Anne of the Apocalypse

Wrong Side of the Cone

Anne had not expected to spend her late thirties fighting zombies...in space.

To be honest she hadn't expected to spend these years doing anything. Expectations were a luxury that belonged to the past. Expectations disconnected you from the present. Being disconnected from the present, as desirable as that might be, would get you dead, real fast.

Yet here she was, coming out of hyper-sleep, to the all too familiar screams and crashes, she had left earth to escape. Where was the Eurythmics she had input to wake her from her 60 year slumber? She didn't want to open her eyes. She could tell from the sound of things she would not like what she was going to see. Maybe she could just input another 60 years through the back-jack, and sleep this one out. If the good-guys won...what the hell, she was the good guys. Good guys didn't sleep through a fight and though she had no great love for any of the current watch team, no telling what kind of damage the Kite was incurring.

"All right then." She began stretching, slowly as not to attract attention to herself. The cone solution was changing, going from liquid to gas. Her digestive system was flushing and the adrenaline charge would inject once the lactic acid flush was complete. She opened her eyes to get the lay of things before the gas cloud thickened and obstructed her vision. Yep. Zombies. She didn't waste time trying to figure out how the hell they got here. No point. As ubiquitous as fleas, it really could not be surprising that they had made it on board. Still, this totally sucked. This was so not how she wanted to wake up.

There were three Zeds in the chamber. They were busy at the moment eating from the body cavity of whomever it was they had just downed. That would explain the earlier screaming and the crashing. Martha McCaffrey was cowering behind a cone console in the far corner of the sleeper cabin. Anne mentally shook her head. Useless. The gas thickened as the critical mass of solution evaporated and she was temporarily blind to the outside. She cleared her throat spitting out a wad of incu-gel. Then, she blew her nose in her hand to clear ther sinuses of the stuff. Why did they make that shit smell like cherries? She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs. Almost almost dry now. She hadn't fought zombies naked in a long time. It was pretty much the worst-case scenario but there was no help for it. She opened and closed her fists and pumped her legs. She had no weapon and the noise of the cone opening was sure to attract attention. If nothing was reachable on the floor, she would have to use the fire extinguisher. She thought about running for it, but there was no telling how bad the sitch...so...fire extinguisher. She used her last few seconds in the safety of the cone recalling the layout of the sleeper cabin-thirty units, two exits, six, extinguishers, one manual control jack---the floor clamps released with a loud hiss. "Shit! Time to dance!"

The cone lifted off of her. Three gore-faced zombies looked up from their kill.

"Young." Anne thought, seeing their intact faces and relatively un-decayed bodies. "Well that doesn't make things any easier." The trio on the floor seemed dully confused. They had a fresh kill but another meal had just made itself available. "God, they were stupid" Anne thought, "Thank God." as she backed away feeling for the wall behind her. She heard it, then smelled it and then it had her by the waist and shoulder. She knew better than this. Crap, that's what sleeping will get you. Too adrenalized to be disgusted by the cold slime of its rotting flesh or that the hand with which she had been reaching for the wall was now wrapped around what could only be a zombie stiffy, she dropped her weight into her pelvis, and launched her hips backward into his. With her free hand she clasped its neck, then before it could bite, heaved forward, bending double and flipped the zombie over her head into the forward-most of the three diners, who had apparently decided on the vertical meal option. She would have loved to follow up this familiar combination with a skull shattering kick but naked that would never do. Even seriously decayed Z's had sharp bones. One cut would be enough. She turned and ran along the wall.