Origin Z Read online

  ORIGIN Z

  TONY HARTZELL

  © 2016 Tony Hartzell

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1523365897

  ISBN 13: 9781523365890

  Contents

  Part I

  Prologue

  Tin

  Teeny

  Michael

  Bio-Sure

  O’Reilly

  Leonidas

  Laudner

  Immune

  Recruited

  Spartan Squad

  Part II

  Mission

  Marty

  Raines

  Dead Man Walking

  Rocky J, Foxy Loxy, and the Big Bad Wolf

  Sustenance

  Death, No Death

  Part III

  Crash

  The Wandering Dead

  Mercy

  Proliferation

  Viking Hordes

  Rescue

  Part IV

  Run

  The Reverend

  Bugged In

  Monk’s Hill Chapel

  Plantation

  Ragers

  Judgment Day

  Epilogue

  PART I

  Origin

  PROLOGUE

  Atlanta was still hundreds of miles away when the truck they were in chugged to a standstill. They hadn’t been able to get close enough to any populated areas to replenish their supplies because of the hordes of wanderers. You could just run by them if they were few, but entering a city or town and getting trapped by hundreds would mean their end. There were many more of the ragers after leaving Trudeau. That strain of the virus was much more dangerous than axola. They were fast and ruthless because they retained some cognitive abilities.

  The survivors were few. In fact, from what they had seen, they didn’t know whether anyone else had endured the man-made plague.

  Who would have anticipated that the best thing that had ever happened to the human race would be the worst thing to happen to humankind…

  TIN

  Six Months Earlier

  Lieutenant Tinley Hardt (people called him Tin) was tall and muscular. His face was flat, and it looked as if he had gotten his nose broken every day of his life. It had been only a dozen or so times, by his recollection. A shock of blond hair in a crew cut set against tan skin topped off that muscular frame. He was built to be a soldier and had felt that it was his destiny since he was five years old.

  Despite his rough look, he was liked by all. His men admired and respected him. Popularity had come to him naturally during high school and when he was a linebacker for the Black Knights at West Point in New York. His large frame was also natural. He hadn’t succumbed to the draw of using enhancement drugs like a lot of athletes these days.

  Tin led Alpha Platoon in the First Battalion of the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment. They were always used for the most difficult situations.

  His platoon wasn’t part of the larger fighting force. They functioned in small fire-team stiletto strikes at enemy command or infrastructure targets in the harshest and most unfriendly environments in the world.

  The regiment’s history was storied. They were known as Merrill’s Marauders in World War II and since then had been the most elite regiment in the US Army. The six battalions had been game changers in every conflict over the last eighty years.

  After the battalion was pulled out of Afghanistan, Alpha Platoon was assigned to protect and keep a perimeter at a large pharmaceutical company called Bio-Sure. They had been stationed there for six months. Tin figured it was because there weren’t any “boots on the ground” anywhere right now. It was an odd assignment for his team, though. Leadership wasn’t forthcoming with why they were protecting a civilian pharmaceutical company. This made him uneasy, and the seasoned soldiers of his platoon were noticeably curious about the situation. Here in the South Carolina forest, the tension among his team was palpable. It felt as if something was being hidden from them, and sooner or later, it was going to explode. They just didn’t know why or when. They would be expected to be there to tamp down the fires. He just hoped they wouldn’t be the cause of that explosion. The whole situation made him feel as nervous as a rat in a room full of alley cats.

  He had checked into the company on the Internet and found out that they made everything from boner pills to chemo meds. But he was sure that they were there to cover someone’s ass. He was also sure that it had to be one of the clandestine agencies.

  They had been given several buildings to protect as a special assignment. When the doors or windows were open, he could hear animals either screaming in pain or growling as if they were cornered. He could pick out the sounds of several kinds of animals—monkeys and dogs, and the squeal of pigs was unmistakable. It sounded as if they were castrating the pigs. The other animal sounds ranged from howling to growling. Whatever they were doing to them, it didn’t sound as if the animals were enjoying it.

  Major Sanchez had been vague about the details when Tin had asked him why they would be protecting a private company. When Tin pressed him a little, the major had become agitated and cut him off, invoking the “need to know” mantra—which was always used as the politically correct way of saying, “Shut the fuck up, and back the fuck off!”

  This was unusual for their relationship. The two weren’t friends, but Sanchez had a deep respect for Tin. But the major was very tight lipped about this assignment.

  _______

  Tin headed up the hill to the barracks, intending to grab some shut-eye. He had taken to long shifts because his well-trained veteran’s gut made him feel he needed to be more cautious these days.

  He saw Corporal O’Reilly coming toward him, and by the way he was staring hard and walking at a brisk pace, Tin was certain that it was time for the usual barrage of questions. O’Reilly was a good soldier and a good friend. Tom had enlisted after Tin graduated from West Point, and they had asked for and gotten permission for then Private O’Reilly to be assigned to one of Tin’s squads. They were both from Saint Louis and had met all the way back in grade school.

  He had always called him Tom or Tommy when they were friends in the civilian world, but he had taken to calling him O’Reilly because everyone else addressed him that way. Tin had always been Tin except to the drill sergeant at West Point. He called him Cadet Tin Head and claimed it was because he had a hard head.

  Both he and O’Reilly were good at soldiering. Both were sharp and focused in intense and stressful situations. It was just due to the fact that Tin was a collegiate-caliber linebacker and O’Reilly was only a high-school-caliber receiver that Tin had been able to attend West Point.

  Tom had just reenlisted for his second tour of duty when they were sent here. Tin had just let him know that he could take the sergeant test and would become Alpha Squad leader after they finished this deployment. Needless to say, Tom was pretty eager to get this assignment to its end.

  As O’Reilly approached Tin, he waved on his companion. “Go ahead, Laudner. I’ll catch up after I talk to the lieutenant.”

  Laudner saluted. “Good morning Lieutenant.”

  “Stay alert out there, Private.”

  “Will do, sir! I’ll try to keep those rogue squirrels from stealing aspirin from the compound.”

  Tin chuckled and saluted as they passed each other. O’Reilly pulled up and watched Laudner’s back to make sure he was out of earshot. After giving his own salute to his friend, he started in with the question that Tin knew was coming. “Hey, Tin.”

  Tin said formally, “Corporal O’Reilly.”

&nb
sp; “Whatever, Tin Head.”

  Tin smiled and pretended to scratch his eye with his middle finger.

  “What did you hear from Sanchez?”

  Tin looked at him and slowly shook his head. “He is tight as a high-school virgin about this one.”

  Some soldiers were passing, and Tin poked his chin toward the barracks. “Why don’t we walk and talk.”

  They both started walking, and O’Reilly continued. “Everyone is nervous as hell around here, and that’s not good when you’re dealing with a bunch of hyped-up army berserkers.”

  They walked in silence for a time, and when O’Reilly heard a squirrel chatter angrily at them, he continued. “Laudner wasn’t far off with his squirrel comment. I’ve seen the men looking at them like they are disguised Taliban!”

  “It sounds like they are torturing the animals over there in Area 51.”

  They had taken to calling it that because it was, coincidentally, building number 51. The irony of that was almost as scary as the animal sounds.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes in deep thought.

  Tin finally spoke. “Just keep doing what you are supposed to, Tom. Be ready for anything, and hopefully, nothing will happen.”

  After more silent introspection, he continued. “Maybe I’ll chat up that cute doctor and see if I can get her to let something slip.”

  O’Reilly smiled, and Tin realized that of course he would see a double entendre.

  Tin smiled at him. “You’re a dick!”

  O’Reilly chuckled. “No, you’re the dick! You need to make sure she brings a fast, loose, and pretty friend!”

  “I’m not supposed to fraternize with enlisted personnel!”

  “Wear your civvies, and we’ll play it off as a happenstance meeting.”

  “I’ll be damned if I let you cramp my style, Corporal O’Reilly!”

  O’Reilly scratched his eye with his middle finger. “Wait till I get my own squad, Tin Head! You’ll be pinning medals on my chest before you can say ‘O’Reilly could be my daddy!’”

  Tin mocked a serious face. “Get to your post on time, Corporal, or you’ll be on latrine duty for two weeks! No woman is going to get near you if you smell like urinal cakes.”

  O’Reilly backed away from him with another subtle scratch of his eye with his middle finger and a salute, and then he turned and trotted away.

  Tin watched his friend’s back as he trotted to his post. Tom was right. There was something happening here that just didn’t feel right. Sooner or later, something was going to happen that would cause a warrior’s spontaneous response. He had to find out what was going on in Building 51. He glanced in the direction of the building and then turned and walked the rest of the way to the barracks.

  TEENY

  Dr. Tina Lisandro grew up in East St. Louis with her black father and Vietnamese mother. Her childhood was spent trying to fit into a mostly black neighborhood. Though she was teased a lot in grade school, her beautiful, almond-shaped eyes and petite but very shapely body earned her much popularity in middle and high school. With her small stature and convenient name, it seemed inevitable that people would change her given name of Tina to Teeny. She ended up not minding that, and she eventually embraced it when her close friends used it.

  Life was hard for her family, and it was made even harder when her father developed muscular dystrophy during her freshman year in high school. The family suffered great hardships with the loss of his paycheck. But the worst part was watching a proud man such as him lose control of his movements and spend most of his time in bed with regular bouts of pneumonia.

  Her mother had to get two jobs just to get by because they had to have home health care for her father.

  Teeny had very little hope of her family paying for college.

  But she was more than a pretty face. She was really bright and had a talent for biology. She had been number one academically in her class three of her four years in high school.

  During her junior year, she wrote a paper for biology that the teacher was so impressed with, he submitted it to a company called Bio-Sure for a contest to win a one-year scholarship. When she won that one, she applied for more in the field of biology from Novus, Bayer, and others. She ended up getting her entire college career paid for with scholarships and grants.

  Her undergraduate was at George Washington University in Saint Louis. This made it convenient for her to help out at home.

  She was accepted to Stanford for her graduate degree soon after her father finally succumbed to muscular dystrophy. It was a very sad time for them, but her mother insisted that she pursue her career and not worry about her. She had her father’s “crazy-ass” family to fill her days.

  Her move to California came with a lot of tears, but once she settled in, it was the happiest she had been in her life.

  Her father dying from muscular dystrophy reinforced her drive to work in the medical field. She continued to expand her research with stem cells and strengthening the human immune system.

  Soon after arriving at Stanford, she met her best friend, Marty. She had always gotten a lot of attention because she was so beautiful, and he was a godsend because he was gay. She didn’t want to deal with intimate relationships yet. With Marty she could relax. There was no sexual drama between them. Pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend to keep the hounds at bay helped them to concentrate on their work.

  She had two majors, molecular biology and molecular medicine. Marty was a molecular biology major.

  In her first year at Stanford, she and Marty made very little progress with her “supercell,” which they had started calling Spartan. In her second year, she was strongly encouraged to move on to other studies. Her teachers seemed strangely disinterested in her discoveries.

  Her doctoral dissertation was around their minimal discoveries with stem cells. She earned her doctorate degrees in both molecular medicine and molecular biology by the time she was twenty-seven. She was hired immediately by Bio-Sure. In fact, they were so anxious for her to work for them that she was able to convince them that Marty had enough to do with her research that it was absolutely necessary to hire him too.

  Arriving at Bio-Sure in South Carolina, they were immediately encouraged to return to their studies of the Spartan cell. One day when Marty was suffering with an especially nasty cold, Teeny had an epiphany. They soon discovered that by infecting the supercell with a virus, they could introduce it to the host merely by letting it catch a common flu.

  It was a breakthrough that would change the world.

  The host would get sick, and when its natural antibodies attacked the virus, the two would recombine to form the Spartan supercell.

  The host would be sick for about a week with a mild flu, and after its recovery, the cells would reproduce in the host’s body to create a practically invincible immune system.

  At first they just experimented by giving the host other strains of the flu. The immune system would react much faster by attacking and killing the virus before the host had even shown the first signs of being sick.

  The great news was that when they introduced other viruses, it was able to fight them off too—viruses that had plagued the human race since the Middle Ages, such as herpes, hantavirus, HIV, smallpox, Ebola, and scores of others.

  They were on the way to enhancing the human immune system to a point where it could fight off any viral infection. This would change our way of life forever!

  There was an unexpected side effect that had everyone even more excited. Lacerations, abrasions, and bruises healed in hours rather than days or weeks.

  The team at Bio-Sure was made up of Teeny, Marty, and three other scientists at the top of their fields.

  Dr. Eli Abraham was a stem cell specialist and the administrator at Bio-Sure. He was also the main reason she worked at Bio-Sure. He had sent the recruiter to
Stanford to make sure she was hired at any cost.

  The second was Michael Tanner. He was a bit of a zealot who followed Abraham around and agreed with everything he said. His specialty was chemistry. Tanner had been working on a project that Abraham kept very close to his chest.

  The third was a pathologist named Edward Leonard. He was creepy and quiet like a mortician. Teeny and Marty would get the shivers every time he was around. She was sure she caught expressions on his face that told her he realized how he made them feel, and it made him smile.

  The three were always meeting in closed rooms and dark corners.

  During the process of testing with different viruses, they found one exception that the Spartan gene would not cure—Rhabdoviridae (rabies). Teeny had several theories about this but wasn’t able to pursue them because of all the positive things that were happening with Spartan.

  They had to put down several animals due to the “rage effect” caused by the rabies infection. And they were very hard to kill.

  They concentrated on working in the direction of healing injuries, and whenever Teeny or Marty suggested going public with their discoveries, Abraham sternly touted the company’s proprietary rights and said that it wasn’t the best time to go public just yet.

  _______

  Marty was busy processing blood work for one of the chimpanzees, Leonidas, when he noticed Teeny standing outside Leonidas’s cage holding a mango. Their eyes were locked. She had a special relationship with the chimpanzee. She definitely had a problem with some of the things Leonard was doing to the chimp. Leonidas was the first primate they had been able to successfully infect with the Spartan virus. Teeny put the mango into the tray on the door of the cage and pushed it into the cage. He gave her a couple of affectionate ooo, ooos; grabbed the mango; and moved to the back of the cage to eat it.

  “You’re welcome, buddy.”

  Marty spoke up then. “He’s lucky.”

  Teeny turned to look at him and gave him that “Whatchu talkin’ ’bout” look that she used on him.