Infection Z (Book 2): The Aftermath Read online

  Infection Z: The Aftermath

  December 2017

  Gary Chesla

  The Aftermath

  The Z virus fell from the sky and within days the world had changed in ways that no one could have ever predicted.

  One month later, it was a wasteland.

  The cities were dark, dead monuments to the horror filled final days of mankind.

  The machines, cars and buildings were now just the ugly skeletal remains of what the human race had accomplished before it died.

  The dead decaying bodies that lined the streets and highways, told the story of mankind’s final days to anyone who cared to listen.

  The story of the struggle to live, then the story of those

  who ran for their lives when the fight was lost, only to realize that there was nowhere left to run.

  But there wasn’t anyone now that cared to listen.

  To those that had died, even to the few that lived, it didn’t matter any longer, it was over.

  Doctor Kennedy, Petty Officer Chervanak, Seamen Davis, Rogers, Reynolds and Connors had found the government’s survival facility at Granite Mountain, Utah, after their base, the Fallon Naval Air Station, had been overrun by the infected.

  Finding the facility had given the men hope, both for themselves and for mankind’s survival.

  They had spent the last month at Granite Mountain with

  Doctor Kennedy making his nightly broadcast to mankind’s unseen survivors as the men scoured the storage bays to find what they could use to help those that had survived the Z virus.

  However, the men soon began to realize the post-apocalyptic world wasn’t what they had expected.

  It was worse.

  Tony, Mike, Linda and Jamie were staying at a small cabin they had discovered in the mountains above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, after they abandoned their home in Westmont to escape the walking dead.

  The cabin turned out to be a safe place to hide from the dead as they discussed their future.

  They listened to Doctor Kennedy’s nightly broadcasts and waited for the doctor to tell them when the Navy would be able to send them help.

  The doctor advised his listeners to stay somewhere safe until he could tell them that it was safe to move around again.

  Deciding to follow the doctor’s advice, they waited.

  When the nightly broadcasts suddenly stopped, Mike and Tony felt confused.

  Why did the broadcasts stop?

  Had something happened to the doctor and his men?

  What was going on around them now?

  By staying isolated at the cabin for the last month, had they missed something that would affect their ability to survive?

  Tony and Mike decided that they had to leave the safety of their mountain home to find out what had changed.

  Doctor Kennedy had told them to expect the bodies of the infected to gradually decay and begin to fall apart.

  But what they found was something the doctor had never told them about.

  They felt that what they had discovered possibly explained why the doctor’s broadcasts had stopped.

  Their discovery also made them reevaluate their chances of surviving.

  Fran lived with her dad and sister outside of Twin Falls, Idaho.

  Her dad came home from work one day, his clothing soaked from the weird orange rain storm that had gone through the area.

  By the end of that horror filled day, Fran was the only member of her family that was still alive.

  Fran soon discovered that not only was she the last member of her family that was still alive, she was the last person anywhere still alive.

  Over the next month Fran tried to find a way to overcome the fear and loneliness of being on her own as she clung to what was left of her life.

  In many ways she was impressed with herself, with her ability to survive, but she knew her time was running out.

  Fran decided that she couldn’t continue to live like this for much longer, so she took a big gamble that could result in her ending up dead.

  But Fran figured she was dead anyways, so with nothing else to lose, she made the plunge.

  Each of the groups quickly discovered that the world they now found themselves in, was nothing like they had expected it to be.

  If they are to survive, they will have to change their thinking and adapt to the world around them.

  They all searched for the answer to the same question.

  Are they just living out the last few days of their lives, or is there something more?

  Chapter 1

  June 28, Granite Mountain

  Seaman Davis walked down the main tunnel at the Granite Mountain facility and turned into the transportation storage bay, bay #47.

  As he entered the room, a small drone crashed into the wall above the door, then fell down on top of Davis’s head.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Davis growled as he bent down and picked up and examined the small bright red drone. “Aren’t you supposed to be training on the simulator? Doc said he wants us to be ready for a live flight in the helicopter in another two weeks.

  You’re supposed to be working, not playing!”

  “Doc told me to practice for a while with the drone,” Rogers replied defensively. “He said maybe flying the drone would help me understand how these things work a little better.”

  “Yeah, like understanding what would have happened to us if we were in this drone when it hit the wall,” Davis said. “Is it helping?”

  “I don’t know but it’s a hell of a lot more fun,” Rogers smiled. “You want to give it a try?”

  “Sure,” Davis replied after looking around to make sure there wasn’t anyone else there.

  “Grab the blue drone on the table over there,” Rogers said. “Doc gave me two drones. He said in case I break one.”

  Davis laughed, “You mean like how you broke the simulator?”

  “Doc said that wasn’t my fault,” Rogers protested again.

  “Well, then who the hell’s fault was it?” Davis asked. “I told you not to yank on the control stick, you are supposed to move it gently. You yank the stick like that when we are in the air in the real helicopter and they will be scraping us off the side of this mountain.”

  “I just wanted to see what would happen,” Rogers said. “How am I supposed to learn if I don’t try out the equipment and know what it does?”

  “Well, I guess it is better for you to get it out of your system now, we only have two of these small helicopters and we can’t afford to wreck them before we get started,” Davis replied then seemed to be thinking. “I wonder how we are supposed to get these helicopters outside? Surely Doc doesn’t expect us to fly them down the tunnel.”

  “That would be tough,” Rogers laughed. “Doc says the blueprints for Granite Mountain show that there is an outside door at the end of this bay that opens up out on to the side of the mountain. He says when the time comes, we will fly out that outside bay door.”

  “Shit, that sounds scary,” Davis said. “Why the hell did Doc pick us to learn how to fly these damn things anyhow? It would be a hell of a lot safer if we all just walked to where we need to go. If I thought I could have been a pilot I would have joined the Air Force.”

  “Well, there are only six of us,” Rogers replied. “We all have to do a job. We already have a doctor and Chervy runs the computer.

  I think I would have made a good doctor, but I guess someone has to fly the helicopter. Besides, Doc said these small helicopters are a piece of cake to fly once you get the hang of it and learn their secrets. Doc didn’t have much of a choice. It was us or Reynolds and I don’t think I would want to ride in any helicopter flown b
y Reynolds. That guy doesn’t have the common sense that God gave a stump.”

  “You would know,” Davis grinned and mumbled under his breath.

  “Come on,” Rogers smiled, “I bet you that I can make your drone crash before you can crash mine.”

  “I probably shouldn’t bet you on this one,” Davis smiled. “You seem to be an expert on crashing things.”

  “Chicken shit,” Rogers smiled. “If I win, on the first flight with the helicopter, I’m the pilot and you’re the copilot. You win, and you can be the pilot.”

  “I have a better idea,” Davis growled, “I win and I’m the pilot, you win and I’m the pilot.”

  Rogers thought for a second.

  “That doesn’t sound right,” he said.

  “It sounds right to me,” Davis replied. “There is no way in hell I’m going to get on any helicopter with you as the pilot.”

  “We’ll see,” Rogers grinned as he moved the throttle on the control panel and his red drone rose up off the floor and flew towards Davis.

  The red drone flew past Davis and crashed into the wall.

  The left front propeller broke off the drone and spun across the floor, coming to a stop at the base of the real helicopters that were sitting in the middle of the storage bay.

  “Shit!” Rogers yelled.

  Davis stood staring at the broken drone on the floor, shaking his head.

  “In two weeks that’s going to be us,” Davis thought. “The only thing that is scarier than Rogers flying a helicopter is the thought of Rogers trying to take out my appendix.”

  It had been four weeks since Doctor Kennedy, Petty Officer Chervanak, Seamen Davis, Rogers, Reynolds and Connors had escaped from their base at Fallon, Nevada, and found their way to Granite Mountain.

  By their narrow escape from the Fallon Naval Air Station, the six men had avoided the fate of the rest of the country and the world.

  Was their arrival at Granite Mountain just a temporary reprieve from the death and devastation caused by the virus, or could it be more?

  Was it the first day of a new world or their last desperate, futile attempt to hang on to life for one more day?

  The men didn’t know, all they could do was the best they could.

  Time would tell.

  The last month had given the men time to reflect on the tragic last days at the base in Fallon.

  Time to try to push out of their minds the haunting final images of the base as their helicopter lifted off and the infected swarmed over the base. The horrific images of the deaths of their friends and comrades who were brutally killed or who were transformed into and joined the growing hordes of the walking dead.

  Some images were just too deeply burned into their minds to ever be forgotten.

  The best that the men could hope for was to be able to accept the fact that there wasn’t anything more that any of them could have done, then to move on.

  If there was going to be a future, the last few weeks gave them time to prepare the best they could for what was to come.

  Time to make plans for how they would use what they had discovered at Granite Mountain to save themselves and maybe whatever was left of mankind.

  That is, if there was anyone left to save.

  The first week at Granite Mountain, the men concentrated on the basics.

  Their first priority was to secure the entrance to the tunnel to protect themselves from both the infected and whatever else might be lurking nearby that could threaten their survival.

  The second thing they did was to locate the mess hall and where the food was stored.

  Third, they found the bays that were constructed to be the housing quarters for the people that were originally to have been sent to Granite Mountain.

  After claiming their own space, they were now officially able to call Granite Mountain home.

  That was the easy part, now came the hard part.

  The men tackled the daunting task of figuring out what to do next.

  All their Navy training did little to prepare them for what they now faced.

  The Navy hadn’t yet updated their survival manuals for surviving a zombie apocalypse, so the men had to figure this one out on their own.

  In order to help them decide what to do next, the men set out to find what all was stored at Granite Mountain while they used their satellite link to watch helplessly as what was left of civilization died a horrible death around them in the outside world.

  They watched as hordes of the dead staggered through the cities and across the countryside.

  All their attempts to contact whatever might be left of civilization had ended unsuccessfully.

  So the men did the only thing they could do, they began their search of Granite Mountain to find out what resources they had, so they could start to plan and get organized for the day when they would hopefully find the first survivors.

  .

  Granite Mountain was a huge facility for only six men to explore, and when Seaman Rogers found the complete TV series of Gilligan’s Island on DVD, the work came to a halt for a few days.

  After what they had lived through and as they watched life as they knew it crumbling around them, finding the crazy mindless TV comedy show from the sixties was just what the doctor ordered.

  Doc said so himself as the men sat and laughed for the first time in weeks.

  But as the days passed by, the gravity of the situation again became all the motivation the men needed to keep their focus on what they had to do.

  It was not going to be easy, the fact that the men including Doc had no idea of what most of the items stored in the bays were, it made their job even harder. Even the items they recognized, other than the medical equipment, they lacked the training to operate.

  But they were all determined to do the best they could with what they had, because if they couldn’t find a way to make a difference, there would be no one else left who could.

  If mankind was going to have a chance, unfortunately they were it.

  Doc walked into the situation room at the end of the tunnel where Petty Officer Chervanak was munching on some dried fruit and intently studying the monitor in front of him.

  Doc had assigned jobs to each of the men a few days after arriving at Granite Mountain.

  Each of the jobs were to help the men survive in their new world and to get the team ready to carry out their new mission, if and when that time ever came.

  Being Fallon’s head computer tech, Chervy’s job was the operation of the facilities computer and satellite link.

  Chervy had been spending three or four hours a day over the last week, using the satellite to scour the country looking for signs of life.

  But more urgently, he had been looking for signs of death – the death of the infected.

  When the group arrived at Granite Mountain one month ago, Doc had a theory that gave the men hope.

  Even though the reanimated bodies of the infected seemed to defy all the laws of science and nature, Doc believed that at least one law of nature still applied.

  That law was that once the body died, as all bodies did, they would decompose and return to dust.

  The men waited and watched, hoping that in three to four weeks the dead bodies of the infected would decay to the point where they would begin to fall apart and no longer be a threat to the living.

  When the infected were no longer able to function, then they would be able to safely go back out into the world.

  The men eagerly counted down the days and waited for the day when the infected would begin to disappear as they worked on the tasks Doc had assigned them.

  Doc grinned to himself as he saw Chervy hard at work in front of the computer screen.

  Today, the Petty Officer looked especially frustrated.

  “How is your search going today?” Doc asked as he walked in and stood next to Chervy.

  “Frustrating as hell,” Chervy looked up and replied. “I thought by now the infected would have all died out.

/>   I admit that there are a lot less of them now compared to when we first arrived, but I was just hoping they would all be gone by now. It feels like this damn nightmare is never going to end.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I still think my original theory that the infected would die out after about a month is still correct,” Doc said. “However, you have to take in to account that there will be a period where the remaining survivors will continue to be infected by the virus. The newly infected will then take another thirty days before they cease to function.

  Be patient Cherv.

  Besides, it’s not like we can do anything to speed up the process. It would be nice if we had a vaccine against the virus, but we don’t. All we can do is wait.

  We can’t do anything until the infected are gone.”

  “I guess you’re right Doc,” Chervy replied. “The fact we are seeing less of the infected roaming around seems to confirm what you said would happen.

  I guess I had just assumed when we arrived here and found the survival vault, that after a month we would be out helping the other survivors.

  But from what I have been seeing, I am beginning to wonder if there are going to be any survivors left for us to help.

  Look at this screen. There is nothing but dead bodies everywhere. Where are the living? This is all I’ve seen for days now.”

  Doc moved over and stood behind Chervanak.

  He looked over Chervy’s shoulder and down at the screen.

  “What am I looking at?” Doc asked. “Where is this?”

  “This is downtown Denver,” Chervy replied. “The last couple of days I’ve spent time checking out Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Miami and Houston.