The Romero Strain (Book 1): The Romero Strain

by Alan, TS

  Lesson taught.

  After my overwhelming experience and after a few days to heal, I humbled myself before her, apologized, and asked her if she would teach an unworthy student some of the finer points of stick fighting. Bonna Abigail Chua was a strong and unpretentious woman, who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it. There were few, if any, female Eskrima competitive stick fighters that could throw down with the boys and win. Of course, I fell in love with her, and before I left the Philippines she properly took my virginity. As I fondly reminisced, Julie jarred me back to reality with adding insult to injury.

  “Told you you’d pay,” Julie reminded me.

  Lesson taught.

  Four times a week we met and I taught them what I knew, hoping that they would never have to use it, but fearing they might.

  Everyone grew stronger. Kermit lost some weight, Marisol and Julie gained muscle—especially Marisol. Joe, too, gradually grew stronger, but didn’t lose much weight. His attitude also grew more willful, which reminded me of myself before my fall.

  David. He surprised me, on purpose, trying once again to get one over on me. After the death of his brother, shortly after he formally announced the disbanding of his group, he decided to seek a new path in life. A path that would not take him to the same tragic end as his brother Christian.

  DD Dominion once again became the simple, unassuming David DiMinni. He embarked on a career track using the college degree he had achieved years prior to his music stardom, and a healthy lifestyle of proper nutrition and exercise. As part of his regimen in making his body healthy and strong, he was studying the Okinawa martial arts style of Isshin-Ryu Karate, which meant one heart way. Isshin-Ryu was a fifty-fifty blend of Shorin-Ryu—in which I held a shodan rank (black belt)—and Goju-Ryu karates, which was considered the perfect blend of soft and hard, linear and circular movements. However, he had not told me that he had been studying karate long enough to have earned a shodan in his discipline, too. David and I often sparred vigorously, testing our skills, and on many occasions, we walked away sore and bruised.

  I had found in Kermit a good training partner, too. Though at first he had been out of practice, it was only a month before he had the stamina and strength he needed to go full-tilt with me. On our fifth week on training, Kermit and I decided to give the class a practical demonstration similar to a tournament fight. However since it wasn’t really a competition; I added a little fun to it. At least entertaining to me.

  “Today,” I announced to the class, “Kermit and I will go full-out, toe-to-toe. This will be our first no holds barred match. We have set some rules, due to the fact that we don’t want to hurt one another. There will be no face or groin strikes. And that’s about it. David, I would like you to be timekeeper, and everyone else will be judges. At the end of three, three-minute rounds, you will vote for a winner.”

  We took our positions and bowed to one another.

  As we sized each other up with a few leg kicks and hand strikes, I taunted him. I wanted to see if I could rattle his cage and cause him to make a tactical mistake. Unprofessional as it was, I wanted to see how he handled himself. I started off innocently.

  “How come you always call me son?” I asked, as I bounced and pranced around our makeshift fight ring like Bruce Lee, adding in a few thumb to nose wipes.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “I’m twenty-eight.”

  “That’s why I keep callin’ you son.”

  “How old are you?” I returned.

  He wasn’t going to tell me. He was quick with his answer, “None of your damn business.”

  I gave him a smart-aleck reply. “Oh, you’re so old you don’t remember?”

  “Is this a dance studio or a martial arts studio?”

  “Why? You asking me on a date? Or you just looking for a little slap and tickle?”

  “You tryin’ to talk smack to me, son? Next thing you know you’ll be getting all 8 Mile on me. Come on; step up to the plate. The sooner I smack the frosting off your flakes the sooner I can start making lunch.”

  We engaged one another with a few more tentative strikes.

  “What’s for lunch, fried boot again?”

  “First you insult me, then you insult my cooking. What’s next?” He was being rock solid.

  I retorted with, “How about a good morning kiss?”

  “How about brushing your teeth first?”

  Kermit wasn’t going to be distracted. He struck at me hard.

  “Time,” David shouted.

  We stepped away from one another. After a moment we approached one another for the second round.

  “Are you done with the psychological cow manure?” he asked.

  “Indeed I am,” I warned.

  This time we engaged one another in combat. Although I was able to defeat him—yeah, I cheated a bit with my transmute strength—Kermit did surprise me by pulling out some moves I didn’t expect, and in doing so got in a few good contact strikes. He knew some French street fighting, known as Savate, and some Krav Maga of the Israeli Commandos. I was exhausted and the olive drab A-shirt I wore was soaked in perspiration. He had made me work for my victory.

  After our match I congratulated him and expressed my honor in being able to compete against such a worthy opponent. When I questioned him on where he learned his techniques he simply responded with, “Even a cook needs to know how to defend himself.” I later found out he had been stationed in France for several years. Though I never did find out how he learned Krav Maga, he did teach me some of his moves. It was nice to learn again.

  IN THE ABSENCE OF

  Part III

  I

  Aftermath

  August 4th—

  Every generation has its tales of doom and ruin, but we were the first generation to cause its own destruction by deliberate action. Our hold on the planet had ended. Hours after we were gone the lights began to go out. After a few days, a cascade effect plunged the world into darkness.

  Returning to the world we had once known was not as simple as stepping into the elevator, taking it up, stepping onto the train platform, and into the land of the dead. Darkness was our first enemy. Though I could see much more than the others, pitch black was still blinding. We had to make our way from the platform, down the stairs of the M 50 entrance, and through a tunnel that led us to the terminal.

  There were inherent dangers in returning to the world above, aside from the living dead and transmutes. The sudden end of the world would bring numerous problems for survivors. Captive wild animals, mainly apex predators, were a threat. Luckily for us Six Flags Wild Safari in New Jersey was far away, so we didn’t worry about lions in Times Square.

  During our escape we avoided the chemical toxification period––a time when gases like hydrogen, used for crude oil refining, and chlorine, used at waste water treatment plants to purify sewage, polluted the world above. There were no oil refineries in Manhattan, but according to David, there were numerous waste facilities, including the largest sewage treatment plant in the state, a dozen toxic chemical companies, and several gas storage facilities in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, along Newtown Creek.

  David warned us about radioactive fallout.

  Though nuclear power plants had fail-safe measures in place to prevent a nuclear meltdown during a power failure, the emergency diesel-powered generators, which were used to keep cooling pumps running, failed once their fuel supply ran out.

  There were no nuclear power plant facilities within the five boroughs, but three were very close. The closet was the Indian Power Point Station in White Plains, New York, just twenty-four miles north. Those destroyed plants had caused massive radioactive noble gases and radioactive fallout far worse than Chernobyl. Though a lot of the radioactive material had dissipated and seeped into the soil or had been washed down street drains, there was still a risk of contamination.

  While Potassium Iodine, if taken in time, can effectively block the thyroid gland’s ab
sorption of radioactive iodine, it is not a magic pill. There is no medicine that will effectively prevent nuclear radiation from damaging the human body, and there was also no Potassium Iodine, no radiation suits or detectors to be found at the GCC. We had no way of telling what the radiation level would be. That was until Sam held up his set of keys.

  “Let me guess, it’s a mini Geiger counter,” I joked, responding to his jingle.

  “No. It’s a NukAlert. A personal radiation meter/monitor/alarm,” he proudly said. “It can detect Gamma and X-ray radiation from twenty Kiloelectron volts to two-plus Megaelectron volts, and has a sensitivity of one hundred millirem to fifty Roentgens per hour.”

  “Of course it does,” I responded. “And why would you have one as a key fob? Or better yet, why do you even have a key fob?”

  He didn’t answer my question. Instead he replied, “I read about it in National Defense Magazine. You should ask yourself why you don’t have one. It should be part of everybody’s go-bag.”

  He had a point. I shut up.

  Lighting had to be set up before we tried to make our way through the tunnel and into Grand Central. The track platform by the elevator had some covert night vision lighting, an eerie green illumination that the army had installed for use with their security camera, but it was insufficient, illuminating only the direction in which the camera was aimed. Though we had seen very few living dead as we monitored the outside world from the command center, there were bound to be more unseen dangers.

  Sam had procured four Watchdog Portable Illumination Systems and one Brighteye Portable Illumination System from “his” supply room.

  The Watchdog self-contained portable systems were designed for boundary security and asset management. They were state-of-the-art and offered visible optical beam-shaping technology with user-defined illumination within the target field, which was three hundred feet by three hundred feet. There was no need for generators, they ran on Li-Ion batteries and had a fifteen-hour runtime.

  The Brighteye system could illuminate up to a thousand feet, had a ten-hour battery lifespan, but weighed nearly ninety pounds, unlike the Watchdog that was half the weight.

  The best part, Sam informed us, was that the systems were wireless, quick to install, and could be operated remotely. I wish he would have led with that and not delivered all the excess, unnecessary information.

  Our initial deployment area had been the cafeteria where, the night before, we had gathered our tactical equipment consisting of extra side arms, ammunition, two-way radios, boots, camouflage, black clothing, body armor, and what Sam told us was a solid black MICH TC-2000 Combat Helmet, like the SWAT teams use. Most of the items were salvaged from the Special Forces troops that hadn’t had their bodies shredded from the razor-like talons of the transmutes during the melee.

  I opted out from wearing the helmet, as did Joe. Helmets were not bulletproof; they just offered a false sense of security. I chose to wear a black baseball cap. David, on the other hand, thought the helmet was cool. He probably would have made Julie wear one too if she had come with us. Kermit decided to wear one; thinking zombies wouldn’t be able to bite him in the head.

  Oddly, the flexible body armor the Special Forces soldiers had worn called Dragon Skin, designed to stop ballistic, explosive blast and forced entry threats, had not failed. Though some of the soldiers’ armor had been shredded, none of the soldiers suffered wounds in the coverage area. It was the deep facial and neck lacerations that Luci and the other transmutes had inflicted that caused their demise.

  It appeared to me, by the amount of Special Forces personnel with intact body armor, the transmutes had figured out slashing the chest area was ineffective. However, the regular soldiers were a different story. They had not been wearing that armor. They had been wearing Improved Outer Tactical Vests (IOTV), standard military issue personal body protection. A key design feature for the IOTV was that the entire armor system could be released with the pull of a hidden lanyard. The armor then fell apart into its component pieces, providing a means for escape in case the wearer fell into water or became trapped in a hazardous environment. It was something the transmutes had exploited, reinforcing my belief in how intelligent the new beings were.

  Though we had laid out enough gear for a full day of exploring, we did not utilize everything, for I had no intention on venturing any farther than inside the terminal once the lights were in place. Joe complained about the amount of gear we were taking just for a recon mission. His complaint was that all the gear and body armor was going to be a comfort issue, telling us we would overheat, the concealable armor alone weighing eight pounds. I told him it was better to be hot and protected, than comfortable and dead. He took the body armor with him without another comment.

  As we geared up, Marisol wanted a reason why the women were excluded from the mission.

  “So why can’t Julie and I go?”

  I could have been straightforward, but I couldn’t resist having a little fun with both of them. With a straight face I told Marisol, “Because we’re men and—”

  “—What?!” Julie exclaimed.

  “And! As a man I feel the need to protect my woman.”

  Julie pointed an excusing finger at me and declared, “That’s bull. You’re being a sexist again.”

  “Yeah. I wanna go, too.”

  “Can you shoot a partridge with a single cartridge?” I asked.

  David tried to hold back his laugh, but my remark had got the better of him. He snickered. Julie gave him an immediate look of disapproval.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Marisol advised.

  However, I needed to make a point.

  “Okay,” I addressed Marisol. “You can go if you can pick up that BrightEye light case,” I told her as I pointed, “and carry it on your shoulder topside.”

  Marisol attempted to pick it up, but she was barely able lift it off the floor.

  “Not fair. It weighs like a hundred pounds.”

  “Ninety,” Sam corrected her.

  I turned to Julie and asked, “Julie, would you like a try?” as I gestured to the case.

  Julie declined the attempt and instead glowered at me. I grabbed the case handle with one hand and lifted it to my shoulder.

  “Cheater!” Marisol reprimanded me. “You got transmute super powers.”

  I clarified my point to her and Julie. “Julie. I’m not being a sexiest. I’m being a smart-ass. The point being the equipment is heavy and better suited for persons with a bit more upper body strength. Besides, I could use one or both of you in the control room to watch our backs.” I turned to my fellow comrades and asked, “Everyone ready? Then mount up.”

  I kissed Marisol, and then said, “In the immortal words of Will Anderson, ‘Where burnin’ daylight.’ ”

  “John Wayne, The Cowboys, 1972,” David informed the unacquainted, and then Julie planted a big kiss on David with a word of advice that sounded more like a warning. She told him to come back safe or she’d kick his ass. She then told me the same, to bring David back safe or she’d kick my ass, and then added it included everyone else, too. I left Max in the care of the women, and also told them to keep an eye on the little weasel.

  We first set up Sam’s system with one on the platform and the other inside the tunnel entrance pointing south along the corridor. After setting those up, I relieved Kermit from guard duty and placed myself in the tunnel, watching beyond the lit portion and toward the dark. Joe and David stood watch over the platform and shed, while Kermit and Sam worked on the lighting. We set up all the light units along the tunnel and up the exit stairs, which led into the terminal.

  As we made our way into the main concourse, the air was stale and faintly foul with the odor of the dead, which grew stronger as we drew closer to the public space. Grand Central was low lit in an eerie daylight glow that shone in from its great arched windows at the east and west, which contained walkways, and large lunette windows on the north and south. The cascading light illuminated th
e concourse, revealing rotting corpses.

  There was a rancid, pungent stench emanating all around us, coming from the festering, decaying flesh of the dead. The air was so foul and heavy with the putrid scent that it permeated our clothing as we walked around the main concourse area, scavenging ammunition and anything else we could find that might be useful. I thought we would have found some dead NYPD Hercules troops inside the terminal but there wasn’t. We only found a few Army Rangers. One with his biomask still secured to his head but not much left of the rest of his corpse.

  I had only planned to venture as far as the main hall, but I thought we all could use some air. I had Sam take point with his NukeAlert to see if the outside was safe from radiation. It was.

  There may not have been many military corpses inside the large main hall, but we discovered many torn apart bodies of the Rangers from the U.S. Army Special Operations 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment outside the terminal. The 75th Ranger Regiment, as Sam explained, was a specialized and tailored response force in the event of an attack involving the use of weapons of mass destruction, including biological weapons. I remembered from the radio report I heard in the conEd tunnel it had been the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases who had been in control. On the outside there also were members of the Arrowhead Brigade, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division out of Fort Lewis, Tacoma, Washington, known as the 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team (3-2 SBCT). Sam had surmised that the 3-2 SBCT was deployed in support of the Army Rangers, since they were a light infantry special operations force and the 3-2 SBCT was a mechanized unit. There was a mixture of armored vehicles ranging from a M93A1 Nuclear, Biological, & Chemical Reconnaissance System (NBCRS), a M998 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs)—Humvee for short—with a M60, 7.62mm machine gun mounted on top, to an armored personnel carrier called a Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) and a few other vehicles. With all the military presence, I couldn’t understand why none of them had made it into the underground facility.