Ashley Drake, Zombie Hunter

by Dana Fredsti

Matt's head stopped moving as if my voice triggered an off switch, then slowly turned to the side to stare at me with milky white pupils, the whites themselves yellowed and bloodshot. One hand stretched out towards me and for a heartbeat I thought he recognized me. Then a feral snarl distorted his features and he—it lunged for me, mindless hunger the only emotion in those dead eyes as it plowed unheedingly through the soldiers between us.

  A bolt of paralyzing grief hit me, so strong and painful it felt like someone plunged a knife into my chest. I just stood there as my now-undead boyfriend knocked soldiers aside in a hunger for my flesh that had nothing to do with sex.

  Zombie Matt's fingers actually grazed my shoulders when one of the pole clasps snagged the collar around its neck, stopping the zombie in its tracks. I looked up to see Gabriel holding the other end of the pole, muscles tensing as he fought to pull Matt away from me. Everyone else scattered as he/it bucked and lunged against the collar and pole's restraint, hands grasping and slipping off Hazmat suits, guttural moans and growls spilling out of its mouth along with that rank black fluid.

  “Some help here!” Sweat poured off Gabriel's brow.

  Without thinking, I grabbed up one of the poles dropped by the soldiers and shoved the business end up against the ring on the side of Matt's collar. The clasp opened and shut with a snap. The resulting jerk on my arms and shoulders nearly made me pass out. Only the knowledge I might be dead if I did faint kept me upright.

  Gabriel shot me an unreadable look before barking out, “Someone grab that pole now!”

  Thankfully, someone did. I didn't know who; all those Hazmat suits looked alike. But someone grabbed the pole from my hands, and someone else caught me as I started a slow collapse to the floor. This is getting monotonous, I thought as everything once more faded to black.

  * * * *

  I woke up—again—in my little sterile room. To my surprise, Gabriel sat in the chair next to the bed. His eyes were shut and I thought he was asleep. He looked haggard, as exhausted as I felt. Although—I didn't feel nearly as shitty as I thought I should have. I ached a little, sure, but the fever? Gone. The bite wounds itched and that was irritating, but shouldn't they hurt a lot more?

  I poked at the fresh bandage covering the bite on my forearm, resulting in about as much pain as if I'd just bruised it a few days ago.

  As much to distract myself from thinking about Matt as anything else, I unhooked the little butterfly clasp holding the bandage in place and slowly unwound what seemed like a large intestine's length of gauze from my arm. I winced as I revealed the arm itself, prepared for a gaping, ragged hole where the zombie's teeth had ripped away the flesh. To my surprise the wound wasn't that bad. I could see tooth marks, sure, but the shark-bite loss of flesh I'd expected just wasn't there.

  “You feeling okay?”

  Gabriel sat up, eyes opened to reveal those gorgeous blue irises.

  “Yeah.” I sat up without any residual light-headedness. “I feel pretty good, actually. I don't get it.”

  Looking uncomfortable, Gabriel got to his feet. “Professor Fraser will explain everything. I'll send her in.” He opened the door and started to leave.

  “Wait!”

  Gabriel stopped in the doorway. “What?”

  “What … what happened to Matt?”

  He hesitated. “Professor Fraser will be here in a minute. She'll explain everything.”

  He turned to leave again, then paused and looked back at me. “I'm really sorry about your boyfriend, Ashley.”

  The door shut behind him. I almost believed he meant it.

  I drank some more ginger ale from the tray on my bedside stand. About five minutes later the door opened and Simone entered bearing a tray, which she set down on the bed stand. She sat down next to me and gave me an encouraging smile.

  “Are you hungry, Ashley?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.” I smelled chicken broth and my stomach growled. Okay, I lied. But I didn't want to be hungry. My boyfriend was dead. Or should be dead. And somehow the fact my body still wanted food seemed like a betrayal.

  Simone reached out and brushed a lock of hair back from my forehead. The simple kindness of the gesture brought tears to my eyes. “I know you're hurting, both physically and emotionally. You've been through so much. No one should have to go through what you've experienced in the last twenty-four hours. But you should try to eat something. You need to get your strength back and you did lose some blood, you know.”

  “I want to call my parents,” I said, trying hard not to cry. I wanted to hear my mom's voice so badly it hurt.

  “I'm sorry, Ashley, but that's just not possible.” Simone looked sympathetic. “Outside communications have been heavily restricted. We have a call center handling all incoming calls to the quarantine zone and fielding questions.”

  “A call center?” I couldn't believe it. “Do not tell me the government is outsourcing this to India or the Philippines.”

  Simone tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile. “No, it's local, at least as far as being in the United States.”

  “But … I need to know if they're okay.” My voice quavered on “okay.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “Ukiah.”

  “So far the infection has been contained in Redwood County. They should be safe.”

  “And if they contact this call center…?”

  “They'll be told you're recovering, but need to remain in quarantine for a while longer. And that you're getting the best possible care.” Simone patted my shoulder. “They'll still worry, of course, but not too badly.”

  I shut my eyes and heaved a huge sigh of relief. Maybe I'd eat a little something after all.

  Opening my eyes again, I looked at her. “How did this happen?”

  She shook her head. “I don't know. We don't know.”

  “Who's ‘we’?”

  “Ah.” Simone picked up the tray and set it carefully across my stomach. “Eat something and I'll tell you what I can.”

  Chicken noodle soup, saltines, and more ginger ale. A very familiar menu over the last month. Definitely comfort food. And right now I needed all the comfort I could get. So I crumbled crackers into the soup, picked up the spoon and ate while Simone talked.

  “This is not the first time an outbreak of this sort has occurred.” Simone settled into professorial mode, lacking only a lectern and laser pointer. “Throughout history,” she continued, “there have been other outbreaks of the walking dead, also referred to as zombies, living dead, and numerous colloquial and hyperbolic descriptions. It all depends on the time period, locale, and average I.Q. of the local populace. Walking Death has been a popular term, though.”

  “What causes it?” I asked, sipping some more ginger ale before going back to the soup.

  She shrugged. “It's been difficult to isolate the root cause. It acts like a virus, spread via contact with the infected's bodily fluids. But as to how it originated? No idea. The religious implications alone are staggering.” Simone paused, as if pondering those implications, but then shook her head as if to dismiss whatever she'd been thinking and got back to business.

  “Some of the outbreaks have been minor, quite easily contained. In those cases, patient zero was easily located and—”

  “Patient zero?”

  “The index case. The first patient that indicates the existence of an outbreak.”

  I nodded. “Like in the movie Outbreak, the guy who let the monkey go, he'd be patient zero, right?”

  “Er, yes. At least for the mutated Ebola virus they—” Simone stopped and looked at me askance. “That was a terrible movie, you know.”

  “It had Dustin Hoffman,” I said in defense. I liked Outbreak.

  “Yes, and that hideous Godzilla remake had Matthew Broderick. And he was no better in his role than Hoffman was in Outbreak.”

  Couldn't argue with that.

  “As I was saying,” said Simone, “Many outbreaks throughout history were easily brought u
nder quarantine. Since this virus wasn't airborne, pandemics were rare. Thankfully the limited travel options made it more difficult to spread, especially when it sprang up in isolated pockets of civilization.

  “Then…” Simone paused. “Two outbreaks occurred that had the potential to become apocalyptic. Drastic measures were taken to quarantine the infected areas in both cases. For instance, Pompeii and its sister town of Herculaneum were so heavily infected, Vesuvius was deliberately induced to erupt.”

  I stared at her. “You have got to be kidding. I mean, what? A bulimic volcano? Did someone stick a finger down its throat?”

  Simone laughed abruptly, as if the sound was startled out of her. “You have a unique way of viewing things, Ashley. But yes. Basically that is what happened.”

  “Seriously?”

  Simone nodded. “You see, there's been a small group of people over the centuries who have been aware of the existence of the zombie virus and the potential threat it carries to humanity. They've taken whatever steps necessary to ensure the disease didn't become a pandemic. You've heard of Atlantis, yes?”

  I assumed it was a rhetorical question, but nodded anyway.

  “There's a reason it's under twenty leagues of saltwater.”

  “No way.” I mean, she couldn't be serious, right?

  “Oh yes.” Simone didn't look or sound like she was joking in the least. “Those who fought to keep the zombie plague contained took measures to … er … pull the plug on Atlantis when the infection's spread couldn't be stopped, at the cost of their own lives.”

  I suddenly pictured an overly earnest group of scholars pulling a giant bathtub-like plug out of the ocean, water swirling around like a flushing toilet, lots of little Atlanteans squealing as they whirled around and vanished under the water. I would have laughed at the absurdity of the image, but if Simone was telling the truth—and after Matt tried to make a meal of me, I had no reason to doubt her—there was nothing funny about it.

  “What I don't get,” I said, trying to wrap my brain around everything she'd told me so far, “is how historical events that big have been covered up. I mean, it's not like they had the CIA back in those days.”

  Simone looked at me pityingly. “There have been cover-ups as long as there have been politicians, Ashley. Which has been since the first Cro-Magnon figured out he could talk his neighbor out of a hunk of mammoth meat instead of beating it out of him. Although there will always be those who prefer beating to talking.”

  “But why cover it up? Why not just tell people what's going on so they could deal with it if it happened again?”

  “I suppose it's because some things are too horrific to cope with without losing their sanity. The concept of the living dead would crack the walls of reality for many people.”

  “Or maybe it's because there's always somebody making the decision that people don't need to know,” I snapped. “Pretty arrogant, if you ask me.”

  “You're absolutely right,” said Simone. “But some things will never change. And the infantilizing of the masses by those in power is one of them.”

  “It sucks,” I muttered.

  “It does indeed,” Simone agreed.”But on the other hand, imagine the ensuing panic, especially amongst extremely superstitious societies, if it became known the dead walked. People would have died needlessly and any effective containment efforts would have been nullified by panicking citizens. No, better to get the situation under control as quickly and quietly as possible, spin a plausible story for the survivors, and avoid the chaos of mass hysteria.”

  “So what's the cover story for this outbreak?”

  “Er… a virulent outbreak of a new Ebola strain.” She actually looked embarrassed as she continued, “Caused by an infected laboratory monkey.” I looked at her and she hurriedly added, “It wasn't my idea.”

  I finished my soup, thinking about what she'd said. “But what if there's an outbreak that gets out of hand? No volcanoes or whatever they did to sink Atlantis.”

  Simone's gaze darted to the side for just an instant before she replied, “So far humans are the only viable host, which is a blessing. If it could be spread by another vector, the ways fleas spread the bubonic plague … well, seventy-five million people were claimed by the Black Death between 1347 to 1351.”

  “No offense, but that doesn't really answer my question.”

  “No, I suppose it doesn't.” Simone leaned back in her chair, pushing her hair off her forehead as she massaged her temples.

  I glared at her. “So stop infantilizing me.”

  “I'm sorry, Ashley.” Simone looked sincerely repentant. “Habits of a lifetime are hard to break. I'll try to answer your questions as best I can.”

  I nodded, somewhat mollified. “So what happens if there's an outbreak that can't be contained? Nuke time?”

  “I hope not.” Simone stared at me grimly. “Special units trained to deal with this were mobilized immediately after the first sighting. But—” She paused, a frown furrowing her brow. “Something's different this time. We haven't located the source of this particular outbreak. It's showing up in pockets of isolated populations spontaneously, but so far tests have negated the possibility it's mutated to an airborne pathogen.”

  “So you don't know why it's spreading?”

  “No. And to make things worse, the symptoms start out very much like a bad case of the flu. Specifically Walker's.”

  I stared at her, horrified. Zara's eyes had shown the same yellowish, bloodshot whites. I wondered if my roommate was still alive or if she'd died in blood-soaked agony only to reanimate as a hungry, walking corpse.

  The door opened and Gabriel dashed in. “Professor Fraser, Alpha Team found another pocket in a tourist stop ten miles up the road. It's definitely spreading.”

  “Any more symptoms amongst the teams?”

  Gabriel nodded reluctantly. “Four more Alphas are showing initial symptoms. I've quarantined them.”

  Simone took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Damn. This isn't good. We're running out of manpower far too quickly.”

  “I know. But I think we may also have another Wild Card. He has a nasty bite wound on one leg, but seems to be shaking off the infection just like Ashley.” He nodded at me, gaze skittering away when I made eye contact.

  Simone immediately brightened. “That is good news! I'll be along to see him after I've finished briefing Ashley.”

  Gabriel nodded and left the room.

  “Briefing?” I tried to laugh, but it came out more like a feeble cough. “That sounds awfully military.”

  Simone sighed. “It is, Ashley. Which leads me to the reason you're here.”

  I waited for her to elaborate. She didn't disappoint me.

  “You are part of less than point-zero-one-percent of the population who can survive being bitten by a zombie. You are what we refer to as a Wild Card.”

  I could hear the caps on that.

  “Not only does some genetic predisposition enable you and other Wild Cards to survive a bite without becoming one of the walking dead … well, the virus also enhances your natural strength, speed, and reflexes.”

  I couldn't help but laugh. “So, what? I'm like, bionic or something?”

  Simone shook her head. “I'm quite serious. Wild Cards are hard to kill and heal fast. Surely you've noticed your wounds aren't nearly as bad as they should be so soon after the initial trauma. And with a fever and infection as extreme as the ones you had twelve hours ago, you shouldn't be able to sit up on your own, let alone subdue a zombie.”

  I glanced at her, surprised.

  “Oh yes, Gabriel told me about your quick thinking with … well, with your boyfriend. You're quite a remarkable young woman, Ashley. And not just because of your immunity to the zombie virus. You're exactly the type of person we need.”

  “Who is ‘we?’ Some kind of secret government zombie squad?”

  Simone gave an indelicate snort. “Zombie squad, indeed. As good a name as any, I suppo
se. Although it sounds rather like a Disney movie.” She shook her head and continued. “The government is involved in that this squad has members amongst all nations at the very highest level. Black ops doesn't begin to cover the level of secrecy involved.”

  “Let me guess. Since you told me, now you have to kill me?”

  She smiled, shook her head. “On the contrary, Ashley, you are now one of the world's most valuable assets. You see, because of the random spread of infection, the increasing frequency with which our teams are developing symptoms, and our current inability to pinpoint the cause, we are dangerously shorthanded and could easily lose control of the situation.”

  “What about bringing in more military from the outside?”

  “Until we figure out what's causing the spread, we can't risk bringing in any more people. You Wild Cards are our last best hope of containing this infection.” She hesitated, then continued. “More than that, your blood, and that of other Wild Cards, coupled with modern technology, potentially holds the cure to a scourge that's threatened mankind for centuries.”

  I didn't like the sound of this. “So I'm some sort of guinea pig now?”

  “Of course not, but—”

  “But you are an American.” A loud, brusque voice cut Simone off.

  Chapter Seven

  Simone and I both looked towards the door, now opened to reveal a lantern-jawed man in a military uniform, stripes, stars and assorted medals dripping off the shoulders and above the left breast pocket. Striding into the room, he was straight out of one of SyFy Channel's “original” movies. You know, the ones where a cast of assorted good-looking twenty-somethings is stuck on an island with one has-been name actor? And they have to battle a giant snake/komodo dragon/spider/dragon/alligator created because of science gone terribly wrong, while making their way to a helicopter on the far side of the island, racing against the clock because the military dude responsible for the experiment wants to blow up the evidence? Well, this guy was the military dude with the itchy push-the-button finger.

  He stopped at the foot of my bed, legs planted firmly apart in what I'm sure he thought was a heroic stance. He had the total middle-aged Charlton Heston thing going, all craggy features and stern expression. This guy looked like he'd blow up an island in a heartbeat and I didn't trust him at all. From her expression, he wasn't on Simone's list of favorite people either.