The Service Centre (Zombie Transference Book 1)

by Tom Germann

  Everything happened quickly then. The lock on the gate popped free with almost no effort and the gates were opened. The vehicles were driven in and then backed up against the building wall. The large double gate was swung shut and chained using a lock they had brought with them. The small fenced door at the side of the compound was checked over and secured as well.

  As the group circled the compound, Jimmy and Wagner checked the racks of metal jerry cans. They were full of gasoline and in a separate pile were diesel jerry cans. They also found two fuel tanks that were both over a quarter full of diesel and gasoline.

  When they looked, the large six-wheeled army truck appeared to be fine and with a single push of the starter button, the vehicle roared to life.

  After they were all settled and everyone had filed into the building, Jimmy called Wagner over to look at the vehicles that they had brought. Jimmy had the hood up on their troubled vehicle and it was off.

  Wagner looked at Jimmy. “You turned it off. Can you start it again or are we down a vehicle?”

  Jimmy waved a hand. “We can start it, no problem. But I found something interesting that I hadn’t thought about before.” He held up a hose clamp. “I went over all the vehicles quickly to make sure everything was still working and I found another one of these blown out.” He squeezed his fingers shut and destroyed the clamp. “I shouldn’t be able to do that so easily with that. It’s like this thing was made out of tin foil. Ours are WAY tougher and I wouldn’t trust that clamp to last five thousand miles, which is just wrong. Same with these hoses.” He reached down and touched one of the rubber hoses running around the engine.

  Jimmy sighed and stepped back. “I didn’t think that much of it when we were getting these ready ‘cause there was no time,. but I’m looking at these and wondering why.” He gestured at all four vehicles parked in front of them. “These vehicles are all built to fall apart. We don’t build like that. I just don’t get it.”

  Wagner looked at the vehicles. “So will they all start? And will they make it to the city? I want to get to wherever the army is with the big guns.”

  Jimmy nodded. “I hear ya. I can get ‘em started. I will guarantee you fifty miles. We can maybe go further, but I don’t know how much further before some other hose or clamp blows out. On the positive side, the army truck there has slightly better quality stuff, which means it can probably go a thousand miles before we have any major issues.”

  Wagner just stared at the vehicles for a second and then nodded. “Okay, I don’t understand anything about this place we’re in. It’s like we’re in some old style horror movie with none of the vehicles working properly, no guns, and everything else just primitively wrong. What the hell is going on here, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy sighed. “Well, as I view it, we are screwed. I don’t know where we are either. I do know those zombies were pretty damn real. We all have to pull together to stay alive and we have to find other people. If we just hide here in the middle of nowhere, who is going to find us? The police or military or somebody have to have fortified some place. We gotta find that place and join up with them. Someone somewhere has to know what they’re doing, right?”

  Wagner shrugged. “I don’t know, Jimmy. If you’ve ever watched a horror movie, they never know what the hell they are dealing with and don’t understand whatever is going wrong. I feel like we’re living that right now, but we do know what to do.” He paused. “We need to get inside and figure out what we are doing next.”

  The two headed inside, pulling the side door closed and then locking it from the inside

  Everyone was sitting upstairs in a small, well-appointed room that looked like it was directly from a men’s club. Jimmy closed the door as they entered and then pushed a straight-backed chair under the knob. There was a small bar in the corner and several small tables and chairs throughout. Against the outside wall was a fireplace with three large stuffed couches in front of it. Sarah was lying on one with Neil sitting in a chair, holding her hand. Susie was with them, checking Sarah’s forehead with the back of her wrist.

  The rest of the group was sitting at the small tables which they had pulled together and were passing around some peanuts they had found.

  Caisson and Vajjer both had rags on their tables and were cleaning their weapons. Wagner put his shotgun down next to the sergeant. “She’s full and ready.” The sergeant nodded and kept wiping down his weapon.

  Wagner grabbed one of the many bottles of sports drink sitting on a table and moved to where everyone could easily see him. He stretched and then opened the bottle, taking a sip. . “Okay, everyone. This is what we found out in clearing this place. This company was partially mobilized early on to help with collecting the infected. The idea had been to use the attached gym at the back to hold them. They even chained the inside doors shut so the infected couldn’t wander in here in a daze. We don’t know why they didn’t do that, except for the fact that the town is almost ten miles away and it was probably too far. So we think they contained the infected in the mall at the town. Unfortunately, that failed early on. We know the company commander deployed forward along with his command post and a few soldiers. The notes left behind show he wanted another twelve soldiers to come forward when they cleared in here. I guess most of the reservists ran away instead of coming in.”

  He paused and took a drink before continuing. “We found that in notes on the OC’s, mmm, Officer Commanding’s desk. We also found another room up here on the other side of this room. This is the officers’ mess, where they would come and have a drink and socialize. On the other side of that wall--” He pointed at the wall behind him. “--is the non-commissioned soldiers’ mess. We found the last survivors barricaded in there, dead. A few soldiers showed up here and must have brought friends or family and someone was infected. There were three rooms set up for living. There were infected in two. I am guessing that everything went wrong and three fought free and came up here and locked themselves in the other mess. One had lost a hand and then infection got him. The other body had several bites on it and he must have also turned almost immediately. The last man took them both out but was bitten in the process. I guess he didn’t want to turn because he put the pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.” There was a sharp intake of breath from someone at that.

  Thinking about sitting there in a building overrun by infected that had once been friends, family, and fellow soldiers. To be trapped in a room with two other survivors that had been bitten and turned. Shooting them in the head and then sitting there not wanting to turn but having been bitten and feeling the infection spreading. Deciding to shoot yourself in the head.

  He took another sip and then pointed at the table where there were several weapons sitting. “We found several weapons and a bit of ammunition. So we now have two more military pistols, an axe, and machete. We even have four magazines full now of ammo. We know where their weapon lockup is and Corporal Vajjer is trained to open safes as part of his training. We hope to open that up and get some more weapons and ammunition. That vault looks to be a decent size so could hold a good number of weapons. There are notes that the basement needs to be reorganized and the stores and food taken out and sorted for an upcoming exercise. So there should be tons of food there for us.”

  He paused again and looked around. “I keep forgetting, as it’s been irrelevant for our time here so far.”

  Wagner walked over to a wall-mounted light and pulled the hanging lanyard. The light came on, looking incredibly bright to people who hadn’t had power for two days.

  “How the hell does this place have power when the power is out everywhere else? The refrigerator on the main floor has power, but all the fresh food has rotted. Anyone know?”

  Neil looked up. “Oh yes, sir, that would be the solar power generators. They refitted all the military buildings years ago with them.”

  Wagner just stared at him. “You have got to be kidding m
e, right?”

  Neil shook his head. “Fuel heating is expensive and wasteful. There are so many army buildings out there, it made sense and it’s one thing that big business and the military didn’t screw up when they tried to work together. They have really big solar collectors along the cross country rapid rails. Don’t they use these things in Canada? I thought Canada had helped develop the system in the eighties.”

  Wagner nodded, “we do I just haven’t seen them used that much. It would make sense here though as it is out of the way.”

  Neil looked up. “The battery and system should be located in the floor above us. It’ll be separated from the water tanks by a barrier.”

  Weibe looked at Neil. “Water tanks upstairs? Why?”

  Neil shrugged while picking up Sarah’s water bottle and taking the lid off. “All water here is on a gravity system up high. It can be heated by the solar generators and every time you flush or run water, it’s from up high. The tanks are topped up by rainfall OR there is a crank system that can use power or be operated by hand to pull water out of a well. Working on the hand-crank is a popular punishment for minor mistakes.”

  Wagner smiled. “So we have power. At least a bit of it, not knowing the state of the batteries. So for now, let’s use it sparingly.”

  He put the lid back on his bottle and put it on the table in front of him. “Okay, here is what we need to get done. We need to go through this place with a fine tooth comb and find every bit of food and water we can. Corporal Vajjer needs to work on the safe with an assistant so that we can get firepower and ammunition. Anything we find needs to be loaded onto the trucks and we need to seriously consider grabbing the army truck. Additionally, I will be checking the basement with Sergeant Caisson with Jimmy as backup and Sam manning the door at the top of the stairs. The basement should be their bulk storage and may hold some more stuff we can use.”

  He paused. “There was one more thing. There is an office next to the company commander’s and there is what appears to be an old style computer sitting there. That should be the second in command’s, or maybe an adjutant. The system has power and is on, but I have no clue what it would be used for. Anyone a tech geek that understands that?”

  Steven put his hand up. “Right here, Warrant. I cut my teeth on tech when I got into the business and I can still find my way around a computer, either using it or working on the hardware. I’ll take a look at it if you want?”

  Wagner nodded. “Please.”

  He looked around at everyone in the small room. “Okay, everyone, we have a plan and things to do. Let’s start moving.”

  Vajjer stood up and motioned to Weibe. Both left and headed for the vault. Steven stood up and left to go take a look at the computer in the office. Tracy stood up and wandered after him. The warrant officer and his group stood up and started walking toward the door. Everyone else was still sitting around looking lost. The sergeant was the last one out the door and he paused for a second, looking at everyone sitting there.

  “Come on, guys. Think and do, don’t just sit. Neil, you stay with Sarah. Everyone else should be going through every room and pulling everything that looks like it has some sort of use. There is a lot of canned food to be stacked up by the vehicle compound door and more equipment in this place that we could use. Or you could just sit here and do nothing until the zombies get here and we can’t leave anymore…”

  The sergeant walked out with the shotgun in hand and everyone could hear him walking down the hall.

  Susie stood up. “I’ll go through the kitchen and start pulling stuff. Maybe lay out some food for a quick meal before we leave.” Andries stood up and left with her.

  Within the building, the activity level was increasing and stores were pulled out, rooms were cleared of anything useful, and the group prepared to either move on or possibly stay. While the building was large, it was hard to tell for everyone why the strange differences existed.

  The attic held a solar cell system that was more advanced than they were used to seeing, but with. a water pump and filtration system that worked well but was incredibly primitive and technology that seemed to come right out of the 1950s.

  The basement had been cleared, giving up massive quantities of tentage, military rations, and all the other assorted goods that military units need and accumulate naturally to do their jobs.

  More was found throughout the rest of the building, including some uniforms and boots.

  More importantly for everyone’s morale was the discovery that the kitchen was fully functional with a set of full propane tanks allowing the cooking of hot meals and that the water heaters for the bathrooms ran off those same propane tanks.

  Vajjer had been unable to force the vault door open using his lock-picking skills. The door, while old, was still sturdy and its very age defeated him as the locks were poorly maintained. Weibe saved the day by being bored. While waiting for the corporal to open the vault door, he had quietly gone through the duty desk and in a large cash box that he had popped open with his knife, he had found several ledgers as well as three different key rings. In a minute, they had the keys in the lock and the vault door opened.

  When Corporal Vajjer opened the vault, everyone took a break for a minute and work was redistributed.

  The basement had been declared clear and Sergeant Caisson went to help Corporal Vajjer in the vault, looking over weapons and other gear. Everyone else was pulling together useful items on the main floor

  The Slow Horde

  All while they were doing this, the horde from the town slowly walked down the road toward them. There was no thought in the staggering mass of bodies. Only outstretched hands reaching for something that wasn’t there.

  The mass was not human anymore. It had not been truly human for a while. It was more like an elemental force similar to a storm. Something had caused it to begin moving and now in motion, there was no reason to stop.

  Hundreds of the dead formed the horde that slowly marched down the narrow strip of paved highway toward the prey that had escaped them. They moved slowly, but they never got tired and they never stopped.

  Very few would wander off from the mass. It was like they felt better in a group than on their own.

  As time had passed, they had already come to and moved past the hunting station.

  For an outsider viewing the horde, they might immediately lose their mind and run away screaming from what mostly still looked like people but missing ears, fingers, hands and for some of the worst, arms and parts of their faces. That outsider, if they weren’t immediately fallen on and torn apart, would see an unstoppable force. The silence from such a large group was terrifying. The only noise to be heard was their shuffling steps.

  Ever onward they shuffled, following the road and looking for those who had gotten away.

  Time For A Meeting

  Everyone headed upstairs after they had finished their work. Outside, the sun was hanging lower in the sky but the heat hadn’t broken. Sarah was lying on the couch, tossing and mumbling in a fevered sleep while Neil hovered, washing her face with a towel from the kitchen and a bowl of cold water that Susie had brought him.

  Susie was taking Sarah’s temperature using the back of her hand pressed against the girl’s forehead. Susie smiled at Neil and patted him on the shoulder before walking over to Wagner and the rest sitting quietly at the bar. She carefully pulled the gloves off, touching no part of the outside, and dropped them into a garbage can.

  She leaned in close and started speaking quietly with her eyes focussed on the top of the bar and the initials that someone had carved in it in the past. “Sarah was bitten just over two hours ago. She has had a fever since shortly after that. Her fever is worse and she threw up almost an hour ago while everyone else was pulling the stores together. It’s a good thing that I finished putting together that food downstairs as fast as I did and I shower fast. I was back up here for
that. Neil was trying to cover up how sick she was. She may have thrown up before but I only saw the one bowl. There was blood in it and it wasn’t normal color at all.”

  Susie reached forward and started tracing her finger over the carvings. “She is getting worse and I can see her veins more. It’s like they’re going black. She’s still drinking water, but I don’t know. I don’t think she can be saved, but I don’t know, I’m not a doctor….”

  Several of the people at the bar shifted so they could see the couple by the couch. Neil sat there ignoring everyone, holding Sarah’s hand and talking to her quietly.

  Tracy piped up, “Maybe if we get her to a hospital they could help her?”

  Sam answered, “What hospital? The town we came from had a clinic and this bug is everywhere according to the newspapers we’ve seen. I bet there aren’t any other people left alive anywhere.”

  Jimmy snorted at that. “Come on, Sam, think about it. It’s only been weeks, maybe a few months. There are LOTS of people left and hiding. This ain’t some sort of horror movie with the end of the world for probably another year. THEN you can be all doom and gloom. There will be lots of preppers with food and water hiding out somewhere, or government, ‘cause you know they made sure that they were protected when things went to shit.”

  Wagner waved his hands to distract everyone before the meeting dissolved into arguing. “Tracy, where’s Steven? Did he have any luck?”

  Tracy nodded. “He’s been able to access the ‘dinosaur computer,’ like he calls it. He found a bunch of, like, code books in the desk and some maps. He’s still trying to make it go but he was able to get somethings out of it. Like, there’s no drives on it. Everything is on a hard drive. And he said that it’s also an online chat machine so that different locations can communicate directly from machine to machine. He’s sending signals out to every station that he can find in the book, but it’s slow. You should see their printer, it’s totally obsolete.” Tracy perked up. “But I was looking on the bookshelves in the room, ‘cause it’s kind of like a library for army stuff, and I found some history books from World War Two and then there are other books about World War Two Point Five. But I haven’t read them yet.”