I heard a chopper overhead, then the message, “Delta Two Five, the bird is on its way to your location.”
“What are they doing here?” Colbert asked.
I shrugged. “The fire must have attracted their attention. They’d probably already known about site Alpha Two but left it alone. Last night, they must have seen the explosion. It lit up the sky for miles around. A fire at a government facility is something that interests them, I suppose.”
“Charlie Ten, copy that. We’ll wait for the breathing equipment before entering the building. We have a visual on the bird, and have marked a landing area within the compound. Tell the pilot to look for the flares located south of the building. Over.”
“Affirmative, Delta Two Five.”
“They’re going inside,” Jax said.
I nodded. “Big mistake. If Vess is still alive, they might as well ring a dinner bell before they go in.”
“He’s alive,” Sam said. “Alex’s stupid stunt might have wiped out most of the building, but Vess is still in there.”
“He was going to kill us,” I said. “I panicked.”
“We’re dead anyway, man.” He stared out of the window at the misty woods.
I cleared my throat. “That’s something we need to discuss. What’s going to happen tonight when we turn? I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t want to become a monster.” I looked at Doctor Colbert. “I’ll give you my gun later. When the time comes, will you do the right thing?”
She nodded grimly.
“Hart should be here tomorrow,” I told her. “Try and get the H1NZ1 to him.”
“Do you think he’s going to land here with the army crawling all over everything?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but we have to hope he will. He was willing to risk it when he thought the area might be full of zombies.”
“Zombies don’t have guns.”
“I don’t think the army will shoot at a helicopter from Site Alpha One,” Doctor Colbert said. “I’ll make sure he gets the H1NZ1.”
“Thanks,” I said. At least Lucy would be okay. Our mission to Alpha Two hadn’t been totally in vain.
The walkie-talkie crackled. “Charlie One, we’ve unloaded the breathing equipment from the bird. I’m sending a recon team of six men into the building now.”
“Affirmative, Delta Two Five.”
If Vess was still in there, those six soldiers were being sent to their deaths. I remembered how Vess had killed Johnny, tearing out his spine cruelly. I hoped the fire had destroyed Vess but, like Sam, I was sure that he was still alive.
A new voice came over the static. “This is Recon One. We are at the front entrance, standing by.”
Delta Two Five said, “Recon One, standby.” Then, a moment later, “Go.”
I heard a sound like a small explosion come over the airwaves, and then the recon team leader said, “Go, go, go.” It sounded like he had taped down the button on his walkie-talkie to give Delta Two Five a running commentary as they searched the building. I assumed the explosion I had heard was some sort of charge they had detonated to blow the main door.
A voice shouted, “Clear!”
“Reception area clear,” Recon One’s leader said. “Advancing to stairs.”
“Where are they going?” Colbert asked.
“Probably the second floor,” Tanya said. “They probably want to know what caused that explosion.”
“I can tell them that,” Sam said, pointing at me. “He’s right here.”
“Tangos on stairs. Engaging.” Bursts of gunfire and shouts of, “Tango down!” came over the static. The shouts sounded muffled by the breathing equipment the soldiers were wearing. It was about a minute before the firing stopped. A steady voice said, “Stairway clear. Proceeding.”
“It didn’t take them long to deal with those nasties on the stairs,” Sam said.
I nodded. “But now they’ve given away their location with all that noise. If Vess is still alive, he’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
“If he’s still alive,” Sam said, “blowing up the building was fucking pointless.”
“Entering level two,” Recon One’s leader said calmly. “Engaging tangos.” More gunfire erupted. We had seen a lot of zombies by the level two elevators, which was where the recon team would be standing now, but the zombies had probably moved when the fire started and the sprinklers kicked in.
It only took thirty seconds before we heard someone shout, “Clear!”
“Proceeding to east side of building,” the leader said. Then, “Holding position. What was that noise?”
A soldier said something I couldn’t hear.
“Check it out,” the leader said. Then into the walkie-talkie, he reported, “Investigating noise in air vent.”
Shouts and gunfire broke through the static. “Man down!” the leader shouted. “What the fuck was that?”
More shouts, more gunfire. “Fall back to stairs! It’s got Samuels! Oh, my God!” More shots were fired. I heard a man scream.
“It took his spine,” the leader said in disbelief. His breathing sounded loud and close, even over the poor reception of the walkie-talkie. “Fall back!”
Another scream was followed by more shots. “Fuck!” Recon One’s leader breathed.
“It’s too fast,” a soldier shouted before he began screaming.
“Falling back,” the leader whispered. “They’ve all gone. It took my men.” I could hear his labored breathing as he fled down the stairs, then a low growl coming from somewhere close to him.
The last thing the Recon One leader said was, “No! Please!”
Then there was nothing more but the hiss of static.
I looked at the others. Colbert’s face had gone pale, her eyes fixed on the walkie-talkie. Tanya’s eyes held their usual cold look, and I wondered if she was thinking that blowing up the servers had not only killed us, but also these soldiers. They probably wouldn’t be here if not for the explosion. Jax was sitting quietly, her eyes bloodshot. I wondered if she still felt ill.
Sam looked at me and raised his eyebrow. “Well done, dude, you just killed six soldiers without even leaving the comfort of the van.”
“Leave him alone,” Jax said. “Alex did what he thought was best at the time. He couldn’t have known the army was going to come here and go into the building.”
“Thanks, Jax,” I said to her.
“It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. I need some air.” Tanya went to the side door of the van and opened it. She stepped outside.
“I need to stretch my legs,” I said. At that moment, I needed to be as far away from the others as possible. I couldn’t take any more of their accusing glances, especially not today.
The morning was cold and damp, the woods smelling strongly of pine and earth. I walked past Tanya and into the woods, away from the road.
“Be careful, Alex,” she said,
I nodded but said nothing. It didn’t really matter if I was careful or not. My fate was sealed, and so was hers.
I walked aimlessly for a while, listening to the birds singing in the trees, feeling the cool breeze on my face, and wondering how things could have turned out differently if Doctor Marcus Vess hadn’t decided to prove that his serum was harmless by injecting it into himself. The smallest event could trigger a catastrophe. The human race could be brought to its knees by something as simple as a microscopic virus.
I found a fallen, mossy tree stump and sat down for a while, watching the sun come up over the trees and burn off the mist. If this was to be my last day on Earth, at least I was in a beautiful setting. Things could be worse. At least I wasn’t spending my last few hours in a Survivors Camp as so many people had. I closed my eyes and listened to the birdsong.
The serenity of the moment was killed when I heard someone shout, “Get out of the vehicle!”
Moving quickly back the way I had come, I stayed low as I approached the camper van. What I saw made my heart sink.
At least a dozen soldiers surrounded the van, rifles aimed at Sam, Tanya, Jax, and Doctor Colbert. My friends had their hands up and offered no resistance as the soldiers herded them along the track toward the road where a truck waited.
I heard someone say, “What have we got here, then?”
“Survivors,” came a reply. “Fuck knows how they lasted this long.”
My friends climbed into the back of the truck at gunpoint. A soldier closed the tailgate, and the truck drove away toward Site Alpha Two.
I waited a few minutes to make sure the area was clear. It was possible that the soldiers might leave a guard her to watch the camper van, but the more I thought about that, the more unlikely it seemed. It would probably be foolish to leave a couple of men in a wood full of zombies. And why bother guarding an empty vehicle? They were securing this whole area, so they could return to the camper van whenever they wanted. It wasn’t going anywhere.
I crept into the clearing, pausing every couple of seconds to listen for a sound that might tell me my theory about a guard was wrong. By the time I reached the camper van, I was sure I was alone here.
I opened the side door and went into the vehicle. The soldiers had taken the weapons and some of the equipment we had brought with us but they had left a backpack of rations, and the pack that contained the H1NZ1. They had missed it in their hasty search, not understood what it was, or decided to come back later to search the vehicle properly.
I slung the pack onto my back and adjusted the straps so that it fit comfortably. I wasn’t sure why I was taking it with me but I couldn’t abandon the thing we had worked so hard to obtain. There might be some way I could get it to Doctor Colbert, and I was going to try my best to do that.
Besides, Johnny Drake had died for this chemical so I wasn’t going to just leave it here.