He paused for barely a second over the remains. There were only scraps. Furiously he went on, now single-mindedly. Years of stringent discipline carried him forward through the burned-out lobby and to the stairs, where he climbed mounds of bodies. At the second floor, he paused, his mind struggling to comprehend the devastation of the fire. Most of the third floor had collapsed onto the second and the mess and debris was amazing—and infuriating.
“Son of bitch!” he screamed. Where was the ward? Where was the nurses’ station? Where was the mini-pharmacy? He gazed about in a growing fury that would soon end in his becoming one of them. Here and there were shambling, black-eyed beasts. More were scattered about, lying still, gaping holes in their heads.
Visible in the dim morning light streaming through the many broken windows was a great pile of bodies. Eng gazed across at it, a sneer on his twisted face. It was where Ryan Deckard had made his final stand, and also where he had shot Eng in the back, ruining everything. Eng was suddenly possessed with a violent desire to climb the pile and stomp what was left of Deckard into pieces, only there was nothing left of the man except for rags and cast-off bones.
Just like with Burke, Eng could smell Deckard’s faint aroma, making his stomach growl. “No,” he hissed, glaring down at his midsection. “We don’t eat people.” But he would if he couldn’t find the pharmacy. “It was by the elevators.”
Yes! He remembered now.
The elevator shafts were made of reinforced concrete. Buildings were frequently erected around them. They were sturdy and the floor closest to them were somewhat intact, including a few of the rooms. He eyed one with a blackened door. Unlike the other doors that were in view, it was not only still intact, it wasn’t even warped.
“That’s it,” he growled, sounding like a cross between a Rottweiler and a cobra. He went straight for the elevator banks and clawed his way up through the rubble to get to the door. Of course, it was locked. With a new scream, he threw himself at it and shook it on its hinges; the door was sturdy, but the frame and walls around it were far less so, and before long, he managed to get his bleeding fingers around the frame.
He surprised even himself as he tore a chunk of a two-by-four out of the wall. In minutes, he was in the room, where everything was dark and the white labels practically unreadable. He had to pull each drawer out into the main atrium and squint at the tiny squiggles.
“Damn it!” he yelled tossing aside the first drawer. It felt as though someone had kicked over a nest of fire ants inside his brain, as if the squiggly letters had infected him somehow. He raked his temples with his broken fingers before going back inside and grabbing the next drawer. It fell, spilling pill bottles all over the floor.
The next fumbled out of his hands as well. Letting out an animal scream he grabbed the next drawer, only to have it unexpectedly resist coming out of its slot. He gaped at it, slowly realizing that there was a light cage over it and the rest of the drawers on that side. It was locked for a reason and his torpid mind slowly spun out the reason why: because there were Class 2 drugs inside. They were addictive, dangerous and exactly what he needed.
At that point, his clogged mind was beyond the ability to read the word Ohmefentanyl and couldn’t have realized that he had hit the jackpot. He tore off the cage and smashed in the little door with his bare hands, grabbed one of the orange bottles and tore it open. Pills went everywhere, bouncing like tiny white marbles. In a flash, he was on his knees gobbling them up.
Twelve went down his gullet before he gave any thought to dosage. To be on the safe side, he took four more. He then stood to assess whether the pills were working. He swayed in place as the battle to retain the rational part of his mind raged. Minutes passed and still he only stood there, his black eyes swimming in and out of focus.
In the doorway were Jaimee Lynn and her pack of little creatures. They were bored and hungry. The pills and the crumbling building meant nothing to them. Finally, Jaimee Lynn asked, “What about the truck?”
The question triggered the clogged synapses in Eng’s brain. He latched onto them as he remembered the idea of a truck and of driving. But to where? It clicked: To kill Dr. Lee. The idea of a cure was forgotten. Only revenge remained and he knew just where to find her.
Chapter 7
1-6:09 a.m. (9:09 p.m. local time)
Huanggang, China
The helicopters were a copy of an Airbus design and were not exactly formidable appearing despite the black paint and the soldiers practically spilling from the doors. There were seven Z-9s in the formation, their pilots sweating furiously in their rubber protective suits, ensuring that their masks were constantly fogging up.
It wasn’t only the heat of their suits that had them sweating so badly. So far, their flight of seven helicopters had yet to lose a bird; they were the only ones. Flight A2 had two of their helicopters clip rotors with disastrous effect. One of the helicopters in the A-1 flight had an engine malfunction at eight-hundred feet and went down like a rock. Lastly, a bird in A-3 had its tail rotor get spiked by the jutting edge of a telephone pole and the next thing the pilot knew, his helicopter was spinning like a top. He tried to correct, but he spun right into the ground and burned to ashes along with nine people on board.
The pilots of A-4 wondered how long their luck would hold out. The last five days had strained the air arm of the People’s Liberation Army Ground Force to the breaking point. After nearly a hundred hours of continuous operations, men and machines were breaking down at a frightening rate. A bleak morale made everything worse.
A fourth of the country’s population lay dead in smoldering, radioactive ruins. Another third of their people were panicked refugees, flying west, and the remainder were nervously waiting for the next disaster to occur.
It was the job of team A-4 to cut off that disaster before it could form. They had been hopscotching all over the Hubei province investigating anyone acting strange. With fears running wild, “strange” was open to gross interpretation. The A-4 team had already detained four drunks, one lunatic and two ex-husbands.
Now they had a fresh body and a bloody one at that. The local police reported that it had taken fifteen shots to bring the man down. That sounded alarmingly strange.
If he twisted in his cramped cockpit, the lead pilot could just see a bit of the corpse over the lip of his mask. Not far away, a smoke grenade was pouring out a green fog and with the rotors whipping the air, the mission zone was cast in an eerie light.
There was barely enough room to hover the bird over the zone. “Sixty feet! Make it sixty feet!” he yelled into his mic to his crew chief. Because the closest place to land the helicopter in the teeming city was five blocks away, the team was going to fast-rope down. It wasn’t an easy task dressed head to toe in rubber and carrying fifty pounds of equipment.
The length of the rope was adjusted and, after checking the altimeter a second time he yelled: “We are a go!”
One after another, the men raced down the line. Once on the ground, they fanned out, bringing their type 95 rifles up, making the local police step even further back. Five of the team members were soldiers, while the last two consisted of the team leader and an official scientific adviser named Zua Hehua. Zua was in deep over his head.
He had a scientific degree, and it was in microbiology, that was true, but for the last four years since he graduated, he had been studying bone density in paraplegics. This new disease was as foreign to him as it was to anyone. But at least he had been briefed on what to look for. There was no briefing in the world that could prepare him for stepping out of a helicopter three stories in the air.
Just as with the previous three insertions, Zua thought that his heart was going to explode as he reached out for the rope. The rubber gloves provided zero grip and it felt like the rope had been oiled as he shrieked down, his entire body clenched around it, holding on for dear life. His only saving grace was that he didn’t have a microphone and so no one heard the girlish scream he let out, or
the shuddering sigh that escaped him when he landed safely.
After a deep breath, he staggered over to the body and knelt next to it. When he looked down, his hood fell over his face; it was one-size fits all and that size seemed to be extra-large. He had to hold it back with one hand. The fug had already built up on the inside his mask and when that was combined with the dark of the dying day, he couldn’t tell what in creation he was looking at.
“Uh, excuse me, officer? Can someone shine a light on him,” he asked, his voice muffled and small. The only light on the scene came from the police cars that were parked far back. Their strobes were disorienting and gave the corpse alternating looks; one second it was pale and soft, the next, it was neon red and appeared semi-alive and was perhaps about to sit up and strangle Zua.
“It’s sergeant,” the team captain said, as if offended at being called an officer. He carried a small belt light which he fumbled at with his slick gloves while mumbling curses. Once he fetched it, he dropped to one knee across from Zua and blazed the light into the corpse’s pale face. “What do you think? Is it one of them?”
Even with rubber gloves on, touching an infected body was pretty much the last thing Zua wanted to do. The rumors were all over the board when it came to the creatures and one of the most persistent ones was that they were ultimately unkillable. Was this one lying in wait, pretending to be dead? Would it tear into Zua like he was a rubber-coated treat?
Gingerly, he put out a finger and poked the corpse’s face. The corpse felt unnatural and he gave it a second poke. The head flopped to the side and Zua pulled his finger back, quickly.
“Come on!” the sergeant growled. “The choppers can’t stay up there all day.” Unceremoniously, he pushed the head back toward Zua.
“Okay, don’t rush me,” he muttered under his breath. The first thing on the official checklist was to see whether the eyes were “dark.” That was rather vague in his opinion; this was China, everyone had dark eyes. He pulled down the corpse’s lids and leaned well over. Its eyes were blank, but no darker than anyone else’s. Next, he checked the mouth, looking for broken teeth and black gums.
Right away he saw that the corpse was missing a lot of teeth and the teeth it had left were practically brown. He leaned back and continued his inspection almost at arm’s length. The teeth suggested this was one of them, but the gums were pale red and the tongue almost white.
Next, he checked the hands; the fingernails were long and brittle, and slightly yellowed.
Zua’s shoulder’s slumped in relief. He was almost certain this wasn’t one of the monsters. But how was he to explain the ugly teeth and the fact that it took so many bullets to kill him?
He sucked in his breath and whispered, “Bingdu!”
“Bingdu?” The sergeant shoved Zua back and leaned over the corpse, the mask hiding the sneer on his face. This was a meth-head. In the last few years, China had witnessed an exploding methamphetamine problem. It was so bad that apparently even an apocalypse wouldn’t stop a junkie from getting high.
The sergeant pushed himself to his feet and gave the pilot the “all clear” sign. The leader of the flight relaxed in his chair, having felt like he had dodged another bullet.
“Find us an extraction point,” he ordered his copilot, “preferably one with a bathroom and maybe a restaurant. I’m starving.” The men could fast rope into a site, but they’d have to hump it out. The co-pilot’s eyes skipped right over the Yangtze River—its banks were either crowded with buildings or trees—and he missed the derelict barge and the bodies lying in the water. And with the sound of the engines and the rotors slapping the air, no one heard the screams as Xu Jingxing and seven other zombies crept out of the dark hold of the barge where they had been gorging themselves on cold corpses.
They wanted fresh blood.
2-6:23 a.m.
New Rochelle, New York
Special Agent in Charge Katherine Pennock did not feel all that special at the moment. She cracked a bleary eye and found herself looking at Sergeant Dave Carlton’s wide, slack face. He had his head canted well-over and if it hadn’t been for his stiff ballistic vest, it would have been bent onto his shoulder. He was snoring gently as was Warrant Officer Bryan.
“Ahem.”
Katherine jerked and looked around to see Anna Holloway smirking down at her. “Having a nice little nap?”
The others, except for Specialist Russell Hoskins, jerked awake. The specialist was completely out of it, splayed out on the carpet as if he were in a king-sized bed.
“Fuuuuck,” Carlton groaned. “I feel like a truck hit me.” He thought about kicking Hoskins awake, but didn’t see the point. Their job had been to set up a defensive perimeter which, for all practical purposes was impossible with four people. Still, they had barricaded the entrances with pyramids of furniture and had basically sealed all of the stairwells with junk pulled from the second floor. They left only one stairwell open and even then, it was only partially open, with just enough room for one person to slip through sideways.
It was true one of them should have been on guard and Carlton gave Bryan a sheepish look.
“Did you want something?” Katherine asked, giving the collar of her ballistic vest a yank. It had been rubbing her neck raw.
“A word in private,” Anna asked, shifting her eyes to the side. She walked about twenty feet away and was staring out at the rising sun when Katherine joined her. “Dr. Lee isn’t doing anything,” Anna whispered. “I caught her sleeping as well, but before that she was just staring into space. I tried to talk to her but she threw a stapler at me.”
Katherine grunted, “After what you did, I’d say you were lucky she didn’t throw a television at you.”
Anna’s face clouded with anger and she seethed, “You don’t know how it was out there. It was survival of the fittest. And I don’t have to answer to…” She stopped and forced a smile back onto her face, mastering herself. “None of that matters now. We, me and you, were supposed to find a cure. That was our mission. Lives depend on it. And we both know the President is on a short fuse.”
“I get it.” Katherine glanced out through the immense lobby windows, not seeing the sunrise, instead she pictured nuclear missiles raining down on them from above. Anna was right. They needed the cure and they needed it quickly. “I’ll see what I can do. Wait here.”
“But I’m supposed to be helping her. I’m the only one here with any background in pharmaceutical research and development.”
Katherine held up her hand. “And you’re the only one here who helped to cause the apocalypse in the first place, and you’re the only one who helped kill Ryan Deckard. So, stay here and let me handle this.”
Now, Anna’s smile was a thin illusion covering her hate. She bobbed her head, as if allowing Katherine to leave.
It was three stories to the BSL labs where Dr. Lee had first perfected the Com-cells. Like the rest of the building, the third floor was dark, and Katherine paused, wondering where Thuy was. Then she heard the hum of a centrifuge. She followed the source of the sound and found the scientist leaning back in a chair with her eyes closed, a hugely thick book open on her lap.
In sleep, she was beautiful. Her features were elfin, small and perfect; her face was unlined by fear or worry, and her black hair streamed down her shoulders like a silken wave. How that could be, Katherine didn’t know. Her own hair felt brittle from the constant application of bleach and she was sure that she would eventually have to cut it into a bob or risk losing it all.
She picked up a lank of her blonde hair and gave it an unhappy sniff. When she looked up, she found Thuy studying her. Embarrassed, Katherine let go of her hair. “I’m just worried about what all this bleach is doing to my hair. It’s weird that your hair hasn’t changed color.”
“Actually, it would be weird if it did,” Thuy replied. “People confuse the concept of the bleaching process with actual bleach, when the two have nothing to do with each other. Lightening the hair is done
with products that are activated by hydrogen peroxide, not bleach.”
“Ah.” There was a long quiet moment between the two women before Katherine gestured to the whirring machine. “Is that the Com-cells? Will they be ready soon?”
Thuy nodded then sighed. “Yes, but I worry that they won’t be effective in stopping the spread of the sabotaged Com-cells, what I am now designating as S-Com-cells. This will be especially true in advance cases. The Com-cells will be at a great numerical disadvantage, in many cases probably up to the sixth power. And this is assuming that the Com-cells would be able to compete against the S-Com-cells at all. Therapeutically, the Com-cells I designed are likely to be a dud.”
Katherine felt her stomach drop. “That’s unacceptable. The President is this close to going nuclear.” She held her finger and thumb so closely together that almost no light could be seen between the two.
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Thuy answered softly.
“Believe me it’s not. He’s unstable. He may not know where to stop. Hell, he may not even know where to start. He might start with places that are still safe.” The two women shared the exact thought then: If there was any place that was still safe. “Either way, our job is to try. It’s all we can do.”
Thuy let out a deeply weary sigh. “My problem stems from a lack of time. This alone will take two hours at a minimum.”
That wasn’t it, Katherine knew. Guilt and grief were crushing Thuy. Deckard had meant everything to her and now he was gone. Exhaustion had a good grip on her as well, and now that she was awake, ten years had been added to her face. But it was more than even that. Thuy couldn’t look up as she said, “And I’m also going to need a batch of S-Com-cells to test.”
“You don’t have any?”
“No and there’s only one way to get any.” She lifted her chin towards the door. “Someone’s going to have to go out and harvest some.”
Katherine’s nose wrinkled at the word harvest. The word just seemed overly scientific for…it suddenly struck her what the word really meant. “You mean someone’s going to have to go back outside?” And it wasn’t just going outside, whoever it was would have to go after one of them. The idea was enough to make her knees go weak.
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 10