The NEXT Apocalypse (Book 2): AFTER Life: Purgatory

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  “The equipment I need is either not here or not working. I don’t have as much as a working laptop on Level 4. I need more people, too.”

  “Any other good news?” Crenshaw made a show of being pissed.

  Arsenault was one of those guys who look like they wouldn’t be surprised if the room turned upside down. “Have you learned anything we can use from this sightseeing excursion?”

  “The boss is on Level 4. He has to stay there. Best place for him, really. I gave him something to do to keep him occupied. He’s taking tissue samples — ”

  “There’s thousands of zombies outside!” Crenshaw exclaimed. “Why do you need samples from down here in this … this damn tomb? We could be miles away — ”

  I cut in, keeping my voice low and even. “The epidemic started at Echidna. If I compare samples from here and from out there, I might be able to understand the development arc of the nanites, if there is one. I need data and the tools to analyze the nanite colony’s evolution.”

  Crenshaw cursed and paced. In such a small space, the ETF officer looked quite ridiculous. I turned my attention to the CSIS agent. “You should also know, Dill took off his biohazard suit.”

  Arsenault looked perplexed rather than alarmed. “Why would he do that in a quarantine area?”

  “He’s not taking the end of the world so well.”

  “People are going to lose it,” Arsenault said. “He won’t be the last.” The government agent fixed me with a gaze that made me feel like I was the only person in the world. In another context, his attention could be misconstrued as romantic. I knew better. This was a guy who was used to interrogating people. He asked a good question. “What was your boss exposed to on Level 4?”

  “We have to assume everything. He could be Typhoid Mary, for all I know. Hamish Allen wiped out all the records, not just those pertaining to Picasso. I don’t know what they’ve been working with in the clean rooms. They could have more bio-weapons in the works down there. Dr. Allen could have damaged the tanks as part of his sabotage.”

  “Or maybe they’re compromised because of all the mischief in the control room,” Arsenault said. “My tech says he can’t even confirm the temperature of the containment tanks in the vault from here. If he was trying to slow us down and destroy the lab forever, if he had that kind of time — ”

  “I inspected the tanks,” I said. “They looked okay. I’m no expert on those kind of biologicals but the thermometers were in the green.”

  “One killer disease at a time, please!” Crenshaw said.

  “We can’t be sure how deep this cesspool goes,” Arsenault told him. “Like Dr. Robinson, we need more data. Tell me, Chloe, is your boss holding back on us in any way?”

  “I don’t think so, but I don’t get the sense that Thomas has been very hands-on with this division.”

  “Agreed,” Arsenault said. “I checked out Dill’s office after you two went downstairs. No pictures of family, nothing in the garbage can. His real office is elsewhere. The drawers were locked but they were close to empty and there was very little to indicate he did much here on a day-to-day basis. He’s not the guy who works in a bunker’s basement. I’m guessing he’s the kind of guy who prefers a big corner office, high up, with a nice view. ”

  He seemed to have Thomas Dill pegged. Bill Arsenault really was a spook. I’d assumed CSIS was here to help secure the bio-weapon prototype. It occurred to me then that part of his mission was to gather evidence, point the finger and assign blame when the time came.

  Crenshaw gave me a hard look. “Are you sure he took off his suit all on his own? You didn’t do it for him? Maybe to cover something up?”

  Arsenault put a hand on Crenshaw’s chest. “Dale, ease off — ”

  “We can’t take this woman’s word on anything. She works for the company that came up with this shit. Dill says the disease is based on her work — ”

  “Look,” I said. “If you don’t believe me, you can go down to Level 4 and ask him yourself. Don’t forget to wear your snowsuit, bundle up and be sure to wear the mittens with strings so you don’t lose them. I don’t have time for your shit.”

  A tech in a blue biohazard suit leaned into view. “Our visitors are coming down, sir. The hatch from Level 2 is sealed and the chamber is starting its cycle.”

  “ETA?”

  “Coupla minutes.”

  “Thanks, Mark. Keep working on the surveillance camera for Level 1, please. We may need to exit back through there soon.”

  Crenshaw’s anger was still at a high simmer. “Y’think? It’s the only way out, so, yeah, I say we stay the hell down here. Let the reinforcements come to us.”

  “There won’t be any reinforcements,” Arsenault said. “All available forces are either working to keep everybody in the city or helping with evacuation of the uninfected and trying to control the infected.”

  “You don’t know which?” Crenshaw asked.

  “Since the Americans threatened to bomb the city, my intel may be dated and the situation is certainly fluid. I was supposed to coordinate with Ken Rigg from the PMO’s office — ”

  “Rigg’s dead,” I said. “Or he joined the zombie army.”

  “Flying in heavy fog and no daylight on the radar,” Arsenault concluded. “I’m sure a bunch of troops are rushing back from overseas but, considering you could fit all our active duty personnel in the Rogers Centre to watch a Jays game, I don’t think — ”

  “What about the Americans?” Crenshaw asked. “How about sending help instead of nuking us?”

  “Whoever they have available will be massing along the border to keep out refugees … and that zombie army.”

  “This is crazy,” Crenshaw said. “Let’s talk to her boss. There’s got to be more we can do down here. I lost a lot of good people getting into the Box. I can’t — ”

  I poked Crenshaw in the shoulder. “Sorry, but those people you lost are a sunk cost. We can’t stay here and solve the problem. I need staff who are up to speed, a bunch of virologists and — ”

  “Where do you think you want to go?”

  “I don’t know. The CDC?”

  “They don’t want us in Atlanta, Doctor,” Arsenault said. “They sent some people but, last I heard, as soon as they caught that tank’s recon report, they turned around.”

  “Who can blame them?” Crenshaw said. “We’re overrun.”

  “Get me to a lab somewhere. After mass death, more diseases follow. Rats are vectors. Birds are vectors. Between carrion and rotting flesh, a biological agent could slide into the groundwater. The logistics on the problem are only beginning. I’m an engineer, not a biologist, but I know that much.”

  “How do you know?”

  Exasperated, I blurted, “Because I read The Stand and The Hot Zone in college. Didn’t you?”

  Arsenault, at least, had the grace to laugh. “Officer Crenshaw is more of a Margaret Atwood fan. Hamish wiped the computers but my forensic data tech is pulling the disks. There may still be some recoverable data — ”

  “Good. With the blood samples from the dead downstairs, maybe I can figure out a way to break the pairing between the nanites and the brain parasites. If the neural matrix shuts down, then we’re just dealing with brain parasites. That should be easier. On their own, a skull full of brain parasites is bad but they’re basically a bone box of worms and not nearly as smart.”

  “You’ve got quite a honey-do list, don’t you?” Crenshaw said. “How are we supposed to get out of here with monsters crawling all over Level 1?”

  I gritted my teeth and gave the cop more lip than I’d ever dared to give any police officer. “You want me to help solve problems or do you want to bust my balls? We don’t have time for both.”

  Arsenault’s cell phone must have been patched into Echidna’s modem because, at that moment, it buzzed. “It’s an update from the PMO’s office,” he said. “You two retreat to neutral corners. I’ll have more intel for you in a second.”

  The hat
ch from Level 2 buzzed.

  The guards brought their guns to bear and Crenshaw, perhaps in an effort to reassert control yelled, quite unnecessarily, “Heads up!”

  The steel door clicked and yawned open. A woman stepped into view. Her biohazard suit was bloody. Her hood was off. Her black hair, matted with blood and sweat, hung in her eyes. Shelly Priyat stood frozen and dazed. Ding!

  The elevator from Level 4 arrived and the doors parted. Thomas Dill, drooling and growling, paused just long enough for me to see the hypodermic needle that still hung, embedded in the blue vein at his left elbow. He had infected himself. The bastard turned himself into a zombie before I could give my official two weeks’ notice.

  I really should have stayed in Aruba with the Foo Fighters.

  Chapter 44

  DANIEL

  My return to the Box was not what I expected. At the bottom of the ramp to Level 1, it was a zombie massacre. I had to crawl over a mound of bullet-riddled bodies and through a broken barricade of office furniture.

  The rest of Level 1 was exactly as I expected. The defenders were wiped out. Zombies don’t use guns. That’s a disadvantage. They don’t run out of ammunition. That’s an advantage.

  There were only two cannibals left when I arrived. One wore a suit. The other was a very thin man, naked and covered in blood and scratches. Neither of them spared me a glance as they fed on the dead. As I picked my way through the carnage, I still didn’t understand how they recognized I was one of them. Fortunately, zombies don’t use phones so the ones who’d attacked me on Lakeshore didn’t warn them I was a traitor to my new species.

  When Hamish Allen infected everyone with his version of Picasso, they turned into animals. Since my injection from the mystery woman in Port Credit, I’d reclaimed a bit of my humanity. For instance, I could read the scrawled blood-smeared note on the floor outside the door to the photocopier room: ALIVE INSIDE.

  I looked around and found a Colt Canada C7. Out of ammo, the assault rifle only weighed about seven pounds so when I took down the first zombie, I really had to swing for the fences. I chose the naked man first. If my plan of attack went badly, I really didn’t want to wrestle with a naked dude. It went well. When the stock met the back of his skull, I heard a high, satisfying pop! Home run. He crumpled.

  The one in the suit turned and leapt at me, snarling and flailing his hands like claws. I broke his nose with the butt of the rifle but he kept coming. He was a heavy guy. I should have taken him out first. As I fell backward over a corpse in a ripped Hazmat suit, I almost wished I was wrestling the naked man. Before I could get up, the big man was on top of me, snarling and trying to bite my nose off.

  I got my forearm under his chin and wrapped my legs around his torso. I imagined this victim was just another Bay Street trader who popped out for a chocolate croissant on his lunch hour. Somebody bit him or he inhaled Picasso on the wind. His bright red tie was my salvation.

  I reached for the Windsor knot and cranked it as hard and as far as I could clockwise, cutting off his air. Sorry, Bay Street Guy. I’d like to think you were a raging asshole before you got infected. I’d like to think you picked out this tie yourself one day, never dreaming it would be the instrument of your death. I’d rather not think it was an anniversary present from your wife or, worse, a Father’s Day present.

  “This isn’t your fault,” I told him. “Sorry.”

  Before the blood vessels in the whites of his eyes burst and his lips turned blue and he went limp, he managed to mouth one word: Don’t.

  Strange, I thought. The zombies only seem to be able to communicate above a snarl when they’re in the middle of combat. In battle, Hamish’s nanotech lost a little bit of control over the parasite’s host. The little robots in their heads aren’t as easy to get along with as my generation of nanotech.

  If he had died a couple days ago from a heart attack or something, he would have been remembered as an individual with a name. He wouldn’t look like the drooling, homicidal bad guy. Now, he’d be just another number added to the dead, a statistic.

  When I was sure Bay Street Guy was dead, I rolled him off me and made my way to the tiny room with the photocopier in it. I had to see if the note was still true. Was anyone alive inside?

  My hand hovered above the knob. The last time I’d been here, I’d fed on the security guard’s corpse. I couldn’t bring myself to go in. Instead, I knocked softly. “Hello? Anybody home? I — ”

  The door burst open and I was amazed to find it was a familiar face. Shelly Priyat was covered in blood and her eyes were wild. She wasn’t infected, though. She held a knife to my throat.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “You can talk?”

  “Daniel Harmon, Emergency Task Force. Call me Dan.”

  She pressed the blade of her knife harder against my throat. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Long story. Telling it at the edge of a knife isn’t standard procedure, is it?”

  “No games.”

  “Okay. I’m infected but I negotiated a truce.”

  “What?”

  “The tech in my head thinks I’m fascinating.”

  “Bullshit. Why aren’t you like the rest of them?”

  “I’m still a carrier, but I got an upgrade. If you’d like to take me prisoner again, we could go downstairs and discuss it. I need to see Dr. Robinson. Is she here? Did she make it?”

  Shelly pulled away. “You tried pretty hard to kill me when this whole thing started. You sound reasonable now.”

  “I’m growling less lately and my tummy’s full. I had a snack on the way in.”

  “And you’re a comedian.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Not a funny comedian.”

  “Oh.”

  Then Shelly Priyat made the mistake of taking her eyes off me. She looked around and took in the massacre. “It really was the Alamo.” She began to weep.

  “Answer me. Is Dr. Robinson down in the Box?”

  Priyat nodded. “She was in the last group to go through to Level 2. She was going to try to fix things, get down to the vault on Level 4 and …. ”

  “You okay?”

  “Of course, I’m not okay! I ran out of bullets in the first minute of the attack. I only had my pistol and a knife. I lost my baton and I couldn’t use my pepper spray.” Her gaze searched the pile of bodies twisted together in a puzzle of blood and bone. “A sergeant ordered me to the rear. When they ran out of ammo and more and more started getting through, I hid in there and …. ”

  “You did the smart thing.”

  “Did I?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “There were more of us in here before.”

  “I’m sure a bunch of the newly infected left to join the horde. They act like ants or bees or something.”

  “Or something?”

  “I don’t get them. I’m one of them but I must have missed a memo.”

  Shelly wept some more and I gave her a minute. There should be no shame in surviving, but there is. I knew that from horrible personal experience in this very spot.

  “When I got my wisdom teeth out, I wanted to be asleep for it,” Shelly began. “My dental surgeon gave me a local instead. I was awake and aware of everything. It didn’t hurt a bit,” she said, “but the sounds … the prying and pulling and grinding. I heard it all as he took out my teeth. That’s a little of what it was like to be on the other side of that door, standing over a chewed corpse of a security guard and listening to what was happening out here.”

  I felt heat rise in my cheeks. The security guard’s name was Tarique. Hamish had mentioned he was a nice guy. It didn’t seem like the right moment to share the fact that I was the zombie who had fed on him. There would never be a right moment for that.

  “Chloe is down in the vault. There’s no way to get to her. You’ll have to wait until she comes out.”

  “We don’t have to wait. Fifty-five African Zebras To 500 Lions Won One Victory, Three Trapped People D
ied Quick.”

  “What the hell are you babbling about, Harmon?”

  “I know the master code.”

  That’s how Officer Shelly Priyat and I ended up on Level 3 just as some maniac came off the elevator from Level 4 and attacked Chloe Robinson.

  Chapter 45

  CHLOE

  I saw an impossible thing. Thomas rushed out of the elevator, pushing two men out of the way to get at me. His eyes were wild. Everyone began yelling at once. I’m pretty sure I screamed. In Aruba, Thomas told me, “I need your brains.” Now he was a zombie, coming to collect.

  Before my boss could reach me and eat my face, another man ran at Thomas in a blur of motion. He tackled Thomas, slamming him into the wall. They both went to the floor in a tangle. Thomas wasn’t in his biohazard suit, but neither was the man who saved me. Then I saw it was Shelly’s prisoner, Officer Daniel Harmon, back from the dead.

  I watched in horror as he grabbed Thomas’ head. He slammed it into the tile floor until blood burst from the back of his skull. He kept going until we all heard a loud stomach-turning crack. I almost threw up.

  Harmon yanked back Thomas’s throat as if he was trying to clear his airway and give him mouth to mouth. Instead, Harmon buried his teeth in his neck, ripping and chewing.

  I threw up.

  Bill Arsenault charged forward and pushed Harmon off Thomas while Dale Crenshaw delivered a savage kick to Harmon’s chest. Every gun on Level 3 was brought to bear on Daniel Harmon’s head as Shelly screamed, “Don’t shoot!”

  Crenshaw told Shelly to shut up and stood over Harmon, his pistol drawn. “I thought I killed you on the front steps, Danny. Should have. You’re a damn zombie. I’m gonna have to kill you twice.”

  Shelly grabbed Crenshaw’s gun hand. The weapon discharged but, thanks to Shelly, missed. Crenshaw’s shot put a hole in Thomas’ stomach but he was well past caring.

  Shelly pushed Crenshaw back. “He knows shit! He got me out of Level 1! He’s not like the others. He told me! The tech in his head, it calls him the First. He’s got answers! You kill him, you kill us all, you idiot!”