The Tiger Cat

They called her the Tiger Cat, in the newsreels. Not that they knew who they were talking about, of course, but there was always someone back in D.C. willing to leak a codename or hint at the target of a mission, in their desperation to show their own importance. Thankfully, Central Intelligence knew how to pepper false trails in with their briefs on what Congress really needed to know. As if that doe-eyed Hollywood brunette could have infiltrated the Nazis or disrupted Soviet sleeper cells! Or the blond diplomat sleeping with the Spanish dictator was anything but small-time. No, America’s most accomplished spy was a red-head from New Jersey. She had been discovered as an actress on the small stage, but now she played on a global one, and by God she shone, if she did say so herself.

She wasted no more time on self-congratulation as she slipped from the office of the sleeping French ambassador, or on reflection on how well he had earned his reputation as a lover. He had procured her the ID, and that was what she needed. Infiltrating East Germany was child’s play: she could win her way on a wink and a smoldering smile, if she chose, but time was short, and the stakes were too high this time.

The Tiger Cat had shut down three of Verner’s labs over the years, including one in the Soviet Union, but this was the big one, the one she had spent a decade risking her life to find. She had known next to nothing of Verner, only rumors of rumors, when she began, but those were terrifying, and her team had been sent to find the rebel scientist. Jim had died in that first year, withered nearly to a corpse only minutes after being infected, but one that had writhed against its chains for an hour before suffering true death. A year later, she had blown her own partner’s brains out with a shotgun, after he turned on her in raving madness. Since then, she worked alone. And since then, the formula had gotten much, much more deadly. Still, no one took a Jersey girl seriously once she put her hair and accent on full display, and so she escaped detection, and began to strike back. Verner was going down for good - today.

After short work with a knife and a pen, the would-be Executive Secretary who was never born Doris Weber made her way into the top-secret site of the most advanced biological research in the history of the world. The security guard knew better than to ask a beautiful woman why she wanted into her boss’s office three hours early, or course. If she had her way, the building and all it represented would be gone within the hour, leveled to a burning wreck. Fire was the best way to kill the pathogen, after all.

However, as “Doris” delved level after level in black evening dress and expensive French makeup, she worried if fire would be enough. There were too many rooms, too many doors, and too much stone. Even after she disabled the sprinklers, it wasn’t going to be enough. Even if she found the room with the serum she sought (and it was taking far too long) she would never get another chance at this, once they discovered her intrusion.

Just when the Tiger Cat was ready to give in to an uncharacteristic despair, she found the false wall behind the bookshelf. Squeezing behind the shelf, she pulled a pin from her hair, and disarmed the security door. She slowly peeked around the door to behold the face and gun of Verner, both leveled directly at her, with a dozen men in business suits behind.

“It’s over,” Verner smirked, holding a small vial in his left hand, and a pistol in his right. “So you’re the one who’s been burning my labs? I think it’s time for a demonstration of what you missed.”

“I’d like that,” the Tiger Cat replied, leveling rapid stiletto-heeled kicks at either hand, ignoring her splitting dress. She slammed the security door shut, bolting anywhere but here, as the vial shattered loudly on the floor.

Within seconds, Verner and his colleagues were chasing after her, but she caught in her horrified backward glances a terrible change. They dropped their guns, and began to rip the suits from their twitching bodies. Damn! They must have breathed in the serum, but she never imagined it would act so fast! Their naked forms moved with frightening speed, reaching for her, clawing at her shoulder and dress with vacant expressions and soulless milky white eyes. Scrambling through rooms that were no longer empty, “Doris” slung a hapless scientist into the writhing mass of bodies, only to watch him fall beneath their grabbing hands and snapping jaws. In only seconds he rose to join the rest.

Oh Shit! The Tiger Cat leaped tables, toppling bunsen burners onto now flaming tables, and losing the last of her dress to grasping hands. The sudden chill of the sprinkler system only delayed the growing zombie horde as the redhead, clad only in her pale shift, made her way up, despairing - and passed through a lab labeled “experimental explosives”. In that moment, she knew hope, and a choice: if the fire reached here, it would destroy the building. Or she could escape with her life. She fled left, towards a fuse box she'd noted on the way down.

Mad, naked, soulless, dying men only steps behind, the spy hurdled a filing cabinet, and wrenched a handful of wires from the electrical box. In seconds, the building's power and the sprinkler systems would fail, and the fire would spread to the explosives, igniting a cleansing flame. But in this moment, the world’s foremost spy stood alone in her pale silken shift against a stone wall, zombies encroaching from every direction, brandishing a handful of wires.

“Well,” she mused, “I always did want to save the world.”