"So, the zombie apocalypse? An actual zombie apocalypse?"
"Well, brain-eating virus apocalypse, but who cares? Why split hairs anymore? Bad things happened. Two months after that, a helicopter running on fumes crashed in this valley, where, because of the nonexistent population, there were no undead. There was also no food, shelter, or supplies. So, the crew and the few survivors who happened to stumble into the area from time to time had a very hard existence, for many years. Eventually, they realized that they didn't have enough people in the community for it to last past a generation or two. What remained of some of the old world governments found their way here after a time, and pooled all their remaining resources into what they saw as the only solution." Branson pointed to himself and then to Rich.
"I don't get it."
"It's not a matter of you being some type of clone Rich. We all are. Every living human that remains is a clone of one of the survivors that made it to the Freehold. After the government finished the first few rounds of the cloning process, they had the workforce to build this citadel and set up effective defenses against the dead things and mutants out there in the old world. We've found that some really nasty things have evolved over time out there. The remaining settlers were wiped out by a resurgence of a particularly nasty strain of bubonic plague. We were produced immune to most communicable disease, so now everyone alive is a clone of someone who once was."
Rich was still letting it all sink in. "So, why all the manipulation? The memory implants, the scenarios, everything. You were doing some type of tests?"
"Selective breeding. Old world social research. Combat division campaign scenarios. At this point, we have virtually unlimited manpower and resources, so we study and test everything. It was always the wish of the original settlers that we build ourselves up enough to begin retaking the old world, and the senior council believes that we are finally ready to begin phase two of achieving that goal. Phase one, of course, being the tests."
Rich still had so many questions, but Branson got up to leave. "Look, I know this is an impossible situation. I can even imagine what you're waiting to ask me. We're about to go on lockdown. You'll see me again in a few hours, so try to get some rest."
Soldiers escorted Rich up some stairs to a decent-sized study. They locked the door behind him. The place was very interesting. It lacked the sterile, bleached lab feeling of other parts of the citadel. It was older, earthier. The rooms were filled with bookshelves. There was even a computer.
Though he was exhausted, he had a hard time resting. Rich forced himself to calm down, and sat in one of the reading chairs scattered around the space. He closed his eyes, and focused in on the hum of one of the cooling units. There was no other sound. He was alone at last.
Stubbornly, sleep refused to come. Everything I've ever believed is a lie. Have I been alive for a day or two hundred years? Do they want me to fight? Why was I created?
Rich held up a book: Common History of the People of the Freehold. He flipped through a few pages, wishing he had more time to read it. The beginning seemed to focus on what the author knew of the old world. Based on Rich's experiences, a lot of that information was wrong. But who knew how many of his false memories were accurate?
For a while, the people living in and building the citadel had seemed to be preparing themselves for rescue. After the first century, after the plague had wiped everyone out, the focus of the community seemed to shift to reclaiming the lands outside the valley. Eventually, they just seemed to accept that the Freehold was their home.
Rich looked around the study a bit more then collapsed back into his chair, grateful for the short time of quiet and safety. These thoughts dominated his mind's eye until, mercifully, he drifted off into the unknown halls of slumber.
He dreamed that everyone was dead. Him, Liz, Alice, Stan, his parents. Branson was there too. It was his first day of school again. Liz was busy eating Principal Drake. Some kids ran screaming from Alice, who was laughing manically while chasing them in her car. His mom waved, holding up his dad’s head, which grinned at him.
In the dream, he wanted to run. His legs were frozen in place as he realized he was dead too. So hungry. Branson was loading him into a casket. "See buddy, this is what it's all about. Time to dig." Big shovelfuls of dirt slammed onto the lid as the air started running out. Rich pounded his dead hands into the coffin lid as the flesh stripped off of them. "BURIED FOREVER!! ROTTING IN THE GROUND FOREVER!!!"
"NOOOOOOOO!!!! HEAAAAAAAA!!"
The glass table near Richard shattered as he knocked it over with his flinging arms.
********
A few hours later, Branson came in with some guards. A meal consisting of some kind of powdered eggs was served. "Hungry?"
Rich started inhaling the eggs. "I was. This tastes like crap."
"Well, considering they're haven't been any live chickens for quite a while, this is the best you're going to get."
"Live chickens?"
"Someone goofed on the cloning process for them. They got...hostile."
Rich pushed the plate away as he finished. "So, what will I be doing today? I hope I don't have to live out the rest of my days in this study." Rich wanted every detail he could get about what was in store for him.
"You're not lucky enough to get to spend the rest of your days safe inside. The council has authorized the release of all the phase two test subjects, so I'll be quite busy. The director has selected you to go with him and scout out sector two, just outside the Freehold defense perimeter. You'll be the first to see it in nearly two centuries."
"In other words, he's bait and I'm a glorified lab rat."
"You are a very intelligent young man, Richard. You were designed that way. You'd better hope your combat skills measure up as well."
******
"Smell that fresh air." Stan seemed happy to get out of the Citadel. This older, director version of Stan fit into the combat gear a lot easier than Desolation Falls Stan would have. Rich had a hard time keeping pace with him.
"Smells like something died." Rich was weighed down by about sixty pounds of gear, combined with the body armor and the rifle he was hauling along. The temperature wasn't tropical, but there was enough humidity in the air to make him uncomfortable.
"That's what I mean. All the air in the Freehold is filtered, so it's like a hospital in there. I prefer nature."
"Why all the walking? Don't we get horses, bikes, tanks or something?"
"No. Too much noise. The dead will swarm and pull you right off something like that. Better to move slow, quiet, and look in five directions at once."
"You talk an awful lot for a guy who wants to move quiet."
Rich had yet to see any dead, or people, or anything at all of interest. They made their way through a strange, wooded area. It reminded Rich of camping when he was a kid, well except for the fact that he had never really been camping when he was a kid. It reminded him of the implanted memories of camping when he has a kid. The woods were a strange mix of tropical plants and typical North American regional plants and trees.
It was unsettling. Rich was used to hearing a lot of background noise when he was outside, but here there was nothing. No birds. No bugs. Nothing. Occasionally, they passed an abandoned hut.
"So, people live out here too?"
"Once upon a time. This was the settlement area for the first people to make it out of the death zone, a permanent camping trip in hell. Later, some of the lower-status workers and farmers chose to live away from the citadel out here. More freedom."
"I can't believe the whole world just fell apart like that."
"It did. It's a history lesson for the rest of us. It started innocently enough: one news broadcast about concern over a pandemic. Forty eight hours later, they were talking about widespread civil disorder, military crackdowns, and the threat of wars breaking out. Forty eight hours after that, no one ever broadcast anything again outside this valley."
As he continued looking at
the area outside the Citadel, it looked more and more like a city forgotten by time. It was like looking at what the inside of the Freehold would be a thousand years in the future. Nature had reclaimed everything. Here and there, you could spot a hollowed-out building, a hill that had doors and windows. A mass of trees, vines, and moss in the shape of a house. The rusted-out frame of a vehicle. Stan seemed to be able to read what Rich was thinking.
"I often wonder exactly what it was like for the first survivors who made it here. I'd imagine they felt relieved to escape certain death out there, until they realized they had very few resources to live very long."
"So, there aren't a lot of records from then? I saw a few books back at the Citadel."
"Well, yes and no. We have the journal of the guy who flew the first chopper in here. He was fortunate in that he was trained to live off the land. The woman traveling with him was pregnant. She had the baby and both survived. Eventually, others found their way here and joined the camp, but resources were limited. There were a lot of accidental deaths, and disease was rampant. The only real laws were survival of the fittest. It was a hard life. The rest you already know."
Richard got ahead of Stan, and started up some stairs which seemed to be constructed out of some form of bamboo. As soon as he cleared the top of the muddy hill, he froze.
Below him, near a burned-out hut, stood a group of children. They looked exposed to the elements: pale with dirty skin and long hair. They all stared at him. It was exactly the same thing that he had experienced his first day in Desolation Falls. One of the children smiled at him. Not the comforting smile of a young child, but one which froze him to the core. Then, all the children did it as they slowly approached. Then he noticed their teeth...
Stan fired a full burst with his TDI Vector. Red and black mist exploded out of two of the things as they collapsed. The rest scattered like animals. "I told you not to make too much noise. Stick closer to me from now on."
Rich nodded. "Something bad is going to happen."
"Well, anything around here just heard me firing. We're going to head back and report..."
A repeating sound started echoing through the woods. Some type of patterned, high-pitched beeping sound. It was coming from the way they had come. Rich looked back down the path.
"What is that?"
"That’s the perimeter defense alarm. My god, they haven't tried to cross that in a generation."
Behind them was the alarm. Ahead of them, in the darkening woods, unnatural sounds were erupting, drawing closer to them. Stan grabbed his shoulder. "RUN!!!"
Beep! Beep! Beep! Everything time the alarm blew, it bored into Rich's head. The only thing more terrible than the potential horrors they were running toward were the unspeakable things they were running from. It was like something out of a Ridley Scott movie. "You guys should have left me in the simulations!!"
"We thought about it!"
The seemingly endless horde of the damned pursued them, pouring out of every bush, ducking out from behind every tree. They came to satisfy their unending hunger for flesh. Somewhere behind them, a tree exploded in half and collapsed. Smoke was rising from the base of the Freehold ahead of them. "How do I know this isn't a simulation?"
"Everything is a simulation! Now, move your ass!"
Ahead of them was a concrete trench where Citadel troops were forming up. Rich and Stan found a spot in the trench with the defense troops. Stan reloaded. "Here they come. Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves!"
The dead swarmed out of the woods, seemingly without end. Their stench was almost as overpowering as the ferocity of their attack. Rich didn't have time to worry about that now. He got a head shot, then another headshot. The horrific thing that stumbled over those two bodies took a hit in the neck and kept coming. Further down the line, a soldier screamed the defeated, soulless howls of someone being eaten. Soon, the dark chorus of screams and undead moaning reached a fevered pitch.
Rich had to put two more bullets in the creature before it fell, and by then three more were closing in on him. "Retreat! Fall back to the Citadel! Fall back!!"
They approached the Citadel perimeter walls. One lone guard stumbled around the main tower. The gate had been shredded and half torn down. There was a lot of blood on the ground, along with a lot of spent shell casings, but no bodies.
Stan approached the soldier. "What's our status?"
"HEAAAAA!!" The grey and black-skinned thing tore into his arm with its serrated hands. Rich cried out, more out of surprise than fear, emptying six shots from his Glock 17 into the thing’s head. He backed away.
Rich fumbled with the first aid kit from his pack. "Geez, that looks bad."
"You don't know the half of it. They can't be through the perimeter, they can't..."
Stan activated the military code on his radio. It was busy. That meant that over two hundred channels were broadcasting at the same time. He tried again. The line had gone dead. "This is insane! This can't happen."
Rich finished wrapping up the arm wound. "Welcome to my world. Ok, assuming the perimeter is overrun, where do we go?"
"This is it. There is nowhere to go. We are in deep!"
"Ok, where would people have gone back in the day? You know, before you started thinking you were perfectly safe behind walls?"
"There's a bunker on the second floor of the citadel, from back when it only had two floors. I'm not even sure we can get access, but there's supposed to be supplies and weapons. It was supposed to be a ‘last stand’ area."
"Unless you have a better idea, which you don't, let's move."
The two approached the front entrance to Freehold. The glass was shattered out of the two guard stations. None of the automated defenses were operational. Again, there was blood and hundreds of shell casings scattered over the area, but no bodies. All of the thick, automated doors were open. They headed in.
The main hall looked like a riot scene. People in civilian uniforms were screaming, running in and out of halls and doorways. Guards and soldiers were trying to restore some type of order, but they had other concerns. Zombies and mutated creatures were randomly attacking. It was a strange mix to behold. Some of the creatures looked like dried-out, semi-skeletal husks. Some were guards or soldiers who had turned. Others were civilians who had turned, all with a unique pattern of old and new wounds. Some had torn out of their clothes, and looked like some type of feral tree beasts.
A man grabbed him. He screamed as his eyes exploded out of his head, and his face half-exploded. Rich fired a few shots into his chest as the civilian collapsed out of his way. "Time to go!!" He grabbed Stan under his right arm and half-dragged him up the first set of stairs.
A soldier blocked their way, the aim of his rifle settled onto Rich. "Get back on the ready line! This is a restricted area. This lapse in discipline will not be tolerated!!" The man had reached his limit. He wasn't thinking clearly.
Stan tried to talk him down. "Soldier, we need to get to floor two. This is an official directive from me."
"I SAID MOVE DOWN THOSE STEPS!!!"
Stan shot two bursts at the soldier just as he fired his rifle. The rifle shot went wide, Stan's hit home. They continued up the stairs.
Rich was getting tired. "Which way buddy?"
Stan was looking rough. He was breaking out in a cold sweat from fever, and the color had drained from his face. "It spreads fast, Rich. Just leave me here."
"I can't."
They approached what looked like a vault door.
"BLAAAA!!" Stan puked brown fluid all over the tile floor. Some type of plant-like fuzz was coming through the bandages on his wounded arm. "Try code 238748. Get in there, and walk away."
The code worked. The main door opened, with plastic doors behind it hissing open. "I'm not leaving you."
Feral Stan threw himself upright at a weird angle. "yUmMmm!!"
The doors sealed as Richard left him behind in that strange, dead world.
******
Rich step
ped out of the darkness, into the storage room at Desolation Falls High Schools. "Great."
He was surrounded by rusted-out playground equipment, old school supplies, mice, and bad memories. He didn't even know what to do now. Was he somewhere inside the Freehold in a test? Had the whole thing just been another scenario? He stepped into the hall. The school seemed empty, but should he chance it? He found the closest exit and headed outside.
It was cool outside. Rich was greeted by grey skies and wind. The old school stood like some twisted gravestone in the background. Rich walked down toward the road, half expecting Alice to pull up in her car, or Liz to happily run up and hug him. That had all been a lie, and it was gone. He fought back tears as he forced himself to move on. "Stupid. How do I get out of here?"
The state of the town was no great surprise. Every shutter and curtain closed. Every car parked. No one on the street. "No more puppets for the puppet show. I'm hungry. Time to go home."
It took a good bit of walking to get to Aunt Rose’s house. Rich hadn't realized how drained he was. It had been just one new situation after another for what seemed like weeks. But who knew? He had never gotten the whole story. Had it been years of this? Hundreds of years!?
The front door was unlocked. No one was there, alive or dead, but there was fresh food in the kitchen. He ate, peeled the dirty clothes from his body, and stepped into the shower. In the mirror, he looked like crap. Rich had lost weight. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes. After the shower, he got dressed in a tee shirt and some sweat pants, had a seat in the kitchen, and tired to turn on the TV. He was shocked when there was actually something on.
It was a reality show about fishermen in the North Atlantic. The captain was fussing at one of the new crew members for not doing his job.
"What's wrong with you boy? You keep messing around the traps like that yur gunna get yur self killed."
The greenhorn looked pissed as he tried to get back to work, but he was just moving too slow. The captain was busy looking at the displays on the bridge, and then his gaze locked right into Rich. "What are you gunna do to survive, boy?"
An Infinite Sorrow Page 7
