Z-Minus (Book 5)

by Perrin Briar

  The RC was surrounded by the undead. They pulled and pried at the car, its protection, and reached underneath it for the music that still blared from the speakers. Susan hit the Off switch and the music stopped, but the undead did not stop attacking, going berserk.

  A swipe from one of the undead flipped the remote control car onto its side. Another infected seized it, and began pulling it to pieces. More infected fell upon it, tearing one another’s flesh more than the little toy. It was only a lump of plastic, but Susan still felt sad.

  Taylor opened the door and let Jericho in. Behind him, not close, but on his heels, was the undead that’d seen Jericho. He howled, pushing at the cars that blocked his way. He growled and fell forward, crawling over the car’s hood. He hit the ground on the other side and snarled at the soldiers inside the building.

  The soldiers shut the door and began to barricade it again.

  “He’ll attract more of them,” Richard said.

  “We’ll deal with that if it happens,” Steve said.

  Jericho dumped his bags on the floor, took a seat, and panted like he’d run a marathon.

  “You owe me a 1978 jeep, my friend,” Jericho said between breaths. “It attracts them like whores to twenty dollar bills. I had to dump it outside town.”

  Jericho was skinny, with no front teeth. He wore torn dirty brown overalls. The greasy hair on his head looked like it hadn’t been washed in years.

  “Do you have any idea how far you have to zigzag to get here?” Jericho said.

  “No,” Steve said. “But I’m glad you do. You need the exercise.”

  “Too fucking far, that’s how far,” Jericho said.

  Jericho and Steve hugged. It was a short, masculine gesture.

  “Here,” Jericho said.

  Oaks opened the bags and pulled out the weapons. There were handguns, machine guns, rifles, everything needed to mount an effective defense.

  “Christ All Mighty,” Taylor said. “You robbed every weapon store on the way here?”

  “Where did you get them all?” Oaks said.

  “From a Sears catalogue,” Jericho said. “But a small piece of my personal armory. I would have brought the sentry guns, only they’re a bit unwieldy.”

  “And perfect for our situation,” Taylor said. “You could have just left a couple of rifles instead.”

  “Maybe,” Jericho said, picking up one of the guns. “But I like the feel of the metal in my hands. There’s nothing quite so comforting as holding a weapon as opposed to putting your fate in the hands of a robot.”

  “Funny, you should mention that,” Steve said.

  “Now I’m here, can someone please explain to me what the fuck I’m doing here?” Jericho said.

  “You had to come through the city,” Susan said. “You should know why you’re here.”

  Jericho looked at Susan. He ran his squinting eyes over her like she was a prize cow.

  “I can tell you why I shouldn’t be here, why we should all be a thousand clicks away,” Jericho said. “I saw things on the way here. The kind of things you don’t discuss in polite company. People attacking people, people eating things I ain’t never seen nobody eat. Now, I’ve got a pretty strong stomach, but even I started to heave. But those things, those undead things-“

  “No one’s saying they’re undead,” Richard said.

  “I am,” Jericho said. “They’re walking dead. There’s no question about it. I put a dozen bullets into one, and it didn’t even stop him. He just kept on coming.”

  His eyes were distant with the memory of it. But in awe, not fear.

  “How did you stop him?” Steve said.

  “A double tap,” Jericho said. “There’s nothing a double tap can’t stop.”

  Z-MINUS: 3 hours 50 minutes

  Susan paced up and down the corridor, her phone pressed to her ear. She was calling Rosario, but there was no answer. The phone rang and rang, and with each passing minute, Susan’s imagination turned darker.

  Rosario should certainly have been out of the city by now, out in the wilderness. Hell, she could have been halfway to New York by now if she’d put her foot down. Why wouldn’t she call Susan? She would. Unless there was something wrong…

  Susan paused, took a deep breath, and collected herself. Panic didn’t help. There was nothing she could do if something was wrong anyway. She needed to stay calm, keep her head clear.

  Bang!

  Susan screamed, shocked at the noise in the silence of the night. The lone undead that had followed Jericho struck the windows and doors. Only now, he wasn’t alone.

  More of his brethren had gathered around him. Shadows cajoled and pressed against the front entrance. Was this it? Was the siege about to begin?

  The doors creaked, pressing inwards, spilling moonlight across the floor. The furniture screeched back, the press of human bodies on the other side too heavy.

  “I’ll take Taylor and push the furniture back into place,” Oaks said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Phil said.

  “No,” Steve said. “They’ll feel the resistance and know someone is in here.”

  “They already know we’re here, don’t they?” Oaks said.

  Steve shook his head.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “They’re curious, that’s all.”

  Jericho raised a rifle.

  “I got a cure for their curiosity,” he said.

  “We can’t fire guns,” Steve said.

  “What are you talking about?” Jericho said. “They’re going to get in. We’ll blow them away.”

  “We can’t use weapons,” Susan said.

  “Like hell we can’t!” Jericho said.

  “The sound attracts them,” Susan said. “Unless you’ve got something that can stop the sound, it will do more harm than good.”

  Jericho sneered. He wasn’t the type to reduce the noise of his weapons.

  “What do you suggest we do instead?” Jericho said. “Ask them politely to leave the premises?”

  “We’ll use the guns when we have no hope of holding them back any longer,” Steve said. “Until then, we stick with knives and bats and anything else that doesn’t produce noise.”

  “This is horseshit,” Jericho said. “You called me to bring weapons. I did. I thought we’d at least get to use them!”

  “We will,” Steve said. “When all else fails.”

  But Jericho shook his head and sucked air in through his wonky teeth. Guns were clearly never a final solution for him. Susan could imagine him now, sitting on the porch at home, on a farm that hadn’t grown anything for years, shotgun across his lap, lolling back and forth in a rickety old rocking chair, fanning himself with his floppy hat, watching the dirt road that ended at his front garden. It was a stereotype, but those archetypes existed for a reason.

  Jericho was also a former soldier, and respected the chain of command, even if he didn’t agree with the decision that’d been made. But that had been a long time ago. Could they trust him if he’d been away from the military for so long? Was he a loose cannon? Had they exposed themselves to their enemy for someone who would prove to be just as dangerous? Looking at him now, Susan wasn’t sure what she believed.

  The soldiers and scientists relocated to the second floor. They were fast at their work, piling tables and chairs up in the stairwells. There were two sets of stairs on either side of the elevator. They had plugged each of them with furniture. It wouldn’t stop the flood of undead, but it would help slow them down. That was all they were doing, really. Slowing the flood.

  Steve set guards at each stairwell. It was premature, as the undead hadn’t even breached the main entrance on the first floor yet, but it was good practice, good to get into the habit of ensuring someone was always on watch.

  There was a loud screech, and the barricade on the first floor rocked back an inch. The groans of the undead grew in volume, like adjusting the volume control on a hi-fi. Taylor crossed herself. The droning and groaning was endl
ess, meditative, one voice taking over from another, joining together and disparaging and growing again. It was something akin to the low resonating chants yogis listened to to calm their minds.

  Susan found herself closing her eyes and listening to the growing volume, the resonating sounds lulling her into a calm state of mind, relaxed, rocking back and forth on her heels. A low groan escaped her own throat. She was taken with the mournful groans of the undead. She could sense it, surrounded by it, felt their pain and agony.

  And then she began to lean forward…

  A hand gripped her shoulder. Her eyes started open, like waking from a deep sleep. She turned to find Richard looking at her with a look of concern.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  “Yes,” Susan said. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  The front door’s hinges snapped, and the furniture screeched across the floor. The infected stumbled through the gaps like water from a burst dam, filling the first floor, bumping into the water fountain and knocking the granite statues over.

  The scientists and soldiers watched from the second floor. The undead seemed incapable of looking up, unless their heads were already twisted at the neck, but even then, they lacked the intelligence to figure out a way up to the second floor. They would end up getting there eventually, Susan supposed, by accident or trial and error, rather than by any real attempt on the part of conscious intelligence.

  In the meantime, they stood directly below the second floor’s balcony that jutted out like an overbite. Blood dribbled from the undead’s lips. Those that could see the survivors reached up for them. The others copied them, not really knowing what they were doing, simply joining in because the others were doing it. The groping hands grew like a forest in a nightmare. Their groans were loud and monotonous to the ear, deafening, like encroaching depression.

  “‘Save the world’,” Jericho said, making a fart sound with his lips. “And who’s going to save us? Humans have never saved the world, never even really attempted to. We only always tried to save ourselves, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do here.”

  “What would you prefer we do?” Susan said. “Just let them overrun us?”

  “Why not?” Jericho said. “They’re going to anyway.”

  He hawked and spat over the side, striking a blonde woman on the cheek. The undead fought over the snot and mucous.

  “I’m a superstar,” Jericho said with a grin. “Someone should sell my body fluids on eBay. There’s nothing wrong with trying to survive, to protect ourselves. It’s what every species does. But the world doesn’t need saving. Except from us.

  “Self-awareness might well be evolution’s biggest mistake. To be aware of yourself, and others, is a curse more than a blessing. And yet here we stand, defending a building against mutated versions of ourselves, waiting, hoping for a cure to come and save us.”

  Jericho shook his head in derision, curling his lips.

  “Have you even thought about what the ‘cure’ might do to them?” he said. “Someone suffering from cancer, having gone through all the surgeries and treatments, even when completely cured of it, rarely gets full function back. There are always scars. What kind of scars do you think these people will be left with? I’ve known guys who come home from war. They’re never the same again. And these are people who were trained to face it. They still get PTSD.

  “Who are we to say that these things aren’t what we’re supposed to be? What we were always meant to be? Returning the universe to a place without consciousness. Pure, perfect. We were never meant to be killers. We don’t have claws or sharp teeth or great speed to hunt down our prey. We have only our brains, and that may turn out to be the biggest and most dangerous weapon of all. Especially to ourselves.”

  Having heard enough, Susan turned and headed away. She sidled up to Steve.

  “You nicknamed him ‘Starky’,” she said. “Now I know why.”

  Steve smiled.

  “He’s a character, all right,” he said.

  “Worse than that,” Susan said. “I think he might be right.”

  Z-MINUS: 3 hours 34 minutes

  “One of them is coming up the stairs,” Taylor said.

  “Already?” Steve said.

  They’d planned on it taking several hours before they would stumble across the stairwells.

  “Some went downstairs, into the basement,” Taylor said. “But one’s coming up now.”

  “So much for hoping they couldn’t climb stairs,” Susan said.

  It was their ambling, shuffling movement that suggested their inability to climb stairs. Turned out they were wrong on that front.

  Richard wrung his hair with his hands.

  “What’re we going to do?” he said. “If one comes, they could make a noise and more of them will come – like they did at the entrance.”

  “We could make noises, draw his attention away from us,” Susan said.

  “Any noise we make will draw more into the center,” Taylor said.

  Jericho unsheathed his hunting knife.

  “I can take care of it,” he said. “Make it so he’ll never make another sound again.”

  The idea horrified Susan. They were going to kill him?

  “Wait,” Susan said. “We shouldn’t kill any of these things if we don’t need to. We could still cure them.”

  “The more we try to save the more dangerous it’ll be for us,” Steve said. “Take this one undead out of the equation and we could prevent many others like him from coming at us.”

  “It’s the lesser of two evils,” Phil said.

  Perhaps. But Susan still didn’t like it.

  “All right, do it,” Richard said. “Quietly.”

  “So quiet not even I will be able to hear it,” Jericho said.

  He walked to the stairwell. Inside, somewhere amongst the forest of table legs and twisted armchairs was a demon risen from the dead. Jericho angled himself to peer through the gaps in the tables and chairs. He caught sight of the undead man.

  “He’s an ugly bastard, isn’t he?” Jericho said. “Reminds me of you, Steve.”

  “Hey,” Steve said, feigning offence. “Be careful in there.”

  “I haven’t had anyone say that to me for quite a while,” Jericho said. “It leaves me with a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Don’t worry. I’m expendable.”

  He put the knife blade between his teeth and began to clamber under the furniture.

  “Come here you,” Jericho said. “You’ve got a date with destiny.”

  The zombie grunted, having thudded into the furniture. The noise attracted the attention of the undead on the first floor.

  “Oaks, keep an eye on the undead below,” Steve said.

  Oaks peered over the railing.

  “They’re approaching the entrance to the stairs,” he said.

  The enclosed space magnified the zombies’ endless sonorous sounds.

  “Yaaa!” Jericho bellowed.

  The undead groaned. There was a scuffle, followed by silence.

  “Starky?” Steve said. “Are you all right? Starky?”

  “Yeah,” Jericho said. “Stubborn bastard didn’t know he was dead. He put up a bit of a fight.”

  “You need to get out of there,” Steve said. “More of them are coming toward you.”

  “I know,” Jericho said. “I hear them.”

  But he made no effort to move away from them.

  “You should get out of their way, don’t you think?” Steve said.

  “Thought I might plan a little welcoming committee,” Jericho said.

  “Get out of there,” Steve said. “They’ll tear you to pieces.”

  “Not before I tear them to pieces first,” Jericho said.

  The undead groans rose in volume, making the furniture vibrate. Susan took her hand off the cold metal of a tabletop.

  “Starky,” Steve said.

  “It’s no good,” Taylor said. “He’s made his decision. You know what he’s like. Besides,
I don’t think he’s really fighting them, do you?”

  Susan processed Taylor’s meaning. They understood what Jericho was doing. He was fighting the memories he had in his past, that part of himself he’d locked away from society, and was now able to release.

  “Yaaa!” Jericho shouted.

  There was a gargle, followed by the thud of something hitting the floor. One after the other, like heavy rain.

  Jericho laughed like a maniac.

  “Come on, then!” he shouted. “Come on!”

  But the undead were getting loud, closer.

  “Get back here now!” Steve said.

  “They ain’t nothin’!” Jericho said. “Nothin’ but a pile of shufflin’ bones!”

  Jericho had backed up to the furniture, his shirt visible, splattered with blood. Steve leaned over and seized Jericho by the collar. He bodily lifted him up and over the furniture.

  “What’re you doing?” Jericho said, kicking at the monsters in the dark stairwell. “I’m doing a job here!”

  Steve dumped him on the floor and hopped down after him.

  “You’re going to get us all killed,” he said. “That’s what you’re doing.”

  “I thinned out their numbers,” Jericho said.

  “You attracted more of the damn things with all your screaming and shouting!” Steve said. “Look!”

  Steve dragged Jericho to the railing. He pointed at the massing undead that came from the hospital and flooded into the foyer below. The space was shoulder to shoulder with the undead.

  The realization dawned on Jericho then. He ran his hands over his hair and clothes, smoothing them back down.

  “I was carving them up nice like a Christmas turkey,” he said.

  “You killed us all!” Taylor said, reaching over to grab Jericho by the lapels.

  Steve blocked her.

  “We still have a few floors left to retreat to,” he said. “We’re not done yet.”

  The furniture on the second floor stairwell screeched as it was pushed further into the corridor. Grasping hands reached and pulled at the empty doorframe.

  “Get back!” Steve said. “How many of them are coming up the stairs?”