Gnash

by Brian Parker

  The point man for the Delta team held up his open hand and then made a downward gesture with it indicating that everyone should halt and take cover. Sergeant Owens knelt down beside the remnants of a building or shed of some type. It was difficult to determine what he was looking at since everything was absolutely demolished and most organic material like wood, fabrics and human flesh had been burnt up, leaving behind pieces of granite, glass, concrete, melted plastics, porcelain and other non-flammable materials laying around in haphazard heaps wherever they had been thrown.

  Hank ran up to the point man in a half crouch to see what was going on. They were on the verge of leaving the residential neighborhood and entering into the Crystal City area. As far as Owens could tell, the buildings had completely collapsed and they wouldn’t be able to make it any farther on this approach. The Delta chief stood up and waved his hand around in a circle above his head meaning to rally up on his position.

  Once everyone was there, Hank’s metallic voice drifted out of the small voice emitter on his chest, “Alright, the time is now 0915. The zombies haven’t been active during the daylight in our interactions with them, but there have been reports that say that’s changed. Cecil, how much time do you estimate we have left on our mask filters and these suits?”

  “The suits are rated at thirty-six hours in a dry, high-radiation environment and the filters are good for eighteen hours. As long as the weather holds, we should be good until 2300, but we have to be on a chopper headed back for decon no later than that.”

  Owens couldn’t see his lips move but Hank’s voice emitter crackled to life, “Ok folks, start setting up a small defensive perimeter with the rubble. One hundred by one hundred with a helo-resupply area in the center. Nothing fancy, I’ll call in our supply bird for the triple-strand, so set up a stand-off area where you won’t get caught on the wire.” The Delta men grunted acceptance and turned to begin working.

  Owens blanched inside his suit. Triple-strand? What the hell did they need concertina wire for? Didn’t he hear me, we can’t remain in place past 2300, we have to be decontaminated at regular intervals. He reached out and placed a hand on the Delta chief’s protective suit and asked, “Hank, what are we doing? I thought we were coming down here for observation.”

  “Change of plans pal. Sorry, just got word during the walk over here,” he glanced to the side and observed his men beginning to drag chunks of concrete and metal into place. “HQ told all five teams to set up defensive perimeters in order to observe and engage the zombie threat. We got a pre-brief that this might occur, depending on the situation, that’s why we were all inserted in at different areas across the city.”

  “We’re in a damned nuclear fall-out zone! We have to be decontaminated at regular intervals. We can’t stay here and make a stand against these things, if they even survived the blast and the initial radiation overdose.”

  “Understood. But that’s why we’re making our perimeter so large for just the fourteen of us. Each team is going to receive a mobile decon station for use within the wire to change, shower and refit. I know you don’t like it, but in this fucked-up situation we’re in, we’ve got to make solid assessments about their whereabouts and be able to defend what’s left of our country against these things. Right now, conventional Army and Marine Corps forces are circling the city on the outside of the radiation zone in an attempt to cordon off those things.”

  “Hank, those mobile decon units aren’t designed for extended use. How long are we supposed to be out here?”

  “Until we’re told to go home buddy. That’s how we work, welcome to Delta,” he held out his hand and Owens could tell he had a big grin on his face from the wrinkles that appeared around his eyes. He reluctantly grabbed it and shook. “You should go tell your guys the situation and let them know we need them to be both trigger pullers and radiation monitors. No room to screw up, got it?”

  “Yeah. Man, I’m too old for this stuff.”

  “Ain’t we all.”

  ***

  01 May, 1451 hrs local

  Military Decontamination and Infection Control Site #3

  Near Culpepper, Virginia

  The refugee stooped to avoid hitting her head as she exited the large military tent. She knew she didn’t need to, since it had been designed for much taller people than her, but she did it out of habit. At five foot eight, she’d always been fairly tall for a girl but she constantly caught herself slouching to not appear so tall. Her mother had always chastised her for that when she’d lived with them. She needed to get fresh air, but it was difficult with the paper mask over her nose and mouth to get a full breath. The mask was a flimsy precaution since as of yet there hadn’t been any fallout this far west.

  It had been four days since she was pulled from the wreckage in the Metro tunnel and Emory was beginning to feel restless. She’d been examined daily for signs of radiation sickness or any other evidence that she’d been exposed to too much of the radiation. Signs of sickness included skin lesions and reddening of the skin that could develop days to weeks after exposure. So far, the doctors were extremely positive about her future.

  According to one of the orderlies she’d made friends with, her train had been deep enough underground that the waves of radiation hadn’t penetrated that far, but they were worried about internal exposure from breathing contaminated air, and for some of the people who were brought to the shelter later, from eating contaminated food. Emory was already sick of taking the potassium iodide pills that they made her force down every day, but she was told that they would help protect her thyroid gland from the radioactive iodine that was in the air from the blast.

  At least the doctors had cleared her to leave the hospital ward to go into the general population of refugees. She had only been confined in the hospital portion of the camp for less than a day, but the moans of the dying and the teams of doctors running from bed to bed as they tried to save as many of the burned and sick as they could had been terrifying for her.

  She had never hated anyone in her life until this attack, but she hated that French bastard that did this with all her heart and soul. The president assured everyone in his nightly briefings that the man who’d ordered the attack was dead and that we’d located and destroyed the submarine that launched the missile, but even that wasn’t enough. She wanted everyone who’d known about the attack to pay for what they’d done, for what they put her through, for the cancer that very well could be growing inside her at this very moment to kill her at some predisposed date in the future.

  That was the thing that galled her even more than the horrible pain of that first day of decontamination with the scrub brushes and bleach mixture. She had to endure the daily humiliation of examinations of every inch of her body by medical personnel and the constant blood tests of every member of the camp. She could be declared healthy enough to leave the site but she might have some type of cancer that was hidden and they might not find it until it was too late. Large-scale radiation poisoning was such a rare event in human history that the medical community had very little reliable data to help them. The medical records from Japan after the United States had detonated atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so convoluted and experimental in nature that they were almost useless. And the medical techniques that were used to help the survivors of Chernobyl were locked away in some secret KGB vault, if there were any besides a bullet in the head. Her only friend in the camp, a nurse’s aide named Josh, told her that they were using a bastardized version of medicine that stole treatments from chemical burn care and chemotherapy alternatives mixed with basic first aid.

  The Virginia state government, Homeland Defense agencies, National Guard and the traditional military had taken over a local high school complex to make up what was known as the Military Decontamination and Infection Control Site #3. The main building pulled double duty as the dining facility, offices and even some beds from the hospital. Everything else was made up of tents supplied by the military. The oper
ating rooms of the hospital were actually large, transportable and self-contained crates that included all the necessary gear, so it was easier to use those than to try hauling all the equipment inside the school. Several of the in-patient “wards” were placed in classrooms as well as sleeping chambers for some of the higher ranking doctors and nurses.

  This was a mess and most everything in her life no longer even existed. Congresswoman Fergusson hadn’t been a high enough priority to evacuate, so it was assumed that she was dead. There had been no word about Grayson, he had simply disappeared and as the military mobilized to fight against the armed rebels, take care of the wounded from the nuclear attack and attempted to quell the race riots that were erupting everywhere, one missing person wasn’t even on their radar. Her apartment and everything she’d ever owned was gone. Grayson’s dog must be dead. Even the clothes that she’d been wearing on the day of the explosion had been confiscated and incinerated. She was utterly and completely destitute, relying on the mercy of the federal government to provide aid.

  She reached the edge of the camp and rested her hands on the fence, letting her fingers slip through the wire mesh. They weren’t technically prisoners, but none of the survivors were allowed to leave the perimeter yet. The doctors wanted to be sure that they were healthy before releasing them into the general population. I didn’t even think radiation sickness was communicable, she thought. There’s something else they’re not telling us. Emory gazed west towards the Blue Ridge Mountains where she knew through the camp scuttlebutt that the president’s secret compound was located. Those guys were definitely keeping things from the population. The military was constantly ferrying soldiers back and forth between the detonation area and a secondary camp located beside the hospital and refugee area.

  She pondered the horrors she’d seen at the hospital and how lucky she was to be relatively unharmed and she vowed to herself that she would increase her work as a volunteer in the camp and make life as bearable as possible for everyone until they could gain their release. While she was at it, she wanted to find out what the government was really testing everyone for.

  ***

  02 May, 1758 hrs local

  Peter's Pizzeria and Hand-Dipped Ice Cream Shop

  Indianapolis, Indiana

  Grayson crouched behind the dining booth table he’d overturned and shoved in front of the door. Five minutes ago he was negotiating with another small-time merchant for some gas, then the man’s head had exploded and Grayson was running for the restaurant next to the gas station. A few ricochets followed him through the door, but his attackers weren’t really aiming for him yet, it looked like they were just peppering his car with bullets to make sure he couldn’t escape.

  He peeked up over the table through the door’s small window. He could see five men going through his car looking for whatever they could take. There were probably more, pulling security, but he couldn’t see them from his low vantage point. They looked like a gang straight out of a movie. He’d never seen an actual gangbanger in person that he knew of, let alone the entire gang together, but these guys fit the bill.

  Stupid! I should have known better than to try to go near a big city, he chided himself silently. One of the thugs smashed out his back windshield with an aluminum baseball bat and another was stabbing a tire with a knife. He ducked his head back down, well, there’s another safety deposit I’m not getting back.

  When he peeked up again, the bangers were finished with his car and it looked like they were going to come looking for him. He had to make a move and get out of there while he still could. He scrambled in a hunched over run and tried to duck even lower as the front windows shattered. He dove over the counter but didn’t quite clear it, knocking his shins against the edge and landing roughly on his arm cast, momentum carrying him across the floor where he hit the far wall. His head swam from the collision and from a very strong chemical smell that he recognized, but in his dazed state, he couldn’t quite remember what it was.

  “Hey, this way,” a man’s voice whispered from the kitchen. He shook his head to clear his vision to see who was talking to him and looked blankly at the dim doorway.

  “Hey, c’mon man, we’ve got those bastards right where we want ‘em. We’re gonna burn this place to the ground and if you don’t get out of here you’re gonna go up with it.”

  He didn’t know what the man was talking about, but he understood that he needed to get out of the building quickly. He crawled to the opening into the kitchen and four hands grabbed him and pulled him roughly to his feet. Immediately he tried to jerk his arms away to fight against his captors.

  “Stop strugglin’ you dumb shit, we’re trying to get you out of here!” the same man who’d spoken to him before said in his ear.

  He relaxed and let them lead him through the kitchen out the back door. On the way out one of the men pushed a large stack of dishes off the counter. They fell to the floor and the sound of the breaking porcelain echoed loudly off the close, unadorned walls of the small kitchen.

  “Leave me alone!” the first man shouted over his shoulder towards the gang members at the front of the restaurant as they shoved Grayson through the back door. Six men of varying ages waited outside in the rear parking lot. They looked almost as rough as the men who’d just finished demolishing Grayson’s car. After all three men were clear of the back door, the group outside set about barricading the exit using two-by-fours and cinder blocks.

  “Good, now let’s go ‘round front and make sure they all followed this guy inside,” an older, slightly pudgy blonde gentleman said. Grayson assumed he was the leader of this ragtag bunch, but he wasn’t sure which gang of men was worse, the ones being led into a trap or the ones he’d fallen in with.

  The men split up into two groups and went around either side of the little restaurant. Grayson crept to the edge of the building and looked around the side, but he wasn’t armed for a street fight. He searched the area immediately around him but he didn’t find anything on the pavement that he could use as a weapon so he settled for remaining hidden behind the shop.

  He heard shouts and banging on the door near him that he’d just came out of. The loud clang of metal on metal told Grayson that the baseball bat wielding thug was inside. The pounding stopped and he heard muffled voices and then more banging towards the front of the building. Thick black smoke quickly began pouring out of the cracks in the back door and through the little window up front. He heard cheers coming from the men who’d collected him up from inside.

  Then Grayson remembered the smell inside the building. “Diesel fuel,” he said out loud.

  “Yup, we had that trap planned for a couple days now and set up since this morning,” the blonde guy said to him as he came around the side of the building. “Diesel won’t explode like gas will, so it would burn inside the building instead of blowing open the doors. Name’s Curtis Long, we’re the good guys. What’s yours mister?”

  “Huh, good guys? You’re burning a group of men alive, that doesn’t sound like the good guys to me.”

  “Now look son, things have changed around here. It’s kill or be killed. These gang bangers have been literally terrorizing our subdivision since this whole thing started. If you want to survive, you’ve gotta get that through your head.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry, I understand that I don’t know your situation. I shouldn’t have judged you.”

  “Apology accepted. Now, what’s your name?”

  “It’s Grayson. Grayson Donnelly. I’m just passing through trying to make it back out east,” he said sticking out his hand.

  Curtis took it and shook it. He had a grip like a vice. “Well, you should avoid the cities young man. The National Guard and the police don’t have this thing under control yet, but they’ve mobilized over in Cleveland, so won’t be long now ‘fore they get here to help us out. We’ve put together a small group to try to keep people like that gang there out of our neighborhood and we’ve had to run more than a few off. We…�
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  He broke off his sentence as the banging on the back door grew to a feverish level. The trapped men were literally throwing themselves against the door in an effort to escape. Curtis looked to a few of his men, “Justin, you’ve got the only gun in the group today, go guard that back door and shoot anybody that comes out. The rest of you, you know what to do if they make it out either door. Let’s just hope they don’t.”

  The group split into two with half running up to the front door and the other half moving back to the rear of the building. “Like I was saying, we’ve ran quite a few of those damn gang kids out of our community, but this group moved in a few days ago and we haven’t been able to scare them off. The word on the street is that they killed the cops that used to come by here at first, but who knows. Only thing we know is that they’ve been attacking our citizens and we had to stop them.”

  Grayson said, “What about the man out front that I was trying to get gas from? I think he’s dead.”

  “Yeah, he’s dead. D.J. was always tryin’ to make a few bucks. We told him to stop selling, but he had a saying, used to say that if the ‘70’s didn’t drive him out of business nobody in Washington would. I guess since this whole thing started in Washington, somehow he blamed them. Now he’s gone, guess this time he didn’t make it through.”

  “Can I help you guys bury him or anything?” Grayson asked. “I feel really bad that he died helping me.”