by Rick Chesler
For just a moment, Arcadia caught a glimpse of a helicopter up there around the rooftops, spinning helplessly, trying to shake off two of the bird-creatures. Then something huge loomed large in the camera’s view, a scream pierced the audio, and the screen went black, turned to static and then… nothing for an uncomfortable few moments until another view took its place, this time of a sedate woman at a desk in a newsroom. Lights flickered overhead and her eyes darted around nervously.
“We have confirmation,” she began, “that the White House is no more…destroyed and abandoned…that the president is dead and the alternate government, location undisclosed, has stepped in. We are assured that everything that can be done is being done, but can confirm at this time that the country is no longer being run from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We are told…told again that the best course of action is to remain in your homes. Stay off the streets, lock your doors, hide in the basements if you can, and wait. Our troops are being mobilized…and we can only hope that this…infection hasn’t spread to our bases in other more secure locations. We are told we can, and will, mount a counter offensive—we will quarantine those areas deemed already lost and…”
The woman shook her head. Her hands trembled and she obviously couldn’t go on, but somehow mustered enough strength for one more thought before she got up and ran to the side, off camera.
“God save us.”
#
Arcadia buzzed the trio into her secure lab, then re-secured the door and set the alarms. She briefly checked the screens and saw with alarm that a greater collection of zombies were congregating outside the main entrance and the side doors, probing, looking for ways in as if they smelled the last good meal left in the city.
Or were they here for some other reason?
She shook her head. That was being paranoid. These infected…they were mindless brutes, dead in most senses of the word except for the ability to move, and of course to feel hunger; but they were truly mindless, acting instinctively.
Or were they? They seemed to be drawn here to the CDC building, directed here for some reason.
“Were you followed?” she asked Alex as he led in the shambling, thrashing creature. She could sense its hunger, its raw animalistic nature, mixed with a primordial fearsomeness, and she trembled as if she stood before the ultimate predator.
“Followed?” Alex almost choked on the word. “I guess you could say that.”
Veronica glanced over her shoulder as if expecting a mob of crazed zombies to be right behind them, clawing at the locked doors. “After we got our sports fan here, they seemed to all be on hyper-drive, coming at us from everywhere. Barely made it here without having to drop him and run.” She let out a breath only after the specimen was deposited onto the table and strapped down with the help of the other two scientists. Veronica took a step back, wiped off her hands and then offered one to Arcadia.
“Special Agent Veronica Winters. Despite everything, I really am glad to meet you.”
Arcadia reluctantly took the hand, thinking she’d have to immediately disinfect. “I imagine you know all about me.”
The agent nodded. “Because of Xander Dyson. Yes. I had you monitored for a couple years in fact, in case he ever contacted you again.”
“Slippery one, he was. Never gave a hint as to where the hell he was or what he was really up to. Even when we were together.”
“Sorry,” Veronica said with a shrug.
“No,” Arcadia replied, softer. “I’m sorry. I know what he did. To your…”
“Let’s not go there,” Veronica interrupted. “We have a job to do, and every second here with them sniffing around the building is too long. They’re going to get in soon—or else make it impossible for us to leave.”
“How long do you need?” Alex asked.
Arcadia went to her workstation beside the thrashing, hissing creature on the table.
“We’re about to find out.” She looked up for a moment, back to Veronica. “Find out if Dyson actually sent me something that might atone for all the bad shit he did in his life.”
“Can’t believe he might be our last hope.”
“Me either,” Arcadia said, selecting a needle and preparing an injection. “But he was a damn genius, and given what’s happening out there….” She looked up at the TV again, where new scenes of violence, smoking cities and mobilizing armed units flashed over and over.
“What’s the latest?” asked Alex, taking his eyes off the captive now that it was finally secured. “Last we knew, major cities on the eastern coast were in trouble. It looks like Atlanta is done for… I’m sorry.” He glanced at Marie, and then Brian, the one with the ponytail who looked even more ashen.
“We haven’t heard from our families,” he said.
Marie swallowed hard then spoke. “I had a friend text me that they were leaving with a National Guard convoy. Not sure where they’re going. Into the Midwest.”
“Safest bet,” Alex agreed. He turned his attention to the screen, where the outline of the White House, in flames, stood like some surreal doomsday movie poster. “Washington?”
Arcadia shook her head.
“Gone. Transfer of power to the backup contingent, wherever they are.”
“Hopefully NORAD in Colorado,” Veronica said.
Alex turned and tapped the specimen on the forehead on its mask. “Where we have to take you, ASAP. Let’s hurry this along.”
“Wait,” Marie said. “I think I heard there’s finally going to be a press conference. Some kind of national announcement.”
“About time,” said Brian. “See if the new guy has a clue how to fix this.”
“It’s the Rapture,” Marie said in a hollow voice. “No one can fix it.”
“It’s not the goddamned Rapture,” Arcadia snapped, fixing the solution and prepping the needle, looking for a spot on the zombie’s arm to insert it. “It’s just an ancient mutated protein that’s… raised the dead to devour the living and sent forth ancient devilish monsters…”
“The Rapture,” Marie echoed, nodding her head. “Whatever you want to call it…”
“We’re screwed,” Brian voiced.
“Um, have some faith,” Alex said. “We can beat this thing, or at least kill them all and sort it all out. First, though, someone has to accept that this was all planned. We were infected on purpose, a deliberate attack to wipe us out.”
“Who would do that?” Marie asked, wide-eyed as she turned her attention to the screen again, where the American flag stood beside an empty podium. “Terrorists? ISIS?”
“No, try a greedy megalomaniac son of a…”
Alex’s voice died and his heart skipped just as Veronica’s hand found his in a flash and squeezed it like a vise.
“No way,” they both said, staring at the TV, at the man in a pressed blue suit and power yellow tie who calmly walked up to the podium, smoothed back his silvery hair and turned a confident, smiling face upon the world.
“President?” Veronica said in a shaking voice that Arcadia imagined echoed a lifetime of disbelief and horror.
“DeKirk.”
32.
Washington, D.C.
“Remington here. Are there any friendlies in the vicinity?”
Under cover of gloom and spreading dusk, weaving behind trees and abandoned cars, Remington occasionally tried his radio as he led his three soldiers across the back lawn, past the pool where the looming Washington Monument caught his attention for just a moment, a bleak sentinel now plastered with blood, basking in the last rays of the sun.
Remington didn’t know whether to stop and stare, maybe salute, maybe cry. There was nothing else to do but run. They had escaped the bunker, finding an access tunnel that led in a serpentine route up and out through a non-descript guard post station, emerging through an unmarked door into its basement.
They put down two zombies upstairs, lurking about aimlessly, then saw their target across the way: another M1A1 tank, perhaps the one they had before
, if it had been commandeered for additional duty.
“Looks to be still under our control,” Remington noted, observing the dozen or so zombies crawling over it, screeching and trying to pry their way in. Another crylo bounded around the rear of the vehicle, staying away from its treads and its gun, but intent on waiting out the morsels inside.
“Let’s lend a hand, men—and get us a ride out of here.”
#
The technician took the handset and Remington surveyed the field one last time before dropping into the belly of the tank. He surveyed the littered corpses—including the dozen zombies he and his men had just put down, and the ragged mess of a carcass that used to be the crylo. Remington and another commando had emptied their clips into the thing’s face and neck from point-blank, catching it as it raced at them over the side of the tank, screeching as if Remington could even hear over the M5’s retort.
Now he dropped down and closed the hatch. Barked orders to his men and the other two that had held out in here as the tank crew.
“Let’s get to work,” he said as he sighted out the viewer.
“What are our orders?” one of the men asked.
Remington surveyed the Con, looking for where there would normally be a list of objectives and mission orders, parameters, but he only saw one: and just for all available F/A-18 fighter pilots…ordered to proceed to Atlanta and turn their missiles on a single set of GPS coordinates.
I bet I can guess where that is.
He swallowed hard, a lump in his throat. Maybe the only saving grace would be that most fighters had already been recalled to D.C. or New York and there wouldn’t be any in Georgia available for the task. Or maybe he could get to the air first, and figure a way to countermand the order.
At first they were glad to change course because a horde of zombies blocked the way to the Capitol, complete with ptero escorts, but after about two miles of relatively easy progress toward the airport where they were able to gun down the opposition without stopping the tank, things became difficult.
Remington ordered his men to turn onto a highway. A multi-vehicle pileup of now abandoned cars and trucks obstructed all lanes, but being in a tank had its advantages and they were able to steamroll over and through barriers, only to be met with not one but a pair of storming T. rexes. The two tyrannosaurs ran at full speed down the concrete ribbon, pausing to snap at anything that moved. One plucked a man on a motorcycle desperately attempting to maneuver around wrecked cars from his seat and head-tossed him to the pavement where the other lizard stamped the human into a formless blood cake.
Remington directed his crew with steely resolve. “120 millimeter gun: Fire on left T. rex! 50-cal machine gun: Fire on right T. rex! Now! Fire, fire, fire! Headshots, people. Kill those things deader than shit, that’s an order!”
But hitting the swinging heads of the zombie animals proved a difficult task. The tank’s iconic big gun blasted a hole in the chest of one of the dinosaurs, ripping away one of the miniscule forearms, which landed on top of the tank and stayed there, still wriggling under some kind of localized neuronal network. Remington saw an opportunity.
He addressed the main gunner team. “Cut the legs out from under it. It’ll still be alive but at least it won’t be able to run.” A succession of heavy rounds blasted into the animal’s powerful hind legs, each one blowing part of the musculature away. Yet with each hit, the beast somehow took another giant step closer to the tank even as it fell lower, focusing the totality of its ire on the lone war machine.
Meanwhile, the machine guns peppered the other T. rex with hot fire, flaying the rotten skin from the creature’s neck, chest and head. The first reptile finally succumbed to the heavy gunfire and flopped over onto the tank, clipping the other T. rex as it fell. That animal retaliated against its companion by snapping at its already wounded neck, opening it more, spilling its blood onto the dirt-caked armor.
The tank continued its momentum, rolled up and over the chest of the fallen T. rex, and then canted over sideways as it rolled off of the unpredictably contoured obstacle, landing on its side, the other tread in mid-air, churning uselessly.
Inside the tank, Remington fumed as he clutched at a ceiling handhold. “Call for any ground support or air support!” He scrambled out of the M1A1, nostrils twitching with the acrid tang of gunpowder and burnt flesh in the air.
He slid down from the tank and assessed his new surroundings, spotting a blue SUV not far away. He knew that many of these vehicles had simply been abandoned with keys inside once the sudden catastrophe began, so he ran up to the SUV, assessing its condition: tires were intact, windows too—at first glance it seemed functional.
When he looked inside the vehicle, though, Remington got quite the surprise. Two human zombies were tearing apart the driver of the vehicle, still belted in. He checked the rear but it was unoccupied. Just two human zombies gorging themselves on the open innards of a once good-looking middle-aged woman. Remington removed his service pistol. All of the windows were rolled up, but the passenger-side door was open. He didn’t want to break a window on the vehicle, as he hoped to drive by shooting through it, so he pulled the driver door handle instead.
Locked. The pair of male zombies snapped their heads up to look at him but then resumed feasting, their bloodlust overcoming all else. Remington walked around to the open door. Took aim with his pistol. Put a neat circle in the forehead of one of the undead. The remaining zombie turned on him at that point, lunging, but Remington waited for the perfect shot to line up, then double-tapped it in the top of the skull.
He dragged all three of the corpses out of the vehicle and left them on the pavement nearby, a pile of wasted life. He moved to get inside the SUV but balked at the thought of sitting on so much blood and guts. He opened the back and checked to see if there were any towels or anything he could spread out on the seat. He found a small cache of roadside emergency equipment in the back, including a cheap yellow rain poncho. He ripped it from the bag and put it on, then got behind the wheel.
Would this thing start? The key was already in the ignition and he turned it, cracking a smile for the first time in a while as the consumer engine came to life. Then one of his men came running over to him, leaning in on the driver side as Remington put the window down.
“Major, what is your course of action, sir?”
“I have other orders. I’m taking this vehicle to the airport.”
The soldier looked confused for a moment, glancing quickly back to the troubled tank before looking into the major’s eyes. “Major, sir, what orders should I relay to the tank unit, sir? What about…us?”
Remington looked over at the carnage that enveloped his tank squad, draped in dead and dying resurrected prehistoric beasts, the wails of dying men carrying through the stench-filled air.
“Listen, soldier. I’m not going to lie. Things appear to be going from bad to worse real fast. As soon as you call for a medic team and backup, have the comm team work the radio bands—the short-waves, not the normal frequencies. Establish contact with groups of survivors, resistance factions, that kind of thing, some of whom might be distant. Don’t assume help is coming soon. Call for it but don’t get your hopes up. You may need to team up with bands of militia who are on our side. Get on those short-waves and enlist outside help.”
His soldier registered the sheer gravity of his situation, then he gave a reluctant “Yes, sir!” He spun on a heel and ran back to the tank.
Remington maneuvered the SUV around the wreckage until he had a clear path down the highway. He allowed himself a weak smile as he scanned the road ahead. The airport loomed in the distance, relatively free from the chaos…and there were several planes, undamaged, resting in dying glow of the sun.
At least he had a ride waiting.
And he had orders to follow.
He had to get down there and save them. Save the original plan.
More than anything, more than his burning need to save his daughter and his wife,
he had another mission, a larger imperative that only he could achieve.
He had to get to Atlanta and protect the cure.
33.
CDC, Atlanta
Veronica tried her best to tune out the droning voice of the man she had hunted for the better part of a decade. The man who had manipulated entire nations, who had duped the world and insinuated himself into a position he knew would thrust him into the role of President of the United States—and with it, she realized, grant him all the power he needed.
“He’ll control the nukes,” she said, not long after he began addressing the nation and the world, speaking in general terms about the great loss of life, the spread of the infection and the effectiveness of quarantines, and how everything that could be done was being done.
“And the armed forces,” Alex said, letting the implications hang out there.
The other scientists noted their concern but didn’t understand. “That’s a good thing,” Marie voiced. “Someone’s in charge, someone’s doing the right things, although why they haven’t contacted us since the power transition, I don’t know.”
“They won’t,” Alex said, “because they don’t care. He doesn’t care.”
“I don’t understand,” Arcadia said, after injecting the specimen, then standing back and checking the screens. The zombie had been hooked up to monitors and intravenous sensors, and now the waiting would begin.
“All you need to know,” said Veronica, “is that man is the bastard who hired Dyson in the first place. The one who financed the Antarctica expeditions, who located the preserved dinosaurs and the ancient microbes—prions—or whatever they are. He’s the one who organized all this, he was behind the shipments of the infected onto our soil. The invasion was all his idea.”
