He began to weigh the option of just sitting tight, not moving, not firing, maybe sneaking back into the cab, watching to see how this all played out. There was a chance that the three hunters on top could defeat the eighteen or so zombies struggling to get at them. He felt pretty good about his decision of indecision, right up until one of the zombies scaled the hood all the way to the perch and bit a mouthful from Darren’s thigh before he could wrest his leg away.
‘It bit me! It fucking bit me!’ Darren screamed. Again, Zurgens observed, as James backed away from the trouble, it was Carla that put a bullet in to the zombie’s neck, blowing enough of the ligature away that the head fell to the side without the adequate support to keep it upright. The zombie wobbled off the hood and out of the fight, not quite dead yet, but the human would be, once the virus wore off.
‘You’ll live,’ Carla said, taking a cursory glance at the wound. ‘Now start firing!’
‘I’m going to be a zombie!’ Darren cried.
‘Not if we win,’ Carla said. ‘The doctor has an antidote.’
‘Damn she’s fast on her feet,’ Zurgens whispered; she’d said it so convincingly he almost believed her himself. Kinzer had told the Reynolds, Zurgens, and his brother that there was an opportunity for the virus to be contracted by a bite, but as of yet he had not found the proper test subject with the appropriate genetic markers to allow this. He thought the chance was somewhere in the five percent range, but without enough studies he could not be sure. And since they were testing the lethality of a disease, it was rather difficult to come by volunteers. Plus, it was easier to control a part-time zombie, especially with their limited supply of subjects, and much safer for the lab crew. Though the doctor thought the chance of an injected zombie spreading the virus was low, he postulated that a ‘true’ zombie would be able to propagate the contagion at nearly one hundred percent.
These zombies represented far too much profit to be used for experiments. Until today, they’d had all the safeguards they needed to make sure no hunter ever came into direct contact with a zombie. So Carla was likely ninety-five percent correct that Darren would survive the bite, if they survived the battle. James Jenkins, the Great White Hunter, had ducked down, and from Zurgens’ point of view, he seemed to be trying to get under his seat.
Carla scoffed at the man. ‘Get your ass up!’ she yelled. His hands were over his ears and he winced with every gunshot report. Two more zombies had gone up the hood but Darren was ready for them. He shot one in the knee, sending it sprawling away, and the second bullet ripped through the side of the face of Tendra, completely blowing out that side of her jaw. James tentatively got back into the fight; Zurgens could see the shake in his barrel from his vantage point.
‘Jesus, I slept with her last night! I thought they said women weren’t infected?’
‘Things have apparently changed.’ Carla was shoving bullets into her magazine.
‘This is bad, this is really bad. We’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and I have twenty rounds and a five round capacity magazine.’
‘There’s only a few left. As soon as we take care of them we’ll head back to camp.’
‘Will there be flights out of here? I don’t want to be stuck on this godforsaken continent.’
‘The continent doesn’t want you to be stuck on it either,’ Carla said. ‘More shooting, less griping.’
Darren was nearly placing the barrel of his weapon directly on foreheads. He was concerned that one of the zombies might attempt to wrest it away from him, but bullets were getting precariously low and he could not afford to waste on a kill-shot miss. Unlike what he knew from movies and books, it did appear that wounds to the chest caused debilitating damage within the zombies. They didn’t die outright but the heavy sucking sounds from their exposed ribcages as they fell to the ground seemed to indicate they were out of the fight.
‘I’m out,’ Darren said as he caved in the skull of the man who had served him ice cold beer the previous evening.
‘Take numb-nuts’ rifle. He keeps putting bullets in the dirt, he’s shaking so much.’
Jenkins did not protest when his friend grabbed the weapon. If anything, he was relieved.
‘I...I think my hand is broken. Can’t grip it right.’
Darren said nothing as he checked the magazine and the safety. ‘You have any more bullets?’
‘Just what you have.’
‘Carla, I have four rounds.’
‘I’m down to my last two or so.’
‘Well, unless they line up single file there will still be four left over.’
The surviving zombies cared not at all about their fallen comrades. If anything, it spurred them on even harder. As of yet, they had not tried the hood again, but it was only a matter of time. When the hunters had expended their last rounds, five zombies remained.
‘Now or never, Zurgens,’ he murmured to himself through gritted teeth. ‘Time to put your big boy pants on.’ His pistol was out and aimed straight forward. He walked slowly towards his target. ‘Six bullets, five zombies. This oughta get interesting.’
‘It’s Zurgens! I’ve always liked that man!’ Jenkins said. ‘Kill them! Kill them, please!’
‘Shut the fuck up, you little weasel,’ Zurgens hissed. He wanted to get as close as he could, maybe kill two of them before they even knew he was there. But all of Jenkins’ animated pointing had alerted the zombies to the fact that something was going on. ‘If I have a bullet left, I’m putting it in your knee, you idiot.’ His voice was barely louder than expelled air.
One zombie turned to look at what Jenkins was so excited about. Zurgens was not happy with the sign of intelligence that one small action displayed. Dogs, for all their strengths, were widely believed to not understand the concept of pointing. And just five seconds ago Zurgens would have said zombies were not as smart as canines. He would never get the opportunity to shatter Jenkins’ knee. A zombie came around from the other side of the truck. Zurgens could only imagine that it had climbed the tire before jumping up to the rooftop. It had grabbed a clump of Jenkins’ hair and, as it fell backwards, it dragged Jenkins over with it. A piercing scream was cut short as the zombie ripped out his vocal cords. Zurgens presumed the monster wanted to eat in peace.
‘Fuck.’ His heart began to pound heavily in his chest as the first of them came his way. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her as he fired. ‘I’m sorry for putting both of us in this situation.’ The first bullet punched a hole into the top of her shoulder, roughly the size of a fist. Her clavicle was shattered into pieces, thick ropes of muscle fell out onto her back. The force of the impact spun her to the side and she stumbled four or five steps but still kept coming forward. The other three, having been alerted to the presence of a new food source, began to head his way as well. He realized he had one bullet for each of them. If he was anything less than perfect, he would be receiving a big old ‘told you so’ from his dearly departed brother very soon.
His second shot struck the center of her chin, severing her spinal column and damaging her cortex, her lifeless body raised a small impact cloud of dust as she hit the ground. Two zombies were in a dead heat to make it to him for the choicest bits, but, luckily for Zurgens, one got tangled up by the newly deceased barmaid. Zurgens was concerned his next shot landed too low when he saw the jaw of Grimmons, the baggage clerk, torn off by the heavy round. Sure, he’d be hard-pressed to inflict a bite wound now, but he could still be problematic. Zurgens was elated when the man fell to the ground. He slowly crept closer to the body, attempting to ascertain whether it was dead or not.
The zombie that had tripped was now speeding across the ground on all fours and, if anything, it was faster in this mode of locomotion. Even if it wasn’t, it was still completely unnerving to Zurgens to see what was once a human move that way. He had to steady his hand to make sure he put a head shot into the beast that was crawling at him. Its head was moving from side to side, spanning nearly a foot as it swung back and fort
h like a target at a shooting gallery. Zurgens lined up, steadied himself, and timed his shot. The bullet hit the crown of the head slightly to the left, shearing off a slice as neatly as if a katana had been used. The zombie rolled three or four times and was still.
‘Two zombies...you’ve got this.’ A fat drop of salty sweat fell into his right eye just as the next zombie hurdled over the dead crab-like thing. Zurgens had not been expecting it to launch upwards like it had. His shot struck the zombie in the groin, splitting its pelvis into four fragments. It howled in rage and pain as it crashed forward into Zurgens. He was able to get his gun up and under its chin. The explosion ripped the top half of its head clean off and sent it rolling across the dirt. Zurgens knew ‘clean’ was the wrong term—he was bathed in detritus; blood and brain covered most of his face, but the meaning was conveyed. He was nearly blinded by the sheer volume of viscous fluid coating him and he still had one zombie to contend with. The zombie that had taken Jenkins down, now had his sights set on fresher meat. He’d been bitten by a dog once; he wondered if a zombie bite would be worse.
It was worse. Infinitely worse. The German Shepherd had pierced the flesh, but hadn’t been intent on eating him. The zombie was compressing the muscle in his arm to the point that he reckoned it would rupture before actual penetration happened. The zombie clamped its teeth together and shook its head violently from side to side, taking a small chunk of Zurgens with him. Zurgens began to blindly punch out, striking the monster wherever he could in an effort to get it away from him. He’d not been expecting the sound of a shot and certainly not from so close. For a moment he thought perhaps he had counted his rounds wrong.
‘It’s okay, Zurgens, it’s me, Darren. He’s dead, they’re all dead.’
‘Fuck that hurts.’ Zurgens took his shirt off and ripped it in two. With one half he cleaned his face as best he could, with the other he tied a tourniquet around his upper arm. ‘Get your shirt off; you’re going to need one too. I don’t want you to bleed out before we get back.’
‘For the antidote?’ Darren was searching for an answer.
‘Sure,’ Zurgens replied.
‘Am I going to need to worry about you two?’ Carla was still on the roof, her rifle poised. She had held one round back and could kill Darren before he had an opportunity to ‘turn.’ Zurgens no longer had a weapon and right now he wasn’t sure if he’d stop her even if he had. She was, after all, the only one who’d avoided being bitten.
‘We’ll be fine. There’s only a five percent transmission rate.’ He said to Carla.
‘You said during the safety briefing that if we got bit we’d be zombies.’
‘Ever hear of marketing?’ Zurgens asked as he tied the tourniquet tightly to Darren’s leg. ‘How scary would it have been if I’d said ‘Don’t worry about getting bit, folks. There’s little chance you’ll get sick.’ Much easier to keep everyone in line if there’s the threat of becoming a target yourself’
‘Oh right now I’d say it’s still very scary.’ Darren said, deadpan.
Zurgens couldn’t help but let out a little stress in the form of a small laugh. ‘I guess you’re right.
‘I’ll drive. Let’s go.’ Carla got behind the wheel.
‘I’m sorry brother. I’ll be back to bury you.’ Zurgens kissed his first two fingers and placed them on his brother’s already cooled forehead.
Carla sped away from the scene of carnage. Darren was in the backseat and refused to look back; Zurgens couldn’t help but do so. All of this was his fault. He’d found a way to keep the hunt going and it had cost him his brother’s life. He realized then that he wasn’t the only one that had lost someone.
‘Are you okay?’ He turned to Carla.
‘Samuel was a tender man, a good man. I will grieve later. Right now I just want to make it through the day.’
‘Fair enough.’ Zurgens picked up the microphone. ‘Doc, this is Zurgens. Can you hear me?’
‘Tell him we need the antidote,’ Darren winced.
‘You want to tell him or should I?’ Carla asked.
‘Tell me what?’ Darren asked in alarm.
‘There is no antidote. Yes, I know what she said. The transmission rate is so low and we supposedly had safeguards ensuring no one ever got bit, so we never had one developed,’ Zurgens informed the man.
‘Well that’s just damned irresponsible isn’t it! You take our money and put us in a flat out perilous situation and then don’t have a way for us to get out of it when it all goes wrong? What kind of operation are you running here? I just lost two of my best damned friends and I’m probably going to lose this fucking leg!’
‘I’m sorry about your friends. Truly I am. But what exactly do you think you agreed to when you signed those documents we handed you upon arrival?’
‘Not the right to kill me, for god’s sake!’
‘You should have read the fine print,’ Zurgens said before trying to hail the doctor again. ‘Doc, this is Zurgens. We’re coming in hot. One of our guests has been bitten, as have I. We’ve lost Karl and three guests. Going to need medical attention as soon as we pull in. Should be there in under a half hour.’
Zurgens could hardly contain his relief when the radio crackled and Kinzer’s voice came through. ‘I’ll be waiting.’ Then there was silence.
Darren was losing his mind. ‘That’s it? I’ll be fucking waiting? Where’s the airlift to the hospital? What the fuck is going on here? What a fucking circus you have going on here!’
‘Mr. Wheats, I can assure you that you do not want to find yourself in a Botswana hospital. And for now, as you pointed out, it appears that the zombie threat has been neutralized.’
Back at camp, Kinzer stitched them up and gave a full spectrum of antibiotics and opiates, assuring Mr. Wheats that he would be fine. It was the sedative, and not the doctor’s assurances, that finally got the man to calm down.
‘Zurgens, I cannot be completely sure for at least another twenty-four hours whether either of you will become infected. It will be necessary for you to be quarantined. I will retrieve your brother’s body, but for now you both need to be in the cell,’ Kinzer said.
Zurgens looked over at the cage, a heavy feeling of dread and apprehension washed over him.
‘Come, come Zurgens. One day, that is all. When I am certain that you are clear, we will resume business as usual.’
Zurgens knew the doctor was right about having to be locked up but he could not shake the feeling that the end was close. There would never be ‘business as usual’ again. Zurgens dragged Darren in with himself and pulled the door closed. Kinzer activated the magnetic locks.
‘I’ll be back in an hour. I am truly sorry about Karl; he was a brilliant man. We spent many a night discussing theorems and postulating hypotheses on all manner of things. What a terrible waste.’
‘Are we talking about the same man?’
‘I do not believe you knew him as I did.’ The doctor said as he exited the medical facility.
He had no sooner left when the door opened back up. It was Carla.
‘We need to talk,’ she said.
‘It appears I have the time,’ he told her, he was sitting on a bench contemplating everything that had gone wrong.
‘Our friend?’ she asked pointing to Darren.
‘Sleeping quite contentedly, lucky bastard.’
‘I...learned a trick many years ago—how to place a name with a face so I would never be in the socially awkward position of coming up on someone I’d met previously and not remembering their name.’
‘That’s a handy tool.’
‘What I’m saying, Zurgens, is that I knew everyone I shot today. I find it strange that Z-Hunt would turn their entire staff into zombies so that rich wankers like us could shoot them. I see the wheels in your head turning, struggling to spin this some way. I’ll let you off the hook on that, but you can’t deny it. While you and Mr. Wheats were getting repaired, I went back out to the site. I took pictures of my dearly
departed and the faces of everyone on the ground out there. I then took screen grabs of Z-Hunt’s web pages, which show bios and photos of your entire staff.’
Zurgens eyes grew wide for a moment.
‘Now, I’m not entirely sure what type of man you are and what might happen to me when you are released from that cell, so I took some necessary precautions to ensure my safety. Don’t worry how; that’s not your concern. Just know that I am protected, should anything...befall me.’
‘What do you want, Mrs. Weatherford?’
‘What do you believe my dead husband to be worth? Now I do realize that you are only an employee yourself, so naturally you’ll want to discuss this with your boss. I’m willing to settle relatively inexpensively. I want ten million in gold. This is not negotiable. I’m leaving my account numbers on the table, and if it’s not deposited by this time tomorrow, I will rain holy hell down upon this entire establishment, you included. Please, don’t get up. I’ve already made arrangements for transportation, and I can honestly say I hope I never have the displeasure of meeting you again.’
He watched her ample backside walk out. ‘How much more fucked up can this day get?’ Zurgens asked the passed-out Wheats. He’d not really meant to tempt the fates with that statement and wished he could withdraw it. Zurgens sat back. He let his mind wander. At some point he became acutely aware that an hour had passed, and then another. Now he was concerned. Either something had happened to the doctor, or Reynolds had told Kinzer not to let him out of the cell. Either way was bad news. More time passed; Darren was beginning to stir. Zurgens moved to the front of the cage trying to think of a way to get out. The release switch was over thirty feet away and underneath a heavy plastic panel. He was contemplating tossing a boot to see if he could flip the panel up, when the facility door opened.