The Romero Strain (Book 1): The Romero Strain

by Alan, TS

  “Can we stop talking and start killing?”

  Sam was anxious as was Joe.

  “Sam, do I interrupt when you’re lecturing me on some weapons system?”

  He responded quickly and concisely with, “Yes!” nodding his head up and down in affirmation.

  “In the words of Darth Sidious,” I began, and then instructed to wipe them out. All of them.”

  David gave me his usual look of disappointment and a slight headshake at my cheesy line.

  We all moved away from the building, toward the 25th Street fencing. Sam lit up the UDs, rejoicing in his endeavor like a pagan with a bale fire, and Joe shot them like rats in a trashcan.

  I had seen things, smelled things, and eaten things that would make an ordinary person projectile vomit. I had eaten durians, coconut grubs and stinky tofu. I had seen victims with their intestines protruding from massive stomach wounds and limbs torn from bodies. I had smelled the foul stench of bile and the rancid smell of gangrenous flesh. But the noxious odor that emanated from the decomposing foulness of burning, undead flesh made me nauseous.

  The smell of burnt flesh was very recognizable. I’d never forget it. The scent was nauseating and sweet, putrid and beefy. The smell could be so thick and abounding that it was nearly a taste. Even worse was the smell of a decomposed body set ablaze. Bacteria inside the organs produced and released methane byproducts, which gave corpses their distinctive stench. Firefighters called those types of bodies “bloaters,” for the decaying body would grow swollen with foul-smelling gases. Bloaters that caught fire released a horrific, noxious stench.

  Except the fetid foulness was far worse than any horribly burnt and blackened flesh of the living or the deceased, and I was not the only one who was overwhelmed. I called Sam back. He was disappointed, but everyone agreed it was better to eradicate the remainders with bullets.

  We let loose a barrage. We nearly finished our task when I expended my last ammo magazine. Having packed more medical supplies than bullets, I let the others continue with the eradication.

  “I’m out!” I called out, and then radioed, “Julie, Marisol, open the door, I need more ammo.”

  I was standing at the back of the Stryker replenishing my weapon when I saw them. At first there were three, then five, and then another group behind them. They were running toward us from 26th Street. The UDs were coming, and they were not the blind and feeble undead. They were fresh undead.

  “Incoming, incoming!” I shouted.

  The others had not finished replacing their expended mags. I released my weapon into the charging lead pack. Kermit was next to fire as they were nearly upon us. An eruption came from the Stryker’s main machine gun. The rampaging packs dropped immediately. The UDs had taken us by surprise and it unnerved us all.

  “What the hell was that?!”

  “One of the girls,” I responded to Kermit’s anxious question.

  “No, not that. I mean, I thought all of these zombies were supposed to be dead after sixteen weeks,” Kermit clarified.

  Marisol and Julie came out of the Stryker.

  Julie exclaimed, “Marisol just smoked those UDs!”

  “Why don’t you boys just pack it in before I leave tread marks on your face?”

  “What?” I responded, never having heard Marisol speak that way.

  David chuckled.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked her. “And why are you out of the truck?”

  “Dude, she just smoked you!” David said.

  “The Fast and the Furious,” she announced with a smile. Marisol gloated, “I thought you were Mister Movie Quote!”

  “That wasn’t a movie. That was self-indulgent pandering to mindless America.”

  “It won an MTV Award!” she informed me.

  “So did Titanic. But that doesn’t make it a good movie. Now get back in the truck, until I give you the all-clear, both of you! And Max, too!”

  I walked away from her and toward the freshly killed UDs.

  “I got you and you know it!” she bragged, making sure I heard her as the rear door to the ICV retracted.

  I walked over to the closest victim and put a round directly into his brainpan. I wasn’t taking any chances. I had seen too many movies where a character thinks he killed the creature only to find out it wasn’t really dead, and then he gets killed, usually in some horrific manner like evisceration. That was not going to happen to me.

  “J.D., that was harsh. You know she’s probably been waiting for months to use that line.”

  “I know but… Whatever,” I told him.

  “You never saw the movie?”

  I knelt down over the bloodied corpse and examined its eyes. There was very little discolorization, but its pupils were moderately constricted where they should have been fixed and dilated. I thought at first it was still alive but I had shot it dead in the forehead.

  “Yeah, I did. The first sequel really sucked.”

  “But you didn’t remember the line?”

  “Of course I do. It was Michelle Rodriquez. Except she didn’t get the quote right. It threw me off,” I tried to convince him. I was making excuses for being outshined by an amateur.

  “Yeah, sure. You stick to that story if it makes you happy.”

  Julie and Marisol were unhappy that I had sent them back into the safety of Stryker. It had barely been a minute when Julie was on the radio pestering me, wanting to know what we had discovered. So I acquiesced and let them join us with one caveat: Max was not invited.

  The UD was different. It looked different. The face was dotted in red splotches and the skin was slightly grey, but it was also discolored like jaundice. The eye sockets were sunken and the eyes were as large as a transmute’s, but bulging. The eyes were nearly clear, too, but the constriction in the eyes bothered me, especially since the day had become overcast. There was also a ridge running from the start of the supraorbital process that extended down and around the ridge of the Zygomatic bone. The delineation was distinct in detail yet more distorted than a transmute.

  As the two women joined us, I turned to David and asked, “Don’t they look sort of like Demon Ash in Evil Dead 2?”

  “Yeah, but Bruce had that chin thing goin’ for him. They kind of remind me more of a Cardassian… No, actually they remind me of a C.H.U.D.”

  “Yeah, but C.H.U.D.s had those nasty Spock ears and those pupiless eyes that glowed.”

  The four of us moved to Kermit and Sam, who were doing their own examination of a corpse. These too were all identical in features, and newly undead. I was watching Sam and his little gizmo and not being vigilant in watching our surroundings, luckily Julie had been.

  It was angry and monstrous, both in size and attitude, and had set its eyes on David and Julie, who were standing a few feet away from the rest of the group. From the corner of my eye I saw Julie grab David and spin him out of the mutant’s path. David stumbled backward over a corpse taking Julie with him. They crash-landed on a dead soldier.

  The creature’s charge had been so furious and rapid that when David and Julie had fallen, it had over charged them. When the mutant turned back it set its sights on me. As it charged I met it head on, and I became the attacker.

  I used a Judo sacrifice throw known as Tomoe Nage against it. It was not something I learned when I studied in Japan. It was something I saw Captain James T. Kirk use against Andorian delegate Thelev in the Star Trek episode “Journey to Babel.” It may sound like a dumb idea to use a choreographed fight move from a 1960s sci-fi television show in a real-life fight for survival, but it really was a martial arts maneuver. As we met I gripped the mutant high and fell backward as in a backward roll. Once it was off balance forward, I planted a foot low on its waist and applied strong pressure. I rolled my back with the mutant above me, causing it to flip over and land on its back. The final position after the throw should have been both of us on our backs, head to head. The next move would have been for me to mount the mutant and plun
ge the knife that was strapped to my leg into its heart. Except the completion of the throw didn’t go as it was supposed to. Instead of us landing head to head, I misjudged my new transmute strength. As I flipped the frenzied beast over I pushed him too hard with my leg, and my grip loosened. The mutant ended up six feet away. As I began a rising handspring from my supine position, the beast had already risen and was on the attack. As I turned with knife in hand toward it, I was just in time to see Kermit smash the creature in the back of the head with a swing from the butt stock of his Colt M4A1 carbine. The hard whack to the cranium sent the mutant vaulting forward uncontrollably. Its nose-dive came to a sudden end when it collided with me, sending us both to the pavement. The knife I was gripping plunged deep into the mutant’s abdomen as it came crashing down on me. It was dead but I was wrist deep in mutant blood and intestines. Kermit never said a word. He was standing above us with his carbine aimed as I rolled the corpse off of me. When he recognized the threat had been neutralized he gave me a helping hand up.

  David and Julie held each other for comfort as they looked down at the creature that had wanted them for breakfast. David cleared his throat and asked, “What are we supposed to call them?” He pretended not to be shaken, not wanting the others to see how frightened he was, especially Julie. Nonetheless, he was rattled; I could clearly hear it in his voice.

  I shook the blood and guts from my hand, and said, “Fuck. I think I just shit a Cooper MINI!” It was my way of telling him it was okay to be sacred.

  David smiled tentatively, and then corrected me. “MINI Cooper.”

  “Yeah, and that too!”

  His smile slightly widened. “So? Deadites? C.H.U.D.s? Half-mutes?”

  “Half-mutes? Yeah,” I agreed. “Half-mutes.”

  Everyone gathered around as I crouched, examining the mutant I had just killed. “These are not like the others… This is so fucked.”

  I wasn’t purposely trying to scare the others, but the words just rolled out of my mouth.

  “You’re right.” Sam replied. “Look at this,” he said, as he showed me his NukAlert, “they’re hot!”

  David had been correct about the radioactive fallout. The effect of the contamination was like something out of Andre Norton’s novel, Daybreak 2250 AD.

  “Great! Radioactive mutants,” I sighed. “And here I am with its blood and shit all over my hand.”

  Sam turned his NukeAlert to me, scanning my hand.

  “As long as you didn’t cut yourself, you should be fine,” Sam told me but then warned, “But you better go wash up to make sure.”

  “Are they some kind of new running zombies?” Marisol asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “More like fast and vicious cannibalistic humanoids from the film Pandorum.”

  “Why is it everything wants to eat us?” Julie asked.

  “We’re going to have to take one back to the doc. Maybe he’s got an answer. Sam, you and Joe grab this one. And I’ll—”

  “Where is Joe?” Sam asked.

  None of us had noticed he was missing.

  We looked toward the building and saw him sitting on the bottom entrance step. It looked like he was resting, but he wasn’t. I could see blood coming from his mouth.

  “Shit. He’s down!” I shouted, as I moved to him.

  Joe had been impaled through his back on the spiked end of the wrought iron bars that made up the entrance gate. The gate had been partially ripped and mangled from its hinges and stood at a forty-five-degree angle toward the street.

  Joe’s breathing was labored.

  “I slipped,” he barely muttered. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “It’s okay, Joe. I have something for the pain,” I told him, and then reached into the utility pouch that hung off my left hip to retrieve a small plastic box that contained syringes and morphine. I cut open his sleeve so I could get to a vein.

  He coughed up blood in an agonizing expulsion. “I’m not going to make it, am I?”

  Joe had been impaled deeply, and it appeared he had punctured a lung and most likely damaged his spine. If he had been wearing his body armor, the severity of his trauma would have been severe bruising and maybe a fractured rib or two.

  “Try to relax,” I told him, as I gave him the injection. “The morphine will kick in momentarily.”

  I knew a few things about combat medics and the supplies they carried. However, what I had tucked under Luci’s head was not a pack from a medic. It was a combat lifesaver aid bag. I had taken the bag from one of the Special Ops members. The nomenclature of the bags did not include pain medication; those were only included in a medic’s bag. Nonetheless, I had taken morphine, amongst other items, from the facility’s medical supplies and made my own medic bag and utility pouches. Instead of carrying extra ammo, I carried additional medical supplies in preparation for any situation that may arise. However, there was nothing in my sundry items that could save Joe.

  The tension in his body eased, and for the last few moments of his life he was without pain.

  “I feel better,” Joe told me. “Can we go ho—”

  Joe’s eyes slowly closed as if he were drifting into slumber. A moment later his rectum and bladder released. I checked his pulse. He was dead.

  “May you find serenity in the arms of your god,” I whispered. I paused for a moment. Everyone was silent. David placed his hand on my shoulder. His gesture was a consolation, not just for me, but also for him. Though no one was fond of Joe, especially me, he was a team member and an integral part of our survivor family. There was no doubt he would be missed.

  “Marisol and Julie,” I said, breaking our silence. “I want both of you back in the Stryker. Sam, you go with them and bring the Stryker in front of the entrance, ass end to the door in case we need to evacuate in a hurry. Join us when you’re done. Kermit and David, you’re with me.”

  “What about Joe?” David asked.

  “He’ll have to stay there for a while. We need body bags. We should check the armory. Oh, shit!” I had left Luci lying unconscious. I ran back into the building, but she was gone. I picked up my pack from the floor.

  David and Kermit had followed. I stood looking at the dead transmutes that Luci had saved me from. I knew it would not be the last time I would see her.

  I hadn’t the time or the opportunity to examine what was stored in the drill hall. A sudden outburst of enthusiasm from Sam echoed throughout the hall. From his excitement it sounded like he had hit the mother lode.

  “Holy gravy… This is amazing!” he exclaimed, astonished at his find. “Look at all this stuff. There’s food everywhere! Whoa! Look at all the FSRs! Holy gravy!”

  “Holy gravy,” I said, half-questioning Sam’s choice of words. “I think you watched too much Rachel Ray.”

  “Yeah, holy gravy! Do you realize how much food we have here?”

  “Military rations suck,” Kermit said with disdain, then added, “There’s nothing like a real cooked meal.”

  “No, those are First Strike Rations. The FSR is a compact, eat-on-the-move assault ration designed for use during initial periods of highly intense, highly mobile combat operations. They’re awesome.”

  “Normally, at this point in the conversation, I would crack wise. But since you’re literally as happy as a kid in a candy store, I’ll give you a pass.”

  Sam responded, defending his knowledge. “It’s not like we got The New York Times delivered every day. It was a lot of Stars and Stripes, Soldiers and RDECOM magazine, and watching a lot of the Military Channel. That’s why I know so much!”

  “Body bags, Sam, body bags,” I instructed.

  The large pallet of rations Sam stood by read, MEAL, READY-TO-EAT, INDIVIDUAL. The far side of the box was stamped Dairy Shakes, Chocolate. I cut open the box and pulled out one of the cases. I sliced the seal open and pulled out a packet from the large box. In the package was a plastic flexi-pouch with a thin cardboard protective outer case sealed in clear plastic. I turned the
ration package sideways and read the capital letter instructions: TEAR POUCH AT NOTCHES. OPEN ZIPPER, ADD 6 OZ (1/4 CANTEEN CUP TO FILL LINE. CLOSE ZIPPER. SHAKE TO MIX. SINGLE USE ONLY. CONSUME PROMPTLY. (WITHIN 1 HOUR). I turned it over, read the ingredients imprinted on the back, and found out why it was only good for an hour. I quickly tossed the package back into the individual case.

  There were more pallets of rations. Sam would later volunteer to do supply inventory and was excited to report that the boxes contained meal pouches of shelf-stable pocket sandwiches, HooAH! nutritious booster bars, energy rich glucose optimized beverage mix, and a variety of snack items, including a modified version of applesauce named “Zapplesauce.” However what truly excited Sam were the pallets of what he told us was the greatest food invention the military ever came up with—though Kermit refuted this emphatically—the unitized group ration-express, or as Sam liked calling it: a kitchen in a box.

  The UGR-E box prepared hot meals for eighteen people with the pull of a tab. To heat the meal, a soldier merely opened the box, then, without removing anything, pulled a tab that released a salt-water solution that reacted chemically and heated the four trays of food in about thirty-five minutes. That was the simplistic version of how the UGR-E works. I made Sam give us the synopsis, not the full rendition.

  I didn’t know much about the armory building with the exception that it had been the home court of the New York Knicks professional basketball team from 1946 through 1950, and that it was a national registered landmark.

  The administration building extended the full length of the block along Lexington Avenue, 25th to 26th Street. It was a three-story brick structure with limestone trim, topped by a high two-story roof with two slopes on each of the four sides. There was a massive, deeply recessed arched entryway in the center bay. A sculptured winged eagle formed the keystone of the entry arch.

  The interior was retro-like. In reality, it was antiquated, apparently having never been updated, harkening back to the days of the Knicks. The upper walls of the gallery area had been painted mostly in a hideous pea green color, while the walls of the main level of the hall were white with green trim. A balcony surrounded the inner perimeter of the drill hall. There were staircases at each corner that lead up to the gallery to tattered and worn seats that were once filled by eager fans during the golden days of the team. The western wall displayed a large rectangular orange sign with large black lettering that read, Next Home Game. Above it hung a large cream-colored banner with a heavy red border, dirtied from time, touting 69th N.Y. Above that was a large, circular, hand-sweep clock, which we later discovered was broken, just another useless relic of the past. There were even black and white fallout shelter signs mounted on some of the drill hall walls—reminders of our Cold War past.