Undead

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  The naked zombie boy looked to be around eight years old, though he might have been much younger if the virus had intensified his growth. His right arm had grown half a foot, while the left featured an insect’s serrated appendage from the elbow down. One elongated canine poked over his lower lip. All of his fingers and toes sported yellowish claws two inches long, and an additional claw had sprouted from each of his heels, yet another feature Max had seen on the aliens.

  West gasped at the sight of him, and the boy laughed mischievously as he ran forth to impale him with his insect arm.

  Max raised his rifle for an easy head shot at point-blank range but found he couldn’t pull the trigger. He’d never killed a child and wasn’t about to start now, even though every instinct told him to. West wouldn’t have the stomach to shoot the boy either, despite the clear danger he presented.

  Max reversed his rifle and butt-stroked the kid right between his vacuous black eyes. The blow knocked him reeling back into the hallway where Max and West pummeled him to unconsciousness with their rifle butts. Just fucking shoot him! The logic could not be denied—the kid would be dead in about twenty-six minutes anyway.

  “Stop it!” West said, his rifle butt poised above the boy’s smashed and bleeding face.

  Tears welled in his eyes. He had two sons fully grown, but a father could never erase the memories of his children when they had been small. Max thought of David, remembered moments they’d shared and ones he had missed, and ceased his assault on the zombie boy.

  “Jesus...” West said in a cracked, quavering voice. “What kind of person would order this?”

  “The worst kind, Dan. He’ll be dead soon enough. We need to move on.”

  Max didn’t wait for a response. Right or left? He jogged right and hoped West would follow.

  They ran though the biogenetics level in a desperate search for an elevator or stairs. Unable to read the Korean signage, they searched for landmarks—carnage and destruction of their own doing—to navigate the floor. Unfortunately, they ran across none. The ubiquitous zombies and the ticking bomb downstairs allowed them little time to pause and consider their course.

  “Right,” West said when they came to a T-intersection.

  “You sure?” Max wondered how he possibly could be. The garishly painted hallways all looked the same to him.

  “Yeah, I smell diesel fuel.”

  The zombie boy’s mischievous laughter tinkled off the walls behind them.

  “Still wants to play,” Max said. “Let’s go.”

  They broke right. Fifty feet later the hall turned left onto a long straightaway. The mantlet broken in their earlier firefight was still there in the distance at a lighted intersection, though the corpses had been removed from the scene. Turn left at the mantlet, then right at the end of that hall. From there he figured he could retrace their steps to find the elevator.

  One guttural bark came from behind, accompanied by more puerile laughter. The barking increased, the zombie dog growing excited as it tracked their scent and closed in for the kill. It rounded the corner eighty feet behind and charged them at top speed, claws clacking on the floor with each step.

  Once a normal large-breed dog, perhaps a Great Dane, it had turned jet black and grown several inches at the shoulder. Dozens of bony armored plates covered its body in lieu of hair. No twisted spine or mismatched legs impeded its performance, and it hadn’t sprouted any strange appendages.

  Its head in particular disquieted Max. The snout had elongated, and row after row of needle-like black teeth had replaced most of its normal dog teeth, though a couple still remained. A streamlined armored shell that gleamed like obsidian encased its head, coming to a pointed crest between the creature’s ears. Max had seen that crested head, reminiscent of a pterodactyl, on the spacecraft. If any of the North Korean zombies might be labeled a success, it was the dog—it most resembled the perfect killing machines Max had fought in Alaska.

  The dog covered thirty feet before Max could even sight in. West’s first two shots struck the dog in its armored head, but the explosive rounds deflected and detonated harmlessly an instant later. The dog didn’t miss a stride until Max’s bullets detonated upon its armored plates with whip-like cracks. Though none penetrated its armor, the impacts were enough to slow the dog a bit.

  Max detected the child zombie in his peripheral vision as he aimed for one of the reeling dog’s black eyes. The bullet struck its armored head and deflected away. The dog again took up its sprint, closing the last thirty feet in a hail of lead that pinged and cracked off its armor. It leaped for Max from a dozen feet away. He aimed one final shot at the dog’s salivating black maw and fired.

  The dog struck him full force in the sternum and knocked him backward to the floor. He gasped for breath, the wind knocked out of him, and flailed at the armored head to keep it away from his face. But the dog just lay upon him, two hundred pounds of dead weight. Blood and gore leaked from its toothy snout and ran down onto his chest. Though its armored head was still intact, the brains within were well and truly scrambled. West pulled the armored dog off Max, letting it flop to the floor.

  “Thought you were a goner,” West said.

  “That makes two of us.” The zombie kid ran at them with malevolent, youthful exuberance. “This needs to cease.”

  West protested as Max fired a shot into the kid’s stomach that practically tore him in half. The boy writhed on the floor, but his bleeding slowed even as they watched, and the edges of the wound began to close.

  “He’ll be fine, but we’ll be long gone by then,” Max said.

  West nodded grudging acknowledgment.

  The shot had emptied Max’s mag, and he loaded his last magazine of explosive rounds.

  Max turned left at the mantlet and ran down the hallway to the intersection where they’d launched their first attack on the soldiers. He turned right without a second thought and kept running.

  From behind West shouted, “Shit!” as he dropped to the floor with a clatter.

  Max stopped and turned, rifle raised, and saw West floundering in the intersection. His bleeding left leg was dead weight now—he’d been hamstrung by a zombie with a spade claw foot as he rounded the corner. Two of them had been hiding by the intersection; had Max turned left he would have run straight into them.

  The one who’d gotten West also had a three-fingered hand tipped with claws. Its head rested shakily atop a neck several inches too long, and one of its black eyes, swollen to the size of a tennis ball, appeared ready to burst from its socket.

  The second zombie towered over eight feet tall, a mass of ripped muscle mottled black and gray with a prominent lantern jaw and a Neanderthal’s brow ridge. A blunt, bony growth protruded from the side of its head. Blood covered its misshapen clawed hands, which had grown to twice normal size.

  The spade-clawed zombie fell upon West, who howled in agony as it bit into his shoulder and came up with a mouthful of skin, muscle and uniform. Max’s explosive rounds punched into the zombie’s back and detonated within. It crashed down upon West, dead for the moment.

  The muscular zombie stepped over his companion with one great stride and reached for Max, who got off a quick shot that winged it high in the shoulder and left behind a large crater of blood and severed muscle. It closed the final couple of feet, appearing to not even feel the wound.

  From down the hallway came shouts in Korean. The muscled zombie turned its attention to the intersection where the mantlet lay ruined, roared once and then took off sprinting after three soldiers standing down there. Perhaps the man had been a political prisoner in his old life or had simply been treated poorly by the soldiers at the facility. Whatever the case, his hatred of North Korean uniforms had saved Max and West. The soldiers didn’t fire on the thing as it charged. Max assumed they had run off, and he certainly couldn’t blame them.

  West gasped in int
ense pain beneath the zombie. Max grabbed its left arm. As he dragged the inert creature off West, it came to sudden spasmodic life and shook free of his grasp. It swung its three-fingered right hand at his face, forcing him to jump back, and quickly leapt to an upright stance. Max fired his rifle an instant after it stomped its spade claw down on West’s right leg, just above the ankle. The zombie’s head exploded atop its spindly neck; its body fell in a stinking heap next to West.

  The echoes from the gunshot dissipated, only to be replaced by West’s tortured cries. Max knelt next to him, rolled him on his side as he wailed, and began rummaging through West’s medical kit.

  “The fuck are you doing?” West growled through his agony. He clutched his stump with one hand. Rivers of blood seeped through his fingers.

  “Putting a tourniquet on your leg.” Judging by the blood splattered on the wall and the pool of it on the floor, he figured West was down at least a pint.

  “I’m dead. Don’t join me. Get out.”

  “We’ll leave in a minute. Now where the fuck are your—” Max snapped his head up and looked down the hallway at the sound of the zombie boy’s laughter. Whole again, the kid stood at the end of the hall by the mantlet. He giggled once, pointed at Max with his insect arm, and started running toward him. “Hold that thought.”

  Max grabbed West by a wrist and his hamstrung leg and hoisted him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. West yelled and cursed him throughout the process, but Max had him shouldered and moving before the kid got halfway down the hall.

  “Can’t shoot zombies if you’re toting a body,” West said.

  “Just enjoy the ride.”

  “I might be infected. Leave me and get out!” West’s body trembled upon Max’s shoulders from the effort of speaking.

  Max shook his head. “Already left behind my quota today.”

  Jesus, what the fuck am I thinking? West was done; he had at most an hour to live. The bomb would detonate in roughly twenty minutes. Even without West, the odds of getting out alive were still greatly against him. But he’d be damned if he obeyed West, for Max had come to believe in the last few minutes that he would die down here no matter what course of action he chose. Not undeserved either. I’ve left too many good men behind in places like this. I don’t want to do it again. And he wouldn’t. They would either survive and somehow escape—at least from the compound—or fall together to zombies or North Koreans.

  Max remembered the area he walked through. The elevator was close, but so was the zombie boy. He turned a corner, walked a few feet down the hall and waited on him. The boy’s laughter betrayed his distance. “Hang on, Dan.” Max drew his pistol with his right hand. He shot the zombie boy in the head when he turned the corner. Go be a boy again.

  West appeared not to have noticed. “Last chance...”

  “Elevator is around the corner.”

  Max navigated the last couple of turns and passed the labs with their floor-to-ceiling glass walls on his way to the elevator. The doors opened when he hit the call button, and he stepped inside.

  “Almost there,” Max said. He hit the UP button for the logistics floor.

  West did not respond.

  “West?”

  Nothing. Max knelt and lowered Daniel West to the floor. He checked his neck for a pulse and found none. It didn’t take a medic to determine that his medic had died.

  * * *

  Max checked his watch as he ran through the logistics floor. 0413. T-minus eighteen minutes... and not a clue where the fuck I am. He was now certain he’d made a wrong turn coming out of the elevator. Speed killed in situations like this, but he hadn’t time to move any slower. On the bright side, he hadn’t seen any creatures yet on this floor, and the couple of soldiers he spied had been distant and moving away from him. Just find that elevator.

  Two minutes later he found himself just as lost. And when shots rang out he knew he’d been spotted by a couple of soldiers hiding in the pools of darkness between emergency lights. Max did not return fire; wasting his last few explosive rounds shooting at muzzle flashes in the dark made no sense. He made for an opening in the left wall just a few feet ahead, darted into the hallway and kept running, first under one emergency light and then another.

  A barked shout in Korean from straight ahead startled him as he jogged beneath an emergency light. Shit! He moved quickly through the pool of light, though he knew the backlight would only silhouette him.

  Max almost ran straight into the soldier, an older man who cocked the hammer on his automatic pistol as he stared him down from point-blank range. He took a step back as Max stopped in his tracks and again shouted in brusque Korean. Max pegged him as a high-ranking NCO, perhaps a first sergeant judging from his gaunt, grizzled countenance and unflinching gaze. Hard-bit and old school. And he clearly had the upper hand.

  Max waited to be shot in the face—the sergeant would likely be quick about it. He considered raising his rifle to expedite the process. As he pondered his next move, Max saw shadows move behind the sergeant.

  “Behind you.”

  The sergeant’s face screwed with annoyance; the foreign words, sharp from his tongue, lashed Max like a gibberish whip.

  Flesh mottled black and white appeared behind the sergeant; past that Max could only see that the zombie was typically tall and misshapen. He jerked his head and eyes upward to warn the sergeant, who responded with an amused comment and a chortle. Max translated his response as, “Oldest trick in the book. Don’t expect me to fall for that!”

  But then the sergeant’s combat instincts kicked in, and he knew. He also knew it was too late as he whirled on the beast with his pistol raised. The zombie caught him by the wrist just above his pistol hand before he could aim.

  Max raised his rifle and fired one round into the zombie’s pale, wart-covered forehead. The sergeant shouted, startled from the dual reports of Max’s rifle and the zombie’s exploding head, pieces of which splattered his face. It released his wrist immediately and dropped lifeless to the floor.

  The sergeant turned and found Max’s rifle suppressor pointed at his face. He lowered his pistol arm to his side but did not drop his weapon. The two veterans stared at one another for a few moments before the sergeant nodded once at Max, then jerked his head to the left down the hall.

  Max didn’t give it a second thought. He ran past the sergeant, confident he’d been pointed in the right direction.

  20

  Juno, slightly winded from having run through seemingly every hallway on the logistics floor, spotted the elevator that would hopefully whisk her up to the main lab. She’d dodged a slew of creatures and a platoon of soldiers, and the dull steel doors beckoned to her beneath the harsh glare of emergency lights burning above them. Finally. Just hope they haven’t disabled it. Apparently, there were more stairwells up from the depths of the complex than she’d thought, but they’d swept the entire main lab and she was certain this elevator provided the only egress up from logistics. She wasn’t sure if the creatures could use an elevator but figured she would be largely free of them above this level.

  Seeing no enemies barring the way, she ran the forty feet to the elevator and punched the only button on the console. The UP arrow lit, yet the doors remained closed. Come on! She divided her attention between watching the elevator doors and the hallway behind her. A faint vibration through her boot soles heralded the elevator’s descent. Relief cleansed her brain of anxiety for a few brief moments.

  Until she took another backward glance and saw a large, shadowy figure enter the pool of light back at the intersection. She darted into a shallow alcove before a closed door and waited. The figure’s size told her he was not a Korean soldier. A creature? Max? She hoped for the former, though either would be a death sentence if she didn’t gain the upper hand. A creature, at least, might ignore the elevator and keep moving. Max would not. She waited, her finger twitch
y on the trigger.

  One burst of distant gunfire echoed through the halls, followed by a single, icy scream cut off in a heartbeat. The noises from afar faded away, replaced by footsteps headed in her direction. Max. She could tell by the heavy, measured tread of his footfalls.

  Juno nearly jumped out of her combat suit when one loud ding resounded down the hallway. The elevator doors parted mere feet from where she hid, and she wanted desperately to run for the car. She did not. If he gets one hand between those doors you’re fucked. Taking Max out was her only option.

  His footsteps quickened to a sprint as he ran to catch the elevator.

  Shoot him when he runs past. It would be easy and quick. No. First confirm the bomb was planted.

  The elevator doors started to slide closed. Max hurtled past her and jammed his rifle barrel between them, and they began to slowly open. Juno stepped out of the alcove and sighted in on the back of his head.

  “Drop the rifle, Max.”

  Max released a heavy sigh of exasperation.

  “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  Max did not obey and remained standing with his back to her as the elevator doors slid shut once again. “Why not? You’re just gonna waste me anyway, right?”

  “Yes, if you don’t drop it right now.”

  Max shook his head, then dropped his rifle on the floor. He turned with raised hands and regarded her. “Seems you’ve lost your flock, Juno. What happened to Zuckerberg? You leave her behind like Delorn?”

  “I could ask the same of your flock.”

  He locked eyes with her, and she damn near shuddered from the violent intensity roiling in his contemptuous, hazel-eyed stare.

  “They died doing their jobs,” Max said.

  “As did the others.”

  “Which job was that? Last I checked the mission was to plant a bomb and get the fuck out.”