The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory

by Rich Restucci

  Apparently, my pal could not only kill people with a toothpick, he could totally assassinate a mine with one as well, because his shoulders relaxed noticeably, and he snipped the pretty much invisible wire with his cutters.

  “I told you,” he said calmly, “that I would go first.” Todd could do nothing but nod, no doubt his shorts in full code brown. Remo stood and looked back at us. “I will go first.” We all nodded. Then I noticed something I wish I hadn’t. Remo stuck the mine in his pack. He had taken it. You can’t make this shit up. He had taken the claymore. I realize I just wrote the same thing three times, but this guy had just put a fucking device made to shred human beings in his pack like it was a box of tissues.

  I looked at everybody and they did the only thing they could, they looked back at me. Remo was already through the hatch when we began following him. We made it all the way past the spot where Jarek had smoked all the infected and into the galley proper without incident. Remo was standing in the center of the room. “Don’t touch anything.”

  He moved about, inspecting things, picking things up and returning them to their resting spots. “Clear,” he told us and he moved through the hatch that the bad guys had blown open. This led to the corridor between the galley and the stairwell, the one we couldn’t go through because it had been jam-packed full of infected before. They were all dead. Or re-dead, I guess. They had been surgically destroyed with ammo that had been in superior supply to ours. This corridor looked just like the one that suffered from Jarek’s handy work, and they were ankle deep all the way to the far door. We could see the open hatch to the stairs.

  Remo studied the corridor for about ten seconds. “Nope.” He turned around and moved past us back the way we had come. The plan was now to backtrack through the original route we had used to get to the galley. We got through two open hatches before we found a closed one. Only one of the handles was in the locked position, but that was enough to set off the MARSOC alarms.

  “Everybody back. Get on the other side of that hatch,” he pointed to the one behind us, “and close it.” We did as we were told, and he fiddled with his hatch. Soon, he knocked on ours, told us it was clear, and we came through. Nothing looked amiss when we all moved through the third corridor. Remo shone his light into an open door as he moved past it, and kept going. We had closed all the doors on the way here. Why was this one open? It was my turn for an alarm to go off, but it didn’t happen until I was in front of the open doorway. I made to tell Remo and the beam of my tac light cut the darkness of the empty room. Except it wasn’t empty. A figure moved into view from out of sight to the right. It looked at me and I looked at it, recognition flooding me. It was Jarek. I saw his face, and the twitchy, feverish look on it only took a half second to process. He processed faster than I did, and was on me in a second, screaming.

  He hit me at chest level like a linebacker, and we both slammed into the bulkhead. Before I knew what was happening, I was atop him, pounding and slashing with my bare hands. He tried to get up and I stuck my thumb in his eye. I felt it go with a liquid squish, and I kept hitting and hitting him, smashing his face with my fists and clawing at him with my nails. He stopped moving in short order, but his screaming didn’t. Realization that it was me who was screaming hit me, so I stopped. I looked at what I had done after what seemed an eternity. There was nothing left of his face and neck. I had ruined it, and could see bone in several places. We were both covered in him. As I heaved, I looked at my hands. They were curled into claws. I wiped my mouth with the back of my bandaged forearm, and noticed a smear of blood on the bandage. I felt stuff in my mouth and spit something out. It was a piece of Jarek. Horrified, I started to rise, and heard a sharp intake of breath behind me. I whipped my head in that direction and saw every gun other than mine pointing at me.

  “He’s turned,” Alvarez said, and instead of pointing his weapon in my direction, he aimed at my head.

  Departure

  Well, obviously he didn’t put one through my melon, or how would I have finished that last journal entry? He did say, “Sorry, buddy,” and tense like he was going to squeeze the trigger. Hey, I had been shot in the head a couple times already. Smacked in the dome by a wrench-toting gorilla as well. Bitten, burned, beaten, shot, tortured, experimented on. Why not Alvarez? Pop me.

  Ship was there, and he gently pushed the barrel of the kid’s rifle to the side, nodding his head. Nobody said a word, (especially Ship) and I felt compelled to express gratitude for not being shot.

  “I’m me,” I said. “Mostly, anyway.” Nobody rushed to give me hand. Or a hug. I stood, and everybody still looked wary. I sighed. “Do infected talk? Do they not attack? I mean other than with Jarek.” Pain began to slowly ebb its way back into my side and arm. Then it came back with a vengeance and I had to lean against the bulkhead. During my leaning, I glanced at what was left of Jarek. It was horrible, and I had to look away fast. I began to furiously wipe at my face with my hands, and Donna made to come to me.

  I put my hand up. “Stop!”

  She did, blinking, and looking a bit hurt.

  “At the very least,” I began, “I have his infected shit all over me. At worst, I’m contagious as well now. I need a change of clothes and a bath before anybody touches me.”

  “But you’re immune!” she yelled at me.

  “At this point, we don’t know. When I was at Baldy Mountain, they took every fluid I had, and did months’ worth of tests. They never found anything different in me than in any other human test subject. They also couldn’t find anything in the infected fluids of the dead. Basically, they had no fucking idea what this thing is.”

  I was tired. Damn tired, and I needed to rest, but there was no time. Remo read my mind. “We need to keep moving.” Two more hatches and we were at the base of the stairs to the wheelhouse. The doors off of each landing had been secured with chains, so nothing was getting in, at least not quickly. Infected were stacked on the sides of the stairs like cord wood, with a path all the way to the top. We were staring out at the sun through the wheelhouse windows when Remo said, “Clear.”

  I moved to the broken front window and stuck my head in the hole. I felt the warmth of the sun and the sea breeze on my face and it was fantastic. Then I got a waft of what was on deck and looked down on a couple hundred rotting corpses. They were in zombie dormant mode, and were just meandering around slowly. They would do this until they received some stimuli, then they would go ape-shit and try to eat whatever they saw. They hadn’t seen me yet. I looked to the left, (port side) and noticed a large, gray vessel steaming toward us. It was the destroyer, Stockdale. No wonder the bad guys had left in a hurry. There aren’t a lot of helicopters that would be able to survive a battle with a ship designed to kill everything. The modern day destroyers are like World War II battleships. Badass.

  I felt a tap on my left shoulder and turned to face it. My girl was there and she took a surprised step back when she looked at me. I smiled, “I still look like one of them?”

  “No,” she replied a little too hastily. “I just…”

  “Don’t sweat it, kid. Maybe I can scare off the infected instead of shoot them now?” She moved in to hug me and I stopped her by stepping away. She didn’t look hurt this time. I pointed at myself. “I still have this shit on me. When we get back, you will receive some significant hugging.” I fluttered my eyebrows and gave her a leer.

  “You wish! I’m not touching your infected ass!”

  I had missed this woman. I had missed them all, and now I would never get to hang out with some of them. Captain Bob, Zero, and Kinga had been my friends. I had just met Jarek, but he was also a hero. They were all dead. So many had died, and so many had been killed by assholes and infected. My ire started to rise and I willfully suppressed it. It was a monumental task, but I got it done.

  Alvarez and Todd were talking. Todd was pointing toward the incoming Stockdale, and Remo was looking at the closed hatch to the roof. Ship was in Heaven, studying the myriad
wheelhouse controls. We were almost done on this ship of death, and although we had suffered key losses, we had succeeded in our mission. I looked up. Shit. Donna saw the look on my face. “What?”

  “The key. We left it on the roof of the monkey island in case we didn’t make it, but we never considered a second group coming here.”

  She looked at me in confusion. Confusion was way better than the revulsion from a moment ago, but I guess I’m significantly more terrifying with these broken blood vessels in my eyes. “What the fuck is a monkey island?”

  “It’s the nautical term for the roof of a wheelhouse,” Remo answered. He had gone all ninja again and was standing next to us looking at the incoming vessel.

  I looked back up. “Do you think they took it?”

  “Gotta go up there and see. That’s our exfil point anyway.” He took his rifle and began knocking out the glass shards in the window. Everybody was looking.

  “Uhhh, what’s happening, Chief? You’re not going to use the hatch?” I pointed to the closed hatch above us behind the control consoles. Everybody looked at where I was pointing.

  “No,” he said and everybody looked back at us. It was starting to feel like a fucking tennis match. “I can’t see what’s on the other side. They could have booby-trapped it. Be a shame to be so close and get killed for not being thorough, don’t you think?”

  He had me on that one. I would probably already look like badly mangled Swiss cheese covered in raspberry sauce without this friggin guy. There was a problem though. There was no way in hell he could climb out this window and get to the roof (monkey island). The windows slanted outward, but the top of the superstructure jutted a good ten feet out above us. He would never be able to reach. The jarhead had already dangled over the top of the windows when he scouted the room, and the dead hadn’t gotten him, so no way. He turned around. “Ship, could you hold my belt please?” Huh. Didn’t want me to do it. Probably because I was missing a piece of my arm, had caught a bullet, and had recently partaken in the evisceration of a Runner with naught but my own teeth and hands.

  Ship came over and held him while he went as far out the broken window as he could. He came back in shortly, shaking his head. “Not going that way. Can’t reach.”

  It was almost like I had just thought that.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  He looked at the port side hatch to the outside. “I’m going to need what ammo you have.” He turned around and put his MP5 on the console. Pulling two magazines, he inspected them. He pointed at Donna’s Beretta. “Any ammo?”

  She shook her head, “You cannot possibly go outside. You can’t.”

  He raised his eyebrows and flashed a very uncommon smile. “Do you want to go? Somebody has to go out, climb the access ladder, and check the other side of the hatch.”

  “But the deck is crawling with them!”

  He stopped smiling. “And the only way off this boat is through that hatch.” As if to punctuate his statement, we heard the sound of a helicopter. “That’s our ride.” He moved to the wooden closet where Kinga had stashed the communications gear. He ran his fingers all along the outside of the closet, then opened the door just enough to fit his mirror inside, shone his light in, then opened it wide. He pulled out the briefcase thingie and set up the umbrella, sticking an earbud in his head. “Pluto, this is Hammer One, how copy? Roger that, Pluto. Hostiles, over.” It was really annoying only hearing half of the conversation. “Achieved primary mission objective, waiting on transport, over.” Let’s just understand that after every damn thing Remo said on the phone, he said the word over, it’s a pain in the ass to keep writing it. “Have transport hover one hundred feet to starboard side of Majestik Maersk until comms are made again. Hammer One copies all, out. Is there any ammo in that M9?” He pointed at Donna’s sidearm again.

  “No.”

  “Does anybody else have any 9mm?” No hands raised. Alvarez pulled his .410 gauge pump shotgun off of his back and inspected the load. “For those close encounters,” he said passing it to Remo, and winking at me. Refer to the movie I mentioned at the beginning of this journal for the wink reference. “Four shells left.”

  Remo took the weapon, strode to the port side hatch, looked through, and glanced at Alvarez. “It’s clear. Cover me to the ladder. Close and lock the hatch the second I’m clear. I won’t be coming back this way. At least not while I’m alive.” He opened the hatch and disappeared through it. Alvarez aimed down the sights of his M4, but didn’t fire before he stepped back into the wheelhouse and locked the hatch.

  Alvarez nodded. “He made it. It was only ten feet across the landing, but they saw him and started up the catwalk.” He locked all six handles and made sure the tamper-proof lock was engaged. A knock came from the hatch, and Ship moved to the ladder. Two rungs up and he was able to unlock the handle. How had the bad guys locked this from the inside and then escaped via the hatch? All our weapons were pointed at the hatch, but it was just Remo’s face. He seemed to approve that we were aiming at him.

  “Come on, it’s clear.”

  Ship came back down and helped Todd up. Todd wouldn’t let go of his spear, and almost took out Ship’s eye with it. The rest of us made it up, and Remo passed me a little chain. The fuckers hadn’t found the key! Alvarez passed Remo the sat-com equipment, and he called for pickup.

  We were going home. I felt woozy just thinking about it. Or it was from blood loss? The bird was above us when I passed out.

  I awoke in the helicopter, with my hands zip tied, and a bandana gag in my mouth. I get it, it was prudent. I looked up at my friends and smiled through my gag. They didn’t see me, but I was able to pass out again knowing I would be either very safe, or die in a fiery crash. At this point, I would take either one.

  Relaxation?

  I’ve taken a break from my journals for a bit, but everybody says I should keep them current. The writing is supposed to help me heal.

  We got to the Stockdale in under a minute after leaving the Majestik, and were exiting the bird in under ten. They carted my mostly unconscious body to medical. The doctors on board the destroyer opened me up like a tin can and dissected me. They actually found two bullet fragments, so it was good they cut me open. There wasn’t a lot they could do for the bite, and as it happens, Captain Bob missed everything vital when he chomped me. I will have a wicked scar when I’m able to keep the bandages off. Now that I’ve been up for a while I gotta tell you, the arm hurts way worse than the bullet wound.

  I learned that Schumitz (captain of the Stockdale) blew several holes in that fucking ship of death, and the Majestik Maersk and all its infected now reside at the bottom of six thousand feet of Gulf. I was exceptionally pissy when Alvarez told me of the sinking. I really would have liked to have seen that.

  We steamed back to the floating asylum called Atlantis that I call home as soon as Schumitz got the key and the hard drives, then sunk his target. Donna, Ship, and Alvarez were with me the entire time. During one of my lucid moments, I called to Donna. “By the way,” I began, and she raised her eyebrows, “you look good for just having kids.” I passed out immediately after, and she thought I was hallucinating, until Remo told her about the two kids Remo, Tim, Kinga, and I had brought to Atlantis.

  They brought me via stretcher to medical on the rig, but honestly, the sick bay on the Stockdale was infinitely more comfortable. I was in recovery for two days. That was a week and a half ago.

  While I was in there, I had a plethora of visitors, including the twins, Richy and Chloe. They had come up with a dog someplace, a border collie by the name of Dusty. The thing is one hundred percent ape-shit, and super smart. Apparently, he made a home with Tim and the twins in my shack in the two days I’ve been away. Actually, I was only back from my months’ long incarceration for a few hours before setting out again. I sound like an idiot. I have a buzz. The doc has found a piece of skin on the back of my shoulder that looks wrong. He wants to do a biopsy, but doesn’t have all the shit
he needs should it turn up malignant. Wouldn’t that be ironic? I’m immune to the worst plague in the history of earth, but I die of cancer two years in?

  So I’m in recovery, stoned on some good pain meds, when Remo comes in with Austin. Austin is the leader of Atlantis, and he’s holding my first journal. After a brief moment of embarrassment when Remo said my ramblings were funny, Austin said he would like me to read them aloud to people each night in the TV room. Apparently, regaling my rig-mates with my comical tales of the apocalypse would boost their spirits. Good for morale or some shit. On day three, when I was finally able to get up and take a piss in an actual toilet, all my close friends except Remo came in at the same time to see how I was doing.

  “Great!” I told them. The twins, Ship, Alvarez, Tim, Greg, Austin, and of course, Donna were there with Dusty running around everybody’s feet. Ape-shit really is the best term for this mutt. I asked where Remo was, and Austin told me he was on the Stockdale. We all had a one-sided conversation where I told them what had happened to me since I had been stolen in great detail. Tim piped in a few times to confirm, especially when the crazy, unbelievable shit was revealed.

  When I was done, Austin and Greg told us what had happened on Atlantis while I was away. The Stockdale had shown up. One of the roughnecks that had been living on the rig had died of a heart attack, but the system they had in place to warn everyone and dispatch the undead had worked, and no one had been bitten. One of the ships that I had done some engine work on, the Spirit, had been overrun from within. Austin and Schumitz had been able to rescue nine folks off of the boat, then they cleared it. It was anchored a quarter mile off of Atlantis with a skeleton crew. Plans were underway to secure one of the abandoned rigs, cover it in soil, and farm it. There were several other ideas and some of them sounded pretty good.