Resurrection: A Zombie Novel - - (the best motivational books txt) 📗
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Parker wept silently. He no longer cared about the pain in his back, nor about the pain in his arm where Kyle had jammed in the needle. He was one of the last human beings on the face of the earth, yet he had no more value to anyone else than a lab rat.
How long, he wondered, before they brought the next needle in? The one that would infect him. And what would they do with him once the results from their little Nazi experiment came in? If he turned and stayed turned, they’d shoot him. That was clear. But what if he turned back into Parker, like Annie had turned back into Annie? Were they still going to shoot him?
Probably. Since shooting him was the plan in the first place.
Maybe after he turns, he’ll have enough strength to rip through the ropes and break out of the bedroom. The virus didn’t give those things extra strength, but it did seem to make them less sensitive or concerned about pain, like psychotics hopped up on angel dust. Maybe he could bust his way free and eat Kyle.
He actually laughed at the thought, a horrible grim laugh even though there was nothing funny about it. He didn’t want to eat Kyle. He didn’t want to eat anybody. Yet he laughed at the thought. Perhaps this was the beginning of acceptance.
Acceptance. Yes. He’d have to accept this. It’s not like they gave him a choice. They were going to stick him with an infected needle, and he’d either turn back like Annie did or he wouldn’t. And then they were going to kill him.
He wondered what it would be like after he turns. Would he be aware of what’s happening? Would he remember the person he was before, when he still knew his name and where he had come from? Annie said her memories of that time were vague, which suggested she was still sentient on some level. She wasn’t sleepwalking. Otherwise she wouldn’t remember it.
He hoped he would at least remember his name. Please let him at least remember his name.
The front door downstairs opened and he tensed up. This was it. They were on their way up. He only wished they could wait a little bit longer and give him more time to make peace with the terrible transformation awaiting him.
Then he wondered: Where on earth did they get the fluid for the second injection?
A horrendous racket downstairs. Lots of banging and scraping.
He heard Hughes say, “Grab his hands, Frank!” and Frank said, “I’m trying!”
Grab whose hands? Kyle’s?
Then he heard Kyle’s voice. “Steady. Get it onto the stairs.”
Get what onto the stairs?
Something heavy banged into the wall.
And then something growled.
No.
It couldn’t be.
They wouldn’t.
He heard a new voice he didn’t recognize. It struggled and strained as if it were gagged. Parker’s entire body flushed with red heat.
The commotion reached the top of the stairs, and soon they were outside the bedroom.
“Okay,” Kyle said. “Hughes and I have a hold of it. Frank, open the door.”
Parker heard grunting and snarling. He wanted it to be some sort of animal, but no. He knew what it was.
One of those things.
Madness and mayhem out in the hallway. Annie stepped back as Kyle, Frank, and Hughes wrestled with the thing they had captured in Eastsound. This one really did look like a thing. Annie felt no kinship or bond with it whatsoever. Not even pity.
It was a male. Maybe thirty years old. It was covered in gore and it stank of a charnel house. Its eyes were like intelligent animal eyes, seeing and focusing but lacking compassion and decency. Its face was red and swollen and puffy. Hughes had stunned it with pepper spray designed to repel grizzly bears, which made it furious and explosive.
Hughes and Frank had placed some kind of fishing net over its upper arms and tied its wrists together behind its back. They covered its mouth with duct tape. It could still kick and head-butt and throw its weight around. It thrashed about so violently, she feared it might get its arms free, rip the tape off its mouth, and start biting.
Annie held the Glock. Her job was to guard that thing while the others tried to control it.
This was not at all what she had in mind. When she said they should inoculate Parker and then infect him, she meant they should inject Parker with the virus, not let one of those things actually bite him. But Kyle insisted—no, he demanded—that they do it this way. His sadistic determination frightened her almost as much as this thing did.
Hughes grabbed its bound wrists with one hand and the hair on the back of its head with the other. Kyle and Hughes each managed to hold one of its shoulders. They had it positioned in front of the door like they were going to use it as a battering ram.
It managed to scream even with its mouth taped shut. It sounded human and not at the same time. Parker hollered on the other side of the door, but the thing in the hall made so much noise with its muffled yelling and thrashing that Parker’s screams were hardly even noticeable in the background.
“Annie,” Hughes said. He gripped the thing’s head and held its writhing arms still as best as he could. “I need you to open the door, step out of the way, and then aim that Glock at this creature’s head. We’re going to get it down on the floor in front of Parker and then rip the tape off. Let it bite Parker one time and one time only. Then shoot it. Do not hit any of us and do not hit Parker. You got it?”
She nodded, trembling.
Parker screamed from the other side of the door. Surely he knew by now what was happening.
She reached for the doorknob and the thing lunged at her. It rammed the top of its head into her shoulder and groaned into the tape. She flinched and stepped back.
“Sorry, Annie,” Kyle said.
“Jesus, this thing,” Frank said.
Hughes gripped its hair and pulled back its head. “Okay. You’re clear.”
She reached for the doorknob again, twisted it, flung open the door, and stepped back.
Parker, tied to the chair, strained and thrashed as violently and hysterically as that thing. “You motherfuckers! You’re going to burn for this!”
“Get it down on the floor,” Hughes said and kicked the back of the thing’s knees with his boots. It went down just a few feet from Parker.
Parker’s face was red from the straining. Spittle flew from his mouth. “You’re the most wicked people alive. I never did anything half as bad as what you’re doing right now. Kyle, after I turn, I’m going to rip through these cords and chew off your face.”
Annie tried to aim at the thing’s head, but she couldn’t keep her hands steady and the gun bobbed all over the place.
“Frank,” Hughes said. “Lift Parker’s pants leg. Expose his ankle.”
God, Annie thought. Lifting his pants leg so that creature has something to bite. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. She’d need to shoot that thing if it got loose.
Hughes turned its head sideways, slammed it into the floor, and leaned all his body weight into its back. “Rip off the tape, Frank. Do it carefully.”
Parker wept. He seemed too tired and resigned to yell anymore.
Frank tried to yank the tape off the thing’s mouth, but he flinched and pulled back, afraid of losing his fingers—and worse. Unlike Parker, he had not been inoculated. None of the others had yet been inoculated. No one even knew if the inoculation would work.
“Try again, Frank,” Hughes said. “This thing’s head isn’t moving.”
Frank reached toward its face with a shaking hand, grabbed a corner of the tape, pulled, and jumped back. He scrambled six feet backward to get clear of its teeth.
The tape was still over its mouth.
“Damnit, Frank,” Hughes said and ripped the tape off himself in a flourish. He did it so quickly, the squirming thing had no time to react. But now its head was free and its teeth were bared, the virus cocked and loaded, the worst biological weapon the world had ever seen.
Parker jerked as if he was being electrocuted in his chair.
Annie should have known what would happen next, but somehow she didn’t. She knew the bite was coming. She anticipated Parker’s screams. She knew she’d have to blow the thing’s brains out before it bit somebody else.
But she didn’t foresee what happened first.
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