LZR-1143: Within

by Bryan James

  Wherever humans lived and worked, the infection took hold. Big cities, of course, were the first to succumb to massive casualties. With high numbers and dense populations came the highest risk of exponential infection, and in such high density areas, chaos and carnage reigned supreme. Packed together under normal circumstances, held in check by the barest cloak of societal norms, ghettos in Chicago and New York and Miami and Los Angeles, neighborhoods and apartments and vast swaths of foreclosed homes and low income housing, long forgotten by a society all too willing to leave them behind, were breeding grounds for the rapid transmission of the infection.

  Schools became charnel houses, and hospitals were among the first to fall, spewing forth vast numbers of the dead and infected living alike.

  Office buildings and sky scrapers were incubators and death camps for the white collar workers inside. Packed interstates became feeding grounds and city streets were impassible.

  In wealthy neighborhoods, the Beverly Hills and the Green Lakes, the Virginia suburbs and Cape Cod, the infection progressed, albeit slower. It knew no boundaries and moved with the flow of people.

  But in a time of abject terror and lawlessness, people moved fast, no matter how wealthy they had once been.

  ***

  Bridget didn’t mind her job. In fact, she kinda thought it rocked. But she was only twenty four, and was content knowing that she had a long life of menial jobs ahead of her, so she knew she had a perspective on this place that the others lacked. Louis was a thirty-something (or at least she thought he was—he was older than she was, at least, and quite honestly, anyone over her age she lumped into the thirty-something demographic) with a live in girlfriend and bad hair, who very clearly wanted more than he had, but was afraid to admit it.

  Cam was a slacker and a stoner, but good with computers. He was about her age, though, and she didn’t know anyone her age that didn’t know their way around the internet and all things app. It was how they had grown up. Surrounded by technology and the constant threat of obsolescence or evolution, they adapted quickly to new tech. You just couldn’t afford to ever be the chick that didn’t know about the new thing. Especially in this job market.

  Which was why she didn’t mind her job. She had three cats, a crap ton of student loans, and a whiny mother that begged her to go to law school with the same frequency that she begged for grandchildren, a husband, and for god’s sake a pushup bra every once and a while.

  Bridget frowned as she remembered her mother and climbed the stairs faster in response, eager to scope out the VP’s office for the radio. Eager for news about what had happened. Or what was happening now.

  Cam trailed behind her, and Beverly from wealth management brought up the rear, her short blond hair bouncing around the thick black frames of her designer glasses. Bridget hadn’t ever really talked to Beverly, but suspected that they were two emails, crossing in the night. Her style was more thrift store casual, while Beverly appeared to shop at actual stores. She even drove a Volkswagen, Bridget had observed casually while walking to the bus stop. No, not a match made in heaven.

  Bridget flashed the keychain flashlight on the last of the stairs and turned right, moving along the exterior wall and toward the bank of executive offices in the corner of the building. There were only six actual offices in the building, and they were all clustered in one corner.

  Across the large room and above their heads, the red emergency lights blazed brightly, their glow just slightly weaker than they had been when the power went out. Bridget wondered as they passed beneath one of the red boxes underneath a large light fixture whether the batteries were designed for prolonged use. This was, after all, the first world. Utilities rarely remained off for long, and the theory behind the emergency lights were that they help you find your way out in an emergency. She chuckled at the last thought, keenly aware of the fact that these lights had simply illuminated the pitch black interior of the windowless crypt of an office. There was, as of now, no way out.

  The smile quickly faded when she realized that those lights were the only thing that stood between them and pitch blackness inside the large building.

  She hoped that the lights had been designed with longevity in mind.

  Behind her, Cam whispered softly.

  “You know which is his?” he asked, and she slowed to allow him to come even with her.

  She remembered well, having been selected to deliver a presentation for him and several board members on electronic mail responses.

  “Yeah, I know where it is. Just stay with me, okay? I don’t want to lose you up here. It’d take me all night to find another sulky dope with a Justin Bieber hair cut and a teenager’s sense of fashion.” Her voice was serious, but it dripped with sarcasm. Cam grunted once but exhaled in a short laugh.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. Not like I could if I wanted to, but …” He trailed off, muttering something under his breath. Behind him, Bridget could hear Beverly breathing heavily, her anxiety becoming apparent.

  They approached the office suite carefully, opening the glass doors into the reception area and moving to the right of the large desk. A large computer monitor faced away from the double doors and toward where the receptionist typically sat. The bank’s logo faced the doors, gleaming in well-polished corporate perfection. A neatly arranged stack of two month old magazines sat on a glass-top table next to a large leather sofa, a large—likely fake—palm tree adorned the corner behind the sofa. One large emergency light lit the room, flooding down from a sconce above the center of the door and reflecting from the gleaming corporate logo in an off-putting semblance of blood.

  “So his office is through here,” Bridget said softly, unconsciously lowering her voice as if she feared getting caught by the boss. She recognized her anxiety and spoke louder as she turned to Cam and Beverly. “You guys want to hang out here and I’ll pop in?”

  Even in the low light she could see Cam’s distorted face as he shook his head. “You crazy? This shit is spooky enough as it is, and we don’t need to start with the horror movie crap. Next thing I know, you’ll be promising to ‘be right back’ and suggesting we split up into teams of one and go into the freezer…”

  “The building doesn’t have a freezer,” she managed to insert, smiling.

  “ … and we’ll be picking pieces of each other from the rusty tools of the crazy mutants or homicidal plague-infected whack-jobs…”

  “And I don’t think a team can have just one person,” she began, as he continued to rail. Her amusement ended suddenly as Beverly gasped quickly and backed away from the door, shooting her hand into Cam, who spoke several more agitated words before Bridget grabbed his shirt and shook it softly.

  She had heard it too.

  Beverly slipped behind them both, moving behind the counter and crouching below the desk. Bridget grunted once in derision, moving toward the door as Cam stayed frozen near the front of the desk.

  She heard it again. The sound of something skittering across a smooth floor, as if being dragged or kicked repeatedly. In the low light, struggling to discern movement against the erratically bright spot lights and the pockets of shadow, she peered into the darkness, leaning out from the open glass doorway into the hall.

  It was quiet, but for a dull, steady pounding that reverberated up the stairwell from downstairs. It was a sound she assumed to be the team at the front, trying to open the door into the security room. Her breath was coming more rapidly, and she felt her hand shake slightly as she brushed her short hair back from her face. She fought the sudden urge that stirred beneath her belt, cursing herself for not using the toilet before coming upstairs. The unbidden, uncomfortable tightness made her shift her weight.

  Behind her, Cam whispered, his voice raspy and dry.

  “Do you see anything?”

  She shook her head slightly, eyes unblinkingly focused on the shadows across the room. They swam in front of her as the bright light from the spotlights began to spot her vision, and s
he blinked despite her best efforts.

  She was totally unprepared when the large hand clasped her arm and dragged her into the darkness.

  ***

  Within twelve hours of the first infection, cities across the nation were burning.

  Millions had been infected, and millions more were dead.

  Power outages and fires complicated what few relief efforts and counter attacks could be organized and arranged, and national guard units, already overwhelmingly short-staffed due to the constant rotations overseas, were hastily deployed from safe holds outside major urban centers. In some cases, the personnel carriers rolled into empty, burning neighborhoods.

  In other cases, they rolled into terror. Bodies crushed against one another, teeming in the streets, hands outstretched, blood running in rivers.

  They couldn’t respond to this.

  No one could respond to this.

  ***

  “There has to be an auxiliary power source in here, right? These security booths are set up for power failures and contingencies. They have to have a way to watch the cameras when the power is cut. It’s a bank for God’s sake.”

  The sound of incessant pounding on the thick doors was loud in the small space, and Antonio’s voice reflected the increasing fear of those inside.

  Louis ran his hand over the door latch, registering that it was locked but wondering again at the need. It would only need to be locked if the guard thought that there was something inside that needed to be protected or secured. Or, it occurred to Louis, if the guard was trying to protect them from themselves.

  “The bank couldn’t possibly have a security system that locked its employees in automatically, could it? I mean, that’s a damn lawsuit waiting to happen.”

  He hadn’t intended to speak out loud, but he was glad he had done so when Antonio nodded and picked up the thought.

  “So someone locked us in on purpose, then left? That doesn’t make sense. I buy that we were locked in, but where is the guard? Where’s Voj for that matter? This shit doesn’t make sense.”

  As Antonio spoke, the others filtered out from behind the security booth, defeated in their search for an auxiliary power switch or a way in to the locked booth.

  “Okay, that leaves the basement.” Antonio’s sentence was met with silence. From Louis’ perspective, it was a silence of disbelief and abject fear. Possibly mixed with a “this dude is crazy” vibe.

  “And…what does that get us exactly?”

  Antonio spoke loudly to be heard over the incessant pounding, which seemed to punctuate the question asked by the other man from customer service, whose large frame was now showing signs of nervous sweat soaking through his cheap, no-iron shirt.

  “The only way to reset the main power is the breaker, and the breaker is in the basement,” he said confidently, as if the aggressive pounding outside didn’t exist

  “Yeah, but…” Louis drew out the vowel in ‘but’ for emphasis, “Doesn’t the power control the magnetic locks on the doors? If the power is reset, how do we know it won’t shoot these doors open and let whoever is outside in?”

  Antonio frowned before responding, tempering his voice with the patience he learned in the Army after two tours in Iraq.

  “I don’t think resetting the power will open the doors. The most it could do is release the magnetic locks, and those locks aren’t on now—and Stan, if we ever want to option of leaving this place, we are going to need to open the doors.”

  He looked pointedly at the older man, eyes hard. Louis swallowed the objection he was going to make and let Stan take the lead.

  “Well I’m not hanging out here so that whoever is on the other side of that door can come in and find me with a welcome banner stapled to my pasty white ass. I’ll wait with the others while you scout the basement with your friend,” as he finished, he nodded toward Louis, who did a double take as he realized Stan was talking about him and that he had just been fingered to descend into the building’s large, dark basement with Antonio.

  Louis cursed under his breath, feeling an unbidden shiver of fear ripple up his spine. Not cool, Stan.

  Before Antonio could answer, Stan turned on his heel and into the darkness of the cubicles, where the red emergency lights were starting to dim. The other men from the section drifted along, like flotsam caught in the wake of a boat, following the older man.

  The pounding from outside had grown more insistent, and Louis shivered involuntarily as he imagined the repeated blows of hands and fists and feet, the sickness and dementia with which the individuals had to be infected to be acting in such a manner. Beside him, Antonio’s gaze drifted into space momentarily, and he wondered what the larger man was thinking.

  “You don’t have to go with me,” Antonio said in a soft whisper, as if uttering an afterthought to a conversation he had been having with himself.

  Louis knew this. And Louis didn’t want to go.

  The rational part of his brain told him that the basement was just as safe as the main building—that the bank was locked down and impenetrable from outside. That the basement was simply one more floor in a large, windowless building, and that it would have no more or less light than the rest of this absurd place.

  The irrational part of his brain said that the basement was full of evil clowns, scorpions, monsters that only ate human testicles, and a mariachi band playing a looped version of the Macarena. In other words, a scary damn place.

  “I know, but …”

  But what?

  He had no reason to go. Other than the fact that Stan had singled him out, and he’d look like a huge dick if he bailed. But other than that, no reason at all. After all, he wasn’t that guy. Yet a part of him wanted to find the answer, and be a part of the solution. He respected that part of himself. He was afraid; he was a coward, but today, he was going to go to the basement because he felt like it. Not because he had to, or because anyone else thought he should.

  “…you shouldn’t go alone, and I’m curious. I want to see what’s happening here, and we can’t do that without power. Besides, we’re not going to last long in here without food.”

  Louis’ voice was soft under the powerful echoes of the doors shaking in their housings, and Antonio barely caught the acknowledgement. When he had processed Louis’ halting response, he looked up, breaking his thousand yard stare and locking eyes with a man he had too quickly dismissed as cowardly. He was happy to have the company, although unconvinced of the value of the man in case of conflict. Either way, he smiled widely at Louis as he turned away from the shuddering doors.

  “Okay then, let’s do it. I think I saw a small flashlight on someone’s desk when we were walking up here. Let’s grab it and get this shit over with.” He clapped Louis on the shoulder and strode past with purpose.

  Louis followed, glad that Antonio couldn’t see his legs shaking in the dim light.

  ***

  The rural areas fared somewhat better. With the advantage of distance from urban centers, and lower populations, combined with a much lower pass-through rate of individuals from outside their geographic areas, towns and smaller cities had a much higher success rate in quelling infection.

  Trauma units had warnings, and barricades could be effective. Roadblocks and quarantine measures could be implemented and enforced. Citizens could arm themselves. Rules could be formulated and security maintained.

  But none were safe for long.

  In a society as transient and fluid as America, there were always connections.

  There were always methods for an infection to spread.

  And spread it did.

  ***

  Bridget struggled briefly before a soft whisper brought her up short.

  “Shhh! Quiet! There’s something over there, against the wall near the back cubes.”

  It was Ty, and his cold hand shook slightly with a clammy palsy. She grimaced at the thought of him touching her and tore her head away, rubbing her neck and staring in the direction he had point
ed. What the hell was he doing up here, anyway?

  Inside the office, Cam lowered his voice to a frantic whisper.

  “Bridget? What the hell? Where’d you go?” He sounded young and afraid.

  She waved her hand in front of the door and gestured to him and Beverly, who had fearfully crept from behind the large secretary’s desk and now huddled behind Cam’s slender, skinny-jean wearing form. Bridget considered guffawing at the irony—if Cam was the only remaining paragon of manly heroics left to cling to, the world was truly in trouble.

  “Come out,” she whispered without turning her head. From the corner of her eye, she saw him peer out, his head protruding from the office doorway, making a dark blotch against the backlight of the emergency lamps.

  “Look!” said Ty, voice creeping up several panicked octaves. Bridget could feel him slinking back against the wall. “What the hell is that? Is that a person?”

  Bridget’s eyes moved to where his shaking hand pointed, focusing on the object of his fear and squinting hard.

  Suddenly, everything happened at once. An ear-splitting scream erupted from the Volkswagen-driving debutante cowering behind the techie nerd, and, as the techie nerd grunted and cursed once, the small woman nearly plowing him down in a fright-induced tumble searching for the stairwell. As she tried to run past Bridget, her foot caught in the cheap carpet, and she tumbled forward, her outstretched hands catching Bridget in the chest and forcing her back against the wall and against Ty, whose own feet tangled with Bridget’s. The three tumbled to the floor in a cacophony of bodies and curses and flailing limbs.

  As they fell, she heard Cam’s startled exclamation.

  “What the hell …? Is that …?”