This Plague of Days, Season Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (14 page)

Sinjin-Smythe watched as Wiggins paused, only a flicker, to look at the boy. The man leaped and screamed a word that sounded like it had been filtered through gravel.

The boy was motionless as a statue as Sinjin-Smythe yelled into his mic. “Merritt! Merritt!”

Gunshots.

A high, warbling scream.

The boy still did not move.

Sounds of a struggle.

A crash and tinkle.
 

Sinjin-Smythe heard a distant alarm and, closer, the laptop’s microphone picked up the sound of heavy breathing.

Dr. Daniel Merritt came into the frame for a second before another crash.

What the doctor saw next happened so fast, he almost missed it. A hand appeared next to the camera. It was a woman’s left hand wearing a diamond ring. Whoever the woman was, she snatched up a keycard attached to a red lanyard.
 

The picture spun and the connection ended. When Sinjin-Smythe tried to call back, no one answered.

* * *
 

On the
Illustrious
, Captain Paul, Desi and Sinjin-Smythe watched and rewatched the video. Sinjin-Smythe had thought to record the call. They played it forward and back and in slow motion until they sorted out what had occurred.

“What does this mean?” Captain Paul asked.

“Mean?” Desi said. “I can tell you what happened, but I’m not sure it
means
anything.”

Sinjin-Smythe straightened and rubbed his face. “I can tell you, Captain. What happened was that bloody zombie picked up Dr. Daniel Merritt and threw him through that glass wall and escaped. Just before that, I’m pretty sure, as he leaps off the table he screams the word ‘pig’! Before that, with that boy? I don’t know what the hell was going on.”

“It would take a lot of torque to throw a numpty that size, Doctor,” Desi said.

“All bets are off, Desi. That’s a new type of zombie and unless they can contain it at that camp, the virus is loose in America.”

“What shall we call this new type?” Captain Paul asked.

The doctor sighed heavily. “First it was the slow build of Sutr-X. Then the quick and disastrous mutation to Sutr-Z.”

“Z for zombie,” Paul said. “Ridiculous, and yet…”

“We’re out of alphabet, Captain. We’ll have to loop back. Since it talks and it seems quite superior to previous incarnations, you can call this thing Sutr-A, as in Alpha.”

“Fits,” Desi said.

“I’d go even more linear.” The virologist refilled his glass. “I’d call it Extinction.”

Desi shook his head. “Marvelous. We’re in for it now, aren’t we?”

The captain sighed heavily. “Who wants to live forever?”

S
EASON
2, E
PISODE
3

This Plague of Days

Robert Chazz Chute

Season 2

Episode 3

Evil can be crammed behind the mild mask of any face.

*
 

Get comfortable with ambiguity. It’s not all laid out for you at once because it wasn’t just Walt Whitman who contained multitudes. We’re all a bundle of contradictions. Look at the chasm between what anyone says and does. Bring saying and doing together? Then you’ve got a demigod walking the earth.

*
 

Animals work on instincts. They do horrible things. They kill their food with their faces. However, they are innocent. They aren’t choosing. But pair up intellect with any killer and you have real Evil.

~ Notes from The Last Cafe

*
 

I have no words;
 

My voice is in my sword.

~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth

P
LOYS
AND
TRAPS
,
POISONS
AND
SCANDALS

D
esi, Captain Paul and Dr. Sinjin-Smythe
crowded shoulder to shoulder, their faces bathed pale in the glow of the computer screen. The virologist replayed the recording of the attack. Dr. Merritt’s short trip through the glass wall at the rear of the room was impressive.
 

Considering Merritt had almost blown him up, Sinjin-Smythe couldn’t find much sympathy for him. However, he did feel terror that the virus was out of the lab. Whatever Wiggins had become with this new Alpha version of the virus, it terrified them all. When they took a break from studying the recording, each man realized that his sweaty back was pressed hard into his chair.

There was little new information to be gleaned, only more mystery. Sinjin-Smythe froze the image. “That kid,” the virologist said. He tapped the screen with his index finger as if he could make the boy turn so his face was visible. “
Who
the bloody hell is the kid who set Wiggins free? They can’t be that low on personnel, surely?”
 

“That’s not Lieutenant Wiggins anymore,” Captain Paul said. “Whatever he is now, the Americans better bloody kill it before whatever it’s got spreads to the locals.”

Sinjin-Smythe drank more of the 12-year-old Glenfiddich the captain had offered him. “Viruses are tricky things. So hard to contain. They’re trying to stay alive and perpetuate themselves the same way we do.”

“How do you mean?” Desi asked.

“Nature designed viruses to be killers. They’re so determined, they often kill themselves when their host dies.”

Desi took a drink of the whiskey. “It’s a dirty world.”

“That’s just it,” the virologist replied. “If you’ll permit me a bit of poetic license. Viruses play the long game. They think globally and act locally. Put a bacterium in a stressful environment? It doesn’t die. It becomes an endospore, goes dormant, and waits.”

“You’ve lost me, Doctor,” Captain Paul said.

“I’m saying that, between bacteria and viruses, we’re suffused in germs, on our skin, in our guts, in our eyelashes. If an alien race scanned the planet, they’d say Earth belongs to the microscopic with a tiny infestation of humans who won’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom! It’s amazing this plague didn’t start sooner. I’ve been saying we’re overdue for a world flu pandemic for years. And now this…”

“You’re drunk,” Desi said.

“Not nearly enough.”

Desi leaned closer. “What about our other problem? How could a container ship with plague aboard get through the blockade? Surely your Marines would have spotted a thousand raging zombies in the hold?”

Captain Paul’s jaw clenched and, for a brief moment, he looked annoyed. “Wiggins reported he searched the
Gaian Commander
. All was well until he got sick aboard the
Lusty
later. They radioed the password. We couldn’t stop them. In fact, we were extra cautious. With the password alone, we could have let them pass.”

“Oh, yes, the bloody password,” Desi, said. “‘Prometheus’. What’s that about exactly?”
 

Sinjin-Smythe looked miserable and exhausted. “I can guess what the terrorists did.” He couldn’t bring himself to name Shiva. “They’ve had a long time to plan. To finance something this big, all they had to do was be the backup plan for rich people in case of a catastrophe. If I needed a ship to escape Europe under these circumstances, I’d make sure I had plenty of important and rich people on board. Parliamentarians, royalty, bankers — ”

“So, as always, what’s bad for the working class isn’t supposed to touch our betters,” Desi said. “End of the world and still business as usual.”

Captain Paul stood. “I wouldn’t know, Mr. Walsh. Most of my betters are dead from the first wave of plague. That’s why a captain is running this task force instead of an admiral.”

“No offense meant, Captain. But I’m sure the doctor is on the right track. Some animals are more equal than others and we were always at war with Oceania. My achin’ arse.”

“You would have preferred
everyone
stay in Ireland and Britain?” Paul said. “No one should get away? Odd sentiments since, without Prometheus, you wouldn’t be sitting here safe and warm on my ship.”

“That, I’ll grant you,” the policeman replied evenly. “But when I escape from hell, sir, I like a nice safe place to run to. Every hell should have a heaven.”

“And you shall have it, Mr. Walsh,” Paul said. “They got past the SBS and us, but we have a last line of defense.
Lieutenant!
”Another officer appeared at the door to the Captain’s quarters. “Mr. Lombardy, have the navigator plot the
Gaian Commander
’s course and speed, double check it yourself and find me the sub closest to its projected position. I need a submarine within 160 km of the target. If they aren’t that close, they are to get that close. I’ll be on the bridge in a moment. Have the sub commander on the channel by the time I arrive.” Paul dismissed the officer with a sharp salute.

“Are you going to board
Gaian Commander
again, Captain?” The doctor’s forehead furrowed. Before he blurted the question, he’d already guessed the answer. “She is on that ship, but she’s carrying my child, too. Maybe she has information about the rest of the terrorist network. With a plot this all-encompassing, there must be many — ”

“Finish your glasses, gentlemen. When you’re ready, my aide is in the outer office. He will escort you to your quarters until I can find a way to get you…well, the Speedway encampment isn’t secure at the moment. Until the Yanks sort themselves out, we’ll have to decide what we’re to do with you and your friends.” Captain Paul paused at the door. “I am not sorry about the terrorist named Shiva. I do pity your unborn child, Doctor. I’m sorry.”

Desi watched him go before reaching for the bottle and pouring another drink, one for Sinjin-Smythe and one for himself. “He didn’t sound sorry, did he?”

“He lost a man.”

“You’ve lost a wife and child.”

“I think there’s an excellent chance we’ve already lost. Everything.”

Desi stared at his hands for a long time before he spoke again. When he did, he looked haunted. “Craig, did you pick out what the boy said to Wiggins, just before he set him free?”

Sinjin-Smythe took his time answering. “I thought I might. Did you manage to read the white-eyed monster’s lips when the boy let him go?”

“May have.”

Sinjin-Smythe smiled despite himself. “I think the boy said, ‘Emancipator.’ With the fight and the screaming, it could have been half a dozen words, I suppose, but when I saw what Wiggins mouthed to him, it fits in an insane sort of way.”

The Garda officer nodded gravely and grinned. “I couldn’t believe it, but I thought your Sutr-Alpha Zombie actually said, ‘Abraham Lincoln.’”

“Desi, do me a favor while we’re still at a working computer. Look up
Insanus omnis furere credit ceteros
.” The doctor told Desi how he thought the words should be spelled. After a few attempts, the answer appeared on the screen.

“What’s that tell you?” Desi said. “I don’t get it.”

“I’m not sure.”

“It must be about Shiva, isn’t it?”

“I worry it’s about us. Maybe it’s about how we got to this sad state of affairs.”

“Then we’ll do the only reasonable thing,” Desi said. “Let’s drink and drain the rest of our host’s excellent bottle of Glenfiddich and ponder, ‘
Every madman thinks everyone else is insane.’”

D
EATH
AND
DISEASE
,
MIRES
AND
MANGLES

I
ris, in classical mythology, is goddess of the rainbow. She was the messenger of the gods. To Jaimie Spencer, messenger from a killer virus named Sutr, all the colors of the rainbow were quickly draining from the refugee camp.

Below him, the many thousands crammed into the Indianapolis Speedway glowed in the dark, but only with shades of crimson and yellow now. The rainbow of human experience fled. The reds were degrees of anger, from irritation to rage. The furious auras would flare and then bleed to bright yellow as the terror spread out. The predator was in the pit of the camp, spreading the virus, a rabid wolf among the flock.

The cool night air was no solace as the Spencer family rushed out through the shattered window. They found themselves in a VIP box, looking down on the track. In a corner of the box, Dr. Daniel Merritt sat against a wall in a pool of his blood. His hand was at his neck, trying to stem the flow from a pumping artery.
 

Jaimie and Theo went to the rail. Under fruitless searchlights, they watched the ripples and shivers spread through the crowds.

Theo quoted Shakespeare in a solemn tone, “
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion was timed with dying cries.
” He pulled his son away from the gruesome sights below.

“He didn’t bite me!” Merritt said. “Wiggins didn’t bite me. I’m not infected! This is from glass, I swear!”

“Yeah, you look great,” Anna said.

“Get help!”
 

“Or you’ll hang my mother?” Anna followed Jack and Theo over a dividing wall into the next VIP box. Jaimie bent over the doctor and put Merritt’s tie up to his ruined neck.
 

Merritt took the suggestion and put the cloth tight against the wound. His other hand slipped around Jaimie’s wrist. “Stay!”

Jaimie considered a moment, but when he looked over his shoulder, his father beckoned. The boy turned back to Dr. Merritt. “
Woof!
” he said, and pulled away.

Merritt’s key card got them into the next suite. From the scattered supplies and boxes of wine, the room had obviously been taken over by an officer with access to luxuries.
 

An alarm sounded far away. The klaxon got quieter by the minute as the Spencers ran down the length of the Speedway’s Tower Plaza, searching for an exit.
 

“Something…what’s happening out there?” Jack asked. “That alarm — ”

Anna cut her off. “It’s not the
alarm
, Mom! The alarm is getting drowned out by
screams
!”