The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory

by Rich Restucci

  “Whoa there! Lie the fuck back down right now! You sit up when I tell you.” I did as instructed. She pulled out a little pen light and shined it in my eyes. Then put her hand on my face. “If you would kindly stop getting shot?”

  “Believe me, it isn’t tops on my to-do list. Shit just keeps happening. Bad luck.”

  Kinga and Remo were by my side, looking down at me. “Bout time,” Kinga griped. “When can he get up? I’m tired of humping his crap.” He had my vest over one shoulder.

  I smiled and looked at Kinga. “Remo, there’s a chink in my armor.”

  Kinga smiled back and leaned over me. “I’m of Korean descent, you racist douche.”

  “Well, I was in prison.”

  Zero, Alvarez, and two folks I didn’t know showed up in a second too. Alvarez put his hand on my shoulder. “He okay?”

  Kinga bowed. “Round-eye fine.” He joked in a mock Chinese accent. “He big pussy. He get up soon and carry own shit.” He put my vest down and went to look for some food.

  I heard thumping on the hatch we had bypassed to get to the galley. “Company already?”

  Alvarez looked at the doors. “They never left.”

  “Okay, everybody back off. You,” my girl pointed at me, “sit up slowly. If you crack open my expert dressing, I will put Kwick Klot in your Bud Light.” I sat up, and eventually stood. “Arms out.” I again did as instructed, and she re-wrapped me with a long bandage.

  I looked at Zero, who was talking to Alvarez, Remo, and Kinga. “He’s bitten,” I told Donna. (My girl.)

  “Yeah, I know. I looked at it. It looks like nothing, but nothing is deadly nowadays.” She sighed. “He’ll never leave this ship, and he knows it.”

  A shadow fell over me and I smiled. “Speaking of Ships…” I turned to look at him. You guessed it. Stinkeye. Complete with giant arms folded and reproachful eyebrow clench. He passed me a pre-scribbled note. You escape the clutches of that insane man, cross an infected country to get home, then proceed to get yourself shot on a stupid suicide mission, all because of sentiment. I looked back at him when I was done reading and he was smiling. He passed me another note. Thank you.

  He made to suffocate me with one of his ungodly bear-hugs, but my significant other, all five foot three of her, stepped in his way and wagged her finger at him. “And you’re supposed to be a genius? What happens when you squeeze him and his pancreas squirts out the hole in his side?” Ship took a step back, visibly frightened. Everybody was looking. “Do you have a spare set of guts on you? No? Then shake hands like men.” She stormed off to check on Zero. “All this hugging. Honest to God.”

  Fully chastised, Ship extended his massive mitt toward me. It was like looking at an infant’s hand being held by a pro wrestler. I sighed a sigh of finality and looked up at my buddy. Way, way up.

  “It’s good to see you, Pal.”

  He nodded, scribbling. We have much to discuss. It can wait until we are back at Atlantis. Did you procure the key?

  “I did, yeah. Alvarez has the hard drives?”

  He nodded in the affirmative, writing. We lost several men in obtaining these. It’s bad in the hold. They were running experiments on infected down there.

  “Yeah, Zero told me.” I stretched a little, testing the limits of my bandages. It hurt, but nothing like before. Remo and Kinga showed up in a few seconds, both looking up at Ship. “Told you he was big.” They both looked at me, then back at Ship, Remo sticking his paw out. “Ship, old buddy, this is Remo and Kinga. Without these two, and a few others, I wouldn’t be here. They saved my ass countless times.”

  Kinga shook Ship’s hand next. “And he ours. We came to get some communications going between your community on Atlantis and ours up in Montana.” Ship reached down to the table I had been on, picking up one of the pieces of paper he had passed me earlier. He handed it to Kinga.

  Kinga chuckled, passing out some Oreos. “You’re welcome. He’s rude, dumb, and apparently racist, but he has other… qualities.”

  Ship put his finger on his nose, and both MARSOC guys laughed.

  “Fuck all three of you. You’re just jealous because I’m so pretty.” Smiles all around. I’m funny. Give me a brick wall and a microphone and I could make a living, or could have if there was a world left.

  Remo looked at the rag-tag band of folks in the galley. “Who do I have to fuck to get off this tub? This mission is only half-complete. We need to get this shit back to Schumitz, and I can think of a few hundred cannibals who would prefer we don’t make it.”

  I looked over at the sink. “About that. I have a plan.”

  The Plan

  Kinga nodded. “So do I. We shoot the infected in the head as we make our way back to the wheelhouse without getting bitten.”

  “Right. Good plan. But what if you could make it all the way there, doing just what you said, with no chance of being bitten?”

  Everybody followed my gaze toward the sink. “We can’t ask him to do that,” Remo scoffed shaking his head. “He’s a civilian.”

  “I’ve got news for everybody: Nobody’s a civilian. You hear that?” I pointed to the hatch being beaten on from the other side by rotting, infected fists, “They’re civilians. There’s only two types anymore, Remo; warriors or undead. You step up now or the species is in the toilet.”

  “I don’t know how this guy,” Kinga thumbed at me, “continues to be both elegant and crude at the same time.”

  Remo was staring at me hard. I didn’t like it. “He’s right though. We send Jarek back the way we came closing any of the hatches off the main corridor we missed. We bang on this hatch,” he indicated the one the infected were futilely smashing themselves against, “Jarek comes in behind them and takes them out one at a time until we’re clear all the way back to the wheelhouse.”

  “I don’t like it,” Zero protested. Where the hell had he come from? “Who knows if what we saw is what we saw?”

  “We did see it. They didn’t touch him. Then there’s the fact that he’s still alive.” Ship passed me a quickly scrawled message: Explain. “I can’t, Sasquatch. The dead didn’t attack him. He stood in a room with them, smoked them all with an axe, and it was like they didn’t give a shit. It doesn’t compute.” Ship began to scribble furiously, us staring at him for a moment before returning to conversation. “Zero, it’s the best way. We know we cleared out everything on the way here. We just need to get rid of the ones in the corridor next to us, be quiet going up the stairs, and we’re good. Call the cavalry and shit.”

  Ship passed me his note. I had no idea how he could scrawl so much so fast. You assume too much. What empirical evidence is there that the undead will not attack this man? You said you saw him stand among the infected, but there could be dozens of factors involved that we are not yet aware of, any one of which could get him and subsequently us killed if not investigated first. We need to test your hypothesis prior to any excursion.

  My side really hurt. I mean really. I had been shot before, in the head too, and it had hurt but not like this. Some guy popped me in the dome with a wrench a few weeks ago, and I was a mess for a few days. That was worse, but this was close. Of course, I had also been bitten by an infected and gone through a night of hell that would make anybody cry. Yeah, I’m immune to this little apocalypse thing. Probably should have told you up front, but if you’ve read my other journals, you know by now. Either way, I was holding my side when I finished Ship’s note, and he pointed at my wound. I nodded. “I’ll be fine.” The little fucker that runs all the juices in my body decided that this particular moment was the time to throw the pain switch and I made that pain face. Ship raised his eyebrows and began the stink-eye, but I interrupted him, “How do we test it? My theory I mean?”

  He passed me another note. He must have anticipated my question and written this new one as I read the old one. I passed the first note to Remo and took the fresh one. We’ll have to appropriate an infected and see if it wants to attack your friend.

>   “You’re fuk’n crazy. I’m in.” Pain lanced through my side. I hissed a little and Donna was suddenly there next to me with a cup of water.

  “Who said you could get up?”

  “I did.” I gave her the look that told her I was not to be fucked with, so in typical female fashion, she emasculated me in front of everyone.

  She pointed at me, “Lie your skinny ass right the fuck back down! You were just shot, idiot, and I don’t need you screwing up all I’ve done to keep you alive. Also,” she looked around the room, “someone get him a sandwich! Didn’t they feed you in… wherever it was they spirited you off to?” She shook her head. “Assholes.” She gently helped me back down and I looked around at the faces of all the douches that had me encircled. Bastards were all smiling that smug smile that says I’m whipped. I can’t wait until this little five-foot-nothing waif of a girl goes off on them. She did that storm away thing, and I felt dumb.

  “Can’t eat lying down,” I said to her back and under my breath as she began yanking open stainless steel cabinets.

  “Guess we know who wears the penis in this group.” Kinga said, complete with smug smile. Douche. “We’ll go get your specimen, C’mon, Remo.”

  Zero shook his head, “I’ll do it. I’m dead anyway, so what’s the difference?”

  Ship shook his head and scribbled something, passing it to Zero. “Huh. I didn’t think of that.” I held my hand out for the note and Zero passed it to me. Not necessarily. Statistically, there have to be immunities. Wait until you start getting sick prior to throwing your life away.

  “Still,” continued Zero, “how many people do you know of that have been bitten and lived?” Half the room looked at me as Zero continued, “I should be the one who goes.”

  Kinga shouldered his pack. “The three of us will go.” Remo nodded in the affirmative.

  “I’m coming too,” Alvarez volunteered.

  I looked at him like he had three heads. It was tricky because I was on my back and looking up, but I pulled that shit off. “The fuck you are. You’re staying here to protect my girl, me, and the Sasquatch.” He started to protest but I cut him off, “And I’m not going back to Atlantis to tell Kat you got dead because your dumb ass volunteered to go on a dangerous mission after volunteering for a suicide mission.” He opened his mouth to say something and I could tell we weren’t done. “AND, if you say one more word about it, I will tell Kat about this conversation even if you make it back.”

  He shut his trap fast. Next to Donna, Kat was the one you didn’t want to piss off.

  The plan was simple: The three military types would go back to that spot where the ladder descended into hell. They would get their collective cowboy on and try to rope one of the infected, dragging it up to them. Easy peasy.

  Except what? Rope one and pull it up? Were they fucking nuts? I voiced my opinions and was summarily (and quite unkindly) told to shut the F up.

  They left and came back fifteen minutes later. All three of them. The only thing missing was the infected, so naturally, we inquired about it, or the lack of it.

  Zero shrugged. “They’re gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “What, are you a parrot? Yeah, they split and are now in parts unknown.” Lynch, the government dick that had kidnapped me, had called me a parrot once. I hadn’t liked it then either. “We banged on the ladder and they didn’t come. We collectively decided that descending that particular ladder was not mission critical.” He must have caught my blank stare. “In other words: fuck that.”

  “No. Not fuck that.” Jarek had finally weighed in. We hadn’t told him what was happening because we didn’t want to ask him to wade through countless ranks of undead with a fire axe until we knew there was no other way. He’d figured out the plan though. “I will go and see what happens.”

  Zero put his hand on Jarek’s shoulder. “We aren’t going to ask you to do this.” Except yes we were and everybody knew it.

  Jarek smiled. He had to be shitting himself from the fear, but all I could detect was the utter awesome dripping off of this man. “I don’t believe you. It is the safest way for everyone to live anyway. I will go and kill them all, then open this door when it is clear.” He pointed to the door with the hordes of infected on the other side.

  “Jerk Douche!” Everybody looked at me as I sat up again. Donna didn’t say anything about my position shift. I threw my feet over the side of the table I had been stretched out on and stuck my paw out to Jarek. “Good luck.”

  He smiled and shook it. We heard the helicopter on the second hand pump.

  My Fault

  The sounds of the helicopter receded after a couple of minutes. We had been staring at each other in silence, and I jumped a little when someone piped up. It hurt my boo-boo, and I inadvertently let that shit be known.

  “We need to contact them to tell them where we are!” cried some husky guy whom I hadn’t met yet. He had longish hair, and looked more like a passenger than a ship worker, which didn’t make sense.

  “Negative,” protested Remo immediately. “We don’t know anything about them. They could be hostiles.”

  The heavy dude looked like he was about to cry. “But they have to be better than the alternative!” He pointed at the door being banged on.

  “No, they don’t.” Four of us disagreed at once. Ship was nodding fiercely in agreement with us. “People can be much worse than the undead.

  Now the pudgy bastard did start to whine. “But what if they’re here to rescue us?”

  “They probably are,” Kinga told him, trying for a reassuring tone, “but shouldn’t we be prudent and check first?”

  “This changes nothing,” Jarek offered, axe in hand. “We still need to… oh flookta… to get away from these things. I will follow the plan and bang on the door when I am done.”

  I’m sure I’m spelling oh flookta wrong, but that’s how it sounded. Must mean escape or something like that. I was really starting to like this guy, even though he had gotten me shot. I sort of felt bad that he was about to go off on a zombie killing spree all alone.

  “Jarek, this changes everything,” Zero said. “Now there could be hostiles on board along with the infected. You might be invisible to the infected, but not the guys with guns.”

  And so began the argument. Banter back and forth about what to do next, how to do it, and who was going to do it. It took a solid two minutes of bickering before I noticed Jarek at the back door. His hand was on the knob (yeah, this was the door we had come through before) and he looked back at me. We exchanged a nod and he slipped out. He hadn’t made a sound. I thought nobody had seen, but Remo and Kinga were both looking at me as I switched my glance back to the group. They had seen him go too, as had Alvarez and Ship. I couldn’t figure out why Zero didn’t catch it until I looked at him.

  He was infected. No two ways about it. The corpuscles in his right eye had already begun to rupture, bleeding into the white. I remember it all too well, as I had not only seen it before but lived through it. It didn’t hurt at all, and the doctors at Baldy Mountain had told me it was because of a rapid increase in blood pressure in the eyes or some shit like that.

  Remo flipped the safety off of his MP5 and Kinga backed up almost imperceptibly. Zero caught that and stopped talking. “What?” he demanded.

  Nobody said anything. “What?” he asked again, and Ship passed him a note in dead silence. “Fuck,” was all Zero said, dropping the note. “Jarek, take my weapons and…” He looked around for his friend.

  I sighed. “He slipped out a minute or two ago.”

  “Assholes!” He ran to the door, opened it, and disappeared through.

  “How long does he have?” Alvarez asked. Everybody was looking at me. Even Hefty Smurf, (the fat dude). Donna had shown up with a Hot Pocket. Pepperoni. Fucking ambrosia. I burned my tongue and didn’t give a shit, as I rolled my eyes and shook my head in answer to Alvarez’s question.

  “Not long,” I reckoned through the meat, cheese,
and pastry. “A day at the very most.” Like I’m an expert. I shook my head again.

  “Alright!” Kinga said and pounded his fist on the table. “Let’s figure this out. Assuming those two make it to this door.” He, like everyone else in the room had done at some point, nodded toward the door with the infected on the other side. “We need to be ready. If there is a hostile fire team aboard this vessel, we should prepare now. They have to come down the stairwell (he had said ladder, but that’s what marines say) either way, and it’s full of infected. The only other way is to go to the stairwell near the stern, and that’s suicide with the deck so crawling with the dead.” Remo pulled out his black Sharpie, looked around the room, and began drawing on the table as Kinga continued, “We have to assume they will come through this door, especially if Zero and Jarek clear the corridor.” He paused thinking, and looking at Remo’s drawing.

  A skinny guy, again one of the few I hadn’t yet been introduced to, raised his hand. He actually raised his hand. “What?” Kinga demanded.

  “There are two other ways down here. They could rappel over the side and use breaching charges to blow the crew door, or they could come through the hold doors. Controls for both are in the wheelhouse, and the crew door, which is twenty feet below the starboard rail, has controls on the interior, but you need a key card. They would still have to get by all those dead folks.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m a crewman. I work… worked as Q-MED.”

  “A medic?” I asked. Kinga rolled his eyes. Prick.

  The guy smiled. “No, an unlicensed engineer. Shit rolls downhill, and I’m pretty close to the bottom. Ex-Navy.” He stuck his hand out to Remo, who shook it, and then he made the rounds. Firm grip on this guy.

  Kinga nodded, “Good intel. They can still only come from these two sets of doors. I would say let’s confront them, but this is where the food is, and if we get trapped, I want it to be here.”