The Zombie Chro [99] - About A Woman, A Zombie Chronicles Novel

by Mark Clodi

  He pushed Dora to arm's length and looked her in the eyes, “It was his dying wish Dora. I swear it.”

  Dora nodded and asked Steve, “So what’s your story?”

  Steve’s face was a purple mash, one eye was swollen shut and he had a long cut down his left arm, which hung limply by his side. It looked like the bleeding had stopped and crusted over. He cleared his throat before talking, the bandage was missing. “Not much of a story. You left me there half dead to fight the other super zombie and then fight my way through the rest of the God damned mob on my own. Fortunately I was not too far from Jake and when he saw me he lent a hand. I saw him kill her.”

  “Kill....?”

  “Mo. Squished her head apart with his bare hands and tossed the pieces to either side of the road.”

  Dora looked at Jake with disgust, “You touched my face with your hand? Eew!”

  Jake laughed and looked at Becka. “You still coming with me?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you want to ride with me or on that death machine of yours?”

  “Hey I've gotten better! Besides two vehicles might be handy.”

  “There are still three super zombies left over from the wonder twin's group. I trashed their car, but they got away, they might give us some problems.”

  Becka shrugged, “If not them, then someone else. Let’s go before the soldiers creep all the way around us and try to ambush you.”

  “Aw, concerned about me are you? Don't worry they are still too far away.”

  “It is not concern. I think I need you.”

  Jake smiled wryly, “The Goddamned story of my life. Everyone needs me, no one cares about me.” Turning to get back into the car he called out, “Dora, if it's a boy, 'Jake' is a good, strong name don't you agree?”

  Becka turned to give Dora an appraising look, to which the other woman nodded slightly, “I should have known.”

  Dora shrugged, “I won't make that mistake Jake. You never name your kids after living people you know, it messes things up for everyone.”

  “Sweetheart I've been dead for three months. Dora, Steve, take care of yourselves, I’ll be seeing you.” Jake started the car, then backed around and turned it back the way they had come, Becka followed slowly on her motorcycle. Dora watched until the smoke from the burning town closed over them.

  Epilogue

  Eighteen months later.

  Dora sat at a heavy wooden desk, looking at a small laptop computer, she was different from the woman who had escaped from Kansas in the early days of the zombie war, there was a fresh scar which started under her chin and ran up the side of her face, under the new patch over her eye and up and over her forehead. The office she was in screamed Spartan efficiency, there were few papers on her desk and one wall was lined with weapons; a heavy rifle, three different shotguns, a hefty metal crowbar and several knives were hung there. More space was available for other weapons on the wall and outlines indicated where a couple of handguns belonged when she was not carrying them. One photo sat on her desk, facing her, it was of a toddler, he was wearing a purple one piece jumper and looked to be a little less than a year old.

  Willy Jacob Sturges was doing well, despite infrequent visits from his mother. Dora had foisted her son out to Mary and Alex to take care of, when Peter was around he doted on the boy too. This Willy's eyes were neither hers nor Roger's, instead they were a pale blue color that Dora most often associated with the sky or shallow Caribbean ocean waters. Willy was super human fast too, far faster than any kids should be, it was an effect of her carrying him to term; some of her powers had passed on to her child. Giving birth to him had been difficult for Dora, there were doctors, including Mary, who were studying his development closely. Willy's birth had been a harrowing experience that both the mother and son had almost not survived. The problem was Dora healed faster than normal, her body sought to mend any damage it had been dealt and treated the natural damage of child birth as a hurt to be healed immediately. In the end a team of surgeons had performed an incredibly messy and fast Cesarean section to remove the little devil before both of them died. The pregnancy was not something Dora thought she would ever do again, although she was still theoretically capable of having another child.

  As for Dora she had found a job that fit her well. The Iowan's were not yet stable; they were at war and had been every single day since Z-day. The government in charge had been gathering people like Dora, those who shown any enhancement from killing so many zombies, into a special task force. Dora, of course, had risen to the head of the new agency. She was perhaps not the most enhanced of all those under her, but she could get people to do what she, and the government, needed done. In particular, Dora was tasked with training the candidates to find and neutralize any super zombies that threatened the nation, which still called itself the United States of America. Flipping through the latest pair of recruits Dora sighed, it was the middle of May and she had not been outside much to enjoy the warm weather. The two recruits looked like they barely qualified for her lowest rung of training, these days she had to take what she could and their records seemed to indicate they could at least use their heads and think on their feet when they had to. She closed down the files and pressed an intercom button, saying “Paige?”

  “Yes Dora?” came the immediate response.

  “I am taking the afternoon off, set these latest two to begin training Monday, okay?”

  “Good, give me five minutes and I’ll come with you.”

  “Why, Paige I haven't had that good of an offer for two years now!” but Dora's voice lacked the enthusiasm it once had for such a double entendre.

  “Ha-ha, you are so not funny anymore, what happened to your humor?”

  “I grew up. Anyway have them here at seven on Monday morning, with enough stuff for a 'Tier One' course, okay?”

  “Only minimal training? I thought they looked like they had potential for better...” said Paige. The agency had three tiers of training, simply known as tiers one, two and three. Ninety percent of all augmented humans fit inside of ‘tier one’, ‘tier two’ took ninety percent of what was left, leaving only one person in a hundred as a tier three.

  “Lord, I need a break and you are an optimist. Fine if you think they are so good, we will run them through a tier two training, but you’re my helper.” Dora made it her personal responsibility to test anyone not lumped into tier one, which was very possibly the reason so many people were put into that first group.

  “Like you’re doing me a favor or something.” Paige handled training for all the tier ones. “Look, I didn't say they were good enough for higher training, just that they had potential. I think they do. One is a cop, a detective, and what is another week of training? You need to recover from our last job anyway. Another week of kicking around here before we go out again will do us both good.”

  Dora thought about it a moment, another week to let her injuries heal would be a good idea, “Alright, you have convinced me. I’m too tired for this shit anymore. You got five minutes to make the calls then we are going out. Maybe I will get laid.”

  “You need to. I hear there is an Army unit in town on rotation, we can hit the bars and see what we come up with.”

  Dora sighed heavily, “I don't want this to turn into a working night out.” The army units were where she and others in her department did most of their recruiting; they constantly scanned the units for those who might join them as special agents.

  “Okay no working, just cruising. I'll be your wing woman.”

  “It's a date. Four minutes.”

  Dora powered down her computer and hoped the new trainees, Kaylee and Brian, were worth the extra training that she and Paige would be putting them through. They had better be, because their files stated that they been involved in that dust up down in Des Moines a few weeks ago and there were rumors that Jake had been involved. Dora felt a strong need to investigate anything involving Jake, but whether her sense of obligation was from hatred or
friendship, she just wasn't sure.

  ~end~

  Preview of the next installment of About a Woman, tentative release date: May, 2012.

  Chapter 1

  The gunfire rang out and Brian dropped to the floor of the grimy building he was searching, he hit the ground and tried to find the source, sliding sideways towards one darkened window as he did so.

  “Brian?” came a soft whisper inside one ear.

  “I can't spot the shooter.” he replied to Kaylee, who was down one floor, moving to cover the stairway exit.

  “I am on my way.”

  “Understood.” Brian didn't bother to tell his partner and girlfriend to be careful, she would be and she was more 'enhanced' than he was from his encounters fighting what the general public called 'super zombies'. The zombie plague had broken out almost two years ago, the fact that humans had survived 'Z-day' was still something that amazed Brian whenever he thought about it. What was worse some of the undead who came back gained power by consuming the living, or parts of the living, such as their blood. Brian's training had given him a lot of theory about why and how the former humans progressed, but few facts. The one thing that was known was that certain humans who killed zombies would also become slightly more than human. The more powerful super zombie they killed or the more of them, the greater they would become themselves.

  A noise attracted Brian's attention and he shifted his gun towards the sound, he saw a low, shambling shape emerge from the darkness in one corner of the room. He lined up his sights and fired three shots. Brian thought he had hit the thing in the head, it went down and did not move or start twitching. The 'twitchers' would result from a solid hit on the thing's spinal columns or from a graze on their brain. With a slight sigh of relief Brian said, “Target down.”

  Slowly he got to his feet, only to have them swept out from underneath him from behind. Brian rolled and tried to bring his gun, a compact sub-machine gun, to bear on his opponent. He was too slow, only noticing the gun his opponent held at the last second. Brian cursed as bullets hit him in the chests, legs, neck and head.

  “Okay! Okay! I’m dead already!”

  With a sigh a woman younger than him, pulled up a pallid, fleshy mask designed to make her look like a zombie and said, “Too easy. I don't know if you’re ready for this yet.”

  “Paige? Damn, that's unfair.”

  “I wasn't even cheating, not much. I tossed a rock”, then she pointed at the other man in the dim light, “He did a ten count and got up after that to draw your fire, you backed right into me. You think the supers will take it easier on you? They know about us, well most of them do.”

  A high scream sounded in the stairwell of the training building as Paige's boss, Dora, 'killed' Kaylee.

  “Shit!” Kaylee swore loud enough for the three on the second story could hear.

  “Well you did tag me. That is better than your boyfriend did.” came Dora's drawn out reply. “Lights!” A moment later the lights came on in the building, the glare causing the others to duck and hold their hands in front of their eyes.

  Paige and Rod, the other man in a zombie suit, were wearing light intensifying goggles, Brian was not.

  Kaylee and Dora came up the stairs through a doorway framed by a set of busted steel doors, “You two act like you think the enemy will play fair or something. They’ll sacrifice lower order zombies; they can control them and even share some of their senses with them, so undoubtedly they will know where you are before you know where they are. They will arm themselves with guns, knives, baseball bats or even rocks to kill you. They’ll use radios and cars. You have to treat them, especially you Brian, like criminals or terrorists, not like stupid shambling undead.”

  Dora was a mixed bag, she had a lot of advice about fighting zombies and had more experience, if the rumors were true than, anyone in the special operations department. The woman stood about five feet six inches tall, had a fair complexion, dark brown hair and one hazel colored eye that sometimes appeared almost blue in color. She had a long scar that went from the top of her forehead to just under her chin, the scar was interrupted by an eye patch over her left eye. Brian had watched her every day and noticed that the scar had been fading, the cleft on her chin where the scar started when he first met her, was gone already. Paige was her direct subordinate, accountable only to Dora and was almost as good as her boss. She looked to be about twenty years old with light brown hair and the same eye color as Dora, she stood slightly shorter than the older woman too. In a knock down fight Brian didn't know which of them would win.

  Everyone with the taint of zombie essence seemed to heal faster and have elevated reflexes, after that the abilities that were gained spanned a great deal of territory. Only those at the top, Dora and Paige in this case, knew what everyone else could do. For example Brian knew Rod was enhanced, but he had yet to see the man do anything amazing. Kaylee was stronger than Brian and had an edge on him in reaction time too. Brian knew he could heal in days injuries that might take another months to recover from and he had extraordinary night vision, something he had figured out when they started night training. His eyes also seemed to adapt to changing light conditions instantly, he could not be blinded by a flash of light or sudden darkness.

  Their training grounds was an old hospital that had started life as a mental institution, then progressed to county hospital status where the poor flocked to when no one else would treat them and now it was a combination detention center for any humans who wandered into Iowa and headquarters for the Special Operations division of the army. It was not an intelligence agency or a ‘Special Forces’ unit specifically, it was merely the 'SO' made up only of enhanced citizen soldiers.

  Dora was the leader and Brian never figured out her rank in the military, only that she was above him. The woman was only thirty and was famous for bringing about a hundred living humans out of Kansas City to Des Moines two months after that city had fallen to the Denver zombie horde. Dora did not interact well with the regular army units, she took the assignments they gave her and got them done. She was not part of any long range planning group that Brian could find out about and he had been actively searching for information about his new boss in his spare time. Kaylee had been a civilian before gaining her powers. She had almost been killed by a super zombie on New Year's eve six months ago. Brian was a police detective in Des Moines and had been assigned to the case. He had tracked down the super zombie to a bar called the Necrologia, but it was Kaylee who had saved him. She had killed a super zombie named Jake’s traitorous helpers in the cellar of the bar and both her and Brian had gained something from the encounter.

  Brian's rumors had hinted that Dora knew Jake somehow, but so far no one was talking. As the newest members of the team Brian knew there might be some resistance to being accepted, Kaylee, unfamiliar with either police or military culture, had come into the situation blind. Brian was certain they could do the work set out for them, but there was no guarantee that they would be working together after they finished their training. In fact, Brian knew that it would not be a good idea, partners should not be dating or married. Their training was to be three weeks long, the first week of which was gone, now they were on to practical environment training, where the more capable team members took on the roles of super zombies while the neophyte members tried to kill or disable them. Looking at the paintball gun in his hand Brian was happy he had at least killed a slow zombie today, most days he was not so lucky.

  Brian had been married before Z-day, but his wife Jenny had disappeared on the day the zombies came to West Des Moines, they had found her car, but not her body. Brian was not the only person living in such circumstances, missing friends and relatives made up just about everyone's history now. When he started dating Kaylee he had finally taken off the ring Jenny had given him so long ago. The gold band was still sitting on his dresser, a daily reminder of his past. Kaylee, on the other hand, had never had a serious boyfriend, and she had been looking. In what remaine
d of the United States there was a very unequal proportion of men to women.

  This had to do with the government’s initial insistence that only men could fight on the front lines against the zombies. Official population data put the percentage of women to men at sixty percent to forty percent. News websites and bloggers put the numbers as closer to seventy to thirty. Marriage, as an institution had all but disappeared, sex outside of relationships had grown common place and with it came the usual spread of venereal disease and pregnancies. The government had recently started a campaign which clearly encouraged single motherhood; they subsidized it with extra food rations and a stipend, which was aggressively condemned by the religious establishments that were left. Brian was only interested in Kaylee, they got along very well and were compatible in bed as well as intellectually.

  The remnants of the United States had suffered a tremendous loss of living standards. The country was suited to growing food and had a good supply of animals when z-day hit too, but the goods they grew were mostly grain corn or corn that needed to be processed before humans could eat it. For the most part corn was in everything, from the tortillas that came with every meal to the liquor they drank, corn fed the nation. Technology was still around, though after two years there was a growing demand for computer parts and cell phones. The cell phone towers had been retooled to work using local talent and wireless internet was still available to almost anyone. Of course all of the computers and websites that had been hosted outside of the new, smaller, United States were cut off, but there was still an internet, run mostly off of the former universities and colleges that dotted the mid-west. With this growing demand for technology it made raiding into the surrounding zombie held territories a popular profession. When the nation first stabilized the raiders went out looking for grocery stores and pharmacies, now they went out looking for big box electronic and cell phone stores.