One man, balding save for a fringe around the dome of his head, was in mid-scream when she came in. He had been ripping into the three officers who had gone in seconds earlier and now he turned on Thuy. Courtney’s description of Thuy as being “unlike” anyone else seemed right on the mark as Colonel O’Brian could only splutter at her sudden appearance.
Finally, he spat out: “Who the fuck are you?”
“My name is Dr. Thuy Lee. I’m a geneticist and former head researcher at R&K Pharmaceuticals. I’m a scientist, sir and I know what has caused this outbreak. You might consider me an expert and as such I need to warn you…”
“What you need to do is shut your mouth,” the colonel hissed. “I know who you are. There’s a warrant out for your arrest. You started this. All of this is your fault. All of it. All—of—it! You deserve to be punished, Doctor. You deserve what’s coming to you.”
A grin crossed his face and he turned to the captain who had just walked in and ordered: “Tie her up. Tie her up tight so she can’t get away.”
“Tie her, sir?” the captain asked, glancing toward Thuy with a raised eyebrow. “I doubt she’s going anywhere and you wouldn’t want her lawyers using…”
“Her lawyers!” O’Brian screamed. “there’s not going to be any lawyers. Not this time. This time we will hand out justice and it will be swift and cruel.” He leaned in close and Thuy shied back, not afraid of the man but afraid of what he carried. He had taken one trip too many close to the lines—his eyes were shiny dark.
Chapter 6
1—6: 49 a.m.
The Quarantine Zone, Gamet Corner, New York
Stephanie Glowitz saw Deckard’s eyes go wide and not a second later, Sundance let out a low, grumbly growl. The German Shepherd tried to stand, but Chuck pulled him close with one hand while the other reached slowly for the M16A1 he had carted around all night. It sat among the litter of cornflakes two feet away.
Stephanie’s first thought was that a zombie had caught wind of them and was heading for the diner—and she wasn’t wrong.
A man in blue denim with a shotgun held up to his shoulder suddenly stepped from the kitchen, his work boots making a crunching sound as he came into the room. He had the big bore of the gun pointed at Max Fowler, the only one of them who was currently holding a weapon.
For some reason, the tension in the air was thick and Stephanie was about to give the stranger a wide toothy smile when the door to the diner eased open and in walked two more men, one old and grizzled, with a grey ponytail that hung down the back of the worn leather biker’s jacket he wore, and the other, middle-aged and wearing a tired suit that was getting shiny in the seat. They each held a pistol in one hand and an opened bottle of tequila in the other.
“They don’t smell right,” the older man said, sounding confused. He swung his pistol, a big black hunk of steel, back and forth so that each of them had it pointed at their faces for a few seconds at a time. Stephanie got the shivers when it swung her way, while Chuck only glared.
“They smell good to me, Mitt,” said the man in the old suit. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, smearing black gunk around so that he ended up looking like a woman who had cried mascara down her face. He then breathed in, enjoying the odor in the room as if he were breathing in an apple pie that had just been pulled from the oven. “They smell real good to me.”
Mitt looked ill and nervous…and slightly hungry. He kept licking his wrinkled lips with a tongue that was an ugly color. It was almost a match for his leather jacket. “I don’t know, Gil. They ain’t right.”
The as yet named man in the denim came to stand over PFC Max Fowler who had his M16 sitting across his thighs, pointing at the wall. There was no way he could yank his gun around fast enough. “This one is with the government. He’s one of their attack dogs.”
“Cliff…Cliff, that’s a real dog, Cliff.” Mitt used his handgun to point at the animal.
“I’m talking about the soldier, you idiot. He’s with the government. He’s one of them that did this to us.”
“Oh,” Mitt said. Cliff began nodding as he took one hand off his gun to reach into his jacket. Stephanie suspected he had a knife stashed there, but he pulled out a bottle of gin and unscrewed it with his thumb, letting the cap roll away. He downed the entire bottle without blinking an eye and then viciously threw it at Max.
Although Cliff was right on top of the soldier, he missed and the bottle shattered against the wall next to Max’s head.
Sundance went wild, snapping teeth that were an inch long and fantastically sharp. Chuck had to forget his gun to keep the dog from attacking…and from getting killed. Cliff had turned his shotgun toward the dog and was aiming down the barrel.
“That a government dog?” he asked. “That one of them police dogs that the government sics on poor, innocent people?”
Chuck shook his head, while his hands dug into Sundance’s fur. Next to him Fowler said: “It’s just a dog we found. He’s trapped just like the rest of us.”
The gun swung back to point at Fowler. “You ain’t trapped like the rest of us. You’re with the government. You did this to us. I’m trapped because of you!” Cliff took a step closer, so that the gun was inches away from Fowler’s head. Stephanie could imagine she could hear the trigger creaking back as he started to pull on it.
A real sound, the crunch of cornflakes, came from behind Cliff, making him spin. Deckard had shifted position slightly and now he had every gun pointed at him.
Deckard wore an odd grin and his eyes were strangely bright. “You’re trapped, too?” he asked, as though excited by the idea. “You must be one of us. We’re trapped too, b-by the government. They were doing experiments on us, but—but we escaped. PFC Fowler helped us.” He pointed at the soldier.
“Yes,” Stephanie said, catching on. “He’s on our side and…and he can help you, too.”
“Really?” Mitt asked. His eyes were dark, but he was still mostly human. The other two were minutes away from being full-on zombies, with only the alcohol keeping them from turning into blood-thirsty monsters. “You hear that, Gil? He can help us.”
Gil scratched his thinning hair with the forward sight on his pistol, looking dubious. “How? How can he help us?”
Mitt looked to Stephanie, who looked to Deckard, who answered: “He knows the way out and…and he knows where to get a cure for your headaches.” Deckard lowered his voice slightly and leaned in toward Cliff, saying: “Have you ever heard of R&K Pharmaceuticals? They’re the ones that started this and they have the cure.”
“That’s right,” Fowler said. “If you have a car, we can save you.”
Gil and Mitt looked as though they had bought the story hook, line and sinker. “We have a truck. Will that do? It’s right out back of the post office.”
Cliff was unconvinced. “Maybe we should talk to the others before we agree to anything. That’s…that’s what we’ll do. And if they don’t like it, then we should kill them. That’s what we should do. We should kill them and…and…” A grin twitched his lips and then he swallowed loudly.
He was getting hungry. The feeling had been getting stronger over the last two hours, ever since Mark Jensen had come back to Gamet Corner with a bullet in his leg and a big bite out of his right arm. Mark and two others had tried to find a way out of the Quarantine Zone, but had run into trouble instead.
And now everyone was fighting savage headaches and feeling strangely hungry for something warm and clean and fresh. Cliff couldn’t understand this new desire for blood or the sudden avalanche of anger that had taken over his head and wouldn’t leave no matter how many pills he swallowed or how much gin he guzzled. He wanted to kill these government people right there, even though it made perfect sense to keep them alive.
He couldn’t make up what was left of his mind and so he decided to leave it to the others. They would know what to do. Ever since Mark Jensen had come back, there had been a sort of “hive” mentality among the few survivors
left in Gamet Corners.
Deckard saw the look of confusion. He was counting on it. Under no circumstances could his little group go with the three strangers. Clearly, they were infected, but what wasn’t known was if they were contagious yet. He figured that they had to be close which meant it would be certain death to go with them.
Chuck knew it as well and caught Deckard’s eye. Just like that, there was an understanding between them: they would fight. PFC Max Fowler was also on board. He bobbed his head and gave Cliff and his gun a significant look. Chuck cut his eye toward Gil and that left Deckard with the task of disarming Mitt.
They just needed the right moment which wasn’t slow in coming. Cliff gestured towards the door with his shotgun, saying: “Get up, all of you. And don’t touch those guns.”
“Of course,” Deckard said, raising his hands. “We’re all on the same team.” The others stood, slowly in Stephanie’s case and painfully in Dr. Wilson’s. The snap of his aging tendons and the groan he let out when he got to his feet were the only noises he had made since the sudden appearance of Cliff.
He had been quiet this entire time, feeling an impending doom surrounding him. Nothing had gone right in the last two days and he didn’t expect this to be any different. Dejectedly, he walked out of the diner with his hands up and didn’t see the look Deckard was trying to slip him, and he didn’t see how Chuck’s muscles were bunched and ready, or how Fowler was half a second away from punching Cliff in the jaw.
Cliff had his eye on Deckard, but his gun was pointed off to the left slightly. Fowler was ready, as was Chuck, who was only a step behind Gil and fully prepared to wrest the pistol out of his hand. The only one of the three who wasn’t ready was Deckard, and that was because Dr. Wilson had put himself between Deckard and Mitt.
“Dr. Wilson? Could you…” Deckard jerked his head to the side which he thought was all the hint he could get away with.
Wilson didn’t pick up on it. “Could I what?” he asked, faintly. His hips felt as though they had rusted in place in the couple of hours they had spent in the diner and he grimaced with every step.
“Never mind,” Deckard answered. The moment had passed. Gil had stepped out into the light and had moved a few feet to the side, the bore of his gun shadowing them. If they fought out in the street it would be a massacre.
Mitt led the group down the street to the post office, a low brick building that stank of old piss and decayed meat. It was cool inside, cool and dark. Deckard squinted through the gloom, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon, however the main floor was basically empty.
A few tables, some plastic bins, a few thousand crisp, white envelopes and stacks of circulars was all he had to work with. There wasn’t even a box cutter sitting out. Sundance wanted to come in with them, but Fowler shut the door in his face. He thought it would be better if the dog wasn’t trapped along with them.
“There are people here?” Stephanie asked, grimacing over the smell and wishing she was outside with Sundance.
“Downstairs,” Gil said, swigging from his bottle and then running his sleeve across his mouth. Again, Mitt went first, heading through a doorway and then down a set of stairs that led to a murky basement where the only light was what filtered through dirty little rectangles of glass set high up on the wall.
He disappeared down the stairs and Stephanie was slow to follow. The smell here was worse, enough to make her gag.
“What’s your problem?” Gil asked, glaring down at her. “You don’t like our little home? Because that’s too bad if you don’t. You made us live here and you made us like this. You and all of your government buddies.”
“That wasn’t us, remember?” she said, speaking quickly. “Remember, we’re on your side. And remember we can fix you, too.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, taking another swig. “That’s right. And we have to tell the others.” He pointed down the stairs with the bottle.
Stephanie went down slowly, each step letting out a desolate creak. At the bottom, there was a jumble of dusty bins and boxes and there were empty liquor bottles by the dozens and there was blood in a pool of red and a body on the floor just a few feet away. It had been a man. His face had been torn off, his fingers were all chewed down to nubs, his belly was laid out and open.
The blood was so fresh that Mitt laid tracks in it as he went to stand over the body. “What did you do?” He looked ghostly pale in the dim light. “Why did you kill Frank?”
Someone hidden by the dark, answered: “He was wrong, Mitt. You know that. He was one of them.”
“Just like these, I bet,” someone to their left, hissed. “They smell clean. They smell like him!” A bottle whistled through the air, missing Stephanie by a hair. It smashed into a thousand shards and drenched her in gin. A second one was thrown, only this one dinged off of Mitt’s head, clipped the rail of the staircase and bounced, unbroken at her feet.
Stephanie had thrown a defensive arm over her face and now she could just make out three creatures hiding amongst the boxes. They were black-eyed, their mouths were red gashes, and blood dripped from their chins. They were zombies, keeping it together by the barest of margins.
They started forward, the red gashes smiling wide.
2—The Connecticut Bubble
The president had given his remarks, stressing his four main points, and he had called all the governors involved and smiled benignly as each of them begged him to federalize the situation, and now he watched the live news feeds of Operation Swift Stand.
Practically every television channel replayed the same footage of roaring planes and formations of men geared up and ready to board the waiting C17 Globemasters at Pope Field.
The men were so loaded down with gear they could only move at an awkward shuffle. Along with their bulky parachutes, they carried M4 assault rifles, six thirty-round magazines, MOPP gear, protective masks, 5 MREs, a gallon of water, radios, maps, bibles and all sorts of other minutia that soldiers used.
Once they boarded the planes, they plopped wearily down in the cargo netting and waited as all ninety planes were loaded.
In order to increase the “wow” factor, more planes and more battalions had been added to the initial stage of the operation as the morning progressed, until almost the entire 82nd Airborne Division was scheduled to jump in one mass event.
Optics was the reason given by the White House. It was all the politicians seemed to care about. How would the operation look on television? They made constant unrealistic demands: could the men stand straighter under their immense burdens? Could we get them to stop sweating? Can they be made to look stoic? Can we get five planes to take off at once?
In spite of the Washington officials trying to turn the operation into something out of Hollywood, it began on time as the first of the huge planes took off at seven sharp, roaring into the bright blue North Carolina sky. People across the country watched with tears in their eyes.
Five hundred miles north of Pope Field, Dr. Thuy Lee had tears threatening to spill from her eyes as well. She found herself trapped in a dark tent with a number of people who were quickly turning into zombies. They were all soldiers who had fought the beasts throughout the night and at some point one or more of them had brought the disease into the command tent.
If it weren’t for the pills they were endlessly popping, they would have been eating people by then. As it was, they had turned paranoid and murderous, and Thuy was the object of their hate.
“I told you to tie her up!” Colonel O’Brian hissed at a tall engineering captain who had walked into the tent just before Thuy. Needless to say, the captain was utterly shocked at the order.
“I don’t think I can. I-I mean that’s not a lawful order, is it?” He looked at the other two men who had just entered. The pair of lieutenants glanced at each other, neither understanding the situation or wanting any part of it, and yet they had been asked a question by a ranking officer.
“Maybe it is,” one said. “Martial law
has been declared. I-I don’t know about punishing anyone, but we can detain civilians, especially if it’s been thought that she has broken the law.”
“Yes! Yes!” shouted O’Brian, jabbing a finger in Thuy’s face. “That’s right. Now tie her up and be quick about it.”
“Yes, sir, but maybe we should listen to her,” one of the lieutenants suggested. “If she knows anything about the virus…”
“She’s a traitor!” O’Brian yelled and then put a hand to his head as if the volume of his voice had cracked his brain like an egg. His head thudded so badly that he sometimes saw double.
Thuy didn’t know what she would say even if she had been allowed to speak. She had come into the tent with the idea of trying to talk the ranking officer into moving the entire force outside the proposed expanded limits of the Zone. Now, after seeing the advanced stage of the disease that Colonel O’Brian was in, she wouldn’t even make the attempt.
She had enough guilt on her shoulders without being the cause of another outbreak of the disease.
Blinking back the tears that threatened to come, she held out her wrists; they were tiny, bird-like. “I will consent to being tied up if you will listen to me. The danger has not passed. The Com-cells are extremely hardy and not easily eradicated and, in case you haven’t noticed, we are surrounded by thousands of diseased bodies. Soon the flies will come and I have no way of knowing if they will be able to transmit the disease.”
“But you have a guess that they will?” the captain asked.
Thuy shrugged. “I am uncomfortable making guesses, but in this case we should assume the worst. This entire camp needs to pick up and move…”
“Hold on!” O’Brian suddenly shouted and again put a hand to his head. “Do not listen to her. She-she started all of this. We can’t listen to her. We-we have to punish her. She has to be made an example of.”
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 9
