The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory Read online

  Conversion Theory

  The Zombie Theories Book 3

  Rich Restucci

  Conversion Theory By R. Restucci

  All Rights reserved.

  Copyright© 2016. This didn’t really happen. I used my limitless creativity and made it up. My mom still insists that the living dead are not real. No part of this novel may be reprinted, televised, or used in any way without express written permission and lots of royalty checks. Any similarity to actual people, places, or events, is purely coincidental.

  For those avid readers who enjoy nothing more than an armchair, a great book, and devouring page after page. Much like the creatures in this tome, you will never stop, and you always want more.

  In the brain and not the chest.

  Headshots are the very best.

  Fido

  Majestik

  A red light flashed near the door.

  “Three minutes!” came screaming through our headsets, and I knew it was about to get real. I looked around at the inside of the helicopter, wondering just how stupid I was.

  I looked at Kinga, a Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command jarhead. He was standing and checking the pack of the other MARSOC marine, Remo. Where Kinga is a guy who could kill you from a mile away, Remo is more hands on. Don’t get me wrong, Kinga is badass, but Remo used to teach other Marines how to kill. He could use anything as a weapon and could kill with a toothpick. No shit, a toothpick. He was equally as deadly when unarmed.

  They both felt me staring at them and looked at me at the same time.

  “Are we really doing this?” I asked, pausing in my writing.

  “All it takes is all you got.” Kinga smirked. “Besides, this is your idea.” They both looked at me harder if it were possible.

  “Up,” said Remo.

  I stood and he went over my pack, checking things.

  We were about to jump off of a helicopter onto the Majestik Maersk, a giant container ship. The last time I had been on this boat, we had gone through a hurricane. I could see the giant vessel out the window. She was adrift and many of the containers had broken loose and were haphazardly tossed askew at weird angles. They created a labyrinth of steel on the massive deck. Many of the huge, colored boxes that I remember from before were nowhere to be seen, having gone overboard during the storm. One was dangerously close to going over now, and hung a full fifteen feet over the edge of the deck. The first bit of weather and it was history.

  The Majestik looked like skyscraper laying down on the water. It was positively enormous. Oh, yeah, and it was crawling with zombies.

  So this is one of my journals, which is basically a zombie story, and if you’re reading it, that means I’m dead and you found it someplace, or I’ve given it to you to read.

  My two friends and I are about to embark on a rescue mission to save the collective asses of another group of my friends and some poor folks that were trapped on this death-boat.

  But I digress.

  The weather was nice as we came in on final approach. Flat-ass calm the weatherman on Atlantis told us before we left. If you’ve read my first two journals, then you know that Atlantis is a floating asylum (read: oil rig) in the Gulf of Mexico. You also know that I’m going to rescue my big buddy Ship, my girlfriend, and a soldier friend from this boat. Yes, his name is Ship. His parents were mean, I guess.

  When I mentioned up above that the deck was crawling, I wasn’t shitting you. I could see at least a few hundred of the pus bags as I call them. They had been searching for food before they heard the helo, but now every red, undead eye was on us. The food is me. I’m sure you know this, as we are more than a year into this apocalypse thing, but just in case, you should probably run if you see a dead guy walking. Unless the dead guy is running. Then you should probably know two more things: he’s not dead, but still wants to kill you, and you need to run faster than he does.

  I know I’m jumping around here. Sorry, I’m scared shitless, and this is the beginning of a new journal.

  Remo gave me a clap on the back of my Condor Assault Pack. “You’re good.”

  Remo doesn’t talk much. He didn’t say a word when he handed me a toothpick. Again, no shit.

  The red light turned green with a buzzing sound, and Kinga slid the portal open. The wash from the rotor hit us, and I smelled the sea air again. We were about fifteen feet above the roof of the superstructure on the Majestik when Kinga tossed out two black ropes. He and I attached the ropes to a little metal thingy that was attached to my waist. I don’t remember what it’s called, but when I pull down and back across my waist, it slows my descent during a rappel. Carabiner! It’s a carabiner.

  I was about to lean out, when the co-pilot held up this journal in front of me. I had left it on the seat. I nodded a thanks, shoved it in my tactical webbing, and zipped down the rope.

  I went with Kinga, and Remo followed when we were both down safely. The co-pilot pulled up the ropes and the helo took off. Bastard didn’t even wave goodbye. Probably because he knew we were already dead, but we hadn’t figured it out yet.

  The rotor wash receded as did the noise of the helicopter. The noise was replaced with the sounds of the dead. There were cries and moans and that rasping hack. It’s unnatural, and I longed for the helo to drown them out once more. The bird wasn’t coming back though. Our extraction would be by boat, tomorrow night at the earliest. If we were still alive. The boat would wait for 24 hours if no contact was made with us, and after that, we would be written off as dead and left here.

  Captain Schumitz of the destroyer Stockdale would send another team to die, and would probably keep sending them until he had no one left to send. He had an ulterior motive for us being on this tub; he wanted some data and a key. The key was weird looking and the data concerned experiments on undead. He wanted these things badly, and I couldn’t help but believe his higher-ups knew something we didn’t.

  I hadn’t heard the cries of the dead in more than two days. It’s not something you get used to, but it’s certainly better not hearing them.

  Remo and Kinga set up a communications system that looked like an upside-down umbrella attached to a stereo. “Pluto, this is Hammer One. How copy, over?”

  I strode carefully to the edge of the hatch in the steel roof of the superstructure. I’d used it before.

  You really can’t imagine how big this ship is until you’ve been on it. Even from the air, it’s huge, but when you’re on board, it’s like you’re in the city walking between big buildings. From this vantage, we were at the highest point of the ship.

  I opened the hatch and took a peek in the wheelhouse. Mistake, as the stink that wafted up from there almost knocked me out. I was still gagging when I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up at Kinga. “Last time you go off by yourself. I’ll shoot you next time.”

  I was twenty feet away from them and didn’t think that was going off by myself. I decided on discretion, and just nodded.

  Remo was there in a moment and passed me a black Sharpie marker. “Don’t open any doors unless we’re all ready. Draw the inside of the wheelhouse.”

  I did. I drew the crap out of it right on the white steel of the boat. The wheelhouse was maybe sixty or seventy feet wide, housed at the top of the superstructure. The windows fore and aft looked both out and down, and there was a door (hatch) at the both ends, with a metal stairway descending to the deck stemming from each hatch. Two other doors, these made of wood, led from the back of the wheelhouse to an internal stairway, which in turn led to the interior of the ship.

  Kinga pointed to three places, one on each end, and one at the back middle of the drawing.r />
  “Only three ways in?”

  “Four if you include this hatch.”

  Remo used his knife to bang on the side of the steel. We waited a minute and he did it again. We all stared into the hole. There was a ladder down, and we could see some components, but nothing that wanted to eat us. Remo pulled out a mirror on a telescoping stick, extended it, and shoved it in through the hatch.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Clear?”

  “Negative. Three at least. One standing by the port side hatch, one sitting next to him, and one sitting on the deck halfway across the wheelhouse.”

  “The wheelhouse was secure the last time I was here. Nothing was getting through the hatches, and the rear doors were locked tight and braced. Why the hell would they leave?”

  Kinga used his own mirror and did his own recon. “Do we engage?” I didn’t have a mirror, and that shit was going on my list of must-haves if I lived through this.

  “I can’t recon the whole wheelhouse. If there are more sitting down behind the consoles, there could be fifty of them in there.”

  I shrugged. “So give a yell.”

  “I would prefer not to compromise our stealth.”

  “Then what did you bang on the hatch with your knife for?”

  He looked at me, then at Kinga, shrugged, and stood. Unpacking a coil of rope, he tied one end to an antenna housing and started toward the front of the wheelhouse. He peered over the edge and I gawked at him.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Taking a look through the front windows.” He tied up, threw the other end of the rope over, and disappeared over the side.

  I instantly heard those awful undead cries through the hatch. Remo climbed back up, and Kinga helped him over the edge. “Nope. Only three. Center doors are wide open though.”

  “So we deactivate the three here,” Kinga whispered, “secure the doors as fast as possible and use this as our FOB.”

  “Uhh… What’s an FOB?” The disapproving eye-roll from Kinga made me instantly regret the question. Bastard looked just like Ship would have if I asked him about internet protocols or had said clip when I meant magazine.

  “Forward Operating Base,” Remo told me. “It’s where we’ll store our shit and fall back to if we get into it. We can exfil back through this bulkhead in case of emergency.” He rubbed his chin. “I drop down first, take them out with this,” he drew his giant knife, “or suppressed fire. You follow and secure the doors.” He had indicated Kinga would be the door closer. I was curiously absent from both the clandestine elimination of the undead and the heroic door closing ops. Mine was to be Operation Stay The Hell Up Here And Don’t Get In The Way. I could see it coming.

  “What about me?” I dared ask.

  Remo was still staring at the crude drawing I had made of the wheelhouse. I used to suck at Pictionary. “You’re going to stay here and guard our retreat if necessary. Don’t let anything get between us and the ladder.” I noticed Kinga smirking as he pulled one of three suppressors from a sleeve in his tac-webbing. Prick.

  Remo glanced at me staring at Kinga. “Cans on.”

  I actually knew what that meant. A can was military slang for a suppressor. A suppressor is a silencer for you folks that actually believe in silencers. That shit isn’t silent, but it’s significantly quieter, and it’s hard to pinpoint the sound when you hear it.

  We all screwed the long tubes to our tactical pistols. We each had three suppressors, and another fact you probably don’t know is that they burn out over time. They begin to get louder as you shoot through them, and you have to change them out. They also add weight to the end of the weapon, are a bitch to use in close quarters, and can affect accuracy on a long shot.

  I friggin love them. There’s something inherently cool about shooting with a suppressor.

  Both Remo and Kinga checked the wheelhouse with their little mirrors again. Remo nodded and cat-quietly moved down the ladder. Kinga followed, and I leaned through, scanning. All three zombies were pawing at the front glass on the port side even though one of the windows was broken out starboard-center. Pus bags were still trying to get to the memory of Remo when he dangled out in front of them.

  Both of the jarheads crept silently behind the long consoles, and both looked into the open rear doors. There must not have been anything there because Remo kept going, slinking up to the first dead-head. He brought his arm around in a wide arc, perforating the temple of the closest creature. He reversed his hand and stabbed the second one in the same spot. Both dropped. Number three turned, snarled, and before she could take a step had an inch of steel sticking out of the top of her skull. Remo had thrust the blade up under her chin.

  Kinga closed the doors and secured them. “Clear.”

  “Clear,” Remo echoed, and checked the port side hatch.

  I climbed down the ladder and made sure the starboard hatch was secure. The three of us looked out the windows at the deck. Shit loads of those things meandered through the labyrinth of steel containers. The critters were in varying stages of decomposition, some rotten, and some looking relatively fresh. I was scanning for black camouflage to identify the team sent here before us, but I couldn’t see any.

  I checked out all the doors once more. The rear doors hadn’t been broken down, and honestly, I didn’t know if they could be. They were thick wood set in steel frames with top, bottom, and side locking mechanisms. Probably to defeat pirates. The side hatches were comprised of steel, with eight of those little handles used to secure them. They also had locks, and Captain Bob had told me that the windows in those hatches were bullet resistant.

  I couldn’t help but wonder where Captain Bob had gone to. Why would he leave? His job was to take the Majestik and beach it as close to Mexico as he could. It was a suicide mission at the time. This was months ago, before we had a destroyer at our disposal. Now the plan was to evacuate all of the living from this tub and scuttle her. They were going to blow a hole below the waterline and watch her sink.

  Some folks had argued that we should clear the ship and use it as a floating hotel, or at least check out the containers. I had argued right back that they were fucking crazy. The ship was crawling with infected, and any of the people who suggested we clear it could feel free to open whatever they wanted on this thing as soon as I was off of it. Nobody volunteered.

  “OK,” I sighed. “We’re secure. What now?”

  Kinga put his hands on the console, looking at the innumerable dials, switches, buttons, and lights. “Now we find out where everybody is.”

  Small Talk

  What we really needed was implants in people that could be read from a central unit in the Majestik’s wheelhouse. Did you see the movie Aliens, when the survivors of the initial alien attack are holed up in Operations, and they are looking at electronic blueprints of the facility? They search for the implants and find out that all the humans are in one central location. Exactly how we looked right now, except our prints were paper, nobody had any implants, and we had zombies instead of aliens.

  Basically, we were screwed. We could probably search this giant vessel for a week and not find where my friends were hiding. Throw in some infected, and we’re here forever.

  “I’m going to check the bodies.” Both of the boys looked at me like I was crazy. “One of them should have the key that Schumitz wants.” I noticed a big body with a black T-shirt covering most of its face. This had been a friend of mine. I actually got a lump in my throat, and felt not a little bit of guilt. I had shot him when he had begun to fade out after being bitten. I got to one knee and touched his hand. The memory of his death was crushing.

  The things up here hadn’t torn him to pieces, so I could only assume that whatever timeframe it takes for a body to turn unappetizing to the dead had expired prior to them gaining access to the wheelhouse.

  I moved to where I remembered the slumped body of Doctor Callus was. She was still there, but stretched out with her hands folded on her chest. Her face was
covered with a towel.

  I looked at her and immediately felt sad. This woman, however stupid, didn’t deserve to die like this. She had forcefully brought hundreds of infected on board this floating sanctuary in order to study them, to find a vaccine or cure or whatever. I hated her for being such an idiot, but looking at her corpse, I started thinking about all the other dead people in the world. They had been people just like me. All dead because of this stupid plague.

  But this dumbass had still killed a bunch of people who otherwise would have made it, at least a while longer. I parted her formerly white shirt and saw a chain around her neck. I pulled on the chain and some of her goo came with it. It was nauseating. I jerked the chain and it came free with the same type of key that Schumitz had. It was red, and roundish. A cylinder with pieces cut out of it. Some type of metal.

  Why hadn’t the first group sent by Schumitz at least taken this key?

  I wiped the key on the dead doctor’s pants and put it in a small, steel box that Captain Schumitz had given me. The box was attached to a chain exactly like the doctor’s, and I put it around my neck.

  Remo and Kinga were messing with something when I returned to the consoles. Kinga looked up. “Did she have it?”

  “The key? Yeah, but I dunno where the data would be.”

  “We need to call that in,” Kinga informed me. “Where is it?”

  I patted my chest. “Safe.”

  He held out his hand. “I’ll take it.”

  I pulled the whole shebang out of my shirt and handed it to him. He put the chain around his own neck the little box now inside his own shirt. Copycat.

  Several dead had made it up the long steel stairway and had begun scratching at the portside hatch window. We all looked and then got back to the task at hand. Kinga began setting up the com-link thing again. I asked him why he didn’t just use the Majestik’s radio, and he told me it wasn’t secure.