Gnash (30 page)

“What the hell?” he said out loud as he spun around from his computers.  One of his Type Two’s rushed past the doorframe towards him.  He only had a few seconds to react before the thing made it around the lab equipment and tore him to pieces.  Frantically, he jerked on the handle of his pistol in its leg holster, finally, the general’s paranoia that everyone must be armed if they were going to keep live subjects on the compound might pay off. 

He cursed at his inexperience with the holster and realized that he’d forgotten to unclasp the cover that held the weapon inside the pocket.  He fumbled with the fastener as the zombie shoved a lab table out of the way. 
Is this how it ends
, he thought. 
Killed by one of my own fucking lab subjects.
  Finally, the plastic clasp came undone and he yanked the pistol from the holster.

The creature lunged forward and he threw his arms up to defend himself.  As he did so, the barrel became lodged in its throat and he used his thumb to rotate the safety to fire.  The little red dot on the side indicated that he had successfully prepared the weapon for firing.  He turned his face away and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” he screamed in frustration.  He hadn’t chambered a round yet.  The full weight of the creature began to push against him and he knew that if he fell, it was all over.  He began to take tiny steps backwards, grunting at the effort to stay upright and continue holding the zombie at bay.  Slowly, he backed up against one of the thin sheet metal walls of his medical trailer.  He only had one shot at this, so he braced his back against the wall and brought up his strongest leg, placing his foot firmly against the chest of the zombie.  He shoved outward as hard as he could and the creature separated a few feet from him.

He grasped the pistol’s slide and yanked back on it.  A round seated satisfyingly in the chamber.  The zombie moved forward again and the last thing he saw were teeth opening impossibly wide, he squeezed the trigger over and over. 

***

13 May, 2049 hrs local

Military Decontamination and Infection Control Site #3

Near Culpepper, Virginia

Emory made her way along the walkway toward the dining facility.  She had a little over an hour until her shift at the hospital started, so she wanted to eat and go to the morale tent to see if there was any new information about Grayson before reporting for work.  After finding out the news that he was simply missing, she’d scoured everything she could find and even enlisted the help of the aid worker at the morale center, but to no avail.  Details were still sketchy coming out of the Midwest after all the fighting, but she knew.  She’d always had a strong intuition and she knew that she’d lost him.  She had the overwhelming feeling that he was gone, but she was also stubborn, so she kept looking. 

In between searching for Grayson and work, she’d been busy with the camp’s refugee defense force.  The mood in the camp had changed drastically in the recent days after she, Hank and Bryce had decided to begin telling the residents the truth about why they were in the camp and just what the creatures they faced were capable of.  The helpless feelings of the refugees turned first to anger at being detained and then they morphed into a type of collective resolve to survive the situation, so they formed an unofficial group and worked on self defense tactics designed to get away from a zombie.  Emory passed along all the information she could from Hank about how to avoid being infected and how to kill the zombies, but the most basic lesson she wanted everyone to know was how to get away and hide.  The group even began pilfering things like broom handles and hammers that could be used as weapons against the creatures in case there was a need. 

A few had tried, and failed, to escape the camp, which only strengthened everyone’s desire to leave.  Two people had even been shot by the guards when they tried to force their way past them.  The camp administrators tried to downplay the incident, but the refugees now felt more like prisoners than displaced citizens.  The sheer amount of resentment in the camp was an unintended consequence of her telling people that they needed to prepare themselves for a zombie attack.  Instead of empowering her fellow refugees, the general feeling was that they were trapped in a cage and that they wouldn’t be able to escape if an incident occurred.

While the tensions were very high between the military and the refugees, some positive things came out of the information leak.  Security around the hospital and the perimeter was tightened tenfold, both by the military and by the residents of the camp.  Based on one civilian’s recommendation, work details had also been going out and to clear the area immediately around the camp of trees that obstructed the view.

She was almost to the dining facility when the guards somewhere on the far side of the camp began firing.  It didn’t sound like the occasional shot that they’d all became accustomed to when a person turned in the hospital.  This was a lot of guns firing on full automatic.  Something wasn’t right.

“ATTENTION!  ATTENTION!”
the camp loudspeakers blared from overhead.
 
“THE CAMP IS UNDER ATTACK!  A LARGE FORCE HAS GATHERED OUTSIDE THE WIRE.  PLEASE REMAIN CALM AND STAY AWAY FROM THE PERIMETER WHILE THE SECURITY FORCE DEALS WITH THE THREAT.”

Emory watched as panicked residents scrambled from wherever they’d been to wherever they were going.  She recognized several people from her defense group running towards the school where they’d stashed weapons and planned to defend from.  She was indecisive for a moment since the attack scenarios she’d thought through and discussed with Hank had involved a breakout from the hospital.  Most of those situations involved ways for her to escape through the wire without getting caught inside or places to hide out of sight from the creatures inside the hospital if she was trapped there. 

Her mind seized on that thought.  She would try to find a cabinet out here to hide in, the same as she’d planned to if she was stuck in the hospital.  She stared blankly towards the hospital trying to remember where there was a cabinet big enough to hold her.  Maybe in the morale tent, she thought.  There were all sorts of shelves, at the very least she could hide in one of those and stack boxes in front of her. 

She focused her eyes and realized that she was staring right at her salvation. 
The hospital!  Of course, how can I be so stupid!
she thought as her legs propelled her along the walkway towards the gate to the hospital perimeter.  It was such a simple solution that she wondered why she hadn’t immediately thought of it.  She could hide in the same place she’d planned to if there was a breakout while she was on shift, except the scenario was just a little different. 

Emory didn’t want to get shot by jumpy guards so she slowed up as she neared the concertina wire and called out.  They recognized her and let her in, quickly securing the gate behind her and she rushed the remaining forty feet to the tent.  Her hands fumbled with the zipper of the tent’s vestibule module, but she finally got it open and ducked inside.             

Just after she got the outer door zipped, the camp’s speakers again crackled to life,
“ATTENTION!  ATTENTION!  ALL NON-DUTY PERSONNEL, REPORT TO YOUR ASSIGNED STATIONS IMMEDIATELY.  THIS IS NOT A DRILL!  ALL CIVILIAN PERSONNEL, PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR SLEEPING QUARTERS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.  REPEAT, ALL NON-DUTY PERSONNEL, REPORT TO YOUR DUTY STATIONS.”

This hadn’t happened before.  She’d been in the camp for almost a month, and this was something new.  She felt like this was the real deal, they wouldn’t risk panicking the camp’s population if it was only a drill.  Plus, the level of automatic weapons fire was higher than anything she’d ever heard before.  She hastily unzipped the interior door and fled down the corridor towards her prepared hiding place. 

She careened off of a day shift nurse who stepped into the hallway.  Both of them went flying and Emory got herself wrapped in the rough fabric of the tent liner before sliding into a heap on the floor, which probably saved her from a hard fall.  She apologized profusely as she picked herself up and continued her headlong run deeper into the hospital’s tent complex.

She almost ran past the door she’d been running to because of the empty litter that was positioned in front of it.  She shoved the litter aside and unzipped the supply room’s flap.  Quickly, she flipped on the overhead light and bright fluorescent lighting filled the small vestibule.  A large cabinet stood secured on the far side of the space and two tables on either side of it were filled with cleaning supplies.  It was just as she’d left it.

Before closing herself in, she reached out and pulled the stretcher back into place in front of the door.  Then she zipped the flap to the supply closet closed.  Outside, and what didn’t sound very far away to her, the firing began again.  Immediately, she knew that the guards at the hospital’s barbed wire fence were now shooting.  She crossed the small space in three large steps and jerked the cabinet door open, she knew that she didn’t have much time. 

The wall locker was empty, again, just as she’d left it.  She said a quiet prayer of thanks and reached under the table on the right of the cabinet to pull out a wash bucket she’d placed there the night before.  She shoved that into the cabinet and pulled the small LED flashlight that Hank had given her from her pocket.  She turned it on and then flicked the light switch off.

She paused for the smallest of moments as she suddenly realized that the shooting had died down to barely a fraction of what it was before.  She rushed back to the cabinet and pulled her satchel out of the bucket and turned the bucket upside down so she could sit on it.  Then, she closed the door and secured it with the hasp that Hank, ever the resourceful scavenger, had installed on the inside of the door.  For added protection, she dropped a discarded chemlight through the hasp’s eyelet.  She knew she should turn the flashlight off, but her fear of the dark wouldn’t allow her to do it, she needed some light or else she’d just end up hyperventilating and give away her hiding place anyways.

Before too long, the firing died down to almost nothing and she started to hear the individual screams.  They sounded like they came from all around her since the tent didn’t block any real sound and the noises that she did hear were amplified and echoed off the inside of the metal cabinet.  She stuffed part of her shirt into her mouth to keep herself from screaming and covered her ears. 

The sounds of death were all around her.  She didn’t understand how her hiding place hadn’t been found yet.  Surely the creatures knew she was there.  How could they not?  They groaned all around her in their triumph at destroying the human safe hold.

How much time had passed?  Five minutes, twenty?  She didn’t know how she hadn’t gone insane yet.  Then a loud, throbbing noise echoed inside the cabinet.  It was louder than anything she could ever remember hearing, but it gave her hope.  The sound was mechanical,
That meant it was manmade
, she reasoned with herself.  Just as suddenly as it had started, the sound ceased.

Her thoughts that the throbbing noise was human were confirmed when the helicopters flew overhead.  Her body shook as their 20mm cannons fired thousands of rounds a minute into God only knew what.  The brass cartridge casings jingled as they fell from the birds overhead and bounced onto the canvas ceiling of the tent.  She thought the noise of the helicopters and the cartridges falling were the most beautiful sounds she’d ever heard.

Slowly, she began to realize that the moans of the dead were gone and the helicopters had stopped firing their big guns.  The smaller, more distinct pops of individual weapons replaced the brrrp sound of the 20mms while the helicopters continued to swoop and dive overhead.

***

She didn’t know how long she’d been in the cabinet, but it was long enough to have drank the entire bottle of water she’d stashed in the satchel and she had to pee, but she wasn’t about to go outside.  Once the camp was secure, they’d announce over the speakers that it was safe to come out of hiding.  The urge to relieve herself became too great so she took her pants off and went inside the closet.  The smell of warm urine trapped inside the close space made her gag, but she fought it back and put her clothes back on, thankful that she had the bucket to sit on instead of sitting in her own puddle.

She wished she had a watch, but everything she’d owned when the blast hit was either melted or had been taken from her and burned when she was brought here.  There was no way to tell what time it was or how long she’d been here.  The gunfire continued in sporadic bursts outside her hiding place.  Sometimes they were very near, and then they would be far away.  She fancied that the men pulling the trigger were trying to get to her. 

Emory admitted to herself that her mind was playing tricks on her.  The stress of the attack and hiding in a fairly flimsy structure while she listened to an unaccountable number of people die a horrible death, people she knew and had interacted with on a daily basis in the camp.  The gunfire had came closer, she was sure of that, but rationally, she knew they were simply clearing the zombies from the camp.  However, her mind clung to the idea that she was going to be saved.

***

She startled awake.  The shooting was definitely closer, it sounded like it was right next to the cabinet.  Emory had dozed off for a little while.  How long?  It was pointless; there was no way to know.  An inhuman scream reverberated inside the metal walls of her sanctuary.  The sound was so close!  Again, she covered her mouth to keep from exposing herself to this new horror.

The side of the cabinet dented in as something huge smashed into it.  This time she couldn’t help herself and screamed out, “Oh God, please help me!”  The thing on the outside screamed again and began to beat on the metal cabinet in earnest.  In frustration, or by design, it shoved the entire cabinet backwards.