Plague of the Dead

by Z. A. Recht

  “Clear!”

  The three soldiers rounded the corner after him. The door to medical was a dozen feet down the corridor, and there was no sign of any infected. The sounds of the labored breathing still echoed around them, slowly growing in intensity. Adrenaline was rushing through Brewster’s veins.

  “Whatever’s going to happen, let it happen soon,” he said.

  “Amen,” Darin agreed, walking in the rear of the group, facing backwards to keep their rear covered.

  “Cover the corridor,” Decker instructed as they approached the doorway to medical. “Brewster, you and I grab the stuff Becky needs topside.”

  “Right, sergeant.”

  The two crept into medical as Darin and the sailor took up position outside the doorway. Once inside, the sound of breathing reached a fever pitch. Brewster and Decker froze, eyes flicking over the room. It looked abandoned, but whatever was making those noises was very close.

  “Clear the room,” said Decker.

  The pair split, inching their way around the examination tables. As Brewster rounded the first table, he stopped, whistling lightly to Decker. The sergeant glanced over.

  “I got him,” Brewster whispered, aiming his weapon into the corner of the room. “On the ground, behind that shelf.”

  “I see him,” said Decker, taking aim as well.

  It didn’t appear to be an infected as they had originally thought. A man lay half-exposed in the corner of the room, trying to tuck himself as deeply as possible in the shadows. He seemed half-mad with fright, and clutched his shoulder with one arm. He seemed in terrible pain, clenching his teeth. His breathing was loud and grating.

  “Say something, buddy,” Brewster said, taking a step towards the man.

  “Don’t . . .” managed the man before a fit of coughing seized him. He cleared his throat, head rolling back in weakness as he tried again. “Don’t come close. It bit me.”

  “We’ll see if we can fix you up,” Brewster replied, holstering his pistol and scanning the shelves in the room for anything useful. The labels on the bottles of medicine read like Greek to him. “Aw, fuck, man, I don’t know what this shit is. I flunked chemistry.”

  “Don’t bother,” said the man. Blood leaked between his fingers as they grasped his shoulder. “You should shoot me.”

  “Fuck that,” Brewster said. “If you go, then I’ll shoot you. Not before.”

  “I’ll shoot him,” Decker said, stepping forward.

  “Whoa, hold it, man!” Brewster exclaimed, putting himself between the man and Decker.

  “Get out of my way, private. We’re containing this outbreak before it gets to all of us,” Decker gritted, glaring at Brewster.

  “Let him do it,” gasped the man. “I can feel it.”

  “No fucking way,” Brewster said, firmly. “He’s still alive.”

  “Shoot me . . .”

  “Out of the way, Brewster!” Decker shouted.

  “What the hell is—holy shit,” said Darin, stepping into the room and seeing the scene within. “Is he infected?”

  “Yes!” Decker shouted again. “And I’m going to deal with him if this bleeding heart motherfucker ever gets out of my way!”

  “Hey, fuck you, pal,” Brewster said, flipping Decker the bird. “You want to kill a living person, you kill me first.”

  “Can’t one of you idiots shoot me?” choked the man in the corner. “I don’t . . . have much time!”

  “That can be arranged,” Decker said to Brewster, ignoring the man’s comment. The sailor in the corridor was looking in at them nervously.

  “Whoa, whoa,” said Darin, stepping in. “We’re safe for now, right? Let’s watch him. If he turns, we take care of him. He won’t leave this room. Right, sergeant?”

  “We should kill him now before he has a chance to spread it around,” Decker said, turning his ire on the corporal.

  “Shoot me . . . shoot me now!” the man gasped. He coughed—a wet, gurgling, pathetic noise, head slumping downwards.

  “Look at him, private!” said Decker. “He’s got it! If we don’t do what we can to stop it now we could—”

  A scream from the doorway caught them all off-guard. Weapons snapped up, eyes following suit.

  The sailor, distracted by the argument, had failed to keep an eye on the corridor. An infected clung to his back, hissing in rage and scratching at his face and neck.

  “Get it off! Get it off!” the sailor screamed, flinging his arms about in terror.

  The infected leaned in and tore a chunk of flesh from the sailor’s cheek, garnering a shriek of pain from the sailor. His finger tightened on the trigger of the MP-5 and the weapon fired, sending rounds flying into medical, ricocheting off the steel walls. The soldiers dove for cover as the sailor and infected fell back into the corridor outside. The sailor kept firing, nearly deafening them all with the quick rattle of the weapon.

  Darin found himself nearest the struggle as he came out of his roll, and brought up his pistol, firing off a pair of quick shots. One missed, and the second took the infected in the shoulder, knocking it off the sailor. It slumped against a wall, life draining from its eyes. A third shot took it in the forehead, ensuring it wouldn’t be getting back up again. It twitched once, and was still.

  The sailor rolled about in pain, holding a hand to his torn cheek. As he removed the hand and saw his own blood coating it, though, his shrieking ceased, and a calm seemed to fall over him. Darin, Brewster, and Decker slowly came out from behind their cover, looking out at the wounded soldier. He looked back at them, a kind of peaceful resignation on his face. He flashed them a grim smile, and in one swift motion drew his pistol, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger, depositing the contents of his skull on the wall behind him. His body slumped sideways, laying beside the corpse of the infected that had doomed him.

  The three soldiers were quiet for a moment. Brewster was the first to speak.

  “Fuck me running,” he managed, mouth agape.

  Darin darted into the hallway, scanning back and forth for more hostiles.

  “Clear! Damn,” he said as he waved a hand to clear the air. “There’s brain mist floating around out here.”

  “Try to breathe in some intelligence,” Decker quipped.

  “You’re a dick, man,” Brewster said, frowning.

  “Maybe, but I’m a—”

  The man in the corner, forgotten during the firefight, howled, and they spun on him. He had pulled himself to his feet and was clutching his head, face twisted in pain. Without warning, he recovered, head snapping up to lock onto Decker with a rageful stare. He sprang forward, growling in the back of his throat, and was almost on top of the sergeant when Decker’s pistol discharged, the round taking the man in the throat and dropping him like a wet sack of meat.

  They surveyed the body for a moment before Decker whirled on Brewster.

  “That’s what I was trying to do earlier,” he said, pointing at the corpse. “If you’d let me do it, he wouldn’t have had a chance to attack us like that. Grow a fucking pair and open your eyes, private. This is total war. Us or them. The sooner you realize that, the better off you are. Now grab those fucking supplies and let’s get out of here.”

  Washington D.C.

  January 11, 2007

  2000 hrs_

  “She’s proving to be a much more stubborn subject than we’d thought,” said Agent Mason, sipping on a lukewarm cup of coffee and watching a muted replay of last night’s interrogation session on a flickering television set. On the screen, Julie Ortiz mouthed indignant answers to questions she had no intention of answering. Mason could see himself in the background, looking bored and distracted.

  “Impressive, that’s for sure,” mumbled Agent Derrick, thumbing through a manila folder. “Is there really any point in continuing the interrogations? We already have what we want. Our information is reliable.”

  “And do what? Let her lie away in a cell for the rest of her life? Wasteful,” said Agent Saw
yer, shaking his head. “We would do better by managing to extract a confession from her.”

  “We have testimony against her on file,” said Mason.

  “It should hold up in court,” added Derrick.

  “It’s not enough,” Sawyer said. “We have accumulated enough evidence to convict her, true. But the trial would be public—and messy. There’s the matter of fraud.”

  “We were authorized to identify ourselves as FBI,” Mason pointed out.

  Sawyer raised his eyebrows and asked, “And will the American people be satisfied with that? A mere authorization to impersonate a federal agent of a different bureau?”

  “Perhaps,” said Derrick. “They are malleable, and easily manipulated. The right story in the right place should cover us well.”

  “Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong,” Mason interjected, furrowing his brow in thought. “Maybe we shouldn’t even be worrying about this case. Maybe there are more important things we should be doing.”

  The silence in the room after he spoke was deafening.

  “What did you say?” Sawyer said after a moment, fixing Mason with a stony glare.

  “Have you looked outside the window recently?” Mason said. “Do our lives really revolve so much around orders that we don’t see the storm on the horizon out there? Things aren’t exactly running smoothly. I’m certain the country would find us more useful in another role. They can’t be bothered with treason charges at a time like this.”

  “Our borders are solid. Cases are scattered and few. They will be contained,” Derrick said, siding with Sawyer.

  “In a month, maybe two, this will have blown over, and then it’s business as usual.

  “When that happens, they’ll begin to wonder what happened to Julie Ortiz—such a high profile case cannot be kept under lock and key forever,” Sawyer said. “And speaking of treason—let’s not hear such talk from you again, Mason.”

  Agent Mason grimaced, taking a final sip from the coffee cup before crumbling it in his hand and tossing it into a nearby wastebasket. He said nothing.

  “Well, then,” Sawyer said, satisfied the situation had been dealt with, “Let’s move on to the business at hand. Any suggestions from either of you? New methods, perhaps?”

  “Miss Ortiz’s profile suggests a susceptibility to psychological tactics,” Derrick answered. “I suggest we continue. Perhaps we should up the moisture seepage into the dungeon, and take the lights down a few more watts.”

  “The dungeon’s settings are optimal. In the fifty years we’ve been using it it’s never failed in its purpose,” Mason pointed out.

  “That doesn’t mean this subject won’t set a new standard,” Sawyer said. “We’ll go with Derrick’s suggestion. Agent Mason, if you will?”

  Mason sighed and swiveled in his chair to face a small console tucked in the corner of the room, and twisted a heavy metal knob farther to the right. A second, more worn knob, was given a twist to the left. The surveillance monitors showed the dungeon dimming. The agents could see Julie in her cell, huddled against a wall, knees tucked up to her chest. As the lights went down a notch, she looked around, surprised by the change. It would be hard for her to make out the far wall of her cell now that it was even darker down there. The moisture seepage was a well-designed irrigation system, but would take a few hours before any real change was felt by the prisoner. The sum of their actions was merely to make Julie Ortiz that much more miserable, and therefore a bit more likely to tell them what they wanted to know.

  Suddenly, the lights in the dungeon went out entirely, as did those in the room the agents were in. The monitors and consoles remained lit, powered by a local generator. After a moment, the lights came flickering back on, illuminating the worried glances of the agents as they looked back and forth at one another.

  “That was different,” Derrick said.

  “This building isn’t supposed to have power outages,” Mason added. “The systems are redundant.”

  “Perhaps the grid suffered a brownout,” Sawyer offered.

  “I hope there isn’t trouble out there.”

  “Once again with the worries,” Sawyer admonished. “The military is in position if civil unrest reaches a boiling point and they are more than well enough equipped to deal with anything a shotgun-toting civilian could throw at them. Power is a valuable commodity at the moment. A brownout, nothing more.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Mason.

  “For the last time, Agent Mason, we are the most secure building in the most secure city in the most secure nation in the world,” Sawyer retorted. “If anything is going to happen, it’ll happen to us last. There’s no reason to get our hackles up over a power fluctuation.”

  “And as to the business at hand?” prompted Derrick, gesturing at the monitors.

  “Oh, yes. I’d almost forgotten over Mason’s constant worrying,” Sawyer said, smiling grimly. “We’ll increase the frequency of interrogations in addition to the modification of the dungeon environment. Let’s begin to throw in items she doesn’t know we’re aware of yet—maybe that will help throw her off-guard.”

  “How about a little good cop, bad cop?” Derrick said. “Classic, but we haven’t tried it yet.”

  “We’ll need to enlist outside help,” Mason replied. “She’s far too familiar with the three of us to buy into any overtures of sympathy.”

  “Oh, at last a helpful suggestion from you, Mason. How kind,” said Sawyer. “You’re right, of course. I’ll contact some people.”

  “What about our other guest?” Derrick asked. “Do we have any further use for her?”

  “No, she’s given us what we wanted with little protest,” Sawyer said, tapping a finger on the tabletop. “Still, we can’t just set her free.”

  “And we can’t keep her here forever, either,” Mason pointed out.

  “But for the time being, we can,” Sawyer replied. “Discontinue interrogations, but keep Dr. Demilio under guard. She may still be of some use in the future.”

  USS Ramage

  January 11, 2007

  2122 hrs_

  General Francis Sherman knelt beside a crumbled infected corpse in the halls of the USS Ramage, grimacing at the sight of the gruesome head wound that had killed it. Around him, soldiers swarmed through the belly of the ship, double-checking rooms and preparing corpses for removal. The firefight below decks had been swift and decisive. Once the soldiers had reacted to the threat, it hadn’t taken long to put down all the infected on board—but the victory was hollow. The corpses of victims lined the bowels of the destroyer.

  Sherman grunted softly, voice muffled behind the surgical mask on his face.

  “How many so far?” he asked, pulling a pair of latex gloves over his hands and snapping them tight.

  “Twenty-three, sir,” answered a grim-faced Sergeant Major Thomas. “Seventeen refugees, four soldiers caught unarmed, two went down fighting.”

  A camera flash went off, followed by the thin, thready whine of the bulb charging for another shot. Sam Denton crouched beside Sherman, face also obscured behind a surgical mask.

  “How do you think it got started, Frank?” Denton questioned, snapping off another photo of the body in front of them.

  “One of the civvies brought it in,” said Sherman. “Only found one body without any bite wounds. Had to be the original carrier—It took a few rounds to the chest and two to the head later on that put him down.”

  “Twenty-three dead because of one carrier?” Denton said, voice filled with awe and a hint of dread.

  “We saw it back before Suez,” Thomas said. “A good bite turns you in a few minutes, maybe an hour or two, tops.”

  Sherman nodded in agreement. “The original host onboard probably got everyone in his compartment before he was discovered. One became six or seven within a few minutes.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Denton whispered.

  “No,” Sherman said, turning his head to shoot Denton a bemused glance. “Quite th
e opposite, actually.”

  A soldier in thick, stained MOPP gear and mask came walking up. He addressed General Sherman with an edge in his voice.

  “General, we’ve finished securing the area. We’ve found two more bodies. One civvie, one sailor, down in the engine room. Looks like they made a stand—blood that ain’t theirs is all over the place. They didn’t make it, though,” said the soldier, accenting the obvious at the end of his short report. The soldiers, in their ever-dwindling numbers, were getting accustomed to death.

  “Thanks, private,” said Sherman. “Secure the bodies and take them topside for burial.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Denton watched the private as he hurried away, then turned back to Sherman and Thomas.

  “Twenty-five now,” he said. He got a mute nod from Sherman as a response. “Think they’ll find any more?”

  “I doubt it,” Sherman said as a pair of soldiers hefted the corpse up off the floor and onto a gurney. “We’ve got everyone accounted for now.”

  A shout came from the direction of medical. Instantly, hackles rose and rifles were trained on the doorway. A soldier backpedaled into the hall, wearing a surprised look on his face. He noticed the rifle barrels trained on him, and raised his hands up quickly.

  “No, it’s alright, he’s strapped down!” he said, gesturing into the room in front of him. “Just startled me, that’s all.”

  “What is it?” Sherman asked, striding over to the soldier and looking into medical.

  “The body—it just started moving again,” said the soldier.

  Inside medical, strapped securely to another wheeled gurney, was a sheet-covered body, twitching randomly under the thin cover. The metal bars of the gurney squeaked here and there as it rocked back and forth under the weight of the reanimated corpse.

  “Soldier, dispose of that carrier,” Sherman ordered, pointing at the gurney.

  “Yes, sir,” said the soldier, stepping back into medical and drawing his sidearm.

  “No!” Sherman barked, holding up a hand. “You’ll just get more hot blood all over the place. We don’t want anyone else getting infected. Take it up topside first.”