“Dysentery.”
Henderson counted out the letters. “What do you know? It fits.” He gave Joseph a smile.
“How have you not finished that?” Heavy Howitzers boomed outside as if they were at the Battle of Gettysburg.
“Well, I dunno. It’s hard.”
“The last newspaper came out, what over a month ago, and you still aren’t finished?”
“Nope. Maybe I don’t want it to be over,” he said, defensiveness creeping up in his voice. Henderson went back to his task of solving his never-ending crossword.
“Why is that?”
“Cause then I won’t have nuttin’ to do.”
“There is always more to do. I’m going to check on a few of the patients and make sure they getting enough fluids.”
They were well-supplied with medical supplies and antivirals, but the task was still daunting with his basic atrophied medical background.
Is Henderson here to assist, or make sure I don’t run off?
“You know what? How about you grab those IV bags over there and change them out,” Joseph commanded.
Truck tires came screeching to a halt outside the tent, and people shouted back and forth. Henderson set down his crossword and went for the door. The tent flap blew open. A fiery-red-haired soldier charged through in bloodied tan digital camouflage. His name tag read Yates in block lettering.
Joseph hesitated, thinking the man might be infected. Yates and another soldier hauled a patient behind him on a stretcher. More men followed them, dragging in their comrades. It’s going to be a long day. Joseph immediately started a triage for the men.
The first man they set down wore the remnants of shredded clothes. Multiple metal fragments protruded from his chest and arms. Joseph put his ear next to the man’s mouth watching his chest rise and fall in rapid successive repetitions. He placed a red marker on his stretcher.
The next man they set down had burns and gunshot wounds to his upper leg. All the hair on his face and head had been burnt away. Joseph tossed red marker down next to him.
The next man was already dead, eyes glazed over. He suffered from a deep penetrating wound just to the left of the mid-thoracic spine of which almost was certainly severed descending the thoracic aorta. Joseph threw a black marker near his feet.
“He’s dead,” Joseph said to the men standing around. He repeated the process for soldier after soldier as they piled in. They set them on the ground in a mangled row of ground up men.
Sergeant Yates paced back and forth behind Joseph, fuming in anger.
“Those fuckers set up a roadside bomb. It was like Iraq all over again,” he said to himself. Another soldier with a faint beard spoke up.
“Wesley was on fire and just wouldn’t stop screaming, Sarge.”
“I know, Taylor. We’ll get those fuckers. I promise. I never thought people here would be like this. Those … those fuckers. We aren’t invaders. We’re Americans,” Sergeant Yates hissed.
“We were only trying to help,” Taylor said to himself.
Joseph couldn’t bear it. “If you aren’t putting pressure on a wound, I need IVs in him and him, and if you aren’t doing anything get the hell out of here,” he yelled over his shoulder. Yates mumbled an apology and the handful of troops not helping left the tent. Joseph’s mind raced. Americans attacked American soldiers. It can’t be. Why?
He found the nearest red marker and went to work. Taking a pair of scissors, he cut open the soldier’s shirt, revealing a chest that looked like hamburger meat. He is more of a boy than a man.
“Hold his mouth open,” Joseph said to Henderson. The specialist wrestled with the soldier’s jaw, finally prying it open. Joseph inserted a laryngoscope, a flashlight with a 90 degree blade on it, to see that he was deploying the endotracheal tube beyond the vocal cords. The tube slid down his throat. Joseph put his ear next to each of the man’s lungs to ensure he was breathing properly. With the airway open, the man would survive for the time being.
“Bag him,” Joseph shouted. Henderson placed a resuscitation bag over his face and squeezed it in a regular rhythm.
Using tweezers, Joseph removed pieces of metal and ripped fabric from the boy’s shredded flesh. He unwrapped a Vaseline gauze and wrapped it around the soldier’s chest wound to ensure air didn’t leak out.
Joseph wiped his forehead. The soldier needed emergency surgery, and Joseph didn’t have the capabilities here. More shouting emerged from outside, and tires burned rubber. No more, he thought, but it grew quiet and he knew the soldiers outside were gone.
Joseph moved to the next red marker. The man’s face and arms were severely burned. The tourniquet wrapped around his upper thigh had prevented him from bleeding out long ago.
“Get fluids in him, now,” Joseph commanded.
With a snap, Joseph slipped on new gloves and began the emergency surgery process. He scrubbed the soldier’s leg wound and started the excoriating process of removing fragments, bits of clothing and dirt from wounds caused when the velocity of the bullet vacuumed foreign particles into the wound cavity. His tweezers clamped around a large fragment and it clinked as he dropped it into a silver tray. Blood spurted on his face. I must have inadvertently moved a clot.
“Hand me the hemostatic agent,” he commanded. Henderson handed him a brown package filled with the small granules that would save the man’s life. He ripped it open and dumped it into the wound.
The spurting blood vessel calmed down with the white sandlike hemostatic agent setting to work clotting the wound.
“Get me the pressure bandage.” Henderson handed it over and Joseph wrapped the soldier’s leg tight with the bandages.
After the excruciating makeshift surgery, Joseph only had to deal with the burns that had spread across the man’s face. The man would lose the use of one of his eyes if not both. He washed the burns on his face, scrubbing the skin. He applied wound filler, followed by antibiotic powder. Controversial, but it hopefully save his life from infection. The man’s life would still be in question for days.
Only when the last men were stabilized did he allow himself rest. Hours had passed. He swept up a bottled water and guzzled it taking a seat near the edge of the tent. The patients chests rose and fell. Many slower than they should. So much death. So many innocent people dead.
That night Colonel Jackson checked on his men. He made rounds around the cots. He breezed past Joseph.
“Come,” Jackson said. Joseph stood up and tailed him like a whipped dog. Night had crept up on Joseph without him noticing.
The air outside the tent was pure, not defiled by the blood, sweat, and tears of the wounded. The moonlight shone off of Jackson’s ghostly bald head.
“How are my boys doing?” he asked.
“Two are dead, and I don’t expect Jefferson to make it through the night. Thomas I give a fifty/fifty chance, but he will most likely lose the use of one of his eyes.”
“Damn it all to hell,” Colonel Jackson cursed. He shook his head. “Not here. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” They stood in silence for a moment until Jackson took a pack of cigarettes from his top breast pocket, pulling a white cigarette straight from the pack with his lips.
“Cigarette, Doctor?” Jackson said, speaking from the corner of his tight lips. Joseph almost laughed at the colonel, but then at the same time it sounded delicious.
“A few weeks ago, I would have asked you if you were crazy. But you know, time is too short to worry about that now.”
Colonel Jackson grunted and struck up a lighter for Joseph. They stood in silence for a minute. The colonel’s guttural voice broke the night air.
“I lost five soldiers today, a dozen to desertion last week, we have thirty to forty men unable to perform their duties, and eight in the medical tent now with you. Do you know how many soldiers I started with?”
Joseph shook his head in the darkness. “No, Colonel,” he said. His understanding of military organizations was limited to television and the news.
“We started with two hundred and thirty-four in the Artillery Battalion and three hundred and fifty-eight in the Combat Infantry Battalion. Five hundred and ninety-two United States Army soldiers. The toughest, most professional military organization on the planet. Now, I have less than two hundred, most of those being the artillery troopers. Not many grunts left.” He shook his head and snorted. “What am I wasting my breath on you for, Doctor? You don’t understand military matters.”
Joseph took a drag off his cigarette and tried to keep a cough inside his chest. His limbs were woozy as the smoke filled his lungs, and he relaxed at the same time.
“No, Colonel Jackson, I don’t. I was in Africa when this first started. I saw a village of people become infected and fall ill. Within the week, they started to die and consume each other. We were extracted to the embassy in Kinshasa and within hours it was under assault from the undead; there was a terror attack and most people died.”
Colonel Jackson’s eyes flashed respect for a moment. It faded into the precipice of his soul.
Joseph exhaled smoke. “I thought I had samples of Patient Zero. We were going to stop this. Then on the return flight from Kinshasa there was another outbreak amongst the staffers, and if it weren’t for the valiant effort of a team of Counterterrorism agents I wouldn’t be here today. When we landed, McCone International had already been compromised. Do you know what that meant?”
Colonel Jackson didn’t answer. Oddly enough the heavy guns had stopped their barrage, and the camp was quiet.
“It meant that I didn’t have samples of Patient Zero. I wasn’t at the initial outbreak. The disease has mutated so fast, we can’t keep up. But if we had Patient Zero, however a long shot that is, we could isolate the original mutation, what I think is a cross from primate to human. If we had that person, that one person, we might have a slim chance of stopping the disease. A slim chance, but a chance,” Joseph said. He took another hit off his cigarette and coughed out loud this time.
Colonel Jackson looked at him grimly. “There is no hope for a cure?” he said.
Joseph tossed his cigarette butt and stepped on it.
Colonel Jackson’s thin lips tightened even more.
“No, Colonel. But there is a man in Michigan, and I have his address. He may be our only hope to finding some sort of vaccine, maybe someday a cure. In time, I could make your soldiers immune to the disease. I need you to take me there. You are the only one who can make sure I get there alive.”
Colonel Jackson’s Cro-Magnon skull glistened. “That is out of the question. My orders are to stay here and contain the infected in Pittsburgh. I would be court-martialed if not outright shot to go on such a mission.”
Rage boiled up in Joseph. “Eventually hordes of the undead will come through here and overrun this camp, and you will have contributed only more infected to this war.”
Jackson looked like he was going to rip Joseph’s head off and spit down his throat. Joseph didn’t care.
“When was the last time you heard from the other quarantine bases? When was the last time you received orders from a superior not in a protective bunker? Somebody who knows what is going on out here. Every day more and more dead make their way here. We are alone. We are on our own. The government response has failed, but we can still win.” The words gave him hope. We might still survive. Colonel Jackson was no idiot; he would have to understand.
“As a member of the United States military you have a responsibility to protect this nation. Please help me, save this nation,” Joseph pleaded. This man couldn’t be blind to what was happening; time was vital. It meant saving lives, their lives included.
Colonel Jackson stiffened, his posture becoming rigid. Jackson leaned into Joseph. His face hovered an inch away from Joseph’s. “Do you take me for an imbecile? Do you think I can’t see what is happening to this unit, this military, this country?” He lowered his voice. “Do you think I can’t see that everything that the United States has built is crumbling in a blink of an eye? Everything that we have fought so hard for? I see it, Joseph. These are my men out here dying. Those boys you treated in that tent are mine. I am the one who is responsible for them. I am the one who decides whether or not to send them into the jaws of Hell. It is me who they look to, to take them home.” He flicked his cigarette butt onto the ground and twisted his boot on top of it.
Jackson pointed at the tent. “The men in that tent were trying to help some civilians that were trapped, when they were supposed to be making contact with the Quarantine Base Boa. Now, we have a whole new threat. By God, if it isn’t bad enough that we have to deal with a bunch of undead cannibals, now we have to deal with domestic terrorists. I had a unit today leave the base with no orders. Do you understand?”
Joseph gulped. “No,” he whispered.
“They left the base with no commands. I don’t know where they are or what they’ve done. And even if they come back, do you expect me to punish them? Do you expect me to lock up a platoon when we are in a war of extermination? Not if I want to remain in charge.” He eyed Joseph. “You don’t want someone else in charge of these men. The country is breaking, and there is nothing I can do to stop it except follow my orders, and hope that somebody higher up the food chain has this figured out.” He looked at Joseph for a long time, his eyes pools of black, before turning his back.
“Victory in war is not repetitious, but adapts its form endlessly, Colonel,” Joseph said. The virus is. They met eye to eye. Joseph knew he was right.
“We stay,” Colonel Jackson said. “Good night, Doctor.” Jackson walked away.
Joseph wandered back into his medical tent. His mind was in a daze. This is not a conventional war. This was an unconventional war at best, but Joseph knew this wasn’t even like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a whole new animal. An animal that the United States Armed Forces wasn’t ready to face; they wouldn’t have a chance to regroup. Joseph needed someone who was willing to gamble. Joseph knew that man, Mark Steele, and he was dead.
MAUSER
Backbone Peak, WV
Mauser’s feet sank deep into the mud. The mud slurped as it sucked him down. He lifted his foot free, feeling like a bug stuck in fly paper. Mobile and hostile and stuck in the fucking mud.
The twisted stink of the brown goop mixed with decaying flesh assaulted him. The stench was a punch to his gut, making him recoil in disgust. He managed to stand upright, flailing his elbows, to catch his balance, his hands still tied together.
The moonshiners hollered at him from above, their faces shadowed like demons by a hellish firelight.
“Eager bastard,” Puck bellowed. A smile cracked his boulder of a head.
“He don’t even know where to go,” Casey laughed, his mustache twitching like rat whiskers. Mauser had no choice but to ignore them. They were the least of his problems.
“Ahmed,” he screamed. Ahmed grappled with an infected, his back smearing along the mud wall. Its face inched closer to Ahmed’s, teeth clanking together. His hands slipped over its skin. Ahmed’s feet shifted, trying to gain footing in the sludge beneath them. More mud-doused people came for their fresh meat.
“Help,” Ahmed yelled at him from the corner. Mauser squared himself to the mass of dead. They were entirely red with mud. Their clothes had melded together, skin with cloth and cloth with skin. The mud accelerated the decomposition process, leaving flesh clinging to bones like stretched thin bubblegum.
Mauser launched himself for the infected. He drove himself into the undead. Flesh squished beneath his fists as he shoved and ripped them, unfazed by his assault. He strained with his calves as he drove into them. Keeping them stacked was the only way to survive.
Using his hands like a hammer, he backhanded a man into the mud and double-hand punched another into the others. Collapsing backward, they fell into one another. They flopped and flung stinking brown matter. He shoved another and threw him back into the wall. Black gore drooled down the undead man’s lipless face. I
t growled through its perpetual skeletal grin. The wall of death wavered but only gave him a moment of respite.
Mauser’s chest burst for air, the sudden onset of hand to hand combat taxing his system. He swung an elbow wildly backward, as a hand dug into his shoulder. Ahmed barely dodged him.
“I thought you were toast,” Mauser breathed. His chest heaved. Ahmed showed him a red rock the size of a softball in his hand.
“Always bring a rock to a fist fight,” Ahmed said. His fist blurred past Mauser and slammed the rock atop an infected skull. Its skull crunched and the infected dropped facedown into the mud.
“Try and keep that body beneath us. Better footing,” Mauser said. More undead slipped, clawed, and crawled their way for them. They were a muddy circus of death. Mauser leaned back adjusting the body of the fallen undead. The gleeful faces of their captors watched from above their mountain gladiatorial combat.
“I got a jar of Old Barnum’s favorite hooch that the city boy gets it first,” Puck called out.
“I’ll take you up on that, that Terry is a goner,” Casey shouted.
“Double or nuttin’ on the A-rab,” Chuck squealed. His pig-like jowls jiggled in delight.
Mauser frantically searched the edges of the pit for a way out, mocked by the sinister grins of his captors.
“No way out, baby,” One-eyed Sue said. She smiled down at him. Fucking One-eyed Sue. Mauser hated them even more. He jumped onto the mud wall, trying to climb out, slipping and sliding down its face. How the hell can I climb out without my hands free? Only a hand from above could pull them free of this mess.
Ahmed’s voice shook as he spoke. “They’re coming.”
Escape was so close. Gwen was there too. She looked away from them.
“Any ideas?” he screamed at her. She was silent, her face dour. He spun, fury rising inside him.
“Let’s give them a show then. I’ll grab them, you mash ’em,” Mauser said. I’ve got to be quick. A mongoose. But this mud is making me no better than a three-toed sloth. The zombies pushed closer to him and Ahmed. A host of brown soulless ghouls in a never-ending struggle to consume them.
The End Time Saga Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 48
