Zombie Botnet Bundle: Books 1 - 3: #zombie, Zombie 2.0, Alpha Zombie

by Al K. Line

  "Why isn't she after us then? I thought they picked human flesh over animal?"

  "I guess maybe as she is young the virus hasn't had quite the same effect on her as others," replied Ven.

  "What's she doing then, she can't make a call can she?"

  "Kyle, don't you get it? She's taking a fucking selfie, a fucking zombie selfie!" Ven was getting kind of hysterical, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

  "C'mon, let's get inside."

  The girl barely looked at them as they quickly made their way to the front door. Bos Bos stayed at Ven's heels the whole way. He knew that the young girl was not someone he would be able to make friends with, and much as he would like to pay the tree a visit he felt it best to wait for a less 'you will get eaten' kind of marker.

  Home Sweet Home

  The scene Kyle was confronted with in the kitchen he knew like the back of his hand was far worse than anything he could have possibly imagined. He wasn't wired for such horrors. His brain found it almost impossible to process just what it was being asked to deal with. The events of yesterday, combined with what had happened so far today, had left him emotionally raw, physically exhausted, and a total wreck of a young man.

  Tears were pouring down his face, pent up emotion and an outpouring of grief flowed down his face and he knew he could easily slide into madness to shut out the sight before him. He felt broken, broken to the core. He understood he would never be the same again. It was too much, too much to take in, too much of a loss to bear — the sadness and feeling of betrayal towards the world as a whole, and yes, to Ven too, enveloped him and drew him into a place darker than he even knew existed.

  After making it finally to his parent's house — his home — the place he had lived in his whole life, he found it was definitely no longer his refuge from the outside world.

  He would never come back here no matter what, this chapter of his life was well and truly over. The scenes he was trying to understand and deal with turned him instantly into a man with a deep understanding of just what real sorrow and shame was. Kyle had led a relatively isolated life, not mixing much with others, happy to focus his attentions on his Online pursuits. It meant he had been sheltered from the darker side of the human psyche, and he had certainly not had the life experience to call upon to even try to deal with what he had to confront in his own home.

  "I'm sorry Mom, I should have come sooner."

  Kyle had made the decision yesterday to stay with Ven and her family, he knew there was no chance his parents would still be alive. Working Online daily in a strict 9am-6pm routine he understood in his heart that they would have been some of the first victims of the zombie botnet, and in that respect he was right, up to a point. He had also gotten that feeling he had on occasion, the tingling at the back of his skull that left him in no doubt about certain facts, often before they had even happened. So he knew his family would be gone, but he was not prepared for what would come afterward.

  It just so happened that when the botnet virus hit, when the world changed forever, Kyle's mom was making a nice cup of tea. His dad was not so lucky, neither of them were if truth be told. You could make out what had happened by the trail of evidence in the kitchen. The downstairs office was located just off from the kitchen, it was actually a converted outhouse and coal store, a common style of building throughout the Victorian construction frenzy.

  Kyle's father had obviously been infected by the botnet. It had taken hold quickly, a few seconds after activation he had become a victim, crashing into his monitor, sending it to the floor, where it smashed and could do no more harm. His office chair was on its side, the rest of the room looking surprisingly normal. His ashtray was still on his desk, piled high with stubbed out cigarettes that he refused to smoke out of doors, even though his wife hated it. A single Marlboro Light lay on the floor where it had been dropped and burnt the carpet.

  Kyle's father had been doing nothing more mundane than checking up on a few orders for his surprisingly successful hobby and business. Kyle had goaded him into expanding via a simple Website he put together and by getting to grips with eBay. His company, dealing mainly with collectible antique weaponry, really took off once he had an Online presence. His father loved nothing more than interacting with his customers. A simple link he clicked on through an email the botnet had sent via a customer's infected smartphone didn't result in a funny cat meme this time though.

  Scant seconds later he returned from his fugue state, no longer the football loving family man who would do anything to protect his wife and his son. He was something more, and something much less, one of the unfortunates that retained a glimmer of understanding as he carried out the foul message he had been infected with. That glimmer soon faded however, then there was nothing left to observe the depravities the body performed on the woman it had loved more than anything in the world for so long.

  On the lino covered floor lay a lonely chipped mug, his dad's favorite — the one with Arsenal written on it — a pathetic dark pool spreading out from it. A teabag and spoon laying beside the mug that had seen countless use over the years.

  Kyle wished he could focus on the mug, not the scene of pure gut wrenching horror he found it impossible to turn away from.

  "Are they here? Did you... oh, fuck, shit, shit. Kyle, Kyle, KYLE!" Ven's voice rose higher and higher and got louder and louder, as she tried to take it all in, cover Tomas' eyes and at the same time scan the room for lurking danger. There wasn't any, the depraved scene before her less an immediate risk to life than it was to a person's sanity.

  Kyle's mother was on the floor, a few steps away from the office door. What there was remaining of her anyway. Bits of intestine and foul smelling innards were left trailing from her in a sickening way, congealed blood pooling around her corpse like a mad piece of abstract art. Part of a hand lay a few steps away, the wedding ring still attached, a gold bracelet snagged on the shard of ulna shining white. It was licked clean, protruding from the ripped off remains.

  This was one of the easier scenes to digest amid the horror they were confronted with.

  Kyle's dad sat slumped on the floor, sitting like a baby with his legs sticking out in front of him. His protruding belly making him look like Buddha perverted into hell personified. Light from the kitchen window made his features stark and terrifying in the bright morning sunshine. His face still showed the initial swelling around the eyes and throat that was the immediate result of becoming infected, all bruised and puffed up in a sick parody of a child's doll. Marks were beginning to show around his neck, where he had grabbed desperately trying to get some air into his lungs. Dark red, almost black veins thick and gnarled crawled across his exposed skin. Around his mouth dark gray matter had congealed. His hair was matted with blood and gore and the most sickening thing of all, a sight that would remain with Kyle until the end of his days, was the look of absolute and pure contentment on his father's face.

  He was almost angelic in the purity of his peace and happiness. It was sick, sick in a way that went against everything Kyle believed in, and stole away forever his belief in God. The thought of ever being truly happy again made him, at this moment, feel ill to his stomach. The churning of acid and bile he felt rising was not to be stopped.

  Tearing his eyes away from the nightmare tableaux before him he made it partway to the sink before a venomous acrid bile rose and spewed forth violently. He accepted it, almost welcomed it as if it would make him clean again — letting the sickness encompass him as he continued to vomit well beyond the point that he felt empty inside.

  Kyle's father had devoured his mother's innards indiscriminately, picking out choice pieces, discarding other bits, flinging them about the room in a frenzy of lust for fresh flesh, all the while tearing pieces off her body and gnawing at bones. But this had come later, after tearing her throat out with his teeth he had gouged out her eyes, sucking on the soft sweet juices to be found. Next came a frantic finger stabb
ing frenzy, trying to reach the tender brains tantalizingly calling to him from behind her gaping eye sockets. You could see the extreme vexation that had taken hold, gouge marks around the eyes obvious signs of frustration and lust for the base of human intelligence. In the end the head of Kyle's mother had been cracked open like a large egg, repeatedly hammered against the floor until the lick smacking gray matter within had been exposed.

  Death would not have come easy or been in any way a happy release for the woman that bore Kyle twenty-one years previously.

  His father sat there, belly resting on his extended thighs, practically comatose. The sick contentment spread across his face like a perversion of all that it meant to be happy in this world.

  His stomach was extended so much it seemed it could actually split open and burst, so much had he consumed. From eyes, to brains, to lungs and liver, bone and arm, thigh and buttock, all had been gorged upon. Not once did the thing that had been Kyle's father stop for a second to consider what it was doing, or even hesitate for a moment in its pursuit of fresh flesh — that flesh being the sacred body of his wife of twenty-seven years. Inside the thing that was once his father madness had taken hold long ago. The glimmer of what he had become sending the remnants of awareness fleeing into the ether, away from the monster he now was.

  "C'mon Kyle, into the living room with you," whispered Ven, trying to be as gentle as possible. She could see the total despair in his eyes, and understood that Kyle had grown old in a way no other young man ever could. It was worse than the trauma of war for one so sheltered from the darker side of life until now.

  She steered him to the couch, gently eased down on his shoulders. Kyle sat there, a complete and utter mess of a man, his world shattered. Forever changed. Ven sat in the chair opposite, nothing but a small immaculately polished coffee table between them. It still smelled of the pine Pledge his mother loved to spray in abundance on any available surface. Ven bounced Tomas on her lap soothingly; Tomas looking around the new place he suddenly found himself in all wide-eyed and full of the innocence they had all once known. Now only remaining in the baby of the group, and the rather confused Labrador.

  "He looks so happy, so fucking happy," whispered Kyle. The despair and utter sorrow wrenching at Ven's heart, making her find it very hard to think of the right thing to say.

  "It's not him anymore Kyle, it's not your dad."

  "He ate my Mom, he smashed her head in and he ate her brains and he pulled out her insides and he..." Ven was across the divide between them by the time he began to falter, wrapping him in her arms and doing the only thing you could do, giving support and the warmth of another human body.

  "Ssh, Ssh. Don't think about it bunny," she said affectionately, "don't think about it anymore, it isn't him, it isn't him." She hugged him tight, even little Tomas seemed to sense what was happening and grasped hold of Kyle's shirt, as if to show his support for the loss he had suffered. Bos Bos, not wanting to be left out, and who had thus far stayed firmly away from the kitchen and Kyle (just in case) came over and gave Kyle's hand a gentle and supportive lick. Kyle seemed to come to his senses somewhat, even managing a weak smile that almost broke Ven's heart.

  "Thanks guys," he said. Looking at what he now realized was the only family he had left in the world.

  ###

  Kyle, a.k.a. rabidbunny (hackers really did like to have daft names), and Ven did not exactly have a friendship you would expect to encounter. Certainly not one quite as close as their associations had become. But they hit it off from day one Online and it spilled over into the actual genuine real world via a strange series of coincidences mingled with some rather excitable private detecting on Ven's part.

  Kyle wasn't even close to Ven's level when it came to coding and other covert Online activities. If truth be told few others were or ever had been. Nonetheless they had hit it off in various underground chat rooms — places Ven felt drawn to now and then, even though she hated the crap that was often spouted by people who thought they knew better than her when they didn't. And she could never understand why people found it acceptable to be rude Online and show no respect to others. You could bet that if they were confronted with you in person they would never act the way they did behind the curtain of Web anonymity they all thought they had. She may have been a criminal, but at least she was polite about it.

  Kyle was very good at hiding his real identity, better than most, but even he was not so good that Ven didn't uncover it eventually, not that it had much to do with her computer skills. The fact was that for once she made a discovery without following an Online trail — Kyle had taken very impressive steps to ensure he could never be traced that way. Rather, and quite bizarrely, it was in the local pet store of all places. Ven had popped in one afternoon after the hairdressers to pick up some Purina diet dog food for Boscoe (she couldn't understand how he kept on gaining weight) and overheard something strange. Some skinny kid all in black was having a rather one-sided conversation with the bunnies in the open pen in the middle of the store — weird!

  Not wanting to intrude she stepped back into the aisle and couldn't help but carry on eavesdropping. She got a few funny looks from people checking out the squeaky dog toys, but hey, so what. The young man (early twenties, she guessed correctly) was prattling away to the rabbits. Sounding kind of soppy, blithely chatting about floppy ears, asking the rabbits and the odd guinea pig how they liked PetSmart and did they get enough food and exercise. Then something odd caught her attention.

  Now that's a bit bonkers, she ruminated.

  Could it be? Did she really hear that? rabidbunny? Surely just a coincidence? Kyle was whispering to the rabbits and she barely caught what he said, but she was sure he had mentioned rabidbunny.

  Just one of those things. It couldn't be him.

  Still, more than a little intrigued she made her way to the counter and paid, and whilst the bag of food was being loaded into her Subaru by a helpful assistant she decided that she had to investigate.

  Totally out of character she stalked Kyle home, which was quite exciting if she was honest. And the next day she knew exactly who lived at the house he entered, found he lived with his parents, uncovered his name, age, date of birth, even the time he was born, and that he was currently self employed as a Website designer with some pretty impressive tax returns for a scrawny twenty-one year old with very bad taste in clothes, certainly in need of a hairdresser.

  It was him it had to be.

  It was the start of a beautiful friendship for two people you would never assume would ever become close, and if asked would say the same. Over the coming weeks Ven surreptitiously tracked his movements through some good old fashioned spying. She found out that Kyle walked almost everywhere and had a real affinity for animals, although he had no pets of his own. He was a slim, verging on skinny guy, and was heavily into what Sarah would call punk, but what Kyle would call hardcore; the term used for anything from old school punk bands like the Dead Kennedys and thrash metal bands like Slayer to Minor Threat, Bad Brains and anything else that wasn't just the usual shit you heard on the radio day in and day out. A Miley Cyrus fan he most certainly was not.

  He wore black almost exclusively. Although often looking and acting like a loner he seemed to go out of his way to meet and greet any animal he came across. His face would then light up and he would chat amiably with both animal and owner (if there was one). You could tell that this was a genuinely nice human being you were interacting with.

  So Ven decided he was to be her friend. Understanding that she was very insular it was a struggle making the decision. But she didn't want to be the way she was, and wanted to begin to have deep friendships outside of her marriage if she possibly could. It was her way of beginning to allow her emotions to become more a part of her personality.

  If truth be told young Kyle didn't have a lot of choice in the matter really. Ven had, if you counted them all, two friends up to this point: Boscoe and Paul her husband. It was a push to up the f
riendship count to two really, but it made her feel better. And if Ven decided that there was to be a third then you can be sure that it was not a decision made lightly. Whether it was just loneliness that made her decide to befriend Kyle, or she had simply realized that he was a nice guy, she never knew, but befriend him she would, and that was her goal for the next day — to have a new person in her very quiet life.

  The day after her decision was made Ven made a point of bumping into Kyle whilst out walking Bos Bos. They did not live far apart but the routes taken by each had simply never crossed before as far as Ven could remember. The chance meeting in the pet shop was just one of those coincidental encounters that probably happen to us all, but we never think twice about them. Why would we?

  The minute Bos Bos met Kyle Ven knew this was a friend of theirs, and when Kyle pulled a cheese (and mayonnaise) sandwich from his pocket and gave it to Boscoe Ven was practically ecstatic.

  "You can call him Bos Bos," she said dramatically, it being the highest honor she could bestow.

  The dog wagged his tail so hard it seemed like he might take off, weight issue or no weight issue. And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship for all concerned. But it wasn't without its ups and downs. Not surprising when we think about the differences between these two unlikely compadres.

  Zen and the Art of Packing

  It took the rest of the day, and well into the Friday evening before Kyle was able to gather together what he wanted from the house. Ven tried to clean up the kitchen the best she could, but the horrendous reality of what had happened to Kyle's family, and the intermittent flashbacks to what she had done to Paul, made dealing with it all a bit of a lost cause.

  She did her best to move his parents away from the kitchen, having had to take out Kyle's father first in as humane a way as possible. Without the mad rush of adrenalin of being under attack disposing of a zombie was a different matter entirely.