TAGGED: THE APOCALYPSE (19 page)

Then s
uddenly, she heard screaming, and she felt intense pain and an unquenchable fury. Alexis was back in her body. She could smell live humans very close, their sweat and their stink and the coppery smell of their blood. She rose up to feed.

A thin dawn broke through the constant gloom to the east and with it the calm female voice intoned loudly, “Code red. Code red. Reactor core meltdown imminent. Reactor temperatures have reached critical levels. Take immediate corrective action. Reactor core meltdown imminent. Code red. Code red. Reactor core meltdown imminent…”

Sven, Jackie, Mack,
Brit and Dixon had spent the entire evening trying to run down the problems causing the code yellow. In between sporadic battles with infected desperate enough to attack despite their flaming torches, they combed through what seemed like every inch of the power plant. The first stop had been Building 3 to recover one of the thick operations manuals Brit had hidden. It was gone. The next stop was the reactor itself, which they could only view from behind the steel door and the eight inch glass, wearing special goggles. If they went in, their DNA would be fried and lead to a slow and painful death. They were close enough to see that the water against the rods was clearly boiling and failing to cool the rods as it was meant to do.

They had failed.

All that was left was to grab as much as they could, as quickly as they could, load it onto trucks, and get out of there before the reactor blew, contaminating everything for several hundred miles. Up ahead by the gate, he could already see figures hustling to get items into trucks to escape.

“Oh shit. We better make sure there’s trucks left for us to get out of here.” Jackie and Mack took off running for the gate.
Brit stood there defeated, hanging his head.

Out of the corner of his eye
, over by the cooling towers, Sven saw a flash of white. Bugs? He turned to see a white rabbit about fifty yards away, looking none the worse for wear from this distance. “Bugs, is that you?” Dixon took off running for the rabbit before Sven could stop him with the leash, his entire body wiggling a little with joy at seeing his friend. Bugs hopped around in a big nervous circle in front of the cooling tower as Dixon charged, then dashed inside the open door. Dixon charged in after him. “Bugs! Dixon! Shit! What if there’s infected in there?”

Sven looked ahead for Jackie and Mack
, but they were too far away. Dixon had already been scratched and cut by infected previously, and had not become infected. The infected tended to ignore animals unless they got too close. Then, they would kill or maim them, just out of pure evil. Sven stood at the door with his torch and peered tentatively inside, “Dixon! Dixon, come here now!” Sven heard a bark from inside. If he was injured or under attack, Sven had to save him. There was no time to go back and get others. “Are you armed? We’re going in.” Dixon barked loudly from somewhere inside. He was normally pretty quiet and he didn’t bark often.

To Sven’s right, an infected ran from a doorway deeper into the cooling tower to escape Sven’s flaming torch
, hissing before it fled. Sven stopped abruptly, startled. Brit bumped into him, following close behind. “Let’s get out of here.” If there was a group of infected inside, they would probably attack.

“
Dixon!” Sven continued slowly moving forward, sweeping his flaming torch right to left, a handgun in the other hand. Brit mirrored his steps behind. Then to his left through the open door, he could see Dixon and his long rope leash had become tangled in some equipment. Dixon wiggled with joy at the sight of Sven. Sven swept the torch right and left. There were large twenty inch diameter pipes with silent mechanical equipment attached, and beyond that were several banks of batteries. Bugs was there, hiding under the big pipe. He couldn’t see any infected in the room and Dixon would be growling at them if there were.

“Of course!” Brit said.

“Come here, boy. My big, slobbery, boy. Don’t run away from me like that anymore,” Sven said, leaning down to untangle Dixon’s rope leash and getting a face full of wet tongue. “Come here, Bugs. It’s good to see you. Where have you been?” Sven called to Bugs who took a single tentative hop toward him.

“He disconnected the batteries. The batteries are the backup. He turned off the generators. That’s how he did it
,” Brit said to himself, lost in thought.

“Did what?” Sven asked
, finally scooping up Bugs into his arms and giving him a big kiss. “I’m never letting you go. Never.”

“The code red. There’s no fresh water being pumped into the core to cool it. Dennis disconnected the generators and the backups and that’s why the reactor core is overheating. If we can get this back online we might still be able to cool down the core and save the plant.”

Immediately, Sven was on his handheld radio, “Jackie, Jeb come in….”

The reactor core temperature began dropping almost the instant the pumps were turned back on. Within fifteen minutes, the batteries were hooked back up and recharging in parallel. After twenty minutes of pumping one hundred gallons a minute of cool fresh water into the reactor core, the code red changed back to code yellow. Five minutes after that, the code yellow turned off and the lights came back on all at once.

“You stopped the meltdown. We were ready to flee.”

“That’s the guy right there,” Sven pointed at Brit and mimed clapping with Bugs in his hands and the smoldering torch in his right. “He did it.”

“Den
nis turned the water pumps off,” Brit said.

Jackie came over and hugged Brit
, picking him off the ground like a feather. Jeb waited and shook his hand. “Good work.”

“Where’s Candy
?” Sven asked. Tiny shook his head and turned away. Jackie and Jeb looked down.

Finally
, Jackie put his hand on Sven’s shoulder. “She didn’t make it. Come on. We were just about to go over there.”

“Where is Eve?” Sven asked Tiny
who appeared exhausted sitting inside the smoldering fire ring outside the door of the tower. He pointed toward the tower entrance. Sven ran over to her and kissed her on the lips and squeezed her with a hug. She didn’t respond but just received his kiss and hug like a limp rag doll. Portland Frank stood two feet away watching them very closely. “How are you? Are you ok? I’m sorry about the kiss. I’m just happy you’re okay.”

Sven handed off Bugs to Eve, “Lock Bugs in the top of the tower with the chickens. It’s safe up there, right?”

Tiny shook his head. “Infected got into the lower tower during the night. We have to go in and clear them out. A few thought it would be safer inside the tower than in the ring of fire.”

“
Can I leave Bugs here with you?” Eve shrugged and looked down. Immediately, Eve was flanked by two newer arrivals, a seven year old girl in a tattered dress and her even dirtier younger brother, who immediately reached out to pet Bugs.

“Help! Help us! Let us out!”

The unmistakable smell of decay hit
Sven, like a brick in the face, from the doorway of the guardhouse. Sven grabbed his nose. Mack doubled over for an involuntary dry heave.

“Candy! Candy!” Sven cried
, and rushed forward toward the cell block. Jackie stopped him with one hand. Dixon rushed forward and stood between Sven and the cells growling a warning.

“We’re too late,” Jackie said
, holding onto Sven.

Twenty or so
women and some children were packed into the tiny cell designed to hold two persons or perhaps four in a pinch, which had been locked to keep out the infected. Unfortunately, they were packed so tight that the women on the outside of the cell couldn’t get away from the bars when the infected attacked, and they were bitten and scratched mercilessly through the bars. Those women then became infected and infected the others inside the cell.

“Sven
, let us out!” A woman pleaded, her hand extended from the cell. Sven looked at her hand reaching for him and saw the thick yellowish claws forming. Her hair was very thick and full, and there were the first hint of canine’s on top. “Let us out!” She grabbed for him, nearly raking his arm with her sharp claws. Her top shifted as she did, exposing a gigantic red boil on her neck. The stench wafting off of her was unbearable.

Sven jumped back
. “Do you think all of them are infected?”

“We are not infected! Let us out!”
Someone in the back screamed. There was dry blood spattered everywhere. Sven looked closer at the woman calling to him. He could see canine marks on her neck where she had been bitten and sucked dry of her blood. There were also multiple bites on the insides of her arms. All of them wore torn clothing.

“We will have the doctor and nurses come and examine you
,” Jackie said, pulling Sven back.

“They’re all infected. Every one of them,” Jeb whispered
, covering his mouth.

“Candy. Candy, can you talk to me?” Sven
called with tears in his eyes.

Candy stood in the
back of the cell, her head down, eyes slits filled with hatred, clawed hands clenching and unclenching. Around her withered neck, hung a ring of keys suspended by a simple string. Jeb raised his torch above Sven’s head for a better look. Most snarled and turned their backs to the flame. Candy raised her claws to shield her eyes. Then, faster than he could see she lunged at the bars, a fury of snarling, spitting and slashing claws, determined to get at them. Sven jumped back. Jeb knocked the flaming torch on Sven’s head, nearly dropping it before recovering. Mack shouldered his gun, leveling it at Candy’s head.

“If they get out, we’re all dead,” Jeb whispered to Jackie.

“It’s daylight. But no, we don’t want that key turning the locks to let them out. We’ll post some guards at the door to make sure no one gets out,” Jackie whispered back. Then loudly for all to hear, “We’ll bring the doctor right back to examine you ladies. Hang tight.”

“Let us out!” They pleaded through the bars.
Two, closer to the bars licked their lips, staring with fascination at the pulsing vein in Sven’s neck. Alexis’ eyes followed Sven’s, Jackie’s and Jeb’s to the keys hanging around Candy’s neck. Slowly she raised her claw and began reaching for the key. Candy snarled absently.

“Alexis! Alexis look at me!” Sven cried
, jumping around in front of the gate to distract her. She barely turned her head. Her name was becoming a distant memory. Perhaps it was already erased by the infection. Somehow, she knew that key was important. Would she know what to do with it when she got it?

Sven grabbed huge handfuls of his dreadlocks in his hands. He didn’t know what to do. Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Jackie’s hand yanked him back and out of the way. Mack and Jeb stood side by side firing their rifles at point blank range
through the bars dropping the infected one by one with head shots. The worst was the little girl with her mother. They shot her last.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Sven fell to his butt and sat with his head in his hands.

“There’s a large group approaching the front gate.” Eve stood at the entrance to the guardhouse holding Bugs in her arms, not wanting to enter because of the smell and the shots. “Looks like bandits. There’s a lot of them.”

“They’re infected! Only the infected look like that,” Mack said, sighting through his scope at the approaching mass still at least two hundred yards distant. Someone waved something white from behind the cover of an abandoned car.

“It’s a trap
,” Tiny said.

One of them peeled off from the front of the group. He dropped
a rucksack he had been carrying. He approached the gate alone, both hands raised and empty except for a long wooden staff.

“Infected don’t move like that
.” Jeb spat out a stream of tobacco. “He’s alive, that one is.”

“Don’t fire until they get right up to the gate.
Keep an eye on the perimeter. Make sure they don’t flank us. One shot one kill,” Jackie instructed. They were all hunkered down with their rifles behind the unburned mattresses and spread out along the bottom of the tower, unable to enter the tower and get to the upper tower for the best defensive position since they hadn’t had time to clear the lower tower of any infected that might still be in there.

“At least we’ve got the lights back
,” Mack said.

“
Until they shoot them out,” Jackie said.

“Wait…
Warren?” Sven stood up, exposing himself to fire.

“Get down!” Jackie yanked him back down. Sven immediately popped back up. “It’s
Warren.”

“Who?”

“Those guys, you know the ones who beat themselves and preach about God.”

“The
flagellates?”

“Sven. Brother
, how are you?” Warren called calmly from the gate but made no effort to enter. He was dressed in what appeared to be a ghillie suit. A ghillie suit was what snipers wore to offset the form of a man and appear, when standing still, to be a bush or tree. “Greetings in the name of the Most High God. May we enter?”