by JE Gurley
“Look, a cabin.” Susan pointed to a spot near the peak of the mountain, just below a sheer rock cliff, partially protected from avalanches by an overhang. The stone structure’s rear butted against the cliff face so tightly as to almost be a part of the mountain itself. Delighted by her discovery, she turned to Samuels. “Who lives there?”
“No one. It’s a hiker’s cabin. There’s a trail from the base of the mountain all the way to the peak. It’s an overnight hike, not for the novice. The cabin provides shelter from the weather.”
“Can we go there?”
Samuels grunted a quick laugh. “It would take several hours to get there from here. We don’t have the time.”
Susan sighed. “Too bad. I bet the view is awesome. Have you been there?”
“A few times. I skied here when I was younger. All of this was once a private ski resort until the military took over a few years ago. It’s very secluded.”
Susan was too enchanted by the cabin to catch the underlying meaning of his words. Erin was not. “In case zombies attack,” she said.
Samuels stared at her a moment to judge the intent of her question. He glanced down the slope at the compound. “Westcliffe is only a few miles away. Pueblo is less than fifty.” When he looked back at her, his eyes were sad. “No place is completely safe, but the road is guarded and nothing can climb over these peaks in the winter.” He moved his finger slowly across the horizon pointing out the separate peaks. “This is the Sangre de Cristo Range – Challenger Point, Kit Carson Peak, Crestone Needle, Crestone Peak, Humboldt and a few others I can’t remember.” He grinned. “They climb to over 14,000 feet and are some of the most difficult climbing in the country. We’re as safe here as anywhere.”
“We came in at night,” Erin reminded him. “I didn’t see much.”
Samuels winced at her reminder of their hasty departure from Atlanta. “I’ll try to get permission for you to get away from the lab more often. It’s a view worth lingering over.”
“You didn’t bring any skis?”
His smile surprised her. “I might have fibbed a bit about my skiing prowess. I’m a novice at best. It’s been a while since I’ve strapped them on.”
Erin doubted Samuels was a novice at anything he attempted and was feigning incompetence to put her at ease. Oddly, it was working. Maybe it was the thin, fresh air at two miles up or the breathtaking scenery surrounding them. Perhaps it was just the illusion of freedom after months of confinement in labs, bent over a microscope. Whatever the reason, she found she was beginning to like Samuels. Being away from the base had loosened him up as well.
Her first impression of him had been a harsh one – shooting Medford, whisking her away from her home into the wilderness. He was doing a job she would never have the courage or the stomach to do. His awkwardness around her was no act. She wondered if he had ever been married. She knew next to nothing about him. With his attention to detail, he probably had a thick dossier on her and the members of her team. A thought struck her.
“Are there other teams like ours?”
“A few in different parts of the country.” His jaw twitched slightly as he fought to control his voice. “A few have been . . . compromised.”
“Compromised? What do you mean comp . . . Oh,” she replied as the implications of his words hit her. “You mean overrun by zombies.”
He nodded. “That’s why you were brought here. It’s safer than any of the cities.”
“How bad has it gotten. We hear nothing.”
“Most of the major cities along both coasts are lost. The plague is spreading rapidly across the country. The military has pulled back to central locations.”
She was aghast. “They’ve abandoned the cities? But the people?”
He shook his head. “They had no choice. The army personnel are dying as fast as the rest of the population. That’s why your work is so important.”
“Then we should go back.”
He looked around. Even the two guards were tossing snowballs and laughing. Oddly, Samuels did not seem upset at their lapse. “Let the others enjoy the moment. There might not be many more.”
* * * *
The sight of the people ruthlessly herded into the wooden warehouse haunted Erin’s thoughts as she sat in the Level 4 lab inoculating culture plates with samples. She could imagine herself as one of those people. Were they infected? Why were they secluded from the rest of the compound? She had hesitated broaching the subject with Samuels for fear of his answer. She was certain he had seen the men and women in the trucks. She hoped that whatever the reason for their confinement, he was not responsible. Her views on Samuels had changed slightly since Atlanta, becoming more tolerant and sympathetic to his plight. However, if the motive behind the mysterious warehouse imprisonment were something sinister, she would never forgive him.
Even happy-go-lucky Susan McNeil was becoming more taciturn as the days passed. Their brief respite on the mountain from the tedium of work had not been enough to stave off the daily failures in the lab. Samuels had procured a sample of the man-made Avian H5N1 virus from some undisclosed source. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw that the new virus from the zombies bore traces of both the mutated H5N1 and the diluted strain used in the vaccine. The new zombie strain had produced at least three identifiable subtypes. She had no idea if any or all were responsible for the conversion. So far, they had been unable to culture any of the three.
After another fourteen-hour day, most of it spent in an uncomfortable biohazard suit in the Level 4 lab, Erin could not sleep. She wandered her usual haunts in the three-story building – the cafeteria, the labs, the offices, the quiet solitude of the mechanical room in the basement – intentionally avoiding the dorm area for fear someone else might be awake and want to engage her in conversation. She did not desire company. The sight of the people in the warehouse troubled her, nagged at her subconscious. Finally, she reached a decision.
Donning the winter coat and boots provided by Samuels, she exited the building through the unguarded basement door. She could not be certain if the use of her pass card key alerted any security people, but no alarms sounded. If caught, she would claim restlessness and claustrophobia. Lights were on in the barracks building and she was certain guards would be patrolling the fence, but doubted anyone would watch the grounds inside the perimeter. She avoided the open area as much as possible, using vehicles, small outbuildings and stands of trees as cover until she reached the wooden warehouse.
Some three hundred-feet long and almost a hundred wide, the old wooden structure resembled pictures she had seen of Noah’s Ark, rectangular and boxy with a raised ridge running the entire length of the roof. Paint covered the lower windows, but lights shone through smaller windows along the raised ridge. She saw no guards but suspected the doors would have guards. She smiled at the sight of a small pine tree growing alongside the building. She had been somewhat of a tomboy growing up, accepting the challenge of every tree in her neighborhood. She quickly shimmied up the pine and onto the flat roof, moving as silently as possible. She noticed that the newly shingled roof bore loose, older shingles placed in strategic spots as camouflage to mimic age and deterioration. She wondered if the entire dilapidated, wooden exterior was a façade hiding – what. She crawled to the nearest window, lay on her belly on the cold roof and peered inside.
Directly below her were rows of beds. At first, she thought it was a hospital. Then she saw the tubes snaking from the patients’ arms to small bottles on rolling carts. Some of the bottles held far more than a simple pint of blood. Aghast, she realized they were bleeding the patients. This was where the serum they had been using originated. The thought made her sick to her stomach. She rolled over on her back and stared at the star-filled night sky trying to erase the revolting sight of comatose men and women hooked up to blood suction pumps like lab animals. They were not volunteers. They were prisoners in a blood bank farm.
She knew she could do nothing to help them. Refus
ing to cooperate with the military would only place her and her team in possibly serious jeopardy. Their ultimate goal of a working vaccine was far too important to allow the deaths of a few innocents impede them, wasn’t it? The problem was that she could not allow such an unconscionable act to continue under any circumstances. If the Nazi concentration camps were atrocities, then what they were doing here was equally cruel and unjust.
She had to see more. Moving cautiously along the roof toward the rear of the building, she imagined she would find more men and women, possibly hundreds. What she did find frightened her even more deeply than the innocents for slaughter. Zombies, dozens of them, prowled restlessly back and forth like caged animals behind heavy, chain-link fence cubicles, test subjects and the source of the zombie blood. The sight of them made her skin crawl. However, one zombie, alone in a separate cage, did not follow this pattern. Its eyes were more alert, less wild. It stood in the center of its cage, peering intently at the moving security cameras along the edge of the roof. It moved to the fence and tested the strength of its cage by grabbing the fence and rattling it violently. Then, as if convinced it could not break out, stepped away and stood observant once more. When the others, alarmed by his actions, began to moan and groan, it stared at them and growled. The others backed away from him and huddled together, clearly intimidated by its Alpha-type zombie dominance. Erin, repulsed and fascinated in equal proportions by his strange, pack-leader behavior, leaned closer to the window for a better view. The Alpha zombie, alerted to her presence by its powerful sense of smell or hearing, gazed up at her, stared at her with its cold, red malevolent eyes and howled like a wolf. The uncanny lupine sound, originating in a human throat that should have been incapable of such sounds, sent chills coursing up and down her spine, reminding her of a werewolf.
Frightened, she backed away from the window before the creature’s cries could alert a guard. In doing so, she tripped on a loose shingle and fell, sliding feet first on her back to the edge of the roof. Grabbing frantically at the metal gutter with both hands, she managed to hang on with one hand while slicing a deep gash in the other. As she dangled by one hand twenty feet in the air with certain knowledge that she could not hold on, she prayed the snow below her was deep enough to cushion her fall. Then she let go.
She landed in a snowdrift but the impact still jarred her hard enough that she bit her tongue. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth and dribbled down her chin. As she stood shakily, an armed soldier appeared from the darkness aiming his weapon at her head. From five steps away, the dark opening of the business end of the barrel was the entrance to hell. She saw the soldier’s finger tightening on the trigger and screamed.
The soldier jumped backwards. “God damn, lady!” he shouted, seeming as frightened as she was. “I almost shot you. Thought you were a damn zombie.” He looked around. “What are you doing here?” He saw the electronic pass card dangling from her pocket. “You’re from the lab, aren’t you? Jesus, we’re both going to catch hell for this.”
“Let me go,” she pleaded.
He hesitated, but shook his head. “They’ll court martial me. Maybe shoot me. No, you’d better come with me.” He lowered his weapon but waited until she began to walk toward the lab before following. She wondered what Samuels would have to say about her night’s adventure. The thought brought a smile to her lips in spite of her predicament.
12
Things were not going well at Red Rock. Since Major Evers death, they had received no further communications from PacCom or any STRATCOM command center – Cheyenne Mountain, Omaha or Vandenberg. The men were growing restless and irritable. Even though Vince rotated them off duty as often as possible, the constant state of alert grated on their nerves. With little to do but play cards, video games or screw, tensions flared. First, Higgins and Conyers had an argument, Higgins accusing Conyers of sleeping with Doyles, which true or not, angered Ivers, Doyles’ lover. The four had a row that ended only with Vince breaking up the argument by separating their shifts, which created even more tension among the others. Then, Valarian and Anderson refused to take their shifts, stating that if the world was ending, they were resigning from the Air Force. In command only by his act of shooting of Major Evers, Vince’s authority carried no real weight unless he wanted to force them to work at gunpoint or confine them to their quarters. He was at his wit’s end. The one bizarre communication they did receive a week after Evers’ death stirred things up even more.
“Something’s coming in,” Lindsay announced. “It’s in the clear.”
A feeling of dread swept over Vince. An uncoded message. He prayed it was not a launch order.
“Maybe it’s all over,” Higgins said.
Vince glanced at the status board, still poised at red DEFCON 1. “What does it say?” he asked Lindsay.
“Secure from launch alert, but do not breech security seals.”
A few mutters of relief ran through the room, but Vince read the message differently. “That’s all?”
“That’s it,” Lindsay confirmed. “It went silent after that.”
“We can get out of this damned tomb,” Higgins said.
“Stow that,” Vince snapped. “It clearly said to not breech the seals. We can stand down from launch alert.” He glanced at the status board again. “I guess Pac Com’s not going to drop the danger level.”
“Give it up, Holcomb,” Higgins said. “It’s over. If we aren’t launching our Raptors, then we don’t need to stay here.”
“It’s Sergeant Holcomb to you, Higgins. There must be a good reason they want us to stay here. Lindsay, see if you can reach them.”
Lindsay cocked his head to one side, his headphones over one ear, and shook his head. “No dice. They shut down after sending.”
“You saw the satellite shots,” Higgins continued, half rising from his seat. “Those zombies are everywhere. We can’t stay trapped in here.”
Vince’s ire at Higgins’ challenge to his authority burst from him. “We’re safe!” he shouted. “You said yourself it might be the virus making them zombies. It’s damn certain lots of people are dying from it. Right now, we’re breathing recycled, scrubbed air. If we break the seals, we breathe whatever’s out there. I, for one, don’t like the idea. Do you?”
Higgins mumbled something under his breath but took his seat. Vince looked at the others. “Well?”
Liz Mears stepped forward. “My daughter,” she said.
“I can’t let you out. It might kill all of us.”
She glared at him, turned and stalked away. He felt bad for refusing her, but the others depended on him.
“Lindsay, I’ll relieve you on the radio. All of you go eat. Get some rest. We may have to go back on alert.” It was an idea that he didn’t want to consider. Neither did the others.
Alone in the control center, the weight of responsibility pressed Vince deep down into the cushion of his chair. He tried not to stare at the bloodstains on the concrete floor where Evers had fallen. Though scrubbed twice, but they were still visible to him if not the others, ghostly reminders. Trying to appear in charge for the others was hard work. The added guilt of killing the person in command weighed heavily on his mind. He detested Evers, but he would never have considered removing him from power until it had become obvious Evers had snapped. He had acted to save his own life, not assume control, but no one else had the experience.
The silence gave him the opportunity to think. They could remain at their posts for months. They had ample food and water, but like the others, he doubted there was enough command structure remaining in America to give orders. The last message had been enigmatic, ordering them to remain on alert and sealed in. He turned on the outside cameras and swept the Pinal Airfield above them. There were no signs of life. The field had the look of a base long abandoned. The small crew of Red Rock was alone in their underground bunker 80 feet below the surface.
It would be three hours before a satellite would be in position to scan Tucson
and the surrounding area. Until he knew more about what was happening outside, they would have to remain on alert.
Doyles and Wells returned to their posts a short time later but neither spoke to Vince. He didn’t know if they were ostracizing him or if they were, like him, caught up in their own thoughts. As long as they did their duty, he didn’t care. Duty. What was his duty? Was it to the military he had sworn allegiance to or to the men and women he now commanded? If, as he suspected, the few remaining functioning bases around the country were acting independently, his duty to his country was at an end. Since there was no need to launch missiles, their base no longer served a military function. He had no reason not to allow the others to leave, except for his certainty that they were safer where they were.
By the time, the hour arrived to contact the satellite, everyone had returned to the control center, even Valarian and Anderson. Valarian made the connection and brought the picture into focus. The dizzying view swept across the Rincon Mountains and Catalinas until Pinal Airpark centered the screen. It looked as dead as it had through the external cameras.
“Bring up Tucson,” he said.
He heard collective gasps as the city of Tucson came into view. I-10 was one long parking lot, as were many of the city streets. Smoke poured from many neighborhoods and downtown buildings. As in San Diego, the only life they saw was thousands of zombies darting in and out of buildings and racing down the streets.