Gases vented from relief valves. The discoverer wiped the glass window with his sleeve, and gasped at the person he found. He drew his comrades closer. One found the controls, deftly punching stubborn buttons, until finally, a rusted arm calmly extended, and let the stainless coffin down upon the floor.
Jack gripped his head as if a bullet had struck it, then he opened his eyes for the first time. Three others surrounding him leaned in for a closer look. One was a young man in faded-olive military fatigues, another was a tall woman draped in bursts of colors and patterns on pigskin, and the last was an older man in an off-white, long-sleeved shirt with a wing-tipped collar and a pen in his breast pocket. From where Jack laid, they all towered over him.
"Parasol!" the woman declared. She prepared to strike with the blunt of her staff. The man in fatigues held her back.
"He ain't army! Frill!" the young man cried, "He don't wear anything like them!"
While he struggled to contain her violence, the other man quipped, "True, his garments reflect the style of Parasol, but I've never seen this pattern in my travels."
Jack was wearing a neon green jacket and beige cargo pants. On his jacket, Garb Delivery Co.'s logo featured prominently on the right breast.
"English?" Jack remarked in a slur. He got up from the pod, which laid haphazardly on the floor.
"You mean Inglish?" "In'lish?" "Aelish?"
So said the wingtip-collared gentleman, the man in fatigues, and the tribal-looking woman. The variations by which they called it didn't make sense to Jack, but it sounded close enough.
For the three, though, the way Jack called it only served to confirm something.
"Parasol?"
"Frill, stop."
Jack shook his head and wiped his face. He glanced around at the odd mix of dim white and green lights, all blurred to his eyes. It's like Christmas in here, good god—he thought to himself. The last thing he remembered—delivering pizza, entering the office, then, maybe… He got lost? Then he tripped?
Kentucky Fried Christ—was that what happened?
"If I may be so bold," the wingtip-collared man said with a slight bow, "This metal-glass bed in which you lay, we had opted to open it as it was making dangerous noises."
"Tha's right! Smoke was a'gushin too sumwhere—though, just by me, I didn' for-reals think we shoulda woked ya. Could've done wrong without anyone knowin', you know?"
"Parasol?"
Jack understood only a little of that. Something about smoke—might have actually been bad, so I guess they did a good thing?—he concluded. Though, this lady constantly insisting "Parasol?" was a bit of a mystery—the speaker and the question both.
A growl caught everyone's attention, and footsteps rattled the metal-grated floor. "Singer," the wingtip-collared man called. "One, out!" the man in fatigues replied. Two cords and a pouch sprung from his right hand, and his left hand cradled a fist-sized rock. In less than a moment, the rock was in the pouch, and in less than the next, the sling made just two circles over his head before the moment of release. Clarity returned to Jack's eyes just in time to watch a person's forehead get squashed in by a quarter-brick-sized projectile.
In a panic, Jack screamed a stifled scream and fell out of the pod. "You killed him!" he cried.
"…Yeah?" Singer replied.
"What? Are you insane!"
"…Nah?" Singer replied.
The other two looked confused.
"Hey, Neruz," Singer bumped the wingtip-collared man by the arm, "He ain't believing me."
Neruz sighed and faced Jack. "Surely, you know about zambies?" he said.
Jack's eyebrows formed a tilde.
"Zambies? Zumbies?" Singer added, "Some people pronounce it differs. Neruz here's traveled a lot, so he'd know—"
"Zomzee, sambeshe, muernahito--"
"Hey, where'd that last one come from? That ain't even close," Singer interrupted.
"From the Nipoñol Quarter, why?"
"What?" was all Jack could say to curse his fate.
He slumped down against the side of his cryo pod. He just wanted to deliver pizza and make ends meet, just doing odd jobs until his writing gig could take off. He'd already written for a couple of magazines, but it wasn't like he was living off of royalties. If anything, he'd say he was at about 5% of the way to that kind of life.
Now what, though? Live life as a post-apocalyptic writer, scavenging for food and stationery supplies?
"Parasol," the woman whispered. She crouched next to Jack, staring at him. He looked up at her, a little bit spooked, pulling his head back. "Parasol?" he asked.
Hold it, wait a minute—right! That's the office he was delivering pizza to!
"Parasol," the woman repeated, pointing at him. After a second of confusion, he shook his head.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"Jack," he replied, pointing at himself.
"Jack… from Parasol?" she asked.
"No? I don't work there?"
"So your name's Jack, huh?" Singer added, "Mine's Singer. The traveller here's Neruz, and that nomad's Frill."
Jack got out of the bed and on his feet. Most of his brain fog's gone, and his eyesight's adjusted, too. He got a good look at his current companions. Frill's staff was set flat beside her, but beside that was a Wabanaki-style hunting bow made with two adjoined fiberglass bows, and Jack recognized the faded brand printed on the back, too. He looked up at Singer, who's got a handle of a hefty little club poking out from his hip between all the slings and cords tucked away in pockets all across the strap of his messenger bag, and that bag looked heavy. He looked up at Neruz, who looked like a writer from the Victorian Era or something. He wore six sheathes for six knives on his sides, and strapped to his legs were two thigh-length sheathes covering up some sort of straight-handled weapon.
At once, the echoes of gunfire and growling clashed among the hallways of the facility. Shouting and the trooping of boots underscored the gunfire brought against a rolling tide of the dead.
"My time here is over," Neruz said.
"Ah shi-et, they're here!" Singer quavered.
"Can't fight—run!" Frill exclaimed.
The three dashed off before Jack could mutter a word. He took off after them, following them down the facility. He ran under dim red lights, past hundreds of opened cryo tubes—some of them starting to rust—and past windows that peered into dark, furniture-less offices.
He didn't remember seeing any of this; he was delivering pizza to an office tower, not to whatever kind of place this was. He lost the three as they ran around the corner, and the sound of a door opened, light shining their shadows on the wall far down the corridor, then the door closed, and their shadows disappeared. He ran after them and slammed his hands into the bar of an emergency exit door.
He emerged to a huge warehouse, where light struggled to come through the dirtied skylights. Instead, a pillar of light waited for them at the other end of the warehouse. He joined up with the three, who had paused in front of an opened crate. Jack took a peek at what they were staring at, and there, lying in a neat stack, were layers of assault rifles stacked on top of each other. Small ammunition cans were also scattered around the opening of the crate. Great! Now they can—
Singer's eyes went wide and he whisked himself away. Neruz grimaced before following. Jack and Frill made eye contact.
"Please," Jack begged, "Please tell me you're gonna get a gun."
Frill shook her head.
"Gun complicated too much," she said before running away.
Jack cried. He cried, because he agreed with her. He didn't know how to use a gun. There were levers under the switches, and switches under the levers. He also roughly knew that guns would jam for whatever reason, and he didn't know how to deal with any of that.
He spotted a few hand grenades mixed up in the pile, though. 'Pull the pin and throw' was as simple enough a concept for him or a 6-year-old Call of Obligation player to grasp. He picked up the case of grenades like he would a case of beer and promptly ran after the trio.
They reached the open warehouse door and emerged to a nice, sunny afternoon. The grass was green, and the birds chirped happily from the trees. This wasn't right.
"Where the hell am I?" Jack blurted out. They were in a square area fenced off by a rusting chainlink fence, topped off by rusting barbed wire. There was a helipad above the grass, and nothing grew in its shadow.
The gunfire from within the facility hadn't stopped. Singer felt kinda bad for Jack. He could kinda relate—having once or ten times gotten drunk and woken up in strange places. This was just one of those times, probably. The others didn't want anything to do with him—they didn't want anything to do with each other, even.
Singer put his messenger bag around Jack.
"Are… are you making me your friend?" Jack asked.
"Just play along for now, okay?" Singer replied.
"You! You four! Hold it right there!" someone shouted. Everyone turned to see two Parasol soldiers who had emerged from the warehouse doors, their rifles pointed at the group.
"Stand down!" Singer shouted, "I said stand down, goddamnit!"
The two soldiers eyed each other. Singer's accent had shifted.
"Sir, with all due respect, what's your unit?" one of the soldiers asked.
"Twenty-first!" he replied. The two soldiers shuffled their feet. Singer continued, "We were trackin' down a smuggler here when we got separated in the facility. I managed to get out, then I met these civilians salvagin' around in the warehouse."
Singer took off the dogtags around his neck and threw them over to the two soldiers. One of them picked it up and read it. "Checks out," he said. They lowered their guns, and the soldier approached and handed Singer his dogtags.
"Apologies for the rudeness, sir!" they announced.
"Exterminators?" Singer asked.
"Yes, sir!"
"Mind if you point me to your caravan? I'll escort these ones there for evacuation, then I'll like to put in a word with the case officer."
The soldiers pointed to a hole in the fence that led to a trail around the facility. "It should take you to the access road," the soldiers saluted. Singer saluted back and led the group out through the hole in the fence.
Soldiers and volunteer militia guarded a caravan that was waiting on a road some distance away from the warehouse. "Halt! Who goes there?" a soldier shouted, pointing his gun at a group of motley civilians who suddenly emerged from the bushes. "Pleas', sir," Singer begged, now wearing plain trousers and a ragged, dirtied shirt, "We were a-merely scavengin' what we thought was another ruin—but alas! Zambeez descended upon us, but t'was when we met the exterminators!"
The soldier slowly lowered his rifle. "Sure," he said, nodding his head in the direction of the caravan, "Ok."
'Sure, ok'? That's it? 3 years in drama school for a 'Sure, ok'? Singer cried real tears. "Huh, he must be exhausted," the soldier thought.
Singer did some more smooth-talking, spewing out ambiguous facts and unverifiable truths, before they managed to hitch a ride in the MEDIVAC wagon. Big tubes, slick with oil, carried the wagon's body on its chassis. They squeezed themselves between the various wounded soldiers—most of them asleep, and some of them missing a limb.
"Medic! Medic!"
Upon the shouting, the attending medic hopped off and dashed towards whichever poor lad needed the morphine. For a while, they could let their guard down.
"Where's this cart taking us, anyway?" Jack asked. Singer bit his lip—he did all that smooth-talking without ever asking for the destination.
"Samarin," Neruz replied.
"Oh, how'dya know?" Singer asked.
"That's where I came from before coming upon the ruin. It's the closest city, but nevertheless a fair one."
Jack looked outside through the view ports. Forest transitioned to sturdy fences and farmland, where sentry towers dotted the paddies and fields, then paddies and fields transitioned to villages and guard posts—then to towns and barracks—then finally, late at night, after a seven-hour journey, the back of the wagon opened, and the gentle glow of Samarin's gas lamps greeted them.
As they got off, he struggled to wrap his head around something. The only logical conclusion to everything he'd seen was that, somewhere along the line, humanity conquered the zombie menace. Was there a trick to it? Maybe. Maybe not.