A Fate Worse Than Death - Chapter 01 (revised)
That last punch literally popped one of my eyes out of my head. It was now dangling from its socket, giving me a very interesting view of my cigarette burned tits, both of which were missing their nipples compliments of the butane torch that had been used to turn them into a pair of charred lumps of cooked meat before the Red soldier with the pliers ripped what was left of them from my squeezies. The torch was then used once more to cauterize the wounds. Why I'll never know, we zombies don't bleed, never had, never will. My reaction to all of this was not exactly what my torturers were expecting, but hell, we zombies don't have much feeling; that's not our fault.
Allow me to introduce myself; I'm Mariah 377, manufactured in October 2072, too late, it turned out, to be of any influence on the final resolution of Civil War 3 that finally settled matters for good. I, like a few of the more advanced Mariah models, have a small but succinct history of the former United States of America implanted in my memory files to act as a guide for why I was doing what I had been programmed to do.
Believe it or not, my main function is to strike terror into the hearts of our enemies, the Red state people, through guerrilla warfare and terrorist activities. Unfortunately they won the best two out of three falls and my purpose no longer has meaning. However that has nothing to do with carrying out my prime directive.
Civil War 2 broke out shortly after a cloned Right, Connors 5, was declared president of the USA by the Supreme Court, after the hotly contested election of 2052 that had brought out nearly three-quarters of the newly qualified voters as decided by the Supreme Court in its landmark decision in the case of Bilbo vs Obama. The judicial writ effectively disenfranchised ninety percent of the current US population. Only those who met one of the following set of qualifications were declared fit to cast ballots in any national election.
A qualified voter had to be worth at least ten million dollars, as determined by the IRS, a member of the upper three levels of corporate management for organizations with annual sales in excess of ten billion dollars, a baptized member of the US Church of the Crusader, members of Congress and their immediate families, those made voters by Congressional action and members of the US Army of Freedom, which was currently carrying out campaigns on three continents. Once it became common knowledge that the cloned Right, Connors 5, was none other than a physically improved version of Connors 2, it was all over as far as who would provide the leadership for the USA in future generations.
Of interest, Connors 3, the brother of Connors 2, was the last US president to be fettered by the 22nd Amendment, since repealed. He was forced to end his tenure in 2021. He in turn was succeeded in office by his brother, Connors 4, who held the office of US President for thirty-two years, despite a number of severely debilitating illnesses, which caused him to be put on a ventilator and kept alive via a feeding tube, until he was well past one hundred years of age.
During the final eleven years of his term in office, the acting president of the country, in reality, was his much younger wife who he had wed shortly before taking office. You talk about poetic justice. It was the election of 2012 when the opposition party ran a woman against Connors 3, that effectively destroyed them as a political force, ultimately paving the way for the Right Party to take over totally. It was during the term of Connors 4 that the Right Party became the official political organization of the nation, selecting candidates for the various national offices that went on the official ballot used for all national elections.
In 2054, three Blue states located on the Pacific Coast of the USA declared their intention of seceding from the nation. Negotiations between them and the national government failed, leading to a brief but decisive war, which left the three Blue states in radioactive ruins. Prior to the actual war, over ten million people with Red state leanings were allowed to migrate into the adjoining Red states. It became quite obvious to the national government that a land war would only play into the seceding states' hands after a disastrous campaign that cost them upwards of fory thousand casualties in the first month of the war.
Although these particular Blue states had a significant population and a powerful economic infrastructure, not to mention approximately one hundred nuclear weapons located on various air bases, they were no match for the number of nuclear weapons that were launched from silos in various nearby Red states. Unfortunately the collateral damage to adjacent Red states was horrendous since the winds were blowing west to east during most of this period. The entire populations of eleven Red states were effectively eliminated, including the ten million folks who had been allowed to leave before the conflict began.
In one of those quirky twists that happens on occasion, Blue state survivors attempted to migrate into Mexico, but were turned back by the Mexican army supported by the national militias of Texas and Oklahoma. During this turbulent period, Connors 5 took this opportunity to successfully attack and effectively obliterate France with a suite of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The rest of Europe quicklydeclared their neutrality in any conflict involving internal USA issues. This action also silenced the complaints of the Canadian government concerning the loss of the city of Vancouver, which was taken out by accident by nukes targeted for Seattle.
Connors 5, who had been appointed President of the USA for life by the Congress, which now consisted of only members of the Church of the Crusader, plus a few token representatives of the surviving Blue states, declared the remaining Blue states to be in a state of rebellion and Civil War 3 began in 2069. The number of nuclear weapons used by both sides was small in most cases with only an occasional city buster utlilized to remove such problem areas as New York and Boston. Unfortunately a few large Red state city populations such as St Louis and Atlanta were also eliminated in this manner. What turned the tide for the Red states was their ability to use clones to effectively overwhelm Blue state armies, and excise portions of the population deemed to be enemies of the Church of the Crusader.
The overuse of chemical and biological weapons, plus poor battle management strategy on both sides finally resulted in a United States of America that consisted of only portions of six Southern states. The western border ended at Dallas, Tulsa was the northern limit, a rebuilt New Orleans the southern and the relatively small city of Dothan in Alabama was the eastern flank of what now was the USA. The new USA capital was located in Jackson, Mississippi.
All people of color were forcibly relocated outside of the boundaries of the nation. Those who could, volunteered to become members of the Army of Freedom, which was still holding its own in Africa and South America, but had taken substantial losses in Asia. The remaining population that had been expelled was forced to make the trek south to Central America and beyond in an effort to find an area that could support them.
Zombies such as myself and Elijah 47 were lost in the shuffle when the enforced racial purification started in what used to be the deep South. We have some very unique characteristics and capabilities. I find it oddly amusing, that is if I had a sense of humor, that both sides chose to develop ultimate weapons that they originally ridiculed or attempted to eliinate entirely. After all Connors 2 was four square against cloning for any purpose, yet there he was, a reborn clone himself. How strange is that? I guess his people were a lot more pragmatic than they were given credit for being. Without clones they not only didn't have a viable Connors to bring forward in 2052, they never would have won Civil War 3 so clearly.
On the other side of that coin why would the high tech folk of the Blue states home in on voodoo as the spring board for the technology that produced the "zombies", an unstoppable force capable of endless cycles of reconstitution under all but the most stressing circumstances? Had the war lasted another year, the zombies might have tipped the balance since they were unmatched in guerrilla warfare, and were considered by friend and foe alike as the ultimate terrorists.
All I know for sure about the process that resulted in my creation was that it involved a unique mineral found only in certain portions of Africa and the use of lightning to catalize it, causing the inert protoplasm to become animated. This for some reason that I truly do not understand infuriates those who profess to believe in an entity that created them , but not me. Getting back to my subject, it was a bizarre coincidence that the principles that led to mass scaling of clones was also responsible for the protoplasm that was used in the creation of we zombies.
In point of fact the creation of the living dead had been pulled off on occasion by African witch doctors who were lucky enough to be in the right place with the right chemical soup when lightning literally struck. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, these poor creatures were unable to sustain life for more than a few days, but they sure raised hell during that period. This was the stuff of legends and the basis for the voodoo cults that took the magic of reanimating the dead to the New World. We are its ultimate result.
The Blue state scientists gave us some very unique capabilities and over the top styling. I am so beautiful and well built, attributes that entice the male of the species that only something like fourteen percent of them capable of attaining an erection will not be moved to have sexual intercourse with me. These numbers have an uncertainty of plus or minus five percent. I prefer to believe the minus five percent numbers myself, based on my adventures over the past year.
I stand one point eighty-eight meters tall, weigh approximately seventy kilos, despite the fact that I do not possess a skeleton support system, can bench press one hundred and fifty kilos twenty times and run the hundred meters in nine seconds flat. Giving me this sepia coloring was debated hammer and tongs for over six months before the first Mariah model rolled off the assembly line. In actuality it tottered from the Lightning Chamber facility that had been set up in a secret location.
Admittedly being a woman of color called attention to me, but that was the purpose once news got around about how deadly dangerous zombies such as I could be. The same argument held for the Elijah model as well, only he was as black as the ace of spades to not only terrify the Red staters, but also to evoke those deep seated forbidden feelings in members of the white female population.
We are almost impossible to kill provided you don't know the trick to making any reconstitution an impossibility. During the first three months that we operated in Red state territory we lived high off the hog, so to speak. Our casualties were less than five percent, naturally all of them permanent kills, occurring by accident in all cases. We were responsible for well over three thousand deaths; damned few ever got away with just a missing limb. This may not sound lke much, but by this time the total Red state population was hovering around five million, still substantially larger than that of the Blue states.
The Blue state commanders were planning on releasing upwards of five thousand zombies over the next year. Based on a projected kill ratio of three hundred to one, it wouldn't take long to reduce the total population of the Red states by nearly thirty percent, at which time they would be prepared to release another ten thousand to finish off the Red states permanently.
Two things got in the way of this optimistic projection. The Red state folks found our Achilles' heel, but we might have survived that. However when coupled with the destruction of the manufacturing facility caused by a barrage of tactical nukes fired from the remaining US Army of Freedom missile submarine lying off shore just a few miles from the Lightning Chamber, we were cooked. As the old saying goes, the rest was history. This is when my personal story begins to get interesting, in a sick sort of way.
( To be continued - rolf palsy )
A Fate Worse Than Death - Chapter 2 (revised)
Before my first reanimation I managed to kill two hundred and twenty-three Red staters, all but fourteen were male. In a sense I'd let them catch me and then after they had their fun, I had mine. This approach, although quite successful, caused significant wear and tear on certain portions of my anatomy, requiring me to hide so I could reconstitute the damaged parts. Those good old boys certainly had a fixation with my 39DD breasts that defied gravity, not to mention my bubble butt that appeared to be mounted on ball bearings. However my utter and absolute best feature, the ultimate honey trap, was my vagina, or as they so crudely described it, my cunt, twat, snatch, pussy, slit, slot, clam, fuckbox, ......... you get the picture.
If there was anything magical about me, it was that my vagina could conform to the penis that was captured within it. This was probably the most brilliant idea my creators came up with during the design of the Mariah class zombie. Now I'm not bragging, but I don't know of any women who could take on gangs of sex crazed males numbering upwards of fifty for periods extending to three days and still be ready to go as if number three hundred and forty-one was the first one inside.
Unfortunately for those rape gangs it was play for pay and my bill was usually fatal. Once it was my turn to play, I had a high old time snapping necks, tearing out throats and generally sending the survivors screaming into the woods to spread the word about this horrible monster with the magic pussy that turned into a killing machine. I have never understood that part of my program that forced me to allow survivors, but I have been told that this caused significant morale problems for the Red state folk to hear first hand just what we zombies were capable of doing to them.
To this day it puzzles me about the attraction my breasts have for these people. The reason I refer to them as squeezies is due to the fact that my sex or is it rape partners seem to have a fascination for squeezing or fondling them while we are engaged in fucking. Of course my external genitals take plenty of rough handling as well, but it's merely part of the hunting process, and of little or no consequence to me.
Now to some little known facts about zombies and how they reconstitute themselves. The head is the key to reconstitution; separate it from the main protoplasm body by a distance greater than one hundred and ten meters (no one seems to know why this particular distance is vital), and there can be no reconstitution and subsequent reanimation of the body, no matter what the condition. Here's the hard part to believe, protoplasm that has once been animated cannot be destroyed. This is the other key to how we can reconstitute, no matter what as happened previously to the protoplasm. This may sound like heresy to the Red state believers, but you might as well say that the protoplasm animated in the Lightning Chamber is eternal. How do those apples taste?
Unlike humans, what we start with is all we'll ever have. In combat it is inevitable that small amounts of protoplasm are lost from the body through one reason or another. Usually they are too small to recover due to the nature of our assignment which has us constantly moving and seeking out the enemy. Where the protoplasm goes is moot as far as a combat zombie is concerned. However when we reconstitute, our bodies are made whole, it's just that they are minimally smaller. For this reason it will take something well out of the ordinary for a zombie to leave a limb behind. It does however happen. I once met a Mariah class zombie who was less than 1.2 meters in height due to some horrendous damage in combat. Even at that reduced size she was quite effective, especially in ambush and reconnaissance situations, not to mention those Red staters into pedophilia.
Up until recently I'm not sure that the Red state folks had figured this one out completely. I had heard through the network that on rare occasins a zombie had fallen into Red state hands. More about our zombie communication system at a later date once I'm free of all these little issues that always seem to demand my full attention. Some of the more sadistic Red state types just liked to mutilate a captured zombie to the point that there was little if anything left to reconstitute or reanimate, and then keep the head for a trophy, thus unknowingly leaving the protoplasm in a permanent neutralized condition. Those unfortunates and the other few combat zombies that managed to get sucked down into quicksand bogs, of which there were many in this part of the country, made up the total casualties to date.
The first time I got into serious trouble was almost the last, and considering what I'm facing for the rest of my unnatural life, perhaps that might have worked out just fine for me. I was making my way through the woods after having sent a group of Red state folks to the hereafter of their choice, when I encountered a local deadfall that put me out of commission long enough for this band of inbreeds to take control of my body. I distinctly remember tripping the wire, but I looked the wrong way and was struck head-on by this massive log that had come swinging out of the trees and knocked me cold. A zombie can take all sorts of hits without accruing too much damage, but the end of a two hundred kilo log moving at perhaps thirty kilometers per hour is another story altogether.
By the time what passes for my brain unscrambled itself, I found myself being carried deeper into the woods. These good old boys sure knew something about knots, so I just took it easy and let them do all the work. I sincerely expected to find myself pulling a train of inbreeds for many long days before someone made a slip and I killed them all. Was I in for a surprise! This gang consisted of eight decidedly scruffy individuals who said little and proved to be rather strong. I was hanging from a fair sized tree limb and I'm not exactly a feather when it comes to weight. Every hour or so, two more of these characters would take up the burden of transporting me toward their encampment. After three changes of carriers we arrived at a clearing surrounded by huge trees. I could hear the sound of water running nearby, and filed this away for future reference once I killed them and made my escape.
The first thing I discovered was these swamp people knew a hell of a lot more about zombies than anyone else I had previously encountered. On the other hand those other folks were either fucking me or dying, so I never did get a good feeling for what they did or did not know about my kind. Well one thing these folk knew was a method of putting me out of order temporarilly. When I came around I discovered that in my absence they had taken me off the tree limb and refastened me to a large log similar to the one that did me in originally. I also realized that there was a substantial dent in my head such as might have been formed by being struck with a stone axe very much like the one that was on the ground beside me. Since it was partly covered with some of my tresses, I assumed that it had been the item that put me away for a time.
The way I was fastened to the log also gave me pause. There was some kind of a metal collar around my neck that was attached to the log by what seemed to be steel spikes, the very same kind that were holding my arms outstretched across the log. I could see that pairs had been driven through what passes for bones in my upper arms, elbows, forearms and wrists. A pattern of three spikes had also been driven through the palms of my hands. In this position it was very difficult for me to get any leverage, especially since my wide spread legs were teethered to the ground in like fashion. These folks knew their anatomy, I had to give them that. What troubled me more than the way I was restrained was the fact that it made it very difficult for them to get at my vagina, which kind of took the wind out of my sails. What happened to my animal magnetism and good looks on the way to the camp?
It didn't take long for me to get an answer to this question. I heard a commotion going on at the edge of the camp site. At first it looked as if two of the inbreeds had gotten into a fight over something.They were both half naked and rolling around in the dirt. What was so strange about this was no one else paid them the slightest attention. Then it became apparent that they were weren't fighting, they were fucking....each other! Case closed, as far as my ability to seduce this gang of alien beings was concerned. If all the Red staters had been like this little band, we zombies would have become an endangered species by now. Immediately it became apparent that they had taken me to their camp not for sex, but something more basic, food! I was the catch of the day, and from the looks of things, they planned starting on me just as soon as the big kettle of water came to a boil.
One of the band approached me with a weird almost childish look on his deformed face. I just sensed what he was up to and unfortunately he didn't disappoint me. Out came this big pig sticker of a knife and the next thing I knew he was carving away at my squeezies, cutting thin slices of protoplasm from my teethered body. The fact that I made no outcry or effort to escape that very sharp inplement he was using kind of spooked him. He stopped what he was doing and hollered a few unintelligible words to his brethren. Soon I was surrounded by the entire gang who started pointing and jabbering among themselves concerning what was not happening where part of my breasts used to be. Not only do we not feel pain, we do not bleed, which can be very helpful in hand-to-hand combat where you don't want to be distracted by a fountain of blood spurting from where your arm used to be.
One thing we can do, but it is not known to the average Red state folk, is speak. I have a fairly decent vocabulary and thanks to another little addition to my body, I am also capable of emitting some of the scariest shrieks, moans, howls, screams and banshee wails that anyone has ever heard. When properly used, it can be a show stopper. You can imagine the type of reaction you get from an opponent who has just cut off maybe a hand or an ear and you let out with one of these sonic blasts. It sort of stops them in their tracks for a moment, just long enough for me to dispatch them to whatever lies beyond this life. I was already preparing for that moment when some noise would give me the edge I needed to get rid of these weird folk and go on my merry way, spreading fear and terror into the hearts and minds of my enemy. For the moment however, I remained silent and let them have their fun, such as it was.
Another of the inbreeds decided to check me out a bit further, and urged on by the peculiar grunts and whistles that passed for language from his peers, he proceeded to pull out an even bigger pig sticker. Without even asking, he rammed it into my vagina with one swift motion and then opened me up from vulva to my solar plexus, quite an impressive strength move on his part. I was tempted to reward him with one of my sonic blasts, but refrained. Still the foolish grin that was plastered all over his face indicated that he and I were bonding quite nicely. At this point he didn't know how to react to a woman who did not bleed or make any sound when cut. Undaunted he made some grunts and whistles of his own and a couple of the band took off into the woods, leaving me to heal myself as inobtrusively as possible under the circumstances.
The one carving off portions of my squeezies resumed his activity, making small whistles and even an occasional sneeze as he worked away on my rapidly depleted breasts. By the time the other two returned with armloads of leaves from the local trees and bushes, the gash the other one had opened up was already starting to close, which caused more grunts, whistles and sneezes, plus plenty of fingerpointing. I'm opened once again,and none too gently. The gang starts stuffing me with leaves as well as the slices of breast "meat" they've carved from my squeezies. As near as I can figure, this has something to do with their plan for cooking and eating me. I'm not at all familiar with this process, but there is enough in my memory background to make it appear that this is what they are planning for me. I have no choice but to bide my time and wait for some kind of an opening that will allow me to dispatch this bunch and be about my business.
The head inbreed didn't make things easy for me and I began to understand that he was a moron leading a pack of imbeciles. Without any warning he hacked off my right hand, leaving it nailed to the log. Then he did the same to my remaining hand. As soon as he hacked off one of my feet, I got the picture. His plan was to incapacitate me to the point that I coud be handled for cooking. Not a bad plan for a moron, but it has one little flaw.I'm almost as dangerous with stumps since I am a dedicated killing machine with tremendous strength and speed, despite some lack of agility due to the temporary loss of my limbs.
He made things a little more difficult on his next pass, which resulted in me losing more of my arms and legs, up past the elbows and knees as near as I could tell. Now I began to worry about this little game that he was playing. If it went any further, matters would have taken a decided turn for the worse. I might still be able to take half of them out with just my jaws and teeth, not to mention a few well placed head butts, but mobility would have become a serious handicap and likely prevent me from killing all of them.
With the second round of amputations, the moron made a fatal mistake and I immediately capitalized on it. There was only one set of spikes holding what was left of my arms and legs to the log and the earth. The moron should have cut below the spikes, not above them! However that was the kind of error that a moron will make, it's no crime. However in his case it made life very easy for me and most difficult for him and his little band. I flexed and popped the remaining spikes from the log. My follow through caught the moron's throat between my stumps, instantly breaking his neck. I rolled and got up on my leg stumps and took out a pair of bug-eyed inbreeds, tearing open one's throat and fracturing the other's skull with a head butt. I'd finish him off at my leisure after taking out the remaining five who had no clue as to how to handle me.
I derived no enjoyment from killing this group, it was just something that I was trained to do and so I did it. Then I rested in this isolated glade and waited for my body to reconstitute and reanimate itself totally, minus perhaps a few millimeters or so off my height. Once that was accomplished, I began to follow the stream that I'd noticed when the now dead band of inbreeds had brought me to this place. Sooner or later the stream would lead to more Red state people who would succumb to my wiles and lethality.
( To be continued - rolf palsy)
A Fate Worse Than Death Chapter 3 It was about three weeks after my encounter with the inbreeds that I ran into Elijah 47. It was the first time I had been in contact with the male zombie version, and had to admit that he was a formidable sight, especially wearing that high density composite battle armor. It would have been impossible for a normal human to carry around over 200 pounds of body and head protection, but to the Elijah class this was like toting a bandolier of small caliber depleted uranium cartridges. We acknowledged each other and exchanged information concerning the terrain and the location of Red state settlements in the vicinity. He also informed me that he was the sole survivor of an ambush that had taken place two days ago to the east. The other three members of Phalanx C, a new battle concept, had either been destroyed or taken captive by a large band of heavily armed Red state militia. Based on my limited knowledge of what I'd seen in the line of firepower from the enemy I found this information to be difficult to process. It was then that I got the first inkling that the enemy had found our weakness, a weakness that was a closely guarded secret. Our fatal flaw had been revealed to the Red state military by a sympathizer who had managed to work his way into the zombie manufacturing facility and gained this carefully guarded knowledge that he carried back to Red state territory. The ambush of Phalanx C could never have been successfully carried out without the knowledge of our weakness. It was a well-coordinated attack that separated the quartet of zombies, using camouflaged pits to trap them individually. Once the zombie clambered from the trap, it was picked off with depleted uranium shells fired from modified shoulder launched platforms. Those shells that struck their targets removed the head from the zombie, in most cases sending them well over 50 yards from the body. Special teams of men raced in and captured the head, removing it from the field of battle, causing the protoplasm to be effectively neutralized. Elijah 47 had sustained some partial damage, but managed to retreat into the woods surrounding the ambush area. The militia chose not to follow him for obvious reasons. For reasons that our creators still do not understand, but finally accepted in light of the need to get us into the field, the zombie head created from the same protoplasm that forms the zombie's body cannot operate with any other zombie body. Each zombie is a unique combination, its parts are not interchangeable. I wonder what the religious folks in the Red states would say about this little fact. On second thought, they'd still call us the devil's spawn and do their level best to do the same thing I was trying to do to them. Was it possible that we were all God's children after all? So this little weakness, a tiny flaw in the DNA we carried, had the potential to ultimately spell our own demise, now that the secret was revealed to the enemy. For the better part of two weeks we roamed the woods, finding very little prey. The few Red staters we did eliminate were a scruffy lot, much like the inbreeds that had captured me. We had little to go on, since our prime instruction was to get rid of as many Red state folk as we could find. We were not aware that for all extents and purposes the civil war was over and the Blue states had been almost totally eliminated, the remaining population left to die of radiation poisoning and diseases contracted during the various biological warfare campaigns. Even more importantly for our survival we did not know that the zombie terrorists like ourselves had been pretty much wiped out by Red state kill squads armed with the kind of weaponry that made zombies very vulnerable and thus very "killable", now that our little secret was out in the open so they could capitalize on it. Had Elijah 47 and myself been given a little more autonomy by our creators, we might have escaped and made our way ultimately into central America or even further south, despite the presence of the Army of Freedom that was waging war in South America. That however was not an option for we zombie terrorists, so we soldiered on and the law of averages caught up with us. It was broad daylight, and we were moving through rough, wooded terrain. Suddenly I was hanging in midair by one ankle, watching as a line of heavily armed folks converged on Elijah 47. He was holding his own until he was struck by a depleted uranium shell fired from one of those shoulder mounted launchers he had warned me about. It hit him in the chest, blew through and forced him off his feet for a few seconds. That was all that was required. A pair of men carrying flame throwers set Elijah 47 afire and he tried to escape into the woods, but had a great deal of difficulty making progress due to the huge hole in his upper torso and the fire that was melting his body armor and impeding his vision to a significant degree. Within a few seconds he was struck by three more shells, blowing his body into numerous chunks and totally separating his head from the rest of his body. I knew that he was finished. As I began to extricate myself from the noose holding me aloft they turned their weapons on me and everything went black until I awoke in a small concrete bunker, surrounded by members of the local Red state militia. I immediately realized that my head had been detatched from my body, which was nowhere to be seen. What was left of me was mounted on some kind of fixture that held my head firmly in its grip. The commander of this group smiled at me and gave me a mocking salute. "Glad to see that you're alive and kicking; that's not exactly true since we've taken the liberty of separating you from that bundle of muscle and nerves that has caused us no end of trouble. If you're a good little zombie and agree to certain demands I will place upon you, I'll allow you to be reunited with that killer body. I have to admit that it's killer in more than one way. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately for me, I'm not tempted by your body any longer thanks to a little injury I sustained in an earlier campaign." There was very little I could do at the moment but listen and try to use the information to my advantage. What I heard and saw was almost unacceptable. The civil war between the Red and Blue states had been decided in favor of the enemy. At first I refused to accept this as truth, but as more and more evidence was brought forward, there was no other logical conclusion. During the past months I had become more and more uneasy about our situation; the enemy appeared to be much stronger now and their tactics and weapons were becoming even more sophisticated based on the encounters I'd been having with them. The added information I received from Elijah 47 only confirmed my feelings. In order to develop a strategy that would allow me, as a minimum, to escape and continue my assignment, I had to assume the worse, that I was on my own for the duration. When they showed me how they were disposing of the captured zombies, and there were more than I imagined, it failed to evoke the response that the commander had hoped. We zombies have no particular feelings towards anyone, thanks to the programming we received after being formed. We have a function to perform, which is to eliminate Red state people in any manner suitable as long as it maximizes our probability to survive for further combat. We have no such sentiment as loyalty, honor, fair play and the other baggage that might get in the way of our prime function. I was however disappointed to see other zombies being destroyed, since that lowered my probablity of surviving, which in turn lowered my chances of carrying out my prime function. However the manner in which they were destroyed was of no consequence. The fact that every zombie that was shown being destroyed had its arms and legs detached prior to the process brought back memories of my encounter with the inbreeds. I was quick to notice that in almost all cases, especially when it involved the Mariah class, which is the female version, the genitals were a prime target for mutilation as the first step in ultimately destroying the zombie. Most zombies were unified; for some strange reason the enemy thought that having both the head and body available at the same time for destruction made the zombie more sensitive to what was happening; nothing could be further from the truth. I watched the reaction of the militia personnel who were observing the screen upon which the elimination of the captured zombies was occurring. Their respiration increased dramatically and in nearly all cases they became sexually aroused, especially when the Mariah zombies' genitals were being mutilated by such means as having explosives inserted into the ersatz vagina and detonated, being burned to ashes by flame throwers, a decidedly risky method which more than likely resulted in some Red state casualties, and being sliced up using machetes, Bowie knives and even axes. Breasts were also a prime target and received similar treatment. To my way of looking at things this was a needless waste of energy and a potential hazard to those involved. I was utterly confused by the frequent use of various methods to hang the zombie. Breaking a zombie's neck did nothing to really harm the zombie, it could still kill Red staters with little inconvenience if it were relatively unscathed otherwise. I did have to admit that decapitating the zombie by hanging it with razor or piano wire did damage the combatant substantially since now the head and body were not in sync.
Chapter 4 It was the last segment of the tape that made me realize I was an endangered species, and it appeared that the Red staters were working very hard to change that status to extinct. It was then that my interrogator began to make major inroads into what passed for my morale. I carefully examined every frame of that tape as it showed the destruction of literally dozens upon dozens of Mariah class zombies, as well as perhaps half a dozen of the Elijah class. They had gotten the process down to a standard routine, which was the most disconcerting information I gleaned from this display. It was obvious from the various backgrounds that this was not one large killing plant, but numerous small stations where the demolition of my kind had taken place. Each zombie was fettered with what appeared to be stainless steel restraints. All were in some state of consciousness, many relatively unscathed considering the type of combat in which they had been involved. Initially each zombie was decapitated and the severed head thrown into a pile located some distance from where the processing of the bodies took place, thus preventing any possibility of reconstitution or reanimation. The bodies were ground up in machines traditionally used for stump grinding, this entire Red state area once having been covered in pine and other smaller sized trees. The ground up bodies were then transported to a trench filled with some type of chemical bath that dissolved the remains. This is turn was pumped into tanker trucks and the mixture poured into quicksand bogs, which completed the process of decommissioning the zombie. I had to admit that it was quite efficient and most effective. The commander was quite candid about what happened in general to the zombie heads. About half of them were made safe by eliminating the optical, auditory and speaking capabilities, rendering them "deaf, dumb and blind" as he so succinctly described the process. These were given as awards or trophies to Red state troops who had distinguished themselves in battle. A few went to the main museum located in Jackson, the Red state capital city, and the rest were destroyed in crematoriums, the ashes sent to other quicksand bogs for ultimate disposal. I had to admit some type of reaction when the screen showed my body, hanging from hooks on what looked to be some kind of conveyor belt. My interrogator laughed as he watched my eyes zero in on my former body. Then he said something that did a bit more than just surprise me. "What you are witnessing is in all probablility the last zombie of its class and perhaps all classes. When it is destroyed, the zombie army, such as it was, will have been totally obliterated. You are the last of your kind. It is for this reason that I have been empowered by our new leadership in Jackson to make you a very generous offer that will allow you to continue to exist for a rather long time, likely a number of years at the least." "In all candor I must admit that I am dead set against this order that has come directly from our new leader, the widow of the man who led us to this final victory. It is tragic that at the moment of his greatest triumph, he should be snatched away from us as the result of some minor deviation that was initiated during his cloning, and over the decades finally ended his brilliant reign as our maximum leader. Related to this event is the fact that our clone armies, which were the backbone of our military success, also were heir to the same deviation, but in their case, because of the lack of quality control, it proceeded at a pace that was well over ten times more rapid than what took Bush 5 from us." "The lack of a functional clone army has severely hampered our military efforts in the other theaters of operation and will put even more pressure on our homeland population to continue to support the activities of the Army of Freedom. Thus what it boils down to these days is morale. That is where you come in. In exchange for allowing you to continue to function, you will act as a focal point for improving national honor and pride. This will be achieved by putting you on a tour that will allow the various population centers the chance to witness what you are and vent their anger and frustration as they watch you suffer the torments of the damned. For in truth, you are truly damned to remain functioning under the most dire of situations. In a sense you are the last of the undead from either side, but that is a thought that I will only share with you." I had to admit that this was tremendous amount of information to digest and attempt to sort in order to determine what my response to this bargain should be. It did not take more than a few seconds to come to the conclusion that cooperation with this human was the optimal path to take if I wanted to continue to fulfill my prime objective, which was to eliminate Red state people. I had no reason to doubt the truth of what he said. The last month or so there had been a tremendous reduction in encounters with the enemy and based on the information provided by Elijah 47, out efforts to overcome the Red state militias was not at all successful. Indeed I might very well be the last of my kind and thus it was imperative I remain functioning in hopes that at some time in the future I could once more return to action. All that remained was to hear the human's terms and the restraints that would be placed upon me. They were quick in coming once he knew I was in agreement with his offer. "In your new capacity, there will be almost constant travel. This is the one area of our new leadership's plan that concerns me the greatest. To reduce the chances of you escaping and returning to your original state as a terrorist, I will have two things done to you. You will receive an implant which will send a signal that can be picked up by our network surveillance system in case you somehow manage to escape. To further reduce this possibility, a small but deadly charge of plastic explosive will be surgically buried in your brain. This can be set off from a distance of approximately half a mile." I could see by his body language and the tone of his voice, that he was quite pleased with himself. I did nothing to make him think otherwise. It would take some serious study of the problem in order to develop an exit strategy. I felt that time was my ally and thus the better my performance as a morale building tool, the better my chances for extended survival. He then revealed to me his strategy for making certain that I did not escape during the time that would be spent doing from one city to another. After each appearance, which invariably would result in my decapitation as part of the morale building event, my body would be transported in an independent carrier that would always be separated from my head by a distance of at least one mile, guaranteeing that there could be no way for me to reanimate or reconstitute myself except when it was necessary to be prepared for my next appearance. His next revelation was almost laughable to me, but my logic could appreciate the importance of such cosmetic considerations. I would now be capable of emitting all variety of shreiks, screams, pleadings and the like thanks to a small broadcasting system implanted in my throat area. My other new capability was being able to "bleed" by means of a small pump that could supply a reasonable facsimile of blood from various ports located in my torso. The irony was that we zombies had no feelings and no blood supply. How else could the audience believe or imagine that I was suffering the torments of the damned if they could not hear and see some manifestation of what I was enduring?
A Fate Worse Than Death Chapter 5 Well, it's been nearly six months since my grand tour of the Red State nation, now called New Freedom, began. I've appeared in some sixty-two presentations, and to quote my handler/manager, the good commander, "I'm still alive and kicking." Despite the fact that we have been in close proximity most of this period, I know nothing about him, not even his name. In some of my less lucid moments, I imagine that he would make a fair zombie soldier due to his fixation that everything involved in this morale building project shall be "by the book", as he often says. We've covered the nation starting from what was left of Montgomery, then following those highways still open to finally reach New Orleans. I was a huge hit in that city ,especially with its history of things magical and the zombie tradition that had been brought to that part of the country by settlers from the Caribbean and Africa. We did two events over a three day span, allowing one day for me to reconstitute what was left of my body after the first morale building appearance. By then the event protocol had been totally established. Upon our arrival there would be a private session for those entrusted with governing the city, ranking members of the Church of the Crusader and decorated heroes who had fought bravely in Civil War 3. No matter where the city, these Red staters that make up the majority of every private session seem to also be following some type of protocol when it comes to venting their anger and hatred on me. The commander would make a short speech addressing whatever significant events occurred in and around the city during the last civil war, provide some very general information concerning my role in the war and then introduce me to them. I will be rolled into the meeting room securely manacled to the metal frame that is an essential part of the presentation. To make me less threatening, so I'm told, I'm stark naked, my body oiled so that it glistens. If you recall my original description of a Mariah, you can imagine the effect that my totally naked and most vulnerable body produces in all but only a small fraction of the male population. The thing that is most amazing is the way the women respond to me. I honestly think that if the makers of the clone armies had decided that they be female, my side would have been swept from the field in a matter of months, instead of the nearly three years it took for things to wind down. I've never been able to be absolutely confident about why women react so violently towards me. Yes, I am beautiful and extremely well built. Yes, I and my fellow zombies have been the cause of many a widow. Yes, I am not white. These are good reasons for women to be jealous and at the same time hate me for my "crimes", but I know there is still more beneath the surface. This is what causes them to totally lose control and attack me with their fists and fingernails, not to mention the butcher knives, lead pipes, lengths of chain, hat pins,ice picks and the lady from Biloxi who actually managed to hack two of my limbs from my body with a hand axe before she was dragged away, screaming and frothing at the mouth. The men on the other hand prefer to use their fists, sometimes enhanced by brass knuckles or spikes, the latter can do some terrible damage in a superficial sense. I often look over to the commander and can see him wince as some male tears my face open or worse. It is not pity that causes this reaction, rather the knowledge on his part that I will have to be allowed some time to reconstitute myself before I'm turned over to the tender mercies of the assembled mobs that have come to see me literally torn to pieces before their very eyes. In many cases the by invitation only viewing is attended strictly by men. It is these times when I am raped savagely as they lose all the trappings of civilization and turn to what mankind must have been like many thousands of years ago. It is time for the ritualistic mutilation of my femininity, my breasts sliced and hacked from their moorings, my vagina stabbed and slashed with huge hunting knives and the like. It is during this frenzy I always go back to my first encounter with the inbreeds and the one who opened me up with one pass of his knife; now that was impressive! Naturally my restraining frame can be turned over to expose my back and hindquarters for even more violent fun and games. I've had heated pokers inserted into my anal passage, an item as useful to me as is the appendix for humans. They've pounded wooden stakes into that tight orifice until it split apart, and yes, they have sodomized me almost as often as they raped my vagina. It may sound strange to hear me say this, but after enduring this type of treatment over and over, I sometimes long for someone with a bit more inventiveness or originality in what he or she does to my body. Unfortunately these members of the New Freedom nation are in many respects much closer to the clones and, yes, even we zombies, in that they lack the capability for independent action. What is currently being done to my helpless body is so typical of the private sessions. Except for the fact that one of my eyes has been popped from its socket as the result of a blow with what looks like a piece of lead pipe, it's business as usual. I am amusing myself, so to speak, by predicting exactly how many slices it will take for them to totally remove my breasts. The ones working on my right one seem to have more enthusiasm and slightly more muscle than the group amputating my left breast. It's my guess that the right one will go first, but the left one will take more cuts to remove it from my chest wall. As is usually the case, especially after the Biloxi incident, the blood pump has been disconnected, so the entire process is decidedly sterile, truly bloodless, although the speaker lodged in my throat is producing some outstanding versions of the human death agonies as they continue to wittle away on these outstanding examples of human femininity. When they are finished venting their lusts on me, it will be time for a period of reconstitution and then out to the main stage to be torn to pieces before nearly three thousand Red staters from the area of Oklahoma City. With some luck I'll be capable of performing tomorrow night in Tulsa, our last stop before heading south to Little Rock and finally ending this segment of the tour in Jackson. I've noticed that there are a growing number of hooded and robed people now attending these "patriotic manifestations of unity", those are the commander's words not mine. I have a footnote somewhere within the brief implanted history of the former United States of America that informs me that these hooded ones are members of a once outlawed secret society called the Ku Klux Klan, now once more flourishing in the New Freedom nation. I find it strange since there are no people of color allowed in New Freedom. What is their charter these days? To pass the time until my assailants finish with their mutilation of my private parts, I begin reviewing the last four stops on the tour, recalling what was done to me at each once the public display took place. Let's see, the tour started its Texas leg in Longview, reaching it three days after finishing up in Shreveport, our last stop in Louisiana. We had a pretty good crowd for out initial stop in what was left of the lone star state. West Texas no longer existed as far as being a place where life could flourish, and the southern portion of the state had been obliterated by a combination of nuclear and chemical weapon attacks.
Chapter 6 It was audience participation time and so I was hung by my wrists from the stage and the good folks of Longview had at me with a variety of weapons ranging from barbed wire whips through chains, finally finishing up with the ever popular Bowie knife. I was a rather tattered zombie terrorist by the time that segment of the presentation ended. Then for the grand finale they hung me using razor wire, which gradually cut through my neck until I was not so neatly decapitated. A few minutes before my body and I parted company, I was doused with some highly flammable liquid and ignited. The flames must have jumped fifteen feet into the air bringing waves of delighted applause and shouts of glee from the asembled throng. Just as my body dropped away from my head the fireworks went off right on cue and the good folks of Longview stood as one and sang the Church of the Crusader hymn of victory. All in all, a good time had been had by all, except yours truly. We arrived in Tyler a day and a half later; the main highways were still damaged to the point that we had to take a number of detours. However this still gave me sufficient time to reconstitute once we reached our destination. The show the following evening went off without a hitch. Here the crew was able to hook up the speaker in my throat to the sound system in the small stadium and treat the audience to the horrifying sounds that were wrung from this "truly terrified", (once more the words of the commander) terrorist zombie by the outraged citizens who took turns demonstrating their hatred for this evil servant of the godless demons from the Blue states. For a little change of pace during the grand finale, while I was hanging from the razor wire, they had a number of local heroes from the war use chain saws to separate my body into a number of chunks as the audience went wild with patriotic fervor. By now I could sing the Church of the Crusader victory hymn backwards as well as forwards. Then it was on to Dallas, for three big shows. It was a long trip, made necessary because the main highways leading into Dallas were still under repair, and might still be for the next few years acording to what I heard from the commander's comments to his underlings. However after the better part of two days and nights we pulled into the city for three big shows, all to take place in perhaps the only large, undamaged stadium in the entire New Freedom nation. The opening show was before an audience of at least ten thousand people, the biggest we'd had on the entire tour. Opening night was a bit more brutal in keeping with the size of the crowd. I was not only sliced and diced with the usual weapons such as barbed wire, but I also took some terrible treatment from one veteran who used a flail to shred me to tatters, managing to tear half of one breast away as the audience roared their approval. I was able to follow the action by looking up at one of the huge screens that was giving every person here a front row seat. It's a strange sensation to watch yourself being ripped to pieces and yet not feel a thing that is transpiring. It's during these moments that I usually concentrate on watching the faces of those who seem to be enjoying themselves to the limit of their capability. You can imagine what I am thinking at that point as well. One of my intermediate goals is to somehow break free of my bonds during one of these orgies of violence and run amok in the audience as an exercise of my capability for destruction. There is a small part of me that grudgingly acknowledges that perhaps I have now experienced so much violence towards my person that there is a small element of celebration in what will occur as I work my way through the hordes of Red staters, leaving a trail of blood and death in my wake. I am curious about how many Red staters I might dispatch before being forced to flee into the wilderness to once more stalk the human prey that populate this region. Once this phase of the event was over, something new was added. The commander hadn't alerted me to this, so I was as interested as the audience in what was to come next. A small group of militia, veterans of civil war 2 who acted to prevent the California survivors from escaping into Mexico, marched onto the stage. I was still hanging from the chains, the blood pumps working away to simulate what a living creature might look like after such brutal handling. I noticed that they were all carrying old style rifles with bayonets attached. I wondered if I was about to be shot full of holes by what passed for a firing squad. Then I heard the one in charge of the squad announce "Fix bayonets!" Then I got it, in more ways than one. Each member of the group took a pass at me, burying his bayonet into my body and then tearing it up or sideways in an attempt to create a larger wound. Quite a few took dead aim at my groin, especially the vulva. Many hit home and it was interesting to watch the expressions on their faces when one of the more accurate managed to bury his shaft of steel deep inside my ersatz vagina and then pull and twist the blade as he screamed and even in some of the more frenzied cases, frothed at the mouth in their fury. It is moments like this that steel my resolve to escape and go back to what I was designed to do. After the "firing squad" got done turning me into what appeared to be a bleeding piece of meat, I was prepared for the grand finale. By now the audience was collectively frothing at the mouth , awaiting my total destruction in some horrible manner. I was manacled to a rectangular frame of metal and wrapped in barbed wire. Then about a dozen muscular members of the audience used clubs to drive the barbed wire deep into my body as a warmup for my big finish. All the time they were driving the barbed wire deeper and deeper into my torn and tattered body, a couple of members of of the local militia were preparing me to be hung from my neck using the old tried and true favorite, razor wire.This time the hook for the crowd of screaming, blood-thirsty humans was the lumberjack special, a particularly violent and brutal assault on what was left of my body. Once the muscle men had finished driving the last of the barbed wire into my private and public parts, the fun began. A noose of razor wire was looped round my neck and drawn tight, beginning the process of decapitation. It was now time for the variation in the standard big finish. Two local heroes armed with axes, the kind used to chop down the local forests for lumber, took up their stances on either side of me. At a nod from one of the local leaders of the Church of the Crusader they started hacking away at my body. This was no completely berserk attack, it was done with a degree of precision considering the implements they had to use. Almost simultaneously my feet were chopped off, then my legs at the kneecaps, and finally at the juncture to my torso. By now one of the men had taken a small lead over his companion. It was then that I realized it was a contest. I was unable to ascertain what defined victory, but I would discover that very soon at the rate they were butchering me. All the while this was going on, the wire was doing its job as well, first slicing slowly across my neck and then gaining speed as the amount of material holding my head attached to my body was reduced. The one slightly ahead landed a pair of vicious blows to my midsection, leaving the remainder for his opponent to hew away, and then moved up to neaty hack one of my bleeding breasts from my chest wall. He then took his stance, readying himself for the winning blow, which would result in my head being separated from the chunks that used to be my body. It was then that I realized there were two things that constituted victory, arriving at my neck first and then slicing my head off before the razor wire did. It was close, but the razor wire did its work a fraction of a second before the blow landed. This distracted the axe wielder just enough that he managed to shear away the lower portion of my face, bringing a frenzied roar of approval from the mob of totally insane folk. In retrospect I had to admit that for unmitigated violence and sheer barbaric behavior, this one was very near the top of the scale. It took most of the time between performances for me to reconstitute my badly damaged body. I received no sympathy from my manager who expressed a great deal of unhappiness in some of the unplanned actvities that had occurred at last night's performance. At the next performance there were no surprises as far as I was concerned. The militia did their thing and the rest of the activities went off as planned, "by the book" as the commander said. Then it was time for the grand finale and this was the first time in a while that more modern technology was employed to destroy me before the eager throngs of Red staters. My torn up body, bleeding profusely from various areas, was chained to a group of motorcycles, and dragged slowly around the stadium to give everyone a good close look at the terrorist zombie being prepared for her just desserts. Four heavy links of chain ran from the metal collar around my neck and were connected to the rear assemblies of the motorcycles. My arms were manacled together at wrist, elbow and bicep, but otherwise I was unfettered. I could see a crew of men working on the surface of the oval track upon which I was to be dragged once more, but they were too far away to show me exactly what they were doing. I found out shortly. They took one circuit at a fairly respectable speed as I bounced along behind them , scraping off patches of skin and opening up some new cuts. My breasts, that had been turned to twin lumps of bleeding meat, were taking a brutal beating, but my head was relatively unscathed, which I'm sure was no accident. Then they gunned the engines of the bikes and tore around the track one more time to the roar of the crowd, which was on their feet and screaming. It was difficult to see since my body was bumping from side to side and on occasion becoming airborne so that I skipped like a stone across the surface of water. Then I struck something that ripped my body into shredded meat. I was twenty yards beyond the point of impact before I realized I'd been dragged across at least three circular ripsaws that had been running at top speed. I was positive they hadn't been there on the other laps. They must have been buried and then deliberately raised on this, my last lap for the night. My arms and legs were gone and my torso had been ripped apart from neck to vulva. Only a few scraps of skin and shredded meat were holding what was left of my torso to my head. The audience was going crazy. Then the fireworks went off and the mob began bellowing the victory hymn on cue as its words began to course across the giant screen that was also showing what was left of me being dragged off the track as the motorcycles headed beneath the stands. After another lengthy reconstitution, more on that subject in a moment, I was barely ready for the third and fnal show for the Dallas people. As it turned out, I'd seen and experienced it all before, so I managed to get through the last show on shall we say, automatic pilot. This time the grand finale was sort of meat and potatoes. After being multilated beyond recognition by the good people of Dallas, my body was chained to four ATVs and my limbs ripped off as the drivers gradually eased their vehicles from one gear to the next. Then a squad of local dignitaries, some I'd already encountered in the private session, buttressed by some local citizens who had been chosen by lot, proceeded to chop my torso into bits with saws, axes and even those ubiquitous Bowie knives that seemed to abound in this area of New Freedom. A good time was had by all, except this terrorist zombie who was beginning to wonder if she had made the right call when offered this opportunity to continue waging war against the Red states and their citizens. On the way to the thriving metropolis of Denton for yet another show, I remember assessing the situation once again and coming to the same conclusion. It was still to my advantage to keep taking whatever these people could dish out in hopes of beating the odds just one time. Early in the tour it appeared that luck was with me when the vehicle carrying my head had an accident and the following vehicle, containing my body, inadvertently got within a hundred yards of me before being warned to keep its distance no matter what the situation. That bit of luck had kept my confidence high for most of this tour. Nothing unique happened in Denton. It was the usual rape and mutilation at the private session and more audience participation and additional mutilation at the "patriotic manifestation of unity" event. The only thing that was beginning to concern me was the fact that my original animated body had lost almost ninety percent of itself through the various travails that it was put through during this grand tour. It was not common knowledge, but if by chance all my original material was somehow spread out over the entire area of New Freedom, it would not be possible to reconstitute me. Original material was the source of the nucleation that allows the other ersatz material such as cadaver parts or even carcasses of dead animals to grow into a zombie. Take away the seed, and no growth, just a head that can do very little without a body. My handler/manager was aware of this fact, having been given intensive briefings on the subject of the operation and maintenance of a zombie.
A Fate Worse Than Death Chapter 7 We were on the last leg of the tour, making our way toward Little Rock after a show in Tulsa. The commander had been acting strangely ever since we arrived in Tulsa. Everytime we were alone, he would stare at me and then smile. This behavior was totally out of character for him. Yesterday he actually sat down and had a conversation of sorts with me. Naturally it was rather one-sided, but I took in every word and tried to interprete as best I could what this decidedly odd behavior meant. I remember his opening words perfectly. "I'll bet you are one bored terrorist zombie these days. Just how many ways are there to do you in? All these nasty things that people do to you must be like water off a duck's back. If only you could be a participant in this great show of pariotic unity, knowing and feeling what it must have been like to fight and suffer for your cause. This is one of the reasons that I dislike you so much. You have absolutely no emotions, no feelings. It's like you have this boring job in a factory and you are punching a timeclock every day for the rest of eternity. That's not the way for any sentinent being, even a zombie like you, to exist." Feelings and emotions were foreign to my kind. We were designed expressly to do one function and do it well. The concept of boredom did not exist in my makeup. I was either active or inactive. To my way of viewing my current situation, I was active. I was continuously gaining new knowledge about my prey; knowledge that would make me even more efficient once I freed myself from the current state. The more I pondered the commander's words, the more interested I became in understanding them. I bided my time and awaited more information that he might provide. The following day was quite arduous. We were required to take a number of very challenging excursions from our planned itinerary, and made little progress in reaching our destination. We encamped for the night, not willing to risk traveling under what were adverse conditions of terrain. Once more the commander settled down to have one of these strange "chats" with me. The modification that had been made to install the speaker in place of my vocal cords had made it impossible for me to speak, even if I was so inclined. He continued to ramble about my lack of feeling, saying it was more evidence that I was not one of god's creations. I am not much for philosophy, except for logic. The rest of it is not part of what I need to accomplish my objective. However I still struggled to try to understand this new vector that was coming from the commander. Perhaps understanding its meaning would aid in escaping from this current situation, something upon which I was totally focused. Just before he ended this latest sitdown, which is what he called it, he mentioned that once we reached Little Rock, I would be meeting with two representatives from the New Freedom office of technology. He went out of his way to make certain that I understood that this meeting would not be part of the usual private sessions that were always held upon our arrival in a new city. It was almost sundown before we reached our destination, escorted for the last hour or so by a number of motorized local militia. In a most unexpected move I was reunited with my body, even though there was no private session or show scheduled for this evening. I realized this was in preparation for my meeting with the two persons from the New Freedom government. Surrounded by over a dozen well armed militia, I was transported on my frame to a building located some distance from where our trailer was parked. There were two humans waiting for me as it turned out. They introduced themselves as Drs. Stanton and Wylie, formerly members of the Neurological Research Department of the now defunct University of Texas at Austin, which was just a crater that glowed in the darkness. At first this meant nothing to me, but as they started to decribe the type of research they had been doing and now were continuing under the aegis of the New Freedom defense department, it became apparent that there was a direct and terrible connection between what they had achieved and my continued existence. Even as they hurriedly explained what type of research they were doing and its ramifications, I could see that the sight of my bound and very bare body was having a decided effect on the younger of the two. He finally could no longer stand the distraction that I was causing. It was obvious that he fell into that category of human males that were strongly attracted sexually to my appearance, a tribute to the Blue state designers who came up with me. He walked over to where I lay and stared down at me, his breathing now rapid. "I've seen plenty of pictures of the Mariah zombie, but they hardly do this one justice. I have to admit that if she was human, I'd be all over her in nothing flat. Those tits are extraordinary and I hear that her pussy is superior to any woman on the planet. I have this on good authority from the few survivors of sexual contact with the Mariah class zombie that we managed to interview before their deaths." The older of the two laughed and chided his companion. "Come off it Dr Stanton, you're not kidding me. Let's be honest; you'd love to tear off a piece of this sexy death machine, especially this one who is the last of its kind and utterly helpless to prevent you from nailing her good and proper. I'm sure the commander would be a gentleman and look the other way while you and I made a few personal observations of her sexual abilities so that we could incorporate the data into our future work. After all it is for the good of the New Freedom nation." A few minutes later after the two of them had satisfied their curiosity concerning my sexual prowess, and returned to what they came to discuss with the commander, things stopped making sense to me. They kept referring to experimental work they had done on the "brains" of other Mariah zombies that gave strong evidence that the use of prions, which they described as pure protein that did not possess either RNA or DNA, caused substantial changes in the zombies' brains. These changes occurred thousands of times faster than in normal tissue since like the prions, the matter composing zombies' brains lacked any genetic coding that typically determined how normal tissue developed. The commander , who was not an educated man, did not completely accept what they said, since he knew for a fact that a great deal of my body was now composed of cadavers and animal matter, both of which were "normal" tissue. The two neurologists dismissed his argument out of hand, stating that the zombie brain would not accept traditional genetically coded tissue, despite the less than perfect composition of the zombie's body. I began to lose interest in this strange discussion until the two men finally got around to what they wished to do to me in order to prove their premise about the use of prions to modify the ability of the zombie to experience sensory stimulation. Now I was once more paying very close attention to what they were saying. I was also applying as much effort as I dared to testing the strength of the bonds that held my body down onto the transportation frame. I had been performing this exercise every chance I got ever since the tour began. I reasoned that if I continued to apply force to my bonds, ultimately I might weaken them sufficiently to allow me to break free. Of course I still had to somehow immobilize the commander to prevent him from detonating the small charge of plastic explosive buried deep within my brain. Then I might have a chance to make a run for it and escape into the countryside. I still had not figured a way to cloak my movements from being detected by the national surveillance system, but that was a problem that was more tractable than the other two. One had to wonder just how reliable such a system might be, considering the damage that had occurred throughout what was left of the old United States of America. The more I listened to what was being said, the more I realized that my window of opportunity , which had originally been years, may now be rapidly closing. The two men had produced a document that the comander was reading. From the expression on his face and the stiffness of his body, it was apparent that he did not like what he was reading. Finally he looked up from the document and glared at the two. "According to these orders, I am to immediately terminate the tour and allow you to join my caravan as it returns to the capital by the quickest and most prudent route available. We, in turn, will be joined by members of the motorized Mississippi militia at a yet to be determined location, to provide additional security for its valuable cargo, to wit, the zombie known as Mariah 47. Upon arrival at the capital city, control of the Mariah 47 zombie will be transferred to the office of Technology Development. I wish to communicate with my organization to verify the accuracy of what this document contains." The commander had the militia stand guard over me while he used the transmitter located on the outskirts of the city to contact his chain of command for instructions concerning the document he had just received. There was nothing I could do under these circumstances except bide my time. This however did not prevent the militia and the two scientists from using me sexually. I took this opportunity, while they were so occupied, to once more evaluate the probability of breaking free, eliminating this group, and fleeing. The plan was too high risk to attempt at this time. I had no way to be sure that I could take the commander by surprise, meaning a high probability that I would be destroyed. The commander did not return that night. However I had plenty of company to keep me busy and out of trouble. Those were the words that the two scientists used as they watched the militia take turns using me. A number of times while this "ritual" took place I was sorely tempted to free myself and end this charade. However I had to wait until the commander returned, since he was the key to a successful escape. Once the militia were satiated, they left me to the tender mercies of the two professors. Their behavior toward me was even more excessive than what had occurred previously. The younger one, Stanton, was still fascinated by my sexual prowess, but unlike the militia, he was a bit more sophisticated, if that be the proper word, this time around. By dint of effort he managed to insert his fist into my vagina, and move it upwards until he was in me up to his elbow. This seemed to excite him tremendously and he shouted to his companion to see what he had accomplished. Dr. Wylie was not impressed, stating the obvious, that I had no way of responding to this activity since I was devoid of almost all sensory capability. This did not prevent his companion from continuing to use his closed hand inside me. Immediately upon withdrawing, he inserted his sex organ into me and from the look on his face, almost immediately discharged into my body. It normally was my method of operation to begin killing once my assailants were partially satiated and thus their response to my attack was slowed considerably. However this could not be my approach in this situation, so I continued to bide my time. Now the other one took his turn, but he had other interests that were just as ineffectual. He produced a small, extremely sharp knife which he demonstrated by plucking a hair from his beard and then slicing it in two with one motionof the blade. Then he proceeded to begin carving my breasts up, cutting lines that all started at the nipple and moved out, creating sectors. Then he began peeling the top layer of flesh, if I dare call it that, simulating the activity known as flaying. Of course it meant nothing of significance to me. I was highly perplexed at the visceral reaction this procedure caused in him. He began to laugh maniacally, followed by remarks that made no sense. "Once we have you in our laboratory and can work on your brain with our prion therapy, you will have the delightful pleasure of feeling what a procedure such as the one I am currently performing can create. I am sure you will not enjoy it. It is called pain and so you will have taken one small step to becoming a little less like a robot and more like a sentient being. Regardless of how successful our work might be, you will never be human. The pleasure we will have making you feel pain, knowing that no matter how much pain you endure, you can never die from it because of that godless ability of yours to reconstitute yourself, will be reward enough for our years of research that has put the final nail in you eternal coffin. In truth, yours will be hell on earth." "Imagine, if you can, going back on the tour to serve as a true symbol that will bind up the wounds of our glorious nation. This time your screams of agony will be genuine and make an enormous impact on our nation's population. You will be a constant reminder of what the face of our foes looked like to those who never experienced the horror and terror brought on our nation by your kind. There is still more in store for you that you cannot even begin to understand. I believe that ultimately our research will create a method of allowing our people to bond with you as you suffer the fires of hell here on earth. However they will be shielded from your pain, but not the terror that you are experiencing as you are tortured beyond belief, surviving travails that no human could. You will experience the pain and possibly even the humiliation of being raped by hundreds, no, thousands of angry men who were injured in one way or another by your kind." "I do not expect whatever happens to you to cause irreparable damage to your mind, since your brain is more reptilian than human. Then again it may be possible for you to be driven insane, which might be a blessing for you, but a minor setback for what we are striving for here on earth. You will be the first of your kind, and for that matter, any kind, that can truly make the statement, "Mine is a fate worse than death!" He got so carried away that his knife slipped, removing my nipple and a chunk of protoplasm beneath it. He grew more agitated and spittle flew from his lips.Then he began slashing away at my face with that sharp blade, gouging more pieces of my oft reconstituted flesh that fell onto the floor. When he began mindlessly stabbing me in the chest, his associate called for help from the militia stationed outside the room. They came quickly and restrained Wylie from damaging me further, even though I felt nothing and realized that within perhaps an hour or two, all of this superficial evidence of his loss of control would be gone. After checking me, the other professor took his leave as well, leaving me to my thoughts about what I had heard from Stanton. I knew the word "pain", but had no idea what it meant. His statements about having a method of making me feel something that I had never experieced held no fear for me at present. What the future held for me in this matter was something I could not fathom. On the other hand the way he responded to me was so inimical that I began to form a plan to extricate myself from this situation very quickly. I resolved that as soon as I was in the presence of the commander I would eliminate him immediately after breaking loose from the manacles that were now so weakened that I knew I could free myself within moments. This would give me the element of surprise and might allow my plan to be executed as designed. I waited and went over my plan again and again to make sure that under the circumstances it was optimal. Just before dawn I heard voices outside the door; the commander had returned and by the tone of his voice was not very happy about something. I heard him tell one of the militia that he wished to see me before he left the convoy that would be taking me to Jackson. He cautioned the guards that I was still extremely dangerous and therefore he was putting the mechanism that would detonate the explosive lodged in my brain in their possession. "If she comes through that door, I'll be already dead, so don't waste time, just press the button or she'll kill you all." My confidence of escaping plummeted. There was little chance of me doing away with the commander and getting past the guards if they had the detonator in their possession. I was now forced to wait for a better time in hopes for a more fortuitous opportunity. The commander entered and took a position above me, his eyes looking down into mine. He sighed deeply and announced that he had been relieved of his duty and from now on the two scientists would be in charge of my security. Then he did a very strange thing, reaching down and touching my face. "We had an arrangement and as far as I am concerned, it's still in place. You are the enemy and in normal times I'd be doing my damndest to kill you. The war is over for us both and I'll be damned if I'll turn a good soldier over to a couple of perverts who want to play god at your expense. Take my advice and when you get out of here head south for Central America. You won't be bothered by the radioactivity and the left over biological blooms, so you have a good chance of escaping. Now do what you have to do and take this with you." He held the detonator in his hand. Seconds later I broke his neck and in less than a minute I dispatched the four militia who waited outside. The one who thought he had the detonator had a strange look on his face just before I tore his throat out; the fountain of blood distracted his cohorts just enough for me to send them to wherever humans went when they died. I leaped from the trailer, noticing that the sun was just rising over the crest of the small hill that provided some degree of shelter for the convoy. I quickly headed west and minutes later I was in dense underbrush. Even as I put the miles between me and the convoy I wondered why the commander had done what he had done. My function had not changed and it never would. I wondered what would happen to me after I killed the last of the Red state folk.
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