by Evan Currie
“Barrow PD!” he called, eyes searching the darkness as his hand felt along the wall. “Is anyone here? Announce yourself!”
He found the switch, finally, and flipped the industrial lever up. The power snapped on audibly as the lights began to emit a low glow, bathing the building in an orange shade. He squinted, barely distinguishing forms in the shadows, people moving.
“I’m Sheriff Leland Griffin,” he said. “Is everyone all right in here?”
The lights made another snapping noise, half of them flickering out just as Leland caught a hint of motion in the corner of his eye and turned his head to the left. He screamed in shock, and then horror, as a figure descended on him suddenly and locked its jaws around his left forearm, biting down hard enough that he felt the bone crunch.
The pain was unreal, and Leland reacted automatically by trying to rip his arm free, only to realize that his attacker was holding on like a pit bull. He used the shotgun like a club, beating the man about the face and head but not wanting to resort to deadly force.
“Let go, you crazy bastard!” he yelled, still beating the man with the weapon.
With a final wrench, one that triggered a near sickening agony from his arm, Leland pulled himself loose and fell back and away from his attacker. He stared in horrified shock at his attacker as the lights snapped back to full brightness.
It was a man, or maybe it used to be — Leland didn’t know if he’d still call it human, as badly torn up as it seemed to be. Pustules had formed on the creature’s face, and the skin seemed to be flapping away from the bone in places as it bared its teeth at him and snarled.
“Jesus,” he swore, unable to quite help himself. “You look like hell, son.”
The thing, man, whatever it was standing there in front of him didn’t seem impressed with his concern, however, and it look another step in his direction. Leland shifted the shotgun so that it was pointed right at the man’s chest and shook his head.
“Don’t do it, son,” he said. “I’m not keen on blowing you away, but you ain’t taking another bite out of me.”
The big bore of the pump twelve-gauge didn’t seem to be much of a deterrent, unfortunately, as the figure continued to step closer, his proximity making Leland’s heart race. He took a deep breath, fighting back the urge to gag as the smell of rot overwhelmed him again.
“I am an officer of the law! Stop walking toward me or I will fire!” Leland practically chanted as he stepped back.
Part of him wanted nothing more than to drop the hammer on the bastard who’d just taken a chunk out of him, but he let himself sink into the rote responses he’d learned a long time ago, in what seemed like a different life. None of it mattered, though — the man kept stumbling in his direction with the clear intent to continue the attack, and when Leland felt a rail pressing into his back he pursed his lips and shook his head as his intellect tried to deny what his body was already doing.
The shotgun roared, a full load of double-aught buck slamming into the man’s chest at point-blank range. The man barely even stumbled — he certainly didn’t fly backward like in the movies — and despite his apparent lack of balance, he didn’t fall. Leland’s eyes widened as the man reached out for him, stepping right into arm’s reach, his curled fingers actually grabbing the sheriff’s shoulder and throat.
Leland lifted the barrel of the Remington, resting it on his attacker’s clavicle so that it was pointed directly at the underside of his jaw, and squeezed the trigger a second time. The resulting explosion of blood, gore, bone, and brain fragments spattered across the curved wall of the machine shop like modern art while some blew back and sprayed across the near shell-shocked sheriff’s face and chest.
This time the man went down in a slump, right at Leland’s feet. A moment passed, one heartbeat and then two, and Leland slowly came to his senses again. He looked up from the source of the wet spatter covering his face and neck only to see dozens of eyes staring back at him from faces just like the one he’d blown to bits.
The machine shop was filled with them.
What in the Lord’s last lament is going on here?
He stared at them as they stared back, unable to quite believe what he was seeing. It was something out of a horror movie, not real life. They couldn’t be what they looked like — dead folk didn’t walk. The flesh looked like it was rotting, practically falling away from the bone in places, but still he couldn’t process it.
Finally, after the long silence, he locked onto the one idea that made some modicum of sense.
Poor bastards must have been exposed to some bad radiation. That’s the only thing that might do this and leave them walking for a time.
That sickening thought did little to ease his mind, however, as Leland lowered his weapon and began pawing the blood and gore from his face.
“Goddamn it! What the hell did you lot get exposed to? Is it safe in here?” he muttered, still trying to clean himself off.
No one spoke to him as he backed toward the door in an effort to put some distance between himself and the contamination that had to be filling the shop. He held up his hand as calmingly as he could, his strained brain missing the fact that he was the only one in the place who was panicking.
“Just remain where you are, and I’ll radio for help from town,” he said as he continued to edge himself backward.
“No,” said a dry and rasping yet distinctly female voice as a hand clamped onto his shoulder like iron. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
Leland half turned, screamed again as he wondered how many more shocks he could take. How did she get behind me?
The woman at least looked marginally better than the rest, but her skin was still leathery dry, and it was pulled back on her face like she was the victim of a botched facelift. Her teeth were yellow and aged behind the rictus of her lips, looking like they’d been exposed to air for years. It made a bizarre bit of sense to him, however, as he didn’t suppose she could close her mouth with her skin pulled back so tightly.
He tried to wrest himself from her, but the iron grip just tightened, and he found that he couldn’t move at all. She looked from him to the corpse on the floor, one thin dark eyebrow lifting almost casually before she shook her head.
“Idiot. Couldn’t control the hunger.”
Leland blinked, finally taking in her accent. She wasn’t from Barrow, that was for sure, but in all fairness, there weren’t many who were. Still, he’d heard all sorts of accents over the years, from all places on the map, and hers wasn’t one he knew. It sounded foreign, ancient even, and it was the oddest he’d heard before.
He was still puzzling it out, trying to ignore the throbbing and stabbing pain from his left arm, when the woman turned her dark eyes on him with a casual, almost indifferent air.
“I do not know if you will be of any use, but waste not, want not, as the saying goes,” she told him, confusing Leland even more. “You took one of mine, so you will replace him.”
“What the fuck?…”
She seemed to smile wider, her lips pulling impossibly far back from her teeth in such a way that, for all his confusion, Leland was completely confident in saying that she meant to do him some serious harm. He tried to pull away as she leaned in closer to him, the putrid air from her mouth bathing his face. Her breath was…indescribable. He could smell some kind of mouthwash, peppermint unless he was gravely mistaken, but beneath it the smell of death was still present.
The mixture turned his stomach even more than the pervasive smell of rot and decay alone.
“God, lady, what the hell have you been eating?” He gagged.
She chuckled darkly at him. “It’s funny you should ask — I was just starting to feel a little peckish. Shall I show you what I like to eat?”
“I’ll pass,” he said, twisting his grip on the shotgun so that it was jammed in between them. “Let me go, lady, or—”
“Or what?” she snarled, grabbing the barrel of the shotgun with her free hand.
Fuck this.
Leland squeezed the trigger.
The Remington roared, blowing the woman’s leg out from under her. In that instant, as she was torn away from him and driven to the ground by shock and gravity, Leland found himself fascinated by the expression of sheer annoyance on the woman’s leathery face. He twisted, tearing himself loose, and threw the door open so he could stumble out into the cold fresh air of the darkening night.
Behind him he could hear her swearing, her voice disturbingly free of any sound of pain.
“Get him!”
He didn’t turn around as he staggered over to his Tahoe, slamming his injured arm into the side of the truck hard enough to draw a whimper from his throat. He tried to grab the door handle with his left hand, fumbling against the pain, but couldn’t get his fingers to curl around the handle.
“Fuck!” he swore, slamming the shotgun down on the roof of the Tahoe so he could yank at the door with his good right hand.
He could hear the sound of slush being kicked around behind him, but didn’t look back. He dropped into the driver’s seat, pulling the shotgun in after him, and wrenched the door shut, his injured arm screaming at him the whole time.
Leland swore near constantly, fumbling with his key as a body hit the door, hammering at the window with bare fists. He didn’t know how the window was holding, but as the Tahoe roared to life he sent up a silent prayer of thanks for small miracles before gunning the engine and dropping it into drive, the gas pedal already heading for the floor.
The wheels spun for traction against the slush and ice, but then the studs hit the gravel underneath, and the Tahoe lurched forward. He felt, more than heard, a thump as the vehicle struck something, or rather someone. He was headed in the wrong direction, however, and he had to spin around when he reached a fence at the far side of the compound.
They were all out of the machine shop by then, and he was both shocked and dismayed by their sheer numbers.
God, there’s got to be dozens of them.
They were arrayed out in front of him like a human barricade, or a nearly human barricade. His mind rebelled as he sat there in his Tahoe, staring at them. He couldn’t believe he was seeing what he was seeing.
All the figures were milling about, seemingly without purpose — other, that is, than a few who were stumbling along in his general direction. They looked sick, frankly. Deathly ill or, more honestly, like the walking dead. He couldn’t help but think of all the damned zombie movies he’d seen over the years, and the throb from his arm hurt all the more.
That was just insanity, though. A fantastical nightmare, nothing more.
In the real world, the dead didn’t rise. In the real world, zombies didn’t exist.
Leland gripped the steering wheel nervously.
Right?
He laid on the horn and the gas at the same time, determined to get himself out of whatever the hell he’d gotten himself into, no matter what it took. The Tahoe leapt forward, charging the mob ahead of him, but the figures didn’t so much as flinch. As he roared into them, Leland saw no sign of them tensing to move, no hint of fear, and he realized then that he was about to mow down a whole pack of people when he’d only been attacked by two.
He lost his determination, throwing the wheel hard to the left at the last second, putting the truck into a spin on the slush-and-ice-covered ground. Honestly, it was the only thing he could have done, he realized as the Tahoe spun toward the derrick rig, which was pumping serenely in its path. The Tahoe struck the pump, whiplash snapping Leland Griffin’s neck as the vehicle came to a jarring stop with enough force to snap the derrick and send black oil gushing skyward.
It rained down all around the car as the rotting crowd watched silently from a distance.
Finally, a woman’s voice rose above the sound.
“The dark has deepened sufficiently,” she said. “Go to the other fields, go to the town. Do as you desire.”
The crowd slowly dispersed, heading off in different directions as she calmly walked over to the machine shop and fetched a road flare from within. It snapped to life, illuminating her grotesque features harshly against the dark of the night sky. Her face was drawn back, leather stretched over bone, a permanent sickly grin exposing her teeth as she tossed the flare underhanded into the oil spill.
It sputtered for a moment, almost seeming to go out, and then, with a roar that shook the ground, a plume of flame erupted against the dark. The woman turned around, shielding her eyes from the glare as she walked off the compound and turned north to town.
COAST GUARD BREAKER, BEAUFORT SEA
USS NORTHERN DREAM
“Captain, we just received an emergency call from Barrow.”
“What’s the situation?” Captain Ronald Tyke asked, glancing over as the mate walked in.
“Riot.”
The single word was delivered in a disbelieving tone, and Tyke didn’t blame him. He stiffened, looking over at the man. “A what?”
“That’s what the call said.…A riot has broken out in Barrow.”
Tyke thought about it briefly, frowning. “Was there a Greenpeace protest scheduled or something?”
“No, sir, nothing of that kind. Summer season has passed; most of those hippy types don’t hang around for long once the temperature starts to drop. The low light this time of year makes for bad photo ops, anyway.”
Tyke grunted, but nodded in agreement. “All right, well, how big is it?”
“Apparently there have been fatalities, and the local police can’t shut it down.”
“Crap.”
“Yes, sir.”
After thinking quietly for a moment, Tyke said, “Have our course changed to take us to Barrow, shortest route. And relay the call to Alaskan Command. I think they’re the only ones with enough warm bodies to break up any serious fight.”
“It’ll probably be over long before either of us get within a hundred miles of the place.”
“I know. We’ll make the calls anyway. We don’t want things to get out of hand.”
“Yes, sir.”
ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
ALASKAN COMMAND (ALCOM) HQ
“General, a strange call just get kicked up the chain.”
Brigadier General Alphonse looked up as his aide walked into his office with a printed communiqué. “What is it?” he grunted.
“Civilian request for aide in Barrow, sir. There’s a riot in progress.”
The general blinked. “What?”
“Just what I said, sir.”
“Not our jurisdiction. Kick it over to the state troopers.”
“Yes, sir, I did. They don’t have any way to get enough people up there.”
“How many people could they need?”
“Apparently it’s a big riot.”
“Fine, we’ll give them a plane. We can do that much without stepping on any toes.” The general paused for a moment, then frowned. “How big?”
“I was wondering the same thing, so I put in a request for some recon photos,” the sergeant admitted, looking a little guilty.
The general just chuckled — he wasn’t going to make a fuss about whether all the forms had been filled out right or the request had been cleared through the proper channels. He wanted the information too, after all. “And?”
“It’s a big riot, sir.”
The general stiffened at his sergeant’s tone. He’d never known the man to exaggerate, and he didn’t like how serious he sounded. Wordlessly he accepted the paper that the other man handed him, noting the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) symbol in the corner. He held it in front of him, taking in the satellite image of Barrow.
There were plumes of smoke rising from some of the buildings, clear fires burning in others, and ample evidence of destruction everywhere he looked.
“That’s not where it stops, sir,” the sergeant said, handing him another photograph.
Alphonse accepted this one with trepidation. Some
thing told him it wasn’t going to be any better than the first.
He was right.
“Sweet Jesus, son. Tell me this isn’t—”
“Those are burning oil wells southwest of Barrow.”
“Tell the troopers to get their people together, and we’ll send some of ours up with them,” the general said, looking up. “And get me the governor on the line — we may need to declare a state of emergency.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Within hours, a motley group of state troopers and National Guard reservists were thrown together out on one of the runways, a C-130 warming up its engines just for them.
The briefing, such as it was, went quickly, as no one knew much of anything…and those who did know something were more concerned with getting in the air than talking on the ground. In all, about sixty men were shoved into the belly of the bird and sent on their way practically before they knew what was going on.
They were given more details once they were in the air, as much as anyone knew, anyway, and they grimly settled themselves in for a long ride with an unpleasant task ahead of them on the other side.
Elsewhere the oil companies were rushing firefighters into planes of their own, screaming for security escorts from the military, while ALCOM started to put together a long-term relief package and waited for a response team from the Federal Emergency Management Administration.
It was an unwelcome break from the routine, but by late evening of that night, General Alphonse was confident they had it all well in hand.
CHAPTER 4
CORONADO, CALIFORNIA
“What the hell is this?” Captain Andrews growled, tossing a sheaf of papers across Masters’s desk.
He barely glanced at it, and didn’t look at her. “Requisition forms.”
“I know that!”
He could resist neither the wry smirk that cracked his face nor the words that came to his lips. “Then why did you ask?”
His sense of humor apparently didn’t hold much water with Andrews — her glare would have turned him to stone in another place, another time.