The Common Cold (Book 2): A Zombie Chronicle-Cabin Fever (22 page)

“You are all damned to hell! The Lord will smite thee as you
have done to his subjects!” she made a grand gesture taking in the field of
slaughter. No-one said anything in reply; most just thought it better if she
just gets it out of her system and goes back inside.

In a flash, she had grabbed Sam by the throat and taken his
gun from him. Holding him close, she put the barrel to his head, the whites of
her knuckles clearly visible as the trigger was squeezed. A shot rang out and
Sam’s face turned red with blood. No-one moved; the shock too great. Slowly Sam
collapsed away from the woman as she too fell to the ground.

“
Nooo
!”
Danny cried as he rushed to the boy. Scooping him up he was surprised to see
the lad’s eyes open and looking at him. Wiping the blood away in confusion,
Danny realised the blood wasn’t Sam’s. He looked over at Angela and saw that
half her face was missing. “What the…”

Cliff had stepped out onto the porch and in his hand was a
rifle, smoke still rising from the muzzle. Danny and Cliff stared at each
other, before the sergeant slowly walked over to the corpse he had just made.

“Sorry,” was all he said. It was impossible to tell whether he
was apologising to the mad woman, the boy, Danny or the rest of the group.

“Thank you, Cliff,” Danny said, still holding Sam tightly.
Janet had come over to him and all three crouched together in a huddle for a
moment.

Mike was the first to react and walked over to his colleague.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Cliff nodded, handing him the
rifle.

“I’m just going back to get my daughter. I’ll be back in a sec.”
With that he returned to his quarters and returned in a moment with a small
bundle in his arms.

He walked back to Mike.
“Permission to
re-join the crew, Captain?”

“
Abso
-fucking-
lutely
, Sergeant.”
Mike replied.

“How many survivor groups have you been able to identify?”
the commander asked, sounding impatient with his staff. The discovery process
would never be fast enough.

“I can detect seventy three groups that appear to be
consolidating their position. Another one hundred and eighteen smaller groups appear
to be on the move.” Ethan McElroy replied, peering at the figures on his
terminal.

“Total number of personnel?”

“Hard to estimate with any accuracy, sir.
The stationary groups are larger than those on the move; they appear to average
out at about eighteen people per group. The mobile groups mostly average out to
about seven people. Overall I estimate in excess of thirteen hundred stationary
and just over eight hundred others wandering around.”

“Is that it?” the commander was exasperated by the paltry results
of their work. These low numbers horrified him; they couldn’t be right, surely?
Of 317 million people across the USA all they could find was this rather
pathetic residual collection. He felt his face drawn of blood as he
contemplated the future, or the lack thereof, of mankind.

Colonel Stacey Bradford was part of a special division of
NASA, set up in secret nearly ten years previously to help counter the ever
escalating threats that the world faced. With the increasing technological
skills of the human race came the potential to make world-changing mistakes
that could not be rectified. And that was what had happened. Most
embarrassingly the fatal, world-changing mistake happened to be NASA’s - a mega-irony
as far as the Colonel was concerned. This was what drove him now, a sense of
collective guilt piling onto his weary shoulders that he belonged to an outfit
that was responsible for the human race’s parlous and irretrievable state.

It has long been believed that the world was originally
populated by organic material from outer space in the first instance before the
atmosphere had fully formed, and that these alien forms had mutated over the
passing millennia to survive on Earth and form the recognisable entities they finally
became. From that perspective the human race could be viewed as the new kid on
the block, a second generation immigrant.

As a norm, meteorites, when they strike the planet, are
usually superheated as they pass through the atmosphere on their way to their
final resting place, somewhere on Earth. As a result, very little evidence has
ever been found to indicate they might carry living entities on their epic
journeys to our habitat. The idea had been discussed for years and so a project
was born to lasso, metaphorically speaking at least, a meteorite from space,
pop it in a sealed bag and bringing it back to Earth in a fashion that would
preserve it perfectly for analysis. With this captured rock, intact in all of
its outer space glory, came the doom of the current inhabitants of the planet,
well at any rate the humans.

Unfortunately the unmanned spacecraft had broken up in space
at supersonic speeds, shedding its terrifying payload; the virulent life form
on this perfectly preserved meteorite had been spread around the world in a
matter of minutes. The debris circled the Earth one and a half times before it
disappeared onto the surface, dropping the contagion in every corner of the now
God-forsaken planet. Within twenty four hours of this event the human race
began dying, and then coming back to life in another form too terrible to imagine.

The NASA unit’s current physical location in the USA was so
heavily classified that even the President didn’t know its whereabouts, but as
the team watched and worked approximately three hundred feet below the surface
of the planet, they could rest assured that so far the contagion had not yet
infiltrated their bunker. Considering they didn’t know what they were trying to
keep out, they had to assume that their air filtration system was a suitable
barrier against whatever this thing was. The Colonel and the forty three men
and women under his command had but one task left to them: collect together the
survivors on the surface to give mankind a chance to rebuild if at all possible,
ensuring long-term survival was set as their only objective and minimum
criterion for success. So it had come down to this rather unhappy state of
affairs. McElroy saw the miserable look on his boss’ face and tried to cheer
him up.

“The picture isn’t necessarily as gloomy as it appears right
now, sir. We have only just begun looking and people in groups of less than
three aren’t detectable, so things should change over the next month or so as larger
scale congregation begins.”

“So what you’re trying to tell me is that,” the Colonel
thought for a moment, struggling to keep sarcasm to a minimum before
continuing, “
a
rate of one survivor for every one
hundred and fifty thousand, nine hundred and fifty two people dead or undead is
acceptable?”

It always freaked McElroy out when the Colonel did that.
Without the aid of a computer, McElroy, and everyone else he knew, could never
have done the maths.

“No sir. All I’m saying is that it is only a starting
position. This problem has only been with us for four days; it will take time
to see the fuller picture.”

“Listen son, even if we found a hundred fold more people it
would only give us nought point nought six
six
per
cent, that’s one sixth of a single per cent survival. And you know the
technical term for such a number, son?”

“No sir,” McElroy tried hard to think ahead of the Colonel,
but had no idea of the answer wanted.

“It is known as ‘fuck all’!”

“Yes, sir.”

The Colonel sighed. “Do me a favour, stop
yessiring
me. It’s really getting on my tits. I think our
management structure has become really flattened in the last couple of days. I
think that, for the first time ever, it is absolutely possible for you to know
the name of every single human in the world. That’s supposing you could find
them, of course.” The young terminal operator looked perplexed. “Think about
it. Right now it’s probable the President is a zombie, the whole of the goddam
democratic machine is comprised of zombies, most of the military are zombies
and almost all of the voting public are zombies. I think my rank counts for
very little now.”

McElroy really didn’t know what to say.

“My name is Stacey.” The colonel broke the impasse. “What’s
yours?”

“Umm.
Ethan,
sir.”

“You mean Ethan, Stacey.”

“
Yessir
, I mean Stacey.”

“Good. Now, Ethan, tell me what else you’ve been able to
discover.”

“I don’t have any figures just yet, but I have caught signs
of some gunfire in Oklahoma and Arkansas, maybe some plays for dominance, but I
have no idea who’s fighting who. Stacey.”

“And?”

“It might be that there are some survivors making their way
out of New York, but we won’t get some useful readings on this for a day or so.
The only other thing I’ve been able to detect is some helicopter activity to
the west of Denver and I’ve caught short radio transmissions from the same area
on military channels. The voices don’t appear to be using scheduled military
protocols and passwords. It all seems to centre on the mountains above Bolder.
I’ve also got some satellite pictures of what looks like a pitched battle that has
been fought there in the last few minutes.”

Pressing a few buttons, Ethan pulled up some satellite
images that seemed to reveal a large force of people all heading in one
direction, presumably at a run, and then ceasing to exist in the next frame, the
standing people being replaced by prone bodies, although the images weren’t
clear at this time.

“What does it mean?”

“It’s happened too quickly for it to be the result of gunfire;
I don’t know just yet, the photos are being processed. I ought to have a better
idea in about half an hour.”

“Can you contact these people?
These users
of helicopters?
They certainly seem to know what they are doing.” the
Colonel asked, made curious by what appeared to be some very serious resistance
to being overcome by the world’s problems.

“I can try. It depends on whether they are monitoring the
radio. It might be less hit and miss if we wait for them to use the helicopters
again and then try. They’ll probably use the same radio frequencies, not that
that would matter, we can use our high speed scanners to pick them up quickly.
I’d be interested to know who they are - as I said, I heard some non-military
codes used.”

“They sound paranoid, just like…” he didn’t finish the
sentence, he was thinking. What if he had stumbled upon a CIA operation? Surely
they would have used encrypted radios. No, this was a flight of fancy. His
guilty conscience at surviving the apparent end of the world wasn’t letting him
think clearly; the CIA no more existed in these current circumstances than did
the Government and there was not a skerrick of evidence to support such an assertion.
He could feel himself coming unstuck; he’d have to get a grip or it would
spread throughout the men and women in this bunker. “Keep a close watch out on
them. If they use radios again let me know. I want to speak to them.”

*

“Sir, sorry, Stacey.
The people you
wanted me to keep an eye on have flown three times in the last five days since
I told you about them, and at no point have they used their radios.”

“Why would that be?” the Colonel asked, quizzically raising
an eyebrow.

“Maybe they are afraid someone will triangulate their
position.”

“I imagine they are afraid they’ll attract the wrong
people,” the Colonel mused, mostly to himself. “It’s a good thing they have us
to protect their interests. Have you told that other group we have been in touch
with? You
know,
the soldiers?”

“Yes sir, as ordered. They are en-route now.”

“Excellent. They should be able to offer these survivors
some added protection.”

“I’m sure they’ll do their best. They certainly came across
as helpful.”

“Good. Did you ever get a full interpretation of that photo
you showed me of what appeared to be a battle?”

“Oh, yes. I did,” Ethan remembered the photo. It gave him
the heebies just thinking about it. Delving into the filing cabinet by his desk
he pulled it out and handed the colourised image to his commander.

“Good Lord,” he exclaimed, shocked at the content. “Are they
all headless?”

“Yes sir. It appears that somehow their heads seem to have burst
open like overripe fruit and the contents spilled out across the ground. As best
we can make out from our analysis that appears to be a pool of rotting brain
matter,” he said, pointing to a reflective pool of colour.

“Well, I’ll be damned. It’s like a damn big puddle of the
stuff. Is your interpretation correct, do you think?”

“Pretty certain, I’ve asked Analysis to double check - I’ve
been waiting for them to get back to me again; they are getting slower every
day. But I think I know what might have done it. See that black rectangle?”

“Oh, yes.”

“If you look closely you can see the shadow of a tripod
underneath it.”

“Hmm…”

“I think it’s an LRAD.”

“A what?”

“It’s a sonic device the military have been playing with.
Looks like this group of survivors have found a way to kill large numbers of infected
people by using it.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Stacey exclaimed and then realised
the problem. “And now it looks like I’ve just sent a military team into harm’s
way.” The Colonel collapsed into a chair next to his subordinate. “Can you
contact them and warn them of the danger?”

“I can try. Unfortunately, they’ve gone radio silent for
now.”

*

 
“Rodriguez, just
finish her off” the corporal insisted. “She’s slowing us down.”

“We can always get another,” Phillips sniggered.

“No. I want her. When will we get another piece of ass so
fine?”

A shot rang out.

“Oh, man!” Rodriguez complained as blood from the poor woman
exploded out of her chest and coated the soldier’s arm that had been trying to
lift her now lifeless body.

“You’ve had your fun, now we have to get moving,” the
corporal smiled lasciviously. “We have some survivors to ‘save’,” he said, with
the emphasis on the last word. The collection of ears the Corporal had begun to
thread and wear around his neck as a necklace gave him the additional authority
to do as he pleased, the men acceding quickly and without argument to his
commands. He had thought the idea a bit cheesy at first, perhaps a little too
Hollywood, but it had been inspired. Now he had all the authority he needed;
the more ears, the more authority, an easy equation.

The corpse moaned; she had turned. Corporal Allen had deliberately
not shot her in the head; he wanted to watch the turning process. She was
beginning to come back.

“Oh, crap. She has them funny eyes!” Phillips grimaced.

“Already?”
Corporal Allen
exclaimed. “That’s the fastest yet.” Another round between her eyes and it was
all over.

The group of seven soldiers made their way back to their
Humvee. To them the apocalypse was just one long party. It was hard to say
whether or not they comprehended the fate of the human race at this point; up
to now it had just been a lot of fun. Receiving the call from that NASA Colonel
had been a short-lived wake-up call, making them think that there might be some
form of government and hence some legal repercussions for their activities after
all. Part way through the conversation, however, Allen realised that this call was
coming from some half-assed remnant of a now defunct governmental body
dedicated to saving the world from itself. Boy, did they get that wrong, he
thought, almost laughing at the caller. It was just as well he didn’t because
in the next breath the disembodied voice had directed them to another group of
survivors, their bivouac set up near a collection of lakes above Bolder. Phillips
had dryly remarked that these would be as much fun as the last lot they had
‘rescued’.