Another Zombie Story

Vickers hated to salute. It was the whole ‘refusing to submit to authority’ thing. He was always one to march to his own drum beat. Thus, a career in the military would seem a strange choice. However, it was unavoidable since it fit his skill set to a tee and he understood this. So, he entered the corps with a plan. After the hell that was basic training on Paris Island he signed up for the most remote, blackest ops possible. It wasn’t so much because he wanted to be a dirty, amoral secret agent as much as he knew this would allow him to, one, work mostly alone and two, deal with as few bureaucratic superiors as he could. Therefore saluting as well as kowtowing would be rare occurrences.

Of course these days he was trapped in country, hell, in city; with very little room to roam and it seemed the only people left around were the higher up mucky-mucks who had been able to avoid the epidemic by locking themselves away behind tremendous amounts of security. This didn’t stop Vickers flare for being rebellious. When he discovered intelligence relating to the mission he was on currently, there was nothing that could be done to stop him from going. General Grabow had informed him he’d be locked up tight if he even thought of leaving the compound. Vickers had told the old man where he could stick it before storming off without a goodbye salute.

Soon after that he stole his way out of the compound like a phantom walking through solid walls. He wondered how they really expected to control him after the training he'd acquired in his years of service. There were very few people alive before the epidemic who could keep up with Vickers. Now, there may not be any.

Vickers weapon of choice was a Penters 328i. Aficionados referred to them as peashooters. They were super impossible to come by. Vickers had two. He had learned to be ambidextrous and use them both at the same time. The units themselves were very small and strapped to the palm of your hand. This way they allowed a person to still use his fingers to perform any manner of activity. The barrel curled over between the thumb and pointer which made them deadly accurate; at least up to fifty feet. After that they got a bit dicey. The trigger was on the inside of the device against the palm and the way to fire was to make a fist and squeeze sharply. The weapon was semi-automatic which allowed for rapid firing. Accidental discharge was certainly possible, but as an expert in its use, Vickers had never done so. Of course, proper use of the safety helped a lot.

Bullets for the Penters were tiny. However, if you could get explosive rounds or dumdums, which was his personal choice, the damage done was extensive nonetheless. On the positive side, the tiny ammunition made for smaller clips which could be easily carried en masse without weighing a soldier down. Each clip had twelve rounds. Vickers had custom made bandoliers that held these clips instead of shotgun shells. There were twenty-five pouches per belt. Including the clips in the weapons themselves Vickers had six hundred and twenty-four single shots on him when at full capacity.

But, when would an agent ever need to make six hundred and twenty-four accurate rapid fire shots at close range in a single encounter? When one was facing a zombie swarm, naturally.

Ever since the infestation the previous year one of the most prized of commodities was ammunition. Luckily, the US government, or what was left of it, had it in spades and still possessed the ability to produce more to satisfy any necessity. Vickers shuttered to imagine if he were a Russian agent somewhere out there in the frozen waste lands of Moscow or St. Petersburg knowing that when he inevitably expended that last bullet there would be no more forthcoming. Yet, there were always more undead…

Vickers leapt into the tiny tunnel which held the capsule. It was practically a small river. He hadn’t expected that. Somewhere along the length of the shaft a water main must have ruptured. That was the only thing that he could think of to account for this sort of flooding. It wouldn’t effect travel any, but it did wash off the aquanet that covered his clothing. That meant he was more vulnerable to zombie attack. It was a good thing he’d kept his precious cargo hidden in the corridor that had brought him here.

It was unknown how the undead developed and retained their exquisite sense of smell. But one thing was certain; they sure had it and could use it to sniff out the living with uncanny ease. For some reason one particular alcohol based hairspray was capable of covering a human’s scent from those walking corpses. Aquanet was a godsend! But, it wasn’t completely infallible. Well, from the vast research Vickers had done he knew he only had an hour, maybe a bit more to complete his mission anyway. This would be all over shortly whether the zombies ferreted him out here in the tunnel or not. Still, it would be easier if he could avoid them for a little while longer.

Opening the capsule was far more difficult then he’d expected and at least ten minutes were wasted before he discovered how to pop the hatch. Once inside he quickly used the computer override to break into the system and readjust the coordinates. This would take the pod directly back to headquarters. Good. He reached into his waterproof pack and pulled out his walkie talkie. That’s when he heard it. It could have been anything. Heck, there could be rats in this place scurrying about and knocking things over. Vickers, though, was the type of man who never worked in ‘could be’s’. He would be certain before exposing his cargo to any sort of danger. The high beam flashlight came out next. He ducked down to the lip of the tunnel so that only his eyes emerged above it and with the electric torch, scanned in the direction of the noise he’d heard. It was mostly unnecessary since the clamor of shuffling feet and crashes of objects being clumsily knocked to the ground filled the place seconds later. He’d been discovered and by the sound of it, there was the possibility he’d need to use all of his six hundred and twenty-four bullets.

The shuttle was in a place particularly devoid of living humans so the undead in the area were exceptionally starved. That’s why it seemed the passageway was suddenly crawling with rotted flesh. At least a few of them were hoping to get lucky with a fresh meal.

Vickers extended his arms into firing position and waited. It was best to let the entire hoard creep in close before blasting them, but he didn’t necessarily have that kind of time before the pod needed to be out of this hell hole, cargo safely tucked inside. The damned things were so slow it could take them forever to find him in hiding, mostly submerged in the transportation shaft.

He carefully placed his wrists on the lip of the tunnel so as not to trigger his weapons and climbed out of the water. If the zombies noticed the movement they didn’t show it. However, the scent of live meat didn’t go undetected for more then a second or two. As if the few hundred zombies who now crowded the building were all attached to the same string tied through their noses, hundreds of heads turned up in unison and the room filled with the sound of sniffing.

Vickers didn’t wait for the heads to snap in his direction before he began firing. Headless bodies hit the ground at an alarming rate and it wasn’t long before undead were literally climbing over piles of truly dead to get at him.

The noise from his gun was deafening. The stench around him was stifling, but he didn’t allow either of those things or anything else to affect his coldly precise and methodical execution of the horrible torrent of beasts that continually flooded toward him.

Every so often the shots would abate for the briefest time it took for his fingers to slide a clip from one of the compartments along a bandolier on his chest and jam it into the slot on a gun, the used one having barely fallen to clatter on the cement ground and bounce away. At one point while reloading he was aware enough that he noticed there was no clink and rattle from the discarded clip. He glanced down just in time to see that it had landed on the back of a zombie that had crawled up behind him and was just about to take a bite out of his achilles tendon. With other undead directly before his face he never stopped firing at them while whipping his leg from the clutches of danger and jackknifing his heel into the skull of his enemy with a sickening crunch that splattered brains and gore all over his shoe and pant leg.

Vickers was so intent on his actions he was startled when he realized that he’d used the last clips on the front of his bandoliers. He ceased firing and glanced around. The zombies were still coming at him, but the throng had abated quite a bit. The closest ones were thirty feet away with a mountain of rotted, dead flesh between them. He backed up toward the closest wall while he unstrapped the bandoliers, turned them over, and reattached them. That accomplished, he resumed his assault. Shortly thereafter all motion in the room stopped beside his own.
He would have to move fast. He could tell that he had only a scant few minutes remaining and that was cutting it too close. He reached for his radio again. If more zombies came he’d simply have to destroy them while finishing up him mission. When the walkie talkie came out Vickers spoke a few soft words into it.

About a minute later Jennifer emerged from the same hidden passageway that Vickers had come through. She was momentarily shocked by all the gore and mess surrounding her dad but she recovered quickly and ran into his arms. The smell of the aquanet nearly choked him, but he didn’t care at all. He lifted his ten year old daughter up into the air and placed her in a seated position in the capsule.

“Are you ready, honey?” he asked while buckling the straps that would secure her during the two hour ride that would transport her to safety.

She nodded solemnly and then asked, “Are you sure you’re going to be able to find mom too?”

“Of course I will. Now give me a kiss.”

She did and a hug as well that he was forced to pull himself out of after too much time had passed. There was only one button to press to get the pod on its way. Vickers told her to punch it the moment he closed the hatch. She didn’t want to leave him. He didn’t want that either. He slammed the door shut and a second later the shuttle cruised off through the water slowly gaining speed that would eventually reach hundreds of miles per hour.

He had set up things for her for when she got to headquarters. Favors had been called in. Trustworthy people were in place. Jennifer would be well taken care of. She would never have to submit to authority or anyone at all if she didn’t want to, in her life. Vickers had made quite sure of that.

As for her mother, Vickers’ wife Lorraine, she’d given her life to keep their daughter unharmed until he could find her. She’d done her job just as he’d done his. God knew he wished he could have located them in time and gotten them both back to the safety of the compound. It brought a tear to his eye to think of her and even worse to imagine her last moments.

Still, he’d not lied to his child; he would find her. The scratch on his leg caused by the bite from a few days ago had been incredibly slow to take affect. Slow, but inevitable. He could feel his body changing under his skin even now. Any second he expected to lapse into coma. Shortly thereafter he would reawaken as a zombie. Of course he’d never let it go that far. He would find his wife first by using one of the two hundred or so rounds left in his Penters 328i.

Vickers had never been much for procrastinating. He lifted his right hand to his head. It was almost like a salute.

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