We work through the following day and darkness falls. And we wait. Then we see it. Unbelievable. All the clans have organized against us and it looks to be all five of them. I see Rucker and Harris in front with the other 3 leaders. Donny lied, there was no mainland battle that killed those crews. The five were in the front of well over 1000 soldiers. Our counts were low. They planned this! Donny just came to check things out. Then all at once, they let out a scream and head towards the building. They are coming in a large wave. We fire at the bombs on the road and take out quite a few, but it isn’t enough. We fire on them, continuously, and kill many.
Then Chris unloads several hundred gallons of gasoline onto the street. A little surprise for our guests. It flows like a river and when we hit it with Molotov cocktails a large part of the crowd is engulfed in flame. They stagger around and eventually burn to death, but there are so many. 500 would be one thing, but this many, no way can we hold them back.
And then it happens. It starts as a whining sound. Then we see large explosions in the distance. Then we see the planes. The Healthies armies have come. Firing on the angry clans that were attacking us. What is going on? I hear laughter behind me. I turn and see Smith laughing at me.
“He’s back. Ha ha ha ha ha!” He is by the door to the stairs.
“Who?” I say, but as the words leave my mouth I know.
“Maslow you fool! Allen and Brown weren’t killed by Maslow’s men. I killed them. Maslow approached me the night we were out vaccinating. Calmly told me he would like to make me a hero. He asked me about you, Het. Said he found your dead body. But we know that wasn’t you, and when he told me what he was going to give me I told him you were alive. I told him everything. Then I lured Brown and Allen to the docks so he could kill them. Unfortunately I took some bullets too, so I passed out in the lab when I got back. That cost Stout his life. And also alerted Maslow to the need to get out of Manhattan. He called for pick up and escaped away with the Eraser antiviral. It was as good a time as any. Said he would be back in the winter with the Army and he didn’t lie. I am off to the docks for pickup. I will be a hero he said.”
And with that Smith hit the steps. We watch outside as every moving thing is shot up. The ones that survive are hit with Eraser and begin attacking each other. It isn’t long before silence hit the streets. Then I smell them. Dogs. They’re on the streets, attacking anyone that moves. And in no time they’re in the building biting all of my people, infecting them with Eraser.
Then Frenzy.
We all tear into each other along with the dogs. In an instant I swear I see Bob out of the corner of my eye when, completely out of control, Chris stabs a screwdriver into my back and bites deep into my neck. She is blind and enraged with Frenzy and she obviously doesn’t know it is me. I instinctively throw her off and she hits the corner of the wall; I hear her back snap. Two others and a dog are on me in an instant. I fight for what seems like hours until everyone is gone, the dogs too.
I am alone, again, that quickly. Everyone is dead. I don’t know what to do, so I head for the docks. I want to kill Smith before he gets picked up. I run as fast as I can, dogs chasing me and stragglers trying to attack. I see Smith at the dock. A helicopter is landing to pick him up. It’s Maslow! I make it to the helicopter. Two of his men aim to shoot.
“No! Leave this one alone!” Maslow tells them.
“He lives, well sort of. Looks as if we both faked our individual demises. Your idea was good, what can I tell you? Madden, I wouldn’t be where I am now without you. And I will not be responsible for your death. I still need you. We all do. Goodbye Mr. Madden.” And then he flew off with Smith in the helicopter.
Everything is gone. I have no one and nothing. I wander the streets looking for infected survivors. There are none. I gorge myself on the Healthies that remain in and around the destroyed Meat Market. But I can’t stay here on Manhattan. I have a job to do. I find a rowboat and head to the mainland.
It is an incredibly clear night, full moon lighting up the water. This helps me see and maneuver around any mines I come upon. This small boat would only hit those that are near the surface. It is silent except for a screeching sound in the distance. I can’t tell if it is getting closer or not. It almost sounds like the brakes on my old Plymouth Duster. I think back to a time when keeping that car running was my biggest concern. Driving on a cool fall day with the windows down and the stereo playing as loud as I could turn it. I am in the moment. I look over and see my college girl. Wind blowing thru her hair while Don Henley sings “The Boys of Summer”; made me realize, even then, that those were days to soak up and enjoy because the sky was already getting dark, and tomorrow, and all that comes with it, was only a heartbeat away.
I keep paddling and the noise is getting louder. Then it suddenly gets darker. I look up and can’t see the moon. A large cloud is covering it, a fast moving white cloud. As the sound gets closer I see that it isn’t a normal cloud.
It’s birds! Seagulls! Hundreds, thousands of them! They cover both sides of the water and I hear gunshots from the city side and screams. Then they are on me. And they are obviously infected. Their feathers are bloodied and unclean and they are not graceful at all in flight. They tear at me as I hunker down in the boat. They are picking me apart and the shrieks are deafening. The only thing I can do is jump in the water. I sink to the bottom and find that I was right about walking down here. It isn’t too difficult for me, but the others wouldn’t have had a chance. I can’t see like in the Norfolk Tunnel and locomotion is tiring in this water, but not impossible.
I can still hear the birds above me as I walk in the direction I think the city is. I am able to get to the surface at certain intervals to check where I am. On about the fifth time I surface, the birds are gone. At least the mobile ones are. Something killed a lot of them. Many are burned, some shot, others have become victims of their own kind. I make it to the dock and pull myself up a rope with ease.
I feel no reversing of The Vaccine yet. As a matter of fact, I feel stronger and smarter than ever. But I am completely alone and my future is unsure. My back is to the ocean and the only thing I can think of is to head north. I think back on all I have been through up to now and feel nothing. Nothing but anger and hate. I realize that I have to find Maslow, and kill him. He has taken away everything I had, everyone I had, and I have to make him pay. He has done horrible things to my people, over and over again, and I can only imagine what he is doing to them in the North. Does he have another Stout? How many are being tortured? What experiments is he doing on us? As long as he lives I will never be at peace, I will never truly rest.
I hear engines and voices in the distance. And I smell Healthies. I’d better get going...
14
Behind Enemy Lines
...because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.
Nothing exists in itself.
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick
The city is dark, cold, and rainy. Gunfire and explosions are everywhere. I have to keep moving, keep warm, or my joints start to stiffen. I hate the cold, we all do. I don’t feel it so much as cold, I feel it as stiffness and difficulty moving if I stay still too long. I also have to get some more clothing. The Wrath virus generates heat inside me. Not as much as a Healthy, but enough to make extra clothes worthwhile to hold in the warmth.
As I walk the streets I try to think about the task at hand, but for some reason all thoughts go back to my son Michael and I wonder.... It seems so long since I lost him. He would be nearly 19 now. I can barely remember the times we laughed and played ball, and even what he looked like. We would ride bikes all day and then sit and talk about our dreams, both of us. I think he is the only person that ever really understood me.
My dream is interrupted by the sound of an engine. It is dark but I make out the form of a soldier being dropped off from the Hummer on the street ahead. I move tow
ard him. His back is to me and I creep up slowly behind him. The rain drowns out any sound I might make. I hear him talking into his radio.
“No Deads left in sector 5. We got them all and what we didn’t get, they got themselves. The bug coated ammo seems to be working. If it gets anywhere on them they just tear into each other. The ones who didn’t, we just burned.”
At that moment I feel a rage that is so comfortable I feel like I am in a warm cocoon. They are using the Eraser antiviral, my Eraser antiviral, to kill us. I grab the young soldier from behind by the throat, tilt his head, and take a bite out of his neck. He struggles to pull away, but all he can do is scream. As he reaches for his gun, I am on him. Seems like old times. I’m back, and it feels good. I tear out his liver and heart and eat them, and then take his clothes and put them on. I now have a pistol, rifle, knife, and most important--radio. I listen as I walk. The clothes are warm and I suspect, from a distance, I will be discerned as a soldier for the Northern Alliance.
Perfect.
From the chatter on the radio it seems as if New York City is the farthese south the Alliance has gotten, and as far north as I can go, for now. It is odd, however, that the Healthies speak so freely on the radio. I guess they don’t expect the infected to be listening or understanding. But if Maslow had gotten to them, he would have told them of the existence of intelligent infected. He must have gotten to them... they have the Eraser antiviral. But why don’t they know of infected like me?
I start to put things together.
Maslow’s Eraser plot to exterminate us could not have worked to plan. The dogs seem to have partly done their job, but maybe there weren’t nearly enough and they didn’t seek out and attack as diligently as Maslow had planned. Or the Eraser did more to the dogs than anyone wants to say. In addition, apathy in the Healthies world is rampant. The soldiers complain constantly over the airwaves that survivors are of no help, some even distrusting soldiers and firing on them. Word is that the Army isn’t trusted because of some of the locals talk about Army deserters who continually came over from Manhattan and kidnapped people. I bet they are talking about Donny Minutes and the others.
Suddenly I hear footsteps. Lots of them. About 20 soldiers are walking down the street to my left.
“Let’s go!” One shouts, and I join in.
They don’t notice I am infected. I have a lot of energy now, and that combined with the fact that so many of them are injured and kind of slow makes it easy for me to keep up. This is good because I could in no way keep up with an uninjured Healthy in full sprint. I am not that fast. Radio says we are heading in to attack a stronghold of Deads. That’s what the soldier I killed called us. Deads. I kinda like it. I decide to follow along and assess the situation.
We walk for a very long time. I feel my joints weakening. I need to feed again soon, or at least stop running, so Wrath can build some of the tissue back up. We finally get to a building, a large apartment. This is supposed to be where hundreds of infected are. I can tell by looking at it that there are at least a hundred here. I can feel it.
We enter the building and these are very slow infected; and they are not in a Frenzy, but there is evidence they had been. Must have been here a while. The soldiers just shoot them in the head as we walk by. That’s when I start to hang back. I grab the last in line, bite his throat, and leave him to bleed out. I don’t eat him, even though I need food. I want him to turn and become one of us. Simple, really. Assimilate the enemy. I continue this until there are only 10 of them left.
We are deep inside the building now and with 10 less men, the soldiers haven’t been killing as many as they think. There are many infected that weren’t killed following me now, including a few of the turned soldiers. We come to the end of a long hall.
“About face!” The lead man shouts. “We’re out of here. Hit as many as you can with bugged ammo on the way out.”
I am standing in their way to leave, with about 50 infected behind me. They can tell I am one of them. They are interested in the Healthies. I take off my helmet, throw it down, and scream so loud they cover their ears. We are on them in a second. Their cries make some of us laugh nervously as we eat. None of these Deads are intelligent enough to do anything but follow and imitate. It takes a while, but I manage to get them into some of the eaten soldiers’ uniforms, 20 of them anyway, and I continue to listen to the radio. From what I gather, makeshift Centers of Operations seem to be just outside the city. Easy to set up and defend I guess... Probably mobile. We will wait here and see if any more troops come. At dark we will move. We must get to the Healthies base of Operations, gathering more help along the way.
In a few minutes a front-line battle comes to our building. Soldiers are chasing down retreating infected. While a shot to the head is needed to kill us, bullets and shrapnel to connective tissue and loss of limbs can turn us into living, but useless, fighters. The sight of a live head lying on the ground snapping at soldiers as they run by is not at all uncommon.
Some of the others can use weapons, but nothing like me or my comrades from Manhattan could. Even though we outnumber the soldiers 10 to 1, this will be a massacre unless I can find a way to turn the tide. I am less interested in taking over the Army and saving everyone, and more interested in finding Maslow. I am obsessed with finding him. It’s all I think about. He must pay with his life. He could be close because that was not a very large helicopter he got into.
Even still, I get on the roof of the building and start picking off soldiers. There is so much noise and fighting that they don’t notice a sniper on a roof. I hit them, one by one. Most aren’t kills, but they are injured enough to allow infected to take them. I try and put one bullet into every soldier I see. I have the ammo, the building is full of it. Must have been stockpiled by someone. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. When they weaken and start to limp, one of us is on them in a few seconds. Instinct drives us towards the weakest of the group so my boys attack the injured first. Initially I thought all the soldiers would be vaccinated with Eraser and be immune to infection. They are turning when bitten and not killed. No Eraser induced Frenzy is occurring. I guess Eraser was not the preventative vaccine Stout hoped it would be. Maybe the dogs became infected and that’s why his plan failed. Most of my men are full from before, so they’re attacking more than eating. We are building an army, we can eat more later.
After a while I see that the plan is working. Soldiers are starting to turn and move against their own troops. A bite from one of us changes them faster now. They don’t seem to do much contemplating on their new favorite food, they simply attack and eat, not having eaten like the rest. But this is good, too. We do want some of them dead.
Night falls and we rest. I really have trouble getting through to this group. They don’t understand what I am saying most of the time. I will try and slow down and keep it simple. Maybe I am going too fast. I need to remember what it was like to teach others back when this started.
I begin to communicate more in simple words, grunts and motions. Almost like training a dog. I try to think like they do. I start to get a little further. They respond to me as an alpha so I have no trouble getting them to follow me.
We head out of the city into the outlying suburbs. I look for lights and have no trouble finding them. It must be the base, but it is lit up like a Christmas tree. This means one of two things. Either they don’t think infected will come out this far and don’t care about giving up their position, or they want us to be attracted to the light and have traps or mines set.
Like moths, we head toward the light, the dumbest of our swarm up front to clear mine fields and trip traps that indeed are there. The lights looked a lot closer than they were. After about two hours of walking behind exploding mines we get to within 100 yards of the place. I have no trouble sending in the dumbest of our bunch to be cannon fodder. I have a mission. Kill Maslow. At any cost.
The whole time we walk, mines are not only exploded by us, but are going off all around th
e complex. The soldiers in the complex are probably used to infected tripping the mines because I see no visible defensive posturing. We slowly approach and I realize the whole thing is a facade. Is it a lure to get us to trip mines, or desperate Healthies barely getting by? Empty buildings and rusted vehicles are everywhere. The only things running are the lights. But how are they being powered? At the back of a structure I notice a single thick electric cord trails off into the night. Could it be that easy? We start following the cord.
We see nothing far in front of us, it is too dark and smoky. We then get to a locked hatch in the ground. The cord goes in. I know they are down there. I cut through the line and hope they send someone up to fix it. The lights in this fake complex go out and the only light left for the infected to follow are the ones we use. We shine them up and around the smoke-filled air and some start to walk towards us. The hatch is thick and metal, but I can’t help but think that they light up that distraction out there to keep us busy. When we are out there, we don’t look for or stumble upon locked hatches.
Het Madden, a Zombie Perspective: Book One: WRATH 2012 Page 13
