War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) (40 page)

Everyone jumped back, all save Deckard who took Wilson’s spear and advanced like any primitive stone-age warrior would. The door had been warped by the explosion and it took a full thirty seconds to grind back.

“What the hell?” Deck poked at the remains of the sweater with his spear. A thin grey smoke lifted up from it.

“Was that a shirt?” Wilson asked. “Did someone spontaneously combust?”

“Wilson, please,” Thuy answered. “Let’s not be ridiculous. This is how Anna set off the gas.” Before anyone asked how she knew who had set off the explosion, she showed the obvious clues. “Look at the open hatch. Anna must have climbed down the elevator shaft and entered there. She started the gas going in the kitchens and then used the elevator with a burning shirt in it as a trigger.”

“What about Von Braun?” Deckard asked. “Couldn’t he have done this? You were pretty sure before.”

“I let my imagination get the best of me,” she answered. “His Diazepam must have run out hours ago. He’s just as brainless as the rest of them.” Her eyes inadvertently slipped over to Riggs.

He scowled at her. “Maybe it was just a shirt that caught on fire when the elevator went by the third floor.”

He was in such a pitiful state that she almost didn’t want to correct him and, if hadn’t been for the renewed fear in some of the eyes of the scientists she would have let it go. “That sort of heat would have ignited the carpet as well. No, it’ll be hot in there but it will be survivable, at least for a little while longer. If we hurry."

“Then what are we waiting for,” Burke demanded. Without looking for permission he walked onto the elevator and kicked the remains of the sweater out.

“I guess some men should ride in the first car,” Thuy said. “Wilson, Riggs, and…” Her eyes went to Milner who was no longer moving. “And…and uh, Rajesh, take the first group down. Deckard, Eng, and Mr. Singleton will escort the second.”

“No, I go wit firs group,” Eng said. He started forward, just as Burke had done, but Deckard grabbed his arm.

“Don’t be a chicken, Eng. You’re going down with me.” There was a real reason to fear waiting on the second trip. The heat and the smoke were fast becoming unbearable, and the sound of the fire eating away at the building came to them in tremendous crashes that rumbled the floor every few seconds.

Eng was no chicken, however he had reached a breaking point watching Milner mewling around on the ground with everyone pretending he didn’t exist. It seemed a particularly horrible and lonely death. “I’m going on this elevator right now,” Eng said, suddenly reverting to perfect English. Before Deckard could reply, Eng pulled the .38 with his right hand and grabbed Thuy around the neck with his left forearm.

“Why do you have a gun, Eng?” Deckard asked, feeling like he had missed something big. It made no sense that this geeky scientist would have a gun and that he hadn’t used it before this moment to fight the zombies.

“That’s my business.”

“And why are you talking like that?” Thuy asked. She was in the exact same confused boat as Deckard.

“Because I chose to,” Eng answered. “Now back off Deckard or I will kill you. And you too, Mr. Cowboy.” He meant Chuck who had angled to his right as stealthily as he could. “In fact, everyone get away from the elevator.”

“Ah ain’t going nowheres,” Burke said from inside the car.

“I will kill you,” Eng said, leveling the gun at John. “You have until the count of three. One…”

“Burke, get out of the elevator!” Deckard snapped. The way Eng held the gun close, how he had snatched up Thuy so easily, so fluidly, and the fact of the gun itself had Deck thinking Eng wasn't what he seemed. It was suddenly very clear that Eng was something beyond the nerdy caricature of an Asian scientist he had appeared to be.

“Two…” Eng said and then thumbed back the hammer.

“This won’t get y’alls little girl back, John,” Chuck said. “Bein’ dead won’t help her at all.”

John dropped his head. “Ah-rat. Y’all win,” he said and then eased out of the elevator with his hands up.

Eng didn’t waste a second. He thrust Thuy at Deckard, stepped into the elevator and hit the one button. As the door ground closed he kept the gun pointed out at the scientists who all kept well back. The elevator, making a high-pitched squeaking sound, dropped slowly through the fire engulfed third floor. The heat, baking through the concrete walls, staggered Eng. It was like stepping into a man-sized oven. His skin stretched tight across his cheekbones and he was forced to hide his face beneath his lab coat to keep it from blistering.

When he got past the flames eating away at the innards of the building, the relief was immediate. He dropped to his knees and, when he finally got to the first floor and the door came open, he jumped out and sucked down huge gulps of air, forgetting for a moment the threat of zombies. What brought him around was the sound of the elevator door shutting behind him.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, sticking his arm out to stop the door. A few feet away a potted plant sat overturned. Eng used it to hold the door open, in effect trapping everyone on the fourth floor once again. “So solly, Dr. Rhee,” he whispered as he headed out the front door.

The quarantine had always been an illusion. There were forty one troopers stationed around the hospital and not a one of them knew exactly what would happen if someone tried to break the ring. Their orders were to “maintain” the quarantine without coming into contact with any potentially infected person.

“Can we shoot them?” one of the troopers asked.

“Only to protect you or another civilian from attack,” Lieutenant Ford answered.

“And if someone just wants to leave?”

There was no good answer to that. Ford cleared his throat before replying, “Just use your authority and order them back into the quarantined area.”

This didn’t work out so well when Von Braun’s army came marching out of the front door. The now ex-prisoner pushed and punched and yelled the zombies out through the gates and at first they only meandered about, not realizing precisely what all the flashing lights meant. Then the trooper directly in front of the gate used his loud speaker to “command” the zombies back inside.

The human voice drew them on and in seconds they swarmed the trooper’s car and before he knew it they were all around him, hammering on the windows with their greasy fists. It took twenty eight seconds for the windows to break. The trooper got off three shots before the zombies crawled in and ate him alive.

A hundred yards back at the command post, Ford was screaming into the radio, first for a sitrep from the now dead trooper and then, belatedly to order all available units to “get their asses” to the front of the facility. Again, the first cruisers on scene were swarmed by the undead with the same bloody result.

Ford listened to the frantic cries for help over the radio with his stomach in knots. The situation was deteriorating, quickly. He could’ve gone in with guns blazing but in his mind he was still thinking in terms of maintaining the quarantine, when he should’ve been thinking about saving his men. “Use CS,” he yelled as more troopers came flying up. He jumped out of his cruiser and ran to the trunk. “We’ll disperse them with tear gas.”

He had a very commanding voice, a very loud voice. It carried into the quarantined tent that sat fifty yards away. For the last hour, eighteen former troopers and three badly mauled former CDC agents had walked in circles in the canvas tent leaving trails of black drool behind them. There was no reason for them to do anything else but to mindlessly walk along the inner wall of the tent. The night had been quiet; the troopers guarding the perimeter stayed in their cruisers where their voices and odors were masked, and so the zombies, who couldn’t think beyond the walls of the tent, just walked.

Now, there were gunshots and voices and the smell of clean humans. It awakened the hunger in them and, so powerful was that force, that they attacked the zippered door. The zipper itself was beyond their ability to comprehend, but they understood ripping and tearing. Just after the first tear gas canisters thumped down-range to land amid the horde of zombies, a wall of the tent ripped wide open.

The former troopers saw their former friends and charged. They came out of the dark and, with all the noise and mayhem, no one noticed them until they were only a few feet away.

Ford saw the uniforms only. “I need you to dump all available…” His words caught in his throat as he recognized Sergeant Foster—it was a grotesque, demonic version of Foster. Ford went for his gun, however Foster was on him too quickly, his teeth searching for the neck, his hands pulling the head back. The two went down, Ford on his back, Foster full on him.

So greedily did Foster go for his flesh that Ford gave up the gun that was still half-holstered. He needed every ounce of strength just to keep his throat from being torn out. Ford was a strong man and gradually he pushed Foster back until he was practically at arm’s length—that was when a second zombie suddenly appeared.

She dropped to her knees and lunged right at Ford’s face. Her teeth tore into his cheek, and then ripped off part of his ear, and then finally got into his neck. He fought back, wildly, trying to buck off his two attackers, but to no avail. They had their claws hooked into his hair and were holding onto his shirt at the collar and sleeve. When he fought off one, the other was always there, taking huge bites of him and chewing in his ear.

Ford was so strong that his death took twenty, very, long minutes. By then half of his troopers were dead and the others, many of them infected, were racing away at top speed.

The quarantine had failed its only test.

The briefing General Collins received while sitting on the side of his bed in his pajamas had him grim faced. An infection that was worse than Ebola was spreading along the Hudson River Valley and it was going to be his job to contain it.

“There are, uh, strange side effects to the disease,” a man named Ross told him. “The victims show, uh, an increased aggression and, uh, there are reports of cannibalism.” At the time Collins had shrugged off such talk. There wasn’t much in this world that a spinning, fiery-hot chunk of lead couldn’t take care of.

His second briefing, which came five minutes later, had him thinking all of this was some big prank. “Zombies?" he laughed. "Ok, that is funny. Who’s behind this? Is it Colonel Becker? That old dog is going to pay for getting me up in the middle of the night for a joke.”

“It’s no joke, General. Like I said, you will be dealing with zombies.”

“Listen lady, I don’t know who you are or who you think…”

“General, I swear this is on the up and up. I’ve diverted a helicopter to your home. It will be there in four minutes. I suggest you get dressed.”

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Courtney Shaw.” She had already overstepped her bounds to such an extent that it didn’t seem right to start going half-assed now. She had commandeered an air-ambulance unit from a hospital in Newburgh by invoking the governor’s name—she figured he’d thank her later.

“I’ve also taken the liberty of starting your call-chain for the 27
th
, the 50
th
, and the 86
th
infantry brigades. When can we expect full muster, do you think?”

Collins sputtered at this: “You did…you did what? I’m only authorized to call up the 27
th
. Who is this?”

“Courtney Shaw. I’m sorta with the governor’s office. Listen, General. I’ve been on the ground from the beginning with this. Until you see for yourself, you’re going to have to trust me.” The sound of the helicopter overhead had him thinking he didn’t really have any choice.

Half-dressed, Collins kissed his wife goodbye and then ducked under the spinning blades of the copter that sat smack down in the middle of his street. Eight minutes later he was circling over the Walton facility. The little craft bounced and rocked as the heat of the fire roiled the air.

Down below people were walking around. There weren’t nearly as many of them as he’d been led to believe. “I only count sixty or so, Courtney. What happened to the hundreds you mentioned?” Sixty didn’t seem like a lot when he was safe in his helicopter.

Courtney had a fair count going that matched up with the breathless tales of horror the fleeing state troopers had given her. “They must have dispersed, sir. I’ve taken the liberty of calling up the 3
rd
battalion of your aviation unit. They’re the ones with the Blackhawks, right?”

“I…I…yeah, but…” Collins was about to ask who she was again and how she knew so much about his own unit when she answered the unspoken question.

“It’s all on Wikipedia. I figured you’d need to start ferrying your troops as soon as possible, though we should begin with Poughkeepsie. The outbreak there is far worse and the containment logistics are a nightmare.”

“What can we expect from local law enforcement?” Collins asked into the mike.

Courtney looked at her board. It was a chaos of flashing lights. Next to her, Renee was busy trying to find out where all the state troopers were, who was dead, who was driving off to who knew where and who was coming to their rescue. “Until morning you won’t have more than a handful," Courtney answered. "Which reminds me, what are your orders concerning the zombies? I hope to God they are to shoot on sight.”