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Book 2 - The Boston Encounter
Page 1 (4/27/2009)

Bookmark: Set | What is this?

The Boston Encounter It was a beautiful September night. It had been very hot during the day, just like it had been for a few weeks now. But the night was a pleasant relief from the dry heat of the day, especially here in the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts, where the woods and lakes from the nearby reservation helped cool and moisten the air. In some lonely part of a cemetery, something stirred underground. At first it sounded like knocking, but then it changed to the soft cracking of rotting wood. After a while, the earth of the grave started moving until a gray and partially decomposed hand pushed through the surface. Yes, it was a beautiful night - so far. And It had chosen this time and place carefully to execute Its plan. Raising this one solitary zombie was only the beginning. By now, most of the body had dug its way out, and after a while it had freed itself completely. It got up, moist and fresh earth still falling off it, and headed East. There was a road to cross, but at this time of night there was hardly any traffic. Still, It had to be careful. So It instructed its new minion to wait behind a tree while It scanned the area. Not one moment too soon as a delivery truck appeared around a bend and sped past. Then there was silence again. Nothing stirred in a sufficient radius around the area, so It sent the zombie on. It crossed the street and was immediately surrounded by the trees of a cool forest. It stayed in the center of the narrow band of woods to avoid the nearby homes, and soon it had cleared the inhabited area of the Middlesex Fells Reservation. This particular zombie It had created was in fairly bad condition and not moving very fast, but that was not necessary for the task it was to fulfill, just as long as it could make it all the way through the forest without attracting unwanted attention. Two slow moving hours later, there was another road to cross that cut right through this area of the forest, and even at this late hour there were occasional cars on it. It concentrated on the area for a short while and found what it was looking for, and It sent its minion there. It was a family of badgers. The zombie crouched down on all fours and approached their nest, and as expected, the badgers came running to protect it from the intruder. Only this was no normal intruder, and it completely ignored the claws and teeth that ripped into its flesh. Hands that would never feel pain grabbed both of them and brought them closer to the zombie's head. There were two short squeaks of terror, and the two badgers stopped resisting. After a while they started moving again, waiting for instructions, and It sent them off into separate directions while the the human zombie approached the road and waited behind the trees. Then, a few hundred yards down the road, a deer that had been spooked by an attacking badger ran out onto the street - directly into the path of a fast approaching car. The deer was hit at full speed and died instantly without suffering, and the driver lost control of his vehicle and ran it off the street and into a tree. Something similar happened half a mile in the other direction, but this driver reacted faster and missed the deer. It did not save him, though, as he, too, smashed into the woods. After a few minutes, more cars gathered around the crashed vehicles, practically blocking a short section of the road for long enough to finally allow the zombie and the badgers to cross it unseen. Now they moved on, staying on lower ground and navigating between the hills of the forest, and after another 20 minutes they were moving parallel to the water line of the Southern Reservoir, avoiding the nearby foot path. At the bottom of a small hill they reached a peninsula that reached far into the lake and was suitable for Its purpose. The human zombie picked up one of the badgers and ripped the body into two halves. Then it threw one half far into the lake, turned around and kept walking, still holding the other part of the badger body in its hands. They kept walking for multiple hours and stayed close to the lakes on their way North. The zombie performed the same ritual at the Middle and North Reservoir, ripping the second badger in two for the third lake. By this time, the first light of dawn was lighting up the trees on the Western shore of the lake, and the zombie turned East again and kept walking a while longer towards a ravine where it lied down behind a bush and stopped moving. It did not move all day, not even when the occasional forest animal would come closer to check out this strange body. Some carnivorous critters even took a bite, and still the zombie did not move, and the animals that had eaten off it also stopped moving very soon and joined it in its hiding place. They were not part of the plan, but It felt that this unexpected bonus could still be used to some advantage later. Finally, some time after midnight, they all got up. There was one final street to cross to finish the job, and it was a major eight lane highway with a smaller road crossing it right between two more lakes. While the animals disappeared into the forest in various directions to perform a little bonus task (which was to recruit more members to their little army), the zombie threw the last badger half into the smaller lake and then approached the area where the two roads crossed. It knew it would be a bit of a gamble to move across this highway without being noticed, but at this point it hardly mattered any longer. The zombie walked up towards the smaller of the roads and then parallel to it as close as It dared let it without too much danger of being detected. Thankfully, there were enough bushes and trees there, and it arrived where this road lifted off the ground and bridged the large highway. This was the tricky bit where it would have to walk out in the open for a short time as it was about to crawl underneath the bridge and climb up on one of the huge metal beams that held up the road above. But as luck would have it, the few seconds of possible exposure passed without any cars, and now it was high up in the beams where even the brightest headlight could no longer reach it. After half an hour of slow climbing, it emerged on the other side and made it into the bushes again. The last thing to cross was a connection exit between the two roads, but the zombie even made it past that without being spotted. Then it threw itself into the lake on the other side. There, a much better plan, and well executed. It experienced something close to happiness and felt like triumphantly rubbing Its hands together - except that of course it didn't have any. This time they would not be able to stop It! It was another beautiful September night. Jonathan had just gotten up and was now looking for breakfast, which meant that he was quietly stalking through dark alleys and looking for anyone dumb enough to walk around town after dark. Jonathan was a vampire and had been one for well over 300 years. He was one of the few who had adapted extraordinarily well to modern society, and he was fairly happy about who and what he was. In the last 50 years, the government had done everything in their power to make keeping his existence a secret harder with their newfangled security and registration laws, but you didn't survive various wars (hot and cold) without learning a thing and gaining a friend or two. So some time in the 1960's he had created his current alter ego by the name of Jonathan Smythe - he felt that John Smith would have been too obvious. Like most vampires of his age, he prided himself on his manipulation skills, but at the same time he also was very much overconfident, again a trait he shared with other Elders of his kind. Ah, and there was breakfast! A party girl, probably on her way to a night of dancing and drinking her brain into jelly, and she even conveniently wore a dress with open neck access - how very considerate! It would be a shame to let all that effort go to waste... 30 seconds later it was all over. Standing there like in a trance and swaying slightly, the girl now looked even more the part of a drunken party goer, and she'd recover soon enough. And she had been tasty - an old family, very well rooted in this area and with hardly any foreign impurities! What a treat! There had been times when he would have left a girl like this dead, completely drained of the precious juice inside her veins. But he had learned the hard way in the 1690's that senseless killing drew attention, and attention caused pain and trouble, one way or another. He clenched his fists as he remembered ... and pushed the memory from his mind. Not yet. There would be time for being sentimental at the anniversary tomorrow. Well, with breakfast over, it was time to attend the meeting. He dreaded going, but it had to be done if he didn't want to wake up one day and find himself admiring his last sunrise in all its deadly beauty - before burning into a pile of ashes. Vampire society had also evolved and grown fairly complex over the years, just like human society. The main goal these days was to stay hidden and out of sight, and it seemed to work. After all, they had been working on purging all memories about vampires from human minds since the end of the Middle Ages, and all that was left now were the myths and a bunch of movies of various quality that did not even get close to showing the truth. Not many humans still existed who knew the truth, and the few who did were under constant supervision, and no one really trusted or believed them much - they were making sure of that. Well, he was about to see what else was new this time. Then he'd finally be able to get ready for his yearly trip up to Salem. Living in Boston had the advantage of being fairly close to Salem and still far enough that people wouldn't suddenly recognize him and start asking questions. Alright, let's get this over with... Two hours later, he emerged from the theater that had been used to host the meeting, and with him about three dozen others like him. The meeting had been boring, as usual. Don't do this, don't do that, bla bla bla... The highlight - at least for him - had been the execution. Some hotshot had decided to create himself some offspring - he had drained a girl completely and then fed her some of his blood, a ritual that would turn her into a vampire, as everyone of them knew only too well since they all had been turned that way. That alone was stupid enough - more vampires meant more competition for food, come on! But this guy's main mistake had been to not ask for permission, and the local head honcho didn't like that, not one bit. Oh, he was one for power, that one, and Jonathan was willing to bet he enjoyed every second of this display of power when his second in command approached that newbie and the poor girl he had embraced - and chopped both their heads off. Man, that was harsh - wasn't her fault this guy got cocky... Still, some of these silly rules actually had some common sense in them, and self-control was the highest goal for every aspiring vampire. Jonathan wondered briefly how they were going to cover up this girl's death, but he knew they would take care of it. They always did, and they were meticulous. Alright, with that out of the way and the night still young, he still had work to do. He held a regular "daytime" job as a celebrity photographer (also known as paparazzo, and he hated the word, not only since Princess Diana's death - openly stalking people with a camera was not his style). He had the reputation of being able to deliver impossible pictures - pictures of people with the highest level of secrecy and security. His pride and joy had been the one time when he had caught someone "in the act" (i.e. in bed) in a locked room without windows and still managed to snap a picture without anyone the wiser. Heh, there had to be some little quirks to being a bloodthirsty undead, and with age came wisdom and the knowledge of ancient powers that were said to be about as old as man. Today's victim was a new so-called singer by the name of Denise who was hoping to make it big in Hollywood some day but was currently in town on a promotional tour. If humans had any taste, she should have been denied access to a microphone in the first place, but why bother? She was easy enough prey and very much in demand at the moment, and Jonathan was as usual the man to deliver. He had already found out her hotel and room number, so all he'd have to do is get up to the executive floor and do his job. After a short walk, he entered the hotel lobby and approached the person behind the desk, a girl. Oh, goodie, he liked playing with girls so much better. "Hey, there, what's a pretty thing like you doing in a place like this?" Not the most original pickup line, but it wasn't really about the words when his mind entered hers, playfully avoided her defenses and then triggered the response he wanted to hear. Oh boy, what a mess it was in there - Dad a boozer, brother in jail, tsk tsk... He decided to be nice to her - her life sucked enough as it was. "Now, please be a dear and unlock the executive floor for me when no one is looking, OK? Thank-you!", he finished joyfully and with a smile that could have swept her off her feet even without his mental grip on her. "Sh ... sure" was all she got out as she pressed the button, and then he was already gone, and she was wondering why she was near the lift controls in the first place, but shrugged it off. On the ride up, Jonathan hummed a tune from the 1970's, "Killer Queen" which he rather liked - he felt that it could nearly have been written to describe him, even if his obvious masculinity very decidedly ruled him out as being a "queen". This was going to be good night. Over the course of the next few days, the zombie parts in the lakes started to dissolve and spread until they had saturated the water enough. Yes, there were filtering systems in place, some natural and some artificial, but this was a new version of the virus, and they would not be able to catch more than 1% of it in their filters. Near the areas where the bodies had been dumped, all wildlife was converted from living to undead within minutes, and both them and the water helped spread the virus even further. A few animals like turtles and frogs were also able to exit the water, and they went on a slow and long trek to other nearby bodies of water to spread it even further. And now, the new zombie army was huge - all water critters in the entire park and already most land and air animals were part of it now. And that was not even the ultimate goal - these were only an expendable bonus that could be sent out when the time was right to help in the final cleanup. But for now, It kept every zombified creature out of sight and instructed them to lay low. Then It broke contact. It had never had an army of this size before, and even though their tiny minds were so much simpler than those of human zombies, the plain number of minds that needed to be controlled took a huge effort. And there were going to be more, soon - it was only a matter of time. And the weather conditions certainly were in Its favor right now - dry and hot. Sooner or later, Boston would have to open the reservoirs to supply the area with drinking water, serving hundreds of thousands of people - even millions if you counted the surrounding areas, and It definitely counted them. In only a few days, It would have more bodies at its disposal than in all previous attempts combined! They would be unstoppable! While It was still musing about the future, It did not notice a young man who had just entered the forest with his girlfriend to walk his dog. And even if It had noticed, all the zombie creatures had been ordered to stay out of sight, and there was not enough intelligence left in either of their minds to disobey, so It felt quite safe. So the couple who were known as Nick and Margy walked through the woods with Nick's dog Amber, not knowing what was hidden deeper in the forest. About a mile in, Nick looked around a few times. When he could not see anyone else who might see them, he nodded at Margy, and they both quickly left the path and followed a thin animal trail they had discovered a few days ago. The path lead through thick brush and ended a few hundred yards away in a cozy little clearing that was covered in moss. Nick tied the dog leash to a sturdy tree. Then he took the backpack off his shoulder and pulled out a blanket that he spread on the ground in the middle of the clearing. A loaf of bread, some meat and cheese and a bottle of wine followed. But then Margy said: "You know, I'm not quite hungry yet. I think we should work up an appetite first..." as she took off her t-shirt and threw suggestive looks at Nick. He immediately stopped what he was doing and bent over to kiss her when they were interrupted by Amber suddenly barking furiously. Nick didn't even look and just shouted "Amber, shush!", but that did not seem to have any effect. Then Amber replaced the barking with a deep growl that reached the most ancient part of Nick's brain, the part that already had kept humans out of danger during the stone age, and he finally stopped caressing Margy and turned his head. "What's the matter, girl?" Amber kept growling. She was showing her teeth, her tail was between her legs and her ears flat against her head. "Weird, she has never acted like this before - she's a real fighter, you know, and I have never seen her afraid of anything..." Nick got up and walked closer to Amber who suddenly turned around and snapped her jaw at him - only inches away from his hand. Then she turned back to growling into the deeper part of the forest. He tried to see what she must have been sensing that way, but could not figure it out. "M... maybe we better go...", he finally said, and they started packing up their picnic. Amber in the meantime became near hysterical and started pulling at her leash, jumping from the left to the right and back, trying desperately to free herself. Nick and Margy increased their efforts, and when they finally had everything stored away in the backpack and where reaching for the leach, Amber's collar suddenly snapped, and she ran off into the woods, barking furiously. "Damn", Nick muttered, and ran after her with Margy following him, but the dog was too fast, and soon they lost sight of her. Then the sound of her barking stayed in one place and stopped, and then they saw her again. Amber had a rabbit in its jaws and was shaking her head angrily to tear it into pieces. "What the...", Nick wondered. "Amber, no! It's just a rabbit! What's the matter with you? Amber! No!" As they approached, they managed to get a better look at Amber's victim. The rabbit, or what was left of it, looked ... strange, as if it had already been dead for days. Amber finally calmed down and dropped the rabbit as instructed, and they relaxed a little. But then she started shaking violently, and she yelped once like a scared puppy. Nick quickly ran closer and stepped around her to see her face. Something about her eyes didn't look right... Then she stopped moving completely and just stood there, staring blankly into nothing with those ... dead eyes. "What's going on, Nick? Is she alright?", Margy asked as she finally caught up and stopped a few steps away, leaning against a tree and panting heavily. "I ... I don't know... We should bring her to a vet, but I don't know if we can or even should pick her up now...", Nick replied. Then he noticed more details. Amber used to love shocking Nick awake with her wet and cold nose, but now it had lost all its moisture, and the same was the case for her eyes and what he could see of her open mouth. One single tooth loosened and dropped to the ground, and a random gust of wind blew off some of her hair. "This ... it's ... freaky...", Nick finally managed. He slowly got up and took a step back. Then Amber moved again. She turned her head to face Nick with her empty eyes, then she slowly started walking towards him with a wide open mouth. And something about the expression of her face scared him more than anything he had ever experienced before. "Let's go, now!", Nick yelled, and he ran into the direction that he hoped would lead back to the main path. As he looked over his shoulder, he could see Amber still following him slowly, as if in trance and on shaky legs. "What about Amber?", Margy asked. "This ... thing is not Amber! Now run!", Nick replied. And they ran. Yep, a good night. Jonathan had of course made it up to the executive floor and was now standing in front of Denise's room door - which was locked. What all these inventors with their fancy key card entry systems never seemed to realize was that no matter how complicated the lock, inside it was still only an old-fashioned mechanical bolt. Obviously, any normal person trying to break in through a door like this would not be able to get to the bolt, but Jonathan was far from normal. He laid his hand on the handle and closed his eyes. Before his inner mind he saw the door. Then he was inside it and moved down through the particle wood until he reached metal. He followed it and found the bolt. He took a deep breath and then focused on the bolt. At first nothing seemed to happen, but inside the lock the metal started to vibrate lightly until a snap indicated that he had been successful. His mind then moved through the door and out the other end and scanned the room. Denise was in bed, but her eyes were open and staring at the door. Obviously, his lock picking had been noisier this time than he had hoped. Oh well... He accelerated, entered Denise's mind and flipped a few mental switches. She collapsed in bed, fast asleep. Ouch, what an empty mind she had. Looked like she was more focused on buying shoes than on her career. And as for her brain - IQ below freezing temperature, geeze... Then he withdrew back into his own body. Ah, better. It's good to be home. He opened the door and entered Denise's room. It was a standard room, not a big suite. It appeared that Denise had only just begun her trip to fame, glory and riches - or maybe just forgot about the riches and went straight for the fame. Anyway, business first. After closing the door again, he walked through the room and placed himself against the window where he pulled one of the curtains partially around him. He was in a position where he could easily take all the pictures he wanted, but there was no use in advertising how he had gotten them or how he had found his way into her room. So he had invented the trick with the curtain a while ago - keep the pictures always a little "dirty", never too good in quality, and they are all the more believable. This way, it would look as if he had taken the pictures through the window with a polar filter, either with a strong zoom lens or from right outside her window. So he snapped a few pictures, then let his mind enter hers again. He made certain to keep her sleeping, but at the same time triggered a few muscle responses that changed her position in bed. Snap, snap. Good. He changed her position again and made her hand pull down the sheet a little to reveal more of her body. Snap, snap. Ooh, yea, baby, a little more pouting, please. He moved her lips into the shape of an O and played with her eyebrows while still snapping away with his camera. Nice. After a while, he let her go again. He left her room, waited outside her door for a while, then locked the door the same way he had unlocked it. This time, he did not bother checking on her. She was no threat to him. In the elevator on his way down, he quickly took the chip out of his camera and replaced it with one that had boring (yet beautiful) landscape shots on it. The important chip was stored in a hidden compartment in the sole of his shoe. Better safe than sorry. He briefly distracted the girl at the counter with the mental equivalent of a dropped spoon behind her as he walked past her, through the front entrance and out into the night. An hour later he was in his apartment. Actually, it was two apartments that had been joined to double the space, but it counted as one. He moved the mouse on his main computer to stop the screen saver from showing more boring landscape shots, then he took the chip out of his shoe and fed it to the card reader. He spent an hour selecting the best shots and digitally "enhancing" them, which meant adding a little fake flare from a pane of glass that wasn't there. He saved the clean originals in a hidden and encrypted partition of his hard drive, then he launched his email program and sent in the best 6 shots to his employer with a little note containing a few ideas for the headline, e.g. "Wet Dreams For Denise" or "Denise hard at work". He emptied the camera chip and placed it back in the camera. Done. Good thing, too - it was getting close to morning. Time to pack. He threw a few clothes into a small suitcase, slid his laptop into its case and placed the camera into its bag. Then he called the hotel in Salem to verify his reservation. All was prepared. Satisfied, Jonathan went to sleep. ...continued on page 2.

 

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