After the End (11 page)

Ann went to heat water on the camp stove. Mrs. Scheider set up more chairs for the newcomers and the three sank gratefully onto them. Deb launched into the tale of how she'd hooked up with Julie and Carl.

"There's usually a receptionist at the front desk and you can't gain access to the offices or labs without a pass, but when I went into the building there was no one there. The door to the offices was torn off its hinges, blood and bodies everywhere." Deb sipped from a bottle of water Lila gave her, her hand shaking. "I went in back and searched until I found Julie and Carl."

"I was at my desk when we were attacked," Julie added her part of the story. "People burst into the room, and I thought they were junkies or something until one of them grabbed Abbie Woolsey and bit her neck. I jumped up from my chair. I didn't even try to help her. I just ran."

Deb grasped her hand. "You couldn't have done anything, babe. You know that."

"But I didn't try. None of us did. We all ran like rats." Julie pressed her lips tight together and stifled a sob.

"You did what you had to in order to survive," Lila said softly. "We all ran yesterday. We all left people behind." There were murmurs of agreement from some of the others.

Deb resumed her story. "By the time I got to Quantus, the zombies had moved on--mostly. When I was searching for Julie, one came around the corner straight at me." Her rough voice wavered a little and she swallowed. "I, uh, used my knife like you showed me, Ari."

"It all happened so fast," Carl spoke up at last. "One minute I was working on my computer and the next I heard screaming, people running, things smashing. The things burst into the room where I was working and I ran out of it. I heard them coming from both directions down the hall so I ducked into a supply closet to hide. Julie was already in there. We blocked the door. We didn't see what happened but we could hear it."

"We waited a long time, long after things got quiet," Julie added. "And then I heard Deb's voice calling my name so we came out."

"I think I might know what caused this," Carl said. "I believe it might be the result of a virus."

"No shit," Derrick said. "That's zombies one-oh-one. It's always in the blood."

Carl frowned. "No, I mean a specific virus—the A7. Quantus Labs has been working on an antidote for it. You may have heard about the new drug on the news."

"What does that have to do with the zombies?" Lila asked.

"It's possible..." Carl cleared his throat. "The work we've been doing may have been flawed."

"Flawed how?" Dr. Morgenstern left his lookout post to listen to his explanation.

"You have to understand, I'm a lab tech with fairly low level clearance. I see parts of the whole. I do the testing I'm asked to do and work on certain aspects of a project. So it's not my business to know how Quantus research is funded or what pharmaceutical company will ultimately manufacture the drug we design."

"Your point?" Ari asked impatiently.

"Rats treated with the antidote were initially healed but it altered their blood structure in minute ways. Still, the results were positive so we administered to test patients. All symptoms connected to A7 disappeared. That drug should never have been cleared without much more rigorous testing, but people were clamoring for a cure. So it was released without sufficient clinical trials either due to government intervention or because a pharmaceutical company was eager to make a fast buck." Carl exhaled a deep breath.

"And you believe people who took the drug, eventually died and then reanimated." Mrs. Scheider made the preposterous claim sound plausible.

"Yes. That's exactly what I fear."

"But why all at once? How could it have been so widespread?" Ari asked. "The logistics don't add up."

Carl shook his head. "You don't understand. This snowballed very quickly. The drug—A7 Counter, we named it—was manufactured on a massive scale and shipped to hospitals from coast to coast. Hospital staff countrywide began administering it almost simultaneously. The first wave of deaths might have taken place within days, but no one was in a hurry to panic the public with a possible connection to the antidote. After death there was likely a delay before the post-mortem results—ie. zombieism—became apparent. By then more people were dead or dying.

"The very first attacks may have gone unreported, bodies in hospital morgues or mortuaries rising to devour or kill attendants or undertakers, spreading their altered blood to others. By this morning, on my way to work, I heard a radio news report of bizarre assaults at several area hospitals. The information was sketchy and quickly suppressed."

"What about those initial test patients?" Lila asked.

"I recognized a couple of them among the zombies that stormed our office," Carl said. "I hadn't known they died. That information was not something I was privy to. I can't give you an exact timeline of how all this played out, only my best guess. But apparently, some of these reanimates came directly from our own on-site morgue, where the bodies had been awaiting dissection. I believe the mutated blood causes a neurological jumpstart after death. The process expends a lot of energy giving the reanimates a ferocious appetite for living tissue."

"It seems like its more than mingling blood that spreads the mutation." Ari strode nervously back and forth, his brows knitted in a frown. "Their bites, their saliva, must carry something for it to spread so fast. And that guy in the subway didn't take long to rise either."

"Like maybe the pace is accelerating." Lila offered Julie a bandage for a gash on her forehead. "Fast enough that it spread like wildfire, beyond the ability of the authorities to get a handle on it. Now what can they do? Say 'screw civilian casualties' and start bombing infected areas?"

Carl accepted the cup of tea Ann offered him and sipped it before speaking again. "I've been going over all the research in my mind and I think I see the flaw in the formula. Given a working lab with proper equipment, I believe I could find a solution to stop the mutated blood from causing reanimation." He gestured with his hand, sloshing tea over the rim of his cup. "Obviously it's too late for those already dead, but it could be administered to the newly infected to curtail the effect."

Deb snorted. "But meanwhile we have zombies running around eating people and infecting others."

"I believe I could find a solution for that as well," Carl said. "Darts filled with a solution that would stop the reanimates' neural systems. Better than bullets for bringing them down. Of course it would take time to develop these remedies and produce them in the necessary quantities."

"But you think you could do it?" Joe said. "Find a cure?"

Carl nodded. "There are files on my hard drive at work with formulas and data that I'd absolutely have to have as a starting point." He turned to Ari, instinctively recognizing him as the leader of the group. "I have to go back. I need to get that research."

"The zombies are thicker than ever out there. We're really going to have to run a gauntlet to get anywhere." Deb nodded toward Ronnie and Mrs. Scheider. "We can't drag everyone along. I vote a team goes for the hard drive and the rest stay here."

"No." Mrs. Scheider was as decisive as always. "Once you have what you need, you'll want to keep going out of the city. It would be a waste of time to come back for us, and we don't deserve to be abandoned because some of us are a little slow."

"I'm not talking about abandoning anyone," Deb argued.

"A strike team," Derrick chimed in. "That makes sense."

Ronnie clung to her brother's hand, whining. "Don't leave me. I don't want to get ate up by zombies."

"That won't happen, honey," Ann comforted her. "We'll be safer here. In fact we should all stay here until rescue comes."

"What rescue?" Deb snapped. "Get it through your head, no one's coming. But that's fine. You stay behind. You'd be useless in a fight anyway."

Tempers and voices rose as everyone argued and offered an opinion. Suddenly Ari's voice cut across the din like a knife. "No one's leaving anyone. We move as a team. We'll find a safe place for the group to stay nearby while a few go into the lab and retrieve the data. Then we'll head to the waterfront, find a boat and get the hell off this island."

Complete silence followed his pronouncement. It was a reasonable plan. Even Deb couldn't argue.

"Look," Lila said, "Everyone's exhausted. Our nerves are fried so let's get some sleep and talk more in the morning."

Wired from the influx of new people and information, it took some time for everyone to settle down to sleep. Lila lay awake on her pallet beside Julie rather than Ari and wished he was still by her even if they didn't touch. Just having him next to her had helped her to relax. She watched him standing guard near the window and listened to sounds of occasional screams and gunfire outside. Zombies were on the prowl. Lila expected any minute the door would rattle or the window shatter as they stormed the building, searching for fresh meat inside.

She prayed to the Organizer of the Universe to please put the world back in order and restore her to the life in which her biggest worry was passing a test or breaking up with a boyfriend. She begged for an end to this nightmare and fell asleep, still praying.

* * * * *

Chapter Seven

"No more arguing. This is the way we're going to do it." Ari clenched his jaw in an effort not to add a curse to the statement. He'd learned a lot from observing his sergeant at basic training. The man hadn't been a screamer, not at all like the "tear 'em down to build 'em up", frothing at the mouth sergeant he'd expected from watching too many movies. When Sergeant Vogt called out a command, he expected it to be obeyed so it was. He was a quiet yet masterful disciplinarian and his unit had responded to it by being consistently at the top of the boards.

Now Ari appreciated how difficult the sergeant's job was. Getting a group of mismatched characters to work as a team was not easy. Running away from the zombies in the subway, the group had deferred to his lead, glad to follow anyone who they thought could get them out alive. But now their individual personalities and agendas were emerging. Everyone had a different idea about what they should do, the route they should take or what items were indispensible to bring along.

"Everyone carries something, even Ronnie. We go out the back exit and move through the alleys as much as possible. Quantus Labs is seven blocks from here. That doesn't sound like much, but we may have to fight our way through those seven blocks."
And that's just the beginning. How the hell am I going to get all these people to the river alive?

He'd considered his plan for most of last night. He'd already established that the main thoroughfares out of New York, the bridges and tunnels were too dangerous to travel. It would be too easy to get trapped by the flesh-eaters. But they should be able to snag a boat from the

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Boat Basin marina. Unfortunately they wouldn't have keys so he hoped boats were as easy to hotwire as cars. He'd had plenty of practice on those.

Ari asked Deb to take point. She was sharp-eyed, fearless and knew the way. She'd had at least one kill now so he felt confident she wouldn't hesitate if she needed to fight. He and Joe flanked the group on either side and Derrick and Lila brought up the rear. The weaker members of the group were clustered in the middle. And he placed Carl dead center, a commodity to be protected at all costs. Ari was well aware this had gone far past mere survival of their group. They now harbored a man who might have the solution to humanity's downfall in his brain and on his hard drive.

Each member of the group wore a hunting vest. The padding might protect them from tearing teeth. Everyone except Ronnie was armed with knives and a pistol. The group in the center carried backpacks crammed with goods, while the "soldiers" on the perimeter were armed with assault rifles. Their job was to protect. They couldn't be hampered by heavy knapsacks.

After they were ready to go, with Deb poised to take that first step out the door—a critical moment for it was impossible to tell what they might encounter in the alley, Ann Hanson suddenly decided to melt down at last. To be honest, Ari was surprised she hadn't folded before. She'd raised questions, but for the most part had gone along with whatever the group decided. Now she dug in her heels and refused to budge.

"I don't want to go. We're safe in here. We should stay and wait for help." Her face was ashen, nearly matching her white-blond hair. Her eyes were huge and Ari could see she'd checked out. She didn't want to see reason or deal with the world they were facing. She wanted to continue believing in cavalry who would ride in and save the day.

"Ann, you can't stay here alone," Lila slipped an arm around the trembling woman's shoulders and hugged her.

"I can't go out there. I can't!" Ann protested, her voice rising. Tears trickled down her cheeks. She let her backpack drop to the floor and covered her face with her hands.

"Snap out of it," Deb ordered. "We're all scared but we have no choice. Now get a grip."

Ari could see neither Lila's gentle coaxing nor Deb's gruff commands were reaching Ann. She had turned in the blink of an eye from a functioning member of the team to a nervous wreck. He had a decision to make and his stomach rolled as he realized he'd already made it. He couldn't put the whole group in jeopardy by dragging along a basket case. They couldn't hang around here waiting for her to snap out of it. The truth was that despite what people believed, in the military sometimes you did leave a man behind if he was going to jeopardize the mission.

He stood in front of Ann, took her by the shoulders and stared into her unfocused eyes. "Listen to me." He kept his voice calm and level. "If you truly want to stay here, nobody's going to force you to go with us. But you have to understand you're in far more danger alone here than you are with a group. The zombies will be searching for fresh meat. They're smart enough to realize people are hiding indoors and they'll go through the buildings hunting them. Are you willing to risk that?"