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  Emory looked at Hank with some alarm. “Busy week, buddy,” she said.

  Hank shook his head and said, “More like busy month. My team and I were at ground zero in the Pentagon fighting the freaks from day one. They escaped because we couldn’t stop them.”

  Bryce shook his head, “This is not your fault. The only people responsible for this are those goddamned terrorists. If they hadn’t cooked up their biological agent, the French wouldn’t have nuked us and everything would be fine. Don’t blame yourself. You and your team did everything that you could.”

  “Thank you sir. I appreciate that.”

  “This is actually a lot to process,” Emory said. “So, you guys are saying that the attack at the Pentagon last month was the cause of the zombie outbreak and that’s why we were nuked, to stop the zombie threat? Why isn’t this information getting out to the refugees in the camps?”

  Hank looked at her for a moment, “Actually, right after the attack, the president did make an announcement, but no one in the camps here in Virginia saw it. They were either running for their lives from D.C. or didn’t have access to televisions after the initial EMP from the blast wiped out all the non-hardened electronics within a couple hundred miles.

  “But do you really think it would matter to the refugees when or where the zombies came from right now?” he continued. “Hell, the few soldiers not on the line, like Sergeant Dawson here, that are allowed to leave the camps to go fight are confined to the wire once they return. Do you know anyone who’s came in here that has left for good who wasn’t in a body bag? I sure don’t.”

  “Are you saying we’re prisoners?” she asked.

  “I don’t think we’re prisoners, but we’re not free to go. That’s for sure,” Bryce said. “But think about it, we’re being provided for at the moment, we’re relatively safe in here, and a lot of us have been in close proximity to nuclear radiation. It’s better to keep us confined to an area so we can be a controlled variable in this whole mess.”

  “You know Mr. Colton, I was a staffer for a Congresswoman less than a month ago. I can spot a bullshitter from a mile away,” she deadpanned.

  “Ok, ok, I give up,” Bryce said holding up his hands. “We can’t leave, but we’re being well taken care of for now. And that’s a lot better than the folks who aren’t in here. We’re…well, our government, is trying to help everyone they can, but they’ve got a huge problem on their hands.”

  “First off, they’re not really sure if we’re contaminated in some way that hasn’t manifested itself yet, like is the disease airborne and we’re going to get sick later on?” Hank said as he started to count off his points on his fingers. “Next, for most of us in here, all our homes and belongings were destroyed in the blast. And finally, the country is in the middle of a goddamned, full-on war with itself…well, actually, the final point is we still don’t know who’s responsible for this and what they have planned next,” he amended.

  “Hell Emory, you can see the news just as well as we can,” Bryce gestured to the TVs on the wall. “They’re just now getting control of the Midwest and it’s full-on gang warfare in California. The reporters are on scene at the D.C. conflict itself, but nobody is out in the countryside. When I moved here from Decon Camp Seven, we convoyed over here in up-armored Humvees and the gunners were still nervous because they’ve been shot at so many times. The nuclear blast has really messed with people’s minds. Frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t had more problems in the camp as it is. We need to organize ourselves for a defense in case things go south faster than the military can handle it.”

  Hank nodded his head in agreement. She looked back and forth between them again and asked, “Ok, I’m in. What do we need to do?”

  “See that sir, I told you she was our girl,” Hank said with a smile as he glanced around the dining facility and then gestured for Bryce to continue.

  “Look, Master Sergeant Dawson and I have been around these things for a while. They’re not the brain-dead zombies from the movies. I’ve seen some of the work in the labs and a little bit back at the Pentagon, he’s seen it extensively in the field. We’ve talked a lot about this. Those things we call zombies are dumb as shit by themselves, but as a group, they’re pretty advanced. Think of them like an ant colony.”

  Bryce let that sink in for a moment. “Well, if they’re like ants, where is their queen?” Emory asked.

  “I’ve seen him. Or at least I think I have, back at the Pentagon,” Hank stated. “Just before they made their escape out of the basement, I saw one of them giving orders to the others. He sent a large force to delay us so that their main group could get away.”

  “And infect the D.C. citizens who weren’t evacuated,” she finished.

  “Yeah, we think there are more of the secondary infections now than the original ones since we’re primarily fighting large groups of them instead of the original freaks. But there’s always one or two of the originals with these groups, those guys move better, are more coordinated and have enough motor skills remaining to carry clubs and other blunt weapons…”

  “Wait, so you’re telling me these things are organized into…” she searched for the word, “…into platoons with the Pentagon zombies leading them? That seems a little far-fetched.”

  “We’re sitting at a table inside a nuclear decontamination camp talking about real-life zombies,” Bryce said.

  “Ok, point goes to you. How is this possible? The ones I’ve seen in the hospital have been rage-filled, self-destructive and all they wanted to do was eat somebody so the soldiers have been able to put them down pretty easily. They’re not interested in doing much besides attack everything in sight.”

  Hank cleared his throat a little, “You’re talking about onesies and twosies. These things outside the wire definitely operate in groups. And we don’t think they’re trying to eat anyone, by the way. Biting and transfer of bodily fluids, like their blood, into open wounds is how the infection spreads. I’ve been around them a lot, none of them are eating people, they just bite and tear and rip once they get close. Their teeth are just another weapon.”

  “So basically, take all the zombie movie stuff and throw it out the window, right?” she asked.

  “Most of it. But destroying their brain is the only way to be sure that they’re dead. The movies got that part right.”

  “Another difference between the originals and the secondary infections is their coloring. The ones from the Pentagon look like kind of like their skin is melting off of them and they have a pale, almost waxy appearance. The secondary infections are more of your typical Hollywood rotters, with grayish, diseased skin and they have big sores that leak pus…really gross stuff,” Bryce added.

  “Alright, so what do we need to do in order to help protect ourselves from these things? I mean, what can we do while we’re stuck in here? I feel like a sitting duck.”

  “I’m going to talk to the camp Sergeant Major after this,” Hank said. “First, I think we need to separate the LZ[19] and the hospital from the rest of the camp more than it is, if a helicopter crashes inside the wire with infected on board, it could spread easily from there. Also, we don’t have any barriers in place to stop an outbreak at the hospital from turning into a camp-wide disaster. We need to put up concertina wire and emplace more guards at a very minimum.

  “Next, we need to stop with the secrecy crap. Colonel Colton and I can’t do it because of our positions in the military, but the truth needs to get out to the people in this camp. That’s where we think you can really help us, Emory. You only need to tell a few people about how things really are outside the wire and word will spread like wildfire. Then they’ll have to address it and come clean with everybody. That, in turn, will allow us to start a defense force as more people learn how truly precarious the situation is. The truth about these things has to get out. People need to know what they’re up against in order to survive.”

  “Ok, I know a few people who I can talk to that should get the
ball rolling.”

  ***

  09 May, 1109 hrs local

  Three Pillars Estates

  Indianapolis, Indiana

  The thing that looked like Jessica continued to kick and slam her body into the door. The tempered glass cutout on the upper half of the door was shattered and both of her arms were pushed through, her hands opening and closing as she tried to grasp anything that came close and her face was pressed against the metal window-pane dividers as she snarled at the small crowd that had gathered on the walkway.

  “What the fuck are we supposed to do with her?” Curtis gestured towards the house as he asked Grayson the question.

  “Well, for now, I think she’s pretty well locked in, but that thin little bit of metal is going to give out sooner or later, she’s been chewing at it a while. Hell, if she went twenty feet the other way and broke out a bedroom window, she’d easily get loose, but it’s like she doesn’t understand that there are other ways to get to us than the one right in front of her. We’re gonna have to either restrain her or barricade the house some way.”

  “What if we handcuff her wrists while she’s got them stuck out the window?” asked the former military cop Gretchen.

  “I think we’d just give her leverage to pull the window pane out,” Curtis said. “You think that Pecan Valley doctor could help her out?”

  “Well, we can ask him, but we need to keep some people back from that trip. I don’t want her getting loose and hurting anyone,” Grayson stated.

  “Hey Jamie, is the back door locked?” one of the residents asked.

  “I think so. I mean, I don’t remember unlocking it, but we always kept it locked. Do you think she can get out? Shit, all the windows back there are open too. I forgot about them. The smell from Jessica’s leg was so bad that I had to keep them open.”

  There was a collective groan from the group as they realized the truth. Even though Grayson had said Jessica could break out a window, none of them had recognized until now that almost all the windows in the house were open, there was no way to keep her inside without lowering the windows.

  “Shit, what are we gonna do now?” Curtis asked again.

  “We’re gonna have to restrain her then. Anyone have any rope?”

  Another of the residents said that he did and ran down the street to his house. While he was gone, the group stood in silence and watched Jessica’s bloody hands waving frantically through the cutout. Abruptly they stopped and Jessica’s head jerked around towards the back of the house and she cocked her head to the side like she was listening.

  “Hey! Hey! What’s she doing?” Gretchen asked, pointing towards the door.

  “Fuck, she’s focusing on something inside the house. I left my rifle in there when we were fighting earlier. Maybe she’s going after that,” Grayson said.

  Before anyone could move, Jessica turned and ran down the hallway towards the back of the house. There were sounds of shouting and of large items breaking coming from inside. A gun went off and suddenly someone started screaming. Jamie covered her ears with both of her hands and sank to the walkway on her knees.

  The scream intensified to a higher level of panic and reached the crescendo. Then, it stopped just as abruptly as it had begun. Grayson grabbed a baseball bat from someone in the crowd and ran to the door. He pressed the thumb lever down on the handle and pushed the door open. Shit, shit, shit! What am I doing? he thought over and over to himself as he crept down the hall.

  He stepped out of the hallway into a scene of utter chaos. Blood was splattered randomly across the walls, the furniture and the curtains. The thing that used to be Jessica was crouched down tearing pieces of meat and fat from a twitching form almost casually. Garbled sounds that could have been either groans of pain or air escaping from dead lungs bubbled from the lips of the person she’d just attacked.

  Grayson had seen a lot of death and dismemberment from IEDs and enemy fighters during his tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they were nothing compared to this. Everything he’d seen had been as a result of some type of mechanical object, either a bullet, a bomb, even vehicle accidents. This was different, there was a raw and primal evil that emanated from this person, this creature, he corrected himself. She’d done this with her bare hands.

  He wretched involuntarily as he thought of the pure wrongness of what he was witnessing. Instantly, Jessica turned towards him and snarled. She stood and crouched low as if she was ready to pounce on him from across the room, which, in all likelihood, she was. He retreated a few steps into the hallway in an effort to protect his flanks. As soon as he did, she advanced towards him and he realized his mistake. He was able to thrust the bat forward to push her away from him, but he wasn’t able to swing it to do any real damage due to the closeness of the hallway.

  He risked a quick glance over his shoulder towards the open front door. Beyond, he could see the small group of his new friends milling about on the driveway, unsure of what to do. He knew that he had to stop her inside the house or else she’d kill all of them the way she’d killed the unknown intruder in the house. He turned his head back around in time to see Jessica in mid-leap and he threw the baseball bat up in a block that caught her across the wrist. Her hand snapped backwards with a sickening snap and flopped along the top of her forearm.

  Unfazed, she swung her injured arm low in an effort to get below his block. He ducked to get the bat lower and realized that he’d made another mistake. With blazing speed, she’d almost simultaneously swung one arm low and reached forward with her other hand to grasp him. She almost connected with her top hand, but years of martial arts had conditioned him enough to move his head back out of the way.

  He tried to push her backwards with the end of the bat but she grasped it and jerked him violently towards her. He instinctively threw up his arm with the cast again as her teeth sank into the material. He’d been in more fights than he could ever remember, both in the dojo and on the streets and he knew this was a battle that he wouldn’t win.

  Even as she ground her teeth closer and closer to his skin under the cast, she tried to grab him with her good hand. Repeatedly, she connected with the stub of her broken hand but the fingers no longer responded to her commands to close. He pushed with all his strength, but he could feel himself weakening. She pushed even harder against him and his shoes scrambled for a grip on the tile floor.

  Suddenly, he was pulled towards her and then her teeth were ripped off of him as the wire loop from an animal control catch tool was slipped over her head and tightened. She thrashed wildly against the metal cable that was tightened around the upper part of her face. Her arms flailed against the pole and it began to bend. Grayson could tell that Justin, the man holding the dog snatching pole, had already gotten more than he bargained for a mere five seconds before.

  Justin struggled to hold Jessica at bay and he almost lost his grip on the pole. Grayson crept up behind her and swung the bat with everything he had. He connected solidly with the back of her head and felt the bat sink a few inches into her skull. She dropped to the ground, but just as quickly began to struggle up again. He took one more baseball swing to knock her down and she started upwards again. He didn’t have any choice left but to bash her brains out with overhand strikes.

  Dimly, he heard Justin yelling at him. All he saw was red. His world was tunneled into destroying this evil bitch that had almost killed him, Jamie and Justin. Finally, a bone-jarring vibration halted his attack and he realized that he’d beaten completely through her head and was now only hitting the floor. Fatigue overwhelmed him and he staggered to the couch. He sat down heavily on a cushion, dimly aware of the large chunk of meat resting beside him on the couch.

  “What the fuck was that, man?” Justin asked as the snatch pole fell from his grip.

  “I don’t know, but the way she acted was a lot like the guy that bit her a couple days ago…” Grayson trailed off as his mind began to process the implication that the sickness was communicable.

&
nbsp; Justin reached for the discarded pole and slid the cable out from the mass of flesh and bone where Jessica’s head had been and asked, “Did you get bitten by her?”

  Grayson patted himself down. He felt like crap from his two battles with Jessica, but as far as he could tell, he hadn’t been bitten.

  Jamie stumbled into the room followed closely by the group. She sobbed when she saw her sister’s body and ran to Grayson and threw her arms around him, crying into his shoulder. A few of the others made faces at the mess, but mostly, they looked to Grayson and Justin for an explanation of what happened.

  Justin relaxed a little, seeing the back-up arrive. He gestured towards Grayson and said, “We need to check him, make sure he wasn’t bitten by her or something. He said it’s the same way that crazy druggie acted the other day, the one that bit her. Whatever he had spread to her and she went just as insane as he was.”

  “I checked myself over, I don’t think I was bitten,” Grayson said as Jamie separated herself from him. “She clamped down on my cast, but she never broke the skin. I should be okay as long as the sickness isn’t airborne.”

  Justin paled visibly and looked around the house. Finally, he settled on the partially dismembered corpse and gestured weakly towards it. “Well, that’s Alex. Guess he was trying to be a hero or something. He’s not gonna help me brew that beer after all,” he said in mild shock. Justin and Alex had planned on making some home-brew for the citizens of Three Pillars once they scraped together the supplies.

  “It’s ok, son. Why don’t you go home, we’ll take care of things here,” Curtis told Justin, who nodded weakly and turned to walk past his friend’s body to the back door where he’d entered during the fight with Jessica.

  Suddenly, Alex’s corpse lunged forward, grabbed Justin’s ankle and sunk its teeth into his thigh. The group surged to action and quickly pulled the partially dismembered corpse off of Justin, then systematically beat it into a bloody pulp with whatever instrument that was in their reach.