Before the dead walked, p.2
Before the Dead Walked, page 2
“Hey Bull,” Jack called out. That was Sandy’s nickname to his close friends. No one asked, or was told how he got it. Jack walked over to the porch, stomped on the boards as he put his foot on the solid planks.
“Git,” he ordered the dogs. He repeated the command a couple more times, but was completely ignored, before entering the kitchen.
“That smells a helluva lot better than what’s out there,” Jack commented.
“Help yourself, you old fart,” Sandy returned the compliment.
They both ate heartedly.
“What’d you kill?” Jack asked.
“Nothing, I just ran over something dead and its guts are still on the rakes,” Sandy replied, curling his nose.
They both spooned a second bowl.
“Damn boy, this is good eatin’,” Jack spoke. “Are the Braves on tonight?”
“Not sure, reach over and flip the switch,” Sandy half-told and half-asked Jack.
Watson did so. Soon, the crackling sounds of AM radio produced the game. Brian McCann was up to bat with a 3-2 lead over the Dodgers. It was the bottom of the 8th.
“Braves should win this,” Sandy said.
“Should,” Jack agreed.
The emergency tone interrupted their supper.
“Damn it,” Jack said.
It wasn’t a complaint about work, because he never wanted anyone to get hurt. It would just be nice that once-in-awhile, he not be interrupted.
The dispatcher’s voice rattled on the radio. “Chief, there’s a fire on 27 near Cataula. They want all of you.”
Sandy was about to offer his help, but he knew he would be of no use, as he was not properly trained. It was just the way he was. Jump into the fire. Put it out. Jack scrambled out the door and into the red Ford so quickly, the dogs didn’t even move. Perhaps they had full bellies. Sandy watched his brother-in-law leave. It would be a while before they saw each other again.
“Damn wretched stink,” Sandy muttered again.
He flipped on the porch lights and this time took a hose to the tractor. The rakes, used for pulling hay into neat rows, had some dirt clods stuck to the tines. They looked like horse turds, but bigger. The smell was infinitely worse, as if something was horrifically dead. McClain washed the clods in the yard, went back inside, and got a bottle of bleach. He poured the entire container over the muddy area.
“You know it’s clean if it’s been bleached,” his mother used to say.
Sandy would check the clumps tomorrow, to see if he could tell what kind of animal had died. Not that it really mattered. It was just that he had never smelled that kind of death before.
Miles away, Jack Watson made it to the firehouse just as three of his other volunteers arrived.
“Go get your gear; I’ve got the truck ready.” Jack announced. “Is Keith on the way?”
“Nobody’s seen him,” Russell Waite answered.
“We can’t wait for him,” Jack shouted. “Let’s go!”
The diesel fire engine rumbled to life and rolled out of the station with haste. The radio chatter was choppy, but a fire in an apartment complex always meant serious trouble. All the surrounding fire stations in the county were called in. Heading down Highway 27 out of Hamilton, it wasn’t long before the truck pulled in behind a pumper heading to the scene. The firefighters were quiet for the next few miles.
Suddenly, they saw the glow in the distance. Slowing down behind the pumper, the men jumped out of the truck as Jack pulled to a stop. The scene was chaotic, as fires always were. It was the firefighters who brought order to this kind of mess.
This was no different.
In the distance, ambulances could be heard coming to the scene.
Injuries appeared to be inevitable. The fire was just too big.
“Hey Chief,” Chief Wilson of Cataula yelled.
“Yo!” was the quick reply from Jack.
“Have your men deploy to the rear, okay?”
“Russell, Bill, Jason . . . to the back,” the burley commander shouted.
“Roger that,” the three obeyed in unison.
Grabbing the hoses, and their gear, the firefighters made their way towards the back of the building. The heat was intense and painful, even in their protective suits. Hooking up their hoses, they turned the valves on and started the task of putting out the fire.
Altogether, four engines were on the scene, along with two pumper trucks loaded with additional water. Jack came back to check on his men. They were too busy to notice his arrival. Jack observed their work and was proud of his team. They knew what to do and were doing it. Jack was headed back to the Command Post, when he smelled the same horrible odor he encountered at Sandy’s place. Instinctively, he looked at his boots. It was then that he realized that something or someone was burning inside the apartment complex. Chief Wilson was at the Post directing other firefighters by radio, as they entered the building searching for any survivors.
The radio chatter stopped suddenly, when one firefighter called out, “I’ve got somebody here.”
All attention turned his way.
“What’s your location, over?” Wilson asked.
“First floor, D-1, first door on the right, in the living room,” was the reply.
Chief Wilson looked at Jack Watson.
He instantly knew what was being asked of him. He donned the head gear, oxygen tank, and axe, before making his way inside the burning building. Smoke billowed, but the flames illuminated the area enough to see the ground. Turning to his right, Jack saw the metal letters D1 attached to the charring door. Through it he went at a brisk pace. Just a few feet away, “Tug” Williams was leaning over a badly burned body.
“He’s still alive,” the firefighter said with disbelief.
Jack relayed the news to command.
Outside, the EMT’s were positioned and ready to go to work. Jack wrapped the body in a fire retardant blanket. He began lifting from under the shoulders. Tug grabbed the legs. The terribly burned man started to twist and turn.
The firefighters simply thought it was from pain.
Perhaps it was.
However, in this case, the victim wasn’t aware of his pain. He was carried to a nearby stretcher and hustled into the ambulance. Immediately it took off for Columbus. More than likely, he would have to be airlifted to the burn ward at Grady Hospital in Atlanta. They had the best burn unit in the southeast region.
Outside at the Command Post, Chief Wilson had made an accounting of the all the apartment dwellers. Only Gerald Marshall had not made it outside. Marshall lived in D1. The feeling of gratitude was overwhelming, knowing that almost everyone was safe. The building was falling in on itself, when the chief called his men to pull back and try to control the fire. He didn’t want it to spread to the other buildings. The teams of volunteers did their job well and after a couple of hours, the fire was contained and finally put out.
“Things can be replaced,” Jack thought. His happiness was followed by sadness, because he thought of what the people had lost. Memories, mementoes, and treasures collected were consumed in minutes by flames.
Chief Wilson added, “I hope they had some insurance.”
The driver of Ambulance 20, EMT Randy Todd, was fairly new to the EMT force. However, he had been a combat medic in Afghanistan. The burned man in the back didn’t bother him much.
Randy cocked his head.
The air rippled with horrific smells.
This odor was different from burning flesh and that fact worried him a bit. As Randy was racing down the highway, he alerted Columbus Regional Hospital that he had a burn victim on board. EMT Kelly Whitfield was in the back with the victim, preparing an IV.
The poor man’s face was red and covered with blisters. The smell was almost overwhelming.
“Burning flesh is the worst part of this job,” Kelly yelled to Todd, who was cursing the drivers of cars in front of the ambulance. Why didn’t they just get out of his way? Even with flashing lights and sirens blaring, they still didn’t respond!
Randy had known his share of burn victims from the Gulf War and had never adjusted to the smell of burning flesh. However, this stench was different. It wasn’t charred flesh, he thought. This was pure death. Todd found himself holding back the bile in his throat.
Kelly had placed the oxygen mask gently over the victim’s nose and was ready to administer the IV to pump much needed moisture to the burned man.
Blink.
The man’s eyelids suddenly popped open, producing burned bubbles of flesh. Yet he was looking right at her. Kelly froze, needle in hand, starring at the deformed face. His arm grabbed her arm and pulled her down to his mouth, as he hungrily bit a chunk of flesh out of her cheek.
She screamed.
EMT Randy Todd, who had seen three deployments in Afghanistan, numerous acts of violence, for which humans can do to each other, thought he was coming home to a safe and secure job. Upon hearing the blood-curdling scream from his partner, Todd looked in the mirror. What he saw transfixed his soul. He couldn’t take his eyes off the scene. He completely forgot he was driving. The last thing he ever saw, before the ambulance left the highway, was a burned body chewing on his partner’s face.
In that passing moment, over 100 people around the world died.
Likewise, over 250 babies were born.
All seemed normal.
It was not.
The ambulance went airborne, sailing across six lanes of traffic, before it slammed into a tree on the other side.
Chapter 1
The Atmosphere Thickens
Gerald Marshall was considered to be a recluse at times. Winding down in his years, he learned to love the isolation he chose. It’s not that he didn’t like people, but he had just had enough of them. Gerry had worked for decades in the CIA, as well as the Foreign Service and CDC in Atlanta. He had seen his share of diplomats and failed diplomacies. Yet science was his passion.
As a young boy, he was fascinated by the Roswell alien UFO stories. After graduating from Cornell, he found himself being recruited by the nation’s top intelligence gathering agency. He often wondered why a scientist would be recruited to be a spy.
That was in the early days.
By the time of his first death, in that apartment fire in Cataula, his clandestine career had long been over. He never married and had always lived alone. Yet he was never really alone, and he knew it. It didn’t bother him. All the chatter about the NSA keeping tabs on people with cell phones, or through their satellite TV boxes, rolled off his shoulders like so much idle nonsense.
Actually, none of it was fiction, but Gerry figured the government could find out anything they wanted to in the end, so why make a fuss. If you had something to hide, they’d get ya.
It went much deeper than that. On the last day of his first life, there were more than 7 billion people on planet earth. That was far too many for any government or collection of governments to keep tabs on. That’s 7,000,000,000. Only computers could really comprehend that number. People sure as hell couldn’t. They could only grasp their immediate universe. What they saw, what they read, where they went, and who they interacted with was shrouded in the sheer capacity of numbers. He knew that people could not comprehend having over two hundred friends on Facebook. That was anyone’s real circle of contacts because, with any true meaning, people’s close friends were contained within a group of five, no more than ten. It was just too much for the brain to process.
Brain processes were what drew Marshall into science in the first place. He was fascinated at how a tiny bit of electrical energy could lead to the creation of an atomic bomb, a wristwatch, or a computer. All things were the result of a spark of electricity, within someone’s brain. That spark amazed Marshall and it ultimately killed him, before finally bringing him back to life.
Or some form of life.
Marshall often thought about the billions of brains on the planet. He wondered why couldn’t these brains all come together, as a giant collective, and solve the world’s problems. He knew the answer, of course, but that didn’t stop him from asking certain questions.
After all, his career was built on questions, or rather finding answers to all the questions. He liked to think of the brains as a hive of bees. Bees were the key to the whole ecosystem. Without them, everyone would die. In his work, he often pondered how bees worked. What genetic mystery was ingrained within them that drove them to survive? He had spent several years in the CDC trying to determine military uses for bees. The CIA had always thought of training dolphins, dogs, cats, snakes, or anything nature could provide, to battle a regime. He imagined if bees could wreak havoc on a terrorist cell, then chaos would reign.
So in 2006, Marshall developed a special enzyme. While experimenting with the Apocephalus Borealis, he discovered that the fly could inject its eggs into the bee. The eggs grew. The result was neurological damage in the bees, causing jerky and erratic movements. The bees would die within hours. The breakthrough came when one of the bees seemed to reanimate.
Marshall was stunned.
His team was speechless.
A bee had died and then it had come back to life. Although the group knew that the bee was not alive, it was still moving. When another bee was introduced to it, the zom-bee attacked it. Bit it. Bee cannibalism was reported to their superiors. They observed a noticeable stench followed this experiment. After a few hours, the bitten bee changed. It had not been killed, but wounded by the bites. The bee went through a metamorphosis, in which the eyes took on a glaze, like a new skin. The color of the bee dulled. Other bees were placed in the Plexiglas box and they were also attacked. Within a matter of hours, the entire group of bees had been attacked, bitten, eaten and each changed.
The team watched all this in amazed silence.
The enzyme, they agreed, mutated into something that didn’t actually resurrect the bees, but took over the dead body, using it as a new host.
The team determined that the fly was the key, not necessarily the bee.
The experiments continued in earnest.
Microscopic needles removed the enzyme from the Apocephalus Borealis and were inserted into a monkey.
Unfortunately, this is where the story gets a bit murky. In their reports that traveled up the chain of faceless bureaucrats, the discoveries were either buried or locked away deep in the CDC vaults. Naturally, the CIA got wind of these experiments and additional funding magical appeared.
Marshall regretted the fact that his team was swiftly broken up and detailed to different agencies around the world. In early 2008, he was reassigned to the State Department offices in Atlanta. While there, he would be reduced to analyzing diplomatic transmissions. All the while, Marshall could not help but think about that poor monkey. He remembered the moment that the monkey turned into something else. He remembered the other monkeys dying and then resurrecting. He remembered the astonishment on his teammates’ faces. Marshall remembered how his director acted nonchalantly about his findings. He remembered how the military seemed to show no interest. He remembered how fast the team was disassembled after that. Gerry was told that he was not to have any communication with anyone that was once on the team.
He obeyed, of course. Not that it mattered, because most of the team had been quietly dispatched with an accident. However, Gerald Marshall, as Team Leader, was still considered useful.
He never forgot that stench.
Marshall could still smell it in his mind, his memories, and his nightmares.
By 2010, Gerald was ready to retire. He had had enough.
All the lies, secrets, whispers, and rumors had become boring. He missed the science. When he left the State Department, he carried with him the knowledge of future warfare, a box of documents and degrees, and his thirty-year service pin. When Marshall walked through the detection devices for the final time, he carried away a wealth of knowledge that would probably all go to waste.
Naturally, that made him something of a risk.
Unbeknownst to him, there were future plans for him.
In fact, Gerald carried with him something that could not be detected. An enzyme was buried deep within his nostril, burrowing its way to his brain. As he was fumbling for the keys to his car, he could still remember the stench in his nose.
After he received his first retirement check, he packed his few belongings and moved to Cataula, Georgia. He had worked on base at Ft. Benning near Columbus for nearly a year and fell in love with the area. Fresh water and fresh air were abundant. He spent countless evenings in his apartment watching the skies. He observed the birds, the skies and his neighbors. He also saw the increasing contrails. They were becoming more and more frequent.
Marshall had easily put two-and-two together. He knew global warming was being manufactured, because he had been part of global climate manipulation. He had helped to develop many of the compounds within the spray being emitted from the jets. What he didn’t know was that some of the organic compounds mixed in the aerosols had been blended with an enzyme from the Apocephalus Borealis.
Military scientists had discovered that goats died nearly instantly when the enzyme attacked their brain. Those goats were lucky. They didn’t reanimate, but they produced the most horrible stench one could imagine. It produced an odor worse than death. It was worse than burning flesh. It was indescribable.
The project was to spray the skies over Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, with a modified enzyme. It was harmless to humans and all animals except goats. The plan was to have the mixture land on the grasslands of the terrorist countries and kill off their goat herds. Since goats were a mainstay of the local farmers, their trade supply would be compromised and confusion would occur. They hoped that for at least for a few months, the terrorist grassroots economy would fail. It was just another form of invisible warfare, generated by the US. Sure, it was a form of bioterrorism, but we were the good guys.
