Rise of the Necrotics (Books 1-4)

by Bates, Bradford

  Plus, no one at the Hilltop had seen my gun. Not unless they started doing some undercover research I wasn’t privy to. I made sure to keep away from fishing at the company docks. It was something my dad told me to avoid at all costs. It was damn good advice. I’d seen people get burned more times than I could count for not following one very simple rule. So, when it came to inter-Hilltop fraternization, I just didn’t partake, and I didn’t talk about my personal life with everyone. The second part was a lesson I’d learned from Garfield and took to heart.

  So when the super-hot lesbian tells you that your gun is plenty big, there is only one thing left to do. No, it wasn’t drop your pants and start tugging away. That was disturbing and more than a little frowned upon by pretty much everyone. No, you stored the audio file for later so you could play it when her birthday card opened to a picture of a big burly man in a Speedo dancing around in a cake. Laughter would ensue, and you wouldn’t go to jail like you would have if you did the first thing.

  There was also the fact that Nandy made a pretty damn good wingman when we went out for drinks. Nothing resonates with other women more than getting confirmation that a guy is ok from his female friends. If nothing else, it gets your foot in the door, so all you have to do is not be a huge douche-nozzle, and a first date is almost assured.

  Something beeped by the nurse's station, snapping me back into the moment. Thankfully nothing happened in the few moments I spent zoned out in the lobby. The last thing I wanted to be written on my tombstone was ripped to pieces by zombies while fantasizing about his hot friend. Thankfully the beeping wasn’t something needing my attention, it was just a fax machine doing what fax machines do. Gotta love hospitals, they won’t spend the money to go digital.

  Now that my heart was starting to slow down again I looked over the lobby one more time. Minus the flashing lights on the walls, nothing seemed out of place here. The nurses had patients, so they could just be seeing to their needs. Part of my brain kept insisting it was a good thing there weren’t more people. When a group of people felt trapped they tended to act irrationally and lash out. That wouldn’t be a problem here.

  The Desert Eagle .44 felt warm in my hands, almost as if it were begging to be used, and with a live fire order in place I was sure it wouldn’t be long before my girl took care of business. The priority had to be making sure none of the infected got off this floor even if one of them had saved my ass earlier. As soon as someone was bitten, that was it. You couldn’t show them pity or remorse. Those were useless emotions in a fight, and would only get you killed.

  Dying wasn’t on my to-do list for tonight, so I tried to center myself. If Ramirez was free on this floor and was half as strong as the Garfield creature looked then I was going to need my wits about me. I moved into the hallway, and another gruesome thought couldn’t help bursting through the weak shield I built around my emotions to protect myself from the reality of the situation. What if Director Chen writes this place off while I’m inside?

  A new sense of urgency fueled my movements. Clearing the floor of infected would surely stall Director Chen from pulling the plug on the hospital. A split in the hallway was coming up as I fought against the instinct to run forward. There had to be enough time for me to do this right or I was dead anyway. On the bright side, a fire inferno sounded better than being snacked on. So at least Chen had that going for him.

  A T intersection was coming up, so I slowed to a walk again as I tried to peer around the corner. I couldn’t see around the corner without exposing myself so I looked forward again. The doors at the end of the hall were closed, and the room beyond appeared to be empty. At the very least I didn’t see a horde of hungry zombies headed this way. The word Recovery was painted on the wall to my left. Ramirez was the real threat here and had to be dealt with first. I couldn’t afford to leave him behind me while I was dealing with any of the slow ones.

  Almost slowing to a standstill, I craned my neck hoping to catch a glimpse what awaited me in the hallway. I hadn’t seen anything yet, but this was the kind of night where a few more surprises wouldn’t be out of the question. I had a tingle in my gut that was whispering to me the thing that used to be Ramirez might be lying in wait. If the bastard was waiting for me to come around the corner at chest height then he was going to be surprised. If Gordon taught me anything it was never peak around the corner from the same height twice.

  When my life was on the line I preferred to be more paranoid than not. Being paranoid didn’t stop me from being scared shitless though. On every other mission I had my partner by my side. Garfield kept me calm, kept me moving when staying still meant coming back in a casket. I didn’t have him now, but I hoped he was with me in spirit.

  My back felt wet as I pressed it against the wall, but my shirt didn’t stick to me. That dancing naked man on TV sure knew how to sell you a shirt. Still, I could do with a little less sweat. Maybe that was the next big innovation. Shirts that actually cool you down. Part of me wondered if such a super shirt would even be able to stand up to the heat generated by being chased by zombies. The shirt might not live up to the hype, but it’d be one hell of a commercial. Maybe they could even put a stencil on the shirt saying it used to be the heat that would kill you. Nothing spells American ingenuity like turning a crisis into billions of dollars.

  Inching forward I kept waiting for something to jump out. The suspense of the moment was killing me, which is why my brain was racing all of over the place. No one cared about my imaginary super shirt. I almost felt like I was stuck in one of the Conjuring movies and something was going to get me right now, and when it didn’t then I knew in the next heartbeat that it would. That fear is what kept me watching scary movies, right now I wasn’t exactly a fan.

  Taking a deep breath I readied myself to go around the corner. The slow approach to the moment of truth was cut off when my gut twisted so hard it dropped me to my knees. Something slammed into the wall above my head and concrete and dust showered down around me. My special little ability decided that second was the right time to release the hold on my bowels, and I rolled away from the corner coming up in a crouch with my gun pointed at the hallway. The hallway was clear, but the fire axe now embedded in the wall was still quivering slightly.

  The first good news of the night was I didn’t look up into Ramirez charging toward me as I came out of my backward roll. The bad news was sunk three inches into a concrete wall, exactly where my chest had been moments before. It’s one thing to shoot a man, it’s a whole ‘nother level of brutality to kill someone with an axe. That’s some serious serial killer shit, but I doubt any of our garden-variety psychopaths could have swung the axe hard enough to embed it in a concrete wall.

  “If I live through this I’m getting into a new line of work,” I mumbled rising back to my feet.

  I had to get around the corner. There was a point in time when Director Chen would call the hospital a total loss, and then he’d blow it off the map. He didn’t care about innocents; he cared about containing the story. A gas leak might be able to explain the damage, as long as he dropped the bomb before sunrise.

  At least I still had a few surprises strapped to my vest. Normally I would have stripped it off in the car, but tonight I kept it on. Small things like that made me wonder if someone was watching over me, or maybe it was just our techies for coming up with all this cool stuff. My favorite item was a miniature smoke bomb, the thing almost looked like one of the cheap ones we used to buy in Mexico as kids. Only this small white package had a pin instead of a fuse.

  The smoke bomb came free from the vest with a quick jerk, and I tossed it around the corner before activating my glasses. I didn’t even know if the smoke would affect Ramirez, but it made me feel better not to be walking out into the open. This time I kept my back against the far wall keeping as much distance between myself and any potential threat.

  It would probably be too much of an assumption to think that the doors to my right might actually be locked making me
safe, but I was willing to bet my life on it because I couldn’t watch the hall and the doors at the same time. Now was the time to have a little faith.

  The glasses did an amazing job filtering the smoke from my vision. It was a chemical compound in the smoke itself that let the goggles filter it out. The things these guys could do with a few dollars behind them blew my mind. The hallway was clear, but I quickly scanned the ceiling before moving forward. There was no way I was going to die because I didn’t look up, that only happened to amateurs and the scream queens from the eighties.

  I made it to the doors and peered through the glass. Did you ever have one of those days where you’re three hours into your shift, and it dawns on you that this day, this single moment at your job is the worst moment of your life? At that moment you question everything. Especially why you didn’t follow your instincts and call out sick. That moment, the moment where you knew nothing would be the same again. I was living in it right now. The momentary epiphany did nothing to settle my nerves as I crept forward.

  Ramirez was standing in the middle of an open space. All of the steel bed frames had been ripped to pieces, and people or parts of people in most cases were pinned to the wall with the metal railings. Some of them were moving, and I hoped that was due to the whole undead thing and not that they were still alive. I didn’t want to think about what it felt like to be pinned to the wall like a bug in a museum.

  At least it looked like I only had Ramirez to deal with. Once he was down I could find out if anyone escaped. The slow ones were easy enough to handle. I stepped through the doors and Ramirez turned around. His shirt was off, and his chest was covered in blood. Some of it had clearly been smeared around, but the drying blood around his lips and the man’s pink teeth were what disturbed me the most. He spread his arms out wide and howled at the ceiling before charging forward.

  I didn’t know if I should be proud of myself or terrified, but I never hesitated. As soon as Ramirez moved towards me I started firing. Two to the chest, one to the leg, followed by two more rounds to the chest before I stepped out the way and let the thing that tried to kill me with an axe slam into the wall.

  The body twitched slightly, and then Ramirez started trying to stand up. Damn things could take a lot of damage and keep on ticking. I wondered if he would turn into one of the slow ones if his body died. That was an experiment for someone getting paid a hell of a lot more than me. I pointed my gun at the back of Ramirez’s head and emptied the rest of the magazine into him before he could stand up.

  Ejecting the mag, I slipped a fresh one in place. There weren’t any steps thundering down the hall in my direction, so I was safe enough considering what was decorating the walls. Slowly, I holstered my gun and went back into the hallway for the axe. I couldn’t afford to waste the ammo until I knew I could get my hands on some more.

  Chapter Twelve

  Max Meridious

  Nothing says bucket of laughs like plunging an axe into the heads of your coworkers. Ok, ok, maybe I shouldn’t be joking about that in this day and age, but being a smartass always helped take the edge off a less than fun task. Plus I was never one to follow the rules so to speak, it wasn’t exactly my thing. Kind of like the anthem protest. Kneel, don’t kneel, I don’t care what you do, just don’t tell me what I should be doing.

  I’m always going to do what I think is right, and I’ve been standing for the national anthem at games since I was a kid. In grade school we used to say the pledge of allegiance every morning. So it’s my decision to stand, but that is the great thing about being born in America, if you want to kneel instead, you’re free to make that choice for yourself. There are a lot of people living in the world whose minds would be blown by that kind of freedom. Sometimes it’s nice to just appreciate what you have.

  There was always the chance that I’d been brainwashed by the military members of our family. All of the soldiers I’ve ever known love this country with a pride that borders on zealousness. That doesn’t mean they think everything is all sunshine and roses, it just means they’ve put their lives on the line for this country and care deeply about it. It wasn’t like our soldiers were showered with praise when they returned from the field. Mostly they just went on living their lives, just like the rest of us.

  If there was one thing that I knew for certain, it was that I would have been laughed out of a traditional military unit when I joined the Hilltop. I was too fat, too full of myself, and as aforementioned didn’t exactly like following the rules. Plus the military doesn’t exactly care how you feel. They tell you how you feel. You feel blessed to be part of the greatest war machine on the planet. At least that was what I always expected someone in charge to shout at the new recruits. The military just didn’t seem right unless you had a drill sergeant screaming at the top of his lungs like the one R. Lee Ermey played.

  Wonder what good old Sergeant Hartman would have thought about me walking the room putting the pointy end of an axe through people’s heads. He’d probably be screaming at me to improve the efficiency of my swing or some shit. The thought made me laugh, as I tried to keep the horror of what I was doing at bay. You never wake up in the morning thinking that by the end of the day you would have killed more people than a serial killer.

  The thing I never really fully understood when streaming zombie shows is just how bad everything smells. They touched on it just a bit and then kind of move on, but the smell is bad enough to be the star of the show. When people die, it’s not exactly the cleanest experience, but with one person the smell can be ignored. When there are ten dead bodies it’s a lot harder. Add in the blood on the walls and the floors, and whatever other bodily juice leaked out when Ramirez ripped these people to shreds and hung them around the room like art. It made the room look like some kind of perverse Jackson Pollock painting, and possibly the worst smelling painting in the world.

  With the dirty work out of the way, I dropped the axe back to the floor and activated my comm. “Operations, Ramirez and the security team have been dealt with. I’m going to check out the rest of the floor.”

  “Max, I don’t know how to say this,” Nandy replied sounding hesitant. “I don’t have a lot of good news for you I’m afraid, so I’m just going to pull the band-aid off. Someone in the quarantine zone was infected, and we have a big problem on our hands.”

  I cut right to the chase. “How long do I have?”

  “I’ll let Director Chen field that question. Be safe, Max.” The line hummed for a moment and then disconnected.

  “Max,” Director Chen said sounding like we were old friends. “The hospital has been deemed a complete loss. Before you say anything, I tried to stall them but the numbers don’t lie. Our threat assessment team came to the same conclusion. We need to eradicate the infection.”

  “The president isn’t seriously considering dropping a bomb in downtown Phoenix, is he?” It was the worst case scenario coming to life. The only thing I had driving me forward was the fact I didn’t want to die in this shitty hospital.

  “He is, and we’ll help them cover it up. For that to work, we have to take out the target before dawn. Which brings us back to the fact that you don’t have a lot of time.” Director Chen almost sounded pleased, like he was savoring the fact that whatever he asked me to do, I’d do it just to survive.

  That didn’t give me enough time to get out of here. The lower level would be suicide, and I couldn’t exactly jump off the roof of a ten story building. Even if I did get out, rounding me up would become the Hilltop’s number one priority. Couldn’t risk the chance that I had been infected. “I’m all for speeding up this conversation to the point where I get out of here. Just tell me what I need to do.”

  “I’ve been instructed that all personnel inside the building are expendable.” Director Chen replied flatly as if he were reading a dry historical fact off a cue card.

  “Then why are you even talking to me?” I was a fucking dead man. But why waste the words, unless he needed something from i
nside the hospital? Whatever Chen needed was my ticket out. Which was pretty much all I wanted right now. I was seriously starting to think that I’d never get a chance to pig out on Little Caesars and binge watch Netflix again.

  “There is someone inside I want to be extracted while we still have a chance. If you can get her out, there’s a seat waiting for you on the helicopter.”

  I had an idea of who I was going to get, but I wanted him to say it. “And just who is the mystery woman you want me to save?”

  “Doctor Holly Bowmont.”

  “So my two choices are between braving the infected to save the doctor or dying in a fiery explosion.”

  “That about sums it up,” Director Chen said, still sounding a little too smug about it.

  “You haven’t exactly left me with any options here, Chen.”

  “Just collect Doctor Bowmont and get to the roof. We can’t save everyone, Max, but Holly needs to get out. The way she can make leaps in research that no one else can, is irreplaceable. Doctor Bowmont is just the asset we need to get out in front of this thing. I’d feel a lot better sleeping at night knowing we have a cure if the infection spreads.”

  “Where is she now?” I hated that I even asked. All I wanted to do was shout fuck you at the top of my lungs and hang up, but that wouldn’t get me out of here. When this was over I deserved a fat pension that kicked in immediately. Retirement at twenty-seven sounded pretty darn good.

  “Fourth floor,” Director Chen replied sounding a little too much like the cat that ate the canary. “Holly and the medical team are currently in the middle of studying Mr. Garfield. She doesn’t know what’s happening and might resist leaving if she did. Get her to the roof at any cost.”