Night of the Living Trekkies (19 page)

Jim glanced at Martock. “Please tell me that’s real.”

“It’s a
lirpa
,” Martock said. “A Vulcan ceremonial weapon first seen in the original
Trek
episode,’Amok Time.’”

“You don’t have to sell me on it,” Jim said. “Got any more?”

“You can help yourself,” Martock said. “Everything’s in our suite. Just be careful because it’s all live.”

Jim, Leia, Willy, and Gary walked next door.

“Merry Christmas, guys,” Leia said.

“And a Happy New Year,” Jim replied as he surveyed the suite’s contents.

The center of the public area was mostly taken up by two long, wheeled racks filled with garment bags. But Jim was more interested in the hardware arrayed on the kitchenette table.

He saw four wicked-looking swords that he recognized as
yan
— Klingon ceremonial blades. He picked one up, checked its edge, and then took a couple experimental swings. Gary and Willy grabbed two more and started to play-fight.

“Nobody touch my lirpa,” Leia said.

“I wouldn’t think of touching it,” Jim said. “At least not until the third date.”

Gary laughed but Leia seemed disconcerted.

“So that’s how this works?” she asked.

“How what works?” Jim said as he continued testing the sword.

“We break into a room and put down an entire family of zombies that were living human beings not too long ago. And then a few minutes later we’re goofing around with play swords and I’m telling you not to touch my lirpa. Is that how this works?”

“That’s pretty much it,” Jim said. “You push down the stuff that’s already happened to make room for the stuff that comes next.”

“I see,” Leia said. “How hard can you push before it pushes back?”

“You can ask that question to a therapist,” Jim said. “Assuming the world goes back to normal and we still have therapists.”

“I want a bat’leth,” Gary said. “Can I have a bat’leth?”

“No,” Jim replied. “Nobody gets a weapon until they have a chance to practice with it. That means you, mister.”

Gary frowned and put down his sword.

“The princess gets a weapon,” he said. “She didn’t have to practice.”

“She gets extra credit for real-world experience,” Jim replied. “As for the rest of you, nobody gets so much as a pair of toenail clippers until we go over some basics. If it’s any consolation, we’re sticking with Tasers when we hit the corner suite.”

“Are we still doing that?” Leia asked.

“We’re just one door away. We’d be crazy not to take the chance.”

Gary walked to the interior door that opened to the corner suite and put his ear against it.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said.

“Maybe that’s good,” Jim said. “But maybe not. These things seem pretty lethargic when there’s nothing to eat. A dozen of them could be milling around over there, waiting for room service to arrive.”

Gary shook his head. “You’re the king of the worst-case scenarios.”

“When you plan for the worst, sometimes you’re pleasantly surprised,” Jim said. “Now let’s put on our game faces and get this done.”

Jim unholstered his Taser and nodded to Leia, who took up position behind him. Then he unlocked the door as quietly as possible, pushed it open an inch, looked around, and stepped inside.

The lights were on. Nothing was out of place. Against the far wall, Jim could see a bank of curtained windows.

He looked to his left. Sitting on an overstuffed chair was a man with a laptop computer balanced on his knees. He snapped it shut and stared at Jim, mouth agape.

Jim stared back.

“Say something,” the man finally said.

Jim smiled. “Dr. Sandoval, I presume?”

The man exhaled, seemingly relieved. “At your service.”

A few minutes later, Jim and the rest of his group stood together on the balcony of the corner suite, taking their first look at downtown Houston.

“We’re in deep shit,” Gary said. “Deep like the Mariana Trench.”

“We can’t leave here,” Rayna said. “There’s no place to go.”

Their perch provided a peek inside the glass-clad skyscrapers surrounding the Botany Bay. Some were dark, but others still had lights, making it easy to see the zombies inside, wandering listlessly through drab, cubicle-filled spaces. In one meeting room a pack of the undead gnawed on a corpse splayed across an oval conference table. Down the street, a Doubletree Hotel was burning furiously, its top floors swathed in smoke and flame. No one fought the blaze.

“This really is the Apocalypse,” Leia said.

“It could be worse,” Jim said. He pointed due east, past the dark, still body of water known as the Houston Ship Channel. The horizon was lit up bright as dawn by a raging inferno. “That’s Baytown Complex—one of the world’s largest petrochemical refineries. They process half a million barrels of oil every day.”

The smell of burning gasoline hung heavy in the air.

“I don’t think they’ll make their quota today,” Gary said.

“That fire is on the other side of the San Jacinto River,” Jim said. “Whatever this plague might be, it’s spreading. Maybe it’s everywhere.”

“This is unbelievable,” Rayna said. “Look over there.”

She pointed to a sleek-looking, gray streetcar, part of the city’s Metrorail system, laying on its side with every topside window broken out. The car looked to be at least a hundred feet long and had to weigh several tons. Yet somehow the creatures had knocked it off the tracks and tipped it over.

“There’s strength in numbers,” Jim said. “On an individual level, no single zombie is very strong. But they seem to understand that they can work as a team. Like army ants. They can network their thoughts and plan a coordinated attack.”

Which doesn’t bode well for us
, he was about to continue, but then his gaze landed on a young man staring through a window in a nearby office building. The guy wore a pair of khaki pants and a blue, short-sleeved polo shirt. Earlier that very day, he had probably been some-one’s office intern.

Now, missing a left hand and a considerable portion of face, he was a zombie. A zombie with a third eye sprouting out of its right cheek.

A third eye that, Jim realized, was looking at him.

The creature pounded on one of the office’s floor-to-ceiling windows. He was shortly joined by three more undead, all of whom commenced moaning and pounding.

Jim pointed them out.

“Watch this,” he said.

A moment later the much-abused window finally gave way. It fell to the street and shattered. The glass was quickly followed by the zombie intern in the blue polo shirt. Utterly infatuated by the sight of the Botany Bay survivors, it mindlessly stepped out into nothingness.

The other zombies likewise tumbled into the void. Then another undead creature shambled to the window, spotted Jim, started moaning, and fell.

“We’d better go inside,” he said. “We’re attracting too much attention.”

“Seriously?” Gary said. “I could watch those dipshits walk the plank all night.”

Jim pointed to another building. Zombies on three floors were staring at them. Here and there, in one location and another, the creatures were becoming aware of their existence. He wondered how long it would be until every flesh-eater, everywhere, was giving them the big red eye.

“Why are they looking at us?” Willy asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jim said. “We’re all that’s left. And right now they’re uploading their discovery to the network.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Gary decided. “Let’s go in.”

They stepped back into the cool, quiet refuge of the Botany Bay’s seventh-floor corner suite.

“How’s the view?” Dr. Sandoval asked.

The events of the last six hours had left him physically unscathed. His Starfleet uniform was still immaculate. He was still the spitting image of the
Voyager
’s doctor.

“I’ve seen better,” Jim said. “How long has it been like this?”

“During the day I could tell that something was happening. But it wasn’t until evening that I understood the scope—and the nature—of the crisis. After sunset the reanimates were free to move outdoors. They pursued and consumed every living thing they encountered.”

“We notice that they seem to like the darkness,” Leia said.

“I wouldn’t say they ‘like’ it, but it’s certainly a better environment for them,” Sandoval said. “Their crude, parasitic eyes lack retinas with which to regulate light intake.”

Jim and the rest stared at him.

“How do you know that?” Gary asked.

“I’m an exobiologist. I work for the Special Projects Office of the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, which is part of the Department of Defense.”

“Right, but you sound like you’ve dissected one of these things,” Rayna said.

“I’ve been studying these creatures for the better part of a decade. I was scheduled to present a paper about their ocular adaptations at the convention.”

“You were going to tell the world about these things at Gulf-Con?” Jim said.

“No. I was going to give the Trekkies a boilerplate speech about whether the life forms in the Trek universe could actually exist. My research findings were for the
real
convention.”

“The real convention?” Rayna said.

“Correct,” Sandoval said. “The much smaller, highly classified gathering for which GulfCon serves as a front.”

Sandoval surveyed the stunned faces surrounding him, then sighed.

“I suppose I’d better start at the beginning,” he said.

“The rest of you might want to sit down,” Sandoval said. “I’ll bring you up to speed as fast as I can, but it will take a couple of minutes.”

They dutifully gathered in the seating area next to the windows. Martock sat apart from the group, still sulking. Sandoval remained standing.

“Let me tell you a little bit about GulfCon,” he said. “This convention is the one and only event staged by a Dallas-based marketing outfit called Star Unlimited. Star is a front corporation for a Newark, New Jersey–based firm called Horizons Exports, which ships sensitive products and materials to overseas governments and organizations. Horizon, in turn, is a subsidiary of STNG Corp., a multinational conglomerate with its fingers in everything from private security to military-base construction.”

“I met some of those guys in Afghanistan,” Jim said. “We called them Stingers. They were real assholes.”

“Perhaps, but they know how to keep secrets. That’s why they get so much business from a Langley, Virginia, organization called the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“Wait a minute,” Rayna said. “You’re telling me that the CIA sponsors GulfCon?”

“Precisely.”

“Damn,” Gary said. “I didn’t realize Trekkies were a national security threat.”

“They’re not,” Sandoval continued. “But they do provide ideal camouflage. For the past five years we’ve used GulfCon as a cover for a smaller convention-within-a-convention—a select gathering of scientists, military men, and covert operatives from across the United States.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Gary said. “Couldn’t you just e-mail each other?”

“The matters we discuss are too sensitive. Every August roughly fifty of us convene here in person. We dress up like Trekkies and try to get into the spirit of the event, which helps our cover. Whoever comes as the most obscure character actually wins a prize.”

“What’s so obscure about you?” Willy said. “You’re the emergency medical hologram from
Voyager
. Everybody knows that.”

“Ah, except I’m not,” Sandoval said. “I’m the emergency medical hologram on the
Enterprise-E
from the movie
First Contact
. My uniform is slightly different. Study stills from the film and you’ll see.”

“That’s pretty dastardly,” Gary said. “I salute you.”

“What do you talk about at this convention-in–a-convention?” Jim asked.

Sandoval pointed to the window.

“Them,” he said. “Or, more accurately, the things that made them.”

“You know what they are?” Jim said. “Tell us. Tell us everything.”

“All right,” Sandoval said. “The information I’m about to share is classified, but given current circumstances, I think full disclosure is in order. Please hold your questions until the end. We’re facing a deadline, so I need to disseminate this quickly.”

“Deadline?” Jim said. “What kind of . . .?”

Sandoval held up his right hand for silence, then began.

“Are any of you familiar with Project Genesis?” he asked.

“
Wrath of Khan
!” Willy exclaimed, like he was answering the final question of a Star Trek trivia bowl. “It’s the process that transformed lifeless planets into life-bearing ones.”

Sandoval shook his head.

“No, I’m speaking of the
real
Project Genesis, a 2001 NASA mission that collected solar wind samples and then returned them to earth in a small reentry capsule.”

“I can’t wait to hear what this has to do with zombies,” Leia said.

“During reentry, the Genesis capsule’s parachute failed to open. It impacted the ground at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah doing just shy of two hundred miles per hour. The malfunction was publicly blamed on a design flaw. In reality, the ship hit a meteor shower; we were lucky to get it back at all. Three of the rocks were trapped in the ship’s collectors and returned to Earth. They were complex, silica-based nodules of almost uniform size. We scooped them up, took them to the Johnson Spaceflight Center, and put them in a clean room. We didn’t know what we had. We were trying to protect
them
from
us
.”

“So what did you have?” Jim asked.

“To put it simply, space seeds. God knows how long they’d drifted through the void, seeking a place to take root.”

“But they were rocks,” Gary said. “How could they be alive?”

“We discovered their true nature when we cut one in half,” Sandoval said. “A technician was somehow exposed during the process, either inhaling or perhaps ingesting a bit of the material. Within three hours he was sick. Within another two he was dead. And shortly after that . . .”