John Holmes - Even Zombie Killers Can Die

“Even as IG, I had no influence or authority over the complex beneath us. It was administered by DARPA, I think in conjunction with JSOC, and it was made clear to me that the limits of my authority ended at the surface. Frankly, I didn’t give a damn. All I really cared about was counting down the days until I could get back here and be with Bryan for the last half of his chemotherapy. My stepson was up here with him, but he had his own life as a photographer in Florida and we knew he would be flying back south as soon as I left the military. There had been persistent reports that soldiers were disappearing from Detrick, and I had noticed on the local news that the number of homeless in surrounding cities was also dropping. There was no explanation for it, but many were of the opinion that it had something to do with Detrick. The base was gradually developing a rather sinister reputation. I’m a practical woman, but even I began to suspect. I asked around among the other Sergeants Major on post — there’s nothing to match the E-9 mafia, I can tell you — and finally one of them admitted that the disappearances had started about the time Moreau arrived.

“Finally, she snatched the wrong soldier: my NCOIC at IG. Before, she’d been careful to take soldiers already known as trouble-makers, choosing the drug abusers, recently-chaptered troops, or those who were most likely to be reported as AWOL. But I knew Staff Sergeant Roberts, and he was utterly dedicated to the Army. Not married, no children, he had nothing but the Army, and he worshipped it. Now I was pissed. It was one thing to hear rumors, but another thing to take one of my soldiers, steal him out of his own apartment, and experiment on him.” Even now, years later, I saw the NCO come out in her face, the old rage that someone had hurt one of her people. No NCO worth their stripes took the misuse of a subordinate by someone else, anyone else, lightly. “I confronted the Sergeant Major who supervised the bioweapons complex. We knew each other from Iraq, Harold Schumaker. He had balls, let me tell you. When Hasan Akbar fragged those two tents, Harry apprehended him in flip-flops and PTs. Get Harry drunk, and he’d tell you he clotheslined the little bastard as he ran between two tents after tossing his last grenade. Harry wasn’t scared of anything. Mortars, IEDs, suicide bombers, you name it: everyone and everything that tried to kill him failed. But when I confronted him about Roberts, he begged me to let it go. Begged me.” She shook her head, incredulous.

“Why the fuck should I let it go, Harry? She took my troop for her experiments. He’s not a lab rat, for Christ’s sake.’

“But I looked in his face and I saw real fear, the kind of fear that keeps a man up at night. I saw a terrified child staring back at me. ‘You have to let this go, Cassie,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about your soldier but you have to believe me, he’s beyond your help now.’

“Not much frightens me, but the sight of this huge, hulking man scared out of his wits, scared me . ‘What did she do to him, Harry? Why won’t you tell me?’

“He could only shake his head. ‘You don’t want to know, Cassie. I swear to God you don’t want to know.’

“‘We have to stop her, Harry. Whatever she’s doing, you have to stop it. If there’s protocol, ways to seal her and her little Nazi scientists in there, you have to hit that button. How many victims is it this year alone? The cops are saying three hundred homeless are missing. If I go through the MPs’ records, how many more victims will I find?’

“He wouldn’t answer me. He just shook his head and told me to leave. I guess the best thing about that conversation, the only good to come out of it, for me at least, is that I confronted him the day after my retirement party. It was Friday, and I had cleared out my quarters that morning. I had ridden to post on my Harley, my truck parked at a hotel near Catoctin Mountain Park. I climb, you know, and I wanted to climb that one before I left for home. Since I lived off-post, the bitch didn’t know that I was already moved out and miles away. I drove back to the hotel, tired and pissed-off, after dark. I figured I’d climb the mountain the next morning, then be on the road by 1500 or so. Instead, I got a call around one am. It was Harry.”

We sat in silence, unable to turn away. I realized dimly that the island was pitch-black around us, all lights doused, and that eerie howling a gruesome accompaniment to what I already knew, in my heart of hearts, what she would say. Her face was pinched with old pain. “He was terrified, crying with fear. I could hear a pounding on a door somewhere in the background, with that same scream we hear right now. I could barely hear him. ‘Get out of your house!’ he cried to me. “For God’s sake, you have to run! She’s sending them after you.”

“Who, Harry?’ I shouted down the phone. ‘Who is she sending? What is that noise?’

“It’s too late for me.’ He sucked in a huge, sobbing breath and spoke as calmly as he could. ‘I’m so sorry, I should have done what you asked, and long before this. It’s all my fault.’ I could hear him loading a pistol in the background, and he came back on the line. ‘Forgive me, Old Girl. I hope you’re right, and God forgives all sins, because what’s about to happen is on my head.’

“‘Harry!’ I yelled at him. ‘Don’t!’”

“‘I have to. You don’t know what will happen to me otherwise.’

“The gunshot was loud on the phone, louder than I expected. I heard the phone drop, and then the sound of the door smashing in and a howling noise. It sounded like his office was being torn apart. Then the phone went dead.” The expression of bitter grief on her face gave me the shudders. She wasn’t just telling us this; she was reliving it.

“I didn’t know what he’d been screaming about, and I had no idea what that noise had been. But I’ve learned, over the years, to trust my gut. Better, I knew to trust him . I packed my bag, turned in the hotel key, and got the hell out of there. I didn’t know how much time I had, so I ditched the trailer with my motorcycle in the parking lot and left in the truck. I was on the road twenty minutes after his phone call. I called Bryan and my stepson answered. I told him I was on my way back north and he needed to keep one eye on the news. I turned on NPR, and less than an hour later the first reports came in. I set my speedometer for ninety miles an hour and drove without stopping for eight hours, taking back roads. I got here in less than twelve hours. By then the infection had spread to Baltimore and D.C. The island had a meeting in the schoolhouse, and I told them what I knew. We started planning the wall that night. Two of our people are general contractors, so we took all of our trucks to their sites and loaded up as much construction material as we could fit, load after load for eighteen hours straight. After that, it was only about a month and a half before the plague reached Burlington. We’ve been walled up here ever since.”

“Fuck me, that’s hideous,” Doc said hoarsely.

She leaned forward and speared each of us with her intense gaze. Pierre had lit candles after the sun fell and it was in their flickering light that she stared us down. “Doctor Morano condemned our entire world to satisfy her ego. I don’t think she released the zombies because I started asking questions. Harry had told me a few days before I confronted him that the funding was going to get cut in the bioweapons program. The staff were subject to the same furlough as every other DA civilian. Morano released her test subjects because she didn’t want to lose her job.” She leaned back, bitter. “Six and a half billion people are either dead or in some grotesque half-dead limbo because one woman wanted to play God at her own whim and get paid to do it.”