Cryonic (13 page)

“Whoa, hey! Careful with that thing!” I yelled. I found Mike on the other side. He'd just disposed of an enemy and was fiddling with his gun, struggling to turn the laser off.

“Sorry about that. I'm still getting used to these things. I think that was the last one,” Mike said.

“Celeste!” I yelled. “We all clear?”

“All clear over here,” she answered.

“You're gonna like this stuff,” Mike said, showing me a bag of meat that had fallen from a box. “You pull this cord right here, the chemicals kick off, and bam! It's like you just pulled it out of the oven on Thanksgiving.”

Celeste and I went to open the freight door while Mike had a look around. I rolled up my sleeves and pulled hard on the chain to crank the door open. As soon as the zombies wandering around outside saw us, they growled and shrieked and moved in our direction. Alex was right where he was supposed to be. He drove the van through the opening, knocking down some of the intruders in the process. I pulled hard on the chain to shut the door while Celeste took the laser to those who made it inside. A blood-curdling scream reverberated from the other end of the warehouse.

I dashed across the warehouse. Mike was near the wide-open doorway for the personnel entrance. Multiple ghouls were climbing on top of him as several more poured in. I sliced at the ghouls on top of Mike, and then focused on the doorway. The laser made quick work of those coming in, but a wall of bodies followed right behind. I charged into the doorway, hoping to clear enough room to get back inside and push the button to shut them out. That's when my gun beeped. The laser retracted, and the bayonet thrust forward in its place. I was stuck in hand-to-hand combat with attackers coming at me from more directions than my weapon could handle. I pulled the trigger and sprayed bullets, but the only ones who fell were those who took bullets to the head. Hands grabbed me on all sides, and then a mouth clamped down on my right forearm. The shock of the bite pulled my hand from the trigger, and a zombie in
front of me became impaled on the blade, pulling the gun from my hands.

I could feel the heat from Celeste's laser as she decapitated my attackers from behind. Alex grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back inside, then waited patiently for Celeste to work her way back in. I looked over at Mike, who was screaming. He was bleeding profusely. I pulled my sleeve back to reveal the bite on my right arm. It looked like I'd been attacked by a dog. The bite was only a couple of inches across, but it covered the width of my forearm. I could make out the path of the top and bottom rows of teeth. The skin was broken all the way around. The bite wasn't deep, and the muscle remained intact.

I ran over to Mike, who was going into shock. Alex and Celeste were still distracted by the chaos in the doorway. I pulled some fabric from Mike's sleeve, tied it around my wound to stop the bleeding, and pulled my sleeve back down to hide it.

Mike had chunks of flesh missing in several places. Both his thighs had hunks missing, but his right triceps was the worst. It looked like more than half of it was gone. I pulled more fabric from Mike's clothing and tied a tourniquet around his right armpit to cut off the flow of blood to his arm. Having successfully sealed the doorway, Alex and Celeste joined us. Mike's leg wounds looked less threatening, so we stuffed them with golf-ball-sized wads of fabric and tied fabric around the wounds to keep the wads in place.

Mike started coming to, and as always, he wanted to talk. “Thanks, guys, thanks. I don't know what happened. I was digging through that shelf near the doorway, and those fuckers got the door open somehow. Oh man, oh man, I'm in bad—”

The automated voice spoke and the door slid open.

“Close it for me, Al.”

In one fell swoop, I grabbed Celeste's weapon and kicked the leading intruder back into the others and out the door. I unloaded rounds into them as Alex shut the door.

“It's that God-forsaken retina scanner. Those creeps are beating on the door looking for us, and every time a soldier is in front it opens the door for them.”

“Guys, guys, just leave me here,” Mike begged. “You gotta go. You know what's going to happen to me.”

“No, we don't,” I barked. “We're gonna load that van up with food, and then we're gonna . . .” I looked around the
room as I searched desperately for an answer, “we're gonna take you to one of those research centers to see if they've found a cure.”

The personnel door opened again. Celeste and Alex took care of it.

“Royce, we're not going anywhere if we can't do something about that door,” Celeste said.

“I know, I know. Gimme a second. I gotta get another gun from the van. The laser on that other one crapped out on me.”

“The gun is fine,” she said. “You just used up the battery. Too much fishing.”

“How do we charge those things?”

“With a charger, of course.”

“Can we get one?”

“Not likely, unless we can get inside their barracks.”

“I know what to do about the door. We can take that forklift and block it with pallets,” Alex suggested.

“That might hold for a while, but there's too many of them,” I said. “Remember, they don't feel anything so they'll just mash themselves into it until it falls over. We need more time than that to load the van. We won't be able to finish.”

We stood there for a moment.

“I have an idea,” I said. “Celeste, Alex, watch the door. Just, um, don't stand too close to it, okay? Unless they open it, of course.”

They looked at me like I was crazy, which I guess I was. A ladder on the wall behind us led to the roof. I climbed the ladder and walked over to the edge of the roof directly above the personnel entrance. The zombies below massed around the entrance, pushing and pawing at it because they knew what was inside.

I pulled the neutron grenade from my pocket.

The zombies moved back and forth across the spot where I wanted the grenade to land. I needed a bit of a clearing to throw it into, otherwise it might bounce off somebody and land too close to the door. I couldn't help but notice that my predicament was a bit like playing a game at the county fair, except my friends would die if I messed up.

I waited and waited until the moment was right. Then I pulled the pin and tossed the grenade underhand toward the clearing like I was throwing a bocce ball. I was so concerned about the grenade landing too close to the door that I threw it too hard in the other direction. I watched the grenade's high arcing trajectory with bated breath. It cleared the area I wanted it to land in and plucked a zombie in the forehead who stepped into its path. The grenade careened off the ghoul's forehead and then hopped across the concrete before rolling to a stop in the middle of the clearing I was shooting for. I couldn't have put it in a better spot if I had walked it out there myself.

I was so busy reveling in my good fortune that I didn't think to hit the deck. When the grenade went off, the force of the blast took care of that for me. I flew backwards and landed flat on my back. I lay there for a moment watching the glory of a mini mushroom cloud. When the smoke cleared, I leapt to my feet and ran to the edge of the roof to check out the grenade's handiwork. Just as Celeste had promised, the crater from the blast was roughly fifteen feet in diameter. It was much deeper than I had expected, which was all the better. The zombies outside the blast radius fell into the crater one after another on their way to the door. Once in the crater they were too far away from the retina scanner for it to pick them up. The crater was just close
enough to the door that zombies walking in from the sides couldn't get in front of the scanner without falling into the hole.

“What did you do?” Alex yelled to me as I made my way back down the ladder. “My ears won't stop ringing.”

“It was the neutron grenade.”

“Why bother?” Celeste asked. “There's no way you got all of them.”

“Nope. Didn't get them all, but I did make a big ole hole in front of the door. They're all falling in, and now they can't get in front of the scanner.”

“That's very clever, Royce,” Celeste said with a warm smile.

“Happy to be of service. I'm probably going to get cancer from it, but . . . ”

“Don't worry about cancer,” Alex said. “It's not even a serious illness anymore.”

“We better get some more of those grenades then,” I said, grinning. “Seriously though, let's load the van before too many of those freaks fall in that hole, and they start piling on top of each other.”

Alex, Celeste, and I loaded the van as carefully as we could, trying to maximize the space available. We packed one side with boxes of meat and cans, and created a flat space with bags of rice on the other to lay Mike on.

Alex and I helped Mike up on his makeshift bed.

“Mike, we're going to take you to one of those research hospitals you told us about and get you fixed up,” I said. Alex and Celeste wouldn't look at me or Mike. It was clear they didn't like my plan, but were uncomfortable speaking against it given Mike's predicament.

“I don't think that's a good idea,” Mike said, groaning in pain. “It's a military hospital. They aren't just going to let the three of you waltz in and out of there as you please, and that's assuming they haven't been overrun.”

“Let us figure that out. Your job is to hang on until we get you there, okay? Where'd you say the nearest facility was, DC?”

“Yes, DC.”

“We shouldn't go to DC,” Alex said. “It's too populated. We need a place that will have less of those things walking around.”

“We can't go far. This guy doesn't have much time.”

“That's true, but if we go to the capitol, we might not even make it, and where does that leave him?” Celeste had a point.

“Mike, is there another place we can go?” I asked. “Somewhere outside the city?”

Mike lay there looking at the ceiling. I couldn't tell if he was thinking or losing consciousness.

“We can go to Weston.” He coughed. “It's a small town. There's a secret facility operating inside an abandoned insane asylum. It's about . . . eighty miles northeast of Charleston. Shouldn't take more than a few hours.”

“Alex, Celeste, what do you think?”

“We can try,” Celeste said.

“All right, I'll get the door.”

They climbed in the van, and I walked over to the door and started pulling on the chain to open it. Each tug made my wound itch and burn. Once I got the door open, I climbed into the passenger seat next to Celeste, who was sitting between the seats on a sack of rice. I put my arm on the armrest to steady myself as Alex weaved through the zombies still wandering the business park. That's when I noticed the blood from my wound seeping through my sleeve. Celeste was looking out my window, and I pulled my arm down nervously between the seat and the door to hide the wound. I couldn't tell if she noticed, and I stared blankly out the window, unwilling to find out.

By the time we reached Weston, Mike was passed out in the back of the van and dripping with sweat.

“You think he'll turn soon?” Celeste asked, checking on his condition.

“I hope not, but we better keep the guns handy just in case,” I said.

It was dusk as we crawled down Main Street in the van. Weston was tiny. It reminded me of a movie set for small town USA that had long been abandoned. Tall weeds sprouted right through the pavement, and the cars parked along the curb were caked with dust. Other than the weeds and grime, some of the shops almost looked as if they were still taking business. We passed a restaurant that still had an open sign hanging in the window, and the filthy steel tables were still arranged neatly on the outdoor patio. Other shops were boarded up and riddled with bullet holes.

“What happened to this place?” I asked.

Alex didn't say a word, and Celeste was slow to answer. It was clear they hadn't been out of the city enough to see something like this. “After the invasion, the Chinese came into small towns and rounded everyone up. They wanted everyone in the cities so they were easier to control and put to work,” she said.

“Looks like there wasn't much time to prepare.”

“Most people didn't know it was coming. The Chinese took people from where they stood, rounded them up like animals, and hauled them off in caravans. Those who holed up and put up a fight were sent to the reeducation camps.”

“So they left everything behind?”

“Everything.”

“We should take a look around on our way out. You know, see what we can find.”

“We should,” Celeste said with a sigh.

A brief detour off Main Street led us to the expansive grounds of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. The building itself was an ancient, rectangular stone structure with multiple floors and narrow wings stretching off into the distance. The stained, white clock tower at the center of the building seemed out of place against the portent Gothic architecture. The tower's peak was adorned with a large copper steeple that thrust violently up into the sky.