Containment

by Sean Schubert

  The connection was broken and the colonel took off the headset, handing it back to the young man still standing at his side. He looked again at the wounded people being treated. The young officer anticipated the question that was forming and said, “Sir, our medical staff—what’s left of it that was able to be evac’d—are treating the walking wounded here, sir, and the more serious cases are further back.”

  “How many so far?”

  “Of the most serious cases, a couple of dozen, sir. The less severe injuries, I’d estimate double that number.” The young man wanted to say more but stopped himself short.

  “What aren’t you telling me, son?”

  “Several of the medical staff have pointed out that most of the injuries appear to be...well, bites, sir. And the bites appear to be extremely susceptible to infection.”

  Bites? Bites? Jesus, that’s right. Those...people, for whatever reason, attacked on sight, but they did so without the most basic of arms. He became keenly and suddenly aware that he hadn’t seen a single weapon in the crowds. There were no guns, no knives, not even any rocks. He shuddered involuntarily at the implications. It was unthinkable.

  “Bites? Are you sure?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Okay son. Why don’t you try and raise the governor’s office again and pass that along. If they’re going to figure this mess out, they’ll need all the intel they can get.”

  “Yes sir. And what are we going to do, sir?”

  “We’re going to do what soldiers do best.”

  From off in the distance, the unmistakable chatter of small arms fire suddenly began to filter into the impromptu military camp. “Those boys up there are going to need some help,” the colonel said. “Let’s get a couple of choppers up there with some firepower and see what we can do.”

  Almost at once, a pair of Blackhawk gunships roared overhead and made their way toward the fighting. Not able to sit back himself, the colonel found another helicopter and did his best to join his men, who were even then fighting for their lives on the ground.

  The battle at the roadblock was virtually no different than those that had been fought all over Anchorage. The two hovering helicopters loosed a barrage of rockets and a shower of machine-gun bullets into the attacking horde, but even those measures had little to no impact. He watched helplessly as his men, disciplined and brave, fought and then, one by one, were overpowered and butchered where they stood by groups of the vile attackers.

  A single armored Humvee with a small group of survivors sped away from the disaster before it was too late. Colonel Frost instructed his pilots to lay down whatever cover fire they were able to try and put some distance between his fleeing soldiers and their pursuers. He watched from his hovering perch as high caliber bullets tore into and through flesh to no avail. The people below didn’t seem to even register that bullets had just passed through them. This was more than just adrenaline or some external chemical or drug affecting this behavior. What was happening was unreal and unimaginable, and yet he was witnessing it. There was no denying it.

  Seeing that these efforts were largely futile, he ordered his pilots to return to the Knik base. It didn’t appear that he had any options left other than to allow the incoming jets from Fairbanks to blanket the entire area in fire and death. To him, these people below were still Americans; the same people he had sworn to defend and protect from exactly the thing that he was ordering done to them.

  Over the radio, he was connected with the pilots in the squadron of jets that were just beginning to appear on the distant horizon. He issued the order to use any and all ordinance on the crowd advancing through the valley.

  And then from a safe distance, the colonel watched as the entire road and all that was on it was engulfed in a sea of seemingly liquid fire that spread out like a searing yellow and black flood. The flash was blinding and the delayed roar of the explosion was deafening even over the clamorous growl of the helicopter’s turbines.

  The colonel bowed and shook his head. He was a warrior, but never in his career, or even in his lifetime would he have imagined that he would be calling down such horrible death on such a target. He wasn’t a praying man, but he found himself asking for forgiveness from above. He knew that there were “bad guys” in that crowd below but he also knew that there were women and children and who knew what else. Was his wife down there? His son? Had they just been incinerated along with everyone else? Maybe this would be enough to end it all so that they could begin sorting out the good from the bad and then figure out who was responsible for this insanity that had cost so much.

  He was lingering in those thoughts when his radio headset began to squawk. It was the pilot of his helicopter. “Sir, it doesn’t appear to have worked, sir. They’re still coming.”

  “What?!?”

  He looked out then and saw that, even through the flames that were still melting the paved roads of the Glenn Highway, the rioters, the attackers, the terrorists or whatever they were to be called were still moving forward. It was as if the attack—the deadly fire that had swallowed hundreds of people in a single instant—had not even happened. They were showing no signs of stopping or even slowing. Through his binoculars, he watched as dozens of them appeared through the conflagration with flames still licking at their clothes and hair. They made not the slightest effort to extinguish the blaze that flickered and burned over their bodies. Smoldering and blackened, they continued their trek toward the bridge, swirling black contrails in their wake.

  The bridge. He had to know if the bridge was ready for demolition. “Connect me with the command post.”

  “Yessir.”

  After a pause, with the colonel still watching the horrible parade as it advanced, the pilot was back on. “Sir, I don’t seem to be able to raise command.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sir, just that. The line is open, but I’m not reaching anyone.”

  “Get us back over there, son.”

  “Yessir.”

  It took only a few brief moments in the fast moving aircraft for them to be over the newly formed command post on the north side of the Knik Arm Bridge. When the colonel looked down, his heart nearly skipped a beat. Below him, the scene resembled what he had left at Fort Richardson. People, soldiers, were running in every direction. Some appeared to be fleeing while others appeared to be pursuing. There were also bodies lying all over the area. There seemed to be a large concentration of them near the critical care unit that had been established to treat the worst cases. And then he saw it. A row of black, zippered bags lying side-by-side behind the unit. Body bags. But not all of them were still. There were several that had something inside that was struggling to get out. They writhed and squirmed like fetuses trying to be born from inside the black, rubbery wombs.

  “Oh dear God.”

  “Sir, what do you want us to do?”

  “Get me on the radio with those pilots.”

  “You’re on, sir.”

  “Pilot, do you have anything left to bring down that bridge?”

  “That’s an affirmative, sir.”

  “Then bring it down. We’ve got to do what we can to stop this.”

  “Are you asking us to destroy that bridge, sir?”

  “That’s affirmative.”

  “Roger that. We are targeting the bridge.”

  The colonel and the pilots of his helicopter watched as the spans that constituted the Knik Arm Bridge were laid to rubble. There was less fire with this explosion but definitely more smoke than with the napalm bursts on the roadway. One of the jets targeted the more distant railroad trestle for good measure and brought it down in a flash of rising smoke and water. And from the south, getting closer and closer, there seemed to be no stop to the tide of maniacal humanity that pressed ever forward.

  When they reached the concrete and steel ruins of the bridge, they merely continued. Those that could find easy footing crossed and those that couldn’t fell into spaces and gaps in the span until th
ose spaces and gaps were filled full enough with still twisting and squirming bodies to allow others to cross atop them.

  The pilot said flatly, “It didn’t seem to work. There’s no containment. They’re still getting across.”

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Several weeks later…

  Neil Jordan, struggling a bit to catch his breath, asked, “What was that, Doc?”

  “I said that it didn’t work. It doesn’t appear as if they contained it,” answered Dr. Caldwell.

  Now finally on a rise high enough to see the bridge, or more accurately, to see where it had once stood, he saw that while the bridge had been downed, it was obvious by the destruction on the far side that the zombies had made it across. It looked very clearly like military vehicles on the far side in no better shape than those at the attempted roadblock back down the road closer to Anchorage. Curiously, there was a military Humvee beached and abandoned some distance down in the Knik below the bridge.

  Looking at the destruction, he didn’t know what to do; how to react. He had actually been expecting that this is what they would find. He had assumed that the destruction would have worked in stopping the onslaught of undead, but it appeared that Dr. Caldwell was right. If it had worked, there would likely be several thousand ghouls gathered and milling about in front of the broken masonry.

  Neil peered through his binoculars and shook his head. “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think that the bridge is passable as it is.”

  “Why not?”

  “Take a look for yourself. Pay special attention to the darker spots in the pavement.”

  The doctor took the binoculars from Neil and looked out. He adjusted the focus slightly and then scanned from one end of the first stretch to the other. He leaned forward, as if getting those few inches closer would help to bring the scene into sharper relief.

  “Are those bodies stacked atop one another?”

  Neil shook his head in disgust. “No. If those were just bodies, they wouldn’t still be moving around.”

  The doctor looked closer still and could now see a reaching and flexing hand emerging from underneath the top layer of downward-facing bodies. And now he could see the general movement. He was reminded of fish still struggling to breathe and escape from the bottom of a barrel. They were packed so tightly, having been walked on by thousands of their undead brethren, that they were hopelessly tangled and knotted together.

  Neil turned to face the rest of the group of survivors, still approaching up the slope. Their weary faces were drawn tight with exertion and deprivation, the only color from the streaks of dirt here and there, as well as the ruddy rose clouds blotching most of their cheeks. They all seemed so gaunt and frail to him. Perhaps it was just a product of his downcast mood, but these people didn’t seem to be robust Alaskans ready to face the challenges of the sometimes harsh environs of Alaska. Rather, they appeared to be a lonely group of desperate souls who had somehow managed to stay a single step ahead of the Reaper who had apparently harvested most if not all of the other thousands of souls who had once populated Anchorage, Alaska. When his eyes fell upon the two children, Danny and Jules, still tagging along with them, he managed to control the outburst that was threatening to explode from his mouth. These kids had seen and experienced more than should be asked from any adult, and they certainly didn’t need Neil to add to the misery. Instead, he took a deep breath and held it as he turned back to look at the dashed hope that the bridge had once signified.

  It was with Jules’ brother Martin that the calamity had originally begun. He had been bitten by...something, down near Seward. The wound was very superficial, but it had bled well more than it should have and led to a very aggressive infection that within hours had claimed young Martin’s life. And for reasons that science could not answer and that religion dared not contemplate, young Martin had risen from his death slumber and began to kill everyone around him, setting off a chain of events that had escalated and multiplied with each victim also rising up to go on a homicidal spree, first at Providence Hospital and then spreading exponentially throughout all of Anchorage.

  In a few hours, the city had been overrun with the walking dead. Those survivors fortunate enough were able to flee the city, but the vast majority of the population had fallen prey to the killing hordes. There were others like Neil and his group, still clawing for survival in the city, but he was afraid that all of them, his group included, might be fighting a losing battle against insurmountable odds. He kept his thoughts to himself for the most part, but there were times, like this one, that he felt the weight of that possibility hanging heavily on him. Like Sisyphus’ rock, his thoughts just kept rolling down over the top of him.

  They had been on the run or in hiding for weeks now. They had seen as much or more destruction, mayhem, and death than even the saltiest of Genghis Khan’s Mongol warriors. And neither the running nor the chaos showed any signs of slackening in the slightest.

  Fleeing the carnage of Providence Hospital and Midtown Anchorage, Neil and those with him found temporary sanctuary in South Anchorage in a small duplex, abandoned by its escaping owners. With supplies taken from the Fred Meyer where Meghan had been a manager, the group decided that waiting out the storm instead of running was the safer choice. They did their best to quietly entertain one another while avoiding detection by the ghouls that wandered the streets outside. Those were days of quiet, lonely isolation.

  After several desolate days in their four-walled life raft, they were joined by another group of three survivors, Dr. Caldwell, Emma, and a police officer named Malachi Ivanoff. It wasn’t too long afterward that their refuge was discovered by the terrors outside, and they were forced to run once again.

  Since leaving their sanctuary, their numbers had grown and dwindled. The van that had once transported them through the twisted wasteland that Anchorage had become was gone, abandoned by necessity, as it could not navigate the many impassable roads they had encountered. If Anchorage were a person and those roads were its windpipe, the patient would have been asphyxiated long ago. Early on in the catastrophe, the busiest of Anchorage’s roads and intersections had become impenetrable barriers that did nothing more than trap the souls whose vehicles created them. Those same people were virtually served up on glass and metal platters bearing the names of Chevrolet, Ford, and GMC.

  Neil thought back on the past several days...weeks. How many had it been? He’d lost count. Or, more to the point, he’d stopped counting long ago when the sun rising and setting no longer held the same importance. It didn’t matter what day it was anymore because each was going to bring with it the same problems, the same struggles, the same agonizing realizations about their situation without the hope of a weekend to break up the monotony.

  Chapter 2

  Weeks ago, with the minivan loaded with both people and their dwindling supplies, Neil drove away from their south Anchorage hiding place. The vehicle could outrun the ghouls laying siege to the home that had become their bastion but they were traveling into the unknown, like jumping into a mysterious lake on a dark night. With the exception of young Jules and Danny, everyone in the van had lived in Anchorage for some time. The city, as its former self, was familiar, but as it appeared on that autumn day, they could just as well have been driving on Venus.

  Every street, every corner, every building held new mysteries and new dark secrets. The roads, once bustling with cars and pedestrians, were deserted except for the random wandering dog or the occasional plastic shopping bag that fluttered and danced on the gentle breeze. There were abandoned cars here and there, but except for the main intersections, which Neil was careful to avoid, the roads in the city were largely empty. Anchorage had become a ghost town.

  The mix of souls in the minivan made for an eclectic stew of ages, backgrounds, and personalities. At the helm both figuratively and literally, was Neil. Before the zombie apocalypse he’d worked in the mortgage industry, though th
at experience had obviously not hindered his ability to survive the zombie apocalypse. In point of fact, maybe such a ruthless business had prepared him to deal with soulless opportunists.

  Next to him sat the more senior Dr. Caldwell who, along with Jerry, who was sitting behind him, had come from Providence Hospital which was the origin of the outbreak. Dr. Caldwell had served in the military and had worked trauma centers, none of which had prepared him to deal with the horrible circumstances that came part and parcel with current events.

  Behind Neil was Meghan, who had been a manager at a Fred Meyer store. Neil had wandered in looking for supplies and had found Meghan. She had been at his side ever since.

  That’s not to say that Neil’s trip to Fred Meyer had been otherwise fruitless. Many of the spoils of that visit were still crowding the vehicle. There were piles of canned foods, boxes of crackers and other dry foods, and cases of water and juice all stacked in the back of the vehicle behind the rearmost seats. They had grabbed more than just food that morning as well. The group had a large variety of hunting rifles, shotguns, and sidearms as well as a large stock of ammunition for each. At the very least, the guns provided them all with a sense of comfort, whether it was justified or not.

  Beside Meghan on the middle bench sat the most troubled—and troubling—soul in the vehicle. He still wore the uniform of an Anchorage Police Department Officer, but his patrolling days were over. Officer Malachi Ivanoff was as distant from his companions in the van as he was from a firm grasp on reality. Old memories, lurking in the shadows of the past, were punishing him. And in his punishment, all that Malachi could truly feel was fear, but the terror produced only rage. But like a volcano concealing the wrath within its bowels, he contained the anger in silence.

  On the floor next to him was Jerry, a young man not even old enough to buy a drink from a tavern but who was far from a clueless kid. He was squeezed into the space between the edge of the middle bench seat and the sliding side door. Jerry had been a Certified Nursing Assistant at Providence Hospital and was finally getting his act together enough to get out on his own. He had a car and was ready to move into his own apartment when.... well, his story from recent weeks wasn’t much different than everyone else’s in the van. Since that morning, he’d found stores of confidence in himself that, until then, had gone unnoticed and untapped. All of which was rather fortuitous because on that morning, when their world was forever changed, he had been entrusted with the safety of a pair of children, Jules and Danny. The young boy, Danny, had been the best friend and family guest of Jules’ brother Martin, who had invited Danny to vacation with them in Alaska.