by Wilson, David Niall; Brown, Tonia; Meikle, William; McCaffery, Simon; Brown, TW; T. A. Wardrope
“I’m not saying anything yet,” Brett interrupted. “But I need to be on a plane now, before any of the media, or worse… the environmental activist groups… get on scene.”
“Have all traces of that camp sanitized, Mister Urban,” another old man hissed.
“The last thing we need is this administration getting wind of our operation,” a third added.
Brett leaned down and grabbed his case. “Give me twenty hours and tell your friends to keep the satellites away from the area until you hear from me.”
As he left the room and closed the door behind him, he heard the buzz of conversation kick in. The old codgers were, without a doubt, on the phone to various contacts within––and on the fringes of––the government.
DECC Corporation was funded by some of the wealthiest men in the world, and when a geological report arrived claiming that a microbe, previously unknown to man, had been discovered in a glacial ridge in Antarctica, a team had been dispatched immediately. Unlike most government research teams, the expedition had the best equipment money could buy.
Less than two weeks later, DECC’s headquarters received confirmation.
Within a month, experimental stations all over the Antarctic region began encountering problems, ranging from equipment issues to a mysteriously sudden termination of funding.
One outpost—funded by a joint Chinese-Russian Intel organization—proved tougher to deal with. Their power generators suffered a catastrophic fire. By the time an evacuation team arrived, all of the members of the outpost were dead. Frozen.
Brett walked onto the tarmac and crossed the expanse to board the waiting plane. He sat down, strapped on his headset, and nodded for the pilot to take off. Conversation wasn’t necessary. Vic Brady, the pilot, knew where to go. He flew Brett wherever the corporation needed his special talents.
Brett opened his case and read from the folder that had been waiting for him in the conference room. The microbe was perplexing, with one curious finding: there was something in the genetic makeup suggesting a loose relation to primate DNA.
Initially, the board at the DECC Corporation had been furious. After years of raping the Amazon in search of the “one thing” that would offer them a miracle cure for everything, they believed their payday had come.
Brett did not want to be in Rachel Redding’s shoes. Doctor Redding had insisted that the seemingly mundane finding by a third-rate geological team was indeed the break they’d been looking for, being one of the first to examine the sample in a DECC lab.
Brett had been along when the doctor’s handpicked team was sent down.
Vic and him were the only outsiders who knew where the site was located. Even the construction company that had assembled the facility had been handled; an unfortunate plane crash ensured nobody would find Athens. The men who ran DECC didn’t even trust each other with the knowledge. Each of them owned well known, multi-billion dollar companies credited with something mankind could not live without—from technology to snack foods––and each of them had stolen the core idea from a friend, family member, or colleague.
Brett read from his notes as land vanished beneath him, replaced by the waters of the Atlantic.
His mission was simple, his objective clear: take possession of samples, notes, and research; destroy all other evidence; eliminate all persons, and destroy the Athens facility.
* * *
Vic Brady’s voice sounded in Brett’s headset: “Mister Urban, we should be in range for the beacon, sir.” It was the final failsafe of the Athens facility, built to blend in with the environment. Even if a satellite passed overhead, it was unlikely to see anything.
Brett flipped open his laptop and brought up the tracking screen. The central beacon, indicating the facility, appeared as a red square. All members of Athens were medically fitted with a tracking chip, and blue dots indicated personnel. By clicking the blue dots, Brett could bring up a person’s dossier. Or if he typed in the name, it would highlight the corresponding dot.
“I should have us on the ground in twenty,” Vic announced.
“Mmm-hmm,” Brett acknowledged, his eyes fixed on the screen.
What he was seeing had him perplexed. And Brett Urban didn’t experience that feeling very often.
* * *
Swirls of snow and ice crystals made it difficult to see, but Brett had seen enough during the descent to know there were problems, aside from the huge sheet of ice that had broken free and was slowly drifting north. Current projections had it on a collision course with Africa. Given the degree of melting between now and then, it would still be the size of Georgia when it arrived, and having it collide with anything was bound to have consequences. He needed to get in and out so the proper authorities could avert the potential crisis.
But back to the problem at hand: the residents of Athens were not where they should have been. Almost half of them were two miles east of the facility. From what Brett could see, there was nothing in that direction, aside from a nasty wall of ice. Truth be told, it looked like the Cliffs of Dover. Strange how he hadn’t noticed it when he’d dropped the research team off, or during any of his three subsequent visits since then.
Nope, he thought, there had not been a cliff over there. No wall of ice… or whatever it is.
The members of the research team were divided into two clusters of six and eleven. The group of eleven was bunched together on the far side of the camp, as if they had been locked outside and were trying to get in. The other group was halfway between them and the facility. A single member was inside the building, and if the overlay was accurate, he was in a storage closet; it looked like he was hiding.
Brett checked his computer and discovered the man in the closet was Matt Whitehurst, biochemist.
There were three people in sickbay––again, bunched together at the door. The rest were scattered in singles and doubles throughout the facility, exhibiting a disturbing lack of movement.
He’d located Doctor Redding.
She was alone in one of the facility’s recreation centers. Like the others, she wasn’t moving much, until the airplane circled the complex and touched down. Then, some of the scattered members showed activity, but not the mob on the far side of camp, and not Matt Whitehurst.
Something about this was very wrong, but for the life of him, Brett couldn’t figure out what.
2
Doctor Rachel Redding heard the droning sound of an approaching aircraft, knowing it would come sooner or later. Now all she had to worry about was their intentions. She held no illusions about their mission, and it didn’t take a paranoid conspiracy theorist to assume that the DECC wasn’t exactly above board. If a single radio message had been sent out in regards to what was going on, there was no telling what the response would be.
Doctor Redding, known by her colleagues as the no-nonsense type, prided herself on being an atypical woman. She felt no ticking biological clock as she passed forty, and while her looks—wavy brunette hair just past the shoulders, a curvy, athletic body, and hazel eyes—turned heads, she found little desire to copulate. On the rare occasion that the urge arose, she was quite adequate at dealing with it herself.
The events of the last four days made her angry; there was no logic for what she’d seen. She knew there was a misguided and ridiculously delusional section of society that reveled in what she’d witnessed, but even after witnessing it firsthand, her mind was not able to accept it.
The dead do NOT get up. They do not eat the living.
The organism they had been sent to investigate baffled everybody. When one of the biologists came back with evidence linking the sample to primates, nobody was thrilled. It did not explain the cellular activity seen under the scopes.
Then an unlikely error produced interesting results: Doctor Jane Reason nicked her hand while dealing with a sample; she didn’t report it until later that afternoon. The sample, now contaminated with her blood, would have sent a buzz throughout Athens had it not been for the m
assive ice slide, and subsequent fissure, that allowed a state-sized section of eons-old ice to break free.
After that, it was one unbelievable event after another: the team that had been at the site of the original find came on the radio, hysterical. There was a great deal of screaming. Then… silence. Attempts at hailing them were unsuccessful, but later that night, two members of the team arrived at Athens with fantastic stories.
Everybody listened, but nobody believed the stories, which were dismissed as delusional rants by individuals cracking under the pressure of isolation in a desolate environment. There could be no truth to their tale of a fifty-foot-tall white gorilla breaking free of the ice that cascaded down the Ronnie Ice Shelf.
The debate was heating up, and the two “obviously crazy men” were being restrained when Doctor Jane Reason stumbled into the room.
And here’s where things became difficult for Doctor Redding: take the possibility of Doctor Reason being a walking corpse out of the equation––the human jaw should not be able to exert the amount of pressure necessary to bite into somebody’s neck and tear away a chunk of flesh. Also, evolution has rendered man’s incisors useless when it comes to ripping and tearing. Yet, there she was, falling on top of one of Athens’ support staff (a fancy label for the cooks, repairmen, and janitors), and biting a hole in his neck. During the struggle, just about everybody involved came away with an injury, be it a scratch or a bite. And just as things seemed to be under control, the man with his throat torn open defied logic and sat up.
The scenario played out all over again.
By the time Doctor Reason and Harold Clemmons—the staff member with the gaping hole in his throat—were secured, over a dozen people were injured.
Nobody expected the injured to suffer the same fate that night.
As people slept, the injured died. Odd, considering none of the injuries appeared serious.
Worse, nothing seemed to be able to bring down the walking dead.
Rachel had seen one of them shot with a flare gun at point-blank range. The casing lodged in the man’s gut. The smell––
A scratching, pawing, pounding on the thick, metal double doors to the Athens recreation center made her jump. One of them was outside the door.
How was she going to make it to the plane?
3
“Fuel it and I’ll meet you shortly.” Brett opened the cargo hatch and pulled out a footlocker.
“How long you gonna be, boss?” Vic asked.
“Long as it takes,” Brett shrugged. “Something’s not right here…” His voice trailed off as a peculiar sound wove itself into the edges of the howling wind.
A pair of dark figures stepped away from the shadows of the closest building, slowly making their way against the wind towards the landing strip. Brett flipped open the trunk and pulled out his silencer-fitted Beretta.
“May as well start now.”
“Didn’t you say something felt wrong here?” Vic placed a hand on Brett’s arm.
“Yeah. So?”
“They don’t look dressed for the weather.”
Brett took a closer look. Sure enough, neither of the approaching figures wore a stitch of exposure gear… not even gloves. Maybe that explained the pained, awkward way they fought through the wind and swirling ice crystals.
What happened to this place? he wondered. Did something go wrong when the ice separated?
Oh, well. Perhaps the clean-up job will be easier.
He fired three quick shots into the center of mass of each body.
They barely twitched.
“What the—”
The two figures stepped into the light, one of them female. The three bullet holes in her chest were the least of her problems. Her lower lip and a chunk of her left cheek had been ripped off, exposing dark-stained teeth in an exaggerated and hideous perma-grin.
The other looked as if his ample gut had been the site of a barbecue.
The howl of the wind changed as a new sound joined in. Brett did his best to categorize the sound, but all he came up with was the peculiar roaring of the unseen creature in the television show LOST.
The approaching individuals, now less than ten yards away and closing in on them slowly, paused at the sound. Their heads moved in awkward fits, cocking towards the low mewling before returning to Brett and Vic.
“Boss?”
“What the fuck is going on?” Brett asked, inspiring no confidence in Vic whatsoever.
“I was hoping you were fixin’ to tell me!”
4
Rachel lay flat on the floor, peering through the tiny slit between the door and the floor, fairly certain there was only one set of feet on the other side. Problem was, she had no idea what to do. She’d seen some of her colleagues try to subdue the…
Well now, she thought, that’s the first problem. Just what am I dealing with, exactly?
“Zombies?” she scoffed.
Feet shuffled and the pounding at the door resumed.
“Shit!” Rachel squeaked, instantly angry at her frightened response.
Climbing to her feet and dusting herself off, she took a quick inventory of her possibilities. Her gaze lingered on the mop closet. An idea came; it was a bit more “action hero” than she liked, but considering the circumstances, it would have to do.
Taking a deep breath and clutching the doorknob, Rachel turned the knob and yanked. The young woman standing in the hallway was Donna Noble. Rachel hated her, and she was a mess. There was so much blood that it was hard to tell which bite killed her.
The mess formerly known as Donna, stumbled into the rec room. Her arms were outstretched in a sleepwalking parody; her dead, filmed-over eyes were wide open. She was obviously aware of Rachel’s presence.
“That’s right,” Rachel sing-songed, backpedaling towards the closet. “Follow me.”
5
A loud rumble shook what amounted to their whole world. It was enough to cause the small aircraft to bunny-hop sideways a few feet and cause a stack of steel drums to topple.
Brett grabbed Vic by the collar just in time to keep Mister Barbecue from getting a hold of an ankle. Changing magazines quickly and letting the slide load a new round, he shoved the pistol’s muzzle against the back of the dead man’s head and fired.
The body dropped like the proverbial sack of potatoes.
“Well how do you like that,” Brett said with a smirk.
“What’s that?” Vic asked, still looking at the woman who should not be getting up, but was, nonetheless.
“Those terrible movies!”
“Excuse me?”
“All those films with the word Dead in the title.”
“Still not following you, sir.”
“Shoot ’em in the head,” Brett put a round in the woman’s forehead, sending her toppling over backwards beside the big man.
The rumbling sound came again. It was much louder this time and coming from the east. Seconds later, slow and rhythmic vibrations began.
“Something tells me this job just got a lot harder.” Brett began sifting through the footlocker.
6
Rachel slammed the closet door and allowed a smattering of nervous laughter to escape as she leaned against the wall.
There was a sudden shudder. All the lights flickered and went out, and Rachel found herself on the floor with a sharp pain blooming in her left arm.
Her arm was visibly broken just above the wrist.
Holding back the tears, she climbed to her feet as the lights came back on. She heard, before she saw, the trio of zombies up the hall. They were lying on the ground like flipped over turtles, struggling to regain their footing.
After taking a deep breath, Rachel ran as fast as she could manage across the rec room, out the door, down the hall, and past the undead threesome. Taking her first left, she stopped short when she saw more walking dead pawing at the glass window in the door. The women’s locker room was to her right, so she ducked inside. There would be an exit lea
ding outside; she only hoped there would be some protective gear, too. Otherwise, unless the plane was parked outside the door, she would die of exposure within minutes.
She rummaged through a bin and came up with a suit, one glove, and a facemask. It wasn’t ideal, but it was certainly better than nothing.
A peculiar, rhythmic vibration came; it was strong enough to cause the overhead fluorescents to flicker.
The swelling above her left wrist was tremendous. She tried her best not to dwell on the odd angle her arm was bent at as she slid it into the sleeve of the exposure suit. Sitting on a bench, she slipped her feet into a pair of boots that were at least two sizes too large. The door to outside needed to have a pass code typed into the panel, which she did before opening it to the howling wind and deadly cold.
7
Brett shouldered the pack and flipped the chest closed. Vic still stood like an idiot staring at the most recent improbability making itself known.
“Is that…?”
“A giant, snow-white gorilla tall enough to overlook the two-story light tower?” Brett tugged at his facemask, keeping the flap over his mouth. He didn’t want the freezing air to reach his teeth, worried that the warmth of his mouth, combined with the temperature of the air, would cause his teeth to fracture and shatter like hot glass shoved in a freezer.
“Just wanted to know I wasn’t seeing things,” Vic nodded.
“Take these.” Brett held out a green burlap carry bag. “Inside are two dozen affixable explosives.”
“Okay…” Vic said, fixated on the enormous primate.
“Around the buildings you’ll find black squares painted on structural keys. Place the devices on the squares.” Brett spun Vic to face him to ensure that he was being understood. “Then get your ass back here to refuel. Be ready for immediate departure.”