She swallowed hard and continued, “I got in the car and tried to use the cop radio. Suddenly there were bloody people everywhere. I had no place to go. There were no keys in the car, so I got out to make a run for it, but there were too many of them. The cop must have been on a construction detail, because there was a manhole with a big yellow hose coming out of it a few feet from the cop car. I climbed down the ladder and ran as fast as I could in the dark. I almost had a heart attack when Martin shined his flashlight in my face. He brought me here, and we met everybody else on the way.”
“And what about you?” Billy asked the guy on the mattress.
“Me? I live here.”
“Oh.”
“Wait,” Ali asked, “Abbey, why didn’t the infected follow you down the manhole?”
“They did! I only barely got away.”
“But then where are they, why aren’t there any in the sewer tunnels?”
“What are you talking about? You mean you haven’t seen any? The tunnels are
crawling
with them!”
Ali and Billy began to exchange a confused look, but were interrupted by a sudden scream from one of the little boys.
Everyone spun to look at Caleb, fear gripping his small features, his tiny index finger pointed at something behind them. As one, the group turned.
Chuck had gotten off the bench, his eyes blood red. He gave a snarling hiss, lurching toward them with his first steps as one of the undead.
21
A pin drop would have sounded like a thunder clap on the Rock. Then the phone rang a second time, and Rick tore it from Sam’s grasp, fumbling with the device before being able to answer it.
“Hello, who is this? Brenda! My God, are you safe? Yes, we’re in a safe place for now, Sam is fine, and I got my dad too! Wait, what?”
The entire group was hanging on Rick’s every word. There hadn’t been any cell service since the nightmare started, and this was like magic.
“Hang on, there are a bunch of military people here who will want to hear this, I’ll put you on speaker.”
“Rick…Rick are you still there?”
“Yeah! Go ahead, we can all hear you!”
“Listen, I might not have a lot of time, we’ve iso—”
“How do you have a working phone?” Martingale shouted.
“Dammit, don’t interrupt! The phones are fine, it’s all the networks that are down! I’ve got a tech here who was able to re-route the data stream
.
Rick, you said there are military there, who are they?”
McInerney stepped up. “Commander Kevin McInerney of the USS Florida, a ballistic missile submarine. My full crew minus fourteen, and a team of SEALs.”
“Excellent. What’s your clearance level commander?”
“SCI”
“Have you heard of STUXNET?”
“Of course, it’s a computer worm that targets industrial systems. A nuclear reactor in Iran was targeted last year, and it almost shut completely down. There were...”
“No time Commander, this phone could cut out any second. We’ve isolated the source of the plague. We are working on a preventative measure, but we’re running out of resources. The dead are constantly outmaneuvering our outer defenses through sheer numbers alone. We’re safe here, but we can’t leave for supplies, we’ve lost nine people trying. There’s maybe two months left of rations, and we need lab equipment and provisions.”
“What do you need?”
“We need you to come get us, and set us up in a more secure location, the coordinates of which I will give you when you get here. The location we have in mind is extremely secure, and has all the facilities we need, power, equipment, years of rations, and some weapons.”
“And you think you can cure this disease?”
“No. Anyone who is infected already is as good as dead. We are close to coming up with something to prevent infection from taking hold. A vaccine. That means anyone bitten or scratched won’t get infected.”
“What about the few billion hungry walking corpses throughout the world”
“Quite frankly, Commander, they are your problem. We’ve been focused on trying to stop it from happening instead of destroying infected. Can you come for us?”
“Where are you?”
“Boston.”
“Boston! That’s literally across the country!”
“I’m pretty comfortable with geography, Commander, can you come or not?”
“How did you come up with a cure in less than two weeks? I would think it would take years to…”
“We had prior knowledge of the… contagion.”
“But honey, how did—” Rick started.
“Don’t call me honey!”
Rick sighed, “How does a computer person like you get involved in a cure for this thing? You aren’t a medical doctor, you work for MIT! Your doctorate is in software engineering.”
“Like I said, we had prior knowledge of it.”
“What is it, is it a virus?” demanded McInerney.
“Yes. No conventional medication will work on this particular virus though, as evidenced by the total worldwide collapse. Will you come for us or not?”
“Before I commit to that, I want to know how you can stop this virus when you’re not a medical doctor, and the CDC and USAMRIID, people who do this for a living, came up empty.”
“Unfortunately, an epidemiologist’s background would be completely useless for this plague, Commander. My background, however, was perfect.”
“But you just said it’s a virus!”
“I did. It’s a computer virus.”
22
Billy, still a little woozy from his fall, pulled an ice axe from his belt and hurled it at Chuck. The axe hit Chuck right between the eyes and bounced away clattering. A huge gash opened over his nose, the white of his nasal bone standing out in stark clarity on the ashen color of his face. He staggered slightly, then raised his arms and came toward them again. “I got this,” Abbey said and took aim with the pistol.
“No, don’t shoot him!” shouted Tony. “We’re in a metal room for Christ’s sake!” He stepped forward and brought his axe up, waiting. Chuck was coming quickly, and the room wasn’t huge. A
twang!
sounded and suddenly Chuck had an arrow sticking out of his left eye. He didn’t jerk or twitch, he just collapsed backward. The tip of the arrow protruded a full inch out the back of his skull, forcing his head to twist toward them as he hit the floor. Tony started forward, but Ali grabbed his shirt.
“Wait! Look at his eye!”
Tony looked down, and Chuck was indeed watching them. His single, bloody eye was tracking movements. The eye was full of black malice, and perverted need.
“Jesus, how can he not be dead?”
“Well, he is,” said Billy, “he’s just not
dead
.”
Tony walked wide around the prone form, and Chuck tracked him as he did so. The dead man’s arm moved weakly toward Tony, but Tony was out of reach.
“Sorry buddy.”
Tony brought the axe down hard, twice killing poor Chuck.
One of the young boys was whimpering as Tony put the axe down and grabbed the hands of the dead man. He dragged the dead weight to the table opposite the deceased police officer and laid his friend down. He folded Chuck’s hands on his chest almost lovingly before yanking Ali’s arrow out and wiping it on an oily rag that was under the work bench. Tony handed her the arrow and sat on the floor. He gave a quiet sob, composing himself quickly. “He was my pal.”
Billy looked unperturbed. “So who knows how to get to the water from here? Tony, you work in these tunnels, do you know how to get to the bay? It shouldn’t be too far.”
Wiping his eyes, Tony composed himself further, “Yeah. Yeah it ain’t far,” he sniffed, “but we gotta go through a collection station and we’ll come out north of Beach Street, near Pier 39.”
Ali raised her eyebrows, “Come out? You mean we can’t take the sewers all the way to the bay?”
“Nah, they don’t go all the way. I mean they do, but the old outfall was blocked up when they put the treatment plant in. Now all the water gets treated before it goes out into the bay. The treatment pipes the treated effluent a mile and a half out into the ocean, the only thing that goes into the bay now is a bunch of small pipes that we can’t fit through. We’ll have to come up in the treatment plant, or the street behind it. Beach Street.”
“Wait, why do we want to go to the water anyway?” Abbey asked.
“He’s got a boat,” Ali thumbed at Billy, “and there are people and supplies on Alcatraz.”
“I’m in!” Abbey declared. “Today is Saturday, would the plant be open? Would there be a ton of people there?”
“Could be. I dunno. We was working on some power cables about a half mile away when… when all this happened.”
Billy and Ali exchanged glances. “The plant could work,” she told him, “it would be secure, and if there was nobody there, then there wouldn’t be any dead trying to get in.”
“Unless there was a poop seminar today or something. I mean,
these guys
were working.” He thumbed at Tony.
“Well, we can’t stay here. We’ll need to…”
“I’m staying here,” said Martin, who had been forgotten behind them, “I’ve been here for two years, and there’s no reason for me to leave now.”
Tony started to say something, but Melanie stood and spoke to Martin.
“Martin, without you, we would have been walking down here in the dark for ages, probably bumping into those people left and right. You must come with us or you’ll die down here.”
Martin shook his head. “Ma’am, do you really think anybody is going to live through this? If this is an epidemic, which it seems to be, then do the math. If one infected person spreads to one more, then those two spread to two more, and this happens only once in an hour, in a mere twenty four hours there are almost seventeen million infected. This of course assumes only one person infects one other, and that it only happens once in an hour. The probability is, that with the population the way it is, clustered together in large confined areas like cities, that the entire population minus say, two percent, is infected in less than twenty four hours.”
Billy looked at Martin with one eyebrow raised. “You don’t look like a mathematician.”
“Yeah, well, I was. Lost my job at SFU due to budget cuts. Couldn’t get another job, and I don’t have any family. After three years of no income, I wound up here. That was two years ago, and you know what? This is a better life. Or it was until everything went to hell.”
“I thought you were…”
“Yeah, so does everybody else. Books and covers and all that.”
Billy sat next to Martin on the mattress and held out his hand. Martin passed him the dirty milk jug, and he took a big pull on it. He came away sputtering and coughing. He wiped his mouth and handed the jug back to martin.
“It’s water!” choked Billy, “I thought…”
Martin stopped him again. “So does everybody else.”
“Mr. Martin,” said a tiny voice, “please come with us. Please?”
Everyone looked at Caleb.
“Please?” The boy began to sniffle.
Martin sighed, “Fine, but we go my way. I can get us to the plant, but it won’t be fun. Shouldn’t see any of the infected though.”
Tony smiled, “Martin, I believe I got a pretty good handle on these tunnels, I been comin’ down here for years.”
“Yeah, and I’ve been
living
down here for years. You’re going to take them through the collection cistern, past the macerators right?”
“That’s the only way.”
“I rest my case. Firstly, the tunnels down there are full of chest high water. You got maybe ten inches of clearance between the water and the ceiling too, and it can fill up quick. What’s your plan for the kids? Second, I can get us past all of the water, and the cistern, and the macerators, and the infected that are most assuredly in that section. That’s three hundred feet past where I picked you up, and another hundred feet past that, the tunnels are open to the street for work on the new buildings in mid-town. That’s how I get my scraps now. Or how I
did
I guess.”
Tony looked skeptical, “How can you go around all of that, there aren’t any other tunnels that go that way?”
“Not on any survey map there aren’t, but they’re there. Like I said, it won’t be pleasant, but it will be safer, although there is one spot that we’ll have to wade, and one grate we need to get through, but it isn’t locked.”
“Wade?” asked Melanie
“Yes, it’s after the macerators, and before the plant, so we’d have to get wet going his way or mine, but we’ll go over the cistern and most of the water.”
“Over?”
“Yeah, over. You’ll see.”
“OK, so when do we leave?” Abbey demanded.
Billy stood up.
“Oh, now?”
“Might as well. No point putting it off.
“Wait,” insisted Melanie, “what’s a macerator?”
Tony and Martin started to answer her together, but Tony held his hand out, palm up, for Martin to continue alone.
“They’re big metal blades that chew soft matter into smaller bits that are easier to carry in the sewer pipes and tunnels.”
“And… and we’re going to climb over them, but my boys…”
“I do it all the time, and my way will be safer than the catwalk, which is just above them. Besides, there’s a big grate over the units, so no one can fall in by accident. There’s a dead man’s switch as well, so if the grate is open, the teeth shut down.”
“So let’s do it then,” Abbey said, “I want to get out of these damn tunnels.”
“Let me just check the door.” Tony hefted his axe for comfort.
“No need Tony.” Martin stood and passed his milk jug to Billy, who immediately took a swig.
Martin walked to a row of faded blue metal lockers. He pulled them aside revealing a multitude of missing bricks forming a rather large hole in the wall. There was a second, much smaller room excavated behind the lockers. “This is our way out,” he said, indicating a jagged, thirty-inch pipe leading out of the room. The pipe was black as a devil’s heart, and stank twice as bad.
“Nope. Not goin’ down that,” Tony said immediately.
“Sissy,” Billy told him and fell to his hands and knees. “Ali, gimme the flashlight, please.”
She passed the light to him and he crawled in about six feet, the beam from his flashlight cutting the darkness ahead of him allowing him to see how truly horrid the walls of the conduit were.
“Uh, shouldn’t I go first?” asked Martin. “There are a couple of spots where you will need to know which way to go.”
Billy backed out of the tunnel quickly. He was covered in slime and filth, and the smell was horrid. “You can’t turn around in there!”
“It opens up further on.”
There was obvious fear in Tony’s voice. “I don’t care, I can’t do it. I’m too big.”
Abbey got down on one knee. Leaning against the wall, she peered into the pipe. “Me neither, sport. You said there’s a different way?”
“Yeah, we can go—”
Ali interrupted, “We don’t want to split up, there’s safety in numbers.”
Tony now sounded gruff. “Yeah, well, there ain’t no safety in that pipe for none of us if I have a friggin heart attack in there. I ain’t goin’.”
“Listen, Martin said that we would end up on the same path later. Tony and I will meet you after the tunnels join. Besides, I have a gun,” Abbey chimed, smirking.
“Meet us a hundred paces after the macerators, then,” Martin said and stuck his hand out. “Best of luck.”
Tony shook his hand. “Same to you. Thanks for bringing us here before, Martin. You saved us all.”
“Next time I’ll have the china polished.”
Martin smiled and picked up an ancient, rusty, battery-operated lantern. He glanced over at the group over and said: “Follow me.”
One by one, the seven of them got down and entered the pipe, with Noah clinging to his mother’s heels. Ali went last, but before she left she looked back at Abbey and Tony. “You sure?”
“We’ll be fine. Sorry I pointed the gun at you. See you at the rendezvous point?”
“You sound like a spy,” Ali said and disappeared into the pipe.
Tony pushed the lockers back in front of the entrance. Unless one knew it was there, it would be extremely difficult to find.
Abbey stepped up to the heavy steel door. “No point in wasting time.” She put her ear to the door and listened intently for a solid thirty seconds. Tony looked at her and nodded in the affirmative. She shrugged and ratcheted the latch back. Tony burst into the tunnel, axe held high.
There was nothing moving in either direction.