His attention was on the growing noise outside. “I thought you gave the order.”
“I did. But I want to wait until the backup troops arrive. Better safe than sorry, it’s getting crazy. After that’s finished, I already assigned locations for our scouts. But for now, Doctor, please.” Col. Manning maneuvered the mouse, and the hiss of the printer started. “I’m making you copies to review fully on the plane. Check this out.”
Saul leaned into the monitor.
A picture of an arm with a small red gash appeared. The gash wasn’t bad, or deep.
“This was taken one half hour after this soldier was bitten.” Col. Manning switched the screen. “Two hours post bite.”
A redness appeared around the gash, which also seemed to still look as if it seeped.
Another switch and the arm was swollen and turning dark. The wound looked bigger and open.
“How many hours?” Saul asked.
“This is twelve hours. Taken at the hospital.”
“How is the patient?”
“Fevered. Not much. Starting to feel ill.”
“The other one?”
“Interesting enough, at a slower rate with a bigger wound.”
Saul folded his arms. “Adrenaline enhanced.”
“We think,” Col. Manning said. “Soldier one; small wound, was very hyper and worried. Soldier two was hit accidentally in the head and knocked unconscious. So therefore all body function slowed.”
“As did the rate of the virus.”
“Exactly. We’re keeping him sedated and his vitals at minimal to see what happen.”
“Comparable in time frame?”
“His bigger wound is at maybe soldier one’s four hour post.”
“Let me ask you this,” Saul said. “When you first tested them you said there were no signs of the virus in the blood. Not for thirty minutes. Have you yet experimented with removing the infected area or even amputating?”
“We’ve theorized that. Perhaps maybe the wound generates the virus and getting rid of the wound may do it, but we’ve not been fortunate enough to catch it that early.”
“If it happens again, evasive wounds . . .”
“Then we will experiment.”
“Great.”
“I’ve placed those theories and other data in there for you.” Col. Manning grabbed the papers from the printer and placed them in a folder. He extended the folder for Saul as the sound of the helicopter came into earshot.
“Ah, my ride and your backup. Col. Manning, if anything arises, anything of interest before I leave, let me know.”
“I will.” Col. Manning pointed to the folder. “You can review those on the flight.”
“Seven hours,” Saul breathed out. “Makes you wonder what I’m gonna face when I land.”
Both men turned their heads when the sounds of yelling and moaning, damnation moaning rang out.
“Hopefully,” Col. Manning said. “We can do something so that ends here. Tonight.”
Saul gave a closed mouth nod. “Let’s hope.”
<><><><>
“They finished their meal,” Specialist Carlson said. “We’re the smorgasbord.”
“They’re not zombies,” Jack blasted out.
“Then what are they?”
“I ... I don’t know.”
From tent two, the couple hundred hands multiplied and the barbed wire, fenced in area was like a corral of wild animals.
They moved slow, rigid, sloppy. Some carried body parts; all had that same dead-eyed look as they locked stares on the soldiers outside the perimeter.
As if they lost all reasoning, they aimed for the fence, reaching out. Some trying to walk through, getting jabbed and stuck. Others tried to climb with the same results. All of them gaping mouths, biting the air as if trying to consume a meal long distance.
Spc. Carlson snickered in a young way. “Dude, oh, my God. Look at that one.”
Jack turned to see where he pointed. A woman was diligent in her fence attempt, flesh tore from her with each caught up twisted turn, but she didn’t seem to notice.
It was a nightmare Jack had many times. Thought the reasonable man in him, verbally, and outright argued that they weren’t zombies, in his mind he couldn’t think of anything else they would be.
They looked dead. If they weren’t, some sort of nerve disease cut their ability to feel. Some of them had no limbs, no insides, eyes.
Yes, a nightmare he had many times. Every time his wife made him watch a movie, whether scary or lame, he had nightmares about them. The big man’s insides shuddered with disgust as his mind raced to comprehend what was happening. He couldn’t help but stare at them, watching them, taking relief in the fact that he was safe from them for the time being.
The call of the platoon sergeant, yelling out, “Orders are in. Do it.”
Jack knew what that meant.
They were just waiting for the shoot to kill order.
Spc. Carlson chuckled outward before blasting one single shot into the forehead of one of them.
Rapid fire rang out and Jack raised his weapon.
Be smart, he thought, you’ve seen enough movies. Just like Carlson, you know where to hit. Jack didn’t waste time. He performed head shots and that was it.
“Quit wasting ammo,” A soldier yelled out. “They aren’t going down unless you aim for the head. Aim for the head!”
How right that was. Those who randomly shot only caused the creatures to jolt a few times and keep on in their pursuit. A single shot to the head ended it.
There were hundreds upon hundreds, and maybe thirty soldiers to do the job. Jack knew there were plenty of troops to take them all out, as long as they shot carefully and with precision.
Jack’s big concern wasn’t in ending the current situation; it was more so on the fact was this it? Or God forbid, were there more out there. Even scarier, if there were, they certainly weren’t behind barbed wire fences.
CHAPTER TEN
May 7
th
Hans was grateful he was seated in the back of the plane and that the person seated next to him had one too many cocktails before boarding. The overweight man snored loudly as he slept curled to the window, his hard outward breaths caused condensation against the pane of glass. It covered up the sound of regurgitation.
Pretty soon, Hans thought, he would stop throwing up. He didn’t drink much, and the amount that spewed forth from his mouth was less and less with each upheaval. He kept his mouth buried to the bag and closed it quickly as to cover the smell. A smell that wasn’t normal.
After vomiting, he hid the bag, cleared his throat, sat back and pulled the blanket higher. He was cold.
Feeling as if he could sleep, he closed his eyes.
“Sir, are you ok?” The gentle voice of Marian asked. He gazed upward to the stewardess, a woman considered ‘older’ for a stewardess. She offered a comforting smile.
“Air sickness. I suffer terribly from it.”
“You should have taken something.”
“I just did,” Hans said. “Hopefully it’ll knock me out for the flight.”
“If you need anything,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Thank you.”
Another smile, and Marian turned, walking up the aisle, checking on passengers as she moved by them.
Almost half way through the flight, Hans counted down the hours. Sleep would make them pass by faster, and with that thought, feeling pretty lousy, Hans tried to sleep.
<><><><>
Two soldiers were injured. One pretty severely in the camp cleansing. Saul directed those two soldiers, along with the boy and the two already transported to Washington, to be moved to Atlanta where a special quarantine and research center was being set up.
Number one priority was to stop the virus. If infected, they had to figure out how to stop it. The bacterium wasted away the person, then regenerated the cells without regenerating brain cells. Making them into moving monsters.
At least in Atlanta they could contain them, detain them, and hopefully try to cure them if not learn from them.
Col. Manning added one more specific to Saul’s directive.
Not wanting to chance something happening during transport, any soldier fatally injured, would be spared the torment of a regenerated death.
Regenerated death. Saul couldn’t believe that was what they were dealing with. Never in all of his imagination did he think he would be dealing with the walking dead.
But they weren’t really dead. They couldn’t be. Not if they were moving and acting.
He finished the phone call, and leaned back in his chair.
Before he released the grip on his phone, he placed one more call.
“Saul? Saul I didn’t think I’d hear from you,” Irma said concerned.
“I’m on a plane so we may not have great reception.”
“A plane.”
“On my way back to Atlanta.”
She breathed heavily and the ‘hiss’ of it carried over the line. “Thank God. Thank God. Everything must be fine then. You’re coming home.”
“Actually, Irma,” Saul paused. He wasn’t going to say much, not at all. He couldn’t. Not on a government phone, but he knew if he said the right words, the right way, that would tell Irma enough. “Actually they are about as strange as strange could be.”
He ended the call, bringing the phone to his lips in thought.
A clearing of the throat drew him from that moment and Saul turned around.
Steven stood before him. He had been in the back of the plane with the infected that they were bringing back to the states. He looked drawn, something wasn’t right.
“Captain? Are you okay?”
“I heard you mention the word ‘strange’”
Saul nodded. “I was speaking to my wife.”
“It’s about to get stranger.”
“I don’t understand,” Saul said.
“Neither do I. But that boy, Juan?”
“Did he get violent?”
“No, Sir.” Steven shook his head. “He’s crying.”
<><><><>
Medication that rendered a person semi comatose was shipped immediately to the site in Peru before scouting teams were sent out. Platoon leaders were each given ample injections of it.
The orders were simple. If a soldier became injured through bite or scratch of an infected, they were to immediately turn themselves into whoever was in charge, and receive the injection.
Slowing the cardio functions slowed the virus, enabling more time to be cured.
Jack scoffed at that, so did Spc. Carlson. Relying solely on movie information, both conveyed to each other that they didn’t think anything could stop a zombie transformation. However that was fiction. It was never dealt with in ‘real life’.
Or was it.
“How do we know?” Spc. Carlson asked Jack as they moved through a wooded area.
“True.”
“I mean, it could have happened before. And it was contained. You just never know. Plus, we do have cool technology with medicine.”
“True.”
“What are you doing?”
Jack was busted. He gave a smile to Carlson. “Trying to get a signal.” He held up his phone.
“Yeah, well, you just spoke to your wife.”
“I know, sorry.”
“Please keep focused. We’re up front, we don’t need something jumping out at us.”
Jack nodded. He was searching for a signal because he had to abruptly end his talk with Lil. He wanted to tell her so much. He was certain she knew he was worried. Telling her, ‘If I don’t come back …” said a lot. But he had to end his call and he did so without letting her know what was happening. He wanted to.
Jack figured out a coded way to do so, he prepared a simple text. One that couldn’t come back negatively to him as if he let secret information out, and one his wife would understand with a little thought and know exactly what was happening. .
But he couldn’t get a signal to send it out. The text sat in his phone in the ‘outbox’ folder.
Spc. Carlson said something else. Jack didn’t understand. “What was that?” Jack asked.
“I said,” Carlson looked back. “I think there’s a village about two more miles from …”
He stopped. Jack was only two feet behind him. Carlson stopped and didn’t move.
“Hold up,” Jack called out, lifting hand. “Carlson?”
“It broke the perimeter.” Carlson whispered. “I was hoping they contained it. But it broke.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked, then received his answer. Joining Carlson he saw the reason for his concern. A goat with a stick protruded through his mouth lay there. The goat’s fur was half off, its ribcage exposed, the flesh appeared to have been torn, and the body had already entered into a putrefaction stage.
Jack gagged and covered his mouth.
“See what I mean?” Carlson said. “Something ate it alive. Then it came back. Someone had to kill it.”
Jack swallowed the lump and turned around. “Keep your eyes open. We may have infected in these woods.”
For a while, Jack thought his worry and his wanted to forewarn his wife was premature. Until he saw that goat. Carlson was right it either broke the perimeter or was beyond the perimeter long before the virus was discovered to be deadly.
Mid stare at the goat, and whispering questions of the men, a ‘bleep’ caught Jack’s attention. He didn’t need to look. He knew what it meant. He had caught the scope of a signal and his message had been sent. Now he hoped she would figure it out.
<><><><>
Despite the fact that Jack told her to get it all together, Lil couldn’t bring herself to dig up his military papers that he had in the event of his death.
That told her something was wrong, but not as much as Jack calling her three times in the middle of the night to say he loved her and she had to know that in case he didn’t come back.
She asked him three times what was going on, he said he couldn’t tell her. He would figure out a way to tell her more.
That she understood.
The last conversation was twenty-nine seconds long and Jack said to her, ‘You of all people are more prepared than anyone I know.’
Prepared. What was Lil prepared for? Jack’s death? No, it couldn’t be that.
She went on the internet and looked up Peru. The place Jack had gone. The news talked about a meteor causing mass hysteria illness. Maybe Jack went down to help restore peace. But a conspiracy site said it was more, it was illness out of control. Lil thrived on reading, watching and learning about end of the world scenarios. To her, that was what she was most prepared for.