Undead

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  Transaction completed, Max followed up on a couple of weaker leads he’d vacuumed from the dark web. One involved an agency man Banner had known his whole career. Max did some digging for his address. Two hours later he found someone selling access to the database of the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration and made him an offer. Nothing to do now but wait. Shit, that is all you have been doing...

  Correction. You haven’t exhausted all of your options. Juniper Reyes’ business card was in his back pocket. Last place you should look. Call her, and you jump back in bed with them. They’ll never give up any info on Banner.

  Then again, you miss every shot you don’t take.

  “Fuck it.” He pulled out her card and his phone. The call connected after the first ring.

  Her breathy yet mellifluous voice: “Ajax Importers, Juniper speaking, how may I—?”

  “Let’s meet. ASAP.”

  A pause, then, “Very well. Club Phoenix, eleven pm. Ask for me at the side door.”

  She terminated the call.

  5

  “This substance—tell me about it,” Max said to the blond scientist whose name he couldn’t remember, even though she’d told him not two minutes before. The chem lights hanging about the spacious pantry provided light enough to see, yet not as much light as they should have. All faces appeared in bas-relief, ridges and hills of verdigris, slashed and pocked with valleys of pure blackness.

  This isn’t right...

  She parted her lips to speak, and Max swore her face morphed into a naked skull for an instant, then back to black and green just as quickly. What the hell?

  One prolonged and deafening pop echoed throughout the room and reverberated within his brain, bouncing off the interior of his skull like a pinball in perpetual motion. The protracted screech of rending metal that followed drowned out the pop but not the screams from the two women or the bearded man who sat slashed and bleeding atop his makeshift throne of boxes.

  Flying objects—cardboard crates and massive cans of food—floated through the air and dropped slowly, as if the room were under water. Max likewise moved in slow motion as he attempted to avoid being buried under the avalanche of foodstuffs. He knocked boxes aside, the watery air oppressing his movements, its currents rocking him ever so slightly to and fro. Boxes settled on him more quickly than he threw them to slowly float away.

  Faint yells of agony reached his ears as though broadcast from air into water. He swam backward on his butt, as though he were drowning at the bottom of an ocean dimly illuminated by glowing marine life heretofore undiscovered by man. A crimson trail of blood flowed past, slowly diffusing into nothingness.

  A dead man with a skeletal face beneath his combat helmet attempted to crawl through the writhing, floating provisions as a stream of dark blood bloomed profusely from his leg. His shouts of pain reached Max’s ears, lingering and drawling like a phonograph record played at too slow a speed.

  “Coooaaachhhh..!” It took Max several seconds to bellow the word. Is it Coach? The crawling man was dead, after all. But a sniper rifle floated askew in the air behind the man as he attempted to scrabble away across the floor from the thing chasing him.

  Of all the objects in the room—boxes, weapons, people—only the beast moved at normal speed, as if it were the lone aquatic creature within a fish tank of land dwellers. It reached down, scooped up Coach’s somehow-animated corpse, and roared, the sound akin to a torpedo detonating beneath a roiling sea. The beast appeared huge yet indistinct in the watery atmosphere, all black yet somehow translucent. Max could make out its thumping black heart, and of course its roaring maw of pointed black teeth in a muzzle that belonged on a Tyrannosaurus rex.

  Max found himself standing—though his feet would not plant themselves flat on the floor—his rifle trained on the beast. “Shoooooot iiiiit!” The hail of bullets fired by his team traveled at subsonic speed—Max could see them—toward a target now long gone from the hole it had torn in the side of the steel prefab structure.

  Max bounded through the soupy air to the hole. He dropped his night vision goggles over his eyes. The outside world lit on a relentless downpour that pounded the earth into muddy slop. The night usually appeared eerie green when viewed through NVGs, but Max saw the world in the red-threaded pink of blood in water.

  “Therrrre,” said LT. He stood next to Max and pointed out into the night.

  Is it really LT? Max turned his head and looked at his second.

  “Of course it’s LT,” LT droned in his cynical deadpan, the four words stretched over several seconds. His face flashed and morphed into an x-ray image of a skull wearing NVGs. Then he became LT again. “Who the fuck were you expecting?”

  They were wasting time talking—how could they not when it took three times as long to utter a simple sentence? Max looked to where LT pointed. Though the beast stood near the tree line at least a half-mile away, he could still see the light-swallowing blackness of its body as it carried Coach securely under one arm as though he were a football. Coach pointed his pistol upward and fired. Don’t bother. You’re already dead.

  Regardless of that, Max charged out into the rain to save his skeletal sniper. The atmosphere outside was normal, and he felt relieved at first as he slogged across a treadmill of mud toward a tree line that grew no closer no matter how hard and fast he pumped his legs, which tired quickly as his boots sunk deeper with every stride—to the ankle, shin, knee. Fuck, I’m sinking! The mud reached his crotch. His head slipped beneath the surface an instant later.

  He spun in dizzying circles through a vortex of slimy, gritty pudding that filled his mouth and lungs when he tried to scream. He gagged and choked, then stopped breathing. Yet, somehow he remained conscious.

  He fell from a dark sky bawling cold tears upon the earth and landed on his feet in more muck. He could breathe again, and most of his team stood with him in a small clearing surrounded by towering fir trees. But freedom of action was curtailed once more, only this time the air seemed more gelatinous than watery. The faint pop of a pistol reached his ears.

  No!

  Yes, he knew. The creature moved at full speed not a dozen feet away. It now had Coach—who waved his pistol and refused to acknowledge his own death—pinned beneath one of its mighty clawed feet.

  You know what happens next...

  The sound of Coach’s neck breaking—a prolonged bass crack like thick ice thawing on a lake in spring—was followed by an equally dull tearing noise as the creature pulled his spine, still attached to his head, up and out of his body. The beast reared back and roared as it pivoted to face Max and his team, holding Coach’s head aloft like a grizzly prize.

  Again the team fired upon it, their bullets flying no faster than baseballs hurled by mediocre pitchers. They struck the thing nonetheless, and the bits of black gore they blasted from its body floated about the clearing in slow motion.

  Come on, die asshole!

  But the beast bounded away into the trees, seemingly unharmed, its long legs gobbling up ten feet with every stride. It casually discarded Coach’s head in its wake and disappeared.

  It also left behind one of its spindly yet sinewy arms. Sugar had blown it off with his machine gun, but the appendage was still animated. The first leg—chitinous and jointed like a spider’s—sprouted from the arm. Three more quickly followed, and the oozing stump of the arm morphed into a round maw filled with fangs, the severed appendage now a killing machine in its own right. It scuttled through the muck toward the team on its spider legs—ten and counting. Before Max knew it, the thing was moving with the speed and agility of a cougar. It headed straight for him.

  “Fuck you!” Sugar bellowed as he cut loose on the scuttling arm with his Mk 48 machine gun.

  The thing took the burst of creeping bullets yet carried on at only slightly diminished speed toward Max, who snapped out of his mesmerized state and opened fire with
his rifle.

  The arm kept coming. It launched at Max’s face from the muck.

  He kept firing, but his bolt locked back as he expended his last round. The damned arm, now too close for Max to transition to his pistol, moved faster than any animal or human he’d ever hunted. The heavy air had reduced his reflexes to those of a sloth, yet somehow he was able to club the creature away with the butt of his rifle.

  Sugar blasted the arm with a surgical burst of fire as it fell into the mud, nearly all his rounds hitting home. Spindly spider legs and black blood flew everywhere as the creature disintegrated at Max’s feet. The rest of the team joined Sugar in a semi-circle as they fired into the remaining pieces of the creature, which continued to writhe. Soon only scraps of the thing remained. The sound of gunfire echoed away into silence.

  “Is it dead yet?” Sugar asked, his inquiry seeming to take hours.

  He stood like a titanic wraith in a cloud of powder smoke. And he wasn’t the only one. Max could only identify the men who had followed him—LT, Sugar, Diaz, Gable—by their builds and choices of weaponry.

  Each man wore a permanent smile on his skinless skull.

  “Boy, sure looks like it!” Gable spoke at normal speed in the twang of the Alabama backwoods. “Hell, we’re all dead; we just don’t know it yet. Ain’t that right, LT?”

  LT turned his black eye sockets on Max, nodded slowly, and spoke gravely: “For once you’re right, Gable. All dead...” He raised his arm and pointed, his gloved fingertip hovering three inches before Max’s nose. “Except for this lucky bastard!”

  The team erupted into guffawing laughter, all grinning skulls and insouciant, mocking laughs.

  “I’m coming...” Max mumbled as he thrashed in his sleep.

  “I’ll die!” he yelled an instant later when he awakened to full consciousness.

  He lay in bed as his eyes adjusted to the faint light thrown off by his bedside clock, his body tangled in sweat-soaked sheets. The sun had been shining when he’d lain down for a nap after dinner, ahead of his late-night meeting with Juniper Reyes. It paid to be awake and on highest alert when meeting with anyone from the CIA.

  “Yeah, so much for rest,” he muttered as he swung his feet out of bed and onto the floor.

  He felt winded and knew he’d been breathing heavily during the nightmare. His head ached as if he hadn’t slept at all. How many times have I dreamed about that? At least half a dozen. The major events that really happened never changed, but the incidentals were always different. One time the dream had unfolded upon an endless chessboard of alternating squares of ice and mud. He’d been the white king, of course, ruler over seven pawns sacrificed to gargantuan black pieces nightmarish in form and unbelievably resilient.

  The glowing digital numerals on the nightstand clock read 8:51. I needed to get up anyway. He stood and stretched, then shivered for a moment as the sweat cooled on his body.

  Fuck, I hate sleeping.

  * * *

  Max rarely ventured onto the Las Vegas Strip. Other than some stellar people watching—overnight millionaires, women with flawless plastic bodies, tourists letting their drunken inhibitions run amok—the place held little attraction for him. He wasn’t into gambling, drugs, or prostitutes, and he rarely drank to excess.

  The traffic was awful most anytime of the day, so Max called a limo to drive him to the Strip. Not only to avoid the aggravation of driving and parking, but to fool the agents potentially tailing him. All they would see was a stretch limo entering the community gate and then leaving five minutes later. As he had never departed in one before, the agents would likely think nothing of it, just some rich resident going to the airport or a casino.

  Club Phoenix turned out to be Club Fenix. Max waited for the driver to come around and open the door for him. Might as well play it to the hilt. He got out of the car and took in the building. He’d been in there before, several times over the years, and the place bore a different name each time. On the building’s facade, a bird of red neon twelve feet high, rendered in a sleek art-deco style, rocketed skyward out of leaping orange flames. You won’t be airborne long.

  Beneath the garish neon bird stood a doorman in solid black—suit, sunglasses, skin—vigilantly guarding the door against anyone deemed too ugly or square to enter. A crowd of about fifty typical club-goers stretched out behind the purple velvet rope, attractive young women in the majority. A brunette among them, an absolute bombshell and indisputably a hooker, waved at Max and beckoned him closer, inviting him loudly to come and party.

  Max ignored her and headed for the side door. No line here, only a single doorman about seven feet tall. Not a bulked-up guy, but rangy like a pro basketball player. Max saw amusement in his eyes as the man looked him over from above. Max had dressed somewhat for the occasion in a black silk shirt beneath a charcoal jacket and wore his most expensive Italian leather shoes. Still, he knew he wasn’t styling, just a middle-aged guy faking it.

  “You lost, mon?” the doorman asked in a Jamaican accent. He had skin the color of weak tea and wore an earpiece radio.

  “Here to see Juniper Reyes.”

  The doorman produced a metal detecting wand. “Need to give you the once-over.” Max had expected as much and had left home unarmed for the first time in a long time. Though he didn’t care to meet in a club setting, he had to admit it was a prudent idea. Armed undercover agents would be forbidden entrance, and the incessant noise was enough to keep anyone from eavesdropping on his conversation. He went through the rigmarole with the doorman, who finished the scan quickly and then pulled open the steel door. A tsunami of dancing lights and thumping bass smashed Max square in the face.

  “Up the stairs, second floor VIP lounge. Enjoy yourself.”

  Max nodded thanks and entered, veering toward the spiral staircase immediately to the left. Another bouncer, a short white guy as broad in the shoulders as he was tall, guarded the stairs but didn’t give Max a second glance. Max ascended and got a good look at the dance floor, all writhing bodies in a riot of shadows and flashing colors. He passed a Playboy-caliber blond in a bra and g-string gyrating in a cage bolted to the staircase. The deep bass vibrated every molecule in his body and made him reconsider the effectiveness of sonic weapons. Sound idea, now that I feel it in action.

  A faint feeling of apprehension hit him as he neared the top of the staircase. I don’t belong here. This was LT’s turf. Were his former second still alive, he would have been by Max’s side. LT had frequented the poker tables and dance clubs on the Strip for years. Now, he only haunted them.

  No dance floor in the VIP lounge, an area reserved for more intimate gatherings. A group of about twenty trendy young people, drinks in hand, partied amongst the black leather furniture. Max passed couples in dark booths, mostly escorts with wealthy older men, drinking champagne that cost hundreds of dollars a bottle. A guy jammed his pinky up his nose and snorted, not as covertly as he’d attempted.

  Max finally spotted her waiting in a booth at the far end of the lounge. Bare legs a mile long protruded from her silver micro dress, a skin-tight confection that seemed to glow in the lounge’s muted lighting. Her long black hair streamed unfettered down her bare back. In a club packed with tens, Juniper Reyes was a peerless eleven. Stop drooling and concentrate.

  She’d painted her lips in pink gloss, and the corners of her mouth rose faintly as Max nodded in greeting and sat down. A carafe of what looked to be ice water stood sweating on the table. She leaned across the table and said, “Eleven-o-three. You’re almost on time.”

  “I got held up by security.”

  She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You didn’t bring your pistol, I hope?”

  “No.”

  She nodded. “Would you care for a drink? I do not consume alcohol, though you may if you wish.”

  “Gee, thanks.” A statuesque blond waitress appeared at the
table as if on cue. Max found himself in the mood for a drink and ordered a double Maker’s 46.

  “I must admit, you clean up nicely,” she said. “You’re only three or four years out of style.”

  “My subscription to GQ expired.”

  She laughed loudly over the music. It almost sounded genuine.

  “Let’s get down to business already,” Max said when she finished. “Starting with your real name.”

  “Fair enough. My name is Jin-Seo Rey, but please call me Juno.”

  Max nodded. Perhaps she’d told him the truth. “Tell me about the drives. That’s what this is about, correct?”

  “Yes. They’ve fallen into enemy hands.”

  Max snorted. “Which enemy?”

  “The worst possible one: North Korea.”

  The waitress delivered Max’s drink and departed. He took one sip of the caustic bourbon and decided he’d had enough. After a few seconds of quiet thinking he said, “So what? It’s data on a substance that no longer exists. How can it possibly benefit them?”

  She leaned in closer to him. Somewhere along the line she’d maneuvered around the half-circular booth and now sat next to him. “As you know, that substance had astounding regenerative properties.”

  “You only know that because I said as much during the debriefings.”

  “Regenerative properties may also equate to longevity, or so Kim Jong-un believes.”

  It was Max’s turn to laugh. “Really? You want to stop a midget dictator from somehow becoming immortal, even though the miracle elixir he needs came from another planet and no longer exists? I don’t buy it. There’s something else here.”

  “What if the miracle elixir could be reproduced from the research data?”

  Max considered the possibility. But he was a man of history, not science. Could it really be done? And if so, America would have a lot more to worry about than Kim Jong-un living forever. If North Korea reproduced the substance, they could produce a fearsome biological weapon and field an army of the horrific creatures. Provided they could control them. Communist nations had a penchant for reverse engineering weapons of war they could never have invented themselves, with laudable results. He could understand the CIA’s concern.