AZU-1: Lifehack Page 5

Dusk was sneaking up quickly. Regan’s voyage to AutarLabs was taking a lot longer than before the outbreak. She now had to make the effort to avoid the zombie mobs by taking wide detours.

  She was tired and hungry when she came to a city park. It was quiet and peaceful. If there were signs of killings, they managed to be hidden or absorbed into the grass. She bent over to pick a blade of the grass. She was nearly surprised to find that it was real grass and not some amazing uber-mod grass substitute.

  Not far off sat a stout little building made of large bricks and painted thickly with white. A small door on one end was marked as ‘WOMEN’, and doubtless the men’s was on the other side. On the side of the building facing her was a small concession stand, closed up tight. She didn’t want to fire off a round needlessly so she looked around for something to pry the metal shutter open with. Nothing presented itself offhand.

  Remembering there were some odds and ends in the duffle bag she grabbed, she went into it to see what bonuses she had nabbed with her ammo. A bottle of pain killers, some fancy goggles, and two military ration packs. She decided to make due with the rations tonight and deal with the concession stand in the morning.

  The washrooms looked big from the outside and seemed like they might make good overnight shelter. She took note that the door into the women’s washroom swung inwards only, and the cement potted plant outside would make a good barricade to hold the door shut if she dragged it in. It might not stop a zombie if it was very determined, but it should stop ‘casual’ zombies. Even then, the ruckus should wake her up with plenty of time to grab her gun.

  The park had several sports fields, so as it turned out this was no mere washroom, but more of a locker room. There was a lot of space, lockers Regan was happy to loot, a massive shower room, and of course the standard plumbing facilities.

  Satisfied that the locker room was secure, she set up her little barricade and made a crude bed out of people’s abandoned clothes. In the process she found a few other little useful items and stuffed those in her duffle. The little locks of the lockers surrendered easily to the butt end of the P90 but most of them weren’t even locked.

  She settled back, and tried to relax. So, this was the end of the second day after the end of the world. (Or Autar at least) The locker room was a bit cozier than the bank safe, and it was ‘in a good neighborhood’. She hadn’t seen a zombie in the park, at least not yet.

  Having the time to examine some of her loot, she put on the goggles she had confiscated. Of course she was familiar with the notion of VTag equipment, but not being military, she never had a chance to play with it before.

  A translucent display came to live in front of her eyes, complaining about not being associated with any VTag network. Regan fumbled with the buttons on the side of the goggles’ frame and started browsing the goggles’ interface. It wouldn’t let her join a network that was apparently in the area without a password. Fine, she’d start her own. She left the default name ‘New VTag Network’. The option for ‘private’ came up in the process. Sure, OK, private sounds good, whatever.

  Once she was on her network of one, she managed to figure out how to place an actual VTag. The middle of the display in the goggles sported a little crosshair. She lined it up to one of the sinks, and hit the appropriate command.

  Pop! A friendly, circular icon appeared on the sink. It reminded Regan of a lifesaver. Text below it waited to be named but Regan just left it at the default ‘VTag01’. Now no matter how she wished to move, the sink would appear to have the icon and its text pinned on it. She leaned her head so that a corner of the wall was in the way, but the display still faithfully tracked the position. Through walls, through her hand, through the other side of the planet if need be.

  Still wearing the goggles, she looked at the two paperbacks she’d salvaged from the lockers. They were trashy things, but they beat staring at the ceiling. She flipped to the first page of the first one. After half a sentence, Regan rolled her eyes and dismissed it as crap. She put the book down in her lap and used the goggles to put a VTag on the book, and labeled it ‘This sucks’. She tossed the book against the wall, but the VTag remained where the book had been, hovering just a bit above her lap. Alright, so VTags don’t track moving objects. That’s nice.

  She pressed another button, and suddenly the wall rushed at her. She yelped in surprise then laughed at herself. It seemed the goggles also operated as binoculars. After toying some more she managed to get the game of zooming in and out.

  After picking through some of the more mundane items she’d obtained, she thought it would be wise to examine her gun a bit more. She discovered the safety. She wouldn’t have known where to find it before. Lucky for her it was off when she needed it to be. She also found out how to switch it from single shots to full-auto. It hadn’t even really occurred to her that it might have a setting like that. She was firing single shots up until now, and that had been enough so far. However she now had a pile of ammo and access to more, so she flipped over to full auto.

  There was some other little plug that came out on a little wire but it wasn’t labeled, so she left it alone. On the front end just under the muzzle there was a laser sight built in, but it didn’t seem to be working.

  The need for sleep came calling. She settled in and glanced at her door barricade. She left the lights on for safety, but dragged the sleeve of someone’s pullover over her eyes.

  The solitude began to creep up on her again and she missed her brother. In all the fun of setting up a safe spot for the night and toying with the VTag goggles, she’d lost focus a little. She wasn’t even sure she’d find anything at AutarLabs. For all she knew Harold was out and safe, or worse, got killed somewhere. Either of those scenarios meant she was risking her life for nothing.

  Harold was the only thing in the world that meant anything to her. The only real, stable thing. The rest of her life was just flakey jobs here and there, a couple crappy relationships... nothing worth remembering, really. But Harold was always there supporting her, even in her stupid moves, while he tried to sneak in advice. Or being an ear to whine to, or letting her crash at his place and mooch. Well, it was time for her to make an effort for him. He’d never needed help before, and now was her chance to do something meaningful.

  Resolve pushed her hopelessness aside, and sleep finally claimed her.

  Although morning came, the locker room had no windows, so no new light reached in to wake Regan. She awoke on her own and looked at her watch. Quarter to ten. That was the earliest she’d been up in a week. She wasn’t in the mood to waste time, but she had a perfectly good shower room here and she didn’t know when she’d get another chance. It wouldn’t take long. Her clothes could use a wash too, but she didn’t have the patience to watch them dry, nor did she really want to run around in someone else’s jogging pants. She’d put up with her unwashed clothes at least another day. They weren’t that bad all things considered.

  Once she’d put herself back together, she dragged the cement pot barrier out of the way of the door and swung it open. A zombie was standing about four meters away and Regan yelped. The zombie turned to bear down on her but she managed to fumble for her P90 and pepper it with bullets rather quickly. It fell to the ground but kept coming, dragging itself along with its arms, leaving a trail of blood on the path. She aimed at its head and finished the job.

  Well, it almost seemed a fitting way to start a morning after sleeping in a bathroom.

  She stepped around the body and headed towards the concession stand. She’d already made noise with gunfire, why not open it the easy way? She fired on the latch to the rolling shutter that covered the front and pushed it up, having to force the damaged metal a bit. The door finally came loose, rolling up into the ceiling and shedding forth mid morning light on a colourful treasure trove of junk food. She climbed over the counter and attacked the nearest bit of chocolate. With the bar hanging out of her mouth, she examined the rest of the inventory. Oh, look, a door. If she had walke
d a little bit farther around the corner outside, she would have seen it. To add insult it wasn’t locked. She could have been munching junk food last night instead of her selection of rations and nutrition bars. Yeah, that would have been healthy.

  With her duffle bag now stocked with a fresh water bottle and some goodies on top of boring ‘survival’ food, she was ready to head out again. This spot turned out pretty good. Before she left she got out the VTag goggles again. She erased the VTags she’d made while experimenting, and put a Vtag on the little building. ‘JUNK N SHOWER’. Onward.

  ~~~

  As he packed his equipment onto his new little boat, Jonathan Coll couldn’t help giggling to himself when he thought of what he’d done. Such little effort, such huge effect. Too bad they don’t give out a Pulitzer for this kind of thing.

  Killing Scott was simply too much fun. He seemed so surprised! What a classical invention, the knife. The simplicity of the method was an amusing contrast to what happened to Scott after he died. A heavy dose of immune suppressant let the nanite chaser do its work all that much easier.

  Coll was a little disappointed how easy the other killings were as well. He figured if his toys were going to really take the town nicely, he’d have to plant a few more seeds in different areas.

  Simple math told him that the spread could potentially be very quick, being based on a doubling exponent, but he knew in practical terms that people weren’t about to line up to be chomped efficiently. They may as well have though. Panic had spread so quickly.

  Ditching Autar was a matter of timing. Leave too soon, and he wouldn’t have been able to plant an optimal number of seed zombies. Leave too late, and the town would have been locked down. Being officially evacuated tended to leave a record.

  As it turned out, he felt he had found the optimum time. Surely he’d be presumed dead, and with Scott being taken out of the picture, there wasn’t much chance of getting named in this mess.

  Except maybe by Mr. Book. That would have been sweet, if that useless hunk of lard could have been in Autar for the party. He won’t speak up though. He has his own butt to keep safe from blame. Oh yeah. Ole’ Book’s gonna want Coll dead, no doubt. To heck with hiding from the cops, it was time to hide from Lancer.

  ~~~~~

  Chapter 9: Crown of Thorns

  ~~~~~

  Evading the larger mobs was becoming routine to Regan and not all that difficult. It’s difficult to overlook a couple hundred walking corpses, even at a block or two away. Also, they weren’t exactly quick to swarm someone who stayed mindful of an escape route. It would have been very handy to be able to put VTags on as many zombies as possible, but of course the tag would just hang there in the virtual air behind the zombie as it shuffled along.

  No, the large mobs weren’t much of a problem. It was the lone wanderers hiding in the obscure little nooks, or small groups like the one milling around behind a parked van Regan had just passed. Yes, they were a threat.

  A bloody forearm which had begun to stink whipped around Regan’s neck from behind. In reactionary panic, she yelped and tried to push the arm away. It was inhumanly strong. She felt it tighten enough to start strangling her. She heard at least one other shuffling up from behind.

  Regan fought off the panic and trembling enough to bring up the P90. Maybe she could fire a burst into its shoulder to weaken its grip. Firing in such a sloppy manner would be risky to her too, but she only had a split second to think about the risks.

  Or less. The zombie holding her bit at the back of her head. Panic crystallized into rage. She bent forward and pulled the zombie over her, onto the ground in front of her.

  She hopped away, aware of the threats still behind her, and turned to face them. There were a total of three of them. She took a moment to quickly check her wound. The bite mostly got hair, but she was bleeding and it stung appropriately. Now that she was facing her opponents and had some space, it was little effort to send them down with her powerful little rifle. The one that bit her was getting up. She fired a burst into his head to put him down for good. The other two continued forward until they met the same end.

  She stopped and stared at the one who had bit her, while she touched her wound again. Ow. Lovely. Does this mean she’s infected? She dropped to her knees. Fucking lovely. It ends just like that. And for all she knew, Harold had gotten out anyway. That’s fine, that’s fine, we can just leave Regan to die in the ghost town. Nobody would give a damn except maybe Harold anyway.

  She slumped down, posture and optimism melting until she was flat on her back, staring at the azure sky; ready to become one of them. What was the difference now?

  The midday silence surrounded her. It pressed down on her and her three zombie buddies. The silence may as well have been six feet of dirt.

  A sound interrupted Regan’s self-eulogy. Distant. Gunfire? She sat up, and looked towards the sound. That building she noticed before far off in the distance seemed to be the source. Wasn’t that building in a different direction before? She pulled out the VTag goggles and put them on to make use of the zoom feature. The building had some kind of structure on it. She zoomed in closer, closer. The smaller structure had a man in it, and the man had a big gun. It was mounted into the building somehow and he was firing it down at the ground. She couldn’t see the target from where she sat, but it was obvious he was defending himself from zombies. He must be stranded on that building and..

  No, wait... he stopped firing, but his body language.. he’s very casual about it all. She needed a better view.

  Regan looked around and saw a building with a glass elevator that reached up nice and high. It looked zombie-free. The lobby was visible to the street thanks to the glass panels that made up most of the ground floor so she felt safe rushing to the elevator. She pressed the button and stood back. The elevator doors were not glass, and could have been hiding a nasty surprise. They weren’t.

  She got in and pressed the top floor. As she went up she looked around through the goggles. The Vtag ‘JUNK N SHOWER’ caught her attention as she looked around, even though her haven itself was obscured by another building. She turned to the building she had come up here to investigate. The tops of surrounding buildings were mostly out of the way now.

  There was a very good reason why that strange building seemed to be everywhere around the outskirts of Autar. Because it was.

  It was a wall, and from where she stood it looked like it circled the entire city. They had built it all in the few days since the initial outbreak. She had heard of military engineers building much, much smaller walls quickly for the threat of floods and such, but this was a very different scale. This would hold a lake if it needed to.

  So. They had already given up on reclaiming the city. They just didn’t want the zombies getting out.

  The wall had many of those small gun posts. Why not just bomb the living snot out of Autar? Not that she was complaining. She got to live, at least until she started craving brains. Her wound stung less now. Was that good or bad?

  Either way, she was feeling a little less apathetic. She may as well finish her probably-pointless trek to the lab. As the elevator went back down, she heard noises above her. There was a zombie on the roof of the elevator. Frig, was it there all along?

  She watched the ceiling and got out carefully when she reached the bottom. No need to stir up a fuss when she can just walk away. As she left the building she looked at the elevator from the outside. There were at least four of them on there.

  They took notice of her and began throwing themselves against the glass. A considerable smear of blood blotted against the glass as they struck again and again.

  A crack sounded. A few more strikes later, the glass broke and three of the four tumbled like wet laundry off the top of the elevator, onto the ground. They started picking themselves up, caked in blood and broken ‘safety glass’ bits. The fourth trudged through the break in the glass, and fell behind the other three with the unpleasant crack of bone.


  Regan was a safe distance away by now, but she didn’t need them following her and becoming a problem later. She had the ammo to spare, so she took them down.

  How easy it was becoming, to kill the dead. Easier to forget they were people ever so recently.

  She took a moment to imagine their names on some list somewhere on the net, while family members wondered how to hold a funeral.

  ~~~~~

  Chapter 10: The General

  ~~~~~

  With yet another detour while evading a mob, and another small scuffle, Regan was finally at AutarLabs. Well, she could see it, anyway.

  The building was surrounded by zombies. That in itself was not a huge shock, but they were standing in a crude formation. Nearly shoulder to shoulder and five zombies thick.

  The front of the building had about fifty rows. Each row had five zombies in a line. Multiply that by four sides of the property, plus lots of strays just wandering around. That equaled to a lot of rotting people standing around.

  From a safe distance of two blocks down the road, she used the VTag goggles’ magnification to look for a weak point in the barricade, but found none. She did find another odd thing however. The barrier also surrounded a large, open area in front of the entryway. The kind of concrete front yard you might expect a co-operation to grace with a fountain of some gaudy abstract stature.

  AutarLabs didn’t choose to have anything there, but they had something now. Right in the middle stood a large zombie.

  This big fellow wasn’t quite a zombie. It was twice the height of a person. Zooming in closer revealed that its form consisted of random body parts and gore held together by seemingly nothing more than will. It stood like a General behind his troops, staring forward without any noticeable eyes.

  It all seemed to have some kind of purpose.