Zombie Team Alpha

by Yeager, Steve R.

  He selected the sports magazine and picked it up and thumbed through it briefly. The other magazine would have proven too distracting for what he had planned and would have not allowed him to think through the next few steps under consideration.

  “Is there a restroom nearby?” he asked.

  Morgan indicated there was one outside the door and just down the hall. Cutter grunted, tucked the sports magazine under his right arm, and left the small office to go do some serious thinking.

  ~29~

  THRONE OF THOUGHT

  Cutter sat on his temporary throne, flipping through the sports magazine, looking at the strange pictures inside of Russian athletes and letting his mind wander. The restroom was remarkably clean and the plumbing was much the same as any he’d encountered in the States. It was an odd quirk of his, but he always did his best thinking while his body worked its daily cycle.

  Something important wasn’t adding up. If these zombies were all infected by a single artifact, that meant they all had to touch it or somehow come in contact with it directly. He and his team had not been infected, and they’d been here a while. It also was true that the young Russian soldier had been bitten—there were marks everywhere on him—so what Dr. Martinez had said couldn’t be entirely correct. There had to be another form of transmission—through saliva, or blood, or something else. Why would she want to mislead us about that?

  Sharon had mentioned that the artifact they were going after in Ecuador was dangerous, but she had also said it could be handled safely with the proper precautions. So, that meant proximity was not what could lead to becoming one of those things. Sharon had also said that if anyone tried to touch the artifact, they had to be wearing gloves.

  Was it as simple as that?

  If so—then how did the infection spread so quickly and so broadly? And if it spread as far as it had here, what would stop it from spreading further? Maybe it could spread beyond the mine? How far? Worldwide epidemic?

  The thought of it spreading gave him the chills. It seemed the isolation of the operation here was the only thing keeping the infection from spreading to the much larger general population. There had to be towns nearby. Had it already spread there?

  Which all meant that this infection had to be transmittable in a way other than by touching the artifact—or as she had called it, ‘the device.’ It had to be transferable through multiple bites, or some other trauma because he’d come in contact with enough blood and slobber from those things that he should have been infected by now.

  The dilemma now, too, was if he could keep shooting those that had been infected. If they could somehow be cured, maybe turned back into normal people—then wouldn’t the right thing to do would be to go after the source of infection and destroy it? Locate the artifact? Was it some sort of control device itself? Maybe some kind of central mind?

  Or should they all just get the hell out of there and wait for re-enforcements to arrive? It was down to only the four of them now going up against all of those monsters. Hundreds, perhaps. How many will I have to kill to get to the artifact? All of them? Will they try to protect it if it were being attacked—?

  He sighed. All his thinking was only raising more questions, not reducing them. Maybe he was the only real leader that was left, but his primary thought at the moment was getting the hell out of there and letting someone else solve the problem. He didn’t owe anyone an explanation for that—not one bit.

  Screw the money.

  But, on the other hand, it wasn’t just him that was in danger. Morgan and Gauge were hip deep in it now too. They might be thinking differently about all this. They might think that they could save all those people by going after the artifact and would try to convince him likewise.

  He drew a deep breath—let it out. Screw them. It is for their own good. He had his answer. It was the right answer.

  Finishing, he got up and washed himself in the sink to get the dried blood off his skin. His clothes were another matter. He’d have to discard them at his earliest opportunity.

  He checked himself in the mirror and nodded at his own reflection. He was right. It didn’t matter what they said. He’d collect everyone still alive and get them the hell out of there. Then he would go—alone. It would be just as he had planned in the beginning.

  It was just too damn dangerous to risk the lives of his team, his friends. No—his only remaining family. No amount of money was worth watching any of them become infected. He’d been with Sharon when she’d died. That had been enough for one lifetime.

  He returned to the office and found Morgan working behind a computer monitor, typing away and staring at the screen as lines of gibberish scrolled by. Gauge was resting in a chair behind her, half-dozing like he was wont to do, but with a hair-trigger readiness lurking just beneath the surface.

  “So?” Morgan said, turning to him and lifting her fingers from the keyboard.

  “We are bugging out,” he said then squared his shoulders, expecting her to fight back.

  “You sure about this, Jack? I think we should stay and go after that thing. Destroy it so this doesn’t keep happening.”

  Gauge grunted and sat up. “I’m with her.”

  “I’m sure,” Cutter said. “This is not worth it. Not for any amount of money. There are just too many unknowns.”

  “Okay, Jack,” Morgan said. “I agree with you.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For not challenging me on this one. We need to get the hell out of Dodge, and we need to do it without killing anyone else.”

  “That’s not going to be easy,” she said.

  “I know,” he replied, nodding and scanning the room. “Where’s Dr. Martinez?”

  ~30~

  ALTERED PLANS

  When Dr. Martinez did not return after five minutes, Jackson Cutter began to worry, and two minutes after that when she still hadn’t returned and he had finished checking all the offices and the restroom, he went beyond worrying.

  He stopped at the office where Gauge and Morgan still were and poked his head inside. “Stay here. I’m got to go look for her.”

  “Wait,” Morgan said.

  He turned toward her. “What?”

  She held up her tablet computer. “Already found her. Watch this.”

  And as he did, he saw four green dots on the screen. Three were in close proximity. The fourth one was moving away. It stopped, then started moving again.

  “Is that her?”

  “Yes, I slipped a tracker chip into the pocket of her cargo pants. You each have one too. That way I can keep track of you.”

  “Sly. What about the—?” Cutter reached to his waistband for the satellite phone. What the hell? It wasn’t there. “Where do you think that dumbass woman is going?”

  “Hey!” Morgan said. “Sitting here.”

  “Didn’t mean it that way. I meant that particular woman.”

  “I know, but still—”

  “But still…what?”

  “You can be a jerk sometimes, Jack. You know that?”

  “Yeah, I know that. And we are talking about this now—why?”

  She said nothing while he chewed on his bottom lip. He couldn’t win for losing, or lose for winning. But, hell, he knew what she meant when she’d said it. He hadn’t been himself for some time. Too much anger. He used to be a hell of a lot better when he wasn’t so pissed off with the world. Now? He really didn’t know who he was. But he planned to find out. And that started with finding Dr. Martinez, wherever the hell she went.

  “Give me that.” He didn’t wait for her to respond. He grabbed the tablet from Morgan’s hands and yanked it away. “You stay the hell in here. I’m going the hell after her.”

  “No,” she said. “No, you are not.”

  “Like—” He wanted to say, “hell,” but he realized he had been overusing that word to the point of absurdity. “You two are staying put. Right there.” He used his pointer finger to emphasize
the seriousness of his statement.

  Frowning like only Gauge could do, the big man rose from his chair. He crept into Cutter personal space, nearly going chest to chest. Cutter looked up into Gauge’s eyes, which were inches away and stood stock still. He held the man’s unblinking stare. Gauge breathed calmly through his mouth. His cheeks had puffed up, and purple bruises had formed under his eyes, but the man did not move out of the way.

  Cutter blinked first. Shit. I’ve been a real asshole, haven’t I? He swallowed thickly. “Okay. Okay.” He backed off a step. “We are going after her. All of us. That okay? Like old times?”

  Morgan nodded, as did Gauge.

  Cutter checked the tablet one final time before handing it back to Morgan. The green dot representing Dr. Martinez was still moving away from them. They were going after her, for her own damn good. Then they were going to find the damn artifact and destroy the damn thing, and then they were going to get the hell out of there.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Let’s go put some lead in some heads.”

  ~31~

  WHICH WIRE?

  Cutter could smell death in the very air around him, cold and foul and sour. Sodium vapor lights burned incessantly, casting the entire scene in a yellowish orange.

  He and Gauge and Morgan were crossing the compound between the various buildings, stepping gently, weapons up and at the ready. Bodies littered the ground. Some were soldiers, some were dressed as civilian miners. All were damaged beyond repair. Those that had not been shot in the head or had other catastrophic injuries, writhed on the ground, or moved like inchworms on missing limbs. All seemed to be traveling in the same direction—back toward the entrance of the mine.

  Which, according to her tracker chip, also happened to be the same direction Dr. Martinez was headed.

  Cutter did not want to shoot any of those poor wretches who still survived, even if it might put them out of their misery. There still might be a chance to save some, at least. He planned to go after Dr. Martinez in the mine instead—maybe find her or that damned artifact and destroy it. But, before he could do anything else, he had to get to the crates near the helicopter and retrieve as much death-dealing firepower as they possibly could carry between them.

  As they passed by the writhing dead, all Cutter could feel was sympathy for the poor men. If they were being controlled by some unknown entity and were still conscious enough to understand what the hell was happening to them—and cannot do anything about it? That was a horror beyond imagining.

  They rounded the large dormitory building, lit brightly by floodlights mounted on the side of the blue building. Nothing stirred outside the structure, but a few of Suvorov’s young soldiers lay dead nearby. Cutter checked them for movement before squatting to pick up one of their AK-47s. He had to lift the guy with his foot to get the strap over the guy’s shoulder, doing so cautiously. He kept picturing the guy’s single remaining eye opening and displaying that red, satanic look he’d seen in the others. But the guy was nothing more than a rag doll—a very heavy one.

  Once he pried the AK free, he worked the bolt and checked the magazine—empty. Gauge checked another of the young soldiers with the same results. Both had large chunks of flesh missing from their upper arms, and both had been shot through the head, leaving their jellied brains exposed and the air above them smelling like ivory soap and copper.

  Cutter said over his shoulder, “Don’t let those things touch you if they get near, I guess. I don’t care if there are still people inside those bodies, or what the doctor said. If they bite you, that might just be it for you. I’m pretty sure of that. And it would be a hell of a shame if I had to shoot either of you.”

  Morgan and Gauge said nothing, and Cutter grunted at his own bad attempt to lighten their collective mood.

  Gauge had Betty out and was frequently turning and making sure their rear was covered as if he’d been hearing things. But nothing was coming at them—nothing from the shadows, and nothing from the light.

  The entity that had taken overall control here seemed to have no desire to infect Cutter and his team, or to neutralize them as a threat. To which he was extremely glad, but puzzled. He also reconsidered whether they should just leave when they reached the helicopter. If he could get it going again, he could fly them out and to safety. It had been a while since he’d flown a helicopter, but he knew he could do it. There hadn’t been an aircraft made yet he couldn’t fly—fixed wing or not.

  They soon reached the stacked crates near the helicopter. Nothing had tried to stop them. Cutter took it as a sign that perhaps they should get the hell out of there and come back with re-enforcements.

  The lights on the buildings in the distance created just enough illumination to see the outlines of the crates and cause them to cast long shadows. Cutter holstered his Glock and set his nearly empty MP5K against the stack of crates and flipped the first latch on the topmost one.

  “Wait!” Morgan said, running to his side.

  He froze as she circled to stand beside him. “Hold still, Jack. Hold very, very still.”

  He moved only his eyes, watching her drop down to one knee and pulling out a penlight. Next she ran the light up and down and around the latch.

  “What is it?” he whispered, not wanting to draw enough breath to speak any louder.

  “Just keep holding still.” She reached into a pouch on her belt and drew out a pair of diagonal cutters. “There’s something not right here, Jack. I sealed these crates myself. They’ve been opened by someone.”

  “Suvorov?” he whispered.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Stay there. Stay still.” She got up and circled the entire crate, examining it closely in the cone of light from her penlight.

  “Jack, we can’t open this.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it’s been booby trapped.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I can just tell. Just trust me. Okay?”

  “But we need those weapons.”

  “And chance having the whole thing blow up on us?”

  “Who the hell would booby trap our supplies? It doesn’t make sense, unless—”

  Yes…yes, it had to be Dr. Martinez. She is not who she appears to be. She had time to do it. But why the hell—?

  “It has to be the doctor,” he said. “Or Suvorov.”

  “Right, Jack. Whatever the case, don’t open that crate.”

  “Is there any way you can check if you’re right?”

  “I know I’m right, Jack.”

  “No, I mean check. We need what’s inside. Or we need to scoot on out of here.”

  “I thought you weren’t planning on leaving.”

  “What do you think?”

  “You are asking me what I think? Really? That’s a big step for you.”

  “Morgan. Just let me know if I can move—and how we can get these damn crates open.”

  She thought about it for a moment and nodded. She set her pack down, and he watched her bring out the NVGs she’d stashed inside and slip them over her head. She drew a knife from a sheath on her belt and slammed it into the side of the supply crate. She twisted and worked the knife blade to make a hole, and then crouched lower.

  “Can I move now?”

  “No, not yet. Don’t even breathe if you can, okay?”

  How? Not breathing when there was the potential for a bomb going off right next to you was a seriously difficult thing to do.

  She finished making the hole in the side of the crate a little bigger and flipped the goggles down and shut off her pen light.

  “What do you see?”

  “I was right. There is something in here. Looks like maybe a contact trigger tied to a detonator. And that detonator is stuck to a brick of our own C4. Huh? It was a hasty job and would have been effective if I wasn’t here stop you.”

  “Yes, that’s why I love you, Morgan.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, right, Jack. I love you too.”

  He didn’t even h
ave to ask her if she could disarm it. He was relatively certain that she could, so he remained silent.

  “Hey! This is not so good.”

  “What?”

  She tapped the NVGs. “All the wires attached to the trigger are the same color through these things—all green.”

  Cutter almost laughed, but doing so could have cost him his life, and that of Morgan as well. Gauge had the good sense to stand off at a distance once he realized what was going on. Cutter also knew that only movies and television shows made a big deal about which color wire should be cut. It always added to the tension that someone might just cut the wrong damn one. Cut the red or blue—? That would be the question. The hero would then wipe sweat from his brow, clamp his eyes shut, and then cut the opposite color wire. Or if the hero was a she, she’d cut whatever damn wire she thought wouldn’t blow them to hell—and be right about it.

  But he knew that was all just bullshit. You cut one wire, you break the entire circuit. Without a secondary ground, or a path that allows the current to flow, there could be no detonation, no explosion—no boom.

  “Gotta make another hole here, Jack. Spread your legs just a little bit wider.”

  “What?”

  “Trust me.” Morgan got behind him, and he felt the knife blade scrape the inner seam of his tactical pants as it slammed into the side of the crate. Half an inch higher and she would have stabbed him right in the—

  “Cutting it kinda close there.”

  “I said to hold still.”

  He held as still as he possibly could, but he could feel his toes wanting to lift him from the ground while she turned the knife blade back and forth to make another hole in the crate. He could not easily see what she was doing, and that was probably for the best.

  Then he felt something else scrape against his legs then heard a sharp click.