Dead Chaos - Book 1 - Zombie Apocalypse

Dead Chaos - Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

After asking around, I found Kyle and Zeke in a classroom watching the biology students experiment on a zombie chained to the wall. There was a glass case around the zombie, a man whose age was impossible to distinguish with so much decay. A patch of grey flesh was hanging from his forehead down to his cheek. He was missing several fingers spread over both hands and, from the sounds he was making, really pissed off. The zombie was mostly naked, revealing all sorts of bruises and discolorations. I wondered who had the lucky job of undressing him.

I could feel several more zombies behind a chained and padlocked metal door. An infected adolescent boy clawed at the bars of his cage from across the room, staring hungrily at us. His urgent groans made me want to put him out of his misery. Small and scrawny, the infected kid was stuck in a permanent state of agony.

I imagined myself using my power to drop the infected man behind the glass case, just to see what the scientists made of it. They’d no doubt take credit, thinking it was something they’d done to make a zombie pass out for an hour or so.

Creeping up behind Kyle, I poked him in the back. “What are they trying to accomplish?”

A nerdy woman in a white lab coat glanced at me with an irritated look and answered for him. “We’re trying to figure out if snake venom has any effect on the dead.”

Another “scientist” entered the room carrying a crate with tiny holes poked in it. This was turning out to be interesting. Lab coat number two unlatched the crate and climbed up a ladder to throw it into the zombie’s playpen from up above. I watched intently as absolutely nothing happened for what seemed like minutes.

“So, you’re testing the infected’s resistance to empty boxes?” I joked lightheartedly, trying to alleviate the boredom of nothing happening. That jest got an unenthusiastic grunt from the male scientist and a disgusted look from the female. Glad they managed to maintain some levity. Or not, as the case was.

The crate finally began to wobble slightly and a snake peeked its head out slowly. The zombie seemed indifferent to the snake’s presence, but it had definitely noticed it. Both lab coats were furiously taking notes as the snake crept closer to the zombie. I wondered what the heck they could be writing down. I imagined it was something like this:

The snake hissed

The zombie groaned

The snake slithered

The zombie stared blankly

Exciting stuff. Sign me up for Zombie 101.

Of course the zombie didn’t care about the snake. Everyone knew the infected didn’t eat coldblooded creatures. Throw a raccoon in there and we’d be seeing something.

“What kinda snake is that?” Zeke asked quietly, and I noticed there was fear in his eyes when he looked at the zombie.

“Crotalus Viridis,” responded the male scientist.

“The hell is that?” questioned Zeke a little louder.

“Prairie rattlesnake,” scoffed the scientist. Yeah, because everyone knows the Latin name, dork. Did the science geek really expect a little kid to study taxonomy? Science had never been my favorite subject in school, but if science fiction were taught, I’d have aced every test. Little did I know back then all this would happen, taking some of the fiction out of science fiction.

The snake sauntered over to the zombie and started shaking its rattle in warning. The infected male glanced down momentarily, distracted by the noise, and looked back at us with a famished expression. All snapping jaws and grunts with this one. The rattlesnake lunged at the zombie and bit his leg. It retreated back and swayed its rattle a little bit, judging its opponent. The zombie was unaffected by the bite and continued to fight the chains and snap at us. The snake bit him again and again, but the zombie showed no signs of feeling it.