Chapter 43: Chapter 43: Observations on long term effects of starvation on homo zombicus: Recessional.

I tried to shield my passengers as much as I could as we hit the debris cloud. It felt like diving into a pool. I crashed into the soupy mess and the three with me grunted with the impact. I couldn’t slow down, though. The horde was still on our heels.

Sam hit faster than I did. His passengers were on his back, clinging to the cargo pod, tied together. We forged through the mess blindly. He was trusting my map waypoint to be correct. He never questioned it.

“Start braking in fifteen seconds. We don’t want to slam into the bulkhead.”

I remembered doing that once before. It was not an experience I wanted to repeat, especially not with squishable passengers.

“Five. Four. Three,” I rotated to put the rear thrusters in the direction of our travel and protect the ones I carried more. “Two. One. Brake!”

I hammered the jets full bore. The goop and trash that clogged the jet ports was blasted out as I slowed abruptly. The asymmetric thrust that produced cause me to spin slightly. I corrected as well as I could before impact.

The sudden stop was less drastic the last time I’d slammed into this particular bulkhead. My passengers were liberally covered in the soupy mess, but they were still alive and well.

Sam was to my right, heading for the opening that I’d directed him to. I followed. The howls had not let up. The horde was still coming.

“How the hell are they still finding us in this mess?” Sam asked.

“The specifics of how zombies track their prey is a topic that I very much want to study in a more structured experimental setting. One that does not involve using living human beings as bait,” I replied.

“How the heck are you still calm with an entire horde chasing us?” Ileane asked, stress coloring her voice. I rather suspect that ‘heck’ was not her first choice of expletive.

“Practice.”

I was not calm, though. Not even a little bit.

Long before, I’d been scared of the zombies. They still frightened me to a degree, at least. I did not want to die, ripped apart and chewed up and swallowed down. I did not want to turn into one of those things either.

Later on, I’d been eager. I wanted to drain more zombies, to study what was going on with that process. The euphoria that came with the act was something that worried me still, but I thought I was able to control it. I hoped.

Now though, after seeing all the things that had happened after the zombies appeared and threw the lives of every human being into chaos and peril. Death, often enough. Now though? Now I was angered.

I was angered for the effect the zombies had on my own quiet life. Sure there had been problems and I was something of an asshole to other people. But I hadn’t hurt anyone else. Never wanted to. My quiet little life was my own. And zombies had taken that from me.

I was angered for what the zombies had done to everyone else on the station. Assholes like I’d been. Decent folk. Families. Cooks that made sticky rice. Security men and women that had fought to the end while their employers escaped out the back door. Dock workers that fought the zombies back to back, holding on just a little longer so others could escape.

Children that had been eaten alive in the hold with the ore sled.

That was where we were going. The opening that the zombies had made was a choke point that we could use to limit the number of zombies we had to fight. Opening another hold would take too long. The zombies were too close already.

“We’re through! You want to hold them here, right?”

“It is the best place we have that was close enough to reach. If we can keep them from pushing through, we can hold this point.”

“Can we do that? Even with the turrets helping us, we were almost overwhelmed before,” Ileane said.

“This horde is not as big as the massive one at the main shaft in the middle of the level. The opening here is smaller. They will get packed together there. Sam’s grenades and Vera’s explosives will help.”

I heard zombies start smacking into the bulkhead behind me as I made my way through the opening and into the dock. The small, still forms were mostly inside the ore sled, out of immediate sight. The others didn’t seem to have noticed yet.

My three passengers disentangled themselves as soon as we stopped. That was fortunate timing, as the first zombie made it to the opening behind me a bare second later.

“Incoming! I don’t have a shot!” Sam said over the com, maneuvering to get an angle around me.

“I have this. Get everyone positioned and ready.”

“Got it. Vera, you and Ileane here. Hank-”

The zombie was partially broken. It’s legs didn’t appear to be working, but it managed to pull its way inside by arm strength alone. I drained it as quick as possible, moving to the opposite side of the opening so Sam the the others could get a clear shot.

I had a plan to deal with the implant zombie and the big one. It would take some time to set up though.

“Keep that side clear. I will drain the ones coming through on this side.”

“Got it. Doc Delveccio, you and Ileane go high. Frank and Quenton, low. Vera, be ready to backup either one or Z if one gets through. I’ll handle the middle.”

Even as he gave the order, three more zombies appeared out of the debris cloud. Bullets slammed into the trio, stopping one immediately. The other two made it into the bay, heavily wounded but still dangerous.

I managed to snag one and drain it. The other fell to a precise pistol shot to the face.

“Keep firing on them until they stop moving!” Surprisingly it was Doctor Delveccio that mentioned that over the com.

That cycle repeated itself twice more as zombies began to trickle in. The problem was that even though the shots would kill the zombies in minutes or seconds they could still get closer to the firing line in that time. Where the turrets would smash them apart before, now we only had Sam’s heavier bullets to rely on.

He had grenades loaded though they were limited in number. Vera had a few traps with her, but there wasn’t enough time for her to get close.

I crushed a zombies head as it appeared with four more in a group. One manged to make it through relatively unscathed, another two ahead of it soaking up bullets until it could squeeze through. It received a bullet to the throat a bare second before it reached the firing line.

“Watch your shot placement, people! Upper chest if you can’t nail the head!”

Another pair of zombies came through tangled together in the opening. I drained them both while Sam and the others shot over and around me. Beyond those two I finally saw what I’d been waiting for.

“Hold your fire! Only engage the ones that get past me.”

I leapt into the opening. Ahead, the bulk of the horde had finally arrived. For my plan to succeed, I needed time. To get that time, the horde needed to be packed tightly together. With the jets firing full bore, I slammed into the mass just before it reached the opening.

Then I started to drain as many as my nanites could reach, pushing back as the horde attempted to force me back through the opening. I had been draining every single zombie I could catch as they came through the opening. Nanite bloat was once again pressing hard against my insides.

There was no time to think about what would happen when my colony rapidly expanded again once they’d burned through however many of the horde I could handle. The mass in front of me slowed and then stopped.

Once I started draining the horde, just like the group from the other ship’s mess hall, their movements slowed and then stopped. I had a plug of zombies held immobile. However many of the ones that were left could not make it through.

“I can’t hold these for long,” I said through gritted teeth. The pain was starting to thread its way up my arms and through my chest again on its way to my skull.

“When I finish the drain, they’ll try and come through in a rush. No matter what happens, Sam, you have to fire grenades through the ash cloud once they start falling apart.”

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“Z, that might put you too close to the blast radius-”

“Sam, you are just going to have to trust me on this. They’ll-” an intense spike of pain ripped through me.

“They will come through in a rush if you don’t, and bullets won’t be able to stop them all,” I finished in a, agonizing hiss.

Something slammed into the back of the horde, making the plug of zombies flex and pushing me back an inch.

“Almost ready-” I could feel the drain accelerating, nearing completion. I could not reach any farther into the horde. Not yet. My stomach howled in hunger as my head felt like it was splitting open, my hands and arms shot through with rivers of liquid fire.

The first zombies started to break apart into greasy ash.

“Now Sam! Do it now!”

Three things happened almost at once.

The solidly packed mass of zombies started to come apart. First, the ones at the edges disintegrated into a familiar black skeleton that immediately broke apart. The ones closer burnt away in a wave that wicked inward towards me at the center.

Sam shot two grenades over my left shoulder through the fading mass. They exploded an instant later, ripping into the few zombies still left in front of me even as they, too, burnt away. The pressure wave smashed into me, pushing me back even with my jets still at full power.

Lastly, the giant zombie appeared out of the debris cloud.

The soupy mass of gore and grit blasted back into the bay we were in, expanding out as it went. The firing line was far enough back to get a light dusting, but more importantly it reduced visibility markedly.

It couldn’t hide the huge zombie now taking up the entire opening. I’d been blasted back through into the bay. That much, I’d expected. Planned for, even.

The fact that up close, this one was bigger than any other zombie I’d ever seen was not. It had to top nine feet, easily. Probably over six feet wide at the shoulder. It couldn’t even make it through the ragged opening easily. It had to squeeze, one arm and a head reaching through to grab at me as the closest one that it could reach.

I flew to meet it. Just not on its intended terms.

My body was working mostly on autopilot at that moment. I’d shunted as many nanites as the suit could hold into the MHU. There were circuit pathways that were frayed or destroyed. I bridged those gaps with nanites, flash welding them together. Even then, the pressure inside my body screamed at me for release.

I ducked outside the angle of the grabbing hand and grabbed onto the edge of the ragged opening with one gauntlet. The other gripped its over sized head like I was trying to palm a beach ball. It slammed its elbow into me, rocking me back and nearly knocking me free.

“We’ve got to help him! Sam, Vera, is there anything we can do?” Ileane shouted over the com. The bulkhead panel I was holding on to creaked ominously as it twisted around to get a better angle on me.

“I-”

“Come on, Sam! Keep its arm immobilized while he kills it!” That sounded like Vera.

I lost awareness of the outside world as I tried to do two things at once.

Draining the giant was like trying to drink raw kerosene. That had been lit on fire. While I was drinking it. Compared to the rivers of liquid fire from before, this was like I imagined drowning in lava might feel, if one could remain alive even as every single nerve ending cried out as it was flash fried.

At the same time, I was sending threads of nanites through the other gauntlet into the station. We hadn’t had the time to check for power nodes on the way in.

But I was betting my life that they were here, if they were anywhere in this part of the station.

Every time I’d drained one of the big ones, it had come with a price in suffering. It felt like my very bones were shifting under the flesh and muscle tissue. Even as the agony wracked my body, my nanites were worming their way through the station’s network.

Some time later, I finally found what I was looking for. A node network.

There was no subtlety in how I smashed the rogue nanites. I had the numbers. I had all the numbers in the world. The pressure began to ease as my vastly bloated colony washed over node after node, utterly annihilating any resistance as soon as it was detected.

There were only a handful of nodes close by. Not enough to handle the pressure I still had inside. The battle to drain the giant zombie continued to occupy most of my conscious mind. The pressure had lessened, ever so slightly. But the pain had not.

Inside the network, there were still other nodes out there somewhere. They continued to attack the few that I had conquered. I sent my nanites in the direction the rogues were coming from. My senses were now farther than I’d ever sent my threads before. My colony had never been large enough for me to do so, even in lab controlled conditions.

A moment or an hour later, I could not honestly tell, my nanites found the source of the attacks. A much larger cluster of nodes. These managed to fight back against the waves that I sent. Briefly.

Five. Then Ten. A dozen nodes, and still there were more. I could only count, and push further into the network. Somewhere along the way, the giant zombie finally succumbed to the drain. The strange shifting I could feel in my bones slowed, then finally stopped. The searing agony faded slightly to a dull, throbbing ache.

After I controlled over half of the node cluster the rest fell much faster. Twenty nine in all. They were distributed through a complex architecture of circuits and data processing cores somewhere close by. I did not have the energy to investigate further. My stomach was demanding food now.

Raspberry took that moment to climb out from my collar and lick my face. She’d stuck with me through the battle, clinging to my shirt as we’d been tossed around. Her bottle was empty. But this time she chose not to swat me in the face with it.

We both probably wanted food right damned quick about now.

I opened my eyes. No more zombie howls sounded from outside the bay. It occurred to me that the risk I was taking with the drain during combat was not insignificant. Not just to me.

“You doing okay there, Z?” Sam asked from nearby. I had trouble focusing on him for a moment.

“Of course he’s not okay. He nearly fried his internal organs with that stunt, from what I can tell through his suit diagnostics. We really need to put him through a more thorough examination as soon as we get the chance, Ileane. I don’t know what this draining thing is doing inside his body, but it worries me.”

Doctor Delveccio and Ileane began to discuss the tests that they wanted to do on me, once we got back to the clinic in Security Medical. I exited the MHU and all but inhaled a meal bar. I was starting on my third and Raspberry was working her way through the bottle I’d given her when a soft gasp from Vera drew everyone else’s attention to what she was looking at.

A pair of too-small space suits were floating in her line of sight, just over the curve of the ore barge nearby. I’d already seen this sight before, but it still struck me like a punch in the gut.

“Those... Those were children. Children. They’re dead. The zombies, they-” Sam had exited his combat suit at some point. He turned Vera away so she wouldn’t have to look at the two small space suits.

They couldn’t see the shattered visors from this angle. Zombies always seemed to go in through the top for some reason.

After a few moments, I finished eating as much as my stomach could handle. I tried not to intrude on the discussion that followed. Doctor Delveccio was the one to make it clear that we could not give them a proper spacer’s funeral yet. Ileane, surprisingly enough, backed her up on it.

Sam and Vera were the ones to argue the longest against it, even on the journey back over the hull. Everyone was tired after that. But the suggestion of splitting off into the offices in the Security complex was not taken up, at least not right then. We all slept in the clinic for the night.

I dreamt that I was swimming through an ocean of inky blackness. Over time I realized that it was blood. People I knew and had met sailed by on rafts and small boats. As they went by, some of them turned into zombies.

They howled and gnashed their teeth, but none of them left the boats.

Soon I lost the strength to swim, and I began to drown in the sea of blood. Zombie fish began to nibble away at my flesh until there was nothing left of me.

I didn’t even get to drown before they consumed every single bit. They saved my eyeballs for last.

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