War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) (35 page)

“Just give me my meds!” he screamed.

In order to get them, she would have to turn her back on him which meant she had to trust him. A shiver went down her spine as she turned to step through the curtains. There was no time to waste; she went straight for the med locker and began looking for Diazepam. The drawer was clearly marked and clearly empty.

There was plenty of Valium in pill form. She took one of the bottles and measured out triple the normal dose: six pills. They seemed so small and inadequate that she added four more to the med cup. The bottle went into the pocket of her lab coat for future use.

“This is for you,” she said to Von Braun. “But if you want any more you have to do what I say.” She set the pills on the linoleum and backed away. He ate them greedily, chewing them and then swallowing them dry.

“You’ll give the gook to me?” he asked. She nodded and he smiled a mishmash of black spore, red blood, and white powder. “Then name it. What do you want?”

In the fifty-six minutes before Gerald Brunson’s migraine forced him out of his chair and onto the ground where he rolled around moaning, he did his level best to go through the CDC checklist, item by item. Yes, he was interrupted three different times as troopers went berserk and had to be restrained, and then there were the endless, tedious phone calls from his boss and his boss’s boss, and this mayor and that dignitary and even someone from the governor's office, all wanting to know what was going on.

To each, he replied with a simple: "When I know, you'll be the first person I'll call."

Then he'd go back to his precious checklist because that was what he'd been taught. Follow protocol! Don't deviate from procedure. Stay the course, and all that. It had been drummed into his head, and now when there was simply no time to waste going page by page, he kept his team on task and focused on the manual. He even had them read each page aloud so that nothing would be missed, knowing that in the long run, it would pay off.

It cost them precious minutes; minutes they desperately needed and minutes none of them were ever going to get back. No one inside the white tent knew that their quarantine was on a countdown.

Even before Gerald and the second CDC team arrived, Sergeant Foster had accidentally infected half the troopers. After he spat in Brunson’s mouth and went nuts, he got the other half good and germy as well. The CDC people, including Brunson, though it was obviously too late in his case, quickly suited up head to toe in their plastic bio-suits. They were safe against the Com-cells, but not against the infected troopers who gradually fell under the hateful spell of the disease and grew suspicious, angry and above all, jealous of the agents in the plastic suits.

When Gerald's migraine made it impossible for him to go on with his protocols, Rachel Jergen, the second in command, took over and she too "stayed the course", picking up where he left off, attempting to catalog who was infected and where they may have gone and with whom they may have come in contact, but she, too, was interrupted.

Trooper Paul, his face twisted into a grimace from the pain in his head, came stumbling up to her. “How come we don’t get a fancy suit?” The nasty look he wore, coupled with his size made him extremely intimidating. It didn’t help that in order to see the face behind the plastic he had to stand very close to her. He was also armed with an extremely large gun on his hip, something Rachel glanced at every other second. “Where’s my suit?” he demanded.

The CDC people looked back and forth at each other but they weren’t trained to deal with such belligerence. They were used to throwing their weight around, not being cowed by the local "authorities" who they usually didn’t feel were much of an authority on anything besides the locations of the local Dunkin Doughnuts.

“We...we have some coming,” Rachel answered in a jittery voice. “It’ll just be a few more hours before they arrive. We have additional agents on their way and they are bringing extra suits and extra, uh, uh extra of everything.”

Paul had just begun to feel the paranoia. It wasn’t yet the raging voice in his head that it would soon become and he allowed himself to be soothed by her words. He went back to sit with the other troopers, most of whom had been nodding along at his outburst. He sat and watched Rachel, gradually coming to the realization that there was something not right about her. The feeling built in his mind gradually, keeping pace with the growing numbers of replicating Com-cells.

Twenty-eight minutes later he got up, walked to her chair and without warning, punched her full in the face with all his strength—something that was extremely satisfying and good in his mind. Like a ragdoll, she flopped backwards out of her chair and lay on the ground unmoving. None of the troopers batted an eye, not even when he took out a utility knife and slashed open her mask.

“She’s not human,” he whispered. Behind the plastic shield her eyes were all wrong. She was either an alien monster that looked like a human or a fake, like a cyborg or a replicant, he couldn’t tell which, but he was going to find out now.

“Get off her!” one of the CDC men screamed, pulling at Paul’s broad shoulder.

“I have to see,” Paul said. “She’s not real. She’s not one of us!” With little effort he threw the man off him. He bent again to the unconscious woman and without a qualm slit her face from forehead to chin. Blood gushed up, pooling in her eyes, and running to settle in her suit. Using both hands he peeled back her flesh. It didn’t come off easily. Beneath were blood and bone and stuff he didn’t recognize beyond the fact that he knew it was human stuff.

“Must be deeper,” he said. The bone that made up Rachel's nasal ridge was harder than it looked and he had to punch the knife through it to get at the secret below. Someone screamed. “It’s ok. She’s not one of us,” he said to reassure the screamer, he glanced back and saw the plastic people, and wondered if they were indeed real people. The CDC agents didn't look much like people to him.

“Keep an eye on them and someone untie Foster," he demanded of the other troopers. After his run in with Gerald Brunson, Foster had become increasingly irrational, but now Paul was seeing that his words had been more prophetic than crazy. "Foster was right all along about them. They can't be allowed to keep living like plastic fakes. We have to open them up, too.”

At this, the remaining CDC agents broke for the exit with the troopers hot after them. In accordance with protocol, the door was zippered shut. The first agent got the zipper halfway down before the troopers were on them in a paranoia-fueled madness. The agents scattered like sheep, running around the tent uselessly screaming and begging for mercy.

“Don’t listen to them,” Paul ordered. “They ain’t real. They’re like her, underneath.” He pointed to Rachel who, in truth, no longer looked human.

Since the troopers weren't full-on zombies yet, the CDC agents were spared the agony of being eaten alive. Instead they were stomped and beaten into a semi-unconscious state. Even then Paul wasn't sure about them. He mutilated their bodies with his knife, trying to find the hidden truth. "I'll find it," he whispered, growing hungry at the sight of all that red, red blood.

Outside the tent, time ticked uselessly away. The other troopers sat in their cruisers strung out in a wide circle around the hospital and shivered from more than the chill night.

The bloodcurdling screams of the dying CDC agents could be heard by everyone, even those on the other side of the hospital. They radioed back and forth to each other wondering what to do.

"No one does anything," Lieutenant Darrel Ford said. He'd been on scene for all of fifteen minutes, having driven down from Albany to take charge of the quarantine. "No one is to approach that tent. Maintain your intervals and keep your eyes open."

"But it sounds like people are getting skinned alive in there," someone said.

"I don't care!" Ford barked into the radio. "Our job is to enforce the quarantine. No one goes in and no one goes out for any reason." His orders were clear.

Eight minutes later things changed.

People in the little cottages had been waiting out the quarantine in relative comfort, watching TV or playing board games. It wasn't until the sun went down behind the clouds that things became unnerving. First it was the muffled gunshots, and then it was the ring of police cars with their flashing lights, and then it was the screams as Andy O'Brian and his mother-in-law were killed, and now there were people lurking around the grounds. Strange, scary looking people.

Instinctively, the people in the cottages turned off their lights and barricaded their doors. They also began calling the police over and over again until they got through. Their frantic pleas moved Courtney Shaw, who, on her own volition, ordered them to be evacuated.

"We have commandeered a warehouse for exactly this reason," she told Ford. "It's just up route 24 about fourteen miles."

"We don't have suits for everyone," Ford replied. "In fact I have only six available. That's not enough."

"It is," Courtney insisted. "Look, you don't have to transport anyone. They all have cars. Just escort them to the warehouse. The only ones you really have to worry about are those at the big house. Yes, they are infected, but one is comatose and the other is..."

"If they got the disease, they stay," Ford interrupted.

"But one is only a little girl and the other is..."

"I don't care. They stay here with the rest. Unless I hear from the superintendent himself I'm not moving them." Courtney, who had used the line:
You have new orders
as if they had come from somewhere higher up, relented.

Ford wasn't happy about the move; regardless he followed “orders” yet he did so with the very certain knowledge that he wasn't about to lose any troopers on his watch. He contacted each of the cottages personally and coordinated the withdrawal so that his men wouldn't be on the grounds for more than a minute.

The family members in the cottages were eager to get as far away from the hospital as possible.

In the big house, Dr. McGrady was checking the hall closet for his coat. "Someone has to stay," he said. "And I'm not volunteering. Sorry Ed, but you aren’t paying me nearly enough to hang around here.”

His cowardice bothered Edmund Rothchild who gave him a hard look from beneath his bushy brow. “I’ll stay with Gabrielle and Jaimee myself, but you must show me what I need to do to take care of them.”

“Of course,” McGrady said. “It’s not hard.” Taking care of the little girl was nothing. So far, Jaimee’s sickness hadn’t progressed very far. She was moody and bored, but not cannibalistic. Gabrielle Rothchild was even easier. She hadn’t so much as twitched since McGrady had put her under. All Edmund had to do was keep an eye on her IV drip.

“I’m going to stay, too,” Maddy informed them, planting her balled fists on her hips. “Mommy needs me and Jaimee is my friend. I should be here for them.”

“No,” was all Edmund said on the subject. There wasn’t time to argue. The sirens of the police cars had suddenly kicked on. It meant they’d be coming through the gates in precisely one minute.

As McGrady explained the simple procedure to replace an IV bag, Ms. Robins grabbed Maddy and rushed around the house stuffing their things in a suitcase. The little girl was like a whining anchor, needing to be dragged around by the hand. Ms. Robins barely noticed the weight. She had seen the creatures masquerading as people walking around the grounds and she had heard O'Brian's ghastly death as it happened. The screams had lanced her heart and she had bled courage ever since.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry," she repeated, over and over, desperately afraid to be left behind.

When the minute had passed, eight cruisers swept through the open gates. In each were two troopers, one literally riding shotgun. They screeched up to the cottages, nervously looking all around. In the glare of their lights they could see the strange people...the zombies in the rain.

Trooper Ian Andrews, in the lead cruiser disobeyed orders when he saw Ms. Robins. He rolled down his window long enough to yell at her. “Get in your damned car!" he screamed. "Forget all that crap!”

She had a suitcase in one hand, another under her arm and Maddy held by the collar to keep her from going anywhere. Mincing around the puddles in four-inch heels, she was the slowest by far of anyone fleeing the cottages. Before she even got Maddy tucked inside her Mercedes, Dr. McGrady’s BMW was already pulling out, spewing mud in an arc. Right behind him was Mrs. Unger in her Cadillac.

"Don't leave us!" Ms. Robins wailed. A zombie almost caught her as she pushed Maddy into the car. It came splashing up out of the dark, its face half shorn away, one eye hanging by some grisly string of nastiness. Ms. Robins didn’t have to be told to run. With a scream, she raced around the Mercedes, putting it between them.

As the zombie scurried around the car it walked right next to the police cruiser. “What the hell is that?” the trooper in the driver seat asked. His voice was girlishly high.

Ian didn’t notice and when he answered, his own voice was two octaves higher than normal. “What do I do? Do I shoot it?”

“No!” the driver practically screeched. “Don’t you fuckin' roll down the window again. Uh...Uh, use the spotlight.” 

“Right,” Ian said. He had a death grip on his shotgun. It was as though the weapon had fused to his skin, and he had to will his right hand from the stock in order to work the spotlight.

The illumination, equivalent to 240,000 candles, blasted into the disfigured face of the zombie, transfixing it long enough for Ms. Robins to climb into her car. Just like McGrady, she didn’t wait for the troopers. She pointed the Mercedes across the lawn and stomped the gas, tearing twin ruts in the new sod before bouncing over the curb and onto the street. She was so out of her head with fear that at the gate she swung left instead of right.

Lieutenant Ford, watching from the new command post swore into the mike: “Someone get that black car, damn it! And who’s on the beamer?”

“Kilo-four is in pursuit of the BMW. That fucker is really moving.”

“Watch your language, Kilo-four,” Ford admonished. He relaxed a touch when he saw a second cruiser go off after the Mercedes. Ms. Robins wasn’t going to get very far. “Let me have a vehicle count.”