by Al K. Line
It had taken on a life of its own. Subliminal manipulation of the mind had developed into something a whole lot scarier. People on Twitter were hash-tagging zombie and reporting that people were trying to rip them to shreds after collapsing — then seemingly dying and coming back. Trying to kill them before they killed you was mostly unsuccessful, but reports from the media were talking about destroying the brains as the only way to stop these monsters. It all faded pretty quickly, the botnet infiltrated everything and relatively soon you were either one of this new race, about to be, or trying to save yourself from a very grisly death.
Reports on the BBC Website, with a live feed, were hard to take in as a reality. A bedraggled weather girl, eyes sunk in the sockets and raw from tears, was currently reading the news. The presenters obviously either dead or somehow contained.
"From the reports we can understand it seems that people accessing the Internet are becoming infected with some form of digital virus. We do recommend that you turn off any appliance connected to the Internet at the end of this report." By which time it could be too late, and for many it was. The BBC don't always give the best of advice it seems. "Those infected seem to suffer some kind of fit or anaphylactic episode..." the weather girl continued, staring around her with growing concern. "It seems they are then coming back to life and attacking anyone in sight, attacking, killing and... eating them... Christ."
"Shit, shit, shit. Where's my phone? I've got to call Paul, and quick," Ven asked.
Kyle grabbed it from the desk next to her and handed it over.
She called, willing him to answer. Nothing.
"Damn, no answer. Hopefully it means he hasn't got it turned on, he's always forgetting about that after a meeting," she said, hoping against hope.
"I'm sure he'll be home any minute Ven, if his phone is off he should get here no problem." Kyle sounded the opposite of convinced, even to himself.
"You sure we are safe here Ven?" Kyle asked, getting totally freaked out.
"We should be, yep. I have every kind of firewall you could think of, and plenty you couldn't," Ven said, with none too much confidence in her voice. "But fucking zombies? She's just the weather girl, what does she know?"
"But this is your botnet, isn't it? It's happening as the program spreads and delivers the subliminal package," said Kyle.
"But it can't do this. It can't actually kill people and bring them back to life, it just makes them open a virtual Bitcoin account." Ven was not sounding sure about it at all.
The crazy truth was that it was her doing, and although it was not killing and re-animating the dead it was destroying any humanity they had, and was helping turn them into a death machine of the worst kind. A once human being with no compunction, re-programmed with an overwhelming desire to destroy and devour others once of its race. The worst kind of monster there possibly could be.
They carried on surfing the Web, growing less and less convinced it was safe to do so. Ven stared out the window every few seconds, looking out for Paul, growing increasingly nervous about just how quiet the street was.
Where was everyone?
Dread crept up her spine, every second making the reality sink in deeper and deeper.
Reports varied from zombie apocalypse declarations to incredible accounts from rapidly put together YouTube videos — showing infected friends or family going into some kind of shock and collapsing, only to seemingly recover, then turn rabid. They all had one thing in common, their faces were full of hatred and were puffed up, bruised, and consumed by both horror and insanity at the same time. At the back of Ven's brain she knew that they were not actually dying and re-animating, but the reports were less than clear on this point. Besides, they were trying to rip the faces off their children, which was not such a great thing.
Ven contemplated her actions, and how far it would have spread by now: millions of devices, countless countries around the globe, and it wouldn't stop either. This was the way it had been planned, to be viral and to be continually learning how to evade digital capture. To create new ways to send out the subliminal message.
Money was going to mean nothing from that point on, survival being the only currency worth a damn.
They heard the front door slam closed, Ven missed seeing Paul arrive outside and park his car. Hubby called up the stairs — began walking.
Ven and Kyle called to him in unison. "Don't look at fucking Twitter!"
But it was too late.
This was the first time they saw for real exactly what the zombie botnet was capable of. It was the stuff of nightmares and would haunt Ven's dreams for the rest of her life. The responsibility weighing heavier as the world plunged deeper into madness and utter carnage.
Paul reached the top of the stairs and looked into the office in befuddlement. "What's going on?" he said. "Why are you both shouting?"
"Paul, are you okay?" asked Ven with a massive sense of relief. "Do you feel weird?" Maybe she had been wrong, maybe it wasn't her fault and something else was going on?
Paul opened his mouth to reply, but instead of words a thick black goo, akin to liquid chocolate gone rancid, spewed out of his mouth and all over the beige Cormar carpet Ven had taken weeks to choose.
Bos Bos ran under the office table and barked.
Paul took a step forward then stopped. "I don't feel so we..." Paul tried to say, before gagging, falling forward and grabbing for the balustrade. It broke, sending balusters flying, as he fell, clutching despairingly at his throat.
Ven started for the landing, but Kyle grabbed her. "Ven, you can't, it's too late," he whispered. "We can't go near him, he's infected."
"We can't just leave him there, what are we going to do?" Ven sobbed, her voice rising higher and higher, all the while Bos Bos was creeping further and further away into the corner of the office space.
Paul was not having a good time. A zombie botnet virus will do that to you every time. His neck had swollen until he looked like some kind of deranged Michelin man — he was grabbing his throat, struggling to breathe. His airways had completely closed up and anaphylaxis had set in, not the worst way to go but there were better options. This was just the beginning. The infection had a lot more in store for Paul, as well as anyone else that was unfortunate enough to be in his vicinity.
Paul managed to get to his feet, his face bright puce, blotches all over his arms — peeking through above the collar line were dark veins, bulging like demented snakes writhing under his skin.
He began to itch all over, not just a gentle itch, an excruciating pain that was face-tearable in its intensity. His eyes were now almost impossible to see, and as they carried on swelling he stumbled, not knowing where he was or what was happening. His face bulged, veins began to actually rupture, and the swelling around his eyes made it look like two rotting apples attacked by crows had been pushed squarely into his face.
Then it got worse.
He sank to the floor again, this time writhing, clutching alternately at his face, his hair, ripping jagged strips of flesh from the back of his hands, making a heart wrenching sound somewhere between the cry of a newborn and the death rattle of a lung cancer victim.
One ear oozed some kind of pus and the smell that reached Ven and Kyle made them retch. They stood there, not knowing what to do or what to say, unsure about just when Paul would become a zombie — and if they could do anything to stop it. They both still found it almost impossible to believe that people could actually turn into real life zombies, but the news and the rest and the world seemed pretty convinced that was exactly what was about to happen to her husband. Ven's only adult friend in the world apart from Kyle.
Their indecision made not one iota of difference to the life writhing on the floor, and in very short order Paul went from mild mannered office worker to zombie botnet victim number 98,783 in the UK. Worldwide the numbers were in their millions, rising by the second.
Paul stood, a blank but terrifying stare on his face, and pulled a ragged strip of skin
off his left hand with his teeth. He licked his lips and Ven and Kyle both screamed as he lunged for them, his nostrils dilating wildly as he caught the scent of flesh not his own.
Ven was paralyzed with both fear and a deep and heart-wrenching sadness at what she had done to the world, and to the love of her life. Luckily Kyle, although the opposite of what you would think of as an action hero, was faster to act.
Kyle lunged past Ven, grabbed a broken baluster from the floor where the balustrade had collapsed, and pushed it through Paul's throat with all his might.
At least, that's what he envisioned as he pushed the jagged piece of wood into Paul's flesh. But real life isn't like the movies and the makeshift weapon went in, caught just a few inches into Paul's neck, broke and left Kyle with the majority of his slaying stake still in his hands. With the disgusting squishy, yet gristly, feeling still playing up his arms as the wood entered Paul.
Paul, face bulging with dark writhing veins filled with the zombie botnet's infection, faced Kyle snarling, a vision of hell personified, and grabbed for him. Kyle ducked and ran back to the office, slamming the door behind him.
"You've got to mash the fucking brain you idiot," Ven screamed, weeping and verging on hysteria. A million zombie deaths coming back to her from countless movies and TV shows.
"Fuck, seriously? I thought just stabbing his throat would kill him."
"He's already dead," screamed Ven again. "What is wrong with you?"
"Okay, okay, shit," said Kyle. "This is all kind of new to me you know."
"You watch zombie movies don't you? You always have to destroy the brain you twat," Ven said, insanity receding somewhat — which was rather incredible, when you think about the fact her husband just turned into a zombie. Not to mention that he would now very much like to eat them too. Ven had that gift that many of a slightly 'special' nature had: the ability to compartmentalize her emotions, allowing her to focus on what she deemed more pressing matters. It would catch up with her though, there was no doubt about that.
"What are we going to do?" said Kyle. "We need to kill him, um, make him not a zombie anymore. What do you say when you want to kill a zombie anyway?" he mused, now totally not being the time for such questions.
"I don't fucking care," Ven screamed, losing all the calm she had been trying to muster. "Let's just deal with this shall we?"
"Oh, shit, shit, shit," she moaned, realization suddenly crossing her face.
"Ven, I don't like the sounds of this. What?" Kyle was getting seriously anxious, even more anxious than he already was.
Never mind that her husband, who she assumed was now an undead husband, was trying to beat the door down in an insane frenzy of rage and hunger.
"The baby. The baby is still in the nursery. What if Paul eats him?"
"The baby? Tomas? Oh fuck, c'mon," Kyle said, and grabbed her arm as he yanked the office door open and ran full force at Paul, who was standing there looking kind of like a, well, a zombie that really wanted to eat some brains.
Kyle knocked Paul to the floor as they ran past him and made a mad dash for the nursery. Baby Tomas was fast asleep, looking for all the world like Twitter hadn't just turned millions of people into zombies.
Ven's adrenaline levels crashed, she half crumpled against the wall and then pulled herself together. Scanning the room quickly she soon realized that there is absolutely nothing in a nursery designed to destroy what you think is a newly re-animated corpse trying to eat your baby. Safety first, and all that.
"The bedroom, the bedroom Kyle, we have to get there," she whispered, trying to keep calm so Tomas wouldn't wake. "That stupid fucking fake samurai sword is there, the one Paul thinks is really cool, that he got off eBay." It was all Ven could think of that could offer some protection.
"You watch the baby Kyle, and absolutely, under no circumstance whatsoever are you to let Paul eat him, do you hear me?" Which was kind of a moot point really.
"Jesus Ven, what do you take me for?" Kyle whispered, looking kind of like he was given a responsibility far above what he was used to.
"Woof... woof?"
"Shit, the dog, the bloody dog, we left him in the office. Paul is going to eat him, he will eat his brains and then he will eat my baby," Ven screamed.
"Shh," Kyle said, but it was too late.
"Waaahhh?" asked baby Tomas, waking up from a nice long doze and wondering what all the fuss was about. A confusion of senses fighting for priority in his newly formed and rapidly developing body.
"Bugger," Ven whispered, and scooping Tomas up into her arms she pushed him at Kyle, glanced out into the hall to see Paul staggering into the office, Bos Bos backed into the corner, hair on end like he had just had an electric shock, teeth bared and looking like he really wasn't sure what to do about the encroaching zombie situation.
Ven dashed into the bedroom, tore the stupid fake Japanese sword down from its plastic stand screwed to the wall, ripped it out of the stupid fucking shit plastic fucking crap sheath and got it instantly caught in the pale blue, calming bedtime, Laura Ashley curtains she paid £350 for in the sale.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, seriously?" she whispered, to herself, to the curtains, and to the stupid fucking sword.
"Get it together woman," she muttered, trying to stay calm enough to untangle the sword. All the while her brain flashed images of Paul hunched over her baby, brains oozing from between blood stained lips, a look of sheer joy on his zombie face.
And then she flipped. There was absolutely no damn way on earth that any zombie, husband or not, was going to eat the brains of her baby, no fucking way at all. One love was now gone from her life, two would be too much too bear.
With a scream that would make even the most hardened zombie think twice about eating your baby's brains she dashed out into the hallway. She held the sword two handed in a pose she recalled from a show was how you held a sword, and as chemicals surged through her body that usually laid dormant until an extinct leopard tried to eat you, she ran at Paul. He was facing the nursery door and had his back to her as she lifted the sword high, and attacked her husband with all her might. She stabbed him in the middle through the back, but he didn't react in the way she expected, he didn't even seem to bleed. Paul, or what used to be Paul, simply tried to pull away to get his freedom of movement back and get at the soft baby flesh the other side of the door. Ven could hear his teeth snapping as he tried to grab for her from behind.
Kyle peeked out of the nursery door and yelled, "His head, his head, you have to get his head off, or mash his brains, remember?"
"Fuck, shit, forgot," said Ven as she pulled the sword out of Paul's ribs and stepped back to try again. Forgetting the exact same advice she had just given Kyle about stopping her maniac of a once darling husband.
Bos Bos, with a sense that he should be doing something a little more proactive than just cowering and hoping zombies were not really real, took the opportunity to jump up and with all his doggie might grabbed Paul by the arm, dragging him down.
Wasting no time Ven, in a fit of rage, fear and extreme motherly instinct, lifted the sword high and plunged the 'not very sharp at all' point right through Paul's green and swollen eye socket until it stuck in the floorboards she had paid £790 to have sanded and waxed back to their original perfection.
Paul shook, arms and legs trembling as if having a seizure as blood spurted out of his eye, making just a slight splash on the wallpaper, ruining what was once a perfect shade of olive green designed by Rogers & Son to stimulate productivity without being distracting.
"Never did like that bloody wallpaper anyway," she muttered, trying to convince herself rather than anyone else, although secretly she loved it, it was just that £200 a roll still rankled.
Bos Bos ran from the terrifying tableaux, trotted down the stairs and jumped up onto the couch, shock already setting in for the poor guy — he needed his blankie.
Kyle came out of the room, baby in arms, and Ven, in a daze, walked downstairs following B
os Bos, Kyle and baby Tomas right behind.
They had a drink, then they had another one.
Bos Bos had a nervous chew of the sofa. Tomas promptly fell back to sleep — probably the best thing to do once your dad has tried to eat your brains and the zombie apocalypse is in full swing.
Babies do need their rest.
###
5:17 p.m. BST saw the zombie botnet get its name.
Chat on IRC channel nohackersallowed (you have to love hacker humor) was the first place that seemed to make note of the noise. Twitter was a mess, more than usual, with #zombie gaining traction. Facebook seemed to be in meltdown, and Instagram had more than double the normal daily number of images posted in just a few hours — over one hundred million in just a few hours.
Many assumed rightly that the chaos was due to a botnet infiltration of some form running rampant, but doing nothing more than amusing the bot herder. It quickly became the only topic of conversation as people came to understand this was not a joke, that there was something very serious going on. A little delving and it became clear that someone with an awful lot of knowledge had managed to spread a virus around the globe in record time, and that it was a very sophisticated virus indeed. It was very obvious to a lot of those chatting on the channel that this was not going to stop, not even if the original creator wanted it too.
User sandstone27 actually christened the botnet, although the term 'zombie botnet' had been around for many years already as a general description for a botnet that ran on other people's Web connected devices. But now it had taken on a whole new meaning, and one much more sinister. This incredible stroke of imagination came about after sandstone27, a.k.a. Roger, a fourteen year old kid in Cincinnati, realized that the number of zombie selfies on Instagram and the #zombie trend on Twitter really did mean that some serious zombie shit was actually going down, for real. It wasn't just the latest in a long line of Corporate stunts designed to get the word out about a new Game release or some kick-ass app for your mobile device.
