Containment (3 page)

The pilot said flatly, “It didn’t seem to work. There’s no containment. They’re still getting across.”

Several weeks later…

Neil Jordan, struggling a bit to catch his breath, asked, “What was that, Doc?”

“I said that it didn’t work. It doesn’t appear as if they contained it,” answered Dr. Caldwell.

Now finally on a rise high enough to see the bridge, or more accurately, to see where it had once stood, he saw that while the bridge had been downed, it was obvious by the destruction on the far side that the zombies had made it across. It looked very clearly like military vehicles on the far side in no better shape than those at the attempted roadblock back down the road closer to Anchorage. Curiously, there was a military Humvee beached and abandoned some distance down in the Knik below the bridge.

Looking at the destruction, he didn’t know what to do; how to react. He had actually been expecting that this is what they would find. He had assumed that the destruction would have worked in stopping the onslaught of undead, but it appeared that Dr. Caldwell was right. If it had worked, there would likely be several thousand ghouls gathered and milling about in front of the broken masonry.

Neil peered through his binoculars and shook his head. “Damn.”

“What?”

“I don’t think that the bridge is passable as it is.”

“Why not?”

“Take a look for yourself. Pay special attention to the darker spots in the pavement.”

The doctor took the binoculars from Neil and looked out. He adjusted the focus slightly and then scanned from one end of the first stretch to the other. He leaned forward, as if getting those few inches closer would help to bring the scene into sharper relief.

“Are those bodies stacked atop one another?”

Neil shook his head in disgust. “No. If those were just bodies, they wouldn’t still be moving around.”

The doctor looked closer still and could now see a reaching and flexing hand emerging from underneath the top layer of downward-facing bodies. And now he could see the general movement. He was reminded of fish still struggling to breathe and escape from the bottom of a barrel. They were packed so tightly, having been walked on by thousands of their undead brethren, that they were hopelessly tangled and knotted together.

Neil turned to face the rest of the group of survivors, still approaching up the slope. Their weary faces were drawn tight with exertion and deprivation, the only color from the streaks of dirt here and there, as well as the ruddy rose clouds blotching most of their cheeks. They all seemed so gaunt and frail to him. Perhaps it was just a product of his downcast mood, but these people didn’t seem to be robust Alaskans ready to face the challenges of the sometimes harsh environs of Alaska. Rather, they appeared to be a lonely group of desperate souls who had somehow managed to stay a single step ahead of the Reaper who had apparently harvested most if not all of the other thousands of souls who had once populated Anchorage, Alaska. When his eyes fell upon the two children, Danny and Jules, still tagging along with them, he managed to control the outburst that was threatening to explode from his mouth. These kids had seen and experienced more than should be asked from any adult, and they certainly didn’t need Neil to add to the misery. Instead, he took a deep breath and held it as he turned back to look at the dashed hope that the bridge had once signified.

It was with Jules’ brother Martin that the calamity had originally begun. He had been bitten by...
something,
down near Seward. The wound was very superficial, but it had bled well more than it should have and led to a very aggressive infection that within hours had claimed young Martin’s life. And for reasons that science could not answer and that religion dared not contemplate, young Martin had risen from his death slumber and began to kill everyone around him, setting off a chain of events that had escalated and multiplied with each victim also rising up to go on a homicidal spree, first at Providence Hospital and then spreading exponentially throughout all of Anchorage.

In a few hours, the city had been overrun with the walking dead. Those survivors fortunate enough were able to flee the city, but the vast majority of the population had fallen prey to the killing hordes. There were others like Neil and his group, still clawing for survival in the city, but he was afraid that all of them, his group included, might be fighting a losing battle against insurmountable odds. He kept his thoughts to himself for the most part, but there were times, like this one, that he felt the weight of that possibility hanging heavily on him. Like Sisyphus’ rock, his thoughts just kept rolling down over the top of him.

They had been on the run or in hiding for weeks now. They had seen as much or more destruction, mayhem, and death than even the saltiest of Genghis Khan’s Mongol warriors. And neither the running nor the chaos showed any signs of slackening in the slightest.

Fleeing the carnage of Providence Hospital and Midtown Anchorage, Neil and those with him found temporary sanctuary in South Anchorage in a small duplex, abandoned by its escaping owners. With supplies taken from the Fred Meyer where Meghan had been a manager, the group decided that waiting out the storm instead of running was the safer choice. They did their best to quietly entertain one another while avoiding detection by the ghouls that wandered the streets outside. Those were days of quiet, lonely isolation.

After several desolate days in their four-walled life raft, they were joined by another group of three survivors, Dr. Caldwell, Emma, and a police officer named Malachi Ivanoff. It wasn’t too long afterward that their refuge was discovered by the terrors outside, and they were forced to run once again.

Since leaving their sanctuary, their numbers had grown and dwindled. The van that had once transported them through the twisted wasteland that Anchorage had become was gone, abandoned by necessity, as it could not navigate the many impassable roads they had encountered. If Anchorage were a person and those roads were its windpipe, the patient would have been asphyxiated long ago. Early on in the catastrophe, the busiest of Anchorage’s roads and intersections had become impenetrable barriers that did nothing more than trap the souls whose vehicles created them. Those same people were virtually served up on glass and metal platters bearing the names of Chevrolet, Ford, and GMC.

Neil thought back on the past several days...weeks. How many had it been? He’d lost count. Or, more to the point, he’d stopped counting long ago when the sun rising and setting no longer held the same importance. It didn’t matter what day it was anymore because each was going to bring with it the same problems, the same struggles, the same agonizing realizations about their situation without the hope of a weekend to break up the monotony.

Weeks ago, with the minivan loaded with both people and their dwindling supplies, Neil drove away from their south Anchorage hiding place. The vehicle could outrun the ghouls laying siege to the home that had become their bastion but they were traveling into the unknown, like jumping into a mysterious lake on a dark night. With the exception of young Jules and Danny, everyone in the van had lived in Anchorage for some time. The city, as its former self, was familiar, but as it appeared on that autumn day, they could just as well have been driving on Venus.

Every street, every corner, every building held new mysteries and new dark secrets. The roads, once bustling with cars and pedestrians, were deserted except for the random wandering dog or the occasional plastic shopping bag that fluttered and danced on the gentle breeze. There were abandoned cars here and there, but except for the main intersections, which Neil was careful to avoid, the roads in the city were largely empty. Anchorage had become a ghost town.

The mix of souls in the minivan made for an eclectic stew of ages, backgrounds, and personalities. At the helm both figuratively and literally, was Neil. Before the zombie apocalypse he’d worked in the mortgage industry, though that experience had obviously not hindered his ability to survive the zombie apocalypse. In point of fact, maybe such a ruthless business had prepared him to deal with soulless opportunists.

Next to him sat the more senior Dr. Caldwell who, along with Jerry, who was sitting behind him, had come from Providence Hospital which was the origin of the outbreak. Dr. Caldwell had served in the military and had worked trauma centers, none of which had prepared him to deal with the horrible circumstances that came part and parcel with current events.

Behind Neil was Meghan, who had been a manager at a Fred Meyer store. Neil had wandered in looking for supplies and had found Meghan. She had been at his side ever since.

That’s not to say that Neil’s trip to Fred Meyer had been otherwise fruitless. Many of the spoils of that visit were still crowding the vehicle. There were piles of canned foods, boxes of crackers and other dry foods, and cases of water and juice all stacked in the back of the vehicle behind the rearmost seats. They had grabbed more than just food that morning as well. The group had a large variety of hunting rifles, shotguns, and sidearms as well as a large stock of ammunition for each. At the very least, the guns provided them all with a sense of comfort, whether it was justified or not.

Beside Meghan on the middle bench sat the most troubled—and troubling—soul in the vehicle. He still wore the uniform of an Anchorage Police Department Officer, but his patrolling days were over. Officer Malachi Ivanoff was as distant from his companions in the van as he was from a firm grasp on reality. Old memories, lurking in the shadows of the past, were punishing him. And in his punishment, all that Malachi could truly feel was fear, but the terror produced only rage. But like a volcano concealing the wrath within its bowels, he contained the anger in silence.

On the floor next to him was Jerry, a young man not even old enough to buy a drink from a tavern but who was far from a clueless kid. He was squeezed into the space between the edge of the middle bench seat and the sliding side door. Jerry had been a Certified Nursing Assistant at Providence Hospital and was finally getting his act together enough to get out on his own. He had a car and was ready to move into his own apartment when.... well, his story from recent weeks wasn’t much different than everyone else’s in the van. Since that morning, he’d found stores of confidence in himself that, until then, had gone unnoticed and untapped. All of which was rather fortuitous because on that morning, when their world was forever changed, he had been entrusted with the safety of a pair of children, Jules and Danny. The young boy, Danny, had been the best friend and family guest of Jules’ brother Martin, who had invited Danny to vacation with them in Alaska.

The pair of youngsters was sitting on the laps of a couple of women situated in the rear bench seat. Emma, sitting behind Malachi, was once an administrative employee at Providence Hospital. She’d had the good fortune of finding Dr. Caldwell early in the emerging catastrophe at the hospital and was saved by his planning and direction. Their harrowing trek through the hospital was followed by a brief trip in a hospital airlift helicopter and a violent crash on the south side of Anchorage. The survivors from Providence were eventually whittled down to just the good doctor, Emma, and the police officer.

Kim, sitting next to Emma on the very back seat asked, “How much gas do we have?”

Neil was relieved to hear her speak. When they made their escape from the safe house, her best friend Tony was attacked and killed by several of the walking dead as he threw open the garage door. The severity of his wounds caused him to die quickly and, therefore, reanimate quickly. With blood still spurting from the gaping wounds on his neck, face, and arms, he chased after the fleeing van. Kim demanded that they stop to help her friend, not willing to accept that it was no longer Tony that was chasing them. Her manic ranting had quickly turned to depressive silence.

Dr. Caldwell asked half-mockingly, “You want to take a road trip somewhere?”

Kim, still looking out the side window, said without much emotion in her voice, “No, I was just wondering how long we had until we would be on foot.”

From behind Neil, Meghan asked with a little more urgency, “How much gas
do
we have?”

Neil answered both of them, “Relax. We’ve got a full tank and this thing gets great gas mileage.”

“So, where are we headed?” Meghan continued.

Dr. Caldwell turned to look at the others in the back. “We’re going to try and find a way out of the city. I don’t think anyone is going to be coming back here anytime soon to give us any help, so it’s up to us to save ourselves.”

Kim pointedly asked, “You mean the way that we helped Tony?”

“Kim, what is done is done. None of us wanted that to happen to Tony any more than we’d want it to happen to anyone else. We can’t do anything about it now and there is no bringing him back. Had we even tried to help him, you know what would have happened to the rest of us. Do you want to be responsible for the same happening to Jules and Danny?”

Kim looked back out the window and didn’t answer, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.

Malachi just shook his head and didn’t say a word. In his mind, Tony was destined for such a fate. To Malachi, Tony had chosen his ill begotten path when he decided to lay with other men in sin. It sickened him to even imagine it. The rough groping...the clumsy positioning...the sweating...the struggle... He could feel his heart rate jump; his disgust rising as a sour biting taste in the back of his mouth. He couldn’t shake the images though. They just kept running in his mind over and over again. Rather than fight it–fighting it did no good whatsoever–he closed his eyes and relived a past that was never really any further than arm’s length away, always hovering on the periphery. The memories were so common that they didn’t even bring on the fear or the pain like they once had. They represented no more menace than the memory of his first cavity filling. Through the tangle of grabbing, abrasive older hands and arms, his mind sought out better visions, some token remembrance of happiness however fleeting from a childhood that was as flat in aspect as was the adult Malachi’s face.