Plague of the Dead

by Z. A. Recht

  “Then let’s do it fast, and if they catch on to us, we shoot our way out,” Anna said, holding up the pistol Mason had given her.

  He shot her a surprised look and asked, “Are you a scientist or a soldier?”

  “Both, remember?”

  “Fine, Colonel. We go back, but let’s sprint it.”

  The pair eased away from the checkpoint. When they’d moved far enough that their footsteps wouldn’t be heard, they broke back into a full-out run, Anna following Mason through the numerous twists and turns of the confusing facility. All the hallways looked the same—the sterile whitewash, dull hum of fluorescent lighting, tiny placards next to doors that gave vague impressions of what might lay behind them—Anna would have quickly become completely lost if she had been by herself. Mason, however, knew the way perfectly, and it wasn’t long before they came to a narrow flight of stairs that descended into the dimly-lit confines of the dungeon.

  “There’ll be a guard down here,” Mason whispered, drawing to a stop at the top of the stairs. “Let me deal with him. I play poker—I’m pretty good at bluffing.”

  “Right,” Anna said, pushing her back up against a wall and waiting. Mason slung his weapon over his shoulder, took a deep breath to steady his nerves, and walked down the stairway. Anna could hear the guard’s challenge as Mason approached. She could make out most of the conversation, and listened intently.

  “Halt! This is a restricted area!”

  “Agent Mason, NSA.”

  “Oh, thank God. How’s it going up there?”

  “Not good. I’ve been sent to secure a fallback position. The outbreak’s contained within the facility. We need to empty these cells and start moving ammunition and supplies down here.”

  “I wasn’t notified . . .” the guard began.

  “I don’t care,” Mason said, taking on an authoritative tone. “Open the cell doors. Get the lighting turned up.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the guard. Anna bit back an exclamation of joy. For once, things seemed to be going well.

  That was when the guard’s radio squawked.

  “All personnel, all personnel, be advised, we have escaped detainees in the facility. Be on the lookout for suspicious activity. Possible rogue agent Gregory Mason. Suspects armed. Use of deadly force is authorized and recommended.”

  Anna’s eyes widened. For a moment, there was silence in the dungeon below, and then she heard a quick shuffling, feet scraping cement.

  “Don’t do it!”

  “Drop your—”

  Gunshots rang out. Anna swung around the corner, pistol leveled, to see Mason standing over the body of the guard, wisps of smoke trailing from the barrel of his weapon.

  “Goddamn it all,” Mason said, spotting Anna. “I told him not to draw. He drew on me. I killed him.”

  “You did the right thing, but now we’ve got to move twice as fast.”

  “Right,” Mason said, staring at the corpse at his feet. “Cell lever’s on the wall.”

  Anna looked around and spotted the heavy iron lever embedded in the stone walls of the dungeon, grabbed it, and gave it a pull. The old iron cell doors swung open, but Julie did not appear in the hall. Mason was stooping over the dead guard, pulling his utility belt free and stowing the unfortunate man’s gear on his own person. Anna jogged down the hall, scanning left and right in the cells she passed, looking for Ortiz. Near the end of the hall, she found her.

  Julie was curled up in the fetal position on the thin, damp cot in her cell, arms wrapped around herself, shivering.

  “Julie!” Anna blurted from the cell doorway. “Get up!”

  The reporter’s eyes flicked open and she locked her gaze on Anna’s. Her eyes sparked with recognition as she tried to sit up, but fell back onto the cot.

  “Can’t . . .” Julie managed, a cough wracking her body.

  “Jesus,” Anna said, “What have they been doing to you?”

  “So cold . . .” Julie mumbled.

  Anna noticed for the first time that the temperature in the dungeon was more than chilly—coupled with the artificial dampness of the place, Julie was certainly in miserable straits.

  “Mason! I need a hand here!” Anna called back to the agent. “Julie’s in bad shape!”

  Mason ran over, took one look at Julie, and shook his head. “She’ll hold us up. We can’t afford the risk. We’ve got to move fast and get out now that they know we’re trying something.”

  “They’ve got their hands full with your outbreak. We can get her out of here,” Anna persisted. “Help me carry her!”

  “Outbreak of . . . Morningstar?” Julie managed, pulling herself back up into a sitting position, arms still wrapped around her chest. Her face was pale and sickly in the dim light, but she didn’t seem injured aside from malnutrition. Another wracking, full-body cough shook the journalist, and Anna mentally added the possibility of pneumonia to the list of her ailments.

  “I’ll explain the whole thing once we’re out of here,” Mason said. “If we get out. And we won’t, at this rate. If we’re taking her, fine. Let’s go.”

  Mason moved over to Julie and pressed the dead guard’s weapon into her weak hands.

  “You might need this,” he said. “Cover us if you can while we carry you.”

  Julie nodded and allowed Mason and Anna to lift her up and support her as she walked along with them. The trio slowly made their way back up the stairs and into the fluorescents of the main facility, heading back towards the checkpoint they’d abandoned earlier.

  “How are we getting past the guards?” Anna asked.

  “Leave that to me,” Mason whispered. “The guard in the dungeon had a few surprises in his utility belt.”

  They leaned Julie against a wall. She sagged against it heavily, catching her breath and biting back another round of coughs that would have certainly alerted the guards to their presence. Mason kneeled, pulling a blue-tinted cylinder from the guard’s belt slung over his shoulder.

  “Grenade?” Anna asked, incredulous. “Half the facility will be after us.”

  “Grenade? Yes,” Mason whispered back. “Explode? No.”

  Anna shot the rogue agent a perplexed look, but Mason yanked the pin and let the spoon fly free without further explanation. Anna ducked and plugged her ears as the man reached around the corner and sent the grenade clattering down the hall towards the guards. She heard surprised yells from the guards, the safeties being clicked off, rounds being chambered—and no explosion. A loud hissing filled the air, and Mason drew his shirt up over his mouth and nose.

  The surprised guards’ shouts quickly changed from frightened to annoyed, and their yells explained Mason’s tactic to a T.

  “Gas! Gas! Gas!” one yelled, and Anna could imagine him fumbling for his mask—and in the process letting his guard down.

  “Now!” Mason shouted, springing to his feet and rounding the corner. Automatic fire rang out. Anna leaned out from the corner, aiming her pistol. The three guards had been in the process of donning their gas masks when Mason had jumped out and opened fire, catching them momentarily unawares. His first burst had caught one of them in the chest, dropping him to the ground, sending the mask skittering in one direction and the man’s weapon in the other. The guard was stunned—the heavy armor he was wearing caught the rounds, leaving him breathless but unarmed and surrounded by rapidly thickening CS tear gas.

  Anna fired a pair of rounds, both missing but causing the other two guards to duck for cover and abandon their masks. Return fire lit up the corridor, and Anna retreated around the corner as bullets took chunks out of the walls of the hallway.

  “Bravo post taking fire! Man down! Requesting reinforcements!” shouted one of the guards.

  Mason fired another burst down the corridor, suppressing their enemies for a moment. The sounds of choking began to reach Anna’s ears, and wisps of gas danced through the air as the grenade’s contents dispersed. Anna felt an itch in her eyes and mouth and caught the scent of a distant
campfire as the first vestiges of the gas reached her nostrils. She clamped her mouth shut and took only shallow breaths.

  She knew CS gas was non-toxic. One could spend their days living in a roomful of the stuff and not die—but they would not have a very pleasant few days. Light exposure left one itchy and set one’s eyes to watering. A nice lungful started your nose running and the coughing would begin shortly after. A few good breaths and you could expect to deposit your last meal on the floor—followed by whatever was left of the meal before that. She could only imagine the misery of the guards under cover next to the spent grenade.

  “Move in!” Mason said, rounding the corner and charging like a madman toward the checkpoint. One of the two remaining conscious guards was doubled over, bile trickling out of his mouth, struggling to breathe. A quick butt stroke to the head knocked the man out and sent him sprawling to the floor. The third was hacking, spitting, rubbing at his eyes and moaning. When he saw Mason coming through the cloud of gas, he reached for his sidearm, but the agent was too fast. A kick to the chest knocked the guard back, and a second butt stroke knocked him out cold.

  “Clear!” Mason yelled, coughing. The shirt he had drawn over his face was no substitute for a gas mask, and he was beginning to feel the effects as well. “Come on!”

  Anna grabbed Julie around her shoulders and dragged her past the downed guards and through the checkpoint, out of the detention block they had been held in for so long.

  Eyes watering and gasping for breath, Mason gestured down a side hall.

  “There’s a ramp down to the catacombs here. We’re almost out.”

  The trio turned the corner to find the whitewashed walls gone, replaced by bare concrete and utility lighting. Signs said they were entering a maintenance area, but Mason paid them no heed.

  “Downtown has sporadic outbreaks. We’re losing this war,” Mason said between coughs as they helped Julie negotiate the sloped floor that was taking them deep beneath the surface. “These tunnels can take us most of the way out of the city. I wanted to head to Weather, but I don’t think that would be advisable. Probably still a heavy presence of military and government there.”

  Anna said, “Mount Weather, in Virginia? That’s dozens of miles from here. Fifty, sixty . . .”

  “These tunnels link everything in the region,” Mason told her. “We’re heading to the suburbs. They’ll be on our trail, looking for us. Especially you, Colonel.”

  “Me?” Anna asked.

  “You’re the foremost expert on the Morningstar Strain. They want you for intelligence. They’ll come after us.”

  A vicious yell from behind startled the trio. They didn’t turn to see the source—the voice and determination said it all.

  “Mason! You bastard traitor! I’m going to kill you, kill your friends, kill your family—Mason!”

  “It’s Sawyer,” Mason breathed. “Keep moving. Hurry!”

  The ramp leveled off and the trio found themselves in a tunnel that seemed to stretch on forever. Lit with intermittent low-watt bulbs and flanked by rusting, corroded piping, the access tunnel was certainly showing its age, but it was clean and functional. Four electric carts were parked near the base of the ramp, and Mason made for one of them.

  “Put Julie in the back. I’ve got to open the security gates,” Mason said, helping Anna place the weak journalist in the cart. He jogged over to a panel on the wall that looked to Anna like a subway map—tunnels lit with green and red lights, crisscrossing in a wonderful imitation of Perseus’ labyrinth.

  Mason slapped buttons and switched tracks. Lights flicked from red to green and back to red.

  “Our path’s clear. Come on!”

  Footsteps sounded on the ramp behind them. Their pursuers were gaining on them. Anna and Mason hopped into the cart and slammed it into gear. It took off at a modest rate—no faster than a sprint. Mason pushed his sub-machine gun over to Anna.

  “Cover us!” he shouted.

  Anna picked up the weapon and swiveled in her seat, taking aim at the ramp just as Sawyer and Derrick appeared, weapons in hand. Anna squeezed the trigger, sending a fusillade of rounds back at them. The agents were good. They hit the deck, rolling apart from one another and coming up behind the carts they’d left behind, and returned fire. Rounds whizzed through the air, one so close Anna felt it brush through her hair.

  Mason sent their cart careening around a bend and braked to a stop without warning.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” Anna screamed. “Go!”

  “I’m buying us time!”

  Mason had stopped them next to another wall panel, identical to the one he had manipulated moments earlier. He slammed one button and a heavy security gate lowered from the ceiling, cutting off the passage behind them. He grabbed the sub-machine gun back from Anna, held it up to the panel, and put a pair of rounds into it. It sputtered, shot sparks, and died, lights dimming to black.

  “That should hold them for a few minutes.”

  As if to enunciate his statement, a furious pounding on the other side of the gate got their attention.

  “Mason! You shit! Open the gate!”

  “I’m out, Sawyer!” Mason shouted back. “And I’m taking your prisoners with me! We’ve got to survive! Someone’s got to survive! Stay here and die for a cause you think you believe in—I’m leaving!”

  Mason got back into the cart and the three took off again, safe for the moment. Behind them, Sawyer’s rapidly fading voice chased after them with words of conviction.

  “I swear, Mason, I won’t forget this! You’re a dead man! I’ll track you down wherever you go! You can’t hide! Do you hear me, you traitor?! You can’t hide from me! I’ll look down on your body someday, Mason! Mason!”

  If Agent Mason was fazed by the threats, he showed little sign. He seemed very focused on the tunnel that stretched out ahead of them.

  “How far do we have to go? Can’t they cut us off?” Anna asked, grasping her pistol with white knuckles and casting nervous glances behind them as if she expected to see the other agents already catching up.

  “No,” Mason replied. “Not unless they call ahead to the safe house’s operator that we’re heading for and tell him to bar up the catacombs—and he won’t be answering any calls.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s not there anymore—they called in the metro cells for backup at HQ. We’ve got a clear ride for a while.”

  Anna said nothing for a few moments and Mason glanced over at her—only to see the barrel of her pistol pointing at his chest. He recoiled.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Jesus! What’s the idea?!” he protested.

  “If you expect me to just start trusting you,” Anna said, “You’re mistaken. You kidnap us, interrogate us, keep us locked up in conditions that could’ve been deadly,”—Anna jerked a finger over her shoulder at Julie, who was curled up on the back seat of the cart, shivering—“And now, out of nowhere, you’re our best friend. Well, fuck you, Agent. I don’t buy it. What’s your angle?”

  Mason barked laughter.

  “What do you think, I’m leading you into a trap by killing four of our own guards and having you fire on Agents I’ve worked with for five years? Or do you think I’m tricking you somehow? Why? What purpose would that serve? Jesus, listen to yourself. You sound like a raving paranoid. What’s my angle? I don’t want to die yet. How’s that for an angle? Three’s better than one and like I already said, you’re the foremost expert on the Morningstar Strain. I’d say I made a damn fine choice in getting you out of there—that’s my angle.”

  Mason took the cart around another gentle bend in the tunnel. He had already driven past several intersections and Anna knew there was no way she’d ever be able to find her way back, even if she had wanted to. To call the network the catacombs was oddly appropriate, for they were damp and dim and depressing, but the word labyrinth stuck out as even more appropriate in Anna’s mind.

  “Fine,” Anna said, after a moment. She dropped the pistol in
to her lap, and Mason relaxed a bit into his seat. “Though you didn’t seem to have any intention of getting Julie out with us.”

  Mason fixed Anna with a chagrined look. He said with conviction, “I honestly forgot she was even down there. Sawyer took over her interrogations and I was removed from the case. If you think I wanted to leave her behind because I’m ‘cold,’ or felt she would be ‘baggage,’ then to hell with your opinions. I’m not Sawyer—I’m a human being. If I had thought of her before I saw my opportunity, I’d have factored it in. So, ‘forgetful,’ maybe. Unfeeling bastard? No. But I’ve had a lot on my mind recently to be expected to remember the status of every detainee I come across in our facilities.” He swiveled his head to glance at the journalist in the back of the cart, then added, “She seems really sick, not just worn thin.”

  “Might be pneumonia,” Anna said, watching the flickering light fixtures as they swept past the cart. “I won’t know until I can take a closer look at her. I’m not a medical doctor, but I’ll do what I can. Now, there’s something else I’m curious about. What happened today, back there? What’s happening outside, in the city? The world? I need to know. They haven’t told me anything at all.”

  Mason grimaced. “It’s not going well.”

  Anna winced. That was not what she had hoped to hear.

  “What you heard today was our own personal Alamo,” Mason explained. “The infected control several sections of Washington. There’s a war going on in the streets above us. I don’t mean martial law or rioting or flare-ups—I mean a war. The last time I was on the streets was two days ago and I saw a tank firing into an apartment complex. The entire place had been overrun. I saw a line of soldiers butchering a wave of the infected. And I saw that same firing line get taken from the side and overwhelmed by another wave. There have been air strikes ordered in several of the major cities. Entire blocks have been leveled. Here’s the good news: The tactic is at least doing some good.”

  He went on, “Lots of major cities have been completely overrun already, but none of ours, not completely—not yet. We think the strain hit our shores when asymptomatic carriers came over on planes or ships before the situation in Africa had peaked. Every time we find an outbreak, we burn the area to the ground. We scorch the earth. Zero tolerance, if you want to say that. It’s slowed the spread of the virus somewhat, but . . . there have been losses.”