Z-Strain (Book 3): Fallout

by Morris, S. J.

  “Yeah, shit is right. We don’t have enough firepower here to do much of anything but get ourselves killed if we try to rescue the doctors. We have to help the others who might be alive inside. We only heard that one shot earlier, so maybe the soldiers were just trying to show how serious they were about taking the doctors, and they didn’t actually hurt anyone. One of the guards I shot before, I remember him from Brigantine’s compound, so we might at least know where they’re taking Troy and Stuart. Once they lift off, let’s see what direction they’re headed in and go inside to see who we can find.”

  “Sounds like a solid plan, Private First-Class Smith.” Lynn smiled her devilish grin at me again, which I pretended to ignore.

  We watched on as the Black Hawk took off after all of the men, including our shrouded friends, piled inside. They were heading southeast it looked like, maybe into the city.

  Not wasting any time, I took the lead up the stairs into the Visitors Center, keeping my head on a swivel with my M16 at the ready. The inside of the building was completely trashed. There were random materials everywhere. It looked like this was the main dining area for the people living here, but that a tornado had come through destroying everything. Pots and pans were scattered all over the floor. Canned goods were strewn about mixed with plastic plates and cutlery.

  Lynn looked heartbroken. “Look at the mess these guys made. It’s going to take us forever to clean all this up,” she said, picking up a few pots and putting them back on the counter. “The bunker we use for food storage is down those steps,” Lynn said, pointing to a stairwell in the back of the room. “My guess is if anyone’s left alive, they’re down there. It’s where I’d put hostages.”

  I scanned the dark hallway leading to the stairs looking for armed gunman, but instead, I found three blocks of C-4 stuck to the wall with a timer embedded into the clay. The timer read eleven minutes and forty-five seconds... Fuck.

  “Ugh, guys. I’m going to need your help over here and be quick about it!” I yelled to Kamil and Lynn.

  “What now?” Kamil asked, sounding exhausted.

  “Do either of you have any idea how to diffuse a bomb?”

  Lynn stopped dead in her tracks, looking at me, and then looking at the C-4 on the wall with the numbers ticking down. “Son of a bitch! I don’t know how to diffuse it, but I do know that if we try, it’s more than likely going to go off before the timer is up. We need to get downstairs to see if there’s anyone down there and now! We’ve only got eleven minutes and twenty-nine seconds, so let’s go!” Lynn yelled as she took off down the stairs.

  Kamil and I followed her. I set my watch to go off in eleven minutes as we descended. That gave us a fifteen-second buffer to know if we were really fucked or not.

  We made it to the lowest floor, and Lynn had already started cutting the ropes of all of the survivors she found in the pantry room. She yelled for me to check the other three rooms in the building, and I did as I was instructed.

  The first two were empty of people but stocked full of supplies. It made my chest hurt to know that in a matter of minutes, all of these stockpiled supplies that could be very useful to the existence of everyone here were about to go up in a huge fireball.

  The third area I checked had another bomb stuck to the door and a group of about ten women and children inside. All of them were bound with their wrists behind their backs and hoods over their faces.

  Whoever it was that did this didn’t want anyone knowing who they were or what they were doing. I was surprised, especially since they were planning on blowing the whole building sky-high with everyone in it, but who am I to question the leaders of a crazy government conspiracy ring hellbent on ending the human race?

  I quickly cut everyone free and rushed them all up the stairs. I met Lynn and Kamil, and we confirmed we had checked everywhere for survivors.

  “Did anyone see Dr. Nasser?” I questioned.

  Lynn looked completely defeated. “No,” she sighed. “There’s an office upstairs. It’s like a lookout where you can see around the entire Visitors Center. Maybe she’s up there.”

  “I’ll go, you get everyone as far away from the building as possible. I don’t know how big the blast is going to be, but I know there’s C-4 planted in at least two locations, so I guess it’s going to be one hell of an explosion,” I said, checking my watch. Four minutes and thirty-five seconds.

  Kamil slapped my shoulder and clutched his side as he ran towards the front doors. By the looks of it, he was in a great deal of pain. I had no idea how he was still upright. The growing red bloodstain on his shirt indicated all of the action and running this evening had definitely split his stitches.

  Lynn looked at me longingly. “Be careful up there and be quick about it, would ya,” she demanded as she grabbed my face and kissed me intensely.

  I looked down at my watch and told her, “Hey, if I’m not out of here in four minutes, don’t wait for me. Just get everyone down to the gates. Hopefully, they hold because this explosion is going to attract every shuffling meat bag right to us. If the gates don’t hold, you’re going to have to find a way to get everyone back to the cabin ASAP before the undead show up.”

  “Thank you, Jimmy,” Lynn responded as she took off running.

  I took the stairs three at a time, trying to not waste any time, but my body was tired and hungry, so my energy was zapped. I think the only thing that kept me going at this moment was sheer adrenaline. I huffed and puffed, but I made it upstairs with three minutes to spare.

  Dr. Nasser was duct-taped to an office chair with the tape covering her eyes and mouth as well. I cut her hands free first, and she pulled the tape away from her eyes as I cut her feet loose. I reached up to her mouth, and Dr. Nasser pulled away, covering her mouth with her hands, groaning through the tape and shaking her head anxiously. She pointed to the back of the office door that, well, what do you know? It had yet another brick of C-4 stuck to it with another timer that was now down to just under two minutes.

  “Is there anyone else up here with you?” I asked, not wanting to leave anyone behind.

  Dr. Nasser vehemently shook her head no as she ran for the stairs. Hell, you didn’t have to tell me twice. I followed her jumping down the steps now four and five at a time as we rushed to get out before the entire building exploded.

  I looked at my watch as we reached the front doors, pushing them open quickly, and we ran down the front steps to the grass walkway. Twenty-six seconds is what was left on my watch. It was going to be close, but Dr. Nasser and I ran as fast as we possibly could through the trees and tall grasses that surrounded the property.

  I saw Lynn, Kamil, and the others all waiting by the front fence illuminated only by the light of the moon when I felt it. The air behind me felt like it was sucking me back for a fraction of a second before I was being thrown through the air with a flash of hot heat on my back, followed by a deafening boom that fractured the previously quiet night.

  I was thrown hard into the grass as bits and pieces of glass and metal shrapnel rained down around us. My thoughts after the explosion were for everyone else’s safety, so I clawed at the ground, trying to stabilize myself enough to stand when my watch began to beep, and another blast hit me. This one seemed to shake the very ground we were standing on, like an earthquake. I guess the first explosion was the one in the crow’s nest, and the second was the one underground. Either way, the last thing I remember was almost standing and then being pushed back to the trembling ground by a massive fireball erupting from the center of where the Visitors Center once stood. When I fell backward this time, everything went black.

  I woke up dazed, my head spinning. It was still night, but my surroundings were illuminated by a bright orange glowing fire roaring out of the earth where the Wawayanda State Park Visitors Center once stood. I looked at my watch that was still beeping. The face was cracked, but overall the timepiece had survived. I pushed the button on the side to stop the timer from going off.

  I
pushed myself up with my hands, spitting out dirt and grass from my mouth that I had inadvertently chomped on when I was thrown to the ground face-first by the second explosion.

  I looked around, and Dr. Nasser was lying a few feet away from me, her mouth still covered with the silver tape but no apparent life-threatening injuries I could see. I crawled over to her and began picking at the corners of the tape, attempting to remove it. If I were knocked unconscious, I’d want my mouth to breathe through. Do unto others, right? As I picked, she started coming too and almost punched me in the face, flailing her arms and pushing me away.

  “What the hell, Nasser? I’m just trying to get the tape off your face.” I asked, confused as to why she wouldn’t want the tape removed.

  Dr. Nasser stood pointing to her mouth frantically, shaking her head no. She then pointed to what was left of the burning Visitor’s Center, pointed to her mouth again, and made a blasting motion with her hands.

  “Shit,” I answered as I pieced her charades together. “They put a grenade in your mouth before they taped you up, didn’t they?” I asked.

  Dr. Nasser had a single tear roll down her grime ridden cheek as she nodded yes and pointed her finger to her nose, signaling that I had guessed correctly.

  “I assume the pin is still in the grenade?” I asked, needing to know more.

  Dr. Nasser shook her head, yes.

  “Well, that’s good, at least. We might be able to pull the tape off without pulling the pin, and you can just spit it out.”

  Nasser shook her head no.

  “Did they attach the pin to the tape somehow, so as soon as the tape is pulled off, the pin comes out?”

  She nodded her head yes, slowly, crying even harder now.

  Lynn ran up to me out of the darkness, hugging me tightly and kissing me all over my face. She grabbed my shoulders, pulling me away to look me over, and I felt a blinding pain in my right shoulder. “Agh, shit!” I yelled out.

  Lynn pulled her hands away from me, and her left hand was soaked in bright red blood. “Crap, you’re injured,” Lynn barked out, wiping my blood from her hand on her jeans.

  “We’ve got more significant problems at the moment than some shrapnel in my shoulder. I’ll live for now, but Dr. Nasser has a live grenade taped in her mouth. The pin is attached to the tape, so as soon as we pull it off, we’re only going to have four seconds to get it out and away from everyone before it goes off,” I said, pointing to Dr. Nasser, who was sitting on the ground weeping.

  “Well, if we hold the striker lever down, even if we pull the pin, the grenade won’t go off, right?” Lynn asked.

  “Yeah, but it looks like the striker lever is taped open outside of her mouth, against her cheek. So as soon as we pull the tape off, the pin goes with it, and the lever is already open. We’re back to only having four seconds before it explodes,” I say, wiping the sweaty grime and soot from my forehead with my good arm.

  “Well, we’ve got to do something. Look, the fences are down in spots,” Lynn said, pointing to a place where a chunk of the wooden stairwell now lay over the metal chain link. “It looks like debris from the explosions knocked part of the gates down, and like you said before, the ghouls are going to be flocking to us like moths to a giant flame after those explosions. It’s like we rang the dinner bell. We’ve got to get out of here. Preferably without poor Dr. Nasser carrying around a live grenade in her face.”

  “I hear ya. Let me see what I can do. Check the others over for injuries and be sure they’re ready to go. Traveling by night isn’t the best idea, but we don’t have much of a choice, now do we?” I asked, feeling the pain in my wounded arm stinging worse now.

  “There are cabins down by the lake that have some basic provisions in them. There’s a rockface on one side, the lake on the other, so it’ll limit the angles the ghouls can use to swarm us. I say we head there for the night. So these people can maybe get some rest. I think the ghouls are going to be more attracted to the raging fire than us. At least I hope so,” Lynn offered.

  “Sounds good. You get these people there, and I’ll work with Dr. Nasser. Hopefully, she’ll be alive to show me the way to the cabins, and I’ll meet you there,” I smiled painfully.

  Lynn gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, avoiding my injured shoulder and she was off assessing patients and pointing people in the direction of the cabins.

  Now that it was just Dr. Nasser and me, I had some time to think. What did I know about grenades from my training? Well, if we removed the pin, nothing is holding the lever in position, which means nothing is holding the spring-loaded striker because of the way it’s taped to her cheek. Once the pin is removed, it makes a spark that ignites a slow-burn toward the fuse. In about four seconds, six, if we’re lucky, the delay material burns all the way through, and boom goes Dr. Nasser’s head.

  ‘Ugh, this is insane! Why the hell would those men do this?’ I shouted to myself internally, trying not to freak out Dr. Nasser any more than she already was.

  I had my private temper tantrum, now back to fixing this. “Dr. Nasser let me see exactly what we’re dealing with here. Maybe if I have a good look at how the tape is configured, I’ll have a better idea of what to do to solve this.”

  Dr. Nasser looked mortified that her life was in my hands, but she stood to face me anyway.

  “Please don’t move,” I said to her as I slowly reached toward her face.

  I gently pressed against the duct tape feeling where the striker lever was. Sure enough, it was wedged over her cheek, so as soon as that pin was pulled, the grenade would be activated. There would be no putting the pin back in.

  I felt a lump where the pin itself should be, and I could definitely feel there was something wrapped around it, probably more tape through the ring of the pin, so any attempt to pull the tape from her face would pull the trigger with it. I freaking hate being right with shit like this. Why can’t I be right about something happy like winning lotto numbers, not like any of that crap mattered anymore?

  “All right, no more pussyfooting about with this. I’m going to see what I can do to remove as much tape as possible without setting this thing off. Okay?”

  Dr. Nasser pulled back and shook her head, vehemently grunting, “Uh, agh.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder and looked directly into her eyes. “It’s just you and me here, Dr. Nasser. If something happens to you, I bite the big one too. There’s no way I’m leaving you. We do this together, and we both get out of here relatively unharmed. Got it?” I asked, trying to reassure her.

  She shook her head yes slowly, with more tears running down her face.

  I reached down to my holster, and somehow my flashlight managed to survive the blast and stay in my belt. I turned it on and instructed Dr. Nasser to close her eyes. I began lifting the tape slowly, trying to be as gentle as I could with the delicate skin around her mouth, but also with the miniature bomb just beyond her lips.

  I pulled away one side enough that she could breathe through it, so I started on the other side. The trick was going to be getting the entire outline of her mouth free of tape without pulling the pin from its current home. Slow and steady wins this race.

  “All right. I have all of the tape pulled away from your face, so don’t move. I’m going to try and pull the rest of the tape with the grenade still attached out of your mouth, so when I tell you, get down on your knees and open your mouth as wide as you possibly can, please,” I asked Dr. Nasser as I wiped the sweat from my brow once again.

  It was a cool spring evening but tell my nerves that. I was sweating worse than a nun in a cucumber field. Shit was I nervous.

  Nasser got down on her knees and looked up to me with anxious, troubled eyes. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself and shook out my hands. My shoulder screamed in pain with the shrapnel still digging into it, but the pain helped me focus more on pulling the grenade out of her mouth entirely intact.

  “Here goes nothing. Open slowly, please,” I instructed Dr. Nasse
r.

  She slowly opened her mouth. The shell was still held together with the duct tape. I gradually pulled the wad out of her mouth with the whole grenade. The pin was still in place, leaving the weapon inactive for the moment.

  Dr. Nasser breathed out a huge sigh of relief as she collapsed to the ground. She lay there opening and closing her jaw over and over again, rubbing her cheeks with her fingers.

  I, however, just stood there motionless with the grenade in my hand. I didn’t know exactly what to do with the device. I hadn’t thought that far along. I was only focused on getting it out of her mouth without killing her. I laughed at myself.

  “Thank you so much, Jimmy. You really saved my ass. What are you going to do with it now?” Dr. Nasser asked me as she slowly stood up. “Whatever it is, you better think of it fast. We’ve got company,” Dr. Nasser mumbled as she backed up away from me.

  I turned to see hundreds of infected coming through the trees and stumbling over the chain-link fence that was toppled from the debris. Thankfully the fence still stood six feet tall in some places, so where there were breaches, they were only allowing a certain number of zombies in at a time. It was like an undead funnel.

  I looked at the grenade in my hand, and I looked at the rotting corpses shuffling into a large mass at the gates trying to push one another out of the way to get to us, and an idea came to mind.

  “Hey Doc, I’m about to do something really stupid, so you should probably start running. Head to the cabins Lynn mentioned. I’ll be right behind you... I hope.”

  Dr. Nasser looked down at the deadly ball of duct tape in my hand and back at the zombies funneling inside before she gave me a thumbs up and started running in the opposite direction.

  I took another deep breath, pulled the pin from the grenade while holding the strike lever down, aimed into the building crowd of the undead, and tossed the deadly device into the mob. I turned to run after Dr. Nasser, and within seconds the sound of the blast filled my ears and shook my already battered body. Chunks of the infected rained down behind me, making squishy noises as they landed. Body parts cracked as weak bones splintered with the impact of the ground. The sound alone made me queasy. I regained my footing after being pushed by the force of the explosion and continued to run after Dr. Nasser.