Stage 3 (Book 3): Bravo

by Stark, Ken

Even as he heard the Mustang growl to life, he sat there watching Armani stumbling over the countless bodies.

  “Hey, Sarah?” he asked as casually as he could.

  “Yes, Mace?”

  “Ummm…” He struggled until he found something approximating the right words. “Those little micronaut things... they can die, right?”

  She mulled it over. “Well, technically they're not alive, so...”

  “But machines quit working, right? Like, if I smash a toaster with a sledgehammer, you could say that I'd killed it.”

  “I suppose,” she said, rather noncommittally.

  “And a virus isn't alive either, but they can be killed too, right?”

  “Uh... sure, I guess you could say that.”

  He took a deep breath before he asked the next question.

  “So... what kills a technovirus?”

  His words hung in the air for some time, then Richie piped up from the back, “A bullet to the head does the trick.”

  That answer suited Mason just fine, but ever the scientist, Sarah couldn't let it go at that.

  “No, Richie, a bullet kills the host, not the technovirus. I don't even know if...” She cut herself short and looked out at the gathering echoes. As her body grew tense and her hand went automatically to her pistol, she muttered an ominous, “Oh, dear Jesus...”

  Armani was getting closer. But now, it wasn't alone. No fewer than a dozen echoes were stumbling their way toward the truck, and twice that many were stirring. He looked to the body wall and saw three of those ancient corpses struggling to crawl out from under the heaps of others.

  It couldn't be. It couldn't. But it was.

  Armani was dead. He'd killed it himself. Then, Becks had killed the echo it had become, with a javelin through the eye, deep into the brain. Armani had died twice... yet here it was.

  An old female echo thumped into Gloria's flank, and Mason looked down to see her. Clean hole, just above the nose. Ragged. Torn. One of Alejandra's .45 calibre slugs. He looked to another and saw a skull opened up like a hard-boiled egg. And another, with multiple puncture wounds from a spiked bat. And another, its mouth filled with goo from a shot that had gone up through its jaw and into its brain.

  “Sarah?” Mackenzie hushed.

  The girl crawled into Sarah's lap, as the others leaned out from the sleeper cab, and together, they gazed out upon the wakening swarm.

  They should all be dead. Not even an echo could sustain the kind of damage they were seeing and keep on going. But they were.

  Sarah had said it herself. When the body dies, the tech keeps working, repairing, rebuilding. But only now did they understand the full meaning of those words. Only now did they get it.

  Those little fucking machines didn't have an off switch.

  The Mustang's horn sounded, making them all jump. A hushed round of nervous fake-laughter, and Mason pulled the truck forward, crushing Armani to a pulp and rolling effortlessly over dead and undead alike. He pulled up beside the Mustang just as Addison rolled his window down.

  “Dude, are you seeing this?”

  Mason didn't answer. He called down, simply, “Stay close,” then he pulled ahead of them and made his way back down the concourse.

  He expected to hear Alejandra's music start up from behind, but it didn't. They drove on in silence, the Mustang tucked tightly against Gloria's backside.

  When they emerged onto Skyline Boulevard, Mason threw an imaginary salute toward the North, then he wheeled the Peterbilt South.

  EPILOGUE

  It was almost dusk by the time they got there.

  Three days of rough travel. Three days of bashing roadblocks aside and picking their way through an endless maze of surface roads. Three days of eating and sleeping in their vehicles. Three days of pissing into bottles or huddling next to the truck, with their pants around their ankles to do more. When they had the time and the space during those three days, they would park the vehicles with their noses together and take advantage of an hour or part of an hour to share a semblance of a meal together. But then the swarm would inevitably come and they'd be back in their vehicles to do it all over again.

  By the time they found the little homemade stand with the hand-painted sign, the sun was low on the horizon. Addison and Diego unlatched the gate and swung it open. Then, they latched it again and retreated to the Mustang to follow a trail of dust kicked up in Gloria's wake.

  As always, Mason plotted the surroundings as he went. On one side, an open field carpeted in strawberry bushes. On the other, two acres of fenced property including the house, an oversized utility shed, and a full acre of lawn. No alphas. One echo pinned against the far side of the fence. Another, bumbling through the strawberries. No goats. No pigs. No chickens. Daniel’s pickup was parked against the porch. Bloodied. Dented. Driver's window cracked.

  He keyed the engine off and let Gloria's momentum carry them the last thirty yards. When the truck eased to a stop and set about pinging away its heat, Mason popped the door and climbed out with Richie and Christopher on his tail. The air was scented with the sweet smell of strawberries. Behind it, the sickly-sweet stench of death. Sarah cracked her door open to release Clancy and Mackenzie, and as they ran off to play on the grass, she and Becks came out together.

  It was quiet. Too quiet. Gloria was many things, but subtle, she wasn't. They'd have to have heard, but no one emerged from the house or from the shed or from the fields beyond.

  Mason took one step onto the porch, and a slender hand suddenly appeared out of the darkness within the house, to press against a glass panel high up on the front door. It retreated for a moment, then it returned and clawed a ruddy stain down the glass. Then, a howl arose from within, and the door shuddered as something wild thrashed away at the other side.

  He turned his back to the door and looked out at Mackenzie and Clancy taking turns chasing each other around, frolicking through the grass and mindless of anything else.

  “We could stay here for a while, Mace.”

  He'd barely heard Richie's voice as he stood there watching the girl and her dog playing so gaily through the grass. If he lived a thousand lifetimes, he might never be able to imagine a better picture. They were free. They were happy. They were everything Mason could ever hope to see. But it was an illusion. A single frame of beauty in a horror movie from Hell.

  “He's right, Mace,” Christopher said, dissolving that single frame of beauty into nothingness. “We could clean them out and stay for a night. Maybe even longer, with a fence and all.”

  Yes, they could. They could burst through the door, guns blazing and rebar swinging. But then... what? Dig a pair of graves, side by side? It wouldn't end their suffering, it would only delay it. Not even an unrepentant asshole would get any sleep knowing they were out there, clawing their way back through six feet of dirt.

  But they could do it right, couldn't they? Use whatever gasoline was left in the pickup to burn the bodies completely, and kill the little fuckers, once and for all? Hell, they could even give the two of them a Viking funeral and set the old Walton-mobile ablaze before sending it rolling through the strawberry fields. But then... what? A meal of someone else's food and a sleepless night on someone else's bed?

  “No,” he said at last. “This is their home.” And that ended the discussion.

  By now, Teddy and Diego had joined in on the fun, taking turns chasing Clancy around and being chased by him in return. It was a crazy game of tag, with Clancy always 'it.' They ran and they laughed, as if they didn't have a care in the world. Then, Teddy emerged from the grass and tagged Alejandra, saying, “You're it!” and with the briefest of scowls and a mighty, “Oh no, you didn’t!” The Latina spitfire tore off after the others, calling out, “I'm gonna getcha!” as she chased all of them around in endless circles.

  Sarah and Becks came up onto the porch and did their best to ignore whatever was clawing at the door. They took their places on either side of Mason, and he put an arm around each of them.
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  “I could get used to this,” Becks sighed.

  “Don't,” Sarah replied, and that was that.

  They watched the game of tag for a few minutes more, then a breathless Mackenzie tore out of the grass and made straight for the porch. Before Sarah knew what hit her, a pretty little face broke into a wide smile and hooted the words, “You're it!”

  Cheerfully, Sarah abandoned the porch and chased after her daughter. Then, Richie and Addison joined in, and it became a free-for-all. Becks took Mason by the hand and hauled him from the porch, and it was all he could do to grab Christopher by the collar and drag him along too.

  With the sun dipping below the horizon, echoes gathering at the fence, and a wild young thing raging just beyond those paper-thin walls, ten lost souls let the rest of the world slip away.

  If only for now.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ken Stark was born in Saskatchewan, but has called Vancouver home for most of his life. He was raised on a steady diet of science fiction and disaster movies, so it seems right that his first published book series be about the zombie apocalypse. In his spare time, Ken tries to paint like Bob Ross and play poker like Doyle Brunson, but results suggest that he might have got it all backwards.

  Tweet Ken @PennilessScribe

  Website: www.kenstark.ca