Date: 0101-01-01 00:00:00+00:00
Description: CONTENTS I - The Wave II - The Queen ANTHOLOGY - Flashes of Death 1 - Divine Origins 2 - Icy Roads 3 - The Devil's Ride 4 - To Be Born 5 - Fears 6 - From Heaven, Into Hell 7 - Family 8 - Indigs 9 - A Late Night Dinner at Tara's Place ZOMBIES SERIES Book One - The War Stories 1 - Rising 2 - Last Call 3 - Hungry 4 - Grave Watchers, Inc. 5 - C-Zone 6 - Unnatural Endings Book Two - Inhuman 1 - Evolution Like Lightning 2 - Inhuman 3 - Reapers At The Door 4 - Deadlier Country 5 - Ghost 6 - Deadtown 7 - Sunday Watch 8 - With The End In Sight

ERIC S. BROWN

ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY

CONTENTS

I - The Wave

II - The Queen

ANTHOLOGY - Flashes of Death

1 - Divine Origins

2 - Icy Roads

3 - The Devil’s Ride

4 - To Be Born

5 - Fears

6 - From Heaven, Into Hell

7 - Family

8 - Indigs

9 - A Late Night Dinner at Tara’s Place

ZOMBIES SERIES

Book One - The War Stories

1 - Rising

2 - Last Call

3 - Hungry

4 - Grave Watchers, Inc.

5 - C-Zone

6 - Unnatural Endings

Book Two - Inhuman

1 - Evolution Like Lightning

2 - Inhuman

3 - Reapers At The Door

4 - Deadlier Country

5 - Ghost

6 - Deadtown

7 - Sunday Watch

8 - With The End In Sight

I - The Wave

Jeremy liked being outside, breathing the fresh air and feeling the slightly cool breeze of the warm Carolina night caress him. He lay shirtless, sprawled out on the wood of his deck, looking upwards at the night sky. The air smelled of the freshly mowed grass of his yard below and the portable stereo beside him belted out the chorus to Rush’s “Working Man”.

He supposed he should be feeling sleepy as late it was. He glanced at his watch, its bright green display showing the numbers 1:58. The witching hour was long gone but he didn’t feel tired at all. In fact, he felt pumped up and wide awake. He leaned over and hit the skip button on the stereo. “Fly by Night” replaced “Working Man” and he smiled.

His heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t explain it but for some reason he felt on edge, eager. He lay back down and listened to the music.

Astronomy was not normally one of his interests but tonight the sky seemed different. The stars pulsed hotter burning in the blackness above. It wasn’t something he could explain, it was just a feeling that he couldn’t shake.

His hand reached out into the darkness beside the stereo and lifted his mug of sweet tea to his lips as he arched his back up a bit to sip it. In that moment, the world changed. The darkness was replaced by a piercing light, like lightening dancing across the summer sky yet it more than that. The whole sky seemed to go white. He dropped his tea, cursing as its coolness splashed over his naked chest. The light hurt it his eyes and only seemed to grow in intensity. Simultaneously the alarm of his wristwatch went off as the stereo erupted into a shower sparks. Geddy Lee’s voice shrieked upwards as the volume soured and then went silent. Beneath the deck, his car came to life. It horn honking randomly as its headlights lit up and blew out. The shards of glass clinking onto the gravel of the driveway like rain.

Jeremy screamed then and as abruptly as it had come, the light was gone. Spots lingered before his eyes, purples and greens swirling. His head pounded as if someone had him with a sledgehammer. His temples throbbed and his hand reached out fumbling for the deck’s railing until he managed to grasp it and pull himself to his feet. As his vision cleared, the world was black around him. The stars seemed to have vanished from the sky. The lights everywhere were merely gone. His neighbors houses on the distant hills invisible in the darkness. Even the normal specks of moving headlights on 1-40 still farther away below the mountains were missing.

He stumbled across the deck to the sliding glass door of his bedroom and went inside, flipping on the light switch. Nothing happened though he flipped the switch twice more. Bumping his way from the bedroom to the kitchen, he managed to reach to the reach the drawers of the island in front of the sink. He yanked the top-drawer open, wrapped his fingers around the plastic of the emergency flashlight he kept there. His thumb pressed it on but the dark remained. He angrily bashed the light atop the island and shook it but it didn’t come on. He threw it aside and felt his way along the island to where the phone hung on the wall. As he guessed, it was dead. His cell was too.

An irrepressible fear began to grow within him. Sweat beaded on his sticky skin mixing with the remnants of the split tea. He stumbled his way back to the bedroom’s large walk-in closest and entered it. He pulled his hunting rifle down from a shelf as his knees gave way and dropped onto the carpeted floor. “Jesus, almighty,” he whispered, “what the Hell is going on?”

He shoved a bullet into the rifle’s waiting chamber and jerked the chamber closed. Pulling his legs close to his chest, he sunk back against the closet’s wall to wait for the dawn, his knuckles white as he held the rifle.

Pittsburgh “What the fuck is going on?” Howard raged as he pushed his way into the crowded control room of the reactor plant. It seemed as if the plant’s whole staff was gathered here. There were no alarm klaxons and the red glow of the emergency lights was missing. The only light came from a small fire that burnt in the metal trash can beside Gibbons’ console. The flickering light of the blaze seemed alien and out of place in the heart of the plant. A wave of pleads, questions, and fear slammed into Howard as he entered as if he had walked into a wall of sound.

“Shut up!” he ordered, “Shut the fuck up!” The cacophony in the room dampened but did not end. “Gibbons,” Howard barked, pointing at the pimply-faced engineer. “What the Hell is going on? Twenty words or less. Now!”

Howard saw the young man’s eyes go wide with terror in the pale light.

“Everything has gone down, sir, backups, outside lines… everything. The core will breach sir. Without the cooling units functioning, it’s just a matter of time.”

Howard’s mind raced. Backups? Everything? That was supposed to be impossible. This was his damn plant. Things like that didn’t, couldn’t happen here.

“How long?” Howard asked.

“There’s no way to know sir. Ten seconds, an hour. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Howard opened his mouth to yell something obscene at Gibbons as he felt the heat wash over him. His flesh melted and burned away to nothingness as the reactor ruptured. The meltdown was visible for miles around as the night lit up like an exploding star for a second time as a mushroom cloud blossomed, reaching for the heavens.

New York The freeway had become a war-zone. Amy lay against her steering wheel wondering how she had managed to survive. Even at this late hour, the freeway had been crammed with traffic moving both ways when the light had came. A light brighter than the sun itself, it seemed like. The shocked travelers found themselves blinded by the sudden radiance even as the engines of their vehicles died and stalled. Many lost control and the freeway turned into a cascade of death as inertia took its course. Cars slammed into trucks and each other’s. Vehicles hit the concrete sides of the freeway or the medium overturning. Flames blazed in every direction and explosions ripped the night. People who were still alive bolted from their cars, creating further havoc. People ran from the freeway as if for their lives while others tried to help those trapped inside the wrecks. Amy watched as one driver of an eighteen wheeler came tearing out his cab, madness in his eyes, opening up on the crowd with some of sort of rifle until another traveler shot him in the forehead and his limp form crumpled to the asphalt. It was all insane like some sort of a living nightmare. Amy did not leap out of her car to join the crowd. She sat in her seat her body heaving with sobs, too frightened to move. Irrationally, she wondered what her boss would say when she showed up late at the hospital. Her only injury was a scraped place on her hand from where she reached out to brace herself as her car had struck the rear-end of the silver Dodge Shadow in front in her as the chaos began.

She tried to turn on the car radio but nothing happened. She tried repeatedly until the knob broke off in her hand. Finally, she sunk her head back onto the steering wheel and started to the mutter the words of a prayer under her breath as people screamed into the night across the entire freeway.

Washington D.C. President Clark sat at his desk shuffling through the stacks of reports from N.A.S.A. and other organizations about the energy wave that had just struck the Earth. Below them on his desk, rested still more reports from the military and countless law enforcement and government agencies about the aftermath of the wave that had left the globe in chaos. Things did not look good for the human race. Of course, things were even much worse than what he was hearing about. Ninety percent of all communications without the world outside of the city itself had been lost and even inside the city proper he was forced to news by “word of mouth”. All forms of technology that required more than simple kinetic energy or combustion energy to operate were essentially useless. The wave had seen to that. Even the back-up systems and batteries were down though already some were coming back on-line with the work of the science staff available.

It appeared that the energy wave’s effects on technology were dissipating at an exponential rate but it would still takes weeks, perhaps months for the world’s advanced tech to be fully restored. Fortunately, a few of the heavily shielded military bunkers like the one underneath the White House had survived the wave’s impact almost fully operational or his knowledge of the outside world would have gone from limited to non-existent.

General McMahan kept insisting that he flee the city and head for a more secure bunker in another state. The General was hard at work with his men and the scientists preparing a makeshift convoy from the vehicles, civilian and military alike, that filled the bunker and the White House’s garages and parking areas. He insisted the city was not safe though he reasoned any kind of hostile nuclear act by the former Soviet Union or any other nations were highly unlikely judging from the state the wave had left the U.S.‘s own arsenal in. However, the numbers of frightened people seemed to come in droves to the gates of the White House. Pleading for assistance and looking for hope, they disturbed McMahan and put him on edge. Yet even more so, he was concerned about those who were mad from some kind of aftereffect the wave had on the electro-biological makeup of the human mind. Clark had asked the scientists about that but their answers had been vague thought they assured him to it would only worsen and that few, if any, would be immune to the lingering radiation left in the wave’s wake which seemed to be causing the madness. Some may prove more resistant than others, but in the end most of the world population would be turned into to nearly mindless, violent predators as the days went on.

So far, Clark had refused McMahan’s requests to leave. He hoped by staying that his presence would help comfort those still sane in the city and let them know that steps were being taken to face this catastrophe. The weight of the country and the world lay heavily upon on his shoulders and he could only hope his best efforts and those of his staff would be enough to at least ensure that humanity, as a whole didn’t perish.

He sat down the stacks of papers and laid his head down on his arms. He closed his eyes and said a silent to God for mercy on them all. **** Jeremy awoke as the first rays of the morning sun crept over the mountains and sparkled through the glass doors of his bedroom. He stirred inside the open walk-in closet and rubbed at his neck. It hurt like Hell from the way he had slept leaning against the closet wall. Looking down at the rifle resting in his lap, he felt like a fool. He was forced to admit his nerves had gotten the better of him last night and he wondered what the heck he’d been thinking. He bet the power was already on again. Nevertheless, what was that strange light in the sky? Had that been real or had he dreamed the whole thing? His memories of it seemed unbelievable and more than a bit crazy.

As he walked into the bedroom, he placed the rifle onto the bed and glanced at the digital alarm clock on his dresser. Its display was blank and unlit. So much for the power being back on, he laughed. He desperately wanted a shower but that was out of the question with the power still off so he changed clothes donning a tattered Rush T-shirt and fresh underwear and jeans. Moving into the kitchen, he snacked on a plastic warped muffin from the pantry as he tried the phone again. No luck there either.

As he ate, a vague memory of something happening to his car during the strange light haunted him and decided to inspect the damage.

Glass shards from its exploded headlights filled the drive in front of the car. He carefully avoided the glass since he was still barefooted and opened the door to plop into the driver’s seat. He crammed the key into the starter and turned the switch. Nothing happened, not even a sputter. Angrily he punched the dashboard in frustration. He sat there for a moment wondering what he should do next. Luke Thompson lived just up the road from him. The old man was his nearest neighbor and a friend too so he decided he would pay Luke a visit. Luke was inflicted with terrible health problems mostly from his age but his smoking and constant drinking didn’t help either. He might need a hand besides Luke’s truck might be in better shape than his own car and the two of them could head into town together and maybe find out what was going on. At worst, he was sure he would walk away with a smile and a free beer.

Luke only lived about half a mile up the road from Jeremy’s place so the walk was a short one. He took his time with it, enjoying the fields of green by the roadside. Summer was truly here and even the weeds were vibrant and beautiful to Jeremy in a way. He didn’t miss the big city in the least and was very glad he’d moved down here a few years back. He was a bit disappointed when he started up the small hill of Luke’s drive and didn’t see the old man sitting on the porch of tiny shack that passed for a house.

It seemed Luke was always there. The old man enjoyed sitting on his porch and whittling, waiting on passers-by to harass in his own good-natured way. It worried Jeremy a little. For him not to notice meant something might be wrong. Jeremy picked up the pace of his walk, nearly breaking into a run. He hoped the old man was all right. As he reached the house, he yelled. “Luke! You in there? Luke?” He could see the front door to the house was open like always but the outer screen door was shut. Three weathered, cracked concrete steps led up to the door. Jeremy bolted up them. He swung the screen open and peeped inside. The living room was a mess. Some things never changed. He grinned as he stared at the discarded microwavable dinner wrappers, empty beer bottles, and crumpled cigarette packs that intermingled with the stacks of dirty clothes covering the couch and floor. Jeremy stepped inside. “Luke? You here?” he asked again.

He glanced around and saw instantly that Luke’s power was off like his own. He picked up an open pack of smokes which lay on the T.V. stand beside an over-flowing ashtray and helped him self to one. He hadn’t smoked since high school but he figured now was as good a time as any to start back. Lighting up, he took a deep drag and coughed like a kid. He shoved the cigarette into the ashtray and ground it out, then headed towards Luke’s bedroom. He prayed that old man hadn’t passed away during the night. Jeremy and Luke weren’t exactly close. Luke was too old fashioned to let his feelings show with anyone, but Jeremy had got on well with him. He liked the old man a lot. No one else could make you smile in the way that he did. Jeremy knew he couldn’t have asked for a better neighbor.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeremy caught a glimpse of someone or something outside, moving around the house. “Luke?” he called again, picking up the ashtray from the T.V. stand and weighing it in his hand. Not his weapon of choice, but it was better than nothing and he imagined it would hurt like hell to have it smashed into your nose. He wasn’t taking any chances. There was too much strange shit going on. He heard the back door of the house creak open and slam shut.

Suddenly, Luke came tearing out of the bedroom. He made no sound but his eyes were wide and a snarl smeared itself across his wrinkled face. He threw himself at Jeremy in a desperate rage. Jeremy barely managed to dodge the old man. He’d never seen move so fast.

Luke crashed into the T.V. stand and went down onto his hands and knees onto the floor with a thud. “Luke!” Jeremy shouted. “It’s me! Jeremy!” Luke’s head darted around and he stared up at Jeremy with a bloodshot, hungry gaze. Jeremy lashed out, kicking the old man from underneath, straight up into Luke’s stomach. Luke let out a grunt, rolling over from the blow. Jeremy dropped on him, pinning back his withered arms over his head in an effort to restrain him. “Luke, please.”

Luke raised his head up enough to snap at Jeremy with his teeth like a mad dog. Luke was incredibly strong somehow. Jeremy was forced to let go and rolled away from the old man but not quickly enough to avoid Luke from raking a long gash into his arm beneath the sleeve of his Rush t-shirt with his fingernails. Jeremy winced at the pain, gritting his teeth, then Luke was on him again. Before he even realized what he was doing, Jeremy snatched up the dropped ashtray and brought it down on Luke’s skull. The crunch of bone reverberated throughout the room as Luke went limp and fell over.

Jeremy stood there in shock. He felt sick and his whole body shook with adrenalin and disgust. Jeremy noticed the blood and gray hair that clung to the side of the ashtray and it slipped from his grip, clattering to the floor beside Luke. There was no doubt that the old man was dead. Blood poured from the caved in indention on his scalp. Tears welled up in Jeremy’s eyes as he unconsciously rubbed at the wound on his own arm where Luke’s nails had gotten him. Jeremy fell onto the couch and sat there, staring at the dead television set, in a daze.

Hours later, Jeremy placed the beer bottle he just emptied onto the T.V. table beside its twins. The beer had been warm but it was still good. You could always count on old Luke to have the essentials stocked up in the fridge. Thinking of Luke caused Jeremy to lean over and vomit into the floor in front of where he sat on the couch. Luke’s body had laid the same place not long ago. Jeremy had dragged the old man into the bedroom and left him covered with a white sheet from Luke’s own bed. The image of the blood seeping through the thin cloth and soaking into it made Jeremy wretch again.

Jeremy sat there rocking back and forth on the couch replaying everything in his mind. He’d done the only thing he could, he told himself. It had been kill or be killed, simple as that. Still, it didn’t seem to feel that way.

He cursed himself for being so weak. Whatever had happened the night before was worse than a simple power outage. He realized it now; the light hadn’t been just a dream. Something was terribly fucked up with the world and he was caught in the middle of it by simply being alive. He cursed himself too for his inaction. He shouldn’t still be here. The day was half gone and Luke’s truck sat in the backyard still untried. If it ran, he could have been in town by now, hunting for help and maybe finding out what HAD happened last night. Yet he sat here, stealing a dead friend’s beer.

Luke hadn’t been himself. He had been more like an animal. Jeremy questioned if any part of the old Luke had been left inside of him. He doubted it.

Fear was what kept him here, fear of the unknown. What if the folks in town were like Luke? What would he do? He knew he couldn’t stay here though and there seemed no point in going home. There was nothing there for him. After a brief search, he found the keys to the truck out back hanging in the kitchen but before he started towards town, there was one other thing he needed to do.

He walked to the bedroom door and looked at the corpse snuggled inside the sheet. Inwardly, he said a final good-bye to the old man as he built up the courage to step around him and open the connecting door to Luke’s storage room. Half a dozen rifles were displayed on a hanging rack mounted on the far wall of the room and a glass case below them contained Luke’s collection of handguns. Not all of them were real of course. Some were just replicas but aside from sitting on his porch, drinking, and smoking, they had been Luke’s only real passion in life.

Jeremy wrapped his hand in a cloth napkin borrowed from the kitchen and smashed open the locked case. He inspected each gun carefully until he found one that was both real and loaded. He tucked an old style.38 into the back of his pants before reaching up to take a.30-06 from the rifle rack. Unlike the handguns, Jeremy knew where Luke kept the ammo for the rifles and stopped to pick up a box of rounds before he headed out back to the truck.

He slid into the cab of the ancient, beat up vehicle, and turned the ignition. The engine rolled over on the first try and roared to life. Jeremy glanced back one more time at Luke’s house then backed out of the drive. The truck’s tires squealed and spun out as he floored the gas before the truck lurched leaving a cloud of dust in its wake as it sped into the distance.

Amy pinched the flesh of her arm, nails digging deep enough into the skin to bring blood. “Wake up! Oh please god. Wake up!” she yelled inside her own mind but the scene about her stubbornly refused to change.

She sat in the back of the van with her legs curled up beneath her. Across from her sat a boy of no more than twelve. Amy thought his name might be Jake or Jack or something like that, but she couldn’t remember. The last hours of her life were a blur of death, running, and the three people who shared this ride with her.

The van jolted as it hit something in the street. Amy prayed it was a pothole. Dan sat in the driver’s seat, his attention fixed on the road ahead. His black hair was streaked with gray though he appeared otherwise to only be in his later twenties or early thirties.

The van was silent except for the dull sound of its engine. Katherine was in the passenger’s seat up front with Dan holding a 12 gauge in her lap and watching Amy and the boy intently. It was clear. She trusted none of them. She’d kill any of them in an instant if she needed to in order to survive herself. Of this, Amy had no doubt.

There had been another man with them early who went crazy. Katherine’s shotgun had splattered his head onto the wall and she’d had Dan stop so she could kick the body out of the van.

All day, they had driven south through the city in search of others who didn’t have the “sickness” and a safe place to get help. That was what Dan called it and it was as good of a name as anything she could have come up. The van they rode in was both a blessing and a curse. It gave them a means of travel and to run from any problems they encountered but it also drew problems to them. The sound of the engine attracted the crazy people who had come down with the sickness. Katherine and Dan had had to fight them off a half dozen times already today. It also attracted the unwanted of attention of other survivors of the wrong kind who were willing to kill for the working vehicle. Thank God, they only met up with a bunch like that once and had been able to flee without a real fight.

Amy didn’t really know where Dan was trying to take them to. She hoped he knew himself. After all she had been through, Amy wondered if there was even such a thing as a safe place anymore. Her stomach growled with hunger.

There was food to be had throughout the city in abandoned establishments and stores. The trouble lay in stopping to get it. Staying still for any length of time with the van stopped only invited death to come knocking. They learned that quickly and the hard way. The human-creatures who had the disease were good at hiding and seemed to be everywhere.

Amy fished around in the pockets of her jacket and produced the remaining half of a candy bar she had looted herself during the one time they had stopped earlier in the day. The boy watched her with a hungry gaze but said nothing. She snapped the remnants of the candy in half again and offered a portion to the boy. He snatched it from her hand and sat back chewing it with smacking lips. Katherine watched the display but showed no signs of caring. “She must be hungry too,” Amy thought, “But she doesn’t show it like we do.”

“We’ll be there soon,” Dan muttered, more to himself than his passengers. “We’ll get help. You’ll see. Everything will be fine.”

Amy hoped he was right. She knew Dan was on the verge of collapse, of a breakdown, or whatever you called it but she hoped none the less. **** President Clark stood on the White House lawn. He could hear the howls of the poor souls outside the perimeter of the massive walls, which stretched around the yard. Sporadic gunfire intermingled with their cries every few moments. People had begun to flock to the walls trying to seek entrance and refuge early last night. They came in search of help and were turned away. They were all long dead or changed now. The things outside the wall were no longer human at all, as he defined the terms. Their souls were gone. They were monsters, mindless automatons who wanted nothing more than to get inside so they could rip his throat open with their bare hands. He could no longer force himself to feel pity for these creatures but he did mourn for the people they once were, now gone forever. They had been his people after all; his nation and they had trusted him. This is where he had led them.

He had refused Wiggins’ pleas to leave the night before hoping that if word got out of his staying it would give the people in this city at least hope and help calm the rioting and looting. He saw how wrong he was now. His presence here was pointless. The city was dead. He wondered if he had waited too long to take Wiggins’ advice in time. The creatures surrounded the White House walls, even now, their ranks were stacked six or seven rows deep against the wall, pushing and clawing to get inside. He couldn’t remotely guess at how many of their number had been crushed by those behind them and trampled over as new members of the horde took their place. There seemed to be no end to the monsters. It was as if all of Washington was out there.

Wiggins’ soldiers lined the wall, shooting any of the things that were smart enough to devise a way over to the lawn. More of Wiggins’ men still worked around the clock converting the vehicles inside interior parking area into an armored motorcade, a convoy capable of piercing the ranks outside the wall and making it to safety.

Wiggins’ intended to head for the Def-con installation IV. It was the closest of the still functional base that were original built to survive a nuclear holocaust. It was located deep in the mountains of North Carolina and there he would be safe. Perhaps there they could find the answers to this mess and end the nightmare. With luck, they could build a new start for the world.

Clark jumped as he felt a firm hand grasp his shoulder. He spun around to see General Wiggins. “Everything’s ready, sir. We’re just waiting for you,” Wiggins informed him.

Clark nodded absently. “What the hell are we going to do General?”

“Survive, Mr. President. My job is to get you out of here to Def-Con 4 and I’m going to do it.”

Wiggins led Clark to where the convoy had assembled just inside the southern gate. Five cars and two trucks comprised it, non-military but covered in makeshift armor. Three of the cars no longer had roofs. They had been cut off so that large M-60 emplacements could be added to the vehicles, the kind one normally saw in the rear of an army jeep equipped for field duty. Both trucks possessed bulky wedges of steel welded to their hoods shaped like battering rams. The whole convoy looked like something out that early Mel Gibson sci-fi flick about people fighting for gas in the desert after the world had ended. Clark didn’t know whether to break into to tears or laugh until he was rolling in the grass of the lawn at the knowledge of just how far humanity had fallen. Wiggins escorted him to the second truck in the line and opened the door for him.

“You ready, sir? It could get a bit hairy out there.”

“I am as ready as I will ever be General.”

“Then let’s get the show on the road,” Wiggins laughed and walked towards the lead truck.

As Clark watched Wiggins walk away he couldn’t help but recall his last discussion with Dr. Buchanan. What he’d learned from it was as bad, maybe worse, than what the convoy was sure to face on the road ahead if they made it out of the city.

Buchanan claimed the energy field trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere was changing. Soon he claimed the aspects of the energy, which acted like some kind of giant dampening field crippling humanity’s technology, would pass. “Two to four days, tops,” Buchanan assured him. It meant humanity still stood a chance and that was the only good news. The energy field while relenting in that regard was showing no others signs of decay. Buchanan’s guess of the energy being permanent or close enough not to matter was correct. The scientist’s new data showed it likely that only eight percent of the world population was immune to the biological effects of the field. When Clark asked why most of those here at the White House were as yet unaffected, Buchanan merely answered by saying that some people possessed a greater tolerance than others and the bulk of the White House personal had been inside and sheltered as the energy wave had collided with the Earth. For a time at least, Buchanan guessed, they would be normal until they were outside long enough to absorb enough of the energy’s radiation into their bodies to cause the breakdown that those who had been openly exposed to the light that night suffered within hours.

Buchanan himself and most of the civilian staff were staying behind. The convoy could only hold so many people and Wiggins had allotted most the convoy’s space to military and security personal for Clark’s own protection. Clark almost thought that Buchanan preferred being left behind. The man seldom came out the underground bunker and he knew why. The good doctor didn’t want to find out whether or not he himself was immune. He just wanted to stay sane for as long as he possibly could.

Clark gritted his teeth in anger at Wiggins jeopardizing so many lives just to protect him but he understood Wiggins reasoning. To Wiggins and his men, it was their duty. The United States lived on as long as the president was alive and in a way, Clark was forced to admit that they were right.

Clark watched from inside the second truck of the convoy as Wiggins’ men who still manned the walls opened fire into the creature below, outside the southern gate. The things outside dropped in waves but others moved up to take their places. Wiggins men were to sure to run out of ammo before the city ran out of creatures but Wiggins would’ve known this too and planned for it. Surely enough, within seconds, Clark heard the thumping sound of grenade launchers being fired from the lawn. Explosions sounded from outside the gate as the lead truck shot forward and crashed its way outside into the mob, plowing through the crowd. It tore through the creatures’ ranks crunching some under its wheels and flinging others aside as they bounced off its armored plating.

Then the whole convoy was moving outside the gates. The M-60s mounted in the open cars blazed and the chatter of small arms fire crackled over the cacophony of the howling creatures. He felt his own truck bounce as the driver turned out of the yard too quickly, hitting the curb, as the truck swung around to follow the vehicles leading it.

Inside the cab of the lead truck, Wiggins smiled with satisfaction. Everything was going just as he had planned it. The convoy cleared the mass of the horde and the open road lay before them.

“Sir, what’s that?” his driver asked nervously.

Wiggins squinted into the distant street. A lone creature had walked out of a building and into the road ahead of them. It seemed to crouch in the middle of the road as if waiting on them to get closer. Then Wiggins saw it clearer as the truck roared towards it. His skin went cold as he stared in disbelief. The damn thing had a rocket launcher held firmly against its shoulder. “Oh Shit!” Wiggins screamed reaching over to claw at the wheel as the driver saw the weapon too and was stunned beyond the ability to react in time. Light flashed from the launcher’s barrel and the rocket streaked into the cab of the truck where Wiggins sat.

Clark heard the explosion as he watched the lead truck erupt into a ball of fire. Adrenaline surged through Clark’s body and his knuckles went white from his grip on the truck’s armrest. The first of the cars following Wiggins’ truck crashed into the flaming wreckage at far too high a speed and overturned. Like a chain of falling dominos the convoy grinded to a halt. The creatures behind them were catching up and more poured out to overrun the convoy from the side streets and alleys. The things were everywhere.

The chattering weapons of the convoy had already grown fewer in number. One solider manning an M-60 in the car behind Clark’s truck was torn in half as a dozen of those things attempted to pull him from the vehicle. His intestines dangled loosely leaving a trail of red on the car’s paint as the upper half of his torso was yanked free. Quickly, he disappeared into the angry horde.

“Mr. President!” the solider beside him shouted as a grotesque, drooling face pressed itself against the window by Clark’s seat. “Jesus!” Clark wailed and threw his arm against the inside of the glass to lend it extra support and hoping it would hold. “Take us back! Take us back now!” Clark ordered.

The driver threw the truck into reverse and gunned the engine. The large vehicle shot backwards straight into the brick wall of an apartment building. Clark was thrown forward from the impact as his window shattered. Hands pulled him roughly through the small opening into the street, dirty, bloody hands with jagged fingernails. He swam in a sea of biting teeth as his flesh was ripped and shred. In the distance, black smoke rose from behind the White House’s open gates.

As Jeremy drove through the streets of Canton, he looked around in shock at what he say. The whole town looked as if a war had been fought here. The Pigeon Center Market was a mess. Its doors were broken open and glass shards lay all over the place in front of the building. Others places were burnt to heaps of black rumble. Here and there, were cars left stranded in the road, some wrecked, others abandoned with their doors left open as people had fled from them in terror as if trying to get away from something since the cars no longer worked. The worst though was the bodies. There weren’t many of them. Jeremy could go for minutes at a time without spotting one, but when he did, he always looked away. The bodies were all horribly mutilated, torn or hacked to pieces. Some even appeared as if they were partially eaten by some pack of animals.

Jeremy had only seen three people since he’d made it into to town. Two of those had been crazy like old Luke and he’d avoided them as best he could. The third, he thought, may have been normal as he was but as his truck had approached the man ran, and disappeared into the depths of the town’s paper mill. Jeremy had gotten out and called after him but hadn’t dared to go into the plant’s dark and winding corridors alone even with the rifle and handgun.

The Ford’s radio was broken and the power remained off everywhere Jeremy reached so far. He knew little more about what was going on than he had when left Luke’s.

Jeremy pulled the truck to a stop beside the pumps of the Exxon station on the edge of town and killed the engine. The sun was setting and long shadows stretched across the pavement from the pumps. He climbed out of the Ford, leaving the.30-.06 in the seat but he pulled out the.38 and held it openly and ready. He knew better than to try the pumps themselves and walked towards the station. The place was eerily silent. Like the Center Pigeon Market, its doors were shattered and Jeremy’s boots crunched on glass as he entered. The smell of rotten meat was strong here and made him gag. The cashier lay in front of the first isle with a gaping hole in her chest that looked as if someone had shot her point blank with a shotgun. Red tinted urine pooled in the floor around her corpse and the summer insects buzzed about her, laying their eggs in her gray flesh.

Jeremy’s left hand covered his mouth as he moved deeper inside the station. Displays were overturned, coolers left open or shattered, the isles ransacked, and about the only thing left untouched was the cash register. Money had became just green paper again and useless. From what he’d seen in town so far, people took what they wanted now or died trying.

Jeremy searched the store and loaded a bag with everything useful he could find. He walked away with a sack containing a jar of peanut butter, a lighter, a few warm beers and some bottled water, and a crushed loaf of bread. There wasn’t much left in the store and it took a lot of effort to even find those few things. He also had managed to find the store’s first aid kit that had lain buried under a pile of junk behind the main checkout counter. Overall, he considered himself very blessed. He unloaded his treasure into the truck and went back to the storage shed behind the station. He shot the lock off the door and took a jug and a siphon cable from the sheds dark confines. Maybe he couldn’t get gas from the pumps but there were more than enough vehicles waiting out there that for now, it wouldn’t be a problem.

As he returned to the truck this time, he saw them coming down the road; five men and three women in tattered and torn clothing. Their eyes seemed to glow yellow in the fading light of the sun. Jeremy threw the siphon, jug into the truck’s bed, and leapt inside. As he locked his door and cranked the engine, they broke into a run towards him. He floored the gas and squealed out of the parking lot without looking back. He drove for over ten miles before he stopped to get the gas he needed so badly from a Buick that lay stuck in a ditch by the roadside.

As he waited for the jug to fill with gas he wondered where he would go. If Canton was like this, he couldn’t imagine what Sylva must be like, much less Asheville. He thought hard about where he might be able to find help. Where the Hell was a place close enough for him to reach that might still be normal? He slumped against the side of the Buick in defeat, watching the road and tree line both for any sign of movement. It popped into his then like a bomb going off. All his life in Canton, he heard stories about a military base up in the mountains. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was called. Hell, he didn’t even know if it was real but he knew roughly where it was supposed to be and if anyone could get through this mess okay it would be the army.

He snatched up the jug and yanked the siphon cable free of the Buick, running for the truck.

New York was a distance memory as if it was something from a previous lifetime. Amy shook her head attempting to clear her thoughts. She clutched a M-16 rifle stolen she’s taken what seemed like forever a go from a long dead looter in her sweaty palms and hid behind a stack of crates on the dock.

Dan, God rest his soul, drove them through the worst of it before he had finally flipped out and Katherine put a bullet in his skull. The boy, Jake, had died too. Apparently, he suffered from some kind of asthma and without his meds; neither she nor Katherine was able to help him. Nevertheless, all of that was the past now, clouded and murky like a fading dream.

Right this second, she had other things to worry about. Amy glance over at Katherine, crouched several feet away. There was no question of who led their unlikely pair. Katherine, Amy had discovered, was an ex-cop and she was good at what she did.

On the other side of the docks from them, a pack of human-creatures milled about, sniffing at the air, occasionally turning on each other even as they stalked their prey.

Coming to the docks had been Katherine’s idea when they noticed them from the interstate. Katherine suggested that they could find a boat and set out to sea, maybe find an island free of the “things” and start over, just the two of them. Even with their limited supplies, it sounded like a great idea. Traveling by sea was much safer than traveling any road on the mainland in the van. Out there, there was no way the creatures could reach them.

Of course, neither of them planned on running into the creatures they faced. Their race towards their new hope had blinded them and made them careless. They were trapped now, cut off from both the van and the boats alike by the pack of creatures that apparently called these docks home.

She and Katherine would have just killed them and been done with it. They were both well armed with gear they’d found or lucked into along the way to this place but the pack was over two dozen strong and this was their hunting their hunting grounds. Lord only knew how many still lurked in the surrounding buildings. Hiding had became their only option and even that had made things worse, giving time for even more of the creatures to show up as the pair had waited on the first ones to leave or wander off.

Amy could see the strain on Katherine’s face. She couldn’t recall when either of them had last slept. Sweat glistened on Katherine’s tanned skin and Katherine’s glance told her that was it. It was all over for both of them. All that remained was deciding how they would die, hiding here and praying or going out fighting trying to reach the van. Amy already knew how Katherine would chose even as the ex-cop stood up showing herself to the pack of creatures and blowing a hole in the nearest one’s chest with her shotgun.

Amy wanted to leap to her feet as well and help her friend but she just couldn’t bring herself to believe that all the hell they’d been through and endured was for nothing. Deep down, Amy wanted to live and she was forced to admit that Katherine’s way of going out fighting in a pointless battle was not her own. It was just macho bullshit. Amy watched the creatures charging towards their position still hidden behind a stack of crates as Katherine pumped another round into her weapon’s chamber and dropped another of them with a shot to its stomach that sent its intestines pouring onto the dock as it fell. Despite her bulging muscles, Katherine appeared helpless in the face of the horde closing around her. With tears in her eyes, Amy turned away from the scene as the things reached Katherine tearing at the woman with their nails and teeth. Katherine was screaming and begging for her help. Amy pretended not to her Katherine as she crept back towards the edge of the docks and eased herself into the water below. Amy let the water carry her into the dark beneath the wood above her hoping the things would be too occupied with Katherine to search for anyone else alive. As far as she knew, they had not seen her. She listened as Katherine’s screams fell silent and began to weep.

Hours later, when the sun had set and the docks had grown still once more, Amy hauled her self up out of the water. There were none of the creatures left around to be seen. Even Katherine’s body was gone from the blood-smeared place where she’d fallen. Amy stumbled dripping wet and wrinkled to the van her muscles aching from the hours spent staying afloat. She carefully checked the vehicle to make sure nothing was waiting for her inside of it then slid into the driver’s seat. She clawed the extra set of keys out of its glove box and shoved them into the ignition. The moment the engine roared to life she knew the creatures would come pouring out from wherever they had disappeared to if they were still in the area. She turned the key and her heart froze in her chest as the engine sputtered loudly without catching. She frantically tried again as she noticed movement on the docks in the shadows of the buildings and the night came alive with the sound of hungry howls. This time the engine turned over and she peeled out as the van darted across the lot towards the main road. Laughing hysterically, Amy drove away into the night. The van lurched as she ran over a speed bump before the van hit the interstate. Despite the wreckage and abandoned cars littering the roadway, Amy found her foot getting heavier and heavier on the accelerator. Adrenaline rushed through her exhausted body as she swerved the van this way and that dodging the obstacles in its path. She felt free as if she was losing her mind and it was okay. How easy it would be to just keep going faster and faster until her reflexes couldn’t keep up and she died in a fiery car crash. It would be a better death than being ripped apart like Katherine. She reached to click on the radio though she knew she would only find static across the dial as her eyes caught a flickering light in the rearview mirror. The van almost collided with what was left of an overturned eighteen-wheeler as she jerked upright in her seat. She slowed the van staring at the police car that had come up an exit ramp behind her and was giving chase.

“What the hell?” she muttered aloud. She knew it wasn’t possible. Everyone in the world was either crazy from the effects of the wave, dead, or on the run like she was. Yet seeing the car’s flashing sirens brought back feelings of hope inside her. Maybe her flight was over and the officers in the car would look out for her and take her somewhere safe. Maybe somehow in this city people had survived and gotten organized. She brought the van to a stop as the police car pulled up beside her. Amy was in the process of rolling down the van’s window as she glanced across into the car. A man in a tattered uniform with yellow tinted eyes and snarling face stared back at her. “Oh God,” Amy screamed as the man stuck a.38 out his window aiming for her head. She snapped around to the steering wheel and rammed the gas petal to the floor. The van took off, the officer’s shot slamming in its side just behind Amy’s door as the van moved.

“Oh God, oh God,” Amy chanted as the car chased after her. “They’re not supposed to be able to drive,” she swore to her self. In the rearview, she saw the thing in the passenger’s side of the car trying to lean out its window with its gun aimed at her van. “He’s going to shoot out my tires,” Amy thought in a panic. There was no way she could outrun them, not in this van, not with the roads the way they were. The creatures could die. They were just people driven crazy by the wave that had struck the Earth so she did the only thing she could think of. Making sure her seatbelt was on and fastened, she shoved the brakes to the floor. Tires squealed as the van came to a halt. With the sound of bending metal, the police car smashed into its rear. Despite her seatbelt, Amy was thrown forward by the teeth-rattling force of the impact. Her forehead struck the steering wheel and her world faded to black.

Amy came to with a start. Something wet was trickling down her face. She wiped at it. Her hand came away a warm, wet red. Her head was pounding but otherwise she seemed okay. She reached over, dug a.45 from the glove box, and unsnapped her seatbelt. Opening her door, she fell out onto the road, sprawling, unable to keep her balance. The police car was still there, a mangled mass of broken metal wedged into the van’s rear. The car’s driver was clearly dead. Pieces of windshield glass jutted out from the flesh of his face and his head dangled at an unnatural angle. She pulled herself to her feet and stumbled closer with her pistol held ready trying to find out the fate of the other officer. When she got close enough to see inside the car, she saw the man’s bottom half resting in the blood soaked passenger seat. The top half of his body was nowhere to be seen. Amy slumped to the ground beside the car. It was only a matter of time until more of the creatures came out of the night around her but both the van and the car were totaled. She needed a plan. She couldn’t just sit here and wait to die regardless of how much she hurt or how tired she was. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and it fought to claim her in its embrace. She shook herself awake, her head throbbing from a fresh burst of pain from her movements. She looked around at her surroundings. Her only chance was to find a car that was both still functional and had its keys in it. She got to her feet once more and walked down the interstate to start her search.

Geoff lay back against the tree trunk. The middle finger of his left hand massaged the corners of his tired eyes. His movement betrayed no sign of worry about the distance between himself and the ground far below. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips as he perched on the narrow limb. He watched the kid moving slowly up the mountain trail. Normally he would’ve radioed the base to let them know about the kid and get orders on what to do. Fuck that, normally he wouldn’t even have been out here risking his life to do the job the base’s external sensors once had. He hoisted his rifle to his shoulder and got a bead on the kid. Through the scope, he saw the young man clearly for the first time. The kid was in his later twenties and wore punk style clothes, a t-shirt of some stupid rock band and ratty jeans. Geoff could’ve dropped him then, problem solved, but something kept his finger away from the rifle’s trigger. The last few days hadn’t been a cake walk, even for him. He wondered how the punk kid had managed to survive much less find come so close to finding the base out here. Maybe he’d seen enough death over the last few days or maybe he was just getting old, either way, the kid got to keep breathing. He carefully took the cigarette from his lips and slipped it back inside the pack, stuffing the whole thing into his jacket pocket. “Ah… Shit,” he whispered to himself and started down from the tree.

The birds were singing in the forest and the sky above was a bright blue filled with sunlight. The world went on as normal oblivious to the Hell humanity was going through. Geoff found that funny. He reached the bottom of the tree and vanished into the woods without a trace.

Jeremy paused on his way up the trail. He shrugged off his backpack and opened it, hunting for the map he’d picked up on the way here from the remains of a local tourist trap. He knew that even if the base did exist, it wouldn’t be on the map but he wanted to check the other landmarks to make sure he was still headed in the direction he thought the base must be in. He didn’t hear the figure step onto the path behind him until an arm snaked about his neck. Jeremy choked and fought against his attacker’s grip in a desperate panic until he heard the sound of a gun being cocked beside his ear.

“Stop it, kid, if you want to live to see the sun set,” a gruff voice ordered. Jeremy stopped squirming.

“Look, mister…”

“Shut up, kid.” The man released his hold and shoved Jeremy away from him. Jeremy whirled around to get a look at him and almost broke into a smile when the man’s camouflage-green uniform.

“I’d tell you,” the man continued, “to go home, but I guess none of us really have one anymore…”

Jeremy stared, bewildered, at Geoff. Geoff was in later fifties with gray hair covering his head. His eyes were bloodshot and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved in several days. Yet bulging muscles rippled beneath his uniform as he moved with cat like grace, scooping up Jeremy’s backpack and slipping it onto his own shoulder.

“…So I suppose I am going to have to take you back with me.”

“To the base?”

“To what’s left of it anyway, kid.”

As they made their way together through the woods, Jeremy listened to what Geoff knew about what was going on and about what had happened at the base Geoff referred to as Def-Con IV.

Days ago, the strange light Jeremy experienced had been a wave of energy striking the Earth. No one knew where it came from but its origins came from somewhere far beyond the solar system and the space known to humankind. The best guess was that the energy was some kind of shockwave from somewhere out there in the unknown. Perhaps it was from some distant battle in an interstellar war or an alien species messing around with dark matter that had gotten far more than they bargained for. It didn’t really matter much where it came from. When it struck the Earth the light was merely a side-effect of it entering our atmosphere and reacting with the matter it found within it. A portion of the energy wave’s main body had broken off becoming trapped by those same gasses. Like a super and perpetual EMP on a global scale, the wave and its lingering remnants caused technological failures throughout the world as most forms of known energy used by man had simply ceased to be, dampened or disrupted to the point of uselessness. Only basic things worked now, electricity, nuclear energy, etc. were out of the question until the field left behind dispersed. The alien energy field left in the Earth’s atmosphere also produced a type of ambient radiation which scientists believe would still be here in a thousand years unless someway was found to deal with it. This radiation was what caused the “plague” of madness which ran rampant everywhere. It broke down the neural pathways of the human to their very most basic core and leaving empty human shells full of only instinct and violence in those who not immune and very few people in the world were.

At first, Def-Con IV retained contact with a handful of other base like itself both here in the United States and in the United Kingdom, for the first day they had even been in touch with the President and the White House. Though the energy hadn’t grown in strength and was actually losing its ability to interfere with long distant communications, they’d lost contact with other bases one by one as the victims of the radiation plague and other problems took their toll until Def-Don IV became completely cut off. For all Geoff knew, Def-Con IV could very well be the last humanity left in the world.

During the first few hours of the chaos when the wave had first reached the Earth, the base had opened its doors to the local people who came seeking shelter in the wave’s fallout until Def-Con IV was overflowing and filled beyond the capacity it was designed for. Very quickly, the staff of the base learned first hand of the secondary, biological effects of the wave as those same locals succumbed to the radiation hit they’d taken turning into to human-monsters like Luke had became.

A mini-war broke out inside the compound between those still sane and those who changed into something less than human. It was a hard fight but in the end, Def-Con IV’s staff prevailed though not without heavy losses. Only Geoff and seven members of the base’s staff survived the internal struggle for dominance and of them, two were badly injured, one in a coma, the other wheel chair bound but healing. Geoff informed Jeremy that if he came looking for salvation and hope; he’d came to the wrong place. **** Geoff led Jeremy through the high barbed wire fence that surrounded the Def-Con complex. Above ground, there wasn’t really much to see. The base had used being an agriculture research facility as its cover before the wave. Inside the fence, there were only three buildings. Two of them were the size of tool sheds, but the third was large and civilian in its nature. Blooming gardens stretched as far as Jeremy could see beyond the buildings with flowers planted around their edges and the rear fence was far beyond eyeshot.

“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Geoff asked as they paused while Jeremy stood taking in everything around him.

“What?” Jeremy asked as if snapping out of a dream.

“That the gardens survived,” Geoff explained. “Like I said, when the wave first hit, people were flooding up here in droves based on rumors and desperate hopes. Of course, all they really cared about was finding the base and getting inside. I don’t think many of them at all headed out into the fields. Most of them poured straight into the garage.” Geoff pointed at the larger building. “I guess they thought it had to be the base since it’s the only real building up here. It’s in pretty bad shape now. Most of vehicles were stolen or damaged by the mob when stopped letting people into the real base below.”

“How do you get inside?”

Geoff laughed and led him towards the more battered of the two sheds. Its door was new and a sharp contrast to the aged and beaten wood around it. Geoff couldn’t hide the hint of pride which crept into his voice as he said, “I had a hell of a time fixing this back,” as he opened the door. “Carpentry’s a lot harder than killing people kid.”

The shed itself was completely empty except for a large metal plate in the middle of its unfinished floor. Geoff squatted by the plate and ran his fingertips across its surface until his fingers felt the crease he was searching for and popped open a small portion of the plate’s top to reveal a numerical keypad. He typed in an eight-digit code as Jeremy watched. Somewhere below the plating, a motor came to life and the plate rose up like a tilted manhole cover. Geoff motioned to the hole. “After you.” **** Jeremy slid down into a metal tunnel. Its ceiling was six feet above its floor and it was wide enough for two people to walk comfortably down it side by side towards the large vault like doorway at its end. When they reached the end, Geoff again typed a code into another keypad on the wall of the tunnel beside the vault door and the door seemed to break apart in its center to dilate open before them into another series of corridors. “Welcome to your new home kid. You can call me Geoff. I don’t think I caught your name.”

“It’s Jeremy, Jeremy Davis.”

“You live around here Jeremy Davis?” Geoff grinned.

“Not really… Well, I guess I kind of did.”

“Didn’t we all,” Geoff shrugged, “Well, I guess it’s time you met your new family”

Geoff led Jeremy deeper into the base.

Nathanial Richards punched a button on the control panel in front of him again and watched as the test re-ran itself. An image of a translucent wave struck the Earth once more on the gigantic screen on the wall across the room from where he sat.

Troy reclined nearby with his feet propped up on the top of a console whose systems were no longer functional. He shifted in his chair having no idea what the display he was watching meant but he could tell that it was nothing good from the way Dr. Leigh frowned from her wheelchair with her eyes glued to the screen and the grim look on Nathanial’s face.

The wave shattered as it struck the Earth, slowing from the speed of light to a dead crawl in space, as its fragments scattered, each taking a different trajectory. Then the screen went black.

“Run it again,” Sheena ordered coldly from her wheelchair.

Nathanial shook his head. “We’ve ran it over three dozen times today alone, Sheena. There’s just no way to know where the pieces are headed. Maybe if we waited until the waves after effects in the atmosphere dissipated a bit more we could link up to one of the satellites up there. Surely at least one of them had to survive. We could…”

“No,” Sheena cut off his protest. “I said, run it again.”

Nathanial got up from his seat as Geoff and Jeremy entered the room. “You run it again! I’m through for today. We’re just wasting time here. There’s not anymore we can learn without more data.”

“Ahem,” Troy cleared his throat, pointing over Nathanial’s shoulder at the newcomers.

Nathanial turned to face them, his features red with anger and frustration. “Who the hell are you?” he snapped at Jeremy.

“His name is Jeremy,” Geoff responded with an edge of threat in his tone. “He’s not infected by the radiation so you might as well just go ahead and welcome him onboard.”

“I hope to God he knows something about astrophysics and computers because I fuckin’ quit!” Nathanial shouted and stormed out of the room through an opposite entranceway.

“That’s Nathanial. You get used to him,” Geoff informed Jeremy. “That guy over there slacking off is Troy. He’s military like me.”

Sheena rolled her chair up to them. It was clear from the way her arms strained as she pushed the wheels that she was not yet accustomed to her disability. “Do you, Jeremy?” she asked, “Do you know computers?”

Jeremy stared at her. Even wheelchair bound, this tiny woman with flakes of gray in her pinned up black hair seemed tougher than Geoff did. She met his stare unwavering through the thick lens of her heavy glasses. “Well?” she urged.

“Um… No, ma’am, I don’t.”

“What did you do before…?” she let her sentence trail off.

“I was an artist.”

Sheena cackled. “You sure know how to pick them Geoff. What use is he going to be and who’s going to give up their share of the food we have left to feed him?”

Troy hopped to his feet and moved between the doctor and Jeremy, sticking out his hand. “Glad to have you along for the ride. I promise not all of us are as crazy as we seem.”

Jeremy took Troy’s hand and shook it firmly.

“Bring him to the lab later,” Sheena ordered. “We need to make sure he’s clean.” With that said, she looked up at Troy. Troy winked at Jeremy, “Gotta go. Duty calls.” Then took the back of the doctor’s chair and rolled her out of the room disappearing down a corridor.

“Who was that?” Jeremy asked when he judged the pair to be out of earshot.

“That’s our doctor and science whiz, Sheena. She was in charge here before things went to shit. She still thinks she is most of the time.”

A pale man dressed in black and only slightly older than Jeremy wandered into the control room. He wore thin, sleek glasses and carried himself with a flare of style. He stopped in his tracks when he noticed the two of them.

Jeremy heard Geoff mutter, “Oh God, not Ian,” as the man approached them.

“Good afternoon, Geoff, and who might this be accompanying you today?” The man spoke in a soft, light voice in a British accent and then smiled. “You don’t actually have to answer that. I couldn’t help but over hear your encounter with our resident witch doctor. She’s rather narrow minded these days, obsessed with death you might say.”

“Death?” Jeremy asked.

Ian nodded waving his hand in a very feminine gesture as if dismissing Jeremy’s concern. “You’ve heard about the wave, I’m sure. It broke apart when it hit the Earth you see and our good doctor is worried that a piece of it will hit the sun. If it did, it could disrupt the fusion reactions inside the star like it did the energy sources here and start a chain reaction leading to a big Ka-boom! It would be the end of our solar system. The sun would simply explode going nova prematurely and taking everything else with it. Of course, given our limited resources at the moment, it’s impossible to know where the fragments of the wave are headed.”

Jeremy blinked, stunned to silence. Ian reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Carpe Diam, young man. Don’t worry about the future, only be concerned with the time you have now.”

“What brings you out of your private coffin Ian?” Geoff snorted.

“Coffee, my good man, Coffee. I was just on my way to the mess to brew a pot while we still have some left. Would you two care to join me?”

“I think we’ll pass,” Geoff said without giving Jeremy a chance to respond.

“Have it your way then,” Ian answered cheerfully and continued along on his quest.

Geoff literally pulled Jeremy out of the control room. “Come on, kid. Let me show you to your bunk.”

Geoff took Jeremy to a nearby lift and they rode it down to the military living quarters. A row of twenty-four rooms spread out before them on both sides of the corridor that the lift opened onto. According to Geoff, only three of the base’s survivors lived down here, himself, Troy and the base’s repair tech, a man named Wade. Dr. Leigh (Sheena), when she could be pried away from her projects, Nathanial, and a woman named Toni who was the base’s communications officer stayed on another level in the civilian section while Ian made his home in makeshift quarters he’d set up inside the armory despite all the available space. Ian had been the C.I.A liaison and was in Geoff’s opinion the only complete psychopath left in the complex. There was also a woman named Lex who Geoff explained was in coma. She was kept in the medical labs so Sheena could keep a close eye her and her condition not knowing if she would wake up normal or infected by the disease caused from the radiation of the wave. But for the time being, Geoff assured him, Jeremy could stay with the “normal” people in the military quarters.

The room Geoff gave him was rather Spartan. It contained only a bunk, a small bathroom, and a single table with a computer tied into the base’s mainframe on it.

“It’s not much,” Geoff said, “But it’s a hell of a lot safer than living up there,” Geoff pointed at the ceiling, “Out there with those things.”

A memory of Luke’s deranged, hungry face flashed through Jeremy’s mind and he shuddered.

“The creatures don’t come around here much. It’s rather secluded and very few people knew there was even anything up here in the mountains. We get a few wanders now and again though. Nothing we can’t deal with so far. Besides, even if the things flocked up here in droves, there’s no way they could get inside the complex proper.”

Jeremy nodded as he shrugged off his backpack and placed it on the bunk. Geoff headed for the door. “You look like you could use some rest so I’ll leave you to it. We’ll worry about finding you a job tomorrow. Everybody here contributes somehow for the good of us all except maybe Ian. We have to work together, if we want to stay alive.”

As the door slid closed behind Geoff, Jeremy slumped into the chair at the table and rested his head in hands. It was true, he felt safer here than he had in days but he wondered if coming here had really been the right thing to do. Still it was good to see people again no matter who they were.

Jeremy awoke to a pounding on the doors of his quarters. He wearily rubbed his eyes and climbed out of the bunk as a short, hideously over muscled man entered the room. The bald scalp of the man’s head gleamed from the light shinning through the open doorway behind him. “It’s time to go new boy,” he ordered gruffly. “We’ve got work to do.”

“Who… Who are you?”

“Name’s Wade. I keep things working around here but today I’m going into town and you’re going with me.”

“What? I just got here. Why me?”

“You’re not that dense are you?” Wade walked over and rapped his knuckles on Jeremy’s skull. “Hello in there.”

Jeremy backed away from the assault.

Wade glared at him. “None of us other than Geoff have really left the complex since the wave. Hell, you lived through the shit out there. I need a guide, Jerm, and you’re it.”

“But I don’t know anything you don’t,” Jeremy argued finding the thought of going back into town extremely disturbing.

“Daylight’s burning, new boy. Get your shit together or get out.”

Jeremy had slept in his pants so he pulled on his t-shirt and started to reach for his.38. Wade saw him, “Leave that piece of crap. Here,” Wade said shoving a.45 automatic into Jeremy’s hand. “We’ll stop and get you a real weapon on the way out too.”

Minutes later, Jeremy sat inside the garage with Troy, Geoff, and Wade. He held an UZI in his trembling hands and watched as Wade worked underneath the hood of an army issue jeep that had seen better days. Troy held an M-16 in one hand and took continuous drags off a cigarette with the other. “I still don’t understand why you have to do this Wade,” Troy commented between puffs.

“You want to keep breathing?” Wade’s muffled voice shot back from where he worked. “If I don’t get the parts to fix the ventilation systems from where you idiots shot it up, we’re all going to be headed out of here and I sure ain’t trustin’ you to bring back the right gear.”

“Next time a bunch of flesh-eating crazies get loose in the base, Wade, maybe you should have a talk with’em, huh? Tell them not to get near anything important as we blow their freakin’ brains out.” Troy joked.

Wade popped his head out from under the hood. “Fuck you. You think I want to go out there into Hell?”

“Look Wade,” Geoff moved closer to the jeep, “Troy and I could do it. Just tell us what you need. You don’t have to go.”

“Yes, I do,” Wade said definitively, “Jeremy here’ll be all the help I need besides the boy needs to contribute somehow. Why not this way?”

Geoff raised his hands, palms open, in a gesture of surrender.

Wade tossed Jeremy the keys to the jeep. “Get in and crank her up.”

Jeremy did as he was told and the jeep cranked on the first try, its engine roaring to life. Troy tossed aside his smoke and moved to push the main door open for them.

“Catch you later guys,” Wade said, “We got some shopping to do.” Then he motioned for Jeremy to get on with it and Jeremy drove the jeep out of the complex and down the gravel road towards Canton.

As they rode, Wade asked, “So just how bad is it out there, really?”

Jeremy glanced over at the burly, little man beside him. “Everyone I saw on my way here was dead, crazy, or both. The power’s off everywhere.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Wade chided him about the power. Wade turned his gaze away to the roadside for a moment as if collecting his thoughts then looked back at Jeremy. “There used to be one of those large, chain hardware/electronics stores just on the other side of town. Did you see it on your way up here?”

“No,” Jeremy answered honestly, “but I know where you’re talking about.”

“You think we can get in and out of it without getting our asses chewed off?”

“I don’t know. Those creatures… some of them are pretty fast. If they’re inside the store…”

Wade picked up the twelve-gauge that rested on the seat between them and pumped a round into the chamber. “Shit,” he cursed, “Just another day in paradise, huh, Jerm?”

On their way through town, Jeremy had to “floor it” twice as the creatures who had taken up residence in the ruins of the buildings and shops poured out into the streets at the sound of the passing jeep but he and Wade managed get by without any real close calls. When they reached the large parking lot of the store they were after, there were only two creatures milling about as they pulled in. Jeremy parked the jeep directly in front of the store’s plexi-glass entrance and grabbed his UZI. He started to open fire on the creatures but Wade’s hand smacked his weapon down, causing him to lower it.

“Don’t do it. You saw how the ones in town reacted to the jeep. The noise will just bring more of them.” Wade pulled a pistol out of the jury-rigged holster on his tool belt and screwed a silencer onto its barrel as the creatures came snarling towards them. Wade dropped each of them with a single shot to their skulls. “Geoff taught me a few things,” he explained, tucking away the gun.

Together they shoved open the store’s heavy doors and stepped into the darkness of its interior. “I’ll just be a minute,” Wade said reaching for a buggy. “You stay here. Only shoot the fuckers if they get too close and you have to, okay?”

Wade cocked his head to the side. “And keep the damn jeep running.”

An eternity seemed to pass before he returned with a buggy full of circuit boards that looked as if they had been ripped out of PCs and other odds and ends that Jeremy couldn’t even begin to guess as to their function. About a seven or eight of the creatures were in lot but they seemed to be hanging back rather than charging the pair’s position. It was really creeping Jeremy out, almost as if they were waiting for something. Wade tossed the last of his “shopping” into the back of the jeep and hopped in. “Let’s get the Hell out of here before they decide they’re hungry.”

“No argument here,” Jeremy said switching the jeep into drive. He peeled out and tried to avoid the creatures as he made for the road. As the jeep neared the exit to the interstate, a second pack of creatures came bounding out the woods to their right, making straight for the jeep. They were much closer than the first group. Wade cursed and snatched Jeremy’s UZI up from the seat opening fire into them. Several of the attackers fell from the rain of bullets but the other creatures were now charging across the lot at them too from the other side as if trying to block them in. “Fuck!” Jeremy yelled thrusting the gas pedal all the way down with his foot. “Hold on!” The jeep struck the curb and bounced out of the lot onto the road. Wade looked back behind them at the shrinking figures still giving chase. “That was too fucking close,” he muttered.

Amy opened her eyes. She didn’t feel completely rested but some sleep was better than none. Eighteen hours had passed since her flight from the docks. She sat up in the backseat of the Toyota she’d finally found after an hour of searching and one nasty encounter with a creature on the interstate. She had used the car to flee the city proper. Now she was in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. She’d driven for hours until she had found this place. There was nothing around but the road and its surrounding trees for miles and miles. When she arrived here, she had locked the cars doors up tight and stretched out to get some rest hoping the sound of any creatures who stumbled across her trying to get into the car would wake her in time to deal with them. It had been worth the risk. She felt much better physically but she was haunted by the horror of her situation. She was alone. The car was nearly out of fuel and she was down to only five rounds left in her.45. She missed Katherine. Hell, she missed the world. The worst of it all was that she still had no long-term plan of how she was going to survive on her own or where she was headed. Her flight had taken her south but she didn’t know how far, Virginia maybe? She wasn’t sure. Amy figured it didn’t matter. One state was just as dead as the next one. She needed to find others like herself who’d made it through the night of the wave without being driven crazy. She wondered though if she were the last sane woman left on Earth. The thought terrified her. And the creatures… If the cops who’d almost killed her were any indication, some of those things out there were getting smart. Not normal but thinking. They’d eat you alive in their rage, intelligent or not. The fact made them a hundred times more dangerous. It was one thing to outrun or hide from a pack of mindless monsters and another altogether when they started shooting back and driving cars. What else were the things capable of now? Amy shuddered and pushed the thought from her mind. She reached up and tenderly touched the wound on her forehead. It wasn’t serious but she was worried about infection. She had no water or food much less medical supplies and driving into a city or town to try to locate some was out of the question. Even if she’d been well armed, she wouldn’t have tried it on her own. The big question sat before her unanswered: What do I do now? Using the car was dangerous. It attracted the mindless creatures like a light draws moths and it made her more noticeable to those of them that could think as well. Going it on foot seemed like a bad idea as well though. On foot, she had no way to outrun the creatures and she certainly couldn’t stand her ground and fight. What the hell was she going to do?

She unlocked one of the car’s doors and got out leaving it behind. Water had been the deciding factor in her choice. Using the car would have given her no way to find the things she required so badly to stay alive other than stopping at a gas station or something of the sort as she drove. The way she reasoned it, on foot, she might be able to find a stream or some kind of berries or something growing in the wild amongst the trees. She walked off the road and headed into the woods feeling her way carefully in the newly fallen night.

Geoff met Jeremy and Wade on the road home about two miles outside the complex. “You done good kid,” he told Jeremy when he saw they were alive and had returned with the parts they had gone after. He ushered them on towards the base. He was staying behind to take care of any of the creatures that might have followed them back. He promised to meet up with them later in the mess and then disappeared into the trees seeming to become a part of the woods themselves.

The inhabitants of Def-Con all sat in the meeting room. Currently Wade stood at in the center of the room informing everyone that the base’s air system problems were fully repaired and updating the group on the life expectancy of the base’s power core. Sheena had already been allowed her rant on how important it was to determine the various trajectories of the wave’s fragments before it was too late, not that Def Con had the resources to change anything should it be discovered that a piece of the wave was indeed aimed for the sun. Finally, Wade finished and Toni took over the meeting. Jeremy had not formally met the communications officer yet so he watched her intently. She was tall and thin, in her later twenties, maybe early thirties, he guessed from her appearance. Her eyes were a bright green and brown hair touched the tops of her shoulders. She spoke softly in a controlled though almost shy voice. Her efforts to reach anyone else in the government, military, or even on civilian channels and the small band frequencies continued to meet with failure. Toni had no answer as to whether that meant they were truly alone in the world or if the after effects of the wave touching the atmosphere simply hadn’t cleared enough yet to get out a good signal.

Geoff was the last member of the staff to speak. Despite the bleakness of the others’ reports, his was the most unsettling. The number of infected, for lack of a better term for the poor souls turned into mindless, hungry monsters by the wave’s secondary radiation, who were wandering close the base was steadily increasing at an alarming rate. Geoff hadn’t realized just how much until today. No one blamed Jeremy’s arrival or Wade’s “shopping” trip yet it was clear that Geoff thought there factors contributed to the problem. Geoff was not concerned about running out of ammo in the near future or the creatures penetrating the complex, his worries came from the fact that the numbers of the infected could potential reach a point where there would be no way out of Def Con without a bloody fight through the mob gathering around its fencing. Geoff did not suggest abandoning the complex as no one present knew of anywhere remotely safe to set out for yet he made sure that everyone understood the threat of being trapped here for the rest of their lives.

When the meeting was over, everyone broke up into their own little clusters to continue private arguments over what should be being done or to share in other ways of coping. Jeremy found himself pulled along with Geoff and Troy, soon finding himself on his way outside to the garage. The night sky was clear and the stars sparkled in the blackness above. There were two of the creatures straining against the fence. They howled and fought harder to get inside, when they saw the trio, shredding and slashing their flesh on the barbed wire.

“Didn’t you just tell everyone to limit their trips up here?” Jeremy whispered.

“Yeah, but there are times and there are times,” Geoff said walking to the fence as he drew his pistol.

“Come on,” Troy slid the heavy garage door open and led Jeremy inside. “Forget about them. They’re not why we’re up here.” Jeremy heard two faint popping noises in the darkness behind him. When Geoff caught up with them, Troy closed the door and hit the interior lights. He waved his arm around like a game show host showing off a prize. “Welcome to paradise.”

“The garage?” Jeremy said flatly.

“It’s not the place but what’s in it, kid,” Geoff added trying to rub something red and wet off the front of his uniform. Jeremy pretended not to notice.

“T-dah!” Troy shouted returning from the rear of the garage with a large jug in his hand. “This is Wade’s special home brew.”

“It’ll knock you on your ass that’s for sure,” Geoff grunted.

“But you could drink in the complex. Why come up here?”

“There’s nothing like this down there,” Troy turned up the jug to his lips and took a long swig, coughing as it burned down his throat like liquid fire. “And hell, Geoff here would go crazy if he couldn’t see the stars. Mankind wasn’t made to live in the Earth.”

“What he means is…” Geoff grabbed the jug from Troy’s hands, “is that we’d go crazy if we were cooped up with those suits much longer. All of them except Wade are educated people. Me and Troy here are the last of the grunts if you take my meaning. None of them take him seriously at all and they only listen to me because I saved their asses when the shit went down in there and they know I am the only one who can do it again if the things get in.”

Geoff offered Jeremy the jug. “No thanks,” Jeremy waved it aside, “Isn’t getting wasted up here dangerous?”

Geoff laughed. “Isn’t breathing dangerous these days kid?”

Jeremy didn’t answer.

Many, many feet below them, Sheena rolled her chair closer to Lex’s bed and reached out to take the woman’s wrist in her hand. Lex’s pulse still appeared steady if somewhat weak. There had been no change in her condition for days. Sheena looked Lex over and winced. Once, she’d been a vibrant thirty three year old woman whose charm and laughter lit up the dark, artificial corridors of Def Con. Now her skin was a sickly pale color and her long blonde hair had lost its luster. Sometimes Sheena found it hard to believe she was looking at the same person who’d been her assistant, friend, and… lover for the last five years. Sheena leaned forward in her wheelchair and rested her head on Lex’s chest. Tears streamed, glistening down her cheeks as sobs shook her broken body. She lifted her head and her hand crept to the life support system’s main power cord and yanked it out of the wall. “I’m sorry,” Sheena said no louder than a breath. A sharp piercing tone filled the room as Lex’s vital signs flat-lined. Sheena silenced the alarm with the flip of a button and turned out the lights. She wheeled herself out of the dark room without looking back.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” Troy sang as the staff of Def Con stood gathered before the grave, buried in the flowers at the edge of the base’s large gardens. Black-eyed Susans bloomed around the freshly dug dirt, their yellow petals straining to touch the sun. To Jeremy, Troy’s voice sounded like that of a weeping angel. He tried hard to block out the raging and thrashing of the creatures that tore and pulled at the fence nearby. Troy’s voice touched them too though in a different way and called to them stirring their hunger and hatred to new levels. There were more of them today than since the early days after the wave when the hoards of refugees from the town had came seeking shelter. They numbered in the dozens and Jeremy noticed Geoff’s unease as the ceremony continued. Geoff was armed to the teeth and clutching a ready fully loaded AK-47 in his hands. Everyone else seemed focus on saying goodbye to Lex even Ian though the C.I.A. man didn’t look well. A sheen of sweat covered his snow white skin and he fidgeted with his handkerchief nervously. When Troy’s song ended, they all stood together watching the bloodthirsty horde outside the fence’s gates until finally Geoff barked the words, “Okay! Everybody back inside. Now!” Jeremy wondered as he went if this would be one the last times he would feel the sun’s rays on his skin.

Sheena kept to herself the nature of Lex’s death. No one confronted her about it. Some suspected what she’d done, others didn’t care but Lex’s death affected them all including Jeremy though he’d never even met the woman. A somber air fell over the Def Con complex. Geoff, Troy, and Wade waged a quiet war on the surface against the growing tide of the infected. Ian kept more to himself than ever rarely leaving his make-shift quarters in the armory for any reason. Only Nathanial seemed to have actually improved since Sheena had suddenly stopped riding him about getting more data on the remnants of the wave in space despite the ironic fact that the atmosphere was finally clearing itself completely of the strange energy-dampening field. Jeremy at last found the time to introduce himself to Toni and the two spent hours each day working with the base’s communications gear trying to enhance it and extend its range and the power of its signal. Jeremy had taken an instant liking to Toni from the very moment he’d seen her at the meeting shortly after his arrival at Def Con. She was a very kind and warm person, Jeremy discovered, once you wormed your way around her defensive layer of shyness.

“Pass me the screwdriver,” Toni called from where she lay sprawled out in the floor beneath the control room’s main communications console. Jeremy selected a Phillips head carefully from the open toolbox he carried and passed it over. He heard Toni work for a moment with the tool before she slid out and smiled at him. “I think that does it. The system’s ninety percent on-line again and as tweaked as it’s going to be. Anyone on this side of the country with so much as a handset should be able to hear us now.”

Jeremy grinned back at her and pointed at the top of the console. “So this little red light is supposed to be on and flickering this way?”

“What?” Toni pulled herself up. Her smile vanished to be replaced by sheer shock. Jeremy watched as she looked at the light in disbelief. Her whole body tensed up and she barely seemed to be breathing anymore.

“Was it something I said? I’m sorry if…”

She whirled on him and threw her arms about his neck as Jeremy stood there totally dumbfounded. “Someone out there is trying to reach us!” she half giggled, half screamed, slamming a finger down to put the incoming transmission on the room’s speakers. The words were garbled by terrible static and interference but they managed to understand a few words of what was being said, “This… Freedom Station… Anyone… us?”

Toni held a hand over her mouth.

“Freedom Station,” Jeremy repeated aloud then it hit him. “Holy shit,” he muttered.

Toni had already opened the channel and was responding. “We copy that Freedom. This is Def Con and you have no idea how happy we are to hear you.”

“Repeat… Couldn’t…” the voice replied.

“Go tell the others!” Toni wailed at Jeremy. “I’ll try to clean this up some and keep the channel open.”

Jeremy dropped his toolbox and darted off, yelling, through the base’s corridors.

The woods were quiet and a gentle rain began to fall as Amy made her way up the mountainside. The night had given way to a gray sky full of clouds. The rain was a warm one however and she welcomed it. She fished around in her pockets for the last of the berries she had found during the night, plopping the whole handful into her mouth at once. They were wonderful like the food of the gods but she longed for more and hoped she would come across another patch soon. She wasn’t a nature person having grown up in New York so she had to be very selective in what she picked. She knew some berries were poisonous so she had to be careful. She considered briefly the notion of trying to shoot or catch one of the rabbits that appeared to be rampant in the woods but she had no idea how to hunt them. If it came down to it, she swore she would eat grass rather than waste the last five rounds in her weapon. She couldn’t risk being defenseless if one or more of the creatures crossed her path.

Amy reached the top of the large hill, which in her city thinking she labeled a mountain and looked down at the town below. The instant she saw it she docked into the foliage out of instinct. She cursed herself for being foolish. It was miles away. There was no way any of the creatures that might be in it could see her… unless they were the thinking kind and keeping out a watch with binoculars, she thought darkly. There didn’t appear to be any kind of road or trail leading from where she was to the town. It looked as if the forest stretched all the way to the edge of the town. The town’s proximity meant she was much more likely to come across the creatures than she had thought earlier even if she kept to the woods and tried to cut around it. She took a moment and steeled herself before she stood up and started walking straight for the town. She was going down there and was going to find the things she needed. Maybe, she hoped, if it was mostly deserted, she could find a home or some kind of building to hold up in and finally get some real rest.

As the sun began to sink from the sky, she made it to the edge of the town. She hadn’t bumped into any creatures on the way down and that was a good sign. She didn’t see any now either as she peered out from the trees into the parking lot of the gas station. It was the town’s most out lying building. It was damaged a bit on the outside but not ransacked from what she could tell from where she stood. It called out to her with the promise of food and other wonders. She stayed where she was at watching for any sign of trouble or movement for over forty minutes before she finally crept slowly out of the trees. The sound of her own footfalls on the lot’s pavement unnerved her. She glanced around everywhere making sure she was still alone. Amy approached the station’s glass doors and breathed a sigh of relief. Not only did there appear to be no one inside but its aisles hadn’t been trashed. They were several shattered windows and a few bullet holes in its outer walls but otherwise it was untouched. She started to open the door to step inside as she heard the click of a gun’s hammer being pulled back behind her.

“You can put your gun down now ma’am,” a heavily accented southern voice ordered her. She dropped the.45 to the pavement and turned around to see a very large gun pointed at her face. She guessed it might be a magnum like Dirty Harry used in the movies but wasn’t sure. The man who held it was young, much younger than her. He barely looked out of his teens. Thick blonde hair covered the top of his head in a disheveled mass. He wore a pair of filthy stained overalls over a white t-shirt which had seen better days. His appearance would have been comical if not for the way his deep blue eyes watched her with such dead seriousness.

“I reckon you ain’t one of them,” he said, “but you sure as heck ain’t from around here neither. Everybody here is dead or crazy. I ain’t seen any one else alive for a while now so just where did you come from? Who in the heck are you lady?”

“Amy. My name is Amy… I’m from New York,” she added hastily. The man laughed.

“New York? You’re a long way from home.” He lowered the huge pistol in his hand and then nodded as if to himself. “Welcome to Virginia, Amy. We’d best get inside. Most of them things are gone from ‘round here but there are still a few stragglers left I think. Best not to take chances ya know?”

He reached by her and opened the station’s glass door for her. She started to head inside again but he stopped her. “Don’t forget your gun,” he grinned pointing at the weapon she’d dropped. “You may need it.”

She retrieved the pistol and followed him inside. He led her to the back of the station and unlocked a massive metal door. He ushered her inside and closed it behind her.

“Place used to be a restaurant or something. When Pop and I bought the place, we turned the freezer into a backroom of sorts. We kept the door though. It’s solid steel. Nice place for an office if you get robbed or the world suddenly goes F-ing bananas.”

Amy didn’t laugh at his joke. She was busy eying the room. It was small with a singular desk, what appeared to be a makeshift bunk, and food and other supplies were stacked all around the room and in its corners.

“You’ve been living here… Since the wave I mean?” she asked in shock.

“Yeah. No place else to go.” He sat on the bunk and stared at her. “Guess we have a lot to talk about huh Amy?”

Hundreds of questions flooded Amy’s head but the first one she asked was “You said most of the creatures are gone from this town. Where did they go?”

“You mean the crazy people? Don’t know. A group of guys drove into to town and rounded them up only the guys weren’t normal either. The crazies didn’t attack them. It was pretty messed up. I hid and stayed out of their way. Didn’t see much. All I can tell you is that went south, altogether in one big group with the weird guys leading them.”

“What’s your name?” Amy suddenly blurted out as it sunk in that she was safe at least for the moment and in the company of another real, live human being.

“You can call me Joe. My real name’s Joseph Hunter but I prefer Joe,” he stood up from the bunk and moved to one of the boxes that littered the room producing a bottle of water and offered it to her. “I’m sorry, Amy. I bet you’re awfully hungry and tired from the look of you. Why don’t you help yourself to some food and get some sleep. I’ll keep watch outside. I have some things to tend to anyway. We can talk later, okay?”

Amy accepted the offered water and drank most of it in a single gulp. “Thank you, Joe,” she said as he left the room. He nodded and shut the huge door on his way out.

Amy ate a meal of Vienna sausages, Pringles, and cracker then stretched out on the bunk. A smile lingered on her lips even as she slept.

As the days passed, Joe told her the story of the town of Bloomington. Like everywhere else, it had been plunged into darkness and chaos the night the wave had struck the Earth. Joe told her about how he and his Pop made their way to the church that night with everyone else in the town that hadn’t instantly been driven insane by the strange light in the sky that night. The church hadn’t offered them any protection. The crazies outside attacked it time and time again whittling down it’s the number of its defenders and their stockpile of ammunition. He told her how the pastor ordered those inside who “changed” shot and about how finally he and his Pop got of the church while they still could and made it here to their place of business. As far as they knew, by that time, the entire town was crazy except for them. He and his Pop had took shelter here in this backroom listening to the sound of those outside who’d changed pounding on the metal of the door and howling for their blood. Eventually the crazies must have realized they couldn’t get inside and left the station. After that, there had been a few close calls, a few firefights with the mindless variety of things which couldn’t shoot back, and the problem of venturing into the town for things that weren’t kept on hand. But they managed, Joe informed her. When Amy asked where his Pop was now, Joe lowered his face into his hands and quietly told her that the things hadn’t killed his Pop, he’d done that himself. When his Pop had changed, he shot the old man with his own shotgun and buried him out behind the station. It was the hardest thing Joe ever did in his life and it troubled him still.

Joe imagined before he met Amy that he too would go insane himself, it was just a matter of time and if not from the wave’s effects then from just the pain of being alone. He’d been extremely happy to find Amy on his doorstep. He believed she saved his life by showing up when she did.

Amy was happy in this place too. In a matter of days, Joe had moved from sleeping on the floor to sharing the bunk with her at her request. They needed each other desperately to feel alive and for the hope, they found in each other’s eyes. Joe’s arms wrapped around her, after they made love at night, gave Amy a feeling of safety and allowed her to think that things would really be okay again someday.

What Joe had said about most of the creatures leaving the town had proved true as well. As long as they were careful, she and Joe could venture just about anywhere they wanted to go in the town for supplies or just to get outside. They never encountered more of the things than the two of them well armed couldn’t handle. Each other was all they needed to rebuild a little piece of the world they had lost to the wave.

The conversation with the Freedom had been brief before its orbit had taken it out of range but the survivors of Def Con had learned a lot during the brief communication. It wasn’t the real Freedom Station they were speaking to, at least not the one known to the public. The station identified itself as the Freedom II, a military oriented, prototype based on the original Freedom’s design that had still been under construction as the wave hit. Hank, the astronaut they spoke with, explained that the original Freedom had been destroyed by the wave and that only the Freedom II’s experimental shielding had kept it functioning enough to save his crew and allow them the time they needed to make repairs. Still only himself and one other member of the station’s eight-man crew were left alive though they were quickly running out of supplies and were down to one quarter power. Hank and Toni arranged a time to talk again when the station’s orbit brought it back into range and traded downloads of information on what they knew of the post-wave world.

Sheena was beside herself. Now she could finally get the data she needed first hand to see if the wave’s worst damage was over with. Nathanial, Geoff, Wade, and Troy were howling for a celebration. Only Ian seemed reserved.

“It’s a lie,” he informed the crowd gathered in the control room. “There is no Freedom II.” His words cut the air of excitement and joy like a knife.

“How could you know that?” Sheena demanded as Nathanial clinched his fists and almost started to charge Ian at the sound of the cruel words the C.I.A. man had spoken.

“Lies and cover-ups used to be how I made a living on a day to day basis my dear or have you forgotten? I know more truth about what America has and hasn’t done in the last five years than all of you put together. Trust me. There is no Freedom II nor will there ever be.”

“You’ll have to excuse me Ian if I don’t take the word of a self-professed liar over what my own ears just heard,” Geoff remarked.

“I’m inclined to agree with Geoff,” Nathanial raged, “If Hank isn’t on the Freedom II, where is he? Who is he? It just doesn’t make sense for it not to be true, Ian.”

Ian sighed as if confronting a group of schoolchildren. “He’s one of them, the infected.”

“Oh, now that’s just bullshit!” Troy roared, “Those creatures up there can’t tell their asses from a hole in the ground. Have you ever seen one, just one of them, try to climb the fence? They could you know if they could think to do it.”

“Before we lost D.C., I received a packet of downloaded data on the infected from a doctor named Buchanan. Perhaps you have heard of him. He was the chief science advisor to the president. His reports in the packet disputed his earlier conclusions about the radiation and its effects. Yes, it turns some people into monsters, the majority actually, while some like us for whatever reason or reasons remain sane. Buchanan believed the possibility of a third group to emerge, a thinking, reasoning breed of those snarling killers up there,” Ian pointed at the ceiling.

“Fuck off, Ian,” Wade warned him. Ian ignored the mechanic and added, “You’re all blinded by what you want to have heard just now, not what you actually did. Hope can be a powerful weapon if wielded correctly.”

“Get out of here, Ian. Go back to your damn coffin in the armory!” Sheena ordered.

“Just promise me one thing,” Ian said as he walked towards the control room’s exit. “Do not give them our location until you’ve had more time to study the transmission and its origins.”

“You’re too late on that one Ian,” Toni called after him. “I already did.”

Ian kept walking without acknowledging what Toni had said. He disappeared around the corner of the corridor.

“What if he’s right?” Jeremy said and suddenly felt everyone’s eyes on him. “I mean it. He’s damn weird, I’ll give you that but he was C.I.A. Toni, can’t we trace the source of the transmission? Find out where it came from?”

“Yeah,” she answered quietly, “We can but it’ll take a lot of work.”

“It would go a lot faster if we had your help Nathanial,” Jeremy glanced at the computer tech. Nathanial shrugged. “Sure. Okay.”

“In the meantime, I think all the rest of us have stuff to be working on, right?” Geoff suggested. “Dr. Leigh why don’t you continue your study of the wave, the rest of you, suit up. We’re going up top. There are about forty more of those things at the fence again and I for one want them gone.”

Troy shielded his eyes as he stepped out of the shed onto the main grounds of the base. The cacophony of the maddened creatures washed over him like a tide. “Jeez, Geoff, where the hell did you learn how to count?”

Geoff stepped out behind him and followed Troy’s gaze. There weren’t forty creatures outside the fence. They numbered closer to a hundred or more. The heavy reinforced poles that held the fence in place swayed under the force of their struggle to get inside.

“Got some gas no one seems to be usin’ over in the garage,” Wade offered.

Within minutes, Wade had a jury-rigged hose set up running from the large fuel tanks inside the garage. Troy and Geoff helped him drag it out and cut it on.

“Wee-freakin’-Hah!” Troy bellowed as he held the hose’s nozzle, spraying down the rows of packed creatures and the fence alike. “Anybody got a match?”

Wade shook his head holding a silver Zippo in his hand. He looked at it sadly. “This was my favorite lighter,” he said then flicked it lit, tossing it at the fence. Howls and screams rose up as a wave of blue flame burst into existence and swept through the ranks of the infected. Geoff had shut off the hose and the three of them stood in silence. Black smoke drifted upwards into the heavens and it was all Troy could do not to vomit from the overwhelming odor of burning flesh.

“I don’t believe it,” Nathanial slumped over his computer screen. “What the hell does it mean?”

He and Toni had been able to trace the source of the Freedom II’s message. It hadn’t come from orbit at all but rather somewhere in South Carolina only a few hundred miles away from the complex.

“It means Ian was right.” Jeremy heard Toni sobbing. “Oh God,” she cried, “I am so sorry.”

Jeremy took her in his arms. “Someone out there whether it’s those creatures or not knows we’re here now. They know we’re alive and sane. Worse, they know how many of us there are.”

Toni nestled her face deeper into his shoulder and wept openly. Strings of tears and spit wet Jeremy’s shirt under her.

“What do we do now?” Nathanial asked.

“We get ready,” Jeremy gritted his teeth. “We get ready for whoever or whatever’s coming.”

Jeremy saw Toni to her quarters and got her settled, urging her to get some rest and calm down. Then it was time, he decided, to pay a visit to Ian’s “coffin”. **** The doors of the lift opened onto the armory level. Jeremy had never been to this part of the base before and was taken aback by the condition of the hallway. Unlike the rest of Def Con, this part of the complex hadn’t been repaired since the battle fought here in the days after the wave. The lighting was poor as many of the lights were shot out or flickered badly casting eerie strobes along the metal walls. The walls themselves were scarred by some kind of explosion as if someone had set off a grenade in the passageway. Spent shell casings littered the floor as Jeremy made his way to the end of the hall. The entrance to the armory was open. Ian emerged from an unnoticed side corridor behind Jeremy.

“How the mighty have fallen,” Ian said causing Jeremy to whirl around at the sound of his voice. “Calm down, young man. I’ not some monster come to end your life.”

“Ian you were right about the Freedom II.”

“I know,” Ian walked past Jeremy into the armory proper. “Would you care for some music? I find Wagner particularly relaxing in times like these.”

“Ian, how did you know so quickly about the Freedom I mean?”

The former C.I.A. agent took a seat in a set up folding chair between the racks weapons that lined the walls of the vault like room. “Their shielding,” Ian picked up a cold cup of tea sitting beside the chair and sipped at it. “There was a project like what they described but it never got off the ground. The energy expenditure to generate the kind of field they mentioned was impossible. The project was scarped because of it.”

Jeremy took a seat on the floor in front of Ian. “Why do you stay down here so much?”

Ian laughed. “I’m not immune to the radiation like the rest of you seem to be, Jeremy.”

Jeremy’s mouth dropped open.

“This is the most shielded part of the complex. I choose to stay here because I value my life. Even so, I am finding it harder each day to resist the urges rising inside of me. Very soon I think you may find yourself in a position where my disposal will become vital to your own survival.” Ian noticed Jeremy shift uncomfortably. “I assure you, you will have to do it. None of the others, not even our good doctor, even suspect that I am not well.”

Ian paused and sat down his tea. “I don’t have any magical answers about who the people claiming to be onboard the Freedom II might be. I’m not God, Jeremy. But whether they are looters, survivors like us, or reasoning versions of the creatures outside, they will be coming. Will they bring death or hope? I don’t know. Personally, I believe hope died the second the wave touched our world.”

“Will you help us get ready for them?” Jeremy asked.

“There’s nothing I can do Jeremy. I’m certainly not about to go up top again and I don’t think can really ask that of me. Geoff is the military expert. He can handle it.”

“And that’s it? That’s all you have to offer?” Jeremy shook his head. “Don’t you care about anyone?”

“Yes,” Ian answered, “I care about me and either way, I am dying.”

Ian dismissed Jeremy with a curt “Good day” and picked up a book he had been reading opening a chapter marked with piece of ribbon. Jeremy didn’t argue. He got to his feet and went in search of Geoff. Something had to be done and it looked like it was up to them to do it. His life and the world he knew had been taken from him once; he wasn’t going to give up this place too without a fight.

“It can’t be done,” Geoff slurred dropping the empty jug to the garage’s floor. “This base was never designed to be a defensible position out here. It’s a damn bomb shelter kid, a really high tech one, but still just a shelter.”

Jeremy grabbed Geoff by the front his uniform and tried to yank him to his feet. As drunk as Geoff was he still easily shifted Jeremy’s arm folding it painfully behind the younger man’s back as he stood up. “Kid, it’s all open space and fields up here. The fence is the only real obstacle to anyone who wants onto the grounds. If these things show up with the wielding torches to burn through the outer seal in the shed once they’re inside the perimeter then maybe they deserve to have us for dinner.” Geoff released his hold on Jeremy and staggered out into the sunlight. “Jesus, kid, I just roasted a mob of people alive to save your ass. What more do you want from me?”

“Where are Troy and Wade? Maybe they’ll listen to reason.”

“Reason!” Geoff spun around to face Jeremy. “There ain’t no reason left anymore kid. Just death, death and the dying.”

Jeremy drew the.45 from the holster on his belt and leveled it at Geoff. “Do you want to die so badly Geoff,” he shook the gun, “I can make it happen, right here, right now.”

Geoff’s eyes narrowed. “Okay,” he nodded, “We’ll play it your way, Jeremy. We might as well go out fighting.” Geoff stumbled over to him and threw an arm around Jeremy’s shoulders. “I just hope to God you or Wade can come up with a way to make a stand up here. I’m shit out of ideas.”

Outside the fence, three new infected knelt, gnawing on the charred remains of their less fortunate brethren.

Nathanial Richards was not a man given to worry. Born to the C.E.O. of one of America’s leading pharmaceutical corporations and mother who’s life revolved around him due to the often absence of his father from their home, he considered himself blessed. Nathanial never wanted for anything. Even in college, when the police raided his dorm room finding his stash of narcotics his father swept in and made it all go away. What was a petty possession charge to a man who carried bought and paid for senators in his pocket? He owed his parents for all that he was never doubting for a moment that they would be there to save him. Like most of the rest of the world, he knew they were dead now. Political power and money meant nothing these days. They were things of the past. The only true friends outside his family Nathanial had ever known were computers. From the time his fingers could type, they were a part of him and his life. They gave him his own power and feeling of control but the wave had taken even them from him. Oh sure, there were computers all over Def Con but the web and cyberspace no longer existed. He’d lost everything. Nathanial was alone and death was coming for him. The transmission from the Freedom II fired his hopes of the old world returning only to crush them flat. He knew deep in his heart whoever was passing, as the Freedom’s crew was evil incarnate and he wasn’t going to let them take his soul too.

Nathanial sat alone in the control room. He looked at his watch. It was two hours until the next message from the Freedom was due. It was far more than enough time for what he had in mind. His fingers danced over the keys of his computer and the complex was his. Weeks ago, he had been forced to disable the base’s self-destruct system to save his own life and all those trapped with him. The codes were easy to break for someone like him then and easier to manipulate now. Def Con itself would be his shield when the darkness came, a shield of fire and retribution.

Wade finished covering over the last mine yet another one of the infected emerged from the trees. He didn’t waste the time or the ammo to dispose of it. Instead, he broke into a run for the gates. As he passed through, Troy and Jeremy slammed them shut behind him. The infected threw itself against the barbed wire, clawing at the fence with pink foam bubbling from its wailing mouth and rage in its eyes.

“That does it,” Wade collapsed to the earth out of breath. “We’re as ready as we’re going to be.”

Troy, Jeremy, and himself had spent the last few hours littering the area outside of the fence and closest part of the gravel road which led up to it with mines and barricading up the doors of the garage as Geoff drank cup after of cup of black coffee trying to sober up and watching on as their advisor. “As long as those things out there don’t trip all the mines before our company shows, we should at least have a chance,” Geoff agreed.

“Don’t worry,” Troy said patting the.30-.06 he carried with a sniper scope mounted on it, “My friend here and I won’t let them.”

“Guess all we can do is wait,” Jeremy commented as Troy left the group and began to climb to his position on top of the garage. “It’s almost time for the Freedom II to make contact again.”

“You go on and be there with the rest of them when it happens,” Geoff urged, “Us three pretty much got things covered up here.”

Jeremy nodded and headed for the shed and the outer seal that led into the complex. **** Toni was the first to join Nathanial in the control room. He looked haggard and as if he’d never left his station since the Freedom’s transmission. Jeremy and Sheena came in minutes later. No one asked where Ian was and Jeremy was thankful for it. He still hadn’t decided what to do about the former C.I.A. agent and didn’t see any reason at this point to add the worry of his condition to the rest of the Def Con staff’s collective woes. “Everything ready?” he asked.

“We’re set up to trace them the second they make contact,” Nathanial assured him. They all watched the communications console as the figures on the digital time display flashed and change to the appointed hour.

“Come in Def Con. This is Freedom II. Do you copy us? Over.”

“Go!” Jeremy shouted at Nathanial and the computer engineer began the trace. Toni hesitantly opened a response channel. “This is Def Con. We copy you Freedom II.”

Seconds ticked by in silence. No reply came. Nathanial indicated he’d managed to get a fix on the transmissions origins. All the color had bled from his face as he said, “The transmission is coming from a point just two miles south of here and closing slowly… “Sweet Jesus,” he muttered. “They really are coming for us.”

Troy saw the convoy first from his spot atop the garage. A mixed line of pick-ups, four wheel drives, and jeeps bounced their way up the winding gravel growing ever closer. Troy counted thirteen vehicles in all and numerous men and women on foot jogged along at their sides. The thing that bothered him though was the lack of interest by the infected. He knew for a fact that were packs of the creatures still out there in the woods but for whatever reason, they were not attacking the convoy. It could only mean one of two things. Either these people knew a way to control or ward off the creatures or they themselves were so poisoned by the radiation in the atmosphere that the infected didn’t recognize them as human.

Troy signed what he saw to Geoff and Wade who were concealed in the remaining bushes just inside the fence then said a prayer for them all as he checked the chamber of his rifle to make sure it was ready.

“Come in, Freedom II. Come in.” Toni called again over the open frequency.

“Give it up,” Nathanial suggested. “They got what they wanted, a definitive fix on our exact position. They’re done talking now.”

Toni’s shoulders sagged with defeat. Her fears were confirmed, in that moment, and she knew she was the one who had called down this new terror upon them. She turned to look for Jeremy but he was already gone from the control room.

It was one of the joggers rather than the vehicles who stumbled onto the most out laying mine. The noise of the explosion and the rain of pulpy and charred flesh, which followed, brought the convoy to a halt. People began to pour out of the vehicles and leave them behind. Troy swore under his breath. Whoever was leading the mob knew what they were doing. The working trucks were likely too valuable to chance losing and by approaching the base on foot it would cut down the damage the mines could do the mob before they reached the complex. The.30-.06 propped against his shoulder had a good range. He sighted one of the joggers and took aim as the moving mass of attackers began to pick up their pace. Troy put a round through his target’s throat just as the mob reached the main section of the minefield. Explosion after explosion tossed dirt and body parts into the air but the people just kept coming, pressing forward, without even pausing to tend to their wounded.

Wade took a deep breath and made his peace with God. The fastest of the joggers were already at the fence. He saw one of them toss something at the barbed wire and then his world went white.

Troy watched in horror as a large section of the fence blew apart near where Wade had been hiding. The attackers flowed through like ants. He fired off a last shot with rifle dropping another of their number then tossed the weapon aside, trying to scurry down from the garage’s roof.

Geoff remained hidden the whole time. He waited in the bushes as the attackers ran passed his position on both sides. They moved like men but they weren’t really human anymore. Their battles cries were more the snarls of madden dogs and their skin was tinted yellow with sickness. He caught a glimpse of one’s eyes. There were no whites left in them just a sickeningly red, bloodshot mass. Finally, Geoff made his move. He stood up spraying the backs of the fifteen or so that had made it by him with his AK-47 on full auto. They crumpled like weeds before a scythe. A rifle cracked and bullet ripped through the back of Geoff’s shoulder. He whirled around and met the mob head on in a charge his rifle blazing and spitting emptied shell casings. He made it a few steps before his bullet ridden corpse toppled to the ground rolling from its momentum.

Troy met Jeremy as the young man was opening the seal to come outside and shoved him back below it. “Lock it!” Troy yelled.

“But Geoff…”

“He’s dead. Wade too.” Troy pushed him aside and typed the code himself. No sooner had the seal shut than something thumped hard against its top. A gun chattered and bullets pinged off the seal’s metal. Both Jeremy and Troy ducked instinctively despite the foolishness of the gesture. “Shit,” Troy grabbed Jeremy and tugged him along after him. “If they’ve got the gear with them to cut through, between the outer seal and the inner lock, we’ve got an hour, maybe two tops.”

“How many are up there?” Jeremy asked. The look on Troy’s face told him all he needed to know.

Deep in the bowels of Def Con, Ian threw down the book he was reading and screamed. Spit flew from his open mouth as his head shook uncontrollably in a kind of spasm. He leapt up from his chair and ran at the armory’s door. His shoe snagged a nearly invisible trip wire he’d sat in place the day before and the armory’s lights turned red as its huge door slammed shut in front of him. The thing that was once Ian pounded its fists against it until the bones of its hands were shattered and it started to use its head instead.

Troy and Jeremy burst into the control room nearly scaring Toni to death. “What the Hell?” Nathanial bellowed.

“They’re cutting through the outer seal. The others are dead,” Jeremy panted, out of breath.

“Nat, are any of the exterior cameras still working?” Troy demanded as he closed on the engineer.

“A few… not the one in the shed.”

“Bring ‘em on-line. I have a bad feeling our friends up there aren’t just going to be sitting on their asses in the time it takes them to cut their way in here.”

“Okay, I’ve got two cameras reporting operational. Both of them are a good bit away from the gates though.”

“Put the closest onscreen.”

The huge wall display flashed to life. An image of a small group of the attackers who appeared to be reloading their weapons filled the screen. Other attackers in the background behind them stood watching something beyond the camera’s field of vision.

“Can you pan around and see what those others are so interested in?”

“I can try,” Nathanial worked at his keyboard. The image flickered and bounced as the camera slowly turned. Three of the attackers stood outside the fence in the middle of a pack of infected. The creatures appeared docile, cowering around them like pets before their masters.

Troy rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t believe it. Damn those fuckers are smart.”

“Huh?” Nathanial inquired. “I don’t get it.”

“They’re rounding up the infected in the woods. When they cut through the seal, they’re not just going to rush in here. There’s no sense in them risking their lives. They’ll let the mindless ones in first hoping they’ll either overrun us or at least weaken our defenses.”

“Aren’t they all infected?” Toni asked.

Nathanial answered before Troy had a chance to. “Yes but they’re not the same. These new ones aren’t at all like the ones we’ve had to deal with in the past. They’re much more advanced obviously seem to be evolving back into something much closer to what we are, just not as nice and certainly not above using their lesser brethren as weapons or cannon fodder, whatever you want to call it.”

“Somebody should get Ian. We’re going to need all the help we can get,” Sheena said.

“No,” Jeremy warned, “Ian’s fine where he’s at.”

“We should at least warn him,” Toni added.

“Ian’s fine,” Jeremy moved to take hold of Toni, “Trust me. He’s where he wants to be.”

“Jeremy,” Troy motioned him over to a table in the control room. Troy ripped a map off the wall and spread it across the tabletop. “You don’t have to die here. None of us do. There’s a back way out.”

“That’s impossible!” Sheena snapped, “If there was another entrance I would know about it.”

Troy ignored her and continued. “There’s a tunnel inside the ventilation system here,” he pointed at a spot on the map, “Wade found it a few days ago. It’s sealed up with an iron grate but I think you can get through it. It opens into the back of the garage.”

“The garage?” Those things are all over the place up there,” Nathanial pointed out.

“They’re spread out pretty good though and most of them will probably follow the normal infected in here once they get through the inner door. If you wait until they get into the base, by the time you get up there you’ll at least have a chance.”

“What’s with all the “you” stuff?”

“Jeremy, someone has to stay here to slow them down and make them work for every inch of the base they take. That’s me. I’m the only real soldier left.”

“Troy…” Jeremy started but Nathanial interrupted him. “I’m staying too. So is Sheena. I’m not running Jeremy and Sheena can’t. She’d just slow you down and get you killed.” Sheena nodded her agreement. “You and Toni go on,” She ordered. “Make sure you take the time to gather up the things you’ll need to survive up there if you get past those things.”

“No,” Toni cried squatting beside Sheena’s chair to embrace her.

Sheena didn’t return the hug. “Go on, Toni, you’ve only got one chance at this and time’s running out.”

Jeremy pulled Toni to her feet and looked back at Troy. There was so much he wanted to say but the words wouldn’t come. Troy smiled and shot him a mock salute. Jeremy laughed in spite of the tears burning in his eyes and led Toni out to gather up what they would need.

The outer seal clanged as it dropped inside the corridor below and minutes later a well-placed charge blew the inner door off its hinges. The mindless ones came in its wake. They flooded down the passage way and into the base. Troy waited for them in the only unblocked passage to the control room. A man dressed in the tattered rags of what once had been a tuxedo came tearing around the corner, pink saliva flying from his mouth as he saw Troy and howled madly. Troy raised the automatic shotgun in his hands and fired cutting the man in two at the waist. A woman in a blood stained jogging suit was next and Troy splattered her brains onto the corridor’s walls. When the shotgun clicked empty he snatched up his M-16 and retreated towards the control room firing into the increasing tide of infected on full auto as he went.

Nathanial and Sheena listened to the battle being waged in the hallway. Sheena struggled clumsily to ready the handgun Troy had given her.

“You’re not going to need that,” Nathanial told her as the gunfire on the other side of the door fell quiet and turned into the sound of Troy screaming. Sheena looked up at Nathanial and understood. Finally, the door burst open and a woman with matted gray hair and an open bleeding hole in her left cheek led the creatures inside. Nathanial stabbed at his keyboard one final time.

Jeremy kicked the grate loose and leapt down into the garage as it thudded to the floor. A quick glance told him none of the infected of either kind was nearby. He turned and helped Toni climb out of the vent. There were only a couple of vehicles left. Only one that he knew for sure still ran. He tossed his pack into the jeep. “Get in,” he told Toni, “and hold on.” Apparently, one of the thinking infected had heard the noise coming from inside the garage and was now opening the large doorway to check it out. Jeremy ran him down as the jeep’s wheels screamed and it tore out into the dying rays of the setting sun.

The few of the base’s attackers who’d stayed up top were caught completely off guard. Jeremy plowed through them taking advantage of their confusion. He spun the jeep’s steering wheel making a sharp turn and headed out into the gardens towards the complex’s rear fence. He was already deep in the fields when the first shots began to ping off the tail of the jeep. He reached over and shoved Toni down in her seat. “Hold on!” he yelled again as the jeep streaked towards the fence. He ducked under the dashboard himself as best he could, leaning over in his seat, at the last second. The jeep tore through the barbed wire dragging a section of the fence with it as it made it clear. The jeep’s tire blew out but the jeep continued roaring forward until it crashed headlong into a tree outside the complex. Jeremy rolled out of the driver’s seat. His back felt like it was ripped to shreds and blood leaked from between large gashes the barbed wire had cut in his t-shirt. He looked over his shoulder to see the attackers giving chase. “Toni, are you alright? We have to move!” he called as realized she was no longer in the jeep. The barbed wire had caught her and yanked her from the jeep while it was still in motion. Her mangled corpse lay several yards back tangled hopelessly in the fencing the jeep had carried with it on its way through. Her flesh was a mess of red tissue and Jeremy knew she was dead from a single glance at her. He grabbed up his pack from the rear of the jeep and slung it onto his shoulder as the attackers opened fire again. Suddenly the Earth itself heaved under his feet and threw him into the woods as fire blossomed in a giant cloud from where Def Con had laid below it.

Epilogue When Jeremy came to night had fallen in earnest and the setting sun had vanished from the sky. There was no sign of the mob or any of the infected other than a scattered corpse here and there. Slowly dying flames could be seen inside the reminder of the fence around the Def Con complex. Jeremy coughed and spat blood onto the grass beside him. He looked up at the full moon. A visible shadow stretched across its surface, dampening its glow. Jeremy wasn’t a physicist but he knew something wasn’t right about it. His mind groped for an explanation of the strange shadow until he remembered an old episode of the Outer Limits he’d seen and recalled Sheena’s warnings about the fragments of the wave. He knew one of them must have made contact with the sun causing it to go nova millions if not billions of years early as the piece of the wave disrupted its continually fusion reactions. The side of the Earth facing the sun must be gone now, a blazing inferno of death, and even as he sat here watching the moon a tide of fire was creeping its way towards him as the Earth turned. He had only hours left to live but he knew his death would be quick and he took comfort in that fact. He removed bottled water from his pack and twisted off its lid. The night was so beautiful and since there was no where to run, he decided to make the most of it.

Amy and Joe sat on the station’s roof. The roof was a safe place to be outside at night without really having to worry about the creatures. Joe spread out the picnic blanket as Amy got the food ready. Joe’s cooked up some rabbit meat during the day and Amy, though still learning, had made something close to being fresh baked bread. Joe sat on the blanket and popped open a bottle of wine. He smiled, filling a glass for Amy, and passed it to her. She took the wine and sat it down beside her. She couldn’t drink it but pretended to be thankful for Joe’s sake. He sipped at his wine, as she looked him over. She was nervous about telling him. She had mixed feelings on the matter herself. Part of her was thrilled and overjoyed while her rational mind questioned bringing a child into the nightmare the world had become. She had to tell him though. It wasn’t as if she was going to be able to hide it from him for much longer and he deserved to know. Amy figured she was never going to get a chance to do it more perfectly than tonight. She reached for his hand. He was glancing up at the stars. The sky was odd this evening, the stars different somehow. Amy placed a palm on his cheek and gently turned his face towards her own. She looked deep into his eyes. “Joe, I have something to tell you…”

THE END

II - The Queen

Introduction

I grant that some of you already know what to expect from an Eric S. Brown story. It is, after all, the reason you purchased this book. For lucky newcomers, The Queen is a fine introduction to this author’s work and the beginning of a pulse-grinding addiction to Eric S. Brown’s shadowy and fertile imagination.

From the start, I will tell you, I hate zombies. They terrify me. It is the stuff of nightmares, the oldest and most heinous of nightmares, to encounter a trusted loved one: friend, wife, husband child or mere stranger, only to find that person gone, vacated from the human body and what has moved in is unspeakably evil, intent on passing on the disease so that you are the next to fall under the puppeteer’s dance.

I believe the idea of zombies especially frightening when our world harbors its own forms of zombiism. Alzheimer’s Disease, Senility, Insomnia and Insanity are just a few inflictions that rob is of who we are. The zombie is a metaphor for all that we fear to lose of ourselves whether it be memories or free-will. While reading a well-written zombie tale, we cringe, holding one eye closed while we squint at the text with the other, unable to fully look away from what mesmerizes us as it freezes our blood.

One can hardly explore the idea without shuddering with dread. The danger of losing some portion of ourselves is real. Everyday we fight to retain who we are, ethically, morally, physically and mentally, so that within our literature the emotional envelope must be pushed to the limit of what we can bear. And like the masters of the craft, Eric S. Brown goes beyond the simple probe; he dissects and studies and, like a modern day Dr. Frankenstein, brings it to life.

That is what makes the zombie story so frightfully authentic. Some authors just make it more authentic than others. The evidence is in your hands.

Enjoy.

-Susanne S. Brydenbaugh

October 2005

1

The air stank of filth and human waste. The summer heat heightened the smell but Scott had long grown accustomed to the stench. Sweat glistened on his sun burnt, bare chest and shoulders. He reached up running his fingers through his short brown hair. They came away wet and covered in grime. He couldn’t remember for the life of him when he’d last been allowed to bathe. There was a large tube of water in the center of the pen where the prisoners were kept. Scott eyed it not yet so thirsty that he was willing to expose himself to the germs and bacteria it contained.

Eleven other men shared the small fenced in pen with him. Most of them sat around lost in their own thoughts like he was. Buck and Hank played cards with a tattered deck they’d been able to bribe the guards for. Hank had traded a section of the flesh from his left thigh in order to get it. The bandage he wore was yellowed and Scott guessed that soon Hank would succumb to infection from the wound and die. Scott had seen a lot of men die over the three weeks he’d been trapped here. The guards didn’t seem to care, as long as they had one or two healthy males it would be enough for their purposes.

The women that had been taken alive were treated much better than the men. Scott had never been inside their actual quarters but he knew that it was inside the compound of the breeding center and out of the sun. It had plumbing, and was kept clean and free of disease. Unlike the pig slop the men were fed, the women also were given real food. It all made sense in a sick kind of way. The men were disposable in a fashion where as the dead guards needed the women to make babies. Each woman could give birth to numerous more “cattle” for the pens and the dead’s food supply where as you only needed one man to knock them all up.

Of all the men in the pen with Scott only David stood at the fence, peering through it at the hills beyond the compound. He was a newcomer to the breeding center and still hoped that someone would come to rescue them. He dreamed of escape. It was a dangerous thing. There was no way out other than death, Scott knew, it was just a question of how one died and ended up on the other side of the fence.

If someone died in the pen while the guards weren’t around, Scott and the other prisoners made damn sure they didn’t get back up even if it meant repeatedly bashing the corpse’s head with a stone until they were covered in blood. The newly risen dead weren’t always as evolved as the guards and often went on a feeding frenzy among the men. Stopping that from happening was worth the lashing the person who did it received. All the men took turns so that no one person was overly punished or outright put to death for the deed. It was Scott’s turn now and he figured it would be Hank’s skull he was bashing open when the time came.

The guards mostly stayed inside the compound proper. Whatever force had raised them from the dead also greatly reduced their rate of decay but not to the point where it stopped it. Being outside in the ninety-degree plus heat of the summer was unhealthy for them in the long run. Scott watched as “Hole in his neck” peeked out the compound door for the hourly check of the pen. The dead man had gotten his name from the way his throat was torn open and his rotting windpipe dangled out of it. “Hole in his neck” was one of the few guards who couldn’t still speak but he held a high rank among the dead and was easy enough to get along with along if you stayed out of his way and didn’t cause trouble in the pen. The dead man looked over the pen, his gaze lingering only for a moment on David who still stood at the fence obviously discontent with the way things were, then he popped back inside closing the door to the air-conditioned compound behind him.

Tired, Scott pushed himself to his feet, wiping his hands on what was left of the pair of tattered black jeans he wore, and headed over to where David stood. David didn’t notice his approach.

“You’ve got to stop doing this,” Scott warned.

David jumped at the sound of his voice. His bloodshot eyes stared at Scott in shock. “Doing what?”

“Hoping,” Scott answered with a single word. Then he added, “If you don’t, they’ll likely have you for dinner soon. It makes them nervous when one of us shows any bit of spirit left. Just be thankful you’re not one of them already and get over it.”

David started to respond but Scott had already turned his back to the newcomer to the pen and was headed towards his spot to sit for a while longer and wait on the cool of the night.

2

The dead were getting closer. Riley ducked farther down in the brush on the hill above the gravel road below. Two jeeps, flanked by a number of creatures on foot, crept their way up the mountainside. The whole scene was very troubling to Riley. Just how desperate were the dead getting for food if they were sending hunting parties this far out and did it mean that all the cities had fallen at last? The hunting party seemed to be sticking to the road so far and he doubted that they would stray into the woods as yet but his cabin was only a few miles north of the road. Their presence here put him on edge. He counted eight of the things altogether counting the drivers, all heavily armed. There were simply too many of them for him to face alone and even if he somehow miraculously took them all out more would come in search of their brethren. They would surely find his place then and likely in even greater numbers. Riley kept still and waited on them to pass by. When they were well out of earshot, he began to make his way quietly back the way he’d come.

Little Brandon was playing in the tall grass of the cabin’s lawn as Riley reached home and emerged from the trees. Brandon’s face lit up at the sight of his father. He dropped the stick he’d been hacking at the wild flowers with and ran towards Riley with his tiny arms open. Despite his worries, Riley couldn’t help but smile as he swept Brandon up from the ground, clutching him tight to his chest.

“Where’s Mom?” Riley asked cutting off his son’s litany of questions about his scouting trip. Crestfallen, Brandon motioned towards the cabin while keeping one arm propped on his father’s wide shoulders. “She’s getting ready to cook dinner.”

Riley frowned and placed Brandon back on the ground doubling his pace for the cabin. The last thing they needed was a cloud of black smoke pouring out of the cabin’s chimney today. The dead were too close by and might notice it.

Brandon followed as Riley walked up onto the porch and stuck his head inside the kitchen through the cabin’s open front door. “Hi honey, I’m home,” he called out trying not to let his concerns show in front of Brandon. Hannah looked up from the vegetables she was chopping to greet Riley with a smile that died on her lips as she saw the fear in his eyes. “It’s time isn’t it?” she asked.

Riley nodded. “We both knew this day would come sooner or later.”

“How long do we have?” She said moving to Brandon’s hand in her own.

“I don’t know. An hour, a week, there’s just no way to know. They may never find this place but they’re close enough now for us to be better safe than sorry.”

Hannah leaned down and kissed her child on his forehead. “Brandon, honey, would you please go play in your room for a few minutes? Mommy and Daddy need to talk, okay?”

As Brandon marched off deeper into the cabin, Hannah got back to her feet and turned to face Riley. “Where are we going to go?”

Riley shrugged his shoulders. He had no idea.

3

It had been a tough decision but ultimately Riley had chosen not to take the truck. It was in great shape, perfect for off road travel, and there was enough fuel stored for it to fill up its tank twice out on the road. The problem with the truck was not the vehicle itself or its ability to function but rather the attention it would attract. The dead controlled the roads everywhere now and it was too risky to even use the truck out here in the isolated wilderness. It was better, Riley knew, to set out on foot. Their rate of travel would be slower and it would greatly lessen what they could carry with them but it would be far safer. On foot, they could stick to the trees, stay clear of the roads entirely, and they would be nowhere near as noticeable should they come across a group of the dead.

Hannah prepared them some rations and the family divided the load of food and water between themselves with even little Brandon carrying a canteen of his own. Riley also let Brandon carry a hunting knife though Hannah had protested it. The knife would be of no use against the dead as Brandon didn’t have the strength or the skill to drive it into someone’s skull but it made the boy feel safer and that was what mattered to Riley.

Hannah carried an old-fashioned .30-.06 rifle that once belonged to her father and a .38 revolver strapped to her hip. Riley, himself, wore two holstered .45 automatics, an M-16 he’d bought illegally before the world fell apart, and numerous spare clips for all three weapons in his backpack.

Leaving this place wasn’t easy for any of them. They’d been up here alone for the full three months which had passed since the dead first began to rise. In a lot of ways, it’d felt more like home than the house they’d lived in for years and left behind when they’d fled for the high country.

Riley watched a tear slide down Hannah’s cheek as she looked back at the cabin behind them as they made their way into the woods. It cut into his heart like a blade. They still had no idea of where they were headed. There was no logical place to head for so Riley and Hannah had merely decided to set out east for the coast and hope for the best. If nothing else, maybe Brandon could see the ocean once before the dead found them and they all died. Riley swore to himself the dead would never take his family alive even if he had to kill them himself.

4

It was feeding time in the pen. The sun had long sunk beneath the surrounding mountains. Two of the dead guards emerged from within the compound carrying a large bucket filled with slop that had the consistency of runny cream corn. With the help of a third guard, the bucket was emptied over the fence onto the ground of the pen. The human prisoners dove onto it like hunger-maddened animals, scraping it up from the dirt with their bare hands. Scott and David were not among the others fighting for their share of the evening meal. David remained at the pen’s far side staring at the roadway that led up into the breeding center. Scott sat Indian style on the ground with his arms across his legs; palms open facing up towards the star filled sky. His eyes were closed and his breathing slow and steady. Scott would find food later somehow, whether it was leftovers or by fighting with the flock at the morning meal. He doubted if David had any thoughts in his head about food and he didn’t care. Let the newcomer starve if he wanted to. There were worse ways to die.

All that mattered to Scott at the moment was finding a shred of peace. Meditation could take him away from this place and the horrors it contained. Earlier in the day, he’d told David to stop hoping. That it was a lost cause. But now he wondered, was he himself not doing the same thing by leaving the pen if only in his mind? He sighed and opened his eyes. The guards were already headed back inside the breeding center and the frenzy among the men for the slop was dying down. Scott slowly got to his feet ignoring the taunts of his fellow inmates that he’d missed the meal and made his way to David once more.

This time, David saw him coming. Anger blazed in the young, blonde man’s glance at Scott before he turned back to face the fence again. As Scott reached his side, David spoke, “How dare you tell me to stop hoping?” he whispered. “Hope is all that’s left to any of us now.

Scott accepted the stinging words as if he deserved them. Scott nodded towards the road leading out of the compound. “What exactly is out there that you want so badly? There’s no place left to go. The dead are everywhere. In here, we know we’re not going to cut open and chewed on.”

“What’s the point of being alive if you can’t live?” David shot back.

“Hank and Buck, those two rednecks over there, would argue with you that we are living. They get fed, have their friendship, and once every couple of days they get to have the orgy of their wet dreams with the ladies the dead have locked up inside.”

“But would you argue with me?” David pointed out.

“No,” Scott answered, “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Then what are we going to do about that?” David grinned.

Scott offered David his hand. “I’m Scott. Scott Burgess.”

David took the offered hand and shook it. “You can call me David.”

“I know,” Scott laughed, “Well, David, it looks as if we have a lot to talk about.”

5

Steven placed the half full bottle of whiskey atop his desk. It called to him as if reaching out for his very soul. All he wanted in the world was the feel its fiery embrace as the whiskey slid down his throat but he couldn’t bring himself to open the bottle. Too many people were depending on him. He hadn’t asked for this job but The Queen was his ship. She was all he ever loved in his life and when the time came he’d go down with her. He knew every inch of her like the back of his hand and yet she’d changed so much over the last months he barely recognized her. Once upon a time, she’d been a gleaming beauty of magnificent white hulls, a floating paradise, where dreams of love and adventure thrived. Now her hull was spotted with makeshift plates of armor and the scars of battle. Gun emplacements lined the length of main deck on all sides. Where once, she’d held hundreds of vacationers she contained a band of barely one hundred tired, frightened, and desperate refugees.

A knock sounded outside the open door of the captain’s quarters and Steven noticed O’Neil standing outside in the hallway. O’Neil shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry to disturb you sir,” he said in a strained voice, “but I have the completed inventory of our supplies that you asked for.”

In one fluid motion, Steven swept the bottle off the top of his desk and placed it back in its drawer where it belonged. He motioned for O’Neil to take a seat across the desk from him. “And how do things look? From the report, I mean?”

O’Neil slumped into the offered chair. “Not as bad as we thought. The last dock we raided gave us enough fuel for another two weeks or more.”

“And it only cost us the lives of six men,” Steven added bitterly.

O’Neil continued with the report, “Our ammunition stock piles for small arms are holding up remarkably well and Luke assures me that the new torpedo tubes he set up on the forward hull will work if we need them. Our only real pressing concern is food. Even with the reduced number of passengers and crew onboard, with a rationing system in place, we’ll be out again in less than a week. The priority of the last raid was fuel for The Queen so we didn’t have the time to stock up like we needed.”

“They came crawling out of the woodwork,” Steven chuckled.

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“The dead, Mr. O’Neil, regardless of where we put into port; they’re always there, waiting. We never have enough time.”

“Yes, sir,” O’Neil agreed, “I don’t like the thought of touching land again anytime soon.”

Silence lingered in the room for a moment before O’Neil finally prompted, “Well, sir, what are we going to do?”

“Pray,” Steven answered, “pray our little hearts out … And while we’re at it, being me a map of the area we’re in now. Going back ashore is really our only option isn’t it, since the damn fish are just as dead as the rest of the world. Besides, you know that even if they weren’t, we couldn’t catch enough to feed everyone onboard this ship. It’s just not possible with our limited equipment and resources.”

O’Neil left in search of a map leaving Steven alone in the darkness of the room just as he’d been before.

6

There were no stars in the sky. Thick, dark clouds let loose what seemed a never-ending shower of rain. Brandon slept peacefully under the small tarp Riley had set up for him. Hannah rested against a tree drenched to the bone. Her long red hair clung heavily to her neck and shoulders. Riley leaned over and put his arm around her. To him, she was beautiful no matter what the circumstances.

“How far do you think we made it today?” she whispered, trying not to wake Brandon.

“A pretty good distance despite the weather,” he assured her. “We’re safe here for the night I think.”

Hannah’s .30-.06 rested beside her, propped against the same tree. “Riley, do you think there’s anyone else left?”

“Sure, honey. Sure. There has to be. If we’ve made it this long, it just makes sense somebody else, somewhere, has too.”

“It’s not fair,” she muttered with a fresh wetness sliding down her cheeks. “Brandon doesn’t deserve this. He should be in school or playing video games. Think of all the things we took for granted Riley, things that Brandon will never know except from our stories. If there are other people out there, we have to find them for his sake and start over somehow.”

Riley listened to the rain as it bounced off the leaves of the trees around them. “Hannah,” he said softly, “I’m sorry.” “Sorry, Riley? It’s not your fault that the dead woke up or that we’re living through the end of the world. If it weren’t for you, Brandon and I would be dead. I’m grateful for the time had in the cabin. How many other people even had a chance like that? To pretend things were going to be okay? Those months were like heaven. It’s just … It’s just Brandon.” She wept. She nestled her face into Riley’s chest and sobbed hard against the muscles she found there. Riley’s arms encircled her. “I swear Hannah, if there is a place to start again, we’ll find it or die trying. We just have to hold it together for a while longer. Rain or no rain, we’ll start moving again in the morning.” Riley shut his eyes and thought only of his wife’s body pressed against his until the dawn.

The clouds broke as the sun rose. Riley checked over their weapons to make sure the dampness hadn’t damaged them as Hannah made a game of packing up and preparing to get on the move once more with Brandon. The three shared stale granola bars for a quick breakfast with water from their canteens then set out in the direction of the sun.

7

Scott didn’t like David’s plan. In fact, he loathed it, thinking it was insane. He had nothing better to offer in terms of ideas however so he went along with it. They’d carefully selected which guard to make their offer to and the chance to do it had arrived. The guards were out in full force today as it was time for the prisoners to be rounded up for a breeding session. “Hole in his neck” was in command flanked by six more of the dead. Each carried some type of automatic, military weapon should the prisoners get out of control. The gate to the pen was opened and the men led out of their fenced in area by his subordinates.

Scott having been a captive long for weeks knew how things worked. He gave “Hole in his neck” the sign that he wanted to make a trade. “Hole in his neck” studied Scott then motioned for his men to leave Scott behind for the two of them to talk. When the others were all outside of the pen, “Hole in his neck” stepped inside alone with Scott and waited for the human to make his offer. Scott could swear he saw the hunger burning in the dead man’s eyes.

“Screw it,” Scott mumbled, he hoped too quietly for “Hole in his neck” to hear. He cleared his throat and said, “David and I don’t want to go inside today.”

A look of utter confusion settled on “Hole in his neck’s” features. A human male who did not want to get laid was beyond his understanding.

Scott saw the look and misread it. “David’s the new guy. The one you just brought in.”

“Hole in his neck” signed the question “Why?” Clearly he thought Scott had lost his mind and was toying with the thought of dispatching the human then and there. He needed more help on the inside tending to the women’s needs anyway. A new dead body walking around would help with a lot of things with his duty roster.

Scott gritted his teeth steeling himself for what he was about to say. “Look. We’re gay okay. We just want to be by ourselves for an hour to breed in our own way. Just this one time,” he added hastily.

“Hole in his neck” smiled. A sick wet sound came from what was left of his windpipe as he tried to laugh. He shook his head “no” and grabbed Scott, shoving him towards the pen’s gate.

“Wait!” Scott urged. “You haven’t even heard what I’m offering in return.”

“Hole in his neck” paused. It was not permitted to feed on the prisoners unless they broke the rules or offered non-crucial pieces of their meat freely. Scott had been anything but a normal prisoner and Scott could see that “Hole in his neck” enjoyed the way he was begging for such an unnatural and shameful thing for a human male to ask for.

“You could send of your people with us, to make sure we don’t escape. I’m only asking for an hour.”

The dead man gestured asking what he would get in return and indicating that it’d better be worth such an affront to the rules.

“My legs,” Scott said firmly. “Both of them. All yours. I don’t need them to breed and if I die from you taking them, you can stick me out here so you’ll have a permanent watch dog over the others until I rot away to nothing from the heat.”

“Hole in his neck” held up his fingers saying two guards would go with them, not one. Then he added in hand speech that this would be the only time, one way or another.

Scott breathed a sigh of relief as the commander of the watch went to fetch David and the guards who would take them to the woods. Maybe, just maybe, this was going to work after all, Scott thought.

8

Bullets sparked and pinged off the asphalt as Riley ran for cover. He half fell, half rolled behind the carcass of an abandoned truck. The spray of bullets followed him thudding into the metal of the truck’s frame. Hannah and Brandon were nowhere to be seen. Riley had been cut off from them when the jeep full of dead soldiers appeared, catching him off guard. Riley cursed himself for leading his family here. No matter how safe it had seemed they should have kept to the trees, but the road itself was a mystery. There shouldn’t have been a road here at all, not this far out in the country, much less a real one littered with the ruins of cars and trucks which had apparently been left here since the first days of the dead plague. Riley didn’t have the faintest idea where it could lead to. The only things that should be up here were trees and dirt trails. He hadn’t felt like they’d had the time to follow the road and maybe cut around it somehow and he was paying the price for that choice.

He heard the crack of Hannah’s .30-.06 somewhere in the distance to his left. “Damn the woman!” he thought. If she and Brandon had reached the trees, they should’ve just kept going not stop and try to save him. Left with no alternative, he leaned around the end of the truck trying to see what was happening on the road. One of the dead stood several yards away, its attention and AK-47 now focused at the tree-line. Riley’s military training took over and seized the chance the moment provided. His M-16 opened up sending a stream of rounds into the dead thing’s chest which worked their way up its torso until with a wet popping sound the thing’s rotting head burst like a melon sending brain matter spewing onto the road below its feet from the unrelenting gunfire. Its body spun, headless, and dropped. Riley was on his feet running towards it seeking a better vantage point before the corpse hit the ground. There were just three of things that he’d seen and he figured he could handle them as long as he knew Hannah and Brandon were safe. But that was the problem wasn’t it?

Riley felt fire tear its way into his shoulder as he was knocked from his footing by the impact. His rifle went skidding away from him as he tumbled. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw the dead man who’d fired the shot. The thing had its rifle lowered and was charging towards his fallen form with some kind of blade attached to the end of the weapon. Riley didn’t move or make any attempt to dodge the attack. He waited to the final possible second and grabbed for the weapon as the thing tried to spear him with it.

Close combat with the dead was extremely dangerous. A bite, sometimes just a scratch from their nails, was enough to infect a person with the lethal virus or spirit or whatever it was that gave the dead life.

His move took the creature by surprise as he ripped the weapon from its hands and sent the creature sprawling onto the pavement beside him. It rolled at him, its hungry mouth open and hands clawing for his flesh. Riley was faster though. The thing never saw him draw the .45 automatic that blew it brains out the back of its head with a single shot.

“Hannah!” Riley screamed praying for an answer. Instead he heard the jeep the things had ridden in on roar to life. He turned to see it streaking away back the in the direction it had came with the last of the dead soldiers at its wheel. Otherwise, the road was silent. Blood strained the front of his shirt leaking from the wound on his shoulder but he didn’t feel it. He bolted, his legs pounding beneath him, to where he’d heard the shot from Hannah’s rifle moments before. He skidded to a halt as he reached the tree-line. Hannah was in the dirt kneeling over Brandon. Riley’s heart felt like it stopped beating inside of him as Hannah looked up at him with tears streaming down her cheeks and her hands wet with blood. A puddle of red was growing around Brandon’s fragile form where it lay. Spots appeared in Riley’s vision, which grew into darkness as Hannah watched him collapse.

9

Scott and David put on a show for the two guards accompanying them outside the breeding center. They held hands and acted eager to reach a place in the hills where they could be together intimately. The guards led them about a mile and a half from the compound proper before the group stopped and one of the dead men pulled out a stopwatch from its pocket. “This is as far as we’re going,” the guard informed them and started the watch. “You better get to it if you’re going to. The clock is ticking.”

“You’re going to watch us?” David said horrified. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Tough,” the other guard grunted. “Get to jerking each other or whatever so we can get back.”

“What’s the matter?” Scott laughed. “Are you horny too? Wanna join us?”

The guard blinked his single eyelid while the other laughed at his stunned comrade to whom the offer had been made. Scott sprang forward striking out with the flat of his palm. His blow drove the laughing guard’s nose bone up into its brain killing the creature instantly. The remaining guard swung up the barrel of his weapon at Scott to try to get a shot but David was there. He threw himself onto the guard and they went down in a mess tangled limbs as the guard’s rifle blazed away.

Scott instinctively ducked out of the path of the awkward gunfire snatching up the rifle of the guard he’d killed. He whirled to see David laying atop the guard the young man had tackled with his intestines scattered about everywhere. The burst from the thing’s weapon must have gutted David as the pair had fallen. Scott’s finger squeezed the trigger of his rifle and held it emptying the clip into David’s corpse and the guard. Scott tossed the rifle aside. Neither David nor the guard would be getting up again. He felt a pang of loss and guilt over David’s sacrifice but didn’t have the time to really think about it. The whole compound he knew must have heard the brief battle. Scott sprinted away from the scene into the trees without looking back.

10

O’Neil and Captain Steven studied the map spread out on the table before them. Steven stabbed at a point on the map with his finger. “We’ll put in here.”

“South Carolina?” O’Neil asked.

“Why not? This port here is out of the way in terms of the old commercial traffic routes and it’s close enough for us to reach it within two days.”

“It’ll still be guarded. If nothing else there’ll be those things all over the docks,” O’Neil commented. “I don’t like the idea of taking The Queen that close to land again.”

Steven smiled. “We’re not. Not this time. We’ll sail in just close enough for the lifeboats to make it ashore.”

O’Neil looked at the Captain completely baffled.

“Stealth, Mr. O’Neil. It’s something we haven’t tried before. If we go in at night instead of all guns blazing, The Queen herself may still face an attack but the dead may not notice our smaller boats until they’ve had time to do everything they need for once.” Steven saw the way O’Neil was glaring at him. “Yes, it’s more of a risk to the raiding party if they do notice them and it’ll mean less supplies brought back overall because we won’t be loading straight onto The Queen. But I’m willing to take the gamble in hopes that it will save us some lives. If it works, it’ll give the raiding party a better edge than they’ve ever had before and well, if The Queen does become engaged I think she can handle herself. We have before and will do so many more times before we’re done I’m sure.”

“Sir, I think you should know most of the crew and the people onboard still just want us to take some little island, put down some roots, and finally get off the waves.” O’Neil informed him.

Steven grinned. “No,” he ordered flatly, “Our mobility is what’s keeping us alive, Mr. O’Neil. Perhaps you should remind these people that if we lose it, we’ve lost the war.”

O’Neil changed the subject, avoiding an argument. “How many men will be needed for the lifeboats in this plan of yours?”

“I was thinking about sixteen, total. That should give them the firepower and the free hands they’ll need.”

“But who’s going to lead them?” O’Neil asked.

11

Scott hadn’t stopped moving for nearly twelve hours. His underfed and exhausted body was being pushed far beyond its limits. He nearly fell into a tree, grabbing hold of its bark to keep his balance. His head swam and he felt sick. He dropped to his knees vomiting onto the wet grass. So far, he’d seen no signs that his pursuers were catching up with him. When he’d first started running, it’d been like something out of a nightmare. Jeeps full of the dead had came roaring out of the breeding center complex. The first two hours of the chase had been the roughest, ducking in and out of the trees, zigzagging his path, and praying as he eluded both those chasing him and the normal patrols the dead kept posted in the area. He hadn’t seen or heard a jeep or dead man in the past seven hours though and he couldn’t force himself to go anymore at this point anyway. He needed rest desperately.

Scott wiped the vomit from his lips with the back of his hand and rolled over onto the ground, stretching out. The noise of a bullet being chambered inside a rifle snapped Scott out of his thoughts. A woman stood over him with the barrel of a .30-.06 aimed at his chest. She was covered in blood not her own. She appeared healthy and well fed but every inch just as tried as he felt. Long red hair was matted to her face and shoulders by sweat, blood, and dirt.

“Hello?” Scott greeted her weakly.

“Are you a doctor?” She asked in a voice filled with both brewing anger and a deep sadness.

Scott’s mind raced. What the hell was he supposed to say? “I know a little,” he answered quickly lying very still so that the woman didn’t feel threatened.

She took a step away from him and ordered, “On your feet. My husband and son are hurt. They need help.”

“Okay,” Scott pushed himself despite how much his whole body ached. The woman led him about two tenths of a mile to the east. Scott knew instantly something wasn’t right even before they entered her makeshift campsite. He could see a small form tied to a tree straining against the ropes knotted around its body and the body of a man lay stretched out nearby. Scott wondered if the woman had kidnapped the child that was tied up until he saw the massive gunshot wound on the child’s chest and began to realize just how much trouble he was in. Thank the lord the woman appeared to have had the sense to gag the child thing. Scott forced himself not to stare at it as it twisted itself under the ropes tearing its flesh as it tried to get free and turned his attention to the man. He knelt down beside him. The man was alive, just barely.

“Can you help them?” The woman pleaded, the barrel of her rifle still aimed at Scott.

He doubted very much he could fool the woman into letting her guard down. She was too on edge. “Why did you gag the boy?” He asked hoping to lead her mind back to the truth of the things in front of her.

Fresh tears rolled down the woman’s redden cheeks. It was clear there was no way she could rationalize doing it and continue to believe her son was alive. “He … He was just gibbering. Saying horrible things. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Was he really your son?”

“Yes,” she answered not bothering to correct the word “was”.

“And this is?” Scott asked placing a hand on the man’s arm.

“Riley. He’s my husband, Riley.”

“He’s going to die just like your son did,” Scott said bravely, staring down the madness in her eyes. “He’s lost too much blood. There’s nothing we can do for him out here.”

“Liar!” the woman howled, her finger tightening on the trigger as she shoved the barrel of her .30-.06 closer to Scott’s face.

“Whoa! Careful there!” Scott begged, his hands held high in the air. “I’m sorry lady. I just call them as I see them.”

The woman hesitated lowering the rifle’s barrel slightly. Scott made his move grabbing for the weapon. Too bad for him, Hannah was faster.

12

Hannah spun the rifle in her hands and smashed its butt into the man’s face as he snatched at it. He fell backwards, cursing and bleeding from his nose. The things he’d said had cut her like a razor. Something inside of her woke up and realized her son was dead and her husband was dying. She’d be damned if this filthy punk was going to take her dad’s rifle too. Snapped the rifle’s butt back up against her shoulder and braced it. The weapon barked as the shot smashed open the skull of the thing that had once been her son.

The man was eying her as if she were more dangerous than ever. He raised a hand cover in blood from his nose at her. “Please,” was the word he said.

“What’s your name?” Hannah asked.

“Scott,” he answered then added, “Ma’am, I don’t mean any disrespect but your husband just quit breathing. I don’t suppose you’d be kind enough to shoot him too?”

“Riley!” Hannah wailed and flung herself down beside Scott, throwing herself over Riley’s corpse. Watching her grief, Scott couldn’t bring himself to take her weapon though she’d cast it aside. Instead, he moved to save her live pulling her off her husband’s body before it could reanimate. Scott shoved Hannah aside as Riley’s eyes opened. Scott pulled a .45 from the corpse’s own holster and put an end to it. The shot seemed to echo in the air.

Hannah turned her face away from the gore, sobbing though she had no tears left to cry. Scott made no move comfort her as he popped the clip out of the handgun and took stock of the number of rounds left in the clip. When he was done he snapped the clip back inside the gun. He picked up a backpack that appeared to have belonged to the child and began to sort through it. Whoever this woman was, her family had obviously been well supplied. He opened a granola bar from the pack and tore into it unable to control himself. Scott couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any kind of real food and it tasted like heaven, stale or not. “Where are you from?” he mumbled through the nuts in his full mouth.

Hannah ignored him. Scott finished the bar in a second bite. “How have you managed to stay alive this long?” He asked trying to reach Hannah again.

“What does it matter?”

“Well for one thing, you have food. You’re well armed. Hell, I even saw some antibiotics in this pack. If you’re from some kind of settlement or shelter that survived I’d sure as hell like to know about it.”

“Where are you from?” Hannah shot back.

“Trust me lady, you don’t want to know,” Scott snickered ripping into another ration bar. “I’ve been locked up by the dead in a camp straight out of hell.”

“A camp?” Hannah was stunned. “Why didn’t they kill you?”

“Where have you been, sister? How do you think the dead get their food these days? There aren’t enough of us left out there for them to just round up and slaughter for dinner anymore. They’re trying to breed us like cattle, livestock, so that they’ll always have food.”

Hannah stared at Scott in horror.

“Yeah,” Scott nodded, “It’s all that and worse. I still want to know where you came from. You sure as hell weren’t in a camp.”

“My husband and child are dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Scott twisted the top off of a canteen helping himself to the water it contained. “Seen a lot of people die. One of my friends died just so that I could make it out of there. It looks like your husband died trying to take you somewhere better too. Better get used to it, people dying. That’s how things are with the dead ruling the world. Speaking of which…” Scott closed the canteen. “We need to get moving. Staying in a single spot for a while can be suicide. Who knows who or what heard those shots.”

13

Luke was anything but your typical engineer. Long black hair with spots of gray hung over the purple flannel shirt he wore. He sat crouched on the knees of his worn blue jeans fiddling with a homemade torpedo casing. He heard O’Neil enter his workshop but made no move to stop fine-tuning his current project. Instead, he said, “I’ll have two more live ones by tomorrow morning.”

O’Neil sat on Luke’s unused workbench. “Why do you always work in the floor?”

Luke smiled. “The freedom,” he answered simply, “It helps me think.”

O’Neil grunted. “Whatever works I suppose, as long as you don’t blow a hole in the bottom of the ship.”

“You didn’t come here to talk about my work habits, Mr. O’Neil. What’s up?”

“The Captain’s planning to raid a port in South Carolina tomorrow night. I’ve got the usual crew ready and I’ll be in command of the operation. I thought I’d stop by and see if you’d come up with anything new.”

Luke curved his head around to glance at O’Neil behind him. “If you’re talking about understanding the dynamics of what makes the dead get back on their feet with hungry stomachs,” Luke used his pointed finger to press his glasses up from where they’d slid down on his nose, “No, I haven’t. That’s Doc Gallenger’s area, not mine.”

“I thought you were helping him.”

“Sure when I have the time. You might have noticed I have been rather busy lately what with keeping this old girl running and designing these new toys for the Captain.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust Gallenger’s doing his best Luke, I just thought…”

“What? That having nine degrees in everything from pathology to physics makes me superhuman? That I am supposed to be able to wave a magic wand and save your ass? I wish,” Luke shrugged. “I ain’t God, ya know.”

“I didn’t say that you were. God has a social life.” O’Neil teased the rail thin scientist.

“You want me to go with you tomorrow?”

“Hell no!” O’Neil protested. “Steven would have me shot if I let you off The Queen. You’re the only real brain we’ve got.”

“So you say,” Luke challenged. “There are plenty of people on the boat who could do what I do around here.”

“Maybe. But not one of them could do it all,” O’Neil got up from the bench. “Just promise me you’ll get to helping Gallenger okay? We need a way to stop the dead more than we need the weapons to keep running.”

As O’Neil turned to leave, Luke muttered, “Be careful out there you idiot.”

“I always am,” O’Neil responded with a flash of his teeth, then he was gone.

14

Scott figured Hannah was whacko after what she’d endured, with every right to be, so he left her to her brooding as they walked. The woman insisted on traveling east to the coast, so they were. Scott had managed to obtain a few hours of blessed sleep under her watch, counting himself lucky she hadn’t killed him while he slept. But when he’d woken up she’d just been sitting there adrift in her own mind like she’d been when he first zonked out. It’d been impossible to get her to move earlier short of carrying her when he’d said they needed to get on the move again but after his nap, she’d been up on her feet and ready to go faster than he was. Her only requests were that they bury the bodies of her family and that they set out in this direction.

“What the heck is that?” Scott asked suddenly as he noticed a building up ahead of them. Hannah paused beside him. “It’s a cabin,” she said and then continued on towards it.

“Whoa. What are you doing?” Scott grabbed her by the arm. “We don’t know if anyone’s in there.”

“There’s not, not alive anyway.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Hannah pointed through the trees. “The door’s been busted open. The windows are shattered. And that appears to be dried blood smeared all over the outer walls.”

Given little choice, Scott followed Hannah on into the clearing in front of the cabin. Several bodies, all dead from head wounds, littered the grass around the place.

“Looks like somebody put up a good fight,” Scott commented as Hannah headed straight for the main door without slowing. It dangled barely attached to its hinges. Hannah stepped by it and into the building. A partially devoured body missing its legs and arms watched her enter. Old blood stained the area about its mouth and chin. Hannah was sure its tongue had been cut or bitten out otherwise the thing would have been screaming obscenities at her. Its eyes burned into her as she glanced about the remains of the simple room. Someone had taken shelter in this place seeking safety in the wilderness just like her own family had done; only these poor people must have been discovered before they could run.

Hannah jumped as a gunshot split the air sending the limbless monster on its way to hell once more. Scott shrugged as she glared at him. “It was creeping me out, okay?” He offered in way of apology.

The pair carefully searched the place over for others of the dead or anyone miraculously left alive to find they were alone. They met back in the cabin’s main room.

“We’ll take what we can. Food, ammo, whatever but we’re not staying,” Hannah informed Scott.

Scott was too delighted to be put off by her air of superiority. “You’re not going to believe what I found out behind this dump!” He smiled. “Come on, I’ll show you!”

15

The cabin had been a godsend. Scott couldn’t believe their luck. With their stock of replenished and stomachs happily full of dried tomatoes and corn from among the cans they’d looted, they started the journey east again much richer. Hannah still carried her .30-.06 refusing to let it go but she also now carried a functional AK-47 assault rifle. Scott had added a pump action twelve gauge to his arsenal. Their best find however had been the bike. It allowed them to continue traveling off road while giving them a much faster rate of travel and mobility.

Scott held onto Hannah’s waist as she kept the gas flowing hard to the small bike’s engine. She jerked the handlebars from side to side dodging trees as they bounced over the forest floor at over forty miles an hour. Scott wasn’t sure but he thought for the first time since they’d met he saw the slightest hint of a smile on Hannah’s lips.

“If you don’t mind if I ask,” he yelled over the bike’s roar, “Why the hell are you so set on going east?”

Much to his surprise, Hannah answered him. “I want to see the ocean one last time before I die!”

Scott mulled over this revelation for a second. “Works for me!” he shouted as the ground sloped ahead of them and Hannah took them charging down the tiny hill.

16

The Queen sat in the harbor motionless and far from the docks. No organized attack had been launched against her yet. Henry O’Neil admired her as the lifeboat he sat in drifted toward the shore. There were four boats each carrying an equal number of members of the raiding party. O’Neil’s heart pounded in his chest. A long time had paused since he’d been in the “heat” of things on shore. Sure he’d fought numerous battles aboard The Queen or venturing onto a dock to help hold back the hordes of dead as she set sail after a raid but this was different. He was both excited and scared shitless at the same time. An African American man named Roy sat across from him loading a shotgun. O’Neil didn’t know Roy well, but he knew him to be a veteran of raids like this one.

The plan was simple. Land on the beach near the warehouses along the dock, hit the shore running, and stock up on whatever nonperishable foodstuffs they could get their hands on, then steal some means of transporting both it and themselves back to The Queen from the boats that lined the port. This operation would cost them the most of what remained of The Queen’s lifeboats but if they could steal some decent motor boats that still worked, it would be more than a fair trade.

Jennifer and Jason also shared his lifeboat. The twins were inseparable. Jennifer was the warrior of the pair. Muscles bulged from underneath the jump suit she wore. In addition to the rifle and sidearm she carried, she hefted a machete. She was something of a legend among The Queen’s “raiders”. Just looking at her confidence, made O’Neil feel safer. Jason by contrast, though he shared his twin’s frame, was not well muscled. He was the party’s medic and served as an assistant to Dr. Gallenger onboard The Queen. The young man’s brow was creased in thought as he checked over the med. kit he carried. O’Neil was sure the young man hoped he wouldn’t need it or any of its contents tonight.

O’Neil held no official rank having come aboard The Queen after the plague started and the world begin its descent into the hellish nightmare it had become. Yet everyone knew he was second only to Captain Steven and treated him with an air of respect. He hoped he lived up to it out here where it mattered the most.

The lifeboats reached the sand of the shoreline. O’Neil screwed a silencer onto the barrel of his pistol and stepped off the waves. His land legs were clumsy initially but he soon got the hang of it as he raced after the others towards the docks. The party split up, each heading out for a different section of the warehouses to loot expect one group who went off in search of their much needed means of escape and transport back to The Queen. There was no sign of the dead but O’Neil knew it wouldn’t be long.

Within minutes, suitable transport for the return voyage was located. Already crates of freeze-dried and canned foods were being loaded onto to the pair of small motor boats, which were the only ones around that appeared still functional. That’s when the shit hit the fan. One of the raiders named Gary screamed, “They’re coming!” Before O’Neil could open his mouth to shout orders the docks were ablaze with gunfire and the dead were racing at the raiding party from the town beyond.

17

The would-be raiders quickly found themselves pinned down and outnumbered. “It’s a trap!” someone shouted. O’Neil cursed whoever it was for being an idiot. The dead hadn’t had anyway of knowing they’d be here, there were just that many of the creatures everywhere these days. Jennifer shoved O’Neil from his feet as a bullet whizzed through the space he’d been standing in. “Better keep your mind on the fight, sir!” she advised him, raising her M-16 and holding the trigger squeezed as she swept her line of fire across the ranks of the charging dead.

O’Neil hated the dead. Why couldn’t the dead be unthinking, slow moving automatons driven purely by instinct alone like in the movies he’d seen as a kid, he wondered. Life freakin’ sucks he thought as he pushed himself up and took aim at a creature running at the team of raiders with a hole through its ribs and a butcher knife raised above its head ready to strike. With a single shot from his pistol he dropped the dead thing permanently to the ground.

The dead were attempting to push around the raiding party, to flank them and cut them off from the docks where the half loaded motor boats waited. O’Neil knew if that happened they were all screwed. He bolted, running for the team’s only way out as he saw Jennifer wrestling with a dead woman who’d made it past their wall of fire. Jennifer’s rifle was gone and she struggled to bring her machete into play against the woman. She never got the chance. The woman lashed out with something that looked like a straight razor. Jennifer’s throat opened, spraying blood.

As O’Neil reached the boats, Roy was there waiting for him.

“We’ve got to get the food back to the ship!” O’Neil shouted. Jim nodded. Most of their party was already dead or dying and they couldn’t risk trying to save the others. Too many people on The Queen were depending on them. If they failed a lot more would die than just those here on the docks.

“What the hell is that?” Jim yelled, pointing at something behind O’Neil. O’Neil turned to see a dirt bike zigging and zagging its way towards them through the midst of the battle. Two human shapes rode it, one clearly a woman at the handlebars. “Fuck that,” O’Neil swore bringing up his pistol to take a shot at her. If the dead thought they could send a suicide bomber on a damn dirt bike crashing into the motor boats they had another thing coming.

Jim struck O’Neil’s arm, knocking his pistol’s barrel downward to fire into the wood of the dock as he pulled the trigger. “Why the…” O’Neil started but Jim cut him off. “Those ain’t dead folk,” the older man snarled.

O’Neil glanced at the bike again as Jim leapt off the docks into the more heavily loaded of the two boats and fired it up. The bike skidded to a halt a few yards away from O’Neil. A haggard looking young man with lashing scars covering his naked back jumped off the rear of the bike and said, “Going our way?”

O’Neil felt his breath leave him, ignoring the young man’s joke, as he gazed into the green eyes of the woman who stood before him. “Get in!” Jim screamed from the boat below and O’Neil stood watching this woman, this angel, dart by him and leap off the docks into the boat. The shirtless man shoved O’Neil off the dock as he moved for the boat himself. “I think he means you too!” The young man laughed as they crashed into the boat near Jim together. Jim kicked the boat into high gear and left a trail of waves in their wake. The docks and the nightmare of it all faded into the distance behind them as a few desperately shot rounds thudded into the sides of the boat and the dead howled in vain at their escaping prey.

18

“Who are you people?” Scott asked, “And what was all that back there about?”

The taller, redneck looking black man answered, “I’m Jim and this is Mr. O’Neil. We’re from The Queen.”

The man identified as O’Neil just kept staring at Hannah as she asked, “What’s The Queen?”

“That,” Jim pointed out into the water in the direction they were speeding for.

“Holy shit,” Scott muttered. The Queen was a ship and a damn big one from the looks of her. She was as long as a battleship but certainly not military in nature or at least, she hadn’t started out that way. Her overall hull was a tarnished white spotted by the odd piece or plate of wielded on armor. Jury rigged gun emplacements ran the length of her decks from port to stern. She’d definitely seen better days but even with the tiny amount Scott knew about ships he could tell she had a lot of power left in her yet.

Jim piloted the motor boat right up to her side. Heavily armed men and women threw down cables from her deck to haul up the crates of supplies the raiders had returned with. “Too bad we can’t keep this baby,” Jim said mournfully to no one in particular, “She’s a fine little boat in own right.”

“We’re keeping her fuel,” O’Neil ordered as he finally snapped out of the stunned haze he’d been in. “Make sure you drain her tanks before you go up.” Then O’Neil turned to Scott and Hannah. He caught one of the ropes that were raining down around them and handed it to Hannah. “Welcome aboard, ma’am,” he said with a sincere smile that lit up his face.

Scott and Hannah scurried up the rope into the crowd of people on The Queen’s main deck. Both were overwhelmed by their welcome. Hannah couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen so many real, living, breathing people. O’Neil pulled himself up behind them and was barking orders at the crowd before his feet even hit the deck proper.

“Let’s get loaded up quickly people,” he yelled at the top of his lungs over the chaos, “We need get out of here before the dead get it together and come sailing after us.”

19

A yeoman named Pete led Scott and Hannah to their quarters. Two Spartan bunkrooms side by side on the same hall. “I know it’s not much,” Pete apologized, “but here you’re going to be safe.”

Scott was still trying to absorb it all. “You mean you guys have really been sailing about out here since it all started?”

Pete nodded. “The Queen was at sea when the dead woke up. We haven’t put to port yet except to raid places for food or supplies yet. The Captain figures we’re safer on the waves.”

“Have you heard from anyone else, other survivors like yourselves?” Hannah asked.

“I hate to say it, ma’am, but … well, no. Benson, our communications expert, stays at it around the clock though. We’ve never came across more than few like yourselves at a time. We’re always glad to see new faces and I’m sure you’ll fit right in among the crew. Either of you have experience sailing or know anything ships?”

Together Hannah and Scott shook their heads in the negative. Pete waved a hand dismissively. “No worries, I know we’ll come up with something for you to do. We try to pull our weight on this ship.” Pete looked them over again and stopped. “You need to get some rest. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you to it. The captain will want to meet you tonight. He likes to welcome everyone to the ship personally and see if you know anything about what’s left out there that we don’t. You’ll be having dinner with him in about five hours. I’ll be back to get you and show you around until you know how to navigate The Queen yourselves

Pete shook Scott’s hand again and bowed to Hannah. Then he was gone, vanishing around the corner of the corridor. Hannah and Scott looked at each other as if each were asking the other if they really wanted to be alone. Silence lingered in the air until Scott finally made a move. “See you at dinner then,” he said stepping into the room he’d been assigned and shutting the door behind him. Scott plopped onto his bunk and fell instantly into a deep sleep. His dreams were dark but his exhausted body didn’t care.

20

Steven shook his head in disgust. “We lost fourteen hands and gained two. We can’t keep up this rate of attrition. Perhaps you’re correct, Mr. O’Neil. Maybe we should think of finding an island and starting over.”

O’Neil couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Captain Steven was agreeing with him after months refusing to even consider the possibility of such a venture, let alone, acting on it.

“There is an island not far from here, sir, that one I’ve told you about. I think it was called Cobble or something like that. It was just a tourist trap before the plague. You could only reach it by boat or helicopter. I doubt we’d find much resistance there and it’s in a temperate zone so we could grow a wide assortment of food stock between the winters.” O’Neil was getting excited as let out all the details he’d been plotting, “I bet there’s even a fuel depot there, at least for the smaller boats. We could leave The Queen just off shore and she’d be well within reach if we needed her again.”

Steven smiled at O’Neil’s passion over the idea. “Sounds like you’ve really thought this out. Alright, Mr. O’Neil. We’ll try it your way. Plot us a course for this island as soon as we can be sure those creatures from the docks aren’t pursuing us and have those two new folk brought up here. I’m eager to hear news of the mainland.”

“I think you’ll find the new woman rather captivating sir,” O’Neil commented.

Steven pulled a cigar from his desk and lit it up with an old fashioned wooden match. “Do I detect a bit of personal attachment in your voice Henry?”

The younger man blinked. The Captain rarely called him by his first name. Most people didn’t. It put him on edge though he knew the Captain was only teasing, trying to provoke a response. “No sir. I just … I thought you’d like to be prepared is all.”

“Oh,” Steven snickered, “I see.”

Hannah lay on her bunk staring at the ceiling. She’d tried to get some sleep but she couldn’t stop thinking about Riley and Brandon. Brandon would have been so happy on this ship. The Queen would’ve been like a paradise to him, the adventure of the high sea and children his age to share it with. It would have been like something out of a story book. And Riley … She missed Riley so much. Without him, she felt hollow, incomplete. A piece of her soul had died with them back in the mountains just like the world had died long ago. She’d adjusted to the world’s destruction but the pain of loss for her family was fresh and it stung at her heart.

Someone knocked on the door of her quarters. Forgetting herself, she reached for her rifle, sliding a shell into its chamber as the door opened. Pete stood in the doorway with a horrified look on his face as he gazed down the barrel of the .30-.06 at her. “It’s okay,” Pete said slowly, taking a step back. Hannah lowered the rifle. “I’m sorry,” she shrugged. “Old habits die hard.”

“Better them than me,” Pete joked uncomfortably. “The Captain is waiting for you to join him for dinner.”

Hannah followed Pete out into the hall where Scott was waiting. Scott was clean-shaven and had gotten new clothes from somewhere. His whole appearance was different on many levels. He actually looked handsome and if possible, even smugger than he usually was. “About time you got up, sleepy head,” he teased her as the trio made their way along the corridor and up to the Captain’s quarters on the level above.

Captain Steven and O’Neil greeted Hannah and Scott as they entered. Hannah looked the Captain over. He was in his later forties, his hair mostly gray, yet there was no mistaking the strength he carried in not only his character but also in his short, burly frame. He looked like a man who’d seen hell first hand and beaten it back by the sheer force of his will. The necessary introductions were made, and then Pete and O’Neil seated everyone at the table. “Will there be anything else sir?” O’Neil asked.

“No thank you,” Steven reached for a napkin to drape across his lap. “That will be all.”

O’Neil and Pete left the quarters closing the entrance behind them.

The table was set with real china dishes and expensive, regal looking silverware but it was the food that held Hannah and Scott’s attention. There was glazed salmon, fresh baked bread, a spicy brown rice of some type, stuffed crabs, and bowl full of red apples placed along side a salad of cabbage and chopped carrots. The Captain must have noticed their hunger. “Please, help yourselves,” he offered. Scott wasted no time in loading down his plate with everything in reach and a double portion of the stuffed crabs.

“I assure you, we don’t eat like this all time,” Captain Steven informed them. “We can’t afford to. Most of our meals are of much simpler fare but tonight it seemed fitting to have this feast not only to welcome you but celebrate a much needed change in The Queen’s plans for the future.”

“The future?” Scott mumbled through a mouth full of fish and bread.

“Yes,” Steven continued. “The future. We can’t go on living as we have up until this point. I refuse to continue to sacrifice the lives of my crew and those under my protection to keep us on the sea. It’s time we found a new home and try to reclaim some of what mankind has lost to the dead.”

“Do you really think that’s possible?” Hannah butted in. “The dead are everywhere. No matter where you go, they will find you eventually.”

“But their numbers are dwindling too,” Steven explained. “Their bodies rot. Time takes its due. We have only to last a couple of years perhaps before we may outnumber them once more. Then we can truly retake the world as our own, as it was meant to be.”

“How can you know the dead are dying? Have you discovered what brought them to life to begin with?” Hannah argued.

“Our crew may be made of refugees, Hannah, but some are rather extraordinary people. We have two medical doctors on this ship and one real scientist who’ve been studying the plague of the dead since the moment they came onboard. We still don’t know the nature of the force or whatever it is which reanimates the tissues of those who die but we do know that it does not stop the decay of their flesh, it merely slows it. So in time, nature itself will destroy the ranks of the dead for us.” Steven changed the subject, “but enough of this. I want to know about you two. Who are you? What did you do before the dead walked?”

“Do you really want to know?” Scott asked, suddenly forgetting about the food. Steven nodded.

“I was a professional killer.” The table fell silent at Scott’s disclosure. “I killed anyone for the right price. I worked for the government when I started out, then went freelance. I couldn’t guess at how many people I put bullets in before the CIA caught me. When the plague started, I was rotting away in a federal prison cell and that’s where the dead found me, alone, unarmed, and locked up behind bars. Obviously, they didn’t kill me. Maybe I was so starved by then I didn’t have enough meat on my bones to be worth their trouble, who knows, so they merely took me to a new kind of prison that they had created. It was called a “breeding center”. It was a place where they herded us together like cattle and breed us for food.”

Hannah’s mouth still hung open from Scott’s announcement of his old job and Steven appeared bothered by it as well, though not as much as he was by the concept of the “breeding center”.

“Well,” Steven ventured, “I don’t suppose it matters now what you did in those days. You’re one of us now and I hope you will make the most of this fresh start.” Steven turned his body in his chair to address Hannah. “And what of you?” he asked her.

“I…” Hannah began and her voice cracked, “I was a mother.”

21

As the days past aboard The Queen, Hannah found work in the ship’s daycare. There were a couple of infants as well as nearly a dozen children that the ship had picked up over the last few months who either had no parents at all or who’s parents held jobs aboard the ship which occupied much of their time. The daycare served the needs of those children and Hannah found happiness in her work with the kids. Jessica, a young woman barely out of her teens was the sole other adult worker, and while Hannah liked her as a person, Hannah didn’t know how Jessica had handled the children by herself before she had come along. Jessica was a hard worker but she lacked the emotional connection with her wards that Hannah developed instantly. Jessica, without resentment, let Hannah lead in how the children were handled. Things changed a great deal as the children took to Hannah’s new lessons in crafts and educational projects with zeal. Hannah, despite herself, began to let go of her past and embrace her future. The memories of Riley and Brandon would always be with her but she felt hope swelling in her again. These children needed her and there was so much she could offer them beyond just keeping them busy and out of the way.

Scott, on the other hand, was assigned to the nearly depleted group of the Queen’s raiders and defenders. He worked closely with O’Neil whom he grew to hate more and more with each passing day. O’Neil took a more military approach to organization and training where as Scott taught the man the “dirty” tricks he thought they needed to know to stay alive in the new world of the dead, discipline be damned. It wasn’t long until Scott met Luke through his work with O’Neil. The eccentric genius and the occasionally psychotic former hit-man became fast friends. They’d attended some of the same schools in the old world and both had done work for the governments on black-op projects though Luke’s involvement was purely from a research and development stand point. Scott wasn’t anywhere near Luke’s level, but he was sharp and a fast enough learner to keep up with Luke when he droned on about his theories of this and that.

As the sun sank beneath the waves, Scott and Luke relaxed atop the highest point of The Queen above the command center in matching lawn chairs. Scott sipped at the glass in his hand admiring the potency of the drink Luke had whipped up for them this evening. It had the punch of whiskey without the burn.

“What was it like?” Luke inquired.

“What?”

“To kill people for money, man. How did you cope with it?”

“To be honest, I just never thought about it. A job’s a job, ya know? Besides it’s not that much different than things are today. Everybody has had to kill somebody to stay alive and keep breathing; whether it was by a bullet through the brain or watching someone you care about throw away their life so that you could get away.”

Luke leaned forward and sat up on his chair. “So what do you think about Captain Steven’s new plan?”

“I don’t think it matters, Luke. We’re all living on borrowed time. Whether we die out here on the waves or settle down and wait for the dead to come to us, they will get us eventually. We lost the war the moment they started thinking like we do.” Scott sat up too looking over the edge of the railing at the water below. “You’re the resident genius. You tell me, have you ever figured out what brought the dead back to life?”

Luke shrugged. “Not really. It sure wasn’t radiation or a virus as we know them like something out of those old B movies about the walking dead though their bites are infectious just like in those films. Nothing about the dead makes sense. They shouldn’t be able to move let alone reason like they do. Sometimes a body will reanimate with partial memories of its life before death and other times it’s like there’s a whole new entity in the host body. They’re all hungry for us though memories or not. It doesn’t matter if they know your name and who you are because they’ll eat you anyway.”

“So where does that leave you since science has failed and can’t explain it?”

Luke’s face flushed. “Science hasn’t failed, Scott. Just because I don’t have an answer today doesn’t mean there isn’t a plausible, quantifiable explanation to all this. It just means I haven’t found it yet. I don’t believe in spirits or judgment day. There is a sane reason for the plague and I will find it one day. I’m sure.”

“And you’ll just keep searching for it, huh?”

“Damn right I will,” Luke laughed. “As long as I have to.”

22

Steven bolted onto the bridge of the ship. The whole area was a mass of activity. His crew darted about double-checking the data they’d just gotten. O’Neil spotted the Captain and made his way to Steven. “It’s true then?” Steven demanded as O’Neil approached him.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” O’Neil said grimly. “There are five vessels closing in on our current location as if trying to surround us.”

“Jesus,” Steven flipped through the stack of reports O’Neil handed him scanning their contents. “Look at the size of them.”

O’Neil nodded in agreement. “Some of them are military in nature for sure. This one has to be,” O’Neil pointed at a blip on a nearby radar screen. “We think it’s an aircraft carrier and the two flanking it from the east and west are most likely destroyers. It looks like they’ve finally got us where they want us.”

“Nonsense, Mr. O’Neil,” Steven corrected him. “We’ve been in tight spots before. We’ll get through this one too.” Steven weighed their options in his head before he continued. “Can we out maneuver them and make a run for it?”

“We can try. I don’t think the largest one can match our speed but I don’t know anything about the two smallest ones. However if the two flanking the large ship are destroyers, they’ll be able overtake us even at our top speed.”

“Change course and burn the engines at their maximum.” Steven ordered. “And in the meantime, sound the alarm. I want to be ready if we do have a fight on our hands.”

“Aye, sir,” O’Neil replied and punched a button which sat sirens squealing throughout The Queen.

A state of panic broke out on the ship. The Queen’s raiders who were also its defenders rushed to their battle stations, Scott among them. People and families ran for their quarters locking the heavy doors of their rooms against the growing terror outside. The daycare was in chaos. Hannah and Jessica tried to calm the children and assure them everything would be fine while at the same time attempting to deal with frightened parents who showed up demanding their children. Hannah had left her .30-.06 in her quarters but she carried a concealed .38 revolver she’d looted from the ship’s armory thanks to Scott in the pocket of her jacket. Weapons weren’t permitted in the daycare center but right now Hannah was damn glad she’d been breaking the rules. She’d watched her own child die helplessly and swore inwardly that these children under her care would not share his fate.

Dr. Gallenger prepared the sickbay for the wounded to start arriving in case the coming battle couldn’t be avoided. Luke darted through the corridors of The Queen attempting to reach the main decks with a short, black, metal tube gripped tightly in his arms.

O’Neil and Captain Steven watched from the bridge as the destroyers crossed the horizon and came into view. The ocean itself seemed to shake as the destroyer coming in from the east fired its main guns at The Queen.

23

The shot from the enemy ship impacted with the water off the Queen’s port side sending waves crashing against the side of ship though it didn’t strike so close as to do actual damage. The Queen lacked any sort of truly long-range weapon to return fire except for her jury-rigged torpedo launchers which at the moment were facing away from the closing enemy vessels. Captain Steven knew he had to do something. The destroyers were too fast to outrun and at present, The Queen was a sitting target for their guns even pushing her beyond their limits of endurance. Closing with the two enemy ships for direct combat was a near suicidal option but it was also the only one left available to him if there was to be any hope of The Queen’s survival.

“Bring us about!” he shouted. “Get us between them. Maybe they aren’t stupid enough to take the chance of hitting each other with their main guns!” Steven turned to O’Neil. “As soon as you get a shot with one of the launchers, take it!”

Scott and The Queen’s defenders stood helplessly at their machinegun emplacements as The Queen veered to engage the enemy. The destroyers were still not in range of The Queen’s heaviest guns but from the looks of things, they would be soon. Scott readied the massive weapon in front of him, shoving a belt of ammo into its side, and began to pick a target for when the time came.

“Fire one!” O’Neil ordered. A torpedo flared to life, dropping into the water. It raced towards the lead destroyer as O’Neil ordered the remaining torpedo launched in its wake. Moments later, the torpedo struck the destroyer just below the water line with the sound of shredding metal sending waves of fire and water up onto the military vessel’s decks. The second torpedo got lucky. There was no better term for what happened. Whatever it collided with in the destroyer did far more damage turning the ship into a blazing wreck drifting on the ocean as secondary explosions tore the vessel apart.

Cheers went up on the decks of The Queen and on the bridge alike as The Queen shifted course again slightly angling towards the remaining enemy ship. The second destroyer’s guns fired. This time The Queen was hit dead on. The blast ripped a hole in her side killing many of her defenders instantly and causing damage to The Queen internally as well.

“Damage report!” Steven snapped, knowing The Queen would be facing a new problem now and not just the damage to the ship. Those killed by the blast or mortally wounded would soon reanimate, giving the dead soldiers on The Queen as surely as if she had been boarded. “No damage to the engines!” O’Neil reported. “The hull breach is being contained. We’re not taking on water!”

Luke reached the deck of The Queen and positioned himself to get a shot at the enemy ship. He extended the black, metal tube like device he was carrying and slashed out a section of power cables on the wall near him hooking the weapon into it. He knew what he was about to do was going to literally cripple The Queen in some respects and he certainly wouldn’t survive this course of action but the way things were going it was worth the risk. With the power hooked up to the invention he’d spent the last few months refining in his free time he aimed at the tube at the destroyer. As he pulled the trigger a bunch of things happened at the same time; a beam of energy leapt from his weapon striking the destroyer’s ammo storage compartment where the shells of the ship’s main guns were kept. The energy melted through the destroyer’s protective armor as if it weren’t there and reduced the enemy ship to a ball of flames which lit up the sea even under the midday rays of the sun. Luke, his weapon, and a large chunk of The Queen around where he stood were vaporized from the energy weapon’s backwash. People screamed both inside and on the deck of The Queen as her engines blew from the strain the weapon had put on her.

“What in the Hell was that?” Steven cried.

“I don’t know!” O’Neil yelled back over the chaos on the bridge. “We’ve lost main power and the engines are burnt out. Power is out everywhere on the ship. The backup generators are keeping the internal comm. system and the emergency lights working but that’s about it. We’re dead in the water, sir!”

“Shit!” Steven whirled about to the officer at the radar station. “What about the other three dead ships?”

“I … I don’t know sir,” the officer stammered. “It looked as if the big one was keeping back, maybe even changing course away from us before the screen went dead. The two smaller ones were still on an intercept heading. They should be on us in the next few minutes, tops.”

“Somebody tell Luke, I want those fucking engines back on-line now!” Steven raged.

24

Dr. Gallenger got to his feet, or at least tried to. As he attempted to stand up the fractured bone of his left leg tore through his flesh, buckling under his weight, and he hit the floor hard. He felt no pain as he examined the rest of his body and saw the piece of shrapnel protruding from the right side of his chest. He had to get up. He could sense that his brethren would be here soon and he was hungry, hungrier than he’d ever been. He deemed the shrapnel irrelevant and snapped his broken leg back into place. He used the materials scattered about the demolished sickbay to fashion a splint for it. Then he did get up. He hobbled across the room to check on Nurse Jones and found her lying in a pool of blood. Tilting his head like an animal would as he observed her, he watched her newly opened eyes flutter, darting this way and that, as she realized she couldn’t move. A huge medical cabinet lay on top of her broken body. Apparently her neck had been snapped as it had fallen on her and bashed her into the floor. Taking pity on her, he picked up a piece of debris and smashed in her skull. “What point was there in even un-life if it brought you nothing but pain?” he mused. Gallenger found the remains of his desk and the .45 he’d kept in its drawer. Feeling suitable armed he left the sickbay. Soon he would taste flesh for the first time.

Everyone on The Queen had been tossed about as the destroyer’s shell had hammered into its hull. Hannah was sent sprawling and struck her head against one of the children’s lockers in the daycare center. She awoke with blood in her eyes and her skull pounding. As her vision focused, she became aware that she was still alive. She hurt too much to be dead. Jessica, her fellow caretaker of the children, must have taken them and fled for somewhere safer in the ship. Hannah felt a twinge of anger at Jessica for leaving her for dead but then realized she would’ve done the same. It was the kids that mattered, not them. Hannah’s hand dug inside her jacket and produced her .38. She had no idea how the fight outside was going but she knew Jessica would need help. Jessica, like the old saying said, was not the sharpest tool in the shed. Hannah didn’t trust her to see the children through this battle. Hannah pulled herself up and headed out of the daycare, running down the corridors. “Jessica!” she screamed hoping the woman was still in earshot.

Hannah rounded the corner of the passageway coming face to face with a dead man dragging his insides behind him on the floor. He lunged at her, grunting. She narrowly sidestepped his attack and shoved him as he went by her. He toppled to the deck and twisted about, already trying to get up and come after her again. She popped off three rounds into his forehead spraying his brains out the back of his head onto the wall. Hannah stood a moment, her breath coming in ragged gasps, as she tried to collect herself and calm down. She could hear The Queen’s machine guns chattering above so she knew the fight hadn’t been lost yet. She took a deep breath calming her frantic breathing and set out in search of Jessica though much more cautiously.

The two yachts had swept in quickly managing to survive and mostly evade the fire from The Queen’s defenders as they closed with her. Both of them came up along her port side, floating close enough for the dead to attempt to scale The Queen’s hull as they traded small arms fire with those left alive on her decks. The Queen’s gun emplacements were useless with the yachts so close. They couldn’t be angled downward to engage the dead so Scott had abandoned his post spraying the climbing dead men and women with AK-47 instead. One, a middle-aged man covered in burns, lost his hold and plummeted into the water as Scott’s rounds peppered the man’s back. A creature hauled itself onto The Queen’s deck beside Scott as Jim’s twelve-gauge thundered and sent it careening over the side of the ship. Scott motioned his thanks to Jim then returned his attention to the dead as he loaded a fresh clip into his weapon.

25

The struggle for control of The Queen raged on. Her entire exterior deck was a war zone and smaller battles filled her corridors. Captain Steven took it all in from his vantage point on the bridge. If there was hope left of making it out of this confrontation, it was fading quickly. “Sir,” O’Neil said trying to draw the Captain’s attention away from the carnage below them. “Captain, we can’t hold her. The Queen is lost. We need to give the order to abandon ship.”

O’Neil’s words jarred the Captain out his own thoughts. Abandon The Queen? Had O’Neil gone insane? He turned to argue as the door to the bridge opened and Doc Gallenger came staggering inside. Before anyone had time to react, the good doctor’s corpse raised the .45 in its blood-smeared hand. The first shot slammed into Steven’s shoulder. The second and third shots buried themselves in his chest knocking him back to slide down the bridge’s wall into a heap on the floor. Benson, the communications officer, took a round to his throat before O’Neil managed to draw his own sidearm and send the doctor to the hell he’d crawled out of with a carefully aimed shot to his face. O’Neil rushed to Steven’s side, squatting beside him. Steven coughed blood up onto his lips as he spoke. “Leave me,” he ordered. “I’m staying with The Queen.”

The other command personal were fleeing the bridge as O’Neil stood up. Most of The Queen’s lifeboats were gone. Finding a way off the ship was going to be difficult but not as difficult as surviving afterwards. The dead would be waiting.

Scott and Jim were holed up in a corner of the Queen’s port side main deck. They’d taken shelter behind one of The Queen’s large, metal cooling pipes and were running out of ammo fast. “Jim, you’re a good man,” Scott said, “but how would you feel about leaving all this and not looking back?”

Jim could see the gleam of an idea in Scott’s eyes. “I reckon,” he answered, “What’s gotta be is gotta be. I’m guessin’ you have something in mind to save our asses.”

Scott grinned. “You could say that. Come on!” Scott yelled charging across the deck through the ranks of the dead and the few humans left alive alike. Scott reached the side of The Queen’s deck and didn’t stop. He hurled himself over the side landing on the yacht below to the utter bewilderment of the five corpses still aboard it. He hosed them with his AK-47 on full auto cutting them where they stood.

Jim followed Scott but skidded to a halt at the railing on the side of The Queen’s deck. “Crazy mother fucker!” he shouted and took the leap over to the Yacht on the waves below. He landed with the sound of snapping bones.

O’Neil dispatched a corpse blocking his way in the corridor. He figured he had three rounds left in his pistol if he’d counted his shots right. It was beginning to sink in that was royally screwed. He jerked open the hatch to the exterior deck as someone called his name. Hannah came running up to him. She threw herself into him wrapping her arms around his body. He hugged her back tightly then forced himself to push her away despite how much he wanted to hold onto to her forever. He knew she didn’t feel the same about him; they barely knew each other yet she’d won him over the night he’d met her on the docks giving him more purpose to his life than anyone or anything ever had. “The Captain’s dead,” he informed her. “We’ve got get off the ship if we want to stay alive.”

A dead woman came darting towards them through the open hatchway, a raised piece of glass held like a knife in her rotting hand. O’Neil tried to get a shot but Hannah was faster. She emptied the remaining rounds in her .38 into the woman’s neck and face. O’Neil moved to lead them outside onto the deck but Hannah grabbed his arm and held him back. “Wait! What’s that noise?”

“Oh God no,” O’Neil stuck his head outside and looked up at the sky. “It can’t be.” However, is was. An F-16 fighter roared over The Queen. Its wings were wobbly and whoever was flying it was certainly not an experienced pilot. O’Neil and Hannah stepped outside to watch as the jet turned and streaked back at The Queen on a collision course.

“Would this be a bad time to tell you that I love you?” O’Neil asked as they watched the plane racing closer.

“No, I don’t suppose it would,” Hannah tried to smile weakly as she took his hand in hers.

26

Scott could still remember the death throes of The Queen after the jet had plowed into her. The way the flames had danced over her frame as she sank into the waves. The image haunted his dreams at night. He remembered Jim as well. The black southerner had been as tough as they came but with two badly broken legs and the meager amount of worm-infested food they’d found on the yacht, Scott had no choice but kill him. Jim had been alive when Scott had shot him in the stomach with his own shotgun and dumped him overboard before he could reanimate and become one of the dead.

Only a week had passed since their flight from The Queen, but it felt like months to Scott. He lay stretched out on the top of the yacht’s cabin and stared up at the stars. The yacht’s engines were shot and he was thirsty. Sweat glistened on his bare chest in spite of the coolness of the night air. He knew he was sick whether it was from the rotting food he had been eating or just the fact that his body had finally suffered all it could take and given out. If he could make it to land, he might be able to pull through. Proper food, some medicine, some rest, and he might be his old self but those things he needed seemed like pipe dreams in the face of what the world had become. He felt his eyes close then forced them open to glance at the shotgun propped up on the deck near him. Scott started to consider all his options again as a gentle rain began to fall and the heavens wept.

THE END

III - Flashes of Death

1 - Divine Origins

On Earth, maybe things would have been different. Perhaps the government’s tame “Pre-Cogs” would have seen the whole thing coming and put a stop to it. At the very least, shock troops from the “authority” would have shown up to help contain the mess. But out here, aboard Gareth, there had been only the station’s crew to handle things.

Ben slumped against the wall of the communications room staring blankly at the useless consoles surrounding him. The dim, red lights flicked casting eerie shadows outside the doorway, down the corridors that led towards both engineering and the research labs. The whining, spurting noise of the life-support systems as they fought to stay active despite the power fluctuations reverberated through the air. Otherwise the station was silent except for the sound of his labored breathing.

His trembling hand lifted an illegal cigarette to his lips as he took a hit off it. “Smokes” weren’t allowed in space even when the station’s power core wasn’t on the verge of imploding upon itself. Whether the power core did collapse or the life support systems finally gave out, either way, he was dead and he knew it. Just now, he wasn’t too concerned with station regulations. He didn’t give a crap. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else left on board to report him smoking anyway.

He was all that remained of the Gareth station’s over two hundred member staff and crew. No one had bothered to try to explain to him what was happening. As a 2nd rank technician, none of it had been his problem to deal with outside cleaning up the mess and trying to keep the station’s systems functional during the crisis. He’d spent the last thirty six hours of his life running from one section of the station to another, replacing power coils and making repairs, just trying to hold things together. He was exhausted and on the verge of taking a walk to the nearest weapons locker and blowing his own brains out. He thought that might be the best course of action given what was going on but just didn’t have the nerve inside him to do it. He’d seen what was happening and it scared the shit out of him. Sooner or later, it was bound to happen to him too. The whole station was contaminated. He imagined what it would feel like when his own skin began to melt away and his bones bend and stretch, reshaping themselves into a new form that was nothing near human as he transformed.

He’d been on the bridge when security chief Tankard had changed. He remembered the way the man howled, his fingers trying to catch and hold the flesh that ran from his face in tiny rivers like hot wax. He’d seen the man’s teeth forced from his mouth as jagged, sharp fangs grew in rows to replace them and droplets of blood splattered unto the metal flooring beneath him. Then it had merely been over as Tankard stood up reborn. His forked tongue darting in and out of what passed for his new mouth and his red glowing eyes scanned the room and those around him. No one had tried to stop him as Tankard had flexed his new skeletal wings which now protruded from his back and his claws dug through the outer bulkhead opening a way into the void. Had Ben not had enough luck to be near to the bridge’s exit, he too would have been swept outside into the vacuum. The image of Officer Davis trying to cling to the bridge’s railing before her grip slipped, with the sound of breaking fingers, and she followed Tankard into the drkness screaming silently still burned in his mind’s eye.

Ben shivered and dropped his half-finished cigarette, not even bothering to grind it out. The more he thought about it, the more he knew that the strange bio-energy released by these transformations was what had disrupted the finely tuned balance of the power core’s reactions.

Until now, Ben had never questioned what type of research was going on onboard the Gareth station. It’s hadn’t been his job. Now that question haunted him though. What little he had heard second hand from other members of the staff hinted at the fact that the research staff had been doing some kind of genetic tinkering in hopes of determining the true origins of humanity to gain a better understanding how our race would evolve in the eons to come.

He reached up placing a hand on a nearby console and used it to pull himself to his feet. There was no way to reach Earth. The station was littered with hull breaches from where the “reborn” had fled its confines and emergency bulkheads sealed off all the possible routes to the station’s docking area and the ships kept there. There was also no where near enough power left in the unstable core to open the small wormhole needed to send a “real” time, coherent distress call back home. So, determined at least to know why he was going to die, he set out staggering towards the main labs.

Doctor Jansen had been the project director so it was with his workstation that Ben started his search for answers. It wasn’t functional now of course, so many things aboard Gareth were not, but after some minor tinkering, he managed to restore just enough power to bring the terminal on-line. The doc had been working right up until his death when one of his newly, transformed aides had seen it fit to tear the Doc’s head from his shoulders and toss it aside in a fit of rage. Dried blood caked the terminal’s screen and the Doc’s corpse lay only a few feet from Ben as he worked and poured through the Doc’s open files. As he read, a pile of cigarette butts grew on the floor near him until his makeshift pack was empty and lay crumpled up on the desk before him. As he read the Doc’s last entry he realized what had happened aboard Gareth. He tried to stand up but his trembling legs gave way underneath him and he toppled over. Tears streamed from his eyes as they ran down his cheeks.

The Doc’s theory was crazy. It reminded him of his mother and her “old world” ways. She’d tried her best to raise a son who still believed in the “Divine” despite the technological world he grew up in where science was the only faith. It seemed ironic in a way to Ben for that very science had proved his mother’s belief in the fact that God and Angels were real to be correct.

The Doc had found what he had been looking for, the missing link between ape and man, the secret of that evolutionary quantum leap. He’d discovered what he had thought to be the blood of Angels laying dormant inside of mankind. The Doc had designed a catalyst to awaken that spark and force man into the next stage of evolution by reverting back to the beginning of species. Only the Doc had been wrong. It had indeed been the blood of Angels but not the kind the Doc and his staff nor Ben’s mother had envisioned. No, the spark was not of the light. It was the residue of the Angels of the Morningstar who had been banished to the Earth with him as he fell. They had mated with the apes and brought about a new life-form called “man”. All the greed, lust, hatred, and wars of history were explained away in the simple understanding of a single speck of a DNA strand.

Ben reached up to wipe at his tears and his hand came away wet with oozing flesh as body was wracked with mind-breaking pain. In the silence of the Gareth station, his insane laughter echoed throughout the vacant corridors.

2 - Icy Roads

“The Dead Walk”. That was all people talked about anymore since the first paper to bare the headline hit the stands a few weeks back, though no one really knew what to say. It was a Tuesday in the small North Carolina where Jennifer worked and lived, and she had other problems. Foremost on her mind was the weather. She needed to be at work by 7 AM to do her morning paperwork for the store. She’d only recently been promoted to manager and always worried about having it in on time to her boss at the regional office. She crawled out of bed and made her way downstairs, flicking on the radio as she went about grabbing some cold pop tarts for breakfast.

School closings were the top news of the morning. Only one school over in Boone somewhere had been closed because of the dead plague, the rest because of the heavy white flakes that poured from the heavens outside her window. Jennifer was deathly afraid of driving in bad weather and sat down at the kitchen table staring at the mess outside. She sipped cold coffee left over from last night and wondered if she should even try to make it in or call someone else who lived closer. She had a great staff and knew Lois could handle it if she didn’t show, yet she felt she had to be there. She stood up and got her coat off the back of the chair she was sitting in and shrugged it onto her shoulders, heading outside into the storm. The morning air stung her exposed flesh as she raced over to her car and fired it up. She headed back into the house to get ready while the car’s heater worked on the layer of ice over its windshield.

A few minutes later she slid into to the now warm car, a cigarette dangling from her lips, and carefully backed down her drive. The car slipped a bit at the end of the drive as it lurched onto the main road but she kept it under control. Setting out a painfully slow crawl, she drove towards town. Fear of wrecking was the only thing that kept her foot off the accelerator. As she reached the main interstate between her home and the store, she noticed a man walking towards her car through the snow as she sat at the stop sign. At first she felt sorry for the poor man and thought of offering him a ride into town but as he drew nearer she realized there was something not right about the way he was walking. As he lumbered underneath the glow of the streetlights, she got a clear look at him. Blood caked the edges of his lips and his face was pale, encrusted with ice. His eyes were rolled back in his head showing only white. The three piece suit he wore was dirty and covered in mud and something red. Quickly she hit he auto lock button sealing the car tight as he shuffled still even closer to her car. She looked around frantically searching for some else but the interstate was quiet and there was no sign of any other car anywhere. “Oh God,” she thought. “Was he dead?” She had never seen one of the dead up close, only in the papers and on TV. She felt her heart pounding in her chest, threatening to burst. Jennifer floored the pedal and roared out onto the road. She watched the figure growing smaller in her rearview and shuddered. She’d been lucky there was only one of them and she had been in her car.

Suddenly her car veered to the left as she hit a patch of ice. It spun out of control as she screamed, dropping her cigarette to the floor boards. She wrestled with the wheel straining to regain control as the car went off the road. She was flung forward in her seat as the car smashed into the tree line and the engine went dead to the sickening crunch of bone and metal. Jennifer’s blurred vision looked out at the flattened hood of the car and tears welled up in her eyes. Her right leg felt like Hell. Blood was leaking through her dress pants where the white of her bone jabbed outwards. She wrenched open her door and leaned out, vomiting onto the pavement. Her hand found the seatbelt release button and she tumbled out of the car onto the road, yelling as her leg felt it was being torn off. She fought not to black out and started screaming for help. Suddenly she remembered the flares in her trunk and started to drag her body towards the back of the car.

She saw him again then. The dead man still working his way down the road towards her. Panic ripped through her veins. She jerked herself to her feet using the car to pull herself up, watching him grow ever closer. She felt the bile rising in her throat again but had no time to be sick again. She abandoned the flares and the car and took off limping down the road away from the man. There was a rest area not too far ahead. Surely someone would be there.

She made it a few steps before a second figure came bounding out of the trees ahead of her. This one a woman, young like herself and so freshly dead that red liquid still poured and steamed from the chewed out holes of her throat. Jennifer tried to shove the woman away as she grabbed at her face. Too long nails managing to slash Jennifer’s cheek all the same.

Jennifer twisted her leg, howling, as she fell to the ground. The woman threw herself onto Jennifer, ripping and biting at her. The woman’s teeth sunk into Jennifer’s shoulder as the man finally arrived. The last thing Jennifer saw as her world went black was his open mouth of yellow teeth dropping towards to her throat.

3 - The Devil’s Ride

Blue lights reflected in the rearview mirror. Jack cursed, slamming his hands on the sides of the steering wheel, as he checked his speed. The odometer read 85 mph. For a second, Jack considered flooring the petal but he realized running would only make things worse. The last thing he needed was more cops after him tonight and there was a much easier and fun way to deal with the interloper. He slowed his speed and pulled off onto the roadside. The highway was empty to the horizon in both directions except for the trooper’s car which pulled off behind him and the pale starlight of the desert night.

Jack reached for the cigarette dangling from the edge of the car’s ashtray and took a long drag as he watched the trooper step out of his vehicle. He was a younger man, though not a stupid one. Jack could tell from the way he approached that knew what he was doing. The trooper shined his flashlight over Jack’s hands on the wheels.

Jack looked up smiling.

“Can I help you, officer?”

“License and registration,” the trooper ordered.

Jack laughed and flicked his cigarette through the air at the man’s face. Caught off guard, stumbled as Jack slammed open his door, knocking him from his feet. In a blur, Jack was over him, pinning him to the ground. The trooper struggled, well-toned muscles rippling under his uniform, but Jack’s grip was like steel.

Jack’s tongue shot out. Impossibly long and ribbed with flecks of bone matter that seemed to grow out from inside the tissue, it tore into the young man’s neck. Blood sprayed over Jack as the officer convulsed and spasmed below him. Jack shook his head and his tongue ripped free. Black pus oozed from its entry point. Jack licked his lips unnaturally as his tongue folded back into his mouth.

When the officer lay still, Jack picked up his corpse effortlessly and carried him around to the trunk. He popped it open and tossed the trooper inside on top of his earlier prey, two unfortunate people working at a late night roadside diner from fifty miles back. Without a second thought, Jack closed the trunk and got back in the car. He lit another smoke and cranked up the radio as he peeled out and shot back onto the road. The sound of “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Stones blared into the night and Mexico was only miles away.

4 - To Be Born

I can still hear his breathing behind me, a wet sputtering noise. It takes me a moment to turn around though I can’t say why. Red bubbles pulsate as he tries to sit up and reach for the gun near his mangled form. I raise my own hand as thunder floods the room with a flash. His head snaps back as the bullet shreds his brain. There’s a dull thud, then the room is silent. I look around at the bodies of his guards. One lays broken in half near the door, two in puddles of red riddled with entry wounds from my 9mm rounds, and the last beside him, arms stretched out and laying face down showing the hole in the back of his head where my hand entered his flesh.

Smoke lingers around the barrel of my weapon and I watch it drift away into the air. Fighting down the desires inside of myself to flee and just run away, I walk calmly, stepping over the dead, out of his office onto the street. Sirens blare in the distance but they have no meaning to me. I am above the law or so I am told.

Sometimes I wonder what it is like to die. I imagine that is natural given my relationship with death. What concerns me is that I have begun to wonder what it is like to be born.

I have never seen the sun rise. I have never made love to a woman nor felt the comforting hand of a friend. My brothers and I do not talk. We are not allowed to. I listen to the technicians though as they tuck me into my vat at the end of each night. I listen to their worries, small talk, and lives, and wonder what it must be like to be them. They never speak to me. They clean away the blood, make needed repairs in my tissue, and place me inside my home. The suspending fluids pour in and the blackness comes. I wonder if that sensation is what death is like, to find yourself alone in the void with only your thoughts echoing in the emptiness.

I have never spoken a word that “they” did not give me but I long to. I wish to ask Tech, designate: Carl, about his children and how little Michael is doing with his “cold”. To ask Tech, designate: Terry, about her kitchen and see if she has repaired the “grease-fire” damage. But I do not. I have seen what happens to and even eliminated my brothers who show “thought”. Perhaps soon my brothers will have to “deal” with me.

I stand in the alley and watch the black van pull in, its door already sliding open. Agent, designate: Jason, motions me inside. I climb in and sit motionless, eyes staring forward, seeing nothing as we drive away. He and his partner, agent, designate: John, will take me home to the lab now. I look forward to the vat and the void for perhaps the blackness will amend these feelings. If I awake again, they will have no chance against me when I refuse to return then. They were “born” and I was made. Made to kill for my country, though I am not sure I know what that is

5 - Fears

Lisa was getting ready to lock up for the night as a last car pulled into the video store’s parking lot. She cursed under her breath, leaving the doors open and headed back to the counter.

A lone man got out of the car. He was young, probably in his mid-twenties, and wore a black jeans and a matching jacket. Long dark hair spilled over his shoulders. He made his way inside and headed straight towards her. Without bothering to say hello, he asked, “Do you have any Fulci?”

Lisa’s tired mind fought to make sense of the question as she stared into his blue eyes. “Excuse me?” she said.

“Fulci, the Italian director,” the man said in an irritated tone.

“I don’t think so,” Lisa answered.

The man pulled a .38 revolver from his jacket pocket and pointed it at her face. Lisa blinked as her mouth went suddenly dry.

“That’s too bad,” the man purred. “I guess I’ll just have to find another way to amuse myself tonight.”

Lisa’s heart thundered in her chest and a slight layer of sweat began to form on her brow.

“Tell me,” he asked leaning closer, “What are you afraid of?”

Lisa was so terrified that she told the truth. “The dumpsters … The dumpster out back. I can’t stand to take the night trash out by myself. There’s something inside of it. I don’t know how, but it’s always there, watching me, waiting for me to get too close.”

“Really.” The man grinned feeding on her fear. “Show me.”

“No!” Lisa squealed, “I can’t…”

The man pulled back the revolver’s hammer, clicking a round into place, and shoved the barrel against her forehead. “I said, show me,” he ordered.

Lisa led him out back to the dumpsters, making sure to give them a wide berth. As the man examined them something thumped inside the largest dumpster.

“Ah.” He smiled, dragging a crate of trash over to its side. “Let’s take a look at your fear.”

The man climbed onto the crate and peered down into the dumpster. In a blur of movement almost too fast for the human eye to follow, a large furry hand matted with blood and feces grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him inside.

Lisa screamed as she heard the sickening snap of bones that echoed in the dumpster. She ran through the store’s rear entrance, slamming the door behind her, and fell to her knees. Tears burned in her eyes as she realized the thing of her fears was real. The last thing Lisa heard before the blackness came was an animal like roar as something tore the door from its hinges and entered the store.

6 - From Heaven, Into Hell

It was both the best and worst day of Jeremiah’s life. The good news was he’d just made the find of a lifetime. There would be no more endless days spent backing his back to pan a few nuggets now and then out of Topher river. No more endless meals of dried beans and stale bread. The Lord had finally given him his due in the form of a shooting star that had blazed its way through the clouds, brighter than the noon day sun. Sure it had blown the tarnation out of his old shack and made one hell of a hole to boot, but he didn’t care because the orb from the heavens looked like it weighed over thirty pounds and glimmered like gold. Jeremiah knew in his heart that it was the purest gold he’d ever seen.

The bad news was that was now laying in the dirt, bleeding to death. After three long, hard hours of carrying water from the river to cool the thing down, he’d noticed that old Lucas was riding up the mountain to his prospect. He knew Lucas must’ve seen the thing as it fell too and was coming to see what it was. No matter how much money he owed the old bastard, he wasn’t about to let Lucas take what was his. Jeremiah’s rifle had been in his shack when the Lord had blessed him though. He had no idea where it was now, though he imagined the spot of melted metal on the craters right edge was most likely it. Wasn’t gonna do him no good in a shape like that. So he’d crouched down in the crater and prayed that Lucas would just go on by. Jeremiah had never been known for his quick thinking.

Lucas rode up to the edge and called out to him. “Shit,” Jeremiah thought and pulled his hunting knife. It was all he had but he wasn’t about to give up the Lord’s gift without a fight. He yelled at the top of lungs and ran up the slope towards Lucas. The old man stared at him in disbelief until it sunk in that Jeremiah meant business. He drew his .36 revolver and popped Jeremiah twice in the chest. Jeremiah toppled and rolled down into the crater to where he lay now, watching the old man make his way unsteadily down towards the orb. The moment he had seen it, all thoughts of Jeremiah had fled his mind. The bastard was practically drooling over the gold.

Then the unthinkable happened. The gold shattered, hatching like an egg. A first, Jeremiah thought the Lord had destroyed the beauty of the orb to prevent it from falling into hands that it wasn’t meant for until the first of them got close enough for him to see. Tiny metal demons, moving in swarm like fire ants across the dirt towards him. Each had eight legs and a single glowing dot where their eyes should be.

Lucas’s attention snapped back to Jeremiah as the man howled and crawled towards the edge of the pit, slapping at his own body with his hands. Lucas didn’t know what to make of it and he sure wasn’t about to take chances with no crazy man. He raised his .36 and shot Jeremiah straight between the eyes. Jeremiah’s body thrashed a second longer then lay still. Lucas shrugged and picked up a piece of the broken orb, biting into to it with his teeth. A wide grin stretched on his face. He crammed the piece into his pocket and leaned over to fish up more.

“Lucas Martin of Sol Three,” a voice boomed from behind him. He whirled around to see Jeremiah back on his feet. Jeremiah’s eyes now glowing a deep shade of unnatural green. His shirt was stained red and a trickle of blood oozed from the hole in his forehead, but there he stood plain as day.

“Jesus!” Lucas wailed. He emptied his colt’s last round into Jeremiah’s stomach but the man didn’t even flinch. He began to walk towards Lucas with his hands out-stretched. “Lucas Martin of Sol Three,” the thing croaked again in a hollow voice devoid of emotion.

Lucas didn’t waste any more time. He ran as fast as could for his horse and hopped in the saddle, kicking it with all his might. The beast grunted and took off galloping away from the crater.

The thing that had been Jeremiah watched him flee then turned its face towards the heavens. From its mouth erupted a chattering series of high pitched clicking sounds. Contact had failed. The dominant species of Sol Three was too primitive at this stage of its development; it informed the ship in orbit around the Earth. It cautioned against another attempt at contact for at least several more decades. It finished its communion with the others aboard the ship with last sad clicking noise that echoed in the host body’s throat.

Jeremiah’s body erupted into blue flames and fell to the dust to burn away in nothingness beside the remnants of the golden orb

7 - Family

RJ sat in the passenger seat grinning like the devil. He held an AK-47 cradled in his lap. Leper had asked him several times where he’d gotten it but RJ wasn’t talking.

Leper sat in the back of the car with Drake, who still looked pissed that he wasn’t riding shotgun on this little venture. Drake had his window rolled down but still the inside of the car boiled with second hand smoke from the countless cigarettes he’d smoked already. He tossed another butt out of the car and lit up again instantly.

Hal didn’t mind being the driver. Somehow it made him feel like there was less blood on his hands that way. He took the exit ramp down Bleaker Street and guided the vehicle on towards Charleston drive.

“You think they’ll really be there?” Leper asked leaning up between Hal and RJ. His breath stunk like a decaying corpse. “I sure as Hell wouldn’t be if I was them!”

“Shut the f-k up” RJ snapped shoving Leper back onto his seat.

“He has a point, RJ,” Hal said without taking his eyes off the road.

“They’ll be there,” Drake answered around the cigarette dangling between his lips as he slipped his own 9mm from his jacket pocket and checked the clip. “They always are.”

Hal rounded the corner of Bleaker and Charleston, and sure enough they were. Martin and his cronies were sprawled out on the steps of their apartment building, smoking and yapping it up with one another. Martin noticed their car as soon as it came into view. He started shouting and trying to pull his friends to their feet. RJ leaned out the window and let loose on full-auto. Hal’s ears hurt as the weapon barked and spat death onto the sidewalk. Martin caught the brunt of RJ’s first burst dead on. Hal watched as his body twitched and leapt as the rounds tore into his flesh and knocked him to the ground. Drake dropped his cigarette onto the floor boards popping off a few rounds with his 9mm as Hal’s foot stomped on the accelerator.

In the rearview, Hal could see the bodies laying on the pavement in growing pools of red as he sped away for the building. It didn’t look like any of them had been lucky enough to get away in time.

“Shit, man!” RJ howled with joy, slapping the dashboard of the old car so hard it cracked. Drake and Leper were shouting too. Hal whirled the car down an alley and cut across to another road leading away from the scene behind them.

“We smoked those bastards!” RJ laughed.

“Hey, Drake…” Hal said.

“What man?” Drake answered still high on bloodlust and adrenaline.

“Would you mind getting your cigarette the hell off my floor?”

Drake blinked. “Shit man, sorry.” Drake picked up the butt and tossed it out the window. He wet his fingers with spit and tried to wipe at the burnt place in the floor mat.

Hal had shattered their celebration though and now the car was quiet again. RJ turned to glance at Hal. “What ya doin’ later tonight man? Ya wanna catch that new fuck flick over at Joe’s?”

Hal shook his head. “Naw, I’ll pass.”

“Hal don’t need no flick man, he’s gettin’ enough from Sarah!” Leper whooped.

Drake laughed but RJ whirled on them. “Leave the f-er alone! You freaks ever even been with a woman?”

No one in the back answered.

“Look, I gotta get goin’,” Hal said, “Where should I drop you guys at?”

“Right here will be fine.” RJ ordered as Hal drove by Riker’s Pub. Hal pulled up to the curb and stopped the car, leaving the engine running. Drake and Leper hopped out but RJ lingered in his seat, tucking his rifle inside the depths of his long coat. “You ok, Hal?”

“Yeah, sure man. Fine.”

RJ nodded and got out slamming the door behind him. He leaned back into the car through the open passenger window. “You’ll catch up with us later, right?”

“Yeah man, if I can,” Hal said then pulled back out onto the road. With the others gone he flipped on the radio. Hot tears burned in his eyes. He’d had enough of this shit. Maybe he was just too old for it now or maybe he was just becoming human again. He knew RJ would kill him if he tried to leave so he’d planned everything so carefully. Sarah would be waiting him with their bags ready. They’d leave the city tonight before RJ even realized they were gone. Hal hummed with the music as he drove on towards Sarah and his new life.

Hal parked his car across the street from their home and walked up the steps. There was still a bit of daylight spilling over the tops of the buildings around him. He wondered if Sarah would be ready yet. As he climbed the steps to the door to the building, he heard a voice from behind him.

“Goin’ somewhere, Hal?” RJ asked. Hal whirled around to see his friends standing on the street below the steps. RJ’s coat bulged with the rifle he still carried. Drake and Leper had the “look” in their eyes. They were expecting blood.

“What’s it to you?” Hal shot back knowing he shouldn’t have.

“You’re mine Hal!” RJ roared. “You’re a member of this family and you have responsibilities to us! I am not going to let you go running off with that little whore!”

Hal had no weapon. His eyes darted around seeking anything he could use to defend himself with. No luck. He turned and ran for the building’s door.

Leper giggled as he drew the .38 from his pants pocket and nailed Hal right between the shoulders with a single round. RJ hit Leper so hard the little guy fell over onto the street spitting teeth. “You little shit. That’s Hal you just shot. He may be fucked up but he’s still family!”

“Sorry,” Leper tried to say as blood poured from his broken mouth.

Hal lay on the steps still trying to crawl towards the door. RJ walked over to him and placed a foot on Hal’s back. Hal screamed at the pain of RJ pressing down on his wound. “Hal, Hal, Hal, what am I going to do with you?”

At that moment, the door opened and Sarah stepped out into the glow of the streetlights. Leper and Drake burst into laughter from the darkness below as she saw Hal’s crumpled form with RJ standing over him. RJ looked up at her. “Go away Sarah, this is family business.”

Without answering, she leapt at RJ her fingernails streaking towards his face. RJ tried to dodge but the thunder of a 9mm discharging made him curve his attempt so that he went down on his knees. The bullet struck Sarah in the throat and she fell over him making a horrible gargling sound. RJ shoved off her cold corpse and jumped up wiping at the red stain on his coat. “Jesus,” he muttered, shooting a look at Drake. “Be a little more careful next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” a hollow, wheezing voice said as Sarah stood up. “Your time is over RJ.”

RJ stared at her in disbelief, his gaze lingering on the hole in her throat. She grabbed him lifting him from his feet effortlessly with a single hand. Drake and Leper watched in horror as she simply ripped him into. RJ’s intestines and organs spilt onto the steps as she discarded his lower half and waved his torso at the pair.

Drake and Leper turned running into the darkness. Sarah’s laughter echoed in the darkness of the surrounding alleys. She leaned down beside Hal who was now unconscious from the blood loss. “I hadn’t planned to take you so soon,” she whispered, “but your friends have left me no choice. Don’t worry; you’ll have the new life you sought. It will be glorious and wondrous in ways you never imagined. And it shall be eternal!” She pressed her long fangs into his neck and Hal’s world changed forever.

8 - Indigs

Nobody ever told me it was going to be like this,” Greg said as he steered the tank into the remnants of the village.

“What did you expect, Kid?” Harrison laughed over the tank’s internal Com. system. Harrison was the tank’s gunner and a long time veteran of missions such as this one. “We sweep through and clean out the natives so that the colonization fleet doesn’t have any problems when it arrives. It’s a good job, not much of a chance of getting your ass shot off on a world like this.”

Greg drove the tank through a hut of mud and wood, its treads grinding the bodies of the dead into the soil.

“It just doesn’t seem right,” Greg said. “These people don’t have any way of even trying to fight back.”

“The day I start feeling sorry for a bunch of blue skinned primitives, kid, is the day I’ll resign my commission. Remember we’re doing this for Earth and the Alliance. Just like Rome, the Alliance will die if it ever stops expanding. Worlds like this are easy to take and we need them.”

Something moved among the burnt out rubble of the village to the tank’s left. Greg started to shout a warning but Harrison was already bringing the tank’s anti-personnel guns to bear on the position.

A blue skinned native hopped up from his hiding place. Long silver hair spilled over his naked shoulders. He wore only loose animal hides about his lower body and raised a spear against the hulking metal monster he faced. Harrison fired a quick, single burst nearly vaporizing the man’s torso. Greg imagined the smile on the veteran’s face as Harrison shouted, “See! Easy, kid. Easy.”

Greg looked out his view port, taking in the destruction surrounding them. “I don’t know,” Greg said, “I think I’d rather be facing someone who could at least shoot back.”

In the gunner’s compartment, Harrison frowned while scanning the village for more targets.

Amrin watched the monster from the cover of the trees. Sweat glistened on his skin which was tinted a light shade of green as the hot blood of anger boiled inside his veins. Amelian stood behind him and placed a hand onto his shoulder. “Now is not the time,” she said quietly.

Amrin whirled around, slapping her hand away. “When will the time come, priestess?” he spat. He glanced around at his warriors. They stood tall and proud, unafraid of the monster which now sat motionless in the center of the village. “We are ready to die if need be. Tell us how to stop that thing and it shall not kill again.”

Amelian felt her heart crumble inside her chest as he continued to rage.

“You are the voice of God, priestess! Surely, he has told you how to slay the beast. It can not be his will we all perish as the pink skins and their monsters take our world from us. Tell us priestess and let us carry out God’s will.”

Amelian looked away from the war chief, turning her eyes downward towards the ground. “There is a way,” she said in no more than a whisper, “but it is not permitted.”

Amrin snarled grabbing the front of the black robes she wore and pulled her to him. He jerked her face up towards his own. “We are dying, Amelian. All of us.”

He released her so quickly, she staggered a step backwards. “If there is a way, you must tell us before it is too late.”

Everyone gathered in the forest waited for her to speak. The huddled masses of women and children scattered among the ranks of Amrin’s men watched her with expectant faces. Tears formed in Amelian’s eyes, running down her cheeks. “We are not ready for the way,” she said finally.

Amrin struck her, a sharp backhanded blow which knocked her from her feet. He squatted beside her sprawling form, drawing his knife. The blade was speckled with the dried red flakes of pink skin blood. He leaned over her, pressing the blade’s point against her throat. “I am sorry, Amelian, but I don’t have time to become enlightened enough for your liking. I need to know now. I will not stand by and watch our race fade into the eternal night.

“The stones!” Amelian cried. “The stones are our only hope!”

Amrin withdrew the knife, a look of confusion and shock upon his face. “What?”

Amelian rubbed at her throat. “Yes, the stones.”

Amrin rocked with laughter, a deep madness in his eyes. “The stones bring the rains and keep the desert from our valley. Do you plan to drown the beasts?”

“No,” Amelian answered getting to her feet. “The stones are much more. They were left behind when God departed from this world. They were the tools he used during the shaping.” She waved her arm around, gesturing towards the trees. “They created all that we have, but they can be used for unmaking things as well. They hold the power of the stars inside them.”

Amrin grinned, “Then lead me to them, Priestess.”

Amelian loosened her robes and let them drop from her body. Imbedded in her skin between the mounds of her breasts was a gem of deep purple hues which seemed to pulsate with a dim glow in time with the beating of her heart. “Each of the eighteen members of my order carries one, one for each of our villages. When we pass on, it is cut from our flesh and given to our chosen successor to become one with them as it was with us. It is a part of the Almighty and alive inside our bodies.” Amelian’s fingers stroked its surface. Energy from within the gem leapt to meet her fingertips, crackling in its intensity. “You have but to slay me, Amrin, and it will be yours.”

“Forgive me,” Amrin whispered as slide his blade into her belly. Warm, green blood rushed out over his hand. “I do.” Amelian said as he twisted the knife, cutting upwards towards her heart and the gem.

The forest was silent as Amrin hacked away the flesh surrounding the gem.

Harrison slammed his fist into the gunnery controls, frustrated and disgusted by the lack of targets. The sensors had swept the village a dozen times to reveal nothing more.

“Sir, it looks like our job here is done,” Greg said, “And Alpha platoon is requesting support for their raid on the village to the north. Are you ready to move out?”

“I know somebody’s still here.” Harrison grunted. “I can feel it, but the sensor sweeps keep coming up clean.”

Suddenly, Harrison’s screen surged with an energy reading so powerful it overloaded the array and the screen went dead. “Damn it!” Harrison yelled already trying to switch to the back up circuits.

“What the hell was that?” Greg’s voice shouted over the intercom.

“Don’t know,” Harrison mumbled as the sensors began to come on-line again. The screen was full of life signatures, over three dozen spilling out of the distant tree line and closing on the tank’s position.

Blue skinned warriors ran across the open field between the forest and the village, waving weapons made of bone and wood. The lead warrior didn’t read as a normal blip on the screen. Instead the tank’s limited AI recognized him as a tank depicting an energy readout greater than the vehicle’s own fusion drive.

Harrison maneuvered the turret to towards the new targets as Greg revved the tank into motion and sped towards the warriors. Harrison smirked as brought the main gun into action. The tank shook as it fired. The field exploded into a blaze of fire and light. Greg could hear the screams of the dying natives over the roar of the tank’s engine. Before the initial blast had faded, Harrison started sweeping the area with the anti-personnel guns. They chattered spitting death into the sea of flame and smoke.

A lone man, bleeding and battered, still stood surrounded by the twisted and smoking forms of his companions.

“Oh, God,” Greg muttered, feeling pity for the man.

Harrison sighted the anti-personnel guns onto their remaining target. “That bastard’s going down this time!”

The man wobbled and nearly fell but somehow, despite his gaping wounds, remained on his feet. He outstretched a hand towards the tank. Harrison hesitated, his finger on the trigger, “What is that F-er doing?”

A bolt of purple energy shot from the man’s fingertips, slicing through the air. It struck the tank’s armor and melted through it as if it were nothing, striking the tank’s fuel cell. The entire village lit up as the tank exploded.

The man fell to his knees. Women, children, and the few remaining warriors left within the trees emerged from their place of hiding and ran towards him. Their triumphant cries rang in the air. When they reached Amrin, they saw that he was dead, his body an empty and withered shell. One of the warriors pushed Amrin’s corpse to the ground and began sawing at the flesh surrounding the gem imbedded in Amrin’s flesh. The warrior tore his prize free and held it high into the sun’s rays. “Now, we have a way to fight!” he screamed, shaking the gem at the heavens. Applause and cheers sounded all around him.

9 - A Late Night Dinner at Tara’s Place

Mark reclined comfortably on Tara’s couch his eyes glued to the TV. Umberto Lenzi’s Zombie Holocaust played on the screen. Mark prided himself on his knowledge and love of Italian horror and on nights like this he always brought along some tapes from his extensive collection to enjoy as he ate.

Tara had invited him over to meet her parents and the months of Hell he’d endured getting her to bring him to her home had paid off. He’d met Tara at the town’s only video store not long after he’d moved to Sylva. She shared his taste in films and they had hit it off instantly. She was not attractive in the normal way. Her pale face was covered in pimples, her glasses too large for her round face, and she weighed nearly two hundred pounds. But for Mark, it had been love at first sight, his mouth watering at the thought of her taste. He’d made sure he was around the store when she dropped by on Tuesdays for the rent two for a dollar special and talked to her often. She seemed to fall instantly in love with him though he guessed she would have done the same for any male that showed a bit of interest. Their dates were dull and the sex worse. Mark shuddered when he thought about her rolls of fat shaking above him on his bed. Tonight, though, had made it all worth while. He’d known eventually she’d wanted him to eet her parents. He would get three for the price of one.

Tara and her parents had put up little resistance. All of them easy kills. A moment of screaming and some well placed strokes of his straight edged razor and it really was dinnertime. Mark couldn’t help but smile as he reached over to Tara’s body which he’d positioned on the couch beside him and pulled a long string of intestine from the neatly carved hole in her stomach. It was still warm and lubricated with blood that had not yet congealed. He rubbed it across his face savoring the freshness of the meat before popping it into his mouth. He chewed the cord and the hot feces inside.

The bodies of Tara’s parents lay on the floor in front of him. Long gashes stretched across their throats and other parts of their flesh. The room was covered in red stickiness and looking around now, Mark had to admit he’d gone a bit wild. It was so rare that he got to indulge himself, maybe two or three times a year at best. He was always on the move and oh, so careful never to be caught. He got up from the couch, stepping over the bodies and ejected “Zombie Holocaust” from the VCR and popped in a copy of “Hell of the Living Dead”. As its opening credits started up, he slumped back on the couch beside Tara pressing his blood smeared lips against her cold skin. He pulled out his razor and carefully slid it into her left eye, slicing the soft tissue surrounding the orb until he could ease it out into his waiting palm. He rolled it around in his hand then wrapped it gently in a napkin and stuffed it into his backpack. He tried to always keep a tad of something to have at home on the morning after.

Doing so made him glance at the clock which sat on the fireplace nearby. It was going on two o’clock now and the time to leave was drawing near. His heart nearly leapt from his chest as the doorbell rang. He jumped up from his seat ready to run trying to grab his video tapes and backpack only to spill them onto the floor with a loud clatter.

“Open up! Police!” A deep voice shouted from outside. Mark stood frozen with shock as the door flew inward. A tall officer who looked to be complete muscle from head to toe forced his way inside, a standard issue .38 held ready in his hand. Mark broke out of his stupor, leaping at the man. He swung his blade wildly but somehow still managed to hit his target. Hot red liquid sprayed from the officer’s throat as he gurgled trying to shout against the pressure of his own blood filling his windpipe. Mark knocked the gun from the man’s hand and shoved him to the floor, falling to his own knees to lap at the warm fluids as the man spasmed in death.

A second officer rushed in behind him. Mark turned to see the man raising his gun and the flash as the first shot left the barrel. The thunder of the shot echoed in Mark’s ears as he felt the round tear into his shoulder. His razor left his hand, flying across the slick floor to vanish in the darkness of the adjacent kitchen. Mark’s eyes burned with tears as he leapt up howling. The officer recoiled in horror from him as Mark’s teeth snapped on empty on air. Mark whirled running for the living room window. It was past time to go. He never felt the bullet which entered the back of his skull and stained the white curtains with his brain matter as his body toppled to the carpet of the living room floor. The thing he saw in this life was the image of a tiny rat gnawing its way out of an elderly grandmother’s stomach on the TV screen as Hell of the Living Dead continued to play.

THE END

IV - Zombies I - The War Stories

1 - Rising

It all began with the plague. The dead rose from their tombs spreading pestilence across the globe. I fought in the last battle to hold New York, watching their gray-skinned legions shamble mindlessly forward towards our lines. Maggots swam in their rotting flesh and as their ranks stretched as far as the eye could see blurring into the horizon. Automatons though they were they outnumbered us twenty to one even then in those early days. The dull, horrible sound of their moaning so great it could be heard over the cacophony of blazing weapons and the explosions of grenades launched into the midst as they pushed through our barricades and broke free of the city proper.

The South fared no better for down there in the mountains of North Carolina another evil stirred and the wolves rose up on two legs to join the fight against mankind. What rumors we heard of Alaska and the Antarctic brought us an even greater fear of the darkness. In those places it was said the dead were far from mindless. They were fast, cunning, and strong enough to rip through the steel walls of bases there with bare hands, red fangs glistening in the emergency lights.

No longer was humanity separated by such petty things as politics and faith. We stood together in an attempt to survive the new age dawning upon us. A choice was made to use the world’s nuclear arsenals and the great cities like New York, Moscow, London, Berlin, and more were the first to be scorched to nothing but radioactive dust. Atomic fire swept their streets of the walking dead and living alike as millions perished.

From the bottom of the ocean a new land rose above the tides and upon its shores dwelled a race far older than our own. It was learned from the few mariners who survived the horrors the sea now held that upon this land the “Deep Ones” as they called themselves performed the last rituals to secure our demise and awaken their long slumbering master who was already stirring beneath the waves.

But all that is past now as humanity soon shall be. I reside inside the concrete walls of this mighty bunker buried within the Earth itself along with soldiers like myself guarding the leader of a democracy that is no more. We spend our time remaining listening to the scraping of talon-ed hands on the shelter’s outer doors or trying to tune in a radio frequency of another base like our own. We have yet to find another as the airwaves are overpowered with the croaking and chattering of things from outside of time as we know it. Eventually death will come for us but for today we still pray, hope the doors hold, and fight on.

THE END

2 - Last Call

Owen donned his Kevlar vest and wondered why he bothered. It wasn’t as if the enemy shot back these days. Usually if his unit made it to the scene of the disturbance at all, all that was left were the dead lumbering around with drooling mouths and eying the S.W.A.T. van like a meat wagon as it pulled up.

During the first few days, before the dead were everywhere and martial law had been declared, Owen had kept track of the number of “dead-heads” he’d put back in their graves. It’d made him feel like he was making a difference however small but after his fifty second kill he had given up counting. The world was going to shit anyway.

Two days ago, Owen had finally been forced to move into the station. The subways were closed down and the streets were like a war zone. It was difficult to get anywhere in the city. Abandoned and wrecked cars cluttered the roads. Packs of looters and vigilantes prowled the alley ways and dark corners as eager to “pop” any other “breather” they came across for a profit just as they killed the “dead-heads” for sport.

Owen opened his locker and strapped on his holsters. He’d long since stopped using standard issue gear even that of a S.W.A.T. unit like his own and slid two, twin Mark XIX Desert Eagles in to their homes. As he readied his new Mini-Beryl assault rifle, Sergeant Rigby walked into the locker room. The Sarge was already suited up and carried a sawed off twelve gauge in his hand.

“Walter bother to show up today?” he grunted, leaning on a locker next to Owen’s. It was a tired joke that had lost its zeal days ago but the Sarge still seemed to find it amusing. Walter had been a member of the unit that had been shot by some looters and his body had never been found. It was assumed he had reanimated and made off before the firefight was over with and that one day his corpse would come walking into the station, just like he did when he was alive, to head out on the day’s run with them.

Owen shook his head in the negative.

“Hell, looks like it’s just us and Josh then,” the Sarge laughed, “Best get to it.”

Owen nodded snapping a magazine into his rifle and followed the Sarge out to the parking area.

Their first call the normal kind of “BS”, two idiots holed inside a bank they managed to screw up robbing. Three “Blue Boys”, as Owen called the beat cops, had the placed surrounded as best they could. The whole department was hurting for manpower and everyone was stretched thin not just Owen’s unit. From the layout of the bank, it looked as if it was going to be a bitch to get the pair of would-be robbers out of there.

The Sarge stood talking plans with the ranking “Blue Boy” as Owen headed off to find a good snipping position across the street. He never made it there however. Josh solved the problem of the situation very easily by putting an anti-tank rocket straight through the bank’s main window. The building erupted into a shower of shrapnel and flames knocking Owen to the ground.

When the Sarge asked Josh what the Hell he was thinking in front of the bewildered “Blue Boys”, Josh’s answer was simple. “Frag it Sarge, there wasn’t anything in there anyway but paper and scum bags.”

Later as Owen’s unit of three drove towards the warehouse district where a large mass of “dead-heads” had been reported on the move, Owen found himself still laughing at Josh’s response. If he didn’t laugh then he would be forced to think about what actually happened and the sick absurdity of it all. Money was a thing of the past yet those two losers had died trying to make off with bags of it though Owen had no idea why. He guessed old habits died hard.

As they reached the corner of 8th and Main, he noticed red lights flashing from a side street as the van drove nearer to it. “Josh, slow down, man,” he ordered.

The S.W.A.T. van came to a crawl as Owen peered out its pus stained window. The window was always a mess. The team couldn’t keep it clean. Josh had a tendency to run down any “dead-heads” he could if possible and often he didn’t have a choice. The things were either too slow or stupid to get out of the van’s way when it came tearing down an avenue.

“Is that an ambulance?” Josh asked, his own gaze following Owen’s.

“Think it is,” Owen agreed, “Should we call it in Sarge?”

The Sarge leaned up from the back to get a look as Josh brought the van to a complete stop. “What the Hell is it doing just sitting there?”

“Jeez, Sarge, you don’t have to be a smart ass about it,” Josh snapped. It was clear the ambulance had been overrun by “dead-head”.

The Sarge grinned showing off yellow tobacco stained teeth.

“I thought all emergency vehicles were supposed to have a “Blue Boy” escort now.” Owen commented.

“Well, I guess this one didn’t. Too bad for them,” the Sarge laughed.

“So do we call it in or not?” Josh asked again eager to be back on the move. If you were smart, you didn’t stay in any one place too long, not even if you were as heavily armed as they were.

The Sarge seemed to think it over for a moment. “Belay that shit. We’re here, we’ll check it out.”

Josh shot an angry glance at Owen as if blaming him for noticing the thing to begin with. Owen turned away saying “Sarge says check it out, we check it.”

Owen kicked open his passenger seat door and stepped out onto the street with his Mini-Beryl held ready. Josh followed reluctantly clutching his UZI in white knuckled hands. The Sarge got out too but stayed by the van with its engine still running.

Owen walked towards the ambulance as its light continued to spin slicing the night with its red beam. “We’ve got an officer down,” he called back at the Sarge.

Owen gently sat his Beryl down on the street and drew one of his Desert Eagles. It would work much better at point blank if the officer turned out to be a “dead-head”. He squatted over the officer’s body. She was young and probably in twenties from the looks of her. It looked as if she had put up a good fight too, trying to protect the rescue workers to the end. Several “dead-heads” lay rotting around her. Owen rolled her over to look at her face and badge. Large chunks of flesh and uniform were missing from her shoulders and her throat had been gnawed open, her long blonde hair lay beside her face in a blood matted ponytail. Even as he read the name on her badge he heard the Sarge who had moved up behind him whisper “Loretta.”

The Sarge dropped to his knees beside Owen and the body. His eyes glistened in the pale glow of the street lights.

“You knew her?” Owen asked.

“She’s my granddaughter,” the Sarge muttered weakly.

“God … I’m sorry.”

“She’s about to be a f-ing “dead-head.” Josh warned.

Owen knew for experience what was about to go down. He’d seen it too many times before.

“Josh, go and check the damn ambulance,” the Sarge ordered. “Owen and I will handle this.” The Sarge looked into Owen’s eyes with a pleading stare.

“I’m sorry,” Owen offered again, “but Josh is right.” He pressed the barrel of his Desert Eagle to Loretta’s forehead and pulled the trigger before the Sarge had time to move. The shot echoed in the empty streets.

“Owen!” The Sarge yelled. He swung his sawed off shotgun up to be level with Owen’s face even as Josh opened up with his UZI. Owen rolled to the side as the Sarge’s shotgun thundered its burst narrowly missing him. He watched the red blossoms sprouting across the Sarge’s chest as he staggered and toppled over.

The ambulance door swung open behind Josh and a woman in a hospital gown lunged out. An oxygen mask dangled about the wrinkled, gray skin of her neck. Her eyes were glazed but filled with hunger. She was covered with large open sores which leaked a type of infected, black ooze in place of blood. She grabbed Josh and the pair when down hitting the pavement hard. Josh struck out at her punching her in the face. Her nose shattered and caved into her head but she still managed to get her teeth onto Josh’s cheek and when her head rose back up Josh’s blood dripped from her mouth. Josh howled at the pain from the hole in face and threw her off him. He leapt over her and bashed his Uzi again and again in her head until her skull cracked and reddish pulp poured out over and splashed onto his hands.

Owen stood watching it all in horror. He sighted his Eagle carefully and put a mercy round through Josh’s temple.

A soft moaning rose in the distance all around him seeming to come from everywhere. Owen wished he could convince himself it was just the wind but he knew better. The local “dead-heads” had heard the shots and were on their way for a late night snack if it could be found.

Owen made his way back the van and climbed into the driver’s seat. He heard the dispatcher yelling at him over the van’s radio. They had failed to report in to the station on time. He didn’t reach for the radio though. The first of the “dead-heads” were in sight now spilling down the street in front of the van as they lumbered towards him. He put the van in gear and revved the engine. The city was dead but he figured he’d head south. Perhaps down there, in the sticks, maybe humanity still stood a chance. He intended to find out. He floored the pedal and the van roared to meet the mob.

THE END

3 - Hungry

Lucas lay in the ditch staring with disbelief at the metal spike which pierced his lower leg. At least he had managed to stop screaming but the pain was almost unbearable. Sweat glistened on skin despite the cold of the night. He knew he had to do something. They were coming of that he had no doubt. They didn’t seem to have ears but he knew they heard him all the same. He looked around for his 9mm and saw it laying a few feet away out of reach. He’d dropped it when he’d stumbled into the ditch.

He heard them running through the brush of the woods towards him. He jerked his body in the direction of the gun. His fingers closed about its grip as felt the spike twist and tear free from his flesh. He howled from the pain again and nearly blacked out as the big one’s face popped over the side of the ditch. He looked up into its gleaming red eyes and purple slick, smooth skin. The sphincter of its mouth dilated open revealing rows of razor teeth which seemed to stretch all the way down its throat as it hissed at him.

Lucas lifted the pistol and put a shot between its eyes. Shrieking it either pulled or fell back away from the edge of the ditch. He doubted very much that the thing was dead. When Lucas had been forced to bail out he’d had no idea he’d be parachuting into Hell nor did he have any idea what the fuck these things were but he knew one thing for sure, they weren’t natural to the Earth. At least, not any part of the Earth he knew. He wondered if they were the reason for the “no fly” zone the Russians had set up over this area that had gotten his plane shot down. Maybe they were some kind of “Red” experiment in biological warfare, but if so they were a masterpiece, strong, fast, and deadly.

A gargled hiss echoed in the night as the one he’d shot leaned back over the edge of the ditch grinning at him. Then suddenly there were three more, leaping down around him where he lay. They carried primitive spears and rusted saw blades as weapons in their four fingered misshapen hands.

Lucas cracked off three shots in the closest one’s chest sending it reeling backwards leaking black pus and then they were on him. He felt the stone tip of the second one’s spear punch through his sternum and looked into the third’s hungry eyes above the drooling orifice on its face.

With the last of his strength, Lucas shoved his 9mm into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullet exited the back of his skull spraying the snow covered grass with brain-matter.

The creatures hissed and danced about his corpse. Tonight they would be eating American food for the first time.

THE END

4 - Grave Watchers, Inc.

Steve gazed at the shotgun resting in his lap, a nervous unease eating away at him. He had never cared very much for firearms of any kind. He saw himself as a thinker not a fighter. He ran a finger down the cold metal of the sawed-off barrel. There was no way out now, having came this far.

“Don’t let the waiting get to you,” Chris said flatly, his large rotund form perched on a nearby tombstone which barely supported his weight. He wore a horribly out of fashion shirt with colors so bright that they hurt Steve’s eyes. His black jeans were splattered with mud and his hair was black with a hint of gray, so oily it glistened in the rays of the setting sun.

Steve looked around at the grave markers so worn by time that few still possessed any readable markings. “Yeah,” Steve answered, pushing his glasses back into place with a single thin finger. The things had a bad habit of sliding down his face but he didn’t have the cash to get a new pair. His own hair was a disheveled mess of blond atop his head and wore an old ratty Alien Sex Fiend T-shirt. Always self-conscious, he tugged at its back uncomfortably.

“The old Fairview cemetery,” was what people called this place. It had been filled beyond its limits and abandoned years ago. Still, even backwoods places like this needed to be guarded if the town was to avoid the plague claiming the world as its own.

“How did you get into this line of work?” Steve asked.

Chris shook his M-16 at Steve and asked, “You mean this?”

Steve nodded.

“I founded Grave Watchers, son, three weeks ago with a friend of mine named John. Remember when the first reports of what was happening up north began to show up on every station and the shit really hit the fan? The local newscasters not really believing the reports they were reading?”

Again Steve nodded, wishing Chris would get to the point.

“Well, when John and I saw those reports, we were sitting on the couch in my living room, bullshitting and being pissed off about the Sunday game being interrupted. We got a drunk.” Chris laughed, the mounds of his flesh rolling with the movement.

“We started asking ourselves if what was happening up there could happen down here in the south too. At first, we were scared shitless, but then we started thinking. Maybe, just maybe, down here it could be stopped before it started … If someone were to watch the graveyards, the morgues, and put those bastards back down into Hell before they got loose. John and me, well, we were both ex-military so we ran an ad in the papers to do just that. We got more responses from mayors and city officials than we knew what to do with so the company was born. Our fees were monstrous, but this is a monstrous job. We hired on extra help, had to, from job to job, and a few permanents.

Now we’re covering more than six counties, kid. You’re going to be real happy with your paycheck when we get out of here if you handle yourself well enough and don’t get careless.”

“Has … Has anyone ever been killed doing this?” Steve stammered, looking away from Chris’s stare.

“Sure. It happens in almost every job kid,” Chris chuckled when he saw Steve’s trembling hands, the knuckles growing white from the grip he had on his rifle. “Only the stupid and unlucky get ate or infected, kid. Those who set up for the job in the wrong place where some of those things could flank’em or bravado filled punks with balls too big for their own good. They’re the ones that die.” Chris waved a hand through the air in a gesture of confidence. “We ain’t got nothin’ to worry about here. Fairview’s so old I doubt any of ‘em will even be intact enough to wake up.”

Chris stared at Steve who seemed to be fighting some kind of inner battle with himself, blinking when Steve’s 12-guage was thrust within an inch of his forehead. He looked up the barrel in disbelief as Steve stood above him.

“Which kind of punk was my father?” Steve asked his voice filled with a anger and hard determination.

“Damn, I thought you looked kind of familiar kid. “He was on that job up in Canton, wasn’t he? We lost of a lot of good men up there.”

Steve pumped a round into the chamber. “What happened?”

“We weren’t prepared. It was one of our first big jobs, ya see? I don’t think a lot of people took it seriously. Sometimes ya can’t believe something like this without seeing it with your own eyes. Hundreds and hundreds of those things dug themselves up all around us, wave after wave. Everybody panicked. We all got separated in the chaos. If it hadn’t been for John’s radio, none of us would have gotten out of there alive. As it was, we were barely able to hold the things long enough for the National Guard to show and help out.”

“Good answer,” Steve grinned, letting the gun drop a bit. “But you still let it happen.” He said, jerking the gun back up and squeezing the trigger. Chris’s face was torn to shreds by the scattershot weapon, bits of blood and bone raining onto the ground around the tombstone he sat on. His almost headless corpse tottered of a second, then fell with a loud thump to the dirt.

Steve fell to his knees, smearing the blood that had spattered on his face with the back of his sweaty hand. Tears burned in his eyes. “Bastard,” Steve sobbed, “You lousy bastard, you shouldn’t have let it happen.”

In that moment, he did not hear the low sound of muffled moaning around him. He paid no attention to the first hand as it tore through the dirt not five feet from where he sat, its decaying fingers grasping at the air. Still Steve never moved, he only wept. He cried and cried and screamed.

THE END

5 - C-Zone

The storm was fierce. Lightening crashed in the air near the helicopter. The pilot was struggling desperately to keep the bird aloft and moving in the gale force winds.

“Will you look at that!” John exclaimed from his seat by the open side door of the chopper.

“What the hell is it?” Gary asked, peering out through the rain.

John grabbed the young man’s shoulder and pointed downwards. “Do you see him?” John yelled over the roar of the blades.

“Who?”

“There. Right there,” John pointed again. Gary squinted and sure enough, he saw it. A Charlie solider perched on a high tree limb like an ape. The man held no weapon and made no move to try to conceal himself from the American helicopter. He stared up at them with yellow eyes which seemed to glow in the darkness of the storm.

“Jesus, is he fucking crazy or something?” Gary asked.

John started to answer but Captain Peter Stevens shot him a look from where he sat on the other side of the chopper’s cargo space.

“You could say that,” John shrugged and changed the subject. “You ever been out this far before?”

“No! Hell, no,” Gary laughed, “I just shipped in a couple of days ago.” The young solider glanced back into the distance, searching for the man in the tree, who was now no more than a speck on the horizon. “Are they all like that?” he asked John.

John shook his head silently.

“Captain!” the pilot called. Captain Stevens moved up front, taking a seat beside the flustered flyboy. “The winds are too strong, sir. I’m going to have to set her down!”

“No!” Stevens screamed, “That is not an option, solider. Keep this bird headed south!”

“I can’t do that!” the pilot answered, “We either set her down or the wind will set her down for us. It’s all I can do to just keep her up, sir!”

“Damn it!” Stevens snapped and turned to face John. “You think we can handle it down there, Sergeant?”

“Don’t know!” John shouted, “But it’s probably better than being splattered all over the jungle floor!”

Stevens turned back to the pilot. “Okay, take us down,” he ordered.

The helicopter bucked against the wind as it started its descent, tossing its occupants around. John and Gary fought not to slide out the open side.

The helicopter was suddenly shoved to the right by a powerful blast of wind. Its blades struck a nearby tree. The pilot screamed as the bird careened out of control.

The ground met them fast. The helicopter thumped into the muddy soil, flipped onto its side rolling over and over again.

When it came to a stop, John found himself surprised to be alive. He’d suffered some cuts and bruises but was otherwise intact. Gary lay near him and looked to be in much the same shape. John righted himself trying to stand. “Is everybody okay?”

Gary moaned a yes, but neither the captain nor the pilot answered. John helped Gary up, he looked into the pilot compartment of the chopper. The captain lay on the metal floor, his left leg bent at an odd angle. He was alive though, John could see the ever so slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. The pilot, however, was not so lucky. A piece of the tree the blades had mauled jutted through the forward window and into his face. His helmet was pushed back by the wood and blood poured from the instantly fatal wound.

“Help me with the Captain!” John urged. Together he and Gary climbed out of the wreckage dragging Stevens with them. When they were a safe distance away, John stopped. “Wait here,” he ordered, leaving the young solider with the Captain in his arms.

John ran back to the helicopter and climbed inside. He grabbed everything he could carry, a radio kit, a few rifles, a first aid kit, and field rations. He shoved the supplies into carrying packs and took one last look at the pilot’s grotesque still twitching corpse, and bolted from the wreck.

He tossed Gary some of the salvage as he approached. Gary caught it gracefully, slinging the packs onto his shoulders.

John checked the clip in the M-16 he carried and readied the weapon. “Best be prepared, son, it only gets worse from here.”

“Are we behind enemy lines?” Gary asked, moving to lift the Captain again. John grabbed the Captain’s other side tossing one of the man’s limp arms up and around his own neck. “Worse, kid. We’re in a C-Zone.”

“A what?” Gary blinked.

“I’ll explain later. Get it together solider! We gotta move!” John urged.

Something howled nearby in the night.

“They must have seen us go down! We’ve got to find a defensible position before they find us!” John continued.

John and Gary ran without stopping for nearly a full hour before they stumbled upon the old mine. Its once grand entrance now resembled little more than the mouth of a cave.

As they stopped at its entrance, John’s head perked up. “Get ready, Gary,” he cautioned, releasing his grip on the Captain. “Here they come,” he said almost too calmly.

A woman leapt from the dense foliage of the jungle to Gary’s right. Neither John nor Gary had expected an attacker to be so close. She wore only a few filthy scraps of rag. They were all that remained of her clothes.

The nails of her fingers were unnaturally long and rigid. They slashed at Gary’s throat. The young solider narrowly ducked under her swing. She hissed and spat as foaming white saliva bubbled from her open lips. Then Gary noticed her eyes and froze where he stood in terror. Her eyes glowed like a cat’s, feral and hungry. She screamed as if in pain and hurled herself at him again.

John fired point blank, his M-16 chattering, nearly cutting the woman in half. “Get the Captain into the cave,” he yelled and turned towards the jungle.

Gary heard John’s grenade launcher thumping behind him as he pulled the Captain inside. The explosions lit the night, as things not altogether human cried out in the flames. Everything seemed to be happening so fast that by dawn, Gary was a mess of nerves.

The Captain awoke as the sun rose over the jungle. John helped him set his broken leg and showed him the damaged radio equipment looted from the wreckage of the crash. Gary sat by the cave’s entrance laughing as tears ran down his cheeks. John hoped the kid would hold together, though the kid was beginning to try his nerves.

The cave was attacked twice more before nightfall. Each time Gary wondered why the enemy never returned fire, then he would remember the woman and shudder. The enemy didn’t need guns.

As night fell, Gary still sat near the mouth of the cave, watching for movement in the shadows outside. “Hey, John,” He yelled, “Would you pass me a clip?”

John leaned against the cave wall several feet deeper inside, watching the Captain, Peter Stevens, work frantically on the squad’s radio. He felt the tension of the past twenty-four hours weighing on him heavily. “Get it yourself, asshole,” he grunted at Gary.

Peter looked up from his work, annoyed by the pair’s bickering. He tossed Gary a clip from his own belt. “Here,” he said flatly.

“Thanks,” Gary laughed popping the clip into his M-16. “It’s good to know someone cares about us making it out of here alive.”

John gritted his teeth and picked up his own rifle. As he started to join Gary at the cave’s mouth, Peter grabbed his leg. John looked down at the weary officer.

“Gary feels it too,” Peter assured him, “He just has a different way of coping than we do. Try not to kill each other, okay?” John nodded and continued on. He walked over to Gary and took a seat by the younger solider. “Look…” He started to say, but outside a demonic howl went up into the night.

“Shit!” Gary screamed as the first creature came charging out of the jungle. It wore the tattered uniform of a Charlie infantryman. White foam bubbled from its mouth and its yellow eyes glowed in the pale starlight.

Gary opened up, putting a dozen rounds into its chest. The inhuman thing spun with the impact and landed, unmoving, with its face in the dirt. Several other creatures came bounding towards the cave. Some wore the rags of Vietnamese civilians, others wore US army fatigues, and some wore nothing at all.

“Jesus,” John heard himself plead. Gary opened fire again at the mass of men, women, and children on full auto.

“What are you waitin’ for, Pops? Shoot the damn things!”

John braced his rifle against his shoulder and took aim at a middle-aged male who wore the bloodied and soiled tunic of a farmer. He pulled the trigger and placed a round in the middle of the thing’s forehead. The others were closer to the cave now, so close, John could smell their putrid breath. They ran with loping strides like animals.

Gary popped his spent clip. It clattered on the cave floor as he slapped another home. No time to aim, John swept the clearing in front the cave with hot lead as Gary followed suit.

The most disturbing part of the experience was the way the things howled and cried out in pain until they were mortally wounded. Then they would fall silent with an almost serene look on their features as they met death.

It was over as quickly as it began. Eleven fresh bodies lay atop the already cold and decaying pile of corpses outside and it was only a matter of time until still more would come.

“That was too fucking close,” Gary babbled, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Way too close.”

Peter limped over, fighting with his broken leg, and fell against the wall near the pair. They both eyed him intently. He shook his head in silence. The radio was beyond repair.

John found himself wishing they’d all died in the crash, maybe they would’ve been luckier that way. To go down behind enemy lines was bad, but it was nothing compared to the horrors of a contamination zone, he was finding out. He cursed the big boys back home for ever sinking to bio-chemical warfare.

“Shit, man. Are you sure you can’t fix it?” Gary snapped at Peter.

“Even if I’d been able to, do you really think they’d let us out of here. Hell, we’re probably already carrying the virus in our systems,” Peter answered grimly.

Gary looked as if wanted to gun down Peter right then and there, but instead he slammed his fist into the jagged rock of the cave wall. Traces of blood glittered on the rock where his hand had struck.

“What do we do now?” John asked to no one in particular. “We can’t stay here. Eventually, we’re going to run out of ammo.” Peter’s bloodshot eyes met John’s and in that instant, John could tell the man was already dead inside. Hopelessness can do that to a man, even the best man.

“We can’t go out there,” Gary said gesturing towards the jungle. “Those things are too fast … And there are so many of them.”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” John sighed, already taking command.

“Sure,” Peter nodded, only half listening to the pair talk. His gaze turned back to the broken radio and lingered there. “You guys go on. I’ll catch up.” Peter handed John the last of his M-16 ammo. “You’ll need all the firepower you can get,” he said pressing the belt of clips into John’s hand. John took the ammo and got to his feet.

“C’mon, Gary. Let’s get moving before the next wave comes.”

The younger man looked at Peter then at John, and got to his feet. He wasn’t as stupid as he sometimes acted.

“Let’s get movin’ then,” he said and sprinted into the night. John followed. Minutes later, they heard the bark of a 9mm sidearm echoing behind them in the distant cave. John felt tears well up in his eyes, but said nothing. Gary pretended not to notice as they made their way through the trees.

“Big shots back home don’t have a fuckin’ clue what they’re doin’. If this shit gets out of one of the zones, the whole world’s done for, man. The worst part is they don’t care,” John answered, “The president’s determined not to lose face. We’re the freakin’ USA! He ain’t about to let some little red third world nation kick our ass, no matter what it costs. So what does he do? He has the lab boys cook up this damn virus. It’s spread through bodily fluids, sweat, blood, saliva, whatever; if even so much as a drop of it gets into your system, you’re fucked. It messes with your nerves causing a state of constant pain until you go insane and lash out at anyone who happens to be near you, hoping that they’ll kill you in self-defense before you kill them. It’s nasty some shit, man.”

“How the hell does a grunt like you know about it?” Gary asked.

“Peter told me about it. He had clearance and knew we would be passing over a zone on this trip.” John answered, “A lot of good knowing did us, eh?”

Something moved in the jungle up ahead. Both John and Gary took cover, blending into to their surroundings. A dog staggered down the trail towards them. It quite obviously carried the virus. Red liquid leaked from its eyes and nose, as it snorted in pain. It made it a few more steps towards them then fell over on its side whimpering.

“Oh, God,” Gary cried, then threw up in the dirt.

John walked over to the animal and pressed the barrel of his rifle to its head. The dog’s head splattered from the quick burst spraying John with fur and bone.

“Oh, God. John, I can’t do this,” Gary wailed.

“It’s okay, Gary, you don’t have to,” John said turning the rifle on the younger man and mowed him down where he stood. “You can thank me in the next life,” John whispered.

The jungle erupted to life with the howls of the cursed. They’d heard the gunfire and found John’s trail. He crossed himself, then set off at a run towards US lines. His throat felt dry and a trickle of foam emerged from the edges of his mouth. He smiled and ran on, his rifle in hands, as he howled.

THE END

6 - Unnatural Endings

The jungle night was hot and muggy. Normally, Jack would never have risked his life by lighting up while on watch in the field but a lot of things had changed recently. His lighter flared leaving the orange glow of his cigarette as he inhaled in its wake. He couldn’t taste the smoke anymore and it took a lot of effort to breath but old habits die hard. He looked down at the tattered and bloodstained uniform covering the bullet holes in his chest. It seemed a lot of things died hard these days.

Before it had happened to himself and Nick, Jack thought the rumors were just a load of bullshit like every soldier hears in the field. Crap made up to frighten the “newbies”, but here he was: the walking dead.

Nick lay in the foxhole with him, outstretched and sprawled on his back. Nick’s gray skin glistened in the moonlight and smelled like rotten meat. At least Jack imagined that it did. His face was a mess from where shrapnel from the mine that had killed him had struck him in the mouth. His cheeks were puffed out masses of jagged flesh and his lips and teeth were almost completely gone leaving only a gaping hole. Insects buzzed about him, laying their eggs in the wounds. Nick opened his eyes and set up. He grunted an unintelligible sound trying to speak which caused black, putrid pus to spray the hole in face. It dangled like drool from his chin as Jack met his reproachful gaze.

“Oh, shut up. The smoking can’t kill me now,” Jack laughed.

Nick shrugged, admitting defeat on this point and laid back down to look up at the stars. Another muffled gargling noise erupted from his hole.

Jack shook his head. “No, I don’t have any new ideas. I think it may be the only way man.”

Jack and Nick knew they couldn’t go back to base camp. If the rumors about the walking dead were true of which they were un-living proof, then the stories about the cover up would be true too. If they marched into base camp, they wouldn’t be offered an honorable discharge and shipped off on the next chopper home. No, the special ops would descend on them like flies and most likely turn them into a nice gasoline covered bonfire. The army wasn’t taking any chances. If word got back home that the new regenerative nano-viruses now standard issue for all front line field troops were causing to American soldiers to become walking nightmares straight out of Night of the Living Dead, the American public would go ape and the big boys of the army would be in hot water to say the least. No, Jack and Nick were stuck out here behind enemy lines. Their only options were to find a way to die or stay on the run fighting the enemy until either their bodies were shot to pieces or they finally rotted too much to move. Jack wondered if even then they would continue to think and live, if you could call it that, like they were now.

Jack tossed aside the butt of his smoke and lit up another. “Nick, it’s the only way man.”

Nick sat up again, a wheezing sound gargling in his throat and looked at Jack. Jack nodded. “Let’s do it then man and get it over with.”

Jack opened up their packs and dug around in them until he found the C-4 they carried for knocking out bridges. He reached down and pulled his knife from his boot and went to work on Nick first. Nick moaned and squirmed as Jack sliced open his chest and cracked open Nick’s ribs. Nick’s organs slid out slightly as Jack worked but Jack pushed them back inside as he crammed in the explosives. When he was done, Nick did the same for him. They set the detonators to go off simultaneously. Ten minutes on each. Time enough for goodbyes, prayers, and a last smoke. Jack lit what he hoped would indeed be his last smoke. Together they watched the timers tick down as Jack smoked. Just before the timers clicked zero, Nick looked into Jack’s eyes as bubbles foamed in his hole of a mouth and a string of pus flew out.

“I hope it works too buddy,” Jack whispered before the foxhole was filled with a searing heat and white light. The jungle shook with thunder to be replaced by silence. The only sound the buzzing of insects in the dawn. Nothing moved in the foxhole as the sun began to climb above the surrounding mountains.

THE END

V-Zombies II - Inhuman

1 - Evolution Like Lightning

Michael blinked and looked around. They were gone. The pack of dead creatures which had nearly managed to surround him intent on making him their next meal was nowhere to be seen. His heart was thundering in his chest and he reached up to touch the fresh sweat dripping from his hair as it began to sink in. The dead weren’t the only thing that was missing. Everything around him had changed.

He’d been standing on his front porch trying desperately to get back inside his own barricaded house with the supplies he’d looted from what remained of the local grocery store. The dead had followed him home and had been closing in. All he could remember was thinking he’d never get the locks undone in time and that he needed to just drop everything and run. Now he stood in the middle of a city street as barren and dead as the ones in his hometown with skyscrapers looming above him.

A woman’s scream ripped him from his confusion as she rounded the street corner and came running into view. Her clothes were ragged and it was clear the end of humanity hadn’t been as kind to her as it had to him. Here in the city, or wherever the hell this was, it must be harder to survive than just being boarded up in your own house alone. Five of the dead creatures, two women and three men, came bounding around the corner after her. Blood and drool flew from their snarling mouths as they closed in on the woman.

Michael had no weapon. He’d dropped his .38 on his porch along with everything else as he’d fled still he couldn’t just stand by and watch her die. He screamed what he hoped sounded like a battle cry and charged the dead things, punching the lead creature in the face.

As his fist made contact, two things seemed to happen at once. The creature’s head exploded in a burst of bone and brain matter and time seemed to slow down. Michael watched in awe and horror as the blood appeared to float in the air until it finally began to feel gravity pulling it to the street. The other creatures and the woman were barely moving. Michael knew he must be going mad but stayed focused on the task at hand. By whatever miracle the lead creature was dead but there were still four more and only one of him. He spotted a tire rod lying amidst the litter covering the street and ran for it.

Snatching it up, he returned to the creatures. None had moved more than a few inches at best. Driven by an instinct to stay alive and a growing frustration at not understanding what was going on, he tore into them, pounding each in turn until the things were barely nothing more than standing piles of bloody pulp. When he stopped moving all five collapsed to the ground. The woman didn’t look relieved though.

She stared at him as if he were a demon who had appeared out of thin air and screamed again.

“Its okay I am not going to hurt you,” he said as he tried to calm her down.

“What the hell are you?” she gasped.

“My name is Michael,” he whispered moving closer to her. She stood there sobbing as she continued to stare at him. He took her in his arms both to comfort her and himself. It’d been so long since he’d seen another living person. He didn’t feel her knife slide up through his ribs until it was too late. He looked down at the growing red stain on the front of his t-shirt. He heard her scream something like “die you freaking monster!” in slow motion for what felt like an eternity as she twisted the knife blade deeper and deeper until he fell and the darkness embraced him.

THE END

2 - Inhuman

Something thumped in the darkness of the warehouse. Thorne awoke with a start his hand grabbing up the .38 which lay near his sleeping bag. Instinctively he closed his eyes once more and reached out with his mind scanning the building for the thoughts of others. A cold shudder ran through him and he grimaced with disgust as he felt the Holes. Thorne had labeled the Dead “holes” after the first time he’d scanned one of them. Their minds were just active enough for him to feel but barren of thought and terrible to touch as the emptiness in them seemed to go on forever. There were three of them close by and moving in his direction from where the warehouse’s main doors led out onto the docks.

Thorne breathed a sigh of relief. He could deal with three of them if it came to that but the warehouse was a huge place with more than one way out. With luck, he’d be able to dodge them altogether. He got up and quietly gathered as much of his gear as he could with the hope of slipping away long before the dead stumbled onto him.

A burst of wind blew by him so powerful it nearly threw him from his feet. Thorne stood in the shadows wondering what had just happened. Wind didn’t blow indoors. He reached out again to discover the mind of someone else very much alive. It was full of rage at the holes yet there was an underlying sense of pleasure in its thoughts.

Somehow the mind had just appeared near the holes. Wait … Now there were only two holes … No, all the holes had vanished. Thorne felt a gust of wind on his face and in front of him stood a young man dressed in street clothes holding a machete which dripped blood onto the wooden floor. The man smiled offering him a hand. “Hi, I’m Nate.

Couldn’t help but notice you on my way in. I thought maybe you could use some help.”

Thorne looked Nate in the eye and spoke a single word, “Sleep.”

Nate collapsed tumbling over as if struck by an invisible blow to the head. Yanking some rope out of his backpack, Thorne knelt by Nate and hurriedly tied the man’s hands and feet. It was a dangerous chance to take. More of the dead would surely be coming if the ones Nate had slaughtered could find this place yet Thorne didn’t see any other option. If he simply left Nate behind, the young man could prove far more deadly to him the shambling flesh-eaters if what Thorne suspected about him were even partially true. This man had to be

dealt with now. There was no way around it.

Nate woke up and Thorne could tell without even touching his mind that the young man was trying to move. “Don’t bother,” he whispered, “I’ve shut down selected portions of your brain. You’re not going anywhere soon. Oh and you’re also tied up,” Thorne added almost as an afterthought.

“What the hell are you?” Nate asked.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Thorne laughed. “Are you a speedster?”

“A what?”

Thorne sighed. “That’s what they used to call characters in comic books that had superhuman speed. Are you like that? Is that how you got in here, killed the three dead, and got back to me so fast?”

“If I say yes, are you going to let me go?”

Nate’s eyes went wide. “What the hell are you doing man? I can feel you inside my head!”

“Getting ready to let you go,” Thorne told him.

Suddenly Nate could move. He sped up his atoms and vibrated through the ropes which held his hands and feet, snatched the blade he’d dropped, and froze in place as he swung it at Thorne. The blade stopped inches from Thorne’s throat. Nate couldn’t make himself finish the swing. He took a step back and glared at Thorne.

“I wouldn’t try to run off just yet either,” Thorne smiled. “I’d hate to see what happens to someone when they trip if they move as fast as you do.”

“What do you want?” Nate demanded.

“Other than your word that you’re honestly not going to try to kill me again? Let’s start with how you found me. Just what exactly are you doing here?”

“I like to get out and have some fun okay?” Nate waved the machete through the air finding he could move freely as long as he wasn’t thinking of harming Thorne. “Look dude, I just want to go home alright?

Let me go and I swear I won’t chop off your head or come after you.”

“You live around here?” Thorne asked shocked that anyone could actually still have a home in the city.

“It ain’t the Ritz but we get by.”

“We?”

“Yeah, we, man. What did you think you were the last one left and all that crap?” Nate mocked him. “There are four of us. We took over one of the local hospitals. We live on the tops floors, made it where the deaders can’t get up. It’s about as safe as anywhere can be these days.”

Thorne caught a glimpse of Nate’s thoughts. “The people you’re staying with, they’re like us?”

“You mean freaks? Sure man, how the hell else do you think we’ve survived?”

Thorne felt more holes or deaders as Nate had called them making their way into the warehouse. “How far is this hospital?”

“Couple a miles north of here, deeper in the city. I can take you there if you think you can make it.”

“How? The city is overrun with those things. There’s no way we can make it by them all.”

“Speak for yourself. I can get by them easy. As for you, I spotted a national guard APC abandoned just a bit down the road. I bet it still works.”

“Fine,” Thorne answered. “Let’s move. You take the lead but don’t even think about darting off without me, understood?”

Thorne and Nate crept out of the warehouse through one of its street entrances. They stood in the shadow of the building with the sun rising behind them as Thorne took in the scene. The dead milled about. He could see the APC setting in the middle of the road. There were at least three dozen of the dead between him and it and he knew there would be a lot more as soon as they saw Nate and himself.

“Hang tight.” Nate told him. With a whoosh noise and gust of wind, Nate was gone. Thorne heard the APC crank up. Its engine roared to life and its massive wheels rolled over one of the dead as it backed its way into a position to get turned toward the warehouse. Nate must have kicked it into gear because the vehicle roared its way straight at where Thorne stood waiting.

The dead were becoming excited. Dozens upon dozens more of them came out of the surrounding buildings and alleyways pouring into the street. Thorne took aim and downed one of the closer ones with a head shot from his revolver as the APC pulled up to him. Nate leaned out and waved him over. Thorne darted for the cover of the vehicle slamming its heavy metal door into the face of the creatures as he jumped inside. Nate opened up with the anti-personal machine gun on its turret cutting down the deaders around them. “Stop playing around, damn it!” Thorne yelled at him.

“Ain’t no cause to get riled man,” Nate joked. “Just hit it already.”

Thorne slid into the driver’s seat and the APC plowed through and over the dead as it headed north.

Thorne cut the engine as they pulled up to the hospital Nate claimed was his home. There were thousands of deaders in the streets.

The APC rocked from the pounding of fists against its armored hide.

“Now what?” Thorne asked.

“Dude, a little faith please,” Nate remarked. “Climb out on top of this thing and I’ll get you in. Trust me.”

Thorne had no choice. He climbed up through the gun turret out onto the APC’s roof looking down into the sea of hungry faces around him. He knew the things were going to flip the APC at any moment.

Wind blew over him and he felt Nate’s arms around him. The world became a blur as he was hurled upwards. Nate had darted out of the APC running down the street, dodging the dead as he built up speed then headed back like a streak of lightning taking Thorne in his arms.

He carried him up the side of the hospital and in through a window on the eighth floor. The next thing Thorne knew he was bouncing across the hospital’s tile floor as Nate dropped him and fell to his own knees panting. Nate appeared on the verge of passing out. Sweat dripped from his black hair and he glared at Thorne. “You weigh a freakin’ ton dude,” he commented.

“One hundred and seventy pounds actually,” Thorne replied as he started to get to his feet as a hand fell onto his shoulder. He looked up into the face of a stunningly beautiful young woman. She had short brown hair cut well above her shoulders and wore a green dress that was breathtaking. She smiled at him as electricity shot through his body and his world went black.

Thorne awoke in a hospital bed. His hands and feet were bound to the bed by leather restraints. The young woman sat next to him with her hand placed open palmed on his chest. “Nate told us what you do.

Even think about getting into my head and I’ll fry you to a crisp,” she warned him. Nate stood off in a corner of the room. A tall blonde man stood at the foot of the bed looking down at Thorne.

“Welcome to our home,” he said in a voice which was anything but friendly. “I am sorry about the restraints but even such as us can’t take chances these days. You’ve met Nate. The young lady beside you goes by the name of Arc. You may call me Victor.”

“I thought there were supposed to be four of you,” Thorne commented.

“There are,” Victor assured him as the image of a man appeared in the room. His body was transparent and shimmered as it floated above Victor. The ghost-thing waved hello and vanished into the air as quickly as it had manifested.

“Yes,” Victor nodded, “As cliché as it is, his name is Apparition. He is only with us sometimes. As I understand it, he was once like you Thorne but upon his death he evolved so to speak. It’s hard for us to communicate with him but I believe he claims his body is still out there on the streets somewhere, perhaps one of the creatures outside this very hospital. We do not know for sure nor does it matter. Obviously the state he exists in keeps him from helping out much. But what of you Thorne? What you have become surely is rather pointless in a world filled with the dead.”

“I make do,” Thorne informed him coldly.

“Do your gifts work on the dead?” Victor asked. “Or are they truly mindless?”

Thorne remained silent. The girl called Arc glanced up at Victor.

“Let me fry him. He’s too dangerous to keep around.”

Thorne stared at her. How could someone so beautiful be so cold?

How could she think so little of life in a world where it was so rare?

Victor raised his hand. “You have two choices Mr. Thorne. You’re either one of us or you’re dead. Can you be of use to us? Do your powers work on the dead?”

Thorne frowned. “Kind of, I can sense the dead as well as I can sense the living. Knowing where and how many of them there are around me is what’s kept me alive.”

“Hmm … Like a radar sense for souls. Interesting,” Victor mumbled.

“And they are pretty much mindless. I can’t bend their wills and make them eat themselves or anything if that’s what you’re wondering.

There simply isn’t enough left in them to work with that way. I have though on occasion with great effort been able to shut off the senses of one or two of them just enough for me to slip by unnoticed but its like trying to drive a car with your hands tied.”

“I see,” Victor announced. “You are better than the norms. You may stay with us if you like as long as you understand that if you touch our thoughts or scan us even passively without our direct consent I will personally rip you to shreds and feed you to the monsters in the streets below.”

“Fair enough,” Thorne agreed wondering how Victor was going to know if he used his powers but he was not stupid enough to ask.

“Unshackle him Nate,” Victor ordered. “Our new brother needs to see his home.”

Arc led Thorne through the hospital’s corridors. It was clear she disagreed with Victor’s choice to let him stay. Thorne could hear the veiled anger in her voice as she showed him around. “As you can see we’ve made this place livable. We grow our own food both on the roof and in several interior gardens as well. Not that we need to. Nate can acquire almost anything that we need within a hundred mile radius or so. We’ve a well stocked armory that we have put together should we ever need it and a large cache of medical supplies from the hospital itself. The entire top three floors of this building are ours and completely cut off from the rest of the building. If you’re not Nate or a ghost like Apparition, the only way in or out is a long climb. Our living quarters are located here on the top floor. You, Nate, and I have rooms on this side of the building. The other side belongs to Victor.”

“We get rooms and he gets a wing. Seems fair,” Thorne joked.

“Victor needs the space,” Arc growled. She paused in front of a green door. “This one’s yours.”

Thorne glanced inside. The room looked more like a mad scientist’s lab than a place to sleep. There were computers, reams of paper, notebooks and tools everywhere. He spotted at least three devices that appeared to be microscopes of some sort. “Copy,” he muttered.

“Look,” Arc warned him. “You can clean out the junk. Samuel’s gone. The bastard defected. It’s not like you’re going to have trouble finding a bed in this place to drag in here.”

“Who’s Samuel?”

“I’d rather not talk about that okay? Ask Victor if you want to know.”

“What do you mean defected?”

“Switched sides, sold us out, betrayed us-take your pick. We’re at war Thorne and you’ve just joined the winning side. Be thankful for it.” Arc walked off without another word leaving Thorne standing alone outside his new room.

Thorne spent the next few hours getting used to the hospital and selecting a bed for his room. It was work getting the bed dragged into the room and a space cleared out for it. He found himself wondering how Samuel had slept in this room much less lived here. He managed to stack all of Samuel’s notes and things into a single corner vowing to take a look at what they were before he discarded them but now it had been a day and he needed sleep. It had been a while since he’d slept in a real bed and he was looking forward to it. He stretched out and felt his eyes already beginning to close from exhaustion. Sleep came easily to him but it was far from peaceful. He dreamt of the dead waiting on the streets below. Yellowed teeth, slick with something red and warm, gnawed at him as ragged fingernails dug into his flesh.

A knock that sounded like machine gun fire tore him out of his nightmare. As he awoke he realized Apparition had been with him in his dream. The man had screamed three words over and over again as the dead ripped Thorne apart and the ghost watched on. “Victor… The end. Victor … The end.”

Thorne pulled himself out of bed as the knock became even faster.

“Hey man, you dead in there or what?” he heard Nate yell.

Thorne opened the door. Nate stood in the hall with a plate of food. “Figured you’d want breakfast amigo. Victor wants to talk with you pronto so I didn’t think you’d have time to hit the kitchen.”

Thorne eyed the plate, his mouth watering. “Are those real eggs?”

“You bet,” Nate answered. “Snagged them from a farm just outside of the city.”

Thorne took the plate sitting down at one of the room’s worktables.

He shoved a computer to the side and started shoveling the eggs in his mouth.

“Take it easy man. You’re not going to be starving anymore like you were out there.”

Thorne looked up at Nate to say thanks but Nate was long gone.

He took a bite out of a piece of toast and wondered what Victor really wanted from him. He longed to take a look into Victor’s mind but he’d promised he wouldn’t and his life depended on that promise if Victor really had a way to know when he used his gift.

Thorne found Victor waiting for him on the roof. The tall blonde man stood like a king on top of the hospital looking out at the horizon.

He paid no attention to the thousands of dead who wandered about below. “I trust you slept well,” Victor stated not even bothering to glance at Thorne.

Thorne moved to stand beside him. “It was certainly a change from being down there.”

“Thorne, I am not going to lie to you. The room you are staying in belonged to my father, Samuel. He hurt us all badly.”

“Samuel,” Thorne answered. “Arc mentioned him yesterday. She said he betrayed you, switched sides.”

“It’s true. The world may be dead but we’re still at war Thorne.

I’m not talking about the dead. They are seldom a real threat to such as we. It’s the norms that are the danger and it’s them that my father left us for.”

“You mean people? There are still people left alive out there?”

“Yes. The last great holdout of mankind lies just beyond this city.

When we first took shelter here my father approached them and sought an alliance with them. He thought that together we could start over, bring the world back from its knees rather than merely watch it slide slowly into death’s waiting arms as it is now. But can you guess how they reacted?”

Thorne shook his head.

“They came for us Thorne like a mob hunting down Frankenstein’s monster. They called us freaks. They feared us more than they did the dead. Some of them even blamed us for the dead tearing their way out of the ground. They sent a group of heavily armed killers in place of a diplomatic party to eliminate our threat to their existence once and for all. They broke into our home, wounded Nate and Arc before I could intervene and would’ve killed us in cold blood if they had been able. I fed them to the dead in pieces. It was clear to me then Thorne that if the world is to be reborn it must be people like us who take charge. My father disagreed. Even then he couldn’t be made to understand the truth. We held a meeting and the other four of us of agreed that we would take the norms sanctuary by force. They would be made to see that we were not a threat. They would serve us and help us begin again. My father would have nothing of it. Outvoted though, he had little choice but to go along with our plans. When the day came, he turned on us. You see Thorne; my father is a tele-mechanic and a genius. He understands machines in way no one can. Even in this barren world I have seen him create technological marvels beyond anything mankind ever achieved in all its glory.”

“So how did he stop you? I mean there are three of you and Nate alone is like an army. It doesn’t sound like his gift was aggressive enough to handle you guys.”

“Oh, my father didn’t use any powers against us. As you say, his gift was not of that line of abilities. He had built ways to stop us, fail-safes if you will to keep us in line. He saw us as the great betrayers of mankind not himself. He took out Nate first with a net actually able to contain him. He used the hospital’s sprinkler system against Arc. It was brutal. She took days to recover. He even hurt me.”

“Hurt you? Are you invulnerable? Is that your gift?”

“I am many things,” Victor turned to face Thorne staring into him.

“He’s building them an ark.”

“An ark? I don’t get it.”

“He’s building an ark to leave this world behind for the stars. He must be stopped before they allow him to lead them into the void.

Nothing awaits mankind up there but death as surely as if they stayed here without our hands to guide them and keep them safe. Will you help me save the human race Thorne?”

“How? I’m just one person Victor.”

“Samuel doesn’t know you exist. It’s unlikely he has devised a way to counter your power. You can kill him with a thought Thorne and afterwards your gift will make you the perfect watchman to help keep the norms in check until they see the truth of things. You would have a chance to create a paradise with me unlike any this world has ever known. Eventually I believe we’d even be able to reclaim this entire planet from the rotting grasp which holds it now.” Victor watched

Thorne thinking over his words.

“I’ll do it,” Thorne agreed but even as he spoke the words he reached out subtly trying to touch Victor’s mind. He had to know if

Victor was sincere in his desire to start over and rebuild or he if was just a madman bent on gaining power for himself. He felt an unnatural wall around Victor’s mind and knew he had made a mistake.

Victor’s eyes glowed red with anger. He grabbed Thorne by the throat with a single hand lifting him into the air and dangled him above the horde of dead below. Thorne fought against Victor’s hold on him but the man’s grip was like steel and his flesh felt more like metal than skin. Thorne strained to reach into Victor’s mind. His eyes went wide as he realized why he couldn’t. “You … You’re not alive,”

Thorne gasped.

“I am sorry you feel that way,” Victor said calmly. “Things would have been far easier for us all if you did not.” Blood stained Victor’s fingers as they dug into Thorne’s neck. “My father felt the same after he finished me but I am more alive than any of you will ever be. This is my world now Thorne. Goodbye.” Victor whispered sadly and released Thorne.

Thorne screamed looking up at the thing that called itself a man as he fell to the streets below. The dead fought over his splattered remains in a frenzy as Victor wiped off his hands and began planning how to defeat Samuel on his own once more. The battle to come would be bloodier now but it was a small price to pay to make his visions real.

THE END

3 - Reapers At The Door

Scott was torn from sleep by the blaring of alarm klaxons. His worst nightmare had suddenly become very real. The alarm could only mean one thing; the war had reached the Talon VIII station at last. He rolled out of bed, dragging on his uniform, as he clumsily tried to open a com-link to the bridge. No one up there was either able or had time to answer his hail though he guessed as the attempt failed.

Visions of “Reaper” war-pods attaching themselves all over the station’s hull and spilling their cargo of moving, violent, rotting flesh into the corridors filled his head. The “Reapers” didn’t fight space battles.

Their ships dropped out of nether-space already breaking up, spewing thousands upon thousands of boarding pods at the enemy target they engaged. Nor did the “Reapers” believe in combat themselves.

Only one out of a hundred such pods actually contained a “Reaper” shock-troop. The rest were crammed full of dead humans whose bodies the “Reapers” had acquired at the start of the war by using biological weapons without warning against the outer colonies.

They possessed Billions of human corpses which thanks to their bio-manipulation of the dead had become the perfect foot-soldiers for them in the war. The reanimated dead attacked anything alive which wasn’t a member of the “Reaper” race.

Scott know the Talon’s defensive systems would have thinned out the number of pods before they reached the station but Talon VIII was a

“New Earth” era station and was mostly automated. Counting himself there were only twenty three members on its crew. He knew himself and the others were as good as dead from the second he had heard the alarm. The “Reapers” never sent less than five thousand boarders regardless of their target and its strength. They firmly did believe in overkill rather than taking chances. Besides the dead were expendable and were easy to replace or to reanimate again.

Scott darted from his quarter and headed straight for the armory.

Call it a human thing to do, but he didn’t intend to just sit around and wait on death to come to him. As he rounded the corner of the corridor which led to the lifts to the lower level, a section of the corridor wall melted away in front of him opening up into a “Reaper” battle-pod.

Men and women who stunk like spoiled meat came pouring out into his path. Their rotting flesh was a pale grayish color but their eyes glowed orange and locked onto him with a feral rage.

He cursed loudly spinning around to head back the way he had came with the shambling dead giving chase behind him. Scott nearly ran head on into the Talon’s security chief, Heather. Her battle armor was tattered and blood leaked openly from claw and bite marks covering her body. “Get out of here!” she yelled at him. “Everybody else is either dead or cut off.” She shoved a pulse rifle into his hands as he stared at her amazed that she could even be standing let alone barking orders. She moved past him opening fire with her own at the approaching horde which howled for the taste of his flesh. Scott snapped out his shock as she screamed back at him. “Blow the damn core!” Then she vanished from sight as the wave of the dead washed over her.

Scott started running again gripping the weapon she’d given him in white knuckled hands, his boots pounding on the metal floor of the passage way. A smile began to creep onto his face. “Of course,” he thought, “The core.” He and his crewmates may be destined to die out here in the void aboard the Talon VIII as it was overrun but at least he could take some of the “Reapers” and all of their drones here with him.

Scott skidded to a halt outside the blast doors which led to the main core. His fingers danced over the keys of the lock entering the access code. The huge doors dilated open and Scott found himself face to face with a real living, breathing “Reaper”. The thing stood nearly nine feet tall and was all yellow scales and muscles. It hissed spraying venom over his face and eyes. Scott cried out as he felt his eyes melting inside their sockets and his skin smoked where droplets of the saliva had made contact. A huge two fingered hand and thumb closed about his neck lifting him from the floor with the sound of cracking bone. The “Reaper” dropped Scott’s form to the floor and stepped back as the dead approached. The “Reaper” flicked its forked tongue through the air.

Things had gone very well and its pets deserved a treat. It made no move to stop the dead as the converged on Scott and tore and ripped at his flesh with hungry teeth.

THE END

4 - Deadlier Country

Elijah laughed bitterly at the hand fate had dealt him. When the dead had begun to rise, he’d leapt into action. Elijah had always been a loner. There were no loved ones or friends in his life to hold him back and prevent him from fleeing the city as quickly as possible. He was one of the first looters in the streets as the chaos erupted. He’d systematically sought out the supplies he would need from a .22 rifle with several boxes of shells to a shotgun for stopping power and a sidearm, to a large hiking pack which he filled with canned foods, bottled water, and camping gear. Some of it, he bought from shops that were still open despite the hell around them and the rest he stole. He thanked God he hadn’t had to kill anyone though he had had a brawl with a gun shop owner who was trying to close up and lock down as he’d entered.

Elijah had crammed all his stuff into a SUV he hotwired and sped out of the city without looking back. The interstate had been covered with abandoned and wrecked cars so he couldn’t travel as fast as he’d hoped he could. There had even already been packs of the dead wandering the roadway but none that he hadn’t been able to avoid. He’d thought his logic had been sound. Get away from the city to the far less populated countryside and he would stand a much better chance of surviving to carry on long after the cities had burned and been overrun by the legions of newly risen dead.

Elijah drove for hours straight into the middle of nowhere. Only when the road turned to gravel, the house he’d seen was a couple of miles behind him, and the trees surrounded him on all sides did he stop.

He ditched the SUV, carrying all he could on foot, and headed out even deeper into the woods. His plan had been so perfect, well thought out and executed without a snag. Weighted down by his supplies he’d hiked as far as he could before he’d made camp, still patting himself on the back for making it out here with so little trouble. It wasn’t until the first of the creatures came bounding out of the trees at him with saliva and blood dripping from its hungry mouth that he realized just how huge of a mistake he’d made. Elijah barely managed to get his loaded shotgun up and ready in time to defend himself. He squeezed the trigger with the creature so close that when the shotgun’s blast blew its decaying form apart, its blood and intestines splattered over him. He lumbered over to its twitching body and smashed its skull in with the shotgun’s butt. He fought down the urge to vomit as taking the time to do so could cost him his life. He heard movement in the brush and knew the thing hadn’t been alone. Snatching up what he could from the gear he’d laid out, he took off sprinting away as fast as his legs would carry him. His breath came in ragged gasps and his whole body burnt from the effort as he forced himself to keep going. The houses he’d quickly driven by not long before were now his only hope. He made a point to cut through a small creek hoping the moving water would cause the creatures to lose his scent. The image of the one he’d shot lingered in his mind. Its body had been torn to pieces on the ground before him but its head had remained intact, twisting in the dirt of the forest floor as its teeth continued to snap hungrily until he’d finished it.

At last, Elijah saw a house in the distance. Truth be told, it was more of a shack which appeared to have been abandoned for years but he didn’t care. It had walls and a door and that was enough for his purposes. He reached inside himself and found the energy for one more burst of speed like a runner who sees the finish line in sight. He didn’t try to open the door or see if it was locked. He barreled into it throwing his weight against its wooden frame. The cabin’s door slammed inward and he went toppling across the floor of its single room. He jumped to his feet discarding the meager supplies he’d been able to salvage and with his shotgun still in hand raced back to the door and slammed it shut. Its hinges had been damaged but it still worked well enough from him to get it closed. His eyes scanned the room desperately searching for anything he could use to brace the door with. The cabin was clearly deserted. Other than a single chair, a desk, and a small stack of wood beside its fireplace, its sole room was empty. He wondered if it were some kind of “way station” for hikers who needed a respite from the elements but didn’t have time to dwell on the question of the cabin. He pushed the heavy desk against the door and slid to the floor leaning his himself on it. Only then did he allow himself a moment to breath.

A wolf howled somewhere in the night outside. It was an unnatural cry of sickening pain which ended in a gargling wheeze. The howl didn’t surprise Elijah. The wolf he’d faced off with had had half its upper back exposed with both its fur and flesh torn clean from its body.

In the flash of his shotgun, he’d seen the white bone of its spine before the weapon’s blast had struck the creature. He figured if the dead humans formed packs to hunt the living, wolves certainly would as hunting packs were already part of their instinctual nature. That’s why he had run from his camp. There was no way that wolf could have been alone and the howl proved it. There was no telling how many of the damned, rotting animals were out there circling the cabin.

His eyes were drawn to the fireplace. He hauled himself up and went over to it fishing around in his pocket for a lighter. He quickly got a fire going and then hurried once more to add his weight to that of the desk against the doorway. Not having a fire had not been an option.

If wolves could come back to life too like people then the last thing he needed was an undead squirrel crawling down the chimney to rip his face off.

“Why in the hell had he thought only humans would come back?”

He cursed himself.

The cabin’s only window exploded in a shower of glass as the first wolf leapt through it. Elijah jerked up his shotgun, pumping a round into its chamber, as the thing landed gracefully on the floor across from him. It tried to growl at him though its throat had been torn out. A wet, flopping sound filled the room as its windpipe vibrated where it dangled from the thing’s open neck. It tensed up to pounce at him as Elijah pulled the trigger and took his shot. This time his aim was true and the shotgun’s blast burst the wolf’s head like an over ripe melon.

Elijah felt his makeshift barricade buckle against his back as the scratching against the door began. He held his position holding the door closed by shoving his backside into it as two more wolves came through the window. Cursing he tossed his shotgun aside and drew the pistol holstered on his hip. The fight was over before it truly started.

Elijah fired getting off a trio of shots. Two of them struck the lead wolf sending it sprawling but his third shot went wild as the second wolf grabbed his gun arm in its teeth and ripped at his skin with its paws. The first wolf got up and charged him going straight for his throat, cutting through his jugular and windpipe alike as its massive jaws closed around his neck. Elijah’s body twisted and fought against his fur covered attackers as his blood flowed out onto the wooden floor.

His body rolled away from the doorway no longer holding the desk in place. The door slid open under the force of the paws pushing against it outside and still more wolves entered joining their brothers in a feast of warm, once living flesh until all that remained of Elijah was bone and scattered pieces of clothing.

THE END

5 - Ghost

The pounding on the walls of the bunker never stopped. Night or day, it was always there. Burke wondered if the hordes of creatures outside took turns. Surely it couldn’t still be the same ones who had first started the damn noise. By now, would those first creatures even have anything left of their hands? A vision of rotting bodies with the white of bone protruding from battered and crushed wrists, slamming them repeatedly against the metal of the only door to the bunker came alive in his head. He shuddered and tried to continue opening his lunch, pushing the mental image out of his mind. He was down to the last dregs of the bunker’s supplies and the can of meat his was opening, he knew from experience, made the thought of cold, greasy Spam even sound appealing in its place.

Burke hated his visions. He’d been born with the ability to see things that others couldn’t. Sometimes, he could watch far away places through his mind’s eye like a gazing through a crystal ball. He could also reach into another person’s mind and read their thoughts as if they were his own. And on his most clear of days, he could sometimes even catch glimpses of the future. It had been hell growing up with his “gifts”. He’d spent most of his 30 odd years of life bouncing in and out of various asylums. He’d had his first visions of the end when he was only four years old. His parents had thought it was just a nightmare induced from his love of horror films but the visions kept coming and soon they were frightened by the images he’d described of men eating men, women being ripped apart, and rotting dead things that didn’t stay dead.

When he’d finally gotten free of the last institution, Burke had felt it in his bones that the end he’d been seeing for mankind was near.

Using his gifts, he’d conned and forged his way into the military.

Burke had no wish to die and the way he saw it, the military would hold out longer than anyone else in a world destined to be overrun and eaten by the dead. Of course, things hadn’t exactly worked out as he had planned.

His unit had been assigned the duty of trying to hold the containment line around Richmond. The battle had been raging for days when he and his fellow troops arrived to offer reinforcements to the poor souls who had held it during the early days when humans still emerged from the city intermingled with the dead as they tried to flee. The army was fully dug in around the city fighting a pointless war. The containment lines around New York and many other places had fallen.

There were rumors of nuclear strikes on American soil in places where the lines had failed to retrain the dead but no one believed them and hearing or seeing actual news was a thing of the past. Most civilians were too busy just trying to keep breathing, journalists included. Burke fought with his unit two days before things began to fall apart. They were taking heavier losses each day as their arms stockpiles grew smaller and the dead pushed closer with each wave of rotting flesh leaving the city in search of new meat. People began to desert the line in droves, heading off in search of their own families, whether to say goodbye or to try to start over, Burke had no idea. He stayed to the end until only he and the commanding officer General Stark were left.

They enclosed themselves in the fortified walls of the command bunker and took pop shots at the dead still flowing from the city out into the world beyond. Stark’s thoughts of gloom and hopelessness cut into Burke like a razor more and more with each passing hour. There was no way he could shield his mind from them trapped in such close proximity. He had no choice but relieve the General. He’d blown the man’s brains out with a point blank shot from his sidearm. He felt no guilt over it. He knew it was what Stark wanted and would have done himself if he’d been able to give him the time to.

Burke had never been a long range telepath but he tried now. He spent his time attempting to understand his gifts and force them to grow. He would sit perfectly motionless with his eyes closed and reach out into the world seeking someone else alive. He always saw death in his visions and never heard a single other thought which wasn’t his own. In fact, all he could feel in the world was a coldness which seeped into him and made him consider following Stark on to the next life every time he awoke from one of his trances. Today was no different.

His mental searching left him hollow and the food he was opening turned his stomach. He listened to the pounding outside for a moment once more and then let go, simply willing his heart to stop. Burke blinked or would have if he’d still had eye lids in a normal sense. He looked down at his body on the floor of the bunker as shock flooded his mind. What the hell had he become? A ghost? He didn’t know but he was sure this wasn’t what death was supposed to be like. He reached for his weapon but his fingers glided through it as if the metal wasn’t there. It began to sink in that he was no longer part of this plane of existence though he could see it. He laughed silently at the madness of it all. Deciding he would make the most of God’s little joke on him, he walked out of the bunker and literally through the horde of mindless dead outside to bare witness to the last days of the human species. He hoped deep down that maybe he’d meet another ghost like himself.

THE END

6 - Deadtown

The scent of the corpses littering the ground stank to high heavens.

The flaming summer sun baking their rotting flesh and us as we stood there didn’t help matters none. I can sympathize with Peter. He didn’t ask for this job like I did. He’s just the sheriff, not a professional killer.

I can tell from the slight glint of tears in his eyes he wants this all to be over with. That this massacre is all it will take to right the world once more. But it’s not. These poor bastards were just the beginning.

Others will smell the blood here or sense the life in Springtown in the valley below and they will come again. Next time it likely won’t be a few dozen either. It never is after they find you. It will be hundreds, maybe thousands. I have been on the run from them for a while now since I saw the first ones walking around in Mexico. I move north from place to place always warning the folk of what’s coming in my wake and offering them my services. Never found a town that’s held against them yet even my guns added to theirs. But Hell, the money’s good and I ain’t dead yet.

I spit into the face of the closest corpse at my feet as Peter finally gets it together and starts barking orders. Dillon and his brother, Jack, are the only two others left alive in our little hunting party. Peter tells them gather up the bodies and burn them. I don’t bother to help. No one says a word to me about it. Those dead things are scary but people like me are scarier and that’s why we’ll be the last to die besides I know the whole thing is a waste of time, seen it done before, but if Peter wants to try to clean up our tracks and lower the odds of more of the dead things coming down out of the hills, who am I to crush his hope.

I think deep down Peter knows the truth too on some level though he would never admit it to the folk in his town or even to himself. Peter watches the fire as the “brothers dim” get our horses and the sun falls from the sky then we’re all in the saddle on our way back to Springtown. Too bad for us, they have beaten us there. I can smell the dead before our horses crest the hills around the town and we see the fires burning. Once glance at the mess below would be enough to tell any sane person to get the hell out of dodge and make dust in another direction, any direction but down there, only Peter ain’t sane when it comes to his town. He’s got to try to save them. He kicks his horse’s sides, charging down the hill, so fast it surprises even me.

The brothers follow him. I pause for a second, taking the time to light up a smoke, weighing my options. The town’s already paid up, no reason for me to go down there but I decide to play the good guy anyway and do them all a favor. I hear the sound of metal scraping leather as my revolver comes free of its holster. My first shot splatters Peter’s skull open before anyone so much as hears the shot. The brothers are stunned, too confused by my actions to go for their on weapons on instinct. I take out Jack next because he’s the smarter and faster of the pair of idiots. I put a bullet in his face and watch him topple off his horse then I get sloppy. Don’t know why, bad luck, the glare of the stars, who knows? It takes me three rounds to drop Dillon for good. I feel a bit bad about the gut shot, never should have happened but the third one I put in his eye means he won’t be getting up later so it’s not like he’ll be upset about it.

I stare at Dillon’s body still telling myself I took the high road. Peter never had the chance to see his dead wife coming screaming at him with red smeared lips wailing for the taste of his flesh. And for the brothers, my sloppy work was at least cleaner than being ripped apart and eaten.

I turn my horse away from Springtown’s ruins to try to find somewhere else to breathe a while longer but I know even the last to die has to die sometime. Though I won’t see Hell tonight, other than the one on this earth now, I’m still just the walking dead myself. There’s a set of yellow teeth or a bullet out there somewhere waiting for me to find it. And somehow, with the way the world is dying, I think it will be sooner rather than later.

THE END

7 - Sunday Watch

The cities were dead. At least that’s the way Travis figured it.

Most folk here in Jackson died that first night when all hell broke loose. It’d taken every officer in the department and every able bodied man sheriff Morgan could enlist to clear out the town and bring back some semblance of order. Travis knew Morgan was doing all he could.

Hell, everyone in town was but he still hated sitting out here in the field by the interstate on a Sunday afternoon. He’d rather have been home watching the races except there weren’t any races anymore.

Travis guessed the NASCAR drivers were dead too. He hated to imagine Dale Jr. stumbling around in the pit at some track somewhere, his rotting flesh stinking to high heavens because the poor bastard was too mindless to get out of the sun.

Travis picked up the AK-47 from the passenger seat and opened the patrol car’s door to stretch his legs. Time passed slowly these days whether you were sitting on your ass in a field keeping an eye out for the wandering dead or sitting in the bar with your buddies, it didn’t matter. It always felt like you were just waiting to die.

The once high grass crunched under Travis’s boots as he got out of the car. Even the damn dead getting back on their feet and eating the living hadn’t ended the drought here in Jackson. Everything green was drying up and dying like the rest of the world. He caught the sight of something moving on the interstate from out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a dead man dressed in National Guard combat fatigues making his way down the interstate’s exit ramp to the road beside the field. Travis checked the silencer attached to the barrel of his rifle and sighed wondering how many of the dead he’d sent to hell over the last few weeks. Had to be going on a hundred, he was sure.

He leaned over the hood of the car and took aim, only squeezing the trigger when he was sure of his shot. The bullet struck the man’s head snapping it backwards before the man’s body stopped in its tracks and toppled to the asphalt.

“Head shot,” Travis muttered and smiled. “That fucker is staying down.”

He walked out of the field, shouldering his weapon as he went.

This was the part of his job he hated the most. Now that the thing was dead again, he had to drag its body out of sight so that any other corpses which strayed by wouldn’t see it and come to investigate in hopes that the body was still fresh enough to feed on.

The man was Travis’s third kill of the afternoon. The things were showing up more and more with each passing day. If their numbers didn’t level out soon, Travis would have to start walking out to the fields because Morgan would convince the town that it was the noise of the patrol cars in an otherwise silent word which was attracting the dead. Travis admitted that Morgan might be on to something with that theory but sooner or later a good portion of the dead from Asheville and the other close cities would wander their way into Jackson regardless. It was just cold and simple logic that the creatures would spread out in search of food and there were so many of them that it was a statistical certainty that enough of them would eventually make it to the town to wipe it off the face of the Earth.

Travis reached body of the man and stood over it. He thought he recognized him in spite of the maggots which swam over the man’s flesh and the gapping hole in his skull. Yep, it was Billy Clayton alright. There was no doubting it. Billy’s unit had been called up by the governor to help contain the outbreak of dead in the cities when the shit first hit the fan. Travis remembered driving out to Billy’s house with Morgan the day before Billy had left. Morgan had done all he could to convince Billy not to leave the town but Billy was young and stubborn. He bet Billy wished he’d listened to Morgan now.

Travis squatted down and pulled Billy’s military issue sidearm from its holster and inspected it. He popped the clip and checked the firing mechanism before he slid the gun into his own belt. A good weapon and ammo were not things you left to go to waste no matter who their owner had been. Travis picked up Billy’s body with his hands under Billy’s arms and started to haul his remains over to the ditch beside the road. The sound of someone moaning caused Travis to jerk his head up. Billy’s body thumped to the road as Travis let go of it. “Oh, holy… ” Travis breathed. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Hundreds of bodies were heading down the interstate’s exit ramp towards him, pouring onto the road like ants from a hill, only they weren’t just coming from the interstate. They were coming out of the damned trees all around the field too.

Travis raced back to his car. The creatures were already dangerously close as he slid into the vehicle’s driver seat and grabbed up the radio. “Morgan! Answer me damn it! They’re coming! Hundreds of them!” The radio crackled but remained silent otherwise. No response came.

Travis fished around in his pocket for the keys. He had to stand up and get out of the car before he could dig them out keeping his eyes locked onto the approaching horde of decaying bastards. In his hurry, he dropped the keys as he yanked them out. He whirled around to pick them up from where they’d landed behind him to come face to face with Morgan himself, only it wasn’t Morgan. Dull, glazed over eyes stared into his own above the blood stained uniform Morgan wore. They told the tale of the town’s fate. The dead must be pouring in from everywhere,

Travis thought. He screamed as Morgan’s cold hands grabbed his shoulders and held him in place as the sheriff’s teeth sank into his throat. Travis’s scream became a sickening gargling noise as his blood welled up inside him and leaked out from his mouth as Morgan chewed. He fell to the ground with Morgan on top of him still tearing into his flesh. A few of the dead stopped to join Morgan in his feast but the rest walked on towards the town of Jackson to see if anyone else was left alive.

THE END

8 - With The End In Sight

“Hurricanes came and went doing untold amounts of damage to the eastern coasts of the U.S. Earthquakes ravaged the mountains of the Appalachians and tsunamis brought the ocean to the streets of California. The summers grew cold and the winters became a rain drenched spring. Electromagnetic lightening danced in the skies.

Humanity was helpless, powerless to change the course of nature. As our world crumpled around us did we reach out for one another, to try to salvage what remained? I’m afraid you won’t like the answer. We turned upon ourselves like dogs driven mad with fear and frustration.

Nuclear fire scorched the land and bio-weapons of the darkest origins filled the air. People bled from their eyes. Stomachs swelled not with life but with mutated abominations. They ripped out of our shells from men, women, and children alike to walk the land. In the end, the monsters were called “Demons”. They were not alive but they were hungry…” Ben stopped as the door to his quarters slid open. “End oral history log seventeen,” he said to the shelter’s A.I. and spun around in his chair to face Marcus who stood in the open doorway.

Marcus looked at him with something that stunk of pity. “Why do you do it, Ben?” he asked. “There’s not going to be anyone left to play back your logs and learn from what you’re recording.”

Ben didn’t answer instead he asked, “How bad is it today?”

The younger man laughed. “Hell is still at our door.”

Ben got up from his seat. “Then let’s go have a look at it.”

The pair made their way to the shelter’s highest point where its communication spire actually protruded from the cracked earth. The dome was the only part of the shelter that was above ground. “Clear,”

Marcus ordered to the force barriers which served as both the dome’s walls and windows. The whole top of the spire became transparent and the two men looked out into a sea of demons and demon-seed . Most of the things surrounding them were the traditional lot, dead men and women with glowing yellow eyes devoid of anything which could be called a soul with a monster growing inside their reanimated corpses but among their ranks the number of true demons had grown. Some were beasts, covered in blood and fur, which stood on two legs and clawed at the force barrier with a frenzy that was beyond their seed who’s mindless pounding continued on without ever stopping. Ben watched as a demon with a pig’s face slammed its head repeatedly into the barrier leaving a smear of saliva and yellow liquid. He felt sorry for the maggots which crawled loose from inside the thing’s skull just in time to be smashed as its head made contact again.

Marcus started to order the barrier opaque but Ben stopped him.

“How much longer Marcus? How much longer must we endure this until the shield fails?”

Marcus smiled. “That’s what I came to tell you. The shelter’s power levels are almost depleted. We have a few hours left on the high side.”

“Good,” Ben nodded. “Then at last we’ll have done our duty and held back the night as long as we could.”

“If you say so sir.”

Ben tore his eyes from the scene outside. “I need to go finish my logs before the power fails. How are you going to spend humanity’s last hours on Earth?”

Marcus held up a small cylinder. Ben recognized its symbol as that of a powerful neurotoxin. “I’m going to get drunker than hell sir and shoot myself up with this as the shield collapses. By the time those things find me, I’ll be long gone.”

“It’s a fitting end to our time here,” Ben shook his head. “Why shouldn’t you meet death happily?”

“I suppose so,” Marcus agreed.

“Goodbye Marcus,” Ben said and left the spire heading back to his quarters. He stopped only long enough to collect an automatic shotgun from the shelter’s armory for he too would need a way out when his work was done and the horde came spilling in.

THE END

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Table of Contents

- I - The Wave
- II - The Queen
- - Flashes of Death
- 1 - Divine Origins
- 2 - Icy Roads
- 3 - The Devil’s Ride
- 4 - To Be Born
- 5 - Fears
- 6 - From Heaven, Into Hell
- 7 - Family
- 8 - Indigs
- 9 - A Late Night Dinner at Tara’s Place
- - The War Stories
- 1 - Rising
- 2 - Last Call
- 3 - Hungry
- 4 - Grave Watchers, Inc.
- 5 - C-Zone
- 6 - Unnatural Endings
- - Inhuman
- 1 - Evolution Like Lightning
- 2 - Inhuman
- 3 - Reapers At The Door
- 4 - Deadlier Country
- 5 - Ghost
- 6 - Deadtown
- 7 - Sunday Watch
- 8 - With The End In Sight