by Brent Abell
Dying, he smiled, but he knew at least he’d escaped becoming one of them.
33
Rex and Charlie watched Big Cheese push himself to his feet and stare at them. His eyes had the familiar glazed look, and he lumbered at them. Charlie froze, seeing his friend reduced to a mindless hulk. In the dark, he saw the red tears streaming down his cheek, and a peace settled over him.
“Rex, give me the club,” he whispered.
Without a word, Rex handed the club to Charlie and nodded.
Sighing and bringing the club back, he swung it at Big Cheese. It connected with the side of his head with a dull thud. Blood rushed from the gash, and Big Cheese stopped. His head cocked sideways, and an angry growl emanated from him. Closing his eyes, Charlie swung again and again. Each blow made Charlie scream inside. The club hit Big Cheese’s head, and Charlie heard something crack. The lumbering football player and friend sank to his knees. Charlie opened his eyes and looked in the eyes of his friend.
“They say the eyes are the window to the soul, and I don’t see you there anymore, my friend,” Charlie uttered and brought the club down in one last arc. Big Cheese’s head exploded like a piñata, and he fell to the ground convulsing. Charlie raised his head to the sky and screamed. Rex put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder and took the club from his hand.
“We need to go,” Rex said calmly.
The moans from the dead grew louder, and Rex saw the horde moving from the football field toward them. The wave of the undead threatened to wash over and devour them. Rex grabbed Charlie’s shirt and tugged hard.
“Dude, we need to get to the others and in the bunker, NOW!”
Charlie snapped out of his daze and stared at Rex. “But…Trey,”
“We need to go unless we want to end up like him. There are kids over there we need to get to safety,” Rex said, pointing to the group standing by the tennis courts.
“Ok, let’s go,” Charlie said. He took one last look down at Big Cheese’s body and followed Rex toward the others.
34
Rachael, Conrad, and the kids stood and waited for Rex and Charlie to return. She saw the fear and exhaustion etched in their faces when they rushed back over.
“We need to go now,” Rex wheezed.
“They’re heading this way,” Charlie said, panting.
Rachael turned to the kids, “Go now!”
The three students rushed off, and Rex, Charlie, Conrad, and Rachael followed.
35
“Viper-One reporting for mission confirmation,” the radio hissed in the COMM.
General Harris picked up the receiver. “All is a go for Phoenix Protocol.”
“We have munitions locked and loaded, ETA in five minutes.”
“Very good, I’ll keep the line open for a report after the strike,” Harris said and sat the receiver back down. “Go and bring Browning here, I want him here to see the fireworks,” Harris said to the officer standing next to him.
“Yes, sir,” the officer said and snapped a quick salute.
The officer turned to leave when a disheveled Browning was walking into the COMM.
“Nice to see you came by on your own, Dr. Browning,” Harris quipped.
Browning looked at the monitors and felt his blood turn to ice. The satellite images from Middletown were of madness. The zoomed frames showed the bloodied citizens tearing each other apart and feasting on those they killed. A knot formed in his stomach, thinking he caused all of it when he rigged the sample on a timer to break apart in the poorly protected box. He sentenced a university and a town to death.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Browning muttered and pulling a revolver from his pocket, cocked the hammer back.
Harris’s face slacked, and terror raced through him. “Put the gun down. Browning,” he ordered.
“No, I’ll see you in Hell,” Browning said and placed the barrel in his mouth. Closing his eyes, he pressed the trigger, and the gun exploded in his mouth.
The report in the small COMM room was deafening. A crimson shower covered the wall, and bits of brain and skull slid down the paneling.
“Get this mess cleaned up and commence with the operation,” Harris hissed and turned his attention back to the video feed from the fighters.
36
“Hurry!” Carol shouted at Rachael.
Rachael fumbled the keys from the office, and they fell to in the grass. Behind them, the moans grew louder, and she dropped to her knees, frantically running her fingers in the cold damp grass. In the dark, she couldn’t find the key to the shed where their salvation awaited.
“Oh Rachael, please hurry, dear,” Rex said and watched the front line of zombies creep closer to them.
Conrad pulled his phone from his pocket and turned the flashlight on, “Here.”
“Rachael?” Rex yelled. He stepped up in front of the group and began to swing the make-shift club wildly at the front zombies. They reached out, and he batted their hands and arms away. Without hesitation, they continued their shambling march toward the bunker.
Rachael panicked and dug her fingernails deeper into the uncut grass in front of the shed. The light from Conrad’s phone helped, but her tears blurred her vision. Finally, her fingers touched the cold metal of the keys, and she squealed in relief.
“Baby?” Rex hollered and continued swinging at the zombies. An arm reached for him, and the tattered sleeve revealed the tattoo of Ray Higgs, who shared a lab station with him in Chemistry. Behind Ray, Brad Davis, from the corner gas station, gazed at him with his black and dead eyes. The more he looked at the faces of the infected closing in on them; he recognized most of them from either Middletown University or from the town. His neighbors and his friends had changed and came after them with hunger, their only instinct.
Rachael turned the key in the lock and tossed it on the ground. “We’re in!” she called out and entered the shed. The others quickly filed in behind her, and they found themselves standing before the steel doors in the ground leading to their salvation.
37
The fighter group closed in on Middletown quickly. In the east, the dawn remained a few hours away, but they knew they were about to light up the night sky.
“Gold Leader, this is Gold 2, my payload is locked and loaded,” a voice chirped over the radio.
“Gold Leader, this is Gold 3, the payload is hot and ready to drop.”
“Alright, boys, ETA is five minutes. Prepare targeting solutions and fire on my mark.”
38
“Quick, pull open the doors!” Charlie shouted and grabbed one of the handles. He pulled, but the heavy steel door refused to budge.
Rex and Conrad rushed over and began tugging on the other door, trying to break free the layer of rust coating the doors. The students joined in, and everyone pulled with everything they had on the doors. Finally, with a loud creaking, they broke free.
“One last time!” Rex rallied them and grunted.
The rust broke free, and the hinges on the doors groaned as they opened. A ladder went down into the dark, and it smelled musty. Outside the shed, the zombies beat on the metal siding, and it started to bend. Bloodied hands reached through the shed doors and pried them open.
“Down now!” Rachael ordered, and the students descended the ladder.
Charlie, Rex, and Conrad formed a line to protect the others while they climbed down into the fallout shelter.
Conrad swung at the first zombie who came through the door, and it backed away.
“Go,” Rex said.
Charlie and Conrad looked and him and nodded. They scrambled down the ladder and into safety.
“Come and get me, mother fuckers,” Rex dared the zombies and took a shot at the old woman snapping her gums at him. The wood connected solidly, and a trail of blood followed the club’s arc.
He felt the warm blood land on his arm but pushed the thought from his mind as he started down the ladder and slammed the bunker doors shut behind him.
&nbs
p; 39
“Target in sight. Firing solution set, and we’re hot,” the pilot said and hit the trigger on his control stick.
The first bombs dropped from the wings, and the other two planes followed suit, carpet bombing Middletown. Each found their mark, and the town exploded in a fiery blaze. On the ground, the zombies caught fire and walked like living torches until they dropped to the ground. The trees burned, and the buildings caught fire.
Outside of town, the military vehicles pulled up and systematically closed off the roads and set up a perimeter around the decimated city.
40
Rex felt the heat build in him, and he looked at the faces of those around him, their faces illuminated by the cell phones the students had turned on.
“Rachael, I’m sorry,” Rex muttered and reached out his hand to her.
“I love you,” she said and melted in his arms.
In the dark, their lips touched, and she felt the heat burning through him already. She gave in to her love for him and kissed him back deeply and passionately, knowing it was the kiss of death.
“I love you too,” he whispered back.
The bunker shook as the explosions rocked the town overhead, and the bunker fell silent.
“I’m sorry I started this,” Charlie apologized.
“I think it was meant to be this way, Charlie,” Conrad said, trying to comfort him.
In the back corner, Rex and Rachael fell silent.
“Rex?” Charlie asked and shined his phone’s flashlight in the corner and into Rex’s white eyes.
41
General Harris surveyed the footage on the monitors and sighed. Dr. Browing’s remains had been cleaned up and removed from the COMM center, but the smell of blood and death remained. Middletown looked like a smoking crater, but he had the information he needed; the field test had been a success.
The phone rang, and Harris picked up.
“Yes, sir, the Phoenix Protocol worked perfectly.” He nodded a few times and continued, “We even have a new way to weaponize the virus and use it against any insurgency or army. I was against the use of Middletown, but after seeing the results, I believe it was the right choice.”
Harris listened, and his smile grew wider across his face.
“Yes, sir, right away,” Harris replied and hung up the phone.
Leaning back in his chair, he grinned wider and waited for the promotion he knew would be following shortly.
42
Down in the dark bunker, Rex and the others waited as their hunger gnawed at them.
43
Click…
…In other news, the town of Middletown was leveled last night in what is being called a massive gas explosion. The governor has called out the National Guard to secure the area and keep people out of the wreckage. Early reports from first-responders say a gas main broke in the early morning hours and ignited, creating a massive explosion where there are not believed to be any survivors. We have Jeff Toone on the scene. Jeff…
Click…
Phoenix Rising
Click…
…In other news, the town of Middletown was leveled last night in what is being called a massive gas explosion. The governor has called out the National Guard to secure the area and keep people out of the wreckage. Early reports from first-responders say a gas main broke in the early morning hours and ignited, creating a massive explosion where there are not believed to be any survivors. We have Jeff Toone on the scene. Jeff…
Click…
1
Victoria Davis watched the constant barrage of images of Middletown, Indiana, burning to the ground on her desktop’s screen. She’d turned off the sound because she couldn’t bear to listen to the droning news reporter any longer. The media already had their army of cameras and talking heads on the ground, trying to make sense of what had transpired.
But, Victoria knew what happened and didn’t need the reporters to tell her their lies and misinformation.
In the office behind her desk, she heard her boss, Markus Franke, scream what seemed like a constant string of obscenities. Once she had transferred the call from General Harris three and a half minutes ago, the flood gates opened on ‘Fuck Mountain.’ Working as the personal secretary for the CEO of Xen Pharmaceuticals paid well, but lately, she’d been rethinking her career choice. It didn’t matter to her Markus Franke relished being an asshole. Still, when she accidentally stumbled across a cache of hidden files hidden within his computer, she needed an exit strategy. He only wanted her to print off his comments for a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, and instead, Victoria found files about a top-secret project the company had been doing for the military.
She wanted to ignore it, but once her thumb drive hit his CPU, she couldn’t go back. Victoria’s train of thought derailed when silence filled the air. The river of fucks coming from his office ceased. Immediately, she wondered if he finally succumbed to the stroke or heart attack she figured would do him in.
“Victoria!” a gruff voice called out from the closed office.
Great; Victoria thought and slowly pushed herself up from her desk. She turned her phone off and slid it under a pile of papers next to her computer. Markus hated it when Victoria surfed the net on her phone, but as long as she didn’t do it on her PC, he’d never know. Each step she took toward his door filled her with dread. The way the yelling sounded, whatever happened in Middletown, had ties to Xen and her boss. Wrapping her hands around the doorknob, she slowly turned it and stepped inside.
Darkness covered the office like a cloak. A small lamp illuminated the large oak desk in the middle of the room. A figure sat in an oversized chair, and their fingers tapped nervously on the chair arm.
“I want you to go to the lab and have them destroy all evidence about the Phoenix Project,” he ordered. No hello, no how are you, only a hash toned order to illegally destroy evidence.
“Are they expecting me, sir?”
“I don’t give a damn if they’re ready or not. Tell the lab guys I said to destroy all the project samples and erase any files from the face of this fucking planet,” Markus huffed.
“I don’t think it works that easy with erasing a hard drive,” Victoria quipped.
Markus shot from his large leather chair and pounded his fist on the desk. His glass of scotch fell over, and the liquid flowed out. The ice tumbled out and slid across the increasingly damp desk. “Do not piss me off right now. The future of this company and our reputation is on the line here. The only way to deal with this is to erase it. If that is a problem, I can get a new fucking assistant,” Markus hissed. His right hand opened a desk drawer and reaching in, pulled a snub-nosed revolver out, and placed it gently on the desk. “I know you’ve found the files,” he added.
Victoria froze. Her gaze drifted from the gun to the wide grin across his face, and she wanted to scream.
“If you check the files you copied, there’s nothing there,” he laughed.
Hearing him speak those words would’ve leached away any hope she had, but she’d already opened the files and knew better.
“Go and do what I told you to do...now.”
Markus sat back down and laughed. His amusement turned into a mad howling, and he slapped his knee during his loud cackling. His long white hair broke free from the pony-tail he kept it in and covered his face. In the darkness, his eyes gleamed manically, and Victoria felt her blood run cold. The man who hired her three years ago vanished. She took one last look in his eyes, hoping to find any trace of her boss, but she came up empty.
Leaving Markus to his crazed laughter, Victoria quickly turned and exited the office.
***
Kent Barnes stared at the computer screen while the monkeys rattled their cages and screamed in highly agitated tones. The town burning in the YouTube video filled the screen with bright flickering orange light. The reporter kept repeating the tired mantra about a gas line explosion, but Kent knew better. He’d been the one to address the package to Middletown Un
iversity. The orders had come down from on high, and when you either followed directions or find yourself unemployed, Kent didn’t have a choice. He and his wife were expecting their first baby in a few months, and they could make the rent for the apartment they had in Manhattan anyway.
“I did this,” he muttered and continued to gaze mesmerized at the screen.
“Hey! Are you going to shut the fucking monkeys up or sit there with your yap open all day?” Nick Langley called out from his microscope.
Kent stared up at Nick and shook his head. “What?”
“Shut the monkey crew up! I’m trying to isolate the bacteria in this sample from Africa,” Nick answered.
“You need it silent or something to figure out how to weaponize a new viral strain of what-ever-the-fuck the research team brought back from the jungle? Hell, look what our handy work did to that town on the monitor. Nobel Prizes don’t come to researchers like us,” Kent retorted.
Nick straightened up and stared down the lab at Kent. “Nobel invented TNT and has an award about peace named after him.”
“Yeah, but look at what happened to this town, Nick. We did that.”
“No, the military did that. What we did was take a sample from a dead animal cell and make a virus out of it. Did we decide to drop it in a small town to use as a field test? Hell, are we even sure it the Phoenix?” Nick huffed.
The phone on the wall rang, and both men looked at each other.
“I’m working, you answer it,” Nick said and hunched back over his microscope. He jotted a few notes and glanced up at Kent as he answered the phone.
