Survivor Response Read online

  Alan seethed, clicking his tongue.

  “Request that that crew be held in the bay until I can meet them. They do not leave, nor do the bodies. Find me the names of that crew and the fire fighter with Karen.”

  Sophie nodded and began to scan the video footage. Alan walked briskly out of the room, mentally juggling his original plan, the crash and now the exposed hand. He focused his thoughts on one item at a time.

  Everything in Foxer was still on schedule. His new drones would be stationed in various side streets and alleyways, prepared to follow wherever Julian’s trail would go. Nasher needed Julian. Alan knew Nasher still lacked the sophisticated technical skills to acquire credit dollars, a form of authenticated currency based on cryptography, and still relied on cash to do his business. And Alan cornered the market on technical talent by employing them throughout the city’s infrastructure grid with a heavily enforced non compete contract with stipulations that, if caught illegally hacking or manipulating the city’s resources, the offender would end up in prison. He’d only had to act twice. Both times he sent the offenders the Mill, where he ordered them killed.

  He could contain the crash scene where he lost two of his drones as a rogue shipping truck. He’d have to have Sophie doctor the logs to trace the truck, and its contents, to an owner. The people of Greenport accepted the occasional snafu, but this was the first major incident in a year. As Caroline reminded him, Greenport held a reputation for being safe. He’d need her to address the accident publicly, perhaps announcing a review of all shipping and trucking regulations. They could raise the prospect of inspections and fines. It’d be a charade, but it would appear as if the city was doing something.

  But he still needed to contend with the two dead bodies, one of which a ZMT had begun a rudimentary dissection on, discovering the reinforced fist, ferro-electric suit and the controller at the base of the skull. The crash he could easily misdirect, but a controlled zombie he’d repurposed into a walking drone? People accepted the living dead, but zombies that could be controlled like rotting puppets? He’d need to destroy the drones.

  He’d need to destroy the truth behind the Plague—the truth as he believed it to be—or he’d lose the city he worked so hard to rebuild to his vision. And he surprised himself in his own accomplishments.

  By the time the Plague hit, Alan had coauthored fewer than ten papers in his field, where he acted as a neuroscience researcher with a specialty in materials that were biologically sensitive. They counted as modest successes, but it didn’t garner the grant money, accolades, or prestige he craved. In his mid-forties, Alan only had so many laboratory doors remaining in his career for him to walk through.

  But then the outbreak spread, and it leveled all the walls and freed him to create new opportunities.

  Perhaps the CDC knew before it collapsed, and perhaps the government knew before it crumbled, but while holed up in his lab during the early panics, he discovered that the Plague was a technological one that just so happened to have adverse biological affects.

  With his university-sponsored lab empty of colleagues with families, he ran tissue samples recovered from a dead security guard, and discovered tiny molecular particles with an electron microscope. Curious, he had scoured his campus for more samples, avoiding any zombies roaming the increasingly devastated green lawns. The particles themselves were not inherently dangerous or toxic. They attached to the body’s nervous system and sustained themselves off of electrical pulses. An average person would feel tired on initial infection or at worst, fatigued and ache all over. When the body died, the particles would sense their loss of energy and sacrifice a percentage of those within the host in order to revive their host and bring it back to life. This was why someone could turn without being bitten.

  But Alan was curious. What if the particles were exposed to a biological host, a living creature? A mottled white rodent with red eyes gave him the answer. The rat, Chaz, was injected with a serum of the particles and saline, and lived in Alan’s lab. After he survived three weeks, Chaz received a neuro implant, wired to the base of its spinal cord. Chaz survived another three weeks, but now paced his cedar chip plastic cage slower. Satisfied that Chaz was healed, and that the implant received signals from Chaz’s nervous system, Alan injected a fatal solution of concentrated potassium. The rat twitched and squirmed and squealed and clawed as his heart exploded. Thirty minutes later, Alan issued the first commands to dead Chaz, tapping a series of movements to test control of all limbs. Chaz jerked, its legs spastic, motioning forward, and veering right and left in a drunk-like stupor, while Alan yelled in success.

  While the world burned around him, a half dozen more Chazes and an additional three monkeys would undergo Alan’s incremental testing of the ability to control a reanimated corpse. With the rats, he determined a network of electrodes patched to key nerve points on the body would enhance the particles syncing throughout the nervous system by spreading out a small electrical current. With the monkeys, Alan verified the particles affected primates the same way, and further, he created a crude wire mesh suit to cover the body. The prototypes looked like window screen mesh threaded with thin strands of copper wire, only the mesh composited of graphene. When a current traveled through the mesh it enhanced the strength of the mesh. As muscles deteriorated, the mesh would allow the body to perform better than before.

  The mesh. The mesh now covering his two dead zombies traveling to Central Command would need to be explained. It did not exist in Greenport, nor did Alan request it be made in the factory district. He smuggled the material in over the course of a six-month period once he received word that a manufacturer in Virginia had come back online. A worn U-Haul truck entered Greenport with construction supplies designated for Central District. Alan would instruct a city employee to carrying the boxes to his lab, under the guise of testing for structural integrity. Later, he’d request Sophie to modify the city’s logs, indicating the supplies were damaged and destroyed.

  Currently, no one knew what the mesh was or did other than cover a dead person.

  Alan arrived at his personal Greenport lab, swiped his badge and slammed the door. Two zombies paced in the glass holding cell; the torso of Jonathan had begun to scab and congeal from bite marks. He ignored the growls as he sat in front of his computer and brought up his command line control console for his drones. Through the keyboard, he issued new survival instructions. All entities should protect their helmet’s face shield from blunt contact or reduce the exposure to gunshots. The command felt clunky, and he had to hope it would be received and acted upon properly.

  Alan’s thoughts slowed to a less anxious pace, and he reached for the intercom. “Sophie?”

  The intercom clicked and pulsed. “Yes?”

  “Did you figure out who else was at the scene? And did you issue orders to the ZMT arriving here?”

  “I did. Let me send over the profiles. Are you in your lab?”

  “Of course. Where else would I go?”

  “Oh, I, well,” her voice was muted. “The individuals at the scene are Paul Summers, a senior ZMT member and crew leader.”

  “Isn’t he involved with Karen?”

  “He’s actually engaged to Karen.”

  Alan’s mind hummed with possibilities concerning their roles in getting Julian. “And the others?”

  “There was only one other individual. Based on imagery of the individual’s movements and height, I guess it to be Robert Bannon, better known as Bobby. He’s a ZMT on Paul’s team. It appeared he arrived on the scene and held Paul at gunpoint to enter the truck’s cab and retrieve Julian.”

  Was he Ed’s contact to pick up Julian? “Interesting. Has Ed arrived? I’d like talk to him about this.”

  “He’s walking in now.”

  “Have him wait in my office. I’ll be there soon.”

  “I’ll let him know. As for the ZMT vehicle carrying your subjects, it was originally headed for the hospital.”

  “What?” That bre
ached protocol. He slapped his hand against the wall.

  “But I redirected them to Central under orders of quarantine. They should be arriving in the truck bay within thirty minutes.”

  He slowed his breathing. He needed to reel in his anger. “Very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  If the vehicle arrived at the hospital, doctors would have become involved. And doctors would examine the electrodes and mesh and come up with theories as to their purposes. Alan could direct, or misdirect, the examination under his supervision.

  “Is there any status on where Bobby and Paul were going?”

  “Yes and no. They were crossing the bridge to Foxer but crashed.”

  “They crashed? Into what?”

  “One of the trailers. This one was parked on the Foxer side of the bridge. The vehicle lost control and collided with the parked trailer. I’m guessing your subjects are nearby.”

  Sophie sometimes called his remote drones his “subjects” after he introduced them to her in his labs, as test subjects. “That’d be a good guess. I’ll be back up to meet with Ed.”

  “Okay.”

  Alan turned back to his keyboard. Sitting down, a wave of fatigue shored around his legs and swelled across his body. He frowned, struggling to mentally construct the commands he wanted to type as fast as he had liked. He couldn’t afford a slow decision in the next several hours, and he certainly didn’t want his body to slow him down, either. He dug through a drawer and swallowed a synthetic energy stimulant, while he eyed an early prototype of a drone mesh suit that lacked the gloves hanging on the other side of the lab.

  He instructed the two remote drones to slow down their pursuit, observe, and to not kill the suspects they followed. Anyone else was fair game, but he needed Julian, and now Bobby and Paul, alive.

  Before leaving, he stripped off his clothes and put on the mesh suit. It fit too tight across his stomach, but not enough to restrict his movement. He swung his arms and kicked his legs with renewed vigor, moving noticeably faster that he had to take a few minutes to re-acclimate his sense of balance. Alan put his clothes back on and before he left the lab, glanced at the three zombies. It had been a while since he’d talked face to face with Karen. Perhaps, he should greet her arrival and have a one-on-one discussion about her recent performance. But first, Ed would give him answers.

  Found

  A car door slammed, and the girl awoke. She laid in the back cargo area of the wagon, her hands bound behind her back and duct tape encircled her ankles. She guessed that’s what sealed her mouth and enwrapped her wrists. The nylon carpet bristled at her cheek and a foul, musty scent permeated the area. Dark splotches were scattered about the floor and interior sidewall. Out the windows, behind the shadowy oak and ash trees, the sky was a pastel blue and orange.

  The car shook and Lana knelt on the back seat and peered over and shook the girl’s leg. “Wake up, sweetie. Wakey, wakey.”

  The girl rolled her head, strings of hair crossing her eyes and returned a fierce glare.

  “Good, good. Hank, good news, you didn’t kill her.”

  “I told you I didn’t. She was sleeping cold when I threw her back there. Held my hand over her nose to check.” The car’s engine turned over and started.

  “Looks like we’ll get paid good when we take her in to the buyer this morning.” Lana parted the hair on the girl’s forehead, lingered on the gash of dried blood and cupped her cheek. “Whatever you did to your head ought to clear up. We’re just lucky it wasn’t your face.”

  “She got a pretty face, but not like yours, Lana.”

  She smiled and called out over her shoulder, “Shush, you.” Lana turned back to the girl, still smiling, “This pretty face is gonna get us a fine dinner.”

  Lana hopped out the back, closed the door and slipped into the front passenger seat as the car spun around and began to drive out of the park. The girl breathed faster and pulled at her wrists. For a year, she had avoided people, lucky to find an abandoned school stocked with food and fortunate that it had been ignored by other survivors, tucked away in a deserted suburban enclave.

  In that year, how far, how crazy had the world gone? Was everyone like her brother? Were Lana and Hank loners or part of a larger group? And how was she worth dinner to them? If they had gas and basic food and water, then there was some sense of order and civilization.

  Her high school history and psychology lessons blended together. In her world history class, her teacher led them through a world war simulation that ultimately devolved to anarchy after several boys colluded and bought all the food supplies and pitted each county against each other, after they learned about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

  Whatever trade Lana and Hank were driving her to, it wouldn't be in her favor.

  Her body bounced as the vehicle hit a pot hole, and she winced at her pinned wrists. Despite the stains, the cargo area was free of trash, dirty clothes, or tools. She wriggled to her other side, ignoring the conversation in the front seat, other than catching an excited pitch to their voices. Up and down, more dark streaks lined the beige, hard plastic sidewall, except on this side, there was a free form hole with edges like jagged teeth.

  The car turned hard and she rolled back over, hair scattered across her eyes. She twisted her wrists and scooted her body back toward the wall. Despite the cool morning, sweat seeped through her shirt as she attempted to hook an edge of the duct tape on a hard plastic edge. Five times she shrugged her arms, cutting the edges of her hands before she hooked the cuff. Back and forth, she sliced blindly at her wrists, blood tricking down her fingers. Once the tear felt halfway up her hands, she pried them loose, flexed them freely in front of her and tore at the silver bindings around her ankles. She hoped the road noise masked the ripping of the tape.

  With her hands and feet now free, she focused on the flat tops of the buildings scrolling by. Still somewhere in suburbia with nondescript strip malls, the car slowed and turned into a parking lot. Half a McDonald’s golden arch stood, and the playground’s fence was covered in wood panels. At the top of the yellow and red fort, a seated figure in a leather jacket and pants waived a rifle at the car, and they parked.

  Lana and Hank were not here for fries and a shake.

  Their doors opened and she hurried into a bound position facing the rear window to hide her free hands and feet. Lana walked past and didn’t stop, while Hank came around and bent at the window.

  He clapped his hands on his jeans, “Looks like you worked yourself up trying to get free. We’ll cut you loose once we get a price on you.”

  Behind him, Trading Post was scrawled in large, bright yellow paint across the brick walls. He leaned down and stroked the hair out of her eyes. They smelled of dirt and sweat. “We debated on keeping you. See if you were friendly.” His calloused hand caressed her cheek. “Sometimes Lana and me like being friendly with others, and in a way all this craziness let us be real friendly and not worry about what some preacher man thinks. But we gotta eat.”

  Hank turned to the McDonald’s and stretched his arms. Summoning the self defense lessons of her middle school gym class, she swung her leg around and kicked the back of Hank’s knee.

  He collapsed backwards and smacked his head on the latch of the rear door and cried out. She leapt over him and sprinted out of the parking lot, not bothering to look back at Hank pawing his head to stop the blood oozing from the back of his skull.

  She ran free, but light headed. She hadn’t eaten or drank anything in at least twelve hours or more. The street appeared to be a main drag for a suburban town outside of a major city. Stoplights and street signs lined intersections while nail salons, cell phone stores and pizza joints had turned into campsites. Cars were strategically parked in lots in front of tents and makeshift canopies. Small groups of people milled about, some propping up tables and putting items on them.

  She jogged into a lot and collapsed at a wall.

  She pulled her knees close and slowed her breathing
, fighting any urge to sob in front of random strangers in a makeshift campground bazaar. Without a bag of food she’d have to beg or steal for provisions until she found another place to hide out, and she’d need to scrounge spare clothes and fresh water. Reeking of body odor and scratching at dried sweat stains would be bearable for so long. Plus, she needed to find rubbing alcohol to clean the cuts that now stung along her wrists. And the gash in her forehead.

  The soft click of tennis shoes approached, and a man’s voice said with a hint of concern, “Excuse me, are you all right? You ran in here pretty fast.”

  He was tall with grey hair, cargo pants and a striped oxford shirt; he stood like a high school science teacher. At his hip, a worn black cell phone case hung, and from within a chirp rose. She wondered for a moment if it had service or who he could talk to. He tilted his head and palmed the phone. She bowed her head.

  He squatted down, and held out the phone. “Is there someone you need to call? You might get through. The networks are still patchy at best. I use it mostly for GPS, which is one of the few technologies still reliable, provided you have electricity of some sort.”

  She shook her head.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, touching her knee.

  She hadn’t said her name in ages, nor had anyone been around to call her name. Her brother was the last, shouting it over and over while she hid in a closet of a half finished, abandoned house.

  She looked the man in his eyes, a pale blue, and saw sincerity and opportunity. An opportunity to choose a new name.

  She looked the tall man in the eyes, remembering the dying man at the school who cried out love in his last breaths, and she wanted to be someone loved.

  “Sophie,” she said.

  The man nodded. “Pleasure to meet you, Sophie. I’m Alan.”

  Chapter 14

  Halfway en route to the hospital, Karen steadied herself while Vee made an unexpected U-turn.