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BOOK: Zombie Anthology
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"The garage?” Those things are all over the place up there,” Nathanial pointed out.

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

    
"What's with all the “you” stuff?"

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

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

    
"No,” Toni cried squatting beside Sheena's chair to embrace her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

    

 

    Epilogue

 

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

    

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

    

THE END

    

    

    

II - The Queen

Introduction

    

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

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

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

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

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

    
Enjoy.

    
-Susanne S. Brydenbaugh

    
October 2005

    

    

1

    

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

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

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

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

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

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

BOOK: Zombie Anthology
5.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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