by Brian Parker
“Y—yes, sir,” the lieutenant stammered.
By the time the young man held the phone out for Taavi, he was fully dressed in all of his gear and the first of his men were already rushing out the door toward the maintenance bays. He accepted the phone, glancing at the monitors as he did so. The Cursed were already at the doors of the maintenance section, tearing at them to get into the rest of the facility. It was only a matter of time.
“Hello? This is Major Shaikh.”
From the other end of the line, a sleep-hoarse voice said, “This is Sari. What is wrong?”
“We have a breach, Facilitator. The Cursed have made it through the outside perimeter and we’ve lost the maintenance bays. I estimate…” He glanced at the monitors again. “I estimate twelve hundred of them inside the facility.”
“That many? What of the specimens?”
Shaikh’s eyes wandered to the other set of monitors, the ones that his men usually tried to avoid watching as the scientists conducted their experiments, carrying on the work of madmen such as the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and the Japanese Surgeon General Shirō Ishii of the infamous Unit 731. The facility’s scientists had perfected the work of those men and the Cursed were a part of what they’d released upon the world. Taavi hated everything the scientists had created, but understood that the spread of the disease globally must have been Allah’s will. If He did not approve, then it would not have happened.
The monitors showed patients in various states, most visibly excited, running around their cells to smash into the cinder block walls or standing at the bars, shaking and biting at them like animals in a zoo. They would not escape. The cages were too well constructed.
In addition to the raving lunatics, several other patients seemed to remain calm, staring dazedly at the walls as they sat on their blanket. He’d learned through the weekly report to the council that the scientists believed those patients were the furthest along. Naturally immune, they’d been experimented upon to find a blocking agent for the curse, one that could be administered to the armies before they invaded the United States.
“For now, the patient wing is secure, Facilitator,” Taavi spoke firmly into the receiver. “I do not know how much longer that will be the case.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The doors from the maintenance facility will not hold against the pressure of so many bodies. They will be torn from their hinges from the push alone.”
“Why wouldn’t they just go away?”
Shaikh smirked. It was painfully obvious to him that the Facilitator had never been around the Cursed. “It took a long time to get the facility’s alarms turned off. Those klaxons that some idiot installed worked the local population into a frenzy. More are coming even as we speak, Facilitator. They will breach the main facility and all the research will be lost.”
There was a moment of silence on the line before Hamid Abdullah Sari spoke once more. “I must call Kasra Amol. She will make the decision about what you are to do with Site 53. I will call back in three minutes.”
The phone clicked dead and Shaikh handed the receiver to the lieutenant. “He will call back in a few minutes. You must answer it.”
“Where are you going, sir?”
“With my men,” the commander answered. “I have my handheld. Once the Facilitator calls with instructions, you may reach me there.”
“Uh… Yes, sir,” the man replied, standing and following after the major.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do not even think about locking this door behind me. If any of my men need to retreat from the Cursed, they will come here first. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. The door will remain unlocked.”
“Good,” Shaikh answered as he shouldered his way through the door into the corridor beyond. Behind him, he heard the lock click into place faintly.
After a year and a half underground, he knew the facility’s layout by heart and could navigate to the maintenance area blindfolded. At the moment, however, gunfire echoed down the halls, guiding him toward the fight. The exposed rock of the walls managed to both deaden and redirect the sharp reports from the rifles, temporarily disorienting him.
The bare earth and rock walls of the facility’s hallways were in stark contrast to the antiseptic white walls, floors, and ceilings of the scientific labs in the films that Taavi used to watch at the cinema as a youth. The engineers who built the lab did so with the purpose of speed and secrecy, not aesthetics. He turned toward the maintenance bays and began a slow jog. Anything faster and he risked becoming overheated or exhausted in the three-fourths of a kilometer between the security office and the outer doors of maintenance.
He made it less than half of that distance before the first of his men appeared. They stood in a line across the hallway, shoulder to shoulder, braced against the press of bodies assaulting them. The first row of his men acted as a wall, pushing back against the Cursed, while the next row stabbed between them into the crowd with long poles. It was similar to the Greek Phalanx of old, primitive, but highly effective against this type of enemy. Behind them, more of his men fired their rifles at head-height into the crowd. They were killing the Cursed by the scores inside the facility.
And yet, they were losing the battle.
He knew immediately that there would be no return from this incident. Shaikh wondered briefly if there was a way to draw them back outside through sound somehow, but knew it was a fool’s errand. The facility and all of the labs here were lost.
His radio crackled and he lifted it to his lips. “Yes?” he demanded.
“Sir, it’s—”
“I know who it is, dammit. What did the Facilitator say?”
“He said that Kasra Amol directed you to hold the labs. You are to secure the breach and save the work that the council has spent a decade perfecting.”
Typical, Shaikh thought. The dogs were safe back in Tehran while I am here, on the front lines of the battle. They direct me to hold what they have built, but I can’t. He depressed the transmit button on the radio, holding it near his lips. Slowly, he released the button and dug the small nub of an antenna into his forehead in frustration.
“Major Shaikh?” the lieutenant asked over the radio.
Taavi sighed heavily. If he tried to keep the facility open, all would be lost, that much was plain to see. Those fools in Tehran did not see what he did. Already, his men were being forced backward from sheer numbers. It was only a matter of time before their steroid-riddled muscles gave way to exhaustion. They would all die and all of the work would be lost anyways.
However, if he were to save the most promising subjects and take the hard drives, all would not be lost. He could deliver the prize to the council and snatch victory from the proverbial jaws of defeat. The council would understand the position he was in once he could explain it to them.
“Lieutenant Khavari,” he said, once more pressing the transmit button on the radio.
“Yes, sir?”
“Announce over the speakers that Site 53 is overrun and it is to be abandoned.”
“Sir?”
“No questions, Lieutenant. I am in charge of security for this station and I have made my determination based on facts on the ground. Are you writing down what I am telling you to say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Have the pilots prep the airplane. Tell the scientists to secure their lab notes and computer hard drives. There is no time for personal effects. Sedate and transport the test subjects who are the best candidates for success. All others are to be abandoned. Finally, tell the security forces to keep fighting, but to make their way slowly to the hangar. They must allow enough time for the scientists to clear the facility.” Shaikh checked his watch. “We will go wheels up in fifteen minutes.”
He paused, letting the man write everything down. When he felt that sufficient time had passed, he said, “Read it back to me.” Once the young officer had done so, Shaikh continued
, “Good. Make the announcement and follow the instructions as well. Record the video footage showing that the facility is overrun and bring those disks with you to the aircraft. That is the most important task, Khavari. Without proof that we had to abandon the facility, the council will have our heads on a spike. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will see you in a few minutes. Allāhu Akbar.”
“Allāhu Akbar.”
The press of the bodies in the hallway in front of him was too close to use his sidearm, so Shaikh pulled a long, slightly curved knife called a peshkabz from his belt and reversed his grip on the handle. The flat edge of the blade ran along his forearm with the point toward his elbow. Holding his knife this way would allow him to react quickly to the Cursed who emerged from around a corner on his way to the labs.
He didn’t have to wait long to test his skills with the Persian fighting knife. A man, nude except for one sock, bowled into him when he ran in front of an opening that led to the barracks rooms. Shaikh only had enough time to lift his arms when he saw the creature out of the corner of his eye. The blade sunk to the hilt in the soft flesh of its abdomen as he fell sideways with the man on top, riding him to the ground. Teeth grated against the hardened shoulder protector and Shaikh wrenched the knife upward. The razor sharp blade sliced through the skin, spilling gore onto his gloved hand.
As the facility’s chief of security, Taavi Shaikh had witnessed the transmission methods that the Cursed employed. They bit once or twice, and then vomited onto their victims, so it wasn’t a surprise when the creature’s mouth opened wide. He twisted and placed his foot against the man’s chin, then shoved hard.
A pink frothy mix of blood and fluids erupted against the wall. Shaikh left the boot in place and jerked at the peshkabz to free it. He had to push several times against the creature’s neck to get the leverage he needed to slide the blade away. Performing an awkward sit up, he slid his fist along his shin and slashed across his attacker’s jugular. It fell away, the lifeblood pumping rapidly from its failing body.
Shaikh breathed deeply as he rolled onto his stomach. Pushing himself to all fours, and then to his feet, he made his way toward the labs. Allah be praised that I avoided infection, he thought.
…For now.
Taavi’s stomach lurched as the ancient C-130 bounced down the facility’s short dirt runway before the pilot jerked the plane skyward to avoid the jungle below. Strapped into the seats along the fuselage, the major couldn’t see the trees, but he’d watched the old cargo planes taking off and landing often enough to know that they were mere meters below the landing gear.
He looked up and down the length of the aircraft as the hasty piles of hard drives, paperwork, backpacks, and even the occasional suitcase tumbled toward the rear ramp. There was nothing to be done about it until the pilots leveled off. If they’d had more time, they may have been able to secure everything under cargo netting, but the Cursed hadn’t afforded them that luxury. The security forces had collapsed only eight or nine minutes after his announcement and the pilots had to take off immediately.
The rapid collapse of the security forces meant that only one of the test subjects made it onto the plane. He was a white man, an American as far as they knew. The man had been captured during an attempted raid on the facility just a week before the council unleashed hell upon the entire planet. He’d proven to be naturally immune to the curse, and according to the scientists who studied him, his body was surprisingly resilient to experimentation. It was sheer luck that they’d been able to get that subject onto the plane. The rest were still strapped to the gurneys where they’d been lined up, ready to load when the Cursed came pouring through the hangar doors and the pilots began moving to the runway. Shaikh had sprinted to catch the taxiing aircraft, otherwise he’d be trapped at the facility, like the others.
He grimaced at the thought. Every one of his men had been left behind to die.
The group on the plane was a sorry bunch. Shaikh recognized two or three of the scientists, a nurse, and Lieutenant Khavari but no more. Out of the hundred and twelve personnel that the facility roster listed just this morning, only eight men sat in the back of the C-130. He assumed the entire crew of five Air Force personnel were aboard, but didn’t have a way of knowing that right now.
The numbers wouldn’t matter to the council, only the results.
The plane leveled out and several of the scientists unbuckled to retrieve their work. Shaikh unlatched his harness as well and staggered toward the front of the plane. His stomach was still in knots over the combination of physical exertion and the rough takeoff, but he needed to talk to the pilots about their destination.
The cockpit was controlled chaos as the four men inside fiddled with buttons, plotted courses on paper maps, and checked so many gauges that he could never know what they all meant.
“Who is the pilot in charge here?” Shaikh demanded, elevating his voice to be heard over the loud thrumming of the C-130’s four large engines.
“I am the lead pilot,” said the man in the seat on the right. He wore the three stars of an Air Force first lieutenant on his shoulder epaulets.
“I’m Major Taavi Shaikh. Until we took off, I was the chief of the facility’s security forces. Now that we’re airborne—”
“Allāhu Akbar,” the pilot said, which the others repeated quickly. None of them appeared to look up from what they were doing.
Taavi followed suit. “Allāhu Akbar. I am the highest ranking soldier on board. Now that we’re airborne.” Another round of God is the Greatest made its way across the cockpit. When all were finished, he continued. “We need to find a destination. How much fuel do you have?”
“We have full tanks. We can make three thousand, eight hundred kilometers.”
“Where does that get us?” Shaikh asked.
“Lieutenant Rafati is the navigator, sir. He’s plotting our options now.”
Shaikh cast his eyes around the cockpit until he saw the nametag for the lieutenant. “We need to head toward America.”
“Sir?” the young officer blanched.
“We have forces there—or at least our allies do. The Koreans have troops on the mainland that can help us.”
The navigator gulped, then overlay a sheet of thin, almost transparent paper on top of a map. He drew an arc from a point on the map that Shaikh assumed was representative of where they were currently located.
“We can make it to Mexico City!” he announced excitedly.
The absurdity of the man’s statement made Shaikh laugh. It was a great, rumbling belly laugh. He couldn’t contain himself and his laughter echoed throughout the cockpit.
“Sir?” Lieutenant Rafati asked.
It took him a moment to stop laughing. When he did, he had to wipe away tears from his eyes. “Mexico City? You want to go to Mexico City?”
“It is the largest city within safe distance of our fuel range.”
“And it is the most populous city on the planet,” Shaikh stated. “We just barely survived—”
“Allāhu Akbar,” the crew all shouted together.
“Allāhu Akbar,” Shaikh agreed. “There were only a couple thousand of the Cursed in that jungle. Mexico City has a population of twenty million people. That means there’s twenty million of the Cursed.”
“Uh…”
“Exactly, Lieutenant. We need to find a small airfield that is far from major population centers where we can stop to get fuel and then make the second leg into America.”
“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant leaned down over his map and paperwork, and began to look closely at the map. He went through several options, writing names on the paper, and then cross-referencing a printed manual that he’d pulled from a shelf. Each time he looked up the name in the book, he’d cross it off and pore over the map once more.
Finally, the navigator shouted out, “That’s it!”
Shaikh’s eyes narrowed. “What have you found?”
“Th
e, ah… Aeródromo de Palma Sola,” he said, stumbling over the Spanish title. “The Palma Sola Airport. It looks to be about three kilometers from a small town. Improved runway long enough for the C-130 to land…” He trailed off as he scanned the paragraph. “And the manual says they maintain a large supply of both regular gasoline for small aircraft, and the Mexican government keeps s supply of jet fuel onsite for emergency use since it is near the coast.”
Shaikh leaned down, looking at where the lieutenant’s finger pointed. He said it was near the coast, but it was actually on the coast. The narrow strip of land between the airport and the Caribbean Sea was maybe around five hundred meters wide. “Okay, plot a course to there. We will get directions from the council about where we are to go after that.”
The navigator ducked his chin and Shaikh turned to exit the cockpit. “Yes, sir,” the navigator said from behind him.
He stopped and turned back to the fourth man in the cockpit, another junior officer. Pointing to his ear, Shaikh said, “I need a place to make a phone call. Where is the most quiet place onboard?”
The man looked at him for a moment, obviously trying to decide if the major was making a joke. “There is nowhere on the aircraft that is any less quiet than the cockpit.”
Shaikh shook his head. “Too loud in here. There is nowhere else?”
“No, sir. This aircraft was built for functionality. There isn’t even a proper toilet on board.”
Shaikh grimaced. He did not want the flight crew to hear his conversation with the Facilitator. He was certain that given enough time, he would be able to convince the man that it was necessary to abandon the laboratory facility. But that would take much discussion on his part and for now, everyone on the plane except for Lieutenant Khavari believed that the council had ordered the evacuation. Shaikh would need to ensure that the man never spoke of the betrayal.