She who Haunts my Dreams

I unfortunately failed with the one drabble a day for a month thing, but I had written this as a final part.

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A team of men in military-grade NBC gear, armed with rifles and flamethrowers move down the hallway. They stop at a doorway, one of them unlocks the door and they enter cautiously, weapons at the ready.

No immediate threats found, they spray the room with heavy-duty disinfectant and begin a systematic search. Anything biological is regarded as potentially contaminated and, after samples are taken, is destroyed with flame.

They’ve been at this for weeks, they’re tired and bored. Thus they don’t notice the deinonychus corpse on an overhead shelf. And they have already left when it lurches to its feet.

He fired both barrels of the shotgun at the leaping deinonychus. Two solid slugs of lead arrested its momentum, and instead of the arc of its leap ending with a disembowelment, it landed on its back, about six feet short of its target.

“You killed it. I thought you were trying to avoid that.”

“I was, I like dinosaurs and I’d rather it was alive and killing zombies. But I don’t like dinosaurs enough to get eaten by one.”

“That is quite possibly the sanest thing you’ve said since we met.”

“Well, you know how it is in crisis situations.”

“Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been looking for one of these.”

“It’s a vending machine.” Her tone was flat.

“And it might save our lives.”

“What, the secret anti-zombie weapon was hidden in the vending machine?”

“No, just snack food.”

“Snack food is going to save our lives?”

“We’ve been running, often literally, for hours now. Our bodies are running on fumes. Keeping your blood sugar up could make the difference between evading a zombie and getting your brain eaten by a zombie.”

“I’d rather have the secret anti-zombie weapon.”

“Me too, but chocolate is some consolation.”

“Words to live by.”

Her shot took the zombie in the middle-left, blowing away a chunk of its torso. It was rocked back by the shot, but only for a moment as it righted itself and resumed lurching forwards.

“Always aim for the head. A head shot will take out a zombie, otherwise you need to whittle it away to nothing.”

Bracing herself, she carefully lined up her gun and missed.

“Damn. That is why I go for center of mass shots. Head shots are much more difficult.”

“Stick to head shots. Improving your accuracy does no good if your shots have little effect.”

The door was large, and made of steel. It was unadorned save for a small numeric keypad. He looked at the door and frowned.

“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” She gestured towards the door.

“I don’t know what’s behind this door.”

“Can it really be worse than what’s behind us?”

“Oh yes, very much so.”

She rolled her eyes. “Is it likely to be worse than what’s behind us?”

“Likely? No. I give us better than even odds that there’s nothing behind this door that’s worse than what’s following us.”

“I may regret this. Open it.”

“Will do.”

They ran through the door and shut it behind them. Then with unspoken coordination, they searched the area. Any spot big enough to conceal a zombie was inspected, shotgun at the ready. Any entrance large enough to admit a zombie or raptor was carefully blockaded.

“What on Earth were you people thinking! Zombies, raptors, who knows what else you’ve come up with. It’s all insane!”

“Myself, I was thinking ‘dinosaurs are cool.’ Zombies were never my department, but I’ve been obsessed with dinosaurs since I was three years old.”

“Well, your three-year-old self is going to get us killed.”

They could see dozens of zombies through the reinforced windows of the observation area. The zombies threw themselves against the glass in an irregular rhythm. The window was still holding.

“We’ve got to call for help!”

“This place is a Category 6 Quarantine Zone. ‘Help’ involves saturation bombing of this facility and the surrounding area.”

“Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“Considering what we’re developing in here, anything less than nuking us is a restrained, measured response.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Completely eliminate the zombie outbreak.”

“How?”

“I’ve got an idea.”

“What is it?”

“Release the deinonychus.”

“You’re crazy.”

The shot hit the zombie in the right shoulder, throwing it back for a moment, but only a moment. She pulled the trigger again and her gun simply clicked, empty.

The zombie reached for her with its left arm. She reflexively inhaled deeply, but before she could scream the zombie’s left arm, and a large chunk of its torso were suddenly removed by one of the scythe-like toe claws of a deinonychus.

“Come one! We’ve got to get out of here!”

“The raptor saved me. Why?”

“They naturally pick out the weak and slow. You’re much faster than a zombie.”

He slammed the door and dragged a filing cabinet against it. Neither did much to diminish the screams.

“He sacrificed himself to save us from the raptors.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “We didn’t even know his name.”

“Deinonychus.”

“Now is not the time!” she snapped.

He shook his head as if to wake himself up. “We need to keep moving before they find a way in here.”

“But if we keep heading that way, we’ll be heading towards the zombies.”

“We can outrun zombies, we can’t outrun the deinonychus.”

“Damn, I’m glad I wore flats today.”

So, I was trying to remember where the song line "...not be of my clan" came from (it turned out it was a mondegreen, the actual line was "...not be of my land" from "Persephone" by vixyish). But while I looking for that, I came across seanan_mcguire's Horror Movie Survival Guide, which included a bit saying that velociraptors were the best weapon against zombies. I thought that sounded like an awesome idea. So I decided to put aside the short story about a young woman playing poker with a dragon, and instead spend the month of February writting a drabble a day in this continuity which has both zombies and velociraptors (well, deinonychus actually).

( So, here's part 1: )