by Jack Wallen
What I was bearing witness to was a good sign, a very good sign.
“We can’t just think only in the moment. We have to have a plan, one that includes a much larger picture.”
“I understand, Bethany, but if we don’t think in terms of surviving now, we won’t.”
Bethany countered first with a pause to gather her thoughts. “Sam, what I am saying is we have to think survival on a much larger scale. Larger than you, larger than me.”
“Sam,” I had to finally jump in. “Bethany is correct. If we confine our thinking to this small circle there is no hope of us making it through this alive.”
Sam’s hard glare clearly indicated he couldn’t wrap his mind around what I was saying. I had to translate this into terms he could grasp.
“We have two sides to this war – us and them. As we focus on our own, and only our own survival, the enemy continues to grow. Every moment we blind ourselves to the bigger picture, that enemy gains strength.” I paused to let what I had said sink in.
Sam pursed his lips and nodded his head. My explanation seemed to finally make its way into his center of rational thought. Thank God! I was beginning to think that last zombie did more than rattle Sam’s brain.
Sellers walked into the room, turned a chair around, straddled it, and flopped her arms on the table.
“So, what do you suggest we do?” An air of doubt crept out of Courtney.
“What I believe we should do, is put our enemy on the defensive. The last thing they would expect is an attack from us.” Bethany challenged the soldiers, her own strength and resolve taking everyone by surprise.
Before the conclave could continue strategizing the next move in World War Undead, Ronald walked in through the door. “Holy Mother of Skynard, did I miss some epic barbecue?”
Ronald stood in the doorway, a huge backpack over his shoulders, his arms spread out demanding attention. We all ignored the reference to the smoldering zombie meat surrounding the house.
Had the situation not been so dire, we all would have broken out in gales of laughter. Instead, everyone was simply relieved the man was still alive.
“Mission accomplished, Bethany.” A sinewy arm handed Bethany the pack. “You planning on setting up a recording studio or something?”
Bethany opened the bag and peered inside. “Something like that.”
“All right, boys and girls,” Sam stood and clapped his hands together. “We need to close up shop so we can get some rest. I’ll take first watch. Ronald, you’re next, followed by Sellers. Two-hour shifts. Anyone with a firearm, sleep with it by your side. Those without, sleep with someone packing by your side.”
The group stood to go their separate ways. I grabbed Bethany by the arm to hold her back. I had an agenda which must have been chiseled on my face.
“What’s wrong?” Bethany questioned as she gently rocked the sleeping baby Jacob in her arms. The moment might have been the only remaining fragment of humanity left. Everything had all come down to this one moment, the weight of the human race rested entirely on the shoulders of this mother and child. It was the Second Coming of the Virgin Mary and the Messiah. Only this time, should things go wrong, mankind could kiss its ass goodbye.
“Bethany, you understand your survival is our only hope. Jacob is the key to putting an end to the undead nightmare. But…” I paused, knowing the next piece of information would knock Bethany in the gut. “If the ZDC get their hands on Jacob, they will take him apart to make sure every last molecule of his gift is harvested for the second phase of the Great Cleansing.”
Instead of lashing out, Bethany silently pulled Jacob to her breasts and blinked. Tears filled her eyes and with each successive blink another drop rained down onto her reddening cheeks. She lowered herself into a chair, silently blinking and rocking. I waited for a reaction, any reaction, and when none came, I reached out my hand to comfort her. Bethany’s next move took me by surprise. Still without a word, the mother shook her head, denying any comfort.
It was all becoming so clear; she needed no comforting. In the moment of time we just shared, Bethany had hardened not only her heart, but her resolve and her strength. Some other will had just possessed the woman, a will that dared The Zero Day Collective to try and steal her baby.
Bethany stood, patted me on the shoulder, and walked away. There was so much more she needed to know, but I wasn’t about undermine the strength the mother had only just reclaimed by telling her that should The ZDC find her, she would not stand a chance. Let her have this moment. Let her build upon the momentum gathering in her gut.
Chapter 42
ZDC Headquarters
July 6, 2015
This was the moment The Zero Day Collective had been singularly focused upon for the last six months. They had allowed the baby to get away once, that mistake would not be repeated. A legion of the undead had been amassed and would be transported to ground zero – their only objective was to collect the mother, the child, and the traitor and return them.
The holy trinity remade, reborn, remixed.
A select few of the zombie ‘soldiers’ had the same cameras implanted on their skulls as did the first wave of scouts. The cameras would transmit real-time video back to techs at The ZDC and when their quarry was spotted, a low level EMP would be set off to temporarily block the noise within the moaners’ brains – rendering them slightly lucid and able to execute basic commands.
The commands were simple: Return Bethany, Jacob, and Professor Michaels to the drop ships for immediate return to The ZDC HQ. Naturally, the horde was unaware the living soldiers on the drop ships had explicit orders to execute all undead humans once the targets had been acquired.
It was all in the details.
The plan was brilliant in its simplicity, but had little margin for error. The ZDC was exhausting their resources and running out of options and time.
It didn’t help that zombies were driven by chaos in absolute form. Reining in the undead was no easy feat – even for a group with seemingly endless resources. What allowed them to corral the Moaners and Screams was a constant supply of live brains to feed upon.
Innocent men and women, chained inside the drop ship, the cargo door open. The sounds of the living voices quickly drew the undead army inside to dine on skull soup. As the doors to the metallic container closed, the pleas and horrific screams echoed off the walls. Once the hatch sealed, the sounds of doomsday were silenced.
With twenty ships filled and sealed, the fleet was ready to leave the base. It was estimated over two thousand undead soldiers were lifting off. The din of the monsters banging on the walls was barely audible over the whine of the engines.
The endgame was now. The Zero Day was about to finally come to fruition. The Great Cleansing was at hand. Order would soon be restored.
The overseer of the operation sent word to the engineers of the plan that the ships had departed. A quick check of all monitors confirmed video feed was streaming. Night vision had been switched on.
The soldiers were still hungry.
*
“You do understand the gravity of your situation, should this fail. Without that baby the operation cannot succeed and we will have failed.” The new leader of The ZDC stared across the room, her eyes locked on some other moment, her brain on a different trajectory.
“Yes ma’am, we are fully aware of the severity of the situation,” the underling replied, afraid the venomous woman would pull out a pistol and send a bullet through his brain just to make a point. She had been known to do so… and so much worse.
The words had all been spoken before; numerous times in fact. The recently adopted mantra of The ZDC was failure is death. The entirety of the Collective whispered the mantra as if it were a ghost story intended to frighten children into submitting to the whim and will of monster-angry parents. The halls of the new ZDC headquarters hummed with an unnatural, palpable tension. Members passed one another in the hallways, refusing to meet each other’s gaze for fea
r the seed of failure would find purchase on a conscience already stressed with the threat of death. Not one person, under the control of The ZDC, was immune. And as the transport ships left the hangar, any and all workers with a sliver of religious faith spoke a silent prayer.
Dear God in heaven…
Of course, those of the more pragmatic persuasion knew the Great God Chaos was more likely to impose its will than was any biblical God.
As a reminder of the critical nature of the mission, Control piped the streaming feed to every monitor in the building. Every pair of eyes was glued to the unfolding scene.
Our Father, who art…
Chapter 43
Undisclosed Location
July 7, 2015
I woke in a pool of my own cooling sweat. The threads of an impossible nightmare doing everything to pull me back into its Hellish grasp. Within the heart of the dark dream was baby Jacob clumsily walking down a deserted street. Each tenuous, infantile step grew less and less human, until the boy’s movements were violently spasmodic – as if bone could snap any moment. As soon as an arm shot forward, a leg would follow. The walking motion was robotic, but had no logic in its system. The baby was nothing more than a marionette and chaos its puppeteer.
Just as Jacob seemed to find a rhythm to his motion, a zombie appeared and took a bite from his milky-white skin. As soon as the chunk of flesh had been confiscated, the zombie would disappear, only to be replaced by another. This pattern continued on until there was nothing left but a herky-jerky skeleton that finally collapsed to the ground. The bones went up in flames and burned until they were nothing but ash. When an oven-hot wind arose, the ash was scattered. The second the last fleck of ash was gone, everything around began to rot. Trees, buildings, streets all gave way to a sudden, instant entropy. All that was left was my consciousness, trapped inside a body unaware that a foreign evolution had begun. My eyes turned a sour-milk white, my skin sickly translucent. The heart within my breast ceased to beat. The river of blood in my veins ran dry.
When the dreamscape finally paused, my stomach distended until my belly button threatened to pop out. Within seconds of that ridiculous growth, a red rain poured from between my legs. A shock of pain bolted through my spine, freezing my brain. As the pain reached its zenith, where it couldn’t possibly grow any worse, baby Jacob crawled from my loins. Dragging himself out of me, the infant pulled, stretched, and tore at the skin, cartilage, and muscle until he flopped down to the ground. Lying prone and vulnerable, Jacob let out cry and stood to once again perform his break-neck zombie walk.
The pattern wanted to repeat itself, promising to drive me into an abyss of insanity from which I would never escape.
I sat up, as the sweat evaporated and my pulse slowly returned to a near-normal pace. After flipping the sweat-covered pillow over, I finally managed to lay my head back down to hopefully fall back into slumber, avoiding the nightmarish dreamscape. Before my lungs could begin that deep inhalation that always brought on a perfect sleep, a distant thrumming hum danced through the glass of the windows. The sound mimicked a didgeridoo, only slowed down with a shifting pitch. The noise was haunting, but far from threatening. It was an easy assumption to make that the noise was being made by the foundation of the house or a strong wind blowing through a sign creaking on rusty hinges.
Very slowly the sound morphed into a chorus of deep hums, pitching up and down at random moments.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, my conscious decided it was a moment to be investigated. No further thought was necessary for me to exit the bed and the room. When I arrived at the entryway to the house, I was met by Sam, who was about to open the front door.
“You hear it as well?” My question was met with nothing more than a nod.
Sam slowly pulled the door open slightly to allow a clearer, unobstructed path for the sound to reach our ears. The cause of the noise was obvious – only my brain refused to accept what I was hearing. When Sam’s eyes met mine, my mind met reality and I knew, without question, the sound was a mixture of moaning and screaming.
Zombies.
Sam opened the door wide enough to step outside. Against my better judgment, I followed him into the warm, summer night air.
“The noise seems to be coming from everywhere,” I added the all-too obvious conclusion.
“I don’t understand,” Sam muttered to himself as he turned three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. “With as much noise as we are hearing, there should be some signs of movement. I don’t see a damned thing.”
Leamy continued looking around as we were joined by Sellers and Ronald.
“What the fuck, Sam?” Sellers bitched.
“Courtney, I need you to climb to the top of the house and see if you can find out where the noise is coming from,” Sam commanded.
Without a complaint, Sellers was off to find her way to the roof.
“Hells Bells, Sam, there must be hundreds of them,” Ronald added his way-off estimate.
“Actually, more like thousands.” Hesitantly, I corrected the soldier.
Both Sam and Ronald turned to me as if to say ‘Prove it.’
“I know the sounds – intimately. I’ve been studying them long enough to know what they sound like in numbers. Besides, to make a continual noise, at such a high decidable level, would require significant numbers.” I had no proof. Without proof, or the means to reach any sort of scientific conclusion, I had to rely on my gut. So far my gut had been dead on.
“Hundreds, thousands – who gives a shit. Anytime we’re dealing with more than one of those bastards, it’s a chore.” Ronald’s voice grew angry, accompanied by ropes of veins in his neck and face.
“Sam!” Sellers called from the roof. “I got nothing. I can’t see beyond the tree line.”
Sam turned and marched his way back to the house. Both Ronald and I followed him in. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he called for Bethany.
Bethany had begrudgingly agreed to sleep in the attic. Before Sam could bellow again I informed him I would retrieve the woman. I hated to wake her, but the commander had an obvious need and would not give up until that need was fulfilled. I knew that of military types. Persistent.
When I returned with a half-awake Bethany, Sam wasted no time.
“Can you hack the government satellites for images of what’s going on, in real-time, around this area?” Sam was back in commander mode and we were glued to every syllable.
“I can.” Bethany’s reply was met with a get to it nod from Sam.
The hacker extraordinaire sat in front of the laptop and began her beautiful finger dance over the keys. It didn’t take her long, and when she succeeded, her eyes tripled in size and her lips mouthed what might have been the most frightened ‘Oh shit’ I had ever witnessed.
Sam moved to Bethany’s side and glanced at the screen. When he looked up he said simply “We are about to go to war.”
I wasn’t sure if it was fear or a morbid curiosity, but I had to see the view so totally frightening to a woman who had been through the very eye of this horrific needle. What I saw threatened to fold me inside out. On the screen was a bird’s eye view of our location. Coming in, from all sides, completely encircling our house, were the undead. We were the obvious focus of a massive attack.
“Why are they so God-damned interested in us?” Sam pounded his fist on the table.
“It’s Jacob. They want Jacob.” I had already let Bethany in on the dirty little secret, now it was time to inform our leader.
And I told him everything I knew. I expected him to grab the baby and heave him out the door; give The ZDC what they wanted so we could survive. Sam was still military, after all, and our immediate survival was threatened by our having the baby.
I was shocked when he insisted the undead could play a rousing game of hide and go fuck themselves before he’d hand over Jacob. I wasn’t sure if it was Sam’s ever-growing fondness for those in our group, the idea of long-term survival, or just making the life of T
he Collective that much harder. Whatever it was, something had Sam insisting the baby remain under our protection.
“How much time do you think we have before they arrive on our doorstep, Bethany?” From the sound of Sam’s question, he had something up his sleeve.
Our resident hacker took a moment to stare at the monitor, calculations practically flashing across her eyes. A few blinks and she had the answer to the only question that really mattered at the moment.
“An hour, tops. Probably more like thirty to forty-five minutes. That’s the best, most accurate answer I can give.” Bethany was clearly disgusted with the lack of precision in her reply.
Sam immediately took the lead.
“I want to build a ring of fire around the house. It’s the only way we can keep…”
“Sam, it won’t work. First, the time it would take to build a fire to encompass the house would exceed the time we have before the horde arrives. Second, there’s no way we’d be able to build a fire that would last long enough to keep thousands of zombies from reaching us. We need to get away from this house.” Bethany’s tone of voice did not betray her words. She was certain in her thoughts.
“And just how do you suppose we do that?” We’re surrounded,” Sam argued.
Once again, Bethany’s eyes were alight with thought and scheme.
“We did it in Paris, we can do it here.” Bethany confused us all.
“The sewers.”
Two words clarified everything. She had led her group safely around Paris underneath the streets. There was no reason the sewers of a strange city in Pennsylvania couldn’t serve the same purpose.
“Everyone pack up and prepare to go underground,” Sam commanded, no one argued.
Each member of our group set about packing up the necessities to help us survive whatever unknown lay ahead. That unknown was huge and could be our undoing. It was becoming quite apparent we would not just roll over and give up. The human race didn’t stand a chance without us. We knew that. Our responsibility was clear.
