“What should we do with them?” Roy said.
“I don’t think they’ll accommodate us by backing away from the door,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah, that’s a problem, but let’s keep looking for what’s going on here,” I said.
Beyond the quarantine enclosure there was another lab, with an old fashioned blackboard that had a message scrawled on it.
“Think that’s the teacher,” Jimmy said, indicating the slumped white coated figure sitting at a high-top bench.
“School’s out. Forever,” Roy said, moving forward and using the barrel of his AR-15 to pick up the man’s head, lifting the loose scalp instead.
“Tell you what, this is some extreme unit discipline here,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah. Like they knew what this was going to turn into,” I said.
“What, you think this is a case of mass existential suicide,” Jimmy said. “I think they were infected and decided to beat the devil.”
“I think we’re going to find the answers by following the instructions written on the blackboard,” I said. “Let’s do it topside, though.”
Jimmy went to the blackboard and removed the item duct-taped to the surface, underneath the large letters that said: “WATCH THIS DVD.”
Chapter 12
“Awfully nice of him to leave a portable DVD player — with two kinds of power cords,” Jimmy said.
“What do you want, he was a military scientist, if they could figure out how to over engineer how to take a piss they would’ve,” Roy said.
“You know, I believe there was a field manual addendum of human waste functions in the Army if I remember correctly,” I said. I was so happy to be out of that underground tomb I was actually almost smiling.
“I particularly like the fact that it’s a Mickey Mouse official DVD player,” Jimmy said.
“Probably his kids,” Roy said.
“Don’t be so sure about that. There were a whole lot of adult Disney fetishists, back in the day,” I said.
“Yeah well, we don’t need it, the Expo’s all got overhead players,” Jimmy said.
“Still, whatever he wanted to say was important enough for him to go to the trouble to save it — either it was a futile gesture or one of amazing faith, so let’s see what he had to say.”
Even with the tripwire perimeter around us, and the Zekes locked in the quarantine room, one of us had to stay outside and patrol. Roy volunteered.
In the backseat of the Expo, Jimmy said, “Hey there’s no reason for us to be uncomfortable, I’m turning on the A.C.” and leaned forward to turn the ignition on. “Think maybe there’s some microwave popcorn back in the kitchen, we could —”
“Let’s watch the DVD,” I said.
The video opened to a shot of the blackboard filled with the kind of arcane notations that you never know are for real or if they’re just gibberish, and then the scientist we saw downstairs came on camera, with his scalp intact but his confidence was clearly shaken.
“Hello, my name is Doctor Robert Townsend, that’s a PhD. Doctor, in astrogeology, and I am recording this in the hope that surviving humans find it someday — sooner would be better than later, of course, considering what we’re dealing with, and that they will be able to use what I am presenting to help preserve our species.
As of this recording, that statement is somewhat hyperbolic — is that a proper form of the word? — but from what I understand at this point, it will prove to be true.
What we do here, at this Air Force facility, is catalogue and inspect space rocks, in simplest terms. Except for the very few specimens that have been brought back from manned space flight, most of our working stock comes from debris that falls to earth as a matter of course. And this happens with far more frequency and in more volume than the layperson would suspect, nothing on the scale of something you’d see in a science fiction movie, like Armageddon, where the miles-wide rock threatens a dinosaur level extinction event, but mostly fist-sized samples, a boulder here and there and lots and lots of pebbles. Ha, co-co pebbles my little girl used to call them, because they came from comets, or at least she thought that was where they all came from. No matter, now.
The importance of these rocks, to the layperson, might even seem even less significant than their size. I mean, what is the big deal, right, essentially it’s still just a rock, even though it came from somewhere else.
But they’re important because they help us understand how the universe was born, and when, and then there’s also the matter of the theory that holds that life on earth actually came to be because of amino acids that cam from off-world — which has lead to the typically bad scientist joke, ‘E.T. Didn’t Have to Make a Long-Distance Call.’
The study of these organic compounds is important for several reasons, in that they can better help us understand what our pre-historic origins looked like, expose us to proteins we weren’t aware of, which leads us to question what life might be like elsewhere, and also has long-term possibilities in genetic research and therapy.
We are, unfortunately because we are a military facility, also looking out for compounds that might have military applications, either through germ and-or genetic warfare, metals that might have interesting properties or crystals that might prove useful in developing more advanced computer applications.
It sounds ominous but it’s mostly mundane work, because at the end of the day we’re little more than glorified sea shell scavengers strolling along a planet-wide beach, picking up things that wash up on our shore.
Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but I have to assume this is going to be found by non-technical folks. On the other hand, assuming another astrogeologist is going to find this would be pretty absurd. By the way, I hope those of you watching this are safe and able to use this to deal with the horror from space — it’s quite Lovecraftian, actually, though I don’t believe he ever used microscopic organisms as a plot device.
Well — I’ve gone and spoiled the ending, haven’t I? The short answer to the question you may have asked yourselves — where did this mutation come from — is that it came from outer space, which was actually used as a title for a movie about aliens crash landing in Arizona, but that story had a rather more benign ending than this one.
Since you are watching this, I just want to assure you you’re under no danger of contracting the disease, even though you obviously have been in the lab to retrieve this DVD.
In its original format, the pathogen, which I believe to be a virus of some sort, was alive and capable of airborne transmission and infection. And that was part of the problem, its original form I mean, because those who are infected via the airborne delivery take a much longer time to demonstrate symptoms — on the order of about sixteen hours. It’s only after a person has been fully transformed by the airborne virus —”
Roy broke in over the walkie: “Guys, we got a Zeke problem down the road, couple dozen it looks like, fight or flight?”
I had already turned off the DVD as Roy was talking.
“Both,” Jimmy and I answered.
Chapter 13
I had my own glasses out and up to look where Roy was pointing. About a mile or two out, coming over the hazy rise, was a line of Zekes out for a stroll. They were definitely headed in our direction. A quick scan showed no other activity.
“Okay, we’ve got some time,” I said. “You two take down the tripwire mines, I’m going to blow those interior doors and seal Zeke downstairs.”
“What if someone comes along down the road,” Roy said.
“Ah, I’ll paint a sign on the front door, best we can do, but I don’t think anyone’s going to just amble along, and if they do I want to make sure some scavengers don’t open up a can of trouble for themselves.”
The timed mine took down the rear roof of the building, all in a neat pile over where the elevator and stairs led down to the laboratory. In a supply locker I had found a roll of duct tape, no paint and didn’t have time to forage.
Jimmy and Roy watched from their Expos as I taped a giant letter ‘Z’ to one of the outer doors, and a triangle to the other.
“Delta Zulu lives here,” Jimmy called out, “Let’s roll, amigoes!”
In the Expo and on the walkie, I asked, “Do we have a head count, number one, and number two, Roy, have you calculated how far the closest town is?”
Jimmy: “We got twenty-eight Zekes that are in sight.”
“In sight being the operative word,” I said.
“Yeah, and the closest town is 32 miles out,” Roy said.
“At Zeke’s typical one-point-five mile an hour shamble, that means what, they been on the move since, what, last Wednesday,” Jimmy said. “And this is the first we’re seeing them.”
“That’s assuming they stuck to the road and does it really matter,” I said.
“Don’t suppose you want to play Death Race 2000,” Jimmy said.
“No, let’s preserve the metal until we’re actually in a jam where we have to rely on it,” I said. “Standard V-formation, stop three hundred yards out, fifty wide, use bipods for early shots.”
“10-4,” Jimmy said, followed by Roy’s, “Copy that.”
The Zekes kept shambling out of the haze as we got into position, and waited for them to get into range. Even with the promise of resupply, it was a bad habit to spray bullets at Zeke, unless you had a fifty and could afford to just throw the Cusinart at them, so we waited, took our shots and put them all down in under five minutes.
“Roy, keep scanning for Zeke, Jimmy, hold your position,” I said, getting back in the Expo and driving up to the bodies. One of the early shots was still twitching, looked like an eye shot, so I aimed the front right tire for his skull and squished him, extra dead. The slow drive confirmed what concerned me — several of these Zekes were fresher looking than the rest, their clothes not tattered and what was left of their bodies not as ravaged by their Zeekiness.
I suspected one or more of those tracking devices could be found in the clothing of the fresher Zekes, but messing around in a pile of dead zombies was not something you undertook lightly. Drop ‘em and keep moving.
“Okay, guys, let’s saddle up and get on out of here,” I said over the walkie.
“Where we headed,” Jimmy said.
“San Diego,” I said. Breem’s HQ.”
“Short way takes us along the border, long way will take all day if we push through,” Roy said.
“Border road has a greater population, so we’re avoiding it,” I said.
“Bet they have real hot showers, not any of those damned solar showers,” Jimmy said.
“And secure perimeters, Roy said.
“Okay then, we’re motivated, so let’s get moving,” I said. “You two pull ahead, I’ll follow.” Pulling the Expo well away from the downed Zekes, I stopped the vehicle, retrieved the DVD from the car’s player and set up the portable on the passenger seat, to finish hearing Townsend’s story.
“It’s only after a person has been fully transformed by the airborne virus, that they become the flesh-eating monstrosities you are most likely still dealing with.
And that explains the unaltered, but still dead, bodies you have discovered here in our laboratory. The zombies locked up in the quarantine room were originally my esteemed colleagues that had been working on the rather unusual space geode we had discovered. A geode, of course, is an otherwise normal rock that is hollow, and often contains rather pretty crystal formations. As per our usual protocol, we had x-rayed some specimens that had been brought in and discovered the hollow center. Even in our relatively ignorant state we knew that simply cracking it open could be dangerous, so we approached it with biohazard protocol — meaning, the quarantine room.
But I didn’t supervise the cracking open of the specimen, and one of our more impulsive junior researchers did it in the open air, that is, not in a sealed biosafety cabinet.
I didn’t learn this of course until I came in the morning after the damage had been done. When I walked up to the glass of the q-room and saw the specimen sitting out in the open, it sent a chill down my spine, that, even now, I can’t equal.
I immediately spoke to my senior colleague inside the room, informing him I was shutting the entrance until I could run tests on those outside the room. As you saw for yourself, there were a few dozen people down here, but outside the room. By my calculation, they had been infected about six hours after the people inside the room had been — and those people had all gone topside.
The blood tests confirmed my fears — something was inside us — all of us, even me, and we locked down the station.
And waited for the effect to come over the people in the quarantine room. While we waited, I tested every person outside the q. We all had it in us.
Which meant what was happening to them would happen to us.”
Chapter 14
Townsend took a drink of water before continuing. “In short, we knew we were going to turn into those things — hah, not very scientific, but there you have it.
Since I am not a biologist or medical researcher, my conclusion that there is no cure for this virus may prove to be partially or completely incorrect. But I know there is no fixing this problem in the little time we have left and so we had a meeting of all the personnel down here and have decided to euthanize the infected, which is a fancy way of saying committing mass suicide.
Partly, I think, is guilt. We let the cat out of the cosmic bag, and worse, which I haven’t gone into yet, some of the people who were in the q-room yesterday had a day off today — meaning they are out there, in the population and passing on the infection via violent means. We have already had reports of these — these things — tearing into their family and neighbors, and as you know, those so infected in turn become carriers and spreaders of the disease.
We have contacted our superiors and staff at various agencies, asking for a complete quarantine of this region of the United States, but as you might expect there is simply no protocol for locking down a huge area of the country, and even if there was, it couldn’t happen fast enough to halt the spread in time.
The only hope that I do have is that our sister lab, the one up in Oregon, may have better luck with either not spreading the virus, or, since they are a med facility, in coming up with some kind of cure, or perhaps a vaccine.
That’s right, we sent a geode that was almost identical to the one we had here, to another lab. For all we know, they made a similar mistake to the one we did, and so there are now two epicenters for the spread of the virus. We — or at least, I — will never know. That’s because the lab went dark, meaning we can’t get in touch with them. So they either succumbed to it the way we did, or figured it out and decided to take themselves offline, in order to defend themselves. Or maybe something in between.
So there you have it. On a separate disc, which you’ll find in the carrying case, is all the science we were able to extract in the last day or so, along with the contact info for the Oregon lab. For those of you viewing this, you have probably made it through quite a lot, which should give you hope. And I wish you well. As you are well aware, the fate of our species lies in your continued ability to survive. Farewell.”
Chapter 15
“Life is … a mistake.” The detached head stared out of black eyes, pointed in the direction of the researchers, who couldn’t tell if they were being seen.
This was the fifth zombie they had decapitated and hooked up to the monitoring equipment, and the first they had managed to stimulate into language.
“I don’t know whether to call that progress or not,” said Dr. Melissa Schwartz, second in charge of the Biological Defense Lab, outside of Medford, Oregon.
“It is possible it’s just being petulant,” said Vinny DeMaio, her assistant. “You know, like a captured Taliban fighter or something. Allah is on our side, and will rain death upon you infidels.”
“Hah! Remember when people running around pissed off at Pamela Anderson fake
boobs was our biggest problem,” Schwartz said.
“So what should we do, keep shocking it until we get the whole story? And does this fall under the no torture memo regarding enemy combatants?” DeMaio said.
“You are a laugh riot today, Vinny,” Schwartz said. “Yes, we need to understand more of what’s going on here.”
“You still wedded to the idea that there’s a design behind this — that it’s not just a bad draw on the cosmic dance card? I mean, live by the big bang die by the big bang kind of situation?”
“I understand that’s possible. Maybe the dinosaurs were running around saying, ‘why me,’ after the asteroid hit, and maybe we’re just looking for meaning in a meaningless void, but understanding the virus is a legitimate step in figuring out how to deal with it.”
Zach Carter, Zombie Killer Page 5
