by JE Gurley
“Initiate in five seconds,” Jeffries announced.
Everyone held their breath. Alex stared at the screen. He didn’t know what to expect, but certainly not what he witnessed. The device began to shimmer as discharged electrons excited the ionized air around it. The zombie, as if sensing danger, turned toward it and snarled. Alex felt a surge pass through his body and the hairs on his arm danced as if controlled by invisible strings. A sphere of light burst from the device and the zombie dropped to the floor. No one moved for several seconds. One of the scientists typed in a series of commands and a second screen displayed a series of numbers that made no sense to him, but everyone else became excited.
“It worked,” Paul Ivers, one of the researchers, declared with obvious excitement.
Jeffries was more circumspect in his opinion. “But how effectively?”
“Just over 300volts/meter. The test electronics are still functioning. Test subject shows no signs of life, er, motion,” he corrected himself. “It could be lethal to a human within a few hundred meters, but beyond that range, one would receive no more radiation than a long, sunny day at the beach or during a strong solar flare.”
“So it works?” Nicole asked, leaning forward to stare at the motionless zombie in the next room.
The smile that came to Jeffries mouth, erased many of the deep lines creasing his face, lines etched by weeks of strain. “We will have to test it a few more times, but it looks promising.”
“But it’s dead,” she said referring to the zombie.
He nodded. “To be effective, we have to increase the effective range to several kilometers and reduce the adverse effects to living people or we could sterilize an entire city.”
Ivers coughed politely for attention. “Would a few collateral casualties be that unacceptable, considering the severity of the situation?”
Edith spoke. She had remained strangely silent during the entire preparation process. The others had not noticed her reticence, but Alex had. He had noticed how her eyes had often strayed from her work toward the zombie in its acrylic cage.
“Every human life is precious, now more so than ever, if the human race is to survive this ordeal. I am too old to bear children. Many women who survive will fall into that category.” Her quick glance at Nicole was slightly embarrassed. “The possibility of sterility by radiation is still unacceptable. We must see to it that our work not only deactivates the nanites, but does so with no harm to the living host.”
The others continued to stare at her as if expecting her to continue. When she did not, Alex spoke up. “Then you’ll need a guinea pig, so I volunteer.”
“No,” Nicole cried out. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Absolutely not,” Edith said. “I will be the guinea pig if one is needed. If it does not work, what have I lost – a few more weeks or hours of waiting? I have no family.” She swept her arm around the room. “These are my friends, my colleagues.” She looked at her pistol. “I will not be forced to shoot anyone else.
“It’s too early to discuss this,” Jeffries said. “We still have a lot of work to do. Shall we examine our test subject?”
Alex had no stomach for watching an autopsy. He was certain Nicole did not either. “Want to take a stroll on the roof?”
She looked at him in confusion until his question sank in. “Yes, please. I need some fresh air.”
The roof of the two-story building gave them a grand view of the entire area and the restless dead surrounding them. As he watched their movements, Alex noticed an odd pattern in their behavior. One zombie would suddenly head off in a particular direction, and the zombies surrounding it would follow, like a flock of geese following its leader. This divided the mass of zombies into distinct herds that sometimes coalesced into larger groups or broke off into smaller knots. Alex wondered if their behavior was instinctual or if the nanites communicated on some level.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Nicole asked.
Her question caught him off guard. He wanted to lie to her, to tell her everything would be all right, but he knew he could never keep the truth from showing in his face.
“If it doesn’t work, we all die, sometime soon probably. I had wondered back in Coober Pedy about the growing numbers of zombies roaming the streets. I thought it odd that I didn’t run across more survivors raiding for supplies. I thought it was simply because people got careless and were bitten and turned, or remained where they were until they starved to death. Now, I think they just succumbed to the virus.”
Nicole shook her head and slumped over the roof railing. “Oh, Alex, I don’t want to die, not after all we’ve been through. Not after finding you.”
He mentally kicked himself for a fool. “I’m probably wrong. We’ve made it this far, haven’t we?”
She would not be consoled. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Maybe it means we’re immune.”
She grabbed the railing with both hands and shook it violently until the concrete cracked around the supports. “No, we’re not.”
He tried another tactic, “Jeffries knows his stuff. He’s confident the device will work.”
“It works on zombies,” she reminded him.
“It’ll work on us. Just wait and see. By tomorrow, we’ll be clearing the zombies out of here. Then we’ll move on to Adelaide and then Melbourne.”
She turned around to face him and leaned back on the railing. “It all seems so hopeless.”
He walked up to her and wrapped his arms around her. She rested her forehead against his chest. He gently caressed the back of her neck with the tips of his fingers. “No matter what happens, I want you to know how I feel about you.”
“Do you love me, Alex?” she whispered into his chest.
He pressed his lips to her ear and kissed it gently. Then he lifted her head. He looked deep into her eyes and saw what he should have noticed much earlier. In his focus on survival, he had ignored the little signs she had offered him, the same ones Jiselle had given him so long ago. She loved him. He realized at that moment that he loved her as well.
“Yes, Nicole. I do love you.”
Their kiss had none of the hesitancy of earlier kisses. It came from an explosion of pent up emotion finally finding release. He smashed his lips against hers, pulling her against him. She probed the inside of his cheek with her tongue. He returned the favor, brushing her tongue with his. He forgot about the zombies surrounding them, the death sentence hanging over them, even the specter of the Demise that had altered their world irrevocably. He gave in to the feelings that had grown within him, but ignored until this precious moment.
He felt his groin grow warm, pushed against her. She ground her pelvis into his. He wanted her, to be inside her, and knew she wanted the same.
A shot from inside the building shattered the moment. She pushed away and looked at him in horror, the unspoken question on her lips. He grabbed her by the hand.
“Come on.”
They raced down the stairs and found four of the others outside a closed door, pounding on it.
“It’s Edith,” Jeffries said. “She said she felt herself turning and locked herself inside her room. Then we heard a shot. I’m afraid . . .” His voice broke and he glanced away.
Ivers ran up out of breath, “I found the key.”
He handed the key to Jeffries who fumbled as he tried to unlock the door. He cursed and tried again. When he pushed the door open, they saw Edith Newsom sprawled on her back across her bed, blood still flowing from the bullet wound in her forehead. Blood and bits of skull and brain dripped sluggishly down the wall behind the bed. The pistol lay in the floor at her feet. She had used her marksmanship skills to great advantage. The bullet had killed her instantaneously and destroyed much of her brain in its passage. The nanites would never revive her.
Jeffries checked her pulse, a useless gesture, sobbing as he held her bloodstained hand. “Oh, Edith, why? Just a little longer my dear. We could have tried.”
&nb
sp; “She was afraid she might hurt one of you,” Alex said. “She didn’t want to risk it.”
Jeffries nodded. “She would.” He turned to Alex. “The autopsy went well. The nanites were destroyed with no additional tissue damage.”
Alex wondered how they could tell on a week-old decaying corpse.
“We’re ready to test the others.”
He nodded. “Then me.” He stopped Jeffries’ protest. “We have to know. You five have to do the work.” He looked at Nicole. “That leaves me.”
She squeezed his hand. “No. Both of us at the same time. If you die, I want to die with you.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he said.
“That’s why I insist. It’s both of us or neither of us.”
He saw the determination in her eyes. Witnessing Edith’s death had decided her. He squeezed back. “Okay. Both of us.”
“Give me . . . give us some time,” Jeffries said. He turned back to Edith. They left him to grieve.
* * * *
Four hours later, they were ready for Alex and Nicole. The scientists had run tests four more times, succeeding in killing the zombies. For the final test, the last zombie was in the acrylic chamber, while Alex and Nicole stood nearby. Alex felt a bit uneasy staring up into the camera through which the others were watching, waiting to see if he and Nicole survived.
“You can back out now,” Jeffries said over the intercom. “No one would blame you.”
“Then we would learn nothing,” Alex replied. “We’d be trapped here. Let’s get it over with.”
“Yes, I don’t like this waiting,” Nicole seconded.
“Very well. We fire in ten seconds.”
“Alex, I wish we had met earlier. We lived in the same town. How did we not ever meet?”
“After my wife died, you wouldn’t have wanted to know me. I was a right drunk bastard always picking and losing fights. I guess in my own way I was trying to die.”
“Yet after the Demise, you chose to survive.”
“Maybe I thought it was just another fight I couldn’t win.”
“I don’t…”
He heard Nicole’s sharp intake of breath as the EMP device activated. The air around the sphere shimmered. A filling in one of his teeth throbbed and his arms tingled. The zombie, once a soldier, began a frenzied clawing at its confining cell wall, and then collapsed. Alex waited for something else to happen. He looked at Nicole. Her eyes were closed. After a few more seconds, she opened them and looked at him puzzled.
“What happened?” she asked.
He pointed to the dead zombie, “I think it works.”
She leaped at him and hugged him, smothering him with kisses. He happily returned them. The door opened and the others filed in. Jeffries was smiling.
“I think we’ve succeeded. Edith would be pleased.”
“How soon can we get started?” Alex asked.
Jeffries looked surprised. “Why, t-today if you wish,” he stammered.
Nicole frowned at him, “So soon, Alex?”
“I want to kill these bastards. The sooner, the better.” He had a weapon that could kill more than one at a time. Some of the old rage came welling up, the old hatred. “I want to see them gone from our world.”
Nicole said nothing. Either she understood his need for revenge and agreed with him or she knew she could not stop him.
“How do I use it?”
“We’ve developed a remote control with a range of five hundred meters. For a powerful enough device to be effective over a wide area, say a five-kilometer diameter circle, you would need to be at least three hundred meters away to be completely safe.”
“If not?”
“The nearer you are when it activates, the more risk you run. This test device was only one-tenth as powerful as the one of which we are speaking.”
Nicole broke into the conversation. “What about people in the area, people hiding from zombies? What if they are within half a kilometer?”
Jeffries scratched his head. “They could die, I’m afraid. If we know people are present, we can use smaller devices. Otherwise, it would take centuries to take back the planet, block by block. The devices we are planning to develop should have a range of fifty kilometers or more, powerful enough to sterilize an entire city. We can try to evacuate any living people, of course, but there will be casualties, people who cannot, or will not be evacuated. If we knew, the wavelength on which the nanites operated, it would be so much easier. We could fine tune the device, make it more effective.” He shook his head. “But we don’t.”
Nicole covered her eyes with her hands and shook her head. Alex put his arm around her shoulder and drew her to him.
“He’s right, love. We can’t save everyone.”
“I know,” she sobbed.
“We will activate the first device here on the roof,” Jeffries informed them. “We’ll all take shelter in the shielded room. Our calculations indicate our electronics should survive. Let’s hope they are correct. Otherwise . . .”
Otherwise, Alex thought, the game is over.
25
Sept. 6, 2013 Orroroo, Australia
“Listen.”
Anson stopped Marino with an arm across his chest as they trudged up the side of a steep sand dune. Marino was glad to stop. His legs ached and he felt like he was dying of thirst. They had been walking for hours since leaving the highway. Anson, seeming tireless, had insisted on following the vehicle tracks even as the sun was slipping over the horizon.
“It’s him.” Anson motioned Marino to the ground while he crept up the side of the dune. After several minutes, he returned.
“Bastard’s about three hundred meters away in a pickup with a camper. Looks like he’s about to leave. I couldn’t get a good shot at him.”
Marino looked up in alarm. “We don’t know that he’s the one who shot your sister. You can’t just shoot him without finding out first.”
Anson’s face turned feral. “Who else could it be?” he snapped. “You think the desert’s full of people? It’s him all right.”
Marino knew there was no stopping his friend. They had spent the afternoon tracking the truck and Anson was determined to extract his revenge. He had grown more taciturn throughout the day, his mind fixed on the image of his murdered sister and dead or injured brother, who had survived Melbourne only to meet their cruel fate so near their goal.
He sighed and stood, “Let’s get it over with.”
Anson nodded and began to crawl back up the dune. His motions became more frantic when the truck’s engine revved up and it began to leave.
“Hurry!” he yelled.
Marino scrambled to the top of the dune beside Anson, just as the truck’s tail lights vanished over the next rise.
“Too late, damn it!” he cried and kicked the sand with the toe of his boot. He started down the rise. “Come on.”
Marino remained where he was. “No.”
Anson spun. “What?”
“I said no. It’s dark, we’re on foot and I’m dying of thirst. I’m not going any farther.”
“He’ll get away.” Anson said it as if it were the end of his world, the reason for his existence.
“He’s headed back to the highway. We go back to the bike, eat and drink some water and follow him. How many pickups with campers are there out there, at least moving ones? We’ll find him.”
Anson continued to glare at Marino, fingering his rifle. For a moment, Marino was afraid his friend would refuse to halt the chase and try to force him to help, but finally Anson relented. He wasn’t happy about it, but he turned toward the highway and began walking.
They found the roadblock by following the wisps of smoke still rising above it. The first thing Marino did was to grab the canteen and quench his thirst. While Anson stood over the grave of his sister paying his last respects, Marino opened two tins of stew and heated them over a small campfire. Anson sat on the side of the road eating his stew, refusing to talk.
T
he moon had set a couple of hours after dusk, leaving a jet-black sky. Marino tried to pick out constellations familiar in the Arizona night sky. He recognized a few along the northern horizon, but most was unknown to him, except, of course, for the Southern Cross. The clarity of the night sky reminded him of Antarctica. He doubted people would return there for many years. Any survivors that remained there would probably die there. He realized he had been one of the lucky few to escape.
The hours of walking had sapped his strength. He decided to leave Anson to his brooding and sleep. He had just dozed when Anson called out to him.
“Someone’s coming.”
Marino jumped up and grabbed his rifle. Was it the killer returning or Anson’s injured brother drawn by the smoke? He squatted beside the bike and stared at the top of the embankment. Whoever was coming was not moving quietly. The sound of snapping twigs and crunching gravel sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet night. Rocks rolled down the embankment. When a head appeared over the edge, Anson called out.
“Eric!” He turned to Marino. “Wait. It’s my brother.” He stood up.
Something in the movements of Anson’s brother didn’t seem right to Marino. Even if injured, his motions were strangely erratic, almost spasmodic, like…
“Elliot! Wait!”
The tone of Marino’s voice stopped Anson short. When his brother saw Anson, he stood, growled like a wild animal, and tumbled down the embankment. As the creature that had once been Eric Anson, struggled to right himself, Marino saw the gaping wound in the side of his head. Whether his assailant had shot him before he had become a zombie or afterwards, there was no doubt as to his status now.
Anson realized his brother’s fate as well. As the creature stood and lumbered toward him, Marino thought for a moment that his friend had given up hope and was going to let his brother kill him, but at the last moment, Anson raised his rifle and fired from the hip. His brother dropped at his feet.
“Sorry, Eric,” he whispered. Without another word, Anson went to his sister’s grave, took the hubcap and began to dig. Marino sat and watched, wiping the tears from his eyes for his friend’s anguish.