by Sean Platt
An old man shambled forward, hobbled but too fast, his eyes turned and mouth open. A seeping wound marred his arm. There was blood in his mouth, teeth dangling something wet. Bobby fired, this time at the head.
“Don’t fucking argue with me, Jason! Just shoot!”
A kid came at Jason with a feral growl. He let him charge, not so much as blocking. He seemed to get out one word before the kid raised a knife and buried it in Jason’s stomach. The group staggered back before anyone could stop or correct it, and as the gap closed, Bobby watched the kid slice in farther, pulling Jason’s innards out with his hands, raising the meat to his lips.
“What the fuck is going on?” said one of the others, not turning, keeping his weapon pointed outward to protect the group’s core. The melee shifted and changed, forming huddles and similarly open areas. “That kid … he came at Jason with a knife!”
Bobby looked behind the group, his gunmen at its front, nudging them back. They reached a small, temporary oasis in the trees. Screams filled the air. He’d seen Alice when it all started but had lost her since.
“What the shit, Bobby?” said the man who’d spoken earlier — one of the men who’d been watching Ian’s house, a man named Mason. A good hunter, better than this panic. Behind them were the unarmed civilians. If Mason broke, everyone would.
“They’re biting people who are already infected. Ferals biting necrotics.”
“But they don’t—” Ian began, clutching his wife by the hand. Bobby cut him off.
“Apparently, they changed their minds.” But that’s not the whole of what Bobby was thinking. In practical terms, ferals weren’t supposed to have minds. Nor were they supposed to move like sprinters, or communicate with each other. Yet all of these deadheads had the same idea in advance, as if coordinated. And judging by the fact that the ferals’ first bites had been on the apparently necrotic handlers who’d brought them in, it hadn’t been the handlers’ idea.
“They’re—” one of Ian’s group began, an attractive dark-haired woman with pretty eyes. Bobby cut her off too, raising his shotgun, too late.
“Look out!”
A man with blood-mussed hair and a face made of gore came from behind one of the trees and took the curly haired man Ian had called Gary by the shoulders from behind. The thing sank his teeth into Gary’s trapezius like biting into a half moon of watermelon.
Gary screamed and thrashed, but the thing had him in a grip. Bobby couldn’t fire; they were enmeshed. So he kicked at the attacker, which held its pit bull’s grip. Blood gushed from the wound. Muscle and tendon between its teeth elongated like a pull toy in a locked jaw.
Bobby kicked again. The thing was as strong as it was fast, particularly in the jaw muscles. It finally came loose and fell back. Two of the other hunters stepped above it and turned its head to paste.
Gary was gripping his shoulder, moaning, looking faint, somehow staying on his feet despite the pain. Bobby flicked his barrel up, level to Gary’s disbelieving eyes.
“What the hell?” he grunted, still swooning with his hand on his shoulder.
“Bobby,” said Ian from behind.
Bobby trained the weapon. Waiting. Finger on trigger.
“Put your goddamned gun down!” the wounded man said, slapping at the barrel. Again, Bobby brought it back, holding the muzzle six inches from Gary’s face with his eyes narrowed while the others watched and screams filled the air around them.
Bobby lowered the weapon.
“What was that about?” Ian asked, his breath unsteady.
Bobby’s calm snapped like a twig. Why were they all so stupid? Hadn’t they seen what he’d seen? Had they really been fooled as everyone seemed to be? People called Bobby crazy for his obsessions and theories, but he wasn’t crazy; the world was blind. Even now. Especially now.
“Goddammit, pay attention! They’re turning out there!” His eyes flicked toward the lawn, just beyond the trees. The grass was covered in blood and moaning, wounded people. Ferals — both new and old — ran across it like kids on Halloween. They didn’t have long. They’d need to move soon, and fast.
“Turning?” said one of the hunters. “How can they turn as soon as they’re—”
Bridget answered: “Holly told me this would happen.”
“Holly?” Bobby demanded. But of course. She’d known more than she should have, and he should have pressed. She knew Golem, seemingly like old friends, definitely by name. How had they communicated feral to feral? This was the answer.
“What did Holly say, Bridge?” Ian moved in front of her, stooping slightly, taking her by both upper arms.
But Bridget seemed to be finished. She looked at the dirt, no longer searching the crowd. Whatever she’d been anticipating had happened, and now she seemed content to let it end by proxy of fate.
“They’re biting people who are already infected, and those people are turning right away, maybe because their bodies are used to equilibrium and can’t take a new hit of disease. It doesn’t matter why it’s happening, just that it is. The old rules seem to apply when they bite people who weren’t already being treated.” Bobby jabbed a finger at Gary, speaking to Ian. “But you watch him close, you hear me?”
Ian hesitated then nodded. He gave Gary an apologetic glance then asked the logical next question.
“And if he starts to turn?”
Bobby pulled his handgun from its holster and slapped it into Ian’s palm.
“Watch him with this,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW
AUGUST SAW THE TIDE TURN from inside the lab. Whatever was happening on the lawn, as seen from above, looked like something highly coordinated gone severely awry.
He couldn’t see too well without binoculars (which, shockingly, the biochem lab had in short supply), but he’d started watching the picnic after sending Ian his text. He’d already made the web dump then verified that it ended up where it should be and that the firewall hadn’t blunted its exit. With his part done (for the time being, anyway; once the news was out, he and everyone else would use legit labs to learn the rest), August turned on the lab’s TV and watched in stereo: live view through the glass on the left, close-up view with sound on the right.
August kept waiting for someone — Panacea, probably — to kill the broadcast. But just as the evidence archive had passed the firewall without incident, the broadcast stayed on-air. As if nobody cared what August had done and Ian was doing, or was willing to stop it.
He saw the dark-suited agents surround the park from above. At first, he assumed they were security, but then the ferals were loosed and the melee began. A repeat of yesterday’s mall incident, except that this one was bigger … and, according to the monitor on August’s right, was being televised.
He saw the ripples below as the violence spread. It took a while to sort, but soon he saw that the ferals were preferentially attacking the least-likely targets: late-stage necrotics, who couldn’t stagger quickly enough to get away.
The necrotics instantly turned. August watched, safe in the locked lab, alone in the building as far as he could hear. He watched through glass, unable to help, able only to fear the chaos below.
He lost Alice, who’d come in from the far left, from the parking lot.
He’d lost Bobby, Ian, Bridget, and the others, who’d backed away in a knot. Accidentally or on purpose, they’d found the perfect strategy, with what August judged as the best chance of escape: stay in a group with other uninfected. If they were bitten, at least they wouldn’t turn.
He’d even lost Archibald Burgess, who August was a bit ashamed to admit he’d been hoping would survive once the bloodbath began. Archibald was ambitious — too much for his and the world’s own good, apparently. But it was hard to shake the feeling that he meant well — that in the biggest picture, he was only doing what he felt what was best.
The feeling of lost control crept across August’s skin when the snipers showed. When the shock troo
ps, with their Plexiglas shields, stormed the lawn.
Someone had started this. And judging by the way they’d had snipers and a riot squad lined up and ready, they’d probably always intended to stop it quickly. Just a little show. A bit of blood and horror to add an exclamation point to what Ian, August, and the others were trying to prove to the world today, as if they were all sharing a side.
But as ferals multiplied, the snipers found themselves with too many targets. There weren’t just the few dozen they’d loosed upon the crowd. There were hundreds, every available necrotic turned deadly.
The worst of them — those lunging and shambling before being bitten — turned with what seemed to be a partial second wind. Others were taking longer, the virus needing time to undo what civilization had done.
The riot squads were overwhelmed. Men and women taken down, gear ripped from their grips, bodies ripped open. The uninfected didn’t get back up. Shots came. Batons were used, and August wondered why, in today’s world, they didn’t carry blades. The snipers picked off what they could, but the surge kept coming.
August watched from above, gripping the windowsill with white-knuckled hands.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
DECAY
THERE WAS A PATTERN.
BOBBY moved the group when a wave came. There were too many, and two were lost: the woman called Kate, and another Bobby didn’t know. But they made it away, leaving the others behind. It was necessary triage. Gary, who’d been bitten earlier, tried to go after the others even though they were almost surely dead. There was a snarl and a ripping sound from the rear, and Gary didn’t return.
He pulled them back into another temporary space away from the fray, and watched the pattern.
“Bobby,” said a large woman, Iris, who carried a specialty weapon Bobby had only seen in use once before today. It was called a Decimator and wasn’t overly large, but heavy as hell. She could only fire it when there was nothing remotely in the way that anyone wanted to keep breathing after the shot. “You know I hate to say this, but we should just run.”
“We’re surrounded by fences,” Bobby said.
“We can cut through them.” She hefted her weapon. “With this.”
Bobby shook his head slowly. “If we make a hole, we’ll let them out.”
And despite the situation, now that Bobby was finding his natural rhythm as if in Yosemite, that felt like an unacceptable solution. This was a new kind of plague, spreadable from one infected to another. It had to end here, and now, inside these fences. There was only one gate, and it was in the other direction. Deadheads weren’t supposed to be fast, or know how to use tools like that kid had used his knife. But so far, Bobby hadn’t seen any with bolt cutters, and the tops of Hemisphere’s open and honest fences were wound with razor wire that would turn deadheads into diseased meat.
“They’ll contain it,” Iris said, nodding to the clearing. The riot squads were making slow but steady progress. There seemed to be sniper fire out there as well, which was a curiosity of its own. Why were there snipers, unless they’d meant for this to happen before stomping it flat?
“It’s contagious.”
“Yes,” Iris said. “But barely.”
Bobby looked at Iris. He was chewing on a sprig of grass — something he did in Yosemite despite warnings that one of these days he’d ingest spilled necrotic blood by mistake. Iris was the largest, strongest hunter he’d ever worked with, and he’d never worked with her in Yosemite. He was struck with a sudden urge to invite her, to add her to his crew’s deck of cards like a secret weapon.
She was right. They couldn’t open the fence because it might cost a few lives, but that was the pattern he’d noticed earlier. This looked horrible, and between the turned (now incurable) necrotics and the dead, there would be many families mourning tomorrow. But it wasn’t like wildfire. Bakersfield had been far worse because you couldn’t know who was infected and who wasn’t until they got sicker, and by then there were too many. That was before Necrophage. This would require a formulation tweak, for sure — maybe more Necrophage for your buck, to protect against secondary bites. Once quelled, this outbreak wouldn’t be a problem. But for now, until the final body fell, it very much was for all those inside it.
“We can wait it out,” Bobby said.
“Or we can run. Ain’t no shame in running, Bobby Baltimore.”
Bobby actually laughed. Gennifer, the tall blonde who worked with Ian, gave him a reproachful look.
“I’d run if I had to. But I don’t. Look.”
Bobby pointed. Beyond the trees, a group of mindless ferals were ripping some poor necrotic to shreds. Their body language was angry, as if they were punishing more than trying to hurt.
“The new ones can’t spread it,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”
There were three rapid shots. Bullets must have rained from somewhere because all three ferals fell to the ground, leaving their victim to scream at nothing. A fourth gunshot stopped the screaming.
A squad in riot gear passed. The line remained intact, unassailed.
“It’s almost over,” Bobby said.
Iris kept her weapon high, swinging it side to side, waiting to prove him wrong.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
RIGHT THIS WAY
ALICE RAISED THE HANDGUN SHE’D liberated from the cut-in-half policeman. She’d fired it only once, and when she had, the kick had practically slammed the barrel into her forehead. The report had earned her attention from the feral she’d been trying to hit, but its head had inexplicably exploded when it turned, spraying Alice, the grass, and the rock she’d been hiding behind with blood and flecks of blackened gray matter. She supposed someone must have shot it, but she had no idea where the shot had come from, or how she’d been so lucky as to earn its protection.
She felt like a coward. The rock, near the lawn’s rear, had proved an overly nice hiding place, so she’d stuck to it. Once she had the gun (more as a high-caliber security blanket than a means of protection), the rock’s shelter had felt doubly nice. She kept telling herself to move — to go out there and save her friends’ lives. But in the ensuing mental debate, sense won out over moral imperative. If she broke her cover, someone would break her for sure. Alice waged her battles with a pen and a keyboard. She wasn’t a flesh-and-blood fighter and never would be.
But now, as the shouting and screaming and sounds of slaughter diminished, she decided to stand. She’d left everyone else to fend for themselves and that would always make her a little ashamed, but she wouldn’t be rescued. Alice wouldn’t end today with a policeman’s or clarifier’s hand in hers, as he pulled her from to safety from a coward’s hidey-hole.
The gun was heavy. She was terrified of its recoil, sure that she’d brain herself if she pulled the trigger again. But still it felt good. Like she was in control, whereas she very much was not.
There was no one past the rock. Nothing but bodies and — she felt a retch — body parts. It was easy to tell the ferals (or, astonishingly, the ordinary necrotic citizens who’d been turned feral) from the uninfected bodies.
The uninfected looked chewed.
The ferals didn’t have heads because stopping them had required blowing those heads off … or at least perforating them with giant holes.
Alice crossed the lawn, gun out. There were riot squads at the far end. She heard a few shots, far off like the pop of fireworks. Something grabbed at her ankle, and she kicked away, panicked. She looked down to see something that was barely more than arm, shoulder, and head leering at her, its face almost entirely gone.
At the clearing’s other side, past shredded and gore-stained picnic blankets, Alice found a line of black backs: clarifiers facing something, putting it down.
If they saw her, she’d be arrested for sure — maybe this time for real. Same for Ian Keys, and August Maughan, if he were here. Alice wasn’t sure what crime they’d committed, but they’d done something for sure.
She turned and found he
rself facing a pair of clarifiers.
“You’re Alice Frank,” one of them said.
Alice considered her weapon. Would they shoot her out of hand and claim self-defense? Should she try and threaten her way past?
She felt her arms lowering. Then, without even looking in her handgun’s direction, the clarifier who’d spoken pointed toward the parking lot, away from the finished fray. At the end of his gesture, Alice saw a group of uniformed police steering a tall balding man through a sea of what appeared to be reporters.
Archibald Burgess, being led away in handcuffs.
“Right this way, Miss Frank,” said the clarifier, moving to escort her toward the media circus.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
UPGRADES
ALICE CLOSED HER LAPTOP AND set it aside. Then she stood and opened the blinds all the way around the room. Morning had evaporated like something volatile, and she’d been working since before first light. But now that her work fugue had snapped, the room’s darkness slapped her like an open palm. She didn’t like being in the dark. Not for a week now.
The day was bright — and, when she opened the sash, Alice found it brisk as well, the North Carolina late summer beginning its slide into a moderately cool autumn. She took a moment to feel the sun on her face, to breathe deeply. Only then, her body assured that morning had come again with its innocent light, did she feel steeled enough to make her call.
Her party answered on the fifth ring — enough that Alice was about to hang up, glad to forget about all of this for another day.
“Alice?”
“Hey, Ian.”
“Wow. Feels like it’s been forever.”
“It’s only been a week.”
“I know. That’s why I said ‘feels.’”
There was a long pause on the line. Alice wasn’t sure why. She’d covered the plague from the beginning, and she’d seen horrors in Yosemite. She, Ian, and August had blown the lid on the biggest story of the century — maybe ever — and all she could feel was a throbbing sense of regret or loss or odd malaise. As if they shared a horrible secret and vowed never to speak of it again.