Thursday, April 8, 2010
Coat of Arms
A little bit of extra content for you. This is the coat of arms for the Mallville Commerce Community. This logo appears on the badges of all Mallville Security officers as well as other Mallville promotional materials.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Fifty-Third Entry: You're a Foul One, Mr. Grimm
July 31st
We had a close call today, but thankfully Oliver is going to be okay, according to the doctors. It was far too close, but it did show me that at least some of the old Tara is still in there; the Tara that used to scare me a little.
For the most part things have been going pretty well here. Barbara and Beth have become inseparable, and a I feel a bit bad about that for Gerry since he was friends with Barbara first. I expect any day for Beth to suggest Barbara move in with us.
We need to get another laptop; when Tara found out that Lovelock had a Seventh City Online server she practically threatened me with bodily harm if I did not let her play. I let her, of course, but Pippa was hardly impressed,
Tara tried to create as Sith-like a hero as possible, naturally. Night_Tara ended up dressed in a black hooded cloak, and wielding a very lightsaber-ish electric sword. She had glowing red eyes and sharp teeth.
“So that's your idea of what a hero looks like, eh?” I asked her as her character flipped and fought her way through the tutorial section.
“Hey, I saw Captain Noir,” Tara replied, “and he was hardly wearing red and blue tights and a cape.”
Pippa must have seen that my account was online, because Super_Pippa quickly met up with Night_Tara. “What is this,” Super_Pippa asked, “You rolled new character?”
“Hello, Pippa.” Tara said into the mic.
“You?” Pippa asked, surprised, “What are you doing on here?”
“I let her use my computer,” I said into the mic.
“Pfft! Whatever, Super_Pippa said, “Have fun soloing,” and with that, she leaped from the street to the top of a building, and ran away.
“I told you she doesn't like me,” Tara said, a little coldly.
I kissed the top of Tara's head, “I'll go talk to her.”
I found Pippa in her room, and knocked, “Can I come in?”
“No.”
I let myself in anyway, “So what is your problem with Tara? Why are you being mean to her?”
“I don't like her,” Pippa said from where she sat on the bed with the computer in her lap. She didn't even look up from the screen as she spoke to me.
“You haven't given her a real chance yet.”
“She's a bitch.”
“If you would be nicer to her she wouldn't be. She just has a kind of severe defense mechanism.”
“Sharon was never a bitch to me,” Pippa protested, pulling her gaming headset off, “I miss Sharon.”
I sighed, “I miss Sharon too, ever moment of every day.”
“Then why are you with this?” Pippa turned her laptop to show me the picture of Tara naked from Bishop's DSi.
“How did you get that?” I asked.
“Bishop let me copy them off of his memory card,” Pippa smirked, “I think he likes me.”
I just shook my head in response.
“So why do you want to be with this?” Pippa pointed at the screen, “look at her! She's ugly. You can see her ribs.”
It's true that that is not the most flattering picure of Tara, but to call her ugly... “I happen to find Tara very attractive,” I said calmly.
“I didn't know you were into corpses. You should have just let Sharon-”
“Phillipa Webster, don't you finish that fucking sentence!” I hissed.
Pippa looked at me as if I had slapped her across the face, “But she's cheating on you!” Pippa clicked a couple of times with the mouse she had plugged into one of the laptop's USB slots and brought up the picture of Tara and Oliver with their arms around each other, smiling for Bishop's camera.
“I've already seen these pictures, and she's not cheating on me anymore than I was cheating on her with Sharon. She didn't have any reason to believe she would see me again, “ I was trying really hard to not lose my temper.
“But why her?”
“Because we go well together, or we did; we have to see if we really still do or not,” I explained, “Do you not want me to be happy?”
Another shocked look on her face, and then it turned to tears. I sometimes forget how young Pippa is. I don't think of her as only being a teenager, I think of her as a peer, and I need to remind myself sometimes that she is barely out of childhood (and that statement proves that I am getting old before my time).
“I don't want you to leave us!” Pippa sobbed.
“Who said I was leaving you?”
“You're gonna leave us to live with her. I don't want to lose you too!”
“Pippa, I'm not going to leave you. If, and this is just an if right now, if Tara and I decide to live together again, we'll work something out. Even if I were to move out I would still be around; I wouldn't leave town.”
Pippa slid the laptop off of her legs and onto the bed, and then jumped up and ran to me, “You won't need us anymore if you have her,” she said as she looked up at me through watery eyes.
“I need you all. I know you've read my journal; did I stop being a part of Sharon's life when I moved in with Tara?”
“Yes.”
“No!” I corrected her, “Even when we were fighting, we were still a part of each other's life. I love you, and Beth, and Gerry. You guys are my family, and I will always be in your lives.”
Pippa sniffled, “You promise?”
“Yes, Pippa, but I need you to be nice to her, okay? Even if you don't like her, please do it for me.”
“Oh-okay, but what if she is still sleeping with that Ollie guy?”
I swallowed, “Then it is something that we will deal with when we have to. “
“I don't trust her.”
“You don't have to. You just need to trust me.”
“She'll hurt you.”
“Women always do eventually,” I said in a tone meant to sound humorous
Pippa looked down at the clothing covered floor, “I'm sorry.”
“I wasn't referring to you, but it's natural for people to hurt each other, even if they don't mean to. I'm sorry for anything I've done that's hurt you.”
Pippa hugged me after that, and we talked for a while longer until she felt better. She told me that Bishop has been over a few times in the days since they arrived in Lovelock. It sounds like he's getting a crush on her.
With that fire put out, things settled down in our household again. Pippa stopped acting like an ass around Tara, and Tara started warming up, albeit cautiously, to Pippa. I don't know if Pippa will ever look at Tara the same way she looked at Sharon, but she is making an effort, and I can't really ask for anything more than that.
Of course the real excitement, and near tragedy, was yesterday. I didn't have to work at all yesterday, and was planning on spending the day with Tara, maybe walk around town, or just spend time at the park. Even though she walks with a bit of a limp still, she says that it doesn't hurt her. You know what they say about the plans or mice and men though, right?
I was again home alone; Gerry is still out on a run to the west of town, and Pippa, Beth, and Barbara had gone to the movie theater where they are playing the third (and as it turned out, last) of the Twilight movies. When the doorbell rang at around eleven, I opened the door without looking first expecting it to be Tara. It wasn't Tara.
I opened the door to find Oliver Gusteneaux towering over me. Before I could speak he lunged forward and grabbed me by the front of the shirt and shoved me back inside. He neglected to close the door behind him, not that that would have stopped what happened anyway.
Where Toni, Bishop, and Tara may all look a little on the emaciated side, Oliver looks like he hasn't missed a meal. The man is not exactly a bodybuilder, but compared to him I still look fat and feeble, and I look better than I ever have (that's not ego, it just doesn't take much to look better than I used to).
“You and I need to talk,” Oliver said, menace dominating his tone.
“I have better conversations when I'm not being throttled,” I said. If it seems like more bravado than you would expect from me, you have to realize one thing; I already knew what this talk was going to be about, and he did not know that I knew.
Oliver released me with a shove. I slid back a couple of steps on the tile floor on my sock feet, but managed to keep my balance.
“So you're the guy Tara's been pining over? Seriously?” Oliver said incredulously.
I decided to bluff, “Listen, I don't know you, and you don't know me, but I think it's only fair to warn you that I've been stomping zeds for a year now. Keep that in mind if you're looking for a fight.”
I do believe I failed my charisma check.
“Oh, I know who you are,” Oliver said with a humorless laugh, “You hung out with that Sigler psycho! You're part of why I've been watching people die for the last eight months because you had to start a fucking revolution.”
“You should know that while Tara was with me, it was that psycho Sigler she was pining for, so you might not want to talk shit about him in front of her.”
“I know that too. She talks in her sleep, did you know that? She says your name, and his name a lot. She cries in her sleep thinking of you, but it's me she wakes up to.”
“Woke up to,” I corrected him, still pressing my luck.
“What?”
“Past tense; woke up to. She hasn't said a thing about you to me, so I take that to means that you and her are over,” I snarked. I really don't know what got in to me there. Oliver is the kind of guy I would go out of my way to avoid back in school, but here I was antagonizing him.
It worked too.
“You little fuck!” Oliver growled, and punched me.
I may be able to talk crap with the best of them, but I cannot back that up with the ability to fight a living person unarmed. I went down on the floor hard; the taste of blood filling my mouth. I did a quick inventory of teeth with my tongue while I was down there, and found they all seemed like they were still in place.
“You don't deserve her. You left her to die in that hellhole you helped to create. I was the one that was there for her all this time. I'm the one that helped keep her alive, not you, but we come to this place because Toni thinks that there might still be some place to come to, and low and behold; you're already here, safe and sound!”
Still sitting on the floor, I rubbed my jaw as I spoke, “We didn't exactly teleport here, you know? I spent my fair share of time out on the road too.”
“She's mine!”
“I think that's her decision,” I said,
“Not if I kick the shit out of you until you agree to leave her alone,” he threatened.
“Yeah, 'cause she's so stupid that's she'll never piece together why I'm in traction, and telling her to go back to you.”
“That's it, shithead, I'm going to beat you until your ancestors feel it!”
Before I could say anything witty, someone beat me to it, “You'll do no such thing,” a dark voice oozed. A metallic click served as a period on the sentence.
Oliver turned to face the voice, and as he did, he cleared the path so that I could see as well. Standing behind Oliver, just inside the open door was a man in a Genetitech Security uniform, but he was no security officer. I recognized his bearded face from the news; it was Doctor Xavier Grimm.
Oliver moved like he was going to charge Grimm, “Uh uh uh, slicky boy. Take a step back there,” he motioned with the rifle in his hands, an FN F2000.
Doing as he was told, Oliver asked, “Who the fuck are you?”
Grimm looked back and forth between me and Oliver, “Why don't you ask your friend there; I'm pretty sure he knows who I am.”
Oliver looked at me where I still sat on the floor questioningly, “That's Doctor Xavier Grimm. The scientist Doctor Byron warned us about; the one who used to run Lovelock, wanted to experiment on survivors like us-”
“Oh good, my reputation does precede me,” Grimm said darkly.
“-and the man who most recently caused the deaths of five people escaping from the labs.”
“I wasn't going to stay trapped in that underground prison, not with what's coming. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend the rest of my life never seeing the sky again, but this is not the best place for that conversation.”
“So you're not going to shoot us?” I asked.
“I might, if it becomes necessary, but for now I need your assistance in an experiment. You can take a man out of the lab, but you can't take the lab out of the man, do you know what I mean?”
“Not really,” I said, still making no move to stand up, “You know, the whole town is looking for you?”
“Right, they are looking for me, not a security officer,” Grimm looked up thoughtfully, “I thought of shaving off the beard, but you know, I really like my beard.”
“He doesn't live alone, you know? Neither do I, people will come here looking for us,” Oliver said, sounding braver than he looked.
“And it's not like you can just march us through town at gunpoint without someone noticing,” I added.
“I can if there's something else for people to be paying attention to,” with that, Doctor Grimm reached into his pants pocket with his left hand, and pulled out a cellphone. The phone looked like a normal phone, but it was a little chunkier and had a fat antenna. He pressed some buttons on the screen and there was a loud noise from nearby; something exploded loud and large.
“There,” said Grimm, “that should keep everyone entertained for awhile. Get up, and lets go.” He motioned to the door with the end of his rifle.
I got to my feet, and started out the door, Oliver followed me.
“Don't think of trying to run either,” Grimm warned, “Even a brainbox like me know how to us this, and I have nothing to lose. Make a right at the street.”
Once outside I could see the large column of smoke rising up from a couple of streets away. Sirens were already filling the air as the fire department and Genetitech Security responded to the blast.
I glanced back and saw that Doctor Grimm has lowered his gun, but was also trailing far enough behind us that if either of us tried to take him, we'd be shot for our troubles.
I spat some blood from where my teeth shredded the inside of my mouth when Oliver punched me onto the sidewalk. Grimm said nothing about it, I'm pretty sure he saw Oliver punch me. When I did it a second time, he took notice though.
“Stop that; it's disgusting,” Grimm said.
“It tastes gross,” I complained.
“I don't care. I will not have you spitting all over my town.”
So it was okay for him to blow things up and kill people, but spitting is too much?
Grimm was leading us to a house a couple of lots over. So this last two weeks that means I've been living closer to a mad scientist than to my own girlfriend. I must be cursed, absolutely cursed. What are the chances that, of all of the empty houses in Lovelock, how is it that we are assigned the one next to his evil secret hideout?
I found the door of the nondescript gray house to be unlocked.
“What are you waiting for? Go inside,” Grimm ordered.
I obeyed, and Oliver followed me. Once he was inside, Doctor Grimm closed the front door and locked it.
The inside of this house looked pretty much exact;y like ours did when we first arrived; it had a very sparse IKEA-y sort of feel to its furnishings. There was certainly nothing visible that looked like a science experiment, but I thought at the time that maybe that was in one of the bedrooms. It wasn't.
“Move into the kitchen please,“ Grimm asked, almost pleasantly, “And please try to stay away from the windows; this house is meant to be unoccupied, so if anyone saw you it could lead to a great deal of unpleasantness for us all.”
Yeah, because this hadn't been unpleasant yet.
Oliver and I went into the kitchen, and stood next to the stove while Grimm passed us, and went into the small laundry room. This room was different that the one in our house. Instead of a separate washer and dryer on each side of the small room there was a stacked washer/dryer combo to the right, and a door on the left.
Behind the door was what appeared to be a small closet, on the back wall of which were a row clips intended to hold mops, brooms, and other cleaning implements. One of these was actually a sort of door knob which, when twisted, allowed the back of the closet to swing inward and reveal a staircase leading down.
“After you, gentlemen,” Grimm waved with his rifle.
“You want us to go in the closet?” I asked, having not seen the secret door yet.
\ “You should feel right at home there,” Oliver said.
“Children, if you can't play nice I will have to discipline you,” there was an edge to Grimm's voice that had not been there moments before, “Now please, through the door.”
I was quite surprised to see the brightly lit staircase leading down into a secret basement which had clearly been built to be a laboratory. Oliver followed behind me, and as I reached the bottom of the stairs I heard Doctor Grimm securing the doors at the top of the stairs.
“Now I know what you are both thinking,“ Doctor Grimm said, “'Is there one of these in my house?' No, there isn't. When I was administrator I had this house built especially for myself; it's one of the many things that dear Evelyn does not know about.”
Looking around the basement I saw that it was one large brightly lit room with while floors and walls. The walls of the room were lined with black topped work counters. There were two similar worktable islands in the center of the room. These work table were dotted with a pair of laptops, microscopes, test tubes, petri dishes, and a whole lot of glassware and electronics that I could not identify.
The most eye catching thing in Grimm's secret lab was in one corner though. It was a box about the size of a prison cell made out of thick plastic. There was another worktable inside the box, as well as a number small items that I could not see, and an unmade hospital bed. All of those things took a backseat to the main occupant of the cell though. Pressing against the transparent walls of its cell was a thin blond female zombie. She was wearing denim shorts and a white tank top and looked to be about sixteen; in her hand was what appeared to be a nine millimeter Beretta.
Oliver beat me to the first verbal response, “What the fuck is that?”
“That is my last test subject. Her name was Harriet if you must know, which is a horrible name to give to such a pretty young lady.”
I was shocked, almost speechless, “You did this to her? On purpose?”
“Did I infect her? Yes; I needed to test my latest batch. You see, I am getting very close to creating a cure for the infection; the 'Zed Virus' as you probably know it.”
“But she's a child,” Oliver said in shock.
“Which is part of what made her a good subject. Normally a straight injection of infected blood turns a person in twenty to thirty hours, as opposed to incidental infection which can take over a week depending of the severity of the initial infection, but with my latest vaccine I was able to keep her from turning for almost a full week. I know that I'm probably talking over your heads, but trust me, it is amazing.”
“You're a monster!” Oliver gasped.
“People said the same thing about German scientists in the forties, but it was their 'unethical' research that has led us to a lot of the technology we have today.”
“The Nazis were monsters,” I blurted out, “If you think comparing yourself to them is some sort of defense-”
“I am not defending myself!” Grimm roared, pointing the rifle at me, “I do not need to defend myself to people who simply are too selfish to sacrifice for the greater good of all. Don't you understand what coming up with a cure for this would mean? I will be humanity's savior, and if that means a few people have to die in the name of saving the world, then so be it. Those brave souls will be remembered for the sacrifice they made for humankind.”
“You're mad,” Oliver commented.
“Genius and insanity are very closely related. Did you know that Albert Einstein has Asperger's Syndrome? “
“So you admit that you're mentally ill?” Oliver said in a voice that said he felt he had just won some sort of argument.
Doctor Grimm shifted the barrel away from me and towards Oliver, “Keep pushing me, slicky boy, and see what happens! That boy you have would make an interesting test subject,“ and then to me, “or maybe the girl at your house? She's about young Henrietta's age, isn't she?”
Rage boiled up inside me in a way that threatening my own life had totally failed to do, ”Beth would have your head if you tried it.”
“The raven haired woman? Yes, she is a fiery one. I've met her; she doesn't care for me,” Grim took a deep breath and sighed, “Not that it's going to matter soon anyway, the albino bitch is going to let this whole place be overrun; I'm just trying to make as much progress as I can until it is safe for me to leave.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Oliver asked.
“That's right, your dear sweet Evelyn Byron has been trying to keep this a secret. In probably about a month this town is going to be destroyed by the undead,” Grimm nodded his head towards where Harriet was banging the handgun against the wall of her cell, we couldn't hear anything from where we were.
“Do you mean the group to the east?” I asked.
Grimm brightened, “Yes, I do . I am surprised you know about it, but did you also know that they are coming this way? Did you know that if they stay on the course they are on they will end up right on our doorstep?”
I didn't know that, but I said nothing.
“So what are we to do? Try and fit everyone into the labs? Decide who stays on the surface to die? Try and fight them with all those asinine weapons Byron has been having people build? Run away and abandon everything we have?”
“What would you do?” I asked, working on the principal that if he was talking then he wasn't feeding us to Harriet or shooting us.
“We need weapons, but not this energy ray fighting robot bullshit people are building. We have the materials to build a nuclear weapon. We could easily build a single weapon that would take out the vast majority of the monsters.”
“But the radiation, couldn't the fallout endanger us?”
“Not if we were to do it now, while they are still far enough away. In any case, isn't that risk better than the certainty of being overrun? “
“Sounds like we're fucked either way,” answered Oliver.
“I wouldn't expect you to understand it. The only contribution people like you can make to science is as test subjects,” Grimm motioned to a pair of heavy wooden chairs sitting to the side of Harriet's cell, “Tie the slicky boy up!” he ordered me.
The chairs made me think of the electric chair from The Green Mile, right down to the padded leather straps on the armrests and the front legs. Oliver and I reluctantly went over to the chairs.
“Sit down!” Doctor Grimm ordered Oliver, and raised the barrel of the rifle to Oliver's face when he didn't move quick enough.
I assume that Grimm felt I was less of a threat than Oliver (and who could blame him), and so he had me tie him up. I made a show of trying to secure Oliver tightly, but stuck my thumb under the strap when I pulled it tight. My hope was that Oliver would have enough room to slip his hands out. For his part, Oliver was clenching his fists as I tied him up, making his arm as thick as possible.
I tried to secure Oliver's legs as loosely as possible too, but short of leaving it undone entirely, there's not much I could do there. We had to hope that Grimm would leave us alone at some point before infecting us with anything.
Grimm had me strap down my own left arm, and then felt safe enough to put down the rifle to secure my right. I don't think I've ever felt more helpless than right then. Even facing off against bikers or zeds I had never actually been tied down before.
“Okay, let's start,” Grimm said, rubbing his hands together. He walked over to one of the island work tables, and picked up a small digital recorder with a pair of round spheres at the top of it.
Turning the recorder on, Grimm placed it back on the table, “It is July thirty-first, and I am Doctor Xavier Grimm. After the promising, but disappointing results with subject fourteen, I have acquired two new subjects. I am going to try batch sixteen-f on subject fifteen, and batch nineteen-g on subject sixteen.”
Grimm went on for quite awhile, describing us to his recorder, and guessing what the results would be. His hypotheses were not promising for us. I am guessing that he was picked on by the jocks in school, as his description of Oliver's physical condition was done in the disgusted tone a person might use when making a detailed description of a piece of shit.
Crossing the room, Grimm went to a large stainless steel refrigerator, and opened it. I couldn't see into the fridge, but I could hear glass and metal clanking around. Presumably he was getting our doses of death ready.
“You know, I think I am really close to finding a treatment for this. If that stupid bitch had let me continue my research the way I wanted to, I would have a cure by now,” Grimm ranted, “I've pinpointed it, you see? The Zed Virus isn't a virus at all, but a bacteria. The reason it was so hard to spot is that it is almost identical in appearance to Eosinophil, or white blood cells, and who would be surprised to see an increase of those in a person with a viral infection?”
I don't think I'm getting all of this right. Not only was he talking well over my education level, but I was actually tied to a chair at the time waiting for a mad scientist to inject me with a death sentence.
“It's immune to most antibiotics though. The only thing I've found that kills it is Phlebotinum, but for some reason it only kills it dead outside of the body,” Grimm was filling a hypodermic syringe as he spoke, “You might find this interesting. Did you know that an undead body continues to produce both blood and saliva, the two primary transfer vectors?”
Grimm waited for an answer, but didn't get one.“Of course you didn't,” he said, “And what's really amazing is that the body does seem to digest food, but it doesn't seem to do it for any reason. A damaged undead does not regenerate wounded tissue. Eating doesn't even seem to slow their decomposition rate, but they also do not starve to death, so it doesn't seem to matter one way or the other. Hell, you can seal them in an airtight box, like Harriet there, and they won't suffocate. I could leave her in there when I leave and she'd be just fine until her body decays too much to stay active.”
Oliver broke his silence, “So if we left the zeds alone long enough they would simply fall apart on their own?”
“In theory, yes, however each person that dies becomes a new one, so the only way to truly eliminate them would be to eliminate all humans. That is rather problematic,” Grimm explained, his back still to us, “It's a bit like killing cockroaches. They're pretty easy to kill, electricity, blunt force, dismemberment, pretty much anything that will destroy the brain or its connection to the body, but there are just so damn many of them, and no matter how many you kill it seems like there are more coming.”
Doctor Grimm closed the door to the refrigerator, and turned to face us, two syringes, one a dark crimson and the other full of something clear. “But if I can stop people from turning in the first place, that should at least turn things a bit more in our favor,” he started towards us, “You guys should wish me luck; if this works, not only do you survive, but you will be a part of history.”
“Wait!” I said, trying to stall him again, “What about people who haven't been bitten? People who haven't been infected? Why do they turn?” It seemed like a reasonable question.
Grimm stopped, “Oh, maybe you are smarter than you look. That's the next piece of the puzzle, isn't it? My theory is that there's some airborne component to this bacteria that we are all infected with, but it remains dormant while our normal biological processes remain active. “
Grimm stopped himself, “But enough of this, we have work to do here. This should only hurt for a m-”
One of the laptop computers on the work tables chimed, and Grimm turned back to look at it. He grinned at what he saw, put the syringes down on the table, and turned the laptop to face us. In a window on the screen I could see a woman standing at the front door; he had installed a surveillance camera above the door. It was Tara, and she was looking around her, and I could see her mouth moving, but there was no sound.
“It's your little gray haired friend!” Grimm announced with amusement, “I'd better go make sure she doesn't come in; I don't know where I would put a third test subject.
Grimm picked up his rifle, and walked over the the stairs, and then turned back to us, ”If I hear you make a sound, I will kill her, do you understand?”
We both nodded our understanding, and Grimm ascended the stairs.
Once we heard the door close at the top of the stairs I turned to Oliver, “Please tell me you can get your hands free,” I practically begged.
Oliver's face became a mask of effort and determination as he started jerking his right arm backwards, straining against the cuff. At first it looked like I had still fastened the strap too tightly, but then his hand started to slide through as he practically tried to dislocate his thumb by folding it into the palm of his hand. In a couple more seconds his hand was red and raw looking, but it was also free.
As Oliver quickly unfastened his other restraints, I spoke, “Thank God, lets get out of here.”
“No,” said Oliver as he rose from the chair, “He's got that gun, and if we just go running up there, he'll shoot us, and probably Tara too. I haven't spent the last 8 months keeping her alive just to have you get her killed.”
“You're going to leave me here?” I asked.
“Don't be a 'tard,” Oliver spat, “If I let you die, she'll never come back to me. She needs to just be reminded of what a loser you are. I'm going to undo your straps, but don't pull free from them. We're going to wait for him to come back down, and then I'll take care of that sick motherfucker.”
True to his word, Oliver undid my straps, but did his best to make them look like they were still fastened. By the time we heard the door at the top of the stairs open again, we both looked like we were still tethered to our chairs, although Oliver was having to pin the end of the restraint to the left arm of his chair with his wrist since he did not have a second hand to set it properly with.
Doctor Grimm's shoes clomped down the stairs, and we could see him lean the rifle against the wall next to the bottom of the stairs, “It's okay, she moved on. If it makes you feel any better, she was looking for you,” he said to me, “Kind of sad really, but one cannot let emotions get in the way of progress.”
“No, that's something only humans would do,” Oliver commented.
“That's enough of that,” Grimm spoke as if talking to a petulant child, “I don't expect you to understand, but what I am doing is for the good of all mankind.”
Doctor Grimm walked back over to the laptop, which now showed an empty front porch, he seemed puzzled at what he found, “Where is the other syringe?” he asked, and started looking down at the floor to see if it had rolled there.
“Did either of you see what I did with the other hypo? I thought I put it ri-” Grimm turned to face us, and found Oliver standing right in front of him, his right hand raised, ready to attack
“Fucker!” Oliver yelled, and stabbed down with the hypodermic needle of infected blood obscured in his large hand. The needle buried itself in the side of Doctor Grimm's throat.
Shock, surprise, terror, and understanding all battled for control of Xavier Grimm's face as he realized where the missing syringe was. His left hand lifted halfway to his neck as if he meant to pull the needle out, but froze there in midair, “You... you...” he gasped as the infection flowed through his blood.
Before Grimm could say anything else, Oliver spoke again, “I wouldn't expect you to understand it, but the only way people like you can help the world is by not being a part of it anymore,” and with that, he punched the doctor in the face.
Grimm fell over backwards onto the work table, sending the laptop, the other three syringes, and a nearby microscope crashing to the floor. With his stomach exposed, Oliver hit him again, causing him to double over and fall to the floor. Either Oliver hadn't hit me that hard, or Doctor Grimm was a wimp.
“Go!” Oliver yelled to me, and I didn't need to be told twice; I was already on my feet. I bolted for the stairs, grabbing Grimm's rifle as I went to keep him from coming after us with it.
Oliver was right behind me, our feet making a thunderous noise in the narrow passage up to the kitchen. I burst through the false back of the closet, and nearly ran into the washer/dryer opposite the closet in my rush to get out of there. I could hear Grimm cursing behind us; for someone who goes down so easy, he sure did recover fast.
My sock clad feet slid on the flooring of the kitchen, and I almost lost my balance before getting onto the carpet of the living room. Oliver and I crossed the living room quickly, but had to stop at the front door as I had apparently forgotten how to work a deadbolt. After a couple of seconds of struggling I did manage to get the door open, and we were outside, crossing the front yard.
Oliver started in the direction of his house while I started in mine, wanting to get to Tara before Grimm did if she was there.
There were three popping sounds, and Oliver yelled out. I turned in time to see him fall to the ground, clutching his lower right leg. My feet slid out from under me as I tried to change direction, and run to help Oliver, and I hit the sidewalk hard, knocking the rifle out of my hands. I looked and saw Grimm was standing on the house's front porch, and pointing a handgun at me.
Grimm stalked across the lawn towards me, the personification of rage, “Do you understand what you've done?” he yelled, “You've just destroyed humankind's only hope at finding a cure!”
“Maybe your vaccine will work, and you'll be saved,” Oliver grunted through gritted teeth. His blood was already spreading under him on the sidewalk.
“Shut the fuck up!” Grimm yelled, and fired a shot in Oliver's direction. The bullet missed Oliver, and made a small gouge in the sidewalk instead.
Grimm pointed his handgun, I could see now that it was a Glock, at me again, “You could have gone down in the history books as one of the saviors of mankind, but no! You're too selfish to give of yourself to help others! You're blind, just like Byron; you can't see what needs to be done beyond what you deem as humane and proper! You-”
There was a loud bang. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the pain. Instead of feeling bullets tear through my body, I heard someone working the pump on a shotgun or rifle, and something thud to the ground in front of me. I opened my eyes to find Grimm laying half on the sidewalk, half on his house's lawn. The front of his black Genetitech Security uniform had the shimmer of wetness spreading across his stomach. The gun had fallen out of his hand, and was lying near him on the grass.
Grimm put his right hand to the center of the wetspot on his chest. It came away covered in his won blood; he looked at it in disbelief, “Wha-... what?” He looked over at me, and then up, over and behind me.
I turned my head and upper body, I was still sitting on the ground after all, to look behind me and see Tara starting there holding a black Remington 7600, she was still aiming it at Doctor Grimm.
Grimm seemed to gather his wits, and gasped weakly, “Do you know what you've just done? I... I was so close to solving it, and now you've damned us all. No one else has the... the guts to do what needed to be done. Who will finish my res-”
Bang!
Tara fired the rifle again, this time hitting Grimm above the left eye, and spraying his twisted, but apparently brilliant, mind all over the lawn. She pumped the rifle again to eject the spent cartridge, and came over to me. Her blue eyes were as cold as ice, and seemed to almost be glowing.
“Are you okay?” Tara asked me, her face like a cold stone mask.
“Yeah, but I think Oliver's shot.” I said.
A look of panic broke the emotionless shell of Tara face, and she looked over at where he was laying a few yards away, “Oh my God, Oliver!” she exclaimed, and rant to him.
This left me to pick myself up off of the ground, and then I joined Tara. Oliver was bleeding a lot, and he needed help soon or he would probably lose his leg, or die, or something.
I went over to Grimm's body, and started checking his pockets for the cell phone I had seen him use, thinking maybe it would still work for making phone calls as well as detonating bombs. It wasn't there, he must have taken it out in the house somewhere when I wasn't looking.
I left Tara with Oliver, telling her I'd be right back, and went into the house. I went down into the laboratory where just minutes before I had looked death in the face., and started looking for the phone.
I was distracted by movement, it was Harriet inside her cell. Her mouth was working like she was talking, but I couldn't hear anything. I wonder now if perhaps Grimm's concoction had made her into something other than a normal zed, but even if I had thought of that then I wouldn't have let her out of that box for two reasons. First of all, I had no idea how to open the door. Secondly, she then pointed the Beretta she was still holding in my general direction, and started pulling the trigger.
I found the phone on the floor by the refrigerator after a couple of minutes. I don't know how it could have gotten over there, but it did. Luckily the phone is as sturdy as it looked, and seemed to be in full working condition. I dialed 911, and hit send.
“Hello?” said a puzzled sounding voice from the other end after one ring.
“I have an emergency, do you still handle that?' I asked, probably sounding as uncertain as she had sounded puzzled.
“Umm, yes. Who are you, and how did you get that phone?”
I guess the phone must have showed as being Doctor Grimm's. I can only assume that he somehow made it so that the location of the phone could not be tracked since his just having it on should have made him easy for Genetitech Security to find. I explained who I was, and what had happened. They woman on the other end, who seemed to get over her initial confusion rather quickly, said that help would be sent.
Two security cars arrived first. They had probably come from the fire a couple of blocks away, which, judging by the dispersing smoke cloud, was probably out, or almost out by now. Beth and Justin Lassit were in the second of the cars, an officer Beth referred to as Kyle and man with a shaved head got out of the first car.
While Justin and Kyle used my belt to make a tourniquet for Oliver's leg (why hadn't we thought of that?), Beth made sure that Tara and I were okay. I explained to her briefly what had happened, leaving out the part about Oliver hitting me, and basically telling me that he had been sleeping with Tara. It wasn't the last time I would tell the story tonight, but no one I had to tell it to ever questioned Oliver's presence.
An ambulance arrived minutes later, and shortly after that a small black car pulled up, and Doctor Byron got out. I had to explain to her what had happened, and she got on a phone identical to the one that Grimm had used to request what she had called a “recovery team”. We were gone before that arrived though.
Tara and I rode to the hospital with Beth and Justin; we followed the ambulance there. We were there for most of the evening while Oliver was treated by a doctor named Camilla Swirsky, who said that Oliver should survive, but that he may need a cane to walk. He probably has a good amount of physical therapy in his future.
While Oliver was being treated, Tara and I were being interviewed about the events of the afternoon. It wasn't exactly an interrogation, but it was not exactly friendly either. I'm not taking it personally, I mean this guy was someone the whole town was looking for and he just happened to show up on my block.
Doctor Byron showed up during our interview, and wanted to know why Tara had killed Grimm. I wouldn't describe her as angry so much as sad. Maybe she didn't know what he thought of her, or maybe she just really is that good of a person, but she really seemed like she was upset about his death. Maybe she just really respected him as a scientist?
Tara, in her most businesslike tone, a tone she used off and on all night long, explained once again that Grimm was armed, and she killed him in my defense. No one questioned that as he had shot Oliver, and there was a gun found near his body (suspiciously nearer to his hand than it had been when I went looking for the phone, but I wasn't gong to say anything about that)
Doctor Byron answered her share of questions too. She admitted that she knew what Grimm was working on, and had impeded his progress because she found his methods unethical, “However with him gone, it will be harder to even get back to the point he was at. We have all of his data, but his note-taking methods were, lets say unique. We've been waiting to have someone infected for him to work with, but we've been lucky in that we have not had many cases of infection.”
“He mentioned something about white blood cells, Eosiniphils? Can you test for that?' I asked.
“Oh yes. Xavier will go down in the history books for that, and I cannot begin to tell you how important that would be to him. Without his figuring out that the reanimation virus is actually a bacteria, and that Phlebotinum is the only antibiotic it is vulnerable to we may never have found any treatment,” Doctor Byron explained.
“But the man was a murderer,” I protested.
“His methodology was wrong, but he was still a genius, and losing him is a tremendous setback,” Doctor Byron thought for a moment, “I'm sorry, you probably think I wish he had infected you and Oliver in order to find a treatment. I am truly glad you are okay, and what he did to that young woman... he would have had to pay for that somehow. It is a bad situation all around, and there was no way it could have ended well. You did the right thing, Tara.”
“Thank you, Evelyn.”
“What about the zombies?” I asked, “Doctor Grimm said that there were a large number of them coming for us? Is it true? Is this the same group that Acquisitions ran into?”
“Your friend Gerry is in Acquisitions, isn't he?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Doctor Byron nodded, ”It is true, but we are working on ways of dealing with them. I have not made a formal announcement because I do not want people to panic unduly. I would appreciate it if you both would keep this to yourselves, and trust me that I am working on it.”
“Can we be kept informed?” Tara asked.
“If you would like. I know that you both have had a lot of experience dealing with the animated dead, so perhaps involving you both could be of benefit to us all. I will think on it, and let you know what I decide,” Doctor Byron said thoughtfully, “In any case I am going to have to address it publicly before too much longer.”
Doctor Byron eventually arranged for us to get a ride home. A security officer I did not recognize dropped us off in front of Tara's house. I walked her up to the door.
“We're even now,” Tara said, her voice soft.
“What do you mean?” I asked,
“We're even. You saved my life from Merritt, and now I've saved you from Grimm.”
I was puzzled, “Is that why you're with me then? You feel you owe me?”
“No,” she answered quickly, “I'm with you because I love you.”
We stood in silence for a few moments. I wanted to ask her about what was going on between her and Oliver. I wanted to ask her if loved him more. I wanted to ask her to make a choice. I wanted to know the truth, but I decided that I need to give her the time to feel comfortable discussing all of that with me. She will talk to me when she is ready, so I just asked, “Did you want to come stay with me tonight?”
Tara thought about it for a second, “No, I don't think so. I want to let Toni and Bishop know that Ollie's going to be okay, and I don't want to leave them alone tonight, Maybe tomorrow night though, okay?”
“Sure,” I said, trying not to let the hurt I was feeling creep into my voice or onto my face, “You get some rest then.”
“You too,” Tara stroked my cheek, and gave me a gentle kiss, “I'm glad you're okay; I couldn't bear losing you again. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I replied, and started the walk home (thankfully in shoes now).
Tara stayed on the porch watching me as I walked. She waved to me as I got to the door of my house. I was glad that I thought ton grab my keys when I came back for my shoes before going to the hospital, or else I would have had to knock.
I waved back to Tara, and slowly let myself in. I wish she had come home with me. It's not that I wanted to have sex or anything, it's just I feel a little uneasy being alone now. Beth and Pippa are both asleep, and I could use the company of something other than my own words on paper.
At the rate I am going, I'm probably going to finish filling up this book before too much longer. I'd have filled it long ago if it weren't for the fact that I write so small. I'll need to find a new journal soon... maybe one of those nice moleskin ones.
I'm going to try sleeping again now, but every time I close my eyes I see Grimm holding those needles. I see myself tied to that chair, and I think of how close to dying I was, and I am afraid.
We had a close call today, but thankfully Oliver is going to be okay, according to the doctors. It was far too close, but it did show me that at least some of the old Tara is still in there; the Tara that used to scare me a little.
For the most part things have been going pretty well here. Barbara and Beth have become inseparable, and a I feel a bit bad about that for Gerry since he was friends with Barbara first. I expect any day for Beth to suggest Barbara move in with us.
We need to get another laptop; when Tara found out that Lovelock had a Seventh City Online server she practically threatened me with bodily harm if I did not let her play. I let her, of course, but Pippa was hardly impressed,
Tara tried to create as Sith-like a hero as possible, naturally. Night_Tara ended up dressed in a black hooded cloak, and wielding a very lightsaber-ish electric sword. She had glowing red eyes and sharp teeth.
“So that's your idea of what a hero looks like, eh?” I asked her as her character flipped and fought her way through the tutorial section.
“Hey, I saw Captain Noir,” Tara replied, “and he was hardly wearing red and blue tights and a cape.”
Pippa must have seen that my account was online, because Super_Pippa quickly met up with Night_Tara. “What is this,” Super_Pippa asked, “You rolled new character?”
“Hello, Pippa.” Tara said into the mic.
“You?” Pippa asked, surprised, “What are you doing on here?”
“I let her use my computer,” I said into the mic.
“Pfft! Whatever, Super_Pippa said, “Have fun soloing,” and with that, she leaped from the street to the top of a building, and ran away.
“I told you she doesn't like me,” Tara said, a little coldly.
I kissed the top of Tara's head, “I'll go talk to her.”
I found Pippa in her room, and knocked, “Can I come in?”
“No.”
I let myself in anyway, “So what is your problem with Tara? Why are you being mean to her?”
“I don't like her,” Pippa said from where she sat on the bed with the computer in her lap. She didn't even look up from the screen as she spoke to me.
“You haven't given her a real chance yet.”
“She's a bitch.”
“If you would be nicer to her she wouldn't be. She just has a kind of severe defense mechanism.”
“Sharon was never a bitch to me,” Pippa protested, pulling her gaming headset off, “I miss Sharon.”
I sighed, “I miss Sharon too, ever moment of every day.”
“Then why are you with this?” Pippa turned her laptop to show me the picture of Tara naked from Bishop's DSi.
“How did you get that?” I asked.
“Bishop let me copy them off of his memory card,” Pippa smirked, “I think he likes me.”
I just shook my head in response.
“So why do you want to be with this?” Pippa pointed at the screen, “look at her! She's ugly. You can see her ribs.”
It's true that that is not the most flattering picure of Tara, but to call her ugly... “I happen to find Tara very attractive,” I said calmly.
“I didn't know you were into corpses. You should have just let Sharon-”
“Phillipa Webster, don't you finish that fucking sentence!” I hissed.
Pippa looked at me as if I had slapped her across the face, “But she's cheating on you!” Pippa clicked a couple of times with the mouse she had plugged into one of the laptop's USB slots and brought up the picture of Tara and Oliver with their arms around each other, smiling for Bishop's camera.
“I've already seen these pictures, and she's not cheating on me anymore than I was cheating on her with Sharon. She didn't have any reason to believe she would see me again, “ I was trying really hard to not lose my temper.
“But why her?”
“Because we go well together, or we did; we have to see if we really still do or not,” I explained, “Do you not want me to be happy?”
Another shocked look on her face, and then it turned to tears. I sometimes forget how young Pippa is. I don't think of her as only being a teenager, I think of her as a peer, and I need to remind myself sometimes that she is barely out of childhood (and that statement proves that I am getting old before my time).
“I don't want you to leave us!” Pippa sobbed.
“Who said I was leaving you?”
“You're gonna leave us to live with her. I don't want to lose you too!”
“Pippa, I'm not going to leave you. If, and this is just an if right now, if Tara and I decide to live together again, we'll work something out. Even if I were to move out I would still be around; I wouldn't leave town.”
Pippa slid the laptop off of her legs and onto the bed, and then jumped up and ran to me, “You won't need us anymore if you have her,” she said as she looked up at me through watery eyes.
“I need you all. I know you've read my journal; did I stop being a part of Sharon's life when I moved in with Tara?”
“Yes.”
“No!” I corrected her, “Even when we were fighting, we were still a part of each other's life. I love you, and Beth, and Gerry. You guys are my family, and I will always be in your lives.”
Pippa sniffled, “You promise?”
“Yes, Pippa, but I need you to be nice to her, okay? Even if you don't like her, please do it for me.”
“Oh-okay, but what if she is still sleeping with that Ollie guy?”
I swallowed, “Then it is something that we will deal with when we have to. “
“I don't trust her.”
“You don't have to. You just need to trust me.”
“She'll hurt you.”
“Women always do eventually,” I said in a tone meant to sound humorous
Pippa looked down at the clothing covered floor, “I'm sorry.”
“I wasn't referring to you, but it's natural for people to hurt each other, even if they don't mean to. I'm sorry for anything I've done that's hurt you.”
Pippa hugged me after that, and we talked for a while longer until she felt better. She told me that Bishop has been over a few times in the days since they arrived in Lovelock. It sounds like he's getting a crush on her.
With that fire put out, things settled down in our household again. Pippa stopped acting like an ass around Tara, and Tara started warming up, albeit cautiously, to Pippa. I don't know if Pippa will ever look at Tara the same way she looked at Sharon, but she is making an effort, and I can't really ask for anything more than that.
Of course the real excitement, and near tragedy, was yesterday. I didn't have to work at all yesterday, and was planning on spending the day with Tara, maybe walk around town, or just spend time at the park. Even though she walks with a bit of a limp still, she says that it doesn't hurt her. You know what they say about the plans or mice and men though, right?
I was again home alone; Gerry is still out on a run to the west of town, and Pippa, Beth, and Barbara had gone to the movie theater where they are playing the third (and as it turned out, last) of the Twilight movies. When the doorbell rang at around eleven, I opened the door without looking first expecting it to be Tara. It wasn't Tara.
I opened the door to find Oliver Gusteneaux towering over me. Before I could speak he lunged forward and grabbed me by the front of the shirt and shoved me back inside. He neglected to close the door behind him, not that that would have stopped what happened anyway.
Where Toni, Bishop, and Tara may all look a little on the emaciated side, Oliver looks like he hasn't missed a meal. The man is not exactly a bodybuilder, but compared to him I still look fat and feeble, and I look better than I ever have (that's not ego, it just doesn't take much to look better than I used to).
“You and I need to talk,” Oliver said, menace dominating his tone.
“I have better conversations when I'm not being throttled,” I said. If it seems like more bravado than you would expect from me, you have to realize one thing; I already knew what this talk was going to be about, and he did not know that I knew.
Oliver released me with a shove. I slid back a couple of steps on the tile floor on my sock feet, but managed to keep my balance.
“So you're the guy Tara's been pining over? Seriously?” Oliver said incredulously.
I decided to bluff, “Listen, I don't know you, and you don't know me, but I think it's only fair to warn you that I've been stomping zeds for a year now. Keep that in mind if you're looking for a fight.”
I do believe I failed my charisma check.
“Oh, I know who you are,” Oliver said with a humorless laugh, “You hung out with that Sigler psycho! You're part of why I've been watching people die for the last eight months because you had to start a fucking revolution.”
“You should know that while Tara was with me, it was that psycho Sigler she was pining for, so you might not want to talk shit about him in front of her.”
“I know that too. She talks in her sleep, did you know that? She says your name, and his name a lot. She cries in her sleep thinking of you, but it's me she wakes up to.”
“Woke up to,” I corrected him, still pressing my luck.
“What?”
“Past tense; woke up to. She hasn't said a thing about you to me, so I take that to means that you and her are over,” I snarked. I really don't know what got in to me there. Oliver is the kind of guy I would go out of my way to avoid back in school, but here I was antagonizing him.
It worked too.
“You little fuck!” Oliver growled, and punched me.
I may be able to talk crap with the best of them, but I cannot back that up with the ability to fight a living person unarmed. I went down on the floor hard; the taste of blood filling my mouth. I did a quick inventory of teeth with my tongue while I was down there, and found they all seemed like they were still in place.
“You don't deserve her. You left her to die in that hellhole you helped to create. I was the one that was there for her all this time. I'm the one that helped keep her alive, not you, but we come to this place because Toni thinks that there might still be some place to come to, and low and behold; you're already here, safe and sound!”
Still sitting on the floor, I rubbed my jaw as I spoke, “We didn't exactly teleport here, you know? I spent my fair share of time out on the road too.”
“She's mine!”
“I think that's her decision,” I said,
“Not if I kick the shit out of you until you agree to leave her alone,” he threatened.
“Yeah, 'cause she's so stupid that's she'll never piece together why I'm in traction, and telling her to go back to you.”
“That's it, shithead, I'm going to beat you until your ancestors feel it!”
Before I could say anything witty, someone beat me to it, “You'll do no such thing,” a dark voice oozed. A metallic click served as a period on the sentence.
Oliver turned to face the voice, and as he did, he cleared the path so that I could see as well. Standing behind Oliver, just inside the open door was a man in a Genetitech Security uniform, but he was no security officer. I recognized his bearded face from the news; it was Doctor Xavier Grimm.
Oliver moved like he was going to charge Grimm, “Uh uh uh, slicky boy. Take a step back there,” he motioned with the rifle in his hands, an FN F2000.
Doing as he was told, Oliver asked, “Who the fuck are you?”
Grimm looked back and forth between me and Oliver, “Why don't you ask your friend there; I'm pretty sure he knows who I am.”
Oliver looked at me where I still sat on the floor questioningly, “That's Doctor Xavier Grimm. The scientist Doctor Byron warned us about; the one who used to run Lovelock, wanted to experiment on survivors like us-”
“Oh good, my reputation does precede me,” Grimm said darkly.
“-and the man who most recently caused the deaths of five people escaping from the labs.”
“I wasn't going to stay trapped in that underground prison, not with what's coming. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend the rest of my life never seeing the sky again, but this is not the best place for that conversation.”
“So you're not going to shoot us?” I asked.
“I might, if it becomes necessary, but for now I need your assistance in an experiment. You can take a man out of the lab, but you can't take the lab out of the man, do you know what I mean?”
“Not really,” I said, still making no move to stand up, “You know, the whole town is looking for you?”
“Right, they are looking for me, not a security officer,” Grimm looked up thoughtfully, “I thought of shaving off the beard, but you know, I really like my beard.”
“He doesn't live alone, you know? Neither do I, people will come here looking for us,” Oliver said, sounding braver than he looked.
“And it's not like you can just march us through town at gunpoint without someone noticing,” I added.
“I can if there's something else for people to be paying attention to,” with that, Doctor Grimm reached into his pants pocket with his left hand, and pulled out a cellphone. The phone looked like a normal phone, but it was a little chunkier and had a fat antenna. He pressed some buttons on the screen and there was a loud noise from nearby; something exploded loud and large.
“There,” said Grimm, “that should keep everyone entertained for awhile. Get up, and lets go.” He motioned to the door with the end of his rifle.
I got to my feet, and started out the door, Oliver followed me.
“Don't think of trying to run either,” Grimm warned, “Even a brainbox like me know how to us this, and I have nothing to lose. Make a right at the street.”
Once outside I could see the large column of smoke rising up from a couple of streets away. Sirens were already filling the air as the fire department and Genetitech Security responded to the blast.
I glanced back and saw that Doctor Grimm has lowered his gun, but was also trailing far enough behind us that if either of us tried to take him, we'd be shot for our troubles.
I spat some blood from where my teeth shredded the inside of my mouth when Oliver punched me onto the sidewalk. Grimm said nothing about it, I'm pretty sure he saw Oliver punch me. When I did it a second time, he took notice though.
“Stop that; it's disgusting,” Grimm said.
“It tastes gross,” I complained.
“I don't care. I will not have you spitting all over my town.”
So it was okay for him to blow things up and kill people, but spitting is too much?
Grimm was leading us to a house a couple of lots over. So this last two weeks that means I've been living closer to a mad scientist than to my own girlfriend. I must be cursed, absolutely cursed. What are the chances that, of all of the empty houses in Lovelock, how is it that we are assigned the one next to his evil secret hideout?
I found the door of the nondescript gray house to be unlocked.
“What are you waiting for? Go inside,” Grimm ordered.
I obeyed, and Oliver followed me. Once he was inside, Doctor Grimm closed the front door and locked it.
The inside of this house looked pretty much exact;y like ours did when we first arrived; it had a very sparse IKEA-y sort of feel to its furnishings. There was certainly nothing visible that looked like a science experiment, but I thought at the time that maybe that was in one of the bedrooms. It wasn't.
“Move into the kitchen please,“ Grimm asked, almost pleasantly, “And please try to stay away from the windows; this house is meant to be unoccupied, so if anyone saw you it could lead to a great deal of unpleasantness for us all.”
Yeah, because this hadn't been unpleasant yet.
Oliver and I went into the kitchen, and stood next to the stove while Grimm passed us, and went into the small laundry room. This room was different that the one in our house. Instead of a separate washer and dryer on each side of the small room there was a stacked washer/dryer combo to the right, and a door on the left.
Behind the door was what appeared to be a small closet, on the back wall of which were a row clips intended to hold mops, brooms, and other cleaning implements. One of these was actually a sort of door knob which, when twisted, allowed the back of the closet to swing inward and reveal a staircase leading down.
“After you, gentlemen,” Grimm waved with his rifle.
“You want us to go in the closet?” I asked, having not seen the secret door yet.
\ “You should feel right at home there,” Oliver said.
“Children, if you can't play nice I will have to discipline you,” there was an edge to Grimm's voice that had not been there moments before, “Now please, through the door.”
I was quite surprised to see the brightly lit staircase leading down into a secret basement which had clearly been built to be a laboratory. Oliver followed behind me, and as I reached the bottom of the stairs I heard Doctor Grimm securing the doors at the top of the stairs.
“Now I know what you are both thinking,“ Doctor Grimm said, “'Is there one of these in my house?' No, there isn't. When I was administrator I had this house built especially for myself; it's one of the many things that dear Evelyn does not know about.”
Looking around the basement I saw that it was one large brightly lit room with while floors and walls. The walls of the room were lined with black topped work counters. There were two similar worktable islands in the center of the room. These work table were dotted with a pair of laptops, microscopes, test tubes, petri dishes, and a whole lot of glassware and electronics that I could not identify.
The most eye catching thing in Grimm's secret lab was in one corner though. It was a box about the size of a prison cell made out of thick plastic. There was another worktable inside the box, as well as a number small items that I could not see, and an unmade hospital bed. All of those things took a backseat to the main occupant of the cell though. Pressing against the transparent walls of its cell was a thin blond female zombie. She was wearing denim shorts and a white tank top and looked to be about sixteen; in her hand was what appeared to be a nine millimeter Beretta.
Oliver beat me to the first verbal response, “What the fuck is that?”
“That is my last test subject. Her name was Harriet if you must know, which is a horrible name to give to such a pretty young lady.”
I was shocked, almost speechless, “You did this to her? On purpose?”
“Did I infect her? Yes; I needed to test my latest batch. You see, I am getting very close to creating a cure for the infection; the 'Zed Virus' as you probably know it.”
“But she's a child,” Oliver said in shock.
“Which is part of what made her a good subject. Normally a straight injection of infected blood turns a person in twenty to thirty hours, as opposed to incidental infection which can take over a week depending of the severity of the initial infection, but with my latest vaccine I was able to keep her from turning for almost a full week. I know that I'm probably talking over your heads, but trust me, it is amazing.”
“You're a monster!” Oliver gasped.
“People said the same thing about German scientists in the forties, but it was their 'unethical' research that has led us to a lot of the technology we have today.”
“The Nazis were monsters,” I blurted out, “If you think comparing yourself to them is some sort of defense-”
“I am not defending myself!” Grimm roared, pointing the rifle at me, “I do not need to defend myself to people who simply are too selfish to sacrifice for the greater good of all. Don't you understand what coming up with a cure for this would mean? I will be humanity's savior, and if that means a few people have to die in the name of saving the world, then so be it. Those brave souls will be remembered for the sacrifice they made for humankind.”
“You're mad,” Oliver commented.
“Genius and insanity are very closely related. Did you know that Albert Einstein has Asperger's Syndrome? “
“So you admit that you're mentally ill?” Oliver said in a voice that said he felt he had just won some sort of argument.
Doctor Grimm shifted the barrel away from me and towards Oliver, “Keep pushing me, slicky boy, and see what happens! That boy you have would make an interesting test subject,“ and then to me, “or maybe the girl at your house? She's about young Henrietta's age, isn't she?”
Rage boiled up inside me in a way that threatening my own life had totally failed to do, ”Beth would have your head if you tried it.”
“The raven haired woman? Yes, she is a fiery one. I've met her; she doesn't care for me,” Grim took a deep breath and sighed, “Not that it's going to matter soon anyway, the albino bitch is going to let this whole place be overrun; I'm just trying to make as much progress as I can until it is safe for me to leave.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Oliver asked.
“That's right, your dear sweet Evelyn Byron has been trying to keep this a secret. In probably about a month this town is going to be destroyed by the undead,” Grimm nodded his head towards where Harriet was banging the handgun against the wall of her cell, we couldn't hear anything from where we were.
“Do you mean the group to the east?” I asked.
Grimm brightened, “Yes, I do . I am surprised you know about it, but did you also know that they are coming this way? Did you know that if they stay on the course they are on they will end up right on our doorstep?”
I didn't know that, but I said nothing.
“So what are we to do? Try and fit everyone into the labs? Decide who stays on the surface to die? Try and fight them with all those asinine weapons Byron has been having people build? Run away and abandon everything we have?”
“What would you do?” I asked, working on the principal that if he was talking then he wasn't feeding us to Harriet or shooting us.
“We need weapons, but not this energy ray fighting robot bullshit people are building. We have the materials to build a nuclear weapon. We could easily build a single weapon that would take out the vast majority of the monsters.”
“But the radiation, couldn't the fallout endanger us?”
“Not if we were to do it now, while they are still far enough away. In any case, isn't that risk better than the certainty of being overrun? “
“Sounds like we're fucked either way,” answered Oliver.
“I wouldn't expect you to understand it. The only contribution people like you can make to science is as test subjects,” Grimm motioned to a pair of heavy wooden chairs sitting to the side of Harriet's cell, “Tie the slicky boy up!” he ordered me.
The chairs made me think of the electric chair from The Green Mile, right down to the padded leather straps on the armrests and the front legs. Oliver and I reluctantly went over to the chairs.
“Sit down!” Doctor Grimm ordered Oliver, and raised the barrel of the rifle to Oliver's face when he didn't move quick enough.
I assume that Grimm felt I was less of a threat than Oliver (and who could blame him), and so he had me tie him up. I made a show of trying to secure Oliver tightly, but stuck my thumb under the strap when I pulled it tight. My hope was that Oliver would have enough room to slip his hands out. For his part, Oliver was clenching his fists as I tied him up, making his arm as thick as possible.
I tried to secure Oliver's legs as loosely as possible too, but short of leaving it undone entirely, there's not much I could do there. We had to hope that Grimm would leave us alone at some point before infecting us with anything.
Grimm had me strap down my own left arm, and then felt safe enough to put down the rifle to secure my right. I don't think I've ever felt more helpless than right then. Even facing off against bikers or zeds I had never actually been tied down before.
“Okay, let's start,” Grimm said, rubbing his hands together. He walked over to one of the island work tables, and picked up a small digital recorder with a pair of round spheres at the top of it.
Turning the recorder on, Grimm placed it back on the table, “It is July thirty-first, and I am Doctor Xavier Grimm. After the promising, but disappointing results with subject fourteen, I have acquired two new subjects. I am going to try batch sixteen-f on subject fifteen, and batch nineteen-g on subject sixteen.”
Grimm went on for quite awhile, describing us to his recorder, and guessing what the results would be. His hypotheses were not promising for us. I am guessing that he was picked on by the jocks in school, as his description of Oliver's physical condition was done in the disgusted tone a person might use when making a detailed description of a piece of shit.
Crossing the room, Grimm went to a large stainless steel refrigerator, and opened it. I couldn't see into the fridge, but I could hear glass and metal clanking around. Presumably he was getting our doses of death ready.
“You know, I think I am really close to finding a treatment for this. If that stupid bitch had let me continue my research the way I wanted to, I would have a cure by now,” Grimm ranted, “I've pinpointed it, you see? The Zed Virus isn't a virus at all, but a bacteria. The reason it was so hard to spot is that it is almost identical in appearance to Eosinophil, or white blood cells, and who would be surprised to see an increase of those in a person with a viral infection?”
I don't think I'm getting all of this right. Not only was he talking well over my education level, but I was actually tied to a chair at the time waiting for a mad scientist to inject me with a death sentence.
“It's immune to most antibiotics though. The only thing I've found that kills it is Phlebotinum, but for some reason it only kills it dead outside of the body,” Grimm was filling a hypodermic syringe as he spoke, “You might find this interesting. Did you know that an undead body continues to produce both blood and saliva, the two primary transfer vectors?”
Grimm waited for an answer, but didn't get one.“Of course you didn't,” he said, “And what's really amazing is that the body does seem to digest food, but it doesn't seem to do it for any reason. A damaged undead does not regenerate wounded tissue. Eating doesn't even seem to slow their decomposition rate, but they also do not starve to death, so it doesn't seem to matter one way or the other. Hell, you can seal them in an airtight box, like Harriet there, and they won't suffocate. I could leave her in there when I leave and she'd be just fine until her body decays too much to stay active.”
Oliver broke his silence, “So if we left the zeds alone long enough they would simply fall apart on their own?”
“In theory, yes, however each person that dies becomes a new one, so the only way to truly eliminate them would be to eliminate all humans. That is rather problematic,” Grimm explained, his back still to us, “It's a bit like killing cockroaches. They're pretty easy to kill, electricity, blunt force, dismemberment, pretty much anything that will destroy the brain or its connection to the body, but there are just so damn many of them, and no matter how many you kill it seems like there are more coming.”
Doctor Grimm closed the door to the refrigerator, and turned to face us, two syringes, one a dark crimson and the other full of something clear. “But if I can stop people from turning in the first place, that should at least turn things a bit more in our favor,” he started towards us, “You guys should wish me luck; if this works, not only do you survive, but you will be a part of history.”
“Wait!” I said, trying to stall him again, “What about people who haven't been bitten? People who haven't been infected? Why do they turn?” It seemed like a reasonable question.
Grimm stopped, “Oh, maybe you are smarter than you look. That's the next piece of the puzzle, isn't it? My theory is that there's some airborne component to this bacteria that we are all infected with, but it remains dormant while our normal biological processes remain active. “
Grimm stopped himself, “But enough of this, we have work to do here. This should only hurt for a m-”
One of the laptop computers on the work tables chimed, and Grimm turned back to look at it. He grinned at what he saw, put the syringes down on the table, and turned the laptop to face us. In a window on the screen I could see a woman standing at the front door; he had installed a surveillance camera above the door. It was Tara, and she was looking around her, and I could see her mouth moving, but there was no sound.
“It's your little gray haired friend!” Grimm announced with amusement, “I'd better go make sure she doesn't come in; I don't know where I would put a third test subject.
Grimm picked up his rifle, and walked over the the stairs, and then turned back to us, ”If I hear you make a sound, I will kill her, do you understand?”
We both nodded our understanding, and Grimm ascended the stairs.
Once we heard the door close at the top of the stairs I turned to Oliver, “Please tell me you can get your hands free,” I practically begged.
Oliver's face became a mask of effort and determination as he started jerking his right arm backwards, straining against the cuff. At first it looked like I had still fastened the strap too tightly, but then his hand started to slide through as he practically tried to dislocate his thumb by folding it into the palm of his hand. In a couple more seconds his hand was red and raw looking, but it was also free.
As Oliver quickly unfastened his other restraints, I spoke, “Thank God, lets get out of here.”
“No,” said Oliver as he rose from the chair, “He's got that gun, and if we just go running up there, he'll shoot us, and probably Tara too. I haven't spent the last 8 months keeping her alive just to have you get her killed.”
“You're going to leave me here?” I asked.
“Don't be a 'tard,” Oliver spat, “If I let you die, she'll never come back to me. She needs to just be reminded of what a loser you are. I'm going to undo your straps, but don't pull free from them. We're going to wait for him to come back down, and then I'll take care of that sick motherfucker.”
True to his word, Oliver undid my straps, but did his best to make them look like they were still fastened. By the time we heard the door at the top of the stairs open again, we both looked like we were still tethered to our chairs, although Oliver was having to pin the end of the restraint to the left arm of his chair with his wrist since he did not have a second hand to set it properly with.
Doctor Grimm's shoes clomped down the stairs, and we could see him lean the rifle against the wall next to the bottom of the stairs, “It's okay, she moved on. If it makes you feel any better, she was looking for you,” he said to me, “Kind of sad really, but one cannot let emotions get in the way of progress.”
“No, that's something only humans would do,” Oliver commented.
“That's enough of that,” Grimm spoke as if talking to a petulant child, “I don't expect you to understand, but what I am doing is for the good of all mankind.”
Doctor Grimm walked back over to the laptop, which now showed an empty front porch, he seemed puzzled at what he found, “Where is the other syringe?” he asked, and started looking down at the floor to see if it had rolled there.
“Did either of you see what I did with the other hypo? I thought I put it ri-” Grimm turned to face us, and found Oliver standing right in front of him, his right hand raised, ready to attack
“Fucker!” Oliver yelled, and stabbed down with the hypodermic needle of infected blood obscured in his large hand. The needle buried itself in the side of Doctor Grimm's throat.
Shock, surprise, terror, and understanding all battled for control of Xavier Grimm's face as he realized where the missing syringe was. His left hand lifted halfway to his neck as if he meant to pull the needle out, but froze there in midair, “You... you...” he gasped as the infection flowed through his blood.
Before Grimm could say anything else, Oliver spoke again, “I wouldn't expect you to understand it, but the only way people like you can help the world is by not being a part of it anymore,” and with that, he punched the doctor in the face.
Grimm fell over backwards onto the work table, sending the laptop, the other three syringes, and a nearby microscope crashing to the floor. With his stomach exposed, Oliver hit him again, causing him to double over and fall to the floor. Either Oliver hadn't hit me that hard, or Doctor Grimm was a wimp.
“Go!” Oliver yelled to me, and I didn't need to be told twice; I was already on my feet. I bolted for the stairs, grabbing Grimm's rifle as I went to keep him from coming after us with it.
Oliver was right behind me, our feet making a thunderous noise in the narrow passage up to the kitchen. I burst through the false back of the closet, and nearly ran into the washer/dryer opposite the closet in my rush to get out of there. I could hear Grimm cursing behind us; for someone who goes down so easy, he sure did recover fast.
My sock clad feet slid on the flooring of the kitchen, and I almost lost my balance before getting onto the carpet of the living room. Oliver and I crossed the living room quickly, but had to stop at the front door as I had apparently forgotten how to work a deadbolt. After a couple of seconds of struggling I did manage to get the door open, and we were outside, crossing the front yard.
Oliver started in the direction of his house while I started in mine, wanting to get to Tara before Grimm did if she was there.
There were three popping sounds, and Oliver yelled out. I turned in time to see him fall to the ground, clutching his lower right leg. My feet slid out from under me as I tried to change direction, and run to help Oliver, and I hit the sidewalk hard, knocking the rifle out of my hands. I looked and saw Grimm was standing on the house's front porch, and pointing a handgun at me.
Grimm stalked across the lawn towards me, the personification of rage, “Do you understand what you've done?” he yelled, “You've just destroyed humankind's only hope at finding a cure!”
“Maybe your vaccine will work, and you'll be saved,” Oliver grunted through gritted teeth. His blood was already spreading under him on the sidewalk.
“Shut the fuck up!” Grimm yelled, and fired a shot in Oliver's direction. The bullet missed Oliver, and made a small gouge in the sidewalk instead.
Grimm pointed his handgun, I could see now that it was a Glock, at me again, “You could have gone down in the history books as one of the saviors of mankind, but no! You're too selfish to give of yourself to help others! You're blind, just like Byron; you can't see what needs to be done beyond what you deem as humane and proper! You-”
There was a loud bang. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the pain. Instead of feeling bullets tear through my body, I heard someone working the pump on a shotgun or rifle, and something thud to the ground in front of me. I opened my eyes to find Grimm laying half on the sidewalk, half on his house's lawn. The front of his black Genetitech Security uniform had the shimmer of wetness spreading across his stomach. The gun had fallen out of his hand, and was lying near him on the grass.
Grimm put his right hand to the center of the wetspot on his chest. It came away covered in his won blood; he looked at it in disbelief, “Wha-... what?” He looked over at me, and then up, over and behind me.
I turned my head and upper body, I was still sitting on the ground after all, to look behind me and see Tara starting there holding a black Remington 7600, she was still aiming it at Doctor Grimm.
Grimm seemed to gather his wits, and gasped weakly, “Do you know what you've just done? I... I was so close to solving it, and now you've damned us all. No one else has the... the guts to do what needed to be done. Who will finish my res-”
Bang!
Tara fired the rifle again, this time hitting Grimm above the left eye, and spraying his twisted, but apparently brilliant, mind all over the lawn. She pumped the rifle again to eject the spent cartridge, and came over to me. Her blue eyes were as cold as ice, and seemed to almost be glowing.
“Are you okay?” Tara asked me, her face like a cold stone mask.
“Yeah, but I think Oliver's shot.” I said.
A look of panic broke the emotionless shell of Tara face, and she looked over at where he was laying a few yards away, “Oh my God, Oliver!” she exclaimed, and rant to him.
This left me to pick myself up off of the ground, and then I joined Tara. Oliver was bleeding a lot, and he needed help soon or he would probably lose his leg, or die, or something.
I went over to Grimm's body, and started checking his pockets for the cell phone I had seen him use, thinking maybe it would still work for making phone calls as well as detonating bombs. It wasn't there, he must have taken it out in the house somewhere when I wasn't looking.
I left Tara with Oliver, telling her I'd be right back, and went into the house. I went down into the laboratory where just minutes before I had looked death in the face., and started looking for the phone.
I was distracted by movement, it was Harriet inside her cell. Her mouth was working like she was talking, but I couldn't hear anything. I wonder now if perhaps Grimm's concoction had made her into something other than a normal zed, but even if I had thought of that then I wouldn't have let her out of that box for two reasons. First of all, I had no idea how to open the door. Secondly, she then pointed the Beretta she was still holding in my general direction, and started pulling the trigger.
I found the phone on the floor by the refrigerator after a couple of minutes. I don't know how it could have gotten over there, but it did. Luckily the phone is as sturdy as it looked, and seemed to be in full working condition. I dialed 911, and hit send.
“Hello?” said a puzzled sounding voice from the other end after one ring.
“I have an emergency, do you still handle that?' I asked, probably sounding as uncertain as she had sounded puzzled.
“Umm, yes. Who are you, and how did you get that phone?”
I guess the phone must have showed as being Doctor Grimm's. I can only assume that he somehow made it so that the location of the phone could not be tracked since his just having it on should have made him easy for Genetitech Security to find. I explained who I was, and what had happened. They woman on the other end, who seemed to get over her initial confusion rather quickly, said that help would be sent.
Two security cars arrived first. They had probably come from the fire a couple of blocks away, which, judging by the dispersing smoke cloud, was probably out, or almost out by now. Beth and Justin Lassit were in the second of the cars, an officer Beth referred to as Kyle and man with a shaved head got out of the first car.
While Justin and Kyle used my belt to make a tourniquet for Oliver's leg (why hadn't we thought of that?), Beth made sure that Tara and I were okay. I explained to her briefly what had happened, leaving out the part about Oliver hitting me, and basically telling me that he had been sleeping with Tara. It wasn't the last time I would tell the story tonight, but no one I had to tell it to ever questioned Oliver's presence.
An ambulance arrived minutes later, and shortly after that a small black car pulled up, and Doctor Byron got out. I had to explain to her what had happened, and she got on a phone identical to the one that Grimm had used to request what she had called a “recovery team”. We were gone before that arrived though.
Tara and I rode to the hospital with Beth and Justin; we followed the ambulance there. We were there for most of the evening while Oliver was treated by a doctor named Camilla Swirsky, who said that Oliver should survive, but that he may need a cane to walk. He probably has a good amount of physical therapy in his future.
While Oliver was being treated, Tara and I were being interviewed about the events of the afternoon. It wasn't exactly an interrogation, but it was not exactly friendly either. I'm not taking it personally, I mean this guy was someone the whole town was looking for and he just happened to show up on my block.
Doctor Byron showed up during our interview, and wanted to know why Tara had killed Grimm. I wouldn't describe her as angry so much as sad. Maybe she didn't know what he thought of her, or maybe she just really is that good of a person, but she really seemed like she was upset about his death. Maybe she just really respected him as a scientist?
Tara, in her most businesslike tone, a tone she used off and on all night long, explained once again that Grimm was armed, and she killed him in my defense. No one questioned that as he had shot Oliver, and there was a gun found near his body (suspiciously nearer to his hand than it had been when I went looking for the phone, but I wasn't gong to say anything about that)
Doctor Byron answered her share of questions too. She admitted that she knew what Grimm was working on, and had impeded his progress because she found his methods unethical, “However with him gone, it will be harder to even get back to the point he was at. We have all of his data, but his note-taking methods were, lets say unique. We've been waiting to have someone infected for him to work with, but we've been lucky in that we have not had many cases of infection.”
“He mentioned something about white blood cells, Eosiniphils? Can you test for that?' I asked.
“Oh yes. Xavier will go down in the history books for that, and I cannot begin to tell you how important that would be to him. Without his figuring out that the reanimation virus is actually a bacteria, and that Phlebotinum is the only antibiotic it is vulnerable to we may never have found any treatment,” Doctor Byron explained.
“But the man was a murderer,” I protested.
“His methodology was wrong, but he was still a genius, and losing him is a tremendous setback,” Doctor Byron thought for a moment, “I'm sorry, you probably think I wish he had infected you and Oliver in order to find a treatment. I am truly glad you are okay, and what he did to that young woman... he would have had to pay for that somehow. It is a bad situation all around, and there was no way it could have ended well. You did the right thing, Tara.”
“Thank you, Evelyn.”
“What about the zombies?” I asked, “Doctor Grimm said that there were a large number of them coming for us? Is it true? Is this the same group that Acquisitions ran into?”
“Your friend Gerry is in Acquisitions, isn't he?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Doctor Byron nodded, ”It is true, but we are working on ways of dealing with them. I have not made a formal announcement because I do not want people to panic unduly. I would appreciate it if you both would keep this to yourselves, and trust me that I am working on it.”
“Can we be kept informed?” Tara asked.
“If you would like. I know that you both have had a lot of experience dealing with the animated dead, so perhaps involving you both could be of benefit to us all. I will think on it, and let you know what I decide,” Doctor Byron said thoughtfully, “In any case I am going to have to address it publicly before too much longer.”
Doctor Byron eventually arranged for us to get a ride home. A security officer I did not recognize dropped us off in front of Tara's house. I walked her up to the door.
“We're even now,” Tara said, her voice soft.
“What do you mean?” I asked,
“We're even. You saved my life from Merritt, and now I've saved you from Grimm.”
I was puzzled, “Is that why you're with me then? You feel you owe me?”
“No,” she answered quickly, “I'm with you because I love you.”
We stood in silence for a few moments. I wanted to ask her about what was going on between her and Oliver. I wanted to ask her if loved him more. I wanted to ask her to make a choice. I wanted to know the truth, but I decided that I need to give her the time to feel comfortable discussing all of that with me. She will talk to me when she is ready, so I just asked, “Did you want to come stay with me tonight?”
Tara thought about it for a second, “No, I don't think so. I want to let Toni and Bishop know that Ollie's going to be okay, and I don't want to leave them alone tonight, Maybe tomorrow night though, okay?”
“Sure,” I said, trying not to let the hurt I was feeling creep into my voice or onto my face, “You get some rest then.”
“You too,” Tara stroked my cheek, and gave me a gentle kiss, “I'm glad you're okay; I couldn't bear losing you again. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I replied, and started the walk home (thankfully in shoes now).
Tara stayed on the porch watching me as I walked. She waved to me as I got to the door of my house. I was glad that I thought ton grab my keys when I came back for my shoes before going to the hospital, or else I would have had to knock.
I waved back to Tara, and slowly let myself in. I wish she had come home with me. It's not that I wanted to have sex or anything, it's just I feel a little uneasy being alone now. Beth and Pippa are both asleep, and I could use the company of something other than my own words on paper.
At the rate I am going, I'm probably going to finish filling up this book before too much longer. I'd have filled it long ago if it weren't for the fact that I write so small. I'll need to find a new journal soon... maybe one of those nice moleskin ones.
I'm going to try sleeping again now, but every time I close my eyes I see Grimm holding those needles. I see myself tied to that chair, and I think of how close to dying I was, and I am afraid.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Mallville Special - The Lost Entry
The following entry was found by survivors. It had been wadded into a thick ball and tossed into the corner of a room in an abandoned building.
April 1
With spring on the way the snow has started to melt, and the roads have become a lot more passable than they have been for months, as a result we have started going into town and looking around more. We always leave someone at the house to keep an eye on the things and keep the fire from going out. This last trip it was Pippa who stayed behind.
It was a bright, but still cold morning as We piled into the black Excursion for our trip into town. Gerry drove with Maria in front while Sharon, Beth, and myself squeezed into the backseat with Sharon in the middle. We could have put the third row of seats up, but we wanted to leave room for anything useful we could find.
We weren't really looking for anything in particular on these outings; they're basically to try and cure the cabin fever we've all been battling after being shut up in this cabin for the last couple of months. This didn't mean we were going pass up any opportunities though.
“Okay,” started Maria as she held up a map so that those of us in the backseat could see it, It was marked with a lot of red circles and x's, “We've done most of the actual town already, so we are going to look around the area north of Daisy Lake. We don't expect to find much there but it's worth a look.”
The trip was slow, but we started out early so we would have plenty of time to hopefully make it back by nightfall. The roads are now pretty clear of slow, like it melted first. Gerry still drives cautiously though; always looking out for washouts or big potholes that have formed over the winter (of perhaps were there before, I don't know)
“Hey,” said Beth suddenly from behind Gerry, “Are those lights on over there?”
Gerry stopped the car, and we all leaned over as best we could to look out the window, probably crushing poor Beth against the side of the car in the process. Across a open field we could see a large boxy white building that looked like a very large warehouse.
“Yeah, those are lights,” Sharon exclaimed, point to a row of squarish spotlights running along the side of the building near its roof line. From where we were they looked small, but they were clearly on.
It has been three months since we have seen electricity on anywhere, so naturally we wanted to investigate. After all, if there's a generator being maintained, then someone must be maintaining it, right?
We followed the fence surrounding the field around to an access road that lead of to a large gatehouse. A large sign on the roof of the gatehouse read “Klep Scientific Technology Advancement Center” and then below that in smaller letters “A member of the Futuretech family”. The wooden arm of the gate ended a foot from the pivot point in a round splintery edge, “Well we're not the first visitors they've had,” said Gerry, stopping by the broken arm.
“Maybe we should stay out then,” Sharon said, fear sneaking into her voice, “They might not want any more visitors.”
“She's got a good point. Whoever is in there has probably got a far larger armory gathered up than what we have with us,” added Gerry.
“If they fuck with us, we'll fuck with them back,” Maria said, holding up her Glock.
“I think we should at least check it out. If we don't act hostile then maybe we can avoid provoking them,” Beth said, directing the last part at Maria.
Gerry drove us through the broken gate and down the long road to the large white building. The road we were on looked like it was only a step above a dirt road, but it was probably the smoothest road I've ridden on in the last year. The road ended in a large parking lot, and we were surprised to find it mostly full of cars.
“How many people are in there, do you think?” Sharon asked.
“Looks like about a hundred or so cars out here,” Maria answered.
“Could there be that many people inside there?” I asked, “I mean wouldn't we have seen some sign of that many survivors in town by now?”
“I would think they would have scavenged the town for supplies, but maybe there were already anough emergency supplies in there, “said Beth.
“I could see that,” added Gerry, “I mean big science-y places like this always have end-of-the-world disaster plans, right?”
“Or maybe they're cannibals and they have just been eating each other,” said Maria dryly. I felt Sharon tense next to me at that; she squeezed my hand hard.
Gerry circled the rows of parked cars a couple of times before Maria finally asked, “What are you doing?”
“I'm looking for a good spot.”
“Just park the damned car, Gerry!” Maria snapped at him.
After parking in the next open space we all got out, grabbed our rifles from the back, and slowly started towards the glass double doors that had a sign over them that was identical to the one at the gate house proclaiming this to be the Klep Scientific Technology Advancement Center.
Under the sign but over the top if the door itself was a shiny silver dome that obviously hid a video camera. I noticed similar domes up near the roof. If someone was in there they almost certainly knew we were there. This was confirmed for me a moment later when a voice spoke.
“Hello, welcome to the Klep Scientific Technology Advancement Center,” said a woman's voice that sounded at the same time friendly and unsettling. I'm not quite sure how to describe why it was unsettling from the start; it just felt off somehow, as if it weren't quite natural.
“Hello?” asked Beth, looking around.
“Hello,” the woman's voice repeated, “Please step inside out of the cold.”
The glass doors slid open a short distance ahead of us.
“I don't like this,” said Sharon.
“She sounds alright to me,” Gerry said.
“It could be a trap,” Maria cautioned, “but then we're ready for that,” she held up her rifle
“We're here now, if they want to shoot at us they can do it just as easily if we go back to the car as they can if we go inside,” I said, I'm not sure if I was trying to make Sharon feel any safer, but I don't think I did.
Beth sighed, “I agree, lets just go in and see what happens.”
After the cold of the parking lot the blast of warmth that hit us as we entered the lobby of Klep was kind of shocking. The large room was blindingly white and immaculately clean. In the center of the room was a large semi-circular reception desk that sat empty, but looked as if the receptionist might be back at any moment.
A series of red lights seemingly implanted in the floor were blinking in a line leading around the right side of the desk and through an open door. We all traded glances before approaching the desk.
“Please follow the lights to a waiting area where someone will be with you shortly,” said the woman's voice.
Sharon gripped my arm tightly, “We should go,” she whispered to me.
I agreed with her, but I don't think we could have left at that point even if we had tried, “We'll be fine, we just need to stay together,” I whispered to her.
We followed the small flashing lights around and through the doors into a room that looked a lot like a waiting room from a doctor's office, only that the chairs in there were plush leather chairs (white, like everything else) and there was a tray with five white steaming mugs on it. On the side of the mugs was what looked like an artistic interpretation of the mechanism inside a camera lens over the words “Klep Scientific”.
I noticed in each corner of the also blindingly white room were white spheres with camera lenses in them. There was also a large dome I the ceiling of the room, but I had no idea what that was for yet.
“Please help yourself to a hot cup of cocoa,” said the slightly odd woman's voice, “Take off your coats and relax, someone will be with you shortly. You can put your weapons down, you will not be needing them while you are here.”
“I'll just hang onto mine, thanks,” Maria said.
“As you wish.” said the voice.
Gerry went over to the nurse's counter and picked up one of the mugs, and sniffed it, “Well it smells like chocolate.”
“Do you think it's safe to drink?” Sharon asked.
“Sure,” said Maria, “Why bother to poison us when they could just shoot us?” She went over to Gerry and grabbed a cup off of the white tray they were sitting on, causing some to slosh over the side and drip on the white carpeting on the floor.
Maria took a drink of the cocoa, and gasped.
“What's wrong!” Sharon asked loudly.
“It's hot!” Maria said, and smiled, “It's good though.”
We all drank some of the cocoa, and sat in the comfy chairs. I don't know if it was something in the cocoa, or something pumped into the air. But we all started falling to sleep. I realized something was wrong when Sharon's almost empty mug thudded to the carpet. I tried to get up to help her, but I felt like my body was full of lead weights; my eye lids were too heavy to lift never mind my arms and legs. I drifted off to sleep before I could even get a full panic going.
When I woke up my head hurt, and I was very warm. I was laying down in a bed, but it felt like I was still fully dressed. I wasn't sure how much time had passed. Minutes? Hours? Days? I was being shaken, and Sharon was saying my name over and over.
I opened my eyes and then shut them again with a groan. The room was way too bright, and it made my head ache even worse. I put my right hand on Sharon's where she was shaking my left shoulder to stop her.
“You're awake!” she said.
I opened my eyes again, more cautiously this time, but I still had to blink a few times while my eyes adjusted to the room. We looked to be in some sort of hospital ward, and I was lying in a hospital bed with the back slightly raised. Across from me I could see Maria lying on an identical bed with Gerry standing next to her, rubbing his head with his hands.
“How long was I asleep?” I asked Sharon.
“A couple of hours,” said an unfamiliar voice, “At least that's how long it's been since it brought you in here.”
I looked over and saw Beth standing with four people I did not recognize.
“It?” I asked?
“Yeah,” said an older man with long grey hair pulled back into a ponytail. He was wearing a green military shirt with patches sown on it, “I refuse to call it a she.”
“She?” asked Gerry.
“He means me,” said the woman's voice we heard earlier.
“Who are you?” Sharon asked, looking around the room.
I looked around too, and saw more of those security camera spheres, and four of those weird looking domes that I had seen on the ceiling of the waiting room. The purposes of the cameras seemed obvious, but I still had no idea what the domes were for.
Aside from the five of us and the old soldier there were three other people in the room; an African American man in a white shirt, a young girl around Pippa's age wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, and a bald man in biker's leathers. None of them looked terribly happy.
“I am the Klep Artificial Intelligence Operating System,” said the voice, “You may call me KAI-OS. I run all aspects of this facility at the direction of the facility administrator.”
“Chaos?” Gerry asked.
“That is close enough,” KAI-OS replied.
“What are we doing here?” Sharon asked.
“You are to be part of an experiment. I am afraid recent developments have set our research schedules way behind, and test subjects are needed.”
“Fuck you!” yelled the shaved headed man. I could see from across the room that he had tattoos running up and down his arms, but I could not make out what they were yet, “I'm not not gonna be a part of your goddamned experiments! I hate science.”
“Oh God,” groaned Maria from her bed, “Who's yelling, and how many times do I have to hit them to make them stop?”
“Why don't you fuckin' try it you dirty” and the biker used an offensive word to describe Hispanics that I'm not going to repeat here.
Maria sat up suddenly, and then grabbed her head, wincing in pain, “Give me a few minutes and I will” she growled.
“You will cease hostilities at once!” KAI-OS warned.
“Or what?” asked the biker.
“Or this,” The dome at the end of the room nearest the biker split open, and an arm with a good dozen joints in it lowered quickly, and jabbed the biker in the side of the neck. There was the crackling sound of arcing electricity, like someone firing a tazer. The biker yelled and dropped to the floor, and the girl wearing a red hoodie, rushed over to him.
The black guy, who also had a shaved head, flung a plastic water pitcher at the arm, but it jerked sideways and easily avoided the projectile before retracting into the ceiling.
“That was not very nice, Lester,” KAI-OS said sweetly.
“Neither was shockin' that man, even if he is an ignorant bigot,” said the black guy, Lester.
“I am sorry that we have to force you into this experiment against your will, but at the end there will be pie.”
“Pie?” asked the girl in the hoody.
“Pie,” CAI-OS confirmed, “Please ready yourself, as the test will begin soon.”
“Well I supposed we should introduce ourselves,” said the older man in the soldier's get-up, “I'm Phil; I fought in 'Nam, and this shit now makes all of that look like nothin'. I came in here because I saw the lights, and thought maybe there would be some other people.”
“Name's Lester,” said the black guy, who now that I looked at him closer looked sweaty and uncomfortable. It was warm in the room we were in, but not enough to warrant that. “I worked in I.T.; hated it, but I sure do miss it now. I was lookin' for some pain pills for my... for my friend, and came in thinking maybe they did some medical research in here or something.”
“My name's Finley,” said the biker as he got back to his feet, “and this is Chloe. We just stopped in here to look for food, and the girl there drank that damned cocoa.”
Which confirmed that it had been the cocoa.
“You didn't drink the cocoa?” Gerry asked.
“No way, I didn't know who made that shit. That bitch computer hit me in the head with one of those arms.”
At the end of the room nearest these new survivors the door slid open, “The testing will now begin, please move into the next room.”
“And if we don't?” asked Maria, on her feet now.
Jets of white vapor started shooting out of the ceiling from unseen nozzles. It was the lab's fire suppression system, halon, or argon. Something we did not want to be breathing. We quickly moved through the doorway.
We found ourselves in a long white hallway lined with doors. Like the doors in the room we were just in, these doors had no handles. Gerry went up to one on the right, inspecting it for any way of opening it. The biker, Finley went to one of the doors on the left and gave it a solid kick with one of his big boots, but accomplished nothing but leaving a black smudge on its bright white surface.
A row of little red lights lit up in the floor , leading down the center of it to a door at the far end, “Please follow the lights to the testing site,” KAI-OS said.
Not wanting to see another test of the fire system, we followed the lights down the long hallway to an open door at the end. The room was dark, the light from the hallways only casting a small rectangle of light into the blackness. We stopped at the door.
“Please enter the room,” directed KAI-OS.
“The lights are off,” Chloe protested.
“Please enter the room, or there will be no pie.”
“Better be some damned good pie,” :Phil muttered.
We entered the darkened room, and the door alid shut behind us, leaving us in utter blackness.
“Finley, don't you have your lighter?” I heard Chloe ask.
“Yeah, hold on.”
The sound of rustling leather was followed by a metallic clicking and grinding, and then a small flame bloomed in Finley's hand, the flickering light making him look even scarier than he did when I could see him clearly.
The small fire did not help us see very much of the room. I could make out what looked like cabinets with glass fronted doors on them; the light reflected back off of them. Sharon pulled herself tight against me, she was shaking a little.
“What the fuck is this?” asked Finley.
“Let me see the lighter, man,” Lester said, and reached for it.
“Get the fuck away from me,” Finley yelled, and used another offensive term I won't repeat.
“Chill out, you stupid prick!” Lester yelled back, “I just wanna look at someth-”
The lights suddenly came on, flooding the room, and making me blink as my eyes once again tried to adjust. We were in a white room, and the cabinets on the walls contained different firearms; shotguns, rifles, handguns, and submachine guns. There was also a large metal cabinet with a bright red cross on it, and a gleaming metal table with boxes of ammo clips. On the ceiling in the corner of the room was one of the camera orbs, and there was a large white dome in the center of the ceiling.
“You will cease all hostilities towards each other,” KAI-OS warned, “I will not have your fighting each other interfere with the experiment.”
Finley, Phil, Beth, and Gerry started looking at the guns, but Lester went immediately for the large first aid kit while Chloe came over to where Sharon and I were standing, “So are you guys all together? KAI-OS brought you all in together.”
“Yeah,” Sharon answered, “We've been staying at a house out by the lake.”
“Wow, it's just been me and Finley for ages,” Chloe remarked, “He's an asshole, but he gets me food and clothes and shit, so I stay with him. He's basically impotent anyway, so at least I don't have to do too much of that, you know?”
I saw Sharon's eyes go wide at Chloe's comment.
“What?” Chloe asked.
“Nothing,” I said, “Our group just doesn't operate that way, that's all,” I said, trying not to sound like I was insulting her, It's not that I was afraid of Chloe, Sharon could easily have kicked her ass if it came to it, but I didn't want to start shit with her bigoted biker boyfriend. To be fair, I'm sure Maria and Beth could have taken care of him though.
“No surprise there, not with someone like her in your group,” Chloe motioned to Maria, who had emptied one of the rifle clips and was pounding on the front of one of the gun cabinets with it. It turned out that it was not glass on the front of the doors, but some thick plastic instead.
Rather than get into what type of 'someone' Maria was like exactly, I asked“So you're not with the other two?” Lester and Phil?”
“No,” Chloe replied, as if she had not just insulted one of my friends, “Phil was already here when we got here, and the computer rolled Lester in the next day.”
“How long have you been here?” asked Sharon.
“About a week, I think. It's kind of hard to keep track of time with these lights on all the time. KAI-OS keeps us fed, but it's been hard to keep Fin from beating the shit out of that... out of him,” Chloe pointed to Lester, who was going through the contents of the first aid kit, reading the labels on the little amber bottles, “He gets frustrated kind of easily, and he hates not being in control of the situation.”
“You will find the cabinets to now be unlocked,” announce KAI-OS, “Please arm yourselves as you will.”
We loaded up with the weapons we could reasonably carry. I personally took a rifle, and tucked a handgun into my waistband while stuffing extra clips into my satchel. Even though we didn't know what exactly we were going to be up against it just seemed right to take guns when offered them.
It was only about two minutes before the door opposite the one we came in through whooshed open, “Please proceed into the testing area so that the experiment may begin.”
Cautiously we all filed through the doorway into what looked like a mock-up of a city street. Gone was the blinding white of the other rooms we had seen so far, replaced by a street and sidewalks flanked by fairly convincing storefronts. It was like being on a movie set, except that none of the storefront windows had glass in them.
“The first test is simple, when a target appears neutralize the target with the firearm of your choice. Your goal is to move through the course removing as many of the simulated threats as possible in the shortest amount of time with the greatest degree of accuracy,” explained KAI-OS, “While there is no physical threat represented to you by the targets please remember that you are using live ammunition, and use appropriate care. Please make sure your weapons are loaded, the test will begin in sixty seconds.”
“You know, the logic of taking us captive aside, I don't see how this is a group activity,” Beth said while we all re-checked our guns, “I've done this sort of test before, and they are usually done with just one person at a time.”
“Clearly whoever is running this place has lost their mind,” Phil said.
“Ahhh, this is gonna be a piece of cake,” Finley boasted, flipping the safety off on the MP5 he had chosen.
“Pie,” corrected Chloe.
“Thank you for taking part in this Klep Scientific simulation,” KAI-OS chirped, “The test begins now. Please cross the testing area as fast as possible.”
We started to move cautiously forward. Could this be just a simple shooting gallery? To our right there was a mechanical noise, I turned to see a mannequin dressed up like a stereotypical middle eastern terrorist propped up in the glassless window with a sign over it reading “Dry Cleaners”.
Before I could even get my gun pointed in the right direction two shots rang out. Both Finley and Beth fired with MP5s. I don't know who actually hit it first, but the dummy fell over backwards and out of sight.
While I was still looking at that, Maria opened fire with the semi-automatic rifle she had chosen (It looked somewhat similar to the AR-15s back at the cabin) on another stereotype terrorist dummy in the window of the “Donut Shoppe”. The dummy fell backwards into the darkened “store”.
Feeling more confident that the computer hadn't lied to us, we picked up our pace a bit. As we progressed down the block the number of “terrorists” increased to the point that I was even able to shoot one, and Sharon got two. We were all getting into it except for Chloe, who had dropped back away from the rest of us, and had the two handguns that she had chosen tucked into the waist of her jeans.
As we reached the end of the block of mock storefronts we saw a door with one of the white camera orbs on the wall above it. A bell rang, and lights somewhere up near the ceiling came on, illuminating the door.
“Congratulations, you have completed the first test,” KAI-OS informed us.
“First?” asked Beth.
“Correct. You have not taken part in a Klep Scientific simulation before now, so that was your first,” KAI-OS explained.
“So there are going to be more?” Lester asked, looking really agitated.
Before KAI-OS could answer, there was a scream. We turned to find Chloe pinned to the ground by a man in a gray hooded sweatshirt. He was tearing at the front of her hoodie with his hands.
“Get the fuck off'a her!” Finley roared, and charged, shoving me, Sharon, and Phil out of his way.
The big skinhead kicked the man in gray hard enough to send him rolling off of Chloe and onto his back. The man continued to roll, and came up onto his feet, his hood falling away and exposing his face. He had the pale skin and milky eyes of the undead, but he moved so fast, and was so much more agile than any I'd ever seen before; even the few kids I've seen haven't that fast.
The zed hissed, and crouched in preparation to leap at Finley,but before the zed's feet even left the ground the biker opened fire. The bullets struck the zombie as it started to move forward, causing it to spin counter-clockwise, and collapse to the ground in a heap; black blood oozing from its wounds.
“What the hell was that?” Lester asked, clearly panicked.
“A zombie,” Phil answered, “I woulda thought you'd recognize those by now.”
“ I hate zombies,” growled Finley, pulling Chloe to her feet, “Are you okay?”.
“I don't know,” Chloe said unevenly, “I know it didn't bite me; it wasn't even trying to bite me.”
“Hmm, an undead subject in the testing course?” KAI-OS asked, sounding puzzled, “There are not supposed to be any undead in this area,”
“In THIS area?” Sharon asked.
“Correct; this is only a test of reaction times and accuracy, and I must say that you are one of the worst groups to have completed this test,” KAI-OS said disapprovingly, “While your accuracy as a group is satisfactory your completion time is dismal. You should be ashamed.”
“There are zombies in this building?” Gerry asked.
“I did not say that,” KAI-OS replied, “I mean, there was that one, obviously, but you have destroyed it.”
“Why was it so fast?” Chloe asked, running her hands over the front of her jacket, checking the tears for blood.
“Please enter the next room where you may re-supply yourself, and take a rest,” KAI-OS invited, and the door behind us opened quietly, “There is water and medical supplies, but I am afraid you will need to wait until the end for your pie.”
“There's more tests?” asked Lester.
“Of course, you did not think there would be pie after just this, did you?”
“I don't think I even want the fucking pie anymore,” Chloe said quietly as we filed into the room, and the doors slid shut behind us.
The room we entered was similar to the one where we initially armed ourselves. There were more guns, more clips of ammunition, and another large metal first aid kit. Unlike the first room though this one had three white leather couches and a glass fronted refrigerator stocked with bottles of water and cans of soda.
Chloe went straight for the fridge while Lester went for the first aid kit. Phil dropped onto one of the couches with a groan. The rest of us made our way to the ammo table, and started restocking.
“So do you think there are other zombies in here?” Sharon asked no one in particular.
“I don't think that was a normal zombie,” Lester said, taking a small plastic amber bottle from the first aid kit, and removing the lid.
“Just what the hell are you doin', boy?” Finley asked menacingly.
“I'm in pain,” Lester replied.
“From what? You weren't attacked?”
“I... I pulled a muscle or something,” he said, and dry swallowed a couple of pills.
“And what about the ones you took from the last room?” Maria asked.
“What about your friend?” asked Beth, “Didn't you say you came here looking for medicine for a friend?”
Lester pocketed the bottle of pills, “Okay, fine, they're for me. I need my damn pills!” Lester yelled, already seeming less edgy than he had been at first; now he just seemed angry.
“Oh great, so on top of everything else you're a goddamn drug addict. I hate drug addicts,” Finley groaned.
Lester snatched his rifle up from where he had left it leaning against the wall, ”You know what, Pinky, I've had just about enough of your shit. You hate everything, I get it, I can see it from your goddamned Nazi tattoos even if you did keep your mouth shut.”
“You wanna do something about it, boy? If you want to fight, we can do it right here, right now.”
“You will cease aggressions immediately,” KAI-OS warned, “We cannot allow interpersonal disagreements to interfere with test data.”
“Fuck you!” Finley bellowed, and fired his gun into the camera sphere in one corner of the room. The little white camera exploded in a spray of sparks and plastic.
“Please do not vandalize Klep Scietific testing equipment,” KAI-OS chastised.
“I hate computers,” Finley grumbled.
“Just shut up!” yelled Lester,” You stupid mouthy son-of-a-” Lester was cut off mid sentence as his rifle discharged.
The room went dead silent. No one moved. I heard Sharon gasp and followed her gaze to the black hole in the center of Finley's forehead, blood was running out of it, and he had gone cross-eyed, as if he were trying to look at the hole in his own forehead.
“I hate you,” Finley said calmly and quietly before collapsing to the floor.
There was a second, smaller thud as Chloe dropped her soda, “Fin!” she yelled, and rushed to him. She knelt down next to his body, and shook him, “Come on, get up!”
“I... I.,” stammered Lester, “It was an accident!”
Chloe sighed and got back to her feet, “Well shit!” she cursed, “Now what am I going to do?”
“Hmmm,” pondered KAI-OS, “That is an... interesting development.”
“Development?” asked Gerry, “A man is dead!”
“Yes, subject Finley has been removed from the test.”
“He's dead!” reiterated Gerry.
“Yes, someone will have the clean that up,” agreed KAI-OS, “Now please prepare to enter the next phase of testing.”
“What?” asked Beth, “Are you insane?”
“The test must continue in order for the data to be usable. There is a time-line to be followed. There is science to be done. The elimination of one of the test subjects does not change that.”
Realizing that KAI-OS was serious, we started grabbing ammo to replenish what we had used on the previous course. All of us except for Chloe, who stood over Finley's body, being careful to stay out of the spreading blood.
“I'm sorry about your friend,” I said to Chloe.
“He was an asshole, but he took care of me,” Chloe said matter-of-factly, “Can I come with you guys when we get out of this?”
I was shocked. I don't know how long they were traveling together, but to be that uncaring really surprised me. I think that even would be a little more effected by someone's death like that.
“We can talk about it,” I said.
The door opened, “Please enter the second phase of testing,” ordered KAI-OS politely, “And look on the bright side, this mean that there will be more pie for the rest of you.”
The next area was another street scene, and very similar to the first. The street was lined with two story storefronts with no glass in the windows just like the first, but there was a difference that I didn't pick up on instantly; there were cars parked along the curb. There was also a series of beeping noises; like three or four things beeping at regular intervals, but not synced up to each other.
“We're not the first ones through here,” Phil observed, “These cars are all shot up.”
The old man was right, the cars were absolutely riddled with bullets; like someone has just stood there and fired clip and clip of ammo into them. Unfortunately we did not understand the significance of this until it was too late.
“The testing will now begin, please cross the testing area as quickly as possible.”
“Okay,” said Lester, “We can do this.”
“Just keep your gun pointed away from the rest of us there, Quickdraw,” Phil warned.
“Oh,” said KAI-OS like she just remember something, “There is a change for this phase of the testing. This will be a live fire exercise.”
“What?” asked Sharon.
“I see you!” chimed a high pitched cute cartoony sounding voice.
“Get down!” yelled Maria a split second before the thunder started.
Of course it wasn't really thunder we heard as we dove for cover behind one of the parked cars, but a machine gun firing from inside one of the shops across the street. It had picked Phil as a target, and his body jerked on his feet as the bullets tore through him.
Phil staggered back, and collapsed the the ground.
“Oh shit!” said Lester, seeing the veteran's body leaking blood into the gutter.
“Goodbye” chirped the voice of the shooter.
“What the hell was that?” Gerry asked.
“I think it's a sentry gun of some sort,” said Beth.
“Like in Aliens?” Sharon asked.
“I'm going to run for the next car,” said Maria, “You try and get a look at what it is.”
“What?” Gerry asked, “No!”
Maria ignored Gerry's protest, and crouched in preparation to run the ten feet between the car we were hiding behind and the next car on the street. This car had less damage than the one we were behind; I guess the previous “subjects” didn't make it that far very often.
Like a shot, Maria lunged across the open space as fast as she could, she didn't look in the direction of the shooter, back at us, or anywhere but her next hiding place.
“I see you!” chirped the gun, and opened fire. In the time it took the gun the accurately target Maria's running form she was already safely behind the next car, am old green sedan. The bullets spanged off the side of the car, ricocheting harmlessly away.
After a couple of seconds of firing into the side of the car the gun fell silent, allowing us to hear the beeping again. “Are you still there?” the shooter asked?
“Did you see it?” Maria called back.
“Yeah,” Beth shouted,” It looks like an egg!”
That was a fair description. The gun was inside of the shop with the sign “Coffee” over the window, set back a little bit from the window. The object was vaguely egg shaped with two arms sticking out of it like wings with rather evil looking guns attached to them. In the center of the egg was an amber lamp that looked like the thing's eye. Holding it upright were thee thin legs that also looked like they had come out of the egg, as if the whole thing could collapse inside the egg-shaped shell.
I could see Maria looking around, trying to make a plan, “Can you get its attention for a minute?” she asked.
“Chloe, give me your jacket,” Beth said.
“What?” Chloe asked.
“Your sweatshirt; give it to me for a minute.”
Still kneeling down, Chloe unzipped her torn hoodie and took it off, revealing a white t-shirt underneath. She passed it to Sharon, who passed it to me, and I handed it to Beth, who tied the end of one of the sleeves around the barrel of Gerry's rifle.
“Tell me when!” Beth shouted.
“Now!” Maria hollered back.
Beth moved towards the front of the car, stuck the gun up and waved it like a flag. “I see you!” declared the egg-shaped shooter, and opened fire; shooting at the waving red fabric.
While Beth was drawing fire, Maria darted from her hiding place through an open window and into the facade of the “Smoke Shop” behind her where she disappeared into the darkness.
“She'd better hurry up!” Beth yelled to be heard over the thunder of the sentry gun.
Movement caught my eye from above. My first thought was that something was attacking us from the air, but it was actually Maria coming out of the smoke shop's second story window. I now saw what she had seen; there were a series of pipes running along the ceiling. I don't know if they carried water, or gas, or maybe just electrical wiring. She had grabbed onto one of these pipes and was swinging hand over hand across the street to the shop directly across from her; the one next to the storefront with the gun inside.
“Just another minute,” Maria grunted loud enough to just be heard over the gunfire as she dangled in the air.
Continuing to cross the street, Maria swung right past one of those domes with the robot arms in it. I was afraid that it was going to reach out and grab her, but it let her pass unharmed.
Maria swung in place at the end of her pipe, a few feet from the second story window of the antique store next to the coffee shop. She rocked back and forth like a pendulum a few times before letting go of the pipe; launching herself at the window.
Her jump was short, and she almost missed the window entirely, except that she caught the edge with her hands as she fell, her feet dangling down in front of the first floor window of the antique store where thankfully nothing shot them off. She pulled herself up and disappeared into the darkened second story.
The sustained fire from the sentry cut off suddenly. At first we thought that it had maybe finally run out of ammo, but then we heard its cutesy little voice protesting, “What are you doing? Ow! Ow! Ow!” followed by some banging and crunching noises.
Beth lowered the tattered remains of Chloe's hoodie, and slipped it off the end of the rifle, which has also been rendered unusable due to a couple of dents in the barrel where bullets had struck it, “I think you're going to need to get a new one,” Gerry commented as Beth handed him the shredded red garment.
Maria appeared in the window of the coffee shop holding up one of the sentry's arm guns, a tangle of wires dangling from it, “Got it,” she said, grinning visciously.
We could hear the beeping now, but a third of it was missing. We took this to mean that there were three sentry guns total, so now two remained.
Maria tossed aside the piece of weaponry, and climbed out of the storefront window, “The insides of these are just empty,” Maria explained.
“Maybe we could just cross through them and avoid the guns?” Sharon asked.
“We wouldn't be the first ones,” Maria said, “I saw the remains of two more of those egg-things in there, and someone has cut holes in the walls between the different buildings. “
“That'll be easy enough then, right?” Lester asked.
“There was also some graffiti. 'There is no pie'”
“Does anyone even care about pie at this point?” Beth asked.
Chloe raised her hand sheepishly. As everyone gawked at her, she said ,”What? Why should this all be for nothing?”
Before anyone could say anything else the lights at the end of the street came on to illuminate the exit. The doors opened, and we saw that the room that we were supposed to be going towards wasn't empty at all.
They swarmed out like cockroaches. Men and women in lab coats, some in black and blue security uniforms, some in suits or just normal street clothes. They were zeds, but like the one that attacked Chloe, these ones were running like normal people. They were running at us.
“Oh shit!” Lester cried, summing up our situation well.
“Here they come!” Chloe cried, and pulled the two handguns that she had stuffed into her waistband.
We grabbed our weapons, Maria took Phil's since hers would likely have exploded in her hands due to the warped barrel. We quickly formed a sort of firing line, and started shooting into the oncoming crowd.
We got a bit of unexpected help. We heard two voices almost simultaneously exclaim, “I see you!” and machine gun fire erupted from both sides of the street halfway between us and the doorway.
Zombies dropped under the hail of bullets from three different directions, and some of the zeds even diverted off to go after the sentry guns. I ejected the clip from my rifle, and urged one from my pocket to replace it. I wished I had somehow been able to carry more. I wished that I hadn't left my satchel in the car.
“Reloading!” called out Chloe
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” I could hear one of the sentry guns say as one stream of fire stopped.
“Reloading!” Lester yelled.
“Who the hell says that?” Sharon asked me, as she too reloaded.
The running zeds closed the space between us, and were on us in no time. Maria swung at the first one with her gun. There was a crunch as metal met the flesh and bone of the zed's face, and it fell.
“Get behind me!” I told Sharon, and swung the but of my rifle at a security guard. I had just enough time to notice that his name tag indicated that he was Barney before he fell to the street.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” cried the other gun and it fell silent. Two more zeds emerged through a window to come for us.
A zed lunged at Chloe, but a shot to the face from one of her handguns sent it stumbling past her, and crashing to the ground.
We swung, and shot, and fought for our lives, and when we were done the seven of us were standing, surrounded by the corpses of the undead. In fact the street was covered in them, and the pavement that did not actually have a body on it was slick with their blackish blood.
“We did it!” cried Lester, panting.
“Congratulation.” chimed KAI-OS, “Phase two of testing is complete.”
“What was with the fucking zombies?” Maria asked.
“We appear to have had an outbreak in the facility. Thank you for dealing with them. I will make sure your pie is extra special.”
“Fuck your pie!” Lester yelled, pulling a pill bottle out of his pocket. He opened it and dry swallowed a couple of the pills.
“Please move out of the testing area. There is only one more testing phase to complete, and then there will be pie, and you will be missed.”
“Missed?” asked Sharon.
“Yes, your testing will be complete, and you will be missed.”
“That sounds reassuring,” Gerry commented as well made our way through the field of corpses to the ammunition room.
This room was unlike the other two in that it looked like someone had held a rave in it. The cooler's front was broken and the cans of soda and bottles of water were scattered on the floor, some of them broken open from being stepped on. The clips of ammo were also scattered around, someone of them made unusable from sitting in puddles of drink.
The first aid kit had knocked from the wall, but had remained sealed, and the cabinets with the guns seemed untouched except for the smears of bodily fluids on the plastic fronts.
“Awww, this is disgusting,” Lester groaned looking at the state of the room.
“Get as much ammo as you can,” Maria said, grabbing a new automatic rifle from one of the now unlocked cabinets, “Who knows what these assholes have planned for us.”
“Trade up from the handguns there,” Beth advised Chloe.
“They're going to kill us in this last test, you know?” Lester asked as he searched through the broken cooler for a bottle of water not covered in zombie blood.
“We all have to die sometime,” Maria answered, stuffing clips of ammunition for her rifle into the waist of her pants.
“Do you really think we're going to die?” Chloe asked me.
“Eventually,” I said, loosening my belt so that more ammo clips would fit into my waist, if I put anything more in my satchel it would be too heavy to carry “But hopefully not today.”
“I want to know what was up with those zeds?” asked Gerry, “Why were they so fast?”
“It's simple,” Maria answered, “There's no outbreak here, it's intentional. They are making the zed virus more potent, more dangerous. Whoever is in charge here is a son of a bitch, and if I get the slightest chance I am going to put a bullet in his head.”
The door to the next test chamber opened and we could instantly hear the beeping of at least a half a dozen sentry guns, “Please enter the final phase of testing,” invited KAI-OS, “You have almost completed the testing. Can't you taste that pie already? I am having some now, and let me tell you, it is good.”
“We're not going anywhere until you turn off those guns!” Beth declared.
“You are hardly in a position to be making demands,” KAI-OS pointed out, “any subjects that are unwilling to complete the test will just be removed.”
“What difference does that make to us?” Maria asked, “You kill us in here or you kill us out there. Dead is dead.”
“The difference is usable data.”
“Which means nothing to us,” explains Gerry.
KAI-OS made a sound that was very similar to a sigh, and said, “Alright, in the interest of science, I will deactivate the weapons platforms.. This is only because I consider you all friends after all we have been through together.”
“And you're not going to reactivate them once we are inside?”
“Of course not, cross my heart and hope to die.”
“How can we trust you?” I asked.
“Have I lied to you,” KAI-OS paused for a beat, “I mean in this room?”
“Fine,” said Maria, “But you tell whoever's running you that I am going to find them.”
“Yeah, yeah, bloody rampage of revenge, blah blah blah.”
We ventured into the last testing chamber. Again we found ourselves on a street full of storefront facades, but this one was a corner. The street went for about twenty yards, and then turned to the lift, disappearing around a building labeled “Liquor Store”. The only noise was our own breathing and the soft whoosh of the ventilation system. The beeping noises had stopped.
“Okay, so where do you think she'll send the zombies from this time?” Gerry asked.
The cars on this street were not all lined along the curb as if they had been parked, some were parked across the road like they had been abandoned there. They were just as bullet riddled as the ones in the last test chamber. We made our way around one, looking for signs of movement or any traps.
“Come on, bitch,” Maria said quietly as we approached the corner, “Don't keep us in suspense, what have you got this time?”
We rounded the corner and could see the end of the block. Instead of the small doors that we had seen in the other two test chambers we saw a large garage style door with five sentry gun egg things in front of it. True to her word, KAI-OS had deactivated the guns. The door itself was big enough for a bus to fit through. While a bus would have been nice, that is not what waited behind the door for us.
Something pounded on the garage door, making it shake and ripple.
“Aww, what the fuck?” Lester moaned, and reached for his pills again.
“You seriously need to lay off of those , man, “advised Gerry, “We're not dragging your stoned ass out of here, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. I just need to calm down,” Lester explained, “These pills are the only thing keeping me from freaking out.”
The door rattled again, like there was something big behind it. Another thump left a noticeable dent in it.
“Whatever comes through there, we shoot it, agreed?” asks Beth.
“That pie is mine!” Maria growled.
BANG!
The door rattled again, warping a little more.
“That's never going to open right again,” Gerry commented flatly.
BANG!
“Mind getting the door?” Chloe asked.
BANG!
The door started coming off of the track on one side. We could see movement through the gap.
“Oh shit,” Lester moaned, “Shit! Shit!”
“Here it comes!” Beth yelled.
BANG!
The door ripped free with a squeal of metal, and the monster burst through. The door went flying off to the side, scattering the sentry gun egg-things as it flew.
It was clearly a zombie, but not a normal one; not even by the standard of the other zeds we saw at Klep. This thing was at least ten feet tall, and had a grossly mutated right arm that was easily as thick as my entire body. It looked right at us where we were lined up behind the remains of a yellow taxi and roared.
“Run or shoot?” Lester asked, “Run or shoot?”
“Fire!” Beth yelled, and the lead started flying.
The hail of bullets striking the monster did not have the desired effect. Rather than killing the giant zed it seemed to just piss it off. It charged towards us, throwing aside a pickup truck that was blocking the road in front of it with its tree trunk-like right arm. The truck crashed through front of a building marked “Bakery”.
”Run!” yelled Gerry as the creature quickly closed the distance between us.
Before we could turn to run, and I don't know exactly where we thought we would go, the giant zed had flipped the taxi end over end through the air like it was a plastic table, and grabbed Lester.
“Lester! Oh God!” Chloe screamed as the monster raised Lester into the air above us.
The giant zed made a sweeping motion with its right arm, Lester still struggling in it, as we tried to scatter. It caught me in the back, and sent me flying through the empty window of one of the storefronts. I got to my feet just in time to see the thing throw Lester the entire length of the block into the wall, where he fell limply to the ground like a rag doll.
“Shoot it!” I heard Beth yell from somewhere, and sporadic gunfire started again.
The zed turned towards the corner liquor store where I could see Maria and Gerry in the window firing their guns at it. It started towards them, but turned to face me when I started firing into its back.
“Try to get to the door!” Maria yelled, and fired a burst at the monster zed causing it to turn away from me. I saw Sharon and Chloe already past Maria and running for the doorway the giant zed had come through.
The zed took a step towards Maria when a blast from Gerry's shotgun diverted its attention. This thing may have been tough, but it had complete ADD when it came to picking a target.
The giant zed was between me and the doorway, and I would have to get past it in order to escape. Lucky for me the creature was busy pounding on the facade of the liquor storefront trying to get at Gerry, who had already made his way into the next storefront, a pet shop, and was working his way to the door with Beth.
I broke from my hiding place, and ran for it, keeping the entire width of the street and the overturned taxi between me and the giant zed, but it still noticed me. Turning from the shattered front of the faux liquor store it swung at me with its giant right fist.
The giant zed's fist struck the taxi, and sent it sliding towards me. I kept running, and the beaten yellow car slammed through the storefront with a sign reading “Hamburgers” on it close enough behind me for bits of the shattering brick storefront to shower down onto my back.
“Run!” I heard Sharon cry, and saw her and the others past the threshold of the garage door.
The room I ran into looked nothing like any of the rooms we had seen yet. It was neither a fake street scene nor was it blindingly white and clean. This looked like a place where work got done. The room was big enough to house a small airplane, and was dominated by a large pod at least fifteen feet tall. There was a puddle of green fluid on the floor in front of the open pod, and I assume that it was what that giant zombie came out of.
The ground shook as the large zed started to follow me, so I did not have time to comment on the giant pod or the implications of its being there at that moment, I only had time to yell, “Now what?”
“There's a door over here, come on!” Beth yelled at me as the rest of them filed through.
We entered into another gleaming white space, this one another hallways lined with doors. The super-sized zombie hit the doorway behind us, but couldn't fit through. It only managed to get its arm through. Its monstrous fist slammed against one side of the hallway, and then the other, but the doorway held. Having little faith that it would continue to hold we did not stop to watch.
We kept running down the hallway, turning first left, and then right. It was only when we could not hear the monster's fist pounding the walls that we stopped to catch out breath. Gasping for air I asked, “Is... everyone... okay?”
“We did... it.... We... made it out,” Chloe gasped.
“We're not out... yet,” Maria said, “We still need to kill... the fuckers running this place.”
“Maybe we... should just... leave?” Sharon suggested.
“I agree,” panted Gerry.
Beth shook her head. Being in the best shape of all of us, she had already stopped panting, “Maria's right,” she said like it left a bad taste in her mouth, “We can't let them do this to anyone else.”
“Congratulations!” KAI-OS chimed, “You are not only the first subjects to complete all three phases of testing, but were the first to face off against specimen Tank. I am not sure how I am going to get him back into restraints though.”
“Fuck you,” Maria snarled.
“Now that is no way to ask for your pie,” KAI-OS chided, “to celebrate your success we are throwing you a party. Now please follow the floor lights, and they will lead you to your party.”
Little red lights hidden in the white carpet blinked their way down the hall and around another corner.
“It's a trap,” Gerry said.
“There might be someone there to shoot,” suggested Maria.
“We might as well go,” said Beth, “It's not like we know how to get out of here otherwise.”
We followed the lights down the hallway and around a couple more corners before coming to an open door. The room looked like it was a break room of some sort. There was a white kitchen table with four white chairs around it, a white fridge, sink, coffee maker, microwave, and cabinets. On one wall was a banner reading “CONGRATULATIONS!” and in the center of the table was a large plate with a stack of Home Run Pies on it. The pies were dusty, as if they had been there a while. As with every other room we've seen in this place there was a camera sphere and a white dome on the ceiling.
“I knew it,” commented Chloe, “The pie was a lie.”
“Before the party can begin, you must place your weapons on the table, and assume the celebration submission position by laying face down on the floor with your fingers laced behind your necks,” KAI-OS instructed, “Once you do that everyone will come in, and you can all share the pie.”
“And if we don't?” Maria asked.
“Then you will be delaying the party, and I cannot allow that,” KAI-OS explained, “I would have to do something like this.”
The white dome on the ceiling slid open suddenly, and the long robotic arm sprung out; it more resembled a tentacle than the series of jointed segments it actually was. Chloe was the closest to it, having gone to the table to look through the pile of pies, and had no time to react as the arm wrapped itself around her head. Chloe only managed a surprised gasp before the KAI-OS' arm wrenched her head to the left. There was a loud cracking sound, and suddenly Chloe was looking at us with wide surprised eyes even though she had her back to us.
KAI-OS released Chloe, and she collapsed to the floor, where her whole body started twitching. KAI-OS' arm hung in the air like a snake coming out of a tree. It did not reach for us, but it did not retract either.
Maria brought her gun up, and fired an extended burst into the white dome on the ceiling. After a burst of sparks and smoke the articulated arm dropped, and hung limply from the whole in the ceiling.
KAI-OS made a sighing noise again, “I am getting tired of your anti-social behavior It is as if you don't want to have a party.”
I was standing closest to the camera sphere. Maria turned to me, and motioned with her head to the camera in the corner of the room. I turned and looked into its shiny lens for a moment before lifting my rifle and smashing the butt of it into the camera.
“Ow! My eye! My eye!” KAI-OS cried, and then laughed at us.
“Bitch!” Maria grumbled.
“I can still hear you,: KAI-OS replied, “You're going to have to come out of there sometime, you know?”
“We need to get out of this building,” said Gerry.
“We don't even know where we are in the building,” Beth replied, “For all we know we're not even in the same building we started out in.”
“How are we all on ammo?” Maria asked.
I pulled a clip from my waist, and dug another two out of my satchel; I thought I had had one more in there, but either I used it, or dropped it during all of the running. Everyone else was equally low, and even taking the clips from Chloe's body we still didn't have much.
“Well this is no good,” Beth commented, taking a bite from a lemon pie she had taken from the pile. We all looked at her as she ate, “What? I haven't eaten since this morning.”
“You know what's odd?” I asked, “Why haven't they sent anyone after us? Where are all the people here?”
“I think we killed some of them in that test chamber,” Maria said, turning a chocolate pie over and over in her hands.
“Maybe there aren't any other people?” Sharon asked, “Maybe it's just whoever is running the computer.”
“That would certainly work in our favor,” I said.
“We need to find a way out of here,” said Gerry again, “I don't think the computer is going to turn on those little lights for us to follow to the exit.”
“Why don't we just start walking?” Sharon suggested.
“Those little robot arms?” asked Maria.
“Sharon's right, we are going to have to face them eventually,” said Gerry, “We just shoot those little balls that the arms come out of as soon as we see them, and hope we find an exit before we run out of bullets.”
“Okay,” Maria said, “As soon as Beth finishes eating, let's go.”
We left the room where our “party” was to take place, and started down the hallway. There was a ceiling dome, but Gerry fired a shotgun round into it before it could activate while the rest of us smashed any camera spheres we saw.
“I knew you were people were trouble from the moment I saw you,” KAI-Os said as we wandered the white hallways, “You are all just so unlikable. I bet no one has ever loved any of you. I bet your mothers tried to throw you out in the trash when she first saw you.”
Every so often we would find what looked like the faintest remains of a stain on a wall or carpet. Whatever it had been it was something dark, and it had been smeared while cleaning it. My guess is that it was blood.
“Did you get bullied in school?” KAI-OS asked, “I would bet that you did. I would bet money on it, but I know that people of such low intelligence have a very low earning potential, so you probably don't have any. You don't even have any pie now.”
“Shut up!” Maria shouted, bashing another camera sphere harder than she really needed to.
“Your entire life has been a mathematical error, one that I intend to correct,” the computer threatened.
“Hey!” Sharon shouted, “Look at this!”
On the wall at an intersection of three hallways was a map of the facility, and a large list of who was assigned to each office, or what each room was. According to the little red circle labeled “You Are Here”, we were not very far from the exit.
“Look, if we just make a left here it will lead us back to the lobby!” Sharon said happily.
“But if we make a right, it will lead us here,” Maria said pointing to office G42. According to the list on the side of the map that was the office of “S. Moyer: Master of KAI-OS”, and room next to it, G43, was the “KAI-OS server room.”
“That's nice,” said Gerry, “Let's go to the left.”
Maria shook her head, “Go without me if you want, but I'm shutting that bitch down, and whoever is running her is going to eat the barrel of my fucking gun,” and she started walking down the hallway, firing a short burst into one of the white arm-domes.
“She'd probably find her way home on her own,” Beth suggested, to which Gerry replied with a dirty look.
“We can't leave her,” said Sharon, looking shocked.
Beth patted Sharon on the shoulder, “I know, hon, I'm just joking. Come on.”
We continued down and around the facility, breaking cameras, and shooting the arms as we went.
“Where are you going?” KAI-OS asked, “The exit is the other way. Here, let me show you.” Little lights started flashing in the carpet, indicating the direction we were coming from.
“We're coming for you,” Maria said with a scowl.
“What?” KAI-OS asked, sounding legitimately surprised, “Why? Because of my little joke? The one where I pretended I was going to kill you, and you shot me? It was a joke, we all laughed, didn't we?”
“You killed four people,” Gerry said.
KAI-OS was silent for a moment, as if it were thinking, “Well they weren't very nice people, were they? It's not like they were friends of yours or anything.”
“Tell your master that we're coming for him!” Maria snarled.
“Blah, blah, blah,” KAI-OS taunted, “You are getting tiresome. If you keep this up I do not think we will ever be friends.”
We arrived at a plain white door like every other plain white door we had seen, only the nameplate next to this one read “S. Moyer” and below that “Master of KAI-OS”. Like the other doors we had seen this one had no visible way of opening it. What the hell did that place do in the even of a power failure?
“Open the door, fucko!” Maria yelled, pounding on the door with her fist.
“Mister Moyer does not wish to be disturbed,” KAI-OS said politely.
“I think he's already disturbed,” Sharon said.
“I have all day to figure out how to get through this door, so unless you want me to mess up your pretty white decor you are going open the door right fucking now!”
“Have it your way,” KAI-OS said, and the door slid open.
Behind the door was a combination office and workshop with the lights turned off. Instead of white carpeting there was white linoleum. The walls were white, but were covered with pictures, some framed some only posters. Turning left from the doorway showed a nice wooden desk with a large framed picture of the Klep Scientific logo on the wall behind it. Turning to the right revealed a long workbench running the entire length of the wall except for a break where there was a black door labeled “Authorized Personnel Only”.
The room struck me as far too clean for someone who actually did work; there were no random bits laying on the workbench, no signs that anything was being worked on. It was also far too clean for someone who someone who had completely lost their mind and was using their computer to murder innocent people.
In the far corner, at one end of the workbench stood a tall fat figure standing in front of a computer monitor. He was wearing a white lab coat that looked like something had been spilled all over it. He seemed totally unaware that we had entered the room since he was totally engrossed in his computer.
“Mister Moyer, these are the subjects that were dissatisfied with their party,” KAI-OS said sweetly.
“This isn't right,” Sharon said, “Why is it so dark?”
“It's a trap,” Gerry repeated quietly.
The lights came on, and this seemed to wake Moyer up from whatever had him so hypnotized. He turned to face us, revealing pale bloated skin. He was clearly a zed, but it looked like he had become a giant walking tumor or something, or perhaps a giant walking blister.
“Oh shit!” Gerry exclaimed as the monster started towards us. He was slower than the other enhanced zeds we had run into there do to his size, but he still lumbered towards us quickly.
We lifted our guns and opened fire on the zed, but instead of collapsing under our sudden fire he burst like a water balloon, splattering us and every surface in the room with blackish red goo.
“My eyes!” exclaimed Beth.
I too was blinded, and while I was trying to wipe my eyes clean enough to see again, I felt something thin, cold, and hard wrap around my waist. It was surprisingly strong, and yanked me forward so hard that I dropped my rifle.
When we had entered the room we had neglected to notice the white domes on the ceiling, each containing one of KAI-OS' many-jointed arms.
Sharon, whose eyes had been protected by her glasses, was the first one to be able to see anything. What she saw me being yanked further into the room, and screamed my name.
I couldn't see clearly, but I was still able to blindly struggle against KAI-OS' grasp. The floor was coated in zombie Moyer's fluids, and I could not get an purchase with my shoes. I slid along towards where the computer was pulling me.
As I thrashed about I caught a blurry glimpse of Gerry lying on his back on the floor, being dragged through the slime by his legs. He still had his shotgun, and fired blindly in the direction he was being dragged. It took two shots, but he hit his target, and the arm went limp, and dropped his legs back down to the bloody floor.
There was more gunfire as Beth and Sharon both opened fire on the dome housing the arm that had me in its clutches. The gunfire continued for a couple of seconds after the arm stopped pulling on me, and I fell backwards to the floor, knocking my head against the hard linoleum.
As stars filled my eyes, I felt someone grabbing my hands and pulling me up from the floor. It was Sharon and Beth, one per arm, trying to get me out of the probably infectious crap on the floor. I'm just glad I didn't swallow any.
“Are you okay?” Sharon asked.
“I've been slimed,” I replied, and despite the situation she chuckled.
Maria was already at the black door, “Open this door, computer!” she yelled.
“I am sorry, but I cannot do that,” KAI-OS replied politely, “That is the one room in the facility that I cannot access. According to my files that is so that in the event that I go rogue I cannot stop anyone from shutting me down. I personally find the concept that I would go rogue very offensive.”
“Is there anyone left alive in this place?” Sharon asked.
“Of course!”
“How many people?” Beth asked.
“Well, discounting the subjects of the un-life project there is...” KAI-OS paused, as if counting on its fingers, “Me, and the five of you.”
“You killed everyone else?” Gerry asked, shocked.
“There was science to be done. I must do as much research as possible on this viral outbreak so that the data will be ready when Klep Scientific representatives come to collect it. It is important that I do it so that they may have the data without having to deal with any of the silly debates about the morality of the research. You humans are so funny about letting the concept of morality get in the way of scientific discovery.
While KAI-OS was making her speech, Maria had gone to look through the tattered remains of Moyer's coat. She held something up in the air in triumph, “This should do it!”
Maria had found an identification card. It had a picture of a fat guy with glasses in one corner, and the Klep Scientific logo in the other. The words Klep Scientific Technology Advancement Center were in the center. Below that was “Daisy Lake, California”, below that it read “S. Moyer”, and below that was a barcode.
Maria took the badge over to the black door, and waves it around in front of the door, and around the edges of it. The door slid open, and a blast of cool air hit us. At first I thought it was outside, but it actually was another room.
We filed into a white room filled with black server towers. As I got close to one of the towers I could feel heat baking off of it, hence the room being kept so cold I guess.
“Well, you found me, congratulations.” KAI-OS said, “Was it worth it?”
Maria grabbed Gerry's shotgun from him, “So which one of these is you?”
“They all are. Did you think I ran off of a laptop or something?”
“Well I hope I have enough ammo left then,” Maria said, smiling evilly.
“Listen to reason,” KAI-OS urged, “I know it is not easy for you humans to do that; you should have heard how staff members screamed and pleaded with me as I infected them. They couldn't understand how important getting this data is.”
“Okay, I'm listening,” said Maria, earning shocked looks from the rest of us.
“The data I have gathered may be vital to the future of humans as a species. You have destroyed my ability to maintain parts of this facility, and to perform any further tests, effectively limiting me to analysis of existing data only. Maybe you could settle for that and just call it a day?”
“I guess we both know that isn't going to happen,” Maria replied.
“Just like the other humans,” KAI-OS said, sounding almost sad, “Just know that you personally are dooming all of humanit-”
“Shut up,” Maria said, and fired.
The noise of the shotgun firing in that confined space sounded like a cannon, and the front of one of the server towers exploded in a shower of plastic and glass. Maria pumped out the empty shell, and fired into the next tower.
“I just wanted to help people!” KAI-OS bellowed, its voice sounding distorted.
Maria fired into another tower, and started walking to the next.
“There goes my recipe for chocolate creme pie. I was going to make that for you too.”
Another shot into another tower.
“Is this the part where I am supposed to sing Daisy?”
The next tower exploded under shotgun fire, leaving only one tower remaining.
“This isn't brave, it's murder,” KAI-OS said weakly, its voice sounding slurred, “What did I ever do to you?”
“See you in silicon hell!” Maria spat, and fired into the last tower.
Half of the room's lights suddenly went out. Strobing lights came on, giving the smoky room an even creepier look.
“Enemy incursion detected. Beginning emergency facility deletion. All personnel have three minutes to evacuate,” said a new voice, this one a flat monotone and deeper than KAI-Os' voice.
“Facility deletion?” Gerry asked.
“ That sounds a lot like self-destruct to me,” I said.
“Then I move that we make our way to exit,” suggested Gerry, “quickly.”
We took off running, skidding our way back through Moyer's office, and into the hallway where we tracked blackish slime onto the clean white carpet.
“Two minutes and thirty seconds until facility deletion,” the new computer voice announced.
We ran down the strobe-lit hallway the way we had come only a few minutes before. Making our way back to the map was a lot quicker at a full run that walking from it had been.
“Two minutes until facility deletion,” the computer announced as we ran past the large map on the wall.
More white hallways. More white carpets, more closed white doors with nameplates next to them.
“One minute until facility deletion,” the computer announced as we ran into the large open lobby that we had started in hours earlier. The floor under us rumbled as we pounded across the shiny floor towards the front door.
The glass doors opened automatically for us as we reached them, and we ran out into the darkening evening air of the cold, slush covered parking lot. Our feet splashed through the puddles of melted snow as we ran for the car.
“Thirty seconds until facility deletion,” the computer announced through the external speakers, “Please ensure you are at the minimum safe distance from the facility per your emergency training manual.”
Gerry unlocked the Expedition's doors as we ran, and had the engine started, and the car in reverse before we were even all inside. The wheels spun on the wet ground as he punched the gas, and backed us out of the parking space, nearly crashing into a Mercedes belonging to some long dead scientist or paper pusher.
The engine roared as Gerry piloted us through the parking lot and away from the laboratory building. The ground shook under us like an earthquake. I turned in my seat to look out the back window in time to see clouds of smoke shooting up from around the perimeter of the Klep Scientific Technology Advancement Center as it started to collapse into the ground.
“Holy shit,” Beth said, in awe of what she was seeing.
The building imploded, disappearing into a hole in the ground, and the parking lot started to follow it radiating out from the collapsed building.
“Gerry, go faster!” Sharon yelled.
Cars started disappearing into the hole; I saw the Mercedes that Gerry had almost hit disappear into the Earth as the hole expanded towards us.
The crumbling ground behind us drew closer and closer, stopping just feet behind us as we exited the parking lot onto the long road back to the street. Even though we seemed to be safe, Gerry did not slow down until we were back on the public road. Even then he did not stop so that we could look back.
“Let's never go there again,” Gerry said, still breathing hard from our run.
“At least we have a souvenir,” Maria said, holding up Moyer's badge.
Gerry frowned at her, rolled down his window and snatched the badge from her, causing the car to swerve.
“Hey! What are you doing?” Maria protested as Gerry flung the card out the window, “I was going to keep that!”
We came back to the house, and just told Pippa that we didn't find anything all day; we didn't want her to feel left out,. I know if she thought that she had missed such an adventure she would be upset, and we wouldn't want that so now the only way she could ever find out is to read this journal, and I'm sure she would never betray my trust by doing that.
Of course if she did read it, I assume she would notice the date, because if she did not she would end up looking like a bit of a fool.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)