The End

by P. A. Douglas

  Rob Foster made few friends in his fast ascension to First Class Lieutenant. Though young in age, he was more than qualified on paper to handle his position. He saw no reason to be disliked by his peers.

  He had known General Baker for two years. He could tell Baker had grown quite attached to him since his transfer from Wisconsin. One time, the man said he saw a lot of himself in him. Rob was honored by that compliment. The General never neglected to keep up professional appearances despite favoritism.

  Foster pointed to the map. “Over the last forty-eight hours, the unknown contagion seems to have spread as far west as Mobile, into Jacksonville, and into southern parts of Georgia. We have already disabled all forms communications for these areas, excluding the radio station en route. The entire eastern border of Mississippi has been on lockdown for the last thirty-two hours, along with all of southern Georgia, and Alabama. Orlando has yet to be infected, and military personnel from that district are currently posted from coastline to coastline on twenty-four-hour surveillance. In short, nothing can get in, and nothing can get out. The media are swarming us with questions. So far, they are accepting our answers and are refraining from exploiting the situation.”

  “Casualties?” Baker asked.

  “Estimated ninety-eight percent of the infected zone population, sir.”

  “Impressive, Lieutenant. Impressive.”

  Eyeing the outlines of Foster’s map, General Baker pulled another cigar from his shirt pocket, bit off one end, and spit it across the room. He then motioned for Rob to pour himself another glass of scotch as he lit the cigar. As he sat back in his chair and propped up his feet, partially on Foster’s map, Baker took repeated puffs on the cigar to help get it started.

  While Rob made himself a drink, along with another for the General, Baker picked up the phone and dialed out. “Tell Dr. Gibbs that I will be meeting her in her office in fifteen minutes… I don’t care if she is or not, I will expect her to be there.”

  Not quite in the gentlest of ways, the phone came crashing down yet again. “Now all we have to do is clear this mess out and things will be good as new,” Baker said and leaned back with a grin from ear to ear.

  Bringing the drinks to the desk, and taking his place seated with arm reached out passing over a scotch-filled glass, Foster had a nasty gut feeling that something terrible was about to happen. Things weren’t quite over yet.

  The calm before the storm, he thought.

  *

  Meanwhile, only two doors down from the recent accident in Taft’s lab, Dr. Teresa Gibbs squinted into a microscope, examining the partial decomposition of gray decaying flesh—that of Professor Taft himself. Directly in front of her, only a few feet across the room, stood her esteemed colleague tied securely to the wall by the neck with a one-inch-thick chain. The metal pressed tightly into his skin to ensure no further mishaps might occur. His face was practically unrecognizable at first glance.

  It had been a few minutes before Gibbs or anyone else had made it to the lab to see what the commotion was about. The creature that had once been Private Michaels had easily overpowered the thin, unfit professor.

  Dr. Gibbs was not the easiest of people to pull away from her work, especially when potentially uncovering important discoveries. Clay had to practically drag her out of her office.

  The majority of Taft’s scalp had been ripped clean off, leaving only the lower part of his face left holding any skin. Both eyes had been eaten out, along with parts of his tongue. His shirt and stomach had been ripped down the middle, revealing all of his internal organs had been pulled out by hand. Needless to say, he was a mess, and if it hadn’t been for the ID badge clipped to his shirt pocket, it would be impossible to guess his identity. After cleaning up the mess from the attack, most of the professor’s entrails had been disposed of with the remaining bodies. General Baker wouldn’t have allowed Dr. Gibbs to use one of his men as a test subject, therefore reluctantly, she shot Michaels on-sight before having the other men restrain Taft. The room stunk of iron and festering bowels. Taft’s blood-soaked body slowly stained the tile beneath him as he stood tied to the wall.

  Dr. Gibbs steadily jotted down several notes while talking to herself and peering into the microscope. “I can’t believe I didn’t see this before. The molecular patterns are practically identical. If I’m right, this could mean only one thi—”

  Two rapid, deep pounds shook her attention from the tissue sample and toward the door. Baker walked into the room, Foster no less than a step behind.

  “I was told you were making your way down to see me. What do you want now?” Gibbs said as she returned her attention back to the microscope.

  “Yes, we have orders to transfer you and your team to a new location outside of the containment zone. With us being smack dab in the middle of things, the higher ups find it best we move things north.”

  “Everything we’ve learned so far is in this lab. We can’t just move to another location and continue where we left off. It might take weeks to set up a lab like we have. Besides, we’re right in the middle of the best source of specimens. Baker, have you thought of that?” Gibbs asked.

  “Orders are orders, lady. I want you and what’s left of your team ready for evac in no less than forty-eight,” Baker said.

  *

  Foster stood off to the side while Baker and Gibbs had their debate. Standing next to the late Professor Taft was a bit unnerving. Foster couldn’t help but feel a wave of nausea at the stench of rot. And yet the other two arguing back and forth seemed unfazed by it.

  Dr. Gibbs was an attractive woman, even in the stained white lab coat. Foster had thought about her on more than one occasion. What would she look like with the lab coat, and every other piece of clothing, tossed to the floor?

  Her long, jet-black hair constantly draped over her left eye when she leaned over the table. Her light-blue eyes almost luminescent against the darkness of her hair. She was shorter than Foster but taller than the average woman. He had never seen her in anything other than her lab coat and work clothes. The huge white jacket consumed her petite frame and golden complexion, making her hands appear quite small. She was in her early 30s but looked an easy 25. Foster couldn’t keep his eyes off of her, even with the smell lingering in the room.

  He had tried on a few occasions outside of eating lunch together to get her to join him for a drink off the clock. She seemed interested but then always blamed her research being too important right now to spend her time that way. Dr. Theresa Gibbs was passionate about her work and was basically never off the clock. Foster hoped she was just as passionate in the sack. She had what he liked to call bedroom eyes.

  “And where are we planning to relocate?” she asked.

  “That information is currently classified. We are only looking out for your best interest. But enough talk for now. We’ll be having a meeting after dinner to go over your current findings. And I expect something good. It’s your job to figure out what’s causing the outbreak.” Baker slammed his fist on the table, knocking a few loose papers onto the floor.

  Gibbs turned her eyes away from the microscope.

  “Are you hearing me, woman! I expect a full report by day’s end. Is that clear?” Baker said.

  “You’re not going to get a damn report anytime soon if you don’t let me get back to my work, so if you please!” Gibbs said.

  Feeling the tension rising in the room, Foster retrieved the shuffled papers from the floor, with a smile intended to cool the situation with Gibbs. She wasn’t looking his way, though. Her eyes had returned to the microscope.

  General Baker and Rob Foster left the room.

  7

  The three soldiers had been on missions for years but never in these conditions. The general guideline of any operation for these boys was simple and always relatively the same, an in and out operation, quick and easy.

  Bo Brad Barrie the pilot, Gus the bus Stanford, and Willy Smith. They had been through hell and back together a time
or two but nothing ever quite this literal.

  “Only a few more minutes and we should have the target zone in sight,” Bo said through the receiver in his helmet from the cockpit.

  Attracting some attention as the helicopter loudly buzzed through the air over the city streets of the Bay County area, most zombies took notice. Attracted at first toward the aggressive noise created by the blades, then the gust of wind that suddenly rustled the trees, wreckage, and debris about in the street, and then lastly by the sight of a large black object drifting by in the sky. Zombie after countless zombie staggered out from houses and buildings, gathering in the streets, reaching to the sky as they shambled their way toward the ever-shrinking black object, the helicopter steadily moving along.

  “What do you think they’re doing, hidden away in those houses and yards?” Willy said, sitting at his rightful place as the gunman. He leaned halfway out of the chopper and looked back shaking his head.

  “Who knows, man,” Gus said. “They probably aimlessly walk around looking for something to eat, something to kill. I wouldn’t doubt it if they get lost once they make their way into the buildings. Those things are dumb as rocks.”

  They suddenly passed a mass of zombies the likes of which they had never seen. “Holy crap, Gus. Look at this.” Willy leaned ever farther out of his seat, pointing toward the crowd below.

  “There must be hundreds of those things down there,” Gus said as he looked over Willy’s shoulder. “Why do you think they are all crowded up in that backyard like that? I haven’t seen anything like it.”

  The mass of the undead noticed the chopper, and in an almost flawless unison, reached toward the sky.

  Bo, not actually able to see what the other two had been talking about, spoke up, “Chances are there is someone alive in that house or in a shed in the back yard, or something. And they all want to get in. That’s what.”

  “Well, maybe some of them will follow us for a few miles and thin out that yard,” Bo said. “Help out whoever might be stuck down there.”

  The chopper continued on course for several minutes passing street after street, house after house, and countless zombie after zombie. Each one looked the same. A ghost house on a ghost street, with the living dead reaching to the sky. Each one’s attention being drawn to the men in the helicopter. Many of the undead turned and followed. This went on the entire trip to the radio station, all the way from the base in Tallahassee.

  “Holy shit, you guys. Look up ahead!” Bo said.

  “What is it?” Willy asked.

  “We’re here, guys, and it doesn’t look too promising,” Bo said.

  Gus unstrapped his belts and made his way to the front of the chopper to see what the big deal was. With such broad shoulders and height, he had to squeeze past Bo to poke his head into the cockpit to take a look.

  Before joining the military, Gus had tried to make it in the pros as a front lineman. After only his fourth game in the semi-pros, he tore a muscle in his thigh. With no other real options, Gus still felt like he was called to something bigger than himself. Now here he was in the most unlikely of situations, strapped to a freaking helicopter of all things, about to face his Maker. Who would have thought?

  “Well don’t that just beat all,” Gus said with a quirky inflection in his voice.

  “I take it things aren’t looking too good,” Willy’s voice came from the back in both their headsets as if sitting right on top of them.

  “I’m afraid not,” Bo said.

  A mountainous horde of undead ghouls piled together in the parking lot right in front of the radio station. Something they could see over a mile out.

  “That’s not the place we’re going, is it? There must be hundreds of them.”

  “I’m afraid so, Gus. You aren’t going to chicken out on me now, are you? I didn’t remember to pack your security blanket this time,” Bo said.

  Bo loved to tease the hell out of Gus simply because it was so easy to do, and the man was three times his size. Bo was the one who coined the name Gus the bus and was glad it stuck. Even though Gus was a big man, he was the kindest person Bo had ever met.

  “Shut up and just drop the thing already. In and out, remember?” Gus said.

  The helicopter closing in on the building slowed and hovered in place directly over it. Its loud powerful blades blew up dust in its slow descent to the rooftop. The overwhelmingly large crowd of zombies in the parking lot began to stir, falling on top of one another as they reached to the sky toward the large black object. A powerful gust of wind threw rocks and random trash from the station’s roof to the ground two stories below.

  *

  Inside, still telling his story on the air, George continued, “And that was when I found Billy at McKenzie Park, in town. Shortly after that, we made our way to the beach and came up with the idea of heading to the station. It wasn’t until—”

  “Look outside, you guys. I just saw a helicopter.” Billy excitedly danced up and down barefoot on the couch, facing away from the radio equipment, eyes fixed on whatever it was that he happened upon outside.

  “I hear it,” Seth said pulling his headphones off one ear. The sound of the chopper rattled the windows.

  “Attention people, something’s happening outside. We’ll be back shortly.” Seth quickly clicked a few buttons sending the next song in queue across the airwaves.

  Shaking his head up and down to the song’s rhythm, standing on the sofa with a grin ear to ear, Billy said, “We’re gonna be rescued!”

  Both Seth and George instantly found their faces glued to the glass. Dust and trash furiously danced in the air all around the parking lot. The sea of undead beneath them danced even more so.

  George could barely make out his truck from the window looking out onto the mass of bodies littering the parking lot.

  *

  “It’s too small,” Bo said.

  “What do you mean it’s too small? You’ve done this a thousand times. Just drop this bird so we can hustle,” Gus said.

  “The roof of the building is too small, and that freaking oversized air conditioner is in the way. I can’t land it,” Bo said.

  “Then what are you saying? I sure as hell ain’t going to just mosey on up to the front door and knock to see if anyone’s home,” Gus said.

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to have to do actually,” Bo said.

  “Let’s light ‘em up, boys!” Willy brought his gaze over to his right.

  “Well crap, here we go!” Bo pulled back taking them away from the rooftop and directly over the swarming sea of death that engulfed the parking lot below.

  An onslaught of automatic fire littered the parking lot of undead as the helicopter hovered overhead in a circular motion. Zombie after zombie fell to the ground, chopped in bits and pieces as blood, chunks, and bone exploded tearing limb from limb. Torsos separated from legs, and heads exploded like watermelons. The deafening sound of the gunfire Willy’s battle cry. His entire body shook with force matching in rhythm, each bullet shell dispensing in the air with a spark, smoke pushed out with each release of three empty shells a second.

  “Aaahhh…What… the… fuck… now? BITCHES!” Willy shouted as he shot round after round of automatic fire into the crowd of ghouls.

  With most of the threat relinquished, zombies littered the ground. The parking lot was no longer visible beneath the fallen creatures. Blood and scattered remains covered everything beneath the chopper.

  “That’s enough, Willy. That’s enough!” Gus leaned over and grabbed him on the shoulder.

  Willy slouched back in his chair, muscles completely worn out from the ride.

  “You got to admit, Gus. That was pretty freaking sweet.” Willy grinned.

  Gus just smiled and shoved Willy out of the chair. “Let’s move.”

  The helicopter descended slowly to the parking lot, setting down on the ocean of bodies it had just utterly mangled to no end. Crushing several bones beneath its weight, the helicopter
touched down in the center of the lot directly between George’s truck and the front door of the WKBM station.

  “I feel like an idiot for leaving the bird. But with all these zombies out here, you two loafers aren’t going to make it without me. Let’s go!” Bo shouted from the front of the chopper, both men scooping up ammunition and holstering weapons. All three men looked at one another, Bo unhooked from the cockpit making his way to the rear.

  In unison, they all looked out at the carnage before them.

  Bo took off his helmet and shouted, “Stay tight.”

  The others nodded in agreement before jumping from the chopper to the ground.

  With a floor of bodies, the men’s footing and balance was off just a little. Walking on mutilated faces and broken bones was no easy task. The scent was unbearable.

  With only a few feet between them and the front door, Willy did his best to hold it back, knowing he would catch hell for it later, but it was too late. Bent over the heaping pile of rotting flesh and blood, he vomited partially on his boot but mostly on the chest of what looked like a gas station attendant. Its nametag was too hard to make out from the gore that covered it.

  “Come on, we ain’t got all day, boys,” Gus said and grunted, who was already standing in front of the door.

  Bo beside him, pistol drawn, aimed out into the parking lot past the chopper. Some of the previously fallen dead slowly began to shuffle about.

  “Move Willy, we got to go.”

  A zombie underneath Willy’s feet instantly grabbed his leg. It was an elderly woman with gray, matted hair, who somehow still managed to keep her glasses on. One lens was missing and the other was cracked. The knitted scarf she wore, blood-stained and torn to bits, revealed her naked, pale chest. The skin on her bones sagged from age and was covered with liver spots. A large chunk of her ribs protruded from her side, broken in places. The woman wrapped her mouth around his calf and bit down.

  Willy shrieked, releasing a single shot into her skull, blood spraying up and away from him simultaneously. “Stupid bitch!”