Black Tide Rising - eARC

by John Ringo

  Of course he came back. ZZ had seen zombie videos on YouTube. There was a reason people were calling this the zombie apocalypse. The damn things just. Wouldn’t. Stay. Down.

  He tried to forget the guy had been named Bill and that he had cancer of the bladder, and that he had a two-year-old grandson and a granddaughter in Arizona. There was no Bill now, only a zombie, chomping and clawing as it dragged itself upright, and lurched towards ZZ.

  Who, this time, managed to catch him harder on the other side of the head, and, when Bill dropped, rush him and smash his head flat with the tray table.

  Apparently Bill was not the only one to have turned, because there was the sound of chomping teeth in the hallway and someone rushed in, running like a gorilla, on feet and knuckles, and dragging a mess of tubes and an IV stand behind her. ZZ had smashed her against the wall, hitting out with the tray and catching her head between it and the wall. Her head went crunch and then splat, with a sound not unakin to a cabbage getting dropped from a great height, and he turned his head just in time to avoid being splatted with blood and brain matter.

  But there was another zombie. Right about the third, he realized that they had to be coming from somewhere, which left him with the question where in hell are all these zombies coming from? It was impossible they’d all zombed out at the same time as Bill. Okay, not impossible, but not likely.

  Before he could think to investigate, he was surrounded by zombies, and then it was crunch, smack, hit. And he realized after a while they were going to get him in the end. There was only one of him. Which meant that they’d kill him and—

  And he heard two young people talking, a man and a woman.

  He called out to them. Then he thought that even as they waded into the fray they might have trouble telling the zombies from the not-zombie, to wit, himself.

  As the young lady—and she was a looker too, with that braid of red hair—deployed a floor lamp—it occurred to him she might select his head for crunching. And like that, unbidden, came to his lips the song his mother had sang when they went walking when he was a tot, and he found himself singing aloud. “Rocky Mountain High, Colorado!”

  The young lady redirected the club, the young man stuck his lance in someone else, and ZZ made to help them with the table.

  In a moment—seemed like—they were panting and covered in sweat and blood, the zombies were down, and ZZ said, “Thank you.”

  The man, a dark-haired guy, lean with a sort of sharp face, which made ZZ think of Caesar’s line about lean men, said, “No prob. But stop singing hippie songs, okay? I can still change my mind and stab you.”

  “Hey, it was my momma’s favorite song, youngster, and besides get off my lawn.”

  And then there was the sound of groaning and of teeth from the hallway, and zombies poured into the room.

  “Where in Hell are they coming from?” ZZ asked.

  “I don’t know. We have the emergency stairs blocked and we—” the guy said, as he turned to stab zombies. Fortunately this set was easier, as they stopped to eat their fallen comrades. But not too easy as there were at least twenty of them.

  “The other emergency stairs,” the girl said.

  “Shit. There’s more than one of them?” the guy yelled, putting his lance into a zombie’s eye and twisting.

  “Fire regulations or something,” the girl yelled, swinging her club and spraying out brains. “I can’t believe we forgot.”

  “Why not? I always used the elevator.”

  To show he was willing, ZZ stepped up to stand with them and slam his table into zombies.

  “But that means…” the girl said. It was weird that she looked even better like that, splattered in blood and fighting. She reminded him of Rosie is what it was, and he shouldn’t be eyeing a girl half his age. Particularly not when he was dying. But ZZ had never felt less like dying. He had trouble concentrating on the rest of her words, as they all killed zombies. When they had taken care of that wave she said, “That means the people we left blocking the stairway from the zombies below—”

  “Might be overtaken?” the lean man said.

  “No, might be lapped,” the girl said. “I mean, when we get to the other floors, there will be zombies there ahead of us.”

  “Shit,” the lean man said. He turned to ZZ. “You—what’s your name?”

  “Zeezee.”

  “Right. I’m Lucas Fiacre, and that’s Beth Arden. Is there anyone else alive on this floor? Not zombies?”

  ZZ eyed the door. “If there were, they’re probably eaten. Going to sue the fucking hospital for not issuing fucking guns to fucking patients when this fucking Pacific flu started.”

  “Tell me about it, man,” the lean guy said. “I fucking hate that we have nothing designed to kill these sons of bitches on hand. I’m going to run down the hallway and check. Just to make sure.”

  “Don’t,” Beth said. “Just call out.”

  “It will attract zombies.”

  “We are anyway.”

  Fiacre stepped forward, while Beth and ZZ lent support, and as soon as they were through the door, Fiacre shouted, “So, anyone not a zombie in here? Scream or knock or something.”

  There was no answer but the gnash of teeth and the groaning. “Hey, you hoo!” Fiacre said and did his best attempt at the hundred meter dash towards the door to the stairwell while slaying zombies—now that would have been a game for the Olympics—stab zombie, run, stab zombie, run, trip over zombie that Beth killed, almost fall and get eaten except ZZ caught him and pulled him forward.

  Then both of them tripped on a still-live zombie—stab, scream, smash head with table. Beth saved them from falling and pulled them along.

  By the end of the hallway, they were all fighting with one hand and holding the other up with the other, while jumping, dodging, tripping over fallen zombies.

  I’ve Seen It Raining Fire In the Sky

  When they got back to the landing there was pandemonium. Dr. Hayden was alternately opening and slamming the door, managing to catch some zombies in it each time, while Dr. Barfuss wanted to know precisely what this meant and why they were not going up as promised.

  People recoiled from Beth and Lucas and ZZ as they came in. Dr. Barfy said something about contagion. Yeah, well, he should try killing zombies without getting it all over himself.

  Lucas told them about the other staircase.

  “Does that mean there will be zombies up ahead of us?” one of the nurses asked, dismayed.

  “Yep. We’ll have to fight all the way up.”

  “And where are we going once we get to the top?” Dr. Barfuss asked. “Bet you haven’t thought of that young man. Even if we can fly the helicopters—”

  Do no harm, Beth told herself. It was weird, because with adrenaline pumping through her, she could have smashed Dr. Barfy in the face, like a zombie. She realized she’d have to control it. That’s the slippery slope, she thought. Kill zombies because they can’t come back and are just vectors, and then start thinking of people who annoy you as better off dead too. And she was almost sure it wasn’t true. Dr. Barfy might be an annoying paper-pusher, but what Dr. Pillarisetti had said about the collapse of civilization? If there aren’t enough people who can learn, who will be doctors? They might need even Dr. Barfy.

  Lucas was saying something, answering Doctor Barfuss “…can. We’ll go to Plynth. You know, the new hospital, which was supposed to open on Monday. They’re fully stocked. They have generators. They’re empty.”

  “They won’t be empty once the generators start and they have light and sound,” someone said.

  The group was going forward, up the stairs. Beth looked back at where Dr. Jonna Hayden was still holding the door. “Doctor, do you see any way to secure that door? To delay them? This stairway seems to be free of zombies.”

  “Only because they’re eating people in the wards,” ZZ, the man they’d rescued said. He was tall, middle-aged, a bit gaunt, but tanned. Black and possibly native American and
white and who knew what else, Beth thought, looking at him, so that tan might be built in. It wasn’t displeasing. Whatever he was, he was a scrappy fighter, and he still had that table clutched in his hand.

  Beth chose not to argue and Lucas inclined his head. “Probably. But all the same. If we can get to the top with a minimum of fuss.”

  “Okay,” Dr. Hayden said. She’d taken something off her white coat and seemed to be jamming it under the door.

  “What was that?” Lucas asked, as she started up.

  “My cell phone,” the doctor said. “Figured end of the world, didn’t need it.”

  They started running up the stairs, but Lucas stopped at the door to the third floor.

  “What are you doing?” a woman asked.

  “Going to see if anyone can be saved.”

  “That’s insane. The zombies will just get ahead of us,” Dr. Barfuss said.

  “Fine. You go ahead, then, run on up. You and whoever wants to go with you. I’ll go see if anyone needs saving,” Fiacre said.

  “I’ll come with you, son,” ZZ said.

  “Me, too,” Beth said, surprised to hear her own voice as she said it. But after all, she was here to save people, right?

  Third floor yielded three people, all women, one coughing violently with the early stages of H7D3. For a moment Beth thought it would be faster to kill her now and easier on everyone, but after all you couldn’t. Maybe there was a chance she wouldn’t turn. At least the woman was wearing a mask. And all three survivors had been blooded in combat with the zombies. The coughing woman was holding an IV stand as a mace. People who really did fight as cornered cats were probably as valuable as normal doctors and twice as valuable as Dr. Barfuss.

  Fourth floor, Maternity, yielded a desperate woman clutching a baby in one arm, and a jagged, broken flower vase in the other. The vase had blood on it, and there was blood sprayed up her arm and on her hospital gown. The problem hadn’t so much been rescuing her, as stopping her from stabbing them as they approached. But in the end, she’d staggered and sobbed, lowering the arm that held the vase, and sobbed, “My husband. He was visiting. He—”

  “Turned?” Beth said.

  “I had to kill him, I had to.”

  “Of course,” Beth said. “You had to.” She said it because she needed to comfort the woman, but her brain told it was right too. “Can you run?”

  And they ran.

  By the seventh and top floor, as they emerged onto the terrace that held three helicopters, they’d gathered fifteen people in addition to their starting-out two dozen.

  Beth almost expected to hear Dr. Barfuss greet them with “That’s too many people, you idiot. You’ll never take off.”

  But he didn’t because Dr. Barfuss was dead. And Ron, the helicopter pilot, was happily tearing pieces of flesh off Dr. Barfuss and eating them.

  “Oh, hell,” Beth said, and brought her lamp down hard on the head of the helicopter pilot, again and again and again, beating head and face, and neck to pulp long after he’d stopped twitching.

  “Stop!” Dr. Pillarisetti yelled, and grabbed her arm. He was covered in blood and unidentifiable fragments and had just come from the stairway. “Stop, Beth. Stop. He’s dead.”

  And then Beth had started crying. ZZ, the patient, had kind of gathered her in and said, “It’s all right. It’s better than freezing up, kid.”

  He only let go of her as they were apportioning people between helicopters. He patted her shoulder as he called out, “Oh, hell, yeah, I can fly one of these. Better than the crap I flew in Desert Storm. At least no one will be shooting at us. Probably.”

  When they were trying to cram more people than should be possible into each of the rescue helicopters, Beth found herself next to Dr. Pillarisetti and asked, “How did you get so bloody? You weren’t on the stairs.”

  “No,” Nikhil Pillarisetti said. “I doubled back, to go…to euthanize those people we left behind strapped in carts. Some of them were our friends. And at any rate, leaving even a zombie strapped down and helpless to be eaten by other zombies felt wrong. So I cut their throats. Well, those I could reach. Definitely Dr. Tomboulian. I couldn’t leave her. Don’t look at me like that.”

  “No. Thank you,” Dr. Hayden said quietly.

  “Yeah, it was hell managing to get back here, though. Someone had jammed a cell phone under the bottom floor door,” he said, and grinned as he handed it to Dr. Hayden. The doctor just looked sad as she took it back.

  * * *

  When Dr. Hayden zombed out, as they rose high over the city—which was burning, flames licking up to the sky—it was Beth who strangled her, quickly, efficiently, and before Dr. Hayden could bite anyone in the press of terrified people. She would have preferred it, Beth thought, as she held her friend and felt her spasm and fight and finally go limp. There was no Dr. Hayden left, not really. This was stopping a vector. And doing no harm.

  “I’m sorry, Beth,” ZZ told her as he got to her, just too late to help.

  “It was a promise,” was all she said. To Dr. Hayden, and to herself.

  Not in Vain

  Kacey Ezell

  Once upon a time a very good friend had described a cheerleading competition as the seventh circle of hell. It was probably sacrilege for a cheerleading coach to feel that way, but Mia Swanson had to admit that her her old flying buddy had a point. After eight hours of squealing, chanting, hyper high-schoolers throwing each other up in the air, tumbling down open hallways and quite literally bouncing off the walls…Mia had a headache. And there was still most of an hour left on their seven hour drive back to Albuquerque from Colorado Springs.

  Two hours, Mia promised herself. Two hours and I’ll be home, in a bathtub, waiting for Max and the girls to get home. We’ll have dinner. It will be great.

  One of the most irritating things about this particular competition was that it had fallen on a Shooting Weekend. Once every other month or so, Mia and some friends and their families got together and went shooting out on White Mesa, just outside of Albuquerque. It was all BLM land out there, and as long as they took precautions not to hit anyone or any animals, there were no restrictions. It had started before she retired from the Air Force a year ago, and it had rapidly become one of her favorite traditions.

  Alas, retirement meant a new career, and a new career meant new commitments. Mia glanced over her shoulder at the teenagers sprawled in various seats in the fifteen-pax van and smiled. Seventh circle of hell aside, this really was her dream job. These were good kids, and Mia was proud to coach them.

  “What’s that?” Jessa asked, sitting up and pulling her iPhone earbuds out of her ears, as if that would help her see better. Mia looked up and cursed lightly under her breath. Blue and red flashing lights stained the sky up over the next slight hill, and she’d been doing closer to eighty than seventy mph. She eased off the gas and began to break, just as they crested the hill.

  “A roadblock?” Mia could hear the incredulity in her own voice as she continued to slow the van. “Jessa, have you got signal? See if you can pull up the news.” The senior immediately set to work as Mia pulled to a stop, rolling down her window as a uniformed officer approached her window.

  “Officer. Good Evening,” Mia started. “What’s going on? I…” She’d been about to disclose that she was armed, even though she hadn’t exactly told the team that, and she was certain that she’d hear from some irate parents. It might even cost her the job, new as she was, but there had been no way Mia was going to be taking a three day competition trip, with a fourteen hour total drive time with twelve teenagers and no weapon. No fucking thank you.

  “I-25 is closed,” the officer said, cutting her off abruptly. He appeared to be sweating, and his expression looked agitated.

  “Just the road? Is there an accident?” Mia asked. Maybe they could cut over to Bernalillo and take one of the state highways down through Rio Rancho.

  “City’s under quarantine. Governor declared a state of emergency—”
The officer abruptly stopped talking and started scratching vigorously at his throat, where his collar met his neck.

  “Coach?” Jessa called. She and another of the seniors were huddled over her iphone, the glow from the screen throwing a white, eerie light on their faces in the growing dusk.

  “Not now, Jessa,” Mia replied, trying to keep the patience in her voice. “Sir? Officer, are you all right?”

  “No, what is on me? Oh God, they’re all over me!” the man screamed, and then, to Mia’s complete astonishment, he began to strip off all of his clothing.

  “Officer, stop! There are children in this car!” Mia said, aghast. She glanced out the front window of the car, only to see two more half-naked officers coming toward them, shedding clothing and gear as they went. “What the fuck is this?”

  “Coach!” Jessa screamed. Mia turned in time to see a fourth naked man reaching in through the half-open window at them. She and two other girls flinched away from the window and his grasping, reaching hand. For no reason whatsoever, Mia noticed that his arm was covered in coarse, dark hair.

  In her past life as a combat helicopter pilot, Mia Swanson had often faced situations where she had to make a decision quickly, and it had to be right or she and her crew could die. She’d thought that being a high school cheerleading coach would have been different. Apparently she was wrong.

  The officer at her window had stopped cursing and began screaming. Keening, more like. When she was a kid, Mia had devoured Anne McCaffrey’s dragonriders series. In that series, when a dragon died, its fellows were said to raise a keen that damn near shattered eardrums with its sound. Mia could only imagine that sound was much like this one. That was the thought that flitted past her consciousness as she made her decision and acted. She thought of dragons crying out in mourning.

  In one smooth, mechanical move, Mia removed her Ruger .45 from her concealed carry purse and put the gun against the head of the officer now reaching for her through her open window. The back of his head exploded outward, and Jessa and some of the other girls screamed, Mia supposed. She couldn’t really hear, thanks to the fact that she’d just fired a gun in a mostly enclosed car. Then she turned and shot the man on the passenger side, still reaching for the girls through the window.