Authors: S. A. Lusher
The final door led to a large rec room, packed with couches and several different time wasters: a pool table, a small collection of arcade games, a corner with a large screen dedicated to watching vids. It, too, was empty.
With the dormitory clear, the pair moved to one of the bedrooms that didn't have a body or obvious signs of struggle in it.
Kyra slumped onto one of the beds. “We're going to have to sleep in shifts. Give me four hours, no more. I'll do the same for you when you wake me. I trust you enough to watch me sleep, Greg, but I'm sleeping with this.” She held up her pistol. “Don't give me reason to lose what trust you've built so far.”
Greg couldn't think of anything to say without sounding stupid, so he just nodded. Kyra seemed satisfied. She pulled back the blankets and lay down in full
uniform, rolling away from him. Greg wanted to give her reason to trust him. If he was honest with himself, being alone frightened him that much more now that there were actual
zombies
roaming around. On top of that, he liked her. Kyra was a competent ally to have. She was smart, alert, and capable.
Greg found a spot in the room opposite the bed where he could keep Kyra, the door, and the solitary window in plain view and put his back to the wall. He set his shotgun on a desk beside him and kept his pistol in his lap.
Chapter 05
Rain still tapped the window by the time he woke Kyra. She jerked the second he put a hand on her shoulder, but was aware enough not to shove the pistol in his face, for which he was thankful. She stood and rubbed sleep from her eyes, thanking him as she did. He wasn't sure what she was thanking him for. Not killing her in her sleep? Not abandoning her? Simply waking her? He lay down in the bed, beneath the blankets.
The bed smelled of her and held her warmth, nothing as sweet as perfume, but sweat and her natural scent. He found it pleasant and comforting, which helped him fall asleep. Nightmares haunted Greg. He was back in the ruined ship, only it appeared much bigger than it should have been. Somewhere, someone cried, a deep, haunting sob.
Greg tried to navigate the broken corridors bathed in a crimson so deep he began to wonder if this was Hell. The notion terrified him immensely on a deep, dark level. He pressed on, not knowing where he went, or where he should go, but unable to simply sit idle. He tripped on something and crashed to the deck, pain shooting up through his joints. He stared down and found the corridor floor littered with body parts, severed limbs ripped from torsos, bloodied organs, and dismembered heads, grimaces of unknowable pain etched permanently into their frozen faces, like glyphs carved from granite.
Greg gasped and lurched to his feet. All around him, a banging began. It sounded like fists beating on metal. The noise grew and grew. The moans of the damned slipping into his skull like an audible virus. He pressed his hands to his ears, screaming, unable to drive out the sound. He thrashed around, certain that he was going mad.
Greg jerked awake as a hand touched his shoulder. If the safety hadn't been on, his pistol would have gone off. He gripped it beneath the pillow. Kyra hovered over him, loose strands of hair hanging around her pale face, framed by a dim gray light.
“
You were making a lot of noise.” She spoke in a hushed voice.
Greg tried to speak, but found his mouth dry as a desert. He coughed and sat up. Kyra stepped back.
“I'm fine,” he managed. “Anything happen while I was out?”
Kyra shook her head and he pulled the blankets aside. He was drenched in sweat. A shower would do wonders about now. Kyra agreed when he suggested it and he searched the dresser for a spare uniform. When he found one and compared it against his own, he found that it matched. Stepping into the bathroom, he flicked on the light and closed the door.
Greg turned on the water in the small frosted glass stall and let it run until it filled the bathroom with steam. He removed everything from his pockets, setting the items, and the new uniform, folded neatly, on the counter. Before the mirror fogged up, he took a quick look at himself. He didn't like the way his eyes were sunken and bloodshot. It looked like someone had hit him, and more than once. His short, dark hair was plastered to his pale skull. He rubbed at his eyes and stripped off his torn, bloodied clothing.
The shower felt great, best thing to happen to him since waking up. Well, besides finding another living person. He washed all the blood and dirt off of his skin, found a razor and some shaving cream and decided to put them to use. By the time he was out and toweled off, he was already feeling a whole hell of a lot better.
Greg opened up the partially used medical kit and went over his various cuts and scrapes, the bandages from the crashed ship had either fallen off or barely hung on at this point. Sealing the kit back up, he finished dressing and hunted around the squalid bathroom for a toothbrush and some toothpaste. The taste of blood still lingered in his mouth. He brushed, gargled, and spat, then returned to the bedroom.
“
Thought you'd died in there, Greg. You spent more time in that bathroom than
I
usually do.” Kyra smirked.
He didn't know what to say and instead just chuckled and shrugged, making his way across the room. Her gaze followed him.
“Are you
blushing
?” Her grin now infected her voice.
Greg sighed.
“Shut up.” His words lacked any of the emotion they had if he’d meant them.
Kyra laughed and stepped into the bathroom, a new uniform and towel bundled in her arms. He sighed.
I’m such an idiot.
His mind decided to substitute his embarrassment for visualizing what Kyra looked like naked, but that only made him feel more awkward. He sighed again and went to the window.
It was still raining, but the sun had risen.
In the cold gray light of day, the landscape only looked that much bleaker. The view faced away from the camp, showing nothing but unbroken miles of wasteland. In the distance, he saw the uncertain outlines of mountains. Greg turned away from the window and moved over to a desk, laying out his small arsenal. While Kyra showered, Greg cleaned his weapons, disassembling them with practiced ease.
Yes, he decided, he was a soldier.
His dreams disappointed him, as, secretly, he'd hoped they would reveal more about his past. He was sure that the memories were all still there...he just didn't have access to them. And that was true, it had to be, because what was he going to do otherwise?
The shower turned off, and a few moments later Kyra emerged, looking much more put together and refreshed. The pair navigated their way out of the dormitories and back into the familiar rain. Not wanting to be drenched again, Greg hurried to follow Kyra, who seemed to be heading toward the comms building.
He surveyed the camp as he went, remembering Kyra's tale of how zombies just started wandering in from the wastelands. They remained isolated, the only living things around, at least as far as he could tell. Greg wondered if he could even count those things among the living. What nature of zombie was this? What had caused it? Something in the soil? Some toxic spill? Some freak accident? Or something darker and more cliché? A government or military experiment? Some kind of big test? Well, the place was isolated enough for it.
“
We're going to eat first, and then we'll start clearing out the base. You don't mind scrubbing the deck and hauling bodies do you?” Kyra asked as they stepped into the mess hall.
“
Well, I'm not sure how I felt about it before, but I don't really care now. Honestly, the idea is kind of appealing. It'd be nice to have something to do.”
They raided the kitchen area, heating up sealed packages of food, heavy on nutrients, light on taste. Greg remembered
that
from before. The package contained corn, mashed potatoes and a slice of what was referred to as beef. He found some milk in a plastic jug to go along with it. He and Kyra sat across from each other at the long, cafeteria-style table and ate in silence for the first few moments. Despite its blandness, the food seemed delicious.
“
So, what can you tell me about the planet we're on?” Greg asked.
Kyra seemed startled, yanked away from whatever dark thoughts had taken up residence in her mind.
“Well, it's called Dis. Most of it is mountainous, a lot like the wastelands you see now. There are some heavily forested areas I think, and half the planet is ocean, but it’s mostly just rock. It was primarily a mining world, but some industrial corporations decided it would be easier to just set up the building yards near the resources instead of having to ship the resources and, well, the planet's population began to grow from there.”
Kyra stopped talking, her head snapped toward the door, hand reaching for her pistol on the table next to her meal. Greg twisted around to see what she looked at, but saw nothing. He turned back to face her.
“Thought I heard something.” She went back to eating. After a long moment, she continued to talk.
“
The region we're in is
real
wasteland territory. You'll be lucky to get one outpost every fifty miles. There are a lot of do-nothing, backwater jobs in places like this. Communications relays, radar facilities, storage complexes, the occasional military outpost. Most of the places out here are mining operations. I ran tech support at a radar facility. Boring work...”
Kyra paused, appearing to lose herself in memories. She stood, suddenly, and took her now empty food tray to the kitchen. She returned a moment later, this time holding a can of soda, its exterior frosted with moisture. Greg recognized it, from the black and silver art to the gold Vex scrawled across the front. Instantly, he knew what it tasted like. To say the experience was strange would be an understatement.
“You said, last time, that the zombies came, there was some disagreement...then what happened?”
Kyra heaved a big sigh, slamming the can down on the table.
“A whole lot of dicking around,
that's
what...when I think about all the time we wasted, what we could have been doing...no one knew what to do. Our commander was given his job out in the middle of nowhere because of what a big idiot he was. He pretty much folded. His number two tried to take over, but he had less of an idea of what to do than the commander. We argued and while we did, even more zombies showed up. We fought them off and finally decided to call for help.”
Kyra laughed, a dark bitterness lacing her voice. She popped the soda open and took a deep drink.
“The radio was down, but I had a few ideas of how to get a signal out. By the time I managed to get control and start implementing my plan, well...that was when-”
Kyra sprang to her feet, the pistol in her hand so fast that Greg hardly even noticed her pick it up.
“Okay, I
know
I heard something that time,” she snapped, making for the door.
Greg abandoned what was left of his meal and grabbed his shotgun. He had both pistols on him, one in the hip holster, one tucked down the back of his pants. He hurried to follow Kyra back out into the rain. Outside, he heard the hum of a motor, and voices in the rainy mist.
Something about them made him uncomfortable.
Kyra tensed, her posture defensive. The headlights came from the shacks, where she had originally pulled in.
“I never moved the jeep...fucking
stupid
.”
Greg swallowed. Something was definitely wrong here. His senses, what he recognized as combat instincts, murmured to him. He raised the shotgun, tucked it hard against his shoulder and moved his finger inside the trigger guard. He and Kyra went unnoticed. Keeping low and moving fast, they managed to make it behind the nearest shed.
Greg counted six people and two vehicles similar to Kyra's. They clustered around the infirmary and Kyra's jeep. He caught snippets of conversation while they huddled together in the rain, uncertain of what to do.
“
I don't think there's anyone here.”
“
Bullshit, man. They're here, I can feel it...”
“
...blood all over the back seat of this thing.”
“
There. See? No key in the ignition and it wasn't hot-wired. They didn't just
walk
outta here...”
“
All right, split up, find them.”
That voice sounded deep and commanding, unused to being questioned. The way the men talked, everything about them, made Greg think that they were trained soldiers, either groundside guards or possibly Marines. Greg shifted, considering the situation. They were just looking for survivors. Had to be. What else could they be doing? Why this bad feeling if that was the case? Why else would they be here?
Greg decided that it would be a whole lot less awkward for everyone involved if the group of armed soldiers
didn't
find the two of them, hidden and armed. He began to move forward, but Kyra put a restrictive hand on him. She caught his eyes with hers, urgent need and quiet desperation obvious in her gaze, and gave her head a slight shake. Greg mouthed,
Why?
Kyra seemed to be considering how to respond when nearby footsteps caused them both to jump.
One of the men stepped around the building and spotted them. He was tall and wore bulky gray armor.
“Hey,” he shouted, raising an assault rifle. “I found them.”
When the shot was fired, Greg didn't even see it happen.
The next thing he knew, the man's face exploded into a vicious plume of pulpy, crimson gore. His body flew backward, coming to land on the cold, wet ground with a heavy thud. All at once, the other men converged on their location. Greg and Kyra found themselves staring down five cold, black barrels.
“
Is he dead?” The man in charge asked, not taking his eyes off of Greg and Kyra.
Kyra's pistol, still smoking, pointed at the crowd, her finger on the trigger. Greg kept his shotgun raised, uncertain of what to do.
“Half his face is missing, what the fuck do you think?” one of the others replied.
“
Drop the guns or we're going to fucking kill you,” the man in charge said.
Something in his voice made Greg bristle and he knew that they were now at a very primal level. This wasn't about rank, class, or social status. This was about who was bigger and stronger, pure and simple. He wondered what kind of man he'd been before the memory loss and suddenly decided
fuck it
.