ZOMBIE: DEAD 2-3 WEEKS. SHAMBLING IN MOVEMENT. LIMBS STIFFER, SENSES STARTING TO FADE. WEAKER IN STRENGTH. SLIGHT GREY, GREEN AS IN DROWNING, SOME HAVE A BLUISH TINT TO SKIN. DANGEROUS TO UNARMED PERSONNEL IN GROUPS OF SEVEN AND UP. PREFERRED METHOD OF DISPOSAL - DESTRUCTION OF BRAIN OR MASS BURNING.
FLESHEATER: DEAD 5-9 WEEKS. SKIN OBVIOUSLY ROTTING. CLOTHES USUALLY GONE. CAN BE MISSING A LIMB OR MORE. TEETH MOSTLY GONE. DANGEROUS TO UNARMED PERSONNEL IN GROUPS OVER ELEVEN. PREFERRED METHOD OF DISPOSAL - DESTRUCTION OF BRAIN OR MASS BURNING.
SHAMBLER: DEAD OVER FIFTEEN WEEKS. EYES USUALLY GONE. FLESH VERY ROTTED. MAGGOTS USUALLY PRESENT. TEETH COMPLETELY GONE. SEX INDISTINGUISHABLE. DANGEROUS TO UNARMED PERSONNEL ONLY IN GROUPS OF SEVENTEEN OR MORE. EVEN THEN, ONLY DANGEROUS TO ELDERLY OR VERY YOUNG. PREFERRED METHOD OF DISPOSAL - DESTRUCTION OF BRAIN OR BURNING.
STALKER: FACIAL FEATURES GONE. TWO OR MORE LIMBS MISSING. ORGANS GONE. VERY ROTTED, BONES BRITTLE. BARELY ABLE TO MOVE. CAN BE DISABLED EASILY. DANGER LEVEL EXTREMELY LOW. PREFERRED METHOD OF DISPOSAL – DESTRUCTION OF BRAIN.
CRAWLER: MOTIVE ABILITY ALMOST COMPLETELY GONE. SENSORY ABILITIES GONE. USUALLY TOO ROTTED TO BE NOTICED. MOSTLY BONES HELD TOGETHER BY TENDONS AND CARTILAGE. NO DANGER LEVEL. PREFERRED METHOD OF DISPOSAL - BURNING
PUDDLE: TOTALLY ROTTED, VIRTUALLY DISSOLVED. SOMETIMES RECOGNIZABLE BY CLACKING OF JAWS OR BLINK OF EYE. NO DANGER LEVEL. PREFERRED METHOD OF DISPOSAL - BURNING.
Casually, Taylor tucked the paper inside his pocket and looked around the inside of the Sikorsky. He’d have the rest of the team read this bullshit later, if ever. Civilization had collapsed and some asshole still had the time to print out crap like this. Fucking military, Taylor thought; they’d have paperwork even if a comet were about to hit the earth. Some things never changed!
Casually the Sergeant looked over his team. Nicknamed the BodySnatchers, they were tight, all but the new guy. Taylor hated bringing an FNG on a job, but eventually new people had to learn how to do things. Of the original military inside Enclaves, half maintained security and remained inside training new troops. White was one of the trainees. Taylor decided he and Sergeant Chung would keep an eye on the 'newbie'.
Chung was Taylor’s best friend. The two had met in boot camp and then ended up in the same units quite a few times during their careers. Chung's head was tilted back, his mouth open as he snored. Chung could sleep anywhere, anytime. Only Taylor knew that his friend had the same recurring dream. Of finding his lover devoured by the zombies. Like many of the living, vengeance was one of Chung’s driving forces.
Like the rest of the team, Chung was festooned with equipment. They all wore urban cammies and Kevlar body armor. The smart ones had their ceramic shock plates on. Arm, leg, and neck guards completed the ensemble. The armor had saved more than one soldiers life when nearly overcome by zombies.
Almost every part of their bodies was protected in some way. Their gasmasks could be locked into their helmets. When the helmets were sealed, there was little a Zombie could do to ones face. Taylor losing his eye was a stroke of incredible bad luck. Still, the sergeant considered himself lucky. If the accident had happened just a few months earlier, he would have died from the zombie’s infection. They were all inoculated with shots of a super-antibiotic, unofficially called Zombicillin. The drug took a while to culture, so the military who went out were the first recipients. Since that accident, Taylor wondered just how long his luck would hold out.
Next to Chung sat their Civilian/Irregular (but could any of them realistically be called Civilians?), Theo Spiros. Spiros rarely spoke, but he was an excellent trooper. His wife and child were killed by Lazarites. Spiros couldn't bear the thought that they were out there, shambling around, seeking warm human flesh. Spiros would rather kill a Lazarite than a zombie. So far, of the few who’d been captured, none had remained alive long. Sometimes they were able to kill themselves before being captured, other times they would enrage a troop until he or she killed them. This was hard to control since so many had lost so much in the rise.
An evil partnership existed between the zombies and the Lazarus. Lazarites could walk among the zombies unharmed, as if they knew that these filthy, unwashed humans were leading them to a meal. So far, the Enclaves were unable to discover how they accomplished this. When Search and Rescue teams went out, rescuing survivors was more important than taking prisoners. The few bodies that were brought back (there was better things to do with space on a chopper) and autopsied revealed nothing. No anomalies of any kind, their blood, organs, and all tests came up normal. It was a mystery. Until a captive Lazarite was kept alive long enough to interrogate, it would remain so. Taylor shuddered at the thought of capture. The Lazarites took their time with Enclavers. The BodySnatchers had come across the remains of Lazarite captives several times. It was never a pretty sight. Taylor kept a grenade in his vest as a last resort weapon. If he thought capture was a possibility, he did not plan on surviving, or on going alone.
Spiros was stropping his kukri knife. He kept it razor sharp, so that the slightest swipe would take off a zombie’s head. Notches on the wooden hilt represented Lazarites Spiros had killed with it. He had no pity for them and swore that one hundred of the Order would die for each of his losses. Next to him was their PRC-99 satellite encoded radio. Their only contact with the Enclave, Spiros guarded it as if it were a child. As long as the satellites remained functioning, the ability to communicate gave the Enclaves one of their few advantages.
Across from Spiros sat Sergeant Tyler Huston. Nothing ever seemed to bother the corn silk haired veteran. He was an orphan, who had bounced around from family to family before finding a home with the Army, so was not filled with the same fire others had. To him, this was a job, nothing more. It amazed Taylor that any person could look at keeping hordes of flesh-eating zombies away from the Enclaves, rescuing others, fighting Lazarites and looters, and simply refer to it as a ‘job’. Huston was a good man and was virtually beyond surprise. His MOS was sniper and he was a superb one. He was also the team’s primary demolition and booby trap man. Huston was a Marine before the various services, due to massive loses, were combined. Although the corn silk haired man always grinned when this was mentioned saying, “Once a marine always a marine. Don’t care what the brass says.” After meeting Houston on a previous mission, Taylor pestered Nevers until the sniper was reassigned to the BodySnatchers.
The back-up radioman, Sergeant Bennie Carter, was Special Forces, a Green Beret before the world had fallen apart. He had left a wife buried in Ohio, killed during the evacuation of Canton. She’d been trying to reach a rendezvous point and run into a battle between Lazarites and a unit of the State Police. A bullet in her head ended her life, guaranteeing she wouldn’t come back. Carter was originally from Harlem. One of the lessons the brimstone-spouting minister uncle who raised him had drilled into his mind was An Eye for an Eye. Like others, Carter carried a huge hatred for the Lazarites. He clutched his M11A, an assault rifle with a grenade launcher attached, as if it was a rosary.
Corporal Lonnie Young, one of the team’s flame-thrower men, was from Thousand Oaks, North Carolina. He was a 'nervous Nelly'. Taylor had already put in the papers to transfer him to a training cadre. He needed some serious down time. The guy had seen just too much. He was one of the last people to get out of Thousand Oaks during the evacuation. The town, fairly well protected, might have been made an Enclave, but the Lazarites ruined that possibility by letting the dead in. A military reaction team went to help but got there too late.
Young still wouldn't talk about what happened. He had been under the shrink’s care for a while. It was rumored that one or more of the townspeople helped the Lazarites gain entry. This was why any survivors brought into an Enclave were carefully searched and, in some cases, quarantined for a while. Security and safety were the primary concerns of all Enclaves.
Private Al Rizzo was the second Flame-thrower man. A transfer, he'd only been on the team a while, but was well liked. He had a good se
nse of humor and was able to keep his head in a jam. Like Young, a native New Yorker, he pined for the loss of Little Italy and the Village more than anything else that was gone. During down time, when he was in his cups, he would moan about “Pizza and rainbow cookies.”
The last member of the team was the FNG or, Fucking New Guy. Private Fred White. Everything about him was new; from the scent of gun oil on his weapon to the razor scrapes on his face. White held his M11 across his lap, eyes slightly vacant. The other men understood, a while ago he was probably playing high school football, now he was entering a city of the dead. In White’s file was a picture from before the fall. His hair was shoulder length; his smile would have lit up a room. That was the past. None of the teams anywhere wore beards or long hair. They had nothing extraneous that a zombie could grab. Some men even coated the straps on their uniforms with Vaseline so an enemy couldn’t grab on; it was an old football trick.
Taylor caught White’s eye and nodded at him. “White, this mission is no different from any other. Remember your training, follow our lead, keep your head clear and things will be O.K. You’ve had your Zombicillin shot?”
White rubbed his arm as he answered, “Yes Sarge, I just got a booster yesterday. Sarge, how come they don’t shoot up the zombies with Zombicillin; kill the infection?”
Taylor nodded thoughtfully. “They tried that early on, White. The drug only works in active blood; helps the immune system to stop the virus from reproducing. In dead tissue, there’s no carrier for the drug, so it can’t move and kill the virus. That’s why once we die, we revive.” Taylor rubbed his forearm. All people living in an Enclave were micro chipped. Called life-units, the chips were monitored by computer. When someone died within the Enclave walls, an alert sounded and an extermination team dispatched. No one could turn down implantation with a life unit; the only alternative was death. A naval officer came up with the idea and it paid back in huge dividends. The life-units made living in an Enclave or on a sea detachment safer. The only alternative was to have roving patrols watching for people to die. Life units allowed people some semblance of normalcy.
Chung woke up abruptly and tapped Taylor on the leg. “How is it that there’s anyone left in NYC?”
Taylor shrugged. “We evaced so fast after Manhattan was abandoned, there were parts of the outer boroughs we never got to. One team brought in a couple from Staten Island last week. How they survived there is a freaking miracle.”
Chung had to nod at this. Staten Island was separate from the rest of the city, boats the only way in. The bridges were blown; huge gaps left in the spans. The borough pretty much overrun prior to this, invaded from New Jersey and New York. Anyone who’d run a rescue there had to be crazier than the BodySnatchers were. As Chung thought of this, he was surprised the ‘Snatchers hadn’t ever been sent into Staten.
Spiros put his knife away and scowled. “Did they give them a thorough search?”
Taylor and Chung looked at him. Taylor nodded. All Lazarites bore their mark, that of a red diamond, somewhere on their bodies. Some bore tattoos others were branded. To the survivors in the Enclaves, there was no rhyme or reason; it was up to the various Lazarite cells how to mark their members. Enclave 13 nearly learned this the hard way when a recently rescued woman was discovered trying to open the main gate. That bought her a bullet in the head and a cremation. Enclave 13 then sent out the information to the others to check all they rescued. Most Lazarites didn’t care if they died, as long as they took unbelievers with them. Some were an odd 21st century version of kamikazes.
White looked like he was going to puke. Next to him, Carter handed him a stick of gum and shouted, "Relax kid. You're with the best! We're the BodySnatchers! Ain't no zombie gonna chow on us!"
Chung added with a grin, "That’s right. Taylors too tough for those fuckers and if they eat me, they'll be hungry an hour later!" He ended his statement with a broad wink.
Everyone but White laughed at the often-told joke. Even the pilot’s laughter could be heard over the commnet. Seconds later the cabin lit up in red light, all levity evaporating instantly. Taylor rose.
“Up! We’re going in. The school they got the message from is still sending but not receiving. We’ll recon first. It could be a trap.”
White swallowed hard. “What if it is a trap?”
One side of Taylors face rose up in a mirthless grin. “Fuckers will be sorry they sprang it.”
23 April 2032
Brooklyn, New York
Construction Sight
Taylor lay prone on a tall, neat pile of bricks. The silence that followed the helicopters departure was almost frightening. The pilot noticed the piles of construction material within the egress point and hovered there, allowing the men to disembark safely. Once Brooklyn was full of life; people filling the streets, day and night. Now the dark streets lay empty and menacing, every shadow hiding a threat. Taylor glanced at the illuminated face of his watch. 3:00 a.m., at least four hours before sun rise. Weather said the day was going to be beautiful, not a cloud in the sky, 77 degrees. Slowly he peered over the edge of the bricks. There, a mere five feet below them was a zombie. It wore a tattered security guards uniform and was looking worse for the wear. Bone showed through in several places and one arm was missing, a torn sleeve covered with dried blood hanging empty. The left side of its chest was black with dried blood. Likely, the man was wounded in an attack and crawled in here to die. That explained his empty holster and missing radio. The closed gate on the enclosure explained why no other zombies were present.
Chung, crouching on the bricks next to him hissed, “Hey isn’t this near where we tangled with those looters a while back?”
Taylor nodded as he activated his throat mike. "Carter! Sitrep!"
Carter, sitting atop another pile of bricks, was peering around the small enclosure through night vision goggles. A chain link fence, topped with concertina wire surrounded the area. There were no zombies that he could see, but that didn't mean the area was safe. When there was nothing to excite them, zombies could remain perfectly still. Scientists claimed they couldn’t think, but some of them had a kind of rudimentary cunning that made them dangerous. Those types of zombies were almost leaders to the rest. They were usually the first to be eliminated. He looked carefully, watching an area then moved to the next.
"All's clear in here except for the guy waiting at the edge of your pile."
Chung piped in. "No other teams came in this way?"
Taylor looked over his shoulder. "Are you kidding? You know we always get the shit jobs. Spiros."
The Greek-Americans deep voice sounded like it was coming from a pit.
"Yes Sergeant?"
"Take care of that thing quietly."
Sliding carefully to the edge of the bricks, he sat feet dangling. Pulling his combat knife out of its sheath, he held it tightly in his right hand. Noticing the movement, the zombie reached up with its good arm. Its lipless mouth opened, emitting a hissing noise. Spiros grunted and kicked the creature in the face. One arm waving wildly, jaw broken, teeth spilling out of its fetid mouth, it fell down, landing on its rear. Hopping down, Spiro split its skull with his oversized knife. The zombie went limp with the peace of final death.
Before Taylor could order the men to begin climbing down, Chung tapped him on the arm. Both men looked like insects with their NVG’s down, but the goggles were necessary inside the abandoned metropolis. Taylor looked around, noticing that the stripes on their uniforms, treated with a chemical making them visible to their scopes were starting to fade. After this mission, it would be time to replace them.
“What’s the problem?”
“What if there are no choppers and the shit hits? We still holding any of this burg?”
Taylor’s teeth flashed in Chung’s scope. “Army’s still holding onto the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They’ve blasted a moat outside it and mined it. Navy keeps a fast frigate and some landing craft in the river. Anything happens, choppers can’t get to us,
we need to find wheels and head that way. Governor’s Island in our hands too, but we’d need a boat to get to it.”
“Those crazy fucks!” Chung had to admire people like that. Holding a small portion of a dead city against the enemy; now that took balls. He hoped he never got an assignment like that.
Taylor made a ‘climb down’ motion and clambered off the pile of bricks.
Swiftly they assembled on the ground. Spiros took a few moments to wipe his blade clean on the dead zombie’s shirt. Carter, in passing, kicked the dead creature in the head, ripping the split orb from its body. That done, they stood by the gate, waiting for the shuffling footstep that announced the arrival of more zombies.
Chung looked down at the destroyed zombie. “Poor bastard. Not the way I want to die.” Jiggling a rusty lock on the gate, he removed a bolt cutter from his pack and snipping it off, tossed it aside.
Taylor lifted the lever on the gate and carefully opened it. As the rest of the team made a defensive perimeter, he closed the gate and slapped a new lock on it. Other teams might have to use this area as an infil or exfil point in the future, so they would want to keep it Zombie free.
Chung looked over his shoulder, "The sewers?"
Taylor grinned under his night goggles, "The sewers. Spiros, send the message that insertion was successful."
Spiros spoke quietly into the PRC-99's mike, while White and Rizzo pulled the lid off the sewer cover. They did it slow and quiet, not wanting to make any sounds that would announce their presence. It was the safest way to travel. Many times they'd found humans living down there. Most zombies didn't have the dexterity to get down into the depths. Of course, there was always the chance that the Lazarites would lead them in there. That was a worry for the future. For now, there were people that needed to be rescued.
Enclave: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 21
