Rotters

by Carl R. Cart

  “I’m not leaving you,” I shot back.

  The captain stood and snatched the rifle from my hands. “The hell you’re not!” he barked. “Robinson, take these two across, now!”

  The captain fired the AK-47 into the approaching zombies. It bought us a few seconds. When the gun was empty he tossed it aside. He snatched up the detonator and twisted the wires under the connector nuts. “Run!” he screamed at me.

  Robinson grabbed me by my pack’s straps and pulled me at a dead run across the bridge. Keyes ran across just ahead of us. I could hear Dyson’s AK firing from his position back onto the bridge. I looked back. The captain finished arming the explosives just as the zombies reached him. He grabbed the detonator with both hands and released the dead man’s switch.

  Robinson threw me to the ground just as the bridge exploded.

  TO THE JOINT CHEIFS OF STAFF - CODE RED COMMUNIQUE

  NEWEST COMPUTER MODELS INDICATE EXPONENTIAL SPREAD OF

  HAET-MOMBAU VIRUS BEYOND ALL PREVIOUS FORECASTS

  CIA ANALISIS CONFIRMS NEW DATA

  VIRAL SPREAD WILL BECOME UNCONTAINABLE ONCE IT REACHES COSTAL AREAS OF AFRICAN CONTINENT

  SATTELITE SURVELLANCE INDICATES LARGE EXPLOSION AT CHARLIE TEAM LOCATION CITY OF JUNTAH

  CONTACT LOST WITH RECON TEAM CHARLIE

  REPORT ENDS

  Chapter 11

  9:38 p.m. Zulu

  The Road to Gatou

  Central Africa

  We walked on along the road, through the darkness and the rain. We had fled into the forest beyond Juntah, until we realized that nothing was pursuing us. Without Capt. Christopher to lead us, we had slowed and foundered. But I knew what we had to do. I pushed our small group on towards Gatou. Dyson was back out on point; Robinson was bringing up the rear. It was pitch dark, but we couldn’t stop to rest. The clock was ticking now, and if we were going to ever leave Africa alive, we had to reach the village.

  “Stop being so obstinate!” Keyes pleaded with me.

  “We have to go on,” I calmly answered.

  Keyes and I trudged along like an old married couple, arguing as we went.

  “You are technically in command now,” Keyes tried to reason with me. “Dyson will listen to you. I can contact Home Plate. You can call in the chopper. We can go home. We can all go home.”

  I thought about what Keyes was saying. If I left now then Blythe and Capt. Christopher would have died for nothing. We could stop the zombies, but I still didn’t know how to stop the virus. Even with the EMP strike, the virus might still become a pandemic. I didn’t know where it had originated, or how it propagated. I had to know before I could leave.

  “We still have nineteen-something hours before the nukes hit,” I replied. “We’ve come all this way. I want to go on to Gatou. I, at least, want to see the damn village where all this crap started before I leave.”

  “Men,” Keyes complained. “You’re all idiots.”

  “I’m going on to Gatou,” I shot back. “We can be there before dawn. Once I look the village over I’ll call in the chopper. We’ll be out in plenty of time.”

  “Yeah, if the zombies don’t get us. If we don’t catch the virus. If something else very bad doesn’t happen. There are too many damn ifs!” Keyes complained.

  “Don’t remind me,” I quipped. I was technically in charge now, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t think I was up to being the leader. I was responsible for the others safety and everything was falling apart. I knew Robinson wouldn’t take orders from me; he was just playing along, trying to get me out and collect on his contract. Keyes wanted to leave immediately. We were arguing incessantly. Only Dyson was still firmly on my side, and dedicated to completing the mission. But even he was doing it out of a sense of honor; to see the mission through for Capt. Christopher.

  We trudged along, our weary band of misfits, like children lost in the woods at night. It was so dark, and we were all exhausted after the battle in Juntah. I was practically asleep on my feet. Keyes and I kept bumping into one another.

  At one point I thought I was seeing things. A dim red point of light appeared in the darkness, floating before my eyes. I slowly approached it, my hand groping through the gloom ahead of me.

  “It’s me, Doc,” Dyson’s voice spoke from the darkness. He had stopped to allow us to catch up, and was smoking a cigarette in the middle of the road. “It’s about four hours until dawn. Why don’t we rest until we can see? We could walk right into some zombies out here, and I wouldn’t know any better until it was too late.”

  “Alright,” I said sleepily.

  “We can’t fall asleep. What about the nuclear strike?” Keyes yawned.

  “We’ve still got plenty of time. I never sleep more than six hours at a stretch,” Dyson yawned back.

  Robinson strolled up and interrupted our conversation. “What now?” He asked.

  “We’re taking a break,” I answered.

  Dyson steered us a little off the road. Robinson offered to take the first watch. We spread out our sleeping bags and were asleep in seconds.

  I closed my eyes and then Sgt. Dyson was shaking me awake again. He had a pretty hard time doing it. I noticed the sun was up and it had finally stopped raining.

  Keyes was in the upright position, and there was some water heating on the primus stove. Robinson sat with his back to us, watching the road. I crawled over to the stove and fixed a cup of instant coffee. It tasted as awful as I felt.

  I suddenly remembered our situation. “Oh shit!” I exclaimed. “How much time do we have left?”

  “It’s cool, Doc,” Dyson replied. “We have about twelve hours left. It should only take us about eight hours to hump it into Gatou.”

  I gulped down my coffee. “Let’s get moving,” I suggested.

  We struck out on the road. It was gravel, and had been washed out in places by the rain, but we made good time and encountered no zombies. The sun shone through the canopy, and my clothes started to dry out. We pushed on as fast as we could, limping down the lane. I was a total wreck; I didn’t remember ever being so sore and stiff. We only stopped once to eat and drink some water. Dyson kept watch and I stepped off into the brush to relieve myself. When I came back Robinson and Keyes were having a heated argument. “We have to see it through Keyes, we’ve gone too far to stop now!” he spat at her. Robinson frowned and stalked off as I approached. Keyes looked guiltily at me, and turned away.

  We continued on our way through the long weary afternoon. Shafts of sunlight occasionally pierced the canopy overhead. We had been plodding along for hours and everyone was extremely tired. Finally, the road petered out into a small clearing. A few huts were clustered around a single concrete block building with a rusty metal roof. We had reached the village of Gatou. It was pretty anticlimactic.

  We cautiously approached the building, and I peered inside. It was a clinic of the sort common in the African interior. Primitive medical equipment was randomly placed around a large central room. Mosquito netting and filthy sheets hung from the rafters. Medical supplies of all sorts had been dumped haphazardly about. Hundreds of human bones lay scattered about the interior, upon the make shift beds, and everywhere upon the floor.

  None of them moved. They looked like normal skeletal remains, just bones. None of them had any trace of musculature, or bacteria. They were an odd greenish color, but otherwise unremarkable.

  I cautiously approached the nearest skull. I poked at it with a bed-pan. Nothing happened.

  “I think these are the terminal cases,” I said aloud. “These must have been the original victims of the virus. They went through all of the stages, and finally were completely consumed by the bacteria. After that the bacteria and the virus died. They no longer had a host. I bet that if I checked these bones they would be clean.”

  “How can you be sure?” Keyes asked.

  “Because I know that a virus can only survive about forty-eight hours outside of a host body,” I responded. “These bones have been c
lean for a lot longer than that.”

  I picked up a femur bone. It was light as a feather. I snapped it cleanly in half. The marrow and all the digestible materials were gone. I knew I was right.

  “Keyes, hook up the laptop,” I suggested. “I’m going to check these remains for the virus.” I unpacked the microscope, and set it up on a nearby table. Keyes did the same with the computer.

  Sgt. Dyson walked back outside, and slowly circled the building, his AK-47 at the ready, and his eyes on the road and the surrounding forest. Robinson sat down on the front steps. He leaned his head against the door-frame and closed his eyes.

  I prepared four slides from different bones. I checked each in turn; they were all clean. There was no trace of the virus.

  “The samples are clean,” I stated.

  “So, that’s it!” Keyes shouted. “The virus dies. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  I rubbed the palms of my hands into my eyes. “Keyes, this doesn’t change anything. I haven’t identified the first victim, or how the virus originated,” I stated flatly. “Somewhere in this village is the answer.”

  “So, what if you can’t figure out where the virus came from?” Keyes asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” I responded.

  “Just make it quick,” She suggested.

  I wandered out the back door of the clinic. A few more huts were scattered across a muddy field. I wandered through the deserted village, looking inside each hut, hoping for some clue. I found more bones, but nothing out of the ordinary for a settlement that had been ravaged by a deadly virus.

  A heavily rutted road led away towards the forest behind the village. I didn’t remember a road leading away from Gatou on Capt. Christopher’s maps. He had pointed out the village to me several times, and as I remembered, the road dead-ended here. Of course, I didn’t have his maps to check.

  As I made my investigation, Sgt. Dyson watched me from the back door of the clinic. He finally walked over and joined me.

  “Well, Doc?” he asked.

  “Let’s check out this road,” I suggested.

  “Let me get Keyes and Robinson,” he said.

  I led the others down the rutted road. A few hundred yards away a logging truck lay deserted just off the track. Its driver’s door was open, and it had obviously been deserted in a hurry. I began to walk towards it.

  “Hold up, Doc,” Dyson said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Let me check her out first.”

  “Alright,” I agreed.

  Dyson slid down the road, his rifle at his shoulder. He circled the truck, and then returned.

  “It’s clear,” he stated.

  We all approached the truck. The cab was empty; the keys still dangled from the ignition. Robinson climbed inside and turned the key.

  “The ignition was on,” he deduced. “It’s out of fuel, and the battery is dead. I think someone left it running.”

  Its load was still intact on the trailer. Two huge logs were chained onto the trailer’s deck.

  “I used to see a lot of trees cut back home in Kentucky, but I never saw anything like that,” Dyson observed.

  “I’m pretty sure that those are old growth trees,” I shook my head sadly. “I don’t think those trees were supposed to be harvested.”

  Robinson spoke up. “That shit goes on every day, Doc. Some big company pays the government and the rangers to look the other way. The village hetman gets some money not to report it. The locals have starving kids to feed; they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about saving those trees.”

  “I know you’re right, Robinson, but that is exactly how viral epidemics get started,” I explained. “Most of them come from Africa or South America, and almost always from the rain forest. Humans keep on pushing into new territory where we haven’t been before, and coming into contact with unknown strains. Some of those can cross species. They are harmless to their original host, but deadly to humans,” I concluded.

  “Tree hugging bullshit, Doc,” Robinson said dismissively.

  “I think we can safely extrapolate that is what happened here,” I shot back.

  “Extrapolate this!” Robinson growled, grabbing his dick.

  “Can you two stop arguing long enough to remember that our government is going to drop nuclear bombs on this location, right here where we are standing, in a very short time?” Keyes stated, her voice rising an octave.

  “Yeah,” I sighed.

  Robinson shot me a dirty look. He still wanted to argue, or shoot me.

  “Let’s keep on looking,” I suggested.

  We followed the road deeper into the forest. We saw the stumps of clear-cut trees, and finally came upon the remains of the illegal logging operation. Two trucks were parked at the road’s end; one was partially loaded, the other empty. A bulldozer and a skid loader were parked nearby. A huge, rusty chain lay stretched across the clearing.

  Weeds and small trees were already reclaiming the area. They grew waist high in places, even into the roadway. Scattered here and there on the site were human bones. I counted at least five human skulls. The stumps were much more evident here. A cut tree lay on its side. Its leafy top had landed well back into the forest, but I could see that the leaves were brown and withered. I estimated its circumference at ten feet. Apparently, it had been the last tree cut before the site was deserted.

  Everyone wandered around the clearing, trying to piece together what had happened.

  “Do you think the logging crew was attacked by zombies here?” Keyes asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. I approached the last tree. Lying beside it in the tall weeds was an abandoned chain saw. It was a big one, with a five-foot blade, now very rusty. I looked down at the tree stump. The rings were beyond counting. I noticed that the tree sap still looked wet. Without thinking I stuck my finger into the sticky black sap, and rubbed it between my forefinger and thumb.

  The virus penetrated my skin instantly. I felt it hit me like a physical blow. Sweat popped out upon my brow, and my stomach clinched up in a tight knot. I gasped and doubled over.

  “Doc, are you alright?” Dyson asked.

  “Stay where you are,” I calmly answered.

  “What’s wrong?” Keyes insisted, walking towards me.

  “Stay where you are, all of you! Stay away from the stumps, stay away from me!” I replied urgently. “The virus was released when the trees were cut.”

  “What?” Dyson queried.

  Everything suddenly became crystal clear to me. The virus had lain dormant deep within the old growth trees. When the trees were cut, the virus was exposed; it was carried in the tree sap. Somehow, one of the loggers had come into contact with it. Maybe he had cut himself; maybe he had simply touched the sap, the same way I had. If he had been cut, he would have died quickly. His co-workers would have taken him to the clinic in Gatou. He would have then reanimated exactly as the other ACS victims had, and attacked the unsuspecting staff. The virus would have spread very quickly through the small community, especially if it was contagious as an aerosol.

  I realized that I had accidentally discovered the origin of the zombies associated with the voodoo cults of Haiti. The stories of zombies handed down through those religions were founded in historical fact. The slaves brought to Haiti came from Western Africa, and they had brought the stories of zombies with them. Apparently these trees had been cut before, or perhaps the virus had been released by lightning strikes or storms.

  Outbreaks of the zombie virus had occurred in ancient times, and the stories had then passed down through the oral histories of the African people.

  Regardless of its origin, I now knew the secrets of the virus. Unfortunately, I would pay for that knowledge with my life.

  “Listen to me carefully,” I stated. “The virus is in the tree sap. If you touch it the virus can penetrate your skin.”

  “Do you mean that you have the virus?” Keyes asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

 
“What do we do, Doc?” Dyson asked quietly.

  “These trees can never be cut again,” I began. “This area has to be quarantined until the trees and the stumps have rotted away. The EMP strike should stop the zombies, and no more will come out of this area, as long as no one is allowed in. You guys have to make sure that no more trees are logged in the Congo, period. It’s too dangerous.”

  “But what about you?” Sgt. Dyson asked.

  “You have to leave me here,” I replied. I looked up, and gave Dyson a sorry grin.

  Robinson shot him in the back three times. Sgt. Dyson fell face forward, his hand twitched for a second, and then he was still.

  The big mercenary turned his pistol on me. “I can shoot you if you want, Barry,” he laughed. “It would be a lot more pleasant way to die. Lose your weapon, real slow.”

  I pulled my pistol from its holster. I could try to shoot him, I didn’t have anything to lose, but he might shoot Keyes. I tossed my Beretta into the brush.

  Robinson lowered his pistol. “Call in the chopper, Keyes.”

  “Don’t do it Keyes!” I countered. She slipped off her pack.

  I looked at Keyes, bewildered. She didn’t look at me; instead she began to set up the comm gear.

  “She won’t help you,” Robinson growled. “This was all her idea.”

  Keyes spoke into the comm unit, “Home Plate, this is Keyes. We are ready for extraction. Dr. Barry has identified the source of the virus. He is injured and unconscious. Please hurry.” She cut the connection.

  “What?” I asked incredulously.

  “Sorry, Dr. Barry,” she replied. “The virus is worth a fortune to the right buyer, and I have already found that buyer. It can be weaponized. And we will have an unlimited source to offer up for sale,” she concluded.

  “You two are going to let the virus go global?” I asked.

  “No, we will simply take the virus with us when we are extracted. Or more precisely, you will carry the virus out for us. Unfortunately, you will have to be dead. The nukes will take out the zombies, and everything can go back to normal. The buyer will have an agent pick up a sample of the virus once we are safely out of Africa,” Keyes explained.