by Scott Shoyer
“All you military types are so suspicious,” Josef said as he patted Wilder on the shoulder. “I’m not going to sugar-coat any of what we did down here. Those EMP bombs you found in the labs above us weren’t developed as peace-keepers.”
Josef walked over to the transport vehicle and ran his hand along the side of it.
“When your family business is developing weapons of mass destruction,” Josef said in a deeper voice than before, “one becomes very aware of all the various ways the world could end.”
“Did one of those scenarios come from that object above us?” Wilder asked.
Josef stopped and slowly turned his head.
“Absolutely,” said Josef in a hushed voice.
“I think you’ve said quite enough,” Rickard said as he joined the others in the garage. “The truth is, we’re not exactly sure what that object above us is or what it does.” Rickard was in his sixties, but was still a powerful-looking man. Wilder eyed the man from head to toe and knew that Rickard was no stranger to combat. It wasn’t just the scars on his arms and face--it was the look in his eyes. Combat changes a man, and nowhere was that change more visible than in the eyes.
“But you know where it came from, don’t you, Rickard?” Wilder asked.
“Not exactly ‘where,’” Rickard said, “but we do know that it wasn’t made on Earth.”
“I still can’t believe we’re dealing with aliens here,” Steele said.
“It is the alien technology that has us most concerned,” corrected Josef. “So far, E.T. has kept his distance.”
“So far,” added Steele. Rickard just looked at Steele with an icy stare.
“What pisses me off is that we’ve been out there fighting those bastards and assumed they were altered by human-based technology,” Wilder said. “All the while you were safely tucked away in this fortress and knew the origin of this virus was alien in nature.”
“What’s your point?” Rickard said as he looked Wilder in the eyes.
“I’ll show you my point,” Wilder said as he moved toward Rickard. Wilder was quick as a predatory cat and seemed to glide forward, fist ready to strike.
“Guys,” Steele said as he stepped between the two men, “I think we have bigger issues here.”
Wilder stopped himself before he hit Rickard.
“Steele’s right,” Wilder said as he maintained eye contact with Rickard. “We’ve got God knows how many of those things on the other side of that steel door. As much as this sub-level feels like a fortress, those fucking things will find a way in. They always do.”
“So what’s the plan?” Steele asked.
“I’ve got a plan,” Wilder said, “but it involves us leaving this place. I think we need a group meeting to talk about this.”
2
Twenty Miles Outside Huntsville, Texas
Sam Houston Trailer Park
Riker, Teagan, and Hector escorted their new visitors to the center of the trailer park. A few months ago, they’d created a common area in which they held meetings and strategized when they needed to go on food runs. None of the trailers were large enough to hold everyone at once, so they moved five of the larger trailers into a pentagram-like shape. The center of the trailers was their meeting place, and the surrounding trailers helped keep the noise from traveling and gave them some privacy.
Before they walked to the common area, Murphy asked Frye and Hector to grab what was in the baggage compartment and promised everyone they would be pleasantly surprised.
Riker wasn’t one to let his guard down quickly, but he felt that Murphy and the others on the bus were no threat. He was confident they weren’t looking to steal supplies or weapons. Riker felt as though the bus passengers were grateful just to get off the bus for a while.
“Aahhh,” said Murphy as he rubbed his hands together. “Here comes Frye and Hector now.”
After they parked the bus inside the trailer park compound, Frye and Hector looked in the baggage compartment and nearly had heart attacks at what they found in there.
Everyone made themselves comfortable in the mismatched lawn chairs and anything else they could find and use for a seat.
“I see you found our peace offering,” Murphy said as he smiled from ear to ear.
Hector placed a case of Miller Genuine Draft on the table and everyone stared at the case of beer as if it were the Holy Grail itself.
“No way!” shouted Jackson. “We ran out of beer over a year ago.”
“We found this case outside of Orlando, Florida in a dirty little gas station and have been saving it for the right time,” Murphy said.
“I think this is a great time,” Jackson said as he licked his lips.
“We appreciate it,” Riker said.
“We just want to show that we appreciate your hospitality and that we don’t mean any harm,” Murphy said. “We’ve all been on that bus too damn long.”
“And we’ve been in this trailer park too damn long,” Noonan added. They all raised their cans and toasted.
“So you started off in Philadelphia, right?” Greg asked.
“I did,” said Murphy. “I lived down by the South Philly sports complexes. When the shit hit the fan, it was pure chaos in that entire area.” Murphy stared at the ground and held the can of beer tightly as he recounted his story. “My wife was being treated for lung cancer at Methodist Hospital. She had to be admitted and we both knew it wasn’t going well. I was on my way to visit her when all hell broke loose.”
“I’m sorry,” Teagan said.
“I wasn’t stupid,” Murphy continued. “We both knew my wife wasn’t going to make it. We were prepared for that. What I wasn’t prepared for was to not be there with her when she did finally pass. Forty-two years. We were married forty-two years and I never got to say good-bye to her.”
Murphy took a long pull from the warm beer and wiped a tear from his eye.
“Tell them how you ended up going on tour with AC/DC,” a young, twenty-something said. It was obvious he was trying to move Murphy beyond this painful part of his story.
“I guess introductions are in order first,” Murphy said as he ran his sleeve across his eyes. “That’s Braden,” he said as he nodded to the twenty-something. “Paula is our Southern Peach; that’s Brian, the red-headed devil,” Murphy said as he smiled. “Stewart, here, is our resident conspiracy theorist,” Murphy said as he pointed to the black man, “and those three are Gary, Emily, and Kimberly. We picked them up in Washington, DC.”
“The name’s Stewart Scott,” Stewart said. “You can call me either Stewart or Scott. Don’t call me ‘conspiracy nut,’ please.”
“We found those three running for their lives down Massachusetts Avenue,” Braden said as he nodded toward Gary, Emily, and Kimberly, and laughed. “They had about ten of those bastards chasing them and Murphy just plowed right into them with good old ‘Thunder Struck.’”
“Braden named the bus ‘Thunder Struck’ after one of AC/DC’s songs,” explained Murphy. “I guess those boys were in Philly for a concert when the outbreak happened. The bus was parked outside the stadium with no one in it. I know I probably shouldn’t have, but I took it. It looked safe--a lot safer than my 1990 Jetta.”
“I was the first one he picked up,” Brian said as Murphy smacked his hand when he reached for a beer. “Those prick-things had me cornered next to a fence when I suddenly saw this big-ass bus headed my way. I jumped outta the way and heard those thing’s bones shatter as old man Murphy slammed into them.”
“I’m rather brave behind the wheel of that bus,” Murphy said. “In time, I picked all these scoundrels up. I was just driving up and down the East coast. I picked up Paula outside of Atlanta, Braden in Florida, Stewart in Delaware, and those three in Washington, DC.”
“I don’t even know how long we’ve been on that damn bus,” Stewart said through a mouthful of beer. “That thing is like being in a moving prison.”
The group from the bus appeared to notice the awkwa
rd looks from the others.
“What?” Stewart asked. “What did I say?”
“Nothing,” Riker answered. “Prison is where we all came from.” Riker then went through his introductions.
“I’m sorry, everyone,” Stewart apologized. “I didn’t mean to offend.”
“No offense taken,” Noonan said. Riker caught the man eyeing up the college girls and made a mental note to talk to Noonan after the gathering.
“How long have you all been living here?” Gary asked. “That looks like a helluva sturdy fence you built around the park.”
“We’ve been here over two years,” Reece said. “At least your prison was mobile.”
“Teagan and I were talking about holding a meeting with everyone right before your bus pulled up,” Riker said.
“A meeting?” Reilly asked. “What about?”
“I… we…” Riker paused. “We think it is time we move on from here.”
“Where the hell do you propose we go?” asked Greg.
“I think that’s a question for our new friends,” Riker said.
“You all wanna leave?” Stewart asked. “Where are you going to go? There’s nothing out there but death.”
“Unfortunately, Stewart is correct,” Murphy added. “Granted, we’ve only been up and down the East coast, but there’s no place safe to run to. Everything is gone.”
“I was living at a military base for a while,” Braden said. “We thought we were in the safest place you could be. We had guns, ammunition, food, and water, and the soldiers on the base trained the civilians. Then one day it was all gone.”
“All gone?” Teagan repeated.
“We were overrun by those bastards and everyone was slaughtered,” Braden said. “We watched as more and more of the infected gathered around the base. We wondered why they wouldn’t attack us. They didn’t attack until their numbers swelled. There had to be three, four-hundred of those things,” Braden said as his eyes glazed over. “We didn’t have a fucking chance against them. Those bastards aren’t stupid. It was like they strategized and had a plan before they attacked the base. I barely got out of there. There were almost two-thousand people on that base and I think I may have been one of the only ones to escape.”
“There’s nowhere to go, Riker,” Stewart said. “This place is as good as any.”
As if on cue, all five of the trailers that formed the common area started to violently shake. The peaceful, nighttime sky was now full of screams and moans as the zombies all around them violently broke the tranquility.
The zombies had surrounded the group and left no way to escape.
Riker, Teagan, Reilly, Greg, and Frye grabbed their carbines and made sure they were all fully loaded. The others looked desperately for something they could use as a weapon.
Toxic had a length of chain he found in a gas station during one of their food runs and Hector had a fire axe. Jackson grabbed a wooden broomstick, Reece held a two by four, and Noonan picked up the aluminum lawn chair he was sitting on moments ago.
The trailers shook for a few minutes, stopped, and then shook again.
“What now?” Murphy asked nervously.
“Now we get ready for a battle,” Riker said.
3
Sub-Level Facility, Schoepke Springs
Spicewood, Texas
“No,” said Josef Schoepke after he heard Wilder’s plan. “I don’t think we should leave. We are safe down here. This is perhaps the safest place left on Earth.”
A half-hour ago, Josef had announced over the intercom system that a meeting was going to be held in the dining area and that everyone needed to attend. The group had sat around the tables and listened to Wilder and Josef argue.
“Yeah, but for how long?” Wilder asked. “You haven’t been up there, Josef. You have no idea what those things are capable of.”
“You, Steele, and Cheryl have been down here with us for about six months now, yes?” Josef asked rhetorically. “And the infected have been on the other side of the main steel door for that long as well, right?”
“Yes,” Wilder responded. “But what does that matter?”
“What matters is that, over the last six months, those things haven’t so much as dented that steel door,” Josef said. “Why should we go up there and make it easy for them?”
“Josef has a point,” Howard, the chief scientist, said. “If we go up there, aren’t we kind of making it easy for them to get us?” Howard was a tall man in his forties with thinning hair and angular features. He’d already been working in the sub-levels when the initial outbreak had occurred over two years ago. His main area of research had been to identify the material of the strange object. The lead scientist, Barry, had been on his way to work at the time, but had never made it through the chaos. As such, Howard had been given a battlefield promotion to lead scientist.
“Then what do you propose we do?” Cheryl asked. “Are we all going to stay down here until we die of old age? Your scientists have had over two years to come up with something to kill those bastards and have failed. No offense,” Cheryl said as she turned and addressed the scientists in the room.
“You have to understand that this object is like nothing we’ve seen before,” said Jennie. Jennie was a mousy-looking woman in her thirties who claimed to feel more at home in a laboratory than anywhere else. She’d been one of the first scientists to move into the sub-levels, about eight months before the outbreak. Jennie always had her dirty blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and had her glasses hanging around her neck.
Jennie continued, “The skin of the object is impervious to everything we have down here. We’ve gone through what? Five diamond-tipped drill bits?”
“Six,” Howard corrected. “Six diamond-tipped drill bits, and we haven’t so much as scratched that damn thing.”
“I know we haven’t come up with anything,” Josef conceded, “but what do you think you can do up there to save everyone?”
“There’s safety in numbers,” Wilder answered. “We pack as many guns, ammo, and food as we can fit into those Wisent transports and we head to the nearest military base and gather more survivors.”
“And then what?” Josef asked. “Let’s say we gather together two-hundred survivors. Then what do we do?” Josef stood and walked over to Wilder. “I know you’re frustrated, Wilder. I know it’s in your blood to protect and save people and fight the enemy, but those things up there aren’t the kind of enemy the military is used to fighting. Those things are altered by an alien virus which is constantly mutating and evolving.”
“So we give up?” Wilder asked. “Is that the solution? We just hole up down here and live out the rest of our years?”
“Conventional weapons don’t work on those things,” said Howard. “If anyone knows that, it’s you. You risked your lives to make it here to set off one of the EMP bombs we developed. It did nothing but stop them for a few minutes. That was the strongest weapon we had.”
Everyone grew silent. Wilder saw that everyone looked beaten down, but he knew there had to be something he’d overlooked. There had to be a way to fight and kill those creatures.
“I’m not prepared to roll over and die,” Wilder finally said. “I will fight those fuckers with my last dying breath.”
“Your sentiments are noble, Wilder. They really are,” Josef said. “I admire your spirit, but I’m still waiting to hear a good plan that doesn’t involve us leaving this fortress and offering ourselves up for slaughter.”
“We had some success in some chemical research we conducted a while back,” Stacey said. “We discovered that the nanites manipulated the body’s dopamine and altered the way the brain processed rewards. The nanites essentially transformed infected humans into addicts. We thought we might be able to synthesize an antipsychotic drug cocktail that could be used to fight the creatures.”
“Because antipsychotic drugs can block the dopamine receptors,” said Cheryl as she finished Stacey’s thought.
&
nbsp; “That’s correct,” Stacey said with an impressed sound to her voice.
“We had some early success with the antipsychotic drugs,” Stacey continued, “but ultimately, the nanites mutated. The drugs no longer worked.”
“Tell me more about this alien virus,” Wilder asked the scientists. “What do we know? We need to remember that the real enemy aren’t the infected. The real enemy is whatever is coursing through the infected’s veins.”
“Honestly,” Howard started to answer, “we don’t know a whole lot about the actual virus.”
“We know it’s the nanites that do the real damage,” Stefan said. “But there’s also a viral element to the infection. The virus is what makes the infection transferable, and it’s also what made the infection jump from insects and animals to human beings.”
Stefan stood as he talked. He was the youngest of the four scientists and became more excited the more he talked about the infection.
“That was our first clue that this infection wasn’t terrestrial,” Stefan continued. “Whatever, whoever, the source of the infection was, they cracked the code to creating a trans-species contagion.”
As Wilder watched Stefan, he couldn’t help but think of Melvin. Both men were brilliant, and both men became very excited when they talked. Wilder guessed Stefan was in his late twenties. He had sandy-blond hair and was built like someone who’d spent his entire life in a laboratory.
“The viral part of the infection was how the human body accepted the disease,” Stefan explained. “Again, who or whatever developed this infection used a strand of DNA that I haven’t been able to identify yet.”
“What does that mean?” Cheryl asked.
“The creators of this contagion used a strain of DNA that they created,” Stefan answered.
“So the DNA is alien?” Steele asked.
“Not at all,” Stefan said. “The aliens…”
Stefan stopped when he uttered the word “aliens” and shot a look over at Rickard. When the man said nothing, Stefan continued.