Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey (33 page)

“Who’s CC?”

“He’s our lieutenant ma’am—Lieutenant Christopher Calhoun—we
call him ‘CC.’ He’s a good guy, but he’s gonna be pissed though.”

“Why?” Andy asked.

“Because I was supposed to save our last bullet to do him,”
Private Thompson barked it like he was repeating an order.

Michelle let that sink in a little bit. The world was getting
a little too real, a little too fast. After a deep breath Michelle said, “Lead
the way private.”

“Yes ma’am,” he replied, turning toward the doorway and
walking through. Andy and Michelle followed.

The familiar smell of her workplace brought a sense of
comfort to Michelle. It also brought back the recent memory of when they were
finalizing the details of their trip at Walter’s house. Andy had asked for a
quick rundown on the layout of her office.

“What do you want to know about it?” she had asked.

“I don’t know . . . just give me the highlights—the basic
floor plan, other people who work there—that kind of thing.”

“OK . . . Well, my office is considered a field office in the
hierarchy of the federal government, which basically means that considering its
remote location, they didn’t want to put a lot of money into the rental and/or
upkeep of said office. If you were to stand in the parking lot facing the front
of my office, you’d see a glass fronted space, similar to every other strip
mall division. The logo for Fish and Wildlife is emblazoned on the glass to the
left of the doorway. The door itself has nothing but our street address. The
glass to the right of the door has our local and 800 number, as well as a hand
painted nature scene that was done by the local Boy Scout troop as a ‘thank you’
for our support in their jamboree last year. When you walk through the door,
you’ll find yourself in a small reception area about fifteen feet wide and twenty
feet deep. There’s a counter that divides that area in two, and behind the
counter is the reception area where my office manager/secretary sits. Francine
Evans, or “Miss Fran” as she’s been called for years and years. I inherited her
with the office and I am much better off for it.”

“Why’s that?” Walter had asked.

“Because Miss Fran is something of a legend in the Fish and
Wildlife community. She’s been working at the agency for thirty-nine years, and
she can tell you who’s who and what’s what in just about any region across the
country. I’m sure she has an intricate network of ‘secretary spies’ that
reported to her any relevant information—especially gossip—that goes on in
their offices. Want to know who was sleeping with who in the Dallas, Texas
district office, she’d know. Want to find out who got passed over for promotion
because they pissed off somebody above them in the Buffalo, New York office,
she’d be able to tell you.”

“Sounds like someone good to know,” Andy commented.

“I can’t prove it, but I’m sure she’s used her connections to
shift a couple of grants my way. Anyway, if you manage to get past Miss Fran,
there is a door that leads to a short hallway. Go through that door and my
office is the first one on the left. The next door down the hallway is on the
right side—it leads to a small conference room. If you continue down the
hallway you’ll find another door on the left. That one goes to the storage room.
It’s mostly filled with boxes of old, filed paperwork, but that’s also where
the radios are. The last door in the hallway is on the right side. It’s the
bathroom. Nothing special about it, other than it’s the most modern part of the
entire office. Federal regulations finally caught up with us last year, and
they made us expand and update it to comply with handicap accessibility
requirements. A few steps down the hallway past the restroom and you’ll dead end
at a metal door.”

That door, Michelle realized, now had several bullet holes in
it. The sobering thought brought her back to reality and she asked, “Where is
Lieutenant Calhoun?”

“Ma’am, second door on the left—the one with a big table.”

“Is there anybody else in here, any more of your squad . . . anybody?”
Andy said.

“No sir, just CC and myself are alive.”

“What do you mean ‘alive’?” Andy and Michelle echoed at the
same time.

Private Thompson swiveled to look at both of them. Michelle
could see that he was trying to decide who was the “senior officer” between her
and Andy. Apparently her badge won out. Thompson squared away towards Michelle and
said, “Yes ma’am, what I mean is that me and CC have been holed up in this
place since he got tagged by the old lady. Since then we’ve put down five or
six more that were coming through the front.”

A lot of questions started popping into Michelle’s head all
at once. Chief among those were the ones that went along with her gut feeling. “What
old lady?”

Thompson inclined his head toward the front part of the
office. “Ma’am, out there. Me and CC got separated from the rest of our squad
during a firefight out on the highway. We busted ass and took cover behind a
flipped over station wagon. Then the smoke started getting in the way, and we
couldn’t see where the rest of our guys went. Anyhow, CC grabbed me by the
shoulder and pulled me towards the strip mall. It wasn’t very far, but about
halfway there one of them fu. . .” Thompson cut off his choice of words almost
too late. “Umm, I mean . . . sick people, just appeared out of the smoke—scared
the piss out of both of us. CC plugged it with his M4—just dumped the whole mag
on the rat bastard . . . I mean the infected person ma’am. But besides whacking
the zombie, he also took out your window. Three more infected people came out
of the smoke towards us and we took them down. Then we beat feet and jumped
through the busted window into this office. Somebody started shooting pretty
close by and we tried to raise our squad on the radio but it wouldn’t work . .
. I don’t know why, it was just dead. Anyhow ma’am, we were just catching our
breath when we saw two more guys from our squad—Remmy and Carney I think, not
sure though. Anyhow we saw them about one hundred meters away. They were
kneeling down firing towards something we couldn’t see. But they couldn’t see a
group of those things that was moving up the street towards them. Me and CC
started shooting at that group, we took down two or three, and the noise of us
firing alerted our squad mates. They turned around in time to finish off the
group. A bunch of smoke blew across the street and when it cleared they were
gone. CC asked me for a fresh mag—he was out, and I spun around to grab one
from my pack. I was trying to dig one out when I heard him say, ‘We’ve got to
get the hell out of here.’ Then he started screaming. I twisted back around and
saw that some old lady had her arms wrapped around his throat . . . riding him
piggyback style. She was trying to chew through his vest and he was yelling and
swearing, backing up and smashing her into walls. I couldn’t shoot so I dropped
my gun and grabbed her by the hair and yanked hard. Damn old broad was wearing
a wig. When I pulled it came right off, and I threw myself so far off balance that
I tripped over a chair and went down. I got back up and saw that CC had managed
to get her off of him. I grabbed the chair that I had tripped over and smashed
her in the face. CC jumped for his gun and finished the bitch off . . . ma’am.”

“I thought you said he was out of ammo,” Andy said.

“Yes sir, but that didn’t stop him from beating her brains
out with the M4. He was seriously pissed off . . . holding the barrel like a
baseball bat and smashing her over and over again. It was . . . intense.”

Little old lady, wig, in this office—it had to be Miss Fran. Michelle
looked down the hallway; the main overhead lights were off but the “emergency
exit” and power failure lights were both on, providing a dim but shadowy view. She
could see that the doorway between the reception area and this hall was shut. It
was just a plain wooden “interior” door though, no real security if anything
wanted to get through it. Hopefully nothing would. Besides, she wouldn’t need
to go out there anyhow—everything she was after was back here. First things
first though. “Let’s go see your lieutenant,” Michelle said.

Thompson hesitated. “Ma’am, that room ain’t lit up too well,
and CC, well, he was really hot the last time I checked him . . . a couple minutes
before you opened the back door. I ain’t afraid to go there . . . matter of
fact it should be me that goes first anyhow, but if he’s . . . one of them . .
. I’d rather go in with a gun that has some ammo. Just sayin’.”

It was pretty sound logic to Michelle. She handed him her
shotgun. “You know how this thing works?”

“Damn straight,” he huffed.

Andy nudged Michelle and said, “You want to loan the boy your
flashlight?”

Shit

She had started to instinctively reach down toward her belt
ring, realizing almost immediately that she had left her Maglite out in the
truck. It was a mistake—something she should have caught. Michelle mentally
cursed herself again and briefly considered going out to get it, but dismissed
that thought in favor of the “once and done” philosophy. Get in, get out, get
home.

Andy nudged Michelle again. “Here . . . give him mine to
use.”

She took the offered light and handed it to Private Thompson,
who turned it on and held it sandwiched between his left palm and the slide of
the shotgun. He turned and walked slowly up the hall, passing the restroom on
the left and the storage door on the right. Michelle and Andy followed. A few
more steps and they were even with the conference room door.

Thompson called out, “Yo CC . . . you OK?”

There was no answer.

“Hey Lieutenant . . . Calhoun . . . we got some friends here,
we’re going to get you to medical, OK?”

Silence.

Thompson lowered his flashlight hand to the doorknob, giving
it a slight turn to unlatch it before resuming a two handed grip on the shotgun.
Michelle had her Glock in her hands—she didn’t even remember drawing it. Thompson
used his left foot to push the door open, directing the light into the conference
room.

“CC, it’s Thompson, you OK?”

Nothing.

Michelle heard the distant chatter of small arms fire from
somewhere outside. It rapidly dropped off, leaving them again in near
silence—punctuated only by the hum of the emergency lighting above their heads and
quickened pace of her own heartbeat. It seemed the loudest of all.

She watched as Thompson stepped into the conference room; saw
the changing illumination as he swept the light across the area beyond the
door.

“Andy, watch the hallway OK?”

Andy nodded, and Michelle followed Thompson into the room. They
found CC crumpled up in the back right corner; his smashed up and bent M4 across
his lap. He wasn’t moving. Thompson approached closer, and his light clearly
illuminated the now familiar gray tone of CC’s skin.

“Thompson, be careful.”

Thompson stopped about two feet away and leaned forward,
nudging the lieutenant’s shoulder with the barrel of Michelle’s shotgun. Nothing
happened. He did it again, softly calling out, “Hey Chris . . . wake up man, we’re
going to get you to medical. C’mon LT, get up.”

Lieutenant Calhoun didn’t move, and Michelle watched as
Thompson slowly reached down with a bare hand and touched the side of his
lieutenant’s face.

A few seconds later Thompson seemed to relax a little,
withdrawing his hand and taking a deep breath. “He’s gone. For good I mean. He
ain’t hot anymore.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That’s what the colonel told us. Well, the medical guy that
was with the colonel when we had our pre-deployment briefing this morning.”

“Pretend I wasn’t at that meeting, because I wasn’t . . . and
tell me—quickly—what you mean about being hot.”

“Ma’am, this morning before my squad deployed, Colonel Jordan
had some medical guy tell us what we might expect to find if people were
infected. A lot of it seemed like they didn’t know jack shit and were just
making stuff up to pacify us and get our asses moving out the door. One of the
things though, was what they ‘thought’ about the progression of the infection. Everybody
that gets sick gets really hot, and then the bug either kills you and you cool
off, or you become one of those . . . ‘things’ and try and chow down on
everybody else. If that happens, they said you’d stay hot. I don’t know though,
seems like a lot of bullshit to me.”

“Everything OK in there?” Andy’s whispered voice pierced the
silence.

“Yeah, we’re coming out.”

Michelle backed out into the hall and filled Andy in on what
had happened, as well as mentioning what Thompson had said about bodies staying
hot or cooling off.

“Alright, good to know. Now let’s do what we came here to do
and get out,” Andy said.

“Back there,” Michelle pointed towards the door to the
storage room, “that’s where the radios are . . . and some other things.”

Michelle padded past Andy and stopped at the heavy, single
door. Peel and stick lettering spelled out the word “storage” in all capital
letters. Smiling to herself, Michelle thought about the memo she had received
several months ago. In essence, it stated that all governmental offices were required
to comply with federal accounting standards, which included labeling and
tracking of all government property. Miss Fran, after firing off a couple
chastising emails to the higher ups had then proceeded to clean out the local
hardware store of all sticky letters. When she was done, almost everything in
Michelle’s office had its name spelled out in gold, two inch high mailbox
letters. Garbage cans, file cabinets, computers . . . even the toilet in the
restroom had been labeled, although her secretary had apparently run out of the
letter “E.” The word “toilet” had been spelled using masking tape and permanent
marker in place of the missing vowel. Michelle had gone along with the joke for
awhile, politely requesting that Miss Fran remove all but the most practical
ones a few weeks later.