by Wick Welker
“I’ve been busy with everything else in the world. Tell me about the pulse, did it work?” Rambert was annoyed.
“The short answer is no, it did not work, and they no longer respond to our electromagnetic weapons. The pulses don’t even touch them anymore.”
Rambert let out a long sigh, no longer surprised that with every phone call there was catastrophic news on the other end. “Well, what is the long answer?”
“I did get a large pulse from most of the city’s power grid, which was an amazing feat in and of itself. It knocked down the infected here for no longer than ten minutes, but they just got right back up.”
“Son of a bitch,” Rambert said.
“The pulse was too weak,” Stark explained.
“Well… we tried,” Mayberry added, slumping back into his chair.
“Where do we go from here, Dr. Stark?” Rambert asked.
“The horde here is now acting different. They’re not aggressive toward us. They don’t even really seem to notice us or our movements.”
“That’s not surprising, recent satellite footage shows that the mass of infected has stopped moving as quickly into El Paso. They seem to be a little bit of a standstill,” Novak gingerly added. “What are they doing?”
“They’re eating metal,” Stark said bluntly.
“What?” Rambert said.
“They swarm around anything made of metal: aluminum, iron, anything that even looks like a metal alloy, and they try shoving it down their throats. I just saw a group of them across the road, ripping out copper plumbing out of the side of a house.”
“Why would they do that?” Rambert asked.
“Just let me explain some more. I’ve opened a couple of them up—”
“Opened them up?”
“Yes, autopsies. Obviously they’re not thorough autopsies, but I’ve taken a look into some of them, and the virus is definitely changing. I first noticed this metallic mesh that had become embedded underneath their skin. It’s a very thin, but strong sheet of loosely weaved metal with a highly organized structure.”
“Wha—” Rambert blurted out.
“Hang on, hang on, there’s more. I had the squad bring in a couple more bodies that we managed to kill with conventional bullets. Now I opened up their skulls, chests, abdomens, and even stripped away some of their somatic muscle groups. There is an organized integration of metallic sheeting that is being inserted along the entire surface area of their bodies, that also runs along their viable muscle groups. In one of their bellies there was this same metallic mesh completely covering what I think was the person’s badly decayed liver. Another woman’s eye looked like it was also in the process of getting infiltrated by the same mesh.”
“Dr. Stark, that doesn’t happen,” Rambert said calmly.
“What?”
“People, not even infected people don’t just get hard wired with metal plating.”
“Well, millions of the reanimated dead people also don’t just destroy New York City overnight, but that happened.”
“What do you think is going on?” Mayberry asked.
“It’s this new virus that Beckfield developed in Mexico. He told me it was adaptive, hell it made the man a new pancreas. Now, when I was doing an autopsy on our former… former Defense Secretary Houser, his infected body broke free of the magnetic field. I noticed that he also tried to start eating metallic objects soon after.” Stark paused.
“And?” Mayberry spoke into the phone.
“The virus is protecting itself.”
“From what?” Rambert shook his head.
“From us… I think. Usually our pulses have just been destroying the virus outright, but what I think is happening, is we applied too weak of a pulse here in Ciudad Juárez that didn’t completely kill the virus in the infected bodies. It just kind of, knocked them out, but not enough that the virus couldn’t recover and adapt to the toxic stimulus. The virus is integrating anything metallic into its host body and covering the surface area in a mesh, shielding itself from our electromagnetic pulses.”
“So we’re creating… engineering a resistant virus?” Rambert asked.
“Yeah, I think so. It’s the same principle with bacteria and antibiotics. Doctors will start dishing out antibiotics to a patient, telling them to make sure to take it for fourteen days, or whatever. The patient will feel better in five days and stop taking the antibiotic even though they haven’t fully killed off the bacteria. The bacteria then has time to recover and actually slightly alter its genome to resist the antibiotic by pumping the drug out of their cells, or changing a receptor protein or, or whatever. Either way, the truncated course of antibiotic breeds a newly resistant form of the bacteria, and I think that’s exactly what we’ve done with the virus. The virus has adapted.”
“You think this is happening all over the city there?”
“I have no idea but probably at least the radius of the city’s power grid. This all makes me wonder about how effective the ATLAS-Ms really are. What do you know about how the infected have responded in Jerusalem?”
Rambert sighed. “I just got off the phone with Netanyahu. He said that the infected are eating strange things over there too, like metallic objects.”
Stark let out a deep breath and paused. “I was afraid of that. The pulse from the ATLAS-M machine is probably strong enough itself at the core of its impact zone, but I bet on the periphery where the pulse is weaker, it’s not killing the virus. It just knocks it out allowing it to adapt just like it is here.”
“So what do we do?”
“Well, I don’t really have a clue.”
“The great Doctor Reginald Stark, everybody,” Rambert declared to the conference room.
There was silence from the phone for a moment. “I’m elbow deep in people’s intestines over here, Larry. I’m trying to figure it out, but it’s going to take some time,” Stark said.
“It doesn’t even…” Rambert looked down at his hands in his lap while the rest of the room looked over at him.
Mayberry spoke up, “What can we do to help you, Dr. Stark?”
“There’s not much to do for the moment. I’m collecting a lot of samples here that I can bring back to my lab. The only thing is, I really could use the original Virulex virus to compare to the modified one that’s here.”
“You mean, we don’t have the original virus?” Mayberry scoffed.
“No, I exhausted them all. All my samples have been used up. That’s the problem.”
“How could there not be other samples stored away?” Mayberry asked.
“Because… in the crazy aftermath panic of the Eastern outbreak, everybody freaked out and burned everything. Not just us in the government but everyone everywhere. I was lucky to work with the little samples that I did have. It was a huge oversight.”
“Why do you need it?” Rambert asked.
“We never totally mapped its genome out. If I can finish doing that, I might be able to compare its genome to the modified virus’, to see where the adaptability is taking place. It could help us find a weakness in the new virus. But look, this is weeks, months down the road to figure out. There is no way I’m coming up with a clear solution while I’m stuck way in the hell out in this rotting city. You’ve got to get me out of here.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Dr. Stark,” Mayberry said.
“Uh, why in the hell is the CIA director dictating where I can and cannot go?” Stark asked.
“Is there anywhere we could find a sample of the original virus?” Rambert interrupted.
“Maybe…” Stark’s voice shot out from the intercom.
“Where?”
“Uh, Medora.”
“That entire facility was stripped clean right after the original outbreak there.” Mayberry kept staring back at Rambert, who finally looked back up at him.
“You’re probably right.” Stark paused. “But maybe if I went back into the labs there I might be able to get a sample of the virus f
rom some of the old equipment. It’s a fairly robust virus in vitro and could probably sit around dormant for a couple years on a synthetic material…” He exhaled. “I don’t know. It might be worth a shot.”
“I really doubt we’ll find much, but you’re… you’re The Dr. Stark so…” Mayberry waited for Rambert.
“We’ll go.” Rambert blurted out, “I’ll go.”
“Larry, don’t be ridiculous. We’ll have people from the CDC go to the compound where the virus was made and look… if we even want to go on such a goose chase. This is kind of… dumb.” Mayberry looked over at Novak for support but only got an empty shrug in return.
“I’m going.” Rambert looked out to the conference room. “We can find the answer there.”
“Answer? What answer?” Mayberry asked.
“It all started there, and we’re going to find the solution there.”
“Larry, we can’t have the President of United States rooting around in an abandoned, quarantined laboratory in some shitty town in North Dakota,” Mayberry said impatiently.
“If we don’t do something soon, there won’t be a United States around to even have a President. There is more to the story, and I’m going to figure it out there.” Rambert’s eyelids sunk over darkened bags. He stared as if he were looking beyond the room, outside the walls of the underground compound. He swallowed dryly, like a thirsty man looking for water in a dried up well. “We’ll find it in Medora.”
“Fine, go to Medora. I’m staying right here, with my eyes on everything,” Mayberry replied.
“No, Chuck, I want you with me in Medora.”
“Why? I have a million and one things to do.”
Rambert looked up at him slowly. “I need you there.”
“Uh, hello?” Stark’s voice interrupted. “I can’t really hear you guys. I’m going to need some help getting outta here pretty soon.”
“Dr. Stark, you’ve got more research down there to do,” Mayberry said, disconnecting the call.
Chapter Twenty Three: Albion, Nebraska
Elise blinked in the darkness. Several times she had waved her hand in front of her face and saw nothing, but only felt a stir of musty wind from the movement. She kept hoping that they had left her; that the bulky men draped in ammunition belts and dangling grenades had forgotten about her. Her hopes were continually dashed every time she heard a small cough or someone leaning up a different way against the inside of the frigid pipe. She breathed steadily through pursed lips and warmed her tied hands with her breath.
The previous week jumbled through her head like a mass of puzzle pieces, flowing back and forth with still images. She remembered the muddy lagoons of Louisiana, the open brown horizon of Texas, and dozens of terrified faces bending to their knees. The small group of terrorists had murdered and stolen their way through the southern United States after flying into the international airport in New Orleans, which had recently been shut down. The empty terminals of the airport echoed with Atash’s boot steps as he ran up to a sleeping security guard to shoot him in the chest. She never thought she would see a group of grown men look so childish than when they looted a kiosk of its candy bars and Playboy magazines. Atash chastised three of the men and shot one in the head, explaining that he would have shot all of them, but they were still needed before they died.
After they stole two large delivery vans off the tarmac, they drove off toward the Texas border with dozens of rifles, claymore mines, and ammunition that they had loaded off their small plane from Merida. Elise grew hopeful that they would soon be discovered when she saw they were tearing down the freeway over one hundred miles per hour. Not only did it take ten hours before they even saw a cop, but the first one who did pull them over was quickly shot in the face as soon as he came to the window. Worse still, no one seemed to notice or follow them. The group of men walked casually into gas stations with their weapons drawn nonchalantly, wagging their fingers at anyone who even looked at them.
No one does anything anymore, she thought. They looked on, pacified already by fear from the horde of the south. A few men with assault rifles walking down the dairy aisle in the grocery store didn’t have the intended effect of the brotherhood. Lonely mothers and scattered children simply waited for the armed men to be on their way so they could go back to hoarding canned soups. Peeking out the window of the speeding van, she learned that most towns in Texas were now deserted. She saw front doors left ajar and windows shattered as the occupants hurriedly crammed whatever possessions they had valued and fled northward. There were the few remaining households that decided to board up the front door and every window; they barred themselves in from the living and the dead, as neither could be trusted anymore.
When they drove through familiar highways she stared out at the open brush. She felt confidence seeing her own country rather than the ravenous horde that was quickly falling off the edge of humanity somewhere south. Seeing normal traffic and normal people going about their normal day in Wichita made her stronger. Finding a box cutter in the back of the van where they kept her tied up made her believe that something could change soon.
An unusual emotion overcame her with which she was not entirely familiar. She had always known about it, had read about it in books, and had generally understood it to be humanity’s greatest vice; an emotion that she had always thought had drunkenly led millions of people to death in war and great nations to fall. It was something she thought she should have felt when she shot her infected son in the head but which had never overcome her at that time. But here it was now, glowing inside, and pulsating with energy. It went in and out with each breath, sustaining her, and pushing with the hope of turning everything around. Revenge was in her blood.
Silently she had been collecting data from the small group of the brotherhood that continually prodded her along. As expected, they had grown lazy checking on her, only searching her twice a day. Atash would only mumble something about “The Witness”, and one of the more bulky men of the group would push her along, or simply throw her over his shoulder if he was impatient with her limp. She continually tried to read Malik’s face from his seat at the wheel of the van but only saw the side of his frozen stare.
They had finally blindfolded her for the remaining ten or so hours of their road trip, but she knew they were somewhere in Nebraska when they pulled her out of the van. When they took off her blindfold, she saw that they had precisely arrived in the middle of nowhere. No buildings, no major highway, and almost no vegetation. There were exactly two delivery vans and one dirt road as far as she could see. Atash gave a short stump speech to the crew about death and redemption, and some other nonsense that Elise had grown to completely ignore. He spoke of some sort of reckoning and about dying soon.
“And, I can finally tell you my brothers, that you will all meet the Sirr in person soon.” The men cautiously smiled and looked at him. “We will soon be conducting all our affairs from Nebraska alongside the Sirr.”
“You, our witness,” he finally said to Elise. “This will be your last testament. This will be the place that you will die. You will see our final act as the brotherhood of the Sirr and rejoice with us after your death in a way that you cannot understand.” He smiled with his beautiful smile that Elise had grown to loath. “Brothers, we live on borrowed flesh.”
She hadn’t spoken a word in several days and only stared back at his gentle eyes. She had only recently learned of his genius at manipulation. She had become convinced that Atash himself was the Sirr and had learned the subtle art of obtaining power through distance and mystery.
They had moved west at dusk and only on foot for two nights in a row. During the day, they simply hid their entire crew and gear under large camouflage tarps and slept without making any sound. On the second night of walking over thousands of small bushes and dragging her left foot in the dirt, she finally saw the lights from a single cluster of buildings wrapped around with barbed wire.
For three hours the group of six followed A
tash as he patiently searched the ground in the moonlight. With Malik following from behind, Atash swiveled his head back and forth as he walked, slanting his neck to try to make out something in the dirt with his foot.
Elise struggled to walk as one of the men tugged her from behind by her handcuffs. She had grown fatigued from hunger and from a fever that washed over her occasionally to remind her of the infection that festered in her back wounds. She had meticulously fabricated some left arm stiffness into her limp, taking care to never open her biceps away from her armpit where the box cutter had been precariously squeezed.
Atash had stopped and found a single orange fluorescent piece of fabric sticking out from the dirt. Malik walked next to him and was about to turn on a flashlight but Atash stopped him. “We have exactly one of our brothers inside the facility and no more. If we are noticed by anyone else, we will never see daylight again.” Atash bent over the thin, orange fabric in the dirt and dug around it with his fingers, exposing more of the tab. He discovered that the tab was tied to the end of a rope, buried in the soft dirt. Atash looked back at the men. “Dig.”
With tiny, foldable shovels the men worked for several hours as they exposed more of the rope that only led straight down into the earth. None dared mutter under their breaths because they knew that being so close to their target would only make Atash that more likely to kill them on the spot. Elise lay down in the dirt and fell asleep, which she remembered well, because it was the last time she had slept since. It was hours later before she, or anyone else besides Atash knew what they were digging for: a large metal grate buried ten feet below.
“It’s an old sewage system from around thirty years ago,” Atash finally explained, as the sun began to rise around him on the flat plain of Nebraska. “Don’t worry, it hasn’t been used in a very long time. The special thing about this sewage system is that only about two people know it exists, the Sirr, and me. Let us remove that metal top and finally begin our journey, my brothers.”