Plague of the Undead

by Joe McKinney

  Jacob managed a nod. “Do they have any water around here?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “Believe it or not, almost everything still works. The water runs. It tastes great, by the way. The toilets flush.” He waved a hand over a plate of black glass on the wall next to the door and the room filled with a soft white light. “Even the electric lights.”

  Jacob looked at the lights in amazement. The last time he’d seen anything like this, a room lit with electricity, he’d been three years old. He barely remembered it.

  It was glorious.

  “Jake, my man, we have to make contact with Chelsea’s people. They are decades ahead of us technologically. As if, you know, we couldn’t tell that already from seeing one of these things glide through the sky, but . . . you know the electric cars she told us about? She wasn’t kidding. Hell, even the medicines they’ve got onboard justify making contact. You should have heard Kelly talking. She said even if Dr. Williams was treating you himself back at Arbella, you’d probably be dead. But there you are, three days later and you’re up and walking. Jake, you see this, right? I mean, we’ve got to make contact. Think of the good we could do for Arbella.”

  Before Jake could answer, Kelly called to them from another room.

  “In here,” Nick answered. “He’s awake!”

  Kelly and Chelsea came running. They both looked amazing, like completely different people. Chelsea especially. There was actually an attractive young woman under all that accumulated grime and grit.

  Only then did he realize he was standing in the middle of the room wearing nothing but his boxer shorts.

  “Oh, crap,” he said. He looked around for a blanket or a pair of pants or something, but saw nothing.

  “Don’t be such a prude,” Kelly said. “Who do you think took those clothes off you in the first place?”

  “Oh,” he said. But it still didn’t do anything for his embarrassment.

  “This was my parents’ room,” Chelsea said. “Some of my dad’s clothes are still in that closet over there. I bet they’d fit you.”

  “Yes, get dressed,” Kelly said. “Jacob, I can’t wait to show you this place. It’s amazing.”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  He found a pair of blue pants with an expandable waistband and a gray, V-neck shirt that had WALKER printed on the right breast. For shoes he found a pair of white slippers that looked as flimsy as paper, but offered a surprising amount of cushioning when he walked.

  A few minutes later, he stepped into a simple living room dominated by a kitchenette, a small table mounded over with notebooks and science journals and a couch with a black glass mirror mounted into the wall in front of it.

  He went over to the mirror, but couldn’t really see a good reflection of himself.

  “That’s a video monitor,” Chelsea said. “I checked, though. It doesn’t work.”

  “But everything else onboard does,” Kelly said excitedly. “Jacob, I can’t believe it. The technology that these people have at their fingertips. It’s . . . it’s . . .” She broke off there, unable to get the words out.

  “I know,” Jacob said. “Nick told me. Thanks for patching me up.”

  “Yeah,” Kelly said. “That was close. That alone is reason we have to make contact with these people. Jacob, please, let’s not pass this chance by.”

  “Nick said that, too.”

  Kelly rushed across the room to the little kitchen table. She picked up one of the books she’d evidently been studying and stuck it in Jacob’s hand. “Here, look at this. There’s another reason. Do you see that?”

  Jacob squinted at the page. What he saw written there was like his worst dream, chemistry formulas piled on top of math so strange it made his head spin.

  He handed it back to her. “Please. I’ve still got a bit of a headache.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, and set the book down. “If you’d actually bothered to stay awake during chemistry you might have the sense to realize you’re standing in the presence of genius.”

  “Genius,” he said. “Well, that explains why I have no idea what I’m looking at, doesn’t it?”

  She huffed at him, exasperated.

  “It’s the basis of morphic field theory,” she said. “This is basically the bible for zombie behavior. It explains so much. I know I scoffed at it before, but the proof is all there. It all makes sense. And there’s so much more, too, it’s . . . it’s genius.”

  “My dad wrote that,” Chelsea said.

  “Your dad was a genius, Chelsea,” Kelly said. “I wish I could have met him. I’m sorry he’s gone.”

  Chelsea smiled wanly. “Thanks.”

  Kelly turned to Jacob. “Her parents, and most of the others, died on impact. This part of the ship, the top twenty levels or so, are relatively intact, as is the engine room, but a lot of the lower decks, which is apparently where most of the passenger quarters were, are all gone.”

  “Oh,” Jacob said. Nobody spoke for a long moment. Then, finally, Jacob said what was on all their minds. “Chelsea, if you don’t mind me asking. How did you survive, you and your brother both? What happened?”

  “I don’t know why we crashed,” she said. “As to how we survived, I guess we were just lucky. We were in scuba diving class at the time.”

  “I’m sorry?” Jacob said.

  “Scuba diving class,” she repeated. “You know, the tank, the mask, a regulator?”

  He shook his head and looked to Kelly for clarification, who only shrugged.

  “Scuba diving?” Chelsea said. “Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus? It’s a mechanical system that supplies air to divers underwater. It’s not new. It was an old technology even before the War.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kelly said. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Well, you always dive in pairs. Chris and I were sixty feet underwater when the crash happened. We got thrown all the way to the other side of the pool, but nothing much more than that. When we surfaced, we found the ship like this. And everybody dead. After that, we just wandered. Until, you know, the Farris Clan found us in that soybean field.”

  “Wow,” Nick said. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t think so. At least not until recently.”

  “What about those members of the crew who weren’t down in the passenger area?” Jacob asked. “The ones up here working on the top levels. I mean, if you guys survived, others must have, too.”

  “No, I think they all died on impact.”

  “Yes, but what happened to them after?”

  “They turned,” she said.

  “Yes,” Jacob said, “but after . . . what happened?”

  “Chris got me to the bridge. He’d been in an engineering class the year before and he kind of knew how to work things up there. He turned on the morphic field generator and that drew all the dead down to the lower levels. Once the sensors said we had them all, he simply closed off the hatches below a certain level and locked them out.”

  “Pretty impressive,” Nick said. “Hard to believe he turned out to be such a dick.”

  Chelsea nodded.

  “What about a rescue party?” Jacob asked. “Why didn’t your people try to look for the downed aerofluyt?”

  “Oh, they did,” she said. “We were already outside the ship when that happened though. We saw them flying toward the wreck, but we couldn’t get back to them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, the place was crawling with zombies. We were on the run.”

  Nick shook his head. “You really are lucky to be alive. I wonder why they didn’t try to salvage this ship, though. There’s so much here worth saving.”

  “I guess they couldn’t risk it.”

  “Why not?” Jacob asked.

  “Well, because of the zombies.”

  “But they would have drifted away after a few days,” Nick said.

  “No, no, wait a minute,” Jacob said, holding up a hand to stop Nick. He tu
rned to Chelsea. “Are you telling me there are still zombies onboard this ship?”

  “Yes,” Chelsea said. “But they’re trapped.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know. There were one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three people onboard this aerofluyt when it crashed, so I guess, if they’re all still viable, about eighteen hundred.”

  “Oh, crap,” Jacob said.

  “Relax,” Kelly said. “Jacob, I’ve been all over this vessel. I’ve explored nearly every part you can still get to. I haven’t seen a single zombie.”

  “Yeah, but they’re still here.”

  “Yes, but they’re contained.”

  It was his turn to feel exasperated. He turned to Nick. “What about weapons? Did you find any?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “They’ve got a pretty well-stocked arsenal. I’ve got rifles set aside for each of us.”

  “Anything good?”

  “Oh, yeah. Ruger 10/22 Tacticals. All of ’em in mint condition.”

  “Nice. Ammunition?”

  “Sure, that, too. About four hundred rounds each. The good stuff, too. Twenty-two long range, subsonic.”

  “What did you do with the horses?”

  “They’re in the loading bay.”

  “The loading bay?” Jacob asked.

  “Yeah,” Kelly said. “That’s how we got in. That part of the hull broke open during the crash. The hydroponics lab was pretty close to that and all the plants from there have grown into the loading bay. We figured that’d be the perfect place to keep the horses. They’re out of sight and they’ve got enough food to get ’em good and fat. You should have seen them go after the strawberries.”

  “But the loading bay is open? We can get in and out real quick, if we need to?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “All right. I need to see the bridge.”

  “Jacob, chill out. I told you, I’ve been all over this place. There are no zombies above the crash line. Plus, you still need to rest.”

  “I believe you,” he said. “And I’ll rest later. But that’s not what’s bothering me. If Chelsea recognized this place, don’t you think her brother will, too? Who knows how much of a lead we have on Casey and the rest of them. But as soon as Walker picks up the trail, they’re going to be headed this way.”

  He looked at them each in turn, and he realized that the thought had slipped by them all.

  “Jacob,” Nick said, “I don’t think you need to worry. We stayed away from the roads and moved across open country for two days. They’d have no way of knowing where we went to.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second,” he said. “You heard what they said when they first took us prisoner. They started tracking us even before we entered Sikeston. We can’t afford to think they’ve given up, because I guarantee you they haven’t.”

  None of them had a response for that.

  “Nick, go and get those weapons. Everybody needs to gear up for the road. I want to be out of here as fast as we can.”

  “But, Jacob,” Kelly said. “This place, it’s like a treasure trove. There’s so much here, so much we can learn from.”

  “None of which will do us any good if we’re dead,” he said, and realized as soon as the words left his mouth that he’d been too harsh with her. “I’m sorry, Kelly. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I get how important a find like this is. Believe me, I get it. But we can’t stay here. Not right now. When we get back to Arbella, we can organize another expedition to come here and mine whatever we can from this place, but staying alive is priority one right now.”

  But something else was bothering her. She looked troubled. “So . . . we’re going back to Arbella?” she asked.

  The question surprised him. “Well, yeah.”

  “But what about making contact with Chelsea’s people? The Templenauts.”

  “Kelly, I really think we need to head back home. We do that, and we can deal with Mother Jane and the Family. Once that’s done, we can organize a proper expedition to go and make contact. It’ll happen, I promise.”

  “Well, hold up a second,” Nick said. “Jake, what she’s saying actually makes sense to me. I mean, if Casey’s as good at tracking us as you say, won’t he be waiting for us to double back? You said yourself we’d have a hard time losing him. He’s gonna expect us to try and go home. He’d never expect us to keep running to the coast.”

  “To the coast?” Jacob said. The thought of going that far, all the way across Arkansas, and then across Texas, it seemed impossible. “I don’t know, you guys.”

  “Jacob, please,” Kelly said. “Please say yes. We can change this world we live in. We can. I believe that. Please say you believe it, too.”

  Jacob looked at her, and for just a moment let himself see the seventeen-year-old girl she’d once been, the girl he had known and thought he’d spend the rest of his life with. It was crazy, what she was asking of him. But in the end he knew he could never tell her no, and finally, he nodded.

  She leaned forward and kissed him. “Thank you, Jacob! Thank you so much.”

  He nodded again. “Just take me to the bridge first.”

  “All right,” she said. “It’s this way.”

  40

  Most everything still worked, but the rest of the ship certainly hadn’t faired very well. There was trash everywhere they stepped. Some of the debris Jacob could recognize, or at least guess its purpose, but some of it was so strange he had absolutely no clue as to what it was for. As he stepped over it, he found himself imagining what it must have been like during the impact. Everything that wasn’t nailed down must have surged forward in a wave, crashing to the deck as metal groaned and snapped. It must have happened suddenly, too, for there were bodies trapped in some of the debris. None of them appeared to be moving, though, and he wondered if they’d been so badly crushed by the impact that they’d been unable to come back, or if perhaps they had come back, and since expired for lack of food. Hard to say, because they all looked badly decomposed. Some, in fact, were little more than skeletons, and he found himself wishing that it had been quick for them. The idea of dying like that, trapped under a flood of debris, over a period of days, was horrible.

  He forced himself to focus instead on the ship’s construction. The hallways were long and narrow, and their footsteps echoed into the depths. The walls were bare metal, painted an industrial white in most places, but peeling and rusting wherever water had managed to collect. The rust and the trash were the only signs of weakness, though. Everywhere he looked he saw indications of just how well the ship was made, even beneath the rubble. Everything looked designed for where it was. There’d been no cobbling together of odds and ends, no cannibalization that he could see. The level of advancement was simply awe-inspiring, like something from the world that had once been, only cleaner, and even more advanced.

  They passed open areas and closed-off laboratories with long names, most of which Jacob could only guess at pronouncing. He could see why Kelly loved it here so much. She was born to the wrong people, no doubt about it.

  They reached the bridge a few minutes later. It was a large, rectangular room with the workstations sunken below the main deck and divided into four sections by an elevated walkway. The walkway also ran around the edges of the bridge, near the windows, which offered a full three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the surrounding countryside.

  He went to the main windows that looked out over the front of the aerofluyt. Birds had started to nest at the base of the window, but they didn’t seem at all interested in him as he stepped up to the glass. He was high above the top of the wreck, which itself was a good twenty stories above the ground. It was dizzying, and he discovered, much to his displeasure, that he was afraid of heights.

  But he forced himself to look.

  Below him, stretching out to a line of trees far in the distance, was empty farmland. He scanned it in every direction, but there was very little to see. Just a lot of empty land, gone to riot, a
nd a dark and broken skyline to the south.

  “Nick, do you have any idea where we are?”

  “You mean like on the map?”

  “Yeah.”

  “About midway between Jacksonville and North Little Rock would be my guess. Those buildings to the south are downtown Little Rock.”

  “Jacob,” Kelly said. “Why did you want to come up here so bad? What were you hoping to find?”

  “I’m hoping this thing can be our eyes and ears,” he said. “Chelsea, you told us your brother used the morphic field generator to lure all the zombies inside the ship down to the lower decks.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And after that you guys used the ship’s sensors to make sure all the zombies were belowdecks?”

  She nodded. “We had to so that we would know when to power down the morphic field generator. I remember Chris saying that if it overloaded it would blow up the ship.”

  “Do those sensors just scan the inside of the ship, or can they be used to scan the outside as well?”

  “I would imagine they could do both. I wouldn’t know how to work them, though. Chris did all that.”

  “Where are they at? The controls, I mean.”

  Before she could show him, Nick spoke up from the window. “Hey, Jake, I don’t think you’re gonna have to worry about those scanners.”

  Jacob, Kelly, and Chelsea ran to the window and looked out. Nick pointed to a line of riders emerging from the trees at the far edge of the field. One by one the riders came to a stop and looked up. They were too far away for Jacob to see their faces, but he knew the awe they must be experiencing upon seeing the wreck for the first time.

  “Looks like you were right, Jake.”

  Jacob shook his head. “I hate being right.”

  41

  Jacob watched the riders coming on and felt empty inside. Out there on the plain, leading his riders, was Casey, son of Mother Jane and a latter-day Ahab hell-bent on revenge. There’s no reasoning with him, Jacob thought, no bargaining. He was going to have his revenge on Jacob, even if he had to chase him into the midst of the Great Texas Herd to get it.