War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale)

by Meredith, Peter

  Foster stared all around, realizing that the deputy was right, the numbers weren't adding up. With so many shots taken, there should have been a couple of dozen bodies. Something caught his eye. There had been so much blood that he hadn't noticed it before. "Drag marks," he said indicating the floor where black streaks ran through the red. The color didn't make sense, but he had seen the telltale marks of a body having been dragged away enough times to know what they were.

  They followed them out into the admin area to the nearest cubicle, fully expecting to see a pile of corpses, instead, there were just two, again grasping, half-dead creatures that made their stomachs churn.

  "It looks like they just walked off," someone said. "How? How do you get shot up and then walk away like it was nothing?"

  "And where did they walk off to?" another asked, quietly. The men were more like frightened boys. They clumped together, facing outward ready to shoot the nearest shadow if it looked menacing enough.

  "We should've waited for the CDC," a deputy said. "We should've sat tight like the rule say. We..."

  "Shut your fucking lip!" Foster snapped. "We still have a man in this building, not to mention there are civilians trapped upstairs. Now, let's do our fucking jobs."

  There was an embarrassed silence broken when one of the deputies said, "Sir? There's more of them."

  Attracted by Sergeant Foster's yelling, three zombies had come snooping around. One was Lacy Freeman, the pistol she had taken from Rory Vickers was long forgotten. Her meds had run out and now all she knew was hate and hunger.

  The three saw the strange plastic covered figures and grew confused, not being able to juxtapose the sound of human voices with what their blurred vision showed. They advanced slowly until Foster said, "Take them, two per individual. Concentrate on pinning them first and cuffing them second. I don't want anyone bitten."

  The officers knew what to expect this time and the take down went smoothly. The three were trussed up with only a little bit of fuss and then the seven officers stood around looking down at them. One of his troopers said, "My visor keeps getting fogged up. Is that normal?"

  "Mine too," someone agreed.

  "I think you should be worried if it wasn't," Foster told them. "It just means our suits are air tight. That's a good thing." He wanted to reassure them and himself. He had begun to sweat and, like the others, every breath sent a fog across his vision. "Maybe we should just take a moment to relax before we head up. Smoke 'em if you got 'em."

  There was only one trooper with a nicotine addiction. "I would if I could," Trooper Bower said. "You think I can take a drag through these filters?"

  "I think you could..." Foster stopped in midsentence. From the lobby, another dozen or so zombies walked into the cubicled admin area. Sudden fear gripped him and instinctively he dropped into a crouch. The others took one look and hunkered down as well.

  "What do we do?" one of the Middleton men asked, his quivering voice at odds with his size.

  "We, we...hold on, let me think," Foster said. His greatest fear was of the germs, of turning into one of them, however he was also extremely afraid of making a mistake. It was the age of blame and lawsuits, where every action was scrutinized later so that a sacrificial lamb could be produced whenever something really big happened. This is what had him nervous, not for a second did Foster consider the possibility of being eaten alive.

  He peeked over the metaled edge of the cubicle and studied the people for a few seconds. "They're like the others. Whatever happened to them has messed up their minds, which means they'll come in stupid. I saw a printing room while we were coming in. I say we use it to funnel them in at us one at a time. We zip tie them and clear the floor that way."

  Awkwardly in their plastic hoods, they all agreed to the plan. Foster led the way. It was all of forty yards to the printing room but they stopped after only making half that distance. There were a lot more zombies than they had realized. The first floor was teeming with them.

  "Go back!" Foster said, urgently.

  It was already too late. There were black-eyed creatures in front and behind. And worse, they'd been spotted. One of the zombies in a hospital gown let out a hiss and charged. This brought on a full stampede of the infected.

  "Run!" someone yelled. Two of the officers took off in different directions. Another officer, with a zombie bearing down on him, fired his weapon twice in quick succession, dropping it at his feet.

  "Stop," cried Foster to the fleeing troopers. One kept going, racing at top speed to who knew where. The other's mask fogged over at the wrong moment. He tripped over a chair that had been sticking out of a cubicle and went down hard. Three zombies attacked him, throwing themselves on him with their jaws gaping.

  Coming to a split second decision, Foster yelled, "Quick! Follow me." He ran to the downed man and at first tried to do the humane thing: he kicked a horrible black-eyed woman full in the face with his boot. Teeth and blood flew; still she clawed and bit at the prone trooper. Next he used his gun and shot her in the spine. Her legs went jelly, but her hands continued to tear at the plastic and her mouth reached his abdomen where she began to rend threw the plastic and into his flesh.

  Foster grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and hauled her back. One of the troopers fired into her chest twice at point blank range and she slumped.

  Meanwhile gunshots were going off all over the place. The downed trooper was firing up at his other two attackers without regard to anything but saving his own ass. Bullets passed through them and around them, and a couple came within an inch of hitting Foster. He didn't notice. He had his own zombies to worry about. Six were charging in a line in front of him and he completely forgot his fear of getting in trouble. He began firing as quickly as his finger could pull the trigger.

  The other officers were emptying their weapons into the advancing horde with very little effect. If one fell after absorbing the impact of five or six rounds, another took its place. For the span of a half a minute, the two groups fought to a draw and then the Middleton deputies were forced to reload as their guns ran dry. Reloading with gloved hands and fogged over masks, was impossible in the second or two they had to work with.

  First, one was bowled over then the other two were gang rushed a moment later. They were swarmed under a pile of zombies. Foster and the other trooper tried to help. They shot into the mass until their guns emptied as well. Foster fumbled for a full magazine, dropping it. He didn't try to grab it from the ground. It was too late for the deputies and maybe even too late for him and the remaining troopers. There were just too many zombies, too close, coming from every angle.

  "Run!" he yelled, grabbing the one standing trooper and pulling him along. Foster dodged between two zombies and ran along a corridor of cubicles until his path was caught off by three more of the walking horrors. He dodged to the right, jumped up onto a desk and then leapt a cubicle wall. He didn't quite make it and the wall came crashing down. He landed on the desk in the next cubicle and was up and running before he could draw a breath.

  He ran low, keeping below the walls of the cubicles. At one of the little corridors, he paused to check behind him for the trooper whom he'd grabbed. The man was nowhere to be seen. There were gunshots from three directions and zombies everywhere--Foster's courage failed him and for once in his career he ran from the sounds of the guns. He ran for the lobby where he stopped in dread. There were dozens of the creatures between him and the exit.

  His breath began to race clouding his mask completely. "Oh fuck," he whined, digging for a new magazine from the holder at his belt. One slid from his grip and clinked on the linoleum, the next felt turned around and wrong. It wouldn't seem to fit into his gun. With the fog obscuring his vision he was blind and afraid and all around him the growls of the creatures grew louder as they closed in.

  Finally, he couldn't take the terror that was building in him, and he ripped off the hood and mask so he could see his death approaching. It was very close. The zombies were j
ust feet away. The gun went ignored. Now that he could see, Foster sprinted away faster than he thought possible, leaving the beasts and the last of his troopers far behind.

  He dodged in and among the zombies and when he came up to the lobby doors, he pulled them closed behind him and then backed away from the glass still trying to get the damned clip into his pistol. The zombies rushed up to the windows and stopped--the smell of sweet meat had suddenly diminished and the man they'd been chasing had, at least in their eyes, disappeared. All they could see was themselves reflected in the glass.

  Gulping in the cool, wet air, Foster realized he was safe, he had lived! A twisted smile trembled his lips for all of a moment before he remembered his troopers. There was no sign of them save for a lone scream that barely reached his ears. It was an awful, painful sound that went right to his soul, twisting it into a gnarly, foul knot that made his chest ache. His hands shook as he tried to load the magazine into his pistol. Finally, it clicked into place and then he thought: Now what?

  Loaded gun or nor, he knew there was no way he was going back in. But it hardly mattered, the scream ended in a high screech. "No," Foster said, stepping forward. He couldn't bring himself to go further. In fact, the accusing silence had him backing away again until his foot stumbled on the curb and he plopped onto his ass with a grunt.

  The fall jarred him into a version of reality. The gun he holstered and then as quick as he could he pulled the plastic hood and mask back over his face. "I'm ok," he said, making sure everything was back in place. "I'm fine." He took a deep breath as if to prove the point.

  Having convinced himself that he hadn't been near enough to any of the infected people to get their disease, he began to worry on his second greatest fear: he had royally screwed up. Six dead officers meant he'd screwed up worse than anything he could've imagined.

  "But I was just following orders," he whispered. "This was Pemberton's fault." Excuses began to click through his mind: He'd been ordered into the building-not his fault; he'd been ambushed, again, not his fault; the masks were faulty and kept fogging up, that was the fire department's fault; the Middleton boys were equipped with crappy little six-shooters that was Middleton's fault.

  In the middle of this a voice spoke right in his ear: "What the hell happened in there?" Foster actually screamed. It was trooper Paul, the man he had left behind to watch over the CDC zombie. "It sounded like a frigging war in there," Paul went on.

  "We...w-we were ambushed," Foster jabbered. "We...we...they were everywhere. They eat people!"

  Paul stepped back trying to size up his sergeant through the little plastic window in his suit. Foster's eyes were huge and unblinking, he was pale as fish-belly and was dripping sweat down the inside of his suit. In a word, he looked crazy. Gently Paul asked, "Who wants to eat people?"

  The sergeant's eyes went to slits at the question, realizing he wouldn't be believed, not yet at least. "The infected people. They're cannibals. They...they can't be stopped. You'll see. When they get out, you'll see." The idea of them getting out was deeply unsettling; there were just so many of them. Forgetting Paul, Foster started to head back to his cruiser, which doubled as his command post. He looked back over his shoulder every few steps, afraid the zombies had gotten out and were after him, again.

  Paul stood for a moment, confused and worried. He then jogged to catch up. "But what about everyone else? Where are the others?" he asked.

  Foster stopped short. He was the only one left alive...how was he possibly going to explain that? He'd been the leader. Leaders weren't supposed to be the first one out the door, they were supposed to be the last. Who would understand he'd had to run because he'd been without any other option? Who could possibly understand the truth about what really happened?

  They'd have to see it for themselves. "They're dead...sort of." The strange answer and the queer look on Foster's face had Paul thinking it was best not to ask any more questions.

  Foster knew he sounded crazy--he felt crazy. "You'll see and then you won't look at me like you are with your judging eyes. You'll see."

  4

  "Anna!" Thuy whispered as loudly as she dared. As logical as she was, after the terrors she'd faced that day, the dark elevator shaft seemed as though it could hold endless evil. "Anna, if you can hear me say something or tap the wall. Anna?"

  The dark was mute and deep. So deep that Thuy felt she could scream into it at the top of her lungs and her voice wouldn't carry to its furthest depths. She was on her stomach staring down, straining her ears to hear the slightest sound; there was nothing, not even an echo.

  "She must've fallen," Deckard said. He was standing over Thuy, noting that her long, black hair so matched the darkness of the elevator shaft that she looked to be melding with the shadows. It was strangely enticing.

  "She must've fallen?" Thuy snapped. "Is that right? You sure she didn't grow wings and fly away?"

  So much for enticing. Deckard's eye went hard. "Ok, you trapped her, left her hanging in the dark, and then she must've fallen. Better?"

  It wasn't, since it was true. She was guilty of killing Anna. That was the truth. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap. I just...this is my fault. She's dead because of me."

  "And we're alive because of you," Deckard said. "You made a choice, a good one if you ask me."

  "It doesn't feel good." Thuy stood up, the toes of her shoes hanging off the edge. "I need to get a lantern or a torch. I can take some of the wiring from the..." she stopped at Deckard's sharp look. "We have to do something, Deck. We can't just leave her down there. What if she's hurt? She could be down there with a serious brain injury."

  "And what if she is? I could climb down there, but what then? I'm not a brain surgeon. Dr. Wilson is the closest thing but I don't know if he could make the climb and even if he could, he doesn't have any supplies. If you ask me, if she's knocked out, we might consider her lucky. She's missing out on all of this."

  Thuy didn't want to be so easily dissuaded, it made the guilt clogging her chest swell. "Ok, so we don't go down, at least not yet, but I can still fashion a light that we can lower..."

  Below them Foster and his State Troopers had just discovered that they were surrounded. The sound of their gunfire rippled through the building and everyone stopped what they were doing to listen. This wasn't like when Heines and Brown had fired their weapons earlier. From the fourth floor it sounded like there was a platoon of soldiers blasting everything in sight. It lasted barely a minute and then there was silence.

  "Was that the police or the army?" Thuy asked.

  "The police," Deckard said, checking his watch. "It's about time, too. Wait here, I need to make sure Milner isn't getting happy feet over this and breaking quarantine."

  Thuy didn't wait; if the police were here it meant the CDC had finally arrived and there were plenty of things to do before they showed up. She went to the first of the BSL-3 labs where everyone had gathered after the fight on the stairs. "I need someone to get in touch with the police again," she said as she strode through the glass door.

  Dr. Riggs jumped up." Did you hear all the shooting? That means we're being rescued, right?" All of the other scientists looked at her expectantly, their excitement plain on their faces.

  "It seems to be a safe assumption," Thuy answered. "But that doesn't mean we can rush out of here just yet. There are protocols that must be followed. Like I said, I need someone to call the police. I don't want them barging up here if they've come in contact with any of the infected people. Also we should ask for hazmat suits for each of us before we exit this floor. Riggs, put Milner up to it. It’ll give him something to do. The rest of you need to gather up all the information we have on the Com-cells: any printouts, notes, blood samples, what have you. The CDC will want to see all of it."

  The scientists rushed to the shambles that had been their workstations and began to make piles out of the mess, most of them were grinning at the prospect of rescue.

  Before she left to arrange her own n
otes, she went to see Chuck, John and Stephanie. They were tired and pale, less excited than the others. Their being rescued only meant their deaths had been put off for another month or two.

  Thuy dropped down onto her knees in front of where they sat. "I need some help with something. Anna fell while we were busy fending off the zom..." She caught herself just in time; unfortunately the word zombie seemed to fit so well. "I mean while we were fending off the infected persons. There are no sounds coming from the elevator shaft, but I want to make sure Anna isn't down there hurt and all alone."

  "Y'all want us to climb down that bitch?" John asked.

  "No. If you don't mind, could you sit by the shaft and listen for her? She's down there because of me."

  Chuck snorted. "That's not the way I reckon the score. She's down there on account of what she did. She made her bed and I figure she's lyin' in it now."

  "I'll stay with her," Stephanie said. "I made you leave her there. It's my fault, too."

  Chuck went along with Stephanie because of the feelings he had for her and John went along with Chuck because he was uncomfortable around the egghead scientists. The three sat about, talking death.

  "Mayhap gettin' bit by one a them zombies ain't the worst thing in the world," Burke said. "Y'all seen them burnt up ones same as me. They cain't die is all I'm saying. That's sumptin."

  Stephanie couldn't get with the idea of becoming one of them, however Chuck agreed with John. "Supposably, they can be sedated, you know get put into a coma. That wouldn't be so bad. You just lie there until they find a cure and then..." he snapped his fingers, "you wake up good as new."

  "And if they can't find a cure?" Stephanie asked.

  "Then you'll never know," Chuck answered. "I'm not sayin’ I'm going to let myself get bit. I'm just sayin’ it's an option for when we're out of here. In the last couple of weeks, I've been enjoyin’ life more than ever and I kinda want to keep it going if I can."

  5