No Mere Zombie: Deathless Book 2 Read online

  “The rejuvenator will wake me one week after Isis’s slumber ends,” Irakesh explained, voice pitched low so not even the thrall hovering over Ptah could hear. Many dismissed thralls, but Irakesh knew that they had ears. He’d purchased the services of many. “By that time, she will have assumed that her Ark is safe. She will emerge and begin consolidating her holdings. I will wait for her to leave, then simply steal the key and run. She might be able to catch me, but if her Ark is damaged, she won’t be able to leave it. She’ll have no choice but to stay and defend, while I claim the Ark of the Redwood.”

  “A bold plan. One that might even work,” Ptah allowed. He downed the contents of the fresh cup, rising from his stool as he set the empty cup on the table. He swayed like a man newly at sea. “I’ve lived up to my end of our little bargain. See that you do the same. I want a place among Sekhmet’s pantheon.”

  “You’re lying,” Irakesh said, rising smoothly to his feet and drawing his na-kopesh. The curved blade caught the sun glinting through the high windows. “You have no intention of joining Ra. You’re off to report to your real master. To tell Isis of my plan.”

  If he was correct, Ptah would try to kill him, confirming his suspicions. If he was not, then Ptah would protest his innocence loudly and longly. Either way he needed to die. He was no longer of any use and if he found out that Irakesh was acting on his own, he’d warn Ra. That would end badly for Irakesh.

  Ptah wrenched a bronze dagger from its belt sheath, aiming a clumsy strike at Irakesh’s heart. Irakesh flowed backwards, casually allowing the blade’s point to touch his tunic. Then he lunged, ramming his blade through Ptah’s chest in a parody of the same strike the man had just attempted. It was the ultimate insult. Ptah’s chest began to smoke and smolder as the blade did its work, bright pulses of sickly green essence flowing up the blade and into Irakesh.

  The once-great god glared hatefully at Irakesh as his second life faded. “Isis will stop you.”

  “Not so,” Irakesh said, shoving Ptah’s smoking body heavily to the ground. He wiped his na-kopesh on the rumpled cloak, though Sunsteel never needed cleaning. “I will steal the key. The Ark of the Redwood is mine and you’re the one who gave it to me, Ptah.”

  Chapter 1- Wake Up

  Jordan awoke screaming into the frigid morning, a harsh series of ragged cries. The phantom pain of his arms being torn off was still very real, though a quick glance showed that both were intact. He scrambled to his feet, whirling as he tried to understand where he was and what had just happened.

  The last thing that he remembered was dying in the Ark. He'd been torn apart by the Mother, an ancient being that was for all intents and purposes a god. She was the progenitor of the werewolves, and his entire mission had been to curtail their spread. They murdered innocent people, who rose and murdered more people in turn. Yet he'd failed utterly to stop them, and Professor Smith had led his companions into the Ark and successfully woken the Mother.

  He looked down at himself. Jordan was covered in blood, most of it dried into thick flaky patches. He was also naked, and it was damned cold. A quick glance around showed that he was at the base of one of the Ark's sloped sides. The pyramid towered above him, stabbing into the sky like some too smooth mountain. The place was deathly silent, and other than the cry of a wheeling hawk, the wind was his only companion.

  Not your only companion, Ka-Dun. I am here.

  Jordan whirled again, reaching for the pistol no longer belted at his side. "Who the fuck are you?"

  The words were strange. They were inside his mind somehow.

  I am your beast, Ka-Dun. I serve as guide and protector. Turn towards the Ark's mirrored finish. Study your reflection there and I will show you the truth of things.

  Jordan knew he wasn't going mad, though he wished he were. He was alive when he should be dead. He was naked and covered in blood. He had no memory of coming to this place, because he'd died within the Ark. All of that painted a very disconcerting picture.

  He did as the beast asked, turning to face the pyramid. As the voice had said, he could make out his reflection in the dark stone. He looked like hell, close-cropped blonde hair now matted with dirt. His entire body was a mass of dust and blood.

  Watch, Ka-Dun. The voice said.

  Jordan felt something stir within him, a tingling energy akin to static electricity. It flowed down his body, beginning in his chest and moving outwards through his limbs. The tingling grew hotter, becoming a torrent of very painful fire. Then the change began. It wasn't the agony that really bothered him; it was the knowledge of what he was seeing.

  Bones popped and limbs elongated, even as blonde fur sprouted from every part of his body. His back arched, body contorting at the mercy of the change. A lupine muzzle burst from his face, his teeth lengthening as it did so. He grew taller, now nearly eight feet as fur covered the last of him.

  The reflection staring back at him was unmistakable. He'd become the enemy. Jordan was a god-damned werewolf. Part of him was thrilled at still being alive, but most of him was horrified. In a way he'd sold his soul, had become the very thing he'd sworn to fight. For what? And what could he possibly do about it?

  Prepare yourself, Ka-Dun. It begins.

  Jordan wasn't sure what the voice meant, but he felt something all around him. A gathering energy like the moment before a lightning strike. Then tendrils of fire veined across the sky, lighting the valley as if it were noon. He didn't know what it was, but he could feel that energy. Draw strength from it. Part of him sensed that whatever it was would forever change the world.

  It is the great change, Ka-Dun. The sun-sign that shows that we have entered the next age. Your powers will increase, and you will need them. For in the wake of this cleansing fire, the ancient enemy will rise again.

  Chapter 2- The End of the World

  Director Phillips ignored the whispers rustling through the knots of technicians as he stepped off the elevator onto the lowest public level of Mohn Corp’s Syracuse installation. They found excuses to scurry off on whatever business they were supposed to be about, taking great care to avoid his gaze. He abided his side of the social contract, ignoring them as he would ants. Was it wrong that he’d grown used to doing that, used to thinking of himself as The Director instead of just Mark? He wore the title like a mask, a very powerful mask.

  He passed under the high ceilings with their halogen lights, by the impersonal concrete walls and the watchful eyes of security cameras. None of the Kevlar-clad security guards challenged him as he passed through checkpoints, though policy said they should. They too avoided his gaze. In a way it was as if he didn’t exist, a ghost surrounded in this tomb of an installation. Until he chose to be noticed.

  A precise seven minutes after exiting the elevator he finally arrived at Ops, a fishbowl of a room flanked by wall-sized windows on three sides. Banks of monitors lined stations within, each manned by a white-garbed tech monitoring a stream of information that he’d deemed critical. The room’s far side was dominated by a monitor larger than the aquarium he’d visited in Monterey the previous summer. It was dark now, waiting for his arrival to spring to life.

  “Get me feeds on the twelve primaries,” The Director barked before the glass doors had even finished sliding open. Dozens of heads swiveled briefly in his direction, then dropped back to their respective tasks as he strode boldly between the yellow strips marking the pathway to the pit.

  They looked haggard and more than a little terrified, and he couldn't blame them. Their world was about to end, and they were no doubt wrestling with a mixture of fear and guilt. Here they were in the only secure facility left in the world, the one place where technology would survive the sun's fiery wrath. If any of his personnel had family outside this place they'd almost certainly never see them again.

  The people would be fine, so far as they knew, but the CME would devastate the world's power grid. There would be no internet, no cable. No food being transported in daily. No modern conveniences. Tha
t would lead to a very scared, very aggressive populace and every one of his people knew they were exempted from that chaos. They'd be safe while the rest of the world tore itself apart.

  By the time he’d descended the three steps and entered the spacious ring at the foot of the massive wall display a dozen feeds had already sprung to life. He barely noticed as an Asian woman slipped a tablet into his hand. It was the control interface not only for the display, but for the entire complex. Using the simple device he could find data, issue commands or even shut down power. The biometric sensor was keyed to his thumb, of course.

  He took a moment to survey each of the twelve feeds, a brief twinge of satisfaction rising as the low hum of conversation resumed behind him. His command crew were the best at what they did, far too professional to allow a superior’s arrival to intimidate them for long. They had jobs to do and every one of them knew failure could cost countless lives. Most probably took solace in the work, focusing on it rather than on what they were about to witness.

  “What am I seeing on number six?” he barked, tapping the feed on the tablet and swiping to the data screen. “These metrics are outside tolerance. Get it locked down. Seconds count, people.”

  Eleven of the twelve satellites were in the final phases of lockdown, the feeds showing enormous clam-like shells that were slowly covering their vital components. Those components would be cooked instantly if exposed to the fury the sun was about to unleash on their world. Number six, on the other hand, sat perfectly still. Its feed was still being received, but the protective casing remained retracted.

  “Sir,” one of the techs piped up, a sandy-haired kid who looked as though he should be serving french fries. “Number six has a damaged servo. Time to repair is just under two hours.”

  “Noted,” Mark shot back, turning his attention back to the tablet.

  He pinched the IRIS feed, dragging it open to cover the entire screen. The deep-space satellite belonged to NASA and had been designed to study the sun. It had been deployed a bare handful of months before, a timely addition to their data-gathering abilities. Gasps sounded behind him as some of the technicians saw the feed he’d pulled onto the main screen. He couldn’t blame them, even if they were supposed to be professionals. No one had ever seen anything like this, at least no one in the last thirteen thousand years.

  A fiery wave blanketed space, hurling towards the camera with incredible speed. It drowned out the sun behind it, a glob of plasma that undulated and pulsed as it approached. The image provided no real context, but Mark knew that the coronal mass ejection was many times the size of the earth. That made it far larger than anything in recorded history, and he prayed that their projections of the catastrophic damage it would wreak to the earth's power grid were wrong.

  “Get me an estimated time of impact,” he bellowed, pivoting to face the sea of technicians. Most typed furiously on their keyboards, but a few shot him terrified glances. One woman was crying, a young blonde with close-cropped hair and swollen eyes. "Now, people.”

  “Eighty seconds until it hits satellite six, sir,” an Asian woman with wireframe glasses spoke up, rising from her desk so he could meet her gaze. It was the same one who'd given him the tablet. Benson, the name tag read. “We have another forty before it reaches us here. It will blanket the entire planet in just under four minutes.”

  “At least one of you is competent,” The Director growled, attempting to suppress the irritation at how powerless he felt. “Keep six broadcasting and record all data. If we’re going to lose it, let's at least get what we can. Shut down all monitoring as soon as it goes dark.”

  He strode from the pit towards the wide glass desk on the far side of the room. It was slightly elevated over the others, giving him a commanding view of the technicians. It had been placed there to further reinforce his authority, though it did little to help his mood. He slid into the high-backed leather chair behind the desk and keyed in a sequence on the silvered keyboard. His monitor flared to life with the lime-green connecting icon.

  “What is it, Mark?” a familiar voice answered almost immediately. The picture showed a stocky blond-haired man with piercing blue eyes, hands steepled on his desk as he stared at the camera. Leif Mohn himself, a man even Mark found terrifying.

  “The second wave will be here in three minutes. We’re going to lose satellite six, but the other eleven are protected,” he explained, pausing while he awaited a response. Mohn’s face revealed nothing.

  “That’s a shame. Six is responsible for north Africa, isn’t it?” Mohn asked, tone neutral.

  “It is. We can bridge the gap if we alter five and seven to cover a wider radius, but that leaves thin coverage in all three areas,” Mark replied. It wasn’t the best solution, but it was the best they had.

  “As soon as the wave is over, have the artifacts brought below. I want to see if the wave has any effect,” Mohn instructed, reaching for something off-screen. He turned back to the camera. “Do we have an update on the situation in Peru?”

  "No, sir,” Mark admitted, though he hated doing so. It made him look incompetent for trusting subordinates. “Last we heard Commander Jordan was in place and awaiting the package, but he hasn’t reported in since this morning. That’s unusual, but given the impending wave we couldn’t send a team to investigate.”

  “Inform me if anything changes. Also, I want to be notified the second we’ve compiled footage from the aftermath of the wave,” Mohn said. He didn’t bother awaiting a response, simply terminating the feed.

  If the Old Man had been upset about losing an eighty-billion-dollar satellite moments before they were knocked back into the Stone Age, he certainly didn’t show it. Mark compartmentalized the conversation. He had to focus on the situation. Time was critical.

  “Sir, wave impact in fifteen seconds,” Benson called from her desk. She’d be one to watch in the coming days. She seemed to be keeping it together better than most of the techs.

  Mark rose from his desk, watching the feed from six on the giant screen. The wave had blotted out everything, leaving the screen filled with the sun’s fiery wrath. Had the first civilization witnessed something similar thirteen thousand years ago? Or had they lacked the technology and simply been eradicated? He would give anything to know more about that civilization. Mohn had gleaned so little from the pyramid in Peru and even less from Gobekli Tepe. The only solid information they had came from the artifacts, and that was extremely limited.

  The screen went dark. Satellite six was gone. The room fell utterly silent, save for the low hum of computers. No one spoke or even tapped away at a keyboard. They all knew that when the feed returned, when the wave was over, they’d find themselves in a strange new world. There was no way of knowing just how it would affect them.

  They had projections, of course. The world’s power grid would be severely damaged, though there was no way to predict the exact magnitude of that damage. People would be left in a dark aftermath, fighting for food and possibly shelter as the civilized world tore itself apart. That would leave them unable to respond to the true threat, these werewolves that had begun appearing several weeks after they’d explored the pyramid.

  Had that been their true plan all along? Start the plague just before the world faced its worst calamity in recorded history? If so, it was utterly devious. It would give the werewolves the time they needed to spread unopposed. Mohn Corp would resist, of course, but how much resistance they could offer remained to be seen. They had less than three thousand personnel in Syracuse, and every other installation lacked the elaborate shielding they had here. The other facilities would suffer severe damage from the wave. They hadn’t the faintest idea as to the werewolves’ motives and were woefully unable to respond to the threat.

  The lights flickered for a split second and then came back on at a slightly reduced intensity. It was the only sign that they’d switched from the local power grid to their own nuclear reactor. That switch was intended to be permanent, since they had no
idea how long it would take for the local government to rebuild, assuming that it even survived the disaster.

  “Sir,” Benson called. She waited for his attention before continuing. “Satellites are beginning to redeploy. We’ll have feeds in sixty seconds.”

  “Excellent,” Mark replied, leaving the desk and heading back into the pit. He studied the black screen for nearly a full minute before it flickered back to life.

  It now showed eleven feeds, with a conspicuously black spot where six should have been. He tapped a series of commands on the tablet and watched as each of the satellites altered their cameras from the sun back to the earth. The feeds revealed familiar images showing every continent. Those in daylight time zones looked exactly the same, but those on the far side of the earth were dark, save for a thin band of lights around the equator. Every city outside that belt had been extinguished. Power was gone in the blink of an eye leaving them, so far as they knew, the only organization in the world with both satellite access and electricity.

  The latter would return in time, but no nation would be able to recover satellite access. Every last one, save for those belonging to Mohn Corp, had just been obliterated by the coronal mass ejection. The world was blind, naked before whatever apocalypse the ancient myths had tried to warn them about.

  “Give me points of interest, people. What can you show me?” he asked, folding his hands behind his back. It galled him to know so little, but there was nothing for it but patience.

  “Sir, feed five is making a pass over northern Africa. Cairo was listed as a potential point of interest. I think you’re going to want to see this,” a young man with a shock of black hair and a cleft chin said. Mark was close enough to read the name tag. Jacobs.