Zero Hour_Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series

by Justin Bell

  “New Jersey?”

  She nodded.

  Jackson looked toward the sky reflexively. His flight had stopped in Newark briefly before continuing on toward Hanscom. Just for a few minutes, but they’d been there. Spontaneously, he wondered if the other pilots in those other planes had been there, too.

  A scream broke the silence coming from just down the road. It was loud and crazed, bordering on insanity.

  “What was that?” Jackson asked, turning toward it.

  The girls glanced at each other, then looked off into the growing darkness.

  A loud, barking cough echoed from the next table over; the man seated with the woman. He turned his head and hacked, then started to stand. Jackson’s eyes were fixated on him, but he took a step backwards, not toward him. Some innate instinct was telling him to draw away.

  “Scott?” the woman said, starting to stand. “Scott, are you okay?”

  The man whirled toward her, clutching at his chest, then he coughed one last, gasping, wet choke and went crashing toward the table, striking it and knocking it over, catapulting the wine glass into the air, arcing softly, trailing a strange pink liquid. Everything seemed freeze-frozen in Jackson’s vision, a hyperaware worry state. He took a few cautious steps back toward the sidewalk lining Route 2A, then turned to the east and started to run.

  ***

  The skies over Boston had migrated to full indigo, a deep and vacant darkness, the stars and moon obscured by a thick cloud cover moving in from the horizon and rising up from the city streets below. Thickening, dark smoke was sandwiched between the dim light of dusk and a faint, amber glow of an entire city alight with flame.

  Above the constant din of noise in the streets, the low, repeating thump thump thump of a helicopter rotor shook the silence, almost sounding like a lullaby with their soothing repetition, a constant thrumming of calming sound. Swirls of smoke tornadoed up toward the spinning rotor, whipping up and around the gears, swirling up into the sky and scattering back along into the clouds. The Blackhawk UH-60 flew low, only as high as it needed to be to avoid the tops of buildings, guided by a combination of outside light and instrument guidance systems.

  A wide cargo door on the side of the helicopter was swung open and anyone at the right angle and altitude would have seen eight figures huddled inside the aircraft, each one of them clad in a full yellow bodysuit, zipped tight from foot to neck, completely sealed against foreign substance, liquid or gas. Elaborate air masks were clamped over their faces, triple filtered underneath oval goggles, with the rubberized hood pulled up tight and cinched around the mask. They looked like bug-eyed monsters from a 50’s horror movie, faceless and nameless, each one of them carrying an M4 automatic rifle over their shoulders as they glared out into the night sky.

  It wasn’t quite night, not yet, but it might as well have been, the combination of the setting sun and growing smoke shrouding the wide expanse of the city in a dull, vague darkness only punctuated by the scattered yellow and orange flames. Broderick Schmidt stood tall in the open cargo area while everyone else was strapped into seats. His time at MIT had brought him very close to the city of Boston and as they neared the place where he’d spent so many of his formative years he couldn’t help but look over what remained of the once great capital.

  The skyline was already drastically, irrevocably altered, the tall and broad Hancock building simply no more, torn down by the stray wing of a descending aircraft, smashed into the surrounding buildings, swarmed by the combusting jet fuel in one final brilliant swirl of fire and smoke. Where it had stood less than a day before there was now a wide and thick pillar of fog and flame, gray swirls accented by a deep orange and crimson light. Even from this distance they could see the scattered red and blue lights of emergency response vehicles, though the damage looked far too severe and widespread to be mitigated by human intervention.

  Closer to where the helicopter flew, down on the streets, they could see the remains of what looked to be a bus crash, a long and wide transit vehicle buried deep inside another building, flames chasing along the white, metal hide of the vehicle, crawling up the sides of the brickwork, reaching toward the roof. The entire city was a strange mixture of utter darkness from power outages and sheer brightness from active burns, a cascading series of sensory input that made it difficult for Broderick to focus on where the true problem areas really were.

  The market they were responding to was in Quincy, that much he knew, an area south of the actual city of Boston, though part of him worried about the safety of flying so close to the scene of such rampant destruction. If this was an act of terror, as so many had already surmised, would they be in harm’s way if they continued their flight plan?

  “What are you thinking?” Major Chaboth approached Broderick from behind, steadying herself as the helicopter dipped slightly, coming around toward the south.

  He looked back at her. “I’m thinking that if we came here to institute quarantine procedures, it’s way too little way too late.”

  “Do you think this has something to do with the red flag?”

  “Seems pretty coincidental, don’t you think?”

  Chaboth looked out over the ruined landscape of Boston, a shattered city awash in glowing embers.

  “Ethnic bioweapons don’t typically set things on fire.”

  Broderick shook his head. “No, but infected pilots might just crash their planes as they try to land.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’re saying?” Chaboth asked.

  Broderick didn’t answer, he just glared out toward Boston Harbor, trying hard not to look at the cracked and broken city laying below. Sirens wailed and smoke rose, the skyline brushed in a red, orange, and yellow watercolor shade.

  “Butch, call into HQ, would you?” asked Chaboth, looking over toward the pilot. “What are they getting on their end?”

  Butch glanced back. “We’ve been radioing HQ for the past ten minutes to inform of our approach. I’ve got nothing back but static. We can’t get a clear channel.”

  “What was the last word we heard?” Chaboth asked.

  “Not good,” Butch shouted back. “Boston isn’t alone. Chaos everywhere, from what I’m hearing. Western New Jersey and Philly are officially on lock down. Serious crisis control!”

  Chaboth and Broderick looked at each other, neither of them knowing quite what to say.

  “So talk to me,” Chaboth said, turning back toward the rest of the hazardous materials team, still strapped in their seats. “What could we be dealing with here?”

  “The details of Graybar’s project are still sketchy,” replied Lionel Provlov. One of only a handful of liaisons from international organizations, Provlov was lent to the United States from the Biological Shield of Russia program, bringing a unique perspective. “The analysis we’ve been able to perform so far has isolated a targeted payload that can be programmed to attack a certain genome or series of genomes. Some of the stuff they were doing was very advanced.”

  “Does that look like what might be happening here?”

  “If reports are true that a child was in the middle of the attack at the market and somehow survived when no one else did, it certainly lends credence to that,” Provlov said. He was speaking loudly to make his words heard over the thudding of the helicopter blades above them.

  “Could this be related to the Zero Hour Contagion?” Zacharia Randolph asked. Provlov turned toward him, crossing his arms.

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I thought we were decades away from Zero Hour,” Chaboth said.

  Broderick turned from the opened cargo area. “These new designer viruses are more like computer viruses every day,” he said. “Theoretical templates have been designed that inject a contagion in the human body that lies dormant until a certain time passes before deploying within the bloodstream. Unbelievable, but true. Very much the same as a zero hour computer virus, it can infect in relative secrecy, then remain there until the optimal time to str
ike.”

  “Like when a plane is going in for a landing?” Provlov asked.

  Broderick and Chaboth glanced at each other again, neither one altogether comfortable with the topic of discussion.

  “I think we need to address smaller problems first,” Major Chaboth said. “But Butch, keep radioing back to Detrick and see if you can talk to a human. We need to report the current status of Boston. I fear most of the country has not yet been made aware of the severity of what we’re dealing with.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Broderick replied. “Because if they have been made aware this is far more serious than we thought.”

  “I’m still a little fuzzy on how a small localized infection could suddenly start dropping planes out of the sky,” Randolph interjected.

  “And if the crashes are related to an ethnic bio-weapon,” Schmidt interjected, “they just dropped a few planes worth of active virus clusters right in the middle of the city.”

  “Depending on if it can spread by air and live outside a host for an extended period,” continued Anthony Irkus, one of the only geneticists on the team besides Broderick Schmidt, “the windstream may have already taken it over the majority of the Eastern Seaboard. That’d have to be one hell of a virus, but given what we’re seeing I don’t think we can rule it out.”

  The interior of the Blackhawk was silent after that declaration, the dull thudding of the rotors the only noise. Nobody elaborated on the concerns, but nobody discouraged their possibility either. Slowly, the dark helicopter banked left and continued on south, lowering cautiously toward the south side of the burning city.

  ***

  Gray balanced his grip on the broken chunk of rock, his eyes narrowed and focused on the squat building just ahead. Javier stood a few feet away, the smoke dark and thick, the sky itself drifting to a deepening darkness above the layer of smoke and floating ash. The streets were empty and silent, sirens and the roar of flame a distant, background noise, like static underneath a radio transmission.

  “I don’t know about this,” Javier whispered. “This doesn’t feel right.”

  Gray looked over at him through narrowed eyes. “When the men with guns are running the streets, you tell me what feels right. I saw this stuff first hand, man,” he said. “I was over in Iraq. I was first in line heading to Afghanistan after the towers fell. I saw things, brother. I heard ‘em. Don’t tell me what feels right.” Gray cocked his arm and whipped it forward, his fingers springing apart, releasing the brick. It arced through the air and punched into plate glass, the neatly stenciled letters forming the words Davis Custom Arms blasting apart under the impact. Scattering shards of broken glass sprayed in a wide arc inside and outside of the small store, bouncing off Gray’s pants and clattering along the sidewalk.

  Immediately an alarm blasted to life, a shrill, gyration of bell ringing, the loud screech splitting the smoky air.

  “Go go go!” Gray shouted and charged forward, swinging his leg up over the shattered window. Javier stood there, his jaw opened and slack, his mind trying to rationalize where his life had been earlier in the morning and how it had gotten to this point so soon. Less than a day and he was with a group of people breaking into a gun store. Why?

  Half in a daze, he walked up to the window and climbed up into the store after Jake with Maria cautiously proceeding just behind him. The energy from the others was infectious and his heart pounded hard in his chest as he looked at the rows of weapons along the side wall behind the register.

  “AR’s all day!” Porter shouted, and he turned, throwing Gray a swift fist-bump.

  “C’mon, Javi, come grab one of these!” Gray was rounding the counter and lifting an AR-15 off a peg on the wall, modified with scope and tactical forward grip, holding it out at arm’s length. Javier took it from him cautiously, not even sure why, but feeling like he had to, like there was some invisible motivational energy swirling through them, driving them forward. Porter scooped another AR-15 off the pegboard and ejected the magazine, reaching under the counter for ammunition. Gray leaned around him and scooped up a Smith and Wesson M & P 15, a tactical semi-automatic rifle very much like the AR-15 but with its own Smith and Wesson twist.

  Turning, he handed that off to Jake, then grinned widely as he took a step over and wrapped his fingers around the CZ Scorpion EVO 3 Carbine semi-automatic resting on the final peg. He verified there was an extended magazine, with the ability to hold up to thirty nine-millimeter rounds, then crouched down next to Porter, sliding out boxes of nine mil. He located a red dot scope and hooked it into the M-LOK attachment point, lifting the weapon to his eye and swinging it toward the shattered window. It felt right in his hand, light and balanced.

  “I hear sirens!” Maria shouted from near the broken window.

  Gray stood. “You want one?” he asked. Maria looked uncertain. He looked down and slid open the rear door of the glass cabinet, sliding out a Ruger Security-9 pistol, the textured grip feeling smooth and comfortable in his hand. He tossed it to Maria and she caught it somewhat clumsily, then slid it into her pocket. He looked around the shop and noted that everyone had their weapon and everyone seemed to have snatched a stash of ammunition as well.

  “Let’s get outta here,” Gray hissed, vaulting over the low cabinet and landing on the wooden floor in a half crouch before bolting toward the door. Snapping the lock open, he pushed out through the door rather than mess with the broken window and they all spilled out onto the sidewalk, scrambling with weapons clutched tight, their heads moving back and forth, making sure nobody was watching. Across the street and down a block or so was a small mom and pop drug store and they headed that way, keeping their heads low and feet moving, knees bent in a half crouch.

  Javier felt a little ridiculous running down the sidewalk, the AR-15 clutched in his hands military style, and he felt more than a little dangerous. This wasn’t what he wanted. He slowed his run and dropped back to a walk, turning to look at Maria. She looked just as concerned as he did, her eyes wide and almost to the point of watering.

  “What are we doing?” she asked quietly. The other three continued on down the sidewalk as Javier took a step closer.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “This is crazy.”

  He heard the noise then, a scrape of metal on pavement and the low ding of a bell from an opening door. Javier turned to look at the drug store just as the door pushed all the way open and three figures came from the small shop. He couldn’t make sense of it at first, their strange, clumsy gait, fingers scratching at their face and neck. The first one stumbled forward, falling into the road, both knees striking pavement, palms thwacking on the rough road. It was a woman and she coughed, an abrupt, barking hack, vomiting some strange dark substance on the asphalt.

  “What in the—?” Maria asked, taking a step backwards. Up ahead of them, the other three were drawing back as well, watching one of the newcomers convulse and thrash backwards, striking the sidewalk, his skull thunking like an unripe melon.

  Gray whipped his head around, glaring at Javier, and their eyes met. Javier could see the panic there, but it was more than just panic, it was a wide-eyed I told you so kind of glare, as if these three people somehow confirmed his wild-eyed conspiracy theories.

  “This is what it’s all about!” he shouted. “It’s a cover up! All of it!”

  “You’re crazy,” Maria said quietly. Javier heard her, but he hoped Gray didn’t, especially since he was still clutching the Scorpion semi-automatic rifle in his hands.

  Javier’s fingers drummed on the handle of his AR-15, but he remained where he was, a statue on the sidewalk, not quite ready to keep moving.

  “It’s your call, man,” Gray hissed. “You guys can stay here if you want, but look at those people! Look at ‘em!” He gestured toward the three customers who had exited the drug store. They were sprawled over the middle of the road, each one of them motionless. Javier had little experience with dead bodies, but they seemed to truly be dead, their chests unmoving and f
aces a mask of stoic, calm stillness under the smoke-shrouded sky of late day. Two of them were face up, staring upwards with open eyes as if they were looking for answers in the cloud of thick vapor.

  As Javier stared at them, he heard another low sound, loud enough to roll over the sirens, but too low to be clearly audible. It was a rapid thumping combined with a dull, whispering throttle.

  A helicopter?

  Gray heard it, too, Javier could see that, his head turning around to look up into the sky, his weapon brought around, held in two hands. He looked back over.

  “Javi! You hear that, right?”

  Slowly, steadily, the sound got louder, and it was a helicopter; Javier and Gray were both certain of that, clear and audible among the low roar of the fires and the sounds of chaos. Then it was there. Low and swooping, just over the roofs of the buildings, its rotors screaming, its fat black body gliding impossibly through the smoke, gray clouds swirling up into the thrashing chop. Wind beat down around them, picking up trash and debris, swirling it around as the aircraft passed low overhead. The side cargo door was open and Gray glared up toward it, drawing his head back as he got a swift glimpse inside.

  Seconds later it was gone, passing over the roof of the drug store, the rotors fading, its sloped, black armor no longer within sight, consumed by the thickening smoke.

  Gray looked at Javier again, and Javier already knew what he was going to say.

  “Black helicopters,” Gray said. “A black helicopter! Did you see that guy inside? Did you see him?”

  Javier nodded slowly, not wanting to believe it, but being almost forced to. His eyes had seen it, and whether he wanted to or not, slowly, he was starting to believe it.

  “Come on!” Gray shouted. “They went south! This way!” He charged forward across the road, Porter and Jake following close behind. Javier glanced back at Maria who was shaking her head softly.

  “I’m going,” Javier said. “You can stay if you want. Go back to the warehouse. Nobody will blame you.”