The Living Dead 2 Part 26

He was shocked. My face, he thought. My old face.

No, he decided then, studying the man. But close. We could be brothers.

Park's finger twitched, tapping the trigger. He could easily put a bullet through that face, but he hesitated. It had been such a long time since he'd looked in a mirror. Since he'd recognized himself.

Any moment now he'd be spotted. Take the shot, his mind urged. Do it. But what difference did it make? Mei was safe. Park continued to stare. He didn't want to see that face destroyed.

No. Not that that face. face.

He imagined the eyes of all the people he'd delivered into the horrors of the necropolis. He imagined the old woman screaming as his teeth tore into her. He heard Mei's voice crying, "What's happened to you?" and his own replying, "I'm what I have to be. To save you."

Slowly he reached up and grasped a handful of fabric.

There. The man had seen him, was taking aim. For an instant the two of them stared at each other through their scopes.

Park removed his mask.

Dustin watched from the wall of his palace as an army of the living battled through the city toward him, but he was powerless to do anything.

In the yard below, one of his followers came into view.

"Hey!" Dustin shouted. "You! Up here!"

The man stopped and looked at him.

"Listen to me very carefully," Dustin said. "This is your Commander speaking. You are to walk around this palace to the main entrance. Once inside, turn right and keep going until you reach the stairs. Take them to the top floor and continue on the way you were. You'll come to a door leading out onto this balcony. Then remove me from this f.u.c.king spike! Do you understand?"

The man stared back with vacant eyes. "Walk around the palace..." it moaned.

"Yes," Dustin said. "And the rest of it. Turn right-"

"Walk around the palace... " The creature took a step toward him, then away. "Walk around the palace... " it repeated, as it wandered, back and forth.

Obedience By Brenna Yovanoff

Brenna Yovanoff's first novel, a contemporary young adult fantasy called The Replacement The Replacement, should be out from Razorbill around the same time as this anthology. Her short fiction has appeared in Chiaroscuro Chiaroscuro and and Strange Horizons Strange Horizons. On her LiveJournal (brennayovanoff.livejournal.com), she claims to be good at soccer, violent video games, and making very flaky pie pastry, but bad at dancing, making decisions, and inspiring confidence as an authority figure.

One of the most wrenching aspects of a zombie plague that makes it completely different from, say, an invasion of alien arachnids is the knowledge that these hordes of enemies were once our friends and neighbors, were once decent, loving people. As we perforate their faces with a .50 caliber machinegun, or hack at their clutching hands with a machete, axe, or chainsaw, it's impossible not to wonder whether these moaning ghouls retain any trace of their former personality. Are the people they once were still trapped in there somewhere, aware of what's happening around them? Might they ever be cured, the way a mentally ill patient can be, with the right treatment?

Books and films are filled with incidents in which survivors try to show mercy to zombies-as with the barn full of zombies in Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead The Walking Dead-or will even fight to protect them, as with the zombified newborn in the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead Dawn of the Dead. Michael Crichton's novel Jura.s.sic Park Jura.s.sic Park suggests that it's impossible to safely keep dinosaurs in captivity, and much the same thing seems to be true of zombies. The temptation is always there, though-what if it were just one zombie? Just one little girl, surely we could handle that? suggests that it's impossible to safely keep dinosaurs in captivity, and much the same thing seems to be true of zombies. The temptation is always there, though-what if it were just one zombie? Just one little girl, surely we could handle that?

But if zombie stories have taught us anything, it's that keeping zombies around, whether out of mercy or as research subjects, seems to have a way of ending up badly for everyone involved-and by "badly" we mean with teeth, blood, and screams.

When the first drinking gla.s.s. .h.i.t the floor and broke, Private Grace pressed her back against the wall and steadied the sidearm with both hands. The window above her was single-paned, the weather-stripping rotten. To her left, a freestanding radiator was rusting gently. The house was a summer cabin, cramped, and redolent with the smell of mice. They'd spent the better part of an hour nailing the windows shut, then gathering gla.s.sware-pitchers, vases, dinner plates, a souvenir ashtray with a cartoon walrus painted in the bottom-and arranging the dishes in rows along the sills.

Now, they hunkered down, waiting. There had been food at least, canned, coated in dust. They ate quickly, pa.s.sing the open cans back and forth as evening fell. The sound the gla.s.s made when it landed was explosive, a mortar going off.

"What do we show these giddy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds?" Whitaker called from the adjoining room, sounding clipped and perfunctory.

The answer came from a dozen positions, followed by the metallic sound of carbines, magazines and bolt a.s.semblies clattering into place. "No mercy, sir sir."

They had begun as an infantry platoon of forty-seven, mostly up from New Mexico and Texas. Now, they were thirteen. Ten privates, one combat medic, and Denton the Marine, all serving under Whitaker.

Of the privates, only Grace and a trooper named Knotts were from Whitaker's original squad. The other eight and Jacobs, the medic, had come off a company that had gotten pinned down at the Air Force base and, for the most part, died there.

The base had been a short-term El Dorado, but when they arrived, their grand welcome was absent, save for a few survivors holed up in the bunkers. Some of the medical technicians had made a last-ditch effort to seal themselves in the sleep chambers. It was difficult to say whether the ma.s.sacre had happened with the techs scrambling for safety or already in stasis, but one thing was certain. The flyboys had been dead for weeks.

Where Denton originated from remained somewhat of a mystery. It was theorized that he was a deserter, but in truth, Grace did not much care. Denton had the best guns.

"Smirkers," someone shouted in the front hall, immediately followed by a crash as the door splintered. Fire came in three-round bursts, rattling through the tiny house.

Grace crouched lower, sinking into her nanovest, bracing her shoulder against the radiator. She checked the cuffs of her jacket, tucked them deep into the tops of her gloves. Outside, pale hands seemed to float, palms flat against the windows. They were laughing, a storm of high-pitched giggles.

They smiled. No training in the world prepared you for that. They smiled as they slashed and bit, tearing flesh off their victims in chunks. They smiled as they ran, a merciless full-out sprint, headlong, ravenous. They smiled right before you leveled the barrel and squeezed the trigger. Sometimes, if the shot was high enough, the caliber small enough, even when they fell back-smoke rising from a neat round hole in the forehead-they were still smiling.

Jacobs said it was neurological, an involuntary tic. He talked about them a lot, his language precise, his hands sketching neural pathways. It had been his idea to come up here, strike for the research complex near Rosewood. They were close now, a couple miles off, but the slopes were crawling with smirkers and everything had started to seem wildly impossible.

A window broke somewhere and the house was suddenly awash with a new influx. They poured into the little common room. One was wearing a Christmas sweater, red, sprinkled intermittently with green trees, white reindeer.

Against the other wall, Denton was cutting swaths through the mob-systematic, businesslike. His arms were ma.s.sive, the muscles displayed in sharp relief as he swung the carbine up. The smirker in the Christmas sweater was closing. It moved fast, turning on him with hands outstretched.

"Semper Fi," Denton said, but it sounded flat and ironic. He jammed the muzzle in the smirker's face.

In the front hall, Private Sutter was shouting something. He was always shouting, hooting, whooping. Sutter, with the G.o.d-awful tattoo on his neck, upwards arrow pointing to the base of his skull. Corsican script said, in an incongruously graceful hand, Eat Me Eat Me.

Smirkers did not, in actuality, express much preference for the brain over other organs. They seemed content to take any piece they could get, but the celluloid lore of old movies was hard to shake.

In the last few weeks, some of the privates had taken to painting targets on their helmets. Aim here in case of infection. Aim here in case of infection. Whitaker didn't like it, but allowed the targets in the same indulgent way he allowed Sutter's tattoo. Harmless, letting off steam. Grace thought it was morbid. Whitaker didn't like it, but allowed the targets in the same indulgent way he allowed Sutter's tattoo. Harmless, letting off steam. Grace thought it was morbid.

The window above her fell in with a glittering crash, and she rose and popped the first smirker in the face. It slumped forward and she turned to meet the two that came after, dropping them on the carpet. After that, the process became automatic. Her territory extended outward for two yards and ran the distance of the wall. Every other inch of the house was someone else's problem.

Something moved behind her and she swung around, already reaching for her combat knife. It had been a boy, sixteen, maybe seventeen. The face still bore the faint interruptions of acne. He grinned and his teeth were coated in a thin veneer of blood.

The carbines were light, easy to maneuver, and the sidearm was more versatile still, but for such close quarters, Grace favored the knife. She slipped it from the sheath and brought the blade up. The throat first, and directly after that, the right eye.

Preferred it controlled, preferred it close. Some of the others couldn't stand to let the smirkers get near. Instead, they ran themselves out, not keeping count. A dull, shocked look when the handgun clicked empty. They thought about themselves before they thought about the job. That was the secret; if you thought about the job before you thought about anything else, if you just did your job, you got out. She drew her hand back, let the boy drop, and stepped over him. She wiped the blade on her fatigues and then peeled the gloves off. They were soaked.

The shooting had stopped. Grace stood, contemplating the room. Her heart beat hard and fast in her ears, and she could not precisely reckon how much time had pa.s.sed. Smirkers lay everywhere, sprawled out, tangled together on the floor. After a cursory check to make sure that none were still moving, she started for the doorway.

In the front hall, she found Emery, standing with his back to her. His rifle hung at his side and he was breathing in long, whining gasps.

He was one of the ones with a target, a concentric bull's-eye painted in red on the front of his helmet. But when he turned toward her with a mystified expression, the bite on his shoulder already weeping yellow, she aimed for the eye socket. He whimpered and begged a little, but in her head, she had squeezed the trigger a thousand times, and it was no great effort to do it now, in the cramped cabin, with the daylight dropping away and the smell of bodies heavy in the air. The report was very loud in the narrow hall. At her feet, he lay still. After a moment, the blood began to pool out from under him.

Her progress through the house was slow. The floor was littered with debris, spent ammunition. Bodies lay with their limbs jutting at odd angles-smirkers and soldiers. They were mostly accounted for. She didn't recognize Denton at first, except by his size. Someone had shot him in the face. There were bite marks all over his arms. His skin oozed with the thick, pestilential yellow of infection.

In the kitchen, she found Sergeant Whitaker. He was propped in a corner, shoulders wedged in the join between two cabinets.

He looked up at her-a hard, dignified look that stopped her in the doorway. The side of his neck had been torn away, leaving shreds of muscle, exposed tendons. His voice was hoa.r.s.e and liquid. "Are they dead?"

She did not know if he was referring to their makeshift squad or to the recent barrage of smirkers. "Yes, sir."

"What do you think those Washington f.u.c.ks are doing right now?"

Dead, of course, all dead. Except the ones still shambling around smiling to themselves. Giggling their high-pitched giggles.

"They don't pay me to think, sir."

Whitaker laughed at that, a wet, clotted sound. "No one's paid us to do a d.a.m.n thing in months. Maybe you could take up thinking as a sideline. It wouldn't have to be on the clock."

He laughed again, viscous, close to choking. The stripes on his sleeve were the brightest thing in the room. The gold looked almost white in the failing light. The blood was seeping out of him, leaving his face gray. Infection imminent.

"You should've made corporal," he said, and it sounded watery. "I'm sorry for that."

"Don't worry yourself, sir. I don't imagine I would have cared for it."

"You never know. Look at you now-you're the one who's going to walk out of here tonight."

Blood and foul yellow seepage were running down the side of his throat, soaking into his shirt.

"Do you want me to take care of it?" she said, jerking her head in the direction of his sidearm.

He smiled at her, a slow, complicated smile. "No, I got this."

She did not disbelieve Whitaker, even at the last. He was a good man, dependable. Already holding the 9mm to his temple. But she stood in the doorway to make sure. The report made her flinch. When he slumped forward and his hand let go, she turned and started back through the house.

A wooden pull-down ladder stood spindly and erect in the hall. It was fixed to the ceiling by a hinge, and led up to an open skylight. The angle of the ladder was stark, surprising. In the past weeks, the world had taken on an increasingly surreal cast and the ladder did not seem disconcerting now, but only natural and right.

"I'm coming up," Grace said, to no one in particular-to whomever might be at the top, waiting to put a bullet in the first person to stick their head through the opening.

On the roof, Jacobs the medic was sitting with his legs drawn up and his elbows resting on his knees.

"How do they always know?" he said, staring off over the hillside, the dark trees. The sky was deep purple, already speckled with stars. "We go along, covering our tracks, moving in the daytime. And still, they always know."

Grace nodded, because his a.s.sessment was true. Not a thing you argued with, but how it was. They would always find you. It was what they did.

"There aren't any bugs up here," Jacobs said.

"No," said Grace, taking a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. "No, I haven't seen any."

"It's the air. It's thin."

She wondered if he was cracking up. He didn't seem the type, but still, with these smart ones, it was hard to say. Sometimes they fell apart, just from thinking too much.

"They're not hunting people," he said.

"What do you call it then-what they're doing?"

"I mean, they're not hunting people exclusively. They're not strictly cannibals. We saw eviscerated deer when we were coming up-and rabbits-but they're not picked clean. They never eat the dead."

Grace pulled a cigarette out of the pack with her teeth, lit it. Her hands were steady, but felt light and disconnected.

When she breathed out, Jacobs coughed and fanned at the air. "How does something like this just happen?" happen?"

Grace observed Jacobs, his raised head, his profile, hard against the velvety sky. She a.s.sumed he must be talking in some broad, abstract sense, because the how-and-why of it was far from mysterious.

The methodology was simple. Escalating reports of a blood-borne pathogen carried by insects, high fatality rate, drug-resistant. The government had been frightened of pandemic. They had pushed immunization, pushed it hard, and in the end, they got their pandemic, all right. A vector that began at vaccination and exploded outward, extravagant. Uncontainable.

It had begun on the West Coast, vaccination facilities popping up in grocery stores and shopping centers. And everyone lined up. It had taken approximately six hours to ascertain that something was wrong, but in that time, the event had affected nearly half a million people. And it spread like fire. In a way, it was good the infection came on fast. Otherwise, they might have all had the shot, every last one of them, offering their arms to the needle without the slightest indication that anything was amiss.

"What if it's a signature," Jacobs said, turning to her.

"I don't follow."

"A carbon dioxide signature. Blood-seekers-they know to come after you. They follow a trail of chemicals, a stamp. Mosquitoes can sense living blood from almost forty meters."

Grace nodded as he spoke, not comprehending his train of thought exactly, but not needing to. The words sounded round, fat, rea.s.suring.

"We could verify it," he said. "All we'd need is a controlled environment, some preliminary tests. We could keep going, get to Rosewood. They'll have everything we need. It would only take a few trials. I mean, then we'd know know. And Rosewood's only four miles out. If we run-"

"If there's any still in the woods, they'll be on us in two seconds, sir. I don't see much chance."

Jacobs stood up, brushing impatiently at his fatigues. "There's a way, though. There's always a way."

He started down the ladder, his boots clattering on the wooden rungs. There was a smear of blood on the back of his shirt. Grace squashed the cigarette under her toe and wondered again if they were only prolonging something inevitable.

It didn't matter. With a purpose, a mission, the blackness of recent days did not seem so close. They would go to Rosewood and test his theory. Jacobs was not Whitaker, but he was capable. He knew things. And a short-term itinerary was better than none at all. They would go to Rosewood and find a brilliant solution. After a minute, Grace rose and followed Jacobs down.

In the bathroom, she found him standing over the body of Knotts, legs splayed to avoid the mess. He had opened the medicine cabinet and was rummaging along the shelves.

"What are you after?"

"DEET," he said, flinging bottles and tubes from cabinet haphazardly. "Why don't these rednecks have any f.u.c.king DEET?"

"You said it before, sir. There's no bugs up here."

The floor at his feet was littered with adhesive bandages, aspirin, a topical antibiotic.