Moira huffed in frustration. There was so much she didn’t know, and never would.
“Not that I think it will matter in the larger scope,” she continued, speaking to the microphone, “but I have a simple theory on the cannibalism. This is pure speculation, but in a normal parasitic paradigm, the host is steadily consumed until it is no longer of use to the intruding organism. Perhaps, in order to keep the host functioning, the proteins and potassium inherent in human flesh are being consumed to provide the parasites with a food source other than the host, creating a symbiotic relationship.”
She shook her head and muttered, “Or they might just be goddamn monsters.”
Moira made a disgusted face and hit the recorder’s stop button. She was a physician, a scientist, and she owed a better effort than this to anyone who would see her work. She had no illusions about living long enough to ever be questioned about her research quality though, especially now.
A headache had begun, accompanied by chills and nausea.
Her time was almost at an end.
“So make it count,” she said to the empty lab, then rose and put her autopsy gear back on. She wanted to do as many more as possible while she still could, add her findings to the growing record of audio, typed notes and attachments, then upload the file to the cloud. Virologists worldwide who subscribed to the service – and that was most of them since it was a relatively small community – would be able to review Moira’s work and maybe pull something useful from it. That meant she had to get her ass in gear, she thought, palming sweat off her forehead.
Twenty minutes later she had prepped the next subject and pulled them and their bed into the now-gory center of the ward. She’d dragged away the bodies of the three previous subjects and left them in the office cubicles. This one, a young woman from Atlanta who had volunteered as a research subject when the dormant virus was first discovered, raged and bucked against the Velcro restraints, eyes filled with hate as she tried to bite at her tormentor.
The knuckle Moira had accidentally cut with the scalpel was throbbing, and she remembered that she wanted to try sedation with the next one in an attempt to make the procedure go more smoothly. She filled a syringe with 6 mg of morphine (there was no way an IV would stay in place, so a drip was out of the question) and pinned the patient’s right arm to the bed, putting her weight behind it to hold her down. Then she punched the syringe in just below the elbow and injected the amber fluid.
That amount of opiates, administered that quickly, should have put the patient into a relaxed state almost immediately.
Instead, it yielded a very different effect.
With the injection site as a central point, a black necrosis erupted around the puncture and began radiating outward rapidly, corrupting the flesh and engulfing the arm down to the fingers and up to the shoulder in seconds. Veins turned black and raced ahead of the necrosis, spreading out across the girl’s chest and neck.
Staring in horrified fascination (it’s so fast!) Moira thought about watching mold grow and spread through high-speed, time-lapse photography. The girl suddenly went rigid and silent, her mouth frozen in the open position, eyes fixed on the ceiling. In an instant they clouded over silver.
The eyes had no luminescence however, and as the flesh blackened across the patient’s entire body, they turned that same, dull pewter color as those patients she’d destroyed by cutting open the protective sacs full of parasites. The entire process took less than sixty seconds, and now patient number seven was motionless on the bed, looking as if she’d been placed in an incinerator.
Dead. Moira let out a gasp. Truly dead.
She stared at the empty hypodermic she was still holding.
Morphine.
-38-
FEATHER MOUNTAIN
Western Pennsylvania – October 29
Donny heard growling and opened his eyes, feeling a weight on his chest that made it difficult to breathe. He saw that he was nose-to-nose with an infected soldier, mere inches away from a pair of dull, steel-gray eyes and a mouth frozen in mid-shriek. The soldier wasn’t wearing a helmet, had a bullet wound in the side of his head and smelled like sweat and human shit. Donny’s face hurt (rifle butt, someone swinging it like a bat, caught it on the cheek) and he tried to lift a hand to touch the swelling. He couldn’t. His arm was pinned between him and the dead soldier. The growling was closer now, thick and rattling as if the maker of the noise had a throat full of mucous.
It came back to Danny in a rush. Two waves of infected soldiers had hit them, from the airfield and from behind, pouring out of the trees like the human wave attacks of the Korean War he’d studied in ROTC. There had been so much firing, and suddenly it was hand-to-hand, rifle butts and combat knives and bayonets. His entire body was sore, especially his shoulders and arms, and he remembered grabbing soldiers by their combat harnesses, plunging his knife up under their jaws, flinging bodies aside before doing it again with the next attacker. He’d caught a glance of Vaugh his SAW gunner crouched and loading a belt of ammunition, hit and disappearing under a pile of infected troops, of Private Jones being pinned against the wall of the cinderblock house and being ripped apart as he screamed and beat at his killers with his fists. The air had been filled with the sharp odors of blood and gunpowder, and the hungry cries of maniacs.
The growling was coming up on his left. Stay hidden beneath a corpse and hope it goes by? Wiggle out from under and take it on? Lie here and wait until it eats you?
Donny had lost his pistol at some point, and he wasn’t holding his knife anymore. Action is better than waiting. Soldier up. He heaved upward and rolled the body to one side, freeing his trapped arm as he scrambled to his feet. A silver-eyed infantryman (is that Captain Dunham?) lunged at him from ten feet away, and Donny realized it was too close, too late. He threw his arms up reflexively.
A single pistol shot blew out the side of the captain’s head, and the body crumpled. The Secret Service agent who had come in on the Marine chopper took a few steps closer on Donny’s right and fired again. Another headshot, this one a North Carolina National Guardsman who was riddled with bullets but was nonetheless rising to his hands and knees.
“They’re getting back up,” the agent said through clenched teeth, turning and firing again at something else. “They’re coming back!”
Donny looked around at a sea of carnage. Bodies were crumpled on the ground in every direction, and it reminded him of one of those medieval movies where they showed the aftermath of a great battle, the dead and dying carpeting the field, entwined with one another. The air stank of human waste, and he realized that the wounded he saw stirring were infected soldiers with uniforms soaked red, shot through the necks and thighs and arms, wounds that should have kept them down.
Their eyes were radiant and inhuman.
The Secret Service agent’s pistol cracked again, and Donny saw another guardsman take the hit to the side of his head. A snotty mass of gray and pink blew out the other side of his skull and he fell.
A hand gripped his boot and he looked down to see an infected soldier using it as leverage to pull himself out from under a pile of bodies. He kicked the soldier in the face and stumbled away. Losing it…how can I…?
“Lieutenant!”
Donny turned to the voice, seeing Woods, his female quartermaster-turned-infantryman not far away. She had fixed her bayonet to the tip of her assault rifle, and the blade was slippery with gore. So was one side of her dark brown face. The woman reached him and grabbed the collar of his uniform. “We need to go, sir!”
Donny blinked at her. The woman’s uniform was soaked crimson and he could see bite marks on her forearms. She swam out of focus, and he slowly touched his face where he’d been hit by the rifle butt. Really rang my bell, he thought dreamily.
Woods shook her head and picked an assault rifle up off the ground – there were plenty, the guardsmen had all been fully equipped – shoving it into her lieutenant’s hands. “They’re getting up, sir. We have
to move.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face, then shouted, “Snap out of it, butter-bar!”
It got his attention and he squeezed his eyes tightly, then looked at the weapon he was holding and back up at her. “What…?”
The corporal started pulling him toward the cinderblock house where the agent now stood with his back to the door, pistol extended at arm’s length and sweeping back and forth. “Vaughn and Jones are dead,” Woods said. “I saw them go down. I don’t know what happened to our two Green Berets, probably dead too. Out under that.” She waved at the ground hidden by fallen uniforms, then stopped to thrust her bayonet, pinning a growling head to the ground, making it silent.
Donny saw Akins, the malcontent and would-be deserter standing at one corner of the blockhouse. He had obviously been collecting magazine bandoliers from the fallen and now had at least a dozen of them hanging around his neck, looking comically overloaded. He shouted something and fired several bursts at a target Donny couldn’t see on the other side of the blockhouse.
Then more clearly Akins yelled, “Is he fried or functional?”
“He’s good,” the corporal shouted back.
How many hit us? Donny eyes swept over the aftermath. A hundred? More? Bodies were moving out there, some rising to their feet. Others were kneeling in clusters, feeding. Feeding on his people.
Were more coming?
Donny forced himself to think, demanded that his head clear so he could lead instead of being a liability to his men. There weren’t many options, and he reached a decision quickly, pointing at the Secret Service agent. “Get your people out of the blockhouse and take them up the hill to the bunker.” He pointed at the sloping road, then looked at Woods. “You and Akins go with them to provide cover.” He jabbed her in the chest of her body armor. “Make sure they get inside.”
The agent went in to collect his charges as Akins moved to join them. “What about you, El-Tee?” Woods asked. Akins fired a few bursts to the left, and Donny waited so he would be heard.
“I’ll try to hold them here,” he said.
A blue business jet with Air Force markings did a fly-by over the field, and Donny watched it go. “We still need to hold the airstrip. He looked at the bodies, at the rising shapes. “I’ll clean this up.”
Woods shook her head and started to say something, but Donny gave her a hard look. “You have your orders, Corporal.” Then he started taking bandoliers of magazines from Akins’ neck and slung them around his own. When Akins started to complain, Donny simply said, “Find more.”
The agent emerged from the blockhouse with his collection of civilians, all of them looking frightened and somewhat amazed that they had come through the deafening sounds of battle outside their shelter intact. The President’s Deputy Chief of Staff seemed to have it together a little more than the others. “I tried the radio,” he said, “but the mountain isn’t answering. Are you sure-?”
“Yes,” said Donny. He wasn’t in the mood for a debate. “You’re going. My people will escort you.”
The deputy nodded. “A plane is asking for permission to land, and we heard calls that might be another aircraft.”
“I’ll handle it,” Donny said.
A minute later Woods had them organized and moving at a good pace toward the road, Private Akins leading and collecting magazines from the fallen as he went. “Watch your ass, Lieutenant,” the corporal said.
Donny snapped his own bayonet into his rifle as a response. While the corporal hustled after her departing group, Donny checked to make sure that he had a full magazine inserted in his M4. He went inside to the radio and broadcast, “All aircraft inbound to Feather Mountain. You are cleared to land at your own discretion. Be advised we have no air traffic controller, so you’ll have to talk to each other and sort it out. Do not crash into my airstrip or obstruct it with parked planes.” Then he added, “the LZ is hot.”
He went back outside, shouldered his rifle and went to work.
There was a dark humor to the situation. General Rowe knew more about what was happening in the world and country – courtesy of satellite imagery and spotty communication – than he did about what was happening inside the complex he was supposed to be securing. Less humor, he thought, more dark irony.
The major who served as his XO, the one who’d slipped into the dazed, pre-violence stage of the infection, had been relieved of his pistol and locked up in an office just off the comm center. Rowe didn’t know what else to do with him, and neither did the Army surgeon.
The general stood in the back of the room, away from the staff still manning the terminals, joined by the surgeon (a Lt. Colonel) and a sergeant named Stipling who was part of the original Feather Mountain team. The sergeant was visibly uncomfortable. It wasn’t normal for an enlisted man to be invited into private discussions with generals and colonels.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to carry out your orders, General,” the surgeon said.
“Explain.”
“We know the infection status of our people, and you wanted the Feather Mountain team tested. First,” he ticked off a finger, “they’re not all in this room.” He looked to the sergeant.
“That’s correct, sir,” the man said. “The captain and three others left for the armory and never came back. Beside the three of us, five are in comms, but the rest are out in the complex; two engineers, a quartermaster, your combat medic and ours, one of our female sergeants and your remaining biohazard specialist.”
“And they’re not answering when you called their sections, and not responding to loudspeaker announcements,” Rowe said. It wasn’t a question.
“That’s correct, sir,” the sergeant replied.
“Then we have to consider them hostiles until proven otherwise.”
The Army doctor nodded slowly, clearly not liking the general’s ruling. He ticked off another finger. “In order to perform the tests, I’ll have to take those people to medical.” He looked at the door. “Out there.”
“Then it’s a good thing you’re armed, Colonel,” Rowe snapped.
The surgeon frowned and straightened. “I’m not a combat soldier General, but I’m no coward.”
His remark had been sharper than he’d intended, and Rowe put a hand on the surgeon’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Doctor. That wasn’t what I was suggesting.”
The lieutenant colonel nodded and looked across the room, lowering his voice. “Sir, we have to make a decision about what we’re going to do with the Feather Mountain people who test positive, as well as our own infected comm tech.”
The statement hung there in a pregnant silence. The people the colonel was talking about would turn, maybe not right away, but it would happen. When it did they would become a danger to everyone and an added threat to what remained of the bunker’s integrity. And that was the only thing that mattered, at least from the point of carrying out their mission. The tactical solution was simple; eliminate them before they became a threat. The reality was far from simple. These were United States soldiers, not enemy combatants. They were co-workers, people with families. Rowe couldn’t – and wouldn’t – simply execute them.
Isn’t that exactly what I’ll have to do when they turn? When they’re truly dangerous?
They would all have to be isolated and secured. But even as he made that decision, the general realized that since not everyone turned at the same time, undoubtedly he would be trapping people in rooms with others who would become remorseless killing machines. And in the end, how was that different from shooting each one in the head?
Over the course of a thirty year military career, the dictates of combat had forced Joshua Rowe to sacrifice troops, with the understanding that it was for the greater good. Instead of becoming easier, those decisions grew more and more difficult, putting a weight on his soul he knew he’d carry until his final day.
Don’t you dare feel sorry for yourself, you son of a bitch. Your burden is nothing compared to what you have planned for your troops, each of
whom carries a terminal strain of the virus through no fault of their own.
Rowe cleared his throat. “Colonel, you’re going to take Sergeant Stipling, our infected comm tech and the rest of the Feather mountain group down to medical. Anyone who is positive will be secured. Tell them it’s temporary, and per my orders.” He looked at Stipling. The man was Feather Mountain staff and his infection status was unknown. “You understand where we’re at in this, don’t you, Sergeant?”
Stipling nodded. “I do, sir. I’ll make it happen for the colonel, even if it includes me.”
Rowe sent up a quick, silent thanks for the man’s devotion to duty, along with a prayer that he would test in the clear.
“After that’s done,” the general said to the surgeon, “bring the rest back to comms and secure it. We have one uninfected comm tech. He stays here alone until you get back.” Then he nodded toward his remaining IT man, wishing for an infantryman. “The specialist and I are going to make a second try for the armory, and then we’re going hunting.”
Both the colonel and the sergeant started to protest, but the general held up a hand.
“The President may be missing or dead, but there may be others inbound to our location; Cabinet members, senators, Joint Chiefs and others. Some have already landed as you know. Our mission is unchanged. We are to provide a secure facility so they can reestablish a working government.” He scowled. “That can’t happen while the infected are out stalking the tunnels, and we can’t clear them out with a couple of side-arms. We need firepower.”
“Sir,” said Stipling, “after they land, how are we going to get the passengers of those aircraft safely up to the bunker?”
“Lt. Knapp is out there,” Rowe said. “That’s his problem.” If he’s even still alive. “You have your orders, gentlemen. Good luck.”
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