Rise of the Undead (Book 0): Apocalypse Z [Prequel]

by Higgins, Baileigh

  Taking the latest samples, she set to work. It was as she’d predicted. The Vita virus was still mutating, growing ever more virulent and contagious by the second. In just a few days, it had changed drastically.

  It was adapting to the defenses of the immune system, finding ways to use it to its own advantage. Once it did, it seized control of the nervous system. The mortality rate was growing, approaching three in ten now — the same as smallpox.

  Later that night, Tara stumbled out of her lab, prepared to lay it on Bannock until he had no choice but to take her seriously. “Stephen, can you finish up here? Secure the samples and data for transport, then pack your things. Get some sleep too.”

  “Alright, Dr. Lee. Where are you going?” he asked.

  “The triage tent. I need to see what this new strain is doing in the flesh.” Tara stepped out into the night, lit in places by spotlights and lamps. It felt ominous. Dangerous. There was something in the air that prickled her senses.

  The jungle pressed in on all sides, filled with all manner of dangerous creatures, both big and small. It wasn’t a place to venture into lightly, but ordinarily, it didn’t bother her much. It was different now, and she struggled to put her finger on the change. As she walked toward the triage camp, she realized what it was that had her so on edge.

  Silence.

  Complete and utter silence.

  The lab behind her was quiet, as was the camp, but the triage tent bothered her the most. The usual coughing and groaning were gone. Even the jungle was void of its usual nocturnal noises.

  “What’s going on?” Tara wondered.

  As she reached the entrance, the flap opened to reveal Dr. Kabongo. He stopped short when he spotted her. “I was looking for you. Just give me a moment.”

  Tara waited while he removed his protective clothing and sealed it into a bin. After disinfecting his hands, he turned to her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to have a look at the patients. The virus is mutating again. I need to see its effects,” Tara said with a frown.

  “There’s no point. Not anymore,” Dr. Kabongo answered.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “They’re dead. The patients are dead,” he said.

  “All of them?” Tara asked aghast.

  “All of them. The nurses are preparing the bodies for burial now. After that, we’re leaving,” Dr. Kabongo said.

  “Leaving? What do you mean, you’re leaving?” Tara asked, reeling with shock.

  “We have families too, Doctor. This disease is spreading. We cannot stop it or treat it. We need to go home and warn our people.”

  “But…what if more patients arrive?” Tara said, still struggling to process his words.

  “They’re on their own, Dr. Lee, and so are you. I suggest you return to your country. There is no place for you here, anymore,” Dr. Kabongo said. “I’m sorry.”

  Without saying another word, Dr. Kabongo disappeared into the night. Tara stared after him, her mouth working. Without the medical staff or army personnel, the camp was dead. Come morning, it’d be nothing but a collection of huts and tents bordering on a mass grave. A ghost town.

  “Dr. Kabongo is right. Time to go home.”

  Tara shivered, her gaze drawn to the depths of the jungle once more. A breeze stirred the leaves, and she could almost imagine glowing eyes staring at her. Hungry eyes. An old saying written on medieval maps to describe the unknown jumped to her mind.

  Here be monsters.

  Chapter 4

  After an intense conversation with Dr. Bannock, he agreed that her time in the Congo was over. “I’ll arrange for transport to fetch you in two days.”

  “But Lieutenant Dhlamini and his men are leaving tomorrow, along with the local staff. Stephen and I will be alone,” Tara protested.

  “It can’t be helped,” Dr. Bannock muttered. “It’s the soonest I can get anyone to your location.”

  Tara stamped her foot. “Is there really nothing you can do? This is unacceptable.”

  “It’s the way it is. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to go,” Dr. Bannock said.

  The line went dead, and Tara stared at the phone as if it had turned into a cockroach. “Nice day to you too, asshole.”

  She walked to her tent and surveyed the mess inside. It was late, but she didn’t feel tired in the least. Her nerves were strung far too tightly to allow for sleep. Still, she needed to rest. Plonking down onto her bed, she plugged her earphones in and lay back, allowing the music on her phone to soothe her anxiety.

  Tara scrolled through the pictures in her gallery. There weren’t many. Mostly pics from work parties and functions with fellow scientists. At the age of thirty, she had no real friends or family except for a couple of distant cousins she’d never met.

  Her grandparents had emigrated to the States from China decades ago. They worked hard to provide an excellent education for their only son, Tara’s father. He, in turn, became a lawyer and married Tara’s mother, a neuroscientist from Georgia.

  Her grandparents passed away before she was born, and her parents followed them to the grave in her twenties. A freak accident caused their house to burn down, and little remained but ashes. After that, she’d thrown herself into her work, too scared of losing anyone to form real attachments. Now, she wondered if that had been the best thing to do. God, I don’t even have a cat. No one will miss me when I’m gone.

  Eventually, her eyelids began to droop. As she slipped into sleep, nightmares caused her to toss and turn. Something monstrous chased her through the camp while glowing eyes watched from the surrounding jungle.

  Screams rang through her ears. They came from everywhere, surrounding her as she ran. The thing behind her was getting closer, and her limbs wouldn’t move any faster. Panicked, she searched for a place to hide but nowhere offered any safety.

  Suddenly, a rough hand shook her awake. “Dr. Lee! Wake up!”

  Confused, Tara jerked upright, her mind still caught in the cobwebs of sleep. She struggled to focus on the face in front of her, but it was too dark to see. “Who? What?”

  “It’s me, Saul. You have to get up.”

  The gruff voice registered, and she recognized it as Lieutenant Dhlamini. “What’s happening?”

  “Get up. Put on your shoes. There’s no time to explain,” he said, hauling her upright.

  Bewildered, Tara obeyed, groping for her boots in the darkness of her tent. As she pulled them on, she realized she could still hear the screams from her nightmares. Only…they were real.

  Fear shot through her veins and her mind cleared in an instant. It had to be an attack. Rebels. Or poachers, maybe. She jammed her feet into her boots and shoved her phone into her pocket, grateful she’d gone to bed fully dressed.

  Dhlamini gripped her shoulder and whispered in her ear. “Come on. We have to go. We need to get to the helicopter.”

  “What about Stephen?” she asked.

  “I sent someone to get him.”

  “Are we being attacked?” Tara whispered back as they paused by the entrance of her tent.

  “Yes.” Dhlamini’s voice was curt. “Now listen to me. Once we leave this tent, we run. Don’t stop, don’t look back.”

  “But my research. My notes,” Tara protested. Turning back, she groped for her notebook, the one she carried with her everywhere and grabbed it. It contained her personal research, but the rest of the data, reports, and samples were still in the lab.

  “It doesn’t matter now. Everything has changed,” Dhlamini said.

  “What do you mean?” Tara asked, but her question was left unanswered when he ducked outside, pulling her along with physical force.

  “Run!” the lieutenant cried, and she had no choice but to follow.

  They burst out of the tent and into the night. The clearing was lit in places by spotlights, and Tara could see people running around in a panic, their cries filled with fear.

  Dhlamini hauled her toward the concrete slab where his tea
m’s helicopter waited, freshly refueled and serviced for their departure the next morning. Only now they were leaving in the middle of the night, fleeing from an unknown enemy. What the hell is going on?

  Tara’s head swiveled as she tried to take in the chaotic scene. Gunshots peppered the air; the muzzle flashes visible. She caught sight of a man running toward them. He wore a lab coat, and when a shaft of light fell across his face, she recognized him.

  “Dr. Kabongo!” She stopped midstride, and her eyes fixed on his figure. She gasped when she saw the blood that stained his coat. It formed a crimson swathe from the chin down to the waist, enough to know he was grievously hurt. Shot, probably. “You’re hurt.”

  “Don’t stop. Keep running,” Saul yelled at her.

  “But it’s Dr. Kabongo. We need to help him,” she cried, wincing when Dhlamini nearly yanked her arm out of its socket.

  “It’s not him anymore. Trust me,” Dhlamini said, forcing her into a run again.

  Tara’s feet stumbled across the uneven ground as she tried to keep up with the soldier. Her brain was in a daze, unable to understand why Saul wouldn’t stop for the injured Kabongo. She glanced back, expecting the doctor to have collapsed to the ground, but she was wrong. He was still running toward them. Incredibly, he even seemed to be gaining on them, his arms and legs pumping with furious effort. It’s not possible.

  Her eyes shifted to Kabongo’s face, and alarm bells went off in her head. Something was wrong.

  Instead of his usual benign expression, his lips were contorted in an angry snarl. His eyes looked like blank pools of ink, and his skin wore a gray pallor. What was worse, a jagged hole in his throat explained the source of the blood on his clothes. What it didn’t tell her was how he could still be alive with his carotid artery torn to shreds.

  Tara stumbled at the sight. It wasn’t possible. Kabongo was a dead man walking. A corpse.

  Somehow, Saul’s yells permeated the fog of disbelief that had her in its grip. “Dr. Lee! Tara. We’re nearly there. Come on.”

  She turned her face back to the front, away from the approaching nightmare behind her. Her legs sped up as a rush of fear-fueled adrenaline kicked in. Just ahead, the chopper waited, the wind from its rotors kicking up a cloud of dust. It was an SAAF Atlas Oryx outfitted for cargo with a troop capacity of twenty.

  Tara coughed but didn’t slow. Her eyes burned as grit chafed the sensitive membranes, and tears streamed down her cheeks. Dhlamini’s team had formed a perimeter around the helicopter. Their automatic rifles fired off bursts of rounds into the night.

  She didn’t know what they were shooting at or why.

  She didn’t think she wanted to know.

  They reached the concrete slab, and Dhlamini shoved her into the waiting arms of another soldier. The man hauled her onto the chopper, and she fell into an empty seat. Her hands shook so badly she almost couldn’t fasten her seatbelt.

  With her notebook clutched to her chest, Tara watched the scene outside unfold as if in slow motion. Lieutenant Dhlamini had turned away and was directing his men to fall back. One by one, they climbed onto the chopper while he provided fire cover.

  Dr. Kabongo had reached the edge of the dust cloud and charged the lieutenant with outstretched hands. There was nothing human about his expression. Nothing that resembled the man he once used to be. Dhlamini shot him, three rounds thudding into Kabongo’s chest.

  The doctor fell to the ground, but to Tara’s utter amazement, he got back to his feet. Dhlamini fired off another volley, and one of the bullets hit Kabongo in the head. His skull exploded, and he collapsed to the ground like a marionette puppet after its strings had been cut.

  Tara screamed in horror, unable to believe her eyes. More people appeared from the camp. They looked like Dr. Kabongo had. Enraged. Insane. Several were former patients, their clothes encrusted with dirt and blood. The same villagers who had supposedly died earlier that day. They were chasing other fleeing people. People like her who were still unaffected by whatever it was that the others had.

  A thought pinged in her head. The virus. That must be it. It was affecting them, driving them crazy. It’s taking control of their nervous systems.

  Then she spotted Stephen, and her heart sank. The young man who’d often driven her mad with his lack of experience was now a monster. Blood dribbled from his lips, and his eyes were empty. He was covered in wounds, chunks of flesh missing from his limbs like he’d been gnawed on by rats.

  Tara leaned forward, reaching out one hand as tears burned her eyelids. She ignored the soldiers who jostled her in their haste to climb into the helicopter, her attention fixed on her former lab assistant. “Stephen!”

  But Stephen wasn’t listening. Instead, he honed in on a running nurse and pounced like an animal. He ripped into her tender flesh, his hooked fingers clawing their way through her abdomen. The girl’s screams were cut off as blood choked her airways, pouring onto the dust beneath her.

  The last of the soldiers retreated to the helicopter and climbed in. The rotors sped up as the pilot prepared to take off. Saul shot off a few more rounds before jumping onboard himself with a wild yell. “Go, go, go!”

  “What about Stephen? We must save him!” Tara shouted, tugging at his arm, refusing to believe the boy was lost.

  Saul shook his head. “Forget him, Tara. He’s one of them now. The undead,” Saul replied, holding her back as the chopper rose into the air.

  Tara slumped back into her seat as his words sank in. The undead. It was all starting to make sense now. Dr. Kabongo’s gruesome injury, the supposedly dead villagers, Stephen. “It’s not just controlling their nervous systems. It’s actually reanimating their corpses and using them to spread itself to new victims.”

  She leaned forward and grabbed Saul’s arm, raising her voice to be heard above the noise of the chopper. “What happened? What did you see? I must know.”

  Saul turned haunted eyes toward Tara. “We were burying the last of the dead when a couple of them awoke. They attacked one of my men and tore him to shreds. I can still hear his screams when I close my eyes.”

  Tara blanched. “I’m sorry.”

  Saul shook his head. “Sorry? It’s not your fault doctor. This virus comes from the devil himself. Moments after he died, that soldier, rose from the dead. He attacked a brother-in-arms. Ripped right into him like he was butter.”

  Tara didn’t reply. There didn’t seem to be anything she could say to that.

  “You have your notes?” Saul asked.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Good,” he answered before settling back into his seat.

  “Why?” Tara asked.

  “Because you’re the only one who can stop this now. It’s either that or the dead walk the earth.”

  Tara shivered, his words bringing to mind an awful future. One that couldn’t be allowed to exist. She stared out of the chopper as it flew over the dense jungles of the Congo. In the distance, the sun was beginning to rise, its golden light bathing the treetops in gold. It was a new dawn. The dawn of the apocalypse.

  Chapter 5

  Tara endured the flight as best she could. She’d never been fond of flying, and under the current circumstances, it was even worse. Her stomach churned whenever the rough winds buffeted the helicopter, but even more so when she thought of Stephen and his awful fate.

  The living dead.

  Who’d have thought such a thing possible? Not even she’d been able to foresee it despite all her research. A spike of guilt stabbed her through the heart. It was all her fault. She should’ve been stronger. She should’ve made Bannock see how dangerous the Vita virus truly was. Instead, she’d acted like a coward by allowing him to trivialize her and her work.

  She glanced around the inside of the chopper, her gaze traveling across the surviving soldiers. They looked grim. Defeated. Each of them had lost friends back at the camp. Friends that were now enemies.

  Saul had taken it the hardest. As their leader, he was responsibl
e for their lives, and the losses had shaken him to his core.

  She reached out a tentative hand and laid it on his forearm. “Lieutenant Dhlamini?”

  He didn’t respond at first, staring off into the distance, no doubt reliving the nightmare of earlier.

  She tugged on his sleeve. “Saul?”

  He blinked, shaken from his stupor. “Yes?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To Brazzaville,” he replied in a dull voice.

  “Brazzaville? Do you think that’s wise?” she asked, alarmed.

  Saul frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Brazzaville is home to millions, and with the outbreak, it’ll be chaos. Besides, aren’t the borders closed?”

  “The borders, maybe, but we’re heading to the river. I have a friend waiting with a boat,” Saul said.

  “A boat?” Tara asked.

  “Yes, I arranged it all yesterday. We’ll travel down the Congo river to Pointe-Noire.”

  “What’s in Pointe-Noire?”

  “The Agostinho-Neto International Airport,” Saul replied. “From there, I’ll arrange for a flight to Cape Town for my men. Even if the borders are closed, I’m sure I can get special dispensation.”

  “What about you? And me?”

  “I’m escorting you back to your country, Doctor Lee. You’re our only hope now, and I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to you,” Saul said, his dark eyes brooding above his high cheekbones.

  “It’s Tara,” she protested. “I thought we’d established that.”

  Saul smiled. “Tara then.”

  “What about your family? Your government? You’re in the army. You can’t just leave,” she protested.

  “My tribe are Zulus. They’re warriors. Survivors. They’ll survive this too. Besides, my closest relatives are dead. I have no one to go home to.”

  “I see.” Tara sat back in her seat, mulling it over.

  “You’d better get ready,” Saul said, pointing down. “Because we’re here.”