Outbreak (Book 1): Emerald City

by Jay K. Anthony

  “Moving,” Ortiz said and lead them down the alley. They ran down the outside of the same warehouse, just on the opposite side, until they could see the parking lot. “Hold up here,” Williams said and looked around. “Tanner?”

  “Sergeant,” he replied.

  “Take Tasha and the sniper rifle. See if you can get up on one of these buildings. We could use some eyes in the sky.”

  “You got it,” Tanner said and looked around. “That looks good.”

  Tasha saw what Tanner was looking at ... a fire escape. It was about the last thing she wanted to tackle, but no way was she going to let the group down. “Works for me,” she said.

  “Give us a boost,” Tanner said to Cleveland and the three of them went over to the side of the warehouse. Tanner and Cleveland lifted Tasha up so she could reach the bottom ladder. Carefully, trying not to make any noise, they lowered her and the ladder to the ground.

  Cleveland gave them a thumbs up. “Let me know when you are in position,” he said and went back over to Williams and Ortiz.

  Tasha lead the way up the fire escape. It was rusted and old, but still strong, and as soon as she reached the rooftop, she crouched low and ran to the corner nearest the parking lot. Tasha rested the sniper rifle on the brick ledge, pointed it toward the garage, and waited for Tanner. His face was bright red as he gingerly sat down next to her on the gravel rooftop and leaned his back against the inside of the ledge.

  “I think I seriously hurt my ankle,” he said. “Sucks.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Tasha said, trying to sound reassuring. “We will be back to Command soon.” Before he could reply, she looked through the rifle scope at the garage. “We’ll just hang out up here and keep an eye on things.”

  “Yeah,” he said and glanced up and over the rooftop wall. “In position,” Tanner said into his radio handset.

  “What do you see?” Williams replied through the radio. Tanner looked at Tasha for an answer.

  Tasha looked through the scope at the parking lot. There was a red brick garage of some kind on the far end, nearest the fence with the horde of creepers piled up against it. There was some kind of makeshift parking lot to the west of the building. The windows were grimy and dirty, but it looked to her like there were at least two men moving around. “I’ve got two, maybe three guys in the garage,” she said. “They look like they are working on something.”

  “Anyone on guard?” Williams asked.

  “Not that I can see,” Tasha replied.

  “Distance?” Williams asked.

  It looked to her to be about one track length from their building to the garage. “One hundred meters,” she said and Tanner relayed the information to Williams.

  “Copy,” Williams said over the radio. “One of you stay on the roof. The other needs to get down here so we can all approach the garage together.”

  “Shit,” Tanner complained.

  “I can go,” Tasha said, knowing his ankle was not going to allow Tanner to move anywhere fast.

  “Tasha,” he said. “You’re not --”

  “Shut up,” she said. She was not about to argue with him about it. “I need you to show me how your machine gun works.”

  CLARK

  Clark watched the helicopter lift off from the top of the hospital with the survivors crammed inside and had a momentary feeling that maybe he should have forgotten about the documentation and found a seat on board.

  “You ready to move?” Rocha asked.

  “Damn straight,” Clark replied under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Clark said. “Following you.”

  “Good,” Rocha said and jogged back toward the access door to the stairwell.

  Earlier, after they had reached the roof with the survivors and were waiting for the helicopter to come in, Rocha had explained to Clark that this was the same roof he had landed on a few days before. “I can take you straight to the lab from here,” he said. “It was just one floor below where we found these guys.”

  “Excellent,” Clark said. He was already sick of navigating the long dark halls of the hospital. All he wanted was to find the documentation as quickly as possible and catch the next ride back to the aircraft carrier so he could get to work on a cure. And they better send back another damn helicopter, he thought as he followed Rocha inside and down the stairwell. Clark was confident that if they could get a helicopter to come in and pick up survivors, then having what could be the key to winning the war against the virus would certainly warrant another ride.

  Clark followed Rocha past the door where they had entered the stairwell originally and continued down one more flight of stairs. At the next floor, Rocha slowly opened the door and looked into the hallway. “Clear,” he said and crept out. Clark followed. The hallway was a mess of papers, hospital equipment, and decaying dead bodies. The smell was nearly unbearable. Clark put his sleeve up to his mouth, but still caught a strong whiff of the sweet odor of death and decay. He gagged and Rocha looked back at him. “You cool?” Rocha asked. Clark nodded and doing his best to ignore the horrors around him, he fell back into their routine of moving down the hallway with Rocha checking each opening to the left and right and Clark watching their backs. At the end of the hallway was a single door. “This is it,” Rocha said. “Your lab.”

  Forgetting about the smell, Clark excitedly stepped past Rocha and placed his hand on the door knob. He hesitated, then slowly opened the door. It was pitch black inside so he stopped and listened. Movement. A lot of it and from the sound of shuffling feet, it sounded like infected. Clark jumped back and closed the door. He looked at Rocha. “I think there are infected inside.”

  “Damn straight,” Rocha said. “Don’t worry about it. They’re all locked up.”

  “What?”

  “I said don’t worry about it. Just go on in.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Clark asked.

  Rocha pushed him toward the door. “It’s your party, bud. Get in there and check it out.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Clark said. Using the nose of his pistol, he slowly pushed open the door. He crept inside when a security light suddenly came on and flooded the room. “Holy shit,” he barked and ducked down as if expecting an attack.

  Rocha laughed. “Damn, man,” he said. “You’re acting like you never seen a lurker before. It's just a motion sensor.”

  Clark was shaking all over. He did not think Rocha was funny but he let it go and looked around the lab. At the far end of the room there was a desk and chair, a dormant computer, a printer, some microscopes, and a large filing cabinet. There were also ten man-sized cages, two long rows of them which lined both walls and each with a single occupant. The infected in the cages were going ballistic at the arrival of Clark and Rocha. Jesus, Clark thought. What the hell has been going on in here?

  Clark looked in the first cage. It reminded him of a prison cell with a cot, a bucket, a jug of water and a bowl of what looked like dog food. The infected inside was growling and gnashing with what was left of its teeth. It clawed at the cage door and Clark knew that given the chance, the thing inside would literally eat him alive. He shuddered at the thought. “Any reason to keep these alive?” Clark asked.

  “Not that I can think of,” Rocha replied. “But you’re the doctor. Your choice.”

  Clark stared at the infected and tried to think of a reason not to put it out of its misery. He had nothing, so he brought his pistol up to head level and pulled the trigger.

  Thwip!

  The infected’s body sank to the floor of the cage as Clark checked the next three cages and repeated the same execution. One shot, one kill, just like Rocha always did. The last cage on the row was empty. “That's the one that had the normal guy in it,” Rocha said. Clark eagerly pulled the clipboard from its hook on that cage. He quickly scanned the documents on it but it was so loud in the room that he could not focus. The infected in the other five cages were slamming into the fenced doors.

 
“Rocha,” Clark said, trying to focus his attention on the clipboard. “Do you mind?”

  Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!

  “Thank you,” Clark said absently and flipped through the papers. If he was reading it right, the man had been in the cage for over a week. It was incredible. All studies had shown the infection turned its victims in twenty four to forty eight hours.

  Rocha came over to read the paperwork over his shoulder. “That what you were looking for?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Clark replied and finished reading through the charts. It was everything he had hoped it would be. The man had been bitten and immediately began to show signs of infection. He was then placed into the cage for observation, but he never turned. After five days the records stopped and Clark wondered what had happened to the doctors and lab assistants who were monitoring him. Then he remembered the streaks of blood on the floor in the hallway and decided not to think about it anymore. He looked around at the tables and filing cabinets. There were papers everywhere, so he rifled through everything, looking for any reference to the patient. Coming up empty, he tried the filing cabinet, but it was locked.

  “Hey,” he said to Rocha. “You got anything that can open this?”

  Rocha took a multi-tool out of his pocket and handed his rifle to Clark. “Watch the door,” he said and went to work on the lock. Clark watched Rocha more than he watched the door and after a minute, Rocha was able to pry open the top drawer. He then broke the lock so all of the drawers opened. “All yours, Doc.”

  Clark gave Rocha back his machine gun and started digging into the filing cabinets. The top drawer was a disorganized mess of haphazardly stuffed file folders that Clark flipped through. Disappointed with the mess, he slid the drawer closed and took a quick look through the bottom three. None of them were any better. “You are going to want to get comfortable,” he told Rocha and went back to the top drawer and started pulling out files. Rocha pulled the desk chair out and pushed it up against the door. Sitting down, he leaned back, closed his eyes, and immediately started to snore.

  Unbelievable, Clark thought and started to read. Fortunately, he immediately knew he was in the right place. His heart pounding with excitement, he saw what he had in his hands contained the key to saving the world. It may have been a disorganized mess, but there was an amazing amount of critical medical documentation, ranging from handwritten sticky notes to fully edited reports. It appeared the scientists at the hospital were so close to developing the cure that they had synthesized an antidote and were testing it on the infected in these cages. Clark got an empty feeling in his stomach as he looked at the corpses in the cages and thought he and Rocha probably should not have killed the rest of the test subjects. Shit! He thought. Well, nothing can be done about that now.

  As he continued to pull files out of the cabinet, Clark realized he was going to have too much documentation to carry out. It was a dilemma. He knew he could not take it all with him, but he did not want anything to happen to whatever he left behind. It was impossible to know what would happen to the hospital between now and when he could return. He thought of the irony of the situation. Up until the outbreak, paper records had become obsolete. Anyone could store millions of pages of documentation on a drive the size of his finger. But now computers were what was almost obsolete and he had to figure out a way to save a file cabinet worth of data. Knowing he had to be selective, he started sorting what he considered critical information and made stacks on the lab table. It dawned on him he would need something to carry the papers.

  “Rocha!” he said.

  Rocha kept his eyes closed. “Yes?” he asked.

  “See if you can find me a backpack or something.”

  “You got it,” Rocha replied and got up, peeked out the door, and then left.

  Clark thought it was eerily quiet in the lab with just himself and nine dead bodies and felt a shiver roll up his spine. Focus, he thought, and got back to work sorting the documents. By the time Rocha came back with a red defibrillator box that was the size of a carry-on suitcase, Clark had enormous stacks of paper on the desktop. Clark looked at the box.

  “It's the only thing I could find with shoulder straps,” Rocha said. “You need your hands free to shoot.”

  Clark shrugged. He knew Rocha was right, but there was no way all of the papers that he had stacked would fit. He looked around, his eyes stopping on the printer, and had an idea. Most of the paper was printed, not handwritten. That meant at one time or another, the information had probably been on a computer. Hopefully the one right there in the lab. Or the hospital’s network, but that was a problem for a different day. If it was on the network, then he would send Rocha back later to get to the network server. If it was on the local computer’s hard drive, then he would take the hard drive and ignore all of pieces of paper that were from a printer.

  “What’s up?” Rocha asked.

  “Do me a favor and take the hard drive out of this computer.”

  “I can do that,” Rocha said, pulling back out his multi-tool and getting to work. While that was going on, Clark sorted the documentation as quickly as he could and set aside only the handwritten pages. He was soon left with a stack of papers which would fit nicely into the defibrillator box. He opened the box on the lab table, took out the defibrillator and it’s accessories and tossed them under the table. He then filled the empty box with the documentation he wanted. Rocha made quick work of the computer and handed Clark the hard drive, which Clark put into the box with the rest of the notes. He closed it up, put it on his back, and tightened the shoulder straps.

  “Perfect,” he said. He felt like a kid on Christmas and could hardly wait to get somewhere he could begin dissecting the data.

  “You ready?” Rocha asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Clark replied.

  “Let's move then,” Rocha said. “We have a long hike ahead of us.”

  “Whoa,” Clark said. “What? I thought we would just go up on the roof and catch a ride like the survivors.”

  Rocha looked at Clark like he was an idiot. “Dude,” he said. “Where have you been? Survivors are priority Alpha. We are not. You want to get your notes back to Command, you have to carry them.”

  Clark could not believe it. Doesn’t anyone understand the importance of this documentation? he thought. “These notes are going to save the world!” he said. “These records are more important than any of those survivors. We need to get these back to Command immediately. Every second counts!”

  “Whatever, Doc,” Rocha said. “You want to get them back to Command? Then let's get a move on.” He went to the door, peeked out, and stepped into the hall, leaving Clark to do nothing but fume.

  Unbelievable! Clark thought. “Fine,” he said as he left the room and began to reluctantly follow Rocha back down the dark and bloodstained hallway.

  LUKE

  Luke went into a coughing fit. Deep, heavy chest coughs which sounded like something wet and ugly had taken up residence deep in his lungs. He remembered a few years ago, he had coughed like that for a week, in the good old days before the world had been overrun by the zombie apocalypse. He had thought at the time he must have had lung cancer because no one without some kind of fatal illness should ever have to cough like that. Back then, he decided he had to quit smoking so much because, while they normally made him feel better even under the worst circumstances, he was suddenly sure he was dying. He decided to reign in his smoking to only one pack a day. It had been hell. Cutting back had been nearly impossible, but he could not bring himself to go to the doctor, so he had suffered through it. Thankfully, a week later the cough had lightened up and he had gone back to burning his way through three packs a day.

  Unfortunately, the way he was coughing now made that one week feel like a bad case of the sniffles. He was coughing so hard he thought he would break his ribs or pass out. Finally he was able to catch his breath so he hawked up the phlegm in his throat and spit onto the floor of the garage. He recoiled at
the sight of the wad of dark red blood. Did that just come out of me? he thought. He pulled the pack of smokes stuffed in his pocket and crushed them in one hand before he threw them at the back wall of the garage.

  About time I stopped that shit, Luke thought and took another quick glance at the clot of blood on the floor. He decided to pretend it was there all along. Maybe that isn’t really blood. I must have just spit into a spot of oil, he decided and went back to work connecting the hand pump to the barrel of fuel. He was trying to extract the gas from the fuel drum and run it into the tank of the bank truck. He had been trying to do this for the last hour. The problem was he could not get the pump to hold fast to the rim of the drum. It did not help that his head had begun to hurt and his vision in one eye had gone blurry. What the hell is wrong with me? he wondered and peeked at the spot of blood on the floor again.

  “Hey!” Matt called from the front of the bank truck. “Come hold these two wires together again.”

  Eat shit and die, Luke thought, but he put the hand pump on its side on top of the drum and went over to the driver’s side of the bank truck. Matt had to completely tear apart the vehicle's ignition to get to the wiring underneath. After he had finally figured out which wires were which, he had gotten the engine to catch, but it would not start. Matt didn’t know if it was because the truck was out of gas, if the battery was dead, or what, so they had hooked the generator up to the battery connectors and saw the fuel gauge showed empty. That was when Matt put Luke on the duty of filling the tank. Unfortunately, Matt had then promptly fallen into the habit of changing what he wanted Luke to do every two minutes. It was starting to really piss Luke off, to the point he had considered going out to the tow truck and getting his shotgun. That way if Matt kept ordering him around, he would just blow the sorry piece of shit into the same corner he had shot the hermit. Luke’s mood was not helped when he imagined Ted and Pete were probably over at the ambush site picking their asses, torturing zombies, or God only knew what else.