by Ike Hamill
Marta half-ran and half-slid down a grassy hill. Her bag bounced from her grip and tumbled away. She didn’t give it a second thought. Any car on the road was hers to take. She slowed slightly to look back and was surprised to see that she had outpaced the undead by quite a margin. The huge group was slow. Most were hampered by missing limbs or bad limps. Even though she slowed, running out of adrenaline, she still pulled away.
Ahead, across a field and on the other side of a line of trees, a moderately busy road ran parallel to the edge of the cemetery. Marta struck out on a diagonal to meet the road. When she got closer, she would free up a vehicle and put some real distance between herself and the cemetery. Her cape and hood fluttered behind her as she ran, sucking her speed.
A rhythmic clacking from her right side drew her attention. Marta looked over with just enough time to alter her course. Approaching from her right, moving easily at her pace, a green-suited corpse sprinted. With each pounding step his teeth clacked together, bounced slightly, and the came together again. Clack-clack, clack-clack, clack-clack, his teeth announced his pace. Marta couldn’t take her eyes from his skull, even though she knew that looking over her shoulder slowed her down. His blond hair streamed out from the sides. His scalp was missing from the top of his skull. Black goo had leaked from his eyes sockets and had stained his cheeks in artistic streaks, swept back from his eyes.
His lips were pulled back and cracked. She could see just as much of his gums as his teeth.
Clack-clack, clack-clack. She took all this in as he accelerated.
They neared the street, but she couldn’t formulate a plan to get away from him. Without breaking stride, she sent out another wave of hot death. Cars veered and collided, a woman and her dog fell dead on the sidewalk, and a policeman on a bicycle rolled slowly onto his side, but the nightmare creature kept running. Worse than that, with her next head-turn Marta spotted two more zombies cresting the hill. Marta tasted iron in the back of her throat with each gasping breath.
She felt a tug on her neck. The only thing to do was to bear down and run faster—a look back would simply slow her down more—she vowed to keep facing forward. Within a stride she broke that promise. Another tug around her neck made her do it. Marta whipped her head back and saw the undead soldier reaching forward. Two white fingers clutched the hem of her cape. If he closed the gap another couple of inches, he would get a handful and then drag her back down by the fabric.
The next tug was stronger. She formed a desperate plan. Reciprocal buttons fastened the cape around her neck. The more it was pulled from the back, the tighter it would hold, but if she tugged at the tab, it would pop off. Like an angler, she waited for the next strong tug to let her know that the fiend had a good hold. He was cunning too, and waited until he had a good handful before making his play.
Marta felt the pull, cutting into her windpipe. She reached up and tore at the tab. The cape fluttered and billowed.
She kept her focus forward and never knew exactly what happened. She heard him tumble—maybe the cape got caught up in his legs or maybe he overbalanced when the cape gave way. One of his bones released a brittle snap when he fell. Marta planted one foot on the sidewalk and vaulted to the street. She picked a blue sedan that had veered into the center island of the street. She ran around the car and tugged at the door.
It was locked.
She let out a tiny cry of exasperation and ran to a red hatchback. She could see the door lock up even before she got to the car. The engine was running and the front bumper rested against the pole of a No U-Turn sign. Marta threw open the door and pulled at the shoulder of a middle-aged woman with jet black hair. The woman’s hair hit the grass and Marta tugged desperately at the woman’s limp hand until her legs spilled from the car as well. She smelled like shit. Marta had smelled it before. Sometimes her victims would evacuate as their life ebbed away. She didn’t look too closely at the fabric seat. She didn’t want to know if there was a stain.
Marta jumped behind the wheel and slammed the door. The smelly woman’s foot lodged in the door. Instead of a satisfying clunk, the door gave a sick-soft crunch against toes and skin. She held the door mostly shut and pushed the gearshift to Reverse. The car bounced and banged down off the curb just as the first zombies arrived. Marta screamed when their cold hands pounded on the glass.
With Smelly Woman’s foot dislodged, she pulled the door shut and stabbed her hand at the controls until all the doors locked. The car still drifted backwards.
She screamed again when her car ran into the blue sedan. One of the undead crunched between the vehicles. His tattered face pressed against the hatchback, looming in Marta’s review mirror. With a numb, clumsy hand Marta tugged the gearshift into Drive. She gunned the engine and spun the wheel over to the right to get the car back on the road. Corpses pounded on the glass, their blows more desperate as the car started to move.
Navigable road ran out fast. When she’d executed her radius kill, several drivers had collided in the intersection, blocking her escape. Marta clamped her teeth together and veered towards a pair of undead just stepping onto the road. She clipped the faster of the two with the corner of the hatchback. She spun the wheel back to the left, pointing the car back towards the center island. With enough speed, she figured she could get the little car over the center island and into the eastbound lane.
One of the corpse soldiers landed a good whack and smashed through the rear window on the driver’s side. He ran alongside and gripped the doorframe. Marta saw his bobbing torso in her side-view mirror. The hand still surprised her when it gripped a big handful of her hair. The car pitched and heaved when she hit the curb, but the dead hand held on. Big chunks of hair and scalp gave way, but he still pulled.
The car thrashed again when she bounced off the island and into the eastbound lane. A lot less cars had crashed this direction and she had a clear shot at the entrance ramp to 395. Using her hair as a handhold, the corpse attempted to pull himself through the shattered window.
Still accelerating, Marta pointed the hatchback at the point of road where 395 split off. A thick pole was mounted to the sidewalk and Marta meant to use it to scrape off the dead barnacle. The car lurched when it hit the curb and pulled to the left. The pole clipped the front corner of the hatchback and scraped down the length. The windshield cracked and her window imploded. Marta raised her arm defensively and didn’t see the pole shear off the back half of the corpse.
What was left of him still clutched her hair. Marta merged on the highway and flailed with her free arm at the clutching fingers. They fell away. She spun in her seat and saw that she still had an undead arm and skull in the backseat. Burning tears streaked down her face, but Marta held herself together.
She got some distance from the cemetery and found a section of road lined with tall cement walls. She pulled over just beyond an underpass and turned on the hatchback’s hazard lights. She checked the corpse parts again, just to be sure they were still, and cupped her face in her hands for a moment.
Marta looked around carefully at the buzzing traffic and sterile highway before opening her door. The car was too damaged to be any good to her. It would attract too much attention. She sat with her door open and her feet on the pavement.
After a few minute an altruist stopped to offer help. He wore a cheap suit, his tie was loosened, and his top button undone. Marta waited and met him halfway between the vehicles. She noticed slight sweat stains in the armpits of his suit.
“Do you need a phone or something?” he asked. Marta dropped him right there.
A passing driver honked as she bent to take his wallet from his back pocket. Another vehicle slowed and began to pull over as Marta got into her new car. She killed that driver too, to eliminate a potential witness. He swerved off into the wall and Marta pulled her new car around his wreck so she could merge back into traffic.
The radio gave her the news—at two seventeen that afternoon, from North Carolina to Nova Scotia, the dead had risen
from their graves.
She knew it was all connected to Gregory somehow. Marta blinked hard and saw Clack-Clack corpse’s teeth. She sucked in a startled breath. All the times she’d been chased by Gregory’s men they’d always been human, easily snuffed if it came to that. This new threat sucked at her confidence.
The road signs overhead announced that she was headed south—the wrong direction. Her bag had held all her plans and schedules, but she remembered the next city where Gregory was scheduled to appear. He would speak in Pittsburgh in two days. She needed to go north and west. The thought of more graves—more zombies—scared her. She wanted to be moving fast, and to stay away from local roads that might border more cemeteries. The tank was nearly full, and she’d have time before the police identified the sweaty-suit-guy’s body and came looking for his car.
A different voice on the radio grabbed her attention. She turned up the volume to hear about Gregory’s aborted speech in front of Washington Monument. With no notice, Gregory had started to speak and then abruptly stopped, whisked away by his security detail. The reporter attributed the departure to the rise of the dead—the two events had nearly been coincident. Marta figured that Gregory had felt her cold grip on his heart and had cancelled the speech himself. She wondered briefly if Gregory had somehow commanded the dead to rise and come after her when she’d gotten too close. She dismissed the thought—he couldn’t have known that she was in a cemetery during her assassination attempt.
The exit for the Beltway came up and Marta veered right, to take the inner loop back around to the north.
She thought again about her bag. It was probably still laying on the grass somewhere between the cemetery and the road. She wondered who would find it, and what they would make of her scribbled notes and plans. Her little notebook served as her diary, but it also contained maps and plots for her upcoming attempts. If the right person found it, they could easily predict her actions in Pittsburgh. She needed a new plan.
Chapter 20
Convergence
A LIGHT BLINKED ON THE PANEL near the door, simultaneous with a tiny beep. Gregory set down his book. He sat up and leaned over to pull on his shoes. It felt better to receive company with his shoes on. He pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. From his pocket, he pulled out the handheld computer. He crossed to the door, and copied the code from the door panel into the little handheld computer that never left his side. It produced a key sequence which he transferred back to the door panel.
The green light over the door flashed twice and the door pushed in slightly before sliding to the side.
This was the hardest moment. Despite the long assurances from every expert, Gregory dreaded the door sliding away and what might be on the other side.
Andrew—Gregory’s most trusted employee—stood in the airlock.
“We’ve arrived,” said Andrew.
“Thank you,” said Gregory. “Come in, won’t you?”
“Thank you,” said Andrew.
Gregory punched a button and the inside door closed behind Andrew, sealing Gregory’s chamber from the airlock. Although nothing could get into the airlock, they both knew that the airlock had video surveillance, and Andrew was never himself when watched by the others.
“So what’s up?” asked Gregory. Andrew wouldn’t have delivered the message of their arrival in person unless there was something more to report. They had a code for that sort of thing.
“Big shit down south,” said Andrew.
“How big?” asked Gregory.
“Those undead, they were after your girl,” said Andrew.
“Have a seat,” Gregory pointed at the chair, while he sat on the edge of his daybed. “Did they get her?”
“Nope,” said Andrew. “But it looks like they came damn close. No witnesses, of course. She dropped a whole city block getting away.”
“And the zombies?”
“Completely unaffected by her as far as we can tell,” said Andrew. “A couple were pretty fucked up, but it looked like only road-rash. She dragged one of them a few miles. Well, at least parts of him.”
“Jesus,” said Gregory. He rubbed the top of his head. “But she got away?”
“Yup,” said Andrew. “We got her plans. She dropped a bag when she ran.”
“Where is it, can I see it?” asked Gregory.
“No, you know the rules,” said Andrew. “The bag could be psychically linked. You could be walking into a trap. We haven’t even finished our chemical analysis.”
“Come on, it’s just Marta. She doesn’t know about that stuff,” said Gregory.
“We’ve underestimated her once today, you want to go for twice?” asked Andrew. “We had a two mile radius on you, including checkpoints, biometrics, boats, cameras, and five thousand people on the ground. She was two point five miles away and pinpointed you within ten seconds of you leaving this box. You want to take a chance so you can read her diary?”
“No, I guess not,” said Gregory.
“Damn right,” said Andrew.
“I just feel so helpless,” said Gregory. “I’m in here constantly. No video, no music, no telephone, it’s crazy. I’m living like a caged animal.”
“You’re still living though,” said Andrew. “She’s getting better and better, but we’re closing in. We’ll take her out soon, and then you can go back to pretending you have a normal life. How’s that sound?”
“Yeah,” said Gregory. He sighed. “I don’t know.”
“About what?”
Gregory picked up his book from where he’d left it on the day bed and tossed it over to the end table. He ran his fingers through his hair.
“Maybe we shouldn’t even be trying to take her out,” said Gregory. “She probably can’t even do anything to me. Lots of people have tried to kill me.”
“No. Not like her,” said Andrew. “She’s a different thing altogether, and you know it.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Gregory.
“You say you do, but you’ve got that little hitch in your voice that says you’re just humoring me so I’ll shut up, but this is important. You told me once, do you remember? You predicted that you’d get tired of running from her before we were able to pin her down, and you made me promise,” said Andrew.
“I remember,” said Gregory. “It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Well if it wasn’t so long ago, then how come you were so much smarter then?” asked Andrew.
“That was before all this,” Gregory put up his hands and looked around his small room. “Before all the secret protocols and ceramic and lead-lined self-contained living spaces. That was back when life was still precious and unlimited.”
“Well I’m keeping my promise, regardless,” said Andrew. “Things change, situations change, I know, but I keep my promises. We’re getting closer each time, and this time we know where and when she’s going to make another run at you. Furthermore, we have the added bonus of a giant army of zombies that have appeared out of nowhere, and the only person they seem interested in hunting is the very person that’s been putting you on the run.”
“That is a weird fucking coincidence, isn’t it?” asked Gregory.
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Andrew. “By the way, it may not be entirely accurate. At first, Marta was the only person we heard of being chased, but there might have been another incident up in Maine. Could even be that Lindsay woman.”
“Get out of here,” said Gregory. “You’re kidding, right?”
“God’s honest,” said Andrew. He laid his hand against his chest. “I meant to tell you before, but then we got sidetracked with Marta’a bag. We’ve got some blurry footage from a gas station security tape. They found the cashier stuffed in a dumpster and the place was empty. One of the tapes shows a woman who looks a lot like your Lindsay behind the wheel of a car being attacked by a bunch of grave crawlers.”
“Did you ever find out how she escaped the island?” asked Gregory.
“Not for sure,” said Andrew.
“Our guys are still working over the island. She must have had plenty of help though. Everyone who was on that boat ended up dead.”
“What the hell is going on?” Gregory asked. He bent his head towards the ground and linked his hands behind his head.
“Just stay cool,” said Andrew. “We’ll get Marta pinned down and put her in this box. If she can’t get her powers in then she won’t be able to get them out either. It shouldn’t be too hard to track down this Lindsay woman again either. She’s on the run without a friend in the world. If the great Gregory alerts the rest of the country, then you’ll have another three hundred million people watching out for her.”
“I guess,” said Gregory.
“You know,” said Andrew. He scooted forward on his seat and rested his elbows on his knees. “There’s no reason in the world to go through with this Pittsburgh appearance. You give the word and we’re back on the tracks, headed to Colorado. Back on the ranch we’ve got a fifty mile perimeter. You could be walking under the stars by tomorrow.”
“This is my chance,” said Gregory. “You know I’ve been waiting for a unifying event—something to help me bond back with the normals. This zombie thing is perfect. People can’t relate to me at all when it’s just one immortal and the rest of humanity. You throw this whole zombie thing in the mix and all of a sudden I’m a lot more like a normal guy than a mindless zombie, you know? If I disappear then I run the risk of people just lumping me in with the zombies. What happens if they turn cannibal or something?”
“I could just as easily argue it the other way,” said Andrew. “Maybe you want people to draw the parallels. Then you’re just one of a million post-death survivors. Nothing special here, you could just blend in entirely. You might not even be a headline after today.”