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  “Yeah, we’ve got a wheelbarrow stashed a few blocks away. I’ll send one of the boys after it and we can bury him in the First Pentecostal Church’s yard a few blocks over,” Curtis said. “The nearest cemetery is probably four miles away or so and I ain’t havin’ my men wheel his body that far with all the crazies about. Besides, it’s getting dark. Can I offer you a place to stay for the evening?”

  “I’d appreciate that very much. Thank you,” Grayson said. He’d noticed that the sounds from inside had ceased but he decided not to say anything more on the subject.

  ELEVEN

  04 May, 0438 hrs local

  Military Decontamination and Infection Control Site #3

  Near Culpepper, Virginia

  “Emory! Emory, wake up! Wake up, we need your help!” her new friend said as he shook her awake.

  She pushed his hand off her shoulder and sat up. “What’s going on, Josh?” she asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

  “We need all the help we can get over at the hospital. There was some kind of attack involving a large Army group in the city. The helicopters will be here in a few minutes. Please, get up, we need everybody to help out. I’m going to go wake the other volunteers.”

  Great. I didn’t realize when I volunteered to help out at the hospital that I’d be woken up in the middle of the night so often. She put on the scrubs they’d given her and raked her fingers through her hair. This was the third time in as many nights since she’d volunteered at the hospital that there was an emergency. All of the other times it was a new batch of refugees being brought in, this was the first time that a military unit had been attacked here at ground zero that she knew of. Sure, all over the country there were reports of small-scale civil war that was slowly being suppressed, but the local region around the blast site had been relatively calm as people tried to deal with the repercussions of a nuclear detonation sixty miles away. Was the violence and madness beginning to take hold here too?

  She shuffled her feet along the wooden pallet walkway to the hospital. The designers of the camp had wisely installed the pallets as a pathway between each of the tents as protection against the mud that was sure to build up when it finally rained. That would be a treat, poison rain collecting in puddles where the survivors were taking refuge. When she reached the hospital fence she waved to the guard who opened the gate for her. “Good morning Miss Perry,” the young Marine said.

  “Good morning. There’ll probably be a lot more of the volunteers coming in before too long.”

  “Thank you for the update ma’am,” he said smiling. She’d learned after the first night in camp that the guards were just as clueless as the refugees were. They were kept in the dark about what was going on, so presumably, they could focus on securing the facility instead of worrying about what else was happening.

  She heard the helicopters coming from the east and hurried into the triage tent where her station was. Within minutes the flight medics and some of the orderlies were running into the room with litters. Doctors ran from patient to patient conducting quick assessments and marking the injured men as appropriate. In all, there were seven patients brought in. These men had obviously been in some type of building collapse or explosion. Most of them were missing limbs and had open cuts across their bodies as if they’d been hit by flying debris, but there weren’t any burn marks or scorched clothing that Emory thought would have been associated with a gas line explosion or fire of some type. Thankfully, up until the blast, they’d had a very wet April in the Northern Virginia area, so most of the fires had already burned out without dry tender. Those that hadn’t yet were mostly confined to the city where nobody was really willing to go yet.

  She looked over the group of men once more. One of the men was missing his right hand and his legs were mangled. One of the muscles in his leg was ripped open and part of it flopped out to the side. His face was obscured by splattered blood and gore. He had either been given morphine or had passed out from the pain. She wondered whether the man had a family or if he’d sacrificed it all for the military like so many soldiers did. He didn’t appear to have a ring on his hand, but who could tell underneath the crusted blood.

  “Emory, snap out of it! This one needs you,” the doctor said to her. She blinked and shook her head to clear her mind. She realized she’d been standing there in a daze as all the chaos happened around her. The doctor gestured to a man near the side of the tent with a large X on his forehead in red grease pencil.

  She walked over to him and gave him a quick once over. He was a black male, probably in his late thirties or early forties wearing an Army sergeant’s uniform. He had one leg torn off nearly all the way up to his hip and he held his intestines on his stomach with trembling hands. She yelled for a nurse to bring morphine, but the man said, “No. No drugs. I’m ready to go to my Lord, and I’m not going be high the first time I meet him. Just talk with me until I go.”

  “Uh, alright…My, my name’s Emory. What’s yours?”

  “Cecil,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “What happened out there Cecil?” she asked looking him in the eyes.

  “They made it through the wire after we ran out of ammo. Animals. I don’t want to end up like them. Promise me please. Promise me when I go that you’ll burn my body after I go so I don’t become one of them.”

  “One of who, Cecil?” she asked in as soothing a tone as she could manage. The first day on the job she’d learned that it helped patients when you said their names a lot. It kind of helped them identify with who they are and so far they hadn’t lost any of the patients that she’d helped with, but that was probably going to change tonight.

  “One of those things. The zombies. Everyone is in danger…” he grimaced in pain. “Everyone they brought in must be burned. Do it, Miss. Tell the doctors. Get Doctor Collins on the radio. If you don’t destroy our bodies, we’ll turn into zombies and start killing you too.”

  Emory glanced over her shoulder at the doctors working feverishly to stabilize the remaining men before they took them into surgery. What the hell was he talking about, he was crazy, she thought. She jerked her head around when a bloody hand grasped her wrist, “Please, say the Lord’s Prayer with me, it won’t be long now.”

  She reached down and grasped his hand strongly in hers. This was something she knew how to do. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day…” the prayer was interrupted as Cecil coughed up a globule of blood. “Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome, Cecil. I’ve always felt that the Our Father was very soothing,” Emory said as she ran her hand gently over his crew cut.

  He continued on with the part of the 23 Psalm, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” He didn’t close his eyes as he died, he just continued to stare at the fabric of the roof and passed into the afterlife. Hell of a way to go, Emory thought. To her it seemed that this man had been extremely brave. She’d read accounts of men in battle who cried out for their mothers as they died. She checked his identification tags hanging over the table from a chain, his name was Cecil T. Owens and he was a Baptist. He obviously trusted that his soul would be in heaven after he died. It was almost comforting to her that he died in such a calm and brave way, it made her feel that maybe we would all pull through this and establish control again.

  But that was in the future. For now, she needed to at least try to respect his final wishes to be cremated. She walked over to the shift leader for the volunteers to tell him about Cecil’s request. It would be better to have him with her for validity when she tried to talk to the doctors about cremating the bodies. She didn’
t believe the dying man’s rants about monsters of course, but she thought maybe they had been attacked by a group of men who seemed to be like zombies because of severe radiation sickness or something like that and he was worried about getting others sick by being in contact with him. When she thought about that, she was impressed again at how brave the man had been. Even in death, he was worried about others.

  She decided that was how she would broach the subject of cremation, that Cecil’s body must be destroyed, not only because he wished it, but also to avoid contamination in the camp. She came up behind her shift leader and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He turned around, “Yes, Miss Perry? What can I help you…” He never finished his statement as a group of heavily armed men burst into the surgical tent. They took up positions beside each of the patients and two more guarded the doorway. A man in his mid-thirties wearing a lab coat came through the door.

  “Alright everyone, remain calm. My name is Doctor Jeremy Collins. I’m the chief medical officer for the Army’s Special Operations Biological Infections Containment Center at Fort Dietrich, well, what was Fort Dietrich before a radiation cloud forced the evacuation. Anyways, I’m the doctor in command of diagnosing, containing and curing the disease these men on your operation tables were exposed to.”

  “Doctor, what the hell are you talking about? These men were in a firefight,” the chief surgeon, Colonel Jefferson, stated.

  “Yes sir, they were, but they’ve also been in close contact with a very communicable disease that has developed since the detonation. We need to secure and isolate them, and then treat them.”

  “What? Why is this the first we’ve heard of this? We’ve been operating on patients all week. If there’s something else that we should be aware of, we need to know immediately.”

  So the camp doctors don’t know what’s going on either, interesting, Emory thought as she watched the two doctors square off.

  “Sir, up until now, no one outside of the president, his immediate staff and the US Special Operations Command personnel knew that the French missile was an attempt to destroy a biological weapon that was released in the Pentagon and turned the infected into extremely violent creatures. That attack was a failure. We’ve been fighting against the infected men and women for a few days now. They appear to retain the original virus and as far as we can tell, they’re not affected by the radiation that is still heavy in the downtown areas.”

  “What the hell?” the surgeon exclaimed, echoing the sentiment of several other people in the medical tent. He visibly composed himself and looked back at the scientist. “Alright doctor, if we’re going to be treating these patients we need a rundown of their symptoms and what we know about treating them.”

  “Yes, I’ve been working on a few of the infected that we’ve captured and so far, nothing has worked to revert their condition…”

  “Doctor Collins! This one’s already starting to turn!” one of the security team members shouted. Emory’s heart sank as she realized the man who yelled was behind her near the table where Cecil had died.

  “Well, Colonel, you will now see firsthand what we’re dealing with,” Collins said calmly. To his men he said, “Restrain them all to their tables. Remember, they can function with everything missing except their head and torso, so strap down the chest separately from everything else. And use multiple straps for their arms and legs, their strength is incredible.”

  “Now wait a goddamned minute here. We have patients to treat,” the chief surgeon said as he took a step forward. One of the men near the door raised his weapon and advanced in between the colonel and Doctor Collins.

  Collins raised his hand in a gesture meant to pacify the situation. “That won’t be necessary Sergeant,” he said to the man who slowly lowered his weapon. “Sir, you’ll be able to operate on them after we restrain them.” He pointed towards the twitching body of Cecil Owens, “I knew that man. I know all of these men, but we have to get this situation under control before every man, woman and child in this camp is dead.”

  The newly arrived soldiers strapped Cecil’s body to the table and then began strapping the others down as well. Emory yelled out, “He wanted his body cremated. He didn’t want to become one of the things you’re talking about.”

  “His body will be destroyed, believe me. I had great respect for the man; he was at ground zero of this outbreak with me. But at this point, it’s important we know how long the change takes. According to the two survivors from the attack, most of these men were overrun by the infected no more than forty-five minutes ago. This group was only rescued because there were already supply helicopters inbound that cleared a path with their machine guns.”

  Collins gestured again, “Ah…see, the change is beginning to fully take hold.” Sergeant Owens’ body jerked violently against the bonds that now held it firmly to the table. “It’s really a terrible virus we have here, but fascinating from the scientific aspect as well. The mutation is taking hold faster than the original version which, I think, took over forty-eight hours to occur in the initial victims. This virus spreads quickly when passed through broken skin, and obviously these men have had plenty of broken skin.”

  He pulled a voice recorder from his pocket and pressed record, “Subject appears to change almost immediately after expiration. No exact estimates to time of initial infection, but it’s less than an hour. Others in the group who are still alive were exposed at roughly the same time and do not currently show signs of infection yet…Believe that initial victims at the Pentagon had expired as well before they changed, but subsequent victims took roughly twelve hours to change while still alive…Something to do with lack of oxygen that brings about the change in victims…” he clicked off his recorder as the dead man began making loud grunts and he lifted his head up as he strained against the straps.

  “Unngh. Unngh!” he moaned.

  A man wearing only boxer shorts burst through the tent flaps. He saw the creature on the table and said, “Oh fuck. Oh shit Owens. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” Tears began to fall down his face as he cried unashamedly.

  Another man, thinner and less muscled than the first, but dressed only in underwear as well, came in. “Shit, Hank. Those fuckers took out our whole team.”

  Emory looked at them and wondered why they were both nearly naked, but then she remembered the younger doctor’s claim of infection getting into open wounds. If they were part of this team, they’d probably just gone through some type of decontamination and inspection.

  Cecil’s body began jerking so violently that the entire medical table shifted every time he moved. Emory watched in horror as the man stopped jerking and looked directly at her. His eyes seemed to focus on her and yet be totally vacant at the same time. Slowly the muscles in one of its arms contracted as it put all of its effort into freeing the arm that was strapped tightly across the forearm.

  She heard the bones snap then the sick, wet tear as he, the creature, she corrected herself, pulled its upper arm free of the strap. Blood flew across the room as it waved the useless stump around. The lower half of his arm remained strapped to the table.

  “Put him out of his misery,” Doctor Collins told one of the soldiers, who put two quick rounds into the head of Cecil’s corpse and the tent was silent except for the ringing in everyone’s ears.

  The doctor turned towards the chief surgeon. “Sir, with the exception of one individual so far, this outbreak has had a 100% kill rate. My men will stay behind and assist you if any more of your patients expire, but after they are stabilized, they will be immediately transported to my lab at Decon Camp Seven about ten minutes from here. I’m going to take Sergeant Owens’ body with me now for burial, but every moment I’m away from my lab is another moment that I haven’t determined how to combat this thing and the virus spreads even farther.”

  The doctor started to leave the tent, then stopped and turned. He placed a hand on the larger of the half naked men. “I’m sorry about your team, Sergeant. We didn’t exp
ect there to be that many of them. When you’ve had a chance to clean up, please stop by and debrief General Reeves and myself so we can prepare our report for the president.”

  “Yes sir. We’ll be there as soon as we can get some clothes,” the sergeant mumbled as he looked vacantly around the room at the men on the tables that he’d led to their deaths.

  ***

  04 May, 0814 hrs local

  Military Decontamination and Infection Control Site #7

  Fauquier County, Virginia

  Lieutenant Colonel Bryce Colton looked up from his breakfast as the doctor came through the doorway. “What’s the word doc, am I cleared to get out of this place yet?”

  The doctor bypassed the question. “That Delta team that was with us in the Pentagon got overran today.”

  “Man that sucks. Did anyone make it out alive?”

  “Just their team leader and the sniper. They’re coming over here later today for a debriefing, so I’ll get the details from them then. I’d also like it if you could talk to them about how to get through being a sole survivor. Those are a couple of good men and we’re going to need people like them to get through this crisis.”

  “Alright doc, I’d like to talk with them. I may not have been pulling triggers at the building, but we’ve been through a lot together so maybe that will help me connect with them.”

  “I would really appreciate that, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome doc. So, back to my question, am I cleared to leave here yet?” Bryce asked.

  “It’s been two weeks since your initial exposure to the chemicals. Your blood continues to show no signs of the virus, but no discernible antibodies or any reason why you aren’t infected as well. I think I can convince General Reeves to let you out of solitary but I have to have access to you so we can continue to experiment.”

  “Thanks doc. I’ll do whatever my nation needs me to do, but I’d rather not be a human pin cushion.”

  “You’re welcome,” the doctor said, ignoring the second part of the colonel’s statement. “I’m convinced that the cure to this disease lies in your body. I just have to figure it out. After the Delta debrief I’ll see if I can get you a place to stay, but you’ll probably want to be back in your solitary room after a few days amongst the refugees. They’re an angry lot and if it wasn’t for the military security, I’m afraid things could deteriorate pretty quickly. There have already been reports of several rapes and murders in a couple of the camps.”