Zombie Ever After Read online

  Egesa had wanted, almost from the moment he was born, to make his mark on the world. To bring to the masses a wondrous thing, like the cure for cancer or blindness. However, his genius and his passion didn’t exist in either of these fields. His dream was to bring to humankind not merely improved longevity but, if possible, immortality.

  The public did not understand him. They even mocked him. His brilliance. His greatness. Which was why appearing on a show like this—specifically now, with all that had gone so wrong—was necessary.

  A necessary evil.

  Chapter 6

  Donovan grabbed Cathren’s hand, and they dashed up Powell together toward California Street. As they ran for their lives, someone called Donovan’s name.

  “Hey, Donny-boy!”

  Donovan turned his head in response, out of habit rather than common sense. An Indian guy, or perhaps he was Pakistani, sat in a small, orange car waving at them.

  The voice, the mustache, the big smile all seemed familiar, but Donovan couldn’t place him at this distance. The man had a car, however, which was good. So Donovan stopped and turned around, pulling Cathren with him.

  Donovan recognized his friend at last as they drew nearer.

  “Rudra Adhamark, how’s it going?” he said.

  Rudra and Donovan sailboarded or surfed together at least once a month. He’d known Rudra since college.

  Now Rudra ran his own security firm, which he’d taken over when his father had retired. Out of character for Rudy, he was making a success out of it.

  Always seemed to know the right jobs to take and the right ones to walk away from.

  “Give us a ride, man,” Donovan went on. “Need to get back to my car and get out of here. It’s an emergency.”

  “No can do, Donny-O.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no can do’? What are you talking about?” Donovan asked, stopping at the car. “Just let us in. This shit is serious.”

  “Sorry,” Rudra said. “I’m not driving out of town. I just got here. See? I’m parked here. Outstanding spot, too. Got things to do.” Rudra snapped his fingers to indicate speed and determination.

  For a second, Donovan said nothing, but soon got back on topic.

  “Rudy, there are things happening in the city today. Strange things. We witnessed the aftermath of a horrible massacre or something and these people, these—I don’t know what they were. The insane wounded is what they looked like. Now, I appreciate you have other plans, but this is important. I need to get Cathren out of here.”

  Donovan beamed his best smile and waited.

  He could hear the sirens all around them, followed by the sound of rapid gunfire. A jet roared past high overhead.

  “What the hell is going on?” Rudra asked, fidgeting in his seat like a startled bunny.

  “Trouble. Believe me, like I said, you do not want to be in the city today,” Donovan said.

  He opened the passenger-side door, pulled down the front seat, shoved Cathren into the too-small back, and then jumped in up front and slammed the door.

  From a couple streets away, a loud explosion rumbled toward them like stampeding rhinos.

  “Forget about getting my car. We need to get out of the city,” Donovan said. “Now.”

  “Sure, sure, man. Consider us gone.” Rudra’s hand shook as he checked his mirrors and pulled out. “You owe me two dollars for the meter, by the way,” he said to Donovan. Then, mostly to himself, “Lost a damn good parking spot.”

  * * *

  They made a left on Leavenworth and a right on Geary, heading out of town.

  As they approached Hyde, Cathren reached out from the back seat and jabbed her finger into Donovan’s shoulder, then pointed to a strange, shambling crowd starting to fill the avenue up ahead.

  “What I like most about this car,” Rudra was saying as they cruised along like tourists on vacation, oblivious to the insanity around them, “is the quiet.”

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  “No engine noise,” Rudra continued.

  “Shit is right,” Donovan answered. “More water drinkers.”

  “Purrs like a kitten.” Rudra tapped the dashboard as if he were petting it. “Hey, what is happening here?” Rudra asked, interrupting himself. He stared straight ahead, his jaw slack.

  “Maybe we should turn around.” Cathren said.

  Donovan pivoted in his seat to survey the shuffling mob, all of whom were covered in rotting flesh.

  Behind them, military vehicles rumbled up the road with lethal determination.

  “Rudy, man, can you, um, pick up the pace a little?” Donovan said.

  “And get us the hell outta here?”

  Chapter 7

  “Hey,” said Rudra as they rocketed along onto 101, away from the crowds of creeps and the increasing military threat downtown. “You catch all this shit about ATELIC? Oh my God!” He signaled and changed lanes as brain-colored rain spotted the windshield.

  Donovan shrugged and stared out the window, wondering what the hell they had just witnessed.

  “I’ve heard a little,” Cathren said from the back seat. “Something about some chemicals getting spilled, right?”

  “Right. Evidently there’s some kind of chemical bath up there. Crazy shit. Dumping toxic sludge into the environment. Ends up in the water we drink, the water we bathe in.”

  “I don’t understand,” Donovan said, turning away from the cityscape. “How is this possible? What about, I don’t know, FEMA, the ACLU, the FDA, the CDC—whoever handles these things?”

  “Right, yeah, you’d think so.” Rudra squinted past the thumping windshield wipers, which were busy smearing muck across his field of vision. “Check it out, though: they knew all along. The government fuckin’ knew.” He shook his head again and then checked the rear view mirror. “This is your exit coming up, right?” Rudra popped a piece of gum in his mouth.

  “Yep.”

  “Anyway,” Rudra continued, chewing. “Nothing but a big, friggin’ cover-up. You know? Meanwhile, we’re all getting sick out here.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I need to check into all this. I feel like I missed a killer story,” Cathren said. “I’m going to start a series.” She slapped the back of one hand into the palm of her other.

  “Oh, hey, I almost forgot," Rudra said. "There’s a huge protest at the ATELIC campus in Redwood City tonight. Around eight, so that we’re in time for the ten o’clock news. Anyway, I’ve gotten like a thousand tweets about it.” He turned to Donovan. “You going, Donny-O?”

  “I don’t know.” Donovan yawned.

  “Come on, it’ll be cool. Peaceful demonstrations. All the best people are going to show up.”

  Donovan shrugged again, noncommittally. “Okay, I guess.”

  “What about you, Donny’s girl?”

  “She’s not my—”

  “Without a doubt, Rudra. I wouldn’t miss it,” Cathren said, watching the traffic go by.

  Chapter 8

  Welcome back. I’m Zoë Krant and you’re watching Investigation Nation. Let’s return to our story.

  ATELIC scientists were working to develop a serum and a technology to bring the dead back to life. Yes, you heard right. Reanimate the dead. Without this unique serum and this extraordinary technology, the company would fail in its mission. More important than mission-failure, however, were the dozens and dozens of frozen heads maintained at ATELIC. Heads of the rich, the famous, the hopeful—who all depend on ATELIC succeeding in that mission. Heads on ice which, if ATELIC fails, would have no reason for being.

  The promise ATELIC gave its wealthy clients was that in some mythical “future,” a new, perfect technology would appear, as if by magic. This know-how would make it possible to create a new living person in the lab using stem cells.

  Once the promised and glorious technology arrived, the reanimation process could begin. Scientists would insert the brain of the frozen celeb into a new, young, fresh body. A body grown from DNA in a p
etri dish, in the labs at ATELIC. Then, using a variety of yet-to-be-discovered technologies, ATELIC scientists would proceed to bring the heads back to life.

  Their clients would be given new life and, by definition, would be immortal. How? According to ATELIC, as each new body inevitably failed, ATELIC technicians would remove the brain, and along with it, its intellect, its personality, its memories. Next, an ATELIC tech would reinsert the brain into yet another new, young—and presumed “soulless”—body. Thus, transplanting not just an intellect, but a consciousness. The celeb would continue to do this, like changing suits, over and over again, for all eternity.

  The vision of the future is what ATELIC and its clients believed. But it is what ATELIC has failed to deliver. Because something at ATELIC has gone horribly wrong...

  Next, our exclusive interview with the founder of ATELIC, Dr. Burkhart Egesa himself.

  We’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere!

  Chapter 9

  The crowds protesting ATELIC Industries crashed and clanged like a chaotic circus of crazy. To put it another way, shit and fan waged a battle, but neither snatched a victory from the other.

  Donovan, Cathren, and Rudra elbowed through the roaring, chanting, fist-pumping crowd. Police barricades stood everywhere like wooden sentries. With Donovan in the lead, the team squeezed through the crowd, avoiding the mob and the cops like trained dancers. They swept past roadblocks and knots of people. They pushed their way closer to the chain-link fence surrounding the ATELIC compound, fighting to get to safety. At last, they arrived at a grassy knoll of pine trees and bushes just beyond the maddening crowd.

  The horde below chanted in unison. “A-TEL-IC, go to heck! A-TEL-IC, go to heck!”

  The crowd had become a dangerously out of control mob, enforcing for Donovan the reasons he detested crowds. They were unpredictable, smelly, threatening, and could develop a crowd mentality like a stampeding herd.

  Suddenly, as if given a signal, an almost-choreographed line of people appeared at the gates of the site. They lit the rag-ends of their Molotov cocktails and threw them across the parking lot at the various ATELIC structures and vehicles.

  The bottles broke windows and landed inside and out of the buildings all over the ATELIC campus. The first few made contact with combustible materials in different buildings. ATELIC structures—full of chemicals and gasses, liquid and gas containers, and unstable biochemical baths—exploded like Parliament on Guy Fawkes Day. Other small explosions, popping like firecrackers, grew into larger, booming crashes as windows shattered, and buildings and trucks started to burn.

  The frightening stink of biochemical smoke filled the air with a stench similar to that of rotted burning flesh. Heat from the structures made the air oppressive. The shouting of the crowd grew louder until it was no longer possible to distinguish individual words.

  The chanting and hollering became almost an industrial noise, like jets on a runway. It was a symphony of noise, punctuated by screaming sirens, roaring flames, and the beating of helicopter blades from captors approaching on the horizon.

  The small grove of trees where the party stood was close enough to the fence to give Donovan, Cathren, and Rudra a clear view of things. From their vantage point, they scanned the property.

  Cops and firefighters ran around, shouting orders and gesturing like coaches on the sidelines at the Super Bowl. Firefighters strove to control the catastrophe while cops struggled to control the crowd. Some people from the throng scaled the fence as others tore past the guard station onto the ATELIC property in the direction of the burning buildings. Lights from the helicopters above swept across the entire area like spotlights at the Oscars.

  “This is fucking crazy,” someone at Donovan’s left said. A woman’s voice.

  “Shit, yeah,” Donovan mumbled. He could not pull his gaze away from the chaos all around them.

  No other sounds emanated from the person at his left, yet a certain frostiness in the air alerted him, subconsciously, that he was doing something wrong. He swung around to view the person who had addressed him.

  A young woman with strawberry blonde hair cascading down to her shoulders stood there dressed in jeans and a pink hoodie. Feminine, but strong-looking. Capable.

  Cathren, of course.

  * * *

  “Oh, hi,” Donovan said, sheepishly. “In all this excitement, I forgot for a moment you were with me.” He chuckled.

  The frostiness increased.

  After staring at him for a long time, Cathren relented and said, “Is this normal, at one of these protests, for people to act like this?”

  “No. It’s out of control. Stay near me.”

  “I’m documenting all this for my blog,” she said, not listening. “I’ve been taking pictures with my iPhone and posting them. Tweeting, too. Get the truth out there. Maybe I’ll be famous.”

  The helicopter spotlights swung past again, blinding them slightly. As the lights flowed by, the beams highlighted the top of Cathren’s head like a halo.

  “What do you know about ATELIC?” he asked.

  “A lot now,” she said. “They’re messing with things they should not be messing with.”

  “How’d you figure all that out?”

  “Wikipedia.” She winked one of her big, sea-green eyes.

  Someone screamed to Donovan’s right on the ATELIC property, and Donovan jerked his head around to assess what was happening. The cops had a woman down on the ground, cuffing her. Donovan turned back to Cathren.

  “Jesus! Did you see that—”

  But she was gone. He looked for her in the adjacent groups of people. He stood up on his toes, but even at six feet tall, he couldn’t find her. He turned to face Rudra.

  “Where the hell did Cathren go?”

  Rudra wasn’t listening. He had pulled out a small pair of Taiwan-made binoculars he’d bought to watch shows from the cheap seats. Now he used them to watch the chaos on the ATELIC grounds. “Hmmm. Some firefighters are heading into the middle building with people in hazmat suits jogging along behind them.”

  Above the buildings, helicopters dropped one at a time near the roof of the middle building, like birds diving into a large nest.

  “Some helicopters, too. Crazy. Each releasing a line to the rooftop.” He was silent for a minute. “Holy crap!”

  “What?” Donovan said.

  “They’re lifting something. It’s weird. It looks like an egg-shaped container or something.”

  “What are you talking about, man?”

  “The top and bottom seem to be made out of some sort of metal. The rest is glass. Something is floating in the egg thing.”

  “What is it? Come on, Rudy, what’s going on?”

  “Maybe it’s nothing, I don’t know. Perhaps just the splashing of the liquid in the egg.” Rudra adjusted the binoculars, zooming in tighter. “Damn, I just can’t tell. Whatever it is, it’s small and round and bobbing like a beach ball in there.”

  Somewhere behind them, people shouted. The crowd grew angrier. Panicked, Donovan knew their position by the fence would soon be overtaken.

  The enraged mob stormed their way past the few cops and security people tasked with holding them back. Most of the cops were occupied inside the compound now, trying to maintain order. The horde crushed in on Donovan and Rudra. Donovan didn’t like this. Not at all. Too many people. Too close. Perspiration from Donovan’s back soaked through his long-sleeved blue tee shirt.

  “We need to get out here, fast,” he said to Rudra.

  “Lead the way. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Sweat trickled from Donovan’s armpits down his sides. Dread started to overpower him. He fought against the panic, but it overwhelmed him.

  Fuckin’ crazy people. I don’t want to die this way. Not trampled to death, my last breath crushed out of my body. Not because of this idiocy at ATELIC.

  Then Donovan saw her.

  Cathren crouched behind one of the burning buildings, swathed in smoke, froz
en for an instant near a side door. Then she grabbed the handle of the door and yanked it open.

  Plumes of black smoke billowed out of the doorway. A whirlwind of intense heat almost knocked Donovan from his feet, even as far away as he was.

  Before he could draw a breath, Cathren vanished into the blazing building.

  Chapter 10

  Smoke filled the space, flames snapping from every side. Boxes, cans, and drums exploded all around her. The sound of glass shattering pierced her eardrums. Cathren imagined she heard screams in all this madness, but couldn’t be sure. Gasping, she pinned herself against the wall and reached back for the door. The heat of the doorknob stung her fingers like a serpent bite.

  She took a deep breath to steel herself against the situation. Think, Cathren. Panicking won’t get you out of this.

  The engulfing structure had the form and dimensions of an airplane hangar. She estimated the height of the building at roughly three stories. However, it contained no floors, only this one vast open space. Several divided walls intersected at different junctions to create various halls and offices. The rest of the area overflowed with rows of egg-shaped pods or tanks or whatever they were, about the size of an adult male. A number of pipes twisted in and out of the metal tanks. Triple-gauged instruments capped the tops of the eggs like crowns, monitoring temperature, pressure, and vital signs.

  Thunder shook the building unexpectedly. Cathren looked up. Plaster, wood, metal, and glass tumbled from above. The roof started to break open. Multiple holes in the ceiling gradually became gaping wounds. After a bit, she understood what made the crashing, booming noises: wrecking balls pounded at the roof. They swung from the end of thick steel cables suspended from helicopters.

  Work completed, the winch mechanism inside the helicopters’ bays wound the wrecking balls back up. Within a few minutes, the cables reemerged and plunged back through the roof. As the first of them got closer, Cathren noticed massive hooks had replaced the balls.