As I finished the thought, I saw a red light blinking. Now, as far as I know, red generally isn’t a cherished color when it comes to electronics, and I was about to say something. Winters held his finger up. More lights slowly began to come to life. I could feel hope rising; Stenzel’s news helped quell that.
“Not moving past sir. Congregating might be a better term.”
“They coming in?”
“No sir; I think they’re waiting on numbers.”
“Same orders. Keep an eye on them and disengage the moment they decide to come in. Winters, you need to get me on the air quickly.”
“No disrespect, sir,” he started.
“You sure do get that a lot from your personnel,” BT interjected.
I flipped him off and motioned for Winters to continue.
“If I knew enough to be a television producer, I wouldn’t have been doing this Marine Corps gig. Get in front of a camera, and I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”
BT and I headed out. “How do I look?” I asked him.
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t want to have a nose rocket hanging out.”
“You’re reporting back to base, not hosting a variety show.”
Tommy had come back from checking out our perimeter. “No zombies, but this place had guests recently, within the last few weeks. It seems they have moved on.”
“Any food?” I asked.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said as he pulled out a dozen or so packets of unfrosted cherry pop-tarts.
“I’m sure you are.” I turned my back on the small feast as I looked into the reflective lens of the camera, doing my best to look somewhat presentable.
BT ate his allotment like it was filet mignon. Tommy went and handed Winters a pack; he shook his head but pocketed the morsel anyway. I saw a light on the camera begin to blink; it was weird, but I got butterflies. I can’t imagine many people had access to a television or even the ways and means to run one, but I was about to go live. Then I thought on the dangers of that. This would not be a secure transmission, and just how much did I want any eavesdroppers to know? I knew Etna would see this because they actively searched all bands, but did they do it all the time? And I had no idea if I could receive a response.
“On in three, two…” The light atop the camera went from red to green, Winters pointed at me, and I froze.
“LT! Zees coming in!” I could hear Stenzel and Harmon’s footfalls echo throughout the vaulted antechamber as they were making a run for it.
“Now what?” I turned and looked into the booth.
“We wait for Etna to acknowledge you,” Winters said.
“So, I just stand here like an idiot?”
“Make no mistake, Mike, you don’t need to stand to look like an idiot,” BT said.
“Tommy, will you make sure Stenzel and Harmon make it up here? BT, that moves you to the door.”
“Just trying to get rid of me.” He moved that way.
I was acutely aware that I was on the same stage as so many legends had been; I could almost hear their voices as they made millions laugh. I wasn’t even aware when I said: “No Coke, Pepsi!”
“Sir?” Winters asked.
“Sorry, just remembering a better time.”
“Not all that hard to do,” I heard him say. “Wait, message coming through. Patching it out your way.”
“This is Etna Station, Lieutenant Talbot. Hold one while we get Colonel Bennington.”
“Better make it quick, we’re in a bit of a rush.”
Bennington’s voice came on in less than a minute. “Lieutenant Talbot, good to see you. When we lost communication, we feared the worst.”
“Did you lose any sleep, sir?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry. It’s been a long few days.”
“Stick to the sitrep.”
“This is a party line, sir, not going to go into specifics.”
“Understood.”
“Our ride was attacked, lost comm, and they lost the ability to keep giving us passage. We were dropped off early.”
“And your transportation?”
I had to bite my tongue. In the grand scheme of things, that plane was a much more valuable asset than any of the occupants within it; didn’t ease the feelings of being downgraded.
“Safe, but not going anywhere without help. We’ve run into the next iteration of zees; they have the ability to communicate intelligently and can direct other zombies over an unspecified distance. That and they can talk with us.” Like the rest wasn’t terrifying enough.
“Your original mission, Lieutenant.”
“Did you hear the part, sir, where I said we were dropped early from our target and encountered smart zees?”
I could hear Winters’ gasp from where I stood.
“Your hardships notwithstanding, the mission is of paramount importance.”
“No disrespect, sir, but even if we somehow escape our current predicament, what do I do with…”
“What you can, Lieutenant,” he shot back. I almost forgot I wasn’t on a radio and was so close to flipping him the finger I had to consciously stop the movement with my other hand.
“We have your ride’s location and will be sending assistance. In the meantime, I expect you will be doing all you can to complete what you have been tasked with.”
“Understood, sir.” I gave Winters a cut motion across my throat.
“I don’t think he’s done.”
“Yeah, but I am.” I walked off-camera; a moment later the light turned red. “What does he mean he knows where the plane is?”
“Transponder?” Winters guessed.
“So they’ve known all along.” Then I put it together. “But if they thought we’d crashed or been shot down, they weren’t going to spend the resources to come and look for us. I’ve been in a couple of the shittiest armpits in the world, and I’ve never felt so abandoned as I do in downtown New York.”
“I’m here, sir.”
I looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. “I mean from Support.”
He cleared his throat. “I knew that, sir.” We heard gunfire; our attention turned to the stairwell.
“Where’s Belushi and his samurai sword when you need it?” I quickly moved to where BT was. “See anything?”
“Nothing yet. What did Etna say?”
“Pretty much told us to stop slacking off and get what we were sent here for accomplished.”
“I’d say you were full of shit but you look pissed.” He was looking over the handrail and down the stairs, as was I. We could see muzzle flashes and hear the reports as Stenzel and Harmon made their way up.
“Winters! Look for an alternate exit!”
“On it!”
“Tommy…what’s going on?”
“On the fifth floor. Zombies have stopped coming in. Stenzel and Harmon are with me.”
“How many we talking about?”
It was Stenzel that replied, “A couple dozen came in, but twice that are outside sir.”
“This shit is getting old. I wonder if they think that too.”
“Don’t start rolling down the inner highway now, Mike. There aren’t going to be any peace accords down the line.”
“Stop being a realist, BT.”
“My bad.”
Stenzel and Harmon came up first. “Sergeant is watching our back,” Stenzel said, referring to Tommy staying back a few flights lower.
Winters was back within a few minutes. “South stairwell is empty.”
“Tommy, let’s go,” I told him.
“Etna sir?” Harmon asked.
“They’re coming. We still have some work to do though,” I told her, not giving any indication of how frustrated I was.
BT clapped Tommy on the shoulder as the other came up.
“Anyone by any chance see, or, better yet, put a bullet in Dewey?”
Got some head shaking. “Unfortunate. Alright, let’s do a gear check and get ready to leave. Winters, get on the horn with Corporal Rose, find out what’s going on there and then fill her in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“One of these missions, I’m just going to forgo all the other shit we carry and just pack out ammo.” BT was thumbing rounds into a magazine. “Seriously. Not once have I used the sleeping bag and bedroll we bring. Or that little infant shovel…what am I supposed to do with that thing? About the size of the spoon I use for breakfast. For fuck’s sake, Mike, I carry extra underwear. I mean, sure, there are plenty of times when I want to shit my pants, but at that point, man, I’m not stopping to change my drawers.”
“You all right?” I was smiling, but the look that BT gave me back was not one of jest. Humans aren’t built to deal with continued, unrelenting stress; it starts to break down who we are at our core, infecting every other aspect of our existence. “We do this, BT, we go home, take some time, be with my sister. There is an end.”
He wanted to question how I knew this, but he didn’t ask, because yes, there would be an end, but I’d not said it would be a good one. The important part was to live the good life while you could, in spite of the enemy that was out there.
“Rose says the church is clear.” Winters looked from me to BT, not sure he was thrilled with what he saw.
“Change of plans. We’re not going back there. Tell them the primary meeting place is Central Park Zoo. If we’re not there, they are to head to the Bio-Reference Labs and continue the mission.”
“What should I tell her about the people in the church?” Winters asked.
“We’re going to have to come back for them. I can’t take them with us, not yet.” This only compounded my problems. I knew what I’d promised Jason; how I was going to deliver was eluding me at the moment.
Winters did not look thrilled to relay the message.
“Let’s go, people. We’re out of here.”
Didn’t smell anything, or better yet, see anything, as we quickly made our way down the south stairwell. We skipped the first floor and headed to the basement.
“Clear.” Winters had first looked through the small safety window in the door then poked his head out to check.
“What are the odds any of these will start?” I was looking at ten long-abandoned cars.
“Not good,” Harmon said. “My dad was a mechanic; worked with him a lot. If we had a new battery and could drain the old fluids, then yeah. Otherwise…” She left it there.
We could have ridden in style. I touched the front end of a late model Benz; the thing was stout, heavy enough that we could have used it as a dozer for the zees we were likely to encounter. We were cautiously making our way up the ramp that led to street level; we somehow had the good fortune to not encounter any zombies.
I nodded to Stenzel to take point. “I’ve got this,” Harmon spoke up.
“Right behind you,” I told her. I saw her shoulders heave as she took in a great gust of breath and then she soldiered on. BT pursed his lips and nodded slightly; impressed, I think, that she was marshaling.
I had an unshakable fear that the moment she stepped from the shadows of the parking garage and into the light of day, the alarm would sound and we would be once again sprinting for our lives. She had one foot in the light and was swiveling her head; she took another, then a third, until she was basking in the sun.
“All clear.” Hadn’t heard more magical words since I’d been with my wife, and I’m not telling you those words, though, how many guesses do you need? “Which way, sir?”
“Not the front.”
“Helpful,” BT said as he shouldered past.
“Don’t worry, Mr. T. It was extremely helpful to me.” Tommy was moving up front.
“Kiss ass.” BT hip-checked Tommy.
We went two city blocks away from where the majority of the zombies we knew of were, and hopefully, far enough away from Dewey’s influence. We stayed tight on the sidewalk, but it was impossible to stay hidden.
“How far to the zoo?” I asked. We all had handheld GPS units, but Winters, by default, was generally where our information came from.
“Little less than two klicks,” he answered, pausing to check.
“That a mile?” BT asked.
“About,” Winters clarified.
One mile. We could make that in about twenty minutes at our current, cautious pace. It was one mile closer, not to safety, but to getting out of this hellhole, and I was good with that, especially since we would meet up with the rest of the squad. We heard gunfire off to the east; this was followed by some garbled transmission.
“Winters!”
“Buildings are messing with the signal, sir.”
I wanted to tell him to fix it, but short of demolishing all the scrapers, that wasn’t going to happen.
“Contact…” came through loud and clear; everything else sounded like a television underwater, two rooms away.
“Forward or back?” BT looked antsy.
“Hold. We don’t know what we’re getting into or where they’re going.”
I had my hand up while I tried to catch snippets of the quick conversation going on.
“Kirby, watch our six!”
“They’re coming from the side!”
I looked at the anxious faces of those with me.
“Lieutenant, this is Corporal Rose.” They were close, if the quality of the transmission was any indication, even if the gunfire still sounded far away.
“Go, Rose.” I gripped my rifle tight.
“We got company. Going to be coming in hot. You still want us to rally at the zoo?”
“Affirmative. Can you make it?”
“We’ve got some room, but they’re converging–coordinated, even.”
“Dewey,” I hissed.
“Sir?”
“Nothing. We’ll set up some support for your arrival. How’s Sergeant Talbot?”
“Holding his own, sir. I’m going to be happy when he doesn’t look like a giant smurf, though…tough to take him seriously.”
“Just get all your asses there.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Let’s go! Double time.” Eight minutes later we were standing in front of the zoo, and unfortunately, a turned-over and long-abandoned hot dog truck.
“Think the animals are gone?” BT asked as we hit the entrance.
“For all our sakes I hope that’s the case.” For obvious reasons; the big cats were scary, but monkeys were terrifying. They seemed to take the violence they doled out personally. Like each of them knew all about the fucked-up experiments we humans had performed on their kin over the years. I mean, why else would they bite fingers off and rip faces, along with genitalia, free from our bodies?
“Sir, we’re coming down 64th; be there in five minutes.” Rose sounded out of breath.
“Admin building to our left–looks like a fortress. We’ll give them some cover here.” It was a three-story brick building. The front entrance was of thickset, wooden double-doors. Tommy lifted Stenzel so she could go through a broken-out window. The father in me wanted to tell the woman, who was my daughter’s age, to be careful of getting cut. I wisely held back; she might be young, but out of us all, she was, arguably, the best at her job. “Go,” I told Tommy, who looked back at me once the corporal was in. He jumped up, grabbed the windowsill, and swung a leg to get in.
“Must have been closed the day the zombies came,” Stenzel said. “Except for some dust, this place looks like it’s just waiting for the next work day. Heading for the front door.”
“We’ll meet you there,” I told her. “Rose, take a quick left when you get to the end of 64th; you’ll see a tall brick building. We’re leaving the front doors open for you.”
“Yup,” was her quick reply; not sure she had much more than that to give.
I was worried–and I mean a lot. Rose was my PT freak; she worked out regularly on her cardio, and if she was on her last legs, the rest of the group was going to be in trouble, especially my brother, who wasn’t ever going to make a cross-country team even on his best days–and he was far from those.
“Need a volunteer.” The last word hadn’t even come out of my mouth when everyone there said: “I’m in” or a variant. “Tommy, you and I are gonna go out there and see if we can give them some cover.”
“Sir, I’d feel better if you stayed here,” Stenzel said.
“Me too,” I told her as I followed Tommy out. We’d no sooner rounded the corner when we saw the rest of the squad humping it towards us with most of hell on their heels. They couldn’t spare any time to turn and fire upon the enemy. I saw why Rose was struggling; she was hefting a fair portion of Gary’s weight, nearly dragging him along. His mouth was open and his head almost thrown back in a scream. His bright blue outfit was coated in a fair amount of his own blood as he continually broke open his freshly scabbed wounds.
“I’ll get him.” Tommy was on the move; he didn’t wait for me to tell him yay or nay. There wasn’t much of anything I could do with my rifle; the two groups were too close and my angle, or my lack of angle, rather, made it impossible to shoot safely. Rose had her head down, concentrating on moving as fast as she could. Kirby and Springer were behind her, doing their best to give her a cushion and help when they could. I saw the relief flood into her face as Tommy came in from the other side and grabbed Gary into a fireman’s lift. There was now only a hundred yards between them and me. I moved to the sidewalk and started blowing rounds into the zombies nearest them. When they got to twenty yards out, I took a few more shots and got ready to join them in their final sprint.
“Sir,” Grimm shouted as he passed by.
I motioned for him to keep going. Springer, Halsey, and Kirby were next. Rose was keeping stride with Tommy and Gary. I fell in right behind them. I saw puffs of smoke from the zoo admin building; couldn’t hear the shots because of the sheer number of feet smacking against the pavement. It was that loud; trapped between the buildings, the sound was amplified. By the time I made it up the stairs and in, I didn’t have more than ten feet on the lead zombies, all of which were met with a hail of lead and a hearty, Fuck You! from me. I flipped them off as Stenzel and BT shut and barred the doors.
“That help?” BT asked.
“You betcha.”
The six runners were in various states of catching their breath or reliving the horror. A couple were on the floor, chests heaving, ragged breaths shuddering through their bodies. Rose was close to the doors, doubled over, her hands on her knees. Winters was taking a look at my brother, who was sitting in an office chair. Gary looked miserable, and what I was about to say wasn’t going to help.
“You’ve got five minutes. Don’t get comfortable.” I could feel the heated gazes upon me. “I know you’re all tired. So am I, but we can’t afford to stay here. We don’t have the supplies to do it and help isn’t coming until this mission is complete.”
“Fuck this mission,” PFC Kirby blurted out.
“If you think about it, it’s really the mission fucking us,” Harmon said. I was thankful for her bit of humor; it created the motivation I was going to have to work with.
Kirby was the first off the floor, and he helped the others.
“Still clear,” BT informed me regarding the rear of the building.
“Rose, can you rig me a quick something on those doors?” I asked.
“I can give them a little welcome surprise.”
“Three minutes.” I was looking at my watch. In my mind, I was thinking how much I wanted to punch Bennington in the head. On one end of the spectrum, I completely understood the necessity of what we were doing. But the thought that these people under my command, most of them kids, were expendable in his eyes…well, that pissed me off to no end. If none of us came back, save the bio-engineers we were here to retrieve, I’m not sure he’d lose a single night of sleep. I knew that was an oversimplification on my part; as a commander, it was his job to put men and women at risk every day. If it furthered the advancement of the cause we were fighting for, then that was what had to happen. But as one on the front line, watching a team suffer, I tended to see things differently.
As far as I was concerned, the three minutes took an hour to pass; I’m sure for those whose legs and lungs still burned it was more like twelve seconds.
“Just about ready. No one sneeze,” Rose said as she looked upon her handiwork. “That ought to give them a little what for.”
We were out the back and heading through the zoo; I was happy to be on the move again. The zoo was its own special kind of hell. The animals that had not broken out on their own had met some terrible fates. Some, like the giraffes, had been overrun by zombies and stripped clean; massive, long-necked skeletal structures remained crumbled behind fences. In some of the enclosures, the starving animals had turned on each other, with no other food source. Starvation had forced them to become cannibals. The fight in the polar bear pen had been an epic one, if the dried blood splashes across the heavy Plexiglas of the now empty water pools was any indication. I was not thrilled that the grey wolves seemed to have found their way out; I wondered if they were going to be a problem further on down the line.
We were three quarters of the way through the zoo. I would have had my people make a mad dash for it, but there still might be animals here and I would not lose someone to a lion. That, and we were exhausted. Better to move at a cautious pace while also conserving and restoring energy. That changed when the admin building was breached; this we knew from the massive explosion.
I looked over to Rose, who shrugged. “I figured the more I used, sir, the less I had to carry.”
“Can’t fault that logic. Let’s pick it up.” With a traditional enemy, the blast would have sent them scurrying for cover and tentative to make another assault. With zombies, the opening was just a vacuum that needed filling.
When we got to the back of the zoo, we were faced with a nine-foot concrete retaining wall. I’m sure this posed no problem for the monkeys that vacated the area, but for us right now, we may as well have been Huns in China. BT gave Tommy a small boost; he didn’t need it, but the others suspected something about the boy, and we were doing our best to limit the speculation and keep the talk to a minimum.
“Honey, they’re home.” Kirby did his best Jack Torrance voice; if I had to rate it, I’d have given him a solid seven. It was the facial expression that put it over the top. I’ve got to think he practiced it a lot in a mirror. Either that or he was certifiable, like his father, Peter. Man, I missed that crazy bastard. We lost touch after the Corps. The men I had known and fought next to were as close, if not closer, than brothers, but when the shooting finally stops, sometimes you don’t want to be reminded of the past. I knew I was guilty of that.
Tommy was reaching down and snagging people like a crane would a stack of lumber. They might have had questions about him, but he was liked and respected and well, shit. When someone offers you a hand to get away from a bloodthirsty horde, you take it. The zoo was beginning to swell with zombies. We, as of yet, had not been discovered, but it looked as if they were not going to leave any stone unturned in their quest to find us.
“Does this seem a little excessive, even for them?” BT asked as he waited until everyone else was up and over.
“Clear on the other side,” Stenzel said.
“Zombies like to eat, but, yeah…they’re after us like a Jenny Craig dropout going out for all-you-can-eat shrimp. I think this has to do with Dewey, like, maybe he wants to keep his secret a secret for a little while longer.”
“It’s fucking weird when you make sense. Kind of like those pictures on the internet when a chameleon grabs a screwdriver.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Little-known fact: chameleons will grab anything placed in front of them. But just because they have it wrapped in their grip doesn’t mean they know what to do with it. Kind of like you with a valid thought.”
“I wonder if Bennington will let me trade you out. I could probably get a sixth-round draft choice.”
BT and I helped Gary up, trying to touch as little of him as we could. His teeth were clenched shut and he didn’t yell out, but he was visibly uncomfortable. Gary had been gently let down on the other side when Tommy gave us the warning that we’d been spotted.
BT didn’t need much help; a small jump and he had his elbow and underarm on the top of the wall. Tommy grabbed his pack and gave an assist.
“You ready?” Tommy leaned down and hauled me up.
I was standing atop the wall, looking over the sea of several hundred zombies running toward the wall. Tommy had dropped down and into Central Park.
“I fucking see him.” Dewey was standing on top of one of the huts that used to serve refreshments. I had him directly in my sights and was in the process of pulling the trigger, when a collision of zombies broadsided into the wall. I thought I saw a plume of blood exit from Dewey, but it was impossible to tell as I was now fighting the vibrations from the impact. I was teetering. That I was going over was not much in doubt; which way, however, was a life or death question. My calves were bunched as my front half-pitched far forward; I arched my back, flung my arms, and threw as much of my weight into going that way as possible. I wasn’t trying to correct and stand back up; that ship had sailed. I gave not a shit about how I landed in the park, just that it was in the park.
I was both happy and dismayed when BT caught me. Happy that I hadn’t landed on my head or shoulder or in some way that would have broken something and slowed me down. Dismayed, well, because he caught me like Richard Gere had carried Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentlemen. Sure, it was a great scene and even the most macho of men secretly teared up when he swept her off her feet. I mean, that’s what I’ve heard. I wouldn’t know…I didn’t see the flick. So there I was, cradled in his oversized arms; I even had my arms around his neck. The entire thing couldn’t have lasted a second and a half before he roughly deposited me onto the ground, but now it had happened. I wasn’t sure how my sister was going to react to the news; I’m sure she was going to be devastated. Tracy would take it in stride, probably even say she expected something like that from the beginning, the way I always gave him googly eyes. I mean…okay, but that was more due to the sheer size of the man.
“Thanks,” I mumbled. I wanted to add something about the Bears, but I didn’t want to make any more out of it than necessary. And given the circumstances, it was more likely my squad would be thinking about grizzlies and not the football team. I pulled my gear straight. “Winters, get us moving.”
We had cleared the zoo and still no signs of zombies breaking through, but that would happen soon enough. That wall wobble had told me it wasn’t going to hold against a sustained attack; our best strategy would to not be around when it finally gave. We had a mile and a half to the lab and somehow Central Park was free from zombies. Got a partial answer a half mile later. Elephants. Yup, I said elephants. Three of them. A colossal male, an even larger female I figured was the matriarch, and either a baby or another, smaller type. The three of them were walking around, grazing, trumpeting, cavorting, normal elephant stuff. I was worried that our presence would bring them harm; I need not have been concerned. What I had failed to notice, but Grimm pointed out, were the stomped, smattered and splattered zombies all around us. It looked like at one time the zombies thought the elephants would make a grand meal and pushed their chairs up to the table only to be told they would not be served there. This part of the park looked like it had been paved with the flattened bodies of the truly dead.
The female elephant turned and eyed us warily as we were going to approach, about a hundred yards to the small group’s side. Yeah, she knew what guns were and it didn’t look like the experience had been a happy one. We kept moving. The bull took his cues from the female; he shook his massive head and stomped around then let out a loud trumpet blast in warning. If he charged, we would be forced to shoot; I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come down to that.
“Stop, everyone stop!” I ordered. “Turn and face the elephants, hands off your weapons.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?” BT asked as he raised his hands.
“The male looks like he wants to charge I don’t want to give him a reason to do it.” Like the animal had heard my words, he took three quick steps our way.
“Hold!” I yelled when I saw more than one of my group’s hands falter and begin to slide down to their rifle.
“Wasting time.” BT looked over his shoulder to the way we had come.
“Saving lives.” And I meant theirs and ours.
I raised my hands higher, that seemed to agitate the bull even further; the matriarch, though, she understood the gesture. She wrapped her trunk around the male’s tail and gave it a pull, getting his attention. He swung his head to look at her; don’t know what she said or how she said it, but he immediately deferred to her. He turned his back to us like we were never there. The small elephant stayed hidden behind the female, who made sure to continually watch us as we departed.
“Fuck me, you adding elephant whisperer to your resume?” BT asked.
“You know I am.”
We’d been at a slight jog, but that last half mile there wasn’t anyone in my squad not feeling the effects of what had been happening. We were down to a weary and wary walk. Had Halsey at point; the building was in sight and I was about to have us stop so we could reconnoiter the place before we just barged in. Three speeders burst forth from a bodega not ten feet from where Halsey was. He didn’t even have a chance to register alarm as the first of them broadsided him. By then it was already too late; he gave an ear-piercing scream as his nose was completely bitten off. I’ve been shot by a bullet, by a crossbow–stabbed and cut so many times there was very little of me that had not suffered trauma–but in terms of pain, all of it was trumped by a bite. There is something so savage, so visceral and paralyzing in intensity about a bite. Halsey was in shock and survival mode as he tried to push the aggressor away and might have been able to do just that…if the other two hadn’t dog-piled him.
It takes a moment for the mind to process exactly what it is seeing; yes, even though all of us had witnessed it dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of times, you still don’t expect it to happen and most definitely not to one of your own. Not someone you were talking with a minute ago. The four were on the ground; three fat parasites were systematically ripping into one of my men and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Couldn’t shoot them for fear of hitting Halsey, even though I knew he was dead already. This would not be something he walked away from, unless…I was thinking about the lab as I cracked my rifle against the skull of a zombie teenager. Its pale gray face turned to me; I’d ripped the skin most of the way up and off. The side of its jaw was laid bare; teeth were exposed along with the cartilage of its nose. It snarled at me once and made as if to go back in for another piece of Halsey. I cracked it again, and this time it stood. Winters delivered a point-blank round into its forehead.
BT had kicked one of the zombies like he was trying to make a sixty-three-yard field goal; it wouldn’t have split the uprights but it was sufficient enough to launch the woman away, where someone put her down for good. The third made sure to wrap its arms and legs around a convulsing Halsey, using the dying man as a shield. Halsey’s eyes were rolling into the back of his head and he was busy chewing on his tongue; the zombie kept moving its head to keep it clear from us while also moving in to take as big a bite as it dared. It was Stenzel who ended the détente as she snapped the blade of her knife into the temple of the zombie. Its arms and legs opened wide and it rolled over. It was staring straight up into space, its left arm moved ineffectively towards the offending insertion before falling weakly back to earth. By this time, all of our attention was on Halsey.
“Help me grab him!” I yelled.
“Sir,” Winters started. I knew where he was going with this; we all knew the private was going to die. Really, the best thing we could have done for him was to end it quickly. But I felt like we had one more chance. That bio-building; we were here for a reason. Maybe they had a cure.
“The lab–we get him to the lab.”
“I’ll take him.” BT draped the private over his shoulder and we started moving quickly.
We were at the front doors in a matter of minutes. I don’t know what they were testing, but this place was a vault quality facility. Could see the hands of the government all over the drab-but-solid structure. I banged on the doors and then looked up to the camera.
“I know you can see me. I’m Lieutenant Talbot. We were sent by Etna Station to rescue you.”
There was a long delay. “What’s wrong with the man?”
“Bit. We need help.”
“We can’t help him.” The voice didn’t sound frightened to let us in; on the contrary, I’d say there was empathy. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t understand. “But if we were sent to get you, and you work at a lab, you must have a cure.”
“Cure? Now that would be something.”
“Let us in.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that–not with the infected man. You must understand; we cannot allow someone who is going to turn, in.”
“He’s not quite a zombie yet.”
“That camera is infra-red and can also perform bio scans. I suggest you have your Gunnery Sergeant put him down before you have two casualties.”
BT quickly but gently set Halsey onto the front stoop. The convulsions had stopped. Halsey took one final breath before his eyes clouded over. He sat up, his face a mass of hamburger, but the snarl on his lips and the predatory look in his eyes was all we needed to know.
“Forgive me,” I told him as I shot him from a foot away. There was stunned silence from those all around me as his head smacked off the concrete and he was finally still. We heard the door click as the locking mechanism was released.
“Sir?” Harmon asked as she grabbed the door handle. All of my attention was still on my fallen private. My pistol holding hand was still raised; BT pressed it slowly down.
“Come on, man. We gotta go; more are coming.”
“Shit.”
As soon as we got in, the door locks reengaged. We found ourselves in a small corridor faced with another set of locked doors which promptly opened up.