LZR-1143: Evolution

by Bryan James

  It felt too easy that there weren’t any of those flesh eating ghouls wandering around. It’s a messed up world when you don’t feel right about not bumping into a zombie or two around every corner, but you play the hand you’re dealt.

  In the distance, a vehicle burned, yellow flames licking into the night air, fanned by the strong winds. One of the few operable emergency lights flickered slightly before dying near the crashed cargo planes. The steady thump of the two choppers’ blades still beat the night air behind us but faded slowly as we approached the building.

  From inside, we could hear shouts of “clear” echoing outside and through the open radios of two sailors standing guard at the door. We waited outside as we let them do their work of clearing the individual rooms.

  The administrative building resembled a small airport, with a receiving lounge and some rows of chairs lined up facing the air strip. Offices lined the broken windows looking out on the tarmac, and lights from the sailors’ guns randomly shot into the darkness outside. Blood was randomly smeared near the wall in several intervals, and the doorway showed the marks of severe resistance and violence.

  I shivered again in the cold air, troubled by the quiet and the calm.

  “This really doesn’t feel kosher,” I said out loud, speaking to Kate.

  “I know. There’s something we’re missing.”

  She was looking into the darkness, as if willing her eyes to acquire the necessary night vision.

  “LT says the building’s clear,” came a voice from one of the two guardians of the doorway. He nodded his head behind us and we virtually sprinted through the door, both of us eager for cover. The hallway into the receiving lounge was short, but it was clear of people, so I stopped Kate and held her arm as I leaned in and whispered, finally having the time and ability to give her the information.

  My voice was low and urgent.

  “He destroyed it. I don’t know how and I barely understand why, but the vaccine is gone.”

  She nodded quietly, “I know, I could see it in your eyes when you got on board the helicopter.”

  I looked around, then back to her. “Isn’t there a way ... I mean, in the movies, they could always do something with blood and immunity and copying people’s blood. Could we ...” I trailed off, instead miming someone taking my blood with a needle.

  But her eyes were serious and contemplative, considering the problem. She nodded, a brief smile crossing her face.

  “I’ve been thinking about it. We might be able to synthesize something from our blood. There are three of us with this super serum flowing through our veins. If we found a pathologist or a lab or ... shit, I don’t even know how exactly it’s done, but I know it’s possible.”

  I nodded once, rubbing my eyes with fatigue. “If it’s that complicated, it seems unlikely that we’ll find someone alive that knows how to do it, all things considered. Probably a long shot, but ... I suppose we have to try.”

  I regretted it before it was all the way out of my mouth. It was my fault we were in the situation we were—I was the one who insisted on getting to Hartliss and my fault that we couldn’t stop the Captain before he experimented with the serum. She had a daughter on the other side of the country, and she was trying to retain a shred of hope. I had no right to cast doubt on the narrow pathway we had to redemption and salvation.

  Her eyes were sudden large and angry. She slapped my hand away from her arm, backing away angrily.

  “Stranger things have happened lately, asshole. In case you hadn’t noticed. It’s not impossible to believe that someone from the CDC or Walter Reed or USAMRIID survived this damn party with the skills needed to separate this chemical from our blood and is in one of the safe zones, like the Pentagon. We just need to find someone. What’s the alternative? Find a shack in the middle of nowhere and hope for the best? Hope that a fucking herd of those things don’t happen upon us and plow us under?”

  I stuttered, trying to apologize for my insensitivity, but she wasn’t having it.

  She gave me an angry sidelong look, sarcasm tinging her voice.

  “Or were you going to give up now and resign yourself to repopulating the species on top of a mountain somewhere? ‘Cause I got news for you, pal. You ain’t repopulating shit with that attitude. Check yourself and get straight. We’re still trying to find a cure for this, and you are either on board, or you can go to hell.”

  She didn’t wait for me to answer before she walked off to find Peters.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my palm to my head, slowing massaging my temple. It had been insensitive of me to suggest it, I knew that. But it was a real concern. We just had to press on. We were the only ones who could. Especially now.

  I flinched as I heard a single shot fired from somewhere close. My mind flew to Kate and I ran down the hallway toward the sound, which had come from a closed door twenty feet away. I pushed the door inward and took a deep breath in relief.

  Peters and several other SEALs stood clustered around a computer screen, which they had apparently booted from an emergency power source under the desk. Red emergency lights illuminated the room, and the screen was the only source of white light in the area. In the back corner, Kate stood in front of a weapons locker with a smoking pistol, having just destroyed the lock.

  Peters looked up as I came in.

  “Close the door and check this out,” he said begrudgingly, as if hating to acknowledge my presence.

  “Maybe you can make some goddamn sense of this. Looks like those things got in here, but then they just bugged out.”

  I leaned in over the shoulder of one of the sailors, who was rewinding a security footage feed as Peters spoke into his microphone to the other team.

  “Bravo, report,” he ordered, likely looking for feedback from the team on Hartliss’ chopper. I hadn’t heard from him since the deck of the ship, but I knew he was busy at the controls of the chopper, so didn’t worry about him. He knew not to speak of his miraculous cure.

  The video started to run. The SEAL had put it on accelerated playback, making the creatures look like they were moving quickly. The footage was time stamped several hours ago, and was typical for this day and age. We knew nothing of the battle that had been fought before this video, but we knew how it had ended.

  The video was filmed from a corner mounted camera in the lounge area, which allowed a view of the doors opening onto the tarmac. Creatures were clustered around the glass doors, slamming on the entryway with their bloodied hands. In advanced motion, the violence depicted was severe. Airmen periodically came into view, some darting between closed doors—like the one leading to the room we were in now—and some barely out of camera shot below the ceiling mounted security camera.

  Suddenly, the glass in one of the windows shattered to the floor and the dead arms of a decomposing man dressed in the uniform of a gas station attendant came snaking into the opening, writhing against the metal and glass. Behind him, a woman in a night gown reached over the shoulder into the opening. Their bodies suddenly went limp, as their heads exploded to the rear, bullets from the airmen out of sight and below the camera shredding their brains.

  More clambered for their space, however, and the bullets soon flew too slowly. More glass broke, and more bodies pressed forward. Finally, an errant and hastily aimed shot bore through the main lock, and the reinforced metal frames buckled inward. A flood of dead bodies flowed into the hallway, crowding the room with their mass.

  The video showed several more fall from bullets to the head before the mass of undead covered the footage, bodies thick in front of the camera. Below the camera, intense activity revealed what we all knew to be a feeding frenzy. Blessedly, most of the scene was obscured by the angle, and we saw only flashes of violence as gobbets of flesh were torn from bodies below the camera. In the hallway, the doorway to the room in which we were sitting was open, but no action at the door seemed to indicate it was empty at the time of the breach.

  The SEAL sped the video f
orward and pointed at a time marker, merely 30 minutes after the initial breach. From behind me, Peters was still trying to raise Bravo team, but the coms were hissing back in protest, possibly from weather outside. Brusquely, he ordered one of the SEALs outside to establish physical contact with Bravo on the far side of the airfield.

  “Now look at this. Instead of milling around inside, they seem to all turn around and leave at the same time. Check it out,” said the SEAL at the panel. He zoomed in on the doorway, as the creatures standing near the opening suddenly turned and walked slowly away. They were followed by all the creatures inside, leaving the building vacant.

  As he zoomed back out, I suddenly realized what had been nagging at me since we flew over the field and realized it was empty. I remembered what the Captain had told us when he was briefing on the creatures’ new behaviors.

  They were banding together in large groups.

  They were moving en masse.

  Somehow, they seemed to be communicating on a basic level, and their first instinct was to stay together in one pack.

  I knew where they had gone.

  I turned to Peters even as he was shouting into his radio, “Say again, Ensign. Do you have contact?”

  Kate appeared at my side and simply handed me a pistol and an M-16, which I recognized from “Clear and Present Bad Ass,” one of my more spectacular flops. She was still pissed, and she wouldn’t meet my eyes—she just watched Peters as he repeated his attempt to raise his Ensign.

  “Say again. You are breaking up.”

  “... contact ... large group ... are cut ... attempting return ...” was all that came through, but the sounds of gunfire suddenly came through the radio, and from outside.

  Peters cursed and looked up.

  “Lieutenant, I know where they all went,” I said, before he could issue the order I knew was coming. “They’re in the damned fair grounds. Under the tent. They’re massing together now, that’s why we haven’t seen any yet. But when we do, we’re gonna see a shit load.”

  He simply stared for a full five seconds before keying his microphone and shouting orders, “Simmons, take your half of Alpha to the break in the fence and stand by. Daggers One and Two rev your engines and prepare for dust off. All others on me and muster at the helos.”

  No, no, no. This wasn’t right.

  He was going in after Bravo, and he was going to get slaughtered.

  I turned to him, grabbing his sleeve as he started to walk away.

  “Lieutenant, if your men went into that tent, they’re dead. There must be thousands of those things in there. You can’t mean to risk your lives going in after them.”

  The other SEALs were rushing out the doorway, following orders; I simply stood my ground, staring.

  He looked me in the eye and replied, “You are welcome to stay here, or you are welcome to come with me. But you will not convince me to abandon my men to those things. Period. Do what you want.”

  With that, he disappeared out the door.

  Kate stood next to me, watching him leave. She broke the silence abruptly.

  “Well, that seems fucking stupid.”

  Daring to hope that she wasn’t still pissed, I said, “So what do you want to do, follow them and hope for the best, or lock down here?”

  She threw me an annoyed look and started to walk, “I’ll follow the men with the guns until they threaten to get me eaten. Then we’ll talk.”

  Sounded reasonable, I thought, as we walked again into the windy night.

  Chapter 14

  We followed at a respectable distance, stopping when we were between the two helicopters. I waved to Hartliss as we passed the cockpit of the second bird, and he waved back. I ducked into the cabin of his chopper and asked, screaming to be heard over the sound of the spinning blades, “You got a spare radio in here?”

  He simply nodded, turning to the pile of equipment behind him and gesturing toward a tactical vest with a radio plugged into the shoulder. It bore the embroidered call sign of a crew chief, who had apparently missed the flight. I gave him a thumbs up as I dragged the vest out of the cabin and put it on, thankfully holstering the pistol Kate had given me in the vest holster.

  I switched the radio on and listened to the chatter as I saw the teams assemble at the broken fencing. I heard Peters order two sailors to the electrical access panel near the flood lights close to a junction box, apparently hoping to find more light for the insertion.

  The massive fair tent was backed up almost to the chain link itself. A yawning, dark opening was torn in the colorful tent, revealing little inside. Nothing was visible, especially from our vantage point. But Peters was complaining over the radio about the lack of visibility, and searching for a way to illuminate the entrance.

  As the wind howled in the background, and the chopper blades beat the air behind us, Kate suddenly turned to me, asking an obvious question, “Why are they trying to turn the lights on?”

  I thought the answer seemed obvious until the intent of the question sunk in. Christ. If they flipped the runway lights on, we were lighting a beacon that even those things with their bad eyesight couldn’t miss.

  “Lieutenant,” I shouted into the mouthpiece, hearing as I did so how my voice was obscured by the wind racing over the receiver. “You can’t turn the lights on, it will attract them!”

  “...again, you are ... up! I repeat, say ...”

  Son of a bitch.

  I tried again, but it didn’t go through. I cursed the storm’s interference, and flipped the safety off of my rifle as I started to run toward the fence, nearly two hundred yards away.

  Over the radio, I heard the triumphant report from one of the SEALs at the fuse box, “Got it, LT. Diverting emergency power to the floods now.”

  Shit.

  The runway burst into light like morning sun. The flood lights and landing lights fired to life and blinded me, causing me to stumble to one knee even as I keyed the microphone one more time, “Turn them off, god damn it! Turn off the lights!”

  I knew that it was too late, even as I waved my arms and shouted into the microphone.

  Peters and his men were staring at me now, and I stumbled to my feet, pointing at the lights. Inside the tent, the popping sound of a gun being fired shot through the night. Peters turned and gestured at two men, who advanced quickly toward the dark opening in the tent wall. They reached the gap and peered in, then stumbled back, firing rapidly into the press of bodies that followed.

  From the yawning, black opening poured a deluge of broken, tattered bodies. Their faces were torn and bloody, their eyes blank. Men, women and children were among them, and they leaned forward eagerly, staggering together, forward toward the interlopers.

  Peters and his team reacted quickly. Even as I heard him order the team to fire, I knew there were too many.

  The wind tore past the microphones and muddled his fire orders, while obscuring the responses. But I watched in horror as the mob of desiccated and hungry corpses pressed forward en masse.

  Bullets tore into their bodies and heads, rapidly creating piles of truly dead flesh that those behind stumbled over as they surged forward. There were hundreds. Possibly thousands. The fabric of the tent bulged with their numbers, and began to tear in more than a dozen places.

  The SEALs were backing up now, trying to lay down a cover fire, but quickly realizing that they were overwhelmed and outnumbered. No matter what their rate of fire, there were too many coming to stop them with bullets.

  Peters sounded the retreat, ordering regroup at the choppers.

  One of the retreating sailors popped a grenade from his vest, tossing it into the crowd. It exploded with a loud concussion, and body parts shot into the air. Several creatures went down, and several more fell to the ground, one leg badly mangled or gone.

  All of them got up again.

  I stood from where I was crouched and started to back up. Suddenly, a hand was on my shoulder. I screamed in fright and turned quickly, realizing too
late that it was Kate, who had moved closer to join me. She simply stared over my shoulder as the horde moved closer, the SEALs running quickly toward us and the helicopters.

  Behind us, the sound of shattering glass overcame the tearing of the wind and the thump of the chopper blades. I turned, even as I saw Kate whip her head around.

  At least a hundred of the ghouls were streaming from the control tower hundreds of yards away. They must have been packed in there like sardines, waiting for a tasty bit of bread to float by. The wind had obscured the sounds of our choppers as we landed, but the bright lights in the darkness had alerted them. Several front runners had already covered half of the short distance to the parked choppers.

  I shouted over the radio, but the microphone hissed in my ears, victim to the high winds and interference. I started to run to the birds, waving my hands like a mad man to alert them. The doors to the choppers were wide open, and the noise from the rotors and the wind, combined with the headsets, would obscure the creatures’ approach.

  The helicopter on the right was piloted by a severe looking black man, whose eyes lifted in surprise as he saw me raving like a lunatic and gesturing wildly. I tried to mime the actions for “look behind you” and “turn around,” but the rain was beginning to kick up again, and the wind was pushing it sideways, lowering visibility.

  Over the radio, Peters was making a doomed call. “Lift off and circle to the North for rendezvous. The current LZ is too hot!”

  I saw the pilot press his hand to his headset briefly, then nod, forgetting about me for an instant. In the chopper next to him, Hartliss was already reaching above his head for switches on the control panel.

  Behind the first helicopter, I saw a body disappear behind the whirling blades, and into the open door. I ran faster, getting to within a hundred feet before I stopped. The pilot of the first craft was lifting the helicopter off the tarmac.