Chapter 4
Saturday, October 29th, 1983.
1830. Thirty-one hours after outbreak.
Downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma
Ice sat in the open doorway of the helo. The chop chop chop of the spinning ‘copter blades were loud overhead as they took off from Broken Arrow. It would be night soon. The sun, a big orange ball low on the horizon, sank inch by inch as they approached Tulsa.
When they reached the city, Ice stared down at the wreckage on the ground. Dozens of unmoving vehicles filled the streets, doors opened, some sandwiched in multi-car pileups, others crashed into light posts, all abandoned. Dead bodies lay decomposing on the sidewalk, waiting for the coroner to be able to safely move in and collect them.
Infected raced through the streets at inhuman speeds, seeking out their next victim. Armored fighting vehicles slowly patrolled the area, the bullhorns mounted on their rooftops blaring out a warning for all citizens to remain barricaded indoors. Occasionally, soldiers popped out of the AFVs to catch the infected they came across. Each one snarled and fought to evade capture right up until they were shoved into the containment trucks following behind the AFVs. Some were shot and killed when they got too close to overpowering and biting the soldiers trying to capture them.
The scene was an apocalyptic nightmare from high in the sky. It had to be terrifying for everyone down there in the thick of it.
Ice swore to himself that they would retrieve the cure for this outbreak come hell or high water.
“There’s your target,” the pilot said over their headsets.
They swooped up to a tall and narrow office building with a big gold KVP sign mounted above the top floor. The pilot hovered over the rooftop, checking that the space was clear of infected before she slowly lowered to land.
As soon as they touched down Ice jumped out, ready to get to work. Hazard, Ortiz, and Jax were right behind him. They would rappel down to the highest floor with windows, enter there, and start working their way up to the lab where the antidote was located. Each of them had memorized the location of the lab and the passcodes necessary to gain entry to it and the freezer where the cure was stored.
Ortiz gave the pilot a thumbs up, indicating they were all on the ground and she was clear to depart. The helicopter rose, flying back to the safety of Broken Arrow and the base’s infected free zone. They didn’t want to take the chance of an infected somehow finding its way to the roof and attacking the pilot while she waited for them. She would return once they’d completed the mission and called for ex-fil.
Moving swiftly, they made their way to the edge of the rooftop. They were all in combat gear and fully armed. And since these infected appeared to love going for the face, Ortiz, Hazard, and Jax wore thin but strong carbon fiber full-face masks for protection. Ice’s face was covered by his usual wolf mask and tonight he also had on the balaclava that he’d stopped wearing last year.
“Hook up,” Ortiz ordered.
They strapped on the rope and harness systems that would allow them to rappel down the side of the skyscraper, hooking up to whatever fixed fixture they could find to hold their weight. Ice tested his system to make sure it was secure, then stepped up on to the edge of the rooftop. Once the others were all in place, he dropped. He went down the rope in a controlled fall, the zip of metal on rope a steady whine until they reached the twenty-ninth floor.
They stopped there, far below the rooftop and high above the ground. Using an explosives charge to blow out a window was a no-go, as the noise would draw the attention of the infected. They didn’t want to have to fight them off the moment they entered the building. Or worse, while they were still hanging from the roof. Wind whipping around them, they walked along the row of windows, searching for a room that didn’t have any infected inside.
“This room looks empty,” Hazard yelled over the noise of the rushing wind and blaring safety announcements below.
Ice went over to join him. Seeing the room was indeed empty, he applied a large suction hook to the center of the glass pane. Hazard pulled out a laser knife from his tac vest and cut a wide square in the glass. The suction hook kept the cut piece from falling inside and loudly breaking into pieces. Moving quietly, Ice lowered the heavy piece of glass to the carpeted floor.
One by one they slipped inside the empty office. The wind whipped into the room through the hole they’d cut in the glass, scattering the loose papers on top of the desk. Quickly and silently, they removed their rappelling gear and got their weapons in hand.
The office door was open. Just outside of it they could hear movement and raspy, labored breathing. There were definitely infected in the hallway.
“It’s a shame we have to kill these people when we’re on our way to get the antidote,” Jax whispered.
“It is,” Ortiz quietly agreed. “But we have to get past them and we can’t afford to get bit while we do it. We work our way through each floor, moving up to the lab as fast as possible. With any luck, we won’t encounter that many infected. But if we do, don’t hesitate to shoot. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the three of them replied.
At their acknowledgement, she gave them the go ahead to proceed.
“Move out.”
They left the office, weapons at the ready, moving as silently as possible.
Ice’s Instinct was practically vibrating under his skin. His sharp wolf senses smelled death. Lots of it. In response, his Instinct hummed a constant warning to be careful. He sensed the same hyperawareness from his pack mates. Ice flicked a glance to Hazard to check that he was alert even though he knew it wasn’t necessary. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to make sure that his mate was safe.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before they met an infected. Ice took in his first up-close look at one of the rabies-crazed zombies. A woman in a gray pants suit stained rust with dried blood stood at the end of the hall. The whites of her eyes had bled until they were nearly solid red, and thick, white foam dripped from her mouth. Most of her hair had fallen out, leaving only wispy patches of brown clinging to her scalp. Even her eyebrows were gone. And above the collar of her pink dress shirt, the veins in her throat were black as ink against gray-white skin.
The second she saw them, she froze. Her body unnaturally still, she eyed them like a predator sizing up its prey. Then, she sprinted straight for them, her teeth bared, snarling like a rabid dog. She lost one of her heels as she ran but didn’t stop in her rage-induced attack.
“I got her, Major,” Jax said.
He raised his gun and fired, his suppressed rifle making only a muffled thwip . The bullet struck in a clean head shot, immediately halting her forward process. The woman’s body jerked back before she dropped to the floor with a thud.
Weapons up, they continued down the hall, moving to the far end of the floor where the staircase was located. The place was eerie. It was quiet, the sounds one expected to hear in an office building - chatter, phones ringing, and people moving about - completely absent. Splashes of blood covered the walls. And dead bodies, those who’d been killed before the infection took over - lay where they’d taken their final, terrified breaths. Their corpses created an obstacle course for the 448 to jump over or navigate around.
But the dead bodies weren’t the only thing they had to get past. There were several infected between them and the stairs.
“Hazard, Ice, drop ‘em,” Ortiz ordered.
Ice followed the order along with Hazard, calling his shots and firing until all of the infected in their way were dead on the floor. Once the path was clear, the four of them pushed forward, reaching the stairs without further incident. They’d made it through the first floor with relative ease.
“One down, seven to go,” Hazard said as they climbed the wide staircase to the thirtieth floor.
“Too bad the lockdown protocol has the elevator out of service,” Jax grumbled. “Taking it would make this trip a lot faster.”
“Let’s try for the emergency stairwell,” Hazard suggested when they crept onto the thirtieth floor. “It’d be a direct shot up instead of these staircases on the opposite end of every fucking floor.”
They all crouched down and waited as he pulled out a search pole camera and used it to peer around the corner where the emergency exit was located. Breathing a curse, he quickly pulled the camera back and shook his head.
“That way is out. There’s a bunch of infected congregated in front of the door. Maybe the emergency stairs on the next floor will be clear.”
“Best not to bother,” Ice said. “Too much risk of being trapped in a bottleneck of infected in an enclosed stairwell.”
Ortiz agreed. “Ice is right. We stay out in the open where we have room to maneuver and retreat if necessary.”
Jax nodded. “Copy that.”
With the emergency stairwell plan nixed, they jogged in a quiet crouch to get to the next staircase. On the way, they passed by what looked to be a large conference room. The doors were flung open wide as if inviting them to look inside. Several treadmills and weight benches were set up in the back. Most of the chairs surrounding a big, black table lay overturned on the floor, a black curtain was partially torn down from the ceiling, and broken champagne bottles and glasses littered the floor. A dead body wearing a nice suit lay near the door, its rotting stench making its way through Ice’s mask to assault his nose.
“This must be where the outbreak started,” Ice said as he looked at the destruction.
“Yep,” Hazard said in agreement. “You can see they were celebrating their little test with champagne before things went to shit.”
“I doubt this company will celebrate anything ever again once this is all over with.” Ice didn’t have an ounce of sympathy for the higher ups in this company. Injecting rabies into people for profit was cruel, selfish, and stupid.
They continued on and were almost to the stairs when they heard that now tell-tale raspy snarl.
“Infected up ahead, Major,” Jax quietly advised.
“I hear ‘em.”
Ice paused with his team as they took stock of the situation. He could hear the infected, but couldn’t see where they were. They crept forward until they neared an open doorway where the snarls seemed to be coming from. Again Hazard used his pole cam to look around the corner.
“We’ve got one, two... seven infected in a break room. Door is open so we’re not getting past them without being noticed.”
“Let’s close the door,” Jax suggested. “They might not be smart enough to figure out how to open it.”
Ortiz nodded. “Worth a shot. Jax, since it was your suggestion. Go for it.”
The three of them waited while Jax moved ahead with his back sliding against the wall until he reached the doorway. He paused to take a deep breath. Then, he slowly reached up and around to grab the door handle.
Ice hoped to hell that the maintenance staff in this building kept the door hinges oiled so that they wouldn’t squeak.
His jaw clenched tight, Jax pulled the door toward him, closing it with a quiet click .
“Let’s move,” Ortiz whispered to Ice and Hazard.
Jax waited for them to catch up and then kept moving with them to pass the now closed doorway and continue down the hall.
They’d just reached the stairs when Ice chanced a look back. One of the infected had stepped out of the breakroom.
“Looks like they are,” Ice said.
Hazard looked at him with an eyebrow raised.
“Are what?”
“Smart enough to open the door.”
As he spoke, the rest of the infected tumbled out of the breakroom and into the hall. When they spied Ice and his team, they went still in that creepy, predatory freeze. As one they sprang forward, a rabid pack coming straight for them.
“Fucking hell,” Ice cursed. The infected ran so fast they were already close enough for him to see the black veins under their waxy, grayish skin and the bubbling drool frothing at the corners of their mouths.
“Take ‘em down!” Ortiz ordered. “We don’t want them chasing us up to the lab.”
Together they took down the office workers turned monsters in a hail of bullets. They dropped, their suits and power dresses ripped up with bullet holes and wet with black, infected blood.
“Damn, those fuckers are fast,” Hazard said on a rough exhale once the last infected had fallen.
Ortiz growled. “Regular people given inhuman strength and speed so a fucking drug company can make more money. And now we have to put them down like rabid dogs.”
The pissed off note was clear in Ortiz’s tone. Ice was pissed too. None of them were happy that they’d had to kill so many civilians today. But that was the job. They’d sacrifice the people in this building in order to save the people of the city of Tulsa.
They ascended the next flight of stairs, stepping carefully to keep the sound of their boots meeting the stair treads to a minimum.
Floor thirty-one was unlike the first two levels they’d passed through. Instead of offices, the floor was set up as a relaxation area for the employees. It was a huge, wide open space. There were lots of big cushy sofas, several massage chairs, a few cardio machines, a rack of yoga mats with space to practice, and even several billiards and other game tables. Toward the back there was a juice and coffee bar with a small seating section.
Near where they’d come up the stairs was a loft, enclosed by a frosted glass wall, with ladder like steps leading up to it. They couldn’t see what was up there behind the thick, frosted glass but Ice didn’t detect any movement.
The entire floor appeared to be completely empty. Ice didn’t trust what his eyes saw however. He stayed on high alert as they moved through, Ortiz in the lead, Jax and Hazard behind her, and Ice bringing up the rear.
Suddenly, the hairs on the back of Ice’s neck rose. His Instinct stirred, confirming his feeling that this room wasn’t as clear as it seemed. But he didn’t see anyone. Until he looked up. An infected hung off the massive art installation on the ceiling. It let go of the art piece and dropped, just as Hazard passed beneath it.
“Hazard, look out!”
Ice rushed forward, shoving his mate out of the way. Hazard cleared, but the infected landed on Ice’s back, wrapping its legs around his waist to hold on. Snarling, it grabbed Ice’s mask, trying to rip it off his head to get to his face.
“Get off me, you fuck!” Ice gripped the thing by the neck. Heaving with all his strength, he flung it off him in an overhead throw. It went flying across the room, taking his mask and balaclava along with it. The infected crashed to the ground, landing on its back. But it swiftly flipped over to get on its feet. Before it had a chance to come at them again, Ortiz fired twice in quick succession, killing it.
“You okay, Royce?” Hazard asked.
He’d just opened his mouth to answer in the affirmative when Jax shouted a warning.
“Behind you!”
Ice spun to face the threat. Four infected were making a beeline for him. He fired, killing the first one. Bullets from his teammates took out two more. But before he could squeeze off a second shot, the one directly in front of him leaped and slammed into his chest with the force of a Mack Truck, knocking him to the ground. Acting on reflexes drilled into him until they were second nature, he got his gun up, lodging it just beneath the infected’s chin. With a quick pull of the trigger, he blew the top of their head off. Blood, brains, teeth, and viscera rained down on his bare face in a foul shower of death.
His lips twisted in disgust, Ice shoved the corpse off him and got to his feet. He swiped his sleeve across his mouth, spitting on the floor to make sure he didn’t swallow anything that had fallen on him.
“Where the hell did they come from?” Ortiz asked.
“Right there.” Jax gestured with his gun.
Ice, Ortiz, and Hazard all looked to the loft where Jax was staring. The area had appeared empty when they’d passed it. But now, the sound of their gunfire had drawn multiple infected in the space close to the glass. The infected that had attacked them had figured out how to escape their pen, but the remainder were so focused on staring down at the members of the 448 that they either didn’t realize or didn’t care that there was an exit.
One of the infected started banging on the glass. Others followed his action. The noise of their banging drew more infected over, until there were dozens piled up on the other side of the wall. Hissing, snarling, their drool smearing on the glass. Under their fists, the glass splintered. Cracked. It wouldn’t hold them back for much longer.
“We need to go. Now,” Ortiz urgently ordered.
They were on the move before Ortiz finished giving the order.
Ice looked back over his shoulder in time to see the glass wall shatter. The infected burst through the jagged opening they’d created in a furious swell of hairless, black-veined bodies. Some of them simply leaped down from the loft, landing in a beast like crouch. Others found and descended the narrow spiral staircase. They were all coming for the 448.
Adrenaline zinging through his veins, Ice ran with his team to the far end of the level. They were about to turn the corner to reach the next staircase when over the sound of his thudding heart and their boots pounding on the floor Ice heard something else. Footsteps. Lots of them. And it wasn’t the footsteps of the infected behind them. These footsteps were above them, moving toward the same staircase they were racing to.
Thanks to his omega speed, Hazard was out in front as they ran. Ice reached forward and grabbed the back of his mate’s tac vest. He yanked him to a halt, preventing him from climbing the steps.
“Ice, what the fuck?” Hazard asked in surprise.
“Don’t go that way!” he warned sharply.
At his shout, Ortiz and Jax both skidded to a stop. They backed up just in the nick of time. An infected catapulted itself down the stairs, hands curled into claws, hissing and swiping at them like a feral cat. Directly behind it there were more. Lots more.
“Oh, shit!”
Hazard cursed and stumbled back, but still managed to take out the infected in front of him with a bullet through the skull.
With the way ahead blocked, they turned and retreated back the way they’d come. They made it almost to the center of the big open space of the level but couldn’t go any further. The group from the loft was still pursuing them. Infected now blocked both sides, trapping them in the middle of the horde.
“Fuck! They’ve got us boxed in, Major!” Jax yelled.
“We fight them off here then!” Ortiz shouted back. “Ice, Hazard, you take the left! Jax you’re with me on the right!”
“Roger!” Ice planted his feet and raised his rifle.
Mindless with feral rage, the infected ran at them, looking to bite and kill.
Ice fired, gun powder stinging his nose as he dropped the first infected coming at him. He kept shooting, again and again, taking each one down with a single, well-placed bullet until he ran out of ammo in the clip. Instead of leaving himself momentarily vulnerable while he reloaded, he quickly swung his rifle behind him and pulled his black handled blades. He threw the first two knives, striking two of the advancing infected in the throat with deadly accuracy before instantly pulling two more. Armed with a knife in each hand, he went after the ones closest to him. He rammed a blade into one infected’s throat, pierced the eye socket of another.
Time seemed to slow, while his vision went bright and sharp as he fought off the advancing horde. He fought to stay alive. To help his pack. And to protect his mate. Ice stabbed and slashed in a whirlwind of controlled fury. An infected in black workout gear got close as he was knifing a janitor. A pinprick of pain on the apple of his cheek momentarily broke through the fight kill survive haze he was locked in. But there was no time or space to worry about it.
He forced the infected in black workout gear crowding against him back before plunging his blade into its ear. The infected’s body twitched and jumped like it was dancing a jig, more foam bubbling from between clenched teeth before it went limp. Ice yanked the blade free, letting the body drop to the floor in time to take on the next red-eyed attacker.
Hands moving with practiced swiftness, he switched to a different gun, this one without a silencer. He started firing again. At the edge of his awareness, he heard Jax, Ortiz, and Hazard shooting to take out their own parts of the horde. Gunfire and shouts, his own heavy breathing, and the infected’s snarls filled his ears.
And then, with jarring abruptness, it was silent.
The gunfire stopped.
They’d taken out the entire horde.
Ice stood in the center of a ring of corpses. His arms and shoulders ached from fighting with his knives. Sucking in a long, deep breath, he inhaled the metallic scent of blood, tasting pennies on his tongue. He let the tainted breath out on a slow exhale before turning to face his squad mates. They had a similar pile of bodies around them.
Careful not to slip on the blood slicking the floor, Ice leaped across the dead at his feet to make his way over to them. He went to his mate first, visually checking him over to make sure he was okay. Satisfied that his mate didn’t have any wounds, he finally noticed that Hazard was staring at him, his green eyes wide behind his mask.
“Ice,” he whispered. “Your face.”
“What?” Ice scrubbed a gloved hand over his bare face. “You’ve seen me without my mask plenty of times.”
Hazard slowly shook his head. “No, it’s not that.” He paused, throat working for several moments before he spoke again. “You’ve been bit.”