Deadrise (40 page)

"Maybe." The Doctor said without any conviction.

"I think it's fucking aliens too." Jenkins growled.

"Now we mustn’t jump to conclusions Colonel Jenkins." The Doctor said. "This may very well be as The General said; a terrestrial virus released through deforestation."

"Don’t give me that bullshit Doc! You just said you thought it was extraterrestrial in origin. Look at what’s taking place in that fucking room! That isn’t right! Dead men walking around and eating the living is not the result of deforestation!"

"Colonel I understand you are confused and upset by what is happening. About your friend."

"Don’t try and comfort me Doctor!" Jenkins snapped. He took several deep breaths before continuing. "I was down in Salt Lake City on a supply run, right in the middle of the shit. One of those superzombies looked me right in the eye. Those empty, rotted sockets looked me right in the eye and I’ll tell you right now I could hear the devil laughing. They are pure fucking evil! If they are extraterrestrial like you say, and which I believe, then I can assure you they are alien
invaders!
So can the bullshit about being seeded by a meteor."

When Jenkins finished Dr. Cooper’s bug eyes were even larger, seeming to fill his wire rimmed glasses. His face flushed red and his mouth was clamped tightly shut. He looked back and forth between Jenkins and General Parker several times before he finally relaxed enough to breath.

They all turned their attention to the computer console and the dozens of wriggling little slugs inside the pod.

"What sort of danger does this gestation pod pose?" General Parker asked. It took the Doctor several seconds to answer. When he did, his anger had cooled and his voice was under control.

"It is under strict quarantine General. Look how quickly the contagion spread through the subject’s body. Less than forty-eight hours after infection and metamorphosis and gestation has already occurred."

"You didn’t answer my question Doctor. What kind of danger does this thing pose?"

"It should be burned." Jenkins muttered.

The Doctors face went aghast at those words, the Generals question forgotten.

"Burned? You can’t be serious Colonel Jenkins? This is the most important scientific phenomenon to ever occur. This plague threatens to eradicate human kind from the face of the planet. We may have the only link to finding a cure and you want to burn it?" The Doctor looked at Jenkins as though he would rather burn him.

"I heard a lot of this same bullshit down at the U and Fort Douglas. A bunch of goddamned eggheads with their arms full of papers and graphs talking bullshit is all it was. It didn’t amount to a glass of piss down there and it won’t matter to that up here either. I got a real simple theory for you Doc. Earth is under attack by alien invaders who are using some kind of biological weapon to reanimate the dead for use as their army. The Alphas are the Generals who lead the deadfucks into battle."

"That is some theory Colonel." General Parker said with a smile.

"I watched a lot of Sci-Fi when I was a kid. Read even more of it when I joined the service. I took all the known facts you presented and connected the dots under an alien invasion framework." Jenkins looked up from the console screen to see the General and Doctor were both looking at him in slight confusion.

"That may be the most preposterous thing I have ever heard." The Doctor said.

"I’m serious!" Jenkins snapped angrily. "We are in a war! I hope you realize this?"

"Colonel Jenkins, no one doubts the severity of the situation." General Parker said.

"You had me worried there for a minute." Jenkins said with a dry laugh. "But I still say you should burn that thing in there. Who knows what those slugs will turn into once they get out?"

"I think the Colonel is right." General Parker said.

The Doctor's face went aghast. "You can't be serious General?"

It poses too much of a threat. We know what it is. Time to eliminate the threat."

"But we DON'T know what it is!" The Doctor exclaimed. "At least let us harvest some of the slugs for study."

"What do you think, Colonel?" the General looked at Jenkins.

"As much as I hate to admit it, I think Doc is right about the slugs. I don't like it, but what do you do?" Jenkins shrugged his shoulders. "So long as it's burned once they harvest their slugs."

"Perform your vivisection Dr. Cooper." General Parker said. "Take a few of those slugs for research and burn the rest."

"General, please?" The Dr. pleaded.

"If even one of those slugs were to escape the laboratory the r--"

"NONE WILL ESCAPE!" Dr. Cooper shouted, cutting the General off in mid sentence. "WE HAVE THEM UNDER COMPLETE QUARANTINE!"

"The risk of widespread contagion within Park City is just too great."

"BUT GENERAL PARKER-"

"YOU HAVE YOUR ORDERS DR. COOPER!" The General’s shout drowned out the doctors. "IF YOU CANNOT FOLLOW THEM I WILL REPLACE YOU WITH SOMEONE WHO CAN. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?" The heavyset, barrel-chested General seemed to loom over the wiry doctor.

"Yes General." Dr. Cooper said very meekly.

"Good." The Generals voice returned to normal. "How long will it take your team to prepare?"

"A few hours at least."

The general looked at his watch. "It is zero-eight-fifty hours right now; I want your team ready by sixteen hundred hours."

"Yes General."

"Colonel Jenkins and I will be observing the vivisection from here in the control room."

"Yes General." Doctor Cooper sounded defeated and he looked physically deflated.

"Now I’m sure you have plenty to do, so the Colonel and I will be out of your way."

Jenkins followed the General out of the laboratory and into a nearby elevator to the main floor. Outside the main entrance the Generals jeep was waiting to take them back to HQ. Once there they both went straight to the War Room where Captain Sheen was on duty. He gave Jenkins a cold, hateful look as they walked up to him.

"Good news General. The last Alpha has finally been destroyed. Without it to control the Betas we are routing them with ease."

"That’s very good news Captain."

This Alpha-Beta deadfuck classification system was really annoying to Jenkins. They were deadfucks, simple as that, only some of them carried guns and were really hard to kill.

"Since we seem to have things under control I see no reason why Colonel Jenkins shouldn’t return to his mountain hideaway." Capt. Sheen made no effort to hide the contempt in his voice.

"Well, I’d love to do that Captain, but I think I’d better stick around one more day just to make sure." Jenkins made no effort to hide the sarcasm in his voice. Sheen's anger smoldered in his eyes and face, but he kept it under control. Before he could say another thing Jenkins turned away from him.

"I’ll be in my office." Jenkins said. His office was down the hall from the War Room. It was small, but held a desk, a phone for communication within the city, a computer tied to the base network and a filing cabinet. He sat in his chair and unclipped his radio from his belt. He had gone straight to the hospital after waking this morning and had not radioed home. He dialed in the Rainbow Lake frequency and radioed the compound. It was Matt who answered. He passed on what he had learned at the hospital. Matt in turn told him about the attack last night.

"We just finished piling up the bodies down bye the water. They are burning right now... How is the fight going up there?"

"It’s in the mop up stage right now."

"No more came up Parleys Canyon?" Matt sounded surprised.

"I’m surprised too. I thought for sure this last one was just a scout force. Oh well. I should be back up there by tomorrow night, the next morning at the latest."

"Good. We need you up here. Guard duty alone is straining us for manpower." Matt sounded weary.

"How would you feel about bringing a few more people on board?" Jenkins had been thinking about it last night as he lay in bed.

"Did you run into some one you know?"

"No. But I know how short we are on manpower. Counting myself, there are ten adults up there, four of them women. I know Susan can handle herself as good as anyone, she proved that, and Jennifer seems pretty strong but her sister is just a kid and Sharon still hasn’t recovered from her husbands death."

"Frank hasn’t been dead a week yet, give her some time." Matt said apologetically.

"All I’m saying is I don’t think she can handle the pressure of a firefight. Plus there is a lot of work to do up there. A few more strong backs wouldn’t hurt."

"It makes sense."

"Chew the idea over with the others. I’ll keep an eye open for a few prospects and we’ll talk about it later."

"David got the house computer up and running. He says the entire estate is networked; The Solar panels, the locks, the water pumps for the pool, the phone lines, the security system, everything."

"What kind of security system does the place have?" Jenkins asked, truly curious.

"Door alarms, video surveillance including the driveway and grounds, inside the barn. It’ll make sentry duty a hell of a lot easier."

Impressive.
"Was the kid able to connect to the Internet?"

"No. He says way up here the service was provided through a satellite connection, but all the providers have gone offline." Matt said dejectedly.

"He babbled about the computer network on the helicopter, saying it was linked-up by a news satellite and the connection was still good." Jenkins mulled his thoughts a moment…"Is the kid really a whiz on a computer?"

"From what I’ve seen. He hacked into the high school computer easy enough."

"I might be able to get him some military access codes from here. I bet if the kid had access he could tap into the military network." Jenkins said shrewdly.

"Do you think you could get them?" Matt sounded suddenly enthusiastic.

"I can try. I know they are tied into the military network up here. With that kind of access we can keep up with what’s going on all over the world." The prospect excited them both and they talked about it for several manic minutes until they both agreed they had better things to do than talk on the radio. Jenkins signed off and clipped the radio back onto his belt. His stomach rumbled with hunger.

"Time for breakfast." He said to himself. He stood up and exited his office…

Chapter 44

Tuesday, June 26, 2001

Rainbow Lake, UT

8:45 AM

When Jenkins called that morning Matt had already been awake for over an hour helping Scotty, Mac and Rick cart the dead bodies down to the lakeshore to be burned. They piled the bodies onto an empty pallet then used the forklift to truck it down to the beach. Susan helped Matt remove the skeleton from the master bedroom then said she was going to clean the blood-splattered room and claim it as their own. It had a private toilet and a large, luxurious bathtub. Matt could only smile and agree.

After signing off with Jenkins he walked back down to the lakeshore where Mac tossed a match on the fuel splashed bodies. In less than a minute the pile of bodies was a bonfire raging nearly ten feet high. The wind came from the south, carrying the smoke and the stench away from the house as they watched the fire.

"What did Jenkins have to say?" Mac asked.

"They are conducting some experiments on Ron’s body at the Park City hospital." Matt didn’t want to get too specific right now. Rick still seemed a bit shaken by his brother’s death.

"Experiments. That’s what they said down at the U as well." Mac said bitterly.

They turned away from the bonfire and headed back toward the house. The sound of barking dogs drew their attention to the northern edge of the lawn where Zeke the black Labrador came running out of the woods followed by three more dogs. One was a tall, long limbed greyhound with a silver brown coat and black spots. The second dog was a short squat Chinese wrinkle dog with dark brown fur and pudgy wrinkles so thick that the face could barely be seen. The third dog was a scruffy looking mongrel about the size of a Shepherd, with shaggy, patchwork gray, black and white fur and a tattered red bandanna tied around its neck. All three of the newcomers looked a bit thin in the ribs, but their tails wagged jovial enough as they followed Zeke across the yard. Zeke hurried over to Scotty who patted him down with a laugh.

"Who are your new friends Zeke?" Zeke gave a friendly bark and hugged against Scotty.

"Come here," Matt said softly, kneeling down and holding his hand out. All three dogs seemed a bit timid, the wrinkle dog growling and the greyhound whining and pacing nervously. But the mongrel tentatively stepped near, nose low to the ground, sniffing at Matt’s hand. "Come here boy." Matt couldn’t tell for sure that it was a male but the red bandanna tied round its throat had a masculine flair. Matt reached out and began to pet the dog’s shaggy head. Within seconds it was licking his neck as he petted it vigorously. The other two dogs now stepped forward to receive attention.

"They must be pets from residents of the town or lake." Matt said. He grabbed the red bandanna to read the logo on the tattered cloth. Heineken Beer. "Is that your name boy? Heineken?" The dog gave a bark and came to attention. "Well I’ll be damned! That is your name."