Alan Dale - Death Nation's Army 01

by Dna Code Flesh

  Yes, chewing.

  Koko soon fell backwards from the shock and blood loss and ended up on her back, obviously soon to be another casualty in all of this madness.

  The doctors, incoherent and panicky, ran for the locked lab doors. Each worked the handle to no avail to open them, forgetting at first they each needed to have their key cards placed in the read slots simultaneously and only after alerting military personnel waiting in the hall.

  Due to this error under duress, Moreland was next on Shah’s hit list as the maybe-not-dead man sprang from the operating table and launched himself at the doctor.

  Banning stepped aside as Shah grabbed Moreland’s right arm to spin her around and within moments pulled it completely off from the shoulder through brute force.

  Behind the scenes, Koko was seen taking her last breath as she died from the apparent blood loss. Shortly thereafter Moreland’s screams rose to inhuman decibel levels just as Shah flung the arm toward the wall, ultimately knocking out the sole video camera in place for the lab. The last thing anyone could make out was Shah moving into toward Moreland to take the blood from the gaping wound in her shoulder and take a bite of meaty, dangling flesh.

  That was what one camera told of the story of Patient Zero.

  The next part of the story came by way of the two cameras placed in the adjoining corridor to Lab 43.

  A soldier, to date still unnamed, listened outside the lab, asking if everything was all right. Normally, he could not enter without the key codes from the doctors punched in from the other side, but the military had issued override protocols, unknown to the medical staff, in case of any type of emergency. This would allow any military personnel to enter at any time.

  So after a few moments, the solider – watched from about 15 degrees off of his left shoulder – could be seen entered a code of some kind only moments after preparing his rifle to kill if this current drama required it.

  As the door opened the viewer immediately heard growls, growls from at least two different voices.

  Or was it three?

  The solider took a step back and rushed to get his rifle in place.

  “Doctors…doctors…what…,” his shock was evident. The look of disgust and revulsion evident on his face. If one looked close enough, they could also see in the background a one nurse Koko taking bites of flesh from the arms of Doctor Banning, who appeared to still be alive.

  Faintly, a male voice could be heard telling the soldier to “get out of here now…”

  But the solider, trained to kill and deal with any threat no matter what kind they faced, wouldn’t budge.

  “Shah…Shah?” The solider yelled. “Quit…quit…

  “Quit, eating the doctor.”

  Training his weapon toward the right side of the room, the soldier appeared to set his aim on something when the other soldier in the corridor finally made his way down to help.

  “What the hell is going on?” The newly arrived military man slapped the stunned first soldier on the shoulder, turning him around, forcing him to lose aim on his target.

  Big mistake.

  Moments later, both Shah and Doctor Moreland flew out of the room, hands raised, clutching the air, searching for a new victim.

  And finding one.

  Shah took the first soldier, grabbing him by the face and with brutal and unconscious force ripped the flesh from the young man, bringing more screams.

  Moreland tripped moments before getting to the other solider but found fortune as her head landed at the feet of the intended target. The former doctor immediately scrambled and got a hold of the soldier’s leg and took a bite out of his thigh, pulling huge, stringy, pieces of flesh from bone. Even in his dying moments the brave soldier managed to get a couple of shots at Moreland, lying at his feet, placing two, new, gaping holes in his attacker’s back.

  Yet, it made no difference at all, as more of the soldier’s thigh soon became another part of the meal.

  Shah managed to rip his prey’s head completely from the neck and found a way to peel back the scalp, feasting on such a young and once, full of potential, brain.

  To make things even more horrifying - or as some NWO officials found, funny – was watching back in the room, the faint image of Doctor Banning, presumed dead, look up, sit up, watch Koko continuing to feast on his still warm flesh. Banning growled, backhanded the nurse and stopped the feeding frenzy almost immediately. It appeared they readied to fight one another before thinking twice and calling a truce. Hearing the sounds of death and feeding only feet away, the Koko and Banning scrats rolled around on the ground and moved toward a helping of soldier flesh.

  Research found the scrats eat the flesh of the newly dead for just a few moments before the cold takes over, the cocktail brings the victim to reanimation and the undead army added a new member.

  It was said to have been about three minutes after the second soldier died and became a meal to Moreland and Koko when he finally rose. This time, the soldier growled at his two dinner guests and the feeding stopped. Soon all three joined Shah and Banning at finishing off the beheaded military man. It took almost 20 minutes for the quintet to eat the body to the bone, leaving nothing behind, as entrails, flesh and sinew were all made a part of the full course delight.

  Once done, the five slowly rose and found their way toward the direction of the corridor entry way.

  Looking back at the video it took a few rewind attempts to figure it was indeed Banning who pushed the alarm at 12:54 p.m.

  As the five killers, later to be called scrats, pounded on the door to be let out, foyer videotapes saw Romantine anxiously waiting for some kind of order. The foyer video tape’s audio was rendered inaudible due to the loud banging on the door to Wing B. Soon the other four military men securing wings A and C joined Romantine in the foyer, all obviously tense and also very ready to fight.

  Records showed that at 1:11 p.m. Lt. Seamus Callaghan ordered the men to “engage.”

  The video then shows Romantine keying in the code to open Wing B. What it also shows is in his panic, he never completely closed the door that led out of this particular segment of the facility.

  At 1:12 p.m. with guns aimed and ready, the five soldiers ended up meeting with a force none would have ever imagined. They were immediately taken down by one scrat apiece, all becoming a victim to what slowly began to appear as an unending need to feed.

  It took some time for the scrats to finish off the five hopeless soldiers, leaving three of the victims head-intact. Soon eight scrats rose off the floor, realizing all the available flesh had been devoured and seeing two corridors full of potential meals awaiting them. There was the open foyer door leading to the world at large and the scrats began their march in adding to their numbers and feeding their individual, black holes of hunger.

  Alec Romantine could be seen stumbling out of the foyer and into the main entrance lobby of this particular building. As he did, he walked by his former work station and his glowing IPAD. An email from his, no longer girlfriend, had just arrived.

  As it was reported earlier…Alec Romantine never emailed Barbara or anyone else, ever again…

  It didn’t take long for the scrats’ numbers to grow. In minutes a bite and ultimate death, would lead to the rise of another member of the cannibals which would soon attempt to inherent the earth.

  Test Zone Zero stood no chance as the military never held a full presence with the numerous staggered shifts. The unarmed doctors were even more vulnerable as they along with their protectors fell. By the time enough armed military personnel arrived, a plenty large number of scrats took liberties with the facility and made it their own.

  It also didn’t help any when Draco Fortellis was alerted to this event only moments after word of the alarm and subsequent video was brought to him.

  Instead of sending more military out to the facility to combat the menace, he scrambled all radio contact out of Test Zone Zero so all calls for help would reach no one. The entrance and exits w
ere locked down from Berlin and the slaughter was officially on. It took a few days for the entire facility to be tagged as “alive-free” before Fortellis made his final fateful decision to rid the Utopias of their revolutionary and low class threat:

  Set them loose.

  With no people of any real importance living in Oceania and the headquarters of the revolutionary movements coming out of there, why not? Fortellis, knowing the country was an island, guessed this would be the perfect distraction needed for the NWO. The pests beneath his feet would lose many of its high-ranking numbers to distraction of battling a new threat. The NWO would become of secondary importance due to having to deal with what’s in front of them. Topping that off would be a high casualty count and their movements would be setback months. Years. Sure, there was a network of revolutionaries placed all over the globe. But, this would be a major hit.

  Besides, who cared about losing Australia, was Fortellis’ assertion at such a critical juncture.

  Approximately 8,000 scrats remained inside the facility when the feeding ended. That was plenty to send out to start a new war. At least for the time being.

  Ah, for the time being.

  Set them loose.

  And that, he did….

  The feeding of the flesh had officially commenced.

  Fortellis, of course, took for granted, at least during those first days of the scrat outbreak just how serious the threat promised to be.

  Arrogance or a lack naivety may have played a large role in the scrats being allowed to run rampant throughout Australia. Many people followed enough old zombie movies to know to aim for the head, assuming the brain dictated everything, and appeared to guess right. Yet, as the scrats moved out of Test Zone Zero and moved toward the higher populated areas they easily increased their numbers as they plowed toward the major feeding grounds with the easy pickings in their nearby bedroom and rural communities.

  Of course with no news of the security breech and the presence of a new threat not reported due to the executive decision made by Fortellis, no one was prepared for what was coming next. Many didn’t know the incubation period for the virus rendering a bite victim survivor to turn into a scrat. Many would be picked up on the side of the road by well-intended Samaritans who would learn only hours later they saved their own grim reaper. Some would gain passage on continental and intercontinental planes, aiming to flee in a panic and end up in a city 5,000 miles away biting everyone on their flight and leading a charge out onto Gate 4A. Instead of picking up postcards, persons at airports and train stations ended up taking home what many thought at first was a virus and decided to eat their kids rather than bring home a present

  It only took New Zealand three days to first become affected as many arrived via boat or small planes trips. The spread continued and the number of scrats rose in kind.

  It was Candice Hemmerlee who called first.

  “This problem is out of control,” it took a lot for Draco not to cringe at the high pitched bark filtering out of his speaker phone. “We have a bunch of cannibals turning Australians into not-so happy meals, Draco.”

  “We call them scrats, my dear.”

  “God damned zombies!”

  “We don’t use that word around here.”

  There was a short pause as Draco could here Candice take a drag from a cigarette.

  “Whatever,” she started again. “This is going to become a problem.”

  “How do you figure?” he asked her coolly. “It’s confined to Oceania and the revolution is on pause with their HQ under heavy duress using their resources to fight the threat. Besides we have order to shoot down any intercontinental flights out of the zone. ”You sure you can guarantee none of those disgusting things are going to get to any of the other continents?” Another drag. “To one of the damned Utopias, Draco? My Utopia? Yours?”

  Draco took a moment, smile unseen.

  “I am feeling confident how this situation will play out,” Draco said. “Contingencies are in place.”

  “Oh yeah? Well I don’t think your cocktail testing practices had a kill zombie…”

  “Scrat.”

  “Scrat, zombie, fucking monkey! Your testing did not predict this I would bet,” Draco could hear Candice shake behind her silence as her breath blew, long, ragged. “They are about to wipe out an entire population, Draco.”

  “Not an important one.”

  Another drag, longer this time. “Heartless, evil, prick,” Candice bristled. “This is a risk. A big one.”

  “And we are gearing up for a response,” Draco reassured her, his tone smooth, calm. “We are prepared to take care of the Utopias and in fact are military.”

  “Oh yeah,” another drag. “How?”

  Draco sat down in his master chair in the Order meeting room and let the silence drag at the apparent irritation of the woman waiting on the line.

  “We are about to begin monthly inoculations for all military personnel and Utopian residents.”

  “Inoculations?”

  “Yes, Candice. Each person will receive the virus in a minimal dose, but enough to make any of us, worthy ones, not be detected if even in the same room of any of those things.”

  Draco could hear Candice’s rage grow. He then realized she knocked over a few items wherever she happened to be at the time.

  “You’re going to do what? Are you insane! That’s the shit that created these things!”

  “Candice, the doses are so minimal in comparison,” Draco explained. “There will be no threat comparable, especially with what happened with Patient Zero.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Draco could be sure. A week earlier they injected the cocktail in small doses to four test NWO military grunts. All of them were sacrificed into the largest scrat horde located in Perth. They stayed amongst them for an hour and nothing happened. It was if they weren’t even there. For the next few days they tested again with the same results. It was believed the cocktail stayed within the system long enough to last a month, give or take.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Any other back up plans?”

  “Actually, yes.” Draco leaned back in his chair. “So let’s say they get out. Let’s say they get within a few miles of a Utopia. We will use the air propulsion machines to spray an aerosol form of the cocktail into the atmosphere to cover the Utopias perimeter. If they smell themselves they lose interest.”

  “I assume you tested this as well?”

  Draco looked toward the ceiling, eyes closed. He visualized the feed of the six military men and women dropped into a scrat zone outside of Canberra, about 500 yards from a large horde. The aerosol was spray out and directly away from the personnel. The six began to march in the direction of the scrats, following the aerosol trajectory. It wasn’t until they were within a couple dozen yards where the scrats began to sense flesh. The six were immediately extracted with no room to spare.

  “We have.”

  A sigh came over the speaker. “I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t have to,” Draco agreed. “But, let’s be honest this is the best way to keep the revolutionists busy and an even better way to take care of the rest of the people.”

  Another sigh.

  “Do we know why this even happened?” The woman asked him, tone more resigned than challenging.

  Draco thought long about the why. He asked himself plenty of times how this new menace came to be. But at some point it became more of a matter how to deal with the problem and worry about the cause later.

  No one knew exactly what caused the creation of Patient Zero and the eventual spread. Of course theories were thrown from all directions with hopes something would stick.

  Nothing ever plausible or concrete ever did.

  “No,” he told her. “But does it matter? It’s working out to our benefit. That’s all that matters.”

  Another sigh. Draco could grow to like a woman who speaks little and sighs less.

  “This is going to w
ork and work out fine,” Draco told her. “We have this under control. We have already seen states of decline in various scrats. If they don’t eat, they appear to deteriorate. We already see some having trouble to get around and slow. It appears they will eventually die.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Yes, but…” Draco leaned forward and hovered over the telephone speaker. “Only after they pick all the food of the plate and lick to bowl to boot. We have enough of the cocktail to keep them at bay and once we need to, we will turn the military on them once they’re done. If they multiply we just hold the fort until the lower rank-and-file human numbers decrease exponentially and the scrats begin to die out.”

  “Then…” another drag. “We go in and take out the trash.” Candice whispered. Was she shocked or in awe or maybe a little of both.

  “Yes, Candice,” Draco affirmed. “Good girl.”

  “Fuck you, Fortellis,” and the line went dead.

  The leader of the new world smiled and leaned back in his chair. He was completely honest with himself if not with anyone else. There was no doubt these scrats would leave the continent and spread their death and disease. He welcomed it. It was the ultimate double dip. Kill off the population while keeping a revolution at bay as their forces are tapped.

  Not all flights would be shot down of course and some boats would go off unimpeded.

  The New World Order was about to set course for a place it could call its own. Yes, it would include a wasteland of death and rot all around. But, in Draco’s mind that would be a bargain for having it all to themselves once the cleanup began and completed.

  The Utopias would rise and the rest would fall.

  All he needed was time…

  Of course it wouldn’t take very long for the scrat presence to spread and almost immediately turn the world on its ear. Draco and rest of the Order watched from a far as they witnessed the systematic decline in numbers of the population outside of the Utopias.

  Ironically, the poor nations tended to fight better than most of those previous higher on the food chain. The numbers of civil wars and street unrest managed to arm plenty of men, women, and children so they did do well to defend themselves against the undead. But, alas, the loss of ammunition could not be easily compensated for and soon the scrats plague would win out.