Bitten (9 page)

The noise of the car door slamming shut caused Alyssa to shake herself awake. She had been in a deep slumber brought on from fatigue
and the loss of blood. Alyssa looked over to see Rachael staring out of the window of the car, panting, lost in thought. The fresh cool air which filled the car helped her wake up.

“How long have I been out?” Alyssa asked.

“About forty-five minutes,” Rachael said despondently.

“My name’s Alyssa, by the way.
Alyssa Briggs.”

“Nice to meet you, Alyssa,” Rachael said. “I’m Rachael Ramirez.”

“Thanks for saving my tuchis back there,” Alyssa said, her voice wavering in her throat.

Rachael reached over and put her hand on Alyssa’s shoulder. “Let’s get the hell out of here, what do you say?”

“Good idea,” Alyssa replied. “Ever since I was a little girl, schools after dark have always given me the heebie-jeebies.”

Suddenly the school intercom chimed on with an
automated EAS broadcast which came through the loudspeakers. Rachael and Alyssa both jumped at the unexpected interruption.

“This is an Emergency Alert. The CDC has issued a nationwide state of emergency. Controls are now being put in place to guarantee your safety. Please do not panic. Calmly report to the nearest quarantine zone for processing; thank you. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.”

The message repeated.

Alyssa and Rachael looked at each other.

“If the CDC is issuing an alert, it must already be a pandemic,” Alyssa said. “So what do we do now?”

“Survive,” Rachael informed. “That’s all we can do.”

Out of nowhere a bloodied claw came crashing through the passenger window of the vehicle and grabbed Alyssa by the strap of her gray tank top.

Alyssa
screamed hysterically and abruptly swatted away the blood encrusted fingers that clawed at her. Rachael saw the monstrous face of Principal Sanders baring his teeth and snapping his jaws maniacally. His skin seemed to be the worse for wear and was peeling off in lecherous patches.

Punching the ignition button, the engine roared to life and Rachael shifted it into gear and slammed down on the
gas pedal. Tires squealing like a banshee, the SUV peeled backward in reverse. Alyssa’s shirt tore apart as Principal Sanders refused to relinquish his grip.

Principal Sanders
stood before the white beams of the SUV’s headlights holding onto the gray tank top. Looking at them vacantly, he stuck out his chin, opened his mouth and hissed threateningly. Rachael slammed down hard on the breaks and the Audi skidded to a halt.

“Shit.”
Rachael glanced over to see Alyssa shyly cupping her bare breasts with her hands and looking rather uncomfortable. Her bra hooks had snapped off in the tussle.

Rachael reached behind the seat and pulled out a sandy brown hooded jumper
with purple stripes down the sleeves and handed it to Alyssa. It was her gym clothing that she kept in the car for those rare occasions when she forced herself to get off her lazy ass and hit the gym. “Here, put this on.”

“Thanks,” Alyssa said as she tore off the tattered remains
of her undergarments and promptly pulled on the jumper and zipped it up.

“No problem.”

Principal Sanders edged toward them with a stiff, stumbling gait. His arms stretched out toward them, his fingers clawing at the air. He was no more than fifty meters away when Rachael shifted the car back into drive, gripped the steering wheel firmly, and said to her passenger, “Hang on to something.”

Her boot slammed down on the gas and the tires
of the Audi found purchase. The SUV tore foreword with the roar of three hundred and fifty break horse power. Alyssa braced herself as they plowed into Principal Sanders. There was a loud crash as his unresponsive body came smashing down onto the hood of the vehicle.

Without warning he puked blood all over the windshield
and then, slipping on his own vomit, went under. The vehicle rolled over him with a dull thud. Rachael hit the brakes and the SUV skidded to a halt. Turning around, both Rachael and Alyssa stared out the back window in dumb shock. The top half of Principal Sanders’ severed body was desperately dragging itself toward their position as it left its bottom half behind. Intestines dangled behind him as he clawed his way inch by inch to where they sat.

“Y
ou’ve gotta’ be goddamn fracking kidding me!” Rachael hissed through clenched teeth.

“Okay, that’s officially disturbing,” Alyssa added.

Shifting into reverse, with tires smoking, she powered the vehicle backward. The rear bumper smashed into Principal Sanders’ head with brutal force and the left rear tire rolled right over his skull. From within the car they heard the crunching noise of his skull shattering into pulp beneath the weight of the bulky vehicle. Flooring it, Rachael spun the tires, and buried the remains of Principal Sanders in her dust.

Wipers turned
up to full, Rachael used the remainder of her wiper fluid to carve out a clear spot from the red blanket of blood that coated her windshield.

Flicking on the high beams, Rachael tore down the long dark road. It wasn’t long before they saw the lights demarcating the perimeter of the quarantine zone. A large scale electric fence spanned in either direction and surrounded, what appeared to be, the entire city. She wondered how the military had pulled that off so fast.

Off in the distance were spot lights prowling the area in front of the main gate. Suddenly one of the beams locked onto them. The hot flash of white light blinded Rachael's eyes.

Reflexively, she put her hand up in front of her face and tried to squint past the light. Just as her eyes started to readjust, Rachael saw the flash of muzzle shots go off as a warning for them to slow down. But it was too late for that. Rachael hadn’t caught it in time.

The Audi sped over the spike strip, and with a deafening pop, all four of the car’s tires blew out and sent the car into a sideways nose dive. Rachael overcorrected and the SUV skidded sideways, their momentum working violently against them.

Without warning the Audi flipped up and car caught air. For a moment it seemed to ha
ng in the air before it came crashing down onto its hood. The windshield instantaneously shattered upon impact and glass flew everywhere, scratching up both Alyssa and Rachael's faces and getting stuck in their hair.

With a bang, the airbags deployed, and both women slammed into them as the vehicle smashed down on its engine block. The torque from the vehicle’s sharp downward momentum pushed against the resistance of the roll beam and sent the vehicle into a freewheeling spin.

The SUV rolled three times, tossing its occupants around like rag-dolls, and skidded upside down on its crumpled roof. Sparks flying, the SUV scraped along the pavement until it finally came to a screeching halt meters away from the entrance of the main gate.

Dangling upside down in the turned over vehicle, Alyssa tried to focus on Rachael, but her vision blurred in and out as she fought to stay conscious. A large piece of metal wreckage had torn off in the violent
somersault and pierced Rachael’s abdomen. The scrap metal went in one side and out the other.

Alyssa reached over to try and touch Rachael’s neck, wanting urgently to check for a pulse. But she was stopped short by the horrible throbbing pain in her own head. She tried to fight it
back, but the pain only intensified until she couldn't take it any longer. Suddenly, everything went black.

GENERAL GREER PUT OUT HIS cigar in a glass
ashtray on his desk and ignored the wispy trails of smoke that rose in front of his face. It was the night shift and only a skeleton crew manned the command room, monitoring the screens which showed live feeds of the entire perimeter. Now that the president had declared quarantine of all infected zones, nobody came in or out without the general’s explicit consent.

Anyone
who approached the perimeter with the signs of infection was serendipitously ordered to turn immediately around and go back the way they came. Usually they didn’t comply. But the threat was real, and so he sent them back, dead or alive. Usually dead. Except for today, that is. Today General Greer faced a thorny predicament.

Moments earlier, some lunatic made a mad beeline straight toward the perimeter and wrecked their car. Yet due to the sensitive nature of having to maintain a stable perimeter, Greer decided to put out the goddamn fire before it could escalate into a catastrophe. After all, the SUV crashed close enough to the main gate that if the f
uel tank exploded it could blow a hole in his whole operation, and the general was not about to let himself go down in history as the guy who blotched the most important quarantine in the history of the human race.

Greer flipped a button on his desk. The entire glass surface was, in fact, a
touch panel computer. Sliding a blue eagle icon to the front of his desk, it flew off and instantly appeared on the larger command monitor at the front, which was the size of a cinema movie screen. The larger panel brought up a live video feed of the flaming wreckage outside the front gate while a series of smaller video panels got bumped to the side.

Each video stream broadcast
various security feeds from around the base. Greer could see everything from the internal corridors of the base, to the lab technicians working on blood samples, to the guards doing their patrols on along the fence line. Greer had eyes on it all. Nothing went on under his nose without his express knowledge.

Greer pressed a green flashing icon on the glass surface of
his desk’s touch panel screen which brought up the sound to the main monitor. The button chirped and Greer spoke up, “Sergeant Noble, give me your status report.”

Standing next to the battered remains of the Audi Q7, Noble touched the intercom on his ear, which looked like a headset for a wireless cell phone
, and answered, “We pulled out two female survivors from the wreckage.

“What are their conditions?”

“Both are badly wounded.”

“Do they appear to be infected?” asked the general gruffly.

“One appears to have suffered a series of extreme bite marks. The other one has bandages around her right leg around what appears to be a knife wound. How do you want me to proceed, sir?”

Leaning back in his chair, the general
put his chin on his interlocked fingers and thought for a moment. “Have them sent to the infirmary. Make sure you take all the necessary precautions.”

“Yes, sir.”

General Greer swiped his hand across the touch-sensitive panel that was seamlessly integrated into his desk, and a scrolling rotation of icons passed before him. Pressing down on a Red Cross shield, he flicked it with a finger so it slid across his desk to the edge of the screen and then leapt up onto the main monitor on the wall.

A beautiful brunette wearing dark rimmed glasses and a white lab coat
suddenly appeared on the screen. She held the latest generation iPad in her hands and seemed to be studying a high definition FMRI scan of a patient’s head.

“Dr. Patricia Hemingway, this is General Greer.”

Patricia looked up from what she was doing and turned to look into a camera mounted on the ceiling just over her shoulder. “Good evening general. To what do I owe the pleasure of this late night call?”

“Sorry but I don’t have time for idle chit-chat right now. You have two wounded headed your way.”

“Any signs of infection?”

“It’s uncertain at this time
. Just be ready.”

Scrambling to get herself all set, the good doctor replied, “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

With that the general double tapped his desktop and the doctor’s screen flicked off. Picking back up the barely usable stub of his cigar still smoldering in the ash tray, Greer began puffing on it, slowly breathing it back to life.

Rachael Ramirez awoke to find herself strapped to what seemed to be a surgical table. She
was tied down so tight that she couldn’t move her body. At least she could turn her head, she thought, and let ought a sigh as she tried to focus her blurry eyes. The room was completely empty except for the intravenous saline infusion being dripped into her arm and the two-way mirror reflecting the image of her naked body back to her.

Large restraining straps held Rachael
flat against the table and were placed in just the right fashion so that they strategically covered her private bits. She noticed little blue marks all over her skin and worried about what they might mean. Still, she thought, it was hard to imagine a more humiliating situation than this.

Unexpectedly, a voice came on the intercom. “I’m glad you’re awake.”

Rachael assumed it was someone on the other side of the looking glass, so she tilted her chin it its direction. “Who are you? “What is this place? Where am I?”

“This is Dr. Patricia Hemingway. I’m afraid I have a bit of bad news. Unfortunately, you’ve been quarantined. I’ll do my best to answer all of your questions, but
first I am going to have to ask you to answer a few questions for me.”

“What kind of quest
ions?” Rachael demanded to know. She shifted in discomfort, pissed off at how she was being treated, as she stared at her naked reflection waiting for the voice to respond.

“Your wounds, they’re human bite marks
, are they not? How long has it been since you were bitten?”

“I… I don’t remember.”

“Try to think. The more precise you can be the better.”

Staring at her reflection in the mirror, Rachael mapped out the lacerations on her arms, her shoulders, her neck, and the scratches everywhere in between, even across her abdomen. Each blemish was a painful reminder of where
her son, Hector, had bitten her. She closed her eyes and held back the tears.

“I know this must be
a terrible inconvenience for you, but we need to know exactly when you were bitten.”

“Yesterday afternoon, I think.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“A little over
ten or twelve hours ago,” Rachael replied.

Doctor Hemingway flicked off the intercom and looked over at General Greer
sitting next to her with an unlit cigar balancing on his bottom lip. “Is there any truth to what she’s saying?”

“She sounds earnest, but at
ten to twelve hours after infection she should have turned by now. I haven’t heard of any cases which have exceeded six hours after infection.”

“What does this mean doctor? Will she turn or won’t she?”

“I’ll know more when I get the blood work back.”

Turning in his seat Gree
r eyed the doctor suspiciously. “Is there any possibility that she could be immune to the virus?”

“It’s not totally inconceivable.
One in three hundred people have the unusual variant of the CCR5 cell-surface receptor protein that makes them naturally immune to HIV. Knowing the various genetic differences that exist in the human genome, I would assume this limited immunity exists with almost any viral strain. Albeit extremely rare, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that there are those among us who exhibit a natural immunity to this deadly contagion as well.”

“The question is,” General Greer asked, as he peered out of the glass at the gorgeous Latino
woman strapped to the table, “Is she one of them?”

“Like I said,” Hemingway replied, “I’ll definitely know more when the results come back.”

Standing up Greer turned as if he were about to leave, but before he did, he put his hand on Hemingway’s shoulder and said, “Keep me posted.”

“I will,” answered Hemingway. As the general left the room
chewing on his raw cigar, Hemingway flicked back on the intercom. “Infection occurs via the blood—either through a bite or a severe wound of some kind. If you’ve been infected you will soon experience a severe fever. The fever will induce enzyme failure followed by certain death. But this is only the beginning. This new contagion is unlike anything we have ever encountered before.”

“By
we
do you mean the CDC? The military? Who are you people?” Rachael asked. She waited a few moments for a reply before the voice started back up, completely ignoring her questions.

“
As you well know, the virus propagates through a simple bite whereby it can infect its host and then quickly reproduces. The body fights back, naturally, but the ensuing fever destroys the enzymes which keep the body at normal stasis. Once the body burns itself out combating the infection, it quickly dies. Usually within two hours or three hours. Insanity is often a common side-effect.” After a brief pause the voice continued, “Without the immune system in the way the infection spreads with impunity until it takes over completely. Beautifully efficient yet highly deadly. Subsequently, the rapid rate of infectivity turns the infected into what is commonly referred to as a Biter, a Walker, or a Dead Head. A few other less inventive names have been given as well for what are basically walking corpses, or, the living dead.”

“What are you getting at, doctor?” Rachael demanded to know. “
Are you saying I’m going to turn into one of those things?”

“If what you say is true, and you were bitten over eight hours ago, I think you’re safe. If you’re mistaken, then I’m afraid your future looks rather bleak.”

“So what if I am infected? What then?”

“You have a couple of options.”

“What kind of options?”

“Termination.”

Rachael scoffed. “What’s the other option then?”

“Termination.”

Rachael laughed out loud. “Isn’t that basically the same alternative?”

“You can choose to be terminated prior to
succumbing to the virus, or you can wait until you turn, only then we will have no choice but to terminate you using lethal force.”

Rachael turned her head away from the mirror. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to give an answer anytime soon. Looking back at the mirror Rachael asked, “
Where's the woman who came with me?”

The
voice replied in clinical fashion, “Don’t worry. She’s safe within the compound.”

Marching into the command room, General Greer angrily
barked, “Report!”

Major Valentine was already at a consul bringing up a schematic which she put up on the main display. It showed a computer generated image of the city and the perimeter
wrapping around it, delineated by the green glowing fence. Valentine zoomed into three flickering orange areas, which showed breaks in the green fence, and informed, “My God … there are multiple breaches in the perimeter.”