Zombpunk: SAPPA

By Christopher Blankley

The end of the world is finally here.
Seattle sits lost, choked by the thick cloud of nuclear winter and overrun by the walking dead. But the city is not in chaos, order reigns over the streets. Elder Tull's visage looks on as Skinnies shamble about their duties. There is calm, there is industry, there is reconstruction. But no life.
Only Sweet Beat and Kevin still draw a breath.
They move unnoticed through the snow-covered streets, nuclear bombs strapped to their backs. They have every intent to put an end to Elder Tull's little Orwellian, zombie regime – and the last of the Stem menace along with it – but a strange discovery below the streets of Pioneer Square cause Beat and Kevin to reconsider their scheme.

SAPPA is the explosive third installment of the Zombpunk saga, bringing to a close the exciting adventures of Elder Tull, Sweet Beat, Eydie, Kevin, and the billionaire Drew Arrow.

The end of the world is finally here. Can a new world take its first breath?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Blankley
• Release date: Jun 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311977410

Christopher Blankley

Seattle is my home and the backdrop of many of my books. I am not a detective, or a zombie, or living in an alternate version of the 21st Century, so my life and my books pretty much just overlap with the Seattle thing. If you like detectives, zombies, alternate histories, even Seattle, you might like my books. I do. I like you. There, I said it. I’ve written over a dozen books, including the aforementioned ones about detectives and zombies and alternate histories. Did I mention Seattle? Seattle's in some of them, too.

Book preview

ZOMBPUNK

Book 3

SAPPA

by

Christopher Blankley

Copyright @ 2014 by Christopher Blankley

Smashwords Edition

other books by Christopher Blankley:

The Cordwainer

The Bobbies of Bailiwick

The Bobbies of Bailiwick and the Captive Ocean

Zombpunk: STEM

Zombpunk: ARROW

The Raft

That Nietzsche Thing

www.zombpunk.com

Chapter 1

It was a full, shredded BBQ pork dinner with coleslaw and potatoes, all condensed into a paste and squashed into a foil baggy.

Sweet Beat took a sip through the straw and retched in disgust. Even after three years of subsisting off nothing other than Drew Arrow’s stock of weird, astronaut-ready meals-in-a-bag, the nauseating reality of each new flavor still managed to shock her.

It was true, in creating the portable dinners the designers were attempting to develop a freeze-dried, irradiated meal that could be safely stored for twenty years, not a taste sensation. But still...some scientists in some lab somewhere, once-upon-a-time, sat down and said to each other, "Let’s make a BBQ pork dinner, with all the fixings, mush it up, and squeeze it into bag. What astronaut wouldn’t want to eat that?"

Beat took another sip of the straw and grimaced. Yum, she told herself. She could only hope that the fantasy might somehow out vote the reality in her stomach.

Want to try mine? Kevin asked, holding out his silver sack of goo. Eggs benedict. It’s not bad.

Sweet Beat wrinkled up her nose and shook her head. At least there were worse options. Kevin had always had an iron stomach...and no taste buds. Lucky bastard.

Beat took another sip of her dinner and choked it down. Fuck, if this climb doesn’t kill us, she said, then the food will. She looked up into the gloom, up at the flight after flight of stairs that spiraled away into the darkness above her. They were, perhaps, two-thirds of the way up the tower, but there was still no sign of the summit of the stairwell.

She’d been here before, climbed these stairs before. That adventure had cost them the Prime Administrator, Eydie, and eventually Elder Tull, too. There was bad blood between Sweet Beat and these stairs. No good could come for her climbing them again.

Kevin snorted and sucked down the last of his eggs benedict. The foil sack imploded in on itself in a fashion that made Beat think back to apple juice boxes and being young. It was incongruous to see a man of Kevin’s great bulk performing a task so child-like. He noisily slurped at his straw to extract every last drop of nutrition, then let out a satisfied sigh.

Tossing the sack aside, he looked up and smiled a Beat. She was done, if not finished, with her meal. She tossed it over the railing of the stairs.

Come on, she said, climbing to her feet. We’ve still got a shit-can more stairs to go.

Wearily, Kevin proceeded through the labor of helping Beat mount one of the gargantuan backpacks onto her shoulders. In turn, Beat attempted to give Kevin what help she could as he snaked his arm into his. Beat’s was perhaps more bulky, but Kevin’s was certainly much heavier. Fifty stories they’d climbed today, with 25 more to go. And the five climbs prior, up neighboring towers, Kevin had always carried the heavier load.

It was, perhaps, his chivalrous duty to carry the heavier sack, but truth be told, even if Sweet Beat had made an issue of the distribution of labor, she’d never have been able to make the climbs. Seventy-six stories with 200 pounds on her back...no force-of-will would have given her the strength.

Not on BBQ pork goo and mashed slaw.

Once loaded, Kevin lifted a weary foot to the first step in the series of thousands that remained to climb. He groaned and leaned into his load, lifting his next foot slowly up.

Sweet Beat shifted her pack on her back and followed, huffing as she pulled herself and her load up the stairs.

Twenty-four more flights to go.

All the weight of a W88 thermonuclear warhead was really in its core and shielding. Kevin had that in his sack. What remained, Beat was carrying, along with the equipment the Arrowsoft techs had cobbled together to detonate the core when removed from its Mk. 21 reentry vehicle.

This made the sixth warhead Kevin and Sweet Beat had dragged, step by step, to the top of a derelict Seattle skyscraper. This was the last, closing the circle that would perfectly mirror the clustering pattern created by the detonation of a Russian SS-19 Stiletto’s MIRV. Or so the Arrowsoft boffins told them. Each bomb was really a 300 kiloton warhead, instead of the 500 kilotons of each warhead in a Russian ICBM, but once the bombs went off, there’d certainly be nobody around to notice the discrepancy.

There was no one left to care, anyway. No one alive, after all. All life in Seattle had long since been extinguished, consumed by the Stem Phage. All that remained in the city was the walking dead. And Sweet. And Kevin.

And the carcass of a long-dead civilization.

Beat surmounted a flight of stairs and shuffled her feet to the base of the next. Kevin was already halfway up the flight, staining under his heavy load. Beat took a deep breath and tackled the first step. It seemed impossibly high, higher than any step she’d ever taken in her life. But she knew it was no higher than any step that had come before. It felt immense. She’d never make it to the top of the Columbia Tower. Not again. Not back to the Arrowsoft Suite where Prime had died. Where they’d take Eydie and turned her into...

But Beat had no choice. She had to keep climbing. This was the last bomb. Once it was in place, everything would be ready. The work of six months would finally be over. She’d be able to rest. Sleep. They’d be ready. Ready for him.

Ready for Elder Tull.

Twenty-three more flights to go.

The bombs, of course, were not to kill Elder Tull. Beat knew she’d never get the satisfaction of killing him herself. After all, Elder Tull was already dead. Eydie had seen to that. She’d shot Elder Tull in the back. He’d hit the dirt streets of Bannock a corpse. But these days, dead didn’t really count as dead. Not with the dead up and about and eating each other.

No, somehow, some way, Elder Tull was still alive. Eydie must have seen to that, too. But he was no longer the old Elder Tull. Certainly not. The old puke, the unpredictable, often unstable Elder Tull was long gone. What had replaced him...well, it was hard for Sweet Beat to explain. Even to herself.

Elder had always been smart. Bat-shit crazy, maybe, but always smart. The combination of death and resurrection had unleashed something from inside Elder Tull. Something truly horrible. Neither alive nor dead now, he’d become some sort of god to the Skinnies...there was no other way that Sweet Beat could phrase it.

Beat wasn’t normally quick to blaspheme, raised a good Baptist girl. But what Elder Tull had turned the Skinnies into in the three years since the Battle of Bannock was nothing short of miraculous.

Twenty-two more floors, Beat panted. Kevin was beginning to flag. A few more floors and they’d take another rest. Five flights at a time was more than any human could manage. And after all, Kevin and Beat were still just human. Not super-charged, undead maniacs. Not like the Skinnies. Or rather, how the Skinnies had once been. Under the sway of Elder Tull, all that was now over. All the uncountable herds of snarling zombies. They were civilization now...again...but nothing like before the phage. They were all still dead, of course. From the neck up. But they were no longer the crazed, animal-like creatures that had once roamed the desolation of the city, feeding on each other. No more cannibalistic tribes. Under the sway of Elder Tull, there was order. Peace. Regimentation.

At the landing for floor 55, Kevin’s knees buckled under the weight of the nuclear core. He slumped over, letting the heavy pack slide off his back. He moaned in exhaustion as he rolled away from his painful burden and cooled his face against the iron of the stairwell’s landing. Beat dropped down beside him and struggled to free herself from her backpack. She found the canteen and handed it to Kevin. He drank long and deep, letting the water gurgle down his chin.

No, Elder Tull had turned into some sort of fucking Skinny Messiah. They seemed to worship him, though what worship meant to a corpse, Beat couldn’t imagine. The dead Tull was control, halfway between Jim Jones and Joseph Stalin.

Within days of the Battle of Bannock, it was evident that the Skinnies were falling into line. A hierarchy was developing within their ranks. They ceased mindlessly tearing apart the world around them and hungrily consuming all living flesh. They started performing strange, inexplicable acts of reconstruction.

The slowly began to coalesce back in the city, apparently inhabiting buildings and repairing the infrastructure. They wordlessly, mindlessly went about their duties, but it was evident what they were trying to accomplish: reoccupation of the city. A returned to some concept of normalcy.

It was insane, inconceivable, but there it was.

The Skinnies were trying act like people.

We’re never going to fucking make it, Kevin complained, looking up at the stairs. They could have climbed off into infinity for all the progress they were making.

Twenty more to go, Beat panted, taking a drink from the canteen.

Whose stupid fucking idea was this, anyway?

Yours, if I’m remembering right.

Fuck! Kevin cursed, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the sweat from his forehead. Why didn’t you tell me to shut the fuck up?

I did...again, if I’m remembering it correct.

Shut up, Kevin said, pulling himself back to his feet. Or you can carry the heavy bag. He kicked his backpack with his steel-toed boot, and it let out an echoing clang.

You’d make a little ol’ girl carry that heavy sack? Beat pouted, hardly able to hide her grin.

You ain’t no little girl, Kevin replied, giving Beat a lecherous leer.

Well, maybe, Beat said, climbed sorely back to her feet. Now, move that ass.

Kevin groaned and began to struggle back into his pack.

Chapter 2

This better be the last one, Kevin grumbled, painfully cresting the summit to floor 76. There was no more stairs. The stairwell ended in a thin, concrete platform. Where more stairs would have been was only a heavy, iron railing and a large collection of fire suppressant hardware.

This is it, Beat panted. Floor 76. The Arrowsoft suite.

No, Kevin shook his head. "I can fuckin’ see that. This better be the last one," he said with emphasis.

Sweet Beat let out a mirthless laugh. She paused at the final landing, doubled over and sucked in a long, deep breath. Fuck it, Kevin, she shook her head. "You know this is the last one."

I’m just saying, it better be...

Kevin, Beat looked up. The sweet was pouring down his face. "This is your plan. You – you dumb motherfucker – know that this is the last fucking bomb."

It had all been Kevin’s idea. He’d pulled out the old map of Seattle and drawn