Chapter 3

The landing had been rough, as Dave had promised, but it wasn't as bad as they
were expecting. Thankfully none of the group suffered any major injuries as the
plane dropped out of the sky and skidded across a soft plowed field feet away
from a lone one lane road. Even the fuselage of the plane was largely intact,
although the damage to both wings and the landing gear meant it wouldn't be
airworthy without significant repair. After the landing Dave had been able to
muster the energy to help them try to pinpoint their location, somewhere in
south western Missouri, before succumbing to the infection and falling into
coma.

International treaties prohibited any military action on the continent of
Antarctica, except for military involvement in scientific research, and because
of that none of the soldiers at Monroe carried weapons. Dave had given Erik his
sidearm, a standard issue 9mm M9 Beretta, along with his hunting knife. Amanda
took Lindens sidearm, and between them they had 3 full 15 round magazines, less
the single shot from the clip in Erik's weapon.

Erik had never killed anyone. He had seen death, been under fire, in the heat
of battle. He'd carried a weapon, and never thought he'd have trouble using it,
if it came down to it. He wasn't a violent man, still, "Better them than me" he
thought. When he was stationed in Iraq he'd mostly worked to repair the
electronics on the equipment that the other soldiers had used: cameras, radios,
computers. When APCs or tanks were attacked and disabled on patrol he would
have to leave the base. The vehicles were stuffed with valuable electronics,
and if they couldn't be repaired the equipment was destroyed so the technology
wouldn't fall into the hands of insurgents. The enemy knew the MO, and on more
than one "repair or disable" mission they'd been ambushed. He'd laid down cover
fire, but as far as he knew no bullet had ever found it's mark.

Scot had never been in the military, Sam and Amanda had spent their entire
Airforce careers stateside before their arctic deployment, working on computer
networks and communications equipment. When it was time to pull the trigger,
on one of their own no less, Erik had volunteered. He didn't know what would
happen. What if there was a cure, what if Dave hadn't succumbed to the
infection, but they had all seen what had happened to Marcus, what would have
happened to Dave if he hadn't been quick enough to prevent himself from being
torn apart. Not that his reflexes had saved him. If the infected were truly
mindless then it was Dave or them. Erik had never killed anyone, but he had
still seen enough death. He was already damaged, he though, no sense in
traumatizing the others as well.

When Dave had fallen into coma Erik had ushered the others into the cargo hold.
He took the pistol that Dave had given him, placing it a few inches from the
pilot's right temple as he sat at the helm of the aircraft, and pulled the
trigger. When his ears had stopped ringing from the report of the weapon in the
small cockpit he clicked the safety on, holstered it, and walked through the
cockpit door to the area where Scot, Sam, and Amanda were already in
conversation.

"So, what do we do now?" Scot asked.

"Well, we can't have much light left, we don't know the area, and it's raining,
I don't think there's much we can do right now except wait for tomorrow and
hope that someone shows up. If not I guess we walk to down tomorrow." Sam
answered.

"And after that?" Scot asked "Are we going to even discussed that we were
apparently just attacked by a Zombie?"

They all stared in silence at this for a while. "It's obvious that some sort
of, I dunno, virus or bacterial infection or something is going around, but I
don't think we can call them 'zombies'."Amanda answered.

"Dave did, and I don't know what else you'd call a dead guy getting up and
trying to munch on people." Erik responded.

At the mention of Dave they all became quiet, an unacknowledged moment of
silence. In the distance wind howled through the trees as rain continued to
pelt the side of the plane. Inside, there was a whistling draft blowing in
through the no longer airtight gaps in the cargo hold of the plane.

"He said they weren't dead, he said they were 'as close to dead as you can
get', and besides, I didn't hear anyone screaming about brains." Sam retorted.

"Marcus was dead." Erik said flatly.

"Maybe it was just latent electrical activity in the muscles causing some sort
of spasm, we never saw him actually get up." Scot said.

"If it were that he should have been twitching the whole time he was laying
there though." Erik answered.

"Not if, I don't know, if it's some sort of bacteria that causes the muscles to
move." Scot said. They again stared for a while. "Have any of you ever eaten
frog legs?" Scot asked.

Nobody answered. Intermittently hail dinged against the plane, mixed with the
sound of the rain, creating a cacophony of noise echoing around inside the
plane and competing with the voices of the group.

"We used to have them when I was a kid. When you skin frog legs and put salt on
them, they'll start hopping around. Not just randomly, there's muscle memory
there, they move like there was a brain attached to them, hopping or trying to
swim.  Even hours after the legs have been severed from the body. Maybe
whatever is happening here is the same thing. The virus, or bacteria, or
whatever infects the body and it's metabolic activity generates chemicals that
cause the muscles and nerves to move."

"It didn't look like muscle memory to me, the body was coordinated, at least to
some extent, and if it were just some sort of anaerobic metabolizing process
caused by the bacteria then it shouldn't have stopped when the brain was
destroyed." Erik responded.

"Unless the bacteria was acting as a colony, some sort of advanced parasite.
Bacteria in the brain could hijack the nervous system and send signals down the
nerves that triggers the rest of the colony to produce enzymes that complete
the ADP/ATP cycle and cause muscle movement." Scot answered.

"Since neither of you geniuses has a degree in biochemistry why don't we skip
over the debate about why dead bodies are trying to eat people and focus on
what the hell we're going to do about it?" Amanda said, irritated with Scot and
Erik's argument.

"Well," Scot started to answer her question "If we have some idea of what is
causing this, then we'll have a better idea of what we're up against. Right now
we have no idea what we're up against. I mean, do the infected collapse after a
day or two, once the energy in the muscles is used up, do they keep going for a
week, is the infection spread only through fluids or do we need to be concerned
about water, food, hell even transmission through the air? What's the status of
this thing, are we talking 5 percent of the population infected, 10 percent,
fuck 25 percent!? How well is it contained? Are there quarantine zones for the
infected, is there a vaccine yet? Based on the 'hostile area' line in that
message we got it sounds like there could be rioting too."

"That's exactly my fucking point" Amanda said, "All we've got right now is
conjecture. We don't have any evidence, any idea of what's going on, so
guessing at it isn't going to give us any real information. Our best bet is to
figure out how to deal with whatever the situation is, rather than guessing at
how it came to arise, at least until we have something to go on."

"She's right" Sam agreed. "Rather than thinking about how the infection is
operating, let's look at what information we have and decide what to do from
there. The Airforce at least is still operational enough to send a plane down
to pick us up. Given that they pulled troops out from all over the world it
sounds like there is, or they fear there could be, civil unrest. Given that
it's been a couple of hours since we landed and I still don't hear any sirens
I'd guess that all the first responders are tied up, so either there is
rioting, or martial law was put into effect, maybe both. Based on what Dave
told us, the details might not all be worked out yet, but it sounds like they
know enough about the infection to stifle the spread. I think our best bet is
to hoof it to the nearest town tomorrow morning. From there we should have a
better idea of how things stand."

The rest of the group agreed with Sam and it was decided that they would head
out and attempt reach Joplin the following day. Before anything else though,
they would lay to rest the bodies of Dave, Linden, and Marcus.

Moving Dave and Linden was relatively easy, physically at least. Careful not to
come in contact with the men's blood, they positioned them onto the cargo
netting that Amanda had disconnected in their original attempt to stop Linden.
They drug the bodies down the cargo ramp at the back of the plane. It took all
four of them to move Marcus, and had they not had access to gloves and masks
from the salvaged medical equipment they wouldn't have been able to do so
without coming into contact with the fluids pooled in his empty chest cavity or
the organs themselves that had spilled onto the floor. When they had finished
they rinsed themselves and the contaminated parts of the plane as well as they
could in rubbing alcohol, hoping it would be enough to kill the unknown
contagion.

The sun was setting behind the line of trees in the distance by the time they
had drug the bodies of Marcus, Dave, and Linden out of the plane, located the
topographical maps of the area, and narrowed down their location to a stretch
of farmland 20 miles east of Joplin, Missouri. From inside the plane they could
hear the thunk of raindrops hitting the fuselage.

With a plan laid out for their journey the following day, the group set about
trying to get themselves ready for the trip. Scot and Amanda started sorting
through the supplies they had brought with them from Monroe station, deciding
what would be the most useful to bring along. Sam sat examining the maps of the
area by the glow of the emergency light situated above the door to the cockpit,
familiarizing himself with the terrain and plotting the path they would take
the next day. Erik was rifling through the electronics on the plane. They had
no radio nor a portable light source, and he hoped to be able to salvage some
of the equipment on the plane to build a few small flashlights and, with any
luck, a radio receiver.

"Looks like this is going to be the best we can do" Amanda said a couple of
hours later.

Sam and Erik looked to see what the pair had come up with. Four makeshift
rucksacks sat in the middle of the floor. They'd been made using spare material
from the heavy parkas that the group had abandoned once they had made it north
of the arctic circle. They were stuffed with MREs that had served as an
emergency backup to the store of frozen and dehydrated foods on the base. They
had also managed to create a few empty bladders that could hold water if need
be, but they had no water in their supplies.

"That should be enough to last a couple of weeks at least" Sam said. "Hope to
God it's not bad enough out there that we actually need all those supplies." he
added.

Having gotten supplies ready, Scot and Amanda laid out the remainder of the
heavy winter clothing they'd been wearing to create a pair of makeshift beds
and laid down for the night. Erik and Sam joined them shortly after. The group
started to drift off to the rhythmic sound of the rain beating against the top
of the plane when the realization started to creep over them that the rhythmic
pounding was more than just rain beating against the metal shell of the
aircraft.

Amanda was up first, followed by Erik. There were no windows on the plane, save
in the cockpit. Scot moved to the front of the plane. He knew what he was going
to see before he ever caught the silhouette of the first infected in the
moonlight shambling toward the plane. Returning to the group he didn't have to
tell them what he saw.

"How many?" Erik asked in a loud whisper.

"Four or five from what I saw, but no telling how many are around the plane"

"Fight or flight?" Erik asked, looking more at Amanda than the others, as she
was the only other member of the group who was armed.

"Running's going to be a bitch in this field with all the rain." She said.

"Hope you're a good shot." Erik replied, flipping the safety on his weapon.

After a quickly whispered discussion on tactics Scot and Sam dropped the cargo
ramp at the back of the plane and Erik and Amanda darted out. A quick
assessment showed the area behind the plane was clear. The headed left around
the side of the plane. A single ghoul at 50 yards away was staggering through
the soft earth toward the plane. Deciding that the distance was too great for
their hand guns they fought against the mud pulling at their boots and
continued to the front of the plane. As they rounded the corner a withered hand
shot out and caught the sleeve of Erik's uniform. Spinning on the spot to face
the attacker he saw what had been a young man of perhaps twenty. The creature
wore blue jeans stained with earth and dried blood, and a tattered blue flannel
shirt marked with bullet holes, the black craters in it's chest and abdomen
showing through in the moonlight. As he turned Erik slipped on the slick mud of
the field beneath his boots, as he fell back he pulled himself free of the
creatures grasp. Seconds after he hit the ground a shot rang out from behind
him and the creature toppled backwards, a glob of black gelatinous blood oozing
from a hole on his forehead.

Amanda reached out a hand to help him up and, giving the corners of the plane a
wider birth they rounded the side of the plane again, ignoring for now the
corpses Scot had seen shambling down the road toward them. Three ghouls stood
at the side of the plane, their mindless pounding interrupted by either the
gunshot or the smell of the two potential victims. Erik took aim and squeezed
the trigger. His shot went low and tore a hole in the throat of the creature,
who continued onward oblivious to the damage. A second shot just above the
right eye felled the creature but it's two companions were closing in. Amanda
fired and dropped the closest one with a shot that caught the creature just
above the mouth. As it fell Erik took out the last one with a shot to the
center of the forehead.

The pair now turned their attention to the five that had been approaching from
the front of the plane. Whereas before they had been meandering only roughly in
the direction of the crash site, they were now plodding purposefully toward the
origin of the shots.

Still fighting the sucking earth beneath their feet, Erik and Amanda made their
way to the paved road only a couple of yards away. Unencumbered by the terrain
they jogged the dozen yards to get within firing range of the ghouls, who
altered course to meet them. Even in the heat of battle the pair lost their
breath at the horror of the nearest ghoul. The skin on the left side of it's
face had been torn away, leaving only tendons and muscle cleaning to the bone
around the empty socket where there had been an eye. Much of the flesh too had
been torn away from the shirtless torso. A few clumps of fatty tissue hung from
a flap of skin where there had once been a breast, beneath it the jagged
remains of broken rib bone peeked out from the gaping void in the abdomen where
the lungs and a few organs dangled visible behind the torn muscle and fat.
Though Amanda was closest to the creature she seemed transfixed by the horror
of the spectacle, weapon only half raised, and Erik had to take several shots
before a bullet found its mark in the creatures skull and it fell to the
ground. Brought to her senses again Amanda dropped three more ghouls in quick
succession, leaving Erik to pick off the last as it struggled through the damp
ground.

As they returned to the plane the one remaining ghoul that they had left was
within range now, and Erik quickly dispatched it before giving three quick,
sharp knocks against the side of the aircraft. The pair scurried up the ramp
and Scot and Sam pulled the cargo door closed as Erik and Amanda fell onto the
benches, hearts racing and both trying to avoid getting sick as the adrenalin
slowly faded from their systems.