ARES Virus: Arctic Storm (3 page)

Brown spots a large group chasing after three individuals. The three keep looking back over their shoulders at their assailants, their fear evident. Backpacks bob up and down as they try to outdistance those behind.

“Fools, don’t look back,” Brown mutters, silently urging them to run faster. “Don’t you know that will only slow you down?”

His silent wishes go for naught as the pursuers close the distance and catch them. The three are quickly submerged below a mountain of bodies. The mob then rises and races off in search of others, leaving behind three thrashing figures. The three lie still for a moment before rising and racing off, vanishing from sight.

So, whatever the agent is, it’s highly contagious, and transmits quickly—maybe through saliva? This resembles some zombie-like nightmare come to life
, he thinks, shaking his head at the ridiculous idea.
But I can’t discount what I’m seeing, and it’s spreading quickly. It’ll be in town before I know it, and from what I see going on here, it will encompass the entire area within hours.

He looks to the closed door of his office.
There’s no one here. I’ll wait a few minutes longer, then call my responsibility complete and get the fuck out of here
.

Brown hears running steps in the hallway outside. He fumbles for his keys, something he should have done immediately upon entry. He realizes that he won’t have time to unlock the drawer where he keeps his sidearm. Instead, he steps to the side and grabs one of the flagpoles standing behind his desk. The stars and stripes flutter in the air as Brown brings the pole from its stand and turns toward the door. The staff is a little too long to be used effectively in the office, but it’s the only thing within reach. The door bursts open.

Brown lunges forward as three people stumble into his office, one after another. The second one, seeing the pole thrust toward the cadet ahead of her, yells, “Sergeant, no!”

Upon hearing the words, Brown holds back his thrust, but doesn’t ease his stance. He hasn’t survived his many combat tours by relaxing in the middle of chaos. His vision clears and he recognizes three of the detachment’s cadets, none of them displaying violent behavior. Slowly, expecting them to jump forward at any moment, he lowers the staff.

“Get in here and close the door,” he gruffly states.

Seeing the third cadet about to swing the door closed, he adds: “Quietly, you fool.”

It’s not really any way to speak to an officer cadet. They’re not officers yet, but they’re not raw recruits in basic training either. However, the situation is tense and it just comes out. After all, to slam a door and draw attention to oneself in the midst of all of this is foolish, and he’ll call it the way he sees it.

“What’s going on, Sergeant?” the female cadet asks.

“I’m not exactly sure, but it looks like some kind of toxin has been leaked on campus,” Brown answers.

“You mean, like, a nerve agent?” the first one questions.

“Not exactly,” Brown replies. “But, regardless of what it is, it’s spreading quickly. It’s already across campus and will be in the city soon.”

“But, why aren’t we affected?” the female queries.

“Genes? Good luck? Who in the fuck knows? And maybe it only has a low persistence, meaning it disperses quickly. I don’t really know anything except that we’re alive and uncontaminated, and I mean to stay that way,” Brown states, setting the flagpole back into its stand.

Taking his key ring out, he unlocks the bottom drawer and withdraws his handgun.

“You keep a weapon in here?” the first cadet, Hayward, asks.

“Rule number one: never be far from one, son,” Brown replies.

“So, what do we do, Sergeant?” the female asks, her blonde hair tightly bound in a regulation bun.

“Overall, Clarke, we need to get out of the city and away from any populated areas. We’ll have to take the chance that the agent isn’t persistent and that we won’t run through any particles. I would say that we stay here and wait for the authorities to get a handle on this outbreak, but judging by how quickly this is spreading, we’d more than likely be dead or worse by the time the cavalry arrives,” Brown responds.

“Worse than dead? Is that even a thing?” the other male cadet, Mendez, asks.

“We could become one of them,” Brown states, pointing out of the window.

“Oh…yeah. Didn’t think of that. Are there any other weapons around?”

“None that I know of,” Brown says.

“So, how should we do this?” Clarke asks.

“Anyone have a vehicle parked nearby?”

Waking early and walking to work, Brown doesn’t have one of his own nearby.

“I have a motorcycle,” Mendez says.

Brown just stares at him, waiting for the ridiculous nature of that statement to settle in. He notes the flash of awareness and the cadet looks away, adding: “But I don’t think that’ll do us any good.”

A gruff “No shit, Sherlock” almost passes through Brown’s lips, but he lets it slide. After all, they’re in a tense situation where there’s a good chance they won’t make it to sunset. It’s early afternoon and they need to be somewhere safer before dark, preferably out of town. If they can find a vehicle, that could be minutes away. If not, then it will take hours. On foot isn’t preferable, as they’d make little headway compared to the level of risk.

“Anyone else?” Brown asks.

“I have a car, but it’s parked across campus,” Clarke chimes in.

“How far across campus?”

“Pretty much as far as you could get from here and still be on campus,” Clarke answers.

“How about you?” Brown asks Hayward.

“Sorry, Sergeant, I live in the dorms and don’t have a car.”

Brown pulls a binder out of his drawer and opens it to a small map of the campus.

“Show me where you’re parked,” he says to Clarke.

She looks at the map, orients herself, and points to a parking lot that is truly on the opposite side of campus.

“Okay, that will have to do and we need to get there without running into the crazed fools roaming the grounds. That’s our objective. We stay together and move when I say move, stop when I say stop. Don’t hesitate, just do it. If you see anything, mention it, but do so quietly. Our goal is to not draw attention to ourselves in any fashion,” Brown briefs.

Brown retrieves a bag and pulls out a pair of oh-my-god-those-are-large boots. As he begins changing, he glances at the cadets’ shoes.

“Those aren’t going to cut it. Please tell me that you have your gear bags stored in the building and not sitting a mile away.”

The three have their bags stored in the basement armory, although this “armory” only housed company and platoon guidons, plus the plugged M-1s for the precision drill team—an armory in name only.

“That’s our first stop,” Brown says, knotting his laces.

Pineville University

September 2

Brown releases the mag and looks at the gleaming brass cartridges, assuring himself that he has a full complement on board.

Twenty-one plus one in the chamber—not a lot of firepower,
he thinks, slamming the mag home.

Turning to the three cadets, towering over them, he states: “I want you three to stay close to me and do exactly as I tell you. You aren’t sightseers on a tour bus. Our objective is to be as small as we can be. The infected seem to be drawn to movement and sound, so don’t be calling out everything you see and bringing attention to us. Is everyone ready?”

The three nod their understanding. Brown hands his bag to one of the cadets and turns back to the door. He steps forward and pauses. The dark smears on the other side of the opaque glass remind him of what he’s about to walk into. He halts so suddenly that one of the cadets bumps into his back

“Not that close, numbnuts,” Brown growls over his shoulder.

This, and with three puppies in tow
, he thinks.

The cadets behind him were forced into service the moment this shit started. They’ll return to cadet status once the situation has been resolved, but for now, Brown considers himself to be in a combat zone—something with which the kids behind him have zero experience. They can complain about their treatment later, but for the time being, they are his charges. He plans on living through this to enjoy his retirement and he’s not going to let decorum stand in the way.

With his hand poised over the knob, Brown listens for anything that might be on the other side. His heart pounds solidly and his mouth is dry from the adrenaline coursing through his system. He can feel the bounding pulse in his hand gripping the door, along the sides of his neck, and in his ears. Silence reigns in the hallway beyond.

He raises his handgun as he pulls the door open and steps into the hall, looking first in one direction, then the other. There isn’t anything in sight except for the smeared blood reminding them of the recent violence. Brown has witnessed some pretty fucked up things in his career, and knows the ugliness that toxins can create, but he’s never seen or heard of anything that could turn people feral. He will save his questions for later, though. It’s happening and he’s in the middle of it, survival the only thing of importance.

With his free hand, Brown waves the three cadets into the hallway behind him. As they edge down the corridor, he grimaces at each click of the cadets’ heels on the hard linoleum floor. At one point, turning to give them a stern look and putting his fingers to his lips. The echoing clicks diminish some, but they still seem to reverberate down the corridor.

Fucking herd of rampaging water buffalo
.

The faint, lingering iron smell of blood follows them as they descend the stairs. Brown expects an eruption of screams and violence on each and every floor they pass. The emptiness is surprising, especially considering what he had encountered in the commons just a short while ago. It reminds him of the quiet that would follow his squad’s searches into buildings in Iraq. The entire populace would seem to vanish at once, which usually meant an ambush was waiting. Instead of feeling relieved, the silence triggers alarms. His caution increases, slowing their advance to the lower floors.

“Interesting,” Brown mutters as they finally reach the basement armory, referring to the complete lack of encounters.

“Maybe whatever it was went away; like, dissipated or something,” Mendez comments.

“I wish, but highly doubt it. If this thing had run its course, we’d be hearing plenty of sirens outside,” Brown replies.

“True enough,” Clarke states.

“Everyone, grab your bags and change into your fatigues,” Brown says.

They search the bags, eventually finding their own among the rows of nearly identical digital camo patterns. Brown notices Clarke glance around the open room, looking for a shielded place to change.

“We’ll take turns,” Brown states, addressing her concern for privacy.

It takes longer, but they eventually transition from their short-sleeved uniforms to the more comfortable fatigues. Brown is grateful for the new freedom of movement. The thought of having to sneak through a hostile environment in a fitted uniform and Corframs was not comforting.

Without any weapons stored in the armory, Brown selects three guidons, unclips the flags, and hands them to the cadets.

“They aren’t much, but they’re better than nothing. Don’t use them like spears, but rather like staves. Grip them with both hands and swing the ends like you are punching,” Brown says, demonstrating.

He lets them practice for a couple of minutes to get used to the feel. He nearly loses all of them as they come close to removing each other’s heads with the first swings, but they manage to get a semblance of the technique after a few tries. The wooden poles won’t help much if they’re mobbed, and the odds still stand at around fifty-fifty that they’ll hit each other as opposed to anyone attacking, but, like he said, it’s better than nothing. Brown tells himself to keep at least a guidon length away from the cadets should it come down to a hand-to-hand fight.

Brown dons his nearly empty backpack and the group heads for the first floor, with only an occasional clack of the heavy wooden poles hitting a wall, floor, or light fixture.

This is like being in a fucking cartoon.

He turns each time it happens and is met with an embarrassed look from the offending cadet. By the time they reach the main floor, all of the accidental noises have ceased.

Standing to one side of the main entrance, Brown peeks outside. The commons area is clear. He waits for several minutes, monitoring the open area and adjacent buildings for movement. Over an hour has passed since the initial eruption of violence, and things seemed to have calmed. Easing the heavy wooden door open a notch, Brown hears faint screams in the distance, drifting across the campus.

Well, whatever it is that happened, it’s not over, and it’s spreading outward
, he thinks, continuing to look for any movement.

He thinks of a stone dropped in a still pond, the ripples expanding outward as the center calms. Like the waves, the frenzy is spreading out as the attackers search for fresh victims. At the moment, he and the three cadets are in the calm. If they’re to extricate themselves, they’ll have to make their way through the turbulent edge at some point, assuming this whole mess isn’t handled by then.

In the very distant background, toward the center of town, the faint warbling of sirens drifts across the campus. He can’t imagine what will happen once, or if, this reaches the heart of the city, but he doesn’t hold any hopes that law enforcement will be able to cope with it. From what he has witnessed, the relief efforts will involve thousands—the local enforcement agencies won’t have the manpower to deal with it. They will simply be overwhelmed by the deluge. Unless the agent dissipates on its own, this won’t be over until the National Guard is called out. That will result in many deaths, and even then, it may not be enough.

No, this won’t be over for some time. We’re on our own until then
.

“You did bring your keys, right?” Brown asks.

“Right here, Sergeant,” Clarke answers, jiggling her backpack.

“Okay, good. Remember, all of you, keep quiet. We’re going to skirt the commons and make our way across campus to the parking lot. Freeze when I tell you to stop. I mean don’t breathe or blink. And when I say so, run like your grandma is chasing you with a switch. If we have to conduct a hasty retreat and we get separated, make your way back here,” Brown briefs.

They step into the late summer day, the smell of freshly cut grass no longer noticeable. Brown keeps them near the outer walls, his eyes searching every window, every doorway. Although the landscape is much different, the discomforting quiet again reminds Brown of his patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan. Faint screams carry on the afternoon breeze in the distance, but don’t seem to be drawing closer. He logs each door as an escape route, mentally changing his path as they pass each one.

At least they can’t ambush us and start opening fire out of nowhere…not that I’m aware of, at any rate.

The twenty-two rounds he’s carrying seem much fewer now that he’s out in the open. It may be enough to take down a couple of groups, but the sound will draw others. Once he opens fire, it will only extend his remaining time on earth by a few minutes at best. Swinging sticks at quickly closing hordes of attackers will be next to useless. If he were Bruce Lee, different story. But he’s not, and there’s no use thinking he is. “Realize what you’re capable of doing and perform within those limits” has always been his motto. It’s worked for him so far and he’s not about to change it.

Overextending limits, either physically or by thinking you’re better than you are, is a good way to get your dick cut off.

Leaving the blood-stained grass of the commons behind, Brown leads them among the campus buildings. It’s unnerving, as there could be infected staring at them from each window, crouching by every doorway. There are no lanes they can skirt through without being seen from a hundred different places. Turning to the trailing cadets, Brown sees lines of sweat snaking down their cheeks, sees the furrowed brows and pinched lines around their eyes, and the damp patches under their arms.

Peering around the corner of a structure, feeling the heat radiate from its stone surface, Brown spots five figures gathered in a loose huddle in the middle of a main pathway running between two buildings. Their stationary forms are hunched over and shaking slightly from panting breaths. Brown has no idea whether they’re tired from a recent chase or as a result of the agent. It doesn’t matter. In either case, Brown and the cadets won’t be able to cross the open area without being seen.

The pathway extends for some distance in both directions, cutting through most of the campus. Even if they were to try and cross somewhere up or down the path, they’d still be seen. They’d have a greater distance between them, giving them more time to escape, but the screams would draw others—screams that are increasing in volume and intensity as they make their way through the campus. The only other option is to backtrack and try to circumnavigate the university, but that would only take them nearer to the outlying edges of the expanding range of the creatures.

Brown looks toward one of the doorways of a building across the path. Turning to the others, he briefs them on what lies around the corner.

“Give me your guidon,” he says to Hayward. “Here’s the deal. I’m going to try and lead them away. When the route is clear, continue to the parking lot. I’ll meet you there.”

“Why not use your sidearm?” Mendez asks.

“Do you hear that?” Brown asks, the sweep of his hand indicating the screams coming from every direction.

Mendez nods.

“Gunfire will bring them running toward us, and that’s something I’d like to avoid.”

“Won’t that happen if the ones around the corner spot you?” Mendez questions.

“Probably. But five gunshots will be significantly louder than a few screams. My suggestion is for you to head farther left before continuing on to the vehicle.”

“What do you want the guidon for, then? Are you going to bludgeon them?” Hayward queries.

Brown answers with a hard stare and snatches the wooden pole from Hayward’s grip.

“What if you don’t make it to the parking lot?” Clarke asks.

“You have your keys, right?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Well, there you go. I think that answers your question,” Brown says, hoisting the guidon to test its balance.

“So, we’re just supposed to leave without you?”

“Remember, wait until I’m out of sight,” he adds, ignoring the question, thinking that he’s already answered it. Inhaling deeply and letting it out, he runs into the open.

“Over here, kiddies,” he calls toward those gathered.

He makes sure that his call is only loud enough to be heard by the nearby group on the path. Odds are that an entire campus of students will descend on him once he is discovered, but there’s no use in assisting them. The five come out of their trance, heads snapping in his direction. They scream once in unison and race toward him.

Brown is already streaking for the entrance doors across the pathway before the infected take their first step. Aside from the shrieks, he knows that they’re after him by the pounding of running feet. Reaching the stairs, he vaults up the wide steps two at a time. Reflected in the glass panels of the doors, he sees that the five have nearly caught up with him, already mounting the bottom steps as he reaches the entrance.

Fuck, they’re fast! Or, I’m like a turtle in molasses.

Carrying both a handgun and a long, wooden pole interferes with his opening the door quickly, but he’s able to swing the portal open before the quickly closing assailants reach him. He barely notices the cooler interior as he sprints inside. The panting breaths of those chasing him echo within the hallway and are altogether too close. His own breath is coming just as hard.

Ahead, past a short entrance hall, a wide staircase climbs upward. Brown makes for it as fast as he can, his boots pounding on the linoleum. The idea is to get all of the screamers in one building so the cadets can get by.