I Zombie I [Omnibus Edition]

by Jack Wallen

  We were sharing a charming moment around a fire. I’ve never spent much time doing the things normal members of normal society did. I have to say it’s quaint. I can understand why the romantic at heart would enjoy those precious Hallmark moments, listening to fire crackle and feeling the heat caress their glowing skin. I can also now understand why lovers so often want to have sex in front of the blaze. Fire is astonishingly hypnotic, beautiful in its danger. It beckons the onlooker to reach out and touch it, breathe it in.

  While staring helplessly into the blaze, I realized how perfect a weapon fire could be in the war against the damned. Although fire is easily seduced by chaos, it would still bring a zombie to its smoked and jerked, pork rind-like knees if used carefully.

  ”So, what is that you’re writing, Bethany?” The more relaxed Sam became, the more evident his southern drawl.

  “I’m keeping a journal of everything that’s happened to us.” I didn’t really feel like going into too much detail…and I had no desire to dredge up the past at the moment.

  “Is that so? And what will you do with that journal when it’s done? Gonna publish it?” Sam let loose an odd cackle of a laugh making him seem more hick-ignorant by the moment. “What say we have some chow? I bet it’s been a while since you’ve had a full square.”

  Sam was dead-on. Fear certainly wreaks havoc on the appetite. I couldn’t even remember the last full meal I had. The thought of a ‘full square’ was too good to pass up. Our collective reactions must have given Sam all the answer he needed, as he stood and informed us all he would whip something up in the kitchen.

  When Sam left, the first thing I noticed was the glare I was getting from Jean. When I offered up the international sign for ‘what?’ Jean came to me, sat by my side, and spoke in a very light whisper.

  “Do you trust that man?”

  The simple question bounced around in my head for the briefest of moments, long enough to plant the seeds of conspiracy. I hadn’t had enough time to form much of an opinion of Sam – especially one couched in deceit.

  “Don’t you think this is all a little too convenient?” Jean prodded. Maybe it was a cultural more that was leading Jean to such conclusions.

  To be honest, I had only been thinking it fortunate. But I am always willing to entertain the idea of foul play, especially when my very life was at stake.

  “Think about this, Bethany, a very American man resides in a very French home, alone, happy as a lark even though the world and all of its structure has collapsed. Not only that, but he’s willing to take in perfect strangers.” Jean’s point was incredibly valid, almost too much so.

  I can’t believe all those obvious clues were lost on me. This endgame has gone to my head, taking me out of my game.

  “What do we do?” I said in a near-panicked whisper.

  “Isn’t that your job? You’re the social engineer. I’m just a doctor.” I wasn’t sure if Jean was joking or not. His tone of voice would seem to imply the latter.

  I had a decision to make – one that clashed with my very survival instincts. Should we stay or should we go? We had shelter and the promise of food within the walls of this home. Outside, we had nothing but life-threatening cold, hunger, and the promise of zombification. But anytime you look beyond the surface, problems arise. Here we had the possibility of a military-like conspiracy. I didn’t and couldn’t trust anyone. What we had was far too important, and numerous people were out to either take from us or destroy what might be the only hope for the survival of the human race.

  I quickly scanned the room for something, anything, that might give us a bit of leverage. Finally my eyes spied a Glock almost completely hidden on a desk. I silently stood, walked to the desk, and slid the gun into the backside of my pants.

  “Michelle, we’re leaving,” I whispered.

  “What? Why? We can’t!” Her shocked reply took me off guard.

  Before I could offer up any explanation, our host spoke from the other room. “I hope you like a good meatloaf. It was already in the oven before you arrived and it’s almost ready.”

  “I’ll explain later. We have to go now.” I grabbed her attention by grasping her wrist and making sure she made eye contact with me. Michelle had to know the severity of the situation without me having to go into great detail at the moment.

  “Couldn’t we just have one meal first?” The look on the poor girl’s face made me want to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Michelle, but we have to…” I pulled her up to try to get her motivated enough to go. I didn’t get far.

  “Going somewhere?”

  As much as I wanted to go, the last thing we needed was to arouse any suspicion. We needed to get out, but do so without Sam knowing. So, we’ll have a meal and then wait until our ‘host’ retires to bed. Once the lights are out, we can sneak away under the cover of the pitch black sky.

  Besides, Michelle was right, a meal would do us all a lot of good.

  I blew off Sam’s question, hoping to distract him from the possible coup going on under his nose.

  “So, Sam, what brought you to France?” A little distracting conversation would draw everything away from any possible suspicion. When I didn’t receive a reply right away my brain began drawing conclusions I didn’t want it to draw. Those conclusions included Sam stepping out of the kitchen with a shotgun ready to bring an end to my personal nightmare. A fraction of my brain almost welcomed it.

  Sam finally stepped back into the room, carrying a sizable pan resting on his oven-mitted hands. Nestled in the pan was the loafiest chunk of meat I had seen in a very long time. Although meatloaf was about the last entree I would ever hope to see grace a menu, the smell was overpoweringly incredible.

  “Believe it or not, I was brought over to be a chef.” Sam sat the meatloaf on the dining room table and flashed a wicked smile our way.

  A chef? Serving meatloaf in France? I am calling serious shenanigans on that.

  “Oh that smells fantastic!” Michelle leaped to her feet and was instantly hovering over the dish.

  “Please, help yourself. I ate as I was preparing, so it’s all yours.” Sam stood back, far too stiff and straight for a chef.

  Something was amiss. A too-convenient survivor, placed along a flight path chosen by the enemy, now serving us…

  “Michelle!” My yelp startled the poor girl before she dined on what probably would have been her last meal.

  “Sam, we can’t eat without you. Please, join us. Or at least have a taste of your beautiful loaf. How are we to know if your work is acceptable if it doesn’t pass over the taste buds of a real chef?” It was the best I had on the spot. But judging from the look on Sam’s face, I could with near certainty consider his bluff called.

  Without waiting I pulled out the Glock and directed the nose in the direct line of our host.

  “What is this about?” Sam played it as cool and together as he could. It was obvious he was fiercely hiding a truth that could end my life.

  “I think you know what this is about Sam, if that’s even your real name.” Although the Glock spoke far louder than my voice, it was my big reveal that caught him off guard. I continued. “Why don’t you do us all a big favor and sample your cuisine for us. Do it and live, and we’ll all sit down and have a wonderful, family-style meal together. Do it and die and, well, you know the rest.”

  There was something best said about the power a loaded gun can give a woman. Without this iron in my hand every word I spoke would have been lost. Instead, Sam’s attention was rapt.

  Sam’s silence was every bit of answer I needed to continue on. Guilty as fucking charged. And now, for some real answers.

  “Bethany,” Michelle’s voice was laced with the vibrato of fear. “What’s going on?”

  “Sam, would you like to fill my friend in on your little secret, or should I?”

  Again with the silent treatment. This regulation, government issue jackass was starting to wear on my nerves.

  “He’s part
of the group trying to stop us from finding the cure. I’m guessing they have agents scattered all over the area waiting for us to stop by in need of food or shelter. Their orders were probably to bring us in or take us down. What do you say, Sam? Am I good or what?”

  “Put the fucking gun down!” Sam spit the words out before he took a dive for me.

  Before Sam could reach me, I pulled off a shot, intentionally missing the newfound enemy. My second shot, however, rendered Sam’s knee pretty much useless. Sam screamed as he hit the floor, blood quickly pooling around his ruined joint.

  The son of a bitch had it coming. Sam made a lunge at me with obvious intent to harm or incapacitate. My first shot, no more than a badly aimed warning, should have been enough to stop him in his tracks. But when Sam didn’t even so much as flinch when the warning shot was fired, a second, more direct bullet was necessary. No matter how tough a man is, you take out his knee and he’ll fall to the ground like a whimpering baby.

  But more than anything, that second shot was used to prove a point. I needed this man to know just how serious I was. Sam has information that could lead us to ZDC. It finally dawned on me, somewhere in that moment between gunshots, that we couldn’t save the human race if we were constantly running from an unknown variable. We must make that unknown a known, turn the tables, shift the balance of power. And to do that we must know what we were up against – who, what, and where. Our only hope for finding the answers to those questions lie in the man writhing in pain on the ground, possibly bleeding to death.

  It had to be obvious I was pulling this plan out of my ass. Improvisation, however, could be exactly the advantage we needed. This group we were up against was a collective of politicians and businessmen. The red tape and planning committees alone would prevent them from thinking on their feet.

  A familiar roaring sound rattled the windows.

  One of these days fate and I are going to have a one-on-one.

  I had a plan and that plan did not include yet another attack of the living dead. We had to get out of the house, out of the area, and locate the Zero Day Collective. There was one glaring issue: In order to get beyond a horde of zombies – especially screamers – we had to be mobile. With a blown knee, Sam didn’t stand a chance. Hobbled, Sam was either dead weight or, more aptly, just dead.

  “Sam, you have to tell me where the group is located.”

  “No chance.”

  “Look, I realize you think you’re doing your duty, serving your country, and all the other patriotic dogma that goes along with being military. But trust me, what you are doing is counter to everything the military and our country stands for. I don’t have time to explain everything to you, but I can say this – we have a vaccine for the virus. During our work we uncovered a plot, set in motion by that group, to thin the world’s population. That alone might not sway you, but knowing this group furthered research started by Adolph Hitler and Josef Mengele should ignite some righteous fire under your motivation.” That was all I had. If the Nazi card didn’t play out, there was no way we would get Sam to talk.

  The distant sounds of screamers, crashes, and shattering glass reminded us all of the danger we were facing.

  “Bethany, we’re running out of time.” Jean was not trying to state the obvious, he was trying to pull me away before it was far too late.

  “Come on, Sam, your duty to that group ended the moment they began serving the ghost of the Third Reich,” I said, continuing to hammer home the Nazi angle.

  Sam looked up at me. I could see the consideration cross his half-opened eyes. He was starting to understand the gravity of his own personal problem. He was bleeding out.

  “They have taken over the UN Building in New York,” Sam relented. “Please, let me explain before you decide to send another bullet through a more critical target.”

  I decided to hear the man out.

  “They dumped me here with the orders to eliminate you and your friends. And then they left me. I had to watch their fucking undead army plow through the town, devouring every living human around. After the bastards decided I had lost my chance to procure you, they sent the fucking monsters in to take me down. I guess they assumed I had become nothing more than a liability. I know it’s hard to believe, but I want those fuckers dead as much as you.”

  I gave Jean the go-ahead to begin administering first aid to the bleeding man. But before Jean could get to his knees, the windows in the front of the house were shattered.

  “I think we have visitors!” Michelle cried out.

  “In that closet, I have plenty of high-powered weapons,” Sam pointed.

  When I opened the closet, my jaw bottomed out. Sam was obviously preparing for Zombiegeddon. He had just about every form of serious, military-grade, hand-held weapon I had ever seen or imagined. I randomly grabbed weapons. It seemed to me it really didn’t matter which I chose, all of them would blow away a small town if fired properly.

  “I don’t know if I can shoot a weapon like this!” Michelle yelped as I handed her a rifle.

  “Michelle, just point it and pull the trigger. Chaos will do the rest.”

  “Seriously, I don’t want to do this,” Michelle argued, as if she had a choice.

  It didn’t take long for the complaints to stop. Before I could convince Michelle to take up arms and defend the shit out of our little fort, one of the bastard zombies managed to get through the window and take her down. With the weapons we each had in hand, it would have been impossible to get off a clean enough single shot to get the zombie off Michelle.

  “Bethany! Help me!” Michelle was screaming loud enough to wake the undead.

  With the butt of the machine gun in my hands I started beating the zombie upside the head, hoping to knock the thing off of the hysterical girl. I honestly don’t know why I thought that might work. It didn’t.

  I was afraid to pull off a round from the machine gun this close to Michelle, out of fear of making her collateral damage. Desperation began to take control of my brain. Michelle was short on time and that zombie was long on patience.

  I picked up a chair and made to swing it at the thing’s head when a single shot was heard. The zombie dropped to the ground, a clean hole in its head. I turned around to find the shooter and, across the room on the floor, still being attended to by Jean, was Sam, holding a still warm pistol.

  “You can thank me by stopping the rest of those sons of bitches,” Sam smiled and winked.

  Michelle continued writhing on the floor, as if the festering bag of pus was still on top of her, her screams filling the house with a siren call for more monsters.

  “Michelle! Michelle, it’s okay, the thing’s dead.” I ran to her side.

  “My head!” the poor thing cried.

  “It’s okay, you’re okay.”

  Michelle looked at me, with swollen eyes, tears rushing down her cheeks to meet the floor. “No it’s not. It’s never going to be okay. We’re going to die. I can’t do this anymore.”

  She spoke the words my brain had thought day in and day out, since this hellish scenario began. But I refused to give those thoughts credence. I wanted to pull her up, take her hand, and walk her out into the dark, night air, and let whatever wants us have us.

  “Bethany, there are more coming. We have to do this now!” Jean’s voice pulled me out of the vicious loop my brain was falling into.

  I realized I was needed. Even though I was not a good shot, if I fired the damn thing enough, an undead target or two would go down. I turned to Michelle to give her some reassurance.

  “Michelle, just stay here. Keep this gun in your hand, in case you need it. I’m going to make sure you’re safe.”

  I pulled away from the sobbing woman and went to the front of the house. When I pushed the end of my boomstick through the already broken glass of the window, I got a good look at what we were up against.

  “Oh my God…” Jean’s voice trailed off into the ether.

  “Just shoot, Jean. Just shoot.�
� I did my best to assure Jean what he had to do. It worked. He turned to face the window and started firing as if his life depended upon it. Which it did.

  I matched his method. Squeezing the trigger of my machine of death, I let loose a hailstorm of bullets into the oncoming weapons of undead destruction. The only way to bring them down was to hit them square in the head, which I was not doing such a good job of. It did dawn on me that enough bullets could rip off the limbs of the things, which would render them ineffective and immobile. With that in mind, the tip of my gun began waving around like a conductor’s baton.

  “Bethany!” Sam called out, “You’re going to need these.”

  I turned to Sam, who was offering up more weapons – five of them to be exact.

  “Fire grenades. Just what the doctor ordered,” Sam said with a wicked grin. “Just pull that pin and lob it into a crowd.”

  I did just that. Fire. Perfect in its chemistry, elegant in its simplicity, amazing in its ability to wipe out masses of zombies. It took a little longer than I had expected for the things to go down, but once they caught fire it seemed their senses went haywire. The things could no longer hone in on their targets, so they just started pointlessly ambling about, bumping into one another, falling, turning around. It was like a blooper reel from an undead Three Stooges film. Eventually the fuckers went down, their burning carcasses smelling of a barbeque gone horribly wrong.

  Ah fire, you are so my best friend now. Friend me. Tweet me. BFFs.

  After things quieted down, I turned my attention to Michelle. The poor dear had just been through more horror in thirty seconds than most have in a lifetime. Thinking back to that moment made me realize how vulnerable the girl was. That thought reminded me of the vaccination…and how it had actually (and perfectly) prevented infection in me. Jean had injected me with blood we knew without a doubt was profoundly infected, and here I am, still very much alive, still very much not craving brains or hearing horrible noises.

  The conclusion here was fairly obvious: if we were to make it back to the States safely and take down the ZDC, we were all going to have to be vaccinated. With moaners and screamers on every corner of every street, keeping us safe from Mengele’s evil touch was the only way to protect us from succumbing to our own inner zombie.