Rotters

by Carl R. Cart

  The individual pieces of the dismembered zombie twitched and jerked in the mud.

  “What the fuck was that?” Robinson demanded.

  Everyone looked to me for answers.

  “I thought you said they would fall apart!” Keyes shouted at me.

  “I guess I was wrong,” I mumbled. “Captain, I need to look at one.”

  “Look at that one, Barry!” he suggested, pointing towards the pieces with his gun.

  I donned my AVR and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. Then I stepped through the brush and knelt down near the shattered zombie. One of the shoulder blades was still intact. A long section of arm bone was still attached by a rotted rotor cuff and some blackened tendons. The bacterial strands were clearly visible in the remaining musculature. The shoulder joint jerked spasmodically as I pushed it clear of the other remains.

  The first thing I noticed was the change in the smell. The remains did not stink. There was a cloyingly sweet smell of decomposition, but that was all.

  “That thing was like a skeleton,” Dyson suggested. “Skin and bones without the skin. A man made out of bones. A bone man.”

  “A bone man,” I repeated. “Aptly put, Sergeant.”

  I pulled out my electron microscope and went to work. Keyes hooked into the scope with her computer, the others set up a triangular perimeter to guard us as we worked. I prepared a slide sample from the shoulder tissues and looked through the viewer. The virus was still very much present. I had been wrong.

  I looked at the muscle cells. Many were completely disrupted and obviously decayed, but some of them were intact; damaged, yet capable of functioning normally, even though the zombie they had come from had to have been dead for weeks. The virus and the zombies were much more resilient than I had anticipated. This certainly changed things.

  The bacteria were also altered in this new stage of the disease’s progression. They were forming bands within the muscle tissue, replacing the material that was digested. I rolled out my field surgeon’s kit and selected a scalpel. I cut away a strand of bacteria from the shoulder muscle, and split it. A tiny blue spark arced from the bacteria cells to my scalpel.

  I paused and drew back my hand. What had just happened was impossible.

  “Keyes, verify what I am seeing,” I requested.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Come over here,” I demanded. “When I cut this strand before, an electrical discharge jumped to my scalpel, from the bacteria I was cutting. I’m going to try it again. Watch for the spark.”

  I slowly inserted the scalpel back into the strand. Nothing happened. I cut harder, but still nothing occurred.

  “Maybe it was a static charge,” Keyes suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. “Hang on, maybe I discharged that sample.”

  I selected another chunk of muscle and bacteria strands from the wriggling pieces. I removed a bacteria strand, and dissected it. A fat blue spark jumped to my steel scalpel. I couldn’t feel it, but Keyes jumped.

  “What does that mean?” Keyes asked.

  “Somehow these strands of bacteria are acting as capacitors. They are storing a mild electrical charge that is being generated by the digestion of the zombie’s tissues. Somehow the capacitor bacteria are allowing the dead muscle cells to function closely to the way they did in life. An electrical current is causing the muscle tissue to expand and contract,” I concluded.

  “Is that even possible?” Keyes asked.

  “I would have said it was a physiological impossibility, except that I have just confirmed that it’s happening,” I answered.

  “Capt. Christopher!” I shouted. The captain quickly knelt beside me.

  “Watch this,” I suggested.

  I selected another bacteria strand and repeated the experiment.

  “What does this mean?” the captain inquired.

  “A couple of things,” I replied. “Since the zombies are generating and storing an electrical charge, they are probably able to sense us through the electrical field generated by our bodies. And I was wrong about the zombies breaking down. Apparently they have a much longer life span than I anticipated. If the virus continues to spread outward from the original source, and the zombies can carry it indefinitely, then it will become a pandemic.”

  “Damn,” the captain cursed. “As soon as this shit reaches a major airport it is going to get off the continent. We have to stop it, now! Keyes, pull up a map that shows the closest airports.”

  Keyes typed into her laptop, and then turned it so that the captain could look at its screen. There were two major airports and eight smaller ones all within three hundred miles of our position. Juntah was one of them.

  I did some quick calculations in my head. “Captain, I think we may be too late.”

  “I haven’t received any reports of the virus outside of our area, although the zone of infection is spreading,” the captain replied. “The virus may not have been spread outside the quarantine zone yet, but it will reach those airports if we can’t figure out a way to stop it.”

  I wracked my brain for a solution, but I couldn’t come up with anything.

  “I am going to have to call in a tactical nuclear strike,” the captain decided.

  Keyes gasped. “You can’t just nuke the rain forest!”

  “I don’t have any choice,” the captain responded.

  “Capt. Christopher, a nuclear bomb will not stop the virus. It might destroy the zombies, but viruses are resistant to up to five thousand rads. The fallout would actually disperse them into new territory,” I explained. “You would be spreading the virus even more.”

  “I don’t think I have a choice, Barry,” the captain growled. “We can’t stop them with conventional weapons. If there is even a small chance it might work, then we will have to try it.”

  “You’re crazy,” Keyes demanded. “Think of all the damage you be doing to the environment! At least the virus only kills people.”

  “It is my mission to stop the virus at any cost, Keyes. What good will saving the environment do if everyone is dead?” the captain shouted.

  “Wait!” I interjected. “The zombies function much more like living people than I thought. Maybe conventional weapons will work on them.”

  “Nothing I have seen would support that idea, Dr. Barry,” the captain shot back. “They are incredibly tough. The nuclear option stays on the table.”

  “Actually, a tactical airburst by a small thermonuclear warhead would produce an electromagnetic burst that might affect the zombies, if they are storing electrical energy in the bacteria in their bodies,” Keyes suggested.

  “Am EMP strike, why didn’t I think of that?” the captain asked aloud. “Keyes, you are a genius!”

  “What exactly is an EMP burst?” I asked.

  “EMP stands for electromagnetic pulse,” Keyes explained. “When a nuclear bomb is detonated, it scatters radiation through the atmosphere. This causes fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic fields. Anything conductive draws in this excess energy. The EMP can burn up any material that is not shielded from it. Most of your military grade communications equipment is protected, but civilian grade equipment is not. EMP energy is a major concern to any communications specialist. That’s why I know so much about it.”

  “So, if a small nuclear bomb is detonated, it will create enough EMP energy to stop the zombies?” I asked.

  “It would have to be an airburst,” the captain replied. “A ground burst doesn’t produce a significant EMP.”

  “But would it destroy the zombies?” I insisted.

  “In theory, it should work,” Keyes offered. “You just have to overload the capacitor bacteria and burn them out.”

  “But we have no way to test it, do we?” I asked.

  “I guess not,” the captain agreed.

  “Actually, it is very simple to build a small EMP bomb,” Keyes stated.

  “You know how to build one?” the captain asked incredulously.

&nb
sp; “Yes,” Keyes replied. “As I explained, I know all about electromagnetic pulse energy.”

  “Go on,” the captain prompted.

  “All you need is a roll of small gauge copper wire, a pen, a nine-volt battery, and the flash capacitor from a disposable camera,” Keyes expounded.

  “We don’t have a disposable camera do we?” I asked.

  “Actually any modern camera with a flash will work. My Nikon has a powerful flash capacitor, but we would have to break it to get it out. I would really rather not do that,” Keyes explained.

  “I’ll buy you a new camera, Keyes,” the captain stated. “How do you build the bomb?”

  “You start by wrapping the copper wire around the pen. You wrap it until you can’t get any more wire around it. That’s your field generator. Then you connect one end of the wire to the capacitor. You charge the capacitor by connecting it to the battery. Then you simply touch the other end of the wire to the capacitor. The field generator produces a very small electromagnetic pulse. Anything electronic within five feet or so is destroyed,” Keyes concluded.

  “We need to test it on a zombie,” I stated.

  We pressed on through the rain forest, towards the city of Juntah. We wanted to find the zombies now. The captain guided us with his GPS. We moved on through the softly falling rain as quickly as we could manage. I felt cautiously optimistic, at least now we had a fighting chance.

  Without warning, we walked out of the trees and onto a black top road. Several abandoned vehicles sat parked along the roadway.

  The captain quickly pulled us back. He led us through the trees at the road’s edge for several hundred yards. We reached a bend in the road, where a large flatbed truck had wrecked and overturned. The captain led us cautiously forward, using the truck for cover. We could see down the road for a quarter mile or so. It was swarming with bone men. Dozens of them wandered back and forth, blindly seeking prey.

  “Shit!” Sgt. Dyson cursed.

  “I expected this,” the captain stated. He led us back a safe distance into the rain forest, away from the city.

  We huddled together to talk.

  “Sgt. Dyson, you and Robinson grab a bone man and bring it back here,” the captain ordered. “Don’t take any unnecessary chances.”

  “Dr. Barry, does the zombie need to be in one piece?” Dyson asked.

  “No,” I replied. “But bring all the pieces back; we need to see if the EMP will work on a complete zombie.”

  Robinson and Dyson glided into the forest and disappeared.

  I kept watch while Keyes and the captain built the EMP bomb. Keyes flinched as the captain broke her expensive Nikon camera apart with a small rock. He extracted the flash capacitor, and threw the rest into the brush.

  “You owe me a new Nikon, Capt. Christopher,” Keyes mumbled.

  Keyes and I watched as he stripped the copper wire from the proximity sensor array. He drew the wire from its plastic sheathing, and slowly wrapped it around a pen to build the field generator. Once he had wrapped all the wire he paused to critically examine his work.

  “Is this enough wire?” he asked Keyes, holding the jury-rigged generator up.

  “Yes, that should work,” she replied. “We should wait to charge it though.”

  We waited quietly in the rain. I huddled down into my poncho, and suffered silently. I wasn’t really worried about Dyson or Robinson, but I was relieved when they emerged from the trees, dragging a headless bone man between them. They dumped their captive into the mud. They had wired the bone man’s hands and feet together. Dyson had stuffed the severed head into a sack; he upended it, and shook the fleshless skull out. It landed with a splash in a mud puddle next to the quivering body. The jaw snapped open and shut spasmodically.

  The captain knelt down beside the zombie. “Keyes, the battery,” he prompted gently.

  Keyes was staring at the skull. She snapped back to reality. “Here,” she offered. She pulled a nine-volt battery from her pack and handed it to the captain.

  “Just connect it to the capacitor leads,” she instructed.

  The captain connected the capacitor. “Is it charged?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Keyes answered. “Don’t expect anything exciting to happen,” she warned. “Just touch the leads from the field generator to the capacitor. Wait until I move my equipment back,” she added. “Dr. Barry you should do the same.”

  Keyes and I secured our packs well away from the zombie and the bomb, then slowly moved back to watch.

  We all held our breath as the captain connected the leads. One second the zombie was twitching in the mud, the next it was still. There was no explosion, no noise as the bomb discharged, but it worked.

  “I’ll be damned!” Dyson laughed.

  I quickly retrieved my pack and set up the electron microscope. I took a sample of the capacitor bacteria and prepared a slide sample. The bacteria had clearly been destroyed by the EMP blast, but the virus was still there.

  “Well?” the captain inquired.

  “I think it will work. The capacitor bacteria are dead,” I replied. “Will the EMP created by the nuclear explosion be this powerful?” I asked Keyes.

  “The EMP will be a thousand times more powerful, maybe more,” she stated.

  “We can’t take any chances,” the captain warned. “We will calculate an overlapping area of effect. One-megaton air bursts will have a minimal effect on the rain forest. Keyes, help me out.”

  The captain and Keyes used the laptop to calculate the air strikes. Once their calculations were complete the captain contacted Home Plate, and explained the plan. Five one-megaton bombs would be simultaneously detonated over the Congo at an altitude of ten miles each. The overlapping EMP blasts would blanket the ground directly underneath the point of detonation for a range of twelve hundred miles. By Keyes’ calculations, that would be far beyond the zone of infection. The damage to the rain forest would be minimal.

  Keyes passed on the new information, and our latest findings. The captain took the comm and spoke directly to the Pentagon.

  We all waited anxiously nearby. I had no idea how much authority the captain actually had. Surely a nuclear strike would require clearance from someone pretty far up the chain of command.

  The captain spoke briefly, “Understood sir, Operation Gamma Rain to commence in twenty-four hours, or on my command. Thank you, sir. Good luck to you, too, sir.”

  The captain looked down at his wristwatch, and then spoke quietly to us all. “The nuclear strike will commence in twenty-four hours. We have that long to reach Gatou and figure this mess out.”

  TERMS AGREED.

  SECURE SPECIMENS AS PER INSTRUCTIONS.

  Chapter 10

  4:57 p.m. Zulu

  Outskirts of Juntah

  Central Africa

  The captain led us through the forest. We were skirting the road to the southeast, hoping to avoid most of the bone men. The trees began to give way quickly, and we emerged into a clear-cut area with tall weeds and small, overgrown vegetable plots. Tumbledown shacks and junk piles were interspersed throughout the scarred landscape. A crudely dug irrigation ditch, half-filled with stagnant water stretched away towards the city. The captain led us down into it, and we proceeded in a bent over scramble towards the nearest buildings. I sloshed along through the sloppy mess, occasionally falling to my knees in the slippery mud. My back was a knotted mass of agony by the time we stopped.

  The captain brought us up to the rear of a metal-sided building that was built right against the ditch. I stood bent-over, rubbing the small of my back. Dyson peered through the cracks in the wall, and whispered, “Clear.”

  Robinson found a joint in the metal siding, and slowly pulled the wall outward. The metal gave out a low groan as the rusty nails broke away. Robinson stopped, and then pulled again. The metal folded back, leaving a triangular shaped opening into the building. Sgt. Dyson slipped inside and checked the interior. After a moment, his hand protruded from the hole, and w
aved us inside. We clambered out of the ditch and into the building. Just enough daylight penetrated through the holes in the ceiling to dimly illuminate the building. Junk of every description lay piled in disorderly rows. We cautiously made our way through to the far side. I peered through a broken window out into the street. Nothing moved except the rain falling into the mud puddles in the dirt road outside. Juntah looked like a ghost town, but I knew there could be zombies out there.

  “We have to move through the city,” the captain explained. “The bridge is about a half mile away. Juntah is shaped like a banana; most of the city follows the river north to south. We’re coming in from the east, in the middle. We’re close to the bridge, but will have to pass through the center of the city. If we are careful we can use the buildings for cover. We’re going to run into zombies, but no one is to fire until I give the order. Understood?”

  The captain looked grimly at us, one-by-one, “Keyes, Barry, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Keyes said.

  “I’m with you,” I replied.

  The captain opened the building’s front door, and led us out into the falling rain. We moved along the deserted street, hugging the ramshackle buildings. Dyson moved slightly ahead and cleared each building before we passed. Robinson brought up the rear.

  We moved from building to building, using the side streets or alleyways where we could, but always moving west, towards the bridge.

  I began to see skeletal remains in the roadway. Most were partially buried in the mud. I pointed these out to the captain.

  “I was right,” I suggested. “They are falling apart, burning out.”

  “We will see,” he countered.

  We encountered no zombies; at least what you would consider zombies. We had only gone three blocks when Dyson suddenly stopped. He held up a closed fist. Everyone froze. I saw a movement in the muddy track beside me. Keyes gave out a stifled shriek.

  A skeletal hand trailing a bright green bacteria strand was crawling through the mud towards me. I froze in my tracks. Robinson pushed his way forward, and stomped the hand to pieces with his boot. The road around us began to writhe and move. Rotted pieces of skeletal remains began to squirm in the mud. Some of them were too far-gone to move, they could only writhe and wriggle in the roadway. But other, more intact pieces began to pull themselves towards us.