Teeny walked over and looked out the ER door at where they had seen protesters’ signs outside. No one was there. In fact the streets beyond looked eerily quiet.
“I think that…”
As she reached to push the latch down to hold the automatic doors closed, a woman came out of nowhere and grabbed at her arm, making a croaking sound as she opened her mouth wide to take a bite of her arm. Teeny pulled away her arm and scrambled backward. The woman reached toward Teeny, leaning into a falling kind of run and groaning as if she was trying to say something to them. Teeny backed away, and Tin moved up and pushed the woman backward. Her eyes were glazed over, and she obviously had some semblance of cognition because she looked at him momentarily as if to say, “What the fuck is your problem!”
He moved from side to side, trying to lure her as an experiment, but she just kept moving toward Teeny, grabbing air and groaning as if she had something to tell them. From their experience so far, it was likely “You smell delicious!”
Teeny got a little braver and moved up to Tin’s side as he kept pushing the woman back.
“Maybe you look tastier than I do!”
“No, there has to be a reason. The only thing I can think of is that it is because you are immune.”
Teeny shook her head in disgust. “Mother of God, I did this.”
Tin looked at her sideways as he kept pushing the woman back. The woman was obviously getting frustrated by this because she tried to take a couple of chomps out of Tin. He pulled his arm back from one of those attempts and punched her hard right in the middle of her face. Her feet traded places with her head as she flipped over backward from the punch.
The woman’s hands and feet moved as if she were a turtle on its back for a few minutes, and then she rolled and started to get into a crawling attempt to get back up.
“Uh, you want to give this one mercy before she needs a toothpick.”
Tin ticked. “Jesus, lady.”
He grabbed the ax and put her down. After extracting it from her head, he looked out the door and spotted another shambler coming toward them. He walked over, pushed the button to close the doors, and latched them shut.
Teeny cringed at the sight of the gore left by Tin’s ax but then brightened as she had an epiphany. “Wait. I think when they are in this stasis between life and death, they crave the blood of the infected living! You are immune.”
“Lucky me. What about Anderson? Why do you think he’s different?”
“I’m pretty sure that you got rabies from him, so it must be recombining with Spartan and causing a vicious new strain.”
“I think it may be too late to save him, but we need to get to Laudner and O’Reilly and treat them with the RabAvert before they turn into whatever Anderson has become.”
“Yeah. How we will get to them without Reed and his cronies blowing our heads off is going to be the trick.”
Tin gave a half smile. “At this point I think they may have figured out that I’m not one of the good ol’ boys in the club. I don’t want to take the chance that they’ll grab me if I go back like nothing is wrong.”
“Wait! Marty. We still have a friend on the inside.”
“Are you sure you can trust him?”
“He saved my life.”
“Yeah, but I think he expected you to run.”
A bit of doubt showed on her face.
“Maybe you should run, Teeny. This is a very dangerous situation now.”
“Not a chance in hell, Tin Head. I feel like I’m responsible for everything that has happened.” She emphasized her point by pointing at the gory mess on the floor.
“I want to do a couple of experiments with our roommates in the morgue before you put them down.”
“We’ll also have to set up a place to put the guys while we treat them. I still don’t even know if we can cure them.”
“Hopefully we can learn how to have some control of them if they’re too far gone to cooperate.”
“If they have gone all Anderson on us. It’s going to be a trick, but best to have a plan.”
“OK. I think we can use one of those ambulances to transport them. You need to get me a tranquilizer that will knock them down without killing them.”
She gave him a half smile.
“No pressure there. Just come up with the right dosage to knock out a couple of berserkers without killing them. Thanks!”
“I have to find a charger for my phone. I’ll see if I can contact Marty to see what kind of trouble he may have gotten himself into. I’ll also need to draw some blood.”
Tin frowned at her. “Why the hell do you need my blood?”
“So I can test it on the restless corpses down in the morgue. What, are you scared of needles?”
She smiled big. He just turned red.
“Aww, the great big army dawg is just a scared little pussy cat.”
He scowled. “Don’t call me that.”
She started opening drawers to find a rig to draw blood as she teased. “OK, I won’t make fun of you anymore…Camel Toe.”
He scowled again, but it turned to a chuckle when she smiled a mischievous smile at him.
_______
Marty watched O’Reilly through the habitat glass and wondered how long it was going to take before they were full-on ragers like Anderson. Right now he seemed coherent enough, pacing back and forth, stopping every couple of minutes to swing his head as if he were trying to shake out bugs.
Both he and Laudner were starting to run high fevers that they were controlling with high doses of acetaminophen. The RabAvert didn’t seem to be curing the virus as it should, but at least it was slowing it.
He pulled out his phone to see if he had gotten any replies to his messages. The previous conversation had somehow gotten deleted. That worried him. Plus, Michael had been acting funny. He wondered if he had looked at his phone and somehow found out about his helping Teeny. After realizing that, he had changed her name in his contacts to Mother, so if he did get an answer, no one would know it was her except him.
He slid the phone into his lab coat and headed for the employee lounge to get an update on Hurricane Claudette. It was a category-two hurricane that was quickly strengthening, and it was likely going to make landfall somewhere between Savannah and Myrtle Beach. This would put them in the path of some pretty intense storms.
Bio-Sure was just thirty-six miles inland from the coast, nestled between a national forest and a huge lake.
Many of the employees were planning to gather their families and bring them to the campus to hole up in the extensive basement of one of the main buildings. It was perfect because it was concrete reinforced and had food stores for the cafeteria on the first floor.
Marty had decided that if it came down to having to weather the storm, he would stay in the building with the families rather than in Building 51 with Michael and the rest of the Spartan creeps.
_______
Michael watched Marty’s back in the monitor as he in turn watched O’Reilly in the habitat. When Marty walked away, Michael looked up at Abraham for his reaction. He could tell that he and Reed were frustrated because Teeny hadn’t returned any of Marty’s attempts to contact her. They needed to catch her, or the whole plan could come crashing down around them. It was even more important now that the world was falling into chaos.
He walked across the hall into a room that had windows looking out on the floor where they had set up the pathology lab. All of the tables were empty except one. Dr. Leonard and his assistant stood over Leonidas doing some ungodly thing to him.
Leonard had been experimenting by moving body parts, breaking limbs and letting them heal at weird angles, plus who knows what else. The chimp was obviously in pain most of the time. He had had to deal with Marty crying about it several times.
They were discussing something and
threw their heads back laughing. Leonard noticed him and stopped long enough to do a little dance to mock him. The pathologist was the creepiest person he had ever met in his life. He jumped when Abraham spoke from behind him.
“He was one of the most promising surgeons at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. But it held no allure to him. He abandoned his residency amid accusations that he purposely let patients die so he could bring them back. Needless to say, he lost one too many patients and was banned from performing surgery on the living. Subsequently, he was moved to the morgue and eventually left there because it didn’t satisfy his thirst for dissection of living patients. He found us online and was more than happy to change to animal patients. Chimps are his favorites!”
Michael turned and walked away from the window. “As long as he can be trusted, I could care less what he does to that chimp.”
Abraham left the window too. “I hate to say it, but we could really use Teeny to figure out how we can tame the wild beasts that O’Reilly and Laudner will undoubtedly become. Reed wants to let Marty hook up with her and monitor their progress. Once they figure out how to control the Spartan Plus virus, we’ll get rid of her with a little more prejudice this time.”
He waited a minute for Michael to respond. “What are your thoughts, Michael?”
Michael just turned to him and gave an intense stare. “When do we get paid?”
Abraham smiled. “Our clients were supposed to fly in Friday. We would like to get them in and out before Claudette makes landfall and traps them. A week from Friday, we should be home free!”
“OK. I’ll do whatever it takes to get Marty to flush out Teeny for us. It’s time to get this wrapped up and get paid. I’m so fucking sick of the stress!”
_______
Teeny gave Tin his second dose of RabAvert. “You should be fine now, unless you miss the next couple of injections.”
“Have you tried Marty again yet?”
“Yeah. He answered with one word. Wait.”
“Well, I don’t think I can go back to Bio-Sure. I’m sure I’ve been missed. Besides, after what they pulled with you, it’s going to be hard not beating those guys’ asses as soon as I see them!”
“Well, you need to control yourself. Beating them won’t change anything. We need to beat Reed at his own game!”
“Don’t we need to get the serum?”
“Shit. I forgot about that.”
She walked over and looked out the window. “So we have to get Marty, O’Reilly, and Laudner. That’s the main goal. But we have to get that serum, or Marty is going to have to help draw some stem cells from your cerebrospinal fluid again.”
“We are getting the serum, then!”
She smiled. “Wow, showing a bit of that camel toe again.”
He grabbed her and twisted her arms behind her back as he pulled her close enough for their noses to brush against each other. She gave him a coy smile and a breathy comment. “Oooh, so much for camel toe. I didn’t think you had a gun. You definitely have something hard in your pocket.”
He let go of her arms to grab her waist and lift her up to the exam table, pulling her hips closer to press her crotch on his thigh. Once her arms were free, she wrapped them around his neck and kissed him deeply, teasingly biting his lower lip. She pulled her feet up to heel into his buttocks and pulled him close enough to rub on her sensitive loins. Tingles went up her spine where his hands squeezed the small of her back.
He released her lips and moved around her face to lightly kiss her neck and ears. She grabbed his hand and moved it to her breast and encouraged him to squeeze and pinch her nipple. She moaned uncontrollably as waves of tingling fingers made the inside of her upper thighs heat up and twitch. He groaned as he rubbed his crotch on hers.
He pulled back and unbuttoned her shirt as she did the same to him. Once he had freed her beautiful brown breasts, he breathed hot breath on them and teased her by brushing his lips close but not quite touching her areolas. She groaned again as he put his lips on the sensitive nipple and flicked his tongue up and down. Her breathing was nearly gasps as she made mewing sounds and threw her head back in ecstasy. Reaching down, she gently scratched his trousers where his erection was trying to burst open his zipper. She unzipped and unbuckled his pants as he pushed hers down and off her feet.
They made love in the exam room, forgetting about all of their problems for a couple of passion-filled hours.
_______
Anderson crouched about twenty feet up in an oak tree with Spanish moss draped all over him. Five soldiers were moving up, about to pass right under him. His head was clearing after three days of running and ducking Alpha Platoon. There was no way he was going to let them court-martial him because he pushed Laudner and Tin on their asses. Fucking pussies!
He was starving, and when the soldiers passed beneath, he could smell their sweat. It made him think of the salty taste that their flesh would have when he bit it to get at their nourishing blood. He had tried animal blood, and it was as disgusting as you would have thought. Thinking of human blood made him drool.
He was in luck. The soldiers stopped under the tree to rest, as they had the other times they had moved through this part of the forest. He waited until they settled in and propped their guns against the tree. The biggest and meanest looking pulled out his combat knife and started sharpening it on the whetstone that was attached to the side of the sheath.
He moved slowly to a position where he could drop right on top of the big one. Pulling the moss out of the way, he jumped, and the limb made a creaking sound that caused the soldier to look up. Anderson’s boots hit his forehead and shoulder, making a loud crack, confirming that he had broken bones. That would take him out of the fight, but when the moss-covered rager hit the ground, he spun and swatted him across side of the head to make sure, leaving bloody trails from his long fingernails and oozing blood as the man crumpled to the ground. The other four soldiers were diving for their guns as Anderson grabbed the combat knife that Hulkster had dropped and flicked it at the closest soldier, hitting him in the neck. Blood squirted from between his fingers as he grabbed to try to stop the flow. Two of the soldiers had their guns now and were bringing them around to fire at him. He leaped back into the tree as they fired toward him and each other.
One screamed at the other, “Fuck, Nick! You almost hit me.”
The one called Nick didn’t react to the comment. He just moved his gun up to aim and shoot at Anderson, who was jumping and swinging from branch to branch, confusing the timing of the soldier’s aim. The moving target was so fast he couldn’t get his sights on him long enough to take the shot. The third soldier had gotten his gun and was running away toward the Bio-Sure campus. The two who were left started firing in earnest but were still finding it hard to keep up with the fast-moving target.
After they had emptied their clips and only grazed him on his leg and arm, he swung down and side kicked Nick in the chest. He grunted as he flew backward, slammed against the tree, fell to the ground, and rolled in agony. Anderson turned to the remaining soldier and smiled evilly. The soldier turned and started to run toward the forest. Anderson jumped an impossible distance toward him and stretched to tackle him. He struggled, but the strength of his attacker was too much. Slobbering and growling, the huge man chomped down on the soldier’s neck to suck out the delicious liquid. When he was done, he turned to see Hulkster sucking on the open wound the blade had made on the knife-wounded soldier. He stopped long enough to growl at him before going back to his meal.
Anderson took off in the direction of the soldier who had run and was up to thirty-five miles per hour before he was thirty yards. The runner had stopped to catch his breath a mile down the forested path. Anderson pounced on him before he was able to turn and continue his sprint for safety, ripping the man’s neck open before feeding his insatiable thirst.
All four of the soldiers who
were hunting him trotted up and stopped. They all had blood all over them. One another’s blood! The runner stirred and rolled over onto all fours, shaking his head as if he had bees inside.
Anderson cocked his head at the sight and wondered why that made him feel like laughing.
PROLIFERATION
Jax and Rocky stared at the television in the room that they had stayed in for the night.
“This is Katlin Telurite reporting to you from the roof of the WNN Building in New York City. Two days ago we were almost killed in the nation’s capital, barely escaping with our lives after riots broke out when Congress announced a failure to pass the Mercy Act.
“What also came from that gathering was a confirmation of a phenomenon that WNN broke exclusively earlier that day. The dead are walking! And they are attacking the living to drink their blood and eat their flesh.”
Katlin turned to look over the edge of the building as the camera panned to show the street level. There were hundreds of wandering dead, moving in directions that must have been part of their daily routines. Not going anywhere. Some just crossed the street back and forth endlessly until a car came close enough to catch their notice. The few cars and trucks moving through the streets were bumping them out of the way and sometimes even running over them.
The camera panned back up to the field reporter.
“Three days ago we were worried about the crash of the world economy. Two days ago we were worried about the population of earth becoming impoverished and destitute.
“Today, experts are saying that the human race is in danger of becoming extinct!”
She just stopped talking and stared at the camera.
They kept the camera active for a few seconds, and then the director obviously came to his senses from the unexpected ad lib.
The camera they activated in the studio showed Jaff Geppert with his mouth hanging open. Someone from behind the camera yelled, “Jaff, you’re on.”
He turned to the camera and straightened his tie.
Origin Z Page 16