by Glynn James
Mayes said, “I take it the evacuation of Portsmouth and the coast is under way?”
“Affirmative. Mechanized units are holding the perimeter, but not pushing out of the city, as ordered. The port’s now rammed with craft for removal of the civilian population.”
“On schedule?” asked Mayes. “Are we going to get them back behind the lines before the dead take the city?”
“Unknown at this time. I checked a few minutes ago and there seems to be a massive exodus into Portsmouth from the surrounding area.”
“How about the quarantine zone in Wales? Are they ready?”
“Not in the slightest. But they claim they will be.”
Mayes shook his head. ”If they’re not, then we just opened up the whole of the north for the virus.”
“The zone is isolated and heavily fortified. At the very worst, well…” Broads didn’t finish the thought.
Mayes did it for him. “Worst case, we wipe out the overrun civilian population. But I don’t want to be the one making that call. Canterbury was bad enough.”
“Yeah, I don’t either,” said Broads. “But if it comes to that?”
“If it comes to it,” said Mayes, hoping like hell it wouldn’t.
This is Your Wake-Up Call
CentCom Strategic Command - Short-Term Billets
Major Grews lurched as the knock at the door ripped him from sleep. His head spun, and for a moment dizziness swamped his ability to focus. He tried to sit up, but instead almost fell from the bed, as neither his arms nor legs responded. He tottered for a moment before falling back onto the bed.
Deep breaths, he told himself. It’s just anxiety, again.
No matter how many times he faced the dead, this was always the result, and he knew it. Then again, the numbness in his limbs was something new. And then a rush of pain crackled through his stomach and up into his chest.
What the hell was that? He looked around the room, wondering where the hell he even was. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t quite remember the last few hours.
The room was unfamiliar, and sparse, just the bed he lay on and a cabinet with his personal effects and side arm on top in a pile. Confused, he tried to gather his thoughts, as another knock sounded at the door.
“Major?” called a voice, but it was distant, barely audible.
Then it clicked and Grews remembered landing at the CentCom airfield, then heading to the quarantine area to get checked over. He’d had no visible wounds, and the medic, a man who looked like he hadn’t slept for about a week himself, had run a base blood check and found nothing wrong.
He remembered being furious with the team there for even attempting to order him into quarantine, and finally pulling rank to stay out of it. But even he had to admit that he wasn’t thinking straight at the time. He’d been awake for so many hours that the exhaustion had gone beyond what he could physically cope with, though he felt fine otherwise. Finally, they had let him go with a promise that he sleep for a couple of hours before resuming work.
Now his head pounded as though someone was keeping time to music by thumping his skull with a mallet, and he could hear a whooshing sound instead of the quiet of the room. He tensed one arm, willing it to move, and found he couldn’t bend his fingers or his wrist. But his arm finally came up and he looked down at the back of his hand – and nearly retched.
His skin was laced with spidered lines of black, and his nails had turned completely white. It was then that Grews felt the burning, and the cold sweat on his skin, but even these feelings were numbed, as though his nerves were somehow failing, his senses drowning.
This isn’t possible. It’s anxiety. Nothing else. It can’t be. Was he still asleep? Was this a dream?
But it was too lucid to be a dream. Grews closed his eyes, opened them again, and focused on his hand once more. There was no change. The skin was still pale, and laced with fine dark lines.
No! he screamed, but it only sounded in his head. He sucked in a deep breath, and tried to speak again, but only a rasp came out. His throat constricted with the effort, and a splatter of black liquid fell from his mouth to splash across the pillow.
He tried again to call out, but nothing came.
How? he thought. How the hell could this have happened? The blood test was clear!
But no answer came to his mind. He thought back, and knew for certain he hadn’t been wounded, not even a scratch. Even when that Foxtrot had leapt up at him on the rope, and pulled half his trouser leg away, there hadn’t been a wound, nothing. The medics had checked him and found nothing.
But there was no way he could deny it. He was infected. It was his worst nightmare coming true: he was about to switch sides in the great war.
His breathing grew even heavier now, and he could feel his skin almost writhing over his body as it died, cell by cell.
Was this how it was for everyone? he wondered.
Was he going to lie here and feel every sensation as his body slowly succumbed to the virus, which was even now coursing through his veins, seeking living flesh to infect, to kill, to change? To finally reanimate as an inhuman, alien form.
Inside the cabin of the helo, he thought. It had to be there.
And he thought back to the ones he had fought, inside the tiny interior of the crashed aircraft, and the splatterings of blood and gunk as he destroyed them. Was there something he was forgetting? There had to be.
Yes, there was. He finally remembered the taste of iron in his mouth. He’d thought it was his own, thought surely it had to be. His own blood, from a bitten gum, or tongue. But could it instead have been the blood of one of the dead, splattered into his mouth as he fought them?
A vision of the fight rushed through his confused mind – gunshots, the man in the suit, the woman. The one eating the pilot. More gunshots, and then… yes. He had been splattered with the pilot’s blood as he tried to fight him off. It had been as he struggled to get past the chair that pinned Grews down. The animated corpse had flailed, splattering crap everywhere.
Grews shook his head in disbelief, and total despair.
I’m infected. I’m going to turn. But how had the blood test shown up clear? Was the virus not in my blood by then? It can’t have been, must have been in my stomach or maybe my lungs? He remembered coughing, and finding it hard to breathe.
There was another knock at the door.
“Major Grews? This is your wake-up call, sir,” came the muffled voice from the corridor. “You’re expected at the Colonel’s office in ten minutes.”
His mind sparked and flashed at the thought of the man on the other side of the door, and something entered his thoughts – something that had never been there before. The man outside was made of meat. Then it was gone, the thought jumbled among others as they flailed around his head, fighting each other for attention.
They’ll come in if I don’t answer, he thought, and they’ll kill me. It will all be over, and nothing more can go wrong.
But then he heard footsteps moving away.
Idiots! his mind screamed. Why didn’t they come in when I didn’t answer? They would have seen, and shot me, or I would… get to them and bite and scratch every last one. I should kill every one of them. No! I have to stop this!
He had to do something, and he had to do it now, while he was still himself, even if he felt his mind quickly leaving him and becoming… someone or something else. He looked around the room, willing his eyes and his neck to move, though it seemed even they didn’t want to comply, and his gaze finally fell upon the handgun on the cabinet. It was only inches away.
I have to do this myself, he thought. Before I turn.
Meat. They are made of meat and blood. And the smell.
He tried to reach out, to will his rebelling arm to go for the gun, and this seemed to work. He couldn’t sit up, not now, and he also realized he couldn’t feel anything from his waist down. The arm resisted, but got closer, and closer, until his hand dropped onto the weapon. He tried to grasp it, an
d his fingers moved fractionally, but he couldn’t get them at the right angle to pick it up.
He swung his weight to the side, trying to reach, but didn’t judge the movement correctly, and found his whole body toppling forward, rolling, lurching over off the bed. He closed his eyes for a moment as the ground rushed at him, and he tried to turn his head, but his neck muscles refused.
Will I remember this? he thought, as he fell. If I turn – will I remember who I am? Will I look through these eyes as my body wastes away? Will I see it as my own hands seek to kill?
His face slammed into the floor and he just lay there, stunned, unable to move, watching, but not feeling, a pool of black liquid pour from his mouth and spread out onto the floor.
And the Major’s last thoughts were an image of shadows moving in a dark tunnel, and then a child, her face dirty, but smiling as she was held by her mother, as the news cameras focused in on the tunnel escapees.
Blood, he thought, and then he passed out.
They Deserved Better
CentCom Strategic Command
Private Nolan of Internal Security stood at his post for another five minutes before heading back to the third floor, and the short-term accommodation wing. He took the stairs, heading up and cursing under his breath that they had cut the electricity to the lift. It wasn’t the only amenity here that now no longer worked, but it was one he’d used dozens of times a day, and all this climbing of stairs was starting to feel like too much exercise for him.
Somehow he doubted it would be heart disease or high blood pressure that got him in the end. Screw exercise.
This wing of the second largest building in the compound had once been the solitary confinement section of the old prison, and even though a lot of it had been rebuilt and remodeled, it still bore signs of its old function – the curved metal stairways, the open atrium at the center of each level, and of course the bars on the windows. When CentCom took over the prison, they built the main command and control areas, and the big Joint Operations Center, right next to the old prison annex. They’d knocked it through in many places, but most of the old structures had just been given a lick of paint and some new internal drywall.
The place still echoed when you walked the floors, and it still had a hostile feel to it that Nolan had sensed during his time as a prison guard, long before CentCom came along. The animosity and anger were still there, as if they had been absorbed by the very walls, and he could almost hear the curses from the dangerous men who had been locked up here.
Now their former cells were clean and white, and even had carpeting, and thankfully none of the sparse furniture had to be tested to prove it wasn’t usable as a weapon. The visitors to these quarters now were of an entirely different sort – no more cold, emotionless hard men whose faces he had seen on the news, attached to crimes he had to ignore so that he could do his job. No, the cells of the old prison block were now usually filled with visiting military officers or government officials. It was a much quieter place than it had been a few years before, and Nolan wondered what it was like now for the former prisoners.
It wasn’t that he cared at all for the previous occupants, but at the same time he wondered how society could change so much in such a short time that people, even the nastiest of criminals, could be dumped a hundred miles away in the middle of a continent completely overrun by the dead. And who had made that decision? Who had exiled these living people into Undead Europe, on punishment of death if they returned?
Maybe those kinds of terrible decisions were necessary now. But they left a bad taste in Nolan’s mouth. And he was in a fairly unique position to know what terrible human beings many of those inmates had been. But they were still human beings.
And they deserved better.
Muttering to himself, Nolan made his way along the gangway, glancing down and nodding at one of the other guards on the lower level as he passed several empty rooms, their doors habitually left open, before he finally came to one with the door shut.
He’d called Major Grews five minutes before, and hadn’t thought much of it when the man didn’t answer. The guy had been in combat just hours before, and looked utterly exhausted, and Nolan would have liked to have left him in peace, even if only for a few more minutes. But orders from the top, Mayes himself, were that Grews needed to be at the JOC in five minutes, so Nolan banged on the door a second time.
“Major?” he called, and then waited.
There was the sound of movement from inside the room, a bump that sounded like the man might just have been hauling his ass out of bed.
“Sir, you’re expected over at the JOC in five,” Nolan said, his voice louder than he’d intended.
Still no answer, but another bumping noise.
Nolan bit his lip, and stood there for another half a minute, staring at the door, his mind sifting through escalating possibilities. What if Grews was injured? What if, amid his exhaustion, he’d fallen? Or worse – what if the medic hadn’t checked him out thoroughly? But Nolan didn’t imagine that was possible. Not here. The blokes who ran quarantine were deadly serious professionals, and totally thorough. But what if the Major had an internal problem that had gone undetected, like perhaps a concussion?
Maybe I should go for help, he thought, hesitating. He scratched his head, and then turned to walk toward the edge of the platform, thinking he would call the lads on the ground floor and get them to send for a medic. But then he stopped and turned back. He’d feel stupid if it was a false alarm, and the Major was just slow at waking up, like everybody else. It wasn’t like he’d had much sleep. None of them had.
Nolan leaned against the door, listening, but ready to step away quickly if it opened. “Major? Are you okay in there?”
He grabbed the door handle, and then stopped. Now is not the time to get sloppy, he thought, and reached for his side arm. He hesitated again, but then decided it was better to be safe. He was sure the Major would understand. He drew the weapon, cocked it, and held it at his waist as he turned the handle. The door swung open, and Nolan peered inside, slowly raised the gun, and gasped, unable to process the scene before him.
His stomach lurched as he saw the vile mess splashed across the floor. Black gunk, which looked like thick ink or tar, had spilled across a wide area near the bed. There were dark-red smears across the walls and the bed covers, and even the bars on the windows. The reek was so powerful that Nolan had to take a step back as he involuntarily lifted his free hand to his mouth, gagging.
And then a dark flash of movement shot from the other side of the room, leaping up from behind the bed. A pale and blood-smeared version of the Major leapt toward the door at terrifying speed. Nolan’s heart jumped, but he still raised his weapon up to level, aiming for the head, as the dead man bolted toward him.
When Grews was only inches away, the gun went off, but at the same time the racing creature slipped on the blood-slick floor and slid forward, slamming into the door. The shot went high, blowing out one of the windows directly across the room.
Nolan stepped back, shouting, and hearing echoing shouts from the level below. He depressed his weapon toward the flailing body, and fired again, as it scrambled toward him. His second shot hit, but only blasted a hole in the zombie’s shoulder, as it rose and slammed into him.
He felt a lashing of sharp pain across his throat as he was knocked backward and tumbled over the railing, falling through open air, and finally slamming into the wire mesh, put there to stop prisoners throwing objects or themselves onto the ground below.
The air was knocked out of him and he felt his weapon fall from his grasp as he hit, and then he lost consciousness and didn’t even feel the thumping of his carotid artery as the gash in his throat, torn out by the palsied fingers of the now undead Grews, poured the life from his body. And he was insensible to it when Grews landed half on top him, after having followed him over the railing and down.
The corpse of Major Grews didn’t stop when it rolled onto the mesh beside the dy
ing security guard. Instantly, he leapt up and off it, then blasted across the gap to the second-floor deck, and raced at two other guards who were trying to bring their weapons to bear. They both got shots off, but Grews had broken a leg in the fall, which caused him to run even less like a human normally would. Instead he lurched wildly, head lolling from side to side – but still moving much faster than any living man. He slammed into both guards as their rounds went through non-vital regions, knocking them down and stunning them long enough that it was already too late for them to fight back.
The last of the four guards on this block, on the bottom floor, managed to reach the alarm box at the foot of the stairs. He brought his fist up and slammed it forward, but was distracted by movement to his left, and missed the alarm entirely. He spun to face the abomination racing toward him at a speed he had never seen anything move, alive or dead. Half a beat later, as he struggled to unholster and raise his weapon, the one-time commander of the ground forces in the south violently body-checked him and bit into his neck, tearing a chunk of flesh away, even as he was already moving on.
Grews was nearly at the open doors at the end of the hall by the time the last guard hit the ground. The dying man grasped at his throat and tried to stand to reach the alarm, but passed out while still on the floor… as Grews exited and raced to where his instincts called him.
Another dormitory, just fifty yards away.
Knife to a Gunfight
JFK - CIC
“Where’s the Washington?” Drake asked Campbell, referring to the carrier’s escort sub. “And I mean, right this second.”
“You sure you want that on the big board?” The location of the sub at any given point in time was highly classified.
“Yeah. Do it.”
Campbell leaned around a subordinate at his station, logged him out and logged herself in. A few seconds later, the giant overhead map view zoomed out from the South African coast, to show a large chunk of the south Atlantic. A marker for the USS Washington appeared – but nearly a thousand kilometers behind them.