The Fall of Society (Book 2): The Fight of Society (14 page)

             The soldiers checked his body to make sure he was dead.

            Because of the distraction, none of them saw the other person that came out of a building behind them. It was a big, crazed man—300 pounds worth—and he charged straight at them silently, forty feet away and closing fast.

            “What do you think happened in this town?” the black general asked.

            Before the white general could answer—

            “Watcher, behind you!” Arrow One shouted over the radio.

            Arrow One fired a silent shot that hit the big man in the back, but it didn’t kill him, and he kept on going. The generals turned just as the crazed man clothesline tackled the white general. He was thrown back and crashed, face first, into the grill of a Humvee—
cracking
his face shield—but didn’t break it. He fell hard to the ground, and the mad man jumped on top of him, grabbed hold of his helmet, and tried to bite through his splintered face shield. The general watched in shock as the mad beast tried to gnaw through the thick plastic inches from his face with rotten teeth and a discolored tongue that smeared bacteria-filled saliva everywhere. The man growled like a rabid dog and was about to rip the general’s helmet off, when one of the soldiers fired his weapon at the big madman, hitting him on the side of his ribs, killing him, and saving the general.

            The soldiers pulled the corpse off the general and helped him up.

            “Are you okay?” the black general asked.

            The white general looked at his suit, checking its integrity. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

            “Your suit looks intact,” the black general said.

            And they stood there, in the completely forgotten, dead town.

            “Uh-huh,” the white man answered as he wiped his face shield with a towel from his pocket.

            “So, where was I?” the black man said. “Oh yeah, what do you think happened in this town?”

            The white man was confused, “What do you mean, General Stone?”

            General Stone smiled, “I’ll tell you what happened here . . . Project Bully is a complete success!”

            “Oh,” the white general said, his thoughts elsewhere.

            “’Oh?’ That’s all you can say, General Mandall? In less than seven hours, your virus destroyed this place; these people ripped each other to shreds!”

            “A success, I’m very pleased. Now I’d like to get back to the facility,” Mandall said.

            “Of course,” Stone answered, and then noticed the damage on Mandall’s helmet. “Your face shield is cracked.”

            “I know.”

            “Did any of his saliva get inside your helmet?”

            “I don’t think so, but that’s why I want to get back to the facility . . . to find out.”

            Stone looked closely at Mandall’s face shield. “It doesn’t look like any did, so I’m not gonna worry about it.”

            “Wrong, General Stone,” Mandall said. “Upon returning to base, if I discover that my face shield is compromised, I will go through the contamination protocols, just like any other soldier. Do I make myself clear?”

            “Yes, sir. Perfectly clear.”

            Mandall knew what that meant for him. “Good. Let’s finish here and leave.”

            Stone turned to the soldiers, “Let’s move out!”

            The soldiers kept a safe perimeter as Mandall and Stone returned to their Humvee. Once inside, the soldiers got back in their vehicles and they left Piedmont.

            It was a ghost town now, covered in bodies and caked in dust from the wake of the departing vehicles…

            General Stone used his radio, “Paperboy, this is Watcher, how copy? Over.”

A reply came through, “This is Paperboy, Watcher. Send your traffic, over.”

            “Paperboy, our run is complete. You have a go to make delivery, is that understood? Over.”

            “Copy that, Watcher. Inbound to clear site, over.”

            “How long to complete delivery, Paperboy? Over.”

            “Watcher, location will be removed and terrain will appear untouched in three hours, over.”

            “Outstanding, Paperboy, Watcher out.” Stone put down the radio and thought,
“No one will miss this place.”

            General Mandall sat there looking out the window. What crossed his vision didn’t matter because he wasn’t actually looking at anything with his eyes. He was lost in the vision of his mind. He recalled what he said to Stone just a couple minutes earlier—

           
“Upon returning to base, if I discover that my face shield is compromised, then I will go through the contamination protocols, just like any other soldier. Do I make myself clear?”

            He knew what would happen to him once they got back to the ‘facility’. He would be separated from the group, taken to an isolation cell, and asked to remove his suit so it can be examined. After they discover the fracture in his face shield, they will have him strip naked so every single square inch of his body can be scrutinized for scratch or bite marks. It won’t matter that he doesn’t have any; they’ll do it because his face shield was compromised and that’s the protocol for such an event in a hazardous viral situation. He knew the protocols perfectly because he wrote them. After the physical examination is complete, they’ll wash him down and scrub his body with a disinfectant solution several times over.

            He also knew that when the examination period is over, the medical protocols will commence. He’ll be relocated to medical isolation and the blood work phase begins. Technicians will draw a sample of his blood for evaluation and scientists will do a thorough job of going over every single molecule of it. If the blood tests positive for any foreign agents—specifically the virus he created—they will administer a regiment of injections with the cure for the virus. If his system doesn’t respond to the treatments, then he will be terminated immediately and his body will be vaporized. If the test comes back negative and his blood is normal—then he will be escorted to a holding cell and kept there in quarantine for fourteen days. During the fourteen days, they will take blood samples from him for continued tests every four hours—every day and every night.

            This is what he saw in his mind and the reason for this, is was what happened in the town of Piedmont just a few minutes ago…

• • •

            His mind raced back to those events and he could see himself lying on the ground, the mad beast trying to gnaw through his face shield. He remembered the rotten teeth and discolored tongue and, most importantly, the saliva smeared all over.

That’s when it happened—

            Some of the madman’s saliva made its way through the crack in the thick plastic, not much, not even a quarter of a milliliter. A micro-drop formed on the inside of the face shield and the impacts of the beast’s head against the helmet knocked it loose—

            The tiny drop traveled down toward Mandall’s face and landed right in the center of his left eye, it disappeared with the flutter of his eyelid.

            It was in his body…

DAY 18:

DEN of  THE BEAST

GENERAL THOMAS MANDALL WAS THE DIRECTOR OF THE ARMY’S TOP-SECRET BIORESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FACILITY. He leaned forward and grabbed the decanter filled with the dark alcohol off his desk. As he poured himself another drink—John got a good look at his face and cringed—the general’s face was extremely sweaty and his skin was very gray and dead looking. His eyes were milky and dark red in the center, but his left eye was different. That was the infection’s entry point and that eye was completely reddish black. The whole eye was dark and the skin around it had black veins trailing from it, like a spider web, going up into his scalp, back into his ear, and down to his neck. It was a horrifying viral tattoo. He trembled badly. He could barely hold his rock glass and he spilled more liquor than he filled. General Mandall placed the decanter back on the desk and took a drink, but a severe respiratory cough grabbed hold of him and he almost dropped the glass.

            “What happened to you?” John asked.

            “I am…my own victim.”

            “What’re you talking about? Where’s the cure? I know you have it here, there’s still time to save my mother and Tommy! Where is it?”

            “There is no cure for this.”

            “What the fuck do you mean no cure?” John shouted.

            “Hubris,” the general said calmly. “Have you ever heard that term, son?”

            “Don’t call me that,” John said bitterly.

            “You can’t change who you are.”

            John moved closer, five feet from him with his gun almost in the General’s gray face.

            “Where’s the cure?”

            “I didn’t make it,” Thomas said. “When I perfected the Bully virus, I didn’t have time to work on one. So I gave them the cure for Project Terminal and told them it was the vaccine for the Bully virus. They didn’t bother to test it. They took my word for it. Fools.”

            “What?” John couldn’t believe it. “Why would you do that? Why?” he shouted.

            The General became angry, “Because it’s my life’s work, goddamnit!” he yelled and his voice ended with a twisted growl, something unnatural. “It took me forty years to perfect it! I didn’t want to do any field tests without the cure for it, but they threatened me with budget cuts. They wanted results and I didn’t have enough time to develop a proper vaccine. They wanted results and they got results!”

            “And look what you’ve done! To our family, to yourself,” John said.

            “That damn beast cracked my face shield and a drop got in my eye,” Thomas huffed. “I thought I had imagined it because my blood work kept coming back clear, but two days after they released me from quarantine, I knew I had it. I felt it in me.”

            “How did it get past the quarantine protocols?”

            Thomas’ neck began to
twitch
every few moments…

            “It must have found its way into my tear duct and festered. When I realized that I was infected, I panicked and injected myself with every combination of drugs to combat it. Which I believe was my error.”

            “What’re you saying?”

            “I designed the Bully virus to invade a person’s brain and interrupt their rational thought processes. It drives people insane and makes them want to kill anyone they see. I didn’t intend for it to do what it did to your mother. I didn’t design it to do that. Never in my wildest dreams.”

            “What did it do to her?” John asked with a trembling voice.

            “It killed her.”

            “What? That’s not possible.”

            “I think the combination of so many anti-viral drugs that I injected myself with, bonded with the Bully virus and mutated it.”

            “Into what?”

            “The perfect biological weapon.”

            “You’re insane.”

            “Possibly,” Thomas said. “So many drugs that I injected myself with…” he looked at the ceiling in delusion, his insect-like glossy black eye darting in every direction. “They must have got together with Bully and made a baby…they made a baby!” he slapped his hands together hard, repeatedly, trying to smash together whatever invisible thing he saw. “…They made a baby! Made a baby! And it became my child, inside of me, it is me, and…and, I’m gonna spread it to the rest of the world! My last gift.”

            The twitching spread past Thomas’ neck to the rest of his body and became mild convulsions. It was affecting his speech. “I didn’t infect your mother…on purpose…be…fore I realized that I had the virus, I kissed her goodnight…night before last, and she died today. In our bed. Transferred to her by…by saliva.”

            “She’s not dead.” John said.

            A hard spasm shook Thomas’ body and he cried out in agony. He gathered himself from the pain. “She…is, son,” he fought to speak. “I…checked her…several…times,” he took a trembling drink. “She was clinically dead in our bed and…I didn’t know what to do. When I came downstairs to call you…I heard her attack…Tommy upstairs…I was too…weak to stop…her.”

            “Goddamn you.”

            “He…has.”

            At that moment—someone let out a bloodcurdling scream somewhere out on the street—it was a distance away, but they heard it clearly. Someone was being killed.

            Thomas grinned, “Do you hear that? I’ve wondered…for years what it…would sound like…that is the sound of the end…of the world.”

            He laughed, but it was interrupted by involuntary growls and screeches, his head jolting in every direction like an insane animal. Bile oozed from his mouth and his eyes and ears bled. Thomas fought to keep what little of his humanity he had left—tried to laugh, not growl—but his voice became a mad combination of both—

            High-pitched, growling laughter…

            He dropped his drink…

            The rock glass hit the corner of the desk and shattered…

            John placed his finger on the trigger of his gun…

            Thomas’ laughter died and was replaced with a flesh hungry roar…

            He looked at John with maniacal eyes and stood up…

            John pulled the trigger.

            The thing that was his father dropped back in the chair, dead.

            John pulled the trigger again and again, until his weapon was empty.

            Shell casing after shell casing fell on the expensive wood floor; the hot brass settled and burned the clear coat…

DAY 201:

THE LAST NIGHT at THE HOSPITAL

MOST OF THE GROUP LOOKED AT JOHN WITH HATE AS HE SAT THERE. He began to tap his assault rifle again as he looked at every single one of them.