The Beginning of the End (8 page)

“Colonel, get back!
They’re alive!” the soldier shouted. What the hell was he talking
about, of course they’re alive. Bob thought about it for a moment,
but deep down inside, he knew exactly what the soldier meant. Bob
peaked around the door and saw an agglomeration of blood and bodies.
The patients were up, trying to get to the soldier. They walked slow,
clumsy, and seemed to stare into nothing with their glazed over
pupils and glowing blue eyes. Just outside the nurses’ station,
there were five of those things kneeling about a body that was still
wearing a yellow suit. They were ripping the suit to shreds and
taking bites from the flesh. Their victim’s face had been
completely eaten away, but Bob knew who it was when he saw the gold
military crowns on the dead man’s shoulders.

“Jean-Luc…. No!”

Bob turned back to
Sophie and the soldier who was still firing, “Can you make it to
me?” The soldier, never looking away from the attacking patients
nodded his head and led Sophie across the hall to the stairway door.
Bob pulled Sophie out of harm’s way, “He’s dead, Bob! Jean-Luc
is dead!”

“I know, Sophie! Get
downstairs to pathology, we need to get Miranda and Dr. Marcil out of
here. They need to know what’s going on up here!” Bob waved his
arms at the soldier trying to get his attention over the gunfire, “We
need to get out of here now! Follow me.” The soldier stepped from
the hallway into the stairwell and fell to the floor, “They’ve
got me!”

Bob could see that one
of the patient’s hands was wrapped around the soldier’s ankle.
The patient's head appeared from beyond the door and began biting at
the soldier’s calf. The soldier screamed as the patient ripped
through his protective suit and tore away at his flesh. Bob grabbed
the soldier’s M4 and put a single round through the patient’s
forehead, blasting away the back of his head.

“He bit me! He bit
me!” the soldier screamed. Bob dragged the soldier down the stairs
by his hand. Halfway down the stairs, Bob could feel that the soldier
had gone unconscious. He looked back to see that the soldier was
leaving a trail of arterial spray on the wall. By the time Bob
reached the bottom step, the soldier was dead. Bob took a knee next
the soldier, trying to catch his breath. He checked for the soldier’s
pulse. He was gone. What happened here, Bob thought. He grabbed all
three of the M4 magazines that were attached to the soldier’s belt.
Bob put the butt of the M4 on the ground, to use as a make-shift
crutch, to help his exhausted legs lift his body. He was almost back
on his feet when the soldier’s corpse grabbed Bob’s suit. Both
eyes popped open, and the corpse began growling. Bob kicked the
corpse’s hand away and fell back on his ass. The corpse clawed at
Bob’s boots and was trying to stand up. Bob spun the M4 around and
put three rounds in the corpse’s chest. The shots didn’t seem to
affect it. It kept coming, unfazed by the three 5.56 rounds that had
just passed through its chest. Bob briefly froze with fear, as the
corpse made it onto its knees and sprang onto Bob’s chest. The
sound of clacking marbles rang through Bob’s ears as the corpse was
trying to eat him. Bob was able to get off three more shots, with the
third traveling through the soldier's chin and out the back of his
head. The soldier’s corpse collapsed dead on top of Bob. He pushed
the body off his chest, and it rolled onto his legs. He kicked at the
corpse furiously, like he had seen a large spider on his knee. Bob
was trying to process everything that had just happened, when he
heard a scream come from the door leading to pathology, now what?

“Bob, help!”

Bob jumped to his feet
and ran down the long corridor toward pathology. He turned into the
room to find Miranda on the autopsy table in the middle of a full
grand mal seizure.

“Help! Hold her down!
Hold her down! Get something in her mouth! Stabilize her neck!”
Orders were being barked from every side of the table. Miranda arched
her back in an extreme manner. Now the only part of her touching the
cold stainless steel autopsy table were her heals and shoulders.
Miranda arched her back up so high, that Bob was waiting to hear her
spine crack.

“Get her down!” Bob
yelled when he got to the table. Sophie and Dr. Marcil were pushing
with all their weight to straighten the curve in Miranda’s back.
Then, as fast as the seizure came on, it stopped. Bob clutched
Miranda’s face and lightly shook her.

“Miranda! Miranda!
Open your eyes.”

A yellow gloved hand
caressed Bob’s arm. Bob followed the hand, up the arm to Sophie’s
beautiful face, who was now staring at him, “She’s gone, Bob. I’m
sorry.”

“What?” Bob yanked
his hand away from Sophie “How?”

His head dropped, and
he felt himself holding back a tear. He reached for Miranda’s clear
plastic hood, unzipped it, and pulled it off from her head, “Why?”
Bob cried out.

Sophie gave Bob a
second, then she reached over and pulled up one of Miranda’s
eyelids. The once brown eyes were already beginning to swirl with
blue pigment, and a layer of gray had formed over her pupil.

“No, this can’t be
happening!” Bob looked back at Sophie and Dr. Marcil, “Get away
from her! Both of you!” Sophie reached for Bob’s hand again, and
he pushed it away “Now!”

They both stepped back
against the lab sink watching him. Bob shuffled backwards and checked
the chamber of the M4, guaranteeing a round was ready. He slowly
raised the rifle and keyed in on Miranda’s forehead.

“Bob, have you gone
mad? What do you think you’re doing?” Sophie blurted out. Just
then, Miranda’s body sat straight up on the table. Her eyes now
completely cataract, she was growling with blood spilling down her
chin from chewing on her own tongue. Sophie slid behind Dr. Marcil
for protection. Miranda’s gurgled moans quickened, as she tried to
get off the autopsy table to attack Bob.

Sophie heard Bob
whisper, “I’m sorry,” followed by a loud bang!

October 4th 1:00am

Eglin Air Force Base
Commander Colonel Miguel Montoya was waiting at the end of the runway
watching through his Humvee’s window as a light sprinkle of rain
slowly gave way to a harvest moon. A voice crackled over the radio
“Their on approach Colonel.”

The Colonel stepped out
of the Humvee, straightened his shirt, and looked to the East. The
Boeing C-32’s engines whined as they began their approach. Colonel
Montoya took a deep breath trying to steady his nerves before his
visitors arrived. Air Force Two’s tires squealed as they touched
down on the rubber-coated asphalt of the runway. The plane’s
mammoth engines went into reverse and stopped yards from the Colonel.

Colonel Montoya looked
up at the blue and white Boeing and felt a sense of pride as he read
the words, “The United States of America,” written along the
Boeing’s fuselage. The 96th Maintenance Group’s EOR Crew snapped
into action when the engines stopped. One group was setting up the
jet way while another had already started checking for leaks and
cracks in the fuselage. A third began inspecting the Boeing’s
tires. The plane door opened, and an entourage of military personnel
marched down the jet way. They lined up at attention, five by five on
both sides of the walkway preparing to salute.

Two minutes had elapsed
before anyone else stepped out. Colonel Montoya made his way toward
the entourage who was still standing at full attention. The silence
was broken by a command, “Present Arms!” The Colonel watched as
the ten soldiers snapped their arms to their foreheads and held. He
looked up to see Vice President Conroy and General Strong had already
disembarked from the plane and were descending the stairs on the jet
way. Both men gave a salute to the entourage as they passed. Colonel
Montoya snapped to attention and gave a salute. General Strong
returned a half-ass salute, “At ease Colonel.”

“Mr. Vice-President,
General Strong. How was your flight?” General Strong ignored the
question and got straight to business, “Colonel, the Vice President
and I are here to see where we stand on Operation Thunder Storm.”

Colonel Montoya
motioned for the men to head to the Humvee. “Gentlemen, we are
ahead of schedule. My team has been in contact with every United
States Base Commander in the world.”

The three men entered
the vehicle and began driving as the Colonel continued to update the
operation status. “Almost all of the bases have received the ZMapp
and are now adding the bladders and finishing up the retrofitting on
the Hercules.” The Vice President looked over at the Colonel from
the passenger seat of the Humvee, “Hercules?”

The Humvee turned the
corner, in front of them sat a black mammoth C-130 Hercules.

The Colonel lifted his
hand to the airplane, “Yes, Mr. Vice President. The Lockheed C-130
Hercules is a four-engine turboprop aircraft capable of doing just
about anything we want it to. We’ve set them up with a water
bladder and an 18-inch spray nozzle. We can spray about 3,000 gallons
of water in a little under thirty seconds with this baby. We help out
the Forest Service with summer wild fires. Those boys like to call
them Water Bombers, which is exactly what they’ll be doing with our
ZMapp.”

“Ingenious!” The
Vice President said as he stepped out of the Humvee, “When can we
start?”

“We already have Mr.
Vice President. Twenty-five hundred Hercules and most have completed
the retrofitting. The bases closer to Montréal have already started
spraying every water source within their flight radius. With laser
guidance and mapping, every target will be hit without doubling up.
All of Eglin’s C-130’s, except this last one, have lifted off and
are already dosing reservoirs. This one was left here for you to
inspect, and we’ll have her in the air in ten minutes. We’ve
already hit everything from Texas to Tennessee. Before your arrival,
I received a message from Colonel Morehouse at Ramstein AFB in
Germany. He reports that they have just received the ZMapp and
spraying should be commencing right about now. I can say without a
doubt Mr. Vice President, this thing will be over before you’re
back in D.C.

October 11th 9:35pm

Chevy kept pulling on
my arm and my feet seemed to be working on their own. My stomach was
twisted with the thought of that girl lying there dead in the middle
of the street. I kept thinking about her poor parents. Did she have
any family, and if she did, where were they? Did they know she was
murdered in cold blood, left in the street like a dead animal? Or
were they dead too? Why would they gun her down like that?

Chevy stopped running
and dropped to the ground, taking me with him, “Ty, get down and be
quiet! I think I heard something!” We sat against our neighbor’s
house behind a row of bushes, my mind swirling around all the
unanswered questions. My head sickened by the stagnant air, that
putrid odor filling my nostrils with every breath. I wished for a
breeze to take it all away. My thought was broken by the sound of two
men walking down the center of our street. We watched in silence as
the two stopped next to Chevy’s truck, “Why the fuck are they
looking at my truck?” Chevy grunted under his breath.

One of the men tried
the driver-side door, while the other hopped in the bed of the
pickup. I could almost make out what they were saying, “It’s
locked!”

“Try the slider on
the back window.”

“It’s locked too.”

The male jumped out of
the bed of the truck and tried the driver-side door, hoping it had
magically become unlocked since his partner’s attempt. “Do you
want to smash the window and hot wire it?” The first male gave the
second a quizzical stare and asked, “Can you hot wire a truck?”

The second male’s
head dropped, “No. I thought you could.” he said.

“How would I know?
I’ve never hot-wired a car.” The first male shrugged his
shoulders, “I don’t know how either, but we sure would have been
able to run a bunch of people down with those huge ass tires!” The
two men lost interest as easily as they had found it and began
walking away.

“Ty, those guys were
trying to steal my truck!” While Chevy’s concern for his truck
being stolen, began to infuriate him. I was focusing more on their
discussion, “Chevy, they said your truck would be good for running
over people! What the hell is going on here?”

Chevy, staring at the
ground now, had snapped off a small branch from the bush that was
covered in little red berries. He picked off one at a time and rolled
it between his thumb and index finger until it squished into juice,
“I’m not sure Ty, but I have a feeling something very bad has
happened. We need to get to your Dad’s house. He’s got guns and
survival gear. We both know he’s the man and if anyone knows what
to do, it will be him!” I nodded my head in agreement. We watched
as the car thieves disappeared into the night. Chevy and I needed to
get back to our house to come up with a plan, “Do you see anyone
else on the street?” Chevy panned the street twice, “I don’t
see anything out there. I think we’re okay. So what’s the plan?”
I thought about it for a moment, and it seemed pretty simple.

“On three, we sprint
the hundred yards across the street to the house, and we don’t stop
for anything.” Chevy held out his fist for a bump, and as we made
contact he said, “Sounds like a plan Stan!”

“One!”

“Two!”

When I hit three, we
jumped out from the bushes, moving at a dead sprint. We both dodged a
bird bath and easily cleared the flower garden. Chevy turned at the
end of the driveway and wiped out on the loose road gravel. His feet
came out from under him. He landed on his left-side ribs, hand, and
elbows. The impact from the road forced all the air from Chevy’s
lungs, expressing an exaggerated, “Ouch!” There was nothing I
could do but stand there, point and laugh at him. I couldn’t
control myself. “Ha! Ha! Dude you wiped out so hard!” Chevy
picked up a pebble that was laying on the ground by his face and
chucked it at me “Stop laughing at me! It really hurts!” I tried
to contain myself, but even holding my hand over my mouth the giggles
still managed to escape, “Okay, I'm sorry” I said.