Primus Unleashed

by Amber Wyatt

  Indika was only listening with half an ear. He had rapidly scanned down the list of names and was relieved to see that Jenney and Brad’s names were not on the list. But, and his heart jumped with adrenalin, that meant that they were still inside somewhere. Or dead a small voice whispered in the back of his head. Indika refused to believe that, and shut out of his mind the grainy images he had seen from the news helicopter of all those bodies lying in pools of blood. He looked frantically at the little crowd of shoppers gathered to one side by the police, trying to spot Jen’s platinum blonde hair. His heart sank as he realized they were not there.

  “I need to get inside,” he declared firmly. He dug inside the bag and came out with a box each of the pre- and post-exposure vaccines. “Here,” Indika shoved both boxes of vials at the medic. “give everyone who has come out of that mall half a milliliter of this,” he held up one box, “and another shot, same amount, from this one,” he held up the other box.

  “Half a mil of each, got it,” the paramedic said. She waved at the policeman and herself. “How about us?”

  “Yes,” Indika nodded emphatically as he pulled his hood up over his head and fitted his respirator. “Definitely. All of you. Anyone who came out of that mall and anyone who has come into contact with them. But start with the casualties who have open scratches or bleeding wounds.”

  “You can’t go in there alone, Doc.” The young police officer turned and shouted at a couple of his colleagues. “Hey Hopwood, Mauritzen, come over here a second.” The two policemen stopped what they were doing and started walking over. “It’s crazy in there. Like full-on cannibal crazy. I ain’t seen nothing like this in my life.”

  “What’s up?” asked Hopwood.

  “Doc here needs to get inside the mall. We’re going to clear a path for him.”

  The other two nodded, grim-faced, and they all started to walk towards the mall. All three policemen drew their pistols and checked that they had a round in the chamber, ready to fire. Indika’s eyes widened in alarm.

  “Wait,” he said. “Can’t you use tazers or something? These people aren’t criminals, they are just infected with something that is affecting their behavior and making them act like this. You can’t just gun down innocent people because they are suffering from some medical condition.”

  “Doc, I just got out of there,” said the second cop, Mauritzen. “They may be sick or whatever with rabies, but it’s like rabies on steroids and PCP. It takes a dozen bullets to put each one down. This is not the time or place to try and subdue these people. I seen officers in there try to do that when we first got called in, and all those cops are dead now.”

  “My wife and son are in there,” Indika hissed urgently. He brought up the photo of the two of them on the home screen on his phone and showed it to the three of them. “My family! Do you understand?” They all leaned in and took it in turn to look.

  “Okay, Doc,” the policeman looked at him doubtfully. “Blonde lady and the kid. No promises. We will try to taze them.” He held up a warning finger. “But everyone else gets a bullet, okay?”

  “Okay.” Indika swallowed. “But…”

  All of them whirled at the sound of breaking glass behind them, and in the crowd a woman screamed as a blood-smeared body burst from a third-floor window, and hurtled down to slam into the concrete below with a sickening smack.

  The man crumpled on the ground should have been killed, or at least severely crippled by the fall. Indika gaped in disbelief as, instead, he simply picked himself up off the ground and stood upright, apparently unharmed. Seeing the sea of jostling civilians and police in front of him, the man pulled back his lips in a feral snarl, revealing chipped and bloody teeth. Then his gaze snapped to the right, his attention caught by Indika’s bright orange containment suit. Instantly the man started sprinting straight at Indika and the little group gathered around him. Oh shit, Indika’s stomach flip-flopped. He must be one of the infected. Terror paralyzed every muscle in his body and he felt as if his feet were rooted to the floor.

  He jumped as the two policemen next to him opened fire right next to him. Blunt-nosed, nine-millimeter bullets tore into the chest and stomach of the charging man, but from the lack of effect they had on him, he might as well have been running through a cloud of blowing leaves.

  After three deafening seconds, the shooting stopped as abruptly as it had started.

  “I’m out!” shouted Mauritzen, fumbling with a fresh magazine. The young cop on the other side of him was also reloading his empty weapon.

  “I’ve got a stoppage,” cursed Hopwood desperately jerking at the slide of his pistol, before dropping it to the ground and grabbing his baton from his belt. The running man was only a few steps away now, and as he stared into the dark eyes of the man charging towards him, Indika realized that he was literally looking at his own death in the eye. He could see every minute detail of the infected man’s appearance with painful clarity; the blood spatters across the jacket sleeves, the flap of shirt untucked and hanging down on one side, the missing canine tooth on the upper left of the man’s snarling mouth, and the bloodshot, murderous eyes staring directly into his own terrified gaze.

  Indika tensed up for the impact, but just as the infected man lunged towards him, someone charged in from the side and knocked the attacker down in a flurry of thrashing limbs. Rolling to his feet, the second man swiftly whipped the fire extinguisher he had been carrying up above his head, and slammed it down into the other’s face with eye-watering force. Without waiting to see the effect of his first blow, Indika’s rescuer raised the heavy, metal extinguisher again, and started savagely hammering the infected man’s face, as if he was pounding a fence pole into the ground. Within a few seconds his target’s head had disintegrated, and there was virtually nothing left above the shoulders but a bloody puddle of gore, and patches of skin and hair.

  “You have to shoot them in the head,” the newcomer stood up, panting heavily, the front of his shirt sprayed with blood. Then he saw the police officers pointing their guns at him and he quickly dropped the fire extinguisher with a clang and raised his blood-stained hands. “Whoa, whoa! Guys, don’t shoot. I’m on your side.” He looked down at the body at his feet. “Okay, I know this looks bad… really bad. But you have to believe me. I just saved your lives.”

  “Don’t move a goddamn muscle!” shouted Hopwood. “You just murdered someone on national television. You’re under arrest.” Behind him a news team was filming the entire scene, and more police officers were swarming past them, guns aimed at the newcomer. He was tall, mixed-race with a shaved head and powerful, athletic build. He was also covered with the blood of the dead man lying at his feet. The cops were not taking any chances.

  “No, I swear, he was going to kill you,” the man protested. “Look I can help you. I overheard you saying you were going into the mall. I just came out of there. I got separated from my friend from work, I gotta go back in there and find him. I’ll come with you.”

  “Take him away,” Hopwood said to the other officers who swarmed over the man, cuffing his hands behind his back. Then he was led away in a crowd of police towards the jumble of police cars and their flashing red and blue lights.

  “Doc, you okay?”

  Indika tore his eyes from the body lying in front of him and looked over towards his rescuer, who was being put into the back of a police car, still shouting and protesting. Did that man just save my life? He said he just came out of the mall, and he didn’t even hesitate to beat this man to death as fast as he could. What the hell is going on in there? He looked down at his feet. The violent struggle had been so close that his own legs and shoes were spattered with blood.

  “I’m okay,” Indika managed to say. Whatever was going on in the mall, Jenney and Brad were in the middle of it. “Let’s go.”

  And then they had gone in.

  The ensuing nightmare through the mall was just a blur in Indika’s memory. He honestly could not have said if he had fought his wa
y through the mall for ten minutes or ten hours, but afterwards when he stripped off the blood-spattered containment suit, his watch would tell him that only seventeen short minutes had elapsed.

  At some stage as they crossed the car park before entering the mall, the same news team had attached themselves to Indika’s group and trailed them inside. Because of Joe the cameraman’s live uplink and intuitive gift for dramatic framing, what would later be known in the history books as “The Galleria Incident” would primarily be remembered for its iconic images of Indika in his orange containment suit, striding through the nightmare of blood and gunfire like a vengeful angel of mercy, medical bag slung across his back, pistol blazing in one hand and hypodermic syringe gripped in the other.

  Macy’s had been empty as they crept through it, and the eerie silence and empty aisles had raised the level of tension so high that Indika felt a sense of relief when they exited the department store into the mall.

  They had lost the young police officer outside Comfort Shoes. Indika had not even known his name. Then the reporter went down when two infected teenagers rushed them outside Pottery Barn. Hopwood and Mauritzen filled the two zombies’ heads full of bullets until they stopped moving. Indika had checked the reporter for her pulse and declared her dead. From then on, it had been a fairly straightforward run, with the two police officers leading the way, shooting four more infected until they got to Neiman Marcus when they were charged from the front by a wave of infected shoppers drawn from deeper inside the mall by the sound of their gunshots.

  Indika had the fallen cop’s pistol, and he and the two other officers had formed a line and precisely, if not calmly, blasted shot after shot straight into the snarling faces of the attacking infected. After the last body had hit the floor, they were reloading and exchanging relieved smiles when their former companion the reporter, miraculously returned to life, silently and suddenly leaped on Mauritzen from behind and started chewing at his neck. He shouted angrily in pain and hurled the infected journalist to the floor where Indika quickly shot her three times in the head. While Joe zoomed in to get a close up of his former colleague’s crumpled corpse, Indika dropped to his knees, ripped open the medical bag, and quickly prepped a syringe full of vaccine. He jumped up and rushed to Mauritzen who was clutching his neck trying to stop the bleeding and hyperventilating like crazy.

  “No. It’s… too…” the bitten cop choked out, clutching at his neck. He gagged into silence as his whole face became suffused with blood and the veins stood out like pencils on his forehead. Indika watched in horror as the man’s face suddenly went blank, his jaw going slack. Then a black malevolence suddenly glittered in his eyes and his lips drew back, baring his teeth in an all too familiar snarl. Two shots blasted deafeningly from just behind Indika’s head, and Mauritzen dropped back to the floor with half the back of his head sprayed all over the concourse.

  “Jesus Christ,” whispered Hopwood from just behind Indika, his smoking pistol still aimed at the body of his friend. “Jesus Christ.”

  There was nothing Indika could say.

  Joe jerked back from his viewfinder as if he had only just realized that it was a colleague’s body he was filming. From the expression of growing dread on his face, it was clear he had finally realized that he was no longer just capturing an amazing photo opportunity. Something bad was happening. And he was right in the middle of it. Silently he walked over to the dead police officer and picked up his pistol.

  They found the makeshift barrier that the desperate shoppers and police had made of concession stands and chairs outside of Dillards. Bodies were scattered on both sides of the barrier in the grotesque, boneless sprawls of the dead. Indika caught sight of a flash of platinum blonde hair and before he was even aware of it, he was running towards her.

  “Doc, stop! Wait!”

  Indika did not even hear Hopwood’s voice. His breathing was ugly and hoarse in his respirator and his suit and gloves seemed even more unwieldy than normal as he fell to his knees and pawed at her blood-stained blouse, trying to turn her over. Half of her blonde hair was sleek and silky, spilling over his clumsy hands. Even through his sealed hood, he could almost imagine that he smelled the familiar scent of her perfume. The other half of her hair was a scarlet mess of blood and brains. He barely registered Hopwood and Joe standing above him on each side, covering him with their guns, and scanning the empty lobby around them.

  Finally he managed to flip over her floppy and resisting body, and collapsed back sobbing in horror. One eye was gone, where the bullet had gone in he assumed, but otherwise Jenney’s face was unmarked, peaceful. A tiny part of his brain noticed her mouth was bloody. That and the fact that she had been shot told him that she had been infected and had attacked others before being killed herself. A thousand memories of her flashed through his mind and he sat there paralyzed by the sickening realization that she was gone. He simply could not believe it. As a doctor he was probably more familiar with death than the average man in the street, but even so, at this precise moment he was overwhelmed with emotion, far beyond the ability to think clearly.

  Above him, Hopwood was saying something into his radio with a lot of numbers and codes, calling in casualty numbers and asking for reinforcements. It was all just background noise to Indika. He looked at Jenney’s beautiful, sleeping face and noticed something on her neck under her hair, a blemish of some sort. In a numb fog, he reached forward with his gloved hand and gently stroked back her hair. Underneath it, on the side of her throat was a perfectly outlined, circular bite mark. It was tiny, like a child’s. Bradley.

  “BRADLEY!” Indika lurched upward, startling the other two. “Bradley!” The tears in his eyes blurred his vision and he swiped at the front of his respirator angrily, trying to clear the visor. He did a double-take and squinted fiercely, peering at the barrier. There. There was a small body with a green hooded top. He had bought Brad the top for his eighth birthday on their family trip to Disneyworld. Indika walked over slowly and gently turned his son over. There were no marks on his face at all, just a small smear of blood around his mouth. Jen’s blood. He wiped it away tenderly and then scooped his son up in his arms. The already small body felt even more tiny and fragile than Indika’s heart could bear. Brad’s limp legs bumped against his hip with a feather light tap. It was impossible that this empty shell was the same body that had been so full of boundless energy and Saturday morning noise and laughter.

  Lost in his thoughts and unaware of his surroundings, Indika headed slowly towards the doors and walked out of the mall. There was shouting and flashing lights, and a helicopter. Hopwood was next to him, yelling at people to stand down. But Indika heard and saw nothing. He could not even feel his legs, the whole walk was just a surreal, out of body experience for him.

  A lifetime of career instincts kicked into play, and Joe sprinted out past Indika across the driveway to the fountains where he turned back and knelt to take a photo of the doctor in his containment suit, framing him perfectly in the center of the double -doors and two entrance pillars, corpses radiating away from his feet, his head tilted over to one side looking down at the face of his dead son, the tiny body cradled lovingly in his arms. The picture would simply be called Plague, and it would win Joe the Pulitzer Prize For Breaking News Photography.

  The next day, on September 29th, an emergency special session of congress was called, with the CDC providing expert evidence via video link. The National Guard blocked all the highways throughout Southern Florida and at 4pm a Presidential Executive Order imposed the Temporary Lyssavirus Quarantine Zone around much of Fort Lauderdale and the Broward County area.

  The following morning, at 04:50am on September 30th, flight Columbus 754 took off from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and tried to escape the quarantine zone, allegedly with an ongoing infected outbreak on board the aircraft. Nobody would ever know. While a mob surged back and forth trying to board the plane and air traffic control shouted orders at an unresponsive cockpit
crew, one hundred miles to the south at Homestead Air Reserve Base, two F-35 stealth fighters of the 125th Fighter Wing Detachment 1 had been scrambled into the air to intercept. After ignoring all commands to turn around and land, approximately sixty seconds after takeoff, Columbus 754 was hit by two AIM-120 AMRAAMs fired by Major Tommy ‘Dutch’ Sakowski of the Florida Air National Guard, and crashed deep in the Everglades Wildlife Management Reserve with an unknown number of passengers and crew aboard. Due to the inaccessibility of the crash site their bodies were never recovered and the borders of the quarantine zone were simply redrawn to extrude out a long, thin finger that covered the flight corridor and the crash site.

  The decision to execute the rapid imposition of the quarantine zone had been in no small way helped along by both Joe’s footage from the Galleria Incident, and also the detailed reporting from a camera team at the hospital showing the effect of the infection arriving at the ER. The reporter who had originally begun questioning Cordeiro, eagerly followed him out to the first ambulance as he pompously waved at her and her cameraman to follow him. The thrashing patient strapped down on the gurney had immediately bitten him and as Cordeiro had shrieked in pain and run off to his department to get the vaccine, the press team had followed and filmed him as he slowed, stumbled and eventually fell over before he even got halfway there.

  The reporter was leaning over him in concern when Cordeiro lurched to his feet, growling. With impressive reflexes, the cameraman, a veteran of the Baltimore riots, had hauled the reporter out of the way and booted Cordeiro with a solid kick through an open doorway, and then slammed it shut on him. Unfortunately, it was the doorway to the premature neo-natal unit. The crying of newborn babies distracted the now infected Cordeiro from the door, and the only nurse in the room, who tried to defend the babies, had lasted no more than a few seconds against his ferocious attack.