Bitten (6 page)

Zanato
shook as he whipped his head back and forth looking at the zombies pushing their way out onto the ledge. A couple more fell over, but one managed to get its footing on the ledge outside of the same window they had escaped from. “Oh, you acrobatic fucker,” Zanato growled.

“Give me your hand,” shouted Jennifer.

“What?!” Zanato screamed.

Reaching out toward Zanato with even more urgency, Jennifer shouted, “Give me your hand and I’ll swing you across to my side.”

Looking at the tangle of arms reaching out of the window grasping for anything which they could cling to, like the flailing tentacles of a menacing giant squid, and looking down toward the dizzying plummet which awaited his slightest misstep, Zanato considered the odds. “No, thanks Spiderwoman, I think I’ll pass.”

“You wanna die up here?”

Zanato pulled his hair and screamed. “Fuck this shit!”

Just
then several gun shots rang out and several more zombies flew out of the window and fell to their gut splattering deaths.

“Who the hell is shooting at us?” Zanato screamed pathetically.

“They’re not shooting at us, genius. They’re shooting at the Walkers.”

Searching the skyline, Jennifer noticed a U.S. Marine perched on the rooftop directly across from them.

“Over there!” she exclaimed, pointing in the gunman’s direction. Zanato looked out across the divide and spotted the marine.

“It’s the Marines! Thank God! The M
arines are here!”

From inside the building they heard several
more shots. The zombies which were grasping for them now were all slumped into a massive dead heap, half of them hanging out of the window. They looked like ragdolls hanging out of a child’s toy box.

Just
then a tall, dark, and handsome marine appeared in the window and put his hand out for Jennifer to take. “I’m Sergeant Ulysses Noble, and I’m here to rescue you.”

Taking his hand, Jennifer smiled graciously, and said, “My hero.”
As their eyes met Jennifer felt some definite sparks fly. “I’m Jennifer, and…” as he scooped her into his strong arms, she added, “I’m all yours.”

As they walked toward the stairwell, a voice called out, “Hey, what about me?”

Noble stopped and looked back at the window with the man clamoring over the pile of dead zombies.

“Well, don’t diddle-doddle,” Noble said with the urgency of a combat veteran. “This ain’t fucking recess,
son.”

Jennifer couldn’t help but laugh at that last part. It was all too accurate of a description of Jesse Zanato—the boy wonder—a wonder why she had put up with him for this long. But Zanato was yesterday’s news. She had other
cravings.

Jennifer licked her lips, hungrily, and gave Noble her most alluring look. Raising his left eyebrow, he smiled back
at her, letting her know that he caught her message loud and clear.

General Thompson Greer leaned back in his
office chair and checked his watch. He didn’t like it when he lost contact with a team.

“Dammit! Where are those boys?”

General Greer’s hair had gone white long ago due to the stress of the job. Although he was pushing fifty-eight, he still had the physique of a rugged soldier who had seen his fair share of combat. Not only did he look like a hard-edged Cary Grant, he looked good in army green to boot.

A small scar above his right eyebrow marked where some shrapnel had grazed him the time he nearly got taken out by a fanatic suicide bomber who set himself off in the middle of a Bagdad market plac
e. Thirty casualties that god-forsaken day. A lot of bloody nightmares of women and children with missing limbs roaming the streets like ghosts for months afterward too. It wasn’t his best day, that was for goddamn sure.

Major Valentine strode over to the general’s desk and saluted. General Greer
responded in kind. She could tell he had a lot on his mind. Starring at him with her light green eyes, which complimented her military uniform, she waited for him to say something.

“Sniper team sixteen sighted survivors and decided to take a det
our before proceeding to base, sir.” As she updated the General, Corporal Anderson brought over some coffee.

“Well they better goddamn hurry it up. It’s already getting dark and we’re going to have to activate the quarantine barrier in T-minus fifteen. As of twenty-one hundred hours Newcastle City will be officially sealed off.”

Corporal Anderson placed the general’s mug down on the table and began pouring. As he did his eyes drifted to the major’s ample chest. Undressing her with his eyes, Anderson became distracted and spilled the coffee all over the general’s desk.

Gritting his teeth
and flexing his jaw, General Greer turned toward his officer and snarled, “Goddammit Anderson!”

Valentine almost smiled but kept herself in check. She knew the general didn’t tolerate slip-ups. For him they were a sign of poor discipline and carelessness. Two things which could get you or your unit killed on the battlefield.

“Sorry, sir,” Anderson stammered. “I was … it was … er … I mean … I’ll have this cleaned up in no time.”

Greer sat
back down and rolled back in his seat with a huff and turned to Major Valentine. “Tell the guards at the south gate to remain vigilant. I want those boys back safe and sound before we lock her down. Also, get me a progress update on the evacuation of the remaining officials of Newcastle City.”

The major promptly saluted and then turned on her heels and left the control room.

Greer leaned back in his chair and pulled out a cigar from the inside of his uniform’s breast pocket and lit it up. Puffing on it, he watched as the smoke formed rings which wafted away and then dissipate almost as quickly as they were fashioned.

The
damned contagion had decimated the city population almost overnight. There wasn’t any way to prepare for such a thing. You could only deal with it once it arrived. Whoever survived the initial outbreak was being evacuated from the city. Of course screening continued as usual, and hopefully he’d make sure every one of the uninfected had a chance to get out before he went in to sterilize the whole goddamn city. Deep down in his gut, however, he felt the worst was yet to come.

Valentine made her way out of the barracks and headed toward the main gate
s which overlooked the city. The base was set up as a semi-permanent cantonment. Inside the perimeter the base was lit up with halogen lights. At the main entrance there were two guard towers with spotlights and armed soldiers.

Funneling the survivors through the entrance ensured that anybody coming through would be properly inspected
for signs of infection. If they cleared the initial inspection, they would be guided inside to a special room for a chemical shower and sterilization.

Personally, Valentine didn’t like the idea of quarantine check points and sterilization camps. It seemed too eerily similar to America’s dark flirtation with eugenics and the sterilization camps of the quack
American scientist Charles Davenport. Indeed, it was this very American idea of cleansing the “defective,” fueled by Davenport’s deep seeded racism, which would go on to influence Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust and give rise to Auschwitz.

She couldn’t help but feel it was wrong to simply put down the infected. They weren’t defective, per se. They were sick. But maybe in times of crisis the line of demarcation between the two became blurred. Whether it was a terrorist or a virus the first rule of survival always stayed the same: kill or be killed.

Standing on the side of the road, Alyssa stared up at the body of an elderly woman high up on the telephone pole clinging to it for dear life. Seeing the poor old woman stuck up on her perch, sitting listless with eyes wide open,
and stricken with fear deeply unnerved Alyssa. Obviously she had climbed up there to get away from the Walkers only to have died of the cold, dehydration, or sheer terror. Alyssa bet it was probably the cruel combination of all three that did the poor woman in.

“What is the world coming to?” Alyssa asked herself
, speaking out loud. Looking down at her leg she checked the gauze bandages. Everything appeared fine. Her stitches were holding, at least for now. She decided to press on.

Looking back down
the road, the way she had come, she saw the shambling horde of Walkers slowly stalking her. Lucky for her, they didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Some of them were walking aimlessly about, bumping into other Walkers. Another one wandered off in the wrong direction entirely. If they weren’t so horrifyingly blood thirsty, she thought, their fumbling, shambling, lack of intelligence was rather quite amusing. But there was nothing funny about them.

Alyssa
had made her new friends when she had mistakenly come over a hill in a nearby meadow, and like a herd of grazing cattle, there they were. Alyssa considered taking them out on the spot but she was low on bullets.

So instead
of wasting what remained of her precious ammunition, she slowly backed away and just kept hobbling along the road. Apparently several of them had spotted her, however, and now a couple dozen or so were pursuing her. As long as she kept her distance she figured it was no big deal.

Upon getting to the zenith, she looked out across an expanse of nearly fifty or sixty mindless roving heads.
She hadn’t anticipated a second horde just over this hill. At least not so close.

“Shit!” Alyssa
cursed, keeping her voice to a whisper. She was caught between two groups of Walkers prowling for their prey. For fresh meat.

Quickly, Alyssa ducked down to make herself less
noticeable, picked up her rifle and began loading shells into its chamber. She was outnumbered nearly ninety to one with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Her streak of luck had finally run dry.

Crouching there, out in the open, she turned her head
up and looked at the wretched corpse of the old woman stuck up on the telephone pole. “I take it you ran into a similar situation?” As the surrounding hordes’ footsteps encroached upon her, Alyssa cocked the rifle, and said, “Here we go again.”

It had taken Rachael Ramirez
nearly all morning just to dress herself. She was too in shock to act like the day was like any other. It wasn’t.

Finally
getting her stuff together she set out to look for her son. Getting into her Audi, parked on the side of the street, she started down the road. It was strangely deserted. It was like a mid-afternoon lull at the peak of evening rush hour, but still, not a car in sight.

As she drove along
she occasionally ran across an abandoned vehicle, but the real trouble weighing on her mind was how so many people could simply disappear in less than forty-eight hours. Where did they all go?

With her mind on her son, Rachael drove out of town toward his private school. Deep down inside she realized he wouldn’t be there, but perhaps she could find some survivors.

As she left the city limits, she drove around the bend of a hill outlined by a grove of trees. The twilight hour was making it difficult to see the road as she came over the crest of the hill. Out of the blue she plowed into a huge gathering of white-eyed walking dead. Rachael screamed, but instead of slowing down she hit the gas. Bodies bounced off her car as she mowed down a trail in the massive gathering.

A few of them toppled over
her hood while a few others went under the car. The tires bounced over their bodies as if they were speed bumps. Looking into the rear view mirror, she saw the one’s she had just run over start to get back up.

Seeing a
large group of the white-eyed half dead awkwardly galloping after her, she hit the accelerator and sped up. Watching the pack of Walkers shrink in the rearview mirror Rachael smiled to herself and sighed with relief.

Looking back out the front windshield,
Rachael barely noticed the single form waving frantically in front of her desperate for her to stop. Rachael slammed on the breaks and skidded to a halt, stopping mere inches away from the nose of the terrified girl. Leaning over Rachael popped open the door and shouted, “Get in!”

The
young woman jumped into the SUV and slammed the door behind her. Rachael checked the rearview mirror, and said, “They don’t give up, do they?” Slamming her food down, Rachael pushed the pedal to the metal, and with her tires squealing, the silver SUV peeled away, leaving twenty inch elevens burnt into the road.

As she caught her breath, t
he girl looked over at Rachael as if to say thank you, but before she could speak a single word she passed out from exhaustion. Rachael noticed one of the girl’s pants legs was missing and her thigh was tightly bandaged.