Orpheus

by DeWitt, Dan

  “Caller, repeat last.”

  Nothing.

  She hung the mic back on its hook and rolled back to her desk. She closed the book for the time being on what she called “Project: Snake” in her head. There were two hidden files on her computer: that one and “Project: Lost Soul.” She opened this file and started poring over everything she had learned about the lone open file: Ethan Holt.

  Where could he be?

  Twenty minutes went by before another radio transmission came through. This one was crystal clear, and expected. “Lena, it's Sam.”

  Lena keyed her mic, mindful that this frequency was monitored by Trager's goon squad. For some reason, they didn't think that anyone else knew about it, but they only had Lena fooled for about ten seconds. “Go, Sam.”

  “We're initiating retrieval of the walkies, and then we'll begin the sweep of the theater and surrounding buildings before we work our way back up to the roof for extraction. Hope to have a Jekyll in tow. If everything goes well, we'll be silent for a few hours, at least.”

  “And if it doesn't go well?”

  “Then we'll be silent a lot longer.”

  “That's funny. How's the rookie look?”

  “Too early to tell, but he seems to have some balls. That's something.”

  “Okay. Take care of them.”

  She heard Fish yell off-mic but clear, "His balls?" Lena shook her head and chuckled.

  “Shut it, Fish. Will do. Oh, and don't tell those Scythe boys this, but I find them all very sexually arousing. Out.”

  Lena held back her laughter long enough to croak, “Out.” She giggled for a few moments more and then got to work. She went to the large plastic-covered map of the island, found the area that the Scalpel team was going to search, and wrote “2140” in grease pencil over the theater. Tracking their progress was her favorite part of being the dispatcher/resident techie for the team. She liked to imagine that she was right there with them, doing some dirty work.

  In reality, all she really did was answer the radio, chart their movements, and then send in those death-dealers to “sanitize” the areas. She knew why Orpheus and his team didn't let up at all during their searches. They knew that, as soon as they were extracted, everything living and unliving alike would be wiped off the face of the planet, and Orpheus' past failures and desire to not let any innocents die drove him to the edge time and again. His team was the same way: they all had demons. But, unlike a lot of people, they used those demons to push themselves farther.

  They saved lives. And they could very well be instrumental in the survival of the human species.

  She could at least help them, and him, in any way she possibly could.

  * * *

  Trager swiped his ID card and entered the outer viewing ring of the laboratory. He was still amazed at the design of this building, even though he'd all but personally swung every visible and back-alley deal to make it happen; it was put together with such forethought that it was easy to forget the world that existed just outside the doors to the street.

  It had been fairly easy to convert most of the rooms into living quarters. There was no shortage of beds, even with the patients that had been there when the crisis had kicked off. Many of them had died as, unfortunately, they just didn't have enough people to keep up the excellent standard of care he prided himself on. They had running water, heat, and electricity courtesy of the solar panels and wind turbines mounted in strategic places on the exterior of the building. They had a massive store of food thanks to the efforts of the retrieval crews, and they'd even put together an impressive garden on the observation decks.

  They had, in short order, converted this marvel of a building into a thriving mini-city.

  Trager intended to continue making lemons into lemonade.

  He walked slowly around the lab which was viewable from all angles courtesy of the wall of plexiglass that defined the interior research space. Several people were busy inside, either hunched over computer terminals, chemicals, or the dozens of thrashing undead that Anders had managed to procure. Locked inside one of those things was the answer.

  That was the thinking, anyway.

  The zombie virus or whatever the hell it was was proving to be a slippery little devil. They couldn't pin it down enough to the point where they could analyze it to the fullest and gather the information that they needed. They kept at it, but every attempt at a cure had failed. The most intelligent minds in the city were all stumped.

  Trager rapped on the glass and gestured to one of the researchers. The researcher consulted a few instruments before waving Trager in. He swiped his card again and a door slid open with a faint hiss.

  “How are we, Vin?” he asked of the researcher.

  “Not good. I can tell you everything about how the virus acts around dead flesh, but I don't have a clue how it attacks and corrupts living people. We need a fresher subject.”

  “I've already made arrangements. You should have one within the next day or two.” He looked around the room at the captive zombies. “Can you learn anything else from them? If not, we should throw them out.”

  Vin said, “Maybe. Maybe not. I'd like to keep them around for a little while longer, if I can. A few are so decomposed that they're just taking up space, though.”

  “I'll leave it up to you, but let's not keep them any longer than we have to. I knew a couple of these people. They were assholes in life, but...”

  “Of course.”

  Trager walked to the door and swiped his card. When it opened, he turned around and said, “I'm going through a lot of trouble to give you what you're requesting, Vin. Once I do, I expect results.” He saw in the other man's face that his point, and meaning, had been taken as intended. Satisfied, he opened the stairwell and headed to the fifth floor to check on the mission's progress.

  Chapter 5: The Theater

  They cleared the theater from the top down. Nobody was in the hallways. They moved silently, in sync with each other to the point that they rarely even needed to use hand signals, let alone speak.

  All except for Tim. For his part, he stayed close to Orpheus, as he'd been ordered to do.

  The door to the projector room was closed. Orpheus signaled for their newest member to show what he'd learned so far. Tim nodded and went to the door, put his ear to the gap between the door and the frame, and stood absolutely motionless, listening. When he was certain that, at the very least, nothing was moving in there, he opened the door as quietly as possible.

  I should be more nervous than this, he thought. This is real, not training. Then again, I didn't have anyone watching my back then, either. He took a snapshot of each man's location and then, slightly emboldened, opened the door in one slow, smooth motion. Orpheus helped him out by shining his red lens LED flashlight into the room ahead of him. The red light saved their natural night vision, but the glow it cast was almost creepy enough to make Tim wish for a million or more candlepower spotlight.

  Orpheus entered the room just behind and swept the beam from left to right quickly then back again. Tim saw a dark shape slumped over a desk right next to the projector. He knew right away that it was a person; his only question was whether or not the person was dead or something worse. He moved forward to find out for sure but stopped short of touching the body. He could see that something was wrapped tightly around the dead man's neck. A closer inspection revealed that it was a belt.

  Suicide. That's better than the alternative. That could just as easily have been me. He wanted to confirm his diagnosis, so he put his hand on the dead man's shoulder and turned him over enough to do a cursory check of the body. There were no obvious bite marks.

  You died as yourself. Good one on you, pal.

  He gave Orpheus a thumbs up and walked over to the small window next to the projector. He looked below into the seating area but couldn't make out a thing. He pulled out a compact set of night vision goggles and switched them on. The room below was immediately bathed in a green glow...
>
  Red light, green light, it's like Christmas...

  ...and he started counting zombies.

  He counted twice and got eight both times. He flashed five fingers then three more to let Orpheus know the count.

  Orpheus said, “We're safe to talk right now. Hand them over.” He held out his hand to receive the goggles. He looked through them for a few seconds and said, “Training opportunity. Let's say I wanted you to go down there and put them down. How would you do it?”

  Tim wasn't sure if it was a test or a trick question or some other kind of setup, so he decided to just answer the question honestly and hoped that Orpheus approved. “I wouldn't. First thing I'd do would be look for a way to avoid them. Barring that, I'd slide open that window and shoot them from up here.”

  “Not bad. But this one time, we're going to take them head on. You need to bust your cherry in a semi-controlled environment before you step in some real shit. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Tim took point and motioned for the others to follow him. When they got to the entrance to the theater Tim was about to request some light when two high-powered beams flared behind him. His own shadow startled him for a second, but he thought that went unnoticed. He hoped so.

  Orpheus and Mutt were the two who weren't holding flashlights, and they had their weapons raised and ready. Mutt put his free hand on the door and said, “Don't freak. You got backup,” and opened the door much faster than Tim would have liked.

  Tim dropped the first one with a clean shot to the head before any of them had turned around.

  After that, things got a little tense.

  * * *

  When the first one dropped, Tim thought it might be a piece of cake. When he dropped the second, thought he may have given the zombies too much credit to rise to the level of piece of cake. They were sloooow, and too uncoordinated to even figure out a way to get to him because of the obstacles that the rows of seats presented.

  To punish him for being cocky, a Sprinter who had been shambling only seconds before started down the aisle at him. A second one actually began climbing clumsily, but effectively, over the seats.

  I had no idea they could do that.

  Rationally, Tim knew that the zombies, regardless of how old or new, lacked the higher brain functions involved in deceit. They simply reacted to the new stimulus.

  However, his paranoid mind believed that the bastards had been playing possum.

  Thankfully, his body reacted faster than his mind did, and he took the Sprinter in the aisle with two shots to the chest. It wasn't dead, but it did get tangled up under the seats when it fell, and Tim felt extremely lucky for that as the second one vaulted over the last two rows separating the two of them.

  Only one thought flashed through Tim's mind as the airborne zombie closed in on him: I don't have time to shoot. He instinctively thrust his hands forward, dropped his weapon in the process, and used the zombie's momentum to propel it safely past into the seats several rows away. Tim heard something crunch when it landed, but he was under no illusions that whatever had broken in its body would stop it from coming again.

  Tim scrambled for his gun and knocked it further under the seats. He looked over his shoulder and, as he'd feared, the zombie had righted itself and was coming towards him again, its arm bent at a weird angle at the elbow.

  Tim heard a pop and the Sprinter dropped where it stood. A few more followed and the rest of the zombies, most of which Tim had forgotten about while he dealt with the immediate threats, followed suit. In the span of a few seconds the theater had gone from out of control to completely silent, the faint wisps of gunsmoke providing the only movement. Tim felt his chest rising and falling with rapid, nearly panicked breaths, and he had to work to slow them down to normal.

  Everything that had been dead once was dead again, this time for good.

  Tim looked at Orpheus, who was replacing the rounds in his magazine. “Not bad. Grab your weapon and let's move.” That was all he said; he and Mutt started laughing about something while they searched the bodies. Tim found his pistol and replaced his own rounds, as well.

  Sam said, “Nice move. Don't ever drop your weapon, though. We may not always be around to have your back.”

  Tim nodded.

  “Search time, bait,” Fish said. “Quick and dirty.”

  They all started going through pockets and purses.

  “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

  “Anything useful. Food, medications, cameras, and cell phones with cameras. Grab every one of those. Memory cards will do, too.”

  “Why those?”

  “Boss's orders,” Sam said, looking in Orpheus' direction.

  “Good enough.” They spent the next five minutes grabbing what they could. Tim's final tally: 2 cell phones, a digital camera, a keychain multi-tool, a can of pepper spray, three packs of gum, a roll of breath mints, and a condom.

  “Nice haul,” Fish teased. “C'mon bait, time to play pack mule. Turn around.” Tim did so and Fish unzipped the compartment that had been sewn into the back of his jumpsuit. “Everybody, load up.” When they were done,Tim was lugging an extra five pounds, and Fish was passing out gum.

  They formed up, Tim right in the middle, next to Orpheus, who asked, “How do you feel?”

  “I'm okay. A little freaked out, but okay.”

  “Good. I had to know if you could handle the real thing.”

  “And?”

  Orpheus deadpanned. “You're still here.”

  “The worst part was how quiet they were. They didn't make a sound.”

  “Everyone says the same thing the first time. I know I did. I expected moaning and screaming and shit like that, too. But they're dead, bait.” Fish playfully poked Tim in the forehead. “They got no air in their lungs.”

  Tim mentally slapped himself for missing something so obvious.

  “That was a pretty sweet move you pulled, except I would've shot that fucker in the air like skeet.”

  “I bet you would have, Fish. I guess I was too busy trying not to shit myself.”

  * * *

  Their chosen landing site was no accident; it was one of the few places on the island that could accommodate a landing and takeoff, and it was as close to an inert “reap zone” that they could get. They stayed in the shadows as much as possible, scouting each area with the night vision before they continued. They moved at a plodding pace, but it was a lot better than rushing into something that they couldn't rush out of. Along the way, Tim watched his mates as much as he watched his surroundings. He emulated their movements, and he tried to learn to read their body language to lessen the need for speech or even hand signals.

  In this place, the quieter, the better.

  The silence was almost absolute, save for the occasional flutter of bat wings or chirping of an insect. Those were the times when Tim relaxed a little bit, because he knew that where zombies were, animals weren't, and vice versa. When the silence descended again, so did the tension. If the other four felt the same way, they didn't show it, so Tim tried not to, either.

  They must have sneaked by dozens of zombies (and hundreds of corpses), almost without incident. There was a moment when they came upon a bottleneck of cars that almost completely blocked the street. Zombies were plugging the only two gaps large enough to accommodate a human, but Mutt resorted to the old “throw a bottle and watch them chase the noise” trick to move them.

  After that, there was smooth sailing to the courthouse. The closer they got to the reap zone, the more the zombie population thinned out, until finally there were none. They made it to the courthouse. Orpheus decided against entering through the front door and instead led the team down the alley to the right of it. He knew the door was locked, because he was the one who had locked it a few weeks previous. He also had the key, and he used it. He held the rest of his team back as a rush of stale air came out to greet him. He sniffed the air and made a face of d
isgust. A few seconds later the smell hit Tim, and he assumed he made a similar face. It smelled awful, like rotting produce.

  “We're good,” Orpheus said, and he swung the door wider. He turned on his flashlight and entered, not all that cautiously, Tim noticed.

  * * *

  Once they were inside, they took a breather. They found some comfortable chairs in the waiting room and plopped down into them. Fish decided to take a power nap (how anyone could sleep under the circumstances was beyond Tim) while the other four munched on some energy bars. Between mouthfuls Orpheus said, “Once we clear as many buildings as we can before 0400 hours or so, we drop a few walkies here and there. We leave, close up so no strays can get in, and get back to the extraction point. We broadcast a message on the walkies telling people where to meet us or where we can find them, and that they only have a few hours before we leave. That's when Lena sends in Scythe.”

  Tim had an idea what Scythe was for, but he was still very interested.

  “Scythe is a necessary evil. We have to retake this town if we're to have any hope whatsoever of keeping the human race alive. If...if...we can do that, we stand an okay chance of surviving and bouncing all the way back. We are on an island, after all. If whatever started all of this is wiped out along with all of the zombies, we might make it.”

  Orpheus took another bite and continued. “They pump the buildings we cleared with a persistent chemical agent that eats any organic matter it comes in contact with. Seeing as they pump it anywhere and everywhere, including blowing it through the ventilation shafts, that means that all organic matter it comes in contact with disappears in under a week. Even bones. Any zombies we skip over...or flat-out miss...go away.”

  “And any living people we miss, too,” Tim added. He was starting to understand what he'd signed up for, and he felt a small sense of pride in his decision.