I Zombie I [Omnibus Edition]

by Jack Wallen

  Zander and Gunther went off, happy to have something to focus on. Without having to watch Zander’s every move, I was able to concentrate my attention on some fairly immediate needs, the first of which was to check the server, email and, of course, a little Zombie Radio.

  “…certainly was not expected. It seems I have my very own stalker. A living, breathing stalker. I guess that beats a stalker of the dead, brain-eating variety. Well, Lilly, I hate to say this, but a thousand miles and a million zombies separate us. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. Next caller. John from Suffolk…all the way from Merry Old England. Tell me John from Suffolk, has the Queen been infected? Or can you still chant a rousing ‘Long live our noble Queen’?”

  “Well, I do believe she is quite safe in Buckingham. But no one really knows since our news has blacked out. No radio, no telly…we have the internet and that’s about it.”

  “You know what they say John, if it’s on the internet it must be true. So, let’s see what our best friend has to say about the Merry ol’ Queen. God save our gracious Queen, long live our noble Queen…well it looks like no news is no news good, Sir John. So, whatcha got for my listeners?”

  “I wanted to pass along a message to any survivors in England. For some reason Suffolk hasn’t attracted the monsters –”

  “Oh God, Johnny boy, silence yourself. If your town is safe, you keep it that way. Hide yourself and don’t tell anyone. You start attracting attention and the next thing you know, you’re got a thousand zombies tearing down your walls. Now is the time to be selfish. You might love thy neighbor, but don’t invite them in your house.”

  “That’s not a very Christian thing to do.”

  “Oh please, John, do you really think the Christian Way is relevant now? Hell has been cast upon the Earth! The bad guys won. Evil is the new good, Johnny boy.”

  “I can’t believe you are espousing that we ignore the pleas of help and turn our backs on those in need.”

  “What I am saying, my dear man, is that order has gone to shit. The planet has embraced chaos and if you dream of surviving you have to place your own safety above all others. After all, if you can’t save yourself, how can you save anyone else? This is all so inspiring. Talk of the Queen and saving ourselves. I believe there’s a song in there somewhere. Of course! ‘Save Me’ by Queen.”

  I hated to agree with the DJ, but the world has finally reached that cataclysmic point where the phrase ‘every man for himself’ would probably wind up being the one true credo. It made me sick to my stomach to think the post-apocalypse was upon us. Mad Max has been made real. Who knows? It could come down to a bout of hand-to-hand combat to decide the true ruler of the world – the undead or the unliving.

  The powerful voice of Freddy Mercury was interrupted by my phone buzzing. It was Gunther insisting I come up to the roof. There was an underlying tone in his voice I didn’t want to even acknowledge.

  When I arrived on the roof, both Gunther and Zander were staring out to the streets below. When my eyes caught sight of what Gunther wanted me to see, the only possible way to sum up the situation was to say we were undeniably fucked. Within the span of less than twelve hours, the streets surrounding the building had gone from a small gathering to a Zombie Block Party that would shame Times Square on any given New Year’s Eve. All of a sudden the situation looked very much like a zombie horror flick and we were the unfortunate stars of the story.

  From zero to chaos in the blink of an eye.

  It was a lyric to a song by a band whose lead singer I used to date. It was a short-lived and incredibly hot year-long seduction that nearly landed me in jail with a heroine problem. Fortunately, the better part of my brain kicked in before things could take a turn for the ‘I just fucked my life up the ass.’ But that, of course, is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that the building now looked like ground zero for the end of the world.

  “What are we going to do?” My voice was nothing more than a hoarse whisper.

  “I would say, the only thing we can do is wait and hope the crowd disperses,” Zander said. His voice was caught by the chill wind and carried over to me as he leaned over the ledge of the building to get a better view. “Looks like they haven’t discovered the doors yet.”

  That ‘yet’ lingered, a foreshadowing menace to our situation.

  “We certainly do not have enough ammunition to take out an entire league of the damned,” Gunther said, adding his own flavor of menace to the discussion.

  The three of us stood there, looking over the ledge of the building, when a chorus of roars disturbed the silence.

  “If we wait long enough the screamers will thin out the horde on their own. We’ll be left with nothing but a few hundred to deal with.” Even as the words seeped out of my mouth I knew that was of no consequence. A hundred screamers might as well be a million moaners. Either way, we’re dead.

  “As long as those things can’t get into this building, we’re okay. Eventually they’ll move on or die off, either way we win the game of wait and see and things should work out in our favor,” Zander said matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen enough, I’m heading back inside.” Zander left the roof, leaving Gunther and me alone.

  In silence, I stared down at the masses tromping around in the ankle-high ash that stood as a macabre reminder of what set off this shit storm. The moaners and screamers had yet to go ‘Jets and Sharks’ on one another, but given enough time they would. I’ve seen it enough to know the two cannot possibly co-exist. The screamers will go off and begin ripping the moaners into nothing more than gore pudding. Blood and entrails will flood the streets. Moaners will attempt to overpower the screamers with sheer numbers, but it won’t work. The sounds of screaming, flesh tearing, bones cracking, and gore slapping on the pavement will be enough to turn the hardest of stomachs into a bile smoothie.

  And our little group is right in the middle of the fray. If we so much as make a peep loud enough to be heard outside of this building, we’re dead. The horde will tear down the very walls to silence the sound inside their heads.

  “Bethany,” Gunther’s soft voice pulled me out of my inner monologue, “I don’t know how much we can trust that man.”

  “Very little,” I replied honestly. I withheld from Gunther the information I had for fear he’d pull a gun on Zander and splash his brains onto a wall. The last thing we needed was noise as loud as a gunshot to help gain the attention of the undead masses. “Come on. Let’s get back inside before one of us decides to join the horde and does a swan dive from this roof.”

  Gunther looked sharply at me.

  “Oh come now, don’t tell me the thought of giving up and joining the winning team hasn’t crossed your mind,” I said, mostly joking.

  Mostly.

  Gunther just stared at me in disbelief. Just as I was about to reassure the man I was honestly joking, a scream ripped through the dull-gray sky. The sound was like nothing I had heard before; as if every scream below had belched forth, in unison, a battle cry to begin the final war. There was no way to ascertain the point of origin because it sounded as if it came from three hundred and sixty degrees, and maybe even multidimensional planes.

  Whatever it was, and wherever it came from, it had one certain effect: it scared the hell out of us both. Why that is significant is simple: we had thought to have seen, heard, felt, tasted, and experienced every horror that remained on the planet. That sound, that unholy sound, was new.

  “We had best get back inside,” Gunther said. We fled the roof, making sure to close the exit up tight. Although I was fairly certain the undead hadn’t evolved into climbers, there was no need to be too cavalier with our safety.

  We walked to the elevator in complete silence. I, for one, was afraid to speak a word for fear I would break down into a blubbering, slobbering mess of tears. And I had a feeling Gunther was afraid of looking weak. It wasn’t until the elevator chimed our floor that either of us spoke.

  “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”r />
  “It seems to be, yes,” Gunther said, confirming my fears.

  But how? How could the apocalypse get any worse? How could a world now populated with the undead possibly evolve into something worse? It just didn’t seem feasible.

  Little did I know, but when we finally reached our room, I received first-hand knowledge of just how much worse everything could get.

  Jean met me at the door with a voice I could only describe as repressed fear. “Susan is gone,”

  “What do you mean?”

  If Jean was hoping to keep anything from me, his eyes completely betrayed him. It was obvious something had happened to Susan – something far south of good.

  “She…I don’t know how to say this…she evolved, right in front of my eyes. She started screaming about the noise and then began beating her head against the wall. It was only a matter of seconds before she changed. She grew right in front of me. Her musculature expanded, her skin became nearly translucent…she seemed to instantly fill with rage. After the evolution was complete she took off. I have no idea which direction she went. Bethany, I am so sorry.” Jean’s voice clinched to a calm I could not personally find.

  “Where did she go? Why didn’t you stop her?” I said, leaping from peace to panic within a nanosecond.

  It was obvious why no one stopped her – they were afraid. Prior to this moment, Susan was nothing more than a little girl. Now? Now that sweet, innocent ward I made a promise to protect was a tiny fragment of Hell loosed upon the Earth. And whatever Susan had become, she had but one goal, one predilection – our brains. And, somewhere in this building, that little hellion is waiting to attack and kill.

  My brain and my heart froze, but my feet quickly went into action and carried my body out the door. I had to find Susan. The second I hit the hallway my lungs yanked in a gulp of air to shout out my little zombie’s name. Thankfully my brain unfroze and helped me realize noise might possibly attract some very unwanted attention. So, I took off in silence. I found nothing. I searched every floor, only to uncover an endless nothing. No Susan. How she could have managed to hide herself away so well, I have no idea, but when I returned to the room, it was apparent to our remaining crew that I had failed to find her.

  Gunther, bless his heart, decided he needed to make a pilgrimage of his own to try to locate our ward. He must have read the despair lining my face.

  For some strange reason, maybe it was disassociation, my mind focused into a single point. Without saying a word, I went to the PC that was running the second crack to see if any progress had been made. The crack had succeeded. Sitting in front of me was a terminal window handing me global access to the CDC network. All I had to do now was find this magical key Doctor Godwin spoke of.

  “Bethany, what are you doing?” Jean, predictably, questioned my actions.

  “A ghost told me of a possible cure for the virus hidden within the CDC network,” I said, all business now.

  “Ghost? What ghost?” Jean placed his hand on mine to stop me from working. I wanted to be pissed off, but knew the gesture was out of concern. I was avoiding the search for Susan by returning to my computer. Jean knew something inside of me was not right.

  “I was sent a video of Dr. Godwin. In the video he confessed he created a back door into the virus and that back door was in the CDC.” I allowed my resolve to melt the tiniest bit.

  “Back door? I don’t understand.”

  I had to explain to Jean that, to a programmer or hacker, a back door is a secretive means of entering a system or program that a designer will add as a means to get into his work should something go wrong. Dr. Godwin had created such an entryway into his virus, but didn’t want those that funded his work to know about it.

  After my explanation, Jean nodded his approval and removed his hand from mine. He knew what I was doing was twofold: I was keeping my mind and heart from spiraling into an abyss from the loss of Susan, and I was focusing on recovering our lost urchin.

  So, with the distant sounds of our lost Susan screeching in the background, I began a desperate search for this back door. At first I took the logical route and scraped around the file systems of the various PCs on the network. Of course nothing revealed itself to me. My next move was to search for hidden files across the entire network. Of course, given the nature of the network I was on, there were plenty of hidden files to find. That search also led to no success. It wasn’t until I recalled the exact words of Dr. Godwin – the root key – that I realized what he had done. The authentication method for entry into the network was an encrypted key pair. The ‘root key’ or the primary authentication key, could contain a message. All I had to do was decrypt that key to view the hidden message. That task was made simple since I had already cracked into the network and my cracking tool handily stored the authentication password. After I pulled the correct password from the tool and ran the decryption, I was greeted with the hidden message stored by Godwin.

  “Jean!” My voice rang inside the small room. “I found it!”

  “What is it?” Jean was instantly back by my side.

  “Does this mean anything to you?” I pointed to the message.

  “Of course. It’s the necessary ratio and type of rabies vaccination. I’ve been guessing at that number and type all along. I had the type right, but my ratio was way off. With these numbers I can synthesize the cure – given this is, in fact, a true vaccine.

  Jean and I stared at each other for the briefest of moments. Not a word was spoken, but we both knew exactly what the next move was. Jean nodded and went to work. He would mix the vaccination and administer it to Mikka, and would know fairly soon if the vaccination worked. Would the ghost in the shell save the world? Could the man who tipped evolution upside down right his wrong from the grave? Godwin will never gain posthumous forgiveness, but I will certainly say a silent thank you for the brief moment of humanity the man displayed, although I wonder if that back door was less humanity and more a play to save his own ass. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter why at this point; we have what we believe to be the real vaccination, which is about as big a win as we could score at the moment.

  “Bethany,” Jean said secretively, “I believe we should test this vaccination on an uninfected subject.”

  I assumed, by uninfected, Jean meant one of us.

  “That is the nature of a vaccination,” he explained. “It is mean to prevent, not cure. What I gave Mikka will most likely not rid him of the damage that has been done. It might lesson the effects and prevent further damage, but what is done to that young man is done.”

  Of course the implications of what Jean had just said did not fall on deaf ears. My little zombie, terrorizing the empty halls of our current hideaway, seemed to now be without hope. That would not prevent me from capturing the girl and administering the serum. We had to at least try. Giving up at this point would be like spitting Jacob’s grave. I will do no such thing.

  “Who do you suggest we use as our guinea pig?” I was sure Jean could sense the sarcasm in my voice as I laid it on extra thick.

  Just as Jean was about to answer my snarky question, Gunther burst into the room. “We have a problem.” Judging from the look on his face, said problem was serious.

  “The noise Susan is making is starting to attract some most unwanted attention,” Gunther said, breathing hard as if he were afraid. In the weeks I have known the man, the one thing I haven’t seen from him was fear.

  This was bad.

  With the door to our room standing open, it was easy to hear Susan’s screeching echoing off the slate and marble of the building. The echo multiplied the sound so it seemed a dozen or so screamers were running loose inside the building. The inhuman noise started to echo inside my head. The effect tied my stomach and my nerves into knots no Boy Scout could ever undo.

  “What do we do?” Michelle said, her voice coming out of nowhere.

  “We have to silence that lamb,” Zander’s spoken reference added an extra layer of horror we
didn’t need or want.

  “What do you mean? I’m sorry, I realize what that girl is right now, but we will not kill her,” I said, standing rigid against what Zander proposed.

  “I understand you made some sort of promise to your dead lover, but the reality of the situation is that little girl is not a little girl anymore – she’s a screamer and screamers are dangerous. And what’s worse is all that noise she is making is attracting the attention of hundreds or maybe thousands more fucking zombies. When those monsters figure out where the noise is coming from and they break down the doors to this building, that’s it for us. So, to put it as simply as I can, if we don’t take out that little zombie of yours, the undead horde will take us out. Now, what’s your preference?” Zander made his case and made it very clearly.

  “We don’t have to kill her,” Jean insisted. “I can sedate her, which would also allow me to try the vaccine on an evolved state.”

  We all stood, staring at one another, the echoing sound of Susan’s screams still ringing loud and clear. We knew time was very limited, so we had to act fast.

  “It won’t be easy, but we can do it. We lead her into a room, pin her down, and inject her with a combination of vaccine and sedative. We’ve done it before with bigger, stronger zombies, we can do it again.”

  Once again the silence was punctuated with Susan’s screeching.

  As predicted, Gunther was the first to volunteer. “You can count me in.”

  The plan was rough, but time necessitated quick action, so our barely thought-out scheme would have to do. I would lure Susan into a room, Gunther would tackle her, and Jean would give her the injection. Jean assured us the sedative would work quickly. At least, he said, it would on a human. He could up the dosage but he was afraid of doing even more damage to Susan’s brain or heart. We agreed it would be safest just to hold her down until she was out.