Chapter 12: Chapter 12: Sleeper awake.

I responded to the zombie hunting howls with gunfire. Bullets ripped through them as the targeting reticle swept across them. The combat suit defaulted to what I initially thought was automatic fire but it turned out to be three round bursts. I’d just been holding down the trigger.

The first horde bounded towards me like the others had. They used each other to launch themselves and swung and jumped from whatever surface they could find. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before encountering zombies on Walker.

I kept using the one point of aim even though there were several available. There was no way I could control two guns at once, let alone eight.

The zombies were still hard to hit, and my aim hadn’t gotten much better. The lower recoil kept my aim closer to what I was pointing at and that helped a lot, though.

Like the nightmare I’d had there seemed to be no end of them. I could see more trickling in through the open warehouse door as I kept shooting. The closer they got, the easier it was to hit them.

Then some of them got to close and I had to swat them away. Zombie bodies ruptured and split with the power of the combat suit’s arm and the sharpened edges that struck those eager frontrunners. I swept the gun I was firing around like a broom, killing and knocking away any that fell under fire. Then the magic bullet hose stopped working.

A yellow malfunction light glowed next to the right arm weapon status indicator. I swapped the active weapon to the second gun on that arm. An error report showed briefly in my vision as the faulty mechanism was logged.

For a moment I wondered what a stovepipe had to do with a gun. But the zombies had gotten close again. I swatted and fired, sweeping the living and dead zombies away as I started to push forward. The stasis pods were still in danger of failing at any minute.

I had to use my gauntleted fists to push my way up the corridor. Everywhere I looked were dead zombies and parts of dead zombies with occasional glimpses of live ones. Their maddened visages swiftly joined the ranks of the dead.

They kept trying to get close as I forged a path forward. Every few seconds another zombie would somehow catch sight of me and howl, trying to summon yet more of its brethren. If there were truly no end to them, eventually they would succeed in bringing me down. I would get to see up close how the Security officers had died defending the empty Headquarters section as their bosses fled.

All of a sudden I started to hear a thumping noise. Not the sound of wet body parts bouncing off of me and the bulkheads. It was the turrets! The security station was ahead.

I redoubled me efforts to move forward, using the suit’s propulsion jets in small bursts. A zombie managed to latch itself onto the combat suit’s visor for a moment before I brushed it away with a spiked gauntlet. A black line was left across my visor as it was crushed to death. What was that?

Then another zombie tried the same thing. I swatted it away. A third. I had to keep my left arm up as I shoved my way forward like a man in a windstorm protecting his face as I tried to keep my visor clear. The black line in my vision had grown and now looked like a jagged scratch. Blood and gore probably covered the combat suit from helmet to boots but the sensors that were embedded in the armor worked fine. Except where the black line was.

I stepped into the cafeteria still smashing zombies away with my fist. The second gun on the suit had failed and the third refused to even start firing so I was now on the fourth of eight. There were just over 5,000 bullets left as I’d been firing non-stop every time I saw a zombie I couldn’t punch. It had taken over half my ammunition just to make it halfway to the goal.

It was finally clear enough ahead for me to see. Zombies were crawling out of the food vendors to my left. They completely ignored the turrets at the checkpoint firing at them in their single minded desire to somehow claw their way through the combat suit’s armor and into my flesh.

Heavy slugs from the turret caused them to explode like the devil’s confetti. There were also a few trickling out of the Hospital. I took those under fire as I advanced. My shots still missed more often than they hit at that range.

The checkpoint guns fell silent as I approached and I turned slightly to glance behind me. There were no more zombies coming from the food warehouses. Just a sea of gore and severed limbs, and clouds of blood beginning to coat everything in a red so dark it was nearly black.

It was that moment of quiet that allowed me to hear it. It felt like the calm before the storm. That strange low hissing that I’d heard in the maintenance shaft was growing louder, and fast. I turned to glance back at the Hospital entrance just as three more zombies made an appearance.

They were close enough now that when I shot at them they went limp and became good zombies, no longer an active threat. I turned back around just in time to hear the sound grow suddenly deafening. A zombie hunting howl from several dozen throats at once.

The loose mass of flesh chunks exploded outward in a wave ahead of the horde. This revealed a truly massive horde, packed to the bulkheads and surging forward. The checkpoint turrets opened up a half second before I did. It was like spitting into the wind. The horde simply absorbed all our shots and kept coming.

That was when I remembered the few explosives the cradle had loaded, asking me what kind of grenades I wanted. It was time to learn what “fragmentary” meant. I selected a three round burst, since the guns used that too.

It turned out that fragmentary meant big boom and bigger holes.

The horde swarmed forward. I shot more grenades at it, turning zombies into bloody rags and red-tinted mist. Then they came back again. Then my HUD flashed the alert I’d been dreading. A stasis pod was going into critical shutdown.

I didn’t think. The combat suit could follow simple programming instructions, so I had it fire grenades on a short, five second delay timer and follow that up with shots from every available gun in a clockwise circle down the corridor. Then I exited the combat suit.

There was a pistol and knife above a small pack at eye level as I exited labeled “escape kit.” I snagged it as fast as I could and entered the Hospital at a run. Zombie howls chased me inside, punctuated with the crash of explosives.

I leapt over beds and bodies, using the door frames as a rough ladder to accelerate down the hall. I crashed into the first turn, absorbing the punishing velocity with my legs as I twisted to push off the ceiling and make another turn, this one a long hallway that would get me close to the pod storage room. Zombies stuck their heads out of several rooms ahead of me and howled. I didn’t stop.

The first one to reach me was nothing more than a minor obstacle. Ducking its clumsy grab was faster than killing it so I dove under its outstretched claws. The next one launched itself directly into my path and got a knife in the neck for its trouble.

This slowed me slightly as I used the corpse to launch myself around the third zombie. The fourth I shot several times as it reached for me and I twisted past it, snagging a door frame with my foot and charging forward along the bulkhead.

A growl sounded below me as I felt a clawed hand swipe at my foot but it was too slow to get a grip. I kept running along the wall. Two more zombies ahead of me tried to jump their way into my path. I kicked off to the opposite wall and passed them by, howling and grasping fruitlessly at my passing form inches away. There was no emergency suit to protect me this time. All it would take was one bite.

Three were clustered together just ahead and I shot wildly into the mass as I flattened myself to the ceiling in a long jump. I felt a brief tug on my shirt as I passed and then I was at the final turn. A convenient hospital bed was available so I used that to bleed off some velocity.

Then I grabbed a handy desk corner and hurled myself towards the pod room. The doors were open as I swung myself inside, slapping the door controls to close them behind me. Then I turned to look at the pod room. It was much bigger than it looked on the monitor.

It was also a sea of red lights. Stasis pods that failed containment. Hundreds of them, stacked in rows up to the ceiling going down to the bulkhead. I had made note of the failing pods and had their address designations with me so I hastily scanned the row headers looking for K section. The rows were in alphabetical order. Of course.

I kicked off along the rows until I found the right one then rushed down it. Pod number K-323 was flashing amber alternating with red. I could see it in the distance clustered with three other amber lights. The pod room ran nearly half the length of the Hospital so the distance was not inconsiderable.

The pod racks worked well enough as a launching ladder. I rocketed down the row at speeds that in the back of my mind I knew were going to hurt. I had a solution for that, but it involved pain, too- just less than absorbing the impact with my body.

Three stacks in from K-323 I gripped a pod with my hands and feet as I slid down it, then did the same with next and the one after that. My palms and the sides of my feet and knees burned but I didn’t break a bone or sprain an ankle.

K-323 held a middle aged woman, slender and pale skinned like nearly all who lived in space. She wore a hospital gown and had her hands crossed over her stomach. Her color was slightly blue in the light of the stasis field. I feverishly accessed the pod options and selected the revive and release command.

Nothing happened.

I hit it again and the status lights flickered.

Then I drove my nanites into the pod panel. I rerouted power roughly to the core functions and forced the R/R command to execute. It felt like a giant had punched me in the stomach as energy was ripped from my body and into the pod to complete the command.

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The pod surged to life. The control panel sparked and went dark and smoking, all the lights on the pod went out at once save for the stasis field that was slowly brightening. Then the pod lid clicked and drifted open ever so slightly. The woman inside did not stir.

I gasped as my vision blurred and I felt fatigue try to bring me down. I forced it away with the strength of long habit. I’d worked all nighters many more times than I could count before. Gone without food and sleep for as long as it took to get the job done.

Just another project, I told myself.

I opened the lid fully and my personal HUD snapped an alert coming from the woman in the pod.

DELIVER TO STASIS POD IMMEDIATELY. DELIVER TO STASIS POD IMMEDIATELY. MEDICAL EMERGENCY. DELIV-

I spun around, looking up and down the row wildly. There. A cluster of blue lights. Empty pods. I stuffed the knife in my mouth and picked up the woman, turning and jumping down to the blue lights. I kept the pistol in hand, just in case.

The first blue pod was occupied. An older man, also wearing a blue hospital gown. The second a young woman. The third was a zombie.

I stabilized the woman above me and hurried through the control panel to open the pod. I didn’t dare speed it up. That might damage the pod that this woman needed. The seconds ticked by slowly, but the pod opened.

The zombie locked eyes with me and took a breath to howl. Before it could scream at me my knife punched through its eye and into its brain. I roughly dragged it out of the pod. Then I placed the woman inside as swiftly and gently as I could. The pod lid closed automatically, the stasis field illuminating her features in soft blue once more.

There were three others on the verge of critical failure. I only stopped to pull my knife out of the dead zombie before I hauled my tired body away to the next pod. TU-126.

There was a small space at the top of the racks, but it was enough for me to slip through and make my way from row to row. TU-126 was on the top of the rack. And it held a zombie, so I skipped that one and went on to the next. Stasis field failure would do for that one without the need for a knife.

TU-222 was an older gentleman, dark hair salted with gray, tall and thin. I’d found another blue pod empty close by, and the revive and release command activated without a hiccup this time. I was ready for the medical emergency announcement when it triggered.

Out he came and up to the waiting pod. The man’s eyes fluttered briefly and he mumbled something as I carried him.

“Sh. Just changing you to a new stasis pod. You’ll be back up and at ‘em before you know it.”

I don’t know why I said that but it seemed to work. The man sighed and stopped stirring, his breathing slow and even. I put him in and closed the pod lid.

The last pod was on W-026, not far. It was also on the top level. It was the work of a moment to work my way over to it. This one held a little girl. Curly dark hair, freckles, button nose. There was a little doll in the pod with her.

I was reaching for the pod controls when I heard it. The howl.

My heart hammered in my chest as adrenaline shoved my fatigue down roughly. There were four of them. They’d clustered together, as zombies were often want to do. A mini horde. I raised my pistol to fire, but stopped.

There were blue lights directly behind them. Even if I hit them there was a risk that a stasis pod would be struck.

A good guy doesn’t shoot innocent bystanders. I was trying to be that guy.

But I wasn’t yet because I could feel my hands shake and the cold spike of fear stab into my chest. Good guys are strong and don’t get scared of being eaten alive. I still couldn’t shoot though. Not yet.

I pushed off to another rack as they closed. I could see the nest they’d likely been using below me. There were bones and plastic scraps padded with ripped cloth. Blue cloth. Hospital gowns. How many sleepers had these things feasted on?

I descended so I was closer to the zombie’s level before lining up my first shot, straight down the aisle. A miss. I’d jerked the pistol at the last microsecond. I gripped the pistol harder, putting the knife hilt in my mouth again to hold it with both hands. My next shots hit.

One down. I lined up on the next one and shot it in the chest. That didn’t stop it so I shot it twice more. That put it down for good.

Then the last two were upon me and I only managed to shoot one of them before the other crashed into me. I spat the knife out as it clawed at my chest. I got my knee between us and stabbed it in the face, then again when it didn’t stop trying to get at me. It clawed at the arm that held the pistol and drew blood.

The other zombie arrived as the third was choking out its last breaths. I went tumbling again and this time fetched up hard against the nest. Pain exploded in my leg and lower back. I felt blood in my mouth and spat, barely getting my arm up in time to stop the zombie’s teeth from latching onto my face, but the shock and my exhaustion made me too weak to hold it off completely.

It bit into my shoulder and chewed.

That was it. I had a matter of moments before I zombified. The virus was in me. My nanites would be actively suppressing my immune system about now.

Nothing else mattered at that point. So I did something that had been in the back of my mind for a long time. Something so risky, I would never have tried it. Ever. Not when I was still alive.

A walking dead man doesn’t have the luxury of future plans.

He acts.

And damn the cost.

I dropped the pistol. It didn’t matter anymore. I slammed my hand into the zombie’s forehead. Then I drove my nanites into the thing’s flesh while I still had some control. Of my nanites. Of my body.

Then I pulled.

I would be hungering for human flesh soon. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

My vision faded to black.

And I knew nothing more.

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