Then he heard the strangest thing he’d ever heard.
“He’s dead. Note the time of death on his chart and notify his next of kin.”
And then he fell asleep.
The Final Solution
Orth an der Donau, Austria - Day 1403
One day, I hope to sit street-side in a cafe in Vienna and watch the crowds move by, drinking wine with friends or having Sunday morning coffee with my husband. If I ever have friends again. Or get married. Two big ifs. But at least they are “ifs” again. For years, they were just “what ifs” that we used to chat about in the off-hours from the laboratories. What if we found a cure? What would the world turn back into? Would the previously infected remember their lives as zombies?
But we hadn’t found a cure. What was done to them could not be undone. They were no longer human. A DNA-altering retrovirus of unknown origin had genetically changed them, and over the years had continued to modify them into what they now were: a new species of biped. It had taken millions of years and a dozen or more mutations to form homo sapiens, it had taken only a few months to transform most of us into some base unit of them, and then a few more years for the new traits to appear. And nobody thought we had yet seen the endpoint of the species.
“What we’ve developed is not a cure,” Gunter said at the staff meeting. “It’s not going to undo the genetic modifications that have occurred in the infected individuals. What it will do is kill them. And, in the process, convey an immunity to infection to any surviving people so that we don’t have to worry about a re-infection in the future.
“We’ve managed to aerosolize it as a delivery system and we know from extensive testing that the undead will transmit it to each other by being in close proximity. It works like a virus, so once we get it into a population, it will spread of its own accord, so we don’t have worry about dosing individuals.
“On the plus side, everyone in this facility is now carrying the anti-virus in them, so none of us can be turned should we get bitten. They can still eat us, however,” Gunter said with a quick smile. “On the downside, we have no means of delivering the virus to the infected population, although what’s left of the army command claims to be able to modify artillery shells for that purpose. But we have to get it to them.”
The room stirred with the first half of that realization.
“You infected us without telling us?” Adolf asked.
“Not intentionally. The seals on the exam rooms haven’t been maintained in years. We just assumed they worked. They didn’t, and we kept it quiet to see what happened to avoid a panic.”
“Just like the Americans did when this broke out,” Adolf said, shaking his head.
Gunter ignored him. “The only problem is that we have no means of delivering it anywhere but here in Austria, which means it will take months, maybe years to travel the globe and spread throughout the infected population. We’ll have zombies somewhere on the globe for as long as their lifespans are.
“And if they mutate into the ability to sexually reproduce, we may have to deal with them for a decade or more. Maybe forever. But one thing is for sure, this anti-virus will kill them.”
“At least in their present state. Who knows what another mutation might bring?” Adolf said.
Adolf had wanted to cure the infected. Instead, his discovery of the virus’ effect on the human genome had led to another lab working on a shut-off switch, an anti-virus that could be inserted into the undead which would kill them. Or, as I liked to think of it, resurrect them back to death. It had taken Adolf a while to accept that his discovery could save humanity. Millions, probably billions, of beings that had once been humans would be consigned to death because of his work.
When word of the plague hitting Paris and Berlin had reached us, the government had immediately shut down the borders. That hadn’t saved Vienna or Innsbruck or most of the other cities of the country, but the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade had deployed around Orth and managed to keep the zombies out.
Until today.
Which is why I’m running for my life down Rudolf Zoempfenning Way right now. A hundred meters behind me are a half-dozen of the super-ragers, the latest version of the running zombies. Versions: I still can’t believe they specialize.
Anyway, earlier today a super-horde from Vienna streamed across the Danube and down Highway 3. The super-horde was so big and destructive that a wave of human survivors came into Orth a half-hour ahead of the zombies, giving the army enough warning to man the positions and light the kerosene moat between Orth and our biomedical facility. I was on the roof with Gunter watching the snipers pick off the sonars - the zombies who step out of the mob and figure out where to go and who to attack - when a stream of super-ragers poured out of the woods near the north parking lot. The company of soldiers guarding that area was quickly overrun and someone set off the line of mines meant as a last-ditch defensive measure.
But there were still too many of the fast movers and the other army units began falling back.
“Shit, they’re going to get into the building,” Gunter shouted, turning and running for the door to the stairwell. “We need to get inside and get the anti-virus before the undead break in and cut us off.”
We ran through the facility to the lab. Outside, machine-gun fire filled the air. A siren pierced the night followed by an explosion: every man for himself.
“Come on, Heike, we’ve got to do this,” Gunter said as we bounded out of the stairwell into the basement labs. He tore down the hall ahead of me and burst through the doors to the main laboratory. It was a couple of seconds before I caught up, but inside the lab Gunter was frantically working the combination to the storage refrigerator. Automatic gunfire filled the night. So much for head shots.
Adolf ran into the lab and skidded to a stop just short of Gunter. “Give me some, I’m going to try spraying it from the roof.”
“It doesn’t work that quickly,” Gunter said, stuffing vials into a small canvas bag and handing it to me. “You need to run. We all do. We need to get somewhere else, where we can find someone who can deliver this appropriately.”
Adolf laughed. “Appropriately? What, like an airplane with a crop duster? We don’t have time for that.”
Adolf grabbed a few vials and looked at us. “Maybe they won’t make it onto the roof?”
He shrugged and took off, brushing past Sergeant Herman Werksman as he came into the room smelling of gun smoke. He looked around and immediately knew that we were ahead of the curve.
“Good,” Werksman said. “The colonel wants me to take a platoon and get the two of you to the river. There are a pair of police patrol boats tethered there for just this situation.”
“Just this situation? You guys have never said anything about this before,” Gunter said.
Werksman shrugged. “The colonel never thought you guys would come up with a cure.”
“It’s not a cure,” I said.
Werksman shrugged. “Well, a solution, then.”
He turned and poked his head through the door, said something to whoever was on the other side, then turned his attention back to us. “You’ve got sixty seconds to get your stuff and follow me.”
Gunter nodded at Werksman and handed me a nylon shoulder bag. “This should be enough.”
Four loud explosions sounded outside, the sound of the town being demolished by the buried charges the army had put in it last year as a means of both distracting and destroying any zombie horde that might come through the town. The town was lost, then. I didn’t think the zombies would be distracted by it, though: they were already everywhere.
“Let’s go!” Werksman shouted from the hallway.
I smiled at Gunter. “Well, it’s a little over a kilometer to the river. A couple of minutes of running and we’re there.”
He smiled weakly. “I was never much of a runner.”
“Now’s your chance to shine,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We dashed out into the night and
into a perimeter of two dozen soldiers, most armed with Remington 870 shotguns and Steyr AUG machine guns. A pair of spotlights played across the ground, illuminating pockets of zombies for the snipers on the roof. I looked up to see if Adolf was up there but couldn’t pick him out, just the full moon above the facility looking down on us without concern.
“You two, let’s move it,” Werksman said to us before turning his attention to his men “Platoon, begin falling back, five meters and pause!”
The perimeter of men all moved en masse, the three of us in the center, the soldiers around us all firing their weapons as the zombies pressed in on us.
“The undead can’t know what we’ve got with us, can they?” I asked.
“Impossible,” Gunter said and shook his head.
He paused. “But you have to admit, it is one of the most unfortunate coincidences imaginable.”
We had just made it to the park access trail through the Danube-Auen National Park when the firing from the soldiers ratcheted up in intensity. We had made it maybe a hundred meters south. Already, I could see soldiers using their weapons with bayonets. They were being overwhelmed.
Werksman turned to us, his voice calm, resigned to the situation. “You two should run, we’re going to stand here and hold them off. Run. Just run as fast as you can. The boats are at the ferry station. There’s a squad there waiting for you. Go. Run.”
With that he turned and began taking shots at zombies. Gunter looked at me, his eyes hollow, the emotion drained from his face. “I’m going to run down the trail into the forest and maybe try to make it to Eckartsau where I can try to find a way to get in contact with someone in charge of something. You run for the river. The soldiers there will be in contact with someone else in the Army, so you should be fine once you get there.”
“Gunter, we should stay together. It’s dark in the forest. The run isn’t that long. A kilometer or so, maybe.”
Gunter’s eyes widened for a moment as he looked over my shoulder. I turned and saw Werksman swing his rifle butt at a rage-runner and then draw his service pistol out and shoot it in the head. The sound of gunfire was becoming sporadic and the murmuring of the undead was getting louder.
I turned and saw that Gunter was already running into the forest, took one last look behind me at what must surely have been the last defense of civilization, and sprinted down the road toward the river. A kilometer or so. Easy. I used to run five or six of them at a time, several times a week before the undead laid claim to the world. I looked back over my shoulder and saw a half-dozen super-ragers twenty meters away and coming toward me, foam dribbling from their mouths, teeth bared.
And then I ran. Faster than I have ever run. All I ever wanted was a normal life, to fall in love and have a family. I never wanted to be one of the last few hopes for mankind’s survival. Maybe Gunter will make it to the next town? Maybe Adolf will save the world from atop the biomedical facility?
But right now, the only thing I really want to see, the only thing that matters, is the moon’s reflection on the Danube.
###
About the Author
William Young can fly helicopters and airplanes, drive automobiles, steer boats, rollerblade, water ski, snowboard, and ride a bicycle. He was a newspaper reporter for more than a decade at five different newspapers. He has also worked as a golf caddy, flipped burgers at a fast food chain, stocked grocery store shelves, sold ski equipment, worked at a funeral home, unloaded trucks for a department store and worked as a uniformed security guard. He lives in Pennsylvania in a small post-industrial town along the Schuylkill River with his wife, three children and their cat.
###
Also by William Young
The Signal (Paperback. eBook.)
The Divine World (Paperback. eBook)
Monster (eBook)
Uncollected Short Stories:
Loverman (Smashwords.
Bensonhyphentaft (Smashwords.)
A Day at the Beach (eBook)
The Trophy Wife (eBook)
Cities of the Dead: Stories From The Zombie Apocalypse Page 24