War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale)

by Meredith, Peter

  Von Braun didn’t notice him leave. His Diazepam drip had run out a few minutes before and his mind was regressing quickly. “It starts with a 'D' I know that,” he said. He also knew the IV bags were small. It narrowed his choices to one. After a five-minute struggle as his hands and brain fought against each other, he finally got the new bag in place. The calming effects of the drug were immediate.

  “Yes,” he whispered, enjoying the peace in his mind. He still wanted to kill and he still knew that “they” had done something to him, something that called for revenge, and he still felt dirty on the inside, but at least he could think. “The cops will be coming. I need a gun.”

  He had a vague memory of a nurse with a gun; he went in search of it.

  One floor down the “authorities” finally arrived. Vince Oldham and his two EIS officers parked the CDC van directly in front of the building. “Full gear?” Damon asked. He’d been an Epidemic Intelligence Services officer for only three months and the training videos were fresh enough in his mind that he still asked about going full on, every time out.

  “I think so,” Vince said. He liked to gear-up. Without the bio-suit, people only saw him as nothing more than an over-bearing, officious bureaucrat. The suit, whether it was needed or not, lent him an air of urgency and it did quite a number on the psyche of people. The biggest corporate bully was always a bit more circumspect when Vince came in suited up.

  Too bad the CDC suits were canary yellow. He had pleaded with his superiors for them to be changed out to black—for recruiting purposes—he had argued, but had been shot down.

  The three of them began gearing up: full bio-suit, rubber boots and gloves, goggles, and the P-100 filtered mask. Before he put the mask in place, Vince tried to call Dr. Lee one last time. It was a courtesy he extended to her simply because he’d looked her up after the initial call and thought she was smoking hot. Normally, he would march right in, hoping to catch the offending company desperately trying to clean up whatever mess they’d made.

  “Went to voice mail again,” he said

  “What about trying the state troopers one more time?” Peggy asked. He’d called an hour earlier to check on the run-away situation only to sit on hold for fifteen minutes. Eventually some tired sounding dispatcher had come back on to tell him that they hadn’t found anyone matching John Burke's description.

  “I’ll call the state police after our initial run through,” Vince told her, noting that the rain was really starting to come down. Who knew what it would be like after another lengthy stint on hold? “Burke’s probably holed up somewhere, safe as a bug in a rug.”

  Vince wasn’t close in his assessment. John was four floors up, trying to cut a length of carpet in two using only a scalpel. He and Chuck Singleton were rolling up the flooring and using it to stuff the cracks that kept opening up in their barricade—they had run out of furniture and were getting desperate. The zombies were tireless in their attack.

  “Let’s do this,” Vince said. He opened the van door, stepped out and shouldered his pack. They went to the front entrance and noted that the door was unlocked. “First violation,” he remarked.

  “Second violation,” Peggy said as they stepped in. No one had put tape over the elevator or the stairwell entrance. The three of them were so absorbed with picking at the breaches in the hazmat code that none of them saw the body of Earl Johnston lying behind the waiting room chairs.

  “What’s that banging?” Damon asked. A great deal of thumping and crashes were coming from somewhere down the north hall. As there was no one around to escort them, they decided to follow the noise. They passed through a right-angled field of cubicles and found a small group of people hammering on a door with their fists.

  Peggy and Damon turned with a rustle of plastic to share a look that each interpreted as: What the fuck?

  Vince raised his hands and said: “Excuse me! What’s going on here?”

  The group turned as a unit. There were nine of them and Vince saw right away that seven of the nine were in bad shape. They were leaking what looked like old blood from every orifice; their eyes being especially affected.

  “Is that hemorrhagic fever?” Damon asked, taking an involuntary step back.

  “I really doubt it,” Vince answered. “If it is then it’s awfully advanced, and these people seem too energetic to be in such a late stage.” The victims, as the three CDC agents saw them were staring, turning their heads this way and that as if they, too, were trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

  “Thank God we wore the suits,” Peggy said. “We…we should call in some back up. This is bigger than just Fusarium.”

  Vince had to agree. “We will, but first we have to see what we’re dealing with. We have to get a handle on the scope of the situation.” He stepped forward, hands out in a calming gesture. “Hi. We’re from the CDC. We’re here to get you people some help, but first, can any of you tell me where I can find Dr. Lee?”

  One of them, the man that used to be Mr. Mumford, shambled forward. Vince saw the fresh, red blood that ran all down his chin and assumed it was part of the disease. “Hi,” Vince said, this time nervously. Mumford reacted to the sound of his voice and stood on his toes trying to see into the tiny plastic window. They locked eyes. “Yes, I’m trying to find Dr. Lee. She’s the head of…”

  Mumford, realizing there was a human inside the strange yellow suit attacked Vince. His hands were like claws, raking at the plastic hood, turning it around on Vince’s head. The CDC man was basically blind, staring into the side of his hood, while doing his best to keep it from being ripped off altogether. Peggy leapt to his aid and struggled with the growling Mr. Mumford.

  Damon took another step back. The junior agent had the strong, near-overpowering urge to just point his feet at the door and hightail it out of there. His training had not prepared him for the idea that the victims of the diseases would actually attack those trying to help.

  “Get him off me!” Vince screamed. “Get him off!”

  Peggy began slapping Mumford on the top of the head with her clipboard. He seemed not to notice; he was fully focused on getting Vince’s hood off, and when he did, things went from bad to worse.

  Seeing Vince’s red face was like a signal to the rest, they swarmed forward, tackling Vince and sending Peggy sprawling. In that split second, Damon made up his mind to help, however in the next second Mumford reared back with his mouth wide, exposing hellish looking black teeth; he then bit down on Vince’s exposed neck. Horrifically, he began rooting around like a pig, chewing and swallowing until he found the source of Vince’s clean blood.

  It came geysering up in an arc of red. Vince had been screaming and fighting like mad, but now he went limp. Then it was Peggy's turn. There were two of the infected patients on her tearing at the yellow plastic, looking like children at Christmas, ripping into a present. She'd been struggling with all her strength and instead of screaming she was grunting with the effort, but when her suit tore she let out a terrified screech.

  Damon did the only sensible thing: he booked it out of there at top speed, racing for the van. The booties of his suit were as slick at the rest of his outfit and he fell twice, both times knocking the wind out of himself. In his panic, he barely noticed. He made it to the van just ahead of three of the infected patients. Jumping in, he began swatting down the locks one after another. When the last was down he let out a sigh of relief that was cut short—he didn’t have the keys to start the van! And worse, the diseased people had ringed the vehicle.

  They immediately started pounding on the glass with their fists, uncaring what sort of damage they were doing to themselves in the process. The driver’s side window cracked first. Damon only had time to say, “Oh, God, no,” before the glass shattered. He tried to escape by crawling to the passenger seat however something on his bio-suit got hung up on the emergency brake and held him tight.

  They crawled in after him and began to eat.

  4

 
In the ‘big house,” Jaimee sat on a gurney swinging her feet and wondering why the adults were fussing so. Yes, she had a headache, but that didn’t mean she had the cancer. According to her dad, the cancer was got by living in the “bestos” house, and Jaimee had never lived there, not for one day.

  So that only meant she had a cold. She hated being sick. She weren’t never allowed out to play when she was sick.

  A long, tired sigh escaped her and for the millionth time she wished she hadn’t been caught sneaking in to see Maddy’s mom. There was no way Jaimee could’ve known there were cameras watching all over the place as if there were gold and ‘jules’ stashed somewheres in it.

  And boy, howdy, she had gotten a talking to! "That Dr. McGrady is such a cranky-puss," she muttered.

  "We can hear you," Ms. Robins said, her voice magnified by the hidden speakers.

  "I know," grumbled Jaimee.

  "Did you want us to hear you?" Dr. McGrady asked.

  "I don't know. I don't really care iffin y'all hear me or not. How much longer do I gotta be here? My Daidy will be 'specting me when he gets better."

  "Are you mad at me, Jaimee?" the doctor asked. "Do you blame me for keeping you here?"

  "A little cuz I ain't sick. ’Ceptin for my head a little like I told y'all before."

  "Can you describe the headache?"

  Now, Jaimee was getting mad. She pounded her fist down on the gurney. "I already told y'all. It's thumpin' what good, now can I git?"

  "Not yet, Jaimee. Can you take your temperature again for me?"

  "I jes did it!"

  "We need you to take your temperature every fifteen minutes in order to track the progress of your sickness. It's something your father would want you to do."

  "But I ain't sick," she muttered, forgetting how sensitive the microphone was. The thermometer was on a cart across the room next to Gabriele's eternally sleeping body. Jaimee went to it, swiped the little instrument across her forehead, and read the numbers "It has a nine and an eight and there's a little bug of a number that says seven. Is that good?"

  "Yes, that's good," McGrady said. "Now put the thermometer in its place. Good." He was in his room two floors above her, sitting at a desk staring at one of the three monitors.

  Beside him, Ms. Robins asked, "Why do you insist on taking her temperature? Dr. Lee hasn't mentioned anything concerning a fever."

  McGrady gave her sideways look before answering, "You are correct. Fever is not a sign of the disease, however failing eyesight is. I'm trying to judge her acuity based on how well she can read the numbers." He sat back for a moment, tapping a pencil, looking lost in thought. "If she's changing, it's at a rate far slower than that of the others."

  "Is that significant?"

  "Everything is significant, my dear,” he replied, pompously. He had a mountain-sized ego and rarely did anything to keep it in check. “Unfortunately, we frequently find out why too late." He chucked down the pencil and picked up the phone.

  In the hospital eighty yards away, Dr. Lee answered, however she was so engrossed in the latest blood work that she had snatched from John Burke that she wasn't really paying attention to the phone. "How can that be?" she asked herself at what she was seeing on the readout.

  McGrady looked at the phone, confused. "Uh, this is Dr. McGrady...How can what be?"

  "There's no sign of the Com-cells in his blood."

  Her floor was being attacked on three sides, her co-workers were desperately trying to hold the barricades in place against foes who never seemed to tire, and they were running out of anything to stop up the holes. In other words they were running out of time. Deckard was down to pulling out the toilets in the men's room. And yet she was still so engaged with the puzzle that the Com-cell represented, that she was practically oblivious to her danger.

  "Dr. Lee, This is Dr. McGrady, were you talking to me?"

  She blinked, remembering she had just picked up the phone. "Is the girl sick? It's been over ninety minutes."

  "If she is, the disease is not following the same pattern as your other patients. Her only real symptom is a headache and a very slight personality change, though this last is hard to know for certain since I don't have much of a baseline. Everything else, pulse, BP, O2 sats are just fine."

  Thuy frowned. "I do not construe 'just fine' as actual data. Email me real numbers. I'll need to know..."

  Milner stuck his head into the lab, interrupting her. "Lee! Is that the cops you're talking to? When are they going to get here?"

  "No, it's McGrady from over at the Rothchild's. I don’t know when the police will be here. I haven’t called them. I’ve been busy."

  "You’ve been busy!" he shouted. "Haven’t you noticed there’s a fucking crisis going on all around you?"

  "I'll call you back," she said to McGrady and then hung up. "Show me." Of course she had noticed the people running around and the fact they always seemed to be carrying items, however there hadn’t been any more gunshots and she had assumed Deckard was in the process of containing the problem.

  She followed Milner out into the hall where the sight of her hospital being destroyed, piece-by-piece struck her, viscerally. The scientists, being led by Deckard, were tearing up everything they could lift and throwing it down into the three stairwells. There was so little left in sight that she figured the stairwells had to be filled with so much debris by now that nothing could get by, however the infected people were just as quickly yanking everything further down the stairs in their effort to get up. Succinctly: it was a hell of a mess.

  "Nice of you to join us," Deck said. His suit coat was flung on the ground and the sleeves of his black button-up shirt were rolled to the elbows. He stood three steps down, wielding a push broom, knocking back a couple of nurses who had come too close to the top of the stairs. There were another dozen or so clawing their way toward him, basically swimming upstream against metal and glass. In their eyes was hate and murder. They were beyond any understanding of a cure. Now they were only interested in killing.

  Just above Deck, at the top of the stairs, Wilson stood breathing heavily. He held a monitor in one hand and a computer tower in the other. Casually he flung them down the stairs adding to the confusion.

  Seeing the infected people so intent on their destruction focused Dr. Lee’s mind in a snap. "I’m sorry…I was busy working on a cure,” she said, defensively to Deckard. “Can you give me a status update?"

  "Sure, we're fucked." Despite this assertion he was calm. He was the only one.

  "We have to start killing them before it's too late," Milner stated.

  Thuy was wholly unaware of the massacre on the third floor or that even then the door on the first floor break room, where dozens of people were trapped, was only minutes from disintegrating under a voracious attack. She still thought of the infected subjects as people. "These are our patients, Milner! We did this to them. We should be trying to find ways of helping them, not hurting them."

  She thought Milner was being hysterical and she looked to Deck to back her up, but he shook his head. "We either kill them now while we have the advantage or we wait and kill them when they're up here."

  There had to be a better way. "What about wounding them? I bet you're a pretty good shot. Maybe go for a leg or something."

  Milner laughed, high and loud. It was a hysterical cackle that was unnerving coming from such a straight arrow. Thuy tried to step back from him, but Milner grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the stairwell. "Let me show you what you created. Remember, this was your project."

  He tugged her to the central stairs where they stood over a chest-high pile of what used to be fantastically expensive lab equipment. Below them were fifteen or sixteen of the infected, struggling to pull down the pile.

  “Look! Look at that one.” The one stood out from the others. Thuy couldn't help but gasp at the sight of it. It had once been a person, now it was some sort of creature’s whose face was covered in black bile, which leaked from its eyes
, nose and mouth. It was altogether hideous, but what made it worse than the others was that the creature had a twelve-inch carving knife planted in its chest. It didn’t even seem to notice it. It went about the business of trying to kill them without so much as wincing.

  Deck had come up behind them."You see now?"

  Dr. Milner laughed again. “This will be on your head, Thuy, not mine. I was just doing what you told me to. I even have the proof that it was..."

  Deckard grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him around so that they were face to face. "Go get more of those computers and shut your trap while you do it, too." Milner flinched, snapped his jaw closed, and scurried away. Deck cracked a small smile and said, "You hit a man in the face once and he learns to fish for life."

  "You hit him?"

  "Just the one time; he needed it. Let's get out of the way."

  Riggs had just come into the stairwell carrying a shelf and a pile of books. He was sweating and there were dark circles around his eyes. "The cops?" he asked.

  "I’ll call them right now," she told him, touching his arm. Riggs tossed his load down onto the pile. The infected swept it aside almost as soon as it landed.

  "They couldn’t possibly get here in time," Deck said. “There’s almost nothing left to chuck down on top of the creatures. That’s the bad news, the worse news is that I only have twelve rounds in my gun and there’s got to be at least sixty of those things trying to get us. We’re going to have to fight hand to hand. My question is, how contagious are they?”

  She had to make assumptions in order to answer, unfortunately they were safe assumptions. “I’m afraid they’re very contagious.”

  Deck made a face as though he smelled something bad. “Fuck. Excuse my language but we are just about as fucked as can be. Your scientists are…let’s just say they look very doubtful when it comes to fighting.”

  A number of the scientists were nearby looking sick with fear. Thuy had to agree with Deckard, they would make terrible fighters. The scientists were either skinny, shallow-chested nerds or saggy, plump, and pushing fifty. Only a few, Riggs and Eng for example, were in shape enough to put up some sort of fight.