The Dying of the Light (Book 1): End (2 page)

A part of me hadn’t wanted to find her, had hoped that she was still beautiful, still laughing, still so vibrantly alive somewhere… else. But now, that hope was gone. I’d found her.

Or rather, what was left of her. Though her face was slack-jawed and vacant, the beauty was still there and I had to look away. Dammit, why hadn’t she listened? I hadn’t found Eric anywhere, but now it was too much to hope that her young son had made it out of the house alive.

I’ll admit I sort of lost it then; I fell back to the roof and cried. I don’t know how long it was before I pulled myself together, but it was a while.

It’s time,
I thought.
Shit or get off the pot, Dave. Fish or cut bait.

I looked back over the edge of the roof, and sure enough, all of them were still there. Glancing to the side, I measured the distance to the next roof, and knew that I could make it.

I holstered the pistol and drew the rifle off my shoulder, sighting on what used to be my fiancée and taking a deep breath. I offered up a silent prayer, and then, as I squeezed the trigger, I closed my eyes.

It was the only thing I could do for her now.

Chapter One

Washington Territory, 1872

It’s late in the year, and the cold seeps into the very bones of the soldiers who have been sent to this backwater of the country, searching for a tribe of Indians said to be massacring — and sometimes
eating
— settlers, hunters and miners.

Newspapers back home call these reports about savage cannibals and murderous creatures “…nothing but the deranged ravings of madmen and fools.” Unfortunately, the uproar causes President Grant to order the Army to investigate. The Army assigns Captain William Trace of Kentucky to ‘find out just what the hell’s going on up there,’ in the words of the president himself.

Captain Trace uses local scouts and hunters to find the camps and mining outposts that have been attacked, but rather than evidence of Indians, he discovers only nightmares. Buildings burnt and collapsed, torn down from the outside. Broken and bloody remnants of the camps are strewn about like so much garbage, many of them with teeth marks in the skeletons.
Human
teeth marks, his medics tell him.

The detachment comes upon a site with some buildings still smoldering in the chill of the early morning. They find fresher bodies, only hours old, and several soldiers vomit, overwhelmed by the carnage. As a small squad investigates an out-building, they are attacked and wounded by “a creature from the depths of hell.” The soldiers’ combined fire manages to destroy the thing, but it’s only after the smoke clears that they realize that it is, or at some point
was
, a human being.

The medic moves among the soldiers, treating the bites and other wounds. He assures them that they will heal and prescribes each a healthy dose of whiskey from his stores… for the shakes, of course. The rest of the detachment clears the town, burning what little remains and setting up camp while their captain and his advisers determine their next destination.

Several hours later, during a check on his men, Captain Trace realizes something more is going on and summons the company medic. The wounded men are violently ill, shaking, trembling, turning pale and lapsing into an unconsciousness from which he cannot awaken them.

Captain Trace immediately orders a wagon to transport the wounded soldiers to the closest Army base, Fort Vancouver. He provides the wounded soldiers and their drivers with water, rations and extra horses from the detachment’s stores, knowing it will take three days to get there. He orders the drivers to take alternate shifts and to rotate out the tired horses as needed.

A week later, Captain Trace arrives at the final site, with Fort Vancouver a day’s ride to the southwest. A scout on that trail rides back and informs the captain of an overturned and bloody wagon ahead. He sends his most trusted lieutenant to investigate, though he fears the worst. His fears are confirmed when Lieutenant Walker returns with the tale of a blood-coated wagon and snapped harnesses — and no men or horses.

After conferring with his medic, Trace realizes this is not the simple mission he thought. Something darker is at work here. He orders his men to search the surrounding areas in groups no smaller than five soldiers, and any wounded men are to be captured, if possible, or shot until dead if they pose a threat.

A day later, several squadleaders report sighting and destroying creatures similar to the one that attacked them the week before — but these are wearing the tattered remains of US Army uniforms. In order to maintain discipline, Captain Trace informs the men that the wounded soldiers are sick, and pose a serious health risk. As they have no advanced medical facilities nearby, he orders them to shoot any such soldiers on sight. Though rattled, his men follow him to the last attack site.

There, they find a small boy of no more than 12 years, frightened and filthy, hiding in the basement of the saloon. Although unmarked with bites or other wounds, he acts crazy, as though his mind is gone. Trace and his men complete the destruction and burning of the town, and they take the boy back to Fort Vancouver with them. Once he calms down, Captain Trace finds a suitable home for the youngster with a local woman who has lost her family to Indians. Captain Trace knows that he will be in good hands, and thinks no more on it.

Rumors fly for months at what caused the Army to burn village after village, and those brave enough to venture out find only blackened remains, with no clues to the story.

Early the next year, President Grant orders the Department of the Army to create a special investigative detachment — called Unit 73 — to investigate incidents such as the Washington Territory attacks. Unit 73 responds to only nine outbreaks nationwide over the next 30 years, all involving minimal casualties.

Most of these incidents are in northern states, and Unit 73’s scientists theorize that while some infections are neutralized completely, there are other specimens still out there, frozen in high mountain passes or even stuck in box canyons. The researchers inform their commanders that it is very likely more incursions will happen, but there’s no way to tell when or where.

As expected, this does not fill their commanders or the president with joy.

Work continues as medical science improves, with the men and women of Unit 73 trying to discover the source of and cure for the contagion that causes people to turn on their fellows. Unfortunately, the lack of incidents leaves few samples to work with, so progress is slow and halting.

In some of those few outbreaks, survivors are found, but inevitably turn due to having been bitten, except in one unique case.

Washington Territory, 1931

Harry Stafford is a resident of a small hunting camp in northern Washington, and has been described by those who know him as a ‘reclusive, ornery old goat’ that would ‘shoot you soon as look at you.’ Though they don’t much care for him, the others in the camp tolerate his rantings, as he is the best hunter and trapper among them.

Stafford often rambles about having been attacked by crazies and cannibals when young, only just escaping with his life when the Army rescued him. No one believes him, putting his ravings down to that of an old man suffering from senility. But when he comes stumbling into the town closest to the hunting camp, crazy-eyed and covered in blood that isn’t his, gibbering about monsters… well, things start to change.

The townsfolk figure ol’ Harry Stafford’s finally lost it completely and done someone in.  They lock him away, and the Sheriff and his two deputies head out to the camp to check on everyone else. There, they find that the main hunting lodge has burned nearly to the ground, and is still smoking, with the remnants of 13 charred bodies inside.  Nearby, they find a bloody trenching tool. The Sherriff charges Stafford with the murders of the residents of the camp, and the bloody trenching tool is entered into evidence.

Before the trial of Stafford begins, the old man and all the evidence related to his alleged crime are taken into custody by men identified on paper only as federal agents Johnson and Smith. It turns out they work for Unit 73 and return with Harry, the trenching tool, and the remains of the dead to their base at Fort Lewis.

The agents question Harry Stafford and gradually piece together his story.  A walker — named after the lieutenant who helped discover them — had come out of the dense forest and attacked and bitten one of the hunters from the camp while he was checking his traps.

During the fight with the walker, the hunter accidentally decapitated it and made his escape, but he was mortally wounded. He barely made it back to the camp to tell Stafford what had happened.

Stafford tried to dispose of the hunter’s body after he expired; after all, sixty years before, he’d hidden in a saloon’s basement as the only people he had ever known were killed and eaten. He knew what was going to happen. But while he was trying to burn the body, he was caught and tied up by the other hunters, and then, by the time he’d managed to work himself free again, it was too late: the rest of the hunters had been infected.

He stalked them one by one, taking them down with his well-honed stealth and speed. When only two were left, he dragged the rest of the bodies into the main hunting lodge as bait. It worked; they followed him, then he ran around and chained the door shut with them still inside, setting fire to the building.

Throughout his interrogation, Stafford claims that he hasn’t killed anyone but the monsters that would have killed him. Intensive analysis is conducted by Unit 73 personnel, who determine that there is evidence of human teeth marks on each of the thirteen bodies as well as other indicators of walker activity. This evidence lends support to Stafford’s claim of mass walker infection. Years later, analysis of samples from the blood remaining on the trenching tool would test positive for the ‘zombie’ prion, further exonerating the old man.

The agents eventually realize that the walker that had attacked the camp must have been some unfortunate soul who was either a remnant of the original Washington Territory attacks, or someone who was attacked by one of the wounded soldiers nearly 60 years before. It is later determined that the only way this could have happened would have been if the walker had been trapped in one of the blizzards and frozen, only to have thawed out and been just as deadly decades later.

The agents give Harry a nice, quiet place to live in the country, far from anyone else and with every conceivable need provided. They check up on him just over a month after his release and find that he has hanged himself. His suicide note is short and to the point: “I can’t live with this anymore. I can still hear the screams.”

Belzec Extermination Camp, Poland, 1942

Unit 73 is made a part of the Office of Strategic Services when it is determined that walker attacks have been occurring not only on US soil, but also overseas, with reports coming in from posts and Army units throughout World War One and the early days of World War Two.

Agents from Unit 73 drop behind enemy lines in southeastern Poland to investigate rumors that Joseph Mengele has begun experimentation with walkers. The agents investigate a subsidiary camp near Belzec and discover the truth is even more horrifying than they were expecting.

Not only are the Nazis engaged in research on walkers, they are also
manufacturing
them, and at a rate that is staggering to behold. Unit 73 confirms that the SS Colonel General in command of the camp is attempting to create some sort of biological weapon to be dropped on targets from the air. During their infiltration, the agents count more than five thousand active walkers in pens at the smaller camp, and discover the source of the new ones: the Jewish, Romani and Polish prisoners from the main Belzec camp. Even worse, the prisoners know what is happening, and are powerless to stop their deaths and eventual rebirths.

As the agents acquire intelligence, it is delivered to the commander of Unit 73. In cooperation with soon-to-be Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force General Dwight Eisenhower, Unit 73 begins forming a plan to destroy both Belzec and its smaller and more dangerous sub-camp. Before the operation can be finalized and given a green light, operations end at Belzec, and the smaller camp is closed and dismantled, with many of the structures — and the walkers inside them — simply burned where they stand to prevent spread of the contagion. Unit 73 operatives manage to collect some evidence of the mass infection of prisoners of war, but the war soon ends, and due to their nature, the incidents are quietly covered up and never brought to light.

In 1963, the newly-created Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) takes over funding of Unit 73, renaming it as the Advanced Experimental Genetics Intelligence Service (AEGIS). Soon, AEGIS' primary mission is codified and standardized. The two main purposes of the group become containment and investigation. First, to contain and eliminate any and all walker incursions through the United States and its territories, including the manufacture of cover stories to prevent worldwide chaos. This is done through the use of military personnel under strict security and need-to-know access — Special Operations groups who are simply told that the victims are dangerously sick and the illness is incurable. Second, to determine the source of the infection and a possible cure.