In the rearview mirror, I watched the front two Humvee’s of the convoy take an exit for Oregon, followed by the next two peeling off toward Montana. Harper’s Humvee took the next exit, staying in the state according to his plan, which left only two vehicles on the highway. The transport behind us contained three Army Rangers, two Navy S.E.A.L.S., and Douglas, as well as a container of nuclear coolant from a science university somewhere. This was it, whether we were ready or not.
“Hey, you okay?” Jessica asked from behind, placing her hand gently on my shoulder. I was riding shotgun, reading the map while Gabriel drove, with Jessica in the back. We had already rotated drivers completely, each taking a turn at the wheel, to keep everyone fresh for our arrival. I reached up and squeezed her hand, forcing a thin smile.
“Yeah, just trying to find any flaws in the plan, maybe see something we’ve missed.”
“If it would help, I could put my hand on your shoulder, too?” Gabriel offered, grinning.
“I think I’ll pass, thanks.” He glanced over at me, dropping the grin.
“Eric, whatever happens is going to happen. No amount of planning is going to change that at this point, so just embrace life and enjoy the scenery.” The look in his eyes told me he was just as nervous, but he had a great poker face.
Still, I took his advice, keeping my hand on Jessica’s but turning to look out the window. He may be a dick, but Gabriel was right about the scenery. Washington’s forestry was gorgeous, the cooler temperatures forming a pale backdrop to the lush trees and, thankfully, no humidity. It was definitely a welcome change from the past year, whether it was the frostbite of Pittsburg or the blazing humidity of the south. The only thing I knew about Washington’s terrain was what I had seen in the Twilight film, which was a surprisingly accurate depiction. Don’t judge me for watching that, by the way.
We followed the directions Lieutenant Murphy had given us to reach the Columbia Generating Station, but the urban city that we drove through quickly turned to rural terrain. A small downpour started up as we began to see the reactor site in the distance, six huge generators rising out of the ground. The closer we got, the larger they became, until their shadows darkened our view more than the overcast sky. Of course, the massive structures weren’t the only things I noticed ahead of us.
“Dammit,” Gabriel cursed, slowing the Humvee to a stop four-hundred yards out. He brought out binoculars from his pack, scanning the mostly-flat land spread out before us. Lowering the lenses, his eyes were intense as he held the binoculars out for me. I had seen figures moving, but the zoomed-in view made things less blurry.
“Holy…shit…” I exhaled, passing them back to Jessica, who voiced a similar sentiment. Gabriel unclipped the radio from the dashboard.
“H-five to Carrier-one, come in.”
“We read you loud and clear, H-five.” Static hummed on the line, probably from the weather interference.
“Are you seeing the activity outside of the reactor?”
“Wait one.” There was a pause, followed by a burst of static over a low whistle. “We see it. Do you want to deviate and see if there’s an alternate route?” Gabriel pressed the radio to his forehead, thinking with his eyes closed.
“We don’t have time to deviate, but no one could have expected this.” Gabriel turned to me, his eyes flicking to Jessica. “This decision will affect all of us, so what do you think?” I looked out at the reactor site, my brain now filling in the ferals that had to number at least a hundred standing between us and our objective. While I was curious, it didn’t matter what they were here for, it only mattered that they were in the way. I looked to Jessica, who nodded grimly, before answering.
“As one of my favorite action films said, ‘ride or die, bad boys for life.’ We’re in this to the end, Gabriel.” Jessica laughed and Gabriel smirked, nodding with a touch of insanity in his eyes.
“Alright,” he said, clicking on the radio. “We’re staying on-mission, Carrier-one. Let’s get this over with and get the hell out. Quick and clean. Over.”
“Copy that. On your six. Over.” The radio clicked off and we drove on, the headlights turning to illuminate a wave of confused ferals. As the beam of light washed over their faces, their expressions quickly shifted to ravenous hunger, an unnerving white to their eyes that told me some of them were blind.
At least that was something in our favor, though several red eyes stared through the darkness as they watched fresh meat roll in. One pair of eyes never wavered from watching me, unless that was my imagination. Either way, it was unnerving.
Gabriel drove straight through, plowing into the first line of ferals without remorse or hesitation, and the Humvee jerked as the bodies were sucked underneath. Our vehicles make short work of the gate, crashing through the chain and taking a section of fence for a ride before it eventually slid off to the side. While we could have possibly stayed back and picked off the ferals from a distance, reducing their numbers or possibly removing the threats entirely, time wasn’t in our favor to play it safe. There was no telling how close the reactor was to blowing, so we would have to deal with the ferals on our way out.
With the rain pounding on our windows, we barely spotted the main building, since no lights were on, and drove straight for it. Gabriel rolled the Humvee to a stop as close as possible to the front doors, running to them and beginning to pry them open while Jessica and I pulled the duffel bags out of the back hatch. The rest of our team already had the coolant on a dolly and were rolling it toward the entrance when the first feral rounded the corner of the building, thirty feet away.
“Shit,” I muttered, taking a step toward it and firing a three-round burst. Its feet slid forward, but its torso lost all forward momentum as my bullets hit home. “Gabriel, how’s the door coming?” I shouted to be heard over the storm, with lightning starting to add to the mix.
“Almost got it…there!” He yelled, snapping the lock on the chain and yanking on the links to rip the doors open. Two of the Rangers stood next to me while the S.E.A.L.S. watched the opposite side of the building. Everyone else stuck close to the coolant, rolling it inside and yelling for us to follow. The five of us were almost to the doors when a wave of ferals attacked, coming at us from the other end of the station.
“Look out!” Gabriel called out, pulling me inside the doors as I barely avoided a slash from a particularly grotesque feral. It wielded a kitchen knife, the blade passing close enough for me to hear the air move, but I fell out of the way. One of the S.E.A.L.S. pivoted and slammed the stock of his weapon into its skull, sending the feral to the ground before tapping his brother on the shoulder. They moved inside as one, helping me up before we shut the door. While Gabriel had been busy saving me, one of the Rangers hadn’t been so lucky, his blood coloring the rain outside the doors from his stomach being split open. A bullet hole at the crest of his skull saved him the pain of being eaten alive, but it wasn’t much of a silver lining. His fellow Ranger that had done the deed looked distant for a moment before pulling a heavy desk in front of the doors, one of the S.E.A.L.S. offering his condolences.
As we followed after Douglas, I couldn’t help but notice Gabriel holding his side. He caught my look of concern and waved it off, shaking his head. Rather than wait for me to press the issue, he jogged ahead, yelling back for me to hurry. Damn him, but I picked up my pace and rushed to catch up with the group as we headed for the reactor entrance.
Chapter 48
Expecting the worst, I was unusually surprised at how clean the halls of the complex were. Having been in too many buildings ravaged by the infection, blood wasn’t smeared over the walls, viscera wasn’t scattered on the ground…it was almost as if the interior of the reactor was untouched. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, but the group kept moving forward, rolling the coolant toward our objective.
After making a pit-stop to break into the manager’s office, the door to the reactor stood like a gate to Hell, full of menace and heat. The
group made sure the area was secure before giving Douglas the okay. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, because it was too quiet, but there was something even more sinister that I couldn’t put my finger on. I mean, why were the ferals gathered outside? They would only be here if there was food inside, but we hadn’t seen any…
Praying I was wrong, I stepped back from the door and brought up my M4’s night-vision optics to see down the hallway. It wasn’t much, just a torn lab coat that had been discarded, but a dark stain around the tear set off alarm bells in my head. I turned, shouting, “Stop,” but Douglas had already slid the card through the reader. The door’s seal depressurized with a hiss and a plume of mist filled the threshold, before I saw a swirl of fog as movement squeezed through the slowly-opening door.
“Douglas, get back!” I called out, shifting my rifle to fire at the opening, but he was in my line of fire. The skin so thin that it was practically melting off the bone, a zombified hand reached out and pulled Douglas forward into the mist, followed by his blood-curdling scream. The two soldiers already facing the reactor entrance opened fire immediately, not hesitating as they knew Douglas was likely already dead, while the other two pivoted to assist. Jessica jumped back as three zombies stumbled out of the entryway, which was finally clearing of mist, but one managed to grab her leg as it was falling.
In the night vision, the things were grotesque, their flesh glistening like it was liquidated. I didn’t have time to look at the other two, but the one in my crosshairs was missing its eyes, with its lips peeled back so far that I could see inside the jaw that was missing teeth or a tongue. Its ears were basically gone, too, which is why it didn’t seem to have a clear target as it flopped forward to pull its way up Jessica’s body, though I’m not sure what it would have done to bite her.
I ended that journey before it began, though, splattering the clean tiles with a fresh coating of dark blood before dispatching another zombie. We made short work of the four at the reactor entrance before the ranger closest to the door reached in and pulled Douglas out of the foggy air. He hadn’t been bitten, but I saw him wince as he held his shoulder, which confirmed the worst. Helping Jessica up, I stared at the train wreck of a zombie lying dead.
“What the hell are they, Douglas? I thought all of the infected were gone!” I tried to be gentle, knowing he was now dying whether we liked it or not, but I needed an answer to what the fuck I was looking at.
“I don’t know,” he coughed out, inhaling sharply as the same ranger bandaged his shoulder. I flicked up my rifle to see three streaks parting his skin, where a zombie had dug its fingers in to tear at his arteries. “It could be a leak in the coolant that preserved them for such a long duration, or maybe…” He trailed off before ripping open a duffel bag and withdrawing a Geiger counter. Turning it on, the counter went wild as soon as he waved it over the zombie at my feet. “The radiation could have somehow kept their organs and skin intact enough to still function.”
“Great.” That explained why the zombie in the California sewer had been able to stay upright after so long.
“Wait, so should we put on our Hazmat suits? If these things are as radioactive as that counter says, wouldn’t we be in deep shit if we got too close?” One of the S.E.A.L.S. asked, his voice only slightly wavering.
“That’s probably best, yeah,” Douglas answered, beginning to pull suits out of the duffel bags we got from Gabriel’s trunk. Speaking of that bastard…I glanced around the room and found him leaning against the door frame, strangely quiet during this whole exchange. I took a second Hazmat suit and brought it over to him.
“You’re unusually silent. Are you sure there’s nothing I need to be worried about?” I held the rubber out to him and he started to put it on, setting his rifle to the side.
“There absolutely is, Eric. It’s the giant fucking bomb sitting underneath us that could go off at any moment.” He pulled on the last arm of his suit. “I mean, if you really must know, I guess it all started when I was a child…” He broke into a laugh and picked up his rifle. “I can’t even talk like that with a straight face. I’ll be okay once we’re done with the mission, yeah?”
“Deal,” I said, pulling on my own suit and taking the lead with Jessica, who fell in next to me as we began to take the stairs down. Dim red lighting flickered in places, reinforcing my earlier analogy of where it led, and illuminated the kind of scene that I had expected up top. Blood, gore, organs, and random patches of flesh filled the stairwell, completing the disgusting tableau with the scent of vomit and copper.
“What’s your take on this?” I whispered to Jessica, trying to keep my nerves level.
“My guess is that they fled down here when the shit finally came their way. One of the bastards was selfish and didn’t tell the others he had been bitten,” she explained, which fit with the discarded lab coat. It would have been a dead giveaway that they were infected. “After they sealed the door, our doctor didn’t feel so well and turned, killing or infecting everyone down here with them.”
“So, you think they’re all down here? Everyone that ran this site?” I heard her suit shift as she looked at me.
“I sure as hell hope not, but yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.” I slowed down, dropping closer to be heard.
“Douglas, how many people would you say were working here when the outbreak made it this far?” He wasn’t looking good, beginning to fade as sweat beaded on his face.
“I’d say, assuming no one left before, somewhere north of a couple hundred. Now, if you’re talking about who could have made it down here in time,” he inhaled, running out of breath, “it would be a significantly smaller number.” At least that was comforting, I thought, before immediately regretting it.
“So, somewhere down here, there are potentially a couple hundred hostiles that give off radiation?” One of the rangers holding down the rear voiced his concern. He wasn’t the only one, though, because everyone’s eyes were dancing around the tight confines of the hall as we descended the last step. The two S.E.A.L.S. that had carried the coolant down the stairwell exhaled as they set it down on flat ground, able to rest their arms.
The emergency lights flickered and showed too many open doors to the sides down a long hallway, ending in panoramic glass much like in Houston. While each of the dozen rooms could have been empty, they could have also housed a disturbing variation of the infected, which made my stomach seize up.
“The reactor is down there,” Douglas breathed, pointing over my shoulder at the end of the hall. Through the glass, I could see a rounded, metal structure rising over the wall. The problem was that, even with suppressors, one shot would give away our position and, while these things didn’t seem to have much in the way of senses, possibly bring the entire hoard down on us. In the narrow space of the hallway, it would literally become a bloodbath.
“Let’s take it slow…” I took a deep breath, gagging on the thick smell, and started forward. The cramped quarters gave me flashbacks of the California sewer tunnel, the claustrophobia creeping in to further my paranoia.
Mills and I passed the first room, hearing an odd sound as we approached the open doors. The gurgling breaths became more clear as we looked inside, wishing we hadn’t as we saw a group of the sinewy undead. Resisting the urge to curse under my breath, I waved the group forward and motioned for everyone to stay silent. Tension became tangible, hanging in the air as we passed each room and grew closer to the reactor.
We were two rooms from the end of the hall when the crunch of glass went off like a grenade, making everyone freeze. With the zombies being down here so long, they must have knocked around equipment, so it made sense that glass was lying around on the ground, but it had slipped my mind among the numerous other problems. Glancing back down the hall, Douglas was standing stark still, refusing to set the rest of his foot down, but the damage had already been done as that gurgling wheeze suddenly raised in volume.
With their vocal chords destroyed, that sound m
ust have been their version of the droning moan, but it was just as effective. Chaos erupted as crimson infected flooded the hallway, spilling into the tight space and overwhelming us in seconds. Gunfire opened up, echoing off the tight quarters with deafening results, and for sixty seconds, pandemonium reigned.
I relied solely on my instincts to survive, falling to a routine of fire, pivot, repeat. Using the M4, I shoved back several of the infected to create some distance and continue to rain lead. Once the magazine clicked empty, rather than try to reload, I let the rifle drop to hang around my neck and reached for my Sig. Between flashes of darkness, the emergency lights showed a series of sickening images. Bodies were piling up on the ground, blood splashing so thick in some areas that I was slipping as I tried to move forward. One of the S.E.A.L.S. was engaged in hand-to-hand combat, having angled Douglas behind him, but two more zombies attacked him, slashing through his Hazmat suit. If he made it through this without being infected, I hoped the radiation wouldn’t be enough to be a problem, but I doubted that hope with how far right the needle went on the Geiger.
A minute later, all of the infected lay on the ground, with our group still upright. Douglas was pale, even under the lighting, and many of our party looked worn down, but we were all still alive and that counted for a lot after that shit.
A Broken World (Book 3): Fractured Memories Page 20
