The CBRN suit he wore now was a physical reminder of how much, and how quickly, the world had changed in the last ten years. He and his men maybe looked a little bit silly, but these thin, hot suits could be all that stood between life and death for each one of them. If they were unlucky enough to get even a drop of blood from an infected splashed on them, it was game over. The CBRN provided enough of a barrier to keep them safe. Or at least that's how it had been sold to him and his team before they departed Fort Custer Training Center near Battle Creek. He could only trust it was the truth and that the suits would do their jobs.
"Approaching the LZ," the pilot said. "ETA five minutes."
The men — Hedley, Barlow, Fulton, and Mike Hanscomb — and lone woman, Private First Class Alyssa Clemson, of the 75th Ranger Regiment moved into position at the Black Hawk's door. A noise rang out as Chief Willis secured the fast rope and handed it to Clemson.
Protocol kept them from landing on the ground and the bird's rotors churned up a mess of dust and grit as it hovered over a mostly empty parking lot. Clemson jumped into the swirling, gray mess, followed by Hanscomb, Fulton, Barlow, and then Hedley. All the while Willis smacked each person on the shoulder in turn, yelling, "Go! Go! Go!" as they rappelled out the door.
By the time Hedley's feet touched the ground, the fire squad had fanned out to form a perimeter, eyeing the devastation around them through the EOTech 553 holographic reflex sights of their SCAR 7.62mm rifles.
Through the pall of dust, Hedley caught sight of a shape rising atop a hill of rubble. Its features were obscured, but he saw enough to know the figure was no longer human. On his six, Clemson's voice came in softly over the radio. "I have eyes-on."
Suddenly, the hillock of concrete and shattered brick became a hive of activity as more bodies climbed over. Their shrieks were loud enough to give Hedley's heart pause even though he'd heard their awful cries before. Their high-pitched howls were not something one ever grew accustomed to, no matter how many times you heard it. There was a primal wretchedness in their screams that made all the hairs on his body stand on end.
"Contact!" Hanscomb said.
Gunfire rang out as the fire squad found and dispatched their targets. Above, the M240 machine guns aboard the two Black Hawks whined into action, lighting up the sky with orange tracer rounds. Several rounds caught one the creatures in the torso, its body jerking crazily as its tattered clothes caught fire from the still-burning tracer compound. Engulfed in flames, the monster danced to an unsteady rhythm, shrieking in agony as it writhed and flailed. It bumped into another one of the infected, and soon that one, too, was lit up like a Roman candle.
Hedley lined up his sights and shot the second infected in the head. A red mist burst from the back of its skull and it stumbled forward, face planting in the rubble. The other torch simply collapsed, dead from its injuries.
As the covering fire from the M240s strafed the charging horde, Hedley lost count of the bodies piling up. A dozen, two dozen, more beyond that.
All around him, his Rangers operated with calm, cool precision, picking off whatever infected slipped through the Black Hawk's assault. The fire squad widened their circle, not content to simply stand by and let the creatures charge forward. They took the war to the infected, head-on.
Rangers lead the way, he thought.
Firing into the wave of infected, he slowly stepped back and around an old Impala. The car's tires were flat, the windows gone. He ducked behind the hood, using the front end of the vehicle to help stabilize the SCAR. The gun was smooth, a welcome step up from the M4 he'd used previously, and he was able to zero in on his targets even from an unsupported position. Still, the car was right there, so why not use it for support and gain some cover to fire from?
One of the creatures peeled off from the thick mass of approaching infected and darted toward Hedley's position. With unnatural speed and preternatural grace, it leaped into the air, springing forward, and speared its body through the windowless driver's side door. Clawed feet tore at the cloth seat as it scrambled over the center console, hands reaching through the wide hole in the passenger door. Talons grabbed for Hedley's face, the nails practically scratching the clear panel of his CBRN helmet.
"Jesus!" he shouted, falling backward and landing hard on his ass. He brought the SCAR up smoothly, and shot the monster point-blank. The center of the creature's face disappeared in a pulpy mash, its torso slumping against the door halfway out of the vehicle.
Minutes later, although it felt both substantially longer and yet somehow much shorter, the area was clear of infected. A ring of bodies encircled the Rangers. This close, Hedley could see quite clearly that the infected had mutated from human to monster. Their hands and feet were more like claws, their lips deformed into thick, leech-like puckers, the eyes a sickly shade of yellow with dark vertical slits for pupils. Their heads were smoothly bald, but fine, spiky bristles of hair covered their bodies, which he knew helped them scale walls. Whatever humanity they had once possessed was long, long gone. Not for the first time, he hoped his Evelyn had been spared this fate.
"Welcome to Detroit," Chief Willis said.
"Thanks for the assist, Wayfinder One Eight Seven. We'll be in touch."
CHAPTER THREE
Edna Johnson was a proud, stubborn old woman. Strong willed, too, and intensely private. At the age of eighty-three, she was rather fond of the fact that she had not been to a doctor in more than twenty-five years. This was a fact that she told no one, simply because it was nobody's business. She never saw doctors for the same reason — her health was her business, and hers alone. The last thing she needed was for some Indian kid with a scalpel giving her the side eye, looking for excuses to cut her open and root around her insides. She had little in the way of health concerns, but she knew damn well that if she went to the doctor, they'd find all kinds of problems, maybe make up a few extra to help line their pockets, and prescribe enough daily pills to kill a horse. She didn't need that in her life and, besides, if she felt fine, what was the point of seeking out trouble like that?
On the occasions Edna did get sick, she always blamed her illness on one of two things — her allergies, or the flu. It made little difference what symptoms she had, and her self-diagnosis never went any further.
The morning she woke up on a thin cot provided to her by the American Red Cross, she felt feverish, which meant the flu. A bone-deep ache had settled into her muscles and it hurt to move, although she did not let that stop her from getting off the cot. She had to use the toilet, and her stubborn will refused to let her stay in bed all day. Despite the feverish heat, she felt cold all over, her teeth chattering despite the warm air flowing from the overhead vent. She had brought a quilt from home and kept it wrapped around her shoulders, the ends clasped together in a thin hand in front of her throat. She tilted her head to cough into her shoulder, surprised at the metallic taste in her mouth, as she walked to the women's restroom to conduct her morning business.
Passing by the rows of refugees, she heard them whispering about her, laughing at her. When she turned to confront them, though, their mouths were closed and their eyes shut, pretending to sleep or pretending to ignore her. But she heard them. The words were indistinct buzzes, filled with incrimination and accusations, biting at her back as she passed. They acted ignorant, acted like they didn't notice her at all, but she knew and it burned her up. Heat flushed her whole body, the anger sudden and savage. She wanted to wheel around at the voices sniping at her, and lash out with tooth and nail.
I'll rip your fucking throats out! She wanted to scream and howl and maim and kill. Her lips curled into a smile as she pushed through the bathroom door, scratching idly at her arm.
Standing before the wall-length mirror over the row of sinks, she was surprised at how sallow her once-darkly rich complexion had grown overnight. For a moment, she thought she really must have the flu. Even her eyes were taking on a sickly yellow hue, and as she looked closer she
grew troubled by the odd shape to her pupils. Her mouth felt strange and fuzzy, her lips oddly distorted. Her veins were a brighter shade of blue, standing on end through her thin skin. Her nails raked across her forearm, digging in against an embedded itch that refused to go away. Curls of flesh clumped beneath her nails, and she dug deeper, blood pooling against her fingers, scratching, scratching, scratching. Then she noticed something odd on her fingers — a clump of small, thin, pointy hair-like growths.
Through the door, she could hear the buzzing of voices attacking her, swirling around her head and deepening her annoyance. She dismissed the oddities growing from her fingers, distracted by the whiney whispering aimed her way. They were getting louder and more belligerent, and her heart beat faster as her blood pressure grew under the heat of her anger. She wanted to shove through that goddamn door and kill the first person she saw.
A coughing fit seized her chest, doubling her over the sink. A wet chunk slipped loose inside her throat and, as she coughed, she spat it out into the sink. Sitting in the white porcelain sink amidst a spray of blood was a black, semi-solid lump oozing red. Her stomach jolted, twisting with a painfully spasmodic twist. She coughed again, dredging up more partially liquefied material, her stomach growing more upset.
Edna fetched a thick handful of paper towels, her scrawny hand bunching the quilt tighter over her neck, to clean up the mess she'd left behind.
Damn flu.
Feeling weak, she made her way back to her cot on shaky legs, keeping her head down. She kept to herself, and hoped the others would keep to themselves just as well. Their whispers had quieted, and all she heard was the strumming beat of her pulse in her ears. She hated those prying eyes and the curiosity of busybodies and gossipers. There was nothing worse in the world than gossipers in Edna Johnson's opinion, and she had spent much of the night listening to their worried whispers as the city was blown to bits around them. The whole damn city was falling apart, and they were talking about zombies and monsters and things out of fairy tales. Nonsense, all of it. She was not about to give them more fuel to speculate with.
She slowly lowered herself to her cot, an agonizing pain tearing up the length of her spine, and curled up on her side. She couldn't remember a time in her life that she had ever felt so ill.
Maybe food poisoning? she wondered.
Another coughing fit erupted, and this time her stomach did heave, painfully so. She spat up blood on her pillow, twisting her body to aim for the floor and loosening a frothy crimson spill across the tiles. A stabbing pain bloomed in her belly, and then a tearing sensation as her bowels let go, ripping apart her insides.
Her screams drew everyone's attention, but she was in too much agony to care. Her eyes burned until she saw the world through a dark red haze.
"She's seizing," a man's voice shouted. He was close, but somehow distant at the same time. She could feel hands pressing her down, but when they spoke it was as if their voices were deep beneath the ocean.
"I need a crash cart!"
A copper taste filled her mouth, and then darkness claimed her.
Although the doctors were able to restart her heart, Edna Johnson did not wake up again. However, something else would.
CHAPTER FOUR
"We need to get out of here," a panicked voice urged.
Dr. Graham Rodinger shook his head. "We can't. We are now officially under quarantine."
His words were met with angry shouts, a pile-on of protests serving only to drown out one another and turn it into a confused cacophony.
"The best we can do," he continued, his voice rising over the protests, "is move her body, and confine her away from us, in case she changes. We cannot go anywhere, though. We all have to stay put here."
"Why?" someone shouted.
"We've been exposed. Any one of us could be infected."
"So we die in here or we die out there. So what?"
"Yeah," another voice chimed in. "Isn't it better if we leave? Spread out? If we're infected and start changing, doesn't that lessen the chances of more deaths?"
"We don't know what's out there," Rodinger said. "There could be help coming. The government is working on a cure—"
"The government just tried to kill all of us!"
"Please, you have to listen to reason," Rodinger said.
Years ago, he had sworn an oath to uphold ethical standards in medicine. The Hippocratic Oath demanded that he prevent disease, and that prevention was preferable to a cure. He saw it as his sacred duty to contain the spread of the Hemorrhage Virus, and the only way to do that was to contain these people. Any one of them could be infected, exposed to the virus by the poor elderly woman. She had to be moved, separated from the group and placed in her own quarantine zone, a necessary measure in order to protect these people from her...and, if he was being entirely honest with himself, to protect her from them. Tempers were high, aggravated further by violence. If a mob mentality set in, things would only get worse. He had to defuse the situation before it escalated even further.
"What reason?" a shaking woman yelled. "What reason is there for any of this?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. "Please, listen. We're wasting time. If this woman is infected with the mutable strain of the virus, then she could potentially change any moment. All of you know what that means. You've either heard the stories, or have seen it for yourself. The first order of business is to move her away from the group. Do you all understand this? Whatever we decide next, we can do so after we have moved her away from the rest of us."
A quietude swept over the crowd as his words sank in. All of them were worried about the virus, he knew. And he could even sympathize, to a degree. But the virus itself was a secondary problem compared to the immediate threat posed by the sickly woman.
Rodinger looked to one of the Red Cross volunteers for assistance, and together they moved the woman, still prone on her thin cot. As they struggled to carry her, a larger man, solidly built and well-muscled, stepped forward and gripped one side of the cot. A second man joined them, taking the other side and easing their load.
"Thank you," Rodinger said to them both.
Neither man said anything. They nodded, but nothing more.
Rodinger recognized the blank look in both men's eyes. He had seen it often enough over the last few days in the hallways of the Detroit Medical Center. The hospital had been overrun with cases of the virus, and then, eventually, the creatures that came on the heels of the infection. He'd seen a number of people destroyed by the virus, eaten away and right on death's door, only for them to change, the very essence of their being twisted and manipulated into something awful and vulgar.
Since the DMC had fallen days before, he had spent his time volunteering with the American Red Cross, working in their makeshift clinics. Later, when the evacuation orders came through, he had stayed behind with several brave nurses and a handful of other doctors to establish emergency shelters and help care for those in need.
Working with his three-person team, they were able to move the frail, old woman to the back of the room and into a small closet. The cot barely fit, and when he pulled the door shut it scraped against the metal rod at the foot of the cot. Thankfully, the door locked from the outside.
He hoped that the woman would simply pass. Some of the infected merely died, without any changes at all. He worried, though, that such luck was unlikely. He had noticed that the woman's eyes had already begun to change, although he kept that quiet, not wanting to cause panic.
"Now we bar the front entrance as best we can," he said. "Maybe we can stack the boxes of supplies in front of the door."
"There's people outside already," the nurse said. "A few early-risers went to get some fresh air before breakfast. I didn't think to stop them."
"Nothing to be done about them, then." He didn't add that perhaps they were better off out there. He ran a hand through his sleep-mussed hair, which served only to make hi
s hair even messier. "Help me with the boxes."
With the shifting and moving of supplies — mostly large packages of water and boxes filled with blankets, clothes, and toiletries — to create a makeshift barricade, people began to complain and fret once more. He ignored their protests until he could feel the threat of violence beginning to simmer in the air.
"Enough!" he screamed.
He couldn't take their shouting anymore; his patience at its limit. It never failed to amaze him just how stupid and childish mankind could be as a collective, consistently refusing to operate in their own best interests. They were all so concerned with their own selfish needs that they couldn't look beyond their own immediate desires to see the long-term benefits of cooperation.
"Don't any of you understand what's out there?" he railed.
"Doctor," the nurse said, attempting to grab his attention, but he continued to rant.
"You think you're better off outside by yourselves than in here with our numbers?"
"Doctor!" she shouted.
He spun toward her, seeing, for the first time, the drawn faces around him. The room had grown quieter as people stood around open-mouthed.
"Your nose is bleeding," the nurse said.
"What?" He couldn't understand what she was saying as the room began to sway. Sweat beaded on his upper lip, and he swiped it away with the back of his hand. A flash of red caught his eye, an unnaturally rosy smear on his skin. He dabbed again at his lip, this time with his index and middle fingers. He touched the warm, viscous liquid and saw that his fingertips came away stained.
Extinction Cycle (Kindle Worlds Novella): From The Ashes Page 2
