Gnash (37 page)

They worked in earnest for about fifteen minutes and had almost finished loading up all the dried goods in the stockroom when the perimeter security began firing at long-range targets.  They were attracted to the sounds of the weapons firing and came out from whatever hole they’d been hiding in.

“Shit, shit, shit!” the walkie’s open channel blared.  “Boss, we got the biggest group moving this way I’ve ever seen.  Easily a couple thousand.”

“Fuck,” Carrie cursed.  “Everyone, carry your load into the truck and get ready to move, we’re leaving now.  Grayson, you’re in charge of ensuring everyone is accounted for.”  Into her walkie she said, “Mark, I’m coming up the fire escape to you.”

Grayson began yelling orders for everyone to load up and then started counting the heads.  Minus Scott, whose body was infected so it was left behind, Mike, whose body was wrapped in a couple garbage bags in the back of a truck, Carrie, Mark the sniper and the three men on the ground pulling security at the front of the store, everyone was accounted for.

Carrie and Mark scuttled down the ladder as quickly as they could and she ran to the cab of the truck.  Grayson tapped her on the shoulder and told her everyone was accounted for but the three men up front.  “I’ve got to call this in, we can’t chance this mob following us home,” she said as she grabbed the handset of the military radio that was mounted in the cab.  The Brits constantly monitored this frequency for emergencies.

“Mayday!  Mayday!  This is Carrie Downs from Pecan Valley.  Do you copy?”  Grayson grimaced at the civilian’s attempt to copy proper radio procedures that she’d cobbled together from television shows and movies.

“Roger, this is Prince of Wales’ Base.  What is your status, over?” a female replied in heavily accented English.

“We need air support.  We’re on a grocery run and a mob of several thousand zombies is headed our way.  If we try to escape, a group this size will just follow us and overwhelm our security,” she said more calmly than most people in her situation would have.

“Alright ma’am, I’ve alerted our squadron.  The crews are scrambling our helies now,” the operator said after a pause.  “What is your location, over?”

“We’re at the corner of Kentucky Avenue and Mann Road, to the east of the airport,” she replied.

“Um, ma’am…I need more refined information, over,” the woman stammered.

“Shit.  I don’t know we’re still inside the beltway…” she said at a loss.

Grayson took the handset from her and read from the GPS unit attached to his vest, another perk from the outdoor store.  “The civilian GPS coordinates are 39.7131, negative 86.2398.  I don’t have an MGRS
[28]
grid location for you.” 

“Thank you.  I’ll send the coordinates to the air field and they’ll convert them to Lat/Long for the pilots,” the Brit said.  “Stand by, over.”

Carrie looked at Grayson and said, “Geez, you saved our bacon for sure.  I have no idea about the GPS coordinates.”

“We’ve got several of these units back at Three Pillars.  I’ll give you some of them if you come up with a different acronym or nickname for my group of guys besides the ‘TP’ that you currently use.”

“Deal.  We get out of this alive and I’ll call you whatever you want to be called,” she conceded.

“Miss Downs, this is Prince of Wales’ base, over.”

“Yes, this is Carrie Downs…um, over.”

“Ma’am, we’ve got a platoon of AH1’s
[29]
in the air.  Expect four helies in approximately five minutes.  Please place the anti-fratricide panels you were given on the cab of your vehicles, over.”

“Shit,” Carrie swore again.  She yelled to each of the drivers to get the florescent orange and pink colored fabric out from wherever they’d stored them and on top of the trucks.  Into the radio she said, “I understand.  Thank you.”

“Your quite welcome ma’am.  I will continue to monitor this frequency and will relay any messages directly to the pilots for you, over.”

Carrie called into her walkie to bring the three men from the front of the store back to her location.  When they arrived, one of the men said, “We’ve got less than ten minutes before that mob gets here boss.  We need to leave now!”

They heard the steady thump of helicopter rotors coming from the east.  “The cavalry is here to save the day Jake.  I prefer to stay put and mop up any stragglers,” she said staring towards the approaching helicopters.  “Besides, depending on what bombs they use, we’re probably safer on the backside of this building.”

Indianapolis was now officially a war zone
, Grayson thought as the four helicopters flew low overhead.  From underneath, the birds looked exactly like the American Apaches that had swooped in and blasted away at the Taliban or al-Qaeda insurgents so many times during his multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

They hovered in a line a couple hundred feet off the ground facing north.  Then, they each began to fire the little rockets that were mounted under the wings of each.  This was probably just like going to a gunnery range for them since their targets couldn’t fire back.  All they had to do was hold steady and rain death down onto the mob of zombies.  The first couple rounds impacted towards the back of the crowd and the gunners adjusted until they were firing directly into the heart of the group.

The men and women on the ground cheered for their allies in the sky.  For once, the Brits weren’t an impediment on their likelihood of survival, they were the saviors, literally.  Once they were out of rockets the gunners switched to the 30mm chain guns mounted under the nose of the helicopters.  The barrels raked back and forth obliterating everything in front of them.  Finally, they had exhausted their supplies of ammunition for their guns as well and they turned back to their base and were gone.

The radio crackled as the same female Brit spoke, “Miss Downs, the pilots report that they are out of ammunition and are returning to base.  They believe the crowd sufficiently dispersed so you may proceed back to your community, over.”

“Please, tell them thank you for us.  They saved our lives.  So did you Prince of Wales’ Base.  Thank you,” she answered back.

“No worries ma’am.  We’re here to help.  Prince of Wales’ Base out.”

Carrie threw down the handset and confirmed with Grayson that everyone was still accounted for.  She ordered the drivers to take them back home and the little convoy sped around the corner towards Kentucky Avenue.  When they got on the road the drivers swerved between lanes to hit zombies who’d somehow survived the onslaught and were still making their way towards the supermarket.  There weren’t many.

When they neared the closest point to where the mob had been engaged to the road, Carrie had the convoy stop and the men in the back of the trucks took out their frustration at abandoning half a store of food by shooting at crawling zombies.  Most of the creatures were a pathetic mess of flesh, but unless the brain was destroyed they would keep coming so they fired away from the safety of the trucks until they were almost out of ammo.  Someone shouted for them to save some for the journey home in case they encountered more trouble and the shooting quickly died down.

As they headed towards their homes the undead who hadn’t been dispatched continued to writhe and crawl along.

***

09 September, 0743 hrs local

Military Decontamination and Infection Control Site #7

Fauquier County, Virginia

Doctor Collins stretched sleepily between pouring his coffee and mixing in the sugar and cream that he liked.  He’d been up late reading through the latest issue of
Binuclear Genetics Quarterly
and was regretting it as he fumbled with the stir stick.  There had been an impressive special section on
Alexandria-Collins
, the so-called zombie virus, with a lot of data stolen from the WHO database. 

Once he found a vaccine for
Alex-C
, he would have to file a complaint with the magazine and possibly even take legal action, but the author,
Plagiarist!
had given him a few ideas about how the virus-bacteria hybrid might react with other viruses or bacterium.  He hadn’t explored the use of other pathogens to neutralize the virus and it was certainly worth the effort since nothing more traditional seemed to be working.

He’d run a few calculations through the computer and fed some data into the program before he finally went to his cot to rest.  It had been almost four hours since then, so hopefully the systems had returned a few possible combinations that he could begin trials with.  Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you looked at it,
Alex-C
only affected humans.  Even chimpanzees were somehow naturally immune to it, so he’d requested death row prisoners for human trials.  Due to the severity of the crisis, his request was amazingly granted and within twenty-four hours he had more than thirty prisoners housed in individual, airtight cells on site near his lab. 

Those prisoners had already helped his research tremendously.  He’d immediately enclosed one of them in an airtight chamber with a chained up zombie.  Hardly humane, but after two weeks of observation, he was able to determine with certainty that the disease that caused the zombie plague was not airborne.  Just to be safe, he’d had the prisoner killed and left in the chamber to see if the dead corpse would reanimate like they did in the movies.  Thankfully, this was yet another Hollywood legend that proved false. 

He’d filed his report immediately with General Reeves, the director of the Army’s Special Operations Biological Infections Containment Center, who filed it with the Army Chief of Staff, General Hargrove, who then filed the report with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Thompson, who presumably briefed the president.  The doctor hadn’t heard if the president made any decisions yet, but wouldn’t be surprised with the multiple levels of bureaucracy if the report had gotten lost.  He would ensure he sent it again before he left for the day, just in case.

He yawned again and lazily clicked on the mouse button to wake his monitor from the energy saver mode.  He started to take a sip of his coffee, but stopped with the cup raised halfway to his lips.  Blinking in the lower left of his screen was a message from the computer modeling program that he ran overnight.  He clicked on the icon to expand the message.  It said there was a 95% probability that three
different
bacterial compounds might successfully counteract
Alex-C
. 

If a person actually contracted any of the three bacteria that were listed as possible counteragents, they stood a high probability of death.  Not great alternatives if you weren’t worried about being infected by a zombie, but with the possibility of counteracting
Alex-C
, which had a 100% lethality rate, he was willing to bet that people were willing to risk it.  One bacterium, C. tetani, was a neurotoxin that caused tetanus and lockjaw. The other two, K. kingie and Proteus spp., were known to cause urinary tract infections, kidney stones, pneumonia, endocarditis
[30]
, osteomyelitis
[31]
and septicemia. 

He raised his eyebrows as he read that last word on his screen. 
Septicemia
.  While the computer recommended the bacteria that could cause septicemia as a counteragent to
Alex-C
, which contained a combination of viruses and the Septicemic Plague bacteria, he highly doubted it would actually work.  However, the first bacteria, C. tetani, just may be what he was looking for.  His mind wandered as he thought of the possibilities of using the bacteria to fight against the zombie disease. 

Finally, he realized he was still holding his coffee halfway to his mouth and set it down hastily before any of his laboratory assistants noticed how silly he looked.  Then he snatched up a notebook and began to furiously scribble calculations.  He forgot about being tired and his coffee turned cold as he worked out the possible formulas on his paper. 

He also forgot to re-send his findings that the virus was not airborne to General Reeves.

FIFTEEN

13 November, 0252 hrs local

Delta Barracks, USASOC

Quantico Marine Corps Base, Virginia

Emory rolled over away from the doorway when she heard the key being inserted into the lock.  It was better to pretend to sleep than to let him know she was awake.  She never slept when Hank was on a mission, but instead of worrying him, she almost always acted as if she were asleep when he got to their quarters.  Most of the time she actually ended up falling asleep by the time he was finally showered and relaxed enough for bed.

Luckily, Hank’s Delta team was out on a mission the night the camp was overrun or they’d probably be dead as well.  That included her since the only reason she’d been saved was Hank’s charge into the camp from outside the killing zone.  The team medic was right about her feeling beat up after being blasted by the sonic pulse cannon.  She couldn’t even get out of bed for three days because every muscle in her body was in agony, but that cannon was probably the only thing that saved her life so she was alright with the pain and discomfort.

For a couple weeks the team had moved around from house to house and she stayed with them helping wherever she could.  They finally settled on the Marine Corps base as a semi-permanent home and were given a building exclusively for USASOC
[32]
use.  They used the bottom floor for office space and supplies and used the upper three floors as barracks space.  Emory moved in with Hank into the tiny room and replaced the twin bed with a queen bed.  It was crazy and didn’t make any sense, but then again, nothing did in this world.

She’d finally been able to get in contact with her family in La Jolla once they settled in Quantico.  They were shocked to hear from her, having already written her off as dead.  Her father demanded that she return to California immediately, which reminded her why she’d moved completely across the country in the first place and promptly denied the older Perry.  Her family was heartbroken that she decided to stay near such devastation.  Her mother promised her that she’d visit once the travel restrictions were lifted since she wouldn’t come to them.  That was almost five months ago and her relationship with her parents had since devolved back into their previous state of once a week phone calls.