Turning her attention to Doctor Hawkins, Cindy saw that he was rigid with shock. White faced, his mouth opened and closed as he tried to form words. Seconds ago, he might have been in control, but now he was at her mercy.
Using a scalpel from a nearby tray, Jim cut Heather loose. Numb from being restrained for the past few hours, she rubbed her wrist and ankles for a few seconds before standing. As circulation restored feeling to her body, she gauged the distance to Hawkins. When she felt she was ready for any counter-attack, she jabbed out with her right fist, hitting him square in the jaw. Thrown back by the punch, the doctor dropped to the floor.
Turning a steely gaze on Jim, she said, “You have ten seconds to open the door to that fucking rat cage and let my boyfriend in or I’ll rip your balls off and feed them to you.”
It only took him three.
With a target to vent anger on, Steve stepped through the opening in the glass wall and slammed the butt of his rifle into Jim’s face. As the man fell to floor with blood spurting out of his nose, Steve turned and fired three times into the lifeless body of Cain. The man didn’t even flinch, telling him Cain was dead, so he turned his attention to Hawkins. Advancing on the doctor, he raised his rifle to smash it into the top of his head, but stopped when Heather screamed, “No.”
With his M16 raised over his shoulder, he looked between her and where Hawkins crouched down, cowering as he whimpered for mercy. With a snarl, Steve said, “This piece of shit was ready to have you killed, so I’m going to fuck him up.” To punctuate his statement, he reared back to bring the butt of his rifle down with as much force as he could.
From behind him, Cage shouted, “Don’t do it, Steve. Hawkins is a douche-nugget, but we need him.”
Stopping again, Steve asked, “For what? Target practice. Z bait?”
“We need him to get out of here,” Cage explained.
Gesturing toward the door leading to the coal chute, Steve said, “We can go back out the way we came. We left a rope to climb out.”
“But how are we going to get Cindy up it, out through the wire, along the woods and back into the camp?” Fagan asked.
Looking to where the little girl sat strapped in the chair with a torn arm and blood staining her shirt, Steve felt his anger leave him in a rush. Lowering his rifle, he went to her and started loosening her bindings as he talked softly to her about what a good job she had done protecting Heather. Thinking by her lack of reply that she was in shock, he was relieved when she said in a calm tone, “I didn’t want to shoot him, but he left me no choice. He was going to hurt Heather. He was a bad man.”
Heather had joined him in freeing her, and in a calming voice said, “You did real good, Cindy. You saved me. Now we have to get out of here. Do you think you can walk?”
As they were about to lift her from the chair, Hawkins said. “She’s been bitten. You need to leave her tied up until we know if she turns.” Having regained some of his arrogance when he saw that he wasn’t going to be beaten, he added in a haughty tone, “You people are so ignorant. I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long.”
Everything that she had experienced since she entered the farmhouse came back to Heather in a rush. Being knocked out and held hostage by the doctor and Cain, watching Cindy being strapped into a chair and used as a human guinea pig, and then almost being shot flowed through her mind at once. Although she had tried to stay calm and keep Steve from killing Hawkins, she reached where the doctor was being held by Fagan in two steps. Watching as his eyes went wide, she gave him three quick jabs in the stomach, listening in satisfaction as the breath whooshed out of him.
As Fagan started to drop the gasping man, Heather told him, “Hold the son-of-a-bitch up. It makes it hurts worse.”
Fagan laughed as he hoisted the doctor upright and asked, “You military?”
“I used to be a cop,” Heather replied. “We had to deal with a lot of scumbags like him.”
Turning to tend to Cindy, she heard the man named Cage say to Hawkins, “You have two choices now, Herr Doktor. You can get on the intercom and have your people stand down, or I’m going to lock you in the testing chamber with a couple of the dead we bypassed in the coal bin.”
Hawkins’ eyes went wide and he wheezed out that Cain’s men would never take orders from him.
With an evil smile, Fagan squeezed a pressure point on the inside of Hawkins’ elbow and said, “Then tell them an airborne strain of the HWNW virus was accidentally released.”
Still defiant, in a strained voice, Hawkins said, “You idiot. For that, all you have to do is set off the biohazard alarm.”
Irritated that he had forgotten about the alarm, Staff Sergeant Fagan nonetheless gave Hawkins’ a good squeeze on the pressure point that brought him to his knees.
Looking toward a red box mounted on the wall with a biohazard sticker next to it, Cage turned to Steve and said, “Get everyone ready to move.” Pulling a two-way radio from his pocket, he adjusted the channel to contact the entire compound and pushed the transmit button before saying in a calm voice, “Attention, attention. This is Major Cage. We will be conducting a biohazard drill at the farmhouse in five minutes. Don’t be alarmed and pass this down the line so we don’t have a panic. I say again, this is only a drill.”
After repeating the message twice, he switched channels to contact the men and women he had quickly assembled into a reaction squad in case their mission went south. Hitting the transmit button again, he said, “This is Major Cage. The biohazard alarm is going to be set off in a few minutes to clear the farmhouse. I want all personnel exiting the building to be detained, over.”
“Detained by what means, sir, over?” A voice questioned.
Without hesitation, Cage replied, “By whatever means available, just be on the lookout for Lieutenant Perry. We’re going to give it two minutes after the alarm goes off before we come out. There will be eight of us, over.”
Freed from her restraints, Doctor Connors said, “I will stay behind with the girl. Every second we waste in developing the anti-virus means that more people are infected. The sooner we start, the more people we will be able to save.” Seeing Cage hesitate, she added, “The farmhouse will be deserted except for us, and you will have total control of the base, Major. We will be in no danger. If I can start working right away in locating the strand of DNA that was missing from the other woman, I can possible have the anti-virus ready in two to three days.”
“I’ll stay with her,” Heather chimed in as she retrieved Cain’s pistol. Looking down at the dead man, she added, “Besides, this piece of shit took my rifle and I want it back.”
Seeing the logic of plan, Cage pushed the transmit button and said, “Correction, there will be five of us exiting the farmhouse. The two in lab coats are our prisoners. I want you and your men to provide a security perimeter. Doctor Connors, her new assistant and one other will remain behind. If they need anything, I want you to move heaven and earth to get it for them, over.”
“Acknowledged, sir,” The voice replied.
Hearing yelling in the background as the man transmitted, Cage asked, “What’s going on, over.”
In a reluctant voice, the man said, “We have someone here calling himself Brain that keeps screaming about saving someone named Tick-Tock. He showed up a few minutes ago telling us that he fixed the radio and was getting distress calls from Fort Polk about this place named Fort Redoubt that was about to be overrun. I was going to have the medics sedate him, but he had a communique from Polk asking for anyone in the vicinity to help the civilians trapped there, sir. DC still has all air traffic grounded, but I guess it’s not all air traffic though because we have three Blackhawks inbound, over.”
Perking up at hearing this, Hawkins said, “Those are for me and my people. The joint Chiefs sent them to take me and the Malectron to Washington. Your best course of action would be to release me immediately.”
Steve ignored him, motioning frantically for the handset as Major Cage told the radioman to put Brain on. Seconds later, the tech’s voice came over the speaker saying, “I got the radio working and heard that Tick-Tock’s in trouble. Fort Redoubt got hit by a couple big herds of Zs and they’re about to be wiped out. We have to help him and Denise, over.”
His mind spinning on how to save his friend, Steve flashed back to the plan he had concocted on the ride from the airfield. Turning to look at Hawkins, he felt an instant distrust for the weasel. Seeing where Jim was slowly sitting up and shaking his head to clear it of the blow he had received, Steve strode over to him and asked harshly, “Where’s the Malectron.”
Pointing with a shaking hand at a box strapped to the top of the control panel, he replied, “That’s it. Please don’t kill me. I was only following orders.”
“Just like the Nazis and the Liberals,” Heather commented with disgust in her voice.
Ignoring this, Steve asked, “Do you know how to operate it?”
Nodding, Jim said, “I do.”
Turning to Major Cage, Steve said, “I need that box, my new buddy, Jim, and one of those helicopters.” Looking at Hawkins with disgust, he added, “And I might as well take this asshole along for the ride. I have plans for him.”
Not used to taking orders from a civilian, Cage balked for a second until he realized what Steve wanted to do. Glancing at where Heather and Doctor Connors were checking Cindy’s wounds, he knew that they would have had little chance in coming up with a way to kill the dead if it wasn’t for Steve and his people.
Making his decision, he walked over to the biohazard alarm and pulled the handle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Fort Redoubt:
Seeing one of the dead make it through the wall and past the spearmen, Tick-Tock fired twice into its snarling face as he wondered how long his ammunition would last. With fifteen major breaches in the past two hours, it was taking every bit of effort from those inside the fort to keep the dead from flooding into the compound.
Watching as a dozen creatures from hell squirmed through another gap where two telephone poles had been pushed in, he raised his rifle, but held fire when five men rushed in with long spears. With short thrusts used to punch holes in the craniums of the dead, they quickly eliminated them. More walking corpses moved forward to be dispatched by the spearmen, causing a logjam of lifeless flesh to stack up in the gap. Tick-Tock noticed that while the dead were plugging the hole with their bodies as they fell, the reanimated corpses behind them were clawing them out of the way just as fast in their quest to get in. Anxiously, he looked around for the men and women in the patching crew, but saw they were already busy on two other breaks.
Turning his attention back to the wall, Tick-Tock watched as one of the spearmen missed his mark, hitting his target in the shoulder when it moved at the last second. Trying to retract his spear from the creature, the man screamed when the dead thing lunged forward, pushing the shaft of the weapon through its own body as it sought to get closer to the food. In an attempt to kick it off, the spearman raised his foot just as three more of the dead squirmed their way through the gap, grabbing his leg and sinking their teeth into it.
Seeing he was a goner, Tick-Tock shot him once in the back of the head.
With only four spearmen to resist them, the dead slowly forced the living back.
Sighting in on the reanimated corpses tearing at the fallen spearman, Tick-Tock squeezed the trigger of his M4, firing off three rounds and downing all three of the dead. Reaching for his final magazine, fear ripped through him when he realized it was gone. Darting his eyes back and forth as he searched the ground, he spotted it lying near the breach in the wall where he had been standing when the dead started pushing their way in. Looking around for help, he saw that the other armed men and women had their hands full as they shot down the Zs that were on the verge of pouring into the compound. From all around the fort, he could hear the steady sound of gunfire, telling him that the dead were breaking in all over the compound.
With anger brought on by fear at what seemed to be a hopeless situation, Tick-Tock let out a bellow of rage before rushing forward. Twisting out of the grasp of one of the dead that had made it through the gap, he reached down and ripped the spear from the body of the creature he had shot and started punching holes in the skulls of the dead. Crazed by rage, his vision went red as he thrust forward again and again with the spear. As he reached the hole in the wall, he had the presence of mind to pick up the loaded magazine for his rifle before returning to his slaughter of the walking corpses.
The light around him dimmed as he advanced. He could hear nothing, but took no notice. Focused only on killing the dead, he lost sense of time and space, concentrating only on the twisted face in front of him before shoving the point of the spear through it and moved on to the next. His combat training took over, naturally directing him to climb atop the piles of dead bodies to keep the high ground as he advanced. His adrenalin pumping, he felt like he could go on forever, wiping out all the dead-asses by himself.
Suddenly feeling himself being grabbed and pulled rearward, he twisted his body and fought against the creatures that had gotten behind him. Thrusting backward with his spear, he felt himself immobilized as more hands grabbed it while also latching onto his arms and legs. With a bellow of rage that he couldn’t hear, his right hand slipped down to the pocket where he had secured his last magazine of ammunition, struggling against the buttons securing the flap over the cargo pocket. With his only thought being that if he was going down that he would take as many of them with him as he could, Tick-Tock hoped that the dead would first tear into his chainmail shirt before finding flesh. This would give him enough time to clear them off him. As he was pulled to the ground and dragged rearward, a face appeared directly above his, causing him to relax. In an instant, he knew it was over.