Zombie Squad

by K. H. Graham

  The three of them said their goodnights and retired to their rooms. When Nick had his door closed behind him, he looked around the room, out of sorts and confused.

  How had all of this happened so quickly? And what the hell had he gotten himself into? For the first time, he regretted his decision to bring James and Katherine into this.

  He sat on the edge of his bed, doing nothing more than looking at the walls. He stared at the TV for a moment and thought about heading to the main building to see what they had to offer in the DVD collection. But there was something about the thought of watching a movie that made his head feel funny. After two years of nothing but still images and quiet, was he really prepared to assault his senses with a movie?

  In the end, he stripped down to his boxers and lay down. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was 7:02. Not too long after that, he fell asleep as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  ***

  When a soft knock at his door stirred him awake, Nick slowly opened his eyes and glanced at the digital bedside clock. It was 11:52. He fumbled with the lamp by the edge of his bed, switched it on, and then rolled out of bed.

  The knocking sounded out again as he neared the door in only his boxers. He unlocked it and opened it just a bit to see Katherine standing on the other side.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s late. You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m good. But we need to talk.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Just let me get my clothes on.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I have an idea. Can I come in?”

  “Sure,” he said, opening the door to let her in.

  She stepped inside and he closed the door behind her. He flipped the overhead light on and winced at the glare. He followed her into the bathroom where she cut on the light and the exhaust fan. When the fan kicked on, she closed the door and leaned against the sink.

  When Nick sat on toilet, he was dimly aware that he was only in his boxers but wasn’t bothered by it. Katherine had seen him like this several times in the past. As far as he was concerned, they were far from being modest around one another.

  “One thing I found in my snooping,” she said speaking in a whisper, “was that every single room here is bugged. Not just ours. But there’s no surveillance in the bathrooms. So we’re safe in here.”

  “Good. Did you find out anything else?”

  “I did. And like I said, it was easy. I guess with no real threat of cyber-attacks, they’ve all but abandoned security measures. Of course, I didn’t want to risk poking around too long. I’ve been in and out several times, peeking here and there and then skipping out.”

  “Anything of substance?”

  “Not much. Nothing we didn’t already know. There are several databases of precise locations—places where they believe some of their people of interest are. They also have detailed maps of that area in Japan you were telling me about that managed to totally survive the outbreak. There’s more info there, but I saved that for later. It didn’t seem immediately relevant.”

  “Did you get a list of people they want to rescue?”

  “A few. There’s President Ames, naturally. The only other names I saw that I recognized were Adam Lowery, Nancy Hamlett, and Barry Cain.”

  “Cain was the Secretary of Defense and Lowery was some huge head honcho for Lockheed Martin,” Nick said. “Who is Nancy Lowery?”

  “Second in command at the NSA,” Katherine answered.

  “How many names were there in all?”

  “I found two lists. One, from what I gathered, was high priority. There were only seven names on it. The second list had fifty names. I knew none of them.”

  “So what do you think of Ogden’s supposed plan?” Nick asked. “Do you think he really just wants to re-establish the government?”

  “It makes sense,” Katherine said, “but not plausible. If they just want government, why not establish a new one from within?”

  “I wondered the same thing,” Nick said. “It makes me think there’s some ulterior motive.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe these people on the priority list know something. Maybe Ogden needs them for information.”

  Katherine nodded, thinking it over. “Possibly.”

  The room was quiet for a moment as they let their ideas take root. Katherine had been standing the entire time and now she stepped forward, closing the distance between them.

  “How are you, Nick?” she asked.

  “I’m good,” he said, looking up at her and trying everything he could to remember a time when he had almost loved this woman. She seemed different now—not like an entirely different person, but like someone in the midst of some huge metamorphosis. “Apparently, I’m tired as hell,” he added. “I can’t seem to get enough sleep.”

  “Same here,” she said. “You know, Nick…I almost came looking for you. It was about five months after it all happened. I had been staying in my HQ with a friend of mine and after he died, I needed you. I know that sounds messed up, but it’s true. I was pretty sure you’d be out at that lake you sometimes talked about. You told me once it was your escape spot. I thought about coming to Virginia to find you.”

  Nick tried to look away from her, but her hand was suddenly cupping the side of his face.

  “I missed you, Nick.” She stroked the side of his face and then ran her thumb along his bottom lip.

  “Katherine, I can’t—” he said.

  But she felt how flimsy his words were, as did he. She closed the distance between them, her right leg now pressing softly between his closed legs. In one deft motion that was so swift and effortless that it seemed rehearsed, she removed her shirt. She was wearing nothing underneath.

  Nick placed his hand on her stomach and pushed her back lightly. He thought about Valerie, seeing her in his mind’s eye in her last moments. He saw that and felt Katherine’s soft bare flesh under his hand and his heart wanted to burst.

  “I’ve been lonely, Nick,” she said. “And I know you have to. And you’re familiar. I know you. I feel like I always have. I need you to touch me.”

  His hand stopped pushing. It instead clutched her hips and pulled her closer. Her breasts were in his face and then lowered away as she knelt in front of him and looked into his eyes.

  “This is okay, Nick,” she said. “We deserve this. After everything we—”

  He placed his hand over her mouth to silence her and then removed it. He leaned in slowly, looking into her eyes. He had missed her, and if he was being honest, she had been in his thoughts far too much over the last two years.

  His hands found the back of her head and he pulled her to him. Their lips connected and she leaned into him. His hands ran effortlessly down her neck to her shoulders. He caressed her there and they kissed fiercely. She sank into him and he held her tightly as he sat awkwardly on the toilet. His hands explored every inch of her that they could touch and it was as if they had never missed a beat.

  He felt her hands tugging at the waist of his boxers.

  In the distance, an alarm began to shriek.

  They ignored it for two seconds before they stopped the kiss. They were both short of breath and it took far too much effort for Nick to take his hands away from her skin.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked.

  He opened the bathroom door and killed the exhaust fan. The siren was louder now, a constant building screech that escalated and fell, escalated and fell.

  Katherine slid her shirt back on and exited the bathroom. Nick was behind her, sliding into his clothes as the siren continued to blare.

  Nick was sliding his shoes on when a thunderous knock sounded at the door. Nick answered it as he shoved the last shoe on, hobbling on one foot.

  James was standing there, looking to the right. “You know what’s going on?” James asked.

  “No clue.”

  Katherine came to the door and all three of them stared down the length of lawn towards t
he main building. A few people were running into the building, the dim lights inside spilling out onto the sidewalk outside. A few muffled panicked voices started to waiver through the night.

  As they watched, one person exited the building, running in a mad dash towards the lawn.

  “Blackburn!”

  It was a woman yelling for him, a familiar voice that none of them placed right away. Then she got closer and Nick could make out Shelby Kent’s features in the waning moonlight.

  “What the hell is going on?” Nick asked.

  “Ogden needs you,” Shelby said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s Sergeant Griffith. He’s escaped. He’s killed two people and is holding one hostage. He’s demanding to speak with you and your team.”

  TWO YEARS AGO

  24

  The streets were packed with people rushing for safety. In between the dashing bodies and the mass confusion of people trying to survive, there were the ramblers. And there were a lot of them.

  Nick, Ames, and Steve had gone less than a block and a half before Nick had run out of ammo for the shotgun. He’d used it as a club to fight off an eager rambler and then left it discarded on the street. He surged forward with two Sig Sauers and the AK-47. The AK did its job well, mowing down ramblers as they charged through the crowds, but the way it tore through ammunition was disheartening. It too was out of ammunition by the time they reached Nick’s block.

  There were gunshots everywhere, punctuated by screams and sirens. Nick did his best to look beyond all of this, focusing only on the block ahead. He could see the stairs that led to the front door of his apartment. They were blocked by a crowd of panicked people. As Nick ran forward, he watched the two policemen that were trying to hold the crowd back get knocked down and trampled under more than fifty sets of feet.

  Nick turned his head to check for Ames and Steve. They were still there, running close behind him. Ames held his gun with great disdain and inexperience; he held it as if it might bite him. When he turned around, he saw two ramblers taking down a teenage girl. The ramblers were no threat to Nick, but he shot the bastards just out of spite, putting them down with clean fatal shots to the back of the head.

  They drew up close to the stairs and several people noticed the President right away. Nick had to throw a few elbows and shove people back in order to get through to his steps. He accidentally nudged a policeman that wheeled around on him with his hand on the butt of his holstered service pistol.

  He opened his mouth to berate Nick but then saw President Ames. He looked dumbfounded, his hand now frozen at his gun.

  “We need to get inside this building,” Ames told the policeman.

  “Of course, sir,” the policeman said.

  He then snapped out of his amazement of seeing the President and looked back to the crowd around him. Several ramblers had approached. The policeman raised his gun and looked like a terrified boy about to shoot his first game—perhaps a duck or a deer. He looked unprepared and didn’t even move when the first screams of pain tore through the crowd. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of automatic gunfire could be heard. Nick caught a glimpse of the policemen looking in that direction as Nick bound up the stairs to his apartment building. Ames and Steve followed closely behind.

  When they were safely inside, Nick took an inventory of his travelling companions. “You okay?” Nick asked Ames.

  “Yes.”

  “How about now you tell me what the hell this is all about?” Steve asked. “I’m down to just a few rounds and I’m assuming we have to go back out there eventually.” He looked shaken and on the edge of losing it altogether. He was looking at Ames like a young boy looks at a stray dog. He wanted to be the dog’s friend but didn’t fully trust it.

  “It is very important that Nick’s wife gets to safety,” Ames said.

  “Can I ask why?”

  “If it will help speed things up, then yes,” Ames said. “We don’t have much time. Valerie Blackburn has three passwords and a key code that we need. This information is very important and she is the only person that knows them.”

  “Why her?” Steve asked.

  Nick had already started heading for the elevator. He answered Steve as he weaved his way through a small crowd of people that came rushing down the stairs. Why they would be in any hurry to get out onto the street was beyond Nick.

  “I was offered the information,” Nick said, “but I didn’t trust myself with it. Also, a lot of people saw me as an enemy when I went under the radar, so I gave the codes to my wife. That way, if I was killed, the codes wouldn’t die with me.”

  “The passwords and code keys are for an underground safe buried in Nebraska,” Ames said. “When Nick worked on the Secret Service for me, I entrusted him with the codes. Even I myself did not know them. It was suggested that as few people as possible knew them.”

  “Codes to what?”

  “Within that safe is the key to stopping the world’s situation before it gets too far out of hand.”

  “I don’t understand,” Steve said.

  “You aren’t meant to,” Ames said. “But if we make it out of this alive, I’ll fill you in. You have my word on that, Steve.”

  “Come on,” Nick said, already headed up the stairs.

  But the moment he started up, something rammed into the front doors of the building. They all looked in that direction and saw that a wall of bodies had been pushed against the glass doors. Several people were slapping for the handles and desperately trying to get inside but the others standing by them, screaming, wouldn’t allow for even that simplest of movements.

  “What the hell?” Steve said.

  That’s when the glass started cracking down the center and the first spray of blood coursed down the glass. The bodies in the group were now scrambling to escape. People were throwing punches and shoving others down. As they watched, a woman of fifty or so hit the stairs and she was trampled underfoot.

  Another splatter of blood struck the glass and then the back of someone’s head was pushed hard enough to break through the thick glass of the door. Nick watched one of the cops draw his weapon and fire into the crowd. That’s when he saw the three ramblers. They were attacking with their slow yet deliberate energy and the bullets seemed to do very little.

  Nick watched as one was shot in the head. It fell to the ground, the man it had been feasting on already dead and going down with it. But by the time the rambler had fallen, there were five new ones to take its place. The group of people pressed against the door was quickly becoming nothing more than a buffet.

  “Let’s go,” Nick said, not liking the idea of those glass doors shattering and the ramblers pouring in.

  They dashed up the stairs, taking three flights and stopping at the third floor. As they climbed up, several people nearly knocked them down as they headed for the first floor. On the landing to the second floor, a man lay bent in half, a huge wound in his stomach. He reached up absently for Nick as they passed.

  Somewhere below, there came a series of screams.

  Nick raced down the third floor hallway towards his apartment. He glanced back and saw that Steve had taken up a defensive position. His back was turned to them as his gun was trained down the stairwell behind them.

  Nick came to his apartment and hammered on the door. “Valerie! It’s me! Let me in!”

  The door opened less than three seconds later. It was swung open fast and when Nick saw his wife, he instantly took her in his arms. It had been less than a full day since he had last seen her, but that day had been an endless one, where the world seemed to have lost its collective sanity.

  “It got so bad so fast,” Valerie said. “I’ve been watching on the news. I was sure you had died and—”

  “But I didn’t. I’m here now, and we have to go. Is Mary ready?”

  “She is. But she’s been watching the stuff on TV, too. She’s petrified. She won’t come out of her closet.”

  Nick kissed Valerie on the f
orehead. “Get your bags together and let me talk to her. President…can you and Steve give her a hand?”

  “Certainly,” Ames said.

  Valerie seemed to just then realize that the President of the United States was in her apartment. She had met him once, during Nick’s stint with the Secret Service and she looked mildly entertained at best to see him again. There was too much going on right now and his stature or title was doing nothing to impress her.

  Nick walked quickly out of the hallway and then through the living room and the small hallway to the right. He walked into Mary’s room and saw that she was indeed done packing. Her bags were packed, complete with the pink backpack with polka dots that she had used as her arts and crafts center since the age of seven or so.

  But she was no longer seven. Now at the age of twelve, arts and crafts were behind her, replaced with watercolors and pastels. She was getting quite good at it too, as evidenced by the prize pieces taped to her wall. Nick gave these pictures a passing glance as he walked to the closet and peered in.

  “Mary?”

  His daughter was curled up in the corner beside a pile of old winter coats that had been knocked down during packing. She looked up at him with wide eyes and smiled. A tear trickled out of her right eye.

  “Daddy,” she said softly. She then repeated it, in a near shout: “Daddy!”

  She came rushing out of the closet and flung herself at him. He caught her, nearly forgetting that he still had his Sig in his hands.

  “I’m here, baby,” he said, hugging her. “I know you’re scared and there are a lot of strange things happening right now, but we need to get going. Do you understand that?”

  “I do,” she said. “But aren’t we safe here? Isn’t it dangerous outside?”

  “I won’t lie to you…it is dangerous outside. But it’s not going to be safe here much longer. I have some very important men outside that are going to do everything they can to make sure we get away safely. Okay?”

  She broke the hug and looked at him, her big brown eyes still wet with tears.

  “Do you promise?” she asked.