by Chesla, Gary
“OK,” Larsen replied. “You just get some rest and we can talk about this some more tomorrow.”
When Johnson closed his eyes again and his breathing settled into a long slow pattern, Larsen left the room.
He walked out of Johnson’s room and turned left down the hallway that led to the front entrance of the hospital.
“Wow! Johnson is really out of it,” Larsen shook his head. “He is paranoid enough without being under the influence of anesthetic.”
Larsen smiled to himself and picked up his pace, needing to get back to get some sleep before going back on duty in a few hours.
As he approached the front desk, he saw the same person was still on duty that had given him directions on how to find Johnson’s room.
A thought passed through Larsen’s mind, “Johnson seems as crazy as hell right now, but in all the time I’ve known him, he has exaggerated from time to time, but he has always been on the level. I wonder?”
Larsen walked over to the desk and waited for the man to look up.
“I just wanted to tell you I appreciate you helping me find my buddy earlier,” Larsen said.
“How’s he doing?” the man asked.
“He is a little out of his head right now,” Larsen smiled. “But he should be fine after a few days.”
“That’s good,” the man replied.
“But I was surprised to find out that he came in with another friend of mine, which I wasn’t aware of,” Larsen said. “I was wondering if you could direct me to where he might be? I’d like to see how he is doing before I go back to my barracks.”
“OK, what’s his name?” the man asked.
“His name is Bennet,” Larsen replied and watched as the man flipped through the pages on the register in front of him.
“I’m afraid you can’t visit him at this time,” the man replied.
“Why not?” Larsen asked. “Is he still in surgery or something?”
“No, he is in room 301, and the third floor is where they keep everyone that may be infectious,” the man replied. “I’m afraid no one is allowed up on the third floor.”
“Any idea how long he’ll be up there?” Larsen asked.
“I’m not a doctor and I have no idea why he is there, so I’m afraid I couldn’t answer that question,” the man replied. “According to the register, his doctor is Doctor Chu. Maybe tomorrow you could ask him about your friend.”
“I’ve never heard of a doctor Chu,” Larsen said. “Is he new to Cheyenne Mountain?”
“He is, in fact he came in with the president’s men today,” the man replied. “He is supposed to be an expert on infectious diseases, so I’m sure your friend is in good hands.”
“Thanks,” Larsen said and pretended that he was searching for his keys. “I think I left my keys back in Johnson’s room. I can’t forget those. Thanks again, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you here over the next few days.”
The man waved and turned back to his paperwork as Larsen walked away.
Larsen walked back to Johnson’s room and quietly stepped inside.
Johnson appeared to be sleeping comfortably.
Larsen reached over to the stand next to the bed and picked up a surgical mask that he remembered seeing when he was visiting, slipped it in his pocket and left the room.
“Johnson, If I get my ass in trouble over this,” Larsen said under his breath, “I’m as crazy as you are.”
Larsen walked down the hall and slipped into the stairwell.
He walked as quietly as he could to try to keep the sounds of his footsteps from echoing up the stairwell.
Larsen had thought that Johnson had been delirious when he visited him earlier, but he did say that he was with a guy named Bennet. When Larsen had found out about Johnson being in the hospital, no one had said a word about Bennet.
In fact, everyone that Larsen had talked to had almost made a point to tell him that Johnson had been found alone outside the doors of the facility.
The fact that Bennet was being treated by one of the new doctors from the president’s group that was here to find a cure for the virus, made questions start to flash through Larsen’s mind.
The more Larsen thought about what Johnson had said, the more something didn’t set well with him.
He hoped that if he could just see Bennet, he would see something that would put his mind at ease. If nothing else, it would prove that Bennet really did exist and that Johnson hadn’t made up the entire story he was telling. It would mean that Johnson wasn’t totally off his rocker.
Larsen knew he shouldn’t be doing this, but he also felt that there was something that was being kept from him and that idea bothered him.
What was it? Did Johnson stumble upon what it was?
If what Johnson had told him had any truth to it, it still didn’t make any sense.
Everyone at Cheyenne Mountain now knew about the virus, they all knew the virus had devastated the country and large parts of the population had died.
Why, if Johnson was right about what he had seen, why hadn’t they all been told the entire story.
Once you were dead, you were dead, who cares if your dead body gets back up and roams around, you’re dead and would never know about it.
Of course it was a nightmare, but the virus itself was a nightmare, so why would anyone care.
Larsen didn’t care what happened to him once he was dead, all that mattered to him was what happened to him while he was still alive.
Larsen was worried about getting the virus and dying, but once he would get the virus and die, as far as he was concerned, it was over.
If by some crazy notion that his body started walking around trying to kill people, as long as he didn’t know about it because he was dead, then that was someone else’s problem.
All Larsen could think was, he wanted to see what was going on up on the third floor for himself.
He didn’t know if that would answer any of his questions, but it just felt like it would be the place he needed to go to find out if what Johnson had stumbled onto was something big or it was just the medication talking.
Larsen soon reached the door that would open out on to the third floor.
As Larsen looked out through the small vertical window on the door, he saw that room 301 was directly across the hall from him.
He pushed the door open only a crack and listened.
A foul odor that almost made him gag hit him in the face, making him want to shut the door, but he forced himself to keep the door open and continue to listen for footsteps in the hallway.
After a few long agonizing moments, Larsen pushed his head through the door.
The smell was worse inside the hallway, but now Larsen heard the muffled sounds of people groaning in agony.
He didn’t have time to figure out what the sound meant, he just set his sights on the door across the hallway from him.
When he entered the hallway, he noticed that all the doors up and down the hallway were closed.
He hurried across the hall and leaned his head against the door to room 301 and listened to see if he could hear if anyone was inside the room other than Bennet.
After a few seconds, Larsen determined that all was quiet inside the room, so he opened the door and slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind him.
Larsen walked over to the only bed in the room, which was surrounded by a heavy curtain that was hanging from a bar that circled the bed.
He spotted a chart hanging from the bar on a clip. He removed the clipboard and chart from the clip.
Bennet was written across the top of the chart.
“It seems I have the correct room and Bennet really exists,” Larsen thought as he began to look over the chart.
Between the scribbled entries on the chart and what he was able to make out, the chart didn’t seem to make any sense.
The entries seemed to be logged onto the chart once every fifteen minutes.
Larsen checked his watch, it was ten minute
s before the hour, so he determined that he had five minutes to try to talk to Bennet and get out of here before someone would show up to examine Bennet and make the next entry.
From what Larsen could tell by looking at the chart, Bennet had been getting progressively worse since he was given a shot two hours ago.
Larsen tucked the chart under his arm and reached over and began to pull the curtain open to look in at Bennet.
Larsen remembered the surgical mask in his pocket and quickly pulled it over his face, then he continued to pull open the curtain.
When he had the curtain pulled aside for about a foot, he pushed his head inside.
The clipboard fell to the floor making a loud noise when Larsen saw Bennet turn his head and look up at him.
Larsen quickly closed the curtain, grabbed the clipboard and ran out of the room.
On the way down the stairs, Larsen took the paper off the clipboard, tossed the clipboard in the trash can on the second landing and folded the paper up and slipped it into his pocket.
He felt like his heart was going to explode as he did his best to casually walk out the front door of the hospital and not attract any attention.
Then he began to run.
Chapter 8
August 11, Granite Mountain
Doc looked at the computer screen.
“So, you don’t have any idea where they came from?” Doc asked.
“All we know was we heard a rumbling noise coming from the sewers,” Rogers replied. “Davis kept hearing a noise, so we went out on the runway to see if we could figure out what it was. When we took a lid off one of the manholes we could hear the noise below a lot clearer.”
“I thought we were just hearing the wind blowing through the sewer line,” Pete added.
“I did think I saw something in the McDonalds when we landed, but I figured I had just seen a shadow or something after watching the building for a while when we landed,” Davis said.
It’s my guess that they were down in the sewer system, when they heard you up above, they must have come up in one of the buildings,” the Captain said.
“We hated to waste all that fuel, but we had to get out of there,” Pete said. “I figured it was we shoot holes in the tanks or we would have to try to make a run for it on foot, but we didn’t know where to run without risking getting ourselves trapped.”
“The important thing was you all got out of there safely,” Doc replied.
“Are there any other airports in range of our helicopters?” the Captain asked.
“I found one small airport west of Salt Lake City,” Chervy replied. “But, I didn’t see any tankers. I couldn’t tell if we would be able to find any fuel there or not.”
“What do you think, Captain?” Doc asked.
“Well, we know the fuel we need is at the Salt Lake City airport,” the Captain replied. “Also, we have only seen about a hundred and fifty infected down there. It’s my guess that there shouldn’t be many more of them still down in the sewers. I figure when they heard you, every one of the infected that could make it to the surface came up top after you. My feeling is that we should be able to send a few men down to the airport and clear out the infected so we can go back and get the fuel we need for the trip to Cheyenne Mountain. How do you feel about that, Doc?”
“My concern about doing that is what happened back at Fallon,” Doc replied. “We sent a unit out to face the infected and they blasted the hell out of them with machine guns and explosives. The problem with doing that was we contaminated the air and soil around the base so much that it just made the infection spread faster. Within two days, half of our men had become infected without suffering any type of physical injuries.
If we were to do the same thing down at the airport, I’m concerned that the airport could become too contaminated to safely be able to go back for the fuel afterwards.”
The Captain looked at the computer screen and at the staggering bodies.
“How about if we did this,” the Captain said and pointed to the screen. “What if we dropped two men on the top of these two buildings at the edge of the airport. We then use the helicopters to lure the infected into this area. Two snipers making clean headshots could make fast work out of one hundred and fifty bodies and simple headshots should limit any possible contamination to that area.”
“As long as we’re not blasting the bodies apart, that might work,” Doc replied. “We could use low caliber rounds.”
“Any reason that you can think of to explain why there are still infected walkers at the airport,” Tony asked, “since just about everywhere else they have dried up, decayed and fallen apart?”
Yeah, Doc,” Rogers asked, “what were they all doing down in the sewers?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” Doc replied. “I don’t have enough information to form a hypothesis that might explain it. For now, all I can say is to be careful anywhere that has a large sewer or drainage system where the infected could still be hiding.”
“I did notice one thing that might help explain it,” Davis added. “When we pulled up that manhole cover, the air that came out felt cool, not hot air like normally blows across the desert. Could that have anything to do with it?”
Doc thought for a second.
“It might,” Doc replied. “Being in a cooler environment would slow the rate of decomposition. It would be like putting meat in a refrigerator, it could last for months. That could explain why the infected were still down in the sewers. After all the living died in that area, they didn’t have anything to attract them to the surface until we arrived looking for fuel. Depending on the temperature down in the sewers, theoretically it could be possible for them to exist for months in that environment. However, that still doesn’t explain why they were down there in the first place.”
Doc thought for a few seconds, “It could be that the manhole cover didn’t open into the sewers, but instead it opened up into the subway system or people mover system that transported people from the main check in area over to the terminals. When the power went out in the final hours, it is possible that hundreds of people could have been trapped under ground, were attacked and became infected.”
“But it sure smelled like a sewer system down in that manhole,” Rogers said.
“Remember the way the base back at Fallon smelled after we were attacked?” Davis asked.
Yeah, like a combination of sewage and road kill,” Rogers replied.
“So are you agreeable with the idea of sending the men down to take out the infected?” the Captain asked.
“I believe it could work,” Doc replied. “It would be better if we had an extra tanker of fuel, we could soak a section of the runway with fuel and lure the dead to that location and set them on fire. But since the virus is resistant to extreme high temperatures and we can’t afford to waste the fuel, your plan sounds like the best option we have. I agree that we should do it. After the infected are eliminated, take an air sample near the tanker and come straight back. We’ll analyze the results and go from there.”
“Captain, I would like to volunteer myself and Mason for sniper duty,” Tony said. “That was part of our job back in Iraq. Mason’s attention span should hold for an hour and while he is focused, he is almost as good as I am, or was.”
“OK, go get outfitted and report to the helicopters in an hour,” the Captain replied. “Take two rifles, your normal sniper rifle and a 22 caliber rifle. A 22 rifle usually doesn’t make much of an exit wound. See how the smaller caliber rifle works first to minimize the blood and tissue splatter.”
“Rogers, if you would transport our snipers in one helicopter,” the Captain instructed, “Davis if you and Pete would go in the second helicopter and be our distraction.”
“Yes Sir,” Pete replied.
“Go make sure the helicopters are fueled up and Doc and I will be down with final instructions in an hour,” the Captain said.
Then the men left to get ready for their mission.
&
nbsp; “This was an unexpected event,” the Captain said.
“An inconvenient occurrence, but I’m not sure we can really consider it unexpected,” Doc replied. “Now days when just about anything can happen, I’m not sure we can really call anything unexpected. Did I tell you when we were looking for survivors in Stone, we saw bodies that had been dead for at least a month being reanimated?”
“How was that possible?” the Captain asked. “The idea that any dead body could become a walker is scary as hell. It would mean that this nightmare could go on forever!”
Doc nodded, “It did scare the hell out of me. But since I can’t explain how the virus kills and reanimates the living, I won’t even attempt to explain how it reanimated a body that has been dead for any length of time. All I can say is that under the right circumstances it can happen. We found the area where we had witnessed this occur had an extremely high concentration of the virus. That event is probably the main reason that I am constantly taking air and soil samples. Under the right circumstances, anything is possible and should be expected as a possibility.
But you are right, based on our observations and assumptions, seeing the infected attack like this again was not anticipated.”
“Then we will just have to be careful that we don’t assume anything,” Captain Byron grinned.
Outside the entrance to Granite Mountain
Tony was examining the barrels attached to the skids on the helicopters.
“The red line painted on the outside of the tanks should be at the weight limit for the helicopters. I estimated what I felt should be one hundred seventy-five pounds per tank,” Pete said.
“I hope we don’t have to shoot holes in these barrels too,” Rogers said. “It took us forever to get the old barrels off the skids. We did a better job of making sure the barrels wouldn’t fall off than we thought.”