The Cannibal Virus

by Anthony DeCosmo

  "Yeah … yeah, I'm seeing this," Franco said and stumbled as he tried to control his revulsion. "Wells wasn't full of shit."

  The things gathered on the deck of the freighter matched the description Jupiter Wells had provided. A description of zombies. Walking corpses. The living dead.

  Franco and Roberts clearly saw pasty white eyes and rotting skin.

  Most of the reanimated cadavers wore splashes of blood, several were missing limbs, and black soot from the oily fire smudged the faces of a few more. Most of their clothes were covered in layers of dirt and bodily gore, but a few colorful beach shirts, straw hats, and bathing suits could be seen among the mob. These were the bodies spirited away from the scene of the crime, most likely to hide that crime.

  The gaps in the smoke created by the Sea Knight's downdrafts allowed Franco and Roberts to see the mob, and also allowed the mob to see them.

  Ignoring the fire, the crowd surged forward in search of new victims. The soldiers watched as a trio of the things walked directly into the flames. Each of them went up fast, but they kept coming. One even made it to the catwalk at the top of the stairs before succumbing to the fire and falling over.

  Hollywood movies had trained audiences to expect groans and growls but not here. The zombies from Tioga Island made no sound, giving them an extra layer of sinister.

  Van Buren's voice broadcast into Franco's earpiece: "Biggy, you want me to open up on those things?"

  The stupid question rattled Franco into action.

  "Damn straight. See if you can clear us a path off this roof!"

  Heavy machine gun fire erupted from the chopper as it orbited above. Fifty-caliber rounds ripped the ship between the bridge and the bow, tearing into the creatures. One lost its head completely, while another was literally cut in two. Yet the headless corpse kept on coming and the top half of the split creature pulled itself along with entrails hanging out behind.

  "We have to find out where this ship was going," Franco said to Roberts. "You cover me from up here."

  Acting before he could rethink it, the sergeant jumped from the roof and landed on the catwalk outside the bridge. As he did, the walking body of a dead, twenty-something girl came up the stairs, reaching for him with two burning arms.

  Franco fired his automatic shotgun, punching a hole through her abdomen so big that he saw another zombie climbing the stairs behind her.

  He fired again, turning the creature's head into something resembling a melted lollipop and revealing some kind of white ball attached to her spine. Another blast disintegrated whatever that was and caused the corpse to drop to the deck and stay there.

  Bullets from Roberts's M4 carbine kept the next attacker at bay while Franco opened the bridge door and stepped inside … only to be grabbed by a pair of grimy, bloody hands.

  Franco brought his shotgun up … and then stopped as this particular zombie spoke.

  "It didn't hold! The PX didn't hold!"

  The man was clearly of southeast Asian descent and spoke poor English, but the sergeant understood him well enough.

  Franco brought his shotgun butt into the man's gut. He crumpled and his hands came off Biggy's shoulders.

  "Where's the rest of your crew, you damn gook?"

  "Get me out of here! Get me out of here!"

  Franco reached for the crewman's throat, but another blast of fifty-caliber fire from the orbiting Sea Knight sounded particularly close. If that was not enough to motivate him, Roberts's frantic voice called over the radio, "I can't hold them! Get back up here!"

  More fire came from Van Buren's big gun, Roberts's rifle, and Sal Galati shooting from the open rear ramp onboard the chopper as the team fired furiously to hold back the tide.

  "Okay then, you're coming with me," Franco said and practically threw the man toward the exit.

  Two more creatures pushed through the veil of smoke and climbed the stairs. Franco got the impression that an entire line of the things was marching toward him in one long snake stretching across the deck and down into the cargo hold.

  "Climb, you fuck," he said and practically pushed the man up onto a deck railing, steering him toward the superstructure roof in the process. Roberts put aside his carbine and helped.

  Two more half-burning things reached the bridge just as Franco slung his shotgun so as to escape to the roof. They came out of the fog with such surprising speed that Franco actually gasped. An old woman's bloody teeth lunged for his throat … and then her skull exploded.

  The shot came from Sal Galati, strapped into a sitting position on the open rear ramp of the circling helicopter. He had made the shot despite distance, despite a moving target, despite riding in a flying helicopter.

  Of course an exploded skull was not enough to stop this particular animated corpse, but the force from the blow caused the body to first bounce into the wall and then stagger the other direction, up and over the railing, and down into the Pacific with a splash.

  As he often did, Franco turned fear into anger, meeting the next zombie with both hands and throwing it over the railing despite a patch of fire burning on its shoulder.

  More approached but Franco did not wait around. He climbed onto the roof, where Roberts hovered over the crewman. The guy from the freighter curled into a fetal position and mumbled something sounding like a prayer in what might have been Thai.

  "Get down here and pick us up," Franco ordered on his radio while also leaning over the side and firing a shotgun blast to obliterate one of their living dead pursuers. "Then this guy is gonna tell us where this boat was going. Ain't that right, buddy?" And Franco picked the man up by his shoulders.

  The Sea Knight stopped circling and came in low over the deck, the twin rotors creating a hurricane-like wind around the superstructure.

  "Grab the rope, you dumb ass," Franco said and thrust the Asian man toward a rope that had been dropped down by Galati.

  The sailor did as instructed and the soldiers on board the helicopter reeled him up fifteen feet and into the open ramp. A moment later the two ropes Roberts and Biggy had used to descend onto the ship returned, and while it took longer to go up than to come down, the soldiers attacked the task with vigor as the burning fuel waned and the mob was free to encircle the bridge in earnest.

  Franco reached the helicopter a second behind Roberts, crawling into the passenger compartment. There he found Sal standing over the rescued seaman with a finger in his face.

  "Where was your ship going?"

  The Thai man still seemed rather shaken, but not nearly as panicked now that he had been rescued from the freighter.

  He answered Galati's question calmly but in his native tongue and added a shrug to emphasize what clearly was a response of "I don't understand English."

  Franco took to a knee and worked to regain his breath. Escaping the ship — particularly almost being bitten by the woman whom Galati had made headless — had sent far more shivers down his spine than he had realized. Fortunately the adrenaline of action as well as his innate ability to twist any emotion — fear, sadness, shame — into outright anger had kept those shivers from interfering with his task. Still, he did not like the idea of zombies and teeth and boats filled with walking dead.

  Just as important, after the incident at Red Rock he had made a conscious decision to show a lot more empathy and interest in Gant, Wells, and others like them. Meaning black people. He figured that was the best way to combat the streak of racism that had led him to try to kill his commanding officer in that Pennsylvania dungeon.

  Gant's disappearance provided the perfect opportunity to end any suspicions about Franco's dark heart. After all, would a racist son of a bitch put so much effort and concern into finding his black C.O.?

  "Listen, you," Sal wagged his finger with all the sternness of a second-grade school teacher berating a pupil for dog-devoured homework. "You had better cooperate. Tell us where you were going with your cargo."

  Again their newest passenger shrugged and said, "No English
."

  Franco took a deep breath, turned his head to glance out the open ramp at the freighter drifting below, and then stood up, marched over to the Thai man, grabbed him, and threw him to the back of the helicopter. The man stumbled and slid, two feet from the edge of the ramp, his hands clawing at the metal floor.

  "Listen, you stupid gook," Franco said, hauling him up by the collar and thrusting his prisoner out toward open space. The freighter and a mob of zombies waited some fifty feet below. "Now listen, you dumb fuck. I know you speak English, I know you were taking these friggin' things back to whoever made them in the first place, and I damn well know that I could throw your sorry ass down there and no one would ever know. So start yapping or you're going back on board the love boat."

  Despite a slight accent, the man spoke nearly perfect English.

  23

  Annabelle Stacy pressed against the wall and held perfectly still, hoping to stay hidden from the two guards coming toward her along the main corridor.

  Fortunately, they never reached her position. Instead, they turned off and went through a big and open door, apparently doing exactly what she was doing: heading in the direction of the gunshots.

  She heard voices from up ahead and proceeded forward at a slightly faster pace, pausing once to wait for a swiveling security camera to point in the other direction. As she arrived at the door she recognized the loudest of the voices as belonging to Dr. Waters.

  Annabelle peeked inside. She saw red doors on either side of a big rectangular room, two rows of three pillars, and an unmanned control console standing about fifteen feet from her position. While she knew that the platform must be the nerve center for that area, it was currently neglected in favor of something going on at the far end of the chamber. She saw Waters standing back there, as well as eight guards, all with their rifles raised.

  She immediately guessed that Major Gant was the focus of their attention but did not know for sure until she heard his voice yell a nasty expletive in regard to Dr. Waters's parentage.

  "Major, you are trapped," Waters spoke in a tone that suggested his patience had come to an end. "Raise your hands and come out. You have no choice."

  So there it was. Thom had broken free but they had cornered him in this place. From what Stacy could see, there was another door at the far end but it was closed and it was more likely that it would open to let in more guards than to let Thom escape.

  Unless …

  Since escaping from the test chamber, Annabelle had wandered the halls of the facility with no direction, no plan. What she had seen in the storage room had upped the ante, but had not led to any ideas on how to get out of that place alive. In fact, whenever she had thought about trying to survive her mind had come back to Major Thom Gant. Any chance she had lay with him, and so she would need to take a chance to help him.

  Besides, she did have one or two questions for Dr. Waters.

  Annabelle walked into the specimen containment room and directly to the unguarded control console. She stood there for several seconds until she realized that no one had even taken notice of her; they all faced the rear of the room where Gant apparently hid, their backs to her.

  "This is your last chance. I need an answer."

  The panel was rather simple. She easily found the appropriate switch to close the door behind her. The guards were so focused on Major Gant that they did not even turn to look when the bulkhead shut with a solid thud.

  It took her another four seconds to understand the function of the thirty switches lined in two rows, an associated panel of square buttons, and the lever marked CONTAINMENT FAILSAFE on the right side of the console.

  There were more switches and buttons that she wanted to understand, but she ran out of time.

  "I gave you your chance, Major. Kill him."

  Half of the soldiers started toward the divider wall at the back of the chamber where Gant hid.

  Stacy yelled, "No!"

  Waters turned quickly, as did most of the soldiers. Half of the guns in the room now pointed in her direction.

  "Dr. Stacy? I take it you never made your scheduled test. Congratulations to you, but you would have done better to stay in hiding."

  "Don't anyone move," she said.

  The guards shuffled their feet, unsure of why they should not move. Waters was more direct.

  "My dear, you're not in a position to dictate. Unless I'm missing something, you don't appear to be armed."

  She did not respond.

  Waters drew the attention of two of his men and told them, "Keep your weapons on her, just in case. The rest of you stay on the major. He is far more dangerous."

  "Leave him alone," she said with a hint of authority in her voice.

  "Tell me, my dear, exactly why we should do anything you say."

  She glanced down at the console controls then back to him.

  "If anyone moves, I'll open every cell in this place. You and your men will be overwhelmed in about three seconds."

  Waters was not impressed.

  "I'm sorry, Doctor, but we have safeguards in place for just that type of eventuality. Besides, you're in here with us. You would be committing suicide."

  He smiled at her while a solitary tear, a symptom of his chronic condition, streaked down one of his dark cheeks.

  "Still," Waters went on, "I'll play for a moment. What is it you would have us do? Open the front door and let the two of you go?"

  It seemed to her that Waters — again — showed an interest in games.

  "Everything is a test with you, isn't it?" she asked. "You don't really believe I can do anything, but instead of having your men shoot me or rush me, you want to see what I want. Like you're going to gain some sort of insight into the human condition."

  He shrugged and admitted, "Maybe. I find people and the choices they make fascinating. Sometimes I wonder if we really are nothing more than big animals, with our so-called free will and sentience nothing more than advanced instinct. Don't you find that interesting? You are, after all, a scientist."

  "I'm not a sadist. You're a sad man, Waters. You didn't survive that monster back in Zaire; it killed you just as surely as it did everyone else in your village. The only difference is, your body lived. An empty, soulless shell."

  Of course she tried to sound brave. She tried to sound judgmental. Truth was, her stomach lurched with fear, her arms trembled, and her voice quivered with each word.

  Yes, she was afraid. But not quite as afraid as she had been the day before.

  He responded, "You have a flair for the dramatic. I can appreciate that, Doctor. But I am a scientist. I'm dealing with subjects and situations that are far bigger than one person or one village."

  She saw Gant stick his head out — just a little — to glimpse the conversation. It seemed to her, however, that he was in no position to do anything. If they were going to escape this particular predicament, it would be up to her.

  "Interesting that you say that. You see, Dr. Waters, I've been going for a little stroll around this base of yours. I’ve found some interesting things."

  "Oh really? Like what?"

  "I found your storage room," she said, and her mind drifted to the centerpiece of the collection. "Tell me something. What does the Phaistos disc have to do with a parasitic fungus?"

  Her adversary hesitated.

  Stacy went on, loud enough to be sure Thom heard.

  "You have a high-tech bio weapons facility here, but one room is more like a museum. Tell me about that, Waters."

  "You don't know what you're talking about."

  "Actually, I hold a doctorate in history from Penn. You don't get one of those without covering the classics. I recognized the Phaistos disc immediately. It comes from the Minoan civilization. It's one of those mysteries of the ancient world that you kind of learn about in maybe your sophomore year in high school. Discovered on Crete over a hundred years ago. Last I heard, no one had deciphered it, but there was a theory that the writing was linked to Linear
A. Of course, no one has deciphered that yet, either."

  Waters found his smile again and took a step forward, using his cane for balance. Stacy felt her legs urge her to turn and run. If she were fast enough, maybe she could open the door and get out without suffering a bullet wound to the back.

  Stand your ground, Annie-girl.

  Maybe it was not her father's voice that she heard, but she found strength from somewhere. Strength she had not had as recently as the night before. Every minute she stayed alive gave her more confidence. Besides, she had faced death so often in the last forty-eight hours that another confrontation with the grim reaper seemed like just another part of her day.

  Is that how Major Gant and the others do it? They grow so accustomed to death and killing that it is just another routine? Is that what I am to become?

  Waters wagged his cane in her direction, saying, "Your history is incomplete, dear. The Phaistos disc is not one of a kind. It is one of many. If you had looked a little more closely, you would have seen that what we have here is not the one found in 1908. The writing … the symbols … it's a different disc. Just as old, but not the same."

  He smiled in obvious enjoyment of the puzzled look that fell over her face. He had just suggested something akin to finding another pyramid in the Egyptian desert or a second Stonehenge in the English countryside.

  "You see, Dr. Stacy, you are in over your head. And I don't have the time or inclination to educate you in these matters. Now step away from the console or I will have you shot."

  The idea of multiple Phaistos discs held center stage in her mind to the point that she barely heard his order.

  "And the blueprint for your designer fungus came from there? I saw pages of biomathematics. Is that it? The writing on the disc gave you the map for this? How is that possible?"

  Clearly Waters did not like giving credit to any outside source. His delight at having stumped her switched over to aggravation.

  "I did the work. Make no mistake, I am the master of all this. I have nurtured the organism, modified it, matured it to perfection."

  So many thoughts, ideas, and guesses swirled through her head. It all started with that disc. The Minoans had been wiped from the planet thousands of years ago by a combination of natural disasters and foreign invasion. How was it possible that they had created the original recipe for this type of organism, something that even the most modern scientists were in no position to engineer? What was the language on the disc?