Apocalily Series (Book 2): The Almighty Lady of Tomorrow

by Fizzotti, Marcos

  “If my dead memory doesn’t fail me,” Slim spoke “they call it Tornado signal.”

  “And what does this signal do?” Mate queried.

  “It captures our brain signatures.” Hank responded.

  “What the heck is this?” Lily asked.

  “It’s the element of the brain that defines us and makes us unique.” The one called Doctor filled that question, while entering the room. “It identifies us better than any fingerprint. Not so long ago, this element was one of those mysteries of science that puzzled neurologists. Recently, new discoveries shed some light on the subject. The Undertakers surely found out a lot about it.”

  “The idea is to capture brain signatures and send them to a processing center somehow.” Hank continued. “However, the thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams of the whole planet’s population are just too much to digest. No computer known to man can handle it. But they found a solution.”

  “What is it?” Lily asked.

  “The human brain” The Doctor replied. “It’s the most sophisticated computer there is. But even the brain can only take so much, so more than one is required and they have to be fresh and enhanced somehow.”

  “Children with a high extrasensory perception” Lily guessed “Like Shane was.”

  “Precisely” The Doctor proceeded. “And now, the children have the brain signatures of the majority of population in their little heads. They can control and manipulate people as they please.”

  “And the children will do everything the Undertakers tell them to do.” Hank concluded. “Individuality of many lost to the desires of a few.”

  “Hold your horses!” Zomboy said. “Joshua up there didn’t seem controlled to me. I don’t feel any manipulated either, do you?”

  Hank opened a smirk.

  “The scramblers” He said. “You know, the equipment my team and I installed to prevent the Undertakers from tracing our clandestine broadcasts. They messed up real good with the massive signal.”

  “Please continue.” Zomboy requested. “You fascinate me, my good man.”

  “Thank you.” Hank responded. “According to my analyzers, a lot came in, but nothing came out.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “The scramblers totally modified the original massive signal, in such a way that it couldn’t find its way back to the satellites. I’m pretty sure no brain signature ever left our great Devasta Land.”

  “Not a big loss.” Trisha commented.

  “Too bad our equipment only covers the Devasta Land perimeter.” Hank lamented. “The rest of the world is defenseless against it.”

  “The only thing that puzzles me is the headache Joshua described.” The Doctor said.

  “A damn fucked up one.” Trisha recalled.

  “Thank you.” The Doctor said.

  “Pardon my French.” She spoke.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen.” The Doctor continued. “According to the documents I got my hands on, people hit by the massive signal shouldn’t feel a thing.”

  “And I don’t think they did outside these premises.” Hank responded. “Thanks to the scramblers, brains in Devasta Land didn’t receive the intended signal, which probably caused the headaches. But it only lasted a few seconds, a minute, tops.”

  “How come Mate and I didn’t have any headaches?” Lily queried.

  “I was kind of curious about that myself.” Zomboy said. “Can we have some enlightenment on this, Hank?”

  “None of us did, slick.” Hank answered. “Even the massive signal can only go so far. It doesn’t reach the undergrounds.”

  “So, none of us is affected.” Mate Clarkson concluded.

  “No.” Hank confirmed. “We are still individuals in a world that now belongs to a corporation.

  “What happens if we go back to the surface?” Mate asked.

  “Nothing” Hank answered. “They don’t have our brain signatures. I don’t think they’ll send the massive signal again anytime soon. It consumes too much energy. Besides, they figure they don’t have to.”

  “Then we have to go up there!” Clarkson cheerfully spoke to Lily. “See what we can do stop them.”

  Nevertheless, Lily lowered her eyes. She turned her back on the group and waved Clark to follow her outside. The crowd had already dispersed, with heavy hearts and souls.

  “What’s wrong?” Mate asked his partner.

  “We’re not going anywhere.” Lily determined.

  “W-what? This is a joke, right? Although we’ve never played with a thing like that before.”

  “And we never will.” She sighed. “No, it’s not a joke, lad.”

  “But I thought…”

  “What can we possibly do, mate? The whole world is controlled now, or at least most of it. What do you propose we do?”

  “Well, you being Apocalily and all…”

  “Stop this, okay!” Lily furiously interrupted. “Grow up, will you!”

  Mate looked at his friend astounded. He could never image he would ever hear those words from her mouth.

  “I’m not anybody’s hero!” Lily continued mercilessly. “I’ve never asked to be. I’ve never asked to have this burden on my shoulders! I’m a freaking daddy’s little girl whose ego goes stratospheric sometimes, that’s all! I don’t want the weight of the world on my back! It’s not fair! And I’m tired.”

  “O-okay” Mate said, almost in a whisper. “I just thought that… as long as we were together… You know that Condor City will fall to the Undertakers again, don’t you?”

  “It would anyway, sooner or later. Too bad we put all those efforts for nothing.”

  “We killed Shane for crying out loud! You killed her. That must count for something.”

  “It just postponed the inevitable. Face it, Mate. This is just too big. The Undertakers can’t be stopped. They must have spent years planning all this, and they got the money, the power and the means. Now they also got the people. The game was always in their hands.”

  “People out there believed in you.”

  “No. They believed in a fantasy world of knights on horses and gorgeous princesses. They needed that to escape a harsh reality. Now, they can’t even get real anymore. Everything they got was taken away from them, even their own free will.”

  “We still have our will. There got to be something we can do.”

  “Just the two of us? I don’t think so.”

  “Then what?”

  “We stay here.” Lily decided. “Zomboy is right. This place is the world’s last refuge. We have to work on this. That’s the only way to start a new life. The surface is lost.” She took a deep breath. “I want to be alone now.”

  And she walked away.

  Mate turned his head and found Zomboy. The young cadaver was sitting on a rock, overhearing.

  “You really got through to her, didn’t you?” Mate barked at him and went away.

  For the first time since he had become a smart zombie, Zomboy did not have a snap come back.

  21st MOVEMENT

  The Chancellor broke out the champagne, with the cork flying somewhere and foam spilling on the shirt under his suit jacket. More people in the dome followed his gesture and glasses started to be filled.

  “I’d like to thank you all for your tireless efforts, which results we celebrate today!” The Chancellor spoke. “The gears of a better future are now in motion. I don’t know if you realize this, but you’ve just saved humanity for your children and grandchildren. Thanks to you, Phase 2 of the great Undertaking is now a reality!”

  Applauses, cheers and whistles followed his little speech. Glasses were raised in excitement, so fast that a lot of liquid spilled from them.

  “Now, let the fun begins!” The Chancellor declared.

  The lights dimmed and a disco globe descended from the ceiling. The dome, a once rigid place of work, suddenly became a nightclub. And the music started. Everybody drank and danced happily to the tune, enjoying life to the most.

  Even th
e children shared the enthusiasm, chatting and giggling as if they had just returned from an amusement park.

  The only one quiet and frowning was Amy.

  Allison was walking on cloud nine. A new universe of possibilities unfolded for her like the curtains of a theater, a queen for the new empire on the rise.

  But a good deal of such excitement vanished the moment her eyes met Amy’s on one of the big screens.

  The girl seemed to be looking straight at her. Nothing wrong with that, Amy was just staring at the camera. However, Allison had a strange feeling that those punitive, accusatory, penetrating blue eyes were aiming at her. She could feel Amy’s look churn in her head.

  Angry, Miss Forrester strode to a console, stepping hardly on the floor. She turned off all big screens.

  Arrogance and limitless thirst for power kept repeating over and over again in Amy’s mind. The greed of a few had reached the next level. And they would stop at nothing.

  In the square patio, the big rock was a commemorative monument of some sort. It bore inscriptions with the names of people, probably the founding fathers of that particular university, carved on a plate fixed to the rock by thick screws.

  And the structure was also tall enough to overlook the improvised corral sitting by it. The boards surrounding the Destructors and keeping them in were spaced enough so it was possible to see everything that happened inside. Such boards had been disposed in a way to roughly form a circle, and they ended in a gate.

  A cheering crowd gathered around the corral, laughing and placing bets – ten dollars the zombies will finish the humans in the first two minutes, twenty dollars they’ll eat the little girl first, five dollars some of the creatures will bang the woman before eating her – so on and so forth.

  On the top of the monument, three men pulled the prisoners by their collars until they became visible to the crowd. Every single person around the corral applauded and raised hands.

  “Toss them, toss them, toss them!” They chanted at the same time.

  The three men holding Ike, Ivy and Jill looked at a fountain that stood nearby. On top of it, the Owner sat. He lifted a thumb and then pointed it down. The crowd cheered even louder, for they understood the meaning of that gesture.

  The men released the prisoners from their collars and threw them off the monument to the corral below. The bodies of Ike, Ivy and Jill collided strongly against the terrain. That surely called the attention of the Destructors, which advanced to them with blind fury.

  “Follow me!” Ike suddenly said.

  “What?” Ivy mumbled.

  “Grab the girl.”

  Ivy did it, and Ike kicked the gate open, just like that. They ran outside, with the enhanced monsters after them.

  “Fuck!” A man screamed.

  In the presence of a lot more alternatives, the Destructors spread all around after leaving the corral, biting, opening up and eating whatever flesh they found in their way. Many brothers and sisters succumbed to them, screaming in pain and despair.

  “Oh boy!” The Owner grunted.

  He lost balance and fell off the fountain.

  The ones with fire weapons shot the beasts in the head, which worked only so much. There was way more corpses than ammunition and soon the shooters also perished.

  Ike, Ivy and Jill made it to a tall statue of a man holding a book, so typical in places like that. Resisting the awful pain in his shoulder, Ike managed to climb the sculpture. Ivy lifted Jill and Ike could reach the girl and pull her to the top. Ivy jumped and climbed too, but an enhanced cadaver grabbed her socks and tried to bite her foot. More was coming.

  “Come on, Ivy!” Ike screamed. “Take my hand!”

  “I can’t!” The woman cried.

  The strength of the reanimated corpse surpassed Ivy’s arms resistance by far and the creature pulled her down. But not before Ike stretched his arm as much as he could and grabbed her by the wrist.

  “I got you!” He said.

  The Destructor tore Ivy’s sock by accident and she was free from its grip.

  Making faces of pain because of his shoulder, Ike pulled Ivy up to safety. They hugged and kissed, also opening room for Jill to do the same.

  “How did you do that?” Ivy asked, truly impressed. “That stupid gate should be locked. We saw those fuckers locking it up!”

  “When we had those strange goddamn migraines, everybody got distracted. I bit my tongue as hard as I could to fight the pain and then I crawled to the gate. I unlocked it and nobody saw me doing it. Lucky the zombies inside didn’t realize it as well.”

  “That was amazing!” Ivy praised, caressing his forehead. “You are amazing.”

  “No, I’m not. I just made things worse, like I always do.”

  “What? That’s bullshit, honey! You bought us time!”

  “We are surrounded.”

  In fact, several Destructors were trying to climb the statue after their prey. Lack of motor coordination was the only thing stopping them from achieving such goal.

  “There’s only one way out of this.” Ike spoke. “I attract those jerks as far away as I can and you make a run for it with the girl.”

  “What?” Ivy mumbled.

  “Listen! Nobody is coming here to save us. This is the only way.”

  “Ike! This is not the time for jokes!”

  Ike grabbed both her arms.

  “If I was joking, you’d be laughing, honey.” He said.

  Ivy shook her head in denial.

  “NO!” She said.

  “My whole life I’ve been a letdown.” Ike spoke. “Please, let me do just this one thing I can be proud of.”

  “W-what are you talking about?” Ivy stammered. “You’re making no sense!”

  Ike pulled her body to him and gave her a very tight kiss in the lips.

  “You and Jill run for safety.” Ike said. “Try to get to one of the buildings. You’ll be safe in there for a while. You’re going to make a helluva mother. I always knew.”

  The man let go of her arms, and before Ivy could argue the point any further, Ike jumped off the statue as far as he could. He was unable to land on his feet and rolled over the grass, but managed to stand up.

  “Over here! Over here.” He screamed to the living dead, not that he had to.

  Ike ran like hell, with the Destructors hard on his heels. Ivy stood still looking at him going, as if paralyzed. Jill was hugging her tightly.

  “We have to go, Ivy.” The little girl spoke.

  Ivy woke up from her stupor and climbed down the statue. She signaled to Jill and the girl descended to the woman’s arms.

  Ivy ran with the girl, trying to reach the nearest building. With most of Destructors busy with other victims, their coast was reasonably clear. But Ivy’s leg was hit by an arrow. She fell down on the floor screaming in pain, and had to let go of Jill.

  The girl stood up and pulled Ivy’s arm. They were only two steps away from a work shed.

  “Let’s go, Ivy!” The girl cried. “Let’s go!”

  But Ivy was tired and defeated. Her strength and will to live had abandoned her. She raised her eyes to face the child in front of her and said:

  “Go. Get in there, honey.”

  “NO!” The girl kept pulling her arm. “Stand up! Let’s go!”

  Some enhanced corpses had caught sight of them.

  “I can’t.” Ivy said tenderly. “Don’t worry, peach. Just go, hide in that place.” She pointed a finger at the work shed. “Lock yourself good. When things calm down out here, you leave the house. You’ll find somebody.” Her voice faltered.

  “But I want to stay with you!” Jill sobbed.

  “I love you.”

  Ivy pushed the girl inside the work shed. Jill closed the door and locked the latch.

  A shadow grew bigger around Ivy.

  “You snotty little bastard” The Owner said with the bow on his shoulder. “You just couldn’t behave yourself, now could you?” Now, I’m going to do to you and the little
bitch what I should’ve done long ago.”

  The Owner took a step toward the work shed, but he saw the Destructors coming fast.

  “Ah, what the heck” He said. “One can’t be selfish in times like this. Let them critters have their little party, too.”

  He kicked the door open, obliterating the latch inside.

  “They’ll get the scent of her.” The Owner spoke.

  “No, please, NO!” Ivy begged.

  “It seems it’s just you and me now, babe.”

  The Owner dragged Ivy away by the arrow piercing her leg. Ivy screamed.

  The reanimated cadavers broke into the work shed, dropping the door as if it was made of Styrofoam. The latch would have been useless anyway. Jill ran to the window, but the living dead shattered the glasses and fell inside the hut.

  They were everywhere. Jill collapsed on a corner, crossed her arms around her legs and hid her head between the knees. She could not bear the sight of the monsters ready to kill her. Jill was too young to understand the concepts of having her whole body torn up to death. She did not know how to deal with it. Then, she just didn’t look.