The Cannibal Virus

by Anthony DeCosmo

  The room was so bright white that it seemed surreal, like some TV show version of heaven's waiting room. However, the big dark rectangle on the interior wall — the window — from which Waters and the two guards watched spoiled that illusion.

  Dr. Waters had told the truth; they were giving the major a gun for this particular test. That made him feel worse — not better — about his predicament.

  A burst of feedback announced the activation of a microphone, and then came his host's voice.

  "Major Gant, thank you for participating in today's activities. As you can see, we've placed a firearm on the table in front of you."

  Gant identified the weapon: "An AKM, type 68, standard issue for North Korean infantry."

  "Used by a great many militaries in the world," Waters corrected. "But that is immaterial. As you can see, I have also provided a magazine. Unfortunately, it is not entirely full. If you count — and please be my guest — you will find twelve 7.62 rifle cartridges."

  He approached the table and picked up the detached magazine. Given the circumstances and his experience in handling weapons, Thom guessed Waters told the truth.

  "Okay, so what?"

  "So let's go over what you know, Major. You know that people killed by those who are infected reanimate due to a parasitic fungus growing inside their bodies. You know they can regenerate tissue and overcome various injuries. You know the surest way to destroy one of these units is to find and eradicate the central core, approximately the size of a golf ball and potentially located just about anywhere on the creature's body."

  Gant put down the magazine and picked up the AKM. He looked it over once, then glanced through the glass at Waters, who said, "Be my guest."

  He then put the AKM through a function test, cycling the bolt and confirming proper operation of the trigger mechanism. All seemed in good order.

  "Satisfied, Major?"

  Gant did not respond.

  "Very well. You may load the weapon."

  This time he did respond, slipping the magazine into place and sliding the bolt, chambering the first round. His mental counter set to twelve.

  "Let me guess. I represent your standard soldier approximately one week — maybe less — from the initial outbreak."

  "Good, Major, but we're actually estimating two weeks after initial outbreak in an urban environment within an industrialized nation. Under these conditions, do you know the ratio of units to military personnel we anticipate?"

  Gant glanced at the door labeled fifteen and figured the answer to Waters's question waited behind that bulkhead.

  The researcher went on, "We estimate six infected units to every armed member of the law enforcement, paramilitary, or military. Do you know what that means, Major? In terms of our test, that is."

  Gant sighed and answered, "It means six zombies are coming through that door in a moment. But wait a second, if you want an accurate test I will require more bullets. Most military or law enforcement with assault rifles have full magazines; thirty rounds at least."

  "I appreciate your concern, but we will extrapolate the data based on your performance. We think it is better if your supply of ammunition is limited. Oh, in case you're giving it any thought, yes, this glass is bulletproof. I recommend you don't waste any rounds in my direction. Good luck, Major."

  The door labeled fifteen slid up. Of course Gant noticed the mob of zombies waiting to be released, but he also noticed that there was another door in the holding pen, one leading to another room. He remembered seeing an area labeled "specimen containment" on their way in and wondered if that might lurk on the far side.

  In any case, he had bigger problems to worry about. The monsters noticed him and started into the chamber the way the woman in the jogging suit had stumbled after Costa, except this time there were six of the things.

  Preceding the mob came a rancid odor; the smell of decaying bodies. He had not noticed that scent as much on Tioga, probably because the "dead" people were much fresher than the crop attacking him now. Indeed, Gant saw that these poor souls did not hail from that resort island. Their clothes were torn and ragged but also rather cheap looking, some in what were obviously prison jumpsuits, others in the type of ramshackle outfits one might find on a homeless bum or street addict.

  Their flesh had decayed to the point that gravity caused runs in the rotting skin, particularly on the cheeks, giving way to glimpses of bone as well as the white strands that emanated from the implanted parasite. He wondered if Waters had gone through the trouble of making sure the zombies participating in the test were, in fact, two weeks old.

  Before Thom raised his rifle he had to stifle the rising of his stomach. The noodles, pork, and rice from last night seemed eager to return as the noxious fumes and the gory sight combined to induce nausea.

  Major Thom Gant had faced all manner of nightmares in his career, from downed extraterrestrial beasts in the Florida everglades to cannibalistic children in the sublevels of Red Rock, Pennsylvania. Furthermore, he had already fought these creatures on Tioga Island, in a tactical situation as difficult as this. But his current predicament caused him much greater anxiety.

  Now he understood these things. He knew that if he fell, he would be infected with the fungal parasite that would lodge in his body, sprout tendrils, and take control of his corpse, turning him into another of Waters's killing machines.

  Who are you kidding, Thom? Your body is already under control, by the United States military. You've been conditioned and programmed and you always march to their orders, don't you? You're already a walking dead man — ask your wife about how alive you are; about how alive she is.

  He bit his lower lip and growled at himself. Now was not the time for self-doubt.

  That's right, Thom. Now's the time for that training to kick in. Cannibals? Aliens? Zombies? No problem. The robot always does as programmed.

  As much as his inner conflict tried to devolve into mental civil war, the milky white eyes, the working-but-silent jaws, and the crooked fingers reaching for him provided enough motivation to act in self-defense.

  The lead creature might have been the remains of an eastern teenager wearing a t-shirt featuring a beer company logo. Thom fired, the bullet hitting and rupturing the forehead like a ripe cantaloupe. Dark gunk drizzled over the dead boy's face resembling rotten sap oozing from a split tree. But it kept coming.

  Gant fired again, this time blasting the kid in the middle of the beer logo. More gooey awfulness erupted from the walking corpse but it did not fall.

  He switched tactics, charging in and kicking the thing so that it staggered back, bumping into a tall thin woman who was missing an arm and a bald man dressed in a faded orange jumpsuit.

  The next closest threat came from a naked old man who had, at some point, lost the left half of his face. Instead of a cheek, ear, and eye, white strands shaped to mimic flesh covered that side of his face.

  Thom let this one get a little closer for a better look and, in fact, found what he hoped to find: a small pale ball hidden among those strands like a spider's egg in a web.

  BAM! The round passed through the remains of the old man's head but splattered the core along the way, causing the walking dead guy to turn off.

  One down, five to go.

  Two of the nasty things came in from either side. One was a short man wearing the remains of baggy, ragged clothes, making Thom think the poor fellow had found his wardrobe in a dumpster, sizes be damned. The second was a big, muscular guy wearing a clean jumpsuit and showing no apparent signs of trauma. Thom guessed this particular sample had come directly from the execution chamber via lethal injection or gas.

  Regardless, both reanimated corpses closed fast, leaving him no choice but to fire four shots in repaid succession, most into the raggedy man's chest, where a lucky bullet must have found the weak spot because the hobo fell as hard and fast as the naked old man with half a face (who had not gotten back up, Thom noted).

  The muscular guy took one of t
hose rounds in the gut as he reached for Thom's gun and managed to grab ahold of the barrel for a moment before the major yanked it free.

  Still, the situation grew desperate. Four of the things remained and Thom felt boxed in.

  Think, man, think!

  He did just that, glancing at each of the threats and sizing them up, looking first at the woman missing her left arm. He spotted a bulge on her shoulder just above the damaged socket.

  Thom took a guess, aimed, and fired. His first shot missed wide and ricocheted off the far wall but his second hit the bulge which, as he hoped, was the core parasite. Another of Dr. Waters's units fell and the researcher seemed appreciative of the effort.

  "Well done, Major! You are exceeding my expectations. Half the units destroyed, but you have expended nearly all your bullets."

  Gant dodged an outstretched arm from the big muscular guy again, who seemed in the best physical shape of the batch. No sign of any bulge, either.

  Next, the bald man in the orange jumpsuit came surging in for an attack, his arms outstretched like Frankenstein's monster. Gant ducked down, allowing the zombie's momentum to carry him over his shoulder in a flip, resulting in the creature on its back on the floor.

  An instant later the teenager with the beer logo shirt reached for Thom's throat as well, moving close enough that the major noticed an extraordinarily large Adam's apple on the kid, just inches from an old wound that might have been a bite mark.

  However, the kid was too close to raise the rifle, so Gant settled for shoving him off balance for the moment.

  Gant jumped away from the fray, again managing to avoid the big muscular guy while the boy and the bald man regrouped for another run.

  He realized the larger muscular guy would be the hardest of the three to dispatch because the body — despite signs of decay — was in good shape and heavy.

  Costa had trouble evading an old woman in a jogging suit. They just keep coming. They will wear me down in a few minutes.

  He remembered the Secret Service agent's fate, and he also knew that while Waters had promised a rest between tests, these tests would keep coming. Six this time. Maybe eight next, then ten, then twenty?

  Fuck this.

  Thom Gant went to work. He fired a round from the AKM directly into the left knee of the big guy, exploding the joint there and sending the creature tumbling. He knew from watching yesterday's experiment that the damage would be repaired; the big guy would rise again. Still, he needed to divide and conquer and a plan had come to mind.

  He turned and kicked both the teenager and the bald man, knocking them backward and, again, buying a few seconds. He used those seconds to pummel the muscle guy with kicks, pushing the zombie from his knees to face down on the floor.

  At that point Gant reached with his left hand and ripped open the man's jump suit, exposing a rotting back and a network of white tendrils squirming just beneath the skin, a fibrous mesh holding the body together.

  As had been the case with the naked old man's skull, Thom found the target, this time jammed in the zombie's back, just below the shoulder blades and along the spine, intertwined with the network of parasitic strands that had hijacked the dead body.

  BAM!

  With the big zombie destroyed, that left two in the room. He focused on the teenage boy sporting what resembled an unnaturally large Adam's apple near a neck wound. Thom guessed exactly what that might be.

  He raised the rifle gifted to him by Dr. Waters, took aim, and … no bullet fired.

  "Fuck!" Thom yelled.

  The career soldier quickly changed tactics, thrusting the butt of the AKM into the throat of the approaching threat. The creature that once was a teenager staggered, clearly injured by the blow.

  Thom followed up on the attack, smashing the rifle into the bulge in the kid's throat once again, and this time he felt something squish; pop, even. The teenage boy with the beer shirt who had been transformed into a member of the living dead fell over, bounced off the hard floor, and lay still.

  Before engaging the last remaining creature, Thom turned his eyes to Dr. Waters, who watched from the observation room, flanked by two guards. He saw disappointment in the man's expression.

  I plan to disappoint you a little more today, Doctor.

  The bald man wearing the faded orange jumpsuit attacked Gant without consideration for the fact that his five companions had already been dispatched. There was no fear, no hesitation.

  Thom knew that to defeat this zombie when no central core was easily discernible would require that same type of focus and decisiveness; he would do what needed to be done, no matter how grisly.

  In that moment he realized why Monroe and Waters had found this organism such a fascinating and potentially effective weapon. No would hesitate to eradicate a virus, a germ, or an anthrax spore. But destroying creatures that had once been a mother, a child, or a friendly old man would take a level of savagery beyond the reach of most people. The fungal infection would spread because people would lack the will to fight it.

  Thom felled the creature with a leg sweep. He then wielded the AKM like a club, swinging once … twice … again … and again, battering at the skull until it cracked. He then fell upon it, pining the beast to the ground under his knee and ramming the butt into the jaw, bashing the teeth, caving in the face, until everything above the shoulders had become a bloody pulp.

  His arms grew tired, his breath heavy, exhaustion tried to grab hold. At the same time, bits of flesh and tar-like blood sprayed out from the struggling corpse, splashing off of — and just as much sticking to — Major Thom Gant, while the balance fell on the floor and walls of the chamber.

  The bald man tried to get up, tried to move, tried to counterattack, but the rifle butt and kicks came at a relentless place. Thom had become a wild killer, smashing over and over, breaking the brittle bones of the rotting creature, collapsing its tender flesh, beating the body until it felt like a soggy bag of mess.

  Still unable to find that final weak spot, Thom stepped away. What had once been a body and then had become a zombie was now a two-legged abomination, beaten and squashed and gored.

  Yet it still tried to move. There was still a milky white film in the sockets where the eyes had popped and collapsed. It still tried to take to its feet … and Thom let it move until it stood, at which point he kicked out its leg again but added a push so that it would fall face down.

  Once again he pinned it under his knee, and this time he ran his hand over the creature's pummeled carcass as it struggled to free itself. He found a cyst-like bulge on the thing's right thigh.

  Gant targeted this area with the rifle butt, which felt on the verge of bending and breaking from its work as a blunt weapon.

  A moment later the creature went still, its core finally dispatched. Thom stood over top, sucking in big deep breaths, sweating profusely, and resembling a walking corpse himself, particularly with so much gore splashed on his person.

  "Major Gant, I am very impressed," Waters said over the microphone, but his sunken eyes and the frown he wore implied disappointment. "Six units, taken out by one man, even after he ran out of ammunition. I must admit, I did not anticipate this outcome."

  Thom took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a second, and when he reopened them he baited, "That is because you did not count on me in your little test."

  "Is there something you wish to share, Major? Are you Delta Force, perhaps? Or have you seen this type of infection before?"

  "Sorry, Doctor, but that is something I do not care to discuss."

  Waters rubbed his chin and considered. No doubt the fact that he had beat the test had piqued Waters's curiosity to the breaking point. Who was this Major Gant? How did his skill set and experience compare to the typical soldier's?

  For a man seemingly obsessed with quantifying his biological weapon and its effectiveness, the unknown variable of Thom Gant must be maddeningly frustrating. Exactly as Gant hoped.

  "And if I offered a bargain
? A full confession on your part with access to supporting materials in exchange for, well, what now? The life of Dr. Stacy? Your own life?"

  "That would be a starting point, yes."

  Waters rubbed his chin again and then answered, "No deal, Major. However, I will forgo the standard tests for the remainder of today. Instead, we're going to transfer you to one of our interrogation rooms." On the other side of the observation window, Waters nodded to his guards, one of whom drew his truncheon, the other the Makarov pistol. "I'll catch up with you in a little while, after you've been softened up a bit."

  The doctor moved away from the window. Gant guessed he needed to consult with others before undertaking an interrogation. Nonetheless, things were moving in the direction he had hoped they would.

  A clang announced the release of a bolt and then the interior door opened. The guard with the truncheon approached, producing a pair of handcuffs. The second stood back with his pistol leveled in Gant's direction.

  "Table," the pistol-wielding guard said and motioned at the bloody AKM, which Gant held by the barrel after having wielded it as a club.

  He followed the instructions and moved toward the table.

  "I don't know who you two work for," he said to the guards, "but you are on the wrong side of this."

  The closest soldier raised his truncheon and curled his lips, making him resemble a dog ready to bite.

  "Easy," Gant held his free hand up. "I didn't mean anything by it."

  The rifle touched the table top … and Gant slid his hand down to the trigger and pulled. A rough pull — not even close to squeezing — but the bullet in the chamber fired and hit the guard with the pistol square in the chest.

  Gant then used both hands to aim the gun at the second soldier.

  "Fooled you," he said, and the man froze with his hand hovering above his holster. "You guys really should learn how to count. Two shots left."

  With the gun still aimed at the man, Gant walked over to the one he had shot. While not yet dead, shock as well as trauma to his lungs robbed the wounded guard of any voice.

  Gant stooped, grabbed the Makarov, and waited to see if reinforcements burst in through the door.