The Chronos Plague (Book 1): No Time Left

by Talluto, Joseph

  “Madre de Dios, can it be true?” he asked in a low tone.

  “I’ve seen it myself. My last partner is on a lab table at Langley, and they are terrified of him. This Jester group is number one on my ‘To Do’ list,” I said. “That’s why I’m down here. Rumor has it locals are talking about monsters and people being eaten.”

  “I heard those rumors, too, but like the rest I just ignored them. Now, after what you told me, I need to check it out,” Ricky said. “Cristos! What were those people thinking?”

  “Playing God at the highest level, trying to control death,” I said. I pulled up a small map on my phone. “Latest rumor says they’re here, in the Bosque La Joya. We did a pass with satellites and turns out there’s a building in there. We checked locally and there isn’t supposed to be a building there. Same thing like we found in Utah.”

  Ricky nodded. “I know the area, and there is nothing but jungle and mountains there. No one would put a building there, but if you did, it’d be a very good hiding spot.”

  “Can we get there? If we don’t get a handle on this, it could get ugly very fast.”

  “How fast?”

  I did some quick calculations in my head. “If the virus got out of control and hit a major city like San Salvador, you’d be overrun in a week.”

  Ricky stood up. “Let’s go. I can get us a truck and a guide in an hour.”

  We rolled out with a small squad that Ricky had quickly put together. They were not military, nor were they government. But they looked as every bit as capable. If I had to guess, they were borrowed from local dealers. They eyeballed me in an insolent manner, but I ignored it. I wasn’t here to teach lessons. I was here to try to stop a nightmare from spreading.

  We rode quickly through the city and out into the countryside. The roads went from paved to stone to dirt, and they didn’t get smoother with the transition. We turned the truck down a farm road and we entered deep jungle. The trees overhead blocked the sun and we were dipped into twilight. Patches of sunlight hurt our eyes and the contrast didn’t help much.

  Ricky looked to me for coordinates and I checked my phone several times. I waved him to a stop and we unloaded. Ricky took some white strips of cloth from a bag and handed one to each of us.

  “No le dispares al tipo equivocado, pendejos,” Ricky said. “You too, Mac.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll try not to shoot the wrong guy, either,” I said.

  We stepped into the jungle and were swallowed up by the vegetation. I took the lead and headed deeper, followed by Ricky and his motley band. After about three hundred yards, I called a stop.

  “Something’s up ahead,” I said to Ricky.

  He nodded and signaled to his men, who spread out and started forward. We all drew weapons, and Ricky smiled as he saw mine. He was carrying a 1911, too. Nice to see someone in this world appreciated artillery.

  We moved carefully, slipping in between trees and sticking to shadows. Ahead in the gloom was another low building. This one was painted dark green, with an alternating pattern to make it hard to see from the ground and from the air. But our satellite found it through a thermal signature that wasn’t supposed to be there, so here we are.

  Suddenly, there was a shout.

  “Alto! Alto!”

  Two shots were fired and Ricky and I crouched low.

  “I can’t see anything! Who fired?” I asked.

  “One of mine, look out!” Ricky brought up his gun and fired, striking something.

  Guns suddenly flared in the low light, ripping bullets every which way. Men cried out as they were hit and Ricky and I fired back, our 45s bellowing out and causing some cries of our own. Ricky dove for a tree and we got separated.

  Ahead of me were three men, and it looked like they were shooting just at random. I lined up a shot and put one down. He struggled for a bit, then got back up, grabbing up his weapons.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered. I lined up another shot, and put this one in his head. He dropped then, staying down as the back end of his skull was blown to the wind. His companions fired wilder, punching the tree I was taking cover behind and sending rounds much too close to my face for comfort. There was firing behind me, so I thought there might be more than one battle going on. I shot again, this time hitting one of the men in the leg, and he went down. Another gun boomed close to me and I recognized it as Ricky’s pistol. The third man went down and there was another burst of firing from across the trees. I slipped around to where Ricky was.

  “Are those your men?” I asked, aiming my gun that way.

  “Not wearing white. They split up, and right now I would say they are shooting at anyone who shoots at them,” Ricky said.

  “In that case, I’ll wait,” I said.

  Muzzle flashes sparked around me, and I hunkered down between two trees. In times like these, it was better not to be shooting and give anyone cause to throw lead your way. I noticed Ricky was doing the same thing, just waiting for things to calm down a bit.

  The firing intensified for a moment, then quieted down. I waited a little longer, then Ricky nodded my way.

  “Alto! Alto!” he yelled, identifying himself. His men gathered near the building and a few of them were dragging corpses their way.

  I went over to the three men on the ground, checking them over. All three had the Jester tattoo. Ricky joined me after conferring with his troops.

  “Jester?” he asked.

  “Yep. You know any of these guys? They look like locals,” I said.

  “What are you saying, locals?” Ricky asked quietly.

  “Don’t give me crap, Enrique, you guys all look alike to an old white guy like me,” I said.

  Ricky laughed. “We probably do, juero.”

  There was no identification on any of them, nor on the ones that we dragged out of the woods. Ricky’s men had killed three more that were in the jungle.

  I stepped away from the chattering voices of the men and looked at the situation. There were six trained men here, sent to get something. What, I had no idea.

  Suddenly, there was a lot of noise. I looked over at the building and three people were stumbling out the front door. In the gloom, it was hard to see them, but they looked pale and unwell. Their eyes were glassy, and they fixated on the nearest man to walk over to them.

  I had seen that walk and look before.

  “Stop! Stay away from them!” I shouted at the man, but it was too late. The three infected persons literally leaped at the nearby man and each began tearing chunks out of whatever they got their teeth into. One bit into his shoulder, the other was tearing at his chest, and the third was chewing on his inner thigh. The man screamed in a high-pitched voice and stumbled to the ground. The three continued to claw and tear, and the screams quickly stopped. Everyone had been stunned into inactivity, but I raised my gun and shot two of them, killing the third when he raised his bloodstained face up to me. I put the last bullet in the man who got attacked.

  “Aquí!” a cry went up from the side of the building and there was a rush to get over there.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Ricky questioned his men, then turned back to me.

  “There was another person at the back of the building. They ran into the jungle, carrying something,” he said. He waved to two men to follow.

  “Well, shit,” I said. “Guess we have to go inside and see what they took so we can see what damage we’re looking at.” Things couldn’t possibly get much worse, so why not?

  Rick and I went inside, leaving the rest of the men to guard the perimeter. The place had been thoroughly ransacked, with very little to find. I found the place to be very similar to the one we found in Utah, only this one was a lot messier. Several other bodies were sitting in a corner, likely the ones the first group to enter the building encountered. There were a couple I could see as infected types, and the others were dressed in black. Seems like whatever they were looking for, they paid a good price for it.

  “Ma
c! Over here!” Ricky shouted.

  I hurried over and when I saw what he was looking at, I swore.

  “Damn. This is probably the worst thing we could find,” I said. I was looking at a virus storage unit, a self-contained canister designed to keep viruses viable for extended periods. Two of them were open and the third was missing altogether.

  “They took the virus,” I said. “I hope your men can find whoever took off in the jungle.”

  “Doubt it. They’re hired guns, not trackers.”

  “Great,” I said. “Well, I guess I know what happens next.”

  “I arrest you for having a gun in my country?”

  “Funny. You could try,” I said.

  “I could.”

  “You never saw the day you could get your gun out faster and you know it.”

  Ricky smiled. “That’s true. What will you do now?”

  I described Steve Castle to Ricky. “I’m going to go get yelled at for sure, and after that, I am having our computer guys scour the internet to look for any traffic about this spot and acquisition of that virus.”

  “Vaya con Dios, my friend.”

  “At least give me a ride to the airport, jackass,” I said. “Then you have clean-up of your own. Anyone that looks like a zombie needs to be shot in the head.”

  Ricky shook his head.

  “This is what we have come to. Such a waste,” he said sadly. “What do I tell my government?”

  “Bring them out here, show them what was happening, and then secure your own. If this blows up, it’s every country for itself,” I said.

  “Do you think it will come to that?” Ricky asked quietly.

  “I have no idea how this will play out,” I said honestly. “I feel like I’m trying to play catchup with shackles on my legs against someone who’s sprinting away. We literally fell into this investigation and we are just playing defense all the time.”

  “Good luck, then. I hope you catch them and give them what they deserve.”

  “I’ll just put them out my misery. Giving them what they deserve would take too long.”

  I flew out of El Salvador on a private flight arranged for me by the agency. We were up in the air for a couple of hours and had crossed over into U.S. airspace when a call came through.

  “Mac? It’s Peggy.”

  “Hey, Peggy. What’s the news? Please tell me something good.”

  “Maybe. We got a call about an hour ago, from a contact over at the FBI. They shipped it to us since they have been wanting to keep out of this investigation,” Peggy said.

  “Lazy bastards. Asleep for the work, show up for the glory.” It was well known that the CIA and the FBI did not play well together, and while we hid our successes, they were more than willing to take credit for what we did.

  “Yeah, so here’s the thing. They got a call from a person who did not want to identify themselves, but said they knew why the dead were rising,” Peggy said. “Anyway, since I knew you were on point with this mess, I’d give you a call.”

  “So, what’s the message?”

  Peggy outlined what she had learned, and I used my ID to route the plane to Los Angeles. We were only about an hour out of there anyway, so it wasn’t as bad as it could be.

  I hustled out of the airport as fast as I could and waved a taxi down to get me to Santa Monica. I was relieved to be back on U.S. soil; we were a little more lenient on government officials carrying guns.

  The trip to Santa Monica was only about a half an hour, thanks to the traffic being lighter than normal. I took that as a sign and checked into a hotel that looked out over the Pacific Ocean. The rates were crazy but this one was on the government’s dime. My room was straight out of the seventies, with a teak dresser and coffee table, and a pair of sling-back chairs on the porch overlooking the beach. I didn’t have time to admire the view, I just needed to shower and change and get out to meet a potential breakthrough in this case. I carefully dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a jacket. It was cool for May, so it wouldn’t seem out of place.

  I stepped out into the evening, and there were dozens of people out on the street, walking along the sidewalks that lined both sides of the highway. Across the main road was a walkway that paralleled the cliffs that ran along the coast toward the mountains. At the bottom of the cliff was another road, and down there were a bunch of houses and small businesses. West of that was about a quarter mile of beach before it hit the water. After that it was just blue to the horizon, which was currently turning pink to red to purple.

  I crossed the street and joined the human river flowing down toward the beach. There were several stairwells leading down the cliffs, but most of them seemed to be under some sort of construction or repair, and I kept getting detoured further along the walkway toward the Santa Monica Pier.

  Along the way, I watched a bunch of people moving around the sidewalk, and many of them surely resembled the infected ones I had recently seen and recently shot. My hand slipped toward my pistol more than once and I realized in that moment that we had a very big problem if this got out. Who do you shoot? Everyone that acts like a zombie would catch a bullet in the head and the reefer heads would explode like popcorn thanks to few trigger-happy morons.

  On a more personal note, I had to consider the government response. How would we contain an outbreak? We’d never experienced anything like this before, and given what I already knew about government responses, I knew it was not going to be pretty.

  I made it to the walkway that arched out over the beach road and followed the rest of the herd that wanted to get to the pier. I could see the lights of the midway as I reached the top of the arch and the Ferris wheel was glowing like a bright Frisbee.

  The road ended at a large pier, and the asphalt turned to wooden planks. A very large sign invited me to enjoy Bubba Gump’s Shrimp, while on the boardwalk several performers abused songs from Janis Joplin to the Rolling Stones. Even in her worst drug-fueled haze, Janis never squeaked like that. She was a little before my time, but I appreciated songs that actually had a story, not just noise for money.

  I made my way along the edge of the boardwalk, past a man painted gold who danced to some eighties music. I stopped at a small stand and picked up a funnel cake. I didn’t get them often and they were a small, guilty pleasure. While I was there, I looked at the reflective glass and saw the two men who had been trailing me since I hit the boardwalk. One was in a dark hoodie doing his best to look interested in a bead booth, while the other was a whole lot less subtle, staring at me like he was trying to screw up the courage to stab me in the back.

  I didn’t need the headache, so I decided to do something about it. I made a quick call, and spent some time at a booth that was selling silver chains and jewelry. I walked around and finally faced the two knuckleheads as they were surrounded by six uniformed officers with guns drawn and shouted orders.

  Imagine my relief when they actually found the weapons I fearfully told the 911 operator they had.

  With that show in progress, I made my way down toward the end of the pier. I kept an eye on any other persons following me, but if there were any, they were better at remaining unseen than the last two.

  The pier actually had two levels when you reached the end of it. There was one for looking out over the water, and the other was for getting closer to the water, about twenty feet below the main level. On that lower level, there were about fifteen people, all of them leaning out, taking selfies, looking at the water, breathing in the salt air.

  All except one. She was in a corner, watching the stairs, trying to look like she wasn’t. She’d chosen a good spot. Any trouble and she’d be able to run and get away before it hit her, or she could leap into the ocean and make for the beach.

  I walked up to her, made sure that she saw me and what I was wearing. I did not see relief on her face when she looked me over, so I had to approach this in a different way.

  “Dr. Rodriguez, I presume?” I asked.

  “Are
you the agent?” she asked, putting her hand into her purse.

  “I am he,” I said in what I hoped was a reassuring tone. I looked at her hand in her purse long enough for her to realize I knew what she was holding, and it didn’t faze me.

  “Why don’t we get out of the open?” I suggested. “It’s too easy for someone to slip up next to us and I don’t like having just three exits available to me.”

  Dr. Rodriguez looked around and I saw her mentally counting to two. She looked at me in askance until I mentioned the third exit.

  “The ocean,” I said. “We could just jump in the ocean. Come on.” I didn’t bother to tell her about the two men that had been casing me. I wanted to chalk that up to coincidence, but I still suspected that we had a leak in the agency that hadn’t been plugged up yet.

  I led her up the stairs and over to the other side of the pier. We went down those stairs that led to the beach. I walked in the middle of the sand until we reached a fairly secluded area. The weather wasn’t quite warm enough for too many beachgoers, so we had a good stretch to ourselves. The nearest person was about a hundred yards away, and if anyone looked like they were trying to intercept us, I was fairly confident I could drop them anywhere within seventy-five yards.

  I wasn’t so sure about the good doctor’s skills, but I had to assume she was good for at least ten.

  I faced her and stated the obvious. “When did you guys start making zombies?” I asked.

  Dr. Rodriguez looked down then she turned and looked out over the ocean. The sun was setting nicely, turning the ocean orange in a long streak off to the edge of the horizon. The water was nearly black, but the white caps on the cresting waves created a very calming effect.

  When she spoke, it was barely above the sound of the waves.