The Age of Zombies: Sergeant Jones (30 page)

These divergent views arose simultaneously in nearly every camp, even though there was absolutely no communication between the camps.

The towns and villages and cities that weren’t protected by the Orobu camps would be facing tough times ahead. Millions had already fallen to the M-Worm, either as victims or as monsters. Most of the people living outside of the protected zones developed their own systems of quarantine. They would not welcome visitors into the home, or travellers from outside the community. There was little travel outside of what was necessary for transportation of goods. Everybody wore surgical masks, thinking that they were sufficient in protecting them from the M-Worm.

The people who were lucky enough to find solace in the camps and cities across the world would be facing their own unique challenges in time. Because they were given shelter and protection from the M-Worm by the Orobu, they were convinced that this giant race would protect them in the future.

But what the humans thought ultimately didn’t matter. They were complete and total subjects of the Orobu.

There were other things, strange, magnificent things, that were happening besides these camps. The Orobu weren’t merely interested in punishing the human race. The camps were there to meet immediate needs, and the initial stages of their strategy were meant to subdue the population, so that they could eat. But they also had long term goals.

These centered around the development of mega-scale infrastructure projects. For millennia, the Orobu had watched human innovation from the shadows. The Orobu saw that although the human mind was uniquely inventive, it possessed an intrinsic flaw. The human race couldn’t help but exist in a perpetual state of conflict.

The Orobu were ready to harness the creative ingenuity of human technology, engineering, and science. As a cohesive ruling body, the Orobu planned to direct the next stages of civilization. They were confident that rapid, unprecedented progress would soon be realized.

With this aim, the Orobu quarantined special teams of engineers, scientists, and architects in zones dedicated to various projects. One of the main projects was nuclear fusion, which humans had made great headway on with the ITER project in France. The ITER was a decades long international attempt at total energy independence through nuclear fusion.

The Orobu started a fresh project emulating and improving upon ITER in the deserts of northwest Arizona. One engineer poetically called the project, “Man’s chance to capture the power of the stars.” The project in Arizona would be the largest, most ambitious tokamak fusion device on the planet. It could produce enough energy to fuel the planet for the next five hundred million years.

Another team of engineers were devoted to the acceleration of nanotech. Some members of Orobu society were already involved with the development of nanotechnology in the United States, Japan, and China. These Orobu scientists were confident that if resources, both human and material, were devoted to serious nanotech projects that tested the limits of the technology, they could reach substantial breakthroughs in less than three years. One of the Orobu stated, “It’s not a matter of if, but when. When we go all in, the results will be dramatic. In one year, we will have nanotech that can construct human flesh from raw carbon. In two years, advanced quantum computing will happen on the nano level. In five years, the behemoth of spacetime could be conquered, giving our race the ability to traverse great spans in the universe with ease.”

When questioned about his last prediction, the Orobu scientist enigmatically stated, “The technology is already out there. Somewhere. Not here. But it’s out there.”

The Orobu were not shy of this sort of enigmatic phrasing.

The Orobu faced great challenges in maintaining the human population. Although the human inmates were compelled to farm their own gardens, this sort of agriculture wasn’t sufficient to feed them all. The Orobu conscripted major agribusinesses to continue operations throughout specific areas of the country. Dairy, meat, vegetable, and fruit production was contracted out to these outfits.

Other essential components of human civilization were kept running under similar mandates. Raw materials, essential manufacturing, and select research and development institutions were sanctioned to keep functioning even under the strict order that had been imposed on society.

To prevent these human workers from willfully defecting to camps that were safe from the M-Worm, the Orobu developed a vaccine. They administered the vaccine under a strict confidentiality agreement. Nobody who received the vaccine could speak about it. If they did, the penalty was immediate execution.

Radoula and Boul directed this activity. They were able to do so in their sleep, in the quiet moments that they had between meetings and conference calls, in the short lulls they had between the demands of other business. The twins were the central hub of intelligence and action for the Orobu. They shared the duties between them that Zoruth once possessed singularly. The twins were getting used to the great power and responsibility that they were given.

The twins’ hearts swelled with pride as they watched their great vision for the future start to solidify. But there was more to their long term plan than just planetary dominance.

The ultimate goal was to get back in touch with the stars.

Specifically, a star in the constellation Reticulum.

Humans called the star Beta Reticuli. The Chinese called it the Snake’s Head.

The Orobu knew it as their distant home.

And one day, the winds would bring them back.

Chapter Seventeen

Metamorphosis

The guards dragged Jones into another holding chamber. He didn’t have any idea how long he had been down here. He estimated three weeks, but it could’ve been much shorter. Or longer. He wasn’t sure.

Nothing was certain.

Except that Jones lusted for human flesh.

His greatest nightmare arrived. He had become one of them. He was a prisoner in his own skin. His gut betrayed his heart; his mind was nothing but a slave to this new appetite.

Once Jones was brought to this dank hole, he smelled humans. It was a familiar smell. One that he had almost forgotten. One that he had fantasized about for the last few weeks, as the worms colonized his mind and body, sending him into fits of unfulfilled cannibalistic rage. All he wanted was a chance to taste a single morsel of morsel flesh.

Jones couldn’t take it much longer. Eventually he shredded his own muscle just to get a taste. But his own meat was unsatisfactory. It tasted like copper pennies. Nothing about it could quiet his new hunger.

The Orobu guards tossed Jones into the small cell and slid its iron door shut.

“There’s a human near,” Jones said. He was sweating. The anticipation was overwhelming. “Will I get a taste?”

The guards just laughed. “Of course,” they said. “Why would we deprive you? We know your hunger well. You will soon be fed.”

Jones took their words as solace. He leaned against a corner of the cell and slid down to the concrete floor. He smiled like an idiot. He imagined biting into a fresh, living thigh. Would he prefer the thigh of a woman or a man?

The woman would have more fat; and the man more muscle. Who would taste better?

He compared the virtues of various cuts of beef. He remembered Vanessa buying him a Kobe ribeye. It was marvelous. The meat was incredibly tender and juicy with its marbled fats.

Jones fantasized about feasting on the perfect human. They would be well fed, in shape, and toned. They would have a balanced ratio of fat to muscle. Somebody in their youth, their prime. He imagined that a beautiful woman with these qualities would make for an exquisite experience.

Jones salivated all over his chest. The saliva dripped down his bare stomach and coated the thin elastic waistband of his prison pants. His stomach roared with hunger. The smell of the human came closer. It was the smell of a woman.

“You’re bringing her to me,” Jones said. “Aren’t you?”

The Orobu guards didn’t respond.

Jones stood up and kicked the wall. He needed human meat in his mouth. The wait became infuriating. His saliva dripped onto the concrete floor. He paced the cell back and forth, muttering to himself. His brain was at war with his gut. He was a fiend right now. Nothing more. But his brain told him that he had to resist the urge to cannibalize another human being.

His jugular bulged. Jones clawed at his face. He looked down at his hands just to remind himself that he was human. That it was wrong to lust for human flesh. But just as he was able to subdue his cannibalistic passions, his gut got the best of him.

Jones collapsed onto the ground and writhed around in pain. His stomach cramped with hunger. It had to be fed. Something inside his gut needed to feed on human sinew, muscle, flesh, bone, brains, it didn’t matter. It was the worms. The worms needed human meat.

The scent of the human was getting closer. Jones smelled a second human. His sense of smell was incredibly precise. He picked up the scent of a child. A small girl.

Then it became clear. The scents were familiar. Jones thought back over the last month and everything he had been through, everything he had done to get to this point. He did it all just so that he could find Vanessa and Emma Jo.

And here they were. Jones had fallen into a great trap. There was nothing he could do to escape. Vanessa and Emma Jo were being escorted to his cell. He would have to wage a literal war within himself to resist the urge of eating them.

They continued to get closer. Jones ran as hard as he could and slammed his body against the iron door. It wasn’t going anywhere. He frantically ran into every wall. He punched the concrete with knotted fists, trying to find a loose brick, a trap door, anything that he could use to escape.

Closer, closer, closer they came. Jones punched himself in the face. He could knock himself out, he thought. That would buy him some time. That would buy his family time.

He punched himself again, harder this time. Right in the temple. Again, on the top of his skull. It wasn’t working.

Jones positioned himself at the edge of the cell’s wall. He lowered his head and rushed as hard as he could into the opposite wall. The top of his skull smashed against the concrete. He was dazed, but still standing. He repeated the battering again.

Finally, Jones was light’s out.

The scent of human flesh was out, too. For now.

When Vanessa and Emma Jo finally arrived to his cell, Jones was out cold. This wasn’t what the guards expected to find. The Orobu guards were ordered to bring the mother and daughter back to the central room of the underground palace. Radoula and Boul wanted to see them. The guards escorted Vanessa and Emma Jo back through the labyrinthine tunnels. Two other guards carried Jones with them.

Emma Jo beamed with joy when she saw her papa. She was confused about his condition, however. “Why’s papa sleeping?” she asked her mother. “He should be so happy to see us.”

Vanessa was on the brink of tears. She thought back to the betrayal she had set upon her husband, the father of her children. She was ready to give birth to Junior. The Orobu were waiting patiently for that, too. They had plans for Junior. But Vanessa vowed to do everything she could to protect her child. Now with Jones here, he would do anything it took to do the same.

Vanessa regretted her mistake with the jogger, a decision made solely to satisfy her lust. She tried rationalizing the decision, but it was all bullshit. She loved Jones. It was heartbreaking to see her husband, the strongest man she had ever known, in such a condition. But she had to console her child. She turned to Emma Jo and smiled, struggling to hold back the tears. “Daddy must be tired,” she said. “Do you remember how long it took to come to China?”

Emma Jo nodded. “A very long time, mommy.”

“That’s right, Emma Jo,” Vanessa said. “Daddy must be very tired from that long trip. He tried so hard to find us, and he needs his sleep.”

“No more talk,” one of the Orobu said.

Vanessa turned to Emma Jo and blew her daughter a kiss.

Emma Jo snagged it out of the air, and placed it on her cheek.

They finally got to the inner sanctuary of the underground palace. The Orobu guards opened the ornate metal doors and brought the family inside. They laid Jones on the ground before Radoula and Boul. Vanessa and Emma Jo were chained to a far wall.

Vanessa knew better than to resist. Her night in captivity, Vanessa tried to fight back against her captors. It was a huge mistake. The Orobu guards didn’t think twice about brutally assaulting her. The Orobu weren’t attracted to humans generally, but as punishment the guards took painful liberties with Vanessa’s body. It took about ten days for her wounds to heal enough so that she could walk properly.

The most gut wrenching thing about the attack for Vanessa was that Emma Jo had to witness the whole thing. The only thing Vanessa told her daughter about the assault was that “mommy will be okay, mommy will always be okay.”

Now that Jones was with them again, Vanessa knew to play cool. If anybody would be able to fight back and win, it was her husband. The strongest man she knew.

“Your husband is a great warrior,” Boul said to Vanessa. “It is an honor to finally be able to meet him.”