by Jack Wallen
“B-dizz, you better Trek yourself.”
Jamal tossed off one of his favorite nerdisms. The wink that followed finally managed to bring as much of a smile as my face was capable of creating.
“Oh, Jamal, it’s too late. I’ve already wrecked myself.”
Jamal laughed at the inside joke. “Nothing can take down ZeroOneZero. Not Superman, not Magneto, and certainly not the Zero Day Collective. You are their kryptonite, baby.”
“What is ZeroOneZero?” Echo questioned.
Jamal glanced my way, his eyes begging me to let him tell my story. I acquiesced. Who was I to deprive my best friend a moment of joy?
“Fuck!” From the front of the Hummer, Josh shouted. His f-bomb dropped in time for the vehicle to chug to a halt.
“Joshua.” Morgan’s voice pierced the rising tension. The leader of the Zombie Response Team always commanded a certain level of attention when her voice rose above a whisper—especially when her voice carried an accusatory tone. “Please tell me we did not just run out of gas.”
Josh put the Hummer in park and dropped his head to the steering wheel. “That obvious, huh?”
Morgan released a heavy sigh. “Fine. Let’s get the spare cans off the truck and fill the tank.”
The sigh that spilled from Josh’s lips spoke volumes. He mumbled something under his breath. Morgan threw open the passenger door and jumped to the pavement below. Soon after Josh joined her, we could hear the rise and fall of the ensuing argument. After a moment of silence, Morgan peeked her head into the vehicle.
“We’re very much out of gas. Don’t worry, the cavalry will arrive any moment.”
Morgan shut the passenger door, and darkness descended over us once again.
“Is she saying what I think she’s saying?” Jamal’s voice was alive with nervous tension.
“They’re probably calling in the nearest Zombie Response Team to come to the rescue.”
“Awesome,” was all Jamal could come up with.
“Seriously? In which season of Doctor Who is this awesome? It’s near dark, we’re out of gas, and there are millions of zombies roaming the land. It’s only a matter of time before a small pack of the undead gets a whiff of our fresh meat and rambles our way. Once one of them has found our scent, he’ll drag all his friends along for the ride and we’re dead. I don’t know about you, but from my perspective that end game sucks.”
Jamal reached out a kind hand and placed it on my knee. A thread of warmth ran up my thigh and continued on. I felt simultaneously calmed and excited.
“B, we’re riding along with the Zombie Response Team. This is the kind of situation they live for. We have nothing to—”
Before Jamal could finish his sentence, the sound wafted over the area. At first it was only one undead voice. It didn’t take long for that solo note to morph into a chorus.
“Oh my God, they’re coming from everywhere!” My little ninja, Echo’s panic rose instantly. “What are we going to do?”
Before order melted into chaos, we heard Morgan’s unmistakable army-issue footwear banging on top of the Hummer. She was locking and loading herself for the big gun on top of the truck.
“We’re going to do exactly what we need to do—nothing.” The sound of my voice reached out to return Echo’s earlier favor and offer her every ounce of calm I had. She was just short of hyperventilating.
So much for my little ninja.
I was about to remind everyone to plug their ears when Morgan started firing. Joshua’s voice shouted booming cheers up to the roof of the Hummer. The shots and shouts went on for a good twenty minutes. I was afraid to peek my head out for fear an errant undead survivor would grab fistfuls of my hair, drop me to the ground, and bash open my skull. I’d seen the action so many times I could recount it, blow by blow, in my sleep.
“Oh crap,” Joshua shouted. “Morgan, they’re slipping through!”
Before my brain could make sense of Josh’s words, the Hummer began to rock. Through the tinted windows, sour-milk eyes peered through glass and into my soul. The jerking motion of the truck was joined by the all-too-familiar moans.
“Joshua,” Morgan shouted from above, “I’m out of ammo. I need a reload, now!”
Josh banged on the ceiling of the truck. “Ammunition crates are in the back, I can’t get to them.” Joshua turned toward me, his eyes twinkling with near madness. “If you have any ideas, we’re in serious need.”
“Sound.” The single word dropped out of my mouth and fell on deaf minds. Post-Jacob, there was only one thing I could always count on to get me out of an undead situation.
“Joshua, does this Humvee have a PA system?”
Josh looked at me, curiosity arching his eyebrows. I couldn’t believe not one person in the truck had picked up on my thread.
Josh nodded. “Yeah, it does; a damn good one, too. Why? You have a plan?”
“I do. What kind of connection will the system take?”
Josh pointed to an eighth-inch headphone jack connection. A bit outdated, but it’d do.
“Anyone with headphones, I need them now.”
Echo pulled her trusty phones from around her neck. It was a rare occasion to see her without them; they were her comfort, they brought her hope. I hated to do what I was about to do.
“Wait, what are you doing? You can’t—”
Before Echo could complain further, I sliced the wires to remove the plug. Echo’s eyes grew until they nearly overtook her entire face.
“I promise I’ll fix them or we’ll get you another pair. Trust me, this is the only way we’re getting out of this.”
My calming palm patted Echo’s knee. The touch seemed to cool her temper a bit. At times like this, a touch from the living was the only way to humanize a moment.
“I need another pair. Anyone care to…?”
Jamal hesitantly pulled his phones from his jacket pocket.
“You don’t know how much this hurts. I just managed to get these babies broke in.”
“Actually, Jamal, I do know. But the undead mafia is lining up for the buffet of a lifetime and I want to make sure they leave hungry.” Without prompting, the horde insisted itself upon the truck, once again; only this time, the rocking was punctuated by the jarring crunch of fists on metal.
“Jesus, Bethany…hurry!” Echo cried out.
I snipped the end of the headphones, stripped the wires, and connected them to the leads from Echo’s phones.
The laptop slid out of its bag. A part of me wanted to see this play out in slow motion, with a killer soundtrack—but Hollywood had no business in this level of reality. In the end, no network would capitalize on this particular apocalypse.
Or so I hoped. If someone managed to make a buck off the end-times suffering, that someone would pay for their transgression.
I handed one end of the plug to Joshua.
“Plug that in and crank up the volume.”
“To eleven,” Joshua replied. I got the reference. There was no time to explain to the cockeyed stares from the peanut gallery.
I booted up the laptop, plugged the cord in, fired up my audio player, and cranked up the sampled sound of the Obliterator. When the high-pitched, oscillating noise poured from the PA system, I thought my ears would bleed. Josh wasn’t kidding, the Hummer’s PA did go to eleven.
The vehicle stopped tilting. The moans shifted to panic as the zombies fell away and either sped off or dropped to the pavement below to crack their own brains open and silence the pain.
“It worked,” Jamal shouted, as if he’d doubted my plan. He glanced my way and quickly read the look on my face. “I never doubted you for a second.”
Before anything more could be said, Josh opened the driver-side door and jumped out. Seconds later, the back of the Hummer opened and Josh rummaged around until he came up with gold.
“Lock and motherfuckin’ load, my peeps.” Josh grinned at me and closed the door. A brief moment later, the driver-side door reopened and he
climbed back into his seat.
“Morgan’s ready for action. It won’t be long before the nearest ZRT unit arrives with some gas.”
The statement danced around my brain in an out-of-sync step. There was something afoot. I forced myself back a few moments in time to go over what had transpired. Eventually it dawned on me.
“Josh,” I spoke up, my voice edged with caution. “How does the Zombie Response Team know where we are? I didn’t hear you or Morgan give our coordinates.”
A sheepish grin slid across Josh’s face. “Oh yeah, that. Morgan and I are both chipped, so the ZRT HQ knows our location at all times. We realized this was the only way to ensure efficient rescue.”
The realization struck Jamal as quickly as it did me.
“Oh, that’s bad,” Jamal started. “We can’t have that. Those transponders have to be shut down immediately.”
Josh turned his head toward Jamal and opened his mouth to speak. Jamal held up his hand to silence the bear of a man.
“If the ZRT HQ can track you, anyone can track you.”
Joshua seemed to release all the tension that had built up within his system.
“We took that into consideration. So the transponders and receivers all shift channels at programmed intervals. Plus the two can only communicate with devices that have a special encryption key.”
Jamal looked at me and nodded his approval that I may pick up the torch.
“Josh, I could hack that system in five minutes. And I am just one hacker with limited resources. The Zero Day Collective has the world’s only limitless supply of manpower and bandwidth. They’ll find the frequency and when they do, they’ll find us. You need to disable those transponders immediately.”
“Bethany, I promise you, these are secure. We have hackers as well. The IT team worked diligently to make sure this system was as secure and reliable as possible.”
It was Jamal’s turn to pull up a soapbox.
“You may have hackers on staff, but you don’t have Bethany Nitshimi. She is enemy number one when it comes to security. If it exists, she can get to it. But it wouldn’t take her level of skills to break into something as rudimentary as this.”
“Are you saying—?” Joshua’s engines started to rev.
“I’m not saying anything. I just want to make sure our little enclave is as secure and trustworthy as possible. You have with you two of the best hackers on the planet. You might want to consider that any time it comes to tech.”
Joshua glanced between Jamal and me. “Look, I promise you, once help arrives I’ll give you access to my transponder. Whatever you need to do to modify the system, make it Bethany-approved, do it. But only after the ZRT arrives with a full can or two of gas. We get free and clear of this tragedy, and the system is all yours.” Josh stuck out his right hand. “Deal?”
How could I pass up the opportunity to illustrate how pathetic the minds and plans are of most other people on the planet? Thankfully, that thought didn’t escape my lips or I’d be tagged “douchebag” for the rest of my life. I had to stop myself. For the briefest of moments, I felt like I was turning into one of those people. Of all the things the apocalypse could do, I couldn’t allow it to turn me into an elitist. That train of thought would only serve to cut me off from the majority of the remaining thinking population. I had to remain connected to the people. If mankind had any hope for salvation from the Zero Day Collective, I had to always remain a part of those in need of saving.
I finally thrust my hand at Joshua. He nearly crushed the bones in my fingers as we shook. His oversized grin was a perfect counterpoint to his death-inducing grip. As our hands separated, all went to silence and then to hell.
“What happened to the noise?” Jamal’s voice trembled. “B, the noise went away. Funk the silence and bring back the noise.”
A quick glance at the laptop gave me every piece of intel I needed. “No. No, no, no, no! The laptop died. It must not have been fully charged.”
The chorus of moans began anew. Morgan wasted no time before she revved up the armaments. The rhythmic beat of the massive gun was soon punctuated by the wet slop of dead meat hitting the ground.
Jamal grabbed my arm. “Please tell me you have a spare battery.”
The second our eyes made contact, Jamal knew the answer was a post-apocalyptic tragedy. I shook my head to add clarity to the moment.
“AC,” Jamal shouted. “Joshua, does this freighter have a twelve to one hundred and twenty volt AC converter on board?”
The gentle giant stared at Jamal as if he’d been rambling in Cantonese. “I have no idea what you’re—”
“An AC outlet. We need to plug her laptop in to get the Obliterator to work again.”
The Hummer started rocking again. From a distance, a new sound cut through the wall of moans. My stomach dropped to the floor of the truck.
“Bethany.” Echo grabbed my hand as she spoke. “Did you hear that?”
“I did.”
Screamers. There was no doubt they were heading for us.
“Here!” Joshua screamed. “I found an outlet. Hand me the power cord.”
I scrambled to get the cord from my bag. Jamal grabbed the outlet end and handed it over to Joshua as my fingers danced around awkwardly to get the adapter plugged into the laptop. As soon as I saw the green dot on the power brick, I hit the on/off button of the laptop. The screams were closing in.
“Come on, come on!” I sealed my lips and held my breath—waiting for the first sign of life from the laptop. Finally…
“We have BIOS! The boot sequence posted.”
Another round of screams pierced the fragile veil of safety we had. They were close enough that their battle cry shook the glass of the Hummer. Morgan continued firing, zombies continued dropping. It wasn’t enough.
It was never enough.
“Bethany, if those Screamers reach the truck before the Obliterator sings its unholy song, we’re done for.”
I looked at Jamal; shock had to have been smeared across my face.
“You think I don’t know that? I’ve been facing these bastards down for a very long time. I know what they are capable of. There’s nothing I can do to make this laptop boot any faster.”
What I really wanted to do was wrap my arms around Jamal and let him know everything would be fine. There was one problem with that wish—I didn’t know if it would come true. Everything was rotting from the inside out. Every plan, every connection, every hope—it all had gone to shit since Jacob was taken from me; Jacob my lover and now Jacob my baby. If I really dug deep into the viscera of my emotions, I’d discover the truth was…I needed someone to reassure me that everything was going to be fine.
The laptop was still in the boot process, the kernel rushing through its processes. For the first time in my life I hated technology; hated it for the fact that without it, we’d be dead. I wasn’t ready to die. Not now, not when I was unmade, un-whole. Out of nowhere, a song slammed into the core of my memory, the lyrics far too apt.
Awake and lift the blindness from your eyes
Stumble forth in this land of newborn irony
Our lives are past, our deaths ahead
Give rise to question
Give alms to the poor masses
Bring to the blinding, apocalyptic sun
A greeting of need and want
The smash of fist and bone on glass yanked me from my musical nostalgia. The Screamers had arrived. The Hummer thrashed about as if it would rock and roll over and give up the ghost.
“Bethany!” Echo’s fear-induced shriek slashed through the air and assaulted my eardrums.
The laptop bounced out of my grasp and landed on the floor of the truck. I placed my feet down and pressed the palm of my right hand against the ceiling. My left hand snaked down to reach for the precious cargo. I could feel the device on my left foot, but my hand wouldn’t reach. I released my right hand from the ceiling, knowing my balance would be shot to hell, and reached down until my fing
ers grasped the familiar carbon shell of the laptop.
As soon as I had the PC on my lap, the login screen appeared.
“I swear, Jamal, I’m switching to Slackware after this.”
“B, if I weren’t scared for my life I’d crack some serious wise on you for threatening to quit on Ubuntu. But at the moment, there are machines of death and destruction mere feet away and only a sheet of quarter-inch-thick glass keeping them from ripping my neck off my shoulders and sucking my brain from my skull. So you’ll have to excuse me for going lame on you.”
A broken and rotted fist cracked through one of the rear windows of the Hummer. One of the Screamers smashed his head against the now-ruined glass pane and forced his way through the hole. The sound of gnashing teeth and the smell of fetid breath filled the interior of the truck. A thick, glistening string of brown slop fell from the mouth of the zombie and landed on Echo’s shoulder. Her face went immediately pale and her eyes maddening-wide.
“Apology accepted,” I said, as my finger hit the key combination to fire off the Obliterator. The undead symphony immediately returned in full. The Screamer who’d crossed the glass boundary between the living and the dead panicked at the sound of undead-death and flailed about until the glass sliced through the meat of his neck. For reasons I could not explain, Echo turned and dug her fingers into the hair of the zombie as it continued to thrash. The glass bit deeper into its rotten flesh. Once the spinal cord had been severed, the undead bastard dropped lifeless to the ground. The head fell between Echo’s legs and landed on the floorboard of the back seat. Survival immediately kicked in and Echo grabbed the severed head and tossed it through the hole in the glass.
“Don’t mess with me, you undead prick!” Echo shouted after the head.
The remaining members of the horror-fueled horde once again scrambled to get clear of the zombie-crushing sound.
I held my breath, waiting for some other tragic twist of fate to befall our little band of brothers and sisters.
“What do we do now?” Echo’s voice was barely audible over the angry sounds of the Obliterator.
