by J. K. Norry
“I’m not okay.” She shook her head. “None of us are.”
The detective smiled, and she wanted to scream at his kindness. Her voice was like her gaunt twitching body, nothing but a slim sad shadow of its former self. She sounded like an animal trying to talk, or like a monster. She sounded like a zombie.
“What’s your name?” Stiles was still being kind.
“My name was Elayna Mallory. My father was a university professor.” She sighed. “Now we are both named destruction, now we are both called murder; now we are both the most monstrous of monsters. We are here to kill all of you that we can, you who we used to be.”
The detective’s smile had fallen. “What makes you feel that way?”
“If I bit you, you would know. If I bit you, that’s how you would feel too.” Elayna looked at him, and the detective saw droplets of blood trickle down her fleshless cheeks like tears.
“I get the feeling you don’t really want to bite me, Elayna.” He tried to smile again. “You don’t seem like the creatures we are hearing news reports about. Even in the lobby, it seemed like you were just trying to get someone’s attention. I watched the recordings. I-”
“Detective Stiles. We’ll take it from here.”
The voice was calm and firm and confident; the detective and the monster that used to be Elayna both turned at the sound.
“Wait, what?” Stiles looked at the man and woman in matching black suits. She wore a burgundy scarf where he wore a dark blue tie, but otherwise they were dressed nearly identically. “Who are you?”
“We are with whatever government agency you feel you should release this young woman to.” The man didn’t smile at all.
“The…bureau?”
“Absolutely.” They both reached into pockets, removed identification. “Feel free to check us out. We’ll wait. Not too long, though. This is a global crisis.”
Stiles released the button, and Elayna didn’t hear anything for nearly a minute. She saw the detective take his phone from his pocket and make a call, and she saw that the call didn’t take long. Then she was straining at the chains again as her nose filled with the irresistible smell of their living flesh and their pumping blood. There was no fear, in either scent.
“She’ll try to bite you,” she heard Stiles warning them. “I don’t think she wants to, but she might still try.”
“We’ve got this, detective,” the woman smiled. The expression looked robotic and forced; it fell as quickly as it had appeared. She closed the door behind her. Stiles listened from the other side of the reinforced glass.
“Miss Mallory, we’re not going to hurt you.” The man was approaching her with a syringe. “You’re not going to hurt us either.”
She lunged at him, and he grabbed her arm. Plunging the needle into one of the exposed veins in her forearm, he emptied the contents of the syringe into her. Almost immediately, Elayna relaxed. She dropped her arms to her sides, looked at each of the agents and the detective through the window. Then she collapsed, unconscious.
Chapter 13
On a private stretch of beach, far from the hustle and bustle of the city and the life that went with it, Rolawndo soaked in the sun and savored the quiet. The only sounds were the soothing rhythmic crashing of waves and the constant happy hum of his own thoughts. He had shut off his phone and stowed it in his bag several days ago, and hadn’t turned it on since. It was not the first time he had done so. Each time it got easier to turn it off, and harder to turn it back on. By the end of the first day he had begun to wonder if he would ever turn it on again. He felt free, and happy, and like he could stay here forever. Meanwhile, deep in a great ancient pyramid…
Todd had been the first to return to her. Mallory showed up a few hours later, Allen the next day. He entered the historic site unchallenged. All he had seen since landing were ramblers and howlers. The plane had been full of them. They had taken over the world.
“Where’s Elayna?” he asked, as soon as he entered the chamber.
“She betrayed us,” Todd growled. “They have her.”
Maya put her hand on his arm. “Don’t speak of your sister like that. We are the beginning of the history that will erase history. If our mission is carried out properly, even we will not be remembered. Elayna is still with us. She has done her part.”
“She betrayed you,” Todd growled again, more quietly. “She disobeyed your orders.”
Maya laughed, and it was the most beautiful sound Allen had ever heard. She had been made just as breathtaking by her change as he had by his, but in an entirely different way. Her curves were more pronounced, her skin glowed with an eternal youthfulness, and her eyes were darker and more beautiful than ever when they were not the color of shifting sand or coded screens. Her hair had grown longer, and she did have a new set of short sharp fangs; otherwise she was simply a more magically stunning version of her former startlingly beautiful self.
“My orders, if that’s what they were, were disregarded by all of you.” Maya smiled at Todd. “You turned an entire airplane full of passengers after only an hour in the air.”
“It worked out.” Todd shrugged.
Maya nodded. “The professor called his friend before the plane landed, to warn him. The professor and Allen both took their first bite right outside of international airports. You all put our cause at risk; and yet it worked out, as you pointed out, in every case.”
“She turned herself in,” Todd snarled. “She’s telling them all of our secrets.”
“Not all of them.” Maya smiled. “We are now ready for phase two. Professor Mallory already saw the wisdom in the upcoming strategy, and we can thank him for arming us. Now it is time to take the other armies, and their political leaders.”
“Maya.” The professor stared at the sand while he spoke, to keep his own wits about him in the hum of the hive mind. “Maybe we could talk to them. You have displayed your might. Perhaps they will listen, perhaps they will be open to change.”
“Do you remember the things you told me before, professor?” Maya’s voice called to him, and he lifted his eyes to drown in hers as she spoke. “Between eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred, the population went from five billion to ten billion. Now we have hit a critical number, over seventy billion a little over a century later. Our planet cannot sustain that. You taught me that. You also taught me the other critical number, how many should be left to both erase history and repopulate.”
“Two to three thousand,” the professor breathed. He shook his head. “You are not the same girl that sat in on my lectures and asked questions after class.”
“True,” Maya smiled. “I still remember. Want to hear another one, equally relevant? You once told me that sixty years ago, over seventy five percent of Americans thought there would be an end to war someday. Now polls show that over ninety percent of the present day version of the same population believe that war is eternal and inevitable. The military budget could have been diverted at any time to health care and reformed education, or simply given back to the people working so hard to earn it. Peace could have been sown these last hundred years, rather than another boring round of wars. Instead new weapons are now at every civilized nation’s fingertips. These weapons, if detonated, will make it very hard to breathe here for some time. If anyone is left to breathe. Don’t you understand?”
Maya looked deep into his eyes, into his soul, and Mallory could not do anything but nod as she went on.
“We’re not just saving the universe from them,” Maya said softly. “We’re saving them from themselves.”
Mallory let his eyes drift to the sand once more.
“What about Elayna?” he asked quietly.
“I was hoping you would take your jet and go recover her.” Maya continued, as he lifted his eyes to hers and smiled. “By now, she will have affected quite a few members of an agency that would have otherwise posed a major problem.”
“Affected?” Allen asked, smiling wickedly.
“B
etween here and the airport, in the airport, and on the planes,” Maya returned his smile. “You were all spreading the seeds of our family already. The old skin flaking off you was turning to dust. People stepped in it, they breathed it, they tracked little trigger particles all over the world. The only people that it has worked on so far are the ones that were sick, or on antidepressants, or addicted to opiates, or freshly dead.”
Maya looked at each of them in turn, lovingly. “You are special, the three of you and your sister. Everywhere you go, you spread the seeds, even now. Anyone you touch, or who touches you, for them it is inevitable. Maybe a day, maybe three…”
“Has it been long enough?” Todd asked.
“Oh yes.” Maya nodded. “We are in the facility. We will be in control soon. I need the professor to go take command and turn Elayna.”
“Turn her?” Mallory frowned.
“Put her in the same room with a living human,” Maya said quietly. “She will feed, and she will turn. We mustn’t lose her again. You must come back to me together. Can you do that, Professor?”
Mallory hesitated.
“I can,” Todd sneered.
“No,” Maya said. “I have a mission for you.”
Mallory kept his eyes on the sand. “It should be me. I’ll do it. Do you need me to arrange jets for the others?”
“I have already arranged something for Allen.” He stood up taller at the sound of his name. “You will be going to Europe. I have a loaded plane waiting for you at the airport.”
“Loaded?” Allen smiled. “With what?”
“Paratroopers.” Maya smiled back. “Many of your brothers and sisters, all equipped with military weapons and parachutes.”
“Will I have to jump out?” Allen made for an amusing sight, standing there with his powerful new body and monstrous face twisted in fear.
“Of course not,” Maya said. “Land wherever you like, once the plane is empty. See all the places you always wanted to see, London and Paris, España and Italia. Then come back to me again.”
“Maya,” Todd growled. He was getting hungry; it was easy to tell. “What about me?”
“I saved you for last because I knew you would not wait out this meeting otherwise.” Maya stepped into his long sinewy arms, kissed the dried blood on his skinless lips. “There is a ship waiting for you at the harbor. It is full of skilled sailors and warriors that have taken up our cause. Would you captain the ship, darling? Would you hunt those that flee the inevitable by sea?”
Todd grinned, and kissed her again. “I haven’t heard anything since you said there is a ship waiting for me at the harbor.”
“Listen now, please,” she smiled. “There is also a submarine that will be flanking you. It is armed even better than your ship. Command them both, use them to scour the ocean. Find everyone. Can you do that?”
Todd couldn’t form words, he was so excited. He nodded, kissed her again, and dashed out of the chamber. A few moments later they heard a scream, and then a howl.
Todd had found a snack. All of them dashed out of the space, even Maya; they converged with inhuman speed on the feast. The man was already turned by the time they started eating, and he pulled them toward him while there were still muscles in his arms to embrace them with.
Chapter 14
Three hundred feet under the city, dozens of stories underground, a special strike force has assembled. There are twelve of them, nine men and three women; under their masks, their faces are as hard as the exoskeleton armor they are wearing. Small cannons are fitted to their wrists, and each suit is equipped with a self-destruct mechanism that can be calibrated by the wearer’s voice to take out everything from a small room to a small block. None of them expect to survive the night, but all of them expect to do some serious damage to their emerging enemy. In the same facility, two stories deeper in the earth…
“Elayna.”
The voice came at her through a fog. It was familiar and different all at once, and she opened her thin new eyelids to see who it was. She had slept, at last, and so much; the sleep continued to cling to her.
“Elayna, sweetie, we have to go.”
There was that voice again, monstrous but gentle. She answered from a place of fog and uncertainty.
“Daddy?”
Mallory smiled. He hadn’t heard that word from her lips in a good many years. “Yes, it’s me.”
Elayna’s memory and consciousness came back with her vision. She cringed, backing away from him on the bunk.
“No,” she moaned. “No, no, no. How are you here? What happened to the others? They’re helping me. They’re making me human again.”
Elayna moved as far away as she could, until she was pressed flat against the stark white wall. Her eyes were not on her father, but on his companion. He was similar to Mallory, in that his skull and ribcage were now armored and covered in muscles but lacking completely in skin. She did not recognize him.
“Who is that?” she asked. “Why are you here?”
Mallory’s pilot took the liberty of answering for them both.
“We’re here to make sure you feed,” he sneered, showing her rows of jagged teeth stained in blood.
Mallory sighed. He reached out and grabbed the pilot’s head with both of his huge taloned hands. He twisted, so fast the skull became a spinning blur, until the head popped off in his hands. The body dropped to the floor, spurting blood from the sudden opening.
The professor turned to Elayna. “Come on, sweetheart. We have to go.” He extended a long sinewed arm to her, withdrawing it when she shrunk further away.
“I’m not eating anybody,” she whimpered.
“I know,” Mallory nodded. “That’s why we have to go.”
“They’ve been helping me,” she said again.
Mallory pulled two bottles of pills from his pockets, shook them noisily. “I know. With these. I got enough for all of us. Let’s go.”
Elayna remained pressed against the wall for another moment, then moved toward him. Her shoulders sagged with relieved exhaustion as she opened her arms to him.
“Don’t touch me,” Mallory said. He backed away sadly. “The first wave is…contagious.”
Elayna nodded. “Of course.” She had heard the news reports, followed by the howling in the halls. She had known that she must be responsible, somehow. She stood her ground.
“Then you have to kill me.”
Mallory laughed. “You won’t infect anyone after you have changed back completely. It should only be a few more days. I am not going to kill you. We need to get you somewhere safe.”
“What about you?”
They heard more howling in the halls, and Mallory tensed.
“We need to go,” he growled.
Elayna clutched her gown about her. “Can I get some clothes?”
“Where are the ones you wore in here?”
Elayna shuddered. “Never mind.”
Most of the ramblers and howlers in the hallway were busy eating or being eaten, and it was hard to tell which were enjoying themselves more. Two of them looked up and came at them, but Mallory ripped their heads off with such amazing speed that none of the others took note. Only Elayna noticed, watching him toss and bat them about like a grown man wrestling with little boys. Part of her was awed, another part horrified.
“You’re so…powerful,” she breathed.
“You would be too, if you changed,” he answered, clearing a path as rapidly as she could walk. “Allen is like me, and Todd…”
Elayna shuddered again. “Please. Don’t tell me.”
“We’re thirty floors down,” he said, eyeing the door clearly marked with stairs. “Can you climb?”
The fresh skin on her face was still thin, and a little transparent. It went white at the thought. Elayna shook her head.
“I ate a little yogurt and kept it down,” she said. “Everything else I threw up.”
Mallory pushed the elevator call button, and said a prayer to whatever deity got
along least with Mother Earth.
Elayna smiled at him while they waited. “I think I might be a vegetarian now, Dad.”
Mallory laughed, and ushered her into the enclosed space. She peeked in first. Two howlers were finishing off a rambler in the far corner, tearing the last strips of flesh from a bloody skeleton. The walls were covered in blood, as were their hands and faces. Elayna pointed when she saw them, and stepped back instead of forward. Mallory was a red streak of rage, and two splashes of blood poured from the open doors followed by three headless corpses. He kicked the heads out as he held the door from closing, and Elayna stepped in.
“Sorry,” he said, as softly as that monstrous thing his voice had become would allow. Elayna bit her lip and shook her head, dismissing the apology as she avoided the slick puddles at her feet. The elevator was swift, and it opened less than a minute later.
Two men and one woman waited on the other side of the open door. They had exoskeleton armor that made them ten times stronger than an abnormally strong man, and the suits were fitted with cannons and self-destruct devices. The woman was smiling; they couldn’t see it behind her mask. Mallory heard it in her voice when she spoke, however; he shoved Elayna back into the steel elevator and pressed a half dozen buttons.
“You two aren’t going anywhere,” the woman said. Her voice was amplified through the suit, and mildly distorted by the amplification. As the doors closed between Mallory and Elayna, the woman trained her right wrist cannon on him. It made a high whirring sound, and three little red dots appeared on the professor’s forehead.
“The zombie revolution is officially over,” she said.
She pressed a button on her wrist.
Chapter 15
Under the earth, in a back yard that had been a back yard through many generations, there was a bomb shelter. Industry had crept over the orchards, and lawn had crept in over the steel trap door; Angela never would have found it if it hadn’t been for her desire to extend the sprinkler system to grow some tomatoes. Now, three years later, a full garden lined the fence; there was a writing and recording studio in the shelter. Angela had played hell getting the futon down there; now she was glad she had powered through the task. It gave her and her husband somewhere to sleep while they waited out the apocalypse. High above the earth, across a wide expanse of ocean…
