Zombie Galaxy: Outbreak Read online

  Zombie Galaxy: Outbreak

  Scott Reeves

  Zombie Galaxy: Outbreak

  Copyright © 2012 by Scott Reeves.

  All rights reserved.

  Books by Scott Reeves:

  The Big City

  Demonspawn

  Billy Barnaby’s Twisted Christmas

  The Dream of an Ancient God

  The Last Legend

  Inferno: Go to Hell

  Colony

  A Hijacked Life

  The Dawkins Delusion

  The Miracle Brigade

  Tales of Science Fiction

  Tales of Fantasy

  The Chronicles of Varuk: Book One

  Soldiers of Infinity: a Novelette

  Snowybrook Inn: Book One

  Snowybrook Inn: Book Two

  Liberal vs. Conservative: A Novella

  Temporogravitism and Other Speculations of a Crackpot

  A Crackpot’s Notebook, Volume 1

  Graphic Novels:

  The Adventures of Captain Bob in Outer Space

  For free Star Trek fan fiction and book notes by Scott Reeves, visit the author’s blog at http://scottonwriting.blogspot.com

  From the Galactipedia:

  Caldor: Fifth planet of the star Daneb, deep in the heart of the Goat’s Horn nebula. A hive planet with a vast population, Caldor is entirely covered with city, from the very edges of its atmosphere all the way to the inner depths of its molten core. No natural portion of the planet remains, every inch of the original Earth-sized planet having been converted to concrete and steel to support the millions of 10-mile-high skyscrapers that comprise the planet city. Tunnels and cavernous rooms honeycomb the subsurface. With a population of 853 billion, Caldor is the twenty-fifth most populous planet in the Galactic Union. Caldor’s AI governor is named Mac.

  Transmat: Matter transmitter; teleportation device.

  Andy Watson

  Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12

  4:15 PM Planetary Standard Time

  Andy stood on the forward observation deck of the starcruiser Belfast. An invisible force shield three feet in front of his gawking face was all that separated him from the vacuum of space. To either side of him, the great hyperdrive thrusters of the cruiser swept forward like the wings of an enormous hawk. Directly ahead, the planet Caldor grew swiftly. An immense jagged sphere of metal, it glistened harshly in the light of Daneb. The plasma cloud of the nebula glowed purple in the background. A few stars were visible here and there through the dusty murk.

  The cruiser was on final approach.

  The captain’s voice came over the intercom, “The planetary AI has taken control of the helm, and we’re cleared for landing. Just relax and enjoy the ride, folks. And welcome to Caldor.”

  The planet grew until only an enormous, curving limb that stretched from one side of the viewing port to the other was visible. That limb was jagged and rough, bristling as it did with immense, monolithic skyscrapers that thrust up to the very edge of the atmosphere. Not a patch of bare ground was visible; just the upper reaches of those man-made monuments to civilization. Mixed among the sea of skyscrapers were spires tipped with giant globes of a mesh-like material that towered even higher than the skyscrapers. These were the atmosphere generators that fed air to the upper reaches of Caldor’s sky.

  A simple farm boy from the nearly deserted, backwater planet of Molon, Andy thrilled to the sight of civilization on such a vast scale. The technological immensity of it! The place teemed with life, with hundreds of billions of people. It was almost more than his mind could grasp. Molon had only a population of two million people on the entire planet. On his family’s isolated farm, he had rarely seen anyone beyond his brothers and sisters.

  He was here to start a new life. He had gotten his education, and he would make his family proud. Caldor was possibility, infinite possibility! He was the first Watson in five generations to leave Molon, and he wouldn’t squander the opportunity he’d been given.

  Caldor swam ever closer. They swept down into the late afternoon sky, and Andy gawked down at the sea of rooftops that spread below in every direction. People crawled across the rooftops, small as ants and just as busy. The place bustled! How would he ever manage to fit in, a country boy used to a relatively slow pace?

  The Belfast slid to a halt fifty feet above one particular rooftop, a mile-square expanse of concrete that served as one of the many spaceports of Caldor. Three other hawk-like starcruisers hovered at various points across the rooftop, with one immense, cylindrical starship hovering at the very center of the group and higher in the sky, like some great space queen attended by her entourage.

  Hovering, Andy looked down at the crowds thronging the vast stretch of concrete, people waiting upon the arrival of loved ones returning from the stars, vendors hawking their wares to new arrivals, guides hoping to be hired by outworlders unfamiliar with Caldor. Here and there, robocops strode among the throngs, and were given wide berth. Some of the people were looking up at his ship, saw him and the other passengers on the observation deck. Some waved, and Andy waved back, smiling. Others made rude gestures at him, or at least in the general direction of the ship. Surely they weren’t making those vulgar gestures at him in particular?

  The captain came over the intercom once again, “Passengers, please disembark through the transmat stations to the rear of the observation deck. Thank you for traveling with Galactic Spaceways. Enjoy your stay on Caldor, and please be sure to recommend Galactic to your friends and family for all your interstellar traveling needs.”

  Andy retrieved his luggage from the floor beside him and trudged back to the transmat stations. There were only fifteen other passengers, so he didn’t have long to wait. He stepped onto the platform, and between one blink and the next, he was standing down on the concrete expanse of the spaceport. He smiled around at the intimidating mass of humanity writhing chaotically around him, alive with noise and life.

  Hopefully, he had just arrived at his new home.

  Bart Johnston

  Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12

  4:30 PM Planetary Standard Time

  Bart Johnston stood on the spaceport on the rooftop of Skyscraper B4500, or, as it was more commonly known, the Murray Building. Bart had no idea who Murray was, and he had no desire to know. He could easily have solved the mystery of Murray’s identity simply by accessing the planetary data net through his interface, but he didn’t bother. He didn’t give a flying rat’s fuck who Murray had been or why they’d named a building after him/her/it.

  He needed a new mark, and a spaceport was always the best place to find one.

  He looked up at the Belfast, just now coasting in for debarkation. As it slid to a stop fifty feet above his upturned face, he cranked up the magnification on his eyes and swept a critical gaze across the passengers assembled on the cruiser’s observation deck.

  Not too many passengers. Slim pickings for sure. Wait a minute. His gaze swung back to the tall, gangly kid with the awestruck expression on his too-pretty young face. His clothes were ten years out of style, and he had carelessly left his suitcase unguarded on the deck behind him. By the looks of him, a real rube, a gee-golly-shucks bona fide country boy, come to seek his fortune in the big city.

  Bart smiled. He had found his new mark. He would squeeze every last credit from the kid and leave him sobbing in a dark alleyway somewhere. He’d do the kid a favor and shatter his innocence, introduce him to life in the real galaxy.

  Something on the kid’s forehead caught Bart’s attention. His enhanced eyes zoomed in for a closer look.

  A tattoo of a red crucifix on the kid’s forehead. Christian!

  Bart gritted his teeth. That tattoo took things t
o a whole new level. He looked at his own black tattoo on the web of skin between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand: “666.” Mark of the ancient Beast, the only thing that gave any purpose to his life.

  That gee-golly-shucks bona fide country boy, come to seek his fortune in the big city, was going to find nothing but a quick death. Bart had a sworn duty to see to that.

  Edoard Dogon

  Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12

  4:30 PM Planetary Standard Time

  Edoard Dogon, manager of Transmat Hub One, looked sidelong at the thin, prissy man who stood next to him, dressed in a prissy business suit with a disdainful expression on his prissy face. As the main hub for the planetary transmat network, it was Hub One’s honor to host the network CEO.

  But Edoard didn’t see it as an honor. He had worked with Shermit Jordal before, when they’d both been mere technicians. The man had been a back-stabbing, prissy little pain in the butt even then, and his eventual promotion to CEO had only made him worse.

  Fortunately, as CEO, it was Sherm’s duty to personally step through the transmat any time they made a major change to the network. It was a cruel test demanded by the public. If anything went wrong with the network as a result of the change, the main person responsible for the network would be one of the first to pay.

  Ed took comfort in the thought. It was the only thing that made the CEO’s afternoon visit tolerable. Most days when the CEO dropped in, Ed didn’t even have that.

  They had maxed out the network’s bandwidth and were going to open a new subspace channel to ease the workload. Matter transmissions were currently taking ten seconds due to heavy network traffic. The effects of such an outrageously long delay were being felt in all sectors of the economy, and the people were demanding a solution. Adding a subspace channel was that solution, for a few years at least. But the new channel that had been assigned to Caldor was the deepest one yet. Of course, every new subspace channel that was opened was the deepest one yet. That was just the nature of subspace.

  But the people were wary. Hence the presence of the network CEO this afternoon.

  The control room was crowded. Technicians manned their consoles, whispering excitedly to each other as they awaited the first test. A gaggle of holo reporters stood at the rear of the small room, their invisible, molecule-sized cameras rolling.

  At the front of the room, the transmat test pad stood conspicuously vacant, awaiting its victim. Unlike a commercial transmat, the test pad had separate transmission and receiving plates. The transmission plate was ten feet to the left of the receiver. A short distance, given the incredible range of the devices, but adequate for a test.

  Ed turned a snarky grin on Sherm. “You ready to get this show underway, Mr. Jordal?”

  “I hate this part of the job,” Sherm muttered.

  “Yeah, well, if you hadn’t fucked me over when we were both up for the job, you wouldn’t have anything to worry about today, now, would you, Mr. Jordal?”

  “Fuck you,” Sherm whispered.

  They both smiled and waved at the cameras.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Ed said through gritted teeth, the false smile for the cameras tiring his facial muscles. “There hasn’t been a transporter accident in a hundred years. The new channel is just like all the others.”

  Sherm nodded. “Yeah. That’s right, isn’t it? How could this one be any different than the others?”

  Ed felt a genuine pang of sympathy for his old nemesis. He hated the man, but didn’t want to see him hurt. He put a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine,” he said sincerely.

  Sherm’s plastered-on smile twitched with the struggle to maintain his false cheer. “Yeah.” He bravely stepped to the front of the room. “All right, boys,” he nodded confidently to the technicians in the front row. “Open the bitch up.”

  The technicians swiped furiously at their control interfaces. In response, somewhere deep within the planet, gargantuan turbines spun into new configurations, manipulating dark energy currents that twisted space in an impossible direction until the new subspace channel cracked open. Ed, despite being one of the managers of the local transmat network, had never had the privilege of seeing these turbines.

  Moments later, each technician nodded to the lead technician, Chris Donu, who in turn nodded to Sherm.

  “The new channel is open,” reported a soft, steady voice that emanated from the air itself: Mac, the planetary AI, who was monitoring the event.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” Sherm said to the assembled reporters. “The newest subspace channel is now open.” As if Mac hadn’t just reported the very same. He smiled proudly around the room, trying to force an air of grandeur upon the occasion. “We should see an immediate reduction in matter transmission time. We’ll have confirmation in just a few moments. But first, to demonstrate the continued safety of the network, I myself will now beam through the network.”

  And with those final words, Shermit Jordal stepped onto the transmission plate of the test pad. The matter stream engulfed him and swallowed him into subspace.

  As his old rival faded slowly from view, Ed held his breath expectantly.

  Samala Vintron

  Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12

  4:30 PM Planetary Standard Time

  15-year-old Samala Vintron rolled away from her boyfriend, regretting the loss of his warm naked skin against hers. Like a phantom limb, she imagined she could still feel his big cock churning inside her. She sat on the edge of the bed and picked her panties up from the floor, slid them up her slender legs.

  Her boyfriend, Malfred Gil, sat up behind her and wrapped his muscular arms around her narrow waist. “Come back,” he insisted, kissing her shoulder. “I’m not through with you yet.”

  She reluctantly struggled out of his grasp and stood. “Yes, you are,” she said. “Daddy will be home from work in a few minutes, and you need to be gone.”

  He sat up, leaning his head on his elbow, and watched as she put on her bra. “It’s a shame you have to cover those magnificent beauties up,” he said with a wistful sigh.

  Bra fastened, she took hold of his arm and tried to drag him out of her bed. “Come on, get dressed. Daddy will go ballistic if he finds you here.”

  “Man, why can’t your father get with the times like everybody else? Mr. Galtrow, he lets me stay with Windy whenever I want. Sometimes he and his wife join in. Windy’s mom is really hot, you know?”

  Samala rolled her eyes. “Times and people may change, but morality doesn’t, that’s what Daddy says.”

  “Damn you fucking Christians,” Mal said. But at least he got up and started putting on his clothes. “You’re dinosaurs, that’s what you are.”

  She wiggled her hips and ran her hands suggestively down her body. “Do I look like a dinosaur to you?” She knew she was gorgeous, with long blonde hair, luxuriously thick lips and a body that made all the boys drool after her. She was the mirror image of her mother, judging from the many recordings she’d seen of her. Of course, recordings could easily be faked and genes manipulated. Her mother might have been a hideous she-hag sagging everywhere that a woman should be firm. But she doubted her father had faked the recordings or doctored his daughter’s genes. He was too much of a purist to do anything like that. Surely no amount of genetic manipulation could have produced a gorgeous young woman such as herself from a hideous she-hag.

  He grinned, grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against him. “My sexy dinosaur!” He growled playfully, nuzzling at her neck and licking at her collarbone.

  She pushed him away. “Come on,” she said, and dragged him from the bedroom.

  Resisting slightly but not enough to hinder her, he let himself be pulled across the cramped living room toward the transmat pad. Once on the pad, he bent down and kissed her. She let her lips linger against his for a delicious moment before pulling back.

  “Say hello to Daddy for me,” he grinned, mocking. She slapped playfully at him,
then reached over and hit the transmit button. In a sparkle of light, he slowly faded into subspace.

  She returned to her bedroom and finished dressing. The smell of sex still permeated the air, so she had the ventilation system release a spurt of freshener. She inhaled the smell of roses, enjoying the brief vision of a field of flowers that the psychotropic freshener aroused in her mind.

  She liked the visions. Since her apartment was accessible only by transmat, the momentary glimpses of wide open spaces filled with gorgeous flowers relieved the claustrophobia inspired by the apartment, even if the visions weren’t real and only lasted moments before returning her to cold reality. And the reality was that she was basically living in an impregnable vault with no way in or out other than being reduced to atoms and transmitted through subspace.

  She went back to the living room, stood a moment listening to the utter silence around her, then went to the kitchen and began fixing cheese and macaroni for dinner. Daddy liked having dinner on the table as soon as he got home. This evening dinner would be a little late, but oh well.

  Just as the water was beginning to boil, she heard the telltale hum as the transmat activated. She went into the living room to greet her father.

  But what materialized on the transmat pad was not Daddy. It looked like Daddy, but he had a feral gleam in his eye. As soon as he was fully materialized, he licked his lips hungrily, growled, and lunged at her faster than was humanly possible.

  Bin Jamin

  Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12

  4:30 PM Planetary Standard Time

  Bin Jamin lay on his side in the air duct. The metal walls pressed close against him on all sides, and he was covered in a cold sweat, irrationally fearful that he would be trapped, unable to move, and die in the ducts, his whereabouts unknown to anyone. He would die, and rot, and eventually the stink would attract notice, whereupon his mysterious disappearance would be solved.