Pressing her back against the sofa, she looked across the floor and saw Little Johnny dragging himself rapidly toward her across the beer-stained rug. His mouth was still working busily and the pupils of his eyes shone creamy white. His expression seemed filled with a hunger that was like something she’d never seen before. As his cold, little hands grasped at her ankle and he began pulling himself up her leg, Kathy Mae drew a stuttering breath and started to scream.
Exordium
The landing gear of the UH-60M Blackhawk helicopter touched down on the helipad, its hydraulics hissing like venomous snakes under the weight of the aircraft. The titanium and fiberglass composite four-blade rotor began to whine down as power was cut to the T700-GE-701D engine. Almost immediately after the three wheels touched the paved ground, a clacking sound came from one of the copter’s side doors and it slid open on oiled rails. Two men jumped down heavily to the pavement— their boots making an empty and hollow sound— with their AR-15 rifles not drawn, but at the ready.
A quick survey of the landing space and one of the security men nodded back toward the darkness within the helicopter. From inside the cramped compartment, a man in an impeccably cut silk suit climbed out of the helicopter and out onto the tarmac. He surveyed the area, breathing deeply of the early morning’s cool air.
The man, one James Masterson by name, wore the officious bearing and no-nonsense demeanor of someone who was born to lead and had spent a lifetime doing so. His manner was one that demanded respect and was, more often than not, granted it. Short dark hair crowned his head and gave him a distinct military look. His dark eyes gleamed from over an aquiline nose, intellect cataloging minutiae, silently gathering details that— in another place and at another time— could spell the difference between life and death.
"Sir," said one of the armed men, "the area is secure."
"Good job, Son," said Masterson as he absentmindedly brushed his seams straight. "Thank you."
His baritone voice splintered slightly from lack of use, many hours having passed since he’d last spoken to another human being. It had been a long flight from what still passed for San Francisco and, in spite of his best efforts to the contrary, Masterson felt tired and more than a little cranky. The search for this new man had been long and arduous, but after having seen some of the footage of him at work, both Masterson and The League felt it would all soon be worth it—well worth it.
At least that was the hope…
The man now sitting in the shadows of the copter’s interior was as close to a natural fighter as Masterson had ever seen. His intuition was good, even if raw and untrained. His body was not large, but it was firmly put together: hard muscle mixed with a brain that could react, truth be told, even more effectively than Masterson’s own. All of this was impressive, in spite of the fact that up until now the man had been working on instinct, a big set of balls, and pure dumb-fuck luck.
Thinking back to the tapes he’d seen on the guy, it was no wonder that The League had ordered Masterson to personally escort him back to this facility. It wasn’t exactly irregular for them to send someone with Masterson’s pedigree out into the field to do something as simple as a retrieval, especially when there was so much money potentially riding on this dude’s ass. Better to protect their investment out of the gate with a trained and armed chaperone than lose it due to some bad planning.
Masterson turned at the hip and looked back into the inky black of the copter.
"Cleese…" he said into the darkness, "Follow me."
From within the shadows of the copter, a figure pulled itself from the blackness and moved slowly toward the door. Anyone could see that this was a man who radiated an innate sense of power with limbs that were both lithe and supple. His movements, although controlled, crackled with an energy that betrayed abilities learned in the blistering heat of battle. His build was forged in the Real World, not in some gym somewhere hefting weights. The man gave off the impression of a big, lethal cat that had been caught dozing. It was plain from his demeanor and body language that if something was to rile his ass up, there would surely be hell to pay.
Cleese’s face came almost reluctantly into the light. His features were lined, hard-edged, and dominated by a pair of cold eyes that burned with an icy-blue fire. His mouth was little more than a cruel slash that tore angrily across the lower part of his face. His gaze was one that gave no bullshit and expected none in return. This was a face that had gotten him out of a lot of bad shit in the past, but then again, had gotten him into a lot of it as well.
He stepped out of the Blackhawk, his long black hair whipping about his face, strands riding the air being moved by the still-spinning rotors overhead. He looked around suspiciously—taking in the expanse of the compound spread out before him at a glance—and raised his eyebrows. The place he’d been brought to was an odd cluster of modern buildings set amidst large expanses of grass, all plunked down right here in the middle of no-fucking-where. The compound was made up of no more than a handful of what looked like semi-permanent structures and then nothing for miles. It was as if whatever it was that they were doing out here—when they did it—they didn’t want much of an audience.
Masterson marched across the helipad, never looking back to see if Cleese was following. He simply walked, trusting that his every order, his every command, would be followed to the letter. His silhouette grew smaller until it finally turned and descended a flight of unseen stairs at the far end of the helipad.
Cleese looked at the soldier nearest him and cocked an eyebrow.
"Nice guy…" and he nodded in Masterson’s direction.
"Your gear will be delivered to your quarters a-sap, Sir," said the soldier in a flat monotone. His gaze remained fixed and pointed straight ahead. He was a young kid of about twenty-five who looked as if he’d once called someplace like Kansas home. Cleese looked into the man’s eyes, which were set back in deep, cavernous sockets. They were rimmed in redness and puffy from lack of sleep.
Cleese smiled to himself. He glanced over to the other soldier who could have been the first one’s brother and saw the same weariness in his gaze. He looked back and forth between the two men. They both stared silently straight ahead and waited for him to comply with Masterson’s orders.
As he always did when confronted by a new and potentially dangerous situation, Cleese assessed the myriad of possible outcomes should things turn ugly and he need to clock both of these bitches and head the fuck on out of here. He considered their guns, his inability to fly a helicopter and God only knew what else might lie beyond the walls of this place, and decided against it.
"Sir," reminded the first soldier as he almost imperceptibly jerked the gun barrel in the direction of the stairwell where Masterson had gone. "Mr. Masterson will be waiting. You’ll need to follow the stairs down, head through the door. Mr. Masterson will be waiting for you in The Press Hall which is down the long corridor and to the right."
Cleese ran a hand through his hair and chuckled as he slowly crossed the helipad. A few scant hours ago, he was asleep and dreaming in his bed. Then, a knock on the door later and he was being escorted onto the Blackhawk only to now find himself here. It was turning into quite a night. He couldn’t wait to hear what this Masterson fella had in store for him now that they’d arrived here in this Disneyland of the Damned.
Still chuckling softly, Cleese strode across the asphalt and toward the stairway.
Space Station #5
Back when the poop hit the prop, things had been rumbling along pretty well for most of the world’s population despite the usual moguls and pitfalls that always had a way of cropping up. Life, as they say, could oftentimes get in the way of Living. Economies see-sawed, despots rose and fell, morality shifted along its slippery slope toward inevitable oblivion, but in the end it was pretty much status quo.
In the spirit of global unity, several of the more affluent nations of the world came together under NASA’s banner, and after several years of development set up an orbiting research station. It floated serenely in space and real strides in medical and technological science were made. Brave new strains of substances were generated up there in the cold, vacuum of space that never could have been created here on Earth. We were all, as a planet, beginning to understand that the world was indeed a small place and, like it or not, we’d better all start getting along.
Sure, there were isolated instances back on terra firma in which dictators would venture outside their country’s borders, but they were put down in short order like rabid dogs. A seemingly real and lasting peace was catching and spreading like a grass fire across the planet and, finally, everything seemed to be on track for ol’ Mother Earth.
As so often happens, just when things seemed to be going their best, it all went to shit. A group of scientists in the U.K. discovered that the space station’s orbit had begun to decay—microscopically at first—but within a week or two, it was a given that the whole shebang was going to come down out of the sky and fall onto all of our heads. The scientists and astronauts who’d inhabited the station only had enough time to grab their Buck Rogers suits and beat feet onto the shuttles hastily sent to retrieve them before it did just that.
When the station entered the atmosphere, its collapse and incineration was a light show like no other. Giant pieces came apart from the main hull like wings pulled from an overcooked chicken. Huge, multi-colored streaks ran like a street hooker’s eye-makeup across the dark of the sky. Everyone came out to watch. It was like the Fourth of July, the Macy’s Day Parade, and Christmas all rolled into one big burning ball of rapidly descending metal.
It wasn’t until later, when the government asked what had gone wrong, that people questioned what exactly it was that was being done in that circling laboratory in the sky. Finally, CNN ran an interview with a rogue scientist (his face obscured for his protection by computer-generated pixelization) whose conscience outweighed his sense of national obligation, and he admitted that there were indeed some very nasty bugs being brewed up there. He went on further to insinuate that–maybe–a fiery combining of them probably wouldn’t be in the planet’s best interest.
But several days went by and nothing happened. After a week or two, we all thought that whatever danger there might have been had passed us by. It was that error in judgment that brought due a bill for which we would all be made to pay.
It was only when the first of the dead opened their eyes in, of all places, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that it was apparent how right that scrambled-pixel-faced scientist guy had been. Within hours, we had ourselves a nice little End-of-Times caliber catastrophe brewing. The contagion (if that was what it could be called) splashed across the face of the planet. Due to some of our antiquated views on death and dying, we’d gotten ourselves right fucked pretty quickly.
First, morgues and mortuaries started reporting cases of flat-line misdiagnoses. Then, hospitals were flooded with random biting and clawing attacks. The medical community was initially indignant, saying that these reports were unlikely especially considering the number and how spread out they were. The Center for Disease Control finally decided that the disaster could only be the result of either a series of chemical spills, bio-terrorism, or something heretofore unknown biologically.
And in a roundabout way, they were right on that last bit.
Soon enough, all protests and hypotheses were drowned out by the sheer number of police reports that came flooding in. There were just too many instances to be ignored, let alone enough time to try to explain them all away. When the dead finally got up from their beds and shuffled out from their tombs to roam the streets by the tens of thousands, the C.D.C. had fallen ominously silent.
So when it could do nothing else, the networks reluctantly began reporting the truth of what was happening and the news wasn’t good. It was with sad and unbelieving faces that the anchors told us what we all already knew…
The Dead were returning to life and eating the Living.
The Gullfire’s Waiting
After entering through a pair of double doors at the bottom of the helipad’s stairway, Cleese walked down the long corridor in front of him and followed it through a maze of very corporate-looking passageways. From what he could tell, the place was made up of offices and conference rooms mostly, but since the majority of the doors in the building were locked, it was hard to tell what else was housed there.
After a bit of searching and finally following the guard’s instructions, he discovered a set of doors with a sign reading Press Hall above them. Inside, he found Masterson seated behind a long table in what looked like a lecture hall. The auditorium was laid out with long rows of theater seats each with desktops that could be folded up or down depending on the needs of whoever sat there. The desks were set in a large semi-circle, which surrounded on three sides the podium at the furthest part of the room. From the looks of things, this was where The League held their news conferences. Across both the walls and ceiling, squares of acoustic tile ran in a grid-like pattern; each tile dampening any sound within the room. As a result, even the door shutting behind him sounded muted and hollow.
Along the far wall was a set of blackboards, each on rails allowing them to slide back and forth, one behind the other. The lectern stood at the center of the stage; a microphone jutted up phallically from the middle of the podium. Masterson sat patiently at a table just to the right. His fingers were tented and his eyes closed as if he were trying to snatch up any bit of rest he could.
Cleese had heard of the technique before from men in the military. They called it "Alpha Napping" and it was a way to rest the mind (since brainwaves changed to restful Alpha Waves when the eyes were closed) when full blown sleep was a luxury the soldier couldn’t afford. Cleese figured that the military must have been where Masterson had learned it. The guy had a look about him that said he’d spent some time in Uncle Sam’s service. He noted the tidbit of information and catalogued it for later consideration.