The Living Dead Series (Book 2): World Without End (14 page)

Before they could respond, whoever he had been talking to came back on the line. From the frown on his face when he hung up, they knew the news wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

Bea asked him, “What’s wrong?”

“A colleague of mine is stranded in the mountains and needs a lift back here. He’s pretty sure his wife is infected and he wants medical attention. I can’t get approval for the transport so they-”

Dr. Osawy interrupted, “She’s infected? What are her injuries?”

“I don’t know all the details but it sounds like she was just bitten. Sorry to be rude but I’ve got to keep trying so if you don’t mind I’ve got more calls to make.”

“Don’t bother. I’ve got it.” The doctor pulled out her phone. “Now, who was asking for transport approval?”

~

Dr. Osawy knew all the right administrative buttons to push and less than four hours later the military transport helicopter made a successful landing outside the White House complex. Security was expecting wounded and a medical team had already assembled to meet them but there was a hitch. The infected woman’s husband refused to relinquish her to them until he had a thorough discussion with her doctor. He had gathered that they intended to try an experimental therapy and he wanted details. David accompanied Dr. Osawy to meet with Ian Dare.

Ian looked tired and somehow older than the last time David had seen him just a few days ago. He carried an unconscious woman whose long, dark hair hung loose in a shining fall across his arm and shoulder. Someone had gagged her with a cloth. Three small children, one barely a toddler, walked behind them. Their hollow eyes reminded David of pictures of children from a war zone.

“Where is the bite?”

Ian placed his wife on the stretcher and the doctor bent over her. She had a small bite on her left wrist and some cuts in her forearm. Her skin was cold to the touch and her hands were bound with cords. Listening to her chest with a stethoscope, Dr. Osawy wasn’t certain she even heard a heartbeat. Possibly a very faint one. There were no indications of necrosis in the skin around the bite. Looking for other injuries she started to cut her out of her clothing then stopped. All three children stood close by looking at her solemnly. She knelt down in front of them.

“Hi. I’m going to be your mom’s doctor and try to get her well. If it’s okay with you and your dad, we’re going to take her to a room where we will give her medicine and let her rest. We’re going to try very hard to make her better.”

The little girl spoke. “I can’t swallow pills yet but my mom can. Are you going to give her pills?”

“What we’ll probably do is put the medicine right into her veins so it will start working even faster. But we need to do it soon. Is that okay, Dad?” She looked directly at Ian.

“I want to know more.”

“Come with me and I’ll explain it along the way. Every second counts.”

An orderly took charge of the children and the rest of the team went into action, cutting the woman out of her clothes, setting up an IV drip and readying the malaria sample for injection. Dr. Osawy explained the basic concept of the therapy and the risks involved.

“She has a very recently healed wound on the side of her abdomen. Do you know how that happened?”

“No, we had been apart for several days. She would have told me if she had been bitten previously though.”

Other than this, is she healthy? No heart problems, diabetes, any other chronic conditions?”

“No, none. She’s always been very healthy.”

“Good. That increases the likelihood of her surviving this. I don’t want to mislead you. This is extremely experimental and she may very well die but I have a good feeling about this patient. Now if you don’t mind, we need to get started. I’m sure you want to check on the children. We’ll notify you if anything unusual occurs but I doubt anything will happen for several hours. Right now let’s just be optimistic for our patient.”

“Virginia.” Ian said. He wanted to make sure the doctor understood she was dealing with a human being, not just a body on a table.

“I beg your pardon?” Dr. Osawy said.

“Her name is Virginia.”

R
oughly three thousand miles to the west, off the coast of southern California three enormous container ships floated ponderously in a rough sea. Markings and flags identified them as Chinese, unremarkable in the polyglot port of Long Beach.

Chinese cargo ships were all designed to be convertible into troop transport ships with a minimum of fuss. The government of the People’s Republic of China believed that commerce and warfare were interchangeable weapons in the quest for world domination and their ships reflected that philosophy.

Attempts to raise the Port Authority by radio failed and permission to dock, in effect, denied. Two of the ship’s captains communicated on a hidden frequency. The third ship was not responding. The other two captains speculated grimly on the possible cause.

“…of course it was. I told them the screenings should be more rigorous. The situation on my boat could have spiraled out of control had I not the luck to contain the infected early,” said Captain Tao Zhijun.

“How many men were lost?” asked Captain Xianmin.

“Twenty-one total. Three soldiers turned and attacked in the mess hall the first night infecting eighteen men who were placed in quarantine. All eighteen showed almost immediate signs of infection and chose suicide. We were very fortunate there weren’t more.”

“What do you think has happened to the Admiral?” asked Xianmin.

“The ship is on auto-pilot. I think we both know what has happened to the Admiral.” Captain Zhijun’s tone was clipped. Yesterday he received a transmission from an officer on the Admiral’s ship that indicated the virus was aboard. Something had gone very wrong. They had been at sea and running silent for several days.

“I’m going above now to see if we can get a visual with the night vision scope.”

In reality he didn’t have to go on deck to see. He simply desired to feel the ship rocking under him and breathe the bracing, salty air. The sea spray stung his face and he squinted to see through the goggles but with no luck. They were too far out to see anything happening near the docks. To his left dark figures roamed the deck of the Admiral’s ship.

Once he was absolutely certain the ship was infected, he intended to propose they direct it toward the port and let it crash. The idea of unleashing thousands of infected on the decadent U.S. city appealed to him in a way he didn’t bother to question.

Captain Zhijun had despised America for almost as long as he could remember. His father was an Olympic athlete who won two gold medals at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and when word came back to their small village both he and his mother were honored and admired. Zhijun could still remember that day at school when the news came. His teacher and all his classmates bowed respectfully and thanked his family for bringing such honor to their village. He remembered a feeling of pride so strong his chest felt as if it burned.

Then word came, whispered at first but later spoken tauntingly in the school yard that his father had defected to the Americans, requesting political asylum. His mother, her face filled with anguish, confirmed the stories.

Thereafter, Zhijun never again spoke his father’s name. He and his mother and grandparents were the village pariahs, living embodiments of shame.

Zhijun spent his life from then on trying to obliterate that shame. His grades in school were the highest in all of the eastern provinces and his scores at the Naval Academy were nothing short of stellar as were the political instincts and skills that led him to this command.

Tonight he felt as if he had finally reached a time and place he had been working toward for a long time. He knew his mission was to assess the situation and act according to the commands sent from Beijing. He was glad he was here to be sure that the United States felt the full wrath and power of the Chinese dragon.

V
irginia floated upward through waves of cold. Cold sheets of ice enclosed her then cold razor-thin slivers of ice burned as they fell away. She reached the surface and felt a cold burn in her chest, a burn that changed to a constricting band of fire from which she struggled to break free. Her body thrashed and jerked.

“She’s convulsing now.” Outside, in the hallway and observing through the glass, Dr. Osawy confirmed the time and made a note on her chart.

“How much longer will this go on?” Ian had trouble watching but didn’t want to leave.

“No way to know. Normally the brain regulates temperature and won’t let it go above 106 Fahrenheit. The longer she can maintain that high temperature the more of the virus will die.”

Just as she reached the end of her strength the band snapped and she fell backward into a warm flowing river of lava that didn’t burn but embraced her, taking her somewhere she had forgotten even existed. The pain receded and she felt the freshness of air filling her lungs. The awful, frozen emptiness was gone.

Dr. Osawy checked the monitor and frowned. “Her temperature is dropping too soon. We need to get it back up again. I want more blankets and she needs to be bundled tightly.”

The convulsions began again, less visible this time because they had swaddled her so tightly. Her temperature rose and held steady at 105.

“It’s going to be a long night, Mr. Dare. Why don’t you try to rest?” When he didn’t respond, just continued to stare through the glass, she placed a hand briefly on his shoulder and left.

Ian knew he was being rude but he couldn’t summon the strength to care. Virginia’s body bucked once, twice more, then lay still. He thought he saw the blankets rise and fall in a breathing rhythm but if so it was very slight. She must be breathing though.

He leaned back against the cold, tiled wall and slowly slid down to a crouch. The nightmare quality of the last few days had only altered, not gone away and he re-lived the days in flashbacks that kept flickering through his head.

The nightmare scramble to find a way out of the city and get back home to his family. The long trek up into the mountains only to find his wife gone and his town and his house abandoned to the foraging dead. Losing his parents then finding the children again only to have this happen.

He heard footsteps and looked up. David came down the hallway looking grim. There were many possible reasons for that but Ian was pretty sure he knew what was on his mind. He stood. David pulled him aside, away from the guard station.

“What the hell, Ian? You pulled a gun on the pilot? He could have shot you dead on the spot for that and probably should have. What were you thinking?”

“He wasn’t going to take the kids, David! I couldn’t leave them behind. The whole region is infested; the groundwater is becoming saturated with the runoff of the piles of rotting corpses. Who would take care of three children when they can barely keep themselves alive?”

“Pulling a gun and threatening to shoot the pilot of the only feasible transport out of there might have gotten all of you killed. And since when do you have three kids? Last time I saw the pictures on your desk you had two.”

“Virginia found Daniel, the five year old, somewhere along the way. His parents were ‘dead’ and she was trying to save his life. You haven’t been out there like I have, David. Or like she has. She fought her way through two towns full of those things just to get to the children. You don’t- never mind.” He clenched his fists and turned away.

“I managed to talk the powers-that-be out of locking you up but you can’t carry while you’re in here so...”

Ian smiled bleakly and handed over his gun. “I understand. I just hope it was all worth it. This doctor seems to have some interesting ideas but no guarantee of success.”

“They’re doing everything they can to help her. By the way, I fought my way through the D.C. streets to get here. That was no walk in the park.”

“You’re right and I’m not intentionally denigrating anything you have done. I’m just trying to show you why I did what I did to that pilot. I did apologize to him.”

Boots clicked on the floor and Dr. Osawy came around the corner frowning at the mini-laptop screen she held. When she saw the two men the frown disappeared and was replaced by a look of professional calm.

“Good news. The foreign cell count is way, way down. Your wife is more than holding her own. I think she’s winning, Mr. Dare.”

“Is she in pain?”

“Probably more uncomfortable than in actual pain. Her fever is up and she is still unconscious. Once this fever starts to ebb we’re not going to try to get it back up like we did before. The malarial fevers should continue to come in cycles, attacking any stragglers in the system. You may be able to speak with her tomorrow but that’s not a promise. I don’t want to deceive you, Mr. Dare, your wife is not out of the woods yet.”

She donned a mask and paper gown before going into the room. When she moved the blankets aside to palpate Virginia’s throat and chest, Ian saw the heavy canvas straps holding her immobile and tied to the bed. Dr. Osawy looked over at Ian and gave a thumbs up before pulling the curtain around the bed for privacy to complete the exam.

David was gone. Ian suspected he had left to give him some privacy. He poured a cup of coffee and slowly walked back to the room allotted to him and the children to find them gone. Slightly alarmed he wandered a little before finally hearing high-pitched screams of delight coming from a break-room at the end of the hall.

David and a woman Ian had only glimpsed briefly the night before were playing ping-pong (sort of) with Anna, Daniel, and an older blond-haired boy. The woman held Greg, Ian’s almost two-year-old son on one hip as she played. Greg had his own paddle and alternated swatting the woman on the head with making swipes at the ball. He held his blanket tightly in his other hand.

Anna looked up and her eyes widened. “Dad!” She put her paddle down and ran to the door. Ian caught her up in his arms and held her tight for just a few seconds before she pulled back and looked at him, arms still around his neck, and asked, “Where’s Mom?”

“She’s resting. The doctor said we might be able to see her tomorrow.”

Anna continued to stare at him as if evaluating his words. Finally she nodded and slid from his arms down to the floor but she didn’t rejoin the game. She climbed onto a folding metal chair and pulled her legs up, Indian style. Greg, still holding his paddle, toddled over with his blanket, laid it on his sister’s knees and dropped his head on her lap. They had both been uncharacteristically quiet for days. Ian couldn’t imagine how they must feel right now, having lost both of their grandparents and maybe their mother as well. How much worse it must be for Daniel who had lost both parents and everyone he knew. The young woman who had been holding Greg stopped playing and walked over

“Hi, I’m Beatrice Kelly and this is my brother, Brian. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself before but I’m an acquaintance of David’s. How is your wife?”

“Better, they think.  They’ll know more as time goes on, of course. Thanks for looking out for my children.” Ian said.

“No problem. Did Dr. Osawy say anything about an antibody response?”

“Should she have? Is that what they’re looking for?” Ian was puzzled.

“I’m not sure. It was just one thing the doctor said when…” Belatedly Bea thought she shouldn’t say anything about Mac. The end results of that treatment were best left un-discussed right now and she tried to recover.

“Oh…I just heard someone mention that a while back. You know- mounting an antibody response is usually good and I just thought that, well-”

David came smoothly to her rescue. “Everyone is talking about a cure and hoping that we find one soon.” Bea had told him the bare minimum about Mac’s death just an hour ago.

“Yeah, who doesn’t?” Ian turned to the children. “Ok, Anna, Daniel, I’m going to put Greg down for a nap. Stay here and don’t wander around.”

Ian strode from the room with his sleepy son over one shoulder. The two older children began a desultory game of foosball but their hearts weren’t in it. To Bea they looked haunted and pale; the look in their eyes belonged on much older faces. She wondered how well they had slept last night.

David left the room but soon returned with brown bag lunches for everyone. The children sat at their own table and Bea was cheered by the enthusiasm with which they attacked the sandwiches.

The small room was cold and the light from the buzzing fluorescent bulbs was harsh. A solid-looking, black phone hung on the wall. It had an old fashioned circular dial and corded handset. The entire room had a 1950’s or 1960’s vibe.

“How far underground are we?” Bea asked.

“Not very, not here. There are deeper sections but they were hard to ventilate and there aren’t a whole lot of us here so we don’t need the space. Almost everyone who worked in this area and wanted to get out had plenty of time to do it.”

“But we just had to retreat, right? Aren’t we being pushed back farther and farther? Is there a way out of here without having to fight back through the infected?”

“Don’t worry, there are other ways out and I doubt they’ll get in any farther. These things are stupid.”

Bea agreed but added, “Stupid but persistent. Remember the ones we saw on fire? They didn’t even feel it or if they did, it didn’t slow them down. Do you think they are really zombies?”

David shrugged. “Zombies? The stuff of legend and folklore come to life? Well maybe. But there is usually reality behind the legend. So many known mysteries and so many more unknown. What happened to the colonists of Roanoke Island? Is it possible that they were attacked by tribes from down in the Caribbean known for their taste for human flesh?”

He obviously had an enthusiasm for the subject and continued. “Did you know that in 1963 city workers in Prague unearthed an ancient section of the town with over seven hundred skeletal remains all with human teeth-marks on them? The bones were dated back to the 900’s when no famine or any sort of siege warfare had occurred in the area. There are also a multitude of sites throughout the desert in the Middle East, abandoned cities where the signs point to cannibalism on every single skeleton found.”

Brian joined them. “Don’t forget about the Vikings in Greenland. Nobody knows where they went. Their houses were empty but they left their clothes, food, and their weapons all still inside.”

David agreed. “Good example. There are also reports of cannibalism during the various waves of the Black Plague all the way up to the last major outbreaks in London of the 1600 and 1700’s. There are lots of anomalies like this scattered around the world. If our civilization survives this we may someday discover that vampirism and lycanthropy are real, vector-borne conditions.”

“Millions of teenaged girls will be happy about the vampires at least.” Bea laughed.

“They might think so. But what if the vampires turn out to be more like Nosferatu?”

Bea said, “Maybe not then. How did you get this information?”

“I think I already mentioned that I stumbled on some old military records a while back, before any of this happened. Once you know it’s a real condition, you can interpret things in a new light. The U.S.government, parts of it anyway, already knew this disease existed. Like the Germans, they tried to see if it had any practical military application but they had the same problems the Nazi’s did. You can’t control or direct it. It’s been around for a long, long time and it doesn’t look like anyone ever has.”

Bea was intrigued. “How long? I read about the incident at the Tutankhamen excavation.”

“In actual recorded history, possibly three thousand years. Some evidence points to the disease having originated in Africa. Egyptian records make mention of
Apep
or
Apophis
, a miles-long, golden, evil, snake god from their earliest mythology that was always associated with foul, dead creatures that feasted on the living. According to records, in one village the creatures became so numerous that Pharaoh ordered the entire region barricaded and every living (or not) creature inside was burned to death and all the corpses beheaded. This god later merged in the historical record and became one and the same with the better-known evil god, Set.”

Ian returned with his own lunch and joined them at the table. “Looks like they’re going to try tactical nukes in at least three major metropolitan areas. Right now they’re considering Houston, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.”

Bea was shocked. “How do you know?”

“It came out in a memo. They said the military is planting LRADs to draw the dead in and after a few days of that they’ll launch the nukes. Things are bad out there and they’re desperate.”

“Elrad?”

“L-R-A-D. It stands for long range acoustic device.”

“Oh. But still-detonating nuclear weapons inside our own country? You know there have to be a lot of people still alive in those cities!” Bea couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“They’ll drop leaflets warning people to get out of town before they start the cannons. I assume they’ll put it on the internet too. Civilian losses always occur in wartime. No one wants it to happen but… what can they do?”

“So they just get vaporized along with the dead? There are living people trapped out there with no way to get out. They’ll never see the leaflets and those without electricity can’t get on the internet. This is crazy.”