Zombie Apocalypse (Book 3): Absolute Zero Read online

  Absolute Zero

  by

  James Loscombe

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  Tales of the Apocalypse contains nine short stories and novellas set before, during or after an apocalyptic event.

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  Copyright © 2016 by James Loscombe

  The rights of James Loscombe to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are ficticious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Free Book

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  Absolute Zero

  About the Author

  Other Books

  CHAPTER ONE

  Velma stared out the window and watched the crowd slowly move away from the gate. She felt like a prisoner again.

  She turned in her seat. Sam was looking out the other window. She wondered if this was like coming home for him, or if he felt the same way she did.

  A part of her expected security to be waiting for them, but there was nobody there.

  She opened her door and climbed out. “Come on,” she said. There was no point sitting in there all day.

  “What are we going to do?” Alice said, climbing out the other side. Her dark hair had been pulled back, and her gothic makeup was smeared.

  “I don’t know,” Velma said.

  “We could leave,” Sam suggested. He climbed out of the jeep and stood opposite her. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come back?”

  “What do you think they’re going to do to us?” Velma said. She had considered the possibilities a lot during the journey back. “It can’t possibly be worse than being out there, can it?”

  Sam shrugged. The others joined them.

  “Listen, nobody even knows about the super zombie, so it’s not going to be broadcast just because we didn’t manage to catch it.”

  “You saw what happened?” Lucy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It obeyed her,” Lucy said.

  Velma laughed and attempted to make the idea seem ridiculous, but she couldn’t. She had seen it as well and there was no doubt in her mind that the creature had listened to the girl and done as she’d told it. The army had succeeded in creating a super soldier and she’d given it straight to the enemy.

  But were they the enemy?

  It was easy to let herself think that, but really, what were they fighting over? There was no reason to believe that the group was a threat, chances were that their paths would never cross again.

  “We don’t know that’s what happened,” Velma said. “There could be hundreds of reasons it went. Maybe it killed them all?”

  Lucy shook her head but she didn’t say anything. They all just stood there, waiting for her to tell them what to do.

  It felt like it should be late in the evening, but it was just after ten in the morning. Her whole body clock was screwed up and she didn’t know whether she wanted to sleep or drink. Probably the latter than the former.

  “Come on,” Velma said, turning away from them. “Let’s not do this out here.”

  She started to walk and knew that they would follow her.

  “Where are we going?” Sam said.

  “The bar,” Velma said.

  They didn’t argue and followed her into the military building.

  It wasn’t as large as the canteen in the living quarters, but it had the advantage of only being accessible to people with a military rank. It didn’t serve food, only alcohol. Considering the time of day it was surprisingly busy.

  They found a table towards the back of the room, as far away from the other soldiers as possible. It wasn’t the traditional place for a debriefing, Velma thought, but they weren’t a traditional unit.

  For a while they all sat in silence, drinks in front of them but nobody drinking.

  Velma lifted her glass. The sides were dirty and the golden liquid inside moved around with a syrup-like consistency. It smelled like engine oil but it wasn’t as if she could afford to be fussy; the rest of the base was dry and what they had here wouldn’t last forever.

  “I want to propose a toast,” she said.

  They looked at her as if she was mad. She raised her glass like she meant it and gradually they copied her, waiting to hear what she would say.

  “I’m proud of you all,” she said. “We had a difficult job to do and you did everything you could to make it work. Success or failure isn’t just about the final result, the fact that you pulled together and worked like a team is important. Don’t forget that. Each and every one of you proved yourselves and you shouldn’t need me to tell you that. But I will tell you, every time I see you I will tell you because I understand.

  “When you go back out there you’re going to encounter people who don’t understand but I want you to remember that. The things they say to you aren’t because they’re true, they’re because they don’t understand. I do and I’m proud of you.”

  She waited a moment to let that sink in. She didn’t know whether it would do any good long term but she meant every word of it. A part of her began to think how it would be if they hadn’t come back, if right now the six of them were out in the wilderness, doing what they had to in order to survive.

  “Not all of us made it back,” she said. “Kate was a fine soldier and we should all be proud of her. She died so that we could be where we are now, and we should respect that.”

  Lucy and Michelle nodded.

  “This isn’t the end,” Velma said. “We will work together again and we will prove ourselves. But I want you to remember that you don’t need to prove yourself to me and, I hope, not to yourselves.

  “Cheers,” she said and lifted her glass high into the air before downing the sticky liquid inside.

  “Cheers,” they repeated and a moment later six empty glasses were on the table.

  They talked for a little longer after, but Velma could see they were tired and needed to rest. She brought another round of drinks from the bar but, after that, she insisted they go their separate ways. She meant what she had said, this wasn’t the end, only the beginning.

  * * * * *

  Tim gripped his Koch MP5 sub-machine gun and tried not to move. He could feel Roxy’s breath on his neck but refused to turn around and tell her how annoying it was. He had to stay focussed. If he couldn’t do that, then they were both as good as dead.

  There was a crackle of static in his ear and then a voice: “Do you see them?” It sounded like Stephen but the induction microphones distorted everyone’s voices until they sounded the same.

  “I see them,” he said, barely making a sound.

  Ahead of him there was a group of twenty zombies. They were on the edge of Eastern Bridge territory and might wander off of their own accord, but it had been weeks since their last contact, and they were all anxious for some action. A group this size shouldn’t cause any trouble, but there were rules to an engagement and they were all trained well enough to follow them precisely.

  Tim and Roxy had a position,
Stephen and Ben had another, a third location was occupied by Michelle and Tara. He couldn’t see them but he trusted they were there to follow him when the order came.

  “On my mark,” said the voice in his ear. “In five… four… three…”

  Two and one were implied. Tim counted them in his head and when he reached zero he began to move forwards with Roxy covering his back.

  He moved with the ease that a lifetime of military service had taught him, keeping low and with his gun trained on the targets. He watched the zombies and they seemed completely unaware of his presence.

  Tim stopped near the pack, still mostly hidden by the foliage that filled in the spaces between the tall trees, but close enough that he could guarantee head shots if the zombies surprised them. He raised his gun and drew a bead on the closest one, through his gun sight he could see the withered flesh that covered its face, missing in places to reveal raw muscle and bone beneath. He couldn’t even tell whether it had been male or female; all of the features which might have helped him distinguish between the two were gone.

  Three pips in his ear told him that the others were in position.

  He rested his finger on the trigger and waited, slowing his heart beat as much as possible, waiting… waiting…

  The fourth pip seemed to take a lifetime to come.

  Even for a group of zombies as decomposed as this lot, they seemed particularly unaware. If he hadn’t known any better, he might have worried that this was a trap. He had seen plenty of such setups when he’d been fighting other humans for a living, but zombies just weren’t that smart.

  The pip sounded in his ear and he relaxed his finger, squeezing down on the trigger and already preparing himself for the small recoil the gun would produce. He felt, more than heard, the gun fire and then saw the creature’s head explode like an empty egg. When zombies became as decayed as this one had been, most of the liquid in their bodies seemed to disappear. He wasn’t a scientific man, but he could observe the difference and was pleased that he wouldn’t be sending his uniform to laundry covered in blood again.

  He moved forwards, confident that the others would be doing the same. Slowly cutting down the distance to the last zombies.

  His foot hit something, but he knew better than to look down and lose focus. It was probably just an exposed root or one of the dead bodies that had fallen without him noticing it. He tried to step over it and keep walking, but felt something wrap around his ankle and hold him in place.

  Still convinced that it was only a root he pulled his leg, still aiming at the next zombie he intended to kill, but then he felt it.

  The moisture on his leg was slimy and gross, but he didn’t have long to think about it. He felt the blunt teeth against his flesh and the tearing sensation that he knew meant he was being bitten.

  His heart rate shot up and everything that he had been trained to do left his head. He turned away from the dwindling pack of zombies in front of him and looked down.

  It was practically dead. Half of its head was missing, its greying brain exposed to the air. It didn’t look up at Tim as he turned his gun on it.

  A single shot went into the creature’s head and it fell limply at his feet. The pain in his leg was intense.

  “Tim?” came a voice through his earpiece.

  He lowered his gun and looked at his leg. There wasn’t much, blood but the skin was broken. His trouser wasn’t even torn as the zombie had managed to push it up to get at his leg.

  “Tim are you there?”

  He looked at the wound. Any contact with a zombie had to be checked out, but he didn’t need a doctor to tell him this was bad.

  The shooting stopped.

  “That’s the last of them. Has anybody got eyes on Tim?”

  He should have reported it immediately, but the thought never crossed his mind. He pulled down his trouser leg and turned his gun around so that it was pointing at the ground.

  “I’m here,” he said. Beads of sweat here forming on the back of his neck and he wondered whether that was the first symptom. How would he know when it was too late?

  “Gather ‘round people.”

  Tim walked towards the others and wondered whether they would they be able to tell?

  “Good work,” Stephen said.

  Tim looked around and wondered which one of them would be the one to shoot him.

  “Any problems?”

  Tim opened his mouth to answer, but he couldn’t bring himself to make words. No one else spoke

  “Good work then,” Stephen said, moving on too quickly for Tim to interrupt him. “Let’s get a fire started and burn these fuckers.”

  Tim worked to gather wood and wondered how long it would be before he started to turn. He told himself that, at the first sign, he would say something, that he didn’t want to get shot in the head, but he also didn’t want to eat any of his friends. He waited but nothing happened.

  Twenty minutes later the fire was burning brightly and he still hadn’t turned.

  They packed up their things and he wondered when he would start to look at his friends as food. He tried to imagine eating their flesh, tearing it from their bodies while they screamed at him to stop. The thought made him feel ill.

  The jeep that they had been travelling in was parked on the road. The wound throbbed painfully and he imagined that he could feel the poison running through his veins. He walked at the back of the group and knew that he should tell them what had happened.

  It felt like hours since he had been bitten, so why hadn’t he turned?

  He climbed into the jeep and closed the door. He knew that a certain percentage of people were immune to the virus, well, not immune exactly but whatever Dale had been. No one knew what percentage that was, so maybe it was more common than they thought?

  Was he immune? Was that why he hadn’t turned?

  Roxy and Ben were talking about food. The idea of eating turned his stomach and he didn’t know whether that was a good thing or not. He held onto the handle above the door as they sped along the bumpy road. He wondered what was going to happen to him.

  The gates closed behind them and he felt that his opportunity to reveal the truth had passed. If they found out that he had been bitten now then they wouldn’t wait to hear his excuses.

  The jeep slowed down as they approached the garages behind the military building. He told himself that, if he was going to turn, then he would have done so already. The fact that he hadn’t was proof that he was one of the lucky ones. Wasn’t it?

  His leg still hurt though and he hadn’t taken the time to properly examine it in the forest.

  The jeep stopped and he jumped out, being careful to land on his good foot. Was the fact that he had chosen self-preservation a sign that he was changing or not?

  “You coming for a drink?” Stephen shouted.

  Tim had started to walk away from them without realising. He looked back over his shoulder. “Not this time mate, I need to see Sally.”

  “Sally, again?” Stephen said. Then he gave an exaggerated shrug. “Suit yourself. You know where we are if you change your mind.”

  Tim gave him a thumbs up and turned away. He walked as quickly as he could manage but he had no intention of visiting Sally today.

  By the time he reached the living quarters he knew he had made a mistake. The pain in his leg had moved towards his stomach and become a hunger.

  He pushed the door open and fell towards the stairs. His room was on the second floor but he practically had to drag himself up. If he was going to change, then he couldn’t do it there. He had to get somewhere and lock himself away. It was the only thing he could do now to stop himself hurting anyone. If he’d been carrying a gun then he might have been able to summon the strength to use it, but he wasn’t certain about that even now.

  He reached his floor but it was too late.

  Tim fell to the ground, clutching his chest. If there had been anyone else there to see him they might have been able to sound the alarm, bu
t there wasn’t.

  No one knew how long he lay there by himself, foaming at the mouth while the virus crushed his body. All they knew was that, at some point, he rose and, when he did, he was no longer human. The zombie stood at the top of the stairs and sniffed the air. It could smell food, lots and lots of food.

  * * * * *

  The chance to prove themselves came sooner than she had expected, and much sooner than she would have liked. The zombie had been free for almost three hours before it had been captured and killed and in that time it had bitten more people than any of them knew. Victims had been frustratingly reluctant to come forwards but Velma, still nursing the wound on her own leg, could understand that.

  She pushed open the door and raised her gun. Lucy was behind her and Sam behind her. The corridor in front of them was dark but a single emergency light flickered so that every four to five seconds she could see ahead.

  “It’s clear,” she said and started to move in. Lucy held the door so that the rest of them could follow.

  Her footsteps sounded too loud and she wasn’t the best shot in the group, but there was no question of her going first. She wouldn’t have gone so far as to say she felt a mothering instinct towards them, but certainly a maiden aunt one.

  They no longer followed her because they’d been ordered to. She’d given them each the option of walking away before they began. Now they were there because they wanted to be. They were there because they could see, as well as anyone else, what was happening all around them.

  No one knew where was safe. The outbreak had started in the living quarters, but it had quickly spread, as people too afraid to admit to themselves, or others, what had happened, went about their usual routine. From the initial outbreak others had quickly followed, in the military building, in the medical facility, even in the farm.