AZU-1: Lifehack (4 page)

Regan finished her little breakfast,
picked out a handful of places to apply for menial jobs and two
clubs she missed yesterday. She slung her guitar over her shoulder
and headed out.

The closest she got to a guitar job was
a ‘maybe later down the road’ from an assistant manager who seemed
to be being more polite than anything. On the ‘crap-job’ front she
got a few ‘the manager will be in on-‘, and a lot of ‘not at this
time’ responses.

It’s not like she was expecting to fall
into a multi-million salary job playing guitar in the first week,
but it would have been nice. Between today’s discouragements and
the breakup with Kris in the back of her head, she felt the need to
visit her ever-supportive brother again for lunch. She punched him
up on her mini terminal.

“
Hey Regan!” he soon
responded, obviously multitasking with work.

“
Hey Harold. Whatcha up to?”
Regan said with wistful melancholy.

“
Oh, I’m at work, so I’m...
you know.. working.”

“
Yeah. Have ya done lunch
yet? Mind if I pop in again?”

Soon enough, Regan and Harold were
sitting down in the cafeteria again with lunch paid by Harold.
Although it wasn’t by any means the biggest contribution Harold had
been making to Regan, standing there while he paid did make her
feel the most like a mooch. This job thing had better happen
soon.

“
Hey,” Regan mulled while
idly forking her food, “That jerk isn’t here today.” Not that she
missed him.

“
Jonathan Coll? No, he quit
this morning. No real notice. He just said he quit, and
left.”

“
I’m sure the interns are
devastated.”

Harold raised his eyebrows for a
second. “Well, two of them certainly are, but not over Coll. That
thing on the news... the deaths? Did you hear? Two of them were
interns here.”

“
Shit! Really? Did that
happen here?”

“
Yeah. Well, in the lower
levels somewhere. A whole wing has been taped off by the cops. It’s
got a lot of people rattled. Lots of dumb rumors running around. So
how’s the job hunt? Wanna apply for intern? I think there’s an
opening.” He said jokingly.

“
Ugh. I doubt I’m
qualified.” Regan said, missing or ignoring the tactless attempt at
humor.

Harold sighed sympathetically. “It’s
going that well, huh? Well, don’t worry, it takes time. Something’s
bound to pop up.”

~~~

Regan left AutarLabs and headed towards
home. The failures in finding a job nagged at her with self pity.
It’s thick stuff, self pity; no wonder it makes one walk slower. It
had nothing to do with Kris. Nothing.

The early afternoon sun came down
starkly overhead, making sharp shadows which weren’t all that dark,
except compared to the shafts of light that managed to sneak
between buildings. For all its cleanliness and technological
perfection, Autar only seemed to feel less and less familiar the
longer she was here.

Even the streets were clean. Unusually
clean. Drop a sandwich, pick it up, and still eat it clean. No
doubt some technical wonder kept any offending dirt away. Even the
alleys looked clean.

Regan couldn’t help but stop and stare
for a moment down one of these clean alleys when she saw a homeless
man in one. It seemed quite unlike Autar to have any homeless. He
looked out of place, way back down that clean alley.

No. He looked a bit too out of place.
He was leaning against the wall, not standing straight and facing
away. Regan ventured down the alley timidly until she got close
enough to see a smear of blood along the wall. She broke into a
jog. “Hey, man! Are you alright?”

The man turned around when he heard
her. His head was bleeding, a part of his skull caved in. He raised
his bloody hands towards Regan. One of the hands had two fingers
hanging limp, nearly ripped off. Regan’s first reaction was
repulsion, then concern. “Hey, just stay there, I’ll get help.” She
was reaching for her mini-terminal but the man staggered forward,
ignoring her suggestion to stay put.

“
Just hang on! You’ll just
aggravate the-“ she looked into his eye for the first time. This
was not someone who was in pain, or wanted help. His expression was
hollow except for a slight frown on his brow, and clouding of his
eyes. Regan stepped back.

“
I said stay
there.”

He ignored her request, and walked
forward at an unsteady pace. She could have run but being so close
and looking this thing in the eye, her instinct chose “fight”.
Without thinking, she swung her guitar as hard as she
could.

A splash of blood from his previous
injury hit the wall when the guitar impacted his head, and he was
forced against the wall. He didn’t seem very bothered by it. He
corrected his step and continued forward, grabbing the stem of the
guitar with both hands and snapping it in two.

Regan still had her hand on the head of
the guitar. She pulled it back, splintered wood on the one end
marred by blood from the creature’s hands. She looked at the shard
of guitar, and looked at the thing advancing on her. She stabbed
the splinters into his abdomen. That didn’t really bother him much
either. After dropping his part of the guitar, he reached out to
grab Regan’s head. She skipped back out of the way then ran to the
mouth of the alley, getting about five meters between them. A few
other passers by were now looking at the man as well. He walked
towards them bit by bit, the head of the guitar still sticking out
of him.

Regan called the police on her
terminal. A message came on that sounded recently (and hastily)
recorded. “At this time, emergencies throughout the city have
unfortunately risen beyond expected numbers. We cannot respond at
this time. If this is in regards to a violent death, or an
untalkative assailant, we can only advise that you avoid the
assailant, and not confront them directly. We will be addressing
incidents systematically. Please leave a-“

“
Yeah, wonderful” Regan
said, disconnecting. She saw another person leaving a frenzied
message anyway on their own terminal.

Down the street, a scream was heard. In
the other direction, a storefront window was smeared with blood.
Wide eyed, Regan gritted her teeth and muttered “Just
wonderful.”

~~~~~

Chapter 5: Cavalry

~~~~~

Regan called Harold while walking home,
crossing the street often, or even walking in the street to avoid
incidents where there had doubtlessly been attacks. There were more
and more of them and it was becoming rare that there was not some
blood to be seen somewhere, if even just a humble smear from a
wounded hand across a door.

One of the more staggering displays of
gore was a large pool of blood that almost spread across the street
with significant large splatters up the building it was next to. In
the middle were several bodies, some of which were moving. She
dared not get closer. It was impossible to tell if the movements
were living people in the last throws of death or dead people in
the first groggy motions of becoming one of the legions which were
spreading across the city. The red dragging footsteps that led away
from the pool were even less inviting to investigate.

Screams came from random directions.
Distant, lonely, desperate calls of fear or despair as the living
became a rapidly rarer sight.

A man came by running for his life,
terrified. He bumped into Regan. He wasn’t wounded, but was not
alright. Regan felt the need to say something to him before he ran
off but she couldn’t think of anything helpful.

Finally Harold picked up one of Regan’s
calls. “Regan! Are you okay?”

“
Yeah. I was gonna head
home. How about you?” Regan’s casual answer surprised even her. She
felt like her mind was working on two separate levels. Outwardly,
she was handling everything cool and relaxed, while inside, she was
ready to scream.

Harold was understandably tense. “I’m
fine. We’ve been advised to stay indoors until this blows over. Are
you closer to home, or here?”

“
Home.”

“
Okay, go there, lock the
door, and keep an eye out.”

“
Yeah, that’s pretty much
what I planned.” Regan was quiet for a moment, wishing her brother
was by her side. The noise around her was creeping closer
constantly. “Stay safe.”

She disconnected and kept going. Regan
considered calling Harold back just to have someone to talk to,
something calming. She saw some of the dead wandering out in the
streets. Some in groups. This wasn’t about to get any
better.

Shortly after, she could hear a
commotion ahead. Yelling, shooting. As she neared the next
intersection, she could tell the battle was less than a block to
her left. She stood at the corner of the building, and peeked
around it.

Just over half a block away, half a
dozen police officers were firing pistols and shotguns into a crowd
of dead that continually ambled towards them. Now and then one of
the walking would fall, only to be trampled by the one behind
it.

The chaotic battle and the moans of the
dead struck her. There was no denying what these lost souls had
become. There was no other word but ‘zombie’. It was just too
unreal. This sort of thing just doesn’t happen.

Regan was trying to decide if she
should go talk to one of them to ask for information or just stay
out of the way. Her train of thought was derailed when a door to a
building between her and the police crashed open, and more zombies
started pouring out. They weren’t fast, but they had a steady
persistence to them.

“
Hey cops!” Regan yelled
over to them, “Run over here! You’re gonna get cut off!” Only one
heard, but he then saw the growing group forming behind them, and
alerted the other officers.

Regan started crossing the intersection
as she watched the officers begin running towards her. One started
firing at the zombies in the way. Regan dropped to the ground to
avoid stray shots.

The zombies were closing the open path
between Regan and the police. Hoping against the obvious, Regan
watched as her view of the officers became obscured by the mob. She
heard more shots being fired. A frustrated yell. More
shots.

Less shots.

A scream.

One more shot.

A cry of hopeless anguish.

A vivid scream that ended with gurgling
blood.

Regan was still lying prone on the
pavement, staring forward at the churning mob. The sounds of combat
were gone, replaced only with deathly low groans and a silence
beyond sound.

She saw some of the zombies looking
around. They’d spot her soon. Time to quietly leave. Once she made
it out of view, she ran until she couldn’t hear the moans
anymore.

Some time after her hands stopped
trembling, she heard a sound she hadn’t heard in the city before. A
deep hissing, overhead. She looked up to see a large aircraft. It
looked only slightly more aerodynamic than a small house. It was
compact, but even from the ground it was easy to tell that it was
big. It bore no tail, just stubby stabilizer wings with turbines on
them. It passed under the southern bridge and just kept going,
despite Regan’s waving.

It looked like it was planning on
landing somewhere in the next block or two, so she ran to go meet
it. As she got closer, Regan began seeing other people who were
also heading for the aircraft.

Once she got closer to the thing parked
in the street, it was rather daunting. Its bulk took up more than
three lanes, leaving very little space for its side fins and
turbines. A mob of people was already forming and three soldiers
were guiding people into a cargo door.

Regan went up to one. His uniform
seemed a little unusual though she couldn’t put her finger on why.
His shoulder didn’t bear any markings to identify his
unit.

“
Hey Mister soldier
guy!”

The soldier didn’t even really look at
Regan, keeping his attention on the mass of people. “Miss, just get
aboard the airlimb, we’ll get you out of here.”

“
Airlimb?”

“
Yes Ma’am. Helicopters
aren’t cleared for flight in the middle of the city. None are
nearby anyway. We were nearby when things erupted, so we’re using
our four airlimbs to get people out from as deep in the city as we
dare.”

“
Four? There’s a lot of
people in here! When’s there going to be more help?”

“
I don’t know about that
Ma’am, I’m just doing what I can.”

“
What about AutarLabs? My
brother’s there!”

“
Aut-“ he flinched,
momentarily glancing at Regan. “I personally don’t know what order
we’re evacuating where Ma’am, we’re just doing our
best.”

Regan stepped back, and pulled out her
mini terminal, and called Harold. It rang.. and rang.. finally it
picked up.

“
You’ve reached Harold
Grier, I’m busy at the moment, so leave a message and I’ll get back
to you.”

Regan gave a frustrated sigh. “Harold,
I wanna know what’s going on there. Have you heard anything about
being evacuated?” Regan paused for a sigh. “Aw fuck it, I’m coming
there. Call me when you get this.” She stuffed the terminal away
with an extra “Fuck it!”