by Josiah Upton
I collapse onto the truck floor, and let this new reality consume me – that though I live, I have already died three times. Once in my father’s basement, again with my father slipping away in my arms, and once more as I realize Zaul is never coming out of that tunnel. Everything I am, everything I travel towards is the consequence of life’s destruction.
There is no more life in me. I am the Daughter of Death.
Epilogue
Zaul
Nineteen, zero. Nineteen, zero. Nineteen, zero...
The numbers repeat in my head as I run down this carpeted hallway, muscles and sinews grinding together like gears of an old clock. Nearly one hundred male Hybrids – about a fifth of our original team – run alongside me. I wonder which numbers are echoing through their minds, or if they’ve even kept track at all.
An agent appears from around the corner. He isn’t wearing the protective clothing the ones in the tunnel were, but I can tell he isn’t a timid desk clerk, either. He reaches into his suit coat. Don’t do it, I think. Turn and run. Hide. Just don’t do it.
His hand pulls out a pistol, and shoots the containee to my left in the head. Then another one behind him. And another.
He did it! my Prisoner squeals with delight. Now it’s your turn!
I’ve made a temporary, limited arrangement with my inner monster ever since I came through that elevator hatch, and snapped the life from my first victim. An agreement to kill. The agent before me now trains his gun my direction, ready to shoot. I grab his wrist with one hand, and with the other punch him in the heart. I keep striking until I hear his sternum crack. His eyes roll into the back of his head, and he falls to the floor.
Finish it, my Prisoner barks. Give me what I want. Body after body, I’ve waited long enough. Now GIVE IT TO ME!
“No,” I say out loud, but the grunting and panting of the marching Hybrids around me drowns it out. I won’t give him what he wants – I won’t give myself what I want – no matter the cost. I must keep that last number at zero.
Twenty, zero. Twenty, zero…
While we press on, a containee stops at the agent’s body, staring at it with hungry eyes. I already know what’s about to happen. One by one I’ve seen Hybrids lose their resolve, and give in to their desires. I stopped intervening when one agent threw an explosive and completely destroyed the ladder leading to the small door on the tunnel ceiling. An undead mob trapped underground with the very meat they have craved their entire second lives.
That’s when the doors at the other end opened, and the last big push of the Headquarters’ remaining agents poured out. It was a massacre. At the end of it, there were so many bodies. So much flesh. Even Ezra broke down and partook. Walt and Rich followed immediately after. I judged the actions of those poor, executed containees in the Lock too quickly.
I stopped intervening, but I didn’t stop resisting. And I didn’t stop counting.
Twenty, zero. Twenty, zero…
We enter the large, open lobby of the APA Headquarters. Empty. Whichever agents didn’t meet their end in the tunnel evacuated the building before we entered. Only a foolish few remained to defend it. But I still smell a human here, alive. One of the containees pulls a screaming woman out from the wooden desk she was hiding behind. He snarls wickedly, and starts pulling at her clothes.
“Take care of that,” I say to Rich and Walt. They nod, and approach the attacking Hybrid. They’re the enforcers. One thing I haven’t stopped intervening are attacks on the defenseless. It started with Thumb, when he went after the surrendered agents, and tried to get the others to join him. His body lies underground with the other dead and re-dead, and added to my number. The Hybrid attacking the woman now will share his fate.
So sanctimonious, my Prisoner hisses. You’re no better. And you should check your numbers again. Forgetting Jensen?
Twenty-one, zero. Twenty-one…
“Where to now, Zaul?” Ezra asks. The frightened woman runs away screaming, after the brothers tell her to get somewhere safe. “Wherever we go, it needs to be quick. I don’t imagine they’ll just leave this place behind. They’ll come back with something, and something big.”
We move towards Genny. That’s the only direction my mind goes. If the females were successful, she should be out there with them on the street, waiting for me to leave in that truck. If they were successful…
“There has to be a front entrance,” I say, clearing the thought from my head. “Something that will get us outside. Where would that be?”
“I don’t know,” Ezra says, looking down all the hallways that feed from the lobby. “I’ve only ever been to Tran’s lab, and to the Cure for bloodwork.” He rotates, pointing his finger in different directions, trying to orient our position in relation to the tunnel. “This way?”
“No,” I say, the light of a green EXIT sign catching my eyes. I remember seeing those when I began attending school. I thought it was peculiar then, but am immensely grateful for it now. “This way.”
We follow the trail of signs, until we arrive at a large wall of glass doors. And behind them, metal shutters that block our escape. The HQ is locked down as well. I breathe a sigh of defeat.
“Dammit!” Rich shouts. “We’re never getting out of here!”
“Trains,” a gruff voice says from behind me. It’s Daah, limping from both old age and a shot to his leg. I never thought he’d survive. “Long time back, all Uggers come to this place on trains, then walk through tunnel in Facility.”
“I remember Tran saying something about that,” Ezra mentions. “The Headquarters was built the same time the Facility was changed from human prison to Hybrid containment. There were old train tracks here that they built around, and a large migration of Hybrids from all over were shipped by rail, processed here, then moved over to the Facility.”
“Find train,” Daah says, “find… way out?”
If we could locate these rails in time (of which we are quickly running out), there’s not even a guarantee it will lead us out. But looking at these metal barricades trapping us in, I’ll take any other option there is. “Let’s move. Quickly.”
Weaving through the halls, using all the keycards we’ve picked off dead agents along the way to get us through doors, we somehow manage to find the rails in an area darker and more spacious than the tunnel. But the pursuit was fruitless, because at the end where the steel lines would leave the Headquarters, more immovable shutters block us in.
“Trapped!” a containee shouts at me, his number 483. I don’t know his name. “We die! No help from Brains!”
“Hey Zaul,” Walt yells at me. He stands by a train engine with three cars attached to it. “This thing looks, like, not old. Like it’s ready to be used. Think we could start it up, crash our way through the doors?”
I approach the train, getting a better look. I know very little about rail transportation, but it does indeed appear to be in working order, just waiting for someone to jump in and start it up. Unfortunately, that someone couldn’t possibly be any of the Hybrid Reanimates surrounding me. Unless Daah has another secret he wants to reveal.
“What do you think are in these things?” Ezra asks, knocking his fist on the side of a metal box. There are six boxes to a car, in two rows of three and about ten feet wide each, with a sealed door on the sides facing out. Each one is numbered, one through eighteen. “This is just weird.”
“I don’t really care what it is,” I say. “I just want to get out of here.”
I get a closer look at the engine, hoping to find a way in and somehow miraculously start this thing, but it too is sealed shut. All I can find is a small screen, with a red timer. Counting down. It reads 1:26. Less than two minutes until… until what?
I tap the black portion of the screen under the counter, and a digital handprint appears, along with a grid of numbers, a bouncing line that reacts to any nearby sound, and a single line of text:
JULIUS SCHUTZHORNE > IDENTIFICATION AND PASSCODE REQUIRED
&nb
sp; “Yeah, good luck with that,” Ezra chuckles.
As the red numbers count down, my own numbers sound off in my head.
Twenty-one, zero. Twenty-one, zero. Twenty-one, zero…
Once the counter is finished, the train engine rumbles to life, and we all instinctively take a step back. Another moment passes, and it starts moving, inching closer to the metal doors as it picks up speed. Then, at seemingly the last second, the barricades lift. Light blazes in, blinding us all with something we never thought we’d see again. Sunshine. Everyone cheers.
We’re free. We start running.
But I’m stopped when I hear my name shouted. It’s Walt. And unlike the others, there is no jubilation on his face. In fact, I could only describe it as horror. He stands on the other side of a box stashed by a wall, identical to the ones on those train cars, with the sealed door pointed towards me. When I get closer, Walt finally makes eye contact. “I found out what was on that train.”
I round the corner of the box to join him, and am horrified as well. A glass window is all that separates us from a handful of bodies. Moving slowly, shuffling through the container aimlessly. Flesh hangs from their skin, rotting and putrid. Their eyes are each a kaleidoscope of sickly colors, all at different states of decay. None of them see us. None have the slightest hint of thought or emotion or soul behind them. They are Reanimates. Not Hybrids, but authentic Reanimates. Despite the century-old story of their eradication, my undead ancestors live on.
And a train full of them just left to somewhere I don’t know, for reasons I can’t begin to conceive.
The End…
…Is Near.
The Postmortem Anomalies epic will conclude in 2017. To stay up to date on new story developments, release dates, and have a chance at some free giveaways, sign up to Josiah Upton’s mailing list. Don’t get left in the Lock, join the Hybrid Army.
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Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I thank my beautiful wife Jessica, my constant cheerleader. Through disappointments, lulls in production, and lack of creative drive and direction, you have always believed this is what I was meant to do.
More credit to my mother-in-law Deborah, and my mom Ellen, for watching over my most prized treasures – Teddy, Ozzy and Link – while I chased after the ridiculous pursuit of telling zombie stories. Though writing is my creative passion, my heart and soul will always be my family. Thank you.
A shout out to Erin and Josh, for taking the time to read this monstrosity. Your eager support and feedback help assure me that I’m not insane for continuing this story. Thanks!
And for anyone who’s waited forever to find out what happened after Sons of Sludge. Seriously, two years is too long, and I thank you for not forgetting about me, Genny, and Zaul.
About The Author
Josiah Upton is an independent author from Fort Worth, Texas. When he isn't assembling monsters to the heavy metal soundtrack playing in his head, he's enjoying domestic life with his lovely bride and three crazy little boys.
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