed over him. He planned to only use a fraction, to get his wits back, but his thumb pushed all the way down, emptying the syringe. He fell back into the stone, enjoying the rush, the ride up.
“Take me to heaven,” he said and giggled.
That junkie had suffered; however, their brains couldn’t still the need for drugs. Not enough of their gray matter still functioned, but maybe if the addiction had been strong enough. Sam’s hand stopped stinging, and for a short term, he didn’t give a shit that hell had come to earth.
It’s what people deserved.
***
Sam rode the high, passed out a bit, woke up in the dark, having burned out the remainder of his lantern fuel. The high felt like flying, like earth had dissolved below. Shit. It must have been a heroine dose mixed with fentanyl. Fentanyl was the most potent component in opium, used as the strongest pain killer for terminal patients. As law and order broke down in the last months, manufacturers and dealers benefited, increasing their trade with impunity. The market excelled and a nihilistic spirit possessed the remainder of the population, driving them to swell the market.
He ran his hand along the wall to keep his balance, using the stray light shafts projected through the grates and sewers along the streets. Sam followed the current back out to the water treatment substation. Bodies stumbled over head, interrupting the rays, and Sam paused to let them pass.
On black canvas, visions played out as his memories manifested. He dreamed awake of Lucy. She had been one of the early ones, the founders of this new species—going through chemo with a rare lymphoma. Sam had been clean for her, for her parents, working as a bike messenger in Manhattan. They’d met on the internet while he lived in Georgia, and when she got sick—so young—he moved north to tend to her. After the first month of chemo, watching how it burned her, destroyed her, he hit the streets and found the first dealer. Junkies and dealers can sniff each other out, and a cab driver offered him a dime bag. He used her credit card, maxing it out, and when she discovered him high in the bathroom the night before her next chemo treatment, she called him a narcissist monster. He jumped on the first bus down south. Sam watched her Facebook page to see how she was. He couldn’t face her directly, and the agony drove him to get high—a nasty cycle, but that was always the excuse. Junkies thrived on coming up with excuses and justifications. Then he read an amazing message on her page.
A miracle cure! I couldn�
��t tell anyone before, but I was inducted into the Helsinki 221 trials. The tumors shrunk—the cowards. Couldn’t face a woman with faith.
He nearly called her, but he couldn’t stop crying. He’d get clean again, beg her forgiveness, to recognize him as a weak creature in need of her light and understanding. It didn’t matter though. Two weeks later, the cancer avenged, burned through her body in days and ended her song—at least Lucy’s song. A couple hundred test subjects all over the world died in coeval way, but death manifested merely as a transitory symptom. Waiting for autopsies or even just minutes later, their brains reactivated, driven by the gene therapy, the retro virus. Before anyone knew what was happening, the hospitals shut down, attacked from within. The staff brought it home to their families. People went to the hospitals for help. It concentrated then exploded. Emergency services depended on hospitals, and the retrovirus cut off FEMA’s right from the beginning. Though an accident of procedure, nature utilized this weakness like a military tactician and crippled the major cities.
Sam reached the pumping station and eased open the service hatch, checking concrete cathedral. Water still rushed through the old rusting pipes from the river, and it covered any noise he made. His head floated from the drugs, and focused on the short journey ahead. He giggled again, and he shook it off—just had to get home to safety where he could ride the out the rest of the high. Snakes writhed out of the slice down his hand and crawled out over the handle of the dead lantern. He threw it, and it hit one of the concrete walls and burst. The sound echoed through the underground chamber.
“Dumb asshole,” he admonished himself and calmed. He eased out the hatch and into the pipe venue, holding his staff at the ready. It wobbled in his fingers. He decided to just run through. Fuck the undead. He made it as far as the surface when a chubby woman with bloated belly rolls, most of her clothes fallen off, followed him. He paused, waiting for her and giggled—still riding his high—laughing his ass off. She clawed for him, snapping at the air, and he knocked her on her ass then laughed again when she wobbled, trying to right herself. Finally, he tore off along the river and turned into the woods—a preserved patch of land by the river wilderness preserved by Louisiana Conservation Board. The oaks, birches and cypress covered him.
Undead War (Dead Guns Press) Page 20