2
Within the poorly lit set of holding cells, Gibbs and the others waited, quietly lost in their thoughts and hopes. It had been quite some time since the obnoxious group of soldiers had barged in, leaving the ragtag collection of civilians to their boundaries and bars.
Kent sat at the edge of the cell’s bed toying with the broken glasses. Utterly beyond repair, he twisted and bent them in an attempt to fix the unfixable.
Eric wasn’t doing so well. Seated on the cement floor, Eric was short of breath and felt as if he might be on the verge of passing out. He eased his head to the floor and laid down. The cold floor felt good against his otherwise burning skin.
Cynthia sat on the bed with her feet up and her knees to her chest.
With her face buried in her knees and her arms tightly wrapped around her legs, Gibbs was unsure if the red-headed lady was asleep or not. How anyone could fall asleep in that position was beyond her. Gibbs quietly paced back and forth in the little space still barefoot. Her shoes and jacket still lay neatly placed on the edge of the bed next to her cellmate.
Eric’s condition was getting worse. The fungus growth had accelerated around his hand. Ghostly white skin crept from underneath the bandaged. Red specks had started to form around the wound.
Parasitoid spores, thought Gibbs.
Dark circles formed around his eyes, and he had complained of lightheadedness in the last hour. All she could do was sit back and watch.
From the look of things, everyone else in the makeshift warehouse was oblivious to the young man’s rapidly growing condition.
She huffed a deep sigh, cutting a sharp turn making her way across the cell for the hundredth time. Biting hard on her thumbnail, the cell walls felt like they were closing in on her.
Billy was still dead asleep. George was on his feet. Holding onto the metal bars, George gazed off across the room at the building’s entrance. His mind wandered between here and the what if of possibilities. Why had they been put in here in the first place? He had hoped to speak with the General by now, and his mind played out almost any and every possible scenario that could have happened. His mind was currently busy playing out one of those scenarios. Some of them ended with him and a group of soldiers searching the coastline for his boy. Others ended with his son bursting into the General’s office and rushing in. The sweet embrace would cut the two men’s conversation off in mid-sentence. The scenario he was currently fixed on, however, wasn’t quite as hopeful. It was just him and his son standing in a room. Tyler was dead, but not. The decay-ridden teen shambled eagerly toward George, with his arms outstretched. This sweet embrace, however, would not be so sweet. The young man loomed over George as he crept closer, with eyes wide and teeth showing. It was terrifying, terrifying to have finally found his boy and know that it was too late. He had turned into one of those dreadful monsters. George just stood there defenseless and weak. He felt too weak and too ashamed to move. How could he have let this happen to his only child? He wept with both hands covering his face. He could look on his dead son no more. And if it hadn’t been for—
“What’s wrong, dude? Eric… Eric… Wake up.” Kent positioned himself over Eric shoving the unconscious cellmate on the shoulder.
George instantly snapped out of his fantasy nightmare and turned to see what the commotion was about. In the cell next to him, Kent was hovering over Eric who lay passed out on the floor. Cynthia and Dr. Gibbs both stood holding onto bars looking in.
“He’s not breathing,” Kent said. “What the hell do I do?” Leaned over with one knee to the ground, he pressed his fingers to the base of Eric’s neck. “I don’t know if I’m doing this right! Shit, what’s wrong with him?”
“He’s turning,” Gibbs said, sounding unsurprised.
“What? What the hell do you mean he’s turning? I think he’s dead, for Christ’s sake!”
“You need to destroy the brain before he wakes up and attacks you, Kent. You have to destroy the brain,” Gibbs said.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? He isn’t one of them. I’m not just going to kill him,” Kent said, his eyebrows arched toward his hairline.
“What happened?” George said.
“I don’t know. I just looked over and he wasn’t breathing. I think he’s dead, man,” Kent said.
“Well, do something,” Cynthia said with desperation in her voice.
“Oh, and what am I supposed to do? I’m stuck in a holding cell for crying out loud!” Kent said.
Billy was awake now.
The ruckus stirred him from a deep sleep of candied dreams and cotton clouds. Startled from his peaceful slumber into the consistently recurring nightmare, Billy was still dazed as he sat up. His eyes tried focusing but had trouble. Between the racket and eye crust, Billy sat at the edge of his bed trying to figure out what was happening. As his eyes focused, he could see that everyone else was occupied with whatever was happening in the middle cell of the room. Billy looked over tilting his head to see around George and could see that Kent looked like he was helping Eric to his feet. He must have fallen over.
“Kent, look out!” George shouted.
Eric opened his eyes and sprung from the sitting position. His skin was pale and dry, his eyes glossed over and milky-white. His jaw dropped opened as if he were about to take a bite of air.
“Oh, shit,” Kent said as he fell back on his bottom, landing atop his already broken glasses. His head smashed into the bars behind him. A little dazed, but not disoriented, Kent shot to his feet.
Eric slowly rose from the bed. Death had taken him. Something else had taken over his body and was now in control.
Eric was no longer Eric.
With both hands raised toward Kent as it ambled toward him, Kent leaped forward, shoving the zombie away from him with the heel of his shoe. The reanimated corpse fell backward, crashing into the toilet. It awkwardly flapped its limbs as it tried pulling itself up. Kent spastically looked around for a weapon, anything he could use to defend himself. There was nothing. The makeshift warehouse of cells was bare and empty. Frantically, trying to come up with a plan while blocking out the chaotic cries of the people around him, Kent watched Eric stagger to his feet again.
Kent’s mind instantly flashed to the underground shelter and the legs that Eric had broken off the bed to use as a weapon. The zombie, with renewed balance, stepped forward. Kent caught eye contact with Cynthia and knew right away what needed to happen.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Kent said as he struggled, pushing Eric’s reanimated body away again. “You and the science chick get ready. I’m going to push him with his back against the cell wall. You two reach out and grab his arms and hold him there.” Kent pushed the undead creature again. It staggered backward a few steps, but relentlessly pressed toward Kent.
“Yeah, but what are you—?”
Before Gibbs could spit it out, Kent grabbed the corpse by the shoulders, spun it to one side, and sent it crashing with its back against the metal bars. The two ladies reached out between the metal bars, grabbing hold of the dead teen’s cold flesh. Cynthia had gotten a solid grip on Eric’s upper arm by wedging her shoulder against the bars and throwing her arm out and around the zombie. Her other hand tightly gripped onto a loose portion of Eric’s shirt.
Gibbs had grabbed the cold wrist of the zombie’s arm with both hands. She held it firm and low at the hip. All she could think of was the infected bandages. With her hands only so far from the source of the infection, her hands were clasped around some of the red spots and puffy tissue. She started to panic.
As soon as Kent saw that the two women had a good hold on the attacking corpse, he instantly turned his back to them. Swiftly ripping off the bedding to the cell’s bed frame, Kent hoped it would be just as easy as Eric had made it look back at the underground bunker.
The legs were bolted to the floor.
It was harder than it looked to keep a tight grip on Eric. With the zombie flailing its limbs, Cynthia had adjust
ed her grip twice already. The undead creature jerked violently against the bars trying to free its self. Its grunts and moans intensified. The more it was held against its will, with Kent so close in sight, the more irritated it became. It shook and yanked trying to get free.
The creature’s right hand was suddenly freed and it flipped around, landing its disease-infested teeth into Cynthia’s arm.
Gibbs had lost hold on the zombie’s wrist, falling back onto the bed in her cell. Before she could leap back to her feet, it was too late. She looked up to see it.
Cynthia screamed. Its teeth fell down on her upper arm and went in deep. The pain felt slow and sharp, unbearable.
They watched in horror as Eric fell on her with his mouth wide open. The instant that its open mouth met with her flesh, Cynthia saw blood. Eric’s teeth tore through the skin and meaty chunks of her muscle.
As zombie-Eric pulled away the massive chunk of flesh, Cynthia passed out from shock, falling to the floor inside her cell.
Gibbs sat frozen in place, playing back in her mind what went wrong. She looked down to see the blood spilling out on the floor around the red-headed woman. There was a lot of it and it just kept spreading.
The scream startled Kent from focus. He hadn’t gotten the post free yet. With the legs bolted to the floor, it was a bit more difficult than last time. He jumped and turned around when Cynthia screamed.
Eric stood there before him, as if its undead mind was vacant of thought, blood dripped from its mouth as it chewed. With each bite more and more blood fell. The crimson spill stood out against his pale, cold skin.
“Eric…”
The undead ghoul tilted its neck, catching eye-to-eye contact with Kent. It stopped chewing and snarled. It opened its mouth wide, dropping a large chunk of flesh to the ground. Blood dripped heavily from its mouth, and its gaze went wide as it hissed.
“Oh shi—”
It leaped forward, falling on Kent, sending them both to the floor. Kent crashed onto the bed frame before wrestling the zombie to the ground.
Suddenly, the front door opened and the lights to the warehouse kicked on. The events that had unfolded in the last several minutes instantly became more apparent, no longer hidden in the shadows. There was blood everywhere. Cynthia still lay on the ground with large amounts of blood still flowing from her arm. Kent and his attacker wrestled on the floor. There was no way of telling if Kent had been bitten yet. There was just too much blood. One thing was for sure, he hadn’t screamed out in pain, yet.
“Rob!” Gibbs shouted, pulled from her unconscious daze. She was unsure, at this point, if her mind was playing tricks on her or if he had actually just barged into the room.
Rob Foster had, indeed, just blow through the door and turned on the lights. Upon seeing the situation, he went straight for the desk drawers. “The keys—where are the keys?” Foster shouted, pulling each drawer out and rummaging through them.
Both Gibbs and George scanned the room with faces pressed against their cell bars but offered nothing.
Checking the last drawer and coming up empty handed, Forster was at a loss. The keys were nowhere to be found. He anxiously scanned the floor around the desk and the walls as well. Just like Gibbs and George, he had no clue.
The sounds of scuffling and wrestling had drastically changed to grunts and huffing. Kent lay still on his back. Straddling him at the knees, Eric’s undead corpse hovered over him, feasting. The fight was over, and Kent lay motionless and blood covered. His eyes had frozen open, and terror remained on his face.
With Gibbs and George focused on what was taking place outside the cells, Billy watched in horror as Kent’s dead eyes stared across to him. It was as if Kent was asking Billy to save him. Billy didn’t want to look, but felt compelled, the image of Kent slowly being eaten, burning into the boy’s mind forever.
Billy watched in disgust. The zombie reached down, sticking its hand near Kent’s belly button. With the dead man’s shirt already torn away, Billy watched as the creature’s fingers pressed deeper and deeper into the want-to-be rock star’s stomach. Slowly, the ghoul’s ghastly fingers disappeared knuckle by knuckle. With the thick, wet sounds of ripping flesh and slopping organs, Eric’s white, pale hand was suddenly sprayed with red up to the forearm. It suddenly came away with long, bloody organs. The streams of intestine and innards in Eric’s grip came free as the creature lifted the putrid gunk to its festering mouth. Feasting on the remains of the fallen cellmate, the chomping and gnashing of body parts filled the small warehouse with a wet, horrifying sound.
Foster took a breath and looked around the room. With nothing to lose, he reached his hand under the desktop, below the drawer, and felt around. Metal against metal chimed briefly. His hand came back with keys on a ring.
3
As the chopper steadied on the ground, Gus and Clay stepped down from the platform to the earth. Clay nudged him on the shoulder and pointed.
When Gus looked up in the direction the young man had pointed, he immediately saw the concern. Wind whirled around them as Gus looked out, the three soldiers watched as a small group jogged in their direction from a small warehouse building in the distance.
With the engine off and the blades winding down, Clay was surprised to see Rob Foster in the lead. Dr. Gibbs was close behind. She was covered in blood. With them were two other people that Clay didn’t recognize. An old man carrying a little boy laboring to keep pace with Foster.
“What happened?” Gus asked while readying his M-4 for battle.
“That doesn’t matter right now. We need to leave!” Foster put his arm around Gibbs’ shoulder.
“Can’t right now. We need fuel. We saw a mass of zombies heading to the fuel pumps so I put us down here. There’s a fuel storage drum in the hanger. We can swing by and pick up some juice,” Gus said, slamming a fresh magazine into the rifle and racking the chamber.
Behind him, Clay was ahead of the game, pulling out the three five-gallon empty containers and passing one off to the pilot.
“The General has totally lost it,” Foster said.
“Yeah, we figured that out. You aren’t going to believe what we found out in Jacksonville. The General is—”
“Hey guys,” the pilot said. “If we’re going to get out of here in one piece, we need to move.” He pointed in the direction they had come in. In the distance, past all the landing field’s open space and between several buildings, a number of figures were piling up against a fence. The stagger in their step made it easy to tell that they were anything but friendlies. Their limp, swaying limbs and stiff postures marked them as the undead.
“Oh hell,” Clay said with both hands tight around the containers, wishing he had a free hand for his sidearm. “I wonder how long that’s gonna hold?”
“There’s no way to know. That’s a secondary fence, and it’s not built as strong as the fence around the perimeter,” Watts said. “Let’s move now.”
*
With Billy wrapped tight in George’s arms, all six of them took off running for the hanger to fill the fuel containers for the helicopter. Out in the wide open of the landing field, George began to panic inside like he had never done before. He felt like the escape was going to go terribly wrong, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He had watched Eric die and then turn, killing two other people just like that. What real chance did any of them have with the number of zombies heading their way?
His knees weakened as he thought of Tyler. The distance between him and the others slowly widened. He was running out of hope. What was the point of going on? Billy wasn’t his to take care of. He had failed with Eric, and he had failed with his own son. There was no possible way he could bear the thought of messing things up for Billy. He slowed in mid-stride and looked down at the ground with Billy in his arms.
Gus said, “Come on, old timer. Don’t quit on me now.” He slowed his pace and waved George forward.
George looked deep into the massive man’s eyes and instantly
remembered the radio station, meeting Gus and the hope that he had felt. He looked past Gus. It wasn’t that far to the hanger. Watts was already by the door and about to open it.
*
The hanger was a lot bigger on the inside than it had appeared. With its high arched ceiling and extended frame, the metal-aluminum warehouse held a few helicopters and a number of Humvees.
With the main drop doors closed, the small group had made their way in from one of the side doors.
“The fuel tank’s all the way to the back,” Watts called out.
The fuel tank was set next to a closed rear door, against a wall.
Once there, Watts, the pilot said, “There’s a hand pump we can use. Clay, open that blue valve by the hose and put the nozzle in the first can.”
Clay set his two containers by the fuel nozzle and quickly opened the valve.
Watts grabbed an eighteen-inch lever and pumped it back and forth. Fuel gushed into the container.
With Clay and the pilot on the platform steadily at work, Foster said to Gus, “Like I was saying, the General just lost it. He took Gibbs and the civilians you brought in and locked them away in the old holding cells we used to use back at the storage shed.”
“That don’t surprise me one bit,” said Gus.
“What do you mean?”
“We got sent on the Jacksonville OP to go in and extract that Grech guy, and—”
“Wait, did you actually find Grech?” Gibbs said. She reached out and grabbed Gus’ arm.
Gus continued, “Yeah, we found the old geezer, all right. The guy is definitely a nut-job for sure. Still, I trust him more than anyone else about the situation right now. Anyway, we get there right and you would never guess what we find.”
“If you found him, then where the hell is he?” Gibbs asked.
“You going to let me tell my story or not, lady?” Gus grunted and swelled out his chest. “As I was saying. Sent there to get that science guy, right? We get there and find him. The old freak is hunkered down in lab monitoring the fucking world. Says the fungus crap, or plague thing, is spreading past the quarantine zone already. We sat there with the grease ball and watched some of what he swore up and down to be live footage of Atlanta.”
The End Page 25
