McDaniels remained quiet, waiting for the rest.
Gartrell hung his head. He roused himself suddenly and looked across the table at McDaniels with those oddly empty eyes of his, and he smiled. The gesture didn’t even approach looking realistic. “I rode you pretty hard about not killing that kid in Afghanistan,” he said. “I know now that I was fucked up to do that. Making that kind of call, being responsible for something like that, well… I wouldn’t have wanted to be in your shoes because I thought it would be an easy decision to make. I was wrong about that.”
“What happened to the kid, Gartrell?”
“I popped him. Two fucking seconds before a squad from the 87th showed up on the opposite track, hauling all sorts of firepower. They wiped out every zed in the tunnel, but only after I’d put a round through the kid’s head. Talk about ironic, huh?”
McDaniels didn’t know what to say. Which was funny in a way, since he actually knew exactly what it felt like to carry around that kind of guilt. He’d been carrying it inside himself for almost a decade after losing five men whose lives might have been spared had he instead ordered Gartrell to kill one Afghan boy, a boy whose only crime was to discover the Special Forces team’s hide site.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t have a choice at the moment, Gartrell. And it sucks that the kid had to die right before the cavalry rode up, but life is like that.” McDaniels placed his elbows on the table and leaned toward Gartrell. “And at the end of the day, Gartrell, God forgives all our sins.”
Gartrell snorted humorlessly. “God’s a fucking asshole.” He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “I’ll be stopping by the TOC to check on things, sir, if that’s all right with you.”
McDaniels nodded. “I’ll be there directly. We’ll need to start devising ways to defend SPARTA if the zeds show up.”
“Hooah. I’ll wait for you there.” Gartrell picked up his tray, dumped the trash in a nearby garbage can, and left the DFAC.
McDaniels sighed and turned back to his breakfast, which had become cold and unappetizing. He forced himself to eat it anyway. He would need something in his stomach, and it gave him something else to do other than worry about just how far unhinged Sergeant Major David Gartrell had become.
7
Colonel Marcus Jeffries, MD, stared at the computer display as the modeling program ran once again, charting out the bug’s various biochemical properties. It was a tough bastard, immune to almost everything a human host could throw at it. It outlasted barrage after barrage of white blood cells, shrugged off every antibiotic available, and continued to flourish even when exposed to temperatures above 112° Fahrenheit, a fever far more likely to kill the host than the virus itself. And when the infected subject eventually succumbed to the fever, the virus changed again… into something the wizards and bug masters at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases simply couldn’t understand. And neither could the Army’s counterparts at the Center for Disease Control. Whatever the virus transformed into had the ability to jumpstart portions of the recently deceased’s brain, providing enough biochemical juice to get the brain operating again, albeit at a substantially degraded pace.
After days of examining the virus, Jeffries had concluded that there was no chance at reversing its effect after the infected patients had died. And while the rate of infection seemed substantial—the Rid had already isolated the virus in almost every one of its staffers, and Jeffries himself had it in his own blood—it only caused a small percentage of those infected to die. Of course, the dearly departed then reanimated, anywhere from minutes to a few hours later, and they in turn would attack and feed on living humans. The attacks resulted in a fluidic transfer of the new, mutated virus, which would then induce the cycle all over again in those bitten. That was where the virus was proving to be absolutely dastardly. In its original form, it was almost benign, causing no harm to 99% of those infected. But a bite from the reanimated dead resulted in a mortality rate that approached almost 100%, and the infection vector was growing almost exponentially.
And of course, the dead would rise again, unless sufficient trauma was introduced to the brain. The only way to keep the corpses still was to shoot them in the head, or otherwise destroy the brain before it could reactivate.
Even though he and his staff had been on the virus since the very beginning, spending days at a time without sleep, they’d made absolutely no progress in figuring out how to impede the virus’s progress. It wasn’t until Wolf Safire—a brilliant, truly gifted researcher and virologist if ever there was one—had determined there was no effective method to kill the virus that the first real breakthrough had occurred. Safire’s work had centered on preventing the virus from bonding to healthy human cells by way of short-circuiting the phosphotransferase process, wherein the virus’s as-yet unidentified proteins would adhere to the cellular walls of the host and multiply at a fantastic rate. Safire had determined that without the bonding, the virus was essentially harmless; it needed to be able to nest itself inside the host’s cellular structures and tap the DNA to fuel its incredible expansion throughout the body. By utilizing a kinase inhibitor, the virus would be denied its anchorages, and would begin to die within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. While hardy and almost indestructible if it could harvest cellular tissues, the virus lacked enough “body fat” to live for very long without being able to contact the host’s DNA.
That characteristic was the only flaw Jeffries and the rest of the staff at the Rid could think to exploit. Viruses were notoriously hard to kill, since they were living organisms, complete with complex proteins and either their own DNA or RNA. The zed virus which Safire had dubbed Rex Articulus Morte, the walking dead, was no pushover, but they had found its Achilles’ heel, and the only thing left to do was to exploit it. The required inhibitor still needed to be synthesized; Safire had presented the appropriate formulations, which Jeffries’s senior scientist Joanna Kersey had verified. The formulation had been packaged and distributed to every medical research facility in the world with which the Rid was still in contact. Most of Europe was off the map, but there were facilities operating in France and England, and those in Japan, the Philippines, and Singapore had not yet come under unrelenting threat.
Automatic weapons fire rattled outside, and Jeffries looked up, distracted by the noise. The stenches were coming to Fort Detrick in greater numbers than the post’s security teams could reasonably control. Jeffries had already been notified that he and his senior staff would be evacuated—to where, he did not know. But the ruckus had only been increasing, and the Marines guarding the Rid had their tracked vehicles moving constantly. The pounding pulse of the 25 millimeter cannon mounted on their LAVs was something Jeffries had almost grown used to.
Jeffries went back to the computer model and ignored the sounds of gunfire as best as he could. He still needed to submit his report to the Army Chief of Staff’s office, where it would go on to the Secretary of Defense and, he supposed, the president and the rest of the national command authority. He popped another antacid and wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow. He felt like complete garbage, and if he hadn’t been running for days without sleep, he would be worried that he was succumbing to the virus in his bloodstream. But exhaustion was his foe, something everyone in the Rid was struggling against. Even though the keyboard grew blurry before him, Jeffries only rubbed his eyes and soldiered on. He had to get his work done. He heard more gunfire. And a distant shriek.
From inside the building.
Jesus, have the stenches gotten inside? He didn’t stop typing, but his heart hammered in his chest and his breath grew short, as if he had just run a marathon. Panic gnawed at the edges of his consciousness, seeking a way to unravel his discipline and derail everything. Jeffries held it at bay as best as he could as his fingers flew across the keyboard.
“Colonel, we have to get out of here, sir.”
Jeffries looked up from his computer screen, and it took a moment to registe
r that the Marine standing in his office doorway was packing full battle rattle—body armor, weapons, helmet, goggles, hard pads on his elbows and knees. Outside the glass-walled office, another Marine lurked, a virtual clone of the first.
Jeffries went back to typing. “What’s the situation, Corporal?”
“It’s not too good, sir. The post is overrun. The cops can’t hold the zeds back, and neither can we. Several buildings have already been compromised, including this one. It’s time to go, sir.”
“Just a minute,” Jeffries said. “What about the rest of the staff? Doctor Kersey, her people, and the Safire woman?”
“All accounted for and being relocated to the roof, sir. Just like you should.” More gunfire sounded, and the second Marine shouldered his M4 carbine.
The Marine corporal took a few steps into the office. “Colonel Jeffries! It’s time to go, sir. Let’s move it!”
Jeffries saved his document, dropped it into his e-mail, and sent it off to the Army Chief of Staff’s office. He grabbed his helmet—all the military members of the Rid had been instructed to change into BDUs and combat gear if possible—and slipped it on as he rose unsteadily to his feet. The room blurred and swam, and he felt vaguely sick to his stomach.
Come on. Keep it together. Pretend it’s an all-nighter with the boys.
“All right, where are we headed? To the helipad?”
The Marine corporal looked at Jeffries as if he had just released an explosive fart. “Sir, the building’s already compromised, and there are hundreds of stenches outside trying to get in. We’re going to the roof. We’ll be extracted from there. Now, if you don’t mind…” The corporal grabbed Jeffries’s arm and hustled him out of the office and down the hall. The second Marine followed, guarding the rear, his M4 at ready. The Marine leading him along set out at an aggressive pace, and Jeffries stumbled a bit as he tried to keep up. He felt light-headed.
What the hell is wrong with me?
The Marine led him straight to the elevator and pressed the Up button. The elevator arrived a moment later, and the Marine corporal visually cleared it before he pulled Jeffries inside and pressed the button for the top floor. As the second Marine made to follow them, a door at the far end of the hall flew open. Several zombies emerged into the corridor, moaning when they saw the Marines and Jeffries entering the elevator. They shambled forward, but most of them were far enough away that they would never make it before the elevator door closed.
Except for the three of them that could run.
“Oh, fuck!” The Marine outside the elevator squeezed off several shots and struck the zombies as they ran toward him, but not one round hit any in the head. The stenches pressed on, arms outstretched, reaching for him even as he backpedaled and flipped his weapon over to automatic. He fired several bursts, and one zed went down, its skull blasted apart, leaking dark ichor onto the white tile floor.
The first Marine corporal shoved Jeffries into one corner of the elevator and raised his rifle. He fired past the other Marine’s shoulder after shouting warning, and drilled another zombie in the forehead. It collapsed to floor, practically right at the second Marine’s feet. Jeffries was almost deafened by the rifle reports, and as such he did not hear the Marine outside the elevator scream as the last runner slammed into him and drove him to the ground, but he could imagine it. The corporal next to him continued firing at the rest of the approaching zombies, dropping two more. He leaped out of the elevator and ripped the zombie off the fallen Marine, but it was too late. The Marine had already been bitten on the face.
“Colonel, get to the roof! The helo will pick you up there!” the corporal shouted as the elevator doors closed. As the lift lurched upward, Jeffries heard more gunfire over the ringing in his ears and his own frantic breathing.
My God, those zeds were in uniform.
The elevator reached the top floor. Jeffries stood to one side as the door slid open. He couldn’t seem to get his wind back, and his face and hands tingled. He slowly stuck his head out the elevator and looked up and down the corridor beyond. He saw nothing other than vacant offices and empty conference rooms. He stepped out of the elevator and turned left, heading to where he thought the stairs would be. If he remembered correctly, the only way to access the roof was from the stairway. Though the way his legs were trembling, Jeffries certainly wished there was another way to get there. He found the stairwell door and pulled it open. Gunfire echoed from below, then the gunfire abruptly ended. Were the Marines moving to another fighting position, or had they been overrun? He slowly stepped onto the stairway landing, still gasping for air.
Below, a door opened and closed. Jeffries heard movement on the lower stairs. When he heard the first moans, he realized stenches were climbing toward him.
A sharp pain in his chest caused him to wince, and his heart rate accelerated. He lunged for the handrail and mounted the stairs to the roof. It was only one flight to the roof door, which was already open; morning light and fresh air entered the stairwell. Jeffries climbed toward it as if he wore cement boots. As he broke out in a fresh sweat, he recognized that he wasn’t just suffering from the effects of sleep deprivation. Something else was wrong, and if he remembered his medical training correctly, he was having some sort of cardiovascular episode.
Not the best time to have a heart attack, he thought as he continued up the stairs. He was gasping loudly, as he just couldn’t get enough air. Overhead, he heard approaching rotor beats.
The stenches apparently heard the noise as well because they surged upward, moaning.
“Jesus Christ.” He was only halfway up the stairs. The zeds would be on him in no time.
Above, a figure stepped into the gloomy stairwell. It was another Marine, the lieutenant Jeffries had met just last night. The lieutenant looked down at Jeffries, a puzzled expression on his face. The puzzlement fled the second he heard the moaning zombies below, and he bolted down the stairs and grabbed Jeffries’s arm.
“Come on, sir. You really have to move some ass!” The lieutenant tugged Jeffries along, and Jeffries followed as well as he could, stumbling on the steps. Finally, he emerged into the light of a crisp, early Virginia morning, propelled through the doorway by a very anxious Marine.
A UH-60 Black Hawk hovered thirty feet away, its landing gear only inches above the roof. Jeffries knew that was as good as it was going to get; the helicopter was far too heavy to settle on the roof. The helicopter’s crew chief was helping several people to board—Jeffries’s senior staff, along with Wolf Safire’s daughter.
The Marine lieutenant slammed the stairwell door closed and dragged Jeffries toward the hovering helicopter. Jeffries found he could barely move; he couldn’t draw enough air to speak, couldn’t even shuffle along the roof. He felt dizzy and nauseous and feared he was about to vomit. The pain in his chest radiated down his right arm and up to his jaw.
I’m having a fucking heart attack!
“Colonel, you still with me?” the Marine shouted over the rotor noise.
Jeffries fell to the roof. Another intense jolt of pain shot through his chest, and then the world went black.
***
Regina Safire was lucky to have a seat on the helicopter, and she knew it. The medical personnel at the Rid understood that she had some value, since she was familiar with her father’s work and his thought processes, and therefore, she was able to go… well, wherever the Rid’s staff was headed.
She had just buckled herself into the Black Hawk’s bench seat—Not another helicopter, please, God, don’t let this one crash too—when she saw the Marine drag Colonel Jeffries out onto the roof. Regina didn’t like the way the small Army officer looked. He was quite pale and appeared almost cyanotic as he struggled to follow the Marine to the helicopter. And then, he collapsed. The Marine slung his rifle and pulled Jeffries onto his shoulders.
The roof door popped open again, and zombies boiled out of the stairwell like a swarm of African killer bees.
The Army crew chi
ef that had been helping his passengers secure themselves said something over the intercom system and pulled a rifle from a nearby compartment. It was too late. The zombies slammed into the Marine from behind, driving him to the floor. Jeffries flopped to the side and lay unmoving. The zombies tore into the flailing Marine, savaging him with their teeth.
Some of them continued past the melee toward the hovering helicopter, including one that could run as fast as a track star. Regina felt the helicopter pull in power and start to climb out, but the zombie launched itself at the aircraft and caught the bottom of the door frame. Doctor Kersey, who sat closest to the door, screamed, but the sound was drowned out by the wail of the Black Hawk’s turboshaft engines. The crew chief stepped forward and fired a single shot from his rifle. The zombie fell as the helicopter climbed away from Fort Detrick, Maryland.
***
The body that had once been known as Colonel Marcus Jeffries stirred and twitched, then sat upright in the bright Maryland sunlight. It saw several Others nearby, feasting on their shrieking meal, their rotting bodies dappled with sweet, warm blood. Dead Jeffries could smell it, sense it, almost taste it, even from where it sat. The sudden urge to feed struck, and Dead Jeffries rose to its feet and pushed its way into the group, scrabbling for some chunks of warm flesh. But the exposed areas of the U.S. Marine’s body had already been ravaged; Dead Jeffries unlaced a boot, pulled it off, and sank its teeth into the exposed foot. It ripped off toes with its teeth, crunching down on the morsels, feeling bone shatter and break in its mouth as it chewed. Most of the Others stared at Dead Jeffries stupidly, unable to comprehend what he had done, how he had found more food when the Marine’s thighs and calves and arms had been stripped almost bare. Dead Jeffries shoved an Other out of the way and repeated the process with the Marine’s other foot. The rest of the group reacted, and they reached out for the newly-exposed flesh; Dead Jeffries fought them off, striking them in their heads, driving them back. It devoured the appendage swiftly, teeth tearing flesh from bone, flesh it swallowed almost convulsively. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
The Rising Horde, Volume One (Sequel to The Gathering Dead ) Page 9