Zombie Fever: Evolution by B.M. Hodges Page A

the chair down, he picked up a barstool made from metal tubing. He counted to three and stepped around the bar, already swinging the barstool towards his unseen foe.
    But there was nothing there.
    The blood streak stopped behind the bar, but there was nothing else.
    Tomas let out a sigh and set the bar stool down. He grabbed a glass, filled it full of water with the bar’s drink gun and pounded it back.
    Clink.
    There was the sound of dishes being knocked together in the kitchen.
    A thin paring knife used to cut limes sat next to the beer taps. Tomas picked it up, then wrapped a towel around his left hand - the idea being to shove his left fist into the zombie’s mouth, then shove the knife through its eye.
    He crept up to the kitchen door and peered through the crack.
    There was someone inside. It was a waiter in full uniform facing in the other direction, so it was hard to tell if he was infected. He seemed hard at work, his busy hands out of view in the industrial sink. Tomas watched through the slit in the door as the waiter got all twitchy for a minute then continued with whatever it was he was doing in the sink. Suspecting that the waiter wasn’t in his right mind, Tomas backed away from the door and retreated to the deck. He pulled down a string of lights hanging from the ceiling and cut off a three-foot length with the knife.
    As Tomas snuck through the kitchen door, the waiter must have heard a noise because he paused what he was doing and cocked his head.
    Tomas froze.
    As the waiter waited and listened, Tomas noticed he was missing an ear.
    Tomas slid behind the waiter, took a deep breath, pulled the sting of lights over his head and began choking the life out of him. The waiter didn’t put up much of a struggle. He more or less pressed his body back against Tomas and banged on the lip of the sink with his open hands.
    When it was all over, Tomas laid him on the ground and confirmed he was a zombie. It was obvious really. If the missing ear didn’t give it away, then surely the missing nose did the trick.
    Curious to see what the zombie waiter had been working on, Tomas glanced into the sink. There was a mass of organs, crushed and squeezed into a pulpy mass. Whether the remains were human, animal or fish, it was impossible to tell. But this waiter zombie hadn’t been dining on the gore; the whole scene had the look of preparation.
    Tomas tried to wrap his head around this. He recalled the zombie he had beheaded the night before dragging the corpse and now this. Two possible explanations came to him: either zombies infected with IHS-2 were passively following echoes of their previous existence or they retained more than mere rudimentary instincts like those infected with the original strain. This waiter, Tomas reasoned, could have been doing waiter duties, only handling fistfuls of gore in the sink instead of fresh veggies or dirty dishes. Or he may have been up to something nefarious, an action oozing out of a darker understanding.
    He checked his watch.
    12:20 am.
    He hoped Abigail and her friend wouldn’t be late and they could skiff across the strait before the Singapore Coast Guard was the wiser.
    If they don’t make it, I have to assume they’re trapped somewhere on the island.
    Thirty minutes later and he was worried.
    He pulled out Abigail’s headshot photo, stared at it, then turned it over and reread the address and directions he had scrawled on the back to her parent’s apartment about five miles south from his current locale. It didn’t make much sense to stand around and wait or to continue hunting for infected at the jetty so he began searching for transportation. He was sure that she was alive. It was just a matter of locating her whereabouts.
    She’s a survivor, Tomas thought. She’ll find me if I don’t find her first.
     

 
     
    Chapter Seven
     
    Vitura International Research Laboratory Ship
    Singapore Strait/International Waters
     
    Jayden and Vines marched through the