The general turned to look back at the screen. His soldiers were dying. Actually, he hoped they were already dead. With no sound, he couldn’t hear if they were screaming. At least that was a blessing. To control such a powerful weapon, releasing these things on their enemies… All they had to do was learn how to control them, and it would be a landfall of a weapon. These things were unstoppable, and he had found them.
“So what are you going to do? What should I tell the president?”
“Sir?” The captain had hurried back to the door. He was carrying a stack of photos under his arm.
“Yes, captain?”
“The zombies are taking over the inner perimeter. The men are trying to hold, but they are having to fall back.”
“Zombies?”
“Sir?”
“Who the hell started calling the biological entities zombies?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Well, tell everyone to stop,” the general snapped. “We don’t need that shit spreading. Get back with the sergeant. Tell him he needs to hold. Also, get with the outer perimeter and set up some back-up for them. Tell them to be ready to shoot anyone on sight, no matter who they are.”
“Sir, there’s more.”
“What?”
“We have the latest satellite feed. It’s spreading. It looks like it has spread through most of the town. The zom-, biological entities are nearly filling the main streets and starting to head towards the outer areas.”
The captain came in, spreading out the images of the satellite pictures across the general’s desk. Each of the pictures depicted different people in the streets, masses of the biological entities surrounding them.
The general looked down at the images, each one showing carnage. It was primal and he couldn’t help but think of predators tearing apart their prey. They were in a jungle…that was it…and man was no longer at the top of the food chain. Whatever these things were, they were taking over. They couldn’t be stopped and they couldn’t be controlled.
They needed something bigger.
The general looked up to see Burns looking at him like he was his own predator, sitting there licking his lips and ready to chomp at his running prey.
“The president needs to prepare his statement,” the major said.
“And that is?”
“You tell me? These things make an excellent weapon. If we send a mass of troops in to contain them, then we have time to study them, learn how to control them.”
The general looked at the pictures again, then turned to look at his display. More of them came in from the outer reaches of the frame, filling it as they went to the downed soldiers. Yes, these things would make a great weapon. Control. They needed control.
But people were dying, his troops were getting pushed back. He had to face the reality of it. If he let this go on, it would get further out of control.
He knew he was about to let the greatest weapon the United States had ever seen slip through his fingers, but he couldn’t handle the fallout if he were wrong.
The general looked down at the images. “Captain, get me an ETA on when we will have the M.O.A.B ready.”
“That seems drastic,” Major Burns said as he looked at him, his smile not even touching the corner of his eyes.
“The bird is already in the air. It can reach the nest in twenty minutes,” the captain responded
“They have a go. Launch code, AN3DND, Protocol Pompeii,” the general said.
“Yes, sir,” the captain said, then disappeared out of the office.
“You going to go watch the fireworks?” the major asked as he stood, straightening his uniform, then walking towards the door.
“No. When the world ends, I plan on drowning myself in ice, rather than the fire.” The general walked over to the large liquor bar and poured himself a drink, then dropped in three large ice cubes.
“Farewell, my friend.”
The general nodded to him as the man stood in the doorway. For the briefest of moments, the general swore he could smell raw sewage, the heavy stench filling the room and trying to gag him. He tried to ignore it, but he felt his face crinkle as it overtook him. Something must have died in the air conditioning vents and he must be smelling it now that the air had kicked on. Quick as he had smelled it, the foul odor was gone, and the major had left the room.
The general turned and looked at his drink. He watched as the ice cracked, splintering into different fractures. It seemed like the world was cracking, breaking apart. Everything was ripping at the seams and, right now, he was at the epicenter of it all. It was right were the person could fall the farthest, and he saw his future swirling around in that rich brown liquid. He knew the whiskey would burn on its way down, and the idea of sinking into it nagged at the corner of his mind.
He had never turned away from his responsibility and he wouldn’t start now. However, and not for the first time, he wondered why he had ever joined the military. He could have done so many other things with his life, and none of them would have brought him there. Maybe he could be off somewhere right then, married, happy, living another life. He could have been doing so many other things
“I should have been a watchmaker.”
CHAPTER 21
Westdale was not a scientist. He had not studied to be one, nor did he ever care much about the sciences. In high school, he had barely graduated. To him, a clear liquid was water. He didn’t need to test it. If it was clear, you drank it. Thankfully, in his lab work in high school, he never put his theory to the test, but he didn’t pay much attention to what the teacher had been saying, either. It wasn’t only because his teacher had been one of the driest individuals to have ever walked the planet, making the class very painful to sit through, but it was also just something he had never been able to wrap his brain around.
So as he was now surrounded in the mobile lab, he really couldn’t care less about its construction, about how the different sections and parts of the lab worked. He was in one part with chaos erupting around him, and he wanted out. His two options were to either go straight outside through the side door of the lab, or go through the inner door to the other section. There was a third scientist there, but that one hadn’t been exposed to any of this. Westdale assumed that if he made it there, he would be safe. Well, at least safer until he could find another way out.
Westdale stepped over the thinner of the female scientists, the one who had been giving him orders since he had first gotten there, and rushed to the side airlock door. The larger scientist was still fighting with the torso. He didn’t think her suit had been broken yet, but he was not about to take any more chances. Not for these people who had gotten them into this mess. These people were nuts. They could deal with their own problems.
He made it to the door and pounded. The glass…or whatever it was because he couldn’t tell through the plastic of his own suit…made no sound. It didn’t matter, though, because the third scientist was standing on the other side, his scared expression obvious through the little visor on his face.
“Let me in!” Westdale yelled. He knew that, through the radio transmitter in his suit, the man could hear him, even if he couldn’t hear the pounding on the glass. They had all been sharing a frequency, and it was what had allowed them to have taken orders from the scientists when they had been in the doctor’s office. That seemed like it was a lifetime ago, when it had only really been an hour. The radio was still working, so the man could definitely hear him.
However, it seemed like he wasn’t going to pay attention to him. Instead, he was too caught up in what was going on behind Westdale. Westdale turned, having to use his whole body to see what was happening. The thin scientist was still on the floor; however, the other one was back against the other wall. Her suit was torn open now, and the woman was digging at her own skin. “Get them off of me. Get the spiders out of me! Please! Get them off!”
He didn't know what she was talking about. He didn’t see anything. She was clawing d
eep gouges into her cheeks, then her neck. The veins were popping as she was struggling with herself. He knew that with how she was tearing away at the flesh, she would soon be tearing away at her carotid artery, and then she really wouldn’t have much longer. At least he knew that much of basic medicine.
He turned back to the door. He had to scream to be heard over the scientist’s yelling. “Get me out of here! Open the door.”
The doctor seemed to wake a little from his trance and looked at the soldier as though it was the first time really seeing him there. Then he started to shake his head. It was barely a visible motion inside the suit. “No.”
“You have to. They are both infected. I’m the only one left.”
“How do I know you aren’t infected?”
“Look at them, then look at me.”
The doctor looked at the two other scientists, then back at the soldier. He knew the man must be weighing his options. Westdale thought he was going to have to get harsh with the man, figuring if he ordered him, he would open the door before he thought more about it. Then he saw the man cave in. Even through the large protective suit, he could register a slump to the shoulders, and the scientist started pressing some buttons near the door.
“You’ll enter the air lock. There will be a few minutes of sanitation to your suit to make sure nothing biological comes through, then the inner door will open.”
With a loud hiss, the outer door opened, and Westdale quickly stepped in.
* * * *
Westdale stepped out into the other side of the lab and looked at the smaller man. His suit read “Bernard”. He nodded an acknowledgement to the man as he stepped into the inner sanctum. He wished he could take off his damned suit, but as the other scientist had his on, he felt safer doing the same. However, according to the flashing light out of the corner of his eye, he knew he needed to get a new oxygen tank hooked to it because his was running low.
“Thank you.”
The scientist nodded, then looked back into the other room. Westdale followed his gaze. He watched as both scientists were moving. The thinner one was still on the ground, flailing as she was trying to get turned over to stand. She reminded him of a turtle that was stuck on its back. He knew these suits were hard to get turned over in, but knew right away that it wasn’t her problem. He didn’t have to see inside the suit to know she had become one of those things.
“They’re both dead.”
Westdale turned to look at Bernard. “What?”
“Look at their vitals. They are both dead. They shouldn’t be moving. Neither one of them has a pulse. They’re both dead.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I know it’s not, but they are both dead.”
Westdale watched. The larger scientist was stumbling towards the glass wall. It was one of the two walls that separated them, but he still took a step back. She slammed into the wall as though she didn’t see it there, then reached out to try and push through it. He noticed that, at some point, she had found her artery and blood should have been gushing out of her. It wasn’t, and now the flow had stopped, leaving a puddle of red liquid all over the floor and down the front of her suit.
He turned away, and saw that the other scientist had done the same. Bernard was working to keep his eyes diverted to the monitors. There was the status monitor that had everyone’s vitals. Of all the names listed, his and Bernard's were the only two that weren’t flatline. Then there was the surveillance monitor, which showed multiple feeds from multiple cameras. In every view, those things were surrounding the trailer. There were so many of them out there. So many of the indestructible killing machines. Just one of them had killed two scientists and had nearly taken out his whole squad.
“We have to get out of here.”
“Yeah? How?” Bernard asked, his dry tone thick with sarcasm. They both watched the monitors. They knew how hopeless their situation was. “There’s nowhere to go. We have to wait for help. They have to send more troops in, right? They have to send in help.”
Westdale saw the things out there. Were they really zombies? He had seen enough horror films to think the term fit, but zombies were supposed to die with a shot to the head, weren’t they? These things just kept coming. Those weren’t movie zombies. These were the real thing.
Yeah, that logic made sense on some level, but he sure wished he could be facing off against some of those movie zombies right about then. He wasn’t a great shot but, if it would put these things down, he was sure he could score a few head shots. Shoot these things in the head, though, and they just kept coming at you. Hell, they’d even come at you without a head, arm, leg, whatever. Every piece of these things wanted to take you out. It was like every piece was alive, and not having a head no longer mattered.
“I don’t think there is going to be anyone coming for us.”
“They have to. We’re not soldiers. They need us.”
“Look at that out there. Do you think they are going to send troops into that? For what? One damn scientist and a private? You may not have noticed, but everything you see in here is sure as hell being broadcast out to command somewhere. They don’t need you. They’ll have other scientists studying this shit. No. If we are going to live, we need to get the hell out of here.”
The doctor looked at him, then back at the monitors. Westdale could tell he wasn’t getting through to the man, so he was going to have to think of something on his own. He turned and started to look around the small, cramped area. Just how the hell were the doctors supposed to work in there? His studio apartment in Chicago was bigger than that, and that sometimes felt like it was no bigger than a closet.
His eyes were drawn to the liquids stored on different shelves, locked into place for transport. There were different bottles, all of them having small, detailed labels.
He looked back at the parts of the thing in that room. Something was coming to him. What was it? He had wanted something. He had been thinking of something before. What was it?
That damn thing had taken bullets, had been torn apart, but the pieces were all still fighting. It didn’t matter what the hell they did to it. It still came after them. They could blow its head clean off, and it would still come after them. The thing was unstoppable.
But what would happen if they burned it. Not just burned it, but completely incinerated it? That’s right. He wanted to find a damn flamethrower. Of course, he wasn’t going to find one in there. They wouldn't have stored one in a lab. The place didn’t have an armory. It wasn’t set up for soldiers. It was set up for scientists.
“What do you have in here that is flammable?”
“Um, well…” The doctor turned his questioning look to the soldier, then looked around. “Well, we have some ether and some other things. I’m not completely sure what we have. Su-” The man gulped when he tried to say her name, then looked into the lab at what had once been his boss. He turned back to the soldier. “Dr. Demoin had been in charge of organizing the list of what would be in here, but I’m sure we have ether.”
The doctor turned around, looking at the bottles. The man seemed like he was starting to pull himself together, though it was still obvious he was very nervous as he continued rambling on, “Yeah, I had been making jokes about it. Talking about how we really felt like we were all going to start cooking up some meth. Of course, Beth, who had been on a scholarship through school and was from a bad neighborhood, hadn’t found it too funny. I still say this place feels like we’re in some TV cop show and need to be cooking something. That’s what they call it, right? Cooking?”
“How would I know?” Westdale mumbled, continuing to look around, wishing the man would stop talking. It was probably good, as it meant his mind was working again, but it grated on Westdale’s skull, and he really couldn’t care less. The less he knew about the former people in the other room, the better he would be able to put them out of his mind. He just wanted to scream at the guy to shut the hell up and find some flammable shit. He had an idea. He
wasn’t sure if it would work, but he had one. At least it was something better than they had thought of so far.
“Found it!” the doctor exclaimed, and Westdale whirled around to see the man holding up a large glass jar with the printed label, (C2H5)2O.
“What’s that?”
“Ether. Ethoxyethane, to be precise. Highly flammable.”
“Okay. Anything else in here flammable? And we’re going to need jars, a lighter, and some cloth.”
“Um…” The doctor looked around again.
Westdale had the opinion that the doctor seemed to be getting where he was going with his shopping list, so maybe they would be able to get out of there. He didn’t feel like they would need to get very far. They just needed to clear a path to the armored Humvee parked behind the trailer. If they could get there, then they could race to get out of there.
“I’ll gather up the flammables. There are some we shouldn’t mix.”
“So you get what I want?”
“Yeah. Molotov's. Good idea to see if these things burn. They seem to move slowly, so they make easy targets. Just don’t get too close with this stuff. These liquids, if they get on you, will make you go up just as fast.”
The doctor was grabbing jars, looking at them. Some he put back, others he thought about and then set down on the work table. “In those overnight bags over there, you’ll find clothes. You should be able to rip up some of the shirts. Then soak them in this bowl. We’ll have to wash our hands before we actually use these things.”
The doctor finished putting glass bottles of liquid on the work table, and had taken out a large bowl. Now the man was pulling out smaller glass bottles that were like large beakers, with long necks and large rounded out bottoms. The man kept placing more and more of them onto the table until they had ten of them. Then he stopped and looked around.
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