Season of Rot (5 page)

Vince grabbed his arm. “Wait. Wait until
everyone’s settled and then explain. That way you only have to do
it once. It’s easier, trust me.” Vince stood up, putting a hand on
Martin’s back, and Martin deferred to his wisdom.

***

After Laura had left the conference room,
she’d returned to her quarters. She had faith that Vince could
introduce Martin and convince the group that he wasn’t a threat.
Jack’s reaction had upset her, but there was nothing she could do
except give him time to calm down. In his current state, she knew
reasoning with him would be out of the question, it would only make
matters worse. Anyway, she had more important matters to deal with.
She could feel another attack coming on, and she wanted to make
sure she was alone when it hit.

She took off her lab coat, slumped onto the
edge of her mattress and rolled up her sleeve. When she finished,
she opened the drawer of the small desk beside the bed. Inside was
her private mini-pharmacy from the hospital’s stores. Unlike
Alyson, about whom she’d heard rumors, none of her stash was
narcotic in nature. It was composed entirely of treatments for her
cancer and its symptoms.

She measured out a dose into a syringe and
shot up, praying the treatment would stem off the attack. Exhausted
both physically and emotionally, she reclined on the bed and closed
her eyes, wishing she could bring herself to dream of a better
tomorrow.

***

Vince waited as long as he felt comfortable
for the group to gather in the cafeteria. Almost everyone was there
and settled in by now. Only Laura, Jack, and a few of the man’s
cronies were absent.

When the room finally grew quiet, Vince
spoke. “As you all know, the man beside me is Martin Kier. He’s the
person we made radio contact with recently. And yes, his story is
real. He arrived this morning by helicopter and brought us a
delivery of supplies from the military installation he’s been
surviving in since the plague started.”

Murmurs of excitement rippled through the
crowd.

“There are a few things you need to know. The
base may not be a viable spot for us to relocate to. We are making
plans to send a small task force to ensure it will be safe for all
of us.” Vince could see the hope dying in the crowd. “Please, don’t
be discouraged. It’s just a precautionary measure, nothing more. We
have every reason to believe the base will be suitable for our
needs.”

Voices erupted from the crowd. Who goes
first? How will we know the base is safe? How soon does the task
force leave?

Vince struggled to regain control. “Four
people including the doctor will go with Martin on his way home.
They’ll stay in complete and constant radio contact with us, and we
should know if the base is all right in a matter of days. As to
when they will be leaving, that hasn’t been established yet. We
need a bit more time to prepare.”

“What is it we should know about Martin?”
Chris asked, his tone so hostile and unforgiving it cut clearly
through the others. If he was supposed to trust this stranger with
his daughter’s life, he damned sure wanted to know everything about
him. Especially with the way the man had stared at her when they’d
first met.

Vince didn’t want to answer Chris’s question,
considering the way the informal meeting was headed. Disclosing the
problems with Martin’s installation had changed the mood of the
crowd from hope to something approaching heartbreak and anger. But
Vince knew he had little choice now. Chris had put him on the spot,
and there was no way to back out.

He shot Martin a troubled glance, but the
man—or whatever he was—was too new to such subtle human warnings to
catch it.

Martin stepped forward boldly, looking out
into the sea of faces. “My name is Martin Kier. I have come to help
you in any way that I can. However, you should know I am not human
in the normal use of the word.”

A new wave of murmurs ran through the
gathering, and everyone looked to Vince to see his reaction. He
nodded, and shouts filled the room, ranging in tone from anger to
utter confusion.

“Wait!” Vince yelled. “Wait! Just hear him
out, okay? He’s not crazy.”

“No,” Martin said as the room fell quiet. “I
am a biogenetically-created weapon, created by your own government
in secret. I am the prototype for what was to be a new breed of
soldier, which would end the need for this country’s men and women
to die in battle. I have survived the undead nightmare we live in
just as you have, though I was left alone. Everyone from my
creators to my guards perished. Until your Daniel contacted me, I
believed the human race to be extinct. I was made to serve you, and
now I can do my duty. I will see you all safely from this place,
this I swear.”

At that precise moment, the doorway to the
cafeteria crashed open, and Jack, Mitchell and their small band of
cronies entered. All of them were armed. “Cut the shit, Mr. Kier,”
Jack said. “Don’t believe a word he says. He’s either insane, or
worse, the first of a military assault on this building.”

“Jack...” Vince held up a hand and tried to
reason with him, but Jack hit him in the face with a loaded
revolver. The blow knocked Vince to the floor.

“That’ll be quite enough from you today,
Vince. You and Laura may buy into his crap, but not me. I’m not
going to stand by and let him destroy everything we’ve worked
for.”

Martin seemed to vanish. One second he was
standing beside Vince, the next he was twisting Jack’s arm behind
his back. The gun clattered from Jack’s grasp and his arm snapped
as Martin turned him like a shield toward Mitchell and the others.
Jack cried out until Martin slapped a palm over his mouth.

“Stop this madness!” Martin shouted. “I have
no wish to harm any of you, but I will if you force my hand.”

Mitchell blinked, trying to process what had
just happened. He motioned to the rest of the men to hold their
fire.

Jack managed to shake off the effects of the
pain. He turned his head to look at Martin, who removed his hand
from Jack’s mouth.

“How did you...” Jack began.

“I am what I say I am,” Martin replied. “Do
you yield?”

Jack nodded and Martin released him as Vince
fought to calm everyone down. Jack’s betrayal he could deal with
later; right now, he had a riot to prevent.

***

Hours later, Jack sat with his arm in a cast,
facing Laura and Vince. His men had been disarmed and confined to
their quarters.

“Where do we go from here, Jack?” Laura
asked, shaking her head in disappointment.

Jack didn’t even bother to look at her. He
stared off into space.

“How could you do this to us, Jack, and at
such a critical time for us all?”

“Forget him, Laura,” Vince said. “We’ll
confine him like the others.”

“And how do we do that?” Laura snapped. “His
goon squad represents about half of the men defending this place.
The other half is busy watching them, except for Daniel and
Gregory. Who’s going to keep an eye on those things outside? Much
less make up the team to go check out Martin’s base.”

“Take it easy, Laura.” Vince laid a hand on
her shoulder, trying to comfort her as she doubled over into a
coughing fit. “Hey, are you okay?”

In a voice devoid of compassion, Jack said,
“She needs her medicine. She’s dying of lung cancer, you
idiot.”

Vince saw Laura’s surprise, as if she
believed no one knew her secret; she couldn’t deny it though,
couldn’t even speak she was too busy wheezing. Vince wanted to
believe Jack was lying, but Laura’s shock told him otherwise.
“Where is it, Jack? Where’s her medicine?”

“She keeps it hidden all over the place. Try
the back of the cabinet over there.”

Vince darted to the cabinet, jerked it open
and began throwing its contents onto the floor in a desperate
search for the meds. He found an inhaler and helped Laura use
it.

“How did you know?” she asked Jack as her
breathing began to stabilize.

“I know a lot of things, Laura. For example,
I know you’re going to kill us all if you don’t deal with our new
guest. Even if he is what he claims to be, that just makes him more
dangerous. We have to kill him now before it’s too late.”

“Vince, would you please see to it that Jack
gets locked away like his men?”

Vince smiled, leveling the barrel of his .38
at Jack. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

With the help of Martin and one of the
hospital’s remaining defenders, Vince escorted Jack and his goons
to one of the hospital’s larger waiting rooms and locked them
inside. The room made a poor makeshift jail, but at least it only
had one way in and out. The guard sat in a chair facing the door, a
fully loaded AK-47 in his hands.

With the matter of the prisoners settled,
Vince refocused on assembling a team to escort Martin to his base
in the morning, and Laura held a second meeting to restore some
order and sense of peace to the hospital. Jack’s treason—and it
couldn’t be called anything less—had woken everyone up to how
quickly things were falling apart.

***

On the roof of the hospital, Alyson stood
with an empty syringe at her bare feet. She had finally found her
way out. Martin couldn’t save them. No one could. The world was
dead and the only thing left to do was die. At least she would be
going out happy. She giggled and danced as the night wind caressed
her naked flesh. She could feel them already, the fingers of the
dead running over her skin, the teeth of the dead taking chunks of
her into their mouths. She spun on the roof’s edge like a ballerina
and raised her face as rain began to fall and wash over her. The
water trickled between her breasts and slid off her shapely thighs.
The end, the real end, was finally here. She hoped Mitchell had
found peace with it as she had, then dove off the roof, gliding
like a wounded bird toward the street below.

The dead ate her splattered remains.

One of them, a woman wearing a tattered
wedding dress, stood from the feast and stumbled through her
brethren toward the hospital. One of her legs was broken beneath
her bloodstained gown. It barely held her weight.

She looked up at the hospital, catching the
scent of living flesh above. She opened her mouth to scream as the
hunger burned hotter inside her, but sprayed blood and stale bile
instead. The corpse woman staggered, fell to her knees and thrashed
about as her body rippled and spasmed, leaving red patches upon the
street until at last she lay still.

The other dead close by quit howling and
turned to look at her. Her eyes sprung open once more, only now
they glowed a pale blue in the darkness. Had a living human been
able to see her face, they would have sworn she smiled.

The woman pushed herself up, and without a
single stagger, she walked to the nearest zombie and vomited blood
into his face.

***

Daniel sat in the hospital’s stairwell,
watching the dead. His head hurt from one too many beers. He’d
finished off his entire stash, but it had been worth it. It wasn’t
every day he got to see an asshole like Jack get what he deserved.
Sure, it had really messed things up around the place, and he was
pulling watch instead of sleeping because the person who was
supposed to be out here was locked up with the rest of Jack’s men,
but oh well.

Daniel wished for an aspirin, which, unlike
his beloved cigarettes, were nowhere near running out. The damn
things were all over the place, but he couldn’t leave his post to
get one.

He turned his attention back to the dead,
hoping to see one of the idiots fall off the broken stairs
below.

Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. His
knuckles went white as he clutched his rifle.

The dead had stopped howling. They weren’t
pushing and shoving each other or trying to jump across the gap in
the stairs. They were all just standing there, staring at him with
glaring blue eyes.

A sudden warmth filled Daniel’s jeans and
trickled down his legs. “Oh hell...” he whispered and raised his
rifle. As the dead saw him taking aim, they opened their mouths in
unison and screeched . Daniel dropped the rifle. It fell, spinning
toward the ground floor below as he jumped to his feet and raced up
the stairs.

Vince, who had been coming to check on him,
was nearly smashed in the face by the stairwell door as Daniel came
bursting out.

Seeing how freaked out Daniel was, Vince
grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him into the wall. “Are
they on their way up? Answer me, damn it!”

Daniel shook his head wildly and managed to
stutter the word “No.”

Relief washed over Vince. “Then what the hell
is wrong?”

“The dead are fucked up, man! They’re just
really fucked up.”

Daniel broke free and darted off without
looking back.

Vince turned to the stairwell door and knew
he had to go down there, had to see. He drew his .38 and checked
the chamber. Pistol in hand, he entered the stairwell.

It hit him then, sinking in, that the dead
were silent. He stepped onto the stairs and peered over the railing
into a sea of cold blue eyes. The dead stood motionless, as if they
were all locked in some sort of waking dream.

Vince carefully backed into the hall and then
broke into a run. Laura had to see this. Maybe she’d know what was
going on; he sure as hell didn’t.

***

Daniel had run all the way back to the
makeshift communications room.

In an effort to stop shaking, to take his
mind off those dead blue eyes, he switched on the radio and
listened to R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” as he went to
work trying to boost the hospital’s signal. His head bobbed to the
music as his fingers danced through the wiring of his radio. A cold
cup of black coffee sat at his side. He took a sip, grimacing at
the bitterness and almost spit it out when the incoming signal
light lit up.