Dead Man Running (63 page)

Mira
opened the case, pulled out two bombs.

"I read your mind.  Thank you for finally acting.  This will bring things to a conclusion.  You know, I can convince Wiley to let you stay here until your child is
born
.  It'll be just like old times."

"Fuck you and die old man."  She dropped the bombs on the floor.  The bombs snicked open and the nanobots flew out.  The two females stopped having sex long enough to realize that the bots were coming directly to them.  The
robots flew into the women and soon they were tumbling off the bed, flopping on the floor as if having seizure
s
.

Meanwhile a group of nanobots flew into
Hamid
Hidar
's body.  Under his skin, the robots could be seen moving frantically to and fro.

"Ah, they feel like bumblebees.  They are quite the achievement.  Congratulations."  He laughed as the metallic creatures tickled his insides.  "But, alas, they cannot harm me.  I am protected by my magical heart."

The two female zombies had stilled.  The nanobots were working on them; they would be human in less than twenty minutes
Mira
knew.

Hamid
got to his feet.  "I'm sorry but this is boring me now.  Time to move on, granddaughter."  He pressed some type of intercom and asked Prit
chett
to bring an assault team to his suite.

In less than a minute
Mira
was facing Pritchett, ten of his men, and their assault weapons.  As she stared at the smiling face that used to belong to her beloved grandfather, the case containing the
remaining
reversal bombs was closed and taken from her.

Manchester Lee watched from the security nerve center of
Harlem
Hospital
the activities occurring in Operation Room Seven.  Two people – an older female and young
er
male – stood in opposite corners of the room brandishing assault weapons.  In the center of the room the doctor and nurses he had spent his time converting from zombie to human were performing a caesarian section on Jan Sugerfoot Wiley.

The problem with converting zombies to humans, he discovered, was that it brought to the fore their sense of self preservation.  These new humans wanted to live and, therefore, were not going to do anything to cause the two gunmen to fire their weapons.

His other converts at the hospital – the three 'rent a cop' security force he shared the security center with – w
ere
no more eager to take on the heavily armed duo. 

The
c
ops? The Fed
s
? 
T
hey would take the word of a
walking
dead man that the young wife of the Vice President
-
elect was giving birth to a monster?  Knowing the Feds as he did, they were likely to believe him but would retain the child for 'study' and possible duplication as a sentient, highly mobile, weapon of mass destruction.

No, Manchester Lee was on his own and he would have to destroy baby Wiley all by his lonesome.

The turncoat doctor pulled the bloody child clear of its mother's body.  Jan was conscious and said something to the nurses and doctor. 
Manchester
could hear neither question nor response but the woman smiled and rested her head back.

"Probably asked if the fucking thing had a tail," he muttered.  The three humans looked at him, then back to the video monitor.

Yes
, he thought,
I'
m
all fuckin' alone.

Elias drifted on the clear, calm waters.  He spent his time – maybe about an hour since the plane exploded – watching the sea life just below the surface.

Suddenly a grotesquely familiar face
shattered the tranquility
of the water.  "Mind if I come aboard?" Wiley asked.  "I
t
took me so long to reach you and I'm kinda tired.
"  He raised one arm out of the water.  It looked like a doll's arm plugged back into the socket in a haphazard manner by a determined toddler.  "Can ya help a brother out?  I have a leg just like it."  He lowered his voice to a whisper.  "Let me tell you, zombie or not, jumping out of a jet plane without a parachute is not a good idea."

"Fuck off, Ben," Elias screamed.  He began paddling the boat furiously.

Wiley's head disappeared under the water.  Next, damaged leg or not, he roared from underneath the sad little raft, flipping the
c
raft, its occupant tumbling out into the ocean.

Elias felt the warmth of the ocean and the coolness of Wiley's lifeless arm clamp around his neck.  The zombie faced Elias as he wrapped his legs around Elias' and the pair dropped under the surface, down under, where death waited for one.

Mira
, Pritchett, and his men watched as
Hamid
cou
g
hed out the remaining nanobots from his body.  The angry swarm hovered above his head, frustrated.

Mira
wondered why they did not attack the other zombies in the room.  They seemed particularly single minded when it came to her grandfather.

She recalled the bewitching spell she had applied to this set of nanobots
.  Perhaps that would be enough, combined with their apparent stubborn determination, to overcome the magical barrier protecting Hamid's heart.

Hamid
straightened himself and walked toward his granddaughter.  He took her hand.  "Ready?" he asked.

"For what?" 

He smiled.  "Why, to go to your new home!"

"My cell."

Hamid
nodded, turned toward Pritchett.  "Take her."  He looked down at the still slumbering women.  "I will visit….afterwards."  His stomach growled in hunger.

"Look," said one of the soldiers.  The nanobots were very agitated, their energy now consumed by a quickening circular motion near the ceiling.

Their movement accelerated until the sound they made was very similar to that made by a high speed saw.

The group, now moving in a perfect circle, traveled upward until they met the ceiling. 
Mira
,
Hamid
and the soldiers stepped back as the nanobots destroyed the building materials in their path, chewing through the ceiling.

"What should we do?" asked Pritchett.

"Nothing," said
Hamid
.  "They're frustrated.
 
They're seeking greener pastures."  He laughed and some of the soldiers joined him.

Pritchett did not laugh.  He looked from the hole created by the nanobots to
Hamid
then
to
Mira
.

He
realized what the young woman already knew. 
They already ha
d
greener pastures – us!
  Why were they leaving?

"Stop them," he said to
Mira
.  He pointed his H&K machine pistol in her face.

Hamid
knocked away the pistol.  "She can't, you idiot.  She has no magic.  She cannot control those things."

"Can't you control them?  You have magic, right?"

Hamid
shook his head.  "It's her magic
–
one magician cannot control another's
creations
."

A circle of sunlight shone on the floor of
Hamid
's apartment
as more material drifted downward
.

"They're through the roof," one of the soldiers said.  He stood in the sunny patch, looking upward.

Suddenly the room was filled with a loud buzzing noise, loud enough to make
Mira
hold her ears
, as the devices returned
.

The nanobots, still in a circular formation, transited the room.  They fell upon
Mira
's metallic briefcase, disintegrating the material.  The
last of the
globes were free
d
and quickly deployed.  The soldiers fired upon the globes but it was too late – the nanobots entered their bodies and soon the eleven men were gyrating and convulsing on the floor.  The original swarm continued a tight circular flight around
Hamid
, frustrating his efforts to get out of the room.  Finally, the man had lost his smile.  This was no longer funny.

Over the next ten minutes t
he swarm grew as nanobots, having
completed
their work on the women and
soldiers,
vacated the transformed bodies. 
Mira
, t
he
transformed
women, and a few of the newly human men, watched as the nanobots generated a very tight funnel cloud, one meant for
a singular
purpose, to lift
Hamid
Hidar
out of the room.

Hamid
's body was
quickly
transported out of the facility.  In seconds, all was quiet.  The
two
women, realizing their nakedness, covered themselves. 

Mira
, wondering what would happen to her grandfather, walked out of the apartment.
  Her thoughts traveled thousands of miles away to the Pacific.  She couldn't shake the sense of imminent loss.

Tamesha was getting tired and Mrs. Chin was gaining on her.  With nowhere else to run, she
ran to their
next
closest neighbors, the Browntree's.

Good luck!  Mrs. Browntree was working in her garden!

"Mrs. Browntree!" shouted Tamesha.  She didn't know the woman too well but hopefully she'll save her from a homicidal foster mother.

She froze as she got close to the woman.  It was the smile – wide and full of teeth, pure evil to the core.

"What can I do for you, child?" she asked.  She set down the hoe
that
she had been
wielding
.  Tamesha didn't know what she had been doing with that hoe but it looked like body parts, not potatoes she was burying.

The creature followed Tamesha's eyes
to her 'garden'
. 
It
stepped back so that the child could get a better look. 
"I'm just burying what's left of my husband.  He had such beautiful hands.  I can't bear to eat them." 
Her stomach growled with anticipation
as Mrs. Chin grabbed her stunned ward. 

"Hello, Mrs. Browntree.  Thank you for slowing down little
Tammy."

"You're welcome.  Dinner or convert?"

"Convert," she said and she raised the fistful of darts above Tamesha's head.

They must have dropped about a hundred feet and Elias
struggled
to
hold his breath. 
In a matter of seconds he would have to open
his mouth and his burning lungs
would
fill with water.  He faced his murderer, the smiling face of Ben Wiley.  He thought of
Mira
as the darkness began to creep around the edges of his conscious mind.

Hamid
Hidar
found himself under water as well, under at least a thousand feet of the Atlantic, off the continental shelf near the coast of
Maryland
.  He too smiled, until he realized the plan of the nanobot
s
. 

The bots suddenly accelerated his body upward, the sudden pressure change overwhelming even magical defenses, swelling his heart until it burst in his chest.  The last living part of
Hamid
Hidar
was dead.

With the loss of his magical heart, he was ripe for invasion by the bots, which wasted no time.  In seconds, still hundreds of feet below the surface,
Hamid
Hidar
began to be transformed back into a human being.

As a weakening Elias stared into his eyes, Wiley's eyes widened.  With a sudden surge of supernatural power, Wiley's body blew apart into its component pieces, the force of the explosion sending Elias jetting toward
the sunlight.

With one last burst of energy, he was able to break the surface and breathe life giving air, simultaneously coughing out seawater.  He wasn't far from the raft and he slowly paddled his way back to it.

After righting the small craft, he climbed inside.  It was his turn to smile.  Mira had been successful – Hamid was dead. 

But was she still alive?