Apocalyptic Moon (After the Bane) (3 page)

Another biohazard-suited man reasoned with Dr. Grover, but he was having none of it. “She’s bleeding!”

Pressing her lips together so as not to hiss, Dora forced a small smile. “Don’t worry, it’s not so bad.”

The man in the biohazard suit set her on a wheelchair and pushed her to the red painted biohazard elevator. Mr. Harrison attempted to run but a guard injected him with a knockout drug and dumped him on a gurney. Two men in biohazard suits black-bagged the hefty dead woman and dragged the bag into the elevator. Two others gathered the zombie’s splattered brain tissue and cleaned up the blood.

The biohazard-suited man behind her pushed the button to level Q and the elevator dropped taking her stomach with it. “I need to call my brother.”
And say goodbye
.

“Your next of kin will be notified in a few days.”

I am just as good as dead. So much for beating the 27 Club.

The
elevator finally stopped at the underground quarantine. Two women in biohazard suits escorted her to the decontamination shower. One apologized, her voice muffled behind the mask, “I’m sorry, Dr. Adler.”

She swallowed. “So what’s next?”

“You’ll need to undress and stay in the shower until the light flashes red. Then we’ll escort you to the infirmary and dress your wound.”

“What’s the point? There’s no chance the infection can be washed away.”

“Protocol. I promise as soon as you’re done, I’ll bandage your bite. We’ll give you as much pain medication as you want.”

She stepped in, stripped, and then entered the shower. The doors sealed shut and powerful ceiling sprinklers turned on. She bit her knuckle as the disinfectants burned her gash and blood dribbled down her arm and down the drain. The stinging pain on her wound overwhelmed her and she pounded on the wall. “Get me out!” She looked up as the hot water splashed her face and dizzied from the pain, her vision swam, then blackness.

****

Dora lay on a small bed in a glass-sealed room. One tiny sink and one toilet. Except for a small table that held a bottle of water and snacks, no other furniture or wall décor adorned her cell. Her long brown hair had dried from the chemical decontamination shower and she wore a hospital gown. She touched her neatly bandaged wound. How long had she been unconscious? Before she woke up, she had the sensation of floating against the low ceiling. She would have blamed it on Z-phage, except she’d had the same dream the previous night, before being bitten.

A moan from the other side of the glass made her shiver. She stood. “Mr. Harrison, how are you doing?”

He too had a clean bandage over his head cut and one on his ankle. “Hey, no formalities, it’s Steve and you are…?”

“Dora.”

He smiled; his eyes blood red. “I feel feverish but other than that I’m feeling pretty decent. Must be the antiviral drug they shot us with.”

Poor man. Little did he know it was Valium to keep him calm until death. “Yeah, it should slow the infection until they find a cure.”

“What the hell started this virus?”

“No one knows. I’ve heard every theory, from terrorist bio-weapon to extraterrestrials. Unlike the flu, it didn’t have a place of origin. It appeared everywhere at once. At least in the big cities. My brother thinks it’s Mother Nature finally trying to stop us from destroying the earth”

“You’re a doctor. What do you think?”

“Definitely engineered by some evil fan of zombie movies.”

They talked about family and work while they ate lunch and then dinner. Time passed and Steve took a long nap. He got up to drink water and then went back to bed.

At 10 p.m., Steve banged against a small metal tray and swore.

Dora shot out of bed. “What’s wrong?”

Squeezing his eyes tight, Steve gripped his head. “My head. Shit. It hurts like a brain freeze.”

“Take another pain med and drink all of your water.”

Steve’s knees buckled and he crashed onto the ground. He convulsed and finally stopped. He struggled for breath as he opened and closed his mouth, making a choking sound. It had only been twenty-four hours.

Dora pressed the help button. Nobody came. Her doctor instincts sprung into full gear. She pounded her fists on the glass then stared at the camera. “Patient needs help!” Silence. She peered in on Steve. He laid still, his skin blanching gray, a sign he was turning. No other disease in the annals of medicine proved faster than the Z-phage transformation. His eyes shot open. He stood and charged at her. Slime and hot breath fogged the glass as he pressed his mouth against the barrier. He banged and clawed, all the time making a snarling hideous moan. She stepped away and screamed.

A panel on his wall opened and a rifle muzzle appeared. A man called, “Over here!”

Steve the zombie turned and shuffled toward the voice as a hungry moan escaped his throat. The rifle fired once. The bullet pierced his brain and killed him.

Dora huddled in the corner of her tiny cell and watched in horror. Within the next twelve hours, she too would be executed, just like that. No last meal, no call to family and not even her cheesy little romance novel. She would die alone. No happily ever after for the newest member of the 27 Club.

Chapter 2

Tall stalks of corn swayed against the wind, and
drew Dirk’s attention. He screeched his Harley to a hard stop. He sniffed.
Zombies. Their foul stench alerted him to their slow approach, and then he
caught sight of a young family. Children. The father and his two young sons changed a flat tire while the mother nursed an infant. It was just sunrise and the humans were unaware of advancing zombies, not yet within hearing range of a human’s ears. He’d not seen survivors in at least two weeks. His predatory werewolf instinct honed in on the zombies, shuffling through the pasture toward them. He growled, ready to defend the pack, even if they were just human. He jammed the gas pedal and raced over. He spun his bike between the family and the walking dead. The thunderous roar of his motor interrupted the zombies blundering prowl, and they twisted in his direction.

The mother pointed a rifle at Dirk, not clear if his intentions were innocent or threatening. After the Bane, fellow humans robbed and killed one another for a bottle of fresh water or tank of gas. Hell, for a package of gum. “Don’t move!”

He lifted his arms. “My dog has to take a leak.” He slowly took out Fang, his
white teacup Chihuahua, from his fiberglass custom made pet carrier. He dangled him like a white flag. His sister Sierra’s human husband, Ethan, a dog veterinarian gave him the little beast as a joke gift. Dirk humored Ethan by keeping the rat-sized puppy over the weekend, thinking he’d return him on Monday, instead he, the next-in-line reluctant alpha had fallen in love with the beastie. Owning the pooch had led to more fights with other werewolves to defend his macho honor than anything else in his entire life. Damn little dog had helped build Dirk’s reputation as the toughest badass unbeatable alpha werewolf.

“Ah Mom, he’s got a puppy,” said the younger of the two boys. The father grabbed his son’s sleeve to keep him from approaching.

He quirked a smile and pointed his chin toward the flat. “Need a hand?”

The father nodded. “The jack’s not working.” He glanced at his wife. “Shoot if he tries anything.”

With her infant squirming in her carrier, the woman kept her weapon raised. “Got it, honey.”

He’d had enough experience with mothers defending their cubs to know she wouldn’t miss. Still, she’d only be wasting bullets shooting him. Werewolves could only be killed with silver ammo. He put Fang down. “Go pee and stay out of trouble.”

Fang lifted his leg over a rock then kicked dirt with his back legs as he growled toward the field.

Dirk sauntered over while Fang pranced alongside his tall black leather biker boots. The children knelt down and Fang squirmed with delight as they petted him. “Allow me.” Dirk lifted the car three feet above the ground. The man gaped, but then quickly replaced the tire.

The boys gasped. “Wow!”

He didn’t explain his super human strength. There wasn’t time. Fortunately, the parents were either too jaded or on high survival mode to ask how he managed the feat.

As the moans grew closer, Fang barked in the direction of the swarm of five zombies.

The father gathered his family. “Everyone get in.” The mother secured the kids in the car and locked the doors. He grabbed his gun. “We have a place up in Canada. You’re welcome to join us, umm…?”

“Dirk Gunderson.”

“Ben Ramirez.” He glanced at the looming zombies. “We best go. I’d rather not waste ammo.”

Dirk reached for his military grade rifle. “Take mine. I’ve got plenty where I’m going.”

The man took it. “Thanks.”

“None needed. How are you on fuel?”

“Enough packed for several thousand miles.”

“Good. Take the county road to the left.” Dirk drew out two large machetes from beneath his long dark leather coat. “You’re right. No sense wasting bullets.”

“Are you sure you want to risk getting bitten?”

“No problem. I’ve killed many more than five.”

His wife screamed, “Ben. Hurry!”

“Go!”

The father jumped in the car and floored it. The zombies reached the road and hollered a moan seeing their fresh human meat disappear. Should he have taken them to his pack’s compound? No. Not without his uncle’s permission. The rules forbid humans while they held a Wolf Pact gathering. Three separate enemy packs had agreed to meet and discuss the zombie invasion, or what his werewolf kind called,
the Bane
.

Fuck pack rules! The family wouldn’t survive. He turned to call them back. Too late. They were out of sight. He growled in frustration. Damn it.

Why am I getting soft on humans?
Truth was, with the exception of his sister’s human mate, he didn’t trust humans. Well at least the human werewolf hunters known as the Kindred. When he was ten years old, these werewolf hunters slaughtered his parents and two younger siblings. Only Dirk and his twin sister had survived. At the time, Uncle Talon took them to his territory to test their pack status. When Dirk became an adult, he turned lone wolf and hunted them down. Jaeger, the son of the man who killed his family, remained at large.
Not for long
.

He wrinkled his nose at the zombies that shambled on the gravel road. “Jeez, zombies, at least jump in a lake once in a while.” Three men and two women, most likely from a small farming community. One of the men wore only boxer shorts and the two women were still in their PJs. Unlike the numerous zombie movies, many of the dead wore the clothes they died in rather than worked in. Although these days a good percentage died in their street clothes while trying to escape zombies.

Fang hid behind Dirk and growled from the safety of the werewolf’s boots. He grabbed Fang and put him inside the pet carrier then waved his machetes. “Hey z-fuckers!”

They turned and tilted their heads in confusion. He smelled human but also something else, wolf. For whatever reason, zombies never went after other animals, only humans. The damn things ignored them when they were in werewolf form. Early experiments on the once popular social networks showed zombies in arenas with bulls and other livestock. They fumbled around amongst the cattle and sheep but only charged when they heard, smelled or saw a human. Fortunately, all shifters were immune to the zombie virus.

The zombies sniffed the air and moaned in approval. Human enough. With outstretched arms, they stumbled toward him. Two were missing arms and an especially ghastly large man had an eyeball hanging by a string of tissue. None died pretty.

He shrugged. “Fine! I’ll come to you.” If he didn’t hurry, he risked being late for the important Wolf Pact meeting and shaming his uncle. He dashed toward them, wielding his huge machetes. Heads flew, blood splattered and bodies fell. He glanced at his Rolex watch. Twelve seconds. Not bad.

****

Dora looked at her white board calendar on the otherwise barren walls of her prison cell. It had been five weeks since she’d been blindfolded and flown by helicopter to some mysterious government underground lab, called Lab Zero. At least her cell had a private bathroom and a laptop for her to use. Not wired with Internet capability, but at least the laptop allowed her to write down her observations and add to their data. On record, she was thus far the only human immune to Z-phage. How ironic. She was twenty-seven and still alive. Over the last month, they had brought patients thought to be immune only to have them turn into gray-skinned, ravenous for human flesh creatures. The delay of their infection resulted because of a slight superficial wound at the bite site. More often, because they had only a minor cut that had come in contact with zombie blood.

She glanced at her recent notes. According to Lab Zero research, Z-phage was a retro virus that replicated faster than any known disease inside the brain while the patient died of a high fever. Upon reanimation, the hypothalamus went in to overdrive and the creatures searched for living human flesh, to satiate a hunger driven by the virus’s need to infect and replicate in a new brain. The perfect virus. Invade. Replicate. Spread.

Instead of being locked up, she wanted to contribute to the current research. Not here, but at a better known facility headquarters such as the CDC or the new Biohazard Level 4 Lab in San Antonio. Did legitimate health organizations still exist?

She sat on her bed and typed away her frustrations. At first, she’d felt safe in this sterile facility but now she only thought of escape. Dr. Mansfield, aka sadist, treated her no better than a lab rat. At least for the last two days, she’d not been prodded and poked. Her bruised veins varied in color from deep purple to red to pukey yellow. His crude blood drawing skills were shitty at best.