Chill Factor: Ice Station Zombie 2

by JE Gurley

  In the uppermost level, the two-story Biology Pod and the Core Pod, which contained equipment rooms, stockrooms, offices, and the boiler room on the first floor and a library and a lounge on the second floor loft, were equally intact, but cold and dark. Entering the Core Pod first, the three checked each room carefully before closing them off. Upstairs, they found no bodies, but streaks of blood marked the floor. Not everyone had escaped unharmed. In the small lounge, a pot of coffee sat frozen on the table, surrounded by three partially filled coffee mugs. A sheaf of papers, a pair of dark-rimmed glasses, and half-eaten doughnut lay on the table beside one of the cups.

  “They left in a hurry,” Brad noted aloud.

  Hughes picked up the doughnut and squeezed it between thumb and forefinger. It crumbled into a fine powder. “It’s stale. This happened weeks ago.”

  That placed the time of the abandoned meal sometime after they had lost contact with McMurdo. “Then people were still alive after the outbreak. It happened slowly.”

  “Some were alive,” Hughes agreed, “but it doesn’t mean they are now.”

  Brad wouldn’t give up. “Maybe they’re still here somewhere hiding,” he insisted. “We have to search for survivors.”

  “Our first priority is to secure a safe place for the others. Any survivors that have managed this long, will manage another day.”

  Brad’s hopes shrank when they found the first bodies in the Biology Pod. Several zombies lay in a pile in front of the smashed door of the chemical storage room. All had been shot in the head.

  “Somebody figured it out,” Deen said with obvious admiration for the shooter or shooters in his voice.

  Inside, frozen blood glittering like dark rubies covered the floor and two of the four walls. Chemicals, some frozen solid, lay in pools of shattered glass. More zombies, one whose face was half-eaten away by acid, lay on the floor amid bits and pieces of flesh, internal organs, and a few gnawed bones. Brad grimaced as he recognized a human femur. There were no whole corpses, but judging by the degree of carnage inside the room, he doubted anyone had made it out alive.

  “They trapped themselves here,” Deen said.

  Brad detected a trace of condescension in Deen’s voice, as if he had contempt for anyone so stupid as to seek refuge in a place with no windows or other exits. Brad didn’t know the circumstances of their deaths, but decided to speak up in their behalf. “Maybe they had no choice. They certainly didn’t go quietly.”

  “Someone made it out alive,” Hughes said.

  “How do you know?” Deen challenged.

  Hughes smiled and replied, “No gun. Who shot them?” and then walked away.

  They encountered the first zombies in Loading Dock A, the staging area for freight destined for expeditions out onto the ice or to the Dry Valleys. Brad almost walked into one of the creatures as he rounded a corner. Three more stood in the open loading door across the room. Upon seeing Brad, the first zombie growled and lunged at him. Brad dropped his flashlight and fended the creature off with the butt of his rifle as he backed down the hallway. Neither Deen nor Hughes could get a clean shot at it in the close confines of the hallway. As they stumbled backwards, their flashlights played across the zombie like spotlights at a movie premier. The creature’s red eyes never left Brad, solely intent on its next meal. The zombie was surprisingly strong, pushing him backwards into a glass display case. The glass shattered and cascaded over Brad. If not for the thick anorak he wore and the coat underneath it, the sharp falling shards of glass would have sliced him to ribbons. Even so, a small piece cut his right cheek. The smell of blood enraged the zombie, doubling its efforts to get at him. Finally, Brad managed to shove hard enough to throw the zombie off balance. He quickly reversed his rifle, placed the barrel against the creature’s head, and pulled the trigger. The head exploded like an over-ripe melon, splattering the wall with thick, black blood and bits of dead flesh. Blood drenched his gloves and sprayed his face. The stench was overpowering, the smell of a disinterred body.

  “My God,” Deen said, choking on the smell. “He stinks worse than a cesspool.”

  Hughes was more matter of fact. “We had better take care of the others.”

  Alerted by the shot, the remaining three zombies made a beeline across the dock for them. Brad followed Hughes and Deen while fighting down the bile rising in this throat. He removed his blood-spattered gloves and tossed them to the floor, and then fell to his knees to vomit. He wiped his face with his hands. They came away covered with black blood. For a few seconds, his mind slipped into a zone away from his body. He saw himself kneeling, the headless zombie a few paces away. He wanted to leave, to escape the insanity surrounding him; wander the universe opening before him. He heard three shots and fought to regain his feet, but they refused to support him. Another wave of nausea swept over him. He dry heaved the contents of his empty stomach. The sound of the roll-down door closing brought him back around. He rose slowly, ashamed at his reaction to the dead zombie, and joined his comrades.

  Deen strutted around the three corpses like a game rooster. He stood over one of the zombies, smiling, and nudging it with the toe of his boot. Brad half-expected Deen to reach down and scalp the dead creature, a trophy for his belt. Brad suddenly realized that he disliked Deen very much. Hughes had dismissed the three corpses and was examining a generator he had spotted in a corner of the dock.

  “Maybe we should stay here,” Hughes said, finally agreeing with Brad’s original idea. “We can power the equipment with the generator, you know, for Doctor Strong’s research.”

  Brad nodded, not trusting his voice. Hughes stared at him, cocking his head slightly to one side.

  “Are you okay?” Hughes asked. He thankfully didn’t mention Brad losing his lunch.

  “I think so,” Brad answered. “Just shaken. Yes, I think this place will do. Liz can use the lab here to find out just what we’re fighting.”

  “I think I can enlighten you gentlemen.”

  All three turned at the sound of the strange voice. Deen pointed his AK-47 at the man standing in the door. The man held a revolver in his hand, but he casually shoved it into his coat pocket. A long piece of steel fashioned into a machete with a duct tape handle dangled from his waist.

  “You won’t need that, sir,” he said, smiling at Deen. Ignoring the threat of the rifle, he continued into the room. “My name is Doctor Gregory Malosi. I’m glad to see you gentlemen. It’s been a rather lonely couple of weeks.”

  Brad studied Malosi’s face. Malosi appeared to be about forty years old. He was very thin but not emaciated, as if he had always been a thin man. He sported several weeks’ growth of beard and walked with a slight limp. Noticing Brad’s scrutiny, he said, “I took a spill on the snowmobile some miles out and injured my knee. It has not healed properly.”

  “You’re not from McMurdo?” Brad asked.

  “No. I was … elsewhere when the Demise struck.”

  “The Demise?” Hughes asked.

  Malosi took a few more steps into the room. Hughes played his flashlight across the newcomer’s face. Malosi warded his face from the light, frowned, and shot Hughes a scathing look. “Well, the Australians called it that. The rest of the world had various names. The Apocalypse would fit nicely, I suppose, the end of the world as we know it.”

  “Do you know what happened here?” Brad’s heart began to race. He was eager for answers and any news from the outside world. Malosi’s enigmatic smile shook him. What could the man find humorous about the end of the world?

  “Not all of it. I arrived to find the place crawling with zombies. Everyone living was gone. I found a hastily scrawled note in the radio room dated August 12. The writer didn’t know very much. A C-130 had landed a week earlier to bring in some supplies in a rare night landing. Soon afterwards, several people became ill, died, and came back to life as these creatures. They soon learned that it was happening all over the world. They gathered the survivors and evacuated the base in the C-130, the fool
s.”

  Malosi’s condescension mystified Brad. “Fools?”

  “The disease came here from Christchurch aboard the very plane in which they were escaping. What did they expect to find there? They probably never made it. We’re all infected to some degree or the other, you know.” Malosi paused to judge the effect his words had on them, grinning when he saw that they already knew. “How many frightened people do you think concealed their symptoms in order to escape? Can you imagine zombies on a plane?” He shook his head. “Better that they had stayed here.”

  “Where were you if not here?” Hughes asked.

  “Out on the ice.”

  When he saw that Malosi was not going to expand on his statement, Hughes pushed.

  “Where on the ice?”

  Malosi sighed. “Does it matter? I’m a biologist. I was out collecting samples. I prefer solitude. Most people bore me.” He turned to face Brad. “You knew that we’re all infected. How?”

  “I’m more curious as to how you knew?” Brad asked.

  “It was obvious. People became infected and died who had not been bitten.”

  “What about natural immunity to the disease?”

  Malosi’s grin seemed darker this time, as if he had a secret that only he knew and savored the power it gave him. “Do you truly believe this is a natural disease?”

  “How have you survived here alone for over a month,” Deen asked.

  “I move about quietly. I have my revolver and this.” He touched the makeshift machete with his hand. “I have a safe cubbyhole in which to hide, enough propane to provide heat for cooking, and sufficient food to last for some time.”

  “There are no other survivors?” Brad asked.

  “No one. Where did you come from?”

  “Amundsen-Scott.”

  “Ah, Polies. I have never been to the South Pole. I hear it is a very stark and barren abode.”

  “It is now,” Hughes answered.

  “Are you all that remain?”

  Brad answered. “No. More are coming soon. We came ahead to scout around.”

  Malosi walked over and examined the generator that Hughes had been examining, running his gloved hand along its surface. “Alone, I could not hope to secure this building. A group could do so.”

  “We have a doctor with us,” Brad said. “I want to get the labs running. We have to determine what this infection is and find a cure.”

  “Oh, I can tell you what it is – microscopic nanites.”

  Deen scowled. “What the hell are nanites, some kind of ice termite?”

  Brad had heard of nanites, but wasn’t certain if he believed Malosi’s claim.

  “Nanites are tiny, man-made self-replicating robots that can move through the human blood stream. They are neither virus nor bacteria, so antibiotics will not work on them. Gentlemen, there is no cure.”

  1 6

  Sept. 10, Port Augusta, Australia

  Val Marino stood by the fresh grave, dirty Stetson hat in hand, weeping openly, not caring what the others present might think. His tears ran warm down his cheeks, mingling with the beads of sweat elicited by the unnaturally hot day. Elliot Anson had been his friend and colleague. If not for the gruff Australian, Marino had no doubt that he would still be stuck in Antarctica or more likely, dead. He would miss Anson, and the small mound of earth and building rubble didn’t seem monument enough for all Anson had done.

  Alex Nelson from Coober Pedy offered him a few words of comfort. He slapped Marino on the back and said, “It seems to me that Anson died in the way he lived – by his own rules.”

  Marino nodded. He had known Alex only a few days, but the opal miner – he called himself a fossiker, another Australian stine term Marino didn’t understand – had made a quick impression on him. Like Anson, Alex was hard enough to cut diamond but easy going and friendly.

  “I shouldn’t have left him.”

  “The flash drive is important,” Alex reminded him. “It allowed Jeffries to fine tune the devices. It will save lives.”

  Marino nodded. “Maybe, but it didn’t save Anson’s.”

  When the two had landed in Adelaide just five days earlier – Has it only been five days? Marino thought. It seems like a lifetime ago – searching for Anson’s sister and brother, they had set out north for the Flinders Range after them, only to find them murdered by a highwayman. Their chance encounter with Nelson had prompted Marino’s return to Woomera with him to deliver John Gilford’s flash drive that they had brought from Resurrection City. He knew he shouldn’t have left Anson alone, but Anson had insisted. Anson’s thirst for revenge on the murderer of his siblings had driven him to take chances. They had found Anson, or rather, Anson had found them, in Port Augusta as Marino, Alex, and the scientists from Woomera used Electro-Magnetic Pulse devices to clear the city of zombies.

  The properly tuned EM waves rendered the nanites inoperable, killing their zombie hosts, but at a safe distance, they were harmless to humans. In fact, the EMP provided temporary relief from nanite infection, a rudimentary cure. However, Anson’s injuries, a bullet wound to the stomach, were so severe that only the nanites infecting him kept him alive. Using the new device would only kill him.

  “He took his own life to save you from having to do it for him.”

  Marino turned on Alex angrily, his fists clenched; then relaxed as he realized that Alex was right. “It doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “It doesn’t get any easier, mate. It never will.” With those parting words, Alex left Marino alone by the grave.

  Marino shoved his hat hack on his head. Alex was right. They still had work to do. Australia was Anson’s home. He wouldn’t want anyone slacking off because of him.

  Port Augusta was clear. So far, almost a hundred survivors had staggered out of their hiding places, starving, filthy and numb, but now free of the zombie threat that had lingered over them. It was a small number for a city of thirteen-thousand souls, but more might come out. They had finally contacted the military. Remnants of the ADF station near Melbourne had been killing zombies from helicopter gunships in Port Augusta for sport, inadvertently forcing the humans scavenging the city for food into hiding. Their commander, General Aubrey Hayes, had pledged his small surviving force to the task of cleansing the cities of zombies.

  Marino looked down at the grave with its wooden marker. “It’s time to go now, Elliot. We’re headed to Adelaide. I’ll see if Tabitha is still around.”

  Tabitha Jewels had been the slightly insane woman they had met at the Adelaide airport where Anson had landed the Hercules C-130. She had tried to imprison them for their services as pilots to help evacuate the city. They had left her to her delusions with the promise to bring more pilots to her. In a way, they would be keeping their promise.

  As Marino trudged through the rows of barracks tents set up for the survivors, trying not to stare at their gaunt, vacant faces, he wondered how his friends and acquaintances in Tucson were doing. Was there still a Tucson for him to return to? He spotted Nicole Blalock standing with Doctor Winston Jeffries and Alex. Nicole had her arms around Nelson’s waist, leaning against him. Marino envied him and his relationship with her. According to Alex, she had turned him into a human being. Human beings were a rare commodity now days.

  He faced the three and smiled. “I’ve said my goodbyes. I guess it’s time to move on and move out. It’s time to go to Adelaide.”

  This time, he would be returning to Adelaide in a fleet of helicopters equipped with loudspeakers announcing what they were going to do, and two hundred soldiers to secure a safe refuge for the survivors while they detonated the EMP devices. In this manner, they intended to retake all of Australia. He owed Anson that much.

  17

  Sept. 10, Leverett Glacier, Antarctic Plateau

  Liz stared out the window at the unchanging landscape. Darkness prevailed. Stars studded a black moonless sky. The wind created a ground haze of blowing snow that made picking a safe path among the crevasses and ic
e ridges difficult. Somewhere along the way, they had lost the Sno-Cat bearing Trace Wilkie, Matsu Shimoda, and Mattie Mullins. Wilkie, with his superior knowledge of ice road conditions, had insisted on leading the two-vehicle caravan. For two days, the slower Kharkovchanka had trudged along behind the Sno-Cat, following its tracks like a hound after the fox. By the third day, Wilkie, frustrated with the Russian tractor’s slower pace, had increased the distance between the two vehicles. DeSousa pushed the Kharkovchanka to its limits to keep up, but abruptly, the Sno-Cat tracks disappeared, vanished with the wind. They searched blindly for several hours but found no trace of the vehicle. Now, they had to decide on a course of action.

  Liz knew what she wanted. She was eager to continue, to reunite with Brad, but felt they couldn’t abandon anyone. “We must wait for them,” she suggested. “Once they notice we aren’t following, they’ll backtrack and find us.”

  DeSousa disagreed. “There are hundreds of paths they could have taken off the glacier. I haven’t seen a marker flag or any sign of a road all day. I don’t know exactly where we are. The chances of them finding us are infinitesimal. Besides,” he pointed to the radio, “I haven’t been able to raise them on the radio.”

  “You told me it had a very limited range. That’s why we can’t reach Brad.”

  He nodded. “That’s true. That means Wilkie is way ahead of us. We’re too slow for him. He’s left us behind.”

  Deep down, she worried that DeSousa’s assessment of Wilkie might be true, but she could not allow herself to dwell on it. “He wouldn’t do that. We can’t leave them.”

  “We’re not leaving them; he left us.”