by Micah Gurley
“Don’t sweat it, somebody will do something stupid soon enough, and that will cause everyone to forget about you.”
“Says the guy who caused it,” though there was no malice in the words. The two had become good friends quickly after, both of them having a love affair with the University of North Carolina basketball team.
Eric was also a county local, though he wasn’t quite like Tim. He could tell and swap stories more than anyone Kyle had ever met. He seemed to epitomize a good old boy in almost every aspect. He also found out, to his amazement, that Eric could fix or build anything he wanted. The guy was a Michelangelo of machines with a southern accent.
“Everything is good here, though I haven’t check the guns yet,” Kyle said, standing.
“Don’t worry, I’ll look ‘em over.” Eric sat down in the chair that Kyle just got up from. “Gonna call my folks and tell them to be on the lookout for people that are sick.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Kyle answered. “All right man, I’ll catch you later.” He walked out and to his next post. XR-8.
XR-8 was the officer’s spot inside the command center for security. It also always had one sergeant manning it, usually with the roaming officers popping in and out all the time. As Kyle walked in to the post, he saw Neil was manning the sergeant’s station and groaned. Neil was a slim, tall man of about thirty to thirty-two. He had calculating brown eyes and solid black hair that was perfectly manicured, so much so it appeared almost fake. Vain in his appearance, he was the sort to worship his betters and condescend to his subordinates, of which Kyle had recently become.
Neil seemed to have been a decent guy, though a ridiculous stickler for the rules, but then he became a sergeant. Since his promotion, Kyle had had a few run-ins with the guy, usually over some nonsense in Kyle's view. The guy was just unbearable to be with sometimes. He had drunk the Kool-Aid. Power brings change, even a little he thought.
“Morning everyone,” Kyle called out, as he stepped further into the command center.
“Bout time, I couldn’t stay awake much longer,” the officer manning his upcoming post grumbled. Kyle really didn’t know the guy that well, at least for him to be complaining to him yet. Rookies had to earn their complaining like everyone else. He listened as the guy told him what was going on in the plant and signed for his rifle that was being passed on. The rifle was a Remington AR15, which looked very similar to an M16, and was widely used among civilians as well. Kyle began to check the magazines and the action on the rifle, something he was always supposed to do but it became quite redundant.
“All right, good to go. Have a nice one,” the departing officer called out, now seeming to be in a much better mood.
“Yep, see ya,” Kyle returned, and the guy swiped out, the heavy door slamming shut behind him.
“What’s up Neil?” he asked, still getting his equipment situated. He was supposed to check all twenty-something of the cameras, but he just took a quick look at the monitor and leaned back in his seat.
“Make sure you check all your stuff well,” came the commanding reply from Neil. Kyle clamped down on the response he wanted to give.
“Yes, sir,” he answered with sarcasm, he knew he sounded like a child but this guy made him crazy, even if he was right at the moment, something Kyle decided not to think about. This caused Neil to lean back and look at him.
“I’m not being difficult Kyle, but the lieutenant will be coming in a few minutes and he might check your equipment.” Kyle listened to Neil and wanted to call bullshit on it but knew that wouldn’t help anything. He wondered if Neil even realized that he was talking nonsense. The lieutenant never checked equipment, and no one ever used the guns except to clean them. Neil used to be the same way, but he had bought in to everything the director had been offering and so now was on the dark side. Neil didn’t say anything else as he turned around. The phone rang. Kyle took a minute and started pulling out the magazines from the extras and looking to make sure they were full. “Good enough,” he thought, as he finished a few, and again leaned back against the chair.
The heavy door to the command center opened and a young guy in his thirties walked in sporting a yellow mohawk. He was shorter than Kyle, with a broad chest for someone his height. He face was one of those that you looked at and you wanted to be friends with. He was followed by the lieutenant, a man in his late fifties or early sixties, who was bald on top and had a slight stoop to his walk. Years in the sun, or smoking, had left deep lines in his kind face.
“Smalls,” the younger guy called out, as he dumped himself heavily on a seat toward the back of the room. He pulled out a sandwich and began to eat. “Missed you on Sunday, we were at the bat cave and had some monster juice.” Pat was that fun loving guy at work who still loved all things superhero and Star Wars. He was a great guy and one of Kyle’s closest friends at work.
“Yeah, sorry man, my brother is in town and we went surfing and then had some steaks on the beach,” Kyle answered, leaning back further in his chair to look at Pat.
“Should have brought him by, I liked the guy,” he mumbled, mouth full of tuna sandwich.
“Morning Bill,” Kyle greeted, as the lieutenant walked in, and Kyle swiveled in his seat away from Pat. “How’s everything?”
“Good morning Kyle,” drawled the lieutenant. The lieutenant was the only person he worked with who called him by his first name. He was an air force vet some thirty years ago. Kyle liked the guy, if he had drunk the Kool-Aid, he only sipped because he was a laid back guy. “This virus has me concerned, I have family in upstate New York.” Kyle looked at the lieutenant, not being able to detect any extra worry there, but he wasn’t a mentalist so didn’t keep thinking about it.
“Have you talked to them?” Neil asked, not bothering to turn around as he held the microphone in front of him. “All units, radio check.” Neil turned down the speakers as the arriving Bravo team started to report. “XR-1 10-20, XR-2 10-20, and XR-3 10-20... and so it went.
“Na, we don’t talk much. They're Yankees after all,” he said, winking at Pat. Pat was also from up north and some of the predominantly southern team members gave him a hard time about. Pat, for his part, didn’t even understand what they were talking about at first. He would just smile, pull his shirtsleeve up, and show them his Star Wars tattoo, while humming some song from the movie. They didn’t understand what he was going on about, so it all came out even in the end. “I’m just pullin your leg, Patrick. I ain’t got nothing against any Yankee.” Kyle wondered if he always used the word Yankee when he was referring to people from up north. Pat gave the lieutenant a big smile and then continued to eat.
The room settled into a peaceful quiet, soft beeps from various computers and the low voices of officers on the radio filled the silence. Kyle leaned up in his chair and started scrolling through his cameras. He pulled up the camera for the entrance to the plant, a quarter mile away, down a small road that led all the way to the main street. There, Kyle could see the small non-descript building that he came through earlier this morning. He could see an officer, Jerry he thought, looking under the car with a mirror. That post was a boring place to work and he was glad he wasn’t there today. He then switched cameras to another one positioned in the woods facing the plant. The main part of the plant was really two massively tall concrete buildings. They were the very picture of dreariness created by some boring engineer. Surrounding those buildings were other various smaller buildings, also beauty challenged. There were yards full of related work materials and large equipment stashed everywhere in between.
All in all, the plant was a depressing sight, with no hints to alert anyone to the danger that lingered inside. Kyle didn’t care for going into the main reactor buildings if he could help it, though he knew he picked up more radiation from the sun than he did from the reactors. His imagination was another matter. Also, going through the process of decontamination wasn’t that fun either.
Kyle’s eyes were starting to get heavy when a
call came from one of the tower posts in the front of the plant. He greeted the call after looking at the post assignments for the day. “What’s up Roy, thought you would be catching some z’s?” He winked at the sergeant, letting him know he was joking. He wasn’t.
“Just finishing my breakfast and saw something in the tree line, can you check?” he sounded as if he still had grits in his mouth. Kyle's position in the command center allowed him to control all the cameras in the plant, and he could take them away from others’ control if needed to. He never had.
“Looking now,” he responded, phone still to his ear. Neil had turned and was looking at him from his console. “Zooming in,” letting Roy be aware of what was going on. He zoomed the closest camera in on the tree line, waited for the focus to clear up, and started scanning the area from left to right. The sun hadn’t fully risen, making it difficult to find something with a black and white monitor, everything appearing to be grey. He stopped moving the camera. What was that? It wasn’t the shape that gave it away, it was movement. He zoomed in a little closer on the object. A silhouette of a man suddenly stumbled fully out of the woods and onto the grass.
“Take a look,” he said to Neil, as he punched the camera number he had been looking at into the larger monitor between him and Neil. “Looks like we have a guy out there. Looks to be stumbling or drunk.” He was squinting but just couldn’t make it out. The tree line was a good 150 yards away and the camera wasn’t made for details that far off.
The lieutenant stood up from his seat behind Kyle and walked over to the small operations area. “Have XR-23 take a look,” he directed to Neil. XR-23 was one of two mobile units that patrolled the countless roads, paved and dirt, that existed on the property.
“XR-23, XR-20, we have an unidentified person on the tree line in front of XR-3 position, please respond. XR-3 and XR-7 cover.”
“Copy that,” came the responses from the two posts. Kyle was squinting at the larger monitor trying to make out what the guy was doing. “Looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he said, as he saw the white Tahoe drive up on the screen, lights flashing.
Chapter 4
Kyle watched as the large white Tahoe drove to the site and pulled off the road onto the grass. A large man half-stumbled out of the SUV, turned and reached back inside for his rifle. Kyle watched him sling the weapon over his right shoulder so it would be accessible quickly if he needed it. “That’s Brian,” Kyle thought, looking at his stomach size. The unidentified man was now about twenty feet from the SUV and the Tahoe.
Kyle didn’t know what Brian was thinking, but he felt a little excitement rush through him, this was defiantly out of the ordinary around here. It wasn’t every day that something this exciting happened at the plant. A second Tahoe drove up, parked at an angle to the first, and a second officer, this one skinny as a rail, hopped out of the truck. The skinny officer gave Brian a jerky nod and lifted his rifle halfway to the firing position. Both were behind their engine blocks as Brian picked up a microphone that was attached to his roof and cleared his throat.
“Sir, this is plant security, you are trespassing on private property. Please show us your hands and stop walking.”
Kyle heard the warning come through the radio and watched for a response from the stumbling man. The command center was completely quiet as they all watched what was going on. The lieutenant was standing directly behind the sergeant’s chair, and Patrick was behind his chair trying to rest his elbows on the top, pulling his chair back.
The man didn’t see to hear, or if he did, he didn’t respond at first. A moment later the man tilted his head up in the air as if he were an animal smelling his prey. He slowly turned his head toward Brian and jerkily began to stumble toward him. Kyle could see the two men glance at each other before Brian turned his head back toward the advancing man.
As the man got closer his image became more clear. What Kyle first thought was dirt on the man’s arm seemed to be something else, something darker. He couldn’t really tell the color but it looked dark in some places. There also appeared to be lesions or tears on his face and arms. His clothes were torn and shredded, probably in no small part to the forest he just walked through. He also didn’t seem able to focus very well, as he seemed to be jerking his head with little motor control.
“That guy must have had one good time last night,” whispered Patrick, close to Kyle’s ear. He was supposed to be leaving on a tour but he didn’t seem anxious to leave.
“Something is weird about this guy,” Kyle said, as he looked at the lieutenant. The lieutenant just nodded and kept looking at the video.
“Call Code Orange,” he said quietly to the sergeant.
Neil nodded. “All units, all units, Code Orange. I repeat Code Orange. Count off in order.” Code Orange was the signal to ready all firearms, to open gun ports, and be ready. Code Orange meant there was a threat but attack wasn’t imminent. Kyle couldn't remember when they had a previous one, if they ever did.
Kyle tuned out the radio and looked back at the monitor. He manipulated the joystick to the camera and zoomed in a little more. His eyes squinted as he focused on the stumbling man.
“Neil, that guy has a wound on forearm, it looks to be a really bad one,” he stopped and squinted harder. “It looks as if that part of his arm is missing.”
He leaned back in his chair and felt Patrick almost draped completely over the top of the chair. He was beginning to feel a little fearful. He had experienced the feeling many times in the Middle East. It was the feeling of wanting to freeze and hide, of feeling your body working against you, of controlling your actions. It was a companion that he hadn’t missed. The man tripped, fell, rose shakily, and kept stumbling closer to the big officer. Brian for his part was quite nervous. He couldn’t remember if they trained him for anything like this, and if they did, he was having a hell of a time remembering it. He knew he wasn’t supposed to let someone just walk up to him, especially someone who looked as if they had just drunk a bottle of Jack Daniels and fallen out of a hay wagon. The man sounded as if he was trying to talk, to cry out, but only gurgles advanced from him in a non-rhythmic chorus.
Brian felt his stomach twist, his hands shake. Ten feet. He placed his right hand on the plastic release that kept his 9 millimeter pistol tucked into his hip harness. Sweat began to roll down his hairy, fleshy arm making his fingers moist. “I might have to pull my gun,” he thought.
Kyle was glued to the monitor, and the command center was tense as a spring waiting to see what would happen. Kyle began to wonder what the lieutenant was going to order, he found himself thankful that he didn’t have to make the call. Shooting someone seemed to be a bad way to start the day. He really didn’t think it would go that far, of course.
The lieutenant behind him and to the left spoke, “Get 2 and 7 to zero in but keep safeties on.” The sergeant quickly followed through with the orders. “Have XR-22 go pepper spray, tell him to remember to evade.” The information again went out.
Brian heard and acknowledged the instructions; his hand was beginning to shake a little more as he pulled the small canister of pepper spray out and flipped the cap to fire. They had been trained to fire a straight shot just above the eyes and to retreat in an L-fashion in case the person continued to go straight. Brian risked a quick glance at his fellow officer. He was a guy named Finn. He was a shaggy, anorexic man of unidentifiable years. His face was lean and hard as a new corpse, with the same accompanying smell about him. He too had drawn his spray from his loosely worn gun belt.
“I’ll cover ya,” he drawled, making sure that he kept away from the advancing man.
Brian straightened his fleshly arm and warned the man a last time, “Sir, this is private land. I need you to stop and get on your knees.”
The stumbling grey man only increased his pace and, if anything, seemed to growl louder. The smell of rot and feces floated before the man. His steps became quicker as his head lifted into the air. He was closing. His ha
nds reached before him like a man searching in a dark room, his fingers were reaching, moving in twitchy spasms.
Brian made the decision. He sprayed the man, a clear ballistic spray shot out of the canister and landed on his forehead, face, and neck. His fear caused him to forget the short controlled burst as he jammed the button. The spray showed no sign of working as the grey man reached a visibly-shaking Brian who was attempting to walk backward. Brian stumbled, tripped and went down. His large bulk and guns helping to make it graceless and painful. The grey man followed Brian down and latched onto his outstretched hand. He sunk his teeth deep into the forearm and began to pull his head back.
“Oh shit, he’s eating me!” came the scream from the confused and panicked Brian. On reflex he brought his other hand up in a wild, out of control roundhouse. The blow was sufficient to knock the crazed grey man off of him but he was able to carry away a bloody portion of his arm. Brian started to scoot back on the ground like a crab.
Finn finally came out of his trance to lean down and try to pick up the massive burden that was Brian. They had managed to move a few feet when the powerful sound of a rifle hit them, quickly followed by another, and was instantly followed by the grey man hitting the ground. Finn reached across his vest, grabbed his radio and called in, not sure what he should do. Kyle saw the incident play out before him in black and white, a shocked expression on his face. His body almost tingled with nerves and tension. It was a surreal feeling watching on a monitor while knowing it wasn’t TV. The lieutenant had immediately given the call to fire after the man had attacked Brian. Josh was a little impressed by his decisive thinking, seemingly not worried at all if it was the correct call. He wondered how the officer in the tower felt, putting two rounds into another person. He knew it wasn’t a great feeling.
“Smalls, Patrick, escort them into the protected area,” commanded the lieutenant, his face grave. He gave them a small nod full of tension and quickly turned back to the sergeant who was busying making calls to local law enforcement. Kyle and Patrick got up, hoisted their rifles, extra magazines, and swiped out of the protected room.