Carlie Simmons (Book 2): In Too Deep Page 7

  As they approached, Efron could hear the sickening chortle of grating teeth and the moaning sounds of the undead consigned to the inky black chamber. Avery walked over to a nearby circuit breaker and flipped a switch, turning on the lights inside the darkened rooms.

  “Suit up, everyone,” said Avery, who donned a heavy pair of latex gloves and a face shield while his men and Efron did the same.

  As the fluorescent lights flickered on in each chamber, the creatures inside rushed forward, slamming their decaying extremities through the bars. Efron stepped back, his stomach tightening. Even though he had done this twice before, he found his eyes darting along the supports of the metal bars to make sure there really was a secure barrier between them.

  “Let’s go, you fucking meatheads,” shouted Avery while we waved his arms around in the air.

  Efron moved up slightly and examined the four creatures that were pawing at the air and snapping their jaws while their eyes shifted greedily between each of the soldiers. “I need a sample from the thin one to the right,” said Efron, pointing to a thin figure with a custard- colored face. “That’s the only one I haven’t tested yet and it may yield some new results.”

  “Good thing the rest of the personnel don’t know these craggy pus-brains are down here or they’d be getting even less sleep than they are now,” said Avery, motioning to his men to move forward with their canisters of pepper spray.

  The soldiers unleashed the scarlet liquid onto the faces of the three zombies to the left which caused them to forcefully recoil into the wall with shrieks. The wispy creature to the right paid no attention to the others and continued thrusting its arms through the grate so violently that it sloughed off sections of its forearm skin. The decomposing flesh hung on the bars as if a molting snake had just passed over it.

  With the other zombies temporarily disabled, Avery moved up and fired his Taser into the frail figure before him. The barbed leads embedded themselves into the yellow skin below the clavicles. As soon it began shuddering from the voltage, one of Avery’s men moved in with the pole-noose and slipped it through the bars, securing it around the creature’s neck.

  It took three men to hold the pole still while Avery kept depressing his finger on the Taser trigger, sending burst after burst of electrical shocks into the tiring creature. After thirty seconds, the wispy figure went limp and Efron quickly rushed forward and grabbed the forearm. He yanked the shriveled appendage through the bars while another soldier restrained the bony hand.

  Efron inserted a syringe into what resembled a vein near the exposed pulp of the forearm, watching it slowly fill with the murky reddish-orange liquid. When he was through he placed the syringe in a small padded container and closed it up.

  The soldier squatting beside Efron let go of the creature’s spindly fingers and both men moved out of the way as Avery stepped forward and gave one last jolt on the Taser while motioning his other men to remove the pole-lasso. As Avery moved up to the bars to detach the electrical wires, the inner cuff of his right sleeve brushed against a miniscule strand of putrid flesh hanging off the bars.

  Efron and the others removed their gloves and face masks and tossed them in a burn barrel near the bay door then doused their hands with hand sanitizer. “Alright, let’s get Doctor Frankenstein back to his lab and then we’ll have the sanitation crew torch the shit in the barrel,” said Avery, flicking the lights off on the chambers as the creatures began staggering back towards the bars.

  “Nighty-night, you fucking meatheads.”

  As they moved back along the dimly lit corridor, Efron hoped this would be his last visit to this wretched part of the base but he knew that no researcher is fortunate enough to solve so complex a riddle as the one inflicted upon the world.

  After Efron returned to his lab, Avery returned with his men to his post working in the armory. He hoped that he would never have to revisit the grisly dungeon below again with Efron and he hardly noticed the warm sensation in his right wrist near an abrasion he had received a few days earlier. Avery looked down and saw a dried bead of blood and skin on his sleeve. He gasped as he quickly realized its origins. Then he nervously looked around to see if anyone had noticed as he retreated into the shadows near some wall lockers while the warmth in his wrist rapidly spread and the memories of his life began trickling away like precious grains of sand lost to an all-consuming wind.

  Chapter 18

  First Day of the Global Pandemic

  Pavel was leaning against the damp wall of the subterranean room finishing a bland meal of rice and beans when he heard the heavy iron door upstairs creak. He put his tin plate on the lopsided table and stood up to look through the steel door’s peephole. As he wiped his hands across his soiled trousers, he heard the familiar sound of boots on the cement steps. He saw the dead CIA operative, Jack, staring at the door, his jaundiced face resembling an accordion. He heard the man clawing on the other side and snorting. This is how it had gone for the past twenty-four hours since the outbreak had claimed most of the smugglers. Those who survived were either holed up somewhere else in the jungle or had fled to the boats.

  Pavel stared at the pallid face again through the peephole and felt his stomach coil up. It was only ever Jack clawing at the door and he wondered how the creature remembered that there was anyone on the other side. How much of the man’s brain and memory center could be left intact? Or does he just smell us behind this thin barrier?

  Pavel recoiled away from the peephole as he heard the ghastly noise of animalistic rage and scratching.

  “Is it the same creature?” said Viktor, who was lying on a nearby cot with his body rigid and a thick layer of soiled gauze secured to his right bicep.

  “Yes. Once more he has come to check on his guests,” said Pavel with a grimace as he looked at the bite mark on Viktor’s arm that he had gotten during the night when they tried to make a run for one of the trucks. “I wonder how the smugglers have fared? Are they still holed up in their underground bunker or are we the last ones left here?”

  “You can’t stay here forever,” said Viktor. “Once you have observed the entire process of viral development in me, you must take that data and the samples we’ve already collected and find a way off this island.”

  Pavel walked up to the cot and stared at his old friend. Viktor’s skin was starting to show signs of discoloration and sweat was beginning to roll off his forehead. “Who ever thought that we’d end up trapped here by a microscopic villain from a far-off lab,” said Viktor, who tilted his head and looked up at Pavel. “You’ll finish it, won’t you? You won’t let me walk around like that,” he said, pointing a finger at the steel door.

  “Viktor, there is no need for you to suffer any further. I can give you an injection of sedatives and you won’t feel anything.”

  “No, this is to be my penance,” he said, curling forward to cough, “albeit a poor one at that. Plus you need to keep taking blood samples right up until the time I transition. It may provide some information we’ve overlooked.”

  “We’ve examined this from all angles and still don’t know if the disease vector was through mosquitos which fed upon the remains of the Soviet corpses or if it was the bird population transmitting it, or both. We can’t extrapolate on our work without a proper lab.”

  “It had to be the mosquitos initially. Like West Nile virus they then transmitted to the bird population which became the primary carrier. Regardless, this virus will keep mutating until it finds the perfect host which now appears to be us.”

  “We just don’t have enough to go on. We should have come to this island with a full containment team and research lab. This should never have been done this way,” he said, striking his palm on the wall.

  “My old friend, I lied to you. This isn’t the first time I examined the KAD97 virus. I was in Namibia, Africa two years ago at another site with several corpses…” He coughed and struggled to keep his eyes open. “They were also Soviet soldiers…those old uniforms with the
bronze buttons and pleated shoulders…remember those? I had those bodies reburied after I gathered tissue samples. They were the final experiments done before the project folded in ’69. I knew we would need an antidote for this in case it ever broke out. I couldn’t have my legacy be the horrors we created in the old lab in Kiev.”

  “But the antidote won’t work on this strain since it seems to have combined with the yellow fever of this region.”

  “Perhaps not but it is the closest you will come to unraveling the helix as it contains the two original viruses. With it you could trim off years of research trying to formulate an antidote.”

  “Where?” he said, propping his friend up. “Where is it?”

  “The antidote is in a vault at the Annoric cold-weather facility in Alaska. You know the one,” Viktor said, reaching up his hand which kept opening and closing as his body spasmed. “Quickly, take one more blood sample. I haven’t much time. The virus is no longer taking days to manifest itself.”

  Pavel grabbed a syringe and inserted it into the fold of skin by Viktor’s elbow. When he was through, he placed it on the table behind him and then rested his right hand on the pistol that was tucked in his belt. He hesitated to pull it out while listening to the raspy, labored breathing coming from the cot. Pavel forced his hand away from the weapon and took a deep breath as he returned to Viktor’s side.

  “Come closer, Pavel. Just one more thing to tell you,” Viktor said as his eyes rolled back in his head and he forced himself to hang on.

  As Pavel squatted down, Viktor leaned forward, his lips pressing out a half-smile. “No one should have to take the life of a friend,” Viktor whispered and then yanked the pistol out of Pavel’s belt and pushed him back while the enclosed room rang out with a gunshot.

  Chapter 19

  Carlie stopped beside a tipped-over bread truck, scanning the faintly illuminated street in both directions. “Which way?” she said to Jared who had moved up alongside her.

  “There’s a service tunnel used by the city maintenance staff that goes underground near the park. We can head down there and make our way for about a hundred yards before it surfaces.”

  “Too risky being in a chokepoint like that and I won’t be able to get SAT imagery on any creatures down there. What else do you have?”

  Jared peered around the white bumper of the crumpled vehicle. “OK, then I’d say let’s bolt straight ahead to that retaining wall before the river. There’s a narrow walkway on the other side of that that we can use to cover our movement. I used to sneak along that when I was a kid to steal fish traps off the pier.”

  After relaying the plan to the others, Carlie stepped out behind the truck and began running across the littered street with the rest of her teams in tow. They maneuvered past mangled cars, stepping over a headless corpse in a blue dress whose right hand was still clutching a purse. As she neared the eight-foot-high cement wall, Carlie heard the clatter of footsteps coming from her right as four creatures with ulcerated faces began heading towards them.

  “I’ve got movement behind us,” she heard Shane say into her earpiece. Carlie turned and saw a dozen more mutants in the moonlight closing in behind them.

  “Shit,” she said, raising her rifle.

  Jared grabbed her arm. “This way, there’s a large aquarium building that we can take cover in,” he said as they started to run towards a circular glass building with a sloped roof a hundred yards away.

  As they ran, the small crowd of ravenous creatures chasing them from either direction merged into one group like a school of piranhas. Carlie sprinted behind Jared as they all made their way to the rear of the blue structure whose glass walls were aglow in the moonlight. Carlie could hear the waves of the Mississippi lapping against the retaining wall to her right. Looking at the glass panes ahead she could see the eerie reflections of the menace behind them increasing.

  She followed Jared as they ran past a red trolley with turquoise trim around the windows. Jared swung to the right over by a metal service door which he was attempting to open with some small tool he removed from his pocket. As Carlie motioned for everyone to take up defensive positions, she saw the creatures come to an abrupt halt before the massive one-way mirror windows of the aquarium. The sixteen rotting figures stood with their mouths agape at the sight of themselves, their heads weaving from side to side as they approached the glass. The lead creature, who wore a baseball jersey, white pants, and cleats, limped to the façade and began clawing with its putrescent fingers at the shiny image of itself, moaning as it left four parallel streaks of blood on the mirrored surface.

  Carlie heard the door open behind her and saw Jared nodding for them to enter. She motioned for everyone to retreat inside as she moved up in front of Jared to sweep the entrance ahead.

  Chapter 20

  Once they entered and the door was closed, Carlie led the way forward through the dark hallway which led past two offices and a small employee lounge. There were faint nightlights lining the walls along the floor at ankle level and she could hear the sound of a generator humming inside a maintenance room to the left. As the hallway merged with the main circular chamber ahead, she saw a massive figure flit by to her right. She swung her rifle up as she entered the room and saw a nine-foot gray shark thrashing in a massive aquarium tank that rose from the floor towards the ceiling.

  As the rest of her team entered behind her, Boyd and his men cleared the nearby rooms in an adjoining hallway to the right. Carlie stood gazing at the aquatic exhibits lining the entire span of the circular viewing room. Each aquarium held squids, manta rays, jellyfish, and alligators.

  “This place must have its own internal power station to keep things going during emergencies,” said Shane.

  “Yeah, but for how long?” said Amy, touching her hand to the glass of a tank full of frantic leatherback turtles. “These poor things probably haven’t eaten in days.”

  Carlie’s eyes floated past the exhibits toward the windows ahead. The one-way glass enabled her to see the entire layout of the quiet city to the north and east. The small crowd of mutants was still marveling at themselves in the reflection and she moved closer to inspect her adversary.

  “Damn, look at that lemonade-face on the right with the missing teeth and caveman forehead,” said Jared. “He must’ve been Cajun.”

  “Those eyes—there’s just nothing there except fury,” said Shane.

  “Like the hungry expression on that shark back there,” Carlie whispered.

  A sudden noise in a distant hallway to their left caused everyone to swing abruptly. Carlie could see Matias with two fingers raised and then pointing to a dark recess ahead.

  As rifles were raised, Carlie whispered into her mic, “No shooting or we may risk breaching an aquarium. Blades only.” She slid her M4 behind her back and withdrew the black-handled machete on her left hip.

  She crept along the windows towards the direction of the noise, trying to stay in the shadows cast by a wall-sized map of the Pacific Ocean while Shane followed behind her. Two creatures dressed in security guard attire rushed forward into the main room. Carlie bounded on an angle between them, swiftly delivering an arcing cut across the neck which caused the soiled head to flop sideways, barely attached by a stringy tendon. It turned abruptly, causing the head to detach completely and plunk on the tiled floor followed by its crumpled body. Shane had cleaved the larger creature’s head in two with a single strike but had buried the machete so deep that the handle was sticking out of the mouth of the figure.

  As the others moved forward to help Shane, four other zombies came screaming from the hallway and lunged for Carlie. She sidestepped, clipping one behind the right knee, severing the limb, then drove her blade into the back of the cervical region. Before the gangly creature crashed to the floor, she pivoted to her left and delivered a comma cut across the abdomen of the incoming mutant who had grabbed her vest. Its ropy blue innards spilled out onto the floor as it let out a sickening groan. Carlie pushed the e
viscerated creature back long enough for her to slam a roundhouse kick into its calf, dropping it on the blood-slickened tiles, then she stomped its forehead, watching the cranium collapse like a rotten floorboard.

  One creature with a greasy beard had slid past them and was rushing for Amy and Jared, who were holding their outstretched blade hands and moving in circles as if they were fencing. Carlie closed the gap and slammed her machete into the center of the skull, removing it quickly while driving her boot into the creature’s back, which sent it into a wall.

  Amy still had her dueling hand extended and was white-faced as Carlie turned to check on her.

  “You gotta teach me some of those moves one day.”

  “Any time,” Carlie said, flicking her blade to remove the blood and then resheathing it after glancing at the creature Matias had just dispatched.

  Boyd and his men trotted into the room. “Everybody OK?” he said.

  “I think that’s all of ’em,” Shane said, dragging his soiled machete across the blue sweatshirt of the beheaded figure beneath him.

  “The rest of the place is secure. These things must have come up from the basement but I just sealed off that door,” Boyd said.

  “This one-way glass will provide us with a vantage point for surveying the path ahead,” said Carlie. “The freighter is only about a ten-minute walk from here so let’s observe our approach route and when the coast is clear outside, we’ll move out.”

  Chapter 21

  Forty minutes later, Carlie followed Jared out of the rear entrance of the aquarium along a little-known route that skirted along the riverfront park and adjacent buildings. She could see the massive freighter jutting halfway out of the river like some misplaced steel log that had washed ashore. The front had slammed into the lawn, cutting through a wide swath of dirt and burying its hull atop vehicles and various obliterated concession stands. She could hear the lull of waves from the Mississippi careening against the rear of the freighter, which hung out into the current.