Chapter 21: Chapter 21: Night crawling.

I had to move. The horde would be attracted to the howl that I’d just heard. It had been close. Too close to simply hide where I was, and that was no long term solution anyway. The deck had enough indentations for cargo tiedowns that could serve as places for me to grip. I moved out slowly, as close to the deck as I could manage. Any noise would bring disaster.

There was no way for me to know which way I was going. Not after the first few moments anyway. I could be going in circles. Or headed right towards a zombie. From point to point I traveled. One tie down at a time. With nothing to see, touch and sound was my only way to see the world around me.

Shuffling and thumping sounded. It seemed close. I tried to angle away from the sound. After a while the sounds stopped altogether. Only my breathing and my heartbeat. The occasional groan of shifting metal as the Earth and the moon’s gravity flexed the station ever so minutely. Then I found a wall.

I chose to go right at the wall and came to a corner. Still nothing but blackness and the sound of my own breathing. Technically, I did have something that could bring light. Briefly. But the sound of the pistol and the flash it brought would only summon the zombies. Ricochets might even strike me. That would make things more difficult.

Creeping around in the dark was something I hadn’t done since I was little. City 4 had plenty of dark places and abandoned buildings. There had been monsters in the dark there, too. Later I learned that other children were afraid of the dark even when the monsters in it were only imaginary. It is only rational to have some fear if the dark. Especially when there are actual monsters in it.

The zombie howled as it fell onto my back. I rolled, trying to get a grip on it as it squirmed. It kicked me in the chest. I snagged it under the knee and drained the life out of it, but by then it was too late. More howls sounded as two more zombies fell nearby.

The first one slammed an elbow into my head as I tried to disentangle myself from the corpse. At least I think it was an elbow. The second one impacted the decaying body of the one I’d just drained with a dry sounding snap. When I finally got my feet under me to jump one of the zombies came along for the ride.

It had managed to snag the hem of my tee shirt, causing me to spin. I swung blindly, trying to get a grip on the thing in the air. More zombies were on their way and drifting apart from any surface would be the end of me.

I didn’t find the zombie that had tagged me before another one crashed into me. This one had built up some velocity and caused me to grunt involuntarily. More zombies howled. I managed to grab it and drain it and then pushed myself away. With the spin, I couldn’t tell up from down. So I tried to jump away from where the howls were coming from. I found the ceiling.

There were more handholds on the ceiling, but it was also full of loose trash. The pipes and conduits were the perfect sieve to catch all the trash that was floating around in microgravity. I crashed into one of those piles, scrabbling for something solid to latch on to.

What I grabbed turned out to be more trash, but it served to arrest my momentum. Noisily. I had to move. With no idea what direction I’d been turned I set off, climbing across the ceiling like a dilapidated obstacle course.

Moving fast was what I wanted to do, but couldn’t. Crashing face first into another pile would only draw the horde that was even now smacking into the ceiling around me. They were even less coordinated in the dark, from what I could tell. Slowly picking my way across the ceiling in the dark proved to be the right idea when the zombie howls stopped abruptly.

Several times I smacked my hands into things I couldn’t see in the dark. My growing collection of scrapes and bruises was annoying and painful. Once I found a pipe that was clear of debris. That was a good enough place to stop and rest for a moment.

The first one that found me in the dark puzzled me. How did it know I wasn’t another zombie? It had howled the very moment it touched me. I thought that zombies used sight and sound to determine what was prey and what was other zombies. What if there were another method?

There looked to be a faint glow in the distance. At first I thought it was a figment of my imagination. It was so faint that it probably wouldn’t have been noticeable if it weren’t the only light to be seen. If I were some plucky young hero, I would probably jump straight for that light immediately. And probably get eaten by zombies along the way, because that sounded like a stupid idea.

I continued my slow crawl across the pipes and the accumulated trash. The trash itself was sharp plastic scrap that gave me tiny cuts that, while painful, didn’t seem to bleed much. There were also bits of clothing and packing material, which was softer and didn’t cause pain. And bodies. Or parts of bodies.

One of which was not quite dead yet.

It sunk its teeth into my leg as I brushed by it, gnawing and biting. I sucked in a breath, trying not to scream as I reached down to drain it. As I pulled my nanites back from the corpse it felt like there was barely any energy at all coming from the zombie. And the corpse was cold when I’d touched it.

Most zombies are warm or hot to the touch. Not the cold and withered corpses that they appear to be at all. This one hadn’t even broken the skin when it bit me. It pinched, but my flesh was only bruised. I recalled the zombie corpse I’d come upon when I’d first got to the docks. It had been cold, too. Had this weakened one been simply in the last stages of starvation?

A zombie groaned in the distance. It wasn’t the howl or scream that announced that they’d found prey. That prompted others around the docks to groan as well. Then they stopped.

It wasn’t clear to me if these vocalizations were significant or not. Zombies hadn’t shown much in the way of any intelligence apart from their recognition of the need to feed. They did not use tools or doors. But they did build nests and had some sort of rudimentary tactics. I pondered this newest mystery as I crept further along the ceiling.

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There were now two kinds of zombie that I’d come across that did not make any noises. The implant zombie and the starved one. If the latter crept up on you while you were sleeping, it might even manage to kill you before you ever woke. The former was dangerous even when you weren’t sleeping.

I’d been keeping an eye on the glow in the distance. When it disappeared, I stopped. Then carefully pushed myself backward. The light reappeared. It looked like there was something between me and the light. I couldn’t tell how far away it was, or even what it was. There was only one thing I could do. Continue on.

I found another half starved zombie as I traveled. I drained this one as well. Nearly no energy left. It had moved when I put a hand on it. No bites this time. My hands ached from the ongoing strain, not just the small cuts and bruises that had accumulated. Despite the stress and my pounding heart I was getting cold, too. My hands and feet were starting to grow numb, which helped with the pain a tiny bit.

But that wasn’t a good thing in the long run. As my body shivered I was losing energy. Already hungry, my stomach growled softly. That reminded me of Experiment Number One. I hoped the catgirl remembered to feed it.

Bah. Who was I kidding? The fuzzball would not tolerate being hungry for even one second. Probably was banging the empty bottle about her head even now.

It took over an hour for me to reach the wall by the clock on my HUD. It was smooth and free of the trash and pipes I’d been using to climb. I could get a tiny bit of friction with my fingertips, but that also pushed me away from the wall. Jumping down was a risk. But it was one I had to take.

One moment there was nothing but darkness. In the next, the glow I’d seen revealed itself to be a sign that wasn’t the source of the light at all but merely a reflection. I touched down atop what felt like a stack of crates. Not the deck, and not a zombie.

The light disappeared again as I climbed down the crates. Once again I crept across the deck, keeping low and slow. My hands ached and my leg where it had been bitten felt hot in contrast to my increasingly chilly fingers and toes. I came to a wall and had to follow it around in the direction that the light should be.

It was an docking status indicator. A zombie stood revealed by its green glow. A zombie with a shiny metal spinal implant.

The infected was unnaturally still, floating almost upside down facing the closed hatch and the light that indicated a ship was on the other side of it. Little else was visible in the faint glow. In the distance I could see other lights. Other ships were docked here, I recalled. And down at the other far end there would be the other horde.

Just how perceptive were zombies? I couldn’t see the horde from where I crouched in the shadows, but that did not mean that would remain the case if I ventured into the light. For that matter there could well be zombies close by, hidden in the shadows just as I was.

There was no real choice. Well, suicide was technically a choice. Not one I was brave enough to follow, though. I had to risk it.

I inched my way forward. The last implanted zombie I’d encountered had been fast. Frighteningly so. And quiet. It was highly doubtful that this one was exactly the same, but I had no hard data to determine just how they differed. The cranial implant had been the only visible indication that the other had been different. The scientist in me wanted to know what this one was capable of. The rest of me only wanted it dead.

No howls sounded as I entered the light. Whether that was due to my slow pace or no zombie was close enough and looking in my direction or some other factor was unclear. I pushed off to drift closer so I could drain my unsuspecting victim.

All hell broke loose the moment I touched the zombie.

Its howl shattered the silence even as I forced my nanites into its flesh, draining its energy far more than any other I’d come across. It took several long seconds to complete the process. During those seconds it twisted and howled, trying to reach me as I fought to keep a grip on the back of its neck. My back hit the hatch with bruising force, nearly driving the wind out of me. I coughed.

Answering howls echoed from down the docks and deep in the warehouse district. Both hordes were coming for me. I tossed the already shriveled and ashen corpse aside and gripped the hatch wheel, bracing my feet against the frame to twist it open. It didn’t budge.

A slight clanking noise greeted me as the hatch refused my entry. I forced nanites into the access panel beside me, searching for whatever was keeping the hatch closed.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I found the hatch was only software locked. The credentialed access commands were not close to the top level, but I found them quickly enough. The howls were growing closer as I withdrew and twisted the wheel once more. It groaned open, shuddering slightly as I forced my way inside.

The inner hatch seemed to take forever to unlock, clicking and groaning. There was actually rust flaking off as it swung open to reveal a brightly lit interior. Too bright. My eyes were momentarily blinded and I blinked rapidly in the glare.

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