The Rising Dead (31 page)

“He knocked me to the ground and bit the other side of my back,” Gunner said. “I screamed out in pain but I knew it was too late. They'd gotten me. The thing was strong. It did its best to keep me pinned to the ground but I grabbed one of its arms and rolled over, trapping him underneath me. I got my elbow into the crook of its neck and kept it in place. I got a good look. It was just a kid. A stupid, ugly kid killed me. I got angry. I lost a good buddy in Iraq to a twelve year old with a rifle. All that training, all those hours logged doing hand-to-hand combat, all those rounds at the range, and here some pimple-faced geek strung out on meth was the one who got me. I was irate.”

“What did you do then?” Holt asked.

“I pulled him apart,” Gunner said as they squirmed at his answer. “Piece by piece. I took my knife out and cut off his arms first, hacking through the bone. I cut him in half like a serial killer. I spent a lot of time on him. The last thing I did was detach his head. It was the only thing that caused him to stop thrashing and trying to bite me again. He never showed any emotion, not one bit of pain or remorse. Nothing. He never slowed down.”

“After that, I sat down for a while and just waited to die,” Gunner said. “I kept thinking I should put the gun in my mouth to end it before the symptoms started, but time went by and nothing changed. That's when I decided I was going to do everything in my power to help anyone left in this nightmare before my time was up. The way I figured, my clock was already done ticking but if I managed to help a few of you out along the way, it wouldn't be so bad after all. I wouldn't have died in vain, you know?”

“And what were you going to do when you turned and ended up eating us all?” Max asked.

“I wasn't planning on letting it get that far,” Gunner said. “I made myself a promise that the minute I started getting sick, I would put my gun in my mouth and turn my own lights out. That's why I kept that extra round, the one I used down in the tunnels, remember?”

Max scowled in reply.

“I kept waiting to manifest some symptoms, praying I'd be able to help someone, anyone, before it happened. Only it didn't happen. By the time I found you, quite a few hours had already gone by. It wasn't until we were back in the Command Center and I was explaining the probable origins of the disease that I realized not only was I not showing signs, I honestly felt better than I'd ever felt since I was a kid.”

“You've got to be kidding me?” she screamed. “What if you would have turned at the auto parts store and killed us all? The enemy has been with us every step of the way.”

“In case you forgot,” Gunner said, losing his cool at last, “I saved your life.” He pointed around at all of them and they shrank back from his angry stare. “I saved all of your lives, many times over. If it wasn't for me, you’d be dead back in your apartments or wandering the streets in search of fresh meat--every last one of you. I'm not asking you to kiss my backside but I think a little appreciation would be nice right about now.”

“You also risked all of our lives in the process,” Holt pointed out.

“Yeah,” Max said. “You think you deserve some kind of special treatment for lying to cover your own ass? Is that what you think you deserve?”

“How about maybe just the benefit of the doubt?” Gunner said. “Can you give me that much?”

“How is all this possible?” Parker asked.

“I told you they did a bunch of experiments on us when I was in the military,” Gunner said, turning to Fat Elvis, who shook his head. “They gave us booster shots when we shipped off to the Middle East, told us we were bound to run into strange new colds like we'd never experienced. They made a big deal about telling us not to fuck the locals. Said they had limited supplies of penicillin.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Max asked.

“Get to the fucking point Gunner,” Parker shouted.

“We flew into Al Asad Airfield,” Gunner said. “I was taken aside and told to report to the medic on base, to give him my papers. I spent the next two weeks locked in a room while they experimented on me.”

“Jesus Christ,” Holt said.

“They shot me full of different types of serums and kept me chained to a bed,” Gunner said. “So you see, I know what the prisoners on Islas Maria went through. I had blinding headaches, shivers so bad all my muscles locked up, felt like my whole body was one big Charlie horse. I lost control of my bodily functions more than once.”

“Is that legal?” Holt asked. “That can't be legal.”

“I was their property,” Gunner said. “They told me they were making me a better soldier, that I would be part of an elite unit that would take down Saddam.”

“I don't understand,” Parker said. “What does this have to do with you being bit again?”

“The revelations virus is a hybrid,” Gunner said. “It's part Ebola, part rabies, with a whole lot of other nastiness thrown in for good measure.”

“That's true,” Max said. “Nothing comes from scratch. They'd have to build it on the backs of existing strands of other diseases.”

“It's a designer virus,” Gunner said. “I was vaccinated for the common building blocks that they used to create it while I was in the service. The parent company of Zymetech, Black Helix, also made me get a series of shots as part of their physical. It's part of why they only employ Gulf War vets for Zymetech security as opposed to their security unit Code Grey. I thought it was in case of a terrorist attack on our labs. Now I know the real reason, to ensure there are enough of us left after an outbreak to clean up the mess and sweep it under the rug. Only it didn't work out so well for them, seeing as how their lead scientist ate two of my men.”

“Not to mention you went AWOL,” Fat Elvis said, slamming a shot back.

“Al Asad,” Max said. “I've heard of it. Wikileaks said it might possibly have been a secret CIA black prison site as well.”

“It was,” Gunner said. “I got off lucky compared to what they did to them other guys. You could hear the screams at night for hours, guys praying to Allah.”

“I don't buy it,” Parker said. “You expect me to believe they just held you prisoner like that then released you back to your unit?”

“That's right,” Gunner said, “but not before breaking my mind with sodium pentathol and large doses of morphine. My commander told me I was to keep my status as an elite member of the team personally responsible for capturing Saddam to myself, that I couldn't tell anyone, that they would place me where I needed to be when the time was right.”

“And you believed him?” Fat Elvis said, taken in by the tale.

“I am a soldier,” Gunner said. “It was my duty to obey orders and that's what I did.”

“Hoo fucking rah,” Holt said.

“Did you ever get to take a run at him?” Fat Elvis blurted out, seemingly forgetting his previous exchanges with Gunner.

“I did. It was right after he'd lit all the oil wells on fire,” Gunner said. “We had him for sure. We were certain of it. He was retreating and destroying his natural resources at the same time to keep us distracted. It was an ecological disaster of unprecedented proportions. No one dreamed he would pull a stunt so drastic.”

“I remember that,” Holt said. “We watched it in social studies in high school.”

“That night we mounted a full scale attack on one of his palaces,” Gunner said. “We were confident he was holed up in there. We started shelling compound walls with heavy artillery right after sundown. We ringed the palace with thousands of troops to make sure no one got out. I was stationed along the south wall, blocking escape to his home village of Tikrat where we knew his largest concentration of supporters could easily conceal him. Our plan was to wear his troops down, then our unit would sneak up and tear down the back wall, giving us an access point we could control. The whole sky was filled with smoke. Rockets, bullets whizzing past, even the smoke from the oil fires made visibility low as the wind shifted and blew all of it in our faces.”

“We were within less than five hundred feet of the south wall when it happened,” Gunner recalled. “Several small rockets shot out over us, like fireworks burning orange and red in the smoke. I thought he was attacking our main flank, but when I turned I saw the missiles heading toward the Gulf, far enough out that they looked like they might hit the water. It didn't make any sense. Why wouldn't he try to clear a hole for his escape? For a minute I thought maybe their guidance systems had been compromised somehow, or maybe the wind blew them off course. It could be a simple case of human error. After all, there were a lot of Iraqis conscripted into military service that didn't know their elbow from the business end of a camel. Then I felt something wet cover me, drenching my uniform and coating the exposed skin of my hands and neck. It felt like the mist sprayed back from a passing wave at the beach, carried by an offshore wind. A few seconds later the burning began.”

“It burned like that for weeks,” Gunner said, fighting back tears. “The government said it was gasoline from defective rockets that blew overhead. Bullshit! They let him poison us! Worse still, they let him get away! We were in place and they knew where he was and they let him go. After everything I had been through, puking my guts out and being reprogrammed and they let the butcher of Baghdad off the hook. I was furious!”

“So you really were brainwashed by the military?” Holt said, lowering his crowbar. “All this time people have been spreading rumors about you--and they've all been true.”

“Yeah,” Gunner said. “I guess that's one way to look at it.”

“Sorry to hear about your troubles,” Frankie said. “That is one hell of a story. I thank you for sharing it with us.”

“Same here,” Holt chimed in. “You have a lot of bad dreams?”

“Forget about the dreams,” Gunner laughed. “That's the least of it. Waking up in the middle of the night screaming is one thing. This was something different. I used to get these rashes all over my body that nothing would take away. Pain all the way down to the bone that never went away. One minute I'd be working out at the gym, wide awake, the next I'd be in the bathroom, throwing up from both ends, exhausted and tired for no good reason.”

“I used to work as a clerk at a grocery store before I got this gig,” Fat Elvis joined in. “Knew a guy there, one of the stockers on the night shift, got fired for not moving fast enough. He was injured during the war as well. The union didn't lift a finger to protect him when the manager told 'em he needed to find new employment he was better suited to. All that national fervor, support-the-troops nonsense, with the yellow ribbons and the bumper stickers, and for what?”

“What do you tell the doctor when you go in?” Holt asked. “Oh, by the way the government experimented on me and also I might have been poisoned with chemical weapons?”

“You let them run the tests and give you the results,” Gunner said.

“And just what did they say was wrong with you?” Parker asked suspiciously.

“Post traumatic stress order,” Gunner chuckled. “That's what they told me it was at the V.A. When I kept coming back complaining, they said there was a slim chance I might have Gulf War Syndrome but not to get my hopes up because there wasn't any money in it. Syndrome? Sounded like a mental condition, like I was sick in the head and somehow I was manifesting real world issues because of it. It made me so mad. They got a word for that.”

“Psychosomatic,” Max said.

“All this time I thought it was a curse being there,” Gunner said. “What they did to me.”

“It sure sounds like it was,” Fat Elvis said in a drunken slur.

“I don't know anymore,” Gunner said, shaking his head. “If I hadn't been there I'd both be dead now. Can I get a swig of that, King?”

Frankie paused, as if he was considering it, then handed it over reluctantly. Gunner knocked back a healthy shot while the impersonator kept his eyes on his flask.

“How do we know this isn't some kind of temporary side effect?” Parker asked. “How do you know it won't wear off at some point, transforming you into one of those snarling monsters out there?”

“I've been wondered the same thing ever since I got bit,” Gunner said. “In the end, I decided it wasn't worth frying my noodle over. If it ain't happened by now, chances are it ain't never going to happen. Guess that's the luck of the draw.”

Just then, a loud rumbling crash hit the side of the building accompanied by the low moaning of the dead as they tried to get in the bolted door.

“Jesus Chris,” Max shouted.

“What was that?” Parker asked. “It sounded like a tree hitting the building.”

“Maybe they've learned to work together,” Holt said. “Like Gunner's story suggested.”

“It's a hive mind at work,” Gunner replied. “That's what Travis said. Somehow the organism driving 'em seems capable of basic communication with the others. It'd be fascinating stuff for sure if they weren't trying to kill us all.”

“The sun is going down if we stay here too long,” Parker said. “We need to come up with some real strategy on how we’re going to secure this place if we plan on making it through another night. So let's stop fighting and figure out how we're going to do that.”

“Fine,” Max spat out. “Why don't we just send Gunner out there to negotiate with them?”

“Fine by me,” Gunner said through gritted teeth. “If that's what you want, I'll go.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Parker said. “They'd tear him to shreds trying to get to us.”

“Unlike the rest of you children, I'm ready to die,” Gunner said. “As far as I’m concerned, I died years ago, out in that dark, endless desert. I'd be happy to sacrifice myself for a meaningful cause. If you think that by going out there and fighting I can save you, then I’m willing to go.”

Max didn't say anything. She stared in disbelief. She was in an impossible situation. More than anything she wanted to call his bluff, to dare him to charge out into the swarm of hungry zombies and sacrifice himself, but she knew without a shred of doubt that he would. Could she live with his death on her conscience? Would he be able to make a difference? Probably not. Parker was right. They would rip him apart to get to the rest of them. She fumed in silence.