Part Six

Gordon watched Peter go to work over the thrashing body of the zombie. The range of the cell phone jammer was left as high as it could be pushed in the hope of concealing their location from the zombie leaders, but it also prevented them from keeping in contact by any other means than the radio. Gordon was dreading the point at which the radios would be jammed, as they had been in Houston.

But so far they still worked, and Gordon had used his radio link with Eric to explain why they would try to use the captured zombie to hack into the system first. “If we try to emulate a signal, there’s a good chance the zombies won’t recognize the command. We’ll also be alerting the leaders to guard their system better.”

“All right, you’ve got one shot,” Eric said. “After that, bring the equipment here to let our guys get to work on a backup plan.”

“Will do,” Gordon agreed while he stared across the transport at their prisoner.

The zombie was strapped to the gurney, and though it was weakened from fluid loss, the wound in its leg had already healed. In order to access the pin inside the zombie’s mouth, they needed to strap the head down and insert a thick pair of dental wedges to keep the zombie from gnashing its teeth.

Peter leaned over to connect the laptop sensor to the pin in the zombie’s mouth while professor Garfield watched both the displays on the machine and the laptop screen. He tapped the laptop screen with a stubby index finger. “There’s a dialogue box. It says the conversion process is complete, but the diagnostics are indicating a low blood level. It’s giving an option to inject more.” He turned to look at Robin. “You did say you wanted to collect a sample to test on yourself, right?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, do you want it in the leg, the arm, or the throat?” Professor Garfield asked.

Robin grimaced. “Well… out of those choices, I’ll have to pick my arm.”

Peter moved to the side of the machine to collect a thin hose with a catheter. He attached the line to the machine and took hold of Robin’s arm when she got closer. Yet even after he squeezed, her veins wouldn’t rise. “Bad news, Robin. Without blood pressure, I can’t find your vein.”

Robin frowned. “So the leg is no good either?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Just raise your head and hold still. I’ll try to get this thing out of you as quick as-”

“Just do it already.” Robin clenched her jaw when the needle buried into her skin with a sharp stabbing pain that quickly became a dull ache.

“I’m starting the transfer now.” Professor Garfield pressed a key.

A cold sensation started to spread out from Robin’s neck. The pain in her throat faded away, leaving her feeling blissfully calm. She closed her eyes, smiling faintly before her body dropped back onto the floor.

***

Frank stood in a circle of zombies with his hands glued together as tightly as his lips and teeth were. His hands were behind him, and it was all but impossible for him to break free. He didn’t have any body oils or dying skin cells to help weaken the bond of the glue, and his only option was to rip a large section of skin away from his hands and fingers.

Even if he had wanted to, the zombies standing at his sides held his arms in place. When an attack came, they meant to play kamikazes, and they would drag Frank into the firefight with them.

But it wasn’t the police who arrived first, and a change came over the zombies in the warehouse. Instead of standing motionless they had started to slowly back away from the cargo bay. Frank wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw expressions of fear on the faces of some of the zombies.

The trailer backed to the cargo bay shuddered violently, and the middle folded. Frank listened to the roar, and even then he knew the huge mutant would be leading the charge. The midsection of the trailer collapsed, and more zombies were backing up at a faster pace while the open end of the trailer slid away from the cargo bay with the sounds of screeching rubber and rending metal.

Frank wasn’t sure if the order to scatter was coming from the leader or if some kind of basic survival instinct was driving their actions, but the first sighting of the black beast at the cargo bay caused the zombies to run toward the back of the warehouse in a panicked frenzy. The circle surrounding Frank was gone, and the zombies holding Frank’s arms certainly weren’t coordinating their efforts. They both tried to drag him by the arms in opposite directions.

Frank gritted his teeth and pried his hands at the same time, tearing the skin away from his left palm and fingers. Though his mouth was glued shut, his pained cry still caught the attention of the mutant, which glared at him and hunched down in preparation to jump. Dozens of the undead parted, diving to the floor to get out of the beast’s path before Frank had even finished falling to his knees.

It leapt through the bay doors, landing directly in front of Frank. The huge black head lunged at him, and he held up his hand in front of his face, closing his eyes to wait for the killing bite. The mutant growled and slammed its massive head into him instead, knocking him back through a group of the zombies.

He was trying to get to his feet when the smaller mutants began to climb into the warehouse through the cargo bay. Many were mutated in a similar way to the huge black monstrosity, but they still resembled something closer to humans in spite of their elongated arms. Others had seemed to sport new limbs, and Frank noticed several had what looked like short tails jutting down from the bases of their spines.

Frank watched two mutants pull a zombie to the floor and sink their hideously distorted mouths into its flesh to drain it. He spun at the sound of a mutant hissing next to him and he threw a punch with his right hand. Pink blood from his still wet skin grazed the mutant’s cheek. It shook its head, wiping a scaly grey forearm at its face before leaping away at a nearby zombie.

Frank looked down at the lump of skin in his hand. An idea came to him, and he turned to search for the smaller crate the zombie leader had been transported in. He ran toward it, lashing his arm out to slap a mutant as it was reaching for him. It reacted in the same way as the first mutant, as though Frank’s blood were somehow repugnant to it.

Frank hoped he was guessing right while he began to slap his wounded left hand and the wet section of skin on his right over the outside of the crate. He stepped into the crate, finding two handles mounted into the side. Shutting the two halves, he fumbled to close the three locks mounted along the inner seams in front of him.

The crate was slammed onto the side, and something clambered over the exterior. The heavy thumping stopped, and for a few seconds, all he could hear was the hissing of the mutants, and the occasional roar from the largest beast as it finished feeding from one zombie and moved to take down another.

Then, seeming almost like a blessing to him by then, Frank heard the sounds of gunfire erupting. He closed his eyes and started trying to think of how to keep himself from getting shot when he couldn’t speak.

***

Gordon watched Robin for any signs of movement, but she hadn’t stirred since dropping to the floor. Her body was still warm. He was trying to take it as a good sign, but the hours had ticked by without any changes. He started to worry that he’d lost her, and possibly Frank as well.

A soldier drew Gordon out of his thoughts by tapping him on the shoulder. “Sir, we’re being advised to move. The police are reporting that the zombies at the warehouse scattered, and they were being pursued by a number of large grey mutants.”

“Was Frank found inside the warehouse?”

“I don’t have any information about him. The police were attacked by a group of mutants who had remained behind in the warehouse for some reason. The few remaining survivors had to pull back. Sir, as I said, we’re being advised to move. The horde and the mutants both seem to be heading in our direction. We’ve checked with the FBI, and the numbers they’re tracking are all headed east.”

“All right, get us moving again. Just pick whichever direction seems most likely to keep us away from the action, okay?”

“Yes sir.”

Gordon turned to look back down at Robin. He blinked, then leaned forward, not quite sure of his eyesight at first. “Hey, Janice? Come over here and look at this.”

Janice stepped across the transport and leaned over to study Robin’s face. “What am I looking…” She leaned closer, then back. “She looks different, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

Gordon watched the tip of Robin’s nose lower while her cheekbones rose. The effect was so subtle he still wasn’t sure of what he was seeing. The skin of her cheeks curved inward with the change, and her lips thinned. “She’s aging. If you watch, you can even see her skin shifting.”

Janice made a strange sounding laugh. “Sorry, I was distracted by the more obvious changes.”

“What?” Gordon saw her nod and turned to follow her gaze toward Robin’s chest, which had expanded at least another cup size. “Oh.”

“Got it!” Professor Garfield waved Gordon over and tapped a finger at the screen. “These are the subcommands which control the biorhythmic functions.”

“So you can stop their hearts?”

“Hearts and lungs both, yes. I’ll need to recompile the program, but it shouldn’t take too long, maybe a half an hour at the-”

“Sir, we may have a problem,” the soldier manning the radio declared.

Gordon turned to frown at the soldier. “Of course we do. What’s happened?”

“The word on the radio is the hordes positioned on the outskirts of town are making wide sweeps for new converts. No matter which direction we head, we’re going to run into trouble.”

Gordon looked back toward professor Garfield. “Shouldn’t you be compiling now?”

“Right, sorry.”

Returning his attention to the soldier, Gordon made a circling gesture with his hand. “Take us around a residential block and park until a zombie scouting party is spotted. We just need to buy ourselves a little more time.”

***

Frank opened the locks, cringing at each metallic pop though he heard nothing outside. The new skin on his left hand still felt raw and sore, and the blood on his peeled skin had dried, causing the flesh to become rubbery. His first plan was to find some kind of solvent to wash his hands before he sorted out how to open his mouth without copious amounts of pain.

He opened the lid and swung it back over onto the floor as quietly as he could manage before he stood. The walk to the open cargo bay was nerve wracking, and as soon as he had jumped down onto the ground, he broke into a run to the side of the building. He didn’t expect Robin to still be outside, but he did feel a small measure of relief to find his clothes and weapons.

Scanning the parking lot while he dressed, he saw swarms of police and SWAT vehicles, but no uniformed officers or SWAT unit members. He wondered if the zombies had taken the police when they had left the warehouse, but it didn’t seem likely with the mutants being so closely in pursuit.
 
He was pulling on his shoulder harness when a massive shadow loomed over his on the grass. Frank turned his head, staring up at the black mutant. Even at a glance he could tell it was much larger than the last time he’d seen it. He caught another flicker of movement to his right and looked at another mutant, one with a long tail which had developed a greenish hue to its skin. Frank looked back and forth between the two, wondering why they didn’t attack him right away.

He stood up slowly, trying to compare the height of the two creatures. The black mutant was so big that it wouldn’t be able to fit through the cargo bay door, while the green mutant was just a few inches above Frank in height. Both were freakishly muscle bound, but the black mutant had a much thicker torso to help support its gargantuan arms. It lifted one arm in an odd waving gesture before it walked around Frank toward the front of the building. When he looked to the green mutant, it hissed and nodded at the black mutant.

Frank took it as a cue to follow along, and when he got to the front of the building, his face pinched in a grimace over the obvious signs of a major battle. Uniformed officers, SWAT member, and suited agents all littered the ground in various states of mutilation. Scattered among them were the bodies of burned or wounded mutants, and Frank saw that for the most part, Jamal’s plan was a smashing success. The zombie leader let the law enforcement agencies wipe themselves out by attacking the mutants, and he’d only needed to sacrifice a handful of his troops, who could all be replaced within hours.

There were also six other mutants huddled together, each one bearing a different color or shade of skin. Four of the mutants fell back at the approach of the larger black mutant, and it occurred to Frank that it had become a leader, probably by rite of strength. He looked down to see the other two mutants were pinning a zombie to the ground, and though it thrashed with its legs, the zombie was unable to pull its arms free.

The black mutant made a sweeping gesture toward the zombie then stared at Frank. Flicking his eyes toward the struggling zombie, Frank shook his head. He had no clue what the mutant leader wanted. It gestured at the zombie again. The second time Frank realized they wanted him to feed from the zombie, and he put his hand over his chin, pulling down to try and show that he couldn’t open his mouth.

Whether the black mutant fully understood or not, the sign language acted to enrage it. Snapping a hand out to grab Frank’s leg, it threw him at the metal wall of the warehouse. He was still sliding out of the dent his impact made when he saw the black mutant leap and draw back a balled fist for an attack. The last thing that went through Frank’s mind was the mutant’s fist, which also crushed most of his chest and part of his arms as well.

***

“It’s ready,” Professor Garfield said and nodded to Peter. “Please tell me you’ve got your end of this plan done.”

“I was ready an hour ago.” Peter pointed at the laptop. “All I need is the new code, and we can be done with this problem for good.”

“No, not quite,” Gordon said. “We would still have to deal with the leaders, because their implants will probably be set up differently.”

“So how will we do that?”

Gordon moved to lean over the zombie, who was still thrashing to get free. “Drop the jammer, and keep it down. We’re going to call the leaders out.”

Peter moved the laptop to get up and crab crawl over to the jammer to shut it off. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

Gordon stared at the zombie while he considered his plan. “Jamal, I  think you can hear me. You know where we are, and we’re waiting for you and your leaders to show up. The… the president has authorized me to discuss the terms of our surrender.”

Peter opened his mouth, then closed it quickly. He moved back to his laptop and took a memory key from professor Garfield to start loading the modified program. “Do you think he’ll be interested in listening to our terms?”

“He’ll want to talk to us. We’ve figured out how to kill the mutants, and I’m sure he’ll want that information.”

“That’s fine, but his terms may be that we get to die quickly instead of slowly,” Peter said.

“We’ll see when he gets here.”

“When who gets here?” Robin asked.

Gordon spun and sighed with relief to see her sitting up with Janice’s help. “I thought you’d died.”

“I did, and probably again at that.” Robin smacked her lips as a puzzled expression crossed her face. “My mouth feels funny.”

“You might have had some wisdom teeth come in,” Janice commented.

“How’s that?” Robin asked.

“Um… Robin, look down.”

Robin did, and her expression moved from bewilderment to bemusement quickly. “Wow, I’ve had a zombie puberty.” She smacked her lips again, raising her hand to slip her finger into her mouth and rub the inside of her cheek. Her finger came away wet, and she smirked at Janice. “I have saliva again, and I have a bigger chest. Somehow, I was expecting something better.” She shrugged and turned to look at Gordon. “So, I suppose you forgot this already, but who’s coming here, and when will they arrive?”

“The leaders and their hordes, and if I had to guess, I’d say about an hour, maybe less.”

“I see. So what did I miss while I was dead?”

“I’m afraid we can’t discuss it. The jammer is off, and our zombie is broadcasting again.”

“I was wondering why it was laying still. So what’s our plan?”

“When the leader arrives. The three of us will get out and discuss the terms of our surrender, as outlined by the president during our last radio communication.”

“Wow, so things got bleak, huh?” Robin winked at Gordon.

“Yeah, but there may be hope if Jamal is willing to listen.”

Barely a half an hour had passed before the radio crackled to life. “Sir, we’ve got a visual on a horde in front of us, and another behind. They’re moving to box us in.”

Gordon stepped over to the radio to pick it up. “Hold your fire, and have everyone stay in the vehicles. We’ll handle this, and if they attack us, you should try to punch through and take our prisoner out of the state to be dissected.”

“Understood sir.”

“Scott-”

“I know, I’m staying here.” Scott smiled at Gordon. “I kind of figured that out when you said the three of you were going out to discuss the terms.”

Gordon moved to the door of the transport and opened it, glancing back at Peter. “If we aren’t shredded in two minutes…”

“We’re ready,” Peter said. “Go on.”

Gordon stepped out onto the street, looking at the wide circle of pale white bodies closed around the transports. If the plan failed, there wouldn’t be any hope of escape.

A motion in the crowd drew his attention to the end of the street, where the horde parted for four tall men, each of them wearing nothing but a broad smile. Gordon started slowly walking toward the group. “It’s a pity Frank isn’t here. Then this might have almost been a fair fight.”

“Yeah right. I’m calling it a somewhere near fourteen to one odds, which puts it on par with the battle of the Alamo,” Janice said.

“It should be four to three real soon,” Gordon muttered in a much quieter voice as the gap between their group and the zombie leaders closed.

Jamal spread his hands wide as he grinned. “Did the president really offer terms for his surrender, or were you hoping to call us out to make sure the nuclear strike kills us all?”

“You already know there won’t be more nuclear strikes. We can’t risk making any more mutants. If you’ll forgive a question, I wonder if their mutation was something you planned for?”

“No, but then they aren’t as much of a problem as you think.”

Gordon smiled genuinely then. “Jamal, please don’t take this as an insult, but that was a bullshit bluff if ever I’ve heard one. You’re here now because you need to know how to bring them under control or eliminate them. But you can’t control them, because their implants got fried by the EMP.”

“Not all of them, no. However, those mutants whose implants are still functional in some way are able to track down my minions. Once they are in a certain range, it creates a panicked response in my minions and I can’t make them follow orders.”

“Well I guess we can help each other out.”

Jamal shook his head. “I’m not sure what you expect of me, really. I said there would be no mercy.”

“The president would like to point out that-” Gordon stopped himself as the zombies began falling over all around him. “Oh, never mind. I lied.”

Enraged, the leaders leapt forward. Jamal and one leader both came at Gordon, who stepped back to give himself time to pull a machete. On his right, Robin was throwing punches to keep her opponent back. Gordon wanted to check on Janice, but he had trouble trying to prevent getting caught between Jamal and the other zombie leader.

Jamal spun away from an attack on Gordon to drive a side kick into Janice’s chest. Gordon was still helpless to do anything, but he glanced over to see Jamal sink down over her. He caught his opponent with a chop to the shoulder which forced the leader to step back, and when he looked back to help Janice, he noticed that the ground around her and the zombie leaders seemed darker, as though a shadow was growing over them.

The black mutant slammed down on top of the tangled trio, roaring as it turned to face Gordon. The sound of gunfire erupted from the top of the transports, and men began to pour out of the back of the point vehicle. The black mutant ignored them, leaping over Gordon to sink down onto the zombie leader who was trying to flee.

Robin was still grappling on the ground with her opponent, but she finally floated over it to grab the zombie leader’s head and snap it back. She was up and running to check on Janice, but even from where Gordon stood, he knew it was too late.

Robin walked to Gordon and took the machete from his hand before she drew the other from the sheath strapped to his hip and waved back at the transports. “Get the kids out of here. Check back in an hour or so, okay?”

Gordon thought of any number of objections. Saying she was too young to die didn’t work, and the ammunition the soldiers wasted didn’t convince him that he would have better odds. Robin was a trained fighter, and even then he knew she was hoping to act as a distraction. He gave a short nod and turned to run for the transports.

***

Robin watched the mutant rise up when it finished feeding on the zombie leader. It turned around quickly, springing toward her a second later. Robin leapt up and to the side, slashing a machete along the underside of the mutant’s arm. The wound was already healing before she had finished the stroke, and the act of cutting into its flesh was much harder than hacking a zombie.

She jumped back to avoid another attack and sank the blade into the back of the mutant’s fist. The mutant clutched it hands together and raised them high. Robin froze, watching the attack coming. She leapt back with a short hop then sprang forward as soon as her feet connected with the ground.

Landing on the wide forearm of the mutant, she dashed up the arm even as the mutant was rising it in an attempt to shake her off.  Dropping to straddle the mutant’s shoulder, she leaned out to drive the machete though the eye of the mutant. The point struck the back of the zombie’s skull, and tilted back its head to roar.

Robin saw the other arm rising to pick her off, and she slipped over onto its back, driving the other machete down through the mutant’s neck. She was thrown off when the mutant stiffened. Landing on her side, Robin rolled over and watched the mutant pry both machetes out of its wounds. Her eyes followed the path of the machetes when the mutant threw them back over its shoulder, and she took a small sideways step to prepare herself for the next attack.

“Robin, duck!” Gordon shouted from behind her.

Robin dropped to the ground , and the mutant crouched for a leap. She saw something fly into the mutant’s mouth, and it reared up on its legs, making a strangled cry as the object lodged in its throat. A spilt second later, an explosion removed the mutant’s head and shoulders. The arms spiraled away in opposite directions to thump on the ground dozens of yards from the burning torso.

Standing up, Robin turned to look at the rocket propelled grenade launcher on Gordon’s shoulder and nodded. “Right, that could work too.”