“Issues with the way their brains work,” said Phil.
Everyone looked at Phil again. Phil simply shrugged.
“Yes. People with certain psychoses, even those who can control the psychoses, or haven’t manifested any symptoms, could be immune to the shut-down effects of the Rama virus. They would still contract it, but it wouldn’t work the same. It may not shut down or take over as many critical systems, or it could spiral off in other ways. Just a theory, mind you.”
“A good one though,” Ravi agreed. “Drugs or certain sounds or visual stimuli can alter alpha and beta waves. But if we’re all already infected, why don’t we just shut down right now? Why do we need fluid contact from a victim that is already dead?”
“I’ve hypothesized on that as well. Rama was always in a dormant mode in all the computers until it received some type of signal to activate. I believe this signal could be the introduction of fluids from an individual where Rama is running the show. Or death, that could start it off too. Somehow Rama kicks in when one of the vital systems of the human body shuts down. The virus then takes over the system that controls all the others. The nervous system. It doesn’t need other systems, like digestive or endocrine, and it can slow, but not stop the degradation procedure, so the dead can walk, but they rot, albeit significantly slower.”
Rick rubbed the back of his neck. “So then why do the infected want to eat us?”
Dr. Martin sighed. “I don’t know. Perhaps to infect others, or to spread the virus. Maybe just to destroy, but that’s not my area of expertise. Honestly, the whole Abaddon-Rama thing is just a theory.”
Bourne picked up his radio. “This is good intel, but it doesn’t change the mission. We have your data, your gear, and you. Let’s get you to where you can work in safety. Tin Can, do you copy?”
Tin Can was the call sign Bourne had given to the LAV prior to the mission. “Five by five. Ready and waiting. Our position is clear of hostiles.”
“Copy, no hostiles. Exfil within the hour, stay frosty. We’ve got all of your hostiles here. We will be coming plus four with the loss of Murray.”
“Roger that, we saw it. Previous intel indicated only four breathers.”
“We’ve got an extra. Three males, two females.”
“Copy. Tin Can is ready.”
38
“Uh-uh. Nope. I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid.”
Dallas backed up two steps from the open and unfriendly looking maw of the service elevator shaft. The elevator was on the sixth floor, and the humans were on the fifth looking down. With two basement levels, it was more than eighty feet to the bottom, but with no lights in the shaft the darkness below was impenetrable after just a few feet. Still, the knowledge of what they were preparing to do filled the non-military survivors with dread.
Seyfert, down on one knee and holding the left elevator door open, peered over the edge and then looked back at Dallas, shaking his head. “Sissy.” The SEAL jammed a large flat-head screwdriver into the carriage of the door, and stood up and kicked it. The door stayed open when he let it go. “This is it, hillbilly, you coming? Way I hear it is that there’s no chow left here. Man up and prepare to climb.”
He pulled three green chem lights out of his tac-webbing and snapped them. He shook them as he swung out into the shaft and deftly grabbed the ladder. He dropped two of the lights clipped a third to his webbing, and proceeded to climb down. “Check check.”
“Read you loud and clear, Recon,” Bourne answered the radio check. The colonel and Rick watched Seyfert descend until he was nothing but a green light bobbing on the left side of the shaft. The lights below him looked a hundred miles away.
“The climb isn’t too bad, the rungs are dry. The glow stick throws a lot of light and I can see the ladder all around me. Passing the third floor doors now.”
Dallas was shaking his head, “Dammit. I don’t like heights. Don’t like ‘em.”
“I told you,” said Phil, “don’t look down and you’re only a foot off the ground.”
“Now that’s the dumbest thing I ever did hear. O’course yer off’n the ground.”
The radio crackled again. “Shit.”
“What’s the problem, son?”
“Second floor elevator doors are open,” he whispered. “It’s dark in the corridor and I can’t see more than a foot in.” Seyfert hooked his arm around a rung and dug for another glow stick. He pulled one out, cracked and shook it, and tossed it into the open door, where it rolled against a body. “Dammit, we’ve got a body just inside the corridor.”
The colonel flexed his right fingers and looked at his palm, obvious discomfort on his face. He rubbed his wounded shoulder. “Moving?”
“Negative, truly dead. Continuing down.”
There was a full minute of silence before Seyfert’s voice came back. “About to breach the first floor doors now. SITREP in two minutes or I’m dead and find another way.”
The SEAL jammed another long screwdriver in between the elevator doors and began to pry. Spread eagled across the doorway, he slipped his fingers into the sliver of space between the stainless steel plates and pulled, the doors opening slightly. Peering in, he couldn’t see much as the area was dark. He pushed the doors open wide and brought up his weapon, tactical light scanning. Just like so many times in the past few months, in most of the buildings he had been in, there was blood everywhere. Footprints, handprints, drag marks, and directional drop spatter decorated the floor and nearby walls. A dried pile of viscera was at his feet, but he was used to such sights as well. Two bodies were splayed out in front of him by some shelves, one with no head, the other with its face and cranium crushed. He still wasn’t used to the smell though, and he swallowed hard breathing through his mouth. He heard movement to his left and tensed, thinking of missing heads, as two dead men appeared out of the shadows.
The ratcheting sound from his suppressed MP5 couldn’t be helped as he destroyed the two things. He cursed to himself as the moaning started, and he backed up to the elevator shaft, keeping the emptiness and the safety of the ladder to his back. Going to one knee, he kept his firing stance ready and swept his tac-light left and right until the beasties appeared. Seyfert took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he sighted down his weapon. The holographic reticule on his optics having died with the batteries weeks ago, he used an open sight picture and fired in succession.
Pffft! Pffft! And so on until eight body thieves were sent back to hell permanently. Although he had only used ten rounds, he still quickly exchanged magazines in his weapon, then whistled, high and loud.
Nothing else came. He whistled again then called out lightly, “Hey boys, free dinner!” More shuffling steps came from his right; what was left of a female student in shorts stepped into his sliver of illumination. She may have been pretty once, but now her tattered skin was a slimy black, with patches of yellow and purple, what was left of her long hair a matted mess. Seyfert no longer wondered what happened to the misplaced head, the dead girl was cradling it like a crying child. She let it fall when she saw the live human. It sounded like someone dropped a cantaloupe, and it broke open somewhat when it hit the floor. She came at him quickly, but she was no runner. He dropped the thing with a single shot, then waited a solid five minutes, making soft noises before he stood.
“Recon, SITREP.”
“Sweeping the room now, sir, initial hostiles down. Clatter tactics ineffective or hostiles are hiding.”
“Copy that, triple check the corners and your six. Waiting on further SITREP.”
“Roger that, Lead. Wilco.” The SEAL walked softly in half-crouch, weapon at the ready. He panned the light back and forth as he moved, pausing between shelves and clearing each section before moving on. Besides the elevator shaft, the only other ways into or out of the loading dock were a fairly large roll down door at the loading area, and a set of double doors that were thoroughly barricaded. Initially, it didn’t make sense to the SEAL how the whole room was dead. Then it
dawned on him that one of the folks in here had been infected when they barricaded themselves in. Seyfert pictured the scenario in his mind: The folks in the loading dock barricading themselves against the undead hordes both outside and in the building. Hunkering down and being quiet, waiting for the dead to pass. One of them already infected, and either didn’t tell anyone, or didn’t know. They start to get sick and no one notices or they refuse to believe that it’s the plague. The person dies, turns, and attacks the nearest people, all of whom are trapped in a blockaded room with no escape except into the teeth of the mass of undead outside the room. It must have been a bloodbath. The SEAL wondered how many times and in how many places this exact situation had played out across the world.
He checked the entire room three times, put on a pair of blue latex gloves, and dragged the bodies and pieces in a corner, covering them with a thick packing blanket. As he removed his gloves, he noticed he had forgotten the chewed head, and made to move it with his boot. He pushed it and the eyes and mouth moved, “Jesus! Bitch was carrying around a pet head. Yuk.” Not wanting anyone to get bitten, he grabbed a push broom and unscrewed the handle. He broke the end off and jabbed the point through the left eye. He used the broom stick to push the now motionless head under the blanket with the rest of its body. He left the stick.
The roll door had four tinted oval windows, ten by twenty centimeters spaced evenly at waist level across the door. He ventured a look outside and saw minimal stumblers in the area. The main body of the horde must be to the quad side of the building, waiting for the humans to come back down for dinner.
“Wanderer Lead, this is Wanderer Recon.”
“Go ahead, Recon.”
“Area is clear of hostiles, but infected fluids are present so all should be careful as to what they touch. You can send down the packs.”
“Roger that, Recon, area is clear. Packs are on the way.”
Phil had come up with the idea that sending the ALICE packs down by rope would be easier than climbing down the shaft with them on their backs, and Bourne agreed. Unfortunately, there was no rope. Phil again showed his ingenuity by coming up with two fifty foot lengths of extension cord that he used to power the floor buffer. He knotted them together and tied one end to a pack full of hard drives, DVDs, and notebooks, and began lowering it down to Seyfert.
The SEAL grabbed the first pack and radioed back that he had it. The next two packs came down the same way, and then the humans followed.
Dallas gave one last look over the edge into the shaft and reached his hand for the ladder. “Survive a damn zombie apocalypse to die of a heart attack ‘cause I’m afraid o’ heights. Now thas’ jus’ embarrassin’.”
“Remember,” said Phil, “just don’t look down.”
The big man grumbled an unintelligible reply and began his descent. The colonel came next, followed by Brenda, Linda, Ravi, Henry, Phil, and Rick.
“Why I gotta go first anyway?” demanded the Texan.
Bourne replied without humor, “In case you fall you won’t take anybody with you.”
“Sounds familiar. Didn’t like it then neither, but I had to go second.”
Dallas was sweating as he passed the second floor elevator doors, the green glow from Seyfert’s chem light illuminating a small area inside the corridor. He pressed on and suddenly he was staring the SEAL in the face. “Howdy,” was all Seyfert had to say. The seaman grabbed the big man and helped him from the access ladder to the first floor.
Dallas breathed heavily. Whether it was exertion from the climb, or a sigh of relief, he wasn’t sure. “That’s it? I thought it would be worse.”
“Help the rest of them off the ladder, I’ll keep watch behind.”
“Didn’t ya clear th’ room already?”
“Yeah, but better safe than…” Yelling from above made him stop and look up into the darkness of the shaft.
39
“You got any fours?”
“Nope. Any kings?”
“Go fish.”
Anna had found a deck of cards in one of the galley cabins of the Brilliance. She, Stenner, and Wilcox were occupying themselves with a game at one of the galley tables while they waited for word from the rest of the team. The Brilliance was anchored in the center of the Charles River, and the day was getting hot.
The radio crackled to life. Keleher, the lookout, called from the top deck. “Stenner, we have company.”
“Live or dead?”
“Living, unless the dead can operate a Boston Whaler. Four contacts, all armed, coming up on our stern slowly.”
“Military?”
“Negative. Or they changed gear and went native.”
“Shit. Call them on the radio and…”
“Already tried. No response.”
Anna and Wilcox grabbed their weapons and checked the loads. Stenner limped up on deck and they followed behind. All were armed.
The boat with the newcomers stopped moving forward about ten meters from the stern of the Sundancer. The weapons on the Whaler were a mixed bag. A shotgun, a hunting rifle, an old M1 Garand, and a wicked-looking crossbow. The man with the shotgun pointedly laid it on the deck and put his hands up. “Hello. My name is Tim Straith. We would like to know why you’re here.”
Stenner called back, “We are elements of the United States military on a mission in Boston, that’s all I can tell you.”
The man visibly brightened, and looked at his friends. “The military! Have you come to help us?”
“Uh, no. As I said, we’re here on a mission.”
The woman with the crossbow shouted next. “We’re from Fort Warren. We’re in desperate need of medical supplies and information.”
“I can give you what information I can, but we haven’t got any meds, sorry.”
“Can you tell us when we’ll be rescued? We’ve been on that damn island for months! There are more than a hundred of us now. When is the government going to send soldiers, or have they just written us off in a quarantine?”
These people were completely ignorant of how global the pandemic had become.
“I’m sorry to tell you, sir, there is no more government. This plague isn’t just in Boston, or on the east coast. The entire world is infected. Every major city on the planet is dead or dying.”
All four survivors in the Boston Whaler looked at their feet. “So that’s it then,” the woman with the crossbow said. “It’s over.”
The man with the hunting rifle looked at her. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you a hundred times? There’s nobody left to save us. Nobody to come get us.”
The man who had the shotgun, Tim, sat in one of the fishing chairs on the bow of the small craft and began to sob.
Stenner felt absolutely helpless for a second, then he got angry. “Listen up,” he shouted, “I know this must be hard to take, but believe me when I tell you, if you’re on that island and you’re not near infected, then you’re doing better than most of the rest of the folks in America. Hell, most of the world is dead, you folks are lucky! You should go back to your island. I will speak to my CO about stopping in when our mission is complete. We can have a long talk and let you know what’s happening out there, what we’ve seen. The bottom line is you shouldn’t give up! You’re alive!”
Tim wiped his face with his arm and nodded. “Let’s get back.”
“Monitor channel six,” Stenner shouted, “we’ll contact you at some point.”
The taller man with dark sunglasses and the M1 shouted back, “And if you don’t?”
“Then we’re dead.”
The woman with the crossbow waved to them as they turned the Whaler around and made for Boston Harbor.
Tim turned to his three friends as he picked up his shotgun. “What do you guys think?”
The woman sighed. “We’re all going to die.”
“That about sums it up,” said the man with the hunting rifle.
The taller man with the sunglasses was sitting down, looking back at the Brilliance.
Tim asked a second time, “I asked what you think, I know you’re kind of new to Warren, but your opinion is important buddy. You’re part of the family too.”
“Greg?” Tim smiled and picked up a wet rag from the deck of the small vessel. He squeezed the water out of it, crunched it into a ball and pitched it at the guy with the sunglasses. The man whipped around and caught it in mid-air.
“I’ll never get tired of that,” Tim said with a small smile. “What do you think, Brooksy?”
“We’ll have to wait and see,” the man said, looking back at the Brilliance, “we’ll just have to wait.”
Dallas yanked Seyfert back by his tac-webbing as a body flew past them, impacting the bottom of the elevator shaft with a sickening crunch. The yelling above continued, and the SEAL and the Texan were able to make out panicked yelps. Both men flashed their lights down and saw barely perceptible movements coming from a body a few feet lower in the shaft. Seyfert put a round in the broken thing’s head and shifted his beam up so he was able to see someone fighting on the ladder above.
“Get it off me,” screamed Henry. “It won’t let go!”
An undead thing had snaked its arm and shoulders through the open door to the second floor, and had latched its dead hand on to Henry’s dirty shirt. Dallas and Seyfert helped the colonel and Brenda into the loading area. As they were helping Linda, they heard Rick yelling, “Quit moving, I can’t get a shot!” A single shot rang out, and three pings echoed in the elevator shaft. Seyfert and the Bourne dove for cover, but Dallas, Brenda, and Linda stood their ground.
“Ricochets,” growled Seyfert. “Get down!” They moved further into the room as another body came crashing down. Ravi leapt into the room, Seyfert grabbing him. Another body fell, and another. Three more shots sounded, and then silence. Seyfert shone his light into the bottom of the shaft. “Dammit.” He fired twice, and then Phil and Rick were coming through the doorway.
Run (Book 2): The Crossing Page 24
