Doctor Yew paid him no mind as he began to scribble an equation onto his pad. When he was done with the equation he wrote down a few observations and then looked at the Lieutenant Colonel that was now pacing back and forth and growing more irritated, at least that is what is body language conveyed.
He looked back at the formula that had been developed by Doctor Rutledge at the University of London and tapped the pencil to his pad several times before holding the pencil between his teeth and getting more lost in thought. He barely recognized the sighing of the Colonel as he paced to the window and stood looking out over the campus of the United States Naval Academy.
Doctor Yew began thinking back to the afternoon and the battle that had been taking place around the Capitol Building. He was in the midst of writing another equation when the Colonel interrupted him.
‘Where did they bring you in from?” the Colonel asked. But his tone suggested that he was trying to make polite conversation rather than holding a genuine interest. The Doctor made a slow and deliberate display of putting his pad and pencil away before answering.
“I came in from DC”. He held out a hand. “Yew” he added.
“Oh, I came in from Fort Lee” the Colonel said, taking the man’s hand and shaking it twice.
“Sorry, I mean my name is Yew. Y.E.W.” he said with a smile, and the Colonel looked embarrassed for a second.
“Oh Sorry, I’m Captain… I mean Lieutenant Colonel Timothy”. He reached up to is collar and brushed a finger and thumb across the golden oak leaves that had recently replaced his twin Captain’s bars.
“How recent?” the doctor asked with a smile, as he attempted to ease the soldier’s embarrassment.
“Six Hours and...” he paused for a second and checked his watch, “…twenty three minutes.” The new Colonel then smiled back and took the seat opposite the doctor once more, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.
“What were you working on there?” He said, using his head to point towards the Doctor’s pocket.
“Oh, its math, I am trying to work out why the crowd would riot so quickly in DC the way they did this afternoon.” He shook his head as he spoke and looked at the ground. It was obvious to Colonel Timothy that this man had seen something horrific earlier. The sagging of his shoulders and the resigned dropping of the head spoke volumes. Yet, the fact that the doctor had not become hysterical or upset meant that this was not his first rodeo.
“Riots?” the colonel asked, a little confused at the Doctor’s word choice.
“Yes, outside the Capitol. It is true that happiness deteriorates rapidly in a fast spreading outbreak, but, of the reported cases, the public reaction is overwhelming. According to this equation I was just working on, happiness only deteriorates when things are going worse than expected, but over a period of time, not two days.”
“You don’t know do you?” The Colonel asked
“Know what?” the Doctor replied, but before the answer could be given, a man that was obviously secret service opened the door at the end of the corridor and invited them both in to the room where the President of the United States sat at the head of a long oak table.
Colonel Timothy stood to attention and made a quick salute before reporting in with a degree of formality slightly confusing to Doctor Yew.
‘Mister President” Yew uttered, in a voice that was resigned and sullen. Doctor Yew suddenly realized that his isolation in the CDC building had led to his missing some vital parts of the puzzle here.
“Gentlemen, please sit.” The president beckoned, using a pile of papers in his hands to motion to the two empty chairs. It was perceived as an order, which both men followed. And they waited in quietly as the President looked out of his window silently for a moment.
“Colonel Timothy and Doctor Yew” the President began “Both of you are graduates of two of the finest Military Academies in the world. Both of you are in mediocre positions within The Army and the Centers for Disease Control, and yet it is you two that I am now asking for advice. You may wonder why.”
The President paused again and the two men replied in the affirmative.
“Gentlemen, it is because you are two of the dumbest fucks I have ever met. Timothy, you wrote a paper on the “Logistical Preparations Required in the Event of an Undead Population Rising”. And you, Doctor Yew, are the man behind the CDC’S “Prepare for a Zombie Outbreak, Prepare for any Disaster” initiative.
In short, I am now seeking advice from a washed out alcoholic and a CDC Math nerd because you are the only two people in the entire United States Government who have even contemplated a zombie outbreak of any kind. Do you have any idea how much that fucking fills me with an overwhelming sense of dread right now?”
The two men looked back at the President in silence. Doctor Yew was the first to speak.
“Sir,” he began, “I actually am not aware of a zombie outbreak even being possible.”
The president said nothing for a moment and then nodded to a Midshipman Cadet whom Yew recognized as the young and pretty girl that had escorted him here earlier.
A screen filled and one of the President’s advisors began to speak over the video feeds.
“Providence Rhode Island has been overrun in less than two days. Those who escaped gave accounts of enraged crowds biting and eating people in mass groups. California, Los Angeles and San Francisco are reporting pockets of resistance against creatures using the same MO to attack those who are not infected.
New York City looks like a battle field from the air, and those communications we can get out are minimal. I-95 is a goddamn parking lot and “zombies” are attacking vehicles.”
The screen showed an obvious feed from a predator drone as it flew over a line of stationary vehicles near Richmond Virginia. The images showed crowds of people running away from a slower moving crowd of approximately two hundred approaching from the south. Those fleeing snaked their way through cars and trucks. Occasionally one or two people would dive under cars or fall under the feet of those moving more quickly. The images panned out and, unseen to those fleeing the smaller crowd, a much larger crowd was walking south. Over a thousand people strong the crowd advanced.
Everyone in the room watched in horrified silence as the fleeing crowd stopped. Several people climbed atop of an abandoned Semi truck, but others tried to flee the road.
Then the two crowds met and sandwiched their victims between them. There was no sound, but as he had imagined earlier that day, Doctor Yew thought that the horrific screams must have been deafening. As if to compound the horror, a large group of people that had taken refuge on the top of a school bus slipped into the crowd one by one as their assumed sanctuary rocked back and forth.
Now only one person remained on top of the bus. Then, like a massive organism, the now converged super-crowd left the road and moved like a swarm of ants into the southern suburbs of Richmond. The predator drone flew in low and picked up the ones lucky enough to have taken refuge atop of semis and busses. In this part of Richmond, Yew counted seven survivors.
“Doctor Yew. I hope you are more than aware now!” said the President as he turned to look out of the window again. Yew caught sight of the Midshipman Captain in the corner of the room who stared blankly ahead. She was trying desperately to keep her emotions in check. Yew admired her courage, even when she asked to be excused and he saw the tears welling from her eyes and streaking down her cheeks. Emotion was also etched on the Presidents face when he turned back to the room.
“I have never felt so gad-damn fucking helpless in my life people, but that pales in comparison to those people sitting out there on trucks and waiting for help that we cannot provide. Fix it!” he yelled for real this time and slammed his bare palms down roughly on the desk.
“Timothy and Yew, you may be crazy sons-of-bitches, but you two are actually the only ones who have designed any kind of a plan. Get to work. We want a briefing at seven AM. No one sleeps until those poor bastards are rescued.”
“Sir,” interrupted Yew raising his hand slightly.
“What is it Yew? And don’t raise your hand, this is not third grade” the president snapped.
“Yes Sir” he began, lowering his hand slowly. “A point you may want to note, is that research shows that when people are in dense areas, say seven people per square meter, they stop acting as individuals.”
“What are you saying?” The president asked.
“Sir, what I am saying is that if we use crowds as an example, such as Hillsborough Stadium in 1989, or The Who Concert a decade earlier, we find that when a crowd is in a singular space, a series of sentient people will almost move like particles in a gas. A group mentality takes over. Consequently, the crowd will push on as one unit and trample everything underfoot.”
“And what does that have to do with these fuckers?” It was Timothy that asked the question this time. He quickly realized that he had spoken out of turn and looked to the President and received a nod in reply.
“Go on Doctor Yew.” The president added.
“Sir, I am saying that if sentient humans can develop a hive mind mentality in a crowd, these creatures will stop being individuals in a confined space and start acting as one very soon. They just rocked nine people off of a bus without a thought. If we do not think these crowds out, we are going to have a locust swarm on our hands. An all-consuming relentless swarm that never stops; what we just witnessed was only the beginning.”
Epilogue
It had been dark for hours now and Dana sat alone on the top of the yellow school-bus. She could not see much in the cloudless night. A few lights shone in the upper floors of the Hampton Court Hotel that was on the opposite side of the Interstate 95. Although she was aching, cold and thirsty, she had no way of knowing where to go, or what to do once she got down from the roof of the bus. She simply sat and watched and listened. Occasionally she would hear a volley of gun shots coming from a place in the city that she did not know.
There were whispering voices nearby. Before the light had completely gone she had seen people nearby also on the roofs of vehicles. The closest to her was a couple, or at least she assumed they were a couple, on the roof of a semi. Occasionally there would be a flash of light that illuminated another survivor who checked a phone for a signal.
After dark she had heard a woman sobbing about how she had left her children, and that the herd had swallowed them up.
“Joanne, no, they may be alive, or there may be a reason you lived.” Another voice had responded.
There was a flash of light north of Dana’s position as a muzzle flashed and then the sobbing resumed.
That sobbing voice whispered a prayer later in the night just before the sound of a body hitting the ground. Joanne, whoever she was, had taken her own life. At least that was what Dana concluded now that she could no longer hear her sobs.
Dana was only twenty years old herself, and had been trying to get home to Newcastle Delaware when the news went dead. She had chosen not to take a Spring-break trip. She just wanted to be home from college, read a book and share a long talk about Adam with her mother.
Yet Adam was not here now, and the conversation about her hopes and dreams of a wonderful future with Adam would never take place now because he had gone. Gone in the time it took him to accidently slip from the roof of the bus earlier.
Dana knew he had saved her life when he had boosted her atop of the school-bus but then he slipped and was swallowed by the herd. How he had screamed as they bit into him and tore the flesh from his bones. She had been too frozen with fear to even think about trying to help him.
The only movement she had felt was the warm stream of urine that had involuntarily escaped her body as the bus had rocked back and forth and one by one the people had slipped into the waves of the dead.
A light flashed on and off from the roof of the Hampton Court, she did not understand Morse code, but she knew that three short flashes, followed by three long and three more short ones meant S.O.S.
The flashing light annoyed.
“Yeah, Save you from a fucking Luxury Hotel!” she screamed back at the light and others around her called back for her to be quiet.
“Oh fuck you!” she called back and sat back down on her bus roof. The cold dampness of her clothes reminded her of her earlier accident and she wept softly to herself for a moment.
“Is someone up there?” a voice suddenly asked in a hushed tone. Dana realized that the sound was coming from inside the bus.
“Yes.” She responded in her own hushed tone.
“Oh cool” said the young man’s voice. “There are two of us in here. Everyone else ran away. There is just me and my sister, Aleksandra.”
“Ally” another voice said in a softer tone. “People call me Ally now” she scolded.
She nodded for a second and then realized that they could not see her.
“Are you two ok? Are you hurt or anything?” she asked. Both replied that they were not hurt.
“Ok, listen, I need you to open the door for me. You cannot stay there. You need to come onto the roof to be safe. Can you do that for me?”
The two replied that they could before Dana instructed them to pass up as many bags, or other items from inside, they could find. From the center of the bus, the boy, who had by now identified himself as Juan, passed up ten school bags in addition to his own and Ally’s.
The door to the bus opened and Dana moved quickly to boost the two kids up onto the roof of the bus. The whole process took approximately five minutes, but it felt like a life time.
The kids where ages thirteen and fifteen and had obviously belonged to the student body of some ill-fated school.
Juan settled down in the center of the roof and Ally sat next to him.
“Everybody is dead aren’t they?” Ally asked a few moments later, but Dana paid it no attention.
“Is mom dead?” she asked after another few moments and then nodded to herself. She was silent for a while, as was Dana and Juan. They had all lost someone today, but for some reason, mourning was not something to be done now.
Almost as if their bodies had taken control of their emotions. They each sounded like they fought back tears until well into the morning.
“I am freezing” Dana said after a while, and then started rummaging through the school bags.
“Is that because you pissed yourself?” Juan asked, with an awkward laugh.
“Juan!” His sister protested but Dana shook it off. He was fifteen and she was twenty. Hormones are hormones Dana thought even in an apocalyptic scenario atop a school bus.
In the third bag she was lucky enough to find a pair of sweat pants, and thankfully they were still clean. She instructed the boy to turn away and pulled off her own damp pants and threw them to the ground.
Within minutes she was changed and enjoying the warmth of the sweat pants on her legs. She continued scavenging her way through the bags. Her haul was excellent for now. Four juice boxes, a PB&J sandwich, and a lunch pail with three bags of chips. It was hardly a feast, but it was enough for her and the kids to be distracted for a moment. When they were done she took a quick look at one of the mobile phones she had recovered. The time was one forty five in the morning.
“Dana?” asked Juan causing her to look up from the cell phone.
“Yes?” she added, as she shivered against the cold night air once more.
“Can you get us out of here?” he asked, and she nodded.
“I will do my best, I promise.”
As she lay with the two children that night, curled up against the cold beneath a hodge-podge blanket of coats and towels recovered from the bus, she listened to them sleep. She would soon join them. But before sleep finally embraced her, she gave way to one last exhausted thought:
Nice one Dana, now who the fuck is going to get you out of here?
******
She woke with a start the next morning. A gun shot filled the air amidst a groaning noise and a rocking
motion on the roof of the bus.
She opened her eyes and blinked against the morning’s emerging sunlight. Another series of blood curdling screams filled the air and she looked across to the Hampton Court. About forty people stood on the roof, some of them shooting down into the crowd of zombies that surrounded the hotel. As she sat up the bus rocked again. For as far as she could see zombies covered every inch of open ground.
Daring a look over the side of the bus’s roof she looked down into the blood shot eyes of a creature that had chewed away a chunk of his own cheek. The look of a predator with its prey in its eyes stared back at her.
With spittle, blood and flesh hanging from what had once been a human mouth saliva diluted blood ran freely from its face. The creature tilted back its head and let out a long slow high pitched scream at Dana.
END OF DAY TWO
Zombie Outbreak Z1O5 (Book 2): Zed Dawn Page 12