Baxter just thought: Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
“They subdued him, tied him up, brought him back.”
“That’s him down in the basement, isn’t it?”
Zack just nodded.
Baxter lay in silence in the dark, his back propped up against the musty wall. “‘The spirit of the baboon came back for him…’ It sure as hell did.”
“Yes. Just so.”
“It couldn’t have really been the same dogs, though, could it?”
“Seems unlikely, after all that time. Not if it was really rabies. They’d have died long before. But that strain of rabies could have been out there in the bush all that time, going from dog to monkey to squirrel and back to dog again.”
Baxter inclined his head in the dark. “So, wait, that chimera virus… you told me it was smallpox…”
“Yep. The fever, headache, stiffness. The red bumps, turning to sores, then turning to scabs. Corneal ulcers.”
Baxter tried to remember their conversation about all this from back in the safehouse, and what seemed like several lifetimes ago. He was also flashing back to all the infected people he’d seen since it all came down. “Plus myelin toxin…”
Zack nodded. “Yep. Nervous system agonist – tremors, paralysis, radical mood swings. Massive psychological changes.”
Baxter snorted. His reaction was going rapidly from impressed to profoundly horrified. “And then rabies? On top of it, somehow…?”
Zack’s expression didn’t change. “Maybe. Maybe the chimera virus mutated in the presence of the rabies virus. Maybe the two strands of DNA or RNA merged inside host cells they both attacked. I don’t know. I’m not a bioscientist.”
“But you did study biology, you told me that. So rabies, then…”
Zack nodded. “Zoonotic – transferable between species. Causes encephalitis – inflammation of the brain. Symptoms include confusion, agitation, paranoia, terror, delirium…”
“And fucking biting?”
“Sure, okay. Fucking biting. Who knows? Maybe. Rabies is also invariably fatal after onset of symptoms.” Zack shook his head – not in disbelief, but actually believing it all too easily. “We finally did it. We cooked up something so horrible that we did ourselves in.”
“With a little extra help from Mother Nature.”
Zack swallowed dryly, looking off into the black corners of the damp room. “But it wasn’t just humanity, nor just Mother Nature. It also needed me.”
“What? What does that mean?”
Zack shook his head. “I let it happen. And can you see the irony? Me, with my constant worry that this was the real danger, that we had to be vigilant against it. And yet still I missed something. I fucked up. And now I’m responsible. For the end of the world.”
Baxter looked up at Zack with silent respect and compassion. Instead of trying to console him, he said, “Did you ever send out your document – your brief on the risk at the nexus of bioweapons and natural pandemics?”
Zack snorted once, mirthlessly. “No. But I’d suggest my case has now been made for me. With the small problem that there’s nobody left alive to consider it…”
Baxter nodded eagerly. “Okay, but, listen, the thing is – now you really have to stay alive.”
“What? Why?”
“Because now you know how it all started.”
“Maybe. It’s all conjecture.”
Baxter kept nodding. “That may be so. But, as of right now, it seems very clear that you have more intel in your head about the causes and genesis of the plague than exists in the entire rest of the world. And, some day, somebody is going to come looking for it. To find out what happened. And you have to be there to tell the story.”
Zack exhaled and his shoulders slumped.
“I think that day may be a very long time in coming. And we’re going to have a hell of a lot to fight through before then. And not much left to fight with.”
Baxter didn’t look away. Instead, he looked Zack in the eye, his voice level and very intent. “Remember what Dugan said, Zack: ‘So the truck’s gone. Tough shit. We adapt and overcome.’”
Zack nodded. Then he looked over to Baxter’s M4 propped in the corner. Both the weapon, and the newly empowered young man who wielded it, gave him a stirring of hope. Any world which still had men like him in it still had some kind of a fighting chance.
But, still, he thought – and he sighed aloud as he thought it –
It’s going to be a long, hard end of the world…
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Bibliography
The following awesome books were somewhere between very helpful and, in the case of the first one, totally critical to the production of this one. (Please see also the bibliographies at the back of my books D-Boys and Counter-Assault, which include very many truly stunning military memoirs and non-fiction works, all of which to one degree or another laid the groundwork for most of my work, including this one.)
Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World – Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, by Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman
Virtually everything I’ve written about bioengineering dangerous pathogens, weaponizing them, genetically modifying them, and for that matter about pandemics, bioterrorism, viruses in general, etc., all came straight out of this amazing and terrifying book.
The Red Circle: My Life in the Navy SEAL Sniper Corps and How I Trained America’s Deadliest Marksmen, by Brandon Webb
Quite a lot of Navy SEAL culture, and not a few excellent turns of phrase (“not real interested in whatever this guy’s problem was” springs to mind), came from this book – which I suggest is one of the best SEAL memoirs going (and I’ve read most of them). Moreover, this book provided what I think is pretty much the single best prescription for life under the existential condition – be it a zombie apocalypse, or just our actual universe, a cold and uncaring void that is ultimately going to devour you: “Tough. Deal with it. Adapt and overcome.” With those last three words, you almost can’t lose at life. Thanks, Chief Webb.
Fire Strike 7/9, by Paul ‘Bommer’ Grahame & Damien Lewis
Any and all accuracy in terminology and concepts related to JTACs and close air support is owed, with sincere and humble thanks, to Sergeant Grahame.
No Easy Day: The Only First-hand Account of the Navy SEAL Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden, by Mark Owen with Kevin Maurer
Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, by David E. Sanger
And extra special thanks go out to the suddenly indispensable SOFREP (Special Operations Forces Situation Report), which I now read religiously, and which also provided all the best dialogue out of my SEAL character’s mouths, via their regular “S*^% Navy SEALs Say” feature. Cheers, lads.
A world fallen – under a plague of 7 billion walking dead
A tiny island nation – the last refuge of the living
One team – of the world’s most elite special operators
The dead, these heroes, humanity’s last hope, all have...
When the Zombie Apocalypse came, one country had shut down its borders in response to a major terrorist attack. Now Fortress Britain is the last bastion of the living, with 50 million beleaguered survivors facing down a world of 7 billion animated corpses.
And when civilization fell, one international team of supremely elite special operators was being assembled for a nearly impossible mission, deployed out of the SAS barracks at Hereford. Supremely trained and armed, always the mos
t skilled, resolved, and unstoppable amongst us, now the commandos of Alpha team are humanity’s last best hope for survival. Searching through the detritus of fallen Europe, scavenging pharmaceutical labs for clues to a vaccine that might bring humanity back from the brink, now they are tasked with one last desperate operation.
Meanwhile, the Channel Tunnel to France, long ago sealed by demolition, has been breached by a new super-fast mutation of the zombie virus. And one corporal in the UK Security Services, thrown together with a lone captain in the Royal Corps of Engineers, are all that stand between the settler families of Folkestone and certain undeath. At the same time, an entire tooled-up SEAL team disappears into the dark labyrinth on the other side of the Channel. And as the world’s last floating carrier strike group steams into Portsmouth to transport Alpha team to their most lethal mission yet, time is running out for Fortress Britain…
Available now, exclusively from: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk.
The epic adventure continues in:
ARISEN, BOOK TWO
MOGADISHU OF THE DEAD
When the Zombie Apocalypse came, one country had shut down its borders in response to a major terrorist attack. Now Fortress Britain is the last bastion of the living.
And one international team of supremely elite special operators are humanity’s last best hope for survival. Supremely trained and armed, always the most skilled, resolved, and unstoppable amongst us, now the commandos of Alpha team are tasked with one last desperate operation.
They must cross the Atlantic aboard the world’s only remaining supercarrier and insert by air into the very middle of a dead continent, all in search of a rumored vaccine that might bring humanity back from the brink. But their op goes dangerously wrong from the start, with their team scattered to hell and back, and their target site a dry hole. Now they must fight their way on foot through a city of 3 million ravening dead guys, in search of an underground bunker that might hold the Last Man on Earth. But these undead will not be like any Zulus they ever encountered before – and they surround the new target in a writhing ring of death 30 feet high on all sides…
Available now, exclusively from: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk.
Alpha team will return in January 2013 in
ARISEN, BOOK THREE
THREE PARTS DEAD
Arisen : Genesis Page 18
