“This guy’s not dead.”
Cam turned. One of the soldier’s was stooped over Kline’s body. Cam started to move away from the computer but the soldier stopped him.
“You have your orders, Doctor, finish what you’re doing.”
Cam hesitated, looking from the soldier to where Sharpe stood behind the stained glass. Sharpe touched the intercom. “Finish what you’re doing, Dr. Bradford.”
Cam’s scowl was sharp, but pointless in the face of the Colonel’s control. He turned away angry, angry with himself and with the man who had continually forced him toward actions he now regretted. His anger was as useless as he felt, as pointless as any of the excuses he could make. Sharpe had pushed him, but in the end he had said yes. He looked over at the case where the rest of the NANOs writhed, a mass of speck-like insects of his creation. He watched as they swarmed higher until they covered the glass walls of their cage with a metallic sheen. He knew how to stop them, knew of only one way and also knew Sharpe wouldn’t approve it. He moved back to the computer again to try one more time to deactivate and kill the NANOs, but they still ignored the commands. He turned away from the computer, he had no other choice. Sharpe wouldn’t approve, but Sharpe was unwilling to understand just what a threat the activated NANOs were. He wasn’t willing to let that threat continue or to escalate. Three lives was already too high a price to pay.
“What are you doing now, Dr. Bradford?” Sharpe’s voice boomed over head like the voice of God.
“Stopping them, Colonel, like you asked.” Cam crossed the space to the enforced glass case that held the rest of the NANOs. He reached up and took down a small vial, metal and smooth and he slipped it into his pocket. His eyes lifted to the covered switch, the final kill switch. The NANOs, no matter what was causing them to be immune to the computers commands could not survive a high level electromagnetic pulse. The EMP that would be directed at them with a flick of that switch would effectively destroy all of them within a one mile radius.
“Bradford! Don’t you…Sergeant, stop him!”
Cam moved fast, but the soldier moved faster and he was tackled before he could flip the switch. He hit the ground hard, landing inches from where Kline’s body lay, eyes closed as if in sleep. He had a split second of breathless immobility as he lay face to face with the corpse before he was drug to his feet.
As he was drug up he saw Kline’s eyes open and focus on him. His breath caught, he started to speak, but he was jerked forward as Sharpe’s voice snapped out. “Sergeant, escort Dr. Bradford from the building.”
It all happened so fast. Two soldiers grabbed his arms to force him out, he had a glimpse of Sharpe’s face through the glass, than there was a blur of movement at the edge of his vision. The soldier on his right was grabbed, jerked backward, his throat erupting blood as stiffened fingers pierced the flesh and ripped his carotid artery wide open. Blood sprayed Cam, hot and startling as the sergeant yanked him back. He was shoved back, stumbling over shattered lab equipment, nearly falling. Chaos erupted; Kline dropped the soldier, moving toward Cam, that blank, almost doll like expression in his eyes that had been in the first victim’s eyes. He was mobile without consciousness, without life, without soul.
On the floor the female body surged out of the unzipped body bag where the soldier’s had placed it. She lunged forward to fasten hands and teeth onto the soldier who had been kneeling beside her. The other body bag vibrated and spasmed as the body inside reanimated under the NANOs control. The sergeant opened fire, the bullets lodged into Kline’s body, slowing him, but not stopping him. Screams erupted, soldiers died, the third body ripped out of the bag and launched itself at the glass that kept Sharpe separated from the horror.
Cam grabbed the sergeant by the arm, dragging him towards the door. “Come on!”
The handle moved under his hand, the door opened and he almost fell through into the hall beyond. He turned back grabbing for the soldier, his hands slipping off the soldier’s sleeve as he was hauled screaming back inside the room. Cam hesitated, stunned by the un-realness of what was happening. Then he pushed the door shut as he heard the glass shatter and Sharpe’s scream.
He braced his shoulder against the door, his breathing heavy, fear and panic running through him in a potent cocktail that threatened to immobilize him. His head buzzed with adrenalin and panic, his vision narrowing down with darkness crowding towards the front of his eyes. He couldn’t block the sounds that slipped past the pounding of his heart. He heard them die and heard the silence that followed. Slowly his breathing evened and he pressed his ear to the door to listen even though every instinct inside told him not to. There was a faint ruffling, a shuffling as three un-living bodies shambled around the lab. He listened, the door cold against his cheek. Listening as he heard a heavy blow, followed by another and another until he heard glass break. His stomach rolled inside of him. There was no more glass for them to break. None, except the case that held the remaining NANOs.
They were free.
He turned his head, laying his forehead against the door. It was too late, even for the EMP, it was too late. He needed….What he didn’t have there. Frustration, fear, rage and guilt surged through him and he slammed his palms against the door.
They hit back.
***
It wasn’t metal, it was just a door. This was just a lab and they were going to get out. He could hear the hinges buckle before they gave way and he ran. He ran through empty halls because it was past midnight and everyone else was either gone or dead. He was alone with the monsters he had created, and they were right behind him. He could hear them, coming closer, their gate horrifyingly fast. He raced up narrow metal stairs, up and up before bursting through the doors into the main lobby. Lights shone around him, turned low in the late hours of the night. The lobby was starkly empty as he raced across it toward the twin glass doors that looked out into the night. His footsteps echoed on the linoleum floor and behind him he heard the door from the stairs slam open, hit the wall and then swing shut. He didn’t look back, he didn’t need to. He could see them running behind him, reflected back at him in the darkened glass of the doors. He reached the doors ahead of them, pushed through into the night.
***
Though the government funded it, Bancroft BioSys was a public facility with many avenues of research. One of which was focused on green energy sources such as ethanol. To that end, vast waves of corn speared up into the sky on all sides. Dark, dancing stalks that swayed beneath the moon. Cam raced out into the night, leaving the lights cast by the facility, across the black top of the employee parking lot, asphalt vanishing beneath his feet. His footsteps were muffled by packed earth, he was lost from the light, from the moon, embraced by the shadows of the towering corn. He plunged into the shadows, pushing through the pressing stalks that rustled and whispered and swayed around him. He pressed through a clump of them, staggering on the uneven ground when he found an open track between two rows. The light from the building vanished behind a ten foot wall of late summer corn. Shadows and darkness swallowed him. He stumbled along, unable to run as he felt his way along in the consuming darkness. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the black void of night and he was able to see the night sky against the jagged points of the corn. He pushed forward as around him the corn shook and trembled, wavered and moved like living things. He knew they followed him, he could hear them in the corn, but he could no longer tell where. Noises, movement, seemed to come from all sides as the corn rustled and trembled with each night breeze. His senses were strained beyond their max, around him shadows and corn stalks moved and somewhere, just beyond the faint range of his vision, monsters, monsters that he had created, stalked him.
The corn rustled, they swayed and parted. Fear spurred him. He ran blindly, fighting his way through the corn until he ran out into the light.
Chapter Two
Light, pain, a glancing blow that sent him fly
ing. He hit the gravel, heard the squeal of tires on asphalt and could smell the acrid scent of burning rubber. His world was black again, his heart the only sound, fear his only emotion.
***
The form crumpled in the beam of her headlights was human. Her stomach did a long, slow roll before she reached for the handle on the door; it was cold beneath her hand as she jerked on it and slammed her shoulder into the door so that it swung open. She didn’t make it far out of the truck before she heaved up everything she had eaten that night.
She had killed someone.
Mouth sour, head pounding with mounting panic, Cheyenne forced herself to straighten up away from the truck. Every movement, every step was a battle against herself as she faced what she had done. Around her the night was dark, a void pressing in on the circle of light cast by her headlights. She could hear the rustle of the cornfields on either side in the darkness and the wind was cold when it touched her face. She was trembling when she reached the body, shaking when she forced herself down on her knees beside it. She swallowed her fear and reached out to touch.
Her fingers touched cold flesh and she thought the worst until it moved. Relief flooded her and she rolled the person over quickly. The face was barely human, and guilt flooded her at the sight of the blood covered face. Heart pounding she reached out to feel for a pulse, but her hand snapped back as the eyes flared open, blank, wildly dilated, red veined and focused on her.
“Are you-“
A grotesquely animalistic snarl rumbled in the thing’s chest as bloody lips peeled back to show its teeth. Fear, primordial and dark, raced into her and she scrambled back. But it was fast, faster than she would have dreamed and it grabbed out for her. She screamed, tried to pull away but it held her, trying to drag her close. Hands slid underneath her arms from behind and she was physically lifted up and away from her attacker. She was nearly tossed aside and her savior ran forward to kick the thing in the head. Blood erupted from its nose and it rolled over on its back. Her savior turned back on her then, grabbing her by the forearm to haul her up and toward the truck.
She was nearly carried to the cab. Around them she heard a loud crashing in the corn and knew instantly it was no longer the wind. Behind them she saw the one she had struck push awkwardly to its feet and, on a broken leg, shamble towards her.
“What is it?” Her question was nearly a scream.
Cam lifted her up and shoved her through the open cab door. “Get in.”
She resisted more from stunned disbelief than anything else. He shoved her across the front seat and climbed in beside her. He shifted the truck into gear as the thing lurched nearer, flooring the gas and sending the front of the truck slamming head on into it. It slammed against the truck’s grill and red splashed the windshield. Cheyenne screamed as it clung to the hood, snarling past bloodied lips, fingers scraped raw, scrambling to find purchase on the hood now slick with blood. Time seemed to slow, to nearly stop as the thing forced itself up, inch by bloody inch. Then the truck swerved across the road, skidded on the soft shoulder and hit a wall of corn. Corn stalks slapped against the grill, obliterating against the wind shield, before scraping the thing that had once been a man from the hood. It snarled, she had one last look at its hideous face, and then it fell, slipping under the wheels. The truck jolted as the tires ran over the man, one bounce, two…
Cam turned the wheel and the truck bounced back up onto the road, leaving the corn field behind them. The woman turned in her seat to look back out the window, but all she could see was the night. She slowly turned back to face the road that stretched before them, her hands reaching mechanically for the seat belt.
She looked over at him. “What the hell was that?”
His eyes were grim, focused ahead, his lips a thin, tight line, his knuckles white on the wheel. “Not sure I can explain it.”
Her voice was flat. “Try.”
He was silent for a long moment, and the only sound was the wheels on the road. The silence stretched until she was ready to demand an answer from him. Then he spoke. “I work for BioSys, doing…research for government contracts.”
“You were making weapons?”
He heard the outrage and censor in her voice.
“No! Well…not at first.” He hesitated. “It all went wrong. There was a…malfunction. People died, but they didn’t stay dead.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘They didn’t stay dead’?”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t understand it himself. “I don’t know…something they did to them. Somehow they took control even after the hosts were dead.”
“So that guy back there was what? A zombie?”
“For lack of a better word? Yeah.”
“Fuck that and fuck you if you think I’m going to believe bull shit like that.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
Silence stretched again and Cheyenne found herself searching the darkness behind them for any signs of the…zombie. As much as she wanted to deny what he had said, she found it hard to do. She had seen that thing, looked into its eyes. They had been feral, savage, inhuman. But to say it was dead? She just couldn’t accept it.
“So,” Her voice sounded sharp as it broke the deep silence. “That wasn’t a human?”
“Not anymore.”
“Good, I wouldn’t want to have run over a human.”
“You did.”
She looked over at him. “You just said-“
“You hit me.”
***
The first lights of town settled him more than he would have imagined. Just seeing evidence of humanity seemed to wash away most of the horror. Made it all seem unreal, like some delusion he could now wake from. The woman sat beside him quietly but he could tell that was about to pass. She had been eyeing him for a few moments; he could see the questions forming in her eyes.
“Do you plan on giving me my truck back?” She demanded at length.
He didn’t look at her as he continued to thread their way through the sleeping town. “As soon as I get where I’m going.”
“And where would that be?” He did look at her this time; saw the spark in her eyes that told him it was anger that colored her tone.
“The police station.”
“The police? No fucking way!” Anger fled before panic. “Stop. Stop now!”
It was the fear he saw there in those golden eyes that had him pulling the truck to the curb. “I have to tell them, they need to know.”
“I’m sorry.” She scooted across the bench seat until she could grab the keys out of the ignition. “Not with me.”
They eyed each other for a moment, panic and anger warring. At length he shoved open his door. “Fine, I’ll walk.”
She watched him get out. “I’m sorry…for hitting you.”
His eyes were flat with disgust as he turned away. She watched him walk away heading up the street a long minute before she slid over to close the door. She started the truck and eased out onto the empty street to make an illegal u-turn and head back the way they had come and as far from town as a tank of gas would take her.
***
The engine rumbled, reluctant to give up even at its age and above its roar she could hear the unsteady rattle of the passenger side window that long ago refused to roll all the way up. One head light glared into the darkness and in the back splash of that light she could see the splatter of blood across the hood. Zombie…the word shuddered through her. Where it had once been something of old horror movies she knew it was now real no matter how hard she tried to deny it. She glanced into the rearview mirror at the street up which he had walked, sickened and disgusted by sudden and unwanted feelings of guilt. It wasn’t her problem. Didn’t need to be. All she had to do was keep driving. Even as she thought it, even as her foot pressed down firmer on the gas pedal the shadow before her coalesced into form. Humans that were no longer human. Her hands convu
lsed on the wheel and she stomped hard on the breaks. The old Chevy squealed, swayed, than lurched to a stop. She watched as they stepped into the beam of her single headlight. She recognized their gate, something not quite human in the stiffness of limbs fighting against rigor mortis. Too much like the midnight movies she had watched as a kid. It was almost possible for her to deny it as fantasy, but she wasn’t dreaming. The increasing thud of her heart confirmed that.
Hating herself as she did it, she flipped the old truck into a u-turn in the middle of the street, lurching up and over the low cement divide, crushing hardy shrubs beneath her. She bounced once when the wheels settled and the truck’s engine roared as she sped off in the direction she had come.
***
The sound of a vehicle approaching didn’t make him turn, but when the truck swerved to a stop at the curb beside him he had to side step to avoid being clipped by its already dented fender. If he was surprised to see her, it didn’t show through the anger on his face. She leaned over to shove open the passenger side door.
“Hitting me once wasn’t enough? You had to try again?”
“Get in.”
He hesitated, but there was something there in her face and voice that made him get into the vehicle. “What changed your mind?”
The truck lurched away from the curb heading deeper into town.
“They made it to town.”
“What?” He couldn’t stop himself from looking back through the cabs rear window.
“Those bastards are fast.” Her voice was grim, her hands tight on the wheel.
“We need to go to the police.”
“And say what?” Her eyes flashed to his for a moment, sharp, cold. “’I’m being chased by zombies’?”
“We have to do something.”
“We? No, you have to do something. You made them.”