The man dives.
I swing.
A metallic clang rings out as the pan strikes the top of the man’s head and crumples it downward like thin aluminum. The animated man slumps to the ground, falling short of the woman, who spins around and crawls backward a few feet until she sees me, pan in hand, standing over the dead man who nearly ended her life. Or restarted it as something new.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, trying not to ogle at her face, which is just as stunning as Luscious’s.
“I’m—I’m…”
I reach a hand down to help her up. “Just try to cool down.”
She takes my hand and I pull her up. She stands awkwardly, still wearing her shoes, one broken, one ridiculous. “Take those off,” I tell her. “You’ll be able to run faster without them.”
Her eyes show confusion. “But he’s…”
“Not alone,” I tell her. “I don’t think you’re done running yet.”
I didn’t mean to scare her, but I can feel her limbs shaking as she holds onto me for balance and hastily removes her shoes. Once they’re removed, she’s a good three inches shorter, but still a few taller than me.
“Go,” I tell her. “Find someplace safe.”
She runs just as Jimbo and Luscious arrive, stepping timidly as though the twice dead man might leap up again.
I turn to Luscious and with my most serious voice, I say, “Take off your shoes.”
She looks from me to the discarded shoes left in the street near the man’s head. Her gaze turns from the shoes to the woman I rescued. She’s running at least twice as fast, making long balanced strides.
“I don’t think we have long,” I tell her.
“Long for what?” she asks.
“God dammit,” Jimbo says.
“God?” I ask, but don’t think this new slang term has anything to do with our situation and adjust my line of questioning. “What is it?”
“I know what this is.” He looks up at me. “My … Master. My job was to entertain his kid. Dance. Sing. Get him cookies. Whatever. He was obsessed with violent movies and games. Those are like music, but with pictures and stories. I swear, half of them featured these things.”
“The living dead?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “But most of the time, they called them zombies.”
10.
“Zombies,” I say, trying out the new word, but it must come out like a question because Jimbo replies.
“Zombies. Undead. Living dead. Walking dead. Ghouls. Walkers. Draugr. Infected.”
“You seem to know a lot about them,” Luscious notes.
“I told you,” Jimbo says. “Kid was obsessed with them. Forced me to watch the movies and play the games with him. Called me his ‘wingman for the apocalypse.’ I even had to read him these Jane Harper novels with Draugr zombies and perform different voices for each character. Embarrassing.”
I feel bad interrupting Jimbo’s tirade. He seems to be emoting like he’s never expressed any of this before, but I don’t think we have much more time. “Why were they called infected?”
“People were turned into zombies if they were bit by other zombies. It was an infection, like a virus, that would kill them, alter their bodies and bring them back to life with an insatiable appetite for human flesh and sometimes brains. Originally brains, I think, unless you believe that Jane Harper stuff, that zombies originated from the Viking legend of the Draugr.”
My mind flashes back to the first man in the woods, the one who was caught and killed by those … zombies and who came back as one of them. “It’s like overclocking,” I say. “The virus entered his system through the skin when he was bit. It infected him to the core, killing him, but then brought him back as a zombie who would continue spreading the infection.”
“Him?” Luscious says.
“Something you’re not telling us?” Jimbo says, squinting up at me.
“The bone pit,” I say. “That’s how I ended up there. The dead—”
“Undead,” Jimbo says.
“Undead. I was in a town to the south.”
“The ruins?” Luscious says. “There’s no reason to go there.”
“Stars,” I say. “The sky is darker there.”
Luscious looks up like she could see the stars in the middle of the day.
“We heard a scream and went to help,” I say.
“We, who?” Jimbo asks. It’s a strange question, but I think he’s asking about who I was with.
“Heap,” I say. “He was my friend.”
“Was?” Luscious says, catching my use of the past tense.
I sigh and try to speak quickly so I can get the whole story out without being interrupted. “We heard a scream and saw a man being chased. We went to help, but by the time we got there, they were … eating him. Heap killed them—and the man—when he became one of them, but there were more in the field and more in the woods, and in town. Heap stayed behind to give me a head start. To save me. It was his job, protecting me. So I ran, nearly got caught a few times and ended up in the bone pit. I don’t remember the rest, but Jimbo already told that part of the story.”
“Is Heap dead?” Luscious asks and I’m touched by her concern for someone she hasn’t met.
“I hope not,” I say. “He’d be one of them now and I’m not sure I could, you know.” I look down at the pan. Fluid drips a steady tap, tap, tap onto the pavement.
A scream rises up from the distance. I turn to look, but see only empty street. But they’re out there. I know they are. “We need to leave. Now.”
“Can’t we just hole up in the buildings?” Jimbo asks. “Wait them out?”
“How can you wait out something that’s already dead?” I ask. “And there are thousands of them. Doors won’t matter.”
“Thousands!” Luscious says, sounding terrified. She suddenly makes a break for the apartment and runs up the stairs.
I shout after her, but she’s inside before her full name escapes my mouth.
I start to go after her, but Jimbo takes my hand. “She’ll be back.” He shrugs. “Women.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“Dunno,” he admits. “Something my Master would say when a woman did something he couldn’t explain.”
“Why do you talk like them?” I ask. “Wouldn’t you rather forget?”
Jimbo laughs. “Forget. Right. They made that impossible, didn’t they?”
Before I reply, I notice a large black metal box sitting atop a trailer attached to what I think is a tractor. “Is that yours?”
“Yeah, I use it to salvage scrap from towns like the one you were stargazing in.”
“Is that where the HoverCy—”
“Hot damn, yes!” Jimbo says.
“Is ‘hot damn’ good?” I ask.
“Yeah. But I’m not sure if the thing is still working.”
We head for the back of the big metal box, but are cut off by a groaning voice. Then another.
Two zombies shuffle out from behind the trailer.
More screams echo from surrounding streets. I can see them in my mind’s eye, flowing down a major artery, slowly filtering out through the city side streets, like human-sized virus cells working their way through a body. There will be no way out in a few minutes and my skills with a frying pan will only get us so far.
We back away from the pair of undead. I wonder if I should attack them, but a third emerges, stopping my bravery in its tracks.
“Luscious!” Jimbo yells. “Get your ass out here!”
I hear the slap of feet behind me and turn back to see Luscious wearing a form-fitting black outfit including thick-soled black boots.
“You changed?” Jimbo says, aghast.
“I saw some zombie movies, too,” she says. “The people who lived longest were usually dressed like this.”
“Why do you even have—you know what, never mind. Can we go now—ahh!”
I spin around to find a zombie right behind Lusciou
s. “Get down!”
She listens quickly and I swing as hard as I can. My arm vibrates as the pan collides with the side of the dead man’s head, but my grip remains solid. I can’t say the same for the man’s head. It snaps free of his neck and skitters across the sidewalk. Luscious jumps back as the man’s body slumps to the ground and spills gore across her shiny black boots.
“Behind you!” Jimbo says.
The three zombies have closed the distance. I kick the first hard in the chest, knocking it back, and bash the second in the head, crushing its skull. The third reaches out for me, but I spin away and strike out with the pan, this time directing its edge toward the man’s temple. The pan strikes hard, embedding itself halfway inside the man’s head. He falls and takes the lodged pan with him.
The whole fight takes just three seconds.
“Holy shit,” Jimbo says. “That was … amazing.”
The kicked zombie staggers forward again. I move to kick him away again, but he’s suddenly not alone. Five more undead shamble out from behind the metal trailer. Then ten.
The horde is here.
“Run,” I say, and then turn and follow my own advice. “Run!”
As I pass Jimbo in two strides I realize the small man will never be able to keep up with Luscious and me, who are nearly twice his size. I backtrack a step, grab his arm and swing him up onto my back.
He complains for a moment, but I hit my upgrade-fueled sprint speed and his attitude quickly changes. He laughs, lets out a “whoop” and starts slapping my shoulder, shouting, “Go, baby, go! Damn, I’m glad I didn’t try to salvage you!”
Ignoring my jubilant passenger, I shout to Luscious. “Is there a way I can contact the Council?”
“What?” she shouts, looking angry.
“The Council can send help,” I say.
“The Council,” Jimbo shouts in my ear, “would destroy the Lowers before sending any useful kind of help.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Council to me,” I say.
“You’re sixteen days old!” Jimbo yells. “You wouldn’t know shit if you stepped in it!”
It’s clear that both Luscious and Jimbo not only have issues with the Council, but genuinely fear them, which is a little backward compared to my understanding of the world. But I’m discovering that there is a lot about the world that I don’t know. That has been kept from me. It seems likely that there are some things about the Council that I don’t know. But I know one thing for sure.
“They won’t destroy the Lowers if I’m with you,” I say.
“Oh really?” Jimbo says with his typical aplomb. “Why is that?”
“Because they made me.”
The brief, stunned silence that follows this revelation is shattered by the shrill cry of a woman.
“Get us to the Uppers,” Jimbo says. “We’ll call your Masters when we’re across the river and no longer in a part of town they’ve been looking for an excuse to annihilate.”
“Which way should I go?” I ask.
Jimbo grunts in my ear. “I swear, kid, we need to get you an express education that goes beyond blunt questioning and dormant fighting skills.” He thrusts his arm up and to the left, pointing.
I look left, and then up. “Oh.”
The Uppers are black buildings covered in long glowing streaks of color. There’s more buildings than I can count from here, each providing homes for thousands more people. Maybe millions. If the virus is released there … there will be no place to hide.
“How fast can you run?” I shout to Luscious.
“I’ll keep up,” she replies, so I pick up the pace and she matches it, though she can’t hide the strain on her face. I could go faster, but don’t want to leave her behind, so I pace myself, delaying my contact with the Council and perhaps risking the lives of millions to save one woman.
Part of me says that this is wrong, that the lives of millions outweigh the life of one. But another part of me says that this decision, to save Luscious no matter what, is the most interesting thing I’ve done in my sixteen days of life. I want to see where it leads.
11.
As we near our destination, the buildings appear to grow, and not just the color-framed black spears of the Uppers, but the brick buildings of the neighborhood through which we’re running. Based on the language I’ve heard Jimbo employ to describe the Uppers and his desire to reside there, I believe height is somehow attached to status, which might explain why Jimbo’s mood is permanently set to sour. Perhaps it’s the ability to look down on others that insinuates a higher station? I say insinuates because the science facility in which I spent my first days of life is a simple two-story building far from the city, yet my worth to the Council is quite high. I don’t know why, only that they look at me with admiration and pride that suggests equal status with them, if not elevated. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the Council makes their homes in the tallest buildings of the Uppers.
“How much farther?” I ask, my voice coming out warbled as each step jounces Jimbo on my back.
“One point three miles,” Luscious replies with uncommon precision. She must note my surprise because she adds, “I walk this route every day.”
I’m about to say something encouraging—we’re almost there, just another minute, we’re going to make it, something like that—but a very nearby scream turns me around. A pair of zombies have just barged through the front door of one of the buildings and set upon the woman who answered the door, ignorant to the danger outside.
A second shout turns my eyes forward again. The voice came from a woman, short like Jimbo, but with a high, delicate voice and twin braids on either side of her head. “Look out! Over there!” The small woman points across the street, to an alley on my right. At least ten more of the monsters tear through the gap between buildings, their teeth clacking with frenzied hunger.
Despite our fast pace, the dead are closing in.
Jimbo slaps my chest. “Faster! Go faster!”
Despite my instincts agreeing with Jimbo’s response, a quick look at Luscious reveals she’s not capable of moving faster. I shake my head. “This is as fast as we can go.”
Jimbo leans in close to my ear. “Look,” he whispers between jolts, “I’ve known Luscious for a long time. She’s not really contributing anything positive to the world. No one will miss her if she doesn’t make it. But you, you’ll be missed. And me, well, I suppose I’m lucky to be attached to you.” He tightens his grip. “No one will judge you poorly for it.”
“I will,” I reply, my whisper coming out something like a growl. “And you’re wrong, I would miss her. But I suppose I could carry her and let you try to outrun—”
“Fine!” he grumbles. “Just don’t let us die.”
“That is my intention,” I say, but proclaiming my intent and seeing it through are two different things.
A horde of walking dead emerges from both sides of an intersection just ahead of us. The two sides spot us and close in like a living doorway. With teeth.
“Straight ahead,” I shout to Luscious, and do my best to maintain my current speed and not leave her behind.
A lone man, who is clearly one of the animated dead, but looks … fresh, takes the lead on my right side, closing the distance quickly. As he nears, I can see that his gut has been torn open and fresh fluids spray from his insides with every step. He’s a new zombie, recently killed and already part of the pack.
The zombies aren’t just invading and killing, they’re expanding their numbers.
As we make our mad dash through the intersection it’s clear that the freshly changed dead man is going to reach us before we pass through. If he slows us down, even for a moment, it will be long enough for the others to catch us.
I change my course, angling my flight toward the approaching zombie.
“What are you doing?” Jimbo says, his voice oozing fear and confusion.
I ignore him. There isn’t time to explain and I don’t think he’d care or agree.
I watch the man’s unsteady gait. His head moves up and down as he runs, following a rhythm no one can hear, but I can see. I fall back a step, allowing Luscious to take the lead and attract the man’s full attention. As he turns toward her, arms outstretched, I cock back my fist.
“No!” Jimbo shouts, perhaps misreading what I’m about to do, or just wholeheartedly disagreeing with it. Either way, his fear has blinded him and he acts without thought, yanking back on my neck, shoving my chin up and my eyes to the sky.
But I’m committed to my course of action. There’s no avoiding it. So I swing out hard, propelling my fist to where I believe the side of the man’s head will be. If I connect, I can leap his sprawling body and continue on unharmed. If not … well, that’s exactly what happens.
My fist passes the moment in time where I’m expecting an impact. But a fraction of a second into my missing swing, something strikes my forearm.
And then clamps down.
The world seems to slow down around me as my eyes widen and shift toward my forearm. I can hear Jimbo screaming something in my ear, but his voice is muted and slowed, impossible to understand. I feel the impact of another step forward vibrate up through my leg, but it feels as though I’m no longer making headway.
The entirety of my mind is focused on the twenty pressure points exploding pain into my forearm. The first thing I see is the skin on my arm, bending inward toward the multiple points of impact. Then I see the shiny white teeth of the fresh zombie pressing down, increasing the PSI with each passing microsecond.
This is how it happens, I think during this strange break from time. How someone becomes a zombie. In a few minutes I’ll be just another member of the horde, but with all my upgrades I’ll be faster and stronger than all of them. Luscious won’t stand a chance.
A fresh prick tells me the teeth have broken the skin. The virus is being transmitted already, flowing through my system, rewriting my code and changing me.
But my mind, for the moment, remains intact.
Time resumes.
I yank my arm from the man’s mouth, tearing away layers of skin. The man falls to the ground. A surge of anger tells me to stomp on the man’s head. An act of vengeance. But logic keeps its fragile hold and urges me onward. I stumble for a moment, but regain my footing and sprint, quickly reaching my top speed. The zombie hordes conjoin behind us, surging like a river freed from a dam.
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