#zombie
(Zombie Botnet Book 1)
by Al
K. Line
#zombie is the first book in Al K.
Line's Zombie Botnet series. Also available: Zombie 2.0 and Alpha Zombie (NEW RELEASE). Coming soon: Zombie Slaver. Plus, visit the website and sign up for the author's
newsletter and get a FREE copy of the lost story, Al vs Zombies.
Description
In a normal house in the English suburbs Ven, a mother and world class
hacker, presses enter on her keyboard and Armageddon is unleashed. She loses
almost everything with that fateful keystroke.
The largest Web hack ever performed has devastating repercussions as it
all goes horribly wrong. Designed to compromise the world's connected devices,
the zombie botnet delivers subliminal data packets via social media and more -
in an afternoon most of the world is either infected or eaten.
Now it is a fight for survival for Ven and her baby. Kyle, her one and
only friend, and her faithful tubby Labrador Boscoe, help navigate the
apocalyptic nightmare that is now their world.
The problem is Ven has never used a gun in her life, has no idea how to
kill a zombie, and finds it hard to leave the house without doing her make-up.
Let's just say it gets interesting, and leave you to find out the rest,
in this totally unique zombie novel series that will leave you too scared to
ever go on Twitter again.
Excerpt (note: contains coarse language)
Paul's Experience
Paul drove home from
work listening to all kinds of crazy stories on the radio. There was obviously
a serious situation occurring, he just couldn't quite make sense of it from the
jumbled broadcasts he was hearing. BBC Radio 2, normally a bastion of sensible
reporting, was hijacked by news teams giving manic reports so comical, yet at
the same time so disturbing, that he seriously wondered if there was some kind
of stunt going on he hadn't been let in on.
His day had been
just like so many others — a boring as hell meeting in the morning, consisting
of people going over the same conversations they'd already had via email, then
working on a few projects when he was actually given any time to be productive.
It was all so pointless, such a waste of resources. The afternoon had been
filled making a few calls to clients then answering emails that he didn't doubt
would then be discussed at length, again, the next day in yet another meeting.
Same old crap. Day
in, day out.
He felt tired, tired
and bored out of his brain. Ven, his wife, had told him on countless occasions
that he didn't need to work — she made enough doing her technical consulting
from home for the both of them. It just didn't seem right to Paul though, he should go out to work to support his
family, shouldn't he? Even if the money wasn't as good as he would have liked.
But boy, was he
drained.
How can you get so
tired, and feel like the life has been sucked out of you, when you just sit
there at a desk all day like a mindless drone?
No matter though, he
had nearly arrived. Paul was very much looking forward to a relaxing evening.
Definitely a drink or two as well. Maybe three?
The streets looked
normal as far as he could tell, although he was almost home by the time the
reports of strange happenings on social media were finally becoming coherent.
Hashtag zombie was
trending on Twitter apparently.
So fucking what?
Probably just one of
the latest corporate stunts designed to sell a car, or some new bloody perfume advertised
by a woman he had never heard of — that got paid more than his lifetime's
salary just to walk.
Paul got out of the
car just as his phone rang.
Just Ven. Bet she forgot to buy anything for dinner
again, he thought, not
bothering to answer.
He grabbed his bag
and coat, shut the car door and shot it with his key. Shaking his head and
smiling to himself at the weird reports on the radio he stopped, thinking he
heard screams from across the street. Listening again he heard nothing, it was
probably Mrs. Roberts from number twenty-seven watching one of those channels
that just showed old repeats, with the sound up too high as usual.
It was a hot
Thursday afternoon, something to be grateful for in Berwick-upon-Tweed as
summer never guaranteed good weather in the UK. So he was contemplating having
his evening tipple out in the garden to make the most of it. Maybe throw the
ball a few times for Bos Bos, that dog could certainly do with a little extra
activity.
Inside the house he
put his keys into the cut glass crystal bowl on the hall console table, not
risking the wrath of Ven if he didn't keep the hall table 'just so'. Shutting
the door behind him and hanging up his coat he heard his wife and her odd
friend Kyle upstairs. They sounded freaked out.
What the hell was going on?
Taking the stairs
two at a time he shouted up about the hashtag zombie craziness on the radio,
simultaneously looking at his iPhone, scrolling through his Twitter timeline.
The news was right, there were a shit-load of #zombie messages. Plus a lot of
garbled junk.
Nothing new there.
But something wasn't
quite right either, this stuff was just plain weird. This seemed beyond any
corporate stunt, maybe something serious really was going on? But zombies?
Yeah, right!
Flicking through his
timeline, which seemed to have auto-followed thousands of new people somehow,
nearly every tweet had a link attached. Either that or grossly distorted
selfies of people who seriously needed to get to a hospital, it was unnerving
to say the least.
"Funniest shit ever bit.Ly/34TGIF8"
"#zombie finally arrived twat.Ly/4jg
if8g"
"my dad just eated me fucking mom.
WTF!!!"
"You will not believe this video
youth.be/cutoff79"
"I can haz brainburgerz"
"Armageddon has arrived, I'm ready, are you?
#survivalist"
"cheb out myz zelfie, its v coowel
annoy.ly/zelfc864"
...and on and on the
timeline went.
Tweet after tweet
that made little to no sense. Like someone brainless had been given access to a
keyboard, or else some kind of linkbait that had gone viral. Celebrities had
messaged him — there really must be some
kind of massive media campaign going on — tens of selfie pictures were
rolling down the shiny screen, lots of them looking like they had been in
serious accidents, or staring uncomprehendingly, eyes red-raw with faces puffed
up, blemished like over-ripe fruit.
This was getting
disconcerting, Twitter seemed to have been overtaken by very ill people and
spammers. There was message after message from hot women inviting him to come
check them out via links they supplied.
It was genuinely
melting down.
He clicked a link in
a tweet from his cousin Mike as he carried on walking up the stairs. "Are
you guys watching the news?" he shouted up to them, just as Ven and Kyle
screamed at him like his life depended on it.
"Don't look at
fucking Twitter!" they both shouted, but it was too late.
Paul spoke a few
more words, took a couple more steps. Then the zombie botnet took control of
his very short-lived future.
His brain just had
time to register a new page on his phone, the face of what appeared to be a
cancer ridden old man smiling. Staring back at him with the knowledge of what
was to come. Then it was all too fast to be consciously aware of. Thousands of
images bombarded his brain, synapses reconfiguring. Some kind of severe
epileptic fit shut down his senses. He could feel himself beginning to drift
far far away. Paul staggered on the stairs, bumping into the wall, dropping his
phone as he did so. Simultaneously the iPhone accessed all the social networks
he was logged into, as well as his email accounts, blogs he had visited and
anything else where it could continue the cycle, further expanding the zombie
botnet.
Paul neither knew or
cared about any of this.
Coming out of a
daze, still only slightly aware of his situation, a gloopy liquid foulness
covering the floor he was unaware he was responsible for, there was a sense of
intense heat and something seriously wrong. He had a faint awareness of what
felt like his peanut allergy taking hold, but compounded to the n'th degree.
Anaphylaxis set in
rapidly, shutting down his airways, his heart stopped beating and an internal
terror took hold. Neuropeptide Y ran rampant, forcing to the fore a feeling of
all encompassing hunger. A total absence of emotion left nothing but an ever so
fleeting vision of gold coins, and an obscenely strong desire to own them.
Fading fast it was replaced with an all pervasive numbness along with a total
lack of conscious thought or will. Just a base instinct to consume, consume
anything warm and made from flesh.
Human flesh.
To devour, rip and
shred. To satiate a need for the gray matter that meant cognition for the
higher species and animation for the lesser, which he had now become.
Paul ceased to be
Paul.
He was reborn as
something new — primal.
Parts of his brain
no longer functioned above a base level. Nerve endings no longer fired
properly, some would randomly activate with extreme intensity, causing him to
jerk and spasm, only to suddenly cease functioning or die completely. In just a
few minutes any kind of pain inflicted on his body would hardly register, his
consciousness too far away to care. Then nociceptors shut down permanently,
pain a permanent absence now. But for the first few minutes of infection it was
as if a lifetime's worth of suffering and agony was inflicted upon him as a prelude
to the real punishment to come. Afferent nociceptive fibers bombarded the
brain, before it ceased to accept their signal.
His heart beat at
double time, warming him to fever level. Blood thickened so that injuries would
not lead to massive blood loss. Adrenaline rushed through his body making him
fast, strong and demonic. Base bodily functions would continue to work on auto,
and flesh, flesh, flesh, it was all that he desired. All that he cared about.
Was he dead? In some
ways he was. He was a different kind of creature now. One that felt no pain,
could sustain massive injury and continue for a length of time pursuing his
goal of flesh.
And if he bit you
and you managed to survive? Yours would be a slow and ghastly death, one where
you became infected with the corruption seeping through his possessed body,
infecting every cell, and without antibiotics and medical treatment you would
linger and agonizingly succumb to the many infections the human mouth carried.
Not to mention the disease ridden foulness that would be carried into your
bloodstream from the rotting flesh of other victims stuck in his mouth and
smothering his lips, unless you happened to be his first ever meal.
Any kind of
awareness he now had was dulled to the point of being nothing more than a part
of the race for food. Brains, lovely brains, flesh and bone and the desire to
fill his already expanding esophagus and let the tasty treats slide through his
upper intestine. There to mix with the foul acids that were already churning in
anticipation of food deep within his stomach.
Deep in the depths
of his soul he could feel an ache, an ache to complete a task, to share in gold
coins and to reach for an itch he couldn't scratch. It faded fast — gone within
seconds. Exposed full on and with full line of sight to the zombie botnet's
subliminal imagery he was no longer human. The data packet, corrupted beyond
all reason, so far deviated from its original intention, had taken over and
purged Paul's very soul. The result was nothing more than a machine made of
flesh with a sole purpose devoid of any form of logic: to devour, and destroy,
and satisfy a never ending craving for the life force of other living beings.
Just a few seconds
after following a simple link on Twitter Paul had been infected by the
bombardment of images designed originally to control a few actions at his
keyboard. It had done so much more. He would never again be referred to as
Paul, husband and father, son and brother. A torment humans could not
comprehend existed consumed his mind, drove out his sanity and made the tiny
glimmer of consciousness left weep and howl at the injustice of it all. Ranting
insanely against the thing he had now become.
Paul was not alone,
he was now just one of a brand new species.
Countless millions
had been infected by what became known as the zombie botnet. Each and every
person was now in their own own private purgatory. Levels of hunger became
overwhelming, but the fact is that the person was in there somewhere, never
able to control their urges or beat them. Depending on the level of first
infection, more or less of that which was once a person is dimly aware of the
sickness that overtakes them — for all but the most sick and twisted while
alive it drives them mad in seconds. That madness compelling them to greater
depths of depravity. The infection feeding off the horror and the misery,
compounding it and compounding it, a living hell that some are aware of. Seen
through a fog of sickness. A demented, twisted nightmare come real.
The most unfortunate
being those aware of their foul new life with every action clouded by a haze of
absolute terror. Trying feebly to rail against it but never being able to
control their cannibalistic actions. Just watching in growing despair as they
lose more and more of their mind.
Luckily for the
majority of people the initial infection drives their soul screaming into the
ether, thankful for the release. Leaving nothing but a rabid flesh eating
machine behind, but not always. The terror, or muddled understanding of what your
body is doing, and the depravities it will perform, sends the most hardened of
minds into total and utter meltdown — escaping to a place within the backwaters
of the mind. Where the only sanctuary is a release of consciousness in its
totality to whatever lies beyond the realms the living can understand. Being
properly dead is what you would rather face than continue in an existence where
base urges so vile take over and rule your every movement and depraved action.
Best advice, don't
get infected. And if you do then you better hope that you are pretty sick in
the head to begin with, otherwise it is going to really suck — a lot — and
there is no way back from hell.
Review
By Lee
I'm always looking for something new, or unique, in the zombie world.
When I sampled the sample, I knew I had found a different kind of tale in #zombie.
An awesome premise, and rich writing made this an unputdownable winner for me.
And as a former software engineer and sys admin and certified geek, I
loved the tech talk, though some might gloss over it.
About the Author
Al K. Line is a British author who lives somewhere in England with his
wife, son, and stinky dogs.
Previously a notorious botnet herder, he hung up his hacker moniker and
turned to writing zombie novels rather than making your fridge send out mass
email spam.
He finds it more fun and less likely to lead to incarceration.
For news of future releases in the Zombie
Botnet series visit the website.
Links
