Then something heavy covered her and a large hand hid her face from the flying glass. It was Deckard. He had thrown himself across her. Glass cut him in so many places he could barely feel all the wounds. They didn’t matter to him. They were nicks only. What mattered to him, he realized, was not himself but Thuy.
“Are you ok?” he asked Thuy. “Are you hurt?”
He was shouting, but he came across in a mumble as her ears rang from the explosion. “I’m ok, I think.” In truth she was numb and couldn’t feel anything, good or bad. “How’s Riggs?” she asked. “Is he ok?”
Deckard wasn’t nearly so numb; there was a slashing pain running up and down his back, but what stung worse was that she would ask about Riggs first. He squinted through the grey pall that was gradually overcoming the clean air. Halfway down the hall, Chuck was on his hands and knees, spitting blood onto the rubble and glass strewn floor.
Further down, Riggs was just getting to his feet, while next to him Milner was screaming and holding his hands to his face. Deckard turned to look down the other end of the hall, Burke was climbing out from beneath a clump of skinny scientists—if asked he’d say they fell over on top of him. A few feet away from John, Wilson was helping Stephanie to her feet.
“Riggs looks ok,” Deck answered, and then worked his jaw around on its hinges. His head felt plugged with sawdust.
“You’re bleeding,” Thuy noted, seeing all the blood on his face.
“Probably,” he said with a shrug. He winced at the move, something Thuy also noticed. She began to inspect him closely, and he felt like a chimp being groomed, right up until she pulled something that seemed to be made of fire out of his shoulder.
“Son of a…” he seethed through gritted teeth. She shrugged and held up a bloody shard of glass the size of her hand that had been stuck in his back. She tried to hand it to him as though he might want to keep it as a souvenir. “No thanks,” he said. “I’ve got one just like it at home.”
Chuck came up then. “You know y’alls bleedin'?”
“You, too,” Deck answered. They both were running red from a hundred tiny cuts and a few larger ones as well.
Thuy looked past Chuck. “Oh no, Milner!” Milner was being helped along by Riggs. Milner had one hand thrown out questing blindly for a wall that had basically disintegrated, while the other sat across his eyes and, from beneath his palm, blood ran wet. Thuy turned to the others. “Wilson? Dr. Wilson, we need you.” She heard the fear in her own voice. “Quickly!”
Grimacing, Deck got to his feet, just as Milner’s flailing hand finally struck something solid: the central stairwell door. It swung back on its broken hinges with a groan. “Riggs!” Milner cried in a panic. Even blind he knew the touch of the door and it didn’t take a genius to guess that the danger from the zombies hadn’t ended with the explosion.
Riggs had been moving in a daze but as he glanced at the open door he cried, “Oh God!” Before he could react, zombies rushed up from the stairs. Milner was closest and there were three of the black-eyed creatures on him before he knew it. Riggs tried to kick them off his friend, however two more came through the stairwell door and latched onto him, sinking their teeth into him, one at the shoulder, another on his arm.
Chuck and Deckard pulled their surgical masks over their noses and ran to help, while everyone else hung back. Chuck had a spear made from a broom handle with which he stabbed down into one of the zombies chewing on Riggs. The point went four inches deep, slipping between ribs to puncture a lung—the zombie continued ripping into Riggs’ shoulder as if nothing had happened.
Deckard had his pistol with its twelve bullets. He brought it up to shoot one of Milner’s attackers, but a movement to his left attracted his attention—there were more zombies coming up out of the stairwell. Some were whole and strong, like Rory Vickers, who was the color of old oatmeal and had black goo in his eyes and mouth and up under his hair, but otherwise looked like his old self. It took three shots to the chest to drop him.
Some of the zombies were downright horrifying.
Sergeant Heines had most of his skin burned away and what was left was charred black and hanging in strips. He was gruesome and smelled so bad it turned Deckard’s stomach. A strange pity awoke in Deckard, which ended up saving him…for the moment. He shot Heines in the head, hoping to kill any thinking part of him that was left and was happily surprised to see the zombie fall straight over from the single bullet.
“Go for the brain!” he shouted to Chuck. The Okie had been stabbing over and over again into the back of the zombie, slowing it down but not killing it. Now, he aimed for the back of the head. The spear broke but not before sending a killing shard into the thing’s brain.
While Deckard made head shot after head shot at the zombies coming up out of the stairwell, Chuck used half a spear to kill the second zombie that was on Riggs. He stepped on the thing’s head with one shit-kicking boot to hold it still and then drove the shaft right into its eyes socket.
Riggs rolled out from beneath the corpse and then kicked away from the zombies eating Milner who was still very much alive.
Chuck raised his hand to the others showing his broken spear. Only Thuy seemed to understand. Chuck would continue to fight but he needed a new weapon. Thuy yelled, “Eng! Wilson, come on, don’t just stand there. Burke, you're immune, damn it. Go help."
None of the three were eager to go into battle. Eng went first, carrying Thuy’s desk chair as a combination weapon and shield. He used it to pin one of the zombies down. Burk and Wilson came next with makeshift spears; they went for the eyes.
In short order the zombies attacking Milner were dead. The scientist just laid there and cried blood; he wasn’t going to make it. Even without the Com-cells busy replicating in his system, he wasn’t going to last so grievous were his injuries; the floor was slick with his blood.
Deckard shot down the last of the zombies coming from the stairs. He went to check his ammo, but the slide was back; the gun was empty. “Huh,” he said and then showed Chuck.
“Close,” Chuck said. He then began coughing and backing away from the stairs. They all did. A heavy black smoke broiled up out of the stairwell and the air was shimmering with heat.
“What do we do about Dr. Milner?” one of the scientists asked. Milner was trying to move away from the stairwell door, but one of his arms was dislocated and the other ended at a mangled and bleeding stump.
“We don’t do anything!” Riggs spat. “We let him die. The smoke is a blessing for him…and for me.” He started for the stairwell door, but after a quick look from Thuy, Deckard grabbed him and shoved him back.
“Not yet, Riggs,” Deckard said, wondering why Thuy wouldn’t let him end himself before he became a danger. “You have lots of time left.”
Riggs cackled, madly. “I have all the time in the world. It’s you who’s out of time. Can’t you feel it?” He knelt down and put his hands on the floor. Blood trickled down from the bite on his shoulder to pool around his hand. “You can feel the heat through the floor. You can feel the building dying.”
Everyone but Thuy knelt and touched the floor. Riggs wasn’t lying. Burke was the first to stand. He went as close to the stairwell as he could, his face twisted from the heat. With a curse, he turned away. “It’s clear of them zombies. I says we kin wet down all our clothes and make a run for it.”
Deckard rolled his eyes at the stupidity of the idea. Thuy was more circumspect. “The heat will shrivel your lungs in seconds. You will die. But…but maybe it doesn’t matter. We're trapped. I think we’re all going to die here very quickly.”
As if to prove her wrong, the elevator took that moment to ding! Freed from the key that had kept it penned on the first floor, its tiny electronic brain had gone through its floor sequence and ended up on the fourth floor.
Everyone jumped back, all save Deckard who took Wilson’s spear and advanced like any primitive stone-age warrior would. The door had been warped by the explosion and it too
k a full thirty seconds to grind back.
“What the hell?” Deck poked at the remains of the sweater with his spear. A thin grey smoke lifted up from it.
“Was that a shirt?” Wilson asked. “Did someone spontaneously combust?”
“Wilson, please,” Thuy answered. “Let’s not be ridiculous. This is how Anna set off the gas.” Before anyone asked how she knew who had set off the explosion, she showed the obvious clues. “Look at the open hatch. Anna must have climbed down the elevator shaft and entered there. She started the gas going in the kitchens and then used the elevator with a burning shirt in it as a trigger.”
“What about Von Braun?” Deckard asked. “Couldn’t he have done this? You were pretty sure before.”
“I let my imagination get the best of me,” she answered. “His Diazepam must have run out hours ago. He’s just as brainless as the rest of them.” Her eyes inadvertently slipped over to Riggs.
He scowled at her. “Maybe it was just a shirt that caught on fire when the elevator went by the third floor.”
He was in such a pitiful state that she almost didn’t want to correct him and, if hadn’t been for the renewed fear in some of the eyes of the scientists she would have let it go. “That sort of heat would have ignited the carpet as well. No, it’ll be hot in there but it will be survivable, at least for a little while longer. If we hurry."
“Then what are we waiting for,” Burke demanded. Without looking for permission he walked onto the elevator and kicked the remains of the sweater out.
“I guess some men should ride in the first car,” Thuy said. “Wilson, Riggs, and…” Her eyes went to Milner who was no longer moving. “And…and uh, Rajesh, take the first group down. Deckard, Eng, and Mr. Singleton will escort the second.”
“No, I go wit firs group,” Eng said. He started forward, just as Burke had done, but Deckard grabbed his arm.
“Don’t be a chicken, Eng. You’re going down with me.” There was a real reason to fear waiting on the second trip. The heat and the smoke were fast becoming unbearable, and the sound of the fire eating away at the building came to them in tremendous crashes that rumbled the floor every few seconds.
Eng was no chicken, however he had reached a breaking point watching Milner mewling around on the ground with everyone pretending he didn’t exist. It seemed a particularly horrible and lonely death. “I’m going on this elevator right now,” Eng said, suddenly reverting to perfect English. Before Deckard could reply, Eng pulled the .38 with his right hand and grabbed Thuy around the neck with his left forearm.
“Why do you have a gun, Eng?” Deckard asked, feeling like he had missed something big. It made no sense that this geeky scientist would have a gun and that he hadn’t used it before this moment to fight the zombies.
“That’s my business.”
“And why are you talking like that?” Thuy asked. She was in the exact same confused boat as Deckard.
“Because I chose to,” Eng answered. “Now back off Deckard or I will kill you. And you too, Mr. Cowboy.” He meant Chuck who had angled to his right as stealthily as he could. “In fact, everyone get away from the elevator.”
“Ah ain’t going nowheres,” Burke said from inside the car.
“I will kill you,” Eng said, leveling the gun at John. “You have until the count of three. One…”
“Burke, get out of the elevator!” Deckard snapped. The way Eng held the gun close, how he had snatched up Thuy so easily, so fluidly, and the fact of the gun itself had Deck thinking Eng wasn't what he seemed. It was suddenly very clear that Eng was something beyond the nerdy caricature of an Asian scientist he had appeared to be.
“Two…” Eng said and then thumbed back the hammer.
“This won’t get y’alls little girl back, John,” Chuck said. “Bein’ dead won’t help her at all.”
John dropped his head. “Ah-rat. Y’all win,” he said and then eased out of the elevator with his hands up.
Eng didn’t waste a second. He thrust Thuy at Deckard, stepped into the elevator and hit the one button. As the door ground closed he kept the gun pointed out at the scientists who all kept well back. The elevator, making a high-pitched squeaking sound, dropped slowly through the fire engulfed third floor. The heat, baking through the concrete walls, staggered Eng. It was like stepping into a man-sized oven. His skin stretched tight across his cheekbones and he was forced to hide his face beneath his lab coat to keep it from blistering.
When he got past the flames eating away at the innards of the building, the relief was immediate. He dropped to his knees and, when he finally got to the first floor and the door came open, he jumped out and sucked down huge gulps of air, forgetting for a moment the threat of zombies. What brought him around was the sound of the elevator door shutting behind him.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, sticking his arm out to stop the door. A few feet away a potted plant sat overturned. Eng used it to hold the door open, in effect trapping everyone on the fourth floor once again. “So solly, Dr. Rhee,” he whispered as he headed out the front door.
2
The quarantine had always been an illusion. There were forty one troopers stationed around the hospital and not a one of them knew exactly what would happen if someone tried to break the ring. Their orders were to “maintain” the quarantine without coming into contact with any potentially infected person.
“Can we shoot them?” one of the troopers asked.
“Only to protect you or another civilian from attack,” Lieutenant Ford answered.
“And if someone just wants to leave?”
There was no good answer to that. Ford cleared his throat before replying, “Just use your authority and order them back into the quarantined area.”
This didn’t work out so well when Von Braun’s army came marching out of the front door. The now ex-prisoner pushed and punched and yelled the zombies out through the gates and at first they only meandered about, not realizing precisely what all the flashing lights meant. Then the trooper directly in front of the gate used his loud speaker to “command” the zombies back inside.
The human voice drew them on and in seconds they swarmed the trooper’s car and before he knew it they were all around him, hammering on the windows with their greasy fists. It took twenty eight seconds for the windows to break. The trooper got off three shots before the zombies crawled in and ate him alive.
A hundred yards back at the command post, Ford was screaming into the radio, first for a sitrep from the now dead trooper and then, belatedly to order all available units to “get their asses” to the front of the facility. Again, the first cruisers on scene were swarmed by the undead with the same bloody result.
Ford listened to the frantic cries for help over the radio with his stomach in knots. The situation was deteriorating, quickly. He could’ve gone in with guns blazing but in his mind he was still thinking in terms of maintaining the quarantine, when he should’ve been thinking about saving his men. “Use CS,” he yelled as more troopers came flying up. He jumped out of his cruiser and ran to the trunk. “We’ll disperse them with tear gas.”
He had a very commanding voice, a very loud voice. It carried into the quarantined tent that sat fifty yards away. For the last hour, eighteen former troopers and three badly mauled former CDC agents had walked in circles in the canvas tent leaving trails of black drool behind them. There was no reason for them to do anything else but to mindlessly walk along the inner wall of the tent. The night had been quiet; the troopers guarding the perimeter stayed in their cruisers where their voices and odors were masked, and so the zombies, who couldn’t think beyond the walls of the tent, just walked.
Now, there were gunshots and voices and the smell of clean humans. It awakened the hunger in them and, so powerful was that force, that they attacked the zippered door. The zipper itself was beyond their ability to comprehend, but they understood ripping and tearing. Just after the first tear gas canisters thumped down-range to land amid the horde of
zombies, a wall of the tent ripped wide open.
The former troopers saw their former friends and charged. They came out of the dark and, with all the noise and mayhem, no one noticed them until they were only a few feet away.
Ford saw the uniforms only. “I need you to dump all available…” His words caught in his throat as he recognized Sergeant Foster—it was a grotesque, demonic version of Foster. Ford went for his gun, however Foster was on him too quickly, his teeth searching for the neck, his hands pulling the head back. The two went down, Ford on his back, Foster full on him.
So greedily did Foster go for his flesh that Ford gave up the gun that was still half-holstered. He needed every ounce of strength just to keep his throat from being torn out. Ford was a strong man and gradually he pushed Foster back until he was practically at arm’s length—that was when a second zombie suddenly appeared.
She dropped to her knees and lunged right at Ford’s face. Her teeth tore into his cheek, and then ripped off part of his ear, and then finally got into his neck. He fought back, wildly, trying to buck off his two attackers, but to no avail. They had their claws hooked into his hair and were holding onto his shirt at the collar and sleeve. When he fought off one, the other was always there, taking huge bites of him and chewing in his ear.
Ford was so strong that his death took twenty, very, long minutes. By then half of his troopers were dead and the others, many of them infected, were racing away at top speed.
The quarantine had failed its only test.
3
The briefing General Collins received while sitting on the side of his bed in his pajamas had him grim faced. An infection that was worse than Ebola was spreading along the Hudson River Valley and it was going to be his job to contain it.
“There are, uh, strange side effects to the disease,” a man named Ross told him. “The victims show, uh, an increased aggression and, uh, there are reports of cannibalism.” At the time Collins had shrugged off such talk. There wasn’t much in this world that a spinning, fiery-hot chunk of lead couldn’t take care of.
The Apocalypse Crusade (Book 1): War of the Undead Day One Page 34