Read Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending Online
Authors: Brian Stewart
Tags: #Zombie Apocalypse
Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (89 page)
Several people were shifting their necks back and
forth, trying to bring the image into clarity and comprehension.
“One final time, only this one,” Oakley said, “is a
macro shot.”
The next picture that flipped onto the screen brought
a hollow pit to my stomach. Judging from the gasps that echoed around the room,
others were able to connect the dots as well. The image, like Oakley had
hinted, was an extreme close-up of the drool, and the brown layer was now
easily discernible as a thick covering of mosquitoes.
The lieutenant spoke in his neutral, friendly tone as
he inclined his head towards the movie screen. “One of the ways that FALCON can
spread is by a mosquito vector. Think of the piercing mouthpart of a mosquito
as a tiny blue needle. The data indicates that each bite from an infected
mosquito carries a prionic load that correlates to an approximate zero point
four chance of infection. In other words, just slightly higher than the
percentage of contracting HIV from a needle stick.
However
,” Oakley
emphasized the word strongly, “remember what I told you about the effects being
cumulative over short period of time. If you’re somehow swarmed and bitten by
dozens of recently infected mosquitoes, the odds are that you’ll succumb to the
pathogen, and the drool that some of the ghouls secrete is highly attractive to
mosquitoes.”
My mind raced back to the tree stand in the swamp
during the Pickle Barrel hunt. Using Oakley’s math, I probably would have
become infected in less than two minutes.
“FALCON,” Oakley continued, “was designed as a first
strike bioweapon. The idea was to infect a host, or group of hosts, and then
basically sit back and monitor the progression until the infection ran its
course. Yes, you heard that correctly. Originally, FALCON was designed to be a
self-limiting pathogen.”
“Originally?” Callie asked.
Oakley nodded his head enthusiastically. “Yes,
originally.” He paced through another half dozen images of drooling, mosquito
covered ghouls before stopping at the shadowy image of a humanoid form inside a
thick-barred cage. Judging from bits of reflection around the outside of the
image, the metal lattice of the cage was further enclosed by some type of glass
wall. “Approximately seven years ago, something went very wrong in the FALCON
project. They began to experience what they termed an ‘unforeseeable shift in
hybridization and control loss of test subjects.’ What you’re looking at here,
I believe, is the first feral. There were deaths involved—apparently a
substantial number of them in a very short time—including most of the
development team.” The lieutenant flicked through several more images of the
cage, finally stopping at one that was similar to the first, but at an angle
slightly to the right. In this image, the combination of perspective and light
revealed a set of sickly yellow eyes staring out of the darkness of the cage.
“The data that we have for after that event is pretty
thin, because a short time later the entire project was shut down and
classified above top secret with the code name GREEN TEARDROP.”
“And what’s that?” Bucky asked.
“We know very little about GREEN TEARDROP, but what we
do know isn’t very encouraging. GREEN TEARDROP is the code name for a plan of
action that deals with the eventual escape of the FALCON prion. Let me say it
another way—it’s not a plan that’s supposed to be put into effect
if
FALCON ever escaped. What it is, quite simply, is a pre-positioning of assets,
intelligence, and contingencies for
when
FALCON escaped. In other words,
they knew that it was just a matter of time before their corrupt child came
back and paid them a visit, so a strategy was developed to safeguard the
critical infrastructures of our government and our society. Billions . . . yes,
with a ‘B’ . . . of dollars have been covertly poured into GREEN TEARDROP since
the FALCON project was shut down.”
The lieutenant refilled his cup with water and then
turned back to face us. “In a nutshell, that’s the relevant information that
we’ve obtained from the data drive. I plan on taking another look through the
files that we’ve been able to photograph, and there’s a good chance that more
information will be forthcoming. For now, I’ll be happy to try and answer some
questions.”
I caught the motion of Glenda raising her hand from
the corner.
“Yes ma’am?” Oakley nodded towards her.
“That seven hour time frame—does it mean that if you
don’t become one of those things in less than seven hours you’ll be OK?”
“Great question,” Oakley answered. “Unfortunately, the
answer is no. The data indicates that approximately seven hours is the maximum
time frame that FALCON has to
take hold
on your system. Depending on the
circumstances surrounding your potential exposure, that event could happen in
just minutes—for example if you get a massive dose of infected saliva into your
circulatory system. Now, once FALCON is locked on, it migrates to your brain
and salivary glands and begins to make biochemical changes to your system.
That
process can take as long as seventy-two hours, although depending on a myriad
of factors, it can—and usually does—happen much more quickly. About thirty
percent of infected people don’t survive the transformation process, and for
those who do, the data seems to indicate that the average length of time from
infection to active transformation is roughly thirteen hours. For some people
it’s longer . . . others jump from exposure to active transformation relatively
quickly. A lot of that has to do with the amount of pathogen that’s been
introduced to your body.” Oakley’s eyebrows arched as he looked out over the
crowd. “Blood type O victims can go from a non-infected status to full blown,
active transformation in less than four minutes.”
Doc Collins raised a finger. “Lieutenant, tell them
about the children.”
Oakley nodded. “As some of you have observed, there
seems to be a skewed ratio between the number of adults who are infected vs.
the number of adolescents or children who succumb to FALCON. This is correlated
directly to the time frame of their vaccination against measles. Simply put,
younger people with recent vaccinations respond to the infection more rapidly,
and are more likely to make the jump to infected status.”
I raised my hand and Oakley nodded in my direction.
“Two questions,” I said, “the first is about mosquitoes. Do we have any data to
indicate how long mosquitoes remain infectious after they feed on the ghoul
saliva?”
“Excellent question Officer Coleman. Mosquitoes are
only a carrier agent for the FALCON prion. They don’t actually become infected
themselves. The data we have seems to indicate a post feeding infectious window
that falls within a relatively narrow band, with the average being about twelve
hours. That time frame can be much shorter if the mosquitoes are exposed to UV
light.”
“OK, good to know. My second question has to do with
cross species infection. Most of you know about Max, so my question relates to
the possibility of him becoming infected and potentially spreading it to one of
us.”
Oakley shook his head. “No, FALCON was engineered to
be infectious to humans only. Other species cannot naturally harbor or become
infected with the pathogen, but don’t forget about short term contamination. If
Max tears out the throat of an infected ghoul, I probably wouldn’t let him lick
my eyeballs right away.”
C.J. stood and ran his hand down the long gray beard
that hung from his chin. “I want to know who the hell is responsible for
creating this little monster. Was it us? . . . Russia? . . . China? Who do we
have to thank for screwing the world over?”
Oakley shrugged. “It’s ours.”
The room went silent at Oakley’s two words. In the
stillness that followed, the shrieking laughter of the children playing
downstairs carried faintly into the living room. My uncle stood up, balancing
on the crutches for stability as he scanned the crowd. “Do you hear that? Those
children, and hopefully others as time passes, are both our future and our
legacy. We—each and every one of us—have one job left to do. We have to
survive.”
The beginnings of yeasty aromas trickled out from the
kitchen, but even that welcome smell did little to alter the mood in the room.
I felt Michelle’s hand stiffen against my ribs as she edged closer, and I
squeezed her tight as my eyes sought out Uncle Andy. From across the room his
steely gaze marched straight towards me. In the brief glance that we traded the
message was crystal clear—there was something else. Something that they weren’t
sharing. I gave a bare nod, and then turned to whisper in Michelle’s ear. A
deep exhale accompanied the sag of her shoulders.
Amy broke the silence by clearing her throat as she
stood. “We all have a lot of thinking to do. Part of those thoughts should be
about how we can bravely step towards tomorrow without losing sight of who we
are today . . . and yesterday . . . and the day before that. What I’m saying is
that everybody here is valuable. Everybody has skills, talents, and areas of
knowledge that are priceless—not only to you personally, but to everybody in
this room—and we’re going to be counting on you to contribute those abilities
to our merry little band of survivors.” She made a small circle through the
crowded floor as she continued. “I’m not a soldier like Captain Estes or
Private Thompson. I don’t have the medical knowledge that Doctor Collins or
Callie possess. Heck, if you stuffed me in the kitchen with unlimited
ingredients and a library of cookbooks, I might eventually come out with
something semi-edible, but it sure wouldn’t be with the efficiency or taste of
Bernice’s culinary skills. Now, with that said, it doesn’t mean that I’ll never
be standing guard somewhere with a rifle in my hands, or stirring a big pot of
stew, or changing bandages the next time Andy gets shot.” A string of quiet
laughter began to loop the room.
“Hey now . . .” Uncle Andy cut in.
“We’re just kidding Andy,” Amy teased.
“Yeah,” Walter added, “the next time it’ll probably be
a stab wound.”
A few more chuckles added their strength to the mental
ice picks chipping away at the heavy, frozen gloom from Oakley’s report, and I
even managed to add my own grin to the effort.
“What you need to walk away from this meeting with,”
Amy finished as she returned to her seat, “is the assurance that today and in
the days to come, you are not alone.” She turned towards Preacher Dave. “I’m
not the authority on religious matters either,” Amy said, “but somewhere in the
bible it says that ‘a cord of three strands is not easily broken.’ That was
good advice then, and it’s still true today.”
“Amen,” Dave echoed from somewhere to my left.
“Oh,” Amy added as she half stood, “I almost forgot.
By the time the bread comes out of the oven, all of your cell phones should be
fully charged. We’ll hand them out with the butter.”
Several cheers accompanied her announcement, and then
Walter stood and waved the audience to silence one final time. “Bernice has
just informed me that supper is going to be a little bit earlier today.
Probably around 4:00 PM. We’ve got some beautiful weather, and since the
mosquitoes in North Dakota don’t usually show up for another few weeks, we’re
going to grill out on the deck.”
This time the applause was sincere, and I added my own
in an attempt to cover up the growing apprehension that I was feeling. With the
meeting now adjourned, the crowd began to stand and mingle as Amy read job
assignments for the rest of the day. I barely registered her voice through the
dense fuzz of my own thoughts, and I’d probably still be sitting there if Sam
hadn’t nudged me with his boot.
“Eric, can you and Michelle take a quick trip up to
the tractor shed? There something I’d like you to take a look at.”
“Yeah . . . when?” I asked.
“Now is good if you’ve got the time.”
I got to my feet and offered a hand to Michelle. She
took it and I pulled her up. “Let’s go.”
The familiar scent of hay bales offered a slight
counterbalance of comfort to the unease that permeated the gathering. In
addition to Michelle and I, Sam, Estes, and Uncle Andy were seated around the
circle. Nobody spoke. After a few more seconds of impatient waiting, I flipped
my palms upside down. “What?”
Sam nodded my way. “Do you remember Wayne King, the
fire chief from Richland?”
“Yeah . . . why?”
“Last night, Walter and Rebecca were in the sewing
room fiddling with the different radios and watching the security camera video.
About 10:00 PM, Scott and Mr. Lee—they were on the roof of the store—called in
a contact. It was the fire chief. He was riding an old motorcycle down the
highway.”
“Did we add another mouth to feed? Is that what you
want to tell me?” I asked.
“No,” Sam chuckled. “Walter, Mike, and Shawn took the
Mule down to the marina to chat with Wayne, but he wasn’t in a very good mood.”
“Why . . . because of the people who lost their lives
when they attacked us?”
“No.”
My eyes narrowed and I waited. I didn’t have to wait
long before Sam replied.
“Shelter Yellow was overrun. It’s gone.”
“What? . . . How? . . . I thought there were heavy
steel doors at the shelter,” I asked.
My uncle shrugged. “It happened yesterday just before
evening. The fire chief was about a quarter mile away from the shelter on a
scouting trip. He had climbed up a low antenna tower to get a better view of
the terrain and he noticed three different lines of ghouls weaving their way
through the city and heading for the shelter.”
“Did he call it in on his radio?” I asked.
“He said he tried but didn’t get any response.”
“How many ghouls were there?” Michelle asked.
Estes spoke. “According to what the fire chief said,
each of the lines had several thousand in it.”
“Thousand?” I asked.
“Yeah, ‘thousand.’”
“There’s no way we’re going to Richland on a rescue
mission.” My interruption was cold and hard and honest.
Sam held up a hand. “Hold on Eric, that’s not what
we’re saying.”
My eyes narrowed with annoyance. I hated guessing
games, especially because lately it seemed like every one of them resulted in my
ass being dropped in the fire. I pressed my lips together and waited.
“Wayne took the bike up the narrow trail at the back
of the shelter, and by the time he got there it was over. The entire swath—the
wide roadway that led through the quarry and down into the shelter—was nothing
but a sea of ghouls, and the blast door was hanging wide open.”
I tried to recall the number of people that Ray Ingram
had said were at the shelter. It was around 250 I thought. The loss of that
many lives a few months ago would have circled the global news services in just
seconds. Right now, it was just another muted slap against our already numbed
cheeks. I was about to comment when I caught a shifting of eyes between my
uncle and Sam. My mood was rapidly dropping to somewhere between foul and grim,
and I sat up straight and stared at my uncle. “What the hell are you not
telling me?”
Uncle Andy motioned to the laptop computer sitting on
the hay table that used to serve as my bed. A screensaver of three dimensional
bubbles bouncing from edge to edge was playing, and he pointed a finger at the
computer. “The fire chief had a camera with him. I guess it was one of those
expensive jobbers with a big telephoto lens. Anyhow, he snapped a few pictures
of the swarm. Before he took off down the road last night, he pulled out the
memory card and gave it to Walter.”
Michelle and I both stood and walked toward my uncle
for a better view of the screen.
“Before we show you the pictures he took, we’d like
you to meet somebody,” Sam interjected.
My patience was very nearly expired, and I bit back an
angry comment and pressed my lips together as my uncle entered the laptop’s
password.
“This is one of the personnel files from the FALCON
project. Dr. Kenneth North,” the image of a wispy haired man with a graying
goatee popped onto the screen, “was the chief pathologist and second in command
of the FALCON program. The next one you’re going to see is Dr. Susan
Andrews-Wickham. She was the lead developer for the FALCON research team, and
also the chief of operations for the entire project. Her specialty is
nano-biology.”
The image that took the place of the goateed Dr. North
gapped my mouth like a carp too long out of water. If you took away the lab
coat and frameless half glasses, and then unrolled the clump of dark hair
pinned in a swirling bun, the beautiful face that would be revealed was one
that I had seen before. With the exception of hazel eyes, it was identical to
the drawing in my pocket.
“What the . . .” I trailed off confusion.
“Yeah, that’s what I said too,” Sam added, “but just
wait a minute . . . it gets better.”
My uncle’s fingertips danced across the touchpad and a
series of picture icons appeared. “These are the pictures that Wayne took from
the gravel hill behind the shelter.” He double clicked on the first one, and
thousands of gray faces filled almost every square inch of the slope that led
down to the entrance of shelter Yellow. Several more wide angle shots followed
the first, and each one added another chill to my gut as I contemplated facing
that many infected.
“Do you see anything odd about these pictures . . .
specifically the ghouls?” Uncle Andy asked.
“Show me again,” I said, and the images were replayed
slowly.
Michelle's long finger darted towards the screen at the
same time that I saw it. “It looks like there’s a space—a gap here and
here—that separates the mob of infected. Like an invisible wall that’s dividing
the ghouls into thirds.”
Uncle Andy cleared his throat and zoomed in on the
image. “You’re correct ‘Chelle. There is a narrow but definite ‘no contact’
line dividing the three groups, although it’s not equally balanced. The center
group has about twice as many as the two side groups. The point is, we’re
talking over 5000 people—I mean infected people—crowded in to a relatively
constricted area, and yet somehow their entire mob is able to divide and
maintain itself into three separate . . . ‘hordes.’”
The question that popped to my mind was echoed by
Michelle as soon as it erupted from my mouth. “And what is at the front of
those hordes?”
I noticed Estes clench slightly at my words, and the
edge of tension in the room was substantial as my uncle replied.
“Not at the front. It’s the back of the horde we need
to focus on.” He returned to the thumbnail pictures and scrolled several rows
down before highlighting one. “This is near the rear of the central—the
largest—group of infected.” A double click of his finger brought the image of a
beautiful, naked woman with ebony black eyes standing at the center of an
oblong ring of ferals. She was covered with bite marks, but she was
unmistakable. Dr. Susan Andrews-Wickham . . . the black-eyed lady from that
night in the barn . . . the dark angel.
“Look familiar?” Sam asked.
“Yeah.”
“To me too,” he added.
“Now take a look at the back of the left hand section
of the horde,” my uncle continued.
I nosed closer to the screen as he brought up the next
image. The picture that was now displayed on the laptop triggered a hesitant,
halting shift of my neck towards Sam and my uncle, as well as a burst of
disbelieving half curses from Michelle. It showed another ring of ferals
surrounding a partly clothed beautiful woman with long, dark hair and obsidian
eyes. Her facial features were identical to the one behind the central section.
“Wait a minute . . .” I began.
“Hold on, there’s something else.” My uncle held up a
finger towards me while he used his other hand on the touchpad. “This,” his
voice was low and curiously intense, “is at the back of the right hand section.”
The picture was remarkably clear, and the circle of guards were easily
recognizable as amber-eyed feral ghouls. It was the central figure they were
surrounding that grabbed—and held—my attention. Dread black eyes dripping with
malice looked straight into the camera, and my skin began to crawl as I focused
on the unmistakable image staring back.
It was me.
…to be concluded in book three of the Fade to Grey
trilogy,
Black Eyes, White Light
.
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Thank you!
Brian