The End

by P. A. Douglas

  Benton glanced up from the scope and looked at the timer. “Seriously, Christopher!” He slammed his hands on the table.

  Christopher shot his head up from the sink, startled. “What now?”

  “How are we supposed to study the natural decomposition rate in this sample if you continually forget to set the freaking timer after injecting the Cordyceps Unilateralis?” Benton said and glared.

  “What are you talking about?” he replied, rinsing the soap from his hands. “I haven’t done that yet. The syringe is right next to you, in front of the stupid timer.”

  “What?”

  Christopher was correct. The injector was right there. Benton quickly peeked back down at the unwinnable war going on atop the thin piece of glass beneath the scope. “This can’t be right.”

  “What do you mean?” Christopher asked, drying his hands and making his way back to the manila folder. “If I’m not mistaken, this sample is from the teenager that we have already established as a carrier. If that’s the case, then perhaps the parasitoid is just, finally, at its crucial point. Hell, look at Taft. I’m surprised the boy hadn’t turned already. Taft changed less than an hour after transfer.”

  “This is true, but Taft was practically eaten to death, so he received a much higher concentration of the fungus. The boy just had a scratch,” Benton said. His eyes met with his lab partner revealing something Christopher had never seen in Benton, concern.

  Christopher thumbed through his papers one more time, suddenly realizing that he hadn’t been the last person to test the blood sample, which explained his lack of paperwork.

  Whoever administered the last set of tests on the 12EM3 sample must have done something to increase the production rate of the Cordyceps Unilateralis. Whatever it was, he stood over his notes, hoping like hell that it hadn’t also been administered to the patient.

  Slamming the manila folder closed, he jerked his head up, locking gazes with the dead thing strapped to the wall at the corner of the room. Its milky-white eyes were lost somewhere between them. He stared right back, while trying with all he had, to remember what it was that Gibbs had given the boy for pain. Was it Demerol, a small dose of Morphine, or something else?

  2

  Gibbs sat quietly in the dark, damp room behind its thick steel-reinforced bars. Trying to make herself as comfortable as possible, she had removed her lab coat and shoes shortly after being thrown into the cell, placing them neatly on the bed. She squatted uncomfortably against a thin and rickety bench at one side of the cell, eyeing her watch and shaking her knees. It had been a few hours now and she was getting restless.

  She had tried making small talk with the guard, hoping to help pass the time, but to no avail.

  The Brig, as the General liked to call it, was nothing more than an old warehouse at the far side of the base, at the west end. Initially built to house large amounts of explosives, along with other things, the building was far away from most other buildings. Being one of the original buildings on the base, along with the fact that it was hardly ever used, left the Brig in bad shape.

  The small holding area only consisted of three, ten-foot square cells, and a guard station. The walls in each cell, excluding that of the warehouse foundation, were comprised of steel bar. With each cell set side-by-side, you could see each toilet in the room from any cell, leaving no privacy when occupied by more one prisoner.

  Each cell had a functional toilet, bed, bench, and sink. If and when, a fight broke out between the soldiers, or, someone decided to drink a little more than their fair share, they generally ended up in a cell for a day or two. Depending upon how the General was feeling had a lot to do with the length of the confinement.

  The single guard, manning the small warehouse of cells, was only stationed when someone was in custody. The solo guard sat with legs propped up behind a desk, doing everything he could to ignore the captive. After deciding he was tired of the doctor disturbing his nap, the soldier got up and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  She sat there alone, and had been for close to an hour, imagining the guard passed out in a chair on the other side. Other than that, her mind raced with questions. Questions about the blood test results and what Baker planned to do with her played out in her head.

  The sudden thought of Rob Foster, in all his gentleness, crashed in knocking the other ideas away from her mind. Had she been too irrational visiting him last night? Had they gone too far, and, what could sex really change about their relationship? She liked things the way they were, and, began to worry that maybe she had made a bad decision. But then again, who doesn’t make bad decisions after having a few tall glasses of wine?

  Thinking of his soft breath tickling her bare chest entered her head creating a bleak smile. His gentle fingers rubbing down her belly in a slow and sensual—

  Her daydream was suddenly interrupted when in walked a tall soldier, thrusting the door open, letting it crash against the wall as it pivoted.

  *

  “Line ‘em up over there!” the soldier grunted, stepping into the small warehouse.

  Behind him another soldier entered, followed by another, and another. All three of the soldiers, excluding the one barking off the orders, wielded pistols. With their weapons drawn toward the open door, one after another of the civilian survivors entered the room, gazes down, hands on top of their heads. Filing in as a straight line, the five captives stood in single file against the wall, a state of disbelief etched on each face.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” George asked, instantly getting struck with the butt of a 9mm on the back of the skull.

  “Shut up and stay in line,” the soldier that delivered the sudden blow shouted.

  George staggered to the side, off-balance for a moment, his sight fading in and out briefly in a white blur, but it quickly returned as he caught himself before falling to the floor.

  “Back in line I said,” the soldier shouted once more.

  The tall, commanding soldier produced a clip of keys from his person, tossing them across the room and into the hands of a shorter, yet still very tall, man wearing the same military attire.

  “Open ‘em up,” the lead soldier said, the keys clinking in the silence between his words.

  The man, now holding the keys, made his way to each cell and unlocked them, including the cell that held the Dr.

  “You!” the man said, giving orders and pointing to Cynthia, who was obviously scared out of her mind. “In there!” the soldier said, pointing at the first open cell currently occupied.

  Eric and Kent were placed in the middle cell, leaving George and Billy at the far end of the warehouse in the last cell.

  With the cells locked down and the small squad of soldiers getting ready to leave, Kent burst out into a fit. With both fists gripping the steel, he violently convulsed as he shook at the bars, yelling, “You can’t do this! Why, tell me why? I want an answer!” His face had turned a deep shade of crimson.

  “Who gets to stay and watch guard?” one soldier asked, totally ignoring the civilian’s demands. The lead soldier walked over to Kent and pulled a large pair of aviator sunglasses from his front pant pocket. “You forgot these,” the soldier said, handing them over.

  Before Kent had a chance to grab them, the soldier let them fall to the floor, and then smashed them under his boot.

  “Oops,” the soldier said and smirked.

  “Fuck ‘em! Let’s go. They aren’t going anywhere.” The soldiers’ holstered their handguns simultaneously before leaving. The door slammed shut with a loud crash, but not before the last soldier reached in and flipped off the main light switch. His hand disappeared before the door hand a chance to close on it.

  Kent knelt and snatched up the crushed glasses. With one lens missing and the other cracked, Kent let out a large sigh and threw them on the floor in his new cell.

  He sat on the edge of the bed trying to play it cool. Those shades were the last bit of tangible memory he had of hi
s grandfather. They meant a lot to him, which was why he wore them so much.

  Not actually knowing his real parents, Kent had been raised by his grandparents after his real ones died in a house fire, while he was still too young to remember. To him, his grandfather meant everything. Being in the Air Force all the way through retirement, Kent always wanted to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. Having dropped out of high school and with the added minor drug charges as a teen, he wasn’t able to. Now that he was older, what was the point? Sitting on the edge of the rickety bed, Kent thought these things, his eyes slowly adjusting to the sudden darkness.

  With the lights unexpectedly shut off, the only light in the small warehouse building was that of a poorly-painted-over window in one corner. Small hints of light peeked in, keeping the room from going into total darkness.

  “Are you all right?” Eric asked, standing beside Kent, but looking past him into the next cell at George, who was still rubbing the back of his head.

  “Yeah, I should be all right. My head is throbbing,” George replied. He and Billy were both sitting on the bed in their cell wondering, like all the rest, what the hell was going on.

  Eric nodded and turned to face Cynthia. Expecting the lady to be sitting in her cell alone, he was slightly startled to see that she wasn’t. So focused on the situation and the guards, he hadn’t been paying that much attention to his surroundings. Intending to ask Cynthia if she was okay, his thought process in midsentence changed. Seeing Dr. Gibbs out of the blue made him stumble over his words, “How a… who… what are you doing in here?”

  With her eyes still fixed on the door that the soldiers had just exited, Gibbs stood at the edge of the locked cell in deep thought.

  Cynthia sat on the bed behind her, already looking up at Eric.

  “Hey, science lady, what the heck are you doing in here?” he asked again, true curiosity inflecting in each word.

  “It’s complicated,” she said, not taking her gaze from the warehouse entrance.

  “Hey, you’re Dr. Gibbs, right?” Kent shuffled about on the bed mat. He easily remembered her name, because man, was she fine.

  Behind him, George and the little boy both stood to their feet trying to get a better look from the far end of the room while listening in.

  “Yeah,” Cynthia said to emphasize Eric’s question once more. “What gives? One minute we’re getting the royal treatment, and then thrown in the dungeon the next.” She crossed her arms kicking both feet up onto the bed.

  “And what did they do with all of our stuff?” Kent said. “They took my shotgun. Hell, they took all of our weapons.”

  “Like I said, it’s complicated.” Gibbs turned to face Eric and Kent, and leaned against the wall where she stood.

  “It’s not like we don’t have time on our hands,” Kent said. “So if you have something to say, then let’s hear it.”

  *

  Sighing a deep breath, Gibbs looked around the room at her new fellow captives. Eyeing each one individually for a moment or two, she recalled her notes and the files of each patient. Cynthia, the danger to herself. Kent, the slacker from Mars. George, the retired widower. Billy, well there wasn’t much on him. And then there was Eric, the straight A student, all-American teenager. She had stayed late again in the lab last night running tests on Eric’s blood samples, the log report still sat on her desk in her office. She removed her glasses and wiped them on her shirt.

  Well, if I can’t get to the lab and study the test results of last night’s blood tests, at least I can monitor the patient in here, she thought.

  Pulling her glasses back to her face, Gibbs looked across at Eric once more. “How are you doing, Eric?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, unconsciously reaching up and scratched at the cut beneath his bandaged hand. The wound felt like it was on fire.

  3

  The two soldiers had been sitting tight for quite a while now, just waiting for the dust and smoke from the grenade to settle. Shortly after going over the map displayed on the wall in the center of the room, Gus and Clay came up with a game plan.

  Clay lay against the floor on his back, looking up at the ceiling. With both hands tucked under his head for support, he found himself lost in thought. He imagined what he would have been doing right now, had he not actually joined the military, and assuming that the apocalypse of the dead hadn’t struck. He liked to think that he would have finally gotten out of that dingy, little trailer and locked down a solid job that he enjoyed, and found a good-looking girl. He never had problems finding ladies; it was keeping them that he had trouble with. That must have had something to do with the lack of effort put into his home life and a lack of job security. He laid quietly on his back, thinking and doing his best not to notice the dead woman on the floor across from him, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  *

  Gus, on the other hand, could not so easily block out their current set of circumstances. It was his job to keep the two alive. Running over the plan, time and time again, he sat with his back to the wall, across for the main doorway. He intently tried to relax. With one hand, he held his other extremity out. It throbbed with pain. The shot of painkillers the doc had given him for his fractured hand was starting to wear down. His focus consistently jumped from the bandaged fist and the blocked doorway in front of him. The sounds of the living dead, relentlessly trying to get in, pressed on. Their pounding and moans had given away the two soldiers’ location and had only reassured Gus that they knew the two men were in that room.

  Flexing his fingers from outstretched and into a balled fist repeatedly, Gus held out the throbbing limb, hoping like hell that it wasn’t going to slow him down. So far, he hadn’t even noticed the fractured appendage. That meant that the painkillers had been doing their job. Sure, handling his M-4 with the bandages was a little awkward at first, but it was nothing that held him back. With the drugs starting to wear off, that was, however, going to be another story. Looking up at the door covered with a large desk and a few smaller student chairs, Gus was at least a little worried and wished that he had talked Gibbs into packing him a few extra pills to take for the trip.

  “You think the smoke is cleared up by now? It’s been fifteen already,” Clay said, pulling one of his head supporting hands away to glance at the wristwatch strapped on the outside of his suit.

  Gus replied, “Eh… another five wouldn’t hurt.” Upon pronouncing the word hurt, a sharp stabbing sensation erupted in the man’s bandaged hand. He had taken attention away from the flexing limb to reply to Clay and suddenly bent his fingers up too high. The pain was unbearable, causing the soldier to wince.

  “You all right?” Clay asked, sitting up and pulling his rifle from the floor beside him and into his lap.

  He pressed the release, dropping out the magazine, then dispensed the chambered round all in one fluid motion. He then sighted down the barrel right before disassembling the rifle. If they planned to sit tight for another five minutes, he had time to take apart his M-4 and give it a quick cleaning.

  “Yeah, I will be fine. Just bent it back too far,” Gus said.

  “You would think with your hand being like that, they would have sent someone else out to do this mission, don’t you think?”

  “Hell, if you want to look at it like that, what in the world was the General thinking when he decided to send you with me?” Gus said. “No offense, but an OP like this should never have been your first. You got to build up to this sort of thing, you know. At the end of it all, this outbreak has us all running like chickens with our heads cut off. We just have to do what we have to do, I guess,” Gus said.

  “If I had to guess, having me tag along wasn’t the General’s idea.”

  “Foster?”

  “Yeah, he has this big idea in his head that I’m going to be promoted soon, once I get my act together and stop shitting away my potential. I hate to break it to the guy, but I’m out in two and that’s that,” Clay said.

  The two m
en sat for a while longer, waiting for the time to pass. Clay finished reassembling his rifle and slammed the magazine back into the chamber locking a fresh round into position. Standing to his feet, he slung the rifle around his shoulder and across his back, retrieving the handgun from his hip.

  “Well, you ready, then?” Clay asked, taking Gus’ attention away from his wounded fist. The man nodded, standing to his feet as well.

  With the set of smaller study desks spread out in what must have been the makeshift classroom, the two soldiers had already piled them up high enough for Clay to reach the ceiling grate. He climbed them with Gus’ assistance and reached the top, popping the grate out of place, and tossing it to the floor.

  *

  With one big heave, Clay pulled himself up and into the ventilation system that ran above them and through the entire first floor. It took a minute, but once he got situated, he turned around, facing Gus to give a thumb-up from inside the vent. He was ready. The space to move around was narrow and definitely a tight fit. Clay was, however, able to maneuver well considering his weapons and bulky suit.

  Setting the timer on his watch, Clay took off down the ventilation shaft. Crawling on all fours, he shimmied forward, attempting to make as little noise as he could. Periodically, the clink and clang of aluminum would pop and bend around him as his weight shifted with each moment he inched forward. It was hot, and luckily, he wasn’t claustrophobic. Otherwise, he might have already started to panic, having only made it a few feet.

  Ahead of him, a small gleam of light peeked from a square grate. It was the hallway littered with infected. As he came up to it, the moans and pounding of their relentless pursuit echoed louder and louder against the aluminum.

  Trying to get a clear view of the hall, he tilted his head at an angle trying to get a better look. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there. And from what he could tell, he was in the right place. Blood and tattered body parts littered the floor, undoubtedly, from the grenade, as well as the barrage of fire they laid down earlier. The smoke and dust had settled quite a bit. He was still having a little trouble seeing down the hall as far as he wanted to. The dust and debris still taking its time to settle didn’t help his efforts much.