by Mark Wandrey
Vance had just enough warning to slide back a foot to behind the muzzle of the SSG3000 before it boomed. He saw clearly through the monocle as a 308 round hit a man high on his left shoulder. The impact threw off his stride, almost sending him to the ground. A visible cone of meat and blood exploded out the man’s back. He regained his balance and kept coming.
“He’s not stopping!” Vance cried out.
“Did he miss?” Tim asked of Harry’s shot.
“No, clean shoulder hit.” Vance watched the wounded man’s arm begin to flop around. “God, the hit fucked up his whole arm and the guy isn’t slowing!”
“I told you,” Harry said and expertly worked the bolt with his left hand, actually reaching over the scope to do it. The move let him keep his right hand on the pistol grip/trigger assembly, eye never leaving the scope. In less than two seconds he was settled back on target. “Firing,” the ex-Marine said calmly. The Sig boomed again and Vance watched the wounded man’s neck open up like a flower. The man fell like someone had cut his strings, hitting face first and grinding into the dirt and gravel.
“He’s down,” Vance confirmed as Harry worked the bolt. “Fifty yards.”
“I can’t get them all before they’re on us,” Harry warned as he picked a new target. “I got the center two.”
“Right,” Vance said. In a second he’d unshipped the bipod on his L1A1 FN FAL battle rifle and settled it next to Harry. Tim moved to the other side of the boulder and did the same.
“What’s happening?” Ann asked in the earpiece of the radio he was wearing. Vance took a split second to reach to his belt and flip the radio to VOX. “We hear more shots!”
“We’ve got zombies on the property,” he said, feeling far calmer than he expected. “Remain locked down. Wait one for an update. Tim, I got the left.”
“Confirmed, I’m on the right,” Tim replied.
As luck would have it, when Vance flipped up the covers on his Leopold scope and picked the far left of the five, it was a woman. On the right edge of his scopes view he could see two more of the sprinting figures. Harry’s rifle boomed and one of them staggered, a hole appearing in the person’s left chest who then staggered and slowed. Harry worked the bolt.
Vance settled his crosshairs on the woman’s sternum, right between her breasts. Falling into time with her up and down running movement. It’s a woman, a voice said in his head. He knew by the size of the person and that the scope was present to four-power that she was no more than 40 yards away. It’s a woman, Vance.
A man walking out of a building. A baby held in his hands. He leans forward as if to kiss it, teeth red and tearing…
Vance shuddered uncontrollably for a moment, then went completely calm. All emotions gone in a heartbeat. It was just him, and the rifle alone in the entire universe. A rifle he’d fired thousands of times on this very property.
He corrected his aim upward slightly. Even in the darkness the moon gave enough light to see the face. The woman might have been a Latin beauty once. Now her face was smeared with blood. Her mouth was open and snarling. He could see a tooth was broken off roughly. Bits of flesh were between her teeth. Harry’s gun spoke and the straggler fell, he worked the bolt onto his last round in the mag.
“Vance…” Tim said from the other side of the boulder. He heard in the man’s voice the same doubts and fears he was having as well. A lifetime of civilization weighed on them. Their parents’ lessons of not hurting others. To take a life was the greatest of all decisions. He’d carried a firearm for over twenty years and never pulled the trigger in self defense. Those teeth would soon be tearing into his flesh. His girlfriend’s flesh. His unborn baby.
“Thirty yards,” Harry warned as he fired his last round in the Sig.
“Do it,” Vance said as he lowered his sights and squeezed the trigger.
All three of them were firing .308 Winchester rounds, also called 7.62x45 to the US military and other NATO countries. It was the preferred round of Special Forces snipers and averaged over 2,800 foot pounds of muzzle energy. The round struck her low, he’d misestimated a bit and it hit just above her bellybutton. At least that was his estimate. The round mushroomed inside her abdominal cavity and blew a chuck of flesh seven inches across out of her back. The hydrostatic shock partially exploded her belly, throwing intestines out both sides. She didn’t even miss a step.
Vance and Tim’s weapons had one big advantage over Harry’s. While his could out distance them for accuracy, theirs were semi-automatic and had twenty-round magazines. He didn’t have to work a bolt, the gun instantly cycled a fresh round into the chamber and it was ready to fire again. As soon as the sight picture settled Vance adjusted and fired again.
The second round hit her just about her left breast. It might have been a beautiful breast once, he thought. Blood fountained from the wound and she fell. He shifted to the man to her left and fired three times in quick succession, stitching him from hip to neck. Tim fired his first round at the same time as Vance’s last.
Vance started to shift far right to help Tim and realized the last man was no more than ten yards away. The target filled his field of view so completely Vance didn’t know what he was looking at. He gasped and began to switch sight off the scope to the optical sights underneath it when the sound of a big bore handgun roared once, twice, and the man was blown back off his feet to crash to the dirt.
Vance looked over and saw Harry on one knee, a Ruger Super Redhawk .44 magnum held in a two-handed Weaver stance. He was panning the weapon back and forth searching for targets.
“C-clear,” Tim stammered. Vance could see he was looking through his scope at the man he’d shot. “Jesus Christ forgive me.”
“Clear,” Harry agreed, standing. He holstered a huge 6” barreled revolver and snatched up his Sig, swapping out magazines.
“Clear,” Vance said, standing with the FN FAL, but leaving the magazine. Only five of the twenty rounds had been used.
“We just killed five people,” Tim said, his voice shaking with an edge of hysteria.
“They’re not going to be the last,” Harry said. “Listen.” The men had to strain, their ears were still ringing from the gunfire. But even with their shocked ears they could hear the sounds of grunts and snarls coming towards them.
“How far are we from Mexico?” Harry wondered.
“Apparently too damned close,” Vance said. “We better get back to the retreat, and fast.” He flipped the radio from Vox to transmit. “Ann!”
“Oh Vance, thank God!”
“We’re on the way back. We have hostiles inside the fence.”
“Is Harry okay?” he heard Belinda yell in the background.
“We’re all fine, but we’re on the way back. Finish locking down, we’ve got lots of unwanted guests.” And the three men started running towards the distant house. Over five hundred yards away, the house’s floodlights suddenly went out. “Don’t kill the lights yet!” Vance yelled into the radio.
“We didn’t,” Ann replied. “The power just went out.”
* * *
As night fell across the United States, most Americans were still unaware of the degree of the infection’s spread. The supply chain for fresh food was relatively short. From weeks for vegetables to less than a week for fresh fruit to days for most meats. There were instances of ‘abnormal cattle behavior’ all across slaughterhouses in Texas, Arizona, and Kansas. There were bites. A couple shut down. But most still shipped.
Millions of hamburgers were served across the nation as meat from suspect animals flowed out into the nation’s food supply like poison from a snake bite. Where the distance was too far for the suspect food to reach in the days since the initial outbreak special shipments of prime meats and fish arrived via air. Places like Bismarck, North Dakota and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan which might have been far outside the reach without high-end steakhouses whose advertising bragged ‘the best steaks flown in daily’. Hundreds of guests went home with smiles, only t
o walk out their doors hours later hungry for their neighbor’s flesh.
For most Americans, the evening of April 23rd was the last normal day of their lives. The internet kill switch had slowed the release of vital information on how to avoid being infected by the transformative elements of Strain Delta. Most people no longer had regular broadcast television, they got it from their internet service provider. When the federal government pulled the plug, 75% of all TV news and information stopped either directly, or secondarily through TV providers who depended on the internet to move their media to distributors.
Into the late evening hours, military units rushed into deployment. National military leadership was in complete disarray. Units were sent with widely different, often conflicting orders. Some to isolate cities to avoid contamination, others were told to facilitate civilian evacuation into safe zones that were yet to be specified. Outside of Denver a mechanized battalion tasked with isolating the city came face to face with an infantry battalion from a different division who’d been ordered to prepare to evacuate
As morning dawned they got in their cars to go to work, the radios were either silent or carried random news about viral outbreaks in big cities. A few talked about rumors of terrorists detonating a nuclear device in Mexico. And that wasn’t the strangest rumors. There was an amateur astronomer who claimed to have watched a space ship launched by Jeremiah Osborne’s Oceanic Orbital Enterprises achieve orbit at incredible momentum. Once there, this person claimed, the ship then appeared to accelerate to impossible speeds before disappearing.
In the predawn hour’s various government agencies, those that could coordinate enough of their high-level leadership, attended a meeting of the minds. A multi-agency video conference on the already struggling military network, it was spotty with poor frame rate, but representatives of most of the cabinet level departments were present as well as many of the sub-agencies.
An hour in and most of those who could hope to effect any help to the spasming pieces of society knew in their minds that it was over. The government of the people, by the people, and for the people was not going to be able to save them. But some parts of it might at least try.
A connection was lost and the commandant of the Marine Corps disappeared. A few minutes later the Secretary of the Interior vanished. None of the others noticed. But when NASA fell out, they did. And JPL soon went as well.
As the remaining agencies and military representatives continued their mindless debates of the best ways to retain control, another secured connection was created between the Marine commandant and his old friend who just happened to be the Secretary of the Interior. They discussed their options for a few minutes until the Directors of JPL and NASA joined them.
Unlike at the earlier meeting, this group was united in understanding what was at stake, and what needed to be saved. Their own personal lives were less of a concern than the species. They’d all actually read the reports from the CDC just before something happened there and it went off the grid for good. The entire city of Atlanta was designated a quarantine zone, one of the few things those idiots had gotten right.
The Secretary of the Interior mobilized her contacts and access was granted to vaults in Missouri. Decommissioned salt mines that now were public and private warehouses kept at a natural 52 degrees Fahrenheit. Hundreds of the venerable Oshkosh five-ton trucks rolled into each of these facilities.
Crews at the warehouses were called out in the dead of the night and spent many hours moving thousands of pallets into the staging areas. They watched in bleary-eyed amazement as the transports, many still painted in desert tan, rolled in and were rapidly loaded. Many of the crews hadn’t wanted to come out, what with widespread disruptions underway. They were paid with crates of MREs and other survival supplies. Just hours later the trucks were roaring out into the dawn leaving formerly full FEMA warehouses now empty.
Convoys rolled out of Albany, Georgia, Jacksonville, Paris Island, and a dozen other Marine bases. Flight after flight of attack helicopters, transport copters, and C-130s lifted off from Yuma, Miramar, Cherry Point, and Beaufort in the largest Marine mobilization since Vietnam. Anything that could drive, or fly was moved. Tanks were driven out onto the highways as locals stared in stunned amazement, their transports following behind. Once fuel ran low miles later, they were refueled and loaded onto the transports. Empty fuel trucks were abandoned or civilian jet fuel was commandeered from airports. It’s hard to say no to a marine gunnery sergeant when he’s standing on an M-1 Abrams and a thousand devil dogs are swarming over your airport.
DOD agents arrived on these same bases not long after 9am and found them essentially empty of combat personnel and equipment. There were plenty of confused civilian workers and pogues who hadn’t been in the loop. Some of the bases even had full blown virus outbreaks underway. Personnel had celebrated the departure of the hard ass combat troops by having an impromptu barbeque. The meat was contaminated.
The convoys of trucks full of appropriated supplies and certain civilian dependents met up with combat units and headed for predetermined destinations. CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters, MV-22 Ospreys and a wing each of C-130s descended on Cape Canaveral Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Thousands of personnel, many awoken in the middle of the night by hectic phone calls were rushed on board along with crates of computers and storage media.
The press might have been all over the strange occurrences at the NASA headquarters except that the local TV station in Cocoa Beach was overrun with infected and the city was aflame. Houston had sporadic pockets of looting as the National Guard was just beginning to mobilize.
Between Corpus Christi and Galveston, the South Texas nuclear power project was isolated from the outside. The federal government in charge of nuclear power safety put terrorist protocols in effect, closing off all outside access and putting armed guards along the perimeter to keep the infection from spreading to the staff. The controllers all met to discuss what they knew about the crisis, all sharing a meal of fresh barbeque brought in by the wife of the chief engineer. Government agents could keep infected people out, but not infected food.
Half the on-shift operators went insane an hour into the late shift, attacking their uninfected coworkers. Hours later, as dawn approached, government agents stormed the control center, trying to rescue the plant manager and senior staff and were met with more than a hundred infected. Controlled fire changed to fully automatic and then to panicked spray-and-pray. As the agents were being overrun, a grenade was thrown in a panic.
The detonation took out one of the main control boards and dozens of computers, including safety monitors and feedback system. The reactor was far too safely designed to melt down. However, with most of the staff dead or infected, and the main control systems hopelessly wrecked, the plant went into emergency scram mode and shut down. The state’s grid, already dangerously stressed from other failures, reached the tipping point and failed in a ripple from east to west. Many plants remained functional, but were now isolated.
Tiny pockets of power remained, but as Texas grid failed the country began to quickly follow. Radio and TV went with it. The internet backbone was close behind. People who were sitting tight to see what would happen panicked as power went off all over the country in the early morning hours of April 24th.
Chapter 24
Tuesday, April 24
Morning
Vance checked the locks for the twentieth time, going through each exit to the huge house and verifying with his own eyes systematically. In the lower level bunker, one floor below the house’s original basement, the other five members of his now extended family all waited. Redundant monitors allowed them to track his progress, and the horror that was outside.
He stood behind the main front door for several minutes. Four solid inches thick, made of oak and reinforced with metal bands on the inside. The hinges were set with four-inch heavy steel screws and the triple deadbolts sunk three inches into the frame. The best batteri
ng rams made by the police couldn’t penetrate the door. Yet he could hear the grumbling, grunting, shambling sound of zombies just on the other side.
Vance descended the stairs to the basement, then the ladder into the bunker, pressed the button so the hydraulics would lower the bunker lid in place. His dog Lexus whined from her bed, the area now shared with the Prices’ dogs Rocky & Dewey. The dogs all had their ears back and were wearily watching the humans.
“How many now?” he asked.
“At least five hundred,” Belinda said from the monitor bank. She was currently panning one of the rooftop cameras over the crowd in the yard. “Looks like a lot more than that working across the property, south to north.”
Nicole was watching them with fascination, her medical background was pushing her to try and understand what was happening. Having not been privy to the details of Strain Delta, she had no idea what was happening. But thanks to the shortwave, they did know about the warning concerning fresh food harvested less than thirty days ago. Luckily they had tons of freeze dried, canned, and MREs. Not to mention a dozen freezers full of meat. The last freezer now had a big X on the door in red duct tape. Some of the contents had been bought over the last thirty days.
Vance thought back to after the shootout. The three men had raced back from the dry streambed towards the house. They took turns following a few feet behind the other two checking back every few yards. Strange, almost inhuman sounds could be heard back in the direction of the fight. That and tearing flesh, cracking bones, wet chewing.
“Jesus Christ,” Tim said over and over and they hurried back.
Inside the house the men rushed through the doors and past the wide eyed women, busily shuttering the big glass windows using the steel dropdown covers installed long ago. Each one had a two-inch-wide firing slit that could be opened or closed. The men raced to the third floor landing that circled the entire house. They split up immediately and headed different directions, each trying to cover as much space as possible.