Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel (2 page)

Capt. Matvei Volkov was still trying to put to rest the feeling of dread that had been creeping into his gut. Everything had just been business up to this point, and Matvei had made his life's business one of warfare and killing. Now face to face with the end result of his plan, the horror he was about to unleash on all of humanity was finally sinking in.

"There is no longer any turning back," Matvei said to the guard standing next to him. "It is now just a matter of time, and our world will never be the same again."

At 6’2”, 225lbs, and dressed in his usual Russian Para Brown VSR camouflage uniform, Matvei was an imposing figure. He was also a hard man who had seen and done things in his past that would have broken most others. Even past actions he was not proud of failed to hang on his conscience for long.

The past is the past
was a motto that Matvei lived by. “You can’t change it so why worry about it?”

Hardened by battle, Matvei learned to never second guess himself in the field, as hesitation often meant death. Now, as he watched several families loaded into trucks for the drive north, he reminded himself of his own motto. Mothers were carefully handing off their small children to outstretched arms in the back of the trailers before being lifted in themselves. Dozens of trucks had already left while the rest were loading their human cargo now.

“
Man up, you fucking pussy,” Matvei muttered to himself. "It is done.”

Matvei fished a cigarette from the pack in his breast pocket and lit it with his lighter, exhaling a long smooth drag. His right hand reached for and instinctually came to rest on the butt of his holstered HK USP .45 while he smoked the cigarette with the other. Both the heavy weight of the loaded pistol and calming effect of the cigarette smoke gave him solace as he reflected briefly on the many events in his life that had led him to this place and time.

Born in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia, to poor parents who worked in a large armament factory, Matvei entered the Army after the war in Afghanistan had wound down. He was a natural soldier who craved action and a born leader who commanded respect by his mere presence. Matvei got a commission as a Lieutenant and fought in the first Chechen war with the Russian Army around the capital city of Grozny from December 1994 to February 1995 and then again during the second conflict, from October 1999 to February 2000. The fighting was brutal, and Matvei soon became callused to the looting, rape and torture that was all too common during both conflicts. He became immensely popular among his men due to his personality and leadership style, and this was noticed by his superiors. They also noticed that he got things done in the field, and they were often looking for results at any price. Matvei soon received a promotion to the rank of Captain and was eventually transferred to the 76 Guards Airborne Division. As his luck would have it, Matvei saw more action, leading his battalion of paratroopers during the war with Georgia over South Ossetia in August 2008.

However, this time around the Russian Army knew that the rest of the world was paying them a bit more attention than they had during the Chechen Wars, and the top commanders were less than pleased with some of the atrocities committed by the men under the command of the now Capt. Matvei Volkov. Matvei resigned from the army under threat of prosecution for war crimes and returned home to Koltsovo just in time to watch both of his parents die within months of each other from leukemia, most likely a result from their work in the defense plants. Matvei looked for work in the civilian sector, but there was nothing to be had, and his discontent grew. The “Arab Spring” was still burning in the Middle East, but that wasn’t his fight, and they weren’t the type to pay mercenaries worth a shit. The final tipping point was when his Uncle Aleksey became ill. Matvei always looked up to his uncle, and it was Aleksey, in fact, who had pulled some strings and got Matvei into school at the prestigious Malinovsky Military Armored Forces Academy, which once bore the name of Stalin himself.

Aleksey died at home in bed from lung cancer, but before he passed, he shared a secret with his favorite nephew. Matvei carried that secret aboard a cargo ship bound for Mexico, along with four of his most trusted men. He would never get through customs with what was contained in that briefcase. They were heading to the “New World” for the same reasons as countless others had, looking for opportunity. Their plan was slightly different, however. The drug war was again heating up, and there was always a place for men with his specific skill set. And the pay? Well the pay was excellent.

Matvei hired on with the cartel based in Matamoros in the Mexican State of Tamaulipas, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. His ruthlessness and effectiveness moved him swiftly up the ranks of the Los Zetas, the mercenary army of the cartel. The fighting with other cartels and government forces along the U.S. border was nearly as fierce as Chechnya, and when it was done, Matvei helped secure vital trafficking routes into the United States for both narcotics and human cargo. The money to the cartel was again pouring in, and Matvei was rewarded by seeing his power and influence on the rise. Things were finally looking up for Matvei, and the briefcase from his uncle became an afterthought.

Shortly thereafter, troubling trends started to emerge in the United States. The Arizona Immigration Law, once challenged by the Federal Government, finally went into full effect after the passing of a heavily debated bill including comprehensive immigration reform. Other states, including Alabama and Texas, then began enacting similar laws, and several political candidates were campaigning and winning in the polls on the notion of a secure border. The American people wanted a stop to the illegal immigrants, drugs and violence that were continuing to leak across the Rio Grande. Matvei himself tried to limit the violence to Mexico but had met with mixed results. He knew that if the United States decided to really crack down on the cartel, it could get ugly real fast. Results could soon be seen almost immediately in both the United States and Mexico. As the border began to be properly secured, it became much harder to traverse, with more and more shipments north becoming confiscated. On the street, the price of the cartel's products was on the rise due to limited supplies of it and the accompanying sex slaves. Profits plummeted while costs soared.

A new string of wins by “Tea Party” candidates in the following elections only escalated the matter, and by the following spring, it looked like serious reform might actually happen. Security was on everyone’s agenda after successful terrorist attacks in Boston and Los Angeles. The current administration in the White House even got onboard after a violent skirmish between the cartel and the Border Patrol left three agents dead and several others wounded. The public outcry was so great that the president outlined a new proposal consisting of a large National Guard presence along the entire border. The cartel was now facing a serious threat to its main source of customers, money and power.

The final straw was when Matvei began hearing reports from his own intelligence officers of covert U.S. military action against the cartel in Mexico itself.

“
They got Bin Laden,” he joked, “so why wouldn’t they take a shot at us?”

The media was left totally in the dark of course, and Matvei was sure that it would be considered illegal action. The country had grown weary of scandal after scandal involving either the IRS or other questionable surveillance programs. However, that didn’t change the fact that Special Forces units were conducting a successful campaign against cartel drug manufacturing facilities, distribution centers and security installations. They had the advantage of complete air superiority, satellites, and the ever present Predator UAV's. Matvei himself was nearly killed twice. The first attempt occurred while he was in a vehicle convoy that was attacked by a UAV with a missile, taking out a top cartel boss that was riding in the vehicle directly behind Matvei’s. The second occurrence was when a small cartel retreat was attacked by a helicopter-borne assault only minutes before his scheduled arrival for a security meeting.

This was when Matvei, after much internal deliberation, played his uncle’s hand. Matvei convened a top secret meeting of the bosses and made his proposal. In exchange for a top place in the cartel’s power echelon, Matvei would produce a weapon that would bring the United States to her knees. In the power vacuum that would follow, the cartel could move in and set up shop, becoming a world power in a matter of months. The top bosses sat in stunned amazement as Matvei laid it all out for them.

He spoke of his Uncle Aleksey and the work he had done at the Vector Institute in the area of biological warfare. He spoke of the Marburg virus and hemorrhagic fever. The initial work with the weaponization of the virus, Matvei explained, had been done by a Dr. Ulyanov, who accidentally caught and subsequently died from the virus. The autopsy of Dr. Ulyanov’s body showed that the virus had mutated and was now even more lethal. This strain, known as “Variant U” became weaponized by the Soviet military in 1990. The program was cancelled in 1992 after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Aleksey had become very bitter over the way he had been treated under the Soviet Empire, and viewed his work as his personal property. He carried on the work in private. He was nearly caught after securing several vials in a modified lunch cooler prior to being escorted off the property. Aleksey had to bribe several of the soldiers, one of whom almost reported him and would have had he not had a young wife and two hungry babies to feed at home. In the collapse of the Soviet Union, so much military hardware went missing that the few small vials were never missed. They were having a hard enough time accounting for all the nukes.

After a decade and a half of slow, hard and difficult research, experimentation and development, Aleksey’s result was “Variant Z”, and it was the perfect biological weapon. Aleksey secretly hid the results and kept several vials frozen in a tank of liquid nitrogen. He had nearly bankrupted himself paying for his own laboratory equipment, as he wasn’t being paid worth a shit at the Vector Institute. He had to do all the work on his own time, hidden from the Institute which itself was suffering from a severe lack of funding. The continued decline of his country made him even bitterer, and he held out hope that the right buyer for his “product” and a ticket out of Russia would someday present itself. When Aleksey shortly thereafter became unexpectedly ill and was confronted with his own death, he confided in his nephew, Matvei, what he had accomplished.

“
I leave it to you,” Aleksey had confided on his deathbed. “Use it as you see fit.”

Matvei went on to explain to the cartel bosses that when “Variant Z” was given to a person via an injection, with a near 100% mortality rate if infected, the human carrier itself became the tool by which to spread the disease. The initially infected person would carry the weakened form of the virus for about one week (a slow burn) before symptoms became evident. As the virus affected their central nervous system, they would become more and more agitated, eventually violent, aggressively biting or injuring future victims, spreading the virus through the transfer of bodily fluids. The longer the virus remained in its human host, the more mutated and lethal it became. It reacted quicker to the new host the longer it remained in the blood stream, with less of a dormant stage. The person eventually “died”, but the body amazingly continued to function at a limited level. This animated body would be able to sustain massive amounts of damage and still function as long as the central nervous system stayed intact, able to further spread the virus to other living hosts.

Following a six to eight week infection period, the host would eventually stop functioning as the 107 degree temperature and lack of nutrition weakened the muscles and brain enough to stop all functions, with the virus consuming all remaining cells in the body. With a terrifyingly fast and effective means of transmission combined with the fact that the virus itself could not survive outside of the human body for more than a few minutes, it was a fearsome biological weapon. Add to that the expected 80% casualty rate to the host population, and in a matter of a few months there would be a decimated population base and a biologically safe, while still fairly intact, infrastructure to move into and conquer. Matvei certainly had their attention at that point in the meeting as low murmurs filled the room. Matvei then laid out the photographic evidence of his testimony, compiled by his uncle, and the room grew quiet.

At first, the cartel remained skeptical that Matvei could deliver on his promise, but the payment of 100 million USD to Matvei secured safe delivery of the vials to the bosses. Matvei carefully hid their exact location before payment in fear of being double crossed and killed. From here a test was set to be conducted on several captured Federal police officers, as well as a few locals who had gotten in the way. The lethal shots were administered, and the cartel waited anxiously for the results to unfold. On the fifth day, all of the test subjects began to run a fever, which accompanied severe diarrhea and vomiting. They became more aggressive with one another, easily agitated over the slightest contact. The test subjects became a mild shade of yellow and started having bloody noses. The first attack happened the next day, and in a matter of a few minutes, it was all over. Most of the victims suffered what should have been mortal wounds but soon revived in a semi-conscious state. Matvei and his men used them for target practice from a safe distance and were amazed at the damage the doomed souls could sustain. A shot to the head destroying the brain was about the only thing that would bring them down. It was decided to kill all but one individual and keep him as a source of more vials of the virus.