Gauge nodded once professionally and led the way with Cutter holding his Glock up as well, scanning the way ahead over the large man’s shoulder and covering where Gauge was not. The floor changed to thin, industrial carpeting. At the far end of the office row was another sturdy door with a push bar on it. It was shut tight. There was a body resting against it—a soldier’s body. The guy was slumped in a heap on the floor, not moving.
As they approached, the guy resolved into one of Suvorov young conscripts. The kid was missing a large section of his upper arm, and his shoulder had almost been torn completely off by something. The limb was dangling uselessly at his side, held there by overly stretched tendons and skin and fabric. Blood trickled from the wounds and was congealing like paste.
Suddenly, the motionless body stirred and the kid raised his eyes to the heavens and screamed a hideous throat warbling cry that sent shivers racing up and down Cutter’s spine. Both he and Gauge raised their guns and approached the soldier with caution, holding their fire.
The kid tried to stand. He did so jerkily, bouncing his head against the closed door and clambering to his feet like a marionette whose strings were being pulled from above. He made it to his feet and stumbled forward a shuffling step, dangling arm flopping uselessly against his body. Ribbons of fresh blood ran freely down his side and leaked onto the carpet.
“What the hell?” Cutter said as he watched the suffering thing in horror. If it had been alive, there was no way it could have moved like that. The pain would have been excruciating.
The young soldier began to move faster, as if he were learning how to walk. He bumped into the walls to either side of him, which caused him to spin and shift sideways, but he kept coming.
Is this how it happens—? Is this how they turn into zombies? Cutter’s revulsion turned to fear. More than anything, he did not want to turn into one of those things.
He watched the thing learning to walk. That’s what it had to be doing, right? Learning? Even so, he had a hard time seeing the zombie as anything other than a sick pimply-faced teenager. He did not see him as a monster. Not yet. But as the young soldier drew closer, it became the prominent identifier in his mind. Whatever the kid had become, it was no longer a peaceful human being, and tragically, it had to die.
The new-born zombie bared its teeth and snapped at Cutter. It shrieked and fell into a slow, clumsy run, making it an imminent threat that needed to be neutralized.
“I got this,” he said. A strange, sinking feeling overcame him—like he wasn’t supposed to shoot and kill the kid. He would have much rather restrained the thing until figuring out what the hell had gone wrong. Maybe whatever was afflicting it could be cured. He knew if he shot it there was no turning back. He’d be ending a life with his next trigger pull. Is there even a chance the kid can be saved? A remote one? What if I trapped it—didn’t kill it?
In his moment of indecision, the thing crossed much of the distance between them and was preparing to attack. There was no denying it. His lizard brain reacted, and his deepest animal instinct took over. He had to kill it before it killed him.
He raised his gun to fire. “Sorry.” Turning away slightly, he pulled the trigger, already instinctively correcting for the recoil so the next shot would complete the familiar double-tap.
Nothing happened.
He squeezed the trigger again.
Nothing?
He reached up to draw the slide back. His gun had jammed. A well-maintained Glock almost never jams.
Almost never.
The thing was upon him in a flash. Cutter’s arms shot up protectively, but they were bent, and he was off-balance. The zombie had the advantage. It came for his face, and he drew back in horror, not wanting the thing to take a bite from the exposed flesh of his cheek.
Then Gauge was there, kicking the thing away with a booted foot, driving the thing back against the opposite wall. The big man kicked it again, knocking the zombie to the ground. Gauge hovered over his fallen adversary for a beat and then fired a single shot from Betty downward into the thing’s skull. The zombie’s head cratered and the skull pan emptied onto the carpeted floor beneath it as the booming echo from Gauge’s hand cannon died away into nothingness.
Cutter stuck a finger in his ear and shook it to clear the ringing pain. As his hearing returned somewhat, he heard another short series of gunshots. Small caliber. They had come from where Morgan and Dr. Martinez were working to restore power—at the opposite end of the building. Morgan was shooting at something. She was trained in basic marksmanship, but she hated guns.
Shit!
“Go!” he urged Gauge, hoping the man could reach the women in time.
Gauge did not hesitate. He took off at a run. Cutter shook his head as he sprinted down the narrow hallway looking for any other entrances to the building, then checked to make sure the sturdy outside door was secure. He found it was slightly ajar. Anyone could have come through it if they had wanted to. A cold fear ran through him, and his heart rattled in his ribcage. Is Gauge about to walk into a whole group of those things? Were Morgan and Dr. Martinez already dead? Did I just send them all to their deaths? Can I shoot them if they turn into one of those things—?
He pulled the door closed and felt it catch. He tested it to make sure it was locked. It didn’t seem sturdy enough. Nothing seemed sturdy enough right now. He’d just have to hope that it would hold. Spinning on his heel, he raced back through the narrow hallway and out into the expanse of the generator room. He took the middle path and ran as fast as his legs would take him.
And then on the other side came to a skidding halt and doubled over, panting, wheezing. All three were there—Gauge, Morgan, and Dr. Martinez.
Alive. They were all alive and well. He wanted to throw his arms around them all—but that would be weird.
Dr. Martinez had a small pistol cradled loosely in her hand. It was a Walther PPK, the kind James Bond might use. The gun had very little firepower, but it had been enough to get the job done. Where did she get it? It was nothing they had brought along with them. One of the soldiers, maybe? Something that small would definitely not be Gauge-approved.
And what worried him even more was that it hadn’t been Morgan who’d fired the shot. He spared her a quick glance. She’d remained completely defenseless. She didn’t even have her sidearm out. It was still strapped in its holster on her hip. He’d have to speak with her about that. Guns are tools that keep you alive, he would tell her for the umpteenth time. While she’d so often been so damn stubborn about that particular fact, she wasn’t a complete moron.
On the floor at her feet was another one of those things. A shot had entered the creature’s head through the left eye socket. Another had bored its way through the nasal cavity. Two shots, well placed. That was a surprise. I’ve underestimated you. She could take care of herself when pressed. She’d also saved a defenseless Morgan, which made him doubly mad. He should have been there, or Morgan should have done something. But mostly he was pissed off at himself. He’d guessed wrong earlier, and one of those goddamned things had gotten past him. His hand clenched on his gun, and he worked to clear the jam in his Glock, yanking perhaps a bit too hard on the slide.
He turned to Morgan. “I thought I told you to get the goddamn power back on. So do it!”
She flashed him a grim look, as if to say, “Back off!”
Cutter cleared the jam and holstered his weapon. He tossed the chewed-up round from his gun and bent over the corpse of the zombie on the concrete floor. He shivered a little as he went to touch the thing and then pulled his hand back with a jerk. A slick pool of blood was forming around its head and had matted its short, curly hair. The thing’s teeth were exposed, and the torn lips were stretched as if someone had grabbed it by the hair and pulled all the loose skin taut from behind. Cutter ran his light up and down the body. There were bite marks and chunks of missing skin and shredded clothing. It was basically just a big, bloody mess.
“How the hell is
this happening?” he asked, looking up at Dr. Martinez. “You need to tell me right here and right now. We just witnessed one of these things turning. One minute it was a human—the next? I don’t know what the hell it became. Can we save them from this?”
She nodded slowly, and as she did, emergency lights clicked on, bathing the room in shades of red.
“Almost got it,” Morgan said from a short distance away. She gave Cutter a quick nod and disappeared behind a wall next to the control panel. Mechanical noises started—deep rumbling vibrations that shook Cutter to his core. One of the massive engines behind him came to life like a demon rising from hell. The noise level grew as the generator came fully online and finished with a whine that sounded like a thousand electric motors all spinning up at once.
The lights all about him began to flicker and strike.
Morgan returned. “One of these generators should be enough to get the lights on throughout the complex,” she said with a hint of pride in her voice. “Probably down inside the mine too. Pumps, air circulation. We can go down there now—if we are still going.”
“Don’t know if we are,” Cutter said. “But fire everything up anyway.”
“It’s all computer controlled, Jack. I’m sure of that. I suspect there are terminals around here somewhere to operate everything.”
“Maybe the offices in the back?” he offered.
“Perfect,” she said. She gave Gauge a look. He fell in beside her, and they made their way to the path between generators, leaving Cutter alone with Dr. Martinez.
“We should join them,” he said. “Then I want to hear the whole story about what is really going on here. Everything—okay?”
Dr. Martinez gave him a nervous look and then nodded.
~28~
ZOMBIES?
Back in one of the offices, Cutter rested on the edge of a desk. Dr. Martinez sat in a chair off to one side. She had the satellite phone in her hands and was turning it over and over. He’d given it back to her so she could call her bosses back home and have them send reinforcements, or even the Russian Military. At this point, it didn’t matter much to him that he and his team were in the country illegally. There were a few more pressing issues—the flesh-eating zombies being the primary concern.
Gauge was leaning against one wall, keeping an ear in the room while keeping his eyes on Morgan, who was working in the office across the hallway from them.
“So what the hell are these things?” Cutter asked. “The whole idea of undead zombies seems a little farfetched, maybe even a little juvenile.”
“Obviously,” she said. “They require too much effort to suspend disbelief. But, it is an appropriate term, nonetheless. Undead, maybe not. Zombies—yes. Do you know the etymology of the word ‘zombie’?”
He partially understood what she had meant, something about Haiti and Voodoo curses and such. “Entomology? Isn’t that the study of bugs?”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “No, not bugs, Mr. Cutter. Ety-mology. It is the study of words and their historical origins. I was asking if you knew where the word ‘zombie’ first originated.”
“No, afraid I don’t. We didn’t study that sort of thing in military school.” For half a second, he wanted to take that back. Didn’t seem appropriate.
She shook her head side to side and adjusted her glasses. “’Zombi,’ spelled without the ‘E,’ was originally a West African deity. It later came to mean—” She cleared her throat. “It means the vegetative state when the life force that makes us human escapes the body and leaves only a hollow shell behind. Some call it the fleeing of the spirit or soul, but the basis for the actual condition is much more definable, scientifically speaking. So, essentially, the term refers to any being that more or less lacks any self-awareness or individual intelligence.”
“But,” she continued, “unlike all those fictionalized stories about them, zombies are indeed real. Ask any Haitian. The difference here is that their version of zombies start out dead and are brought back to life fully under the control of the priest or priestess who resurrected them. Some say the reference even goes back as far as biblical times. You’ve read the Bible, yes?”
He nodded. It had mostly been when he was eight or nine or ten, so it mostly consisted of picture books and stories about animals marching two-by-two. But he knew what she was referring to. Sharon, who was far more intelligent than he had ever been, had first offered a theory related to the many references to zombie-like creatures in the Bible. She had just never actually stooped to calling them that and had often scoffed at all the odd names the many television shows, books, and movies used to refer to them. She’d simply called them ‘The Resurrected.’
“Yes,” Dr. Martinez said as she watched him closely. “I can tell you understand me now. Your wife did know a lot more than you currently do about these matters. Maybe you should have paid more attention to her.”
Cutter tightened his jaw and considered walking away. By sheer will, he held himself in place.
She smirked at him. “You see, one notable Biblical verse that applies here is Revelation 9:6, ‘And in those days people will seek death and not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.’ Do you understand the implications of that, Mr. Cutter? There are many such referrals throughout ancient history to these so-called ‘resurrections’ where those who are supposedly dead walk the earth.”
“And how does that apply here, specifically?” he asked.
Gauge was listening with interest. Morgan was also at the door, looking from Cutter to Dr. Martinez in puzzlement. Noticing them, Cutter held up a hand to interrupt Dr. Martinez for a moment while he dealt with the more immediate issue.
“Are the lights on?” he asked Morgan.
“They will be soon. It’ll take ten or fifteen minutes for them all to come back online, but I think the entire site should soon be blanketed in bright, white light soon enough. Pumps should come online soon after, as will the ventilation systems.”
“Good,” Cutter said. “How about cameras? Are there any cameras in the mines or anywhere on the property?”
She snapped her fingers as if she had forgotten something so trivial. “No,” she said. “No cameras at all. Might have to do with this being an illegal mining operation.”
“Uh, yes,” Dr. Martinez said. She swiveled back to address Cutter directly. “These ‘zombies’ that we have encountered so far are sensitive to bright light. They will shy away from it, but it will not stop them completely. Nothing will short of—”
“Severing their brain stems?” Gauge added. He scratched at the bandage still on his nose.
She nodded, but said nothing.
Gauge grunted.
Cutter bobbed his head in agreement. “So, what else can you tell us about these things? Can they be stopped another way? One that doesn’t mean we kill them? Can they be—helped?”
“They can be killed, yes. Helped? I do not know. But to kill them you will need to shoot them in the head to destroy their hypothalamus—their primitive mind. That will stop them immediately. But—”
“But, what?” Cutter asked.
“You should know that the person whose body has been resurrected—probably remains a part of the entity.”
Cutter made a fist and leaned closer to her. “What—? What does that mean?”
“They, Mr. Cutter, are—in my best estimation—still sentient and fully aware of everything they are doing, but remain unable to consciously control their actions.”
He leaned back and sucked his lips together. “You mean who they were is still a part of them? Thinking and feeling everything they do?”
“Crudely, put, yes. It’s who they are—their essence. Or it is what they once were—their original mind. It is what we call our waking state of consciousness, which is present and very active and alive when we are not sleeping. And this leaves these entities able to feel everything that’s being done to them, but they have no way of controlling it or acting to change their beha
vior.”
“That’s horrible,” Morgan said. “I get it.” She faced Cutter. “Think of it like being a passenger in your own body, Jack. Wow—heck, if that ever happens to me, just shoot me in the head and put me out of my misery, will you?”
He nodded slowly as he further absorbed the implications.
Morgan rubbed her cheek nervously. “Is what they have infectious? How is it happening to so many, so quickly? And are you sure it is not some kind of disease these things are spreading? Like getting bit by one of those things? With the way their teeth are—”
“No, assuredly not,” Dr. Martinez stated. “The original infection behaves much like chorea, but it is not that.”
“St. Vitus’s Dance?” Cutter asked, recalling something his wife had once said.
Dr. Martinez turned to him and gave him a look of reappraisal. “That’s one term for it. But no, it’s not that. We don’t know for sure what causes it, or what the foreign entity is that controls those it infects. It is either a hive mind or a central control scheme. Right now, it is beyond our understanding. That is why I’m here to determine what is happening to these people and how to control it.”
Cutter asked, “Whatever the hell it is, can it be stopped?”
“Maybe,” she said. “If we find the source of the control.”
He stated the obvious, “The artifact, right?”
“Yes, the artifact,” she said. “If you destroy it then the influence over all those who have come in contact with it should end as well.”
“Should?” he asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m fairly certain,” she stated.
It was the typical answer from the scientific types—always one-hundred percent certain of something right up until the moment they are inconclusively proven wrong.
He’d also detected something in the way she had answered, some hidden deception lurking just below the surface. He sat back on the desk and folded his arms across his chest. He had a lot of thinking to do and not much time to do it. On a corner bookshelf, he spotted an old copy of a magazine that looked like a Russian version of Sports Illustrated. Next to it was another magazine featuring a well-endowed topless woman on the cover. He had a simple decision to make and then a much larger one. To make that decision, he needed to go somewhere he could make it alone.
Zombie Team Alpha Page 13