Three Zombie Novels

by David Wellington

  “I’d congratulate you on your detective work if you, me and Singh Nanda weren’t the only ones with the authorization code.” He studied Clark’s face. “Yeah, this is going to be a hard sell, but you and me, we’re loyalty oath types, right? Tried and true, red state good old folks to the core. So when I tell you the doors have to stay open you’ll just get in line behind me.”

  “I’m not sure you understand. People are dying here, right now. Every second those doors are open somebody else dies.”

  Instead of answering the Civilian stared hard into Clark until he felt as if he was pinned in place, transfixed by that gaze. He tried to laugh it off, surely this was just some trick, some kind of hypnotist’s trick but laughing didn’t help. Clark had trouble breathing. He tried clawing at his uniform collar but it didn’t help. He had a hard time standing up. Unable to really stop himself, he fell down on the floor, hard.

  “I’m inside of your head, Bannerman. He told me there were incentives and wow, did he not lie. This is so goddamned cool.”

  “He? He who?” Clark gasped.

  “This dead Scottish guy. His name wouldn’t mean anything to you. He’s like, the C-in-C of the dead or something, and I’m going to be his SecDef. Pretty cool, huh? He taught me how to do this to you.”

  The Civilian’s eyes were lit up like two lighthouses spearing out light at Clark through a sudden fog that had come up out of nowhere, a buzzing, rattling fog that got inside his head, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t, he couldn’t stand up there was nothing, there was nothing in the world except those eyes, those glowing eyes and the Civilian’s voice…

  “I literally have the power to cloud your mind, do you get it? It’s easy. It’s the easiest thing I ever done and you have no defense against it. I’m squeezing your life energy right now, that’s all. I’m cutting off the force that makes you alive. This is what dying feels like.”

  Instantly the fog was gone. The Civilian looked as he always had and the room, while dimly lit, was clear of haze.

  “Okay. I think this pissing contest is over, and I think I got a mandate. Do you want a recount, Bannerman?”

  The fog started coming back.

  “No,” Clark said. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  What will it be? Waddington’s chreode, inspiring some kind of Platonic human form on everything it touches? Or just a ministering angel with eyes like flashing gold? I need to know before I bring it to the surface—the potential negative consequences are truly chilling. [Lab Notes, 6/2/04]

  “There are some victories that cost more than defeat,” the Civilian lectured. Wearing only a hospital gown and a thick bandage around either wrist he should have looked absurd. Pathetic. His newfound power to strangle Clark’s life force probably helped allay that appearance. “Then there are just plain old defeats. I never got that shit about captains going down with the ship. Even the rats aren’t that stupid, right? So back in the first days of the Epidemic, when this Druid guy came to me and said, look, humanity’s a done deal, it’s gone, finito, a real non-starter, but maybe, just maybe there was a way for me to save my own neck, well… You know you have to listen to that. Look, give me your gun. I’m going to have power over the dead. He promised. You know, fuck dental, ruling the undead with an iron fist is the ultimate fringe benefit.”

  Clark handed over his firearm. He had little choice. The Civilian could kill him before he could get off a single shot.

  “I was a little leery when, you know, he said I had to die and then crawl my way back from the grave. That’s going to have a chilling effect on most negotiations. Turns out it was the easy part. I was going to come back anyway. Staying sharp, though, holding onto my faculties the way your blonde girl did, that took some work. It’s all about maintaining oxygen flow to the brain.”

  “The girl,” Clark said, still kneeling on the infirmary floor. He could feel his calves ping as they complained about their cut-off circulation. “What does she have to do with all this?”

  “Surprisingly little. God am I sick of hearing about Nilla! My new boss is obsessed with her, too. What is it, the blonde hair? The tits? No, Bannerman, she’s just a pawn in this game. A pawn that everyone thinks is a queen. Fuck her, alright? Let’s stay on-message here.” The Civilian smiled warmly at him. “I like you, Bannerman. I like you a lot.”

  “I… like you, too,” Clark tried, warily.

  The Civilian pulled away the chair that had been barring the door to the ICU. The door slid open silently and snicked against the magnet on the far wall, sealing itself open. The smell of blood and death billowed out of the enclosed room. “No you don’t. Nobody likes me, and with good reason. I’m an asshole. Because I have to be to help preserve freedom. My country needed me to be an asshole. You, on the other hand, are likeable. You’re honest, and dependable, and smart, and you try to do your best. Always. That’s so commendable. It makes people trust you. No way am I going to just throw away a resource like that. So I’m going to take you with me, as my servant or something, right? I’m even going to hook you up to a respirator when I kill you to make sure you don’t lose that beautiful brain of yours. Not all of it, anyway. I can’t really let you be smarter than me, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense. You’ll probably experience some slurred speech and you won’t be operating any heavy machinery, but you won’t be one of these drooling slobs you see all over, either, and that’s something. So come on. I have the bed all ready for you—the ventilator’s hooked into the emergency power. We’re going to live forever, Bannerman. You and me, side by side, wonk and wonklord.” The Civilian stepped out of the ICU and held out a hand for Clark to take.

  “No, no, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Clark said, slowly rising to his feet, shaking out his numb legs.

  The Civilian rolled his eyes and lifted one hand as if he planned on choking Clark from afar. Before he could use his power Vikram Singh Nanda shot him twice in the back of the head. The Civilian collapsed in a tangle of limbs, completely dead.

  There was a good reason why the flanking maneuver was considered a classic.

  “Are you alright?” Vikram asked, picking up Clark’s pistol from where it had fallen when the Civilian dropped it.

  “I’m fine.” He looked down at the corpse between them. “Thanks.” It was all he needed to say, for the time being. He stepped over the body and into the ICU. The equipment there looked ready to use, just as the Civilian had promised. Clark ignored the waiting hospital bed and found a security terminal. He paged through the menus and re-activated the emergency lockdown. An error message appeared when the screen refreshed.

  INVALID OR OUTDATED PASSWORD ENTERED

  He tried again but he hadn’t made a mistake, he knew it. The Civilian had changed the password and it had died with him. There was no way to shut the ten thousand doors.

  Running out of options made it very easy to see what to do next. Clark flipped open his cell phone and called Horrocks. The phone rang twelve times before it was answered.

  “Sir,” Horrocks reported, “I’m pinned down in a sally port and we’re seeing heavy action right now, we have—have—please hold on a second, sir.” Clark heard gunshots on the other end. “I have taken significant casualties. I cannot hold this section of the D Wing for very much longer, sir.”

  “I want you to break contact as soon as possible,” Clark ordered. “We’ve lost too much time. I want you to retreat to the roof, to the helipad. We’re going to abandon the facility. I will see you there and provide further orders when we arrive.” He ended the call once Horrocks had confirmed the order and turned to face Vikram. “I suppose we should get out of here before the walking dead show up.”

  Vikram agreed.

  The malignancy—oh, for the days when I could call it a “neoplasm” with a straight face!—is like a football now, or some horrible fetus growing inside her. Some nights while she’s sedated I place a hand on its smooth edge and imagine I can feel it kicking. I’ve been working for so l
ong with no result… I should take a break. [Lab Notes, 8/17/04]

  A dead girl, maybe fifteen years old, pushed down the hall, one side pressed up tight against the cream-painted cinder blocks. She left a trail of blood from behind her, blood which had soaked through her hair, ruined her clothes. She didn’t seem to care.

  Nilla balled her hands into fists and then let go of them again. The pain in her left hand—she wondered if she’d broken it while getting out of her manacles—brought her into perfect focus. Time to take stock.

  There was shooting everywhere—it came to her from every darkened corridor, every pool of emergency lighting. Smoke filled one hallway. She was pretty sure the prison was on fire.

  The dead moved through the prison like they owned the place. And she was one of the dead. She walked as calmly as she could past the dead teenager—the girl didn’t even reach for her, didn’t waste a moment’s energy on Nilla—and stepped through a doorway.

  The armless freak blocked her path.

  He didn’t look all that great. Skin had peeled away from most of his naked chest, long strips of it dangling around his waist. His face had puffed up and turned black with rot and his eyes looked like frosted glass. The smell of him would make animals run away.

  He wasn’t quite used up, though. He grinned down at her in the darkness, really grinned—how was that possible? There wasn’t enough left of his brain to feel any satisfaction in intimidating her.

  The grin slid into leering territory as she studied it.

  “Fuck off,” she told him. Something cold and sharp throbbed in her chest—maybe her dead heart going into cardiac arrest. “Just… leave me alone. Get out of the way.”

  The grin opened and he made an obscene sucking noise. “Nnnnnuggghhh,” he told her, and she took a step back in extreme shock. He coughed and tried again. “No,” he said, finally.

  The explanation leapt to her mind and she felt foolish. “Mael, stop playing games.”

  “Fancy you saying as much,” Mael said through Dick’s mouth. The words were slurred, turned sideways by the corpse’s swollen tongue and pulverized in his broken teeth but she understood him just fine. “You, who’s been playing me for a fool this whole time. I have plans for you still. I think we have a real future together, but for just now I think it’s best if you sit tight.”

  “Bullshit. This place is going to hell—I want out!” Nilla exclaimed.

  “If you were to be hurt, I would feel just—” he said, but he didn’t finish. She had started to duck under and around Dick’s left side and Mael had to lean over to try to stop her. Which was exactly what she’d wanted him to do. She brought her feet up and slid across the monster’s craning back and was behind him before he could even straighten up again.

  She didn’t waste any time after that. A corridor opened up before her, long and straight and pierced with pencil-thin windows. She dashed down it, or rather lumbered with as much alacrity as she could muster. She could feel the weight and mass of Dick behind her as Mael propelled his stolen corpse in pursuit, she could sense him back there with the hairs on the back of her neck but she refused to turn. She reached a doorway at the far end of the corridor and skidded through. She tried slamming the door shut behind her only to find that it was held open by some kind of magnetic stopper. While she tried to figure out how to release the mechanism she heard Dick smash into a wall not ten feet away.

  She turned to head deeper into the maze-like prison but had to stop in her tracks. A soldier was standing in the doorway just ahead, staring at her, breathing hard. His eyes were very wide.

  “Ma’am, it’s alright, I can protect you,” he said. “I promise we’ll get out of here together.”

  Dick stumbled out into the hallway and wobbled on his feet for a second, trying to get his bearings, perhaps. The soldier raised his rifle to his eye and fired three rounds in one quick burst. The noise was huge in the narrow corridor, the muzzle flash blinding. Holes popped open in Dick’s chest and neck and face and he spun around and fell to the floor.

  The soldier was smart enough not to head over to Dick’s body and check it for signs of unlife. Dick lay crumpled, his head down and away from the soldier, his legs splayed out before him. The soldier took aim again and unloaded half a clip into the dead man’s back. “Shit,” he screamed, and fired again. In the shadowy hallway he couldn’t seem to land a head shot.

  He stepped closer, then closer still. He raced up and kicked Dick’s remaining boot and then danced back, but nothing happened. Licking his lips he stepped closer until he was looming over Dick’s collapsed form. He raised his weapon to his face, ready to blow Dick’s head off once and for all. “Ma’am, stay back,” he shouted at her.

  Dick sat up with enough force to knock the rifle butt right into the soldier’s eye, making him scream loud enough to hurt Nilla’s ears. Not half as loud, of course, as when Dick sank his incisors into the soldier’s thigh and tore off a thick gobbet of flesh.

  Nilla didn’t stick around to watch.

  If I only had more time to be sure. What am I screwing with here? I pinched the field for almost three seconds this morning. I could feel it bunching up, the heat of it on my hands. Warm, pleasant. Invigorating. This is crazy—I’m crazy! I’m not a scientist anymore, I’m a witch doctor, painted red and shaking rattles at the back of a cave. Except… it works. [Lab Notes, 9/4/04]

  In a disused kitchen full of dust and spiders Nilla tripped over a fat woman whose legs had been gnawed down to splayed fragments of bone. The corpse kept trying to get up, to pull herself up to a standing position by grabbing at a table above her. She would get a few inches off the ground and then fall back again with a sputtering creak, only to try again, and again.

  Nilla picked up an institutional-sized can of beets and bashed the dead woman’s head in. Then she sat down on the floor next to the twice-dead corpse and tried to think of what to do next.

  She was having trouble understanding what was happening. At least part of that had to do with the light. The emergency lights in the prison were everywhere and they were bright enough to let you see where the doors and exits were. The light came at weird angles, though, and it was dim enough that as you approached someone in the halls they looked like nothing more than a dull shadow. It was impossible to know if they were alive or dead.

  Nilla. Nilla, talk to me. I can get you out of here if you’ll talk to me.

  She sat up, suddenly payting attention. Mael’s voice had softened. Once his intrusions into her head had been buzzing, clattering torrents of noise. Now they almost sounded like her own thoughts. It was hard to resist him, harder than it had ever been before. He was figuring her out, learning her buttons, her triggers. He was going deep inside of her mind and she wasn’t sure she could extract him anymore without hurting herself in the process.

  And was that such a bad thing? She had to wonder. She was pretty sure he was crazy, but at least in the middle of his insanity there was a place for her.

  Why do you hide from me, lass? I thought we were finally getting on alright. Just say something, will you? Say something so I can figure out where you are. Then I can get you to safety.

  She kept her mouth shut. She just wasn’t sure, yet. There was so much of her, so much she couldn’t find anymore. There had been a complete human being, somebody with a personality all her own, with likes and dislikes and beliefs and attitudes and, and, and… memories. There had been memories and now they were hidden from her. That person had just stopped. When she died, that person had stopped functioning. Those memories had been barred from her, hidden behind a wall she couldn’t seem to break down.

  Were those things lost forever? Would she ever get her memories back? Mael promised her a name. He had implied there was more. She wanted so much for there to be more. She needed to know who she’d been. If she knew, for instance, whether she’d been a good person, a kind person, or if she had been a little wicked, a little mean. If she knew that maybe she would know what to do next.

&nb
sp; Lass. Don’t you know I’m your friend? Don’t you know it by now? I’ve done so much for you. Is this how you repay me?

  Jason Singletary could have told her the truth but he was dead now. Twice dead. She and Dick had devoured his brains between them. It was the closest thing to mercy that she had possessed to give him.

  She thought maybe that she had started over. That dying had relieved her of the burden of having a past. Or maybe it gave her a duty—a duty to build herself from scratch. Maybe she had been brought back for a reason, but not for Mael’s reason. Jason Singletary had certainly thought so. She was the only one, he’d said, who could go to that place. That place in the mountains, that place at the end of the world. The place Captain Clark had shown her, in a photograph. Too bad nobody could tell her what she was supposed to do there.

  She stood up slowly and dusted off her pants. She left the kitchen. She took the next left turn just because she seemed to remember that when you were lost in a maze you were supposed to take every left turn.

  The corridor beyond was long and dark and cold. At its far end she saw a rectangle of pale light. She moved toward it. She was drawn toward it. “I’m here, Mael,” she said out loud. Because she owed him that much. “I’m going to find my own way for now, though, if you don’t mind.”

  Nilla—finally! I’d thought you must be dead. Well, I blasted well do mind, actually. We have things to do. Turn right at the next junction, lass. That’s an order, lass.

  “I don’t know about this,” Nilla said. “I’ve seen what your dead people do to the living people. It looks pretty cruel to me. It looks pretty unnecessary. If he just wanted to kill them all off, why didn’t your pal Teuagh just melt the ice caps or set off all the nukes or whatever? Why raise the dead? It’s so messy, so inefficient. Are you telling me he couldn’t think of anything better?”