Gnash

by Brian Parker

  “My God. All over the country?”

  “Yes sir. It’s a full-on uprising everywhere. I guess people finally got tired of their Constitutional rights being slowly and systematically stripped away. Now, I don’t agree with them fighting the government, mind you, but I understand how they feel. You know what? My husband had to turn in his favorite shotgun last summer because it had an internal magazine tube that held seven rounds. They called a pump-action shotgun an assault weapon that violated the terms of the Smithwick-Greenspan Gun Registration Act. Can you believe that, an assault weapon?” Each time she said assault weapon she emphasized her words and made a sour face.

  “Well, I guess he did the right thing by complying with the law,” he answered at a loss for words. He’d long since stopped listening to the different sides of the gun control debates that had raged across the country for decades. Both sides were unwilling to budge, so the rhetoric went back and forth in an exhausting, never-ending debate. Two years ago, the party pushing for gun control finally won a majority of seats in both the House and the Senate and pushed through an extremely restrictive and harsh policy towards private gun ownership in an effort to get even with their political rivals. Even the politicians themselves admitted that the Smithwick-Greenspan Gun Registration Act would never have passed as it was written if the two sides hadn’t squared off so long ago and caused the bitter hatred between themselves.

  “Well, maybe so, maybe not,” she said as she shrugged. “I’ll update your chart and when the doctor can get in here and see you, we’ll see what the next move is for you. I’m sorry we can’t let you call your fiance, I’m sure she’s real worried about you.”

  “Thank you for the information,” he said dejectedly. “I think I’m ok, I’ve got to get a flight out of here.”

  “Well, that won’t happen either, airports are all closed what with the attacks in D.C. and the president getting shot and now the military being overrun…”

  “Overrun?”

  “Ok, maybe not overrun, but they definitely got their nose bloodied, that’s for sure. I’ve got to return to my station, so please let me know if you need anything later. Just push the call button like you did before.” She turned around and opened the door into the hallway. She paused before stepping outside, “I’m glad you’re feeling more like yourself sir. You were so crazy, I was worried that I was gonna have to put you down for a while there,” she said with a wink that left Grayson wondering if she really would have killed him in his sleep.

  There was nothing for Grayson to do except to lay his head down and attempt to fall back asleep…

  ***

  19 April, 1024 hrs local

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  “Now Jean-Pierre, I assure you that the situation is totally under control...Yes, of course I realize that this is a potential global disaster. Given the high mortality rate of the original virus and the extremely high infection rate of the mutated strain…” he paused and cocked his head to the side, listening to the receiver. He unconsciously shook his head and said, “The Pentagon, where one hundred percent of the cases have occurred, is completely sealed, none of the infected individuals are going to get out. We’ll whip this thing and hit those sons-a-bitch Al-Qaeda bastards at their home base…Yes, we have some very good intelligence as to where they are…No, I don’t have that information available to me right now. Tell you what, you have the director of your Interior Intelligence agency call my CIA chief and have them exchange information…Well, thank you for those sentiments, I believe…Hello? Jean-Pierre?” The president pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it. He shook his head in disgust and slammed it down on the receiver.

  He looked at the men assembled on the two couches in his office, America’s men of military power and political influence. “That shit-bird Frog is gonna do something to fuck up this situation, mark my words gentlemen.” He stood up and looked out the windows to the South Lawn where a few workers clipped the grass to its characteristic perfect appearance. He sighed audibly and walked around his old desk to sit in the armchair positioned at the head of the low coffee table situated between the couches. “Sorry Chip, didn’t mean to throw you under the bus like that, but if I didn’t give that French bastard a bone, he would have kept at me and I’ve got better things to do.”

  “That’s alright Mr. President, it’s my job to interact with the intelligence agencies of our foreign partners,” William “Chip” Bullis, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said as he made a half-shrugging motion.

  “Bullshit, no one should ever have to deal with the French. Goddamned thorn in our side. Ever since they helped us out during the Revolutionary War they think we owe them something. Anyways, sorry for the interruption gentlemen. It’s been four days since this attack, the assassinations and various coordinated attacks worldwide. Chip, give me a rundown on what we know.”

  “Yes sir. First off, we did verify Agent Michael Winters’ story. There was no sign of his family until last night at approximately midnight. The FBI was tipped off on some suspicious activities going on at a run-down apartment over in Silver Springs, Maryland. Given the current situation, they pushed through a warrant and raided the apartment. Inside, they found bomb-making material, automatic weapons and fundamentalist paraphernalia. Two men of Middle-Eastern decent were killed and two more were wounded and taken into custody. In a back room the strike force found Agent Winters’ wife and three children, relatively unharmed except for a few bruises and the mental trauma of being kidnapped.”

  “Thank God for that. Although that son-of-a-bitch will probably feel justified for killing those people now that his family was rescued instead of murdered,” President Holmes said. “Alright, go on.”

  “Yes sir. The Justice Department feels that they’ll be able to go to court within a few months on that. He’s admitted to the killings and gave his motive. He’s turned down any legal assistance and will act as his own defense at the trial. He’s not looking for a plea bargain, he just wants a speedy trial, a quick judgment and an even quicker carrying out of whatever sentence he’s given.

  “The aftermath at the Pentagon is still a disaster. The media is going crazy with the stories, as you well know, sir. We’ve apprehended several journalists trying to get inside the boundary we’ve set up around the building. Our team on the inside is reporting gains in identifying what the disease is, but are taking casualties. So far, three men have died, six men are injured and two of those have contracted the symptoms of these, these…”

  “Just call them what they are goddammit. They’re fucking zombies. Just like the damned movies. Lifeless and mindless with a bad attitude and they attack everything that they see.”

  “Well sir, not quite. The doctor in charge of the operation, Doctor Collins, is reporting that they appear to have some type of pack mentality, like dogs if you will, but as of yet, he’s seen no evidence of a leader among them. They disappear into the building during the day and the teams we send in there can’t find any indication of where they went. At night, there is definitely some type of communication between the infected because they attack in waves, withdraw and regroup and try it again and again.”

  The president rubbed his temples with his thumbs, “Ok, let me get this straight. Initially we thought everyone was dead, but most of them have now come back to life.” He held up his fingers as he called out his points. “We’ve got an untold amount of these zombie-things, possibly every man and woman that worked in the Pentagon, 27,000 people. They are infected with some biological agent that has ruined their bodies and their minds are mush, or so they appear to non-infected people. They’re so aggressive that they throw themselves onto barbed wire in an attempt to get to our men inside that wire, they have little care about their own bodies. They don’t appear to attack each other, but will stop at nothing to get to normal people. There’s been no way to turn them aside other than to shoot them, and thank God that works better than it does in t
he movies. Do I have this right?”

  “Yes sir and the disease also seems to spread easily to a non-infected person if they have any type of broken skin. Those two soldiers I mentioned were injured in the first day’s fighting with the zombies. In fact one of the men, both of whom are both fully infected now, was the commander of the original hazardous materials response team that we sent in there. They’re restrained and Doctor Collins is conducting tests in order to see if the infection can be reversed. He hasn’t had any luck so far and has even said that if he could reverse the symptoms, they’d probably be on life support for the remainder of their lives due to the extreme destruction of their internal organs. He’s primarily attempting to develop a vaccine against catching the disease in the first place.

  “He’s also reported that the two men with secondary infections appear slightly different than those originally infected,” he continued. “The coloration of these men are different and they don’t appear to have higher cognitive functions, like the Pentagon employees who were originally infected do. The originals seem to have the capacity to learn and they are constantly changing their attack techniques each time an attempt fails, in fact, it’s even been reported that they can use clubs as weapons. The secondary infected seem to only have the capacity to walk and attack with their bodies, not with weapons.”

  “So, if the primary infected not mindless, can we negotiate with them? Find out what they want?”

  “Sir, the only thing they’ve shown so far is that they want normal people dead or infected like them. We’ve also had to segregate the injured men of our strike teams so if they turn, they can be captured easily. We can’t risk the Medevac of an infected soldier since, so far, this is contained within the Pentagon walls right now.”

  “So those men are as good as dead then?”

  “Sir, it’s most likely that they will become infected and need to be put down like the others. However, there is the Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who worked in the Pentagon and was at ground zero for all of this and he’s still uninfected. The doctor’s been analyzing samples of his blood in an effort to identify anti-bodies against the infection and if there is a way to produce some type of preventative vaccine like I mentioned.”

  “Alright Chip, what are my options?”

  “Sir, we can either keep moving forward with our current operation or seek out all of the infected and have them destroyed. We’re studying the creatures and working on a vaccine now, but we are also losing damn good men, the Delta and SEAL soldiers that are in there now are extremely difficult to replace and it’s doubtful that we’ll develop any type of cure for the infected.”

  The Director shared a knowing glance with the president, “And we’ve got that other search taking place in the Middle East, sir.”

  The president nodded and turned to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Rob, do we know if there is any more of this biological weapon out there?”

  “No sir, in fact, we don’t have any substantial information on these guys yet. The only person we’ve been able to find that was in any way connected to these events was the terrorist who died when he opened the nerve agent to seal the building. He’s not in any of the databases that we have access to. The same goes for the few fingerprints we pulled from the vans they drove up to the Pentagon. These guys have never been arrested or fingerprinted in the States or Europe that we know of. According to the video footage we pulled before the power went out there were originally ten of them but we believe they were either killed or infected just like everyone else and are now in the building.”

  “So what are you doing to ensure we don’t get hit again somewhere else damn it?”

  “We’re working everything we’ve got Mr. President. There hasn’t been anything unusual on the blogs or the usual terrorist websites, but I…”

  “Actually, we have a lead on that,” Chip Bullis interrupted. “There was an obscure Islamic website that went active a little over a month ago. It was very well done, mostly information about the faith, its history and beliefs, just like hundreds of others out there. But there was a one-liner buried within this site that possibly matches up with the dates of the attacks worldwide. It said ‘Today is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and honor Him on the Night of Power.’ The Night of Power is supposedly the anniversary of the night the Qur’an was revealed to Mohammed, the Islamic prophet. It’s celebrated annually during the month of Ramadan, and this year, the Night of Power was in mid-April. Depending on the sect and branch of the Muslim faith, they celebrate the night between the 14 and the 18. It’s extremely obscure and a long shot, but the page was dated for this year and it does coincide with the attacks.”

  The president nodded his head, “So what does that tell us?”

  “The site was published on a computer purchased in Egypt and uploaded via a satellite internet connection from somewhere in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

  “I knew it was those Al Qaeda fuckers! We need to action on this right away.”

  “Sir, we couldn’t reliably pinpoint anything closer than a two hundred-mile radius in those mountains, our equipment just isn’t that good yet. And there are several known organizations operating there. With that large of a search area, it could be one of five or six terrorist groups that posted that web site or even a rival organization that inserted into the area to upload the information so we would think it was one of them. Until one of them claims responsibility, we can’t reliably say who it was. It’s good intelligence, but it’s not legally actionable yet.”

  “The American people demand action, and I’m going to give it to them. What are our options for attacking these mountain hideouts?”

  “Sir, we’ve operated relatively freely within those mountains for over a decade and we haven’t found our primary targets on most of our missions there. The people are just too sympathetic with the terrorists and there are too many places to hide. It would take ten divisions of Marines several months to search all of the valleys and caves, and even then, they might not find anything useful.”

  “Pete,” he said to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Send out a warning order to the Marines and the Army, we’re putting as many men as we can into those mountains within a week. I’ll tell Congress that I’m going to partially mobilize the reserve force and we’ll say it’s part of another surge in Afghanistan. We will find those responsible and make them pay.”

  SEVEN

  21 April, 1617 hrs local

  Comanche County Emergency Medical Center

  Lawton, Oklahoma

  The same heavyset nurse who’d been caring for Grayson and providing him rumors from outside of the hospital for the past several days opened the door to the hospital room where he was staying. “Well, Mr. Donnelly, you’re cleared to leave. The phones are still out, but if you wait by the front entryway, I’m sure a taxi will be along soon. But I’ve been told they charge some outrageous prices right now since it’s still so dangerous to be out on the streets.”

  “Thanks Maggie,” he said as he gingerly swung his legs over the side. “Um, did my clothes make it?”

  “No sir, we had to cut them off of you. But the hospital does give out complementary scrubs to patients in your situation. No family to bring them any new clothes, I mean.”

  “Complementary? Sure, I bet you guys charged the hell out of my insurance for those pajamas.”

  “Of course we did sir,” Maggie said with a wink. “Here’s an envelope with your personal effects. Don’t worry, I know you had a lot of money in your wallet, but the whole bundle has been locked in the safe.”

  “Thanks again Maggie. I really appreciate all your help,” he said with a little smile as he took the envelope with his wallet and car keys.

  “Oh, Mr. Donnelly, you’ve been a perfect patient since you fully woke up. I hope everything goes well for you. Let me take that IV out, and then we’ll be all set.” She leaned over him and deftly pulled the catheter out of his arm a
nd quickly wrapped a cotton ball under a self-adhesive bandage.

  After Maggie left, Grayson changed out of the hospital gown he’d been wearing for several days and put on the scrubs and the shoes he’d been wearing when he was brought in. Unfortunately, the laces on the shoes had been cut, so they wouldn’t be useful for much more than shuffling his feet.

  He lightly tapped his cast on the nurse’s station desk as he walked by. “See you around ladies, thanks for taking such good care of me.”

  ***

  The taxi pulled into the diner’s parking lot. There was the Chevy Cobalt, flat front tire and now busted driver’s window. “What the hell?” Grayson mumbled as he examined the badly vandalized rental car.

  Out loud he said to the taxi driver, “Ok, I can’t change that tire with my arm in this cast. Can you please take me to the Best Western and I’ll coordinate for a tow truck or something to take care of this thing?”

  “Sure, buddy,” the cabbie said as he pressed the gas pedal down and turned the wheel. The little red Dodge Neon that passed for a cab in Lawton did a complete U-turn from one lane into the next without any effort.

  Before too long they pulled into the Best Western guest check-in lane. “That’ll be, oh, I don’t know, three hundred bucks,” the taxi driver said over his shoulder towards the back seat.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. What does the meter say?” Grayson asked as he tried to see the meter set low on the dashboard.

  “Didn’t set it. Look, bud, its three hundred dollars for the cab ride from one end of town to the next. It’s dangerous out here,” he said holding his hand out between the Neon’s front seats.