Origin Z

by Tony Hartzell

  Tin was leaning out over the edge, watching dozens of wanderers gathered around the doors of the hospital. He turned around and walked to where she was continuing to slowly spin, looking for any bars on the display.

  “You should just put that away. Something has happened to cellular service, and there is no one to fix it!”

  She dropped the phone in her pocket. “So what’s the plan, Lieutenant?”

  He walked back over to the edge again and looked out over the parking lot. “First thing we have to do is get O’Reilly, Laudner, and Marty out of that pot of boiling water. It sure does feel like time is getting short.”

  “So we can’t confirm that Marty will be able to help us get into building 51.”

  “OK. We’ll have to leave the ambulance off-site and sneak onto the campus.”

  “I hope your friends are in good enough shape to get out of there without a fight! It sure wouldn’t be very productive having to deal with them at the same time we’re fighting off Reed’s cronies!”

  “Let’s stop by the store and grab some more stealth attire on our way. I don’t think that white lab coat is going to cut it!”

  _______

  Marty struggled futilely as Johnson and Marquardt dragged him over to the lab table and strapped him down. He looked over to the next table and saw Sanchez already strapped down. There were tears streaming down the side of his face and into his ear.

  After Marty was strapped down, Leonard walked over and lightly slapped Sanchez a couple times. “Don’t be sad, Major. You are going to help me take a huge step forward in my research.”

  He walked over and tapped Marty’s nose a couple times. “You two are going to help me with some experiments on body-to-body transplants!”

  Marty started sobbing. “No, please no!”

  Sanchez rolled his head toward them. “Where is your humanity?”

  “What about your Hippocratic Oath?”

  “Heh heh. I’m making huge strides for science! Fuck the Hippocratic Oath.”

  With that, he grabbed a scalpel and sliced off Sanchez’s left ear. Then he walked over to Marty, did the same thing, and then stuck the other ear where it had been. He pulled some medical tape from the instrument table next to him and taped it on.

  Walking back over to Sanchez, he waggled the ear at him. “Let’s try something new.”

  He laid the ear on the table next to his head and grabbed Sanchez by the nose with a pair of surgical pliers. He started cutting off the nose with a scalpel as Sanchez screamed.

  “Aaaggghhhh!”

  He placed the nose where the ear had been and started carefully pulling the edges of the skin together and applying surgical glue to hold it. He did the same with the ear while Sanchez’s eyes rolled back in his head; he was unconscious from the shock and pain.

  Leonard stepped back and admired his work.

  Marty watched this horror, crying silently. Leonard noticed him and grabbed Sanchez’s head and rolled it toward Marty. “So what do you think, faggot? Real-life art! Picasso would be jealous.”

  Marty screamed in frustration. “You are insane! Somebody please help me!”

  Leonard just laughed and did his teasing little tap dance. Turning back to the instrument table, he put his left arm across his chest and rested his right elbow on it. Reaching up, he tapped his chin as if he were thinking. “Hmm. I think something to do with the eyes would be interesting.”

  Marty began sobbing again.

  Leonard grabbed an evil-looking hooked instrument and lifted it up to inspect it, thumbing the edge to check its sharpness. He turned to Marty and laughed like a supervillain in a movie.

  _______

  Reed watched from the window above the pathology floor as Leonard danced back and forth between the two men. Jesus, he was a freak! “Leonard spotted him and turned Marty’s table to show him the mess.

  It looked as if his arms had been broken several times, and his face was unrecognizable. Leonard gave a game-show-host presentation of his work with two hands palms up. Reed gave an ungenuine smile and a half wave as he turned and walked away from the window.

  He walked back into the office, where Michael was sitting behind the desk and Abraham was leaning against the windowsill.

  “Hello, gentlemen. Any word from the airport? They should have landed by now.”

  “They have. The limo is on the way and should be here around five o’clock.”

  “Perfect. I’m confident that the rescue attempt will be soon after dark. That will make the perfect situation for our Spartan Team to show the Russians what they can do.”

  Abraham spoke up then. “So the plan is to let them into the building, and after they rescue O’Reilly and Laudner, we unleash the new Spartan Team on them?”

  “That is the plan. I don’t know how effective a show it will be, but we can always follow it up with a dog-and-pony tomorrow on the obstacle course.”

  Michael looked at Reed. “What’s going on with Marty?”

  Reed walked over and leaned in over the desk. “Son, you need to forget about him. He’s gone.”

  Michael slowly nodded his head. “Forgotten. OK, let’s get on with this. I want to get away from this place.”

  Reed stepped into the hall and gave the three Spartan soldiers instructions. “You three get on your armor and post yourselves around the perimeter. I want to know when the insurgents return to rescue their cohorts.”

  The three soldiers nodded and darted off toward the weapons room.

  _______

  Tin looked at the emergency-room exit. There had to be dozens of wanderers right outside. They were, unfortunately, cutting them off from the ambulance that they wanted to use for the rescue. Teeny looked on with dismay. “How the hell are we going to get past them?”

  Tin looked down at her and smiled. “Come with me.”

  He led her up to the second floor, to the lobby right above the emergency doors. He put his head up to the window and could see that there were forty or fifty of them bunched up at the door below.

  He leaned his ax against the wall, grabbed one of the lobby chairs, and lifted it above his head. Getting a running start, he flung it with all his strength at the window. It crackled for a couple of seconds then stopped.

  Teeny snickered. “Come on, Camel Toe. You can do better than that.”

  Tin turned, grabbed her by the waist, and hoisted her above his head with hardly any effort. She wiggled around and squealed.

  “Huh? You think I can finish it off with you?”

  “OK. OK. You can put me down, Tinley Hardt, you man among men.”

  He tossed her down on the lobby couch and grabbed another chair.

  This time when he threw the chair, the glass flew out and down onto the crowd of wanderers below. They approached the open space and carefully leaned out to assess the situation. The groaning mass was unnerving. The grotesque mob was writhing and crawling on the backs of others to try to reach them. Dull, glazed eyes stared up at them, and obviously broken bones, eyeballs hanging out of sockets, and other gore made the view unnerving. Teeny pulled back from the opening with her hand over her mouth, holding back the vomit that was working its way up to the back of her throat.

  “Just what do you think we’re going to do? Jump over them?”

  “When I was at West Point, we studied military strategy, including strategies in the Middle Ages. What does this look like to you?”

  She thought about it a few seconds. “It kind of looks like the Viking hordes storming Paris.”

  “Do you know what legend says about how French Count Odo managed to turn back the Viking hordes with very few soldiers?”

  She looked up at him. “They poured burning oil on them?”

  Tin just smiled. “That was actually more myth than reality, but you nailed it.”

  “But that
’s horrible!”

  Tin lost his smile. “Got any better ideas?”

  He leaned out to look at the crowd again and screwed up his face at the smell.

  Teeny leaned out again and shook her head. “Nope.”

  RESCUE

  Tin filled the third fifty-five gallon container with diesel from the generator tanks. He tipped the drum back onto the hand truck and wheeled it into the service elevator. After he pressed two, the doors closed and the elevator moved upward.

  When the doors opened on the second floor, he rolled the barrel over to the edge of the opening where he had broken out the window.

  Teeny was wrapping gauze around a chair leg to use it as a torch. After tying it off, she walked over to where Tin had the barrels lined up. “You don’t think three is overkill?”

  “In this case, I think underkill would be a bigger issue.”

  She peeked over the edge again. “OK, let’s do this.”

  Teeny dipped the torch into the diesel and stepped back away from the barrels. Tin toppled them over the edge one at a time as Teeny lit the torch. After pushing the last one, they moved back just far enough that they could duck around a corner. Tin took the torch from her and tossed it over the edge. There was a loud voom, and the ensuing fireball and concussion from the explosion warmed their faces and pushed them back a step.

  “Holy shit! That was a little bigger than expected.”

  “Tin, I told you that it was too much.”

  He smiled and shrugged as the fire alarm and sprinklers started. “We live and learn.”

  “Really?”

  “Wait. Uh oh, did you hear glass?”

  “Uh, I think I may have.”

  “Nice. Sure hope that killed all of the chompers down there. Because if it didn’t, we’ll have to clear out the first floor again.”

  Tin grabbed his fireman’s ax and jumped onto the elevator. Teeny moved in and positioned herself behind him with another leg from the chair she had broken apart for the torch.

  When the elevator opened on the first floor, the carnage was sickening. There were lumps of burning flesh everywhere. Fortunately, none of the lumps were moving, and the fire was being drowned by the sprinklers. They hurried out the broken emergency doors to one of the ambulances and jumped into the cab.

  “How are we going to keep any new arrivals from entering the hospital? That alarm is bound to attract them.”

  Tin started the ambulance with the keys, which had been left in the ignition. But instead of heading out to the street, he backed the ambulance into the opening where the doors were. It fit close enough that nothing could squeeze by on either side.

  As they did that, several other wanderers were moving closer. Tin jumped out and rushed up to make short work of them with his ax.

  They ran to the second ambulance and drove away, running over several other slow-moving wanderers.

  _______

  The streets were chaos. The living were barricaded into their homes, and the dead were wandering the streets. They had seen two military kill squads taking out groups of wanderers, but the squads were small, and the groups were getting larger and larger. The armed forces must have been spread so thin that they could only send small squads to the smaller towns. There were probably bigger forces in the cities. That was a worry for another time, though. The issue that was right in front of them was rescuing their friends.

  Tin eased to a stop on a gravel road that was on the edge of a wooded area that bordered the Bio-Sure campus. After a quick scan of the area from inside the ambulance, he jumped out and hid the keys in the crook of a nearby tree. He didn’t want anyone stealing their getaway vehicle.

  Teeny moved around to his side of the vehicle. They had found black spandex suits, hooded sweatshirts, and a baseball bat for Teeny in a department store that they had raided.

  Tin admired her shape for a few seconds until she said, “What?”

  He gave her a sly smile. “Nothing that can’t wait until later.”

  They moved into the edge of the woods and hunkered down to wait for the sun to set. Teeny pulled out two energy bars and bottles of water from her sports bag. They ate in silence, listening to the buzz of cicadas and a late-summer breeze stirring the leaves of trees.

  Squirrels made crackling sounds while going about their day-ending tasks.

  As dusk started to descend, the breeze slowed to silence and the leaves and cicadas stopped their buzzing calls.

  When Tin turned to let Teeny know that it was time to start moving, he heard a twig snap and froze. Staring in the direction of the sound, he held out his hand to let her know to keep silent. Then there was a rhythmic crackling of leaves like slow footfalls. Tin signed for Teeny to return to the vehicle and slide underneath.

  Once she started moving that way, he started moving tree to tree in the direction of the sound. Dusk had passed now. It was fully dark, with no moon.

  Tin thought, Shit! Perfect!

  When he was sure he was close, he positioned himself behind a tree to lie in wait for whoever was approaching, listening carefully for more clues to where the intruder was coming from. The breeze started again in earnest, causing the leaves to rustle even louder than before.

  Shit! Perfect!

  He leaned out and scanned the area where he had last heard the sound. Starting to move again, he would stop at a tree and peer around and look for movement. His eyes were adjusting to the blackness now, so he didn’t think someone could slip past him.

  Just as he finished that thought, he heard Teeny squeak out a muffled scream. “Aagghh, get away from me!”

  Tin started a sprint in her direction and, after going five strides, tripped on an unseen tree root and fell sliding facedown in a puddle and almost kicking the back of his head with his heels. Although it was painful and knocked the breath out of him, he jumped back up and continued his sprint.

  When he arrived at the ambulance, he found Teeny standing next to the vehicle with a large branch stabbed into the shoulder of a wanderer that had tried to follow her under the ambulance. He didn’t have the cognitive ability to realize that grabbing the branch itself would free him. He just kept stretching his hands and grasping for Teeny.

  Tin hoisted his ax to take him out.

  “No! Wait!”

  Tin hesitated and gave her a puzzled look.

  “It’s Raines.”

  Tin looked closer at the man trapped under the truck by Teeny’s branch. It was Raines, all right. Behind the black ooze coming out of his mouth and eyes was the man he had known for several years.

  “We’ve got to take him back with us, Tin.”

  “Uh, how the hell are we going to do that?”

  She looked up at him and started to reply but stopped with a startled look. “You tryin’ to make a statement there, white boy?” She started laughing and almost lost her hold on the branch.

  It was his turn for the startled look. “What the hell is your problem?”

  She pointed at his face. “If you kneel and sing “Mammy” to me, I’ll kick you in the balls.”

  She continued to laugh as he pulled out his flashlight and looked at his reflection in the window of the truck. His face was covered in mud except for white circles around his eyes. He chuckled and shook his head in shame. “I nearly broke my neck trying to save you! You could be a little grateful.”

  Covering her face with her free hand, she tried to stop giggling but couldn’t.

  He grabbed the keys from the crook of the tree where he had left them and moved to the back of the truck. He opened the doors and pulled out the stretcher, and the wheels extended to the ground. Then he pulled it around to where Raines was struggling against the branch. Teeny still had a huge smile on her face as he collapsed the stretcher down to the ground.

  “All right, comedian, let’s get him loaded up and strapped d
own. When you let him go, I’ll grab him and get him onto the stretcher. Then you strap him down. Whatever you do, don’t let him bite or scratch you.”

  She nodded and dropped the branch. Raines “commando crawled” the rest of the way from under the truck and started to work hard at standing up again. It was obviously hard for him in his state because he looked as if he hadn’t been able to drink infected blood for quite a while. Tin let him straighten to his standing position before grabbing him in a bear hug from the back.

  Raines had no interest at all in eating Tin, but Teeny must have smelled like prime rib. Tin body-slammed Raines onto the stretcher face first and held him down while Teeny slipped straps between their bodies and secured them in place. She used smaller straps on his hands and even strapped down his head. When Tin stood up, Raines was barely able to move.

  They pulled the stretcher up to extend the wheels and walked it around to slide it into the ambulance. Teeny jumped up into the truck, grabbed a towel, backed out, and quietly closed the doors. Tin locked them and placed the keys back into the crook of the tree.

  When he turned back to Teeny, she tossed the towel at his face. “Here you go, Camel Toe. Wash that black off your face, or someone will think you’re a basketball player.”

  “I actually was a pre—”

  “Shut up, white boy. I’ve seen you jump.”

  He looked ridiculous smiling with the mud all over his face, so she couldn’t help but giggle.

  He shook his head. “When we get out of this, I’m going to lay you over my knee and spank you for name-calling.”

  “Ha. Good luck!”

  _______

  Johnson watched the capture of Raines and the exchange between Tin and the little doctor from his perch in a tree twenty yards away. He would let them pass and follow them for a while before running back to report which direction they would be approaching the campus from.

  _______

  Jax slowed the pickup down as they looked for road to turn onto.

  “Ah, here it is, Jaxxy. Turn here, turn here!”

  He made a left onto the split driveway, and they saw a sign: