Arisen, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  But with a singularity closing on London… Aliyev could, just maybe, God really willing, both save London – and kill all the dead. He could kick off what would be the beginning of the end for the world’s seven billion ravening, slavering, rotting, biting, infecting, disgusting dead sons of bitches.

  And, for humanity… well, it could be the beginning of a new beginning.

  * * *

  Six frantic, non-stop hours later, he had it.

  I think, he thought – half-collapsing onto a lab stool and mopping his damp brow with his sleeve. Initially, racking his brain, he decided that – in theory – the existing vaccine against meningitis C should almost work. It would just need a little tweaking, a little clever biohacking. Which Aliyev felt confident he was still a dab hand at.

  He didn’t have meningitis C vaccine on hand – but he did have a culture of the meningitis C bacterium itself, tucked in the back of the omni-maleficent Fridge of Death. For a few panicked instants, he couldn’t find the right test tube. With his shaking hands, he also almost killed himself several times over, by nearly dropping a couple of the other particularly horrible pathogen samples stored in there. But it turned out he didn’t even need the C culture.

  Because, shortly after that, he got lucky again, by finding a detailed description of the strategy and design of the meningitis C vaccine in one of his big reference books. (Goddamn, I miss Wikipedia, he thought.) After that, it was pretty much just a matter of producing a conjugate-type vaccine that was, for practical purposes, identical to the C version, just with Z antigens.

  This involved isolating and detaching the antigen (the bit that causes an immune reaction) from his designer meningitis Z bug – and then attaching it to a suitable carrier protein, safely inactivated. For the carrier protein, he ended up using the same one the C vaccine used – a non-toxic derivative of diphtheria toxin. (Diphtheria, check – yep, definitely got that in the Fridge.) Producing both the antigen and the carrier protein involved fermenting, homogenizing, and purifying cultures of both organisms – all pretty standard, if detailed and exacting, lab tasks.

  The resultant vaccine, which he had already derivatized, conjugated, and loaded up in the syringe that now lay on the lab bench in front of him, should, in theory, induce a T-cell-dependent antibody response and immunological memory – thus protecting anyone inoculated with it from ever being infected with meningitis Z.

  The trouble was… he didn’t have anyone to test this shit on. He could potentially test it on a dead guy, but A) that would by no means prove it worked on living people – in fact, even if it did work on the living, it still probably wouldn’t work on dead ones, who were believed to have no immune systems, and thus no immunological reactions for a vaccine to provoke. And, B) he simply wasn’t going out in that fucking snowstorm to collect dead Mongols again.

  No, fuck that noise.

  And it wasn’t strictly true that he had no one living to test it on. He took a baleful look down to the veins in his own forearm, which were already bulging from all the fiddly vaccine development work, and stress over saving the human race, and whatnot.

  Jesus Christ…

  Ideally, there should be about five years of animal testing, starting with mice and progressing to chimps – followed by cautious and very limited human clinical trials. In real life, it would have taken the better part of a decade to demonstrate that a new vaccine like this was safe, and get it approved for clinical use.

  But in this life, Aliyev was exactly six hours into the process – and needed to wind it down fast. Because, judging by the radio reports, he was probably looking at a runway of not years for rolling out this vaccine – but weeks or even days. After which, there would be no one left alive to benefit from it.

  There was also the small matter that his body’s immunological reaction would take, at very least, the better part of a week to spin up and start protecting him. Only then would it be safe to expose himself to MZ and see if he was resistant to it.

  Then again, if the vaccine was going to kill him, that might be demonstrated rather more quickly.

  Fuck it, he thought, sitting on a stool at a lab bench, tearing open an alcohol swab, wiping down the crook of his arm… and then taking the syringe in his right hand and lofting it in the air.

  His thumb twitched on the plunger.

  10,000 Days

  The Kazakh’s Dacha, Altai Mountains

  Ninety minutes later, Aliyev huffingly laid down the last case of bottled water on top of the other three. All of them were stacked against the front wall of the lab, near the point where the lab met the living area – and just beside the vestibule and outside doorway.

  Why is water so goddamned heavy? Aliyev wondered, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. But as a scientist, he already knew the answer. It was because it was extremely dense, almost a thousand kilograms per cubic meter. At any rate, he probably had as much as he needed out here now – four cases, 72 liters in total.

  The stack of water bottles was the first of a number of piles of survivalist shit, which now stretched along the entire front wall of the lab, all the way down to the Fridge of Death at the far left. Following along the row with his eye, Aliyev suddenly got the feeling that the Fridge was laughing at him. Because back inside it now was that syringe loaded up with the MZ vaccine.

  He hadn’t been able to make himself do it – hadn’t dredged up the required courage to inject himself with the seriously unknown quantity of the new vaccine.

  So he was putting it off by packing, instead. Which he had to do anyway, right? And what was another hour or two? And by packing up the helo, he was committing himself to this course of action.

  Wasn’t he?

  Or maybe he was merely fooling himself into thinking he had the guts to leave the Dacha and attempt to fly over 3,500 miles to London – all in an aircraft that had a range of less than 750 miles, even with the auxiliary fuel tanks under the cabin floor – all of it over two continents heaving with flesh-chomping dead fuckers from coast to coast…

  But if he wasn’t serious, he didn’t want to know.

  I AM fucking going to do it, he told himself.

  He was just going to finish packing first.

  * * *

  Now he had pretty much everything he needed staged out here. Maybe just one more trip to the supply closet. After that, it would simply be a matter of ferrying it out to the helo.

  He’d always vaguely had a plan, what he’d do if he were forced to abandon this place. (A plan, that is, aside from: Die shortly thereafter.) If the Dacha fell, if it got surrounded by a zombie singularity, if (God forbid) it caught fire, he had a whole bunch of essential supplies earmarked for evacuation, and shoved into a storage closet in the main building. They had been set aside – if not quite bundled up for transport.

  So they still required a little staging.

  Aliyev did have, like any good survivalist, a “bug-out bag,” packed and ready to go in an instant. This was a large backpack from the fine folks at 5.11 Tactical, stuffed full of survival essentials, and now propped up by his feet.

  He unzipped it and rifled through the contents: maps and compass, GPS, multi-tool, tarp/emergency shelter, survival blanket, 200m of paracord. Magnesium firestarter, some spare hiking socks, LED flashlight. There was a good-sized first aid kit (with broad-spectrum antibiotics), a hand-cranked radio, three days worth of water, a case of energy bars. Fishing kit. Night-vision goggles (the good ones). Spare batteries, Gore-tex jacket for foul weather, a shitload of duct tape. Hand sanitizer, gloves, face mask.

  The commonly included signal mirror and emergency whistle he had, for obvious reasons, ditched. The last thing he’d want to do was get anybody’s attention.

  Lastly, there were six full mags for the pistol, plus an additional two boxes of 50 cartridges each, as well as two boxes of 25 shells each for the Benelli M4 Tactical shotgun.

  The shotgun itself was currently propped up by the inner door, and Aliyev admired it for the thousan
dth time. It had a tactical light, visible and IR aiming lasers, all the nice accessories – including an 8-shot magazine extender, and 6 more in a sidesaddle shell carrier on the solid fixed stock. No expense spared.

  So, yeah, he did keep a bug-out bag – he just knew it wasn’t going to keep him alive very long in the fucking Altai mountains, or anywhere else in the world these days. He knew he’d realistically need a lot more supplies, especially for this crazy-ass trip he was planning now.

  Zipping the bag closed again, he cast his eye over the piles of additional crap he’d ferried out here, cross-referencing it all against his mental checklist. Now was definitely the time to remember anything critical that was missing. Later would be way too late.

  Beside the piled crates of water, there were four cases of civilian MREs – 48 meal kits in total, each with at least 1,250 calories, each self-contained and non-perishable. Next down was the two-man tent and four-season sleeping bag – the best money could buy.

  Further along was the real ammo cache – 40 boxes of shotgun shells, a mix of double-ought, buckshot, and slugs. On top of those were 20 boxes of 5.7mm rounds for the pistol. And down beyond that, sitting right beside, perhaps fittingly, the Fridge of Death…

  Yes, that actually was a small wooden crate of motherfucking grenades – complete with rope carrying handles. These were formerly the property of the United States Army – how they got loose was unknown, or at least untold by Aliyev’s buddy, a former Russian special forces guy, later loosely connected with the Russian mafia. With money and the right connections, one could buy absolutely any goddamned thing in post-Soviet Russia.

  In this case, Aliyev had bought a mix of high-explosive, anti-personnel fragmentation, and even a couple of flashbang grenades. Basically, you just never knew when you were going to have to blow some shit up – or when there would be too many damned zombies coming at you at once to shoot them all.

  Aliyev had almost no military or weapons training. But he tried to make up for it with sheer firepower.

  * * *

  He decided to make one more trip back to the closet, then start ferrying it all out. On his way through the living room, for some reason the stereo cabinet caught his eye, and he was stabbed with a tiny twinge of remorse. He’d paid a fortune for this thing, including its gigantic amplifier, sixteen satellite speakers, and embedded subwoofer system. But he’d never once turned it up to anything approaching its maximum volume – for fear, initially, of attracting attention from the living; then, later, of drawing the dead, sparse as they were in this 1.6-million-square-kilometer wasteland.

  Last chance, he thought. Fuck it.

  He selected Tool’s 10,000 Days from his music library – sometimes, nothing else was hard enough, and there was also the amusing fact that 10,000 days was almost exactly how long it had been since the fall of the Soviet Union and Biopreparat – casting him out into this wilderness – and which had led, perhaps inevitably, to all of this.

  Cueing up the first song, he twisted the volume knob to the three-quarters mark. No, okay, that’s actually painful – and then spun it back down to the one-half mark, which was still atrociously loud, arena-concert loud. He nodded in approval, half-squinted his eyes, pursed his lips, and bobbed his head rhythmically as he threaded his way back to the supply closet.

  Now, let’s see… what else? He decided to take a second crate of grenades. You couldn’t be too careful – and better to have extra grenades and not need them, than need them and not have them…

  There was also a lot of additional camping gear in there, but he didn’t plan on spending any more time outside the helo than it took to refuel the damned thing. And if he found himself sleeping overnight on the ground, well, he’d have much bigger problems than malleting tent pegs or washing camp cookware…

  But he did eye up the kerosene lamp. Yeah, what the hell… In an age of LED flashlights, which ran forever, there wasn’t all that much point, but you never knew. He looped his elbow through the carrying handle, threw a few other bits on the crate of grenades, and hefted it all up. He should probably make two trips, as this load was precarious. But he was tired – from his frantic full day of vaccine development, and from the months of work on the MZ before that.

  As he carried the last survivalist goodies back through the living room, the blasting music seeming to shake the very floor, he found himself wheezing again. Should have had that home gym installed, he thought. But he knew himself well enough to know that he’d never use it, and had decided not to blow $20,000 on optimistic self-delusion.

  And it was too goddamned late now anyway.

  Plus, the ass-kicking music was sustaining his energy levels – was overloading them, in fact. His muscles buzzed and his foot tapped.

  Or maybe he was really just thrilled that, after all his grim expectations… he wasn’t going to die in this stupid Dacha after all.

  * * *

  As he set the lamp down on the top crate of MREs, it occurred to him to see if there was actually any kerosene in it. There was. He flipped the cover closed again.

  Okay, he thought. Now he could begin ferrying it all out to the helo. For sound tactical reasons, he started with the bug-out bag – and for no very good reason also grabbed the first crate of grenades. When he stepped outside, the snowstorm was finally winding down. But there was nearly a foot of powder on the ground, the wind still whipped loose flakes around, and the glare of the low sun nearly shut his eyes. He’d definitely be needing his Ray-Ban Aviators to fly today.

  He picked his way carefully down that same front path he’d traversed earlier, then turned right at the corner of the building. The helipad was off to the side, carved out of the side of the mountain – there hadn’t really been any flat places to start with.

  The aircraft sitting upon it was a sleek, beautiful, and stupidly expensive Eurocopter, in gunmetal blue – with a shark-like nose, a four-bladed rotor (same color), a lot of glass, and all sitting on four shiny black tires. It was fueled up – it always was – and Aliyev was reasonably hopeful it would start, despite not having been flown in quite a few months.

  He set his load down in the snow and slid open the cargo door in the side. He’d already had all the rear passenger seats removed, for ferrying supplies up here. Now he hefted the bug-out bag and crate up and slid them across the deck to the back wall.

  Then he paused, the reality of how far he was actually planning on flying this thing hitting him for the first time.

  Jesus Christ, he thought, shaking his head. I should have my head examined.

  He trudged back around the building, the fantastic, mystical, head-banging stylings of Tool greeting him long before he reached the entrance. He went back inside, leaving the door open behind him, as this was going to take a few trips. Pacing down the row of gear, he leaned over to pick up the second crate of grenades. But then he stopped, still bent over, and looked to his immediate left.

  The Fridge of Death was smirking at him. Goddammit.

  He shook his head. He was committed to this course of action – wasn’t he? No, not by a long shot. In fact, he seriously doubted he’d have the courage to really do it. Trying to get to London was basically just an elaborate form of suicide, anyway. But by loading up the helo, he could, at least for a while, convince himself that he was serious.

  But, in his heart, he knew when he’d actually be committed: when he injected himself with the damned MZ vaccine. Then he’d be in it for real – one way or another. And the Fridge knew this, too. And that was why it was laughing at him.

  Okay, screw you, Fridge, he thought. He couldn’t take the tension any more. He’d do it, or die trying. All it takes is one quick injection. Then I’m all in.

  But when he yanked open the glass door, he found himself frozen again. Sitting there at the front of the shelf were the two cultures he needed to take with him to London: the meningitis Z, and the vaccine for it. He pulled those out and loaded them into a self-powered coldbox, which he’d already dug out of an
other part of the lab. This would keep the cultures viable for weeks if need be.

  But he knew he was really just stalling again.

  As he shut the coldbox, he was seized with another wave of self-loathing. Goddammit. Was he even willing to try and fix what he had done? Or was he going to die as he had lived – a selfish, self-absorbed, amoral coward?

  He grabbed the loaded syringe, his own personally earmarked dose of the vaccine, slammed the Fridge shut, and stalked over to the same lab bench where he’d wussed out last time. The head-banging music gave him courage – and also made everything seem slightly dream-like, the way it washed over him and drowned out every other sound. He yanked open a drawer, tore open an alcohol swab, and wiped down the crook of his arm for the second time.

  And he picked up the syringe.

  It was extremely cold to the touch – the Fridge was kept at about four degrees Celsius. He hesitated again. It was well-known that ice-cold injections going into your veins resulted in more stinging and soreness – and he had no idea how bad this one was going to be to start with, due to no one ever having taken it before.

  Glancing down into the open drawer, he saw a flint-spark lab lighter. If he were going to warm this up – and was he just procrastinating again? – he should probably go use the microwave in the kitchen. But he decided he couldn’t be arsed to make the trip. And, anyway, what was the point of having these nice glass syringes?

  He grabbed a Bunsen burner from the next bench, sparked it with the lighter, and held the syringe just above the flame. He took a deep breath to settle himself.

  For no reason, he looked up.

  And there was somebody STANDING IN THE MOTHERFUCKING DOORWAY.

  How the Dead Live

  JFK - Biosciences Lab

  Back on the Kennedy, down in the biosciences lab, Doctors Park and Close were having an unaccustomed reflective moment. They had just completed their tag-team work on a comprehensive spreadsheet, one which listed and described in detail every clinical task that was now standing between them and a finished vaccine.