by Tristan Vick
As Gordon passed by, he beckoned for them to follow with a friendly nod.
The woman looked down at the little dog and smiled, then tossed the broken bottle back onto the sandy beach. Although she couldn’t quite remember who she was, she knew she was a decent judge of character, and decided that Gordon Longstaff was good people. Confident they were in safe company, the woman and the corgi trailed after the Cowboy.
PART 1
KINGDOM OF
THE LIVING DEAD
NEWCASTLE CITY, NEW YORK, U.S.A.
THE QUARANTEEN ZONE
1
Running Scared
The Outskirts of Newcastle City
Flicking on the high beams, Rachael Ramirez raced down the long, dark coastal road. There weren’t any other cars in sight, so she hit the gas and took the silver Audi Q7 well beyond the speed limit. She didn’t know why she felt in such a hurry, just that, in the wake of recent events, things felt more urgent somehow.
Alyssa and she had barely made it out of the Newcastle Middle School parking lot alive. Principle Sanders, or what used to be Principle Sanders, viciously attacked them as they were leaving. And even though she hadn’t found any trace of her son Hector, she knew he was still out there. Somewhere.
It wasn’t long before they saw the string of lights demarcating the perimeter of the quarantine zone that the military had set up. A large electric fence spanned the horizon in either direction and surrounded what appeared to be the entire south section of the city. She wondered how the military had pulled that off so fast; almost as if they’d been expecting it. The highway itself went straight up to the gate, so any person going in or out of the city would have to go through there first.
Spotlights prowled the area in front of the main gate. Suddenly one of the beams locked onto them. The hot flash of white light blinded Rachael’s eyes.
Reflexively, she put her hand up in front of her face and tried to squint past the light. Just as her eyes started to readjust, Rachael saw the flash of muzzle shots go off as a warning for them to slow down. But it was too late for that. Rachael hadn’t caught it in time.
The Audi sped over the spike strip, and with a deafening pop, all four of the tires blew out and sent the car into a sideways nose dive. Rachael over-corrected and the SUV skidded sideways, their momentum working violently against them.
Without warning, the Audi flipped up and caught air. For a moment, it seemed to hang in suspended motion before it came crashing down onto its hood. The windshield instantaneously shattered upon impact and glass flew everywhere, scratching up both Alyssa’s and Rachael’s faces and getting embedded in their hair.
Half a second later, the airbags deployed with a bang, and both women slammed into them as the vehicle smashed down on its engine block. The weight of the heavy car’s sharp downward momentum pushed against the resistance of the roll beam and sent the vehicle into a freewheeling spin.
The Audi rolled three times, whipping its occupants around like rag dolls, and skidded across the highway, upside down on its crumpled roof. Sparks flying, the SUV scraped along the pavement towards the fencing until it finally came to a screeching halt just meters away from the entrance of the main gate.
Dangling upside down in the turned-over vehicle, Alyssa tried to focus on Rachael, but her vision blurred in and out as she fought to stay conscious. A large piece of metal wreckage had torn off in the violent somersault and pierced Rachael’s abdomen. The scrap metal went in one side and out the other, pinning her to the seat. Blood pooled beneath her head; her hair laying soaked in the dripping mess. Rachael was bleeding out.
Alyssa reached over to try and touch her friend's neck, wanting urgently to find a pulse. But she was stopped short by the horrible throbbing pain in her own head. She tried to fight it back, but the pain only intensified until she couldn’t take it any longer and then, suddenly, everything went black.
2
Quarantine
The Quarantine zone, Newcastle City
Smoke curled from the ashtray as General Greer put out his cigar. Brushing away the wispy trails that lingered in front of his face, Greer glanced around the room at the skeleton crew that manned the command room. He watched as his people diligently monitored the screens that showed live feeds of the entire perimeter. Now that the President had declared quarantine of all infected zones in or around Newcastle, nobody came in or out without his explicit consent.
Anyone who approached the perimeter with the slightest symptom of potential infection, such a bite mark, pale skin, or even so much as a fever, was serendipitously ordered to turn around immediately and go back the way they had come.
Greer checked the monitors and grumbled to himself. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. Moments earlier, some lunatic had made a mad beeline straight toward the perimeter and wrecked their car. Yet due to the imperative of having to maintain a stable perimeter, Greer decided to put out the goddamn fire before it could escalate into a catastrophe. The SUV had crashed close enough to the main gate that if the fuel tank had exploded it could have blown a hole in his whole operation, and the general was not about to let himself go down in history as the guy who botched the most important quarantine in the history of the human race.
Greer flipped a button on his desk. The entire glass surface was, in fact, a touch panel computer. He slid a blue eagle icon to the front of his desk, and it flew off-panel and instantly appeared on the larger command monitor at the front of the room, which was practically the size of a cinema movie screen. The larger panel brought up a live video feed of the smoldering wreckage outside the front gate while a series of smaller video panes got bumped to the side. The numerous boxes made the entire thing look like a living graphic novel playing out in real time.
Each video stream broadcast various security feeds from around the base. Greer could see everything, from the internal corridors of the base, to the lab technicians working on blood samples, to the guards doing their patrols along the fence line. Greer had eyes on it all. Nothing went on under his nose without his knowledge. Information was power, and he had it all funneled right to his command station.
Greer pressed a green flashing audio icon on the black, touch sensitive screen, which brought up the sound to the main monitor. The button chirped and Greer spoke up. “Sergeant, give me your status report.”
Standing next to the battered remains of the Audi Q7, Ulysses Noble touched the intercom on his ear, which looked like a wireless Bluetooth headset for a cell phone, and answered, “We pulled out two female survivors from the vehicle.” Behind him, a contingent of U.S. Marines attended to the wreckage, and a medic was busy assessing one of the women.
“What are their conditions, Sergeant?”
“Both are badly wounded, Sir.”
“Do they appear to be infected?” asked the general gruffly.
“One appears to have suffered a series of extreme bites. The other one has bandages around her right leg covering what appears to be a stab wound, but they’re both covered in contusions How do you want me to proceed, Sir?”
Leaning back in his chair, the general put his chin on his interlocked fingers and made a mental map of event, approaching things from every possible angle. After giving it some thought, Greer asked, “How fresh are those bite marks, Sergeant?”
“They seem at least a couple hours old, Sir. Should I leave her on this side of the fence?”
Usually the virus spread instantaneously: ten to twenty minutes after infection, the person turned. This was the first time he’d heard of a case of someone lasting several hours. But, then again, they were still observing the behavior of the disease, and the bite marks might not even be from an infected person. Still, it piqued his curiosity—enough to warrant further investigation. “That won’t be necessary. Have them sent to the infirmary. Make sure you take all the necessary precautions.”
“Yes, Sir.”
General Greer swiped his hand across the display that was seamlessly integrated into
his desk and brought up a carousel of icons before him. Scrolling through several of the icons, he finally selected a Red Cross shield and flicked it with a finger so it slid across his desk to the edge of the screen and then leaped up onto the main monitor.
A beautiful brunette, wearing dark-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat, suddenly appeared on the main screen. She held the latest generation iPad in her hands and seemed to be studying a high definition FMRI scan of a patient’s head on her tablet screen.
“Dr. Hemingway, this is General Greer.”
Patricia Hemingway looked up from her device and turned to a camera mounted on the ceiling just over her shoulder. “Good evening, General. To what do I owe the pleasure of this late night video call?”
“Sorry, but I don’t have time for idle chit-chat right now, doctor. You have two wounded headed your way.”
“Any signs of infection?”
“It’s uncertain at this time. Just be ready for anything.”
Scrambling to get herself organized, the good doctor enthusiastically replied, “Yes, Sir. I’ll be ready.”
The general double-tapped his desktop and the doctor’s screen flicked off. Picking back up the barely usable stub of his still smoldering cigar from the ashtray, Greer began puffing on it, slowly breathing it back to life, giving it an orange, glowing pulse.
3
Resurrection Girl
The Quarantine zone, Newcastle City
Rachael Ramirez awoke to find herself strapped to what seemed to be a surgical table. Wide restraining straps held her flat against the cold metal surface and were placed in just the right positions so that they strategically covered her private bits. Stitches, like little black train tracks running down her abdomen, held her side together from where the shard of metal car wreckage had sliced through her. But aside from the overly tight straps of her bed, she felt fine.
Blinking her eyes to try and clear away her blurry vision, she noticed the room was completely empty except for the intravenous saline infusion being dripped into her arm and the mirror reflecting the image of her naked body back to her. Blue dotted pencil lines circled the bite marks where Hector had sunk his teeth into her, but apart from the drip and the weird penciling, it didn’t appear that she’d been molested or treated roughly, or anything. At least, not in the alien abduction with a complementary anal probe sort of way. Thank God.
Unexpectedly, a voice came over the intercom. “I’m glad you’re finally awake. I have so many questions to ask you about your wounds…and how you sustained them.”
Rachael assumed it was someone on the other side of the looking glass, probably military personnel, so she tilted her chin it its direction. “Who are you? What is this place? Where am I?”
“Do you know your name?”
“Yes. It’s Rachael Ramirez.”
“Good. When is your birthday?”
“Why? Is that important?”
“Please, just answer the question, miss Ramirez.”
Letting out a disgruntled huff, she answered, “March seventeenth…I’m 35.”
“Excellent. Now, how many fingers am I holding up?”
Rachael glared at the two-way glass that reflected her less than amused image back at her.
“Sorry,” the feminine voice apologized. “A bit of uncouth humor to lighten the mood. My name is Dr. Patricia Hemingway. And I have both good news and bad news for you, Ms. Ramirez. Unfortunately, you’ve been quarantined.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Rachael said briskly, her patience beginning to wear thin. “But how about being a little judicious and sharing some answers with me in return. And perhaps some clothes? Or even a blanket, maybe?”
“Yes, I apologize for the demoralizing nature of this interrogation. But we have to monitor you closely for signs of infection.”
“Infection? What sort of infection?”
“Ms. Ramirez, I’ll do my best to answer all of your questions in due time, but first I am going to need you to answer a few more questions for me.”
“Like what, exactly?” Rachael asked. Pissed off at how she was being treated, she shifted in discomfort as she looked past her naked reflection, waiting for the voice to respond.
“Your wounds—they’re human bite marks, are they not? How long has it been since you were bitten?”
“I…I don’t remember. Is it important?”
“Try to think. The more precise you can be, the better.”
Staring at her body in the mirror, Rachael mapped out the lacerations on her arms, her shoulders, her neck, and the scratches everywhere in between, even across her abdomen. Each blemish was a painful reminder of where her son, Hector, had mauled her. She put the rest of the terrible events out of her mind and closed her eyes and fought back the tears.
“I know this must be a terribly difficult for you, but we need to know exactly when you were bitten.”
“Yesterday afternoon, I think.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“A little over ten or twelve hours ago,” Rachael replied. Although it was just a guess. The past two days had been complete chaos and she honestly didn’t know how long it had been since she discovered her son eating the family cat behind the kitchen counter. Or the shocking events that followed when she confronted him over it. In fact, she didn’t even recollect sleeping all that much. How could she? It was as though she were caught in some kind of never ending nightmare and couldn’t wake up.
Doctor Hemingway flicked off the intercom and mulled it over for a minute. That was far longer than the window of time the virus needed to fully infect its host. If she was carrying the virus, this could be very good news. Hemingway flicked back on the intercom. “Infection occurs via the blood—either through a bite or a wound of some kind. A laceration, for example. If you’ve been infected, you should soon experience a severe fever.”
“My son had a fever the night before…before it happened,” Rachael said in a somber voice that did little to conceal the deeply affective pain she felt as a mother.
Although Patricia Hemingway could see Rachael’s heartache from the other side of the looking glass, she couldn’t help but smile. It was beginning to sound more and more like she had found what she was looking for. Someone with a naturally occurring genetic variation to antiviral proteins; this could potentially make the person completely resistant to the virus. She might use this person to develop a cure; perhaps even a vaccine.
“Am I infected, Doctor?” Rachael asked, gazing sternly at the mirror.
“The infected experience a severe fever, among other, well, unpleasant symptoms, followed by certain death. But this is only the beginning of our acquaintance with this virus. This new contagion is unlike anything we have ever encountered before.”
“By we do you mean the CDC? The military? Who are you people?” Rachael asked. She waited a few moments for a reply before the voice started back up.
“Your inference is correct, Ms. Ramirez.”
“Which one?”
“All of them.”
“All of them? So, it’s that bad, is it?”
“Let’s just say the CDC brought to my attention five days ago that there was an Amber Alert for a potential pandemic of an unknown contagion. Twenty-four hours after that, the threat level jumped up to Orange, and not even ten hours after that it went to Red. If we don’t get a handle on this thing in the next sixty-four hours, the death toll could be apocalyptic in scale.”
“As morbidly fascinating as that all is, Doctor,” Rachael said in her “legal” tone of voice, “The question you keep skirting around is whether I’m infected. So, if you don’t mind cutting to the chase, am I or aren’t I?”
“I’m afraid we won’t know for certain until your blood work comes back.”
“If I am, what will happen to me exactly?” Although Rachael didn’t really care to know the answer to that, she needed to know.
“As you are well aware, the virus most easily propagates through entering an open wound, usuall
y as something as simple as a bite—a highly efficient delivery mechanism whereby it can quickly infect its host. The body fights back, naturally, but the ensuing fever destroys the enzymes that keep the body at functioning. Once the body burns itself out combating the infection, it quickly dies. Delirium is often a common side-effect from the intense fever just prior to death. This renders the brain quite useless, so when the body reanimates, it is stuck in a primal state of instinct only. The strongest of human instincts being the need to eat and procreate.”
“Reanimate?! What are you getting at, Doctor?” Rachael asked, fending off her urge to gasp in shock. “Are you saying people are turning into living corpses?”
There was a long pause.
“Precisely.”
4
Failure
The Quarantine zone, Newcastle City
Returning from his meeting with Dr. Hemingway, who’d briefed him on the condition of the survivors, General Greer marched into the command room and, shouting over the racket of the alarm, barked, “Report!”
First Sergeant Valentine was already at a console, bringing up a schematic that she swiped up onto the main display. It showed a computer-generated image of the city and the perimeter wrapping around it, delineated by the green glowing fence. Valentine zoomed in to three flickering orange areas, called hot-spots, which showed breaks in the electrical current running through the fence, and said, “We have multiple breaches in the perimeter.”
“When did this happen?” Greer demanded.
She gave him a look that said she had no readily available answers. Valentine frowned and chewed her bottom lip as she nervously watched the orange flashing icons light up like a wild fire. It couldn’t have been more than twenty-minutes ago, but still, it was turning out to be an all-out cluster-fuck. Probably, thanks—in no small part—to their hasty command set-up. “It’s uncertain at this time, but I’ll do everything in my power to find out, Sir. What are your orders, Sir?”