by Frank Tayell
The creature straightened. It raised the gory stubby hands toward Tom. Its mouth opened, and an inhuman sigh escaped its lips.
Aim for the legs, immobilize it, he thought as the creature lurched toward him. Behind him came the sound of a key in a lock, and then a chain being pulled back. The warehouse door opened. Ryan came in, pistol drawn. He saw the zombie and froze.
“Shoot it!” Tom yelled.
The zombie staggered another step, a dark pus oozing from its fingerless hands.
“Shoot it!”
But Ryan didn’t fire. Tom stepped forward as the zombie threw out an arm toward him. Ducking under the ill-aimed roundhouse blow, he swept out his leg, hooking his foot behind the creature’s knee, pulling it up. The zombie toppled over, landing on its back. Almost immediately, it pushed those bloody nubs of hands against the concrete as it tried to stand.
“Now! Shoot!” Tom yelled. Ryan was immobile, staring in shock at the creature. Tom swore, ran over to him, and snatched the gun from the young man’s trembling hands. The zombie was on its knees. Tom flicked off the safety, braced himself, and fired a shot straight into the zombie’s head. He fired a second round, just to be sure.
Everything was quiet, but only for a second. From deeper in the warehouse came another rattle of hands being drawn down a wire cage. Tom stalked toward the sound.
“Not me! Not me!” a bearded man cried, as Tom neared. “It’s him! Over there!”
The figure was dressed in clothes as ragged as Tom’s own. He was older, though, nearing sixty, at least. Tom raised the gun, aiming carefully between the wire grille that was bulging under the pressure of the zombie struggling to escape. He fired. The zombie collapsed.
“Ryan? Ryan?”
The kid was still frozen to the spot near the warehouse door. Tom looked down at the gun, then at the warehouse’s remaining occupant.
“Lock us in, Ryan. If you hear a shot, you know what’s happened.”
He waited until the teenager had left, then walked over to the occupied cage.
“My name’s Tom. What’s yours?”
“Phil.”
Tom sat down with his back against the cage next to Phil’s.
“Try to get some sleep, Phil. Whatever tomorrow brings, we’re both going to need it.”
Chapter 15 - Another Miserable Day
February 23rd, Carthage, Pennsylvania
Dawn had barely arrived when he heard the chain being drawn back on the other side of the warehouse door. Ryan came in. He wasn’t alone, but with a middle-aged man Tom hadn’t seen the previous day. The man held a shotgun, raised to his shoulder. Tom still held Ryan’s sidearm, but kept the barrel pointing at the floor.
“We’re both human,” he said, trying to force some jocularity into his voice. “Here. Safety’s on.” Holding the gun by the barrel, he passed it to Ryan.
“Thanks,” Ryan said.
“You, get up,” the older man barked at the man in the cage. “Unlock it.”
Ryan unlocked the cage.
“Now get out,” the man said.
“You’re letting us go? It’s not been twenty-four hours,” Tom said.
The shotgun swung toward him, the barrel not six inches from his face. “You want me to tell you again?”
Tom raised his hands, took a step to the side, and headed for the door. Ryan fell into step next to him. “What’s going on?” he asked the young man.
“It all went wrong last night,” Ryan said. “A convoy arrived. Some were military, some weren’t. Said they came from Lexington. It was a general leading them. Or he said he was a general. Said he was taking over the town. He said he had orders. I… The zombies were following them. I think. Or maybe they had infected people with them. I don’t know. The mayor’s dead. The general drove off. It’s all chaos.”
He pushed open the door and led Tom outside. “Here.” He grabbed the plastic crate with Tom’s name on it. The sat-phone and tablet were inside. The adaptor, money, and the unloaded revolver were not. “Take them and go. Go quickly.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Tom asked.
“They’re saying we should kill the outsiders. Anyone who might be infected. You have to go. Please.”
Tom grabbed the sat-phone and tablet, and went outside. The parking lot was filled with men, women, and children. He guessed these were the other detainees.
“That was hellish,” Helena said, coming over to join him. “I don’t know about you, but that was one of the worst night’s sleep of my life.”
Tom started walking, out of the lot, and down the road leading away from the town.
“Hey!” Helena called, running to catch up. “I need to get my stuff.”
“Leave it.”
“But—”
“Look behind.”
“What— oh.” Three plumes of smoke rose up from the town.
“A kid told me that people arrived last night, brought the infection with them. Said others were going to come and kill the lot of us,” he said.
“They… what?”
He didn’t repeat himself. They had no water, no weapons, no food. He had the sat-phone and tablet, and on a whim he took them out. The battery was drained. It looked like someone had tried to use it the previous night. A barrage of gunfire came from behind them.
“Are they shooting them?” Helena asked.
“It’s not from the warehouse. Not yet.” He started to jog. They had to stay ahead of the rest of the detainees, and far ahead of whoever, and whatever, was in the town.
Tom remembered the lightning-struck oak from their journey to the warehouse. It meant they were less than half a mile from the gas station. There was a single shot, and then another, but it wasn’t coming from behind. Tom stopped. The shooting kept on. Four shots. Five. Then silence.
“They’re ahead of us,” Helena said.
“We can’t go back,” Tom said. There was no safety there. No safety anywhere. His fists bunched as he started walking. Fury slowly took hold.
“Tom! Tom!”
He ignored her. A burning anger had gripped him. It was an old, familiar companion. He’d suppressed it in recent years, but it had always been there, lurking beneath the surface. He almost welcomed the prospect of the fight that would come, and gave no heed to the almost certain death that would follow.
“Tom! Stop!”
She grabbed his arm. He saw the abject fear in her eyes and realized he’d seen the same thing in Ryan, the man who’d let them out of the warehouse, and almost everyone else he’d come in contact with in the last three days.
“We can’t go back, so we go on,” he said, forcing the rage back down. “But we’ll do it carefully,” he added.
Outside the gas station was a police cruiser. Its doors hung wide open. A large truck had crashed into the filling station, knocking down the struts supporting the roof. There was no sign of the two sentries who’d been on guard, though on the ground were two clusters of zombies. Four at one, five at another. The truck must have breached the barricade. The cops had chased it. The truck had crashed. The zombies… he didn’t know from where they’d come, except that now they truly were everywhere.
“That cop car. That’s how we get out of here,” he said. “When I say run, do it. Get inside. Start the engine. Don’t argue.”
He kept his eyes on the zombies. They were milling around aimlessly. Some heading up the road, some toward the filling station. And then one turned around. Its head cricked to the right. It took a lurching step toward them.
“Not yet.”
It managed four paces before another creature noticed the movement. Then a third. A fourth. Then the rest of that small pack, turned as one toward them.
“Now!”
Helena ran. So did Tom, keeping a step behind.
They were going to make it. They were going to make it. A zombie lurched across the road, slightly quicker than the others. They weren’t going to make it. Tom changed direction, putting on a burst of speed, bringing up
his elbow, smashing it into the zombie’s face. The creature went flying, and Tom kept running.
Helena reached the car and jumped inside. The engine roared. Tom’s heart sang. The vehicle began to move. His heart skipped a beat as he thought Helena was about to drive off without him. The car jerked to a halt.
“Come on!” she yelled.
He threw himself through the open door. Helena slammed a foot on the pedal. The car rocketed forward before Tom had even closed the door.
Chapter 16 - It’s Not a Virus
Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania
“There’s no spare ammo in the trunk,” Tom said. “Just what’s in the magazine.”
“I’ll take the pistol,” Helena said.
Tom picked up the shotgun. Its eight shells and the pistol’s fifteen were of little reassurance when he thought of the fate of the officer at the gas station. The rest of the trunk’s contents were useless: a couple of bulletproof vests, some high-viz tabards, and an assortment of tools that suggested Carthage’s police force spent as much time dealing with breakdowns as they did break-ins. He picked up a tire iron, long enough to be called a crowbar. It was reassuringly sturdy.
“What about the bulletproof vests?” Helena asked. “It might help us if people think we’re police.”
It wasn’t an idle suggestion. They’d come across roadblocks twice during their journey west, and got through both by turning on the siren.
“No,” he said, after considered deliberation. “People who’d believe we’re cops would expect us to help them, or they’d shoot at us. Against zombies, it would only be extra weight.”
Helena took a swig from the gallon-jug of water. It was already half empty. She passed it to Tom. They’d found that in a minivan, abandoned twenty miles from the town. The only trace of the occupants had been a bloody stain on the asphalt, and another on the passenger-side door.
“You sure it’s this road?” Helena asked. “It’s more gravel than asphalt, and more mud than both.”
“I’m as sure as I can be.” And if he was wrong, they were stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no fuel for a car that was barely road-worthy. They had half a gallon of water, no shelter, and the undead were no more than two days’ lurch to the east. Not counting however many might be ahead of them. He slung the shotgun, but kept the crowbar in his hand.
“So who is this scientist?” Helena said, as they walked along the rutted track. “How do you know her?”
Tom tried to recall what he’d told Helena, but so much had happened that he couldn’t remember.
“I’ve not met her,” he said. “At least, I don’t think I have. She’s one of those brilliant scientists completely lacking in a moral compass. Because of that, she was involved in some questionable research, disregarding most of the basic safety considerations.”
“What do you mean, questionable?”
“She smuggled infected tissue samples back from West Africa, developed a cure, and tested it on her grad students.”
“Wow. And she didn’t get locked up?”
“Odd, right? It was over ten years ago, and she was working at the CDC at the time. There was an investigation. It concluded her findings were useful. They couldn’t announce that she’d been acting without any kind of oversight, so a compromise was reached. She’d stay out of jail, and was sent into internal exile, never to go near a lab again. In return, she stayed out of prison, and there was no embarrassing court case.”
“Hmm.” Helena was quiet for a long while. When she spoke, the question wasn’t one Tom expected. “Do you think she created the zombie virus?”
“If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have said that no one could. Since someone clearly has, the next question is whether she’s technically able.”
“And is she?”
“I think so.” He mulled it over. “In fact, I’d go one step further. Out of all the people in the U.S., I’d say she was one of the few who could.”
“But did she, do you think?”
“I suppose we’ll find out when we’ll get there.”
After another mile, and just as Tom began to think they’d come the wrong way, they turned a bend and saw a timber-framed house. A mud-splattered Jeep was parked out front.
“No dogs. No smoke. No smell of cooking,” Tom murmured. There was no sign of life more recent than the wide-wheeled ruts dug deep into the mud either side of the road.
Helena reached for the door.
“Wait.” Tom pointed at the alarm. About the size of a cereal box, it was ridiculously large for such a remote house. The bell might scare deer, but it wouldn’t have much effect on anyone who’d come all this way to break in. A more effective system would be a silent alarm linked to the county police or, considering the woman’s identity, the Feds.
“Try knocking,” he suggested. She did. There was no answer.
“Hello!” she called. There was no response.
Tom pulled a plant pot across the decked veranda, climbed up, and looked at the alarm. He nudged the box, and then lifted it clear. All that was inside was a small battery attached to a blinking red LED.
“Anything else you want to try?” Helena asked.
Tom shrugged. Then he realized. “The tire marks don’t match the Jeep,” he said. “Look at them. Someone drove in, turned around, and drove off again.”
“Okay, but is that a reason we should stay out here in the cold?”
Somehow, he thought it was.
Helena opened the door. No alarm sounded. That wasn’t reassuring. Nor was the organized chaos they found inside. Whiteboards were positioned around the room. Each was covered in overlapping scrawls. Where there wasn’t room, the writing continued on the windows and walls, sometimes onto the once-polished floor – at least in the places not obscured by a drift of paper, each covered in their own incomprehensible collection of hieroglyphs.
It was a small house, and it didn’t take long to confirm it was deserted. On returning to the living room, he found Helena staring at the whiteboards. She pointed at one of the few phrases written in non-mathematical English.
“It’s not a virus,” she read aloud. “It doesn’t say what it is. At least not in any language I understand.”
“But it explains what she was working on,” Tom said.
“And probably means that she wasn’t the one who created it,” Helena said.
Did it? Tom stared at the phrase. Maybe she’d written it in frustration at the descriptions given by the hysterical media. He traced a finger along the equation that had led to the scientist’s conclusion. He couldn’t make sense of it, but the calculation had begun on the adjacent whiteboard.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “She had no idea someone was working on this until it happened. But she might know who was. See if you can find any names there.”
Discounting the recent mess, the house had the sparse, battered furnishings of an owner who’d had few visitors. There was a television in a corner. Near it, and looking more frequently used, was a desk, down the back of which the cables for the keyboard and display dangled uselessly. The computer tower was missing. He knelt down. Under the desk was a multi-plug power-strip filled with adaptors. One was for a laptop, though that was missing as well. Another was the right size for the sat-phone. He plugged that in, and the tablet into that, leaving both devices to recharge.
“There’s electricity,” he said, only realizing as the power button on the sat-phone blinked red.
“Shouldn’t there be?” Helena asked.
“No. I mean, it’s a relief to know that’s still working.” For good measure, he checked the light switches, and then that water still ran from the faucet. He walked back into the main room, stood in the middle, and slowly turned on the spot. Three-sixty degrees, seven-twenty…
“What is it?” Helena asked, staring at him.
“Something’s off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone came here and took her away. A heavy vehicle
with wider tires than you’d find on a car or domestic truck.”
“So?”
“And she was working on zombies,” he said, now talking to himself. He was trying to get a sense of the woman who’d lived in the house. The television had a thin layer of dust on it, suggesting it was used infrequently enough to be forgotten. The couch didn’t quite face it, and wasn’t as worn as the chair by the window. Yet there were few books on the half-empty shelf, and enough dust to suggest there hadn’t been more that were taken away with her. Other than the desk, the only other furniture was a table with four chairs, each pushed in. The table had been shoved against the wall suggesting it was rarely used.
“Maybe it was the CDC,” Helena suggested. “Someone there remembered her name and thought she could help. That’s the obvious answer, isn’t it? I mean, why look for a conspiracy?”
“Because conspiracies exist,” Tom muttered. There was only one ornament in the room: an iron statue of a horse on a thick steel base.
“Why have the alarm outside? It’s not going to scare anyone away,” he said, and picked up the statue. “The only reason is so people don’t look for the real alarm system. When you can’t deter theft, the best you can do is make sure you’ll get your stuff back.” The statue’s base was hollow, but sealed shut. He smiled. There was a thin line around the animal’s neck. The head unscrewed, revealing a small camera inside.
“A nanny-cam?” Helena asked.
“Looks like it. A camera, a battery, a memory card, and a USB port.” He plugged it into the tablet. “Let’s see. Yes. The footage is low quality, but it looks like it’ll record for forty-eight hours without being recharged.”
He pressed play. The first twenty hours showed a woman with wild, grey hair stalking back and forth across her living room, a pen in each hand. She scrawled notes on the whiteboard, occasionally crossing to the computer, and sometimes to the laptop. Sometimes she would wipe the boards clean, other times simply write over whatever had been there before. At the end of twenty hours she seemed to reach some conclusion, tapping her pen repeatedly on the whiteboard nearest the door. She put the pens down and disappeared. The recording wasn’t of a high-enough definition to make out what she’d written.