Gnash

by Brian Parker

  The driver of SUV slammed it into reverse and backed further into the parking lot as the PLS edged by and took the lead of the small convoy. Behind them, another several hundred creatures began to emerge from the field. The group from the front of the store had advanced another several feet and Grayson was worried that the truck wouldn’t have enough speed to get through them. It barely reached twenty miles per hour before it slammed into the first of the group. Corpses were flung sideways and crushed under the huge tires. The shooters in the back fired blindly over the side of the trailer’s panels and the big 600-horsepower engine revved higher while it pushed through the writhing mass of flesh. Slowly, inexorably, the truck gained speed as it neared the back of the group and the space between bodies began to spread out and not be so tightly packed.

  Grayson’s SUV followed within a few feet of the first truck. It bounced and jumped while the tires slowly churned through the pieces of the zombie horde that had been crushed under the massive weight of the PLS. Jamie buried her face in Grayson’s shoulders as the windows became smeared in blood and gore. Teeth gnashed at the glass and dead hands beat at the vehicle as it passed by them. He tried, but couldn’t decide if the men and women in the back of the trailer were better off than those in the SUV. At least they could defend themselves, unlike the four panicked people sitting on the nutmeg brown leather seats in the luxury truck listening to a country music CD.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, but in reality was less than thirty seconds, they too burst out through the rear of the mob. Grayson turned and saw third truck barrel out of the group as well. The desert tan vehicle looked as if it had been painted red halfway up the cab of the semi. Remains of former Hoosiers dangled from the every surface.

  Jamie leaned violently away from Grayson and covered her mouth. With her opposite hand she punched the button for the power window and half stood to throw up out the window. Carrie made a disgusted noise from the front seat. Jamie sat slowly and wiped her mouth with her shirt sleeve after she’d expelled the entire contents of her stomach.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered. Grayson wrapped her in his arms and assured her that it was alright while he told himself that she wasn’t cut out to be on missions outside of the wire and it was stupid of him to have allowed her to come with him.

  The convoy stopped less than a ¼ mile from the garden center in the middle of the highway. “Hey, what’s going on?” Grayson asked.

  Carrie turned around in her seat and said, “Standard operating procedure for us. Even though this group is a whole lot bigger than anything we’ve seen before, what we do is get clear of the zombies, then, when we’re in an open area, we set up and kill the ones that are following us.”

  “Another Vietnam lesson?”

  “Yup. My dad used to tell me all about it. It also makes sense for us for two reasons, same as it did back then. One,” she said holding up her index finger, “They don’t follow us home. And two, we kill more of these things. There were more than two million people the city and the surrounding suburbs. The more zombies we take out, the more people we can save.”

  She opened her door and stepped outside to take part in the massacre. There was an undeniable logic to the tactic that Grayson couldn’t argue with. Keeping them away from the neighborhoods was the whole reason they’d stayed longer to get the building supplies. Shots began ringing out from the trucks. The shooters were using the side panels of the trailer to rest their arms on and picking their targets, taking head shots.

  As the firing volume began to decrease Carrie yelled something to her troops and jumped back into the SUV. The firing from the back of the trucks stopped and the column drove another few hundred feet and repeated the process. This time, Grayson exited the vehicle as well and fired his rifle into the crowd. It took him a few tries because he couldn’t get the thought out of his head that these people would do the same to him in a heartbeat if he turned into a zombie. He lined up his sights and shot one of the creatures in the head. Two weeks ago, the guy he’d just killed was probably a normal guy, going to work and making a living for his family, now he was just another target. Kill or be killed, he thought.

  The subject of his second execution was only half as tall as the others. It was probably the remains of a kid, but he couldn’t let himself think about that. His third and fourth kills were easier and by the time he had to change magazines, he’d already stopped wondering how the zombies felt about being killed and concentrated on destroying the horde that wanted to attack his new friends. Finally, they were out of targets in the immediate area and the trucks began the trek back towards Pecan Valley.

  ***

  13 May, 2025 hrs local

  Military Decontamination and Infection Control Site #7

  Fauquier County, Virginia

  Doctor Jeremy Collins leaned back from his computer screen and typed some commands to manipulate the 3D rendering of the infected blood that was in the electron microscope. Finally, he believed that he’d identified a portion of what made the disease so lethal and spread so quickly. They’d known all along that it was some mixture of Avian and Swine Flu, which was nowhere near as fatal by themselves as this engineered virus, but the unique characteristics of those two components of the disease did allow it to spread extremely quickly with only a minor bite. The men and women fighting on the front lines had also learned the hard way that besides the bite, if any of the zombie’s bodily fluids found their way into any open wounds, then that was a death sentence as well.

  There were other compounds present in the zombie blood that were simply too complex to easily identify so he had several computers that were tied into the World Health Organization’s database running non-stop. The computer had finally identified a very rare plague virus that was only intermittently present along the entire DNA chain. The genetic markers of Septicemic Plague, a bacterium, were spliced into seemingly random portions of the double helix. No wonder he’d had such a hard time even identifying the damn thing. It was extremely difficult to link bacteria and viruses together. The biologists that developed this disease must be brilliant, he thought.

  The Septicemic Plague was almost extinct in the modern world, although it did pop up occasionally and was part of the many plagues that affected the Old World of Europe and Asia. The more widely known Bubonic and Pneumonic Plagues had wiped out more than a third of Europe’s population in the so-called Middle Ages and still popped up in some third world countries today, but if there were to be a large outbreak of just the Septicemic Plague alone, he doubted that anyone would survive the devastation.

  The plague caused a type of blood poisoning that was almost always 100% fatal. It was typically carried by rodents and transmitted to humans by flea bites after they’d bitten an infected rodent, which may explain how the saliva transfer played into the zombie infection’s transfer. He scanned the lab notes that were listed along the margin of his computer screen. The original plague, by itself had a 2-5 day incubation period with the typical flu-like symptoms of chills, fever, cough and headache, what set this apart from other plagues, besides the lethality, was the presence of black and purple splotches under the skin of the infected. That could also explain the coloration of the Type Two zombies, those that were infected as a result of the Type One, Pentagon zombie’s, bite.

  He tapped the button on the side of his headset microphone and began dictating this newfound information into the system, which would automatically be backed up and saved on the server in case of power failure. He’d barely spoken three sentences and just began to explain about the type of plague he’d found before the research facility alarms blared to life. They were only supposed to go off in the event of a perimeter breach or if one of his stable of test subjects escaped from the holding cell.

  “What the hell?” he said out loud as he spun around from his computers. One of his Type Two’s rushed past the doorframe towards him. He only had a few seconds to react before the thing made it around the lab equipment and tore him to p
ieces. Frantically, he jerked on the handle of his pistol in its leg holster, finally, the general’s paranoia that everyone must be armed if they were going to keep live subjects on the compound might pay off.

  He cursed at his inexperience with the holster and realized that he’d forgotten to unclasp the cover that held the weapon inside the pocket. He fumbled with the fastener as the zombie shoved a lab table out of the way. Is this how it ends, he thought. Killed by one of my own fucking lab subjects. Finally, the plastic clasp came undone and he yanked the pistol from the holster.

  The creature lunged forward and he threw his arms up to defend himself. As he did so, the barrel became lodged in its throat and he used his thumb to rotate the safety to fire. The little red dot on the side indicated that he had successfully prepared the weapon for firing. He turned his face away and squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  “Oh Jesus Christ,” he screamed in frustration. He hadn’t chambered a round yet. The full weight of the creature began to push against him and he knew that if he fell, it was all over. He began to take tiny steps backwards, grunting at the effort to stay upright and continue holding the zombie at bay. Slowly, he backed up against one of the thin sheet metal walls of his medical trailer. He only had one shot at this, so he braced his back against the wall and brought up his strongest leg, placing his foot firmly against the chest of the zombie. He shoved outward as hard as he could and the creature separated a few feet from him.

  He grasped the pistol’s slide and yanked back on it. A round seated satisfyingly in the chamber. The zombie moved forward again and the last thing he saw were teeth opening impossibly wide, he squeezed the trigger over and over.

  ***

  13 May, 2049 hrs local

  Military Decontamination and Infection Control Site #3

  Near Culpepper, Virginia

  Emory made her way along the walkway toward the dining facility. She had a little over an hour until her shift at the hospital started, so she wanted to eat and go to the morale tent to see if there was any new information about Grayson before reporting for work. After finding out the news that he was simply missing, she’d scoured everything she could find and even enlisted the help of the aid worker at the morale center, but to no avail. Details were still sketchy coming out of the Midwest after all the fighting, but she knew. She’d always had a strong intuition and she knew that she’d lost him. She had the overwhelming feeling that he was gone, but she was also stubborn, so she kept looking.

  In between searching for Grayson and work, she’d been busy with the camp’s refugee defense force. The mood in the camp had changed drastically in the recent days after she, Hank and Bryce had decided to begin telling the residents the truth about why they were in the camp and just what the creatures they faced were capable of. The helpless feelings of the refugees turned first to anger at being detained and then they morphed into a type of collective resolve to survive the situation, so they formed an unofficial group and worked on self defense tactics designed to get away from a zombie. Emory passed along all the information she could from Hank about how to avoid being infected and how to kill the zombies, but the most basic lesson she wanted everyone to know was how to get away and hide. The group even began pilfering things like broom handles and hammers that could be used as weapons against the creatures in case there was a need.

  A few had tried, and failed, to escape the camp, which only strengthened everyone’s desire to leave. Two people had even been shot by the guards when they tried to force their way past them. The camp administrators tried to downplay the incident, but the refugees now felt more like prisoners than displaced citizens. The sheer amount of resentment in the camp was an unintended consequence of her telling people that they needed to prepare themselves for a zombie attack. Instead of empowering her fellow refugees, the general feeling was that they were trapped in a cage and that they wouldn’t be able to escape if an incident occurred.

  While the tensions were very high between the military and the refugees, some positive things came out of the information leak. Security around the hospital and the perimeter was tightened tenfold, both by the military and by the residents of the camp. Based on one civilian’s recommendation, work details had also been going out and to clear the area immediately around the camp of trees that obstructed the view.

  She was almost to the dining facility when the guards somewhere on the far side of the camp began firing. It didn’t sound like the occasional shot that they’d all became accustomed to when a person turned in the hospital. This was a lot of guns firing on full automatic. Something wasn’t right.

  “ATTENTION! ATTENTION!” the camp loudspeakers blared from overhead. “THE CAMP IS UNDER ATTACK! A LARGE FORCE HAS GATHERED OUTSIDE THE WIRE. PLEASE REMAIN CALM AND STAY AWAY FROM THE PERIMETER WHILE THE SECURITY FORCE DEALS WITH THE THREAT.”

  Emory watched as panicked residents scrambled from wherever they’d been to wherever they were going. She recognized several people from her defense group running towards the school where they’d stashed weapons and planned to defend from. She was indecisive for a moment since the attack scenarios she’d thought through and discussed with Hank had involved a breakout from the hospital. Most of those situations involved ways for her to escape through the wire without getting caught inside or places to hide out of sight from the creatures inside the hospital if she was trapped there.

  Her mind seized on that thought. She would try to find a cabinet out here to hide in, the same as she’d planned to if she was stuck in the hospital. She stared blankly towards the hospital trying to remember where there was a cabinet big enough to hold her. Maybe in the morale tent, she thought. There were all sorts of shelves, at the very least she could hide in one of those and stack boxes in front of her.

  She focused her eyes and realized that she was staring right at her salvation. The hospital! Of course, how can I be so stupid! she thought as her legs propelled her along the walkway towards the gate to the hospital perimeter. It was such a simple solution that she wondered why she hadn’t immediately thought of it. She could hide in the same place she’d planned to if there was a breakout while she was on shift, except the scenario was just a little different.

  Emory didn’t want to get shot by jumpy guards so she slowed up as she neared the concertina wire and called out. They recognized her and let her in, quickly securing the gate behind her and she rushed the remaining forty feet to the tent. Her hands fumbled with the zipper of the tent’s vestibule module, but she finally got it open and ducked inside.

  Just after she got the outer door zipped, the camp’s speakers again crackled to life, “ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ALL NON-DUTY PERSONNEL, REPORT TO YOUR ASSIGNED STATIONS IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL! ALL CIVILIAN PERSONNEL, PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR SLEEPING QUARTERS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. REPEAT, ALL NON-DUTY PERSONNEL, REPORT TO YOUR DUTY STATIONS.”

  This hadn’t happened before. She’d been in the camp for almost a month, and this was something new. She felt like this was the real deal, they wouldn’t risk panicking the camp’s population if it was only a drill. Plus, the level of automatic weapons fire was higher than anything she’d ever heard before. She hastily unzipped the interior door and fled down the corridor towards her prepared hiding place.

  She careened off of a day shift nurse who stepped into the hallway. Both of them went flying and Emory got herself wrapped in the rough fabric of the tent liner before sliding into a heap on the floor, which probably saved her from a hard fall. She apologized profusely as she picked herself up and continued her headlong run deeper into the hospital’s tent complex.

  She almost ran past the door she’d been running to because of the empty litter that was positioned in front of it. She shoved the litter aside and unzipped the supply room’s flap. Quickly, she flipped on the overhead light and bright fluorescent lighting filled the small vestibule. A large cabinet stood secured on the far side of the space and two tables on either side of it were filled w
ith cleaning supplies. It was just as she’d left it.

  Before closing herself in, she reached out and pulled the stretcher back into place in front of the door. Then she zipped the flap to the supply closet closed. Outside, and what didn’t sound very far away to her, the firing began again. Immediately, she knew that the guards at the hospital’s barbed wire fence were now shooting. She crossed the small space in three large steps and jerked the cabinet door open, she knew that she didn’t have much time.

  The wall locker was empty, again, just as she’d left it. She said a quiet prayer of thanks and reached under the table on the right of the cabinet to pull out a wash bucket she’d placed there the night before. She shoved that into the cabinet and pulled the small LED flashlight that Hank had given her from her pocket. She turned it on and then flicked the light switch off.

  She paused for the smallest of moments as she suddenly realized that the shooting had died down to barely a fraction of what it was before. She rushed back to the cabinet and pulled her satchel out of the bucket and turned the bucket upside down so she could sit on it. Then, she closed the door and secured it with the hasp that Hank, ever the resourceful scavenger, had installed on the inside of the door. For added protection, she dropped a discarded chemlight through the hasp’s eyelet. She knew she should turn the flashlight off, but her fear of the dark wouldn’t allow her to do it, she needed some light or else she’d just end up hyperventilating and give away her hiding place anyways.

  Before too long, the firing died down to almost nothing and she started to hear the individual screams. They sounded like they came from all around her since the tent didn’t block any real sound and the noises that she did hear were amplified and echoed off the inside of the metal cabinet. She stuffed part of her shirt into her mouth to keep herself from screaming and covered her ears.

  The sounds of death were all around her. She didn’t understand how her hiding place hadn’t been found yet. Surely the creatures knew she was there. How could they not? They groaned all around her in their triumph at destroying the human safe hold.