Red packed his old corncob pipe, well-worn from frequent use, with the last remnants of his tobacco stores. He'd already been smoking for near to an hour, and surely had something better to be doing, but just then he couldn't think of what that something might be. He struck a match, lit
the tobacco, and inhaled of the earthy substance deeply. The sun hung low in the sky, steadily creeping ever closer to the horizon. He looked out across the sea, glad that the strange storm from earlier had dissipated so quickly after building up.
He hated it when the sunset was obscured. He had no particular reason for smoking, other than he liked it. It didn't calm his nerves, that was for sure, though he would have loved it even more if it did. There was certainly enough happening in the world to fry any old man's nerves. The fact that his were made up of nanites didn't change that fact not one bit.
He chuckled to himself. Susie would have given him the stink eye for calling himself "old." How could he help it? He'd been born fifty years in the past and he'd felt old for every one of them. Like his dearly departed love used to say, "There's a difference between being old and being an old soul." It made him smile every time she'd uttered those words. He reached up and wiped a stray tear from his cheek.
He still didn't quite understand how he was even able to cry. Where did the tears come from? What was the liquid made of? He let the questions fade away, knowing he wouldn't get an answer now that Susie was gone. He turned his attention back to the weather. It was much better than the day he'd found her. Images of her covered in blood, shrieking like a banshee from hell, raced through his mind again. It had happened almost ceaselessly ever since that day. She'd been coming after him, and he wasn't going to fight her. He loved her too much to hurt her, no matter her condition. He would die before he ever harmed her. That was until that man shot her in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun. He hadn't stood a chance when Red turned on him... Not many did.
He crushed the man's skull between his hands like a grape. He'd been a regular human, that guy, not an upgrade, or "replacement," as many called Red and those like him. The man had killed the only thing that Red had ever loved in the world, and in that moment there was no forgiveness in him. He stood over the mashed head of his wife's killer, brain matter and skull fragments clinging to his fingers and palms, and screamed at him, "YOU KILLED HER! WHY DID YOU KILL HER?"
Now, thinking back on it, Red could see that the man was just trying to save his life. He was so confused in that moment, though, that he had no time to process what was happening to Susie - he only knew that she seemed intent on killing him, and he owed her that much. She was the one
who'd given his life back to him, after all. She was the one who sat there on that very porch every evening with him to watch the sun drop below that western horizon.
After the accident she had fixed him up better than any of those other upgrades. Susie had been at the head of the nanotech field and it showed in the work she'd done on his body. And to
think that she gave up everything after that, just to be with him... He wiped another tear from his cheek. His tech was a far cry more advanced than that of the other upgrades out there, and he came with none of the silly ideologies they and their "Collective" espoused, all thanks to Susie.
This is how his days and nights went, interrupted only by the occasional destruction of Zs that strayed too close to his home. He couldn't bear to think of his beautiful wife, but had no way to stop remembering, not that he would if he could. There wasn't a thing that could erase her from
his mind save God himself, if He was really even up there and felt so inclined.
Susie, or as the world knew her, Dr. Susan Forthright, found him by chance and all but brought him back to life. His body, everything but his brain of course, was completely made up of the solar-powered nanotechnology that Susie had invented from the ground up. Red was the first and last subject she'd used her tech on. He always wondered why she didn't leave once she knew he was okay.
She could have saved a lot more lives with this technology than just Red's, but every time he asked, she managed to change the subject. What was interesting to Red was what he saw when he looked in the mirror. His face and body, even his chest length red beard, looked identical to how he'd looked before the accident - at least as long as he willed it to be that way; Susie had explained once that the nanites formed a body that matched his mental image of himself, saying that they were somehow linked to his subconscious. And his memories were all still there, too, which for some reason struck him as odd.
Regardless, Red knew he'd never known love like he knew it when he was with Susie. He didn't exactly care how the technology worked, as long as she was there. She'd made all his doubts and fears vanish and, like a good wife does, made him feel happy and whole. She'd mentioned once, in
passing, that the technology could never fall into the wrong hands, so she was happy she'd been able to give it to Red, but beyond those words Susie never mentioned or wanted to talk about it.
He took another long inhale from the pipe and watched the smoke swirl through the air in front of him, coming both from his exhale and from the top of the well of the pipe itself. Now he was alone, and Susie was sent out to sea. Red thought she'd be happiest out there, away from the chaos that had overtaken the land. The whole ordeal had been horrifying for him, but there was nothing for it but to get it done and try to move on. He had briefly considered killing himself, but he knew that would make Susie angry with him, and very sad, so he abstained despite the pain of living without her.
He knew now about the outbreak of zombies across the world and knew that it wasn't Susie who had wanted him dead. It was something inside her that drove her to try to kill him. He'd been ready to go, if that's what she'd wanted. But it wasn't what she wanted, and it never had been. He wished he'd met her sooner...
They'd only had a few short years together and Red was infuriated their time was cut short. They could have seen the world, climbed mountains, and sailed the seas if there had only been more time. His heart, already shattered, seemed to break a little more. He momentarily thought how silly that idea was, considering the fact that he no longer had a human heart...
He heard a shriek, then another, then several more, from the street down below. He put his still smoking pipe down and stood. He'd spent a lot of time building his body to be strong and powerful back in the day and so now, as he was accustomed to it, his six foot frame rippled with muscle under a white t-shirt and black leather vest, faded blue jeans and black riding boots. Of course, it was just that way because that's how he thought of himself; the nanites did what he willed them to do.
He supposed he could make his body look like just about anything if he wanted to. He picked
up his sunglasses and slid them on top of his head which was covered with closely cropped short red and gray peppered hair. The street was about thirty feet below his cliff-top home, but that was nothing for Red. He vaulted over the wooden railing and landed heavily on the road. The zombies
turned toward him at the sound of his landing and without a second thought he used a weapon he'd grown quite adept with in recent weeks.
Red extended his right hand and willed the nanites that made up his hand to form a long, double-edged blade, black as night and more menacing. The weapon was a part of him. He swung, cleanly slicing the first zombie in half. Sidestepping the gnashing teeth of the next, he separated the third monster's rotting head from its putrid body. The fourth halted for an instant, as if there was some vestige of humanity left in it somewhere causing it to hesitate, and in its pausing, it found its death. Red stabbed the thing in the chest, then wrenched his blade upward, splitting the creature
in half from chest to crown.
The second zombie was behind him now. He twisted, swiftly planting his size twelve in its torso, sending it flying backward a few of dozen feet. Emotionless, he leaped through the empty space between them and landed heavily, driving the blade into the zombie's face with such force it sank into the road nearly a foot deep. With a tug he pulled the nanite sword free, releasing
those ones covered in Z guts so they could initiate PROTOCOL: SCOUR, cleaning the filth from themselves before rejoining their microscopic brethren as parts of his body.
Red didn't think anything bad would happen if he didn't release the nanites and left the scum where it was, but it was disgusting. Something about it felt wrong. He knew the programming of the nanites that were protecting his brain prevented them from doing anything else, but he very much disliked the idea of any of that zombie blood getting through them to his brain. He wasn't going to take any chances.
Apart from his own misgivings about becoming an uber- powerful zombie, he had a responsibility. If his brain was somehow infected, then he'd be an unkillable zombie. That didn't bode well for the any possible future which humanity may still be able to have. He'd never really liked other people all that much, and now he saw no reason to change his stance, though he didn't want to be responsible for their deaths, which is exactly what would happen if he let himself get infected.
Still, though, he'd always distrusted others, except for Susie that is. She was the one light in his darkness. He thought that maybe, just maybe, Susie was God's way of letting Red know He really existed. The way Red saw it was if there was something as purely good as Susie that existed then it
wouldn't be too far off to think that a perfect God existed either. So Red had taken to reading his Bible over the last couple of years and had learned quite a lot about what was expected of him as a man. Susie always encouraged it and loved attending church with Red and having Bible studies at
their home.
So, Red knew it wasn't murder to slay these beasts. They weren't human any longer. He believed it when the Bible told him that he was made in the image of God, as were his fellow humans. That image had been so distorted in these zombies, though, that Red figured they just didn't fit the bill anymore. It was like someone had come to a priceless work of art and sliced it to shreds. Red thought that it wasn't really the body that mattered anyway, or at least it wasn't what mattered the
most. It was the spirit that was made in the image of God.
That's what he hoped to be true, anyway. It was something he'd struggled with when he'd first woken up in this nanite body. He'd never been really all that religious before the accident, but he'd been raised in such a way as to believe that alterations to the body were a sin. He'd never gotten a
tattoo or a piercing before. So, waking up in a body that was almost not human at all freaked him out at first. But he felt normal, for the most part. He could do things he'd never been able to do before, sure, but beyond that he felt like himself. He felt like his spirit was still intact.
That wasn't to say that he understood it in a deep way, of course. No, he just felt that when he prayed, God listened. It was really all on faith, though, as was everything in this life. It also seemed somewhat paradoxical to him; that he could feel like God was listening and still sometimes doubt
that God existed was beyond strange to Red. Maybe it was his spirit telling him the truth and his head, trying to reason his way to the truth, that brought about his doubt. He didn't know and he suspected he never really would, not in this life at least.
Maybe it was just like Susie used to say, that the mark of intelligence was being able to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas in one's mind without growing insane. He thought again of his initial fear when waking up in this body as he crouched down and pushed off the asphalt, effortlessly leaping back up to the balcony thirty feet above.
He landed as softly as he could, transferring some of the kinetic energy his movement had built up out of his body in the form of a gust of wind. If God minded this replacement body or not was another thing he'd never know in this life. He'd looked and had not been able to find anything in the Good Book that gave a clear answer on it. He had on occasion been terrified that this technology was akin to the mark of the beast that the Book spoke of, but deep down he didn't believe it was - or maybe he just really hoped it wasn't.
Red sat back down in his cushioned chair and picked up his pipe. The tobacco has all burned up, so he flipped it over and tapped the bowl on the nearby wooden table, knocking out the ashes. He refilled the deep well of the pipe and chuckled to himself. Red didn't even know how he was able to inhale the smoke, or breath, seeing as how he didn't have any lungs. Susie had explained it once, but he just wasn't able to retain it all. She'd always been much smarter than him, but that didn't bother Red. If anything, it made him love her more.
He did remember her saying that since his only flesh-and-blood organ was his brain that he only needed a small fraction of the amount of oxygen that a normal human needed. His body did somehow store air though - enough for him to go for a full day without needing access to oxygen outside of his internal stores. He'd yet to test it but maybe someday he'd go for a walk at the bottom of the sea.
Another memory floated into his mind, then. Susie had also explained the ability of his body to change kinetic energy into other types of energy. He couldn't even pretend to know the underlying workings of that process, but it was pretty cool, nonetheless. That thought - the oddity of being able to do something like that - brought him back to his dilemma. He thought - hoped - that the mark of the beast was less a physical thing and more a mindset, or decision, or disregard for that which was Holy, and whatever physical representation that took on would reflect the underlying
ideals behind it.
It didn't make sense to Red that a physical mark of some kind would bring damnation to all who wore it. No, he thought that it must be something more along the lines of humanity's widespread insatiable desire to attain godhood - sans God - that was the issue. He'd spoken with Susie on the subject a lot of times and they both agreed that for most people in the field replacing physical bodies with technological "upgrades" had become like a new Tower of Babel.
Except this time instead of trying to reach Heaven or climb higher than a Flood, people were just going to do away with the flesh altogether, and supposedly death too, ultimately. Some had gone so far as to start research programs specifically designed to allow the merging of human consciousness with artificial intelligence to increase their cognitive capabilities - to outsmart God.
The problem was that those were slowly losing their humanity and - arguably just as bad - were far more susceptible to what caused the zombie outbreak than Red was, with their subpar "upgraded"
bodies. His was a completely closed and self-sufficient system wherein his brain, memories, beliefs, worldview, thought processes and humanity were all intact. That was what made Susie's work so much more powerful and groundbreaking that what others in her field were doing. No one could replicate this system. Many tried and failed, yet Susie would never give up the secret. Most didn't even know Red was anything but a normal human - that's how good Susie was at what she did.
Still, people did what people do and continued pushing. Red had been watching from the background ever since he'd woken up with a new body and life. He'd seen them making impossible advancements in technology, and he saw them become little more than machines themselves. He saw them reach toward perfection and fall utterly and irredeemably short.
It had been a supposed genius scientist that had started all of this. He was the reason that humanity had been destroyed. He'd caused the outbreak. Susie would be so ashamed if she knew… She had somehow seen all of this in advance, that's how smart she was. She knew something bad was going to happen, and she was right. Red only wished that he'd been able to protect her... Red thought he might be the only one left alive who knew the truth behind what had happened. He still had access to those servers which were operable, and all the information stored on them. He'd observed in dismay as they slowly became less and less active as time went on. Now he had no idea if there was anyone else left alive, other than himself.
As the sun finally set fully below the horizon and darkness encroached, Red thought that maybe he should move on - find others still alive out there. He knew Susie would hate him spending the rest of his life in an empty home, alone. She'd want him to be with people, to help them however he could. And boy would he have a long time to help...