Night of the Living Trekkies (16 page)

Perhaps they were a touch
too
sensitive. The sliver of light seeping under the door was too painful to look at.

Matt reached over to the nightstand, where he had deposited his trusty Ray-Bans before lying down. He put them on.

Better. Much better.

He felt like a new man.

Pain and fear had forced his retreat into darkness and quiet. Rayna and Gary’s loud, ceaseless prattling drove him to distraction. So did the suite’s insanely bright lights. He had to escape to a quiet, dark place to sort things out. To process what was happening to him.

It had begun shortly after he reached the suite. He, Rayna, and Gary got there by running a gauntlet of the undead. One of them attacked him. Instinctively he punched it in the face, knocking it to the floor. Then he stomped on its head.

He kept racing down the hall, right over T’Poc. She’d fallen. One of the undead things was climbing on top of her, about to take its first bite. Not his problem. As he explained to Gary earlier in the day, man shouldn’t interfere with nature’s rhythms.

Once behind closed doors, they were okay. Yet for some reason Matt couldn’t stop sweating. His skin crawled. His limbs ached.

Even worse, he felt a stirring deep inside his psyche. As if something had hitched a ride in his mind.

He went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face, trying to calm himself. Then he spotted a small, almost unnoticeable cut on one knuckle. It came, he guessed, from popping the zombie in the face.

He’d seen enough movies to know what such blood-to-blood contact could mean. He grew more and more agitated about it. Finally, he simply walked into the bedroom, closed the door, and cut himself off from the others.

Just as the urges in his head told him to.

At first he was frightened. He lay trembling in the dark, his clothes soaked with sweat. He couldn’t close his eyes, for fear he’d awaken as a zombie. But slowly the fear eased. Slowly his discomfort lessened.

Slowly the things in his mind grew more powerful. And as their powers grew, they began to work wonders.

They improved his ears and eyes. They made his muscles stronger. They made his brain work faster. All stress and uncertainty receded.

This is way better than Xanax
, Matt thought.

The only topic that tickled anything approaching discord was the news of Jim Pike’s imminent arrival. That, and the obvious glee that his surviving crew, Gary and Rayna, displayed at the prospect.

This is textbook treason
, he thought.

He knew their plans. How some kid upstairs helped distract the zombies. How they’d figured out that Tasers worked on the undead. Even how they’d met a wounded T’Poc on the stairs and discovered Matt’s role in her demise.

He puzzled over that last bit of information. He couldn’t remember how he knew it. Yet there it was, tucked away in his cerebral cortex, like some random bit of trivia he’d discovered while surfing the Web.
Where did I read that again? How do I know this?

He also knew, somehow, that Jim was furious. That he wanted Matt’s head on a stick.

The thought made him smile.

Matt stood up and walked to the bedroom door. Based on the sounds outside, he knew exactly where his suitemates were. Rayna stood at the door, waiting to admit her brother. Gary was right behind her, anxiously rocking back and forth, the soft friction of his sneakers creating a noise that was imperceptible to human ears but rang clear as a bell to Matt.

They were committing the vilest treason. Bringing visitors aboard, behind the commanding officer’s back. Visitors who actually meant to do him harm.

Matt placed his hand on the doorknob. His body tensed for action.

Time for the big fight scene
, he thought.

He opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the light.

The hallway was littered with corpses of the freshly dead. Too fresh, Jim hoped, to rise quite yet, but there was no way to know for sure. Everything he’d seen suggested that the incubation period was wildly inconsistent: some people turned within minutes; others took several hours. Why?

He and Leia and Willy picked their way among the carnage, carefully watching for movement. It wasn’t easy because, just as on the third floor, most of the light sconces had been destroyed. This was another puzzle. He’d already concluded that the zombies were too dumb to open doors—so how could they make the strategic decision to smash the lights one by one? The only possible explanation was that it
wasn’t
a strategic decision—that the creatures were operating by base instinct. They did not like light. And now that the sun was down, they were coming out in force.

Jim glanced up to see Rayna, still wearing her electric-blue Andorian face paint, cautiously open the suite’s door. She motioned for them to hurry. He motioned, just as emphatically, for her to stay inside until they got closer.

Something grabbed his left ankle.

Jim looked down to see the bloodied face of a man in his forties, his blue tunic pulled up to expose his prodigiously hairy paunch. A paunch that sprouted a bloodshot eyeball just above the belly button.

Jim shook his ankle free and then punctured the eye with the tip of his kar’takin.

Leia pointed down the hall to another freshly minted zombie—an elderly woman who doddered to her feet as they watched, then lurched toward them, toothless mouth agape.

As he advanced on his target, Jim briefly wondered what front-desk moron gave the old lady a room on the Trekkie floor. Then he realized she wore a ragged, bloodied
Next Gen
medical uniform.

Fandom knows no age limits
, he thought.

He swung the kar’takin. The blow sliced off the top of the creature’s fragile-looking skull, exposing a neat cross section of its brain. The body tumbled to the floor.

Jim surveyed the hall for other potential targets. He glanced back at the suite. His sister was still watching. She’d covered her mouth with her hand and seemed on the edge of fainting. She’d seen more carnage than she’d ever imagined, and things were going to get worse before they got better.

He glanced behind him, making sure Leia and Willy kept close. Then he looked back at the door.

Rayna wasn’t there anymore.

In her place stood Matt. He was grinning.

“Sorry, Jim, but your sister and I would like a little privacy.” He reached out and hung a Do Not Disturb sign from the door handle.

“Be quiet,” Jim said. “They’ll hear you.”

“Hear me?” Matt shouted.
“You’re worried that all the zombies down
the hall are going to hear me? And maybe they’re going to shamble down here and tear you to pieces?”

Jim started running, but it was too late. Matt slammed the door in his face and the automatic lock clicked into place.

“What just happened?” Leia shouted. “What the hell is he doing?”

“Trying to kill us,” Jim said. Some two dozen zombies had abandoned the elevators and were now shambling toward them.

Leia hammered on the door. “Let us in!” she shouted. “Please!”

Willy joined her. “Open the goddamn door!”

Jim looked at the peephole. He sensed that Matt was on the other side, watching them.

“We can’t stay here,” Leia said.

Jim handed his kar’takin to Leia, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a lanyard with a universal passkey attached. He passed it over the door’s sensor pad. A tiny light near the knob changed from red to green. The locking mechanism clicked.

Jim turned the knob, put his shoulder against the door, and pushed.

It didn’t budge.

“What’s wrong now?” Willy asked nervously, his eyes locked on the advancing undead.

“Door must be barricaded,” Jim said, straining against it.

Leia pushed, too. It didn’t help.

“We don’t have time for this,” she said. “We’ve got to—”

She was cut off by a high-pitched shriek from Willy.

A corpse they’d just stepped over—a woman dressed in a miniskirt uniform from the original series—rose up, moaned, and stumbled toward them. Leia dispatched it with a sharp jab from the kar’takin, cleanly bisecting its third eye.

“We’re out of time,” she said.

Jim hit the door repeatedly with his shoulder.

Meanwhile, a solid wall of zombies, filling the hallway from side to side, shambled toward them.

“They’re coming!” Willy shouted.

Jim tried to think of them only as a faceless swarm, a strategic obstacle, but little bits of lost humanity insisted on jumping out at him: a ridged Klingon forehead here, a torn Romulan tunic there. A scrolling LED lanyard that blinked
: Frak Me? Frak You!

“We’ve got to get back to the stairwell!” Leia insisted.

“No,” Jim said.

Instead, he retreated to the door of the adjacent room. He could hear scratching and moaning from the other side. Jim took out his passkey and turned to Leia.

“Tase this prick as soon as it steps out,” he said.

Leia tossed the kar’takin to Willy and then pulled her Taser just as Jim unlocked the room, shoved open the door, and stepped back.

Out stumbled two bedraggled-looking zombies, the first wearing bloodied pajamas, the second a pair of boxer shorts. Leia tased the first as soon as it cleared the threshold. Jim grabbed the second by the shoulders, spun it in the direction of the other zombies, and sent it sailing toward them with a boot to the butt.

“Get in!” he shouted, pushing the others inside and slamming the door in the faces of the advancing horde.

“Now what?” Leia and Willy asked at the same time.

Jim didn’t reply. Instead, he switched on the overhead light, tossed his backpack in a chair, pulled out the Glock, and chambered a round.

“Stay in here,” Jim said. “Keep out of sight.”

Through the wall he could hear Rayna’s voice. She was crying and pleading. Begging Matt to unlock the door.

Jim located the interior door that linked the room to Matt’s suite. Again he swiped his passkey, but this time he kicked the door open. The force of the blow nearly knocked it off its hinges.

Matt was standing near the exterior door, gripping Rayna’s right arm by the wrist. Gary lay on the floor, groaning.

“Commodore Stockard, you are unfit for command,” Jim said. “I’m here to relieve you of duty.”

Then he aimed the Glock at Matt’s face and advanced on him. This should have been enough to get the job done. Jim knew that nearly all civilians shrank away from the sight of a gun barrel. Especially if it was inches from their face. But Matt never flinched.

“This is
my
ship,” he hissed.

“You’re one of them,” Jim concluded. “You’re not human anymore.”

“No,” Matt said. “I’m better.”

He released Rayna, then brought up his right arm with superhuman speed, batting the gun out of the way. Then he delivered a stunning head butt, knocking Jim off his feet. The Glock flew out of his hand, bounced across the floor, and stopped a foot short of the wide-open connecting door.

Jim’s ears rang and his eyes blurred. When he finally regained his senses, he found Matt standing over him.

“You need to respect the chain of command,” Matt said.

He walked over to the pistol, knelt down, and picked it up. He inspected it carefully.

“I don’t really need this,” he said, glancing back at Jim. “Not the way I am now. But I think I’ll hold onto it just the same.”

He was so busy looking at the gun and at Jim that he didn’t notice Leia step quietly into the doorway. Didn’t notice until she brought the kar’takin down on his wrist, cleanly separating his gun hand from his arm.

“Try holding it now!” she screamed.

Leia raised the blade again and struck at Matt’s head. But her target, who accepted his injury without the slightest outward sign of pain or panic, grabbed the weapon with his remaining hand and wrenched it away. He tossed it to the floor and stood on the shaft. Then he grabbed Leia by the throat. Slowly, he lifted her off the floor.

Jim struggled to his feet. Just then the Glock discharged a round. The slug buzzed past his left ear.

The pistol lay on the floor, Matt’s severed hand still wrapped around the grip. The hand twitched and rocked. It was trying to move the weapon.

Trying to aim it.

Another shot sped Jim’s way, barely missing him.

“Willy!” he shouted. “Get the gun!”

The terrified red shirt dashed through the doorway. Screaming, he fell to all fours next to the weapon, grappling with the hand for control.

Another round discharged. It sped past Rayna and Gary and straight through the window, shattering it.

“Get his hand away from it!” Jim shouted.

“I’m trying!” Willy shrieked. “It won’t let go!”

Leia, held a foot above the floor and slowly choking, furiously kicked her dangling, slippered feet. Jim ducked around her and punched Matt hard in the kidneys. Once, twice, a third time. Nothing happened.

He remembered his Taser. He took it out and aimed it.

That got Matt’s attention. He turned, still holding Leia by the neck, and threw her at Jim. He caught her, but the impact landed them both back on the floor.

Jim managed to raise his Taser and fire. Matt jumped out of the darts’ way, toward the hallway door.

Leia, still weak, regained enough of her senses to bring her own stun gun to bear. She fired but also missed.

The two of them got to their feet, weapons ready. Matt, while dodging the darts, had cornered himself in the hallway leading to the exterior door. There was only one way out.

“Thanks for coming to my party,” he said as he eyed the hallway exit. “But I think it’s time to call it a night. Going to be a big day tomorrow. Catch you at the convention.”

Then he put his shoulder to the door, pushing it off its hinges with frightening ease. He fled into the hallway, toward the fire-exit stairs.

“Oh, shit,” Jim said.

A zombie peeked inside the room and moaned. It staggered into the entry with another close behind.

“Everybody out!” Jim said. “Into the next room! Go, go, go!”