Origin Z

by Tony Hartzell

  When they reached the hospital, Tin backed the truck right up against the ambulance that was positioned under their entry point. Wanderers were moving toward them from several directions. They would have only a few minutes to get to the top and into the window. O’Reilly picked up Reed by the collar and pulled him up so they were face to face.

  “I would throw you to them if my virtuous commanding officer hadn’t given me a direct order not to.”

  Reed smiled, and O’Reilly smiled back just before grabbing his crotch and tossing him like a bale of hay to the top of the ambulance. He slid to the edge and was barely able to balance himself and roll away to stay on top. O’Reilly watched and laughed as he saw the asshole was obviously scared by the close call. He turned and grabbed Tanner in the same manner to toss him up also. He laughed again when he hit and yelled in pain. O’Reilly jumped up then and waited for Tin and Jax to move the equipment up.

  They crawled out of the cab of the truck and threw the packs up. The wanderers ignored the men in the back of the truck but growled in frustration at not being able to reach those on top of the ambulance.

  Marty was at the window looking down as Reed and Michael slid onto the roof of the ambulance. He could picture himself punching and kicking them to death even though they were tied and helpless. What they had done to him was punishable by death as far as he was concerned.

  Tin was watching him and knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “They’re prisoners, Marty. We have to figure out what to do with them.”

  “I know what to do with them. Toss them to the dead. They don’t deserve any better, and I can think of much worse.”

  Tin shook his head. “No. I understand how you feel, Marty, but this is not the time to decide.”

  Marty was shaking his head as Tin took a step toward him. “I promise justice will be done.”

  Marty spit in Reed’s face and gave Michael angry frown before turning and stalking off into the hospital.

  JUDGMENT DAY

  Tin and Jax kept watch in the pitch-black forest with the heat-sensing visors on their shadow armor helmets. Cloud cover made it hard to see in the South Carolina night. The thick forest made it near impossible unless you were under a gap in the trees. Under one of those gaps was O’Reilly, putting together the drone they would use to find where all of the sentries were posted around the campus.

  He handed the assembled drone to Jax and pulled the control tablet from the backpack. After tapping the tablet a few times, he instructed Jax to hold the drone over his head.

  “Hold it until I tell you to let go, Jax.”

  The drone came to life and started to pull at Jax’s grasp. O’Reilly looked at the tablet and tapped the screen a few more times before rolling his face to the forest canopy and swearing quietly. “Shit!”

  The drone stopped whirring.

  Both men looked down at him and said almost in unison. “What’s your malfunction, soldier?”

  O’Reilly looked up at them. “Even after those years apart, you guys still do that. It’s fucking creepy.”

  Tin gritted his teeth and continued in a barely restrained whisper. “What is the problem, O’Reilly?”

  He threw the tablet down. “The drone battery is low. It won’t fly long enough to be useful.”

  Both of the other men swore in unison. “Shit!”

  O’Reilly smiled as they looked at each other and growled—again in unison. He barely held back a laugh, remembering when they were children together. Their “twin connection” always intensified in dangerous situations. They hated it because it took away their individuality, but in reality it had saved their asses more than a few times.

  He broke the standoff by saying, “Do we remember why we are here, Tweedledee and Tweedledum?”

  After giving O’Reilly an angry stare, Tin pointed at Jax. “Swing around to where you observed from the tree. You should know the routine on that side. I’ll do the same on this side.”

  He pointed at O’Reilly. “You go straight up the middle. Most of the sentries there stick close to the front porch.”

  They were nodding as he continued. “The object is stealth, so don’t engage unless you absolutely have to. And if you do, stay as quiet as possible. Everyone start counting. When you get to one hundred twenty, start moving in on the house.”

  O’Reilly turned to Jax. “Use the shadows, big guy, just like at Bio-Sure. The armor is specially designed to hide you. They won’t spot you even if they are staring straight at you. But you have to remain motionless.”

  Jax nodded in affirmation, flipped his visor down, and ran off into the darkness in the direction Tin had indicated.

  _______

  Marty stared through the glass of the door at the two men slumped on the floor of the machine room. They had chains looped around their abdomens tight enough that they couldn’t slide them up or down to escape. The chain had been threaded behind a sewer pipe to keep them from escaping.

  Marty entered the room with plates of food and bottles of water. Both captives had both been without food and water for several days in the habitat, so they drank the water and hungrily downed the simple peanut butter sandwiches Marty had made for them. Trudeau and his men had left few supplies behind, and much of what was left had spoiled over the summer since the outbreak of axola and the resulting downfall of the medical industry had ensued.

  He watched his former lover stuffing the food in his mouth and felt disgusted that he had ever felt anything for him. Tears filled his eyes as he turned to leave.

  Michael spoke quickly. “No, don’t leave.”

  Marty stopped and spoke without turning. He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing him cry. “Why would I stay? There’s nothing that I care to stay for.”

  Michael looked down at the floor in thought long enough for Marty to start moving toward the door again.

  “It was never my intention to let Leonard do the things that he did to you.”

  Marty heard a sob in his voice now.

  “By the time I found out what was happening, it was too late to save you.”

  He looked back at Reed.

  “He would have killed me, Marty.”

  Reed lifted his eyebrows and gave him a wry smile that said he understood what was happening. The lone shipmate was in full mutiny now.

  When Michael turned back to Marty, he had already started walking with his rolling gait again. His shoulders bobbed in a way that Michael knew he was sobbing as the door closed behind him.

  He turned back toward Reed, ready to tell him his impromptu plan, and was met with a pipe to the face. He saw stars dancing around Reed’s face as he lifted the pipe to strike again. It was the last thing he would ever see.

  _______

  Tin finished counting and peeked around the tree he was behind. His visor allowed him to see several figures ducked behind objects looking outward. He figured they would be expecting a rescue attempt, but they couldn’t have known when. These guys seemed to be hunkered down for an assault. He saw that at least a couple of them had guns now. He guessed the reverend considered the situation important enough to pull out the stash.

  He started moving from tree to tree, peeking each time to see the men’s positions before moving to the next. When he stepped out from behind the last line to move to the corner of the house, a spotlight came on. There was no hiding, even in his black armor. He froze for a moment, surprised by the light. The men reacted immediately, pulling up their rifles and firing.

  _______

  Jax made it to his position and ducked behind a brick column that was part of a wrought-iron fence that bordered that edge of the property. He jumped and grabbed the branch of the tree he had been in earlier and pulled himself up to crouch and look into the compound. He lowered his visor and scanned across the open area on this side of the house. Then he saw something i
n one of the windows on the second floor. Staring at that window, he saw the heat signature glow of a head pop up for several seconds before ducking down again. He saw the same thing in several other windows.

  He was deciding what to do when the west side of the house lit up, and he heard gunfire cracking the silence of the night like a bullwhip. He knew that was where his brother was, and he could feel the panic of being spotted through their connection. The men he had been watching in the windows stood up and looked in that direction as if they could see what was happening through the walls of the house.

  This was the opening he needed. He jumped from the tree, rolled when he hit the ground, and sprinted toward the wall underneath the windows. When he got within forty feet of the house, the motion-sensor lights came on, and when he was twenty feet from the house, one of the men turned back and got his rifle up in time to get off one shot. He was several steps inside the room, so the angle caused the shot to go well over Jax’s head.

  When he reached the house, he squeezed himself into a corner and hoped that there was enough shadow for the armor to do its shadow trick. He thought that O’Reilly had better be right about this armor or he was a sitting duck.

  The man leaned out the window with his rifle and scanned back and forth along the wall with it. When he couldn’t spot Jax, he pulled down the rifle and opened both eyes to again scan back and forth along the wall. Slowly he moved his eyes across Jax’s position and didn’t spot him. Jax smiled behind his visor as the man leaned farther out to see if his prey had moved closer to the corner of the house. Jax brought up his dart gun and aimed at the middle of his chest and fired. There was a thwip from the gun and a thud when it hit his chest. Falling forward out of the window, he landed several feet from Jax and didn’t make another move.

  _______

  O’Reilly was halfway to the porch when the lights came on at the west side of the house. Seconds later they lit the east side too. Knowing that he only had seconds before the men on the porch would come to their senses, he sprinted as only he could, straight toward them. By the time their attention returned to where they should have been looking, he had leaped to the second floor of the porch and flipped the first man he came to over the railing to fall head first to the ground. When he hit there was a cracking sound that only the men on the first floor heard.

  There were two others on the second floor porch, and they turned their guns toward O’Reilly and started firing. He dodged left and right before whipping the legs from under the first and firing his dart gun at the chest of the second. By the time the first man hit the floor, the second was clutching his chest where the dart had shredded his heart and lungs. O’Reilly chopped the neck of prone man on the floor and didn’t wait to hear the gurgle of his attempts to draw another breath. He moved through the open door and slid into the dark room. There were no lights inside the house. They must have used all of the generator’s power for the motion-sensing lights.

  _______

  Marty watched as Reed stood over Michael with the pipe. He lifted the pipe up with both hands, ready to strike again. Marty pushed open the door and screamed, “No! What are you going to do?”

  Reed looked at him and stabbed down right on his spine with it. It made a hollow sound as it penetrated his back. Reed looked up at Marty and started wrenching the pipe back and forth. There was a crunching sound as the bones cracked. After the crunching stopped, Reed pulled it out and started stabbing down repeatedly at Michael’s abdomen.

  Marty shouted, “What…Stop that, you sick fuck!”

  Then he realized what was happening. They only had one length of chain and no way to cut it. So Jax had looped it behind the pipe and chained each of their captives to one end of the chain. Once Reed finished his gory operation, he would be able to free himself by pulling the chain from behind the sewer pipe.

  Marty turned and ran as fast as his broken body could go, not knowing where he was going, but he knew he had to get away from Reed.

  _______

  Tin stood motionless as the men started moving toward him with their weapons shouldered and ready to fire. When the first man reached him, he used the butt of his gun to hit Tin in his lower abdomen. The armor protected him, but the expectation of pain caused him to double over. When he realized that the blow had had no effect, he feigned retching, as if it had been devastating. The one he recognized as Jerrod pointed at the third.

  “Go let Reverend Trudeau know that we have one of the twins.”

  As he ran off, the man who had struck him grabbed the back of his neck and tried to push him down to lie on the ground. Tin grabbed the hand on his neck by the thumb and in a smooth motion stood up, twisting and rolling under the man’s arm to come up behind him. Wrapping his arm around his neck from behind, he pulled back hard to stand him up to keep him off balance and use him as a barrier and a hostage.

  “Where are Teeny and Rocky? Tell me or I’ll break his neck.”

  Jerrod answered by smiling and pulling up his weapon and firing straight at the face of the man he was holding. The bullet went through the man’s face and skimmed between Tin’s cheek and his helmet. Tin’s face and neck burned from the heat of the shot, but he knew that it hadn’t caused any real damage.

  The man he was holding grasped his face. “What the fuck, Jerrod!”

  Jerrod took aim at Tin then. He twisted and ducked, and the shot ricocheted off of his Kevlar and hardened-plastic helmet. Tin grabbed the man in front of him, who was still bent over, with both hands and pushed with all his strength. The man flew at Jerrod and crashed into him. They both tumbled and rolled. Tin took one step toward them before he realized Jerrod was recovering quickly. He sprinted toward the house and disappeared around the corner as two more shots splintered the corner of the house.

  After rounding the corner, he immediately crouched in a corner that had to be the outside portion of a chimney. He could still hear the man whom Jerrod had shot moaning from his injury. Jerrod came running around the corner and right past him, thinking that he had kept going. He stopped a few yards past and was obviously wondering how Tin had gotten so far by the time he rounded the corner. He stopped and looked back and then back toward where he thought Tin must have gone and continued his run.

  After Jerrod disappeared around another corner, Tin jumped up and returned to the injured man. He had his face in his hands, moaning from a painful but not fatal wound. Tin grabbed him from behind and pressed his hands tighter on his face with his arm around his head as he dragged the man into the woods, fighting and attempting to scream through his hands. Luckily it was muffled enough that no one noticed.

  _______

  Jax jumped and hefted himself onto the windowsill. He rolled in and scooted across the floor to a corner just before the door burst open and two men with guns came through. They moved through the room looking over the tops of the rifles they were carrying, scanning back and forth while moving toward the window. One leaned out and commented on their comrade lying under the window. “Damn. Charlie is dead as fuck.”

  All he heard in return was a thwip. When he pulled his head back in, he saw a flash of a black fist and then nothing but blackness.

  Jax pulled the cord from the curtains on the window and tied the man up. When he turned to leave the room, the reverend was standing in the doorway pointing his two silver Colts directly at his face. There was no chance he would be able to avoid the blasts from those cannons. He had seen firsthand what kind of damage they could do.

  “On your knees, demon.”

  Jax did as he was told.

  _______

  O’Reilly squatted behind a table against the wall with the door and waited for the men from the first-floor porch to arrive. He heard the voices as they approached. The door burst open, and streams of light shone in on the man on the porch whom he had killed with the hand chop. He was starting to show signs of waking in an undead state.


  He felt the men outside in the hallway and heard them speak in hushed tones. It sounded as if there were three men, but there may have been someone who was being silent.

  The flashlight scanned the room. They had to be aware that there were several hiding places in the room, so he wasn’t counting on them thinking he had escaped to somewhere else in the house.

  He recognized Hector when he spoke. “You can just come out and give yourself up, or…we will kill you.”

  He heard a groan from the porch as the dead man rolled onto his hands and knees and stood up. A flashlight shone on the man as he shambled through the door.

  “What the hell, man. That’s Jimmy.”

  There was an explosion from one of the guns, and the man’s brains were sprayed all over the porch.

  O’Reilly immediately pushed up on the table and used it to bull rush Hector and two others in the room. They didn’t have time to react as he pushed hard and ran them backward until they tripped over themselves and fell down in a tangle. He turned to run out the door to see the fourth, whom he had only suspected. His .38 revolver was pointing straight at his chest. The man didn’t hesitate. He fired two shots straight at O’Reilly’s chest. He felt the slugs hit his chest, first one and then the other in rapid succession.

  _______

  It had to have taken Reed several minutes to gather the chain and wrap it so he could move. Marty was galloping as fast as he could toward the cafeteria, where he planned on barricading himself inside. If he was going to be trapped for a time, he wanted to have food and water. He heard the echo of a door slamming open and chains rattling in rhythm as Reed started to run toward his location. He pushed the door open, grabbed two chairs, and wedged them under the handles of the double doors. Sliding a table against the legs would help to keep the chairs in place.

  Just as he got the table in place, Reed’s face appeared in the narrow window in one of the doors. The deranged spook smiled at him and then shouldered against the doors, rattling them against the chairs. He looked back into the window, but now he was growling through gritted teeth. He used the chain to beat on the window several times. The window broke, and after several more strikes with the chain, it shattered. Reed reached his arm in and was working on pushing one of the chairs. Marty shuffled over to a cabinet against the wall and crawled inside.