The Night of the Lord
We’d just come back from New York. Everything about that mission was still raw and now we were at it again.
“You look like shit, Lieutenant. You alright?” Colonel Bennington was sitting at the head of a large table; he stood as I came in. The table was packed with a cluster of shiny-lapeled officers.
“As all right as one can be after what we witnessed. Once I’m cleaned up, finished with my debriefing, I’m going home, then I think I’m going to drink an entire bottle of Jeff Daniels, and I hate the shit.”
“Jeff?”
“Sorry, sir, I get the two mixed up. Long story.”
“Have a seat. Tell us what happened.”
After spending the next two hours recounting the entire mission and answering dozens of questions, I was finally about to be dismissed. About halfway through my recounting, a corporal came running in and quickly handed a piece of paper to the colonel. It looked urgent, but right now all I wanted was to finish out the day and hope the next was better. The colonel looked at the paper then at me before scribbling some hasty notes and sending the corporal on his way.
I stood up. “Hope I passed,” I told the captain to my right, who had been taking copious notes. He looked up. I had expected some response, even if it was derision. That none of his facial features moved was somehow more disconcerting.
I was walking down the hallway of the command center after having finished my debriefing. My uniform was filthy, as was my rifle. I was shaking my head, attempting to get rid of the memories I had collected on the last mission. Life is strange; I realize by this point there shouldn’t be much that surprises me, but there always seems to be something unique and terrible around every corner. I just wanted to get home and wash the stink of the last few days off me.
“Lieutenant Talbot…” Colonel Bennington had come out of meeting room and had called to me as I was leaving.
“Sir,” I said, turning around.
“Listen, Lieutenant, I hate to interrupt your plans for what sounds like a stellar evening, but I’m going to need for your team to turn around quickly.”
“Sir? His family should be…”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“No disrespect, but he was my man.”
“None taken, Lieutenant, but you need to remember that all of you are my men.”
“Yes, sir. You heard my debriefing, sir, you know we’ve been run ragged. I wouldn’t doubt if all of my personnel were half in the bag or sleeping.”
“I need you to check something out. I’d get another team on it, but there are none here.”
My head sagged.
“I promise you, Lieutenant, it’s close. And when you get back, I’ll give your team a week’s R&R.”
“Unless, of course, something comes up.” It was past my lips before I could even think to contain it.
“I’m going to let that one pass on by, Lieutenant, due to the rough nature of your last outing.”
“I appreciate that, sir. We’ll be ready to go in forty-five; going to need to restock everything.”
“Already all set. There’s a fully loaded Hummer right outside.”
“Well, isn’t it my lucky day, sir.”
“Lucky I like you, Lieutenant.”
“My wife says I’ve got an endearing quality. What are we checking out?”
“Eatonville, couple of towns over. Some brainchild has lit up the night sky with those industrial searchlights the auto dealerships use.”
“Really? For what purpose?” I asked, the Colonel scowled. “Right…that’s why you’re sending us out there.”
“Lieutenant be careful. If someone is willing to let the whole world know they are there, it’s safe to say they are not too worried about anything.”
“Or they’re plain old crazy. Neither thing sounds good to me.”
The colonel smiled. “See you soon,” he said before heading back into the room.
I gave my rifle to the corporal who was sitting at the admittance desk. “Could you please get this to the armory?” I asked, placing the weapon on his desk. He looked down, horrified at the congealed blood that coated almost the entirety of it. “Don’t worry, it’s not mine,” I told him before leaving. I had no sooner walked out of the building when BT, who had been leaning against the Hummer, pushed off and yelled.
“What the fuck, Talbot? Who’d you piss off now? You realize we just got back, right? I bet you told the Colonel to go fuck himself with a frog or something like that. I was asleep! Some little pissant private came running in; I nearly choked him out. You know I hate when I get woken up.
“Did you get a shower?” I asked, stopping his diatribe.
“Yeah.” He looked perplexed.
“How about a meal?”
“Of course.”
“You get to see my sister?”
“Yeah, I did. What’s that got to do with anything?” He was building back to surly.
“Substitute my sister for my wife, and I didn’t get to do any of those things.”
BT finally took a moment to look at me; the dried blood of the one we’d lost still on the uniform I was wearing. “I’m sorry, man, I just figured you had done something to get us on a shit list.”
“Not a horrible or unjustified assumption, just not correct this time. There’s no one else available for the job. Plus, the old man promised us a week of R&R once this is done.”
“You realize that’s horse shit, right?”
“Of course I do. Duty calls. At least it’s close. Some idiot is playing with a huge flashlight over in Eatonville. Our job is to go check out why.”
“Maybe he has a death wish,” BT said as he got back into the Hummer. “Because I’m going to kill him.”
I poked my head in; Sergeant Winters was driving. He nodded to me; even in the bad lighting it would have been difficult to miss the hollowness of his eyes.
“You up for this, Winters?” I asked.
“Tried to sleep, sir. That didn’t go over so well.”
In the back seat were my brother and Tommy. Gary, aka Gambo, was fast asleep. Tommy looked pensively out the window.
“Where’s the rest?” I asked BT, as he was responsible for mustering the unit.
“The colonel only wanted one Hummer going in,” he replied. “Figured we’d let the corporals and privates sit this one out.”
In five minutes we were outside the gate and back into the unknown. The night was cool, though the day had been unseasonably warm. I knew what that meant: fog, and lots of it. Winters was leaning forward as he attempted to peer through the thick pea-soup that was rapidly forming.
I turned on the small flashlight I had and pulled open a manila folder that contained our mission parameters. “Gary, I need for you to be awake.” I shook him.
“Come on, mom…no one wears rubbers anymore!” he shouted as he sat up. “Huh?” he asked, looking at our confused stares.
BT turned his considerable bulk around. “You had better clarify everything you just said.”
“What did I say?” Gary had no idea.
“Something about your mother and rubbers, and I need for you to tell me that is vastly different from the half-dozen things going through my head right now. Go on. I’m listening,” BT prodded.
“I don’t know…oh, wait, yeah I do. Fifth grade…it was raining like crazy and my mother didn’t want me to ruin my new shoes, made me wear rubbers. Instead of going to school, I hid under our back porch for the entire day.”
BT turned his attention to me. “Mike, can you translate from crazy Talbot speech to English for the rest of us?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that story.” I smiled. “Galoshes.” BT still had a confused look on his face. “Rain boots made from rubber. You put them over your shoes so you don’t get them wet.”
“What kind of white bread shit is that? You put shoes over your shoes? Do all white people do that or only the insane ones? Winters, tell me you weren’t in on this. Come on, man, I need someone on my side.”
“They were a big thing on the East Coast,” he said as a weak defense.
“You crazy fuckers should have been practicing more safe-sex instead of safe-walking. That way there would be less of you. People wearing condoms on their feet…were they called Toejans?” He laughed loudly at his joke.
“You done?” I asked him as I pointed out the front of the Hummer. Up ahead was a thick column of light piercing the fog-filled night sky.
“Shit,” he sighed. “Yeah.”
“We are only here to observe and call back in. Once that’s done, we turn around and go home. If it gets hot, our extraction point is the town hall, which is about a klick away from where the light is coming from.”
“Secondary extraction point?” BT asked.
“In this soup, my guess is there won’t be a first,” Winters said.
“There’s a church on the far side of town, Our Lady of Perpetually Burnt Food. Head there.”
“That a dig on my fiancee?” BT asked.
“Not at all. Not everything is about you,” I told him. Gary fist-bumped me.
“I hate fucking Talbots.”
“Mike, where’s the comma in that sentence?” Gary asked
“It’s best not to dwell on it,” I replied.
“What, no fist bumps for me?” BT asked.
“Guess we know who’s on point tonight,” I said. “Winters, I don’t want to get too close. I’d rather come in quiet. Let’s make sure the ZADAR, zombie radar, is up and running too. I hate being in the fog, and I don’t want anything sneaking up on us.”
We stopped as soon as we saw the sign saying: “Welcome to the Town of Eatonville.” The wooden sign was riddled with bullet holes and as Winters moved over to the shoulder, we drove over the skeletal remains of a half-dozen somethings. Most likely zombies, but I wasn’t about to check if their heads had been shot. Best not to think on such things; all dead beings were zombies, that thought helped me sleep at night.
“Alright, let’s set up a perimeter. Tommy, the ZAD is on you. Winters, could you help him, please?”
Winters nodded.
“All right Mr. T, Lieutenant, sir.”
“It’s fine, Tommy…the only one I want calling me Lieutenant is BT. He needs to know that the Marine Corps, in its infinite wisdom, decided that I should be his commander.”
BT was in front of the Hummer with his weapon, scanning the area. He scoffed. “They promoted me first, dumbass. I just wanted to be part of your unit.”
“He loves me; turned down a commission to be by my side,” I told Winters.
“I promised your sister I’d look out for you,” BT replied.
“Look out for me?”
“Remember, you’re her little brother. She’ll never stop thinking she needs to protect you. When in reality, we all need protecting from you. Crazy-ass,” he said under his breath. “Talbots all be crazy. Never heard of no brothers wearing shoes over their shoes…hell, I was lucky I even had shoes.”
“Yeah, because it was difficult to get them in canoe sizes,” I said.
“I wonder if I can tell the colonel I reconsidered,” BT said.
There was a loud series of beeps as Tommy fired up the ZAD.
“Sorry,” he said as he immediately lowered the volume. I moved quickly to Tommy’s side; the only reason the ZAD would give off beeps was if there was something beep-worthy, and unfortunately, we had a lot of beep-worthy entities. As far as military equipment used in the field goes, this stuff was pretty sophisticated. It had software that could render a three-dimensional image of our surroundings, including any beings within its range. Even had infrared capability which could penetrate buildings. The only downside was that the old school zombies who had first died and then were reanimated had a much lower body heat and hardly ever showed inside a building. So just because the ZAD showed a building as clear, we still had to take precautions. After all the shit we’d all been through, to be taken out by a first-generation zombie would be humiliating, to say the least.
It had pros and cons over the tech that Deneaux had brought us. We weren’t limited by night or bad weather, but everything was in hues of green, and buildings were outlined in green lines, giving it a feel of video games from the eighties. Other than that, it was invaluable.
“There is a crapload of zombies around.” BT was looking over my shoulder. “And bulkers.” He pointed at the screen.
“You do realize that with those sausage fingers, you could be pointing to anywhere on half the display,” I told him. “And it doesn’t help that your gloves are the same size as the mitt I used to play baseball with.”
“How do you think he stays so big, especially with our sister’s cooking?” Gary asked.
“That’s why he’s so surly; only so many Eggos you can eat before you start to snap,” I answered. “She burn those too, big guy?”
He looked angry, then relented. “If you put enough syrup on them they’re palatable.”
“Sorry, man,” I told him. “Starvation is a slow and painful death.”
“Can we maybe get through this so that I can find some real food? Looks like whoever set up the beacon got what they were looking for.” The light showed up as a bright column on our screen and there was a bunch of zombies congregating around it.
“Yeah, but for what purpose? Distraction, maybe?” Winters asked.
“That looks like a football field,” Gary said as we all looked at the screen. The fog was beginning to congeal; we couldn’t see much more than ten yards. The nearest zombie was over a hundred yards off and moving away from us and toward the light.
“Must be a high school. We should check the field out, then this building. It has a large open floor; I’m thinking the gym.”
“Yeah, and there’s something in there.” Tommy was looking intently at the screen. “Mr. T, there’s something weird here.”
“Listening,” I told him.
“Look closer at the occupants in the gym.”
There were two signals coming from the gym, and one of them was smaller like a shrieker. It wasn’t moving, but the other blip was. It was a dark blip, and something about it made all the hair on my neck stand up.
“Vampire.” I sucked the word through my teeth.
“Payne?” BT asked. We were instantly on high alert. Not that we weren’t already ready, but the threat level had just been increased. “I know you know what I mean here, but I really fucking hate vampires.”
“Understood,” I told him.
When we had been shown the ZAD and had gone to a class on how it operated, Tommy and I had to always make sure we were on the “Good Guys” team. We wore a special pin that registered as a “friendly” on the ZAD so as to not show up as an anomaly on the special radar. We just glowed blue on the screen with our names and ranks displayed. That had been a stressful day; luckily, the captain teaching the course hadn’t noticed just how adamant Tommy and I had been to be the “hunters.” Once I had to switch with Gary; if the captain noticed, he said nothing.
“Shit. Now what? It looks like Payne is amassing an army,” Winters said after pacing a few steps.
“I feel pretty good about the five of us against damn near anything, but I’ve got a vibe we might be in over our head,” BT said. His words struck a chord; he was right. Something powerful was in that gym. I could feel the waves of energy vibrating through me.
“I take it we’re going in?” Winters resigned himself to a fact he already knew.
“Of course he is because…”
“Talbots be crazy,” Winters finished BT’s thoughts.
“You know you’re crazy when other people point it out.” BT clapped Winters on the back.
“Winters, could you radio back to command that we are about to make contact with an unknown entity, and to maybe warm up our ride?”
“On it, sir.” He moved closer to the Hummer and radioed in my message. BT and myself were going over the best approach to the building when Winters came back. “Birds are grounded.”
“Shit.” I looked up. “Listen, I realize I’m technically in command here by some strange twists of fate, but we’re more than just a military unit; we’re friends and family. And now that we’ve found out that help isn’t coming should we need it, I’d rather put this up for a vote instead of making an executive decision and just ordering us in, because, you all know I want to go in. It’s a character flaw of mine and I realize that, but I don’t want anyone getting hurt just because from time to time I like to do a ball check.”
“A ball check? You’re calling the shit you do a ‘ball check?’ And what the hell does ‘from time to time’ mean? It’s every time. And, oh yeah, I’m in,” BT said.
“You had to go through all of that shit just to say you’re in?” I asked.
“Whenever there is an opportunity to give you a hard time, it’s guaranteed I’m going to do it. That’s in my nature.”
“There’s a part of me that appreciates when you do things like this, Lieutenant,” Winters started, “but you’re also the commanding officer here. I’m going to do whatever you say we’re going to do. I’d rather not hear an option.”
That was something I could understand. When you had choices, you could think yourself into circles about what was the right thing to do or whether you’d made a bad choice. But if you were told what to do, it took the responsibility off of your shoulders; it was actually easier, even if what you had to do was distasteful. Now don’t get me wrong; I don’t want anyone blindly following my lead or my orders, but yeah, there is something comforting about it.
“I’m your big brother; someone has to look out for you.” Gary was a hundred percent serious, even added a bit of the Gambo inflection to make his point.
“Tommy?” I prodded; he was the only one that had been abundantly quiet.
“If we have an opportunity to stop her before she does anything cataclysmic, I’m all for it.” He was staring at the screen, and though it was tough to discern because of the lack of light, I would say he was laser-focused on that off-color blip that signified Payne.
“Alright. BT, you and I are taking the direct approach. Winters, Gary, Tommy, I want you heading in here. This looks like a door–if it’s not, make one. Let me know though, because I’ll want to adjust our timeline. We need to be synched-up perfectly or she could escape. Let’s do a radio check.” I was paranoid about military equipment and always had my squad check that everything was functioning before I deployed anyone out. I almost lost one of my privates on our very first mission. Grimm had gone to take a crap in a port-a-potty away from where we had rallied. Not sure why anyone would want to use one of those this far into the apocalypse; it was highly likely that the second wave of death was going to spring forth from those blue devils.
Anyway, he had no sooner dropped his trousers and planted his ass on the seat when multiple hands had reached up and tried to pull him down. He tried to call us on his radio for help, but the unit itself was broken. If it hadn’t of been for Springer following him over to take a leak, Grimm might have been dragged down into that portable cesspool and never heard from again. Not sure who had thought to dispose of live zombies in that stink-pudding quagmire, but if I ever found them, odds were I was going to sink them as well. All’s well that ends well. Now Grimm always makes sure he takes care of his bodily functions either before we leave or real close to wherever we are, although, that’s gotten a little old. It seems he always has to take a solid and usually moves upwind. Come to think of it, I might need to talk to him.
“Check, check.” Winters broke me out of my tangential thought.
“Gotcha,” BT replied.
“Ready?” I looked at everyone.
Terse nods all around, except for Gambo, who was busy putting black stripes on his face; they looked more like cat whiskers, but I wasn’t going to wreck his psych-up. We moved quietly together for a little bit until the building came into view. With a hand signal, I motioned for the trio to move toward the back of the building. The football field ahead was glowing as the water droplets in the air reflected and refracted the plethora of light striking them. Our desire to see this giant searchlight increased as we got closer; I had an inkling of the dilemma moths must suffer. We stayed away, though; all that was there were zombies, and we’d seen enough of them for a few lifetimes. Although, if I’m being honest, I’d seen enough vampires for a few lifetimes as well.
“Found a way in,” Winters said through my earpiece.
“How far are you from the main room?” I answered through my throat microphone. The beauty of those was you could practically think your response and the person on the other end could hear you loud and clear.
“Twenty seconds. Fifteen if Sergeant Talbot finishes applying his make-up.”
“Copy,” I replied. BT was keeping tabs of the time elapsed on his watch, which would have looked like a clock on any of our wrists.
He tapped my shoulder when it was time to go. I turned the door handle; it made no sound. I had expected there to be some light inside, then I remembered the facts of our prey. I turned my flashlight on. The first thing it played across was a group of zombies in various stages of dismemberment. A slightly longer look made me think of a long-ago biology class in high school and television shows about autopsies.
“What the fuck?” came out involuntarily; at least it was quiet.
Three rifle lights illuminated from the other side. We had an effective lead sandwich; now we just needed some meat in between to make it complete. When I saw the zombie pile ahead of us, I had a flashback to Fritzy–if someone had jumped out of the shadows in a fucking catsuit I would have either gone shrieking into the night or unloaded all seven of my magazines into him. I tracked my light up onto the roof; no telling where Payne was.
“Mr. T…room off to your left.” Tommy had the ZAD.
“Anyone else in here?” I asked before I attempted to move in on the other room.
“Nothing,” Winters replied.
“Gary, you watch our six. Tommy, Winters, on us.” As we went quickly to the door, rifles raised, we moved tactically, leaving plenty of room between us. Should she have a weapon or decide to attack, she could not hit more than one of us at a time. I knew in my gut we had eyes on us; something was watching our cautious approach. The only thing in question was, what was the outcome to be? We were in a semi-circle in front of that door; whatever came out was going to have a hell of a time getting past the barrage of bullets heading its way. Now came the tricky part: did we file in? I didn’t like that tactic as we would shift the advantage Payne’s way. Did I call out to her? What was the sense in that? Not like she was going to surrender; there wasn’t a chance I was going to keep her as a prisoner. I had to entice her.
“Payne? ‘Lot of fresh blood out here. You interested?” I asked.
“Seriously?” BT never looked away from the door as he questioned my words.
“You want to go in first?”
“Fresh blood?” BT echoed.
“Good evening.” A disembodied, distinctly male voice spoke loud enough to echo slightly. “Can I help you gentlemen with something?”
Whoever was in there didn’t seem overly concerned that four rifles were trained in his general direction.
“That’s not Payne.” This from Tommy; needed to remember to thank him for his incredible insight.
“There’s no pain here,” he agreed. “Well, none of any consequence. And no one by that name, either, in case you were wondering.”
“Who am I speaking with?” I asked.
“Don’t you use the magic word in this realm?” the voice asked.
“How about ‘come the fuck out?’ That magic enough?” I wasn’t in the mood for games. My heart was thumping in my chest; whoever or whatever was in there wasn’t human; my body knew what my head was unwilling to grasp.
“Strangely enough, the word ‘fuck’ or its linguistic equivalent is used as an intensifier in most of the languages I know,” he mused, almost to himself. The man, and I use that word merely as a placeholder, stepped into the abundant shine our flashlights made.
“What the fuck. Everyone seeing the same thing I am?” I was looking at a person, standing in the neighborhood of six feet tall and very thin; that wasn’t overly remarkable. What was, was the full body armor he was wearing—really full; helmet, pauldrons, gauntlets–the works. Add in two swords and a cloak, of all things, and there you have him. Not that swords are inappropriate gear for a zombie apocalypse, just extremely bizarre. In my opinion, he was sacrificing mobility, speed, and I would think, stealth.
“Do you think he raided an armor museum?” BT asked quietly.
I might have agreed, only it looked more like a dull, black plastic than metal. Maybe he ordered this from China back when the world was more normal. Probably showed up to his friend’s Dungeons and Dragons games all decked out.
“What are we even doing here?” Not sure who I asked. My finger, having a mind of its own, was slowly applying pressure to the trigger. This wasn’t right; he was too self-assured, like he knew something we didn’t. As if he figured he could end this stand-off quickly, and with us on the losing end.
“You know, I’ve often asked myself that very question, Mike. When you think about it, what are any of us doing here?” He answered so nonchalantly. He moved to a bench. I got the feeling he moved slowly so as not to provoke a bunch of excited people with guns. Not out of fear, exactly, but maybe because he was used to it. Or, I don’t know, maybe because he was humoring us. I didn’t like the feeling at all.
“Great, he’s existential.” BT was not amused. “More specifically, what are you doing here in this gym, with these zombies? Any funny answers and I might start shooting so I can get home and eat some shitty dinner that this guy’s sister, the woman that I love, prepares for me.”
“TMI, BT,” I said.
“I’m a little frustrated, man. I like my dinner. You know how many times she’s stopped me from going to the Chow Hall to eat? The food there is like fine French Cuisine compared to the stuff she puts on plates. I have had to throw dishes away because whatever she tried to cook was permanently embedded within the ceramic or metal, depending. You’re like the gift that keeps on giving, man. I already have to deal with you, and now I have to deal with your sister. It’s more than any man should be exposed to. I fully expect Sainthood when my time comes.”
Winters leaned back so he could look at me, his eyebrows arched. I shrugged a response. I would have swirled a finger near my temple if I hadn’t been pointing my rifle at a potential hostile.
“Everything all right over there?” Gary asked.
I honestly didn’t know how to reply. The person we were dealing with here was either extremely off his rocker or ultimately prepared. He didn’t seem at all bothered. In fact, he leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees; he laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them. He seemed almost intrigued. I was glad I didn’t have to make any judgment calls on him, as BT kept rolling.
“The chow hall eggs aren’t bad. The hash browns are pretty good too, and the meatloaf is really good, and I missed that last time. Want to know what your sister made? She called it lasagna. Lasagna, Mike. It was green–and not because it was a vegetable lasagna, but because she boiled the noodles in green Jell-O water. Green Jell-O water, Mike! Why? What the fuck is that all about? I had to pretend that I thoroughly enjoyed a lime-flavored lasagna. Man, no one is that good of an actor! And then, instead of hamburger in the sauce, it was tofu. Said she was concerned about my cholesterol, even though I told her that my last physical came back perfect. She said she was thinking ahead. Want to know what tofu tastes like? Gooey snots. That’s the best way to describe it. Man, look at me! I’m starving to death! I hoard candy bars when we go on these runs so I’ll have something to eat when I get back. It’s torture by Talbot!”
“Umm, right. Well, one problem at a time. And how do you know my name?” I asked of the stranger.
“Someone must have said it at one point.”
I didn’t think that was the case, but I wasn’t one who could specifically remember everything that was said to them, though the lime lasagna noodles were going to stay with me for a good long while.
“Since we’re on a first name basis, what’s yours?”
“Oh! Terrible manners on my part; I do apologize. I’ve been a bit distracted by events. My name is Eric; I’m pleased to meet you.” He stood up and offered his gauntleted-gauntlets, for fuck’s sake-hand, taking a step toward me.
“Whoa, whoa, hold on there, Eric,” I told him. “Don’t come any closer.” His reaction had caused me to stir, as it had all of us; I figured we were real close to having an incident, and I’d yet to determine if he rated a bullet or not. “We shoot you and then I have to do a bunch of paperwork explaining why we did, or, more likely, all of us here come to an agreement that we didn’t come across anyone and then BT here can get to his raspberry eggs or whatever my sister cooks up.”
“You’re an asshole,” BT said.
“Would it help if I say I have no interest in harming any of you?” Eric responded.
“Fair enough. Can you tell me what your intentions with the zombies are?”
“Mostly honorable,” he replied, “although they don’t seem to agree.”
“Didn’t quite mean it like that; I wasn’t thinking you were taking them out on a date.”
“I know. My sense of humor is a bit off; sorry about that. No, I’ve been examining the zombies you have in this world. I’ve never seen a biological zombie before, much less witnessed mutating specialist castes. Reminds me of ants,” he finished, and shivered. The shiver was strangely reassuring. It meant he was afraid of something. Then it wasn’t reassuring, because he was afraid of something, which meant there was something worse. The part of me that could sense these things kept telling me there wasn’t anything worse, and I really wanted it to be right.
“This world?” Winters asked. “How many other worlds do you know?”
“I wouldn’t even hazard to guess.” Something like a low chuckle escaped him. “I mean, I know several personally, but I know of many, many more.” He looked thoughtful, his eyes doing the thousand-yard stare for a moment. I had the strangest feeling he was…communing or something. Not talking to someone, per se, but something like it. Consulting his memory, maybe? He was a vampire; perhaps he had a lot of memory to consult.
“No, I don’t have a definite answer for you. I used to keep a catalog, but it got lost, sort of. It’s in the billions, in any case. By the way, speaking of things I’ve lost, I don’t suppose you know where I might find a working FMRI machine, do you?”
I wasn’t going to tell him we had one at the base, not until I knew a little bit more about who I was dealing with.
“You a doctor? Biologist maybe?” I asked.
“Mr. T, remember…he’s like Payne,” Tommy replied.
“Right, right,” Winters chimed in. “When did humans become such a minority?”
“Probably at about the same time those flu shots rolled out,” Gary said.
Eric was looking intently at Tommy and then his gaze shifted toward me. “Well, isn’t that strange.” He left it at that, for the time being, anyway. “Can we put the guns down now? I’m not a fan of getting shot. We’re having such a lovely conversation, and pointing guns at people is usually considered rude.”
“Forgive my manners,” I said, “but you’re a vampire who is rounding up zombies for what I must assume are nefarious, albeit honorable, reasons. For the moment, I feel better holding this weapon on you.”
“The zombies, they have been getting smarter, yes? Yes.” I felt like an explanation was coming as he answered his own question.
“Is that observation supposed to stop me in my tracks?” I responded. “Anyone who has lived this long realizes that by now.”
“Hey, I think that’s doing pretty good, especially since I’ve only been here…” he trailed off, and again I had that feeling he was…I don’t know…consulting. Communicating. Almost talking to someone. “Eleven days? Curious. Time flies when you’re doing your due diligence.”
“Is any one else in there with you?” I motioned with my rifle toward the other room.
“Oh. No, there’s no one in there.”
“Who are you talking to, then?”
“That’s a long story. It only makes sense in the extended telling; the short version makes me sound crazy.”
“Try me.”
“I have a psychic sword and an empathic horse, although the horse is usually a statue.”
“A horse that’s a statue?”
“Right now, she’s a pickup truck. Her name is Bronze.”
“Bronze?” I felt a headache coming. “Fine. Let’s forget that for now. What are you doing with the zombies over there?”
“Ah. You don’t believe in magic?” Eric asked.
“Not since I learned how David Blaine did the levitation thing on his shows.”
His head tilted slightly. “Not an unreasonable view,” he admitted. “Loved his shows, but I was always a Copperfield fan, myself. Let me take this in another direction. Some of these zombies aren’t too physically capable, but they have a talent, a psychic ability. They scream into your mind, right?”
“Shriekers. We call them shriekers.”
“Aptly named. And the hulking creatures?”
“Bulkers, then speeders; the slow ones, those that are left, anyway, we call them deaders. They were the first wave of zombies, corpses reanimated as the viral agent takes over. That quickly changed, and we got the speeders. They never truly died; their bodies were taken over before they went through the process of rigor mortis, thus keeping all their physical abilities, their speed. The bulkers were next; we figure they were adapting well to their environment. Once the speeders started dragging down everything in sight, people began to barricade themselves in their homes.”
“Fascinating,” he said, nodding. “And then these bulkers started showing up, breaking in through the barricades, yes?”
“That’s about the way of it. Then came the shriekers to flush out those still remaining. Their signal seems to strike squarely in the flight response center of the brain. It’s almost impossible to ignore the spike without some training in the matter,” I explained.
“Your situation here is going to get worse,” Eric said matter of factly. “I can’t be completely sure without some dissection, some equipment, and perhaps a neurologist. What I think is happening is that another evolution of these beings is in progress; the development of a unified intellect; a hive-mind.” He looked to us like he knew we suspected the same.
“I believe the shriekers can link telepathically with their horde, enabling the growth of a cohesive group. If it is not already in play, I suspect the next step will be their ability to link among themselves, which will form a collective consciousness that is much smarter than any individual zombie. Unlike normal evolution, these beings can learn unendingly from the deaths of their fellows, and thus adapt to threats without the need for a generation of weeding-out. It’s difficult to guess what they might come up with once their intelligence is at its apex; indeed, humans may not live to see it.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Once the shriekers stop turning up food in large quantities, they’ll have to adapt again.”
I looked to BT. It had been our fear all along that as the zombies got smarter it was very likely they would begin to use tools and weapons, making them much more efficient killing machines. But a telepathic hive-mind?
“I also think…that they may be on the cusp of becoming self-aware,” Eric continued. “This, I’m sorry to say, might be the worst thing possible. If they become smart enough to consciously direct their own evolution, there’s no telling what specialized monsters they may become. Flying, bat-like things for bombing, multi-armed monsters with claws and carapace armor…or perhaps telepaths powerful enough to directly influence the actions of others. Your brains,” he added, nodding at BT and Winter, “are capable of much more than you use them for. Intelligent shriekers would evolve them into much more potent weapons.”
He sighed and sat down again, shaking his head.
“Sometimes I wonder how humans survived any of the zombie scenarios. In this case, though, there’s a clear strategy in play. The shriekers are the brains, and that makes them the key. Neutralize them and you slow down the evolution of their entire species, prevent it from becoming purposefully developed. It won’t stop the mindless hordes, of course, but it buys you time.”
“Tommy, what do you think?”
“I think I wish we had a breatine,” he replied.
“What’s a breatine?” Eric asked.
“Small bug. It detects truth.”
“Sweet! I could use one of those.”
“Yeah, let’s make everything even freakier,” BT snapped. “A lot of weirdness going on Talbot; what are we supposed to do? I kind of just want to shoot him and go home.”
“Yeah, I heard my sister was working on some seafood dishes; I can’t imagine how she could screw those up.” I could hear BT cringing. “So, Eric. Is all of this hypothesis, or do you have a plan to stop them?”
“Wait. You aren’t buying into all this, are you?” BT asked.
“I don’t know what I’m buying here, BT. I don’t know what to do. Tommy says he’s a vampire, he’s a vampire. That doesn’t mean he’s inherently evil. Do we kill him to cover our asses? And I’ve never liked that–killing proactively, I mean. I’m definitely not bringing him back to the base. That’s like bringing a bouquet of lit sparklers into a fireworks warehouse. So where does that leave us?”
“Tactical withdrawal, I hope,” Winters responded.
“Look, I understand you’re concerned,” Eric offered. “I like to think I’m generally trustworthy.”
“Generally?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve lied, stolen, cheated, killed, and occasionally been unkind, but I rarely do these things without some sort of justification. I prefer to consider them last resorts under exceptional circumstances. Of course, I may be biased.”
“Is this one of those ‘generally’ times?” I was lowering my rifle.
“Mike, yeah, man. I would say this isn’t one of those circumstances he was discussing, though.” BT was not so ready to drop his rifle down.
“I’m listening, guys. If anyone has a viable option, speak up. Otherwise we hear him out. I’d feel more comfortable, Eric, if you put those swords you have over there.”
“Firebrand? You want me to put Firebrand in a corner? Nobody puts Firebrand in a corner.”
“Did he just kind of quote Dirty Dancing?” BT asked. Eric’s face split in a grin.
“What?” I took my eyes completely off Eric to look at BT.
“Nobody puts Baby in a corner. Dirty Dancing, you know what I’m talking about, right?” BT was looking flustered.
“Drink down that gin and kerosene!” Gary started singing from across the gymnasium.
“Light a match and leave me be!” Eric sang back. Neither of them could carry a tune.
“This is not happening.” Winters was shaking his head.
“Tell you what,” Eric said, still chuckling, “come with me. I’ll show you what I found out.” Eric stepped to one side of the door he’d emerged from and swept his arm as if inviting us to go on.
“This a trap?” I asked.
“Talbot, I think you’ve finally snapped. Of course, it’s a trap. You think he’s going to tell you that?” BT said.
“Shall I go in first?” Eric asked.
“Not a chance.” BT shouldered past all of us. “I’ll take a look first.” He was in there for about fifteen seconds, didn’t hear any sounds of a struggle, then his voice came out of the room clear enough. “Listen, I know white people are touched, especially the ones I end up with but this is starting to border on the absurd.”
“What’s going on?” I lifted my rifle on Eric.
“He’s got a zombie in here trapped by enough weights to sink the Titanic, plus it’s wearing a football helmet.”
“Go, please.” I motioned for Eric to go in so I could follow. “Tommy, Winters, stay close to the door. Anything happens in there, shoot everything that’s not a confirmed friendly.”
I had my flashlight trained on the zombie, who looked, for lack of a better word, pathetic. Like maybe it was in massive amounts of pain, though as of yet I had never seen one display that emotion. Suddenly, I was struck with a profound new thought; not that I cared for its welfare, but I realized just to have that emotion meant it had to have feelings, and feelings came with higher intelligence. “Why the helmet, Eric?”
“It’s one of your shriekers,” he replied as way of an explanation.
“The helmet stops the shrieking?” I didn’t believe that, but the thing wasn’t calling out for help, so there had to be some explanation.
“Not exactly. The designs on the helmet are spells.”
“Spells?” BT repeated.
“Okay, fine. It’s magic.”
“We’re back to that?” BT looked about ready to kick puppies and shoo away rainbows.
“Alright, maybe the word ‘magic’ in this realm is more of the poo-poo variety. How about vampire powers?” He lifted his hands and wiggled his fingers.
“Better,” BT said.
“Really?” I asked. He shrugged.
“I have a spell,” Eric began, then caught himself. “…erm, I mean I have mystically…hmm.” He held up a finger to beg a moment’s wait while he thought. “Right, I think I’ve got it. Through technology so advanced as to seem magical, I have applied certain forces to the helmet. This causes her shriek to enter a feedback loop within her own head, with results as painful as you might imagine. She doesn’t like it all that much.” He shrugged. “Maybe she can learn some empathy; but all she’s managed so far is anger.”
“That’s why she looks like her mom grounded her from going over to Suzie’s party,” I said absently as I looked down upon the zee.
“Yeah, Mike. I’m sure that’s exactly what happened. Just want everyone to know that’s my commanding officer right there. I wonder if they still do section eights? And you won’t even need to wear a dress.”
“What?” I looked away and to him.
“Bullshit! You don’t know who Klinger is?” BT asked.
Eric answered with, “Corporal Max Klinger.”
“Why are you talking about MASH at a time like this?” I asked.
“I give up.” BT put his hand to his face and slowly shook his head from side to side.
“What’s up with him?” I asked Eric.
“Beats me. None of your references make much sense; it is like listening to whales underwater when you speak to each other.” Eric replied.
“Alright, Eric, I need for you to explain this in a way that I can understand and relay to others,” I said.
“Sure. How basic do you need it?” Eric asked.
“Pretend you’re talking to a first grader that somehow got his Kool-Aid mixed up with beer and got so drunk he threw up all over his Minion pajamas and married his favorite teddy bear, that basic,” BT said. “Or a third grader that likes to pretend his paste is milk, that kind.”
Eric was looking from BT to me, a confused expression upon his face.
“Really man?” I asked.
BT shrugged. “If the pointy cap fits, you wear it proudly.”
Eric took that as his cue to interrupt before things got out of hand.
“Look, in a shrieker, large chunks of her brain activate during a scream,” Eric stated as if I was supposed to know what that meant.
“I thought you said you needed an MRI machine?” I asked.
“To make more progress, yes.”
“Then how do you know about chunks of brain activating?”
“I can’t explain that without using words like ‘psychic,’ ‘vampire,’ and ‘magic.’”
“Fine, we’re listening. Winters, you make sure you recall everything he says,” I said.
“Why me?”
“Because you have medical training.”
“Yeah, as a medic, not a neurosurgeon.”
“You’ll be fine,” I told him.
“Shall I continue?” Eric asked.
I motioned for him to do that. I wasn’t completely convinced he didn’t mean us harm, but it was easy enough to see at this moment he was much more interested in telling us what he had discovered rather than discovering how we tasted. I took note that Tommy made sure to stay in a corner of the room the farthest away, keeping a vigilant gaze upon him.
“Because of the…uh, the science-laden helmet I have applied to her head, I can tell the front of her brain performs tasks, while the echo of her scream activates areas closer to her brainstem. It seems to cause quite a bit of pain.”
“Amen to that brother.” Gary had come closer.
“This isn’t a revival tent. Get back to your post,” I told him.
I could hear him mumbling as he left. “I’m the older brother…who does he think he’s bossing around? Wish I could tell dad.”
Me too, I thought.
“I’ve only had experimental subjects for a couple of hours, but you seem to have psychic zombies. They can gather other zombies to them, can call out for help if needed, and obviously force people from safe hiding places by triggering the flight response. There are mutant ogre-types—sorry, I mean ‘bulkers’—and your sprinters, er, speeders. It’s almost like a hive with specialized workers, soldiers, and the like. It’s worse, though, since they seem to be linking psychically to form a composite creature. Individual zombies die, but the creature learns and evolves.”
“Preaching to the choir!” Gary shouted from across the gym.
“Gary! Do you want to lose a stripe?” I shouted back.
“Little bit of power and he lets it go straight to his head.”
“The acoustics in this place are pretty incredible, Private!” I replied.
“It’s Serg…forget it. I get it.”
“What’s next?” BT was done with the distraction as he looked to Eric.
“I can’t tell for sure, not without studying them more or with some advanced machinery. I’m still thinking total consciousness isn’t too far away for them.”
I was happy when he didn’t say “advanced spells” or something along those lines. It seemed strange in the times we lived in that I would be so anti-magic. I did not think I would ever get over that, not anytime soon.
Eric continued. “I think at some point, it will be safe to assume these screamers will get together, maybe a dozen at first, or a hundred, whatever the critical threshold is, and you’ll have a group of zombies capable of thinking.”
“Once that happens, we will find ourselves licking the stinky-pudding end of the stick,” I said.
“Stinky-pudding? That mean what I think it does?” BT asked. “Forget I asked. Of course it does. Great, another visual.” BT flipped me off. “Just fuck you, man. I love my pudding.”
“These shriekers are the real problem,” Eric went on. “They already possess a fair amount of intelligence…more than any of the others, anyway. It can register pain, for one thing, which implies it has a sense of identity. ‘I’ feel pain, but there has to be an ‘I’ to feel it, if that makes sense. This one stopped screaming because it hurts to do so. I’m not sure if she realizes the screams aren’t going to summon help, but she knows screaming hurts.”
“The group intelligence you’re talking about…any idea the limitations?” Winters asked.
“Depends on how many there are. At first, you wouldn’t have anything too bright, but once they realize they could get smarter by adding more members, they might also start evolving big zombie brains to act as central processors. The zombie horde could become more intelligent than any human simply because it would evolve faster than humans.”
I took note that Eric did not seem to include himself within that equation and the more I looked at him, the harder it was to believe he had ever originated from humanity like myself or Tommy. What exactly was he and where was he from? For all I knew, he could be the vanguard of an invading force. He had direct knowledge of the zombies, maybe he was even now manipulating them so that they would be a more powerful adversary to us. So many questions. Good thing I had a shit ton of bullets on me. A significant part of me knew the safe play was to shoot him, but what if he couldn’t die that way? I wouldn’t want to piss him off. I’m sure we would find ourselves in a sinking vat of stinky-pudding in a hurry.
“The main thing in humanity’s favor is this brainiac here,” he nudged the shrieker with the toe of his boot, “doesn’t appear to have a lot of memory. Firebrand has been listening; she doesn’t seem to remember anything beyond the simple Pavlovian response level.”
“Fire…your weapon? Your sword told you this?”
“My psychic sword,” he reminded me. “You want me to go into it?” Eric asked, giving me a look.
“No, just continue,” I sighed.
“Good idea. She knows enough that if she attacks, say, a red thing—”
“What kind of red thing?” Gary asked from across the room.
I put my palm to my head.
“It’s just an example,” Eric replied, nodding at me in sympathy. “How about we say it’s a tank?”
“A red tank?” Gary asked.
“This isn’t happening. Gary, you say one more thing while you’re supposed to be watching our back and I’m going to call in to have you evac’d. Clear enough?”
“I’ve just never seen a red tank is all.”
“Please go on.” I turned back to Eric.
“Okay, so our shrieker attacks, for this argument and this argument only, a red tank.” He nodded over my shoulder to Gary whom, I would imagine, was beaming. “If this tank wiped out the entire group and this one were to survive, she might recruit another gang of zombies to attack. It’s possible she could retain the memory—develop the conditioned response—that to attack a red tank only results in too many zombie deaths. She would be conditioned to avoid red tanks rather than attack them.”
“That could be huge. We saw something like this early on, but if we could make them see humanity in its entirety as too difficult to attack, that could be the turning point.”
“We’re—that is, I’m not sure quite yet if it would be a true memory or a conditioned response. If enough get together to form a sentient entity, it won’t matter. But yes, both could be quite useful.”
He paused for a moment, as though listening again. I tried not to wonder about psychic swords and pickup-truck horses.
“Speaking of useful,” he went on, eyeing me, “I can see you keep wondering what to do with me, Michael Talbot. Let me suggest that while you are uncertain about whether or not I am more valuable as an ally than I am dangerous as a potential enemy, what I am is a powerful unknown. As you suspected, I also dislike being shot. It annoys me dreadfully, and the only thing it will kill is any chance of me leaning toward ally.”
“That’s a lot of words to say not to fuck with you,” I said.
“I thought I should share my viewpoint.”
“I cannot bring you back to our base; there are too many unknown variables here. You say you’re from another realm; do you mean harm here?”
“Nope. Just passing through, really, and wondered why the place seemed abandoned. Then I got curious about your zombies.”
“Are you empathetic enough to see how strange this is for us?”
“Oh, hell yes. This is unusual even for me. I’ve never encountered nonmagical zombies before.” BT bit his lip, but didn’t say anything.
“How long you planning on staying? I don’t want to be like the sheriff of every small town on a television show or movie who forces the outsider to the borders…”
“But,” Eric said, he seemed to be bemused at the notion.
“Not going to lie, you and your research concern me. Like you’re a giant hornet’s nest a half mile from a school. Everything is all fine and dandy until one of them kiddies gets it in his head to throw a rock, then a thousand little hells pop loose. That make sense?”
“The analogy is not without merit.”
“Umm…guys.” Gary was moving away from the door.
“What did I tell you?” I was about to physically place him back at his post.
“You’re going to want to see this,” he told me.
Didn’t need any magical scientific powers to know what was happening. “How many?” I asked before I got there.
“I don’t know, maybe all of them.”
“BT, Winters.” I motioned for them to come with me. Neither Eric nor Tommy moved; I wondered which of them might start pissing first. Alright, so that wasn’t so obvious, pissing contest, I mean. They looked like they were sizing each other up.
“That was fast.” BT was looking through a two-inch opening on the door. The football field was covered in zombies and more were streaming in, beginning to cover the running track that encircled the field, and some were even in the stands as if they were waiting for the festivities to start.
“Lock that. What about the other exit?” I was heading to another door. I opened it only to have three, semi-inflated, red dodge balls roll out. “Supply closet. Great.”
“I’ll check the way we came in.” Winters was gone for less than a minute. “Got close to fifty there. From the looks of it I’d say they’re circling up, checking out about a dozen used foil packs, not eating them just sniffing.”
I turned to Tommy, who was looking through his pack. “I don’t know how they fell out!”
“Shit,” was my only response; all it needed to be, really.
“There are windows in the locker rooms we can fit through.” Winters was in the doorframe.
“Anyone gauge how far we traveled to get here?”
“Fifty-one miles,” Winters said. “Why?”
“How far can base artillery travel?” I asked.
“You insane…sir? Lucky for us, about eighteen miles. No way do I want people I don’t know raining down shells that close to us.”
“Just a thought.”
“Don’t let him upset you, Talbot. At least you had one. That’s a rarity.”
“Thanks, BT. I like it better when we’re on-base, where all you assholes pretend like I’m in charge.”
We were now standing in the hallowed girl’s locker room, the beginning of many adolescent fantasies…though that ends abruptly in the face of reality. Whoever said girls were made of sugar and spice had never been in this site of stink. Adolescent boys didn’t have the market cornered on funk.
The frosted windows were high up above a row of lockers, they appeared to only be for light, as I didn’t see any hardware that would make them open. That wasn’t the biggest problem; the biggest problem was standing next to me.
“You’re not going to fit,” I told him. Our host, Eric, was the most slender of us all, and he would have to wriggle his way through. I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to get through, and the thought of my head sticking out for all to eat like a corn dog at a carnival didn’t sit so well.
“Winters, give me the phone. Haven, this is Tribulation…repeat…Haven, this is Tribulation.”
“Your call signs are getting worse,” BT pointed out unnecessarily.
“At this point, we’ll be lucky if they respond at all,” Winters said. I gave him the finger.
“Go ahead Tribulation.”
“Haven, we’ve found ourselves in a bit of a jam.” Could almost hear the sigh from the other end.
“Tribulation, birds are grounded. We can’t get you an extraction.”
“Looking for a drone strike or two.” He didn’t respond for a few minutes and when he did, he told me to hold for a second.
“What the fuck does he think I’ve been doing, jamming my thumb up my butt?”
“Lieutenant Talbot, you probably want to keep your finger off the transmit button when you’re not following protocol,” Colonel Bennington said.
“Sorry, sir.”
“What’s going on?”
“We’re stuck in a gym. No way out except through roughly seven, eight hundred zombies, sir. The majority are huddled around our beacon in the sky, in fact, striking that and only that would be optimum. Hopefully we’ll be able to do clean up at that point.”
“You safe?”
“For the moment, sir. They’re amassing bulkers to assail our position at some point. Plenty of shriekers in the midst as well.”
“And the light? Any idea who summoned the trouble?”
I was looking directly at Eric; how could I even begin to explain this.
“Sir, I’m not sure as to the who, but there’s some whys. There are some zombies in the gym; looks like some experiments were being performed. Luckily, whoever was playing doctor left some detailed instructions.”
“Anything we can use?”
“Does my answer determine if we get help or not?”
“Of course not, already authorized deployment. I’m told the ETA is fifteen minutes. Lieutenant, you’re going to want to find some cover if possible; this one is armed with four Hellfires.”
“Roger that sir. As for the notes, there’s not a bunch of hard science, but some compelling theories. Some we’re aware of, but some of the insight is new.” At the Colonel’s prompting, I spent the next five minutes going over everything Eric had told us. Bennington was a pragmatist; there was more than a decent chance that something would go south here and we’d never make it back. At least the information would survive, and that was the mission. Sure, none of us here considered ourselves disposable, but that was never the case back at HQ. Mission first, safety third.
“Excuse me—not to interrupt,” Eric asked, once I had my thumb off the button and we had a pause, “but am I to understand you’re calling in an airstrike here?”
“Not here specifically, where the light is.”
“I’m not sure the distance is sufficient.”
“Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you set-up your little Frankenstein shop here. Don’t worry too much; the drone operators are pretty good at their job.” I told him.
“Sir, is it Andres or Verdan at the helm tonight?” Winters asked.
“Shit.”
“What’s shit?” BT asked.
“Verdan is my neighbor. Henry, for some reason, can’t stand him or more likely his mode of transportation, keeps pissing on his motorcycle and has dropped a few deuces around it as well. Verdan has come into work a couple of times with Henry’s offal peppered all over. The guy is actually pretty cool; I think it’s that the machine is so loud it’s disturbed some of Henry’s naps.”
“Your dog is tired after his naps, man, and because one of his siestas is disturbed, we now have to worry about getting pelted by Hellfires.”
“I mostly smoothed it over.”
“Sorry LT,” Winters said. “I was there for one of your smoothing over sessions, smearing it further into his uniform with a wet paper towel doesn’t count as damage control.”
“It’s the thought that counts, right?” I was looking for anything.
“Yeah, I’m sure that was exactly what he was thinking all day as he took whiffs of Henry’s refuse,” BT said.
“Well, if Henry dislikes Verdan now, what do you think the big dog will do if he offs his food delivery system?” I asked.
“That’s a good point. I could see that dog dismantling his bike with that maw of his. Fuck, I do like when you make sense every now and again.” BT clapped me hard enough on the shoulder I nearly pitched over.
“You realize that shit hurts, right?”
“Every time brother, every time. I consider it recompense for all the crap I have to go through with you.”
“Alright people. We have five minutes. Gary, come on, I want everyone in the weight room.”
I was keeping an eye on my brother as he crossed the gym floor, his gaze was down on his ancient walkman, as he must have been fast-forwarding through a song. I have tried repeatedly to get him to switch to a more updated mode of playing music, but he wouldn’t hear of it, said the cassettes added character to the songs. He didn’t care in the least that most music made from 2002 forward was not available in that format. He just said anything worth listening to came out between 1975 and 1989. Strangely specific span, but ultimately his call. Not sure if an mp3 player would have saved him anyway.
I called out to him just as his left foot came down in a wide smear of clear spinal fluid that had leaked out from one of the zombies. He slid for a good two feet before his balance was ultimately lost and he slammed down hard on his ass. He was more upset he had smashed his Walkman than that he had bruised his ass or that he was covered in goo. I had gone over to help him when the doors he had just left were slammed up against. Instantly I knew the sound for what it was: bulkers wanted in. The doors opened outward, but even a single bulker was completely capable of bashing the steel frame out of the cinderblock and concrete, given time-say, less than we had remaining before the drone strike. The weight room door was another steel door, but it might make the difference. I didn’t like there wasn’t any alternate way out once we shuttered ourselves in there, but if there was enough of a horde, I didn’t see a choice.
We stood in a loose circle by the door, watching on the far side as those doors rattled. We bet on whether they would hold before the drone strike hit. Being from Boston, I knew better. They were going to give a good full minute before.
“You owe me a case,” I told BT as the doors burst open.
He let his rifle express how angry he was. He’d opted for the heavier rounded 300 Blackout which worked considerably better than the 5.56 rounds the rest of us were firing. Still would’ve felt a ton better if he was hefting a fifty cal. BT knew better than to go for the armor-plated head, instead opting for the only real soft spot on the beast: the knees. The floor was bouncing up and down as three of the over-sized zombies lumbered toward us; though in no way does that imply that they were slow. The first bulker through the door thumped down to the ground once its right leg was infused with enough holes that it could no longer support the weight it was designed for. If you are an American football fan and happened to have had the displeasure of watching the end of Joe Theismann’s career, you’ll know what I saw. If not…the bulker’s leg bent outward at a ninety-degree angle to the rest of his body. The echo of his head reverberating off the floor was immediately drowned out as his brothers passed him by.
“Inside, let’s go!” As far as I was concerned, the main part of the gym was yielded ground. Eric stood next to me; his sword was out. As far as I was concerned, he had balls of steel if he was going to face a bulker with a bladed weapon. Not sure if he was technically an ally yet, but, enemy of my enemy and all that. Winters pulled the door shut and threw the bolt, stepping back just as the first of the bulkers slammed into it. Didn’t bode well when three of the drop-ceiling panels fell free, one breaking over Gary’s head and coating him in a fine white powder.
“Is this asbestos?” he yelled out, dancing around as if fire ants had crawled into his underwear. He was in far greater danger of knocking himself out running into a weight stack than he was of getting a lung disease.
“It’s alright, man.” BT was wiping the stuff off. “You’re fine, just a regular panel, polystyrene, just polystyrene.”
“How bad is it? Tell me!” Gary pleaded.
BT looked at me as if to ask how deep the crazy ran through the Talbots. He should already know; he was dating my sister. “It’s a resin, a foam or something, it’s fine.” BT finally got my brother somewhat under control.
“Mr. T, the drone is here.” Tommy had his head cocked to the side. I couldn’t hear anything past the shuffling of feet and the pounding at the door. Only way I could have missed the missile strike, though, was if I was in a coma. The explosion was deafening, and if the ceiling tiles were old and indeed made from asbestos, we were screwed, as nearly all the rest of them came down. Looked like we’d been in a baby powder factory after an industrial accident. The drone swung by overhead and fired another missile. I was going to wait until it dropped its entire payload before I committed to a course of action.
The missiles would rip giant holes in the carpet of zombies, but then any of them that had yet to join the party would be coming to investigate. We had an escape window we needed to hit.
“What the hell is taking so long?” I asked when we didn’t hear any more explosions.
“Hear that?” This from BT.
Just on the outer range, I could hear a high-pitched whine.
“Get down, get down!” Winters yelled. “Drone engine is failing!”
I think he finished the sentence, tough to tell as the machine blasted into the gym. I, along with everyone else, was tossed around like kids in the back of a pickup. Heavy steel weights were tumbled in the mix; if we did get home, we were going to be dealing with multiple contusions.
“Verdan fucking hates you, man,” BT grunted as he stood, helping me up.
Thankfully, the relentless assault on the door had stopped, but we had other problems; smoke was beginning to creep in around the frame.
“The door…BT, get it open. I’ll cover you.” Zombies are one thing, but there was no way I was going to die by asphyxiation.
He grabbed the handle. “It’s warm.” He tried to push it open, then he placed his shoulder against it. “Not moving.” He had his full weight and considerable muscle attempting to do so.
“Tommy, help him.” I was worried that when it opened they would spill out onto the floor and be completely vulnerable. The smoke inside was beginning to thicken up.
“Wedged, Talbot.” BT was using all of his considerable resources to try.
“Stand back! I’ll shoot it.” Gary was aiming his rifle.
“Yeah, hold a sec on that idea. It’s wedged in the frame.”
“Stand back,” Eric said. “Shield your eyes.”
“What the fuck?” BT asked.
“I’m not going to ask you to trust me,” Eric replied, placing the point of a big-ass sword against the door, “but just chant ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ and you’ll feel better. I’m not going to be ripped apart by zombie hordes if I can avoid it, and I’m pretty sure I can. Being a decent sort, I’ll also bring you with me as we leave. Can’t ask for a deal more fair than that.” His eyes narrowed and something totally weird happened. The sword was a big monster of a blade, thoroughly medieval, with an ornate pommel in the shape of a dragon’s head with tiny jewels for eyes. I swear to God, despite the obvious risk I take in doing so, the damned thing winked at me.
I instinctively looked to Tommy. Even he seemed out of his element with this one.
“I’m getting something but it’s garbled, kind of like distorted images I might see at the bottom of a dirty pool,” Tommy said. I honestly didn’t know what he was even referencing. Later, I would find out more about Bronze, the statue, the psychic link, and the possessed truck, but at the moment I was close to flying blind. This stuff is beyond my capability to make up, and there was no way I was ever going to tell anyone about it when I was debriefed. And if any of those with me mentioned this, I would, as their superior officer, recommend that they go through a few days of a psych eval.
I backed up as I watched the edge of the blade begin to glow, then I got closer, making sure it wasn’t a trick of my eyes. It wasn’t. The light grew brighter as the whole length of the blade caught fire then narrowed, focusing down to a star-hot line of fire along the edge. He pushed it through the door while everyone shielded their eyes. The damn thing cut through the steel fire door like a plasma torch.
“Any chance I could get one of those?” I asked him.
“I don’t have a spare dragon,” was the cryptic answer, “and you might want to step away.”
“Can I try it?”
He turned his head, lifted his visor and looked at me. In the searing light from the blade, his face seemed different, especially the eyes. They didn’t look like human eyes. There was something deep and dark and terrible in them, something ruthless and savage. Even so, maybe there was also something a little sad. I backed up a step. I moved farther back when he returned to the task at hand.
“That’s like a tiny acetylene torch, right?” BT asked me.
“Where? In the hilt? It would already be exhausted,” I whispered.
“I know you hate the concept, but it is quite definitely magic,” Eric seemed slightly perturbed. “It’s got a dragon spirit inside of it, and you’d better get used to the idea of spirits inside things, because they’re going to save our collective asses.”
I wanted to tell him “bullshit,” but how do I tell someone that while they’re cutting through a steel fire door with the edge of a burning sword?
“A dragon?” Winters looked distraught at the thought. “Lieutenant, what did you get us into?”
“I really don’t think this can be laid at my feet.”
“Come on man,” BT started. “I guarantee that any other team came out on this bullshit run, they wouldn’t have encountered any of this weird shit. There’d be, like, a discarded flashlight in the middle of the field and one old toothless zombie gnawing on it. Eric here would be a scarecrow in a cornfield.”
“Hey!” Eric called, not stopping in his slicing. He wore two swords, the other one was more like a cavalry saber. What the hell did he need it for when the greatsword was a cutting torch?
“Sorry. I’m just saying, Talbot, you’re like a magnet for this type of shit. One of those special rare-earth magnets but instead of metal, you attract crazy–a fucking super-conductor for insanity. Why do I decide to stay with the guy that’s a few cushions shy of a couch?”
“What?”
“No insulation in the attic,” he continued, nudging Gary. “Probably put your shoes on before your pants, you crazy bastard.”
I think he would have gone on until we all choked to death on smoke, luckily, Eric spoke.
“The door will go with a good kick,” he said as the light and fire died around the blade. “Are we going to pick on Talbot some more or run like hell?”
BT nodded, we all raised our rifles.
“I’ll rush the door and take it out. Bronze is waiting for us.”
“The statue? The statue is waiting? How fast does it go? Can we all fit on it? It’s a statue of a horse, right?” Gary wanted to know; hell, I wanted to know.
“Not exactly how it works. Just pile in and we’ll sort it all out later, okay?”
Eric pushed the cut-out door over. The two bulkers that had been trying to force themselves into the gymnasium were running around the gym ablaze, could hear the vast fat stores sizzling as they did so. Occasionally, large droplets would fall from them and continue to burn.
“Well, that’s fucking gross. Don’t shoot them; let’s try to get out of here without making any more noise,” I said.
The gym was burning; easy enough to see the origin of the blaze. Verdan’s drone had punched a hole right through the roof. I was not thrilled when I saw the tips of two missiles pointing directly toward the weight room.
“What aren’t you telling us?” BT asked. “This is about more than just a couple of shitty uniforms. You run over his pet turtle? Maybe put your trash out too early?”
We were moving quickly to the only exit afforded us. We could hear the throaty roar of a V-8 not too far off; I looked over to Eric, who was smiling. Verdan might dislike me immensely, but he had done an admirable job with the gaggle of zombies. There were two large craters on the football field; The Eatonville Eagles would not be playing a home game anytime soon. The zombies that had not been completely obliterated were in complete disarray. Safe to say they were not fans of fire, maybe not the crazed affliction Frankenstein’s monster suffered, but they were staying away from the secondary blazes. We had to clear a couple of them away from our general area, but nothing too taxing. We rounded the corner of the building to where Bronze was parked. Hesitant to get in was an accurate statement, maybe not strong enough to truly imply how I felt.
“It’s not going to turn back into a statue, is it?” I asked as Gary piled in.
“That’s not how it works,” Eric responded. “It’s a perfectly normal truck.” The engine surged twice, like a laugh. “Mostly normal,” Eric amended. “It’s just…possessed. Get in.”
BT looked over at me. “Hummer isn’t that far away.” He had the same misgivings I did.
“You mean the one behind all those zombies?” Eric asked, standing in the bed of the truck and looking toward our vehicle. “Think we can clear them, get it going, and get away before the rest get their act together?”
“Huh?” was my thoughtful answer. My gaze did not waver from the truck; I had poked my head in to see if perhaps this whole magic thing was a ruse and there was a driver, albeit a small one, in there operating the controls. Even when I proved that hope false, I was thinking this could maybe be remote controlled; that was a much more valid notion than a self-aware statue that could inhabit vehicles, right?
A shrieker was barely visible behind what remained of the visitor’s bleachers; its head was thrown back and its mouth was wide open. Neither I, nor anyone with me, was suffering the effects of its yell.
“Oh, wonderful,” Eric and Tommy said in unison. They traded glances and Tommy added, “It’s summoning.”
Even though I hadn’t picked up on the psychic signal, the effects would have been difficult to miss. Zombies who were, only moments before, confused individuals were beginning to coalesce around the shrieker and as they got closer to him, it appeared that they were receiving a secondary message as they would turn to us and start moving as fast as they could. I entertained thoughts of standing and fighting, but there were too many and more were coming.
“Oh well, I guess I can always tell my grandkids I rode inside a magical statue; pretty sure they’ll just commit me at that point, but what the hell.” I waited until everyone was in before joining them. The engine thrummed; the reverberations were loud inside the cab as it left a trail of rubber some twenty feet long as we fishtailed it out of there. Eric said nothing, riding in the bed and holding on to the headache rack with one hand as the driverless vehicle barreled down the highway.
“Don’t you want to get in?” I shouted.
“Swords,” he replied over the engine roar and wind. “This truck doesn’t have the sword rack option installed.”
I would have felt much better to see someone driving. The wheel turned, the pedals moved, the whole thing ran like a machine possessed, which I guess it was. I swear it was fucking with me as it would drift around, coming dangerously close to debris or other stalled cars along the road, then swerving clear at the last possible moment. I winced or involuntarily bunched up each time, and it seemed to be getting its jollies from the entire affair. I was smart enough to wait until we were stopped and all out before I told Eric his statue was an asshole. I flipped it off, too. The engine backfired, spitting a black cloud of smoke. Same to you, buddy.
“She’s just playful.”
“The Hummer is one street over.” BT was looking at his GPS.
“See? She can be nice,” Eric pointed out.
“What now?” I asked him.
“I think I’m going to move on. Too many zombies, not enough magic, and I doubt anyone is interested in taking up a collection to keep me fed. Don’t misunderstand. I’d be willing to help, but I suspect your superiors will start poking their noses into things better left unpoked. I might be forced to do some unsavory things in response to their prejudice. I’m sure you understand.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, because I did.
“All in all, I think we should end on a high note. Don’t you?”
“This is a high note?” BT asked. “I’d hate to see your aria.”
“The Queen of the Night’s got nothing on me,” he replied, smirking. I caught the joke. “It’s been interesting,” he went on. “I doubt we’ll see each other again, but I’ve been wrong before. Entirely too often, in fact.” He seemed to be scanning a memory.
I stuck my hand out, wasn’t sure what else to do. Eric tugged off a gauntlet and shook it. His grip was firm and dry, but his hand was cold, very cold.
“Thanks for…I’m not sure what,” I admitted.
“You are most welcome…Michael Talbot, Lawrence Tynes, Gary Talbot, Thomas Van Goth, and Jake Winters. Good luck with the zombies! With those, the shriekers are the key.”
“Oh, we got it,” BT agreed.
“As for the humans,” he added, “I wish I had an answer for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Observe humans for a thousand years and see if you still need to ask.”
We all watched as Eric mounted up on his V8 steed and took a grip on the headache rack. It roared to life with the cab still empty. The headlights came on and one of them blinked off for an instant, like it winked at me. The whole truck darkened from a coppery color down to a dull black before it spun through a tight turn and roared off into the night.
“Are we gonna check out where he goes?” BT asked.
“Not a fucking chance,” I said as I turned and was heading to our ride.
“What are we supposed to say in our debriefing?” Winters asked.
“Everything, exactly like it happened, just without Eric, magic swords, possessed trucks, and all the other crazy-ass bullshit. Should make it simple enough,” I told him.
The drive home was quiet except for Gary’s humming. We were all trying to process what had just happened, or at least assimilate it into our new reality. Luckily, I was the only one Bennington met with and after an hour of telling him all I wanted him to know, he dismissed me. I had stood and was heading for the door, thankful he’d not delved too deeply.
“Oh, Lieutenant, the next time you don’t want to tell me something, I suggest you work a little longer on your delivery.”
“Sir.” I turned back. “What I saw, what we all saw…I don’t even think I believe it. I wouldn’t even know how to explain it. The intel is good, the anomaly is gone; if you still want to know, give me a day or two to formulate some thoughts.”
“If you think I need to know, then you know where to find me. Otherwise, good job, Lieutenant. Enjoy some downtime.”
“Thank you, sir.”