Conspiracy Theory (The Zombie Theories Book 2) Read online

  “Aim your weapons three feet in front of the door. Do not fire at the first thing that moves. Take a moment and make sure you’re firing at infected before you pull the trigger.”

  How the hell was he so calm when I was consistently soiling my shorts?

  The circular light behind the 3 above the door popped on and there was a ding! The stainless steel doors slid to the sides, and we were witness to a nightmare. The back of the elevator was coated in arterial spray, which stuck out in stark contrast to the shiny steel. Three forms, two in lab coats and the third a mottled-black, rotting monstrosity, were kneeling over another prone form also in a lab coat. The pus bags were shoving choice bits of the hapless victim into their greedy maws, and there wasn’t much left. They were really pigging out. I watched as one had to yank twice to pull away something purple and when the thing hefted it to its mouth and bit into it, it squirted all over his pal to the right.

  It had been a while since I had seen this shit. Apparently I wasn’t the only one, because both Sara and the louder of the two orderlies gagged.

  In slow motion, all three attackers lifted their heads and swiveled them in our direction. The two in lab coats had been savaged, and were missing important parts of them, but the rotten one was so far gone I couldn’t tell if it had been male or female.

  “That’s what we’re fighting, people. No quarter asked and none given.” Lynch fired his weapon three times before any of us could recover from the overwhelming feelings of pity and disgust. All three zombies crumpled. Perfect head shots again. The doors tried to close, but one of the slain undead had fallen into the door path and the steel panels kept bouncing off his corpse and re-opening. The spook stepped forward and shot the one they had been feeding on. He stepped into the elevator and did something, the doors remaining open. Then he looked up. “I need a boost.”

  I didn’t have a holster on me, so I passed my Sig to Tim and moved to help. I stepped into the elevator, the stink from the rotten one so bad I almost gagged. Almost.

  Lynch looked at me as I bent down and reverse-steepled my fingers for him. “Don’t get any blood on you.”

  Don’t get any blood on me? Was he fucking serious? There wasn’t a square inch of this metal box not dripping or puddled with gore. The undead did not believe in napkins. Not being able to keep my mouth shut; “I can’t get infected,” I told him.

  “I can. If you’re covered in that shit and bump against one of us, our infection risk goes up.”

  “But you’re standing in it!”

  “Am I?”

  I looked down. So I was wrong. There was a square inch of the floor not covered in infected zombie goo, and this prick was perched on it. How he consistently pulled this kind of shit off was beyond me. He was smug about it too. It’s the little things.

  He reached up and pushed the emergency escape hatch which I had thought was bullshit and elevators didn’t have. They do. At least this one did, and it opened up, which I thought was kind of dumb. How the hell were you supposed to get up there if you were alone and there was an emergency? He stood on my ten fingers and I helped him peer into the shaft above the car. He was getting heavy when he popped back down and said, “This’ll work.”

  “What’ll work?”

  “We’re taking the stairs.”

  I looked up through the hole in the roof of the elevator car. I didn’t see any stairs.

  We moved out to the rest of the group, preparing to discuss what to do, when gunshots and screams came through the open doorway. We all looked back the way we had come, into the hospital area, and we could see through the window in the far door that the living and dead were fighting hand to hand. The guard tried to run back to help, and Lynch grabbed him by the arm, “There’s only death back there.”

  The guard shook loose and ran back past my room toward the far door. Lynch shook his head and double tapped the poor bastard in the back with his Sig. The guard fell forward and Lynch ran up to him and shot him in the head. He picked up the guard’s HK416 and ammo belt. He stooped and picked up a pistol as well, re-loading as he returned to us. Brick had his weapon pointed at Lynch’s chest. “Why did you do that?”

  Lynch didn’t even look up. “He was gonna open the door,” he said, like Brick had asked a stupid question. He passed me the rifle and the ammo belt, and gave one of the orderly guys the dead guard’s pistol. I tried to give the last guy the Sig that the spook had given me, and Lynch looked at me like I was mentally challenged. “Don’t do that.”

  Slaps on the window sixty feet away had us looking at the door out of my wing. The dead were pressed against it, and some of them had been folks we had been talking to not twenty minutes before. Several were Runners, and they were beating the shit out of the window.

  “Shouldn’t he have a gun?”

  “There will be plenty laying around on the floors above, trust me. In the meantime, you keep those, and shoot anything that gets past me, living or dead.”

  “Living?”

  “Yeah, if somebody gets past me, then I’m dead. I want you to shoot that guy. I want you to shoot him if he’s the President. How many times I gotta say it? You have to live. Not to mention, if he just killed me, I don’t like him.”

  The far window spider-webbed, and then a chunk of it busted in. It was that safety glass that had the chicken wire inside it, so it cut the crap out of the Runner that was ripping at it. I know they have a tolerance to pain, but I think the bottom line is that they want to tear into us so badly that they just don’t give a shit. This particular Runner, a woman in what used to be a white lab coat, pulled on the glass so hard I saw her pinky finger shear almost off. She looked at her lacerated hands, little finger hanging by threads of flesh, then roared at the ceiling and propelled herself at the glass. I don’t know if it was her rage, or the fact that she and the others were all working together on the window, but that shit caved right in, and she climbed through, dripping and pissed.

  Lynch shut this door and we ran to the elevator. I didn’t see it, but I heard that Runner slam into the door behind us. This would be the last door between them and us.

  You know, hindsight is twenty-twenty. In retrospect, I probably should have told you that the two orderlies were wearing red shirts. They weren’t really, and the Star Trek reference not-withstanding, I didn’t tell you their names, or overly describe them, so you can guess what happened to them.

  The orderly with the gun pointed it in our particular direction and said he was going back. Lynch didn’t even turn around. “Go then.”

  “Don’t go,” I yelled at him. “There’s nothing down here for you, everybody’s dead!”

  He shook his head, “You don’t know that!” He backed up until he was near the corner of the junction, and ran off back down the hallway parallel to the one in my wing. Shocker incoming: We never saw him again.

  “You first,” Lynch said to Brick. “Anything up there gets one in the noggin.”

  Brick nodded, and the spook ten-fingered him up. “Still clear!”

  “Why don’t we just use the elevator?” demanded Sara.

  Prick actually rolled his eyes. “Cuz it could open on one of the floors above us, and I don’t know what’s up there.”

  He pointed at me. “You’re next.” I went, and it was dusty and greasy up there, with little lighting from the emergency lights that seemed to go up forever, but there were no infected. Sara came next followed by Tim. His ID badge fell off and he totally panicked. “I need that!” Lynch scooped it up, wiping it on a white portion of one of the zombie lab coats.

  We heard the glass give way on the door twenty feet down the corridor, and we knew that they were coming. Lynch jumped and Tim and I caught his hands, hauling him up. The screaming from the Runners got louder quickly, and the unarmed orderly turned, pissed himself, and leapt toward us with that desperate, terrified look that you’ve seen countless times since the beginning of the plague. Tim and I caught him, and Lynch pitched in a hand, but nine-fingers came shrie
king into that blood-stained car and grabbed the orderly’s midsection. Bitch didn’t bite him though. She looked right at me and started climbing up the guy like a spider. She wanted the whole buffet. I couldn’t tell who was screaming louder, the infected or the guy she was using as a ladder. Lynch let the guy go, and fired off a shot into the thing’s face. She let go instantly, and fell back into the car, but the moment she had jumped on the orderly, he had gained a hundred and twenty pounds. Lynch had taken his hands off of the poor kid to shoot the Runner, and Tim and I couldn’t handle the extra weight. He slipped from my grasp, falling back into the car and slipping on the rotten thing below, going on his ass in the goo. The elevator filled with infected and they swarmed him, biting and tearing. He gave me a short, helpless Oh shit! look, and then he was covered by them. The only ones looking up at us were the ones that couldn’t reach him.

  Lynch shut the hatch and sighed.

  Over the din of the feeding below us, I heard Tim whisper, “Nobody should go out like that.”

  Lynch exploded, “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m tired of babysitting you assholes! Man the fuck up! We’re all going to go out like that, and the quicker you get it into your damn heads, the quicker you’ll be of use!” He stood, the rest of us looking at him like his face was made of something scary. “I hope that badge was worth it.” He located a ladder and started to climb.

  We followed.

  We climbed. We stopped at the next floor, a big yellow 2 on this side of the doors. There was a small foldable catwalk that lead three feet from the ladder to the doors. Lynch folded it down and closed the distance, his fist up in the universal be quiet signal. We heard running and some screaming, and he shook his head and we began climbing again.

  It had only been maybe fifty feet, but it was wearing on me, and I wasn’t the only one. Sara was huffing, and so was Tim. We got to the big yellow 1, and Lynch repeated the thing with the catwalk. We didn’t hear anything, and apparently neither did he, because he pulled his knife and pried the doors open.

  The elevator lobby was empty. No blood. No bodies. No people or zombies. I didn’t know if that was good or bad at the time, but hey, no zombies is no zombies, so I was opting for good.

  Lynch climbed out first, scanning the area in a crouch. The rest of our little party followed him, never making a sound. We were there, just standing, waiting for someone to make a decision, when an orderly, and three guys in riot gear, two with M4s and one with a FNP90 rounded the far corner and aimed right at us. Why was there an orderly up here?

  Brick hit the floor, the rest of us stood like morons until Lynch went all ninja and I was on my ass with him protecting me.

  One of the soldiers lowered his weapon. “Friendlies.” The others did the same and they came to us quickly. “Chief Master Sergeant,” one of them said. These guys apparently weren’t soldiers, but Air Force. Or at least they knew Brick.

  They helped us up. “Wilkes, report,” Brick said.

  “Chief Master Sergeant,” the kid on the left began, “this level is not secure. Hostiles are everywhere. Our orders are to make our way to the PX, eliminating hostiles as we move. There’s a group of friendlies in the PX, but they’ve been cut off, and are low on ammo. We’re carrying a thousand rounds of five-fifty-six, and twelve hundred five-point-seven,” he indicated the MOLLE packs they were carrying, “and we’re going to distribute when we get to the PX.”

  “Give me two five-fifty-six mags,” Brick said.

  “I’ll take a full MOLLE,” Lynch chimed, and I jumped on the band wagon and told the boys I could carry a pouch too.

  The guys looked at each other for a moment, and then Brick said, “Now Airman First Class.” They gave him two magazines, but didn’t give shit to me or the spook.

  I was perplexed. “What the fuck?”

  “Not giving rounds to a civvie,” Mr. First Class told me.

  Lynch stared him down. “I’m not a civvie. I vouch for him. Give them to us or I take them.”

  The kid swallowed hard, obviously very aware of who Lynch was, and in the midst of his indecision, everything, once again, went to hell.

  Airman First Class Wilkes stood stock still, but the kid with the P90 began to bring it up, and that was enough for Lynch. He moved like a cat, his left foot kicking out and impacting the Achilles of the kid slightly. The spook spun backwards and used the back of his right leg to drop the kid onto the floor. Lynch had barely moved, and made it look like a dance. The kid was hanging, back down, no doubt wondering what the hell just happened. Lynch was holding the P90 by the top, suspending the Air Force stooge by the weapon sling. With one hand. He looked sideways at the other kid with the M4, and said with venom: “Don’t.”

  As all this was happening, the infected had found us, and a group of them rounded the same corner that the three Air Force kids had a minute prior. They also came from the other direction, boxing us in.

  Well shit. And WAH! WAH! WAH! Because that effing alarm was still going on.

  These were all pus bags, mostly fresh too, no Runners.

  Lynch pulled the kid off the floor, and everybody started shooting. My ears were gone quickly, lost to the din of gunfire. I could no longer hear the moans of the dead over the ringing in my melon. The Air Force guys, including Brick, were doing well, dropping many infected. Lynch was efficient and didn’t miss, and I did more than my fair share. Tim’s pistol was empty in five seconds, and he didn’t score a single head shot. Sara had her hands over her ears, as did the orderly, except his mouth was open and it looked like he was yelling.

  But I couldn’t hear a damn thing.

  Lynch was yelling something, and then grabbed the kid with the P90, the kid looked as terrified as I felt, and spun the weapon toward the spook. In true virtuoso fashion, Lynch grabbed the weapon and pointed it at the ceiling, where two rounds impacted before the kid took his finger off the trigger. Lynch grabbed a MOLLE pouch full of ammo and yanked a clip…oh shit, sorry Ship, a magazine, performing the best tactical magazine switch I had seen to date. Lynch forcibly spun the kid back around, and we continued to fire.

  I ran dry, Brick ran dry, and we reached for more mags. Then I think courage ran out. The only thing that we didn’t seem to run out of was infected. Where the hell did they all come from? An hour ago there weren’t any, how did everyone get infected so fast? How did they all turn so fast? I wonder if zombie porn stars are still hot? Damn I’m thirsty! I was just playing basketball, I need a drink. OW! That brass it hot!

  That’s the shit that rips through your mind when you’re terrified and firing at the living dead and alarms are sounding.

  So you keep shooting.

  I pulled a hot bullet casing from my neck line where it had deposited itself and decided to keep on keeping on. With bullets.

  The infected gained ten feet and we kept firing. They got closer, stepping over or on their pals, and we kept firing. Airman First Class Wilkes ran dry, but it was terrible timing because at that very moment they were in amongst us and we had to go hand to hand. His M4 was pushed to the side and three of the things grabbed him. Many of these ones were fresh, but a couple were nasty. The smell was overpowering, and Sara and Tim began to gag. Lynch was still firing his HK, but I had run out of ammo and couldn’t reach the MOLLE pack on the floor. I was grabbed from behind, and started to panic a little when I realized it was the spook just chucking me to the side, out of harm’s immediate way.

  Wilkes was engulfed, and went down screaming and trying to re-load. I couldn’t hear him very well, but I could see he had his mouth open like he was screaming. The kid with the P90 switched to full auto and just slammed rounds into anything in front of him. To his credit, he put his game face on and started smashing skulls with his rifle when he ran out of ammo in three seconds. He knew he didn’t have time to slap in a fresh mag. He didn’t get the chance to scream when they pulled him into the crowd.

  The third kid pulled his knife as there was no time now for any of us to reload. He did this aw
esome stab move up under the chin of the first one to latch on to him, and then stuck another in the forehead. The knife slid off and got another one in the eye, but neither of them was done, and they tore into the poor kid. Brick tried to rescue him and got a bite on his forearm for it before he could pull back.

  Not that there was any place to pull back to. It was game time. The only person without a weapon was the orderly, and he saved my ass. He yelled something that sounded like “Fuck this,” and ran full on bull-rush into the crowd behind us.

  He fought like a cornered lion. Not only did he make it through, but the pack that wasn’t chewing on the Air Force kids was turning to make grabs at the orderly. Lynch noticed this, grabbed my wrist in his iron grip, and dragged me through the crowd, who mostly had their backs to us. Brick went back for a paralyzed Sara, but the paralysis left her and she put her gun in her mouth just as he reached her. Brick skidded to a stop and turned around running, not waiting for the gunshot, but we lost him as they closed in behind us. I hope he made it, but I doubt it. He was bitten regardless and so condemned. I couldn’t hear anything, so I don’t know if Sara actually checked out on her own, or if she was part of the banquet. I guess either way she got eaten.

  We fought through the crowd, and it was way easier than I thought it would be. The things had all turned around to snack on the guy in blue scrubs, but he looked like Barry Sanders (yeah, I know I’m dating myself) and just juked past them. The orderly made it through and turned around to yell as us. He got a good look at what was shambling after him, us in the middle of them, and doubtless lost his shit. When he was plowing through them, they were kind an obstacle, but when he turned around, he knew exactly what he had just done. I would have had a woody, and thought myself awesome, fist pumping the air, this guy screamed and ran away down the hall.

  The path in front of us closed, and I ran into the back of a dead soldier in desert camo. I had no choice but to fire, and that almost killed us both. The weapon was suppressed, but if you’ve ever heard a suppressed weapon fire, it isn’t like the movies. There’s no pfffttt like you think, it still sounds like a gunshot, just muffled. They all turned and looked at us. Lynch shot three of the things with his Sig, and pushed me through. He had shot them all in under a second it seemed, again, perfect head shots. Two others grabbed him and he fired but one grabbed his arm, and his shot went wide. The fucker missed. I had never seen that before, and it was life changing.