The Z Chronicles Read online

  “You’re infected?”

  “Of course I’m bloody infected. Why would you be here otherwise? They didn’t tell you what happened? How they threw me The Chamber to rot?” Freya’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why are you here? Nobody comes to this lab.”

  “They said you were dead, that I needed to take over you and Baidlin’s work.”

  “You were told I was dead, yet you’ve sat there worrying about infection?”

  She eyed him carefully, looking for his nervous twitch. It was there; that noticeable chewing at the insides of his mouth. “Jorge, straight up…what’s going on?”

  “Nothing, I promise. I’ve been sitting in here for hours, totally freaking out. Fix Pacifier…me? I’m a first year biology student…how the hell am I supposed to know what to do? Baidlin’s dead. You’re dead. I’m supposed to save the world? How the hell is that even possible? And then everyone goes off grid, I can’t get a line down to home base and the next thing I know you come screaming down through the mall in a sea of Frothers.” He fell silent, sliding off the metal stool he was on and moving to the window to stare down to where the Frothers were pounding on the pharmacy’s thickened glass windows below. They were on a mezzanine; a one-time stockroom that she and Baidlin had converted into a makeshift laboratory. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?” he said quietly, staring down at the undead below.

  “Not necessarily,” Freya replied, moving across the room and standing beside him. She’d known him long enough to see the honesty in his words. She didn’t need fear him. “Jorge. I need your help. I’m going to survive infection.”

  “How?”

  “With these.”

  She drew out the box of phials from the Styrofoam container and looked at the bright green mixture.

  “I should be dead by now. I have almost all the symptoms and, okay, I feel like shite, but I’m fine otherwise…I gave myself a dose,” she continued, revealing her wrist and the dark bruise that had begun to emerge around the syringe’s puncture mark.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Jorge said, taking hold of her wrist and scrutinising first the injury and then the dark welt. There were faint green streaks under the skin as if the lurid Pacifier drug had caused permanent staining.

  “Will you help me?”

  He glanced out the window towards where the Frothers showed no sign that their interest was waning.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Freya stared down at the needle protruding from her arm. If she lost much more blood, it wouldn’t be transitioning that killed her. She was feeling faint, and for the past four hours Jorge had been steadily winding digestive biscuits into her in an attempt to maintain blood sugar level; like that was her main concern. But, though she dared not hope too much, the nausea had subsided a little. Her eyes were clearer too, though overriding tiredness was making it harder to focus on the task in hand.

  “I just want to confirm it,” Jorge said as he removed the needle and passed her yet another cotton ball to push upon the site.

  “We can’t confirm anything until we test it,” Freya said as she swooned.

  “You need to rest.”

  She didn’t need to voice her reply, and threw him a deadpan expression instead, easily conveying her thoughts on the matter.

  “Okay,” he added quickly. “But do me a favour and stay there. I can’t have you falling over and ruining everything we’ve been working on.”

  She nodded her head and watched him as he moved across the room to the array of laboratory instruments. As he’d already done numerous times, Jorge transferred the withdrawn blood into a separation tube, opened the lid of the centrifuge and placed the sample inside. As he closed the machine and it began to whir, Freya allowed herself to relax. It was only a matter of time till they knew for sure.

  “How are you bearing up?” Jorge asked as he returned to the seat next to her.

  “Aching, tired, but, you know, I’m not trying to gnaw your face off, so that’s a plus.”

  He smirked. “I should’ve known that if anyone could do it, it’d be you. Though, I don’t think I realised it would be quite so literally.”

  His words resonated with her. She’d never imagined this would happen, that her Pacifier, Pacifier 6, the finalisation of Baidlin’s work, would come about because of infection. They’d never tested it on people before; only Frothers. Only the monsters they wished to calm. They’d always waited for someone to transition before they stabbed the syringe and began to pump the green syrup in.

  Why hadn’t it ever occurred to her?

  But it didn’t matter now. She’d found it eventually. It was a virus; of that she was sure. It was vicious and rapid in its attack and replication. There was no eradicating it, no overcoming its fatal effects. It killed indiscriminately, taking every living creature that a single, self-replicating bastard cell got into, not matter how strong someone was, regardless of their immune system’s determination to hold the invader at bay. Eventually, all humans succumbed.

  It was the toxicity levels of the virus that brought about the rabid, vicious characteristics of the dead. Pacifier had always sought to target this feature, to thin those invading cells. But humanity’s very core — uniqueness — was also their flaw. No matter how much Baidlin and Freya had tried, they’d never managed to reduce viral load consistently. They’d never been able to establish regular downtime during which they could guarantee the pacification of an otherwise ravaged monster. But this, this seemed to work.

  “Freya.”

  She was roused by Jorge’s gentle hands as they shook her awake.

  “Freya, it’s ready.”

  “Already?” she murmured, wiping drool from her chin. She panicked momentarily, questioning whether it was foam and feeling sick to her stomach at the thought of it. Jorge’s reassurance that it wasn’t calmed her, and she breathed a sigh of relief before getting to her feet and stumbling across the room to the microscope.

  “Is this it?” she asked, looking towards the blood-smeared slide that awaited her. Jorge nodded, and she pressed her eye to the lens and stared down with hope. It was apparent right away that her predictions were correct. The blood cells before her weren’t the misshapen, ruptured husks of the infected that she was so used to seeing. The virus hadn’t broken cell membranes as before, hadn’t decimated the body, not only of its immune defence system, but those vital oxygen carriers. Here, the cells were engorged. They looked, at first glance, to be completely healthy.

  Freya shifted the microscope’s focus, targeting the fluffy edges of the cells. To the undiscerning eye there was nothing wrong, but on closer inspection, each cell’s surround was not the smooth surface it should be, but was covered in tiny nodules.

  “The bastards! There they are,” she gasped, focusing in further to see that the virus had become stuck to the cells in tiny clusters, like iron filings attracted and caught by a giant magnet.

  “It’s not a cure,” Jorge said quietly over her shoulder.

  “I can tell that,” Freya said quickly, having already realised her mortality was still very much in question. Being so smothered, there was no way the blood cells could continue to function properly. “But we don’t need our subjects alive. We just need a way to thin the virus density. This is it, this works.”

  It was crude; of that there was no denying. But whatever the reason, Baidlin’s Pacifier and her blood worked together. The virus was clustered in the blood stream and, if she guessed correctly, drawn back out of the tissues and muscles. Its density was thinned, reducing its host’s hostile characteristics. It wasn’t even deforming and breaking down the cell membranes any longer.

  “Have you heard from the others yet?” Freya asked, withdrawing her gaze from the blood sample and turning to look at Jorge’s grave face. He shook his head slowly.

  “Take more of my blood,” Freya said, moving towards the window and staring out across the dozen Frothers that ambled below.

  “You can’t handle it.”

/>   “Jorge, take my blood. We’re going back to get them out.”

  CHAPTER 6

  They erupted from the pharmacy without warning, smashing their way through a window and rounding on the Frothers before the grotesque beings knew what was happening. Coupled with staggering faintness and vicious tiredness, Freya’s vanquished symptoms had begun to return, but she hid it from Jorge as she struck down the first beast with her boot, knelt on its neck and thrust a bright green syringe into its skin. They were armed with a new weapon now, something far more deadly to their enemies than knives, baseball bats and brute force. A drug that sapped the strength and bloodlust from the dead: Pacifier 6. It was hers. She was in it. Though no one else but Jorge would ever know that fact.

  She saw him struggling with a Frother as she took out another two, jabbing each with their new armaments. She was surprised how fast it worked, how quickly those on the receiving end of her assault became quieter and placated.

  Freya looked again to where Jorge was being backed towards a glass plate window, the knife in his hand outstretched but inadequately brandished. She knew what had to be done. It was the only way to guarantee her safety.

  He called out for her, and she relinquished the thought, immediately jumping to his aid, unable to let infection take another. There would be a way. There had to be a way to trust him, to safeguard her secret.

  If she’d had her earlier vigour, Freya would have stayed and laid waste to those before her, but the faintness ate at her determination. Instead, she simply felled the dozen or so Frothers and pacified them, still shocked at the speed with which her medicinal concoction worked. They could deal with them later.

  Once free from the horde, they moved on, retracing her steps back towards the safe zone. She felt odd, different somehow. Not in physicality, but in character. Infection was there, filtering through her veins, pumping around her body but being held at bay, for now, by Baidlin’s work.

  They entered the corridor that led to the quarantine door, noting the flickering and whirring lights above. Each step took her closer to his body, to the smell of death and decay. It was only then that she realised what was wrong. Fear. There was none, it was gone.

  “Come on,” she called back to Jorge as he side-stepped the mass of crushed limbs and discarded body parts from her earlier rampage. In the midst of the fight, she hadn’t quite realised the extent of her damage. The walls were splattered with dark ooze, the occasional piece of dried flesh and skin, some still with hair, stuck to the place it had landed. The floor was littered with those she’d despatched, the force at which she’d hit them having eventually rendered most completely inanimate. She saw Jorge wince as he stepped over the crushed skull, and she squinted to see her flesh still between its teeth. Freya stretched her back, expecting to feel a vicious sting from the wound those teeth had inflicted. There was nothing.

  No pain either?

  She ached, that was true, but now that she sought any twinge or throb, there was none to be found.

  “I’m going ahead,” she called out as Jorge continued to stumble through the dim hall.

  “No, wait for me,” he replied, but she ignored him and moved forwards without a second’s thought.

  She turned the corner and, this time, looked down. He lay there, quiet and still; the blood that pooled around him was beginning to turn brown. She took a step forwards, noting his body fluids were starting to dry and become a viscous, sticky syrup.

  “We did it,” she said, leaning over and attempting to find an ear on his mutilated head. There were no discernable features left, and so she simply stared at the torn flesh instead, trying to place her memory of the man onto the remains. She couldn’t find his face in her mind, however hard she tried. It had vanished, evaporated as if it had never been there.

  But he was gone, and she was not. She shrugged. That’s what mattered now.

  Before she drew away from his corpse, she hesitated. The browning blood paste was beneath her face. It was so close; the stench of it drew her in. Should she? The thought repulsed her, yet she reached out anyway, drawing her fingers through the thick, congealing blood. Freya put the hand to her lips and tasted him. She shrugged again; it wasn’t as good as she’d expected.

  “What are you doing?” She heard Jorge’s quivering voice over her shoulder, and quickly wiped the blood on her trousers.

  “Nothing,” Freya replied, leaving her uncle on the floor and moving on. “I know why there wasn’t a response from home base.”

  She drew to one side and allowed Jorge to look past her. The quarantine door from which she’d escaped earlier was wide open. A body lay on the threshold, its legs quivering and convulsing inhumanly.

  “They must’ve tried to come after me,” she said. “They’re dead.”

  “Oh God.”

  “But it started before that. It was quiet before I got out,” Freya continued as she stepped over the corpse and looked down. She’d known him, though only by sight. He snarled at her, unable to move. “Someone’s fighting back,” she added, noting the lacerations that had sliced his limbs away and left him defenceless. Jorge pulled out a syringe and bent down.

  “No,” Freya said, pulling his hand away. “It’s a waste.”

  He paused as he saw her face and took in her meaning. Their supply was limited. Only those deemed a threat needed dosing.

  “Y-y-you have blo-od on your lip,” Jorge stammered as their eyes met.

  “I must haven bitten myself,” she replied, turning quickly away and moving deeper into her home. He knew. He’d seen her.

  The body was the first of many. They littered the halls as she and Jorge inched their way closer to the cafeteria, the core of their community. Each and every one was eviscerated and heavily sliced, allowing the duo safe passage.

  “Hello?” Freya called out as she pushed a pair of double metal doors open. The café was strewn with furniture, its regimentally ordered benches thrown on their sides, smashed plates and tins of rations scattered across the floor. Body parts were everywhere, most deathly still, torn from bodies before infection was able to set in and rot. A few, like the others they’d passed, twitched, unable to move but stuck in perpetual animation.

  “Over there,” Jorge whispered, nodding his head towards the utilities cupboard. The door was firmly shut, but was covered in smear marks and scratches. A trail of bodies snaked towards the room; a sign they’d been struck down as their attacker had retreated.

  Freya put a finger to her lips and pointed, guiding Jorge around the room so they took up position on either side of the doorway. Then, without warning, Freya wrenched it open and jumped aside to evade the unknown.

  “You’re alive?!”

  Freya peered into the darkened room and saw Mrs Gilbert hunched in the corner amidst the mops, buckets and jars of cleaning fluids.

  “No thanks to you,” Freya scowled.

  “Jorge! Well I never.” Mrs Gilbert beamed as she scuttled from her hiding place, ignored Freya and placed her arms around the young man’s neck. “How on earth did you — ”

  “Freya,” he replied, throwing praise in her direction. “If it wasn’t for her, I either be dead or locked in that lab.”

  “If it wasn’t for her we’d all still be alive,” Mrs Gilbert said as her voice quivered in rage. “It was that Frother you attacked that started all of this! Thought she was Pacified, didn’t we? Thought she could be patched up and put to work. But you —” She turned and jabbed a finger towards Freya. “You had to steal the limelight with your self-centred ‘I’m a little genius’ ways, didn’t you? First you ruin our seamstress, then you manipulate poor Darshna…oh yes, I know all about that,” Mrs Gilbert continued without taking a breath. “Poor mite’s still locked up in The Chamber, though no doubt to her advantage in light of what’s happened. I wouldn’t wonder if she’s tried to claw her way ou — ”

  Mrs Gilbert’s voice turned to a scream as the teeth sank into her throat and ripped a chunk of flesh away. Freya had seen it c
oming, creeping from behind the discarded furniture, attracted by the woman’s tirade. The seamstress, despite the smashed jaw and missing teeth, still carried a bite, Freya saw, as the Frother got a taste of blood. Mrs Gilbert choked and pulled away as blood flooded in a torrent across her chest and to the floor. With a new meal in its sights, the beast showed no interest in Jorge or Freya. Primal instincts drove it to devour the prey in its grip. Freya smirked slightly; there was enough there to keep her going for a while.

  “Shouldn’t we Pacifier it?” Jorge asked as Freya took his arm and pulled him away.

  “Leave it. It’s satisfied…for now.”

  They left Mrs Gilbert writhing on the floor, picking their way back across the room and moving back into the hallway.

  “Jorge, we couldn’t have done anything,” Freya said, realising her comrade’s loyalty was waning. “It’s just you and I…and Darsh. We have to stick together. We know how to stop them. We have a real chance now.”

  He was quiet, but she saw the horror on his face fade a little as he quickened his step and walked alongside her instead of traipsing behind. They arrived at the stairwell and hurried down the steps, descending to the parking garage where the place of torment lay. Here too, the lights flickered back and forth, whirring above their heads and threatening to go out at any point. But it didn’t matter, they were just two now. There was nothing to fear.

  The Chamber was ahead. It seemed so recently that she’d awoken there and realised her fate. How quickly things change.

  “Darsh?” Freya called out. “Darsh, are you there?”

  “Oh my god, Freya?”

  As soon as she heard her friend’s voice, she knew she was no longer alone. Turning towards Jorge, she plunged the knife into his chest and watched as the blood drained from his face and began to pump across his shirt.

  “I’m sorry,” Freya gasped, dismayed at how different it felt to sink a blade into flesh instead of a leathery corpse. She’d thought it would be easier, that he’d just become another number. But the way in which it slid so easily took her by surprise. “You know too much,” she said, holding his body as he sank to the floor. Jorge gasped for air, unable to say a word, his eyes rolling upwards as the blood drained away. Freya left him where he lay, closing his eyes before she stood and walked to walked to the door.