Exit Zero (Book 2): Nuke Jersey

by Neil A. Cohen

  Her voice remained as flat and scientific tonally as someone whose world consisted of books and beakers. “We are securing the infected so that they can be transported and housed in quarantine until we can cure them, or reverse the process that has taken over their bodies. We are working within FEMA guidelines to establish these camps around the state, which will ensure the safety of both the infected and the uninfected population.”

  “Dr. Reynolds, how close are we to a cure?” Patrick inquired.

  “Unfortunately, much of the team and their research was lost when the original PCRC test facility was destroyed. We need to find Dr. Coleman to assist in the reverse engineering of this virus.”

  Mr. Spencer spoke up. “We are still looking for Colonel Tindall as well. We are unclear as to why he prematurely called in the missile attack, although it would appear from what we found at the base that some disturbing event had occurred. We hope he’s not compromised and we have been putting out messages that he is not the target of prosecution, we just need to know what happened. Once we have him, though, he will have to face trial for what he has done.”

  Patrick sighed. “So you put out word that if he turns himself in, we won’t prosecute, yet if he does, we will prosecute him as a war criminal. So basically, we’re lying, correct?”

  “I guess Ivan was right,” Daniel chimed in. “You really can’t trust the government.”

  Patrick shot Daniel a quick look with a clear message: Shut the fuck up. “Mr. Spencer, any additional good news to share?”

  Mr. Spencer flipped the pages in his binder. He took a deep breath. “Texas announced that they officially seceded from the United States and become the independent Republic of Texas. More troubling is that they have had some skirmishes at the border with the Mexicans. We are consulting with the State Department and Pentagon to consider our options and what can be done before this turns into a shooting war.”

  Patrick stood up and looked out the window of his new office. “Okay, so we have gassed New York, lost Texas, potentially started a war with Mexico, and flooded New Jersey with zombies. What about the rest of the country?”

  Spencer turned another page. “Well, sir, California has become very problematic, but the rest of this briefing is classified top secret. I need to meet with Mr. Gold right now, but I will resume our briefing after you complete your meeting with your friend and we can discuss the West Coast situation.”

  Patrick relented. He needed a break from the barrage of bad news. “Thank you, Mr. Spencer. Oh, by the way, any update on locating the governor? I heard a rumor he had been found.”

  Mr. Spencer smirked. “That report was a false alarm. A man entered a police station yesterday in Trenton claiming to be the governor. He had his spiel down pat, seemed to know a lot that only the governor would know. There was even a slight resemblance. The issue was this imposter was only about a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. While he looked like the governor, and had all his facts accurate, you’d think the guy would have tried to add some padding to pull off the look. But, honestly, sir, we have thousands of missing person reports, we have portions of the state that are totally overrun, they are considered no-go zones. If he is out there, we will find him.”

  Mr. Spencer left the room to head to his briefing of Maxwell Gold.

  “Dr. Reynolds, do you have anything to add?” Patrick asked, curious as to why the woman was still sitting there.

  She did not respond. She was lost in thought, as if she were trying to figure a way to say something. Or tell someone something they did not want to say out loud. Daniel recognized that look. It was the look you got telling a girl you’d screwed that she might want to get herself to the gynecologist for an STD test.

  “Dr. Reynolds?” Patrick repeated.

  The doctor breathed in and opened her mouth. Daniel realized at that moment how attractive she was. And not just in an “I’ve been fighting zombies and the only naked woman I have seen in a week was an infected woman running down the street resembling a skeleton wearing a latex bodysuit made out of skin” attractive, but teen movie, take off the dork glasses, pull the hair out of the tight bun, and voila: attractive.

  “Reynolds!” the shout came from Mr. Spencer, who had returned and was poking his head back through the door.

  Dr. Reynolds got up and scurried out of the room, followed by Spencer, who shut the door behind them.

  “They make a cute couple,” Daniel said.

  CHAPTER 8

  This is Dr. Zed coming to you with your Outbreak Update.

  Even in the face of the zombie apocalypse, tech entrepreneurs still keep innovating. A brand new app has been developed by the Post Conflict Restoration Corp and is being pushed out to all smart phones as a software update. There will be no charge for this app and your data plan will not be billed.

  The app is called WALKR and you’ll see the icon once your phone restarts. To use the app, just click WALKR on your smart phone, then take a picture of an infected or suspected infected. Once you have a photo, swipe the photo to the right, and it’ll be sent to the PCRC Containment Team headquarters. The photo will be automatically tagged with the latitude and longitude of where it was taken, allowing PCRC Containment Teams to arrive within minutes to collect the infected for safe transport to a quarantine camp. There, the infected will be well cared for until a cure can be found and administered. If you did not get a good photo, or you realize the picture is not a Skell but really your ex-wife or mother-in-law, simply swipe left, and the photo will be deleted.

  And please folks, stop sending in pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow, she is not a Skell, she’s a vegan! Just a little joke there, Gwyn, no need to call the lawyers!

  Now, Dr. Zed says: please don’t confuse this with that other swiping app, otherwise you could end up dating a real stiff.

  Unlike that other app, WALKR is meant to stop the spread of disease.

  Dr. Zed is just joking folks—infection control is everyone’s responsibility.

  We now return to your regular programming.

  CHAPTER 9

  Fiona gazed out the window of the passenger side of her brother James Sullivan’s car. He had picked her up from the small airport where a private PCRC jet had flown her in from her home in Washington, DC. She had left—some may say fled—Jersey for D.C. only a couple years prior, but you never really leave New Jersey. It can’t be scrubbed off you, it can’t be purged out of you; it is in your DNA.

  Since leaving, she had returned at most twice a year, and when she did, it would appear as if she never left. Same crowd at the T-Bone Bar, same high school, same roads, same shops. Yet this time, it was as if she were in a version of her hometown only seen in nightmares. A landscape recognizable, yet unfamiliar. She was lost.

  She had been brought back to her hometown by Maxwell in an attempt to provide some comfort for her brother James. She hoped that, while there, she would gain some closure for herself as well.

  She and James were two damaged people, bonded by blood, but distant as strangers. She had grown closer to her brother Gerald when he shared his secret with her not long ago. It was a vulnerability he exposed which had brought her closer to him than either of her other two brothers. The death of Gerald had crushed her emotionally, but it seemed to cause James to snap. He was not a man unaccustomed to death. While her brother Daniel was relentless in his recounting of war stories, relishing in every act of valor or depravity, James had not spoken much about his time in special operations or of his work as a mercenary for PCRC.

  Growing up, she observed her older brothers as if she was researching primates in the wild. She saw how their core group of friends had formed, and she alone had sensed the invisible hand of Maxwell Gold coaxing them together, and then serving as a shepherd, guiding each of them into their individual—possibly pre-determined—destiny. It was not until recently that she had understood why he took such interest, and why he had shaped and coalesced them to suit his anticipated future needs.

  Her eyes tu
rned to a large green freeway exit sign in the distance. James Sullivan saw it as well and slowed the car to view the spectacle. Underneath the white letters that read North Exit, someone had spray painted: “Must Gut Them!”

  It was not the first time she had seen that simple, three-word command scrawled.

  Must gut them.

  It had been written on brick walls, written in huge letters across the asphalt of a Kmart parking lot. It was not until this moment that she realized what that three-word message was commanding them to do. Beyond the sign, positioned on the side of the road, three Skells had been propped against highway equipment.

  Their stomachs sliced open, their black, oily intestines laying in a pile on the ground in front of them. It was a grotesque illustration by the author to convey what he wanted done.

  James realized his sister was gawking at this gruesome display and accelerated.

  “I’m really glad you’re here, Fi,” James said, hoping to pull her attention away. “It’s been a long time. I don’t know what Maxwell told you, but really, I’m fine.” It was a lie. “But I’m glad you’re here anyway.”

  Fiona looked over at him. “Mr. Gold told me you tried to commit suicide.”

  James balked, “That’s ridiculous!” He did not look over at her; he kept his eyes on the nearly empty road. Before the apocalypse, at this time of day, traffic would be at a standstill. Right now, there was barely another car on the road.

  Fiona did not believe James, but she played along. “Okay, I thought it was a load of horseshit anyway.” She noticed how quickly her vernacular reverted back to the way it was before she left the state. She could not speak in that fashion in gentile Washington, and it took her a while as a Jersey girl to grow accustomed to the more delicate discussions of polite society.

  “So we’ll be staying at the Congress hotel. Pretty swank digs. Well, for me anyway. They have the whole place locked down with a perimeter of security that a microbe couldn’t penetrate. It really is the new White House.”

  There was activity up ahead. She saw a white truck with the PCRC logo on side. Two men in hazmat suits were using long poles with large hooks to corral half a dozen bloody Skells up a ramp into the back of the truck doors. On the side of the road, the remains of their victims. It appeared as if two cars had run off the road and the occupants were set upon by the creatures. Ripped apart and eaten. Their remains were scattered both inside and outside the vehicles.

  “Do they still offer room service?” Fiona asked, figuring she would not be venturing out.

  “Does the Pope shit in the woods?” James responded.

  “I don’t know,” Fiona sighed, “but God sure shits in New Jersey.”

  CHAPTER 10

  James Sullivan had faced death many times while serving in the military and later as a mercenary. He had killed and almost been killed. He never dealt with the idea of his own mortality, though. Even in the most precarious situations, where death seemed inevitable, he knew there was at least a 1% chance he would be able to fight or shoot or talk his way out of taking a dirt nap.

  Now, he was facing a foe he could not fight or shoot or talk to.

  He had cancer. And to add insult to inevitability, it was MBC, male breast cancer. Inoperable, metastasized, and spreading to his heart. He had months left—optimistically.

  He knew what would happen if he shared his secret. He would tell them he had breast cancer. First, they would laugh, assuming he was making a joke. Then, slowly realize was not, and their smile would fade and a look of mortification would set in. Next would come the pity, then avoidance, and from that point on, he would already be dead to them.

  Why couldn’t he die from something more manly, like prostate cancer, heart disease, or getting shot by a jealous husband. Christ, male breast cancer, how fucking embarrassing, he thought.

  James had been able to file this news away, just as he had filed away the bad memories from a lifetime spent creating bad memories. But, as the cancer ate through his body, the thought of it ate through at the walls he had built in his mind. The “dying of cancer” compartment started to spill into the “my brother is dead” compartment.

  The thoughts of cancer continued eating away his mind walls. The walls that had held back empathy, sympathy, and decency, long suppressed and hidden away, they were roaming free. They created confusion and reevaluations of decisions and past actions. Not something that someone in his line of work should ever do.

  Next, the cancer thoughts began to eat through the mind walls holding long-forgotten atrocities. Atrocities he had witnessed and committed. Then it collapsed the wall that blocked out the guilty thought that he himself had paved the way for his brothers to follow in his footsteps. That he had not protected them and, instead, had led them into a life of experiencing and committing their own atrocities and war crimes.

  Finally, the cancer thoughts ate through the mind wall that blocked out the faces of those he had killed and the faces of the families who cursed him. Like a horde of zombies, those thoughts and memories and faces and emotions burst through the mind walls. They descended upon him; arms out, faces ravaged, hands bloody, and teeth snapping.

  His mind had made its final stand, and it had fallen.

  CHAPTER 11

  Woodrow looked around the room. It appeared that the former occupant had been a teenage boy by the various swimsuit model posters and rock band promotions pinned to the walls. He saw a poster for a band called Roman Kandle, a thrash punk band based out of San Francisco.

  This kid has got to have a stash of weed somewhere, he thought. I just need to relax a bit. He went through the kid’s room, opening dresser drawers and cabinets, searching for the box or baggie that would hold the hidden buds. He found no contraband, but he did find an Apple laptop.

  He opened it and the screen lit up. It automatically detected the house WiFi and went online. He needed to learn what was happening outside in the real world. He clicked over to the CNN website, then NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox. All the major news sites seemed to be reporting the same story, as if someone had handed them all the same script and they were dutiful parrots repeating what they were told to say. For this, they are paid millions a year, he thought.

  He logged into Gmail to check his email account. He entered his username and password and his inbox opened.

  There was a tone, and the Skype application opened.

  “What the hell, I did not hit Skype,” he muttered.

  The laptop screen blurred and a video chat window overtook the display. A live feed of a man wearing a rubber cow head sitting in front of a green banner with white lettering spelling out GRASS appeared.

  The rubber cow-headed person spoke to him using a voice-altering application. “Hello, Dr. Woody. We have been waiting for you.”

  Woodrow began to type: WHO IS THI—

  “No need to type, Dr. Woody,” the voice said. “You can speak freely, we can see and hear you.”

  Woodrow noticed that a small light next to the laptop’s built in webcam was now lit. “Who are you?”

  “We are the cyber arm of GRASS.”

  Woodrow cocked an eyebrow. “What the hell is Grass?”

  “Green Rights Action, Schutzstaffel. Schutzstaffel is German for Protection Squad.”

  “How did you find me, how are you even doing this?”

  “Again, as I just said, we are the cyber arm of GRASS. Is this not sinking in? We are really good at computer stuff.” The cow was getting obnoxious.

  “You found me when I logged into my email. Damn it!” Woodrow said it out loud, but he was cursing himself.

  “You think we can’t find you when you’re online no matter what you’re doing? We have been tracking you for months. Your phone, your car’s GPS, that Fitbit on your wrist. We know where you go”

  “What do you want with me?” Woodrow asked, growing more disconcerted at the tone of this conversation.

  “How are you going to stop this fire, Dr. Woody?”

  “You! It was
you that contacted me at the lab!” Woodrow said, recalling the cryptic email he received at the PCRC underground laboratory where the Skell virus was researched and infected humans were studied.

  “Yes.”

  “You know about the...about what was being done there,” Woodrow accused.

  The cow head wobbled a little. “Yes”

  “Why didn’t you stop it?!” Woodrow demanded.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Woodrow balled his hands into fists. “I tried!” He pleaded.

  “You failed. You have a history of failing, don’t you, Dr. Woody?”

  “What do you want?”

  “We want to help you, Dr. Woody. We want to expose the PCRC. We want to tell the world who started the zombie apocalypse.”

  “Okay, let’s not get hyperbolic. There is no apocalypse and there are no zombies. But, if you want to sling mud at a corporation, do it. You don’t need me. I have no affiliation with them.”

  “We need you to help us get the message out.”

  “How and why would I do that?”

  “Fugitive war criminal Colonel Tindall has a laptop. That laptop has the ability to execute a specific program. Do you know if he took it with him?”

  “I don’t know. If not, we have no chance of getting back in there to retrieve it. The Colonel tried to gas the state. After that, we all fled. The PCRC’s private army came in and stormed the base. The place is some sort of camp now. There are private contractors scurrying around everywhere like roaches.”

  “All we need you to do is find and turn on his laptop. On that laptop, you will find an icon that says ‘Broadcast.’ Double-click that icon, and together we will let the world know what is happening here in New Jersey, and what is headed their way. Everyone will know what is really happening to the infected.”