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

  I looked at Remo, he looked right back in my teary eyes as he wrapped the bandage around me. When he was done wrapping, he pulled the right side of his T-shirt down and to the right from his collar. There was a circular, indented scar, an obvious bullet wound, probably years old but still evident on his shoulder. “I screamed too.”

  “So did I,” Kinga added, and he had his left bicep flexed. He had the same scar Remo did, but on his arm.

  Zero rolled his eyes. “Sissies. Don’t get shot and you won’t have to scream. Me? I woulda’ fuk’n ducked. Get him on his feet, we’ve got company on the way. A few at least.”

  My shirt was a hot mess, so I opted to just wear the tactical vest and webbing, but Remo said no. I needed to cover the bandage with some type of cloth or the webbing could rip the bandage open. He wrung out my shirt, and I watched as what used to be inside of me pelted the already soaked carpet in a crimson rain. He helped me put the shirt on, and it was gross. Kinga and Jarek helped me to stand, and Remo carefully put the webbing around me. He shouldered my pack and Kevlar, and I was grateful, but it would interfere with his aim. In point of fact, I had no doubt that this guy would be able to throw an injured hippo over his shoulder with little impact on his aim. He is that badass.

  “Contact,” Zero whispered into his mic, “three at least, on my twelve. Must have been your girly cries. Fifteen meters.” He raised his Sig and let a round go.

  Kinga moved forward and took up a firing position next to Zero. They would be shooting through the hatch at whatever was coming.

  I was woozy, but still able to make out the pffftt of the suppressed rounds.

  “You alright to stand?” Remo asked.

  Jarek took my right arm and put it over his shoulders. “I will help him.” We moved toward Kinga and Zero, who had both already stepped over the knee knocker and pressed on.

  “Open port on the right,” Zero whispered. “Cover.” Zero snapped his fingers and waited. Nothing came from the open door, so Zero stepped in front of it, shining his light in. He reached for the doorknob and pulled the door closed. We had closed the gap, and honestly, I was feeling better, although a little cold, which I thought was odd for the summertime. We were in the bowels of a container ship though, and I thought that might be the issue.

  A lone creature stepped from another open door out into the corridor and we all froze. It must have heard us closing doors. It was looking away from us, and Zero went into a low crouch, sneaking up to it with his big knife. He switched the knife so it was pointing down in his fist, then jammed it sideways into the thing’s temple.

  The undead spun and latched on to Zero. I gotta admit, I never saw that coming. The knife was still sticking out of the side of the thing’s melon. It surprised us all, including Zero, but he still had the guile to get his forearm up between the thing’s teeth and his face. He tried to get his arm under its chin, but it pulled him in and bit down on the meaty top of his arm. He was wearing a long-sleeved tactical shirt, and the dead man apparently didn’t get the best purchase because it didn’t pull back with a piece of him. To Zero’s credit, he gritted his teeth and fought the thing off, not making a sound. Kinga was on the thing before the rest of us could react, popping a neat hole in the side of its dome with his pistol. The exiting round spattered goo all over the bulkhead in a conical pattern and there was a resulting ricochet that scared the shit out of everybody.

  Zero reached down to pull his blade from the thing’s head. It wouldn’t come, so he put his boot on its face and yanked again, the knife coming out with a sucking sound. He wiped it on the dead man’s shirt and returned it to its sheath. Even in my weakened condition, I could see the blood on his hand. He noticed too and pushed his sleeve up. He smiled. He actually looked a little smug, “Now that shit just ain’t fair. I been runnin’ around this damn boat, dodging these assholes,” he pointed at the dead man, “for a couple days. I run into Marines, and I’m dead in ten fuk’n seconds.”

  The wound looked more like a rip than a bite mark. It was semi-circular like all of them are, but this looked pulled instead of bitten. Remo yanked out a gauze pack, but Zero shrugged him off. “Save it.”

  “You’re bleeding,” Remo pointed out.

  Zero harrumphed, “Yeah, but that bandage won’t do much, will it?” He looked at me. “How long do I have?”

  “Why does everybody ask me that? I don’t know, and I think it varies per person anyway.”

  Remo held up the bandage. “At worst, this will keep your blood inside you. It isn’t bleeding much anyway, so it couldn’t hurt.”

  In the end, Zero acquiesced and Remo patched him up. We all knew he was doomed, and the person who seemed to take it the best was Zero.

  “We need to keep moving,” he barked, and took point.

  I was getting colder, and my bandage was leaking. I could feel the warmth of the blood on my leg and it felt great. Tell me that isn’t F’d up? I’m slowly bleeding to death, and my blood makes me feel warm (briefly) when it hits my skin. Jarek was helping me walk, my arm around his shoulders.

  Zero opened another hatch, and it was clear for another forty feet. We could hear them on the other side of this hatch. They were beating and pounding and howling and hissing. But not on our hatch, on something else.

  “This next area is full of them,” Zero told us, wiping his forehead. He already had that rancid cream color to him. He had been bitten less than three minutes ago. “A dozen at least, maybe more. Galley is right on the other side of them. Let’s do the same thing we did before, without the lights or shooting of our people.” He looked right at Jarek and raised his eyebrows. I heard Jarek swallow hard.

  We got into position, Remo and Zero up front, Kinga standing behind them, but I was having trouble focusing and I let the boys know.

  “Stay awake,” Remo told me. “Don’t fire unless they take us down, I don’t want you to shoot us.”

  I flipped him off. “Payback’s a bitch.”

  Remo shrugged out of my Kevlar and handed it to Kinga, who put it to the right of him on the floor. He put my pack to his left and nodded to Zero. The army guy moved forward and popped five of the six handles on the hatch. He looked back at us, nodded, threw the last handle, and pushed the hatch open. It squealed a little, and a shit-ton of red-eyed freaks looked over their shoulders in our direction.

  Zero fired three times before he ran back to the line. I was getting really woozy, and leaned against the exterior bulkhead. Zero moved forward as he fired. “Back on the line, Army!” Kinga shouted, but Zero still walked toward the things, shooting. They were dropping like flies, but also like flies, they just kept coming. One tripped over the knee-knocker, and Zero shot it in the back of its melon.

  “Out!” I heard Kinga shout and he pulled his pistol. He fired twice before the suppressor burned out and shit got pretty loud.

  “Back, fall back,” Remo notified casually, and Jarek lifted me off the floor, where I had slumped. He began carry-dragging me back through the hatch behind us. He got me through and we heard a scream. It wasn’t the scream of agony and terror that comes from someone being torn apart by a throng of dead people, it was the shriek of a Runner. It fought through the horde, taking a round in the shoulder. I saw the thing take two more rounds as it leapt past its cousins, hitting Zero in the chest and taking him down. It began to shriek and beat at my buddy as both Kinga and Remo ran out of ammo at the same time. Remo pulled his big ass knife and stood, but a blur of motion streaked past him and a fire axe nearly decapitated the Runner. I put my hand on the bulkhead as my support had left me.

  “Get back!” Jarek yelled, pulling Zero to his feet. He threw the shocked soldier behind him into Remo and Kinga and began hacking at the things in front of him. None of them seemed to give a shit, and they walked right by him. Was I seeing this correctly? Did those fuckers not tear into this guy? I was freaked out a bit to say the least. The MARSOC boys dragged Zero through the hatch and began to pull expended magazines. I could see Jarek thrust
ing with his axe, there was no room to swing with all those pus bags surrounding him. They continued to plod by him and came for us. The last thing I saw before Kinga slammed the door was Jarek pulling some of the things backwards toward himself.

  Zero tried to fight Kinga off, “We need to get him!”

  “We open that door and we all die!” Kinga yelled back at him.

  Zero put his hand on one of the hatch handles anyway, and Remo gently pulled it off. “We can’t get to him. He’s too far away and we need to reload.” Remo shook his head. “He’s gone.” We fell back to the previous hatch, and everybody began to load their weapons in silence.

  Kinga broke the silence, “A dozen huh?”

  “I don’t know where the others came from. There weren’t that many when they chased me out of there. There were fifty at least. Jarek didn’t deserve to go out like that.”

  My mouth was really dry, and I reached for my canteen. I took a swig, and rinsed my mouth. “Yeah, so nobody saw those things walk right by Jarek?”

  Zero shook his head. “That’s sure as shit what it looked like.”

  They were halfway done loading their magazines when the first handle on the hatch down the corridor twisted open with a squeak. The second turned and the others began to follow suit. “Holy shit, they’re coming through!” Zero yelled.

  The boys all slammed their half-loaded mags home and yanked their charging handles, aiming back down the corridor. The last handle spun and the door opened. A disgusting figure, positively coated in gore and indistinguishable on race or gender stepped through and onto the carpet. The only thing that was in any way telling was the axe in its hand.

  “Come,” it called. “The way is clear.”

  All four of us looked at each other. Then back at the thing. The thing looked down at itself then back at us. “I am Jarek. I am human, just covered in them. Come.”

  Reunion

  Jarek had slain all of the undead. Every one. In one five-minute span, he had killed half as many as I had killed in my entire zombie-slaying career. And he had done it with an axe. Not with a tactical battle rifle, or even a suppressed pistol. With an axe.

  That wasn’t even the weirdest part. The really crazy thing was that those dead motherfuckers hadn’t attacked him. This was a first for me. Since when did these things not want to feast on someone’s innards?

  Remo, not missing a trick, passed Jarek a white towel. No, I don’t know where he got a friggin’ towel, that’s not important. The important thing was that Jarek wiped his face and anything else he could. Guy was covered in zombie shit. Not poop, blood and guts and viscera and brains. Are brains guts? Whatever.

  We stepped through the hatch into the next corridor and it looked like an abattoir. All the blood and shit that was on Jarek paled in comparison to the hallway. Each of the noggins of the things on the floor was crushed or caved in. It was gross, and my admiration for this guy went up ten-fold.

  “Explain,” I heard Zero demand.

  “Explain what?” Jarek asked right back, “I do not know why they did not attack me. I am no different than you are.” He hefted his axe and smiled. “I did crush all of their heads with this one. You are welcome.”

  Remo pointed at Jarek’s face, “You’ve got stuff in your beard.” Jarek used his now nasty towel to comb his whiskers. Remo turned to Zero. “Is that the door to the Galley?” We all looked at the double doors which had begun to break from the stress of a hundred pounding fists.

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Zero looked at a hatch on the starboard side, “This is how they must have been getting in here.” He shut it and turned all six handles. “Fuck ‘em. Now we’re in business.” He knocked on the double doors. “Anybody alive in there? It’s Zero and company. We took care of all the infected out here and are just itching to talk to you.”

  Jarek raised one eyebrow. “We?”

  I heard a bunch of shit being moved on the other side of the doors. Heavy stuff sliding and things being tossed aside. The door unlocked with a click, and I was suddenly looking at Alvarez. I smiled despite the pain in my side, and he stepped out, shaking Zero’s hand. He noticed the bandage on Zero’s arm and looked at him questioningly. “I died,” the doomed man quipped. “Good to see you though.”

  I was leaning on Kinga, and I felt really cold. “When you two are done smooching, can we come inside? It’s kind of nasty out here.”

  Alvarez shifted his gaze to me and sighed. “You blew the pool for me, dickhead.” He started toward me, but Zero stopped him.

  “Let’s get inside the galley. We need to get him looked at, and get Jarek cleaned off.”

  Alvarez nodded and told us to come in. I didn’t make it three steps before I was looking down a long tunnel and darkness claimed me.

  When did popular culture decide that zombies wanted brains? When you think about it, it’s really the only squishy part of a person that’s hard to get to. Your average zombie is all teeth and fingernails, and although I wouldn’t call them lazy, they certainly don’t go out of their way to take the most difficult path to food, so spending the requisite time to open a noggin for the juicy center isn’t at the forefront of their semi-functional minds. How the hell is one of them going to get through your skull using primarily teeth? I don’t know about you, but I think that if I tried to bite through somebody’s noggin, I would get a mouthful of hair and scalp, and my choppers would just scrape off the cranium. The brain is literally the most difficult organ to acquire. The undead don’t give a shit about getting to your brain, they want to take the easy route and go into the abdominal cavity for the important vittles. If a brain is just hanging around, then I’m sure they will swallow it down with limited chewing, but for the most part, the mobile deceased are around specifically because their brains haven’t been consumed. If the pus bags did eat brains, then this whole apocalypse thing would have been over in a jiffy.

  That is what I was thinking, or rather dreaming about, when I felt a searing pain lance through my left side. I didn’t want to wake up. I can remember thinking don’t wake up. Someone was rummaging around inside my body, and it was beginning to hurt. If I could just stay asleep… alas, that was not to be.

  My eyes opened and I stared into the fluorescent light above me. This was becoming commonplace and it was beginning to piss me off. Why did they always put me directly under a light?

  “I need more light!” a familiar woman’s voice proclaimed loudly.

  “He’s awake!” Alvarez pointed out, and shined a light in my face.

  “I really don’t want to be. And ouch, that fucking hurts.” That had come out of me.

  “It’s about to get worse there, kiddo.” She leaned in and kissed me on the forehead. “Your buddies saved your life with the bandage, but it has to come off.”

  I heard Jarek ask her: “Are you a medical professional?”

  “Who the fuck is this guy, the Swedish Chef?” Damn, that’s my girl! “Yeah, I can stitch a bitch, now go clean yourself off in the sink. Nobody else touch him,” she thumbed at Jarek, “he’s been doused in that shit. Okay, Hon, are you ready? The bandage is going to stick and this is going to hurt like hell. Normally, I wouldn’t take this off, but I have to see the wound.” She cut the bandage straps with some scissors.

  She had called me Hon. Nobody ever called me Hon except my mom. “Do it.”

  She did it. My girl is not a liar. It really hurt, and I hissed as the bandages came off both sides. It was like ripping off a scab. She poked and prodded and pushed. “Mmmm hmm, yup, yup. I got bad news, lover: you’re going to live.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it.” I closed my eyes.

  “Oh, it’s about to get worse.” I whipped my eyes open and glared at her. Can you whip eyes? I friggin’ did. “The reason you’re bleeding through the bandage is that at some point prior to it being on you, it got wet. That decreased the efficiency of the hemostatic agent, and the reason it was undoubtedly crispy when it was applied. Fear not, young Padawan, I brought the good
shit.” She produced a green package from her bag, and I closed my eyes again. “Do you remember how much it hurt when they put the bandage on you?” My eyes shot open for the second time in a minute and I looked at her. Yeah, shot is better as a descriptive eye-opening term. “Bite this and don’t be a pussy,” she grumbled before she stuffed a towel in my mouth and dumped that shit on me.

  I already gave you details on how badly it hurt when MARSOC had applied the bandage. This was worse. Way worse. She poured the powder right into the hole in my side, flipped me over, and did the same to the exit wound. As to the shenanigans I pulled when that stuff hit me, I will just write that it was undignified, and leave it at that.

  “So then why did he pass out?” I heard Kinga ask.

  She sighed. “Shock, adrenaline, and straight-up pain. Getting shot doesn’t just hurt, it sends signals to all your systems that there is a problem. Sometimes those systems overreact.” I could feel Kinga nodding. “The blood wasn’t black or arterial red, and nothing’s spurting, so I’m thinking nothing major is damaged.” She thought out loud. “What I don’t understand is how he got shot when he was wearing body armor.”

  “We were concerned about bouncers inside a metal ship, so we were using subsonic rounds for our suppressed weapons. The slower round must have skipped off the bottom of the armor plate and gotten him in the side below the plate.”

  “Bouncers?”

  “Ricochets. All metal in here.”

  “Ah, right. When he wakes up—”

  “I’m up,” I told her, and moved up on one elbow.