Deadrise (50 page)

"That was almost the case. I guess it just wasn’t my time." Turner turned back to the Tank and waved his left hand. "All clear!" he called to the occupants. A few seconds later the tanks engine rumbled louder as it went into motion, navigating around the fountain to park near the north end of the mansion, just in front of the solar panels array, its turret pointed back down the driveway.

In the meantime the driver and two passengers had exited the Humvee. The driver was Pvt. Josh Irving, a chubby, round faced kid with buzzed red hair, black-rimmed glasses and a perpetual smile. The rear passengers were Pvt. Alex Cordoba, a thin Hispanic with a mustache and goatee in need of a trim and finally Cpl. William Norris, a mid sized African American with close-cropped hair and carrying a medical bag instead of a rifle.

"Norris is our medic, and a damn fine one at that." Sgt. Turner said.

The tank crew had exited their war machine and walked slowly to the porch, stretching their tired, cramped muscles. The first two were Cpl. Ted Philips, a skinny African American with a shaven head, large expressive eyes and a gap toothed smile and Corporal Bruce Carey, a skinny, dark haired man with bulging eyes and a look of permanent acid indigestion and/or constipation on his face. The third man was Commander Wayne King, tall, broad shouldered, with thick dark hair, a granite chin and a smirk of confidant arrogance across his face.

"How did you find us?" Matt asked Sgt. Turner.

"Jenkins extended the invitation, told us where to look. Once we got up here we just started checking houses. Lucky number two." Turner said, pulling a thin cigar from a pocket and lighting it up.

"
Damn
lucky number two." Commander King said in a deep, commanding voice. "The
Tincan
is on fumes. I doubt she would have made it to a third."

"How the hell did you get out of Douglas?" Mac asked. "You stayed to fight, and the word from Park City was that nobody made it out of there."

We can thank the
Tincan
for that." Turner said grudgingly, looking back at the tank with respect. "Once the battle was lost and it was time to flee, we found ourselves surrounded by deadfucks on all sides. And it wasn’t just normal deadfucks, there were some of those superzombies, and they had commandeered a tank! Imagine that? But the
Tincan
punched through the bastard and then made a path through that army of deadfucks. It was like nothing I had ever seen. Thousands of zombies and they were ground beneath the
Tincan's
treads like tomatoes. All Irving had to do was keep the hummer in her wake." Sgt. Turner puffed on his cigar, reliving the memories.

"That was three days ago. Where have you been?"

"We took the
East Canyon
turn off just below
Summittown
and spent a couple of nights at the
Joshua Ranch Golf Lodge
, holed up in a ground floor condo, getting some sleep and scrounging some fuel from the vehicles parked in the different garages. Last night we took the back way out of
East Canyon
and came out near
Wanship,
skirting around Park City all together. From there we just followed the highway up to
Kittewa.
"

"Why avoid Park City?"

"Those gutless bastards are the reason Douglas and the U fell. If they had sent reinforcements when we called, I’d probably still be at my post on the rear gate. Those cocksuckers can rot for all I care." Sgt. Turner said bitterly.

"Well you may have just escaped from the frying pan right into the fire." Rick said.

"He’s not shitting, Turner." Mac said. "You not going to believe what we have to tell you."

"Me and my men are tired and thirsty. Why don’t you let us go in, sit down, wet our throats and we’ll talk about it." Turner took another puff on his cigar before following Mac into the house…

"My God." Was all Turner could mutter after hearing their story. The looks on his men’s faces reflected similar sentiments. "What does Jenkins have to say about all of this?"

"We can’t raise him on the radio." David said over the intercom. He still hadn’t left his computer.

"And we can’t wait around waiting to hear from him either." Mac said sharply. "Those bastards are going to come, sooner or later, most likely sooner. We need to get ready for them."

"What’s your plan?" Turner asked.

"Well, it was to take-up firing positions at the upstairs balconies and have at them. If they made it inside we could clog them up at the stairs. We have grenades for the superzombies and the bastards in robes are just human, a bullet will work good enough." Mac paused. But now that you and your squad have arrived with the tank..."

"Are you sure this guy Zack is a friendly?" Turner didn’t sound convinced.

"He may not be a friendly but he’s definitely a non-hostile as far as we are concerned." Matt spoke up for his friend.

"Where do you and your men stand on weapons and ammo?" Mac asked.

"We got plenty for ourselves and we still have a dozen rounds left for the
Tincan's
main gun. But that won't be much good unless we can bunch them up. If we can catch those deadfucks in bunches the main gun will take them out by the dozens. More than likely we will just be grinding them beneath the treads. Not to mention the grenade launcher and .50 cal mounted to the turret. Still, better to mow them down with the treads and save on the ammo." Commander King said.

"We have armored vests and helmets if you and your men need them." Susan said. Turner and all of his men were in worn and rumpled fatigues.

"What I could use is a shower." Corporal Philips said, his gap toothed smile stretched from ear to ear.

"No hot water at the golf resort?" Scotty asked.

"No water period." Philips said back with flair and a smile. "We were washing our faces in the toilet bowls."

"We have defenses to prepare." Turner said with a snap, casting a sideways glance at Cpl. Philips that was meant to intimidate but only eliciting an even wider smile.

"We have four showers in this house." Sharon said as if appalled by the though of not being able to shower. "It wouldn’t take but a few minutes each."

Susan recognized this side of her mother; the stern, controlling homemaker. She was slipping into an old, familiar routine as a way of dealing with her husband’s death. Susan looked to David and saw him smile with warmth and love. Susan suddenly had to bite back the urge to cry.

"It sounds like a plan to me." Cpl. Philips said with a smile, rising to his feet as if the matter were decided.

"Sit your ass down Philips." Commander King snapped with good-humored reproach.

"You heard the lady Commander. They got four-"

"Back in your seat Philips!" Sgt. Turner barked at him in mid sentence. Philips sat back down in his chair with an over exaggerated lowering of his head and hunching of his shoulders.

"With all due respect Sgt. Turner," Sharon interjected herself back into the conversation. "You and your men
could
use some refreshing." That was her smiling, polite way of saying they stunk of three days in the same clothes without seeing a bar of soap, and the smell was in fact offensive.

"You
should
smell yourself Clint." Mac chided with a laugh.

"Well I guess it’s settled then." Turner laughed back. "But we go one at a time."

"Who goes first?" Cpl. Carey asked, his bug eyes and sour expression already anticipating the answer.

"Rank does have its privileges." Sgt. Turner said, rising to his feet with a smile.

"Just leave your soiled clothes outside the bathroom door." Sharon said. "We have enough extras to give you all a fresh outfit and boxers. Once I have all of your clothes I’ll wash them for you. Now if you will just follow me Sgt. Turner-"

"Please Mrs. Young, call me Clint." He offered his hand and smiled as wide a smile as his craggy, weary face was capable of smiling. At first she seemed taken aback by his gesture, but after a moment she took his hand in both of hers and shook it warmly, returning his smile with a beaming one of her own.

"Thank you Clint. My name is Sharon. Now, as I was saying, if you would follow me I will show you to the shower…"

Chapter 51

Tuesday, June 26, 2001

Park City, UT

4:50 PM

Dr. Cooper was fully aware that he was breaking a direct order from the supreme commander of the city when he ordered the three bodies taken into one of the regular autopsy rooms rather than the incinerator, but he didn’t care. This was the most extraordinary phenomenon in the history of mankind, and he was on the cutting edge of understanding it. That he had barely escaped the vivisection of the gestation pod with his life was behind him now, filed away and forgotten, his mind focused on more important things, like the three body bags spread out before him on separate examination tables.

He walked over and read the tags on all three bags. Two of the men, still clad in crumpled and splintered EBA had been exterminators on his vivisection team while the third was the glass dagger riddled corpse of General Cooper. For the first two he felt nothing, they had been professionals who volunteered for the job knowing full well the risks. For the General he had a smile and a laugh at a fitting demise.

"Fuck you, you pompous windbag!" he snarled at the Generals corpse, then began to laugh. It took him nearly a minute to compose himself.

On the far autopsy table the body in the bag began to wriggle.

The last of his chuckles ceased instantly and a moment Dr. Cooper’s blood turned to ice and he froze with fear...

But only for a moment, for the next he was checking the time of reanimation against the time of death. He walked over to the writhing body bag and checked the tag again…Number 2. The man didn’t even die with a name, only a number. For some reason Dr. Cooper found that very funny and broke into another fit of laughter. Number 2’s reanimated corpse began to struggle harder within the confines of the body bag and Dr. Cooper stifled his laughter and looked closely at the other two body bags for signs of reanimation.

SOP was to drill any corpse through the skull upon death to prevent reanimation. Dr. Cooper had told Colonel Jenkins he would do it himself. In reality he wanted to observe the reanimation process first hand, knowing he could easily dispose of them after they rose. He doubted that General Parker would reanimate, as there had been a large glass shard protruding from his left eyeball where it plunged deep into his skull, most likely scrambling the brain. But the other one…Sgt. Brown the tag read. He had died a similar death to Number 2, both crushed by the gestation pods tentacles. But his bag remained still.

Number 2 suddenly sat up on his table, his thrashings in the bag becoming stronger. Dr. Cooper stepped over to push the zombie back down on the table when a leathery, slimy, skeletal husk of a hand tipped with black hooked nails burst through the front of the body bag. It was attached to an arm equally withered, the flesh wrinkled and worn with a mangled piece of EBA covering the forearm and elbow. Less than a second later the bony, withered fingers of the other hand gripped the edge of the tear and began to rip the body bag open.

Dr. Cooper immediately classified it as an Alpha Superzombie; the withered, blackened flesh with the texture of beef jerky, the thin strong fingers and talon like nails. There was no mistaking it. But what really nagged at Dr. Coopers mind was
how
the body had transformed into and Alpha? Number 2 had been crushed to death in the coils of the creature’s tentacle, the force so strong that his eyeballs popped from their sockets and his internal organs had been squeezed out of his nose, mouth and anus. He should have been a blind, barely intact Beta zombie. Dr. Cooper continued to watch, fascinated, as the Alpha ripped the body bag lengthwise, peeling back the two halves and exposing its head and chest. It still wore a badly damaged chest plate from the EBA, but its head and other arm were bare, both as withered and gnarled as its arms. The head was a hairless, burned lump, with a ruined, gaping hole where the eyes and nose used to be. The mouth had suffered massive trauma, splayed outward like a starfish.

The hot, wet, musky stench of charred flesh escaped bag and with it came several of the small black slugs that the gestation pod had produced. The stench reached Dr. Cooper and choked the breath from his lungs. He stumbled back several steps, gasping for fresh air. The slugs squirmed off the Alphas body, onto the table and over the side to land on the floor with little
squishy-splat
sounds before slithering away in all directions. One came directly at him and he stomped on it with a snarl, feeling its tiny body pulp beneath his shoe. The Alpha turned its head to look directly at Dr. Cooper, the gaping ruin where its eyes and nose used to be looking at his like some hellish, cyclopean eye. The words of Colonel Jenkins from just a few hours ago echoed through his head.

‘
One of those superzombies looked me right in the eye. Those empty, rotted sockets looked me right in the eye and I’ll tell you right now I could hear the devil laughing. Those deadfuck’s are pure fucking evil!’

Dr. Cooper knew right then and there that Colonel Jenkins had been right.

Dr. Vasquez, a colleague and fellow researcher on the phenomenon walked into the autopsy room through the swinging doors from the morgue. He was dressed in blue surgical gear and had come at the behest of Dr. Cooper to assist in the autopsies.