Degeneration

by Mark Campbell

  Medford quickly looked away and sprinted for the rest of the way before coming to a stop next to Mathis. He hunched over, nearly fainting, as he breathed frantically inside his white-suit.

  Mathis gestured for Richard to move.

  Richard took a few uneasy steps forward past the store and startled each time someone struck against the glass–

  Come on, you pussy! Stop being an embarrassment!

  Richard shut his eyes and felt his body tense as Andy tried to take control.

  With his eyes shut, Richard fought Andy’s influence and ran as fast as he could, trying to ignore the shuddering glass–

  He ran into Mathis and quickly opened his eyes, panicking.

  “Relax! Calm the fuck down!” Mathis shouted, shaking Richard by the shoulders.

  Richard heartbeat slowly settled as he looked down at his hands and realized that he was still in control of himself.

  “The operations center… it’s inside that Belk store, right?” Mathis asked the doctor.

  Medford looked disoriented and confused by the question, but then snapped back to reality as his sharp gaze came back into focus.

  “Yeah… yes, yes, of course,” Medford stammered.

  “And you know where the DSN terminal is, right?” Mathis asked again, speaking slowly, pacifyingly.

  “Yes, it is in the main operations room we sat up in the store’s security office. It’s the management hall behind menswear,” Medford replied, staring at the Belk store with frightened misgivings.

  “Alright, then let’s get moving,” Mathis said, extending an open palm towards the store.

  Medford trudged towards the Belk store, Richard followed, and Mathis took the rear.

  Behind them, the infected continued to pummel against the glass of the sporting goods store. An infected man wearing a tattered Crabtree Valley Mall security uniform pushed ahead of the pack, knocking over a display rack of baseball equipment as he staggered against the window. He slapped his open palms against the glass and then used his closed fists, giving feral growls.

  He stopped, reached down, and picked up one of the metal baseball bats that had fallen by his feet.

  He stared vacantly at the bat in his hands for a minute and suddenly swung it back, and struck it against the glass.

  A web of fine cracks formed around the impact point and blossomed out across the entire window pane.

  Medford, Richard, and Mathis stopped and turned at the sound of the crackling glass, horrified–

  The security guard swung the bat again, harder.

  The stores display window pane erupted in a shower of glass shards.

  The guard ran out of the store towards Mathis with the baseball bat raised over his head.

  Mathis almost dropped the rifle in his haste to aim it and quickly fired a burst of ineffective gunfire into the guard’s chest.

  The guard’s body jerked with each bullet, but he relentlessly advanced and started swinging the bat wildly.

  Mathis fired again, taking time to steady his aim.

  He struck the guard in the center of his forehead.

  The guard collapsed against the ground. The metallic bat clanged as it hit the floor and then rolled off of the upper-tier and into the sea of infected on the first floor.

  Infected poured out of the sporting goods store and branched off into two different directions; one group headed towards the Marines and the rest started running towards Mathis, Richard, and Medford.

  “Shit! Run! Run!” Mathis shouted, firing wildly into the advancing crowd.

  The infected on the first floor started funneling into a nearby store and made their way towards the open stairwell in the back of the store.

  Medford suffered as he ran inside his bulky suit. He was not a solider and he was definitely not athletically gifted. He was sweltering and panting, unable to catch his breath as sheer terror and adrenaline kept his legs frantically moving forward.

  Richard ran on Medford’s heels, head twitching, and Andy’s voice prattling away in his head.

  Mathis followed close behind; he blind-fired ineffective bursts of automatic gunfire into the pursing horde, but didn’t have time to aim and land any effective shots. He heard the Marine’s panicked gunfire in the distance and then heard their blood-curdling screams, before both sounds abruptly stopped.

  Medford was the first to reach the Belk entrance. He pulled and violently shook the security grille covering the doors, but they didn’t budge–

  He started to panic and hyperventilate inside his white-suit.

  Richard arrived next. He grabbed the grille at the bottom and tried desperately to roll it up. He strained, and felt his face breakout in beads of sweat.

  Mathis fired a burst of gunfire at the padlock at the bottom of the grille with the infected swarm closing in behind him.

  The bullet-riddled padlock, a cheap round lock, disengaged and fell to the floor.

  Richard rolled the heavy grille up halfway and held it open.

  Medford, still hyperventilating, collapsed on the floor and crawled underneath the grille into the store.

  Mathis turned and blindly opened fire as he ran towards the grille.

  A business woman, half of her face missing, wearing a tattered black Prada dress, slapped the rifle aside and reached for Mathis.

  Mathis lunged away, and brought the rifle up to her–

  A man wearing a dirtied nursing smock grabbed the rifle’s muzzle with both hands and pulled the gun out from Mathis’ grasp.

  Mathis grabbed the riffle and tried to take it back, but was assaulted by countless grasping cold hands as the horde started to entomb him from all sides. He let go of the rifle and shoved his way through the massive swarm, pulling his arms and legs free away from their deadly grip. He darted forward and slid headfirst underneath the security grille into Belk.

  Richard let the heavy grille slam shut and staggered away from it, hands shaking.

  In less than a second, the entire grille was swarmed with bodies, all of which were reaching in between the grille’s iron bars towards the three men with clammy hands, moaning. The grille bent and swayed as countless bodies continued to swarm against it.

  Mathis helped Dr. Medford back onto his feet and led him away from the grille.

  The infected started to projectile vomit through the grille, creating slick pools of bile across the floor.

  Richard stepped back in revulsion, wringing his hands together.

  The drywall along the top of the security grille started to crumble away as the infected shook the grille.

  “We better hurry up,” Mathis said, “That thing won’t keep them out of here for long.”

  24

  Forty miles away from downtown Raleigh and fifteen miles away from the small town of Butner, a behemoth trailer adorned with the Homeland Security logo was parked in the middle of a picnic area next to Falls Lake. The mobile command trailer was white, armored, and built to withstand the devastating shockwave from a nuclear blast. A crew of fifty worked inside the large trailer, monitoring a variety of specialized equipment. All around the outside of the trailer, hundreds of soldiers wearing respirators scurried about, checked equipment, sat up halogen lamps, moved armored vehicles, and secured the perimeter.

  Major General Yates sat inside his cramped office at the far end of the white command trailer and stared at his blank laptop screen. He called repeatedly for clearance to evacuate over the encrypted DSN line, but his requests were denied each time. Instead, he was given some ridiculous fictitious orders to keep him busy and to deplete his very limited resources.

  Each time he sent a helicopter out towards the edge of the quarantine border to test the waters, the helicopter was shot down.

  They were watching him on radar.

  He was out of options and was about to give up and shoot his way through the quarantine with what remained of his squadron… but then he heard the garbled transmission from Colonel Mathis.

  Despite his current situation, his
sweat-stained uniform, and being abandoned by Washington, he sat back in his uncomfortable chair and grinned.

  Once he secured the immune survivor that the inept Mathis somehow acquired, he would hold the most powerful bargaining chip in the country. Yates knew that if he held the key to a working antivirus, he could achieve whatever political leverage he wanted and get safe passage out of the hot zone. They may even name the antivirus after me, Yates thought with a smirk.

  He also took solace in the fact that his encampment was far enough away from the interstate that the infected wouldn’t stumble across him for quite some time.

  “Sir, we have a problem,” one of the lieutenants announced at Yate’s office door.

  Yates frowned; he was getting sick of complications.

  “What is it now, Lieutenant?”

  “We lost radio contact with Colonel Mathis’ craft and it dropped off of our radar. The last know location was the Crabtree Valley Mall FEMA Center. We suspect that the helicopter was shot down by the Air Force in accordance with the ‘No-Fly’ zone.”

  “Goddamnit! I knew he would fuck this up!” Yates exclaimed as he pounded his closed fists against the top of his desk. “Those fucking planes are gone now, right?!”

  “Yes, sir, the majority of the jets have fallen back and now only a few scattered ones remain on patrol.”

  “And they’re still leaving our few remaining birds alone, right?”

  “As long as we stay away from the quarantine borders, I don’t think they’ll fire on us since we’re operating on official orders.”

  Yates scoffed at their ‘official orders’. The aerial observation operational orders that Central Command tasked him with was busy work and he damned well knew it. Washington had absolutely no intention on evacuating him or anybody else trapped inside the quarantine, unless he had something to offer in return.

  In order for him to get out, he needed that immune civilian.

  “What’s the nearest unit we have in that area?” Yates asked.

  “Bravo-Echelon is, sir, they were monitoring the I-40 corridor and–”

  “How big is their flight crew?”

  “Six, sir, but like I tried to–”

  “Have them turn around and report to Crabtree immediately. Securing that immune civilian is our number one priority.”

  The lieutenant threw an uncomfortable glace around the small office.

  “But, sir,” he said nervously, “aren’t the orders from Central Command to cease all evacuations and observe and log what we–”

  Yate’s face contorted with rage as he grabbed the laptop off of his desk and threw it full-force across the room.

  The laptop shattered against the doorframe just inches away from the lieutenant’s head.

  The terrified lieutenant quickly retreated from the doorway and ran back towards his control station, almost tripping over his own feet in the process.

  “Do not ever question my authority again!” Yates billowed out from his office. “Until the goddamn president comes out of his hole in the ground and steps into this trailer, I am the only one making the decisions! If we don’t capture that immune civilian, we’re all going to be left here to rot! He is our last hope! Do you all understand!?”

  “Yes, sir!” came the immediate reply from the terrified console operators. They kept their eyes glued to their monitors.

  “Now, Lieutenant, order the helicopter to turn around and bring me that civilian! I don’t care if they have to pull his mangled corpse out of the wreckage! Is that understood?!”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant quietly replied, defeated.

  Outside of the trailer, gunfire erupted and alarms started chirping throughout the complex.

  “Proximity alarms are activating along the western side of the perimeter!” one of the console operators yelled, terrified. “It looks like a herd of them!”

  “Infected?! Way out here?! All detachments, masks on! Masks on! Perimeter units, engage hostiles!” Yates ordered, fumbling to slide his gas mask over his fat face.

  25

  The lights were off in the Belk department store. The store was afforded some meager lighting from the moonlight shining through the overhead skylights and from the continuous white strobes of the fire alarms. The obnoxious fire alarms blared every ten seconds and echoed throughout the store, staying in sync with the wall strobes. Droplets of water trickled down from the sprinkler heads. Overturned display racks were scattered across the floor and piles of clothes lay soaked in the pools of water that had collected on the floor.

  Mathis and Medford switched their white-suit’s lamps on and swept their beams across the jewelry department that was situated right in front of them. The glass jewelry cases had been shattered and everything of value had been stolen. Costume jewelry and cheap watches lay left behind in the water on the floor. Some of the water was tinged red, mixed with blood and small bits of flesh.

  Richard stayed hidden behind Mathis and Medford and stared at the infected as they shook the security grille, desperately trying to pull it down. He gipped his pistol tightly, trembling, neck twitching.

  Mathis kept still and silent, but he didn’t hear any movement inside the store.

  “Why did they lock this place up?” Mathis whispered to Medford.

  Medford hesitated a moment, afraid to venture ahead. He looked over at Mathis and spoke quietly.

  “We… tried the antivirus that we had on file for ‘PT-12’,” Medford finally said. “They wanted us to try it, even though we already knew that ‘PT-12’ underwent an antigenic shift and the ‘vaccine’ was useless. It’s a joke, really. The ‘vaccine’ is simply another virulent pathogen that was engineered to devour ‘PT-12’ strains without causing ill effects to the hosts. The plan was to use one virus to cure another virus. We had no idea that the virus we were using as a cure was so volatile. We never even passed the antivirus through the final stage of testing, so how were we supposed to know?”

  “There’s a cure?!” Richard exclaimed, rubbing his neck.

  “They distributed it here?” Mathis asked, ignoring Richard’s outburst. “From what I heard on the HF lines, it sounded like the vaccine wasn’t working.”

  “You’re right. The stuff is deadly,” Medford said reflectively, shaking his head. “At the CDC, we knew that the antivirus wasn’t ready going in, but the orders were to try it anyway. I guess they ran out of options and were getting desperate. Like I said, if we knew what that the antivirus was capable of once it got into a human host, we would have never risked trying it, despite the ill-informed orders…”

  “What do you mean?” Mathis asked.

  Medford laughed darkly and shifted uncomfortably inside his bulky suit.

  “We… abandoned the operations center for a reason, colonel. I suggest that we hurry to that secure terminal and then get out of here as soon as quickly as possible.

  “And if you’re considering moving forward without me, the door to the operations center is reinforced and secured with a battery-backup lock and I’m the only left alive who knows the code,” Medford said in a tone meant to sound threating but ultimately came out frightened.

  Medford started to move forward, but stopped when Mathis grabbed his shoulder.

  “Where did you store the oxygen canisters for the suits?” Mathis asked, glancing down at his nearly empty tank. The red light on his gauge flashed steadily.

  Medford glanced down at his own tank, satisfied; he had the foresight to exchange his canister before they abandoned the center.

  “Those are all stored in the armory we sat up in the supply office, next to the store manager’s office,” Medford said. He looked at Mathis, and saw that he was no longer carrying his rifle. Seeing Mathis without a weapon gave him a sense of security. “Maybe while you’re in there, you can find another weapon, since you seem to have lost yours.”

  “Give me yours,” Mathis ordered, holding a hand out.

  Medford gripped his pistol tightly, suddenly frightened again
.

  “I’d…I’d prefer to keep my pistol,” Medford said sheepishly.

  Mathis clinched his fists, but then relaxed, forcing a sense of composure. He knew that it would be smarter to wait until the man let his guard down. He turned and looked at Richard, remembering that he held the other pistol…

  Richard was stroking the pistol and staring down at it longingly. His lips were moving, speaking in silent whispers.

  Mathis turned away. He knew that something wasn’t right about Richard, and he really didn’t want to test the man in such a dangerous state of mind.

  No.

  He would go after Medford’s, when the time was right.

  “I hope you can shoot,” Mathis told Medford bitterly. “Go on! Lead the way, since you’re a leader of men all of a sudden.”

  Medford uneasily entered the jewelry department, scanning the area with his nearly depleted pistol, navigating a maze of shattered glass display cases.

  Mathis followed closely behind, staring at Medford, calculating.

  Richard trailed in the back, clinching his teeth together as Andy continued to scream inside his head. Andy had been prattling on nonstop ever since the CDC white-suit mentioned a cure.

  You have to do it!

  (I can’t yet though! I need to wait until–)

  Excuses! You’re fucking pathetic! Didn’t you hear what he said?! There is a cure – and they have it!

  Richard shook his head and slapped his forehead with his open palm, groaning.

  (YES! Yes, Andy, I know! Give me time to–)

  Time for what?! They have a fucking cure! A cure! That means that you are worthless to them! Don’t you get it?! You’re expendable to them now and they’re going to kill you the first chance they get! Did you hear it?!

  (Yes, Andy, yes! I know! I know already!)

  Do you hear it?!

  Richard stopped walking and started to pace back-and-forth, slapping his forehead with a closed fist. The gun in his other hand shook uncontrollably.

  (YES! YES! YES! I KNOW, ANDY! I KNOW!)

  Shut the fuck up! DO YOU HEAR IT?!

  Richard stopped pacing and looked at the two white-suits in front of him; they had stopped walking and were staring off into the distance.