Sharing Sunday – Dead on Time: Part Two

And here’s part two!

Dead on Time: Part Two

Groaning softly, Rae pressed her hands to her temples softly, fearing to open her eyes and have any lights in the room make the pounding in her head worse. She couldn’t remember anything in the pamphlet for time travel about feeling like your head would split in two. Didn’t companies have to list side effects on shit like that? Even if it was in the fine print? And Rae would remember if it said anything, she had been sure to read the whole novel-length contract three times, and thoroughly.

A low moan finally prompted her to crack open one eye, and what she saw made both bright green eyes flash open in fear. There were no glaring bright lights as she had expected; instead, dim lighting barely illuminated the large room. But that was hardly the reason she had to swallow the scream of fear that began to well up in her throat. No, that honor went to the person shuffling toward her with agonizingly slow steps. A person that looked eerily like the creatures in the movies; creatures that most would call zombies.

Her eyes dominated her face as she took in the creature, from its’ missing arm complete with an oozing, bloody socket, to the broken ankle with a hint of glistening white bone sticking through the greening skin. The zombie’s jaw gnashed open and closed, loose skin writhing and pulling along its’ mouth with each haunting moan that spoke of its’ hunger…. for her flesh.

Scrambling into action, Rae pulled off the wires that were meant to monitor her vital signs and sprinted over to the pedestal. A quick scan of it gave her no hope at all of being able to operate it. None of the buttons or dials were labeled with a function and she didn’t exactly have the time to figure out how it all worked with a zombie shambling toward her in a typical Romero fashion. King of zombie movies, she wasn’t at all surprised that he hit the nail on the head when it came down to the real thing.

Just as the zombie was about to chomp down on a big bite of Rae-jerky, she shifted away from the pedestal. Her eyes wandered around the large room, searching for any sort of weapon to use. She just had to destroy the brain, right? That’s how it always happened in the movies; so it was really the first, and hopefully last, thing she was going to try. Though it would probably be easier to do if she had at least some sort of weapon to defend herself with, a hard order to fill when she was in a room only meant for time travel, not zombie fighting.

Right when Rae was on the edge of giving up and trying her luck in another room, while locking the zombie in here of course, she spotted a loose metal pipe jutting from the wall. Her feet seemed to fly across the speckled white tiles, carrying her body forward so she could wrap her fingers around the slightly rusted pipe. Within three quick, hard tugs the pipe broke free from the wall and she had it swinging towards the zombie.

Her first swing missed completely, having judged how close he would be incorrectly before she even turned around. The second swing landed against the side of the zombie’s shoulder with a sickening crack that didn’t even seem to faze the thing. Rae huffed out a breath before swinging the third time, a loud thud sounding through the room as the pipe finally connected with his head, causing him to crumble to the ground. When she saw his fingers twitch slightly, she swung the pipe up above her head, before bringing it down on his head with all her strength. Grey matter and blood splattered the floor beneath the zombie, a giant pool spreading out from its’ cracked head.

Rae collapsed to her knees on the ground beside the zombie, head falling forward for her chin to rest against her chest. Confusion clouded her features as her grip tightened on her shoddy weapon. How could this all have happened in only ten years time? What would cause zombies to become reality, a horrific reality that she no longer wanted to be a part of.

“Hello?”

Gasping, Rae glanced around wildly, trying to figure out the source of the voice. There was no one in the room with her, at least that she could see. And the voice didn’t sound as if it came from inside the room; there was a ring to it that sounded as if it had come through some sort of loud speaker. That thought caused her to gaze up at the walls closer to the ceiling for the tell-tale speaker box that she found in a few seconds flat.

“Um, hello?”

“Oh thank goodness,” a male voice echoed through the room, “five long years of waiting and I feared that no one would ever break the ten year rule for that damned machine.”

Eyebrows drawing together in confusion, Rae stood up slowly, pipe clutched in her hands. “I didn’t break the ten year rule.”

The man on the other side of the speaker box scoffed, “You don’t need to lie to me, missy, these damned zombies came around more than the ten year rule would allow, and I’ve been here for most of that time so I know you’ve traveled forward more than ten years.”

“What year is it?”

“2128.” The man paused, but she could still hear him breathing into whatever microphone he spoke into. “What year are you from, young lady?”

A small smile curled on her lips at him calling her a young lady, letting her know that he was considerably older than herself. Concentrating on that fact allowed her mind time to process that she had been transported fifty years into the future, five times the maximum number that was legal for the time machine. The orderly that she had mouthed off to about her name had obviously taken it to heart. What a jerk. She took satisfaction in knowing the fact that when she got back to her time, he would have a lot to answer for. That is, if she ever got back to her own time.

“I’m from the year 2078.” Silence greeted her reply, the man quiet for so long that Rae began to get worried. “Uh, speaker man? Did a zombie eat you?”

A soft chuckle drifted to her ears from the speaker, allowing her to release the breath of air she hadn’t realized that she had been holding. “The name is Dr. Reed, honey, and if a zom got me we would both be royally screwed.”

“Zom,” Rae let the word roll around in her mouth.

“Yes, when you’ve been dealing with these damned zombies for more than half your lifetime, you find the full word a bit grating on your nerves.”

Rae couldn’t comprehend him dealing with zombies for over half his lifetime, especially when he spoke like an elderly gentleman. How long exactly had the zombies been here, eating and turning the people of the world into more zombies? Was it a world-wide epidemic? Or had it been contained to the North American continent? She quickly dismissed that idea though, if the zoms had been contained she could hardly believe that the United World Order would leave people stranded in the middle of it all.

“Well, Dr. Reed, my name is Rae, and I only have two questions for you… What do you want and where the hell are you?”

“Both are excellent questions, dear Rae, and both I am more than willing to answer.” She could hear a quiet shuffling through the speaker before his voice filled the room again. “I am currently trapped just a few hallways away from you, in the security room. It is the only way that I knew you had arrived, I saw you through the video feed.”

Pacing back and forth, careful to avoid the ever growing puddle of zombie brains and blood, Rae waited a few moments for him to answer her second question. When it didn’t seem as if he would continue, she paused, head tilted as she searched for the camera in the room without much luck. “So what is it that you want, or need?”

“It’s not just what I need, it is what we both need.” The intercom played static with each pause in his words, making Rae raise a single eyebrow. “Just from watching you upon your arrival, I can tell that you don’t know how to operate the time machine. I just so happen to have had plenty of time to read the manuals and orientation packets to know my way around that

machine quite well. My problem, is that I’m nearly out of provisions and there are too many zoms out there for me to fight my way to the room you are currently in. As you can guess, I’m a rather old man and I don’t have quite the strength and fitness that I did when this whole epidemic started.”

Rae tightened her grip on her rusty makeshift weapon, a soft smile hovering on her lips as she could see where he was going with this. “So, what, you want me to find you provisions, fight through the zoms to get them to you, learn from you how to operate the machine, and fight my way back so I can get back to my own time?”

Dr. Reed’s barely suppressed laughter cackled through the speaker. “Oh no, dear Rae, that’s not completely the way I want things to go. What I need is for you to fight your way through these pesky zoms, so you can take me back to the room you are in now, so I can send you back to your time so you can warn everyone about the zombie epidemic.” A low cough interrupted his small monologue. “I’m way pass my prime, and there is no way for a single person to use the time machine. One person is required to press that little red button to initiate the machine; there is not nearly enough time between the push of the button and the start of the machine to go from the pedestal to the chair. Otherwise, I would have already tried to send myself back in time.”

About the Dreamer:

Danni has been writing over ten years, mostly dribbling in short fictional stories and poetry. Born in the MidWest, she moved more times than she can count during her schooling years. This led to her spending most of her time reading piles of books taller than herself and filling just as many notebooks with various ideas. She now lives in the southern parts of Texas with her husband, two daughters, cat, and dog. Drinking copious amounts of caffeine and staying up at ungodly hours of the night, writing for her is now more of an escape than a hobby.