"Terra Mortis" - Chapter 4

Terra Mortis

Chapter 4

By Dwayne MacInnes

Brady awoke to the sound of birds chirping and the smell of food cooking. It must have all been a dream. Mom must be cooking breakfast.

"Good morning," greeted the same female voice that was in his dream last night. Brady shot straight up and opened his eyes wide to stare at the small figure of a girl cooking over a fire. It wasn't a dream there was the girl. She was a girl of Asian descent, not much over five feet tall, and dressed in black leather. On her slim waist was a military webbed belt and holster holding a pink automatic pistol with the picture of "Hello Kitty" on the handle. "Oh God! I must still be dreaming," Brady said to himself.

"Hungry?" the girl asked.

"Umm...yes. Thank you." Brady responded.

The girl turned towards Brady with a plate of food in her hand. She handed Brady the plate with what appeared to be eggs. The smell was too inviting, and without further talking, Brady started to devour the food.

"Wow! You'd think you haven't eaten for a while. Oh, sorry you may not have." The sadness filled the once cheery face as the girl remembered their circumstances. "I'm Noriko Fubuki. My friends call me Nori though I'm not a dwarf." Noriko laughed.

That stopped Brady. He looked up with a quizzical expression on his face.

"You obviously never read the Hobbit."

"Uh, no. I guess I never got around to it. I'm Brady West. Thank you for saving me last night."

"Oh, I just shot the second zombie. You need to thank Ronnie. He shot the first one. He's off with Coop gathering some more wood."

"What do you mean zombies?" Brady enquired.

"Zombies. You know Night of the Living Dead?" Noriko sat down next to Brady.

"I guess I never read that either."

"It's a movie, silly. Well, Ronnie can tell you more about that. But what I do know is that those are not diseased people walking around out there; unless you consider being dead a disease." Nori continued.

"Dead? I don't get it. I remember on TV there being some talk about that. But the dead can't come back to life."

"I hate to tell you this, but that was a dead man who had you by the leg last night."

Brady was going to continue his question when he saw a tall, stocky black man in his forties with a young boy walking from the woods both with their arms full of wood. The black man could have been a linebacker by the size of him. He was dressed in a military uniform and stood over six feet tall. There was an M-16 on his back. The boy looked to be about 10, dressed in blue jeans and a matching jacket. He had a blank look on his face and his short blonde hair was a mess.

"Hi. Look who's finally awake." Noriko jumped up.

The soldier dumped his load of wood next to the fire. The young boy did the same and then sat down staring at the flames. The soldier then walked over to Brady and extended his hand.

"Hello, I'm Master Sergeant Ronald Greene." The big man's hand grasped Brady's and pumped it with a strong and firm hand shake.

"Man, the man is strong," thought Brady.

"Uh, hi," muttered Brady. "Thank you for saving my life and all."

"No problem. Though, you did walk right into that one. You are lucky that there weren't more out there."

"Yeah, Ronnie, I was telling him all about those zombies." Nori interrupted.

Ronald looked sourly at Noriko. "Please, call me sergeant, Sarge, Ron, or even Ronald. But not Ronnie."

Brady watched the exchange and couldn't help but smile.

"Sorry, Ron. You know how I am..."

"Right, anyway what is your name, or should I call you 'hey you'". Ron continued.

"I'm Brady West, and you can call me Brady. I was trying to get to Seattle to find my parents." Brady replied.

"I've got some bad news for you son. Seattle is gone. No one is getting in or out alive. I mean that. If anything survived that fire bombing it was those creatures."

"NO! NO! They have to be alive," sobbed Brady, "they must be alive."

Brady put his face in his hands and started crying uncontrollably. Nori sat down by Brady again and put her arm around his shoulder. "I know how you feel. I cried for two days straight after I lost my family." Nori consoled.

Ronald went over to the fire and started tending it. The boy just sat there lost in the flames. After about half an hour, Brady regained his composure.

Nori looked tenderly into Brady's face. "You know Ronnie saved my life too." Nori began talking again hoping to take Brady's mind off his loss. Ronald shook his head when Nori said the name Ronnie. "Oops, sorry Sarge. Anyway, I go to, or I should say used to go to a Catholic school. Father Henderson believed that he could get us students and our families out of Seattle. So he loads us all up in these school buses. How he did it I don't know. But anyway, we left the city proper and had just hit the checkpoint. Oh, yeah, this was just before things really started to hit the fan, so there weren't too many people fleeing yet. But as we stopped, Father Henderson stepped out to talk to the soldiers manning the checkpoint. He gets no further than in front of the bus before one of those big machine guns on one of those tanks starts to shoot him. His blood hits the window and everyone starts screaming. That was when the machine gun started hitting the buses. I was near the back and the last thing I saw were my parents being shot up. The emergency exit door opened up behind me and I was pulled out. It was Ronnie...er, Sarge. He pulled me out and covered my mouth so I couldn't scream. Through the chaos he got me away, and we hid in the woods. I think I cried for the entire night. I don't remember too much after that." Noriko fell suddenly silent as she relived the death of her friends and family again.

"I was part of the army Rangers." Ronald started picking up the story, "we had orders to shoot anyone coming out of the cities because they were carrying a highly contagious disease with no cure. At first they were calling in only soldiers with no family, but as the situation progressed the Special Forces and active duty soldiers were called. We had a few skirmishes with the National Guard units. They knew better than we did of the situation and were also trying to leave the city. In any case, the night before Noriko's party showed up, we stop this black car. We do our business and send in volunteers to burn up everything that could be contagious. So I volunteer. I'm given an NBC suit and approach the vehicle. In the back seat there is this man in a business suit. He's hit pretty bad and he's clutching a brief case. He keeps saying that he needs to get out of Seattle. Well, I think he is raving from the disease so I finish him off. I was about to torch the car and everything when I decided to save the briefcase. I don't what made me do it, but I did. I tucked it under my suit and then started the vehicle on fire." Sergeant Greene began staring in the fire like the little boy.

"Well," continued Ronald, "I picked the case open when my watch was over and find all these documents and a CD-Rom. The documents are from Columbia Technologies, the parent company of ColTech pharmaceuticals. I started reading about this project of theirs that is supposed to help Alzheimer's victims by creating a drug that'll regenerate the brain tissue. Unfortunately, the drug kills the patients after it brings certain more primitive parts of the brain back to life. But not life as we know it. This tissue lives on its own. It doesn't need oxygen or anything.

"The military gets wind of this so they start funding it for a super soldier formula."

"Super soldier formula...wasn't that something that Captain America was given?" interrupted Nori.

Ronald resumed his story without paying attention to Noriko. "So now ColTech is trying to make the unstoppable soldier. Unfortunately, they can't test on animals. This drug, PZ60 only works on humans. So ColTech secretly starts abducting homeless people. Now, Washington, D.C. knows all about this and in fact encourages it. So ColTech has this room with all these people tied down on tables with the drug being tested on them. They are all dead, but the regenerated brain tissue reanimates their corpses. Imagine the A.L.A.'s surprise when they broke in to free test animals and instead find a bunch of people being tested on. You can guess how the story goes from there."

"Well, I decided I can't be a part of what was going on any more. I made my plans to leave the next chance I could. That was when Nori's bus convoy showed up. I opened the emergency exit door grabbed the first person I could find when things were getting pretty hot. Nori and I hid in the woods for two days until the military checkpoint was overrun by the fleeing people and later the zombies. It was a mess."

"Yeah, Sarge gives me this gun. A P-14 he calls it. It can hold 14 bullets and has a bit of a kick. But Sarge has been teaching me how to use it. It was kind of an ugly black, so I decided to make look better. I was going to go to art school next year after I graduated. So I painted it pink and I thought a 'Hello Kitty' would look cute on the handle." Nori piped in.

"I, uh, had some things on my motorcycle." Brady started to offer.

"Oh, don't worry! I grabbed your shotgun and backpack. I even grabbed your helmet; you may need it when we meet zombies again." Noriko replied in her usual chipper voice.

"We're going to need to get you outfitted out here if you are going to survive." Sarge started saying, "First, you need tough close fitting clothes. If one of those things bites you, you will get sick and then be a zombie yourself. So leather is the clothing of choice. Gloves, boots, and a helmet with a closed face are also a requirement. You have a motorcycle helmet and your jacket is leather. The rest we'll get when we start back to town tomorrow. You have a shotgun, that's fine. But zombies can hear and they know shooting is the also the sound of food for them. So we'll need to find you a silent weapon. Can you use a sword?"

"Ok, we'll get you a bat." Sarge continued after Brady shook his head no.

"I used to take kendo, so I also carry my father's katana." Noriko pointed to a bundle that was all wrapped up in a blanket. "Oh yeah, we went back to the bus after everything. Well, I should say Ronnie...er, Sarge did. I couldn't go back. He brought me my sword and found some of my personal effects. That's when he found Cooper." Noriko pointed to the boy who impassively stared into the fire.

"Coop was locked in a car. Somehow he had survived all the carnage that had transpired at the checkpoint. But he was catatonic and covered with filth. I got him out. He wouldn't respond to my questions so I found the car's registration papers. It belonged to a Franklin Cooper. I returned to camp and Noriko and I cleaned him up. He's better than he used to be. He'll follow orders and will stay out of trouble, but hasn't said a word since I've retrieved him." Ronald offered.

Brady then told them his story of hiding out in the family cabin until the fire bombing. How he drove his bike down here and his experience with the dead soldier.

"Well, after you and Noriko finish the dishes you both will begin training." Ronald said. "Welcome to the army."

Brady laughed for the first time in over a week. He laughed so hard he started crying.

"What's wrong?" Nori asked.

"That was something my father always wanted me to do. I went to college so I could escape the military and it looks like it found me."

Nori and Ronald looked at each other. Ronald shrugged and walked off. Nori just put a pot of water on the fire.

After the dishes were done Ronald took Nori and Brady out to the edge of the woods. He had three M-16s leaning against a tree. There were several clips lying on the ground.

"Now your shotgun will be good at close range, but if you need to get one of those things from a distance you are going to have to learn how to use a rifle. This here is an M-16A2." The sergeant stated as he picked up the rifle. "This has four settings; safety, semi, burst, and automatic." Ronald showed them the selector on the side of the M-16. You will want to only use semi to allow it to fire as a semiautomatic weapon. In other words one shot for each time you squeeze the trigger. Burst and automatic will just be a waste of bullets on these guys. We need precision. The head is a tough target to begin with so stay on semi! Now this is not just the M-16A1 you see them use in the movies where you can spray bullets until you let off the trigger. On M-16A2 you also have the burst option which will allow to fire three bullets with one squeeze. But as I said only use semi!"

The sergeant began instructing them in the use and care of the M-16 and by noon they were already taking practice shots at some targets that the sergeant had carved in the trees. Brady was surprised how quickly he was able to recall his unused shooting skills after about fifteen minutes of practice. Ronald was impressed.

They broke for lunch. Ronald had prepared an MRE for each of them over the fire. They weren't the best tasting things in the world but after all that had transpired over the last couple of weeks they tasted like manna from heaven.

"There's a small town back that way," pointed Ronald, "which must have been evacuated. It is where Nori and I have gathered some supplies a few days ago. We'll start heading there tomorrow morning and get you some stuff. We don't stay in towns because they are the most dangerous places right now. We have bombers blowing everything to bits, zombies walking all over kingdom come, and some renegades that have taken advantage of the chaos to wreak their own havoc. It is total anarchy."

After lunch Ronald started instructing Nori and Brady in martial arts. Nori was quicker at learning self-defense than Brady was. But after a long day of working out they all enjoyed a good dinner. When the sun set, Ronald kicked out the fire.

"We can't alert our presence to anyone. Your best bet is to share body heat. The three of you sleep under these blankets. I'll take first watch. Nori you take second, and Brady you have third. If you see or hear anything, I mean anything, silently wake us up." With that the sergeant walked off into the darkness.

"Now don't you get any funny ideas," Noriko whispered, "I'm a good Catholic girl and there'll be no hanky panky unless we get married. I don't think we'll find any priests out here so we don't have to worry about that either." Nori chuckled as she slid under the blanket between Cooper and Brady. It wasn't long before all three were asleep. It was the best night of sleep Brady had in a very long time despite the hard ground and the cool night.