Chapter 9

Miracles come in many forms. Some are by coincidence so stupidly lucky it could almost be called divine. Some are from friends who just happen to know or be the right people for the job. And some come in the form of chaingun fire. I won't bother telling you which this was but for any idiots still clinging to their faith I would just like to mention that if there was a god he left us back in 2014 when the first dead body sat back up.

The armoured buggy crashed through the tree line and came in fast, strafing the doorway with bullets and causing zombies to go down in a sea of moans and flailing limbs. Re-energised, we all raised our guns again and started firing at those that remained while the bears at the tree line swung their attention to the buggy. That was when they exploded. I shit you not, they actually exploded in a shower of blood, viscera and gore. That was when the tank rolled on in. No, I wasn't hallucinating. Although I did have to double-check for myself. I risked a glance and noticed Shaun practically busting a nut while Ash and Foxy began to drool uncontrollably as it smashed down the trees in front of it and rolled into the clearing to flatten the gates of the compound. It was too big to fit through, so it pulled back and let the chaingun buggy roll on in while firing on all barrels. Zombies fell before they'd even made it through the doors. We held our fire as they cleaned up the last of them. No point wasting ammo we might need inside. As the last of them fell silent, the person driving hopped down and walked over to one who's arm was still twitching, putting a round through its head.

"Do you think you got them?" I asked rhetorically. The person turned around and walked over, taking their helmet off and letting a sea of long blonde hair roll down from inside it. I would never have let my hair get to even a sixth of that length. It was basically like passive suicide. Then again, if she was in a buggy with a mounted chaingun with a tank as backup, she probably figured she didn't have much worry.

"Tara Strickland, EIS." She ignored me, walking past us to shake Audrey's hand. "It's been a long time, Doctor Sung." Sung? That was new. What else didn't we know?

"Have you been holding out on us?" I asked Audrey curiously. Her glare spoke volumes.

"It's an old name from an old life." She shrugged, feigning indifference. "I have told them to stop calling me that."

"You were lucky we were in the area." Tara folded her arms as the top of the tank opened up and two guys that looked too big to fit through the entry hole made their way out and climbed down the side.

"Dr Abbey told me about you guys being near here." Audrey replied. "I guess this is like a homecoming for some of Clive's old ordinance, huh?"

"Well, waste not want not." Tara shrugged as the pieces began to click together in my head. So this Clive guy had stockpiled ATVs, buggies with mounted chainguns, tanks and who even knew what else? And then when he'd died, the EIS had stolen a load of stuff from his compound before a total power transfer could be established. Either that or he'd had it en-route during the attack on Dr Abbey's lab that Foxy had told us about during the time when I was ill and waiting for my multi-organ transplant. At the best guess, he would have planned to take Dr Abbey's lab and all its science equipment back to the Maze and then store the spare heavy equipment there. While I was working this out, however, Shaun was busy being an idiot just like old times.

"Lady, I swear I would cancel my own wedding for just one drive around the block on that thing!" He completely disregarded my glare, partly because he'd grown so accustomed to it after all these years and partly because my eyes were covered by my new visor. That was okay. I would get him later.

"You mean the buggy or the tank?" Tara asked.

"Yes!" Shaun, Ash and Foxy all said in unison. Tara rolled her eyes and let out a sigh.

"How are these guys more childish than those pre-schoolers we saved from that outbreak?" she muttered to one of the burly guys before turning back to us. "Hey, you guys should head on in. We'll hold down the fort out here. Go get smashy with all that delicate science equipment.

We didn't need any further encouragement. We dashed inside the Maze with Ash and Audrey leading the way. I was willing to let them. They'd been here before. They were the ones who'd have an idea of the layout. They could lead and we would just help them shoot anything in the way. We were journalists, after all. This was how it always should have been. The story led and we followed. It wasn't our job to change the narrative; or become it. The Ryman campaign changed all that.

As we ran, I began to see just how this place earned its name. It was more than a maze, it was a full-blown any nest. So many corridors, twists and turns that it was impossible to commit them all to memory. It felt almost like we were trying to crack the labyrinth in the hopes of seeing the Minotaur before it killed us. As it stood, all we saw were more zombies.

As we ran through the halls shooting as we went, it dawned on me how careless Shaun and I had become. More than once, Ash, Audrey or Foxy had to pull us further back because our position put us at risk from blood spray. We'd grown reliant on our resistances to the KA virus that we were totally forgetting that this new hybrid strain posed just as much danger to us as any other person. It was something we'd never even conceived to be possible and something that I vowed to work on with Shaun as soon as we got back home. That was if we lived that long.

Fortunately, while we may have forgotten some of the principles of formite and bloodborne viral transmission and how to avoid them, we still remembered how to safely tackle zombies. We were aiming low, kneecapping them to drop them down to make their heads an easier target and only going straight for their heads when we knew we couldn't miss. We were still moving like an efficient unit and that helped to keep us alive. But our luck could only last for so long.

"Jesus, that's a big mob!" Ash hissed as she ducked back around the corner she'd been about to take and signalled for us to stop. "Okay, we need a new plan. Who's got one?" I glanced at everyone. Foxy was shaking her head and Audrey was giving Ash her best 'Are you serious?' look. Shaun and I were only in here for the first time now, so we didn't know what there was around to work with. That didn't stop him trying to get a thought process going.

"How much ammo has everyone got?" he asked. I ripped out my own clip and checked it. Three rounds left in my SMG. My .40 had a couple of clips left, but only because it was my favourite and I always made a point to pack extra ammo for it. The SMG was almost totally useless anyway. I'd been given it because we'd expected our opposition to still be alive. This was totally the wrong situation for it and I hated it.

"I don't have much." Foxy reported. Audrey was also ripping her magazines out to check her reserves. It wasn't looking good. We hadn't expected the situation we'd find ourselves in. We hadn't prepared properly and it had landed us in serious trouble.

"What do you think the chances are we could get the buggy in here?" Ash asked. Audrey and I both sighed and rolled our eyes as Shaun and Foxy nodded in agreement.

"I think that would be strategically advantageous." Shaun said eagerly. I resisted the urge to hit him. He might yell out and then the zombies might come and save him.

"Does this place have some sort of an armoury in this area?" I asked. It must have had at least one for the raiders to have been as well armed as they were. But was it nearby?

"We wouldn't know." Ash shrugged. "Audrey wasn't allowed to leave the science area and Clive wanted me to bring future generations into the world so I was locked up with the whores. He wouldn't let girls near guns in case they topped themselves at the thought of getting in his bed." Just then, a thoughtful look crossed Audrey's face. She clearly had an idea; or the beginning of one. Even that was better than what we already had.

"Spit it out." I said, turning to her.

"Well, there was something that someone let slip when he came in one time with his leg pouring blood." She rubbed her head furiously, trying to remember. "Something about the gun under his desk coming loose and shooting him. When I got him high on valium, he told me never to get a disposable gun because they were pieces of shit. I'm wondering just how many of Clive's workers might have disposables lying around under desks, beds and so on. If someone decided they wanted out and tried to grab them, they'd only be a threat for as long as they had any bullets."

"Right!" Shaun realised, snapping his fingers before realising how loud he was getting from our alarmed faces and lowered his voice. By some miracle, the zombies didn't react. They weren't moving yet but I knew it wouldn't be long. "The disposables are literally budget arms. You get them for about twenty dollars and throw them away once they're empty. You can't reload them. If one of the harem got their hands on it, they'd be a threat for as long as they had ammo but that's it. And I take it not many of them were weapons trained so the guards could put them down before they even worked that out." Ash nodded at his words, unable to hide the bitterness of her own.

"Just a cheap whore holding an even cheaper gun." It wasn't painting a decent picture and knowing that Ash had almost suffered that fate turned my stomach. I also felt sorry for all those other who'd been kidnapped and taken into the Maze. The ones we were busily putting down now. How many of them had been taken in against their will, resisted at first and then lost their will to fight... Or had it beaten out of them? But a look between us told us that it was the best idea we had. Most of the doors had been opened at some point or another during the outbreak. We'd had to check and clear virtually every room on the way down. With frustration bubbling dangerously inside us, we turned tail and went to look for more weapons.

"Okay ladies, let me make this quite plain: I know you all want me. That's not me trying to be big-headed, no matter how much it sounds like it. The amount of you throwing yourselves at me whenever we make a public appearance makes it obvious. Except for the lesbians that read this, obviously. If I'm a bit too male for you, fair enough. But to the rest of you, what I'm trying to say is please stop. The flirting and the witty conversation is fine provided you don't expect it to go any further. My sister and I are not on the market.

The point is, we're not looking for a serious relationship to anything other than our work right now. And while some of those zombie girls might still be decent if you pop a bag over their heads, you don't see me making a move on them either. If anyone's stupid enough to do that then they deserve everything they get and they need to seek help right now. I'm not saying this to be insulting to anyone or to break anyone's heart, but to save you emotionally in the long run. I've had to keep a lot of guys away from George lately and she's had to warn a lot of girls away from me. This isn't me trying to do the 'bad boy' routine or anything; this is just me trying to tell you that if you set your hearts and minds on us, it's only going to end one way: disappointment. This is a PSA for your own safety and convenience. You're welcome."

A draft article from Hail to the King, the blog of Shaun Mason.

February 3 2035.

Unpublished.