Omega Pathogen: Despair (27 page)

George stood there for a few seconds, in awe of his gifts and abilities. Then it was time. With a quick fluid motion he placed his right hand over Linda’s mouth and pulled her head backwards against his abdomen. Linda reached back with both hands and gripped his forearm. Her nails hurt him as they dug through his skin.
Should I feel the scratching if I’m chosen?
George wondered briefly.

George thrust the steel of the six-inch Phillips head screwdriver into Linda’s left ear until it stopped at the handle. It went in much easier than he thought it would. He wiggled it around. He removed the screwdriver and immediately thrust it into her again, this time it entered a little below her ear. That time it was harder to push it in and seemed to change course as it went in and scraped skull. Again George wiggled the screwdriver.

He noticed Linda had stopped struggling. George maintained his hold on Linda’s face and held her head up against him. He held the screwdriver’s handle while he leaned back to look through the window. Royce was still far enough away that he didn’t need to be concerned with him.

George leaned down and listened. He didn’t hear breathing. “Liiindaaa,” George whispered like someone trying to gently wake a child. Nothing. George slowly lowered Linda’s head to the desk and looked down the hallway to his right. He tried to remember the layout of the home but he was pretty sure that Marlene and the children’s rooms were the closest.

George noticed the pistol on Linda’s right hip and took it before he started to walk down the hall. He spun around to look back toward Linda to make sure she wasn’t trying to trick him. She still lay where he had left her so he returned to his important work.

Arzu looked in disbelief. She could make out Linda’s features. She must just have fallen asleep. It was an optical illusion, she only thought she saw something sticking out of the side of Linda’s head. Still, she should wake Linda. She was on watch and that was no time to be sleeping. Arzu grew a little angry. She wondered how Linda could fall asleep with the responsibility she had to everyone. How long had she been asleep?

Arzu was already in sweatpants and a t-shirt. She grabbed her jacket and slipped on her shoes. She checked on Berk and Kayra and left the camper. Arzu stopped. She turned around and went back inside to get her revolver. With it in her jacket pocket she left the camper again and made the short walk to the house.

She crossed the twenty feet or so from the camper and entered the house through the sliding glass door. She stopped and stood just inside the house. Arzu no longer felt the physical effect of the cold weather when she could clearly see Linda and realization hit her. What she thought she had seen was reality.

The sound of popping noises startled her out of her trancelike state with a jump. Arzu looked toward the hallway from where the noise had come and she realized the sound was gunshots from a pistol with a sound suppressor.

Arzu moved to the radio and video monitoring station and reached over Linda’s lifeless form to call for Royce on the radio. As soon as he replied to his name being called Arzu said, “Come to the house. George killed Linda.” She heard him say he was on his way as she set down the radio to look for George.

The others were in danger or would soon be dead. The poor children. Jen and Rob and Marlene. “George!” Arzu screamed. Her voice was unmistakably filled with rage. She tried to hold her fear and horror in check. Arzu tried to steady the revolver in front of her as she walked down the hall and neared Marlene and the children’s rooms.

Rob walked out of the bedroom down the hall on the left. In one hand he held a pistol and with the other hand he scratched at his head. Rob rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Arzu, what’s going . . .” The sound of two low gunshots, Rob’s words were blown out of his throat with the first shot that went through his trachea. As he turned to where the shot came from on his left, the second round entered his forehead above his left eye and exploded out the right side of the back of his head. Rob fell against the wall then slid to the floor.

Arzu brought up the muzzle of the revolver and got George in her sights for half a second, when he leapt over Rob’s body and into the room Rob had exited seconds earlier. The room Rob shared with Brent. She didn’t have a shot to take, but felt some relief that she didn’t fire. Jen’s room would have been in the path of the bullet. Arzu heard Brent yell out something and then two gunshots came from the dark room.

Arzu moved toward the noise despite fear for herself, fear for her children and those that still lived drove her. And the anger she now had for George. Jen walked out of her room and looked down at Rob. “Get back!” Arzu yelled. As she spoke she saw the muzzle flash from the doorway where George was. Jen fell. Arzu fired twice into the wall where George should have been. She waited. She wondered if she should wait for Royce. She wondered about the children that had been sleeping inside the house.
Had George killed them all?
She couldn’t wait.

She moved slowly down the hallway. She wasn’t sure she heard it with the ringing in her ears from the gunshots from her revolver, but she thought she heard George crying. Arzu froze as George threw the pistol out the bedroom door. “Come out, you bastard!” Arzu commanded. George stopped crying. He staggered out of the room and moved slowly toward Arzu. George held the right side of his abdomen with his left hand. Blood flowed around his hand and down his leg.

Kathy pushed the MRAP harder than they ever had. She steered clear of most of the infected, some couldn’t be avoided and maintain their speed so they were clipped or outright run over. The cold had helped. Only a few of the faster infected were out to jump into the way. Those living infected that were out were slower. Jim continuously tried to try to reach someone on the radio. Chris and Jeremy stood behind the driver and passenger seats hoping for news.

Jim switched to their police radio once they got within range. After several tries Royce answered. The distance distorted the reception so Jim just kept repeating, “George is dangerous. Find George.” After several broken transmissions they heard Royce through the static say Arzu had called him and he was heading to the house.

The MRAP was pulling up to the entrance as Royce was on his way to the house. He changed direction toward the gate. Royce hit the brake, threw the shifter in
PARK
and had jumped out as the truck still slid to a stop and opened the gate. Royce hurriedly closed the gate as the MRAP sped by.

Royce jumped back into the pickup to follow the MRAP and noticed Chelsea emerge from her and Chris’ sleeping container. Understandably, she looked confused but had armed herself with a rifle as she looked around. Chelsea ran toward the house where she saw the vehicles were converging.   

“Put your hands up,” Arzu said.

“You’re an idiot. Can’t you see what I’m doing is going to save this world? I am the savior. The protector,” George said so quietly Arzu could hardly hear him. He moved toward her slowly.

Arzu pulled the hammer back on the revolver. “Stop now. Get on the floor!” she ordered.

Jim burst through the door behind her. Arzu involuntarily flinched from being startled. Her revolver’s aim was now off by a few degrees.

George jumped on Arzu and they fell to the floor. She landed on her back and George on top. The sound of the revolver blasted once more through the house.

Arzu screamed out, a sound of pain.

Jim had his rifle aimed at George, but Arzu had stood between them. With George on top of her, Jim couldn’t risk a shot.

Arzu screamed again.

Jim changed his grip on the M4. He held the foregrip like a baseball bat and swung the butt of the rifle as hard as he could at George. The swing found its mark, hitting George in the head. Jim grabbed George by his shirt collar and yanked him off of Arzu.

George landed on his back and moaned. Blood streamed from the gaping wound to his right temple inflicted by Jim.

Arzu groaned as she tried to move and felt the agony in her left shoulder.

Chris and Jeremy had followed their father inside and checked their mother. It was quickly obvious to them that nothing could be done for her. She was dead.

They left their mother’s side and aimed their rifles at George. Chris flipped George onto his abdomen and bound his wrists with a combat tourniquet from his vest, and resumed aiming his M4 at George's face.

Jim quickly examined Arzu looking for bleeding. He found blood, but it wasn’t from any wound he could find on her.

“The kids,” Arzu moaned.

Royce and Kathy then joined them; they had checked the rest of the house.

Jim looked up at them and Kathy shook her head.

“Berk. Kayra,” Jim said and tears formed in his eyes.

“They were sleeping in the camper. They’re okay,” Arzu said as she tried to sit up.

“Kathy?” Jim asked. His sister nodded and went to the camper.

Arzu fell back to the floor as she tried again to sit up. “Shoulder,” Arzu said.

“It’s dislocated,” Jim said. He helped her to a seated position and leaned her against a wall. Jim dug through a small medical pack on the side of his vest and removed a pre-filled syringe of morphine. He injected it into Arzu’s upper thigh through her pants.

George moaned. Jim spun his head around at the sound of George’s voice. “Get that fucker outside,” Jim said and looked to Chris then Jeremy.

“I’m the one that could save all the world!” George said.

Chris and Jeremy yanked George off the floor and dragged him outside.

“Royce, help me lay her on the kitchen table,” Jim said. They picked up Arzu and placed her on her back on the table. Jim got a tablecloth and looped it under the armpit of her injured shoulder, and stood at her head. “Sit on her thighs and hold her left forearm, Royce,” Jim said.

When Royce was set, Jim warned Arzu and yanked the tablecloth. A pop from her shoulder and Arzu yelled and then sighed.

“Better?” Jim asked.

Arzu nodded.

Jim cut off some of the tablecloth and used it as sling and to wrap her arm against her body.

Royce approached Jim and whispered in his ear, “Everyone in the house is dead.”

Jim stopped moving. The fear and anxiety he’d felt all the way to the Yates’ compound had faded. Hate took its place. He looked around for his rifle but couldn’t see it. He remembered the pistol strapped to his thigh. Jim kissed Arzu on her forehead. His lips remained there for a few seconds. “Be back in a second, sweetheart,” Jim said and stood. His kind tone in his words masked his rage.

Outside, George had been dropped on the ground and was in a kneeling position with his hands still bound behind him. He bled from the two bullet wounds Arzu had inflicted and the head wound that Jim had. One bullet had gone straight through his right side and the second had entered downward when he leapt on Arzu and the round shattered his left knee.

“I told you. I told you. I told you all. I am chosen. I did what needed to be done. I did what had to be done,” George rambled and then grew silent.

A faint metallic click broke the silence. The sound of a safety lever on an M4 rifle. Then another click.

Jim walked out the door with his pistol in hand. As he got outside the sound of two nearly simultaneous gunshots echoed in the cold air. Chris and Jeremy stood near George’s body. Both rifle barrels smoked.

George lay on his knees on the ground, his hands tied behind his back, his face down in the mud. Blood spread from the exit wounds in his face and mixed with the rain-soaked dirt.

“We did what needed to be done,” Chris said.

“We did what had to be done,” Jeremy said.

Jim looked from George’s body to Chris and Jeremy. He holstered his pistol, walked to his oldest boys and embraced them. He could feel them shaking as they tried to hold back sobs. “I’m sorry about your mother,” Jim said. He wanted to say more. Wished he could think of something else to add. Some words that would help. Something better.

What else could he say? Nothing could help it or make it any better.

Jim carried Arzu to their camper. The morphine had started to kick in. Despite her ordeal she slept, or more like passed out; the drug left her no choice.

Chelsea remained with Arzu, Berk and Kayra in the camper. The two children seemed to have stayed asleep during George’s psychotic rampage.

Jim, Chris, Jeremy, Royce, and Kathy went about collecting all the bodies. The children’s room was the most difficult for everyone. Several times their emotions took over and each had walked out several times before they returned to help. Each of the remains were wrapped in linen and put on the flatbed delivery truck. Then they started cleaning up all of the blood.

By morning they had buried all of the dead in the cemetery that had been started on the Yates’ property. It had grown too quickly. All but George Simmons were buried there. He was stacked in the dump truck to be taken to the pit with the corpses of the infected.  

Epilogue

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 1974 – Russian Federation 1991

Colonel Azarov tried to put the mountain between the helicopter he piloted and the blast wave that would come in seconds from the underground research facility. He had been unsuccessful. The tail boom of the helicopter hadn’t quite it made behind the natural barrier and was blown away by the force and heat of the small-yield nuclear device detonated at the complex.