“I need a bigger gun,” Kelton said at one point, and when Larry suggested there could be additional large energy pulses, making more zombies, Kelton said, “I need two bigger guns.”
Chief Simpson hollered at them all to be quiet so he could think.
Lucy tuned everyone out to focus on her computer. Unfortunately, the data didn’t tell her much more. By now, she had a pretty good historical topographical map of the radiation levels across town but not much else. What she really needed was Dr. Robertson’s advice and a month to run experiments on the next Mr. Monster candidate. She didn’t think she could stomach working again on the one now on her floor.
Her frustration grew as she realized how little she really understood. And these people were counting on her. She’d already gone out on a limb and blamed this on extraterrestrials. She wasn’t about to make any more wild assumptions without evidence.
The one thing she could do at least was to deduce a better answer to Paula Trent’s question: how far might the energy waves go? How far might the zombie epidemic spread?
She called up a simple graphing program and loaded in figures from the field sensors. From that, she tried to convert her finger points across the map into kilometers.
Let’s see. X is time, and Y is distance.…
It was quieter in the lab now, but having all these anxious people around her made it impossible to concentrate. She revised her calculations and redrew her graph several times. Dr. Robertson called mathematical models like these “plans”—perhaps a holdover from his hush-hush days as a DOD weapons designer, he wouldn’t say—so she thought of each model as a plan.
By the time she got to plan nine, she had to stop because she didn’t like what the numbers were telling her. If the energy waves continued growing in intensity at the same rate as the first three, then in twenty-four hours, they would cover the whole world. Zombies everywhere. The extermination of the human race.
She paused to find her phone list with Dr. Robertson’s home number. The quiet cop with the yellow traffic vest took the list aside to make the call.
Officer Larry dug through a spare desk until he found a packet of toothpicks. He plucked one into his mouth. “You mentioned this energy wave could have just killed everyone with a heart attack. Why wouldn’t they just do that instead of this resurrection thing?”
Here we go with more questions I can’t answer. “Maybe they only want certain species dead and not all. Or their technology works best on flat-line cardiac rhythms, which rules out people already alive.”
Larry harrumphed. “Sure sounds like a lot of speculation.”
“This is all speculation!” Lucy pounded her desk. Her tears finally spilled over.
She struggled to regain control. Forced herself to unclench her fist.
Kelton frowned at Larry. “Strike two.”
Larry pulled out his toothpick. “I…I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s just…” Lucy stood up. “I need a minute.”
The way to the ladies’ room was barred by the file cabinet in front of the main hallway door, so she disappeared into her boss’s office.
She heard Larry ask Kelton, “What’d I say?”
She sat down behind Robertson’s desk and pinched the bridge of her nose. She was tired of being jerked around. First, the depression of Grandma’s funeral, and then the joy of the latest findings about the isotope experiments—who knew when she’d ever get back to that—and now the sheer terror of Nilbog’s zombie problem.
Zombie problem.
It sounded absurd. Surreal.
She started laughing.
“You all right?”
Kelton stood in the doorway. The yellow-vest cop stood behind him.
It embarrassed her to be seen like this, so she rummaged through papers on her boss’s desk. “Yeah, I was just, uh…”
“Trevor here couldn’t reach Robertson. There was no answer at his house.”
Trevor shrugged. It was good to have a name for him now. “Sorry. I tried several times.”
She wasn’t surprised he couldn’t get through. But what did surprise her was what came out of her mouth: “My grandmother was buried today.”
As if that was the most important thing right now. And yet her heart insisted it was.
Kelton crossed his arms—and then seemed to reconsider that, placed his hand on his gun, reconsidered that, and finally sat down in the spare chair.
Trevor cleared his throat in an awkward way. “Excuse me.” He returned to the main work room.
“You okay?” Kelton said.
“In all the commotion, I never called my grandfather to see how he’s doing. He…he may not have…”
“So, try him now. The phones lines are working.”
She snatched up Robertson’s phone and dialed. “Isn’t there anyone you’re worried about? Family?”
Kelton shook his head. “My parents are long dead. I don’t know why I still live here, to tell you the truth.”
She stared at him as she listened to the phone at her grandparents’ house ring and ring. Finally, she hung up.
Chief Simpson bustled in. “Is that line working? I need to call state police.”
As Lucy stood up to relinquish the phone, Kelton pulled his cell phone off his belt and offered it to her. But she waved it away. “No, I’ll try later. He’s either okay, or he isn’t. Maybe I don’t want to know.”
Chief Simpson dialed a number, listened for a moment, and then hung up. “I can’t get through. The network must be overloaded. How long until the next wave?”
The question caught her flatfooted. She looked at Dr. Robertson’s wall clock, whose hands were two tobacco pipes. How could she have lost track of time?
“Damn.”
“How long, homey?” the chief said.
“Five minutes.”
Chief Simpson hurried out into the main room. “Everyone saddle up! More blue light’s on the way, which means more zombies. So we best be gone by then.”
The posture of the others, either sitting on chairs or the floor, reminded Lucy of photos she’d seen of battle-weary soldiers. They sluggishly started to gather their weapons.
Paula Trent looked naked and defenseless in her negligee, white robe, and flip-flops. She raised a hand. “Where are we going?”
“We’ll take two vehicles. Kelton, you take Ms. Trent and Ms. Grimm in your squad car and get off the island to safety. The rest of us are going to the elementary school.”
“Do you think my husband might…” Paula shook her head. “Never mind.”
Lucy exchanged a look with Kelton. They’d just been arguing about whether to abandon the lab, but now she realized there wasn’t much else she could accomplish here. She gestured at her computer. “Have a floppy disk?”
He smiled at her. Despite everything, it made her feel good.
Chapter 14
GRANDPA
He followed the whims of the Chest Thing. First, he walked to a place where the Red men fired guns at the attacking Blue before speeding away in a van.
After that, he walked with the others of the Blue horde toward their next destination. Along the way, the Chest Thing bid him to recruit the Red still breathing.
One such Red sat on his living room couch, watching television. The Red held an unopened bottle of beer on his knee, forgotten as the box spoke and flashed at him. A sound of running water echoed from another room down the hallway.
Heeding the Chest Thing, he entered through the unlocked front door. He used the sound of the running water as cover to approach the Red man on the couch.
“This has to be the best Halloween prank ever.” The man called over his shoulder, “Baby? You oughta see this. There’s a news report about zombies.…Baby?”
He turned to glance at the figure standing behind him—and was too late to prevent powerful hands from strangling him.
Now it was time to deal with the other Red in the running water room. He entered to see her silhouette through a curtain as
she bathed herself.
“Another Halloween gag? Shane?”
She screamed as he yanked the shower curtain aside to seize her. When she tried to lunge past him, he hugged her close and bit her neck. He tore away a thick mouthful of meat. Blood sprayed them both.
When she stopped struggling, he released her. Her head smashed against the sink on the way down.
Blue, the Chest Thing said.
Following its bidding, he turned to leave—and stopped.
Someone stood in the doorway, staring at him.
It was another Blue, like him. A woman. Normally, he would push past her, but there was something about her.…
Blue! the Chest Thing commanded. It spoke in counterpoint to the woman’s equally insistent Chest Thing. But she remained standing there, as frozen in her tracks as he was.
Her hair streamed across her long black dress. Something familiar. Comfortable. As she stared at him, her mouth moved in half-formed words.
Blue, Blue! both their Chest Things chanted, and their calls were irresistible. It was time to leave, to follow the bidding of the Blue.
The woman grabbed his hand and held it. She searched his face once more before turning to leave.
When she let go of him, he reached out and took her hand again. It felt right.
Since their Chest Things had no further argument against it, the two went on holding hands as they walked into the night.
Chapter 15
PAULA
Paula still felt cold although the laboratory was hot and stuffy. Becky, the beautiful African American woman who helped her find the flip-flops, had suggested the power surges wiped out the HVAC.
Cold and clammy. She’d always expected hell to be hot.
Kelton smiled as he talked to the scientist. It surprised Paula to feel jealous. Kelton carrying a torch for her was a given, and now he was flirting with another woman? And she was flirting back?
It made her want to get back to Jeff all the more.
The young cop wearing the yellow traffic vest approached. He held out a pistol, butt-first. “If we’re all splitting up, you should have this. Do you know how to—”
“I don’t want it.”
“What? Are you sure? I think you should—”
“I said I don’t want it.” She couldn’t explain to him her feelings about guns, the flood of memories of her father posing for militia photos, a Bible in one hand and an assault rifle in the other. “Give it to her instead.”
The young cop sighed and went up to the scientist. “You know how to use this?”
“Pull the trigger and send out a fraction of lead, causing pain. If you’re lucky, death.”
“You’re a strange girl.”
“And I don’t want one.”
Well, at least that was one thing Paula had in common with her.
The cop shook his head and walked away.
Kelton chuckled at this exchange, and Lucy the scientist chuckled back.
Paula turned away so she wouldn’t have to look at them.
Chief Simpson headed toward the exit with a shotgun. “We go now!”
Everyone filed down the short hallway to the exterior door. Those with weapons chambered rounds as they went.
Kelton’s partner, Larry, turned to him before they left the lab. “We’re going to go blow up something alien to stop the dead from rising from their graves.”
“I know.”
“Just had to say it out loud.”
***
Before opening the door, the chief ordered Paula, Kelton, and Lucy to the rear of the group. “We’ll lay down cover fire so you can reach your car.”
Paula only had a few seconds to wonder how strange and uncomfortable it would be to travel with only Kelton and the other woman. She remembered pillow talk with Kelton from way back. What’s your ultimate fantasy? she once asked, and he answered, To be the last man on Earth, protecting beautiful women from Amazon vampires. Well, he’d be getting his wish tonight.
Except that’s not the way it went down.
While the zombies weren’t waiting for them on the other side of the exterior door, they hadn’t moved far off. They milled around the parking lot in clusters—some old, some young, nearly all of them suffering from bloody wounds to their faces and throats.
Larry took aim with his handgun. “Here they come.”
“Move!” the chief said.
More zombies charged out of the shadows like ants erupting from mounds. Where had they all come from? She didn’t remember this many from before. Her flip-flops slapped against her heels as she ran for Kelton’s squad car.
The cops took down a few attackers with gunfire, but it was apparent her group of three would never make it to Kelton’s car alive. The other car Becky and Yellow Vest arrived in was closer. Paula started to head there.
But Chief Simpson had other ideas. He yanked open the side door of the police van. “In here! Everyone!”
Paula changed course and jumped into the van. She felt like she would vomit. Lucy the scientist leapt in behind her, knocking her over.
Once the rest piled in, the chief pulled the door shut with a clunk.
Kelton climbed into the driver’s seat. His partner took the passenger side. Larry cringed from the window as a creature banged on it. “Ah, hell!”
The key was still in the ignition, and Kelton lost no time in cranking it. The engine sputtered and turned over. They were in business.
But as Kelton reached for the gearshift, the wave of blue light they’d been expecting washed over the vehicle. Paula jerked back from the window behind her as the light flowered there. It spread over them. Her heart sped up until she saw white spots.
The engine died.
Kelton turned the key again, but nothing happened. “This is gonna complicate things.”
***
Paula listened to them outside—hissing, moaning through partially decomposed vocal chords, banging on the van—and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look out the windows. She knew it was irrational, but she couldn’t shake the feeling her father was among them. Her parents had been dead three years—her mother of breast cancer, father of cirrhosis of the liver—so they shouldn’t be zombies now. Hadn’t Lucy said only the recently dead were affected?
Even so, she still felt Daddy was out there. That’s why they’d attacked her house. Minutes after she escaped, she had no doubt Daddy shambled through her living room on his skeletal legs, searching for her. He’d fumbled through her library shelves, knocking aside romance novels and How to Save Your Marriage until he found the crumbling family Bible. He would find her, and when did, he would stuff it down her throat.
Paula opened her eyes to see Becky preparing to fire her pistol through the window.
Chief Simpson pulled her hand down. “No, Becky. Bulletproof glass. Ricochets at us.”
So many zombies surrounded the van that Paula couldn’t see anything else. Their blows on the roof and windows gently rocked the vehicle from side to side.
Kelton turned the ignition key again. Nothing. “No go.”
He pulled a police walkie talkie off the console. He turned it on and depressed the red button on its side a few times, but it was as dead as the van. He clipped it to his belt anyway.
Paula understood what he was doing: saving it for later, for when the energy effects wore off. Maybe he was more intelligent than she gave him credit for.
Lucy pointed out the window. “Look!”
A woman in a brown coat stood near a pile of construction debris. She had picked up a cinderblock from the pile and raised it overhead.
The cop who drove the van earlier said, “That’s new.”
Lucy nodded. “They just got smarter.”
“Shit, we can’t stay here.” Kelton tried the ignition again, but nothing happened.
Paula drew in a deep breath and tried not to cry. When they pulled her through the broken window, how would she die? Would Daddy run out of the shadows to finish her off?
<
br /> Kelton’s partner and Yellow Vest seemed to be having a silent conversation. They nodded, and Larry said, “You in?”
“Yep.”
Larry pointed at the lab building. “On the other side of the lab is a large discharge pipe from a storm sewer. Kelton and I once busted up a kegger there. You should be able to use it to get to the school.”
Kelton looked confused. “What the fuck are you thinking?”
“We’ll make a hole,” Yellow Vest said. Paula finally remembered his name from the hurried introductions at the lab. Trevor. “You guys get to the sewer.”
Becky shook her head. “That’s suicide.”
Larry flashed a toothy smile. “If we stay here, we all die.”
“No,” Kelton said.
Chief Simpson patted his hands in the air as if putting out a fire. “No. That’s an order.”
But Paula could see by the look on Larry’s and Trevor’s faces that they were going to do it anyway. Maybe they thought they could survive. She stared at them in disbelief. Of all the macho, stupid things…
But the time for discussion was over. The zombie carrying the cinder block had nearly reached the van. The others parted the way for her. If the scientist was right about their growing intelligence, then they probably knew what was coming.
“You ready?” Trevor said.
Larry nodded yes. “No.”
“No!” the chief said, but they were already opening their doors.
Larry stuck his gun out first, the way you would thrust an umbrella through a car door’s crack before stepping into the rain. He blew the head off an old woman with gums the color of tar. Then the others reached in and grabbed him. They pulled him to the pavement.
Trevor didn’t even get to fire off a shot. A zombie waited for him with a spike of metal rebar. Paula screamed as the zombie lunged forward in one smooth movement and drove the spike through his chest.
She kept screaming as everyone else fired their guns through the open doors. The blasts were dynamite exploding in her ears. Soon, all she could hear was a high-pitched whine as her hearing shut down.
Plan 9- Official Movie Novelization Page 13
