by Rick Chesler
Then both men aimed their guns at the thrashing creature as Veronica ran up between them, gun outstretched.
“Don’t waste time questioning your vision.” She fired, blasting a hole in the zombie’s skull just as it was about to lunge at her. With just a glance back at the men, she ran ahead, toward the commotion. “Come on, now you know what to do. Anyone bitten who looks dead…”
“…isn’t,” said one of the soldiers, shaking his head as he watched the body missing half its head slump to the floor.
#
Veronica rounded the corner, into the lobby and skidded to a halt. How had it gotten this far already? Two agents in plainclothes—a man and a woman, nerdy types from level three, she realized—had been infected and changed. They were charging the front desk where two armed guards with a no-nonsense attitude didn’t think twice, but cut down the attackers.
Good, Veronica thought, seeing them go for headshots. Word’s finally out, and they believe my briefing.
The area safe, more agents and soldiers emerged from hallways and around cover.
“Lobby secure,” one agent in a black suit spoke into his Bluetooth. Veronica, taking a breath, was about to agree—when a shadow fell over the lobby, something blocking out the sun from the western set of windows on the second level.
Something large, something…
“Get down!” she screamed, running for cover—the nearest pillar.
An explosion of glass, tortured metal and concrete bursting apart. Shards rained down on the soldiers and agents, trying to dodge and flee the gray-leathery thing that had flown right into the building.
Veronica would have thought it a small plane at first, except for the stench.
The horrid, fetid stench of something that should have been dead millions of years ago.
Something that awkwardly careened off a pillar, shattering off a huge chunk of masonry, then flapping and rolling and gripping the third level landing with its giant claws…
It opened its beak. Its hideously vacant and remorseless eyes seemed to seek out Veronica’s, to root her to the spot, even as it regurgitated its payload.
Two human figures spilled from its gullet, tumbling, thrashing and alighting onto the marble floor beneath—
—where they promptly shook off the fall, got up, chose targets, and ran…
#
She couldn’t even get a shot off before the huge black shape fell to the floor, crashed and heaved itself up, spreading its wings and rearing back its enormous head. Pockets of flesh hung off the creature, as its eyes—empty, hideous, famished—continued to stare hungrily at Veronica.
The fear she felt now, confined in this building, surrounded by other zombies and screaming colleagues, was even more acute than being down in the cargo hold of the Hammond with the chained T.rex…
This thing was vile, unearthly and alien in a different way, as if its malice and brooding terror came not from animalistic nature, but from sheer evil itself—from the very nature of evil.
The utter weight of those eyes, the slavering bloody ooze dripping from its beak, and the enormous wingspan, all served to freeze her in her tracks like susceptible prey.
She was a goner.
Except in the next instant, as the pterodactyl reared back and was about to launch upon her, a strafing run of bullets—armor piercing 50-caliber rounds—tore through its right side, from shoulder to skull. Veronica watched in awe as the rounds fired from a second story turret and an M2 machine gun raked the undead creature up and down and sideways, shredding its skin and bone as it would a tank or armored vehicle.
The pterodactyl issued a baneful shrieking as it flapped and tried to cover its head with its wings—that were subsequently obliterated, and then it lifted its beak and made one last attempt to snap at its unseen attackers. After that, another salvo bored holes through its carapace, shattering its skull and blasting its brain stem into gory shreds.
Its neck almost completely severed, it flopped awkwardly backward and lay flat, with its wings spread out in tatters. Smoke rose from its bullet-ridden body.
The gun went silent as Veronica looked up, now with the sun back and streaming through the broken window, where she could just make out the machine gunner running from the turret toward the stairs and down to join the closer fighting below.
She recognized the man as he appeared on the lower landing. Recognized him from the briefing about the aircraft carrier’s attack. He was a pilot, and Alex’s escort, and must have been finishing his debrief here as well when the assault began.
Clear-thinker, she thought proudly. Major Casey Remington rounded the pillar just as Veronica leapt over the ptero’s twitching tail. They both had their sidearms out, taking aim at the pair of zombies engaged with unarmed CIA agents trying to keep them at bay with a fire extinguisher.
Two shots, each firing simultaneously, and the two zombies fell, backs of their skulls blown out.
“Nice shooting,” Remington said to her.
“You too, and thanks.” She nodded back to the twice-dead flying dinosaur. “Was that three of those birds you’ve killed now?”
He nodded. “By my count. Although it’s getting easier. And thanks to you and your briefing. Head shots…”
She nodded, then glanced around, listening. “Is that all of them?”
More gunfire erupted down the western hallway, followed by screams.
“Damn it, they’ve gotten into the building.”
“Go,” Remington said. “Help where you can, I have other orders.”
“What orders?”
“I’ve got to get into the air and protect the harbor, and… do what I can from the air.” He gave the pterodactyl a wide berth, but lingered with a look of grudging awe and respect, then turned back to her. “I have a feeling we’ll meet again.”
She met his look and saw the fear lodged there, the same almost resigned acceptance one would expect seeing a tidal wave heading toward an unprotected beach. She hoped it wasn’t true, but thought: maybe all we can do is hang on and wait for the aftermath.
As he ran off, a new round of gunfire echoed from the eastern hallway. Veronica froze, undecided. The lobby was empty but for the dead dinosaur and the corpses with their heads shot up. She hesitated, unsure in which direction to run and provide aid, but then heard screams and shouts outside, as well as a roaring and something unearthly rumbling in the streets. She saw the broken front entrance and wondered for a moment if the best spot for her might actually be at the turret upstairs, guarding the entrance and shooting anything that shambled inside. They had to protect this intelligence center. Who knows what was happening out there, but inside, they had access to worldwide communications, an arsenal, a bunker and could hold out and direct the outside forces if need be.
However, if those screams from the other hallways were any indication, Langley’s interior was far from secure. Whoever planned all this—and did she even have to wonder—knew what they were doing, attacking it first as a high priority target.
Then she shuddered, thinking of the planning, and what she would have done if she were on the other side. What other targets would have been selected, and what other battles were raging right now?
In the midst of such questions, her phone rang.
It was Nesmith. She was wanted in the control room, mission of vital importance. She couldn’t hear everything through the gunfire, but it sounded like they needed her to get to Atlanta, where there just might be a key to stopping all this.
15.
CDC Headquarters, Atlanta
Arcadia was close to finding a synthesis that actually made sense, nowhere near to a complete understanding of what this thing was, but she was running a program to break down Xander’s complicated algorithms and unravel the protein inhibitors to get at what this prion could do.
She also had to see what this invasive agent couldn’t do. What it couldn’t attack, break down, control and devour. In the midst of all this research and focus, she almost didn’t
hear the commotion until the office had broken out into complete chaos. Other researchers and doctors surrounded computer screens and TV monitors at first, pointing with shaking hands, then looks of fear, a bustling of activity, people scrambling for their cell phones.
Arcadia stood up, making to head out of her office, when her laptop screen flashed to a media app they all had running in the background. Look away, she told herself, just don’t look. Go out there, and maybe it’ll be something else, something normal like another mass shooting—as unfortunately ‘normal’ that has become in this day and age. The screen changed and of course, she couldn’t look away. Not from the multiple angles and raw footage of the impossible:
Dinosaurs, things out of B-movies, except with greater realism and terror, these things—some she recognized, others were different, like those pale, swift creatures with crown-like appendages.
The cameras were shaky—maybe hand-held phones and video apps—again in this day, all too popular. This was CNN, but she knew they would all be carrying more of the same, and after the initial certainty that this had to be a hoax or the ultimate prank, terror would be sweeping the country, gripping it. The world even.
She sat back down, mesmerized. The horror, the devastation…and the transformations. She watched, and quickly the brutality and the violence and sheer insanity of it all gave way to a scientist’s interest. Her curiosity and observational nature took over. She studied the ferocity of the zombie attacks, the movements of the dinosaurs, the rising of the corpses after attack, and most importantly…the means of transfer.
The prions.
In her mind she saw the protein structures, the way they reacted to and conquered their surrounding cells.
She saw the human victims on these videos. Bitten by other infected humans. Bitten—but surprisingly not eaten completely—by the dinosaurs. It was as if the raging attackers knew they had to leave enough of the flesh and muscle (and teeth) to keep the body alive, to be able to reproduce in the only way they could.
A few more minutes, and she was still riveted, studying details and picking up knowledge most of the viewers likely missed. Scenes shifted, cities changed, but it was all the same. Whether it was Miami or Charlotte or Baltimore… Or the current scene—from Atlanta itself, where something of incredible size, with a huge brontosaurus-like neck, lumbered away from a flatbed 18-wheeler, crushing townhomes, restaurants, people and everything in its wake. It reminded her superficially of a video she’d once seen of an escaped circus elephant rampaging through city streets until it had to be stopped by police with shotguns, only this was so much worse, orders of magnitude worse.
Oh god.
That brought her back, and now she realized what the commotion was all about in her office.
Just then, all the CDC breach alarms went off. The panic buttons had been hit.
They were here.
#
“Levels four through six secure.”
Arcadia listened with only some minor fraction of her attention. She implicitly understood that, at least for the moment, she and her colleagues were safe here, and she imagined that should the building stability or facility in total be threatened, they could take a secure elevator non-stop down to the bunker-level and the highest degree of security, the underground level where all the truly dangerous chemicals and bio-threats were kept behind multiple firewall and security precautions.
For now, she hoped the security measures—including external window sealing, multiple locked entry points and reinforced walls, would hold.
Unless something like that thing with the enormous neck comes this way…what could stop that short of a guided missile?
She shuddered, put it out of her mind and focused on the incoming communication.
Forget for a moment the chaos reigning outside, the prehistoric creatures attacking the city like Godzilla on steroids.
The president was calling.
16.
Veronica listened, but understood only about a third of what the CDC Director said—and she had the sneaking suspicion that even that was half more than the president himself comprehended. She had to give him the benefit of the doubt though, as his attention was absorbed in a million other directions: his country under attack, the capital itself in serious danger. Civilization itself seemed to be hanging in the balance.
She could hear the planes overhead, the sonic booms, bombs and gunfire, and she shuddered with each thudding that shook the building and rattled dust over her. The screen ahead, however, was crystal clear, the president on the left, the CDC Director of Pathogen Research on the right.
They both looked like hell, but Arcadia’s eyes at least held a promise of hope.
“Agent Winters,” the president said, as he winced, looking up and over his shoulder.
“Sir, are you secure?”
“Underground and behind multiple walls of steel? I sure hope so, but there won’t be a nation left to govern if we can’t stop this thing. If Dr. Grey’s infection projections are true, and we can’t end this here and now…”
Arcadia shook her head. “If it was just Atlanta, or just Baltimore? Maybe. You could block all the roads, secure the city, even…do the unthinkable and nuke the area.”
The president closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. They looked hardened and pained. “Scary as that option is, I wish it were on the table. But we have no choice at all. As she says, with six cities and counting under attack, we’ll never have the resources.”
“Then why am I here?” Veronica asked. And why am I here? Surely these two should be spending their precious time on other alternatives.
The president sighed and settled his attention on her. “We’ll do our best in the air and with ground troops to contain this, repel the…things and control the spread of the infection, and even if we fail, there are secure locations around the country. Even now…” He rubbed his eyes.
Was he about to tell her what she had already guessed? There were shadow government sites, bunkers in secure locations around the country, possibly NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, among others, where an alternate cabinet and leadership structure stood ready to take control should Washington fall. She knew all about it in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, and how close we had come to another plane knocking out the White House and the Pentagon.
“Contingencies are in effect,” the president said, echoing her thoughts, “but what Dr. Grey has brought to my attention is something that may be a silver bullet, a long shot, but hope nonetheless.”
“And it concerns you,” Arcadia Grey said to Veronica, “since it came from Xander Dyson.”
Veronica’s breath froze. She tried not to show a reaction, but she knew something about Xander might come up on this call if it involved the CDC Director. Arcadia Grey was Dyson’s girlfriend for a time, it was all in the file, and Veronica knew everything about the man, every aspect of his past, every family member, friend, lover and acquaintance. She had left no stone unturned, but also she had a tremendous amount of respect for Dr. Grey. She did, after all, dump the bastard and then reveal everything she could about him to the FBI and CIA. She had been mortified by the level of his sadism and the misuse of his talents in the name of some misbegotten undertaking.
Still, discussing Dyson at all was painful for Veronica. He had killed her fiancée, after all, and now…
“I’m sorry, Agent Winters.” Dr. Grey appeared solemn and pale. She shook her head slowly. “I wish I could have stopped Dyson before…before he hurt anyone.”
“Thank you, but…”
“I’m not sure if you were aware of this, but while you were on that island, when it became clear to him that DeKirk was going to sell him out and steal his science, Dyson worked on something that might just be the key we need to reverse all this.”
Veronica tried to think of a question, some response to make any kind of sense out of what she had just been told. “Are you sure? Alex and I…when we were in that facility, it looked like Xander Dy
son was bluffing while he was communicating with DeKirk. He claimed he had a ‘failsafe’ just at the time needed it to save his ass.”
“I thought of that, too,” the president said, “but Dr. Grey assures me she’s checked the science, the biology.”
“It’s sound,” Arcadia said. “It’s not complete though, not totally, but it’s close. Dyson knew it, knew if he sent me what he had, that I could finish the work, see how the elements all fit and put the rest of the jigsaw together. I would realize his theory was correct. There’s a way to use the prions’ own transfer mechanisms against them. There’s a way to control them, first off—”
“—which is probably what DeKirk took from Dyson,” the president added, “and why these mindless creatures seem to be acting with more intelligence than they should have.” He sighed. “Not that I’m a goddamned dinosaur expert, but the fact that these things with little more than bird brains are strategically dropping off payloads, running elaborate diversions and hitting key targets all speaks to something—or someone—controlling them.”
Dr. Grey nodded. “Without getting into the complexities of the science, the similarities to group consciousness, migratory patterns and pack mentality, there’s something even beyond that that these things share…”
“No time, doctor.”
“Right. Sorry.” Arcadia glanced down, then winced at some noise in the background.
“Is it still secure there?” Veronica asked.
“For the moment,” Arcadia responded, “but we don’t know how much longer. There was something coming up from the south, something big, saw it on the news, transported by a huge truck.”
“We don’t know what its target is,” the president said, “but we’re not taking any chances. The National Guard has been mobilized.”
Dr. Grey leaned closer so Veronica could see the red in her eyes, the lines around her cheekbones and her thin lips. She wondered if, a lifetime ago, under different circumstances, she and Xander Dyson could have had a normal life. Dinner parties, kids, family outings…
