Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America (2 page)

“We like secrecy,” the instructor said flatly. “You should know that by now.”

“Da,” the Russian nodded sagely. “After seventeen months in this stinking hell-hole I should know.”

The instructor smiled, but there was ice in his eyes. “You could always leave, comrade. You could always return home to your mother Russia.” He knew that wasn’t true. The man would never see his homeland again. In fact he would not see the next sunrise.

The big man looked pained and sad. He knew the Iranian was taunting him.

“To face life in prison? My government does not look highly upon its scientists who sell their skills, even to the camel-loving desert nomads in your government, my friend. I would be killed if I return.”

“I am not your friend,” the instructor said with an icy smile. “And I would kill you right now if I were able to. If you were a Muslim, you would have been dead long ago for your blasphemies. It is only while you remain useful that you live, Russian. Remember that. Once the entire world has learned to embrace Allah and the faith, men like you will be ground into dust.”

The two men glared at each other, the Iranian instructor’s face intense with his hatred, and the Russian scientist’s face bemused. The scientist nodded in concession, but then waved a fat finger under the other man’s nose. “But you can’t kill me,” he said. “Your government still needs me. That’s why they bring me vodka and whores and turn a blind eye as I commit every offense against your blessed Allah.
Because they need me.
”
His expression suddenly turned malevolent. He shoved his finger hard into the instructor’s chest. “And as for Allah? You camel humping apes have been promising Allah’s wrath against the world for hundreds of years. And what? What have you achieved? Nothing,” the Russian spat contemptuously. “You live in the dirt like animals, and you smell like unwashed pigs. You are uncivilized, and that will never change,” he said with the defiance of a man who had long ago realized he was doomed to certain death. “You beat your women, you think fucking is a sin and even drinking is evil.” He shook his head “You are a backward race of thieves, nothing more. Now, get my fucking bag from the Land-Rover and show me my quarters. I will be ready to commence in an hour.”

The instructor jerked his head at the driver, and the man snatched up a leather briefcase off the passenger seat. The Russian shoved his way past the instructor and the girl followed.

“Soon,” the instructor’s rage seethed like lava, although his face remained expressionless. This man was not the only Russian scientist in Iran. The Supreme Leader employed many of the Godless pigs as whores to service the Islamic struggle. Some were employed in the nation’s nuclear program. Others were hired for gold to train and advise the military – but the instructor had never met any of them. He had only met two other Russians, and they were buried in the shifting sand on the edges of the camp.

The instructor turned back to the martyrs around the fire and sent them to their tents. Then he walked a slow circuit of the campsite, wandering past the row of cages and then around the trucks and Land-Rover. He walked stiffly, with his fists clasped tightly behind his back and his head lowered in thought.

He was choosing a good place where he would bury the Russian.

“Allah be praised.”

*

It was completely dark when the Russian tugged aside the hessian cloth across the cabin door, and stepped out into the glow of the firelight. The night was cold – the temperature had plummeted as the last of the day’s heat was sucked from the desert sand. The Russian fastened the button of his trousers and re-buckled his belt, then looked round for the imposing shape of the instructor.

He was sitting around the fire, squatting over the flames, amidst the dark, expressionless faces of the martyrs. “We will begin,” he said. “I want to be away from here before sunrise. I have meetings in Tehran with your leaders.”

The instructor looked up into the face of the Russian and he nodded, his expression blank. He knew the Russian did not have meetings. He knew because his orders were to kill him as soon as the demonstration was complete. He got to his feet and the men around him stood dutifully.

He waved to the three martyrs. “Arrange the trucks and the Land-Rover,” he said brusquely. “I want their headlights on the row of cages.”

It took a few minutes – long enough for the Russian to fetch his briefcase from the hut. He set it down on the hood of the Land-Rover. Inside was a bottle of vodka, a small leather pouch the size of a woman’s purse, and a row of slim vials, each two inches long. The vials were packed within thick black foam that had been cut to hold the vessels. Each vial was sealed, and beside each one was an aluminum tube with a screw cap.

“These are for your men,” the Russian said, pulling one of the vials carefully from the clutch of its foam padding. “The vial goes inside the aluminum tube for transport,” he demonstrated, slipping a vial inside the cylinder and screwing the cap back on carefully. “It should be kept this way until the time to open it and inject the virus. Understand?”

The instructor nodded. He took the cylinder carefully between his fingers, unscrewed the lid and slid the vial into the palm of his hand. It was half an inch round. The liquid inside was clear as water. The top of the tube had been sealed.

“The contents must be injected immediately,” the Russian said.

Again the instructor nodded. The previous Russian scientist who had come to the camp a week earlier had gone carefully over the transport and storage procedures, but this was the first time he or his men had seen the actual virus. The instructor passed the cylinder and vial on to the martyr beside him, and then began to issue the other vials until there were three glass tubes remaining.

The Russian took the leather pouch from the briefcase and unzipped it. It opened to reveal several syringes, an assortment of needles, and a stethoscope.

He rigged a syringe and filled it with the contents of one of the vials.

“Enough for ten men,” he said. “Come. I will show you.”

The Russian strode across to the nearest cage. The two prisoners cowered away, but the cage was small. They pressed themselves against the bars. The Russian reached into the cage and snatched at one of the Iraqi’s thin frail wrists and clamped his fingers tight. The man made a pathetic whimpering sound. The Russian jabbed the needle into the man’s arm and injected a small amount of the virus.

Nothing happened.

He trapped the second prisoner’s foot and one of the martyrs reached between the bars to hold the leg steady. The Russian shot the second prisoner full of virus and then leaped back quickly, as though the prisoners might explode.

Nothing happened.

“The virus works quickly,” the Russian said. He went to the fire and threw the syringe into the flames. Then he went back to the hood of the Land-Rover and prepared the next round of injections.

Suddenly the first prisoner went rigid, as though charged with a surge of electricity. There was no room within the cage and the sound of his leg breaking was like the crack of a bat hitting a ball. The man’s eyes rolled in their sockets and his back arched, bending to an impossible angle. A scream of agony split through the still night and was abruptly cut short.

The man was dead.

The second prisoner wailed in terror – and then his body went into spasms. He writhed and thrashed. He raked his fingers at his face, clawing at his eyes, and then a bright gush of blood burst from his mouth and he slumped dead against the cold bars of the cage.

“Reanimation takes place anywhere between a minute and forty-five minutes after death,” the Russian said casually, as the instructor stared fixedly at the bodies of the two Iraqis, twisted in the agony of cruel murder. “It depends on the victim, and their physical condition. In the case of these poor pathetic wretches, the next stage will happen soon,” he said.

“Explain,” the instructor demanded, even though he knew the workings of the virus.

The Russian didn’t answer immediately. Instead he went to the second cage and injected one of the prisoners.

“It is a pathogenic virus,” the Russian said, “that induces rapid death in the victim, and then reanimation sometime shortly afterwards.”

“How?”

The Russian frowned. “Do you really want to know?”

“Of course,” the instructor said.

The Russian sighed irritably. He had a headache from the vodka. He rubbed his forehead. “Death comes quickly once the victim has been infected. Usually within thirty seconds. Once death has occurred, the virus re-wires the victim’s nervous system,” he said vaguely, “although not entirely. The machinery of the pathogen spreads through the blood system. It takes a minute for blood to circulate through the body of an average person, and once the pathogen begins to break down, it starts inducing an immune response. The pathogen produces a highly volatile state. In essence, the reanimated ghoul uses the body’s capabilities much like a parasite. What the pathogen creates within that body is a creature that cannot feel pain, cannot reason, and is governed only by one biological instinct – the urge to reproduce through biting and infecting. That instinct will drive it until the time it decomposes.”

“They become living dead?”

The Russian nodded. “They do not feed. They do not drink, nor do they sleep. They kill until they collapse.”

The Russian went quickly along the line and injected one prisoner in each cage. When he was finished he was sweating, despite the near freezing temperature. He leaned heavily against the side of the Land-Rover. His hands were shaking. He needed a drink. He checked his wristwatch. It had been nearly twenty minutes since the first two prisoners had died.

“What is it called, this thing of terror?” the instructor asked. “Does it have a name?”

The Russian smiled bleakly. “When I was back in Soviet Union I worked in chemical weapons labs,” he said proudly and his chest puffed out. “We were perfecting many things, but not all were success,” he said. “Some things became not what we expected. Some things became worse,” he winked conspiratorially as though he were sharing a State secret. “This was called F1-st,” the Russian explained. It had no other name.”

The Iranian instructor’s English was passable but it was not a language he was comfortable with. The Russian picked up a branch of wood from the fire and scratched the letters large in the sand at the man’s feet.

The instructor sounded them out silently, and then more clearly.

“Fist,” he said, and there was a sudden sense of righteousness and awe in his voice. “The Fist of Allah.”

*

Even for hardened men who were accustomed to death in all its forms, the killing of the uninfected Iraqi prisoners was difficult to watch. The men who had died under the needle suddenly rose, like wild animals, snarling and hissing. Their eyes blazed with manic hatred as they tore at their fellow captives. The scent of blood seemed to enrage the infected, and their voices rose to high wailing shrieks as the virus drove them berserk. In just a few frenzied minutes it was all over. The dead lay mutilated in the cages and the infected prowled and snarled and hissed at the assembled martyrs, shaking the bars with strength that was borne from blind madness.

The Iranian instructor stepped forward warily and paced along the line of cages. Blood seeped into the sand and the undead thrust their clawed hands through the bars of the cage and lashed out at him like wild animals. At the end of the line, he spun on his heel and called out to the Russian.

“And so the ones they have attacked – they too will reanimate within forty-five minutes, yes?”

“Da,” the Russian nodded.

“How do you kill them?”

The Russian smiled wryly. He cocked his thumb and finger into the shape of a gun and put it to his temple. “You shoot them in the head. Destroy the diseased brain. It’s the only way,” he said.

The instructor frowned thoughtfully as he came back to the Land-Rover.

“You do not have an antidote, Russian?”

“No. Not yet. I am still working on this matter.”

The instructor shook his head. “Not any more.”

He pulled his pistol from its holder and thrust it between the big scientist’s eyes.

There was a split-second of dangerous silence, and then the Russian laughed. It was a bear-like growl; a wheezing breathless sound that shook his big fleshy frame. “You can’t shoot me,” he chuckled. “I just told you, I have not yet created an antidote. Without it, even you camel-loving apes would be infected once the virus is released. It will sweep around the world, cross all borders, and leave your filthy piece of desert barren of all life. Not even your fucking Allah could save you then.”

The instructor raised his eyebrow.

“That is the very last time you blaspheme,” he said coldly. Your insults to Allah signed your death warrant long ago.”

The Russian’s face became outraged. He spat in the instructor’s face. “Do it then!” The Russian held his hands wide, inviting his own execution. “But if you kill me it will be the end of your Muslim dream. I have told you – there is no antidote.”

The Russian was wrong.

The instructor pulled the trigger and the bullet tore through the back of the Russian’s head in a pink cloud of blood and gore. He fell backwards into the sand, eyes still wide with a frozen expression of disbelief and shock as the sound of the shot echoed into the dark night.