“But he didn’t, right?”
Bannon shook his head. “He did begin to turn. His skin became grey like the color of the sidewalk, and the blood from his bite wound seemed to thicken and then turn brown. Then he opened his eyes. They were yellow.”
“And then what happened,” the intelligence officer was leaning close to Bannon, and there was a blaze of intensity in the man’s expression.
“I had pressure on the trigger. I was about to fire. Then he spoke to me.”
Bannon heard someone in the shadows gasp. The intelligence officer looked incredulous. “He spoke to you?”
“Yes.”
The next voice Bannon heard was from someone in the back of the room. It was a deep, powerful man’s voice – the bark of someone who was accustomed to command. The words slashed across the stunned silence.
“Was his speech affected? Was he able to communicate with you clearly?”
Bannon squinted his eyes, hunting the origin of the questions. “He was perfectly lucid, and had no trouble talking.”
“Son of a bitch!” someone breathed impulsively, their hushed tone filled with awe and astonishment.
The big voice boomed again in a snap of decision. “Right,” he barked. “Get this man cleaned up. Shower, shave and something to eat. I want him in the Colonel’s office in exactly three hours, and not a single minute later.”
Chapter 2.
Bannon stood at the end of a long conference table and stared at the people seated around him. The lighting in the room was subdued, but there were spotlights nested in the ceiling. They lit the table and left the edges of the room darkened.
On the far wall was a clock. It was a few minutes past eleven at night.
At the end of the table was a large bull of a man. He had a blotched, ruddy complexion, and clear piercing eyes. His hair was grey, his mouth clamped around the stump of a cigar. He sat back in his chair, half hidden in the shadows, watching Bannon’s every move, missing nothing. He was dressed in army fatigues. For all his imposing size, the man looked amiable. Bannon imagined, in a different life, the guy could have been a physical education teacher, or maybe a college football coach.
Beside the soldier was another, younger man. He was wearing a rumpled business suite. The man was unshaven, with a dark shadow of stubble on his jaw. He looked like he had slept in the clothes he wore. His eyes were dark and nervous. His gaze shifted fitfully to the last man in the room, sitting across from him. It was the intelligence officer – the man who had introduced himself as Smith.
Smith spoke first.
“Mr. Bannon, this gentleman across from me is Dan Lawrence. He works for the government. Mr. Lawrence has been sent to Camp Calamity from Washington to monitor the outbreak and he has direct contact with the President.”
The nervous man twitched his mouth into something closer to a grimace than a smile. He nodded at Bannon, then hunched back into his chair.
“And this is Colonel Fallow, commanding officer here at Camp Calamity,” the intelligence officer went on. “The Colonel and his troops are at the pointy end of the U.S. Army’s initial response to the crisis.”
The big man leaned forward, propping his elbows on the edge of the table and then snatched the cigar from his mouth. “How you feeling, son?” The question was grudging.
“Like shit.”
The Colonel offered no sympathy. “Well at least you’re alive. There are thousands that aren’t so lucky.”
The intelligence officer flipped open a folder set in front of him, and the other two men turned to their own notes. For a moment there was heavy silence, then the man named Smith cleared his throat and looked up at where Bannon stood waiting.
“To be brutally honest about this, Mr. Bannon, we’re not interested in you at all. We’re actually interested in this John Sully – the man you claim was bitten by one of the infected, yet somehow survived the attack.”
Bannon paid close attention to the intelligence officer’s words. “He didn’t survive – not completely.”
Smith nodded. “That’s right,” he said, and then shuffled through several pages of information before plucking a single sheet from within the folder. “You actually claim that he was bitten, and then died, and then came back to life, but not entirely undead.”
Bannon nodded. “Sully somehow survived. When he came back to life, he was actually alive.”
The Colonel cut in. “Son, I’m just a farm boy from Idaho,” he growled. “You wanna explain that last statement in full so someone like me can understand?”
Bannon stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and paced across the room. His head was bowed and he was frowning in concentration. He paused by a wall and looked up. “When Sully turned, for some reason he didn’t turn entirely. He had normal functions, but for all that, he also had some of the characteristics of the undead.”
The government man interrupted, and his tone was almost cynical. “You are an expert in the field of undead characteristics?”
“Expert enough,” Bannon’s temper snapped. “I became a fucking expert this morning, asshole. My expertise was through close up encounters with the zombie fuckers – watching two of my friends get killed, and grappling with these frenzied killers for my fucking life. I got drenched in blood and gore. That makes me an expert.” His voice became strident, and he wrenched his hands from his pockets suddenly and hammered his fist on the tabletop. The government man flinched, and then shrank back down in his chair. His eyes flicked furtively from face to face and then he gave a weak, wavering smile.
“Fair enough,” he said in retreat.
Bannon took a deep breath. He was tired – impossibly exhausted, and his nerves were frayed. He rubbed at the pain behind his eyes, massaging his temples, and everyone in the room watched silently for long seconds. He waved his hand. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”
“No apology necessary, son,” the Colonel said abruptly. “We haven’t got time for niceties because while we sit here getting pissed off with each other, more people are dying. So right now, I need you just to tell us everything – everything you know, or think about what happened to this Sully friend of yours.” The Colonel paused to glare meaningfully at the government man. “We’re listening.”
Bannon nodded. There was an empty chair in the corner of the room. He dragged it across to the table and slumped down wearily.
“When Sully came back to life, he spoke to me, just like he was still alive, even though he was displaying the symptoms I had seen in my two other friends when they woke up dead.”
“What symptoms?” the intelligence officer asked.
“I already told you,” Bannon said. “Grey skin, congealed wound, yellow eyes…”
“What did he say? What were his first words?”
Bannon thought back. “Something about ‘please don’t kill me’,” he replied. “Something like that. Then he sat up. He slapped a hand over his chest. He still had a heartbeat. He said he couldn’t get his eyes to focus, and… and he couldn’t smell anything.”
The intelligence officer looked suddenly serious. He leaned towards Bannon and thrust his face into the light so that his features showed in ridges and deep shadow. “Are you sure about that?” the man asked. “He said he couldn’t focus his eyes and he couldn’t smell anything?”
“I’m sure,” Bannon said. “It was one of the curious things that I noticed from that moment on – Sully’s hearing… or his sense of hearing seemed greatly heightened. It was as if he could feel vibrations in the air. He sensed a dog approaching us before I saw it, and he could sense the undead chasing us long before I could see them. Jesus, he even sensed the helicopter long before I saw it, let alone heard it.”
“But he couldn’t see these things?” the government man cut in, this time his tone almost timid.
“Not clearly,” Bannon explained. “When we were on the bridge, running from the town, he sensed the undead were chasing us, but he couldn’t actually see th
em clearly enough to tell how many of them were hunting. The virus had affected his eyesight, I guess. But his instinct for hearing, or sense…” Bannon shrugged because he didn’t have a better way to explain himself, “… well that was incredible.”
The three men at the far end of the table leaned their heads close together and Bannon heard hoarse excited whispers. The government man wrote a note on the back of his folder and slid it across the table to Smith. The intelligence officer read the message and made a thoughtful face. He nodded slowly, then looked back at where Bannon sat.
“Tell us again why you and Sully went back to the apartment complex?” Smith asked carefully.
“Maddie – my wife,” Bannon said. “I went looking for her.”
“And John Sully went with you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Bannon shrugged. “He didn’t want to,” he admitted. “He didn’t think Maddie would be in the apartment, but I was determined to look for her. I guess Sully came along because he figured the only safety was in numbers.”
The intelligence officer narrowed his eyes. “But you didn’t find your wife, did you?”
Bannon shook his head and his expression became tragic. “No,” he said. “We searched the entire complex. Maddie wasn’t there. I started to hope she had escaped before the town had become overrun… but her car was still parked in the lot. That was the car Sully and I used to get to the bridge.”
“So your wife… you think she is still in Grey Stone?”
Bannon nodded. “I have to believe she is hiding somewhere, waiting for rescue.”
There was a polite tap on the door, and the room fell suddenly silent and secretive.
“Come,” the Colonel gruffed. A young soldier entered the office pushing a projector on a steel wheeled trolley. He turned the projector on and the room filled with weird glowing light. A patch of wall turned stark white. The soldier went back out through the door, pulling it quietly closed behind him.
The government man, Lawrence, got out of his seat and went to the wall. The white space exploded into black and white images showing an aerial view of the fields and river beyond the town of Grey Stone.
“This is the footage taken from the helicopter showing the moments before you were rescued,” Lawrence said. The footage swung dramatically to a new view that picked up small shapes in the top left corner of the frame, running parallel to a road. “That’s you,” the man said. “You can see the distance between you and this second figure, and then the other undead closing quickly.”
Bannon nodded. “That second figure is John Sully,” he explained. He got out of his chair and went to the wall, watching his own nightmares play out with a macabre kind of fascination. He stabbed his finger. “Sully was behind me, and falling further behind. When I was already well into the field, he was just climbing through the fence. The undead – well I didn’t know how close they really were until now.”
The image paused and the intelligence officer began to play the scene through frame-by-frame. “Why was Sully so slow?” he asked. On the wall, the projector showed the figure at the fence moving in long lumbering strides.
“I think it was the infection,” Bannon said, and then remembered something he had forgotten until that moment. “Sully said he couldn’t feel his legs.”
“When? When did he say that?”
“Right after he was bitten. I think the infection affected his co-ordination. He could move, but not quickly.”
“Explain!” the Colonel suddenly barked.
Bannon sensed the soldier’s urgency. “He moved with some kind of economy,” Bannon struggled to find adequate words. “He could run, but he couldn’t sprint. His movement was always awkward, but he never tired, never sweated. He never ran out of breath.”
The image on the screen flashed back to white empty wall. Lawrence turned the machine off.
Colonel Fallow stood slowly and planted his big hands on the polished tabletop, thrusting his jaw out and searching the eyes of Smith and Lawrence. “Gentlemen, do we have enough?”
The two other men nodded. The Colonel looked bleak, but satisfied. “Very well,” he announced. “Mr. Bannon thank you for your help. If you head out through that door, someone will be waiting to escort you to a bunk for the night. We appreciate your assistance. That will be all, for now.”
Bannon shook his head slowly, and his expression became grim and stubborn. “No,” he said. “That won’t be all, Colonel. I’m not leaving this room until someone tells me what the fuck is happening.”
Smith reached out for his arm but Bannon shook the man off with a snarl of defiance. “Fuck you!” he turned on the intelligence officer, and then whirled and stared hard at Fallow. “I’ve been up to my neck in blood and guts all day, Colonel. I’ve been chased and attacked… and I’ve seen my town burned to the ground and overrun by some… some kind of virus infected fucking zombie killers. I need to know what is happening! You at least owe me that much, dammit!”
The Colonel’s gaze was like stone, smoldering behind his stare. He was a man unaccustomed to having his instructions questioned or his orders defied. The two men locked eyes and the tense silence stretched out.
Finally the Colonel nodded his head, and then slumped back down into his seat. He regarded Bannon carefully, as though he was choosing his words, striking a balance between what he could reveal, and what must remain confidential.
“Six days ago, medical staff in a town about forty miles south of Grey Stone reported a patient who had suddenly been overcome by a psychotic episode. They said the victim had gone on a rampage through the town, shooting several people before authorities could restrain him. The man was taken to hospital. Once in the hospital, the man just up and died.”
“For no reason?”
“Apparently the man began retching violently. A nurse went into the room to attend to him. He must have concealed the vial in his mouth. Security vision from the room shows him vomiting something up and then crushing it between his teeth.”
“And then?”
“And then the world started going to hell,” the Colonel sighed heavily. “The man was a Syrian national. A thirty-three year old who had been in the country for exactly seven days.”
“Syrian?”
The government man cut in smoothly. “It is our belief the man might have been a terrorist, sent to America as the most gruesome suicide bomber the world will ever know,” Lawrence’s voice lowered and became hollow. “He was the bomb.”
“He stayed dead for just a few minutes, then seemed to come back to life and began biting and attacking medical staff in a mindless frenzy,” the Colonel continued. “Those who were bitten died horribly, and then came back to life just seconds later, also now filled with the same mindless urge to murder and kill.”
“How do you know this?” Bannon asked.
“Survivors,” the Colonel said. “Two of the nurses fled the hospital and escaped. A handful of other residents made it out of town. But by the time the CDC responded, it was already too late. Within twelve hours the town was overrun and burned to the ground.”
Bannon stared appalled. “What are we doing about it?”
The Colonel’s voice was weary and heavy. “Trying to contain it,” he growled. “So far the infection has spread to Grey Stone and three other towns along the coast. Maybe twenty thousand people already dead or undead… infected. The military has a perimeter line that we’re holding – for now.”
“For now… what does that mean?”
The big man mad a grim face. “It means that we have thrown every piece of equipment and every man available into a defensive line surrounding these towns and cordoning off an entire section of the state. At this point, contact at the line has been minimal.”
Bannon felt suddenly very tired. “Minimal?”
“That’s right,” the Colonel said. “So far there has been a dozen isolated encounters along the perimeter, and each approach has been driven back. It seems that
the infected are still milling around within the towns, not yet pressing our defenses. But that can’t last forever. Sooner or later…”
“So it is an infection?”
The Colonel shrugged. “Or a virus,” he said. “Truth is we don’t goddamned know. Whatever it is, it’s passed from person to person through bites and blood. Once bitten, there is no cure. The mortality rate is one hundred percent.”
“Or it was,” the intelligence officer cut in. “Until you told us your account of John Sully’s apparent survival.”
Bannon frowned and thought for long moments. “You said I am at an army base?”
“Camp Calamity,” the Colonel nodded.
“Where are we – exactly?”
The big man’s eyes narrowed just a little. “We’re about twenty clicks north of Grey Stone,” he said with some caution. “This installation is a temporary headquarters for the army’s containment efforts.”
“And is this virus being contained?”
“At the moment,” the Colonel said guardedly, as though his confidence was somehow provisional. “We have all roads blocked off – effectively we’re quarantined half the state, all the way north and south of the infected towns, right across to the coastal perimeter.”
Bannon nodded. “So you’re not going in, are you? You’re not going to do a damned thing about rescuing people who might still be living and trapped.”
Smith, the intelligence officer, cut across Bannon’s question, sensing his rising resentment. “We can’t,” Smith said. He made a placating gesture with his hands. “The fact is that we don’t have a cure. Sending the army into these townships is just offering up more bodies.”
“So what happens?” Bannon became belligerent. “What happens to people like my wife?”
Lawrence, the government official, made an uncomfortable face and brushed at the wrinkles of his jacket with no effect. “We don’t know for a fact that your wife – or anyone else – is still alive,” he reminded Bannon. “As the Colonel rightly explained, the mortality rate for the virus is one hundred percent.”
Dead Rage Page 10
