Zombpunk: STEM

  "What is it?" Eydie screamed, following the shadow in the air.

  "A-10!" Prime called out.

  "A what?"

  "A-10! Warthog!" Prime pushed forward, shoving his way through the crowd.

  "What's that?" Eydie followed in the wake Prime created.

  "Tank killer!" Prime yelled back over his shoulder.

  Eydie's eyes shot to the sky, the full realization hitting her. "They wouldn't!"

  "Just keep moving!" Prime began to bulldoze forward, knocking bodies out of his path. The others tried to stay behind him, but the crowd was beginning to panic. The black shadow in the sky was banking, turning for another pass.

  It came in low and fast, perpendicular to the bridge, barking a tongue of fire from its nose. The high explosive 30mm cannon shells cut into the bridge behind them, slicing the bridge deck in two. Screams of fear and pain erupted from the crowd as the mass of bodies began to surge forward. What had started as a somber march, turned into a panicked sprint. People were shedding belongings to lighten their load as the tank killer circled for another pass.

  The second strafe of fire cut across the nose of the fleeing crowd. Running figures exploded in half as the shells cut through them, impacting the bridge deck. The forward momentum of the crowd halted as the cascade of explosions enveloped the bridge in front of it. Concrete dust and body parts rained down on the hesitating mob.

  The tank killer banked to the east, slowly circling. When it was far away, out in the darkness over Mercer Island, it lined up parallel with the floating bridge. Slowly, it began to dive, lowering it nose at the stalled crowd.

  "Jump!" Prime screamed, pulling off his backpack and dropping to the ground. He threw his shotgun aside and forced his way to the edge of the bridge. When the crowd proved resistant to his intentions, he lowered his shoulder and charged.

  The others followed, picking through the panicked crowd. The airplane was closing in, the roar of its engines again deafening. At the bridge's edge, Prime threw himself over the railing into the dark, churning water. Kevin and Beat followed suit, leaping over the low concrete rise and vanishing into the deep.

  Eydie looked at Elder with panicked eyes. Elder was struggling out of the straps of his backpack. Above them, the tank killer's cannon barked to life. With this pass, the explosions chewed through the long axis of the gathered mass, bisecting those attempting to flee the city.

  Bodies and concrete exploded all around Eydie and Elder. Elder grabbed Eydie by the shoulders and threw her over the railing. Elder followed, still tangled in his backpack.

  He hit the freezing water with a large splash, instantly sinking. Under the surface, he frantically wrestled with the clips of his backpack. Finally, as his lungs screamed in pain, the straps came free and the backpack fell away. Elder kicked hard, climbing for the surface, but in the pitch black it was hard to tell up from down.

  Elder's body cried out for air.

  #

  A hand grabbed Elder by the hair, the pain shocking him back to full consciousness. A light shone in his eyes. Elder blinked. The roar of the tank killer's engine had died away, replaced by the more subtle rumble of a gas-powered motor. The face of the man who held Elder's hair came into focus. Elder was still submerged up to his waist in the icy water, but the man had hauled Elder's upper torso onto a cold, hard platform.

  "Another fucking Stem," a voice said.

  Elder flailed in a panic. He tried to speak, but his teeth were chattering from the cold. Elder reached out and took full hold of the platform that thrust out over the water. He held himself there, half in-half out of the water, and looked up. The man holding his hair let go, stepping back. There was a sound of a shotgun being cycled and Elder quickly looked to his right.

  There, another person had been pulled out of the lake, placed in a seated position on the platform. A man stood behind it, a shotgun lowered to the back of the person's head. In the instant the gun fired, the head evaporated into red mist.

  The man with the shotgun casually pushed the now headless body back into the lake with his foot.

  "This one, too," said the man who'd pulled Elder out of the water. And the man with the twelve-gauge turned toward Elder.

  "No, no!" Elder mumbled through frozen lips.

  The shotgun came up. Elder looked up into its gaping barrel. The man worked the gun's action.

  "No, no, not him! I know him!" a familiar voice called. The barrel came down and Elder was pulled fully out of the water.

  His shirt was roughly ripped open and his chest examined. When no sign of a plug was found, the two men moved on down the platform. Elder was left to shiver in the cold.

  "Elder? How you doing?" The same voice came. Elder looked up to see Sweet Beat looking down at him. She was wrapped in a towel that she quickly pulled off her shoulders and wrapped around Elder. Dressed only in her underwear, she helped Elder to his feet.

  "What the hell?" Elder asked, his teeth still chattering, pulling the towel tightly around him. The two men had fished another body of the water. They examined it, disliked what they saw, and decapitated it with the shotgun.

  "Stems," Beat said, putting an arm around Elder. "They've got to make sure no Stems get aboard."

  "Aboard?" Elder looked around. He was standing on a low diving platform hanging from the rear of a large, luxury vessel. Beat and Elder walked up a small set of fiberglass stairs onto an aft deck, where a small group of sopping wet, disheveled Pukes were being tended to by a small army of uniformed personnel. "What is this?"

  "The Little John," Beat said. A uniformed woman brought Beat another towel, a large, fluffy, flannel affair that Beat quickly wrapped around herself.

  "The what? Little?" Elder looked up. Above the aft deck, a small helicopter was perched on a landing deck. Above that, the flying bridge could be seen, bristling with antenna.

  "It's one of Drew Arrow's yachts," Beat said. "When they saw the attack, they maneuvered across the lake to rescue any survivors."

  "The Tank Killer!" Elder said in shock, remembering. He turned around, looked off the rear of the ship. The floating bridge was no more than a hundred yards away, burning in the dark.

  "The A-10 crashed into the bridge on its fourth pass," Beat relayed. "She nosedived into the deck. The whole thing will sink now," Beat said without emotion. "Eventually."

  Beat took Elder's hand and turned him around, leading him towards a set of frosted glass doors at the fore of the deck. They opened automatically, Star Trek style, as they approached. Inside was a lush lounge lined along both bulkheads by long, leather couches. A burning fireplace sat in the center, near a large, circular bar.

  Prime, soaking wet, was sitting at a bar stool, sipping a martini, looking like he'd died and gone to heaven. He gave Elder a nod as he entered.

  "They have orders to only rescue the Pukes," Beat continued, stepping away from Elder. She sat down next to Kevin, who was sprawled out on one of the couches. She picked up his head and placed it in her lap, tenderly. "Drew Arrow is only interested in saving the Pukes."

  "Too right," Prime said between sips of his drink. "One of those fucking things aboard, and we'd all be dead."

  "Where's Eydie?" Elder asked, scanning the lounge.

  Beat pointed to the ceiling.

  "What?" Elder said, looking up.

  "Talking to the captain."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah," Beat smiled. "Maybe you should go have a word, too."

  #

  Elder was led up to the bridge by an excruciatingly polite woman, dressed in a uniform bearing the Arrowsoft logo. She asked three times if Elder would like something to eat. He did, but was far too curious to pause for a meal. She held the door for Elder Tull as he stepped onto the bridge, still wrapped in his fluffy towel.

  Eydie stood before a mass of blinking controls, the dark lake beyond the large windows moving by slowly. The Little John was underway once more, having rescued everyone it was going to rescue from the attack on the bridg
e.

  "Elder!" Eydie said with surprise, hopping across the bridge to hug Elder. Elder hugged her back, picking her up clean off the deck. "You're alive. It was a hard sell convincing the crew we weren't Stems. Luckily, Sweet Beat was doing most of the talking, and was mostly naked."

  "She got to me just in time," Elder replied.

  She kissed him softly, as if they'd been apart for days.

  "You should meet our captain," she said with sly pleasure once they broke off the kiss. Eydie led Elder to a large, high-backed chair that sat mid-console in the bridge. The chair turned as Elder approached, revealing its occupant: a small, middle-aged, gray-bearded man. Elder was instantly starstruck.

  It was Drew Arrow himself.

  "Good evening," Drew Arrow said, holding out a hand.

  "You're Drew Arrow," Elder said in disbelief, taking the hand and shaking it.

  "That I am," Drew Arrow smiled. "You'll forgive me," he said, turn his seat back to the controls. "Even this ship doesn't sail itself."

  Elder stepped up beside the captain's chair as Drew Arrow returned his attention to the wheel.

  "Err, thank you," Elder blurted out, realizing he hadn't already said it.

  "You are welcome. You and your friends are very lucky, from what this young lady tells me." Drew Arrow turned to Eydie. "She says you were at the Opera House? Where it all began?"

  "Yes," Eydie looked at Elder. "We think, somehow, we caused this."

  "Yes," Drew Arrow nodded, without a hint of sarcasm or irony. "We believe that it all began at the beginning, as it were. A Cascade Psycho-Social Terminal Event – I have far too many eggheads working for me – they suspect that the fault began in the core node of the Stem array: serial number one. All of this began with Doctor Raul. He was at the Opera House, yes?"

  "Yes," Eydie confirmed.

  "Stem array?" Elder asked.

  "Hmm, yes, well it's only a working theory, mind you, but it does explain events. The Stem, you see, are all interconnected."

  "What, like a computer?"

  "Yes, exactly. For diagnostic reasons... to pick up software patches... for updates... we've reversed engineered the Whole Life Interface as far as we could in our labs. We know it has primitive wireless capabilities. We suspect, perhaps, that Whole Life Inc. included the technology surreptitiously. Their links to the Big U have always been murky... What future Communist dictator wouldn't want print outs of the biometrics of each and every one of his citizens, after all...?

  "Anyway, we theorize there might have been some crosstalk. Nodes speaking directly to other nodes, if you know what I mean-"

  "Ad hoc?" Elder volunteered.

  "Yes, very good," Drew looked up from his controls, impressed. "Well, if Doctor Raul had a Psycho-Social Terminal Event – he basically went bat shit crazy for some reason – then that event dropped like a pebble in a pond, radiating out to all the stems within communication distance; those stems, in turn, passed the event along to all stems within communication distance to them; and so on. Creating an array."

  "A cascade failure," Elder added, understanding.

  "Each bulb popped as the surge passed through it..."

  "Then it can't be stopped?" Elder realized.

  "No, it's peer to peer, now. After event zero, there's no reset."

  "It'll spread like a virus," Eydie said. "Each sick Stem infecting a thousand more. As long as two Stems are within communication distance, it will keep on spreading."

  "They're done for." Drew said without emotion. "Perhaps you'll understand now the harsh measures that need to taken," he cocked his head back, aft. "On the aft deck... No Stem is immune."

  "Yes," Elder nodded.

  "The only hope now is Bannock," Drew said with a swell of pride. "Separate ourselves from the Stems, wait out the contagion. With the power grid offline, there's the possibility the Stems will run out of power before they destroy the whole planet."

  "But," Elder remembered, "I saw one... eating..."

  "Eating?" Drew looked up in surprise. "Eating what?"

  "A cat – flesh."

  "Oh, I see," Drew replied.

  "Why would it do that?" Elder asked.

  "I think our troubles might be bigger than we previously understood. But it changes nothing. Bannock will still be your goal. Bannock and nothing else."

  "Our goal?" Eydie was surprised. "You're not coming with us?"

  "Oh, no. There's still much I need to do here, close to the city. You shall go to Bannock, with the other rescued Pukes. I will remain behind to pick up the stragglers. My radio message is still playing. Perhaps there will be more that will attempt to make it to my estate, and safety."

  "But after the tank killer, you won't be safe aboard this ship."

  "Perhaps. But I will not be aboard this ship," Drew said theatrically. "This is The Little John. She's just the launch. That is my boat, right there." Drew Arrow pointed out the large windshield in front of him. In the dark, the lights of a massive vessel were approaching – a ship that dwarfed The Little John by many orders of magnitude.

  "Jesus Christ!" Elder murmured.

  "No," Drew Arrow said with obvious pride. "The Robin Hood."

  Chapter 28

  The black sack was pulled roughly off of Nathan's head.

  Nathan gasped for breath, sucking in the freezing, smoke-laced air. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to a panoramic view of the city. Nathan choked back a scream of surprise. He was floating above the city, looking down upon it. A large fire was burning below him, somewhere out in the center of the lake. Nathan looked left and then right and realized he was not floating – he was seated at the opened side doorway of a helicopter, still naked except for his underwear.

  The helicopter was banking over the city. Peters sat on the precipice of the open doorway, no longer dressed in his designer Italian suit. Instead, he sported camo BDU's and an AR rifle slung from a single point harness around his neck. The two special ops goons sat across from Nathan, still cowled by their gas masks.

  Nathan shivered.

  "We're evac'ing everyone," Peters began, leaning forward and looking down at the city far below him. "Seattle's a total write off. This is the last black hawk out of town. Consider yourself lucky."

  "Where are we going?" Nathan asked.

  "Not sure," Peters said without emotion. "Battalion Command. Then maybe a C-17 to Handford. Word is they're setting up SOCOM there, close to the fusion reactors. They take a priority now – protecting them."

  "You sent men to kill me," Nathan said between chattering teeth.

  "No, no," Peters corrected, turning to face Nathan. "That was a... mistake. The Big U security personnel became... overzealous... they've been compromised... by the phage. They had to be taken care of." Peters glanced over his shoulder at the two special ops goons in their gas masks. "Regular army thinks they've found a cure, however. At least a way to offset the symptoms. Massive power infusions to the stem. Megawatts. That's why the civil defense focus has shifted to the fusion reactor network." Peters paused, fixing Nathan with a serious stare. "I'm sorry about Jude," he said, authentically.

  "She..." Nathan searched for the words. "She tried to remove her stem."

  "It can't be removed, Nathan. Once it's been implanted..."

  "She said it was killing us all."

  "She'd been infected, Nathan. She'd gone insane."

  Nathan didn't answer. Peters turned his attention back to the city below him. The fire in the center of the lake seemed to be burning on one of the floating bridges.

  "Why'd you come for me?" Nathan finally asked over the thump of the helicopter blades.

  "If the army is correct, if their hypothesis holds water, then the rate of infection is related to the age of WLI implantation: those who got their stems early are going crazy the fastest. If that's true, then..."

  "Then, I was the last to be implanted..." Nathan finished.

  "They'll want to run tests... the scientists..."

  "I–" Nathan b
egan to object, but thought better of it. He looked at the special ops goons sitting ominously behind their gas masks, and then turned his gaze back to the open doorway. "They're all going to die, aren't they?" he asked no one in particular.

  "Perhaps," Peters replied. "But that would be a blessing..."

  "What?"

  "Those who've died... those whose central nervous systems just burned out from the crazy... they just haven't laid down to die..."

  "What?"

  Peters looked away from the panorama and up at Nathan. "Jude was right. It's the stem. It keeps them moving, controlling them," he said with utter sincerity. "They're like the walking dead now."

  Nathan shivered against the cold.

  Epilogue

  Elder Tull dreamed he was adrift, fishing on a serene lake. The sun was setting majestically in the West as mosquitoes buzzed around him.

  Silently, his float sank below the water. Elder moved smoothly into action. Pulling back on his pole, he hurriedly reeled in his catch. The large bass leapt from the water as Elder climbed to his feet, fighting against the weight on the line. Moments later, he had the fish out of the water and pulled into his small boat.

  In victory, Elder dropped back into his seat, exhausted. The fish flopped at his feet, frantically fighting for breath, spasming and kicking. Its eye stared up at the evening sky, fixed, its mouth gasping.

  Suddenly, Elder was no longer in the boat, but on his knees in the destruction of Westlake Square, the dying Stem woman bloodied and convulsing before him. The echo of the bomb blast still rang in his ears in a high-pitched sustained note. The woman's mouth was moving as if to speak, or gasp for air, but no sound was reaching Elder's ears.

  Then, through ringing in his ears, Elder heard a single word:

  "Murder."

  #

  Elder Tull awoke with a start, sitting up quickly and breathing in hard. He could still hear the ringing in his ears, but he was no longer in Westlake Square. He was sitting next to Eydie on a blanket spread out on a wildflower-covered hillside. He looked down over Bannock sitting sleepily below him.

  The ringing in his ears faded.

  He exhaled and lay down gently beside the still-sleeping Eydie. He watched her purr softly, lost in Elysium, her beautiful face bathed in the warm, early spring sunlight. What a difference six months had made, Elder thought, looking at her sleeping features. All signs of malnutrition had vanished from her face; the hair she'd cut off to disguise herself as a Stem slowly grown out. She was once again the woman that Elder remembered from before the food shortages had begun: young, healthy, and beautiful.