Chapter 64.

Saturday, June 30 2001 Park City, UT 8:45 AM.

Dr. Cooper huddled in a dark, forgotten, dead-end junction of the Park City sewer system, chastising himself for the thousandth time about breaking with protocol and disobeying Colonel Jenkins orders. Had he taken the bodies directly to the incinerator as ordered, a dozen or more Alpha's wouldn't have been created and slaughtered the majority of the hospitals inhabitants before taking to the streets and helping to sack the city.

It had been twenty-four hours since he had taken water, and seventy-two since he had eaten. A day ago he had ventured out of his hidden spiderhole in search of drinkable water. He had come up in the flood basement of a looted and abandoned fast food restaurant. He wandered upstairs to the washroom, drinking deeply from the sink. But hunger drove him into the kitchen looking for food, only to be surprised by half a dozen Beta zombies. He had been bitten twice on the arms and once on the side but managed to escape their clutches, back down stairs and into the sewer. He returned back to his spiderhole, expecting a ravenous pack of zombies to lunge out of the darkness any moment, but none came. Occasionally he would hear something moving down the length of the dark tunnel, but he would see nothing.

But he knew that would change. If nothing else, he would begin to hallucinate once the infection reached the thirty-five to forty-eight hour mark. He was already hot with fever, and his bite wounds stunk with rot and burned as if hot acid had been poured on them. The rest of his muscles ached with cramps and fatigue, and he was slavering with mucus from dehydration.

At times, he wished a band of zombies would find him and tear him apart so as to end his misery, but then the thought of becoming a walking dead filled him with such dread that he was reduced to tears. He had sliced up hundreds of them, and everyone had the same glazed, dull stare, but behind that look burned a spark of intelligence, the mark of a soul trapped in purgatory. He could not allow that to happen to himself.

He would not allow it to happen!

He would find a discarded pistol or rifle and end his own life with a bullet through the brain, and spare himself damnation in hell.

Determined, he mustered all of his strength and stood, his bite wounds burning double hot and spurting black blood, pus, and small bits of rotten flesh. He let out a small scream of agony, but remained on his feet, leaning against the wall. He took several deep breaths and the pain subsided, and mustering all his willpower he forced himself to take a step...and another...and another.

He could feel the blood and infection oozing freely from his wounds, the sickly sweet stench warm and wet. The pain was torturous, his body drenched with a hot, sour sweat and it took everything he had just to put one foot in front of the other. His head swam with nausea, had he stopped several times to dry heave, the last time vomiting blood, yet he continued on.

Dr. Cooper lost track of how long or which way he wandered the dark maze of sewers, several minutes seeming as several hours to his fevered mind, but eventually he came to an iron rung latter set in the wall which accessed a manhole fifteen feet above. Bright, crisp morning sunlight lanced down through its grate. Gripping the ladder weakly with both hands, he began to climb. If walking had been torturous, climbing was downright excruciating, taking him nearly half an hour to ascend the fifteen rungs. He peered up through the manhole for several minutes, but not a single zombie staggered by.

He was all but sapped physically, and muscling the manhole cover aside would drain him even more, but it had to be done. He just hoped he had the strength to pull himself out of the hole, get to his feet and find a weapon before any zombie's spotted him and tore him apart.

Taking a deep breath, he put his shoulder to the manhole grate and pushed it up, electric pain lancing through his bones and fire shooting through his veins. He pushed it to one side and collapsed the upper half of his torso face down onto the pavement.

It was the instinct of self-preservation that gave him the strength to rise up and pull himself from the sewer hole onto his hands and knees, but he hadn't the energy to scream out in pain. He looked about, blinking to clear his blurred vision, finding himself in an intersection of an industrial sector and saw over fifty zombies within a one hundred foot radius, all of them turning their attention to him. Sprawled in a crucifix position on the pavement less than twenty feet away was a stiff, dead corpse of a solder, his abdomen torn open and his entrails long since removed. His face and throat were mauled beyond recognition and all the fingers had been bitten from his hands. But there was a shoulder holster strapped to the body and a .357 magnum revolver was still in the sheath.

Dr. Cooper knew it was a race of Death VS Undeath as he scrambled for the weapon and the salvation of suicide before the zombies reached him. Each pace of the crawl was a new exercise in pain, suffering, and willpower, but at long last he reached the soldiers corpse before the nearest zombie was within twenty feet. He clumsily pulled the .357 from the holster and was surprised to find the safety was already off. He looked about, seeing the closest zombie now only fifteen feet away and the rest of the pack circling just a few feet behind. He pulled back the hammer on the revolver and put the barrel in his mouth and closed his eyes.

He could hear the shuffling feet and ghoulish moan of the approaching zombies, and knew their clammy hands and jagged teeth would close on him any second.

Letting his breath out, Dr. Cooper squeezed the trigger.

CLICK!.

Cold, adrenaline fueled terror flooded his body, washing away the pain. He opened his eyes and cocked the hammer back just as the nearest zombies hands fell onto the back of his shoulders. He let out a girlish scream of fright and pulled the trigger.

CLICK!.

His scream of fright bellowed into a roar of horror as the zombie sank its teeth into the back of his neck, and the next five in the pack fell on top of him. He felt their teeth tear chunks of flesh from his neck, legs and arm. Still screaming hysterically, he yanked his gun hand free and instinctively pointed the gun into the face of the nearest zombie; a female, once pretty, looming over his face with a chunk of his bloody flesh in it's mouth. He cocked the hammer back and pulled the trigger.

BLAM!.

The bullet blasted between her eyes, splitting the top of her head like a melon and splashing his face with cold, rotten brains, then the gun was ripped from his hand as another zombie began biting off his fingers and the remainder of the pack closed in. Luckily for Dr. Cooper he blacked out just as they pulled his stomach apart and began tugging at his gray, roping intestines. The last thing he saw, besides a section of his lower intestine going down the gullet of a zombie, was a small black aircraft hovering several miles out on the eastern horizon; clear as a bug on a window in the bright blue sky...

Chapter 65.

Saturday, June 30 2001 Park City, UT 9:01 AM.

Zack looked out the cockpit viewport at Park City spread out in the valley three miles beyond, his thumb resting on the firing button that would deploy the city busting warhead. There were thousands of drones scattered about, with large congregations of them massing at the northern end of the city. He lowered his mind block, feeling the hollow, aching buzz of ten thousand zombies, as well as the occasional sharp, electric ping of nearly thirty Sentinels as they locked onto him.

Zack wondered if there were any live humans remaining in the city, the psychic plane too awash with the hum of the dead to detect them if there were. Not that it mattered. In a few seconds, they would be dead.

Scanning the targeting screen one last time, Zack depressed the button, and the missile containing the warhead fired from its launch pod. As soon as it was away Zack put the shuttlecraft into maximum climb, angling up into the sky at nearly 80 degrees at over 300 mph.

The shuttle was six miles away and over a mile and a half high when the warhead detonated over the center of down town Park City with a blinding green flash. As the rippling blast wave of crackling emerald energy spread out concentrically, obliterating everything in its path, a towering green mushroom cloud of electric fire rose ten thousand feet into the sky, over fifteen hundred feet higher than the shuttlecrafts altitude. His minds eye still open, Zack felt the psychic hum of ten thousand damned souls instantly cease.

The viewport had tinted automatically from the green glare and the throbbing hum of the engines reverberated throughout the shuttle as his speed rapidly approached and then exceeded Mach 1. The valley hills around Park City helped contain the blast, but the concussion wave still caught up with the shuttlecraft, tossing it around like a rattle in a baby's hand. But it only lasted a few seconds before passing beyond him and Zack quickly regained control of the shuttle, slowing to a stop and spinning the craft around to give him a view of the blast.

As with the concussion wave, the surrounding hills and mountains had helped to contain and direct the blast, channeling the circle of green energy as it expanded through the valley to completely annihilate everything from Park City to Kimball Junction. The whole valley swirled, burned and churned with green, electric fire, the mushroom cloud boiling its fury and would continue to do so for hours.

Zack looked at the holonav, noting the nearest Krylok shuttlecraft over seven hundred miles away on the west coast. Setting his navigational beacon east, with no particular location in mind, Zack engaged the autopilot and released the controls, closing his eyes and letting what remained of his humanity come to grips with what he had just done...

Chapter 66.

Saturday, June 30, 2001.

Necrotura Island; The South Pacific.

9:03 AM.

Mordecai Necrotura watched the green mushroom cloud from the astral plain, having projected his spirit to Park City from the safety of his private island. He was ethereal, a spiritual voyeur on a different plane of existence, yet he couldn't help but be awed by the blasts destructive splendor. The hypnotic rhythm of its swirling, electric green miasma stirred him deeply. So much apocalyptic power! It was overwhelming! Mordecai slowly retracted his spirit back along his ethereal lifeline in a kaleidoscopic blur of land and ocean until he entered his body with an electric pop of his synapses. He slowly opened his eyes and surveyed the room around him.

He was in his meditation chamber, a small room with dark blank walls.

He gave a telepathic nudge and almost instantly a doorway opened in the wall behind him and in hurried two young male Acolytes, falling to their knees once inside the chamber. They would have praised his name as the savior of humanity, but like all of his Acolytes, their tongues had been cut out when they were but children. But their voices mattered not when he was telepathically attuned to their mind.

"I will take Communion now." Mordecai said softly, still entranced by the boiling green cloud of destruction seared into his minds eye. "I SAID I'LL TAKE COMMUNION NOW!" Mordecai snarled and the Acolytes scrambled to their feet, rushing from the room to do their masters bidding...

Mordecai gave the girls heart one final squeeze, riding out the orgasmic rapture of Communion. Once he was certain the last of her soul had been drained, he retracted his arm from her sliced sternum and stood there, blood dripping from his arm onto his sagging manhood while a pair of mute Acolytes wiped him clean with towels. Another pair dragged the girl's corpse off where a bullet would be put through its head and then the body cremated.

Those who provided Mordecai with his Communion were spared the damnation of reanimation.

Once clean his Acolytes dressed him in his robes, bowed and took their leave through the servant's entrance, leaving him alone. He closed his eyes and drank in the calm euphoric afterglow, letting it clear his mind, allowing the reflection of the past to illuminate the path ahead.

During the battle with the Krylok at his estate, one of the aliens had slashed his face. He had fallen ill on the Learjet as it retreated for his island. He knew right then that the Krylok had infected him, and he fully expected to die before he reached his island. And within minutes, he had been on the brink of death, his muscles convulsing with pain, his skin burning with fever. But miraculously, he had recovered as quickly as he had fallen ill, and by the time they had reached the island, his facial wounds had actually begun to heal, the shredded flaps of skin scabbing along the slash marks.

It was then that he felt himself begin to change, but not on the outside. If anything, he looked stronger and fitter than ever before. The slashing wounds on his cheek were now little more than fading white scars. No, the real change had taken place on the inside. It had only been four days since his Rainbow Lake estate has fallen, but already his energy had increased to the point where he needed little more than three hours of sleep a night. His body had grown tougher, more resilient. His physical strength, speed and dexterity had increased several times over, to superhuman proportions. His psychic abilities had also sharpened, even increased in some instance. But a hunger had also risen in him, a hunger that could only be satiated with fresh human brains. The Krylok had infected him and changed him, of that there was no doubt, but in Mordecai's eyes it had been for the better. Was this what they had planned for him back in 1964? He was genetically compatible for the Hybrid conversion. Had the Krylok's slash somehow implanted him with one of their slugs? He remembered swallowing and gagging on blood and chunks of flesh. Had one of those pieces of flesh been an embryo? And if so, would he become a supplicant to their will?

"You are Mordecai Necrotura, and you bow to nothing on the earth or in heaven, Man, Beast or God." He spoke aloud, his wicked voice echoing in the Chamber.

His Island was well stocked and well fortified, with over one hundred Templar's and twice as many Acolytes, eager to sacrifice themselves at his slightest whim. Not to mention it was wired with cutting edge surveillance and defensive technology. There would be plenty of time to settle his scores with the Krylok, as well as the Unbelievers who had desecrated his temple at Rainbow Lake. World domination was still within his grasp, but now was the time to consolidate his strength, explore his newfound powers and abilities and assess what remained of his worldwide network of occultists and contacts. He needed to call home as many of his followers as possible, yet at the same time infiltrate his people into as many outposts and strongholds of humanity as he could find.

His strategy for conquering would have to change as well. He had been foolish to think humanity would come to him for salvation. The masses were sheep, and deserving of a slaughter.

And I will feed on their flesh and blood!

Only his New Humanity was fit to reclaim the earth, to reshape it in Mordecai's image. Yes, once the herds were culled, the age of the New Humanity would be at hand.

But first it was time to fffeeeeed!

Mordecai opened his dark eyes, which sparkled with diabolical madness. A wide, toothy smile spread from ear to ear. An evil cackle grew in his throat, growing in intensity and passion until it was a full on fit of insane laughter that echoed through the Communion chamber...

The epic saga continues in DEADRISE 2: DEADWAR available now!

end.