“Stop!” I shouted, knowing it was too late. I picked up the bright yellow suit off the ground and poked a finger through the bullet hole in its faceshield. LEVEL A/FULL ENCAPSULATION, I read from a tag attached to the HazMat suit’s zipper. LIQUIDPROOF AND VAPORPROOF, it assured me. Well, not anymore.
“I’m going to open another locker. Don’t shoot this time, okay?” I asked. The girls nodded in chorus. They looked terrified, as if the next locker might reveal some magical bird that would flap out and peck at their eyes. Instead it held a duplicate of the first suit, as did the third locker. I tossed one to Ayaan and she just stared at me. “Now there are only two suits. Guess who just got volunteered for this mission?” I asked her.
Cruel, I know. She hadn’t exactly been the soul of warmth to me, though. She was also one of the few girls I trusted to not panic when we walked right into a crowd of the undead protected by only three layers of military grade Tyvek. Tyvek, of course, being a very high-tech kind ofpaper.
“Normally,” I explained to her, “these suits keep out contaminants. This time they’ll hold in our smell. The dead won’t attack something that smells like plastic and looks like a Teletubby.”
“You think this, or you know it?” she asked, holding the bulky yellow suit at arm’s length.
“I’m counting on it.” That was the best I could offer.
We took the suits back to the boat and had Osman steam north forForty-Second street. There was plenty to do. We had to sterilize the outsides of the suits, read instruction manuals and then run drills on how to put on and use the SCBA air recirculator units, teach each other how to put on the suits (a two-person job) without contaminating the surface. We had to practice talking to each other through the mylar faceshields and even how to walk so we didn’t trip over the baggy legs of the suits.
I had been through a crash course in how to use a Level B suit back when I was investigating weaponized nuclear facilities inLibya. There had been a three hour seminar with PowerPoint presentations and a thirty-question quiz at the end. I had paid attention because a breach in that suit might have meant being exposed to carcinogens. This time the smallest tear in the suit would surely mean being surrounded and devoured by the hungry dead.
I made sure we went through all of our drills twice.
David Wellington - Monster Island
Monster Island
Chapter Five
Author’s Note: “MonsterIsland” ran a contest last month in which we promised a part in the novel to whoever was the first to bring us two hundred hits. The judging was too close to call so we have two winners,Paul Ford ofwww.ftrain.com andDeadKev ofwww.allthingszombie.com. Our thanks go out to these two and also everyone who has linked to, reviewed, or read the site. I hope you all enjoy the following chapter. -David Wellington
Garystepped aside and the next shot missed him completely. He glanced at his companions-at the noseless man and the faceless woman and gestured for them to spread out and find cover. They communicated their inability to do so-they lacked the brainpower to identify what was covered and what wasn’t-so he wasted another second telling them mentally to duck down behind abandoned cars. The violence of the moment had sharpened him somehow, thrown everything into high contrast.
“Kev-I’m reloading-get this one!” a living human shouted.Gary swiveled to track the voice and saw a big guy with short curly black hair standing under an awning. The living man worked nervously at the action of a long-barreled hunting rifle that looked like a stick in his enormous hands. He wore a rumpled tan shirt and a nametag that read HELLO MY NAME IS Paul. There were two of them,Gary inferred, this Paul and another one named Kev.Gary stepped closer to the shooter and sent instructions to his companions to spread out and try to flank the assailants.