Now it was too late. Something was happening in the town. He just wasn’t sure what. He had been getting reports from the inner roadblocks and had heard that shots had been fired. There were things, human-shaped things, attacking them every so often. He didn’t have full reports, only that the things were hard to kill, and it took near dismemberment to stop even just one of them.
Over the course of the last few hours, they had stopped having any people try to get out. They had one family try to get out after the CDC team went in. Thankfully, that family had turned back without incident. There had been no others since then.
He turned around and followed the corporal towards their communication post. It was better not to think about what they already had to do.
What was happening in the town? The CDC was in there, people weren’t coming out anymore, and now there were these “things”.
“Stop where you are!” he heard one of his soldiers yell. He looked over to see a couple more soldiers hurry over, all raising their rifles. Wade could just see where they were pointing them and watched as five people were walking towards the checkpoint. No, that wasn’t right. They weren’t really walking. They were more like shuffling, staggering.
He walked over towards his men, calling out to McCormick, “Tell the major he will have to wait. We have a situation developing.”
McCormick nodded to him and hurried off.
“What’s happening? Why didn’t you call me over?”
“Sergeant, they had been making their way closer, but had stopped for a while. We really hadn’t known what to make of it.”
They were still a couple hundred feet away, but were slowly walking towards them.
“What should we do?”
“Get yourselves in position. Jones, Krist, take up the corner positions. Then rest of you know where to go.”
Jones and Krist walked off, working to the fringes of the barricade. Each one took a corner. That way, they could fire into a “V”.
He could feel that something was happening, although he didn’t know if that was because of this, or just because the day had been getting worse. The sun was low, and it would only be an hour until darkness. They weren’t set up to stay out there for too much longer, and they were not prepared to be out there at night.
“They are not stopping,” one soldier pointed out. He had to look at the name on the uniform. Tims. It sounded familiar, though he wasn’t sure why. He thought maybe it had something to do with some discipline he had doled out. It didn’t matter.
Wade stepped forward. “By order of the United States Army, you are hereby ordered to turn around and head back into town. You cannot leave. There is an incident, and you are ordered to return home and stay there. It is not safe. You must return home,” he yelled out to them, his voice booming.
They kept coming, were only a hundred feet away now, and he could see there was something seriously wrong with them. Their clothing was ripped, exposing their skin. One of them, a man who looked to be in his late thirties, had a long rip down the side of his pants. It looked like part of his flesh was white and pale, but then there were dark spots.
As they continued to get closer, he could see that one of them was missing a hand, leaving only a bloody stump. The hand was gone, the bone exposed, and there was just a red mess where the hand should have been. When he looked closer, he realized that the hand wasn’t completely gone. There was a finger remaining, dangling from flesh that just barely held it.
One of them, one he had thought had been wearing tight yoga pants, was not wearing anything. That wasn’t a dark, workout garment. It was like she was coated in something. As she got closer, he could see where it had faded in a few places and there was pale flesh underneath.
He could see their faces in the remaining light. He saw the deep gashes in their skin, and the massive amount of disfiguration. He should have seen it before they had even gotten that close, but he hadn’t been looking there. He had been watching their forms.
“Sergeant…?”
They were getting closer and he knew his men were awaiting his orders. He had given the order once already, but it seemed harder to take his eyes away this time. Just what was going on?
“Fire!” he yelled.
The first shot tore into the face of the woman covered in blood. The shot ripped through her cheek, and he watched as the back of her head exploded outwards. The woman stumbled back, falling. One down. The soldier who had fired was already turning to fire at the next one, but the sergeant didn’t watch. He was watching the woman he had shot. She had fallen back, landed, and should have been dead. Instead, she turned over and stumbled to get up.
These were the things. These were the things the other barricades had reported about. They sure did look human.
What was going on in that town? These things didn’t just look human. They had to have been human at some point. There was nothing that could copy humanity to that degree. There was no imitation to that kind of carnage as it walked toward them. He was amazed and horrified by it. This was a horror film come alive. Would his sister be a part of it? Would he have to shoot her as she stumbled forward?
Just what the hell was going on in there?! He watched as the woman got back to her feet, the back of her head gone, the grey matter of her brain oozing out. The woman should not be moving. How was she moving?!
Wade looked to see the next man the soldier had shot…the one missing the hand. The soldier had made another head shot and the man had stumbled back, but didn’t even fall to the ground. The right side of his head was completely gone, but he was still coming forward.
“Ah!” he heard the scream from one of his men, and he turned to see that Jones, who had been positioned at the outer leg of their “V”, had a dark shape appear behind him and start pulling him back into the tall corn. Then there were more dark shapes emerging from the corn, staggering in from the sides, stumbling as they walked down the embankment of the ditch, moving towards his men.
He quickly pulled his sidearm and was hurrying towards Jones. Behind him, he heard more shouting and shots ringing out. He heard himself screaming, “Fire! Take them out! Fire!”
He didn’t have to look around to know that all his men, who had been standing around most of the day, were now amidst a flurry of activity.
He heard another scream from behind him. He didn’t need to turn to know that another one of his men was getting attacked.
Wade fired his sidearm into the first one he neared and watched the face disappear as his bullet tore through it, just to have the thing keep stumbling towards him. He fired again and again, the bullets slamming into the skull, exploding out the back, but the thing kept coming, barely slowing down.
He stopped before he got too close to the thing, realizing he had emptied his clip. He grabbed another from his belt and in a smooth, well-practiced motion, slammed the new clip into his revolver. As he did, he took a moment to stop and look around.
His men had formed a line at the barricade and were firing into the five coming down the street. The things weren’t moving fast, but they were getting closer, and the bullets tearing through them barely seemed to slow them down. It made them stagger, but not stop. The five coming down the street now had more that had joined them, ones that had been in the cornfield. More dark shapes were still emerging, stumbling forward.
Jones was gone, and there was no way he could go in after him. Where Jones had disappeared into the corn, dark shapes continued to flow out. On the other side, Krist was staggering away from the field. He had his hand to his neck, but it wasn’t stopping the flow of blood flooding out of him. His gaze was lost, he was going into shock, and he staggered as though he was one of those things. Behind him, there were three coming for him. Within seconds, they had overtaken him, and they all fallen to a heap on the ground.
“Fall back!” he yelled.
Where would they fall back to? He knew they couldn’t make it to the outer perimeter, and even if they did, they would be shot on sig
ht. Their only option was to hold. They needed to form up and get a strong line of fire that can wipe these things out.
Just ignore that there was probably even more of the things in the corn. He couldn’t worry about that now. They had to get this taken care of. Get these things put down, then they could get patrols formed up and go hunting for more.
“Fall back! Form up!” He watched as his men were moving to fall back to his position, getting into a line of fire.
“McCormick!” he yelled.
He looked over and saw the little man was already near him, his face pale. The kid had probably shit himself when he had seen the first one get back up. He could see puke all down the front of his uniform.
“Get on the horn. Let command know we are taking fire and falling back. Tell them we’re trying to hold, but may be overrun. Go!”
The corporal stood there, watching as the things continued to take fire. He wasn’t even looking at the sergeant. He rushed over to him and harshly shook the man. Slowly, the man’s eyes seemed to focus on him.
“Go! Get on the horn! Let them know we are being overrun!”
“Yes, sergeant,” he said, but he still wasn’t moving.
“Go!”
He had to forcefully push the man, causing him to stumble back. He caught himself, again looking at the things coming towards them. Then he was gone, running towards his little communication tent.
Wade turned back around and emptied his clip into the closest one, watching as its head continued to explode until it was nothing more than a bottom jaw on top of a body. The thing kept coming, its tongue barely fastened to whatever it was connected to inside its head, flopping as it continued to come. Those things were not stopping.
* * * *
On the bank of monitors in his office, the general watched the video feed. There were ten screens, various shots of different views inside and out of the trailer, rotating through as the situation was developing. All of the screens were randomly changing, but he had locked the one directly in front of him on a view of the operating area of the trailer.
He watched as the body had first been thrown down onto the table, then saw as the thing had leaped up and attacked the doctor.
The general had watched as part of a corpse came to life and attacked their scientist. It was vicious, and the soldier in the room with them seemed to have a hard time fighting it.
The general had also watched the soldiers inside the doctor’s office, thanks to the cameras built into the helmets. He had watched as the three soldiers had fought against the same corpse and had barely been able to stop it.
Whatever the thing was, whether it was dead or not, it was not easy to kill. If it could be controlled, it would be one hell of a weapon. If they could find out what created it, find out how to tame it, it would be unstoppable. They would have the perfect weapon. There wouldn’t be anybody out there who could stop them. Even fighting terrorists, they could just drop a few of these things in the general area of the insurgents and just let it go. There would be collateral damage, but that was easy to hide. The things couldn’t be killed, and when the incursion was over, he’d just pick up the pieces.
He couldn’t help but appreciate the pure beauty of how deadly just one undead corpse could be. It would revolutionize warfare, and it had just fallen into his lap.
“Sir?”
The general looked up and saw Captain Davis standing in the doorway.
“Yes, captain?”
“We are getting reports back. The soldiers outside the trailer are getting attacked.”
The general looked over at another screen as it flipped back to the outer corner of the trailer. He saw three soldiers there. Two of them were fighting against the things surrounding them, while they tried to drag the third one towards the trailer. They still had quite a distance to go, but it was hard to tell just how far from the perspective of the camera.
He could see there were a lot more of the things out there now. They disappeared beyond where the camera could see. More were staggering into frame, surrounding his troops.
“Thank you, captain.” He kept the commanding tone in his voice, hiding the exasperation he was feeling. He just couldn’t believe how amazing these things were as killing machines. It was fascinating to watch as they surrounded their targets, attacked, then moved on. Whatever was in their way, they would just overcome. No matter what it was, they just swarmed over it.
It almost reminded him of ants. Wasn’t it fire ants that did that? When there was food or danger, they would swarm over it, the workers attacking, then returning to their queen. He didn’t watch television so he had never watched those animal shows, but he thought he had seen or heard something like that. This was how he imagined they worked…surrounding, devouring, moving on.
Nothing seemed to really slow them down, so how could they control it? These weapons were too good to let go. They needed to find a way to prevent this from spreading, and they needed to get it contained.
“Knock, knock.” He turned from the monitors to see that the captain had left, and Major Burns was standing there.
“Not good news?” the major asked as he stepped into the office.
“They are overtaking our CDC team and their support,” the general said as he went back to watching the monitors. Not liking the man, he really didn’t want to have to deal with him, although he knew as much as he wanted to ignore him, he wasn’t going to go away. The major was like an annoying fly that, as much as you swatted at it, just would not fly away. Though a fly might leave a person alone if they ignored it long enough. He doubted the major would.
The major took a seat and just sat there quietly.
The general continued to watch the carnage on the screen. “Do you ever wonder why we do what we do?” the general asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m watching men die. Soldiers, somebody's husband or wife. People are dying, and for what reason? It’s easy to contain the threat here, but we send these same men and women overseas to other countries to fight. We always look to find new weapons to make killing the enemy more effective. Kill the enemy while incurring the least amount of collateral damage. So we’re always looking for that new weapon.
“So…here I am, watching those things kill people, and I’m watching it…”
The general turned, looking into the major’s eyes. He could feel the bags under his own, and hadn’t realized how tired he felt. The day was wearing on him. It was becoming a long one and he didn’t think he was going to get rest anytime soon. Not until this mess was over.
“Here I am, watching this, and I don’t care about the lives lost. I’m thinking about how great a weapon these things are. I want to find a way to control them. Why? Why do we do the things we do? Why do we do this?”
“We do this because it has to be done. We do this because others can’t. And we do this because we love the look on the innocent’s face right before we put a bullet through their skull.”
The general’s forehead creased in disapproval, his eyebrows raised as he glared into the other man’s dark eyes. Those eyes just burned into him, not relenting.
“Have you ever actually been in the field? What do you know about it?” the general growled.
“I’ve done my time.”
“Yeah. I’m sure you have. I can see it in your scars.”
The smile returned to the major’s face, but it still never seemed to be truly genuine. It stayed there as the major seemed to be studying him. It unnerved him, but he tried to hold the man’s glare. However, those dark eyes burrowed into him, and he could feel a pounding grow behind his temple. The world was thudding a tune, and everything else had gone silent, except for the humming of the monitors behind him.
The general turned to look back at the monitors, grimacing as he watched the things tearing into his men. The three who had been out of the trailer were now on the ground. His view was mostly obscured, but he could still see the dark liquid oozing out from under them. The
parts of the bodies he could see were no longer moving.
“Did you know any of them?”
The general shook his head. Did he really know any of the soldiers under him anymore? He couldn’t remember the last time he had really talked to any of his subordinates and learned anything about them.
These troops who were dying hadn’t even been in his command. He learned long ago that it was not beneficial for him to even know their names. It was always harder to send someone off to die when you knew how many kids they had back home.
“Yeah. It’s good not to know the ones you kill.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not what you’re thinking about, though, is it?”
“Look at those things. They just keep coming. We’ve shot the hell out of them. Three of my men barely took down one of them. You get two of those things together and they are damn near unstoppable.”
“You want to make more of them?”
“I want to know how to control them.”
“To control them, you have to learn what they want. What are they after?”
“Looks like they’re feeding.”
“Are they?”
“Well, just look at them.”
“Yeah, watch them. Look at that one. He doesn’t even have a body anymore, but he’s still eating.”
The general looked at Burns, then looked back at the monitor he was pointing at. He saw one of the things without a head. It was still clawing at one of the men, but he couldn’t really see what it was trying to do. It looked like it was trying to bite them, but there wasn’t any head! It was pulling itself forward, the exposed spine moving forward and back.
“It doesn’t know,” the general mumbled.
“Maybe.”
“You’re right. If we could contain them, find a way to control them, it would be a great weapon for the U.S. military. It looks like we could just drop one of these into a terrorist camp… Hell, drop one into China and use their over-crowded cities against them. And it wouldn’t even technically be biological warfare. I don’t even know what you would call it.”
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