by Jack Wallen
My words were stopped short by the hell-born cry of a Screamer.
Ah, fate. It never ceased to amaze me how the irony of timing just couldn’t take a damn break—even with the apocalypse driving the universe forward.
The fact that we, the prey, were forcing nature’s hand to become the hunter also amazed me.
Maybe amazed wasn’t the best choice of words.
Fucking pissed me off.
That’s better.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by any one turn of events. The human race excelled at flipping the narrative. For a very long time we’d cowered under the weight of terror the undead brought about. We hid in the dark of night, ducked and dodged through cellars, attics, and sewers.
Now we had Fry…a weapon that would become the great liberator. All things were now equal.
Or so we hoped.
Dr. Richard Gerrand had developed a serum that would react based on the infected state of the victim. Inject the functioning undead with Fry, and they’d burn up from the inside. Inject the newly infected with the same golden liquid and, viola, the desire to nom gray matter would instantly abate.
In theory.
I hated that phrase. Two words that could so easily deflate what little joy remained in the world.
“Fuck you…in theory,” I whispered.
The Screamer came into view. Once a man, ripped and lean, the thing raced into the four-way intersection, stopped, sniffed the air, and released a patented roar. I lifted the rifle scope to my eye and adjusted the sights until I could see every inch of sinewy flesh test the tensile strength of tendon and muscle.
“Go to Hell,” I whispered as I slowly released my breath and pulled the trigger.
With a crack, the dart was sent speeding toward the target. I continued watching through the scope to see the Screamer flinch when the projectile plunged into the meat of its right shoulder.
“Kiss kiss, foul creature,” I said with a joy I wanted to find sickening. When did I become that woman?
Wait…I knew the answer to that question. The day I had to put a bullet through the head of the man I loved, and had to rescue my cloned child from the group who’d zombified the vast majority of the world’s population.
That’s about right, the moment hatred germinated inside my heart.
The Screamer howled again. It shook its head, stumbled backward, and fell to its knees.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I hissed.
“SITREP, B,” Jamal demanded from the walkie.
I pressed the talk button. “Are we cosplaying Battlestar Galactica? Please tell me you’re in a Major Adama uniform?”
“That all depends,” Jamal returned. “Are you Kara Thrace, or Number Six?”
Before I could reply, the Screamer tilted its head back, roared to the sky, and proved the old trash rags of the eighties were correct—spontaneous human combustion was real. At least, it was if you were a zombie shot up with Dr. Richard Gerrand’s sure-fire cure for all that ails the human race.
“Fuck yeah!” I shouted into the walkie.
“I take it by your enthusiasm, you’re going with Kara Thrace?” Jamal called back through the radio.
“No, nerd boy, I just watched a damn Screamer go up in flames.”
“It worked?” Jamal shouted into the walkie.
“Yes!” I screamed.
My joyous cry was answered by the horrific mating call of the damned.
Another Screamer.
“Shit,” I whispered.
I had just shot my last dose of Fry. We each set out with three darts. My first two were wasted on missed shots, and my third had just unmade the undead.
Another sky-shattering scream echoed off every building in the vicinity.
“How fast can you reach me, Jamal?” I whispered.
“I’m on my way, B. Five minutes.”
Radio silence.
A Clash song was stuck in my head. It may have been the last thing I heard from the world’s favorite DJ. Or maybe I was just in a punk state of mind. Either way, This is Radio Clash kept me company within the deep folds of my mind. Each verse was punctuated by an unholy scream not coming from the pirate satellite.
I lifted the scope back to my eye and scanned the area. The central location was a ghost town, haunted by a recursive, certain death.
A cloud of dust kicked up and something large flew into the intersection. Said something landed in a cloud of dust. When the dirty veil settled, the unknown object became instantly known.
A body.
A brown-skinned body.
A dead, brown-skinned body.
Without thinking, I pressed the call button on the walkie. “Jamal?” I begged the universe not to have fucked me once again.
Neither Jamal nor the universe answered.
“Jamal, answer me…now.”
Fear gripped me by the nervous system and gave it a hard shake. Micro shock waves pulsed through the muscles surrounding my eyes to twitch my lids in a grand mal waltz of nerves.
The Screamer came into view, bounding into the intersection to play with its toy. It picked up the body, neck in one hand and ankles in the other, and pulled. The monster doubled down its effort until a fountain of blood erupted, showering the creature with crimson, and the body ripped in half.
Intestines flopped from the unsealed corpse and looped around the Screamer’s neck. The thing dropped the lower half of the body and buried its head into the opened torso.
It was then that Jamal came into view. He slid to a stop when he spotted the bastard creature.
My heart slammed into the back of my breastbone and a wellspring of tears flooded my cheeks. Joy and fear went to war in my mind.
Jamal glanced my way. He knew exactly where I was. I could see him calculating the distance and the time it would take to make it to me.
“Just run,” I whispered.
Jamal remained, tethered to his spot.
“What are you waiting for?”
And then I saw it…written all over his face. Jamal was doing his thing. The man could calculate the distance of sound to within inches. He’d heard something. I left the scope trained on Jamal’s face. The moment I saw him close his eyes and nod, I knew what was about to happen.
Three, two, one…I thought.
The second I reached zero, Jamal took off toward me. Before the Screamer realized what was going on behind him, a second of his despicable kind entered the arena of doom. The first beast turned to face the oncoming foe, his grip on the ruined torso tightening. I’d never witnessed a battle of the damned before, but food sources had become scarce for everyone but the clever and resourceful. With a headful of brain on the line, these bastards would certainly toss down the gauntlet and fight to final death.
By the time Jamal reached me, he had his rifle out and was extending a fresh dart my way. I snatched up the undeadly ammo, inserted it into my rifle, and re-scoped the original Screamer.
Jamal cozied up to me, pointing his own boom stick toward the monstrous fray that was about to begin.
“You’re sexy when you’re aiming,” Jamal whispered.
“You’d think I was sexy mowing the yard, J-Mart.”
Jamal stifled a chuckle.
“Laugh it up, fuzzball.”
The second Screamer leaped with a God-like roar. It landed with a thunderous whump, one fist buried into the ground, the second tucked tight behind its back. This was any given clichéd superhero movie…only, in this case, the heroes were rage-filled zombies. The original beast tossed the soiled sack of meat to the ground, puffed out its chest, and screamed to the heavens.
“I’ve got a lock on number two,” Jamal said under his breath.
“In three…” I started the countdown.
“Two,” Jamal added.
I took in a deep breath. We’d only have a single chance to get this right. Even if only one shot was off the mark, there’d still be another deadly bastard to chase us down and rip us in two.
W
ith my grip and aim as steady as they’d ever been, I said calmly…
“One.”
With a simultaneous crack, the darts were sent racing through the air. Time and breath suspended until both Screamers flinched.
“Sweet,” Jamal offered up a quiet cheer. “Now the fun begins.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding, Jamal,” I responded, my voice undercut with disgust.
“I don’t see you looking away, sweet cheeks.”
I was about to slug my best friend on principle.
“The only reason I keep looking is to ensure these two bastards go down. I refuse to become desensitized to such horrific displays of violence.”
“B,” Jamal sighed. “Whether you like it or not, you’re our leader. You have to toughen up.”
“Tough doesn’t even begin to describe me, Jamal.”
Another sigh, this time one of resignation.
While Jamal rethought his position, I refocused my sights on the battlefield. Both Screamers had ceased fighting and were flexing every overripe muscle on their bodies, incapable of comprehending what was going on.
The first Screamer dropped and repeatedly slammed its head into the cement until a thick crescent of brownish blood slopped over the area. The beast opened its mouth to release a glass-shattering scream. Before the hateful noise was unleashed, the thing exploded in a cloud of meat and bone.
“I did not need to see that,” Jamal confessed.
“Now who needs to toughen up?” I teased.
The remaining Screamer stood, showered in the other’s remains. It sniffed the air and cried out in rage. There was no mourning, no suffering of loss for a fallen familiar. This monstrous prick screamed in celebration, as if to say I won, you festering mess.
The Screamer fell silent, a look of confusion plastered across its face.
Comprehension.
Fear.
“Shit,” I whispered. “It knows something is wrong.”
“That’s not possible,” Jamal asked quietly, “is it?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” I answered, and let my voice and mind drift off into the realm of possibility. “If there’s one thing the unnatural order has taught us is to never say never.”
The Screamer’s entire body vibrated. The scene went well beyond the boundaries of disturbing. With every passing second, the vibrations grew and the beast did everything in its power to hold flesh and bone together. In the end, Fry won out and the Screamer was unhinged, unmade, undone. A three hundred and sixty degree spray of gore was unleashed over the area.
Then all went silent.
“And there was much rejoicing,” Jamal said.
“Hooray,” we sang in a monotone unison homage to The Holy Grail.
I grabbed my radio from the dusty ground, switched channels, pressed the talk button, and said, “Harley to Joker. Do you read me, Joker?”
Silence.
I glanced up at Jamal. He rolled his eyes as if correcting me.
“Fine,” I hissed and returned my attention to the walkie talkie. “Harley Quinn to the Joker. Are you out there, Joker?”
A high-pitched laugh launched from the radio speaker. “The Joker is here, there, and everywhere.”
“Joker,” I stopped the discourse before it devolved into complete chaos. “Is Xavier available?”
We had to pick nicknames for everyone. On the off chance the Zero Day Collective was listening—and there was no reason to believe they weren’t—we couldn’t chance letting them know who and where we were. Half of our little band of survivors wanted to go with DC and the other Marvel. We did the fair thing and split it down the middle. The only outcasts were Echo and Rizzo, who insisted on being called Crow and Tom.
What were the odds our entire group would wind up a collection of nerds?
I guess world domination was in our future.
“This is Xavier,” the sexy, smooth British stylings of Richard Gerrand’s voice rose from the radio.
“It worked,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Of course it worked.” The man’s voice was spit-shined with ego. “Did you record the times?”
Son of a bitch, I mouthed.
“What?” Jamal asked. “Why son of a bitch?”
“Sorry, Gerrand, we were a bit preoccupied to turn killing two Screamers into a science project.” I could hear the disappointment seeping from the radio. I couldn’t help but react. “If you seriously need data points and spreadsheets for this, you’re coming into the field with us next time. That’s how this works, Doctor.”
I received the silence I’d expected. Gerrand was a brilliant scientist, but worthless when it came to fighting back the apocalyptic onslaught. Fortunately, I’d played enough Dungeons and Dragons and knew every questing group couldn’t consist entirely of fighters. We had to have our mages, healers, and bards.
“You’re thinking about D&D, aren’t you?” Jamal asked.
“How in the hell did you know that?”
Jamal grinned. “I knows me some Bethany.”
The punch Jamal had deserved earlier finally arrived. “Dork.”
I stood, shouldered my rifle, and sauntered off toward the bicycles. After a moment, Jamal caught up to me. “What now?”
“We’re out of Fry, so…”
“Not so, B.” Jamal reached into a pouch and withdrew a single dart. “We’ve one shot left.”
“And about a mile between us and headquarters. Load that baby up in case we’re jumped on the way home.”
Jamal locked the dart into chamber and shouldered his rifle. We reached the bicycles, swung our legs over, and took off toward home.
two | pi r squared
We arrived at the headquarters without incident. For the first time in a while, it was actually peaceful pedaling the bikes around. For a moment, it felt like we were back in college, tooling around campus, falling in love with each other and the world outside. We were heavy-duty nerds, and the great outdoorsy thing was such a foreign concept. Each stroll among the grass and trees was like an adventure.
That was then, this is…a death-pocked landscape of ruin and sorrow. But it was ours—our little walled-in community that was ever so slowing being rid of the monsters.
Once inside, I made my way to the Kill board and placed three red push pins into the area where Jamal and I had taken down the monsters.
“Three Screamers?” Morgan said with a nod. “Impressive.”
“It’s too easy when you’re locked and loaded with Gerrand’s juicy juice,” Jamal replied.
I glanced over the Kill board and noticed a few extra blue pins. “Who took out the Moaners?”
Rizzo and Echo bounced into the room and said, “Us,” in unison.
I held my hand up and Echo gave it a sharp slap. “Girl power,” she said with pride.
Also on the board was a single new black pin. My skin crawled at the sight. I pointed and said, “Who got the…”
“Boner?” Joshua interrupted with a muffled laugh. “That’d be me.”
Morgan rolled her eyes. “I must apologize for my husband’s blatant display of prepubescent buffoonery.”
Rizzo laughed and pointed. Josh shrugged and took a deep pull from a beer.
“Where in the hell did you get the brew?” Jamal asked, his voice cracking.
Josh immediately tucked the bottle behind his back. “What brew? I see no brew. You must be hallucinating.”
“Joshua,” Morgan snapped.
Josh went rigid, knowing he’d been busted. “It’s my last one, I swear. I’d been saving it for a special occasion. I figured taking down one of those son of a bitches was reason enough.”
“Speaking of which,” I shifted the subject from that of the booze, “how did you manage to take one down by yourself? Fry?”
A wide grin spread across Josh’s face. He swung his leg over a chair and sat, taking us all in before speaking. “I’ve been tracking one of them for a while now. I wanted to learn as much as I could before attempting to
take it out. Turns out, Boners do have one soft spot in their armor.”
Josh paused to suck dry his drink. He plopped the bottle onto the table and pointed right where the glass bent inward to form the neck. “Here. Right above the shoulder is the bony plate that forms the helmet—for lack of a better word.” Josh grabbed the bottle and tilted it to the left and right. “As they walk, the helmet rocks on their shoulders. Just as it shifts from one direction to the other, there’s a gap big enough to let a Fry dart through. If you time it just right…BAM!” Josh slammed his beefy hand down onto the table, sending the bottle toppling over. “The dart will hit home and the Boner will blow.” He grabbed up the bottle and added, “Pun very much intended.”
Gerrand entered the room and placed an odd metal configuration on the table. “This,” he said with standard British confidence, “will turn the tables.”
“What is it?” Jamal asked, curiosity nearly folding him inside out.
“I call it a Fry Bomb.” Gerrand pointed at the device. “Each one of these arms holds a dart. When the bomb goes off, the arms flick the darts with enough force to send them flying over twenty yards. Roll this baby into a crowd of the undead and, chances are, you’ll be flooding the area with gore.”
I raised my hand. Gerrand was quick to silence me. “The one caveat to the Fry Bomb, or, as I called them in their beta stage, Fry Arrow Distributor—or FAD—is that you must be well out of flinging distance within the allotted time.”
I raised my hand again. Gerrand nodded my way.
“And what would the allotted time be?” I asked.
“You will have thirty seconds to get beyond twenty yards…otherwise you run the risk of getting dosed.” Gerrand scanned the room. “I believe most of you can cover twenty yards in under half a minute?”
“I thought Fry was safe for those who weren’t infected,” Morgan chimed in with a quick reality check.
Gerrand drew an index finger to his mouth and tapped his lips. With his eyes closed, he said, “In theory, yes. I tested this very serum on myself numerous times, to no ill effect. However—and this is crucial to understand—this is the apocalypse and nothing is guaranteed. At this point, not even science is a sure thing. The Zero Day Collective has wreaked havoc on logic and certainty.”
