Zombies II: Inhuman Read online

  “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 blond 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 pow
er. 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.

  Reapers at the Door

  The blaring of alarm klaxons tore Scott from sleep. 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 that 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 that 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 that 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 that 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. It 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, tearing and ripping at his flesh with hungry teeth.

  Deadlier Country

  Elijah laughed bitterly at the hand fate had dealt him. When the dead had begun to rise, he’d leapt into action. He 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, s
till 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 that 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, 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.