What Remains (Book 1): The Outbreak

by Barrett, Tyler

  Muller started, “I made it out, and the others didn’t. The government officials didn’t make it either. It was a bloodbath, and I only made by pure luck. I did, however, get the information the government officials decided to share with us. They said this information could mean life and death for the entire world. Everything they knew about the infection is on these hard drives.”

  Ramirez weakly smiled, “At least now this has been worth something, I guess.”

  Knight muttered, “Hardly.”

  Everyone heard him say it, and each person knew what he meant. They had all seen someone they knew gruesomely and brutally murdered by the infection. It had touched every life that it could find, tearing at each person’s soul and will.

  “So, what’s the plan now?” said Muller nodding his head towards Knight.

  “Well, we need to get the rest of the group quickly. Carter, go get them.”

  “Rest of the group? I thought everyone else from the mission was dead?” asked Muller confused.

  Knight turned back towards Muller, “Yeah, we went to go to the crash site and grab the pilots. But when we got there, they were already gone. Some civilians that were holed up in a warehouse nearby had helped them get out of there and to safety."

  “As volatile as the infection is I am surprised you guys managed to find anyone alive out there. I have seen the hordes that form; it’s a scary thing to see. That’s how I lost most of my team, we were overwhelmed before we even had a chance to get away,” described Muller.

  He reached down to his pack at his feet, opening the main pouch. He grabbed a hard drive, “There are three of these, all containing the files that the scientists gathered about the infection. We need to get this back to command so that we can analyze the data. There might even be a cure in these files, for all we know. I hope you guys have a plan to get out of here.”

  Knight had set down his gear, “I had hoped to fly out of here, but the helicopters we have out there are both out of fuel. We could get some fuel for them but finding it would be impossible. However, I think we could make our way out of the city and make our way to the American Air Force base to the south of the city.”

  Muller nodded, “That doesn’t sound too bad. I just don’t know how we would get around the city without running into hordes.”

  “We can think about that in a while. First I want to get everyone settled in and back in good condition. Many of us haven’t gotten the proper sleep or food and water that we need. We can wait out for a few hours until everyone rests up,” Knight told Muller.

  “But first let me introduce you to the rest of the group,” he continued.

  Muller grabbed his pack, not wanting to leave it unattended, “Let’s go meet them.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Kenji waited with the others in the stairwell, waiting for the usual sound of a fight, an ever-growing familiar sound of a scream following it. So far, however, they hadn’t heard anything. The few minutes that Knight, Ramirez, and Carter had been gone, seemed too long, and the pit in his stomach that seemed to become permanent as of late was telling him to worry. As if they knew that his worry was setting in, Carter opened the door.

  “It’s all clear, it seems that another member of our team made it back,” said Carter. He continued, “He also has what we came for, so our mission is still active. Knight wants everyone to rest up for the next few hours. There is food, water, and beds.”

  Kenji looked down at the few people that remained from his group and the pilots that he had helped save earlier. Each face showed a slight sign of stress, but a little less now that they had made it to the base. Kenji wanted to tell everyone about Knight, that they should leave now since he was starting to crack. He had put his faith in the man, and in return, he allowed over half of his group to be slaughtered while they watched. Who was he to deny the few people alive the simple pleasures of a place to sleep, and have food and water, though.

  Kenji was too tired himself to even argue, so he stepped through the door, and followed Carter. He was surprised to see a helicopter on the roof but knew that they did have pilots with them after all. He just hadn’t expected to see them up close, since they didn’t mention them earlier. They walked by them, towards the opposite side of the roof, finally seeing the tents that made up the actual base.

  The first tent they all stopped at was the supply tent, containing all the MRE rations and bottled water. The water tasted like sweet heaven, crisp and refreshing while the food was not anything special, it was better than what Kenji had eaten in the past week. They had lived off anything they could find, typically sticking with the food that was already ready to eat or took very little to cook.

  Ramirez opened a box and began to hand out MRE’s to everyone, and Kenji stayed at the back of the line. Carter and the other pilots began to trade parts of their meals while simultaneously helping Nobuto and Ren make their meals. Kenji walked up to Ramirez, who had just finished digging out an MRE for him.

  As Ramirez handed the MRE to Kenji, he spoke to him, “Can I speak to you…Somewhere else?”

  Ramirez looked up at Kenji before replying, “Sure, come on.”

  Ramirez led Kenji back towards the roof access door, looking again to make sure that no one else was around.

  “What’s the problem?” Ramirez asked quietly.

  Kenji opened his mouth but did not speak for a few moments. “I…I don’t know how to start. I wanted to talk to you about Knight. Have you noticed anything odd about him? He didn’t seem all there earlier.”

  “Describe not all there? What happened?” asked Ramirez.

  “Before the hordes showed up, we were both in the tent looking at the map. We came out, and we thought we saw someone from our group further on down the road, so we went to investigate. That’s when it got weird. We got near the person, which turned out to be an infected soldier, and he approached the man but froze then threw up."

  Ramirez interrupted, “Froze and then threw up?

  Kenji continued, "Yes, he froze as if he didn't want to kill the infected man. He's lucky I stepped in when I did, or the infected would have torn into him."

  “What?!” exclaimed Ramirez, “He almost let the infected man bite him? He didn't try to stop him?"

  “No, he just stood there until I stepped in to save him. Almost like seeing me running in snapped him back to reality. He just seemed so distant, like he didn’t comprehend that he was in danger.”

  Ramirez stared at Kenji for a moment, letting what he had just been told process, “Don’t tell anyone because I want to be one hundred percent sure before I act on it…but I think that Knight might be losing it. When I went to find him in the warehouse, he thought I was Smith. I didn’t think anything of it. I just figured he still hadn’t fully processed that he was dead.”

  Kenji looked back at the base, to make sure no one was coming their way, “Something needs to be done about him, though, we are allowing him to lead us, and he got most of my people killed. I feel like he is becoming unattached to reality.”

  Ramirez said with a heavy heart, “What should we do; it’s not like we can get him any help. We don’t have any medicine with us that would help. Besides just leaving him here, there isn’t anything else we can do.”

  “We should bound him. You know like with handcuffs,” Kenji said shaking his head slightly.

  “That would just make him angry, and probably push him entirely over the edge. We don’t want to do that. I have seen this kind of behavior before. It happens quite often on the battlefield and shortly after to soldiers that have suffered severe trauma or lost a friend. The best thing to do is to get them away from the source, which in this case is seeing all these dead soldiers. The more they are reminded of it, the less lucid they become.

  “What should we do then? It seems like no matter what, he will be reminded of him. He will probably attack one of us next time. You weren’t there when he went crazy; it was a terrifying thing to see,” stated Kenji.

  “I will w
atch him. I will try to keep him from going back into that state. We just have to keep reminding him of why we need to get out of here and his duty to finish the mission. He isn’t one to stray from doing his job.”

  Kenji thought about it for a second, “So, it’s agreed that we both keep an eye on him.”

  Ramirez shook his head, “Yeah. Let’s get back to the group, though. He is right; we need to rest.”

  They both walked back, each going their separate ways. Ramirez went to go check in with Knight, while Kenji went to talk to Nobuto and Ren. Everyone tried to rest or at least eat while the morning sun silently rose over the city.

  Chapter 34

  A bird’s eye view

  Knight had closed his eyes but found his brain flooding them with visions of the night before. It had seemed like it had happened years ago, just a mere flashback. Everything had happened so quickly, and he had little time to react to any of it before some other problem had popped up. He wanted someone else to take the lead on the mission but knew that his men looked up to him, becoming familiar with his leadership.

  The burden fell on him, like the world crashing down on his shoulders. He was Atlas; struggling to keep the world held up. It was that feeling that crept up on him arching through is back, the tension of all deeds and future ones too. All the bad and the good weighed on him, with no release in sight.

  Wanting to try to free his mind from such conviction, he got up from where he was attempting to lay down and sleep. He decided to focus his mind on more current, less strenuous tasks. He readied his pack for the trek they would make next and lined up supplies for everyone else as well. Crossing tents, he started to work his way through the weapons and ammo they had.

  Finding a few extra combat knives, he put them aside for the civilians that had more crude weapons. He looked at the ammo, wondering if they should even bother taking it as sound attracted the infected. It might still be good to have if they got in a tight spot like they did earlier with the bus.

  The bus, Knight, remembered the screams of the people he left to die, but he knew what he had done was right. None of them would have made it out alive if he had even let one infected into the bus. He didn’t know what else to do; they had no other options at the time. Either let the infected get in or cut off all possibility of anyone getting in.

  He felt like he should say something to Kenji and the other civilians, at least, the ones left, and apologize. But, how could he? Sorry, I let all your friends die; I did it so that we could live. No one would understand because they were not in his shoes. Given a chance they probably would have come to the same conclusion. He knew he would have, to say something eventually, but it was too soon, too fresh for it to be considered sincere.

  Knight chastised himself for letting his mind wander again to such things. He needed to get out of the tents and get some fresh air and let his mind clear. Knight stepped out from the shelter feeling the immediate temperature difference. Allowing his feet take him to wherever they stopped he ended up at the edge of the building near the sandbag wall. The sun was now in full view, a giant orange ball in the sky.

  Scanning the city before him, he was in shock. The difference between the nighttime dark and the daytime left the city more abandoned and dead. The destruction was evident, with several smoke trails leading up from where fires had run rampant before the storm rolled through. He hadn’t realized the silence and how out of place it felt. No cars moved along the streets, people walking on the sidewalks, nothing but dead motionless silence.

  The destruction of the virus was absolute, leaving no chance, but cold hard fact behind. The rooftop gave them a bird’s eye view of the damage below; the vast reminder of what civilization used to be. The city’s buildings were so close together to save space, which when a fire broke out, it left half a city block a charred husk.

  He could see several checkpoints like the one they had been at earlier, spread throughout the city. At each one cars blocked the road, a graveyard of vehicles. Knight looked carefully at the city before him, trying to find a suitable way out of the city without being caught in another situation where they could get trapped. No matter where he looked the streets bottlenecked, or completely impassable.

  Lost in thought about the city and its unwillingness to let them leave, he stood there for quite some time. He was interrupted by a voice, “It looks like a war zone out there, doesn’t it?”

  Knight turned and looked to see who it was, answering, “Yes, it does.”

  An awkward pause occurred, where both men stood in silence at the vast dead city. In that time, they finally saw movement in the streets below. Just coming into their view, they could make out a small group of people moving slowly down the street towards them. Both Knight and Muller looked at the group, deciding whether they were infected or not.

  A few minutes passed, and the group came closer to the building. It was clear they were infected; even at a distance, they could see their slow, forced movement down the street. They stopped at an intersection as if deciding a direction they wanted to follow. After a few moments, one perked up turning towards the street to the left and started to move that direction.

  Knowing that the infected had heard a noise, but Knight and Muller were too far away to hear it made them both wonder if it was a person, a living one. Maybe it was the wind blowing over a trashcan.

  Muller stood next to him, looking over the edge of the building and decided to break the silence again, “Thinking about your plan on how we are going to get out of the city? I don’t see a straightforward way to get out.”

  “Everywhere looks like certain death, and we can’t cut through any buildings to get around the worst congestion,” replied Knight.

  “Well I have an option on how we can get through most of the city without running into too much trouble, but we will still have to worry about the streets closer to the edge of the city. We can take the sewer service tunnels. They run right along most of the streets, and they access to the subway tunnels.”

  “The sewers? I hadn’t thought of that but are you sure they are clear?” asked Knight.

  Muller paused for a few seconds before replying, “After we got the bunker we used a ventilation system to escape, it led to the sewer, which we followed to the sewer main. We took that up to the surface, which is where we ran into trouble, but while we were down there, we didn’t see a single infected. I don’t think too many people were thinking about the sewer when infected were chasing them down.”

  Knight thought for a minute, “It sounds like it could work, and it would sure beat the hell out walking around on the streets. I just hope it leads to the edge of the city. If it doesn’t, I guess we could just follow the Subway tunnels out of the city. We just need to get to the base south of the city. It’s an airfield, so if it doesn’t have the aircraft we need, we can just sit tight and call for help. We just need to get to a long-range radio system, which should be located there.”

  “Well here’s to us making it to the base!” said Muller as he walked back towards the tents, raising a bottle of water he had just opened.

  Knight looked at his watch and saw that it had been about three and a half hours already. The group had long enough to rest, and it was time they all set out, and, at least, make it out of the city by nightfall. That was if they were lucky. Otherwise, they would have to hole up somewhere and wait out the night. Knight couldn’t risk them walking right into a horde at night time.

  He opened the tent that Carter and Ramirez where they had decided to rest. Ramirez was already up and stretching while Carter slept fitfully. Knight hoped Carter was having nightmares about Smith, still blaming him for what happened.

  He turned to Ramirez, “Let’s get everyone up and ready, I want to head out in the next thirty minutes.”

  Ramirez yawned deeply, shaking his head that he understood, and would do as he asked.

  Chapter 35

  The trek in the dark

  Knight stood in the lobby facing the doors le
ading out to the street. The bodies of the two soldiers were still there and looked as though nothing had touched them. That was a good sign, but infected could still be lingering nearby. He waited for everyone to adjust their packs, and ready their weapons.

  He looked back and saw they were ready and waiting. He spoke, “The plan we have is to find a sewer entrance and follow that until we come to a subway service entrance. While we are underground, there will be less risk of running into the infected, as well as our path being blocked. If we get separated underground, we can head south out of the city, and regroup at the airfield about twenty miles outside the city. We will stay there for twenty-four hours if time permits us to.”

  Knight paused, “Does anyone have any questions?”

  Silence greeted him as he looked at each person again. He grabbed his knife and prepared to open the doors. The swooshing noise of the door, greeted them again, like an old friend. It would be the last time they heard the doors open. Knight stepped out into the streets once more. His sense heightened as he scanned the street once more for infected.

  He could hear the people behind him breathing, and clothes swishing ever so slightly. Knight headed down the street to the left, back towards where they had gone the night before. Almost at the end of the street, there was a storm sewer drain. They stopped at it, the group circling it, and together they lifted it using their crowbars. The metal drain cover made a loud screeching noise, and it ground against the concrete.

  Once it was off, they could see into the sewer, which was only big enough to have two people stand side by side, and barely a foot taller than them. It was clear these were not made for human passage on a regular basis but as quick, easy access to the cities underground water and sewage. The rain from the early morning before was still making its way through the cities sewers, and there were several inches of water.