“I’ve … I’ve found the crew.”
Jiang turned away from staring at the Klingon corpse like she had done for the last couple of minutes or so since he had died, only to see the Tiburon stumble back into sickbay.
“Oh my God, Telvin, what happened?” she said and immediately rushed towards the medical technician.
His face was bloodied and his uniform ripped and torn in multiple places. He practically fell into her arms when the nurse approached and she was forced onto her knees by his weight.
“Chayton, help me get him onto one of the beds,” she said even while she looked him over. He had a large bite mark on his left cheek but there were other wounds all over, almost as if he had been in vicious melee combat with multiple unyielding opponents. He was bleeding from more places than she could count.
“What did this to you?” she said and when she pulled down the collar of his blood soaked uniform shirt she gasped in shock when she realized that a massive chunk of his neck had been ripped clean out, severing his jugular vein along with a couple of others. “How … did this happen? How can you still be –“
She felt Chayton by her side, harshly yanking her away at the same moment that Telvin snapped forward as if he was trying to take a bite right out of her.
The Sioux instantly threw a mean left hook which smacked loudly against his chin, causing Telvin to fall backwards and collapse.
“What …” Jiang was too confused to know what was happening but seeing the Tiburon falling on his back and bleeding onto the floor, she immediately freed herself from Chayton’s grasp and knelt at his side.
She tried to take a pulse but there wasn’t enough neck left to do it with so she went for his wrist. She found nothing. She pulled out her tricorder for a second opinion but the result stayed the same. “He’s dead. You’ve killed him.”
“He was dead before.”
She shot him a perplexed look and then stood slowly. “What are you saying? He was walking. He spoke. He wasn’t dead until you attacked him.”
“He attacked first.”
“How could he have attacked first if he was already dead? You are not making a lick of sense, Crewman,” she shouted, now almost hysterically.
Then she heard the long, guttural moan.
She turned around very slowly, not quite able to believe what her ears were telling her.
And yet the sound was clearly emanating from Telvin.
She didn’t quite dare to get close but she consulted her tricorder yet again. No heart beat, no brain activity, all life signs at zero. He was completely and entirely dead.
And then he began to stir.
“This … this is not possible,” she said as she watched in horror as the previously assumed dead Telvin rose from the ground.
He moaned loudly and seemed momentarily confused. He had an empty, almost soulless look in his eyes as he seemed to take in his surroundings.
“Telvin … Telvin, can you hear me?” she said.
But he didn’t appear to respond to his name. Not at first. Then he groaned again and began to slowly walk towards the nurse and Chayton with small, unbalanced steps as if he had only learned to walk minutes ago.
Jiang and Chayton stepped backwards as he continued on. His skin had turned a sickly pale and his mouth opened wide as if getting ready to consume. An almost constant groan escaped from somewhere down his ripped throat.
“This cannot be happening,” said Jiang. “Stay back. Please just stay back and we’ll figure this out.”
But he didn’t and eventually they both ended up with their backs against the wall.
Chayton found a Klingon sword, a
mek’leth, discarded carelessly on one of the workstations. He reached for it and used it to keep Telvin at bay without success. He kept coming even when the sharp blade began to tear through his uniform and flesh underneath as if it was made out of nothing but air. Telvin kept coming.
The Sioux changed tactics. He pushed Telvin away harshly, coming within inches of being bitten by him and when that didn’t discourage him, he took a vicious swing with the blade.
It did nothing but tear clothes and flesh.
“My god, what has happened to him?” Jiang nearly shrieked.
Chayton went for the head and the sword split his cranium with such force, Chayton and Jiang were both hit by the blood spatter. The blade remained lodged inside Telvin’s skull but the groaning stopped almost instantly and the former medical technician sagged to his knees before collapsing to the floor where he remained motionless.
For a moment nobody spoke as they simply stared at his seemingly lifeless body lying in a pool of his dark red blood. Jiang had tears streaming down her cheeks.
Then they heard the groans again. Dozens of them, coming from the same direction Telvin had arrived from.
Chayton looked at Jiang. “The crew,” he told her. “He said he had found the crew.”
She didn’t seem to understand straight away. Then she saw the Klingons stream into sickbay, all of them with the same pale skin, all of them with horrible and clearly fatal wounds covering much of their bodies, all of them with that same empty look in their eyes and all of them single-mindedly stumbling or walking towards the two Starfleet officers.
These ones were much faster than Telvin had been and within moments the sickbay was filled with them.
Chayton grabbed the
mek’leth still buried inside the dead Tiburon’s skull and by placing one boot onto his head, he dislodged it, making a sickening squishing sound in the process.
“Stay behind me,” he said as he waved the blade back and forth in an effort to keep the horde of Klingons at bay.
For Jiang there was no place to go, within no time the seemingly crazed crew had completely surrounded them, blocking off all potential avenues of escape.
The only place to go was deeper into the medical bay and towards the bio-beds.
Staring with wide-open eyes and complete disbelieve at the approaching Klingons, Jiang failed to notice the movement right by her side. Until something cold grabbed hold of her wrist and she screamed.
It was K’ven. She had stepped up right next to the bed on which the dead captain had been left except for that he wasn’t dead anymore. At least not in the traditional sense. He had risen slightly from the bed, reached out for the nurse and looked straight at her with an unintelligible and disturbing groan which added to the sick symphony now filling the sickbay.
And he didn’t let go.
Chayton noticed and with once swift move with his blade, cut right through the Klingon’s lower arm, separating him from Jiang.
He pushed the captain off the bed, causing him to land on the floor. Then he swung around just in time to impale one of the other Klingons who had tried to use the distraction to attack him.
Unfortunately, in the process the
mek’leth got stuck in the man’s chest and Chayton found himself unarmed and faced with two dozen more Klingons, all seemingly determined to eat the two Starfleeters alive.
Jiang hadn’t quite realized this predicament yet as she desperately tried to pull K’ven’s severed hand and arm stump off her wrist. By the time she had finally managed to get those dead fingers untangled, she quickly threw the limp away in disgust only then to discover that Chayton was now without a weapon and the Klingons almost upon them both.
“My God, my god, what do we do, what do we do?” she shrieked.
Apparently Chayton’s only response was to place himself in front of the petrified nurse to try and shield her from the inevitable.
The nearest Klingon of course was undeterred and continued to stumble forward, ready to take a bite out of the tall Sioux. Chayton was not going to stand still while serving as dinner to the crazy-starved former crew and went on the offensive, grabbing hold of the possessed Klingon, struggling with him for a moment and quickly realizing that his unnatural condition had lessened none of his inherent strength.
Understanding that he would not be able to simply overpower him, he went for his head and in a swift motion, jerked it ninety-five degrees until he heard a loud crunch. The Klingon stumbled backwards and fell and even though his neck was clearly broken, he didn’t appear to be completely dead yet.
Chayton had no time to try and finish the job.
“Watch out!”
Jiang’s warning still came too late. Another Klingon had walked up next to Chayton, placed his hands by his neck and went in to tear out a mouthful of flesh.
But just before his rotten teeth could make contact, the Klingon completely disintegrated.
Nurse Jiang wasn’t entirely sure what had happened until she heard the sound of a phaser blast and then saw an amber colored beam demolecularize another Klingon nearby.
It was enough to give the two Starfleeters some breathing room as their attackers turned to find the new threat.
“Are you guys, alright?”
Jiang peered past the Klingons and recognized Gradkowski and Aliris who had entered the sickbay, the security officer blasting at the Klingons with his rifle while the Risian was wielding a Klingon-made disruptor pistol.
After disintegrating two more former Klingon crewmembers, they had managed to clear a path between them and their fellow officers.
Chayton recognizing this, grabbed hold of Jiang’s arm and pushed her forward. “Go.”
They both ran through a field of Klingons trying to eat them, exploiting their momentary confusion caused by the armed newcomers.
On his dash, Chayton found the man who still had his
mek’leth stuck in his chest, pulled it free and then cut him down in the same motion.
Jiang breathed hard when she finally managed to get to the relative safety of Aliris and Gradkowski who hadn’t stopped firing into the horde for cover. “Am I glad to see you,” she said through labored breaths.
“What the hell is going on here, Yifey?” said Aliris as she blasted yet another Klingon in the chest. “One moment the ship is all but abandoned and the next we’re fighting our way through a legion of flesh-eating monsters.”
“They’re dead,” Jiang said hysterically. “They’re all dead.”
Aliris gave the nurse an unconvinced look.
“When there is no more room in
Gre’thor, the dishonored dead will rise.”
They looked at Chayton and not just because it was perhaps the longest sentence he had ever uttered since either of them had known him.
“That’s what the Klingon captain said just before he died,” explained Jiang, recalling the words K’ven had spoken earlier and which at the time had seemed like nothing more than the fever-induced ramblings of a dying man.
“Alright, for argument’s sake, let’s ignore for a moment the absurdity of what you’re saying,” said the ensign and dematerialized another Klingon who was getting too close. “Why the hell are they trying to eat us?”
Neither Chayton nor Jiang had an answer to that.
“And where is Telvin?” she added.
The sad look in the nurse’s eyes was enough answer.
“We can’t keep this up,” said Gradkowski just before disintegrating another undead Klingon. “At this rate I’ll run out of juice long before we run out of … whatever they are.”
Aliris nodded with understanding. “We need to get back to the transporter room and off this gods-forsaken ship,” she said. “For now, lower the setting of your rifle to seven,” she added and then performed a similar adjustment on her disruptor.
Gradkowski’s next shot went clean through an approaching Klingon, leaving behind a gaping hole in his torso. The zombie was unimpressed and continued on.
He fired again with the same results. “It’s not having any effect on them.”
Aliris found the same to be true. The Klingons kept coming.
“Shoot their heads,” Chayton yelled. “Aim for the heads,” he said and took a wild swing with his sword. He was dead-on target as the blade sliced through a Klingon’s neck, causing his head to pop straight off. The body itself took another step before collapsing in a heap at the Sioux’s feet.
Aliris had a Klingon at arm’s length and without hesitation she pressed the muzzle of her pistol against his bony forehead and pulled the trigger. The head exploded instantly, showering her in nasty, cold Klingon blood.
Gradkowski dispatched an attacker in similar fashion, blasting away the entire left side of a Klingon’s face.
“Jo, behind you,” Jiang cried out.
The security officer wasn’t able to get his rifle around quickly enough and the zombie grabbed Gradkowski’s arm and bit him right through his uniform while the human screamed in pain.
Aliris blew away his head too late.
“Goddamnit, the bastard bit me,” said Gradkowski, his face twisted into a mask of agony as he reached for his injured arm. His rifle clattered to the floor.
Chayton didn’t waste any time and picked up the weapon to keep the advancing Klingons back.
Jiang quickly tended to the security officer, removing his jacket and rolling up the golden undershirt, she revealed a nasty wound underneath, bleeding profusely. “Just a flesh wound, soldier. Nothing to worry about,” she said with forced humor.
He gritted his teeth. “Stings like a son-of-a-bitch,” he said.
“You’re loosing a lot of blood.” In lieu of any readily available bandages, she tore away the sleeve of his discarded jacket and wrapped it around the wound. “This should hold for a while but we need to get you back to the runabout.”
“That’s our cue,” said Aliris. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
* * *
). Even though they use almost the same characters, Japanese read them completely differently (and Japanese surnames are usually two-character, while Chinese one-character).
She would still be considered Chinese.
