CHAPTER 2 - ROSENCRANTZ, GET HIM!

Yeah, that officially locked down first place as the ‘weirdest thing I'd ever seen.’ Mercutio was now sitting upright, making growling noises as he dug his chompers deeper into poor Karen's neck. His skin hadn't changed; he still looked about the same as he had before all this happened: naked, pale, and very dead. But for whatever reason, our med school project had turned into a genuine zombie.

Fortunately, I had seen more than a few zombie movies. Almost by reflex, I knew what to do. The scalpel was still in my hand. I took it and stabbed Mercutio solidly in the temple, as hard as I could. It wasn't as easy as I'd thought, punching through. My first blow sort of glanced off. It got the zombie's attention, though. It unlatched itself from Karen, which caused a fountain of blood to splash all over the lab table before she slumped to the floor. Mercutio was looking at me like I was the Chef’s Special. I figured I had a couple seconds before he made a lunge at my throat next.

So I stabbed again, this time putting my back into it a little bit more. This time, the blade punched through his skull, solidly embedding itself in the tissue beneath. I shoved it in all the way to my fist, and the blade snapped off inside the thing's head as it turned to face me.

According to the movies, that should have taken it out. Unfortunately, this zombie hadn't seen the same movies I had. It took the blow and kept coming at me, sluggish but consistent. Next thing it did was sort of flop over in my general direction. It was still seated on the table, and didn't seem to have complete control of its muscles. Maybe that was something that would improve with time? I didn't want to find out!

As the thing tipped itself toward me, I scooted sideways, doing my best to dodge out of the way. Instead of landing on top of me, the zombie grabbed my lab coat with both hands as he fell off the table onto the floor, dragging me along with him. I fell hard on top of the monster, and I admit it, I screamed.

Don't look at me that way. You would have, too.

I was fresh out of weapons, my scalpel a useless piece of plastic. Wait—I still had my cell phone! I whipped the thing out of my pocket, transferred it to my left hand, and proceeded to start bashing the thing in the head right where I'd wounded it with the scalpel. Bone splintered and broke as I hammered the creature with repeated blows. I hammered the iPhone into it over and over as the monster thrashed on the floor beneath me.

Finally, something I did must have had an effect, because the creature just stopped moving. All at once it collapsed like its strings had just been cut. I heaved a huge sigh of relief, panting from the exertion.

My cell phone was trashed. There were bits of brain all over it, and the screen and back plate were both shattered as well. I dropped the useless thing on the floor.

I'd done a number on the zombie's skull, too. The small hole from my scalpel was now a much larger hole, with a lot of messy edges and what looked like some brain matter showing. Gross. But at least it wasn't moving anymore! I slipped as I tried to get myself back to my feet, and my hand landed hard on the zombie's sternum. It felt cold, almost unnaturally so. And I realized with a start that there something was under my palm which hadn't been there before.

Without thinking, because if I'd thought for ten seconds, I might have left well enough alone, I scooped the object under my palm up and glanced at it. To my surprise, it was a small, black crystal, the sort you might see at a New Age shop. It was tiny. Maybe the size you would use for a dangly earring or something.

But I didn't get to stare at it for very long, because as I did, the crystal vanished. It didn't just disappear. It literally sank into my palm before I could even reach over with my other hand to scrape it off. And as the crystal vanished, it left something behind, inside my head.

A rush of new thoughts flooded my mind. They felt like memories. But it was difficult to call them memories, since this wasn't even close to anything I'd directly experienced. It was like new knowledge, unfolding in my brain without me having to do anything at all. Any other time, learning like this would have been awesome. I’d have killed for a crystal that magically taught me everything I needed to know to pass my next exams, for instance. This wasn’t like that.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Alongside the memories, I got an image in my mind of an elaborate network of swirling energy. In the center were five ‘sockets,’ all interconnected. One socket was now filled with a small black stone, while the other four looked…weird. Like they ought to be able to fit a similar stone, but were blocked. I felt like I needed to do something to unlock them.

Magical Stones

Point 1: Black stone - Control Undead

Point 2: X

Point 3: X

Point 4: X

Point 5: X

I wanted to be able to stand up and shout to the world, ‘I know Kung Fu!’ or something else comparably cool. But the crystal didn't give me any practical, real-world skills like that. Instead, supposedly, the memories I'd been given taught me how to ‘Control Undead.’

Which would have been really useful, a few minutes earlier. But the zombie was dead, and I was hoping to never run into another one again...

My first glance around the room told me that hope was in vain. Mercutio hadn't been the only zombie to wake up. All of them had. Plus, Karen was now shambling around the room as well, chasing poor Alfred even after her demise. It looked like at least two students from other groups had fallen in the initial assault, and then risen again to join the fun.

Zombies were real. Was there any chance the magic spell that crystal thing supposedly taught me was real, too? It was worth a shot. The nearest zombie was Rosencrantz. He was menacing Dr. Carver, backing him into a corner. I stretched out my hand toward Rosencrantz, reaching deep inside myself for that well of power those memories said was sitting there waiting for me to use it.

At first, nothing happened. But then I felt something connect inside me, almost like it clicked. All at once, wisps of black energy sprang from my fingertips, reaching out like tendrils toward the zombie. As soon as the first tendril touched it, Rosencrantz stopped moving. He just stood there like a statue as the other wisps of whatever the smoke-like black stuff wrapped themselves around him.

Then in a flash, he was mine.

I felt it the second it happened. One moment, the zombie was an enemy and a threat. The next, I knew intuitively that it would do whatever I asked. Rosencrantz was mine now. He was my servant, bound to my will. Mine to order and command. Or that’s what the crystal’s pseudo-memories said, anyway. It was time to put that to a test.

“Rosencrantz, come to me,” I told it.

The zombie did as I asked. It strode swiftly to my side, and then stood there waiting for more orders.

“How were you doing that?” Carver asked.

I shook my head at him. “I'm not sure, myself!”

He got over his fear quickly enough and joined me in staring at the now-passive zombie. “Fascinating. Can you control more than one? How did you do this?”

I held up my palm, like that explained everything—which of course, it didn’t. I shook my head and pointed at Mercutio’s body. “Hard to explain. When I took down that zombie there, a crystal appeared. When I picked it up, it was sucked into my palm. Now I can ‘Control Undead,’ apparently. Just one, though, at least according to the memories the crystal gave me.”

“Fascinating!” he repeated. “We should experiment some more once we can. For now—watch out!”

That last was because another of the zombies was headed our way. This wasn’t a cadaver; it was one of the students, a guy I only knew by his last name, Stevens. Like Karen, the zombie had gone for his throat, and he’d come back as a zombie. Didn’t take long, it seemed.

Again, I’d watched enough movies to know that was bad news. If the zombies busted out of this room, they’d kill other people who would come back as zombies themselves, and next thing you knew we’d all be extras in a new version of ‘The Walking Dead.’

Most of my classmates were either dead or fled. Alfred was still alive, trying to keep a table between himself and Zombie Karen. A trio of med students stood in one corner using stools to fend off the two zombies trying to get at them. All around the lab, little dramas were played out, and unfortunately it didn’t look like the students were winning.

Zombie Stevens was still making a bee-line for me.

“Rosencrantz, get him!” I called out. My zombie lurched immediately into motion, staggering forward to attack Zombie Stevens. I didn’t know if he’d be able to beat it solo, but it took the pressure off us. I needed to get some more people on board with stopping this menace here and now, or we were screwed.

“Doctor, we need to stop them from getting out,” I said.

“I’m game, but how?”

“Go for the head. Worked on that one,” I replied, pointing. “But it takes more than a couple of hits.”

Most of the dissection tools were small and not very adapted to this sort of thing, so I grabbed one of the wooden stools, picked it up, and smashed it to the ground hard enough to shatter. There was one good chunk about two feet long with a pointed end. I snatched that up, and handed another clunkier piece of broken wood to Carver.

“If they get out of this room, how many new zombies are they going to create? We have to stop this.”

He nodded, taking the club. “Let’s go, then.”