Zero Hour: Book 1 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (Zero Hour - Book 1)

by Justin Bell

  In the front transport, the main cannon swiveled around with a metallic whir, the gunner flipping down a pair of night vision goggles and barking over the noise.

  “Identify yourselves!” he shouted. “Identify yourselves or I will open fire!”

  Major Chaboth didn’t hesitate, she stepped forward, letting her M4 carbine hang loose on its canvas strap over her shoulder.

  “My name is Major Joan Chaboth and I am with the United States Army Medical Research Institute out of Fort Detrick!”

  The gunner paused for a moment, holding still, and Broderick thought he could see him activating a radio clipped to his tactical vest. A door cranked open on the side of the transport, and a man clad in military fatigues stepped out, his own weapon slung in two hands in front of him.

  “Major Chaboth?” he asked stepping closer, then halted, stiffened, and snapped off a crisp salute, which Chaboth returned. “With due respect, ma’am, can I ask what you’re doing here?”

  “You can ask, unfortunately I cannot say. It’s a classified operation.” She looked at the three transports with curiosity. “Did they not issue you any hazardous material gear, Sergeant?”

  “No, ma’am, they did not.” He followed the trail of her gaze, then looked back at her, somewhat nervous. “Should they have?”

  “We’re unsure of exactly what we’re looking for, but I would exercise the appropriate caution. If you have any rebreather kits, I’d suggest using them.”

  “Is that what’s going on here?” the sergeant asked. “Biological weapons?”

  “Even if I knew,” Chaboth replied, “I would not be at liberty to say. We simply do not have enough information yet.”

  The man nodded. “Very well. Carry on, Major.”

  “Be safe, Sergeant,” Chaboth said quietly to the sergeant’s back. He didn’t turn or make any acknowledgement of her comment, he just walked back into the transport and slammed the metal door behind him. Engines rattled and roared and the three-vehicle convoy surged forward, continuing on down the darkened street, fading into black.

  “Let’s all hope this isn’t what we think it is,” Broderick said, coming up on Chaboth’s right. “Those men would be as good as dead.”

  “Let’s all hope,” the major replied. “Until then we are treating this city as if an active biological agent is in the air. One-hundred-percent structural integrity. The highest protocols! Grab the cases, let’s move; double time, Team Ten!”

  Chaboth was standing in the middle of the group, speaking with the authority that she was accustomed to. They all watched her with rapt attention, and tensed, ready to run the next short distance to the small store in Quincy.

  A low, flat whack cut the air, a sound so strange and unexpected to them on the streets of Boston that none of them identified it at first. None of them recognized it as a gunshot.

  The major started to turn, but her head snapped back before she got all the way around, glass shattering from her goggles, plastic splintering and spraying from the built-in filtration system that was strapped to her face. She stumbled backwards, took two unsteady, confused steps, then slammed down back-first to the pavement, the gunshot that killed her still echoing in the smoky air.

  Chapter Four

  Everything screamed to a shuddering halt, a sense of freeze frame, that single moment in history forever engraved into Team Ten’s memories. Major Chaboth lay on the pavement, her shattered filtration mask scattered across the rough surface around her, a thick pool of dark red spreading slowly underneath her head that lay askew atop her neck. Her face was a mask of blood, no features visible among the broken remnants of the mask and streaked curtain of red.

  Sergeant Davis snapped into gear, a full-on instinctual movement, his arms whipping up into rigid position, his hooded head pressing tight to the curved side of his M4, fingers clutching the tactical front grip, bringing his weapon level and bearing down on the direction of the shot. It took less than ten seconds for him to catch Gray in his scope, the figure pulling back and moving toward cover. Davis fired twice, two swift barks of single-shot fire, the weapon bucking in his grasp and Gray shouted, stumbling forward out of the view of Davis’s scope.

  In the distance, two more figures peeled away from where the shooter had been, lifting their own weapons and firing, scattered semi-automatic gunfire with staccato pops and bangs.

  “Cover, Team Ten, take cover!” Davis shouted, ducking away and moving right. Broderick drifted left, his eyes moving to the still form of Chaboth, while bringing around his own M4, bearing it down on one of the new shooters, firing. Two other Team Ten members moved in as well, lifting their own weapons and firing as Davis pushed forward even farther. Gunfire blasted in quick, calculated flashes and pops, sparks pounding off the brick sides of buildings and pinging from the metal roofs of nearby vehicles.

  “Broderick, keep moving!” Davis shouted, looking over his left shoulder. “Two targets isolated, behind that pickup truck!” He gestured with the barrel of his rifle toward a blue truck parked at the side of the road parallel to the wide open area where the Blackhawk had descended to drop them off. As he spoke, another scattering of muzzle flashes burst from behind the hood of the vehicle, their targets returning fire.

  Broderick moved left and forward, two chunks of pavement blowing up into the air under the impact of incoming fire that were widely off target. He glared over the iron sight on the barrel of his weapon, shifting it right and tracking the flashes, then pulled the trigger three quick times. Two shots punched into the hood of the truck, spraying sparks, but the third shot hit something dull and solid, a grunt echoing as the shadowed figure stumbled backwards, his weapon cartwheeling.

  “Two down!” shouted Schmidt as he continued moving forward in a low crouch, letting his weapon sink back down. He looked right and saw Davis in a half run, charging the truck. Behind the vehicle, the silhouette popped up again, swinging a weapon around, bringing it up in the direction of Broderick, but Davis was on him, aiming and firing in swift succession, driving at least three bullets into the forward-facing torso of the would-be shooter. He stumbled backwards and whirled, his weapon clattering to the sidewalk.

  “Three down!” screamed Davis. “There! Behind the red car!”

  Several yards down the street, a brief blur of motion behind a red hatchback caught Broderick’s eye and he twisted toward it, seeing a shoulder emerge from behind the vehicle. A hand shot up, starting to swing and Davis was on it, firing with the M4.

  “No, don’t, we give—”

  Pop pop pop pop

  Shots blasted from the narrow barrel of his tactical rifle, catching the first silhouette and driving it to the ground as if the bullet grew arms and grappled. A muffled female cry of anguish echoed over the vehicle and another voice screamed in the darkness.

  “—up! We give up!” The man stood from behind the car, hands stretching to the sky, no weapon visible, but Davis was moving fast, heart racing, his weapon arcing.

  “Cease fire!” Broderick shouted. “Cease fire right now!”

  The words drilled into Davis’s ear and managed to punch through the flood of adrenaline, and his finger sprang from the trigger, flattening itself against the trigger guard as he approached, weapon still raised and pointed at the last man standing.

  “Do not move!” shouted Davis as he came in closer. “Don’t even breathe wrong, you get me?”

  “You killed her!” the man shouted. “We were giving up and you killed her!”

  “She had a gun!”

  “She was throwing it away!” his voice was shrill and broken, a choking gasp of anger and sadness.

  “Lie down on the sidewalk, face first, right now, you got me?”

  The man nodded slowly, linking his fingers behind his head and dropping to his knees. He was breathing hard and ragged and Davis came close, pushing him face-first to the ground with the sole of his boot. He looked past the man and saw the woman sprawled out on the sidewalk, arms splayed, a Ruger Security-9 pistol la
ying several feet away from her outstretched fingers.

  “One of your friends killed a major of the United States Army!” Davis screamed. “Do you have any idea what that means?”

  “Sorry!” Javier shouted. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know he was going to—”

  “What the hell else was he going to do with a tactical rifle running through the streets? What exactly did you think was going to happen?” Davis’s voice was a strained scream, the stress and rage over the surprise attack coming through in thin, sharp words. Verbal shards of broken glass.

  “I don’t know, man. I just don’t know. Everything’s broken. The city’s burning. I just… I don’t know—” he was sobbing, his torso heaving as he lay face first on the sidewalk. “We saw people dead. Dying. Died right in front of us.”

  “Died how?” asked Broderick making his way over. He’d slung the weapon back over his shoulder, letting Davis resume his place as the aggressor. Behind him, the rest of Team Ten moved in, some of them held weapons at the ready, others left their barrels pointed down toward the road.

  “Coughing. Looks like they coughed their dang lungs out, right on the road.”

  Broderick and Provlov glanced at each other, and even through the emotionless faces of the filtration masks, their concern was clear. Too late. They had officially been too late. It was spreading.

  “What do you want me to do with him?” Davis asked, looking toward Broderick. Javier sobbed quietly, face down on the sidewalk.

  “Take his weapon. Take all of their weapons. Where we’re going, he can’t come, we’re going to have to just let him go.”

  “He and his buddies killed one of ours,” Davis growled.

  “His buddies did. Far as I can tell, this poor jerk never fired a single shot. Neither did his girlfriend. Unless you want some closer scrutiny than you’d probably prefer, I think we just need to let him go.”

  “I won’t tell,” Javier groveled. “I won’t tell no one, I promise. Just let me go, I just wanna go home.”

  Davis shook his head, the barrel of the weapon rigid and pointing at the back of Javier’s head. His finger twitched on the trigger guard, and for a fraction of a second, Broderick thought he might pull it.

  But he didn’t. The finger relaxed and the rifle fell away, then Davis moved right, bending over to scoop up the discarded weapons.

  “You got room in that backpack?” Davis asked and Irkus nodded, slipping the canvas sack from his shoulder. He followed Davis along, picking up the rifles and stuffing them into the backpack for safe keeping.

  Broderick lowered himself to a crouch, tapping Javier on the shoulder. “Get up,” he whispered.

  Javier pushed himself up onto his knees. Tears cut through the grime and smoky dirt covering his face.

  “Forget this as much as you can… over the next few hours you may be hearing about quarantine procedures. Follow them, do you understand? I’m violating a hundred different protocols by letting you go, but I suspect things may already be out of control.”

  Javier looked over at Maria, sprawled across the sidewalk and he sniffed short and hard, then wiped at his eyes.

  “Do you understand?”

  Javier nodded. “Yeah, man. I get it.”

  Broderick turned and took a step away.

  “So,” Javier said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “What is going on here?”

  Broderick looked over his shoulder. “Nothing good.”

  Javier watched him join the rest of Team Ten, gather up their stuff and walk away, their bright yellow uniforms swallowed by the smoke and dark. He took one last look at Maria, then looked over where Gray, Porter, and Jake lay, drew in one shaky breath, and walked down the road after them. If this was some biological attack, he wasn’t about to go home. He had been a few feet away from the people in the drug store. He wasn’t going to contaminate his friends or his family. What he was going to do is figure out what was going on in the city, and do whatever he could to help.

  ***

  It almost seemed too good to be true, but there it was, standing tall and wide in the scant glow of surrounding firelight. Jackson saw his apartment building around the corner as he emerged from the alley and couldn’t help himself. Falling into a lumbering run, he dashed across the street and over the sidewalk, then drew up quickly. In the dim light he hadn’t noticed them from farther away, but as he got closer, they were clearer. More visible. Slumped shadows in the splash of pale light on the apartment. Jackson could hear the laboring chatter of the generator running, the faint smell of fuel mixing with smoke as he neared the building. He knew his apartment complex had a generator, but never recalled it actually being used before.

  He was at once happy to hear the noise, but also dismayed as the light supplied by the generator illuminated the shapes on the grass outside the building. Three of them. Bodies. Just three more to add to the list that he’d seen today, but these three were cast in the pallor of generator-supplied light, clearly visible, not the strange obscured husks that he’d seen previously throughout the day.

  They’d once been people, that much was clear, one of them male, one female, and one… heaven help him, one looked to be a child. The male was slumped over forward, his blue jeans dirty with soot and arms sprawled out on the lawn, fingers splayed. The female was lying on her side, coiled around the child as if trying to protect it from something, protection that would go unrealized. By far the smallest shape, the third form was in a fetal position, knees tucked tight to its chest, curled so tight that Jackson couldn’t even tell if it was a boy or a girl.

  There was no visible cause of death, a small miracle that he was glad for, and as soon as the reality of what he was looking at became clear, he angled right and quickened his pace toward the apartment building, wanting to get as far away from the bodies as possible. Turning to face the door, he saw another body, two more bodies, both of them face up in the street, staring up into the smoke-covered stars. One of them was shrouded in darkness and somewhat invisible, but the second was caught in another circle of light and he could see the blood caked face, his chin and cheeks obscured by a dark, rust colored stain.

  Just like the Cessna pilot. Just like Drew.

  Jackson pulled keys out of his pocket and ran a fob over the card reader at the door, and with a click, the front door opened, letting him slide his way into the foyer, then make his way toward the stairwell. Even with the generator running, he didn’t much want to take the elevator, and even being on the fifth floor, he took the stairs more often anyway, using whatever excuse he could to get some extra exercise. He’d committed to running a marathon a week, twenty-six miles, generally broken up into several shorter runs, and he was in really good shape. Walking the five floors barely taxed him, even after his long trek from Hanscom into the city and in fact, he felt even better and stronger as he crested that final flight and turned left into the hallway leading to his apartment. Throughout his way up to the fifth floor and to his apartment, he’d seen a handful more corpses, two in the stairwell itself, one more on the landing, and two more in the hallway leading to the narrow door that made up his entrance. He’d braced himself for more, and figured after a few weeks the whole apartment building would be reeking with the smell of rotting corpses. It was a thought that grabbed at his guts and felt as if they turned them end over end within his body.

  The entire building was filled with an eerie silence. Being in the middle of the city, his apartment complex housed many different kinds of people, including several families, and there was almost always the sound of giggling or outright laughter (and yes, occasionally screaming) as he walked down the halls, but tonight the absence of sound was louder than any scream he’d ever heard. His feet twisted and squeaked the loose floorboards in ways he had rarely heard, and as he approached apartment 5H, he halted for a moment outside his door, closing his eyes, trying not to imagine that everyone in every apartment was like the people he’d seen on the grass and inside the building.

  They couldn’t be
. This wasn’t happening. He’d go into his apartment, go to sleep, wake up in the morning and everything would be fixed. That’s the way the world worked. The way he was comfortable with it working.

  Jiggling in his tight fingers, he pressed the keys into the slot above the knob, twisted and pushed his door open, easing it shut behind him with a clack. Unlike the faint generator supplied light in the hallway, his apartment was pitch black, and he moved right, flipping on a lamp on an end table to give himself some semblance of light.

  The apartment looked normal, a short, unremarkable hallway leading to an opened living room and kitchen combination, far smaller than he’d ever lived in throughout his childhood. The place was adorned with only the basics; no fancy art on the walls, no decor on the counters, just utilitarian appliances, a plain chair, even plainer sofa, and a television set that, while a flat screen, was impressively small and sat on a squat dresser acting as a makeshift entertainment center.

  There was literally nothing to love about his cramped living quarters. It was nothing except a roof, a bed, and a refrigerator, and he’d never been happier to see it in his life. The place felt empty tonight, as it always did without Lisa, but for the first time he was glad she had left. He felt happy that she had returned to her hometown to care for her sick mother. It was better than her being here and falling victim to whatever was happening, even if it meant the end of their engagement.

  He preferred to say it was on “hiatus,” and Lisa begrudgingly allowed him that, but he felt like the longer things went with them apart, the more permanent the separation was becoming.

  Not that he could do anything about it. Lisa’s mother had fallen ill three months after Lisa moved to the city. Three months after signing a one-year lease for this expensive apartment in downtown Boston. Like it or not, he was here for nine more months, and while Lisa had told him she’d wait for him, he grew less certain of that by the day. He wanted to take her at her word, he felt like he owed her that, but with every phone call he could hear the distance. He could feel it. Heck, he could almost taste it. It didn’t taste good.