And then there were zombies! Zed End – Book #1 Pre-preview

This week’s post is something a little different. Up until now, I’ve posted Solendrea content pretty exclusively.

You’re about to get something very different. It seems like everyone and their sister is putting out zombie content these days. I’d be lying if I said I was any different.

I’ve been toying with my version of a zombie infested apocalypse for some time now. This is a pre-preview version of a novel I’ve tentatively titled Zed End.

Standard disclaimers apply. This isn’t a publication ready work and is subject to change prior to publishing, if it ever gets published at all.

Enjoy!

~MFHengst

 

Zed End Book #1 : Pre-Preview

 

The name on my badge is Keller Hale. I’ll be twenty-five years old next week. I’m an officer in the Infection Control Corps. And I’m going to tell you the story of how I died. I guess I should start at the beginning.

You relinquish your sidearm as part of graduation. It’s tradition. It’s supposed to be this grand symbol of how you’re dedicating your life and career to the protection of the United Cities. I guess, in a way, it is a grand symbol, but if I’d known what was going to happen after graduation, I’d have fought tooth and nail to keep it in my holster.

The graduation itself was fine. It was a lot of the same thing that graduates have been hearing for decades. “Now is a bright new future.” “Go forth and claim your destiny.” It’s all bullshit. Especially for those of us who had the misfortune to be born in the lower city. Graduation from the Infection Control Corps is the only way that any of us will see life above the 50th floor.

Anyway, I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about what happened after graduation. I got my plastic scrip with my graduation date and my badge number. They told me I’d be assigned a permanent unit over the next few days, and I was fine with that. I just wanted to get back to my cubicle and lie down.

See, I’ve never been much of a people person. Life in the lower city was hell. So many bodies crammed in against each other like sardines in a can. Getting on a train was like a death sentence. I don’t even remember the last time I tried to take a bus. The smell. Dear God. So many unwashed people in one place. Let’s just say things got gamey, fast.

I turned down the corridor that led to the short timer’s bunks. It would be my last night here. As soon as I got my orders, I’d be shipping out for whatever unit they’d assigned me to. There would be a bunk or a barracks there for me, depending on what unit I got, and where. I didn’t care about any of that at the moment, though. I just wanted to lay down and try to ease the throbbing in my head. The little man in there beating out a bass rhythm on my skull was really having a time of it.

I never made it to my bunk. Hell, I never even got close. They jumped me almost before I’d made it out of the auditorium. Three guys stepped out of a side hall. They were all wearing black tactical gear and they were big. They moved like ninjas. Jesus, guys that big shouldn’t be able to move that quiet, or that quick.

Before I knew it, I had a black hood over my face. It was a suppression mask. I’d been trained on them. See, it’s this nano-fabric that lets air in, but only a little, so you really gotta work at it to be able to breathe. Pretty much takes the fight right out of you.

I put up a fight anyway. At least for a couple of minutes. Until I couldn’t breathe anymore. I was gasping for air and not getting any. The inside of the hood was hot and moist from my breath and sweat. I was either going to suffocate or drown, at that rate. I wanted an honest shot at survival, so I forced myself to calm down, relax, and just take it.

They knocked my feet out from under me and whatever air I had left in my lungs went out in a whoosh. One of them put a knee on the back of my neck. Another put some of those plastic quick-cuffs on my wrists and ankles. When they had me bound up good and tight, they hoisted me up like a pig going to roast and started carrying me down the corridor.

Yelling was out of the question. I took a breath deep enough to try it and one of the goons punched me in the side of the head for my trouble. Stars flashed across my eyes, the only light in the darkness of the hood. That was the last time I tried that.

They say your other senses compensate when you lose something like your vision or your hearing. My other senses didn’t do shit. I knew I was in a blackout hood, I knew I was tied up, and I knew I was being carried somewhere. I had no idea where, or by who, and had no clues to help me try and figure it out. After a while, I gave up and just resigned myself to being taken. They were going to do what they were going to do and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

We went down an elevator. That made sense. It was probably the service shaft, since I didn’t hear an ident reader being used. The service shaft only went up to the sixtieth floor, which was where the auditorium and the ICC Academy offices were. To go from sixty-one up to ninety, you needed special “Upper United Cities” ident cards. You didn’t get those slumming around on the lower floors. Those were for the elite. The best of the best. Or the richest of the richest. They were pretty much the same thing.

After the infection spread, the government of the old United States did what they did best, they protected their own. By their own, I’m not talking about the citizens. I’m talking about the wealthy, the influential, and the powerful. If you were a politician, a media mogul, a superstar, or a famous entertainer, you got your own military detachment to keep you safe until the walls went up. Not that it really mattered. If you had enough Streakers and Shamblers in your neighborhood, your life expectancy wasn’t shit to start with, soldiers watching your six or not.

They say the infection started somewhere outside DC. A little army base where all the USAMRIID guys played with toys that could wipe out all of humanity. Almost did, too. No one knows how the infection started, or what it came from. If they do, they’re playing those cards very close to the chest. History says that it started in that little army base and spread like wildfire to DC, then to the rest of the old US, then to the rest of the world.

Seventy-five percent of the population was dead in two weeks. That’s how fast it moved. They were burning bodies in the streets, trying to keep the infection from spreading, but they didn’t really understand how it worked back then. I’m not sure they know how it works now, but at least we understand the process a bit better. In your cold-blooded animals and insects, you don’t see any transmission or infection. That, at least, is a saving grace. I can’t imagine what would have happened to us if flies or mosquitoes could carry it. We’d probably have gone extinct. It takes a warm-blooded carrier and blood-to-blood contact to transfer it.

Cats, of all things, are immune to it. A bunch of United Cities and ICC scientists got together a few years after the infection and tried to figure out why, but they’ve never said what they found out, other than there’s something in the feline genetic makeup that prevents the infection from taking hold. Even if they’re injected with infected blood, they’ll throw off the symptoms after a few weeks. They never go feral the way that humans or other animals do. They never undergo the Change. Not like dogs. Jesus…infected dogs are the worst. If you see a Seeker, you empty your magazine into it and don’t give it a second thought.

Right, so the Change. Sometime between death and resurrection, the infection starts monkeying around with the genetic makeup of the infected. There are four classes of post-Change infected. The first class are Seekers. Dogs that have been infected, died, undergone the Change, and reanimated. They can smell living flesh from miles away. If you hear a Seeker howling, you’re probably already dead. They’ll find you and they won’t stop until they’ve infected you, eaten you, or both.

Then you have your class twos. Those are your Shramblers. They’re human, or used to be. Folks old enough to remember back before the infection refer to them as slow zombies, or walkers. They just sort of meander around, catching and infecting what they can. They’re pretty easy to deal with singly, or in pairs. Let them gang up on you though, and you’re toast.

Class threes are humanoid too, they’re Streakers. They’re fast. Really fast. The Change must rewire everything they’ve got into the leg muscles. An uninfected human isn’t going to outrun a Streaker. It’s just not going to happen. Those huge, gross muscles in the legs propel them like machines.

Finally, you’ve got your last of the human infected. They’re the Shriekers. I hate Shriekers. They’re almost always found with a Seeker. When the Seeker finds fresh prey, the Shrieker starts shrieking…and it doesn’t stop. Ever. Until all of the Streakers and Shramblers, and Seekers in the area have come to find and infect whatever they’ve found. You never forget a Shrieker’s wailing cry. It sounds like hell itself has opened up and the souls of billions of damned souls are screaming at you to join them in their torment.

The elevator, you remember the elevator, right? The service elevator went all the way to the bottom floor of what had once been the parking garage, but was now a shantytown. Folks in the lower city make due with whatever they can get their hands on. Old shopping carts, shelving, newspaper between thick slabs of cardboard, if you can imagine it, there are hovels built out of it. Extension cords hang from everywhere, spreading out from the buildings they steal their power from like the web of a drunken spider. The maintenance crews just look the other way. Light requires power, and light is life. The infection brought about a fear of the dark unknown to humanity since the Middle Ages. I dare you to find a place in the United Cities that doesn’t keep a night light on.

If you don’t, you’re crazy, or suicidal. The Infected are drawn to the dark and they’re photophobic. You can’t really hurt one with a flashlight, but you might buy yourself a couple seconds to get out of dodge. It also gives you the advantage of being mostly safe during the day. If you’re in one of the cities, at least. Being outside the wall is another story. Outlanders are almost as dangerous as the infected.

The lower cities have a certain odor to them. It’s urine and sweat and fear. It’s also something a little more intangible. It’s the desperation of knowing that if you were born below the 88th floor, you’re probably going to be a drone for the rest of your life. It’s a lottery of birth. Get born to one of the 88’s and you’ll live a life of luxury and opulence. Get born in the lower cities and you’ll spend the rest of your miserable life trying to get a foot in the door of the elevator that will take you up to paradise.

That’s why I joined the ICC and why I’m stuffed in a hood and bound, being carried through the shantytown under SkyTower One. I wanted out of the lower cities. The 88’s get bedrooms. Real bedrooms. All to themselves. Somewhere they can sleep without being crammed in amongst the rest of humanity. You have no idea how enticing that is until you’ve lived with a family of eight in a 700 square foot hovel. I’ll never be an 88. I wasn’t born into their world, but with a good job in the ICC and a lifetime to work my way up, literally. I could have an apartment. An honest to God space of my own, in the 60’s or 70’s.

I gagged as the acrid smell of burnt flesh wafted past the hood. There were muted hoots and catcalls. The goons carrying me shifted my weight and the quick cuffs chaffed my wrists. I felt a warm trickle of blood where they’d broken the skin.

“Bleeder!” someone screeched and a crowd of voices answered. If my captors didn’t do something about my wrists, and quick, they were going to have a riot on their hands. It was taboo to bleed in public. The fastest way to get yourself surrounded by infected was to have an open wound. Or one recently scabbed over. The infected loved their blood.

“Should we stop?” That was one of the goons to someone nearby. The voice was deep and gruff and had an accent to it. Scottish, maybe? The hood made it hard to tell.

Someone dabbed at my wrist with a soft cloth. I couldn’t feel the trickle of blood anymore.

“Keep moving. It’s just a scratch and we’ll be there in a few minutes.”

We went up a gentle incline and within a few minutes, we were outside. The dank weight of the shantytown was behind us and we were out in the relatively fresher air of the open city. Hawkers called out for marks to buy their wares. People shouted. Scooters bleated. Your average automobile was a thing of the past. There just wasn’t enough room for them in the walled off cities. A fleet of battered busses and the occasional underground train provided transportation for the lower cities. The 88’s rarely deigned to come down from on high. Monorail stations had been built into all of the SkyTowers and higher buildings. You never had to leave the upper city unless you wanted to…and I’d never known an 88 who wanted to.

“Watch it!” a gruff voice snarled, and I heard someone utter a startled exclamation. A scooter clattered to the pavement. No one said anything about a guy being hooded and bound, carried openly out in the street. Wasn’t their concern. Wasn’t their problem.

I felt it before I heard it, the deep bass thumping of a nightclub. As it got louder, I started to struggle and got another punch in the temple for my trouble. I don’t like being around people. I think I mentioned that. A lower cities nightclub is my own private version of hell. So many people crammed in so small a place. I fought not to be sick.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem as if we were destined to stay in the nightclub. We passed through a sea of bodies. I could feel them pressing in on every side and not even my squirming earned another blow to the head. Apparently my kidnappers were no more at ease in this undulating throng of people than I was. I heard the squeal of a metal door and the sticky heat of the nightclub vanished. It was cooler here, thankfully, and as soon as the door closed, the rumble of the bass stopped almost entirely.

There were still people around. I could feel them, but this was different. The air wasn’t fetid. It was cool, recycled air with just a hint of roses. I heard hushed conversations as we passed and light, popular music. All fluff, no substance. We passed through a heavy curtain. I felt it as it brushed my sides. Then the goons lay me down on the floor.

It was soft; a plush carpet almost as thick as a bunk mattress. I jerked as cold metal touched the inside of my wrists.

“Hold still,” the goon with the gruff voice demanded. “Or I’ll cut your damn fingers off.”

There were two sharp snaps and I was free of the quick cuffs. I wanted to rub my wrists, to ease some of the chaffing, but I didn’t dare move. My head was still throbbing from where I’d been injudicious before. I’d have to bide my time.

Someone hauled me up by the armpits, settling me into a comfortable chair. It was soft and thick, like the carpet. Sort of like an old armchair, without the arms. It seemed completely at odds with my sudden abduction. The suppression hood was yanked off and I gulped air like a drowning man. Everything was blurry. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the subdued lighting.

The room was small, maybe sixteen by twenty. There was a small raised platform, a pole, a few chairs. The goons were standing around me. In the chairs were an older man in an ICC uniform and a smaller Asian woman in matching sim-leather pants and jacket.

Soft music filtered into the room from overhead speakers and a topless blond with the curves of a goddess walked out from a curtain behind the platform.

I’d been kidnapped, beaten, and brought to a strip club?

 

Copyright 2015 Martin F. Hengst. All Rights Reserved. No unauthorized duplication without permission.

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