Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗
- Author: A.M. Geever
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Walter felt two strong hands grab his shoulders. He cried out in panic and struggled against them but was pulled backwards into darkness. A heavy door slammed shut with a metallic thud. Walter heard a sliding lock shoved into place.
“Help me push this against the door,” Visiting Assistant Professor said, his voice barely a whisper.
Struggling to tamp down his panic, Walter realized he was in the building’s tiny maintenance room. Feeble light trickled in from a tiny glass block window near the ceiling. He could barely make out a drum of cleaning solvent against the wall. Walter pulled while Visiting Assistant Professor pushed. As his eyes adjusted to the poor light Walter saw three more people crammed in with them against the back wall.
The chaos on the other side of the door intensified. Gunfire and screams reverberated down the hallway. More sirens wailed, some distant, some near. Walter and the rest of the occupants of the tiny room huddled together as far away from the door as possible.
“Do you think we’ll be safe in here?” a young woman asked.
Visiting Assistant Professor said, “It’s better than the hallway.”
“There’s no way out but the door,” she said, not quite disagreeing. “We’re trapped.”
“I think we’re safer here,” Walter said. Under his breath, he muttered, “Please, God, let help be here soon.”
As soon as the words left his mouth Walter realized that the police and Campus Security were already here and he felt safer in this closet.
A man’s voice, high with fright. “The guy from Campus Security tasered him and he didn’t even slow down.”
No one had anything to say after that. They fell silent, listening to the screams and shouts and gunfire. Sirens seemed to be coming from every direction. Dark shadows flickered across the cracks of light around the door. The astringent smell of cleaning fluid and furniture polish permeated the stuffy air.
Walter looked up at Visiting Assistant Professor. “You saved my life and I don’t even know your name.”
A ghost of a smile lifted the corners of Visiting Assistant Professor’s mouth. Walter could not tell the color of his eyes, but the tiny expression transformed the young man’s delicate features into movie star handsomeness.
He stuck out his hand. “Doug Michel. Astrophysics, Florida State. I’m here to work with… Shit, I can’t even remember.”
“I’m Walter Brennan,” Walter said, before adding inanely, “I teach Algebra and Statistics.”
“What the hell do you get up to here in Math and CS, Walter?” Doug whispered. “I’m not complaining, but why is there a lock on the inside of this door?”
Walter looked at the lock, then back to Doug. “I’m sure I don’t want to know.”
October 2036
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Miranda said, bringing the Range Rover to a halt.
She squinted her eyes against the glare as she watched the stumbling figure near the Secured Expressway’s Tenth Street exit. The clothes of the one-time businessman hung in filthy tatters, fluttering in the breeze. The uneven gait and awkward balance marked it as a shambler, now the most common type of zombie, and its guttural moan carried across the distance.
Miranda twisted around in her seat to look up and down the deserted freeway for more zombies, then inched the Rover closer. A cacophony of snarls and barking erupted behind her, courtesy of Delilah, her caramel-colored pit bull. The fur along Delilah’s spine bristled as she lunged between the front seats. Fifty feet from the shambler, Miranda stopped the Rover. She pulled the handbrake and popped the clutch into neutral but did not turn the engine off.
“Delilah, stay,” she said, then opened the door and stepped out.
The stench of decayed flesh, rank and sweet, wafted toward her. Flies buzzed around the zombie like a dark full-body halo. She ran her hand over her auburn hair to make sure the up-twist was tight. Satisfied that her hair would not give the zombie anything to latch on to, she pulled the .50 caliber Desert Eagle from her shoulder holster and once more looked up and down the Expressway. A lot of people ended up as zombies because they failed to appreciate that while speed was not a shambler’s strong suit, persistence most certainly was.
She walked closer, then spread her feet wide so the kick from the gun did not knock her over. She took her time sighting up, not wanting to waste ammo taking a long shot. Just as she squeezed the trigger, the shambler tripped over its feet and tumbled to the pavement.
“For fuck’s sake.”
A scowl twisted her lips as Miranda walked closer. The zombie rolled onto its back, writhing on the pavement. The fetid reek of rotting meat burned her nostrils. Gray-filmed eyes turned toward her. The shambler’s mouth opened in a lipless grimace, its blackened tongue flicking back and forth. Stiff, bony fingers stretched toward her and still the zombie moaned. Even after all this time, the sound still raised the hairs on the back of Miranda’s neck.
She raised the Desert Eagle again and squeezed the trigger, but the shambler twitched its head at the last moment, like it knew she was trying to kill it. The bullet nicked its jaw but did not hit the zombie’s brain.
“You fucking piece of shit, that’s two bullets!”
She reholstered her gun and unsheathed her machete as she closed the remaining distance between herself and the zombie. Stomping on the zombie’s arm, Miranda swung the machete down like a guillotine. The crunch of bones reverberated up her arm as the head came free of the neck. The head rolled away, the zombie still hissing. When it stopped, Miranda raised her booted foot.
“Fucking.” Her foot descended, smashing into the zombie’s temple.
“Piece of.” Sticky slop splashed on her leg as she pulled her foot free.
“Shit,” she snarled, her foot pounding through the shambler’s skull.
She glared at the gummy pile of bone and brain that stained the pavement black, chest heaving from exertion.
“Unfuckingbelievable,” she muttered.
She walked back to the Rover, stopping to wipe the machete and her boot on a rag tucked into a pocket in the driver’s side door. She retrieved a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment and looked up and down the freeway again. Her mind raced as she searched the walls and fences that lined the road. How had it gotten in?
“Settle down, Delilah. It’s okay now,” she said. She patted the dog’s head and rubbed her batwing ears through the back window. Delilah ceased barking but persisted in growling, only partially appeased that the zombie no longer moved toward them.
Maybe the power around a maintenance entrance gate shorted out, Miranda speculated, a frown twisting her mouth downward. Electrified fences were the weakest link in the Expressway’s security system, but the second set of gates behind them were manned and overengineered. It had never been a problem.
Until now maybe… But this shambler wasn’t coordinated enough to be a good climber, she thought, lowering the binoculars.
Most zombies couldn’t climb. They could stumble over low obstacles, but climbing stairs, fences, or ladders required coordination beyond a typical zombie’s abilities. Even if this one were coordinated enough to climb the Expressway walls, there would need to be an electrical failure at the fence and a failure at the secondary gate including the guard.
“How the hell does that happen and no one notices?”
A zombie on the Expressway in the heart of Zone 1, the safest area in San Jose. Hell, in all of Silicon Valley. The evidence lay crumpled a few feet away, but she could not believe it. There had never been a zombie on the Expressway. Never.
What if it’s an outbreak?
The idea sent an unpleasant shiver skittering down her spine. Miranda climbed into the Rover and turned around to drive back to the Bird Street exit. She looked in the rearview mirror at the slumped form, growing smaller by the second. It’s not an outbreak, she decided, remembering the condition of its clothes. This was an old zombie, not someone who had missed a dose.
Delilah’s snout nuzzled Miranda’s ear. She nudged the dog away before Delilah could give her a wet willy.
“This is definitely going to liven up some gate operator’s morning, Liley; that’s for sure.”
“And then he said he ‘didn’t have time for crazy chicks.’”
Miranda and her best
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