The Saga Of Tom Stinson (Book 1): Summer School Zombocalypse (12 page)

Tom scowled at Anidea. “We stick to my plan. We’re going to walk in there.”

“
With all the zombies?” Emmett said. “No way. We’ll be eaten.”

“
I suppose we could disguise ourselves,” Anidea said.

“
Now you’re getting it,” Tom said in an upbeat voice to Anidea. “There are only eight of them at the entrance. We’ll put our backpacks over our heads, they will never know the difference. Camouflage.”

“
What about the food?”

“
Stuff the pockets. It’ll be fine.”

“
No, I really didn’t mean it,” Anidea said, backpedaling furiously. “Oh why did I have to open my big mouth?”

Winston raised his gun. “What if we shoot them?”

“
Don't be stupid, Winston. Think about it, who will control the zombies?” Emmett asked.

“
Why aren’t the zombies attacking the lizard people?” Anidea asked.

“
Lizardmen, Anidea, call them lizardmen,” Tom said. “People they are not. You do not have to be politically correct when talking about invading aliens from outer space.”

“
Maybe the zombies are hypnotized,” Emmett said. “Maybe it’s that awful smell in the air that’s doing it. That could be how they control the zombies. Like a Venus flytrap attracts flies.”

“
Shouldn’t we wait until dark?” Anidea asked, “That way they won’t see us so easily.”

“
No, we will go now,” Tom said. “It won’t make a difference when we do it. We have to walk past them no matter what. Get as much weaponry as you can tucked away, and use those backpacks as a disguise.”

Anidea unzipped her pack and put it over her head. “This is like totally, incredibly stupid.”

Anidea buried her head deep in the backpack. Her body trembled as they hunched, limped, and shuffled their way into the line. “I can’t breathe,” she gasped.

A zombie pushed Emmett to the side.

“
Hold hands. Stay together,” Tom said, as he pulled Emmett back.

“
Wet zombie smell is the worst,” Winston said. “It makes me want to puke.”

“
Don’t say puke,” Anidea gagged.

“
Well it does. I can’t think about anything else.”

Anidea threw up again and started to cry. She pulled the pack off her head and wiped her mouth. Vomit dripped down her clothes and onto her shoe.

“
Hang in there, Anidea,” Tom said, “your plan is working.”

“
I puked. It’s so gross and disgusting.” She gagged and spat again.

“
It could be worse,” Emmett added

“
Yeah?” she was still swallowing hard. “Now I’ve been sick in my hair, and I haven’t had a shower in like three days.”

Tom pulled his pack off slowly and let out a short laugh. “It really is working. We don’t need the packs over our heads. I think we’ll be alright.”

All around, zombies pressed against them.

Anidea bowed her head and closed her eyes, “I can't look.”

Tom squeezed her hand and pulled her in tight. “We can do this.”

Emmett pulled his pack off too and gulped. His voice shook. “I was right.”

Following his brother’s lead, Winston took his pack off and slung it over his shoulder. His eyes narrowed and he kicked one of the zombies, “See? Hypnotized.”

“
No,” Tom panicked and pulled him away from the zombie.

The zombie growled, turned, and sniffed at Anidea as tendrils protruded from a hole in its head and caressed her face. She screamed and tried to run. Acting quickly, Tom and Winston jerked her away from the zombie.

“
Stop, Anidea, stop,” Tom strained to hold her still. “Don’t run. Don’t let them know we are here. Listen to me. Control your fear.”

Anidea closed her eyes to keep herself from screaming again as they shuffled closer to the ship. She hummed to herself the song her grandpa sang to her to at bedtime. Slowly they shuffled their way in.

“
Did you hear that?” Winston said. “It sounds like shorting out electricity. What are those flashes of green light up ahead?”

“
It’s the lizardmen’s spears,” Tom pushed them to the center of the line to avoid the prods. “Stay tight, we’ll keep in the center.”

The lizardmen were clicking, chirping, and chattering. “It sounds like they are laughing,” Winston said.

“
Maybe they are joking about the zombies while they work, maybe it’s how they communicate.”

Shoulder-high partitions angled out from the sides of the ship’s bay, packing them in tighter. They were pressed into walking two by two. Lizardmen that Tom hadn’t seen from outside of the spaceship stood either side. “Crouch down,” he said.

Ahead, one lizardman howled in excitement as it jammed its spear into zombies as they passed.

“
We’ll never make it past,” Emmett said.

“
If we stop now we’ll slow the line and draw attention.” Tom pulled Winston forward and reached into his pocket, took out a pack of peanuts and threw it at the lizardman. He missed and the peanuts flew off into the dark of the ship’s bay.

Emmett let go of Anidea’s hand and tugged on Toms arm. “What did you do?”

“
Distraction,” Tom explained. “Wait, another lizardman is coming.”

The lizardman approached and pushed the excited one, knocking it off balance. The faced each other off. The boss-lizardman shook its head and grabbed the spear away from the one who disrupted the line. The disruptor held its hands up in the air and bobbed and weaved its head.

“
Hold hands. Form a chain,” Tom said and led the way forward, deeper into the line past the arguing lizardman. "Now's our chance."

They were drawing closer to the steady rhythmic drone of machinery. Tom popped up on his tiptoes to catch sight of what was at the end of the line. He didn’t understand what he saw at first, but then his eyes widened. They were being herded like cattle towards the maws of a slaughterhouse. At the end of the line, the floor sloped upward onto a platform. There, a mechanical picker arm ending in a man-sized claw extended outward from a horizontal conveyor belt. The claw closed around the zombies on the platform and pressed them together in its grip. Arms and legs that stuck out were clipped off and fell onto a pile on the floor. The claw retracted back and moved into the next position as another group of zombies were pushed up to the platform so the process could start over. The floor vibrated with the whir and push of pistons and the clank of metal on metal as they were herded ever closer.

Winston and Anidea pulled Tom back down. Tom could hear the crunching of gears in his mind as he watched the zombies struggle to get free. “We have to get out of this.”

“
We can climb over the wall,” Emmett said.

“
Is this in your famous plan?” Anidea asked, so sarcastically that Tom reached out to strangle her. “The lizardmen will see us.”

“
They are not watching where the claws are," Tom motioned with a nod. "We can escape there. Nothing changes, keep walking one foot in front of the other, and get ready for my signal. Watch the claws; one - two - three - and - grab. It's every five seconds. When the claw closes we go. Get ready.”

The claws extended and snapped shut. Tom yelled for them to run. They made a break for it and surged forward, sliding through the piles of stinking offal underneath the claws and right over the platform edge. They tumbled onto the floor behind and hid underneath the machine.

Black muck oozed over the sides of the platform, accompanied by occasional body parts. Repulsed and still nauseous, Anidea wiped vainly at the slime that smeared her face. “If we make it through this I’m never forgiving you, Tom Stinson.”

“
I’m okay with that, Anidea. Just watch for lizardmen.”

They watched and waited. The whirring of gears and the hissing of pistons from the conveyor belt drowned out all other sounds.

Not wanting to stay any longer, Tom motioned for them to move again. They slogged through the zombie jelly and pushed past the piles of severed limbs, crawling along the wall in the shadows beneath the grabber claws.

At the end of the bay where the grabber claw line feed began, they inched away with their backs pressed tightly to the wall. They were looking at a behind the scenes view of the slaughterhouse line. And they were held in the grip of the show.

“
Where do we go from here?” Anidea stammered.

Tom felt the wall next to him, found his hand resting on a lever and pulled. “Here.”

A large panel in the wall slid back and a cloud of steam rolled out, revealing a dimly lit passageway. They entered and the panel slid closed behind them automatically.

Pipes ran across the ceiling and down the walls; the humidity was worse than outside, and sweat ran freely from their brows to sting their eyes. The air was choking.

“
It’s like 200 degrees in here,” Anidea said.

“
More like 100,” Emmett said.

Winston bumped onto a pipe and recoiled away, holding his arm. “Spaceships don’t have steam pipes, do they?”

Moving slowly, they passed the pipes and found rows of glowing circles lining the walls from floor to ceiling. Each row had different markings.

“
Buttons,” Emmett said.

“
Don’t touch anything,” Tom said. “We don’t know what any of this is.”

“
They look like drawers,” Emmett felt compelled to press one of the buttons; he couldn’t resist. His finger found its way.

The button clicked and there was a hiss as a drawer slid out from the wall. Inside the drawer glowed like a firefly, revealing shoe sized copper boxes. Each with more of the alien writing engraved in dull red letters across the top.

Emmett reached in and took out a box. He rolled it over in his hands, studying the red writing. As strange as the markings were they seemed familiar to Emmett; he was sure he could read the word
pickles
.

“
Put that back right now,” Anidea ordered, seeing the box.

Emmett shook the box. “It says pickles. Let’s open it up and see.”

“
No it doesn’t, knucklehead,” Anidea hit him. “Do you have an undiagnosable illness? Put it back.”

Tom saw Emmett with the box and took it away quickly. “Come on, Emmett, this is a spaceship. This is an alien box. What if it’s the stuff that turns us into zombies?”

Tom pulled a lever at the end of the hall and another panel slid open. Conveyor belts, mechanical arms and unnameable machinery roared in the room; it was deafening. They covered their ears and entered, mesmerized by the sight. Shoes, wallets, eyeglasses, and tattered clothes blanketed the floor and crunched under their feet. Tom stepped back into Anidea. This was where all the zombies were taken. This was the processing floor.

Giant pouches hung from a motorized track on the ceiling. They rolled by and stopped in position just below where the grabber claw assembly emerged from a narrow tunnel. Hooks on spindly arms took the zombies from the claws and spinning wheels with rubber fingers stripped them of their remaining tattered clothes.

The naked zombies were sprayed with a mist that loosened their skin. Another arm extended with scissor and clamp, cutting and pulling at it. Once stripped clean, they were dropped into the pouches, where a mechanical arm with two nozzles swung down. One nozzle released a red colored dry powder, and the other nozzle squirted out a dark green liquid. The pouches were cinched tight and then passed to a third conveyor that carried them away through a narrow slot out of sight.

Anidea gasped and shouted over the drumming of the machinery. “We have to go back.”

Winston closed his eyes. “This is so wrong. I can’t look. What if we see our mom in one of those pouches, Emmett?”

Tom pointed to an eye shaped lens mounted on the ceiling. “If that’s a camera. They know we are here. No alien smart enough to come across space would let intruders run around their ship as easily we have. There’s another door.”

The panel slid back, and they entered into another hall at a T junction. The air smelled a like salty rotting fish, and it made them even more nauseous than the last room. The walls were devoid of any markings; there were no signs like in an office or hospital to indicate direction or where anything was.

A thick pipe ran down the center of the ceiling, every ten feet or so steam hissed out of nozzles making it feel unbearably humid.

“
We are so dead,” Anidea said.

Tom moved to the right. “This way. Let’s move.”

Halfway down the hall, oval doors that looked like cabin doors on a submarine lined the walls.

Emmett tapped on a door. “We need to check every door if we are going to find your dad.”

Tom nodded, “We have to start somewhere. I’ll go first, watch my back.”

Tom pulled the handle. “It’s not locked.”

“
I don’t think they are expecting us.”

Slowly he opened the door a crack and peeked through. “Stay here,” he said, then slipped in.

The twins and Anidea moved to follow him, but Tom emerged as pale as a ghost before they took a step.

“
What’s in there?” Winston asked, surprised by Tom’s sudden exit.

“
Don’t,” he pleaded.

“
We better go in and find out,” Emmett said as he reached for the door.

Tom grabbed Emmett’s arm. “No way. You’re not going in there.”

“
We have to,” Anidea said, and pushed her way past Tom and the twins. She opened the door a crack. She stuck her head in and pulled it out again immediately, her face as pale as Tom’s.

“
What did you see?” Winston asked.

Tom couldn’t tell the Twins what he saw. “Don’t.”

Anidea turned away. “They experiment in there.”

“
I told you not to.”

The twins pushed the door open before he could stop them. They froze, transfixed. Strange machines consisting of rubber tubes and gray metal suspended in the air was a man whose skin had been peeled like an apple without him bleeding. His muscular and vascular systems were revealed for display as if in an anatomy book.

Assorted body parts floated in jars with curling tubes, spewing blood into beakers that bubbled over burners. On the table a stringed instrument like a harpsichord hummed.

“
What’s that for?” Winston asked.

Gurgling caught Tom’s attention and he looked back to the man. His eyes moved. Gooseflesh shivers quaked across Tom’s body. “He’s still alive.”

“
That’s not possible,” Anidea said.

“
His eyes are familiar,” suddenly, horrified, he knew. “It was the school principal.”

They skittered like mice down the hall, checking each door they passed and seeking entrance. That was when Tom noticed another eye shaped globe in the ceiling. The tromp of boots, heavy and thick, echoed from down the hall. They froze.

“
This is it. We’re caught,” Anidea said.

Emmett trembled. “If it were my ship I wouldn’t let aliens run around either.”

Tom pushed backwards with his arms held out, “Go back.”

“
Here,” Emmett said, “into this room.”

They shut the door behind them quietly, Tom put his ear to the thick metal and held his breath. He listened but couldn’t hear anything. Like the other room there were many different types of mechanical devices. Orange and lime colored wires connected the black and gray and green machines together, beeping and buzzing in unity.

A centrifuge in the middle of the room was racing so fast that it looked like it was standing still. Vertical pipes webbed up from floor to ceiling caught their attention, Flickers of orange fire snapped and sparked where wires were bound to the glass tubes.

“
See the pattern,” Emmett said. “Watch it, see it goes red, blue, red, red, blue.”

“
Like Christmas,” Winston said.

“
What does that mean?” Anidea asked. “In fact, never mind that, what if they come in here?”

Tom crossed the room to a second door. “Wait, what was that? A sound came from over here, too, quiet.”

“
I don’t hear anything. Let’s get out,” Anidea was close to panicking again.

Tom put his ear to the second door. After a brief hushed interval he heard the distinct murmur again. “I hear something. Be quiet.”

He pulled the lever on the wall next to the door, but nothing happened.

“
Don’t go in there, Tom Stinson,” she ordered.

He tried the lever again and heard the voice cry out clearly. “It sounds human. What if it’s my dad?”

“
I didn’t hear anything either,” Winston whined, “can we just go now?”

“
I could just push these buttons over here on the wall,” Emmett said, and without waiting for an answer he did. The lights in the room went out. “Hey, the light switch.”

“
Turn those back on, now!” Anidea snapped into the darkness.

“
Wait,” Tom said, “On the wall, one of those glowing circles.”

He pushed the circle and the door clicked. He tried the lever again. It opened. Electric arcs like ribbons jumped and clustered upon multi-hued glass tubes bordering a small chamber in the back corner of the room.

They moved toward the chamber and behind a partition they found a boy restrained on a table. Glowing tubes and blinking instruments attached to his body illuminated his form. His skin was crispy like  burnt cheese on a pizza with extra sauce; he was the source of the murmuring. His eyes turned to Tom and Anidea as they approached.

At the boy’s side. “What do we do?” Anidea asked.

Tom shrugged. “I don’t know what to do or where to begin.”

“
How can he be alive?” Anidea reached out to touch the boy.

The twins stood watching at the foot of the table. Emmett said, “He’s trying to say something.”

The boy’s mouth moved, not quite forming words. Anidea took hold of the boy’s hand and leaned over, putting her ear to his mouth. She paled.

The boy blinked twice and closed his eyes. Anidea hummed a shaky lullaby and stroked the boy’s hair gently. Her lullaby captivated them. The hum and buzz pop of the machines in the room seemed to fade into the background as they listened to her. They all focused their eyes on the boy illuminated in the dark of the room. The boy twitched, then gasped for air. His chest heaved and his eyes widened. The lights on the devices attached to him changed color, and his chest fell still; his breath wheezed as it escaped from his lungs.

Tom had watched his grandfather die in the hospice, but nothing could have prepared him for a moment like this. Tom and Anidea turned away.

Anidea wept.

Tom balled his fists and hit the wall. “Dammit. How can anyone do this? We could have saved him if we were faster.”

“
There’s nothing we could have done,” Anidea said.

The twins stood and stared at the body. Winston reached out and nudged the boy’s foot. “Is he dead?”

Tom turned and nodded.

Winston thought that it would be different. It was nothing like in the movies. “He looks. . .,” he started to say but Anidea silenced him and his voice trailed off.

Anidea pictured herself being on the table. “Why did they do this? Why are the aliens here? Why us?”

Emmett took the device from the boy’s chest and gave it a shake, then tossed onto his chest and walked away. “Hey, a window, a little window on the side of that chamber.”

“
Don’t you care?” Anidea stormed at Emmett. “The boy is dead, experimented on, tortured. He’s dead, and we’re on an alien ship. If they catch us this is what’s going to happen.”

Emmett yelled for her to stop, “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Tom grabbed Anidea’s arm and turned her toward him. He held up his other hand to silence Emmett, “I think we all know that, so let’s just keep our heads and work together to make sure that this doesn’t happen to us.”

Emmett waved them over to the view port. “There’s something in there.”

“
Shut up,” Anidea yelled as she charged Emmett. “You’re the most uncaring person in the world. I hope they eat you.”

Tom grabbed Anidea, holding her back. “Enough! If we fight each other we will be caught for certain, so both of you shut up.”

Tom let go of Anidea and turned towards the view port on the side of the chamber. It was filled with an orange gas. They pressed close to see through it, and the face of another kid they didn’t recognize popped into view. Startled, they jumped back and watched him as he pounded on the glass of the viewport that separated them. They could read his lips, “Let me out.”

“
What are they doing to him?” Anidea asked. “We have to get him out.”

“
We can’t leave him,” Tom said. Memories of his classroom flooded his mind. “We have to do something. He’s pleading with us. We can save him.”

“
How do we get him out?” Winston asked.

“
What about that orange gas?” Anidea asked. “Orange gas has to be bad.”

“
We could pull this lever over here. It could be a release valve,” Emmett said.

“
Wait.” Tom moved to stop him. “You can’t just keep pulling levers when you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Ignoring Tom, Emmett pulled. The chamber’s door hissed opened, and an orange gas cloud spread across the room.

“
Get me outta this place!” the boy cried.

He took two steps out of the chamber and collapsed to the floor, clawing at his neck and choking. His eyes bulged and his tongue swelled up, sticking out of his mouth. He convulsed and then lay motionless.

“
OMG, “ Anidea screeched. “We killed him.”

As the gas billowed out of the chamber it burned their lungs, and they gasped for air. They rushed out of the room, passing through the first chamber and into the hallway. Tom sealed the door behind them.

Coughing hard, he raged at Emmett. “You can’t just open doors and pull levers! Why are you so stupid?”

Emmett shrank away. For a moment he cowered under Tom’s anger, but then he stood up to him. He clenched his fists and held back a cough. “If it weren’t for my curiosity we wouldn’t be where we are. He was dead anyway. You couldn’t have known. You need to back off, Stinson.”

Tom stared at Emmett for a moment. “Just stop.”

The room next door was open and Tom ordered everyone in. It was almost identical to the last, but empty. Strange machines lined the walls, beeping and buzzing ready for the next round of experiments.

“
We should rest here,” Tom said as he took his pack off and handed out packs of trail mix from the pockets, “I think we will be safe for a bit. Eat these.”

“
How can you think of food?” Anidea asked him. “Every time I actually manage to eat something, we see another horror that makes me puke.”

“
We’re not hungry,” said the twins.

“
You will be,” Tom said, “and what if we don’t have time later. We need to keep our energy up.”

He walked over to the door in the far wall. It was locked. He was strangely relieved. A repeat of the last room would send Anidea into complete hysterics. They sat listening to the hum of the machinery for an hour or so. Barely rested, they continued their search for his dad.