The Z Chronicles Read online

  He mewled like an infant. He knew there was a horrible truth that he didn’t want to contemplate, hovering just beyond the grasp of his conscious mind.

  His thoughts were blurred and slow. He hung his head. His eyes filled with tears.

  He had failed in the most horrific way.

  Others would learn from his mistakes. This was the way of science. Of progress.

  There was a disquieting feeling in the pit of his belly. And it was growing. It seemed to radiate outwards from his core like a flame.

  He needed to tell Pyona.

  His ears rang, but the bridge was silent. He stood, swaying, and shuffled to her command chair.

  She was oblivious to him. There was another world behind her eyes, inside her head, that he would never see. Her skin was sheened with sweat. Her brow furrowed as she listened to some silent voice from the ether, on the verge of making a demand, issuing an order, coopting another life.

  He felt a wave of respect and affection.

  Then the emotion distorted like a distending bubble.

  His entire body began to tremble. His filial feelings fell away, replaced by something unspeakable.

  He leaned in close, opened his mouth.

  It felt like hunger. It burned like rage.

  A Word from Jennifer Foehner Wells

  Nanites fascinate me. They were an important element in my first novel, Fluency. I had a lot of fun imagining all the practical applications that a race farther along than us on the technological timeline would use them for.

  Readers frequently ask me for backstory about the Sectilius people or for stories that would feature sectilian protagonists. With this story, I decided to honor both requests.

  In Fluency, Jane asks Ei’Brai why he hadn’t used nanites (called “squillae” by the Sectilius, which has a meaning akin to shrimp) to destroy the nepatrox in their larval stage. He replies, “Under Sectilius law, squillae are confined to inorganic repair except under rare, tightly controlled circumstances. Technology serves life. It does not destroy it. These lessons are rooted in the very foundations of Sectilius culture and law, without deviation, under threat of penalty of strictest nature. The slug population must be dealt with, but the squillae will not perform that duty.”

  I decided to disclose the reasons behind this prohibition by revealing a moment in the distant past of sectilian history. It’s a cautionary tale, to remind us that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should, and that rushing the scientific process can lead to disaster, no matter how good our intentions might be.

  You can find out more about me, my work, and upcoming releases on my website: www.jenthulhu.com. I’m also extremely active on Twitter where you can find me as:

  @Jenthulhu

  Z Ball

  by Will Swardstrom

  THE SECONDS CLICKED OFF the massive scoreboard in the middle of the stadium. 44...43...42...41… Each second that went by meant another endgame scenario I ticked off in my head. I had to make the call. It was all on me, but the number of seconds left in the game was hardly the number I was most concerned about.

  “Hut!”

  The ball popped into my hands, and I took a standard seven-step drop to get a look downfield. The pass rush was an onslaught of terror, one after another, pouring through the offensive line, grunting, running, and chasing me. Arms flailing around as if the defenders had never played football before. Most likely, they hadn’t. Even so, they would pursue me unrelentingly.

  With just seconds before they reached me, I swung my arm around and the blades tucked inside my arm pads sprung out and slashed deeply into the throats of the two closest to me.

  Of course, this wasn’t really football. And they weren’t really pass rushers.

  It was Z Ball.

  And I’d just decapitated two zombies.

  No rest for the weary. At least nine other threats patrolled the field. Just like football, there was an even amount on both sides—eleven for the humans, and eleven for the Z. I’d taken out two with the now bloody blades embedded in my left arm. With zombies though, I couldn’t count on all my teammates to stay on my side, if you get what I’m saying. Z Ball players covered any spare inch of their bodies with padding and extensive weaponry, but the zombies were resilient. Already this season, I’d lost four linemen, three wide receivers, and a running back.

  I needed to pass the ball. Yancey Hall was wide open about twenty yards down the right sideline, but putrefied flesh hung off my arm, covering some of the ball. A pigskin I could handle just fine, but not a zombieskin. I shucked off the blade along with the excess flesh and chucked the ball with a tight spiral towards Yancey. I didn’t see him make the catch; I had another chaser on my tail and was forced to take the axe from the harness across my back to deal with it. I had to chuckle a little at the irony; my chaser had been a woman in her 20’s when she’d turned. One of the few times a woman would have been able to play on the gridiron happened only after her death.

  I glanced up at the jumbotron to see the replay of Yancey’s catch.

  Good news, bad news. He caught the pigskin, but Yancey also caught a face-full of zombie teeth on his right forearm.

  Nuts.

  Yancey had been the best receiver I’d had since I lost Lawson Smith back in Week 1. I made a mental note to take him out on one of the next few plays. I didn’t want to, but survival was certainly something I wanted more than friendship with a Z.

  I was still staring at the jumbotron when they flashed a picture of me up there. “Vince Lager, QB,” it read with a few of my stats from the game. I had to admit, I was a little impressed with myself. Then, I almost made the fatal mistake of scoreboard gazing. I turned around just in time to see a Z shambling towards me.

  Just as quickly, I tried my forearm blades; I was all out. Last resort—I reached inside my uniform and found the clip of my shoulder pads. I popped a small compartment open and pulled out what was inside. I hadn’t retreated—I never do—and the walker kept on advancing towards my position. Steady and purposefully, I took aim with my emergency armament and put a small caliber bullet right between the eyes of the Z. Less than five yards away, he stumbled and fell, his poisoned blood turning the green turf a dark brown.

  The clock was winding down on the game anyway. I glanced from the jumbotron to the scoreboard. Los Angeles had put up 35 points against their horde, edging Detroit who had just 20 points (they showed the replay on the monitors at halftime at our game of Detroit’s kicker getting mauled by a particularly gruesome walker).

  Meanwhile, in our stadium, we were scalding Atlanta. In Z Ball, it was a combination of the old style American football, along with Arena Football, and a host of undead zombies. We had one side of the 50-yard line, and the other team—Atlanta today—had the other half. Simultaneously, we each took shots at the end zone, maneuvering through the zombies who got in our way. In spite of the debilitating injury Yancey just suffered (RIP Yancey), we’d put up 49 points on the day while Atlanta had just 14 points over on the other side. That’s the breaks when the quarterback gets infected in the first quarter.

  If we could hold on here without losing anyone else, it would be the first time in the ZFL championship for Chicago.

  I gotta admit, I was pretty excited to play in the Brain Bowl.

  Of course, that wasn’t the official name, but that’s what everyone called it. This year would be Brain Bowl VI, adopting the same Roman numeral system the NFL used for decades. The NFL still exists, so for copyright purposes, we’ll call the final game of their season the “League Championship Game.” The ZFL Brain Bowl leapfrogged that game its first year in existence and hasn’t looked back.

  The sponsorships are crazy for the winners—which, to be fair, are pretty few and far between. Even if you end up on the winning team, there’s no guarantee of walking out of the stadium alive or uninfected.

  Last year, Atlanta took the title, but only four players were left standing. Even then, after post-game blood tests, their quarterb
ack Ernie Pilson, showed the beginnings of the Z virus. When I was in college, I quarterbacked for Arizona State. Pilson was just across the desert at University of Arizona. Really gave the sportscasters something to talk about—Pilson vs. Lager. Dubbed the Beer Bowl whenever the Wildcats played the Sun Devils. A heated rivalry, yes, but we got to know each other and I considered him a friend.

  Too bad. No one ever saw him again. That is…until the first game of the season when Pilson’s walking corpse took the field against his former squad.

  Brutal.

  That’s how the ZFL Commissioner likes it. Really drives up the ratings, they say. Like we needed a ratings spike.

  It wasn’t that long ago when zombies were a fictional thing. Made up to show our humanity—in the face of death personified, what would we do? Books, TV shows, movies, video games—all devoted to it. The scare was there, but in the end people felt comfortable in their own homes because zombies weren’t real.

  But then somebody figured it out. A “walking death” of a sort. No one was really sure who did it. They’re probably dead now, but a few years back the newly dead in the New York City morgues started coming back to life. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it spread.

  To New Jersey.

  I’m not kidding. A few dozen ports throughout New York and New Jersey allowed those few mindless undead to have unfettered access to global grey matter. Soon, zombies threatened every continent on earth, save Antarctica. But, unlike in all those TV shows or movies, the hordes were contained. Most countries were actually more competent than people wanted to give them credit for, and those that weren’t...well we don’t call them countries anymore.

  All told, it was estimated about twenty percent of the earth’s population had succumbed to the plague. But, it wasn’t over. The zombies still were a major factor in the remote areas of Africa, South America, Asia, and even a few parts of North America. Many of the governments had employed their military to contain the scourge, but in some parts of the world, private contractors were called in. Many had previous experience as military contractors in the Middle East, but a few newcomers cropped up.

  Soon, one of the top contractors in the field of zombie containment was a company which became the ZFL.

  * * *

  The outbreak was in full swing when I was finishing up my senior year at ASU. Of course, there was a general isolation as a student athlete at an NCAA Division I school, but I heard things here and there. We weren’t affected much until the season was mostly over.

  Ironically, it was when I was away from the team that I not only learned about the outbreak in full detail, but when I also cemented my place in the future of the ZFL. The jail cell was cold and dank, but in hindsight, it was the wake-up call I needed. I stewed for a couple days until my roommate came down to the station.

  “Vince, what are you doing to yourself?” Cal asked.

  Cal Ervin, 6’6”, 334 pounds. My roommate the past two years and the best left tackle in the Pac 12. He’d dealt with the best defensive linemen from schools like USC and UCLA, but perhaps his biggest challenge was corralling me.

  I imagine my own scouting report read something like: “Vince Lager. 6’4” 230 lbs. First round arm. Fourth round legs. Questionable decision making. Highly questionable character. Not a leader. DO NOT DRAFT.”

  Even before the zombie outbreak, I was what you might call “self-destructive”. Of course, what landed me in the Tempe City Jail was not self-destructive, but actually bar destructive. I’d heard sports analysts before the outbreak say nothing good ever happened between one and six in the morning. That axiom certainly proved to be true on an early December morning during my senior season. In my defense, those bar stools were really shabbily made.

  I looked up from my cot in the jail cell. Cal was on the outside, holding the bars as if his paws were enough to bend them and free me. His expression was pained. We both knew I would have been out within hours if it had been my first offense. By the time you stop counting on one hand, people are less willing to give you chances.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember what happened,” I said.

  “That’s bull, and you know it.”

  “Honest!” I said, sitting up. “I remember going to the bar and having a drink or two, but then the next thing I know, I’m laying in my own puke, my hands cuffed behind my back.”

  “Fine. But you know as well as me that you have a problem. If you can’t control yourself, you have to stay away from the bars. Shoot, just last week, the Jags were talking about taking you with a flier in the first round. Now? You’d be lucky to get a walk-on audition with any team in the league.”

  I looked back to the bare concrete floor.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “You haven’t seen the video.”

  Of course, the video from inside the bar was irrefutable. It showed me drinking a few boilermakers and then absolutely losing it when a random bar patron bumped my barstool. I found out the patron’s name was Rick Welch, famous for making the Top 12 on America’s Next Top Singer back in its heyday. Apparently he had quite the YouTube following. The stool was the first act of destruction, cracking down on Welch, immediately knocking him down and unconscious.

  When I watched the video later, I was amazed at my own actions. I honestly didn’t remember what I’d done, and wouldn’t have believed it if not for the security video.

  When the stool shattered, I grabbed one of the legs, and took out each and every bottle behind the bar, like an amateur baseball player. When the bartender came at me, I jumped up on the bar—pretty impressive for someone so wasted—and continued to hold off the employees and patrons with a mixture of bar stool parts and movie kung fu until the police showed up and tazed me.

  Cal walked back out of the jail, but came back a few days later to check on me again. He was my rock on the football field and he was my rock off the field as well. My family had given up on me a long time ago, but for some reason, Cal Ervin thought I was redeemable.

  The longer I sat in the jail, the worse the zombie outbreak got. I was mostly forgotten, and eventually the District Attorney just dropped the charges. Cal showed up with his Jeep the day I was released and we went back to our apartment, no words spoken between us. Cal had everything ahead of him in the NFL. My future hinged on a miracle.

  For me, the zombie outbreak was that miracle.

  What a miracle, right?

  It took a couple years for the U.S. to get its zombie problem mostly contained, but once it did, people wanted to get back to “normal”— you know, apple pie, reality TV, football. It all returned (including reality TV, the malignant cancer on the underbelly of society), but football wasn’t the same anymore.

  Cal had gotten drafted, but had barely played thanks to shortened seasons in the NFL the past few years. I was happy for him, but the NFL wanted no part of Vince Lager. I got a courtesy call from the team that drafted Cal. They offered a practice squad spot, but it was too soon; pride held me in check. I got a job as a physical trainer for college players at a local gym, provided I do one thing—not talk to them.

  But America had seen and suffered too much. After people lost loved ones to the zombies, the tame violence of American football no longer held their interest. In fact, it was a typical professional football game on a calm Sunday afternoon where everything changed.

  If you can imagine Cowboy Stadium (of course you can—it’s a Texas-sized shrine to football), then picture it on game day against the Eagles. The game was all tied up, 21-21, heading into the 4th quarter. A fan seated in the mezzanine (later identified as one Rafael Myers), had been bitten by his four year old son before he headed to the game with his buddies. Unfortunately for Rafael, his son, and a significant portion of the crowd that day, the bite transferred the Z virus. By the time the fourth quarter was beginning, Rafael was gone, replaced by a Z that only looked like him.

  Rafael went berserk, eviscerating his drinking buddies in just a few seconds, and moving on to the rest of th
e crowd. With the crowd noise, people didn’t catch on to what was happening in the stands, but poor Rafael found his way to the gridiron soon enough. There, he tackled and tore into the neck of the Eagles’ punter. Just a few bites was all it took for the poor punter’s head to be free of his body. Then, Rafael used the punter’s thin helmet as a bowl for the head and brains of the cheapest player on the team.

  Horror set in on the field and everyone ran. Everyone except one Jerry “Jellyroll” Parks. Jellyroll hadn’t earned his nickname at the salad bar. The defensive lineman clocked in at 6’7” and a svelte 367 pounds. All the other players ran for their sidelines. The smart ones sprinted to the locker rooms.

  Only Jellyroll stayed on the field. He alone would face Rafael the zombie. Jellyroll rushed the attacker, putting him on his back quickly and knocking the punter’s helmeted head for a 20-yard loss. The abandoned TV cameras caught Rafael attempting to go after Jellyroll’s skull instead. Thankfully, the lineman hadn’t taken off his helmet. Rafael’s teeth just bounced off the fiberglass. Jellyroll pushed him down and stood back up.

  At this point, the crowd had either begun to stream out of the stadium as fast as they could, or they were transfixed by Jellyroll and his one-man stand against a Z. Reports put the number trampled to death at thirty-three, and the injured at over a hundred.

  The clips of what happened next were replayed on YouTube over a billion times, and were essentially the inspiration for what ZFL could be. Just a few yards away sat a lone football. Jellyroll picked up the pigskin and gripped it in his right hand. His massive paw could hold it by itself, and he used it as a weapon of sorts. He didn’t have any protection on his hands, so the football was insulation against any potential bites. Jellyroll used it over and over to pound on Rafael’s face.

  Apparently though, Jellyroll also considered himself to be an amateur wrestler. After a half-minute of toying around with Rafael, Jellyroll swiveled around the Z and put his hands and arms around the engorged neck of Rafael Myers. Jellyroll put him in a chinlock and pulled. Being so freshly converted, Rafael hadn’t suffered decay like so many other zombies had; it wasn’t easy, but Jellyroll grunted and twisted, eventually ripping Rafael’s head off his already dead body.