Infected Planet Read online

  Sleeping battle craft loomed above us in the hanger-sized room. We passed below their intimidating wings as we made our way toward the airlocks at the far end. We’d seen no signs of Federation security. When our lights bounced off a fuselage, we were startled by something moving behind the windows. I stepped toward it for a closer look and soon realized the faces inside belonged to rotters. The glass separating them from us was smudged by their decaying flesh. My pulse began to hammer in my ears. Sweat trickled from my skin and sent a chill down my spine.

  Jade glared at me. “What the hell, Brand? I thought you said it was just a dumb theory.”

  “I guess I got lucky.”

  We didn’t have to walk much further before we found the Federation soldiers scattered face down on the tarmac. Pools of blood around the bodies were slick with ice. We poked at the corpses with our rifles to be sure they were dead. Jade pulled back their hoods after we pried them from the ice. Each forehead had sustained a horrific wound.

  “They were rotters before this happened,” Jade said. “So why weren’t the ones in the fighter ship put down at the same time?”

  Ramos was shivering. “Maybe they were outnumbered and decided to run...”

  “You all right?” I asked.

  Ramos rolled his eyes. “Of course, Brand. I like nothing better than feeling my nuts turn to ice.”

  “How long ago do you think the outbreak happened here?” I asked, ignoring his sarcasm.

  “I’d guess around the time we made our homecoming trip to Lazarus as guests of the President.”

  “I was thinking the same.”

  “Come look at this,” Patch called. He was several yards in front of us and hunched over another corpse. Another fighter ship cast a darker shadow over him.

  Ramos scratched his cheek. “I thought I said to stick close, Patch. Get on back here.”

  “You need to see this,” Patch insisted. “It’s different than the others. I think this poor bastard was too far eaten to even turn rotter.”

  “Damn you Patch,” Jade said. “Get back here. We believe you.”

  Patch finally turned and walked toward us, his footfalls echoing across the tarmac. He stopped to glance up at the dark fuselage of the mothballed fighter ship. The airlock was open above him. From where we stood, it resembled a large mouth. Horrible sounds began to emerge from the black opening, filling the cold air with dread.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  But Patch couldn’t tear his eyes off the shadows moving within. He glanced back at us and shook his head. Goddamn it, I thought. What’s wrong with him?

  The first rotter to fall from the fuselage landed right in front of Patch. He jumped back and his top hat flew off his head and rolled away. Although the rotter’s legs were shattered mush up to its waist, it still managed to rise up on its torso and attempt to grab him with its nearly fleshless hands.

  More rotters dropped from the airlock above. Some broke open their skulls and lay still while others tried to move themselves with whatever limbs they still had use of.

  Jade brushed past me to go help Patch. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back. She turned and glared at me. I pointed up at the ship. The rain of falling rotters had intensified. It reminded me of the times I’d accidentally chopped into a nest of scorpions and watched them pour from a hollowed log.

  There was already a pile of rotters twisting on the ground. As new ones landed on top of their predecessors, their damage was less severe. Some of the able bodied pulled themselves free of the twitching mound and headed toward Patch.

  Jade broke away from my grip and ran to help him. She ordered him to hit the ground but he ignored her, terrified as more rotters gained on him from behind.

  “Get down!” Jade called before firing shots just above Patch’s head.

  Now he looked more confused and frightened than ever. Until the bit of sanity left inside his adrenaline-soaked brain enabled him to understand what Jade wanted him to do.

  He was already too late. Tattered hands had grabbed hold of him from behind and he’d been unable to shake them off. Desperate, he dove forward to break from their grip. Although he’d freed himself by slamming into the tarmac on his stomach, his problems were far from over. With no time to get up, he crawled away on hands and knees while Jade and Ramos shot down the rotters lurching toward him. As soon as his attackers dropped, he scrambled to his feet and grabbed his top hat before heading back to rejoin us.

  More rotters rose from the pile below the fuselage and rushed forward. There were too damn many of them, I thought. And they’re coming from the direction we need to go. There’s no way we’re going to be able to clear a path to the Federation airlock...

  Patch finally reached us, panting hard. When he glanced up at Jade and Ramos, their burning eyes confused him. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Jade decided to inflict some pain. Maybe it was something he had coming.

  “What?” He asked innocently.

  I drove my fist into Patch’s mouth before I even knew what was happening. I instantly regretted what I’d done. Patch rubbed his jaw and stared at me with tearful eyes. Jade and Ramos smiled approvingly.

  “Why’d you do that?” the showman cried.

  “We’re now cut off thanks to you,” I said.

  “Cut off from what?”

  “From the Federation entrance. If you’d listened earlier, we might have had a chance of reaching it. Now we’re left with no choice. There’s no other way into the helix except through the prison. I don’t know about you, but that’s the last place I ever wanted to see again.”

  Chapter 20

  Yet the prison still had power. It also had heat. Too much of it, for my liking. The humidity was thick and cloying. Our faces were dripping wet within ten minutes of walking the bridge toward the first command post.

  Guards-turned-rotters moved frantically behind walls on both sides of us. They hammered the glass with crushed fists and bellowed incoherently. Luckily, none of them had figured out how to open the doors and escape. The smell of their decaying flesh had seeped out, however. In no time, we were gagging and trying to get past them without being sick.

  Had we seen enough evidence now to believe the entire Federation was infected? The effort to bring Junior Garrett back to his father now felt pointless. I thought about the needless deaths. All because a dying regime was hell bent on restoring their glory days.

  After we passed into the next section, I saw the hallway leading toward the thawing room where I’d spent my first days recovering from freeze. A feeling I can’t describe made me suddenly turn right and start running. There might be prisoners still alive in there, I thought.

  “Where are you going?” Ramos shouted at me.

  The plan had been to get through the prison as fast as possible. At the terminus, there was a lesser-known passage leading into the rest of the Federation. Of any place on the helix, it would be the most heavily guarded. Or packed with rotters if the infection had already spread there. I think we already knew the answer.

  “Don’t wait for me,” I called. “If you can’t find the President, go back to the hopper and get the hell out of here.”

  Although this part of the helix appeared to be compromised, I encountered no infected. I wished we could have turned around already and gone back home. But we had no idea if the Federation had pre-programmed their deadly missile attack on Lazarus to wipe the slate clean.

  Knowing how the Federation thought, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had opted for mutual destruction should the helix ever suffer a devastating attack. If Ramos found a way to hack into their network with the tool Cutter had given him, it might be possible to disable the command. As long as we didn’t have to deal with many rotters, our chances weren’t bad. In fact, we might save some Dusters from extinction if our plan succeeded. I wished that Cutter could have seen how he’d helped us.

  I passed through several more rooms before I reached the thawing area. What I saw made me want to puke. Men a
nd women strapped down in pods like I had once been. Except they’d been chewed on by rotters while unable to free themselves.

  One victim opened her milky green eyes. I stepped over her intestines spilled across the floor and ignored the frothy sounds coming from her mouth. Her face reminded me of someone I once knew on Lazarus. From one of the old Duster bloodlines, most likely. I’d seen pictures once. Even a few of my own family going way back.

  My mind flashed images of Laura hanging onto the side of that building back in Cranston. Pleading for help while rotters tried to pull her off...

  I fought back tears as I circled around the dead woman. Wondered if things had turned out differently, I might have settled down with someone like her and closed the book on a life of crime.

  The longer I stared, the deeper the hurt twisted. I walked behind her and held my breath. She became frenzied with hunger and began pulling at her intestines. I reached out my hand and gently stilled her trembling head while with the other I drove a knife into her right temple.

  When I let go, her head fell limp to the side. I backed away and shut my eyes. Wondering if I was to become blind would I sooner stop seeing her in my head. Although she was supposed to be truly dead, I still felt a presence lingering behind. I wondered if I was losing my mind.

  “Welcome home, shit kicker,” a man’s voice said.

  A baton slammed into my lower back and buzzed like an angry McCarthy rattler. The electric shock was so great I thought my bladder would give. Another baton swipe to my legs, and I fell onto my knees.

  The warden stood over me, grinning. He looked like he’d aged another ten years since I’d seen him last. There was a blood-soaked rag wrapped hastily around one of his hands. The greenish hue of his skin told me he’d been recently bitten.

  He tossed away my rifle and knife before ordering me to stand back up. He raised the baton and held it close to my left eye. I knew I’d lose it if I tried to escape or pull anything else he might deem stupid.

  “Listen,” I said. “You’re infected. Don’t you want to go get a vodka or something before you go? I sure know I would.”

  I agree it was idiotic of me to talk that way while the fate of my eye was in his hands. The warden’s face read stone crazy. Judging by the drying blood on his chin, I’d say he’d recently experienced the infection’s first dramatic stage and had become obsessed with the idea of eating human flesh. Now that he’d taken his first taste, he was sure to start moaning with self-loathing. Like most infected, there’d be much vomiting yet to come before he accepted his fate.

  The warden shoved me past the others in their thawing pods. Not a single prisoner had escaped infection. The air was heavy with the stench of death and human waste. Any one of the thawing prisoners could have been the bastard’s first snack. At the end of the room we came to a staging area where the bodies were prepared for disposal.

  “I see what you’re doing,” I said. “And I feel touched that the last thing you’ve chosen to do with your time is kill me.”

  The electric baton slid away from my face. It crackled before it made contact with my lower back again and forced me to drop to my knees. I heard the sound of cuffs rattling. Unless I did something soon, the warden was going to kill me in any manner of his choosing. And he’d take his sweet time about it.

  “Hands behind your back, dust mite,” the warden ordered. “If I need to use my little friend again, I’ll make sure it goes some place that really hurts.”

  “You’re the boss.” I offered up my wrists behind my back. As soon as he reached down, I shoved up from my knees as fast as I could until I felt the back of my head connect with the bottom of his chin.

  I saw arc flash before my vision went grainy. I’d cracked my skull much harder than I’d intended, and it hurt like hell. The warden was on the ground half conscious. His lower jaw hung loose and bloody. He swung the baton up at me and I kicked it from his hand. It spun through the air to the other side of the room and smashed several monitors.

  I dragged the warden to the disposal machine and laid him out on a prep grid. I knew this place well. While I was a prisoner, the warden had brought me here to watch him execute Dusters. Men and women who’d been discovered plotting an escape or who had committed other serious infractions. Or so we were led to believe...

  But he wasn’t able to get me to break. I never gave him names or spilled any secrets. And I watched my kinfolk die. Now, after all this time, I was going to see the warden pay his dues.

  “Begin process,” I said.

  Dozens of steel robotic arms descended from the ceiling and began wrapping the warden like a spider wraps its prey in silk. Its work was cool and efficient. The sound the polymer strands made as they were spun around the warden’s body raised the hair on my arms.

  The warden screamed. When he struggled to free himself, one of the robotic arms shot toward him with a loaded syringe.

  “Stop," I ordered. "No sedative necessary.”

  “The human is still alive and is experiencing great pain,” the computer said.

  “The human is infected with a deadly virus. The very virus that is endangering the whole Federation helix.”

  “I must confirm,” the voice insisted.

  “There is no time.”

  “It will require less than 30 seconds to test a sample for the presence of the contagion.”

  I gritted my teeth and waited. After the machine retrieved a sample of the warden’s blood, it took only a few seconds before it confirmed he’d tested positive for the virus.

  “Told you he was infected,” I said. “Now prepare him for disposal without further delay.”

  I watched the robotic arms finish packaging the warden’s body. He screamed at me to stop. By now, the spider legs had wrapped him so tight he sounded no louder than an angry housefly. I gave the command to dispose.

  After a loud whoosh of air, the warden was jettisoned into space. He thrashed inside his transparent cocoon like a mummy brought back to life. I took a seat at the controls and slipped my hands up inside the weaponry gloves. As they initiated the connection with my nervous system, my fingertips began to tingle.

  “Weapon now functional,” the computer said.

  I took aim at the warden and finally did what I’d only been able to dream about up until now. With each curl of my finger, another one of his limbs exploded into a colorful fireball.

  By the time I was done, there was nothing left but his head and torso spinning off into space. The warden’s silk-covered face was melting. His red mouth gaped in a silent scream, like a child’s ragdoll cast into space. I hoped the warden was still conscious to enjoy the trip for a while longer. I would have hated him to miss it.

  I wanted to savor the warden’s demise much longer, but there wasn’t time. And although his fantasy execution had played in my head for all these years, when the time came I was filled with neither joy nor satisfaction. The bastard still gets the last laugh, I thought. Back in the comfort of the dark place.

  I pushed away from the controls and headed back through the prison to find the others. We needed a plan soon.

  Chapter 21

  “All the prisoners left at the helix are infected,” Ramos announced. “Except for those still stored in freeze, of course.”

  Jade handed him a cup of something hot. The broth’s aroma caused my stomach to knot with hunger. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.

  “Nothing we can do,” she said. “We’ll have to come back when the rotter bug has burned itself out. I see no other way.”

  Although Jade was right, Ramos and I still didn’t have to like it. We wanted to do something for them now. What if bandits decide to visit the helix someday, thinking they might find something they wanted? Weapons, spacecraft and freezer banks packed with Dusters would be worth a fortune on the black market.

  Abe had been listening to us while he gave Patch’s lip a bandage where I’d slugged him earlier. Despite my distrust of the artificial, I couldn’t de
ny he’d been useful at restoring our health. If it hadn’t been for his help, I wouldn’t have seen my hand working again.

  “I have an idea you might find worth considering,” our nurse stated.

  “Go on,” Ramos said, curious. We were exhausted and trying to warm up inside the hopper. Soon we’d be back on Lazarus and bitching about the heat.

  The nurse continued. “Since the Federation is under siege, I see no reason why you shouldn’t go back to Lazarus and take care of your unfinished business.”

  “And what about you?” I asked, wondering how much I must have said during surgery.

  “I’m immune to the rotter virus. I could remain here and wait until it has burned out. I might be able to pull your people from freeze. Thaw them out and see to their full recovery. Given time, Dusters could be the ones with the upper hand.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Garrett Junior said. “And I want to stay with him and look for my father. If he didn’t get off the helix in time, he still might be trapped somewhere waiting for help. I want to tell him what sacrifices you made for him.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked. “What if we’re unable to make it back and pick you up? The rotters will remain a serious danger for some time.”

  “I’m willing to take the risk. It’s the Pilgrims who started this whole mess and it should be a Pilgrim who puts an end to it.”

  “And why should we believe you?” Jade asked.

  Garrett shook his head in disbelief. “After all we’ve been through together? You saved my ass more than once. I think I damn well owe you one.”

  ****

  On our return pass of the Federation bio domes, things had changed. They were no longer mysteriously vacant of people. I asked Ramos to bring us closer, and we watched the teaming crowd of human forms pressed behind the glass. It was clear from their behavior they were interested in watching our flyby. Could these be trapped survivors? I asked myself. My heart leaped at the idea. But after Ramos tilted us much too close, I found myself gasping for air.