Season of Rot

by Eric S. Brown

  She took off her lab coat, slumped onto the edge of her mattress and rolled up her sleeve. When she finished, she opened the drawer of the small desk beside the bed. Inside was her private mini-pharmacy from the hospital’s stores. Unlike Alyson, about whom she’d heard rumors, none of her stash was narcotic in nature. It was composed entirely of treatments for her cancer and its symptoms.

  She measured out a dose into a syringe and shot up, praying the treatment would stem off the attack. Exhausted both physically and emotionally, she reclined on the bed and closed her eyes, wishing she could bring herself to dream of a better tomorrow.

  * * *

  Vince waited as long as he felt comfortable for the group to gather in the cafeteria. Almost everyone was there and settled in by now. Only Laura, Jack, and a few of the man’s cronies were absent.

  When the room finally grew quiet, Vince spoke. “As you all know, the man beside me is Martin Kier. He’s the person we made radio contact with recently. And yes, his story is real. He arrived this morning by helicopter and brought us a delivery of supplies from the military installation he’s been surviving in since the plague started.”

  Murmurs of excitement rippled through the crowd.

  “There are a few things you need to know. The base may not be a viable spot for us to relocate to. We are making plans to send a small task force to ensure it will be safe for all of us.” Vince could see the hope dying in the crowd. “Please, don’t be discouraged. It’s just a precautionary measure, nothing more. We have every reason to believe the base will be suitable for our needs.”

  Voices erupted from the crowd. Who goes first? How will we know the base is safe? How soon does the task force leave?

  Vince struggled to regain control. “Four people including the doctor will go with Martin on his way home. They’ll stay in complete and constant radio contact with us, and we should know if the base is all right in a matter of days. As to when they will be leaving, that hasn’t been established yet. We need a bit more time to prepare.”

  “What is it we should know about Martin?” Chris asked, his tone so hostile and unforgiving it cut clearly through the others. If he was supposed to trust this stranger with his daughter’s life, he damned sure wanted to know everything about him. Especially with the way the man had stared at her when they’d first met.

  Vince didn’t want to answer Chris’s question, considering the way the informal meeting was headed. Disclosing the problems with Martin’s installation had changed the mood of the crowd from hope to something approaching heartbreak and anger. But Vince knew he had little choice now. Chris had put him on the spot, and there was no way to back out.

  He shot Martin a troubled glance, but the man—or whatever he was—was too new to such subtle human warnings to catch it.

  Martin stepped forward boldly, looking out into the sea of faces. “My name is Martin Kier. I have come to help you in any way that I can. However, you should know I am not human in the normal use of the word.”

  A new wave of murmurs ran through the gathering, and everyone looked to Vince to see his reaction. He nodded, and shouts filled the room, ranging in tone from anger to utter confusion.

  “Wait!” Vince yelled. “Wait! Just hear him out, okay? He’s not crazy.”

  “No,” Martin said as the room fell quiet. “I am a biogenetically-created weapon, created by your own government in secret. I am the prototype for what was to be a new breed of soldier, which would end the need for this country’s men and women to die in battle. I have survived the undead nightmare we live in just as you have, though I was left alone. Everyone from my creators to my guards perished. Until your Daniel contacted me, I believed the human race to be extinct. I was made to serve you, and now I can do my duty. I will see you all safely from this place, this I swear.”

  At that precise moment, the doorway to the cafeteria crashed open, and Jack, Mitchell and their small band of cronies entered. All of them were armed. “Cut the shit, Mr. Kier,” Jack said. “Don’t believe a word he says. He’s either insane, or worse, the first of a military assault on this building.”

  “Jack…” Vince held up a hand and tried to reason with him, but Jack hit him in the face with a loaded revolver. The blow knocked Vince to the floor.

  “That’ll be quite enough from you today, Vince. You and Laura may buy into his crap, but not me. I’m not going to stand by and let him destroy everything we’ve worked for.”

  Martin seemed to vanish. One second he was standing beside Vince, the next he was twisting Jack’s arm behind his back. The gun clattered from Jack’s grasp and his arm snapped as Martin turned him like a shield toward Mitchell and the others. Jack cried out until Martin slapped a palm over his mouth.

  “Stop this madness!” Martin shouted. “I have no wish to harm any of you, but I will if you force my hand.”

  Mitchell blinked, trying to process what had just happened. He motioned to the rest of the men to hold their fire.

  Jack managed to shake off the effects of the pain. He turned his head to look at Martin, who removed his hand from Jack’s mouth.

  “How did you…” Jack began.

  “I am what I say I am,” Martin replied. “Do you yield?”

  Jack nodded and Martin released him as Vince fought to calm everyone down. Jack’s betrayal he could deal with later; right now, he had a riot to prevent.

  * * *

  Hours later, Jack sat with his arm in a cast, facing Laura and Vince. His men had been disarmed and confined to their quarters.

  “Where do we go from here, Jack?” Laura asked, shaking her head in disappointment.

  Jack didn’t even bother to look at her. He stared off into space.

  “How could you do this to us, Jack, and at such a critical time for us all?”

  “Forget him, Laura,” Vince said. “We’ll confine him like the others.”

  “And how do we do that?” Laura snapped. “His goon squad represents about half of the men defending this place. The other half is busy watching them, except for Daniel and Gregory. Who’s going to keep an eye on those things outside? Much less make up the team to go check out Martin’s base.”

  “Take it easy, Laura.” Vince laid a hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her as she doubled over into a coughing fit. “Hey, are you okay?”

  In a voice devoid of compassion, Jack said, “She needs her medicine. She’s dying of lung cancer, you idiot.”

  Vince saw Laura’s surprise, as if she believed no one knew her secret; she couldn’t deny it though, couldn’t even speak she was too busy wheezing. Vince wanted to believe Jack was lying, but Laura’s shock told him otherwise. “Where is it, Jack? Where’s her medicine?”

  “She keeps it hidden all over the place. Try the back of the cabinet over there.”

  Vince darted to the cabinet, jerked it open and began throwing its contents onto the floor in a desperate search for the meds. He found an inhaler and helped Laura use it.

  “How did you know?” she asked Jack as her breathing began to stabilize.

  “I know a lot of things, Laura. For example, I know you’re going to kill us all if you don’t deal with our new guest. Even if he is what he claims to be, that just makes him more dangerous. We have to kill him now before it’s too late.”

  “Vince, would you please see to it that Jack gets locked away like his men?”

  Vince smiled, leveling the barrel of his .38 at Jack. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

  With the help of Martin and one of the hospital’s remaining defenders, Vince escorted Jack and his goons to one of the hospital’s larger waiting rooms and locked them inside. The room made a poor makeshift jail, but at least it only had one way in and out. The guard sat in a chair facing the door, a fully loaded AK-47 in his hands.

  With the matter of the prisoners settled, Vince refocused on assembling a team to escort Martin to his base in the morning, and Laura held a second meeting to restore some order and sense of peace to the hospital. Jack’s tre
ason—and it couldn’t be called anything less—had woken everyone up to how quickly things were falling apart.

  * * *

  On the roof of the hospital, Alyson stood with an empty syringe at her bare feet. She had finally found her way out. Martin couldn’t save them. No one could. The world was dead and the only thing left to do was die. At least she would be going out happy. She giggled and danced as the night wind caressed her naked flesh. She could feel them already, the fingers of the dead running over her skin, the teeth of the dead taking chunks of her into their mouths. She spun on the roof’s edge like a ballerina and raised her face as rain began to fall and wash over her. The water trickled between her breasts and slid off her shapely thighs. The end, the real end, was finally here. She hoped Mitchell had found peace with it as she had, then dove off the roof, gliding like a wounded bird toward the street below.

  The dead ate her splattered remains.

  One of them, a woman wearing a tattered wedding dress, stood from the feast and stumbled through her brethren toward the hospital. One of her legs was broken beneath her bloodstained gown. It barely held her weight.

  She looked up at the hospital, catching the scent of living flesh above. She opened her mouth to scream as the hunger burned hotter inside her, but sprayed blood and stale bile instead. The corpse woman staggered, fell to her knees and thrashed about as her body rippled and spasmed, leaving red patches upon the street until at last she lay still.

  The other dead close by quit howling and turned to look at her. Her eyes sprung open once more, only now they glowed a pale blue in the darkness. Had a living human been able to see her face, they would have sworn she smiled.

  The woman pushed herself up, and without a single stagger, she walked to the nearest zombie and vomited blood into his face.

  * * *

  Daniel sat in the hospital’s stairwell, watching the dead. His head hurt from one too many beers. He’d finished off his entire stash, but it had been worth it. It wasn’t every day he got to see an asshole like Jack get what he deserved. Sure, it had really messed things up around the place, and he was pulling watch instead of sleeping because the person who was supposed to be out here was locked up with the rest of Jack’s men, but oh well.

  Daniel wished for an aspirin, which, unlike his beloved cigarettes, were nowhere near running out. The damn things were all over the place, but he couldn’t leave his post to get one.

  He turned his attention back to the dead, hoping to see one of the idiots fall off the broken stairs below.

  Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. His knuckles went white as he clutched his rifle.

  The dead had stopped howling. They weren’t pushing and shoving each other or trying to jump across the gap in the stairs. They were all just standing there, staring at him with glaring blue eyes.

  A sudden warmth filled Daniel’s jeans and trickled down his legs. “Oh hell…” he whispered and raised his rifle. As the dead saw him taking aim, they opened their mouths in unison and screeched . Daniel dropped the rifle. It fell, spinning toward the ground floor below as he jumped to his feet and raced up the stairs.

  Vince, who had been coming to check on him, was nearly smashed in the face by the stairwell door as Daniel came bursting out.

  Seeing how freaked out Daniel was, Vince grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him into the wall. “Are they on their way up? Answer me, damn it!”

  Daniel shook his head wildly and managed to stutter the word “No.”

  Relief washed over Vince. “Then what the hell is wrong?”

  “The dead are fucked up, man! They’re just really fucked up.”

  Daniel broke free and darted off without looking back.

  Vince turned to the stairwell door and knew he had to go down there, had to see. He drew his .38 and checked the chamber. Pistol in hand, he entered the stairwell.

  It hit him then, sinking in, that the dead were silent. He stepped onto the stairs and peered over the railing into a sea of cold blue eyes. The dead stood motionless, as if they were all locked in some sort of waking dream.

  Vince carefully backed into the hall and then broke into a run. Laura had to see this. Maybe she’d know what was going on; he sure as hell didn’t.

  * * *

  Daniel had run all the way back to the makeshift communications room.

  In an effort to stop shaking, to take his mind off those dead blue eyes, he switched on the radio and listened to R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” as he went to work trying to boost the hospital’s signal. His head bobbed to the music as his fingers danced through the wiring of his radio. A cold cup of black coffee sat at his side. He took a sip, grimacing at the bitterness and almost spit it out when the incoming signal light lit up.

  He shut off the music and tried to tune in the radio, but remembered he’d just taken it apart. The light had to be a glitch, but something told him to check anyway. He opened the channel and smiled as static crackled on the airwaves. He reached again for his coffee, laughing at himself for being so foolish.

  “You are ours,” said a voice on the radio, a single voice that sounded like a billion souls speaking at once. “We are coming.”

  Daniel spilt his stale coffee on his lap and cursed. He had to be imagining this. The radio wasn’t working—couldn’t be working.

  “We are coming,” the voice said again. “Your flesh is ours.”

  Static crackled loudly as the channel closed itself.

  Daniel leaned into his chair, wide-eyed and shaking, wondering if he had gone mad.

  Three

  Laura stood by the window as Vince and Martin watched her. “Something is certainly going on down there. I’ve never seen the dead just stop like this.”

  “Really?” Vince asked sarcastically.

  “I don’t understand it,” Laura said. “It goes against everything we know about their behavior.”

  “What the hell do we do about it?” Vince asked. “And I swear to God, if you say some shit like ‘let’s just enjoy the silence,’ I’m going to throw you out that window.”

  “It’s got to have something to do with the virus. It’s changed, mutated somehow.”

  “How could it do that?” Martin wondered.

  “Oh my lord,” Laura blurted. “It’s you. You and your helicopter.”

  Vince stepped away from Martin, aiming his .38 at the man.

  “I did nothing,” Martin said, completely unafraid of Vince and the weapon pointed at him.

  “You didn’t have to. You brought the airborne strain of the virus with you. It does exist, and you’re not only a carrier of it, you’ve spread it all over the city when you flew in. The airborne strain must have altered when it encountered the original, altered itself in some way where it affects the dead rather than the living, changing them into something completely new.”

  Martin nodded. “Please understand there is no way I could have known my presence here would cause this. I am sorry.”

  “Laura?” Vince asked, keeping his gun trained on Martin.

  “Put the gun down, Vince. What’s done is done. The only question is what’s happening to the dead. They’re changing, that’s clear, but into what?”

  “We’ve got to get out of here, Laura. Staying around to find out is just asking to get our butts gnawed off.”

  “Agreed, but Martin’s helicopter is the only way out. It’s not going to carry everyone.”

  “I know that, damn it! Let’s just grab who and what we can and go. Right now.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Martin informed them. “Your Daniel is also a pilot, I believe. Have him fly you out of here. There’s a map to the base inside the helicopter. My purpose is to save as many as I can, and I will make sure the hospital doesn’t fall until Daniel can come back for a second group of your people.”

  Laura tried to argue, but Martin cut her off. “We must prepare. There is a storm coming, and even I cannot fight so many alone.”

  * * *

 
Jack paced back and forth in the waiting room. Most of his crew slept on the couches, but Mitchell was still awake and staring out the window.

  “What are you looking at?” Jack asked.

  “The dead. They’re bringing ladders and rope into the building. Fucking ladders and rope.”

  Jack laughed. “You’re shitting me.”

  Mitchell was pale as he looked up at Jack. “I wish I were.”

  The door to the waiting room opened. Martin stood in the doorway. “You may kill me now, or you can help save all those who may be saved. The choice is yours.” He tossed a shotgun into Jack’s hands and raised his arms to the sides, presenting his chest.

  Jack stared at him, gritting his teeth. “You brought this, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Martin answered painfully.

  “Fuck you.” Jack pumped a round into the shotgun’s chamber. “Let’s go kick some dead ass.”

  Martin grinned, and twin auto-pistols like something out of science fiction appeared in his hands.

  * * *

  The door to the stairwell opened as the first stream of the undead poured into the halls. Martin, Jack, and Jack’s men stood in the hallway like old-fashioned minutemen. They hadn’t had time to build any sort of barricade.

  As the dead raced towards them, Jack screamed the order to fire. The hallway echoed with gunshots and howls as the men tore the first wave of the dead to shreds. The hospital’s defenders held their ground for a few seconds until they were forced to reload. Martin, in an effort to buy time, charged into the ranks of the dead. His guns blazed, each shot perfect, splattering rotting brain matter everywhere.

  Jack and the others held their fire as Martin tossed aside his empty weapons and dove deeper into the midst of the enemy. He bent his hands downward at the wrists, and blades shot out from beneath the sleeves of his uniform. He sliced the closest creature’s skull open with a single swipe and plunged the other blade into another monster’s face. He yanked the blade free as the thing leaked blood from between its eyes and collapsed.