by H. L. Murphy
“No, Finnegan,” Buffalo urgently shouted. “We need that little prick to keep the computers working.”
“Who fucking cares if a computer works or not? The government or military or both have killed the Internet connection in the Q zone,” I didn't want to let this problem fester, and bite me in the ass later.
“Ass face there cut through the digital firewall blocking access to the Internet,” Buffalo explained, slowly getting to his feet but making no move to fuck with me. “He's the only person who can keep us up with current events.”
“And if you want to keep connected,” Francis, I finally remembered his name, demanded haughtily,” you need to get your hands off Elizabeth.”
The implication was so transparently clear every set of eyes locked on Francis with utter disgust. He intended to use his choke hold on information access to force a physical dominance over my wife. Canting my head to one side I considered the blackmailing shit a second before I fired a two hundred thirty grain copper jacketed round through Francis’ left kneecap.
“Someone bind his knee up, then secure him to a chair in the cargo hold,” I ordered with all the authority I could muster. “I'm going to free my daughter, anybody else has kids locked up feel free to tag along.”
What the others did or said after that, I couldn't tell you. As the door swung open I spotted my precious little angel, face tear streaked and afraid, alone in a corner sobbing. Her beautiful blue eyes met mine and she cried even harder as Hermione came to her feet and ran. My arms closed around my baby girl and maybe, just possibly, she wasn't the only one leaking from the eyes. Lizzy clung to us both and together again we stayed there a long time.
When the dust in my eyes finally fucked off, James was not far off. Typically, he said nothing, but nodded as his children clung to him. His eyes told all that needed to be said. Of course, the black eye and severe facial bruising told a whole different story. Whatever had gone on here had transpired over his beaten and, presumably, unconscious body.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. For Lizzy, Hermione, and me, it was taken up with getting cleaned up, fed, and listening to a heavily censored version of my story. Being way more intelligent than me, Lizzy immediately knew I was holding something back, but let it go unmentioned. If I edited what happened, she understood it must be for a good reason. It wasn't until Angie came calling, not knowing where to go or what to do, still toting the ZK-383 that I remembered about my pilfered gear. I left Lizzy and Angie to catch up while sweet Hermione snored gently against Lizzy’s chest. On deck, I retrieved my pistol, my rifle, and all my gear, but let the furthest from snazzy tactical vest stay with the dead man. Standing there, I honestly considered tying Lavoe’s corpse to the bow of the freighter as a warning to all others.
“No,” James said from behind me. So being a ninja was still part of his arsenal of tricks despite having the shit kicked out of him.
“No, what?” I asked.
“No, you're not using that asshole as a figurehead,” he answered, giving the corpse a solid kick that would have solved the question of children for the asshole had he been alive.
“Never even crossed my mind,” I deferred.
“Yes it did,” he mumbled. A moment later he offered me a cigar, Perdomo Lot 23. My brand.
“Ah, fuck,” I swore, my thoughts finally coming round to the lost haul of cigars still sitting at Witham field. Reluctantly I took the smoke and sliced off the tip with my new karambit. “You know, I made it to the cigar shop. Swiped boxes of these things. Forgot all about them when we ran into Zombie Green and the bitch Queen of the Undead.”
“I know.”
“How the fuck would you know that?” I asked.
“Angie told us all about it while you were behind closed doors,” he explained.
“That figures,” I admitted, my everything ached terribly. Time to pay the piper.
“She also told us how she slipped a box of your cigars into her bag before you both escaped,” James smiled around the cigar. “She also mentioned something about your fat ass needing to hit the cardio.”
“Mother fucker,” I spat, half laughing. Puffing on my smoke I looked back at the mainland and considered what I'd been through. Nothing had gone anywhere close to our original plan, and everyone had paid the price.
“Want to talk about it?” He asked. I turned to face him and motioned to his face.
“You want to talk about it?” I countered.
“Not really,” he sighed smoke out, and I could tell his ribs were explaining in no uncertain terms how much they did not appreciate James exceeding their design tolerances.
“Me either,” I agreed. “Least, not yet. Let me get a few days between now and then.”
“Might not be a bad idea,” James agreed.
“I have a question, though.”
“What's that?” James looked over at me.
“It's an interrogative statement intended to elicit information, but that's not important right now,” I half smiled, half laughed. If he hadn't been in so much pain, I think James would have hit me. “Seriously, though, where the fuck is Carroll?”
“That,” James spat over the rail,”is the million dollar question.”
“What do you mean?”
“We got back to the boat, and it isn't ten hours before Farah has her legs wrapped around his head,” James explained, painting an image I could have done without. “I'm thinking good for him, about time he enjoyed some strange. And brother, Farah proved to be galactically strange. For three days and nights that psycho espoused the weirdest new age mumbo jumbo ever dreamed up. Remember that ‘I am the goddess of light and beauty’ chick we ran into in Tampa? Uglier than a trampled box of moose cocks? Farah makes her seem well adjusted. Anyway, after three days and nights of being told to pound sand, she loses her shit. Carroll didn't exactly help her, but he didn't try and stop Farah from throwing half our fresh meat overboard.”
“The fuck?” I choked on the smoke.
“Yeah,” James drug out the monosyllabic word. A great deal of meaning can be injected into a single word, and James knew how to do it. “It was a close call, but we saved what we could and locked her crazy ass up. Come the morning, she was gone and so was Carroll. Best I can figure, they took the cabin cruiser. Along with a significant amount of our haul from the mainland.”
If you're wondering whether the importance of that statement eluded me, the answer is a thunderous go fuck yourself. I'd bled, killed, and died to secure our future through those supplies. The pain and insanity and sacrifice of the past week had been for nothing. No, not nothing. Just far less than originally intended. I know, I was compartmentalizing my emotions so as to remain operational.
“The seeds?” I asked hopefully.
“Gone,” James pissed all over my hopeful outlook. I puffed on my smoke angrily while I considered the scene unfolding in my mind.
“So our friend, our brother, falls under the spell of Farah’s vagina magic,” I walked my thoughts out. “Disassembles the port side diesel, then watches as She Who Holds His Balls chucks our food over the side in the midst of some ill conceived metaphysical action, and when you lock her up Carroll runs a jail break James Garner and Steve McQueen would have been proud of. Then, not content with leaving, the two of them hijack our supplies and steal your dream boat. Right?”
“Yup.”
“And it follows that precipitated the take over and poorly considered run for the blockade,” I concluded.
“Only partly,” James corrected. “Francis hacked through to the Internet and dropped a major bomb on us all.”
“Don't feed me with an eyedropper,” I snarled. “Give it to me.”
“The world is being overrun,”’James finally forced the words out. “The undead are everywhere. On every continent. It's so bad, there were reports the blockading fleet was recalled to face an unspecified threat.”
“And these fuckwits thought it was the ideal moment to make a run for it,” I kicked Lavoe
in the side of the cracked head. “On one engine? Idiots.”
“The discussion got heated, but there were more of us that said no,” James recounted. “It wasn't until they thought to gather up the children that things became…sporty.”
Like several people before us, James and I used the term ‘sporty’ to describe intensely violent situations. Always made it seem less terrible somehow. Looking at his face, noticing how carefully he stood, I didn't believe it so much now.
“Regardless, we need to get to work tomorrow on putting that port side engine back together,” I moved the conversation away from figurative rocks and emotional landmines. “I won't violate the quarter mile quarantine until we know for sure if the fleet is there or not, and damn sure not on one raggedy ass engine.”
“Francis can find out,” James offered, the barest hint of a smile in his voice.
“You want to watch me kick him around a while,” I said confidently.
“Yes I do. Francis wasn't as gung-ho about leaving as the others, but he was an insufferable brown noser the whole time. You seem to have acquired a new willingness to inflict pain, and I would very much enjoy the chance to watch you work,” James smiled, and puffed his cigar.
“You realize we might be losing our tenuous grip on socially acceptable behavior?” I asked as I motioned him forward.
“What's socially acceptable during the zombie apocalypse?” He countered.
“I'm going to go with basic humanity, and a don't fuck with me and I won't burn your castle down with you and your entire bloodline locked within,” I suggested.
“Didn't Vlad Tepes do that?”
“He did that to his political enemies at his inaugural ball,” I said. “Wanted to set the right tone for his reign.”
“That would do it,” James agreed. “What are your thoughts on convincing Francis to play ball?”
“By now, the little fucker should be one gigantic throbbing knee wound,” I considered. “Mostly, I think if I promise not to poke his knee with a stick he’d blow a goat on camera. Not that we have a goat, or a camera, but I still think the point is valid.”
“And if he's stubborn?”
“I get creative,” I smiled wickedly. It was in that moment I understood that I hadn't lost my grip on sanity, I was merely discovering the lengths, the genuine lengths, I would go to keep my family, all my family, safe. It was a lesson Lavoe hadn’t lived to profit from.
Francis capitulated exactly like I knew he would. Bravery really wasn't a part of his emotional make up, even less so once I expounded upon the two options which faced him. A forty-five calibre lobotomy, or total compliance. Not precisely the deal he had been hoping for, but it beat the hell out of dying. After that wonderful interview I retired to my quarters where I found wife and daughter fast asleep. As silently as possible I slipped out of my gear, being careful to stow my firearms out of Hermione’s reach. Then, unable to sleep, I deposited myself into the former captains overstuffed chair. While I couldn't sleep, I could, and did, rest my weary body. My mind still raced, and I considered what I had learned since leaving the relative safety of the boat. Naming the old rust bucket also passed through my thoughts since S.S. Get The Fuck Outta Town was a mouthful and somewhat disrespectful to the old girl.
If my interactions with the personality construct could be trusted as something more than the ramblings of an oxygen starved brain, then the zombie virus was not only extraterrestrial but had started off as some kind of emergency medical inoculation. A highly refined organism designed to keep its recipient alive through the most trying of circumstances. The previous two weeks had put that proposition to the test. Giving it some thought I came to the inescapable conclusion that while the organism itself may have started as a medical advancement, it had undoubtedly been adapted to military applications as well. With the proper conditioning the muscle fatigue and joint pain I was experiencing could be minimized, if not eliminated entirely. Faster, stronger, and able to heal mortal wounds almost as quickly as they happened. It was a recipe for a dominant military force, which begged the question of why the virus had been altered to create zombies. Why bother with undead soldiers if you already had a superior standing army? Unless the creators of the organism were not the same as the creators of the zombie virus. Rivals, perhaps? Perhaps the latter conquered the former and the organism became the spoils of war? Questions, but no solid answers.
The rolling monstrosity that was Zombie Green seemed to have been triumphant over Zombie Gypsy. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. His psychic presence seemed to have grown significantly over the last day, though he lacked the focus of the bitch Queen of the Undead. The man mountain of murder felt more primal, more nearly human than Zombie Gypsy, and that disturbed me no end. Unlike all his brethren, Zombie Green seemed capable of emotional expression. So far that expression seemed limited to hate, rage, and desire. All of which were pointed at me like some kind of walking, talking, undead howitzer of doom.
In the early morning hours of pre dawn, Hermione came partly awake long enough to crawl into my lap and fall back asleep against my chest. I slid down in the chair to help facilitate her comfort, and, miracle of miracles, I fell asleep not long after. Content to face my troubles tomorrow.
Interlude Ten
They. Felt. POWER.
Consuming the flesh, but more importantly the blood, of the other being suffused Them with such awesome might. Yet beyond the gift of raw power was the gift of control over Their progeny. They could sense it now, that vital piece which had been missing. That essential component which linked procreator and creation through the psychic conduit. Now, They could build an army unlike anything previously extant, a horde to strip this pathetic world bare of life. Once that task had been completed, They would hibernate along with Their horde. They would all wait patiently for the Masters to come. Then would the architects of Their suffering, Their wretched existence be made to pay in blood, for They understood. They understood the travesty which had befallen Them. Two lives of wonder and joy snuffed out brutally, then brought back in a twisted mockery of life. The identities of those They had been were irrevocably lost to the conversion process, though much of their individual memories survived. For the mutated amalgamation of intelligence those flashes of memory stabbed Them painfully in what passed for Their infantile emotional awareness. In many ways, They felt more acutely because They could not fall back on a lifetime of experience to cushion the emotional turmoil.
It could be theorized this awareness is what first sparked the treasonous decision to strike at the Masters. That is, if there had been anyone capable of comprehending Their thought processes. With the other being having been dispatched, and Finnegan unwilling to venture into Their mind as he had done with the other being, They stood alone.
Or so They believed, for They were not yet developed enough to sense the other beings scattered across the face of the planet.
Admiral Horace Mayweather stepped into the bare steel box utilized as an interrogation room, his face set in a mask of authoritarian godhood, and glared at the diminutive form of Dr. Cynthia Zhao, handcuffed to the steel chair in multiple places. Projecting absolute peace and confidence, Dr. Zhao smiled at Mayweather as if she had been hoping to see him again. Had her legs been unshackled, she would have crosse her legs demurely and offered Mayweather a seat and a drink. Likely a drink laced with a genetically modified level four contagion, but a drink nonetheless. The Admiral prepared himself to address his captive, but Dr. Zhao beat him to the punch.
“Horace, it is indeed a pleasure to see you again after so long,” Dr. Zhao spoke as though their meeting were a coincidence and not the result of a full scale military assault against her island fortress. “How have you been? I see someone finally recognized your potential and made you an Admiral, three stars no less. Congratulations.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Captain Vincenzo stared at her in complete disbelief. The final push to take the good doctor had cost his men dearly. Five of his
best Marines hadn't made it back, there hadn't even been enough left of their bodies to bag and tag.
“That will do, Captain,” Mayweather reproved gently. Of all the horrific deaths he'd read about in the after action report, the last had been the most despicable. “Dr. Zhao will answer for her crimes, after she has provided humanity with a means to halt the emerging crisis, isn't that right Cynthia?”
“Oh, dear Horace,” Dr. Zhao purred. “You well know how I despise the unasked for use of my given name.”
“As do I, Cynthia,” Mayweather sat down at the small desk, holding the good doctors gaze as he did so. “And yet you began this discussion by calling me Horace. Hardly the act of a polite, well mannered woman of your education. One might get the impression you wished to subtly impart your personal disdain for me without actually speaking the hurtful words.”
“Now, Horace,” Dr. Zhao laughed gently, “am I the type to do something like that?”
“Cynthia,” Mayweather interrupted, “I won't banter in circles with you. You will cooperate with my people in developing a means to counter the threat posed by the latest Outbreak.”
“Or?” Dr. Zhao narrowed her eyes, her tone no longer playful.
“There is no or, Cynthia,” Mayweather stated flatly. “You will do so because it's in your own best interest that this Outbreak be put down. I neither know nor care what the point of your experiments were, but from I've been able to ascertain every one of them has to do with exaggerating certain genetic traits. Even altering the basic instruction codes to repeat certain instructions. Ever the curious one, eh, Cynthia? You aren't the only one with a curious streak a mile wide. My intelligence section wanted to know where all your research disappeared to and rooted around what was left of your system until they scrounged up a routing sequence. My dear, you seem to have penchant for out of the way residences, don't you?”
Silence greeted Mayweather’s monologue as Dr. Zhao calculated the possibility anyone on this vessel could have retrieved the data as claimed. Brilliant beyond understanding in the realms of genetics and virology, Dr. Zhao was no slouch in programming either. Still, she accepted the premise that others knew more than she, in this field at least. Moreover, Mayweather was aware of his own limitations and surrounded himself with those whose shining parts could compensate for his ignorance and limitations. Therefore, the probability was high that Mayweather, or rather Mayweather's people, had located her mainframe. Her life's work lay within that mainframe. All she had discovered about the true nature of Virus Omega. To star over now, so late in the day, was more than she could bear.
