CHAPTER 26

Nate woke with rain in his face. It came out of a starless night sky, cold and steady. He blinked, disoriented, unable to remember where he was or what had happened to him. Then, all at once, it came back to him—Jessica Metcalfe, the men in the white suits, the van ride. His nose and lips felt tender and swollen, and he could taste fresh blood in his mouth. He was missing a tooth. His tongue kept coming back to the gap it had left behind.

He rolled over onto his hands and knees and spit out a wad of blood and phlegm, then looked around, desperate for something familiar to anchor his mind to his present circumstances. What he saw was a large fenced-in field of trampled grass and mud puddles. It looked a little larger than a football field, though it was difficult to tell for certain because it was dark and the only light came from floodlights pointed down into the enclosure from atop the fences. There were people all around him. Most of the ones he could see were seated, their heads down between their knees, oblivious to the rain pelting the backs of their necks. But quite a few were walking around. They were changing. Some, he could see now, already had.

An older woman, about sixty, was on her back a few feet away. She was looking right at him, her eyes so bloodshot they frightened him. She was mumbling something. Nate tried to look away, but out of the corner of his eye he saw her holding up a mangled, trembling hand. She was trying to say something.

“What do you want?” he said.

Her voice was weak, hoarse. It sounded like she was saying “Please,” over and over again.

“Please what?” he asked.

“Please,” she said again. “Paul, please.”

“Paul? Lady, you’re hallucinating.”

Nate turned away and tried to block out the sounds of her pleading. Here and there throughout the enclosure, people were rising to their feet and shambling off into the darkness. There were a lot more of them on their feet now.

From behind him, Nate heard the old woman’s pleading change to a gurgling, rattling sound.

He looked at her and was shocked that he could actually see her changing. Nate couldn’t believe that it could happen so quickly. Her eyes were wide open and unblinking. And they weren’t as bloodshot as they had been a few moments before. Now there was a pinkish, milky haze seeping through them. Her body had stopped shaking.

She rolled over awkwardly and at last managed to rise to her feet.

“Oh, fuck,” he said.

He looked around the enclosure, and for the first time realized that there wasn’t anyplace to hide. Just a muddy field full of zombies and people who were only seconds away from becoming zombies.

There was no way out.

More and more of the zombies were coming toward him, attracted by the old woman’s moaning. Nate panicked. He turned and stepped into the arms of a girl of about fifteen whose head was bent to one side, almost all the way to her shoulder. Her teeth were blood soaked.

Nate hit her in the chest and knocked her backward.

A gap opened in the knot of zombies around him. He could see the perimeter fence and the soldiers milling around outside it. He sprinted toward them, and this time, the demon that plagued his knee was no match for the fear in his gut.

He reached the fence and threw himself onto it.

“Get me out of here,” he screamed at the soldiers. “Please. Jesus, don’t leave me in here.”

He took the fence in both hands and shook it.

“Let me out of here.”

A few soldiers turned their gas-masked faces toward him, but none made any move to help.

“Please,” he shouted. “Please.”

Behind him, the moans were growing louder. He turned around and saw a blur of faces closing in on him.

He grabbed the fence again and screamed at the soldiers. “For God’s sake, you fucking bastards, get me out of here. Get me out of here.”

Someone put a hand on his shoulder and he screamed. He threw an elbow at the man behind him and felt it connect with the man’s ribs. The man fell backward, but didn’t make a sound.

“Shit oh shit oh shit,” Nate said as he started to scramble up the fence. He hadn’t climbed a chain-link fence since he was a kid, and he was surprised at how hard it was to pull up his own weight.

But he pulled himself upward. He could feel hands grasping at his feet, tugging at the hems of his jeans, and his fear pushed him higher.

He made it as far as the top of the fence before he touched razor wire.

“Please, help me,” he pleaded.

None of the soldiers moved.

Below him, the zombies moaned and shook the fence. The combined volume of so many voices made him tremble. He put his face against the fence and let the rain run into his eyes without blinking it away.

“Please, help me.”

Major Mark Kellogg sat in the backseat of a Humvee, watching the figure clinging to the fence. The floodlights were designed to cast light into the enclosure, and so the figure up on the fence was visible only as a silhouette. Below the figure, the infected were clamoring to get at him. He could hear their moaning over the rain pounding on the roof of the vehicle.

He looked over at Colonel Jim Budlong. “All the others have changed,” he said. “This is the last one.”

Budlong nodded. They had discussed this at length, the time it took a normal person to go from initial infection to full depersonalization. The longest either of them had heard of was a twenty-four-year-old Delta Force operative who had received a fingernail scratch on his calf during a clean-and-sweep operation in Atlanta. The man was in superior physical condition, and he’d been kept nearly motionless from the moment of infection, but had made it only sixteen hours before he changed. And that was the record. Average time to depersonalization was much shorter—anywhere from five minutes to four hours.

The dynamic between severity of infection, location of infection, and physical condition of the victim prior to infection was well documented. It took longer for a physically fit person who was infected through a minor injury in a non-vital area to change than it did for a person with a preexisting health condition, such as hypertension or some form of weakened immune response, who received a substantial bite in a vital area, like the neck or near a major artery. Kellogg’s own research over the last year and a half had shown that the necrosis filovirus had a strong affinity for victims with hypertension. In fact, after the degree of physical activity a person undergoes immediately after their initial infection, hypertension seemed to be the leading factor in how fast a person changed. It was such a pronounced factor that an out-of-shape individual with hypertension who received a substantial bite near a major artery could expect to make the change almost immediately—certainly within two or three minutes.

Budlong said, “How long?”

“The last subjects were put in there eighteen hours ago.” Kellogg waited, but when Budlong didn’t say anything, he said, “Jim, I can tell from here that guy’s no swinging dick from Special Forces. Look at him. Beer gut. Mullet haircut.”

Budlong sighed. He watched the man hanging on the fence for a moment longer, then sighed again and mopped a hand over his face.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Kellogg grunted in frustration. He turned, opened his door, and stepped out into the rain.

Surprised, Budlong leaned over the seat.

“Mark, where are you going?”

Kellogg had to nearly yell to be heard over the rain. “You said when you asked me to join your little think tank that you would let me trust my instincts. Time to make good on your promise, Jim.”

Kellogg walked over to the enclosure, weaving his way through a maze of vehicles and bored-looking sentries who snapped to attention when they realized who he was. Budlong was at his side by the time he reached the enclosure.

Kellogg found a sentry near the fence and said, “Soldier, how long has that man been up there?”

“Nearly an hour, sir.” The sentry hesitated before adding, “You want me to hit the current, sir?”

Electrocute the fence, Kellogg thought. Jesus Christ.

“No,” he said. “Stand by.”

He turned to Budlong. “Well? You heard that. He’s been up there nearly an hour. You know how much physical strain that puts on a body to cling to a fence like that?”

“What do you expect me to do?” Budlong said.

“I told you. Make good on your promise.”

Budlong stared up at the shadowy figure on the fence, the rain feathering off the hanging man in sheets. Then he looked at Mark Kellogg and he nodded.

“Thank you, Jim.”

Kellogg grabbed the sentry and said, “I want that man taken down and put into isolation, you hear?”

The soldier cocked his head at Kellogg. “Sir?”

“You heard me. And make sure no one harms him in the process.”