by M. Van
“This way,” he said, and without further explanation, he ran down the ramp. My heart hammered inside my chest as I followed, hoping that he might have found her. Maybe that soldier at the door had been able to give him the information we needed.
Loud screams stopped me in my tracks. Gunfire erupted so close to me that I dropped to my knees. In a reflex, I raised the M4 and scanned my surroundings. Not far from me a young woman was holding her child. A man with a wrinkled face and gray hair watched me as he hid behind a crate. Ahead of me Mars had also raised his weapon, but he kept moving.
Angie tapped my shoulder, and as if I were back on that gun range in Alaska, I followed without thinking. Panic started to ensue around us as the weapons fire increased in frequency. People came running toward us, fleeing from the danger; but that was the problem, I couldn’t locate any danger.
“Where is it coming from?” I shouted. Angie waved a hand and motioned me to follow. With the side of my face glued to the gun, and my eye locked on the scope, I moved my body from left to right as I tried to prepare myself for the decrepit faces that would surely follow. These days, the sound of gunfire usually meant zombies weren’t far off.
A few feet ahead of me Angie, stopped at Mars’s side. He seemed to be speaking over the radio.
“Copy that,” he said in a loud voice over the people screaming before he started to run for the stadium. We followed him until we had found our way to the main entrance, but I had a feeling this wouldn’t be our way in. People rushed out in a panic, while soldiers and airmen admonished them to calm down and keep others from being trampled.
“What the hell is going on?” Preston called over the radio. “I just received an update from the perimeter and they’re holding the line around the camp. So what are they shooting at?”
“Just got word from one of the helicopters,” Mars said, cutting off Preston. “He said it originated from inside the stadium. Within seconds, all hell had broken out between the tents in the middle of the field—people are tearing each other apart.”
“How is that possible?” Tom yelled. “Everyone was screened before they were let in here.”
The silence that followed Tom’s remark was interrupted by bursts of automatic weapons fire. Still, the air around me seemed to thicken and it became harder to breathe. This couldn’t be happening. I shook my head in disbelief, unable to understand how someone could deliberately send people to their death by infecting them with Mortem, but the expressions on both Mars’s and Angie’s faces said it all. He had done this, but why?
“Goddammit, Warren,” Preston cursed over the radio.
“If he did this, then he might still be inside,” Mars said. “We’re going in.”
“We’ll be right behind you,” Preston replied.
“If this is Warren,” Angie said in a hesitant voice, “then he might have …”
“Ash with him,” Mars said and shot me a knowing look. “Well then, let’s get her back.”
Everywhere I looked people were scrambling to leave, but they seemed stuck inside like sardines in a tin. This wasn’t the biggest stadium I’d ever seen. Stands ran along the lengths of the fields, and along the width of the field stood a low building on one side and a fence on the other. With the panic rising, it seemed that people were unable to think about finding a safe way out.
We found a side entrance that led us underneath the stands, and then made our way to the steps that would lead us up.
It became increasingly harder to dodge people as they fled the field and tried for safety higher up. A man nearly knocked me over as he pushed past me in the opposite direction. I had to jump up onto the benches, and I struggled to hold my balance as I followed Mars and Angie.
Halfway up the stands, we raced along the benches until we hit the middle of the field. All the while, I kept scanning the area in the hopes of spotting Ash, but who was I kidding? In her wheelchair, I didn’t think Ash would be able to keep upright in the middle of the chaos on that field. Three rows of tents lined the field, with pathways carved out between them. Frantic people scrambled down those paths in an attempt to flee the stadium overrun by zombies.
Mars stopped and peered down the scope of his rifle. As Mars took a closer look through the scope, I took that time to make my own observations of the field below. I noticed several tents near the middle of the field hadn’t survived the panic that had struck and had been run over by the mob of either fleeing people or the infected. So many zombies already roamed the field, and as I watched them through my scope, a chill ran down my spine.
In these early stages, it was hard to tell the difference between the uninfected and the infected. The bodies of the infected hadn’t had the chance to deteriorate, as they would once time progressed, and it made them hard to identify. Especially if you’ve come in contact with only the decrepit creatures. Except for the white fog that swam in the eyes of an infected person, and maybe the blood that coated their clothes from inflicted wounds, the recently infected looked normal.
Something else struck me as I peered through the scope of my rifle. I wouldn’t have noticed it if the magnification through the scope hadn’t brought it to light, and once I’d noticed, it wasn’t hard to see that these zombies were different. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t seen them before. In fact, I had created them before by infecting William back at Cheyenne, and it seemed that Dr. David had brought along his 2.0 version of the virus.
The difference lay in the fact that these newer versions seemed aware of what they had become. This wasn’t a proven fact, but I had seen it in their eyes. It wasn’t just irises swimming behind a white fog anymore, they seemed to seek you out as if they recognized what they had once been and it looked similar to what I saw in the eyes of the newly turned that crowed the field. Something Dr. David had done had left a form of consciousness behind inside the zombies. Sure, they still craved flesh and would kill and devour any uninfected human they’d encounter, but they would know what they were doing, and they would have to live with that.
“Have you noticed?” I asked Angie, who was standing at my side. She had been there inside Cheyenne and had seen that new version of the zombie up close. Hell, she had even warned me about it after we’d escaped Dr. David’s lab in Florida. Angie didn’t answer, and I glanced down at her to see what she was doing. She seemed fixated on the low buildings at the far end of the field.
“Oh no,” she said in a whisper that I would have missed if I hadn’t been paying attention. Instantly, I followed her gaze and used my scope to pull the image closer and gasped.
“What is it?” Mars asked. Angie tapped him on the arm and pointed him in the right direction.
“Son of a bitch,” he said.
Across the field, in an outcrop between the small building and the stands stood Dr. David Warren.
The only thing I could imagine that kept Mars from pulling the trigger was that Ash was sitting next to Dr. David.
| 34
Ash
“What do you think, Ms. Reed?” Warren asked as he prodded me in the shoulder with his gun. “It’s a glorious sight, isn’t it?”
I kept my eyes closed. The screams alone made me sick to my stomach, and I had seen enough of what zombies could do. Warren, however, had a different idea. I sensed him kneel beside me, and I felt the cold metal of his handgun pressed against my neck.
“It is not polite to ignore your host,” he said and tugged at my hair. My eyes shot open, and I gripped the push rings tightly.
I felt like an extra in a horror movie with an enormous budget. The number of people screaming and running for their lives was horrific. At first, they all scrambled for the exit, but as the infection spread and more and more people turned into zombies, the greater the chaos. One moment a person would be running and a second later someone would latch on and rip their throat out.
Warren laughed as he watched me recoil from the images that invaded my mind. I wanted to close my eyes again but knew that Warren w
ould force me to watch; he reveled in it.
Strolling through the panicking crowd, Chester took his time getting back to us. Warren’s equivalent of the Divus serum established the zombies were repelled by his smell, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t attack him in a frenzy. He moved between the carcasses of destroyed tents and fallen bodies and seemed undeterred by what was happening around him.
A while ago, Warren had sent him into the camp that had been set up on the field among the stands of this stadium with the sole purpose to infect a random person. It had been enough. Infecting one person had been enough to first spread hysteria and to then create the perfect playground for spreading the virus.
As a man fell to his knees, holding his entrails in his hands, I shook my head in disbelief.
“Why?” I said in a voice that would never have reached another’s ear over the screams of terror, but Warren had his face close to mine as he forced me to watch.
“Why?” he said, sounding incredulous. “This is my insurance of course.” I slowly turned my head to look at him. “How else can I make sure that your friend will come alone?” I swallowed and closed my eyes.
“This is just to get Mags,” I said as I opened my eyes again.
“Well, of course.”
“Assuming the military hasn’t developed their own version of Divus,” I said. Warren grinned and shook his head.
“My dear girl,” he said gleefully, “the development has never been the problem. Testing, however, is something that takes time, especially if it comes to human beings and I doubt even the military has reached that stage yet. They lack both the desperation and the tenacity for it.”
Warren stood as Chester neared. “Of course, injecting that Meadow woman with Divus seems to have been the exception, but then Dr. Matley would be the only one bold enough to try an unsanctioned test like that, and don’t worry: my men will take care of our friend with the FBI.”
I cringed at his mention of Angie. She had been the first test subject to receive Divus and had to endure a hell of a time for the serum to settle into her system. If Warren had spoken the truth and Matley was the only one bold enough to go through with implementing her own research, then Mags and Angie would be on their own. Warren had made sure of that when he’d killed Matley at Cheyenne, and none of the others, Mags, Angie, or even Mars had ever mentioned any progress to the development or testing of the Divus serum. In fact, the reason Mags had been in Alaska for so long was exactly that, because they hadn’t been able to make any progress.
“Well done,” Warren said as Chester stopped at his side and turned to watch his handiwork.
“It’s messy,” Chester said, “but it works.”
“It’ll be well worth when Ms. Vissers shows up and I finally get a chance to look inside that pretty head,” Warren replied.
I probably shouldn’t have been as shocked as I had felt at that moment, because I knew Warren’s intentions were never good, but still. Tears threatened my eyes as I looked up to face Warren, and a single word fell from my mouth.
“Head,” I said. Warren barely glanced down at me as a smile spread across his face.
“Ah yes, my dear, it’s all in the head,” he said. “If there is anything my good friend William has taught me, then it’s that, and I’ll be sure to enjoy poking around your friend’s brains.”
I shuddered at Warren’s remark as I remembered how Mars had mentioned something about finding William’s head in a freezer. Before I could find the words to reply, Warren turned at the sound of a voice calling out to him.
I turned to see who it was, and saw the delivery guy running up to us. I hadn’t seen him since we’d left the Marsden house and thought he might have been shot during the shootout, but here he was, alive and kicking.
“Thank God, I found you,” he said breathing heavily. He stopped and bent over to catch his breath as Warren eyed him with a raised brow.
“Terrence,” he asked questioningly. Still wearing his red cap, Terrence raised himself up to face Warren and Chester. “Please don’t tell me you’ve screwed up setting the charges?”
Terrence shook his head as he said, “No, of course not, sir, but … but …”
“Spit it out, man,” Warren said, annoyed.
Terrence swallowed hard. “It’s the military,” he said. “They’re here.”
“Well, of course, they’re here,” Chester said. He sounded as if Terrence had just uttered the most stupid thing he had ever heard. “They run this camp.”
“No,” Terrence said, shaking his head vehemently. “Troops are coming in by helicopter, and they’re inoculated. They’re shooting up everyone they come in contact with.”
“They’re killing everyone,” Chester asked.
“No, you dumbass,” Terrence said. “They’re inoculating everyone with Divus.”
Warren stared at him in shock. “It can’t be,” he said.
I couldn’t help the hope swelling in my chest. Maybe there still was a chance to get out of here.
Warren’s head turned as his gaze shifted along the stands and past the horrors on the fields as if he were searching for something. I followed his gaze, unsure what to find until my eyes landed on what I was looking for.
I was acutely aware of the danger that hadn’t subsided. I still sat among Warren and his goons and felt the nuzzle of his gun pressing into my shoulder now. I assumed he used the weapon as a form of intimidation, because it wasn’t as if I were going to run off or something, and I had to admit it worked, but that couldn’t compete with the sense of relief that came with seeing Mags maneuvering down a path between a row of tents that crawled with zombies. She moved fast, keeping her body low, but with her height, she still stuck out over most, especially since a lot of the action on the field was now taking place at knee-height with bodies pulling each other to the ground as they tore at flesh with their teeth.
She looked different, held herself different in the way she moved and in the way she held the rifle in front of her. I blinked to check if I was seeing it correctly, but it was her. The way Mags was moving was on the border of being a professional soldier, as if she’d done this all her life. But what was even weirder, and I didn’t think Mags seemed to notice, was that the zombies that she passed in her in endeavor to cross the field stopped and followed her with their gazes. It looked just as it had on the security footage that I had seen from inside Cheyenne Mountain. Mags and Angie had told me about it afterward. The zombies had acted strange and had followed Mags around as if she was the Pied Piper.
“Dammit, I knew they’d be trying to evacuate and even stop the spread, but with enough of the infected creating a distraction and blocking the way, they would never have been able to get to us. Are you sure they are immune?” Warren said as a helicopter passed us overhead. We had been hearing them coming and going for a while, but this was the first time Warren looked up at one of them.
He had shown no interest in the helicopters or the troops they carried, because he had probably assumed they wouldn’t be able to get to him inside a stadium overrun by zombies. If these choppers had been dropping off inoculated soldiers, then that might change his plans. I shifted my gaze from Mags so I wouldn’t be the one to give her away.
Warren pulled my chair backward, but a hand on my shoulder stopped me from rolling off, and as I looked up saw the delivery guy—Terrence?—standing behind me.
“Trust me: they’re here,” Terrence said. “They arrived not long after I’d set off the first charges, and the infected didn’t even look at them. Those solders are definitely on Divus.” Warren seemed to take a moment to digest the information.
“Boss, look,” Chester said, pointing a finger. For a moment I was afraid he’d spotted Mags, but he pointed at several other figures in military gear pushing through the crowd as they climbed the stands across the field from us. Warren watched the group roam between the benches for a moment before his gaze slit down to me, and he said, “It seems we’ll have to postpone our little r
eunion with Ms. Vissers. Let’s get out of here.”
He walked around me and toward a narrow alley that led between a part of the stands and a low building. With Warren’s back turned to me, I chanced a glance back at the field but couldn’t find Mags. My heart sunk as I frantically searched among the raging bodies. Terrence started to push my chair, but I held on to the push rings, keeping him from turning me around.
“Get your hands off the damn wheels,” he said, “or I’ll cut them off and feed them to the infected.”
I didn’t listen to him; I couldn’t. I was too busy finding Mags. She had to be out there. Fear that she might have been caught in the frenzy and was lying hurt on that field kept me frozen in place, and I didn’t care for Terrence’s threats.
Not until he grabbed my hair and jerked me back, that is. I let out a small whimper from the pain that ripped through my skull.
“Are you listening to me?” Terrence said in a caustic voice.
“Hey, Terrence,” Chester said from where he stood waiting for us, “having a little trouble with the kid in the wheelchair?”
“Shut up, Chester,” Terrence replied as he pulled at my chair again.
“Let’s get moving,” Warren said in an impatient tone from behind me. “We don’t hav—” He fell silent, and I was about to turn my head to see what he was doing when I heard a familiar voice.
“Warren,” Mags shouted in an angry tone. The other two guys stopped and stared out toward the field. I could only imagine the look on Warren’s face. Reflexively, Chester and Terrence grabbed their handguns and pointed them at Mags, who stood with her hands passively at her side in the middle of a path between two tents. She was decked in full assault gear, and an M4 hung across her chest, but she kept her hands angled away from her body as if she didn’t want to be perceived as a threat. At the sight of guns in the hands of Chester and Terrence, she called out, “I thought you wanted me alive, Warren.”
