Night of the Living Trekkies (22 page)

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Really? Try and stop me.”

Jim took a step back and set his feet firmly on the ground.

“Your dishonor makes you weak,” he said.

There was a flash of real anger in the Klingon’s eyes.

“Look, Jim, I don’t know if you’ve gotten the memo yet, but we’re screwed. If you want to go out there and die, go ahead. I’ll stay behind and do it in here.”

Jim raised his right hand and slapped Martock’s face.

“Shut up,” he said. “I don’t need to hear your prattling. I know that the guy who owns a machine shop back in Atlanta is having a hard time handling this. I know he lost his friend. But I also think that, somewhere deep inside, Martock is still in there. And he wants vengeance.”

The Klingon rubbed his cheek with a leather-swathed hand. He looked at Jim as if he were a particularly annoying insect.

“I’m done with this shit,” he said.

“No, you’re not!” Jim shouted back. “You’re an expert weapons maker and second in command of the bird of prey Plank’Nar. Because that’s what we need you to be right now. Do you understand? I need a Klingon who doesn’t give a damn whether he lives or dies, as long as he kills plenty of zombies so he can brag about it to Karen in Sto’Vo’Kor. That’s what she’d want, isn’t it? For you to fight instead of quit?”

Jim stared at Martock.

Come on, you gigantic son of a bitch, buy into this
, he thought.
I need you to get in the game.

Martock stared back. Then, to Jim’s immense relief, his mouth split into a pointy-toothed grin.

“You speak wisdom, human,” he said. “Better to die a Klingon than live as a coward.”

“Exactly,” Jim said. “Now arm these poor civilians and get them ready for battle.”

“My pleasure,” Martock said. “It will be glorious.”

He patted Jim on the shoulder.

“And if you slap me again, I’ll kill you where you stand.”

Jim grinned. “I would expect nothing less.”

At five minutes to four, the team was as well-armed and well-prepared as it would ever be. Jim carried his trusty kar’takin and the Glock. He passed his Taser belt holster to Leia, who packed two extra Taser dart sets as well as her lirpa. Rayna carried the Mace clipped to her belt, plus a Taser. Gary and Willy got yans. Martock wielded his personal bat’leth. Sandoval got a Taser.

Time to go to red alert
, Jim thought.

He looked through the door’s peephole at the hallway. From there, he could see the entry to the west fire stairwell, just a few yards away. There were no zombies to impede their progress. It would be a quick thirty-second jump.

“Listen up,” Jim said. “We’re heading out in three minutes. Once I open this door, I don’t want any talking. If you need to say something, whisper. I know we have weapons, but the zombies have numbers. We’re not looking for a battle. Understand?”

His crewmembers nodded. Jim looked at their faces. There were so many other things he wanted them to know. But there wasn’t time.

“We’ll go in this order: myself and Leia, followed by Rayna and Gary. Then Martock, Sandoval, and Willy. Don’t get separated. Stay with your apocalypse buddies at all times. Got it?”

Everyone nodded again. Jim could feel the tension rising.

“Keep moving. Don’t give them time to gang up on you. Any questions?”

“What about Matt?” Gary said. “What if we run into him?”

Jim patted his Glock.

“I hope we do,” he said. “But I doubt we’ll be that lucky. I’m guessing he’s being processed inside a zombie’s GI tract about now.”

Sandoval looked at his watch.

“We really should be going,” he said. “After we reach our vehicle, we still have to drive far enough to reach minimum safe distance before the blast.”

“You heard the man,” Jim said. “Prepare for transport.”

Matt sat in a second-floor suite, calmly observing the zombies milling around just beneath his window. They slowly paced the atrium, spaced precisely three yards apart. Even as they lurched in seemingly random directions, they always maintained the same spacing. It was the perfect way, Matt realized, to blanket the entire area, to make sure no living thing passed undetected among them. They moved with the same mathematical precision displayed by flocking birds and schooling fish. The network was gloriously sophisticated in its design.

He leaned against the window frame with his left hand. His right hand—his
new
right hand—rested on his hip.

It had been a gift from his new benefactors. Matt didn’t use the word
infection
to describe what happened. That term was too base for such a miracle.

Union
seemed more appropriate.

He welcomed the visitors aboard, and in return they made him strong. And smarter. And they gave him a new hand. Or, rather, something better.

Matt 2.0
, he thought as he raised his arm to admire its new shape.

At the end of his wrist sprouted a wild confusion of tentacles. At first they’d seemed to have minds of their own, writhing around without any input from him. But he soon asserted his mastery. They could pick things up. They could wrap themselves into a rock-hard knot for fighting. They could whip out as far as three feet in any direction.

He received this boon shortly after escaping from Jim and his own treasonous crew. He’d retreated to the second floor and broken into a suite situated directly beneath his old one. He evicted a couple of zombies to obtain it, tossing them into the hallway before slamming the door in their blood-caked faces.

Once inside he’d inspected the stump. There was no pain and precious little bleeding. This was puzzling, because it was a very serious injury. The old Matt—the person he’d been just a few hours ago—would have fainted from the trauma. Maybe even died of blood loss.

But the new Matt didn’t. Instead, he matter-of-factly located the room’s microwave oven. He used his remaining hand to punch out the radiation-proof window on its door. Then he placed several glasses of water inside to keep the machine from arcing, clicked the door shut, and set it to run for an hour on maximum. Lastly he pulled up a chair and sat down no more than a foot from the humming device.

It occurred to him that he was getting quite a bit of microwave exposure. Probably more than was healthy for a human.

But then he remembered that human frailties weren’t his problem anymore.

The oven shut off five minutes before the hotel’s power failed. Matt couldn’t say for sure, but he felt that the microwaves had done him good—or, more accurately—done his new friends good.

He didn’t realize how much until he raised his right arm and saw what had sprouted there. It was his reward for helping them.

It was also a first step, he somehow knew, down a road to even bigger changes.

The prospect didn’t faze him. Emotions, human ones at least, didn’t have much power over him anymore. Only the strongest stimuli—like the thought of killing Jim—roused them. That, and wreaking vengeance on the bitch who took his original hand. Fantasizing about what he might inflict on
her
produced a Technicolor grab bag of fantasies, all of them in bright crimson hues.

Suddenly, Matt felt an urge tickling up from the back of his mind. He couldn’t quite grasp its subtleties, but he understood the overall meaning. He needed to go. The creatures sharing his mind felt it was time to move on. There was danger growing on the horizon. Matt needed to get to a safe place.

And he knew just how to get there.

His starship was waiting in the garage.

The stairwell was illuminated by emergency lights at each landing and switchback. The mission got off to an easy start. There were no zombies on the sixth-floor landing or the fifth.

“Maybe we can skate right down to the basement,” Rayna said.

A moment later, a single moan drifted up the stairs.

“I order you to quit saying optimistic things,” Jim scolded. “Every time you do, something bad happens.”

“Acknowledged,” Rayna said.

Jim descended the stairs until the fourth-floor landing came into view, then stopped. He found a single ghoul pacing back and forth.

“I’ll take care of this,” he whispered.

“No,” Gary said. “Let me do it. I need the practice.”

Jim thought about the request. He had a point.

“Fine,” he said. “Martock, will you back him up?”

“It would be my honor,” the Klingon said.

“I don’t need any help,” Gary said.

“Martock’s your second, like in a duel,” Jim said. “He can give you advice. Now, do the deed.”

Gary and Martock descended the stairs, making no attempt at stealth.

The zombie lurched toward Gary, its alien eye bulging out of its forehead. Gary raised his yan and swung it as hard as he could at the flesh-eater’s neck. The blade struck spine and lodged there. Gary, panicking, tried to pull it out. But the zombie came with it.

“This blade sucks!” Gary exclaimed. “How the hell are you supposed to kill with this thing?”

Martock stepped forward, calmly took the hilt of the weapon, and then kicked the zombie in the middle of the chest. The blade wrenched free and the creature fell sprawling to the floor.

“Use more wrist in your attacks,” Martock said, demonstrating with a quick gesture. “It will increase the power of your strike.”

He returned the weapon to Gary as the zombie clambered to its feet and once more advanced. Its head listed to one side, the inner mechanics of its throat exposed by Gary’s first blow. Gary dropped into a fighting stance and swung again. This time the yan cut cleanly, sending the head flying across the room.

A smattering of muted applause issued from the onlookers on the steps. Gary turned to them and bowed.

“Don’t get cocky,” Leia said. “There’s plenty more where that one came from.”

On the very next level they found three others. In the interests of expediency, Jim killed two while Leia broke in her lirpa, removing the top third of a hotel housekeeper’s skull with one precise jab.

After the kill, she spotted Gary taking pictures of her with his cell phone.

“For Facebook,” he explained.

Sandoval glanced at his watch. It was already a quarter after five.

“This is taking too long,” he said. “We need to make up some time.”

Just then a moan wafted up the stairwell. Followed by another. And another.

The group crept down until the second-floor landing came into view.

“Shit,” Martock said.

“This is definitely not my fault,” Rayna said. “I didn’t make a single positive comment.”

Jim stared downward, momentarily at a loss. It was his nightmare come true. The landing held perhaps fifteen zombies, packed together like commuters on a train. And the door to the landing stood open—blocked by a legless, limbless, well-chewed torso. Wearing a Wesley Crusher sweater.

Gary groaned quietly. “Not
now
, Wesley.”

Jim’s mind raced. The best approach would be to stand at the bottom of the stairs and kill them as they advanced. But an open door meant an endless supply of newcomers. Which meant wiping out every zombie on the floor. They’d finish up just in time to get nuked.

“Martock, Leia, and Gary, go to the bottom of the stairs and get their attention,” Jim said. “Stand on the last couple of steps and take them out as they approach.”

The three descended to within two steps of the floor and formed a line. The zombies reacted with a chorus of moans. Jim waited until they shambled clear of the door.

He looked over the rail at the next flight of stairs below. It was maybe a twelve-foot drop. A good landing was critical. He couldn’t afford a twisted or broken ankle.

“What are you planning?” Rayna asked, eyeing her brother nervously.

“Something really stupid.”

Then he climbed onto the rail and used it to launch himself down to the stairs below. By a miracle of balance, he managed to plant both feet cleanly on the same step. But then he almost toppled over backward. Only several embarrassing seconds of twists and arm waves saved him from disaster.

His balance recovered, Jim raced up the stairs to the landing. He used his kar’takin to take the heads of two zombies at the back of the crowd pressing in on the stairs.

Then he rushed to the stairway entrance, dragged Wesley Crusher clear with the blade of his weapon and shoved the door shut. This left half a dozen zombies in the stairwell, but they were easily outmatched by Leia, Martock, and Gary. Jim shouldered his blade and watched them finish. The last creature standing was a tall, thin man in a
Next Gen
uniform, vainly trying to climb over the bodies of his comrades.

Martock, impatient, descended to the lowest step and brought his bat’leth down in a high arc on the last survivor’s skull. Its point struck home and the zombie went limp.

“Kapla!” the Klingon roared, raising his weapon over his head.

He didn’t notice that one of the zombies in the pile wasn’t dead at all. Just immobilized by the mass of corpses heaped on top of it. As Martock celebrated, it pushed itself free, grabbed his right leg, and sank its teeth into his boot.

“Khest’n!” Martock screamed as he fell backward.

He kicked the zombie in the face, breaking its grip. Gary brought his yan down on the monster’s head.

Jim saw it all unfold. He ran to the stairs and dragged bodies out of the way, opening a corridor.

“Did the teeth get through?” he asked.

Martock pulled off his boot and examined his skin. So did Leia and Sandoval.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It didn’t make it through the leather.”

Leia nodded in agreement.

Martock started laughing.

“We have to keep moving,” Jim said. “We’re running out of time.”

Martock put his boot back on and fell into line. The group trudged down to the first-floor landing. It was empty. Then they descended to the garage level. It was darker, grimier, and smelled of diesel, but it was zombie-free.

“End of the line,” Jim said as he approached the door. “Good job, everybody.”