Early in The Reason
Zombies can't lunge hungrily at somebody flying over. A shuttle goes to the city nearest the roadblocks. Once there no one will rent me a verti, fleeing citizens have got them all, I'll have to wave warrant displays to hitch rides from the military.
While riding gravity downward in the shuttle, suit got me a breakdown of the outbreak. It started like most historical cinema recordings of zombie outbreaks with vid crews of a zombie ENT production using the swamps as a filming location. Somehow zombie extras got zombiefied to run amok on the set. Blame when this occurs is usually put on casting which must have shoved a real zombie into the horde of actors by accident. The first to die was actors. The crew continued to record until too late. If you watch carefully you can see what has become known as Zombie Number One grab biting at a womyn zombie who is seen in another scene biting other zombies. The last time this happened a century or so ago was shown at Cannes to good reviews. Unfortunately the lessons learned in ancient cinema prove useless in this plot.
Much more current amateur video of our snapping zombies feasting on the neighbors brains show these zombies are of Type 3 on the Romero scale. The oldest known form of zombie is the Type 1 horde: a drugged person is buried as dead then dug up and revived. Continuous administration of drugs spiked with rare puffer fish venom keeps the zombie a zombie. Useful mainly as a docile servant. Maintenance drug costs are high. Illegal by most governments. Called a Type 1 zombie as drug costs typically limit horde size to one individual. Type 1 zombies do not crave brains but when sent to the market to pick up fried chicken and cola might have a nibble and a sip.
Type 2 zombie horde requires of the infected an induced persistent dissociative fugue that centers on a craving for brain. First recorded in very early cinema. Typically caused by meteorite impact carrying space fungus or plant. No incidents recorded last several hundred years. Type 2 zombies move very slow, respond negatively to fire, easily wiped out with methods at hand by survivors. Contained to localized geographic area, not pandemic. Horde size can range from several hundred to less then ten thousand.
Type 3 horde zombies satisfy the apocalyptic pandemic code red criteria. Not geographically localized. Often made up of recently dead who've been infected by bites upon the living uninfected. Wounded victims who escape being eaten appear to die then become zombies after a dormant period dependent upon dramatic stress. Horde sizes range from many thousands to millions. Typically type 3 zombies are the product of a twisted science gone evil. May be fast moving, may carry weapons, may be communicative depending on the warped science involved. Controlled by quarantine extermination programs or rehabilitation with zombie chows.
Type 4 horde zombies crave brains, are not localized, are recently or previously long dead, in fact can be very decomposed corpses that crawl out of their graves. Untraceable supernatural causes. Recorded also in cinema though outbreaks not seen since late first Hollywood period. Animal zombies may occur.
We live in a fortunate era. Who hasn't battled zombies in some game milieu? They are a convenient opponent in being dead already does not raise many moral or nationalistic objections. Hundreds of years of practice has made humanity ready with tried and true simulated zombie combat experience. Big drawback is there is no re-spawn in real life. You cannot reload a checkpoint in real life to give it another try. Though the military types long for this ability.
The nearest to the outbreaks city space port was in a state of panic. Only three people got off the shuttle, after having a look around two of those got right back on. The sea of people destined anywhere else pressed against me as I fought the tide. The quarantine zone is being extended toward us and everybody except me wants out now. I waved down a military officer whose armband flashed PIO in cool blue letters. He acknowledged my floating flashing ID with a pained: “OK so...?” Warrant slap! POW! Or more realistically 'DING' as it reached his coms. “Oh...” he read... ”OK so?”
“Take me to your leader. Which way to the front? Can I get a ride from somebody to headquarters?” He made a call.
They were a team of combat forensic anthropologists sent to investigate the thousands of missing people. They meant to document the struggles of the locals to survive. The Katska they rode in on had huge G5s' painted on all sides. There was barely room for me among the crates of questionnaires and lami pamphlets. I was asked if I'd seen the biologic survey team that went in ahead of them to “test for poisonous atmospheres, rogue virus's, deadly bacteria's, nerve gas's, eccetera...” Eccetera like there is much more.
I answered: “nope.”
Our driver had: “They went in with the tanks. So they should be OK.” though his face showed he was not certain. Had he seen active zombies? Refugees? “Oh yes. Everyone in the zone is dead or a zombie.” Mass graves? Pyres? Killed zombies? Trails of dead? “Oh you'll get all that.” And then he kicked us all out at the local quarantine headquarters.
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This Command Post is split into cubicles by utility: armory, ammo, coms, snack room, TOC and TACs, supply, meds, trans, duty, CQ, each labeled with handy lami signs. I proceed from the armory to the less post apocalyptic decor of the snack cubicle. The place was full of break time soldiers whose background murmur of conversations rose then fell into dead silence. There was a minor chorus of chairs squealing as snacking soldiers and cops got out of the way of a Librarian entering with his entourage. He made his way right at me like a reaper missile. I gulp suits marstini sippy tube into 'mixing/standby mode'. I gotta upgrade to a higher capacity suit bar.
“You the Dvorak kid?” He's old. The oldest Librarian First Class I'd ever seen. Not short or tall with the face like a sculpture of an ancient politician. They tend to be young, eager, flexible, naive. I nod obediently. “I don't work for you.” He snarls. That settles that, he won't be bossed around by me. “My commitment is to the three S.R.s we got now. You're just along for the ride. The brass is going to send a squad in with you mostly so we can confirm for history how you die.” So I'm going in? With a squad? Of course I'm recording all this and upping it to the office for my report so eventually everyone can see me die anyway.
To live to get this old a Combat Librarian must be good and lucky. Somehow I feel I want to stay close to him like his magical luck perimeter could cover me too. I don't want any separation from his view that could cast doubt about my zombiefication. A guy could slip from view, get scratched to infection, then reappear a moment later a ticking brain eating time bomb in the midst of dinner. Any doubt just shoot. Historically proximity to a Librarian in combat is usually a very safe place. Too bad when I'll have to split off for the labs I want to see. He'll be too busy looking for those other two Senior Researchers and their Librarians, that were overrun two days ago, to worry about where I went.
I am dismissed by the back of this receding Librarian without my having said a word or learned his name. No hearty intro handshake or 'good luck' from him since I am already dead in his prehistory. 'Librarian First Class Otto Grey' Thanks suit. He's famous, I've heard of him. He's declared war on suspected zombies before. He's declared about thirty wars, big and small, mostly justifiable, but none for quite awhile, at least an info-war ago in fact. A good heroic Librarian might only get one or two in a whole career. Retired, suit says, brought back by the Public Library Board after they lost three Librarians to this outbreak.
Suit has the newest rules of engagement: 'shoot all zombies dead on sight'. The order of battle, with me included, is posted. It's a combined task force sweep to clear some zombie free chunks of real estate. They will try to clear and hold approximately eight square kilometers. The intel estimate is nine to nine hundred zombies per square kilometer, a range that makes me cringe at its absurdity, part of this area has already absorbed thousands of well armed troops. We, my squad of witnesses go in last, which worries me; in all my cinema/game zombie experience last in line is first to die. Naturally Otto the Librarian with his close support shock assault combat brigade goes in first to stir them up as last in line, us, tries to catch up.
My plan, since I can't ride in Otto's pocket is to skirt their main route, avoid zombie contact. Shooting is a known way to attract more zombies. By not shooting ones not within arms length and moving fast and waiting till they home in on Otto's brigade shooting we should be able to reach the labs OK. I know Otto's column will be shooting because we won't be there following last to be grabbed first. It should be loud enough to attract zombies from kilometers away, especially once air support starts bombing. Only ones we should see are the deaf ones.
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Whatever caused this zombiefication is very new. Someone has found a way to animate dead meat into murderous machine. The long quest for a fleshy suitably sexy non threatening domestic bot has struggled with the meaty parts. Plastic no matter how squishy or well warmed is not the same. Growing blank people and trying to program them has had not much success either: lawyers. Building mechanical yet fleshy people bots is safe from lawyers as an individual product item can't qualify as sentient life, or sue anybody. So some well meaning mad genetic scientist in the interest of power and greed has sniped and shuffled bits of DNA, cooked up flesh in vats, till something they did crossed over. Some new type of life has taken over the victims basic biology of life. The chemistry of life mechanisms encoded in the zombies genes must have been scrambled by some bio labs gene tinkering.
The span of the existence of life on Tera is geologic. Life has outlasted continents. It is meta geologic since life has so transformed the planet. The very first choices of chemistry creating sustainable reactions is at the root of all life. All life as we know it shares the same basic mechanisms at the cellular level, shares the transfer of knowledge in the genetic recipes. All life shares these basic functions that make life. Tiny strands of coded knowledge control even the largest of beings. So to understand big you have to go small, molecular small, atomic small. Lots of things affect the very small world in very large ways, thus, at this moment: brain craving zombies. It's usually too late for the very small when zombies are pounding at the door. They were probably searching for a genetic obesity cure and the menu preference mode got stuck on human brains. According to the Holy Hollywood archives not the first time obesity treatments have led to zombies.
This outbreak had to have started years ago quietly in actions rooted in one of the bio labs around here. These bio corporations like industrial areas surrounded by swamp, or in far deserts, there are a few under the sea, many on the moon and in orbit, like they half expect something dangerous could very well escape. It has happened. It's like a resigned inevitability. The NA Army thinks they have the zero infection location plotted to a lab run by one of the corporations they buy their secret poisons, deadly bugs and stuff from. They can save a lot of money here by grabbing up all they can get that they would have had to pay for otherwise. No one alive from the corporation left around to work up a bill. If that corp caused the outbreak they are done as a business entity. They'll never get insurance again. They are sure to be sued by millions of people and businesses. The Army can kill zombies that hunt the living; few armies have stopped lawyers that hunt money. First came the zombies then came the Army here comes the lawyers.
The second Senior Researcher intrigued by these zombies quickly secured the support of a Librarian backed by the military structure that imposed the quarantine zone. They went in late last week, only three days ago with a Battalion of heavy infantry on hundreds of assault vehicles under a cloud of air and space fire support; no ones had contact for days. An armed force of over a thousand evaporated into the hundred proof mildly radioactive shiny metallic fog, accompanied by two Senior Researchers with a Librarian included. Heat signatures recorded from space record an intense battle that lasted less then an hour, then six hours of chaotic coms interspersed by horrific vid scenes from pockets of survivors while the Governments struggled with raising a relief force to rescue them. Earlier, before anyone thought apocalypse another Researcher with a Librarian First Class and a trainee First Class Librarian Combat Document Clerk went no coms on the second day of the outbreak before the quarantine was established, they had gone looking for the movie crews. It became obvious to anyone being asked to provide troops as the quarantine zone expanded that there could now be up to several hundred thousand zombies in there.
Putting these kinds of labs and bio-flesh factories near swamps that happen to be next to large cities does not enhance their isolation. Swamps and zombies go together in every horde type, add a city, that's what we've got here. There must be... it can only mean... yes no... thousands, no... maybe ten thousand zombie lawyers! Who do you sue?! From here safely surrounded by guns its hard to believe some people can have survived in there; could be thousands of isolated pockets of survivors. It's what we are counting on. Hopefully someone is still alive in that lab that can explain why they needed so many hundreds of millions of liters of alcohol. My personal crusade, an angle missed by the missing three Senior Researchers who got here early on the zombie thing, only me is after the alcohol.
Where did all the alcohol go? It's a volume that dwarfs the local structures seen from space. What did they do with it? No empty wet fuel rockets landed anywhere near to fill up before blasting off. Pouring it into the swamp would have been noticed downstream, but the present alcohol clouds might be a hint of this. Did they pump it into the ground like the ancient fractors? Perhaps the pipes are broken somewhere, somehow, or they just left the booze spigot running.
“Why we going there?” The soldiers don't like the idea of leaving the column. I explain the 'last in line rule'. They are still reluctant. I tell them we are going there to seize data relating to alcohol shipments. I could see the change come over them, the word 'seize' excited them and the 'shipments of alcohol' gave them hope for the future.
“We break away low and quiet. No contact shooting. Shove the zombies out of the way. We keep moving fast to these big doors on this building.”
These guys assigned to me are not an ugly bunch. Well one of them is. Marines? “It's a swamp.” “Space Marines?” “Water Marines.” OK swamp tactics to the water Marines. They didn't seem to want to talk about the distinction anymore. One of the better looking ones was their boss they called: 'Gunny',which I assumed meant he would be good with guns. A good looking one of those that Gunny yelled at constantly was 'Boats”, who must have large feet; hard to tell with the anti-zombie booties on. The one of them that was most not ugly was the Marine they called 'Pig', which I thought was unfair because she seemed gorgeous when she peeked out of her blast hood from behind her Gatling blaster, her nickname must be about how she eats. The last and least in rank, also by far in my opinion the ugliest was the Marine they called 'Cherry', which is actually his name: Myron Cherry. Cherry was also harnessed into a Gatling blaster. These guys intend to mow down any kind of unarmed 'run at you' type enemy. I am comforted by that concentration of firepower only as long as it is pointed away from me. Gunny's “We keep you in the middle.” tactical sketch has them both behind me however. At least half their guns are pointed away from me.
“What is it you do Boats? I mean he's the boss, and they got Gatling blasters?” Demo, coms, meds, what? He just grinned at me. Gunny answered in his cigar choked growl:
“His job is to kill you...” pause “if you get bit. He's gonna watch you the whole way. His job is to survive to bring back a record out from under the mist and report exactly how you died with vid, audio, DNA portions, telemetry, witness statements, pieces of you, eccetera.”
“My mission is to make sure you're dead. I'll be right behind you every step.” While the 'last guy rule' here gave me some comfort, Gunny's tactical positions put Boats right in front of me! I decided not to bring it up.
