Zombies - Encounters with the Hungry Dead Part 38

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h," she says. "You never said-"

And the lights go out all over the Ecosphere.

17.

Bonnie sits in lotus on her bed. Om. mani padme om. Om mani padme om. She uses the litany as a kind of squeegee to wipe away the karmic sc.u.m she feels she has acc.u.mulated tonight.

She is just beginning to feel relaxed when the lights go out. She sits in darkness for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

She hears a faint noise like popcorn popping in the distance.

She debates whether she should stay in her room. What decides her is the realization that the air vents probably aren't working if the power is out. She'll want to be outside.

But... outside? The men are stalking each other, and probably Marly playing their adolescent army games along with them. Outside? No; let them get it out of their systems. Of course there are carnitropes out there, the reanimated corpses, but Bonnie feels no superst.i.tious dread whatsoever toward them. They didn't ask to be what they are, and what they are is really not very different from plants. Hungry plants, mobile plants, but plants all the same. And Bonnie feels a kinship with plants. She certainly does not feel threatened by them, just as she does not feel threatened by the carnitropes. You could outrun them, outsmart them, out-anything them.

She gropes around her modular dresser until she finds miniature Tekna flashlight. She twists the ridged section ringing the lens; and the light comes on. She slides the circle of light around her room and is reminded of a germ under a microscope. Light is the only weapon she needs. She fixes the circle of light on her door and makes her way toward it.

"This is it." Dieter opens the power-room door and begins to enter.

"Stay right there. Turn on the light."

"I can't stay where I am and turn on the light."

"Turn on the light, a.s.shole."

Dieter leans in and turns on the light. He takes short steps as he is prodded in. The door is shut behind him. He turns to look at his captor for the first time and is unsurprised to recognize the long-haired young man who came begging last week. Was it last week? He's not sure how long ago it was. Time flies.

"Yeah, it's me," says the young man. "You just stay right there. Lace your fingers and put your hands on top of your head. We're playing charades and you're a sequoia, got it?"

Dieter doesn't get it, but he nods anyway and does as he's told.

The man keeps the submachine gun trained on him as he shrugs out of a nylon daypack. He bends and unzips it, keeping the gun on him, then pulls out a box about the size of a cardboard pencil case. The box is olive-drab and curved like a hip flask. In upraised letters one side reads FRONT TOWARD ENEMY. He carries box and backpack toward power-convertor controls, circuit breakers, generator controls, voltmeters, regulators, and stacked banks of power-storage batteries. He sets the box face-down on a bank of controls, pulls out a little white box with square b.u.t.tons that looks like a portable radio, connects it to the curved box, and trips a toggle switch. He sets another curved box against the battery bank. "Nice little ratbox you people have here," he says conversationally as he goes about his work. "All the comforts of home. Air conditioning. Barcaloungers. MTV"

"What do you want from us?" Dieter asks.

"Nothing." He glances at him. "Really." He shrugs. "Used to want a hamburger or two, but hey, that's life in the big city, now, isn't it?"

"Look, man, I wanted to give you some food. I told them we should, that it was only the right thing to do. But they wouldn't-"

The man waves him to silence. "Water under the bridge," he says. "Let the dead past bury its dead, I say." He indicates the row of circuit breakers. "Main power switch?" he asks.

Dieter shrugs. "I'm a marine biologist," he says.

"Mmph. Chust followink orders, huh?"

Dieter says nothing. The man rises and goes to the row of circuit breakers. He throws a knife switch. Nothing happens. He pulls another one. Nothing. Another.

" 'S awright," he says. "They're doing something somewhere." He continues throwing switches.

The lights go out, and Dieter makes his move.

Sailor waits until he hears the door latch jerked down and the door s.n.a.t.c.hed open. He fires a burst on full auto, sweeping the barrel in a tight crescent. The clip is empty in seconds. He thumbs the release, pulls out the empty drops it, pulls a fresh one from his back pocket, and slaps it in. He bends and gropes until he encounters the backpack. He pulls out a penlight and switches it on, then attaches it beneath the squarish gun barrel with electrical tape and plays it around the room.

The body props open the door. Bulletholes in a slight diagonal to either side of the door frame. Sailor shoulders his pack and steps over the body. "One duuumb f.u.c.ker," he says. He trains the penlight beam down. All back shots, a whole bunch of them. They don't count for s.h.i.t in the long run, but that's all right. It's Sailor's party. The more, the merrier.

Flashlight beam guarded with one hand, he steps past the body and makes his way down the hall.

Bill doesn't waste a second: He knows where his gun is and when the lights go out, he bends, scoops it up, and runs. He doesn't need light to find his way. Hyperacute kinesthesia. Night sense. Geared to register motion. Under siege. Trojan horse. Marly and Leonard calling, but he keeps running. Charlie's out there. In the bush. In the desert. In the marsh. In the fields. In their own back yard. Gotta deploy. Gotta recon. Stay low. Hit and roll. Hit and run.

He reaches the screen door easily and negotiates the access corridor in a westerly direction. He emerges in fresher air and croplands. Out there. Waiting.

Footsteps. Running toward him. Breathing, low, from the ground. Crawling, sneaky sons of b.i.t.c.hes. Pale figure coming toward him on hands and knees. He raises the magnum and fires. Pain st.i.tches his sprained wrist. Tough s.h.i.t. Gotta be tough, son. No pain, no gain.

Squealing, labored breathing. Stubby, flailing legs in front of him. A G.o.dd.a.m.n pig, for Christ's sake!

Wrist throbbing, he stalks the cornfields. There, there, two of the f.u.c.ks. Zip, zip, good as dead. Good as dead-hah! Better soon.

He stalks. Three shots left? Let's see: one that liberated Deke, one that missed Marly, one for makin' bacon. Yep: three left.

They're turning for him now. Stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, not even brains enough to hide. Couldn't sneak up on a G.o.dd.a.m.n slug. He walks right up to the nearest. Gun against the nose. It grabs the barrel. "Say goodnight, Gracie," he says, and pulls the trigger-but the sonofab.i.t.c.h has grabbed around the back of the gun, and the hammer won't c.o.c.k back. Bill tugs the gun and the creature merely follows. The other one is pretty close now. Bill puts a foot on its stomach and shoves. The gun slides free. Bill steps back. Too close to take time to aim. Head a hard target. Policeman crouch, good form, squeeze...

Boom.' and the f.u.c.ker slams backward like it's been sledgehammered by G.o.d himself. In the muzzle flash the T-shirt reads save the whales.

Bill ignores the pain in his wrist as he takes aim and fires at the second staggering figure. Boom! eat me, reads the shirt.

Bill laughs. "Eat this, s.h.i.t-for-brains!" He waves the magnum. His wrist is on fire. He is alive.

He runs for the staff HQ. Ten feet in front of it, the door is flung open. He fires automatically: last bullet, quick on the draw, and right in the G.o.dd.a.m.n forehead, yeah! What's her T-shirt say? He bends, pulls a flashlight from the twitching fingers, shines it down.

No T-shirt. Kimono, parted to expose one breast. Doesn't say a thing. Germ circle of light slides up to dead eyes, drilled forehead, red hair.

Bonnie.

18.

Leonard walks the forest of the dead. He is one of them and they leave him alone. He is tainted. He is taboo. He is bad meat.

Leonard laughs.

In the distance, gunfire.

Sweating he wanders smiling through lush tropics. He'll make it. They'll leave him alone. Leonard alone may run the gauntlet of the dead. The rejected cull triumphant. Darwin in reverse: Those who have not survived will allow the genetic undesirable to continue.

Another shot.

Leonard pauses. There is more to fear from the living he realizes.

Then I shall climb a tree. I will sit in a branch and await the dawn. And then? I will be free. To do whatever I want. For as long as... as I have left.

He finds a tree and hoists himself up from the leaf-carpeted ground.

Marly thinks it's about time to abandon ship. At the first sound of gunfire she was acting out of concern for the Ecosphere and the safety of the others, but now she realizes that the Ecosphere has been a ghost ship for quite some time, Flying Dutchman in the Arizona desert, and the truth about her crew is that it's always been every man for himself. The current situation merely brings the point home.

Nope: too late to repair the leaks, to Band Together As A Unit; no returning to Those Golden Days of Yesteryear. Time to jump in a lifeboat and row for sh.o.r.e.

Marly exits the access corridor and crouches low near the gla.s.s. In her pocket is the key to the armory, taken from Deke's body on the beach. In the armory are the keys to the Land Rover, along with more guns and ammunition.

She runs forward, bent low, carbine ready. She nearly trips over the body of a pig. Half its head has been blown away.

Bill the a.s.shole.

She hurries on toward the habitat. In the darkness every shape is a threat. Why didn't she think to grab a flashlight? Well, this wasn't exactly the sort of emergency they'd planned on.

But wasn't it exactly the sort of emergency they should have considered? Didn't crop blights sort of pale in comparison?

She heads toward the three tall rows of corn; from there she can survey her surroundings before proceeding.

Body among the stalks. Face up, face gone, save the whaies beneath. She steps around it and puts some distance between it and herself, then kneels in the rich soil. Tang of nitrogenated fertilizers.

She looks toward the staff quarters. The door is partway open, propped by a body. She can see it only from the waist down; from the waist up it is inside the building. Too dark to tell who it is.

Cornstalks rustle.

Marly grows still. She strains to hear, but it is difficult because of the sound of her breathing, of her heartbeat in her ears. She turns her head slowly. The sound is approaching from her right.

She turns that way and steadies in a marksman's stance, right leg back and weight over the knee, left leg forward, left elbow on left knee, rifle steady.

There.

It lurches toward her almost drunkenly. It's moving pretty slowly; she has plenty of time. She steadies, sights, and fires. The rifle bucks slightly. The drunken figure staggers back, trips over the body behind it, and lands on its b.u.t.t. It gets to its feet again.

Go for the head, Marly remembers. The chest is the easier target, but the head is the only thing that powers it. Medulla oblongata.

She slaps the bolt of the carbine with the heel of her hand and pulls it back.

The cartridge spits out. She pushes the bolt forward, and it sticks. She pulls back, push again. No good. She glances again. Scarecrow approaching through the corn. If I only had a brain. She stands and turns- into the arms of another. It hugs her. Stink of rotten meat. Opens its mouth. Gold filling glints. Half-moon crescent in one earlobe where an earring has been ripped away. Its head bends toward her.

Marly gets an arm up and grabs it by the throat, forcing its head back. The flesh against her palm is loose and leathery cool, like touching the neck of a turtle. She bats her rifle against its side, but can get no room for a powerful swing. The creature bleats softly. Smell of stale air from dead lungs. Quiet, so quiet; absurdly, she thinks there ought to be more noise.

Her hair is tugged from behind.

She turns and the hungry thing turns with her, wedged now between her and the first one. She pushes against the unbreathing throat while the other tries to reach around the one holding her. She can't get loose.

Pop.' like a champagne cork. The carnitrope not holding her cants to one side, balances on one leg like a street mime doing an obscure impression, and falls. The one holding her works its head from side to side and snaps its teeth to bite the hand it wants to feed it. Clack-clack! Clack!

"Turn it!" someone yells. "Turn it toward me! G.o.ddammit-"

Marly strains. For a panicked moment she feels overbalanced, about to fall over with the creature on top of her, but she jerks a leg back, brings it up into the creature's groin, and pivots.

A loud riveting sound from her right. The creature's head peels away like a rotten plum. It holds her a moment longer, and she feels its dead fingers spasming against her. Then it drops, and she pushes it away and jumps back, turning toward the sound of the gunfire.

A flashlight, but who's behind it? Bill? Dieter? Leonard?

He walks closer. The light shines beneath the squarish barrel of his submachine gun.

"You...?"

He nods. The light does not waver. He cups it with his left hand. "Get out of here," he says.

"But-I don't-"

"Go on. Party's winding down."

Marly considers him for a moment, then nods. "I was just leaving," she says.

"Good idea."

She starts to thank him, hut stops. Thanks are not called for here. He hadn't thanked her for the basket, had he? She nods again. "I have to get ammunition and supplies."

"You have about ten minutes."

"The others," she begins. "I have to-"

"f.u.c.k the others. Get your s.h.i.t and get out of here."

Still she hesitates. "I-I'm a botanist. I can keep this place going. I know how. It can keep you and your wife-and your baby-"

"Wasn't a real baby." The light dips, then raises again. "Deadhead."

"Dead...? OhmiG.o.d."

"There's a lot of 'em out there, deadheads. But you wouldn't know. You've been in here."

She feels a clammy turning inside. World of dead babies, relentless crawling, toothless chewing. "You want the station," she says. "I understand that. But look, I know how to maintain it. It won't last without-"

"I don't want it to last. I want to bring it down."