by Damon Hunter
THE SMELL
Copyright © 2018 by Damon Hunter
All right reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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STAY UP TO DATE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
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CHAPTER 1
TMRT Bunker, San Francisco, CA
The thing moved among the abandoned vehicles and burned-out wreckage on all fours. The only light was the moon and a few stars poking through holes in the fog but he moved along the crowded bridge without a problem.
He looked out across the bay often, as if he sensed he was being watched. His vision was not the only sense heightened since being infected with the rot.
The rot affected people differently. Most fell into an almost catatonic state as the virus ate away at their flesh. Others, called amblers, were more or less catatonic most of the time but they walked, constantly. They were slow-moving but relentless. If they could get their hands on somebody they would bite them, spreading the rot to a new victim.
He was not an ambler and certainly not comatose. The rot made him a predator. His type were called vampire rotters or vampers. He was not slow. In fact he was much faster than he had been before getting bitten. He did not amble along mindlessly. He hunted, actively seeking out victims.
Even rarer than those who became predators were those who were immune. Getting bitten was never a good thing, but for a small group of humans a bite did not mean an onset of the rot.
Eric Vance was among the immune. It was the reason he and another man named Holiday were still around manning the bunker, and almost everyone else on both the security and the research units of the newly formed Tactical Medical Response Team that had made the trip into quarantined San Francisco was not.
It was unknown whether the other survivor, fellow TMRT soldier Ashley Cope, was immune or not. She was the only team member to avoid getting bitten. If not for Vance’s immunity, though, it was unlikely she would have made it back to the bunker. She was no slouch in the killing and surviving department, but even with the two of them fighting together they felt lucky to still be alive.
Vance tracked the vamper through the night-vision scope on the sniper rifle as it came to a clearing on the bridge. He exhaled and tried to be aware of the beating of his own heart so he could squeeze the trigger between beats. He went for the vamper’s spine, and hit his mark.
“Nice,” said Ashley, who was acting as his spotter. “I was beginning to think we were going to get nothing but amblers tonight.”
Vance nodded, keeping his eye through the scope, seeing the bridge below in night-vision green. They had been waiting for a vamper to shoot since the sun went down. There had been no shortage of the amblers, but they were not worth a bullet. Though it wasn’t like any bullets fired would really do anything to hasten reclaiming the city. What they were doing was more a way to pass the time waiting for rescue to arrive. A rescue they were beginning to doubt was coming.
As expected, the downed vamper began to make a noise, a low, gravely hum. The noise usually brought more vampire rotters to the area.
“Maybe after last night the vampers are avoiding the bridge,” Ashley said as the minutes passed without any new targets appearing. “I tore it up.”
“You saying you’re a better shot than me?” Vance said without looking up. There was only one sniper rifle left and they had been alternating nights.
“Just saying I tore it up.”
They were holed up in a World War Two-era bunker on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge. The bunker had been refurbished and modified, serving as a base of operations as the newly formed TMRT unit moved into the Bay area. Vance and Ashley both had long, distinguished military careers and were brought onto this mission to escort a group of scientists. They were out to collect samples, see how the rot was advancing in the abandoned quarantine area and, if possible, extract any survivors.
Things had not gone the way they planned. The way the rot had spread since the quarantine was worse than the experts had anticipated. Given time, it was clear the comatose progressed to the ambler phase. They were overwhelmed on the first excursion into the city as they found the rare predator strain was not as rare as they’d anticipated. Possibly because the amblers may eventually turn to vampire rotters over time. The rotters of all levels started moving in groups. Instead of taking on one vamper, here and there, which could be dangerous enough, they found themselves confronted by a battalion of them.
Of the excursion team, only Ashley and Vance were still around. The other man, Holiday, was neither security or research. He was the only non-infected person they found before things went bad.
“Got one,” Ashley said as she peered through her night-vision binoculars. “Over by the park.”
Vance swung his long rifle toward the north end of the bridge. It took a minute but he found it. The predators were hunched over and moving on all fours like animals. The vampire rotters’ arms lengthened out, allowing them to push off the ground with their hands while they ran, increasing their speed. This also gave them the ability to launch themselves from long distances at their victims. The jaw of a vampire rotter elongated, making it easier for them to bite. Extra rows of teeth grew and sharpened, especially the canines, giving them the vampire-like appearance.
A head shot was not required to take them down, but both Vance and Ashley had seen them run through
a bunch of bullets to the body. At some point they would bleed out, but they could do a lot of damage before it happened.
With this in mind, Vance took his time, noted the distance and adjusted for the way gravity would affect the heavy bullet as it made its way to the target. He exhaled and listened for his own pulse. As always, he waited for a space between heartbeats before squeezing the trigger.
The predator’s head vanished in a puff of green mist. After he went down, the amblers became agitated. Vance chambered another round and watched through the scope. He could have picked off two dozen amblers, but since they could be taken out with just about any heavy blunt object and ammunition was finite, he waited for another vampire rotter. The idea of taking on a vamper with knives and clubs did not appeal to Vance. He may have been immune to the rot, but a vamper could tear a man up. It was the reason Holiday was down in the lower chamber with a morphine drip.
Ashley put down the binoculars and looked at the time.
“Almost family time,” she said.
Vance nodded, keeping his eye in the scope. He knew they booted up the internet at eight. To save battery life, they limited contact with the outside world via phone or computer to one hour in the evening and one hour in the morning. Regulations required they brief the commanders making decisions from the safe zone twice every twenty-four hours. They were instructed to plan an hour for each briefing. This was when they thought researchers would be giving briefings and emailing massive files filled with data. With so little to report now, most of the hour they designated was unneeded for official business, giving them some time to interact with the outside world.
Ashley had a family—a husband and twin boys—living in relative safety in the Midwest outside the quarantine zone. Once the business part was finished, she would spend the rest of the hour video chatting with them.
Vance would file his reports and check his email. Mostly, he would ask that they be extracted right away. The answer tonight would probably be the same as it was the last four nights, which was someone saying, “As soon as possible,” which Vance took to mean they didn’t know. It made him wonder if the safe zone was not as safe as it had been when they left.
He would spend the rest of the hour checking news sites. He had an ex-wife and teenage daughter, but they didn’t talk much. Mostly because his past conversations with his daughter always ended up with her asking him to come see her, and him being unable to because of his job. He hated saying it and she hated hearing it, leading both to be slow to pick up the phone. He had missed her birthday again. He remembered this time, but had spent most of the day fighting for his life on the streets of San Francisco and never had a chance to call. He knew they were still alive as of yesterday, living in the San Diego area just outside the quarantine zone, because Donna, his former wife, had sent a message detailing what an asshole he was for failing to acknowledge Katelin’s fourteenth birthday.
When he first learned they were still in California after the West Coast outbreak, he reached out to them. In one of his few recent conversations with his ex-wife he reached out and tried to tell them to get out of San Diego. He told them to get a desert between them and the outbreak.
The former Mrs. Vance told him she was glad to hear he gave a damn about their safety but to mind his own business. He decided to take her advice, it had been working for both of them for the last decade. He did, however, tell her to call anytime. She told him not to hold his breath waiting.
“Got some more,” he said as two more vampire rotters came loping onto the bridge, coming from their side, which was not comforting. He figured they were roaming the hills looking for them. They seemed to know the thing causing their fellow vampers to lose their heads every night was somewhere in the hills overlooking the bridge.
“Hurry up,” she said, raising the spotting scope. “Devin had to do a speech in class today and I want to hear how it went. Plus the brass will freak if we don’t report in on time.”
Vance pulled the trigger and chambered another round. The remaining vamper stood on two legs and looked right at him. His large eyes glowed, and Vance saw he was one of just a handful he had seen with tusks starting to grow below the ears. He was raising an arm, possibly to point at the bunker with fingers more like talons. Vance blew his head off before he got the arm all the way up.
“Should we leave the moaner?” Vance asked.
“I’m kind of sick of staring at this bridge.”
“You just don’t want me to beat your record,” Vance said as he took aim and put the paralyzed vamper out of its misery.
“You say that like you had a chance.”
“Let’s keep the lights out up here,” he told her, “they seem to be looking for us.”
“You think they’re that smart?”
Vance shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”
They moved to the lower level by sense of touch, keeping the flashlights off in case the vampire rotters were really looking for them. The lower level was basically underground. With the hatch shut, no light should bleed out.
Since Vance had no one else to talk to and his frustration with the lack of a rescue didn’t make him feel like being punctual, he checked on Holiday. Another reason for frustration, the man needed medical attention neither he nor Ashley could provide. Just because the rot hadn’t set in didn’t mean he wasn’t in bad shape. He had injuries like a pack of wolves had attacked him, and in truth a vamper attack was not much different.
He checked the transponder on the armored vehicle they had used to enter the quarantine zone. It had not moved and no one used the radio. He held out hope someone had survived and would make it back to the vehicle they’d abandoned.
He was surprised when he logged on and was told another team going by land was on the way. They were finally going to be extracted. Not what he’d hoped for, he would rather be airlifted, but they did not care what he thought.
He noticed in the news rumors that Oceanside, where Donna and Katelin were living, was going to be made part of the quarantine. Evacuations might be happening as soon as tomorrow morning. With this in mind, he sent a message to his ex-wife. It occurred to him at moments like this, when he should be exchanging messages with friends and family, that he had no one. He often blamed his dedication to his job, but Ashley was as good a soldier as he had met over his nearly twenty years in the killing business. She still had a family.
He kept it short and simple.
“Tell Katelin happy birthday and if you need anything let me know.”
He waited a bit for a response, hoping she wouldn’t reply with something like, “I need you to go fuck yourself.”
When he didn’t get a response right away, he logged off, saving some battery. The timeframe for a rescue coming over the ground may take days; chances were they would be nearly out of power before anyone arrived.
He checked on Holiday again before lying down to get some rest.
Vance was still awake when the curtain separating his makeshift quarters from Ashley’s and Holiday’s was pulled aside.
Ashley stood there naked. In the low light provided by Vance’s lamp, the scars on her body were nearly invisible. Without the scars, she had the body of a slightly taller, slightly more muscular supermodel.
Vance sat up as she came forward.
“This may be our last night,” she told him.
“No offense, but as good as this part has been, I’m ready to go,” Vance said as he peeled off his shirt.
“I can’t disagree. I am going to miss you though.”
He took her in his arms. “This part, anyway.”
“No, I’ll miss it all. You’re a good guy, Vance. If I didn’t already have a great guy and a great family I think you and I could have been an item.”
“I don’t know, my track record says otherwise. This part always went well. It’s the rest I’m bad at.”
“Lucky for me, this is the only part we’re doing,” Ashley said as she brought her mouth to his.
&nbs
p; CHAPTER 2
Evacuation Point 3, Oceanside, CA
“Maddie said it’s just bullshit. There is no rot here.”
“No need for bad language,” Donna told her daughter Katelin as they got in line for the evacuation, each carrying two bags since it was all they were allowed.
“I’m just repeating what she said.”
“Don’t,” Donna said. She leaned toward her daughter’s friend Maddie’s way of thinking. It was the fourth time they had been told to prepare for possible evacuation and the second time they had gathered at the designated spot and got ready to board a bus. She suspected that just as they had the other times, the whole thing would be called off before anyone took a seat.
“Isn’t everybody vaccinated?” Katelin asked.
“They’re not sure if it works,” Donna told her.
“I took all those shots for nothing?”
“It might work.”
“I’m going to miss Maddie’s party.”
“If we get evacuated, Maddie will miss Maddie’s party.”
“She said they might stay.”
“Then she will party alone, because everyone else will be leaving,” Donna said.
“Why can’t we just drive?”
“They don’t want a huge traffic jam.”
“The car would be so much more comfortable. . .”
“Can you quit complaining? You think I want to ride the bus?”
Katelin didn’t seem to have an answer, and Donna was thinking she had finally gotten her fourteen-year-old to quit making an already bad situation worse by whining about it. Katelin was about to ruin the silence when there was a commotion up toward the front of the line.
Some people gave up their prime spot in line and guarantee of a good seat, deciding to run instead. They ran past Donna and Katelin, who were more in the middle of the line, far enough back that Donna was thinking they might be toward the front of the line for the second bus, but there was no way they would make the first.
Katelin stepped out of line to get a look at what everybody was running from. “Holy shit.”
