Z-Volution (20 page)

32.

Washington, D.C.

“Remington here. Are there any friendlies in the vicinity?”

Under cover of gloom and spreading dusk, weaving behind trees and abandoned cars, Remington occasionally tried his radio as he led his three soldiers across the back lawn, past the pool where the looming Washington Monument caught his attention for just a moment, a bleak sentinel now plastered with blood, basking in the last rays of the sun.

Remington didn’t know whether to stop and stare, maybe salute, maybe cry. There was nothing else to do but run. They had escaped the bunker, finding an access tunnel that led in a serpentine route up and out through a non-descript guard post station, emerging through an unmarked door into its basement.

They put down two zombies upstairs, lurking about aimlessly, then saw their target across the way: another M1A1 tank, perhaps the one they had before, if it had been commandeered for additional duty.

“Looks to be still under our control,” Remington noted, observing the dozen or so zombies crawling over it, screeching and trying to pry their way in. Another crylo bounded around the rear of the vehicle, staying away from its treads and its gun, but intent on waiting out the morsels inside.

“Let’s lend a hand, men—and get us a ride out of here.”

#

The technician took the handset and Remington surveyed the field one last time before dropping into the belly of the tank. He surveyed the littered corpses—including the dozen zombies he and his men had just put down, and the ragged mess of a carcass that used to be the crylo. Remington and another commando had emptied their clips into the thing’s face and neck from point-blank, catching it as it raced at them over the side of the tank, screeching as if Remington could even hear over the M5’s retort.

Now he dropped down and closed the hatch. Barked orders to his men and the other two that had held out in here as the tank crew.

“Let’s get to work,” he said as he sighted out the viewer.

“What are our orders?” one of the men asked.

Remington surveyed the Con, looking for where there would normally be a list of objectives and mission orders, parameters, but he only saw one: and just for all available F/A-18 fighter pilots…ordered to proceed to Atlanta and turn their missiles on a single set of GPS coordinates.

I bet I can guess where that is.

He swallowed hard, a lump in his throat. Maybe the only saving grace would be that most fighters had already been recalled to D.C. or New York and there wouldn’t be any in Georgia available for the task. Or maybe he could get to the air first, and figure a way to countermand the order.

At first they were glad to change course because a horde of zombies blocked the way to the Capitol, complete with ptero escorts, but after about two miles of relatively easy progress toward the airport where they were able to gun down the opposition without stopping the tank, things became difficult.

Remington ordered his men to turn onto a highway. A multi-vehicle pileup of now abandoned cars and trucks obstructed all lanes, but being in a tank had its advantages and they were able to steamroll over and through barriers, only to be met with not one but a pair of storming
T. rex
es. The two tyrannosaurs ran at full speed down the concrete ribbon, pausing to snap at anything that moved. One plucked a man on a motorcycle desperately attempting to maneuver around wrecked cars from his seat and head-tossed him to the pavement where the other lizard stamped the human into a formless blood cake.

Remington directed his crew with steely resolve. “120 millimeter gun: Fire on left
T. rex
! 50-cal machine gun: Fire on right
T. rex
! Now! Fire, fire, fire!
Headshots
, people. Kill those things deader than shit, that’s an order!”

But hitting the swinging heads of the zombie animals proved a difficult task. The tank’s iconic big gun blasted a hole in the chest of one of the dinosaurs, ripping away one of the miniscule forearms, which landed on top of the tank and stayed there, still wriggling under some kind of localized neuronal network. Remington saw an opportunity.

He addressed the main gunner team. “Cut the legs out from under it. It’ll still be alive but at least it won’t be able to run.” A succession of heavy rounds blasted into the animal’s powerful hind legs, each one blowing part of the musculature away. Yet with each hit, the beast somehow took another giant step closer to the tank even as it fell lower, focusing the totality of its ire on the lone war machine.

Meanwhile, the machine guns peppered the other
T. rex
with hot fire, flaying the rotten skin from the creature’s neck, chest and head. The first reptile finally succumbed to the heavy gunfire and flopped over onto the tank, clipping the other
T. rex
as it fell. That animal retaliated against its companion by snapping at its already wounded neck, opening it more, spilling its blood onto the dirt-caked armor.

The tank continued its momentum, rolled up and over the chest of the fallen
T. rex,
and then canted over sideways as it rolled off of the unpredictably contoured obstacle, landing on its side, the other tread in mid-air, churning uselessly.

Inside the tank, Remington fumed as he clutched at a ceiling handhold. “Call for any ground support or air support!” He scrambled out of the M1A1, nostrils twitching with the acrid tang of gunpowder and burnt flesh in the air.

He slid down from the tank and assessed his new surroundings, spotting a blue SUV not far away. He knew that many of these vehicles had simply been abandoned with keys inside once the sudden catastrophe began, so he ran up to the SUV, assessing its condition: tires were intact, windows too—at first glance it seemed functional.

When he looked inside the vehicle, though, Remington got quite the surprise. Two human zombies were tearing apart the driver of the vehicle, still belted in. He checked the rear but it was unoccupied. Just two human zombies gorging themselves on the open innards of a once good-looking middle-aged woman. Remington removed his service pistol. All of the windows were rolled up, but the passenger-side door was open. He didn’t want to break a window on the vehicle, as he hoped to drive by shooting through it, so he pulled the driver door handle instead.

Locked. The pair of male zombies snapped their heads up to look at him but then resumed feasting, their bloodlust overcoming all else. Remington walked around to the open door. Took aim with his pistol. Put a neat circle in the forehead of one of the undead. The remaining zombie turned on him at that point, lunging, but Remington waited for the perfect shot to line up, then double-tapped it in the top of the skull.

He dragged all three of the corpses out of the vehicle and left them on the pavement nearby, a pile of wasted life. He moved to get inside the SUV but balked at the thought of sitting on so much blood and guts. He opened the back and checked to see if there were any towels or anything he could spread out on the seat. He found a small cache of roadside emergency equipment in the back, including a cheap yellow rain poncho. He ripped it from the bag and put it on, then got behind the wheel.

Would this thing start? The key was already in the ignition and he turned it, cracking a smile for the first time in a while as the consumer engine came to life. Then one of his men came running over to him, leaning in on the driver side as Remington put the window down.

“Major, what is your course of action, sir?”

“I have other orders. I’m taking this vehicle to the airport.”

The soldier looked confused for a moment, glancing quickly back to the troubled tank before looking into the major’s eyes. “Major, sir, what orders should I relay to the tank unit, sir? What about…us?”

Remington looked over at the carnage that enveloped his tank squad, draped in dead and dying resurrected prehistoric beasts, the wails of dying men carrying through the stench-filled air.

“Listen, soldier. I’m not going to lie. Things appear to be going from bad to worse real fast. As soon as you call for a medic team and backup, have the comm team work the radio bands—the short-waves, not the normal frequencies. Establish contact with groups of survivors, resistance factions, that kind of thing, some of whom might be distant. Don’t assume help is coming soon. Call for it but don’t get your hopes up. You may need to team up with bands of militia who are on our side. Get on those short-waves and enlist outside help.”

His soldier registered the sheer gravity of his situation, then he gave a reluctant “Yes, sir!” He spun on a heel and ran back to the tank.

Remington maneuvered the SUV around the wreckage until he had a clear path down the highway. He allowed himself a weak smile as he scanned the road ahead. The airport loomed in the distance, relatively free from the chaos…and there were several planes, undamaged, resting in dying glow of the sun.

At least he had a ride waiting.

And he had orders to follow.

He had to get down there and save them. Save the original plan.

More than anything, more than his burning need to save his daughter and his wife, he had another mission, a larger imperative that only he could achieve.

He had to get to Atlanta and protect the cure.

33.

CDC, Atlanta

Veronica tried her best to tune out the droning voice of the man she had hunted for the better part of a decade. The man who had manipulated entire nations, who had duped the world and insinuated himself into a position he knew would thrust him into the role of President of the United States—and with it, she realized, grant him all the power he needed.

“He’ll control the nukes,” she said, not long after he began addressing the nation and the world, speaking in general terms about the great loss of life, the spread of the infection and the effectiveness of quarantines, and how everything that could be done was being done.

“And the armed forces,” Alex said, letting the implications hang out there.

The other scientists noted their concern but didn’t understand. “That’s a good thing,” Marie voiced. “Someone’s in charge, someone’s doing the right things, although why they haven’t contacted us since the power transition, I don’t know.”

“They won’t,” Alex said, “because they don’t care.
He
doesn’t care.”

“I don’t understand,” Arcadia said, after injecting the specimen, then standing back and checking the screens. The zombie had been hooked up to monitors and intravenous sensors, and now the waiting would begin.

“All you need to know,” said Veronica, “is that man is the bastard who hired Dyson in the first place. The one who financed the Antarctica expeditions, who located the preserved dinosaurs and the ancient microbes—prions—or whatever they are. He’s the one who organized all this, he was behind the shipments of the infected onto our soil. The invasion was all his idea.”

“What?” Marie and Brian both turned, open-mouthed.

“Now he’s stepped in and basically taken control of the only opposition he might have faced.” Alex shook his head in disgust but also grudging admiration. “It’s genius, and before anyone has time to second guess him or try to stop him, he’ll control the satellites, the armies, the aircraft carriers, the nukes.” Alex’s eyes widened with the realization. “Hell, he could even…”

“Nuke our own cities,” Veronica supplied. “In the name of quarantining or preserving the rest of the country from the spread of the infection.”

“Except that wouldn’t be their purpose.”

“What about the rest of the world?” Brian asked, incredulous, staring at DeKirk in a new light, as if the president had just donned the imperial robes of the Emperor from
Star Wars
.

“I don’t think they will matter much,” Veronica said, “unless we can stop this thing here. DeKirk will have planes loaded with infection vectors ready to go.”

“He’ll hit London, Paris, Berlin, Rome…” Alex closed his eyes and took his hand away from Veronica’s, making a fist. “Moscow, Tehran, Tokyo…it doesn’t matter. They won’t be able to defend against this.”

“All right,” Arcadia snapped. “Working as fast as I can. Would be nice if we had some other hope, but right now we are in doomsday—I’m sorry, Marie—Rapture mode. We train for this, we’re ready for it. The Superbugs, the infectious diseases that might blindside us when we least expect it. Influenza and smallpox almost did us in a hundred years ago. Bubonic plague, Ebola, swine flu. This is nothing different.”

“Except that we’ve lost control of it already,” Marie said. “Look at the screens. Look out the window—if we had one.”

“And,” Brian said dully, “don’t forget the fucking dinosaurs.”

Arcadia stabbed the specimen with another needle, this time drawing out blood, which she brought quickly to a microscope. “Be quiet a moment, and focus here. Something Dyson missed. It looks like the protein sequences aren’t responding to the introduction of the prions.”

“Not responding?” Veronica asked. “I thought the prion things were the aggressors. That they took over, infected, blocked receptors, whatever.”

“They’re the Borg of the microbial world,” Alex said with a loopy grin that no one except Brian shared, and Veronica desperately hoped they wouldn’t high-five each other.

“Yes but in this case…no interest. They’re not…” She looked up, eyes wide. “Bonding!”

“Huh?” Veronica asked, her attention drawn again to the TV where DeKirk had just finished saying something perfectly normal-sounding and confidence-building, like
May God bless our nation and our brave men and women as we endure through this crisis…

“It needs a bonding agent!” Arcadia said, clapping her hands and then rushing to a cabinet. “Oh, please let it be that simple!”

“What’s a bonding agent?” Alex asked.

“Something to cause that initial attraction between the protein strings. If they’re not interested, this will bring them together.”

“Ah,” he said. “Kind of like alcohol at a singles bar.”

Veronica rolled her eyes, but Arcadia actually let out a little laugh as she returned with a medicine dropper and a jar full of a clear liquid. “Exactly. It removes the inhibitions, and allows the attraction to commence.”

She returned to the microscope and the blood spatter, again ignoring the zombie specimen—which seemed to be growing more agitated, kicking, thrashing and twisting its head back and forth. Snapping noises and grinding teeth from under the plastic mask did nothing to help Veronica’s mood, but at least the CDC investigator seemed unfazed.

“There, now…” Arcadia peered into the microscope, and the next few moments, amidst the gnashing of teeth and the strains of the National Anthem playing on the TV as DeKirk made his exit, stage left, were tense as any Veronica could recall. She met Alex’s eyes, and she was sure they shared the same thought: the next words out of Dr. Grey’s mouth might spell the fate of human civilization.

Arcadia looked up, wide-eyed, but didn’t give them the satisfaction.

“What is it?” Marie asked.

Without responding, Arcadia grabbed a new syringe, pulled out some of the Dyson solution, then sucked in a few drops of the bonding agent, and returned to the thrashing corpse—and promptly stuck the syringe into a vein in its neck.

She stood back after emptying the contents, and pressed her hands together.

Veronica stepped in closer along with Alex and their hands found each others’ again, and this time they clenched out of need and trust and for the first time in a while…hope.

The zombie suddenly sucked in a huge wheezing breath. Its back arched at an impossibly strong angle until just its wrists and shins were straining against the table, and then just as quickly, all the energy seemed to flee, deflating from its lungs in a huge gasp—and then it sunk and lay completely still.

The vitals monitor—which had been registering brain waves as well as a flatline for heart rate and blood pressure, with values previously almost off the chart—now sunk in a sharp downward spike, then leveled out, flatlined along with the others.

Marie edged closer ahead of the rest, impatient. Her eyes were wide. “Is it—?”

“Dead? Cured?” Alex stepped in too, bringing Veronica with him.

She pulled back though.
I’ve seen this movie before. The thing which should be dead but isn’t. And the expendable cast member…
She was about to warn Marie. Warn Brian, warn the research director. There was no way, they couldn’t be this lucky, or this good. Dyson’s cure—nothing so worthy of salvation could have come from that unholy monster.

No way, it was all some kind of unlucky trick, and they couldn’t fall for it. Couldn’t—

But then the impossible happened. Only it was much worse than she had feared.

One moment she registered the shock of hearing something overhead that sent shockwaves all the way down here, something that sounded like a muffled explosion on the order of a bunker-buster bomb.

In the next instant, the lights flickered, the glass doors shattered, the ceiling split open and a thousand tons of concrete, plaster and sand came collapsing down upon them.