The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins] (17 page)

The
broadcast van came to a stop. Everyone jumped out as quickly as they could,
performing their various jobs in order to get the van ready to transmit back to
the station. Moiz stood behind the production camera that Tetsuo had set up.
Gafar was ready, standing in front of the camera. He was ready for the biggest
news story that he had ever produced in his broadcast career. Moiz counted him
down from three, two…

“This
is Gafar Rahal with the Saudi Press Agency in Riyadh. We are reporting from
behind the King Fahd International Stadium on Shaikh Isa Ben Salman Al Khalifah
Road. Our broadcast is being aired live. There will be no editing done to this
broadcast. Some of this material may not be suitable for younger children. You
will be viewing actual events as they occur. From where I am standing, I can
see some 70 to 100 zombies, maybe more.” He gestured toward the area where the
zombies were milling about.

“There
are considerably many more zombies down on the grounds that I cannot see from
this location. Our point of view is blocked by several buildings and trees. The
zombies are killing people as fast as they can catch them. The dead bodies are
spread throughout the parking lot and grassy areas. There are too many bodies
for an accurate count from where we are situated. If we were any closer, we
would not be safe. There is so much blood that has been spilled onto the ground
that it is running down the curbing next to the parade grounds, and there are
still more bodies there, all torn to shreds. With so many body parts lying on
the ground, it looks like the floor of a slaughterhouse.”

He
turned toward the scene slightly. “We can hear the security police from the
stadium shooting the zombies as quickly as they can. The city police are
shooting at them as well. It sounds like a war is going on. In the footage
you’re seeing now, you can see that when a zombie is shot, the force of the
bullet may spin the zombie around, may even knock it down, but if you look
closely, you will see that after a zombie has been shot, it quickly returns to what
it was doing. It’s dreadfully apparent that being shot simply does not stop them.
The zombie’s job, its
only
job, is killing anyone that they can get hold
of. This they repeat, over and over again.”

Suddenly
Gahar got a look of panic on his face. “Oh, no! Moiz, are you getting this?
Some of the stadium guards have stopped firing. I can’t make out why just yet...
Oh, my God! More of them have stopped firing. It looks like they’ve run out of
ammunition. They’re turning and running. The zombies can’t move as fast as the guards,
but the zombies have them surrounded… Oh, no! No! They’re herding them down the
side of the building that the stadium wall is connected to. The wall is about six
meters high, running at an angle to the wall of the building… It’s a dead end! There
will not be any way out once they’re forced into it. In a minute or two, the
guards will be trapped! Now they are
all
out of ammunition… the zombies
are pushing them into the dead end. There must be 60 or more zombies against 35
to 40 security guards. With no weapons besides their empty guns, they’re
doomed.”

Gafar
was overcome with revulsion. Tears began to run down his face. “The zombies are
ripping them apart. Their screams are horrifying. The police officers have
abandoned the guards to their fate in order to protect the bystanders. It’s
horrible, so very horrible…”

Everyone
on Gafar’s crew was busy doing their different jobs. There were several areas
of zombie activity, so they had to juggle what they would film when. As Gafar and
his crew were working, none of them had time to look around. If they did, they
would have seen the zombies coming up from behind them or those that were coming
at them from both sides of the buildings that they had parked between. They all
focused on the wholesale killings that were taking place right in front of
them.

As
Tetsuo looked back over his shoulder, he saw the first zombie grab Taha by his
neck. It bit into his shoulder ripping large chunks of his shoulder muscle
completely off of his body in one swift movement spitting it on the ground.
Taha screamed. He grabbed the zombie by its head with his only arm that still
worked, but he was too late to do anything to help himself. As Taha grabbed its
head, the zombie pushed him to the ground face first, kneeling next to him. The
zombie started to rip the meat off of Taha’s back using full swings of its
clawed hands. Tetsuo stopped what he was doing as Taha cried out. He shouted to
Gafar.

“Gafar,
watch out! Zombies are coming towards our van! They are coming down the side of
the building! Gafar! Taha has been killed! Allah have mercy on his soul!”

As
Tetsuo was shouting, three more zombies circled around behind the van, grabbing
Shamz by his head. Rizwan was grabbed from behind. The three zombies pushed
them to the ground. They knelt on the ground next to Shamz and Rizwan shredding
flesh off the two men as quickly as they could. Tetsuo was still shouting
warnings to Gafar. Unfortunately, Gafar, with his headset on, could not hear
Tetsuo.

“Gafar!
Those zombies have Shamz and Rizwan behind the van! Rizwan has lost an arm!
They are dying before my eyes! We must do something… We cannot just let them
die! I do not know what to do! Allah have mercy on them! There is no hope.”

At
nearly the last moment, Gafar saw Tetsuo waving his arms. He took his headset
off to hear what he was shouting. Then Gafar looked back towards the van and
saw the torn bodies of his three friends.

Gafar
shouted to Moiz. His microphone was still on, so anyone who was watching the
broadcast could hear him shouting as well. He pointed down the side of the van
to get Moiz to look.

“Moiz,
turn around! Look! Tetsuo, drop everything where it is and get in the van! We
need to get out of here now!”

“Gafar!
What about Shamz?” asked Tetsuo. “What about Rizwan? Listen to them, they’re
dying! Do you hear their screams? We have to help them!”

“Tetsuo,
there’s nothing we can do for them. They are in Allah’s hands! If we do not go
now, we will be the next to die! We must get out of here now!”

The
three of them abandoned their equipment and ran to the van. Tetsuo jumped into
the driver’s seat and starting the engine. Gafar jumped into the passenger
seat.

Moiz
jumped into the open side door and pulled it shut. The back doors of the van
were wide open as they raced out of the stadium parking lot. The production
camera fell over onto the ground, but it was still recording and broadcasting
to the van via a wireless connection which had a range of 15 meters. The van would
continue transmitting the camera’s signal back to the studio until the van was
out of range of the camera.

Tetsuo
was driving as fast as he could, wiping away the tears in his eyes. Gafar,
sitting next to Tetsuo, was calling Kamal through the station operator.

“Please
connect me with Kamal Saab. This is Gafar Rahal calling.”

Kamal
picked up the phone on his desk.

“This
is Kamal. How can I help you, Gafar?”

“Kamal,
we are returning to the station. Have you been receiving our signal? Right now
there are only three of us left. Myself, Moiz Ajam, and Tetsuo Amjad. Shamz
Kader, Taha Ahmed and Rizwan El-Mofty are all dead, killed by zombies at King
Fahd Stadium. It was horrible.”

He
sook his head in disbelief. “If you watched our signal, you saw what is
happening there. We recorded everything in case you did not receive the
transmission. So many people died… The stadium’s security guards were all
killed by zombies, so many that you could not begin to count them.”

He
looked into the distance. “I think what we are witnessing is the start of a
very real catastrophe that is growing out of this zombie outbreak. In just the
last 30 hours, it has grown to this level, just since the first report in
Melbourne. There is death everywhere. I don’t know of any place that is safe.”

“Gafar,
my friend,” said Kamal. “Perhaps you might be exaggerating a little?”

“Kamal,
did you watch
any
of the footage we sent back to you? If you have not,
you need to do it
now
. After you have watched it, we can talk about it.
There was so much death… It was
sickening
. We are pulling into the
parking garage now, and I will be in your office shortly.”

In a
few minutes, Gafar and the other two men were in Kamal’s office. Gafar inserted
the memory stick into the computer on Kamal’s desk and pressed PLAY. As Kamal
was watching it, Gafar told him, “Kamal, this is the raw footage. This is what
happened to our friends. This same thing happened to probably 150 to 200 people
at the stadium.”

He
gave Kamal a hard look and said, “If anyone at all got out alive, they were fortunate.
You need to stop what you are doing now and watch this without any
interruption. This is where our world is heading. The zombies are taking over.
They will kill anyone that they can catch, anywhere, anytime, day or night.”

“Fine,
Gafar,” said Kamal. “I will do nothing else but watch your footage.”

They
sat in silence, watching the footage of the stadium. When it was over, Kamal
looked Gafar, his eyes wide open, unblinking, with tears rolling down his face.
His mouth was hanging open. After a minute or two, he shook his head and cleared
his throat.

“I did
not know it had gotten so bad. I told Ahmed to broadcast this live with no
editing. I need to make sure that Ahmed did as I asked. Gafar, will you have my
secretary call the head of security, please. She is to tell him to lock down
the building. Also tell her that we need to clear the large conference room.”

Kamal
called Ahmed Samara, the production manager. He was in charge of what was
broadcast over the air. Kamal told him to come to his office immediately. When
Ahmed arrived, Kamal motioned to a chair and asked him to sit.

“Ahmed,
did you broadcast Gafar’s transmission from the stadium as they sent it live?”

“Mr.
Saab, I did as you told me. We will be closed down for doing this. This will be
the end of all of our careers.”

“Ahmed,
did you watch it as Gafar sent it in? I just watched it myself. I am not
worried about our careers at this point. What I am worried about is our
survival. This zombie outbreak is going to bring the world to its knees. We are
responsible to our viewers. Our job is to make news like this available to
anyone that who wants to view it. People need to know the truth. People around
the world need to know that they are not safe anywhere outside. I want you to
put this on a repeating loop and keep playing it until we lose power. Call all
of our remote crews back to the station, now. They are to stop what they are
doing and get back here as fast as they can. Right now it is 1:00 PM; I want to
meet with everyone at 4:00 PM in the large conference room. No one is allowed
to leave the building.”

“Yes,
Mr. Saab. I will call all the crews that are out and tell them to return now. I
will put Gafar’s footage on a repeating loop to play until we get shut down or
we lose power.”

The
three field crews were called back to the station, and the station locked down.
They brought the emergency generator online and disconnected from the city’s
power grid.

In a
few minutes, all of Saudi Arabia would know how deadly the zombie outbreak was.

As the
loop began to play, the panic started, first in Riyadh, and then less than thirty
minutes later throughout Saudi Arabia. Those that had the ability to leave took
what they had and ran.

At 4:00
PM, all of the station’s personnel gathered in the large meeting room.

University
Medical Center 

New Orleans, Louisiana

ADZ
+5d

August 19, 2036, marked five days since Australia Day Zero began. Layla
Gallot had been home for a much-needed — and much too brief — sleep, and was
getting ready to go back in to work. She worked as a Registered Nurse in the
emergency room at the University Medical Center in New Orleans.

Layla had been
a bridesmaid at the wedding of one of her friends. Her future husband, Landon
Gallot, was a friend of the groom. He was also one of his groomsmen.

Throughout
the wedding rehearsal, the actual wedding and the reception that followed, the
two of them could not take their eyes off each other. At the reception, they
danced the night away.

The
next day, Layla dialed Landon’s number eight or ten times, only to hang up as
quickly as she pressed send. She was standing in her apartment kitchen, staring
at her phone, working up the will to try again, when it rang. It startled her
so much she nearly dropped the receiver.

Looking
at the Caller ID display, she could see that it was Landon. She let it ring five
times before she answered it. They talked for an hour and a half, and made
plans to have dinner that night.

So it
was with them. Since the wedding they had been together almost every day. After
two weeks of dating, Landon proposed to Layla. She quickly agreed to marry him.

They
set a date for three months from that day. The planning for her wedding through
to the honeymoon was a whirlwind of excitement. Upon their return to New
Orleans from their honeymoon, Layla moved into Landon’s home. With the
encouragement of her new husband, she quit her job as a grocery clerk at the
neighborhood market and enrolled in nursing school. Less than two years later,
Layla was a newly graduated Registered Nurse. Her first job as a new nurse was
at University Medical Center in New Orleans.

Marrying
Landon came with a new lifestyle. As a firefighter, Landon wanted to keep in
shape for his job. He was a fitness fanatic. Layla wanting to be a part of her
husband’s life, so she began following her husband’s fitness routine.

Shortly
after beginning her workout routine, she started to lose her body fat and build
muscle. Ten months later, Layla was becoming a fit and trim woman. She was a
short, fit, happy wife of a firefighter. At five feet, two inches tall and 121
pounds, she was nothing to mess with. As a nurse, she had many patients who could
be demanding. Layla was not going to have any of that. She would tell her
patients that she was in charge. If they did not behave, she could make their
lives a little rougher than it was already.
Before the zombie outbreak began, she worked
a regular schedule of three twelve-and-a-half-hour shifts each week. The
hospital normally ran two shifts a day, beginning at either 7:00 AM or 7:00 PM,
depending on whether the staffer was assigned to the day shift or the graveyard
shift.

Now, five days into the outbreak, Layla was
getting ready
to work her fifth 12-hour day in a row.
S
ince the outbreak began
everyone at the hospital was working as long as they could stay awake, only
going home to sleep when they reached the point of exhaustion or not being able
to stand up any longer.

The City of New Orleans was nearly empty. The majority of the
residents had either fled the city, were dead or were simply missing. No one
knew why or where the missing people had gone; all they knew was that they had
simply seemed to disappear. For as long as UMC had the staff to operate,
however, they intended to remain open.

Inside the hospital, every gurney was full. Every patient room held
two or three times as many patients that the room was designed for. Looking at
the emergency room, it was hard to believe that so many of the city’s residents
were gone. The majority of the complaints that brought people to the ER were things
such as shortness of breath, chest pains, cuts, broken bones or high blood
pressure. Now, however, the reason tended to be wounds from a zombie attack.
Those patients would die no matter what the staff did to help them. Their
deaths were generally quick.

Because of the number of deaths that were occurring at the
hospital, they had been forced to set up an area as a morgue. The usual method
of handling a death in a hospital was once a patient passed away, the hospital
staff would call the coroner (if the death was suspicious) or a funeral home
(if the death was due to natural causes) to come and retrieve the body. Now the
coroner’s office was closed and the funeral homes were no longer operating. Dealing
with the bodies was left up to the hospital itself.

At UMC, they had decided to use a storage room in the basement as a
temporary morgue until they could set up a place to burn the bodies. The room
that they chose for a temporary morgue was not big enough from the start, and was
filling with bodies quickly. It had already become so crowded that they had begun
taking the bodies off the gurneys that had been wheeled in and begun stacking
the bodies on the floor. As more bodies were added, they were forced to stack
them on top of each other. The bodies were coming faster than they could handle
them. No one was able to get a place ready to burn the bodies. All they could
do is keep up with the growing morgue full of the dead.

The hospital was not alone in having to make changes to survive.
The rest of New Orleans had gone crazy as well. The police and fire departments
had already shut down. Without staff to maintain the equipment to keep the
utilities online, they were failing as well. The power was sketchy at best; it
was on in some areas of town for a day or an hour, then it went out. Sometimes
it came back, other times it was out for good.

Today Layla woke up from her rest when Landon came home early. He
was one of the city’s firefighters. His shift was normally two 24-hour days in
a row, and today was the first of his current two-day schedule. What he had to
tell her made her worry even more. As he walked into the house, he called out, “Layla,
are you home? Where are you?”

Startled, Layla answered him, “Landon, are you okay? I’m upstairs.
What’s going on?” She hurried downstairs. “Is everything all right? I thought
your shift started today. It’s 2:30… you should be at the firehouse.”

They found each other in the kitchen. Landon said, “Honey, I don’t
understand what is going on. Nothing makes sense to me any more. Ever since
this damn zombie thing started, it’s like the whole damn world has taken a huge
crap. The fire crew that works the other side of our shift had nine of their
fourteen men not show up for work. They didn’t call, or message, or anything.
They just didn’t show up. On our shift, eight of our fourteen guys didn’t come
in today. It was the same as the other shift. No call, nothing. Our shift’s
fire chief came in, but he wasn’t in uniform. All he was doing was stopping to
tell us to close up the firehouse and go home. He had his family with him in
his truck, with the camper mounted on the back. He was leaving town and taking
his family with him. With everything going to hell, he wanted to find a better
place for his family. Without water in the hydrants or fuel to run the trucks,
we couldn’t do the job that the city hired us to do.”

“So, sweetheart, what do you want to do?” Layla said. “I’ve been
working steady since this crap started. Today will be my fourth straight day.
There’s so many doctors, nurses, aides and other staff that aren’t showing up…
they need me. I
have
to go in. This is what I
do.
I have to help
until I can’t stand up anymore or the hospital closes. We’re already running the
hospital on emergency power. We have water stored in a huge tank on the roof.
They told us that we could possibly run for a month or more. We’re gonna stay
open as long as we can to help the people of New Orleans.”

“Honey, I don’t want to run either. I think this might be over
before too much longer. The CDC has to be working on a cure for this right now.
One of the guys has a radio that can pick up stations from around the world. He
has a generator to run it, too. He told us that the outbreak that is happening
here in New Orleans is happening everywhere around the country, and I guess it’s
in other countries as well. It seems like there’s nowhere to run that’s safe.
From the firehouse, we saw five or six zombies in the houses behind the
station. It was the first time I’d really seen one of them. They’re horrible to
look at. So the firehouse is shut down. You told me that most of the hospital
staff aren’t coming in either; it sounds like the world is going to hell. How
long are you going to work?”

“I’ll work as long as I have a hospital to work in. I worked too
hard to get my nursing degree to just throw it away. When this is over, if I
don’t go to work, I could have my license taken away. Right now it sounds like
there’s nowhere to go that is any safer than right here. If you want to stay
home, you can, but I’m going to work. You know what you can do? You have
medical training. Since the firehouse is closed, why don’t you come to the
hospital to help me? You know we’re shorthanded.”

“Layla, if I go with you, they’re not going to let me help. I’m
not part of the hospital staff. Their insurance won’t allow them to let me
work. You know that.”

“They’re so shorthanded now, they’d welcome you or anyone else who
knows how to start an IV, splint a broken bone or bandage a wound. Just come
with me, honey. I’m sure they’ll let you help out. When I left this morning,
there were only two doctors left to cover the entire hospital. The other
hospitals in the city are no better than we are. If you come, you can keep me
safe. Come on, come with me.”

“The firehouse doesn’t want me to come in. I’ll come with you. I
can do something to help. I’ll wear my firehouse uniform. Are you still on your
7 PM to 7:30 AM shift?”

“No, they aren’t using shifts anymore. Everyone works as long as
they can before they stop to get some rest. I want to take my car because I
think I can get another trip out of it; then it’ll be out of gas. I know you
keep your truck full. We can leave it in the parking garage to use after my car
dies. It’s 3 PM right now. I want to leave for the hospital in an hour. Believe
me, we can use your help. They wanted me to stay over this morning but I told
them I couldn’t work anymore without some rest. I’m sure that they’ll be asking
again in the morning.”

Landon and Layla got ready to leave for the hospital. The city of
New Orleans was turning into a death zone for anyone who didn’t have a place to
escape to. When the hotels in the French Quarter closed, it forced the tourists
onto the streets to fend for themselves.

When the airlines quit flying, tourists who had no vehicles had no
way out and were on their own to wander the streets. The zombies gathered in
the Quarter, hunting the tourists. The grocers that were still open were nearly
out of food. People broke into the stores that had already closed, looting
anything they could find.

Those who could leave had left the city days ago. The people who
had a sense of commitment to the city stayed to help until they could no longer
do so.

New Orleans had a fragile infrastructure. It had been bad since
the last big storm back in August of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina blew through
Louisiana and destroyed the city. The city never quite recovered from that, and
it only took losing one utility for all the others to start to crumble, taking
everything else with it.

For New Orleans, it was the sewer system. The sewage pumps had
become plugged. This caused a surge in the power grid, taking it down.
Following that, the police department closed as well as the fire department.

Landon drove his wife’s car, parking in the hospital employees’
parking lot. In front of the hospital, they could see a large tent set up which
the hospital was using to triage patients before anyone was allowed inside the
hospital for treatment. The two of them walked to the back door of the
emergency room to get in. She used her keycard to open the locked door.

As she pulled it open, they could see that it was chaos already.
The overflow of patients in the emergency room had filled each exam room,
leaving patients on gurneys or sitting in chairs in the hallway.

On the floors above the emergency room, there were two or three
times the number of patients in each room as was normal. The hospital was
overcrowded, with more patients coming every minute. Savannah Locaviche, the
charge nurse for the emergency room, saw Layla and called her to her desk.

Savannah said, “Layla, I see you brought your husband. Is he here
to help us, or just to keep you company? If he wants to work, we could really
use the help.”

“I was getting ready to come in when Landon came home early from
the firehouse. All the firehouses in the city are now closed. I asked him to
come help us here. You know all of the firemen are trained EMTs. He’ll do
anything you ask of him. Will that be okay?”

Savannah nodded. “Landon, you’re a sight for my tired eyes. Yes,
you can stay. The only thing that I’ve heard is that everyone is leaving the
city if they can. If this is true, then where are all these people coming from?
We’re swamped. For now, the two of you have rooms 47 through 50, including the
six patients in the hall outside those rooms. We need them worked up so we can
either admit them or get them discharged the hell out of my ER. I think most of
them just want a safe place to stay. We only have one doctor on the floor to
help us. It’s Dr. Gavin LaTour. Call him only if you need him. The last time we
talked he told me that, in his opinion, most of the patients are terrified.”