Authors: Peter Cawdron
“And this is hell?” I ask, reaching down and touching at the rock. Again, it feels as smooth and slick as glass.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I yell, turning around and seeing an astronaut walking toward me. Although this is no astronaut. He’s dressed in what looks like a fire suit, with a large visor that looks more like a welding mask than a space suit helmet. The fiery red glow of the volcano reflects off his silver suit.
“I’ve seen death. I’ve fought with Zee and won. I fear nothing you can do.”
From behind me, there’s a growl.
Turning my back on the astronaut, I swing around to face my nemesis.
No baseball bat.
No backpack.
No gun.
Those should have been the first things I noticed when I awoke, but I was distracted by the clouds, caught off guard by the lava. The Glock has been removed from my ankle holster, and that’s when I realize what this is—it’s a trap.
None of this is real, I tell myself, and yet Zee is no illusion.
She would have been in her early forties when she turned. Her shirt is torn, exposing a bite mark on her shoulder and a torn bra strap. She stinks. They all do, but she smells rotten. Dark blotches on her skin look like bruises. She rushes at me. I’m defenseless. Zee grabs my throat as I roll, fighting to get away. We tumble across the rocks, sliding toward the molten lava boiling just a few feet away.
I shift my weight, trying to knock her into a steam vent, but she’s too strong, towering over me and pinning me to the smooth, hot rocks. The man in the fireproof silver suit pushes a gun against her right temple and kills her in an instant. Blood splatters across the rocks and she collapses to one side, falling half on top of me. Her warm dead body is even more repulsive than when she was alive, and I quickly scramble away from her.
“Who the hell are you?” I cry, freeing myself from beneath the dead zombie and scrambling to my feet to face the silver fire fighter/astronaut or whatever he is. “Why the hell are you doing this?”
The astronaut points over my shoulder as a familiar voice calls out, saying, “Haze. Behind you!”
“Steve?” I say, turning away from the silver fire fighter but not seeing Steve anywhere.
Those words are far too familiar. Those were the exact words Steve spoke on the stage in the mall. It’s as though the astronaut has simply replayed a recording to distract me. And it’s worked.
Another zombie stands beside the dead woman. He’s athletic. Perhaps in his early twenties. Large, muscular shoulders and pumped biceps speak of either college football or bodybuilding.
Instantly, I’m on the defensive, crouching to lower my center of gravity, ready to throw my attacker to one side, only Zee stands mute. His eyes follow me as I move across the rocks, wanting to put some distance between us.
“What is going on?” I ask, turning back to the astronaut in silver, but he’s gone.
Zee never blinks. His eyes never waver from mine, watching my every step, but like the zombies in the mall, he doesn’t attack.
I creep forward, ignoring a blast of heat as another plume of lava erupts in the distance, sending molten rock spewing into the dark sky and spraying across the charcoal colored crater.
My mouth utters words my mind can barely comprehend.
“This is wrong. This isn’t real. It can’t be.”
With the muscular zombie watching my every move, I slowly bend down, examining the blood from the dead woman. Splotches of blood are suspended in midair beside her. No, not suspended. Her blood has struck some invisible surface and is dripping down toward the dark rock.
Without taking my eyes of muscle-bound Zee, I step around the side of the dead woman’s body, running my hands along what feels like a smooth glass wall, an invisible barrier floating in the air.
There’s something behind the stationary zombie.
Zee turns as I move, always facing me but never advancing. Blasts of hot air scorch my face, forcing me back, but I can see the faint outline of a rectangle behind Zee. It’s as though the outline of a door has been suspended in the air above the glowing, seething lava.
Gathering courage, I run my hand along the invisible wall, tracing it as it arcs toward the faint outline of the door.
No sooner has my finger touched the thin, edge of the door than the lights go out, plunging the room into darkness. Instantly, I leap back, wanting to distance myself from Zee, and I stumble over the dead body, standing awkwardly on outstretched hands and legs.
The heat fades and the lights slowly come up, revealing a room roughly forty feet wide. Mirrors cover every surface, even the floor. Looking down at my feet, I see myself reflected back at me, upside-down and joined at the soles of my boots. Above me, a perfect mirror reflects a billion images of the room stretching into eternity.
The side walls are curved. I appear upside down staring at myself. If I walk forward, reaching out with my hand to touch the mirror, I’m suddenly right side up and magnified like the fifty-foot woman.
“What is this place?” I ask, seeing Zee standing dumb by the door.
A voice booms around me.
“You are in the Marshall Space Flight Center in what was once Huntsville, Alabama. MSFC is now a level-five decontamination and research facility.”
I laugh. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m sure it sounds that way. Of everything I’ve seen and heard, this is the most ludicrous notion of all.
“How is that possible?” I ask.
Before a reply comes, I march across the mirrored floor, pointing at muscle-bound Zee and asking my hidden captor, “And what about him? Why hasn’t he attacked me?”
There’s silence for a few seconds before the voice responds, “We were hoping you could tell us.”
Zee is wearing a tank top. The shirt is torn, revealing a number of festering sores on otherwise immaculate abs. His thighs are like tree trunks. I don’t know what his body fat ratio is, but I’d guess it’s in the single digits. Zee is chiseled like a Greek god, or a demon from hades, as the case may be.
Through all this, Zee has not taken his dark eyes off me. His face is gaunt. Dark stains around his mouth appear to be dried blood. The sickly, yellow green tinge to his skin leaves him looking inhuman despite his statuesque physique.
“Me?” I ask, not understanding.
“Why won’t he attack you?” the voice booms.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask, ignoring the question.
“One zombie attacks. Another doesn’t. Why? What makes you so special?”
“I don’t know,” I say, making eye contact with the creature. I’d like to push past him and bang on the door set into the curved, mirrored wall, but I don’t want to risk provoking the zombie.
“You were bitten,” the voice says. “But you haven’t turned.”
“No,” I reply, not sure where I should look in response, turning through three hundred and sixty degrees as I speak. “My father. He figured it out. It’s not a virus... It’s complicated. He can explain it, but they’re not the living dead. They’re alive in their own right. They use the sun for energy—just like plants.”
The voice booms in response, saying, “Your father was wrong.”
And the curved wall transforms into a high-resolution image of a microscopic blood red squiggle. To my untrained eye, it looks like a knot of skipping rope bundled on the ground.
“This is the zombie virus.”
“No,” I reply. “It’s more complicated than that. The zombies—they’re driven by parasites or something. Break the cycle, and you won’t turn.”
The door behind the zombie opens, but Zee doesn’t respond. He seems mesmerized by me. The astronaut in the silver suit steps through the door, raising a gun to the back of the zombie’s head and again, blood, bone and brains splatter across the mirrored floor, reflecting into what seems like eternity above and below me.
I flinch at the sight. It’s an unconscious reaction even though I knew what was coming when I saw the gun. Such bloody violence is always shocking to behold.
Several more men in full body suits come through the door, only they’re not wearing space suits or silver fire suits. They’re dressed in camouflage, carrying exotic rifles attached to backpacks. Like the spacemen, their faces are hidden from view. Gas masks built into their suits hide their eyes. Black military boots and thick gloves keep them sealed, safe from contamination.
Three of them move off to one side, unfurling body bags and loading the corpses into the thick, black bags. Their boots squeak and squelch as they move around. I want to say something, but I’m spellbound by blood and brains seeping out onto the mirror. There’s something hypnotic about the whole situation. Nothing is real.
The other soldiers surround me, pointing their rifles at me but these aren’t like any firearms I’ve seen before.
“Take your clothes off,” booms through the room, spoken by someone outside this crazy house of mirrors.
“No,” I reply, instinctively.
The butt of a rifle connects with the side of my head, knocking me to my knees.
“Take off your
goddamn
clothes!” an angry male voice says from behind me.
My head throbs, while my inner ear swirls, making me feel sick, but I comply, slowly unbuttoning my shirt. To one side, a soldier sprays white foam from his pack, washing the zombie blood from the floor into a grate that has opened around the edge of the room. The other soldiers carry the body bags out of the room. Steam billows from the door as it closes.
I’m half expecting to be struck again and told to hurry up, but it’s all I can do not to vomit. Warm blood runs down my neck from the back of my ear. My ear throbs. My earlobe must have been torn by the rifle butt. I want to grab at my ear and try to suppress the pain or at least stop the bleeding, but I continue unbuttoning my shirt. It might be asking a bit much, but I leave my tank top on and shift to my boots.
The soldiers stand around me with their rifles pointing at me, but I suspect these are similar to the high-pressure foam gun used to clean the zombie mess. I have a fair idea what’s coming next. I’m a little tired of being scrubbed clean.
If anything, it’s a relief to get rid of my boots as they’re so damn heavy and too big. My socks are damp. They stink, but no one says anything. The soldiers stand there patiently waiting for me to finish. Getting to my feet, I pull off my jeans, kicking them across the floor.
Standing there in my underwear, I ask, “Is this really necessary?”
“Yes,” is the booming reply echoing around the room.
I unwind the bandages on my arms and hands, which need changing anyway, and then pull off my underpants and finally my tank top. No sooner have I finished than one of the faceless soldiers opens the door and I’m shoved forward.
The door itself is set almost a foot above the ground, forcing me to step up into a long room shaped like a cylinder or a pipe lying sideways. Two soldiers step in behind me. Raised grates keep us from walking awkwardly on the curved floor.
The door closes behind us. Jets of cold water shoot out from the walls as a soldier pushes me on. A prod from his rifle barrel has me raise my hands. Another prod between my knees gets me to widen my stance. The pungent smell of bleach fills the air. My cuts sting, causing me to wince in pain. I can’t keep my eyes open, the torrent of water hitting me from all sides is too intense, making it hard to breathe as I stumble through the decontamination chamber.
A high-speed fan blows the moisture away, and I catch a glimpse of ruddy brown water swirling beneath the floor grate. This thing is a goddamn car wash. Jets of steam rush in. Although the warmth is appreciated, the steam is a little hot at points, forcing me to step to one side. A rifle butt pushes me back to the center of the room.
As the steam dissipates I’m suddenly doused with freezing cold water. Had there been some warning, I could have taken a deep breath, instead I almost choke as what feels like an entire swimming pool is dumped on me. I buckle under the weight of the water, almost falling to the grating on the floor.
In seconds, it’s over and the fan comes on again, blowing warm, high-speed air over my naked body.
With my arms raised, I turn to see the four soldiers standing behind me, adopting a similar arms-up position. Water drips from their hazmat suits or biological warfare suits or whatever those camouflaged plastic uniforms are called.
“Put this on,” a voice says, and I turn back to see a woman dressed as a soldier standing outside the chamber. The glass door has opened. She hands me a surgical gown along with tiny booties for my feet. The paper-thin cotton gown has several ties at the back to hold it in place. As I take the clothing, another soldier hands her a towel and she starts rubbing my hair, drying my long locks.
I almost say, thank you, but the way I’ve been treated demands answers, not groveling, so I purse my lips tight.
The surgical gown doesn’t leave much to the imagination and is breezy to say the least. The thin, cotton ties leave skin exposed on my lower back and buttocks. I get the feeling nothing is haphazard. If I’m left feeling cold and vulnerable, it’s because that’s what they want, whoever they are. I’m sure they could have given me some actual clothing if they wanted, and mentally I keep my wits about me, knowing there are no mistakes being made.
Whoever these guys are, they thrive on authority and use intimidation to keep people in their place. Given how much I hate such contrived notions, and how easily I was stirred against Marge back when James died, I’m careful to hold my tongue until I learn more.
“This way,” the woman says, warmly. “I’m sure you have lots of questions.”
“Not really,” I reply coyly, wanting to keep her off guard. I will not be someone’s pawn. They may control my body. They may be able to shove me around and point guns at me, but they have no idea who they’re dealing with, and I want to keep it that way.
“The simulation room was originally a tool for training astronauts for surface missions on Mars,” the woman says. “Since the early days, we’ve been using it to evaluate PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Heaven and hell. We find it useful to evaluate the sanity of anyone coming in from the outside.”