by Derek Slaton
She struck the first zombie in the chest, the force causing it to slam back into the rest of the zombies, giving them a chance to gain ground. The hurtled up to the third floor and slammed through the double doors, slamming them shut behind them.
The zombies hit the doors, causing both Ben and Jeff to leap away from it. Ashley quickly ducked under Ben’s arm and clicked the deadbolt, securing it.
“Okay, they’re locked,” the blonde said, chest heaving and heart pounding. “They aren’t getting in. At least not through there.”
“You okay?” Jeff clapped a hand on Ben’s back.
The shorter man scowled. “Peachy.”
“Where to?” Sparks asked, and the blonde pointed.
“Walkway is just through those doors. Building should be clear,” she said.
Sparks reloaded her gun and cocked it with a click of finality. “Forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tuesday, 6:45 P.M.
Sparks led the group cautiously towards the lab, holding up a hand to stop the group at the sight of a pair of legs in the doorway. She readied her weapon and raised her chin.
“Jackson?” she called. “Michaels?”
“Sparks?” Jackson’s voice from inside. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, I got the doc’s assistants,” she replied as he stepped into the doorway.
His eyes were wide and skin pale, and his gun was drawn but not in that normal arrogant way of his.
“What the fuck happened here?” Sparks demanded.
“My guess is the same thing that caused you to take fie hours to run across the quad,” Jackson retorted. “Get in here, we need to talk.” He backed up and allowed them access to the room.
Sparks stepped over the body, which was one of the kids that had greeted them when they first arrived. He was missing the entire back of his head, shot clean off. Michaels’ body was slumped against the far wall with a giant shard of glass sticking out of his neck, blood pooling beneath him.
The taller skinny kid tended to Agent Ross in the corner, who was missing a substantial chunk of his upper right arm.
“Let me guess, somebody got hungry?” Sparks asked.
“Deke here,” Jackson began, kicking the body in the doorway for effect, “went into a serious coughing fit before collapsing to the ground. Michaels went over to check on him and next thing we knew, Deke pounces on him. Michaels lost his balance and went head first into an experiment, which is how he got the glass in his throat. Ross ran over and this asshole-” Jackson kicked the corpse again with a grunt. “-took a fucking chunk out of his arm. Just clamped down like a gator on an unattended child. Once that happened, I opened fire. Put two in his chest, but all that did was piss him off. So I put one right between his eyes, which calmed him down. Didn’t see any other option.”
“Yeah, headshots were the only thing that worked for us, too.” Sparks ran a hand through her hair with a sigh. “And Jackson, you did the right thing. Those things are vicious and there is no reasoning with them.”
“Ms. Sparks is correct,” Dr. Alvison spoke up as he walked out of the back room. He held a clipboard in his hands.
“Doc, you got anything for us?” Jackson asked.
“I think you all need to sit down,” the old man replied, following his own advice as he lowered himself into his desk chair. “This is going to be difficult to hear.”
Tuesday, 6:58 P.M.
Jeff and Ben deposited the corpses outside of the lab door and secured it, locking the deadbolt and making sure it wouldn’t budge. Ted, the tall kid that had tended to Ross, drummed up chairs for everyone and they all sat in a crude semicircle around the doctor.
“I need to preface this by saying I’ve just started my research and everything I’ve found is preliminary,” Dr. Alvison wheezed.
“Doc, just get to the fucking point,” Jackson demanded.
“With that said,” the doctor said with a huff, pointedly ignoring the rude strike leader, “what I’m about to tell you is accurate, although my timeline may be off by ten to twenty percent.” He coughed and took a deep breath. “Okay. So, approximately eighty hours ago there was a bio-terrorist attack on the UT football game. A man infected with an unknown virus exposed roughly a hundred thousand people to it by wandering the grounds. I’ve determined that this virus is airborne, so everyone that attended that game was exposed.
“To complicate matters, it has a nearly one hundred percent infection rate, and once you are infected you become a carrier as well. I haven’t been able to determine how long of a dormant period it has once someone is infected before they are contagious, but it doesn’t appear to be too long. Maybe even as little as a few minutes.”
“So what are you saying, doc?” Jackson cut in, furrowing his brow. “Are we all infected? Are we going to become those fucking flesh eating things?”
“To answer your first question,” Dr. Alvison replied, “yes, we are all infected. As to your second, it depends entirely on your blood type.”
“Blood type?”
“Yes, Agent Jackson,” the doctor confirmed. “Blood type. Whatever this virus is, it only becomes deadly if it infects someone with the A blood type. Something in the A blood type caused the virus to mutate, killing the host and reanimating it into the killing machine we witnessed a little while ago with Deke.
“I have been able to determine that for people with the A blood type, there is roughly a seventy-two hour incubation period before the mutation takes hold. Within twenty-four to forty-eight hours the person will develop flu-like symptoms.”
“Like what you have?” Jackson asked.
“Yes, Agent Jackson.” Dr. Alvison nodded. “Just like what I have.”
A sob tore it’s way out of Ted’s throat and he turned away from the group to hide his tears in fear and embarrassment.
“And I’m guessing Ted over there as well,” Jackson mused.
“Yeah,” the young man stammered through his tears, “I have A blood type… but I’m not sick.”
“You will be, son,” Dr. Alvison said gently. “You just came into the office this morning, so it’s possible you weren’t exposed to it until you met up with Deke.”
“So doc, lay it out for us,” Jackson cut in. “How bad is it? How do we contain it?”
“The only way this could have been contained is if you’d nuked Austin on Saturday morning,” Dr. Alvison replied.
Jackson growled. “Don’t give me that bullshit, doc.”
“You don’t understand.” The doctor narrowed his tired eyes. “This virus is airborne, and it infects nearly every single person it comes into contact with. It has a hundred percent kill rate with people who have the A blood type, which is roughly forty percent of the population. As soon as the infected person left the stadium, this became impossible to contain.”
Jackson turned and slammed a fist down onto the counter, knocking over a few beakers.
“Jackson, keep cool,” Sparks snapped.
“I’m fucking cool, Sparks,” he shot back. “I just don’t like this defeatist attitude.”
“The doc is right, though,” she replied with a shrug. “Just stop and think about it for a moment. You have a hundred thousand people leaving the stadium that afternoon. Those people go downtown to 6th street for some music and infect tens of thousands more, including touring bands.
“They then take it on the road and infect more. Some people flew in for the game, including the opposing team. As soon as they hit the airport this virus goes global, especially if anybody they come into contact with has a connecting flight in a major international hub.”
Her diatribe began to sink in, and Jackson’s eyes seemed to glaze over with the severity of the situation.
“I’ve done some preliminary estimates on the spread of the virus.” Dr. Alvison flicked through the pages on his clipboard. “Within ten days every major city in the world will have active cases of these creatures. If they are able to spread withou
t the knowledge we possess, I fear upwards of sixty percent of the population will either be those things or killed by those things within a month.”
“What if the bites can infect someone who doesn’t have A blood type?” Sparks wondered, and Ross stiffened, his free hand absently rising to clutch his wound.
“What do you mean?” the doctor asked.
“At the diner we saw two people who weren’t showing signs of illness turn into those things after succumbing to their bites,” Sparks explained. “I mean, it’s possible that they both were A type and just hadn’t been exposed yet, but one of them was the diner owner so it’s unlikely.”
“Assuming you are correct, the situation becomes much more dire.” Dr. Alvison pursed his lips in thought. “Best guess? Seventy-five percent of the world’s population will be dead within a month, and potentially as high as ninety percent here in the USA since we are at Ground Zero.”
There was a somber silence, save for the sniffling as Ted’s sobs started to mellow out.
“So, doc,” Sparks finally broke the quiet, voice strained. “Realistically, what can we do?”
“If you can let your higher ups know the situation, they may be able to get the word out and some sort of quarantine effort may save some lives,” the doctor replied.
“Well, given our immediate superior was worse than Deke when we left,” Jackson cut in, “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s not an option.”
“Well, we’re open to suggestions, Jackson,” Sparks snapped.
“You know what?” He threw up his hands. “Y’all do what you want, but I’m getting the fuck out of here.” He snatched one of the bags of gear and threw it over his shoulder.
“Oh yeah, and where are you going to go?” the redhead asked, crossing her arms. “Seeing as how you aren’t familiar with the area, let me lay out your options. If you go North, you’ll be in Austin, which is where this shitshow began. South isn’t much better since it’s San Antonio with one and a half million people. Now, you may be thinking east and trying to hit the coast. Assuming you survive the journey through the various backroads you’ll be dealing with the population of Houston trying to escape this madness. So good luck finding a boa when a million people are all doing the same thing.” She raised an eyebrow.
Jackson sneered. “Guess I’m going west, then.”
“Great idea,” she supplied, “except unfortunately for you it’s all back roads. Take the wrong one and you’ll be in a major city suburb. Now, I know a way to get us out, but we need to finish our mission first and get the word out about this.”
“So, how are we getting out?” he conceded with a scowl.
“Canyon Lake is pretty close to here, and it connects right to the Guadalupe River,” Sparks explained, turning to face the group. “One of the most popular spring break destinations is attached to it. You can get rafts to float, or you can get some boats if you want to explore. This thing is happening so quickly that I don’t think the people here will be able to take all of them and escape. So if we get there, we’ll have a good chance to jack a ride and escape via the river.”
“And then what?” Jackson prompted.
“Haven’t thought that far ahead,” she admitted. “But it’s sparsely populated once you get away from the lake. We’ll be able to get away from all the major population areas and give us a chance to regroup from there.”
“Well, I’ve heard worse plans,” he said. “But what’s your grand plan to get the word out? Everyone immediately above us is dead.”
Jeff picked up the phone on the desk next to him and then slammed it back down. “And, anyway, the phone is dead.”
“Yeah,” Jackson confirmed. “So let’s have it, Sparks. What’s your plan?”
She shrugged. “We use the Hostile Zone Protocol.”
“Great.” He rolled his eyes. “So all we need is a functioning radio station, which I’m sure are plentiful in small towns this close to major cities.”
“Well,” Ashley said quietly, and then cleared her throat. “There is the campus radio station. Do you think that would work?” She wrung her hands in front of her. Sparks raised an eyebrow at Jackson to accentuate the question.
He sighed. “Goddammit.”
“Ashley, where is the radio station?” Sparks asked gently.
“It’s in the building across from this one on the top floor,” the blonde replied. “Unfortunately there isn’t a walkway so you’d have to go in through the ground floor.”
“Which, if you’ve forgotten, isn’t that easy of a task,” Jeff put in.
“Then we do another distraction, only something a lot louder,” Sparks said firmly. “I mean, we’re going to need to do one anyway if we want any hope of reaching the SUV.”
“What about firing some guns off of the second floor?” Ben suggested.
“No, our ammo is too precious.” She shook her head, and let out a deep breath in thought. “And besides, we need something sustained.”
“What about music?” Ted wiped furiously at his red eyes, finally having overcome his pity party. “I have this battery speaker set, you just put your phone in. The doc is always yelling at me to turn it down, so it’s plenty loud.”
“Alright,” Sparks said with a nod. “Anyone got a phone with some loud music they don’t mind parting with?”
“I got some R and B music on mine,” Ben said with a shrug. “Not sure how loud that would be, though.”
Jeff shook his head. “Lost mine back at the diner.”
“I’m not giving up my phone.” Jackson crossed his arms. “We may need the maps.”
“Pretty sure mine is in the SUV.” Sparks sighed.
Ashley put up her hand shyly. “I have some Slayer on mine.”
Everyone gaped at her, and a blush crept up her cheeks.
“Goddamn, girl, you are a catch,” Jeff said with an impressed grin. “If you ever decide to go back to vanilla.”
“Motherfucker,” Ben huffed. “Once you go black-”
“Yeah yeah.” Jeff laughed, waving him off. “Don’t worry, Chocolate Thunder, I’m just bustin’ your balls.”
Ben smirked, and the skinhead clapped him on the back in appreciation.
“Slayer it is,” Sparks said, bringing the topic back on track.
“I’d suggest Raining Blood,” Ashley instructed, holding out her phone. “It has a mellow thirty second intro before it kicks in, so you would have time to set it and run.”
“Great, let’s do it,” the redhead agreed, nodding her head.
“Whoa, whoa,” Jackson cut in, holding up his hands. “Wait a goddamn minute. I’m not going anywhere with anyone until I know who has what blood type. I’m not going to take a nap and wake up to one of you motherfuckers feasting on me. I’ll start. I’m O positive.”
Sparks pursed her lips. “O positive.”
“B positive,” Ben put in.
“O negative,” Ashley added. They all turned to Jeff, who simply blinked.
“Do I look like the type of man who knows what kind of blood type he has?” he asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow.
“Ted, if you would, please test him,” Dr Alvison motioned, and the student with the red-rimmed eyes scurried forward.
“Of course, doc,” he said, and motioned for Jeff to hold out his hand. He pricked the bald man’s finger and headed over to the corner machine.
“Ross, what do you want to do?” Jackson asked his team member in the meantime. “I can end it for you right now.”
“Fuck that,” Ross snapped. “I want to go out fighting.”
“That’s the spirit,” Jackson said with a grin. “You want to kill some of those motherfuckers for us?”
Ross sneered. “Hell yeah.”
“I don’t mean to eavesdrop, gentlemen,” Dr. Alvison piped up.
“What do you want, doc?” Jackson asked.
“Agent Ross.” The doctor ignored the team leader and addressed his subordinate directly. “I know you want to exact
some sort of revenge as your final act on this planet, but may I suggest another path?”
Ross shrugged. “Sure.”
“I have a day left, maybe a little more before this virus overtakes me,” Dr. Alvison continued. “In that time I plan on doing as much research as I can. Having you to study and do tests on could potentially help stem the tide of this pandemic.”
“How you gonna get the info to them there, doc?” Jackson scoffed. “Carrier pigeon?”
“If Sparks is able to get a message out, I’m going to request she mention my research and where it will be,” the doctor replied. “There is roof access to this building, so they can fly in and only have to deal with the three of us to retrieve it.”
“Ross, it’s up to you.” Jackson turned to his comrade. “If you want to go down fighting, I can use you. If you want to be a guinea pig that’s your call.”
Ross sighed deeply, lowering his gaze to the floor in thought. His lips twisted and he raised his eyes to the doctor.
“Do you really think I can do some good?” he asked quietly.
“I really do,” Dr. Alvison replied with a nod. “And if it will help put your blood lust at ease, you have my permission to take me out when I turn. I’m sure Ted over there will appreciate it since he has an extra day or two before he goes.”
Ross nodded. “Okay doc, I’ll do it.”
Jackson patted his subordinate on the shoulder as the doctor shuffled over to Sparks, who was speaking with Ted.
“I got the big fella’s results,” the student was saying. “O positive.”
“Good to know,” the redhead replied. “Thanks.”
“Sparks, I have a request,” Dr. Alvison cut in.
“Whatever you need, doc,” she affirmed, turning to him.
“I’m going to write down some info about this building and my lab,” he told her. “I need you to read it over the air so your people hear it. This information could potentially save millions of lives.”
