The Loss (Zombie Ocean Book 4)

by Michael John Grist

Great vistas of power opened before her. So this was what Lars had felt like every day. The reality of a zombie apocalypse could set in another time. There was too much to take care of inside, too many new laws to formulate, too complex a balance to strike, with the carrot of the outside world now removed.

  They wouldn't be able to leave. They wouldn't be going to Mars. In fact all of their in-depth research into the human condition would be useless, except for how it applied to this moment and all the moments to come, getting the three thousand back under control.

  She looked around the room again, but there was no one else like the bald man, standing up and ready to take charge. Was he really alone? Was it such a tight hierarchy? Perhaps.

  She looked back at the soldier as she caught fully up with events. Capture, he'd said. He was saying it into the mic even now, and instinctively she knew that it was wrong. There could be no forgiveness of crimes like these, no way to go on and live in peace, and capturing wouldn't be enough to lance the boil of frustration and rage down there. It would just enflame it. It was a hard decision but it had to be made.

  She laid a hand on his shoulder. "Nobody gets captured," she said. "Nobody gets wounded. The names I give you, you kill. You leave the bodies where they fall."

  He nodded sharply and relayed this.

  Salle turned to the room at large. "Bring up more screens," she ordered. "Give me the forest, the first floor bar and the red corridor on the sixth."

  She'd always had this power, or something like it. She'd had a staff in the last few years, an office and access to all personnel files and footage. It wasn't a change at all, but for her immediate surroundings.

  The video feeds popped up in seconds. She pointed again, named more names, and the man at her left transferred them over. In moments figures in black were moving across the screens, like SWAT forces moving on bank robbers. Bullets were fired and bodies fell. It was like watching an action movie, as untrained scientists fell.

  Then one of the SWAT got engulfed in flame, as a Molotov cocktail smashed at his feet. He screamed, his colleagues tried to help him, and they were mobbed by scientists who bashed at them and beat in their helmets, stealing their rifles and shooting them back into the flames.

  "Shit," the lead guy whispered, and turned to her.

  It was strange. She didn't feel much for the loss of these soldiers; she knew nothing about them, had never seen their files and didn't know their names. Watching them struggle and die in the fire while people she did know strapped on their weaponry felt like losing a level in a video game. It was all so distant.

  She turned to the man with the visor down.

  "What's your name?" she asked.

  "Joseph," he said. "Ma'am."

  "Joseph, do your men have infrared vision?"

  "We do, ma'am."

  "Then start killing the lights in a rolling pattern. I want all the people we can muster flushed down to the forest, the swamp, the Arctic zone, away from the stores, the bars and accommodation. Can you control temperature?"

  Joseph was staring past her to the screen, where more bodies were falling.

  "Joseph!"

  "Yes, ma'am. Climate control deck, bottom right."

  A hand went up amidst the rows of desk.

  Salle swiveled. "Turn the heat down everywhere but the three areas I listed. I don't care if the Arctic melts, just pack them in there. Can you lower oxygen content?"

  "Marginally, ma'am," someone piped up. "The system has flues that connect every space, but we can alter the access each has to the scrubbers. That'll load the areas slightly with carbon dioxide."

  "Do it. We need to steer these people to a place we can better control them. Now bring me up more images."

  The lights in the Habitat went out. All the screens turned dark, then a few glinted back to life as sparks were struck, emergency exit lighting came on, and people used their phones as flashlights.

  The screens that were black turned to a monotone green for infrared, and more images followed. Salle drew on her memory of the Habitat's three thousand, gleaned from Mecklarin's exacting files, and made strategic decisions. First they had to set an ambush for the four scientists armed with weapons, then they had to pacify the populace. Here a gravitational engineer with a background of parental abuse was terrorizing three women with a broken table leg. He had to die. Here a doctor with a suspiciously clean record and perfect bill of mental health was warming up to a rape.

  She named him too.

  On the screen lights flickered and people began to surge from their hiding places as the air grew thin. She knew the map backwards and sent the commands to guide them on like rats in a laboratory maze.

  Lars was dead on the floor. Somewhere to the side through stone, soil and poured concrete his Habitat was collapsing in chaos. But at least they had a chance.

  FUTURE

  7. DECISIONS

  My phone reads 11:30.

  The meeting starts in 30 minutes and perhaps I'm through the worst of it. There are no more knives spinning overhead; they're all buried in me somewhere. I feel light and insubstantial. The solid foundations I've built my life on are gone, and there's a process to that. I remember Cerulean talking about the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining and so on.

  Perhaps I'm at acceptance already. I don't have time to not be. I'm not even angry, because that kind of anger is no different from self-pity when I'm the one to blame. There is only one thing to do now to correct my mistakes, and that is to kill them all.

  I turn that thought in my mind.

  Kill them all.

  11:35 already. I rub my face and shake my head. The twinge is there, hovering like Cerulean's demon. There isn't much time.

  I stand up and push my way out of the hot dark closet. Taking steps into the light helps, space and fresh air help. The path is chosen now and I can't stop until it's done.

  I walkie Lara first, then Anna and Sulman, followed by Ozark, Feargal and Witzgenstein, with Jake thrown in for good measure, then I go on the master channel to tell everyone the meeting is delayed until 2.

  Two hours to save New LA.

  Composure comes back in the sea breeze across the Chinese Theater courtyard. Confidence returns as I stride into the lobby, smiling and waving at the people tending to the survivors in this new hospital ward; Betty by the boilers preparing some orange juice, Karim working on the blood samples, Macy and Samuel moving through the forest of drip stands and checking readouts.

  They nod and wave back. As I'd hoped, there is no panic here. The people don't know yet, at least not about the worst of it.

  "Two o'clock," I tell them, one by one, with a gentle touch on their arm or shoulder, reinforcing the walkie message. This is reassurance, recharging them from my own personal supply. Ozark is standing in the hall waiting and nods in my direction. I nod back, feeling like I'm high.

  I drop by Peters. He's lying on his back in his bedding, gazing up at the ceiling vacantly. Ozark said earlier he was most likely in a state of delirium, caused by extreme lack of sleep, intensity of emotions and the chemical effect of months of his fat cells slowly breaking down into sugars.

  "Hey," I say softly. He's so wasted, with tight withered skin. His big head, on too thin a neck, wobbles over toward me.

  "Amo," he says, "you left."

  "Had to think," I say. "I've done that now. Peters, I know you must be exhausted, but can I ask you to join another meeting? Answer some questions."

  He looks up at me and I see the death in his eyes. If only he knew. "You think we have a chance?" he asks.

  I don't grin for him, or try to reassure with a soft touch. He's seen things I never have and I don't want to be a liar. "We have a shot."

  He pushes himself to a seated position. I take his arm, gesture Ozark over, and between us we help Peters hobble down the hall toward the back office. He's sweating and trembling by screen 4.

  "Is this a cinema?" he asks abruptly, perhaps noticing for the first time.

&n
bsp; "Best in LA," I answer.

  Down the hall we enter the back office, where Lara, Anna, Sulman, Feargal, Witzgenstein and Jake are sitting around the conference table in a flood of light cast down through the glass ceiling. They have a whiteboard and marker pens at the ready, and are in the midst of a heated discussion which halts abruptly as I walk in.

  "Thanks for coming," I tell them, as I lower Peters into an ergonomic office chair.

  "Where've you been?" Anna asks. The accusation is there but finds no purchase in my calm, polished exterior.

  "Thinking," I answer easily. "Have you shared what Peters told us?"

  "Yes."

  "Good." I check my watch; two hours and ten minutes left. Lara's glaring at me, with anger and concern mixing, and I can only hope she understands.

  I take my place at the table and survey the faces looking back. Sulman, our resident expert on the T4 virus' biology, looks curious beneath his thick black beard. Anna is ready to fight someone, poised and holding to the table with white knuckles. Feargal, a fighting Irish fan, infantryman and ex-boxer who's now in charge of our security, watches me with his usual calm demeanor. Witzgenstein, once a Wisconsin county clerk, sits with her legs crossed and her long Goldilocks braids twisted between her fists. Jake is affable and breezy as ever, as if all of this was just another wonderful jaunt.

  "A demon is coming," I tell them flatly. "Perhaps two if we include Cerulean, sent by a bunker in Maine that has access to drones and missiles." I pause a moment to let this sink in. "I doubt conventional weapons can hurt them. Anna, you shot the one in Mongolia didn't you?"

  She nods, adapting to the briefing style. "Bullets barely slowed it down. I'm confident the RPG didn't kill it either."

  I remember her story of shooting the demon while it was inside a great pyramid of fossilized zombie bodies. The pyramid collapsed on itself and the demon was halted.

  "Because of the cold feeling?"

  She nods. "It continued even after I blew it up. It didn't go away until I was miles to the west."

  I look at Peters. "Cerulean killed a few of them, you said. He couldn't kill the original?"

  He gives a little shake of his head. "He tried. He broke its arms but he couldn't pull its head off."

  "And you felt the cold all the way back here?"

  "Yes, chasing after us. I feel it even now."

  Alarm washes through the group in widened eyes, shuffling bodies and a gasp from Jake.

  "Not near," Peters adds. "Not so near, but getting closer. I feel him on my skin. I feel you too. It's how Julio hunted us all down."

  I nod. Interesting. "Can you explain?"

  "It's a kind of radar," he says. "After I was in the hallway with the demon I started to feel him, like a piece of ice touching my skin. I can feel you too, you're warm dots, and the zombies are warm too, but different. I don't know why it works, but I'm sure Julio had it too. It's how he hunted so many survivors down."

  "That's our early warning system," I say, "it should give us some lead time."

  Peters nods. I go on. "Though I don't think we can feasibly outrun them. Not in the long-term, not with every leftover zombie or survivor they find as fodder. I estimate we have a day, maybe two before they arrive. Peters?" He nods. "We should aim to be completely gone from here by this time tomorrow, all of us together, but where we go and what we do when we arrive, I haven't decided. There's just one thing I know."

  I stop and look around this small gathering, into each person's eyes as if defying them to challenge me. They look back, probably waiting to hear my genius plan, whatever it is I went off alone to formulate. Wouldn't they laugh if they knew I went to a cupboard to play video games, reminisce and cry.

  "After we deal with the demons, we go to the bunker. We do what I should have done ten years ago."

  I don't say it explicitly, either because I don't believe it or I just can't face it, but they know. Kill them all.

  A silence descends and I wade into it. "Now we have two hours to figure out how." I pick up a red whiteboard marker and unclip the lid. "Thoughts?"

  * * *

  Within thirty minutes the board is a mass of brainstormed ideas. In one corner is the 'nuclear bomb' suggestion, now thoroughly crossed out after Sulman suggested it and Feargal shot it down, because we don't have a hope of putting that kind of weaponry together in our lifetimes, let alone in the next 24 hours.

  Beneath it is the 'escape' contingent, as brought up by Jake; ready an ocean liner and circle the world endlessly until the demon winds down, if it ever does.

  "It was there for ten years," Peters argues quietly, pale but persistent. "No food, no water, nothing, and it never changed. I think it could outlast us all."

  Anna seconds him. "Mine was buried in a pile of zombies for ten years, but as soon as I dug him halfway out he came for me. He didn't look weak."

  "Plus where can we get a functional liner together at such short notice?" Witzgenstein asks. "The engines will be shot."

  Witzgenstein has proven herself time and again to be a steady head on a solid pair of shoulders. She's slight, wispy almost, but her brain is incredibly thorough with detail. She was the one who sorted out our plumbing mess, with the simple solution of erecting our own water tower to provide water pressure, and plumbing the existing pipes into it. Her days as county clerk, dealing with policy at the practical level, have really helped us out.

  We don't get on. She doesn't like the broad sweep of my ideas, doesn't like that we're all gathered here so closely together, doesn't like my politics or my general lack of religion, but she's smart and I'm glad to have her in the room.

  I cross a line through the ocean liner idea.

  "What if we drive round in circles forever?" Jake suggests. "We become itinerant, like the Native Americans were. Peters said it, he can detect where they are at all times, so we can evade them. We can have homes in multiple cities and move between them."

  "No good," I say. "That demon will multiply every time he finds another survivor, and at some point early warning won't matter. They'll come at us from all sides."

  I cross it out.

  There are more suggestions to attack, with Feargal describing an assault of the biggest munitions we've stocked, perhaps using the tank Julio fetched years ago, but none of us is trained in using distance artillery, and none of us really believes that'll do it.

  "Bombs fell from above," Peters says. "when we were running. All around us, sent by the woman's drones. They may have hit him already but it didn't stop him. He's stronger than that."

  I cross it out.

  We discuss erecting walls for a short time, but come down on the conclusion that given his size and strength and the fact he might have friends by then, they'd eventually knock them down. Sulman theorizes about a virus he might be able to design to take out the T4, perhaps even some kind of radiation, but that is about as far away from reality as going nuclear.

  "If it could be done, wouldn't they have done it already?" Anna counters. "Whoever's in that bunker, they surely have more expertise than us."

  I cross it out.

  "Jets," Feargal offers enthusiastically. "Our own drones. We bomb this demon back to the stone age."

  Anna frowns at him. "You have a Yangtze delivery drone. How long did that take to get ready?"

  He shrugs. "Over a day to assemble and wire. It could drop books on its head."

  Nobody laughs.

  Jake suggests an avalanche. If we could lure the demon up into the mountains then trigger a massive flood of snow, maybe we could trap him in it. Other ideas flurry forward quickly after that, all variations on the avalanche; like filling a swimming pool with quick-drying cement and luring it into that, or a lake of oil which we set on fire, or a crater filled with TNT which we blow.

  "And the back-up is?" I ask for each one. "If it doesn't work, or we can't trap him sufficiently, or he's just too smart to fall for it?"

  It always comes down to running. Run again, go in circles, try anoth
er plan. How do you kill an unkillable thing? You can't.

  At last Lara speaks up. She's been quiet the whole time, listening. "I don't think the zombie piles work like that," she says, and we all turn to her. "Like an avalanche or any of these other ideas. It's not just the mass of their bodies that holds the demons still, it's something else. Peters, you said you felt the zombies as hot blips, people as hotter blips, and the demon as cold."

  "I do. I feel you all now."

  She looks at me. "I think it's the signal. Think back to the first infection, you and me in New York. It spread in hours around the world, but how was that possible? No germ can spread that fast."

  I consider. We'd talked about this endlessly in the early days, more again recently with Anna's demon and the discovery of the T4 cell within us all. "I'm with you so far."

  "Peters can feel that signal still, like radar on his skin. It's why the people in the bunker want to kill us, because with us up here they can never come out."

  I don't know if this is new to the others. Many nod.

  "They need to get rid of us," Lara explains, "because they're not immune and we're constantly transmitting. To them we're the zombies, and just being near us is enough to be infected. It means we're all still giving off a signal that we can't stop. If we could mask the signal somehow it would help, but even the people in that bunker couldn't figure that out."

  I frown. "I don't follow."

  She stands up, goes to the whiteboard and plucks up a blue pen. I stand aside. Quickly she sketches the gun turret and concrete box from Maine, familiar to me but perhaps not to the others.

  "They built this thing in Maine to kill zombies. If they had the means to repel them, or even to mask their own signal, why wouldn't they do that instead of use bullets?"

  "They would," Feargal chimes in. "Camouflage is always better than conflict. With the gun there's all kinds of risks, including mechanical failure, misfires. Camouflage is passive, and it wouldn't draw others in."

  Lara points at him. "So they don't have that technology. We certainly can't get it by tomorrow. So we have to use a means we all understand, one we've lived with for years. We have to go old school."