by JE Gurley
“Get it out of your system?” he asked. Jeb detected no rancor or recrimination in his voice. When Jeb did not reply, he said, “Good. We’ve got work to do.”
“Such as?”
“We’ve been in the mine up the side of the mountain, but it was only temporary. We need to find a more permanent location, a safer one. We’ve decided you can join us if you want. I went through your things and saw you were a doctor. We could use one.”
“I’m a psychiatrist,” Jeb corrected him.
Mace chuckled. “Hell, you’ve got a whole planet full of patients you can cure, starting with me. You’ve had medical training, right. You can sew up a wound, treat a fever?”
“Not much experience, but I suppose I could.”
Mace nodded his head at the AK47 now resting against the side of the Explorer. “You can shoot, I suppose.”
Jeb nodded, not wanting to reveal his squeamishness about hunting animals. He wasn’t sure why. He had killed humans readily enough. Benjamin had said his home was ideally located, but did he really want to share it with strangers? After a moment’s hesitation, he decided he did. Being alone would be too big a temptation to give in to stage four of grief – Depression.
“I’ve got a house in the foothills. A metal-gated stonewall and steep bluffs on three sides surround it. I have solar panels, a propane generator and I just bought a truckload of food, gas and supplies. It should be safe enough.”
Mace looked at him grinning. “Is that an offer, Doc?”
“Do you have a shower?” Renda asked. “I want to get the stink of that camp off my skin.” She hugged herself and shuddered.
“Yeah, it’s an offer. I don’t want to be alone and call me Jeb.”
“Like Jeb Stuart? Remarkable cavalryman. I hope you do his name proud. I got some things to grab from the mine. You two wait here, but keep on guard.”
After Mace left, Jeb felt a little uncomfortable around Renda. He wanted to pump her for information about Karen, but was afraid to broach the subject, afraid of what her answers might reveal. She seemed to sense his reluctance.
“I didn’t know her,” she said, breaking the ice. “After, after they took away your son, I left. I didn’t want to see any more misery. I had been there almost two weeks and misery was a constant close companion.”
“Why were you there?”
“I had cancer. It’s in remission now, but my medicine made me sick. They thought I was infected but they wouldn’t release me even when they saw I wasn’t. I guess I was immune, like your wife. That’s why they took her, you know.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Mace said they want to use their blood to make a vaccine for the military and the government.” She hesitated as she realized what she was telling him might hurt him, but she continued. “They called my name too. I guess if it wasn’t for Mace, I would be with your wife.”
Jeb heard the guilt in her voice at her admission. “You were lucky. The vaccine. Not for us?”
She shook her head. “There wouldn’t be enough for everyone.”
“So we’re expendable.”
“I guess so.”
Jeb stared west, toward where they had taken Karen. “Well, I’m not expendable. Neither is Karen. I’ll find her, if I have to rip apart with my bare hands whatever building they’re holding her prisoner.”
He watched Mace climbing the trial toward the mine. I’ll have to become more like him, he thought. Hard as flint. A killer. The world had become a place of killers. The Weltschmerz of the new order threatened to overwhelm him, but he focused on the image of Karen and steadied himself.
11
“Not another one.” Erin’s frustration welled up in her and overflowed. She took the slide from under the microscope and flung it across the room. It landed on the floor and shattered into a dozen pieces. She winced as she realized the safety protocols she had broken in her anger. Such a lapse of discipline in the biosafety level 4 lab would risk all their lives. She glanced around to see if anyone had witnessed her outburst, but she was alone in the lab. Her disappointment at the outcome of almost a week’s effort only heightened her fatigue. Lack of proper sleep and irregular eating habits over the last two weeks were taking a toll on her body and her concentration. She was not the only one suffering. All her colleagues had made mistakes, though none as egregious as hers. Susan had sliced her hand removing a test tube from a centrifuge. Thankfully, it had been only the sterile saline used for balance. Jim Ingersoll had inadvertently erased a full day’s research from his laptop. They all needed a break.
Staring at the snow and trees outside the window reminded her of winter trips to the Smoky Mountains and Gatlinburg, Tennessee. She didn’t ski, but riding the lifts up the mountain and tubing back down had been thrilling. It had been years since her last visit. She sighed and swept up the pieces of broken slide, disposing of them in the medical waste container. The contents of the slide had not been particularly dangerous, only a drop of donor sera and their latest vaccine, another in a long line of failures. She would have to be more careful, more controlled, an example to the others. Not a nut case, she added.
She checked her watch – almost seven a.m. The first golden blush of sunrise softly caressed the highest snow packed peaks, but left the still sleeping valleys wrapped in a purple blanket of shadow. The others were probably in the cafeteria toying with their food. For her, two or three cups of strong coffee with lots of sugar served as breakfast – the caffeine to keep her awake and the sugar to keep her going. She knew there would be a price to pay for her dietary lapses, but she was a driven woman.
Atlanta was gone. She had not been able to hold back the tears as the helicopter flew through the smoke of its second burning. Midtown, her apartment building, had been in flames, as had Vinings and Smyrna. The entire east side of town looked like a forest fire. Only the bare granite knoll of Stone Mountain, rising 800 feet above the landscape, looked immune to the destruction surrounding it. Other cities had been an inferno as well – Birmingham, Memphis, Little Rock, Amarillo, Denver. Even farms and small communities were not spared the blaze of war. For war it was, with an enemy that knew no mercy, understood no rules and took no prisoners.
Her battle had begun with the Avian flu sweeping across the globe. Now, it was with zombies, created in part by the very vaccine she had helped develop at the CDC. The dead, arisen somehow, sought human flesh and blood like creatures from a George Romero movie. She had witnessed one such attack in Atlanta, upon a colleague. Bullets to the torso had not even registered with it. Only a bullet to the brain had finally stopped it. Not her team, but others had provided results of a zombie dissection. Their findings had been both fascinating and apocalyptic. A small percentage of the dead who had received the last vaccine, though clinically dead for as long as three hours, reawakened with inert medulla cortexes that control higher reasoning but highly functioning hindbrains – the mesencephalon, metencephalon and medulla oblongata – controlling unconscious bodily functions, such as breathing, heartbeat, visual coordination and animal reasoning. They also awoke with an insatiable appetite for flesh and blood. A world filled with such unstoppable creatures frightened her.
She sensed someone watching her and turned. “Elliot,” she said, acknowledging him.
Elliot Samuels nodded. The former southern area FEMA coordinator was now regional director after the deaths of the former director, as well as the head of the FBI and Homeland security, in a plane crash when the pilot turned zombie. “Doctor Kostner,” he said.
Samuels had brought her team to Colorado. In doing so, he had probably saved their lives, but she still resented him for his cold aloofness. She had watched him kill Lyle Medford when he had reawakened as a zombie after sustaining a bite. The grisly image still haunted her nightmares.
“You were staring at the snow,” he said.
“Oh, I, ah, I was just daydreaming,” she stammered, wondering how long he had been watching her.
“Your people need a break.
”
Did he see my mistake? “What do you suggest, Disneyland?” She immediately regretted her caustic reply. She didn’t know why her answers always came out harsh around him. None of what was happening was his fault. He was like her, simply trying to stay ahead of the avalanche.
“Take the day off. Go outside. Build a snowman. Make a snow angel. Write your name in the god damned snow. Do something away from this damn tomb.”
She opened and closed her mouth. This was the first time she had seen Samuels show any emotion. Had her angry retort upset him, or was there something else behind his anger. She sensed more.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
He walked over to look out the window. After a few moments, he said, “Iran invaded Iraq and Pakistan, closed the Persian Gulf and sent warships through the Suez Canal. Israel nuked Tehran and sank Iran’s entire fleet. They lost Haifa. Now Jordan, Syria and Egypt are making threats. World War III may be heating up.”
Erin was stunned and angry. “My God! With the entire world dying, they’re tossing around nuclear bombs. What kind of sick bastards are they?”
“People do strange things when they’re frightened. Did you know that over a million people crowded the Square at St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, waiting to see the Pope? When a rumor spread that the Holy Father was a zombie, they went crazy and stormed the Vatican, looting, burning, killing the Swiss Papal guards, and these were devout Catholics, not religious zealots. Can you imagine what the rest of the world is like?”
She could and the thought horrified her. A sudden, overwhelming desire to give up came over her. “What’s the use? We’ve lost. Hell, we created the zombie plague with our last vaccine. I was in charge. I’m responsible for the world’s death.”
To her surprise, Samuels reached out and slapped her across the cheek just hard enough to sting but not hard enough to bruise. “Quit feeling sorry for yourself. You don’t have time. Your vaccine worked on the virus against which you created it. That the virus underwent a major antigenic shift in the population was unforeseen and unfortunate.”
She lightly brushed her cheek where it stung. “Unfortunate? Unfortunate that 70% of the population is dying?”
“Yes. You said it yourself; someone released the more lethal man-made strain into the mix. The virus mutated too quickly, but now it seems to have settled into one form, the zombie virus. Create a new vaccine from the blood we’ve provided from immune donors.”
“Who are these mysterious donors? Why can’t we examine them?” She had wandered the limits of the building and had seen no dormitories, no patients.
Samuel’s lips tightened. What is he hiding? “You have no need to examine them. They are in another wing under quarantine conditions. Do not concern yourself with their welfare. The blood is enough. Use it. Concentrate on a vaccine. The fate of our country depends upon it.”
She sighed. “Don’t remind me. It’s bad enough I’ve killed the world. Now I have to save it, as well. I’m not God, you know,” she shouted. “Like you said; maybe it’s Judgment Day.”
Samuels stiffened beside her. “What do you know about Judgment Day?”
She stared at his odd reaction. “The day of the Rapture. The End of Days.”
He visibly relaxed at her answer and nodded. “God’s revenge.”
She shook her head. “No, I believe it was God’s promise. What do you know about Judgment Day?”
He leaned against the window frame, bracing himself with one hand. His entire body sagged. “Too damned much.”
She felt a chink in his armor forming and pressed him. “What do you mean?”
He shook his head; then looked at her, his face resuming its hardness. “Keep working. Find this vaccine. The quicker you develop it, the more we can make.”
“We will.”
“Tell your people to take today off. Rest. Play. Get the hell outside for a while and breathe some fresh air. I need you sharp and I need you ready to go tomorrow morning.”
As Samuels walked away, Erin noticed his usual cocky strut was absent. He was a man walking to the gallows and she wondered what crimes he had committed.
When Susan arrived, she conveyed Samuel’s message. Her face immediately brightened.
“Good. I want to play in the snow and forget this damn place for a few hours.” She pointed toward the ski lift rising up the slope. “I want to ride to the top and look out over the world.”
The closed ski resort was outside the compound, but she knew Samuels would accommodate them somehow. The base was on a secluded mountain and should be safe from zombies.
“I’ll ask Samuels.” She hesitated before asking the real question plaguing her. “Susan, do you know where the patients supplying the blood are located? Samuels seemed rather vague when I asked. He said they were in another wing, but I remember the layout from when we flew in. There is no other wing.”
“Maybe he meant another building.”
“Maybe, but I’ve only seen a garage, the soldiers’ barracks and that old wooden building across the compound. It’s almost falling down with disrepair. They can’t be there.”
Susan’s mind had returned to the ski slope. “Oh, what does it matter? They probably used a part of the barracks. Go ask Samuels about the ski lift, okay?”
Erin knew Susan would not be dissuaded from her romp in the snow and the exercise would do them all some good. “I’ll see if the others want to accompany us.”
“Ask Elliot. Maybe he needs a little R and R.” Susan covered her mouth with her hand, crinkled her eyes and chuckled.
“You had better watch Samuels,” Erin warned. “He’s a cold character.”
“I notice you glance at him every chance you get,” Susan shot back, a little miffed.
Erin blushed. Was it that obvious? “I admit that he’s handsome, but he has a mistress.”
Susan frowned. “Who?”
“His job.”
* * * *
Samuels proved true to his word. The six members of Erin’s team, Samuels and two armed soldiers rode the ski lift while two more soldiers remained below to operate the lift. Erin rode with Susan McNeil with Samuels alone in a chair behind them. She could feel Samuels’ eyes on the back of her neck the entire trip and resisted the urge to turn and look at him. Samuels had provided them with heavy military coats and boots, but could find no skis. Since he was the only one with any skiing experience, Erin thought it just as well. She didn’t need any broken bones among her team.
The breeze was slight, but possessed a sharp chilled edge that made her shiver in spite of her heavy coat. However, it was bracing and, as Samuels had promised, the air was clean and sweet and the view was spectacular. Thick stands of bright green spruce, blue-green Douglas fir, orange-barked Ponderosa pine and the arrow-straight white trunks of aspen with their red and yellow foliage dotted the slopes and lined the ski runs. Near the top, the lift crossed a wide, deep chasm with a rushing stream cascading over its boulder-strewn channel. Swinging suspended three hundred feet above the rocks made her uneasy but she took heart from Susan’s child-like squeals of delight. To Susan, it was like a ride at Atlanta’s Six Flags over Georgia.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Susan yelled over the sound of the rushing water.
Erin nodded her agreement while holding tightly to the bar across her lap securing her in the seat. Once they reached the top and leaped off the lift. Susan ran immediately to a snowdrift and fell into it, splashing as if in the surf. The pair of armed dutiful soldiers took up positions on either side of the clearing at a simple nod from Samuels.
“Watch out for bears,” Samuels warned, quickly dispelling the aura of peace that had finally descended over Erin. “It’s been a rough winter and they might be hungry.”
“Bears,” Susan shouted in delight. “Oh, I would love to see a bear.”
“They would love to see you too,” Samuels replied, “Though you would hardly qualify as a good snack.”
Susan smiled, brushed her
hand down the side of her petite but well-formed frame hidden beneath her bulky coat and said, “Thank you.”
He turned toward Erin as she stared down the mountain. “Would you like a better view?” He pulled out a pair of binoculars and handed them to her. She took them and, after a few seconds fumbling to bring things into focus, looked back down lift line, following the remarkably thin cables that had borne her to that spot. Lifting them, she observed the adjoining higher peak, a bald ridge of granite running north and south. An eagle rose from its flanks and fell gracefully until finding a thermal, which it rode until level with the peak. Then she sought the compound that had become her new home. A line of men stood in formation in front of the barracks doing exercises. She was glad she was not among them. They wore no heavy coats in spite of the freezing temperature. Smoke curled peacefully from the chimney of the lodge-like common room of the base. Steam rose from the lab area. As she swung the binoculars north back up the slope, she spotted two trucks entering the compound through the seldom-used western gate. Following them, she noticed their destination was the ramshackle wooden building known as ‘the barn’, though it looked more like an abandoned warehouse.
The two trucks backed up to the entrance. One soldier jumped out and opened the large door. She did a double take as a line of civilians climbed from the trucks and entered the building, surrounded by armed guards. While she was wondering what was going on, Samuels’ voice made her jump.
“See anything interesting?” he asked.
She moved the binoculars quickly across the valley. “I thought I saw some deer at the edge of the woods.” She handed the binoculars back to Samuels. “I think I’ll join Susan.” As she walked away, she saw Samuels raise the binoculars to his eyes and focus on the compound. Had he seen what she had seen? She ignored him when he glanced in her direction.
Susan acted like a child on holiday, stomping through snowdrifts, collapsing on the ground on a whim to make making snow angels and throwing snowballs at everyone. Everyone but Samuels and Erin joined in, forgetting for a few minutes the tremendous pressure they were under and the devastation that surrounded them just a few miles away. Erin could not. She did not believe Samuels was capable of having fun. He stood like their self-appointed sentinel, scanning the mountainside for invisible dangers. She felt a momentary twinge of guilt at her callous assessment of him, but then she remembered the people in the warehouse. Volunteers did not need armed guards. She suspected Samuels knew more of the situation than he cared to reveal.