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  Tales of the Zombie Chronicles

  Smashwords License Notes

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means (electric, scanned, photocopied, recording or otherwise) without the prior written approval of the copyright holder and publisher of this book. This DRM-free ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. The distribution of this book without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author by purchasing this ebook.

  A Zombie Chronicles short story compilation.

  For more stories in the Zombie Chronicles Universe please visit https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/zombieman

  Published by Ctales Publishing at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2010 by Mark Clodi

  First Edition: December 2010 vers 1.0

  Cover designed and © by Michael Picco, 2010.

  I have had a lot of help with the stories in this book. I would like to thank the following people for their work. Mike, thanks for help with all the stories in this book. Inhumanity: Thank you Dan, I would state what you did, but I don’t want you to come under fire for it! Cruising: Thank you Paul, without our emails I may never have written this story. Contender: Thank you again Mike and thank you Neal for your efforts with this story as well. In addition thank you everyone in the ‘First Eyes’ group. Finally, thank you Picco for providing the cover.

  Table of Contents

  The First Zombie

  Inhumanity

  Cruising

  Contender

  The First Zombie

  Chapter 1

  The radio was on as Doctor Thomas Sentry pulled out of his garage and headed into the lab. “Hurricane Zelda is expected to make landfall tomorrow night, crossing the southern tip of Florida and tearing up Cuba again. It has been a heck of a season and the people of south Florida are going into the frying pan after getting out of the fire from Yvonne two weeks ago.” Thankfully music replaced the droning weather commentary, some U2 song about global warming.

  The good doctor was a middle aged man, just south of forty years old and he looked it. His hairline was receding rapidly and what he had was kept cut short using a set of ancient hair clippers in his own bathroom. Thomas ate sporadically and was skinny, not a healthy thin work was his life blood and pleasure such as fine food and drink were consumed only when meeting with those who had money to fund his project. When he was in the confines of his home he wore gold framed thin glasses, however on days he worked in the clean part of the lab, like today, he work contact lenses that seemed to make his light brown eyes a shade darker. He would almost be handsome; at six feet tall he had the height to be a leading man, were it not for his pale, almost vampiric skin color.

  Dr. Sentry grinned to himself, thinking about how he was going to change everything about global warming very soon. If his experiment worked, and he was sure it would, the human race was going to be entering a new phase of its existence. His cell phone rang, playing 'Ring of Fire' by Johnny Cash; he answered it halfway through humming the song in his mind.

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. Sentry? Where are you?” asked Doctor Heather Wilkins, his assistant and second in command at the lab.

  “On my way in, everything go well last night?”, he asked.

  “Yes doctor, as planned no mutations at all. It is stable Doctor! You know what this means?”

  “We are going to be very rich?”

  “Hm, yes well that too, but the trial can proceed. We've got a volunteer prepped and waiting, Vic Launders. He won the draw of the three of them. He is pretty excited about it too. A chance to outlive his sentence. A chance to start over.”

  “Yes, yes, I can't stand the man myself, but he is the ideal candidate, I admit. He is ready now?”

  “I am only waiting for you Doctor, I thought you deserved to make the injection yourself.”

  “I look forward to it. I will be there in ten minutes; can you wait that long Heather?”

  “Of course, Tom! But hurry!”

  The Lazarus laboratory (incorporated), had been funding Dr. Sentry's work for nine years, a long wait to get to this point, where human trials could begin. The work was an open secret in the science world, completely funded by private donations to seek out the reasons for and to stop the aging process. The first phase called for three volunteers. The local prison had a wide variety of candidates, so the company had set up some criteria to weed some people out. Unfortunate it was not a coed prison so the volunteers were all men. First the volunteers had to be as non-violent as possible, second they had to have been sentenced to more years in prison than they could conceivably live and they had to agree that they would get no consideration from the program in regards to their volunteer work. These criteria were in addition to not on medications currently and that they had to be in fair or better health.

  If the treatment worked they would serve their remaining sentence completely. In Vic's case he was the least violent of the three prisoners, he had assaulted an officer when he was being arrested on securities fraud charges, but he had no prior record. The evidence of his fiduciary malfeasance was overwhelming, he was found guilty of a variety of crimes using money that was supposed to be invested in solid, low interest, low risk funds and that was actually used to fund, among other things, importing drugs from South American companies.

  The exceptional thing in his case was that he did not lose any money for his clients, they all made the safe, stable, rate of return he had guaranteed them. Vic, on the other hand, made hundreds of millions, he was too successful and that is how he was caught. Sentenced to almost one hundred and twenty years of non-consecutive time in prison the man had jumped at the opportunity to live forever. The rumors that Vic had some money stashed away were all too true as well, he had shunted close to fifty million dollars into Doctor Sentry's private accounts (all well hidden) to assure himself a place in the top three candidates. This small complication could probably be traced back to Vic if the man wanted to do so, but if he did he would be revealing that he did indeed hide money away when he had denied it at his trial.

  'Such is the price of doing business these days', thought Thomas, who planned on using the money to continue his efforts if his funding were ever cut. Making sure Vic was the number one candidate took almost no effort on Thomas's part, while it was a risk, if the man died, it also would not be a terrible blow either. If Vic died during the testing the money he had given Sentry would have complication removed from it, if he lived the experiment would be a success. A win either way.

  Ten minutes later he pulled past the security guards at the front gate and into the parking garage at the lab. Working every day for the past two and a half years, driving from his garage to the company garage had made the good doctor pale; he could not even remember the last time he had gone outside for anything other than a perfunctory trip across the parking lot to go into a grocery store. Dr. Sentry had a maid who used a food allowance to buy most things, but she came down firmly on the side of natural foods, so periodically the doctor had to visit the store himself to buy a secret stash of junk food and real coffee and non-organic cream. If the maid had not been so accommodating in dealing with Dr. Sentry's physical needs he would have replaced her. Now it seemed like too much bother to interview and seduce another maid to take her place.

  As he got out of his car and headed towards the employee entrance of the secured building he passed another guard station.

  “Good morning Doctor Sentry.” said Gabe the
head of security who had been here the last seven years. Gabe was an older man, in his mid-fifties; he had no weight on him except for a small beer belly. Gabe's head had less hair than that of the good doctor, and his was a silver gray color too. The man squinted a bit when he read, but wore no glasses, only a crisp, clean uniform with a massive looking pistol in a holster on his belt.

  “G'morning Gabe!” Thomas called as he moved by, “Gotta big day ahead of me in the lab, it should be earth shattering, if all goes as planned.”

  “Glad to hear it, let me know when you need an old fart like me to test on.” Gabe said. Gabe, having risen to the head of security knew what the goal of the company was, even if he didn't understand how it was supposed to come about.

  “Will do Gabe, I think I am close.”

  “Good. And good luck today too.”

  Although he did not believe luck would play a role in today's test, he nodded jovially at the guard. Gabe was a big believer in luck and the man could have been a professor of ancient Egyptian civilizations, had he chosen to be. The man could speak for hours, or semesters, about the long dead deities and seemed fascinated in particular about their creation myths. The Egyptian Og-doad was his specialty within the overarching myths and culture. Sentry had made the mistake of thinking the security guard just had a cursory knowledge of the subject, so he had boned up on trivia about the field and started a conversation with Gabe one day. That day turned into a night of drinking and philosophizing in Thomas's office, with both men coming away with a profound respect for the other. Gabe was no doctor, at least not of medicine, however he should have been a professor and the mere bachelor's degree he held in anthropology was far beneath his actual knowledge in the field.

  Thomas went through the second door as Gabe buzzed it open and was met there by Heather; she had a clip board in her hand and was, in Thomas eyes, giddy. She was hopping from foot to foot, rocking back and forth excitedly.

  Doctor Wilkins suffered that curse of most middle aged woman; she was losing the battle of the bulge. Her sandy blond hair was also thinning already and she wore it long and usually kept it tied back behind her head and out of the way. With her sharp blue eyes and almost perfect height of five foot six she had probably been a knockout in her early twenties. Thomas, as wrapped up in his work as he was, didn't know if she were married, had kids or virtually anything else about her except that she was an exceptional researcher, not just his right hand, but his right arm. The thought of asking about her outside life had never occurred to Dr. Sentry.

  “Today is going to be the day. I know it.” Heather said.

  “Of course, it is not like we haven't put our time in, is it?”

  “The sacrifices are worth it. Everlasting life, it will make the last eight years look like nothing. Especially when we are a thousand years old. What will eight years be to us then?”

  “Of course there will be other complications; eternal life is not necessarily one free from disease or hardship. We will have more time to deal with those problems, I hope. Let’s get cleaned up and I will meet you in room one in five minutes.”

  Thomas Sentry moved into the men's room that led into the clean room, while Heather moved into the women's room to do the same thing. Despite having showered and shaved at home he followed procedure to the letter and again stripped naked, washed completely with an anti-bacterial soap, then slathered on an alcohol based sterile gel before stepping into the second half of the room to have it rinsed off by a separate water supply and then be blown dry by hundred and twenty degree heat. Finally he moved to the clothing room and picked up his gowns and his internal security badge to wear before stepping into the clean room. Once there he waited only a few moments for Heather to come out and join him. Once they were in the lab proper they moved down the hall to room one, where Vic was already prepped and ready.

  Chapter 2

  “Hiya docs!” Vic said to them as they entered room one. The man was Caucasian, stood about five foot ten inches tall and was fit, not just thin. His skin was still somehow brown, as if he had just come in from the beach. His hands stood out due to his long fingers, perfect for making transfers using a keyboard and computer. The top of his head sported a choppy prison haircut that didn't do his glossy brown hair justice. His almond colored eyes seemed to size up everyone he met, getting there measure instantly. The man always seemed to be looking for angles, for edges, ways to turn any situation to his advantage.

  The room he was in was square with a single door leading into the hallway in the clean section. There were large rectangular windows set into two walls, one was towards the clean room side, looking into the hallway, the other opened into the main part of the building into an observation room, which was currently crowded with assistants and other people who had helped get the project to this point. Curtains hung on both walls in front of the windows and in both cases they were fully opened, allowing view into and out of the room.

  Vic was, by requirement, handcuffed to the stainless steel bed and his ever present guard was there as well. The bed had to be custom made and sterilized after the decision to use prisoners had been finalized. That was one of the pains of dealing with Vic 'Half Billion' Launders, the state required he be handcuffed and supervised at all times. The office had three cells, the equivalent of solitary confinement cells, one for each prisoner. The cells were not in the clean section of the building and the clinic was actually certified as a private prison with a head count of three. This had meant the addition of several employees just to keep watch on the prisoners and to see for their care; however this was far better than having to wait for transportation to and from the prison every day. Vic had already served six months of his sentence at Lazarus offices, the man's only comments about the arrangement were to say the food was better and he liked having a cable television to himself.

  Thomas moved up to Vic's side and said, “So today is the big day? Are you ready?”

  “I was ready three months ago. I know you have to keep asking me, but I am ready, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

  “Good.” said Thomas, “I do need to remind you that you can cancel this volunteer duty at any time up to my injecting you with the formula...”, looking at a monitor he read off the series number out loud, “series thirteen point two four three 'F' six 'A'. Do you agree to be injected with this drug for experimental reasons? Understanding that the consequences could range from absolutely nothing on one extreme to your death on the other?”

  “Yes, I do. Get on with it doc.” said Vic.

  “Formalities Vic, we have to follow procedure.”

  “I understand that, what is next then?”

  “The injection.”

  Vic nodded. “Finally! Should I be lying down?”

  “However you can relax the best. Now, as I have explained in prepping you for this procedure, you may not notice any effect from the treatment right away, it could be days or even weeks or months before we can tell scientifically that something has happened. It might be longer before we know what has happened, if the experiment was success or not.”

  “I know. I understand that.” said Vic as he hopped up on to the table and adjusted his gown over his legs. He waved at the other researchers and then lay back on the table. Heather moved forward and raised one armrest on the side and prepped Vic's arm, although technically already sterilized, she went through the motions again and then presented Thomas with a clean arm.

  Heather had prepared the syringe before Thomas arrived that morning, almost as soon as she had known the culture of bio-medicine was functioning as designed. Thomas picked up the syringe and approached Vic's arm.

  “Ready?” he asked one last time.

  “Do it.” Vic said.

  Thomas found a vein and injected the medicine into Vic's body. Stepping back, he asked, “Any reactions?”

  “No, nothing. Just like I was giving blood or getting a vaccination. No big deal at all.”

  Through the glass the muffles of a
cheer was heard.

  “Looks like the geek squad is happy.” turning towards them Vic gave them a halfhearted wave, “Here I go a brave pioneer into worlds unknown, and you all made it possible, so you have my thanks. And you too doc, I know this is your baby.”

  'The man was a manipulator, no doubt he would have thanked his executioner before entering the gas chamber.' thought Thomas.

  “Heart rate increased.” Heather called out.

  “Just the excitement of the big day, I bet.” said Thomas.

  They both watched as Vic's heart rate shot up, soon the man was laying back on the bed, with beads of sweat coming off of his forehead.

  “Doc, I ain't complaining, but I am not feeling so great right now.”

  “Just relax Vic, an elevated heart rate does not mean much. Heather prepare the antidote.” said Thomas.

  “Yes doctor Sentry.” Heather said, her tone unreadable.

  “There is an antidote?” asked Vic.

  “Of course.” Thomas lied, “You don't think we want something bad to happen to you. The treatment and the chemical to stop its progress were developed at the same time.” This was not a literal truth, the 'antidote', in theory could only stop further changes from being made, it could not reverse any damage caused up until it was used.

  “So I am going to be okay?”

  “Yes Vic, you are going to be fine.”

  “Heart rate backing down.” Heather droned tonelessly.

  “See? Just nerves. You sit tight and think happy thoughts. There is no pain, right?”

  “No. I feel a little uncomfortable. More tired than anything.”

  “You feel tired? Vic the treatment is fundamentally changing the way your body works, I think you will feel a little tired, at the very least. Now we are not going anywhere, today is all about monitoring you and getting your feedback on what is happening to you, so keep talking, okay?”