The Zone

by RW Krpoun

  I left the pair at the distributorship with a list of ‘to-dos’, not the least of which was figure out how to operate the cameras, and headed home, stopping at my convenience store to refuel and grab a few more twelve-packs of sodas from its much-depleted inventory.

  By the time I had off-loaded my new acquisitions, which was becoming a daily event for me, and parked the truck, it was dark out. I walked across the still-warm blacktop, key in my left hand and my right on the M-4’s grip, eyes moving. I was tired, physically and mentally, my knee was irritable but better than on Wednesday, and my major muscle groups were stiff and sore. Despite this I felt good because the rhythm of our work was familiar and comfortable to me: get up, suit up, work a busy shift, run errands, head home-comfort in familiarity. I was back in my pre-House world, and it was nice.

  The utilities were still holding, so once I stowed my loot I followed SOP and took a shower followed by washing the clothes I had been wearing. I was too weary for more bad news so I cleaned my weapons without the benefit of the TV, re-filled magazines, and headed up onto the roof with a rack of pork ribs.

  Laying back against the slope of my roof while the ribs sizzled, I stared up at the stars, mind empty. I should have been pondering the tactical considerations of a raid into the campus, or working up a more efficient method of extracting survivors, but the fact was I didn’t feel like it. It was eight days since things started getting strange for me, and things were just getting weirder every day. I needed a break.

  I wondered if Marvin and what was left of his crew were alive, and if so, where?

  The team phone buzzing caught my attention; it was Ted. “Have you checked your e-mail?”

  “Nope. I’m on my roof grilling supper.” I flipped the rack of ribs over and shook seasoned salt onto the crispy brown meat.

  “So you haven’t seen the news, either?”

  “No, I just got home. We spent the rest of the day getting survivors loose and on their way out of the Zone. Over sixty, as a matter of fact. Why?”

  “I e-mailed you the information you requested: security data, locations of the objects and books, everything, even a map of the library annex and another of the campus grounds.”

  “I took a good look at the campus-its going to be tricky. I honestly don’t know if it can be done.”

  “Will you try?”

  I poked at the ribs. “Look, I’m tired tonight. Yeah, probably. Tomorrow I’ll take the information you sent and eyeball it again. Thing is, all I’ve got to work with is two kids who were counting credit hours a week ago and a beat-up armored truck. I’m not exactly front line material anymore, myself. If I had a few more people, some better equipment, well, I would have more options. What I’m trying to say is I can’t promise anything.”

  “The rock salt-doesn’t that prove anything?”

  “Sure. Your theory has moved from crackpot to strange-but-plausible; the thing is that even if I believed in your idea like I believe the sun’s gonna rise tomorrow, its not going to change the tactical situation. I’ve got two kids and a truck, and there’s a lot of infected in the area, and by ‘a lot’ I mean hundreds. This isn’t a rescue where its just a matter of maneuvering the truck and putting out cover fire. We are going to have to enter a building, get your photos, and then get out alive. How valid the ultimate goal is does not change the difficulties in getting to said goal. Let me look at your data, look over the campus again, maybe run a couple tests, and then I’ll know more.”

  “Watch the news tonight,” he urged.

  “OK. Look, I’ll keep you informed step-by-step.” The phone beeped. “I’m losing battery power-I’ll call you tomorrow.” I made a mental note to try and find another battery for this phone-it didn’t seem to hold a charge for any length of time.

  I watched the stars while the ribs got crispy and brown. Going into buildings, close quarter battle, all played to the infected’s strengths. Stealth was possible, but the problem is that covert can cease to be covert in an instant and then you are back to square one. If I had more shooters it would be doable-with more firepower the complexities of indoor operations would hinder the infecteds’ ability to move enough bodies fast enough. But I didn’t have more shooters.

  Spending my days pulling out sixty or seventy survivors and dusting maybe a hundred infected wasn’t going to cut it on a strategic level: neither activity was going to significantly affect the odds in the city, although they were pretty damn important to those survivors we extracted. If Ted was on to something, then trying it would be worth the effort. If I could figure out a way.

  The hatch securely latched, I settled on the sofa with the rack carved into greasy ribs, a bowl of canned corn and some fresh-baked rolls to hand, I flipped to an episode of the cop drama and consumed my supper watching the linkage between East Coast drug trade and the conditions in the inner city schools. Or at least what the writers imagined those links were, anyway. It made for entertaining TV in any case.

  When supper and the episode were over I washed my dishes and checked out Ted’s e-mails; he had done good work-an employee from the university had provided a copious amount of detail, down to floor plans and where the spare keys were kept. On one of the raids to Radio Shack I had grabbed the best printer they had, and I ran off several copies of the floor plans and a quick reference list of points I found to be interesting.

  In the course of my career I have investigated the scenes of countless burglaries, successful and failed, and interrogated scores of burglars, so one thing I was confident of was my knowledge base of forcible entry. With that in mind, I studied the two sites and made some notes. One was more doable while the other was a lot more problematical, although the risk with either would be high.

  One factor I was now considering was that the rock salt rounds were not very loud, about the same as a bean-bag round, so indoors the sound of the shot would not carry far, and the rounds’ short range would not be so critical. The lack of felt recoil would offset the need for a pump-action weapon, leaving only the limited magazine capacity and slow reload as negatives.

  The plan I came up with was stupid and risky, but also possible-it would require equipment we did not immediately have, but nothing we couldn’t find easily enough.

  What we really needed was more shooters, but I couldn’t see a way around that. I had sent e-mails to every team still listed as active as soon as I had gotten home, and no one had bothered to volunteer. I hadn’t really expected anyone.

  I did get a lengthy e-mail from Dane Riley, who was outside the Zone and working for FEMA. He was a gangly kid who had signed on with the City’s IT department not long before I got shot. During my gig in Communications I helped him get into a tech position with our Computer Crimes, where he did very well. Apparently he got a lot of hardware and databases out when he headed for the tall timber-I was proud of him, and e-mailed him to advise him of that fact.

  Sitting on the couch with tools and a sack full of various devices, I set about building timer-controlled baits, using various smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, light timers, and personal sirens. After rigging up a handful successfully, I remembered to cut on the news.

  The big screen made it far too real for my taste. I came in part-way through what was obviously a looped broadcast, so I didn’t catch the cities involved, but that was trivia. One was somewhere in Japan, and the others were also overseas, but that was just a detail. Aerial footage showed the infected pouring out into major roadways like streams flowing into a river, creating a massed formation probably two hundred infected wide and more than a mile long, maybe several miles, all flowing in the same direction: out of the city.

  One city was in the Middle East, I would guess Damascus; the footage showed four T-72 main battle tanks moving on line plowing into the head of one formation. They went through them like a bowling ball rolling over eggs, the tracks visibly slipping on the paste that had been infected. Four more, off-set from the first line followed; the slaughter was staggering and comp
letely one-sided-the vehicles were impervious to anything the infected could do. They weren’t bothering to expend ammunition, just using their mass and momentum to crush the ranks of infected.

  It was sheer slaughter, but it wasn’t perfect as infected were getting past the vehicles-not many, but some. The problem was that the infected were coming out every major roadway in the city, and the perimeter wasn’t holding. They were getting most of the infected, but not all.

  The talking heads were batting the development around; in addition to forming into the vast columns, the infected were reported to be employing clubs and actively seeking to engage and kill the uninfected subjects they encountered. The CDC rep said that this change in behavior was likely brought on by the population density of the infected within a given area reaching specific levels, also possibly based upon pheromones. He likened it to bees swarming, but I missed the reference. The reason it was happening overseas was that they had been exposed first and hit harder than in the USA, where an armed populace had resulted is a higher attrition of infected in the initial phases. It was his opinion that in the USA the affected major urban centers were only behind the timeline, not immune.

  A four star general assured the public that the US was readying air strikes with fuel-air explosives, cluster bombs, Specter gunships, both MLRS and conventional artillery, and armored ‘frontal assaults’ as demonstrated by the T-72s, and promised kill rates in excess of ninety-five per cent.

  He didn’t have to say it: two or three percent of those mobs were likely enough to crack the Zone perimeter held by motley bands of military personnel (two-thirds of whom were not trained for ground combat) and volunteers. Not every line, but some. Meaning the virus would breach the crude quarantine system in place.

  I turned it off-further details were unimportant. This explained a great deal-the past change in tactics for one thing, and justified my fear of another change.

  When there were only a few infected, singles and small groups, call it Stage I, the infected hid, and avoided contact with armed individuals-my encounter at the concrete pipes and Alan’s with the group of ‘winos’ were prime examples. The police calls where people were jumped, but the attackers fled when the police showed up likewise were examples. Hit and run, spread the virus and boogie.

  When the population of infected grew, they transitioned to Stage II, forming into large groups and mad-rushing anyone they could physically reach, throwing lives away because they had plenty. There were probably stages in between, but I wasn’t working on a thesis for my Master’s.

  Next was Stage III: arm up, clubs because that’s about all they had the capacity for, mass into huge columns based upon the road network, and lunge out of the cities. I was willing to bet the groups that didn’t get the word or reach the main body in time would revert to Stage I again. It was like Mao’s theories about guerilla warfare.

  Rock salt wasn’t going to break them. Odds were very good neither would whatever wonder weapon the long-dead king had come up with, but this development certainly made our rescue efforts less critical: when Stage III rolled around most of those cornered survivors would be able to walk out on their own.

  The baits completed, I sat back to study my plans and notes again, making some minor changes. The news had helped in one regard: knowing what the enemy’s tactics were going to become gave me an advantage in acting now.

  When I was done I called Ted using my personal phone, whose minutes counter was getting low. “Another point for your boy, doc,” I admitted. “I’m going to try for the lower library annex tomorrow morning; the upper wing I’m not certain about given my resources, but if I do try it, figure Sunday. Hopefully the stuff at the first site will give you what you need and we won’t need the second.”

  “We can hope,” he agreed, sounding weak.

  “What about the government? Does the rock salt and rivers of dead give you more credibility?”

  “Not so much. As you’ve pointed out, rock salt isn’t a serious advantage, and being right about one aspect isn’t enough for them to pull resources. I am exchanging e-mails with some mid-grade people, where before I was getting brushed off by interns, so there is some hope. I expect they are looking into my theory with their own people, but I doubt it’s a priority. Like you, they doubt that even if there is a weapon that it will be applicable to our situation.”

  “At least you’re getting some interest. You’ll know by noon my time if we can get the first site.”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  I laughed. “Waiting for the call, doc. If tomorrow’s mission goes south, odds are I’ll be dead. This is a very ragged-margin undertaking.”

  “Good luck, then.”

  “Airborne, doc.” I hit the red button. False bravado? I examined it, and shook my head. Nope. It was the same as when we broke out Tina on the elevated roadway: when there’s only one way to do the thing, once you decide the thing is worth doing, then say to hell with it and act.

  Like Alan said, some of us are just too dumb to live.

  The phone rang while I was putting my gear together: it was Charlie. “You keep calling me late at night and people are gonna talk.” I was glad to hear from him, glad he was alive.

  He chuckled. “You see the news?”

  “Yeah. Our turn soon enough.”

  “I saw on the Net you perfected a rock salt cure for the infected.”

  “Yeah, it works, but how much help it’ll be, I dunno. Fairly quiet, though.” I explained Ted’s theory. “We’re gonna try one of the sites tomorrow if I can figure out a way to do it with two kids and one used-up ex-Ranger.”

  “Pretty long shot,” he sounded dubious. “Odds are the guy found out iron’s better than what the hell they used then.”

  “That’s my thought, but what the hell, it just might be true. You checking to see if I was alive?”

  “I already wrote you off as dead once,” he reminded me. “No, I saw the salt thing and your current body count and thought I would give you a yell. See, I didn’t follow my best instincts and avoid your deranged ass when I had the chance.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh is right, I came down with a raging case of the dumbass.”

  “How bad-did you volunteer?”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m with a bunch of other idiots in a school gym for the night, and tomorrow they’re assigning us to units. After the footage, they’re really bracing to get hit. They figure we got maybe three days, five at the most. I’m gonna be in an outfit combing the areas outside the city-out here in the heartland the infection’s on the run-they can’t get an outbreak going long enough to sustain it. Too many guns, too many places for healthy people to run. They are using us militia for the hunting while the varsity looks to hold the urban perimeters.”

  “Charlie…damn, man, that’s risky.”

  “Said the kettle. Screw it, the virus gets loose we’re all toast. The government’s just barely operating, and the guys on the Zone perimeter are holding on by their fingernails-if we don’t stop it there won’t be anything left to rebuild. I was able to get in the same outfit as Miguel, at least. We’ll get moved to the perimeter when the river is about to flow.”

  “Him, too? More’n one virus running around, apparently. Stay in touch- I’ll head out and hook up with you guys when you move to the perimeter.”

  “Billy Joel sucked, but he had a song, reminds me of this doomed-old-fart bullshit we’re living. Talked about waiting for the enemy to arrive, and everybody dying together.”

  “I remember. I used to think there would be fewer wars if they only sent old men, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “I blame you, just so you know. You and your ‘can’t lose anything more’ crap. I was home free and you had to get me thinking about stuff I knew was BS when I first heard it.”

  “John Wayne and Gunny Emery can’t be wrong, you know.”

  He laughed. “Good luck tomorrow. See you next week.”

  “Take care.” I figured
we would both be dead next week, and I could hear in his voice that he did, too.

  When faced with doom some men cling to hope, some men flee madly, and some turn and rage at their fate. I’m not sure which category I was actually in-there is more than one way to flee.

  The infected would likely march over my corpse, but I wanted them to have to climb over a mound of their own dead before they got to me. Like Charlie said, you had to be able to see the other end of a thing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I fried pork chops for breakfast-no point in worrying about cholesterol anymore. I felt good: the House, my knee, my family, my son, all were receding into the background. Regrets and hope both require a belief in the future in order to have weight, and I was coming to terms with the possibility of the end being nigh, at least on a personal level. It wasn’t despair, but acceptance. I wasn’t going to throw my life away, but events were shaping up in a direction that left my odds extremely slim. It was a war, and I was in for the duration. See it to the end, and win or lose I would be myself again. I liked the sound of that.

  With some extra time to kill I checked on our board for new data. A couple more teams were gone or silent, a couple more solos were offering their services. Of those I was tracking, DalmationGuy had left the zone, and scared003 had gotten infected, along with Stryker and most of Team 117. One guy we rescued yesterday was up on the board, having gotten home within the Zone and loaded up-he mentioned us by name. Ergo sent me a private message pointing this out-it was pretty interesting to get a bit of news on one of those we had helped.

  Just for luck I posted the news of Marvin’s group and their situation-maybe someone else could make them stick to a plan long enough to get clear of the infected.