by H. L. Murphy
“I want answers,” I informed the deputy. “And my conditions still apply.”
“What do I get out helping you?” The deputy demanded.
“Well, if you don't answer me, I'll carve you into steak tartar,” I explained. “So really, you're not in a position to make demands or negotiate. And if you jerk me around too much, I'll just knee cap you and leave you for the undead.”
“Asshole,” she breathed, licking her lips nervously. I couldn’t disagree with her, but I nudged her closest foot in a less than friendly way. “Okay. What do you want to know?”
“What happened here? And where are all the other sheriff’s deputies?” I demanded.
“The dead happened here. They came over the Roosevelt bridge,” she breathed more rapidly as the memory rolled out of the distant, untouched corners of her mind. “They came over the bridge, ten thousand strong. We shot and shot and shot, but they just kept coming. Someone said something about shooting them in the head, but nobody listened. That was just movie bullshit, and this was real life. Then a deputy, Morales I think, jumped onto the hood of a cruiser with a shotgun and sent a slug through one’s gut, then another.”
A great big neon sign flashed across my mind, it's message a single word. MISTAKE.
“Then the crippled ones started to…started to,” she choked as the image tore at her brain.
“They assimilated one another,” I said matter of factly. “I've seen a lot of that.”
“We hadn't. We'd never seen anything like it. Morales just kept firing, pumping slug after slug into the thing,” she recounted as tears rolled down her face. “Then the thing reached out and grabbed Morales with a hand so big it wrapped around his neck. Right before it bit his head off, Morales begged someone to shoot him. He didn't want that thing to bite his head off. Didn’t want to feel that.”
Christ on fire, I wish that particular visual wasn't stuck in my head.
“Nobody could spare the time, the dead were all over us by then,” she kept explaining. “We finally started shooting the fucks in the head, but it was too late. We'd crippled too many, torn too many apart. There were a dozen monsters ripping officers apart and eating them alive. There wasn't anything we could do, we didn't have enough firepower and enough defenses set up. Three hundred deputies came to stop the dead at the bridge. Stop them before they could harm our families. Thirteen of us escaped. We had to run away with nothing but what we were carrying. We hid until the horde moved on. It was Tom Jenkins that came up with the idea of building the hospital into a defensive position. Only real choice. Only building high enough, with the supplies to ensure our survival. Next time they come, we’re going to kill them all. Every fucking last one.”
Listening to her speak with the fervor of zealot I finally understood what had actually happened. The bravest of the brave had drawn a line in the sand, dared the enemy to cross it, and the enemy not only showed up, but crossed the line in the sand and devoured the defenders. Ten thousand undead came over the bridge to roll over Leonidas and his three hundred. Only after all hope had been lost did the last thirteen defenders break and run. Only after having watched all their fellow defenders go down under a ravening horde of gnashing teeth overseen by the bitch queen of the undead. The devastating impact on the morale and resolve of the citizens, those that even knew what was happening, must have been overwhelming. How many people had simple laid down and died after watching three hundred sheriff’s deputies be ripped limb from limb by an unstoppable army of walking dead.
The survivors of the battle of Roosevelt Bridge had gone mad from the stresses of facing an unconquerable, implacable foe. A foe that felt no pain, never grew tired, and thought of you as tasty and good to eat. The screams of the dying, the stench of the undead, and watching as friends came back to join the ranks of the enemies. It had all been too much, and the survivors had broken. Each according to their individual psyches and along their weakest personality lines, but they had nonetheless broken together.
I walked over to where her Glock lay and picked it up. Out came the magazine, and I racked out the round in the chamber just to be safe. The polymer pistol dropped into the deputies lap as I walked back to the truck. She stared at the weapon for a long, long moment before her eyes raised to me.
“Go to hell in your own way,” I said. I still hated her for her participation in a forced labor camp, but I couldn’t bring myself to kill her then. She was just too fucking damaged. There was crazy rambling around her brain I, thankfully, couldn't relate to. As dented and turned about as my moral compass may have been, shooting an emotionally crippled combat survivor was just too far for me right then. I turned to the Honda crashing twits. “You can go your own way, or come with us till you decide to fuck off.”
“That's not very nice,” the dark haired girl said with a stunning amount of smug bitch in her voice.
“Which part, fucktard? The part where you rammed into our truck, or the part where I saved you from those two crazies?” I demanded with a less than cordial attitude.
“You don't have have to put on your tough guy routine,”’dark hair sneered, sounding entirely too high school drama princess for my liking. “You're too old for either of us.”
I admit it, I was stunned. Stunned into silence by the utterly absurd notion I was strutting around, putting up a front to impress either of these blithering fucktards. I glanced to James for his take, and he was running a hand over his face in the clearest expression of ‘leave these twits here, and let's go home’. I didn't need the added aggravation these two would bring with them, so I was inclined to leave them behind and motor on.
“Fuck it, life's too fucking short to put up with idiots and drama princesses,” I said and climbed into the truck.
“Wait, what?” Dark hair said, her bitchy attitude suddenly evaporating in the face of being left behind with the gut shot deputy. “No, you can't leave us here.”
“Fucking hide and watch,” I shot back at her. I was tired, hungry, and psychologically hurting. All I needed was to go back to the boat and have breakfast, kiss my daughter good morning, and hug my wife while copping a feel on her backside. I didn't need to engage in any white knight bullshit with two snotty pubescents, or post pubescents. I wasn't responsible for their lives. At no point in time did I take them to raise. They were complete strangers, and if they died in the next minute it meant nothing to me.
“Please,” the blonde haired girl, who had obviously endured physical coercion, spoke for the first time. I looked into shadowed blue eyes filled pain and knowledge that no one should bear. It was the eyes. Those goddamn blue eyes. Just like the cerulean orbs that watched me everyday and belonged to my sweet Hermione.
“Goddamn it,” I swore. “Hi Ho, fucking silver.”
Interlude Four
The island lay two hundred miles to the USS Constellation’s east, and Admiral Mayweather could practically smell Cynthia’s perfume. Within minutes the drone would arrive on station and live feed images would give his Marines a much clearer idea of what tactics to adopt. Intelligence reports from members of the T.R. Society indicated an unprecedented growth rate in Montreal, while the Florida outbreak appeared to have been contained within a massive quarantine zone. Millions would die, and then probably join the ranks of the invasion. Sighing deeply, Mayweather considered the rest of the globe with considerably less optimism.
The Russian Federation had immediately instituted draconian measures in what was clearly becoming a vain attempt to save Moscow. The army had encircled the city, and subjected it to a three day artillery barrage. If there had even been two stones left to stack on one another, the artillery was redirected to annihilate those stones. Tanks, mortars, and self propelled cannons reduced the city to absolute rubble.
That's when the damned creatures began combining. Slightly more than twelve million potential infected, and the Russians felt it necessary to reenact the siege of Stalingrad. Mayweather knew from long, bitter experience that Russians could be frighteningly
subtle when dealing with outsiders. Yet, time and again they utilized a steel gauntleted fist with their own people. Better that some should die early, than all should die later. He supposed the Russian outlook wasn't so far from his own mandate. From that perspective the Russian military forces were doing the work of the San Juan Mandate without even knowing it.
In China, though, the massacre of more than a million of its citizens went unreported, if not unnoticed. Where the T.R. Society succeeded, and most government agencies failed, was in the article of payment. Government jobs didn't normally pay a living wage, let alone account for the desire of the remarkable citizen to achieve greatness. The T.R. Society, however, could afford to pay far better than any software gaming company on the planet. The Society’s intelligence division had intercepted reports from the PLA concerning the destruction of at least two semi-abandoned, new construction cities. When presented with the existence of an outbreak, the PLA took measures that made the Russians seem warm and fuzzy. Small nuclear devices were detonated in the problem areas. While this managed to significantly reduce the number of undead roaming the spaces around Beijing, it also provoked the Russian Federation into nuking Beijing into a radioactive glass topped parking lot.
On the other side of the planet, NORAD detected the launch of Russian nuclear devices, but swiftly determined the target area was not the United States so they watched as Russia nuked China. Of course, the annihilation of Beijing did not go unnoticed by Pakistan or India, both of whom had been making great strides towards a détente. Looking back, Mayweather couldn't honestly tell who struck first, only that India seemed to lose the least in population and square acreage.
As long as nuclear devices were being exchanged, North Korea took this opportunity to sling atomics at South Korea and their long hated foe, Japan. As the South Koreans had never endured the ghastly horror of an atomic weapon being detonated on their soil, they shit bricks and mobilized forces to invade North Korea. The Japanese, having tasted the fury of two previous atomic weapons, quite literally regressed, psychologically, to a point before the Meiji Restoration and went old school samurai. In the space of one explosion, thousands of kendo students from age twelve to age seventy, girded themselves with five hundred year old katana and boarded ships, boats, and fishing trollers. Their destination, Pyongyang. In the space of a week, one of the most pacifist nations in the world turned back the clock three hundred years to pick up the mantle of the warrior.
Mayweather wished them the best of luck. If the human race was to succeed, to survive this invasion they would need all the dedicated warriors their race could produce. Dr. Cynthia Zhao had known this when they had met. Been justified in her statements as those long ago events unfolded. He believed the good doctor held the key to stopping the invasion and securing the human races continued dominance over planet earth. To that end, Mayweather had brought in Captain Esteban Vincenzo of the USMC Force Recon unit aboard the carrier. The captain was, reluctantly, aware of the exact nature of the threat before him. A dedicated Marine, Captain Vincenzo had been ready to shoot the Admiral and force the ship into port until Mayweather had explained both his authority in this matter and the exact nature of the threat before all of humanity. Vincenzo’s response had been typical of any Marine officer.
“Fuck every shithole across this fucking planet,” Vincenzo spat,”how do I save the United States?”
God love the United States Marine Corps., because nothing else in Mayweather’s experience could match the awe inspiring determination and reality defying confidence bred into every Marine. Those knuckle dragging geniuses literally could not be convinced that defeat was a foregone conclusion. They would smile and nod, then suggest the moron speaking relocate themselves to a rear echelon position while the Marines secured victory.
“Admiral,” Captain Vincenzo spoke from behind Mayweather, startling the older man. The admiral had been so completely caught up in his own thoughts he hadn't heard the young Marine approach. Although, it was more than possible he wouldn't have heard Vincenzo’s approach even if he had been listening for the Marine’s boot falls. “Thirty seconds to target.”
“Very well,” Mayweather turned away from the bustling flight deck and led the way to CIC.
“Sir, do you have any pertinent data on this island you can share?” Captain Vincenzo asked cautiously. Even so far removed from normal operational parameters, Vincenzo hesitated to cross classification lines. Every piece of information could save the lives of his Marines, as well as achieve the person of interest, but Vincenzo understood the score on need to know.
“Captain,” Mayweather answered honestly. “I was never privy to the location of Dr. Zhao’s ‘confinement’. That such a place existed was beyond question, her work was simply too valuable to liquidate her. In the terrifying history of the virus, no one has ever come as close to understanding its workings than Cynthia Zhao. Bob Nelson, the agent in charge from CIA, introduced me to the good doctor after she had been residing in Guantanamo Bay for six months. Her research had apparently failed to conform to AMA standards, and violated twelve international laws, including three secret laws the simple knowledge of which carries a ten year sentence. The thing was, she knew what she was talking about. From day one, no one knew more about the virus, or better understood its patterns of contagion, than Dr. Zhao. She was invaluable in crushing the outbreaks in the early two thousands. In 2006, Bob Nelson shut down the program, disappeared the records, and shipped Cynthia Zhao off the face of the planet. Turns out the CIA just dumped her on an island nobody knew existed.”
“I don't understand, sir,” Vincenzo said as he held the hatch open for his superior. “If Dr. Zhao was so important to the cause, why was she detained on the far side of nowhere?”
“That is an excellent question, Captain,” Mayweather answered. “The truth is, I don't know. Bob Nelson killed the project, then disappeared off the face of the planet. As a member of the T.R. Society, I had access to secrets that most men are better off never even glimpsing. There are things in this world that defy understanding, Captain. I have always assumed one of these things found Nelson.”
“Was Agent Nelson a member of this society as well?” Vincenzo asked.
“No, Bob Nelson just had a bad habit of sticking his nose in where it didn't belong,” Mayweather offered. The disappearance of Bob Nelson had been everything Mayweather had said it was, and more besides. In subsequent years, Mayweather had discovered the CIA man’s dangerous interest in a little known, seldom read document known as the San Juan Mandate penned by then President Theodore Roosevelt. The Admiral did not doubt for one moment that the former head of the T.R. Society would have had any moral difficulty permanently removing Bob Nelson from the face of the planet. It was the kind of man Clancy McGillis had been. “Honestly, I don't think it every occurred to Bob that there was anything he couldn't handle, whether he was cleared to know about it or not.”
“I know the type, sir,” Vincenzo nodded and followed along.
“All right, let's see what the drone has to tell us,” Mayweather announced as he walked into CIC. Several ratings and officers perked up as the Admiral stepped within. Already playing on several monitors was a fast moving approach to a small island, heavily forested with an enormous building rising from the center of the island. As it came into focus, Mayweather could tell the building had been built into the side of a mountain initially and had simply over taken it. The truly bizarre aspect of the edifice lay not in its sprawling layout, but in the architecture of the complex. The entire thing reminded Mayweather of the old Hong Kong Kung-fu films he watched as a boy. The building had obviously made extensive use of concrete, but there were aesthetic choices that defied belief. “What in the hell am I looking at?”
“It seems to be a copy of the temple on Wudang Mountain,” a young petty officer offered from his station, where he was already picking apart a frozen image in an attempt to identify possible defensive emplacements.
“Yes, yes it does,” th
e Admiral admitted. “I suppose my real question is what the hell is it doing on an island supposedly controlled by the CIA to conduct the most morally questionable research ever carried out by mankind.”
“Camouflage?” The petty officer suggested. “This island is located outside of the shipping lanes, but not so far a ship might not stumble across it. Buddhism and Islam have been fighting for existence in this area for centuries, wouldn't necessarily be out of place.”
“That is an excellent theory, Petty Officer Thomas,” Mayweather clapped the young man on the shoulder reassuringly. “As soon as you've located any possible weapons emplacements, run down any possible contact between merchant vessels and this island. Report as soon as you're done.”
“Yes, sir,” Petty Officer Thomas answered crisply. He'd been afraid his answer would sound stupid to the Admiral, but instead of coming down on him the Old Man had taken him seriously. And in truth, Mayweather took the idea seriously. It was a bit far fetched, but then again so was the dead rising to consume the living. It was bad science fiction, yet it was also a stone cold fact. Ten years ago, Dr. Zhao had been at the absolute forefront of her field with an innate understanding of how the virus worked, but she had also been conducting experimentation into cloning and DNA splicing the AMA, USAMRIID, the CDC, and every other ethical organization had explicitly forbidden. While not a stupid man, Mayweather hadn't been able to make heads or tails of her notes. It was only after the T.R. Society put Mayweather in contact with a reliable man at Johns Hopkins that the picture became clear. Cynthia Zhao had been trying to reverse the aging process to a specific point, then render the patient capable of maintaining that physical age without defect to mind or body indefinitely. One might consider her work to be a laudable goal, provided that person had not cast their eyes upon the nightmare menagerie of abject failures the good doctor amassed in her search for the fountain of youth. Bob Nelson was one of those unfortunate people, so too was Mayweather, although Mayweather did not know what the good Dr. Zhao had done to get shipped to the middle of nowhere.
