Gus ripped away the covering to find what looked like a massive, broken ant farm. It had to have been at least twenty feet wide and fifteen feet tall. A huge crack in the center of the structure had released its contents onto the floor. Dirt, gray specks of dust, and not much of anything else, still lay exposed. As Gus stood there, looking over it, Grech and Clay made their way beside him.
“Yes, we had a large shipment of infected ants carrying the fungus and they got out. That’s what spread the plague out onto the streets. There’s nothing we can do about it now and pointing blame isn’t going to help. If it was anyone’s fault, I blame your government for pushing my company, pushing me. They demanded too much and in too little time. When things are rushed, accidents happen.”
The three men stood over the mess for a moment in silence, then, Grech continued again. “We contained the spill and killed all of the specimens before the outbreak could get out of control. Several people got bitten by the ants and they were taken care of. The breach occurred, when one of the lab workers that denied getting bitten, was infected and took a leave of absence. Three days later, the coast was hit. How was I supposed to know something like this would happen? We didn’t invent the disease—it is in nature. We were just studying it.”
“Something like this is fixable,” Clay said. He stepped between Gus and the old man, hoping that Gus would keep his cool. “We have blockades covering the entire East Coast. We keep it from spreading and in a few years it dies out on its own. Right?”
“Wrong,” Grech said in a bitter reprimand. “Like I said before, I have all radio frequencies, from here to the end of the Earth and back, and what I have heard over those waves, in the last twenty-four hours, have been anything but good.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Gus.
“Follow me, and I will show you.”
After walking clear across the room once again, they made it back to the table filled with surveillance monitors and the highly technical and overpowered radio transmitter. With Grech seated at the head chair in front of the microphone, Clay and Gus took seats behind him, in similar chairs. Next to them, Grech turned the monitors back to normal, but not before showing the pilot still on the rooftop shooting to help pass the time.
The large section of small monitors changed from various shots from the above ground facility to the sight of a fallen warzone. The living dead, thousands of them, walked the streets.
“So what? We saw plenty of that on our way in here. We are a good ways off from the quarantine borders. What’s your point?” Gus asked.
“My point is this…” Grech sighed. “This is footage of Atlanta, Georgia. There are also other feeds I could show you in other states as well.”
“That is way outside of the Q-zone!” Clay gasped.
“That can’t be possible.” Gus grimaced. “You’re a liar!”
“That isn’t even the bad news, son,” Grech said. “The clean sweep they had scheduled for Monday officially got pushed to sunup tomorrow. They are blowing up everybody and everything before it gets any more out of hand, and there is nothing anybody can do about it.”
“All the more reason to be on our way!” Gus said.
“No reason to rush. You, of all people, should know that they aren’t going to just let you up and walk out of the dead zone like that,” Grech said.
Gus stated, “But General Baker wouldn’t let—”
“Your General is in the dark. They all are. I know, because I have been listening in. The Tallahassee area will be bombed too. If you want to stay alive, you could do what’s right and bunker down with me until it’s all over.”
Gus yanked his M-4 up. His eyes caught one last glimpse of the footage displayed in the set of screens. “You’re right about one thing, old man. Someone has to do what’s right.”
7
“Hurry up with it already. I got to take a piss,” Stately Christopher said.
It was well past lunchtime, and Benton insisted on running the final phase of tests on a few of the blood samples before taking their break. That chubby little prick always wanted to stay ahead of schedule, not for any other reason than to possibly have the opportunity to impress, if and when it presented itself.
Benton readied the injection of anti-coagulant, while Christopher stood there, dancing in place. “Hell, if you need to go that bad, then just go. Come back before heading to the cafeteria. We need to both log out of the computer systems at the same time.”
“Log out at the same time…” Christopher said with a sarcastic tone, mimicking Benton. He stepped away from the table and headed toward the door and out into the hall to relieve himself.
Benton finished getting things ready for the shot. He wanted to see what the result would be on Professor Taft when introducing the chemical compounds to the already clotted, rotting tissue. The effects on each of the blood samples seemed to vary from sample to sample.
Standing over Taft’s rotting corpse, Benton began to administer the shot into the dead man’s neck. The thick silver needle slid in with ease, the flesh softening from rot and pus. It made a squishing sound as it penetrated the graying flesh. Taft didn’t seem to mind one bit. Although upright and moving about, Taft was dead. It wasn’t as if he could feel the pain. As Benton pressed the thick fluids into Taft’s neck, the bright red liquid left the syringe and entered the creature’s blood stream, or what was left of it.
Taft reacted in a way that Benton was not prepared for. The zombie, that had once been his fellow lab associate, lunged forward, grabbing hold of Benton’s arm, the one that had been administering the shot. Other than grabbing him, the zombie remained still, staring at the captured limb, with its fogged eyes and drooling mouth.
Benton froze in fear, not exactly sure what he should do. When they first tied Taft up, he was thriving with life and aggressive, but that quickly died down after a day. He had drawn blood from the dead man numerous times before, and not once had the thing leaped out like that. Benton was shocked, letting go of the syringe. It hung there, half hanging from the creature’s neck. Black and gray liquids ran down from the needle as the weight of the cylinder pulled down on the putrid skin.
Benton slowly pulled away, but the monster’s grip quickly tightened. Benton frantically looked over his shoulder at the table behind him. It seemed to be so far away.
Before he had time to turn back and look Taft in the eyes, he knew what had happened. A sudden, unbelievable pain shot through his forearm causing him to let out a scream. He was afraid to look, but the pain made him jerk his head around.
Taft was pulling his head away from the stout little man’s upper arm. Blood, chunks of red meat, and white flesh came away with one massive tear. It peeled away like an orange skin. Blood poured out from the cavernous chunk of missing skin and muscle. The blood splashed as it poured out onto the cold white tiles below.
As Benton looked on in horrifying shock, unable to pull himself away from the zombie’s grip, the ghoulish figure came down for another bite. His rotting and germ-infested teeth fell upon Benton again, tearing into the same spot on his arm. This time, the bite went so deep, that as Taft pulled away, portions of the bald little man’s bone became visible. He screamed, almost passing out from the pain.
The door swung open, and Christopher dashed into the room. He ran around the table and landed on top of Benton, grabbing him by the shoulders. Trying to help pull him free, he pushed against Taft with his right foot.
In the same instant that Benton came free, crashing to the ground with one hand covered in blood as he held his open wound, Christopher lost his balance, falling forward. He caught his footing and kept from crashing into the chained zombie, but not before getting too close. His right hand grazed right past the creature’s face as he caught his balance. The abrupt pain caught him off guard. The ghoul’s putrid rot-filled teeth chomped down hard and landed a clean bite right down on Christopher’s hand, between the thumb and his index finger. He pulled away, instantly covering his pained ha
nd with his other, and stared in shock and disgust at the foul creature that had just taken a large chunk from him. “You stupid fuck!” Christopher shouted, as he spit into the zombie’s face.
He instantly thought of Benton and looked back, but didn’t see him. Only a thick trail of blood littered across the tile floor suggested his whereabouts. The door to the lab was wide open. The bloody trail disappeared out of the room and around the corner into the hall. “You have got to be fucking kidding me, Benton,” he said whispering to himself. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to turn into one of those things!”
Christopher calmly sat at the table doing what he could to stop the bleeding on his hand and began to gather up the materials he needed to give himself a shot. He sure as hell hoped it would do the trick. It just had to.
8
“What the hell do you mean she committed treason?” Rob Foster said.
“That is exactly what I said. You better watch your mouth, boy. Remember who you’re speaking to,” General Baker said.
The two men had been going at it in the General’s office for several minutes now and Foster was having enough of it. The General had lost it and there was no getting through to him. “I’m sure she had her reasons for doing what she did, sir, but that’s no grounds for throwing her in a cell. And the civilians are there with her, I take it?”
“They are. They are going to stay there until the bombers come in and clear up on Monday. As far as your little girlfriend, you can just forget about her. She isn’t going anywhere either,” General Baker argued.
“The bombers aren’t going to destroy the base,” Foster said.
“I’ve learned different. Of course, the officers will leave before it happens. Consider yourself lucky.”
“That’s murder! I can’t believe you’d go along with this.” Foster’s face was getting redder by the minute.
The intrusive chime of Foster’s radio caught both men by surprise.
“Lieutenant, come in. Over,” the voice said, echoing with static, clipped to Foster’s hip.
Foster eyed General Baker with a glare of frustrated rage. Removing the large handset, he took gaze away from Baker, looking out between the blinds of the office window. “Go ahead. Over.”
“We have some activity at the main gate, sir, thought you might like to be informed. Over,” came the voice from the other end.
“What kind of activity? Over.” The two disgruntled men eyed one another again, but this time with curious glances.
“A small truck, sir. Civilian. Over.”
“What’s it doing? Over.”
“That’s just it, sir, nothing at the moment. They’re just sitting out there in plain view. I think they want us to see them. Over.”
*
The small Chevy sat quietly idling in the middle of the street about a mile and a half from the main gate. The front of the military base was overrun with the walking dead. The entire fence line was crawling with them, especially so at the gate’s entrance. The rotting corpses shambled forward, ten and fifteen bodies deep, right where the survivors planned to get into the safe zone. The entrance was blocked. A few straggler ghouls lingered farther out into the streets and the surrounding fence line, but for the most part, they were heavily concentrated on getting past that gate to the fresh meat. The stench was unbearable. It wafted into the air, replacing the breeze’s summer aroma with something foul and decaying. From as far off as the truck sat, they could see the buzzing of flies over the heads of the dead.
*
“Holy hell, there are so many of them,” Victor said, sitting in the driver’s seat, with Ashley seated next to him.
“It must be all of the activity that excites them. The outgoing and incoming helicopters generally pass over this part of the fence line every day. It must be drawing them in,” Ashley said, eyes fixed on the obstacle ahead.
“So, what’s the plan exactly? I don’t imagine we’re going to be able to just mosey on up there and ring the bell to get in,” Victor said, throwing a hand up from the steering wheel in defeat. “I vote we just plow through the son-of-a bitches and hit the fence.”
“Are you insane? Like that is going to work!” Ashley said.
“Do you have a better idea, lady?”
“If I had my radio, we could call in and get them to let us in and—”
Victor said, “But you don’t and you can’t just shit one.”
*
Back at the gate, General Baker and Lieutenant Rob Foster rolled up in a small base truck. Its framework was very similar to a golf cart but with a lot of upgraded modifications and off-road abilities.
Parking the cart a good distance away from the actual entrance, the two men hopped out. They briskly walked toward the gate. On the opposite side stood hundreds of the undead. They clawed, moaned, gnashed, and spit, violently shaking the chain link as the two men drew closer.
Baker pulled a hanky from his front pocket and used it to cover his mouth and nose with one hand.
Foster followed suit, using the crevice of his elbow to cover his nose and mouth as they moved forward.
Haunting dread overcame Foster with each step toward the small spiral staircase. All eyes were on him and that made him uneasy. The idea that the only thing keeping a massive mob of cannibals from tearing into him and taking him apart to the bone was nothing more than some wire and hollow pipe. He did his best to keep his head down. Focused on his boots, one foot in front of the other, he still couldn’t help but feel the ghostly stare of an endless sea of eyes piercing at him. He didn’t like it one bit.
Before he realized it, he was right beside Baker at the top of the guard tower overhanging the gate’s entrance. The view was terrifying. Their numbers had almost tripled since the last time he had to stand on this very ledge. Most towers were manned by three guards at all times, surrounding the entire base. With this being the most active, and most importantly, weak point of their military compound, there was always at least five people on watch at a time. This was something Baker insisted on for safety measures, once the crowd became too large. The guards on duty had only two jobs when on watch. One was to thin things out when needed and to sound the alarm if something were ever to go wrong. Roughly once a day, the guards would flip a coin. The winner of this toss was given the honor of stepping behind the mounted .50 caliber machine gun. This massive gun ripped six-inch bullets in rapid succession of pure power, a true man’s toy.
Overlooking the fence line of walkers and death beyond death, a sea of carnage and revulsion overcame the naked eye. Severed limbs and puddles of dried blood littered the street. The horrific damage that the .50-cal. had bestowed upon the lingering creatures over the course of a few days beset the pavement below.
Foster looked up from his boots, not wanting to look out at the putrid sight. Beside him, Baker stood, already wielding a pair of binoculars. With both hands up to his face, Baker silently looked out past the massive horde of undead. After a moment, he jerked them from his face and looked at the guard closest to him.
With a stern voice and stiff posture, he said, “How long have they been sitting here, Private?”
“I don’t know, sir. Not long, sir.” The young man stood beside him at parade rest, looking out past the hungry mob, both hands behind his back.
Baker tossed the binoculars back up for a second. “Nothing to see here. Whoever’s in there is probably infected.”
“How are we going to let them in? That truck would flip before it got halfway to the gate trying to get past that many bodies,” Foster said sounding concerned.
“The hell with them!” General Baker said. He spit over the edge of the tower’s ledge before pulling away from the railing. The spit slid across the wind on its descent, landing over a small cluster of the undead trying to get in. They didn’t notice when the slime misted them from above. They just pressed on with their moans and howling, wanting to get to what lay beyond the blockade.
“What? You can’t just leave them out
there to die,” Foster argued.
Baker pushed passed the Lieutenant toward the stairs. As he started to descend the first set of steps, he shouted out one last order before disappearing below, “If they try anything stupid, gun them down!”
Foster stood atop the guard tower, watching as the General drove away without him, most likely headed back to the peace and quiet of his tranquil little office.
“Fuck dude, I would take a bullet, sure as shit, before I risked getting eaten the fuck alive,” one of the guards said leaning against the .50 caliber machinegun.
Suddenly, one of the other guards with a thick dark mustache pointed out past the mob at the truck. “Look, they’re moving!”
*
“We’re going to die right here, right now…” Victor said in a low voice. His bottom lip began to quiver, and a tear formed in his left eye and slowly trailed down his cheek. Abruptly, he shouted, “No!”
With the Chevy in reverse, Victor stepped on the gas taking off down the street. Kieta had been sitting up when he took off, sending her off-balance and almost tumbling out the bed onto the street.
“What are you doing, Victor?” Ashley asked.
“What else is there to do, woman? We don’t have much gas left as it is, and there is nowhere else to go. You said so yourself, that we’ve been quarantined. We’re out of options, and I’m getting us onto that base!”
Victor instantly hit the brakes causing the truck to shake violently.
Kieta screamed, banging on the sliding glass window, and trying to keep her balance. Next to her, Jenny, was still just as out of it as ever. She wasn’t sure that the little girl was ever going to come back. With that stupid grin, the girl just stared off at the road behind them, dead to the world around her.
Without giving an answer, and ignoring both Kieta and his passenger, Victor slammed his foot on the gas to the floorboard. The vehicle quickly picked up speed heading straight for the massive crowd of dead walkers and the gate’s entrance.
The End Page 23
