Zombie Ever After Read online

  “I don’t know. She was downstairs last I saw, in the basement.”

  “Okay. Show me.”

  “We need to be careful. She’s conceivably in cahoots with the enemy— ”

  “I strongly doubt that.”

  “—or being tortured by them.”

  “Why, what did you see?”

  “I’m not sure, but—”

  Cathren started down the steps at a fast clip. Donovan headed off after her. She might be strong, she might even practice martial arts or whatever the hell she did, but she wasn’t ready to face Egesa again.

  Ahead of him, Cathren turned the corner in the dark as Donovan reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Then he heard her scream.

  Chapter 36

  He ran to her as fast as he could, knowing all too well she was now face-to-face with Alena’s dead body. He called out, “Yes, Cathren, I know, it’s not pretty. But be careful, Egesa is down here somewhere.”

  Donovan rounded the bend and skidded to a stop on the dirty cement floor, cutting the bottom of his feet.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said. Not because of his burning feet, but because the chair was toppled, and the basement door to the outside was wide open.

  Egesa and Alena had vanished into the night.

  Cathren was out the basement door before Donovan could say, “You haven’t got any clothes on, you know!” Which he did say, actually. Immediately after she’d disappeared into the night. He was not fast enough to convince her to put on something more appropriate for battling evildoers. She was scarcely wearing a tank top and thong panties, and Donovan had on only his boxers.

  The couple ran through the gloomy, pre-dawn morning on a rescue mission only Cathren truly understood. They jogged along the sidewalk of the gray San Mateo street, looking for something—anything—that would indicate where Alena had gone. Or, more accurately, been taken.

  Outside, at night, in his skivvies, in a world newly-populated by the undead, was not Donovan’s idea of a good time. For some reason he felt vulnerable. This happened every time he was outdoors in only his underwear. Which he’d done a total of, until now, never. But now he knew how it felt. It felt just as bad as he thought it would.

  “There!” Cathren pointed to a car roaring around the corner. It was just a couple of blocks up ahead. “I’m sure that’s them in that Mercedes.” She picked up the pace. But Donovan knew even a girl with superhuman strength (and maybe speed) was no match for a car.

  “Cathren,” he wheezed, catching up. “We need to stop. I don’t mean stop going after them. But stop for a minute. We need to find a car or a motorcycle or something. We’ll never be able to follow them on foot, let alone catch up with them.”

  She wasn’t listening. She was pounding along in her bare feet, her legs like pistons, arms like smaller pistons. Donovan was running out of steam. Plus he needed to relieve himself, something he became acutely aware of when he’d first witnessed Alena’s interrogation.

  Cathren sped on far ahead of Donovan, machine-like. He faltered, drifted, and ultimately stopped, mortal-like. Puffing and grabbing his side, Donovan turned the corner. He could see Cathren in the distance. Still half-naked, running in the middle of the road. Beyond her, he glimpsed cars at a standstill on the freeway on-ramp. An older Mercedes sat at the end of the congested mass of vehicles. As Donovan got closer, he could make out the license plate: SMRT-DOC.

  Donovan had no choice but to start running again. Yet his body kept telling him it was a remarkably bad idea. He was less than a block away from the freeway. Cathren was already at the vehicle, however. She reached in and then climbed in. He couldn’t tell what was going on, but getting into the vehicle seemed ill-advised.

  When he reached the car, he peered in cautiously. Cathren sat inside. Alone. Egesa appeared to have abandoned his car and, no doubt, commandeered another. He had gotten away with Alena Portanova as his hostage.

  Donovan reached in and touched Cathren’s shoulder. She pulled away from him and kept staring straight ahead. Traffic was beginning to move, but incredibly slowly. Donovan took Cathren’s hand and led her from the car.

  “There’s nothing we can do for her,” he said. She kept her hand in his and they walked together back to Alena’s house. Now it was Cathren and Donovan against the world, as far as he could tell.

  “Let’s find some clothes,” he offered, “and get the hell away from here.”

  Cathren had tears running down her cheeks and was still in a distracted state of mind. Donovan looked forward to getting dressed. To have a shirt and shorts on after all this time would be a kind of a relief.

  As they reached Alena’s front door, the sun came up over the horizon, adding a bit of color to the melancholy skies. Donovan could feel the humidity already. He mused how, ordinarily, he’d look forward to a day that started off like this. The killer sunrise, that is. Not the killings. Inside the house, they dressed, then went back downstairs.

  “Let’s go,” Donovan said. And they left.

  Outside, they looked up and down the street. No people. But a few cars dotted the lane. Including the one in which Donovan had arrived in here the night before: Alena’s BMW.

  “Maybe she left her keys in the house,” Donovan said.

  “I don’t know,” Cathren said. “Worth checking, I guess. Otherwise we’re on foot. And that ain’t good.”

  Donovan ran back indoors. Alena’s purse rested on the kitchen counter. He wiggled his fingers inside it and found the keys. He pulled them out and strolled outside. Smiling, he stood on the porch and held them up.

  “Nice,” Cathren said, turning the corner of her lips up in a smirk.

  They hopped in the car and Donovan started it up.

  “Sweet,” he said. “And look at that. The tank is half full.”

  “Or half empty.”

  “Either way, we got no money, but we do have gas. Let’s see how far from here we can get.”

  They pulled away from the curb and headed toward the freeway entrance. They didn’t have a plan. No idea where go. The only thing they truly understood was they were heading out of town, as fast as possible. Leaving all this madness behind them.

  Or so they thought.

  Chapter 37

  The highway was jammed with die-hard, early morning commuters, still bent on their soulless voyage to work despite the growing apocalypse. Donovan and Cathren glided up to the tail-end of the traffic jam on 287. They settled in with the rest of the cars, SUVs, and minivans.

  This is when Egesa reappeared, stepping out of the overgrowth on the side of the road. He pointed a gun at Cathren’s head.

  “Humans can die like this. So can zombies. I think your friend here qualifies as one or the other, yes?” Egesa said. “Either way, it’s a kill shot.”

  Cathren stayed still as stone.

  “Now,” Egesa continued, “you’ll do what I say. Exactly as I say.” He opened the back door and got in behind Cathren. He pressed the gun against the back of her head. “Or kiss your little girlfriend bye-bye.”

  Without any real options, Donovan did as he was told and continued driving.

  “Where’s Alena?” he asked.

  “Lucky one, her. Should be dead a few times over. But when you are friends with a half-zombie girl, it affords you a bit of protection.”

  “Is she dead or what? What did you do?”

  “Calm down, you wretched man-child. As far as I know, she’s fine. She ran away from me for some reason. I had no intention of hurting her, yes? Why would I? I love her. Anyway, she’s probably zombie-food by now.”

  Traffic grunted down the highway like a tribe of exhausted pachyderms. Before long, they had reached the outskirts of Redwood City. No one had uttered a word for a long time. Donovan couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

  “Where are you taking us?” he said, looking in the rearview mirror at Egesa.

  Egesa sneered. “Where do you think, genius? Back to ATELIC Industries.”

  “That’s
been destroyed. I saw the fires myself, firsthand.”

  Egesa was silent for a minute, as if considering this new information. “Look, brain-dead. I’m only so patient, yes? Shut the hell up and keep driving. I’ll tell you where to turn and when.”

  A few miles later, Egesa leaned forward and pointed. “Here,” he said. “Turn here!”

  Donovan rolled to the light and made a left, in the direction Egesa was pointing. They headed toward the business district of Redwood City, moving at a leisurely pace due to traffic congestion. What wasn’t leisurely, however, was the beating of Donovan’s heart, the fear in his head. He was panicking. Even with Cathren, the undead killing machine, he couldn’t see how this could end well.

  “Here we are,” Egesa said after another mile or two and a few more forced turns. Egesa guided them back to the main campus of ATELIC Industries. He told Donovan to park the car about three blocks from the place.

  It looked exactly as Donovan expected. The damp, blackened shells of the former ATELIC buildings lay steaming in the early morning drizzle. Barricades still stood, but he didn’t spot any cops or other official or military vehicles. The place had been pretty well locked up and locked down. Security, if it existed at all here, was thin. A couple of squad cars were parked behind a patch of bushes and trees, and what he took to be private security cars, white cars with official-looking lettering on the doors, were parked up the road.

  “Now what?” Donovan asked.

  “We wait. When the time is right, we move.”

  * * *

  “See these buildings?” Egesa went on. “Destroyed, yes? Useless, yes? But not to worry. That’s only the part of ATELIC that stood above ground. At ATELIC, there’s always more than meets the eye.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There is a complete subterranean structure. Below all this … more ATELIC.”

  “What?” Donovan said, perplexed. “Why on earth…?”

  “Purely business. Never intended as a bunker of any kind. Although, I have to admit, conveniently it will be that now. It’s down beneath the ground of our feet. It’s where we keep the most famous, most brilliant, most important of our frozen heads. You know, in case of fire and so on, yes?” Egesa croaked out a laugh.

  Donovan said nothing. Egesa still held the gun to Cathren’s head. It was no longer pressed against her skull, but it was close enough to do the job. Donovan didn’t see any wriggle room here. Or any options.

  Egesa went on, like a madman in a Bond movie. “You see, we have the technology to transplant the brains, to awaken them, so to speak, yes? Insert them into new bodies. Yes, yes.” He cleared his throat, followed by an exaggerated swallow. “Well, to be completely truthful, we don’t have all of the technology yet. Close enough for government work, though.” He chortled again, sounding more like he was choking than laughing.

  “What are you planning?” Donovan said.

  “Well, sir. Your body is relatively useless, agreed? Cathren’s is quite another story. So, I’ll simply disengage your brain and upgrade it with the frozen brain of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. That should work. Then Mr. Nobel Prize can work with me to unscramble this contamination, yes? Solve this damn zombie puzzle, once and for all.”

  “That’s all science fiction,” Donovan said, almost yelling. “You’ll be wasting your time. Not to mention killing me for no reason.”

  “As for Cathren, a girl with almost superhuman powers,” Egesa continued, ignoring Donovan’s protests. “Well, she deserves our full, undivided attention, yes? She will be examined like a diamond, studied like a celebrity. Diagnosed. Dismembered. Cut open. Pulled apart. Shaken. Stirred.” Egesa laughed his hoarse laugh.

  “What the fuck?” Cathren said. She turned her head slightly. Egesa pressed the gun back up to it. She turned and faced forward again, her fists clenched and shaking in her lap.

  “You are out of your fucking head,” Donovan suggested. He enunciated as clearly and as slowly as possible, like you would when talking to an insane person.

  “Perhaps,” Egesa said, clicking his tongue. “But that’s neither here nor there at the moment.” He laughed a diabolical laugh, then wiped his sleeve across his mouth to remove the spittle.

  “Okay, now we move,” Egesa said. “Get out.”

  Donovan hesitated, then left the car.

  Keeping the weapon pressed against Cathren’s head, Egesa climbed into the front seat and they exited the vehicle like conjoined twins. All three walked toward ATELIC. Before they got to the main gate, however, Egesa forced them off into a patch of scrub pines and other brush.

  “That’s far enough,” he said. “Okay, you—” He waved the gun at Donovan. “Start digging.”

  “What? You’re going to kill us right here? What was all that talk about brain transplants?”

  “Don’t worry. We’re still doing all of that. Just start digging. You’ll find a shovel in the hollow of the eucalyptus over there, yes? See for yourself.”

  * * *

  Donovan checked. A wooden handle barely protruded from the crotch of the tree. It belonged to a camping shovel, the kind that folds to fit in a backpack. He pulled the tool out and snapped it open. He reluctantly began digging close to the trunk of the tree.

  “Not there, you fool. Here.” Egesa waved the gun at an area slightly beyond where Donovan stood. With the weapon pointed away from her, Cathren lunged at Egesa. He put the gun back as quickly as he had removed it, stopping Cathren in mid-stride. Cathren now had the barrel stuck against her forehead.

  “May I remind you, young lady, I don’t need your brain,” Egesa said. “Just your body, yes?” Without losing eye contact with Cathren, he said to Donovan, “Start digging.”

  Donovan saw no way out of creating his own grave. Cathren’s, too, possibly.

  At least we’ll be buried together. Kind of nice, in a macabre way.

  He got down on his knees, the only good method to dig with a shovel this small. He started hacking away at the ground. After about forty minutes or so, the blade hit some resistance.

  “Uh, I hit something. We should move to another spot. I think it’s a sewer line or something.”

  “It’s not a sewer line. You’ve dug far enough. Clear the dirt away now, yes? Until we can see the metal thing.”

  Donovan did as instructed. But he didn’t understand why Egesa wanted to see the “metal thing.” In the back of his mind, Donovan hoped a brilliant plan would pop into his exhausted brain. Nothing came to him, though. Not the tiniest spark.

  In a few minutes, he had the “metal thing” cleared for viewing. A manhole cover. At least that’s what it looked like. On the right side of the disc was a large handle. A small metal box nestled in the middle of the cover.

  “Open the box,” Egesa ordered.

  Donovan tried to open it with both hands. No luck. He picked up the shovel again and pried the top of the little box with the blade. After struggling for a few minutes, Donovan managed to get it to pop open, revealing a keypad. The kind used to open garage doors.

  “4-B-R-A-I-N-Z,” Egesa said. “Obvious, I guess, yet easy to remember, yes?” He smiled, but no one paid any attention.

  “What?” Donovan said. He was irritated by this maniac more than he could safely show.

  “The combination, idiot. Type it in.”

  Donovan glared at his captor, then returned his gaze to the pad between his knees. The gray plastic pad had three rows of numbers, three letters to each number. Except for 1 and 0. Donovan pressed each button methodically: 4-2-7-2-4-6-9, “4-Brainz.”

  The manhole cover made a beeping noise. After a few seconds, the cover popped open just a crack, sounding like a beer can opening. Fffffzzzzzuh.

  “Good,” said Egesa. “Pull it open and let’s go.”

  “What is this?” Donovan asked, grabbing the handle and pulling the hinged manhole cover all the way open. A strong chemical scent, formaldehyde or chlorine or something, assaulted his nose. A narrow set of iron stairs
ran down one side into darkness. Donovan was reminded of the entrance to a sewer, or the hatch on the top of a submarine. Climbing down was a claustrophobe’s—in other words, his—worst nightmare.

  In a minute, Donovan had traversed more than halfway down. He knew because a soft white light glowed somewhere down below him. At this point, Cathren started down, too.

  “Cathren,” he whispered.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered back. “I promise.”

  “That’s my line,” Donovan said. “Only I can’t say it now. Because I don’t believe it.”

  Chapter 38

  At last, Donovan reached the bottom. He considered standing aside and ambushing Egesa when he came down the narrow chute, but knowing that Egesa still had a gun trained on Cathren, he decided against it. At least for the time being. The opportunity would come. When it did, he would seize it—that is, if Cathren didn’t seize it first.

  The manhole cover clanged shut somewhere above him. Cathren came into view. Egesa followed a few seconds later, but he didn’t step down like Cathren and Donovan had. The gun appeared first. Then Egesa’s head. He was hanging upside down by his legs, like a Cirque du Soleil trapeze artist.

  “Get back against the wall,” he said, waving the weapon.

  Donovan and Cathren backed up about six or seven feet in the small, circular stainless steel room in which they found themselves.

  “Now, turn around and face the wall.”

  They did.

  Egesa let go of whatever hold he had and fell like a bag of laundry down a laundry chute. Somehow, he still managed to keep his gun trained on his two victims.

  So much for that plan to ambush him.

  “Welcome to the subterranean entrance to the world of ATELIC Industries,” Egesa said, standing up and dusting himself off. “The grand and glorious tour is about to begin. Your last ever tour, yes?” He gestured with the gun. “Move.”

  They set out on along the metal corridor for maybe five or ten minutes, with nobody saying anything. They seemed to be walking through a subterranean submarine, walking a gradual decline deep into the earth. The floor sloped to a significant degree, as if the metaphorical sub had been given the command: Dive! Dive!