“It is impressive. You didn’t startle me. I was just thinking.”
“I didn’t mean to bother you. The way I see it, everybody needs their moments of solitude. Especially after the things that you and your friends have gone through.”
“Family,” she nearly interrupted.
“Sorry?”
“Things my family has gone through.”
Teel smiled and collected some of the cards that were around him. Handing them gently back to her, he patted her hand. “Quite right. My apologies.”
“I really appreciate you giving us living quarters together. We’ve really bonded with each other. After having to rely on each other so much, we have really learned to care for one another.”
“Well, you all insisted. Why say no? My pleasure, Mrs. Garner,” the General said.
“Miss Garner. It’s Miss.”
CHAPTER 14
I
“I’ve called you all here because we have found the breakthrough I have been looking for. The breakthrough I have promised.” Darin stood in an open domed area not dissimilar from one of the greenhouses. They used this one as a gathering area. Even the hundreds of residents there still looked like a speck compared to the expanse of that part of the building. They all looked at him. Military personnel, civilians, fellow scientists . . . even the President himself all stood away from the man speaking at the makeshift plywood podium. He didn’t need a microphone if it wasn’t already there. They were all dead silent. “We have used the remaining plants you have here, but don’t be alarmed. It was not a waste. We have successfully synthesized a version of the Lynn serum. LYNN004.”
“Wait a second,” the Commander in Chief said, raising his hand amidst the sea of confused faces. Everyone there knew about Lynn and the file . . . which was blacked out here and there. The meat of it was intact, pretty much. The big, black marker didn’t scar it too terribly. Civilians knew just about what the government knew. This made Darin happy to see that things had changed a little bit. The common man was given near-full disclosure now, but there were really no such people as the common man anymore. They were all in the same line together. It seemed that Nathaniel had done exactly what he set out to do. The playing field was leveled. No human being was above another one now. The world itself had changed and when this was all over, mankind would forever be altered. Not just the military read the LYNN file. Everybody did. “Now . . . you say you created another version of Lynn when you were to work a cure, right? Isn’t Lynn what caused all this?”
“You were here to cure this problem. Your . . . mentor . . . started and you go ahead and just create another version if it here? In this lab? Look at what it did out there! What do you think will happen in an enclosed area?” An E-3 in the Navy chimed in somewhere near the back of the now-murmuring crowd.
“Everybody . . . quiet down,” Doctor Miles said. The crowd complied after a few seconds. If he didn’t explain why he did what he did, this could quickly turn into a lynch mob. Not such a good thing in a massive structure, but it was still just a room. “Like I said in my report, the Lynn drug works by stimulating the mitochondria in human cells, right? Let me ask you a question to truly explain my actions, Mr. President. I like to make the comparison that the cell mitochondria are like the power plant of the cell. What this drug does is self-sustains the power plant . . . with some nasty side effects. I ask you, sir . . . if you were stuck in a power plant and only had what was available to you on the inside, what is the most effective way to destroy that power plant by the quickest and most total means possible?”
The President opened his mouth to respond, when someone in the front row said it first. “Meltdown . . . you cause a meltdown.”
“Exactly,” Darin said. “Perfect answer. This new version of Lynn is so concentrated, I nearly quadrupled the amount of the lab-synthesized plant in it per unit. Just coming in contact with the stuff speeds up the rate of mitochondrial biogenesis so quickly, it overloads each and every cell in the body. A human body, even one with the healing factor they have, will not be able to catch up with it or slow it down. I just made a one-thousand-times stronger version of the same drug that caused people to turn into these things. Why? Simply expose them to this, and you got yourself a dead fucking zed.”
“What’s the transfer method?” Some older man in the middle of the crowd said. “How are we going to take down a whole group of those things? Inject each of them with it? Tell them to hold still?” A small laugh echoed through the group, but died quickly when Darin didn’t share in their revelry.
“Not exactly. See . . . Lynn isn’t just the plant extract, ok? Nathaniel and I synthesized Lynn as nearly 99% water-based. Saline, actually. We knew we had to dilute it with something the body wouldn’t react harmfully to. It seemed to thrive in water. It was an original theory that if we tipped the scales even a tad more as to how much of Archie to put in the formula, we would end up with what we have now. The effects of someone getting this stuff anywhere on them . . . skin, eyes, even breathing in a vapor form of it would be devastating.”
“What happens when someone is exposed to it?” General Teel spoke up.
“The mitochondrial acceleration is unfathomable. Each cell undergoes so much stress, that they simply break down. Without getting too scientific and to make you all understand, an intense pressure is built up inside the body at the actual molecular level as the body tries to expel the formula. Each cell in the body basically panics, overworks itself . . . and explodes. Anyone who ingests even the smallest amount of LYNN004 will suffer a full-body explosion within seconds. However . . . as you were expecting, there is a drawback to this.”
“What is it?” Teel shouted over the murmurs of the crowd.
“Much like the infection spreading around out there right now . . . if anybody touches this stuff, if the skin even soaks in a drop of it, it will kill you nearly instantly. As you can imagine with the effects it will have on those infected and the resulting effect on their bodies, this poses a serious problem. Blood, tissue, absolutely anything inside their bodies becomes the most dangerous shrapnel in existence. It could soak into thin clothing and kill you. This stuff needs to be treated for what it is . . . extremely toxic.”
“How much of it have you made with the plant samples we have available?” A young woman in the front row asked.
“About nine thousand gallons of the stuff. That is hardly enough to take down every infected person on this planet, but I have been able to multiply it exponentially using the formula as a vapor. Basically boiling it and using the steam. A lot of the scientists here had apparently forgotten that this drug is only water-based. That’s why their research never went anywhere. It can be mixed with anything. Think of using it as a . . .”
Victoria, about two rows back, stood up and spoke, cutting Darin off. “A tear-gas . . .” Darin smiled and nodded at the podium and stepped away from the makeshift PA system they set up. The microphone popped off with a loud click and everybody dispersed after General Teel announced to the crowd that a relief effort would begin immediately.
Afterwards, Darin found himself with Victoria Rains, Dennis Jackson and Ana Garner inside what the military called a briefing room. It just looked like one of those ‘board of directors’ rooms like they had always seen in the movies. The most powerful men left in the world were here. Everybody from the President to what remained of the elite of every branch of military. After the announcement, the General and his men contacted military bunkers in China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and others who were still more or less standing to tell them they had a cure. Each bunker was conferenced in and given a briefing about the new weapon that Darin Miles had devised against the plague that had overthrown the planet.
The Commander in Chief addressed everyone sitting at the long table mere days later. “Every country that we have been in contact with is willing to open up their airspace to allow us to supply them with the vapor-bombs that Darin and his team have come up with. They have yet
to be tested, but I am confident that after the field test today, it will be successful. We also must supply them with breathing apparatuses if they do not have any. There are armories all over this country with enough supplies to go around if it came to that. Doctor Miles was right. This stuff needs to be treated as extremely toxic . . . and there is enough to mix into traditional teargas bombs that give us a nearly unlimited supply. All we needed was just a bit. I think that Doctor Miles said only a couple eye-droppers a canister would do the trick. General McConnel, how soon can we go full-scale with this?”
General McConnel, an ancient but decorated man at the other head of the table of twenty-or-so people, leaned forward and said, “If the field test today proves successful, we are confident that we can alter enough canisters to ship in as little as two weeks if we work around the clock. I am amazed that when I asked for volunteers, every single person in the bunker stepped up. I’m currently working with Doctor Miles, who is out for the field test today, to come up with a safety program during the manufacturing process to make sure that no harm will come
to anybody helping us re-assemble the canisters.”
A Colonel stood up and addressed the room. “There’s another thing we must brief you all on. There is nearly an acre of remaining Archaeamphora plants at the base of Mount Fuji where it was initially discovered. We need to get rid of these at all costs. When the bombs are distributed, we are sending all remaining forces to the site to destroy the other plants. This cannot and will not happen again. It is a scientific wonder, yes, but its effects are too dangerous. It should have become extinct like the rest of them. I understand that Mr. Jackson and Miss Rains, as well as Miss Garner have volunteered to go with Doctor Miles and the first strike team to the site?”
“Yes,” Dennis said, nervously clearing his throat. “If Darin goes, we all go. No other option.”
“Dennis Jackson, Victoria Rains and Ana Garner, are you all sure that you wish to go out there?” The President said. “We will have a lot of men with us, but the Japanese Government has strictly forbidden anyone coming into the country, cure or not. It seems that they figured out how the plant extract works as a repellent and they are keeping it for themselves. This will be extremely dangerous and we will be destroying the entire area by any means necessary, even if it means war.”
“If Darin goes, we all go,” Dennis repeated.
“Your request is accepted, though I don’t see the need to have four untrained civilians working alongside our guys going in. You will all need to go through training. These two weeks are going to be the hardest two weeks of your lives. We will not take it easy on you. When this is over, I want you eating nails or you aren’t going anywhere, understood?” an Admiral said to them.
They all nodded nearly in unison. The briefing was dismissed and the three of them were taken away to a training facility at the other end of the bunker and another story down. They had a whole ‘boot camp’ facility built down there. That was where they would be living the next two weeks until the canisters were ready to go. As they walked out of the briefing room, Victoria took one of the shuttle-carts that drive people around the grounds to the security area. Inside that room, the whole grounds were monitored. Out of the nearly seventy flatscreen monitors lining the walls, one of the larger three main screens patched in a feed from outside, where an armored ATV was slowly moving toward Arlington, Virginia. Darin was with them. It was his idea to field test the new LYNN004 in the biggest city that was closely accessible to them. If the test proved successful, he would lead the front line itself to bring humanity back.
II
They were sitting in the ATV on the outskirts of the city. The cold sweat underneath Darin Miles’ mask fogged up the glass. His hands were trembling so badly, that he could barely tie his shoes. There wasn’t enough extract left to put on themselves. Darin had used up all of it to make LYNN004. If it failed, they wouldn’t just go home and get back to the drawing board. If they failed, they were dead.
The powers that be didn’t want Doctor Miles, as big as asset as he was, to join in the party. Not only did he insist, but he refused to do any further research unless he went with them. Another condition of his continued work was to allow his fellow survivors Dennis, Ana and Victoria to travel with the team going after the Archies in Japan. The brass reluctantly accepted. They didn’t want any of them going out on that operation for some reason. Darin understood, he supposed . . . but just the fact he had to threaten the government and say he would halt his work just so Dennis, Ana and Vic could go was a little strange.
After two days of firearm training out in the field, the boys taught Darin how to use an M-16. He would be following behind them, flanked by three men with guns bigger than themselves. They would be alright, but reports stated that there were potentially millions of the dead walking around in the city. Even from a mile out of the downtown area of Arlington, they could all see them. They filled the streets. They just wandered around, their eyes focused on nothing. Some were standing still, snarling like rabid dogs and their eyes scanning the army of the undead before them. It was Teel’s idea to hike to the attack position, which was only two blocks outside of the city. There was a promotional advertising company there that was only one-story high. Two men would make it to the roof, five would stay around the building, while Darin and General Teel stood between the building and the ATV. It was a short run to the big green can on wheels, but those things seem to swarm out of nowhere. Even if there is nothing else around . . . with all the lacking intelligent brain activity they had, they were dead silent. When it came to them and a prey that didn’t see them coming, the prey was already dead. No need to make a sound. The infected could be as silent as the grave where they once slept.
The men hiked the mile nearly crouched over the entire time. Darin’s back was already killing him. The thick Kevlar armor, the gas masks and heavy boots were a hell of an outfit to run around in. Those damn guns weren’t the lightest things in the world, either. Darin felt sorry for the guys with the fucking shoulder-cannons. “Now, you just stick right by me,” Teel whispered to Darin as they neared the building. There were scattered zeds everywhere, but most seemed to be concentrated to the downtown area. There was no sense in drawing a crowd. During the briefing made on the ride to the city, one of the team leaders said that the smoke grenades are extremely loud, so if nothing worked, they had to haul ass and quick. There wasn’t near enough ammunition, even on the ATV, to get them all. Darin watched in awe at how these men moved. It was amazing. They looked like they had rehearsed the movements in this very spot for years. He knew for a fact that they didn’t practice this once. Back at the bunker, Teel picked the team and they just fucking left. That was it.
“What are these guys?” Darin said to Teel who was getting down on his stomach in the tall grass beside the empty highway.
“Three of them are SEALS. One is a former Green Beret from back in my day and the rest are Rangers. Some badass motherfuckers, lemme tell ya. Get down. Bad fucking time to be spotted.”
It seemed like they were laying down in that tall, brown grass for hours. Shit . . . it could have only been fifteen minutes. Darin had never been in situations like these, not like the hardened veterans that were watching his ass. He was a trained pony. These men were mustangs; the real deal. If someone had told him even two years ago that on this day he would be hunkered on his stomach with full battle-dress on . . . in the mud next to a five-star General with an M-16 in his hands, he would have told that person they were crazy. It gave him a new appreciation for what the men and women did overseas back when America was still a country. It wasn’t anymore. Now, it was as twisted, destroyed and discarded as the trash that blew through the streets and the cars that were now beginning to rust outside.
One of the men on the roof fired a shot above his head when Teel gave the order over the small earpiece everybody had wired into their masks. Darin could even see it from his vantage point. The mass of the filthy, stinking dead were
walking towards the building and toward the sound that echoed through the mostly deserted city streets. It was like looking at the aftermath of a brutal war. Arms, legs and picked-off bones were all over the place. Half-torsos hung out of broken windshields on the highway. People who jumped from high-rise buildings to escape being eaten alive were on sidewalks; their extremities mangled and twisted. Darin’s eye caught sight of a man who had hung himself from a streetlamp. He dangled low . . . his feet about head-level to anyone walking below. The zeds had eaten off both of his feet at the ankles. He swayed lightly in the breeze. Some kind of morbid wind-chime now. Poor man. To escape the fate that had more than likely befallen everyone he knew, he willingly broke his own neck, leaving himself to the bipedal vultures that now owned the world.
As the infected walked toward the building, one of them caught sight of one of the men peering around the outer wall. Then, the others saw him.
They all started running.
They piled out of every conceivable space from as far as four blocks away. They smashed through shop windows, lurched out of alleyways and crawled out of vehicles. The ones that couldn’t walk, the ones that were missing legs or lower torsos, simply lay on the ground with their eyes fixed on the masked men. They hissed like pissed-off snakes and barred their rancid teeth. It was so strange how they looked . . . how much a human being could turn out looking so much like some kind of animal. The only thing that convinced Darin Miles that there was ever any humanity in them was simply the fact that they walked upright. Hell, most of them didn’t even have faces. The majority of them had been partially devoured when they succumbed to the effects of Lynn. When they turned, the infected simply stopped eating them for whatever reason. No matter the if’s. It was time to watch and pray.
The Zombie Letters Page 24