by Tristan Vick
“I want you to send three teams to lock down the goddamned perimeter and close up those gaps. And shut off that infernal alarm while you’re at it!”
“Yes, Sir.” Valentine grabbed a head set with a mic and hit a button on the computer panel. Her voice came onto the speaker system for the entire base and she broke the bad news. “This is First Sergeant Valentine. This is a Level Orange threat. Squads seven, eight, and nine assemble and report for duty. Squads seven, eight, and nine, I repeat, this is not a drill. Threat level is Orange.”
The general slammed his fist down on the command table. The frustration of this slip-up cut through his thinly stretched nerves like a raging hot bayonet. Something was off about all this. Patrols walked that fence from sun up to sun down. There was no way all of his teams could have missed a gaping breach in the fence, let alone three of them. No, it was impossible. Rather, he had the gut feeling that this had to be something else.
Slowly, Greer reached inside his breast pocket and plucked out a plump cigar. He rolled it under his nose as he took in the scent of tobacco, but before he could pause long enough to enjoy it, five more orange marks suddenly lit up on the screen. Then several more. All of them blinked furiously in a bid for attention This time a new alarm sounded. The alarm he didn’t ever want to hear. The alarm of a full security failure.
Valentine shot the general with a worried look. “Full perimeter breach, Sir. The fence is down.”
Greer mulled over the information then said, “Cancel my previous orders and initiate fail-safe protocols.”
“Sir?” Valentine inquired. Stress-induced sweat streamed down both sides of her face.
“Just do it,” Greer ordered.
“Yes, Sir.” She flicked on the intercom. “This is First Sergeant Valentine. The perimeter has been breached, we’re under attack. All units mobilize. This is not a drill. I repeat, we’re under attack.” Her voice echoed from the delay of the base’s outer speaker system and gave her warning an ominous, ethereal quality.
“Bring up the visuals,” Greer said with a wag of his finger. Multiple panels lit up and filled the main monitor. Every single one of them depicted a mass horde of walking dead storming the fence. Greer put the unlit cigar between his teeth and watched the nightmare unfold.
“There must be hundreds of them,” Valentine gasped in horror as she watched a sea of corpses claw their way onto one another, uncaring that they were crushing their own underfoot, until, finally, they formed a wall of writhing bodies.
Like a slow rolling wave, one after another they toppled over the electrified fence, which sparked and hissed in defiance. It wasn’t long until a portion of the fence snapped and smashed into the ground with a static pop, followed by a large crackle and a spray of dust infused with sparks. This blew the base’s breaker and the fence went from hot to completely cold.
Inside the dark control room, an orange and blue-tipped flame appeared as Greer lit his cigar. He looked up at the monitors flickering back to life as the backup generators turned on. It was just in time to see the first team engage the zombie horde. Gunfire mowed down several waves of bodies, but it did little good. Most of the monsters simply got back up and, oblivious to the pain that would cripple a normal human being, they continued to push forward, relentless in their undertaking.
Out in the open, automatic gunfire rang out as the soldiers shot blindly at the horde and shared nervous glances. The wall of undead tightened in on them, and then, somewhere nearby, a grenade went off. Dozens of bodies flew into the air; severed limbs exploded in every direction. But still, the march of the undead continued. More grenades went off as soldiers resorted to more drastic measures and more powerful ammunition. But even the added firepower didn’t do much to deter the stampede of the mindless monsters. They just got back up again and rejoined the horde, leaving severed and smoldering limbs behind as they relentlessly pushed onward.
More marines arrived in time, only to repeat the same old routine—guns, fire, grenades, explosions, more fire…then the screams of good men falling to the ravenous horde of undead, and the burning stench of flesh. Like a plague of locusts, they descended upon and devoured anything and everything that stood in their way.
“This is a goddamn fucking nightmare,” said Greer, puffing crossly on his cigar. “Issue the order for evacuation.”
“Yes, Sir. Right away, Sir.”
Newcastle City was as good as lost, and Greer knew that it would be his head they put on a spike for this. But he’d handle that when the time came. Right now he had more pressing concerns to deal with.
Taking one last drag on his cigar, General Greer turned back toward the monitors and watched as the monsters overtook the base’s perimeter. It was only a matter of time before they’d be pounding down his front door.
5
Knock Knock
The Quarantine zone, Newcastle City
Sand bags were piled high in a series of makeshift barriers that ran down the hallway which lead up to the main entrance of the base. Three barriers had been constructed as a means to endure a last stand if worse came to worst. Behind each post stood a contingent of Marines armed with M4 carbines replete with grenade launchers.
General Greer walked up to the glass of the front door and puffed on his cigar. On the other side was the horribly disfigured face of a man he didn’t recognize pawing at the glass window with bloodied appendages. Fresh blood dribbled down the creature’s jowls from a recent kill.
As the monster stared back at him from the other side of the thin pane of glass with those terrible white eyes, Greer couldn’t help but find it bothersome. Puffing up a storm, he took a long drag on his cigar, then blew smoke at the creature’s face. The smoke merely hit the glass and dissipated into a uniform haze, blurring out the threat gathering on the other side of the doors. The perimeter of the base had been overrun and now an entire throng of the undead stood outside, clawing at the walls and doors. It was their way of asking to be invited in for dinner. And Greer didn’t like it. Not one goddamn bit.
More distressed than usual, Greer gathered himself and tugged on his uniform, straightened his white, peaked cap, and did his best to conceal his concern. Then he turned and faced his men. “Nothing gets past this point,” he ordered. His Marines saluted him in reply.
With that, Greer knew he needed to get back to the command room ASAP, but first he wanted to check on Patricia Hemingway and her two patients. Making a detour to the medical lab, he was stopped by a male nurse at the doors to the lab room. The man’s name tag read Stephen Bowlin.
“Sorry, Sir. I cannot let you go beyond this point.”
“And why is that? What’s going on here, Bowlin?”
“It’s Doctor Hemingway, Sir,” Bowlin informed him, “she’s been injured. Currently, she’s being operated on.”
Greer could barely conceal his anger. “Why on God’s green earth wasn’t I notified? What the hell happened? I want answers and I want them now, goddammit!”
Bowlin looked over his shoulder to check how things were going in the operating room, then looked back at the general. “Maybe you should come with me.”
Ushering the General to the observation window, he saw Hemingway lying on a table next to the woman from the car wreck, a “Rachael” somebody…if he recollected correctly.
“I found her lying unconscious on the floor shortly after the evacuation order was given.”
General Greer looked straight at the nurse, his eyes flickering with impending fury trapped behind the impregnable exterior of a well-disciplined Marine. “Well, spit it out, son. I ain’t got all day.”
The nurse looked right at the general. “Ms. Ramirez’s blood work came back an hour ago. She’s completely immune to the virus.”
“I see,” Greer said. He was still furious but equally astonished. And now, at least now, things were beginning to make better sense. “So, what you mean to tell me is, Dr. Hemingway willfully infected herself with the woman’s blood?”
�
�Yes; but it’s more complicated than that. For her body to produce the platelets needed to replicate the immunity, she needed a full bone marrow transplant. She knew you wouldn’t sign off on it unless she had a viable reason.”
“A Hail Mary pass,” Greer said in a hushed tone.
“Apparently so. But she knows what’s at stake. She knows exactly what she’s doing.”
“What she’s doing is goddamn reckless.”
“Maybe so, but by risking her life she’s hoping to ensure the rest of us will have a fighting chance.”
“What a tangled web we weave, Doctor,” Greer said, looking through the glass window at Hemingway lying on the operation table. “Just to be clear, if she succeeds in cloning Ms. Ramirez’s immune system, it will be a viable cure, correct?”
“That’s correct, Sir. It’s a miracle that Ms. Ramirez was even O-negative to begin with. But if everything goes smoothly, we should find out if we can clone her immune system and then do the same for other O-negative donors. Once we have a host of immune donors, we can begin curing others via standard blood transfusions.”
Still gazing through the glass at the unconscious Patricia, Greer whispered to her, knowing she couldn’t hear him. “This gambit had better pay off, Doctor. The fate of billions depends on it.” Greer turned back to the nurse and said, “Keep me updated on her condition. I want regular reports every hour on the hour.”
“Will do, Sir. Anything else?”
Greer stared through the glass at Dr. Hemingway. He wanted to say to the nurse to tell her to hang on, that he was worried about her, and that he’d do anything to make sure she came through as good as new. But he bit his tongue. It wouldn’t be professional to pour one’s feelings out for a co-worker, even if they were secretly on-again off-again lovers. Instead he just shook his head no, and said, “Just keep me posted.”
With that said, Greer left the medical wing and headed back toward the command station. That’s when he heard gunfire erupt from the main entrance. “Dammit all to hell,” he cursed. The base had been breached.
6
Evacuation
The Quarantine zone, Newcastle City
Doctor Patricia Hemingway opened her eyes, sat up on the operating table, and looked over at Rachael Ramirez, who lay on the gurney beside her, gazing back at the doctor with alluring brown eyes. “How do you feel?” she asked.
“I feel as well as can be expected, I guess.”
Swinging her legs over the edge of her bed, Hemingway slid down; two nurses rushed over to her to assist her. She raised her hand to stop them, as if to say don’t bother, and she stood upright on her own. “That’s peculiar,” she said aloud.
“What is it?” Rachael inquired.
“I feel perfectly fine. I mean, I should be sore as hell, but I feel as right as rain.”
A male nurse named Bowlin stepped up to her and leaned in and, not to alarm anyone else in the room, he whispered, “Doctor Hemingway, the based has been breached. We must leave immediately. It’s the General’s orders.”
“Wait a minute,” Rachael said as she sat up, rubbing her eyes. “I have to get Alyssa. We can’t just leave her here alone.”
Dr. Hemingway walked over and helped Rachael climb down off her bed. “I’m sure General Greer has everything under control,” she said in a consoling tone of voice. “I have the utmost confidence in him. I can assure you, your friend is in good hands.”
“You promise me she’ll be safe,” Rachael said, brushing a strand of sable hair form her face and tucking it behind her ear.
“You have my word, Ms. Ramirez. Now, the best course of action right now is to get you out of here and to Bradley Air Force Base where you’ll be safe. The very fate of the world may depend on whether you and I make it out of this mess alive. And come hell or high water, I swear to God, I will see that we do.”
Another nurse, whose name tag read Natalie Coleman, rushed into the room and handed both Doctor Hemingway and Rachael a set of freshly dry-cleaned clothes. Just then the emergency operating room doors swung open and a zombie stumbled in. Natalie turned in time to see it lunge forward and sink its ravenous teeth into Bowlin’s neck. Covering her mouth, she let out a terrible scream.
Bowlin tumbled to the ground, thrashing and kicking, doing his best to try to shake the zombie off of him, but it held on with an inhuman strength. “Get it off! Get it off!” he cried out, still flailing about as he tried to shake off his attacker.
“Get back!” Hemingway shouted. Rachael and Natalie did as they were told. Acting fast, Hemingway grabbed the unspeakably long needle, used for extracting bone marrow, from the surgical table and cautiously snuck up behind the zombie, which was busy tearing poor Mr. Bowlin apart.
As she inched up to the monster, she worried because Bowlin had suddenly fallen silent. Standing two feet away from the feeding beast, Dr. Hemingway raised the needle high above her. Without warning, the zombie stopped what it was doing, looked up and hissed at her. Startled, Hemingway screamed out, and with all her strength she slammed the oversized needle straight into the zombie’s left eye socket and pierced its brain.
The creature wobbled upon rickety legs momentarily before it collapsed under its own dead weight and crashed to the ground.
Nurse Bowlin lay on the cold tile floor in shock, as a fountain of blood gushed out of his gaping neck wound. With whatever strength he had left, he raised his lethargic hand and pressed down on the wound to prevent himself from bleeding out. Weary, he looked over at the deceased zombie lying on the floor next to him for a moment then slowly turned his head and looked back up at Dr. Hemingway’s tear-soaked face. Dismayed, he thought to himself, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was no way to die.
Without skipping a beat, Dr. Hemingway quickly reached over and grabbed some latex gloves from the same surgical table and slipped them on. Bending down, she immediately applied pressure to Bowlin’s spurting neck wound. She felt all the fear he was feeling as he gazed back up her with terrified eyes that caused a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Hang in there,” she whispered. But just as she had finished urging him to hold on, Bowlin’s eyes went blank and then his head fell lax. He was gone.
“Dammit!” Hemingway cursed. Sitting there, Bowlin’s blood all over her hands, she beat herself up over the fact that she hadn’t gotten to a cure soon enough. A full bone marrow transplant for every human on the planet wasn’t feasible. She still would need to develop a retroviral to combat the raging virus.
Letting out an unhappy sigh, Dr. Hemingway peeled off her gloves and, feeling utterly defeated, dropped them on the floor beside her. “I simply wasn’t fast enough.”
Bursts of automatic gunfire suddenly rang out in the hallway just outside the operating room doors. Worried, Rachael locked eyes with Hemingway, who was staring back at her with the same panic stricken expression, and said, “We have to go. Right now.”
Together, Rachael and Natalie helped Doctor Hemingway up off the floor and back onto her feet. Looking at them both, Doctor Hemingway promptly informed them, “There’ll be a MEDEVAC safety and rescue chopper waiting for us outside.”
“Are you kidding me?” Natalie gasped. “I’m not going out there. What if we run into more of those things?” she asked, nodding her chin at the dead zombie lying dead on the floor.
“If we wait here,” Dr. Hemingway answered, “we’ll be sitting ducks.”
“She’s right,” Rachael said in agreement. “We can’t just wait around here sitting on our thumbs, doing nothing.”
“But I don’t want to die like Bowlin,” Natalie said, her voice cracking from the stress of a sudden torrent of fear.
“If we stick together, we’ll be fine,” Rachael said, putting her hand on Natalie’s shoulder and making sure she made eye contact. Holding her attention, Rachael added, “Just stay calm, and whatever you do…don’t get bit.”
Suddenly they heard a metallic clank followed by the rattling noise of what sounded like a tin can rolling d
own the hall. A green canister hit the wall outside and then rebounded off and rolled in through the open doors of the O.R. All three women looked over at the doorway in time to see the grenade come to a stop right in front of them.
“Get back!” Rachael screamed. She ran to the large double doors, shuttled the grenade back out into the hall with a tap of her foot, and then slammed the doors shut. The moment they closed, the blast went off.
The doors tore from their hinges and sent Rachael flying backward. She slammed into the surgical table and then crashed to the floor. At the same time, Hemingway and Natalie were picked up off their feet from the force of the blast and tossed clear across the room. Everyone and everything, including a plethora of medical supplies, slammed into the back wall and crashed into a heap on the concrete floor.
Doctor Hemingway tried to push herself up off the floor but struggled to remain conscious, having struck her head against the back wall with a merciless wallop. As the room blurred in and out of focus, she realized she must have incurred a mild concussion. But no matter how much it pained her, she refused to allow herself to black out. If she blacked out now they would be hopeless to fend off the voracious, chomping teeth of the undead that were no doubt heading toward them right that very instant.
Crawling over to where Rachael lay, Dr. Hemingway checked her neck for a pulse. “Good—she’s alive,” Hemingway said with a sigh of relief. “Quick, Natalie,” she continued, “help me get her onto the table and…” Hemingway’s voice trailed off when she glanced over toward the unresponsive nurse who lay on the floor, her neck bent at an unnatural angle. Her eyes gazed vacantly at the adjacent wall.