AZU-1: Lifehack (13 page)

The Major excused himself and logged
off the comm.

Alisia’s eyes fixed on Tracy’s wound
while she talked to her comm, “Parker, I’m going for the nearest
‘GA’ VTag. I want to know what they are.” The nearest was on one of
the bridges. Luckily, she wasn’t far from a building that could get
her up there.

It had a working elevator, with a
(broken) window facing Parker’s section of the wall. The zipper
gunners liked to be able to see her as much as possible, for safety
reasons.

Alisia took one last look at
Kensington, and headed for the tower.

~~~~~

Chapter 17: A Visitor

~~~~~

Regan watched the little clip of video
repeatedly. Someone in uniform had messed with one of her stashes.
They didn’t notice the visor duct taped to the ceiling, which
alerted Regan immediately when motion was detected in its field of
vision. The visor didn’t get a terribly good look. The legs, even
through the cammo pants, looked female and there was a glimpse of
what looked like a P90. If the stupid duct tape hadn’t slipped, she
could have seen this person’s face. In any event, they didn’t take
anything, but they ran off in a hurry, yelling.

This needed investigating. Regan knew
the army had the city surrounded, but this was the first time she’d
noticed any of them actually in Autar. Well, since the evacuation,
anyway.

Regan headed out and made her way
through her own little shortcuts and paths. A single scrawny zombie
got in the way and she shot it once in the neck. The head fell off
and the body groped around blindly. Normally she’d disassemble it a
bit more, but she didn’t want to waste time.

She made it to a rooftop and pulled out
her favorite salvaged visor. She looked down to the FW VTag that
had been violated. In hindsight she realized that she neglected to
erase access to the army network from a visor she recently found,
and this was what got her noticed.

Guessing the plan of her prey, she
looked around through her visor for the next nearest tag to it.
Looking around the space between the two VTags, she spotted some
motion. The elevator in that building was moving!

Regan zoomed in, doing her best to keep
a steady hand. Aha. Same cammo, same weapon. But this was the first
Regan saw of Alisia’s red mane. Alisia was sitting on her knees in
the slow elevator, staring down out the window. She looked sad.
This was the first live human Regan had seen in ages aside from
tiny glimpses of the wall snipers.

Regan felt the need to go be sociable.
This lovely redhead looked like she needed some cheering up, and
Regan had many, many ideas on how this could be
accomplished.

~~~

Alisia reloaded her P90 and sorted her
equipment. She was having a bit of trouble finding good ways to
carry the ammo she took off Kensington, and the effort only made
her feel like more of a vulture. Some commander she was. She
shouldn’t have left such a raw rookie alone, even for a
minute.

The elevator finally reached the top
and eased to a stop. Alisia waved in the general direction of
Parker and walked off into the building. She passed through the
sullen quiet of its lobby and stepped out into one of the bridge’s
streets.

The limited, three-block width of the
bridges left a bit more room for light to come in between
buildings, and fewer nooks and crannies for the zombies to hide in.
The daylight was still pretty good. No zombies were immediately
apparent in the area. The bridges were higher than the zipper guns
though. Only zombies that wandered to the outside edge needed to
worry about being gunned down.

The GA VTag was about two blocks away.
Alisia took her time. She hoped for something to pop out and start
a fight, to get her mind off Kensington’s bleeding throat. Did she
burn the wound enough? Or was Kensington now a puppet, wandering
about moaning? Would the extraction team have to shoot her to
chunks to take her out?

How do you tell the family that? “Mr.
and Mrs. Kensington? Yes, I was your daughter’s commanding officer
and I left her alone in a dark alley in Autar city, where a zombie
ripped her fucking throat out, while I listened to her gurgling
scream. Oh, and I left her body there and it came to un-life, so if
you want the body for burial, we’re sending it to you in
forty-seven plastic containers.”

Great. And just you watch, they’re
gonna outright disband the unit. Disband? What’s to disband?
There’s only one surviving member! Why the hell don’t they just
nuke this damned place?

Alisia came to a strip-mall. The VTag
was just inside the main doors. This would have been ideal, but in
front of the doors was a gaping hole in the ground, with a view
down to the lower street. A hundred stories down? Eep.

Edging sideways along the wall, Alisia
tried to get to the doors. In places where the ragged edge of the
hole was under the wall, it left only chunks of protruding metal to
step on.

As she neared the doors, she saw the
source of the VTag through a small clean spot in the otherwise
blackened window. A handful of medium sized crates. One had a few
P90 clips sticking out. “GA”.... Guns and ammo? She kept going
towards the door. It was opaque and had an auto-open feature.
Unfortunately, since she had approached by the side and was so
close, the sensor couldn’t see her to trigger the door to
open.

The trick now was to reach out and
trigger the sensor above the door frame without losing grip and
falling backwards through the hole. To extend her reach she waved
her P90 out as best she could.

Finally she heard the door motors
start. As the door opened, Alisia was treated to an up-close view
of a dense mob of zombies. She panicked, and slipped.

Her P90 went tumbling just before she
did. She screamed, desperately grabbing at anything but the
outstretched hand of a zombie. She caught a chunk of the wreckage
around the edge of the hole, but only for a split
second.

Her other hand found a chunk of cable.
Loose cable. She continued falling, dragging meter after meter
worth of cable out of the bridge’s innards.

An overzealous zombie stumbled forward
trying to reach her, and fell forward, passing Alisia. She was at
least being slowed by the cable. She watched the zombie plummet.
Why the hell hadn’t she just found a different ‘GA’
VTag?

Frantic hollering came though over her
comm as she slipped down the cable, but she was too preoccupied to
listen to it. The cable was also pulling other loops of cable out
with it. The cable she was hanging onto finally ran out of slack,
jolting her arm. Wrist, elbow, shoulder... none of them were happy
at all, but at least she kept her grip.

She was now dangling, but not falling.
Other cable that had been yanked free by the first one dangled and
swayed around her.

“
Captain!” Parker’s voice
came through the comm, cutting through the frantic mumbling of all
the other gunners, most of which could see her dangling under the
bridge. “Captain, what the hell are you doing?!”

Alisia looked down and up. She was more
than half way to the ground. Still plenty to distance to get a
person killed. She was suddenly very aware of her own breathing as
she tightened her grip. The world felt light, and meaningless.
Mortal fear has a way of being very clarifying. Suddenly, all the
little unimportant things disappear. You’re left with one simple,
but huge, problem. The lack of control is almost liberating. You
either survive somehow, and go back to the complicated mess of
little problems… or you die, and have no problems.

She was snapped back to focused thought
by the sound of a P90. Not close, but not far. “Parker! What’s
going on?”

“
Captain, you’re aware
you’re hanging from-“

“
I know, I know! I think I
might be able go down safely from here.”

“
We can get people there
to-“

“
Not before my fucking arm
breaks off, you can’t!” Alisia reached for a looped dangling cable
with her free hand and pulled on it. One end was giving more slack,
still feeding more cable from the bridge’s insides. The other end
seemed secure.

“
Okay. Okay. The cable I’m
on is out of length, but I think this other one can get me down.
The loose end goes all the way to the top. By the time it comes out
I’ll have more than enough.”

She wrapped the second cable around the
wrist that wasn’t screaming at her, and held her weight on it to
give her sore arm a break. Cautiously, she released the first
cable.

She pulled the loose side of the second
cable until she had about ten meters more of cable to climb down.
“See, Parker? I planned this all along. While I was brushing my
teeth this morning.”

“
Sure, Cap.”

Alisia chuckled nervously and made
herself busy with climbing down, pulling more cable free as she
needed it.

Then the secure end decided to come
loose. “Oh shit.”

Suddenly she felt weightless and
sickly. Down, down, down. How far did she have left when she
started falling? Why was she still gripping the damned
cable?

After a second or two that felt like
forever, she felt herself impact in some shallow water, and the
world seemed to bob up and down. Cabling continued to land around
her, so she tried to guard her face while losing consciousness. The
water lapped up against her face, getting deeper. She knew that if
she passed out with her face underwater, it wouldn’t matter that
she’s survived the fall.

The world went black.

~~~~~

Chapter 18: Good Morning

~~~~~

Alisia, much to her surprise,
awoke.

She was dry, she was warm, and there
was no particular pain. As she awoke, she realized she was having a
little trouble breathing. There was some kind of weight on her. And
strands of black soft hair laid carelessly across her
face.

There was a corpse on top of her. A
fresh one. No... it’s warm? This girl’s alive? It’s the IR
signature! It is a human. Next question, why is this human on top
of her?

Alisia felt that there was a hand near
hers. With as little motion as possible, she felt for a pulse. Yup,
she’s alive alright. But, she just woke her up. Alisia went for her
gun on instinct, but she was unarmed. Alisia froze in
panic.

The girl on top of her sat up slowly.
Her black hair dragged along Alisia’s face as the stranger began to
pull herself up. The girl’s hand pushed down on Alisia’s shoulder
softly for some support to rise. The stranger’s eyes were closed.
She rose up to a straddling position and reached her arms up, up,
up.

Her short tank top slid up as well,
threatening to reveal a bit more than Alisia cared to see. As the
stranger eased her stretch, she slowly opened her eyes. Regan
smiled as seductively as she could.

“
Good moooorning, sweetie.”
Regan purred.

“
Who the hell are you?”
Alisia asked.

Regan leaned forward, hovering over the
new found object of her affection, running one of her hands up
Alisia’s abdomen.

“
I’m your new friend.” Regan
smiled sweetly.

“
I’m not this friendly!”
Alisia pushed Regan’s hand away and clumsily tried to worm free.
Alisia got off the mattress, falling a few centimeters to the tile
floor.

Alisia got a good look at where she
was. It was a large public washroom that Regan had converted to a
surprisingly welcoming living space. This corner was a little
bedroom of sorts. To the left, the wheelchair stall had been
converted to a kitchenette, and the other stalls used for storage.
One of the sinks had a plant growing out of it. Further down was
the entrance to a large shower room, racks of clothing, and beyond
that, a barricaded entrance.

Alisia backed up against the wall.
“You- you rescued me?”

“
Yeah. I’d been watching
you. When I saw you dangling over my rain-catching pool, I came
running. Good thing too. I had to clean out that zombie that fell
in before you.”

“
The shots I
heard..”

“
Yup, that was me. You’re
lucky, you know. I almost drained that pool last month. I
constructed it under that hole to gather rain, but I never use it.
There’s enough bottled water around for one person. Anyway, I
scooped you out, and brought you home. Do I get to keep you?” Regan
advanced, and pressed against Alisia.

Alisia was stunned by Regan’s outright,
unabashed advances. “No, you cannot ‘keep’ me. I’m here to get you
out of Autar.”

“
Hm?” Regan seemed suddenly
a little detached. “No, we can’t do that. I have business
here.”

“
What? What possible
business could you have here?”

“
I have to find my
brother.”

“
What? You.. must realize
he’s dead by now... it’s a miracle You’re alive.”

“
He’s not dead, he’s
undead.” Regan seemed suddenly serious.

“
You know this?”

“
By his own voice, recorded
for posterity. He’s one of them now.”