by SD Tanner
The man had torn off his own face. Someone attacking themselves that way wasn't outside the realms of what was possible, but it usually involved drugs or severe mental illness. The real strangeness wasn't the apparent self-mutilation, but what was underneath the skin. The pitch black, rubbery looking face wasn't human, and if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn't have believed it.
“I dunno.”
“B…b…but there were thousands of them. They were all doing it. What are they?”
He wasn’t sure what they were, but he was confident they were the reason the city had collapsed. He and Jas had been driving for half an hour and it was a complete waste of time. The streets were jammed with abandoned cars, injured people and lunatics. He'd witnessed citizens being attacked, but there was nothing they could do about it. They’d been making their way across the city to his apartment to find Jenny, when they'd run across the swarm of people walking along the I-40.
Jas had been trying to stay in contact with dispatch, but the comms line was flaky and she couldn't always get through. Even when she did, they had nothing new to tell her, but what they'd just witnessed was important and he needed to tell Jo.
The radio crackled and he heard the dispatcher. “This is dispatch. Who am I talking to?”
His car didn't have a standard police radio and Jas was using the mike attached to her uniform. Stretching his arm across her chest, he said, “Gimme the radio.” When Jas pulled it from her shirt and handed it to him, he said, “This is Harry Jones and I need to speak to the Commander urgently.”
“Sorry, but the best I can do is pass a message onto her.”
“Not good enough. She needs to know what I've seen.”
The operator hesitated, then he heard the sound of the line being transferred, and Jo’s voice came on the radio. “Jonesy?”
“Yeah.”
“What is it? Make it quick. The lines aren’t stable and I could lose you.”
“I just saw something very weird. There's about thirty thousand people leaving the city via the Interstate.”
“I don't blame them for leaving.”
“That's not the point. They started tearing their faces off and underneath there was…some sort of rubbery, black looking humanoid face.”
Jo didn't reply immediately and then she asked, “Are you sure?”
“Err, yeah, I saw it with my own eyes.”
She hesitated again. “I need to put the city under Martial Law, but I'm not sure how. We've lost track of most of the officers, and I don't think the Army or National Guard are coming.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think it means it's every man for himself. We don't have the ability to establish control over the situation.”
“Are you saying the city has fallen in three hours?”
“I think so, but I've never been in this situation before. In every disaster scenario we assumed a much slower rate of collapse. We never anticipated how to deal with what looks like half the population attacking one another randomly. There's no logic to this. We don't know who will become an attacker and who will be their victim. We don't know even know who to protect, and none of our forces are immune.” Jo lowered her voice and added, “I don't even know if you and I are immune. It's possible the person next to you right now could try and kill you for no reason.”
The implications of her words were slowly sinking in. There was no government control left in place, and the country was effectively falling, but to what? The people he'd watched tear themselves apart weren't human. Based on what they looked like on the surface, they had once been human, but he wasn't sure what they were becoming.
“Is it a virus?” He asked.
“I don't know and I don't think it matters either. We are where we are, and I don't have anyone left.”
“What are your orders?”
“I'm not sure I've got any or anyone left to give them to.”
He could hear the confusion in her words and her voice. They hadn't planned for a situation where the population turned against one another in such an unpredictable or complete way. Having witnessed the mob leaving the city, it was obvious something had changed them. One minute they’d looked like regular people, and then they’d turned into something completely alien. If they'd just turned without doing anyone any harm, then he would have assumed they were sick and needed help. It wasn't the change that was causing the problem, but the fact they were murdering people for no reason. That changed the nature of the situation from people becoming ill to an assault on the city.
“Do you think we’re under attack?”
“What do you mean?” Jo asked.
“Is this some sort of takeover? You know, like a terrorist attack?”
“I don't think anyone could convince regular people to start killing their families like this on such a wide scale basis at the same time.”
He agreed no conventional enemy could do that, but what if there was another enemy? An enemy they didn't know they had. What if this was some sort of alien attack?
“What if we have an enemy we don't know about? I mean, those people I saw didn't look human anymore. What if they're not? What if we’ve been invaded in some way and didn't know it?”
“Do you think this is an invasion?”
Staring through his windshield, all he could see were crashed cars and fires burning on the street and in the buildings. A woman clutching a child ran from a door and disappeared into an alley. If he wound down his window, he would clearly hear gunfire and screaming. He peered up at the windows above the road where a man was fighting with a woman on a small balcony. It would remain to be seen which of them would plummet to the ground. There wasn't anything he could do about it, and within moments it was the woman who fell. She landed only fifty yards away from him, and she clumsily clambered to her feet and ran back into the building. Her hard landing hadn’t even left her stunned.
“It looks like an invasion out here. And it doesn't matter if it is an invasion or not, we need to assume it is.”
Jo spoke again, only now her tone was decisive. “Okay. Okay. I get what you're saying. If this is an invasion, then we need to regroup.”
Being side-lined and preparing to retire, he'd never had much to do with Jo. She was the Commander of the Northwest Area Command and he was only a Sergeant. Most people had spoken highly of her and he'd had no reason to think any differently. He waited to find out just how smart Jo really was and she didn't disappoint him.
Her voice came over the radio again. “We need to direct people to a safe place. Somewhere we can regroup and prepare to fight against whatever this is.”
“Where?” Jo didn't answer and he worried they’d lost the line. “Jo, are you still there?”
“Yes. I'm looking at map. I think the best place to send people is Kirtland Air Force Base. It's only a few miles from the city. Spread the word, Jonesy, and I'll get the message out in every way I can.”
“Will you go there too?”
This time she hesitated for longer. “No, my job is to protect the city, and the best thing I can do is get everyone to head to the base, but you go there and tell them what you saw.”
He didn't really know Jo, but his instinct was to tell her to leave and go somewhere safe. Hesitating himself, he thought about Jenny and their daughter, Miranda. She'd moved to Las Vegas with her husband, Darren, and he should get Jenny and then look for her. She was four months pregnant with their first grandchild and she was his primary responsibility. Being so close to retirement, he'd sort of forgotten about being a cop, but Jo was right, it was still his job.
“I…I need to find my family, Jo.”
“I appreciate your position, but you're a cop first and that means you need to take care of the people.”
“I'm only half a mile from my apartment. I need to get my wife and then go to Las Vegas to find my daughter. She's pregnant.”
“I understand. Get your wife and then go to the base. Hopefully there'll be people the
re that can help you find your daughter.”
Her orders didn't make him happy and a part of him wanted to ignore her. Under their current circumstances she couldn’t make him do anything.
“Jonesy,” she said sternly. “You have information and you might be the only one who knows it. Step up. Your record is impeccable. Don't screw it up at the last minute. You're a good cop, so go be one.”
He knew his record was perfect, but in his view it wasn’t much of an achievement. He'd turned up to work, done his job diligently, and kept his nose clean. It didn't make him a great cop, only a man who did his job professionally. He wasn't even trying to be professional, that was a by-product of following the rules. With a slow dawning awareness, he realized his commitment to his job had never really been tested. Now he was being asked to choose. Would he take care of his own interests first, or would he serve and protect? Before he had a chance to speak, the line went dead.
CHAPTER NINE: Graduation Day (Dayton)
The crawlspace in the ceiling of the hospital was dusty and cramped. He wasn’t even supposed to be at work today, but after watching the news he’d felt compelled to head straight to the emergency room. On his way to the hospital, he’d witnessed more gunfire and assaults than he’d ever seen in any movie and the room below him was a testimony to the murders taking place on the streets.
“What do we do now?” The woman whispered urgently.
Her face was gloomily lit through the cracks in the ceiling tiles and he held his finger to his lips. Peering through the small gap, he adjusted his position on the supporting beam he was lying on. Below them was a small hospital ward with four beds. Every bed was covered in blood, and the motionless bodies were lying awkwardly on their narrow cots. When he’d walked into the room the fire alarm had begun its irritating whooping sound, and people were running wildly through the corridors outside. Noticing the red stains on the pale blue blankets on the beds, he’d quickly flicked each one back, only to discover every patient had been repeatedly stabbed. After a quick check that they were dead, he’d turned to leave the room and collided with the woman he was now with.
It was then he’d heard the gunfire, and they’d piled a chair onto a bureau in the room and clambered into the ceiling. If he hadn’t witnessed the violence on the streets, he might have thought he was being overcautious, but within seconds of replacing the ceiling tile, someone had opened rapid fire into the room below them. The shooter was a middle-aged man wearing jeans and a leather jacket. He was now walking between the beds, checking each occupant, and peering under the metal cots. The chair they’d used to climb into the ceiling was now lying on the floor and the man eyed it suspiciously.
“Is there anyone here?”
The woman was lying along the beam in front of him, and their heads were so close they were almost touching. A dusty web swung slowly in the bright beam of light. He could hear her panicked breathing, and reached out a hand to touch her shoulder. If the large man holding the semi-automatic weapon suspected they were there, then it would be easy for him to fire into the ceiling. With only the thin tiles between them, the bullets would rip through the fabric and into their prone bodies.
While he breathed shallowly, a woman walked into the room. To his surprise, the man didn’t shoot her and said, “It’s empty.”
“But I saw one of them come in here,” she replied disdainfully.
“You couldn’t have. There’s no one here.”
Walking across the small room, the woman peered out of the window to the ground three floors below. “Well, she didn’t leave through the window. There’s no way down.”
“Why are you being stubborn? If she’s not here, she’s not here.”
“I’m not being stubborn. I just know what I saw.”
The brutish looking man stared at the woman blankly and then seemed to come to a decision. “We’re wasting time. We have to leave soon, and we should kill as many as we can before we go.” Even as he spoke, he was already striding from the room.
Watching him leave, the woman frowned to herself and began to inspect the bodies lying on their beds. “I know you’re in here. You won’t get away from me.”
The ward below them was for terminal patients, mostly suffering from late stage cancer. Each one was dressed in their pajamas, and they were thin to the point of being skeletal. He suspected their untimely deaths had come less than a week before their diseases would have claimed them. Although they’d been destined to die soon, they didn’t deserve to be murdered or cheated of their last days on earth. He felt resentful on their behalf, and narrowed his eyes at the woman still prodding their silent corpses. A familiar anger was building up in him, and he wanted take revenge for the lost lives lying below him. Whoever these killers were, they had no right to prey on the vulnerable, and the people they’d murdered deserved to be cared for, not violently attacked.
Quietly fumbling in his shirt pocket, his fingers felt the sharp end of his gold ballpoint pen. It was a graduation gift from his father, not for becoming a doctor, but for his final year at high school. His father hadn’t even lived long enough to see him graduate from school, and he’d handed it to him while he lay dying of cancer. Remembering his father, the deaths of the people in the beds felt personal, and his anger was turning into a white rage. His father had stipulated his life insurance be set aside to pay for his education, and he’d chosen to specialize in Oncology in his honor.
The woman below him was wearing scrubs and he assumed she worked at the hospital. Obviously still puzzled by where the woman with him had gone, she was standing with her back to him and staring out of the door. Angling his head against the beam, he looked over the woman’s head at the people still moving through the corridor. They’d lost their panicked air, and seemed to walking with purpose towards the elevators at the end of the corridor. Although there was still sporadic gunfire from various levels of the hospital, the sound had diminished considerably. It was a good-sized hospital, with at least a thousand patients and fifteen fully functioning operating theatres. Having its own trauma center, it was able to take in emergency cases, and it had been overflowing with people when he’d arrived. The reception area had been standing room only, and some patients were being treated for injuries in the corridors. He estimated there’d been at least four thousand people inside and around the hospital.
While he waited for the woman to make up her mind to stay or leave, the hospital was falling strangely silent. Just as he was thinking she might leave, the woman hiding in the ceiling with him sneezed. The effect was immediate, and the woman below spun and stared up at the ceiling accusingly. He didn’t wait to see what she would do, but allowed his body to roll from the beam and onto the thin tiles. Working long hours on stressful cancer cases left him little time to eat well or work out, and his hefty two hundred and fifty pound body shattered the ceiling tiles underneath him.
The body of one of the deceased cancer patients broke his fall with an ugly squelch, and he silently thanked them for their one last service to mankind. One of the advantages of being a large six foot three man who never found time for the gym, was he had a good amount of padding. His generous rump and well-covered belly took the brunt of the impact, and he felt the crunch of bones snapping beneath him. He was surprisingly agile for his size and less than average fitness, and he bounced from the bed landing on his feet. Without stopping his momentum, he crashed into the scrub-wearing nurse, hammering her against the wall.
The woman was clawing at his face and he was surprised at the strength of her fingers. He grabbed at the hand reaching for his eyes and snapped her fingers back, only they bent in an unnatural way, and her forefinger touched the back of her wrist. She should have screamed in pain, but she made no sound and ripped at his face with her other hand.
“Open the window!” He shouted, hoping the other woman would hear him.
Ignoring the pain in his face, he pulled his father’s pen from his pocket and jabbed it into the woman’s gut. It should have
been sharp enough to penetrate, but it simply slid over her belly. She was incredibly strong, and in desperation, he let go of her hand and grabbed at her mid-length blonde hair. Clutching a fistful, he tried to haul her away from the wall towards the window. He felt her scalp give under his tight grip, and half of her face pulled away from her skull. It should have been enough to stop her, but it didn’t, and under her face the flesh was black and rubbery looking.
The woman had recovered from his attack, and with her hand now free, she grabbed him by the throat. He pulled away from her grip, but she tightened it and followed his movement. He could feel her fingers digging deeply into his throat and he punched at her wildly. Her body was jerking and he couldn’t work out why. Opening his eyes fully, he stared over the head of his attacker at the other woman, who was now heaving a chair repeatedly at the woman’s back. Being hit was a force that should have at least distracted her, his attacker continued to clutch his throat, but each blow was pushing her closer to him.
With her near enough to him, he grabbed her shoulders, and pulled her into a tight bear hug. At that angle, she was forced to loosen her grip around his throat. The other woman had turned her assault with the chair onto the window, and was slamming it hard against the glass. It was safety glass so it didn’t break, but small cracks appeared. Still holding the woman to him in a tight hug, he used his extra weight against her, pushing her towards the window. With a fast heave of his arms, he slammed the woman against the window, and the glass shattered. She bulged outward until her spine was bent ninety degrees over the windowsill, and she was finally forced to let go of his throat, but he felt his flesh give.
The woman was howling and she sounded outraged and angry. With her head hanging outside of the window, very little of her cries could be heard inside the room. He and the other woman looked at one another, and then without saying a word, they each grabbed one of the woman’s legs and flipped her over the windowsill. In unison, they followed the move by peering over the edge and watching the woman fall the three stories to the ground. She landed awkwardly, but climbed to her feet and glared up at them angrily.
