Killing the dead book 20.., p.1
Killing The Dead (Book 20): Parasite, page 1
part #20 of Killing The Dead Series
Parasite.
Killing the Dead: Season Four Book Two
By Richard Murray
Copyright 2020 Richard Murray
All Rights Reserved
All Characters are a work of Fiction.
Any resemblance to real persons
Living or dead is purely coincidental.
Some scenes are based on real locations that
have been altered for the purpose of the story.
Chapter 1
The city lay in ruins, buildings crumbling as the wild growth reclaimed that which we had lost to the zombies all those years ago. Those undead that had finally found some kind of peace, lay on the cracked and broken pavements, their bones bleaching beneath the sun.
Birds flew around the taller buildings, defending their nests and searching for food, while smaller animals scurried amongst the weather-beaten buildings with shattered windows and faded signs, uncaring about the plane flying overhead.
A hush fell over the command centre as those few of us in attendance watched the live feed on the monitors. No one spoke, or so much as breathed as they watched that plane as it approached the target.
Cass reached out her hand, fingers entwining with mine as she held on for dear life. All of our hopes, months of effort and preparation, had been put towards this one moment and we all knew that if it failed, then we faced a threat, unlike anything we had seen before.
Beside me, Isaac leaned closer, grizzled features set as he watched the screen. Some of his people were on that plane. Men and women that he had been training and it was with a great deal of regret that he wasn’t with them.
I knew he was angry with me for denying him a place on the mission, but I needed him with me, on the island and I couldn’t risk him. Not with Sebastian solidifying his hold, anyway.
“Coming up, folks,” Charlie said, her usual gleeful tone subdued. “Should see the target in three, two… holy shit!”
Crimson tendrils spread out across the ground, climbing the buildings and pushing in through those broken windows, like some perverse act of assault upon the city. Some as thick as tree trunks, others as slim as a child’s wrist, they writhed in a way that made all of those who watched uncomfortable.
Like a nest of worms, all tangled together, pushing and pulling as they wriggled along the floor. It was an unnerving sight and one that I had never expected to see. They never seemed to stop, undulating even when just lying in place as though something was moving beneath the surface.
“Look,” I said, tilting my head towards the bottom corner of the screen where a thick tentacle-like appendage brushed aside a rusting car as though it were made of paper. “How can we fight that?”
“We can’t,” Eunice said, primly. “Those who might have stood a chance were destroyed along with the majority of our facilities.”
I glowered at her, and her untimely reminder of who she had worked for once, not so long ago. Until Ryan had destroyed them, and himself, in a nuclear fire. She was an enemy and it was clear, even after so many months, that she still saw us the same way.
“Quiet,” Charlie hissed, staring intently at a second monitor that was feeding in data direct from the plane’s instruments. “It’s about to happen.”
The plane banked to the right, turning around the taller office building, flying between them as they dropped down low. I sucked in a breath for there it was, like some obscene cancerous spider in the centre of an unimaginably vast web, the parasite itself.
Twenty feet in height, a pulsating crimson mass that did nothing but consume all life around it, I felt nauseous just looking at it. There were no obvious features, no eyes nor mouth, for it didn’t need them and they would have just been points of weakness.
It was a creature that was unnatural in every way, born in a lab and not in nature, it was, as far as we could tell, immortal and damned near invincible. No longer requiring a human shell to protect it, the creature’s own body was its armour.
“Bomb’s away,” Charlie cackled, not taking her eyes off of the screen.
A burst of light almost too bright to handle filled the screen and I looked away, shielding my eyes from the glare before the monitor went abruptly black.
“Trailing drone’s camera’s gone dark,” Charlie said. “Switching to satellite.”
An image reappeared, a rising cloud of smoke and fury rising up over the city and, climbing slowly, the plane that had just dropped the largest bomb we had been able to make. A small cheer rang out from those few gathered in the room and someone reached out to pat Isaac on the back.
“They did it,” Cass said. “I don’t know why we were so worried-“
She cut off, eyes widening in horror as a crimson tentacle burst from the cloud, wrapping itself around the tail of the plane.
“No!” Isaac breathed, eyes widening as his grip tightened on the back of the chair.
Another tentacle-like appendage rose up to grasp a wing, and a third broke clean through the bottom of the craft. We all watched, hope draining away as the plane tore apart like a child’s toy, and the pieces were dragged back down towards the city.
In silence, we watched, knowing that there was no hope but unable to tear away our gaze as the smoke shifted on the wind, blowing to the west and away from the city. There, blackened but very much alive, sat the parasite.
“That’s that then,” Eunice said, turning away from the monitors. “Another failure.”
“This is your fault!” Isaac snapped, face twisting into a snarl as he glared her way. “You and the rest of your homicidal people! You weren’t content with just killing the world once, were you? No, you had to make sure that there was no chance at all.”
“Enough, Isaac,” I said, voice soft and full of the weariness that made me feel every one of my years. “Just, enough.”
Whoever had created the parasite was either a mad genius or a fool. Sure, it took over the host body at the point of death, reanimating it and using it as a vessel to spread more parasites and to feed, but it didn’t just stop there.
Once it had enough sustenance, it began to improve its control over the host body, moving from Shambler to Feral. With more food, it grew larger inside the body, altering it by growing bone plates over the places it could be hurt.
We thought that incarnation, the Reaper, was the final one. Fast and almost intelligent, wounds that healed as the parasite grew inside of the body, strengthening the limbs and becoming a true threat.
We were wrong.
The final form was something much more monstrous and I could only hope it was a mistake that the creators hadn’t expected. Anything else would have been an obscene fuck you to those poor souls that survived the zombie apocalypse.
If it had been created intentionally, then that creator had never intended for any human to survive the apocalypse, not even the other members of their own genocidal organisation.
“We call it the bloom,” Eunice said, coming up beside me. “When the parasite reaches a size and maturity that it no longer needs the human host. It splits the body apart from the inside and roots itself to the ground, leaching nutrients from the earth.”
She glanced back at the screen, admiration on her face.
“It is a work of art. Each of the many appendages it can grow are essentially a feeding organ. They move ever outwards, searching for sources of food so that the parasite can continue to grow. My colleagues do not believe there is an upper limit on how large they will become.”
“Sounds wonderful,” I replied, a little sourly. I rubbed my eyes; it had been way too long since I had slept or seen my children. “A useful fact to remember as it devours the world.”
“It’s why the… Reapers, as you call them, become so territorial,” she continued, not seeming to have heard me. “They gather more of the weaker parasites around themselves and then, once they Bloom, they have a ready source of sustenance and plenty of room to grow.”
Lisa, standing guard by the door with a small group of black-garbed acolytes, each wearing a white armband with the black half of the yin-yang symbol on it, nodded slightly as she caught my eye.
With a few short words, she strode forward with two of the bodyguards, crossing the dimly lit room swiftly as Eunice cocked one elegantly plucked eyebrow, the corners of her mouth lifting in a smile.
“Time to head back to my cell?”
“Months,” I said, so very weary of the games she played. “You have been here months and brought nothing but problems for me to deal with. I am running out of patience and since your last brilliant plan didn’t really work, I am running out of reasons not to just have you and every other member of your insane group executed!”
“Oh, my darling,” she cooed. “You won’t do any such thing. You are far too weak to just have us all executed. Besides, we are allies now, all crimes forgiven.”
“Hardly forgiven,” I muttered, gesturing for the guards to take her.
She waved, even managing to do that elegantly, and walked away. The way she moved made it seem as though the guards were there to protect her and not to escort her to the makeshift prison we had made for her and the other members of the Genpact survivors that had come to the island.
“Send the data to their facilities,” I said to Charlie. “Maybe they can figure out why fire, explosives and acid haven’t yet managed to kill the damned thing.”
“Will do, boss.”
“Isaac,” I said, and he turned to look at me. “I’m sorry
for the loss of your people.”
“They knew what they were doing.” His voice was gruff, but I could see the pain in his eyes. “Knew it was probably a one-way trip.”
“Still…”
He waved, gesturing for me to leave it be and I complied, not wanting to force him to deal with those emotions until he was ready. A good man and a fine leader of the island’s security, his primary concern was keeping our people safe and with the news Eunice had brought, that was fast becoming ever more difficult.
“What now?” Cass asked, looking askance at some of the other people in the room, most notably the tall form of Sebastian who had been uncharacteristically silent. “Do we still move forward with what we discussed?”
“Yes,” I said, lowering my voice. “Now more than ever, we need unity and I can’t have that snake distracting me.”
“He still has Samuel.”
“I know, but Lisa is fairly sure she can get to him. There’s nothing else we can do about the parasite until someone comes up with another idea of what might hurt the damned thing, so we might as well be doing something.”
She gave me a look that I knew too well, and I looked away, rubbing at my eyes as I fought against the urge to yawn.
“How long since you slept?”
“Too long,” I admitted. “But things have been busy.”
“I know.” She hesitated then added, “when are you going to tell people?”
“That they are not safe and even though most of the zombies are dead, the parasites are going to spread across the entire world and kill us all?”
“Yeah, that,” she said, with a wry smile.
“Probably not today.” I did yawn then, pressing my hand against my mouth in a vain attempt to stifle it. “But for now. I think I really need to see my babies.”
“I’ll walk back with you,” Cass said. “Pat will be fast asleep, but I have a sudden urge to pick her up and not let go.”
That was an urge I could understand. It had been three years since Ryan died and I missed him every day. With most things I could deal with it and throw myself into my work enough so that I could forget about his loss, at least for a little while.
With what we had to face though, I needed him more than ever before. He would have smiled as he watched the screen and come up with a dozen ideas of how to kill it, and later, when I was so scared I wanted to curl into a little ball and weep, he would hold me and I would just know it would be okay.
But I couldn’t have that. Not since he had killed himself saving all of us from Genpact and their attempts to kill everyone on the island. So, instead, all I had to remember him were our twin children, Gabriel and Angelina.
I would go home, and I would scoop them up into my arms and I would hold them as long as I could, because, for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine a way to survive what was coming.
Chapter 2
“I’m bored,” I said, for perhaps the fourth time. “Really bored.”
“Shut up,” Gregg muttered, as he looked everywhere but at the needle in his arm and the attached vial filling quickly with his blood. “Just, don’t talk, mate.”
I glanced over at my friend, the only real friend I had in the dark bowels of the former Genpact base. His scarred face was pale, with sweat beading on his forehead and a tinge of green around his lips. I almost laughed, aloud.
“After everything we’ve been through, all the zombies and people, we have fought and killed, the fact that you are so terrified of a needle brings me no small amusement.”
“Yeah, cheers, mate.”
I did laugh then, a low chuckle that I knew would make the two burly fellows standing by the door deeply uncomfortable, for the last time they had heard me laugh in such a manner I had been slaughtering their colleagues.
The square-jawed man, with a thick beard and furrowed brow, watched me impassively with his hand resting on the hilt of the cattle prod that was stuck through his belt. His companion, shorter, with a crooked nose and droopy eye, grimaced as his hand tightened on the hilt of his own cattle prod.
“Stop it,” Abigail said, switching the full vial for an empty one. “You know you make them nervous.”
But not her though, no, she had lost her wariness of me in the year we had spent trapped on the twelfth floor together. It had taken some time, but she had finally begun to believe that I would keep my word and not kill her.
Which was a problem, as it meant that she could speak to me as an equal and all the while, I would look at her and just see another member of Genpact, the organisation that had attempted to kill my family.
“Ryan,” Gregg said, keeping his gaze firmly averted from the needle. “Play nice, mate.”
“For you, my friend, I shall do.”
He smiled then and it was, even I could admit, a nice smile. Genuine and full of warmth, it gave a life to his face that seemed to set people at ease. If I’d been able to emulate such a smile, I would have had a great deal less trouble convincing people to trust me.
“Finished.” Abigail pulled the needle from Gregg’s arm, placing a piece of gauze there to stem the flow of blood. “Hold this.”
Gregg did as instructed, and she turned away to write on each of the vials of blood she had taken, the time and date that she had taken them, along with the name of the person from whom it had come.
Once done, she picked up each of the vials and placed them carefully in the cooler along with all of the others. A quick count as she made notes on the clipboard beside it, and she turned to me.
A pretty young woman, she wore her blonde hair tied up in a messy bun, usually with a pen inserted to hold it in place. Her white lab coat was pristine, and she had the earnest expression of one who took her job very seriously indeed.
“You’re taking them up to… to… her, now, yes?”
“That is the plan,” I agreed.
“Good. I’d like you to give her this.” She picked up a small paper-wrapped packet of papers. “It’s everything I could come up with about Gregg’s blood and what might make it so different.”
“What do you mean, different?” Gregg asked. “Looks like everyone else’s.”
“But it’s not,” Abigail said, primly. “You know it’s not because even though you were bitten, you didn’t become infected.”
“Because I’m special,” he said, a little smugly.
I ignored that and pushed away from the steel cupboards I had been leaning against. I took the package from her with one hand and lifted the cooler by the handle in my other. With a flash of a smile for my guards, I set off without bothering to say farewell to the others.
The two burly men followed along behind me, ensuring that they stayed close but not so close that they might bump into me. After I had broken the fingers of the one man set to guard me when he grabbed my arm, the others had soon learned not to do the same.
As I walked the corridors of that lowest level, the few people about watched me askance. I could see the fear and the hate on their faces and could only smile in response. They blamed me for their current situation, which, to be fair, was with good reason.
I had attacked their base and slaughtered a great many of the occupants before finally directing a nuclear missile directly at our location. The resultant explosion had collapsed the top ten levels of the base, burying those few survivors deep below the ground.
Add to that, the fact that as they were finally nearing their goal of escape, I had insisted they cease their digging of a tunnel and redirect their time and energy to another task. It had taken some time, but I had managed to convince, Victoria, the leader of those survivors, however, the rest were not so sure.
Of course, if they could have made the journey up the elevator shaft to the fourteenth level, they might have been more inclined to believe me.
“Stay here,” I said as we approached the elevator doors.
My voice was cold, emotionless, as the man retreated, and the killer came out. I tucked the packet of papers beneath my arm and held out my hand.
“Knife.”
I saw the way they looked at one another from the corner of my eye and my smile widened as the taller of the two reached behind his back and pulled my combat knife from where he had tucked it behind his belt.
As soon as the hilt of that knife touched my hand, a small shiver of true joy ran through me. While I did not need the knife to kill, I surely did enjoy using it and where I was about to go, I may very well have the chance.
