Plague of the Dead (17 page)

    “Casualties,” Darin said, holstering his pistol and moving ahead of the group towards a pair of fallen civilians. They lay in pools of blood, unmoving, eyes open and vacant. Darin knelt and put his fingers to their throats. He shook his head after a moment. “They’re gone.”

    “Get back,” Decker told him, narrowing his eyes. Darin stepped away. Decker leaned over the corpses, holding his pistol point-blank against the heads, and fired twice, splashing gore against the wall and floor. Blood flecked his boots. He hurriedly wiped them along a blanket on a nearby bunk.

    “Well,” Brewster breathed, surveying the damage, “I don’t think they’ll be getting up again.”

    “Oh, goddamn it all to hell and back,” Darin mumbled. “You got blood on my shit, too. There isn’t a dry-cleaners for two thousand miles.”

    “Get over it,” Decker said. “Let’s keep moving. This room’s clear.”

    They filed back out into the hallway, closing and securing the door behind them.

    The sailor with the sub-machine gun took point, nodding his head down the corridor. He advised, “Medical’s just ahead, around the next corridor.”

    “Right. Keep it tight. Don’t pull ahead,” Decker said. The four were off again, keeping close to the walls, tense and ready for anything. They were nearly at the elbow in the corridor when the sailor held up a fist. Darin, Brewster, and Decker stopped in their tracks, holding their breath.

    “There’s something there,” he whispered. “I can hear breathing.”

    Brewster strained his ears. The metal of the ship’s body distorted sounds, but he could definitely hear muffled, labored breathing, almost a wet pant, echoing off the steel walls.

    “I hear it too,” Decker said.

    “It’s getting louder,” said Darin, glancing furtively back and forth. “It’s coming this way!”

    Safeties were clicked off and the group tensed, scanning the corridor in both directions.

    “Nothing for it, it knows we’re down here by now,” Decker blurted. “Move! Get to medical!”

    The sailor nodded, swinging around the corner. Brewster expected him to open fire immediately, but the sub-machine gun remained silent. The sailor relaxed a bit.

    “Clear!”

    The three soldiers rounded the corner after him. The door to medical was a dozen feet down the corridor, and there was no sign of any infected. The sounds of the labored breathing still echoed around them, slowly growing in intensity. Adrenaline was rushing through Brewster’s veins.

    “Whatever’s going to happen, let it happen soon,” he said.

    “Amen,” Darin agreed, walking in the rear of the group, facing backwards to keep their rear covered.

    “Cover the corridor,” Decker instructed as they approached the doorway to medical. “Brewster, you and I grab the stuff Becky needs topside.”

    “Right, sergeant.”

    The two crept into medical as Darin and the sailor took up position outside the doorway. Once inside, the sound of breathing reached a fever pitch. Brewster and Decker froze, eyes flicking over the room. It looked abandoned, but whatever was making those noises was very close.

    “Clear the room,” said Decker.

    The pair split, inching their way around the examination tables. As Brewster rounded the first table, he stopped, whistling lightly to Decker. The sergeant glanced over.

    “
I got him
,” Brewster whispered, aiming his weapon into the corner of the room. “On the ground, behind that shelf.”

    “I see him,” said Decker, taking aim as well.

    It didn’t appear to be an infected as they had originally thought. A man lay half-exposed in the corner of the room, trying to tuck himself as deeply as possible in the shadows. He seemed half-mad with fright, and clutched his shoulder with one arm. He seemed in terrible pain, clenching his teeth. His breathing was loud and grating.

    “Say something, buddy,” Brewster said, taking a step towards the man.

    “Don’t…” managed the man before a fit of coughing seized him. He cleared his throat, head rolling back in weakness as he tried again. “Don’t come close. It bit me.”

    “We’ll see if we can fix you up,” Brewster replied, holstering his pistol and scanning the shelves in the room for anything useful. The labels on the bottles of medicine read like Greek to him. “Aw, fuck, man, I don’t know what this shit is. I flunked chemistry.”

    “Don’t bother,” said the man. Blood leaked between his fingers as they grasped his shoulder. “You should shoot me.”

    “Fuck that,” Brewster said. “If you go, then I’ll shoot you. Not before.”

    “I’ll shoot him,” Decker said, stepping forward.

    “Whoa, hold it, man!” Brewster exclaimed, putting himself between the man and Decker.

    “Get out of my way, private. We’re containing this outbreak before it gets to all of us,” Decker gritted, glaring at Brewster.

    “Let him do it,” gasped the man. “I can feel it.”

    “No fucking way,” Brewster said, firmly. “He’s still alive.”

    “Shoot me…”

    “Out of the way, Brewster!” Decker shouted.

    “What the hell is-holy shit,” said Darin, stepping into the room and seeing the scene within. “Is he infected?”

    “Yes!” Decker shouted again. “And I’m going to deal with him if this bleeding heart motherfucker ever gets out of my way!”

    “Hey, fuck you, pal,” Brewster said, flipping Decker the bird. “You want to kill a living person, you kill me first.”

    “Can’t one of you idiots shoot me?” choked the man in the corner. “I don’t… have much time!”

    “That can be arranged,” Decker said to Brewster, ignoring the man’s comment. The sailor in the corridor was looking in at them nervously.

    “Whoa, whoa,” said Darin, stepping in. “We’re safe for now, right? Let’s watch him. If he turns, we take care of him. He won’t leave this room. Right, sergeant?”

    “We should kill him now before he has a chance to spread it around,” Decker said, turning his ire on the corporal.

    “Shoot me… shoot me now!” the man gasped. He coughed-a wet, gurgling, pathetic noise, head slumping downwards.

    “Look at him, private!” said Decker. “He’s got it! If we don’t do what we can to stop it now we could-”

    A scream from the doorway caught them all off-guard. Weapons snapped up, eyes following suit.

    The sailor, distracted by the argument, had failed to keep an eye on the corridor. An infected clung to his back, hissing in rage and scratching at his face and neck.

    “Get it off! Get it off!” the sailor screamed, flinging his arms about in terror.

    The infected leaned in and tore a chunk of flesh from the sailor’s cheek, garnering a shriek of pain from the sailor. His finger tightened on the trigger of the MP-5 and the weapon fired, sending rounds flying into medical, ricocheting off the steel walls. The soldiers dove for cover as the sailor and infected fell back into the corridor outside. The sailor kept firing, nearly deafening them all with the quick rattle of the weapon.

    Darin found himself nearest the struggle as he came out of his roll, and brought up his pistol, firing off a pair of quick shots. One missed, and the second took the infected in the shoulder, knocking it off the sailor. It slumped against a wall, life draining from its eyes. A third shot took it in the forehead, ensuring it wouldn’t be getting back up again. It twitched once, and was still.

    The sailor rolled about in pain, holding a hand to his torn cheek. As he removed the hand and saw his own blood coating it, though, his shrieking ceased, and a calm seemed to fall over him. Darin, Brewster, and Decker slowly came out from behind their cover, looking out at the wounded soldier. He looked back at them, a kind of peaceful resignation on his face. He flashed them a grim smile, and in one swift motion drew his pistol, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger, depositing the contents of his skull on the wall behind him. His body slumped sideways, laying beside the corpse of the infected that had doomed him.

    The three soldiers were quiet for a moment. Brewster was the first to speak.

    “Fuck me running,” he managed, mouth agape.

    Darin darted into the hallway, scanning back and forth for more hostiles.

    “Clear! Damn,” he said as he waved a hand to clear the air. “There’s brain mist floating around out here.”

    “Try to breathe in some intelligence,” Decker quipped.

    “You’re a dick, man,” Brewster said, frowning.

    “Maybe, but I’m a-”

    The man in the corner, forgotten during the firefight, howled, and they spun on him. He had pulled himself to his feet and was clutching his head, face twisted in pain. Without warning, he recovered, head snapping up to lock onto Decker with a rageful stare. He sprang forward, growling in the back of his throat, and was almost on top of the sergeant when Decker’s pistol discharged, the round taking the man in the throat and dropping him like a wet sack of meat.

    They surveyed the body for a moment before Decker whirled on Brewster.

    “That’s what I was trying to do earlier,” he said, pointing at the corpse. “If you’d let me do it, he wouldn’t have had a chance to attack us like that. Grow a fucking pair and open your eyes, private. This is total war. Us or them. The sooner you realize that, the better off you are. Now grab those fucking supplies and let’s get out of here.”

Washington D.C.

January 11, 2007

2000 hrs_

    “She’s proving to be a much more stubborn subject than we’d thought,” said Agent Mason, sipping on a lukewarm cup of coffee and watching a muted replay of last night’s interrogation session on a flickering television set. On the screen, Julie Ortiz mouthed indignant answers to questions she had no intention of answering. Mason could see himself in the background, looking bored and distracted.

    “Impressive, that’s for sure,” mumbled Agent Derrick, thumbing through a manila folder. “Is there really any point in continuing the interrogations? We already have what we want. Our information is reliable.”

    “And do what? Let her lie away in a cell for the rest of her life? Wasteful,” said Agent Sawyer, shaking his head. “We would do better by managing to extract a confession from her.”

    “We have testimony against her on file,” said Mason.

    “It should hold up in court,” added Derrick.

    “It’s not enough,” Sawyer said. “We have accumulated enough evidence to convict her, true. But the trial would be public-and messy. There’s the matter of fraud.”

    “We were authorized to identify ourselves as FBI,” Mason pointed out.

    Sawyer raised his eyebrows and asked, “And will the American people be satisfied with that? A mere authorization to impersonate a federal agent of a different bureau?”

    “Perhaps,” said Derrick. “They are malleable, and easily manipulated. The right story in the right place should cover us well.”

    “Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong,” Mason interjected, furrowing his brow in thought. “Maybe we shouldn’t even be worrying about this case. Maybe there are more important things we should be doing.”

    The silence in the room after he spoke was deafening.

    “What did you say?” Sawyer said after a moment, fixing Mason with a stony glare.

    “Have you looked outside the window recently?” Mason said. “Do our lives really revolve so much around orders that we don’t see the storm on the horizon out there? Things aren’t exactly running smoothly. I’m certain the country would find us more useful in another role. They can’t be bothered with treason charges at a time like this.”

    “Our borders are solid. Cases are scattered and few. They will be contained,” Derrick said, siding with Sawyer.

    “In a month, maybe two, this will have blown over, and then it’s business as usual.

    “When that happens, they’ll begin to wonder what happened to Julie Ortiz-such a high profile case cannot be kept under lock and key forever,” Sawyer said. “And speaking of treason-let’s not hear such talk from you again, Mason.”

    Agent Mason grimaced, taking a final sip from the coffee cup before crumbling it in his hand and tossing it into a nearby waste-basket. He said nothing.

    “Well, then,” Sawyer said, satisfied the situation had been dealt with, “Let’s move on to the business at hand. Any suggestions from either of you? New methods, perhaps?”

    “Miss Ortiz’s profile suggests a susceptibility to psychological tactics,” Derrick answered. “I suggest we continue. Perhaps we should up the moisture seepage into the dungeon, and take the lights down a few more watts.”

    “The dungeon’s settings are optimal. In the fifty years we’ve been using it it’s never failed in its purpose,” Mason pointed out.

    “That doesn’t mean this subject won’t set a new standard,” Sawyer said. “We’ll go with Derrick’s suggestion. Agent Mason, if you will?”

    Mason sighed and swiveled in his chair to face a small console tucked in the corner of the room, and twisted a heavy metal knob farther to the right. A second, more worn knob, was given a twist to the left. The surveillance monitors showed the dungeon dimming. The agents could see Julie in her cell, huddled against a wall, knees tucked up to her chest. As the lights went down a notch, she looked around, surprised by the change. It would be hard for her to make out the far wall of her cell now that it was even darker down there. The moisture seepage was a well-designed irrigation system, but would take a few hours before any real change was felt by the prisoner. The sum of their actions was merely to make Julie Ortiz that much more miserable, and therefore a bit more likely to tell them what they wanted to know.

    Suddenly, the lights in the dungeon went out entirely, as did those in the room the agents were in. The monitors and consoles remained lit, powered by a local generator. After a moment, the lights came flickering back on, illuminating the worried glances of the agents as they looked back and forth at one another.

    “That was different,” Derrick said.