Ascension

'You're as dead as I am.'

'No!' Katie yelled, hearing Ruben's voice echo 'He is right.'

A torrent of images came back to her, the Farm and Fleet, Samantha. Katie pushing the younger woman to the ground, tearing her throat out before she could scream. Knocking Kent out in the house, and feeding on his two kids, getting stronger as she fed on them and taking refuge in the car before 'discovering' them the next morning. Along the way, the woman she had picked up, along with the man who was eaten by her kids. Only the woman was in the car, not quiet dead before Katie came back to her. She hadn't survived too much longer. Katie remembered the blood, the taste, the delicious feeling as the colors from those she was killing faded to black.

'Follow it back. Remember everything…' Randy whispered, 'Don't stop halfway.'

'No. Not me. I…didn't.' Katie felt an almost overwhelming surge to forget everything she had remembered, an insidious voice repeated over and over in her mind.

'This is not real, you don't eat people. You're alive. You're human.'

The voice, a woman's, repeated a series of statements, like a music player set to repeat the same tune over and over.

Katie clutched the sides of her head and resisted the urge to forget. Randy stepped forward and interlaced his fingers with hers. She looked up at him, bloody tears streaming down her face.

'Randy…help me!'

'I've always been helping you. Don't forget. Don't forget.' Outside the storm rose to a crescendo, almost drowning out his words.

Katie screamed as her vision faded, spiraling into darkness, consumed by a storm of madness as she followed the lines of her fragmented memory back to that day in Chicago, when she died.

Chapter 39 — Max

The hood was pulled off his head abruptly. Max couldn't see anything at first, the white lights above him drowned out everything else. As his vision returned he could see he was in a doctor's office. It was unlike any office he had visited before, for one thing it didn't have the battle of chemicals versus sickness that Max associated with such places. It had the metallic tinge that he recognized as blood. His quick glance of the surroundings showed him the source of that odor, the floor was covered in streaks of dark red and black blood. It looked like someone had tried to mop the room up, but gave up in defeat and had left the floor a motley mess of streaked crimson streamers.

'I see you've noticed the mess. I am sorry about that. All I can say is this is the cleanest room I have left.'

Max's head turned towards the voice. It belonged to a man that was very difficult to look at. He was of average height, had brown hair and wearing a white doctors coat with green scrubs pants. Black shoes and a stethoscope completed his ensemble, giving him a 'doctor' look, even if Max knew better. The man radiated energy. Max peeked at him with his zombie vision and quickly had to force his mind back to normal vision before his senses were overwhelmed by what he saw. 'Well, we wanted to find the leader. Now where is that bomb?' This thought was followed immediately by fear, 'Fuck, am I screwed.'

'I am Doctor Thomas Sentry.' said the man, extending his hand towards Max, who automatically tried to raise his hand as well. 'So, sorry.' Sentry continued, hastily lowering his hand, 'I've forgotten you are bound, but, well better to be safe than sorry. You would not believe the problems I have been having with the living lately.'

Max was bound with his arms behind him and sitting on a solid chair, which pressed his arms uncomfortably into his back. 'What do you want with me?'

'Oh, so direct! I can appreciate that, even if I was expecting a little less rudeness. What is your name?'

Max felt pressure in his mind, it was as if a massive headache was starting, his brain felt like it was going to explode. The pressure shifted from an overwhelming pressure to thin, spikes of pain that were seeking to lance through his head. He broke out in a sweat and shook his head, trying to repel the assault. 'Stop it!' he said softly, 'Just stop it.'

The doctor shrugged and the pressure eased, 'It hardly ever works anyway. But it was worth a try. I can't seem to get into living brains as easily. But I think I can overcome that. Which brings us to why you are here.'

'My name is Max.'

'Max, I am pleased to meet you. I am very pleased you didn't perish in the trap I set, but I really didn't know what else to do to slow you down. It is unfortunate that some of your friends chose to resist, but really I only needed two of you. For now.'

'What do you want with me?'

'First, I want to continue existing. So you soldiers are all going to have to be put in your place and your superiors are going to have to be defeated. The old world is gone. I would like to keep a few of you alive. It isn't, technically, necessary, but I would hate to have you wiped out and then discover I needed you. I am fairly certain that none of us new types will be propagating and humans are so very good for that. But it comes down to that control issue again, doesn't it?'

Max wasn't sure if he was supposed to respond, so he shrugged his shoulders as best he could.

'Of course it does. I'll give you a little history here, not enough to glaze your eyes over, but I think a little bit is in order. I created this next step in our evolutionary history when I invented a formula for continuing cellular senescence…have you studied biology, Max?'

'I have no idea what you are talking about.'

Sentry frowned, 'Biology, the study of life. It should have been humanities number one priority. Extend life and we would have all the time in the world to look into other problems or create wealth or kill each other. Instead we wasted it on…'the doctor trailed off, his eyes, already almost a clear white color, brightened.

Max looked closer, bringing up his second sight, but trying to keep it dampened down. He saw a stream of so many orders being issued from the doctor to his minions that the 'packets' might as well have been unbroken lines of light. But he also saw something different; the doctor was also taking in information. Max risked taking a peek at one and what he saw was confusing. The data coming back was in English and looked like a poor resolution video stream.

The vision was in a smoking city that looked poorly built, Max was reminded of some soviet style structures he had seen on the internet, massive structures used as housing projects for the 'citizens'. There were a dozen such buildings in sight and a mob of oriental undead running through the streets, pouring into one of the buildings. The voice coming through had a southern accent and sounded harried, '….Chen is in the building. I'm sending in forces now, but you can see he is holding them back. China is out of control and I need your help or I am going to lose it. Just give me five goddamned minutes of your focus!'

Max skipped around to several of the other incoming and outgoing data streams, they all seemed to be reports from various places around the world.

'Are you listening to me?' Sentry asked, 'You aren't hurt are you?' The doctor examined Max's head and looked him in the eyes. Then he took a small light out of his pocket and shined it into Max's eyes, one at a time. 'No obvious sign of head injury.'

'I'm okay.' Max said. He kept his second sight dimmed, so he could focus on Sentry and on the data the zombie was receiving. The man was processing hundreds of thousands of packets a second. Max had never tried to use his power to see in the real world and to see zombies at the same time, it was a new experience and one he wished he had explored before. 'The real news is, he doesn't know I can do it. Can I change what he is seeing?? Max was afraid that doing so might alert Sentry to his meddling, 'I'll hold off for a little, see what else I can learn before I try anything.'

'So, as I was trying to explain, I found a way to extend human life indefinitely. The first process didn't work out so well. You're looking at the result of an experiment that got out of hand. I am sorry to say that the test