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

  Oh, I may have forgotten to mention, because I certainly wasn’t told and had to figure it out for myself, that we were now smack-dab in the middle of a fucking city. Five miles outside Edinburgh was scrubland that our horses had had no trouble with. Here, there was nothing but paved roads and a pretty park next to the college. Yeah, there was a University of Texas here. The census on the map, dated 2014, listed a population of approximately 774,000 for Edinburgh. I feel we had been denied critical information on this one. Javi and Jake were holed up with the horses in a firehouse about a half mile behind us; we made sure it was locked up tight. “Holy shit, they’re dead,” Dix breathed. “How do we get them?”

  I looked at the emaciated, dry corpse that was next to me under the awning. “What do you think, buddy? Think we should ride in there and kill ‘em all? No?” I looked at Dix and thumbed at the thing, which was long dead with a bullet hole in its skull. “Ed says we need a diversion. A big one.”

  Dix gave a quizzical look. “Ed?”

  “Does he look like a Steve, or a Joe to you?” I turned back to the corpse. “Some people.” Focusing my gaze back to Dix, I asked, “Why don’t you give the boys a call and ask them to come out on the roof if they can? Oh, and Ed is a little pissed that you and your crew forgot to mention that we would be entering a city of more than three-quarters of a million people.”

  “Tell them not to come near the edge,” Remo said out loud.

  I rolled on my back. “Got any ideas on what we blow up to get their attention?”

  “Arkansas?” Remo answered. Remo had made a joke. That was good. He was seeing this as a challenge that we could complete. I was skeptical. Remo continued, “Explosives would get their attention, but we need to keep it.”

  “Keep what?” Dix demanded.

  “They’re attention.” The jarhead shot his hand out, desiring the binoculars for another peek.

  “We’ll need a diversion that keeps emitting sound, like music or an alarm.”

  This was not my first rodeo with that. Huh. I’m in Texas and I keep thinking about rodeos. Freudian, or is it the heat?

  “Yeah, so during my valiant and daring escape from torture at the hands of evil doctors in Montana, I stopped at a small town to help a guy out. During the stop, I was sort of conscripted to help some other guys, one of which turned out to be a douche. My long-winded point is that we broke into a record store, stole a radio, and used that as a diversion. That shit worked too.”

  “I have this.” Dix produced an ancient alarm clock that looked oddly familiar.

  Remo looked at it. “Good idea, but it won’t sound off for long enough. We need something that will draw them at least half a mile off, and keep them there.”

  Ship passed Remo his book. Remo read it and passed it to me. I read it aloud for Dix.

  A diversion is not going to succeed. There are a minimum of thirty-thousand infected surrounding that courthouse. If we draw away ninety percent of them, that still leaves three thousand to deal with. This does not include the ones inside the building already.

  “So what do we do?” I asked, passing Ship’s book back to him. I looked back through the binoculars that Remo had passed to me. Stragglers were both leaving and entering the area, dragging others with them. It was very loud, even from our vantage, and the clouds of insects were extreme. There was absolutely no breeze in this horrible city, so the stink of the dead was blissfully absent.

  Remo looked to our right. “Hang on.” A dead man shuffled into view from around the corner of the store, and began walking toward the crowd. For reasons unknown, it spun its head in our direction and began coming toward us. Remo got up and took care of it. I didn’t even watch.

  I began ticking off options. “Set them on fire? Electrocute them? Blow them up?” I looked expectantly at Ship, and he was scribbling away. I really needed to get better with my sign language. Or the mute Sasquatch needed to grow some functional vocal cords. I looked through the binocs again for a moment, and felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Ship’s book.

  We have several options. The safest option, which keeps the maximum amount of people alive, is simple: We leave. As I realize you will never allow this, another option is that we find an operational helicopter with sufficient fuel to extract the men from the roof. This option is unlikely as airfields are likely damaged or overrun, and fuel is probably spoiled by now. I have been working on an idea which may actually work in the future, but we would need a few garbage trucks, decent fuel, and some steel mesh. That sounded intriguing. Ultimately, the possibility that we extract these men with no casualties is extremely low. As previously stated, the diversion will not work. However, I believe that short of abandoning these men, or the aforementioned helicopter, a diversion, however insufficient, is the best option. We must also bear in mind that the thirty-thousand undead we see are approximately 740,000 less than a full city’s worth. The others could be gone, or they could be just out of sight. Also, if 0.001 percent of the infected are of the fast variety, this means that there are 740 sprinters lying in wait.

  How the F did he write so fast? “You know, my silent pal, I didn’t have a buzz, but if I had, you would have straight up murdered it right there.” I sighed. “Dix. Dix, we can’t get them.”

  Dix said something right then that will haunt me until I die. “I know. We should get back to the Double Hoof.” He radioed the guys in the Courthouse, “Daniel, come in.”

  We’re here. Are you guys close?

  “Yeah, we’re down the road a piece.”

  Then you’ve seen the trouble we’re in?

  “Yeah.”

  I heard both air and hope expel from the guy’s lungs in a long-winded sigh on the other side of the radio, Then go home.

  “I’m sorry, Daniel. I’m sorry, James.”

  I stuck my hand out for the radio and Dix passed it over to me. “Daniel, James, you don’t know me, but I’m going to do what I can to get you out of there.” Everybody was looking at me. Stinkeye from Ship. “We’re going to create a big diversion. That should draw away most of the dead, but there will still be a lot to deal with. We’ll meet you…” I pointed to the map and Dix nodded, “at the Tractor Supply outside of Doolittle. We’ll wait a day.”

  Look forward to meeting you.

  The mic went silent, and I gave the radio back to Dix.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  Hanson’s Ford was probably a nice Ford dealership before the plague. Now filthy and partly damaged vehicles sat forgotten on the lot, probably forever. Ship had eluded to a plan and had us backtrack the half mile to the lot.

  Ship is a genius. You’ve probably gathered that from me writing that Ship is a genius so many times throughout these journals. What you really need to understand though, is that Ship is a genius. After we hopped the fence to the dealership, Ship finalized his plan, and we all read it. It was perfect. Some might say genius.

  Sasquatch got a battery tester from the garage and tested the batteries on sixteen vehicles, all of which were viable. My POS Ford Explorer Sport Trac, possibly the worst vehicle designed, and certainly partly responsible for my untimely incarceration prior to the plague, couldn’t go two weeks without needing a jump. These cars and trucks all had good batteries after more than a year of non-use. Ford can suck it for installing my shitty battery, and Yay! to Ford for putting good ones on these. Toss up, really.

  Anyway, I digress. It’s the heat.

  Ship found all the keys to the cars, and a black CD case full of shitty CDs. The four of us lowered the windows to four of the vehicles, and you guessed it, shoved CDs in the slots and cranked the stereos. It was really loud in the extreme quiet of our section of town, but I didn’t think the pus bags would be able to hear it over the sounds of themselves. Yes, Dear Reader, quiet may be extreme.

  We drew a crowd fast on the other side of the fence, and Remo stabbed them through the chain link as they arrived. Ship literally ripped one of the little poles adorned with multicolored plastic flag
s out of the ground, swung it over his head and onto an unpurchased Blue Mustang, triggering the alarm. That was loud enough to get the horde over here.

  I was immediately terrified, and I could envision every single pus bag at the courthouse turning toward us in unison, then beginning that slow plod. F waiting to make sure, we headed for the back of the lot, climbed the fence, and ran like a bunch of pussies.

  We met up with Javi and Jake, who were shitting themselves because of the noise, and we all got the fuck out of Dodge, or in this case Edinburgh.

  Heading at a brisk trot northward toward Doolittle, we could hear the echo of the swarm as it reverberated between some of the buildings and homes. Someone shot at us as we passed the college, and we booked it out of there as fast as we could. We came upon an overpass of I69C which had been under construction when the shit hit. It was then we figured out that the swarm behind us wasn’t the only swarm. Hundreds of pus bags filtered in and out of the horrendous traffic jam that bogged the newly constructed highway. They were on the way toward the diversion we had just created.

  I had seen this before. The construction forced two lanes down to one on the overpass, and this created a jam. People had become trapped in their vehicles when nobody could move, the tide of the dead from the city washing over them and destroying everything living in its path, converting them into the enemy, or outright consuming them. I can’t imagine the horror of being trapped with your family in your car on an overpass, while a wave of rot caught up to you. The things would beat on the windows until they gave way, then they would crawl in and feed.

  They were about to do the same to us. One of the horses gave a whinny at the smell of the dead, and it was on. They all looked at us, then decided we would be a decent brunch. Dix turned his horse around, and we all followed suit.

  “Hyah!” he yelled and his mount bolted. Ours followed, but keep in mind I hadn’t been galloping on a horse in many years. I could trot, I could fucking canter, I could not gallop. Suddenly, I remembered that all I had to do was sort of stand up a little in the stirrups, hold on for dear life, and the horse would do the rest. This particular horse, a chestnut Arabian by the name of Shaitan, was a bit smaller than the others, but wicked fast and dumb as a stump. I had been one of the lighter guys, so they had given me this horse. The beast took off like a rocket and it was all I could do to stay in the saddle. I should also mention that the girlfriend who had owned horses when I was younger used English saddles, and I was now astride a western.

  When I realized I had outdistanced everybody by a full block, I yanked back on the reins, but Shaitan was having none of that. He told me to fuck off, and if anything, sped up. This was about the time the dead stumbled out from between the houses and vehicles, ambling into the street with hungry eyes. The nauseating smell of the dead, which had held off because of the lack of wind, was full bore now, so I had that going for me too.

  The dead in the street were reaching for me as we thundered past, and several were knocked aside by my mount. I felt a hand grip my jeans for a split second, but the force of us galloping freed me before I was caught. Another slapped my leg, and then another. I felt a sting and knew that I had been scratched by one of their filthy nails. Probably death for anybody else but me.

  Everything since the overpass had taken about a minute. I dared glance back over my right shoulder to see how close my friends were, and it was my undoing. My left foot slipped from the stirrup, and as I fought to shove it back in, I felt myself sliding off to the right. Not being able to hold on with my hands and one foot, I fell off that asshole horse in slow motion. I was fortunate enough to have a piece of shit, rusty-silver, Honda Civic break my fall with its back window. I went right through it, ass first, pushing the entire window in, and the car was not empty. Another corpse, this one really gooey, reached for me as I struggled to free myself of the spider-webbed, green safety glass. Thank all that is holy that the poor bastard was eternally seat belted into his vehicle. He could still reach me though, Civics aren’t huge, and he grabbed my T-shirt. I panicked a little, but freed myself, tearing my shirt in the process. If I had thought the smell in the street was bad, the smell in the car was nothing short of debilitating. I puked that morning’s flapjacks (I would have called them pancakes, but we were in Texas) down the front of my newly ripped shirt.

  I put my hands on the window frame of the shit-box to extricate myself, and a lance of agony shot up my left arm from my elbow. I got out anyway, and saw what was headed for me. Hundreds of them, all slogging through the hundred degree Texas heat, and all coming for yours truly. A huge crowd of them shuffled from the right, and I could see where this was going. Putting my feet on the concrete sidewalk, I dodged a lunging set of hands and shot the lunger in the face. There were only about five hundred more to deal with.

  No sign of the other horses, so I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and fucking ran for it. I dodged outstretched hands of the street dwellers, any one of which would slow me to the point of capture if they locked on to me. One did catch me, but my already-ruined shirt tore away, and the thing would get nothing more than my sweat to dine on.

  They were coming from all sides, and I was getting a bit fearful. Just a bit, I’m a badass now. My boots slapped against the pavement as I sprinted to a nearby office building, cradling my left arm the entire way. I ran up the steps, but the door was locked. One of them started up the stairs after me, but I hopped the railing and landed in a bark chip mulch bed, overgrown with weeds and grass. I made it to an open window with tattered curtains, but my arm was throbbing and fucked up, so I was having trouble climbing. I kicked over a blue recycling bin and used it as a step stool. The things were on me, and I had to kick one off before I pulled myself through the window. No rest for the wicked, and the rotting kid that was in this room came at me with a faltering gait. My SOG thrust forward, and I put the poor boy to sleep.

  I was in an office. The sweltering room contained a blood-stained, blue sleeping bag, and two empty and two full two-liter bottles of orange soda. A bunch of food wrappers were scattered about. The kid had obviously been hiding out here. I checked the three doors in the office I was in. One was a closet with office shit in it, one led to another office, and the front door led to an open cubicle area. There were at least two dead people shuffling about the cubes. They hadn’t seen me, or heard the commotion, so I closed the door and tried to think. I could see hands from about the mid-forearm to the wrist just outside the window I had just crawled through. The fuckers were loud too, so I grabbed both bottles of soda, my boo-boo arm screaming in protest, moved into the connecting office, and sat in a wheeled desk chair.

  I looked at my elbow, which was already starting to swell. It hurt like holy blue hell too. I could move it, so I didn’t think anything was broken, but it hurt. I know, I wrote that twice but tough shit, it hurt. It still hurts.

  I didn’t have a radio, so I was on my own. I’m sure my friends made it, but I hope that fucking Arabian horse is in the gullets of a bunch of zombies. Douche. If he had done what he was trained to do, we would both probably be okay.

  By the way, Shaitan means devil.

  Alone

  The cube-critters heard the shitheads outside banging and just being fucking loud, and forced their way into the office I had vacated to investigate. The ones inside thought the ones outside were dinner, and vice versa, until each saw the other through the open window. I had heard the cubicle ones break into the office as I drank some hot orange soda. It wasn’t overly refreshing, but it was liquid, and my water bottle was only half full now. That damned nag had run off with my water bladder attached to the saddle. Dick of a horse.

  The shitheads outside left after a few hours. They must have found some other stimulus and slogged off to eat it. I had only seen two infected in the cubicles, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a back-up team hiding in wait for me.

  I could stay here until I ran out of supplies, or I could go now, and use what supplies I
have on the twenty-five-mile hike back to the Double Hoof. My elbow was killing me, but I knew to remain here was death. I packed the soda in my bag, quietly checked my weapons, and made for the door to the cubes. Maybe I could catch the dead fuckers in the office next to me and quietly shut the door, locking them in behind me as I made my hasty but silent exit.

  The knob was very quiet as I turned it. The hinges made no sound as I opened the door. Ninjas had nothing on my stealth. I didn’t see anything in the cube farm, so I took a quick peek into the office with the sleeping bag, and lo and behold there were two pus bags in there. One stared out the open window in parody of a twisted art piece. The other sat in an office chair with its head cocked to one side, staring at its buddy. The door frame was splintered around the catch, so closing the door was useless, but as I still didn’t need these assholes following me and catching me with my pants down, (hey, everybody poops) they had to go.

  I crept up behind the one sitting down, yanked its head back by the hair, and came away with a handful of rotten scalp. It turned to face me, white skull covered in black goo. With my elbow screaming, I stabbed it in the eye. It slumped back in the chair, re-killed. I glanced at the one standing, but it hadn’t moved. Stepping past the seated one, I snuck up on the other and tapped it on the shoulder. It didn’t move, so I gave it a little shove. Nothing. Fucking stupid zombies. I mean, really.