David Dunwoody - Empire's End

“A-access code?” the terrified scientist asked. Clarke nodded. The doctor opened the door allowing Clarke into the receiving warehouse.

A spurt of gunfire threw the doctor back. Cries of surprise and outrage were heard from the other side of the door: “What the fuck are we dealing with?!”

“It’s Clarke.” Bradshaw said grimly, watching the door from behind the massive wheel of a dump truck. Stoddard just stared at him. On the other side of the captain, Thomas was reloading her M-16 and cursing herself for shooting the doctor.

“Explain,” Stoddard said. “Ken?”

“I fucked up.” Bradshaw counted the beads of sweat rolling down the side of his head. “Me and Whittaker, we fucked up. We killed Clarke and Harmon.”

“Wait a minute…” Thomas started to back away.

Bradshaw turned and said, “You’re not part of this. Go.” And she did.

“I’m staying,” Stoddard whispered.

“Joe, this isn’t your fight.”

“If it’s your fight then it’s my fight, brother.”

“No time for this bullshit!” Bradshaw hissed. Stoddard just shrugged.

Thomas edged toward the receiving bay, where she’d be able to leave the warehouse and join the soldiers scrambling outside. A cold hand closed over her throat.

“No sound.”

She cocked her head a quarter-inch to the right and saw her dead comrade, Pete Clarke. He wasn’t a zombie horror; the only indication of his lifelessness was the empty look in his eyes and that raspy monotone. He stared at her, through her — then she smelled the gas.

She spun away from him, finger on the trigger, and he popped her through the head before she got off one shot. Pulling himself onto the receiving bay, he fired a second round into the spilled gasoline he’d liberated from the trucks.

The warehouse exploded. Soldiers heading for the entrance were thrown back.

Stoddard rose from the grass outside, coughing violently. He and Bradshaw had each gone through a window. Before he could orient himself, soldiers poured through the clouds of smoke to grab him. “Wait! Ken! Ken!” He bellowed.

Bradshaw staggered through a column of darkness into Clarke’s arms. He shoved the afterdead off, and turned to see no escape route, only piles of flaming debris surrounding them; he’d chosen the wrong window and the wall had simply come down around him.

“Whooo?” moaned the afterdead.

“Ryland,” Bradshaw answered, drawing his twin widowmakers. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why it had to happen, and I don’t know why I did it. I’m sorry Pete.”

He leapt at Clarke, going straight for that wasted knee — the afterdead buckled, and Bradshaw scissored off an ear and most of one cheek. He hit the ground ready to pivot, sending his other blade into the meat of Clarke’s waist.

Clarke whirled to face him; Bradshaw knew that the damage dealt to his opponent meant nothing — there was no pain, no shock — quickly, he planted a widowmaker between Clarke’s eyes and jerked his head sharply downward. The neck broke. Clarke’s eyes rolled in their bloody sockets and he pawed at Bradshaw’s uniform. “I’m sorry, so sorry,” Bradshaw was whispering, as he freed his blades, stepped back and prepared to decapitate the undead.

Clarke could not offer the same sentiment. He felt nothing as he shook the pistol from his pants leg and shot Bradshaw through the heart.

For the first time in a long time, things made sense for Ken Bradshaw, including his own demise, and as he fell forward he thought that, maybe now, all things would return to their proper state and the corruption he’d helped sow would wash away. It was a foolish notion, but comforting in death.

Base Commander St. John beat his knuckles against his desk as he listened to radio reports of the havoc on the other side of the base. All they knew at this point was that a shooter had breached the labs, and the receiving warehouse was in flames.

Stoddard’s voice came over the radio. “ He’s an afterdead! Bullets won’t stop him! ” How was one miserable rotter causing such a panic? It was the men on the ground, they needed to pull themselves together and assess the situation with level heads. He grabbed his radio to issue just such a decree when the intercom on his desk squawked. “Commander! It’s Ryland — he’s coming up, he’s — he’s attacking everyone! Just about took my finger off!”

“What in the Christ.” St. John yanked open the drawer at his right hand and roused his Desert Eagle from its foam bedding. He walked out of his office and into the hall.

Ryland was tugging on a staffer’s arm, teeth gnashing scant inches from her ear. St. John fired a shot into the ceiling. Ryland released the terror-stricken girl, and then he was alone with the commander.

“Somehow I sense, Nathan Goddamn Ryland, that you’re the one responsible for all of this. Am I wrong?”

Ryland said nothing. As his eyes adjusted in the hallway, St. John became aware of how blood-soaked the liaison’s suit was. He also became aware of a repugnant, gagging odor. Decaying tissue. “You’re… you’re dead. Undead. You’re the rotter? What have you done?” St. John roared.

Ryland spat a mouthful of someone else’s blood onto the floor.

St. John fired two rounds into Ryland’s chest, kicking him to the end of the hall where he crumpled. The base commander took no chances as he approached the body; standing at arm’s length, he emptied the Desert Eagle into Ryland’s bloated corpse.

This was the end for Fort Armstrong, St. John realized. The entire base, like the files stored within, like the bodies lying on the floor — it would all have to be razed and the ashes scattered to the winds. And all because of this miserable snake in the grass—

Ryland bit into St. John’s palm. The commander kicked him away with a snarl and watched blood swell in the wound. “You’re dead! Son of a bitch!” St. John clasped his hand to the belly of his uniform and staggered away. At least there wasn’t any risk of some sort of infection.

Clarke slipped behind the wheel of a Humvee. Full tank of gas. He knew that Ryland was likely to be just across the base, though it wasn’t so simple as a straight line from point A to point B.

He decided to simplify, and drove through the electrified fences separating the living from the dead.

Soldiers scrambled to put up a roadblock, but the fencing came down like a curtain, folding into the dirt, the afterdead walking right over it even as their toes burst into flames. Every soldier in Fort Armstrong was sure they couldn’t become infected, each was sure that they were dealing with little more than sedated dogs, each saw the afterdead converging with renewed speed on the fallen fences.

Some of them fired, but they all ran.

Esteban Cervantes awoke from a nightmare. In the nightmare, he was alone on a desert road. An old man dressed in black approached him. “ A causa de los gatos, ya en Egipto, ” the man rasped. His eyes were not human and boiled with shapeless larvae. But it was the sound of the man’s leathery tongue over his rotten teeth that drove Cervantes from sleep. Then he heard the alarms.

A flurry of panicked thoughts and prayers assailed him. He was generally able to phase out others’ thoughts, but this crisis had put everyone’s psyche into overdrive. Between all the nervous breakdowns and the bottled-up rages looking for something to shoot, Cervantes wasn’t sure where he’d be of most use.

As he jogged out of his quarters, a Hummer ran up the curb and stopped. “In!”

He complied without hesitation, and paid no mind to the faint small of rot — but then his mind’s eye saw into the other and there was NOTHING.