Walter parked in the first empty spot on his left. He was not sure why he chose to park right next to the last parked car in the row. The entire garage was available to him, but subconsciously, he fell into the natural progression of filling the next available slot.
He did not get out of his car right away. He chose to finish his coffee and listen to the Infected Update Report on the radio.
The announcer stated that a large horde of assembled infected was making its way towards his area, but it was not expected to arrive for at least another twelve to sixteen hours. The horde was thought to be 300 to 600 strong, but crowd reduction methods were underway.
The announcer continued the broadcast by stating that authorities were advising all residents remain in their homes after 5pm that evening, and to take proper precautions prior to the horde’s arrival.
Much like before a snowstorm, residents were asked to avoid travel, keep the roads clear, to stock up on food, water, prescription medicines, and to have Go-Bags ready with additional supplies, cash, flashlights, and copies of essential records should evacuations be mandated.
The announcer reminded residents that they were not to attempt to clear their own yards of infected that might gather, but to wait for authorities to arrive and remove.
Residents were to stay doors and windows closed and locked. Should there be a breach of home perimeter by infected, residents were to have a safe room within the home equipped with cellular and landline phone, computer, food, water, and radio. Residents were to hang white towels out of windows to alert authorities of home invasion and wait until security officials arrived.
Residents were advised not to attempt to assist neighbors, or to conduct vigilante attempts to clear one’s own neighborhood. Only uniformed PCRC Security Agents were to conduct area clearings.
The announcer was from the overnight shift. Walter was there to relieve him and provide the broadcast announcements for the day shift. Walter worked for Westmore Marketing, which was contracted by PCRC to edit, record, and broadcast the Dr. Zed Infected Update Report on all NJ radio networks. The copy he read on air changed every day. He was the voice of thousands of past political campaign commercials, state fair announcements, and department of transportation updates for road work projects, and now, he reported the movement of zombie hordes as if they were approaching snowstorms. It seemed the natural progression of his career.
Walter looked at his watch. It was 9:15am. He determined he would need to leave work a bit early today if he was to have enough time to hit the market before the expected horde arrival. He probably had more time than he anticipated, as the reports they give him to read were never very accurate.
He rode the elevator to the fifth floor, enjoying the silent company of two others on the ride up. As the doors opened on his floor, and he stepped out, he wondered if he should wish them a good day. He didn’t know them, had not said hello to them when he entered. Should he say goodbye as he left? What was the proper protocol for elevator meetings, he thought to himself. Before he came to a decision, the door had closed and they were gone. He decided that if he saw them in the elevator tomorrow he would tell them goodbye.
He entered the office and encountered people he knew. Some he had worked with for over fifteen years. Today, as was the case yesterday, people seemed to walk the halls in a trance. He saw Tracy, who was holding a stack of papers she had just picked up from the printer. She stood with her back to the large corporate Xerox, staring off into space, completely lost in thought. The papers in her hand were poorly collated, as if she had already dropped them, then scooped up the scattered stationary, and just held them without squaring the edges. He said, “Good morning,” and she gave a startled jump and gasp. She quietly apologized to him for her reaction and rushed off. He had announced an update yesterday that stated that as much as 70% of the state of Jersey could be suffering from PTSD, but those reports were probably not very accurate.
Little was.
He walked past his coworker’s offices on the way to his own and it appeared as if many folks had come in just to leave. They were picking up laptops, files, chargers. Some were packing personal items, such as their child’s drawings, which had been thumbtacked to the wall, or family photos from the desk. They seemed to be expecting an extended telecommute period.
He made it to the small studio where he would spend his day receiving, editing, and reading copy on the infected movements. He would announce updates about what areas had been overrun and what areas had been cleared, and helpful hints and advice for protecting yourself when infected were moving en masse into your neighborhood.
Upon returning from lunch, the number of cars in the garage had decreased. The Infected Update Report copy he received and recited over the air stuck to its original predictions of an arrival between 9:00pm and midnight, but it also said that PCRC Security Force attempts at culling of the numbers was unsuccessful. New reports expected a volume of at least 600 infected, but other estimates stated that the number could grow as high as 1,000 infected arriving by midnight.
The remaining people on his floor were now all heading home to hunker down. He was in no rush as he was used to being the last person in the office after his shift, especially during holidays. He was single with no kids, so people just expected him to bite the bullet and continue to work while those with families headed out early on Thanksgiving and Christmas. He would stay behind and man the phones, returned the emails, shuffle the paper, lock the doors, and turn out the lights at the end of the day. He knew that eventually he would have a wife and children, but needed to focus on other things right now. They say that finding a spouse after forty is more unlikely than getting hit by lightning, but those claims are never very accurate.
As 5:00pm rolled around, the act of walking out of an empty building towards an empty garage was something with which he had grown comfortable. Well, perhaps not comfortable, but familiar. As the elevator door opened onto the first floor of the garage, he noticed the entrance gates had been left open.
He also saw that there were still many of his coworkers’ cars parked. And he realized that he was not going to make it to the market that night.
Those arrival time reports were never very accurate.
CHAPTER 38
Colonel Tindall gazed out through the window at two Skells that staggered past the front lawn of the central house on the cul-de-sac. He and his men were about to haul ass. He wanted them gone, but he was curious nonetheless. “These things are fascinating,” he said to no one in particular.
“They are not things, they are people,” Woodrow said.
“Bullshit. They stopped being people once their brain turned to oatmeal and we became the other white meat.”
“Speak for yourself,” Moz chimed in.
Tindall glanced over at him and smiled—his first real smile since he’d left FOB Prince.
He slung his rucksack over his shoulder, checked his sidearm, and looked back at the assembled soldiers geared up to follow him to the ends of the earth...or to the secret Jersey compound that he was taking them.
There was also one overweight former night watchman looking to recreate himself.
Tindall looked to Moz. “Last chance, dark meat.”
Moz smiled. “Thank you, colonel. I’ll take my chances here, Inshallah.”
Dr. Moz found Woodrow’s tale of GRASS and the broadcast they were forcing him into dubious, at best. He was equally distrusting of GRASS’s motives, but decided to stick it out with Woodrow...for the time being.
Moz was born to an Indian mother and an Egyptian father. They had toiled as laborers in the United Arab Emirates, which was one of the better places to actually live and grow up.
His father arrived in the UAE in his twenties and followed the routine as most laborers do. He rented a bed in one of the worker camps outside of Abu Dhabi. These were stone barracks, which slept eight to a room. You rented your bed by shift, which meant if you worked during the day, a man who worked during the
night slept in your bed during the day. When he woke to go to his evening shift, he would vacate the bed for Moz’s father at night.
Buses with no air conditioners shuttled workers back and forth from the camps to the cities all day and night. Small, revolving blade fans churned above every other seat, but usually, only a third of the fans worked. The summers were brutal, with temperatures reaching well above 100 degrees.
That didn’t matter. His father laid bricks in the sun, creating beautifully ornate designs on the embankments between the roads. The work was brutal and the conditions were harsh, but he made enough to send back to his family and still survive.
His designs caught the eye of a developer and he was hired to create tile and porcelain frescos in one of the many shopping malls that dotted the city. In that mall, he met a beautiful girl working in a shop that sold souvenirs to tourists: hookah pipes, prayer rugs, and incense burners.
After the sun set, and the cooler night air replaced the stifling heat, Abu Dhabi became magical. They married, and after a couple years sharing an apartment with others, they were able to afford a tiny apartment of their own. In time, they had a single child. He would grow up and be educated in the seemingly only tranquil oasis in a turbulent Middle East.
He inherited his father’s eye for design and fell in love with the chemical and biological make up of organisms. He received a scholarship to attend a local university, and afterwards, traveled to Egypt for advanced education. It was there that things took a wrong turn.
Moz and three classmates decided to travel to the resort area of Dahab one Saturday. On their way back, Moz drifted off to sleep in the back seat behind the driver. He awoke to find the car had come to a stop in the middle of an isolated desert road back to Cairo. Four heavily armed men stood guard at a roadblock that was not much more than three steel oil drums placed in the center of the road.
The leader of the men was the only one in uniform, the others looked as though they had come from a night of disco directly to their posts, but with the large AK-47s they were holding, no one would argue their lack of propriety. The leader came over, heavyset, top buttons of his shirt undone to display a generous amount of body hair. He asked the driver for the men’s identification. Each of them dutifully handed over their student cards. The driver handed them to one of the casually dressed men, who used his cell phone to call someone and read off each card’s information.
The leader looked at the four for a bit, with a hint of disdain at the young, educated men who would someday most likely leave Egypt to make their futures. He told them to get out of the car and they obeyed.
They stood side by side at the car. Moz was nervous, but his three companions had grown up in Egypt, where such harassment by the authorities was a common occurrence. The car’s driver whispered to the others that he expected the soldiers to ask them to pay a toll to continue forward. Each smiled as they anticipated this stop as nothing more than a shakedown for a few dollars.
The soldier returned and handed the ID cards to the uniformed leader, he pointed to one of the IDs while leaning towards the uniformed soldier and muttering something in his ear. The soldier told them to get back in the car and be on their way. As they did, and as Moz closed his door, the uniformed man yelled out in anger.
The four men froze.
“You!” He said, pointing at Moz. “You stepped on my foot!”
“No, I did not,” he protested, not realizing he had stepped on the man’s foot at all.
“You did,” said the man, pulling Moz from the car.
“Sir, I did not realize. I assure you it was not on purpose. I apologize.”
“You are under arrest for assaulting an officer,” the uniformed solder announced.
“What?!” Moz screeched. Fear and shock shook him.
“You three, go, drive on!” The other soldier commanded.
The students attempted to get out of the car, but the guards leveled their guns at them, one shouting, “If you move, you will be shot!”
The three students retreated into the car.
“Now go!” The man in the uniform yelled at them. “You can collect your friend at the Cairo central police department, or you can stay and be arrested as well.”
The three had no choice. They gave one last look to Moz’s confused and terrified eyes and drove off. Over the horizon. The students immediately reported the incident to the Cairo police, the Egyptian Army, and the university, but not having any identification or even a name as to who the men on the road were, nor even an exact position of where they were stopped, made the effort futile.
Moz was taken to Afghanistan by his captors a few days later. He assumed the soldiers had been told that he, with his chemical engineering and biological research background, would be of value to certain organizations. The guards had been bribed by the terrorists to be on the lookout for such people, and when found, they would be rewarded for delivering them.
Afghanistan was his home with his new captors for a month before Moz was caught, along with other scientists, by Americans and sent to GITMO, the US prison in Cuba. After a year of captivity, a trade was negotiated. Several prisoners were to be swapped in exchange for some Americans held by the Taliban. Dr. Moz and two other scientists held in the prison were chosen for the exchange. He begged the Americans not to send him back to the Taliban.
Moz had befriended an American soldier who worked at the prison. The two bonded over their mutual love of film and when Moz pleaded with him to not allow the swap, the soldier told him in confidence that there was nothing he could do, that it was being ordered by someone powerful. The soldier told him that an American one-star general in Afghanistan had opposed the exchange, and had complained so loudly that he was demoted to the rank of colonel and reassigned to a place that was supposedly even worse than Kandahar.
A place called Jersey.
The swap went forward anyway, but to Dr. Moz’s surprise, he and the other scientists did not get sent back to the hands of the Taliban.
No.
They were sent to the New Jersey-based laboratories of PCRC and were put to work on the Modified Embryonic Animal Tissue experiments.
CHAPTER 39
Fiona hit every key possible on her laptop trying to get the video connection back with Woodrow. She had no idea how he had accessed her laptop and she had no idea how to reopen the video chat.
She threw her laptop on the bed and ran down the hall to James’s room. She was going to insist he take her to Princeton University to try and find where Woodrow was hiding out. She knew James would fight her on this, tell her it was too dangerous, and she would have to make a big show of how if he did not escort her, she would go alone.
She burst into his room to find him sitting at the edge of his hotel bed, facing the bare wall.
“I need you to take me to Princeton University right now. I just received a video from Woodrow saying he was there, but your security teams chased them out and are now hunting him down. I want you to drive me there right now, and if you don’t, I’ll—”
James rose up from his perch on the bed. “Okay, let’s go.”
“What?” She blinked. Not sure if he was serious. Even less certain of why it would be that easy.
“I said let’s go, I need a change of scenery.” He reached over and swiped the car keys from the top of his dresser.
“Okay...thanks.”
They made their way down to the garage and took off in James’s Humvee.
They drove for almost an hour, silent, with not a word shared between them. Fiona stared out the window at the endless expanse of trees as they navigated the back roads past Wharton State Forrest.
James had stayed off the main roads after seeing several Must Gut Them warnings and a white PCRC containment truck on the side of the road in a strange angle. The back doors were open and the driver’s side door was smeared with blood. The scattered body parts strewn around told tale of a containment gone wrong.
“It’s metastasizing,”
James said aloud, but to himself.
“What is?” Fiona asked.
“They can’t control this. They think they can, but it is too far gone. It will spread. There is no treatment.” He continued to mumble.
She watched him. Worried about his mental state. “I thought they were housing them in quarantine till a cure or treatment could be found.”
“Who?”
“The infected. You were just talking about the infected.”
James’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, right, them.”
She sat silent, looking at him. “Every time I am in the car with you, I am completely lost,” she said and returned to watching the trees.
They drove in silence for another couple of miles.
“Look,” Fiona yelled. “There’s a man up there.”
“Probably infected,” James said.
“No way, he’s too fat. He’s waiving us down.”
“We ain’t stopping.”
“We need to help him!” Fiona pleaded.
“No, no way, we are not helping anyone, and we are not picking up strangers.”
“You need to pull over.”
As they approached the portly man waving his arms in distress, Fiona grabbed the steering wheel and forced an angry James to pull the car to the side of the road.
The man started to walk up to the car, but then stopped, turned, and ran into the woods.
Six men in military uniforms emerged and surrounded the car.
James looked at Fiona, but she was too scared to return his glare.
The men pointed assault rifles at the car. A tense minute passed and then a new man emerged from the woods. The portly guy followed him a few feet behind.
“Hello, sir, ma’am,” the man said as politely as possible. “I truly apologize for this inconvenience, but we are going to have to confiscate your vehicle. We will not harm you and we won’t take any of your personal belongings, we just need the vehicle. We will drive you to a safe zone and ensure you arrive there unharmed.”
Exit Zero (Book 2): Nuke Jersey Page 14
