I Zombie I [Omnibus Edition]

by Jack Wallen

  “We wait,” was my simple reply.

  Joshua released a heavy sigh. “It’s going to be a long-ass wait if we have to listen to this same song on repeat. Don’t you have any Avenged Sevenfold? Makes me bash my head every time.” Josh braved a smile and a wink.

  The passenger door opened and Morgan lowered herself to the seat.

  “Wow. That was crazy.” She smiled at Josh. “How long before the crew arrives with gas?”

  “Shouldn’t be long now. Just sit back and enjoy the show.”

  An odd quiet befell the inside of the Hummer as we watched the theatre of the macabre play out on the streets with no names. We were lost in so many ways.

  chapter 2 | a dark and twisted plan

  The radio crackled to life, breaking a too-long silence. The commander stood from behind his desk and glided to the communications station to grab the handset.

  “This is Faddig.”

  “Sir.” The voice belonged to Thomas Webber, lead biologist for the Zero Day Collective. “I have something you’ll want to see. Yes, you will definitely want to see this. Yes.”

  Faddig rolled his eyes. It seemed every time the biologists or chemists rearranged a few molecules they felt it necessary for their commander to come to them immediately.

  “I don’t really—”

  “Sir, please pardon this insubordination, but get down here now. Without a doubt, you need to be in this location at this precious moment. Now.”

  With that, the radio went silent.

  Faddig huffed, straightened his tie, and opened the door to his office. The cooler air danced across his caramel skin like a familiar lover. He welcomed it. The stifling heat of his office never failed to lull him into a false sense of comfort he once felt in his homeland.

  “They have such horrible timing,” Faddig sighed.

  Since the Zero Day Collective had managed to get their hands on baby Jacob, it was a twenty-four seven circus of experiments, meetings, security threats, and monstrous evolutionary changes for the undead.

  They had the cure in their hands. The only way they could ensure the Great Cleansing succeeded was to make sure the Mengele Virus evolved in such a way that any attempt at a cure would never succeed. It was all such dark, necessary work—work that had become the single greatest challenge the ZDC had ever faced. Somehow, the blood flowing through the child was able to predictively evolve as if it knew exactly what the Zero Day biologists would do to alter the virus, as if the very chemistry within Jacob had a sentience of its own. But how? That was the sixty-four million dollar question that would, inevitably, have no worth should the Great Cleansing fail.

  As Faddig marched through the halls of the mobile headquarters, soldiers turned and snapped to attention. The commander made no effort to acknowledge the existence of anyone around him; he simply marched forward with a singular anxious purpose. The fear his authority and power instilled drove him onward, into the belly of the beast. The deeper he went into the heart of the biological car, the more frightening the reality became. Inhuman screams tore from the throats of creatures within the surrounding rooms. Should any one of the monsters escape, no one in the headquarters would survive.

  Monsters.

  A shudder chased its way around Faddig’s back. He stopped at one of the isolation chambers and turned to glance through the three-inch Plexiglas portal. Standing in the center of the room was what looked at first blush like a tall, gaunt male. The figure stood in absolute stillness. No breath entered its useless lungs, no heart beat within its rotting torso. The meat covering its skeleton did everything it could to fend off decomposition. The thing appeared harmless.

  Until your scent danced over its tongue.

  The beast’s hands were large and strong enough to palm and crush a human skull. With an overlong proboscis for a tongue, the raging, rotting creature could suck brains through the ear canal. The creature, commonly referred to as Evo4, had been stored in the room for weeks. It had been so long since its last feeding (a grievous and gruesome error on the part of a careless lab technician) that its motor functions had drastically slowed to conserve energy.

  “Why we keep these calamities I will never know.” Faddig whispered to himself, as he turned to continue onward.

  He finally reached his destination and made to knock on the door.

  “Who am I kidding?”

  Faddig grabbed the handle, and opened the door with a single swift motion. The room was the antechamber of the holding cell for baby Jacob. Getting into the actual room with the infant was another task that required multiple security clearances even the leader of the Zero Day Collective mobile unit didn’t have. Instead, he stood within the outer room and glanced around.

  “I don’t suppose you actually have something to show me this time? Or am I to stand here until you grow tired of this game?”

  A door hissed open and Webber slunk out. He was short and rail-thin; his hands and eyes fluttered like nervous butterflies.

  “I assure you, Commander Faddig, this is no game. What I have to show you might well change the very nature of how we proceed.” Thomas Webber stood and smiled at Faddig.

  “Well? Get on with the dog and pony show. I have work to do.”

  Webber took the hint and stepped up to the glass plate separating the adults from the infant messiah.

  “What am I looking at? The baby?”

  Webber sidled up next to Faddig and nodded toward the center of the inner room.

  “Next to the baby. On the surgical tray.”

  Faddig turned to Webber and wrapped his fingers around the biologist’s bow tie-clad neck.

  “I don’t have time for your nonsense, scientist. Either you have a miraculous development to reveal to me, or you have wasted my time. I think you know what happened to the last man to waste my time.”

  Webber swallowed hard. The last of his team to have trifled with Faddig now stood in one of the evolutionary holding cells—a victim of one of the more vicious experiments. A bead of sweat collected at the nape of the biologist’s neck.

  “On the tray next to baby Jacob is a Petri dish. Within that Petri dish is a growing colony of cells that will be used for the clone.”

  Faddig released Webber.

  “You did it?”

  Webber nodded with enthusiasm.

  “We did it. The cells are growing at an exponentially fast rate. We should see full development within a matter of days. Once the clone is within the target parameters, the DNA from Subject 001 will be introduced.”

  “And we will have complete control over the clone?”

  Webber nodded as a smile crept across his lips. “That is correct, sir.”

  Faddig smacked his biologist on the shoulder as he turned to go.

  “Brilliant. She won’t stand a chance against this.”

  Faddig left the room, his step lighter than when he’d entered.

  *

  Webber wiped his brow, relieved he’d survived another encounter with the power suits.

  A faint cry sifted through the monitors in the room.

  “Must be feeding time.”

  Webber stepped into the attached kitchenette to prepare Jacob’s bottle. Although the child’s DNA held answers to questions yet to be asked, he was still a baby and had to be treated as such. To that end, Webber was not only the single most powerful biologist on the planet, but a nursemaid to the messiah.

  When he entered the room that held Jacob, a flood of energy washed over him. It was always the same and never failed to take him by surprise.

  Jacob’s big blue eyes and grinning, toothless mouth looked up from the bassinet. Tiny hands reached upward to grasp at comfort.

  “Here you go, little man,” Webber whispered, in an almost reverential tone.

  The baby Jacob grabbed the bottle, pulled the nipple to his pink lips, and drank deeply of the life-giving formula.

  chapter 3 | exit light, enter rizzo

  “Oh my God, turn that fucking thing off!” Joshua shou
ted over the Obliterator.

  “What’s the matter, tough guy?” Morgan chided.

  Jamal leaned forward, his head between the front seats, to address Josh and Morgan. “Tell me you have an ETA on your unit.”

  “Aren’t you having fun? It’s like Camp of the Damned.” Joshua laughed at his attempted humor.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen that film; it doesn’t end well—at least not for us.”

  Morgan leaned over and smacked the back of Joshua’s head. “Stop being such a goofball, Josh. Tell the poor man how soon the cavalry will arrive.”

  Josh laughed and glanced at his watch. “They should be here any minute.”

  The distant sound of moans wafted up from the darkening sky.

  “Please don’t get dark yet,” Echo whispered, as if to hide her plea. I wrapped my arms around her tiny frame and pulled her into me.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything hurt you.”

  The words took me back to broken promises from the past. Susan—another young girl I’d promised to protect. That failure would eat at my heart for eternity. The only thing to be done was to finally make good on a similar promise and ensure nothing happened to Echo.

  So far, so good.

  “By the way, what’s the plan once we’re gassed up and on the road?” Jamal spoke softly. I loved that about him, how he always knew when to effect peace in a room—one of his many gifts.

  “The plan hasn’t changed,” I started. “We hunt down and kill the Zero Day Collective and reclaim Jacob.”

  Echo shuddered. “Jesus, when you put it that way it makes Jacob seem more property than prophet.”

  The sentiment cut sharply. The thought that Jacob would ever be seen as a commodity to be tossed back and forth between enemy lines was insane. He was my baby, my joy, my hope for life. The idea threatened to spiral me down into emotional withdrawal. I had to change the subject before I reached critical psychological mass.

  “Speaking of which,” I added, as I focused my attention back to the laptop, “I need to see if the tracker has any hits.”

  It has always been rumored that technology would eventually be the ultimate demise of man. The singularity would occur and machines would take over. The tiniest fragment of my intelligence begged me to consider it possible the singularity had finally arrived—in human form. The lowest common denominator had won out and would overtake the planet with predictable stupidity and greed. Ignorance and power were the new currency.

  I propped the laptop back on my lap and minimized the Obliterator application. In its place came the tracker. The application ran in the background, collecting tons of data from the network at large. Any time specific suspect words were captured, traveling across the global network of connected computers and communication satellites, a flag would be raised and the data packets logged. Once the tracker had collected enough data, I could sift through the information and begin piecing together the location of the Zero Day Collective and Jacob. It was only a matter of time before they appeared on my radar. The NSA and Sherlock Holmes had nothing on me.

  As soon as the tracker window was open, Jamal peered over my shoulder, his eyes wide and his mouth agape. I could feel his warm breath on my neck as my eyes ripped through the information. A pattern started to develop.

  Mobile unit.

  Biologist.

  Zero Day Collective.

  Jacob.

  40.0176 degrees North.

  105.2797 degrees West.

  “Bethany,” Jamal whispered, “that’s Boulder, Colorado. But what does it mean by “Mobile unit”?”

  “Well, Jamal, I would assume it means that whoever is sending out these communications happens to be on some sort of mobile Zero Day Collective biological unit. In other words, it’s moving.”

  Jamal sighed. “So getting a fixed location isn’t likely.”

  I nodded.

  Jamal grinned. “Yes, but…if you get a number of consecutive coordinates, you can at least predict where the unit will be at a given time. Of course, that would require knowing what type of unit and at what speed they were traveling.”

  Before Jamal could continue, I silenced him with a palm to the lips.

  “Joshua, how quickly can you get us to Boulder?”

  Josh laughed. “At this rate it’ll take, oh, forever!”

  Again, Morgan smacked Josh across the back of the head.

  “I’m just fucking with you. We get back up to speed soon, and I can have you there in a day…tops.”

  “B, what do you have in mind?”

  Before I could answer Jamal, a soul-destroying roar ripped through the truck. The prehistoric release was followed by the shattering of glass and a pale arm reaching into the truck. Dirty, blood-soaked fingers tangled deep into Echo’s hair and yanked hard. Echo released a cry that was almost too high in pitch to hear as the arm pulled her head toward the shattered glass.

  “What the hell? The Obliterator is running strong.” Josh shouted, as he gave the volume knob for the Obliterator one last turn.

  “Oh my God, look at its ears,” was all Morgan needed to say.

  Blood was caked around both ears. A thick, viscous liquid bubbled from the holes on the side of his head.

  “The fucker cracked his skull on the cement until he went deaf,” Joshua added. “Perfect immunity to the power of the Obliterator.”

  The beast gave another tug that pulled Echo’s head nearer the shattered window. Echo’s arms flailed outward to thwart the thing’s attempts at commandeering her skull.

  “Josh,” Morgan screamed, “your weapon!”

  “Help me!” Echo cried out, the top of her head now dangerously close to the hole in the window. Glass shards awaited her frail flesh.

  Josh had his gun out and was fumbling to free the safety when a shot rang from beyond the truck. Echo’s hair was released and she leaped into my waiting arms. Everyone in the truck exchanged curious glances. Outside, the Obliterator continued its soul-destroying song.

  A fresh face appeared in the hole that had tried to swallow Echo. A pair of kohl-rimmed eyes, filled with an electric energy, looked through. Her jet-black hair cut and tousled like she sang for a Joan Jett tribute band.

  “Everyone okay in there?”

  “Holy shit,” Morgan shouted. “Rizzo, is that really you?”

  “In the flesh and boner. How’s my favorite girlfriend?”

  Morgan nearly squealed before she spoke. “I’m alive and…still not your girlfriend.”

  “Can ya blame a girl for trying? I come bearing gifts, by the way; if you consider gasoline to be ‘of the Magi.’”

  “From God, a gift from God.” Josh hooted as he opened his door and jumped out. Morgan started to shout after him, but stifled her cry and joined the dangerous liaison. Even from within the thick steel of the Hummer, and over the siren call of the Obliterator, the reunion of Morgan and this Rizzo character could be heard.

  I pulled away from Echo’s embrace.

  “You two stay in the truck.”

  Without further explanation, I opened the door and hopped to the ground. When I arrived at the other side of the Hummer, Josh was hauling twin jerricans out of an almost identical truck. All around us, Moaners and Screamers were in various stages of opening their own brainpans onto the cement. The sight was beyond comprehension. What should have had us curling into permanent fetal states was little more than background noise at that moment. This is not good, I thought. If we continued down this road we’d never survive. Desensitization should never reach this level of “meh.”

  “Bethany, this is Rizzo. She’s been my right-hand girl for the last three years. She heads up the NOCAL Zombie Response Team.”

  “No way,” Rizzo beamed, “you mean this is the Bethany, as in Nit-freakin-shimi?”

  Before another word could be said, Rizzo pulled me into a powerhouse of a hug. The strength of the girl took me by surprise. She was small, maybe five foot tall, and had the face and body of a pixie. Her misplaced smile—s
omething the Mengele Virus seemed to have virtually eradicated—shamed the sun. Her hair and dress was a comfortable mixture of goth, punk, and scene. I was looking at Echo’s older sister… or future Echo. Either way, the similarity was eerie.

  “I want to have your babies,” Rizzo grinned, as she pulled away.

  “Cool down, Rizzo,” Morgan laughed. “There’ll be plenty of time for flirting once we clear this mess.”

  Within a blink, Rizzo was all business. “What’s the plan?”

  “First and foremost, were you followed?”

  “No. And no one else knows about my current whereabouts. When I saw your transponder distress I assumed covert ops were in order.”

  As Rizzo spoke, her eyes shifted from Morgan to me. The slightest blush rose on her cheeks. The cutest thing on the planet had officially arrived.

  Would that I were gay.

  “Hummer has enough fuel to get us to the next station—hopefully.” Josh interrupted our little threesome.

  “What do you mean, hopefully?”

  Morgan’s sharp question caught Josh off guard.

  “I mean…well…I have no idea where the next station is. So how can I be one hundred percent sure we have enough—?”

  “There’s a station about five miles north of us.” Rizzo to the rescue.

  Morgan turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “Well, Bethany?”

  What was the plan? The only idea I had was the endgame—stuffing the Zero Day Collective down the throats of the undead army they’d created, then watching them die and turn to rot. We needed more than that. My brain buzzed through every piece of information we had. The single most relevant bit was the location of the ZDC—somewhere in Boulder, Colorado. To confuse matters, they were most likely on the move. With our current vulnerable state, we’d never stand a chance against the same destructive machine that had dropped mankind to its knees.

  We needed to organize. That meant we needed a base of operations.

  I turned to Morgan. “Where is the nearest Zombie Response Team unit in relation to Boulder?”

  “Denver was compromised, so that leaves New Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s not our largest cell, but the base is well protected.”