John Holmes - Even Zombie Killers Can Die

Doctor Morano started to speak, “Ah, Miss O’Nei-“, but before she could get the words out, Brit took an icepick and poked her in the eye, puncturing it. Morano fell to the ground, screaming. Jim grabbed Brit’s hand, but she stepped back.

“It’s OK, I’m done!”

“Doc, treat that. Get her patched up. I want her alive.”

Doc got out a field dressing and started to wrap it around her head, holding it to her bleeding eye. As he held her face with his free hand, she twisted her head and bit down hard on his fingers.

“OW! FUCK!” Doc pulled his hand away and Morano laughed. Hart kicked her in the shoulders and she fell to the ground, still laughing.

“Crazy bitch!” Doc was holding his hand, and I could see the blood welling up from the teeth marks.

“Go get that cleaned up, Doc. Leave her eye the way it is.” Doc walked over to the well pump, muttering to himself.

“You’re an evil snake. Gotta get one last once of pain in, don’t you?”

“You have no idea, Nick. No idea.” She licked at the blood running down her face and kept laughing.

Brit screamed, and Doc hit me from behind, knocking me down into the dirt. I felt his hands wrap around my neck as I rolled over. Training kicked in and I jammed my arm up into his mouth, the kevlar inserts in my sleeves keeping his teeth from sinking into my arm.

“I CAN’T GET A SHOT!” yelled Ziv. I dragged my pistol out with my free hand and forced it slowly up under his chin. His red eyes burned at me from inches away, and his hands were choking me, jaws reaching for my neck. Everything was going black, hazy around the eyes. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Red with his hammer looking for a way to swing. Behind him Morano started to run, but Brit tackled her and started banging her head into the dirt. I kept forcing Doc’s head back, trying to get the pistol up, working the hammer with my thumb, cocking it back. I finally got it jammed under the skin of his neck, pulled my arm out of his jaws so I didn’t shoot myself, and pulled the trigger, sending the .22 slug through his lower jaw and into his brain. I pulled it again and again until the magazine was empty and the thing that had been my best friend rolled off me and fell to the ground.

I sat up and started crying.

Morano sat tied to the chair in the basement. I flicked on the light, and she squinted up at me. Not bothering to strap on my leg, I hopped down the stairs. Brit followed behind me, and we each took a seat in chair facing her. She stared at us, her eye socket bloody and a half mad grin on her face. On a table in front of her sat a leather wallet, open, showing half a dozen syringes.

“So, let me get this straight. You’re infected.”

She gave me a look like I was an idiot. “Of course I am. How else could I do my research?”

“You did this to yourself?”

“Why, yes. It would be inhumane to not experience what my test subjects were going through, right?”

Brit leaned over and whispered in my ear. “She is freaking nuts.”

I nodded. “So, what’s in the syringes? A cure?”

“Not that you would understand it, but no, not a cure. A preventive. It keeps the parasite at bay. I need to have it every forty eight hours. You’ll be happy to know that I developed it from your friend Mya’s blood.”

Brit stood up, pulled on a glove, and jammed her finger into Moranos’ bloody eye socket. She screamed in pain. I grabbed Brit’s arm and pulled her back.

“Sit down, Brit. I know what we’re going to do.” I reached for the medicine.

Morano leaned forward in her chair, new blood pouring from her ruined eye. “You have to let me go, you know. I’m very close to a cure. The government needs me. I could have even saved your friend Doc. You’ll of course have to give me Specialist Redshirt. He will be vital to our program. I’ll forgive Ms. O’Neill. Eye for an eye, you know.”

One hundred percent, batshit crazy. I dropped the syringes on the floor and ground the glass vials into dust under my boot, then spread the liquid around on the brick. Morano’s mouth opened, and then closed.

“Forty eight hours you said? Must be at least twenty four since you had your last shot.”

“You can’t do this. The world depends on me!” For once, something seemed to have gotten through to her.

“Not this world, Maybe the next one.” I called up for someone to come down and give us a hand.

Ziv came downstairs and grabbed her by her feet, dumping her out of her chair. Despite her kicking and screaming, he dragged her up the stairs, making sure she hit her head on each step. When we got outside, he locked her cuffs to a tree with a bicycle chain. Then we went to bury Ahmed and Doc in the field just outside the house.

In the end it took less than a day. Maybe the adrenaline from the firefights purged the preventive from her system more quickly, I don’t know. I sat and watched, with Brit, as a red light started to appear in Doctor Morano’s good eye. At first she begged, then cursed us to hell, then laughed hysterically.

When the dark had fallen and the red light was shining out of her eye in a full blaze of hunger for flesh, and the intelligence was gone, I took out the ten foot pole we used to coral zombies and slipped the leather loop on the end around her neck. Pushing and pulling, we managed to get the zombie to the flatbed trailer hitched to my Jeep. We roped her down, careful to avoid the snapping jaws, and drove into the night, crossing over the river and into the hills on the west side. After a few miles, we stopped and all climbed out. Ziv, Red, Hart, Brit, and myself. What was left of our team. We unhitched the trailer, and Red poured a slight acid solution on the ropes. In a few hours, the acid would eat through them, weakening them enough that the reanimated corpse of Doctor Morano could break free. From there, as far as I was concerned, it could wander the earth for all eternity, her evil soul trapped in the hell of her own making. Hopefully, somewhere inside, the thing that was Doctor Morano lived on and knew what had happened to her.

We drove back to the farm in silence, until Red switched on the radio for the 23:00 BBC news broadcast.

“…Scientists in America released the news that a vaccination against the so called zombie parasite had been successful in clinical trials using United State Army volunteers. Production of the serum will proceed at full capacity, and World Health Organization officials say that enough can be produced to vaccinate the remaining world population by this time next year. Spontaneous celebrations have broken out in Seattle, London, Auckland, Tel Aviv, and other remaining cities around the globe.

In other news from the Americas, riots continued for a third day in Portland, started by protests against the continued emergency suspension of the United States Constitution. The office of interim President Clinton downplayed the riots, saying the suspension would be necessary as long as the zombie threat existed.

European Union troops have secured the island of Sicily, in preparation for a major clearing effort on the Italian peninsula. A United States Marine Amphibious Unit is assisting with operations, the first time a major US combat unit has been available to work with”

Red turned the radio off, and Ziv turned it back on. Red turned it off again, and Ziv reached over and punched him in the shoulder as hard as he could. The two started cursing each other, one in Navajo and the other in Serbian. Brit laughed at both of them.

Outside the Jeep, the ghosts of Ahmed, Doc, Esposito, Mya, Killeen and Jonesy laughed silently. Even Zombie Killers can die; but like all our brothers and sister we learned to love in the fires of combat, they will also live forever.