The climb upward took longer. Mostly because I was being careful. A little bit because my hands were still shaking. The floating zombies here looked exactly like the ones in the cafeteria had, hibernating without a care in the world. At least I assumed so.

Was there an upper limit on their ability to hibernate? Zombies appeared not to change appreciably over time. Broken zombies remained broken. Little zombies did not grow larger.

Whatever happened to them during the change from rational human being to mindless hunter of mankind seemed to break the biological process on some fundamental level. They moved and consumed in largely analogous form to extremely primitive human beings.

Zombies, for example, do not poop. From what little I learned through study of the published data, if they had been closer to normal human function, this would have caused them problems in rather short order as most zombies changed while they still had their pants on. Problems enough that such zombies would be rather short lived.

I had suspicions that the nanite worm package is to blame for this. The very wasting that creates their corpse-like appearance is caused by the colony going feral and consuming nearly all potential sources of energy. When zombies eat, they evidently don’t waste a thing. Therefore, no poop.

The hibernation ability was something that other mammals did but humans did not. And even in animals, they needed a great deal of calories to sleep away the winter. Zombies seemed to get by on much less in comparison.

I kept an eye on the probable zombies as I climbed the ladder, moving slowly on instinct. I hadn’t forgotten the horde that even now was battering down the obstacle in their path. As I’d seen before on the planet below, they’d spread out and wander randomly for a bit before gathering together once again.

I could not precisely place a probability on whether or not one would reach the maintenance shaft, but I judged it to be low. Probably. Without a target in sight or hearing distance zombies tended to quickly lose interest. I hoped this would be the case this time, anyway.

The decks on Walker were taller than I’d expected. Ten foot ceilings were the rule, but I’d climbed easily twice that before I saw the opening to Level 4. Unlike the simple hallway access of the Engineering section, Security’s entryway to the maintenance shaft was defended. There were the familiar gun turrets on the ceiling, but no armor glass booth. There was an access panel on a small podium before the closed hatch.

This time when I sent my nanites into the panel they were not immediately rejected out of hand. Apparently Security either did not think I would ever visit this particular panel, or they only defended the laboratory section from me. I focused, flexing the mental muscles that commanded my nanites to analyze the hidden functions within the lock that was keeping me out. I felt the tiny drain on my energy and stamina from using my nanites increase markedly.

It looked like the panel was a combination hand print scanner, retinal scanner, DNA trace analyzer, and facial expression recognition device. The data was taken from the panel and sent away, farther than my nanites could easily trace. Probably to a data vault to check against existing files, but ah ha! There were command inputs coming from that direction. Activation for the gun turrets, retry request, alert signal... And command: release locks and open maintenance access hatch. Perfect.

My ability to analyze and manipulate technology took years of training. It is simple enough to train one’s own nanites to activate something, but far harder to teach them how to look-but-don’t-touch. I had trained my nanites to spread through a device without activating it, perform the analysis, then communicate back what they discovered without, again, tripping any command functions or sensor alarms.

That, and a few other things that were all highly illegal to do without proper authorization and authority, which I had a very limited amount of. Security’s concern over me was quite rational and understandable. If I were inclined to mischief, I could cause quite a lot of damage in a very short period of time.

Fortunately for the good order of Walker and the world at large I was quite allergic to mischief. My research was my life. Everything else was secondary, at best.

Hunger and thirst had grown in me as I worked, and I was now in a state that only usually appeared when I’d gone multiple days without sleeping or eating while consumed with a project. Other people did not understand how one could forget to eat.

It was a matter of priorities. When distraction could cause me to lose countless hours of focus and work, food was not the priority. To my eventual and inevitable detriment.

The hatch revealed a broad, nearly empty compartment. Lockers lined the walls and showers could be seen through the opening across from me. Along with a zombie, opening just then its mouth to howl.

Correction. Make that several zombies.

My very own un-welcoming committee.

I grabbed the pistol in panic, ripping it out of the holster and pointing it roughly in the direction of the first zombie. I remembered the safety switch after fruitlessly yanking at the trigger for a second. With the safety disengaged, I saw a tiny red dot crazily jumping around the zombie.

A laser. That could be quite useful to an utterly untrained novice like myself, I thought.

My first shot went wild of the creature. Why had I missed? The squirrelly red dot had been on the zombie. My second struck it, likely only because the zombie was only about five feet away at that point.

It crashed into me, jaws busily trying to get at my face as I pushed it roughly away with one hand and put the pistol under its jaw with the other. Or attempted to. What actually happened is the zombie attempted to bite the hand with the pistol in it and my next shot blew the back of its skull apart from the inside.

The next two zombies were tangled up in the opening to the locker room, so I shot at them. Again I missed. I fired again, twice more before I hit one just as it squared up to use the other as a launchpad to get at me faster. My shot drilled into its upper chest and caused it to spasm slightly in the air. It missed and slammed into the arch of the opening. The third zombie pulled itself through, hurtling towards me as another zombie appeared in the showers, followed by a fifth.

I missed the flying zombie, but managed to dodge quickly enough that I wasn’t caught. I shot at it twice, actually hitting it both times at that range and it flopped around weakly, its legs and right arm limp and leaking.

The two newest infected were already in the locker room, and I had to jump away once again, just barely out of reach of their claws. This time when I pulled the trigger nothing happened.

I’d somehow shot every bullet in the pistol, killing only one zombie with one other mostly disabled.

The other bullet boxes. They were on my belt. Left side. Probably because the holster was on the right, implying that Kinkead had been right handed. A part of me wondered if zombies had right or left hand preference as the rest of me was grabbing for the bullet boxes and glancing around wildly.

The two zombies in the locker room had collided with the leaking but still sort of alive one and were now faced about, leaping towards me again. I had no hands free to change my trajectory, but my feet were adequate to the job.

I attempted to put the bullet box in the gun, but it would not go in. Because I hadn’t taken out the other one first.

A split second was all it took to remember how to pop the old one out. But I didn’t have that split second to actually do it as a clawed hand swiped at me from above while the other grabbed at my leg from below.

I ducked low and pushed my way free of the first one and kicked the second one on instinct. It flew away, grabbing and missing at my foot as it did. Finally, I got the pistol loaded and this time it fired.

It had to be luck. My first shot struck one of the zombies snapping its head back as it went silent and still. The other one was closer. Too close.

I tried to jump away, but something caught my foot. It latched its jaws onto arm- the arm with the pistol! At the same time, something pinched my leg hard. I twisted, trying to throw the chewing zombie off but all I accomplished was to send us into a stomach churning spin. My helmet cracked into something and my vision sparked as my skull was bounced around like a ping pong ball.

Somehow I’d kept a death grip on the pistol. I focused through the angrily throbbing headache, grabbed the pistol with me other hand and pointed it at the zombie on my arm.

Then I aimed the pistol properly so I wouldn’t shoot myself in the arm, having noticed that this could be a bad thing. My leg jerked and I looked down to see another zombie busily trying to gnaw its way through my suit and into my shinbone.

The other one, probably miffed that I wasn’t paying him any attention, took that moment to try and rip my arm off, its legs pushing into my chest as it pulled with the rest of its body. I screamed and then I shot several times before it went limp. Then I shot the other one in the head.

Carefully. Because I didn’t want to put any bullets into me.

No more zombies appeared as I finally removed the ankle biter from my suit. The other one’s jaw had relaxed enough I could push it away. The locker room was not totally splattered in gore. The crippled zombie had bled out and the other four were quite dead.

I hurt. A lot.

But, seeing as I didn’t want to die, I stumble-jumped through the showers to see another closed door. No zombies appeared to be beating on it as far as I could tell. It looked thin enough to ring like a drum if they did.

I was also very hungry by this point. Using my nanites like that always sucked the energy out of me. But now I was battered and bruised as well as hungry, and more than a little tired.

Despite the pain and more than a little bit because I was in dire, desperate need of a snack, I searched the lockers as quick as my bruises and headache would allow. There was also the matter of having shot my pistol a bunch of times.

My poor accuracy had expended around a third of my total ammunition for at this point, six zombies. It wouldn’t take much more than another six to get to the point of going hand-to-hand. Which would end with zombies finally finding a way to chew through my emergency suit. If I ever got into a fight with zombies without such protection I would die.

There was no food in the lockers. And no bullets. Only clothes, personal terminals, soap and shampoo and the like. So I went back to the shower room door and I listened like an idiot for a long moment. If the gunfire and zombie shrieks hadn’t drawn any attention...

I doubled back to the maintenance side hatch and pulled it shut. The cafeteria horde was still out there somewhere. And the maintenance shaft zombies. The latter would definitely have heard something. And if they had shrieked, who knew what attention might be coming my way. I wouldn’t likely be using that way to get around any time soon.