The Living Dead Series (Book 2): World Without End (12 page)

“Head for the lights and try to look as un-zombie like as possible. We’ve come a long way just to get shot.” Mac said.

“How do we look un-zombie like? Dance? Turn cartwheels?” Sylvie asked.

“We’ll be moving much faster than them. At least I hope so. I forgot I had this but it might help.” Mac pulled a thin, square, plastic package from his pocket. “Got this at the gun store in Maryland. Free flag with every twelve-hundred rounds. Wave it like you mean it.” He handed it to Brian who tore open the plastic and unfolded a surprisingly large American flag.

They sprinted across the snowy grounds, dodging the reaching dead and heading straight for the spotlights, Brian waving the flag like mad. The gunfire ceased altogether and they knew they had been spotted.

Mac tripped over something buried under the snow and went down hard. Sylvie stopped and pulled him back up, the two of them now falling behind. They were cut off from Bea and Brian almost immediately and Bea stopped when she realized what had happened. Brian tugged her arm, pulling her onward. The dead closed in and one, a bare-chested teen whose ribs flashed intermittently through shredded skin, grabbed Brian’s arm and pulled him down. Bea aimed her revolver at the teen’s head but couldn’t get a clear shot. A shot rang out and the teen’s head disintegrated. Brian rolled away from the odorous mess on the snow and got to his feet. Bea couldn’t tell where the shot came from but whoever they were, they were good.

Someone grabbed her arm and she struggled to break away until a voice said, “I’ve got you now. Stay close and we’ll have all of you out of this and inside.” It was too dark to see his face well but the voice was reassuring and she stayed as close as she could, holding onto Brian. More shots were fired not too far away and she flinched but kept running until they reached a low stone marker. Beside it was a set of concrete steps leading to a depression in the lawn and a metal door. The door opened to an underground tunnel. Her rescuer shoved her and Brian inside and shut the door, leaving them in almost total darkness but only momentarily. The door opened again and Sylvie and Mac stumbled in alongside two more men in military-style fatigues. They shut the door and shoved a bolt lock into place with a loud metallic
thunk
. They turned and removed their Kevlar knit ski masks.

“Welcome to the White House.”

They proceeded to another thick, metal door and when it closed behind them Bea momentarily fought against a feeling of panic at being shut in. The mostly underground complex was spotless and modern and, according to their guide, a freckled, blond, giant of a soldier, was intended to accommodate high-ranking officials in case of a short-term event. He explained there were medical facilities and enough food to last one hundred people for three months. Other, deeper parts of the facility could be sealed off with recirculated air and were thus capable of being entirely self-contained in case of a nuclear or biological contamination event. Motion sensors and infrared heat detectors surrounded the entire unit and were also placed at strategic locations inside for state of the art security. The lushly carpeted hallways were surprisingly bereft of people. When Mac commented on that their guide snorted, “You think the senior staffers and their kind stuck around long? They were out before the announcement.”

“Where did they go?” Bea asked.

Brian replied, “Probably Mount Weather.”

The soldier shrugged. They went up a short flight of steps then passed a recessed checkpoint manned by a dark-haired, female MP. Two leashed German shepherds barked twice then sat down quickly, muscles trembling in apparent restraint. The MP patted their furry heads and then sighted her rifle on the group. Their escort did the same.

“Who’s infected?” The inquiry was unemotional and matter-of-fact.

Mac stepped forward, laid his rifle down and raised his hands. “I’m your guy.”

“Step this way, sir.” Mac was led away. Sylvie tried to follow only to have the rifles trained on her. They all had to surrender their guns and were made to pass by the dogs again, one by one, this time with no resulting barks. To Bea’s surprise they returned the guns to them.

“Dangerous world these days,” was their guard’s only comment as he led them down an antiseptic-smelling hallway to a small alcove containing deep leather chairs, flat screen and a mini-bar.

“Sir, how do the dogs know if someone is infected?” Brian asked.

“Keen sense of smell. Our infected countrymen out there begin to rot from the inside out once they’re bit and the dogs can pick up on it long before we can.” He turned to leave.

“Wait, can you take this to our friend they just took away?” Bea reached into her pocket and handed her flash drive over.

“Sure, anything else?”

“Just one.  A friend of ours should be here somewhere. David Chambord? He’s with Homeland Security and should have arrived ahead of us.” Bea said.

“Sorry, ma’am, I don’t know him. There are other sections of the complex in use that we don’t have access to. Help yourselves to the bar if you’re thirsty or hungry. The senators won’t miss it.” He left.

Brian tore into a bag of pretzels and opened one of the cold, bottled sodas. Flipping through channels only to find blank screens he finally tossed the remote onto a table. Bea sat beside him but Sylvie paced the corridor. There was no clock but it felt like hours had passed when Sylvie leaned against the door and spoke to no one in particular.

“Are they going to try to help him or just kill him? Who are these people?” She didn’t seem to expect an answer and jumped when a voice came from the hallway.

“I’m Dr. Anouk Osawy and I don’t plan to kill anyone.”

A petite, dark-skinned woman in camouflage pants, green tee shirt and combat boots held the handles of a wheelchair in which Mac sat, smiling bleakly at them before lapsing into a coughing fit. He struggled to regain his breath.

“We needed to complete a physical exam before we broached what you will probably find to be a disquieting topic. I’ve already talked to Mac about this but we want his family to know what he has agreed to before we proceed,” she continued.

“We’re not family.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you were. Close friends, then? Yes? That’s almost as good. You need to know what we are attempting to do. I would like you all to follow me as I explain.”

Bea turned to Brian only to find him asleep in one of the cushy chairs, empty bag of pretzels on the floor in front of him.

Dr. Osawy said, “He’ll be fine here if you want to leave him. It might be best if he didn’t see everything I’m about to show you.”

“Ok.”

Dr. Osawy led them through a set of double-doors to a tiled corridor on the left of the guard station where the guard they encountered before stood and saluted smartly. Dr. Osawy explained to them she carried the rank of colonel. A metallic rattling sound grew louder the farther they went down the hallway. The doctor stopped in front of a locked, gray, metal door and ran an ID card through a reader. The lock on the door clicked and they went inside.

The room was slightly larger than a school infirmary and contained a wall full of expensive, high-tech equipment. State of the art defibrillators, dialysis and x-ray equipment stood next to a recessed area holding the rounded bulk of an MRI machine. Floor to ceiling, glass-fronted cabinets held vast supplies of medicines, gauze and bandages.

“You know how they say generals are always fighting the last war? Well doctors are always prepared for the last health crisis. Of course this one was a little hard to anticipate.”

They walked through the room and approached a set of double doors. A foul, familiar odor grew stronger and the rattling sounds increased.

“They sense us. We’ve just started studying them really but we do know that the changes that the virus causes are extensive and somewhat to their advantage in their ‘dead’ state. Eyes as well as mucous membranes in the nasal cavity dry out quickly and they lose sight and probably most of their sense of smell but their hearing stays quite acute and possibly becomes more so. I would say that at this moment they can hear all of our hearts beating.”

She opened another metal door and led them into a high-ceilinged, concrete-floored room. It had a small bay door, closed and locked, that was probably used for deliveries. Right now it echoed from the many blows of dead hands trying to force their way in. The air here was so cold that they could see their breath in small puffs of condensation. Canned goods and sacks of flour shared space with stacks of toilet paper. Shelves were pushed against the walls and four metal gurneys occupied the middle of the space. Bright, fluorescent lights shone on a hellish scene.

Autopsies appeared to have stopped in progress on the bodies strapped to the gurneys. The patient nearest the door had its skin sliced open and peeled apart, pinned down and exposing the tissue and bones underneath, much like a high school biology dissection. The internal organs were in a state of advanced decay and metal trays were placed on the floor to catch the rotting flesh as it dropped off. The creature thrashed and struggled to break free as the open mouth turned their way.

“All of these victims were infected around the same time. Despite that the disease has not progressed at the same rate. Some succumbed within hours while others took as long as four days before they died and revived. We believe their health at the time of infection might have something to do with the progress. Some people may be naturally more resistant than others but no one, so far, is immune.

Their hunger is strong and seems to be the only thing that causes them pain. I suppose it is the survival imperative the virus carries with it. We’ve concluded they are constantly seeking fresh genetic material. Mac told me something of your research into the history of the disease so you may know a good bit about that already.”

Sylvie shook her head. “We didn’t find that much technical information and we didn’t find information on a cure. The Germans were looking for a weapon.”

“We’re all fortunate they never tried to use this as one. The virus could have gone pandemic quite easily even in the nineteen-thirties or forties.”

The other three gurneys held more patients. One had been beheaded and the body was still but the eyes in the skull rolled in their sockets and the mouth moved.

“We left the brainstem intact on this one just to see if it would survive decapitation and you can see it is still active. It makes sense that the brain would last longest since it is the best protected organ in the body. Tests indicate very little other than the most rudimentary intelligence though. The driving force here again is the survival of the virus and its need for fresh cells.”

Nauseated by the smells and sights in the room, Bea went back into the infirmary section. The rest of the group stayed inside a few minutes more then came out.

“…so that’s basically what we’re up against. I have a theory that these things can actually survive for a very, very long time especially if the bodies were to be preserved in some way. Mummification or irradiation for instance.”

Sylvie said, “I think you’re right. You did read the documents on the flash drive we brought?”

The doctor pulled the flash drive out of her pocket and returned it to Bea. “Yes, I hope you don’t mind but I copied it. One of the papers gave me an idea. The Nazis tried injecting the infected with boiling water after they found the virus could be killed with heat and obviously that didn’t work. We’ve cultured the virus from infected tissue and done a battery of experiments. It
can
be killed with heat. What we want to do next is infect a patient with a strain of malaria. Mac is an ideal candidate.”

“Why would you give him another illness on top of this one?”

“For one thing we’re very familiar with malaria. It’s been around longer than mankind. Malaria parasite fossils have even been found in dinosaur remains. Over millennia it made the jump from species to species creating the form we have today about the time West Africa was settled by humans.”

“How does this relate to what you want to do to Mac?”

“I just want you to know that malaria is something we know how to deal with here. We can kill the virus with heat, right? One problem though, is the life cycle of the Z-virus. The infected are teeming with millions of viruses, all at different stages of their ‘life’ cycle. While some are in the active stage, others go dormant and they are very, very difficult to destroy in dormancy. The virus has a way of stealing the surface membranes of the host and covering up in them and tucking in if you will, before they go into the dormant stage. During the dormant stage they look almost identical to benign cell tissue.

The nasty little bugger that causes malaria is a protozoan, also very difficult to kill. The human body reacts to it with a high temperature and that is what interests us. You see the high temperature it produces can kill the Z-virus. What we want to try is to infect the Z patient with malaria. My theory is that the fever resulting from the malaria will heal the Z-virus victim. Of course there is still danger from the malaria but it might be a good trade-off.”

“But malaria can re-occur right? Will he always have malaria?”

“That is a risk. But most of us would choose malaria over living death. The recurring nature of malaria is really another advantage to the treatment. Each reoccurrence starts another period of fever that will attack any Z-virus stragglers still in the patient. This is not an easy route to go and we don’t have any early-stage victims to experiment on. You’ve seen how quickly the decay progresses. All those moving corpses back there would die of the injuries they’ve already received if we brought them back to ‘real’ life. Mac, however…” she trailed off expectantly.