“Most painful time for what?”
Instead of a response, the smug leader said, “We’re the master race and you’re the mongrels. You’ve lived off our scraps, but you don’t even deserve that anymore.”
The ground shook as the gargantuan stepped forward. It blocked Matt’s sight of many of the spectators in the amphitheatre. A long view up its huge skyscraper body made Matt tremble where he stood.
When the metal monstrosity lifted its leg, its hinges groaned like a sinking ship being torn apart by gallons of water.
Stood in its deep shadow, Matt’s blood ran cold.
With his arm raised, the leader looked around at his peers.
Matt looked up at the bottom of the massive foot. It hung motionless above them as if gravity had no effect on it. The length of a train carriage and twice the width, it remained above him and his daughter. Imprinted on the bottom read one word—Trojan.
Matt pulled Louise in closer and squeezed hard. She shook as much as he did, if not more. “I love you, darling,” he said. “I love you with all my being.”
The leader laughed and his shrill cackle echoed through the vast open arena. The mirth left his face when he looked down again. His glare bore into Matt and disgust dragged a sneer across his loose jowls. “We own you. We always have.” He then dropped his hand.
Like a meteor on a crash course with earth, the heavy foot of the gargantuan rushed toward Matt and his daughter.
The last thing Matt heard, over the roar of the gathered crowd, was his daughter’s scream. She didn’t even get to the end of the word before the gargantuan foot crashed down on them.
“Da—”
Ends.
Zombies, Vampires, Aliens, and Oddities
Edited and Cover by
Zombies, Vampires, Aliens, and Oddities
By
Michael Robertson
Website and Newsletter:
http://michaelrobertson.co.uk
Email: [email protected]
Edited by Amanda Shore of By the Shore Editing
Monique Happy - http://indiebookauthors.com
And
Terri King - http://terri-king.wix.com/editing
Cover Design by James at GoOnWrite.com
Zombies, Vampires, Aliens, and Oddities
Michael Robertson
© 2014 Michael Robertson
Zombies, Vampires, Aliens, and Oddities is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, situations, and all dialogue are entirely a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not in any way representative of real people, places or things.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Eden
Following his dad into the control room, Mark remained on his feet and watched the old man fall into his high-backed chair. Letting out a groan, his dad leaned back in the threadbare seat and stared at the six monitors before him. Over three decades ago, both the furniture and equipment had been new, or at least, that’s what his dad had told him. To Mark, they’d existed for a lifetime. A lifetime he’d spent in the underground community of Eden.
For a moment, all Mark’s dad did was look from one monitor to the next. It was like he’d never seen them before. There was one large screen in the center, and it was surrounded by five smaller ones. On each one, black and white CCTV footage played out, the wide lenses of the cameras giving a fish-eye perspective on things. But this was as it had always been. “Are you okay, Dad?”
Spinning to face his son, Mark’s dad looked tired. He looked old. “So this is it: the control room.” His paper-thin smile did little to hide his clear anxiety. “You’ll be spending plenty of time in this chair.”
This was hardly news, but his dad needed to say his piece, so Mark held his tongue. Let him have his moment. God knows he’s earned it.
“We have security cameras set up to show you what’s happening outside of Eden.”
Having spent his entire life in Eden, there wasn’t anything Mark didn’t know about the place. Hell, he’d become so well-acquainted with it that he could probably show his dad a thing or two.
“Six cameras, six screens.” When Mark’s dad pressed a button on the keyboard, Mark noticed his hand was shaking. “Press this button to cycle through the cameras so you can bring each one up on the main screen.”
Watching the almost Parkinson’s wobble, Mark said, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
The only reply he got was the click of the button as his dad pressed it to cycle the footage.
Other than long grass and rusted metal, there wasn’t much going on outside. Then they got to the last camera. Pausing on the footage, both Mark and his dad leaned forward.
Running a quick headcount, Mark said, “Seven of them. That’s more than we’ve seen in a while.” It still wasn’t a big deal. It certainly wasn’t the reason for his dad’s behavior. Zombies were nothing new.
A few button presses, and his dad had zoomed in on the scene. Backed into a corner was a small dog. Shooting air from his nose in an attempt at a laugh, he tapped the screen with his long finger. “I was wondering what had piqued their interest.”
The tiny white thing was one of those ridiculous canines that Mark had heard the older people refer to as handbag dogs. People used to carry the stupid little things around rather than let them walk. Maybe wiping the human race out wasn’t such a bad thing if that’s what it had come to. “If only we could find a way to kill all of the dogs. It would cut off the zombie’s food supply, and they’d probably die out within months.” It was a conversation they’d had many times, but seeing as today was a day for re-treading old ground…
The seven zombies closed in around the dog before one finally made a lunge forward. Seconds later, the others overwhelmed it.
Although it was small, the stupid creature kicked and fought for all it was worth before a rotting jaw closed around its neck. It suddenly fell limp, and its white fur turned red. Seconds later, all four of its legs were ripped free simultaneously. The remaining three zombies fought over its body as the others backed away with their tiny prizes.
Clearly getting bored with the show, Mark’s dad tapped at the keyboard and brought a pie chart up on the screen.
The pie was mostly full, a small segment of black preventing it from being a complete circle. In the top right-hand corner, it read, “eighty-two percent.” For now, the pie was green.
Rubbing his chin, Mark’s dad pointed at the illustration. “When this green pie turns red, it’s telling you that our solar panels are running at less than seventy-five percent efficiency. When that happens, you need to sen—”
“Send a team of engineers out. I’m not new, Dad. I know all of this.” A headache stretched its spindly tendrils behind Mark’s eyes. Were they really going to have to go through everything today? This could get very fucking tiring very fucking fast.
“It could be something as simple as clearing the panels off.”
Hadn’t he heard him?
“The wildlife is so, well, wild that you need to send a team out every once in a while to do the gardening. Once, we found the panels co—”
“Covered in sheets. I know, you’ve told me before.” Trying to force his tense body to relax, Mark backed down. This was his dad’s last day; he needed to have his moment. After being shown a lifetime of kindness from him, Mark needed to stop being such an impatient arsehole. Drawing a deep breath, he focused on slowing his pulse and stared at the man he loved more than any other being on the planet. Let him do it his way.
Zoning out as if hypnotized by the pie chart, his dad said, “We don’t know if it
was other survivors or the zombies doing it, but it certainly gave me sleepless nights for a while. I was expecting something else to happen, but it never did. We never heard from them again.”
Shrugging, Mark’s dad brought up a map of the city. On it were pulsing green dots. “This map shows you where all the spare UVB bulbs are in the city. There are enough out there to last many lifetimes. It’s getting to them that may be tricky.”
Something else that Mark was more than aware of. Turning his attention to the small monitor that showed the zombies eating the dog, Mark ran another quick headcount. There were at least thirty zombies outside now. Fresh meat always pulled them out of the woodwork. The last time there was a person out there, over a hundred zombies tracked her down and fed on her while he and his dad watched. She was a skinny little blonde thing. There can’t have been much to go around. Of course, it was hard to watch, but with that many zombies on top of her, it would have been madness to open Eden’s gates to try and let her in.
A fight broke out over the small dog’s carcass. It was like watching drunkards play rugby.
When his dad brought up an inventory list on the screen, Mark rolled his eyes. “Why do you keep showing me things I know how to do? You’ve seen me as good as run Eden for the past decade already. This handover is a formality at best. Besides, you’ll still be here if I have any questions.” A wave of grief caught Mark off guard. It strangled his words. “I’ll still need you. I’ll always need you, Dad.”
When his dad slumped in his seat, Mark stepped forward and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “This day was always going to come, Pop. We can’t prevent the passing of time, but you’ve earned this retirement. You should enjoy the diminished responsibility.”
Nodding gently, Mark’s dad turned to look up at him again, his blue eyes glazed. “I suppose it just feels strange. When I set this community up thirty years ago, I knew this day would come. It just seemed so far away then. Everything I’ve done here has been for you and your safety. Keeping this place going has meant keeping you alive, and that’s all I’ve cared about. I know you’re an adult now, but you’ll always be my son. It’s hard to let go of that responsibility.”
After a moment of silence, he added, “I’m so proud of what you’ve become. You’re a natural leader. The community looks up to you. I know I’m not needed anymore.”
Despite the words, there was something in his dad’s body language that Mark couldn’t place. He was still shaking. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” Mark said. “Something you’re not telling me.”
The azure glaze in his dad’s eyes crystallized. There was definitely something else.
“What is it, Dad? What are you hiding from me?”
Staring at his son for a moment, Mark’s dad pinched the bridge of his nose as if trying to ease a headache. Releasing a long sigh, he said, “You’re right.” Reaching over the keyboard, he tapped in a combination of buttons.
Why hadn’t Mark seen that password before?
The main screen was taken over by grainy video footage. It looked like it was recorded a long time ago. “I’ve been dreading this day, but I always knew it would come. It’s time you learned the truth.”
The screen showed a woman lying on a table in the lab. She wasn’t moving. “Is she dead?”
“Yes.” His dad then nodded at the footage. Seconds later, a younger, leaner, more handsome—and certainly hairier—version of himself appeared.
Despite the tension in the room, Mark laughed. “When did you have a ponytail and a beard, Dad?”
“That was thirty years ago. Everyone had ponytails and beards then. You were only two years old.”
“So the virus hadn’t even hit then?”
“No. It came soon after.”
A cold chill ran through Mark. “How soon?”
With a huge needle in his hand, the recorded version of Mark’s dad walked over to the corpse on the table and injected it.
Holding his breath, Mark stared at the screen, his unblinking eyes stinging. “What are we watching, Dad? What is this?”
Mark’s dad didn’t reply.
Within seconds, the woman’s eyes and mouth snapped open. Mark’s heart kicked hard, and he jumped backwards. Shaking from the shot of adrenalin, he watched her writhe and twist on the table as a palsied battle raged through her. A discomforting squirm of his own twisted his body. “How long had she been dead for?”
“Just over a week.”
“What? That’s impossible.”
Mark’s dad kept his eyes on the screen. “It was top secret. A virus had been found in a South American rainforest that was rumored to be bringing dead bodies back to life.”
Mark glanced at the screen with the zombies feeding on the dog. The frenzy had died down, and the reanimated corpses had returned to their shuffling and aimless existence, waiting for the next unsuspecting meal.
“It was a group of Marines who discovered it. It took some of them down too. They didn’t leave any survivors, so when it was sent over to me, all I had were second-hand accounts of what had happened. It wasn’t a lot to go on, so I had to do my own experiments.”
Nausea sat in Mark’s guts as he watched the woman fighting to control her pale body. “Why didn’t they leave the virus where it was and burn the bodies?”
“The government thought it could be utilized as a weapon. North Korea was quite a threat to us back then, and they wanted a cheap and efficient way to take them out.”
Frowning at his father, Mark’s mouth fell loose. How could he—the kind man he’d called dad for the past thirty-two years—have been the one responsible for turning something like this into a weapon?
“But I wasn’t going to do that, Mark. I promise. I pretended that’s what I was trying to do, but secretly, I wanted to use it for good. I thought I could bring the dead back to life.”
Turning to the zombies on the small monitor, Mark couldn’t hide his sarcasm. “It sounds like paradise.”
When he looked back at his dad, he saw the hurt on his face.
Although the sound quality was poor on the old footage, a low hiss running as a constant through the console’s speakers, the loud crash! was clear enough when the woman hit the floor. Turning over and over, she contorted and twisted, locked in a battle against what seemed like the random and chaotic impulses that possessed her.
It was easier to watch the footage than his dad, so, for the next twenty minutes or so, that’s what Mark did. A hunch of tension gripped his body as he stood staring at the woman on the screen.
Finally, the footage leaped forwards in time. The woman was now wandering around the lab with a twitching and shuffling gait. Her head movements jerked, and her eyes were vacant.
“It only took a few hours before she was up and walking around.”
Glancing down at his dad’s slumped frame, Mark couldn’t suppress the disgust rising up from his guts. But this was his dad, and he had to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’d earned that if nothing else. “She looks like one of them.”
Raising a long and bony finger, Mark’s dad said, “But there was one major difference.”
“Which is?”
“The aggression. Or lack thereof. She was perfectly passive…for a while at least.”
She did look different than the zombies outside of Eden. Walking around the lab, she tugged at posters and examined shelves. In all his life, Mark had never seen one act like this. They normally had two states: mobilized coma or ravenous fury. This one was in neither. Instead, she seemed driven by curiosity.
Another break in the footage, and the video leapt forwards in time again.
Mark’s dad said, “But things started to change.”
Although the woman was still walking around the room, her movement was different. There was an underlying tension in everything she did. Was it boredom? Rage?
“She went days without eating. She refused everything we offered her. She got weaker, but she stayed on her feet for a long time.
”
At that moment, the woman hit the floor hard.
“Her legs finally gave up on her.”
Mark’s dad appeared on the screen again. His chair creaked as he leaned towards the monitor. “This is when we knew something was up.”
Swallowing a dry gulp, Mark listened to the recorded hiss and watched his onscreen father edge closer to the woman. There was something in the way she stared at him. Hate sat in her dark glare. This was the man who had done this to her, and she fucking knew it.
When his dad was within reach, Mark’s pulse surged as the woman snarled at him. Exploding from the floor like she was spring-loaded, she swiped in his direction.
Jumping backwards for a second time, Mark smashed his head against a shelf on the back wall.
“The weaker she got, the more she seemed to hate me. It was frustrating that she couldn’t talk.”
Rubbing the sting on the back of his head, Mark watched his dad stare at the screen.
“If only we could have known what was going on in her mind. We would have learned so much more.”
After another five minutes or so, the footage took another leap forwards in time. Entering the lab in full riot gear, Mark’s dad had a plate in his hand.
“It wasn’t long before I had to go in there dressed like that.”
The woman jumped to her feet and charged at Mark’s dad.
In a flash, his father had driven his heavily armored forearm into the center of her face. The solid crack sent a shudder running through Mark and drove the woman back to the far wall. Tension sat in Mark’s bowels. Who was this man on the screen? His dad had never even raised his voice at him.
Lying in a ball on the floor like a scorned dog, the woman glared at him, snarling and snapping her jaws.
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