Evolution Z (Book 3): Stage Three

by Bourne, David

  “The good thing about this virus is that it opens up completely new opportunities. Right now, Walter Krueger is having the amphitheater prepared for a speech he will soon give to the inhabitants of the town. Thompson, Gerber and the others are also going to be there. I have asked to see Krueger before he goes to the meeting. The main reason is because I want to firmly shake his hand and wish him luck.” Fuller pressed a small, hidden mechanism on the ring, and the spike jutted out in front.

  Valeria and Duke could hardly believe it. Richard Fuller was a demon in human form.

  Sam could not understand every single word, but he suspected some diabolical plot was being hatched down there. He took his instant camera and aimed it through the vent at the inside of the building. He knew he would have only one opportunity. He pressed the button three times—CLICK, CLICK, CLICK—and placed the photos into his shirt pocket. He was not sure whether anyone would have noticed the sound of the camera, but he did not want to run any risks. He wanted to get away from here as soon as he could. He lowered himself as quietly as possible along the exterior wall to hurry back to his dwelling. He had to tell his mom about this—something weird was going on. Sam was almost on the ground but when he landed, he lost his balance and had to lean on the wall, which made a noise. For a moment, his heart seemed to stop. Just when he thought he had remained unnoticed, one of the guards saw him. Sam ran for his life.

  “Damn it, what did that little shit want? He must‘ve been there the whole time,” one of the men growled.

  “I told you that, you idiot!” The two thugs saw Sam running off.

  “You go after him, and I‘ll tell Mr. Fuller about it.” So one of the men ran after Sam, while his companion entered the building. He how Fuller was just preparing the spike on his ring with contaminated blood. Fuller gave the guard a piercing stare, as if he expected to hear a good explanation for this interruption.

  After the guard had made his report, Fuller dismissed him with a curt nod.

  “Whoever that may be, he is forcing us to act,” he said gravely.

  “You‘re still continuing with the entire plan?” Duke wanted to now.

  “Why shouldn’t I? Any resistance against our authority should be gone with Walter Krueger. Therefore, he is and remains our main problem. And I am going to take care of this problem. You will get your weapons and mingle with the crowd in an hour. Bring your people. We will meet there.” Valeria seemed worried, but Duke was grinning.

  “Finally things are starting to move.”

  A short time later, there was a knock at the door of Walter Krueger’s office.

  “Yes?”

  Richard Fuller opened the door and came in.

  “Hello, Walter.”

  “Hello, Richard. I was just about to leave for the amphitheater.”

  “Then don’t let me stop you. We can talk on the way there. I will go with you and then mingle with the audience.”

  “Come on, Richard. You can sit on the stage with me. I already had chairs put there for several people–you included.”

  “Very kind. Then let‘s get going.” Fuller and Krueger left the office and started walking in the direction of the amphitheater. Fuller started to chat.

  “So what exactly did Captain Thompson tell you?”

  “Some disturbing facts, but also good news. It seems everybody might potentially be infected. The virus infection is only noticeable when it becomes active. However, our new friends also brought us a new test kit that can show within seconds whether someone is infected or not.”

  “Interesting. How does this test work?” Fuller asked.

  “I don’t know the exact method, but it is a blood test. I had the test done one me, and it came out negative. Thank God. And the best thing is, that the test can be easily replicated.”

  “That sounds wonderful. What are you going to do this with someone who is infected?”

  “I don’t want to worry about that yet. I‘ll deal with it, when the time has come.”

  “Isn’t that rather naive, Walter?”

  “Let’s not discuss that topic again. You know exactly how I feel about such issues, Richard. And as long as I run this town, please accept it, even though you don’t agree with me.” They had now reached the entrance to the amphitheater. Inside, there was already a crowd of people waiting for the event to start.

  Fuller made a conciliatory gesture. “I‘ll do this, Walter, no offense. I am just eager for something greater. Maybe you will soon understand what I mean.”

  “I doubt that.” Fuller reached out his right hand to Krueger, the one with the beautiful signet ring. The golden ring, which sported a lion’s head, glittered and sparkled. Krueger took the hand, and Fuller vigorously shook it. Suddenly Krueger pulled back his hand. He felt like having been stung by an insect.

  “Ouch. Your ring is rather large. It must have bruised my hand.”

  “Sorry, Walter. The ring is rather bulky. I am so sorry. Best luck on the stage. I will be right by you.” When Walter Krueger stepped onto the makeshift stage and looked at the crowd, Richard Fuller took a deep breath. Ray, Scott and Nika were also there. They stood to the side of the stage and were supposed to be introduced to the townspeople as new allies in the fight against the virus. Danny, Pam and Duke had mingled with the crowd.

  Fuller straightened his back and his shoulders before entering the stage. When he strolled past the newcomers, they first started at him incredulously, and then at each other.

  “Nice to see you again, gentlemen,” Fuller purred at Scott and Ray. “Dear lady, I don’t know whether your choice of companions for this evening was particularly felicitous.” Then he went to his chair next to Valeria Martinez, who was already sitting behind Krueger.

  Scott’s brain went haywire, and Ray was speechless, too. Richard Fuller was the last person he had expected here. He shook his head and looked through the crowd, until his eyes found the huge, grinning, face of Duke Powell. This just could not be true! A dark sense of foreboding overcame Ray. If people like these roamed Sanctuary, this was not a good sign. Before he could think further about it, Krueger started to speak.

  “Citizens of Sanctuary. These times, good news is quite rare, or are mixed with bad ones. That‘s the reason why I wanted to speak to all of you.” A murmur went through the crowd. When Scott looked at the people, his heart jumped: Over there stood Jane! Her hair was a bit shorter, and the stress of the past weeks had left its traces on her. But it was definitely his wife. All the harsh thoughts about Fuller were gone in a heartbeat. He winked at her with a smile. Only a few minutes, and she would be in his arms again. She was crying tears of joy when she waved back at him.

  “During the past few days we took in new visitors who told us all humans could potentially be infected with the virus.” The crowd started to get restive. One could see the fear on their faces, and many began to murmur loudly.

  “Please calm down, my friends,” Krueger continued. “Our new arrivals also brought a kind of quick screening kit. With the aid of this test we can find out within minutes if someone is infected or not. If someone should be infected, we will of course do everything in our power to find a cure.” In the audience, Duke was clearly rolling his eyes.

  “I had the test successfully done one me. It‘s not very painful. You only feel a little stAAAAHHH:” Walter Krueger suddenly convulsed behind the lectern, and his hands spasmed. He slumped and vomited.

  “IT BURNS! SSSSO... AHHHH.” He vomited again, this time mixed with blood. Richard Fuller enjoyed the scene. It could not have worked better. All the citizens of Sanctuary were watching. He stood up and slowly walked towards Krueger.

  Scott nudged Ray. “Do you see that? Like Billy Maddox at Fort Weeks,” he whispered. “Ray, the man‘s turning. What the hell‘s going on here?”

  Meanwhile, Fuller was speaking to Walter Krueger.

  “Walter, my God, is everything alright with you?”

  Krueger violently spasmed and knocked over the lectern. He looked at
the audience through clouded eyes and started snapping, while still spitting blood. His face had turned into a rigid grimace. It looked, as if electricity was continuously flowing through his muscles. The audience was beginning to panic. Everyone wondered what was going on up there. Richard Fuller stepped up to Krueger and continued playing his role. He placed his hand on Krueger’s shoulders, as if trying to help him up, but Walter Krueger was not himself anymore. The bloodthirst and the hunger for human flesh had taken total control of him. He ground his teeth together so strongly, that an ugly cracking sound was heard, like a joint being snapped into place.

  Krueger struggled to get up and lurched toward Fuller. He lifted his arms and tried to bite him. Fuller, though, stepped aside and continued to talk to Krueger.

  “Walter, what’s wrong with you? For heaven’s sake, get a hold of yourself!” Duke was sure that he could see a subtle smile around Fuller’s eyes.

  The transformed mayor once again attacked Fuller. However, this time Fuller quickly drew his sword and deftly sliced off Walter Krueger’s head, right in front of the entire audience. He looked as if he had been forced to kill his best friend and bent down to Krueger’s corpse. “The king is dead, Walter. The king is dead...“ He whispered: “...long live the king.”

  The people reacted with a mixture of panic and paralysis. Some stared incredulously at Krueger’s corpse, others were trying to leave the arena as quickly as possible. Before the general commotion got out of hand, Richard Fuller walked forward and carefully set the lectern upright again. Krueger’s transformed body lay only about six feet behind him. Then Fuller nodded to some of his guards, who immediately surrounded the group from Fort Weeks. Ray, Scott and Nika looked at each other with worried expressions. Even Watson seemed to notice that something was wrong here and lay down besides Ray with his tail tucked between his legs.

  “My friends. Please calm yourselves and listen to me. Please stay calm. I must tell you something.” The people were still agitated, but they reacted to Fuller, and most of them listened to him.

  “Walter Krueger was our friend, and he was in very good health. Everyone knows that.” The murmuring got louder, and some people nodded in approval.

  “So how can it be that a man who was fit as a fiddle suddenly turns into a monster in front of our very eyes?” He let the question sink in for a while. Ray could already imagine what would come next. Inwardly, he cursed Fuller. Then the former right hand of the mayor answered his own question.

  “Walter Krueger was a great and kind man. But sometimes he was too trusting.” He directly looked at Ray and his friends.

  “Strangers came to us, and Walter wanted us to take them in, as our code demands. He even took a blood test they brought. And I say: That‘s how he got infected. These newcomers were sent to weaken us and to kill our leader because they want to take our town away from us!”

  The surprise of the crowd soon turned into overwhelming anger. Now, the audience was raging. Grim faces and clenched fists could be seen everywhere. Fuller skillfully played on their fear of getting infected. The anger against Ray’s group became more vocal. Jane glanced at Scott in despair. She seemed to want to come forward, but the crowd was in too much of an uproar. There were cries in the arena calling to arrest the newcomers, or even string them up right away. Fuller seemed to enjoy all of this. Ray, Scott and Nika stared at Fuller, as if he had gone insane. Ray wanted to get up and reply, when one of the guards pushed him back.

  “Look, it is not like Fuller says. Let me talk to the people, and I–”

  The guard glared at Ray and pulled out a long knife. “Shut the fuck up, you dirty murderer. One more step and you are going to lie right next to Mr. Krueger.”

  Ray knew it was futile. Fuller had left nothing to chance with this show.

  “As you all know, every accused in Sanctuary is given a reasonable trial. The question is whether this should apply in such an extraordinary case. We will have to vote about this. But one thing is clear: We will not tolerate such an attack under any circumstance. I will personally take care that Sanctuary is strong and will remain so–I owe this to Walter. I owe this to all of you here. Do not worry, my friends, something like this will never happen again here.” The audience now cheered. Almost everyone was on his side. Duke turned around and started walking away. Now our time begins.

  While they were being taken away, Scott looked dejectedly over his shoulder and saw Jane’s face. There were no longer tears of joy on it, but real tears of desperation. Then he turned to Ray:

  “That son of a bitch... now the shit‘s really hitting the fan.”

  “My friend, that‘s the understatement of the century.”

  45Epilogue

  Schaefer looked pensively out the side window of the helicopter and saw the outskirts of the city below him. Since the incubation period of the virus had passed and people had started to transform, a lot had happened. How could I have expected this?

  In spite of everything that had happened to him, right now he was mostly interested in finding out how his family in Germany was doing. His son Jonathan and his wife Karoline had been living in the center of Munich before the plague happened. He had spoken to his son on the phone, before the soldiers had taken him to Fort Weeks the day of the outbreak. Schaefer had tried to tell him he should get his mother and quickly leave Munich. He even told his son of a point of contact on a large air base. He knew the general commanding the base was a client of Vita Invicta. He doubted though, that his son had been able to assess the situation correctly. Even though the two of them never had the best of relationships, this uncertainty worried Schaefer immensely. He simply had to try and get in contact with Germany to see whether both of them were doing alright. He sighed.

  „Welcome in New York City, Dr. Schaefer. The welcoming committee is already waving at us.”

  The crackling announcement by Taylor, the pilot, brought Schaefer back to reality. He looked down through the window and at first could not believe what he saw. Down there, right in the center of New York, stood what must have been millions of undead. The scene was surreal. This part of the Big Apple was firmly under the control of zombies. When they detected the descending helicopter, they greedily raised their arms skyward. Schaefer had the impression he was watching an anthill, with millions of hungry mouths that wanted to devour him. He was feeling uneasy. Several streets were so crowded with zombies that the asphalt was no longer visible in some areas. Schaefer looked for the high-rise building serving as the headquarters of Vita Invicta. At closer inspection, he discovered some skyscrapers had already been noticeably damaged. Several of the buildings must have endured fires a while ago. At least, that’s what he gathered from the soot on the exterior walls, as none of them were on fire anymore. That was the only positive news, if one could even call it that. Otherwise, what he saw of New York had nothing to do with the city he used to visit regularly in past years in order to present his research to the board of Vita Invicta. Down there, the undead ruled. Cars were standing sideways and blocked the roads, and debris and garbage was piled up everywhere. The traces of the devastation caused in the days after the outbreak were unmistakable—and then these hordes of zombies. Schaefer sighed.

  As they got closer to their target, he discovered that Manhattan must have been purposely cut off from the rest of New York. All bridges leading to the North had been destroyed, and there was even a huge hole in the center of the Washington Bridge, which came in sight soon afterward. Somebody had done a thorough job. Schaefer doubted, though, that all of this was the work of Vita Invicta. There probably had been some emergency plan that was triggered by the catastrophe. Right next to the Washington Bridge, on Interstate 95, he saw concrete walls several yards high that seemed to consist of modular elements. Just like the ones used on military bases overseas. It looked like they had succeeded in keeping the undead out of Manhattan because he could not see any zombies on the streets of this area. If this worked, and if Vita Invicta still controlled this part of the c
ity, that was okay with Schaefer. Finally, the company building came into sight.

  The scientist now became curious. Somehow, his employers had managed to profit from this chaos. The company headquarters looked shiny and new, a glass giant standing tall as a symbol of victory, in the midst of dirty former competitors.

  The building of Vita Invicta stood in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, so Schaefer was surprised when the helicopter descended early and aimed for Central Park. A few seconds later, Schaefer had the answer as to why they were already going in for a landing. On an open area the size of two football fields, a large group of helicopters and ground vehicles was visible. It was an odd mixture of military and civilian equipment.

  The helicopter made a soft landing. While the rotors were still coming to a standstill, Dr. Schaefer and Special Agent Jonah already sat in a car and were driven toward the headquarters of Vita Invicta. On the way there. Schaefer got many more impressions of the situation in Manhattan.

  The walls he had seen on the interstate were also visible in parts of Manhattan and blocked of several streets. This probably was a precautionary measure, so if any zombies ever managed to enter Manhattan, they would meet with a second ring of defenses. Better to be safe than sorry, Schaefer thought.

  They also met with a few military transports during their short trip, although he noticed that these were not driven by uniformed soldiers. In the meantime, Vita Invicta must have found some mercenaries who were only too glad to work in Manhattan. The drivers, like Jonah, must have been either working for a private security company, or were freelancers. Schaefer was visibly impressed. In the high-stakes poker for survival, Vita Invicta played in the top tiers.

  The car made a turn and drove into an underground garage. After several levels, the driver abruptly stopped in front of an elevator.

  “Here we are. You are being expected on the forty-third floor, Doctor.”

  Jonah and Schaefer left the car, entered the elevator and pressed the button for the forty-third floor.