Clickers vs Zombies (13 page)

The city’s streets echoed with a cacophony of screams, gunshots, shattering glass, wailing alarms, and blaring car horns. The only silence was inside their car. Clark drove without speaking, focused on the task of weaving them in and out of traffic. They drove past a burning police car that had crashed through an intersection, plowing into a minivan. The van was on its side, and a horde of zombies had surrounded it and were menacing a family trapped inside. Tears welled up in Michele’s eyes when she saw the panicked, horrified expressions on the faces of the four children and their parents.

“We should stop…do something…”

Clark stared straight ahead and gave the car more gas. They raced past the accident just as a few of the zombies turned toward them. Michele’s gaze locked with the mother trapped in the minivan.

“We have to help them,” she pleaded. “We can’t just keep going.”

Clark shook his head. His eyes didn’t leave the road.

Michele fumed. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

He opened his mouth to respond, but all that came out was a low, wounded moan. It was then that Michele noticed the tears on his cheeks.

“Of course it does.” His voice broke—a hoarse, mournful whisper. “But we can save them, or we can save everyone. If we had stopped back there, we’d be dead. Now let me focus.”

“I’m sorry…” She turned away and stared out the window, wanting to close her eyes to the horrors around them, but afraid to do so.

They drove through Hell.

The traffic lights were blinking. Buildings burned. Broken fire hydrants spewed geysers of water and severed body parts littered the streets. Michele’s gorge rose at the steaming piles of viscera and haphazardly strewn limbs. A man running from a zombie slipped in a pile of intestines, and plowed into the sidewalk. Stunned, he barely managed to regain his feet before the zombie reached him. He fled again, dragging one foot behind him. Both the man and the zombie left red footprints in their wake.

A man dressed in some sort of martial arts uniform and armed with a sword fought off three human zombies before a dozen undead rats swarmed him, climbing up his legs. He screamed, dropping the sword and beating at them with his hands. Sharp little teeth bit and chewed, gnawing his fingers to the bones. The man fled, but the rats held their grip. He sagged to the pavement and they went for his eyes and mouth, shredding his lips, eyelids, and nose. The head of one of the zombies he’d decapitated was still alert. It stared into Michele’s eyes as they drove past.

The city echoed with chaos. Dead humans and animals ran riot, killing everything in their path. The living fought them—and each other. Clark slowed as they approached another intersection. A trolley car and a bus had collided. Black smoke belched from them both, and the air smelled of burned meat, even with the car windows closed. Clark blew the horn at the stopped cars in front of him.

“Shit. Come on, people. We can’t just sit here.”

“Mr. Arroyo?” Michele’s eyes widened as she pointed out her window. “We need to go.”

He turned to her and saw what she was pointing at. “Oh shit…”

A group of zombies converged on the intersection. A three-legged pit bull hobbled towards them, followed by nine human corpses, a dead cat, and another swarm of rats. Several of the zombies wielded weapons—lengths of pipe, butcher knives, a golf club, and a shovel. Behind them, several humans had been tied spread-eagled to a fruit-vendor’s stand. The zombies had apparently been torturing them before Clark and Michele’s arrival.

“Hang on,” Clark said.

Michele gripped the door handle as he threw the car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator. Their rear bumper smashed into a mailbox on the curb. Then Clark dropped the transmission in drive again and floored it. The tires screeched as the car raced directly toward the horde. He smashed into the zombies, sending them careening into the building behind them. He made a hard left turn and swerved onto the sidewalk, then sped down the pavement. Michele’s passenger door scraped against the side of the brick building next to them. Her side mirror snapped off. The car shuddered and bucked as they mowed down the dead. Then, once they were clear of the wreckage in the intersection, Clark whipped the car back into the street.

Michele didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until they reached the Golden Gate bridge. She exhaled, gasping. Ahead of them, traffic had once again slowed to a crawl. She glanced in the rearview mirror, but saw no sign of the zombies.

“Look down there.” Clark pointed at the water far below. Dozens of large shapes could be glimpsed near the surface, swimming toward the shore. They were big enough to be easily visible despite the distance from the bridge.

“What are they?” Michele asked. “They don’t look like whales.”

“They’re not. They’re Clickers. More properly known as
Homarus Tyrannous
. They’re sort of a cross between the
Megarachne Servinei
and the
Woodwardopterus
. They were supposed to have been extinct for the last two-hundred million years. There’s been fossil evidence of them discovered in Greenland, Nova Scotia, and Scotland.”

“Two-hundred million years? So they’re dinosaurs?”

“No. Dinosaurs we could deal with. These are something else. I don’t know much about them. I was briefed on them earlier today, but another division is handling the problem. Apparently, wherever they’ve been hiding, that tsunami last week has stirred them up. But like I said, they’re for somebody else to deal with. We’ve got more important problems.”

“The zombies.”

“Correct. The Siqqusim.”

“But they’re just here in the city, right?”

“No. What we just went through—what we just escaped from? It’s spreading everywhere. The entire world will be like that by tomorrow morning.”

“What do we do? How do we stop it?”

“Open the glove compartment.”

Michele did as he asked while Clark alternated his attention between the traffic ahead of them and the ominous shapes in the water far below. She pulled out a small hardcover book, bound in black leather with gold foil embossing.

“That’s one of your field manuals,” Clark said. “It documents everything we know about the Thirteen. I’m supposed to wait until your probationary period is up before I give it to you, but…fuck it. Let’s just say you’ve fast-tracked. Welcome to the team.”

Michele was stunned. “Thank you, sir.”

“Please, call me Clark. Michele, you’ve been doing great, but I’m really going to need your help in the task ahead. We’ve got a big job ahead of us. First thing I need to do is focus my energies for a while.”

“You can meditate and drive at the same time?”

“Sure. Later—if there is a later—I can teach you how. It will be dark soon. In a little while, I’ll answer all your questions about where we are going and what’s happening. But first I need to focus for a bit. Turn my attention inward. So what I want you to do, in the meantime, is read the first few entries in that book. That will provide answers to some of your questions. Okay?”

She nodded, unable to disguise her eagerness to open the book.

Clark grinned. “Okay.”

He fell silent, staring straight ahead. His eyes remained open and focused on the road, but his breathing slowed. Once Michele was certain that he wouldn’t drive them off the bridge, she turned her attention to the field manual and opened to the first page.

She began to read.

TOP SECRET

EYES ONLY

G42-667-666-777-MU

The following information is for Black Lodge operatives with a security classification of Adept or higher, to assist them in the field. Please note that sigils, binding rituals and banishing techniques are not included in this pamphlet. Only operatives with a security classification of Magus or higher shall have access to that information. The material contained herein is not to be disseminated with any other parties or persons, be they living or otherwise, under penalty of our laws, by order of Kaine.

I.

WHO ARE THE THIRTEEN?

In the beginning, the entity we know as God, Yahweh, Allah, and more (herein referred to as the Creator), whose true name is known only to a handful of people, created the heavens and the Earth. In order to create this new universe, He needed a lot of energy. So the Creator destroyed the universe that existed before ours, down to the very last atom, and utilized the harvested energies as building blocks. The old universe ceased to exist.

However, in addition to the Creator, there were thirteen other denizens of that previous universe who somehow escaped the destruction. These entities are collectively known to us as the Thirteen.

They are not gods or demons, though mankind and other races have often mistaken them for such. Indeed, they are often mistaken for the Devil, or are worshipped by servants who do not understand that the Thirteen will not hear their entreaties unless it somehow benefits their plans. They are not susceptible to all of the same magicks and supernatural laws that govern, banish or bind demons, angels, and other supernatural entities. Very specific magicks and rules must be used when confronting them. Most of these have been verified by a number of different sources, including copies of the
Daemonolateria
from both this level and others.

While it is folly to apply human logic and emotion to their motivations, the Thirteen seem to have one single-minded goal. They seek the total obliteration of everything the Creator has made. Perhaps it is revenge for His destruction of their old universe. Perhaps they seek to build a universe of their own—one in which they are in charge.

They will not stop until all of creation is destroyed.

That includes all of the Earths.

The universe is composed of different ‘levels’. Some call these levels alternate realities. While string theory has scratched the surface of this, mankind, for the most part, remains woefully ignorant as to the vast extent of these levels. Just as there are different planets in the sky, there are also different versions of those planets, existing simultaneously on a different level of the universe. Beings, including some humans, can traverse this multiverse by means of something called The Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth is a dimensional shortcut through time and space. It is not actually a labyrinth, but that is how mankind perceives it, thus the name. Only a handful of humans know of its existence—madmen, magi, a few in the highest levels of government, and of course, operatives of Black Lodge. But the Thirteen know it well, and they use it to traverse the various levels of reality, and lay waste to creation.

Their methods are many—global floods, plaques, fires, the resurrection of the dead, planetary darkness, and a host of other means. Sometimes, they work together. Sometimes, they act alone. Once a planet is utterly destroyed, they move on to the next.

We do not know why the Creator has not taken steps to stop them. All we know is that their war rages unchecked. It is whispered that throughout the multiverse, there are seven individuals who can stand against them. Herein, they are collectively referred to as The Seven.

II.

OB

NAME: Ob

OTHER NAMES: Mictla-techuhtli. The Obot (see below)

TITLE: Lord of the Siqqusim

FIELD REPORT: Ob is the brother of Ab and Api. Most of Ob’s other names are unknown. There is a possibility that the Obot serves as another name for this entity, but there has not been a definitive consensus on this.

Ob is the leader of an incorporeal race of beings known as the Siqqusim. We do not know if Ob created this race or if they were created by another, but he does command them. The Siqqusim have the ability to possess the dead bodies of major warm and cold-blooded life forms after the soul has departed, in effect, turning them into zombies.

Ob is mentioned seventeen times in the Old Testament (although one of these references, Job 32:19, is rather dubious). Ob is also mentioned in other texts of that era, and while the word Ob is a Hebrew term, it also shows up in Sumerian, Ugartitian, Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Martian, and Reptilian texts as well.

Most scholars agree that the worship of Ob involved the act of necromancy, and the conjuration, consultation, and control of the dead. He is often mentioned in conjunction with engastrimythos, meaning “one who speaks from the head.” It is said that Ob possessed King Niqmaddu III upon his death, and “spoke from his head.”

One early Mesopotamian cult falsely believed that Ob referred to a group of spirits of the dead, rather than a singular entity. They used a series of spells, called gidim-hul, as necromantic rituals that could, in turn, conjure or expel the spirits of the dead. In this context, Ob was worshipped alongside Baal in Moab. Other cultures believed incorrectly that Ob was not an entity or group of entities at all, but rather, a location—the point of contact between our world and the realm of the dead. We know this to be false.