by K. H. Graham
“You two want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Katherine asked as Nick opened the back door to the truck.
“Griffith came looking for me,” Nick explained as he hunted through the several bags that Ogden had instructed his underlings to pack for the trip. “He was sent by a man named Colonel Ogden. He found me on my houseboat in Virginia yesterday morning. He recruited me for a mission that, even now, seems ridiculous.”
“What sort of mission?”
“To start spreading a vaccine among the infected. To try to locate infected persons of interest, administer the vaccine to them, and bring them back to safety.”
“And who’s kicking this mission off? The army?”
“If you can call it that. They’ve just thrown together the best sort of military establishment they could manage with anyone that survived the outbreak.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“And where is safety you mentioned?”
“Langley, Virginia.”
“So then why the hell are you here in Texas?”
“Because I came to recruit you,” Nick said. He found the vaccine, boxed up in its metal container, already loaded into three syringes. He looked back to Katherine’s Toyota and lowered his voice, stepping closer to Katherine.
“This mission presents an interesting opportunity,” he said. “I realized it right away. Past what Griffith’s superiors expect of me, there’s something else…something I don’t want Griffith knowing about. I knew I’d need help, though. People I could trust. You instantly came to mind.”
“I suppose I was an afterthought?” James asked.
“No. You’re equally important.”
“What opportunity are you talking about?” Katherine asked.
“Not now,” Nick said. “Katherine, I know we have a tense history, but I need you to trust me. Please come back to Langley with us. Be a part of this mission that I’ve been tasked to orchestrate. I’ll tell you everything, but there’s no time now. Right now, I just want to make sure Griffith doesn’t become a rambler.”
Katherine nodded, but she was staring blankly at her feet. Nick didn’t know what this meant nor, in that moment, did he care. He took the metal box containing the vaccine back to Katherine’s truck and climbed inside.
Griffith had leaned to the left, stretching out and elevating the bitten leg. He had pulled his pants leg up, revealing the wound. The skin around the bite had already taken on a purplish color, the edges around the bite marks looking like meat that had been sitting in the sun too long. Although the wound was no more than ten minutes old, the flesh around the bite looked as if it had been decaying for days.
“I don’t know what to do with this,” Nick told Griffith, opening the latch on the box and taking out one of the syringes.
“There’s a dose in each syringe,” Griffith said. “It only takes one. The whole thing. A four milliliter dosage.”
“Where?”
“In my arm, just above the elbow. It acts fast. It’ll knock me out, though. Maybe for an entire day.”
“I’ve never given a shot before,” Nick said. “You’ll have to point to exactly where it needs to be.”
Griffith almost said something but screamed instead. He was shuddering, coated in sweat, and beginning to drool. His eyes were wild and terrified. He looked to Nick, pleading, scared and helpless.
James poked his head into the truck and held out his hand. “Give it here. I can do it.”
Nick held on to the syringe, giving James a contemplative look.
“What?” James said. “Okay, so no…I don’t like him. But I’m not going to let him turn to a rambler right in front of us. Give me the damn needle.”
Nick handed it over before he could talk himself out of it. He stood aside and let James slide into the truck. Nick noticed that James took great care not to look at the gruesome nature of the bite. Instead, he went directly to Griffith’s arm, pulled up the man’s sleeve, and injected the vaccine with a precision that surprised Nick. Nick watched as the clear fluid drained from the syringe and into Griffith’s arm.
“Is there anything else we need to do?” Nick asked Griffith
“Some of the subjects…the vaccine made them develop severe fevers…as high as one hundred and five. If that happens, just try to keep me cool.”
Katherine had come back over, looking into the truck. Griffith acknowledged her, but only briefly. He closed his eyes, his face scrunched up in pain, as he waited for the vaccine to kick in.
Nick looked back up the street and although there were still no ramblers in sight, he could almost sense them getting closer.
“We have to go,” Nick said. He looked to Katherine, doing his best not to seem desperate. “I’d like your help on this.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems crazy.”
“It is,” Nick said. “But what else are you going to do?”
She chuckled. “More than you know.”
“Yeah, where were you anyway?” James asked.
Katherine shrugged. She looked into her truck, surveying Griffith. She then looked back to Nick thoughtfully.
“Have you changed?” she asked him.
“My wife and daughter died. I watched it happen. After that, I lived on a houseboat for two years by myself. So yeah, I’m a tad different.”
She looked genuinely surprised and hurt by his response but in the end, all she could do was sigh. “I’ll come,” she said. “But this opportunity you’re saying that all of this could lead to…it better be good.”
“It is.”
“And is there food there?” she asked. “Shelter?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “They’ve got a nice set-up.”
It pained him to see Katherine having to make such a huge decision based on necessities that had once been so simple and trivial. But that’s what the world had come down to for the vast majority of those that had survived. Nick was just now coming to understand that it was one of the bigger reasons he had decided to join Griffith in the first place.
“Then let’s go,” Katherine said.
She slid up the seat, trying not to jar Griffith too much, and pulled a laptop bag out. She then retrieved two small duffel bags that had fallen into the floorboard in the chaos of the last ten minutes. The pistol she had used to help plow through the wall of ramblers was tucked into a frayed holster that she wore on her hip. Other than those belongings, she appeared to have nothing else of value.
Nick and James carefully slid Griffith out of Katherine’s truck. After some tricky maneuvering, Nick was able to position Griffith on his back in a half-assed piggyback ride. As he trudged back to the black government truck, he could feel Griffith already beginning to go slack. His grip around Nick’s shoulders was loosening and his body was going limp.
By the time they slid him into the back seat of the truck, he was basically out of it. His breaths were deep yet weak and there were still tremors passing through his body, but he was quickly fading away.
When James closed the door and Nick climbed in behind the wheel, Katherine looked up the street. Nick followed her gaze just before starting the engine. The first rambler came into view, followed by five others. They were small in the distance, like little rag dolls that some kid had left in the street.
“Truth be told,” Katherine said, “I’m not going to miss this place one bit.”
She climbed into the front seat and James followed in behind her.
When Nick pulled off and headed back towards the ramp that would place them back on the interstate, he looked into the rearview and saw the figures of the ramblers shrinking away, swallowed by the edges of the city they had helped destroy.
19
They had been on the road for less than fifteen minutes before the awkward conversation that Nick had been dreading started to unravel. Given his present company, he was not at all surprised by the blunt nature of the questions. Still, despite the sharp-edged words and biting sarcasm from all
directions, Nick found that he was just glad to be having any conversation at all. Speaking with Griffith had been fine, but there had been certain topics he’d been careful to avoid. Now, with Griffith passed out in the back, the vaccine having fully gripped him, everything was fair game.
Nick knew that James and Katherine were just as deeply entrenched in their own secrets and it made him feel at home in a way that he was not prepared for. He had known both James and Katherine fairly well before things had gone to hell and it was good to be in the company of friends again…even if they were friends that would likely turn on him at the drop of a dime if a situation deemed it necessary.
“So where did this vaccine come from?” Katherine asked.
“Ogden and his men captured a few ramblers and kept them at their base in Langley,” Nick said. “They’ve got a few former employees of the CDC and some doctors at the base. It took them several months to perfect it.”
“So you’re telling me that out of all of the death and destruction the world went through during those few weeks, the US government just happened to be able to scrounge up personnel that could whip up a vaccine?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “Seems convenient, huh?”
“Seems planned,” James said.
“I won’t rule that out,” Nick said. “No matter what the news said before the TVs were nothing but static, I always thought there was something fishy about how the government handled things. It was almost like they had been expecting it.”
“I got that, too,” Katherine said. “But if that’s the case, then why did so many important people die? You’d think they would have planned better.”
“Who?” James asked. “The US government? Planning efficiently? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Besides that,” Nick said, “this was global. It goes beyond our government. If it was some sort of inside job, there were several different powers behind it.”
“Level with us,” James said, nudging Katherine. “How much were you able to find out before it all went to ka-pow?”
“A bit,” Katherine said. “But not as much as I would have liked. All of the networks went down so fast.”
“Well, what did you find out?” Nick asked.
“Nothing monumental. They think the parasite came from Haiti. It was confirmed that it’s passed through saliva and blood. Probably semen, too, but there was no time for such studies obviously. And besides…ugh. Gross.”
“Did you find out anything about Japan?” Nick asked.
“No. What about Japan?”
“According to Ogden’s intel, there’s a stretch of land in Japan where no one was infected. Six whole towns about fifty miles away from Sendai. Apparently, everything is fine along that particular strip.”
“Any idea why?” Katherine asked.
“None. As you might imagine, I haven’t yet been given access to classified information.”
“Which, I assume, is why you needed me,” Katherine said.
“Among other things,” Nick said. “I was pretty sure you could hack into the same satellites that Ogden and his crew are using for communications and GPS tech. It was an assumption I had to test when we found that you weren’t in your building. I figured you had some sort of network going. I was sure you were still trying to do some hacking even after all of this.”
“And you were correct,” she said. “But it’s limited. I knew within two months after the outbreak that the scrambling government bodies and the military were relying on satellites after landlines and most wireless networks were downed. So I started using them. I knew about the base in Langley. I also know there’s one in California.”
“Near Edwards Air Force Base,” Nick said.
“Right. I can also tell you that a small group of government survivors also tried to establish a base just outside of Boston. But that site went off the grid right after it got up and running. From what I can gather, it was infiltrated by zombies.”
“Zombies?” James said, letting out one of his crazy laughs. “Really?”
“Like ramblers sounds any better?” Katherine asked.
“Good point.”
Nick noticed that James seemed like an excited child that had been all alone, locked away in his room for days on end. Now that he had someone to speak to, the world was a much better place. Nick recalled the barren and isolated cabin that James had been holed up in and thought he understood. Sure, his houseboat hadn’t been much better, but at least he’d had the water to use as a barrier of sorts—something that had broken him away from the rest of the world.
They drove on, quiet for a while as Nick roared down the interstate. He discovered that even though he didn’t trust the powers that resided in Langley, he couldn’t wait to get back there. He’d felt safe there behind the gates and whether he wanted to admit it or not, he’d felt needed.
After several minutes, Katherine swerved the conversation to where Nick had been expecting it to go. It excited him, but there was also a degree of hesitation on his part.
“So tell me about this opportunity you baited me with,” she said. “Would it happen to be related to unfinished business of the Night Hawk variety?”
“It would.”
“What unfinished business?” James asked.
“Operation Zephyr,” Katherine answered. “Right?”
“Right,” Nick confirmed.
“Sorry, but that’s not ringing any bells,” James said.
“It never got out of the planning stages,” Nick explained. “Not too long after all of those big NSA leaks, there were several underground organizations that tried to find more leaks. Two were found in the end. One was basic stuff…social security information, personal details about crooked politicians, healthcare swindles, things like that. But the other one…”
He stopped here, thinking it all over. Everything seemed to be coming full circle and it freaked him out. It almost seemed to give a rhyme and reason to the current state of the world.
“What?” James asked.
“The other one,” Katherine said, picking up where Nick had left off, “was a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream. There were documents hinting at a multi-continent conspiracy to thin out the population by about two million people. In impoverished countries, there were to be Ebola outbreaks. In America, there were supposed to be several staged terrorist attacks, leading to political unrest and violence in the streets, leading to a police state and war with whatever country we chose to blame the attacks on. It would all lead up to chemical warfare on a massive scale. There were plans in place to have the H1N1 virus dropped into the water supply on the West Coast in the guise of a terrorist attack.”
“Are you shitting me?” James asked.
“No,” Katherine said. “I pulled some of this information myself. The plans on this went back to the early 70s. A lot of time, planning, and effort went into this. Once we had the proper leads, Night Hawk started what we called Operation Zephyr…an attempt to locate the people named in the documents and convince them to either stop the plan or be ousted through the media.”
“Well, what happened to Operation Zephyr?”
“We had just started it when the shit hit the fan…the first reports of infection were reported in Texas and Florida about two days after we grilled our first suspect.”
“And I guess you two think the timings are more than just coincidental?” James asked.
Nick shrugged. Katherine said nothing.
“And I thought I was paranoid.”
“I’ve been living with guilt for the last two years,” Katherine said. “I’ve always wondered if it was Operation Zephyr that caused the outbreaks…was it maybe the government trying to get a head start on things after knowing that all of that information had been leaked and then it all just got out of their control?”
“No way,” James said. “I don’t care what sort of death wish power-hungry politicians have for their countries…no one has a parasite on hand that turns people into flesh eating ramb…zombies.”
Katherine smiled. “Yeah, I thought about that, too. I didn’t say I had it all figured out. There are tons of blanks to any theory I try to piece together. Especially the big question of why a worldwide conspiracy would even want to kill two million people.”
“And that’s what brings us back to the opportunity I mentioned,” Nick said. “We have a chance to fill in those blanks now. We are now on the inside of the very body that tried to keep us out before. With insider access and a secret knowledge of things that Ogden and his people would never suspect we know, the three of us can learn everything if there was indeed something rotten at the core of it all. We can see that justice is done.”
“But what good will that do?” James asked.
“If this vaccine works and they can eventually produce it on a large scale, we can theoretically save the world.”
The truck fell into silence with the exception of the snoring grunts that escaped from Griffith in the back.
“So that’s us now, huh?” Katherine asked after a moment of quiet. “This is what we do?”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
“We’ve gone from being outcasts hunted down by the government to some weird sort of zombie squad for the government.”
This prompted an explosive round of laughter from James. And although it was very much like his maniacal chuckling that usually grated on Nick’s nerves, he found that it actually cheered him a bit this time.
“The Zombie Squad,” James said. “Ha! I like that.”
His laughter filled the truck. Behind them, stretched out in the back seat, Griffith continued to rest in a deep sleep, his body adapting to the vaccine and fighting off the deadly parasite that was trying its best to work past its defenses. Still, he was quite ill. They could feel the heat and sickness radiating off of him from the back.