Zombie Squad Read online

  “Well, I haven’t really agreed to anything yet,” Nick said.

  Ogden frowned slightly, his moustache drooping a bit. He then looked to Griffith with a quizzical look on his face.

  “He says he’ll help,” Griffith said, “but that he has a mission of his own to carry out before he takes on any of our assignments.”

  “Is that so?” Ogden asked. Instantly, the cheer in the man dried up.

  Nick only nodded, not wanting to address the man in any way that might make him think he had the upper hand. Colonel or not, as far as Nick was concerned, the military was useless now. Until these men proved otherwise, Nick saw them as nothing more than sad men still trying to seem important by carrying out the orders and traditions of a world they had not been able to save.

  “Well then, let’s talk it over,” Ogden said.

  “Can we get Mr. Blackburn something to eat?” Griffith asked.

  “Yes, yes, by all means,” Ogden said. “Send one of the grunts up to the cafeteria and have them bring him something.”

  Griffith nodded and took his exit. Alone in the office with Colonel Ogden, he felt slightly threatened. The man believed he was powerful; it was evident in everything from his posture to the way he eyed Nick with contempt and suspicion.

  “Please,” Ogden said, “have a seat.”

  Nick sat down in one of the two chairs positioned in front of Ogden’s desk. He eyed the screen on the wall again, trying to make out the information. He saw what he thought were formulas for some sort of chemical compound.

  “Before you tell me about your mission,” Ogden said, taking his seat behind the desk, “let’s go ahead and clear the air. Make no mistake, Mr. Blackburn. I know about your past. I know about the many ways you have assisted this country, as well as the ways you have disgraced it. That includes the stunt you pulled on the last day anyone ever saw President Ames alive. Now, based on all of that, I will be blatantly honest with you and let you know right away that I’m not your biggest fan.”

  Nick chuckled nervously. “Is this how you recruit all of your men?” he asked.

  Ogden ignored this comment and continued. “But as I said, I know everything about your history. I may not like you, but I do respect the hell out of you. If I ignored your skills and abilities, I’d be a fool.”

  “The way Griffith makes it sound, you guys are hard up for soldiers,” Nick said. “Is that about right?”

  “We wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to find you if we didn’t need you,” Ogden said, answering the question as subtly as he could. “We found you by using satellite imaging that we just got booted back up a few months ago. For you to have survived in the way you did, you must be very determined.”

  “I just didn’t feel like dying.”

  “Is that why you accepted our offer?”

  “No, I accepted your offer because I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself out on the lake if I knew that I could have been of some help to get things back to some sort of order.”

  “That might be a bit generous,” Ogden said. “If our plan works, we won’t see any real order for many years…probably not in our lifetime.”

  “Yes, Griffith made that very clear.”

  Ogden reclined back in his seat and eyed Nick as if he were a very interesting insect. The silence that fell between them was so thick that Nick thought he could feel it pressing against him.

  “Here’s the deal,” Ogden said. “If you are indeed serious about helping us, I’d like to start right away. We have several vials of the vaccine ready to go. Before you head off, we’ll be debriefing you on everything we know about the ramblers and the disease, as well as the plans we have going forward. It shouldn’t take too terribly long…maybe a few hours.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “So before we get into all of that, go ahead and tell me about this personal mission of yours.”

  “I told Griffith when he came for me that your plan is a suicide mission. Next to impossible. So I want help. And I don’t mean any of your soldiers. I want to hand-pick my help.”

  “That’s simple. You can have your pick of any of the men here. We can even get you access to the dossiers of the men currently residing at the base in California.”

  Nick shook his head. “No. I have two people in mind. And they aren’t military.”

  Ogden was clearly confused. For a moment, he let the façade of control slip away as he sat forward, perplexed.

  “And what do you mean, exactly?”

  “Two people I once worked with. I want to find them and I want to enlist them to help with these assignments.”

  “Did they survive?”

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. “But if you guys have a way to find useless politicians and scientists for me to administer the vaccine to, then I’d imagine you could find these two people as well. Am I right? Besides that…these are people that are just as resourceful as I am. I’d be very surprised if they were infected.”

  “And who are these two people?” Ogden asked.

  Nick smiled and leaned forward, his elbows propped on Ogden’s desk. He felt the control sliding his way. He could tell that he would get whatever the hell he wanted if he agreed to help. He could ask to get the help of Genghis Kahn, and they’d jump through hoops to try to make it happen.

  Nick gave Ogden the two names and smiled again when the colonel’s face went slack with anger and confusion.

  6

  Nick sat at the head of a large oak table in the center of operations, the room he had stepped into from the elevator less than half an hour ago. He was eating the meal that Griffith had delivered to him: two cheeseburgers, cookies, and tasteless green beans. He was washing it down with crystal clear clean water—something he had not had in over a year.

  Colonel Ogden sat at the other end of the table, staring Nick down as if the strength of his hatred could be conveyed through his eyes and maybe, if he tried hard enough, he could cause Nick’s head to explode. There were a dozen other people sitting around the table, Griffith included. Some were furiously typing at laptops and others sat politely and quietly, speaking only when they needed to.

  Nick hadn’t bothered memorizing their names. If his hunch was correct, none of these other people ultimately mattered. The only men he needed to bother himself with were Griffith and Ogden.

  Ogden sat forward, trying to regain the power and position he had lost while speaking with Nick in his office. That had been less than fifteen minutes ago, and now things were totally different. Nick felt like he was sitting in the principal’s office, waiting for either some great praise or a strict lecture.

  “I’ve discussed your request for your partners with my advisors,” Ogden said. When he spoke, all eyes at the table were on him. “And we aren’t sure that it’s the best idea.”

  “Really,” Nick said, slurping down a mouthful of green beans. “And why is that?”

  Ogden looked around the table with a sneer. “Does everyone here know who Mr. Blackburn is asking to work with? Do you all know who these two individuals are?”

  Nick assumed the people at the table were Ogden’s “advisors.” None of them looked like they had any idea what was going on and it made Nick wonder if Ogden was trying to pull some sort of charade over on him.

  Ogden didn’t wait for a response before filling everyone in regardless. Nick listened with great concentration, wondering how Ogden would cherry pick the bios of two people he had once called co-workers in a sense.

  “James McAllister,” Ogden said, almost spitting the name from his mouth. “He was a highly decorated soldier that spent time in Afghanistan throughout most of the 90s. For a while, he was the go-to expert for news programs when it came to survival strategies in extreme conditions. He fell off the map for several years, resurfacing only to be the prime suspect in aiding terrorists in several attempts to bring down buildings in the western part of the US. He’s been in prison four times since 9/11, including a stint in Guantanamo Bay.”r />
  And then there’s Katherine Laslo,” he added, saying her name as if it was a joke. “While the crimes were never pinned on her, it is highly suspected that she provided residence and funding to computer hackers that successfully hacked into the DOD and the IRS. It was this same hacker group that caused the six hour blackout on Wall Street four years ago. She was also charged with contributing her skills and resources to the classified leaks that surfaced for the handful of years leading up to the outbreak.”

  There were murmurs of recognition around the room, but apparently not the uproar that Ogden had been expecting. His face was growing red, making his mustache appear whiter than it actually was. If he were a bit heavier, Nick thought he might resemble a walrus in his current state.

  When it was clear that no one was willing to follow Ogden, Nick said, “Times are different now. It’s clear that many of you aren’t fond of me, but here I am. You only need me because of my skills. I don’t see why the case would be any different for James and Katherine.”

  “Based on this,” Ogden said, “I don’t know that I can put as much faith into the mission as I thought.”

  A thin spindly woman on the right side of the table cleared her throat and spoke softly. “Sir, if I may, we would have them under surveillance for the duration of their missions. If there is any sort of foul play, we’ll know.”

  “What sort of foul play?” Nick asked. “What the hell is out there in the world right now that is worth trying to steal or manipulate?”

  Silence surrounded the table. Nick finished his water and pushed his now-empty plate to the side. “Look, I understand that everyone in this little hideout feels that they have to uphold the structures and processes that once made them feel important. But that’s beyond stupid. If things were the same as they had been before, you wouldn’t have hunted me down with a satellite and sent someone across the state to find me.”

  “At least you once had a history of success within the government,” Ogden said. “And I could maybe even say the same for McAllister. Whatever decisions you made near the end…those are your own demons to worry with. But before all of that, you did an amazing part in serving you country. We know that you have what it takes to—“

  “Spare me,” Nick interrupted. “Here’s the deal: throwing me out there to administer this vaccine to the ramblers …that’s suicide. I need help—help that you aren’t prepared or equipped to offer. The truth of the matter is that James McAllister is a brilliant strategist when it comes to military-like attacks and he could survive in any area of the planet without any resources. He’s been trained by the best. And what you failed to mention in your little summary of him was that he was in prison four times because the charges never stuck. He was released each and every time. The same can be said for Katherine. She was never charged because she wasn’t guilty, and in fact, was basically harassed by the government for the better part of a year.”

  “She admitted to aiding the hackers that—” Ogden started.

  “And look at what she found,” Nick yelled. “Bank fraud, hidden sexual abuse cases against government officials—”

  “That’s highly speculative and—”

  “Wait!”

  Griffith yelled this out and the room fell into silence. He looked apologetically to Ogden before he went on. The man that was sitting next to him had been introduced to Nick as Oscar Rabkin, one of the men that had been responsible for developing the vaccine. They both looked anxious, like they were running late for something.

  “Colonel,” Griffith said, “this is your decision, sir. But if we are serious about getting this mission started, we need to start soon. Bickering about the past is not going to do any good and might I add, there is classified information in the stories you were about to get into.”

  “Of course,” Ogden said gruffly.

  “He’s right,” Rabkin said. “We need the field research and results as soon as possible to proceed with the development and fine tuning of the vaccine. And forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but it might be best to test it on these people you consider as undesirable before sending Mr. Blackburn out in search of those you truly want saved.”

  “That’s an exceptional point,” an older gentleman at the end of the table said. Nick couldn’t remember clearly from his round of quick introductions, but he thought this man had once been an important figure within the NSA.

  “Yeah,” Nick said, scoffing them all. “Let James and Katherine be the guinea pigs.”

  “We already know the vaccine works,” Ogden said, nearly shouting now. The look on his face made it apparent that he knew he had no choice, but he was going down swinging.

  “We know that it works in a safe and sterile lab environment,” Griffith said.

  “Yes,” Rabkin said. “And it only works about seventy percent of the time. We have no idea if the setting or the environment will affect it.”

  Ogden sat back in his chair, clearly not pleased. He looked directly at Nick, his stare unwavering and his eyes unblinking.

  “You’re right, you know,” Ogden said. “It’s a different world right now. So I have no choice but let you go after your corrupt little friends first. If that’s what it takes to get our mission started…if that’s what it takes to start taking the baby steps towards saving the world. But, as the world is a different place, know this: if I begin to suspect that you ever have anything but the interest of the betterment of the world at heart, I’ll personally drive you out to one of the more heavily populated regions and feed you to the ramblers. Am I understood?”

  Nick smiled widely, satisfied that the stuffy colonel had gotten so frazzled over this. He started to wonder if maybe he had never quite understood the depth of anger he caused in certain people within the government due to the career choices he had made near the end.

  Ogden nodded briskly to the others gathered around the table and then got up. He stormed to his office and slammed the door behind him.

  “He seems a little uptight,” Nick said, snickering.

  But no one else laughed. Instead, Griffith stood up and beckoned him forward.

  “Come on,” he said. “Rabkin and I will debrief you and then I’ll get you set up to head out to find your friends.”

  7

  While no one had bothered to give Nick a tour of the facilities or even explain how the place was set up, he was able to get the gist of it by quickly looking at an emergency exit schematic that was pinned to the far wall of the center of operations.

  There were five levels to the place, four of which were underground. The top floor seemed mostly vacant from what he could tell from the schematic. The second floor seemed to consist of residences for those living in the building. The third floor, which they were on, was made up of the large central room and a series of offices.

  It was no surprise to Nick when Griffith and Rabkin led him to the elevator and headed down. He had assumed that any sort of laboratories would be as far underground as possible. It just made sense for the security of a building laid out like this one.

  They headed down in silence, but when the elevator doors opened, Rabkin seemed to shift a mental gear and instantly started filling Nick in. Griffith nodded here and there as the two men led him through the halls and rooms along the fourth floor.

  They passed several rooms with walls made of fiberglass paneling. There were a few people inside, dressed in protective gear that looked like something HAZMAT might use. There were vials, computers, and a myriad of other things that Nick didn’t fully understand. It all looked clean, yet hastily put together.

  The entire fourth level smelled of disinfectant and, the deeper into the level they got, heavily like a hospital. They came to a large metal-looking desk near the back of the level, tucked away behind two large walls.

  Rabkin tapped a few keys on the computer that was set up at the center of the table, looked over something, and nodded satisfactorily.

  “So here’s what we know about the infected,” Rabkin sai
d. “And by infected, I obviously mean the people that everyone started to refer to as the ramblers when things got bad near the end.”

  He paused, as if thinking Nick was going to sit down, pull out a pad and paper, and take down notes. When he saw that Nick was going to do nothing of the sort, he went on.

  “They look like they’re dumb, but from what we can tell, their mental capacities are almost normal. They are just slow to react. Some of them seem to show emotion, including fear. The parasite does not make them weaker, as we originally thought. The only changes seem to be the obvious ones: they decay, as if dead, while still alive. The decay seems to fade, almost like it is healing, every few weeks, and then starts over again. They can go weeks without eating and when there are no humans or animals to eat, they have no qualms about feeding on one another, or in extreme cases, themselves.”

  “So they kill themselves by eating themselves?” Nick asked.

  “No,” Rabkin said. “They’ll eat just enough to satisfy their hunger—say a bicep or the meat from their hand. The wound slowly heals itself, much like their decayed state, after a while. From what we’ve seen, a standard gunshot takes about four days to heal almost completely. This odd healing process is why they can only be killed with a gunshot to the head or burning.”

  “We also think electrocution can do the trick,” Griffith added. “But it has to be a pretty lethal jolt.”

  “Now, there is one thing we know about them that will help us locate our targets,” Rabkin said. “And that is that they don’t appear to stray too far away from home. We aren’t sure why, exactly. As things came to an end and the few people that survived found suitable hiding places, we started to send out troops to find out more about the ramblers.”

  “We lost a lot of men during these missions,” Griffith added. “It’s one of the reasons we started thinking outside of the box and tried to locate you.”

  “Anyway,” Rabkin continued, “about a year or so after the outbreak, the soldiers took down a few of the ramblers in sporadic locations around the country. In every single location, it was determined that none of those infected were any further than twenty miles away from their homes. So the thought everyone had when it first started happening—that they were just wandering and rambling around with no aim or purpose—isn’t entirely true. They might have been wandering, but they weren’t walking too far away from their homes.”