The Apocalypse Crusade (Book 1): War of the Undead Day One

by Peter Meredith

  “I’d do sumptin’ but I has my baby girl to think on,” Burke said. Thuy nearly choked. She hadn’t yet told Burke about his daughter being infected.

  “Then I’ll do it,” Chuck said. “All that shooting means the cops are here and everyone knows she’ll hide herself behind the law just as soon as she can. If y'all want real answers out of her, now's the only time you'll get 'em.”

  “What are you going to do?” Thuy asked as Chuck stood up. With his boots on he was the tallest man in the room and very intimidating when he squinted down at her.

  “I think you know.”

  She couldn't comprehend what was on the verge of happening. Was Chuck Singleton suggesting torture?“You’ll get in trouble,” Thuy whispered.

  “It not America way,” Eng declared. “This not right.” He didn’t care about America and clearly right or wrong didn’t mean all that much to him—he cared about himself. Anna hadn’t sabotaged anything, and wouldn’t be able to answer the simplest question. If she endured the torture, some would think she was telling the truth and their suspicions would go elsewhere. In Eng’s eyes, it was better for the American police to investigate. They were notoriously slow and inept; every good Chinese citizen knew that.

  “Thanks for the civics lesson,” Chuck drawled. “You’ll make a great American when you can speak the fuckin’ language.” He clapped Eng on the back and headed for the door.

  “Deck?” Thuy asked, flicking her dark eyes at Chuck. She was still the boss as far as Deckard was concerned. He stood and cleared his throat.

  Chuck paused at the door. “You ain’t the law, boy. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

  “I’m not pretending. I know I’m not the law. It’s you who seems not to have a grasp on the fact. We don’t know what happened here and you jumping in half-cocked isn’t going to make anything better.”

  The Okie was flinty-eyed and though he gave up fifty pounds of muscle to Deckard he wasn’t one to back down. “Just to let you know, I don’t do anythin’ halfcocked. If that woman’s been up to no good I’m gonna to find out.”

  “You people may want to give us some space,” Deck said to the scientists between him and Chuck. Deckard didn’t really want to fight. There was no real honor in beating up a man on the verge of dying. Sadly, it looked like Chuck wasn’t going to give him any choice.

  As the scientists scrambled for safer seats, Chuck cracked his knuckles. “Law or no law, there’s a thing called justice, boy. If she been stealin’ for some big corporation it don’t take much of a leap to think she been-a sabotagin’ for it, too.”

  “That’s what evidence is for,” Deck said coming forward. “And let’s say you are right. If you hurt her, you have to know her lawyer will turn that against the prosecution. She might end up going free.”

  “And I might end up savin’ some lives.”

  They were eye to eye, neither giving an inch, when the phone rang. Dr. Wilson, who didn’t know which side to come down on, picked it up, hoping it was the police with some news.

  “R&K Industries,” he said. “Dr. Wilson speaking.” Wilson had a deep, soothing voice that he had cultivated over the years. Cancer patients seemed to find it calming. It was a distinctive voice.

  “Oh, hey, it’s the nigger. You still thinking you can be a doctor just like white folk? Don’t you know they keep you around to amuse them? You're like a chimp that rides a tricycle.”

  “Von Braun?” If it wasn’t for the racist crap, Wilson wouldn’t have recognized the prisoner’s voice—he sounded like he was speaking around a throat full of razor blades.

  “Yes. Good job, chimpy. You earned your banana, now let me talk to the gook. She’s got something I need.”

  The name Von Braun had caused the room to go still and quiet. Wilson held the phone out to Dr. Lee. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “I can’t believe he can talk,” Thuy said, excitedly, hoping that this meant the negative effects of the Com-cells were temporary. “Hello, Mr. Von Braun! It’s so good to hear your voice. Where are you?”

  At first there was nothing on the other end of the line except heavy breathing then Von Braun hissed, “Cunt! Whore! Bitch!” Shocked, she held the phone out and stared at it as he went on, “You have the cure and I want it.”

  “I’m afraid there is no cure yet. How are you doing this? Talking I mean. Are there others like you who can talk?”

  “Stop your lying!” he screamed into the phone. “You have it. I know it. Now give it or I will kill all of you. Believe that, bitch. I want the goddamned cure and if you don't give it over in thirty minutes, I'll fucking kill all of you!” He slammed down the phone.

  The good feeling drained out of her. She believed Von Braun. He would try to kill them and given the fact that he could talk it meant that he could also think, at least on some rudimentary level. It might be enough for him to get past the doors.

  “Find Milner,” she snapped at Deck. “See if he knows when the police are coming.” As he hurried out of the room, she turned to the other scientists, the three patients and Wilson. “That was a man named Von Braun. He was a prisoner who was treated this morning along with all the rest. Somehow he can talk, which means he can still think. He says he going to kill us.”

  “He’s probably taking barbiturates of some sort,” Dr. Wilson said. “Nurse Freeman was able to function better than her…I almost said colleagues. That’s funny. I should say, she was doing better than the others who were infected because she was popping mega-doses of valium.”

  “Oh,” Thuy said, disappointed. “Well, that information should help us, I hope. But for now...” She faltered as Deck slipped back into the room. “What is it, Deck? Where are the police?”

  “Milner’s been on hold with the CDC this entire time. He doesn’t know anything except that there should be CDC agents somewhere on the property, but they aren’t answering their cell phones. I'm starting to get the feeling no one knows what’s going on around here.”

  4

  The dispatcher, Courtney Shaw, had finally reached a stage where emotion seeped into her radio voice. “Say again Echo 2. What is your ETA?”

  “Thirty five minutes.”

  Courtney looked at her map and saw where Echo 2 was supposed to be—it was twenty minutes away with the siren hot. This meant Echo 2 had been off route, probably checking in with one of his mistresses. The man was notorious.

  “You understand we have an officer down? One injured and one MIA?” Her anger rippled across hundreds of miles of airwaves and she didn’t care in the least. This was one call that had turned into a nightmare. She was simultaneously trying to talk to the CDC, half a dozen frightened hospital workers, and Sergeant Heines who had no clue where his partner had gone to, or where the rest of the CDC team was, or really what was happening at all.

  She checked the board for the third time that minute. She had rerouted three cruisers to the Walton facility—it didn’t seem like enough, however she would need permission to send more. It was something she wasn’t looking forward to.

  Courtney rang Lieutenant Pemberton. He made a tired noise when he heard her voice. “Is this about the ‘zombies’ again?” It had been a mistake mentioning the word, she knew that now.

  “Yes, sir. The current situation is a bit convoluted. There are twenty three personnel trapped on the fourth floor and thirty one, including Sergeant Heines trapped in a room on the first floor.”

  “And they’re trapped by zombies?” The disbelief in his voice was obvious and annoying.

  “That’s the word some people are using," she answered.

  He exhaled loudly into the phone. “I swear if this is some sort of prank, I will not be happy.”

  “Yes, sir,” Courtney replied. “It’s not. The CDC in Atlanta is thinking that environmental exposure to some toxic is causing the odd behavior.”

  She could hear him tapping his pen through the phone line. He asked, “And they’re on scene?”

  “We don’t know. A team suppose
dly arrived about an hour ago. We confirmed one is dead, however the other two are MIA. The CDC is sending up another team, with an ETA of about midnight.”

  “Taking their sweet time, aren’t they?” he growled as if it was her fault they were being so slow. “When do our own lab boys get there?”

  She knew this was going to be sticky. “The Mid-Hudson team won’t arrive until around eight.” Before he could begin yelling, she added, “They were already on another run and their van broke down. I called Albany but they’re making excuses. They’re going to need someone with more authority than I have to send out a team.”

  “Did you use the term zombie? Because if you did…”

  “I didn’t, sir. I said we had a possible biological hazard with deaths involved. They’re moving as fast as they can.”

  Pemberton was quiet for a moment before slamming his pen down in frustration. “Zombies…motherfucker! I don’t want to see that word in anything official. Man, I hate this. We have at least three KIAs, who knows how many MIAs, and it feels like we’re just sitting around. What about ambulance and emergency support?”

  “The Kingston fire department has sent two trucks, Havilland and Millbrook have sent one each. Unfortunately, not only is the facility now under a Class 1 quarantine, we only have a Millbrook sheriff’s deputy and a single trooper on site. I have three more troopers heading in, but I need permission for anything more.”

  “Yes, fine. Send what we have available, but keep everyone back until you hear from me,” Pemberton said, hanging up abruptly. He made a call to his boss, Major Billups, who called his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Parks, who called the CDC in Atlanta, who called the New York CDC office, only to get a recording. Thus began a forty six minute pause in the chain of command.

  Eventually, a half mile from the Weston facility gates, four fire trucks, five ambulances, three state police cruisers, and four local police cruisers sat parked with their lights blasting the rainy evening waiting for the word go. The minutes ticked by and, as each passed, the thirty one employees stuck in the first floor break room grew edgier and edgier. First they fidgeted or complained of headaches, then, when the migraines set in, they lay on the ground clutching their heads and groaning.

  When the phone rang, Heines snarled at it through twisted lips and smashed it with the butt of his gun. The snarl felt good. Venting his anger and hate felt really good. Inside him was a nasty, evil feeling that hurting someone would feel even better. He was stuck on the idea that he could transfer his pain to someone else with his fists or with his teeth. It was an idea he fought for some time, but at 6:32 PM he’d had enough of being good, of waiting for the authorities to get their shit together, of living in pain. He was dying of the disease as everyone in the room had taken to calling it and he was fucking tired of it.

  “I have to do something,” Heines said. He tried to stand but his injured leg wouldn’t hold his weight. “Fuck!” he raged. “What are we going to do? They’re keeping us stuck in this room for no reason except to maybe watch us die. I bet they’re laughing right now.”

  Everyone knew who they were and looked up at the ceiling. “They’re laughing because they have the cure,”

  Jodi Schmelling said.

  Morgan no longer craved cigarettes; they were a pale vice in comparison to what she really wanted. “We should go get it.” She wasn’t really thinking about a cure, she was thinking how much she needed to wet her mouth with blood.

  Chapter 10

  //6:39 PM//

  1

  Von Braun’s threat had effectively ended the crisis over torturing Anna Holloway. The group on the fourth floor was in too weak a position not to take his threat seriously and all thoughts of a fight between Chuck and Deckard evaporated in a blink.

  “We’re going to need more of your smarts,” Deck said to Thuy after he’d toured the floor, looking for ways the infected people could get at them. There was a gaping hole in their defenses and it was a wonder it hadn’t been exploited before.

  “I’m using them at the moment,” Thuy replied. She had just got off the phone after a lengthy conversation with Jaimee Burke. Thuy had quizzed her in the same manner as she had her father only to discover the young girl was of little help. Jaimee wasn’t very bright to begin with and her mental faculties had deteriorated over the last two hours. She was still far better off than any of the other infected persons but there was a slight change that Thuy had discerned.

  “You’re smart, Deck,” Thuy went on. “Whatever you need I’m sure you can figure it out. And there are other scientists running around here, some of them are smart, too.”

  “That’s just it,” Deck said. “They are running around doing things while you’re holed up in your office. It almost seems like you’re hiding.”

  Thuy sat back with arms folded and stared hard at Deckard. “It’s called delegation. You job is security. I expect you to secure the place. I am a scientist. My job is to make hypotheses, test my hypotheses and, if possible, discover facts. What everyone else is doing is up to them. It’s safe to say that I’m no longer in charge.”

  “If you’re not in charge then nobody is and we’re screwed.”

  “Then you be in charge,” Thuy said. “You’re all big and manly. They’ll listen to you.”

  Deck went to the glass wall and leaned back against it. He found himself smiling at her. “Two compliments in one conversation. I feel like I’m getting a pat on the head and a push in the back. You must really want me to leave.”

  “I am busy…”

  “Stop it,” Deck growled. “The only reason you’re not in charge is because you’ve given up. Milner said what he said and you just folded. I’d happily be in charge but I’m just security in your eyes and in theirs. If there’s killing to do, everyone will turn to me, but in the meantime, I’m being treated like the help.”

  “And there’s something you need?” Thuy wasn’t about to address how Deck was being treated. There was definitely a pecking order in academia. PH.Ds lauded their degrees and looked down their noses at those with only a master's degree, and rarely conversed with anyone who had only a bachelor’s. It became ingrained in school and people forgot that although it was nice to get a degree, it was even better to actually do something with it.

  “I need you in charge,” Deck said. “Right now we have mayhem and bickering. If Von Braun can find a way through the doors we’ll be dead.”

  “What about the police?”

  Deck shook his head as he answered, “They’re waiting for the CDC to give them clearance to come in and no one knows where the CDC is.”

  “Then it’s just us for the moment.” Thuy pushed back from her desk and stood. “Show me the problem.” Deck opened the door for her and the sounds of the infected people out in the stairwell, struck her ears. Their groans and growls were muted by the doors but their ceaseless banging echoed throughout the floor. It was haunting and unnerving.

  Thuy did her best to ignore it as she followed Deck. “It’s the elevator,” he said. “There’s very little stopping Von Braun from just turning the control key. He could be up here in thirty seconds with a car full of zombies.”

  She raised an eyebrow at the word "zombie", but let it pass. “And we can’t lock the doors ourselves.” It was a statement. The outer elevator doors were flat, there was no obvious way to lock them or hold them in a closed position. She turned to Deck. “What about tools? There were workmen all over this place yesterday.”

  “They finished up here yesterday, too. Right now we don’t even have a screw driver.”

  A number of scientists had followed them and Riggs was with them. “That’s not exactly true,” he said. “We can pry open the doors and I was thinking that maybe if we could run a line over from the gas supply, we could cut one of the cables.”

  “Show me,” Thuy said, stepping back.

  Riggs had armed himself with a sliver of metal he had pried from the inside of one of the centrifuges. It looked like a prison shiv. He
stuck the edge in the crack of the doors and worked them just far enough apart so that he and Deck could get their fingers in. The two men hauled back on the doors until the elevator shaft sat like a black pit before them.

  Thuy stepped forward and peered in at the cables. She then looked back at Riggs and saw a man whom she barely recognized. The stress had given him a ragged appearance. His sandy blond hair stuck up at odd angles and his eyes were very round as if he was walking around in a state of constant surprise.

  “I’m afraid that won’t work,” she told him. “We have propane, yes, however we don’t have pure oxygen, and even if we did we don’t have any way to mix them properly. Riggs, don't you realize we’re talking about a fifteen hundred degree temperature difference using only room air compared to pure oxygen. Propane alone won’t be able to cut those cables.”

  Riggs was shaking his head with jerky little snaps of his neck. “But…but there’s O2 on the second floor. If we can run a new line up…”

  Thuy touched his arm and tried to smile away his fears. “No. We can’t get to the second floor and even if we could there’s no telling how the Com-cells are spreading. If it’s in the air we risk getting contaminated.”

  “We need to do something,” Anna said. “It wouldn’t hurt to try using the propane.” A few of the other scientists were nodding as were Dr. Wilson and Chuck. Deck was grim-faced and shook his head at Thuy.

  She caught his meaning. If she didn’t assume command they would try every bad idea under the sun until they ran out of time and Von Braun attacked. “No,” Thuy said. “I will fix the elevator so it doesn't run. The rest of you need to split up into three teams. Each team will guard a staircase. Deckard, Mr. Singleton, and Dr. Riggs will be the captains. They will choose who’s on their teams. It’ll be like in school.”

  “So that means I’ll be picked last,” one of the smaller scientists said with a smile. She wasn’t quite five feet in height and had the bones of a bird.