Zombie Theorem (Book 1): The Culling (8 page)
“I know him, he has been with the security group for three months. He always made comments about how the government would never be there for us when we need them the most. I figured he meant for the next earthquake and FEMA and how they failed Katrina. I usually just let him talk my ear off while I waited for the elevator. I never really paid more attention to him than that.”
Reynolds cell phone went off to a ring of the A-team theme song. He looked down at the caller id and answered it. “Reynolds. Talk to me.” He listened intensely and a look of concentration came upon his face. He took a pen from his breast pocket and started making notes on the jacket folder he was holding. “Ok thank you for the update. Let me know if anything changes.”
He looked over at me and just stared for a while, his lips pursing into a thin white line. “That was a friend of mine who’s a news director at NBC. He said he’s been monitoring his east coast office since it went down Wednesday. He said he just got an email from his counterpart. It said that the virus was out of control out there and that Washington had just declared a Federal emergency and martial law.”
“How are we doing here on the west coast?” I asked
“The hospitals are filled up with sick people. The virus seems to be getting out of control. But is worse east of the Rockies, for now that is.”
“You know what’s going to happen with the sick people right? Just like Marco they die and come back and infect others. This is going to get bad.” I explained.
Reynolds put down his pen, file, and coffee cup. He sighed deeply and examined me with his bright eyes. “I hear what you are saying and I’m not believing you or disbelieving you. So far though, we have not had anything like that happen. The hospitals and morgue are not reporting anything. So unless you are wrong with what you saw, the virus has mutated or we’ve all gotten lucky so far and been able to stop this from happening or getting worse. Why don’t you continue on with your story? There are more questions I have a feeling you’re going to have the answers to.”
Brian kept a vigilante watch over Lisa's body. I sat down on the floor and rested my head against the window. Brian looked at me and then did something I thought was strange. He lifted the table up and moved it over so he could place the edge down on Lisa’s body. He then walked over and placed chairs on their side creating a ring around the area I was sitting in. He stepped over the chairs and eased his body to the ground against the windows.
“That’s better.” He sighed and let his body go limp. “Even big guys like me need to sit down and relax every once in a while. It’ll take her a while to change anyway. Let’s get some rest boss since last night sucked all kinds of ass. I’ll take first watch, go ahead and get some winks in.”
I was too exhausted to argue, so I gave him thumbs up and passed right out. I dreamed San Francisco was on fire, guns could be heard all over and people were running around screaming. I was walking down the Embarcadero toward the piers. The bay was to my right. People would run past me with horrendous wounds, screaming for help before jumping into the bay. Boats could be seen clogging the water heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge. I couldn’t understand the emergency, I just kept walking, taking in the scenes unfolding in front of me. I saw strollers knocked over, cars wrecked into each other, and when I looked up I saw a huge jet liner go over my head way too low to make it over the buildings. Suddenly the plane tipped over on its left wing tip and crashed right into the Coit tower, taking the top half off the tower and crashing into Pioneer Park. The plane erupted into flames setting more of the city on fire. I stopped and watched the fire grow in intensity. Something was pulling on my arm, I looked down and it was a little six-year-old girl dressed in a pretty white dress. She had her blonde hair done up in big curls. She was trying to say something but I couldn’t understand what. Like her voice was slowed down and echoed back and forth. That’s when I looked up and saw a group of bloody people running at us, some missing hands or feet, their teeth kept clacking while their jaws worked like they were eating something. I picked up the girl and we started running but there was fire in front of us and these people behind and also now coming from our left. I cut to the right and ran straight for the bay. A boat was just shoving off and the crew was yelling for me to hurry. I got to the edge of the dock and threw the little girl into the boat. She made it safe into a crewman’s arms. I then jumped as hard as I could but missed the boat and was just about to fall into the water when I opened my eyes and bolted straight up gasping for air. I was back in the conference room. Brian reached out and grabbed my bicep and squeezed assuredly. Letting me know I was not alone.
“Boss, you’re fine. Calm down. It was just a nightmare.” He patted my back. “You slept for three hours. How are you feeling?”
“Like shit.” I croaked out.
Brian produced a half full bottle of water. “Here I found this and saved half for you.”
I sipped at it feeling the dream slowly slip back into its own world. “Thanks Brian, I needed that. Did you get any sleep?”
“I napped on and off, I feel pretty good, ready when you are to continue our little adventure.” He chuckled seemingly enjoying my discomfort.
“Has Lisa come back yet?”
“No, I think this thing takes a while. Remember Stacey was bitten and infected, at least we assume so. It took her a while to change and I’m thinking this thing takes somewhere around 8 or more hours to reanimate the dead. I guess that word is the only way to describe what it does.”
“So do we wait or move on? Part one of our mission is complete with finding Lisa and Marco. So do we leave her here or should we move on for the sat phone and come back for her later?” I asked as I stood looking over what remained of her body.
“This is going to sound bad, but I think we should go ahead and destroy her brain now. Then move on to our second objective,” he answered truthfully.
I walked over to all three bodies and looked down at them. Right then I had so much anger built up in my chest and escaping in a roar as I started stomping on Marco’s head. I was so angry over everything and just kept stomping till I ended up crushing it. My shoes were covered in little pieces of black fluid and bone bits. I just stood there staring at what I had done, breathing heavily in and out trying to control my emotions. I had never lost control before like that and it terrified me.
I was trying to process what I had just done when I felt Brian’s hand grabbing my arm and guiding me over to the windows again. He handed me a roll of paper towels he had found by the white board. “Here clean off your shoes and legs. I’m going to take care of Lisa then we need to gather ourselves and move on.” I nodded at him and bent down toward my feet.
I tried to block out what Brian was doing, by cleaning up the mess I had created. I was able to get the beast back into its cage and lock down my emotions when Brian came back from his gruesome duty. He evaluated both our weapons.
“Hey Boss I’m a little worried about our weapons. We used them twice and they are already showing some pretty bad wear and tear. Mine is worse than yours though.” He said and flipped my spike to me.
I caught it and quipped. “Of course yours is worse. It has to deal with your retarded silver back, gorilla strength.” I pointed at his weapon then at his big arms.
“Yeah well it’s not my fault I do more than work at my desk, then go home and play with myself.” He gave me a lopsided grin and flipped me the bird. “Are you feeling better now? Are all outbursts under control?”
I moved to the back door and motioned him over. “Did you put cameras in my house? Never mind, yes, I feel better sorry about that. I got a grip on it now.”
“Yeah I got video but it aint making no money on Dorksathome.com. I’ll take point, stay on my ass though. I know you got no problem doing that, just keep your hands off unless you got flowers and chocolate.” He walked up and gripped the door knob and turned it slowly. He then swung the door open and stepped back. “Just making sure no one is at the door ready to eat at Brian’s buffet.” He stepped out then waved me on.
We turned left and continued down the hallway, clearing offices and closets as we went. It wasn’t till we entered the lunch room, when we ran into trouble. Two of those things were standing at the far end by the fridge. We stepped back and Brian whispered to me. “There are two of them, and two of us. So pick the one you want to take care of and I’ll take the other. “
I poked my head back in and decided to take the woman and leave the bigger guy to Brian. I pointed to the woman and mouthed to Brian “I’ll take her.” I slowly walked in and promptly tripped over a chair landing hard on my face. Fuck me that hurt. The two things turned and came for us but they had trouble with the table and chairs between us. It was like they were dunk and just walked straight into the obstacles.
Brian reached down grabbed me by my belt and lifted me off the floor. “Alright rest time is over; you already took a nap earlier. Get your shit back in the game. Thank you by the way for making this harder. I take it you like a challenge?”
I got to my feet and made sure my grip on the spike was strong. I looked at the furniture and an idea came to me. I picked up a chair and held it like a lion tamer would, feet sticking out. Brian looked at me questioning and gave me the go ahead sign. I moved slowly toward the woman. I waited till I was closer then ran at her, hitting her in the chest. I then kicked her legs out from under her, causing her to fall to the ground. I pinned her to the ground with the chair and took a deep breath to calm down. I raised the spike over my head and brought it down intending to slam it down on her head, but she moved her head to the side. My arm went numb from slamming the spike into the floor. I couldn’t tell if she moved intelligently or if it was just a fluke. She tried moving out from under the chair but there was no way I was going let her. I got mad lifted the chair and slammed it back down but this time forcing two of the legs into her, one in the throat, the other into her chest. I looked over at Brian and he had already finished off his thing and was now sitting on one of the tables smiling at me.
“Need help?” he asked. I gave him the finger and put my foot on her head. I then slammed the spike down into her eye socket finally finishing her off. I wiped my spike off on her brown crusted dress and walked over to Brian.
“Fuck you. I’m new at this shit. You were trained professionally; I'm learning on- the-job.” I was breathing hard trying not to lose my lunch from the rotten smell coming from the two bloody bodies. The smell was like nothing I have ever experienced. It was as if you picked up fresh dog crap, microwaved it with rotten broccoli and garbage. Yeah never mind, that smell I’m sure doesn’t come close. in fact, that sounded heavenly.
“Boss they don’t teach you how to kill these things in the Marines.” Brian patted me on the back and we got up and headed back toward the elevator lobby.
We arrived in the lobby without meeting anyone, or should I say anything. I grabbed my keys out of my pocket and unlocked one of the doors. “Thank God I remembered my keys huh? That would’ve sucked.” I held the door open and waived him on. “Beauty before brains.”
“Really Boss? I mean, first you like my ass now you tell me I’m beautiful. We need to have a deep talk after all this.” Brian walked into the hallway.
This floor was laid out differently than the one we worked on. Instead of an open area of cubicles, this one had a big lushly carpeted hallway with offices on the window side. This was where the big wigs worked. Their secretaries sat on the other side in cubes by the break room which we had already cleared. I could see most of the office doors were open.
We walked up to the first one and Brian poked his head in. “Clear. Move onto the next one I’ll follow you.”
“Brian don’t you think we should check the entire office like behind the door and desk? You know just to make sure?” I pointed out.
“Damn you really are the brains in this operation. Good job pointing that one out. I’ll make a soldier out of you yet.” Brian slowly moved into the office as I kept a watch on the hallway. We talked in hushed tones so we did not alert anyone or thing to our presence. Brian looked behind the door and then travelled behind the desk. He even moved the chair and looked underneath it. “Clear.”
I smiled then moved onto the next office. I poked my head in first and saw it vacant of anyone or thing. I walked in further and checked behind the door and mimicked Brian’s pattern from the other office. “Clear” I said.
We repeated this for the next two offices and found nothing; the doors were open and inviting. We came upon the first office with a closed door and Brian motioned that he would take this one himself. He pointed to the other side of the door and told me to watch our back. He reached out and tried the door knob. He found it locked. He hunched his shoulders at me as if saying “Now what the fuck do we do?”
“Let’s move on and try the other offices. Opening that door is going to make an awful racket.” Brian smiled at that.
We moved on to the next closed door and Brian tried the handle. It moved, so he unlatched it and pushed the door open, stopping it before it could slam into the wall. He walked in taking slow measured steps. He was checking behind the door when it was pushed back at him. A man stumbled out grabbing Brian’s forearm and taking a big bite. Brian closed his eyes taking the pain in but took his spike and shoved it into the things eye. Brian moved the arm being bitten closer to him like doing an arm curl with weights, helping the spike to dig deeper into the eye socket. He jiggled the spike back and forth, then pulled it free with a pop. He used the spike to pry the things mouth open, releasing his arm. I moved forward to help but he stayed me with a look. He examined his arm closely and then sighed out loud and sunk to his knees. “The skin is not broken but fuck me that hurt.” He flexed his hand a couple of times testing out his grip and I'm sure, trying to regain his composure.