The instructor turned back to the martyrs around the fire and sent them to their tents. Then he walked a slow circuit of the campsite, wandering past the row of cages and then around the trucks and Land-Rover. He walked stiffly, with his fists clasped tightly behind his back and his head lowered in thought.
He was choosing a good place where he would bury the Russian.
“Allah be praised.”
*
It was completely dark when the Russian tugged aside the hessian cloth across the cabin door, and stepped out into the glow of the firelight. The night was cold – the temperature had plummeted as the last of the day’s heat was sucked from the desert sand. The Russian fastened the button of his trousers and re-buckled his belt, then looked round for the imposing shape of the instructor.
He was sitting around the fire, squatting over the flames, amidst the dark, expressionless faces of the martyrs. “We will begin,” he said. “I want to be away from here before sunrise. I have meetings in Tehran with your leaders.”
The instructor looked up into the face of the Russian and he nodded, his expression blank. He knew the Russian did not have meetings. He knew because his orders were to kill him as soon as the demonstration was complete. He got to his feet and the men around him stood dutifully.
He waved to the three martyrs. “Arrange the trucks and the Land-Rover,” he said brusquely. “I want their headlights on the row of cages.”
It took a few minutes – long enough for the Russian to fetch his briefcase from the hut. He set it down on the hood of the Land-Rover. Inside was a bottle of vodka, a small leather pouch the size of a woman’s purse, and a row of slim vials, each two inches long. The vials were packed within thick black foam that had been cut to hold the vessels. Each vial was sealed, and beside each one was an aluminum tube with a screw cap.
“These are for your men,” the Russian said, pulling one of the vials carefully from the clutch of its foam padding. “The vial goes inside the aluminum tube for transport,” he demonstrated, slipping a vial inside the cylinder and screwing the cap back on carefully. “It should be kept this way until the time to open it and inject the virus. Understand?”
The instructor nodded. He took the cylinder carefully between his fingers, unscrewed the lid and slid the vial into the palm of his hand. It was half an inch round. The liquid inside was clear as water. The top of the tube had been sealed.
“The contents must be injected immediately,” the Russian said.
Again the instructor nodded. The previous Russian scientist who had come to the camp a week earlier had gone carefully over the transport and storage procedures, but this was the first time he or his men had seen the actual virus. The instructor passed the cylinder and vial on to the martyr beside him, and then began to issue the other vials until there were three glass tubes remaining.
The Russian took the leather pouch from the briefcase and unzipped it. It opened to reveal several syringes, an assortment of needles, and a stethoscope.
He rigged a syringe and filled it with the contents of one of the vials.
“Enough for ten men,” he said. “Come. I will show you.”
The Russian strode across to the nearest cage. The two prisoners cowered away, but the cage was small. They pressed themselves against the bars. The Russian reached into the cage and snatched at one of the Iraqi’s thin frail wrists and clamped his fingers tight. The man made a pathetic whimpering sound. The Russian jabbed the needle into the man’s arm and injected a small amount of the virus.
Nothing happened.
He trapped the second prisoner’s foot and one of the martyrs reached between the bars to hold the leg steady. The Russian shot the second prisoner full of virus and then leaped back quickly, as though the prisoners might explode.
Nothing happened.
“The virus works quickly,” the Russian said. He went to the fire and threw the syringe into the flames. Then he went back to the hood of the Land-Rover and prepared the next round of injections.
Suddenly the first prisoner went rigid, as though charged with a surge of electricity. There was no room within the cage and the sound of his leg breaking was like the crack of a bat hitting a ball. The man’s eyes rolled in their sockets and his back arched, bending to an impossible angle. A scream of agony split through the still night and was abruptly cut short.
The man was dead.
The second prisoner wailed in terror – and then his body went into spasms. He writhed and thrashed. He raked his fingers at his face, clawing at his eyes, and then a bright gush of blood burst from his mouth and he slumped dead against the cold bars of the cage.
“Reanimation takes place anywhere between a minute and forty-five minutes after death,” the Russian said casually, as the instructor stared fixedly at the bodies of the two Iraqis, twisted in the agony of cruel murder. “It depends on the victim, and their physical condition. In the case of these poor pathetic wretches, the next stage will happen soon,” he said.
“Explain,” the instructor demanded, even though he knew the workings of the virus.
The Russian didn’t answer immediately. Instead he went to the second cage and injected one of the prisoners.
“It is a pathogenic virus,” the Russian said, “that induces rapid death in the victim, and then reanimation sometime shortly afterwards.”
“How?”
The Russian frowned. “Do you really want to know?”
“Of course,” the instructor said.
The Russian sighed irritably. He had a headache from the vodka. He rubbed his forehead. “Death comes quickly once the victim has been infected. Usually within thirty seconds. Once death has occurred, the virus re-wires the victim’s nervous system,” he said vaguely, “although not entirely. The machinery of the pathogen spreads through the blood system. It takes a minute for blood to circulate through the body of an average person, and once the pathogen begins to break down, it starts inducing an immune response. The pathogen produces a highly volatile state. In essence, the reanimated ghoul uses the body’s capabilities much like a parasite. What the pathogen creates within that body is a creature that cannot feel pain, cannot reason, and is governed only by one biological instinct – the urge to reproduce through biting and infecting. That instinct will drive it until the time it decomposes.”
“They become living dead?”
The Russian nodded. “They do not feed. They do not drink, nor do they sleep. They kill until they collapse.”
The Russian went quickly along the line and injected one prisoner in each cage. When he was finished he was sweating, despite the near freezing temperature. He leaned heavily against the side of the Land-Rover. His hands were shaking. He needed a drink. He checked his wristwatch. It had been nearly twenty minutes since the first two prisoners had died.
“What is it called, this thing of terror?” the instructor asked. “Does it have a name?”
The Russian smiled bleakly. “When I was back in Soviet Union I worked in chemical weapons labs,” he said proudly and his chest puffed out. “We were perfecting many things, but not all were success,” he said. “Some things became not what we expected. Some things became worse,” he winked conspiratorially as though he were sharing a State secret. “This was called F1-st,” the Russian explained. It had no other name.”
The Iranian instructor’s English was passable but it was not a language he was comfortable with. The Russian picked up a branch of wood from the fire and scratched the letters large in the sand at the man’s feet.
The instructor sounded them out silently, and then more clearly.
“Fist,” he said, and there was a sudden sense of righteousness and awe in his voice. “The Fist of Allah.”
*
Even for hardened men who were accustomed to death in all its forms, the killing of the uninfected Iraqi prisoners was difficult to watch. The men who had died under the needle suddenly rose, like wild animals, snarling and hissing. Their eyes blazed with manic hatred as the
y tore at their fellow captives. The scent of blood seemed to enrage the infected, and their voices rose to high wailing shrieks as the virus drove them berserk. In just a few frenzied minutes it was all over. The dead lay mutilated in the cages and the infected prowled and snarled and hissed at the assembled martyrs, shaking the bars with strength that was borne from blind madness.
The Iranian instructor stepped forward warily and paced along the line of cages. Blood seeped into the sand and the undead thrust their clawed hands through the bars of the cage and lashed out at him like wild animals. At the end of the line, he spun on his heel and called out to the Russian.
“And so the ones they have attacked – they too will reanimate within forty-five minutes, yes?”
“Da,” the Russian nodded.
“How do you kill them?”
The Russian smiled wryly. He cocked his thumb and finger into the shape of a gun and put it to his temple. “You shoot them in the head. Destroy the diseased brain. It’s the only way,” he said.
The instructor frowned thoughtfully as he came back to the Land-Rover.
“You do not have an antidote, Russian?”
“No. Not yet. I am still working on this matter.”
The instructor shook his head. “Not any more.”
He pulled his pistol from its holder and thrust it between the big scientist’s eyes.
There was a split-second of dangerous silence, and then the Russian laughed. It was a bear-like growl; a wheezing breathless sound that shook his big fleshy frame. “You can’t shoot me,” he chuckled. “I just told you, I have not yet created an antidote. Without it, even you camel-loving apes would be infected once the virus is released. It will sweep around the world, cross all borders, and leave your filthy piece of desert barren of all life. Not even your fucking Allah could save you then.”
The instructor raised his eyebrow.
“That is the very last time you blaspheme,” he said coldly. Your insults to Allah signed your death warrant long ago.”
The Russian’s face became outraged. He spat in the instructor’s face. “Do it then!” The Russian held his hands wide, inviting his own execution. “But if you kill me it will be the end of your Muslim dream. I have told you – there is no antidote.”
The Russian was wrong.
The instructor pulled the trigger and the bullet tore through the back of the Russian’s head in a pink cloud of blood and gore. He fell backwards into the sand, eyes still wide with a frozen expression of disbelief and shock as the sound of the shot echoed into the dark night.
The girl was asleep on a narrow cot when two of the martyrs burst into the hut. They dragged her naked into the glowing firelight and forced her onto her knees. The instructor executed her with a single bullet to the back of her head and she fell forward into the sand.
“Take a long look,” he raised his voice and clenched his fist. “Look at the cages and know this is what you will become – glorious killing machines to champion the Muslim cause against the infidels. Warrior lions who will take Allah’s Fist to America, and destroy it with a single mighty blow.”
The martyrs began to chant, raising their weapons and thrusting them above their head. The instructor listened to the sound of their voices swelling with the force of their fanaticism, and he knew they were ready.
“Allah be praised.”
At midnight the instructor began executing the infected. The cages were dismantled and each bloody body dragged onto the fire. Then the hut and tents were burned.
At dawn the next morning - just as first light was breaking across the rim of endless desert horizon - the Lions of Islam boarded the trucks and Land-Rover, and set out on a journey that would change the world forever.
TEHRAN.
The meeting took place in a secret underground command center that sprawled deep beneath the Abbas Abad district in the north of the capital. The area was the location for the offices of the state security forces and the Organization of Islamic Culture and Communications, and so he was surprised when the driver by-passed each building complex and drove on past several foreign embassies.
The vehicle turned, and then turned again, finally braking to a halt in front of a non-descript brick building on Mirzayeh Shirazi Avenue. It was dark. The instructor stepped out of the car. The night sky was brilliant with the light of a million stars, and in the cool still silence of the city he could hear the distant sounds of evening prayers, carried on the breeze from the Mosalla Prayer Grounds.
Three men were waiting for him on the footpath. They were dressed casually, but the instructor sensed the awareness of them. It was in the way they held themselves, and in the steel of their eyes. They were military, and he stood passively and allowed them to search him before being escorted through the heavy wooden door.
The building was a two-story empty shell. Inside was a foyer where four uniformed members of the Revolutionary Guard stood on alert. Each of the soldiers wore a black beard and was dressed in combat uniform. Behind the soldiers was a small, slim man, who stood beside a set of double doors.
The man was wearing a dark, western styled suit over a crisp white shirt and black tie. His facial features were classically Persian. The nose beneath the dark eyes was hooked, and the jet-black hair was closely cut atop a high-set forehead. He watched the instructor being searched by two of the Revolutionary Guard, and then nodded. A faint flicker of a smile touched his lips.
“Welcome captain,” the man said. His voice was almost effeminately soft, and cultured. “The mullahs have just arrived from prayers. They are waiting for you.”
The double doors were opened from within by two more guards, and the man led the instructor to an elevator. They rode down in silence, and when the doors whispered open again, the instructor was forty feet below the embassy district of Tehran and standing in a wide well lit passageway.
“This way,” the man said softly. He led the instructor into a vast network of tunnels, their footsteps echoing in the eerie silence of the cavernous complex, and finally came to a halt outside a wide wooden door attended by two more guards. The man nodded and the soldiers stepped aside. He pushed the doors open and led the instructor inside a conference room. There was a polished timber table in the middle of the floor with a dozen chairs nestled around it. The lighting in the room was softer than the flaring fluorescent light in the passageways, and the air carried the faint scent of tobacco smoke.
Standing, waiting for him at the head of the table was a black-robed Ayatollah.
He was a thin, elderly man, his expression made thoughtful and studious by the over-sized glasses that rested on the beak of his nose. He was dressed in a Palestinian kaffiyeh and a black turban. His long untrimmed beard was streaked with silver strands. In attendance at either side of the Ayatollah stood four heavily bearded hojjat-el-Islam. They were younger men, perhaps each in their sixties, the instructor guessed. They were dressed in black robes and wore white turbans.
“Salam aleikom, captain,” the Ayatollah said. He was softly spoken, yet his voice carried unmistakable authority. “You have performed your tasks most admirably.”
The instructor said nothing. He bowed his head and the Ayatollah summoned him closer with a wave of his hand. The instructor marched to the head of the table and stood stiffly.
“How many martyrs remain to carry the war to the Great Satan and its allies?” the old man’s voice took on a sudden edge.
“Three,” the instructor said. “One was killed during our time in the desert training and preparing.”
“And where are these jihadists?”
“Do Ab, your Holiness.”
The Ayatollah frowned. “The training camp?”
“Yes, your Holiness. It has been abandoned for some months. The martyrs wait there in secrecy for your order.”
The Do Ab Training Camp was a remote installation in the north of the country. Little more than a cluster of crude huts, the camp had been left abandoned since the beginning of the year.
/> The Ayatollah nodded thoughtfully. He turned and glanced at the clerics who stood around him.
“Have you preserved all secrecy?” one of the hojjats asked suddenly. He was the tallest of the four men, his eyes hooded beneath dark bushy eyebrows. He had a long drawn face, and his skin was grey as ash.
The instructor nodded. “There are no witnesses.”
The Ayatollah studied the instructor carefully, his expression suddenly darker, and made grave.
“Are they ready to take the holy war to the infidels?”
“Most ready, your Holiness,” the instructor said. “As are we all.”
The Ayatollah smiled and nodded benignly. The answer was as he had expected. “Good, my son,” he said and suddenly reached out and placed his hand gently on the instructor’s arm. “Because it has been decided that you will join your men as the last martyr, captain. In one week from now, you will go to America and lead the war against the Great Satan yourself.”
*
When the instructor had been escorted from the underground complex, the small man in the western business suit returned to the conference room. The Ayatollah was waiting for him, alone.
“It is time to begin the immunization,” the Ayatollah said. “All soldiers and important religious and political members will be the first to be immunized against the virus. Once this has been done, the Army will go into the cities and towns and will immunize all men aged between thirteen and fifty. After that you may immunize the women – but only those of a suitable and useful age. The rest will need to trust their fate to Allah.”
The young man nodded gravely. He bit his lip, as if to stifle the futile protest that leaped to his throat. The Ayatollah saw his expression and nodded benevolently. “Speak your mind, Ahmed.”
Still the young man hesitated. He had raised the matter before. He clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “Your Holiness, might we consider an alternative plan for the martyrs?” he offered cautiously. “Sending them all to just one destination within America…? Might we not be better served if they were separated? This would cause the virus to spread more rapidly, yes?”
Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America Page 2
