by Frank Martin
The tension in the room abruptly shifted as its occupants scanned one another with a sense of suspicion. The silence was brutal and had completely undone the minute trust they had built with one another.
At least until Nellie tore through the quiet with a distracting proclamation. “We need an avalanche to destroy the town.”
An ecstatic jolt ran through the room, pulling everyone’s gaze in Nellie’s direction. They remained silent, wondering, maybe even hoping that the woman was joking. And they stayed that way until she elaborated. “There’s no saving these people, and there’s too many of them to fight. We have to end this here and now before it gets any worse. Destroying the town is the only way.”
The room waited silently as its occupants slowly glanced around at each other to gauge their reactions. They remained speechless with blank expressions on all their faces until Scott Brooks was the first to break the quiet with a humored smile. “Well, this just got interesting.”
Peter followed up Scott’s remark by snapping in Nellie’s direction. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
With an almost cold chill to her voice, Nellie calmly retorted. “No. I’m not. In fact, I’m perfectly sane. But your friends and family, you know, the people outside trying to kill us, I’m pretty sure they are. And if we don’t do something, we’ll probably be joining them.”
Adding a crack of her own, Georgia was fairly indifferent to the plan. “Well, it’s an easy way to get out of my lease.”
While Molly felt a nostalgic sadness. “I’ve lived here my entire adult life. Is this really our only option?”
The village manager, on the other hand, still fought the idea as best he could. “Only option? I can’t believe it’s even AN option.”
The dissenting opinions started to squabble with the others and soon the discussion turned into a jumbled mess of voices. Stephanie stayed out of it, both literally and figuratively, from her position on the outskirts of the room. Through the heated debate though, she noticed Mr. Brooks had stopped his disinterested wandering and taken up shop at a similar position to hers on the other side of the room. He was listening intently to what everyone had to say and forming thoughts of his own. If Steph didn’t know any better, she would’ve assumed those thoughts could further be labeled as plans.
But Scott caught sight of the girl staring at him and quickly turned in her direction, which she abruptly countered by loudly joining the hectic conversation. “She’s right.”
Stephanie’s voice overpowered the others, and everyone stopped to allow the teenager to continue. “We don’t know what this is or even how to fight it. I mean, just look what it did to a small town in a couple of hours. With tourists and locals! If the military comes here and fails…or worse, joins them…who knows what will happen.”
The room once again fell flat, and Peter’s passive objections had taken a more practical angle. “Is an avalanche even possible? I thought we have measures to prevent that.”
With his extensive knowledge of the resort’s operations, Chris was quick to answer. “We do, but the blizzard left a lot of loose snow on the mountain. Usually the skiers, CATs and patrolmen knock it down, but now it’s just sitting on the trails ready to slide. A big enough explosion from inside Mountain Village will shake it all loose.”
Peter persisted with his mild arguments. “Inside? You mean destroy Mountain Village? Just blow it all up. That’s what you’re proposing?”
Chris nodded his head in the affirmative. “There’s explosives in the ski patrol office we could use.”
And Nellie added to his inventory. “I brought some in the truck, too.”
Trying to gather supporters, Peter pleaded to the others in the room. “So we’re actually considering this? Demolishing our home?”
When no one joined in, Nellie offered the man a note of compassion. “It’s not your home anymore. It’s just a graveyard.”
“But there might still be survivors hiding in their houses up there. And here in town, too. Are we just supposed to kill them all?”
Stephanie jumped in to add to the already developing plan. “What if we warn them somehow? Is there any way to get a message out?”
That idea sparked in Georgia a way for her to contribute. “We could try TORO. If anyone’s alive, I bet they still have their radios on.”
Feeling the pressure mounting against him, Peter continued his campaign against the plan. “I thought the radio went dead.”
But Georgia optimistically squashed that objection. “It did, but I might be able to put something together. I probably won't be able to have any long range capabilities, but a weak signal might at least make it to the local receivers.”
Not forgetting how all this came about, Nellie reminded them of the most important part. “Don’t forget about the mine. We’ll have to seal it off too, just in case.”
As the logistical patroller, Chris started organizing their plans out loud. “So we’re talking three teams. One for the radio station. One for the mine. And one up to the village.”
Just as the scheme started to take shape, Peter suddenly began to lose his cool. “No. No. No! This is insane. Crazy! You’re talking about annihilating this whole community. I can’t let that happen.”
Stephanie could sense each member of the group wanting to calm Peter down but ultimately hesitating to engage him. Even Nellie was reluctant to look the man in his eyes. But with nothing left to lose and a long way from home, the girl understood their situation better than most.
And that’s why she confidently stepped forward to approach Peter with her head held high. “I know you’re afraid.”
“I’m not scared of those things.”
Stephanie continued her forward march, eventually stopping right in front of Peter’s feet. “Not of them. Of losing everything you’ve ever known. But it’s already lost. All we can do now is make sure it doesn’t happen to somebody else.”
Peter lowered his eyes and took a deep breath, allowing a tumultuous wave of thoughts to calm down inside his head. Stephanie was ready to say more but chose to wait and let the gravity of reason return to the man before her.
Once it had, Peter opened his mouth to speak and out came a stronger, more decisive voice. “Our gas supplier keeps an underground reserve for emergencies in the basement of my office. It’s piped underneath the buildings, and if you open all the valves an explosion there might take out the entire village square.”
The group took his comment as a reluctant agreement, but Chris asked the obvious question just to make sure. “Does this mean you’re in?”
“I’ve been lying to myself, hoping this place could be saved.” Peter displayed a short, somber tone that quickly evaporated, replaced by the stern demands of a leader. “But nothing happens in that village until we’re all ready. Agreed?”
A series of silent nods put everyone in acknowledgment, and although it wasn't ideal, the daring plan put the room’s mood on a solid foundation. They had a goal and a course of action. All they had to do now was figure out who would be executing which part.
22
As she approached the gymnasium doors, Dr. Morris couldn't wipe the smile from her face. She'd done it. She'd really done it. She found a cure for the terror plaguing her town.
After she returned from her expedition to the pharmacy, the patients isolated in the classrooms began to turn one by one. Luckily, the nurses and volunteers were able to administer the medications before they became violent. Because it was a trial, every subject had to be given a different drug to try as many substances as possible. It was far from an ideal form of treatment. It was actually a desperate shot in the dark, but there was nothing left to lose. All Anna could do was cross her fingers and hope one of those unfortunate souls got better.
For well over an hour she randomly roamed the halls checking in on her patients one after the other. Some had yet to become ravenous and just continued to show standard flu like symptoms, which was a positive sign that there might be some way to slow down thei
r transformation. It was hardly a solution. In fact, some of the patients degenerated from their insanity into a state of bloody sluggishness, similar to the zombies she encountered in the pharmacy.
Each failed patient further drowned Anna's hopes in a pot of inevitable doom. Her aspirations diminished with every classroom she visited. But she wouldn't stop checking on them. After all, she wrestled with herself for hours about possible courses of action and a shotgun drug trial approach was the only thing she could come up with. Now there was nothing left for her to do but pray for a miracle. And she found it in room 221B.
When the classroom came into view through the glass window on the door, Dr. Morris almost didn't believe what she was seeing. She'd been so accustomed to watching the sick and insane that it was strange to see a healthy, coherent man pacing at the front of the class. She blinked. Then blinked again. And when the man was still there the realization finally hit her: she had found a cure.
Upon seeing Anna outside the classroom, the man ran up to the door and tried to open it. The doorknob was locked, just as it'd been the first hundred times he tried it. But now that he saw someone the man assumed he would be let free. He banged on the glass, begging and pleading for her to let him out. However, Anna was still stuck in a state of disbelief from her discovery. After so much death and despair compounded into a single day, the doctor was almost shell-shocked by her success.
But even after regaining her senses, Anna never made a move to unlock the door. In fact, she didn't even register the man's desperate cries for help. There were still too many variables. What if it wasn't permanent? What if the change became intermittent? What if he was just faking it? (Could these things even fake?) There was still much more work to do. And for that reason, Anna ignored the man's yelling and instead focused on the piece of paper pinned to the door.
It had a brief description of the man’s condition as well as the time and type of drug administered. It was some type of opiate compound Dr. Morris wasn’t too familiar with. But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that she had the information, and it was time to start spreading the news.
Like a gleeful madwoman, Anna tore through the empty halls back towards the gymnasium. And it was on that approach which she currently found herself, smiling from ear to ear with the knowledge that could save Telluride. In just a few short steps she would burst through the doors and begin planning on how best to deliver the cure to as many people as possible.
But upon stepping inside the temporary medical clinic she helped establish, Anna walked in on a scene of pure horror and chaos. Several of the patients had subtly turned into raging homicidal maniacs and were already well into the process of killing everyone in sight.
With most of the doors to the outside chained shut to prevent zombies from coming in, the frantic survivors were fearfully funneling towards the few exits available to them. In their path were ravenous madmen clawing and tearing their way from one unlucky bystander to the next. Their slaughter was random in its approach, and they spared no act of destruction as the fiends tossed and turned every cot and medical tray in their wake.
The once organized shelter had become a disaster itself. The sheer anarchy and terror of it all paralyzed Dr. Morris in her tracks. How could this be happening? She just gained the knowledge of their salvation only to have the hope of acting upon it ripped from her grasp.
But it wasn’t too late. As long as she was alive she had the will to make a difference. That will was meaningless just a few minutes ago. She had no direction or way to change her fate. But now, with the information she had just learned, there was a chance to fight back. And she would be damned if she was just going to give up after coming so far.
With a newfound sense of urgency, Anna stormed over to the large medication cabinet turned over at the side of the gym. She climbed on top, swung open the doors, and began digging through the mess of vials for compounds matching the cure. Behind her she continued to hear the screams and cries of the innocent being murdered while running for their lives. But Dr. Morris had to drown the massacre out and focus on the task at hand. Her search was just too important to fail. She had to find something.
And she did! First there was one. Then Anna stumbled upon several more clustered together in the same spot of the cabinet. She wanted to continue searching but was suddenly startled by a hand on her shoulder. Anna turned around ready for an attack only to see Beth staring back at her.
The young woman obviously caught the doctor by surprise, but she also looked down with a shocked expression. “What are you doing? You need to get out of here.”
Once Anna realized Beth was only concerned for their safety, the doctor went back to scrounging through the cabinets. “Just a second.”
The baffled look upon Miss McCabe’s face fell further into confusion. “Do you not see what’s going on? People are dying.”
“I know, and it’s all pointless unless…aha!”
Dr. Morris cut off her own sentence by ripping out a small black case from deep within the cabinet. She then opened it up, revealing a series of small syringes before stuffing the vials she found inside.
Beth watched on as her worry morphed into curiosity. “What is that?”
The doctor finished loading the medicine, zipped the case closed, and looked up at the girl with a smile of pure satisfaction. “A cure.”
Beth’s lips slowly parted as her brain began processing Dr. Morris’s revelation. The two women then remained in the same position while Anna allowed her time to absorb the information.
But the moment only lasted until Anna caught sight of a deranged man charging at them. “Look out!”
At the last second before impact, Dr. Morris tackled her former patient down and just out of the way of their would-be assailant’s attack. The man’s momentum took him flying into the cabinet at full speed, smashing the glass on the door and crumpling his body in on itself.
The loud noise of the crash echoed throughout the destroyed gymnasium, drawing the attention of the few other fiends finishing off their remaining victims. They all turned in the direction of the cabinet and slowly became less interested in the barely alive, bloody bodies around them.
Realizing what was about to happen, Beth and Anna both scrambled to their feet and took off in the direction of the gym’s sole remaining exit. Without waiting for the chase to begin, the two women sprinted for the door while Dr. Morris clutched onto the small case like her life depended on it. With only a few steps remaining, they both heard the quick stomps behind them as the others began their pursuit. But by then it was too late. The running women slammed through the double doors without every turning around to see who was running after them.
Anna knew their immediate escape wouldn’t be the end of the story. They still had to run. But that plan changed when her and Beth entered the mountain night only to be met by shrieks and cries of pain.
They both stopped just outside the door. They had to. Otherwise, the women would’ve run head first into an endless horde of zombies feasting upon the people that had escaped before them. The faint light flickering off the school barely illuminated the scene. It was hard to make out the faces of the deranged cannibals and their living meals through the darkness. Only bodies could be seen. But Anna recognized enough to know the situation wasn’t in their favor.
In fact, their sudden emergence from the building got the attention of the infected in the crowd not preoccupied with food. Those zombies then turned and began making their way towards the two petrified women.
Upon first glance, Anna assumed the mob in front of her was the same one she narrowly escaped from when it was still daylight. But their body language, coupled with the moaning, which had now become an endless stream of monotone grunts, told her something was off. Any hop in their step (and there wasn’t much to begin with) was replaced with a slow drone of a walk. Instead of a swift shuffle forward with a sense of urgency, the horde slumped along, moving one foot in front of the other without a single ni
mble bone in their bodies.
If it wasn’t for the adrenaline pumping its way through her veins, Dr. Morris might’ve found their mobility amusing. But then she remembered the more immediate threat fast approaching them from behind.
She grabbed onto Beth’s hand and together they ran along the side of the school, turning a corner around the building’s edge. The two women then stopped and eagerly looked back to see what became of their pursuers.
The slow moving mob surely saw their meal’s departure and began a sluggish shift in their direction. But no sooner had they fully turned themselves about than their more manic counterparts emerged through the double doors at full speed. Without missing a beat, the crazed savages locked onto the fading screams from the casualties in the crowd and barreled straight towards them. The whole throng slightly collapsed upon impact, tumbling over and disrupting their pursuit of the two women.
Grateful for the unlikely assist, Anna and Beth both shared a silent smile at their unusual luck. But the moment was brief. They had to keep moving and pressed on around to the other side of the school, where they began hopping through backyards in search of another shelter.
***
Since the other two plans couldn't get started until Georgia began hers, she and Molly were the first to leave. And for Scott, it wasn't a moment too soon. The punk girl's creepy purple hair was starting to freak him out.
As the local DJ, it was fairly obvious which task she was assigned to. And since Molly took a most personal interest in saving as many of her fellow townsfolk as possible, she readily volunteered to accompany Georgia on her mission.
Figuring out who would complete the other assignments was a bit more difficult. Given her personal history on the subject, everyone assumed Nellie would've jumped at the chance to close off the mine for good. But she declined, figuring setting the charges inside Mountain Village was the more important of the two explosions.
With that opening, the gears began to once again turn in the back of Brooks's mind. Ever since the crisis began, his plan to capitalize on the situation had to evolve along with the circumstances. First his plane failed to take off. Then his rescuers failed to escape when they had the chance. And now he was stuck in a cabin with people crazy enough to try and save the day.
