Zombie Rules (Book 4): Destiny (30 page)

“Well, it looks like you two are feeling better,” I said happily.

“I’m hungry,” Frederick replied, which caused me to grin from ear to ear.

The two of them had a healthy appetite and I couldn’t wait to get on the radio and inform Grant. It was a brief but good conversation. Grant agreed we should wait two more days before we went to the school.

“Clair died last night,” Grant informed us somberly before we even made it through the door of the school. “She developed pneumonia.”

“Oh, no,” Kelly said and went to look for Rhonda.

“We’re going to carry her to the church and have a graveside service,” Ruth said.

We used the bus to carry everyone to the church. The collective mood was somber, dark. We’d lost a child who was a part of our future and it weighed heavily on all of us. Her coffin was nothing more than a wooden crate.

“It was the best we could do on short notice,” Justin had whispered.

Gus read a few passages from the book of Psalms and led us in a prayer. He did it smoothly, like he’d done it a few times before. Surprisingly, Rhonda sang Amazing Grace in a beautiful, lilting voice. Even I teared up.

I volunteered to do the burial honors and insisted everyone go back to the school. Justin elected to stay with me. When everyone was safely out of sight, I looked at him somberly.

“You know what I intend to do, right?” He nodded without speaking. I pried open the lid. Her little body was wrapped in a blanket. I started to take aim, but stopped.

“Oh, wow,” Justin said when he saw what I was looking at. Blood had soaked through the blanket around Claire’s head.

“Looks like someone has already taken care of it.”

“I bet the major did it,” Justin guessed. He helped me put the lid back on and we spent the next hour burying her. The thought of burning her remains didn’t seem right, somehow.

When we were finished, Justin and I got in my truck and started back. When we started to cross over the bridge, Justin pointed out four or five zombies wandering down the Interstate. He looked at me questioningly. I responded by turning onto the exit ramp and driving the wrong way down to the Interstate.

“No need for wasting ammo,” Justin said tersely. He exited the truck armed with a bayonet and an aluminum baseball bat. I grabbed my machete.

The four of them were adult males, all dressed like they were in a militia or something. All of them had camo jackets and pants, boots, and ski masks that’d been torn open around the mouth area, I guess to expedite eating. Justin ran forward and hit one of them in the chest with a lunging side kick before spinning around and hitting a second one with his ball bat before finishing up with the bayonet through an eye socket.

The other two forgot all about me and focused on Justin. That made it easy for me to run up and bury my machete in the back of the head of one of them. The second one turned toward me then and I readied my machete, but Justin beat me to it. He hit the man so hard the bastard’s head literally exploded, spraying Justin. He backed off immediately. I ran up to the last one who was struggling back to his feet and stomped on his head until there wasn’t much left.

“Come with me,” I directed Justin and led him to the back of the truck. I had one of those hard plastic beer growlers lying in back and grabbed it. Unscrewing the top, I had Justin hold his hands out and poured the water over them.

“It’s a mixture of water and bleach,” I said. “Wash your face off.” Justin hesitated. “Quickly, Marine,” I chided. Justin did as I said and then I cleaned myself up.

“You’ve got to figure out a different strategy for killing them,” I said. “You get that goo in your mouth or in your eyes, anything like that, you’ll get infected.” I thought for a second. “Maybe wear a face shield or something.”

“What about you?” he questioned, pointing at my machete. I shrugged.

“I’m immune, remember?” Justin eyed me and scoffed.

“I don't want to do it, but Major Parsons has convinced me of the necessity of it,” Justin said to us.

“Let me see if I've got this straight,” Tonya said. “You all are going back to the CDC?”

“Yes,” Major Parsons replied. “But it's not a permanent move. In order to properly conduct tests, we're going to need to access the labs down there.”

“What's wrong with staying here?” Marc asked. “I bet there’s everything you need at one of the hospitals around here. Heck, I bet Vanderbilt has everything and then some.”

“I'm sure you're right, Marc, but there is specific equipment down there and most importantly, I’m familiar with all of it.” He glanced over at Justin. “Besides, I’m going to attempt to retrieve the data files of the other doctors.”

“It seems awfully risky,” Marc said in almost a mumble.

“So, the mission is as follows,” Justin stated. “Five of us will be leaving tomorrow. It’ll be Major Parsons, Private Mann,” he pointed at Blake who acknowledged with a halfhearted salute. “Cutter, Sergeant Caswell, and myself. We know the CDC.” He gestured at Cutter.

“Obviously, Cutter has never been there, but he’ll still be able to help out. We should arrive in Atlanta within twenty-four hours. It may take us an hour or two to get back inside and perhaps a couple of hours to download all of the necessary files. This, of course, is dependent on how many infected are still inside and whether or not the generators are damaged.”

“What if they are?” Tonya asked.

“If that’s the case, we’ll remove the hard drives and bring them back with us, but if the facility is secure enough, and we can get the generators running, Grant is going to conduct tests with the pint of blood Zach is going to donate and maybe even attempt to synthesize a serum.”

“How long will that take?” I asked the good doctor.

“As I told you earlier, we’d actually come a long way before we were overrun. The test batch I told you about is in all likelihood no longer good, but with your blood I believe I can work up a new batch. I'll not make a long convoluted explanation. The short answer is, three days or so.” There was some murmuring in the crowd.

“We’ll be taking the two Humvees. They've already been prepped and ready to go.”

“Why two?” Gus asked. “Isn't that a waste of fuel?”

“We'll need both vehicles to haul the equipment back and if one of them breaks down, we'll still have a viable means of transportation.” Justin held his hand up to stop the questions. "Listen people, we've thought this all out and have planned for every foreseeable contingency. We'll be back before you know it.” He's looking at Ruth as he says this. She's not going with him and her worry is palpable.

“It just seems like you're taking an awful lot of gas and ammo with you.” Gus wouldn't let it go, even though it wasn't his gas or ammo.

“Would you like to go with us?” Grant asked him.

“Oh, no,” he answered quickly. The other men traded a look. Tonya had walked out of the cafeteria while everyone was talking and had now returned, holding something in her hands. She handed it to Justin. He and Grant looked at it curiously.

“It’s a radiation detection device. You’ll be traveling through areas that may or may not have radiation fallout. I’ll train you how to use it.”

“Thank you,” Justin said. Tonya smirked.

“Don’t thank me, by the time you realize you’re in a hotspot, it’ll probably already be too late.

“The technical name for it is an ion chamber survey meter with a beta slide.” She pointed at the on/off switch.

“It is quite simple to operate. Turn it on, it automatically clears the chamber and takes a reading. There is no sound card with this one, so it won’t make any noise like those Geiger counters you see on TV. You have to pay attention and read the gauge. It’s powered with batteries, so I would suggest having extras on hand.

“You’re only problem is going to be the range. This particular model will only test the immediate area, drive down the road a hundred yards and you’ll need to test again.”

Justin listened carefully and tried it out. She was right, it was really simple to use.

“I appreciate it.”

“Try not to break it,” she said with a tone in her voice which indicated she believed that’s exactly what they’d do.

I sat in one of those child-sized classroom chairs while Grant prepped my arm and inserted the needle. Lacking a tennis ball, Grant found one of those erasers for a dry-erase board and had me squeeze it.

“Do you really think this is a good idea? Going back to the CDC?” I asked him. His mouth worked while he formed an answer.

“We have to try,” he finally said. It was just the two of us in the classroom, everyone else was eating dinner. He leaned closer and lowered his voice.

“There’s something I haven’t told anyone but Mike and Mary. Clair was infected.” I looked at him in surprise.

“She didn’t have the flu?” He shook his head.

“The presentation of symptoms are very similar. It’s possible the flu virus activated it, I don’t know.” He continued staring at me somberly.

“So, you see, the plague is still active. We must find a cure.”

“I was going to put a bullet in her head after everyone left the church, but you’d already taken care of it.” Grant nodded. “What’d you do?”

“I shoved a scalpel into the base of her brain.”

“Wow,” I muttered.

“I had to be certain she wouldn’t infect anyone. That’s one of your rules, isn’t it?”

“Yep, rule number one.” I watched the plastic bag as it slowly filled with my blood.

“I never read up on viruses.”

“It’s a fascinating topic,” Grant said. “Did you know there are over one hundred million known types to exist? And, we haven’t even come close to discovering them all.” He had a gleam in his eye as he continued.

“They can self-replicate, and if they’re attacked by something like an antibiotic, the cells will mutate. That’s why there has never been a cure for the common cold, specifically known as rhinovirus.” He wagged a finger.

“This particular virus starts with flu-like symptoms, but it attacks the brain. The infection time varies, we had compiled a data base of exposure to full blown infection from minutes to several hours. At the beginning stages, the infected person becomes highly unstable.”

“So, that explains the violent behavior,” I said.

“Correct. The frontal lobe is responsible for morality, multi-tasking, complex problem solving. It was easy to observe the damage. The amygdala, which is the portion of the brain which triggers the fear mechanism, is virtually wiped out. Their inability to walk and climb stairs is an indicator of damage to the cerebellum.”

“The Zee-Fourteens are showing signs that they’re healing,” I remarked. “They’re moving better and some of them have even tried to flee when they realized their lives were in danger. That’s a sign of their brain repairing itself, right?”

“Yes and no,” Grant replied. “The human brain is remarkable. A part of it can be irrevocably damaged and another part of the brain can take over the functions.”

“Will mankind ever become resistant to this virus?”

“To an extent,
if
mankind survives.” Grant noticed me frowning.

“What?”

“Alright, I’m no expert in this topic, but it seems to me the survivors, like you for instance, have at least some type of resistance to the infection.”

“Yes, we do, but we’re not totally immune.” He worked his mouth a moment. “Let’s compare it to the smallpox epidemic. Are you familiar with it?”

“Haven’t there been several outbreaks over the years?”

“Yes, there have. There was a big one in 1862,” Grant said. “It was a worldwide infection. Tens of thousands of people died, perhaps even millions. But, it was only a thirty to thirty-five percent mortality rate. The mortality rate for this virus is somewhere around eighty percent.”

“I figured as much,” I said. Grant continued speaking while I mentally worked the numbers in my head. That left a worldwide population of roughly 1.6 billion. Figure a mortality rate of the survivors at 25%, and that was a modest estimation, the math left a population of approximately 1.2 billion. Worldwide. I wondered where the highest concentration of the survivors were located, but Grant interrupted my thoughts.

“And, in addition, new vaccination techniques were tested,” Grant said. He paused a moment and chuckled.

“Did you know, as early as the fourteenth century, the Chinese would ground up pox scabs from infected people and blow it up the noses of the wealthy elite?”

“I read that online back before,” I said. “But the article didn’t say whether or not it was effective.”

“From all of the known writings on the subject, it was very successful.”

“And there was no antigen or vaccine made for this virus?” Grant shook his head.

“Several attempts were made, but they all failed. That’s why we at the CDC believed that if we found someone who is immune, like you, we could create an antigen.”

“It doesn’t explain why I got sick when I was exposed.”

“If a sample base of one hundred people were to be inoculated with a flu vaccine, a sizeable percentage would experience flu-like symptoms after being inoculated. It is entirely possible you were experiencing the same thing. If only we had known this information back when the CDC was operational,” he mused, “perhaps we could have found the reason.”

“Coulda, shoulda, woulda,” I lamented. Grant chuckled.

“The CBIRF teams were trained for all forms of nuclear, biological, and chemical attack. CDC personnel had trained for every type of possible outbreak as well. Even so, we had our asses handed to us.”

“Was there ever a consensus reached on what the hell caused this?” Grant shook his head.

“It’s definitely a virus. The genetic markers indicate it’s natural, like chicken pox, herpes, HIV, but that’s where the similarity ends. It attacks the brain like meningitis and mutates quickly. All of the autopsies we performed showed portions of the brain such as the frontal lobe destroyed and the rest was…” he rubbed his face, attempting to find the right words.

“The rest of the brain was infected, obviously, but the virus had mutated it somehow.” He looked at the IV bag and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“The answer to your question; no, we had no idea what caused it. If I were to guess, it’s one of those undiscovered viruses.”

“Grant, since we’re being so friendly with each other at the moment, I have a question to ask you.” He looked at me curiously. “Was there any experimentation done on infected subjects?” Grant looked away, and moved his mouth a couple of times. It was a peculiar habit of his when he was trying to think up the best way to say something.

“Just spit it out, yes or no?”

“Yes.” After a few seconds, he elaborated. “Even before Colonel Coltrane and I arrived at the CDC, they were capturing zombies of various genders, age, and ethnicity and performing experiments.”

“What kind of experiments?”

“Everything you can imagine, Zach. We injected them with every type of serum known. We’d draw fluid samples from one and inject them into another. We performed hundreds of autopsies. We dissected them while they were still alive. I assisted in one experiment where we removed portions of the brain and then would test their cognitive functions. You name it, we did it.” He frowned and shook his head.

“We accumulated a vast amount of data, but, the closest thing we’ve come to a cure was you and the now deceased female from Kentucky.”

“Did you meet her?”

“Oh yes. I was the one who tested her. A cute, eighteen-year-old girl straight out of the mountains.”

I sat in silence now and watched the plastic bag fill up with my blood while I pondered what he’d said. For some reason, I didn’t believe a cure would ever be found.

“Don’t ask me why I say this, Grant, but I don’t believe she’s dead.” Grant looked at me in surprise and then offered a nervous chuckle.

“When you say it like that, I feel compelled to ask. Did you know her?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure if you know her or you’re not sure how you suspect she’s still alive?”

“Both.”