Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  Gran’s bullet plows through one’s arm. The shot spins it around but doesn’t drop it. It keeps coming, thick dark blood oozing from the wound. One of them opens its mouth, the grimace of its smile becoming a leer. Its mouth is full of purple fur that leaks down its chin, staining its blood-spattered work shirt. Black tendrils grow out of the corners of its eyes.

  “Shit!” Gran fires again. A solid gut shot. It slows the Clyde zombie down for all of six seconds.

  Felicity opens fire too. Bullets graze shoulders, crack clavicles. One head shot opens a creature’s skull with concussive force. The body drops away, ending in a ragged stump of neck. The spine glints white in the ruined flesh.

  But they are too damn close.

  I yank the table leg out of my belt loop and set to work. It’s a dull, blunt thing. But while I cannot slice a leg in two, I can crack the hell out of some bones.

  My initial gambit leaves two on the floor. They try to scrabble up as I roll away, but the extra joints I’ve put in their legs don’t give them much leverage. I come up, but I’ve misjudged the distance and one is inches from my face. I feel its hand claw at my gut.

  I expect some sort of terrible cold. The mockery of life from the grave. Instead the skin of the creature is almost scaldingly hot. I recoil, lashing out blindly with the table leg. The point of it jams into the thing’s mouth, keeps pushing back.

  It is like pushing my finger into a peach. Soft reluctant resistance. Then the head detonates.

  Brain and bone cover me. Black blood mixing with the mess still spilling from my nose.

  And God, and Jesus, and even the Holy Ghost if he’s hanging about, I hope with everything I have that that crap is not toxic, doesn’t transmit the spores. I cannot become a mindless fungus man today. I cannot. I have weekend plans.

  Something grabs me by the collar. I spin, still spitting out chunks of my last opponent. An ugly purple-white face lunges at me. My table leg whirls through the air.

  But the zombie is collapsing before I connect. Felicity stands behind it, gun held in outstretched arms, its barrel smoking. Apparently one bullet to the torso may not put one of these bastards down, but ten to the chest will rupture enough internal organs to slow them.

  Then one of the ones whose leg I broke gets an arm around my ankles and attempts to enact revenge.

  I go down hard. My nose takes more punishment. I do some screaming, and flail about with more wild abandon than I think Kayla would really approve.

  When I come back to my senses, there’s another guy with an exploded head lying next to me, and I am covered in way more filth.

  “Jesus.” I stand. I am drenched in other people’s blood. It’s soaking through the shoulders of my jacket. I feel like throwing up but that would be yet another undesirable fluid on my clothes. I choke the urge down.

  Gran and Felicity’s guns are smoking. Tabitha is crouched behind her laptop, which is spattered and smeared with the same crap as my face. There are six bodies on the ground. Three are missing their heads.

  “Are you OK?” Felicity looks at me, concerned. “Come here.”

  I smile, despite the pain. It is nice to have someone care for—

  Her hand snakes out, grabs my nose, and wrenches it back into place. I bellow.

  “It’ll heal better this way,” she says as I punch a wall. “So I can at least always love you in a really shallow way.”

  I think it says something about our relationship that despite everything, despite the pain, and the bodies, and the general hopelessness of our situation, what really catches my attention is, “Did you just use the L-word?”

  Felicity Shaw, director of MI37, the British government’s answer to all that goes bump in the night, does not quite meet my eyes. She opens her mouth as if to say something, and then just blushes.

  “Jesus. Fuck.” Tabitha shakes her head. Her disapproval might carry more weight if she wasn’t just coming out from cowering behind her laptop.

  “We need to move, dudes,” Gran says.

  It’s probably good there’s an outsider to MI37 here. Someone to sit above all the soap opera crap and get us on our feet and moving.

  “Where are the sleeping quarters?” I ask. I knew when I went into the computer lab this morning, but the geography seems foreign now. There’s a lot more smoke and dead bodies than there were then.

  “One floor down,” Gran says. “We need to go, like, up and out, man.”

  “My sword,” I say.

  Felicity wraps an arm around me. “Do you need it? You just killed three men with a table leg.”

  I am not sure if I’m more concerned by the fact that I did that or that Felicity seems to be a little bit turned on by it.

  But it is a flaming sword…

  Jesus, there are dead bodies on the floor rotting at an unnatural pace, and my biggest concern is the absence of my cool flaming sword?

  “Let’s get out of here,” I say.

  “Suppose you can’t be a dumbass every decision you make.” It’s not exactly approval in Tabitha’s voice but it’s nice to know we’re on the same page.

  We head down the corridor toward a short flight of stairs. I take point along with Gran. Felicity has the rear, her pistol drawn, but she has to be running low on ammunition at this point. Even her handbag can’t hold that many clips.

  Gran and I brace ourselves at the top of the stairs, where they turn at a right angle.

  “You ready?” he asks.

  “On three. One, two—”

  We both turn on the appropriate number. There is a moment where I get to glimpse the bodies, the blood spattering the walls, the dull red light, and then the whine of speeding barrels registers.

  We duck back just as bullets smash into the wall. One of the wall-mounted guns Clyde mentioned blazes to life. I swear I felt the heat of lead ripping past me. If my heartbeat gets any faster I’ll be able to set a techno track to it.

  “Not that way,” I suggest.

  We double back, take a left, a right. There are signs of wilted fungal growths hanging limply against the wall. Purple stains stretch around them. In some places there are larger stains on the floor. The remains of zombies the uninfected members of Area 51 must have killed.

  There are bodies that haven’t rotted too. Bodies with bullet holes. Bodies with bite marks. The whole place reeks of rot and copper. I want to spit the stink out of my mouth where it seems to sit like a cloud.

  “Fucking massacre,” Tabitha says.

  And she’s right. This was done with remarkable, brutal speed. A completely clandestine, supposedly impregnable CIA installation deep beneath New York City, and Version 2.0 took it out in minutes. How long will it take him to take out an unprepared, defenseless city? How long have we got? A handful of hours, maybe?

  How long does the whole human race have? Are we all still alive tomorrow? How wide is the attack he can coordinate?

  I don’t have any answers. Just gnawing fear.

  Gran opens a door for us to go through, then slams it again. He puts a hand over his mouth. When he’s recovered, all he will say is, “Not that way.”

  “Where are the zombies?” I ask. This place is too quiet.

  “Maybe they break down,” Felicity suggests. “After a few minutes or so the fungus is too much for them to sustain.”

  It’s testament to how bad things look that I’m hoping that is true. When a higher body count is better for you, things have definitely gone awry.

  Jesus, these were people. Were people with families and lives. All of them. And I’ve killed… Jesus, I killed three of them with a table leg. And I know it was too late for them. That their minds were gone, that they were fungal monsters, but… God. I killed people today. And it’s not the first time I’ve done it. But the line seemed clearer back then. The side of it I stood on.

  We reach the end of a corridor, and Gran points. “That door is, like, to a stairwell.”

  We eye it. It looks calm and innocent as doors go. Almost too innocent.
“Exactly where I’d put a security countermeasure,” I say. “In a stairwell.”

  “Me too.” Gran nods.

  There is a pause. “We have to risk it anyway, don’t we?” I say.

  “I think we’re going to have to.” Felicity nods.

  “Fucking rat trap.” Tabitha appears to be reaching her breaking point. “Doesn’t have to kill us. Just starve us. Coward’s way.”

  Considering there’s a decent chance Version 2.0 is listening to us, I’m not sure I would have gone as far as insulting him directly. Still, there is no peep out of any of the speakers. No rationalizations or apologies. Just silence.

  Like in a tomb, for example.

  “Screw it,” I say, “I’ll open the bloody door.”

  I stand to one side, so that, when I open it, any bullets that emerge flow past me rather than through me.

  I am not quite as prepared for a zombie horde.

  36

  They surge through the doorway—a struggling, seething mass. Bodies upon bodies. Like a blown pressure valve. Fighting to get past each other. Grunting and hissing. Their hair falling out. Milky eyes. Black eyes. Fungus spilling from their mouths, ears, nostrils. Creeping out from under their fingernails. They smear themselves on the doorframe as they pour toward us.

  Bloody zombies.

  Well, not zombies exactly. Not risen from the grave, feasting on human brain matter. Not a seventies commentary on consumer culture. But as far as mindless automatons seeking to kill me go, zombies is close enough.

  There’s just enough time to hear someone scream, “Shit!” and then I’m running. Feet mashing against the floor. Only ahead of the zombies by merit of the fact that I don’t have to cram myself through a doorway. There is no bottleneck for me, only the full flood of panic and the open corridor.

  Felicity, Gran, and Tabitha have a good head start. I am reminded of the adage that you don’t have to run faster than the bear, just faster than your friend.

  I’m not the one running faster.

  We round one corner, another. We are just ahead of the pack. Left. Right. Left again. Grunting and cawing screeches after us. Right. Right. Only the hindrance of their stuttering limbs keeping us ahead now. Left. My breath ragged in my chest. Left. I’m still trailing the pack. The weakest of the herd. Right again. This place is a maze. Left. Left.

  “The hell,” I manage, “we going?”

  “Just…” Gran flails his arm. “Away.” He sounds no better than I feel. Felicity clutches her side. I risk a glance over my shoulder. The bastards are not slowing down.

  Shit. Shit. Think.

  Suddenly something familiar. Something that locates me. The tear in the plastic wall. Where we emerged from the air duct. This is back the way we came. Back to the beginning. To the…

  “Want to do something really stupid?” I gasp.

  “No.” I’m surprised Tabitha wastes the breath on me.

  “Next left,” I pant. “Then right. Then wait at the corner.”

  “Wait?” Felicity looks at me like I’m insane. There’s a chance she’s right.

  “We have to let them catch up before we go round the corner.”

  “Dude, are you, like… you know…” Gran pants. “Stress and its impacts.”

  We make the left. Thirty yards and then the right.

  “We get to that corner, and we wait,” I insist. “Then when I give the word, we turn and duck.”

  “Duck?”

  I just nod. I don’t want to give too much away. Because they’ll object to the stupidity of my plan. But if it doesn’t work it’s at least a better way to die than being eaten alive.

  We make the right. Sprint. Hit the end of the corridor. I hold up my hand. To my enormous relief, everyone stops.

  We can hear the horde behind us. Not just their guttural moaning, but their limbs. Their bodies smacking off the wall. A wet squelching sound.

  I double over, trying to catch my breath. My muscles start to freeze. Tabitha flirts with the corner, caught on the edge of indecision.

  The horde rounds the bend.

  They are hideous. A mindless stretch of fungus and man, blurring the line between flora and fauna. The same stuttering steps. Arms stretched out. Mouths pulled back. That moan, that grunting desire for us, for flesh.

  Tabitha twitches. I grab her arm.

  “We have to wait.”

  “Fucking crazy.” Her eyes are wide and her breath coming fast.

  They come on. Faster. Closer. The cawing clack of murder on what’s left of their tongues.

  “Seriously having issues with this plan now, dude,” Gran says.

  Just a little longer. Just a little longer.

  I see one. Eyes wide. No white. Its teeth are black. It’s wearing a jacket with shoulder pads. There’s blood on its tie. It’s almost on me,

  “Arthur!” I think I just lost Felicity’s confidence.

  Just two more seconds.

  The arm of the zombie is a yard away. A foot.

  “Now!” I yell.

  No one needs to be told twice. We burst around the corner.

  Area 51’s security countermeasures roar into life.

  37

  I duck, roll. With one hand I grab Felicity, the other Tabitha. I pull them down.

  Zombies roar behind us.

  Bullets from the ceiling-mounted machine gun scream overhead. We press faces to the floor as hot death streaks through the air.

  With an explosive, horrendously wet thunder, the machine gun chews through our pursuers.

  Slowly, slowly, we begin to crawl forward. The guns are at the end of the corridor. A thirty-yard, face-down crawl and the faintest prayer that there are enough zombies to keep the gun’s automated targeting system occupied long enough for us to make it.

  Halfway down the corridor. The zombies keep on coming. Because they’re mindless zombies. It’s sort of what they do. On and on they pour into the mouth of the guns in their desperation to get to us. The stink of their detonating bodies fills the air.

  “Jesus,” I hear Felicity mutter. I want to reach out and squeeze her hand, but the whole desperate race for survival thing is probably more of a priority.

  Three-quarters of the way down the corridor.

  “We’ve got to be running out those zombie dudes soon,” Gran says.

  I risk a backward glance. The carnage is awful. I feel my gorge rise. Bodies stacked upon bodies. More zombies clambering over the stinking, rotting pile. On all fours. On two jerking legs. On fewer limbs as the bullets keep ripping into them. They ignore terrifying injuries—holes like fists open in their chests, spilling fluid behind them. The far end of the corridor looks like it’s been painted by a goth with a Pollock fixation.

  Five yards to go. Four.

  And suddenly silence. Another glance. Everything at the far end of the corridor is still.

  Oh shit.

  I risk a few inches of forward movement.

  The machine gun barrels—oiled, black things, a foot long each, perforated with circular vents—protrude from a gray circular device that makes me think of Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon. Its servos whine loudly as I move. They fall silent as I freeze.

  Four yards to go.

  It’s not aiming at me yet. It’s aiming over my head at the back of the corridor.

  How long will it take to re-aim when I start moving again?

  How long will it take us to cover four yards?

  “When I say go—” I glance at Felicity then at Gran and Tabitha, “we sprint for the corner.”

  Felicity swallows. “All right.”

  Tabitha adds, “Your plan is balls.”

  She may have a point, but I think we’re twenty-six yards further down this corridor than we might have got without my plans.

  “OK,” I say, “three, two—”

  “Wait,” Gran interrupts.

  “What?”

  “Nothing really, dude. Just, you know, wanted to take another moment to enjoy the whole being alive th
ing.”

  I take a breath. I look at everybody and they seem disinclined to interrupt. “One. Go!”

  We sprint.

  The machine gun reacts like we tazed it, jerking spastically to life. Bullets stitch a path up the corridor behind us. Boom. Boom. Boom. I can hear each bullet leaving the machine gun barrels. How much goddamn ammunition do they put in these things? The barrels are almost pointing straight down. I leap, breath bursting, legs feeling achingly slow, my heartbeat the only fast thing in the world.

  And then we are beneath them, beneath the mounting, out of range.

  Alive.

  For just a little bit longer. Alive.

  This seems as good a time as any to collapse.

  38

  TWO STORIES UP

  “Oh dude, it’s seriously like they’re taking the piss now.” Gran yanks his head back from around the corner.

  Beyond it lie the twin doors that lead out to Area 51’s hidden garage. Right in front hangs another machine gun. From the piled bodies and abundant fungal stains it seems it has been thoroughly enjoying the killing field spread out before it.

  “You’re sure there’s no other way out?” I say for the seventeenth time.

  “I know, man.” Gran shakes his head. “Total fire safety violation.”

  My ability to be flippant runs headlong into my need to survive the next five minutes. “You know we have to get out of here, like, now,” I snap. “Who knows what the hell is happening up on the surface of this city.”

  Felicity lays a hand on my shoulder. “It’s OK, Arthur. Each thing in order. We’ll deal with that when we get to it.”

  She’s using her calming voice. But I don’t need to be calm. Version 2.0 has us up shit creek, and he’s confiscated all our paddles. I need everybody to get their crap together and—

  OK, she’s right. I need to be calm.

  “There has to be another way out of here,” I say, focusing on what we can do. “Another air duct or something.”

  “Yeah,” Tabitha grunts. “So much fun last time. Being gassed.”