I Zombie I [Omnibus Edition]

by Jack Wallen

  Eddie’s voice was faint, but he was coherent enough to make a move toward the car.

  “Honk the horn when you’re in.” I yelled above the moaning bastard below me. My only plan was to jump and run. There was no way I was taking this son of bitch out. If a broken jaw didn’t faze him, what little might I had was useless.

  The car horn blared at me. Signal given, signal received. My right arm swung out one last time, the fist again connecting with the lower jaw. The ‘crunch’ that echoed from the open mouth of the zombie was sickening. Sound was nothing compared to sight – the zombie’s jaw sagged further and caught on one of the flailing arms. When the zombie gave one last, violent jerk of his arm, the jaw broke free from its face.

  My legs sprung up and got me clear of the undead bastard actor. I was certain my heart was going to burst through the flesh of my chest as I sprinted to the car door and dove in. Before I shut the door, I realized Eddie’s camera was ten yards away, on the ground.

  “Wait here.”

  “Malcolm, what are doing?”

  I didn’t answer, I acted. My feet and legs pumped faster than I thought possible toward the red light of the camera.

  Equipment in hands (and still filming), I turned to head back to the car. The zombie was ambling toward the open door, pink tongue dangling. Before my brain could dictate a plan, my feet did their thing and carried me toward the beast. Before I reached the car a gunshot pierced the shadows and sent my heart cart-wheeling around my chest. The crazed actor dropped instantly. I threw myself into the car and slammed the door shut.

  Eddie and I simultaneously gasped for some semblance of a regular rhythm for our lungs.

  “Malcolm…what just…happened?”

  I had no answer. The only assumption to be made was an actor lost his mind and attacked a cameraman. I’d seen it happen before on set. Actors with deep seeded emotional damage unleashing when at their most vulnerable. But biting fingers off? Cracking open the skulls of cameramen?

  “Fuck.” Eddie’s woozy voice nearly trailed off.

  “Stay with me Eddie.”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  He wasn’t fine. I smashed the gas and turned the wheel one hundred eighty degrees. The car threatened to shoot flames from the rear tires as they squealed their joy of being unleashed. What I would do with Mixx at the director’s booth, I had no clue. What was most important was getting him out of harm’s way.

  “Can you tell me what happened, Eddie?”

  No response.

  “Earth to Eddie, respond Eddie.”

  “Yeah, I’m here. I don’t know man. I was filming and all of sudden things went to Hell. The actor in the zombie makeup bit the hot chick’s finger off, so she beat him with her fists and took off. Next thing I know, the dude is introducing my skull to the pavement. That’s when things get a bit fuzzy. Until you arrived, it’s all one really bad trip.”

  Eddie was one of the single greatest camera artists alive. His one issue was that he tended to prefer working while sufficiently baked. His drug of choice was straight up weed – only the finest he could procure.

  I glanced Eddie’s way, when his voice exploded from his mouth.

  “Shit!” Eddie screamed and pointed.

  I didn’t see anyone; I just felt and heard the crunch. When I slammed on the brakes, the thought of crushed skull under tire nearly had me choking up my last meal.

  Eddie and I stared at one another for much longer than necessary. I was afraid to step out of the vehicle for fear of what I’d see.

  My fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard, I though the bones within my digits would snap. My eyes refused to blink. The engine of the car continued to idle; time, however, begged to stop and take bit of a break.

  When I was finally able to unhook my fingers from the wheel and reach for the door handle, the newly ordained road kill stood and glared through the same lumpy white contacts the other actors wore. The jawless freak show was now missing most of the flesh on the side of his head and the right shoulder was little more than a pound or two of ground beef. A moan, low enough to shame Barry White, issued from the throat of the wrecked man.

  “It’s him. It’s the same dude that attacked me. What is he on and where does an interested party – ”

  “Eddie, be quiet please.”

  As soon as Mixx’s mouth shut, the broken actor’s rage dulled. He looked around with his useless eyes and sniffed the air. Nothing. Carefully I put the car in reverse and eased down on the gas. The actor didn’t seem interested in the soft crunch of car tires or the whir and purr of the engine. Once the car was roughly twenty yards away, I put on the brakes and watched as the man lowered his arms and swayed to the left and right. The low moan continued; the violence subsided.

  Something was amiss and I had every intention of getting to the bottom of the mystery. For a brief second I thought about slamming the car into drive and playing chicken with the actor. Certainly he’d break character if he thought I was about to run him down. Bad decision gave way to good conscience and I opted to flee the scene.

  *

  In the few short minutes it took to reach the director’s booth, Eddie Mixx seemed to wrap the thread of coherence around his finger. Though he was still a bit on the woozy side, it looked as if he’d make it. With Eddie safely inside, I grabbed my phone and dialed Burgess’ number.

  “John, this is Malcolm. There’s an actor badly hurt. You need to get an ambulance here right away. What do you mean you can’t do that? Burgess, I – you have to – what in the fuck do you mean ‘no’?”

  Sonja signaled for me to put the call on speaker. Before I could, Burgess finalized the conversation and hung up.

  “What the fuck, Malcolm? What’s going on? I saw the damn feed. That kid is seriously hurt.” Sonja bristled.

  “Burgess refused to call for help. He said every participant signed a waiver and no outside help, of any kind, would be brought in.”

  “We have to do something. Fuck this shit, I’m calling 911.” Sonja stormed back to her station and grabbed her cell phone. “Shit. You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you have service?”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Nothing.

  “No.”

  “Great. Now we have no means of communication with the outside world. Malcolm, we have to do something.”

  Chapter 18

  John Burgess was never a man to test the boundaries of fate. So when Malcolm demanded a call to the outside world be placed, he had to make use of the cell scrambler. It was a simple device that used RF signals to effectively prevent phone calls into or out of the area. The only problem with the technology was that it was all or nothing.

  That was standard operating procedure for a man with such power as Burgess.

  “We’re going to have to do something with that man. He’s getting curious.” L.A. Wenning spoke with a deep voice and raised eyebrow.

  Burgess tilted his head back and looked down his crooked nose. “We do nothing. The man may be trouble, but he’s brilliant and we need his artistry to pull this off. Besides, the plan is in motion; should we stop it now, The Great Cleansing fails. Failure is not an option.”

  “John,” one of the elder board members calmly called out. “What are we to do when your director realizes he is not filming fiction?”

  Glasses were lowered from curious eyes. Doubting brows were raised.

  Burgess smiled. “By the time Malcolm realizes this is all very real, it’ll be too late. At the point when the population ratio tips toward the undead, there will be nothing anyone can do; that is, anyone but us.”

  The silence that wafted over the room was palpable, thick.

  A single hand was raised. L.A. Wenning.

  “What about us? At what point is it too late for this group?”

  Burgess smiled, lifted his heavy frame from the creaking chair, and addressed the room with his usual arrogance.

  “Trust me when I tell you, that is not a concern of ours. We are Gods
among parasites. This experiment will succeed; and once it does, we will lay claim as the sole proprietor of salvation. Besides, the walking dead you see out there, they have a shelf life. Our good biologist has assured me that entropy will take down the beasts after a short period. We have succeeded in creating a weaponized virus that cannot be stopped by anything but time.”

  Burgess nodded to one of the monitors. On the screen was the female runner; stopped in the middle of the street, her hands clutching her head. A gut-wrenching scream flew from her mouth as she dropped to her knees. Fingernails clawed at her flesh and drew blood.

  The runner tried to stand; her legs shuddered and gave out. The scene on the street went still; the runner encased in a silent calm.

  “Is she – ” one of the board members choked out.

  “Dead?” Burgess completed the question, a sinister grin painted across his face. “You might say that.”

  A deafening scream distorted the speakers on the monitor. The woman sat up, her hands tore at the hair on her head. The thick, dark strands refused to give quarter, so the woman wrapped her hands around her skull and smashed it into the pavement. Over and over, the pounding continued. Every crash of her head was accompanied by a horrific screech.

  “She can’t possibly survive this. John, what are we seeing? Is this part of the process?” L.A. Wenning tilted her head and pursed her lips.

  Burgess merely smiled and looked to the wreckage played out on the monitor.

  As quickly as the rage started, it stopped. On awkward legs, the woman stood. Once back on two feet, she swayed back and forth. Other than the slow, rhythmic sway, there was no attempt to move. The runner’s face was a wash of blood and gore; only her sour-milk eyes stared through the dark gloom.

  “This is most unsettling.” Darrius Kriege, the eldest of the Zero Day Collective, spoke as he averted his eyes from the monitor.

  “Don’t be such a pussy Kriege. You are a part of the new world order. Get used to what you’re seeing. This is just the calm before the apocalyptic storm.” Burgess nearly laughed at the cringing old man. “And should you get any fancy ideas about leaving the Collective, there is only one way out.”

  With a nod toward the monitor, everyone in the room understood, in full, the meaning.

  Burgess picked up the tablet in front of him and opened the timer application. Knowing the shelf life of the undead was crucial to The Great Cleansing. Should they live too long, there’d be nothing left of the human race.

  Gerand assured the Collective the virus contained a self-destruct component; that once cell degradation began, it would increase in speed until decay took down the beast. Burgess had to know if the timing would work out perfectly.

  “Something’s caught her attention!” Kriege pointed at the monitor, his long, bony finger shaking.

  The woman’s head jerked toward one of the houses; its porch light sliced through the night like a beacon. Silhouetted in the door frame of the house was a woman. Light shining through her nightgown made a sensual shadow-box show of her muscular legs.

  “Something’s caught your attention, you dirty old scoundrel.” L.A. Wenning chided.

  “I’ll have you know – ” Kriege started.

  “We all know, Kriege, you are happily married, to a lovely wife half your age.” L.A. Wenning stopped the man from rambling on.

  The woman in the nightgown waved her hands above her head and shouted. The wavering runner stopped her trance-like swaying motion and ratcheted her head toward the lit porch. In the same, methodical tempo as her rocking motion, the runner plodded toward the house.

  “Are we about to witness the world’s first undead catfight?” Burgess sat up straight and offered a low chuckle.

  Concern drew across ‘nightgown woman’s’ face as she stepped toward the stumbling runner. When her arms reached out for the afflicted woman, it happened. Like a broken and wild cat, the runner dove for the woman in white, only to come up with a handful of foot. Both women were on the ground. The woman in the gown cocked her right leg and shot it out, like a spring-wound piston, at the runner’s face. The foot connected. The runner’s head kicked back in a whiplash nod. The head lolled around uselessly, neck broken. The bare foot of the woman in white struck again, only this time off target. The hands of the broken woman snagged the foot and inched it toward the snapping jaws of the bobbing head.

  When the teeth dug in the meat of the calf, the woman kicked out hard enough to break the grip of the biting monster. As the victim sprinted toward the door to the house, her white gown flapped in the night wind, a spot of blood collecting near the right-side hem.

  Burgess smacked his hands on the table.

  “That, my friends, was poetry. You can’t write that shit, you just can’t; of course, wrapped up in that poetry is a dirty trick of fate. You see; that lovely piece of meat will most likely seek the safety and comfort of her family. The husband will tend to her wounds, the children will sit at her feet, and the family pets will bark at the door until they feel the danger outside has passed. Eventually, they’ll all retire to their beds to dream of, well, whatever it is average suburbanites dream of. Those dreams will, without warning, shift to nightmares when the matriarch of the family comes to feast on the flesh of her loved ones.”

  Again, Burgess smacked the table.

  “God damned poetry, I tell you.”

  The broken runner stood again, the back of her head resting between her shoulder blades, and swayed; a moan, colored with the sound of sorrow, escaping her lips.

  Chapter 19

  The headless, blood-soaked, corpse lay on a surgical table in the middle of the main room of the lab. The unsealed, unmade man was in perfect counterpoint to the sterile lab. Every technician assigned to Gerand stared in awe and fear. CDC-approved BSL4 biohazard suits were worn by everyone. The room was filled with the ominous sounds of a Darth Vader chorus, thanks to the necessary re-breathers.

  Before anyone could begin their examination, the lifeless body released a dollop of thick, brown blood. The globule hit the ground and exploded in a fan of drops; those closest to the body, instinctively jumped back.

  Gerand pointed to the new-found Rorschach design on the floor. “Someone disinfect that immediately. We must exercise extreme caution from this point forward. One wrong move and infection could spread throughout this lab. The consequences of such an infection, as I’m sure you all know, are deadly.” Gerand nodded to the headless body on the table.

  Two technicians attended to the infectious stain on the floor. With the aid of a biohazard cleanup kit, the virus-laden spatter was completely removed.

  Gerand approached the corpse and waved for assistance.

  “I need a necropsy and a tissue collection kit. Bring them to me and prepare to assist.”

  One of the technicians huffed as she stepped away. Gerand looked toward the offending girl.

  “You. Do you have a problem with my instructions? Need you be reminded the consequences of such mutinous actions?”

  The girl’s lower jaw quivered and her eyes welled up with the tears of fear. “I’m very sorry Dr. Gerand. I won’t –”

  “No, you won’t.” Gerand nearly stared the girl to her knees. “Continue with your orders or you will be my next subject. Is that clear?”

  With a quick nod, the girl turned and rushed off. Gerand turned his attention to the meat on the table. As if playing a delicate piano concerto, the biologist’s hands danced from the neck of the corpse to the feet.

  “There has never been anything so lovely, as the sight of the unmade man.” The whisper bounced off the inside of Gerand’s mask. “What secrets have you to reveal to me? What delicious delights can I glean from the very moment you expired?”

  Before the man could continue his macabre monologue, the assistant returned with the required kits. Gerand instructed one assistant to stand by his side, and the other to move across from him.

  “We begin by with a standard autopsy. I’ll need a ‘Y’ incision ma
de,” the biologist nodded across the table. The young woman picked up a scalpel and, with nervous hands, began the familiar ‘Y’ incision for the autopsy. To everyone’s surprise, no blood flowed from the cut. As the razor-sharp scalpel effortlessly bisected the cold flesh, other technicians began to amass around the table. Whispers danced about like tiny gusts of wind.

  The striker saw broke through the ribs to reveal a torso that was a quagmire of rot. Only the major organs, furthest from the heart, had given way to entropy. Inside the abdominal cavity the intestines appeared as a brown, sticky slush. The liver was little more than a clump of mud.

  “Oh my God, the smell,” a technician entered from another area of the lab, choked, and made a dash for one of the BSL4 suits.

  The waft of festering stench slithered its way around the heads and nostrils of everyone not breathing through a respirator. Some ignored the stench, while others went immediately weak in the gag reflex. The sound of retching filled the room, as the younger techs peeled away from the table.

  Gerand lifted his arms and waved them over the corpse. “This, my students, is the future of mankind. What you see before you is a miracle, born of a need to force our species closer to perfection. We are the grand designers of fate and are all part of the miraculous birth and re-birth of mankind.”

  “Is it just me, or does that nut job sound a bit too much like Hitler?”

  The whisper snaked its way from behind Gerand, up to his ears.

  “You dare compare what I am doing with Nazi depravity?” Gerand boiled, but remained staring down at the corpse. “My work serves a much higher power than anything Hitler dared conjure.”

  When Gerand turned, his eyes were wide with rage.

  “Who spoke those mutinous words?”

  No one dared answer. Gerand sucked in a deep breath and released it with a damning purpose.

  “If someone doesn’t confess, each and every one of you will suffer the consequences.”

  Still, not one confession was voiced.

  “Very well.” Gerand stormed away from the table and into his office; he returned with a gun in one hand and hypodermic in the other.