“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon said, from where she sat on the edge of the table beside me, “Andalon’s got a bad feeling ‘bout this…”
I suppose we all did.
It was amazing how far she’d come. Days before, when Andalon had first appeared to, she’d been almost entirely unaware of the real world. But, my senses had become more intertwined with hers as my changes had progressed. Now, it was like she was her own separate person, perceiving and reacting to the world around us, only from somewhere inside me.
“This footage is from the Water Treatment Facility in Tonevay,” General Marteneiss said. It seemed he was going to be providing the narration.
The footage began with an aerial shot of the Tonevay WTF. The facility sat in a massive, irregularly shaped quadrilateral lot that was sandwiched between sedimentary bluffs to the east and a narrow strip of rocky beach to the west. The area was a jumbled mix of scattered pine trees, autumnal foliage, and heavy industry—but, that was Tonevay zoning laws for you. They only allowed for human habitation further back, up on the bluffs. In other words, the WTF was a very good place to set up camp during a pandemic, provided you could put up with the exposure to all the toxic chemicals, though, at this point, that didn’t really matter anymore.
The WTF itself was a collection of motley shapes. Tapered smokestacks banded in red and white rose next to big, beige, egg-shaped tanks. Rows of circular pits laid out alongside the eggs, filled with water to be purified by the light of the Sun.
Cleanliness was next to Godliness, after all.
“This was one of our best safe zones,” the General said.
And, as the aerial view closed in, I could see exactly what he meant. It was a genuinely impressive set-up. The WTF was surrounded by multiple layers of fencing, some of which were parts of the facility, others of which had been recently erected. Armored vehicles and makeshift structures—watchtowers, parapets—asserted their presence, enforcing the perimeter. The lines of people—both military and civilian—in and around the facility were regimented and orderly. For a second, I thought the white forms that littered the beach were flocks of roosting gulls, only to realize they were tents (emergency housing, perhaps?).
There wasn’t a bird in sight.
But one feature dominated the scene: a massive, billowing plastic tarp that cut through the middle of the WTF, splitting it into two halves.
“The tarp you see is,” Vernon said, only to correct himself, “was our cordon. It was a simple set-up: the infected go on one side, and everyone else goes on the other. Even while the world was going down the tubes all around us, this set-up worked like a charm, and for several days straight.” He shook his head. “But then it fell apart, literally overnight.” His expression turned grave as he tapped the console once more.
“It began with reports of violence and unrest.”
The footage changed. Everything was an eerie green, and it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing must have been recorded by the night vision of a security camera. The aerial view from before had been replaced by one from the ground, with the camera pointing at the highway that ran between the WTF and the adjacent bluffs.
Gradually, figures came into view. People staggered across the street in an unnatural limp. Their limbs twitched oddly.
Clusters of bright lights flashed at the footage’s edges.
“Gunfire,” Vernon said.
The General tapped the console screen. The gray-green palette burst into living color as the image changed from security camera’s footage to console-footage, recorded by a soldier’s body camera.
Heggy brought her hand to her face as she gasped in shock. Yes, she was already wearing a rebreather mask—and a PPE visor over that—but still, she brought her hand to her face.
The people on the footage were no longer people. They were zombies from a grisly horror movie, only they were out here, in the real world, instead of the fiction where they belonged. They threw their fungus-ravaged, bullet-ridden bodies against the fences and walls, clawing and flailing with mindless need. Black and green spewed from their wounds, flicking onto the armor and face-shields of the soldiers who stood against them, fighting to keep the horde at bay.
Then everything froze.
“We’ve been callin’ them ferals,” General Marteneiss said, speaking over the paused footage, “or, well… zombies.” He shook his head. “Whatever you wanna call them, they’re everywhere. Wherever we turn, there are horrifying reports about how the infected are turning violent. They bite, shriek, and claw, chasing after people like wild animals. Our soldiers and airmen have been conducting skirmishes and other forms of limited engagement against these mindless hordes, with the hope of reducing their numbers and securing key facilities and transportation routes. The chaos you all heard a little while ago was my boys having a run in with some ferals while they were escorting a convoy of troops and civilians alike across town. It goes without saying that the ferals are an existential threat to humanity. Not only are they vectors for spreading NFP-20, they’re also makin’ mincemeat outta the safe zones.” He shook his head again. “But I’ll let the footage speak for itself.”
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Vernon took a deep breath—a raspy echo that crackled out of his black hazmat suit’s speakers. The General was distraught, nearly to the point of tears. After lowering his head in a moment of respectful silence, he let the footage resume.
One of the zombies reached through the fence and grabbed a soldier and pulled him close. It tugged off his PPE as it clawed at him with its rotting, fungus-haunted fingers.
The soldier screamed.
“Fall back!” someone yelled, “Fall back!”
The soldier whose body carried the camera turned tail and ran, and the footage whirled along with him. We could hear his breaths and panicked curses as he darted through the narrow gap in between two of the beige, building-sized processing tanks. His squad-mates rushed ahead, turning left at the other end of the gap, but then one of them looked to the right and screamed and raised his rifle, firing into the night. The others joined him a moment later, as did the body-camera’s soldier.
“As you have probably figured out for yourselves,” the General said, “NFP-20’s spores aren’t just extremely infectious, they’re also extremely corrosive. When there’s enough of the stuff in one place, it can eat its way through pretty much anything.” He sighed in shame. “By the time we noticed the holes in the tarp, it was already too late. Even so… the worst was yet to come.”
From what the footage showed, at this point, calling the holes “holes” didn’t do them justice. Massive, gaping tears had opened in the plastic barrier. The spores had eaten through the plastic, weakening and perforating it, and then the zombies came along and burst through. And the spores were everywhere. Green specks lilted in the air, glinting in the WTF’s hazy, orange lights as they drifted and swirled.
The cordon didn’t just fail, it fell apart. The gateway between the safe zone and the sick zone had been torn wide open, clearing the way for a horde of zombies to break through.
Zombie apocalypses were the only kind of horror fiction that had ever given me nightmares. The only way I was ever able to stomach them was by reminding myself that, nine times out of ten, at least the zombie apocalypse had the saving grace of destroying you when it turned you. The true horror of a zombie was in those unbearable moments after they’d been infected, but before they’d turned, when the victim was still a person with a will and a conscience, and you watched, with dread and sorrow, as the humanity faded from their eyes.
Would that the Green Death be so kind.
To my horror, the zombies that staggered out of the openings in the sanitary cordon were still very much themselves. I could see it in their eyes. I could hear them beg.
“Help me!”
“I can’t stop!”
“Run! Run!!”
I bit my lip, trying not to cry. It was like someone had plucked the scene right out of my nightmares.
Andalon closed her eyes, covered her ears and shook her head. “Make it stop, Mr. Genneth. Please, make it stop.”
I wished I could.
The zombies fought a losing battle against the fungus. Many tried to stop themselves, grabbing onto a bed post, or sinking their fingers into chain-linked fencing. But their bodies overpowered them. It overrode their will, forcing them into the horde—an apotheosis of impressment.
“By the Angel…” I muttered.
The behavior was spreading.
Through the gaps in the tarp, you could see people get up from their makeshift beds from within the quarantine. They screamed and wailed, crying out to the Angel, pleading for Him to stop their suffering.
But the Angel didn’t answer their prayers. Or, maybe He did, and the answer took the form of the bullets that the soldiers then fired into the crowd.
Andalon hid behind me.
I want to say that the gunfire stopped the infected in their tracks, but it didn’t stop. If anything, it made things worse. Guns went wild as the soldiers holding them spasmed and convulsed. They screamed for help as they lunged at their comrades. The soldier next to the body cameraman slammed into the body cameraman, pinning him against the base of the beige processing tank.
Our soldier shot him in the head, splattering his brains on the concrete below. Aerostat engines roared overhead, drawing our solider’s gaze skyward. He had just enough time to look up and see the bombs being dropped before the zombies pounced on him. There was a split second of limbs flailing against the camera before the explosion came, ending the footage, as well as everything else, leaving only a static feed.
Vernon tapped the console, stopping the playback.
“We had to bomb the Water Treatment Facility,” he said.
Heggy was in shock. “Vernon…” she muttered, under her breath.
“It was… overrun,” Vernon said. “That mob you saw in those last few seconds? Half of those ferals were our own people. As far as we can tell, the feral state is contagious. It spreads through crowds with terrifying speed. The infected that crossed the road somehow carried their violence to the people in quarantine. It’s a merciless chain reaction. Quarantine zones get broken open, doctors and soldiers get attacked, then they turn feral and start attacking anyone nearby. It spreads like wildfire. When enough ferals pile up on a gate or a door, their collective weight will break through, especially with the spores weakening every structure they touch. This makes it very difficult to restrain them.”
The General lowered his head. “We’re at the end of our rope, here, people. Even if we can isolate the infected, it won’t do any good if they go feral and trigger a domino effect like what you just saw. Unless we can find a way to safely contain them, we’re going to have to treat all infected persons as a threat, and neutralize them with deadly force, feral or not.”