Read Online Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology by Anthony Giangregorio - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anthony Giangregorio
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that they real y are worms, one realizes—they have extruded themselves from the main satel ite—what we took to be—which is to say one means—the cabin is ful of floating body parts. These space-worms apparently excrete some sort of aci—
(Booster rockets fired at this point; duration of the burn is seven point two seconds. This may or may not have been attempt to escape or possibly to ram the central object. In either case, the maneuver did not work. It seems likely that the chambers themselves were clogged with worms and Captain Vassily Task—or whichever officer was then in charge—believed an explosion of the fuel tanks themselves to be imminent as a result of the clog. Hence the shutdown.) American voice : Oh my Christ they’re in my head, they’re eating my fuckin br —
(Static.)
Dagbolt : I am retreating to the aft storage compartment. At the present moment, this seems the most prudent of my severely limited choices. I believe the others are al dead. Pity. Brave bunch.
Even that fat Russian who kept rooting around in his nose. But in another sense I don’t think—
(Static.)
Dagbolt : —dead at al because the Russian woman—or rather, the Russian woman’s severed head, one means to say—just floated past me, and her eyes were open. She was looking at me from inside her—
(Static.)
Dagbolt : —keep you—
(Explosion. Static.)
Dagbolt : Is it possible for a severed penis to have an orgasm? I th—
(Static.)
Dagbolt : —around me. I repeat, al around me. Squirming things. They—I say, does anyone know if—
(Dagbolt, screaming and cursing, then just screaming. Sound of toothless old man again.) Transmission ends.
The Gorbachev/Truman exploded three seconds later. The extrusion from the rough bal nicknamed Star Wormwood had been observed from better than three hundred telescopes earthside during the short and rather pitiful conflict. As the final sixty-one seconds of transmission began, the craft began to be obscured by something that certainly looked like worms. By the end of the final transmission, the craft itself could not be seen at al —only the squirming mass of things that had attached themselves to it. Moments after the final explosion, a weather satel ite snapped a single picture of floating debris, some of which was almost certainly chunks of the worm-things. A severed human leg clad in a Russian space suit floating among them was a good deal easier to identify.
And in a way, none of it even mattered. The scientists and political leaders of both countries knew exactly where Star Wormwood was located: above the expanding hole in earth’s ozone layer. It was sending something down from there, and it was not Flowers by Wire.
Missiles came next.
Star Wormwood jigged easily out of their way and then returned to its place over the hole.
More dead people got up and walked.
Now they were al biting.
The final effort to destroy the thing was made by the United States. At a cost of just under six hundred mil ion dol ars, four SDI “defensive weapons” satel ites had been hoisted into orbit by the previous administration. The president of the current—and last—administration informed the Soviet premier of his intentions to use the SDI missiles, and got an enthusiastic approval (the Russian premier failed to note the fact that seven years before he had cal ed these missiles
“infernal engines of war and hate forged in the factories of hel ”).
It might even have worked… except not a single missile from a single SDI orbiter fired. Each satel ite was equipped with six two-megaton warheads. Every goddamn one malfunctioned.
So much for modern technology.
Maddie supposed the horrible deaths of those brave men (and one woman) in space real y hadn’t been the last shock; there was the business of the one little graveyard right here on Jenny. But that didn’t seem to count so much because, after al , she had not been there. With the end of the world now clearly at hand and the
(Booster rockets fired at this point; duration of the burn is seven point two seconds. This may or may not have been attempt to escape or possibly to ram the central object. In either case, the maneuver did not work. It seems likely that the chambers themselves were clogged with worms and Captain Vassily Task—or whichever officer was then in charge—believed an explosion of the fuel tanks themselves to be imminent as a result of the clog. Hence the shutdown.) American voice : Oh my Christ they’re in my head, they’re eating my fuckin br —
(Static.)
Dagbolt : I am retreating to the aft storage compartment. At the present moment, this seems the most prudent of my severely limited choices. I believe the others are al dead. Pity. Brave bunch.
Even that fat Russian who kept rooting around in his nose. But in another sense I don’t think—
(Static.)
Dagbolt : —dead at al because the Russian woman—or rather, the Russian woman’s severed head, one means to say—just floated past me, and her eyes were open. She was looking at me from inside her—
(Static.)
Dagbolt : —keep you—
(Explosion. Static.)
Dagbolt : Is it possible for a severed penis to have an orgasm? I th—
(Static.)
Dagbolt : —around me. I repeat, al around me. Squirming things. They—I say, does anyone know if—
(Dagbolt, screaming and cursing, then just screaming. Sound of toothless old man again.) Transmission ends.
The Gorbachev/Truman exploded three seconds later. The extrusion from the rough bal nicknamed Star Wormwood had been observed from better than three hundred telescopes earthside during the short and rather pitiful conflict. As the final sixty-one seconds of transmission began, the craft began to be obscured by something that certainly looked like worms. By the end of the final transmission, the craft itself could not be seen at al —only the squirming mass of things that had attached themselves to it. Moments after the final explosion, a weather satel ite snapped a single picture of floating debris, some of which was almost certainly chunks of the worm-things. A severed human leg clad in a Russian space suit floating among them was a good deal easier to identify.
And in a way, none of it even mattered. The scientists and political leaders of both countries knew exactly where Star Wormwood was located: above the expanding hole in earth’s ozone layer. It was sending something down from there, and it was not Flowers by Wire.
Missiles came next.
Star Wormwood jigged easily out of their way and then returned to its place over the hole.
More dead people got up and walked.
Now they were al biting.
The final effort to destroy the thing was made by the United States. At a cost of just under six hundred mil ion dol ars, four SDI “defensive weapons” satel ites had been hoisted into orbit by the previous administration. The president of the current—and last—administration informed the Soviet premier of his intentions to use the SDI missiles, and got an enthusiastic approval (the Russian premier failed to note the fact that seven years before he had cal ed these missiles
“infernal engines of war and hate forged in the factories of hel ”).
It might even have worked… except not a single missile from a single SDI orbiter fired. Each satel ite was equipped with six two-megaton warheads. Every goddamn one malfunctioned.
So much for modern technology.
Maddie supposed the horrible deaths of those brave men (and one woman) in space real y hadn’t been the last shock; there was the business of the one little graveyard right here on Jenny. But that didn’t seem to count so much because, after al , she had not been there. With the end of the world now clearly at hand and the
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