Christa was undergoing more testing with Dr. Montgomery. It was just the two of them this time. Normally Montgomery had an entire team of scientists hovering around to help.
“Where is everyone today?” Christa asked. “You usually have a whole group here helping out.”
“Oh, there was a deadline on another project that needed to get finished up today. They’ve gone to help out with that one. Don’t worry, we’re not neglecting you. They’ll be back later next week.”
“Ah, I wouldn’t worry about that. At least I have you here. I know I’ve got to be important when the big boss is spending all her time with me.”
Montgomery smiled. “You’re definitely right about that. If we’re going to get this passed by the big wigs, we need to keep pushing the project along. I really believe targeting the violent zombies is the right approach. Controlling them all with Pacize was the only solution at the time. We were desperate back then. But science is all about the next big breakthrough. We’ll pull this off, I’m sure of it.”
Christa nodded in agreement. “It’s good …”
Before she could finish her sentence, Leekasha barged into the lab.
“Where is everyone?” she asked, somewhat flustered.
“Leekasha,” Dr. Montgomery said. “Good timing, I was just about to send someone looking for you. I’ve got an extra battery of tests I wanted to do this afternoon after I’m done with Christa. We could start right now though, since you’re here.”
“Actually,” Leekasha said, “Chambers wanted me to come see him. He wanted Christa too. That’s why I’m here. I could come back and see you afterwards.”
“Alright, we’re just finishing up here. Come back when you’re done with Chambers.”
Montgomery gave Leekasha a funny look as she rushed Christa out of the lab. As soon as they were gone, she picked up the phone and made a call to General Chambers.
“General,” she said when he answered the phone. “The girls are on their way to you now. What exactly was it that’s so urgent you needed to drag both of them away?”
***
As soon as they got outside Montgomery’s lab, Leekasha picked up the two packs she had left outside the door and put one on. The other she handed to Christa.
“I’m sorry, but we need to go now. I did something I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself.”
Putting the pack on Christa said, “What exactly did you do?”
“C’mon, I’ll tell you on the way.” Leekasha pulled Christa by the arm as they started moving towards the elevators. “I got into his head and got him to let me into his private quarters.”
“Leekasha, you know we’re all under surveillance. Especially him. They know what you can do.”
“Yeah, I know, I just overestimated myself. I thought as long as he was out from under the security cameras it would be OK. They must have some other way of watching him. As soon as he logged into his private computer, he just passed out. I don’t know if he is dead or what. Then his computer just shut down, and I saw the silent alarm go off in his room. I tried to get his computer to boot back up, but then he started coming around.”
They took the elevator to the top floor. Leekasha continued, “I had to mind control a few soldiers on the way here. They’re definitely on to me.”
“Great, you’ve really screwed things up. They’ll be after me as well now.”
“Christa. Things are already screwed up. Us staying here isn’t helping. It’s actually the biggest screw-up of all. We need to move past all this. We need to get out. Patzy was right all along. We need to go. I need to go.”
“Patzy? Can you still hear her?”
“Barely. Just a whisper, she’s so faint. She just keeps repeating ‘go, go, go.’ That’s all she says.”
From the elevator to the front lobby, Leekasha and Christa mind controlled a few more soldiers. Pausing at the front doors, Christa took a deep breath and sighed.
“There’s no coming back from this. Once we leave, they’ll be looking for us. They won’t give up. God knows who they’ll send after us, but I have a bad feeling about that.”
“It’s too late to worry about that now, Christa. For now, we just need to run.”
With that, they wasted no time in commandeering the nearest vehicle and heading for the main highway.
“Which way?” Leekasha asked.
“North. Just go north.”
“Really, you’re sure? What’s up north?”
Christa watched the rearview mirror. “I don’t know, it’s just a direction away from here.”
Leekasha took the highway heading north.
Who’s Thelma?
Christa and Leekasha drove for six days. Initially they started north, but then went east for a while and back south again, whenever the mood took them. They took turns driving, and switched cars over a dozen times. It was easy. It was easy convincing people to switch cars with them. So, they switched, and the people loved their new car. They didn’t care what it was, and most importantly, they didn’t report it stolen. So Christa and Leekasha drove, and they talked. They talked a lot.
“You know,” Christa said, “they’re going to find us eventually. We just can’t keep running forever.”
“You ever see the movie Thelma and Louise?” Leekasha answered.
“Yeah, of course I did. Long time ago. The book was better.”
“There was a book? I didn’t even know there was a book. Either way, it doesn’t matter. They ran and ran and did all sorts of crazy stuff. They didn’t worry about getting caught. At least, not that much. They just ran till they got tired of it. Till they had enough.”
Christa smiled. “Yeah, but then they died. I don’t want to die.”
“You’re missing the point. Everybody dies. At the end of the movie, or in the middle, it doesn’t really matter that they died. The point is they ran for as long as they wanted to. We can do that too. We don’t have to die. We can just keep running. I want to keep running. There are millions of people in this country, and we can hide behind all of them. Who cares if it’s run by the British, or by Kongod, or by the regent, or a bunch of zombies? It really doesn’t matter. Does it?”
“I don’t know. It matters to the British. It matters to the people here. They can’t do what we can. They can’t just keep running. Most peoples need a place to live. They need to have a purpose.”
“Everybody finds a place eventually. Some just don’t like where they end up.”
“Nobody we ever meet seems to like where they end up,” Christa said. “Why can’t people just be happy with what they have and where they are?”
“It’s human nature to want things better. It’s how the world spins.”
“Well, maybe we need to stop worrying about human nature and worry more about zombie nature.”
Leekasha looked confused. “Nobody even knows what that means. Do they? Is it the same as human nature, or do they want to just keep looking for something better too?”
“Maybe it’s time to find out what they want.”
Leekasha nodded in agreement. “The humans have screwed things up for long enough, and I’m tired of fighting it. I know you must be. You’ve been fighting this practically forever, and I’ve only been at it a few months. Why keep on fighting … for what … for whom?”
They drove for a few more miles before Christa asked, “You have any idea where we are?”
“None. I stopped reading signs a long time ago. I just like driving with the window open and the wind in my hair.”
“You heard from Patzy lately?”
Leekasha looked out the side window. “No, not for days. How about you?”
“No, not since she started talking with you. I think she’s gone.”
“Dead? You mean dead, right?”
“Yeah, I do. If she ever was truly alive. I think she’s gone for good.”
“What do you think she’d want us to do?”
Christa smiled. “I think the only thing she wanted anyone to ever do
was to get her the heck out of those damn tanks. She just wanted to be free. She wanted to be doing what we’re doing right now. She just couldn’t explain it in a way we’d understand.”
Leekasha started laughing and couldn’t stop. Christa remained sombre for as long as she could, but eventually the laughter was contagious. Leekasha hit the gas harder the more they laughed. Eventually, with tears rolling down both their faces, the laughter subsided.
“Oh man, that hurts. My stomach’s gonna hurt for a week. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that much. It wasn’t even that funny.” Christa wiped the tears from her face. “It was pretty sad actually.”
“I think it’s time we let everyone out of their tanks, Christa.”
“I do too.”
“OK, let’s do it. At the very least, our odds of surviving that are better than driving off a cliff.”
Trafficking
The office of the regent couldn’t be sure if the call from King William was a desperate attempt to force the hand of the people, or simply a diversionary tactic. One thing was certain though: the recording and distribution of the recording to the public was intentional. When the government of a country is truly run by the people as it was in the Americas, it made little sense to try getting what you wanted through diplomacy and discussion. You had to go straight to the source.
What the European nations didn’t understand, or perhaps what they had forgotten, was the resilience of a country’s people, especially people who have survived years of war. Only those that have ever gone through it can understand the strength that comes out of surviving a beating. Europe hadn’t been at the wrong end of a beating since the Second World War. They just assumed that the threat of invasion would have the desired effect. That it would in fact convince the people to give up a piece of their prosperity in exchange for the guarantee of peace.
Instead, there grew a rising sense of outrage and resentment towards the rest of the world. How dare anyone else threaten their livelihoods and prosperity, which they had only in recent history managed to regain? Instead of fostering a sense of insecurity that looks for the easy path to peace, public opinion leaned to the side of resistance. They wanted to fight back. No damn way they were going to let a bunch of foreigners come into their country and take what was theirs.
Kongod began diverting resources to the military and public defense. For the first time since the wars had ended, young people started enlisting. Military contracts were once again being tendered out to contractors. What the rest of the world governments didn’t truly understand was that public opinion can be a fearless animal. It has a mob mentality, because it’s never alone … it’s always in a crowd that feeds on itself. In a sea of digital social interaction, there’s always someone willing to rally to your cause. It doesn’t take much typing and talking into the digital void to build an army of support. It spreads like wildfire.
It didn’t take long to see that with their abundance of resources and rapid growth of technology and infrastructure the Americas wouldn’t be an easy target for full-scale invasion. Not that it was ever the intention of the other countries, but neither was it their intention to rally the people against them. Perhaps they had taken the wrong approach. There were always alternatives.
While the British never did come, there was an increase in attacks on Pacize distribution centers across the country. This time, it was the smaller backup facilities that were the targets. They were easier to break into and steal from as security wasn’t as tough. The first-tier distribution centers had long been the target of the now diminished radical group Freeze that sought to free the zombie population. The attack on the larger centers had always been geared towards destruction. It was these initial attacks on larger centers that prompted the development of backup facilities. They had all the technology and capabilities of the larger centers, without the range. These new attacks were different though. They were focused more on theft than destruction. The existing defenses were geared towards keeping the Pacize flowing. Losing a single backup facility in one area was insignificant. The attacks or thefts were random and widely distributed across the country. They posed no immediate threat. It became obvious quickly, but still too late, that these attacks were about acquisition rather than destruction.
Surveillance footage from the crime sites showed organized and orchestrated attacks. The perpetrators were always concealed so identification was difficult. They knew exactly what they wanted, and wasted no time removing the critical equipment and drugs. They never took all the equipment, but they did take the complete cache of drugs. The only difference between the facilities broken into was the equipment stolen. It was rarely the same pieces. Every facility lost a different part of the machine. The thieves were well equipped. They had all the tools necessary to strip just the pieces they wanted. To take an entire machine would have been a big undertaking for a small team, but by taking pieces from facilities around the country in a short period of time, they got plenty of the drug, and enough machine pieces to assemble several units. One had to assume that a group with their resources would eventually start replicating their own machines and synthesizing their own drugs. It wasn’t a surprise that the rash of thefts stopped almost as quickly as they had started.
To anyone paying attention to the pattern, it also wasn’t much of a surprise when scores of zombie workers began disappearing. They disappeared from everywhere. Homes, schools, factories, offices, and shopping malls. Regardless of what Christa, Leekasha, the regent, or the people of the Americas wanted, the zombie trade had begun.
Drugged Out
“You don’t think we’re taking on a bit too much with this place?” Leekasha asked.
“I can’t believe you just said that,” Christa answered. “You’re the one that’s been ranting on your crusade the whole drive. On and on about the injustice of it all and how zombies need to stand up for their rights and assume their rightful place in the order of things. I swear, you have preacher blood running through your veins the way you were going on.”
“I thought you were on board with all this.” Leekasha frowned at Christa. “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts about this whole thing now?”
“No, of course not. I’ve been fighting for this for such a long time. Part of me is excited, it really wants for this to happen. On the other hand, I still remember what happened the last time I revived zombies. I can’t go through that again. That was horrific.”
“I was there. Remember?”
“Yeah, I know you were, but this is big. Really big. There are over a thousand zombies in this place. Angola is like the biggest prison in the Americas. It’s not just zombies in there either. There are real hardcore criminals locked up inside.”
“I know it is. That’s the biggest crime of all. Those zombies haven’t done anything, but they choose to keep them all locked here with murderers and rapists. That’s just not right. If we’re going to do this, we need to send a message to the powers that be.”
Clouds were rolling up from the south as they drove closer to Angola. By the time they got to the gates of the prison, it was dusk and they could see lightning in the sky to the south.
Leekasha rolled up to the main gates and rolled down her window. The guard started to approach, waving them off when Christa convinced him otherwise. He opened the gate, allowing them to drive on through. Angola was a huge prison facility, with much of the grounds being either undeveloped or used for farming.
“It doesn’t seem like a prison, does it?” Leekasha said as they drove the couple of miles to the main prison complex. “It just feels like we’re out for a drive in the country.”
“Yeah.” Christa yawned. “Bit of a disappointment, isn’t it?”
“Are you kidding me? You’re yawning? You do realize what we’re about to do right?”
“Oh, sorry. It’s just been a long ride. Too much time just sitting in the car I guess. Don’t worry, I’m ready for this.”
By the time Leekasha pul
led their car to a stop, Christa was nodding off to sleep. Leekasha poked her and said, “Christa, you alright?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Christa answered. “Let’s go and make some history.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about history, girl. I just want to do what’s right.”
“This place is huge. How do we know where to find them?”
“Seriously? You can’t hear that?”
“No, what are you talking about?”
“The screams. The pain. You still can’t hear them any longer? It’s coming from inside these buildings ahead. I’ll follow the screams, you follow me. Take care of the guards inside and have them let us in. I’m doing my best to block out the screams.”
They passed through the first few gates easily. Christa kept the guards distant, only engaging them enough to unlock doors and let them through the various cell blocks.
“Is this them, in this block?” Christa asked.
“No, but we’re close. It must be the next cell block over.”
“We’ve gotta move quicker. This is really hard for me today. Don’t know why, but I feel so tired.”
Leekasha led the way, with Christa behind doing her best to keep up. They entered the next block and found themselves surrounded by hundreds of Pacize-controlled zombies wandering the common area surrounded by empty cells. With no purpose, and no human controllers telling them what to do, they milled about, bumping into each other. The pain was too much for Leekasha. She dropped to her knees and doubled over. Desperately, she placed her hands over her ears and rocked back and forth, humming to herself.
“We’re here, Leekasha. We’re here. These are the ones. Focus on me. Just focus on me.”
Rising: Parables From The Apocalypse - Dystopian Fiction Page 5
