 
# The Aurora Infection

# By Andreas Leachim

# Smashwords Edition

# Copyright 2017 Andreas Leachim

# Cover design by Andreas Leachim

# Chapter 1

Peter Harnett watched through a layer of double-paned protective glass as three soldiers wearing hazardous environment suits brought the object into the main examination lab and set it gingerly on the gleaming silver table in the center of the room. They backed out into the decontamination chamber and the thick metal door slid shut behind them, leaving the room empty and silent as a tomb.

The other medical technicians were almost jumping out of their shoes in excitement, but Peter didn't move just yet. He kept his arms crossed, pondering the large, football-shaped object now occupying the examination table. As Head Medical Advisor aboard the space station Aurora, he had the honor of being the first scientist to analyze physical evidence of extraterrestrial life. It was a huge honor for someone as young as he, only twenty-eight, but the massive responsibility dulled his sense of excitement or anticipation. If he screwed up, his career would be over. So while his assistants and fellow biologists were squirming for their chance to get a good look at the object on the table, Peter was going to take his time.

The object, which was called that since no one else could think of an appropriate name, had been discovered almost five billion miles out, farther than the average orbit distance of Pluto, coming toward Sol from far above the ecliptic. Its size and shape were not out of the ordinary, and its speed through space was neither much faster nor slower than any of the other objects swarming around the solar system. Millions upon millions of asteroids and meteoroids and other rocky space debris circled the sun like moths around a porch light. So why had this insignificant-looking object been picked up and rushed to the closest scientific laboratory?

Because it was warm. Its temperature was recorded at several degrees about freezing. Anything else floating in interplanetary space was frozen at the temperature of liquid hydrogen. When the space probes scanned for heat, the object lit up their sensors like a flash grenade going off in a dark room. And where there was heat, there might be some form of life.

"Okay," Peter said. He turned to the crowd of eager scientists behind him and pointed at three of his most experienced medical assistants. "Jerry, Charlene, Rick, put your suits on. We're going in."

Several minutes later, the decontamination chamber door hissed open and the four of them entered the room. The examination room was maintained without an atmosphere to prevent the chance of volatile chemical reactions with elements in the air. The temperature was reduced to three degrees Celsius, the same temperature as the object.

Peter stepped forward and set his hands on the exam table. The object glistened as the thin layer of ice on the outside began to melt. He looked it over and found nothing strange. It was black in color, with a pockmarked, uneven surface area. Almost nervously, he touched it, and found it hard to the touch.

Remote cameras recording everything from several different angles, the four of them began the excruciatingly slow and methodical process of cutting away the outside covering. Using laser knives, they cut away portions and gently placed them on the side tables.

"The outer covering is removed," Peter said when they were done, more for the recorders than the three dozen witnesses outside, gazing through the window. "The inside is dark green and spongy. It looks very much like some sort of plant life. It's possible that this object is a pod of some kind, or a seed."

He looked up at the others, who nodded at him. He was in charge, this was his show. He took out his scalpel and held it above the object. "I'm now going to cut open the second layer and penetrate the interior of the object."

He pressed the knife blade against the soft green material and it slid inside easily. He moved the knife forward to cut a narrow slit, when his arm froze. His eyes opened wide.

"Something moved," he blurted out. "Something moved inside."

The object on the table exploded in the next instant, knocking them all to the floor in a blast of cloudy mist and green slime. It splattered across all the walls like thick mucus, completely covering them.

Peter tried to get up, but someone was screaming in his ear. It was Charlene, one of the other scientists. She was on the floor, wiping madly at the front of her suit, scrambling back to her feet, screaming about the air. Then Peter felt it as well; his suit was losing its internal pressure. The oxygen was escaping!

The others all got up and ran to the decontamination chamber door, but Peter stayed on the floor, sitting up slowly. He looked down and saw that he was covered in green slime like the others, and wiped some of it away with his hand. Then he saw why the oxygen was escaping. The front of his suit was covered in a dozen tiny holes. He plucked a small green sliver from one of the holes and lifted up to examine it. He was already feeling light headed from loss of oxygen. The small sliver looked like a pine needle. Apparently, the object was full of them. Hundreds had exploded out of the object and punctured his suit.

The screaming continued. Dimly, he realized that the decontamination doors would not open. They wouldn't open if any of the suits were damaged, because if any of the decontamination gases got into the suit, they could kill the wearer. The others were pounding on the doors, but they were wasting their energy. With a whoosh, air shot into the room from vents along the ceiling. In case of a suit breach, oxygen would be pumped into the room to keep them alive until proper decontamination could be performed.

"What in the hell just happened?" Rick asked, taking off his helmet. He approached the table, which was now covered in green ooze.

Peter held up a hand and Charlene helped him to his feet. "Defense mechanism, maybe," he grunted, taking his helmet off as well. Even now that he could breath again, he still felt lightheaded. He leaned on the table for support. "If it detected any damage, it would blow up."

"So what do we do now?"

Jerry answered, "We wait here until we can decontaminate. They'll have to keep us quarantined until they can be sure about this thing."

"And how long will that be?"

Jerry shook his head. "No idea."

Charlene leaned over the remains of the object. "I guess our examination is over, then. This has to be biological. This stuff looks like green yogurt."

"What's it there for, though?" Rick asked. "And how did it retain heat in space? That's what I wanted to find out, and now we'll probably never know.

As the other began to discuss the object, Peter tuned them out and began walking around the room. He was still strangely lightheaded, and felt a headache coming on. He stopped and unzipped the front of his suit, letting it fall down around his waist. He still wore his blue and white medical uniform underneath.

"What are you doing?" Rick asked, but Peter ignored him.

Slowly, he felt along his whole chest, and then moved onto his arms. He pushed the suit down around his knees and found what he was looking for. At almost the same moment, he began to feel a sharp, stinging pain.

One of the green slivers had penetrated the suit and his clothes, and was sticking in his thigh.

Chapter 2

The first thing August Haley felt was cold. It was like waking up in the morning to find that it snowed during the night and he'd left his window open. He shivered and tried to ignore it, but he soon heard muffled voices that roused him from his drowsy slumber. He opened his eyes and could not discern what he was looking at. It looked like a window covered in frost only a few inches from his face. Gradually, he began to remember where he was.

Through the frosted window, he saw two blurry shapes just beyond. The voices continued, and he began to make out the words.

"I don't think it's working." A man with a deep voice.

"Of course it is, we just have to wait. It isn't going to happen automatically." A young woman this time.

"He isn't even moving, though."

"It'll take a few minutes, okay? The red light came on, didn't it? Just give it some time."

"I don't like this. We can't wait forever, we're too out in the open."

August blinked a few times and swallowed, his tongue feeling like it was made of cardboard. His eyes felt crusty, so he tried to wipe them. Unfortunately, his hands were tied down. The numbing drowsiness finally went away and he understood what was going on. But he didn't understand who those people were. He expected armed soldiers, not two people who didn't even know what they were doing. He groaned a little bit to let them know he was awake.

"There! See, he's awake," the woman said. "Now how do I open the case?"

"The latch on the side over there."

The door opened and a draft of warm, humid air rushed into the case, making August wince in discomfort. He shivered again and looked out at the two people who had released him. Like the voices indicated, one was an older man and the other was a young woman. They were both dressed in dirty blue uniforms, and even with his still-blurry vision, August could tell that the two of them looked in pretty bad shape.

"What's your name?" the woman asked. She had curly brown hair that came down below her shoulders, and intense brown eyes.

"What?" August croaked, his voice rusty.

"Your name," the man asked more urgently. He was a bald, heavyset black man and he didn't look happy to be there.

"Haley. My name's August Haley."

The woman sighed in relief and said, "I'm Melissa Bentley, and this is Fred Underwood. Listen to me. Why are you in this cryogenic case?"

August felt himself smile at such an idiotic question. How could they possibly not know? Who were these people? He tried to give the woman, Melissa, a penetrating stare, but he was still too physically disoriented to pull it off. "Why should I tell you? You don't look like cops to me."

"We're not cops."

"Then who are you? Why did you wake me up? Where am I, anyway?"

The man named Fred spoke, his deep voice making August think of some angry high school principal. "This is the space station Aurora," he said. "It's a scientific research base. We're in orbit around Mars right now. Melissa and I are engineers here on the station." As Fred spoke, he waved his hand absentmindedly and August noticed for the first time that he had a gun in his hand. "We don't know who you are, but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. This is a prisoner transport ship, and that means you're a criminal."

"Headed toward the colony on Callisto," August finished. He cleared his throat and tugged gently against the straps holding him inside the case. "So where's the guards on this ship? Why the hell are you two waking me up on some space station?"

"What did you do?" Melissa asked. "What were you convicted of?" She had a gun in her hand as well. Very interesting.

"They don't send people to Callisto for jaywalking," August said.

"Answer the question," Fred demanded.

"I killed a cop," August snapped. "How's that for an answer?"

Melissa sighed and looked away as she brushed loose strands of hair from her face. The gesture betrayed her nervousness. Her hand trembled slightly.

"Well?" August asked. "Why did you wake me up?"

Fred answered, his voice sounding hollow. "Because," he said, "you're the only other person left alive on this space station."

August looked at the two of them and pulled against his restraints once more, as if to emphasize a point. "Is that so?" he tried to keep his voice level.

Fred nodded and looked right into August's eyes. "It's just the three of us."

August didn't reply. He was fully awake and oriented now, and at some subconscious level, he had a feeling they weren't lying. He saw caked grime on their uniforms, smudges on their faces, dark lines under their eyes. Proof that they'd been without a shower or adequate sleep for a least a couple of days. They looked exhausted and defeated, Melissa especially.

But if they were the only ones left, why were they carrying guns?

"So what in the hell is going on here?" he asked when they didn't seem eager to share any more information. "You're saying everyone else is dead? From what, a hull breach or something? What does that have to do with me? Why don't you just send a distress signal?"

"We did," Fred said.

Melissa looked at him. "Well, not us personally. But a distress call was sent almost immediately after it started."

"So where's the help?"

"This ship came to investigate," Fred said, looking away. He opened his mouth to speak again, but decided against it and shook his head instead.

"Okay, either tell me what's going on or put me back to sleep," August said angrily. "Something must have happened here because the guards on this ship would never let you open up my case. But if you aren't going to be straight with me, just turn my cryo case back on."

"We don't know how," Melissa said weakly.

"Then untie me and let me go."

Fred suddenly stepped forward and pointed his gun into August's stomach. "Listen to me, you little punk," he snarled. "We opened you up cause we need your help. We can't do this on our own –"

"Do what on your own?"

"– but I'm not letting you out of there unless you can prove to me that you aren't dangerous. You just admitted that you're a murderer. How can we possibly trust you?"

August tried to lean forward but the straps held him back. He succeeded only in jutting his head forward. "Right about now I'm wondering if I can trust you two. You're the ones carrying guns. For all I know, you're terrorists and you killed everyone else on this station."

Fred glared back at him but said nothing. He wasn't stupid, he knew that at the moment, no one had a reason to trust anyone. Melissa ended the stand-off by gently pushing Fred back.

"We can't leave him here, you know," she whispered.

"But what if he tries something?"

Melissa shrugged. "We have guns and he doesn't."

August looked at her incredulously. "You think I'm incapable of overpowering you two?"

"There he goes again!" Fred hissed, jamming the gun back into August's stomach. "This guy's a maniac, we can't trust him!"

"Even if you do that," Melissa said to August. "You won't be able to go anywhere. All the escape pods are disabled. That's what we need your help with."

Time stretched for a minute or two. "Why should I help you with anything?" August asked finally. He wanted to be released, of course, but there were a lot of things not being said. Maybe it would be safer going back to sleep and spending the rest of his life in a prison colony.

But before Melissa could answer, August heard a noise out in the corridor beyond where the cryogenic cases were held. On a normal day, it might have been the sound of someone clearing their throat. But today was not a normal day.

Melissa and Fred backed away at the sound, faces stricken with fear. They both raised their guns and August struggled in his case, trying to get a look toward the corridor. What the hell were they doing? They said everyone else was dead!

From the hallway, one of the soldiers stationed aboard the ship appeared. He staggered into the room, as if incredibly tired. The stripes on his shoulder signified him as the pilot. He looked perfectly normal, as far as August could tell.

But at the same time, he looked wrong. His skin glistened with sweat, and his eyes were clouded white, as if with cataracts. And his movements were wrong. He moved like a clumsy robot, animated by sudden bursts of electricity. He entered the room, looked at the three of them, and smiled. It was the most hideous smile August had ever seen.

Melissa and Fred opened fire, and the pilot's body jerked and twisted with the impacts of half a dozen bullets. The guns sounded like explosions in the tight space, and August's ears rang from the deafening noise. Splatters of dark red blood etched the wall behind the pilot as he collapsed to the ground.

"We have to get out of here," Fred said decisively, lowering his gun. "The others must have heard the shots."

"Jesus Christ!" August screamed. "What in the hell's going on? What was wrong with that guy?" He stared at the dead body and felt his blood run cold. The pilot was still moving, twitching around on the floor, trying to get to his feet, like a sloppy drunk. He got one arm under him and tried to get back to his feet.

Melissa and Fred were already halfway out of the room, going the other way. "Get me out of here!" August screamed. "You can't leave me here with that thing!"

Melissa stopped and looked at Fred. Her eyes said everything. She rushed back to August and unhooked the straps that held him down, and he almost fell out of the case in his hurry. He hit the floor and ran toward Fred. Melissa stood there for a moment.

The pilot got to his feet and lurched toward her. She put a bullet in his forehead and he flew backwards, crashing into the corner, the back half of his skull now smeared across the wall.

Melissa rejoined them and they took off down the rear hallway to the cargo hold and the secondary docking bay. Fred and Melissa walked in front since they had guns, but they encountered no one else on their way.

August desperately wanted to ask a thousand questions, but held his tongue. His first concern was getting to safety. He had to assume that Fred and Melissa knew where they were going. But once they got there, they better have some answers for him.

They snuck past the secondary docking bay, leaving the ship and entering the space station. August noticed right away how dark it was. Half of the florescent lights along the ceiling were either off or very dim.

Fred pulled a screwdriver from his belt and pried off a maintenance access panel on the wall. It revealed a shaft wide enough for someone to crawl through, barely illuminated by small blue lights spaced a few feet apart. Fred crawled inside, followed by Melissa.

August looked up and down the hallway, finding it empty. Almost reluctantly, he climbed into the shaft and reached back out to lift the cover and put it back in place.

# Chapter 3

"It started a couple of days ago," Melissa started to explain.

They were in a cramped maintenance compartment with just enough light to see by, the ceiling just low enough that August and Fred had to duck down a little bit. August couldn't help but notice that while Melissa explained things, Fred hunched against the opposite wall with his gun conspicuously in hand. If he had any ideas about overpowering them, he certainly wouldn't do it here. Without their help, he'd never be able to find his way back out again.

"What started?" August asked, exasperated. "You told me that everyone was dead, but that pilot sure looked alive. Before you blew his brains out, at least."

"You saw him," Fred interrupted. "You saw what he looked like. Be honest and tell me that he looked normal to you."

"He looked sick," August admitted. "But that doesn't mean –"

"We shot him half a dozen times," Melissa said, her quiet voice somehow silencing the other two. "And he got right back up. You saw that. And that's not even the worst we've seen. Nothing you can do to them really ever stops them."

August put his hands up to stop her. "Okay, this is insane! What are you trying to tell me? That the entire crew of the space station is like that guy?"

"Yes. That's what we're trying to tell you."

"But that guy was –"

"He was a zombie," Fred said forcefully, leaning forward. "That's what he was. They're all zombies. Shoot them, stab them, and they keep coming at you. And if one of the bastards even touches you, just for a second, then you become a zombie just like them."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" August shouted. "You can't seriously expect me to believe any of this!"

"We didn't believe it either," Melissa said, almost as if talking to herself. "But we've been running and hiding from them for two days now. We've tried everything, but we can't kill them. I thought that Fred and I were the last ones left, until we found you."

August opened his mouth to speak, to ask another question, but Fred suddenly grabbed his arm and shook his head. Let her speak, as if to say.

"We don't know what started it, but something big was going on a couple days ago. My boyfriend was on the medical team, and he was real anxious about something for weeks before it happened. Maybe they had some kind of experiment planned out, but whatever it was, I'm sure that it caused what's going on now."

She slid down the wall and sat on the floor, wrapping her arms around her legs, and just started talking in a hurried ramble. "Me and Fred and the rest of our crew were working on one of the external ventilation pumps when it started. We were talking with the dispatcher on the comm when she started freaking out about something. Then the comm went dead. So we all came back inside to see what was happening. People were running in the halls, everyone was scared. They said there'd been an accident. Some kind of biological contamination was spreading through the station. We didn't know what to do about it, so we tried to get back to the central control room. In the main hub, all these people were walking around. Danny was our crew leader, and he tried to push through them. But they all just surrounded him and attacked him. And then they got Eliza too. The rest of us just ran."

She stopped finally to take a breath. "All you need is skin contact with one of them, and within a few minutes, you'll change. We've seen it happen. When it started, there were eight of us." She looked up at August, her eyes glimmering with tears. "But we kept losing people, until it was just me and Fred. Now we're the only ones left."

August said nothing for a short time. He was certain that these two didn't have the answers to the questions he wanted to ask, so why ask them? They weren't in charge, they didn't really know what was going on, they were just a couple of repairmen. If everything Melissa told him was true, and he had no reason to believe it not to be, then they were lucky to even be alive now. He guessed that the only thing that helped them survive was their knowledge of these maintenance shafts and tunnels throughout the space station. If they had been forced to hide in more visible areas of the station, they'd probably have been infected by now.

Infected? Was that the right word? Exactly what caused all this? It had to be some sort of disease, but no disease August had ever heard of could keep people alive when they'd been shot in the chest six times. And it was communicable by touch? Melissa and Fred truly were lucky to still be alive.

August had been perfectly safe, sleeping peacefully in his cryogenic chamber, until these two decided to open him up. A confirmed life sentence on Callisto would be preferable to infection with some insane zombie disease. They'd dropped him into this mess. He'd have to get them back for that, but now was not the time.

"Well?" Fred said impatiently.

"Well, what?" August shot back. "What do you expect me to say to all this?"

"Are you saying you don't believe it?" Fred said angrily, his hands turning into fists. August could tell just how scared he actually was, how thin his nerves had been stretched, and how poorly he was containing his panic. It would not take much to knock Fred right over the edge. But at this point, doing so might cause Fred to shoot him.

"Listen, I saw you shoot up one of these diseased people, not a whole crowd. How do you know that we're the only ones left? There might be other survivors."

"We've checked the whole station," Melissa said, getting back to her feet. "We use these access shafts to get around. We've looked everywhere."

"Are you sure?"

Melissa sighed and shrugged, unwilling to argue about it. "I suppose it's possible that someone else might still be alive, but how can we find out for sure?"

"Is there a intercom system or anything?" August asked.

"Sure, but we can't use it," Fred said. "It's in the central control room, and that's where most of the zombies are."

Melissa crossed her arms and slouched against the wall. August wondered when the last time either of them had slept. "Even if we used it, what good would it do?" she asked. "If we made some kind of announcement for all the survivors, then all the zombies would just hear it too."

"So what if they heard it? Would they understand it?" August asked the question rhetorically, assuming that the answer was obvious. Of course the zombies wouldn't understand, because they're just zombies. But Melissa and Fred just stared at him helplessly.

His shoulders dropped in defeat. "You've got to be kidding me."

"They're intelligent," Fred said simply. "At least we're pretty sure they are. We think they can remember things from before they became zombies."

"Like what?"

Melissa explained. "We thought that by closing the security doors around the central hub, we could hold them off, or at least contain them. But they just entered the pass code and the doors opened. They remembered the code, you see? And they aren't stupid, they plan things, they –"

August held out his hands. "Okay, okay, I get it. But if they're so damn smart, exactly what are you guys planning to do to get rid of them?"

"Nothing," Fred said. "We're just trying to escape."

"Escape? Are you telling me there's actually some good news?"

Fred nodded, annoyed by August's sarcasm but trying to ignore it. "Every space station has emergency vessels. If we can get to them, we can leave this place."

"Fine, then let's do it."

"Not that simple," Fred added. "The power to that sector has been knocked out. We can't reach the emergency ships unless we turn the power back on."

"Why not?"

"You see, the entire space station is in the shape of a circle. There are four main generators, which each power a fourth of the circle, the four sectors. If one generator goes out, the entire sector closes itself off. Completely airtight. Because if the power goes out in a sector, the atmosphere stabilizers might go offline and cause accidental decompression."

"Okay, so we can't get to the ships without turning on the power. We can just use these tunnels to go to the generator –"

"Can't," Fred interrupted. "The access tunnels don't lead directly there."

"To the generators? Why the hell not?"

"How the hell should I know?" Fred rumbled. "Did I build the damn place?"

"Stop it," Melissa hissed, staring at them. When her command worked, August realized something that he hadn't thought of before. Melissa was actually the one in charge, not Fred.

"Okay," August said slowly. "So what are we doing now? What exactly is the plan?"

As if given permission, Melissa gratefully slid back to the floor. "The plan," she said with the hint of a smile, "is for you to keep a lookout while me and Fred get some sleep."

"Amen to that," Fred muttered, getting onto the floor as well. With limited floor space, the arrangement was tricky, but both Melissa and Fred got comfortable on the floor, leaving August to stand over them to make sure none of the diseased people came through the maintenance tunnels. He still had a hard time thinking of them as zombies.

Melissa pressed some buttons on her watch. "I'm setting the alarm for eight hours."

"And I just get to stand here like an idiot?" August asked, looking down at her.

"You've already had plenty of sleep, so the answer is yes," she said, and rested her head in her arms.

August shook his head and leaned against the wall. Within minutes, both Melissa and Fred were fast asleep, proving August's earlier assumption that they'd been awake for some time. They'd probably been forced to sleep in short shifts, out of fear of the diseased people finding them. Even in these tunnels, they could be found. After all, Melissa claimed they were smart enough to remember things from their previous life. They couldn't hide there forever. Besides, they would need food and drink after awhile. Speaking of which, August felt rather thirsty.

He sighed. It was going to be a long eight hours.

# Chapter 4

It turned out to be a very long eight hours. August had never been so bored in his entire life. Even the vague fear that at any moment some zombies might start crawling through the tunnels did not succeed in making the time pass any faster. It gave him time to contemplate his position, and perhaps come up with some short-term plans, but that was about it.

Escaping from the space station certainly sounded like a good idea. Whether or not Melissa and Fred made it as well was irrelevant as far as he was concerned. He didn't care much what happened to the zombies either, or the possibility of other survivors. The two people asleep at his feet had let him out of his frozen cage and postponed, perhaps indefinitely, his life sentence on a ball of ice orbiting Jupiter. Given more time to think about it, he decided he liked this better. He'd rather be in this situation, with the possible chance of escape, then on Callisto, where escape was impossible. Battling zombies was a small price to pay for his freedom.

And to think, he had almost resigned himself to a life of hard labor. He remembered when they first locked him in the cryogenic chamber, he thought, "Well, this is it. I'll never see Earth again. My life is over." But Melissa and Fred had helped him out of that little jam. Maybe he owed them some loyalty after all. Then again, maybe not.

When Melissa's watch finally beeped its tinny alarm, August's legs were almost numb from standing for so long. She rolled onto her side and looked up at him, a thin smile on her face. For a moment, August wondered what was on her mind. Just because she was smiling, it did not mean she was happy. What did that smile mean? Amusement? Concealed distrust? Indifference?

"I see you're still here," she said softly.

"Don't have much of a choice," August said, returning his gaze to the tunnels facing him.

Fred slowly got to his feet. If the ceiling had been a little higher, he would have stretched, but he didn't have any room to do it here. The look on his face was much easier to interpret.

"Nothing happened while we were asleep?" he asked, trying to make enough room to arch his back, which surely ached after being curled up on the floor.

"Does it look like anything happened?"

Melissa got up as well. "All right then. First things first. I need to use the bathroom."

"We all need something to eat, too," Fred added. "Then we can head for the generators and get the power turned back on."

"I want a gun," August said suddenly.

Fred almost laughed. "You think we're giving you a gun? Are you crazy?"

"I'm not leaving here if I can't protect myself."

Fred shook his head and put a hand on the pistol sticking out of his belt. He'd been smart enough to sleep on top of his gun, as had Melissa. "I don't think you have a choice. If we're leaving, you're coming with us."

"Not without a gun, I'm not."

"Listen, pal," Fred said disrespectfully, taking half a step forward. He pulled out the gun in an attempt to intimidate. "We got you out of that case to help us, so if you –"

He didn't get to finish the sentence. August reached up with both hands, grabbing Fred's neck with one and the barrel of the gun with the other. One strong step forward pushed Fred against the wall, and as August expected, the jolt made him let go of the gun. In one second, August had him pinned against the wall with the gun to his cheek.

One second later, Melissa had her own gun aimed at August's head. The three of them froze in a stand-off in the cramped quarters.

"Jesus Christ!" Fred shouted, his voice choked. "Shoot him!"

"Drop the gun," Melissa ordered.

"I don't think so," August said.

"Do it or I'll blow your head off!"

"Shooting a regular person isn't the same as shooting one of those zombies out there."

"I'm serious!"

"Go ahead and shoot me if you're serious. I'd rather go out that way than get turned into a zombie like that pilot."

"Jesus, Melissa! Shoot him!" Fred shrieked.

"I didn't ask you to wake me up and throw me into this," August said harshly. "You need my help, remember? Do you want me to help you get off this space station or not?"

"Yes, we do! Just put the gun down, okay?"

"I'll let Fred go, but I'm keeping the gun."

"Fine," Melissa said.

"No!" Fred cried. "Are you crazy?"

"I know you've both been through a lot," August said, turning to look at Melissa. "But I'm not taking orders from either of you. I'm not your prisoner and I'm sure as hell not your servant. We all want out of here, so that means we're going to work together."

"Yes," Melissa said with a curt nod. She stepped back and pointed her gun at the floor.

August calmly stepped back as well, letting go of Fred's neck and aiming the gun off to the side. He kept his eyes on Melissa's gun, but she didn't seem like she was interested in another stand off. Fred slumped against the wall, rubbing is throat, gasping for breath, staring at August with what can only be described as pure, boiling hatred. Little dots of sweat had broken out on his forehead. August, on the other hand, hadn't even increased his heart rate.

"Now what?" Melissa asked.

"Now we can all go out and get something to eat," August said. "And then we're going shopping for some more guns. Wouldn't want to leave poor Fred unarmed, now would we?"

"The moment I get a gun in my hands, I'm using it on you," Fred snarled.

August gave him a condescending smile. "Really? After what just happened, do you really think its a good idea to make idle threats?"

"Knock it off," Melissa snapped. She jammed her pistol into her belt. "Just stop it, both of you. Let's just make it through the rest of the day, all right?"

"I can't believe you're letting this guy –" Fred muttered.

"I said stop it! I didn't have much of a choice, now did I?"

August casually tucked his gun into the back of his pants. Fred continued to glare at him but August ignored it. Finally, Fred puffed up his chest and went toward the maintenance tunnel.

"I'll go first," Melissa said. She jerked her head at August. "He can bring up the rear."

August had no argument with that plan. Melissa went first and Fred followed, glancing over his shoulder at August ever few seconds as if afraid of getting shot in the back. Fred wanted to salvage his pride and regain his air of superiority, but he was scared and humiliated into obedience, and Melissa knew that fighting August would cause more harm than good. As long as he didn't get them into trouble, she would probably leave him alone. Fred might become more of a problem the longer things went on, but August felt he could deal with him for now.

It took awhile before they made it out of the tunnel. August was getting tired of facing Fred's back side when Melissa whispered back that they'd reached the end of the shaft. She very carefully removed the panel cover and glanced up and down the hallway.

"I don't see anyone," she whispered. "The cafeteria is just up here."

Fred climbed out, followed by August. The lights were dim and flickered in the hallway, making August wonder if some of the other power generators were damaged as well. In fact, he wondered exactly how the generators went offline in the first place. Did the zombies somehow damage them? He made a mental note to ask later, but he doubted either Melissa or Fred could give him a satisfactory answer.

The cafeteria was deserted, but trays of food lay untouched on gleaming tabletops. Other trays were scattered on the floor, creating a mess. It looked as if the occupants of the cafeteria had all left in a hurry. It might have happened a month ago or five minutes ago, August couldn't tell. Only half of the lights were on, giving the cafeteria a shadowy illumination that felt disconcerting. The other side of the cafeteria had a long buffet line and an open window looking into the kitchen area, which was mostly dark.

The restroom was across the hall from the cafeteria. Melissa held her gun in front of her and August did the same, turning around to make sure no one was coming down the hallway. Melissa quickly checked out both of the restrooms to make sure they were empty, and then she entered one while Fred went in the other.

August wandered into the cafeteria and peered into the kitchen. He wasn't necessarily hungry, even after his eight-hour vigil, but he was very thirsty. A stack of juice containers were stacked up at the end of the buffet line, along with containers of milk and other drinks. August grabbed one of the juice cups and gulped it down. All of the food in the buffet was cold and stiff and unappetizing anyway. He tossed the empty cup away and opened another.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two figures appear in the hallway and thought it was Melissa and Fred. But it wasn't them. He looked up and saw that it was a man and a woman, both apparently administrative workers of some kind. The man wore a white shirt with a blue tie, and the woman had on a blue business suit. They walked slowly into the cafeteria and stared at him, their eyes clouded over and skin glistening with sweat.

August tossed his drink aside and swung his gun up, expecting the zombies to immediately attack him. But surprisingly, neither of them made a move. He wanted to call out to Melissa and Fred, but at the same time he wanted to keep silent. Yelling out or firing his gun would attract any more zombies in the area. For all he knew, there were fifty more of them in the hallway, just out of sight.

The man and woman stared at him, arms at their sides. Did they recognize the gun or know what it was? If so, they gave no sign. In fact, there was no direct indication they were even zombies, except for the whiteness of their eyes. They stood with a natural posture, they were breathing regularly, they were –

Breathing regularly? August could see their chests moving with breath, but if they were breathing, that meant they were alive. Somehow, calling them zombies made him think they were already dead. But if they were alive, then he suddenly felt less willing to start shooting them. He aimed the gun from one to the other, his mind racing.

Melissa came out of the bathroom and started to say something to August, but the moment she saw the zombies she shrieked and backed away, reaching for her gun. The zombies saw her and immediately changed. In front of August, they seemed almost normal, but the moment they saw Melissa, they hunched down, extended their fingers like talons, and opened their mouths to let out a hideous hissing sound like cornered animals.

It was too late now. August raised his gun and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the male zombie in the side of the head and he flopped to the side, arms flailing. He crashed onto the nearest table and knocked more trays of food to the floor, his body twitching spastically. Melissa lifted her gun and shot the female zombie twice in the chest, knocking her backward. When she pulled the trigger another time, the gun clicked empty.

The mens' bathroom door shot open and Fred rushed out like a charging bull. He grabbed a cafeteria chair on the way and hurled it at the zombie with all his strength. It smashed the woman in the face and she toppled over backwards. Fred grabbed Melissa's arm and pulled her toward the kitchen. The zombie immediately rose to her feet, a stream of blood pouring down the side of her face from where the chair struck her.

Melissa suddenly looked at August and screamed again, pointing at him. It didn't take a genius to know what that meant. He spun around and there was a zombie less than eight feet away, dressed in a chef's uniform. The swinging door to the kitchen swung silently closed behind him. The zombie reached out and lunged at August, but he swung his gun up in time and shot the zombie point blank in the face.

August's heart pounded in his chest. That's why the other zombies didn't attack him! They saw the third zombie sneaking up behind him! He felt incredibly stupid for being so careless when he was obviously in a dangerous place. He should have been more observant, he should have checked the kitchen first. If Melissa hadn't seen the zombie, August would never have known it was there until it was too late.

Fred woke him from his reverie. "August!"

He turned as Melissa and Fred ran by him on their way to the kitchen. The woman zombie came forward at a run, her face twisted in a look of rage. August raised his gun and shot her in the face. She jerked and flopped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Fred was shouting at him. "Did the other one touch you? Did it touch you?" The anger and fear in his voice made him sound almost psychotic.

"No," August said firmly. "No, it didn't touch me."

"We have to get the hell out of here," Fred said. "Before any more show up."

"What about food?" Melissa asked, looking out nervously toward the hallway.

They quickly ransacked the buffet line, grabbing anything that was easy to carry and was still edible. They found some fruit cups and stale cookies and took most of the juice containers. Each second they waited, they expected more zombies to show up, so they went as fast as possible and then hurried back to the maintenance tunnel to plan their next move.

# Chapter 5

Melissa and Fred ate ravenously, finishing off most of the food themselves. August let them have it. He ate a few stale cookies to tide him over until later, if there was a later. If he ever made it back to Earth, he'd get himself a big plate of pasta at some fancy restaurant and gorge himself, but food was not his main concern at the moment.

He ejected the clip of his pistol and found it only had two more bullets, plus one in the chamber. Three shots was not going to get them very far. He would have to make them count. Maybe they all would be better off if he used the three bullets right now, on Melissa, Fred, and himself. With a sigh, he snapped the clip back into place and set the pistol down on the floor beside him.

Melissa wiped her mouth. "August?"

He looked idly back down the maintenance shaft they came through. "Yeah?"

"How many bullets do we have?"

"Three."

Fred swore. "Jesus, we need more bullets if we're gonna get out of here."

"We got lucky that we only ran into three of those zombies," August said. "If there'd been five or six of them, we'd never have got them all."

"You did pretty good," Melissa said. "Shooting them, I mean. You didn't waste any shots, that was good. I panicked and wasted the only shots I had left," she added bitterly. Her own pistol was currently tucked into her pocket, empty and useless.

"I've used guns before," August said, not elaborating.

Fred cleared his throat and stood up. "Yeah, you seem to know what you're doing. Maybe you should hold onto that one. I think you're a better shot then we are."

August finally turned to look at them. "Letting me keep the gun, Fred? Have you had a change of heart?"

"I'm not stupid," Fred grunted. "You pissed me off, that's all. Just like you said, we're in this together. I'm not gonna say that I trust you, exactly ..."

"You killed three of them with three shots," Melissa said, staring at her hands. "I don't think we could have done that. The fact is that you're the best one to carry the gun."

"Can we get more weapons, or at least more ammunition?"

"There's a security office," Fred said with a shrug. "They probably have more guns, but they'll be locked up in a safe or something."

"Where did you get these ones?"

"We took them off dead security guards," Melissa said.

August sighed again. "We'll just have to find some more dead guards, then."

Melissa finished off the last of the fruit cups and sat with her hands in her lap. Fred remained standing and wiped his face with a handkerchief he took from his pocket. August kept his gaze focused down the maintenance tunnel. They sat in silence for a minute or two, each of them lost in their thoughts. None of them said the obvious. Three bullets would not be enough, and there was no easy way to find more.

How could they possibly expect to reactivate the station's generators, find an emergency ship, and escape the station with only three bullets to defend themselves with? According to Melissa and Fred, all it took was one touch for a person to become a zombie like the others. They had to shoot the zombies before they even got close. If they encountered four zombies, they were done for. Once again, August considered using the bullets right now, on the three of them.

"You keep looking down the tunnel," Melissa said, breaking the sullen silence. "Do you think they're going to follow us down here?"

August nodded. "Yeah, and I don't understand why they haven't yet."

"Because they don't know we went down here," Fred said, making it sound like the obvious answer. But August could tell that even Fred didn't quite believe it.

If the zombies were really intelligent, they'd have to know that their prey was hiding in the maintenance shafts. It was the only place left where they could stay hidden. But the zombies didn't seem to bother looking there. Maybe they had trouble maneuvering in cramped spaces. That was far too easy an explanation, though.

Some other zombies must have been close enough to hear the gunshots in the cafeteria. They would have come to investigate and found the dead bodies. If they were as smart as Melissa implied, then they could solve problems, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what must have happened. It simply didn't make sense that the zombies hadn't searched every single maintenance shaft by now.

But August said none of this. He just shrugged and said, "Yeah, I suppose so."

The zombies weren't mindless, he believed that much. He watched two zombies easily distract him to draw his attention away from the third zombie creeping up behind him. They didn't bother to attack because they saw the other zombie coming to get him anyway. It was almost like they planned it that way. If he'd stupidly waited another few seconds, the third zombie would have snuck right up behind him.

August sat up a little straighter, replaying the scene in his mind. Something about the whole event felt wrong. Did those first two zombies actually see the third one? He tried to remember his exact position in the cafeteria and where the third zombie came from. The other zombies had been in the middle of the cafeteria, but they couldn't have seen the third zombie from their vantage point, August was sure of it. It came through the doorway to the kitchen, but it must have come out a second before Melissa noticed it, because the door had still been swinging shut. There was no way the first two zombies could have known the other one was there.

So why didn't they attack him? Because he had a gun? They attacked Melissa right away and she had a gun too. In fact, they treated August almost like he wasn't important to them, but as soon as they saw Melissa, they immediately switched into attack mode. Something else was going on that didn't make any sense yet. August knew he was missing something important, but he didn't have all the necessary information.

"August?" Melissa asked. She must have noticed the look on his face.

He waved her off. "Nothing. I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"Those people out there. The zombies, whatever you want to call them."

"What about them?" Fred said.

"They're alive, you know."

"Man, they're zombies," Fred said.

"I know that. What I mean is that whatever changed them into zombies didn't kill them, it just made them act that way. The ones in the kitchen were still breathing. They're alive."

"I know," Melissa said softly.

"So what does that mean?" Fred said. "How does that change anything? You saying we shouldn't shoot them because they're still alive?"

"Where's the medical bay?" August asked.

"Why?"

"You said that this whole thing started with some kind of biological contamination, right? Something to do with the medical team?"

"I think so," Melissa said. "I mean, we don't have any proof, but it must have started there. They were doing some kind of secret experiment and then this all happened right after that."

August nodded. "Okay, so maybe we can find some clue about what happened. If we get off the station, we'll have to answer a lot of questions back on Earth. It might be nice to know some of the answers. Maybe we could get some kind of evidence to help them figure out what happened."

"I don't think so," Fred said right away. "It's too dangerous. The place is probably overrun with zombies. What if whatever caused this is still there? We could get infected ourselves."

Melissa thought about it and then shook her head. "I understand what you're saying, August, but don't think it's a good idea. The medical wing is too dangerous."

"Let the soldiers and scientists figure out what happened," Fred said. "I just want to get out of here in one piece."

"Let me check it out by myself, then," August ventured.

"Why do you care so much?" Fred asked. "You don't have any stake in this."

"The hell I don't," August said with a humorless laugh. "Even if we make it off this station, they're going to throw me right back on a prison transport to Callisto, remember?"

Fred frowned at that. "What could you possibly figure out, anyway? You're not a scientist."

"We don't have to be scientists. All we have to do is grab some notes or records or samples or something. Anything they might find useful. We can't just leave this place completely empty-handed. We should bring something to help the authorities learn about what happened."

Melissa looked at him with an expression that might have been respect, if he hadn't already admitted that he was suggesting this course of action mainly for his own benefit. "I believe you're right, I really do. But I don't think that –"

"Those people are alive," August said, pointing down the shaft. "What if we found something that could help cure them, or reverse whatever infected them? It might be weeks before the military can safely get people in here. We could bring them important data that could save lives."

Finally, they got the idea. They had both lost friends and colleagues since the disaster started, and Melissa lost her boyfriend. If there was a possibility they could find a way to change the infected people back to normal, they could have all those people back. August could see them weighing the possibilities.

Fred crossed his arms and shook his head. "Listen, I understand what you're trying to do. You think if you help them solve this then they might reduce your sentence or something. I don't blame you, I really don't. But it won't matter. They'll send you to that prison colony no matter what we find, no matter what you bring them."

"Probably," August admitted. "But we should still try."

"We could swing by the medical labs," Melissa suggested to Fred. "It's not very far out of our way. We could take a quick look, right?"

"And what if the place is full of zombies?" Fred said.

"Then we forget about it," August said. "We go to the generators instead."

"All right," Fred said a moment later. "All right, we can check it out."

Melissa got to her feet. "Okay, let's go."

# Chapter 6

August didn't have any idea how large the space station actually was. For all he knew, the diameter could be a mile or a hundred miles. They'd been moving steadily through the tunnels for almost an hour and weren't at their destination yet. August was just about to ask them how much farther they had to crawl, when Fred suddenly stopped and grabbed Melissa's foot.

"Hey, do you hear that?"

Melissa turned turned to look at him. "Hear what?"

"Like an buzzing noise or something."

Inside the maintenance tunnels was a constant humming sound, so August didn't hear anything at all, but Fred and Melissa knew the station far better than he did and would recognize sounds that were out of place. Melissa concentrated and nodded slowly. "Yeah, I hear it, but I don't know what it is. It sounds muffled. Must be coming from the main corridor."

August suddenly felt nervous. "Is it an alarm or something? Like a breach in the station's hull?"

Fred shook his head emphatically. "No, no, if that alarm went off, we'd certainly hear it. That's not an alarm, it's more like a siren. Maybe –"

"The docking buzzer!" Melissa suddenly shouted. "It's the docking buzzer!"

Fred jerked up in surprise. "You're right! There's a ship docking with us!"

Melissa began crawling through the shaft as quickly as she could, and Fred followed after her. August had to hurry to keep up with them. They continued straight for a ways and then turned right at the next intersection in the shaft. August realized that the tunnel they were crawling through ran parallel to the main hallway. Turning right would take them straight there.

"Who would be docking now?" August asked loudly.

"Who knows?" Fred called back. "Whoever it is can get us the hell off this station!"

When they reached the end of the shaft, Melissa pressed her hands against the access panel and looked through the vertical ventilation slots. She gasped and pushed Fred back, who was practically crawling over her in his hurry to get out.

"There's zombies out there!" she hissed.

"How many?"

"A lot," she said anxiously, peering out into the hallway again.

August tried to move next to her to get a look for himself, but the shaft was too narrow for comfort. "How can they be docking? I thought the transport ship you found me in was currently docked."

"There are docking bays all across the outside of the station," Fred explained. "This is a busy place. We might have five or ten ships docked with us at a time."

August squeezed past Fred and looked out of the panel at the hallway beyond. Like everywhere else it seemed, the hallway was dim with long fluorescent lights flickering on and off randomly. Standing around were a crowd of zombies. Maybe fifteen of them, but August didn't have a good view. They milled around, seemingly oblivious to the siren over their heads. With the lights flickering and the loud siren, August had the absurd thought that they looked like a crowd at a rock concert.

Suddenly, the siren stopped and the zombies all began to gather toward the large yellow docking doors at the side of the hallway.

"My God," Melissa whispered. "They know ..."

"They're going to attack whoever comes in," August said. "Jesus Christ."

They all held their breath in dreaded anticipation. The only sound now was the omnipresent hum of machinery and the occasional groan from a zombie. Then, the yellow doors opened and the entire hallway exploded in a roar of noise. August clapped his hands over his ears and watched in amazement as four armed soldiers burst into the hallway, huge assault rifles in their hands, opening fire to blast apart the crowd of zombies in front of them. Melissa screamed, but August could barely hear it because the guns were so loud.

The first row of zombies had no chance; they were blown apart as if they'd been wrapped in dynamite. Body parts flew everywhere, coating the entrance in splashed blood. The rest of the zombies surged forward but most of them were cut down as well. The assault rifles were more like miniature grenade cannons; they used special shells the size of toothpastes tubes. Getting shot in the hand with a bullet that size would tear your arm off. Getting shot in the chest would explode your entire torso, as if you'd swallowed a hand grenade. The zombies blew apart like piñatas, limbs and chunks of flesh splattering everywhere. Stray shots struck the interior wall with booming echoes and August could only pray that none of the bullets struck the access panel.

The soldiers wore shining silver and black extreme-conditions battle armor, looking like giant muscular robots. Their faces were masked by gleaming silver face plates that reflected the fiery flashes from the barrels of their rifles. The entire hallway was bathed in a deafening wave of blood and gunfire.

"Soldiers! They're here to save us!" Fred cried. He tried to push past August to get out of the shaft, but August shoved him back.

"If you go out there now, they'll shoot you too! They're shooting anything that moves. Wait till things calm down before you go running out there."

The gunfire stopped and the soldiers began to survey the carnage. At least two dozen dead zombies littered the floor in pieces. Some of them were miraculously still moving, so the soldiers pulled out smaller, hand-held machine pistols to finish them off.

"They killed them all," Melissa said, sounding as if she was going to vomit. August could already smell the odor of blood, making him feel sick as well. The sight of the slaughtered bodies did not help. Shaking off her nausea, Melissa reached to unlatch the panel. "Come on, let's –"

"Just wait," August said, grabbing her wrist. "If we go out there, they might think we're more zombies."

Melissa shook him off. "No, they won't," she said, and knocked the panel away. It clanged loudly to the floor, and all the soldiers spun around, guns ready. "Don't shoot us! We're not infected!" she shouted, sticking her hands out. "We're still human! Please, don't shoot us!"

August looked at Fred. "I didn't think of that."

"Get the hell out of the way," Fred grumbled, squeezing past him. August let him go, but didn't try to get out of the tunnel himself. He didn't want to.

He hadn't expected soldiers to arrive to rescue them. One look at August and they would know he was a convict from his plain gray prisoner jumpsuit. Even if he somehow had the opportunity to change clothes, the soldiers would perform identity scans just to be thorough. They'd find out who August was, and they'd stick him right back on a criminal transport for Callisto as soon as they arrived on Earth. He'd be imprisoned again the moment he gained his freedom.

The yellow docking doors opened again and one of the soldiers returned inside to the ship, presumably to inform the pilot that they'd found survivors. The other two soldiers told Fred and Melissa not to get too close.

"Be careful," one of them said, his voice muffled by his helmet. "Don't let any part of your body come in contact with any of the blood. If even one drop gets on you, you'll get infected."

Melissa nodded and tried not to look at the blood on her shoes. "Yes, I know. Trust me, I know."

"Is it just the two of you?" the soldier asked.

"No, there's ..."

August sighed and climbed out of the shaft. Melissa, realizing why he had delayed, closed her mouth and said nothing more. The soldiers looked at each other and then back at August, who held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"He helped us," Fred said after a few awkward moments.

"You were on the transport to the Callisto colony?" one of the soldiers asked.

August nodded and looked away. "Yeah."

"Are the men from the ship still alive?"

Melissa answered instantly, "No. I'm sorry."

"I was in a cryo case," August explained. "That's the only thing that saved me."

"All right," the soldier replied. "It doesn't matter. We'll get you folks out of here and figure the rest out later."

August announced, "I'm carrying a gun, just so you know."

The second soldier raised his rifle, but the first one reached out to push the barrel back down. "Okay, no big deal. How about you just give it to me, then."

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."

August kept his eyes on the floor as the soldier approached. The pistol was currently tucked into the back of his waistband. Melissa and Fred looked on with sympathetic expressions, but there was nothing they could do. The other soldier watched carefully, keeping his gun ready just in case August did something stupid. August closed his eyes and swore silently to himself. For a little while there, he actually thought he was going to get away.

Nobody was looking behind them. About fifty feet down the hall was a large set of double doors. Everyone had their backs to the door, except August. When he opened his eyes and started to say something, he saw the doors slide open and a crowd of zombies rush through.

"Behind us!" he screamed, pointing.

The soldier with the assault rifle raised his gun, thinking August was making a move. But then Melissa turned and screamed, and all hell broke loose. The zombies swarmed down the hall in a wave of snarling faces and clutching fingers. The three soldiers all spun around and opened fire on the oncoming onslaught, but they were doomed. In horror, August saw that there were at least fifty of the zombies, far too many to kill quickly, and the hallway was wide enough that they weren't clustered closely together. The soldiers gunned down perhaps fifteen or twenty before the zombies were upon them.

Melissa and Fred had no choice but to run for the shaft, since they weren't wearing armor and didn't even have weapons. August froze in place but then scrambled after them. He shouted for the soldiers to follow him, but they couldn't hear over the gunfire.

Some of the zombies avoided the gunfire and poured through the dock doors directly into the ship. One of the soldiers screamed and tried to gun them down, but it was useless and he was soon overrun.

The soldiers were trapped. The zombies surrounded them in moments, clawing at their armor and pulling on their helmets. The soldiers couldn't use their assault rifles because they couldn't aim the long weapons at themselves in order to shoot the zombies right next to them. They tried to pull out their smaller machine pistols, but couldn't aim with the zombies hanging off their arms.

Melissa and Fred retreated down the shaft, but August stayed at the entrance, watching in sickening despair as the three soldiers tried to fight off the zombies. But they had no chance. There was no way they could kill them all, surrounded as they were. The only thing saving them was their battle armor. The zombies pulled and tore at the armor relentlessly, trying to get it off.

If August hadn't watched it with his own eyes, he might not have believed it. The zombies knew exactly what they were doing. One of them climbed up on a soldier's back and unhooked the latches underneath the extended shoulder pads. With the soldier screaming hysterically, trying to shake him loose, the zombie grabbed the sides of the helmet and lifted it right off. The other zombies roared and pushed the soldier right to the ground, many of them grabbing his face as he went down.

One of the other soldiers was having a better time of it. He had backed himself up against the wall to keep the zombies from getting behind him. He had his regular gun in his hand, and even though zombies were grabbing his arms, he was able to shoot some of the ones in front of him.

August raised his pistol but couldn't pull the trigger. He only had three shots left, and he didn't dare waste them. He didn't even try to run, because he knew he could never get away in time. Besides, the zombies knew exactly where he was.

The soldier broke free of the mob and staggered back, spraying bullets in front of him, blowing half a dozen zombies to bloody chunks. He shoved off the last zombie hanging onto him and made a break for it. But they swarmed him again, and once more his rifle was useless. They knocked him to the floor and began detaching his helmet like they had done to the other soldier.

The third soldier shot his way free and took off for the access panel, spinning around and firing behind him to keep the zombies back. The front of his armor was a gory smear of blood and tissue. August didn't even know how the man could see out his visor, the blood was so thick.

But suddenly, in the midst of the crowd, a soldier stood up, the one whose helmet had been removed first. But he was no longer a regular human, he was one of the zombies now. He got to his feet, surrounded by zombies, and lifted his rifle toward his former comrade, who ran for his life.

August made a decision in a heartbeat. He raised the pistol, aimed carefully, and shot the soldier in the head before he could open fire.

The living soldier's rifle clicked empty so he tossed it aside and ran for the shaft. August backed farther into it to keep from touching the soldier's bloody armor. With zombies just a few feet behind him, he dove into the shaft, barely able to fit because of the width of his armor. The zombies reached and clawed after him, but he was able to crawl inside and get away from them. Melissa and Fred had already retreated much farther down the tunnel, but August was only about twenty feet down and the soldier stopped just in front of him.

August had long suspected it, but now could see it for himself. The zombies would not enter the maintenance shaft. They crowded around the entrance, watching as the soldier crawled farther inside, but none of them came in after him. They stared with white eyes and snarling mouths, gripping the edge of the panel, but it was like some kind of invisible forcefield held them at bay.

The soldier panted for breath and gasped, "What the ...? Why aren't they coming after us?"

"I don't know," August said. "They won't come in the maintenance shafts."

"Shit," the soldier moaned, resting his head on the floor. "Oh, shit, I don't believe this. We are dead. We aren't getting out of here now."

"We should go," August said.

"It doesn't matter. We're dead now anyway."

"Come on," August insisted, starting to crawl away.

The soldier said, "Hey, stop."

"What?" August said, looking back at him.

The soldier said nothing for a few breaths, and then said quietly, "That man you shot. The person you killed. He was a friend of mine."

"I had to shoot him," August said, trying not to sound like he was defending himself. "He was a zombie. He would have killed you."

"I know. I know," the soldier said, his voice weak. He lifted himself up on his elbows and looked down the shaft at the crowd of zombies who were still hovering around the shaft entrance, staring at him with all-white eyes.

The soldier turned onto his stomach and began to crawl forward. "Okay, how do I get out of here? I have to take this stuff off."

"Follow me," August said, and headed down the tunnel. He met Fred and Melissa at the next intersection, and they made their way to the closest maintenance compartment, where the soldier would have enough room to remove his bloody armor. Everyone kept a safe distance from him and made a mental note not to use those tunnels anymore, because he left a trail of blood behind him.

Once he maneuvered himself into the compartment and was able to stand up, he methodically took off his battle armor piece by piece. First, August took his machine pistol because he didn't use it during the fight and it was still fully loaded. Then the soldier removes his helmet, shoulder pads, chest and back plate, arm guards, thigh pads, boots, high-tensile fabric undersuit. He left his gloves on until last, and then sat on the edge of the shaft and pushed them off with his feet to avoid touching them with exposed skin. When it was over, he wore just a plain green military jumpsuit, not all that different than August's prisoner uniform.

"My name's Jason Argento," the soldier said in an emotionless voice. He looked as if he would say more, but did not. He looked as if there was nothing more he could say. To August, he looked like a man on the verge of an emotional breakdown.

Melissa sat beside him in the shaft. "I'm Melissa Bentley," she said, and introduced Fred and August. She gave him a quick rundown of everything that had happened to them so far, but Jason barely reacted to anything she said.

"Can we use your ship?" Fred asked as soon as Melissa was finished.

Jason sighed and shook his head.

"Why not?"

"Safety protocol," he said. "If any ... if any of those zombies get onboard, the ship's drive will shut down."

"We can turn it back on," Melissa said hopefully.

Jason shook his head again. "The ship is remote controlled. There's no pilot and no navigation controls. That way, the zombies can't fly it themselves if they get onboard."

"But we can go out there and try to fight them off –"

"It won't work," Jason said firmly. "Once the zombies got on the ship, it would be completely disabled. That was the plan. The government is terrified about this infection getting off the Aurora."

"What is the infection, anyway?" August asked. "They have to have some idea where it started, don't they?"

"If they do, they didn't tell us. Our mission was to dock with the station and kill every zombie we saw. If we found any survivors, we were to take them to the ship to keep them safe." he said, looking at the three of them with something like amazement in his eyes. "We did not expect to find survivors."

Now it was August's turn to sound amazed. "They're just killing all the infected people? They aren't even trying to look for a cure or something?"

"A cure? Are you nuts?" Jason spat. "They don't even know what this shit is. They have no specimens of any of the zombies, no biological material to examine. None of the original crew ever made it off the station. All they have are recordings of the distress calls and video from the first containment team."

"First containment team?"

"There was another team sent here yesterday. Nobody knew exactly what we were dealing with. The government sent some soldiers and scientists up here, and the zombies infected them as soon as they came in. But they got video of it, so the government knew the nature of this ... whatever the hell it is. We're the second team, and our mission was just to exterminate."

There was a long silence, and then Melissa said softly, "I'm sorry about your teammates."

Jason shrugged weakly. "It doesn't matter. They told us what we were getting into, we knew what the infection was capable of. We're all dead now anyway."

"You keep saying that. What are you talking about?" August asked, leaning forward.

"There won't be a third team," Jason explained, his voice deathly calm. "To keep the infection from getting off the space station, they're just going to nuke the whole damn place. They're doing it tomorrow."

They exploded in argument, shouting and yelling in a panic about how the government couldn't just blow the station up, they had to solve the problem, there were still survivors aboard, there had to be some other way. But their arguments fell on deaf ears; Jason wasn't even listening. He sat like a statue, just staring at the wall, completely numb.

"Listen," August said, grabbing his shoulder to shake him back into reality, "We can get off this space station. There are emergency vessels, escape pods. If we can get to them, we can –"

"The power's turned off," Jason said.

"We know that, but we just have to turn it back on, and –" August stopped suddenly. "Wait a minute, how did you know the power was off?"

Jason made a noise that might have been laughing, if it wasn't so utterly humorless. "Who do you think turned it off? I told you, the government won't let the infection get off this station. They disabled the generator to keep the zombies from using those escape pods."

"But the escape pods are still there, right? They didn't destroy them or anything?"

"I don't think so, but what does it matter? Do you think we can just waltz in there and flip a switch and the power will come back on?" Jason asked angrily, which August thought was a good sign. At least anger was better than complete indifference. "We'd have to wait for the generator to warm up, and the entire sector would have to be re-pressurized and heated. And besides, do you know how to turn it on in the first place? I know that I don't, and I doubt –"

"We can turn it on," Melissa said. "Me and Fred are on the maintenance crew. We know how to get there and we know how to turn it on."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, we're sure!"

Jason stared at them, trying to think of some other argument. It was as if he had accepted his death so thoroughly that he didn't want to think he might be saved. After what he had seen, August almost didn't blame him. Sometimes, surviving a terrible situation could be more traumatic than dying in one. Watching those close to you lose their lives, being unable to help them, and being the only person to survive could wear on a person's soul. August knew that from personal experience.

"They're blowing the station up tomorrow?" Melissa asked.

"Yes, that's what I was told," Jason said.

She nodded firmly, decisively. "Then we still have time to escape this place." She looked at August and Fred, and then back at Jason. "You can stay here if you want and just wait to die, but we're going to try to get out of here alive."

# Chapter 7

"This is a bad idea," Jason said, shaking his head. "Why risk doing this?"

August looked up and down the hallway. He carefully lowered himself out of the shaft and took another look around, holding his pistol tightly in his hand. "If we bring back something for them to examine, maybe they'll think twice about nuking this place."

Melissa came out as well, even though she was armed with only a crowbar. The only guns they had were August's pistol, which had two rounds left, and Jason's machine pistol, which he carried since he was trained in its use. Melissa was the only person who agreed with August's plan to check out the medical labs. They both admitted that the chances of finding anything were incredibly low, but they couldn't leave without taking a look.

"What if they come after you and you get infected?" Fred asked. "We need three people to turn the generators back on, remember? That's the whole reason we woke you up in the first place."

"Just keep an eye out," August said, taking a few cautious steps farther into the hallway. "If we see any zombies at all, we're coming right back, I swear."

"Don't waste any time," Jason said. "I don't know what you think you're going to find in there, but don't spend too long looking for it." Jason climbed out of the shaft and took up position against the opposite wall to keep watch for any sign that the zombies were coming. He had calmed down somewhat since they first spoke to him. Having a plan gave him purpose again, and he seemed as determined as they were to get off the station alive. Or, if that didn't work, to at least get some revenge for the deaths of his fellow soldiers.

"It's just up here," Melissa whispered.

The glass doors to the medical lab were shattered, and shards of broken glass were all over the floor. August peered inside and listened carefully, but heard nothing. Melissa was right behind him. He swallowed nervously and stepped inside, holding his pistol in front. He expected the place to be a disaster, and he was right. The place looked as if a hurricane had just passed through. Broken glass, reams of scattered paper, smashed computer consoles, and random objects knocked off desks lay all over the floor. There was also blood splattered here and there.

When they were certain there were no zombies, Melissa said, "This is the office area. The main labs are over that way."

Another set of doors led to the main medical area. August glanced down the hallway and saw rooms for medical examinations. The lab also served as the station's emergency room, but that wasn't what August was looking for.

"You said they were doing some kind of experiment, right?" he asked. "Where are the biology labs? Where did they do their experiments?"

"Keep going straight. There's security doors farther in."

They walked through the medical bay and through another room of trashed desks and cubicles, and reached the security doors. A large "Authorized Personnel Only" warning was above the doors, written in red block letters. August pushed the doors open and immediately leaned backward, his face pinched in disgust. Melissa covered her mouth and nose with her hand.

"My God, what is that smell?" she whispered.

She really didn't have to ask, since they both knew. Anyone could guess that it was the smell of death and decay.

August took a few deep breaths and lifted his collar to cover his face. Melissa reluctantly stayed in the outside foyer as August walked into the central lab, pushing the door open with the back of his hand. The smell washed over him like a wave, so bad it made his eyes water. He gripped his gun tighter and forced himself to go farther inside.

Like the rest of the medical bay, the central biology lab was thoroughly destroyed and trashed like the aftermath of a violent riot. But instead of scattered papers and office supplies all over the place, this place was full of ruined chemical equipment and scientific apparatus. Broken glass covered the floor, and from the looks of it, hundreds of vials and test tubes and been shattered and broken everywhere.

Melissa was still waiting at the doorway, and he called to her that he was going to go farther into the lab area. He passed by more trashed consoles and destroyed equipment, and gradually became convinced that there were no zombies in the lab at all. The stink of decay was still overwhelming, but he gained enough confidence that he lowered his gun somewhat.

He saw something that caught his attention. At the very far end of the lab area was some kind of examination room. It was separated by thick glass walls to allow onlookers to view what went on inside, and there was an attached chamber off to the side with hazard suits hung on the wall. August walked toward the room, trying to understand what he was looking at.

Covering the other side of the glass wall was a layer of dried green slime. August looked into the room and saw that the green ooze was splattered everywhere inside, as if someone had detonated a mountain of green pudding. On the floor was some kind of broken black shell.

August turned back to the rest of the lab area and searched for any papers or files that might explain what kind of experiment the scientists had been working on. There had to be some kind of record or documentation. Someone must have been recording the events for posterity.

When he found nothing, he walked back over to the examination room in frustration and peered inside for a closer look. There was a dead body lying on the floor in the secondary chamber. August hadn't seen it when he first glanced inside. It was dressed in a hazard suit like the ones on the wall. As August tried to figure out what might have happened, he saw another hazard suit lying crumpled on the floor inside the examination room itself. Why would anyone take their suit off inside that room?

That's when August noticed the cameras. Four security cameras were lined up along the top of the wall inside the examination room. Most of the computers in the lab were smashed, but he found a few that were still turned on and working.

Melissa called into the room to see if he was okay. He replied that he was fine and he would only be a few more minutes. He was afraid to touch anything in the lab, so he covered his hand with the edge of his shirt and began tapping buttons on the keyboard. He found what he was looking for pretty quickly; all the security cameras in the examination room were actually still turned on. No one had ever shut them off.

He clicked back on the computer's video feed to view previous sections of the video. It took a bit of searching until he found the recording from three days before, when the infection first broke out. He had to rewind and fast-forward until he found exactly what he wanted to see.

Four scientists, all wearing hazard suits, examining a large black object on the table. They cut it open and then it exploded, covering them with green slime. The things got confusing. They started panicking, pounding on the doors to let them out. Then they started looking at what was left of the object, talking to each other. And then one of them went crazy.

August rewound the tape again and turned up the volume. As they cut it open, he heard, "The outer covering is removed. The inside is dark green and spongy. It looks very much like some sort of plant life. It's possible that this object is a pod of some kind, or a seed."

August looked out the door toward the examination room. Those scientists hadn't been doing some dangerous experiment. They had found something. Who knows where they found it, but they didn't know what it was and wanted to find out. He returned to the screen as the object blew up. They screamed about contamination and losing oxygen, and then one of the scientists, a woman, said, "I guess our examination is over, then. This has to be biological."

August shut off the video feed. He didn't have to see anymore. It was biological all right, and violently contagious. Was it some kind of alien life form? It seemed likely, but it wasn't the kind of alien life people had dreamed of for a hundred years: friendly green aliens in flying saucers willing to share all the secrets of the galaxy with the human race. Even a race of war-hungry monsters would have been preferable to this.

It was an alien disease that turned humans into horrifying zombies.

August searched the cabinets until he found some unbroken test tubes. He also found a pair of sealed rubber gloves and put them on. Then, very carefully, he snuck into the examination room and used a shard of broken glass to scrape some of the green slime into the test tube. He put in the rubber stopper and then put the test tube in a plastic bag before sticking it in his pocket.

Melissa called after him for a second time, her voice increasingly nervous. "August? Please, hurry up. I don't want to wait out here any longer."

He tossed the gloves away. "I'm coming," he said, and ran out of the lab.

# Chapter 8

They were almost afraid to ask. He'd been in the lab much longer than seemed wise, and did not say anything when he came out. Melissa looked at him expectantly, but he climbed into the maintenance shaft without even acknowledging anyone's presence. Jason and Melissa climbed in after him after exchanging uneasy glances, and they made their way to the next compartment , where there was more room to talk.

Fred broke the nervous silence. "Okay, what did you find out?"

August pulled the test tube from his pocket without preamble. "I think this is what caused the infection." Fred, Jason, and Melissa backed away from him involuntarily. He chuckled humorlessly and returned it to his pocket, as if to protect them from it.

"What is it?" Melissa asked, her voice quavering.

August shook his head and looked at the floor. How could he explain what he had seen on the video tape? Would they believe him? As he thought about it, he knew they'd have to believe him. If they accepted the existence of zombies, why not extraterrestrial life? They were in a position to believe almost anything.

"I think it's an alien life form," he said, but there was no uncertainty in his voice. They knew what he meant. He didn't think anything, he knew it. "I saw the whole thing on a surveillance tape. They found this big seed thing and were trying to dissect it. It exploded and covered the scientists in this stuff." He paused and took time to swallow uncomfortably. "And then one of them attacked the others. He was the first one infected."

"Jesus Christ," Fred whispered.

Was it somehow worse? Was the idea that it had all been caused by some unknown alien disease make the entire situation less bearable? Did it make them feel worse to know that it was truly beyond their control? If it had been caused by some disastrous experiment, would that make it easier to handle? August felt that if the infection was caused by a deliberate action, some intentional experiment that just went wrong, he could accept that. He would be no less angry or afraid, but he could understand it better. But to think that the infection was caused by a totally unknown factor, this alien pod, was almost too much. There was no way to control it or predict it. It was beyond human understanding or comprehension.

In other words, there was no one to blame.

The others felt the same way; he could see it in their faces. In the back of his mind, he had not really believed things were as bad as they seemed. After all, this entire mess was the result of some human mistake, and human mistakes have human solutions. They could take comfort in knowing that it was the direct result of someone's decisions or actions, and they were just innocent victims.

But now that they knew the truth, it made everything seem so much worse, so much more painful. Everyone was an innocent victim here, no one was at fault. No one could have seen this coming, no one was to blame for this catastrophe. It had no cause, it just happened. Their fragile sense of causality, that this had occurred because of some action, now evaporated like a dream. Having someone to blame made the entire thing seem more logical, but with no one to point a finger at, the entire thing seemed unreal.

The final consequence of their discovery was the knowledge that it was likely irreversible. If the infection had been caused in some laboratory, then maybe it could be cured in one. But if this was all some alien disease, there was no guarantee that scientists could ever find a cure or solution.

"We can't sit here and feel sorry for ourselves all day," August said, shaking them all out of their collective malaise. "We have to keep moving. We have to get to the generators."

Fred nodded enthusiastically, glad someone else was taking charge. "Yeah, yeah. Let's get going." He got into the shaft and began moving. Jason followed him, the stony expression of military indifference still on his face. But Melissa didn't move from where she was sitting.

August knew why. She had been dealing with the death of her boyfriend by hanging on to the belief that he was somehow partially responsible. He was on the medical crew, so maybe he was in on the experiment, so maybe he was partly to blame. But with the knowledge that it was not the result of some failed experiment, she could not justify that anymore. The pain, the grief, the sadness were all hitting her at once. It was as if she had just learned that her boyfriend had been infected.

August lifted her up and led her to the shaft entrance. "I'm sorry," he whispered in her ear, "but we have to go."
Chapter 9

No one spoke for a little while. There was nothing anyone could say. But they weren't being quiet because they didn't want to think about what was happening, but because they weren't thinking about it at all. Worrying about what they were about to walk into would only scare them and make them panic. So they thought about something else instead, something to calm them, something to work for.

August didn't claim to know what was going through their minds. Jason and Fred were probably thinking about their friends and family back on Earth, or what they wanted to do once they escaped. Jason might have been thinking about his fallen comrades and how best to honor their memories. Melissa was easier to guess. Most likely, she was thinking of her lost boyfriend, and how she could no longer ignore her feelings by shifting blame onto him.

August thought about how he might possibly gain his freedom. There was no way he could get to Earth without being taken into custody and interrogated by the authorities, and trying to hide his true identity was impossible. Given the nature of this disaster, and the nature of the crime of which he was convicted, it was not unreasonable for them to show mercy. He helped other people make it out alive, so might they commute his sentence? Or at the very least, send him to a prison on Earth instead of a moon circling Jupiter almost half a million miles away? He had to hope so.

After silence for so long, the sound of Fred's voice surprised him. "Here we are," he said, looking out through the ventilation slots on the access panel.

Jason craned his neck to see. "That's the generator room?"

"No, it's one of the outside corridors. We can't get directly to the generator from here."

"Well how far is it?"

"Not far," Fred said, and pried off the panel. He lowered it to the floor and set it down quietly. He climbed out and surveyed the hallway. "Looks like the coast is clear."

The others climbed out after him. The hallway was wide and dark, like some underground catacomb. There were no regular lights at all, just emergency back-ups, glowing eerily red along the top corner of the wall. Large plastic crates, metal canisters, and other supplies and containers were lined along both walls. Thick double-doors were a few yards away, and Fred headed for them. He punched in a pass code and the doors clicked loudly. He pushed them open and the others followed.

"Does it feel hot in here to you?" August asked no one in particular.

Jason nodded and cast a glance behind them. "Yeah, it does."

"Is that normal? Is it always this hot?"

"No," Melissa answered, clutching her crowbar nervously.

Fred shrugged his shoulders. "The lights are out, so maybe the temperature regulator is malfunctioning. A place like this needs constant maintenance, and it's been without any for three days now."

They headed down a side hallway and toward another set of double-doors. Fred entered his pass code again and the door clicked, but when he tried to open it, it wouldn't budge. He frowned and yanked on the handle to not avail.

"What the hell? It won't open."

Jason and August tried as well, but something was holding the door closed at the other end. It was unlocked, but something was holding it shut.

"What now?" August asked. "There's another way in, right?"

Fred sighed and rattled the door again. "Yeah, there's a couple more. But this is the closest." He pressed his face against the small window in the door, but it was frosted glass and he couldn't see anything through it. "What could be blocking this door?"

"I'm more concerned about why it's blocked," Jason said suddenly. He took a few steps back down the hall, methodically swinging his machine pistol back and forth. "Are there survivors in there trying to keep the zombies out? Or are the zombies trying to keep us from getting in?"

August grabbed Fred's arm. "Next door. Take us there right now."

Fred got the point and hurried down the hall, everyone right on his heels. August backed them up, looking behind him every other step. He doubted that there were any survivors inside, but the other theory seemed frighteningly plausible. They already knew that the zombies could plan and organize an attack, and the generator room would be an obvious goal for August and the others if they wanted to leave the station. The more August thought about it, the more certain he became that the zombies could very easily be waiting to ambush them. But what other choice did they have?

They came to the next set of doors and Fred looked expectantly at Jason, who braced himself and nodded. Fred punched in the code and pushed the doors to see inside. Immediately, he swore and jumped back, letting the door swing open.

Zombies were waiting for them in the next hallway, so many that they stretched from wall to wall in a dense crowd. At least fifty of them. They charged as soon as Fred opened the door, one snarling, brutal mass of death coming at them like a stampede.

Jason pulled the trigger, aiming his pistol at head height. Half a dozen zombies instantly reeled back, blood spurting out the back of their heads. Fred scrambled backward and then grabbed one of the doors to slam them shut. August pressed his body into them to hold the doors closed as Melissa slid her crowbar through the door handles. The doors shook and buckled as the crowd of maniacal zombies slammed into it, nearly knocking August to his feet. The doors opened a few inches, but the crowbar held. Zombies stuck their hands and arms through the opening, straining to reach them.

"What are we going to do?" Melissa cried.

"You said there were other ways in," August said to Fred.

"Sure," Fred said in despair. "But we'd have to circle all the way around."

The zombies roared and groaned, pushing and reaching through the open space with outstretched arms, but none of them were able to squeeze through. The door creaked and cracked against their weight.

"We have to go now! Let's get the hell out of here!" August shouted.

They ran back out into the main hallway, but had nowhere to go. August ran back in the direction they had come and the others followed after him. Just before they reached the side hallway leading to the blocked door, a crowd of zombies came rushing at them from farther down the hall. Jason raised his gun and opened fire, dropping another half-dozen with a barrage of bullets aimed directly at their heads. Melissa shrieked in panic as August ran to the blocked door.

He went right up to one of the doors and fired his pistol at the small window. The bullet blew through it and August used his elbow to smash away the remaining shards of cracked glass. He looked down inside and saw a chain wrapped around the door handles on the other side.

"What are you doing?" Fred shouted desperately over the sound of Jason's machine pistol.

August stuck his arm through the window and used his last bullet to shoot at the chain. One of the links snapped with a pop and August bashed his shoulder into the door until the chain slipped loose and the doors finally swung open.

Jason came last, backpedaling as he fired at the oncoming zombies. In the narrower hall, the zombies clustered closer together and he managed to shoot the last few of them with one final barrage of gunfire. However, one final zombie, shot in the throat, jumped back to its feet and lunged at Jason. He swung his gun at it and fire at nearly point blank range, hitting the zombie right in the chin, shattering its jaw and blowing the bullet out the back of its head. It flopped over backwards and landed among the grisly pile of dead zombies covering the floor.

And then, terrifying silence. Melissa's face was streaked with tears, and they were all breathing deep gulps of air that carried the disgusting scent of blood and gun smoke.

Fred took a step back. "Oh my God ..." he whispered.

Jason turned to face them. Specks of blood dotted the front of his face. He idly reached up and wiped blood from his cheek and then looked at his fingers, betraying no emotion at all. He'd been standing too close when he shot the last zombie.

"You better go," he said simply. "Get out while you can."

They stared at Jason in horror and shock, as if they were the ones who had infected blood all over them. They knew that in a minute, maybe two, Jason would become a zombie like all the others, like everyone else on the entire space station. They knew it, but they didn't want to believe it.

"Jason, you can't –" Melissa started to say, her voice quavering.

Jason tossed his machine pistol to August, who caught it in fumbling hands. His eyes held an expression of steely calm flickering with suicidal panic. "I'm dead already. You know it and I know it. Now get the hell out of here before I turn into one of those things."

Fred shook his head and forced himself to look away. "I'm sorry, man, I'm so goddamn sorry ..."

"Just go," Jason repeated. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a small cylindrical silver device with a red button on top. August didn't even have to ask what it was. He had no idea that Jason had been carrying a grenade with him the entire time.

"You can't do this," August blurted out. "They're going to find a cure, I swear to God! We'll find a cure and save you and everyone else! You don't have to do this!"

"There's no other way," Jason said, closing his eyes. "I won't be able to stop from attacking you, and then you'll just have to kill me yourself. I'm not turning into one of those things. I'm going to stop it before it starts." He opened his eyes again and glared at them. "Now go."

August wanted to stop him, to delay the inevitable, to prevent another senseless death. To him, this was the first time someone he knew personally had become infected. Not that he knew Jason well, they had just met after all. They weren't friends, they were barely acquaintances, but they were in this together. Jason had survived when the other soldiers had become infected, and it was for nothing now. He was going to die anyway.

There was a booming crash far down the hall, from where they had just come from, interrupting his sentence. And then a steady rumble, getting louder, coming toward them. They felt the floor shaking under their feet.

"They broke through the door," August said. He grabbed Melissa's hand and pulled her away. "Come on, they're coming," he said urgently. Fred wiped his eyes and came after them. August took one last look toward Jason as they turned the corner, meeting his eyes.

"Goodbye," Jason said. "I hope you make it." And then he turned and ran back down the hall, right toward the oncoming mob of zombies.

Melissa tried to squirm out of August's grip and he let her go. She went to the doors, crying out in despair, but Fred slammed the doors shut and grabbed the chain on the floor to tie them shut once again. Melissa buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

The explosion shook the station so hard that August and the others lost their balance and fell to the floor, the sound of the explosion muffled by the door but loud enough to ring in their ears. August held his breath for a second, terrified that the blast might have ruptured the station's hull. The explosive decompression would suck the air out into space in seconds, but he exhaled in shaky relief once he was sure that the hull hadn't been breached. For a few moments, the three of them just stared at each other.

August stood up unsteadily and held out his hand for Melissa.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and waved him away. "I don't need your help," she said, her voice choked. "So just leave me alone, okay?"

Fred got back to his feet as well and put his hand against his head. "Holy shit. He blew himself up. I can't believe it."

"Yeah," Melissa said, her voice sounding fragile and edged with bitterness. "He went after the other zombies and then killed himself.

"He was infected," August said. His voice sounded miles away.

"Do you think I'm stupid!" Melissa shouted at him. "I know he was infected! We all saw it! But it doesn't matter anymore, does it? He blew himself up! One less zombie to worry about!"

Fred stared at her in amazement. "What are you yelling at him for? It's not his fault that Jason got infected."

"You two are so goddamn stupid! He killed himself and the rest of us are still alive! Don't you care about that?"

"What were we supposed to do about it?" Fred shot back. "He was infected, Melissa. In another minute he'd have been chasing us just like the others! Would that have been better?"

"It's not fair that he had to die! Why not one of us? Why him?"

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Fred asked incredulously. "Was he more important than we are? It's okay if we get killed, but if he dies then it's not fair?"

August looked at the machine pistol in his hands. According to the tiny digital readout, it only had fourteen rounds left in the clip. "It could have been any of us," August said slowly. "It could have been all of us. It's a miracle that we've survived this long. Jason knew that he might get infected at any time, and then he used his very last moments to give the rest of us a chance to escape. I can only hope that if I'm infected, I'll show as much bravery as he did."

He sighed and lowered the gun. "Jason died saving our lives. If you two want to stand here and argue, that's fine. But I'm going to reach that escape ship to make sure he didn't die in vain."

He strode off without another word, and Fred spared Melissa one glance before following him. She stood there for another moment before going after them.

"Which way?" August asked.

Fred pointed ahead of them. "Just up here. We have to ride an elevator down to the generator room. It's a few levels below us."

Fred pressed a button on the wall and the elevator doors slid open. August and Fred stepped inside, followed by Melissa, who remained silent. August was too concerned with their primary goal to worry about it, but in the back of his mind he wondered exactly what she had been so mad about. Was it Jason's death, or their reaction to it?

# Chapter 10

The generator room was at least thirty feet high and one hundred feet wide. When the elevator doors opened, August felt as if he was entering an underground airplane hangar. The generator wasn't quite what he had expected, though. It was an enormous half-cylinder built into the far wall, painted all white, with dozens of small windows looking in, and several computer terminals set around it. August had been expecting some kind of turbine or electromagnet, the kind of thing he'd see in a power plant on Earth. It hadn't even occurred to him that a space station would have a nuclear reactor as a power source.

There was a metal catwalk going around the entire ceiling. Looking up, August saw a control room above him. Metal staircases led up to the catwalk, which led to the control room. Fred went to the stairs and went up, his boots clanging on the metal steps.

"You guys do the manual activation. I'll monitor from up here," he said. Melissa went to one of the computer terminals around the generator and August went to another. He had no idea what to do, but he assumed either Fred or Melissa would tell him.

When Fred was in the control room, he shouted down to them. "Okay, I'm going to initiate the start-up procedures."

There were a couple of loud beeps and clicks and he heard the nuclear reactor begin to hum as it turned on. August got a little closer and looked through one of the small windows. Inside, all he saw was a circle of metal rods turning inside a bubbling pool of water.

"Okay, start the manual activation," Fred called down.

August returned to the computer terminal and found it pretty self-explanatory. He just clicked 'yes' whenever anything came up on the screen. It asked for an authorization number, which Melissa gave to him. He typed it in and clicked 'yes' a few more times. All the while, the generator got louder and louder, and August could swear he felt a physical force emanating from it.

"Okay, looks like you're done," Fred said. "Give the subsystems a few minutes to kick in and we should be fine. I've activated all the life-support systems for the entire sector. We should be all right."

August headed over to one of the metal staircases to the catwalk, intending to go to the control room to see what Fred was doing. It wasn't until then that he noticed that the control room could only be reached by one side of the catwalk. There was only one door inside, and it was on the other side of the room. He'd have to walk all the way around the catwalk to get there. He didn't feel like walking that far, so instead he just leaned on the railing and waited for Fred to tell him when it was okay for them to enter, since they had to wait for the entire sector to be pressurized and heated, and that could take awhile.

Fred breathed a loud sigh of relief. "Everything looks fine. It should only take a few more minutes before it's warm enough for us to enter. It's already pressurized, but cold as hell inside."

It amazed August that even now, when they were so close to getting out, they felt no excitement or joy at the thought. They weren't happy or thrilled to be so close. It was as if they had seen too much horror to think about being happy now. They looked worn out, physically and emotionally.

Suddenly, the elevator beeped. Melissa, who was still by the generator, flinched at the sound and stared at the doors.

August gripped the railing tightly and felt his heart skip a beat. Melissa took a few steps toward the staircase when the elevator doors slid open, revealing the crowd of zombies packed inside. They rushed out and headed right for her.

She screamed and ran up the staircase as fast as she could. The zombies bolted across the room and howled like a pack of wild animals. Melissa made it to the catwalk and ran past August, who braced himself and raised the machine pistol.

He had a clip with fourteen bullets, but there were more than fourteen zombies. Not enough bullets, not enough time. Not enough luck. Not enough, not enough anything.

Fred shouted something to him, Melissa was screaming in fright, the generator seemed to be roaring with sound as well, but August realized it was the zombies roaring. They were coming for their prey, screeching with inhuman delight. Melissa screamed and grabbed his arm.

The zombies were at the stairs. Starting to come up. August raised the pistol and pulled the trigger once, striking the first zombie square in the forehead. Chunks of its skull fluttered away and it flew backward, knocking into the zombies behind it, causing them to cascade back down the stairs, crashing to the floor in a writhing heap. A few of them held onto the railing to keep their footing, and they immediately leaped forward.

August and Melissa ran down the catwalk but they reached a dead end at the doorway to the next sector. He had bought them a few more seconds of life, but that was all. The doors behind them wouldn't open because the sector wasn't ready yet. There was nothing in the way to slow the zombies down, nothing between them, just the stairs and the catwalk ...

The catwalk, which was held up by bolts along the wall and thick metal wires fastened to the ceiling. The zombies recovered and rushed back up the stairs, the entire crowd of them at once, putting all their combined weight on the catwalk. August felt the metal creak under his feet.

He raised the pistol and fired two more shots, hitting the two spots on the railing where the wire brackets were attached. The catwalk screeched and buckled, almost knocking August and Melissa right off. The staircase tilted sideways, throwing one of the zombies down to the floor below. The other zombies made it to the catwalk, and made one last desperate lunge for them.

Grabbing the railing for support, August fired again and hit the last wire support. With a metallic scream, the catwalk broke in half, collapsing in on itself. The side with the staircase broke from the wall and fell to the floor with a deafening crash, all the zombies falling with it. The last fifteen feet of the catwalk, where August and Melissa stood, tilted sideways but did not fall, since it still had one wire support remaining to hold it up.

Melissa slid a few feet before grabbing onto the railing to hold herself up. Her legs dangled over the edge, and the zombies below howled their fury, as if she was teasing them. August grabbed her hand and pulled her toward him, helping her stand back up.

He looked up to see Fred still in the control booth, laughing his head off. "Way to go!" Fred shouted. "How in the hell did you do that?"

When the zombies heard his voice, they ran for the control room. The smile on Fred's face disappeared at once. He knew he couldn't run, so he quickly locked the control room door. He took a chair and propped it under the door to help keep it closed, but it wasn't going to be enough.

He backed away from it as the zombies made their way up the other staircase and ran to the door. They slammed into it with enough force to shake the entire room. The door rattled back and forth, the plastic glass cracked and broke in a spiderweb pattern.

Fred turned and looked at August and Melissa, across a span of maybe thirty feet, from the control room to the catwalk, but it might as well have been a mile. Far too wide a space to risk jumping. August and Melissa had nothing to reach him with.

"Get out of here," Fred called to them. "You can get to the escape ships now."

"No!" Melissa screamed. "No, Fred! We aren't leaving without you!"

The zombies bashed into the door and the chair broke in half with the impact. The doorframe splintered, but somehow the door still held. Fred looked at the raging zombies and sighed. It was too late.

"Fred!" Melissa cried.

"Just get to the ship!" he shouted. "Get out of here and tell everyone what happened!"

"No!"

"I can't get out of here! The zombies can't follow you up there, so just get going!"

The window on the door shattered and the zombies frantically reached in, almost falling through the hole. The frame splintered and the door burst open. And then the zombies were upon him. They tackled and smothered him like a pack of wild dogs. August turned his head away as Melissa cried out, burying her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.
Chapter 11

Melissa would not move, so August had to practically drag her through the doorway and into the elevator on the other side. She fought him off weakly with half-hearted punches, her face streaked with tears. Once they were in the elevator, August punched the button for the main level and the doors slid closed, cutting off the sound of the zombies screaming back in the generator room. August leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, breathing heavily. Melissa sat on the floor across from him, just staring at nothing.

The elevator doors opened and a rush of cold air blew inside. It was cold enough that August could see his breath. It would probably take hours for the newly-activated section to warm up to the same temperature as the rest of the station, but August didn't intend to wait around that long.

Back in the generator room, the zombies were probably trying to find a way to reach the other half of the collapsed catwalk. August doubted they could find one, but if they did, he didn't want them using the elevator. Out in the corridor, he grabbed a metal trash bin and dragged it so it blocked the elevator doors, preventing it from going back down to the generator room. Melissa watched him in silence.

"Come on," he said, trying to help her to her feet. She struggled and fell back to the floor.

"Leave me alone," she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "I don't want your goddamn help."

August grabbed her anyway and lifted her up against her will. She smacked him in the face and pushed away, but remained on her feet, glaring at him. At this point, August didn't care what she thought of him, as long as he didn't have to drag her all the way to the ship. If she kept fighting him, he considered just knocking her out and carrying her there.

She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, not the posture of someone willing to cooperate. She stared at him angrily, her eyes still glistening with tears.

"What?" he asked exasperatedly. "Listen, I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do," he said, trying to sound sympathetic. He stepped forward until Melissa was only a foot away. "We have to keep going. We can't just stay here."

She pushed him back. "Get away from me."

"For God's sake, Melissa, I'm just trying to –"

"I said get away from me!"

August shook his head and looked at her disdainfully. "Listen, if you want to sit here and wallow in your misery, go right ahead." He pointed down the hall. "But there's a ship we can use to get the hell out of here, and I intend to use it."

"You don't care about them at all, do you?"

"About Jason and Fred? I hate to mention it to you, but there's nothing we can do to help them now. If there was, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but there isn't. All that we can do is try to get out of here ourselves. Crying about them getting infected isn't going to make it go away." He pulled out the test tube he still had in his pocket. "But if we can get this to some scientists, maybe they can figure out what this disease is and find a cure. And that will make it go away."

"You don't care about a cure," Melissa accused him. "You just want to get out of here to save your own skin. You're just trying to stay out of the prison colony. You'd let everyone die if it would keep the police from catching you!"

August probably shouldn't have been surprised, but he was. In all the excitement, he'd almost forgotten about that. He almost laughed, but stopped because it would just make Melissa more angry than she already was. "Is that what this is all about? Don't forget that you were the one that woke me up in the first place. You knew what I was when you opened that cyro case, so don't act like it was some big surprise."

"Fred and Jason were good people! They didn't deserve what happened to them! So why did they get infected and you didn't? You're nothing but a goddamn murderer!"

"Oh, now I get it," August said, putting his hands on his hips. "You're not pissed off because they're dead, you're pissed off because I'm still alive."

"We should have left you in that case," Melissa said, glaring at him hatefully. "We should have let the zombies have you. You don't care about anyone but yourself. All that crap you said earlier about saving lives and helping figure out what happened was nothing but you trying to save your own pathetic life."

"You don't know a damn thing about me," August said.

"You're a murderer. That's all I need to know."

"It must be nice to judge people like that. You think your life is so perfect that you've never made any mistakes or done anything you regret? What gives you the right to judge me for what I've done?"

"I've never murdered anyone."

"You killed some of those zombies," August said. "Sure, you did it self-defense, but you still killed them, just like the rest of us did."

"It's not the same thing and you know it," Melissa spat.

"That's not my point. You did what you had to do, and so did I. You want to know why I killed that cop? Do you want to know why I did it?"

"I don't care."

"That's right, you don't care. It's easier to just hate me, because it makes you feel better about yourself. You'd have been caught by those zombies a dozen times if it wasn't for me and Fred saving your life. But hey, I killed a cop once, so I guess that automatically makes me the bad guy, right?"

"Listen to yourself," Melissa sneered. "You don't even try to deny what you did. You murdered someone and you act like it doesn't even matter. Their life doesn't mean anything to you, and neither does Fred's or mine or anyone else's."

"My brother's life meant something to me," August said after a short pause.

Melissa stared at him and blinked. She opened her mouth to say something and just let out a breath and looked away. August shook his head in disappointment and leaned against the opposite wall, tilting his head back to look at the ceiling.

"I grew up in New York City," he said. "You've probably never been there because of the travel restrictions, but I'm sure you know all about it. The martial law, the gang wars, the food riots, it was probably on the news every day in whatever nice little upper-class suburb you grew up in. My father died in a riot when I was two, my mother died of cancer when I was fourteen. My brother's name was Andrew. He was three years younger than me and I had to take care of him."

"Having a shitty life doesn't mean you have a right to kill anyone," Melissa said in a low voice. "Lots of people have tough lives."

"That's true, lots of people had it worse than me. At least me and my brother weren't messed up on drugs or trapped in a gang. We were just trying to survive, you know. We made a living by salvaging scrap metal, doing deliveries for stores and things like that, whatever work we could find. We even worked at a real job for a few months before the cops shut it down because of production limits."

Melissa kept her teeth clenched and said nothing.

August took a breath and continued. "About two years ago there was this riot, one of the biggest I've ever seen. Must have taken up twenty square blocks. A hundred thousand people were going crazy in the streets. Buildings got set on fire, people got trampled, and all because some of the gang leaders wanted a bigger share of the air-dropped food supplements that the government was generous enough to give us poor people."

"Black Tuesday," Melissa said, almost to herself. "The Black Tuesday riot."

"Is that what they call it? I don't even remember what day of the week it was. Anyway, the cops called in the National Guard and the National Riot Task Force and everything. The entire city turned into one huge riot."

"I heard about it on the news. You were involved?"

"Me and Andrew were right in the middle of it. We weren't part of a gang, like I told you, but in the middle of a riot one person pretty much looks like another. We got stuck in a crowd of gang members that were throwing rocks at some cops. Well, the cops opened fire on the whole crowd and it scattered. We took off when the shooting started, and I guess one of the cops decided to chase us. I have no idea why. He must figured we were one of the people throwing rocks. There was no way we were gonna stop and tell him we were innocent, so we just ran. We tried to lose him in an alley, but he kept chasing us, so we decided to split up. I ran one way and Andrew ran the other. The cop followed Andrew, so I turned around and began chasing after the cop. But Andrew turned down the wrong alley and got caught in a dead end, so the cop caught him before I got there."

August paused to take a breath. His voice betrayed no emotion until now, as if he was simply telling a story that happened to someone else. But now, he spoke in a forced voice barely above a whisper.

"And the cop killed him right in front of me. He had him on his knees with his hands behind his head to handcuff him, and then just shot him in the head. Figured he was just another gang punk, not worth the time to arrest."

"Is that when you killed him?" Melissa asked, not looking at him.

"Yeah, I did it without even thinking. I grabbed a metal bar and hit him from behind. He tried to shoot me too, but I hit him in the hand and he dropped his gun. Then I just started hitting him over the head. I beat him to death."

There was a long, tense silence, and August had to struggle to return his breathing to normal. "I wanted to give Andrew a decent burial, but I had to leave him there. They arrested me a couple days later, after the riot was over. My fingerprints were on the metal bar. I confessed anyway, there was no use in fighting it. The crazy part was that they actually believed me when I told them that the cop murdered Andrew. They acted like it was no big deal. The judge didn't care either, he just said I was guilty and they threw me in jail. And when the prison got too overcrowded, they decided to send me to Europa."

Melissa said nothing, so August finished for her. "I don't regret what I did. That cop deserved it. All I wanted to do was save my brother. Does that make me a bad person? Do you still want the zombies to get me?"

Melissa kept quiet but finally shook her head. She cleared her throat and walked out of the elevator and down the corridor. After a few moments, August followed after her.

# Chapter 12

Now that the power to the sector was restored, that meant all the doors were open and zombies could come in. Just to be on the safe side, Melissa located another maintenance tunnel and they crawled inside rather than walking down the hallway.

"How far until we get to the escape pods?' August asked. He had no real urge to know, but he felt like saying something to break the silence.

"Not long," Melissa replied.

"And then what?"

"Nothing, really. The ships have automatic controls. We just have to get in and turn it on."

"Sounds easy enough."

"Yeah," Melissa muttered. "Easy." Quiet returned for a few minutes, and then Melissa spoke again. "The military will probably pick us up as soon as we take off."

"Yeah, probably."

"What are we going to tell them?"

August shrugged. "The truth, I guess."

"About you, I mean."

"It doesn't matter. I'm wearing a prison uniform, so it won't take them long to figure out who I am. They'll verify our identities as soon as they get us quarantined."

"Do you think they'll ... reduce your sentence or anything?"

"Maybe. We'll have to wait and see."

They lapsed back into silence until they reached the emergency vessel hangars. Melissa quietly pried off the access panels and climbed out of the shaft, taking a careful look around.

August had envisioned rocket-like spaceships lined up in rows inside the giant hangar to shoot out of the station like bullets. Instead, the "emergency hangar" was nothing but a long hallway with a series of airlock doors and intake valves leading to the ships, which were actually docked on the outside of the station. It made sense when he thought about it.

The good news was that there was not a single zombie in sight. August stood in the entrance to the hangar with the machine pistol raised, even though it only had a few rounds left.

Melissa ran to the nearest airlock door and hit the button on the wall to open it. She waited a moment, but nothing happened, so she pressed it a second time. Again, nothing. She looked nervously at August and went to the second door. She tried it and it would not open either.

"Do they have a separate power supply or anything?" August asked as he went to try one of the doors himself.

"No," Melissa said, panic beginning to edge her voice. "These doors should just open as soon as you press the button. The airlock itself is already pressurized."

They tried seven different doors before one of them finally opened. Melissa almost fell to her knees in relief, and they ran inside the ship, closing the door behind them. The ship wasn't very large, roomy enough for only about ten people jammed together like sardines. There was just the airlock, a "passenger cabin" the size of a broom closet, and the narrow cockpit with only one chair.

Melissa pressed a switch on the control panel and the lights popped on. She sat down in the pilot's chair and turned on the engine. And finally, she let herself smile.

The radio began to blare static and some scrambled words. She adjusted the frequency and heard a man's stern voice announce, "This is the United Earth Army, please respond. Whoever has just activated the escape ship on the space station Aurora, please respond. Do not attempt to disengage from the Aurora or you will be fired upon."

Melissa grabbed the microphone. "Here I am!" she shouted into the receiver. "My name is Melissa Bentley! Don't shoot at me!"

The voice on the other end sounded less stern and more reassuring now. "Ms. Bentley, this is General James Cooper. Are you the only survivor?"

"No, there's another person with me," she said, and cast August an apologetic glance. "His name is August Haley."

"Neither of you have been infected, is that correct?"

"That's correct. Neither of us are infected."

"Do you have anything with you that may carry the infection? Blood on your clothes, for example? Anything biological from the station that –"

"Yes we do," Melissa interrupted. "Yes. We have a test tube full of the green slime that caused it in the first place. We brought it so scientists could study it."

"Green slime? Are you saying you have a sample of the extraterrestrial life that the researchers were studying?"

"Yes," Melissa said, glad that the general knew about it. Explaining it would be difficult, since neither she nor August knew any of the details.

"That is fantastic, Ms. Bentley. Are you certain that you have nothing else that possibly spread the infection?"

Melissa glanced at her clothes for any blood stains, but didn't see anything. "Oh, I don't know. We just want to get out of here! We won't touch anybody or anything, okay? We'll stay on the ship until we're decontaminated, or whatever else you need to do."

"Okay, but you must follow my orders exactly, do you understand? You can disengage from the station and approach my ship, the Nebula. We are in a synchronous orbit thirty degrees in front of the Aurora. You may approach the ship, but you may not dock with us. We will send a transport to dock with you and prepare you for quarantine. Is that all right?"

"Yes, it's fine. Thank you. We're leaving the station now." Melissa tossed the receiver aside and punched a few buttons on the console. August held onto a section of the bulkhead for support, since there was nowhere for him to sit. The ship trembled and separated from the space station with a shudder. Melissa flew the ship forward with low acceleration.

As soon as the ship moved away from the Aurora and entered open space, August could see the military ship Nebula in the distance. It wasn't just a ship, it was a battle carrier. It had enough weapons to turn their little escape vessel into fragments of radioactive dust.

"We made it," Melissa whispered, as if she didn't really believe it. She leaned back in her seat and laughed incredulously. "I don't believe it! We made it!"

"Hurray for us," August laughed. Knowing that he'd be arrested and returned to prison shortly, he was considerably less happy, but he was glad to be alive. There were a few times that he didn't think they'd make it this far, but they did. And here they were, on the escape ship, moments from being rescued. They had really made it out of there alive.

Something made a noise in the back of the ship. It was nothing but a muffled thump, but August immediately spun around, raising the machine pistol.

Melissa instantly stopped laughing and backed away toward the flight console. "What was that noise?"

August looked at the rear of the passenger cabin. There was nothing there, and nowhere anything could hide. And then he was certain he heard another very quiet thump. It came from within the wall, he was sure of it. He took another step. He noticed that the back wall was actually a removable panel, probably for checking on the ship's electronics. He held out his gun and reached for it.

With a crash, the panel flew off and a zombie launched itself at him. He got one shot off that zipped over the zombie's left shoulder, before the zombie grabbed both of his wrists and pushed him stumbling backwards. He tried to fight it off, but the zombie was taller and stronger than he was. It squeezed his wrists until he shrieked in pain, fearing the bones would splinter under the pressure, and his gun dropped from his hands.

The zombie swung him around and hurled him into the back wall, where he crumpled to the ground. A thought swam in his mind among the pain in his hands: the zombie touched him! He was infected!

Almost casually, the zombie picked up the machine pistol and stuck it in the large front pocket of its lab jacket. It walked forward, where Melissa was cowering frantically beside the flight console, mouth open in a silent scream, eyes wide open in an expression of sheer terror.

The zombie wore a blue and white medical uniform, with the last name "Harnett" stenciled above his breast pocket. It was Peter Harnett, the Head Medical Advisor aboard the Aurora. He was the first man infected with the alien disease.

He was Melissa's boyfriend.

# Chapter 13

Melissa pressed herself against the control panel as if trying to phase through into open space, shaking so bad her hands banged against the edge of the console. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her breath came in ragged gasps as a scream tried to find its way out of her mouth.

Peter Harnett was not like the other zombies. His eyes were not white, but dark red, and while the other zombies only held the semblance of sanity, Peter stood before her like the scientist he was, studying some fascinating new subject. He was almost smiling.

"Mellliiisssaaa," he hissed, coming closer. She shrieked and tried to get away, but he reached out and pressed his hand to the center of her chest, holding her tightly against the flight console. "Melisssaaa," he said again, and the word came out smoother this time. "It'sss meee, Peeeterrr."

Melissa wanted to fight him off and get as far away as possible, but she could not hit him for fear she would touch his skin and get infected herself. She had no choice but to stand there, trapped, terrified, inches away from the man she once loved and was now scared to death of.

"I'mmm ccchhhanggged," the zombie whispered, leaning close as if to seduce her. "Thisss isss beterrr. I wwwaaant yyyou tooo joinnn meee."

Melissa closed her eyes and turned her head away, unable to look at Peter's terrible face any longer. Frozen in fear, her only movement was the motion of her chest as she sobbed silently.

At the other end of the small ship, August got to his feet, gripping his stomach and shuddering in pain. The pain flooded through his entire body, causing his whole frame to twitch like he was being electrocuted. He opened his eyes with effort and through the blur of pain, saw the zombie standing right beside Melissa, but not attacking her.

This is all wrong. This is all wrong. What in the world is going on here? August staggered forward, barely able to walk. It felt like he was being eaten from the inside out by insects, like he was infested with some ravenous parasite. His whole body was wracked with burning pain, and before he even made it to the cockpit, he felt the agony seep into his brain.

And that's when he felt it. He looked up through a cloud of white at the zombie in front of him, and knew what was actually happening. He could feel the truth of the situation occur to him as the infection made its way into his mind. He was becoming a zombie, and that was the only way he could learn. The only way he could learn the nature of the infection was to become infected himself. Knowledge entered his mind along with the infection. And then it all became clear.

The infection was not a disease. The object that Peter Harnett and his team had examined was not just an extraterrestrial plant seed or pod. It was a container for a form of intelligent alien life, packaged and launched through space in an attempt to spread it to other planets. Intelligent, unicellular life. Peter Harnett had been infected with an intelligent alien life form.

It reproduced throughout his body and took control of his central nervous system within minutes. It invaded his brain and manipulated his thoughts. It spread across the surface of his skin through his pores, allowing him infect others just by touching them. Anyone so infected could continue the cycle.

But Peter was only one directly infected with the original life form, the one that had traveled for a millennia inside the alien pod. When he infected others, he passed on an altered form, one that was dependent upon the original form like a child was dependent on its parent. Peter possessed a stronger strain of alien life and retained a powerful bond with the other zombies. He commanded them and controlled them from a distance. That is why the zombies couldn't travel through the maintenance tunnels; the electrical components around them distorted the bond and left Peter unable to control them.

The other zombies were all mindless drones, attached to the their master like worker ants to their queen. Peter Harnett was the king of his hive, the master of all the zombies. And he had been waiting here for Melissa to come to him. Because he wanted to make her his queen.

August learned all of this in a heartbeat, as the infection took over his brain. He could already feel his connection with Peter growing, could almost feel Peter's thoughts. He could feel himself losing control of his body and giving it to the zombie standing only a few feet away. He could feel himself becoming a drone.

But he wasn't going to give up without a fight.

Peter must have sensed his thoughts, because he turned around just as August went for him. He grabbed Peter's throat and pulled him away from Melissa, dragging him into the center of the ship. Peter lashed out and knocked August back, pulling out the machine pistol. But August lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Peter's chest in a bear hug. The gun went off, blowing a bloody hole in August's stomach, spraying blood across the floor.

August roared and pushed forward, slamming Peter into the airlock door. With his elbow, he hit the button and the door opened with a hiss. Peter fell inside and August collapsed on top of him. He swung his arm up and hit the button on the inside, closing the door. A red light flashed on overhead.

Peter screamed and August felt a splinter of agonizing pain erupt inside his head, like a firecracker going off in his brain. Peter raised the gun and pulled the trigger, firing it until it was empty, riddling August with the last few bullets. He fell back and with his last ounce of strength, pressed the button to open the outer door.

It opened and sucked both of them out into space.
Chapter 14

The doctor, clad in a standard white lab coat, tapped his clipboard against the foot of Melissa's bed. She had been staring out the window into the early morning sunshine, and the sudden noise woke her from her violent daydream.

"Good morning, Ms. Bentley," the doctor said professionally. "The nurse told me you had trouble sleeping last night."

"I had nightmares," Melissa whispered. She didn't look the doctor in the eyes.

"Well, I guess that's only natural, after what happened. I can prescribe sleeping pills, if you want."

"No, thank you."

"Has General Cooper called you yet?"

Melissa tried to place the name. She remembered vaguely that he was the military commander in charge of investigating what happened on the space station. The events of the day before were all mixed in her mind. Everything after August saved her life was one long blur. Now, sitting in a nice bed in the military hospital on Mars, it seemed like none of it had really happened, as if she had daydreamed everything after that. The interviews, interrogations, medical exams, procedures, more interviews ... all of it occurred in a haze of numbness.

She realized the doctor was waiting for an answer. "No," she said. "He hasn't."

"I suppose he's still busy dealing with the politicians and the news people. He wanted to talk to you in person, you know."

"I've already answered enough questions."

The doctor smiled. "Oh, not more questions. He wouldn't dare. The science team is learning everything they want to know by direct observation. They've already sent medical and biological teams onto the station, you know."

"What about the zombies?"

"That's what the General wanted to tell you. Since he's not here, I guess I'll tell you the good news myself. When the teams entered the Aurora, there were no more ... um, infected people on the station."

Melissa's head snapped over and she stared at the doctor. "What the hell are you talking about?"

The doctor gave her a smile that was probably meant to look comforting, but to Melissa it just looked insane. "The science teams spent all night working on this. I don't understand all the details, but it seems that Peter Harnett was the only one directly infected by the alien pod they were studying. In some way or another, they aren't sure how, he was actually in control of all the other infected people. It was an alien life form, you see, and had developed a form of psychic bond to communicate. So when Mr. Harnett was killed, the bond was severed."

Melissa sat up in bed and grabbed the front of the doctor's shirt. "What about all the people on the station? What happened to them? Are they all dead?"

"No, no," the doctor said, peeling Melissa's hand away. "They're under observation right now until we can be certain that the infection doesn't have any lasting effects. We're keeping them quarantined until ..."

The phone in Melissa's room rang and she flinched at the sound. The doctor answered the phone and said, "Yes, this is Dr. Lawrence. Oh, I thought this would be General Cooper. Yes, she's right here. You certainly can."

He handed her the phone and she shakily placed it against her ear.

"Hello?" she said in a weak voice.

"Hey, Melissa," came a familiar voice. "It's Fred. It's good to hear your voice."
