Canon Fodder

CHAPTER 467 RESEARCH

CHAPTER 467 RESEARCH

“Fucking bullshit,” I said. Having run into yet another dead end, I was running out of ideas. On my trip West I had stopped to help practically everyone I could. Every person I saved I asked the same damn question. Have you heard where the first zombie appeared? 

I had seen plenty of outbreak movies. You always needed a patient zero. My original plan was to World War Z this canon, and hope to luck upon the original man that decided to take a bite of someone. The one person that the zombie virus mutated inside to make the dead rise. They should have been immune to it, giving us the missing information to find the antidote. But I had found another dead end. 

“It’s fine, we will keep looking,” Doctor Nagata said. He was an older Japanese man that was supposedly at the top of his field. Having found him and other doctors in a hospital, they had been working tirelessly to find the source of the outbreak. I had saved their hospital from a horde of zombies a week ago and spent the last seven days gathering different zombies from hundreds of miles apart. They had hoped to find some mutations in the genes that might be able to help track which area had the least changes. 

“You said it yourself; they are exactly the same,” I said. There had been very minor changes between the viruses. I had just gotten back from grabbing a zombie from New York City, but it too was similar to the cases on the West Coast. “This has to mean something else caused the outbreak.”

“I don’t know what else could,” Dr. Hurley said. “Maybe it really isn’t a virus.” 

I frowned, doubting that. I knew it had to be at least some kind of disease. I had received a disease resistance for my quests. Though I hadn’t tested the resistance by getting bit, I did know the rewards followed a theme. 

Chewing on my lip I decided it was time to shift gears. “What if it really is a space virus?” 

“I know you want to think that, but that is impossible,” Nagata said. “No virus has survived entry into the atmosphere. Even if it had, from what we can tell, the same exact strain struck multiple parts of the world at once.” 

“What makes you say that?” I asked, confused. 

“We were in touch with our sister sites,” he said. He and the other scientists had been standoffish, but as I helped them, they were more willing to share what they were working on. Moving away from the computer monitor he headed to the whiteboard hanging from the wall. Taking out a black marker he began writing on it again. The guy liked to draw as he spoke. 

It wasn’t long until he had drawn a crude rendition of the continents. “We first heard of the virus in nine separate locations on the same day.” He put X’s on the map around New York, the Mexican border, the east coast of Australia, two locations in Asia, one in Europe and one in Africa. Someone else filled in the other three. One at the southern part of Africa, another in Asia, and a last one in Norway. “Nine separate locations all at the same time is impossible. It is almost as if someone planned this out and had it released around the world around the same time.” 

“Same exact time?” I asked, curious.

“Within a 36-hour timeframe,” he amended. 

“Which of these was first?” I asked. 

“This one,” he said, starting in Mexico. He wrote a number 1 on it. Then the others began filling in the other numbers, It didn’t take long to see the pattern. 

“It moved East to West?” I asked, surprised. “Why didn’t I hear about this?”

“I don’t know why you would,” Nagata said. “It means nothing. What? Do you think the sun released radiation that infected many people across the globe in a 36 hour time period?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it feels important.” I knew everyone was infected with the zombie virus. If you died of a heart attack you would rise up and kill all your loved ones. Everyone in the world was infected, maybe the sun really was poisoning us. “I need to go somewhere.”

“Weston, we need your help here,” Nagata said firmly. 

“I know,” I said. “I just need to check something. I swear, I’ll be back.” Without another word I headed out of the room. Security guards let me through and it wasn’t long until I was on the roof. Currently in Portland, Oregon, I decided to make a trip I had been putting off. 

Decades ago, in my first life, my family had come up to the Northwest corner of the US to visit family. On the way we had made a stop at a place called Goldendale Observatory State Park. It was an out of the way observatory that had a massive telescope that looked into the night sky. I had actually enjoyed the tour my parents signed me up for. They had stated that the observatory was constantly looking out into space. 

Having not found anything medically that caused the virus, it was time to look in other places. My flight took me quickly to the observatory, it was a little surprising to find the out of the way place was set upon by a large number of zombies. But they were mindless and weak. It didn’t take me long to kill all of them. 

Around the time I killed the last one, the small group of people that were hiding inside peeked out the large entrance door to greet me. “It’s true, he has superpowers,” a girl said excitedly. 

“Shut the damn door,” someone yelled further in but I rushed the door. Opening it wide, I pushed back the cute girl that had opened it. She yelped and three men pointed guns at me. My Observation haki told me the magazines were empty.

“Is the Observatory open?” I asked with a smile on my face as I walked further in. 

The lights were off but there was a lot of natural light from the windows. Walking around like I had grown up in the place, the three men and lone girl chased after me.

“What are you doing here?!” “You need to leave” The men yelled as I continued my walk inside. The last one pointed his gun at me threateningly. 

“I don’t have time for another rundown,” I said. “I’m on a mission to find what caused the outbreak. I have reason to believe that you can help me find the answer.” 

“What the hell do we have to do with the outbreak!?” The leader yelled. I stopped walking, making them all halt immediately. Giving me a wide berth they were all scared. At least the men were anyway, the young girl was rather excited to see me. My eyes landed on her and she smiled widely. 

“Did you really fly here? I saw you drop but…” She asked. About 19 years old she had thick glasses on. Her dark hair tied behind her head, she wore a white lab coat, and a black button down shirt covered in cats. 

“I did,” I said, nodding slowly. “Can you help me? I need some information you might have.” 

“Okay,” she said, blushing. 

“Linda,” the main man hissed but she walked over to me.

I put my hand on her shoulder and began walking us toward where the large telescope was sitting at the center of the observatory. “I need all the…outer space information for July 2nd and 3rd.”

“All the star charts?” She asked, confused. 

“No, I’m assuming you guys track asteroids, or meteors or whatever. Maybe even sun…spots? No wait, flares. Yeah. Can you tell me if any meteors landed on Earth around that time, or if any sun flares happened?” For all I knew, maybe the virus was caused by a weird sun flare. It was worth at least asking the question. 

“All that is tracked by satellites. But we only get downloads from those monthly. We lost power before the information dump,” she said.

“So if you had power…”

“We could potentially get it,” she said with a nod. “Might just need to force a download, but the satellites should still be working.” 

“Perfect,” I said. Opening my subspace I grabbed onto my largest generator. It was a massive blue box that was four feet tall. Pulling it out of the subspace I set it down on the tiled floor. “Where do you plug this in?” 

“Oh my god, you do have super powers,” she said amazed. “Were you bitten?”

“No, goddammit. I did not gain superpowers by being bit by a zombie. I’m gonna kill whoever started that rumor,” I said truthfully. I had continuously heard the exact question as I moved West. Unsure how rumors spread so easily, the girl frowned, disappointed. “I just have super powers, okay?”

“Okay,” she said sadly. “We have a feed for our own generator down there. If you had diesel we could…” She gave me some orders, and after threatening the other men it didn’t take long to get them working. Excited to have their observatory running again they said they holed up there because there was a lot of food for tour groups. Someone made the mistake of killing a zombie with a gun though, which attracted a lot of them. Since then they hadn’t left the place. 

As the lights turned on in the Observatory, the day turned to night and the massive thirty foot tall telescope whirred to life. Pointing at the night sky I was able to watch the monitors as they began focusing on different areas in the cosmos. The original workers from the place began to cheer as they connected to satellites. I made certain the download of the information I wanted began before they tried contacting other sites and attempting to make calls to loved ones that were most likely dead. Hopeful, but not holding out hope, I waited for hours as the download stretched long into the night. 

“How bad is it out there?” Linda asked. The young girl was a constant presence in the background as the men took control. The others having gone for coffee, it was only us in the observation room. 

“Pretty bad,” I admitted, not bothering to look at her as the telescope focused on some star system. The telescope worked automatically, moving and zooming in on some pre-programmed path. Uncaring that the world had ended as it began it’s work once more. 

Linda walked closer. “Have you been to Portland?”

“I actually just came from there,” I admitted. “There was a hospital trying to research the virus. But it didn’t lead anywhere.”

“Why did you come here?” She asked, her haki leaking worry, probably for some family members in Portland.  

“I…have a theory,” I admitted, side eyeing her as she stood next to me. The room was dark to limit what light pollution we let out that could attract more zombies. The only light in the room came from the monitors.

“Which is…” 

“Some meteorite dropped the virus around the world,” I admitted, and walked her through what I had figured out about the outbreak. 

“And what? You hope to stop it?” She asked. 

I shrugged. “Someone has to.” 

Her Haki began to ignore the worry as she leaked lust now. Turned on beyond belief by the statement. With the reaction I looked up into her eyes. No longer wearing her thick glasses, her hair was down now and a few buttons of her shirt were undone. She really was quite pretty in the light of the monitors. My eyes glanced at the door the men had left, their Haki said they were still far away in the kitchen. 

“I uh-” she stopped as I stood and kissed her. She didn’t push away, but leaned into the kiss. Her Haki soared with happiness as I kissed her. Having been more than a little nervous, I got the sense that she may have been a little scared as the only woman with three grown men there. I was closer to her age and showed strength, a part of me felt she was latching onto me. I really didn’t care though. It had been a long few weeks. 

My hand moving to her ass, she moaned as I set her down on the monitor table. Pushing a keyboard out of the way she began to pull her skirt up. Uncaring where we were as her want for me skyrocketed. I was all on board with her wants as I dropped my pants and slid her panties to the side. 

Entering her sopping wet pussy she moaned as her bony hands pulled me closer for another kiss. We began to heavily make out as I entered her. Both caught up in our own need for comfort at the end of the world. When I was buried all the way inside her she let out a squeak. 

“Fudge-I-I can’t believe-just do-do it,” she said as if psyching herself up. I looked down and saw there was no blood on my dick, so she wasn’t a virgin. Maybe just a little inexperienced. I got a sense of maybe one or a few of the other guys there had been implying they should begin repopulating the Earth. 

Ignoring everything else, my hands moved to her thin thighs as I released Hoken through my dick. Her mouth opening wide as her eyes did the same. I clamped my hand over her mouth as she came instantly. 

More than a little pent up, her orgasm was powerful. Her legs vibrating and shaking as she tried to squeeze them together I stayed buried in her, holding her mouth shut as she tried to scream in to it. My Hoken relaxing slightly, I kept a constant buzz of the power surrounding my dick and forcing her nerves to stay alight with pleasure. 

When her orgasm finished, I pulled out and thrust back into her. As I put some power into it I released her mouth, causing her to let out a lustful moan with each collision of our sexes. My thighs slamming into the tabletop I continued on uncaring as her tight cunt gushed liquid out. Her hands and lips caressing me wherever she could reach her moans only grew louder as I felt my own orgasm build up. 

With a final few quick thrusts I groaned, “Gonna cum.” 

“In-” She got out and I increased the Hoken causing her to cum again as she held onto me for dear life. My mouth on hers to shut her up as she tried to scream again. My large dick released a massive load in her. Each pulse of my dick letting out what felt like buckets of cum as I let a fraction of my libido go. 

When we were done cumming she breathed in and out heavily into my chest. Both of us staying as close as possible in our post-orgasm bliss. “Holy shoot-balls,” she said. “That was…”

“Needed,” I finished for her as I pulled out. She grabbed onto me before I could though, pulling me back in.

“Wait,” she mumbled shyly, unable to look up at me. Smiling, I put my hand at her back and let her take comfort in our closeness as she began to relax and hum happily. It wasn’t until I felt one of the men begin to come back that I pulled out of her. She let me go and we had our clothes fixed as the man walked in. 

“You uh want to go back to your family?” I asked Linda, the girl shyly looking away from me. 

“I-” She stopped answering as the monitors dinged. The male astronomer began playing on the computer next to me.

“Your download is done,” he said, sipping coffee. He sniffed deeply, and side eyed me, but I ignored him. 

“Perfect, show me how to pull up what I want,” I said.

“Do you mind?” Linda asked, her Haki leaking pure bliss as she pointed at my chair. 

“Go ahead,” I said, tapping my lap. She blushed furiously, but after a look at the other guy she sat on my knee. She began to play on the computer, moving to different folders until she pulled up a map of the Earth with all kinds of lines all over it. “Green lines are from meteor showers, red are locations that meteorites may have landed. If they actually made it anyway.”

“Shit, there are a lot more than I assumed,” I said, looking over her shoulder at the map. There were dozens of green and red lines all around. “Print this out for me. Just the red lines.” I knew the general location of where the supposed outbreaks started. It was time to see if maybe there really was something there.