Wildfire- Destruction of the Dead

by Shaun Harbinger

  He sighed, obviously frustrated by my demand. But the truth was, I couldn’t wait any longer to find out if my family was still alive. I had to know now.

  He took a slip of paper from his pocket. Before speaking to me, he addressed Lucy. “We searched for your parents on the Board. Unfortunately, their names aren’t in there. Of course, that only means that they haven’t come into a camp. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t alive.”

  “Yes, it does,” Lucy said.

  Price turned to me. “Your family is currently at this location.” He handed me the slip of paper. I read the words written on it: Camp Achilles. Brecon Beacons. Wales.

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “The Brecon Beacons is where I was when this all started. And now you’re saying that Joe and my parents are at a camp there?”

  He nodded. “They’ve been at that camp for the past two weeks. The camp they were at previously was attacked. It’s not really much of a coincidence; the camps are usually built at remote locations so the Brecon Beacons is perfect. Lovely views if you like mountains.”

  I doubted Joe was enjoying the view from within a locked compound.

  “Anyway, that’s done now,” the brigadier said, cutting in. “You delivered the vaccine and I told you where your family is. Now, come with me to the lab.” He began walking and we followed.

  “I remember telling you,” he said, “that trained military personnel are the best type of people suited to these missions. Civilians, no matter how skilled, will never be able to match a trained soldier.”

  “That is what you said, and we didn’t disagree,” I told him.

  “No, you didn’t disagree, but I could tell that you lot thought you were superior to me and my men.”

  I had no idea where he had gotten that impression. He must have an inferiority complex because we had never said that.

  “I’ve proved you wrong,” he said. “Last night, my men achieved what you couldn’t.”

  “It’s not a competition,” I said.

  “Oh, but of course it is. Life is a competition, my boy. I let you carry out this mission partly because Marilyn MacDonald sent me glowing reports about your actions at Site Alpha Two. You faced a Type 1 and lived to tell the tale.”

  I had no idea where he was going with this so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Do you think your actions were so noteworthy?” he asked. “I mean, you didn’t capture Vess, did you?”

  “No, we didn’t capture him,” I said. “We tried to kill him. We couldn’t.” I remembered Johnny shooting Vess but the creature being so fast that it dodged the bullet.

  We reached a long hut that was the lab, according to the stenciled letters on the door.

  The brigadier opened the door and ushered us inside. “It doesn’t matter how highly Marilyn MacDonald speaks of you. You faced a Type 1 but you couldn’t kill it or capture it. My men, on the other hand, managed to capture this last night.” He pointed along the length of the lab.

  It was like the building we had seen at Camp Apollo. There were less stainless steel tables here, though, and none of them held corpses. Halfway along the room was a Plexiglas cell, exactly like the one at Apollo.

  Except this one had an occupant.

  I looked at the naked female form imprisoned in the Plexiglas cube. I could hardly believe who it was.

  Jax.

  29

  Tanya rushed to the Plexiglas cell to see her friend. Jax stood motionless, showing no emotion in her yellow eyes when Tanya said her name. Jax looked strong and sleek, her darkly-veined skin taut over her muscles. She looked at Tanya with a blank stare.

  “She doesn’t recognize me,” Tanya said.

  “I think she does.” I walked up to the Plexiglas and looked in at Jax. She regarded me with the same emotionless stare. “She just doesn’t attach any emotion to us.” I was sure that she did know who we were. As I had told the brigadier before, Type 1s were intelligent.

  “We set a trap last night,” he said, ‘and she walked right into it. We waited for her to come over the fence and trapped her in nets. It was a big operation because we had to cover every possible entry point. But we got her.”

  “What are you going to do with her?” Tanya asked, with tears in her eyes. It was obvious that even though Jax had no feelings toward Tanya anymore, that situation wasn’t reciprocal.

  I felt the same way as Tanya. Jax was a monster now, a creature capable of spreading the virus and also killing viciously, but she had once been our friend. I knew that she should die before she did any more damage to humanity, but I didn’t want her to suffer.

  “Our scientists will study her,” the brigadier said. “As you said, the Type 1 creatures are strong and intelligent. They are infected with a pure strain of the virus. Just think of the uses we could put that to if we managed to recreate it in a lab.

  “This country has suffered a tragedy with the outbreak of the zombies. But we can turn that tragedy to our advantage. We will have something that no other country has: a virus capable of inducing a killer instinct fed by fearlessness, and ferocity.”

  “You want to weaponize it?” Lucy asked.

  “We are going to explore the military applications,” he said.

  “He wants to weaponize it,” Sam said.

  The brigadier looked at him sharply. “You make it sound as if I’m working on my own initiative. We’ve been ordered to study the creature and those orders have come down from the highest ranking military officials in our government.”

  Sam shook his head slowly in disbelief. “You really need to watch a movie or two, man. You’d realize that this isn’t going to end well for anybody.”

  Something didn’t seem right. I had seen how Vess had managed to avoid capture at Alpha Two, how he had been impossible to kill. Why should Jax, who was the same type of creature -intelligent and cunning- allow herself to be captured by a bunch of soldiers with nets?

  Was that it? Had she allowed herself to be captured?

  I looked at her as she stood placidly in the Plexiglas prison and felt an icy finger creep up my spine. “She let you capture her,” I said.

  “What?” The brigadier looked furious. His face flushed an angry purple. He had brought us in here to gloat about his achievement of catching Jax, but now I was telling him that his achievement meant nothing, that he had been fooled by the creature he’d thought he’d captured. “Don’t be absurd!”

  “I told you the Type 1s are just as intelligent as they were before they were turned. Jax knew that we were part of the mission to develop the new vaccine because she was at Site Alpha Two with us when we went to get the H1NZ1.

  “She probably watches the camp in the daytime from the woods by the fence. When she saw us arrive here yesterday, she must have guessed that we were bringing the vaccine. That’s why she allowed herself to be caught by your men.”

  “What do you mean. Alex?” Lucy looked worried.

  “These labs are under constant guard,” I said. “Jax let herself be caught because she wanted to get in here. She wants to destroy the vaccine.”

  “Listen to yourself,” the brigadier said. “What you’re saying is crazy. She’s in the lab, but she’s in a cell. What good is that going to do her?”

  I looked at the Plexiglas surrounding Jax. “Maybe she made a mistake,” I said, “and she didn’t know you were going to put her somewhere she couldn’t escape from. Or maybe she knows this cell can’t hold her.”

  Suddenly, I wanted to get out of the lab as quickly as possible. “We need to leave,” I said to the others. To the brigadier, I said, “You need to make sure the vaccine is protected. If Jax can get out of here…”

  I stopped when I heard shouts and gunshots outside.

  The brigadier looked toward the door. “What the bloody hell is going on out there?” He pulled the door open and bellowed, “What’s happening? I want a situation report now, damn it!”

  “We’re under attack,” someone shouted.

  The brigadier st
ormed out of the lab but not before ordering us to go with him. We followed him outside, and I felt glad to be away from Jax. I glanced over at Lab 3 where the vaccine was stored. There was no one guarding that hut specifically.

  Captain Price rushed over to us and spoke to the brigadier. “Sir, there’s a horde of hybrids in the northern quadrant. They’ve broken through the perimeter fence.”

  “Have you mobilized the men?”

  “Yes, Sir. All available personnel have been mobilized to the area and are dealing with the situation.”

  “All right.” The brigadier seemed to calm down slightly after being given this information but I felt even more nervous. It was too much of a coincidence that the hybrids were attacking at the same time that Jax was in the lab. I didn’t like this at all. Everyone in the camp was focused on the hybrid attack. There was nobody in this area other than the guards on the fence and in the towers.

  The brigadier beckoned over two of the soldiers who were patrolling the inner fence. “Coleman and Simpson,” he said, reading their name badges, “I want you to go into Lab 1 and guard the prisoner in there.”

  They nodded and said, “Yes, Sir,” before marching over to the lab where Jax was being held.

  “See?” the brigadier said, turning to face me. “Don’t ever say I never listen to you.”

  “If she can get out of that plastic cage,” Tanya said, “two men won’t make a difference.”

  “That cell is strong enough to hold an elephant,” he said. “Now, are you going to come and see how my soldiers deal with hybrids or will you just tell me the hybrids allowed themselves to be killed?” He chuckled to himself and marched toward the northern quadrant with Price.

  “That guy is an asshole,” Sam said, watching the two officers disappear from sight.

  “I think we should get our guns from the bus,” I said. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”

  “I know what you mean,” Tanya said. “It feels like the hybrid attack is a distraction.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s get the guns and come back here. If Jax is going to go for the vaccine, we have to stop her.”

  “You really think she’s going to do that?” Lucy asked as we made our way to the bus.

  “Even if she isn’t, there’s no harm in us guarding the vaccine. The soldiers in these towers are focused on guarding the labs against attacks from the outside, not from within the labs themselves.”

  From the north, shots rang out and screams cut through the air. Things weren’t going as well as the brigadier had hoped. We ran for the bus. If the soldiers couldn’t keep the hybrids at bay, the creatures would be here soon. We needed the M16s. If we had to hold off a horde of hybrids with only the Walther PPKs, we didn’t stand a chance.

  As we approached the bus, I halted and said, “Wait, something’s wrong.”

  Everyone stopped and looked at me. “What is it?” Tanya asked.

  I pointed to the guard towers by the gate. “Where are the guards?”

  Everyone looked at the towers that flanked the main gate. They were empty.

  “They’re probably helping to fight the hybrids,” Lucy suggested.

  “All of them?” I couldn’t believe the brigadier would take the guards off the gate simply to add a few extra soldiers to his already-considerable number of men in the northern quadrant. “And the guards patrolling the fence, too?”

  Then I saw dark, lifeless shapes lying on the ground beneath the towers and inside the fence.

  We ran over to inspect the bodies.

  They lay in the gravel as if they were rag dolls tossed to the ground by a bored child. Their faces still held expressions of shock and surprise.

  Their spines were missing.

  “What the hell?” Tanya asked. “Jax is in the lab. How did this happen?”

  A figure stepped out from behind the bus and, when I saw who it was, my blood ran cold.

  Vess.

  30

  Vess stood by the bus, watching us. He was naked and covered in blood. His yellow eyes looked at us with a hint of cruel amusement. We had failed to kill him at Site Alpha Two and now here he was to punish that failing. He stepped forward as if he had all the time in the world.

  He probably did, but as soon as he reached us, our time would be over. He would kill us in the same savage manner he had killed the soldiers. I remembered when he’d torn out Johnny Drake’s spine and thrown the dead body aside. If we didn’t get out of here now, that same fate would befall us.

  We drew our handguns and fired. Vess dodged back behind the bus with blinding speed before reappearing and running at us.

  I fired two more shots, sure that I had hit him. The Walther’s slide slid back, telling me the gun was empty.

  The others had expended their magazines too.

  And Vess was still coming.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  Lucy and I fled back toward the labs. Sam and Tanya went the other way, toward the car parking area.

  Vess followed Lucy and me.

  “What are we going to do?” Lucy gasped as we ran for the inner fence.

  “The soldiers in the towers, and on patrol,” I managed to say between heaving breaths. “They’ll shoot at him. Maybe he won’t be able to dodge the bullets. If they all fire at once.”

  It was our only chance of survival. But even as I said it, I didn’t have much hope. There was no way Vess had dodged all our bullets a moment ago, yet he seemed unhurt by them. Was he bullet-proof?

  No, that was ridiculous. I had to believe that the soldiers guarding the lab could kill him. Without that belief, I might as well stop running and let Vess catch up with me. If the soldiers couldn’t stop him, we were all dead.

  “Alex!” Lucy said. It came out as a whimper. She pointed at the lab compound ahead.

  The soldiers lay dead within the fence. The guard towers, where we had seen soldiers no more than five minutes ago, were empty.

  The door to Lab 1 was open.

  So was the door to Lab 2. Jax had gotten within the compound by letting the brigadier capture her, but she didn’t know exactly where the vaccine was being stored. She had gone to the wrong lab.

  “Go to Lab 3,” I told Lucy. “We’ll try to barricade ourselves in.”

  Vess was still chasing us but I had the sense that he was toying with us like a cat torturing a mouse. He could have caught us easily by now but he was biding his time. The bastard was probably enjoying this.

  The gate to the lab compound was closed but it hadn’t been locked before and I prayed it wasn’t now.

  We pushed it open and ran into the compound, heading for Lab 3.

  “Is this a good idea?” Lucy asked as we reached the door. “We’re leading him straight to the vaccine.”

  “We don’t have a choice.” I pushed open the door and we rushed inside. I slammed the door behind us. “Find something we can use to barricade it!”

  “There’s nothing here!”

  The lab was empty except for the boxes of vaccine stacked at the far end of the room. They were too light to be of any use.

  The door burst open and Vess stepped into the lab. His mouth twisted into a sneer when he saw that we were trapped with nowhere to go. He took a few steps toward us. Lucy and I backed away.

  Jax came in through the door and stood behind Vess. Her yellow eyes regarded us with the coldness of a lizard staring at a bug.

  We retreated all the way to the stack of cardboard boxes. This was as far as we could go. We were going to die here. And after we were dead, I assumed that Vess and Jax would destroy the vaccine.

  Humanity’s fight against the virus would be set back and while the people at Apocalypse Island rushed to make more vaccine, these two monsters would be on the loose, destroying the survivors camps. By the time they were done, there might be no one left alive. The country would be taken over by the undead.

  Vess stepped toward us slowly, savoring the moment. Jax had come farther into the room. Maybe she wanted to
watch us die. Maybe they were going to fight over who got which spine when we were dead.

  I had nothing left to fight back with. Somewhere in my combat jacket was a Leatherman tool. It would probably be useless against Vess, but I wasn’t going to just stand here and let him take us down.

  Reaching into my pocket, my fingers connected with the three vaccine-loaded syringes I had taken for my family. I couldn’t remember which pocket the Leatherman was in.

  In desperation, I fished one of the syringes out of my pocket and opened the protective plastic tube. I slid the syringe out into my hand. I didn’t think that stabbing Vess with the needle was going to do anything -the vaccine was meant to protect uninfected humans from the virus, not be injected into patient zero- but I had nothing else to try.

  He reached forward and grabbed me by the throat, lifting me into the air. I couldn’t breathe. With a fatalism brought on by my impending death, I told myself that didn’t matter anymore. My spine was about to be ripped away from my body.

  As a last resort, I stabbed the needle into Vess’s arm and pressed the plunger. It seemed like a pathetic final act but it was all I had. Maybe the vaccine shot would give him a cold for a few days or something.

  He swatted away the syringe as if it were a minor annoyance.

  Lucy attacked him, beating on his shoulder with her fists, trying to make him let me go.

  He pushed her away with his free hand and she went crashing into the boxes.

  I struggled for breath. My fatalism only stretched so far; I would fight for survival up to the last second of my life.

  The yellow eyes looked into mine and I realized that this haunting vision was going to be the last thing I ever saw.

  Lucy was struggling to regain her feet, screaming, “No!” at Vess. She was crying. I could hear it in her voice but I couldn’t see her tears; the only things I could see were those hateful yellow eyes.

  Then Vess faltered. His grip on my throat loosened slightly. I fought for breath and managed to suck a little air into my lungs.

  Lucy attacked him again, punching him over and over.