Degeneration

by Mark Campbell

  Richard turned his gaze away from the desolation below and looked over at Mathis.

  “What about Butner?” Richard asked.

  They passed a neighborhood full of historic homes. Multiple fires ravaged the large two-stories and ate their way through the neighborhood streets.

  The sky darkened as dusk turned to night. Behind the helicopter, the smoldering remnants of downtown gave an ominous amber glow. Stretched out far in the horizon, the sky flickered orange from the military’s flame barrier.

  “Butner? Forget about that nonsense,” Mathis said.

  Richard opened his mouth to protest, but closed it when he realized how worthless the endeavor would be.

  We’ll have to get rid of him soon, Richie. He won’t take us to Butner.

  (I know.)

  We need to hurry.

  Richard stared down vacantly at an overturned Raleigh fire truck lying in the middle of the avenue. It had multiple vehicles crushed against it in a pile-up that stretched out for miles.

  “You want to know how Butner looks? Just keep looking out your window. We’ll be passing over the Crabtree Valley Mall FEMA center soon.”

  “How do you know that FEMA center is in bad shape?” Richard asked. “The radio just said it was safe!”

  “Yeah and how long ago do you think that was updated? A bunch of panicked people crammed into a small area? You’re just asking for trouble,” Mathis said. “Just look at how the downtown fiasco went… and you want to rescue someone trapped inside a prison? You’d have better luck landing and finding a survivor inside that goddamn mall.”

  “You can’t assume the mall isn’t safe! You don’t even know where it is!”

  “Crabtree Valley is one of the largest malls in Raleigh. Their FEMA center was purposely made hard to miss,” Mathis said as he pointed ahead.

  A few miles in the distance, beams from rotating searchlights penetrated high into the night sky and lazily encircled each other. The sight of the searchlights calmed Richard’s nerves some, but they did nothing to quiet Andy’s nagging voice.

  You’re going to listen to that horseshit?! He has no intent on stopping in Butner and I already told you that I’m still alive! If he lands at that mall, you’re done! They’ll cart you away! We have to act fast. What are you going to do?!

  Richard reached up and switched off his headset microphone.

  “I don’t know,” Richard whispered under his breath.

  You don’t know? Grow a fucking backbone.

  “Just tell me what to do,” Richard muttered as he closed his eyes.

  Kill him and take the helicopter to Butner.

  “But I don’t know how to fly it,” Richard whispered.

  It’s okay. I’ve been watching how he does it. It’s not that hard. I will fly it.

  “I want to make it fast though… He’s been nice to me. I don’t want to make him suffer like Stacy did… that fucking cunt.”

  Thoughts of his sister always made his blood boil. He wished that he could kill her a thousand times over.

  You’re his prisoner! He is not being nice to you, he’s been USING you. Don’t be naive. Kill him!

  “I know that I have to kill him,” Richard muttered. “I know, Andy, I know. I just don’t want him to suffer. I’ll do him quick.”

  “We nearing the mall,” Mathis’ voice chimed in through the headset. He wanted to fly over the mall just to make sure… he needed a fresh oxygen canister in the worst possible way and he didn’t know where else to look. It was a long shot, but if the mall was still a safe haven then he would land take advantage.

  Richard pressed his face against the window and stared down. His heart felt like it was going to beat itself out of his chest in fear that they were going to land before he could do anything.

  Judging by the scenes below, landing was out of the question.

  Mathis let out a discouraged sigh while Richard breathed a sigh of relief, elated by the destruction below that ensured their continued path forward closer towards Butner.

  The helicopter passed the intersection of two main roads that were backed up for miles and rendered impassible by collisions. Three tanks were parked in the middle of the intersection. Thousands of infected wandered the street in-between the stalled traffic, swarming towards the mall’s searchlights.

  Situated off of the corner of the intersection was a small gas station. The station’s parking lot was full of vehicles that were crammed around the station’s two pumps. The line of vehicles led out into the street. The sign said that gas had been selling for $22.89 per gallon.

  Next to the gas station were two banks. One of the banks had its windows shattered and its ATM removed. The other bank had a semi-trailer smashed against its side.

  The helicopter continued flying over a looted Best Buy, the burnt remnants of an Old Navy store, and a bookstore before making it finally passing over Crabtree Valley Mall’s main hub.

  The mall’s main parking lot was speckled with a few military vehicles, some disabled cars, and countless infected that had gathered around the rotating diesel-powered searchlights pointing towards the sky. Hundreds of red body bags were stacked near the edge of the parking lot bundled together like timber and surrounded by sandbags and barbwire. The parking lot entrance had a large banner hung overhead that read FEMA evacuation center.

  The restless horde milled aimlessly in the lot and had crushed Red Cross tents and toppled aluminum police barriers. They stared up at the helicopter as it hovered overhead with an unabated longing in their soulless eyes.

  The mall itself was in dismal shape. Most of the building’s facade had been decimated by artillery fire and every window was shattered. A tattered Red Cross banner hung above the mall’s main entrance. Below the banner it read CR BTR E V LEY MA L in broken silver letters.

  The helicopter flew over the mall and hovered over the multi-level parking garage situated behind the building.

  The top level of the parking deck had two blue ‘H’s spray-painted on its surface. Sandbags, barbwire, and two abandoned .50 CAL machine guns cordoned off the ramp that led to the levels below. Still corpses lay scattered all over the parking deck like tossed rubbish; most of the cadavers had been riddled by gunfire.

  “Landing to search for a fresh oxygen canister and a secure radio is too risky,” Mathis said, discouraged. “Things look absolutely dismal down there. We’ll keep pushing forward.”

  “Look! A jet is headed towards us,” Richard shouted, pointing ahead at the rapidly approaching fighter jet.

  “Shit,” Mathis replied. He quickly toggled the radio microphone. “This is Colonel Mathis speaking! I have a Sample-Prime HVT! Do not engage! I repeat, do not–”

  His words were cut short by a pulsating alarm tone.

  “Christ! They’ve locked on! Brace yourself! We’re going to go down hard!” Mathis shouted, gripping the controls tightly. He quickly veered the helicopter down towards the parking deck.

  Two sidewinder missiles struck the tail boom of the helicopter and erupted into a large orange fireball. The boom disintegrated into fiery wreckage along with the tail rotor and drive shaft.

  What remained of the flightless bird spun out of control towards the parking deck and the fighter jet disappeared into the horizon.

  The helicopter’s fuselage struck the deck hard, shattering the cockpit windows and the gauges. The craft threw a shower of sparks as it slid across the pavement. It slowed to a stop at the end of the edge of the deck, teetering on the edge. The disabled craft’s main rotors slowly stopped spinning.

  22

  Black smoke quickly filled the cockpit as the instrument panel crackled and sparked.

  Mathis tried to open the cockpit door, but it was stuck. He kicked it repeatedly–

  The cockpit door fell off and landed on the pavement.

  He groaned and stumbled out onto the parking deck, gripping his rifle tightly.

  Richard crawled out of the cockpit behind him and collapsed on the ground, wit
hering in aching pain.

  Flames engulfed the helicopter cabin.

  Richard tried to stand–

  “Stay down!” Mathis shouted. He grabbed Richard by the shoulder and shoved him against the pavement.

  A loud whump rolled over the top of them as the helicopter’s fuel tank erupted and turned the craft into a massive fireball. The fiery wreckage toppled off of the edge of the parking deck and exploded as it struck the ground below, billowing ink-black smoke into the air.

  The wandering infected on the ground level started converging towards the wreckage from all sides.

  Mathis slowly stood and frantically checked his suit for any tares. Satisfied that his suit’s integrity was still intact, he picked his rifle up off of the ground and carefully surveyed the parking deck, weapon ready.

  Richard staggered onto his feet, coughing.

  “What in the hell was that?!” Richard shouted. “Why did your own people shoot us down?”

  Mathis quickly shushed him.

  “I told you already. They’re not letting anybody leave,” Mathis whispered.

  Richard scanned the deck and looked at Mathis, confused and exasperated. He didn’t see anybody else on the deck except for the numerous motionless bullet-riddled cadavers lying underneath the moonlight.

  “Why are you whispering?” Richard asked in a normal speaking tone.

  “Be quiet! We need to make sure that we’re–”

  One of the cadavers laying face-down on the cement slowly started to move, getting onto his hands and knees. He was wearing a blue nylon jacket that had FEMA etched on the back in bold yellow lettering.

  Mathis fired a single shot.

  The round struck the man’s scalp and blew off the back of his head. He fell back against the pavement and lay motionless.

  A soldier and a mutilated teenage boy struggled to rise.

  Mathis fired twice and took both of the infected down. He scanned the area carefully, staring down the rifle’s iron sights. After a few minutes, he lowered the weapon, satisfied.

  “We need to get inside before the ones on the ground find their way up here,” Mathis said, no longer whispering.

  “And how do you propose that we get out of here now that our ride is destroyed!?” Richard shouted, wringing his hands together.

  “This was one of FEMA’s Safe Havens. There should be a secure DSN terminal inside the command center,” Mathis said.

  “DSN?” Richard asked, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck.

  “Defense Switched Network. It’s a network strictly for Department of Defense use,” Mathis quickly explained, annoyed. He hesitated. “The secure terminals can’t be jammed and I can access a DSN number.”

  “Why bother?” Richard said, continuing to rub his neck as he paced. “Your military friends are the ones who almost killed us!”

  “They only did it because I couldn’t communicate with them. For all the pilot knew, I was just another soldier trying to escape the quarantine. If they knew about you they– ”

  Mathis stopped himself mid-sentence and paused.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he finally said. “Let’s just get inside and find the secure terminal. Help me find another way in. I don’t think we want to walk down to the ground level and waltz through the besieged front doors.”

  “How do you know there is still someone alive on the other end to answer your phone call? How do you even know that this quarantine bullshit has stopped the virus from spreading beyond North Carolina?” Richard asked as he stopped pacing, fright evident in his voice.

  Mathis turned and studied him.

  “Because we’re not irradiated yet,” Mathis answered. “They haven’t resorted to their final contingency, so there is still hope. Now, help me find a way in and be quick about it.”

  Richard walked towards the mall, muttering, limping towards the edge of the parking deck. He wrung his hands together tightly, making his knuckles turn white.

  Patience, Richie. We’ll deal with him soon, I promise.

  (If I wait too long, you may get hurt, Andy. He’s wasting time!)

  Just have patience. When the time is right, we’ll act.

  Richard leaned over the edge of the parking deck and spotted the shattered glass remnants of the mall’s 2nd floor entrance on the deck below them. The entrance’s sliding glass doors were shattered and covered by a steel security grille. A wide blood-smeared walkway connected the mall entrance to the 2nd level of the parking deck and was barricaded by sandbags with an empty .50 CAL BMG nest in the middle.

  “The level below us has a way inside the mall,” Richard said as he turned and limped back towards Mathis. “I didn’t see anybody but someone rolled the security shutters down over the doors.”

  “Then let’s head down there,” Mathis said as he hurried towards the ramp that led down to the next level. “If the doors are fortified, maybe FEMA managed to secure the inside of the mall.”

  Mathis crawled over the top of the sandbags that barricaded the ramp down to the lower level and pushed the razorwire aside as he started his decent down the ramp.

  Richard drew his pistol and followed him, inadvertently twitching.

  The ramp was splattered with splotches of blood and bits of bullet-torn flesh. Bullets had chipped away the surface of the concrete and riddled the support pillars next to the ramp with holes. Countless corpses were piled atop each other at the bottom of the ramp, eviscerated by gunfire.

  Mathis walked the forward position down the ramp scanning the area cautiously with his rifle, Richard followed. They made their way through the pile of dead strewn across the bottom of the ramp.

  The air was pungent and stale with the stench of rot. Flies were thick and hovered over the countless dead. Feral cats, busy feasting on the numerous deceased, hissed and scampered off in every direction as Mathis and Richard clamored through the pile of corpses.

  The entire level was pitch-black with no moonlight to succor.

  Richard’s foot crushed the face of an older man and it made a sickening sound as the man’s skull cracked underneath his boot.

  Richard, startled, blindly stumbled his way across the rest of the pile of corpses and collapsed against one of the bullet-riddled support pillars, dropping his pistol. He fell onto his hands and knees and vomited. The smell of defecation and rot made him vomit a second and a third time. It was a cruel chain-reaction.

  Mathis, unaffected by the smell that permeated all around thanks to the unique stench inside his closed environment, turned his suit’s LED shoulder lamp on and turned towards Richard, rifle ready.

  “Hold it together,” he ordered, barely above a whisper. He walked over to Richard and helped him back onto his feet, handing him the pistol off of the ground. “Stay focused! Let’s make our way across and get inside the mall… quietly.”

  Richard nodded, gasping for breath, trying to suppress another round of vomiting.

  Mathis scanned his shoulder light’s beam across the dark parkade, trying to pierce the veil of darkness that swallowed them.

  The beam glistened off of the abandoned cars and emergency vehicles that were peppered across the entire parking deck. The sandbag-barricaded walkway leading to the mall’s second-floor entrance was revealed at the far side of the deck.

  Below, they heard an army of infected sprinting through the lower level towards the second-story access ramp, attracted by the gleam of Mathis’ flashlight.

  “Fuck,” Mathis said, “Just run!”

  Mathis took off running towards the barricaded walkway while Richard followed close behind. Their footfalls echoed throughout the dark deck and reverberated off the cars.

  The snarls of the infected grew closer and echoed in from all around them.

  Mathis leapt over the pile of sandbags that blocked off the walkway and grabbed the steel security grille covering the shattered glass doors.

  He shook the grille violently, but it was secured by a padlock from the outside.

  Richard stum
bled up behind Mathis and turned towards the dark parkade, blindly aiming his pistol into the shadows. Multiple car alarms activated as the approaching horde grew closer, louder.

  Richard started to panic and the gun shook in his hands as his eyes jerked from side-to-side, scanning the dark.

  Mathis raised the rifle, aimed it at the lock at the bottom of the grille, and fired a burst of automatic gunfire.

  The padlock shattered in a shower of sparks and fell to the ground.

  Mathis grabbed hold of the security grille and rolled it up. He kept his weapon aimed a moment longer and then slowly walked through one of the shattered sliding glass doors and entered the mall.

  Richard lowered his gun and hurried into the mall after him, almost tripping in his panicked haste.

  Mathis rolled the steel security grille shut behind them and turned off his shoulder light.

  Immediately, the clamor coming from the parkade ebbed and the snarls turned into listless moans as the infected blindly searched for their prey.

  Mathis and Richard stood motionless in the darkness, breathing heavily.

  As their eyes slowly adjusted to the limited light afforded by the moonlight shining through the mall’s skylights, they saw that they were standing in a large open area encircled by multiple fast food restaurants. The food court tables had been removed and replaced by a toppled maze of aluminum crowd control barriers. The barrier’s paths zigzagged throughout the food court and were divided into three distinct paths with red, blue, or green colored tape running down the middle of each path. A staircase situated in the center of the food court led down to the first-floor level below. The red and blue paths led to the staircase and down the steps. Access down the stairs was impossible since it had been barricaded by a high stack of toppled tables, sandbags, and debris. The green path branched deeper into the mall along the second level. A large sign adorned with the FEMA logo was suspended above the barricaded food court staircase:

  RED PATH – SYMPTOMATIC OR HANDICAPPED

  BLUE PATH – CHILDREN UNDER 12 AND SENIORS OVER 75