by S. A. Lusher
“Jennifer, I did it. Lockdown's raised.”
She hesitated. It was Mark. He wasn't going to like what she had to tell him. Being the sole technician among them, the task of repairs fell squarely on his shoulders. She considered how best to inform him. “Excellent,” she said.
“Have you found the survivors? Can I come up now?”
“Yes and no. Yes, I found the survivors, but no, you can't come up yet. There's something else we need you to take care of,” she replied.
Mark sighed. “What is it?”
“The engines are going to shut down. And we're losing oxygen. Obviously, the engines have a short fuse. You're going to have to get down to the engineering deck and figure out how to stop this. If you stick to the vents and the stairwells or the elevator shafts, you should be fine.”
Mark was silent for a long while.
“And I'm going to send someone to help you,” she added finally, although she hadn't run this by the others yet.
“Fine,” he said.
Jennifer let out a sigh of relief.
She and Ernesto made it back to the infirmary and updated the others on the situation.
“I'll go,” Frost said when she got to the part about someone having to join him.
“I guess that makes sense,” Jennifer said.
She wasn't entirely sure she wanted him and his shotgun wandering off too far, but there was just something about the guy that set her on edge a bit. She didn't know what it was, but she usually had good instincts about people.
“You know how to get down there?” she asked.
He nodded, already heading for the door. “I know my way around. I'll be in touch,” he replied. Then he was gone.
“Now what?” Megan asked. She was pacing.
“We need to shore up our defenses,” Ishi said.
“We need to get to the bridge,” Ernesto countered. “That's where the real answers are. The answers of what happened to us and what we can do about it.”
“Right now,” Jennifer said, speaking up before a new argument could blossom, “we can't do anything without a proper arsenal. Ernesto said there's an armory on this deck. We need to get to it. He and I are going there to deal with whatever is there. We'll be back with guns. While we're gone, lock this place down and inventory our supplies.”
The others looked like they wanted to argue, especially about being left here without any kind of defense, but, apparently, Jennifer had made a compelling enough point, because they didn't argue. Good. The more time she wasted arguing with them, the less she could get done. With that in mind and with Ernesto in tow, she once again left the safety of the infirmary.
CHAPTER 04
–Emergent–
Mark stood alone in an abandoned security center aboard a derelict ship of the damned and memorized a route to the engineering deck.
Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't take him more than five minutes to navigate the corridors and ride the elevator down. Unfortunately, these were anything but normal circumstances. Now that the living dead were roaming the corridors, he was going to have to take every precaution. To make matters worse, however, he couldn't get back into the vents. They were too high up off the floor and, for right now, there was nothing to step up onto to reach. And he couldn't jump up to them. Which meant he was going to have to do this the hard way.
Currently, he was staring at a holographic map of the medical deck. It was five levels above the engineering deck, which was at the bottom of the vessel, but that wasn't the worst of it. He could cut out most of that trip by using a stairwell or, god willing, an elevator. The problem was actually getting to the elevator and then getting to wherever the hell he needed to go to fix the damned engines. Luck was with him...at least at first.
He hoped.
The elevator that would take him down to the lowest deck was only about a sixty second walk from his current position. It was the big mystery of what he'd find down below that had him worried. With a sigh, Mark turned away from the workstation, pulled his pistol out and set off towards the exit. No way to do but to do it, he figured.
He opened the door and cautiously poked his head out, taking a look around. Frozen, icy fear shot through his veins as he spied someone stumbling around down the hall, the way he needed to go. It was a technician, a woman in a ripped, bloodstained blue jumpsuit. She was facing away from him, lurching like a drunk.
Swallowing his fear to the best of his ability, he raised the pistol and took aim. Mark squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked slightly in his hand and clipped the zombie's neck, releasing a spray of black gore that speckled across the wall next to it. This only succeeded in garnering the thing's attention. It turned and stared at him with soulless eyes, issued a hissing shriek and began stumbling rapidly towards him.
“Fuck!” Mark whispered, adjusting his aim and firing once more.
The second shot went wide. So did the third. His hands were shaking. The zombie was getting closer. He swallowed, forced himself to relax and fired again. That did it. A black hole blossomed on the expanse of dead white skin stretched across the monster's forehead and it collapsed into a tumble of limbs on the deckplates, as if someone had cut invisible strings holding it up. Mark let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
“Shit,” he whispered.
He knew he couldn't linger, and the awful, sour reek of the decaying thing only added even more to his desire to leave. Giving the corpse a wide berth, he hurried on down the corridor, keeping an ear open for any more of the ugly things. However, his luck continued to hold as he reached the end of the corridor, turned and jogged down the final stretch of hallway, bringing him neatly to the elevator he'd been looking for.
That's where his luck ran out, however.
The elevator was dead, stuck somewhere in the shaft and it wasn't coming up for anything. Mark didn't let this bother him too much, however, as he opened the door to the emergency stairwell and stepped within. This would take him down to the bottom all the same. It just would take a bit longer and there might be zombies in there with him. But he could handle them. At least, he hoped he could. It was close quarters in there.
He took a moment to peer down the length of the shaft, trying to get a sense as to whether or not anything else was in there with him. It didn't seem like it...but that didn't make it true. Mark set off, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible. Part of him had wanted to wait for that other guy, Frost, to come to him, but they'd agreed to meet on the engineering deck and there were probably about a dozen or more different stairwells and ways down there. A minute passed. Two. They were pleasant minutes, considering.
The stairwell was bloody, but there were no bodies, and the lighting was decent. When minute three rolled around, however, right as Mark hit the cargo deck, everything changed. Suddenly, with no real warning, he became aware of the fact that he was not alone. He wasn't sure how he knew this, only that it was a fact. His body wouldn't let him believe otherwise. Mark paused, raised the pistol and glanced back up the way he'd come.
Nothing.
He could see nothing.
But the feeling wouldn't abate. In fact, now he was sure he was being watched. By what? If it was a zombie, they'd telegraph their presence from a mile away. Was there something else onboard?! Something besides zombies?
It didn't seem possible.
He turned and hurried down the last couple of flights of steps and as he did this, he heard something. The slightest sound of movement. Whatever it was was hurrying up, keeping up with him. Mark reached the base of the stairwell, found the single door closed and the whole room empty. He turned heel, raised his pistol, assumed a shooter's stance and pointed the gun back the way he'd come two-handedly.
And he waited.
Seconds ticked by. Around him, he heard the sounds of the ship: the whisper of respiration, the hum of power, (slightly off now), the distant whale sounds of the hull contracting and expanding, reacting to temperatures and its own internal mec
hanisms. Nothing appeared at the top of the stairs. He kept waiting, certain that he must face this thing. This new terror. Another tense moment passed. Mark was on the verge of deciding that he was just being paranoid, that his mind was playing tricks on him, when it happened.
Something shifted into view, crawling along the wall.
The problem was, he could hardly tell what it is. For the first few seconds, his brain simply didn't understand at all what the hell he was seeing. It was almost like looking at barely visible heat-waves rising from the pavement on a particularly hot summers' day. Then, finally, something clicked inside his head as his mind sorted feverishly through the junk-pile of random facts and figures and memories he had gathered over the past three decades and he had it. It reminded him of a chameleon. The way it turned its skin the same color as everything around it.
That was enough of a handle to get a grip.
Mark raised his pistol and opened fire.
The first two shots went wild, sparking off the gray metal wall around the barely-visible creature, but the third one hit.
It hit head home in its head.
Abruptly, something popped into existence, its apparent natural cloaking abilities rendered inoperable now that it was dead. It collapsed to the floor in a heap. Mark swallowed nervously as he approached it, terrified but intent on studying it. This was no normal zombie. This was something totally different.
It was long and lean and dead pale.
What was really terrifying was the fact that its skin no longer looked decayed. This didn't look like a mutation of a human being, it looked like a healthy creature all its own. Its skin was smooth and firm. What the fuck was he looking at?
“Jennifer,” he said, activating his radio. “Jennifer, we have a problem.”
Jennifer's response was immediate. “What? What's wrong?”
“I found a new one.”
“...a new what?”
“A new zombie.”
“What do you mean 'new'?”
“I mean...not like the others. It was invisible. And it looks...healthy.”
A long pause. “Well, fuck,” she replied.
“What does it mean?”
“It means we need to keep our eyes out for invisible zombies now.”
“You think there's more of them?”
“Yes. Safe bet, wouldn't you assume? How close are you to the engines?”
“Just at the engineering deck now.”
“Good. Hurry.”
“Got it.”
Mark turned and walked back down the steps. He opened the door and let out a startled shout as a zombie came stumbling into the room, groping for him with dead black eyes. They reminded him of shark's eyes.
And there were two more behind it.
He realized they must have been drawn in by the sound. He snapped the pistol up, taking several steps back and opened fire. The first shot was a dead ringer, turning the lead zombie's eyes in a black volcano. The next three shots, unfortunately, were fired in a bit of a panic, and all three of them didn't do squat. Two missed and one buried itself in the chest of the second zombie. Then he aimed and fired once more and put that second zombie down with a shot to the forehead. As it fell down, revealing another pair, he fired again.
Only all he got for his troubles was a dry click.
He'd run out of ammo.
“Fuck!” he hissed in a panic.
No time to reload. Mark dropped the gun, hearing it clack loudly on the deckplates, and ripped out the combat knife. No time to think, thank god, only to act. He lunged forward and jabbed with the knife. His aim, for some reason, was dead on, and punched the tip of the blade through the third zombie's eye. It let out a low moan and then died right there, jerking violently as its dead nerves twitched one last time.
Unfortunately, it was enough to rip the blade free from Mark's grasp. And there was still one zombie left to deal with. It came for him, roaring and drooling, arms outstretched, fingers clenching and unclenching, those long, wicked claws digging bloody gouges out of the thing's own palms. Mark cried out and took a step back, not sure of how he was going to handle this. As it came for him, in a flash, an idea popped into existence.
He reached out and grabbed its wrists. Automatically, it began lowering its head while trying to bring his hands closer to its snapping jaw. Mark swung the thing around and tripped it, sending it sprawling to the floor. Leaping onto its back before it could get up, he grabbed its head, one hand firmly grasping either side, and brought it up high, as high as its neck and chest would allow. Then he drove it as hard as he could into the metal floor. There was a solid crack, a gruesomely satisfying one, but the job wasn't done yet.
Mark repeated this action three more times before the skull finally gave up the ghost and the zombie was put down for good.
Breathing heavily, Mark shakily got to his feet. He retrieved his combat knife, wiping it off on the cleanest part of the nearest zombie's uniform, then sheathed it once more and snatched up his pistol. He ejected the empty magazine and shoved a fresh one in.
Then he set to work.
* * * * *
Jennifer checked over her pistol once more before really setting out.
She remembered the armory that Ernesto had mentioned from her time spent up here and the glances at the map she'd had so far. She should have known the way immediately but her brain was still a little hazy. It was lifting, but she didn't like it. Had they done something to her while she was in down in the tube?
“You said you were on the cargo deck, right?” Ernesto asked quietly as they proceeded away from the infirmary, down the first corridor that would begin their journey to the armory.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Uh...I was a shift leader. Half the deck.”
“That must have been a challenge,” he said.
She shook her head. “No, it was easy. Worse, it was boring. Monotonous. I mean, the first week or so was actually a lot of fun. See, the guy before me, Berkowitz, was a drunk. Consequently, he did a shitty job setting everything up. Schedules, patrol routes, all the little nuts and bolts of managing half a deck worth of security forces. So there was this initial period of time after he got fired and they decided to take a chance with me where I was untangling all the shit he had done. And that was fun. Once that was over however, it got boring.”
“I guess much doesn't happen on the cargo deck,” Ernesto surmised.
She nodded. “Yeah. Where were you stationed?”
“Research.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I didn't see anything, though. I mean, I was bottom rung. Lots of standing around, lots of patrolling. Boring. Never saw anything worthwhile, if that's what you're interested in. Never saw anything that indicated something like this,” he said, indicating the bloody, battered state of the vessel around them.
They both fell silent as something growled up ahead.
Several somethings.
Each of them raised their pistols, getting ready for a fight. Jennifer stepped around the corner of the next corridor while Ernesto remained in cover, leaning partially around it to cover her. Three walking corpses awaited them: two security personnel and a woman in civilian clothing. Jennifer aimed, fired, aimed and fired, and the two security personnel, in her mind the two more dangerous targets, dropped like flies as nasty bullet wounds opened up on their foreheads. The woman went down at almost the same time as the others.
“Straight pro,” Ernesto said.
“Yep. All that training didn't go to waste, apparently,” Jennifer murmured in reply.
She didn't like having to do this. She'd killed enough people in her line of work, and it was always an ugly, nasty thing that you never really got used to. The fact that they weren't really people anymore kind of helped, and the notion that perhaps they were prisoners inside their own bodies, trapped and tortured, waiting for the sweet release of death, helped further, but it still came down to a simple fact: she was extinguishing life.
And she preferred t
o avoid that if at all possible.
Because you can't take that back.
“So where do you think these things came from?” Ernesto asked after they'd decided there were no more zombies in the vicinity and continued along their route.
“Well, we're a research ship, right? The whole goal of the ship was to travel to new planets discovered along the Far Reach and gather samples and specimens of wildlife and plant life and do research on it. So there's a good chance they found something and it got out,” Jennifer replied. She paused as she heard something distantly.
Footfalls.
Heavy ones.
“Then how did we end up in tanks?” Ernesto asked.
She shrugged and kept going. They were getting closer. “Obviously someone put us there. But who or how or why...I guess we'll find that out when we get to the bridge.”
Jennifer's radio crackled. “Jennifer.” It was Mark. “Jennifer, we have a problem.”
She froze, activating her radio “What? What's wrong?” Ernesto glanced over at her.
“I found a new one.”
“...a new what?”
“A new zombie.”
“What do you mean 'new'?”
“I mean...not like the others. It was invisible. And it looks...healthy.”
She paused, considering this. “Well, fuck,” she replied.
“What does it mean?”
“It means we need to keep our eyes out for invisible zombies now.”
“You think there's more of them?”
“Yes. Safe bet, wouldn't you assume? How close are you to the engines?”
“Just at the engineering deck now.”
“Good. Hurry.”
“Got it.”
“What was that about?” Ernesto asked.
“That tech just found something unique. Something new. He said it was...invisible.”
“How is that even possible?”
Jennifer shrugged. “How are zombies possible? Come on.”
They both fell silent as they turned another corner and came on final approach to the armory. They stared down the bloodied length of corridor. It was cast in a flickering, broken light, ratcheting up the tension another notch.
