Found II

The gunfire rang out and Brian dropped to the floor of the grimy building he was searching, he hit the ground and tried to find the source, sliding sideways towards one darkened window as he did so.

“Brian?” came a soft whisper inside one ear.

“I can't spot the shooter.” he replied to Kaylee, who was down one floor, moving to cover the stairway exit.

“I am on my way.”

“Understood.” Brian didn't bother to tell his partner and girlfriend to be careful, she would be and she was more 'enhanced' than he was from his encounters fighting what the general public called 'super zombies'. The zombie plague had broken out almost two years ago, the fact that humans had survived 'Z-day' was still something that amazed Brian whenever he though about it. What was worse was that some of the undead who came back gained power by consuming the living, or parts of the living, such as their blood. Brian's training had given him a lot of theory about why and how the former humans progressed, but few facts. The one thing that was known was that certain humans who killed zombies would also become slightly more than human. The more powerful super zombie they killed or the more of them, the greater they would become themselves.

A noise attracted Brian's attention and he shifted his gun towards the sound, he saw a low, shambling shape emerge from the darkness in one corner of the room. He lined up his sights and fired three shots. Brian thought he had hit the thing in the head, it went down and did not move or start twitching. The 'twitchers' would result from a solid hit on the thing's spinal columns or from a graze on their brain. With a slight sigh of relief Brian said, “Target down.”

Slowly he got to his feet, only to have them swept out from underneath him from behind. Brian rolled and tried to bring his gun, a compact sub-machine gun, to bear on his opponent. He was too slow, only noticing the gun they held at the last second. Brian cursed as bullets hit him in the chests, legs, neck and head.

“Okay! Okay! I am dead already!”

Sighing a woman younger than him, pulled up a pallid, fleshy mask designed to make her look like a zombie and said, “Too easy. I don't know if you are ready for this yet.”

“Paige? Damn, that's unfair.”

“I wasn't even cheating, not much. I tossed a rock”, then she pointed at the other man in the dim light, “He did a ten count and got up after that to draw your fire, you backed right into me. You think the supers will take it easier on you? They know about us, well most of them do.”

A high scream sounded in the stairwell of the training building as Paige's boss Dora 'killed' Kaylee.

“Shit!” Kaylee swore loud enough for the three on the second story could hear.

“Well you did tag me. That is better than your boyfriend did.” came Dora's drawn out reply. “Lights!” A moment later the lights came on in the building, the glare causing the others to duck and hold their hands in front of their eyes.

Paige and Rod, the other man in a zombie suit, were wearing light intensifying goggles, Brian was not.

Kaylee and Dora came up the stairs through a doorway framed by a set of busted steel doors, “You two act like you think the enemy will play fair or something. They will sacrifice lower order zombies, they can control them and even share some of their senses with them, so undoubtedly they will know where you are before you know where they are. They will arm themselves with guns, knives, baseball bats or even rocks to kill you. They will use radios and cars. You have to treat them, especially you Brian, like criminals or terrorists, not like stupid shambling undead.”

Dora was a mixed bag, she had a lot of advice about fighting zombies and had more experience, if the rumors were true than, any one in the special operations department. The woman stood about five feet six inches tall, had a fair complexion, dark brown hair and one hazel colored eye that sometimes appeared almost blue in color. She had a long scar that went from the top of her forehead to just under her chin, the scar was interrupted by an eye patch over her left eye. Brian had been around her every day for the past week and had noticed that the scar had been fading, the cleft on her chin where the bottom of the scar started was gone already. Paige was her direct subordinate, accountable only to Dora and was almost as good as her boss. She looked to be about twenty years old with lighter brown hair and the same eye color as Dora, she stood slightly shorter than the older woman too. In a knock down fight Brian didn't know which of them would win.

Everyone with the taint of zombie essence seemed to heal faster and have elevated reflexes, after that the abilities that were gained spanned a great deal of territory. Only those at the top, Dora and Paige in this case, knew what everyone else could do. For example Brian knew Rod was enhanced, but he had yet to see the man do anything amazing. Kaylee was stronger than Brian and had an edge on him in reaction time too. Brian knew he could heal in days wounds that might take another months to recover from and he had extraordinary night vision, something he had figured out when they started low light training. His eyes also seemed to adapt to changing light conditions instantly, he could not be blinded by a flash of light or sudden darkness.

Their training grounds was an old hospital that had started life as a mental institution, then progressed to county hospital status where the poor flocked to when no one else would treat them. Now it was a combination detention center for any humans who wandered into Iowa and the headquarters for the Special Operations division of the army. It was not an intelligence agency or a special forces unit specifically, it was merely the 'SO' made up only of enhanced citizen soldiers. Dora was the leader and Brian never figured out her rank in the military, only that she was above him. The woman was only thirty and had been famous, if only briefly, for bringing about a hundred living humans out of Kansas City to Des Moines two months after that city had fallen to the Denver zombie horde. Dora did not interact well with the regular army units, she took the assignments they gave her and got them done. She was not part of any long range planning group that Brian could find out about and he had been actively searching for information about his new boss in his spare time. Kaylee had been a civilian before gaining her powers. She had almost been killed by a super zombie named Jake on New Year's eve. Brian was the lone police detective in Des Moines and had been assigned to the case. He had tracked down the super zombie to a bar called the Necrologia and it was Kaylee who had saved him. She had killed Jake in the cellar of the bar and both her and Brian had gained something from the encounter.

Brian's rumors had hinted that Dora knew Jake somehow, but so far no one was talking. As the newest members of the team Brian knew there might be some resistance to being accepted, Kaylee, unfamiliar with either police or military culture, had come into the situation blind. Brian was certain they could do the work set out for them, but there was no guarantee that they would be working together after they finished their training. In fact, Brian knew that it would not be a good idea, partners should not be dating or married. Their training was to be three weeks long, the first week of which was gone, now they were on to practical environment training, where the more capable team members took on the roles of super zombies while the neophyte members tried to kill or disable them. Looking at the paintball gun in his hand Brian was happy he had at least killed a slow zombie today, most days he was not so lucky.

Brian had been married before 'Z-day', but his wife Jenny had disappeared on the day the zombies came to West Des Moines, they had found her car, but not her body. Brian was not the only person living in such circumstances, missing friends and relatives made up just about everyone's history now. When he started dating Kaylee he had finally taken off the ring Jenny had given him so long ago. The gold band was still sitting on his dresser, a daily reminder of his past. Kaylee, on the other hand, had never had a serious boyfriend, and she had been looking. In what remained of the United States there was a very unequal proportion of men to women. This had to do with the governments initial insistence that only men could fight on the front lines against the zombies. Official population data put the percentage of women to men at sixty percent to forty percent. News websites and bloggers put the numbers as closer to seventy to thirty. Marriage, as an institution had all but disappeared, sex outside of relationships had grown common place and with it came the usual spread of venereal disease and pregnancies. The government had recently started a campaign which clearly encouraged single motherhood, they subsidized it with extra food rations and a stipend, which was aggressively condemned by the religious establishments that were left. Brian was only interested in Kaylee, they got along very well and were compatible in bed as well as intellectually.

The remnants of the United States had suffered a tremendous loss of living standards. The new country was suited to growing food and had a good supply of animals when z-day hit too, but the goods they grew were mostly grain corn or corn that needed to be processed before humans could eat it. These days corn was in everything, from the tortillas that came with every meal to the liquor they drank, corn fed the nation. Technology was still around, although after two years there was a growing demand for computer parts and cell phones. The cell phone towers had been retooled to work using local talent and wireless internet was still available to almost anyone. Of course all of the computers and websites that had been hosted outside of the new, smaller, United States were cut off, but there was still an internet, run mostly off of the former universities and colleges that dotted the mid-west. With this growing demand for technology it made raiding into the surrounding zombie held territories a popular profession. When the nation first stabilized the raiders went out looking for grocery stores and pharmacies, now they went out looking for big box electronic and cell phone stores.

“Brian? You still listening to me lecture or are you dreaming of tonight's sack time with your girl again?” questioned Dora.

Blushing Brian said, “Uh, sack time ma'am.”

Looking sideways at Paige Dora said, “Well, at least he is honest.” she glanced at her cell phone, then said, “Okay we've been out here for twelve hours, that is enough for one day, hit the showers, get dinner and get laid before pulling some sack time. We will start fresh at five tomorrow morning.”

Kaylee groaned, which caused Dora to laugh, “Don't worry honey you'll have another chance at me tomorrow!”

For the duration of the training Kaylee and Brian were given rooms at the facility, they were told not to leave the grounds unless ordered or permitted to by Dora. Tonight they returned to the suite they shared and Brian won the game of rock-paper-scissors for the first shower. Kaylee had just hopped in and he was toweling himself dry in the main room of the suite when his cell phone started to vibrate on the desk. He still carried his original cell phone number like almost everyone else, even though this was his fourth phone since z-day.

The incoming number seemed familiar to him, like he had known it before, but due to his fatigue he couldn't quite place it, so he answered to see who it was.

“Hello?” he said, his mind still trying to translate the number into a person.

“Brian?” came a voice that he recognized, but couldn't quite place.

“Yes this is Brian Nelson, who is this?”

“It's Jenny. Your wife.”

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This section was last updated on 6 Aug 2009

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