The Romero Strain

by Alan, TS

  PART III

  IN THE ABSENCE OF MAN

  I. Aftermath

  August 4th. Every generation has its tales of doom and ruin, but we were the first generation to cause its own destruction by deliberate action. Our hold on the planet had ended. Hours after we were gone the lights began to go out. After a few days, a cascade effect plunged the world into darkness.

  * * *

  Returning to the world we had once known was not as simple as stepping into the elevator, taking it up, stepping onto the train platform, and into the land of the dead. Darkness was our first enemy. Though I could see much more than the others, pitch black was still blinding. We had to make our way from the platform, down the stairs of the M 50 entrance, and through a tunnel that led us to the terminal.

  There were inherent dangers in returning to the world above, aside from the living dead and transmutes. The sudden end of the world brought numerous problems for survivors. Captive wild animals, mainly apex predators, were a threat. Luckily for us Six Flags Wild Safari in New Jersey was far away, so we didn’t worry about lions in Times Square.

  During our escape we avoided the chemical toxification period––a time when gases like hydrogen, used for crude oil refining, and chlorine, used at waste water treatment plants to purify sewage, polluted the world above. There were no oil refineries in Manhattan, but according to David, there were numerous waste facilities, including the largest sewage treatment plant in the state, a dozen toxic chemical companies, and several gas storage facilities in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, along Newtown Creek.

  David warned us about radioactive fallout.

  Though nuclear power plants had fail-safe measures in place to prevent a nuclear meltdown during a power failure, the emergency diesel-powered generators, which were used to keep cooling pumps running, failed once their fuel supply ran out.

  There were no nuclear power plant facilities within the five boroughs, but three were very close, the closest being the Indian Power Point Station in White Plains, New York, just twenty-four miles north. Those destroyed plants had caused massive radioactive noble gases and radioactive fallout far worse than Chernobyl. Though a lot of the radioactive material had dissipated and seeped into the soil or had been washed down street drains, there was still a risk of contamination.

  While Potassium Iodine, if taken in time, can effectively block the thyroid gland’s absorption of radioactive iodine, it is not a magic pill. There is no medicine that will effectively prevent nuclear radiation from damaging the human body, and there was also no Potassium Iodine, no radiation suits or detectors to be found at the GCC. We had no way of telling what the radiation level would be. That was until Sam held up his set of keys.

  “Let me guess, it’s a mini Geiger counter,” I joked, responding to his jingle.

  “No. It’s a NukAlert. A personal radiation meter/monitor/alarm,” he proudly said. “It can detect Gamma and X-ray radiation from twenty Kiloelectron volts to two-plus Megaelectron volts, and has a sensitivity of one hundred millirem to fifty Roentgens per hour.”

  “Of course it does,” I responded. “And why would you have one as a key fob? Or better yet, why do you even have a key fob?”

  He didn’t answer my question. Instead he replied, “I read about it in National Defense Magazine. You should ask yourself why you don’t have one. It should be part of everybody’s go-bag.”

  He had a point. I shut up.

  Lighting had to be set up before we tried to make our way through the tunnel and into Grand Central. The track platform by the elevator had some covert night vision lighting, an eerie green illumination that the army had installed for use with their security camera, but it was insufficient, illuminating only the direction in which the camera was aimed. Though we had seen very few living dead as we monitored the outside world from the command center, there were bound to be more unseen dangers.

  Sam had procured four Watchdog Portable Illumination Systems and one Brighteye Portable Illumination System from “his” supply room.

  The Watchdog self-contained portable systems were designed for boundary security and asset management. They were state-of-the-art and offered visible optical beam-shaping technology with user-defined illumination within the target field, which was three hundred feet by three hundred feet. There was no need for generators, they ran on Li-Ion batteries and had a fifteen-hour runtime.

  The Brighteye system could illuminate up to a thousand feet, had a ten-hour battery lifespan, but weighed nearly ninety pounds, unlike the Watchdog that was half the weight.

  The best part, Sam informed us, was that the systems were wireless, quick to install, and could be operated remotely.

  Our initial deployment area had been the cafeteria where, the night before, we had gathered our tactical equipment consisting of side arms, ammunition, two-way radios, boots, camouflage, black clothing, body armor, and what Sam told us was a solid black MICH TC-2000 Combat Helmet, like the SWAT teams use. Most of the items were salvaged from the Special Forces troops that hadn’t had their bodies shredded from the razor-like talons of the transmutes during the melee.

  We found the final one, dead near the laboratories.

  I opted out from wearing the helmet, as did Joe. Helmets were not bulletproof; they just offered a false sense of security. I chose to wear a black baseball cap. David, on the other hand, thought the helmet was cool. He probably would have made Julie wear one too if she had come with us. Kermit decided to wear one; thinking zombies wouldn’t be able to bite him in the head.

  Oddly, the flexible body armor the Special Forces soldiers had worn called Dragon Skin, designed to stop ballistic, explosive blast and forced entry threats, had not failed. Though some of the soldiers’ armor had been shredded, none of the soldiers suffered wounds in the coverage area. It was the deep facial and neck lacerations that Luci and the other transmutes had inflicted that caused their demise.

  It appeared to me, by the amount of Special Forces personnel with intact body armor, they had figured out slashing the chest area was ineffective. However, the regular soldiers were a different story. They had not been wearing that armor. They had been wearing Improved Outer Tactical Vests (IOTV), standard military issue personal body protection. A key design feature for the IOTV was that the entire armor system could be released with the pull of a hidden lanyard. The armor then fell apart into its component pieces, providing a means for escape in case the wearer fell into water or became trapped in a hazardous environment. It was something the transmutes had exploited, reinforcing my belief in how intelligent the new beings were.

  Though we had laid out enough gear for a full day of exploring, we did not utilize everything, for I had no intention on venturing any farther than inside the terminal once the lights were in place. Joe complained about the amount of gear we were taking just for a recon mission. His complaint was that all the gear and body armor was going to be a comfort issue, telling us we would overheat, the concealable armor alone weighing eight pounds. I told him it was better to be hot and protected, than comfortable and dead. He took the body armor with him without another comment.

  After suiting up, Joe, David, Kermit and I each took a Watchdog, while Sam carried the heavier Brighteye. The girls and Max stayed behind, under great protest, along with the doctor. It was safer that way, mainly for our own well-being. We first set up Sam’s system with one on the platform and the other inside the tunnel entrance pointing south along the corridor. After setting the system up, I relieved Kermit from guard duty and placed myself in the tunnel, watching beyond the lit portion and toward the dark. Joe and David stood watch over the platform and shed, while Kermit and Sam worked on the lighting. We set up all the light units along the tunnel and up the exit stairs, which led into the terminal.

  As we made our way into the main concourse, the air was stale and faintly foul with the odor of the dead, which grew stronger as we drew closer to the public space. Grand Central was low lit in an eerie daylight glow that shone in from its g
reat arched windows at the east and west, which contained walkways, and large lunette windows on the north and south. The cascading light illuminated the concourse, revealing rotting corpses.

  There was a rancid, pungent stench emanating all around us, coming from the festering, decaying flesh of the dead. The air was so foul and heavy with the putrid scent that it filled the air and permeated our clothing as we walked around the main concourse area, scavenging ammunition and anything else we could find that might be useful. There were many NYPD Hercules troops and a few soldiers, some still with their biomasks securely placed over their faces as they lay still in death, withered from the months of decay. I had only planned to venture as far as the main area, but I thought we all could use some air. I had Sam take point with his NukeAlert to see if the outside was safe from radiation. It was.

  The NYPD Hercules Squad had guarded the terminal from the inside, but on the outside the Army had taken control. Grand Central had been under the control of the United States Army Special Operations 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, known as the Guardian Brigade, a specialized and tailored response force in the event of an attack involving the use of weapons of mass destruction, including biological weapons. There were also members of the Arrowhead Brigade, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division out of Fort Lewis, Tacoma, Washington, known as the 3-2 Stryker Brigade. Sam had surmised that the Stryker Brigade was deployed in support of the Guardian Brigade, since the Rangers were a light infantry force and the Stryker Brigade was a mechanized unit. There was a mixture of armored vehicles ranging from a M93A1 NBCRS (Nuclear, Biological, & Chemical Reconnaissance System), a M998 HMMWVs (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles)—Humvee for short—with a M60, 7.62mm machine gun mounted on top, to an armored personnel carrier called a Stryker ICV (Infantry Carrier Vehicle) and a few other vehicles.

  Corporal Drukker was as giddy as a schoolgirl on prom night, examining each vehicle with great detail and enthusiasm, telling us civilians what the vehicle was called and what armaments it carried. Sam may have been the facility’s junior maintenance control technician but he seemed to have boundless information on vehicles of the U.S. Military. I would later discover he also had a talent for fixing anything with an engine. Sam, like my father, was a southern boy who had learned auto mechanics from his father. It seemed if you were born below the Mason-Dixon Line, you were born with a wrench in one hand and a grease gun in the other.

  As we made our way back to the elevator, there was one more thing I wanted to do: investigate the train. The locomotive was painted bright red while its undercarriage was black, and the surrounding walkway railings were black and yellow, as were its steps. The nose of the cab had yellow diagonal stripes running across it that alternated with its red paint scheme. Also emblazoned in yellow under the cab side window was the number 4654. Across the body of the locomotive in equally large print was UNITED STATES ARMY. For a change Sam did not know something; he was silent in our investigation.

  The train consisted of the locomotive followed by a black colored caboose, then an armored personnel car, three cargo boxcars, and a biohazard car. Each boxcar had the letters DODX painted in white with a corresponding serial number, such as DODX 295506. The last car on the train was the biohazard boxcar, the one that I had broken into to extract the required genetic materials for Doctor France.

  The boxcars were black with two large doors at one end of the side of the car. This set of doors, which were on a rolling rail system, were capable of opening simultaneously by sliding them toward the other end of the boxcar, allowing for a cargo portal of greater than eleven feet, or if less was desired, the door to the right could be slid open alone. Each door also had its own locking system with the words, CLOSE AND LOCK DOOR BEFORE MOVING CAR, spray-painted in stencil lettering on them. However, I could not unlock and release the cargo doors from the outside; they were internally secured. In order to open them I needed to enter from the ends of the boxcar that had a small-padlocked door.

  The biohazard railcar was different from the others. It was an older riveted construction style and was painted boxcar red, the paint being dulled and washed out, but it was also slightly shorter in height and had only two large cargo doors at one end of the car, as I had discovered the night I had ventured out. I had been lucky that night because the car had been uncoupled and moved away from the train allowing the doors to swing open. If it had been still attached, it would have been a very tight squeeze through the doors into the car. I assumed this boxcar was offset from the others for loading, which hadn’t been completed. The final difference in this car was it was inscribed with the words DO NOT HUMP stenciled in white lettering on the side.

  When I asked if anyone knew what the term meant, it was Kermit, oddly enough, who knew its meaning.

  “It is a term used on railroads for cars that are not supposed to be humped,” he began. “Trains that go into a railroad freight yard that is built on an incline have their cars pushed up a hill, the hump, and rolled down the other side where switches and retarders are thrown to put them on the correct track using gravity, instead of fuel, cars with especially delicate contents are marked ‘Do Not Hump’, which tells the yard crew to set the car aside for special handling.”

  I asked, “And how do you know this when Sam doesn’t?”

  “Mainly because my father worked as an engineer/brakeman for thirty years for the U.S. Army’s Fort Eustis Military Railroad. He retired in the early seventies when operations were turned over to civil servants as part of the Army’s divestiture of rail operations and maintenance missions. As a child I often rode on the locomotives with him. He was the one that got me interested in trains. I suppose you could call me an amateur railroad enthusiast.”

  I decided to tap into Kermit’s knowledge base and questioned him on the biohazard boxcar. I wanted to know why that particular car maintained power well after Grand Central’s power source died. After he gave the rail car a thorough examination, checking it from end-to-end and top-to-bottom, he informed us that this type of mechanical refrigerator car, the R570—also used to transport solid rocket fuel for Trident ICBMs—had been modified and fitted with solar technology, instead of being solely operated by power from the car axle.

  Kermit, like me, was more interested in the armored command/guard car than any other. It was a restored and upgraded USAX G-10 Guard Car manufactured by American Car & Foundry Co. Those cars, according to the master sergeant, had been retired after 1947, primarily due to the wider use of aircraft for long-distance transportation of troops. He finished by telling us that he hadn’t seen any of them in a long time, because they had been sold off to the private sector and converted into boxcars or tool cars. The last one he saw was at the San Diego Railroad Museum.

  The car itself was a heavy duty, riveted steel-sided boxcar painted black, instead of army green. There were center entrance doors on both sides of the car as well as both ends. The doors on the sides had internal locking mechanisms only. The end doors also had internal locking mechanisms, but also allowed external locking/unlocking via padlock like the standard boxcars. The doors were not padlocked, but were secured from the inside, which led us all to believe that someone, or ones, had locked themselves in, most likely the soldiers that would have been guarding the train. There were windows on each side of the doors and on the end doors, but they had been covered from the inside. Trying to smash through one would have been a fruitless effort since the glass was ballistic resistant. Breeching this train would have to wait for another time, for it was time for us to head back to the safety of our refuge.

  * * *

  Our second foray into our lost world was to be a cautionary surveillance expedition around the Grand Central area. It was also another mission of acquisition. We weren’t going to walk around the city leaving ourselves exposed or carrying needed supplies in backpacks, so we sought transportation, the kind that would help protect us.

  We rose at 6:00 a.m., showered, dressed, and went to the mess hall for a qui
ck light breakfast. There were no more eggs, no more bacon, and the coffee was nearly gone. It was cereal, canned fruit cocktail, and canned orange juice for breakfast. We departed without Kermit at 8:00 a.m. after we geared up and got our rifles out of lock-up.

  We loaded our backpacks with the bare essentials: two bottles of water, some individual size cans of peaches that Kermit took from the pantry, extra ammunition, and medical supplies that I added to my pack. This time Joe voiced no objections.

  It was dark as we emerged from the old freight elevator onto Track 61. I immediately took point. I activated the lights and gave the team the all-clear. I stepped across the archway of the M 50 door and activated the lights. We headed south with me at the lead, turning on the lights as we traveled along.

  The terminal, like the day before, was cast in a ghostlike glow. However, the early morning sun greeted us and revealed a beautiful and clear fall day, as I lead my team onto 42nd Street.

  Acquiring a vehicle was the easy part; finding one that would run was another. Sam informed us that all vehicles appeared mechanically sound, except for a few with low battery power. Most were out of fuel. Evidently the U.S. Army lets their vehicles idle.

  The corporal wanted to try repairing two Stryker ICVs with slat armor, even going so far as to bring a toolbox and a siphon with him. However, when I asked if he or Joe knew how to operate one, neither had any clue. I told him to concentrate on getting two Humvees running, which we could drive, but Sam strongly urged me to reconsider.