Plague War: Pandemic

by Alister Hodge

  ‘Time to get the fuck out of here, survivor boy!’ he said, swinging his legs over the edge before disengaging the bedframe to release his handcuff. Jeremy stood straight and pushed his hands into the base of his back to stretch his aching muscles.

  ‘Damn it feels good to be upright again,’ he said, before walking over to the doctor’s desk and opening the second drawer. He fished around inside for a moment then lifted a set of keys free with a triumphant grin.

  ‘That doctor’s no bloody warden. He’s left these on the desktop half the week. I bet he thought he was being all crafty when he hid them in the drawer instead last night,’ he said, chuckling to himself.

  A crash of metal on flooring came from the other side of the room as Calvin finally managed to disengage his own bedframe to release his handcuffs.

  ‘Are we going to leave, or what,’ muttered Calvin as he stalked up to a window and peeked through the blind. ‘Looks clear out there for the moment.’

  Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Just remember what I said last night. I’m in charge. You do as I say, when I fucking say it. Understand?’ he said, voice cold with anger.

  ‘Yeah I remember. Calm down will you. I just want to leave, all right?’ said Calvin, looking unnerved by his partner’s rapid change in mood.

  ‘Good,’ said Jeremy, happy once more as the other man accepted his dominance. ‘Let’s go then.’

  Jeremy unlocked the clinic’s door and stepped outside. He was still wearing the same navy uniform he’d had on when transferred from the ship and had a good chance of avoiding attention if he kept his handcuffs out of view. He tucked the loose ring attached to his wrist into a pocket, then instructed his fellow inmate to come outside.

  ‘Stay right next to me. You stick out like dog’s balls in that flannelette shirt, so we’re going to use that to our advantage. If anyone hassles us, I’m transporting you as a prisoner to the lock up, ok?’

  The survivalist didn’t look convinced by the plan, but agreed nonetheless. Greater activity was starting to happen near the main gates of the Fort, so the two men headed for the back fence. Walking at normal speed, they didn’t gain any attention from the few soldiers they passed. Within a few minutes, they’d reached the cyclone fence at the back of the fort.

  The wire at the fence’s base wasn’t attached to a bar, allowing it to be lifted from the ground. Jeremy grasped the wire and strained upward with it, creating a thirty-centimetre gap at the bottom for the survivalist to squeeze through. His partner returned the favour and within seconds both were outside the Fort’s perimeter. The two men were about to run for cover when a shout froze them.

  ‘Declare yourself! Rank and number, now!’ shouted a Private. Jeremy glanced back at him, finding that the soldier had his rifle aimed straight at his chest.

  ‘He’s an escaping prisoner!’ shouted Jeremy, pointing at the survivalist. ‘The sick bastard’s wanted for raping a girl!’

  Calvin looked at Jeremy, mouth wide in shock at the betrayal before he turned and ran.

  ‘He’s getting away! Shoot him you frigging idiot!’ commanded Jeremy. The soldier’s eyes left Jeremy and tracked the survivalist.

  ‘Halt or I’ll shoot!’ shouted the soldier. Calvin kept going, sprinting for the scrub. The soldier fired his rifle, dropping the running man with a single shot before scanning back the other way.

  ‘Now where the fuck did that other one go?’ muttered the soldier.

  Fifty metres distant lay Jeremy on his belly in the scrub, smiling at the confusion on the face of the sentry. He inched backwards, deeper into cover, a free man once more.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Harry’s eyes opened in the dark, instantly wide-awake. He picked up his watch from the bedside table and looked at the time: 05:00 AM, too bloody early to be up. He rolled over, closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use. Whatever had woken him had banished sleep for the night. Resigned to starting the day, he swung his feet out of bed and stood up in the cool air. Harry thought of the jobs ahead of him, knowing there was a long list of tests that needed to be run at the lab. Figuring that he might as well make an early start, he pulled on some clothes and made ready to leave for work.

  ***

  The sun was just starting to peak over the horizon as Harry neared the research facility. He heard barking in the distance, which didn’t seem odd initially, until he realised the noise wasn’t coming from the direction of the lab. If a pack of dogs had moved into the area, they’d need to be put down quickly. After seeing what the plague had wrought on their test subjects, he had no desire of meeting an infected dog outside a cage.

  As he rounded the last corner and approached his work, a rotating red light outside the main door caught his eye. No audible alarm was sounding, but the front door stood propped open on its mechanical arm. Harry swallowed as he felt adrenalin surge. If the fire alarm had been activated, that meant.... shit. He patted the side of his hip, feeling for the holstered revolver. Unclipping the tether, he pulled it free, gaining some comfort from the weapon.

  He took a steadying breath at the front entrance, willing his nerves to subside and let him act. The place was silent. Usually by now, the barking of caged dogs would be excluding all other noise as they fought to escape their enclosures. A splash of red on the linoleum flooring caught his eye – a red paw print. Once one was noted, it was impossible to miss the rest. The floor was covered in faint bloody prints, extending in a track down the hallway between the enclosure room and the front door of the premises.

  Harry inched his way down the corridor, checking each side room as he went until he reached the back where his worst fears were confirmed. Each cage was open and empty. In the middle of the floor was a ragged mess of bloody meat. The corpse had been torn apart as the dogs fed, the pelvis and legs three metres distant to the torso. There was no way to visually identify the body as there just wasn’t enough left of any feature, but Harry knew it must be his colleague, as there was no one else with unfettered access to the premises.

  What the hell had he been doing here so early in the morning when it was Harry’s shift today? His eye caught sight of a rabbit on the floor, ignored by the dogs in preference of warm prey, and realised that it must have happened during the nightly feeding routine. Harry swore viciously as he turned and sprinted for the lab, he needed to raise the alarm. Finding a phone, he dialled the Fort. In the distance, automatic gunfire began to stutter.

  ***

  The car pulled to a stop, wheels sliding in the gravel as the Private stamped down on the brake. The doctor leapt from the passenger door, bag filled with emergency equipment over his right shoulder. Nate waved him over to where he knelt beside his injured soldiers. A shirt had been placed over the face and neck of the deceased man. The other two wounded now lay on the ground, having taken a turn for the worse.

  ‘Thanks for coming so quick, Doc,’ said Nate. ‘They’re not looking good. I thought they only had minor trauma, but they must have lost more blood than I realised. What do you want us to do?’

  The doctor already had his bag open, kneeling beside the patient with the hand injury. ‘Let me check them out first and work out the priorities. It was dog bites you said?’

  ‘Yeah, a pack of them attacked us out of nowhere, then escaped under the wire. We haven’t seen or heard anything from them since,’ Nate said.

  Both injured men were quiet and listless on the ground. Their skin was pale and clammy, breathing rapid and shallow. The doctor unwrapped the hand wound, quickly noting the missing fingers, then bit his lip in concern as he saw the skin above the wound was a virulent shade of red, with inflammation tracking up the inside of the arm. He quickly moved onto the next man, cutting up the material of his pants to expose the wound at his thigh. Brown pus was oozing from the bite and the surrounding tissue was swollen, the edges spread like a burst piece of fruit. A stench from the uncovered wound assaulted the noses of all those present. Both soldiers had become unresponsive during the as
sessment. The doctor rocked back on his heels and looked up at Nate.

  ‘They were just normal dogs you reckon? Because these wounds look hideously infected. Dogs can introduce some nasty bugs, but it usually takes a few days to get this bad. The only bites I’ve seen progress at this rate are from Carriers.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, doc. They had four legs and were covered in fur – they were bloody dogs,’ said Nate.

  The doctor frowned at the agitated tone of the Corporal’s voice. ‘I’m not trying to be difficult, but if there’s a chance these guys have the plague, it changes management completely. We’ll need to euthanize them before they change and place more lives at risk.’

  ‘Bullshit. They’re under my command, and I’ll be damned if you’re going to shove a drill bit into their brains under my watch. Just treat the fucking wounds and give them an antibiotic or something. They need to be in a hospital, not lying in the dirt by the road,’ he said, anger mounting.

  ‘Nate, I just remembered something, can I speak to you for a sec?’ said Jai. Nate looked none too happy for the interruption, but acquiesced and moved off a few metres to talk.

  ‘Didn’t Harry say something about working on infected dogs as part of his research into a cure?’

  Nate’s eyes widened. ‘Shit! But they’re all carefully locked up behind steel. We’d know if any of them had escaped!’

  The doctor leant over the deceased soldier, the shirt pulled back to expose the gaping hole in his neck. The dog had ripped a fist-sized chunk of flesh away, tearing out a section of trachea along with jugular and carotid artery.

  As Nate cleared his throat to update him, the Private that had driven the doctor to their location yelled out from his seat in the car. He was holding a radio receiver in one hand, his face deathly pale. ‘Doc, we have a problem. I just got news from the Fort, there’s been a breakout from the research facility. Around twenty plague infected dogs have escaped.’

  The doctor looked up from where he knelt over the dead man, ‘I bloody knew it…’

  A hand took a fist full of his hair and dragged his face violently to the corpse’s mouth beneath him. The doctor screamed as the dead soldier ripped away his nose and upper lip, spraying warm blood over the Carrier’s pale face as it gagged down its first meal. Jai grabbed hold of the Doc’s leg and tried to drag him out of the creature’s grasp, but the Carrier held on with a grip of unyielding iron. The next bite tore a mouthful from the side of the doctor’s throat. A thick spurt of arterial blood jetted from his carotid, pumping his blood onto the ground in rapid squirts of crimson.

  Nate dragged himself from his torpor and lifted his rifle to assist, drilling a bullet through the skull of the Carrier. The doctor fell out the corpse’s now lax grip, landing on his side. His eyes were wide in shock above a ruined face, one hand pushing in futile effort against his neck wound. Within moments, he too fell silent as life-sustaining blood drained into the dirt.

  Beside the doctor, the other two wounded soldiers were beginning to stir. Jai stepped forward and without seeking permission from his Corporal, shot a round through each man’s skull. He turned back to the doctor, letting his rifle drop for a moment, distress clearly showing on his face at the needless loss of life. Jai took a steadying breath as his features once more hardened with resolve and fired a bullet to obliterate the doctor’s brains and grant him an uninterrupted sleep.

  After a few moments, Jai looked up from the doctor’s corpse and rounded on his Corporal.

  ‘You and that bloody fire! If you weren’t such a lazy bastard who was more concerned with comfort than doing your job, maybe we would have been ready when that pack came through. Four men, Nate. Four fucking men are now dead because half the detachment was off guard and staring into a fire pit that you sanctioned.’

  Nate said nothing, his mouth open as he failed to reply. Jai waited a moment more, and when he found his Corporal still didn’t have an answer, spat on the ground and walked away in disgust.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ‘Bloody hell, it looks like half the horizon is on fire,’ said Steph, peering in Geelong’s direction. Thick streams of smoke rose in the distance from more than a dozen separate infernos, muting the sun behind a grey haze.

  Mark, Erin and Steph stood on the footpath outside their house in the late afternoon. Time had run down quickly, with final preparations for the coming morning’s offensive drawing to a close. Systematic firebombing of Geelong had commenced the day before. The resultant infernos had raged through the night, turning the horizon to a dull shade of red. Now though, it seemed most of the fires had burnt themselves out, as most of the smoke streams had altered from the dirty black of an active fire, to grey/white. The distant blazes had left an acrid tang in Mark’s mouth and nose, prompting him to hack a gob of spit onto the street to clear the taste.

  ‘That’s so gross,’ said Erin, her nose wrinkled in disgust. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you that spitting spreads disease?’

  ‘Yeah, just not the ones I’m worried about.’

  Steph punched him lightly on his shoulder. ‘The girl’s got a point, Mark, no-one needs to see your phlegm on the pavement.’

  He conceded defeat, clearly outnumbered. ‘Ah, ok. Sorry Erin, I’ll make sure to keep my germs to myself in future. Now can we get back to more important matters?’ he said, moving the topic along. ‘What do you reckon about these alterations?’

  Parked on the street before them were the two semi-trailers allocated to Mark’s platoon. The trucks looked vastly different from their original appearance. A steel cage had been constructed on the flat bed tray to enclose and protect Mark’s squad while they fought, reaching two and a half metres in height. Entrance into the cage was via a flip down manhole at either end. The walls of the cage itself were constructed out of a cross-hatched steel wire with square openings of five centimetres diameter; wide enough to stick through a gun barrel, but too small to admit a Carrier’s hand. Below the tray, sheet metal dropped to within thirty centimetres of the ground to prevent easy handholds. In the middle of the cage was neatly piled boxes of ammunition, replacement rifles, captive pin guns and broom handles to push free any pile up of carcasses on the roof or walls of the cage.

  The cabin of the truck had not escaped renovation, the windscreen being ditched for the same steel wire as the rear cage. In front of the cabin, a reinforced iron wedge had been welded in place to allow the truck to push aside obstacles from its path such as abandoned cars on the road that could not be driven around. Mark leant down and ran a hand over a section of welding, grimacing at what he found.

  ‘I like the overall design, but geez, some of the welding could be better,’ he said mildly, keen to keep out of his voice the true extent of his concern at the poor workmanship. The weld attaching the iron wedge to the front of the cabin was lumpy with scattered gaps, and when combined with the massive weight of the attachment, created a high risk that the weld might fracture when placed under stress.

  ‘I guess it should do the job, but might be better to leave it for emergency use only.’

  He stood back from the truck and sighed, the bitter smell of smoke irritating him again. Mark was about to spit once more, but caught sight of Erin’s face and pulled himself up.

  ‘I’ve assigned the crews for the two trucks,’ he said to Steph. ‘You, Jai and I will be in a truck driven by Nate; Vinh will have command of the other.’

  ‘I heard Harry’s been pulled back into the medic role again?’ said Steph.

  ‘Yeah, he’s not super happy about it, but with the only other doctor on site now dead and the research facility shut down, there’s no real option. To be honest, with what’s happening tomorrow, it’s kind of reassuring to know he’ll be close at hand if things go tits up.’

  ‘Surely he’s not fighting with us?’

  ‘God no, they wouldn’t risk their last medic like that. He’ll be behind the front line, trailing in a support vehicle in case of a friendly fire injury or something happens
which he can actually fix. Plague bites will fall down to individual squads to euthanize tomorrow,’ said Mark, his voice betraying distaste at a job that would likely become his responsibility.

  ‘The General informed me the other night about some possible survivors in town,’ he said.

  ‘Do they have a confirmed location?’

  ‘Yeah, but the bastards couldn’t have picked a worse place. They’re somewhere in the Westfield’s mall, right where the highest concentrations of Carriers are expected in the centre of town. At least the General spoke some common sense – he’s left the call to me as to whether or not we attempt the extraction. If there’s too many corpses trying to kill us, we let them stay put until a later date.’

  Steph’s eyes widened a little in surprise at his cold reasoning. ‘You really think you’d be able to sleep knowing we left people behind?’

  ‘I’d sleep like a baby. To me it’s a no-brainer - I’d swap your lives for a thousand others any day of the week. Besides, if they’ve made it this far, they’ll survive a few more days.’

  Steph still looked unconvinced.

  ‘Look, I’m not committing now. I’ll make a decision once we’ve had a chance to see the extent of opposition in town,’ said Mark, killing conversation on the topic.

  Erin was standing to the side, only half listening to them argue. With the danger facing her friends tomorrow, she’d been trying her hardest to pretend the whole event wasn’t happening. Erin kicked at a pebble on the footpath absently, sending it bouncing down the street toward the park. As she followed it with her eyes, she saw something that made her heart lurch.

  Jeremy.

  Leaning casually against a fence at the street corner stood the man who had tried to kill her. He stared back, a smile kinking his lips at her recognition. Erin raised a shaking hand to rub at her eyes. Surely she must be imagining things. The man was locked up, secure in the Fort’s cells. When she opened her eyes again, she breathed a sigh of relief – the street corner was empty once more.