by H. L. Murphy
As I slowly regained my composure, and stopped trying to pull the colt revolver from my waist so I could shoot the giggling prick above me, I finally thought to eyeball my injury. Blood was no longer pouring down my arm as the flesh knitted itself back together. Some kind of putrescent material coated either side of the cut, and I genuinely wondered whether I was correct in my assumptions concerning the cruelty of the guards. Then my deeply abused olfactory sense informed me the discolored substance was likely bird shit of various origins. I had just endured the introduction of avian fecal material into my bloodstream.
Jesus Fuck, I felt violated.
In addition to a few things from Home Depot I would need to stop at the local liquor store so I could wipe this episode from my long term memory. Although, with my altered immune system would such an epic drunk even be possible? Oh, please, don't take that from me too. If I can't tie one on every now and then, you know, to alleviate the stress and release some mental pressure then what's the point of living?
“Suck it up, pansy,” I told myself. My knees, hell, all my joints, voiced their protests in varying degrees of intensity. The loudest complaints came from my hip, which caught the brunt of the fall, and I was pretty sure I would be having a long conversation with my neck in a few hours. If bird shit poisoning and, maybe, long term joint pain were the price I had to pay for my family’s safety, it was coin I would pay. I'd bitch about it, but I'd pay it. Limping slightly, I stumbled over to the MRAP.
If you've never seen one up close let me say it loud and proud, an MRAP is a huge armored vehicle that should inspire a gigantic, diamond hard erection in the trousers of anyone that gazed upon it. Yes, maybe I was sporting my own stiffy as I climbed up the vehicle to peak into the cabin. Almost no concessions had been made to comfort, but the spartan interior remained clean and intact.
“What's it look like?” James wheezed. Glancing down I watched James swish water around his mouth before spitting it out.
“Well, if the door is unlocked,” I said as I tried the door handle. The satisfying click of the door latch releasing put a wide smile on my face. “We're in business.”
I turned to James as the silence ebbed away. A low disturbing sound wafted to us from within the county jail. It wasn't a moan, more along the lines of a ravenous animal expressing its hunger. A deep, unending hunger. The two of us turned as one to stare, open mouthed, at the pitch black windows high on the building. Within those walls the sound came again, louder and with greater intensity. On any given day, the Martin County jailhouse operated at, or near, capacity so that meant a LOT of people had been in there on Outbreak Day. I didn't know, or want to know, how the virus spread throughout the complex. In a distant corner of my mind an idea popped up its ugly head. It was more than conceivable someone might still be alive in a cage or reinforced office, just waiting for help to come.
I started to speak, to suggest we should at least try to discover whether or not anyone was alive in there when a sound came to us, a sound that ran down my spine to clench my sphincter and I think my testicles crawled into my throat.
The sound wasn't just a sound, it was a chorus of discordant voices raised in the same clarion call. Each voice seemed to call the same word though seconds apart.
“Ffffllllleeeeeessssshhhhhh,” the call began low and soon rattled the windows.
James and I froze in place for entirely too long. Can't tell you what James was thinking or feeling, but I can say for goddamn certain how fucking terrified I was in that moment.
“Get in the truck,” I finally gasped. My eyes never left the building as James climbed up past me. He was too busy climbing into the cab to notice, but I watched, entranced, as an undead prisoner’s face pressed against a window. Its jaw moved the whole time, mouthing my name the entire time.
Interlude Four
In the annals of unsung heroes and singular moments of supreme courage and self sacrifice, the greatest entry was surely that of the II Marine Expeditionary force of Camp Lejeune. Or rather, those elements of the II Marine who rallied at Jacksonville, North Carolina, against a horde of undead ten million strong.
It is, and always would be, impossible to say what those Marine felt before the shooting started, though a few good bye letters were discovered after quite some time passed. The contents of these letters were indecipherable due to age and exposure, however it would be safe to expect those lost sentiments centered squarely on the loved ones of the fallen Marines and their heart felt regret for sins real and imagined.
In all, three hundred eighty-seven Marines drew a line in the dirt just north of the city and held it for fourteen days and fifteen nights. Every advantage was seized upon, every dirty trick acquired by the Corps since its inception was employed, light armored vehicles rolled over hundreds, maybe thousands while mortars dropped like rain, and still the undead came. As the odds shifted further against the Marines, individual bravery soared. Courageous, if blatantly stupid, actions became the order of the day. When faced with the unstoppable advance of a thirty foot tall amalgam, Lance Corporeal Thomas Neil strapped a satchel charge to his chest and charged across the field, through two hundred some odd undead, many he was forced to kill with his beloved Kabar, before hurling himself into the grasping claw like hand of the beast. Evidencing the kind of selfless dedication that had always been the hallmark of the USMC, Lance Corporeal Neil held off detonating the charge until he had been rammed into the amalgams mouth. The resultant explosion served as a personal challenge to every remaining Marine. Flagging resolve hardened in the space of a heartbeat, weakening defenses threw back the uncaring enemy long enough for heavy machine guns and rapid fire grenade launchers to work their magic.
Day after brutal day the Marines fought, attrition thinning their numbers. Unlike the United States Army, which always received the newest equipment and the most of it, the USMC had a long tradition of making due with less, or scrounging whatever they needed. In this instance, elements of the defending force scoured the city for every round, explosive, and instrument of destruction possible. Two well used backhoes were requisitioned and used to dig trenches intended to slow the creatures approach. Over the course of the battle these trenches, six feet deep and four feet across, overflowed with the bodies of the undead. Nearly ten miles of trench, packed with the undead. Crushed down by the passage of so many relentless feet.
On the final day of the siege, the directing intelligence, a Class One being once known as John MacPherson of the Canadian Mounted Police, drove his horde to finish the resistance of the flesh and move on. It could sense a growing danger to the south, and through much consideration had taken it upon its own authority to end the threat. The decision was an impatient one and not supported by the Conclave. It was a mistake that cost the Class One dearly, for Gunnery Sergeant Quills recognized a command and control element when he saw one.
Unwilling to chance this thing escaping back into the mass of undead, Gunny Quills leapt up onto the hull of an M1A1 Abrams, and practically yanked the commander out of place. In short order, Gunny Quills was dropping the cannon’s sights onto the creature. In the very second Quills squeezed the trigger, launching an armor piercing, high explosive round, the thing looked directly into Quills’ shocked eye.
Then the creature exploded into its component atoms as the round found its target.
And just that quickly, the horde lost its direction, its drive, and the undead began to shamble aimlessly, a few hundred continued toward the Marine lines. By the dawn of the fifteenth day, seven Marines remained living. Low on everything, the Marines displaced into the city while an incalculable number of undead wandered back and forth. Unknown to the staggering heroes seeking the cover of the city, analysts used the latest programs to count each and every ambulatory undead. The final tally indicated II Marine terminated or destroyed or dispatched, pick your euphemism, seven million two hundred fifty-seven thousand infected. The analysts, well and truly acquainted with the resolve of the USMC, were nonetheless stagge
red by the epic sets of brass balls, and the single remaining set of titanium tits, displayed by the heroes of the Battle of Jacksonville.
Eric Linner was livid.
Not only had he not been allowed to finish killing that fucking nobody, Angus Finnegan, the soon to be dead pilot had put a pistol to his head and forced Linner to cuff himself to the gunner’s seat support rails. Then Linner endured the flight back to KnightStar’s temporary airbase, all the while that fool Fitzpatrick bellowed his pitiful attempts to intimidate over the radio. After the first ten minutes, Linner would gladly have eaten a bullet to escape the boredom.
Upon setting down, Agent Linner was met by a security contingent armed with AA-12 shotguns and very suspicious attitudes. He was conveyed not to the command tent, where Fitzpatrick undoubtedly waited to continue the anal reaming, but to a more robust mobile facility. It was something Linner had seen before, the tractor trailer set up used by the Armorer, one of the few men Eric Linner found…unsettling. Waiting inside stood the Armorer himself, armed with one of his custom manufactured weapons, probably designed specifically to kill Linner in the most profoundly painful fashion possible, and the doctor who had saved him from a slow death. The doctor stood barely five feet five inches tall, with a shock of unkempt white hair framing a face covered in small, straight scars. Beneath a beak of a nose sat a thick white mustache the doctor continually stroked whether he was speaking or staring daggers. Over their brief acquaintance Linner had learned nothing of the man, not even his name. He simply referred to himself as Doctor White and encouraged Linner to leave it at that. Mainly, he encouraged Linner through the expedient of explaining that any inquiry would be dealt with through the immediate introduction of a genetically engineered strain of fast onset Ebola. Guaranteed to end Agent Linner’s abortion of a life in an explosion of blood and liquified internal organs. When Eric had finally suggested it wouldn't matter because his new immune system would only resuscitate him, Doctor White had smiled and said, “then I will have the pleasure of hearing you gag and scream through your blood filled lungs a second, third, and maybe even a fourth time depending on how long it takes you to learn.”
The Armorer unsettled Eric, but Doctor White fucking terrified him.
“Hello, Eric,” Doctor White greeted in a smooth, cultured voice entirely antithetical to the rage burning in his eyes. “Glad to see you back in one piece. Hate for all our hard work to be for nothing.”
Simmering beneath the kind words the subtext came through loud and clear to Eric, cross the stated agenda again and the doctor would happily engage in one or more of the more colorful endings previously enumerated. Gazing out at the pair through his only remaining eye, Linner nodded his head contritely. Regardless of his personal vendetta, he did owe the doctor a very serious debt. Not only had the doctor saved his life, the old man had given him specialized treatments unlike anything Linner had ever experienced. With the exception of his missing eye, his wounds healed within hours of the first treatment. He could actually see more clearly with one eye than he had been with two. His other senses had been heightened as well, giving him an edge over everyone else he ran across. Privately, he wondered whether this might increase his enjoyment of his more rigorous interpersonal activities. What if he could actually hear his knife severing muscle tissue, tendons, and sinew? Eric thought he might jizz himself at the mere thought of it.
“I believe we have lost the dear boy,” Doctor White addressed the Armorer. “Be so kind as to center his attention.”
“Certainly, Doctor,” the Armorer smiled broadly, then fired his unique pistol. A small dart punched into Linner’s right pectoral muscle, causing exquisite agony, before a secondary wave of agony surged through his entire body. It was as if every nerve ending in Linner’s entire body had been dipped in acid, then electrified, then dropped in a vat of disinfectant. The excruciating agony stretched on forever, filling all the world, every corner of Linner’s twisted mind.
“Oh, very good. Quite effective, Armorer,” Doctor White offered, truly impressed by the results. “I believe Mister Linner has been sufficiently chastised.”
“Okay, Doctor White,” the Armorer agreed and fired a second dart into Linner. The counter agent took several seconds to take effect, but the pain subsided and Linner could think again.
“Hmmm, I believe we can fine tune the counter agent for a swifter response time, if you want,” the doctor offered.
“Oh, no. Thank you for the offer, though,” the Armorer smiled. “I think it's essential for the target to recover slowly, that way his mind lingers on the suffering. I've found it increases pliability during interviews.”
“Jesus fuck,” Eric spat, curling into a protective ball around his aching groin. “What the fuck was that?”
“Please don't curse,” the Armorer asked politely, emphasizing his request by pointing the strange pistol at Linner’s face.
“You got it,” Linner wheezed. “No more fucking cursing.”
“Mister Linner, do not antagonize the Armorer,” Doctor White chided, “or I will permit him an unspecified period of time in which to test several other biochemical substances.”
Not much of the doctor’s monologue registered with Eric, however the part concerning using him as guinea pig for the Armorer struck home.
“No, no, no, that's not necessary. I apologize profusely,” Linner said emphatically, his hands still cupping his aching groin.
“Apology accepted,” the Armorer grinned coldly.
“Thank you, Mister Linner,” Doctor White nodded his head. “Now would you care to explain why you disregarded your instructions to capture the target and instead attempted to atomize him?”
“Look, if the target is as resilient as you've said,” Linner began, eyeing that damned pistol, “I figured I needed to throw him some pain, and maybe a serious wound or two so he would be too busy trying to stay alive to resist being taken. After he tried to run, things just got a little out of hand.”
“A little out of hand,” Doctor White repeated slowly. His ice blue eyes bored into Linner. “Firing a twenty millimeter cannon at the target, the sole entirely successful field test of a vaccine, is out of hand. Launching every missile carried by a Cobra gunship at that target is entirely beyond the definition of unacceptable. Was I not perfectly, painfully clear with you regarding the absolute necessity of acquiring the target intact? Did I not make it clear you would be permitted your vengeance to the Nth degree after samples enough had been taken? You allowed your personal feelings to endanger the entire human race. Armorer, please administer something painful to remind Mister Linner to follow his orders precisely.”
“Oh, fuck that noi…” Eric began, though his voice rose into a scream as the Armorer fired another dart into him. The contents of the dart were a derivative of the toxin produced by Man-O-War jelly fish, though fine tuned to maximize pain and minimize the potential for fatality. It was, as Eric Linner would learn, the least agonizing of the Armorer’s toys.
The USS Constellation carrier battle group had seen a lot of bad seas and hard fights since acquiring Dr. Zhao. Admiral Mayweather reflected on this as he watched a fire suppression team aboard the destroyer Mat Best battle to save their boat. Damned PLA hadn't been too pleased with him for sinking two of their ships. So much so the fools had actually dumped a handful of fighters on that floating cluster fuck of an aircraft carrier of theirs and put to sea after him. It was true Mayweather had underestimated the Chinese navy, but then who could have expected the bastards to risk a jerry rigged aircraft launch? He certainly hadn't. They all nearly paid the price for his arrogance on that score. Too focused on Zhao, and all the goddamn problems that came with her. She was right. He would have to give her access to a computer connected to the internet before the damned thing fell, or they would lose precious ground. The latest reports read like a how to manual on fucking up the apocalypse so badly no one on earth could ever set it right. A limited exchange of small nuclear devices between Russia and China all but
ensured Mongolia would glow in the dark for the next thousand years, while India and Pakistan, in a stunning act of cooperation, put aside their angst over Kashmir to bomb the living shit out PLA forces parked on the Chinese side of the border. As it turned out, neither country was best pleased by the build up of forces along the Kashmir border. Nor were either government enthusiastic at the idea of becoming the next territory annexed by the PLA. Talks between the two governments had been carried out in secret for years under the guise of nuclear disarmament.
Sneaky bastards, Mayweather thought to himself. Nobody saw that coming.
What everybody should have seen coming was the invasion of Israel by most of her neighbors. Seven to one odds, and Israel kicked the hell out of all of them. Then left no doubt in anyone's mind about Israel’s nuclear capability by dropping a low yield device on Damascus, Syria. As most of its neighbors didn't think much of Syria, or Syrians, Damascus wasn't mourned over much, but the ability of Israel to nuke its enemies if pushed too far was noted and discussed at length.
Mayweather did his best not to think about the sprawling nightmare of Mexico City. Or South America. Just, no.
The human race was fast approaching the tipping point, and after that nothing could stop their annihilation.
When he stepped inside her stateroom, Dr. Zhao sat reading The Island of Doctor Moreau, the irony of which was not lost on him. Enthralled, or seemingly so, Dr. Zhao did not deign to look up. More power games.
“You will be given access to a single computer, it will be configured in such a way as to allow you access to your off site data, but not the ship’s network. Any attempt by you to reconfigure the computer will result in retribution, and I am well aware of your resistance to normal methods. I will therefore endeavor to be creative, ”this last piqued the doctor’s interest. Mayweather stared holes through her, the force of his will a palpable thing.