From Oblivion's Ashes

by Michael E. A. Nyman

  The captain sighed.

  “I won’t lie,” he said. “Intelligence is sketchy, but one thing we know is that these things are damn near unstoppable. They’re fireproof, bulletproof, death-proof… nothing seems to stick.

  “We suspect that it’s some kind of advanced virus, but given the short amount of time we’ve had to study it, we can’t be sure. It’s unaffected by our strongest antibiotics, and once contact is made – assuming the victim isn’t eaten alive – it takes only a minute for the virus to take over. The victim dies and conversion takes place. According to the scientists, it’s the fastest-acting, most adaptable virus we’ve ever encountered.

  “If our weapons are useless, sir, how are we supposed to-”

  “HQ doesn’t know,” Captain Davis admitted. “Just do your best. For all their heightened strength, speed, and regenerative capabilities, the creatures remain as light as the average human. That means that your weapons should be able to ‘push’ them away, and maybe discover some kind of vulnerability in the bargain. I’m sorry. I know I’m giving you nothing, but the truth is, that’s all we have.”

  “What about the water front, sir? We could commandeer…”

  But the Captain was shaking his head.

  “No good,” he said. “These things are more at home in the water than on land. They swim faster than dolphins and have no trouble finding us at sea. I repeat, boat, submarine, whatever, they find us!”

  “What about air, sir?”

  “We have a break there,” the Captain said. “They can jump remarkably high, and climb up and down the sides of buildings, but they can’t fly. Unfortunately, neither can we, not for very long. Whatever goes up comes down, and once it’s on the ground, it belongs to them.”

  “This is insane,” Sergeant Hollender said. “How can these things be real? Where do they come from? Someone has to know something! Is this somebody’s Black Ops project run amok? And if so, who in their right mind would develop something like this?”

  “All fair questions,” the Captain said tiredly, “which have nothing to do with our situation right now. We believe that we’re looking at an extinction level event. Does it matter where it came from at this point?

  “Hollender. Take your squad to the west end of the Armory and start planning escape routes. Mathews. You and your people secure the heavy ordinance. There’s a West Point general who’s advocated blowing these things to shit with high caliber weaponry. It doesn’t kill them, but smashed to bits is still smashed to bits, and unfortunately, it’s all we have. Vandermeer. You’re on civilian watch. These things are spreading from east to west. Make sure-”

  The window behind him, along with most of the wall, exploded inwards, and this thing that had once been human appeared.

  It gathered up the Captain into its arms like a lover. Coated in a thin layer of purple resin, giving it a faint, violet shade, it smelled like sugary vomit. As it took hold of the struggling Captain, its mouth opened, stretching monstrously wide, and bit the Captain’s head in half, shearing it with perfect precision. The last thing Master Corporal Vandermeer saw, as they sank below the table, was the Captain’s remaining eye, still opened wide in surprise.

  Another part of the wall exploded, and Sergeant Ellen Dickens was bowled over, flattened to the ground by a creature still wearing a Burger King uniform. She screamed, even as more of the creatures smashed their way into the room.

  Sergeant Collins pulled out his Browning 9mm, and emptied an entire clip into the thing that held Dickens. Vandermeer followed suit. Their bullets punched into the creature like they were burrowing into dirt, and with about as much effect. The creature held Dickens down and took a tremendous bite from her shoulder.

  Vandermeer stared in horror as the monster reared its head back to swallow. The chunk that had come from Dickens traveled down the creature’s throat. Ignoring him, the monster lunged down to take another bite from the screaming woman.

  Something slammed into Vandermeer from behind, knocking him into the table head first, and then down to the floor. His gun fell from his hand, his vision swam, and he rolled over onto his back just in time to see the table come down on top of him, cracking his head near the temple.

  In the confused daze that followed, he heard more gunshots and more screams. He thrashed, trying to move, but the table lay on top of him, pinning him to the floor. His last vision as darkness claimed him was the sight of the Captain, with half his head missing, chasing after Sergeant Barkins as the man fled screaming from the room.

  Vandermeer’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Get him up on the storage deck,” Marshal shouted, closing the back hatch.

  “I got him,” Luca answered. “Just figure out some way to stop his bleeding. It’s amazing he ain’t dead already.”

  Marshal took Luca’s hand and pushed it down on the bloodiest of the wounds. “Keep your hand pressed here,” he said. “The zombies should still be one block over. I’ll run into the pharmacy, grab all the gauze they have, some antibiotics, and be back as soon as I can.”

  “Well, hurry the fuck up,” Luca snapped, his hand already crimson. “The way this guy’s still leaking, he’ll be fully drained any time now.”

  Crapmobile rocked as Marshal departed.

  “NNNnnnnggh!” Vandermeer said. He sagged. Why weren’t his words coming out properly? He breathed in and tried again.

  “Just keep quiet, and try to stay alive, soldier boy,” Luca said. “You’ll bleed less, and let me tell you something. From what I’m seeing, that’s a pretty big fucking deal.”

  Fighting the darkness, Vandermeer tried to focus.

  “Nnnneeeed… annntibiotics…” he managed. The effort taxed him, and for a moment, he felt like he was being strangled.

  “Way ahead of you,” Luca said. “My buddy will be back in just a minute. He’s an idiot, but for an idiot, he’s a pretty smart guy. He’ll get your drugs, and we’ll have you back on your feet in no time.”

  My feet, Vandermeer thought in a moment of clarity. I may never walk again.

  “Nnnoo,” he said. “There’s… need…gguh…”

  The world was spinning all around him now.

  He took a deep breath.

  “Queen… ssstreet… sssubway…” he managed through gritted teeth. “Ssurvive..”

  “Yeah, pal. Just… hang in there.”

  Inside his head, Vandermeer cursed. He wasn’t making himself clear.

  Tears welled up in his eyes.

  My legs… I’ve lost my legs…

  “Hey! Stay with me!” Luca’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Don’t fucking give up on me now, you prick! Not after how far you’ve come!”

  I have come far, haven’t I?

  Crapmobile rocked violently.

  “I have the gauze!” said a voice. “And antibiotics, water, and antibacterial soap. Hold him steady. This is probably going to hurt.”

  But Master Corporal Eric Vandermeer had once again slipped into unconsciousness.

  “GO, GO, GO!!!” he shouted, waving the people towards the subway stairs. They ran like frightened sheep, uncertain where they were going but too terrified to stray from the group. Vandermeer and his squad were little better, except that they were under orders.

  The Armory had been like an otherworld reflection, a bad dream, when Vandermeer awoke. Somehow, the big, briefing table had been shattered when he fell unconscious, and this had allowed him to slip out from under it. The briefing room had been empty, but all around, down the halls and from other offices, he could hear the sounds of people dying, pleading, crying, or… or worse. Staggering to his feet, Vandermeer felt a flurry of black spots attacking his vision, but he willed it away. Retrieving and reloading his 9mm, he hobbled from the briefing room as stealthily as he could manage.

  He found Lieutenant Dawes and a few junior enlisted men and women huddled in the downstairs hall, planning the next move, even as distant screams and howls echoed from the halls and stairwells and from all around
them.

  “It looks like we’re fucked, people,” Dawes muttered. A cache of C7A2 assault rifles had been recovered and was being handed out with clips. Eric took one of them and six clips.

  The Lieutenant caught sight of him.

  “Vandermeeer. You’re ex-JTF, so I’m putting you in charge. Take everyone here and head for the Queen Street subway. You’re tasked with getting as many civilians out of the downtown core as you can by using whatever means necessary.”

  Vandermeer saluted, bringing a flash of pain to his injured head. He beat down the sensation. “What will you be doing, sir?”

  “I’m heading for the communications room,” he said darkly. “Command needs all the Intell it can get, and they need to know what happened here.”

  Suicide mission, Vandermeer thought. He gave a terse nod, and saluted again.

  “It’s been an honor to serve with you, sir.”

  The Lieutenant returned the salute. “Good luck to you all,” he said. “Now go!”

  The entrance to the subway had been chaos.

  “You!” Vandermeer shouted, pointing his rifle. Two men, in the midst of the panic, had started to fight and were blocking the paths for others. They ignored him. “Private Hawkins! Break that shit up!”

  “I’m on it, corporal.” The six-foot six, three hundred pound soldier waded into the fray like a schoolteacher plowing into a pre-school brawl.

  “Move it, people! Northbound trains only! Move it, move it, move it!”

  An attractive woman tore through the mass, her face blank and stained purple, seeming perplexed by so many possible prey. Without hesitation, Vandermeer raised his rifle and fired. The heavy rounds pounded into the undead woman, driving her backwards several steps. It caused a slight splattering of tissue, but the creature was otherwise unhurt.

  She oriented on Vandermeer like a marionette jerking on its strings. Then, crouching down, the woman sprang up into the air, over top of his line of fire. She landed on top of him, bearing him to the ground.

  Vandermeer felt his ribs cracking under her grip as he struggled to break free. A clawed hand like an iron girder tore his assault rifle from his hands. To his horror, he was forced to watch as the woman’s lips stretched open, spasming wider and wider above him...

  And then, the zombie was lifted away. It was Hawkins, physically hauling the man-eater off of him. Strong as it was, the creature was more than light enough for Private Hawkins to fling it away like a rag doll.

  Only he didn’t. One claw flailed about wildly, fastening by pure luck alone on Hawkin’s wrist. This was all the contact it needed, and the big soldier was unable to break that terrible grip. Instead of seeing the zombie fly through the air, Vandermeer watched as the pair of them fell to the ground, entangled with one another.

  Private Hawkins started to scream a few seconds later, accompanied by the sounds of crunching bone and slurping flesh.

  Focused on its meal, the creature did not look up as Master Corporal Vandermeer staggered to his feet. He looked down and saw that Hawkins, with a portion of his chest missing, was already dead. Gasping under the strain of broken ribs and still feeling the oppressive darkness from the blow to his head earlier, Vandermeer tottered off down the subway stairs with only his Browning for defense.

  Somewhat dreamily, he reached down with his free hand to pick up a small, blonde woman from the ground, saving her from being trampled.

  “Northbound trains,” he muttered, hanging on as the woman shrieked and screamed in his grip. “We have to make it to the northbound trains.”

  Were they even still running?

  He and the shrieking woman descended into the first basement level of the Eaton’s Center. Clothing shops, tech stores, restaurant kiosks, and quick-stop newspaper stores glittered and shook above the thunder of the terrified masses. Vandermeer hauled the small woman along with him. The woman, no longer fighting, staggered and struggled in her six hundred dollar, high heeled boots.

  When the windows from one of the clothing stores shattered, and a savage blur barreled into the crowd, knocking down several people at once, Vandermeer knew it was hopeless. More explosions of glass and masonry occurred, shattering the granite-paneled walls into powder and ripping out support beams. People scattered, screamed, fell down, knocked over others, and fought to escape the underground tunnel that had become a killing ground.

  Vandermeer pulled the small woman to his chest, felt her weeping into his neck, and tried to decide what to do. The subway turnstiles were still a good fifty meters and a stairwell away. He had about as much chance of reaching them as he did of reaching the Gates of Heaven. He fired his gun into the air, but even the gun’s deafening report in the close confines of the hallway failed to inspire order. Everywhere, there was a sea of chaos, madness, and despair.

  More explosions rocked the underground tunnel, and then more, as newly created monsters joined in the slaughter. Some ran off in pursuit of fleeing prey, ripping through fixtures and support columns as they went. Holding his position and uncertain what to do, Vandermeer saw a tiny, little boy zombie drag down a woman, like a lion hauling down a wildebeest, right in front of him. The hungry crunching and slurping and the terrible screams brought a flood of tears into his eyes. The woman in his grasp tore herself free, dodging in between the madness. All around her, zombies and victims wriggled like loving couples in coitus on the floor, writhing, twisting, or feasting in and orgy of violence.

  The woman he’d tried to save made it ten feet before being hit like a truck by a zombie wearing the uniform of the bagel shop.

  A terrible cracking sound came from above and suddenly, a part of the ceiling collapsed down upon the seething crowd. Vandermeer looked up, staring in confusion and helpless shock. Another part of the ceiling came down, and then another, further away. The entire room trembled like an earthquake as more of the undead crashed their way through the tunnel’s supporting structure.

  Finally, inevitably, the remainder of the ceiling crumbled. To Vandermeer’s eye, it seemed to happen in slow motion, and he felt a sigh of relief escape his lips. The madness in that tunnel would be over soon, and while deliverance wasn’t sweet, at least it had come. He closed his eyes as, like an avalanche, thousands of metric tonnes of concrete and steel hammered down on the swarming masses below, burying everyone and everything all at once.

  Something heavy snapped Vandermeer’s right leg, slicing it open like a fish. It was all he could do to howl once with pain before the weight of rubble and ruin came down on him.

  Eric Vandermeer’s eyes opened with difficulty.

  Something sticky, like dried syrup, seemed to have glued them shut. He reached up with his right hand, licked dirty fingers to wipe whatever it was away, and realized that it was blood.

  “He’s awake,” Marshal said.

  “Yeah? Well, then that is one tough son of a bitch. Could have sworn he died on us a few minutes ago.”

  Eric became vaguely aware from the vibration rising up through his body that he was in some sort of vehicle, and that it was moving.

  “Where…?”

  “Relax. Is it corporal?” The man leaning over him was frowning. “You’re a corporal, right? I’m not entirely up on my military stripes.”

  “Nah,” came a tough-sounding voice from up front. “That guy’s a Master Corporal. You can tell by the maple leaf sewn in above the chevrons. Means he’s one hell of a soldier. Probably came from the Armory, which is the base for training reserve regiments. They sometimes use Master Corporals for that sort of thing.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “We sell a lot of cheap smokes to those guys. Fact of life. Even today, soldiers smoke, and you can make a lot of money selling contraband to the enlisted men. It pays to know who you’re selling to.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Where… am I?” Eric managed through gritted teeth.

  “Try not to move, Master Corporal,” Marshal said. “We’re taking you to a safe place where we
can clean your wounds and give you a chance to recover. We’ve taped you up as best we can. We’re not doctors but we think we might be able to stitch you up when we get home. No. You have to remain still. I... what… Jesus Christ!”

  Marshal leaned backwards as Eric managed to draw and point his gun.

  “Sorry,” the soldier mumbled, even as his head threatened to shut down again. “Have to...”

  The urge to vomit choked off his words.

  “Just put down the gun,” Marshal said, staring down the barrel. “If you fire that thing, you’ll bring every zombie in the neighborhood down on our heads.”

  “Won’t shoot,” Eric coughed. “Have to get… medicine…”

  “We got your medicine, asshole,” Luca shouted, pulling Crapmobile to a stop. “Now give us the fucking gun before-”

  “Have to get it to… others…”

  “Others?” Marshal blinked. “Did you say others?”

  The gun tumbled from Eric’s hand.

  “… get to… Queen Street Subway…”

  And the darkness once again consumed him.

  The warm sensations that carried Eric Vandermeer were like a pleasant rain in summer, or an iceberg drifting in tropic waters. He swooned in its intimate embrace.

  This isn’t so bad, he thought. This had to be death approaching, not like a lightning strike or a power shortage, but like the slow melting of all your cares, tension, and fear. Like watching a dark but loving child grow to adulthood before your eyes, kiss you on the cheek, and then leave you behind forever. It was sad, but fulfilling.

  Karen? Are you there? He would expect her to be there.

  A darkling nymph with a familiar curvy outline separated itself from the endless night, like a piece separating from a finished puzzle.

  Karen, he sighed. So you did die, and now I’m here with you. Is Aaron here?