by Rick Chesler
She set off down an aisle, a doubtful look on her face as she glanced at racks of hiking gear—backpacks, water bottles, boots. She stopped in front of one of the packs, shrugged, and put it on. “Nice color. Wonder if they take Discover Card.”
Two aisles over, Alex was checking out the hockey gear: sticks, pucks, pads, and goalie masks. A helmet… He took a closer look at them, picked one up. It was a sleek, tapered affair made of heavy-duty plastic with a slick paintjob—long canines on the forehead sticking down and on the chin guard sticking up, giving the impression that the player’s entire face was a gaping maw of doom. The one he chose was a full helmet style and not simply a mask.
He held it up to his face, noting how the chin guard extended up to cover the entire mouth, with a plastic grill covering the face. Even better, a large, clear plastic deflector plate, meant to deflect high speed pucks, covered the entire mouth area.
Perfect!
He put it on and went to find Veronica. She was wandering the exercise equipment section, and for a brief second Alex felt like they were just an ordinary couple goofing around on a little shopping trip. Then he recalled the purpose of the hockey mask and the moment was gone.
“Hey, check this out!” She turned to look at him and a scream escaped her lips at the sight of him in the mask.
“Don’t shoot! Geez, it’s only me!”
“Damn it, Alex! You scared the crap outta me! As if that doesn’t happen enough, the way things are lately.”
He took the mask off and held it. “Sorry. Just wanted to show you the plan.”
“What plan?”
“This.” He held up the mask to his face and made snapping motions with his teeth by way of explanation.
Realization lit in Veronica’s eyes and a smile took hold. “Not sure how we’ll get it on one’s head, but okay. I’m with you.”
“We just need something for the hands. Keep looking.”
One aisle over, Alex found the baseball stuff. He grabbed two large adult catcher’s mitts and tried them on. They were both lefties but then he found a right-handed glove too and was satisfied that they would prevent a zombie from inflicting serious damage with its hands.
He found Veronica still in the exercise aisle, where she had removed a long section of sturdy elastic from a resistance trainer and showed it to Alex. He nodded.
“Let’s go get our volunteer.”
#
Sporting goods in tow, Alex and Veronica made their way back down the block. Now that they were ready, the street seemed to be devoid of undead, except for a lone crylo shuffling down the road, but they did nothing to incite it and it ambled away, head rooting at the ground. When they reached the woman’s clothing store, Alex looked inside and saw the zombie he had fought with earlier still there in the entrance alcove, along with the lifeless bodies of its three comrades.
“That’s our man.”
Alex studied their target. It roamed around the alcove, apparently confused about how to get out or which way to go, stumbling once over the body of one of its fallen brethren.
“So how are we going to do this?”
“Very carefully.”
“Seriously.”
Alex concentrated on the zombie for a moment longer. “How about I place the gear on it but you hold the arms down? When that’s done, you tie the elastic band around it for a leash.”
Veronica unsheathed her big knife. “Why don’t I just cut the thing’s arms off, then we don’t have to worry about that, at least.”
“Dr. Grey said she wanted the specimen whole. That would mean with hands, and I don’t want to come back and try this all again. Do it right the first time, my grandma always used to say.”
Veronica shrugged. “Whatever. Grey better be able to do something with this thing is all I can say. Let’s get it over with.”
The zombie-fighting duo advanced on the alcove.
They split up, with Alex circling to the rear of the zombie—a tight fit against the storefront window—and Veronica stretched the piece of elastic out in front of her, testing it, looking for an opportunity.
The undead human focused its limited attention on Veronica, swiping at her with its arms. It reached for her, a weird groan coming from deep within its core, but she evaded its contact. Then, as it brought its arms up in another swing, Veronica used both of her own arms to wrap the elastic cord around the zombie’s wrists, trapping them against one another.
At the same time, Alex slammed the hockey helmet down on the dumb brute’s head, mashing it in place.
“Wrap those arms tight!”
Veronica wound the strap around the specimen’s arms a couple of more times, then cinched it tight. Alex pounded the helmet down one more time to make certain it would stay put and then stepped back to admire his handiwork.
Ironically, the mythic beast imagery airbrushed onto the goalie mask, designed to elicit ferocity and to intimidate opponents, was infinitely less scary than the sight of the actual zombie’s face, with its rot, ruin, and general suggestion of just how bad things could really get.
“That’s quite an improvement, right?” Veronica remarked after quickly backing away. A row of gleaming, sharp teeth appeared white and healthy above the undead thing’s real decayed stumps, while a pair of electric blue cat’s eyes stood out in vivid contrast to the zombie’s dull stare.
“Definitely.”
Alex appraised the specimen momentarily. “Okay. Now for the hands.”
Veronica held onto the slack elastic to control the thing’s arms while Alex readied the catcher’s mitt for the right hand. Veronica pulled the zombie’s arms down and Alex kneeled by the hands. The helmeted head of the monstrosity lunged at Alex’s neck, and he could hear it gnashing and slavering behind the mask, but it could not bite.
He slid the baseball glove on its right hand and wrapped a Velcro strap tight.
“New one, incoming!” Veronica pointed behind them where another zombie moved toward them. “Hold on!” She blasted the top of its skull open with her firearm and it dropped dead, its cranial contents running into a storm drain.
“One more glove!” Alex prepared the left baseball mitt while Veronica got control of the elastic again. They moved in and Alex crammed the glove onto the zombie’s other hand, cinching it down as before. “Play ball!” Then he stepped away and admired his handiwork.
The zombie prisoner looked ridiculous, wearing a garish hockey mask with a professional leather catcher’s mitt on each hand, while its arms were bound together in front of it with a piece of elastic, the free end of which was held by Veronica.
Alex pointed toward the CDC Headquarters building. “Okay, let’s go, Sports Fan!”
30.
Washington, D.C. – PEOC
“Sir, if we want to have any chance of getting out of here, we have to leave now.”
Remington ignored the other commando. He was aware of everything in this bunker—the three soldiers he had left, the sixteen-plus corpses, half of them partially-devoured, the rest with their heads blown off, the screens, some demolished and others showing either news feeds of the mayhem around the country or the scene outside captured by the closed circuit cameras—but his primary focus was on the man at the other end of the video feed.
“Mr. President…”
“DeKirk,” the other man said with a glint in his eye as he backed away slightly and again the room filled the screen. Remington noted blood stains on the walls, gore streaking the tabletop and what looked like something large and hulking moving outside, in the doorway, perhaps guarding it.
What the hell happened there? And what was he dealing with? A budding sense of dread and hopelessness rose in his chest. Could he elicit an answer and get to the truth? “What’s your situation, there, sir? Do you require assistance?”
“Under control for the moment, major, and much better than your situation, I wager.”
Remington chewed his lip and eyed the closed circuit monitor. A herd of crylos stampeded a
cross the White House lawn, while zombie pileups here and there indicated the recently deceased. DeKirk was right, things had deteriorated rapidly up there. Was there an escape route down here? There had to be, but he didn’t know the layout or have any blueprints. First things first.
He turned to the closest aide and whispered, “Clear the bunker and look for an alternate exit.”
“Good thinking, major,” said DeKirk, and Remington lifted his eyes. Great hearing or was this place just that wired up?
“Sir… Mr. President.” Remington stood at attention again. “Orders? Can you give me a status update? I assume you have full access there, as protocols have been transferred. Do you have links to the Air Force? To NORAD, to NATO? Europe? Are they offering assistance? Or are they facing something similar?”
DeKirk raised a hand motioning restraint. “Easy. From our initial reports, this…outbreak of madness has mostly been limited to the U.S. eastern seaboard and the gulf states.”
“Outbreak of madness? Is that what we’re calling it?”
DeKirk smiled and shrugged. “For lack of a more dramatic…and Hollywood fright night kind of term.”
“Call ‘em zombies,” said one of the remaining commandos.
“And fuckin’ dinosaurs from the grave,” muttered another.
“Yes,” DeKirk said, “I’ve heard the reports and…seen wondrous sights.”
Wondrous? Remington repressed a shudder, again unable to take his eyes off DeKirk’s oddly-hued pupils.
“Tell me, major. What would you suggest for our next course of action?”
He swallowed hard, tasting dust and blood and smoke. “Contact NATO, or mobilize our carriers overseas and activate the divisions supporting Germany and Korea, organize a coalition of other nations, stop the outbreak first from spreading overseas. I assume all flights are grounded. Then consider quarantines of…hell, the entire Mid-Atlantic states, maybe use the Mississippi as the dividing line, and…”
“We have new reports in from Los Angeles,” said DeKirk in a less-than-sullen tone.
A lump lodged in his throat. “What reports?”
“Overrun with the infected. It happens fast, as you I’m sure you know well by now.”
Remington lowered his eyes. “Then…”
“We’re working on it,” DeKirk said. “And yes, NATO will be our next call. I imagine they’re pissing their pants right about now. Phones ringing off the hook upstairs, if you could get up there, with no response obviously. But we can’t leave them waiting, we’ll get in touch.”
A hundred scenarios swarmed in Remington’s mind, all revolving around how to protect the heartland, to set up defensible zones and perimeters of safety, to find some way to save the survivors (including his own family, hopefully) and mitigate the damage still to come.
“Tell him,” said the commando at his back, “about the other mission.”
Remington’s eyes darted to him in a warning, but it was too late.
“Mission?” DeKirk leaned forward. “Yes, tell me, major. Or marine…I’m eager to hear of any other last minute strategies my predecessor may have deemed worthy. I am learning on the job, so to speak. First day and all.”
Remington met the look of his soldier. Damn. No choice, but were his fears unfounded? He knew nothing of this DeKirk, this man suddenly thrust into power and given all the keys to the country, whatever that may be worth at the moment. Was he just some schlep groomed and kept ready in case the impossible happened? Or was there more to it? Even though he mentioned being new on the job—a job that would have any reasonable person stressed out beyond belief—he nevertheless seemed very calm and in control. Something so not right about him, as if none of this came as any surprise to him. The man should be a puddle of absolute fear and loss, and yet he’s cool as an icicle.
He thought of his daughter, and everything again seemed to hang in the balance. Don’t tell him, came her voice across the miles and down through the earth. Don’t, Daddy…
“The CDC,” said the commando, blurting it out as if the words were plucked right out of his throat. “The president…I mean the former president…sent an agent out on a mission.”
“Atlanta?” DeKirk asked, raising an eyebrow. “Major, is this true?”
Remington returned his attention to the screen. Don’t tell.
He had no choice. Cat was out of the bag. But what could it matter? “I only heard part of it, sir. Not sure the agent even got to the airport, she would have had to get through all the chaos, and…”
“She?” DeKirk leaned in. “That wouldn’t be Agent Winters, now would it?”
Remington blinked. “Uh…sir, I think…”
“Thank you, major. So my predecessor sent the young agent with experience against these things down to the one place that might have… what…a cure? An antidote or vaccine?” He narrowed his eyes. “What was it, soldier?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the commando, and Remington nodded, shrugging. “Only heard she was being sent there on a mission.”
“An urgent mission, by the sounds of things.” DeKirk turned and put his hands together behind his back. “Sounds like maybe I have a call to make before I respond to those Europeans.”
Remington’s lips dried out and felt like they were parched from days in the sun. “Sir, with all due respect…”
“That will be all,” president DeKirk said, angling his head around so Remington could see the glint of yellow now, the irises changing, losing the battle to a hunger barely suppressed.
What the hell, was he…?
“Thank you for your information,” DeKirk added, licking his lips. “I’ll take care of things from here. I don’t expect you’ll make it out of there alive, but maybe someday I will see you again. In one form or another.”
He reached forward, and before Remington could even think of a response, the screen went blank and left them in silence.
The silence of their tomb.
31.
CDC, Atlanta
Dr. Arcadia Grey had seen a lot of bizarre things in the last few hours, but she hadn’t been prepared for the sight out the street entrance camera. The agent and the guy she was with from Washington were back, but not alone.
It reminded her of Halloween back home, looking out the front door and seeing a ludicrous costume, kids out-doing themselves for a good trick-or-treat performance. Except this time it was something far more severe, and the trick, if not avoided carefully, would be a nasty death. On the other hand, the treat was an antidote that could save all of humanity.
Once reasonably sure the specimen—a thrashing, zombified man with blood streaked down the front of his torn shirt, his wrists bound with some kind of elastic behind his back and his head covered like Jason from Friday the 13th in a hockey mask—was not going to break out and feast on the few survivors in here, Arcadia released the door locks and allowed them in.
Sealing the door behind them, she then spoke over the lobby intercom and directed Alex and Veronica to the east stairwell. Not trusting the elevators to continue operating reliably, and concerned about all manner of alternative entrance points for those monsters, perhaps through the rooftop access to elevators shafts, she sent them down the long way.
“Stairs?” she heard Alex muttering. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Sorry,” Dr. Grey spoke into the intercom. “Can’t take chances. Just…hold him tight and pretend he’s your infirmed grandpa or something.”
“Wonderful,” Alex said. “Okay Granddad, down you go. You know, we could just shove him down the stairs or put a leash on him and drag him down behind us?”
“Whatever works, just don’t kill him.” Arcadia replied. “No cameras in there so I won’t get the show either way. So just take your friend and go down three levels and on Sub-3, I’ll buzz you through. Head down the hall, and there will be two more secured access doors you’ll need clearance for, and then you’ll find me.”
She released the speaker button, then leaned back
in her chair and returned her attention to the computer where she had various algorithms running to test Xander’s solution. Matching protein strings vied against the prion strains in a simulated dance of give and take, the prions almost always overmatching anything thrown at them.
What is it, Xander, what am I missing? She chewed the end of a pencil, glaring down its length at the screen. What were you missing? Other than the obvious, that this was all theoretical on his part, smashed together on the fly while the island was exploding around him and he was locked in a room surrounded by zombies. He didn’t have time to do real life tests or to fine-tune the equations. That was all up to her, and she was in the same situation, except here it was a whole city—hell, probably the whole country if not the world—crumbling around her.
No pressure.
She studied the interacting strands some more, then looked again at the other screen with Xander’s formulae and conclusions. Shaking her head, she stood and headed to the other section of the room, to the lab where she called over two colleagues to help her prep the table with restraints.
“Let’s move people, we’ve got a test subject coming down and this might be our only chance at this.”
The others—a young woman named Marie, barely out of grad school, and an older man named Brian, with glasses and a grey pony tail who looked like he belonged out jamming with a folk band instead of in here with the world’s most dangerous microbes, didn’t move too fast to join her.
Their attention was still riveted on the main TV screen, set up in the corner of the lab beside wall-length freezer units and cabinets full of tools and slides and other equipment. Arcadia paused to watch the news feed—something she had resisted for most of the past hour, afraid of exactly the kind of reaction she was about to have.
Desperation, hopelessness, and complete disbelief.
“It can’t be real,” Marie said, echoing her thoughts.
As she waited for Alex and Veronica and the zombie specimen, Arcadia couldn’t help but watch the live feed—shakier than a Blair Witch movie—as if it were found footage of a crowd of horrified civilians running down what looked to be Park Avenue in New York City. Towering buildings on all sides, yellow cabs parked or crashed and just left in place, blurry forms leaping onto others and tearing into them, shredding clothes and flesh; something in the distance: an unfocused shape, huge and hulking, barreling through the street and lowering great jaws to scoop up its prey, then howling into the smoke-filled sky. Other smaller bird-like creatures hurtled up and down, pulling the camera’s focus mercifully up and away from the carnage on the streets.
