by Amber Wyatt
In a few short pages, Paul had told of an evil and ungodly magic locked within a chest, which gave the secret of immortal life to its owner, and which he would presently sink into the ocean at an unmarked location. Solomon, a strict Methodist, paled as he read the brief lines describing the final battle of the crew of the Ken Bartlett on that alien shoreline half a world away, and how an aged hag called Maria Guevara had divulged the secrets of the chest to his brother.
Paul Cope had finished his letter with a fond farewell to his family and an urgent plea, the last request from a desperate and dying man, that they inform the church of this danger, so that the proper, holy authorities might maintain a vigilant watch in case this dread necromancy were to surface again in the world of men.
And so Solomon had done exactly that, only to be soundly scolded by his Wesleyan pastor for daring to trouble him with what was obviously the feeble and fanciful fabrication of a drunken sailor. But for all that they had been separated many years before, Solomon Cope knew his brother. Paul was not given to drink, nor to fanciful tales, and Solomon could feel in his bones the undeniable truth in every hasty word scribbled by his dying brother on the other side of the world, as he sat on that desolate beach surrounded by the bodies of his shipmates.
But then who could he tell? The Catholics? Ridiculous. They were corrupt and venal businessmen; idolaters, little better than devil worshippers themselves. After trying and failing to convince various other church officials as to the veracity of the documents, Solomon had given up on trying to pass the responsibility for the letter and its contents on to the church. It had become a family secret, and keeping watch for any resurgence of this dark evil had become a family duty, passed down through four generations, through sons, and daughters and sons again.
And when the dead had once again risen to prey on the living in Florida, Mark Wilkins, whose grandfather had been Solomon Cope’s great-grandson, had known exactly what the so called ‘Lyssavirus’ really was. Of all the bad luck in the world, someone had found that damned chest on his watch and it appeared that Wilkins was destined to be the unfortunate descendant stuck with doing something about it.
Still, it seemed that Wilkins’s luck, usually piss-poor, seemed to have turned a corner with his running into this chap the night before. Although with the amount he had drunk during the previous day or two, he had no recollection of meeting him, Wilkins obviously recognized Behnke now. In fact he had applied, unsuccessfully as usual, for jobs at the UK subsidiaries of no less than four of Behnke’s incredibly successful tech start-ups. And now, after life had seen fit to shit on him from a very great height for so many years, it seems that some sort of karmic balance had resulted in him becoming partners with a man he could previously never have dreamed of meeting.
“So, we agreed that we’re going into the zone together, and uh… we’re partners, right?” in truth Wilkins was a bit hazy on the details of anything that had taken place more than a couple of minutes ago.
Behnke did not look up from his tablet as he tapped out messages at blistering speed. “No, Mr. Wilkins, we are not partners,” his lips curled slightly downwards. “You are an employee,” he tapped a folder to his side and continued typing, “here is your contract, which you seemed extremely keen to sign last night. And, of course, you will be a minor shareholder in the new venture which we will launch upon the successful retrieval of the chest from within the zone. I will explain my own reasons for wishing to enter the zone to you in more detail when we meet the other members of the expedition tomorrow.” Behnke looked up at him momentarily. “Don’t worry, Mr. Wilkins. Even with your small number of shares, you are going to be a very, very wealthy man.”
“New venture. Expedition. Wealthy. Right, got it.” Expedition? Sounds as if Behnke was already planning on going into the zone before he met me. I guess I’ll get the full story later. Wilkins’s curiosity was outweighed by his more immediate physical discomfort. He squinted against the bright sunlight and looked around hopefully, “Is there any chance of a coffee? And where’s the bathroom?”
In short order Wilkins was whisked away by a bewildering succession of extremely efficient and perky staff to be showered, freshly dressed in his own clothes, which had been brought over from his original hotel, and then sat down in front of a huge breakfast selection at a balcony with a breath-taking view over the city. As he slouched in his chair, squinted into the sun and slowly sobered up over his third coffee, he realized that Behnke must have booked out the entire floor for himself and his staff. They were all disturbingly similar; young, attractive and white-toothed clones of both genders, produced from the same high-end, Hollywood entourage factory. In his befuddled state Wilkins was not entirely sure if there were dozens of them, or just the same two or three, coming in and out repeatedly on a loop.
“Leave us,” Behnke’s voice suddenly came from behind him. With a flash of blinding white orthodontistry the clones departed soundlessly, leaving Behnke and Wilkins on the balcony. Craning his neck Wilkins could see a tall, bald man standing further back in the shadows of the hotel suite. The man was huge, built like a powerlifter. Wilkins thought he looked like someone had stuffed a rhinoceros into a tailored suit. “My head of security, Mr. Thesen. You may call him Thomas.” Behnke waved at the man by way of introduction. The man’s handlebar moustache twitched as he grunted something unintelligible in German.
“Hey! Pleased to meet you, Thomas,” Wilkins laughed. The man did not reply, just loomed menacingly. Yup, he’s pretty good at looming, Wilkins thought to himself, and turned his laugh into an awkward cough.
“I trust you are feeling a little more lucid?” Behnke asked. “Good. In that case you have ten minutes to make whatever arrangements you need to, before we head out. We are meeting the rest of the team for dinner and we will be departing for Miami first thing in the morning.
“Ten minutes? What are we going to do for the rest of the day?” Wilkins looked around, confused.
There was a loud snort of amusement from Thomas behind him. It was a deep, bass sound that Wilkins could imagine echoing from the throat of some vast creature in the depths of a prehistoric swamp. For his part, Behnke fixed Wilkins with a flinty-eyed glare. “It is already late evening, Mr. Wilkins. You have been asleep the entire day. Pack your bags and be ready to move as fast as you can please.”
“Ah,” said Wilkins. That was when he realized that the spectacular dawn in front of him was in fact a spectacular sunset. Time to meet the others, the man says. And then off to the zone tomorrow. With that last thought, Wilkins suddenly felt sick. We are really going to do it. I am actually going into the quarantine zone.
Chapter Thirteen
Reality TV
The journey with Behnke to the restaurant was a pleasant revelation to Wilkins. Gliding along thickly carpeted corridors, enveloped by an entourage of beautiful clones, with grim, immaculately suited security men clearing the way through admiring crowds, was clearly a process that Behnke thought of simply as ‘walking’. Similarly, the small convoy of luxurious limousines and SUVs that weaved effortlessly through the flashing neon havoc of South Las Vegas Boulevard was a serene and silent epiphany, very unlike Wilkins’s infuriating taxi ride from the airport to his hotel, down exactly the same road.
The short journey was undoubtedly eased by the VIP bars on board each vehicle, each well stocked with a small but expensive selection of alcohol, and he emerged from the back of his hermetically sealed limousine into a wave of raw noise, clutching a crystal tumbler filled to the brim with 35-year-old, single malt whiskey.
“Did you want to bring the bottle?” Thomas muttered next to Wilkins, his eyes scanning the crowd and checking that his men were ushering people politely but firmly out of the way of the entourage as they crossed swiftly through the hotel lobby. The massively muscled German did not even need to make eye contact with the chattering rabble of tourists and hotel guests. His imposing frame and aura of imminent physical violence caused the crowd to part in front
of him like an invisible bow wave.
“Ah…” of course I would, thought Wilkins, that bottle easily costs a couple of thousand dollars.
“I’m joking, asshole.”
“Mr. Wilkins,” broke in Behnke, who had taken only three sips of Himalayan mineral water during the short drive, “that is your last alcoholic drink until we complete our mission. We will be entering the quarantine zone shortly and, as per your contract, you will stay alcohol free throughout the duration of our expedition there.” His face hardened as Wilkins replied by raising the glass in salute and draining half of it in one gulp.
Wilkins figured that he was in no position to argue. His solo trip to Las Vegas to treat himself to a last farewell party before entering the zone, had burned the last of the meagre funds he had borrowed from his grandfather. If he had not had the good fortune to bump into Behnke, he had actually had no idea how he was going to continue on his quest. He wondered what else he had signed up for in that contract. And at that precise moment, with the whisky burning down his throat and warming nicely in his belly, he did not particularly care.
They passed straight through an opulently decorated hotel lobby into a private elevator, which punched them powerfully up to the top floor, making Wilkins’s ears pop. The doors opened soundlessly on to a marble balcony offering a spectacular bird’s eye view of the Las Vegas strip. Immediately a flurry of obsequious flunkies ushered them along the walkway, and into the restaurant before smoothly guiding them to an ornately appointed, private room at the back. They glided through a babble of conversation and a barrage of laser-like stares from well-groomed and wealthy diners bristling with hostile curiosity, wondering who the staff were treating with more attention than themselves.
Behnke ignored them all without even thinking about it. Insects. He could have bought all of them, and the hotel they were dining in, and still not have noticed the cost. Well, maybe not the Mexican cartel boss in the corner with his similarly large entourage, but certainly the rest of them, dripping in designer labels and trying not to look as if they were noting down every detail of everyone else around them, and of course, hoping in turn to be noticed themselves.
Wilkins weaved his way through crowded dining tables, enjoying the attention their group was attracting and blatantly staring back at the glamorous women on display, until he was finally guided into Behnke’s private room by a smiling waiter. He was still maintaining smirking eye contact with the black-rimmed gaze of an alarmingly elongated, spider-like, Brazilian lingerie model when the door shut behind him. He turned to see that there were already two men in the room, rising from their seats to greet Behnke.
“Philip! Great to see you, bro,” a familiar looking, deeply suntanned, athletic man with close-cropped hair and a blinding smile grabbed Behnke’s hand and pumped it enthusiastically. He had the powerful shoulders of a football player and the blinding white teeth of a Hollywood celebrity.
“Tristan,” Behnke smiled back at the man, and Wilkins realized it was the first time he had seen a genuine smile on his new boss’s face. “Thanks for coming up at such short notice. Were you able to pack all your equipment?”
“No problem, bro. Most of it we already had packed in advance for the planned date in July,” Tristan looked cautiously at Wilkins, “does he ah… who is this, and does he know?”
“Yes, he does, although not all of the details yet. This is Mr. Mark Wilkins, whom I bumped into yesterday, very fortuitously. The new information which Mr. Wilkins has provided to me, as well, of course, as the new court hearing announced for Article 7, is the primary reason I have brought our timetable forward. Please speak freely in front of him. Mr. Wilkins is one of the team now and will be accompanying us into the zone.”
“I’m Tristan K, welcome to the team bro, pleased to meet you,” Tristan grabbed Wilkins’s hand and flashed another thousand-megawatt smile. “And this is my cameraman Rob, the most important one out of all of us. He’s the guy who makes me look good!” Tristan laughed loudly as he waved at his companion.
Wilkins recognized Tristan K now. He was a charismatic extreme sports and survival expert, with his own television series showing him on extreme adventures in various exotic locations around the globe. Tristan’s smile was engaging and he found himself smiling back. “Very pleased to meet you too,” Wilkins’s hand was released from Tristan’s powerful grip, and he stretched over the table and shook the other man’s hand as well.
The cameraman, Rob, was the exact opposite of his companion, with a morose, serious face that probably came from a decade of following Tristan across deserts, jungle and mountains, to fall off cliffs, choke in white-water rapids, and on numerous occasions fight off and/or eat the local wildlife, all whilst encumbered by a heavy load of cameras, battery packs and sound recording equipment. Rob mumbled something bitterly under his breath that sounded like a curse but was probably a polite greeting.
“If you do not mind, gentlemen, I would like to quickly deal with business before we eat, so that my staff can start preparing the plane and our equipment?” Behnke asked, looking around, and then without waiting for a reply he nodded at the waiting maître d’ who gathered his staff with a meaningful glance and disappeared swiftly and discreetly, closing the door silently behind him.
“What is Article 7?” Wilkins asked, looking around the table. He was wondering what he had got himself into. Clearly Behnke and this television crew had already put some kind of plans in motion regarding an expedition into the zone long before he had bumped into him.
“We intend to get in and out of the quarantine zone over the next three to four days. Our expedition was planned for July, but for the first time in history the Florida Legislature has been ahead of schedule in completing the third reading of a proposed new bill, colloquially coined by the media as ‘Article 7’ which, when formally passed into statute, will make it illegal for anyone to leave the quarantine zone.”
“Isn’t it already illegal?” Wilkins was puzzled.
“No.” Behnke paused to take a sip from his water. “There are many strict provisions in the quarantine zone emergency powers bill, which gives the authorities the legal basis to prevent people from leaving the zone, including the use of measures up to and including lethal force. However, if you actually manage to escape the physical borders of the zone, as yet there is no legal framework for dealing with a non-infected person who has been in the zone and is now outside.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Without thinking Wilkins nearly put his whiskey down on the table but snatched it back at the last moment in case Behnke took the opportunity to remove it. “There has been a quarantine in place for years. If you come out of the zone, they will just stick you back in quarantine, or return you to the zone.”
“Yes, one would have thought so, and they are happy to let the general public assume as much, but apparently they have been waiting on some kind of definition of what exactly the Lyssavirus is and how to produce a test to see if someone is infected by the disease or is even a non-symptomatic carrier. Anyway, it seems that their patience has run out now, and Article 7 is a bill which moves to put forward the legal proposition, that anyone who has escaped from the zone is presumed to be infected until proven otherwise.”
“And it’s been voted through now,” broke in Tristan, “so from the first of May, around two weeks’ time, it will actually be a crime to leave the zone. We need to get in and out before then.”
“Why on earth? I mean…” Wilkins looked around at a loss for words, “I mean I know why I need to get in there, but…” he looked at the other men closely now; an attention-seeking billionaire, and a world-famous adventurer and his cameraman. Were they actually thinking of filming some kind of reality show in the zone?
“Bro, we are going to film the world’s most extreme reality show. In the Zombie Zone,” blurted out Tristan happily.
“Shit,” Wilkins took a deep gulp of whiskey to comfort himself. Shit indeed. What the hell have I got myself into now? He was al
ready scarcely able to get his head around how crazy the idea was that he was going to try and enter the zone himself. Doing it in the company of a bunch of actual lunatics seemed to be a recipe for disaster. “If you are on a quest for glory, why don’t you climb Everest? Or trek to the South Pole or something?”
“Everest!” Behnke exploded with outrage. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mr. Wilkins. Everest is easy! Over four thousand people have climbed it. Every year, during the climbing season, it is not uncommon for two hundred or more people to reach the summit in a single day! A thirteen-year old girl and an eighty-year old man have done it. One Sherpa has done it over twenty times. Blind people, double amputees, yes, missing both legs or missing both arms, they have all made it to the peak.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s that easy,” mumbled Wilkins into his whiskey.
“And Antarctica?” Behnke’s voice went up an octave. He was on a roll now. “Now Antarctica is a fucking cruise destination! People are tramping all over the place, posting photos on social media of themselves with penguins.”
“Well you’re hardly breaking virgin territory going to Fort Lauderdale,” Wilkins was mystified. “I mean there’s two million people living their normal, daily lives, drinking coffee, going to the mall...”
“It is less ridiculous than it at first appears, Mr. Wilkins,” Behnke smiled coldly. “Let me explain in a little more detail. Our aim is to mount an expedition to the crash site of Columbus 754.”
“The airplane that was shot down?” Wilkins’s brow furrowed, “Why?”
The fact that the remains of Columbus 754 were located not just in an inaccessible swamp, but moreover lay within the quarantine zone of an as yet untreatable plague, meant that no official organization had ever examined the wreckage of the downed plane. Emergency services within the zone were already stretched to their limits dealing with crises within the zone, and mounting an expedition deep out into the Everglades was simply beyond their resources. The shooting down of the plane had been captured by cameras on board both of the Air National Guard F-35s involved, thus rendering irrelevant, according to the FAA, any urgent requirement to launch an official investigation into the cause of the crash. Quite clearly the cause was that it had been shot down. Any formal investigation had simply been placed on a ‘to do’ list for some future date, at a time when the more pressing problem of an incurable zombie plague had been sorted out first.